John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY LAWRENCE DAVIDSON IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“The Cultural Problem of Cheating & Lying”

“This is not just a lesson for parents, schools, the courts, and the marketplace. It is also a necessary lesson for our politics. But we have not managed to come up with a way to vet our leaders so as to assure their long-term honesty and integrity — a process we have been searching for since the time of Plato. Nonetheless, we should try harder…”

 

Yes, indeed, but I do find the piece weak and rather squishy, avoiding as it does the real source of the problem and putting things into philosophical terms of a search for ways to insure truth in American politics and in the wider society. It actually gets quite preachy, but preaching doesn’t change the real political economy of a huge state, and, indeed, I think it effectively offers a kind false hope to hide behind.

A little like the people in America who periodically stand in a crowd on a hillside with their arms outstretched in a kind of supplication, waiting for the Second Coming. They are sincere, to be sure, I have no doubt, but their efforts are utterly pointless since they ignore science and the realities of the human condition.

There are bricks-and-mortar causes for the ailments of American society, and if you refuse to deal with those, you are in a very real sense lying to yourself and just adding to the total volume of American lying.

Given America’s empire and the vast and costly military/security services supporting it, I don’t think there is any option but for leaders to lie, and doing so almost continuously. The emergence of American plutocracy, which is what the empire serves, and money-driven politics at home are at the heart of the problem.

Can America’s leaders in Washington openly admit that they are starving children and depriving the sick of medicine in Iran and Venezuela and were working to do the same in Bolivia and still other places?

Even the ugliest, most powerful government officials or the plutocrats they serve do not happily take public credit for such grim acts. So, lying and cheating just become built into the society at the highest level. Almost everyone, no matter how malevolent their intentions and actions, wants at least a veneer of respectability, credit for worthy motives. Only the genuine psychopaths, of which America has more than a few in powerful positions because they are useful, are likely to want such credit, much like credit for scalps on display.

So, destroying someone else’s elected government invariably is transformed into fighting for democratic values. Venezuela’s unelected Guaido, absurdly swearing himself in as President without ever running for election and financing his activities with American intelligence agency funds as well as American-appropriated Venezuelan national assets, becomes the hope for democracy over the party of twice-elected Maduro and his thrice-elected predecessor, Chavez.

Again, except for the scalphunters, who would want credit for shutting down Venezuela’s electricity grid several times so that millions of poor ordinary people likely lost the food in their fridges? And many life-sustaining machines stopped working?

Such are the realities of empire. And there are just so very many examples, the story of Ukraine being a prominent and tragic one in recent years.

According to the delightful Victoria Nuland, a high State Department official who was overheard at the time, America spent five billion dollars on the coup in Ukraine, doing absolutely nothing for Ukraine’s people, overthrowing an elected government, and indeed wrecking the country in many ways. All done just to threaten the security interests of Russia along a huge border. Needless violence and intimidation, with plenty of killing along the way.

Parts of Ukraine seceded under the unpleasant language and cultural policies of the coup-installed government, and I think it pretty unlikely they will ever return. Thousands died in an unnecessary civil war over the matter. Great numbers of people sought work in other parts of Europe as the Ukrainian economy literally collapsed under a corrupt and incompetent American-installed administration.

Versions of neo-Nazism now openly flourish in Ukraine because the groups’ capacity to intimidate the government is useful in preventing any turning back to rational policies. Such groups, some subsidized by the State Department or American security services, threaten the government into not making reasonable concessions for peace.

Incidentally, Joe Biden, in his then role as presidential proconsul to Ukraine, assisting the coup government in getting things right – “right” meaning the way America wants them – was photographed warmly shaking hands with the commander of one such group, the Azov Battalion, a group whose marches much resemble those of Hitler’s Brownshirts of the 1930s.

The post-coup Ukrainian military demonstrated gross incompetence. Despite its far greater numbers and resources, it had poor leadership and lack of motivation and managed only to kill thousands of civilians in breakaway Eastern Ukraine. Its efforts to draft soldiers in Western Ukraine to send to fight in Eastern Ukraine resulted in embarrassingly high levels of running from the draft.

And all the previous coup government leader, Poroshenko, could talk about was how the Russians were invading and how brave Ukrainian soldiers were preventing Europe from being invaded. Absolutely absurd stuff, but our press and politicians credited it as truth. Somehow, with all such claims, the hi-tech, unarguable evidence of America’s fleets of spy satellites and sophisticated radars just manages to disappear. America would in fact know in a heartbeat if Russia invaded Ukraine, and it would not sit silently watching it happen.

So, we not only have thick clots of lies, we have the government of the United States treating us all as though we were totally ignorant of the realities of around-the-clock surveillance.

Perhaps the most grotesque aspect of Ukraine’s post-coup military operations was the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, either in error or deliberately, an event which launched an industrial-sized cover-up with a shameless investigation which never even bothered to collect all the evidence, pieces of the plane and contents still being easily discovered in the region where it crashed. If you study the case, there are many powerful reasons for believing the Ukrainian military shot down the airliner with fighter planes, but imagine the risk to America’s five-billion-dollar coup investment if the truth had been broadcast right away? So, years of throwing dust in people’s eyes began, and now the matter is almost forgotten. And, again, no American satellite images or radar tracks were ever produced.

We have ugly stunt after ugly stunt – such as the infamous Skripal Affair of two years ago in Britain – done merely to hurt the interests of those America does not like. Truth is impossible, and the lying goes beyond all normal bounds to become a massive network of distortions, all dutifully attested to at the highest levels of government and by the corporate press which of course always serves the government which has so regulatory powers over it.

It was after all, Hitler himself in his 1925 book, Mein Kampf, who propounded the concept of “the Big Lie.” It proved a highly successful idea, and tyrants and seekers-after-power have never stopped employing it since.

That is the very nature of empire, and there is no escaping it. It is impossible to behave the way America does and not lie about it, massively and continuously.

I’ve said it many times, but there’s no shame in repeating such an important truth: you can either have a decent country or you can have an empire, but you cannot have both.

The infrastructure of empire is built on threats, oppression, subversion, coups, dishonesty, and no shortage of violence.

And there is always an underlying assumption that a relatively small number of people in the United States are somehow entitled to tell the other more than 95% of humanity how they are to run their affairs. Are you not implicitly lying about your democratic and human-rights values when you do that? Of course, it isn’t America’s roughly 5% of the world’s people making the claim, it’s a tiny fraction of that, the highly privileged.

There’s no way the establishment politicians in Washington – including the best Congress money can buy – can one day just take a kind of Boy Scout Oath to reform things. Believing that goes beyond naïve to asinine.

Fundamental change is required – including basic matters like a tax structure which supports the creation of plutocracy and the grotesque role of money in politics – but I don’t think Americans are prepared to undertake it, and perhaps they are not even able to do so, given the establishment’s powerful tools of self-defense.

Right now, the Democratic Party is working to shut out Bernie Sanders, and it has already pretty much shut out Tulsi Gabbard, yet neither of those two admirable politicians is even advocating large-scale change. That’s a good measure of how risk-averse America’s establishment is.

The other half of America’s money-controlled political duopoly, the Republican Party, supports a foul-mouthed madman who brags about stealing. Why? Because he vigorously continues the good work of imposing America’s will on the planet, and he actively works to hurt those who are going to become important parts of a very different future, as China and Russia.

Well, I believe sadly that America is stuck right where it is until larger events overtake it and the now-emerging multi-polar world becomes the dominant reality.

MAGA will be seen as a museum relic, like some Shaman’s pathetic talisman, representing futile efforts by America to claw its way back to where it was seventy years ago, pretty much king of the world.

Either that, or it is not impossible at all for genuine widespread and destructive war to emerge from America’s present global hostilities almost everywhere.

