A day after dozens of doctors around the world released a statement about their mounting concerns regarding JulIan Assanges health as hes detained in a U.K. prison, Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer spoke with Tariq Ali, a renowned British journalist and co-editor of the recent collection of essays, In Defense of Julian Assange. To Scheer, Ali and the many contributors to the book, the case against Assange boils down to an international effort to suppress press freedoms. Yet as Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States have all co-authored the WikiLeaks founders demise, many other journalists and publishers, including at The Guardian and the New York Times---two publications that published work based on Wikileaks---have refused to defend Assange.

What we did in assembling In Defense of Julian Assange, explains Ali, was to take every single facet of the case and present it before a reading public. And one reason we had to do this is because the [liberal] press have given up on him, having used WikiLeaks, having got their scoops, having raised their own circulations.

Corporate medias abandonment of Assange and whistleblower Chelsea Manning comes at no surprise to Scheer who has spent much of his career defending and working with whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg, John Kiriakou, Edward Snowden and others.

Everyone likes a whistleblower as long as he's blowing the whistle on their opponent, or in some other regime, or so forth, Scheer tells Ali.

A prime example of this hypocrisy is the treatment of the Ukraine scandal whistleblower whos been touted by Democrats and much of the press as a hero. Manning and Assange, on the other hand, are vilified, discredited, ignored, jailed, and in Assanges case, psychologically and possibly physically tortured.

The British government [is]keeping [Assange] in Belmarsh prison, which is a high-security prison where he's [surrounded] either by people who have committed unspeakable murders, or so-called terrorists charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Acts, with very high security; he's been kept in isolation. [Doctors are] worried that he might die in prison.

Listen to the full conversation between Ali and Scheer as they discuss the many facets of the obscene persecution of Julian Assange, a man who, both journalists argue, is solely guilty of exposing war crimes and uncomfortable truths the establishment wanted to keep hidden from the public.

Link:
The Plot to Discredit and Destroy Julian Assange | Scheer Intelligence - KCRW

In the past ten years, we lost hope in American politics, realized we were being watched on the internet, and finally broke the gender binary (kind of). So many of the beliefs we held to be true at the beginning of the decade have since been proven falseor at least, much more complicated than they once seemed. The Decade of Disillusion is a series that tracks how the hell we got here.

Transgender people entered the 2010s quietly and are leaving it as magazine cover stars and TV show protagonists. That increased visibility pushed societys understanding of the gender binary, with many people becoming aware of the existence of trans and non-binary people for the first time.

But the 2010s were also when we learned that mainstream visibility doesnt always equal rights, wealth, or safety. While visibility brought significant rights gains to the trans community over the past decade, it also brought a significant backlash that currently threatens several decades of progress for trans people. Here are the 10 most significant moments marking the steps toward rights and representation, which were also, in many cases, steps back.

Before 2010, the ability to legally transition genders was limited to those with financial means. Both conservative and liberal states legally enforced the gender binary, and only allowed changes to gender markers on legal IDs after a trans person had completed gender reassignment surgery, if at all. And given that coverage for such procedures was generally excluded from most health insurance plans, only trans people who could afford the expensive procedures could even dream of legally changing their genders.

In the U.S., you need valid ID to get a job, apply for housing, deal with the police, and buy alcohol, among other things, so any trans person who presented as one gender but had a legal ID showing another was primed to face discrimination.

In 2010, however, the State Department relaxed its surgery requirement in order to change the gender marker on U.S. passports, triggering a sea change for the trans community. Regardless of which state a trans person lived in, they could access a passport with the correct gender that could be used anywhere. It was the first step in allowing a dignified life for trans people who could not afford surgery.

After releasing classified military documents to Wikileaks in 2010, Chelsea Manning was eventually sentenced to 35 years in military prison. Then, on the eve of her sentencing in 2013, Mannings attorneys released a statement revealing that she is a transgender woman. Her struggle in military prison turned her into a high-profile figure for the trans community and brought attention to the plight faced by trans women within the prison system. In 2016, she won the right to have gender reassignment surgery while incarcerated, a first for the U.S. military correctional system.

In early 2017, Mannings sentence was commuted by President Obama, and she ran an unsuccessful campaign for Senate the following year. In March 2019, however, she was re-jailed for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury subpoena and remains in prison today.

You can almost use her progress in life to track a lot of transgender rights over the last decade, said trans advocate and writer Gillian Branstetter. We as a people entered this decade with immense hope, and now we are leaving this decade with immense fear and immense potential for harm. We started this [period of time] with Chelsea Manning in prison and we're ending it with Chelsea Manning in prison.

