{"id":12247,"date":"2015-09-14T06:38:16","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T11:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12247"},"modified":"2015-09-14T06:41:31","modified_gmt":"2015-09-14T11:41:31","slug":"isis-is-us-the-empire-and-the-evil-genie-it-released","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12247","title":{"rendered":"ISIS is US: the Empire and the Evil Genie It Released"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2015\/09\/14\/isis-is-us-the-empire-and-the-evil-genie-it-released\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">ISIS is US: the Empire and the Evil Genie It Released<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2015\/09\/isis.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-74144\" src=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2015\/09\/isis-510x340.jpg\" alt=\"isis\" width=\"510\" height=\"340\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Picturing Papal Petrification<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The reigning politics and media culture of the United States is not without moments of high comic relief. Three weeks ago, for example, CNN\u2019s Chris Cuomo presented the buffoonish Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with a bizarre hypothetical situation. What would Trump do, Cuomo asked, if he met the Pope and the pontiff expressed his opinion that capitalism can be \u201ca real avenue to greed, it can be really toxic and corrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trump didn\u2019t miss a beat. \u201cI\u2019d say ISIS wants to get you,\u201d Trump said. \u201cYou know that ISIS wants to go in and take over the Vatican? You have heard that. You know, that\u2019s a dream of theirs, to go into Italy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe talks to you about capitalism, you scare the pope?\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2015\/08\/19\/politics\/donald-trump-chris-cuomo-cnn-interview\/\">Cuomo asked<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m gonna have to scare the Pope because it\u2019s the only thing,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThe Pope, I hope, can only be scared by God. But the truth is \u2014 you know, if you look at what\u2019s going on \u2014 they better hope that capitalism works, because it\u2019s the only thing we have right now. And it\u2019s a great thing when it works properly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Funny stuff. It doesn\u2019t get much wackier than that. Forget for now the notion that that capitalism is a wonderful \u201cthing\u201d when it is functioning \u201cproperly,\u201d whatever that means. And never mind whether or not ISIS chiefs dream of claiming St. Peter\u2019s Square for Islamic jihad (maybe they do).<\/p>\n<p><strong>ISIS as Imperial Blowback<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s look instead at Trump\u2019s suggestion that the Pope would do well to stop mouthing off about the profits system because he needs to get under the protective umbrella of the U.S. against the Islamic State. Trump\u2019s balderdash aside, the notion that the U.S. is the leading and true enemy of ISIS is widely assumed across the U.S., thanks in part to the properly working propagandistic mechanisms of dominant U.S. corporate war, election, and entertainment media.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ISIS is US: the Empire and the Evil Genie It Released Picturing Papal Petrification The reigning politics and media culture of the United States is not without moments of high comic relief. Three weeks ago, for example, CNN\u2019s Chris Cuomo presented the buffoonish Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with a bizarre hypothetical situation. What would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,5493,1239,446,447,827,834,6797],"class_list":["post-12247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-blowback","tag-counterpunch","tag-is","tag-isis","tag-islamic-state","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-us-imperialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12248,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12247\/revisions\/12248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}