John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS

 

“Canada calls for an independent criminal investigation into Flight PS752 crash

“Foreign Minister Champagne is in London today meeting with Ukraine, Sweden, Afghanistan and U.K. representatives”

 

Calling for an independent “criminal” investigation here is totally inappropriate.

We didn’t call for that in the many other cases involving militaries and the loss of civilian airliners, including several by the United States’ military and one by Israel’s.

This represents rather shameful service to Trump’s war-like White House, but then that has been a notable and consistent feature of Trudeau’s government, supporting the Trump White House in foreign affairs.

Iran very much is sorry for what happened and is taking all reasonable steps. It has given the black-box data to other interested parties, including Canada.

It would be nice to see some understanding here instead of an effort to whip-up the mob.

It sure ain’t Iran who started all the hostilities in the region.

And this event serves nicely to detract from the fact that the United States publicly murdered 35 people in Iraq, including Iran’s General Soleimani, in the weeks previous. Talk about criminal acts.

_____________________

THIS ADDITIONAL COMMENT WAS REMOVED BY AN EDITOR

Here is something readers should find extremely interesting.

It is written by a former CIA senior analyst.

https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/who-targeted-ukraine-airlines-flight-752-iran-shot-it-down-but-there-may-be-more-to-the-story/#comment-3664167

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS

 

“Iran says some arrests made for downing of Ukrainian plane, but gives no details”

 

A comment below speaks of a “mistake” (in quotes to express doubt or contempt for Iran’s explanation) and of our never being able to learn what happened.

That is simply incorrect.

It already is known, and in some detail. It involved a communication-connection error with an officer in charge of a missile battery some distance from others.

Of course, everyone was under great pressure from constant American threats, and there were reports of American cruise missiles being launched.

Given the height and speed of the airliner at the moment, its radar signature on the remote unit’s radar, not at all the latest technology, resembled that of a cruise missile.

The reports had to be treated seriously, and split-second decisions had to be made.

After all, the United States had just used missiles to kill 35 people, including Iran’s General Soleimani, in Iraq in the previous few weeks.

Ultimately, only one person is responsible for all of it. His name is Donald Trump, and he busies himself with threats and violent acts against a nation which has attacked no one in its modern history and is known by all experts to have followed scrupulously its nuclear treaty obligations, the treaty Trump just suddenly one day decided to rip-up.

But our politicians never address the matter fairly or accurately. They are all under Washington’s thumb and shill for Trump, some even asking for further hostile measures against Iran.

It is a shameful situation for Canada to be in.

What kind of a country do you want for your children?

Ethics matter, or why does anyone bother go to church or synagogue to pray and read scripture?

And the rule of law matters. In these matters, Trump has been in complete contempt of the rule of law.

Trump is given a free hand by our politicians to commit murder in public. And to make vicious threats, day after day. Please remember that in ordinary civil society, uttering serious threats can put you into prison.

If Trump’s vicious activities don’t cause our government to speak up, what would?

Certainly not the bloody terrors of Saudi Arabia, courtesy of Trump’s good pal, the Crown Prince. Our government says nothing about his murder, executions and bombing of civilians. Nothing.

We have constructed a society with all kinds of barriers against ethics, and we have learned nothing from the bloody horrors of the past.

All the hypocrisy towards Iran, charging it with crimes it has not committed, makes our ethics and respect for rule of law devoid of meaning.

_______________________

“Iran says some arrests made for downing of Ukrainian plane”

There really is only one arrest that should be made.

Complete responsibility for this mistake made under the threats and pressures of war, as well as for related violent events, is Donald Trump’s alone.

It is of course a sign of Canada’s now close-to complete subservience to Trump’s White House that this indisputable truth is not heard.

Harry Truman famously said, “The buck stops here,” a reference to the expression, “passing the buck”, but that sense of responsibility is totally ignored by Trump. Instead, a steady line of new lies and tales are spun daily to justify what cannot be justified.

And our guys just go along.

_______________________

Response to a comment about there being no justice after Iran’s downing of an airliner:

Please.

Where was the justice when the United States shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 Iranians above the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s own territorial waters, in 1988?

The captain of the American warship that downed that airliner was even awarded a medal.

Or where was the justice when Israel sent 114 people aboard an airliner – Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 – to their deaths in 1973 over the Sinai?

A known, clearly marked airliner, trying to return to Cairo, was downed by two Israeli fighters. There were no repercussions at all for Israel.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICK COCKBURN IN THE UNZ REVIEW

 

“The West Is Still Buying into Nonsense About Iran’s Regional Influence”

 

I welcome Cockburn’s analysis as a needed corrective to much Western thinking, and I especially like this:

“Much the same nonsense is being uttered today about an Iranian hand being behind anything the west and its allies do not like in the Middle East. When they claim to be targeting Iran, they are in practice targeting the Shia community as a whole – a mistake for which both they and the Shia are likely to pay a high price.”