After all, what do bullies do when their demands are ignored but start throwing punches or using a weapon?

John Chuckman

COMMENT – THOUGHTS ON THE TALE OF RUSSIA AGAIN TRYING TO INFLUENCE AMERICA’S ELECTION

 

Political and ideological tales in America enjoy a remarkably long shelf life. I think the fact has to do with unchanging, iron-bound ideology and a simple lack of imagination.

Already, the stuff about Russia working to influence the approaching American election has resurfaced like a bloated corpse floating in a stagnant pond. It’s being repeated by American intelligence officials, American media, and Democratic politicians. 2016 redux.

Hillary Clinton used it as one of several fall-back explanations for her loss, something she had a brutally difficult time accepting as reality, having spent more money than some nations’ space programs have at their disposal. About 1.2 billion dollars.

The charges about Russia were silly then, and they are only sillier now.

But it is an intimidation tool in a country which listened to J. Edgar Hoover blubber for decades about “the communist conspiracy,” trying to tell voters that their votes are supporting Russia.

Russia wouldn’t dream of getting caught trying to manipulate an American election. There really is no reward important enough to be worth the risk.

Of course, facts make no difference in this kind of mumbo-jumbo, but Julian Assange already told us that Russia did not give him the damaging material about the Democrats in 2016.

Several distinguished American technical experts have repeatedly said that the material came from downloading to memory sticks by someone with access to DNC computers, not from hacking. That is the kind of statement that can be made definitively in such matters by an expert who recognizes the telltale signs.

Anyway, what has Trump done for Russia that possibly could have rewarded an effort on his behalf? Nothing.

Of course, individual Russians, both politicians and others, and news sources have their election favorites, just as is the case in America.

I believe a fair part of the Russian establishment does favor Trump, but there are some easy-to-understand explanations for the fact, and they have nothing to do with conspiracy.

First, Russia is a remarkably conservative country. This fact jumps out at you if you read some of its news sources, as I do regularly.

Second, while both American political parties are Pentagon-embracing War Parties with very little real difference between them, the Democrats do seem to make the most noise around hostility towards Russia.

Third, Putin is a very clever and subtle man. He knows what a hopeless putz Trump really is. There are reports of Putin and associates making fun of Trump in private.

If he does favor Trump, it is only because he knows how bad Trump is for America’s interests, America being a nation with about a century of hostility towards Russia. A poor leader like Trump making blunders and creating enemies with everything he does is a lovely situation to chuckle over with some vodka in Moscow.

Putin wouldn’t dream of doing anything to influence the matter, beyond his influence over Russia’s own now extensive English-speaking press, but so what? America’s press never stops talking about Russia, and in disparaging terms, calling it everything from a “regime” to a “kleptocracy.” And it is overwhelmingly the case that most Americans never see the Russian press.

John Chuckman

NOTES ON THE INSANITY GRIPPING THE UNITED STATES – RUSSOPHOBIA AND MEANINGLESS WARS WITH THOUGHTS ON THE NATURE OF PROPAGANDA

 

[Note to readers: this is a collection of thoughts loosely related to the title above rather than a finished essay]

 

In all American mainline publications, you will find Russo-phobia. It comes in many forms and variations, just as is always the case with propaganda and disinformation.

That sense of its being vaguely “everywhere” should serve as a warning for what is a universal characteristic of a certain kind of propaganda. Call it synthetic gossip.

Such propaganda follows the logic of big advertisers who want you to be as continuously aware of their products as it is possible to make you. That is why the Internet now is plagued by advertising, a longstanding reality of print and broadcast journalism and we see “product placement” in the films we pay to see.

That warning largely goes unheeded, just as for most people advertising saturating everything is just taken for granted as part of the atmosphere, part of the air they breathe.

And being “part of the air everyone breathes” has its real effects. In the early days of television, when advertising began to appear in everyone’s living room, often by the deceptively open and honest face of the star or host of a show, it quickly became apparent how powerful its effects were. Companies noted immediate jumps in sales of advertised products.

It had been so for radio, too, with its intimacy of a friendly, attractive voice listened to closely by families from the comfort of their living-room couches and armchairs, especially at certain evening hours.

But television was even more so with a friendly or sympathetic famous face seen glowing in a dimly-lighted room, almost a form of enchantment. A great deal of early television advertising was of the form of a program’s host or star taking a minute from the work of the program to talk to you directly about something he or she especially liked. Neighborly. Chatty. Cozy.

The approach is no longer “cozy” – Arthur Godfrey or Rod Serling or Bob Cummings taking a moment from his show to focus on you with a friendly word of recommendation – because American society in large part has moved on from “cozy.”

Part of the impact of post-early television technology has been to atomize and de-centralize society, each member of a family, for example, focusing on his or her own interests through various “media’ and devices.

A trace of the early form of personal advertising has survived in the endorsements now so widely used in every written or image format from labels to boxes. Companies pay such people great sums of money for lending their influence with fans or followers to the company’s interest of selling its product.

Advertising works as a form of suggestion in the human mind, and as with suggestion, not everyone is equally susceptible, but virtually everyone is to some degree. That’s why advertising works and why companies spend countless billions of dollars every year to place their “suggestions” “out there,” ideally in forms and in places where the most susceptible population will be exposed.

Propaganda and disinformation work exactly the same way. It is naïve to believe, as I am sure most Americans very much believed during the height of the Cold War, that only in authoritarian states is propaganda used on the people of a country. That belief was itself a suggestion constantly reinforced in television shows, movies, and in magazines and newspapers. It was inescapable.

Over the decades, advertising and propaganda have grown not just in volume but in sophistication and complexity. There is still some room for the simplistic stuff of an earlier time, but the dark arts have largely moved on.

The ideal is to plant a “targeted” suggestion in your mind, one targeted to appeal to your tastes and preferences because such suggestions are the most powerful. And ideally, that is accomplished in a manner so that you are really not aware of what is even taking place.

That is part of why we have in our daily-living environment something almost resembling a cosmic storm among the stars, a storm of cosmic rays and particles of every description bombarding everything entering a region.

That’s a pretty good description of Russo-phobia in the United States. It isn’t just in political speeches, it isn’t just in government and political publications, nor is it only in newspaper articles and television programs, it is virtually everywhere in one form or another, including just the word choices writers and speakers make and the attitudes they strike.

It is the contemporary sophisticated descendent of such rather clumsy propaganda as a television series, “I Led Three Lives” in the 1950s, or “The FBI” of the late 1960s, each episode of which had a brief personal anti-communist message at the end from J. Edgar Hoover himself.

Such shows were only one of countless ways that the “Soviet menace” was made almost tangible inside America. Politicians speeches, newspaper and broadcast story selection and emphasis and editorials kept fueling the fires.

I vividly remember, near the real start of Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War, a local newspaper in Chicago, and certainly not the most conservative one, having an editorial with a big bold headline, “The Reds are at the Gates!” That was likely 1964.

Even the assassination of John Kennedy was employed in the cause. Books and articles suggesting Russia was directly or indirectly involved, or that Russian-supported Cuba was, appeared for many years after his death, another measure of the size and intensity of historical anti-Russian activities.

Those suggestions were interesting because the assassination was almost certainly about the opposite of those claims and suggestions. It was about ending Kennedy’s efforts to form new communications with, and policies towards, the Soviet Union and Cuba.

In the case of Cuba, during the early 1960s, an entire industry had become established in the United States to promote hostility and war.

The CIA and FBI had massive investments in everything from radio and newspaper propaganda to gun-running operations, the training of private armies, the writing of manuals, the regular mounting of a range of terrorist operations against Cuba, plus many other activities right down to relationships with mafia interests who were offended by events in Cuba and keen to display their patriotism through cooperation with agencies like CIA and FBI.

