{"id":262288,"date":"2016-08-17T15:44:10","date_gmt":"2016-08-17T15:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=262288"},"modified":"2016-08-17T17:57:14","modified_gmt":"2016-08-17T17:57:14","slug":"huffpo-goes-haywire-russia-hillary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/huffpo-goes-haywire-russia-hillary\/","title":{"rendered":"HuffPo Goes Haywire Against Russia, For Hillary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, commentary on \u2018news\u2019 reporting<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

As part of their campaign for Hillary Clinton to become President, Huffington Post bannered their home-page on the night of Tuesday August 16th,\u00a0“TRUMP BRINGS KREMLIN APOLOGIST TO INTEL\u00a0BRIEFING!\u201d<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0and linked to their news story that\u2019s headlined against Trump, “Donald Trump To\u00a0Bring Adviser With\u00a0Russia Ties To\u00a0Classified Briefing<\/span><\/a>: Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn will join\u00a0Trump at Wednesday\u2019s top-secret session.\u201d Those \u201cRussia Ties\u201d consist of Flynn\u2019s having appeared as a commenter at Russia\u2019s international television network, RT, which is Russia\u2019s equivalent of Britain\u2019s BBC. This was the day\u2019s big news? Really? Is there an editorial agenda here \u2014 or only<\/i> a low-news day, when the Olympics are on, records are being broken<\/span><\/a>, and the Presidential contest is getting under way?<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not only a HuffPo problem; and, so, on July 28th, I reported<\/span><\/a> (with contemporary examples) that, generally, \u201cAmerica\u2019s press cover the Trump campaign with barely concealed hostility toward it, and with an obsessive emphasis upon the candidate\u2019s positions regarding Russia; they\u2019re attacking Trump as being (wittingly or unwittingly) an agent of Russia \u2014 and portraying Russia as being America\u2019s enemy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

How much of this blatant intellectual abuse can America\u2019s news-readers take? No one reasonably alleges that today\u2019s Russia is a dictatorship, such as the Soviet Union unquestionably was. Today\u2019s Russia is perhaps more of a democracy than the U.S. is. Russia\u2019s President shows, even in Western-respected polls, as having an approval-rating of over 80% from the Russian public, whereas our own President has an approval-rating of only more than 40% from the U.S. public. Given the heavy \u2018news\u2019-slant of Huffington Post and other major American \u2018news\u2019 sources, a reasonable question can be raised as to which of these two nations actually has the freer press, and the more representative government. Is the reason why America\u2019s leader is so low-approved, and Russia\u2019s is so high-approved, that America\u2019s top leader does what the American people want, while Russia\u2019s top leader doesn\u2019t do what the Russian people want? Hardly. The American Establishment want us to believe that our government \u2014 the one they<\/i> control \u2014 represents us, more than Russia\u2019s government represents the Russian people. The American Establishment still hate the Russians, and want the American masses (the people who read such media as Huffington Post and the Washington Post<\/i>) to hate the Russians too. Regardless of whether Russia\u2019s government is trying to destroy America, America\u2019s government (and the aristocracy that control both it and the nation\u2019s newsmedia) is still trying to destroy Russia. The ideologues for this American ideology are commonly called \u201cneoconservatives,\u201d and now neoconservatives represent the mainstream amongst America\u2019s oligarchs. They\u2019re not at all ashamed of pumping it. <\/span><\/p>\n

The American Establishment has lost the excuse of there being an ideological reason for their hostility against Russia; so, scare-tactics are used, such as that “Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.<\/span><\/a>\u201d That \u201cred scare\u201d used to be<\/i> the particular demagoguery of Republicans \u2014 back when there was an ideological excuse for it. But now, it\u2019s even the way of the U.S. press, as it presses forward with the Hillary Clinton campaign, to make her the next U.S. President. With her as the candidate, they\u2019ve got to make it \u2018respectable\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Western media-watchdog organizations demand U.S.-government-approved standards of \u2018press freedom\u2019. However, slanting the \u2018news\u2019 as HuffPo and other major U.S.\u00a0\u2018news\u2019 media do, is being treated by those organizations as if it were okay, and were a \u2018free press\u2019, when perhaps it isn\u2019t, really<\/i>. Thus, for example, wikipedia\u2019s article on \u201cMedia Freedom in Russia\u201d<\/span><\/a> notes that \u2018According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, \u2018All three major television networks are now in the hands of Kremlin loyalists.\u2019\u201d Aren\u2019t all television networks in the U.S. now in the hands of U.S. loyalists? There\u2019s no more media-diversity here than there. America has its own issues regarding freedom of its press, and is in no valid position to use its<\/i> standards to evaluate other nations\u2019<\/i> standards. America\u2019s main agencies to evaluate \u2018press freedom\u2019 in nations around the world are Freedom House, and National Endowment for Democracy. Robert Parry reported, on 8 January 2015<\/span><\/a>: \u201cDocuments from the Reagan presidential library reveal that two major institutions promoting \u2018democracy\u2019 and \u2018freedom\u2019 \u2014 Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy \u2014 worked hand-in-glove, behind-the-scenes, with a CIA propaganda expert in the 1980s.\u201d And there\u2019s lots from other U.S. Presidencies that still hasn\u2019t been released; cover-ups are instead the norm, in our\u00a0\u2018democracy\u2019 \u2014 if<\/i> we have one<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

