Politics

Back in July, when the HuffPo was covering Donald Trump's campaign in its "Entertainment Section" (they are not laughing now), and when not a single political pundit thought Trump had any chance of winning the GOP primary (now most of them do), we said that "Donald Trump's Soaring Popularity "Is The Country's Collective Middle Finger To Washington."

Here is what we said:

Donald Trump’s ascendance as the early GOP front-runner is symbolic of a greater global trend: growing pushback against institutional political and economic power.

 

Exclusive: With corruption rampant and living standards falling, Ukraine may become the next failed state that “benefited” from a neoconservative-driven “regime change,” though the blame will always be placed elsewhere – in this case, on the demonized Russian President Putin, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry Nearly two years since U.S. officials helped foment a coup…

Submitted by Roger Barris via Acting-Man.com,

Happy Armchair Warriors

The recent terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, have thrown the debate about ISIS into overdrive, particularly among the presidential candidates.  Several strands have emerged from these discussions, but I think that their taxonomy is not often clearly laid out.  I would therefore like to try to do this.

IS military parade in Mosul

I think that there are three inter-related strands to the discussion, which I summarize below:

If Donald Trump’s poll numbers tell us anything, it’s that Americans are angry.

Angry with what they perceive to be government ineptitude, angry with the economy, angry with US foreign policy, angry with just about everything.

The palpable sense of rage has manifested itself in support for dark horse presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders and is also apparent in “incidents” like that which occurred on Saturday when armed militiamen seized a remote government building in Oregon.

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

On December 3rd, a month before Saudi Arabia carried out it largest mass execution since 1980 — subsequently setting the region on fire — Arjun Sethi wrote an article for Al-Jazeera titled: Saudi Arabia Uses Terrorism As An Excuse for Human Rights Abuses. According to Cora Currier at the Intercept:

Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar appear to have blocked the article outside of the United States because it is critical of an ally of Qatar.