John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN PRESS T V

 

“Trump threatens to quit WHO, calling health body ‘puppet of China”

 

It would be nice to hear prominent Americans – politicians, writers, academics, scientists – speak out about this man and his ravings.

Some do, but remarkably few, I think, considering how serious the situation is.

We have a madman exercising power in the world’s most powerful country. He makes new absurd claims almost daily.

And the truth is, he achieves nothing except to make millions of people in the world miserable, as people in Iran, Palestine, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and many other places.

As if there weren’t already enough misery.

And he attacks such an important part of the world’s economy as China at a time of great economic fragility.

His behavior around all aspects of the coronavirus literally is criminal. His delays and blunders have cost many lives in his own country, but he’ll blame it all on China with no evidence at all.

What can one say of a leader who actually attacks the WHO at such a time? A leader who attacks instead of cooperating?

I don’t recall anything quite like it, even in the Cold War.

It is impossible to cite a single worthy accomplishment by Trump, but there is a long list of failures and threats and destructive behaviors. Is that really America’s idea of a leader?

By the way, he has just told the world that he is self-administering the anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, as a preventive measure.

All experts warn against doing that – the drug has dangerous side-effects and should only be used in a hospital setting, if at all – but here’s the President telling millions that he does, thus effectively endorsing it for them. It is a very good measure of his sense of responsibility.

Just as is the fact that he never puts a mask on. I’ve seen a number of world leaders photographed with face masks on, including the President of China, but far be it from Trump to offer a responsible example to his people.

 

AFTERNOTE:

As I’ve already written, new evidence (dated X-rays) suggests strongly that the coronavirus appeared in France in November, 2019.

That re-inforces previous technical evidence about the origin of the virus having had nothing to do with a bio-lab or even the city of Wuhan.

At some point, it jumped from animals to humans, as viruses often do. All the evidence we have contradicts what Trump keeps yelling about China and its responsibility.

But what are facts to a man spewing hatred?

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN YOUR DESTINATION NOW

 

“Donald Trump says coronavirus is an ATTACK on America worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11 as the [American] death toll climbs to more than 74,000”

 

The world has two major crises – a pandemic and an economic collapse – plus many other serious ongoing problems, including wars and trade wars.

And at the very time of such great need for leadership, a demonstrated incompetent serves as the President of its most powerful country. A man who speaks only in dishonest terms, a man who refuses to cooperate with almost anyone, and a man seemingly bent on destruction.  Not just an incompetent, but a highly belligerent incompetent.

Trump’s efforts are going to make America anything but great again when all this is over.

A lot of old friends and allies – quite apart from those he needlessly calls enemies – are going to remember this ghastly performance which has included a savage lack of compassion for the sick – both at home and abroad – and America’s credibility and influence are going to be much reduced.

That will only magnify the effects of Trump’s previous clumsy, bludgeoning efforts to intimidate everyone into doing things America’s way. Well, it turns out, that in a crisis, America’s way is a disaster.

As well, we have his flash-fire intemperate readiness to tear-up important working international treaties and agreements, acts which only caution everyone about the value of obtaining America’s signature on an important document.

Trump’s America has the greatest number of coronavirus infections and deaths in the world, with a very great many more headed its way. America’s healthcare system, which knowledgeable people understood was poor and extremely unfair, has been put under spotlights for the world to see.

America has been shown not even able to marshal its own resources, as with medical supplies, an important area an unqualified, arrogant son-in-law was appointed to head.

America has been embarrassed by the firing of a very able Navy commander who was only looking after the health and welfare of his crew. At the same time, Trump pardoned another Navy man, one convicted of vicious murder abroad, a man some of whose past associates describe as sick, and even granted him a friendly White House chat.

But Trump is too wrapped up in himself to grasp the withering general impact of any of that. He is uncontrollably angry that the pandemic and its side-effects have interfered with his re-election, which he had earlier believed was pretty much “in the bag,” and which he regards as the world’s pivotally important event.

So, someone must be held responsible, and what better candidate for that role than China, a country he literally hates and has insulted many times over?

His obsession with China from the beginning has been to get it completely “de-coupled” from America. The world’s two most important economies “de-coupled,” and at a time of world disorder in finances, economics, and trade? He simply has no grasp of what he is doing, but he has astonishing depths of resentment and hate.