25 years after the communist Soviet Union and its military alliance the Warsaw Pact ended, General Flynn\u2019s serving RT as an expert commentator about American national-security concerns was the day\u2019s big news on August 16th? Really? Would things have been lots better for HuffPo\u2019s management if Flynn were instead serving as a commentator on the BBC? Really? The \u2018Big News\u2019 of the day?<\/span><\/p>\n

In true 1950s Joseph R. McCarthy fear-mongering form \u2014 but now after<\/i> the end of communism \u2014 HuffPo opened this, their top news story, of the day:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u00a0will bring Michael Flynn \u2015 a former head of the\u00a0Defense Intelligence Agency who was paid by a Russian state-funded television\u00a0network to speak at its 10th-anniversary gala \u2015 to his first national security\u00a0briefing on Wednesday.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Flynn, a retired lieutenant general and high-profile adviser to Trump, has attracted\u00a0attention since he was pushed out of government in 2014 for criticisms of what he\u00a0says is the Obama administration\u2019s failure to confront \u201cradical Islam,\u201d his role as an\u00a0analyst on the Russian network RT, and his embrace of Trump.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

ABC News\u00a0reported\u00a0on Tuesday that Flynn, along with New Jersey Gov. Chris\u00a0Christie, would accompany Trump to his first top-secret briefing, heightening\u00a0critics\u2019 fears that the Trump camp would gain access to secrets it could potentially\u00a0leak to contacts in the Kremlin. But former intelligence officials familiar with the the\u00a0briefings process said it\u2019s unlikely that the presidential nominees or their advisers\u00a0will be looped in on critical secrets until after the election in November.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

What this supposed skullduggery is actually about is Huffington Post\u2019s attacking Trump for his wanting to focus American military expenditures away from the old Cold War, and instead toward the current problem, of overcoming jihadism \u2014 a refocus so as to fit a world in which the present and future threats to U.S. security are coming from invasions (such as 9\/11, and the other, even lone-jihadist, acts) by Islamic terrorists<\/i>, and not<\/i> from any invasion by communists, the Soviet Union, or any part of the former Soviet Union, including Russia<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under U.S. President Obama, and especially inspired and led by his neoconservative<\/span><\/a> former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, America’s refocus away from killing jihadists, to now battling Russia, as our \u201cnumber one geopolitical foe\u201d, is what Huffington Post\u2019s management apparently want to focus America\u2019s bloated military budget upon. We don\u2019t have enough nuclear weapons? Today\u2019s Joseph R. McCarthys want us to spend more to kill Russians (and heads-of-state who ally with them), and less to kill jihadists. When did Russia ever attack America? Not even when it was part of the communist Soviet Union, did it do any such thing. But jihadists are doing it all over the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton favors the overthrow of Russia-friendly leaders, especially Gaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria, and Yanukovych in Ukraine. (So far, we\u2019ve finished two of those three jobs.) Thus, we\u2019ve now had the burgeoning rise of ISIS in Syria and Libya, and a thoroughly unproductive and bloody civil war in the until-then-peaceful nation of Ukraine, following the bloody U.S. coup<\/span><\/a> there that overthrew the nation\u2019s democratically elected President Yanukovych, who had won the votes of 90% of the people in its far-eastern Donbass region, and 75% of the votes of the people in its far southern Crimean peninsula<\/span><\/a>, both of which regions then rebelled against, and refused being ruled by, Obama\u2019s imposed Ukrainian fascist<\/span><\/a> regime, which was selected by Hillary\u2019s friend and prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Victoria Nuland<\/span><\/a>, who had been Vice President Dick Cheney\u2019s foreign-affairs advisor. Huffington Post is a mouthpiece today for Dick Cheney\u2019s brand of neoconservatism? That\u2019s right \u2014 it\u2019s actually far right: it\u2019s the \u2018liberal\u2019 Huffington Post, to steer liberal fools to vote for the hard-line neoconservative Hillary Clinton<\/span><\/a>. (Of course, in order to do this, they have to placate the Democratic Party\u2019s traditional liberal base by reporting the domestic U.S. injustices against Blacks and other minorities, but those aren\u2019t the issues that could blow up the world \u2014 and Democrats have done virtually nothing for those groups, in reality, anyway<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary\u2019s neoconservatism has been fought against by her successor at the State Department, John Kerry; but, when he tried to rein-in her prot\u00e9g\u00e9 (and now Kerry\u2019s subordinate) Nuland, who was exceedingly eager to press for war against Russia, President Obama sided with Nuland against Kerry, in perhaps the most embarassing incident in Kerry\u2019s entire career<\/span><\/a>. And now, HuffPo\u2019s management want the hyper-neoconservative Hillary to become the U.S. President, and are campaigning against Trump as if he and not she is the traitor to the American people. It\u2019s as if the U.S. \u2018news\u2019 media were agents of America\u2019s manufacturers of bombs and bombers and submarines etc., to pump for increasing America\u2019s bloated military budget<\/span><\/a>, which drowns out spending for highways and other infrastructure that serves the public. Melvin Goodman in\u00a0his terrific book about that<\/span><\/a>, asks trenchant questions (p. 371):<\/span><\/p>\n

