Thursday, June 27, 2019

The New York Times:
"Options for Trump Narrow As Iran Standoff Escalates. President Trump's last minute decision to pull back from a retaliatory strike on Iran underscored the absence of appealing options available to him as Tehran races towards its next big challenge to the United States: building up and further enriching its stockpile of nuclear fuel." -June 23, 2019

-->Let's look at these assumptions. What about the option of deescalating the confrontation by reducing or eliminating the trade sanctions on Iran? What about pulling our battleships and navel carriers away from Iran's coast? It seems like there are quite a few options our country hasn't tried. Our government broke the nuclear treaty with Iran, not the other way around. And who said Tehran is "racing" towards another big challenge of the U.S.? 

Our newspaper of record always portrays America's military aggression abroad as the result of narrowing options. The U.S. being pushed into a corner. The NYT headline last month was "As the Crisis in Venezuela Grows, the Options Narrow." How about the empire stop threatening countries around the world with military invasions? Wouldn't that be an unusual option for the NYT to report on?

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Common Dreams:
"Pentagon Releases, Then Deletes, Document Detailing Use of Nuclear Weapons to Restore 'Strategic Stability' for US Military. ...

The U.S. military appears to believe it can somehow prevail in a nuclear war, according to a Pentagon document that was briefly made public, and has plans for using atomic weapons in 'small and limited' capacities in order to create 'strategic stability' for itself in the world.

The document, Nuclear Operations (pdf), describes the current political and military environment and the challenges faced by the Pentagon in strategizing how to most effectively deploy nuclear weapons in war. It was first reported on by the Federation of American Scientists, which downloaded and released the document on June 19."

-->The U.S. contemplating the use of nuclear weapons to restore "strategic stability"? This story, straight from the movie Dr. Stangelove, never made it into the NYT. 

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Common Dreams:
"Critics Lament as 126 House Democrats Join Forces With GOP to Hand Trump 'Terrifying' Mass Domestic Spying Powers. Privacy advocates and civil liberties defenders are expressing outrage after the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday night voted down a bipartisan amendment designed to end, as one group put it, the U.S. government's 'most egregious mass surveillance practices' first revealed by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. ...

'It's good to know that House Democrats like Adam Schiff are 'resisting' Trump by voting to ensure that he has limitless authority to conduct mass warrantless surveillance,' said Evan Greer, the deputy director of Fight for the Future. 'The Democrats who voted against this common sense amendment just threw immigrants, LGBTQ folks, activists, journalists, and political dissidents under the bus by voting to rubber stamp the Trump administration’s Orwellian domestic spying capabilities.' "

-->The NYT and major media are never eager to show how corporate Democrats sell out the American people. This story wasn't covered buy our "newspaper of record."