But I do think many aspects of the Middle East’s religious division are just naturally blurred into politics and geopolitics, and perhaps it is unavoidable.

I regard the Shia-Sunni divide as something akin to the Catholic-Protestant one that dominated Europe from the 16th century.

It permeated all of European politics and generated wars. There was bloodshed for a very long period in Europe, actually a bit of it extending right into the 20th century in places like Northern Ireland.

The division drove all kinds of violence in a number of European countries, including wars of succession and massacres, and it was a key part in Britain’s “Glorious Revolution.”

It played an important role, often now unrecognized, in America’s revolt when Britain put parts of what would become the American Midwest, then regarded as Indian Reserve lands, under the jurisdiction of Quebec Province with the Quebec Act of 1774.

America’s colonials resented the well-intentioned Act deeply, both for cutting off their opportunities to exploit those lands and for putting them under the control of “popery,” a word very much heard then in New England.

So, for Europeans, political and religious matters were largely indistinguishable and remained that way for centuries.

If you understand that history, you do not look at the Muslim world’s situation as anything mysterious or unusual.

It likely reflects a basic division in human psychological make-up when we see vast religious movements divide into factions, just as people divide themselves into political factions. Indeed, in Britain’s early 18^th century Parliament, there were no political parties as we know them, and when they began to emerge, they were called factions.

I think I might identify the Shia a bit with the early Protestants in that some of what they represent is regarded as revolutionary or at least upsetting to the old order.

In any event, a lot of what is said about Muslims in the West is inaccurate and self-serving.

Remember, “the West” is really a global imperial power, the United States, with loyal satraps like Britain or France scurrying along behind.

The primary interest of “the West” in the world at large is control, not understanding or cooperation.

So, the Muslim world’s natural divisions are exploited towards control.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JEFF SCHOGOL IN CHECKPOINT ASIA

 

“The Top US Military Officer: We’ll Provide Evidence of an Imminent Iranian Attack One Day”

https://www.anti-empire.com/the-top-us-military-officer-well-provide-evidence-of-an-imminent-iranian-attack-one-day/#disqus_thread

 

All of the Pentagon and White House people just keep talking in circles, and that’s because what they are claiming is nonsense.

We indeed know what Iran’s General Soleimani was doing, and it was something entirely different than Trump’s blubbering claims about planning attacks.

He was dealing with Iran’s response to a proposal from Saudi Arabia concerned with de-escalating their relations. He was even travelling on a diplomatic passport.

It was virtually the opposite kind of activity the White House claims.

Washington has never gotten away from the Gulf of Tonkin Incident kind of thinking in all its ugly imperial affairs abroad.

For those who don’t recall, a phantom hostile incident in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam became the basis for Lyndon Johnson’s starting the massive American holocaust in Vietnam, a war in which America killed an estimated 3 million people, many of them in the most horrible fashion.

John Chuckman

COMMENT – ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON TRUMP’S IRAN CRISIS AND AMERICAN IMPERIAL DECLINE

 

The American empire has overreached itself in recent decades, in places like Afghanistan and Syria and Libya and Somalia and Yemen and even in Iraq. America has basically lost all of those wars in the sense of having created enduring unstable conditions and great hostilities, not peace or stability and not democratic values. All those places are wrecks with smoldering conflicts continuing and outcomes uncertain. The Neocon Wars of the Middle East have been a disaster, but Trump is closely tuned into the Neocons. He is literally surrounded with them.

Even though America clearly won the Iraq War, a war advocated for directly by Ariel Sharon, with a victory memorialized in the blood of a million Iraqis, it was a kind of technical victory, because the key result was something completely unwanted, that is, greatly strengthening Iran as a regional power. Iraq was a war that should not have been fought, but Washington was incapable of seeing that as a result of both its imperial hubris and its vulnerability to Israel’s tireless efforts to influence. Iraq’s invasion has been called by a number of experts America’s greatest strategic blunder ever.

Just as many Israelis live in a kind of foggy fantasy of sentimental Biblical names and notions combined with efforts to recreate American middle-class urban society in a hostile environment – Ozzie and Harriet on the Desert – all floated on an immense Noah’s Flood of American subsidies, public and private, many of them do not realize the full impact of what they do in the region. They believe America is there to bail them out no matter how badly they behave towards others and create unnecessary hostilities. America can flatten Iraq. American can topple Syria. And America can topple Iran. The thinking is terribly wrong and self-indulgent and dangerous. And people subservient to the Neocons, like Trump, are immersed in it.

Trump now seems perilously close to repeating the mistake of Iraq, only on a far grander scale, with Iran. There are many powerful Israeli interests who want to see America go to war with Iran, something they realize is beyond the capacity of Israel despite its rhetoric and threats. The assassination of General Soleimani seems almost certainly to have been a trap designed for that purpose, and Trump just thoughtlessly walked into it. If Iran had not proceeded in the carefully considered way that it did, giving Trump room to slip out of the trap, and without being humiliated, we would have a big new war.