Why did the United States have more than one and a half million men and women in uniform two decades after the end of the Cold War? Why was the end of the Cold War considered a triumph instead of a challenge and an opportunity? Why are so many troops stationed in Europe and Japan more than six decades after the end of the Second World War? Why are so many troops stationed in South Korea sixty years after the end of the Korean War? Why are there still hundreds of U.S. bases and operational facilities in Europe and Asia, particularly in view of the overwhelming U.S. ability to project power? Why did the United States spend more than a trillion dollars on military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost so much blood and treasure but contributed nothing to American national security?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

How corrupt has America become? Isn\u2019t that<\/i> the basic question here. Can the \u2018news\u2019 media really deal with it if they are themselves part<\/i> of it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Huffington Post\u2019s point in emphasizing Trump\u2019s being \u2018soft on Russia\u2019, is that Trump\u2019s plan to refocus U.S. national-security priorities upon the threats coming from international terrorist organizations, must be blocked, at all costs, and that the current increasing U.S. military focus against Russia (and against the leaders of any nation who are friendly toward Russia) must increase and bring us closer-and-closer to the nuclear brink with Russia, instead of ending this counterproductive anti-Russian conflict by means of a negotiated mutual withdrawal, of NATO-U.S. forces, from Russia\u2019s borders \u2014 and also ending U.S. anti-Russian invasions, such as of Iraq, Libya and Syria, and ending U.S. coups such as of Ukraine<\/span><\/a>, on and near Russia\u2019s borders.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s basic message is: Get over the Cold War; it ended 25 years ago; instead, let\u2019s rebuild America\u2019s infrastructure, and focus national defense on the challenge of defeating jihadists and their ideology. However, America\u2019s Establishment is invested in the Cold War, and they won\u2019t feel that they have won that war until both Russia and China have become conquered by them \u2014 are controlled<\/i> by them.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what the 2016 U.S. Presidential election will really<\/i> be about.<\/span><\/p>\n

How would Americans feel if, 25 years after ending its NATO alliance, the Warsaw Pact continued, and were now massing its forces on America\u2019s<\/i> borders? Would that be \u201cprovocative\u201d? Would we<\/i> tolerate it? Huffington Post\u2019s management apparently think that it\u2019s what the U.S. government ought to be doing to Russia<\/i>. America\u2019s moving forces right up to Russia\u2019s borders is happening right now, and how much opposition to that is there in America\u2019s \u2018free press\u2019?<\/span><\/p>\n

This is Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign; it\u2019s not journalism; it is propaganda. Maybe \u2018Freedom House\u2019 and the \u2018National Endowment for Democracy\u2019, would give it top marks \u2014 for herding \u2018liberals\u2019 into fascism<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