Transgender Tipping Point blared a Time magazine cover, alongside a statuesque photo of trans actress Laverne Cox. While the issue argued that the U.S. had reached a sort of tipping point of acceptance, nothing could have been further from the truth.

That might be remembered as the point that cis people discovered us, but we were here all along, and we've been doing the work all along, said Branstetter. The cover did symbolize a new level of representation for trans people in the U.S., resulting in modest gains in legal rights. But with that increased visibility came increased attacks from anti-trans activists and politiciansattacks that the trans community are still dealing with at the end of the decade.

Transgender journalist Samantha Allen revisited and skewered the overly optimistic cover three years later. Imagine a magazine cover today announcing The Transgender Tipping Point. The thought is almost laughable, she wrote. Whatever burst of momentum there supposedly was in 2014 has given way to a seemingly endless war of attrition between civil rights groups and anti-LGBT groups, with lives hanging delicately in the balance. Yes, transgender people are on TV now. But its clearer now than it has ever been that visibility is no silver bullet for transphobia.

When former Olympian and reality-TV star Caitlyn Jenner first announced her transition via a glamorous Vanity Fair covershe became the de facto face of the trans community in mainstream pop culture. But it soon became clear that Jenner was out of her depth in her new role as an advocate for the greater trans community.

Her support for Donald Trumps campaign for president proved disastrous, and early media missteps as well as her initial discomfort with marriage equality cost her much needed credibility with trans people and the LGBTQ community at large. Jenner is a contemptuous figure, and as a former athlete, most of her fans were the kind of people who didnt know much about trans people to begin with. Its easy for cis people to mock both her and her gender identity, leaving many trans people in the frustrating position of defending Jenners womanhood while denouncing, well, nearly everything else about her.

Despite that, Jenner remains the highest profile celebrity to publicly transition, and that alone makes her coming out a milestone in the past decade of trans rights.

In the wake of their loss at the Supreme Court over marriage equality, right wing cultural conservatives turned their ire toward transgender people. Using outlandish caricatures of trans women, conservative media and politicians launched a vast campaign against transgender peoples rights to use the bathroom that matches their gender, arguing that trans women are actually creepy men who threaten the safety of cis women and girls in public restrooms.

The issue hit its nadir in North Carolina, when Republican governor Pat McCrory signed HB2known as the bathroom billinto law. Effectively, it required trans people to use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex on their original birth certificates if the bathroom is government owned, including those in public schools. Backlash against the bill was swift and immediate. Musicians canceled concerts, the NBA and NCAA moved events out of the state, and companies canceled plans to expand into the state. All told, North Carolina lost about $3.76 billion in economic activity before the state finally relented and compromised on a repeal of the bill in 2017.

Importantly, HB2 taught the LGBTQ rights movement how to effectively respond to conservative attacks on trans issues. You can talk to state legislators in any state who will point to this three billion dollar damage done to the North Carolina economy because of the massive outcry over the threat of HB2, said Branstetter. It was a huge, huge turning point because it showed that transgender people are not defenseless. We could not easily be used as culture war fodder or a wedge issue. It showed that we have teeth, that we can fight back in a real way.

Before passage of the Affordable Care Act, a gender dysphoria diagnosis was considered a pre-existing condition by most insurance companies, so trans people were often left without access to even basic health insurance plans for transition-related care. And even if you did have coverage, most insurance companies also specifically excluded transition-related surgeries from coverage plans.

Passage of Obamacare changed that calculus significantly. Not only did the ACA require insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, the Obama administration put into place a rule to ban healthcare discrimination on the basis of gender identity, ending exclusions of transition-related surgeries.

Suddenly, trans people from all walks of life could afford life-affirming transition surgeries, and hospitals rushed to meet the sudden growth in demand. Earlier this year, however, the Trump administration proposed a rule that would undo the Obama-era rule, threatening access to transition-related care for hundreds of thousands of trans people in the U.S.

While Washington, D.C. was the first U.S. jurisdiction to offer third gender markers on government identification, Oregon became the first state to do so in 2017. It was the first time that people were given an option of legal gender recognition outside of just male or female.

While its an important step in recognizing that gender is more of a spectrum than a binary, some non-binary people have questioned why gender needs to be on identification in the first place. It certainly shows how much society has created a world and bureaucracy where everyone must at all times be sorted as either a woman or a man, said Vin Tanner, a nonbinary writer.