The set of events carries important lessons. First, there is the remarkable steadiness and rationality displayed by Iran’s leaders. They are responsible for avoiding a gigantic, unnecessary conflict.

Second, I think are the unmistakable signs of American imperial decline. Iraq has asked America to leave. Iran has promised new pressures for America to leave. Syria is also effectively telling the United States to leave. America has been reduced to sophomoric jokes about stealing oil, and its treatment of the Iran nuclear agreement has made its word for many close to worthless. It’s pretty hard to stay in a place where the people don’t want you and where long and costly efforts have yielded little of worth. Especially as the near-term future promises nothing but continued relative economic decline for the United States with the privileged position of the dollar gradually disappearing.

Trump has listened to Israel’s bad advice time after time. And the assassination was just the most explosive instance. You do not increase stability or security with such acts. You actually create instabilities that weren’t there before. They may not all be matters to appear in tomorrow’s headlines, but they are like new fault lines in an earthquake-prone zone.

In the end, despite all the bluster, Trump was unwilling to retaliate against Iran. Of course, Iran made it as easy as possible for him with its orchestrated missile attack, an event perhaps better described as an orchestrated missile demonstration. Trump now looks more ineffectual and less in command than ever. The only people looking to him are special interests in Israel, dangerous ones that view him as a big piñata to be poked at with sticks for gifts, and the degree to which he listens to them measures our risk of war.

Trump is likely aware that Iran holds some important cards. No, Iran cannot possibly defeat the United States in a war, but Iran has never sought a war.

Perhaps I shouldn’t speak of “cannot possibly defeat the United States.” We must never forget what the tough and resourceful people of Vietnam achieved vis-à-vis the United States. Wars can go on for very long periods of time, and sometimes a less wealthy, less complex society is able to absorb the costs and demands better than a wealthier, privileged opponent. There have been other instances of that. Note that the United States has been killing peasants for eighteen years in Afghanistan, and the Taleban still controls major parts of the country, as much or more of it than when America started.

If you invade or attack someone without a clear and powerful purpose, you are condemning yourself to an unhappy future. It’s like trying to pour concrete without a mold. And the United States has done that time after time, confident just in its arrogant sense of overwhelming superiority. It is foolish, and absolutely no one is more subject to the illusion of American superiority and exceptional status than Donald Trump.

First, a war means Iran’s hurling fleets of missiles against Israel. It has the missiles. The missiles are very capable, as has been demonstrated several times. They are highly accurate. Iran has literally thousands at its disposal. Underground bunkers packed with them. So, unavoidably, the reason for starting a war against Iran, Israel’s intense and unwarranted hostility against Iran, will result in large-scale destruction of Israel.

The effort to build a deterrence has been one of Iran’s national projects, especially after the ghastly Iraq-Iran War, 1980-88, inflicted upon it.

That deterrent capacity is why Trump wants to strip Iran of its missiles, demanding, as he does, that missile technology be added to the terms of his notion of a new nuclear agreement. But that is like asking Iran to disarm itself and doing so at gunpoint. It will not happen.

Israel makes a rather compact target, meaning a determined opponent can saturate it. Iran can accurately target most of what is worth targeting in Israel. Israel’s anti-missile defenses would be overwhelmed. Besides past incidents demonstrated those defenses fail in part even under the highly favorable circumstances of a limited number of unsophisticated missiles.

Iran can also do the same thing to a number of American bases in the region.

Places like the Saudi oil facilities and the facilities of the Strait of Hormuz could quickly be rendered totally inoperable, bringing the world’s oil economy to a desperate crisis.

Iran several times has demonstrated how resourceful it can be at unconventional or guerilla operations. Any war with the United States would see these capabilities used fully.

Those and other hard facts do make starting a war with Iran an act of madness.

But if you put yourself into a bad situation deliberately, as Trump does, madness can easily happen.

John Chuckman

COMMENT ON THE OUTCOME OF IRAN’S MISSILE STRIKE – ALMOST PLANNED

 

Various bits of information suggest we may have an end, at least for the interim, to the crisis caused by Trump’s stupidly blundering decision to kill Iran’s General Soleimani. They suggest something which seems almost choreographed behind the scenes.

The United States was given advance warning by Iraq of the missile attack, although not provided with the names of the bases to be struck. That allowed Americans to seek safety. It would have been necessary for Iran to warn Iraq ahead since American facilities are generally contained within Iraqi military facilities.

Iran is said to have chosen its targets to avoid American casualties, and aerial photos of the damage suggest missiles with precision guidance were used. Of course, with precision missiles, results just the opposite were possible, so a message was communicated to the United States even if no one was killed.

Reports from Iran say eighty Americans were killed, but governments all make such claims when addressing their own people, especially very angry people.

It is telling that, despite an enormous volume of bluster and threats and crude words, Trump did not launch a counter-attack. He bellowed about additional sanctions, but that has become as regular with him as eating breakfast.