All of it was supported by the vast resources of the State Department and other agencies and departments of government. I think few Americans today, younger ones anyway, are aware of the scale of the enterprise. Well, Kennedy very much got in its way, and it was unquestionably elements of that enterprise who killed him.

I do not mean to diverge into the 1960s or the assassination, a subject of great past interest to me.

I’m only touching on the massive legacy of anti-Russian feelings and notions fixed into the very fabric of the country. It still helps support any new anti-Russian initiatives. That always includes the Pentagon and CIA and FBI – it’s just their gut institutional instinct – but it also very much includes American political interests, and from both parties, each party’s emphasis varying over time.

In America it often takes a very long time for the public consensus to reach a conclusion about something you might think should have been apparent fairly early.

But when the establishment sets its mind to doing something, it is virtually impossible to stop it. And it has so many avenues for influencing people and keeping them confused – from corporate newspapers and broadcasters and hack writers and speakers at many institutions to virtually the entire national political establishment of both parties.

Since America is so much less a democracy than many recognize, it really isn’t necessary to fool all the people all the time. Far from it. And the flow of “information” from establishment sources is constant, virtually around the clock. It becomes part of the air you breathe.

Besides, Americans work very hard, and many have little time for becoming informed about such matters as, say, foreign affairs. If they have to trust someone with the idea of truth, it will tend to be the establishment voices easily accessed.

Most hardworking people at any level have little time or inclination to search for and assess different sources of information, as independent or foreign ones. And, truth be told, there are relatively few solid independent voices out there despite the apparent crush we can see on the Internet.

Apart from outfits on the Internet that now function virtually as agents for the establishment – outfits like Facebook, Wikipedia, or Google – the establishment has a good many inauthentic “independent” publications that it keeps going. The CIA always followed that practice with magazines and news sources during the Cold War, and it does still with sites many believe are independent voices.

Major Western European news sources today – as in Britain, France, or Germany – are in virtual lockstep with their American counterparts. If you think the Washington Post is biased – and it is, heavily – try The Guardian or BBC. They are often toe-scrunchingly insincere.

At the higher end of the employment scale in America, up-and-coming corporate and large professional office types work long hours, ten and twelve hours a day is not unusual, and often more than five days a week. It’s just expected of them. It keeps you looking like someone suitable for promotion. And the competition of others looking for promotions reinforces the discipline. When you do get home, there’s all those middle-class obligations, from the kids’ sports teams or music recitals or meetings at school to walking the dog or attending a service club meeting.

At the low end of the employment scale, millions of Americans must work more than one job just to make a go of things. Or, many jobs demand unusual hours and days. On public transit, for example, pretty good-paying working-class jobs, it is common to have “swing shifts,” where you are responsible for two periods each day. Yes, the hours between are free, but they are often effectively not very useful with not enough time to travel home and do anything substantial. These realities of everyday American economic life are I think not widely appreciated abroad.

For all its reputation for individualism, too, the United States in many matters exhibits very little of it. It is a remarkably lockstep society at a certain social level, the level that counts in influencing anything. I’ve never quite understood where that reputation for individualism, as touted in movies or novels, comes from.

The Vietnam War was a decade-long killing spree in defense of an artificially created rump state, South Vietnam, which for its entire existence was run by dictators. Although run by dictators, Americans were steadily given vague assurances that they were fighting for the values of American democracy.

The rump state served almost exclusively the economic and geopolitical interests of the United States. It served as a toehold in Southeast Asia, a kind of colony, a base for American corporations to market their wares. A pied-a-terre for the CIA. Those were the only American values ever really being served.

The big fighting got started not too long after the flimsiest of excuses, the so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident in the summer of 1964. It was a non-event, even as described in the news at the time, and later we learned it was truly a non-event with virtually nothing having happened.

But it’s the kind of thing we’ve seen in so many other places since, and notably in Syria where non-existent poison gas attacks, supposedly by the government, gave America the excuse to hurl fleets of cruise missiles at people it wanted to hurt anyway, the Syrian Army.

Of course, it was the presence of non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” that gave America the excuse to invade Iraq, destroying one of the most advanced societies in the Arab world and ultimately killing about a million people with all the violent aftermath included.

The destruction of Iraq’s basic facilities was so thorough that all these years later many in Iraq do not have dependable drinking water and electricity. The term “Shock and Awe” was coined by the public relations flacks at the Pentagon for the opening massive, overwhelming destruction, a term which gives some idea of the intensity and one, by the way, with clear bloodlines to Hitler’s concept of “Blitzkrieg” (lightning war).

Once America got into heavy fighting in a protracted war, Vietnam became many other things, including a testing ground for new methods of mass killing, an important part of a supply chain into North America for hard drugs, a laboratory for mass CIA terror tactics attempting to influence a population, and a place of endless lies.

While not all the details were apparent to anyone at the start, enough was understood by a good many to question the United States ever seriously entering the war. John Kennedy, who was inclined not to get involved beyond the level of a significant body of military advisors, was replaced by perhaps the most corrupt and ruthless man ever to become President, Lyndon Johnson, who had his chance to be a “war president,” and he wasted very little time getting things moving.

Today, we have among other wars, the war in Afghanistan. The pointlessness of the war in Afghanistan – that 18 years of bombing peasants and strafing wedding parties – was apparent to a good many from the start. I wrote a number of essays on the subject.

At the time of the invasion, I felt it was just a brute need for some kind of vengeance over 9/11, even if they didn’t know who to take vengeance on. I could imagine certain Americans sitting at bars across the country doing a lot of elbow-pumping and hooting and yelling at the first broadcasts of bombs dropping in Afghanistan, something resembling a scene from a big football game.

But the Taliban were not terrorists, the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. They are not pleasant people, but that is common enough in poor places where people earn hardscrabble livings. And I think my original view remains valid.

Recent revelations by The Washington Post (which to a certainty reflect someone in high places leaking for political purposes, not the investigative thoroughness of a newspaper which always doggedly supports America’s wars with the same enthusiasm as the late John McCain) tell us that even inside the military, no one understood why the United States was fighting in Afghanistan.

Yet America still fights there.

And will be still after Trump makes his election-campaign withdrawal, whose size is said to amount to a fraction of the troops.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CBC NEWS

 

“‘Democracy-defining moment’: House representatives debate Trump impeachment”

 

Well, maybe.

I think it more likely the impeachment effort will reveal how deeply divided the United States is.

The White House refuses to cooperate.

Leadership in the Senate – where such trials occur – has talked about calling no witnesses and shutting down the whole thing quickly, leaving Trump exonerated.

Where does that take anyone that is worth going?

America is a deeply troubled country. Divided, seriously so.

You might not recognize that from the way it tyrannizes over so much of the world with its unceasing imperial demands, but real differences on empire and the military are simply not part of America’s political division.

Likely, Trump will prevail in the Senate. Despite a few dissenting Republicans, there is little evidence of a serious undercurrent against him. Conviction requires a two-thirds vote in a Republican-dominated body.

Yes, Trump’s behavior vis-à-vis Ukraine, trying to use it to influence American domestic politics, has been inappropriate, but it is only inappropriate in a country where people adhere to civility and the rule of law.

And that country is certainly not the United States. Running an empire, and an increasingly harsh one in response to growing awareness of its own relative decline in the world, is the polar opposite to civility and respect for rule of law, but running an empire is the business that America’s establishment is in full-time. All of its establishment, which includes the major figures of both parties, the wealthy interests they all faithfully represent, and powerful, almost unaccountable agencies like CIA assisting their efforts.

