“Sanctions are a form of war. They’re economic warfare. And they destroy people’s lives.”

Joshua Landis (https://twitter.com/joshua_landis), Sandra Mackey Chair in Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, is one of the foremost experts on Syria. This week, as Syria, along with neighbor Turkiye, grapples with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, Professor Landis joins the Useful Idiots to explain the deadly consequences that sanctions pile on to the damage.

“America likes to talk about all its precision bombing and hitting someone with a drone to avoid collateral damage,” Landis explains. “But sanctions? It’s all about collateral damage. Very little of it is targeted.”

But if you read corporate media outlets like the New York Times or Washington Post, you’d find a much different story. Both papers this week published headlines that were hastily changed when they realized they were being a little too truthful. See if you can tell the difference:

The ...

With Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Files and Jeff Gerth’s new in-depth reporting for CJR exposing the years of lies spread by Russiagaters, bitter attacks from outed journalists are rolling in.

Gerth and Taibbi, who come from the old style of journalism where you fact check your work and don’t accept government officials’ claims on faith, have each shown clear, indisputable evidence of disinformation campaigns pushed by corporate reporters. And since the so-called journalists can’t argue the facts, they dig themselves a deeper hole with more lies and name-calling.

Jeff Gerth has been working as a reporter for decades and published, in the very mainstream Columbia Journalism Review, a 20,000-word report on his findings, only to be called a liar and misdirecting magician in the most self-important article by Mother Jones’ David Corn (“The true media failure is that Trump got away with it and that articles like this one that you are now reading are still necessary.”) And possibly worse ...

"If we survive this moment, I do think we'll look back on these progressives in Congress as being of historic irresponsibility in refusing to stand up to a neocon proxy war that could have been avoided with diplomacy."

Good to be part of the community. I think that Aaron and Katie do a brilliant job in these hellish times when such great in - depth research and reporting are essential.

The full Video is now up on our Locals Channel; Truckers Roost.
Our intrepid reporter, Mr. Fat Flabbie Doobie, reports on the war between Russia and Ukraine in the former Crimean Khanate:
By around 800 a.d. the Kievan Rus was the dominant force in Rus culture, but the Crimea, and all coastal areas, were dominated by nomadic Turkic peoples, with ancient Greek port settlements scattered along the coast. In 1222 Ghengis Khan invaded the Crimea and defeated the Turks there. In the years that followed, his Golden Horde would conquer the entirety of the Crimea and the Kievan Rus. In 1441, the descendants of Ghengis Khan established a new nation, the Krimean Khanate, encompassing the Crimean peninsula and the Donbas region. In the meantime the center of Rus culture had shifted to Moscow and had slowly pushed the Mongols out of the greater Rus. In 1783, Catherine the great finally defeated the Khanate (ruled by Khans of Ghengis' Giray clan) and annexed it into Russia. For the next 134 ...

There are many senators and congress people who have dual citizenship with Israel and also identify with Zionism. I believe that they should identify themselves to the American public. I would like these people to give up their Israel citizen ship or leave their positions in the Senate or Congress.
The identification with Zionism has already affected the response of United States response where the general public has not been let in to who and what has been influencing their lives with private agendas. I personally believe that on the subject of the state of Israel,the mind of the collective has been so damaged by historic abuse that it has become distorted by anger.