Iran’s President Rouhani said Americans leaving the region would be Iran’s goal in retaliation for the assassination.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei described the missile attacks as “open” and “proportional,” the kind of language used in international law and diplomacy to describe a “legal” armed response, as in self-defense.

Khamenei warned that it would not be the only response. It represented the opening of a long and quieter campaign to kick the United States out of the Middle East, with more responses coming in the weeks ahead.

 

SOME INTERESTING BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT HOW AMERICA ACTUALLY TREATS OTHER COUNTRIES BEHIND THE SCENES WITH EYE-OPENING DETAILS OF TRUMP’S METHODS

 

Iraq’s Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mehdi, who has already resigned his office but serves in an interim capacity until a new appointment is made, has provided some fascinating details about recent relations between Iraq and the United States, the kind of stuff to which the public rarely is exposed.

He said that American infrastructure projects such as electricity grid destroyed in the war were deliberately being left unfinished. America invaded in 2003, and many Iraqis still suffer from the destroyed infrastructure. The United States was demanding one-half of the country’s oil revenue as the price for finishing the work.

The Prime Minister refused, and, instead, went to China and signed an agreement there to have the job finished. Trump called him and demanded he cancel the agreement with China, or Trump would see to it that huge demonstrations were launched in Iraq against the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister again refused, and the promised huge demonstrations did appear.

Trump called again and threatened that Marine snipers on tall buildings would start targeting the crowds and Iraqi security forces. That of course was part of the technique used during the Ukraine coup of 2013-14, which began with protests and waves of shootings in Kiev’s Maidan Square.

The Prime Minister again refused Trump, but then handed in his resignation.

That is the kind of authoritative, first-hand account Americans rarely receive about the activities of their government abroad.

It is shameful. After all, the United States illegally invaded Iraq. It deliberately destroyed the infrastructure. Even in a “legal” war, it is accepted practice for a larger, more powerful victor to pay some reparations so the losing country isn’t left helpless on its back.

But here we are, seventeen years after America’s bloody invasion – in the war and surrounding events, about a million Iraqis were killed and in this once most-advanced country in the Middle East, millions were left without employment and essential services – and not only is the infrastructure still not repaired, but the President of the United States is attempting extortion around finishing it.

He then threatens the country with civil disorder and sniper killings because China has agreed to do the job on terms acceptable to Iraq, China of course, as part of its massive Belt and Road Initiation – the New Silk Road – being ready to undertake infrastructure projects almost anywhere.

Such are the dark inner workings of empire, and I doubt anyone can make a meaningful distinction between them and the former activities of Al Capone in Chicago.

Knowing Trump operates in this way, why would anyone be surprised that he would make a casual decision to kill a famous man regarded as a hero by millions and create havoc?

 

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CRAIG MURRAY IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“The USA’s Slavish Saudi Allegiance Against Iran

“The assassination of a top Iranian general reflects a U.S. foreign policy tied to Saudi interests”

 

I like Craig Murray as a writer, but this piece comes as quite a disappointment.

It focuses on Saudi Arabia as being at the center of America’s hostility towards Iran. Israel gets slight mention.

I believe Mr. Murray has put the cart before the horse.

The attention America lavishes on Saudi Arabia has much to do with Saudi Arabia’s special relations with Israel, relations which have no long history. Saudi Arabia, before 9/11 was the source of a lot of hostility towards Israel, in everything from publications and speeches to support for various groups.

You find none of that now. It began to quiet down after 9/11 when the Saudi Royals realized how vulnerable they were to American invasion, a much more attractive invasion prospect than the hardscrabble land of Afghanistan. America could easily have manipulated facts like the (purported) nationalities of many of the plane hijackers (Saudi) into a reason to invade and steal the greatest quantity of oil ever stolen.

The Crown Prince took the new direction in Saudi international affairs even further. He made it his focus, recognizing opportunities for personal aggrandizement. Nothing good happens to anyone in the Middle East who does not happily support American policy, and that includes supporting America’s privileged imperial colony at the east end of the Mediterranean.

As we’ve seen in the Neocon Wars, those deemed not adequately warm towards Israel tend to get bombed and paved over.

As an interesting side note, Trump, the candidate who sensibly spoke against the wars in the Middle East, has now so completely compromised himself serving Israel’s special interests – interests often in conflict both with America’s own long-term interests and with the rule of international law – that it seems just impossible America can be extricated from the mess. Indeed, we now have the real possibility of the biggest war of all breaking out, and what has happened was completely avoidable.

Just look at Israel making no objection to the biggest arms deal in history recently between the Crown Prince and Trump. That could not have happened years ago. Israel’s influence wouldn’t have allowed the deal even to be proposed. Israel dearly loves the Crown Prince, and that has a lot to do with Trump’s smiling, back-slapping support for the tyrant.