A situation arose in Ukraine only because the United States fomented and paid for a coup against an elected government there in 2014. All of the controversy which swirls around Joe Biden arises from the fact of his having served as Obama’s proconsul to demand certain directions for the new government.

Trump’s phone call was wrong, but in the context of all the dirt that the United States has been mired in with Ukraine, it does seem almost small.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY THE LATE ROBERT PARRY IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

The Foundering Russia-gate ‘Scandal’

 

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/13/the-foundering-russia-gate-scandal/

 

Thanks for re-publishing another honest and insightful piece from Robert Parry, honesty and insight being pretty rare qualities in American journalism. It inspires some thoughts.

Russia-gate arose from at least two impulses. Both of them are political, and no one in the establishment, which includes the important people of both parties, really wants to investigate either of them thoroughly.

It is important to say that America’s nearly ancient hostility (a good century old) towards the Soviet Union with all the propaganda and vehement rhetoric inspired by it provides even now a fertile medium for any negative accusation touching Russia. Americans are as conditioned as Pavlov’s dogs to have a certain response at just the mention of Russia.

The major impulse was a top-level, yet undisclosed effort to either stop or destroy Trump. There is no other way for senior officials of CIA and FBI to have worked and spoken in public about such matters without the support of President Obama, a fact which again demonstrates – again, as in Neocon Wars, the coup in Ukraine, and rolling tanks up to Russia’s borders – what a destructive leader Obama actually was, destructive even to his own country’s election principles.

And a very secretive leader, a president with an almost unparalleled drive for secrecy and a fierce enemy of all whistle-blowers and the truth. After all, he sent people to prison – Chelsea Manning, just one of several – and consigned others to a life of hell on earth – as we see in the case of Julian Assange.

By the way, Trump’s and the Republican Party’s attitudes and actions towards Julian Assange, a man who could clarify instantly so many controversial matters, screams at us about the true nature of America’s establishment. At a certain level in both political parties, all desire for truth and openness simply evaporates. It is at that level that they all effectively work together to keep America’s creaky sham of democracy going. Plutocracy, privilege, and empire come first for both parties, urgently and without question.

I think we will never get to the bottom of Obama’s scheme. He and his associates made sure he was well insulated, and the operation involved so many very high-level people, including of course Hillary Clinton – a politician with a different style, but a match for Obama’s secrecy and destructiveness in every way – that there is no way America’s establishment today will ever seriously dig into it.

Just the thought of damage to the reputation and security of the United States would prevent that from occurring. And Hillary Clinton’s name serves as a mighty defensive fortress because the Clintons have been one of the Democratic Party’s major conduits for immense campaign funds for over a quarter of a century. In American politics, you do not cross the big-money people.

Look at all the (appropriately) bad publicity in Britain around Prince Andrew’s association with the late Jeffrey Epstein. Even Buckingham Palace has not been able to protect him completely. Compare its extent and impact to that around Bill and Hillary Clinton. We know Bill Clinton was at least as important an associate of Epstein as the Prince. He made 26 flights on “the Lolita Express” according to the plane’s co-pilot and logs, and Epstein contributed to the Clinton Foundation and to other Clinton “causes.” Epstein even claimed a role in creating the Foundation that has served the Clintons’ personal interests so handsomely.

The American establishment is not inclined to attack the Clintons in the way they deserve. And just so, Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the Obama administration plots against Trump.

The notion is further supported by the fact that Hillary never was held accountable for the embarrassing disaster at Benghazi, Libya, which involved the killing of an American Ambassador, a side-effect of a dark program she oversaw as Secretary of State.

That program related to America’s involvement in destroying Libya’s government and in working to do the same to Syria’s. Benghazi was an unintended result of a State Department plan to scoop up weapons and thugs and have them transshipped through Turkey or Saudi Arabia for their final destination in Syria.

The weapons and thugs were everywhere in the collapsed ruins of Libya because the United States had worked hard to put them there for its hybrid attack on Gadhafi. No member of either establishment party wants to “open that can of worms” to public scrutiny.

That’s just how it works when you have an empire instead of a country.

So, people like the Clintons and Obama, having faithfully served imperial interests for years of dark and violent activity, effectively have “get out of jail free” cards good for all their shady pasts.

I read the other day that the Obamas just bought another home, one in prestigious Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, for nearly $12 million. This follows the small castle in Washington for which they paid over 8 million dollars when they left the White House, a small castle which received many costly upgrades.

Not bad financial results for a man who was an undistinguished, untenured university lecturer and who served about half a term as a United States Senator. The establishment takes care of you, handsomely, if you have served it well.

The topic of Hillary brings us to another motive for Russia-gate, and that is covering up the scandal of her behavior in the Democratic Party’s 2016 campaign for a presidential candidate. We know that Hillary’s forces cheated Bernie Sanders out of the nomination. They approached that goal in many different ways, and we have the best evidence in the Wikileaks documents released before the election and in the testimony of various people.

So, there already was an effort to “undermine American democracy” (don’t you just love that hollow phrase?) before there was Russia-gate operating against Trump. Russia-gate represents, in addition to its intent against Trump, kicking lots of dust into everyone’s eyes concerning Hillary Clinton’s political crimes in her own party, and “political crimes” is not too strong an expression for elaborate efforts to steal the nomination of a major political party, efforts which included every imaginable dirty trick right down to seeing huge numbers of ballots trashed.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not a defender of Trump. He is an appalling man by every measure, from his rudeness to his to his aggression, dishonesty, and ignorance. So many of the people bellowing on the Internet about the Constitution-violating treatment of Trump are his supporters. Unfortunately in America, political dialogue can almost never be subtle or sophisticated. It’s always black or white, for or against, when discussing the two political parties. That fact also helps disguise the most fundamental problems at work here.

Yes, Trump is appalling, but Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are equally so. A sense of Hillary’s violence and crudity long ago reached a good portion of the public’s awareness. She has a reputation, but her crudities are different in nature than Trump’s.

Trump is a man who can take pride and even smirk about law-breaking, whether stealing Syrian oil or giving away parts of Palestine. Hillary is no less a law-breaker, but she doesn’t usually boast about it. She likes wearing the platitudes of old-fashioned democratic principles, much as one of her favorite lipsticks.

Obama represents a different case. We see and hear no crudity, a nice smile, and a fairly pleasant voice, but he is a devious and secretive and murderous man.

Americans seem never to ask themselves, if they carry on abroad with covert wars, interventions, coups, all kinds of interference in the governments of others, even democratic governments, and hold no respect for the rule of law, what’s to prevent the same approach being applied inside their own country?

Well, the clearest answer is, nothing. Habits of mind long-set by practice, arrogance, lack of real accountability, immensely powerful agencies at your disposal, secrecy as a way of life, unlimited access to money – these conspire to give you what we see in American government.

It really should not surprise. The last President who actually tried to make the authority of elected high office prevail over an entrenched establishment left half of his head splattered in the streets of Dallas. You’ll perhaps note the fact that no President since has tried that again. Faithful to the establishment, every one of them.

There is no better study of the contemporary American state than the events of the last few years. The ugliness of America’s renewed aggression in the world is apparent to tens of millions in many lands, but the ugliness of America’s internal politics is less well understood. Plutocracy, money-saturated elections, establishment privilege, secrecy, lack of accountability, and behind-the-scenes plotting conspire to make the high school civics textbook version of Washington politics a parody.

It is all comparable to the sense of the Roman Empire going into its decline, yet a great many Americans remain able to conjure a mental image of their country as a modest Eighteenth-century Republic with a well-defined Constitution and Rights and a pervasive respect for law. Many of Washington’s privileged establishment are themselves able to lapse into such fantasies in the course of speeches.

In the deadly accurate words of the 1980s Cyndi Lauper song, money changes everything.

