The World According to TIME Magazine

Richard Stengel, the top editor of Time magazine for the past seven years, is planning to step down as managing editor for a new job at the U.S. Department of State, sources familiar with the situation tell POLITICO and Capital New York.

With this revolving door spinning between TIME’s editorial board and the US State Department in mind, readers must understand that what TIME publishes isn’t reality, but rather “reality” according to what suits US interests, and more specifically, Wall Street and Washington’s interests. 

It is then no surprise to open up its most recent issue covering what it calls “The 100 Most Influential People” and find the likes of Hillary Clinton heaping on praise for John Kerry, or Madeleine Albright condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is the US State Department’s version of the Oscars, an annual ritual centered around self-aggrandizement and the reinforcement of the West’s perceived worldview. 

Of current US Secretary of State John Kerry, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would claim: 

Diplomacy is in John Kerry’s blood. As the son of a foreign-service officer, he grew up understanding that America’s destiny is entwined with that of the wider world.

Diplomacy takes stamina, passion and perspective, and John embodies these traits. He is relentless in the face of the most persistent obstacles — keeping alive the dream of peace in the Middle East, standing up to Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine, negotiating the removal of chemical weapons from Syria and signing an interim nuclear deal with Iran. And his work on climate change exemplifies these qualities. Addressing the dangers posed by global warming has long been a personal commitment for him. I know from experience just how hard this is. There’s nobody better suited to carry the cause forward than John Kerry. The people of the United States can be proud he’s representing America and its interests abroad. I know I am.

“The people of the United State can be proud he’s representing America and its interests abroad…” Clinton claims. Ironically, the picture featured alongside Clinton’s comments was of Kerry in Riyadh visiting the unelected Saudi regime who currently preside over a kingdom where state resources are squandered funding sectarian extremists abroad in places like Libya and Syria, and domestically where women can neither vote nor drive, and enemies of the state – which include heretics, homosexuals, and political opponents (charged for treason, sedition, or terrorism) – are beheaded publicly by swordsmen. Surely Kerry is not representing America or its interests – but rather corporations and financiers residing within America and their interests.

TIME Magazine would continue, with commentary by yet another former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. Albright took on Russian President Vladimir Putin, claiming:

In 2008, in these same pages, I wrote that Putin would “remain an irritant to NATO, a source of division within Europe and yet another reason for the West to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.” I was wrong. It’s worse.

Through his illegal actions in Ukraine, Putin has reminded us that leaders of great countries are most dangerous when they make up their own facts. Putin’s worldview is colored by toxic fictions.

Putin’s ultra-nationalistic instinct has upped his poll numbers, but his increased influence will be temporary. Russia has acquired territory but lost credibility. Putin has bought himself a pile of problems at the cost of the international ties Russia needs to prosper. He has betrayed Russia’s best resource — its people — who will eventually realize his rhetoric is nothing more than a fantasy inside a delusion wrapped in a tissue of lies.

To some, Putin has “won” Crimea. Will he recognize his “victory” is Pyrrhic — or try to repeat it? History is filled with aggressors who triumphed for a moment. Then failed.

Had Albright not mentioned Putin by name, one may have thought she was reflecting on her own career – one which included the sanctioning of Iraq at the cost of starving to death over half a million children, before an illegal war based on “toxic fictions” that led to the death of another 1 million civilians, and left the nation of Iraq to this day in perpetual violent conflict.

Albright’s parting shot of, “history is filled with aggressors who triumphed for a moment. Then failed,” could just as easily be directed at US President George Bush who proclaimed aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003, “mission accomplished,” before America was dragged through a nearly decade long occupation of Iraq that ended in its withdrawal and Iranian influence filling the remaining void.

The audacity of American politicians standing in judge of the world, even as their own hands are covered in the blood of millions, condemning others for simply reacting to their extraterritorial meddling, is generally the hallmark of an empire at its height. But as history teaches, empires at their height merely stand at the edge of their inevitable and irreversible decline.

The world according to TIME is thankfully not the true world we inhabit. The annual self-aggrandizing of TIME and other publications and productions across the Western media are designed to reinforce a fiction aimed at justifying and legitimizing otherwise unjustified and illegitimate leadership and agendas. Seeing through this ill-constructed facade is the first step in tearing it down and letting the light of truth finally shine through.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.