The Crown Prince earned his bloody laurels with projects largely related to Israeli interests, projects such as the terror in Syria, with his generous support of mercenary, fake-jihadi outfits like al-Nusra and ISIS, groups whose main purpose has been to attack governments the United States and Israel wanted hurt.

Genuine jihadi types would, of course, instead be attacking Israel and the corrupt feudal princes of Saudi Arabia, but, somehow, magically, they never do.

Projects like bombing Yemen or arresting the visiting Prime Minister of Lebanon and forcing his resignation. Saudi Arabia frequently finances American schemes in the region, and I’m sure that whenever Netanyahu needs a tidy sum under the table for a dirty project, he has only to ask.

The real reason for Israel’s seething, relentless hatred of Iran comes from the fact that that country, with a population the size of Germany’s, is just naturally at the center of the region’s affairs and arrangements, a position Israel arrogantly regards as its rightful place. After all, it does represent the American empire, doesn’t it?

The immense blunder of America’s Iraq invasion, heavily lobbied for by Israel’s Ariel Sharon, ended up making Iran relatively even more important in the region by eliminating a strong adversary. Saddam Hussein was secular in his viewpoint. Now Iraq is dominated by the politics of a population which is about two-thirds Shia Muslim.

There are influential Israelis who would just love to see America go to war with Iran. Trump’s series of hostilities and humiliations towards Iran for more than a year does tend to work in that direction, or, at least, to create situations where a “happy” accident might happen. Wars do often happen by something being tipped over at a risky moment.

Remember, Iran was the last country listed on the secret Pentagon document General Wesley Clark spoke of seeing years ago, countries that were to be toppled in upcoming years.

The assassination of Iran’s General Soleimani is called an Israeli project by several reliable observers. There is a report that the very target coordinates for the drone were given to its operator by an Israeli. Likely Trump had very little time to make this monumentally stupid decision, having been advised that a brief window of opportunity was open.

John Chuckman

COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DONALD MACINTYRE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“Trump declaring Israeli settlements legal is indefensible – Palestinians deserve more than vote-grabbing

“The settlements, which are swallowing more and more land and resources, remain the biggest obstacle to a negotiated end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”

 

It’s just the latest shameful chapter in the story of Trump’s relationship with Israel.

He has proved the most servile and corrupt President since Lyndon Johnson in all matters touching Israel.

He has ignored international law a number of times to give Israel something that is not his to give – Golan, Jerusalem, West Bank properties – and he has created some ugly international situations on Israel’s behalf.

The unnecessary vicious assault on a law-abiding Iran – his just arbitrarily tearing-up of a valid treaty, extreme war-like sanctions, serious military threats, even using the word “obliteration for 80 million people – is a direct result of trying to please Netanyahu and the important big donors in the United States who want pretty much whatever Netanyahu wants.

So were Trump’s crazed steps against the United Nations – quitting UN Human Rights, quitting UNESCO, cutting UN Palestinian aid funds, threatening voting members in the General Assembly by telling them they are being watched how they vote, and owing the UN around a billion dollars in back dues.

A rather vicious and focused set of acts taken against international law and order.

The basic driving political force for these deeds in the United States is less votes, I think, than money.

America’s campaign finance system is almost totally corrupt, as are its laws governing the activities of political lobbies.

It’s often joked that America gets the best government money can buy, and it really isn’t far from the truth.

The concept, “money is free speech” dominates American politics.

Israel has some of the best organized and financed lobby groups in the United States. It also has a clutch of American multi-billionaires who identify very closely with Israel for all of their huge campaign contributions. Those are Trump’s main targets for such policies.

The lobby groups not only supply cash but also expert professional and technical assistance with campaign work. They are also quite influential in press coverage in America’s “quality” press and broadcasting, all of which is managed with great deference to Israel’s interests.

As far as numbers, American Jews make up about 1.5% of the country’s population. “Fundamentalist” Protestants, depending on your definition, total between 6% and 25% of the population, the world’s largest such group and certainly a large segment of the electorate.

However, American Fundamentalist Christians are seen in polls as not being a particularly well-informed group, as you might expect with a good part of them waiting for the Second Coming of the Lord. Likely, in most cases, they not even aware of many of Trump’s acts, only having a general awareness of his friendliness towards Israel.

But the money and influence people of course follow and analyze and weigh the value of every step.

__________________

Response to another comment:

I think it is more complicated than that.

Israel, de facto, is an American colony in the Middle East, a special one with many extraordinary privileges. Many citizens freely move back and forth, and so does money and influence and technology.

Israel almost always operates on the two levels simultaneously – that of small “independent” country and American imperial colony.

It makes for a bizarre and complicated relationship.

It compares in many ways to France’s old relationship with Algeria, which France considered as an integral part of metropolitan France, although the relationship has dimensions making it still different in nature than that.