It’s a rather remarkable display seeing such incompetence and ignorance mated to insatiable drive and ego. But Nature is like that, often creating the most startling nightmare creatures as its long experiment with evolution proceeds, creatures much like the coronavirus itself.

I think it means that America’s relative decline in the world, already well underway and against which Trump has seen himself as heroically battling, can only be speeded-up, affected by perceptions of a President’s incoherent acts and words and the ensuing necessary heavy loss of confidence, in both America’s abilities and intentions.

Other countries, ones with far less resources, but endowed with generous cooperation and enlightened leaders, have simply done far better. How, after this, in any way can America be regarded as “indispensable” or “exceptional”? I think it cannot.

John Chuckman

COMMENT -THE VERY REAL THREAT OF WAR TRUMP NOW REPRESENTS

 

To bury memories of his own grotesque mismanagement in the pandemic, Trump has opened an intense new verbal assault on China. His earlier attacks on China, although truly motivated by resentment at superior business success and no little tinge of prejudice, at least related superficially to economics and trade, but the new ones are something else entirely.

Trump’s record of ignoring serious advanced warnings about the disease, of belittling its nature for a considerable period, and of then advocating absurd efforts like injecting household disinfectant or heavily using an unproved anti-malarial drug, one with dangerous side effects, have left him looking absurdly incompetent in the eyes of many.  Especially in view of his country’s now running by far the world’s greatest toll of infections and deaths under the watchful eye of “the chosen one,” the unique American “stable genius.”

So, Trump has to create a distraction as he heads towards what in his eyes is the world’s most momentous event, his re-election. He has to generate some heat, some hatred and simmering resentment, because those are the kinds of intense feelings that make people forget inconvenient facts. Hate blurs all details the way a blast furnace melts iron.

New steps have been taken to block American government pension funds from investing in China as well as putting an end to any science grants which support the Wuhan bio-lab. These are unreasonable acts. Investment should go where investors feel it is best to go, and not be restrained by presidential diktats. And science grants are just part of the international system of support and information exchange involved with all top science.

I’ll briefly repeat a bit of what I’ve written before. Many facilities at Wuhan were installed by the French, who also have such a lab. Many of the technical staff at Wuhan were trained in Galveston, Texas, where the US has a facility. Wuhan has been given grants by the US National Institutes of Health and by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Wuhan’s findings are shared with the global virology community.

If anything, the pandemic should stress the immense importance of maintaining such work. Nature is constantly evolving new virus strains, and the only way people can be prepared to deal with them is by maintaining research. Trump’s approach is backward, not only in terms of assuming something for which there is no proof – that the virus came from the Wuhan bio-lab – but also because it goes against an important scientific principle.

Top scientists in the field say that there has never been a release of pathogens from a high-level lab like Wuhan. The labs are designed with many redundant safety features. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control last year closed the American military’s bio-lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, over concern about its waste water treatment, but no release of pathogens was involved.

Remember, absolutely nothing has been proved about the Wuhan lab, nor is it in the least likely anything can be proved. Scientists studying the coronavirus have said that it did not come from a lab but made the kind of jump in nature from animals to humans often seen as viruses evolve.

Only recently, the US Director of National Intelligence said that there was “wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified”

But those unwarranted measures by Trump are nothing compared to other possible activities being discussed. And at this writing a 15-page dossier compiled by intelligence agencies, has been leaked. Use of the word “dossier” is very telling, as in the “Steele Dossier” commissioned privately to defame Trump himself or in Tony Blair’s “dodgy dossier” compiled by British security services to justify the invasion of Iraq. Both the last two were proven frauds. But people trying to do what Trump is aren’t terribly concerned about accuracy. He just needs some red meat to throw to the animals.

Here is a man, demonstrated many times over to have no scientific understanding and little sound knowledge, suddenly telling the world that he knows things they do not. And those things add up to China somehow owing America for all the costs and damages of a new disease. Billions and billions of dollars. We’ve heard mumbling about unilaterally seizing those “damages.” After all, what court would be competent to judge such wild claims?

Certainly, stealing other people’s valuables is nothing new for Trump. We’ve seen him at it, always done under a feeble pretext, in every attempted coup and unwarranted attack on other states. In Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Syria, Iran, Palestine, and other places.

