The Digger

It all seems eerily familiar. Is this to be Maidan deja-vu all over again? The Kagans Are Back; Wars to Follow – Consortiumnews Robert Kagan’s Jungle Book of Forever War | The American Conservative The Neoconservative Comeback – LobeLog Excerpts: Venezuelan President Niсolas Maduro has called for early elections to the National Assembly – a legislative body dominated by the opposition and led by Juan Guaido who declared himself interim leader last week. Maduro’s statement comes as thousands are rallying in the streets of Caracas both in support of and against his government. • • • The regular parliamentary elections were expected to be held in Venezuela in 2020. However, Maduro said that the body needs to be  “re-legitimized”  as he addressed a large crowd of his supporters during a rally in Caracas. The president said that he would consult the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly – a body elected in 2017 to draft the new constitution – on the issue. ...

Sanders: the moral backbone of a wet noodle.  He has repeatdely shown he  is a  willful  ignoramus on foreign policy or —worse—an intellectual coward. (Donkey Hotey) W hen Trump announced his support for the unfolding coup in   hen Trump announced his support for the unfolding coup in Venezuela, Bernie Sanders remained silent for 24 hours.  This matters because coups are made or broken in the first moments or hours; a day during a coup can feel like a month or more. With each hour Bernie’s silence roared louder.  So much was hanging in the balance with Trump at home and abroad, to the point where a finger could tip the scales—  yet Bernie refused to lift his. Among the many  Democratic Party candidates  running for President, only  Tulsi Gabbard  made an unequivocal statement condemning the coup, while leftist darling  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez  limited her criticism to a retweet. While U.S. poli...

“I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.” - The Golden Don Excerpt: It’s ironic that a president who has spent the first two years in office fighting charges that a foreign country meddled in the US elections would turn around and not only meddle in foreign elections but actually demand the right to name a foreign country’s president! How would we react if the Chinese and Russians decided that President Trump was not upholding the US Constitution and recognized Speaker Nancy Pelosi as US president instead? Even those who would like to see a change of government in Venezuela should reject any notion that the change must be “helped” by the United States. According to press reports, Vice President Mike Pence was so involved in internal Venezuelan affairs that he actually urged Guaido to name himself ...

Venezuela. Is there any difference? Link:  When Is a Democracy not a Democracy? When It’s Venezuela and the US is Pushing Regime Change Just another group of people for the world elites to exploit. ---- Hurrah for global, anti racist and anti-xenophobic, liberal-progressivism! And this:   John Bolton Openly Admits He Wants Maduro Out, American Oil Companies In | Zero Hedge

The Intercept Published on Jan 22, 2019  By the end of this year, the war in Afghanistan would be old enough to vote. It would be old enough to be deployed itself to Afghanistan to fight that war. It is the longest, continuous U.S. war in history and there are very few people in the United States who continue to passionately support this failed war. Over the course of two terms of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and the two terms of Barack Obama, the United States got involved in more war, more covert action, more boots on the ground, more drone strikes, more support for despotic regimes — and those administrations were the so-called adults. Enter Donald J. Trump. He is a bumbling authoritarian. He has praised U.S. torture tactics. He has criticized the invasion of Iraq, but he added that we should have taken their oil. President Trump lies with a passion — it’s a pathology. We know all of that. But here’s an uncomfortable truth: Donald Trump probably represents the best ...

Excerpt: " But, third, something larger than even anti-Trumpism plays a major role in condemnations of the president’s withdrawal decisions: imperial thinking about America’s rightful role in the world. Euphemisms abound, but, if not an entreaty to American empire, what else could the  New York Times ’ David  Sanger  mean when he writes of a  “world order that the United States has led for the 73 years since World War II,”  and complains that Trump is reducing  “the global footprint needed to keep that order together” ? Or when President Obama’s national-security adviser Susan Rice  bemoans  Trump’s failures in  “preserving American global leadership,”  which a  Times  lead editorial insists is an  “ imperative ” ? Or when General James Mattis in his  letter  of resignation   echoes President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state Madeline Albright—and Obama himself—in asserting that  “t...

"In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s evil genius matters less than pressures from the ultrarich, US foreign policy, and the ravages of the neoliberal Yeltsin years" Excerpt: "Wood’s Russia isn’t a reascendant superpower on the march. It’s a relatively weak, isolated nation teetering on the brink of instability and held together by a nationalism that has become newly powerful this decade. Its GDP per capita is around a sixth of the US’s and a quarter of the OECD average, with sluggish growth forecast for the future. Its mortality rate has long outpaced its fertility rate, with its population forecast to plunge in the coming decades. And far from a military threat, its 2015 military budget wasn’t even a tenth of that of NATO’s, let alone that of the US, while more and more of its neighboring states join the Western military alliance and China grows in power on its southern border (though Russia does still possess a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons). Moreover, it’...

Excerpts: " Russiagate—allegations that President Trump is strongly influenced by or even under the sway of the Kremlin, for which there remains no actual evidence—continued to escalate as a dangerous and unprecedented factor in the new Cold War. What began as suggestions that the Kremlin had  “meddled”  in the 2016 US presidential election grew into mainstream insinuations, even assertions, that the Kremlin put Trump in the White House. The result has been to all but shackle Trump as a crisis-negotiator with Russian President Putin. Thus, for attending a July summit meeting with Putin in Helsinki—during which Trump defended the legitimacy of his own presidency—he was widely denounced by mainstream US media and politicians as having committed  “treason.”  And twice subsequently Trump was compelled to cancel scheduled meetings with Putin. Americans may reasonably ask whether the politicians, journalists, and organizations that assail Trump for the same kind of summi...

Excerpt: "On Dec. 21sthis nearsightedness emerges with even greater clarity. In order to secure $5 billion in funding for a completely unnecessary border wall Trump is willing to shut down the government just in time for Christmas. Forget the fact people don’t want it, and that it cannot get the votes to pass, the cost to taxpayers for a government shutdown is $6.5 billion per week. It is a repetition of his coercive practice. Trump has regularly used this terrorist tactic, earlier this year in an effort to block funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program is one example. But what if it is all much much worse? Trump is making everyone pay a huge price. His nuclear bomb on the economy could very well be another stunt. He has called himself a debt master, so I wouldn’t doubt that he has plans. He seems to have learned that destruction is easier than creation decades ago; he stole fortunes and left people in ruins by not paying his own bills. His echo chamber continues to...

Given a certain mood in a few local disqus threads the following two essays seemed aprops: Bernie Sanders: Just What Kind of Socialist? - LA Progressive Trump and Russia: What Can Go Wrong? Longish excerpt: Bernie Sanders: Just What Kind of Socialist? BY  WILLIAM BLUM  POSTED ON  FEBRUARY 5, 2016 "Self-described socialist” … How many times have we all read that term in regard to Vermont senator Bernie Sanders? But is he really a socialist? Or is he a “social democrat”, which is what he’d be called in Europe? Or is he a “democratic socialist”, which is the American party he has been a member of (DSA – Democratic Socialists of America)? And does it really matter which one he is? They’re all socialists, are they not? Why does a person raised in a capitalist society become a socialist? It could be because of a parent or parents who are committed socialists and raise their children that way. But it’s usually because the person has seen capitalism up c...