The concept of Israel includes the very emotional claim of being refuge for the world’s formerly terribly abused Jews. That claim of course ignores the healthy, prosperous situation of Jews in America and in many other places. It also ignores the fact that the majority of the world’s Jews do not live in Israel. Indeed, America alone has about as many Jews as Israel does.

______________________

Response to another comment:

Sorry, you are confused.

The Jews you speak of in London are European people, not Middle Eastern people. “Judea,” apart from being a long-dead concept like “Troy,” is not their place of origin.

The Ashkenazi and the ancient Hebrews are not the same people, except for the religion they profess.

The Ashkenazi go back on the order of 900-1000 years according to DNA work.

Their native language is Yiddish, a dialect of German.

Most of their customs and dress are derived from central and eastern Europe, as deli food and most of the dishes eaten on holidays.

Even the dress of the ultra-Orthodox does not reflect the Middle East at all, but central and eastern Europe of the 18th and 19th centuries.

It is most likely that the closest we have to direct descendants from the ancient Hebrews are indeed the Palestinians, and what a bitter irony that is. Two thousand years of history have made many changes in them, including religion, but it is a well-established historical fact that the Romans did not expel populations from conquered territories.

The Romans wanted the farmers farming and the taxpayers paying taxes. The whole “wandering Jews following expulsion from the Holy Land” story is just that, a story, one which more closely binds European Jews to the ancient Hebrews, but it just cannot be historical.

The Hebrews, at least some of them, clearly at some point in history became evangelical, having seen the great success of Christianity, which did start as a small Hebrew sect, and they proselytized in many regions, creating what became remote Jewish colonies.

A larger Jewish population gave more opportunity for marriage, too, something that is always problem for small groups. That is why there are varying traces of Semitic characteristics found in the DNA of Ashkenazi people.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE IN SOUTH FRONT

 

“US NEEDS TO OCCUPY SYRIA BECAUSE OF KURDS OR IRAN OR CHEMICAL WEAPONS OR OIL OR WHATEVER”

 

The author does miss the point.

The Syrian War has always been about toppling or at least dividing Syria.

And that is an objective which has been strongly advocated and materially supported by Israel for years.

Well, the long and costly proxy war in Syria is mainly over, and it was lost by Israel’s side.

Israel has pressed Trump to keep at least something which hurts Syria’s interests.

And facing re-election and in need of lots of funds from lobby interests, Trump is glad to accommodate.

The occupation of Syrian oil fields is his response.

The huge job of reconstruction is ahead, and Syria is to be deprived on its own territory of a valuable resource.

Trump has always acted unhelpfully on all matters related to Syrian reconstruction.

He is, without question, the most faithful American president to Israel’s narrow interests since Lyndon Johnson.

After all, he gave away what was not his to give, Jerusalem and the Golan, he arbitrarily tore up a working treaty with Iran and started immense hostilities against its 80 million people, and he appointed dangerous fanatics like Bolton and Pompeo to high office.

While a weak article on the whole, the following little crescendo of American excuses for being in Syria is very effective:

“We were told that the US must intervene in Syria because the Syrian government was massacring its people. We were told that the US must intervene in Syria in order to promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East. We were told that the US must intervene in Syria because Assad used chemical weapons. We were told that the US must occupy Syria to fight ISIS. We were told that the US must continue to occupy Syria to counter Iranian influence. We were told the US must continue to occupy Syria to protect the Kurds. Now the US must continue to occupy Syria because of oil.”

Over time, though, I think the American hold on the oil fields is not sustainable.

It even works against American interests in the Middle East with the appearance of open piracy by America’s military in a region extremely sensitive about the ownership of natural resources, given a not-so-distant history of European colonialism.

With Russian influence rising and American influence waning in the region, it would be pretty foolish over any extended period to hang on to this booty.

But the superficial explanation for occupying the oil fields gave Trump something to crow about – and being a crude man, crowing and bellowing about nasty things are activities he actually enjoys – instead of telling the simple truth about Israel’s influence and interests.

No heavy-duty American supporter of Israel’s interests admits in public to such things because the cumulative effect over time of a great many such admissions would be to cast Israel in a very poor light.

During all the years and vast destruction and cost of the Neocon Wars in the Middle East, we rarely heard the reason for them articulated, at least from any significant American political figure.

However, there was a moment when George Bush – after his invasion of Iraq in 2003, and having heard that Ariel Sharon was lobbying for another country to be invaded – was quoted along the lines of, “Jeez, I invaded Iraq for him. What more does he want?”

The quote was not given big play but was in some of the corporate press, and it is one of the fundamental pieces of evidence we have concerning the true nature of America’s bloody efforts in the Middle East over the last fifteen years or so.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MARKO MARJANOVIC IN CHECKPOINT ASIA

 

“Senator Graham Threatens Turkey With Sanctions He Failed to Enact on MBS

“When have we heard Lindsey Graham thunder like this before?”