It may all be too complicated to explain to the general public, and America’s dog-loyal corporate press would never even attempt the job. Only here or there on some detail, from which a temporary political advantage might be extracted, do they genuinely report and analyze. They will never conduct an operation which reveals the putrescence inside the body politic of America because their own corporations are indeed part of it.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MURRAY BREWSTER IN CBC NEWS

 

“Canadian-led peacekeeping mission in Ukraine ‘Plan B’ for Kyiv, official says

“For Ukraine, the preferred option would be a successful outcome to peace talks”

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ukraine-canada-peacekeeping-1.5343320

 

The Minsk Agreement is ultimately the only way to end this conflict. Minsk says that the breakaway eastern region will rejoin Ukraine but with special status.

The region is completely Russian-speaking, and Ukraine’s last government tried removing rights of Russian-speakers. That’s what started the trouble. The situation somewhat resembles what anyone would expect from Quebec if Ottawa declared English as the language for education and other matters.

There never has been Russian state involvement there except for a great deal of humanitarian and other assistance since Ukraine, under the last government, cut the region off from almost everything, including pensions. Tales of a Russian invasion in Ukraine are simply not true. They are disinformation fantasies. Russia has declined to accept the region into the Russian Federation, despite being asked by them to do so.

Look at what America has been doing in Venezuela, and you will have some idea of what it did in Ukraine in 2014, to topple an elected government whose only sin was good relations with Russia. All the many problems of Ukraine come out of that fact.

The coup destroyed Ukraine’s economy, destroyed important long-term relationships with Russia (the two societies have a closely entwined history going back nearly a thousand years), generated civil war in eastern Ukraine, saw the rise of extremist right-wing forces who now play a role in its government, and put in place a government, Poroshenko’s, which most people there regarded as palpably corrupt.

Russia has always supported the Minsk Agreement for peace. It helped create it. Putin has repeated his complete support many times. Forces inside Ukraine are what prevent that happening. That’s where outside pressure is needed, but none comes. American anti-Russian interests are central to Ukraine’s position. After all, the coup was encouraged precisely to create threatening instability along a major Russian border. Does anything good ever come out of such actions?

Hopes were that Zelensky, a reasonable man who speaks both Russian and Ukrainian, would implement Minsk, but he has not been able to do so. Why? There are several extreme right-wing armed organizations in Ukraine, most notably the Azov Battalion, who intimidate Zelensky and make sure any orders he issues concerning military occupation of certain positions near the breakaway Donbass (eastern Ukraine) region are simply not followed. Minsk requires a series of steps to be taken in preparation for its full implementation, and the Azov Battalion-types are not prepared to allow those steps.

Ukraine’s State-Sponsored “Azov Battalion” Expands Use of Nazi-Inspired Symbols

The Azov Battalion was incorporated, inappropriately, into Ukraine’s national army by the last government, much like having one of those weird private right-wing American militias of the 1970s (eg, the armed Minutemen) incorporated into the American army, thus furnishing them with resources and support. It is one of the groups used in the violent coup of 2014, and it stands ready to repeat its activity if Zeleskey departs from its demands. They make compromise almost impossible.

It is important to understand that the 2014 coup was financed by the United States ($5 billion was allocated), something we know from the overheard words of a high former State Department official, Victoria Nuland. All the Joe and Hunter Biden controversy in our news recently stems from the fact that Joe Biden acted at the time as an American proconsul sent by Obama to the new coup government in Ukraine, offering certain help and making certain demands.

By the way, there are photos of Joe Biden in Ukraine shaking hands warmly with the commander of the Azov Battalion.

It is hard to see a sensible or useful place for Canadian peacekeepers here, but we have a foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, who is very responsive to American policy aims and warmly supported the troubled, coup-installed government of Ukraine that ruled before Zelensky while making many Russophobic remarks.

 

NOTE:

Joe Biden has a long history of scoring presents and privileges for his family in the course of carrying out various government duties – hence, Hunter Biden’s extraordinary board appointment in Ukraine with an income of $50,000 per month in a company and a country he knows absolutely nothing about.

Saying that does not put me in Trump’s camp at all. Trump is exactly the same kind of sleazy operator. He has his daughter and son-in-law sitting at desks in the White House. While they are not receiving government salaries, they are in extremely sensitive positions with top-level security clearance while receiving huge private incomes from Trump and Kushner family enterprises, something I think most people would regard as a serious conflict of interest.

 

John Chuckman

COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY SCOTT RITTER IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“The Spy Who Failed

“Oleg Smolenkov’s role as a CIA asset and the use of his data by the director of the CIA to cast doubt over the 2016 U.S. presidential election”

 

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/09/14/the-spy-who-failed/

 

Were it not so powerful militarily and financially, the United States would be the laughingstock of the world.

This entire business about a CIA Russian spy is just another avenue travelled in America’s nonstop Russophobia lunatic wanderings.

The DNC material was not hacked as a number of true experts have told us, including the key one now languishing in a British prison.

Putin had no plan because nothing ever happened.

Nothing.

And I think we’ve all seen that when Putin plans something, it happens.

The article is interesting for its laying out of elaborate security procedures – kind of a high-level, almost academic “police procedural” – but I do feel in the end it is not that helpful, much as I respect Scott Ritter expertise.

When nothing has happened, it does seem a bit odd to scrutinize every piece of fiber and bit of dust and to construct a massive scenario of “what ifs.”

Meanwhile, the murder of Seth Rich, a genuine and meaningful event, goes virtually uninvestigated.

No wonder you are in so much trouble, America, and no wonder you make so much trouble for others.

__________________

Response to a comment saying, “Clods like these (add the Clintons) should have their post-employment millions confiscated and put on trial”

Sorry, but “Big Intelligence” is always a failure, and on many levels.

It is not a matter of any “clods.”

It is a matter of the very nature of the institution and the nature of the people who use its output.

The CIA only has a good record at doing bad things.

I refer to its operations side and the havoc and violence they have released through the decades.

They are an army of richly-equipped thugs without uniforms, interfering in the business of others, “lying, cheating, and stealing.”

The true intelligence gathering and evaluating side of things fails and always has to a great extent.

 

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/why-the-cia-always-will-be-a-costly-flop/

 

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“Mueller Testimony an Absolute Trainwreck – Check Out These Liveblog Headlines to Get a Taste”

 

It’s hard to understand why the Democrats pushed ahead with this testimony.

Surely, just in conversations with Mueller, leaders should have known he wouldn’t make a great impression, and the Russia Insider impression of his genuine feebleness is confirmed by various other news sources.

I do wish, though, people would get over the “well, it’s all proven there’s nothing on Russia” syndrome.

No, I don’t say that because I believe Russia officially was in any way involved. I’ve always regarded that notion as having no substance, as feeding off Washington’s dank atmosphere of Russophobia, and I don’t believe Russia had any real incentive for being involved, that last consideration being especially important for a strategic-thinking pragmatist like Putin.

But Russia is a big country with all kinds of individuals doing things which have nothing to with the government, just as is the case for the United States.

There are areas of connection with Russian figures and Trump that Mueller did not investigate. If any connections, no matter how obscure, were his central mandate, why not?

Second, there are definitely, both by Mueller’s words and by the those of the report, areas of concern over obstruction of justice by Trump.

That is important, it represents a serious crime, surely an impeachable offence, but it tends to get washed away with all the noise about Russia.

All in all, Mueller’s report appears a mighty thin piece of work.

There was no examination at all of the technical evidence showing the Wikileaks DNC material having been a leak, not a hack, by Russia or anyone else. Numerous true experts have said that is the case. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have this one shibboleth laid to rest?

Mueller conducted no examination of Democrats’ computers, despite numerous reasons for doing so.