As part of their campaign for Hillary Clinton to become President, Huffington Post bannered their home-page on the night of Tuesday August 16th,\u00a0“TRUMP BRINGS KREMLIN APOLOGIST TO INTEL\u00a0BRIEFING!\u201d<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0and linked to their news story that\u2019s headlined against Trump, “Donald Trump To\u00a0Bring Adviser With\u00a0Russia Ties To\u00a0Classified Briefing<\/span><\/a>: Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn will join\u00a0Trump at Wednesday\u2019s top-secret session.\u201d Those \u201cRussia Ties\u201d consist of Flynn\u2019s having appeared as a commenter at Russia\u2019s international television network, RT, which is Russia\u2019s equivalent of Britain\u2019s BBC. This was the day\u2019s big news? Really? Is there an editorial agenda here \u2014 or only<\/i> a low-news day, when the Olympics are on, records are being broken<\/span><\/a>, and the Presidential contest is getting under way?<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not only a HuffPo problem; and, so, on July 28th, I reported<\/span><\/a> (with contemporary examples) that, generally, \u201cAmerica\u2019s press cover the Trump campaign with barely concealed hostility toward it, and with an obsessive emphasis upon the candidate\u2019s positions regarding Russia; they\u2019re attacking Trump as being (wittingly or unwittingly) an agent of Russia \u2014 and portraying Russia as being America\u2019s enemy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

How much of this blatant intellectual abuse can America\u2019s news-readers take? No one reasonably alleges that today\u2019s Russia is a dictatorship, such as the Soviet Union unquestionably was. Today\u2019s Russia is perhaps more of a democracy than the U.S. is. Russia\u2019s President shows, even in Western-respected polls, as having an approval-rating of over 80% from the Russian public, whereas our own President has an approval-rating of only more than 40% from the U.S. public. Given the heavy \u2018news\u2019-slant of Huffington Post and other major American \u2018news\u2019 sources, a reasonable question can be raised as to which of these two nations actually has the freer press, and the more representative government. Is the reason why America\u2019s leader is so low-approved, and Russia\u2019s is so high-approved, that America\u2019s top leader does what the American people want, while Russia\u2019s top leader doesn\u2019t do what the Russian people want? Hardly. The American Establishment want us to believe that our government \u2014 the one they<\/i> control \u2014 represents us, more than Russia\u2019s government represents the Russian people. The American Establishment still hate the Russians, and want the American masses (the people who read such media as Huffington Post and the Washington Post<\/i>) to hate the Russians too. Regardless of whether Russia\u2019s government is trying to destroy America, America\u2019s government (and the aristocracy that control both it and the nation\u2019s newsmedia) is still trying to destroy Russia. The ideologues for this American ideology are commonly called \u201cneoconservatives,\u201d and now neoconservatives represent the mainstream amongst America\u2019s oligarchs. They\u2019re not at all ashamed of pumping it. <\/span><\/p>\n

The American Establishment has lost the excuse of there being an ideological reason for their hostility against Russia; so, scare-tactics are used, such as that “Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.<\/span><\/a>\u201d That \u201cred scare\u201d used to be<\/i> the particular demagoguery of Republicans \u2014 back when there was an ideological excuse for it. But now, it\u2019s even the way of the U.S. press, as it presses forward with the Hillary Clinton campaign, to make her the next U.S. President. With her as the candidate, they\u2019ve got to make it \u2018respectable\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Western media-watchdog organizations demand U.S.-government-approved standards of \u2018press freedom\u2019. However, slanting the \u2018news\u2019 as HuffPo and other major U.S.\u00a0\u2018news\u2019 media do, is being treated by those organizations as if it were okay, and were a \u2018free press\u2019, when perhaps it isn\u2019t, really<\/i>. Thus, for example, wikipedia\u2019s article on \u201cMedia Freedom in Russia\u201d<\/span><\/a> notes that \u2018According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, \u2018All three major television networks are now in the hands of Kremlin loyalists.\u2019\u201d Aren\u2019t all television networks in the U.S. now in the hands of U.S. loyalists? There\u2019s no more media-diversity here than there. America has its own issues regarding freedom of its press, and is in no valid position to use its<\/i> standards to evaluate other nations\u2019<\/i> standards. America\u2019s main agencies to evaluate \u2018press freedom\u2019 in nations around the world are Freedom House, and National Endowment for Democracy. Robert Parry reported, on 8 January 2015<\/span><\/a>: \u201cDocuments from the Reagan presidential library reveal that two major institutions promoting \u2018democracy\u2019 and \u2018freedom\u2019 \u2014 Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy \u2014 worked hand-in-glove, behind-the-scenes, with a CIA propaganda expert in the 1980s.\u201d And there\u2019s lots from other U.S. Presidencies that still hasn\u2019t been released; cover-ups are instead the norm, in our\u00a0\u2018democracy\u2019 \u2014 if<\/i> we have one<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

