Happy BUY NOTHING Day!
November 29, 2019iHuman (PLAN ‘V’)
November 30, 2019Publisher’s Note: Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi and Useful Idiot Katie Halper in conversation with the Gray Zone Project‘s Max Blumenthal, who was just arrested at his home in the DC area on trumped up charges as punishment for his courageous ongoing coverage of the US attempted coup d’etat in Venezuela and successful coup ‘d’etat in Bolivia. (Part 1). The real good stuff is in Part 2 of this interview, where Blumenthal addresses the US Empire’s prosecution of multiple “hybrid wars” driven by 1) proxy military action (i.e. the CIA and Pentagon funded “moderate rebels” in Syria); 2) economic “sanctions,” which Blumenthal rightly points out are punitive economic measures aimed at starving whole populations; and 3) info wars, in which US corporate commercial “news” outlets” serve as propagandistic mouthpieces for the Deep State and US imperial war goals (#RussiaGate, anyone?). Refreshing to have real geopolitical analysis and such candor in an Age of (Near) Universal Deceit, as George Orwell famously observed.
On the US Empire’s “tapeworm economy” driven by “endless wars,” see our Vermont Commons feature from ten years back in our archives, in which former HUD assistant secretary-turned-whistleblower Catherine Austin Fitts provocatively points out that the United States of Empire makes money from “full spectrum dominance” in four ways, using the 2003 US invasion of Iraq as a case study: 1) Blowing Up Stuff (and people); 2) Rebuilding Stuff (not people); 3) Privatizing Stuff (i.e. Iraq’s oil reserves); and 4) “Democratizing” Stuff (i.e. – sending in the “civil society” NGO actors.). As the 21st century world moves from a UNIpolar moment (US as uncontested global actor) to a multipolar world (China, Russia, the US, BRIC countries etc), it’s anyone’s guess how the US Empire will respond. Free Vermont, and bless our Untied States!