He made no effort to get testimony from Julian Assange or other central figures to the matter of Russia and leaks. No effort to look into the murder of Seth Rich and into the very doubtful circumstances of the local DC Police investigation of it.

That investigation remains more riddles than facts, and we should always remember that Congress holds the ultimate authority for governing DC under the United States Constitution. DC has no state government. In other words, all local events there are influenced, and distorted, by national politics.

Perhaps most concerning, in light of the fact that it is something which occurred only as a result of his own efforts, Mueller did not pursue, and follow-up on, obstruction of justice by the President, a rather serious crime.

That failure quickly gets us into the double-bind that if there were no issues involved in relations with (at least some) Russians or perhaps other dark matters, why would Trump be concerned enough to risk obstructing justice? “Hands entirely off” would have been the wisest policy. Of course, I realize that this is not a wise man we are discussing.

There is also some reason to believe that Theresa May’s ugly Skripal Affair may have been connected in some way, now that we have learned from Putin himself, in an interview with Oliver Stone, that Skripal had wanted to return to Russia.

There’s reason to believe that Skripal may been involved with ex-M16 agent Christopher Steele who ran a small, for-hire, high-end “detective” agency that produced “the dossier” on behalf of American customers, but that too is not explored by Mueller.

There’re some terribly interesting possibilities, but the Mueller Report touches none of them. It really represented a mighty effort, with plenty of noise and publicity, for the birth of a mouse.

 

Readers may be interested in the following articles related to official investigations in America and the reasons that they virtually all fail:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2016/09/11/john-chuckman-comment-a-survivor-says-even-the-simplest-questions-around-911-have-not-been-answered-by-government-yes-and-some-disturbing-truths-around-those-events-the-saudi-arabian-nonsense/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/john-chuckman-comment-the-first-genuine-information-in-the-kennedy-assassination-records-release-to-give-us-some-genuine-information-about-what-happened/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/02/18/john-chuckman-comment-recent-revelations-of-crappy-behavior-by-the-fbi-come-as-no-surprise-if-you-know-something-of-its-past-it-has-a-good-reputation-only-in-its-own-mind/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/19/john-chuckman-comment-there-are-too-many-today-blaming-either-one-party-or-a-newspaper-for-dark-events-we-see-but-the-root-of-the-problem-is-americas-establishment-which-includes-both-parties-and/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/01/23/john-chuckman-comment-on-re-opening-the-kennedy-assassination-investigation-why-it-would-be-a-waste-of-time-the-nature-of-truth-where-empire-or-great-power-is-involved-some-truth-about-the-fbi/

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/the-dreadful-record-of-the-fbi/

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/why-the-cia-always-will-be-a-costly-flop/

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/america-stumbles-through-another-year-spreading-chaos-and-trivia-everywhere-in-its-path/

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/john-chuckman-essay-the-enduring-reality-of-government-by-wealth-and-some-of-its-consequences/

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

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“If Russia Doesn’t Quickly Put Its Foot Down It Will Eventually Face the Choice of Total Surrender to the US or Nuclear War

“Putin’s policy of mild or zero response…is inviting ever more intense provocations”

 

I just couldn’t agree less with Paul Craig Roberts on these matters.

Even his opening words about truths that are emotion-based versus evidence-based is confused and confusing.

Yes, people do say things such as “Trust your feelings,” but the expression has absolutely nothing to do with truth as science understands it or, indeed, with truth in the sense most people understand it.

It’s just a form of psychological reassurance for troubled people, not an alternate technique for discovering truth. Some people with psychological problems are confused about their feelings and are paralyzed to act in the world, but I am not sure such words help them in any event, like so much of the babble we get from self-help efforts.

It is not an alternate route to understanding reality that has been adopted by growing legions of people.

The fact is that scientific truth has an increasing place in our society. This is so because of the tremendous embrace of technology and the rapid pace of change in technology. Most people can see where scientific truth gets us. Every corporation and government agency on earth just keeps expanding their efforts in science – such has our faith in it been established.

(Of course, I even misspeak when I combine “truth” with “science.” Science has actually taught us that there are no truths, just phenomena which may be observed and measured by experiment and may be summed up to guide future expectations through hypotheses and theories, all of which remain open to contradiction through new experiments forever, a basic principle of science. But it is hard to give up old figures of speech, just as we still often speak incorrectly of “laws” in science.)

Yes, we could find some strange people for whom it is an alternate path to understanding, but we have always had many kinds of strange people, and we don’t use any of them as examples for making universal generalizations.

So, we have a weak introduction to a weak piece.

Our troubles with “truth” start with an intensive effort by the American government and establishment, including all their invariably faithful press, to inject all kinds of misdirection and nonsense into things. It is a deliberate effort to generate confusion and doubt and to cover up what is really being done in the world, much of which just could not stand up to honest scrutiny. Because the establishment’s drives for dominance and empire are now greatly intensified, so are these efforts. We live now surrounded with smokescreens.

The theme of the Roberts’ piece might be summed by the quote, “His [Putin’s] policy of ignoring provocations made perfect sense for a while…”

Putin has never ignored provocations. I am certain of that. I am sure he can recite them from memory, and I know he has a very good memory. Another statesman has said that you had better know your stuff when you have a meeting with Putin because he is always deeply prepared on the topic.

Putin has the capacity, an important quality, to not allow provocations to make up his mind for him and hurl him and his country into something far worse than a particular provocation.

Does Roberts actually think the leader of a great nation should be led to starting a war over a provocation?

That is an extremely foolish point of view. On a level with hormonal teen-ager angry over what he regards as a slight.

I, for one, am glad Putin has this quality, and it works well in combination with his other qualities.

He is observant, very thoughtful, and practical. He is also driven by real purpose, not ideology, and his overarching purpose is to see that Russia achieves her place in the sun. He knows the country needs years of peace and growth to achieve this, but he also knows that it is important to work towards establishing an international environment of peace and compromise and acceptance.

He will take whatever legitimate opportunities come his way, but he will not be tempted into making bad bets.

And we should all be happy, because we live in a time when provocation and bad bets are being offered almost continuously by the dangerous spoiled children running the United States. The President of the United States resembled a paranoid lunatic on a day-pass from his institution yesterday at the UN Security Council meeting he chaired. It was a truly ridiculous performance, lowering his country’s esteem in almost everyone’s eyes.

The principle he enunciated – essentially declaring American exceptionalism as the foundation for the future – is totally negative and unpromising, and everyone, except impetuous, angry ideologues like Nikki Haley or John Bolton, understands that.

Every intelligent person understands that that is a principle which can only impoverish the world society, and that it is a principal fraught with genuine threats and danger.

The world’s leaders are only now beginning to “digest” the new American reality, and I have little doubt that it will lead to new and unexpected turns and developments.

You know, if you’ve studied history extensively, we sometimes see the most unexpected turns suddenly happen, turns which a short time earlier could not have been forecast, watersheds in history, and I think we may well be on the precipice of that kind of event or set of events.

America’s folly and the complete failure of its political leadership – and that includes the whole corrupt Washington establishment, not just Trump – to provide any worthy vision or to offer creative leadership in anything has been now noted universally. Trump is the awkward, noisy, and obnoxious salesman for these views, but he is not the author of even most of what is going on.

America’s effort to re-make the globe to its own liking – for that is what really is going on – are, in the end, doomed to fail, but they can cause a terrible amount of damage in the meantime, and how wisely the world reacts to this new hyper-aggressive American drive will help determine the extent of that damage.

We enter now what can truly be termed a new world order, a dangerous reality and not the fantasy America’s Right has talked about for years as something being imposed on them by “globalists” and “liberals.” No, this new world order has a great deal to do with official America’s embrace of principles like “might makes right” and “my country, right or wrong.”