25 years after the communist Soviet Union and its military alliance the Warsaw Pact ended, General Flynn\u2019s serving RT as an expert commentator about American national-security concerns was the day\u2019s big news on August 16th? Really? Would things have been lots better for HuffPo\u2019s management if Flynn were instead serving as a commentator on the BBC? Really? The \u2018Big News\u2019 of the day?<\/span><\/p>\n

In true 1950s Joseph R. McCarthy fear-mongering form \u2014 but now after<\/i> the end of communism \u2014 HuffPo opened this, their top news story, of the day:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u00a0will bring Michael Flynn \u2015 a former head of the\u00a0Defense Intelligence Agency who was paid by a Russian state-funded television\u00a0network to speak at its 10th-anniversary gala \u2015 to his first national security\u00a0briefing on Wednesday.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Flynn, a retired lieutenant general and high-profile adviser to Trump, has attracted\u00a0attention since he was pushed out of government in 2014 for criticisms of what he\u00a0says is the Obama administration\u2019s failure to confront \u201cradical Islam,\u201d his role as an\u00a0analyst on the Russian network RT, and his embrace of Trump.\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

ABC News\u00a0reported\u00a0on Tuesday that Flynn, along with New Jersey Gov. Chris\u00a0Christie, would accompany Trump to his first top-secret briefing, heightening\u00a0critics\u2019 fears that the Trump camp would gain access to secrets it could potentially\u00a0leak to contacts in the Kremlin. But former intelligence officials familiar with the the\u00a0briefings process said it\u2019s unlikely that the presidential nominees or their advisers\u00a0will be looped in on critical secrets until after the election in November.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

What this supposed skullduggery is actually about is Huffington Post\u2019s attacking Trump for his wanting to focus American military expenditures away from the old Cold War, and instead toward the current problem, of overcoming jihadism \u2014 a refocus so as to fit a world in which the present and future threats to U.S. security are coming from invasions (such as 9\/11, and the other, even lone-jihadist, acts) by Islamic terrorists<\/i>, and not<\/i> from any invasion by communists, the Soviet Union, or any part of the former Soviet Union, including Russia<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under U.S. President Obama, and especially inspired and led by his neoconservative<\/span><\/a> former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, America’s refocus away from killing jihadists, to now battling Russia, as our \u201cnumber one geopolitical foe\u201d, is what Huffington Post\u2019s management apparently want to focus America\u2019s bloated military budget upon. We don\u2019t have enough nuclear weapons? Today\u2019s Joseph R. McCarthys want us to spend more to kill Russians (and heads-of-state who ally with them), and less to kill jihadists. When did Russia ever attack America? Not even when it was part of the communist Soviet Union, did it do any such thing. But jihadists are doing it all over the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton favors the overthrow of Russia-friendly leaders, especially Gaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria, and Yanukovych in Ukraine. (So far, we\u2019ve finished two of those three jobs.) Thus, we\u2019ve now had the burgeoning rise of ISIS in Syria and Libya, and a thoroughly unproductive and bloody civil war in the until-then-peaceful nation of Ukraine, following the bloody U.S. coup<\/span><\/a> there that overthrew the nation\u2019s democratically elected President Yanukovych, who had won the votes of 90% of the people in its far-eastern Donbass region, and 75% of the votes of the people in its far southern Crimean peninsula<\/span><\/a>, both of which regions then rebelled against, and refused being ruled by, Obama\u2019s imposed Ukrainian fascist<\/span><\/a> regime, which was selected by Hillary\u2019s friend and prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Victoria Nuland<\/span><\/a>, who had been Vice President Dick Cheney\u2019s foreign-affairs advisor. Huffington Post is a mouthpiece today for Dick Cheney\u2019s brand of neoconservatism? That\u2019s right \u2014 it\u2019s actually far right: it\u2019s the \u2018liberal\u2019 Huffington Post, to steer liberal fools to vote for the hard-line neoconservative Hillary Clinton<\/span><\/a>. (Of course, in order to do this, they have to placate the Democratic Party\u2019s traditional liberal base by reporting the domestic U.S. injustices against Blacks and other minorities, but those aren\u2019t the issues that could blow up the world \u2014 and Democrats have done virtually nothing for those groups, in reality, anyway<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Hillary\u2019s neoconservatism has been fought against by her successor at the State Department, John Kerry; but, when he tried to rein-in her prot\u00e9g\u00e9 (and now Kerry\u2019s subordinate) Nuland, who was exceedingly eager to press for war against Russia, President Obama sided with Nuland against Kerry, in perhaps the most embarassing incident in Kerry\u2019s entire career<\/span><\/a>. And now, HuffPo\u2019s management want the hyper-neoconservative Hillary to become the U.S. President, and are campaigning against Trump as if he and not she is the traitor to the American people. It\u2019s as if the U.S. \u2018news\u2019 media were agents of America\u2019s manufacturers of bombs and bombers and submarines etc., to pump for increasing America\u2019s bloated military budget<\/span><\/a>, which drowns out spending for highways and other infrastructure that serves the public. Melvin Goodman in\u00a0his terrific book about that<\/span><\/a>, asks trenchant questions (p. 371):<\/span><\/p>\n