The idea of invalidating some of China’s vast holding of American T-bills, more than a trillion dollars worth, has been heard – in other words, reneging on your solemn financial obligations to benefit yourself, stealing from your customer’s account at the bank. Also heard is the idea of levying big new punitive tariffs against China, tariffs based on not even a pretense of trade arguments, but simply the claim that America is owed vast sums. Any of the approaches runs counter to international law and good practices. Any of them would further darken what’s left of the honor and credit of the United States.  And any of them would rightly infuriate China.

Any such behavior introduces a gigantic new destabilizing element into international relations. Well, the United States has long done such things, but it does them to relatively weak economies, ones having little influence on the world’s economic and trade affairs, countries such Venezuela or Cuba or even Iran.

But China is something else entirely. Its economy is almost the same size as that of the United States, and by some measures, is indeed already larger. In not many years, it is certain to be larger by every important measure.

Of course, the world’s economy is in a very shaky situation already owing to multiple causes. What kind of mind thinks up new ways to weaken it?  For surely, trying to seriously hurt China, often the world’s engine of economic growth in recent years, is directly attacking the world’s economy. Indeed, while the US is still struggling with the world’s greatest infection of coronavirus, China will be back comparatively to normal, having successfully dealt with the virus, and ready to provide the world economy some stimulus.

It is the same kind of mind that talks about people injecting household sanitizers to fight a virus. Or that takes credit for sweeping achievements that never happened, as millions of Americans supposedly saved by Trump’s (imagined) timely efforts in the pandemic. Or that gives his daughter and her husband – neither of them with any special competence or expertise or even talent – offices with big titles in the White House, with the son-in-law having a special role in the pandemic, an appointment very much in keeping with all of Trump’s dishonesty and bravado and incompetence during the early stages of the pandemic.

Somehow or other, rather than being seen as the disease’s early and rather heroic victim, China is now to be seen as responsible for all the harm done by it, perhaps sharing responsibility with the WHO, the kind of international organization Trump just viscerally dislikes. His reaction to international organizations being a mix of instinctive authoritarianism, hatred of outsiders, and readiness to harm those who believe they know better than he does, even if they clearly do. As well, we have a man with no regard for learning or expertise of almost any description, except for that which manipulates people and takes money from them.

No matter which method Trump fixes on, what he is really trying to do is to steal hundreds of billions of dollars from someone while at the same time heaping them with insults and accusing them of things they didn’t do. China did things right with the outbreak of the virus, as every international expert says. No one did things as badly as Trump’s America. All so that he can be re-elected to inflict still more incompetence and bellowing on the world. Does that sound like a scheme that a proud and ancient society will quietly accept? A remarkably successful society in the modern era, almost the polar opposite of America?

Of course, it isn’t. Trump, being the kind of vicious personality that he is, knows exactly how to inflict hurt and insult on others. That’s just what his kind of morbid personality does. But to believe China will just accept such treatment is to believe a fantasy, an extremely dangerous one.

Trump sharpens his insults with the most insensitive activity in China’s backyard, “freedom of navigation” trips by American warships in waters where China already guarantees all nations freedom of navigation, so long as they follow the basic rules. He adds new provocations about Taiwan, a place that Richard Nixon solemnly pledged America recognizes as an integral part of China, which in fact is just the historical truth, only politics in America having interfered with the fact.

How long before activity on all these fronts leads to war? Calling names. Heavy-duty false accusations. Provocations in China’s territory. And a plan to steal hundreds of billions of dollars. And more effort to undermine China’s remarkable economy at a dangerous time. America is pursuing a reckless course under the generalship of a genuine lunatic. One thinks of General Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s “Doctor Strangelove.”

Trump’s motive is to blame others for upending what he thought was going to be an easy re-election. For that he is willing to do almost anything, ignoring all the world’s many terrible problems.

Mike Pompeo might regard the lying, cheating, and stealing he did in the CIA as amusing and acceptable, as he once not long ago joked about at a university appearance, but applying that sense of values as working principles to China is not going to result in smiles and chuckles.

A figure like Trump is quite capable of calling down Gotterdammerung upon his head, seeing that his fantasies about himself, fantasies of great leadership, are proved just that, fantasies, ridiculous ones, in all the world’s eyes.