Few anywhere outside the United States will want to worship at the Temple to American Exceptionalism. It would be like expecting everyone to suddenly kneel to a new religious faith, and an extremely false one at that. But they are going to face many provocations over the near-term as America pursues a course that is not all that terribly different than the one pursued by 1930s’ fascist states of Europe.

It is going to be a dangerous world for a while, and wishing won’t make it go away. But acting precipitously, as I believe Roberts advocates, won’t get you safely through it.

An erratic man in power in a place with Russia’s capacity for war and destruction would be a terrible thing. Thank God, it is otherwise. And it seems so with Xi in China, too, so we are doubly fortunate.

Places like Europe have an immense and difficult task ahead of them. It isn’t easy to shake off ideas and attitudes which have guided you for three-quarters of a century. Ideas like America is fundamentally decent and trustworthy and embraces the same enlightened principles that we do. It has our best interests at heart despite the odd tiff or difference of opinion.

They are, in effect, stuck with a very outdated and inappropriate business model. Well, just look at how hard it is for many large businesses to adjust to new models in light of greatly changed circumstances. There is the huge struggle of the traditional, fat, and well-established press itself in the face of revolutionary changes arising from the Internet.

Putin’s steadiness and calmness under fire and lack of rash behavior greatly assist the Europeans in reassessing their situation, and the opposite behavior by him would have just the opposite effect. He builds bridges, talks of partners, and only discusses force where he has little choice.

Just so, China’s Xi with his great creative projects like the new Silk Road and all the efforts to establish peaceful, cooperative relationships around the world.

While China and Russia proceed like this, everyone can see how the United States is proceeding with now constant threats and ultimatums and sanctions and bombing. I do not think the contrast could be more glaring despite America’s huge efforts at propaganda to say just the opposite. Propaganda only goes so far when all tangible evidence contradicts it.

We have bridge-builders and willing partners in Russia and China, and we have the United States having turned to a thug’s philosophy in international relations, violating every enlightened principle written into its own founding documents.What Roberts is really preaching here – and it is preaching, not informing – is that old stuff about “Stand your ground” and “Just show ‘em what you’ve got” and “Don’t take no guff.” All very appealing to angry teen-agers and to people attracted to violence, but offering no wisdom, no “truth,” if you will, to guide us through a dark and serious situation.

Garbage. Just like his definition of truth. But this is dangerous garbage from Roberts. Well, he is, after all, an American.

 

 

 

 

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN PRAVDA

 

“Blame MH17 on Russia: International investigation turns into demonic circus”

 

Good summary of events. What has always most impressed me is the vivid memory of some early images I saw on the Internet of the wreckage on the ground.

In the frame of the pilot’s seat and in some of metal skin of the cabin, there were the clearest possible perfectly round holes, as would have been made by a machine gun or small-caliber canon from a fighter plane. The image was unmistakable.

Then, when after much delay, the pilot’s body was sent home for burial, his family were ordered not to open the coffin. I couldn’t help but wonder about that. Was it so they didn’t see bullet holes?

I just don’t know. There clearly was other damage too. The holes I saw were definitely not from missile warhead shrapnel, although other damage suggests that too.

The bottom line for me is the inordinate length of time deliberately taken. This was not a difficult case at all. Everything should have been out to the public within weeks, but it was not.

Also, the investigators failed to comprehensively collect evidence on the ground – something always demanded in such investigations. Locals still had pieces long after and likely still do. The considerable time the investigators took to get around to collecting material gave the Ukrainians an extended opportunity to fiddle with the site.

Investigators also refused to use certain data supplied by Russian authorities and did not allow Russian collaboration. Why?

And then we get periodic announcements, after long intervals of time, always with imprecise conclusions and no new hard evidence. The pattern resembles nothing we’ve ever seen before in a crash investigation. It just screams cover-up with the vague conclusions at each announcement. The Dutch have undoubtedly been put under intense pressure by America in defense of its interests in the coup-induced Ukrainian government, who I think more than likely shot the plane down in stupid error after stupidly not closing the air space over a war zone as they were required to do.

_________________________

Response to a comment:

The Dutch are pretty fair people, and that is part of why they were selected, for credibility. I’ve always thought highly of them.

But even honest people can be pressured behind the scenes.

Especially by a muscle-bound bully like today’s America, which busied itself back then with projects like overthrowing Ukraine’s elected government and lying about all the mercenaries fighting in Syria posed as jihadists and a whole bunch of other dirty operations.

Do you even know what Hillary’s scandal at Benghazi was about? What they were doing was collecting weapons and cut throats to ship to poor old Syria, assistance for all the creepy al-Nusrah and ISIS types. But some of the thugs killed the ambassador instead.

Clinton and Company also, we know, sent very limited amounts of Qaddafi’s stock of poison gas to help create a “red line” incident in Syria so that good old smiley Obama could begin bombing the crap out of them. It all went wrong in part thanks to Putin, providing still another reason for disliking him.

The US spent $5 billion on the Ukraine coup. We know that amount accidentally from big-mouthed former State Department Neocon, Victoria Nuland, the same charmer who was overheard once shouting “F-ck Europe!”

How would you react if some American thug of the quality of a Nuland or today’s Pompeo or Bolton told you that if you didn’t cooperate, you were going to endanger a $5 billion investment by the United States? And if you did that, there would be serious repercussions for Dutch investments and banking, etc.?

America today, sadly, is country almost without honor.

_____________________

Additional comment:

‘”It is also worth mentioning that the United States has not provided satellite images, the presence of which was announced immediately after the catastrophe,” Zakharova said as quoted on the website of the Russian Foreign Ministry.’

It should be noted that America’s “Keyhole” spy satellites have camera equipment not so very different from the space telescope. And we know these satellites are active especially in any area of conflict. Nothing could be more suspicious than the failure to produce the images.

___________________________

FOOTNOTE: A MUCH LATER STATEMENT FROM THE MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER AS QUOTED IN “SOUTHFRONT”

 

“WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?”: MALAYSIAN PM SLAMS MH17 INVESTIGATION AS NOT IMPARTIAL AND POLITICALLY MOTIVATED

 

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that the investigation into the 2014 crash of the Malaysia Airlines-operated Boeing in Ukraine was not conducted in an impartial manner, but was rather focused on simply pinning the blame on Russia for political reasons.

“For some reasons, Malaysia was not allowed to check the black box to see what happened. We don’t know why we are excluded from the examination but from the very beginning, we see too much politics in it and the idea was not to find out how this happened but seems to be concentrated on trying to pin it to the Russians. This is not a neutral kind of examination,“ the prime minister said, as quoted by the Malaysian National News Agency.

“They are accusing Russia but where is the evidence? We know the missile that brought down the plane is a Russian type missile, but it could also be made in Ukraine. You need strong evidence to show it was fired by the Russians, it could be by the rebels in Ukraine, it could be Ukrainian government because they too have the same missile”.

Both Malaysia and Russia were excluded from partaking in the investigation.

If one translates the recent remarks by the Malaysian prime minister from diplomatic language to direct speech, we see that he stated that Malaysia has little doubts that the MH17 was intentionally shot down by the Ukrainian government. He also points out that the side controlling the JIT and thus the investigation is concealing the criminals, hiding data, and limiting the participation of third parties in the ‘international’ investigation.

 

COMMENT ON CHARGES NOW LAID BY DUTCH INVESTIGATORS OF MH17

 

With the announcement of charges being laid by Dutch investigators, a British newspaper used the headline “MH17 suspects charged with murder over 298 deaths will likely escape justice”

What justice?

This American-appointed investigation has ignored all kind of evidence.