Why did the United States have more than one and a half million men and women in uniform two decades after the end of the Cold War? Why was the end of the Cold War considered a triumph instead of a challenge and an opportunity? Why are so many troops stationed in Europe and Japan more than six decades after the end of the Second World War? Why are so many troops stationed in South Korea sixty years after the end of the Korean War? Why are there still hundreds of U.S. bases and operational facilities in Europe and Asia, particularly in view of the overwhelming U.S. ability to project power? Why did the United States spend more than a trillion dollars on military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost so much blood and treasure but contributed nothing to American national security?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

How corrupt has America become? Isn\u2019t that<\/i> the basic question here. Can the \u2018news\u2019 media really deal with it if they are themselves part<\/i> of it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Huffington Post\u2019s point in emphasizing Trump\u2019s being \u2018soft on Russia\u2019, is that Trump\u2019s plan to refocus U.S. national-security priorities upon the threats coming from international terrorist organizations, must be blocked, at all costs, and that the current increasing U.S. military focus against Russia (and against the leaders of any nation who are friendly toward Russia) must increase and bring us closer-and-closer to the nuclear brink with Russia, instead of ending this counterproductive anti-Russian conflict by means of a negotiated mutual withdrawal, of NATO-U.S. forces, from Russia\u2019s borders \u2014 and also ending U.S. anti-Russian invasions, such as of Iraq, Libya and Syria, and ending U.S. coups such as of Ukraine<\/span><\/a>, on and near Russia\u2019s borders.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s basic message is: Get over the Cold War; it ended 25 years ago; instead, let\u2019s rebuild America\u2019s infrastructure, and focus national defense on the challenge of defeating jihadists and their ideology. However, America\u2019s Establishment is invested in the Cold War, and they won\u2019t feel that they have won that war until both Russia and China have become conquered by them \u2014 are controlled<\/i> by them.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what the 2016 U.S. Presidential election will really<\/i> be about.<\/span><\/p>\n

How would Americans feel if, 25 years after ending its NATO alliance, the Warsaw Pact continued, and were now massing its forces on America\u2019s<\/i> borders? Would that be \u201cprovocative\u201d? Would we<\/i> tolerate it? Huffington Post\u2019s management apparently think that it\u2019s what the U.S. government ought to be doing to Russia<\/i>. America\u2019s moving forces right up to Russia\u2019s borders is happening right now, and how much opposition to that is there in America\u2019s \u2018free press\u2019?<\/span><\/p>\n

This is Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign; it\u2019s not journalism; it is propaganda. Maybe \u2018Freedom House\u2019 and the \u2018National Endowment for Democracy\u2019, would give it top marks \u2014 for herding \u2018liberals\u2019 into fascism<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, commentary on \u2018news\u2019 reporting As part of their campaign for Hillary Clinton to become President, Huffington Post bannered their home-page on the night of Tuesday August 16th,\u00a0“TRUMP BRINGS KREMLIN APOLOGIST TO INTEL\u00a0BRIEFING!\u201d,\u00a0and linked to their news story that\u2019s headlined against Trump, “Donald Trump To\u00a0Bring Adviser With\u00a0Russia Ties To\u00a0Classified Briefing: Retired Lt. Gen. Michael […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":261767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[115,30,1036,32,1035,535,698,59,1017,753,804,524,754,92,523,49,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-262288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-daily-news","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-hillary-clinton","15":"tag-military","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-police-state","18":"tag-politics-2","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-syria","21":"tag-terrorism","22":"tag-ukraine","23":"tag-usa-news","24":"tag-warfare","25":"tag-white-house","26":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}