We are entering a seriously dangerous period, and the madman in the White House only sees the next six months as a barrier to his re-election that he believes he knows how to overcome. Yes, war would do it. When don’t Americans loyally endorse a president in time of war, even if he is completely wrong as most American presidents have been in their wars? Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and more – you name it. All pointless and destructive but all supported by the people as though it were impossible for Old Glory to do any harm.

 

NOTE:

Just the day after I wrote this, I read an item saying President Xi Jinping’s staff had prepared a memo for him warning of the risk of war from the United States.

 

ADDITIONAL LATER NOTE:

Trump at this writing has called the coronavirus pandemic the worst “attack” his country has ever experienced. He blamed China for not stopping it.

“This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade Center,” Trump said in the White House.

Dangerous words indeed, and as complete a lie as those he offered when he hurled missiles into Syria for a gas attack which never happened or when he assassinated Iran’s national hero, General Soleimani, claiming he had been up to an evil plan when the opposite was true, he was working on a plan towards stability in the region.

 

 

VARIOUS COMMENTS ON TRUMP AND THE CORONAVIRUS

https://wordpress.com/post/chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/19483

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/04/18/19469/

htps://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/04/29/john-chuckman-comment-some-trump-trash-about-china-and-the-coronavirus-hits-canada-in-a-free-newspaper-here-are-some-facts-about-the-wuhan-virus-lab-nature-of-its-work-c/wn-re-election-more-important-than-anything-for-the-lunatic-president-aggressive-new-efforts-against-china-the-world/

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY THE SAKER IN THE UNZ REVIEW

 

“Looking at the Military Aspects of Biological Warfare”

 

Not the clearest article, but an important fact stands out for me: bio-weapons are rather unpredictable. Just shifts in the wind, for example, can represent a problem.

Were they more predictable, I think it likely the US would have used them a good deal in all its colonial wars since the end of WW II. Other states, too. Britain, the Soviet Union, and still others are known to have worked with such weapons.

Fear of attribution in such dark matters might play a role in prevention. But it sure didn’t in the use of napalm or white phosphorus or cluster bombs or Agent Orange or fire-bombing or nuclear weapons – all of which have been openly used with no apologies. The Pentagon has embraced landmines too.

The US certainly has developed and kept bio-weapons in the recent past. Remember the anthrax attack and scare of 2001? That was military-grade anthrax.

It is claimed that the US did use some kind of bio-weapon in North Korea and perhaps in the adjoining area of China during the Korean War. I’ve seen references to that several times in the past.

I don’t know, but the US was certainly utterly ruthless in that war. Three years of carpet-bombing killed one-fifth of the country’s entire population, and that’s a number from a Pentagon source.

Of course, that hellish experience has a lot to do with North Korea’s sacrificing a great deal to develop nuclear weapons and its not wanting to give them up.

The US Cavalry is said by some sources to have used small-pox laden blankets, given as gifts, in its Indian Wars of the 19th century. I don’t know whether that is proved, but the Cavalry did many other ruthless acts, including the wiping out of entire villages.

I tend to be a stickler for proof, so when I read an article like Philip Giraldi’s recent one on who made coronavirus, I am very interested but take no position. That was a superb article, by the way.

When it comes to matters of war, I think we always have to keep in mind that wars and the people who run them are not rational. So, the use of bio-weapons may not be precluded by rational considerations about their predictability and spread.

Not only are a fair number of psychopaths (eg, Curtis LeMay) and extreme narcissists (eg, Douglas MacArthur) involved in the military, but just hate itself is a form of temporary insanity.

Giraldi gave the excellent example of the Stuxnet computer virus, a very dangerous weapon believed developed by the US and Israel. It was used against Iran, and it leaked out to other places, creating some serious hazards (There has been considerable speculation that the escaped Stuxnet virus contributed to the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power station). Clearly, the warlords hating Iran didn’t care.

It is an odd coincidence that a group of American military had visited the region of China where coronavirus broke out, and you certainly can understand some Chinese being very suspicious about it.

Some pretty vicious hatreds pour out of the US anymore towards China and Russia and Iran.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MIKE WHITNEY IN UNZ REVIEW

 

“Huawei in the Crosshairs”

 

In the end, America’s prolonged and stubborn attack on Huawei is only going to harm its own interests.