Including the fact that the Russians have shown that the BUK missile serial numbers found at the scene correspond to a unit sold to Ukraine many years ago.

The investigators have pulled this stunt of charging four men knowing full well that the individuals named cannot be extradited. They just wanted names for sensational headlines.

The entire performance is shameful.

Such a relatively simple crash, normally solved in weeks by professionals, has had its investigation stretched to years, with still no clear and indisputable findings.

Many pieces of evidence supplied by Russia were simply cast aside by these investigators. Pieces of physical evidence were left on the ground, some of them still in the possession of locals. The effort to collect physical evidence, normally meticulous and scrupulous after air crashes, was careless, and the effort came only after a substantial delay, allowing Ukraine plenty of time to sanitize things before investigators set to work. Still other pieces of potential evidence were never supplied, such as images or radar tracks from an American spy satellite working over the area at the time.

Shame on the Dutch, a people I’ve always admired, but there they are, under the American thumb, America trying to protect a coup-installed government from humiliation over its incompetence.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY THE SAKER IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“We’re Headed to War with Russia, and No One Seems to Care”

 

Yes, I do think we are on a trajectory for war.

It’s terrifying but simply true.

But I am not sure that no one seems to care.

It’s more of a matter of inability to do anything about it. Passivity in the face of truly mad terror.

All of the West has utterly buckled to America’s new hyper-aggressiveness. There isn’t a voice to be heard in Europe about anything important, except, “yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full,” as the American establishment tears up and burns much of the planet.

As for Americans, they have no real choices in politics. It’s a pathetic stage play of democracy. No matter who you vote for, the Washington establishment wins. Kerry vs. Bush? Romney vs Obama? Clinton vs Trump? Maybe Biden vs Trump?

There isn’t a major figure in America who stands for anything different than what we see.

Big Money buying national politics plus uncontrolled lobbyists plus a cancerous Pentagon and CIA pretty well assure the results we see. Those are the rotten building materials for today’s godawful Washington establishment.

Sometimes, I feel like I’m watching one of those magnificent old Greek tragedies in which, no matter how hard he struggles, the protagonist goes down to his fate.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“New Book About the Deep State Plot to Demonize Russia

With a strong endorsement from Oliver Stone The Plot to Scapegoat Russia”

 

I am always glad for new sources which confirm old beliefs, but, I must say, there is little in this review that is new to informed and critically-minded observers.

Concepts such as “humanitarian intervention” are, and have long been, of the same nature as the White Helmets in Syria, totally phony.

The US never intervenes militarily where genuine humanitarian catastrophes occur. It did not intervene in Rwanda while it understood perfectly what was happening at a very early stage. It did not in Cambodia. It did not in Indonesia.

Indeed, in the slaughters of Indonesia, after the fall of Sukarno, the State Department was on the phone submitting lists of “communists” to the new government who were best added to the hundreds of thousands getting their throats cut and having their bodies thrown into rivers.

The US militarily intervenes only where it has a geo-political goal or interest.

As far as phony front outfits like America’s Democracy Now! there are many of them in the US.

Despite formal rules against being involved in local affairs, the CIA has long used the method of such media to “get out its messages.” In the 1960s, good magazines like Saturday Review were secretly supported by CIA.

What do formal rules mean to an organization where it is accepted that lying under oath is just fine? CIA Director Helms himself established that fact for us back in the 1960s.

The Internet has many seemingly liberal or independent sites which I believe are in fact CIA zombies. In some cases, they may know it. In other cases, they may not. The CIA works both ways, just as it has paid its own employees and paid outside assets, the assets not always being aware of where their money comes from.

You can take a good guess at such sites just by the nature of the material they favor, the way they treat things, and the rules they establish.

Mother Jones magazine seems certainly one of these. Daily Kos is another. Pacific News Network is yet another. Vanity Fair belongs on the list I believe.

The American book publishing industry is filled with the same effort. Some publishing houses go along to get along, some are unwitting tools, and some are themselves just covert operations.

Remember, publishing in a country like the United States is today a very difficult business, fraught with risk. How nice to have a source of funds, whether understood or not, streaming in to steady your business.

In return, as a publisher, you still get to do some of what you always wanted to do, but perhaps not all of it, but there are a few things, here and there, that you must do or you will lose your important covert sponsor.

There has been an entire industry in advocacy books about such crucial matters as the Kennedy Assassination, the downing of TWA Flight 800, and 9/11. The manipulative nature of a good many of the books is apparent. This CIA effort, by the way, plays the game from both sides.

Books trying to reestablish the authority of the pathetic Warren Report by one route or another – authors like Gerald Posner, Priscilla Johnson, Vincent Bugliosi, Edward Epstein – clearly have CIA influence embedded one way or another into their books on the Kennedy Assassination, directly or indirectly. You cannot read their books without sensing it at many little points, as in what things are emphasized and what things are glossed over or as in over-hyped claims about the limited evidence we have.

The Agency also takes another route of attack. It actually arranges to have books attacking the Warren Commission published, but ones which are so poorly researched or written that they effectively discredit genuine critics by “the company they keep.”

It was a publicist at the Agency, decades ago, who came up with the derogatory term, “conspiracy theorist” to be used against genuine critics, and the term remains in wide use today.

America’s corporate press, always doggedly loyal to Deep State interests, keeps the term alive by regular use in articles and editorials still. Its longevity is proof of how effective such media manipulation can be.

American society is deeply penetrated by the CIA and its sister agencies, and it has been since long before the Snowden revelations about the NSA snooping on everyone.

The truth is that it was a terrible mistake to create something like CIA, and the very President who signed the legislation, Harry Truman, said so.

You simply cannot create a huge, well-financed agency whose accountability is close to non-existent, charge it with the execution of countless dirty tricks and manipulations abroad, allow its members to lie under oath, and keep financing its cancerous growth, without creating a monster, a monster which attacks decency in your society, destroys ethical considerations in your international dealings, and a monster which erodes the foundations of democratic government.

As far as what it has been done to Trump with phony Russia charges and a phony dossier, well, in the past we’ve had everything from an actual CIA President (certainly George Bush Pere whom we know from old documents was in the Agency in the 1960s, and now, I think quite likely, Obama, who has doggedly served their interests and maintains a kind of Washington fortress-office for coordinating the work on Trump) to Presidents being manipulated by CIA stunts (Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon come to mind) to Kennedy, their one really tough opponent, who of course ended with his brain splattered across the streets of Dallas.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTCLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

A very wise man has spoken here, likely the finest diplomat for a major country of our time.

American policy in the Middle East and Europe and Asia has become impossibly convoluted and dangerous.

The Russians are in fact doing the job no one else honestly wanted to do, ruining the chances for terrorist bands to takeover Syria.

And Americans didn’t want to do it precisely because the terrorist bands are doing their dirty work for them.

Any insertion of American troops, even a small number of special forces, adds only to extreme ambiguity and danger. Clearly some could be struck by Russian jets, and then what?

God, we all need to expect America to start behaving rationally in its foreign policy. The stakes are immense since Russia is competent to literally obliterate America and vice versa.

It is not a situation in which to play games and frat-boy pranks, but that is exactly what America is doing.

___________________

Response to a comment about the EU speaking out against America’s decision:

Yes they should, but, in case anyone hasn’t noticed, the EU has been supine towards American policy recently. There simply are no strong leaders at this time.

If only on the firm basis of international law, Cameron, Hollande, and Merkel should speak out against the move, but it is virtually certain they will not.

John Chuckman

POSTED RESPONSE TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER

“Many illogical wars followed Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.”

This is a remarkably subtle and profoundly true observation.

Sergey Lavrov isn’t just Russia’s top diplomat. He pretty much reigns supreme in today’s world.