“ISRAEL IS WORKING WITH ARAB ALLIES TO DESTROY IRANIAN DRONES, A SIGN OF THE GROWING TIES THAT PRESIDENT BIDEN IS TRYING TO SHORE UP” - Headline in today’s NY Time.

Washington is throwing gasoline on the fire. In the midst of a world economic crisis, the U.S. is doing everything possible to escalate tension and bellicose conflict. At the recent G-20 conference in Indonesia, Blinken adamantly refused to meet with Lavrov, his Russian counterpart. Rather than talk of a negotiated settlement, U.S. spokespeople either explicitly (as do Zelensky, Austin, Hillary Clinton, etc.) or indirectly talk of defeating Russia on the battlefield, even though from a military viewpoint, the Russians are winning the war. U.S. intelligence, rather than accurately gather information is more interested in information for propaganda purposes than a realistic assessment of what’s going on (this is a tendency that goes back at least to Bush II). And this propaganda function rubs off onto the media, thus explaining the obscene degree to which the U.S. media sides with Ukraine and even headlines Ukraine’s allegations as if they were undisputable facts. Nobody in the White House provides any notion of where all this is going to lead. It’s as if they don’t care. Not only is the world’s economy going down the tubes, but WW III looms on the horizon. One can’t help but think that this is just one more example of how under capitalism war is the means to overcome economic crises. And who, by the way, are those “Arab allies” that the NY Times talks about?  They are among the most undemocratic nations on the face of the earth. One doesn’t have to support Russia’s invasion (I certainly don’t) to recognize that Washington is largely responsible for this conflict, even before the invasion began and all the way up to the present.