It risks falling behind in applied technology, and a system like 5-G opens doors for other important advances.

For example, the Chinese have demonstrated a medical operation conducted by robot at quite a long distance, something only possible because of the speed and volume of information transmitted with 5-G.

America risks irritating all of its allies, many of whom are already irritated by threats and demands over what they are allowed to buy and from whom.

And since many of them are going to ignore American demands about Huawei, considering them unrealistic, it really begins to erode America’s traditional international authority.

It strains American credibility even farther because everyone knows America is only doing this as part of a hybrid economic war against China. It is playing the big ugly bully.

America’s allies know that it spies on everyone, with its NSA facilities and with built-in back doors in American technology and with the cooperation of Internet giants like Amazon and Wikipedia and Google and Facebook.

Huawei has been remarkably open about America’s accusations of spying, inviting foreign experts to examine its technology, building countries’ confidence in it.

America’s behavior speeds the day of Putin’s multi-polar world emerging, something already well underway through ongoing natural evolutionary changes in various countries and changes in technology and changes in patterns of trade and growth in some markets over others.

And there’s the fact of America’s lack of competitiveness in so many things. It arrogantly demands that everyone help it regain its past position. America refuses to get busy improving its competitiveness with hard work and lots of investment.

Even its infrastructure is crumbling, but there’s always hundreds of billions for wars and coups which build and advance nothing.

No, America thinks it can issue diktats to regain its position of 1959. That’s literally impossible, and America looks foolish thinking it can.

Accusations of China’s stealing intellectual property are often incorrect and display ignorance about America’s own past.

From the late 18th century through the 19^th, America stole intellectual property from Europe on a large scale – everything from new farm implements to books were brought home and copied with no royalties ever being paid.

The set of actions around Huawei provides a rather fitting symbol for America’s government at this time.

A 21st century Luddite.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS

 

“Huawei founder says company is not yet talking directly with U.S. firms to license 5G

“China urges Canada to release detained Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou”

 

Really, does anyone believe that a clever statesman like Putin would use technology that had security risks?

Russia has a massive national project going with Huawei.

So do many other countries, including some European ones. They now have something near 60 international contracts. And Huawei is just going great guns despite America’s ignorant pooh-poohing.

It is simply the best technology of its kind. And despite expert examinations, no built-in security risk has ever been discovered.

By the way, not many months back, in China they had an impressive demonstration of a complex medical surgery done over a very long distance.

We simply would not be able to duplicate it.

What made it possible?

Huawei’s 5G network, the very thing American anti-Chinese voices keep telling us is so bad.

5G enables new high volumes of information at new high speeds. The more complex the task, the more it is called for. Does anyone really want to avoid such valuable advances?

God, it’s tiresome to still be hearing from the Joe McCarthy types in this world almost 70 years after the Witch Hunts in Washington.

American officials’ words on the subject are less than worthless. That country is engaged in an all-out economic war against China, and it is driven solely by their wish to dominate, and not to compete.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CBC NEWS

 

“Trudeau and Pompeo urged to speak with one voice on China’s response to Hong Kong protests

“U.S. Secretary of State meets PM, Freeland today in Ottawa”

 

Oh crap.

One voice with Pompeo on anything is just asking too much. Remember that’s “lying, cheating, and stealing” braggart Pompeo, formerly of the CIA.

And this Hong Kong business has got entirely out of proportion. Really, nothing that big has happened. The marches are in fact much smaller than the press generally says, and the Chinese government response has not been excessive.

And we must remember, American State Department people have directly encouraged this to embarrass China. We even have a photo, easily found on the Internet, of a woman American Consular official consulting with a couple of march leaders, something that is totally inappropriate.

Shall we compare China’s response to demonstrations to that of Emmanuel Macron in France? The Yellow Jacket demonstrations have resulted in 11 people being killed and 2500 injured. Right in the heart of Paris, legendary symbolic city for human rights and revolution against oppression.

Or, even worse, how about the government of Israel at the Gaza protests? Those protests are not even located in Israel, but more than 200 people have been killed by Israeli army snipers, including women and children. Many thousands have been injured.

