3 January 2019 — Black Agenda Report
– Bruce A. Dixon , BAR managing editor The first hundred pages are a warm and fuzzy memoir of growing up on the black south side of Chicago. The next 300 pages are less truthful and far less interesting. This is a memoir with little reason to exist beyond its author’s celebrity.
3 January 2019 — Morning Star Online
Photo: Thomas Good/NLNON
December 9 William Blum died. He was one of the great truth-tellers of this or any other era and an example of everything a real journalist should be.
3 January 2019 — Oriental Review – The Indian Punchline
Is 2019 going to be the year of the Armageddon? The answer is a definitive ‘No’. As 2018 ended, the potential for war was looming and Russian President Vladimir Putin even refused to rule out a nuclear war. But then, the statesmen grappling with international security also know that nukes are useless. They serve the purpose of deterrence but cannot be used as offensive weapons.
2 January 2019 — Elijah J Magnier
In response to domestic pressure, Trump agreed to extend the deadline for withdrawal of thousands of US troops from the northeaster Syrian province of al-Hasaka from the initial 30 days previously announced until April this year. Journalistic warmongers and hawks in think-tanks and among the US establishment have been railing at Trump with implausible arguments for maintaining the presence of US forces in Syria. The attacks on Trump are mainly justified on the pretext of protecting the US allies, the Kurds, from possible extermination by the Turks. Other analysts dare to repeat the absurd US mantra that “ISIS has between 20,000 and 30,000 militants in Syria and Iraq” to justify the continuous occupation of northeast Syria. If these arguments were not enough, others claim that Trump would be delivering the north of Syria to Iranian and Russian scarecrows, or that he would be facilitating the “Iranian-Baghdad-Damascus-Beirut connection”. Trump remains determined to pull out, despite his allies Israel, France and the UK begging him to stay longer in the Levant.
2 January 2019 — Strategic Culture Foundation
As has become the normal practice, Christmas Day’s air raid by Israel directed against targets near Damascus was largely ignored by the US media. Given the fact that Israel has bombed Syria more than two hundred times, the attack itself, which wounded three soldiers at a warehouse, was not particularly notable. But what was significant was the fact that it was the second time that Israel has used other planes to mask the approach of its own warplanes to the target. On this occasion, the masks consisted of two civilian airliners making their approaches to the airports in Beirut and Damascus. Fortunately, the Syrian Arab Air Defense Forces made the decision to delay the deployment of surface-to-air missiles and electronic jamming “to prevent a tragedy” and air traffic control was able to divert one of the passenger jets landing at Damascus to the reserve military airport in Khmeimim in southern Latakia.
5 December 2018 — MintPress News
With the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident as historical precedent, there’s a real possibility that the U.S. government could stage an incident in the Persian Gulf that would allow the Trump administration to push for military intervention in the Persian Gulf targeting Iran.
2 January 2019 — Global Research
Multiple wars, coups, sanctions and trade disputes dominated the US political agenda. War budgets grew, military sales increased and frictions between the US and Saudi Arabia bubbled to the surface . . . and dissipated. Read more…
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2 January 2019 — Climate & Capitalism
Essential reading for everyone who cares about agriculture, the environment, and social-injustice
The 1930s Dust Bowl presaged today’s global ecological crises. Hannah Holleman’s brilliant new book shows how and why capital destroys the soil that all life depends on.
Hannah Holleman
DUST BOWLS OF EMPIRE
Imperialism, Environmental Politics and the Injustice of ‘Green’ Capitalism
Yale University Press, 2018
reviewed by Martin Empson
The New Dark Age 