 

https://www.checkpointasia.net/having-failed-to-enact-promised-sanctions-on-mbs-senator-graham-issues-more-sanctions-threat-vs-turkey/

 

Lindsey Graham is likely the most absurd man in the US Senate, although there is ferocious competition for that title.

Extremely dishonest, too, because he doesn’t talk about what really motivates him, bringing to the boil all that sputtering righteous indignation.

I think he must have received a call from Netanyahu advising him that it was time to perform. Graham is Israel’s official junkyard dog in the Senate, always creating a stir when the interests of that state are being mentioned.

It is Israel who wants some kind of rump Kurdish state created in northeastern Syria as a way to weaken the Syria emerging from an unsuccessful proxy war that was intended to topple it.

The concept had multiple attractions for Israel: depriving Syria of its crude oil deposits, offering rule on the far end of Syria by a group who might prove very friendly to Israeli interests, giving a further sense of legitimacy to Israel’s own stolen piece of Syria, Golan, and annoying the hell out of Turkey’s Erdogan, a man truly hated in Tel Aviv.

But it has never seemed realistic, given especially Erdogan’s acute allergy to Kurds and Turkey’s keystone position in NATO at a time of so many disagreements between Turkey and the US.

As to Graham’s propensity to explode over the concerns of Israel, I think there are several contributing factors. First, he is simply one of the most knee-jerk imperialists in the Senate, always ready immediately to send in the “boyz” and do bombing runs for dear old America and the cause of freedom.

Second, he may be reflecting the interests of some of his Southern Baptist constituency, fundamentalists with their own special “Second Coming” attitudes towards Israel.

And, third, I’ve long suspected that he was once the target of an Israeli honey-trap and that he knows some very compromising photos exist, photos that would deeply trouble Southern Baptists since Lindsey is gay.

Actually, contrary to the opening lines, we have heard Lindsey Graham like this before. But of course, not about anything like the Saudi Crown Prince’s many bloody crimes. After all, the Crown Prince is a Netanyahu favorite, a genuine “blood brother.”

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ROBERT FISK IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“A year on from Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, and Saudi Arabia is lurching towards hysterical chaos

“This whole wretched saga is beginning to look less like ‘War in the Middle East’ and more like ‘Carry On Up the Gulf’”

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/saudi-arabia-iran-jamal-khashoggi-donald-trump-middle-east-a9126601.html

 

A good piece, and deadly accurate.

The truth is, I’m sure, that America’s government has no great affection for the Crown Prince or for Saudi Arabia.

He is a useful tool for Israeli and American imperial intentions.

A key new part of America’s great bloody effort to remake the face of the Middle East, “the birth of a new Middle East” as Condoleezza Rice charmingly put it when the bombs and screams started to be heard.

All the Neocon Wars – which have killed a couple of million people, created immense floods of refugees, and destroyed several well-functioning states – are part of that plan.

The effort resembles something like trying to pave over everything within hundreds of miles of Israel, America’s de facto colony in the region.

The new Crown Prince was a blessed discovery in the cause, someone suddenly appearing, unbelievably ambitious and willing to kill and kill, and someone who covertly gets along just fine with pals in Israel.

The Crown Prince knows very well that the key to excellent relations with Washington’s power establishment is demonstrating excellent relations with Israel, something Saudi Arabia never did, say, twenty years ago.

It’s only because of the Crown Prince’s attitudes and inclinations that Israel permitted the United States to sell him tens of billions in new armaments, something that wouldn’t have been tolerated not that many years ago.

So, the Prince gets to play powerful ruler of a kind of regional power, something, along with killing, he clearly enjoys.

Only trouble is, there’s that basic reality of traditional Saudi corruption and incompetence showing through, perhaps ultimately threatening the whole house of cards.

Saudi corruption and incompetence flow directly from the fact that the country’s rulers are a gang of immensely rich and spoiled people who want to soil their hands with nothing ordinary or menial. What could you expect in a fairly closed and authoritarian society where hundreds of billions of dollars change hands regularly and in secret? The Saudis try buying everything.

Well, the death the other day of the old King’s faithful bodyguard at Jeddah, Major General Abdul-Aziz Al-Faghm, someone who knew a lot of secrets and an event assigned a highly implausible explanation, accompanied by a huge fire at the new high-speed Jeddah rail station may well signal a new chapter in the Kingdom’s ongoing bloody melodrama.

Saudi Arabia’s disastrous recent failures involving Yemen and Iran’s heroic resistance to America’s undeclared and unwarranted war, “maximum pressure,” against it may indeed signal the coming of a new Middle East, one the United States may not like.

 

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICK COCKBURN IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“The Saudi Crown Prince plans to make us forget about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi before the US election

“A further difficulty the crown prince will face in trying to reboot his nation’s image is that the Khashoggi affair has energised a wave of criticism from former friends, including Republican senator Marco Rubio”

 

What better symbolizes the utter corruption of Washington than its continued close ties with that grotesquely brutal murderer, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia?