Now, at the end of the decade, 16 states offer non-binary gender markers on ID. The administrative moves came in response to a massive growth in people identifying outside of the gender binary. According to Pew Research data released earlier this year, 35 percent of people in Gen Z know someone who uses they/them pronouns and several non-binary actors, such as Asia Kate Dillon, now regularly appear on TV and in movies.

With three tweets, President Trump declared that he would order the military to ban transgender servicemembers from serving in the U.S. military. It was one of the few times he actually uttered the word transgender in public, and the ban became the public face for the administrations comprehensive anti-trans agenda.

For some, the attention on the military ban took away from other, more urgent issues for marginalized trans people. It's taking this big, familiar institution, a violent institution, and using it to frame a marginalized group around shared values, explained Branstetter. It was somewhat odd because you saw a lot of advocacy organizations pouring more time and energy into the right of transgender people to be killed in another country than they have ever poured into the transgender people to live in this country.

Still, the ban brought trans rights onto the moral radars of many who hadnt previously been paying attention.The visibility of [the trans military ban] has elevated the visibility of transgender people in the public eye to an unprecedented degree and in a very positive way, said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Danica Roem not only defeated one of the most outspoken homophobic delegates in the Virginia legislature, but became the first ever openly transgender person to be elected to state level office. Joining Roem in winning elections that year were Andrea Jenkins and Phillipe Cunningham, who became the first ever openly trans Black trans people to win elections when both won races to join the Minneapolis City Council.

Roems campaign focused on local transportation issues, but didnt shy away from her gender identity. So, her opponents attacks on her trans status seemed petty and unproductive compared to her plan to fix Route 28, a major thoroughfare through her district that needed significant upgrades. Roems issue-focused strategy has provided a blueprint for other trans candidates to win elections in districts all over the country, and her win effectively opened the door for others. There are now 21 openly trans elected officials in the U.S.

The Supreme Court heard the case of trans woman Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job as a funeral home director and embalmer after informing her employer of her impending gender transition. If the high court rules against Stephens, it will set a precedent for employers to legally fire anyone who they perceive as gender-nonconforming.

Conservative attacks on the trans community are not showing any signs of slowing down, but what weve seen in the past decade is trans people bravely claiming public life, demanding rights and respect, and fighting back in a loud and organized way.

Aimee Stephens has said the reason she decided to sue was, simply, she got mad enough to do something about it. Thats the energy well need for the 2020s.

Go here to see the original:
Trans Visibility Exploded in the 2010s. But What Did Trans People Actually Gain? - Free

Members of the US Navy conduct joint drills with the South Korean navy on the USS Ronald Reagan. October 19, 2017. (Reuters / Tim Kelly)

EDITORS NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.

Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!

Ever since 2007, when I first started writing for TomDispatch, Ive been arguing against Americas forever wars, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere. Unfortunately, its no surprise that, despite my more than 60 articles, American blood is still being spilled in war after war across the Greater Middle East and Africa, even as foreign peoples pay a far higher price in lives lost and cities ruined. And I keep asking myself: Why, in this century, is the distinctive feature of Americas wars that they never end? Why do our leaders persist in such repetitive folly and the seemingly eternal disasters that go with it?Ad Policy

Sadly, there isnt just one obvious reason for this generational debacle. If there were, we could focus on it, tackle it, and perhaps even fix it. But no such luck.

So why do Americas disastrous wars persist? I can think of many reasons, some obvious and easy to understand, like the endless pursuit of profit through weapons sales for those very wars, and some more subtle but no less significant, like a deep-seated conviction in Washington that a willingness to wage war is a sign of national toughness and seriousness. Before I go on, though, heres another distinctive aspect of our forever-war moment: Have you noticed that peace is no longer even a topic in America today? The very word, once at least part of the rhetoric of Washington politicians, has essentially dropped out of use entirely. Consider the current crop of Democratic candidates for president. One, Representative Tulsi Gabbard, wants to end regime-change wars, but is otherwise a self-professed hawk on the subject of the War on Terror. Another, Senator Bernie Sanders, vows to end endless wars, but is careful to express strong support for Israel and the ultra-expensive F-35 fighter jet. The other dozen or so tend to make vague sounds about cutting defense spending or gradually withdrawing US troops from various wars, but none of them even consider openly speaking of peace. And the Republicans? While President Trump may talk of ending wars, since his inauguration hes sent more troops to Afghanistan and into the Middle East, while greatly expanding drone and other air strikes, something about which he openly boasts.