If Trudeau goes along with Pompeo, as he is likely being encouraged to do by Chrystia Freeland, friend of the current Washington establishment, well, his father once used a word in public that exactly would describe it, merde!

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA TODAY

 

In a way, Trump is worse and more dangerous than a typical liar

But I’m not sure Trump even knows when he is lying.

Basically, as we’ve seen and heard from him in so many matters, Trump’s reality is whatever he wants it to be.

It’s a mental condition, not unlike psychopathy.

He is happy with the tales he tells, and he expects others to be happy with them, too. When they are not, he just insults them, calling them liars or other nasty names.

I think the only safety for the world from a man like this lies in the fact that he is unable to act on many of his tales. The establishment lets him rant on, but indeed blunts any of his acts that it doesn’t regard as in keeping with its pre-existing agenda. Unfortunately for countless millions of ordinary people, that pre-existing agenda is itself also threatening.

America wants nothing so much as a return to the 1950s, or rather a return to the relative importance of America in the world of that time, to the respect that it enjoyed then, because the world has grown away from a reality once so comfortable for America. The trouble is that the effort to return to that world can only involve aggression, threats, Mafia-like pressures and extortions because it is something entirely artificial being imposed, something going against many natural developments of the last seventy-five years.

This is what we are seeing right now, whether it’s America telling Europe where it can buy its natural gas or telling China how it should sell its products or telling third countries that they should not buy any of Russia’s military technology or allowing its colony of Israel literally to seize the homes and assets of Palestinians, or telling countries like Venezuela who they should elect so that resources can be treated the way America wants them treated.

This is the vision for our near-term future, and what is Trump’s role in it?

Trump can be seen now as frantically trying to retain his job as President. Much like a drowning man waving his arms and splashing desperately. He actually tries now to outdo the establishment with its own agenda as a way to demonstrate his usefulness to them and to ward off the threat he is under. Nothing of the few sensible changes Trump first offered, changes the establishment regarded as threatening, is going to be realized. The tiny change he recently offered in Syria, for example, has already been distorted into something  beyond recognition.

After all, official agencies of the American government, set to work by the previous administration and portions of his own party did try to unseat him, and he remains threatened by ongoing investigation. He knows that the threat isn’t just about supposed collusion with Russia, which has always been a dark fairy tale which tried to exploit America’s throbbing hangover from the Cold War.

However, Russophobia in general isn’t just that. It is the implicit recognition of Russia as a stumbling block to America’s reassertion of world dominance, an extremely important point. I think Russia is viewed in Washington much as ancient Carthage was viewed by the rulers of the Roman Empire, clearly a very dangerous perspective.

And America is reinforced in that view by those running its powerful colony in the Middle East. That is how they, too, see Russia, as a stumbling block to America’s complete dominance, the situation they embrace as best for their own interests.

This chaotic, dishonest, and raging man, Trump, has a closet bulging with skeletons, and a well-resourced investigation could come up with any number of them. Embarrassment or indictment or forced resignation rather than impeachment are definitely ongoing possibilities for him, and here is an ego that regards itself as just too big to fail.

The fact that this bizarre man was elected tells us something about America, and that is that there are tens of millions who feel powerless, who feel no one really represents them. There is a good deal of desperation.

And they are absolutely right to feel the way they do, but they only added to the list of their own woes by electing a man who can do nothing for them and whose recklessness is shaping up itself as extremely dangerous – in Venezuela, In Syria, in Palestine, in Iran, in Yemen, in North Korea, and in a list of other places.

The government of a world empire, one working to redouble its authority over others, has next to no use for the ordinary people of its own country, except when it comes to filling uniforms, but Trump pretends that he has because the belly-over-the-belt set are his people, his political base. That’s why, while other promises are forgotten, “the wall” has not been – that costly, pretty much pointless project means a lot to “his people.” Depriving him of it provides a natural path to weakening him for the 2020 election. Hard to see any compromise possible there.

The threat of war is as constant now as it was under Obama, and I believe it is becoming even more so. After all, even if Trump cannot decide everything as he likes to pretend he does, he still influences the international situation, its tone and direction, and he adds only more instability and recklessness.

And in China, the same recklessness has already started serious aspects of economic war. This is unbelievably dangerous to the health of world society, given the many economic weaknesses we see, especially in the United States, with debts and deficits and various bubbles generated by low interest rates and artificially pumped-up liquidity.