War, in other words, is our new normal, Americas default position on global affairs, and peace, some ancient, long-faded dream. And when your default position is war, whether against the Taliban, ISIS, terror more generally, or possibly even Iran or Russia or China, is it any surprise that war is what you get? When you garrison the world with an unprecedented 800 or so military bases, when you configure your armed forces for whats called power projection, when you divide the globethe total planetinto areas of dominance(with acronyms like CENTCOM, AFRICOM, and SOUTHCOM) commanded by four-star generals and admirals, when you spend more on your military than the next seven countries combined, when you insist on modernizing a nuclear arsenal (to the tune of perhaps $1.7 trillion) already quite capable of ending all life on this and several other planets, what can you expect but a reality of endless war?

Think of this as the new American exceptionalism. In Washington, war is now the predictable (and even desirable) way of life, while peace is the unpredictable (and unwise) path to follow. In this context, the United States must continue to be the most powerful nation in the world by a country mile in all death-dealing realms and its wars must be fought, generation after generation, even when victory is never in sight. And if that isnt an exceptional belief system, what is?

If were ever to put an end to our countrys endless 21st-century wars, that mindset will have to be changed. But to do that, we would first have to recognize and confront wars many uses in American life and culture.

A partial list of wars many uses might go something like this: war is profitable, most notably for Americas vast military-industrial complex; war is sold as being necessary for Americas safety, especially to prevent terrorist attacks; and for many Americans, war is seen as a measure of national fitness and worthiness, a reminder that freedom isnt free. In our politics today, its far better to be seen as strong and wrong than meek and right.Current Issue

Subscribe today and Save up to $129.

As the title of a book by former war reporter Chris Hedges so aptly put it, war is a force that gives us meaning. And lets face it, a significant part of Americas meaning in this century has involved pride in having the toughest military on the planet, even as trillions of tax dollars went into a misguided attempt to maintain bragging rights to being the worlds sole superpower.

And keep in mind as well that, among other things, never-ending war weakens democracy while strengthening authoritarian tendencies in politics and society. In an age of gaping inequality, using up the countrys resources in such profligate and destructive ways offers a striking exercise in consumption that profits the few at the expense of the many.

In other words, for a select few, war pays dividends in ways that peace doesnt. In a nutshell, or perhaps an artillery shell, war is antidemocratic, anti-progressive, anti-intellectual, and anti-human. Yet, as we know, history makes heroes out of its participants and celebrates mass murderers like Napoleon as great captains.

What the United States needs today is a new strategy of containmentnot against communist expansion, as in the Cold War, but against war itself. Whats stopping us from containing war? You might say that, in some sense, weve grown addicted to it, which is true enough, but here are five additional reasons for wars enduring presence in American life:

If you like this article, please give today to help fund The Nations work.

The delusional idea that Americans are, by nature, winners and that our wars are therefore winnable. No American leader wants to be labeled a loser. Meanwhile, such dubious conflictssee: the Afghan War, now in its 18th year, with several more years, or even generations, to gocontinue to be treated by the military as if they were indeed winnable, even though they visibly arent. No president, Republican or Democrat, not even Donald J. Trump, despite his promises that American soldiers will be coming home from such fiascos, has successfully resisted the Pentagons siren call for patience (and for yet more trillions of dollars) in the cause of ultimate victory, however poorly defined, farfetched, or far-off.

American societys almost complete isolation from wars deadly effects. Were not being droned (yet). Our cities are not yet lying in ruins (though theyre certainly suffering from a lack of funding, as is our most essential infrastructure, thanks in part to the cost of those overseas wars). Its nonetheless remarkable how little attention, either in the media or elsewhere, this countrys never-ending war-making gets here.

Unnecessary and sweeping secrecy: How can you resist what you essentially dont know about? Learning its lesson from the Vietnam War, the Pentagon now classifies (in plain speak: covers up) the worst aspects of its disastrous wars. This isnt because the enemy could exploit such detailsthe enemy already knows!but because the American people might be roused to something like anger and action by it. Principled whistle-blowers like Chelsea Manning have been imprisoned or otherwise dismissed or, in the case of Edward Snowden, pursued and indicted for sharing honest details about the calamitous Iraq War and Americas invasive and intrusive surveillance state. In the process, a clear message of intimidation has been sent to other would-be truth-tellers.