His grand illusion of “Make America Great Again” – just a re-tread of the now-irrelevant “American Dream” slogan – is causing buttons to be pushed that were best left untouched. The establishment knows his slogan is rubbish, but they are using him to undercut China, a country they resent and fear and a country they have wanted to undercut for a long time. It was Obama, answering to the same masters, who spoke of a “pivot to Asia.”

China is definitely on a natural path to becoming the world’s premier nation, and if there is anything the American establishment can do to torpedo that, it will. Trump and his economically-illiterate talk of China stealing American jobs is useful. Of course, no one is going to start closing factories in China and reopening them in America – Trump’s foggy-brained vision of the future – but attacking China so relentlessly can slow it down, something America’s newly assertive establishment views as useful.

The simple goal of the people who really run America is to reassert their authority worldwide. They cannot do that through economic competition anymore and they cannot do it through the immense respect America once enjoyed after WW II, but they sure can work on the military and financial and foreign policy fronts to become a more threatening bully that makes incessant demands and seizes opportunities as they come along.

They are working hard to undermine the elected government in Venezuela in part because the guy they have lined up as “leader” there has promised he would sell off the government’s big petroleum assets. But it’s more than just that. Venezuela is just one piece in a large puzzle. America wants a return in Latin America also to the 1950s, a time when an unquestioning giant plantation system was dominated by American-compliant governments. Cuba is very much back on the list of targets after Venezuela, as are several other states. The “Lima Group” is just one more Cold War-style front organization for getting what you want from others. They help do your dirty work, giving your arrogant demands an appearance of wider respectability, in return for favors and considerations. Hitler’s willing helpers, as it were. Something of the same role Israel enjoys in the Middle East.

Serious world economic collapse is not just a dark fantasy, it is a real possibility, given the many frailties we see. Things are now slowing in China. Things are slowing in Germany. Europe is rife with division. None of the American establishment has been willing to bear the least burden to rebalance things in America, to correct dangerous excesses. Instead of paying the taxes they should have to pay down debt, they received more outrageous tax cuts. It is behavior which almost exactly parallels that of the great dukes and churchmen of France in the years leading to the French Revolution.

In this they are blood brothers, Trump and the Washington establishment. Trump’s entire career is one of fighting taxes and taking unfair advantages with no regard for the consequences to others and society at large. Trump’s personal real estate empire reflects the efforts over years of accountants and tax lawyers constantly battling government more than it does anything else. He has been a decades-long chiseller in slow motion, which is why he refused to release his tax records.

So, too, in military matters. Overwhelmingly, these establishment people avoided military service, as Trump very much did at the very height of horrors in Vietnam. The guy who regularly has his picture taken in custom-made bomber jackets and other military gear welcomed no opportunity to wear them when they weren’t just political costumes.  He’ll hug the flag for countless photo-ops, but it never occurred to him to risk anything personal for it.

But the American establishment is always ready to send others off to war to inflict God-knows-what on the poor people of the world. They do it in the name of “freedom,” but they mean only the freedom to control and exploit. That’s what those American flag lapel pins they all insist on wearing really mean.

And the costliest, least economically-beneficial institution in America, the military and its associated security establishment, just keeps getting more money than it knows what to do with. It now consumes more than a trillion dollars a year. This works towards the large economic threat, but it also adds still more to the threat of war. Great standing military machines have always in the past proved to be agents for war, not for peace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN BY PAUL KORING IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

America’s establishment is working hard to repeat the scenario of WWII in the Pacific.

Japan was never going to attack the U.S. but after a long period of harassment, trade restrictions, and threats, Japan decided it had no choice.

This is going to become the most dangerous and fearful effort facing Canada’s current younger generation’s time.

And it is completely unnecessary, just as was America’s holocaust in Vietnam where about 3 million people were slaughtered to maintain America’s presence in Asia.

Obama is just as much a creature of America’s military-industrial complex as George Bush or Ronald Reagan.
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“Our US friends should understand that military outreach costs money, and today the US has little of it.”

Yes, but you forget that the United States, having the privilege of the world’s reserve currency, is in a unique position financially.

It has abused, and will continue to abuse, the nations around the world holding its currency.

It will continue inflating gradually or it may at some point devalue.

In either case, America will leave dollar holders around the world “holding the bag,” no different in any respect than a conscienceless fraudster like Bernard Madoff.

So not only does it promote war and violence, it cheats everyone to pay for its stupidity.

That is precisely how the immensely costly and pointless war in Vietnam was paid for.

I am only sorry that most people do not have a grasp of this reality which allows America to behave as an unlimited fool in world affairs.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO COLUMN BY CHARLES BURTON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Charles Burton, parts of this piece are less than insightful.

“Mr. Hu, while the public face of the Chinese regime, faces challenges from his military and security apparatus, from opposing factions within the Communist Party and from powerful regional and business interests.”

“The other is that Mr. Hu cannot make commitments to the West because he lacks the means to assure they are kept.”

Both those statements and more could be made about Obama. Indeed, the same observations may be even more true of an American president.

So few observers realize how weak – weak that is except in command of the military – the office of the American president is, that it was designed to be that way, and that there is a long record of failed opportunities in international affairs owing to that weakness.

But your last statement is a solid one:

“As for Canada, burgeoning Chinese realities cannot be accommodated by our current “one size fits all” approach to foreign relations. Our relations with China deserve a China-based approach that draws on a more comprehensive “whole of government approach,” and a separate government unit to more effectively co-ordinate Canada’s forward-looking engagement with China.”

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‘”China responds to these demands with………”

‘This statement summarizes the whole problem with the West. They demand. They want others to comply. How patronizing.

‘I don’t see the West responding to any of China’s demands. I don’t see China making demands. Period.’

Yes, Mr Burton’s piece is extremely one-sided, largely failing to make any point worth making.

Over recent decades, I think it fair to call China, judging solely by its behavior, one of the world’s best behaved states.

The corollary to that proposition, again based solely upon its behavior, is that the United States has been one of the world’s worst behaved states.

Always demanding. Always pontificating. Always pointing fingers. Always ready to break out into self-righteousness. Always secretly pressuring even its friends.

And always, always starting wars, which in just a few decades, have killed millions.

My God, China looks good by that standard, no matter what other limits it may have.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY RORY GILFILLAN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAILRory Gilfillan’s words are quite unpleasant and more than a little confused.

First, if you take his basic principle of only celebrating the outstanding, it seems to me that you must logically extend it to all areas of activity.

In schools, in the arts, and in the sciences. And that necessarily implies authorities picking and choosing who should pursue what. In the U.S. they do this with floods of money and privilege, and in China they do this with state authority.

That general attitude results in America, a true social Darwinist society.

Second, while everyone likes being astonished by the fabulously gifted, there are many small pleasures in enjoying the efforts of the less gifted.

Third, I just do not regard sports in general as all that important. For those that do enjoy them, fine, but for society to use many precious resources only to groom and praise those with talented bodies gives you the sense of contemporary China towards sports, a sense not completely different to that which prevailed under the Third Reich.

Yes, it is nice to see gold medals, but really when the Olympics or any other big event is over, two weeks later the beer-fed emotion is forgotten and a hell of a lot of money has been spent on very little of substance. It still all reduces to a modern version of Rome’s “bread and circuses.”

People like Mr. Gilfillan would have us believe there is more to it, but truly there isn’t.

Perhaps almost better the many celebrations of small victories than the big blow-out for a few physically talented people.

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY FRANK CHING IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Someone who thought a little more deeply than Frank Ching would know that the United States has absolutely no business in these waters and that over time its presence can only be dangerous.

Much like its continued presence in Korea, this is nothing more than an expression of global imperialism and, in a very real sense, an insult to the peoples of this part of the world who are perfectly capable of settling their own international affairs.

The United States, time and time again, has pushed the limits there in Cold War fashion.

Recall the American spy plane under the great idiot Bush that was brought down in China.

The previous new government of Japan was elected wanting to remove America’s ugly presence in Okinawa – ugly because it includes nuclear weapons aboard ship – but American pressure brought the new leader down.

And readers should know that there is no definitive proof that that South Korean ship was sunk by the North Koreans. It may have been nothing but an accident aboard the ship, afterwards used to stoke up feelings a la “Remember the Maine!”

Indeed, many of North Korea’s extreme behaviors are responses to American provocations never admitted.