An unrepresentative government. Long ago, of course, Congress ceded to the presidency most of its constitutional powers when it comes to making war. Still, despite recent attempts to end Americas arms-dealing role in the genocidal Saudi war in Yemen (overridden by Donald Trumps veto power), Americas duly elected representatives generally dont represent the people when it comes to this countrys disastrous wars. They are, to put it bluntly, largely captives of (and sometimes on leaving politics quite literally go to work for) the military-industrial complex. As long as money is speech (thank you, Supreme Court!), the weapons makers are always likely to be able to shout louder in Congress than you and I ever will.

Americas persistent empathy gap. Despite our size, we are a remarkably insular nation and suffer from a serious empathy gap when it comes to understanding foreign cultures and peoples or what were actually doing to them. Even our globetrotting troops, when not fighting and killing foreigners in battle, often stay on vast bases, referred to in the military as Little Americas, complete with familiar stores, fast food, you name it. Wherever we go, there we are, eating our big burgers, driving our big trucks, wielding our big guns, and dropping our very big bombs. But what those bombs do, whom they hurt or kill, whom they displace from their homes and lives, these are things that Americans turn out to care remarkably little about.

All this puts me sadly in mind of a song popular in my youth, a time when Cat Stevens sang of a peace train that was soundin louder in America. Today, that peace trains been derailed and replaced by an armed and armored one eternally prepared for perpetual warand that train is indeed soundin louder to the great peril of us all.

Heres the rub, though: even the Pentagon knows that our most serious enemy is climate change, not China or Russia or terror, though in the age of Donald Trump and his administration of arsonists its officials cant express themselves on the subject as openly as they otherwise might. Assuming we dont annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons first, that means our real enemy is the endless war were waging against Planet Earth.

The US military is also a major consumer of fossil fuels and therefore a significant driver of climate change. Meanwhile, the Pentagon, like any enormously powerful system, only wants to grow more so, but whats welfare for the military brass isnt wellness for the planet.

There is, unfortunately, only one Planet Earth, or Spaceship Earth, if you prefer, since were all traveling through our galaxy on it. Thought about a certain way, were its crew members, yet instead of cooperating effectively as its stewards, we seem determined to fight one another. If a house divided against itself cannot stand, as Abraham Lincoln pointed out so long ago, surely a spaceship with a disputatious and self-destructive crew is not likely to survive, no less thrive.

Get unlimited digital access to the best independent news and analysis.

In other words, in waging endless war, Americans are also, in effect, mutinying against the planet. In the process, we are spoiling the last, best hope of earth: a concerted and pacific effort to meet the shared challenges of a rapidly warming and changing planet.

Spaceship Earth should not be allowed to remain Warship Earth as well, not when the existence of significant parts of humanity is already becoming ever more precarious. Think of us as suffering from a coolant leak, causing cabin temperatures to rise even as food and other resources dwindle. Under the circumstances, whats the best strategy for survival: killing each other while ignoring the leak or banding together to fix an increasingly compromised ship?

Unfortunately, for Americas leaders, the real fixes remain global military and resource domination, even as those resources continue to shrink on an ever-more fragile globe. And as weve seen recently, the resource part of that fix breeds its own madness, as in President Trumps recently stated desire to keep US troops in Syria to steal that countrys oil resources, though its wells are largely wrecked (thanks in significant part to American bombing) and even when repaired would produce only a minuscule percentage of the worlds petroleum.

If Americas wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen prove anything, its that every war scars our planetand hardens our hearts. Every war makes us less human as well as less humane. Every war wastes resources when these are increasingly at a premium. Every war is a distraction from higher needs and a better life.

Despite all of wars uses and abuses, its allures and temptations, its time that we Americans showed some self-mastery (as well as decency) by putting a stop to the mayhem. Few enough of us experience our wars firsthand and thats precisely why some idealize their purpose and idolize their practitioners. But war is a bloody, murderous mess and those practitioners, when not killed or wounded, are marred for life because war functionally makes everyone involved into a murderer.

We need to stop idealizing war and idolizing its so-called warriors. At stake is nothing less than the future of humanity and the viability of life, as we know it, on Spaceship Earth.

Visit link:
Want to Stop Climate Change? Start With the US Military - The Nation

Self-styled liberals believe they are a better class of people than Trump, but are bigger supporters of unjust wars than the so-called deplorables.

The trauma of Donald Trumps presidency has created continued insanity for American liberals. They were never very trustworthy, due to their abiding belief in United States exceptionalism and an imagined right for it to intervene in the rest of the world as it pleased. Liberals could be counted on to protest wars which killed Americans in Vietnam or in Iraq. But by and large they trust in imperialist dictates if someone they like is in charge and who doesnt allow too many of their countrymen to get hurt.

Hence their dilemma with Donald Trump. Trump is their anti-Christ, a bad mannered, proudly stupid, racist who expresses the id of the great unwashed deplorable white masses. There are many reasons to oppose him but liberals generally attack from the right. The same people who remember that the surveillance state lied about the WMD threat from Iraq now parrot every word from the same people if they are anti-Trump. Their earlier opposition to war propaganda was more a result of their anti-Bush, anti-Republican stance than anything else. They didnt really oppose U.S. interventions or stand up for peace. Instead they eagerly wait for a war they can believe in if the rationale is to their liking.

Now this group which labels itself the resistance say nothing about U.S. sanctions that kill Venezuelans and Iranians by depriving their governments of the ability to conduct transactions needed to secure food and medicines. When their favorite news outlets proclaim Evo Morales to be a strongman and make the case for the coup that ousted him they go right along and make the case for imperialism carried out by the president they allegedly dislike so much.

The latest example of the liberal herd mentality comes in the form of love for the military. Liberals dont associate with this institution themselves. They wouldnt think of sending their kids to the army or the navy. But suddenly they have a love for senior officers if they voice disgust with Trump.

Donald Trump is dangerously undermining the military chain of command, criesSlate.com. Apparently the people at Slate missed the day in school which taught that we have a civilian government with the president as commander in chief of the military. No president can undermine the military chain of command. Heisthe military chain of command. The generals and admirals must follow his direction and they always do so quite happily.

They dropped napalm on Korea when ordered to do so. They did the same in Vietnam. They invaded Iraq and as Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange revealed, they mow down innocent people and laugh about their slaughter. This is not a group that liberals usually admire.

But Trump is a shock to their image of themselves and of their country. Most liberals want to be flag wavers as much as conservatives do. So they fantasize about a nation that is basically good with a little injustice that can be fixed when a Democrat is in the White House. The inequality, racism, and international aggression that are at the heart of American history can be forgotten. Trumps overt racism and general buffoonery make a lie of their beliefs and make them vulnerable to lies and propaganda.

The corporate media aid in the confusion. Trumps decision to intervene in the court martial of a Navy Seal convicted of a war crime is a legitimate news story. The resignation of the naval secretary because he opposed the interference was significant. What is questionable is the lack of attention given to Americas continued presence in Iraq in the first place. Suddenly theNew York Timesgives op-ed space to former secretaries of the navy who dont just express disagreement with Trumps decision but also label Trump as a man who doesnt share their values.

If liberals were to be taken seriously they would question military values, question the nearly 20-year long presence of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan, and question why they get the vapors over anyone in uniform. These wars are the longest in history and are war crimes by definition. That is the point to be made and not that Trump upsets the tradition of letting lower ranked servicemen take the fall for crimes committed with the permission of Congress, presidents and the corporate media.

Trump is proof that appearance makes all the difference. When Obama was president the U.S. bombed an Afghanistan hospital run by Doctors Without Borders and killed 40 people. That act is the inevitable consequence of military occupations, and obviously not a force for good for the dead people. Obamas drone strikes werent opposed by anyone in Washington and Democratic presidential candidates expressed full confidence in Trumps sanctions that are killing Venezuelans.

The idea of American exceptionalism must be discarded completely. When that happens there will be no foolish notions of good and bad military decisions. There will be an appreciation for civilian government and questions about why the U.S. should have 800 military bases around the world. Of course that would mean questioning nearly every premise of political decision making in this country. That is what liberals would do if they were as smart as they think they are.

There is something even more sinister about this newfound affection. The people who could be counted on to protect civil liberties now ask Facebook to be a fact checker. Facebook takes orders from the Atlantic Council, a NATO funded right wing think tank. Fact checking from Facebook leads to censorship of black leftists and Palestinians and anyone else who upsets the established order.

When leftists were targeted as Russian assets and Google began to de-rank websites like Black Agenda Report the liberals didnt say anything then either. They wholeheartedly believed in tales of foreign intrigue that put Trump in office. Now their derangement is so complete they will even support military rule or some other effort to take what is left of our rights. The resistance are a clear and present danger to us all.

Please Donate TodayDid you enjoy this article? Then please consider donating today to ensure that Eurasia Review can continue to be able to provide similar content.

Read the original here:
Liberals Love The Military - OpEd - Eurasia Review