Yes, Trump is especially guilty, but he is only a rude chief representative for the entire Washington establishment.

Rather than drain “the swamp,” he ended up giving jobs to many of its inhabitants. On major matters, he and they are pretty much indistinguishable.

Except for his frequent incoherence, he represents nothing really different compared to all the rest of “the best government money can buy.”

Of course, there is the Israeli connection. Netanyahu and the Crown Prince have a mutual admiration society. They are covert allies in many projects, all of them involving blood and death. Kind of “blood brothers,” you might say.

Sadly, Trump and much of Washington dance to Netanyahu’s tune for the Middle East. We have the ongoing spectacle of a great power dictated to by what is effectively one of its own colonies, albeit a rather special one in the immense attention and subsidy it receives.

The virulent hatred and unwarranted attacks we see against Iran, efforts to strangle a major economy of more than eighty million people and hurling ugly threats of war – Trump recently, like Hillary Clinton a few years ago, having actually threatened Iran with the word “obliteration” – are the direct products of that sick and inappropriate relationship.

Netanyahu, with his putrid “moral army” lined up regularly behind a fence to shoot unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, including women and children, is absolutely no different in character than the murderer Saudi Crown Prince. The screams of Netanyahu’s victims are indistinguishable from the screams the Crown Prince’s victims.

Hypocrisy is just thick in the air when Washington here or there accuses some government whom it doesn’t like of brutality or terror. We hear the words regularly, but the people voicing the charges themselves have blood up to their armpits.

Washington both tolerates and exploits genuine terror for its goals and desires, day-in and day-out.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS

 

“Trump’s direct engagement with North Korea is the first big idea on the file in decades

“Much as only President Nixon could go to China, perhaps only Trump could go to North Korea”

 

Concerning any international issue, it, of course, never hurts to talk.

But what seems so obvious and fitting a concept as talking has never really taken hold in Washington. Never.

Does America talk to Venezuela? Does America talk to Iran? Does America talk to Syria? Does it talk to Cuba? Does America talk to Nicaragua? Does it even talk much with Russia? Or China?

No, America seems to prefer shouting at people, telling them what it wants to see them doing, and very frequently, it threatens them.

It does that not just with its unilaterally-declared opponents – countries regarded as opponents for no other reason than that they follow their own national interests rather than putting America’s first – it does it also with friends and allies, countries like Germany or Turkey or the EU or India.

Such countries receive somewhat less harsh treatment, but they are told what they may buy and from whom, and they are told to enforce the American domestic laws called sanctions as though they had some international legitimacy beyond the threat of military force and financial blackmail used to enforce them, and they are just generally told what is expected of them in a great many matters.

It is arrogant and patronizing behavior, as any impartial witness may plainly see in an instant, but America is used to being arrogant and patronizing on a rather colossal scale, treating whole regions that way, the Middle East being a prime example where not one country does not receive orders and expectations from Washington.

We’re seeing a whole new round of arrogant and patronizing behavior right now with Jared Kushner’s “Deal of the Century” flim-flam marketing operation. The fate of millions of people, held for decades against their will by Israel, enjoying no rights of any kind, not even the right to secure home and farm ownership, and subjected to life-long abuse and harassment with check-points, passes, line-ups, and raids – all offered with a keen eye to making them so miserable they’ll want to leave – is somehow to be settled without so much as consulting them.

It is an operation in which tens of billions of phantom dollars (there being no actual funds held by anyone) from America’s Gulf State tyrant friends are supposed to generate, over a period of many years, a new Palestinian prosperity, without changing any of the realities which now keep Palestinians down.

An operation led by an extremely arrogant man whose very position reflects his father-in-law’s nepotism and distrust of outsiders plus an intimate friendship with the Palestinians’ most vindictive enemy, the current Prime Minister of Israel. Kushner is a man, moreover, possessing absolutely no suitable expertise, education, or experience, and a man who, early on, pronounced from on high that the Palestinians were in fact not ready to govern themselves. Sounds very promising, does it not?

Of course, a great irony of Washington’s ordering other countries about is that so often Washington’s orders are badly misguided and its expectations unrealistic. They prove to be damaging long-term because Washington simply does not understand local realities, realities that will still be there decades later. It refuses to do so if they don’t fit into Washington’s idea of how things should be. It is a form of madness. And of course, repeated enough times, it confirms the old saying about, “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

There are many examples. Perhaps the most glaring is Afghanistan and a nearly twenty-year war against the Taliban that has utterly failed. Countless lives and huge amounts of wealth have been squandered on pointless destruction. America never has understood what the Taliban are. They are not “terrorists,” they are not outsiders imposing themselves on others, a role pretty much reserved for America itself. No, they are simply one of the natural divisions in the society. Expecting them to go away is like expecting Baptists or Democrats in America to go away.

And the Taliban had no role in 9/11. They gave refuge to a devout Muslim by the name of Osama bin Laden whose native country, Saudi Arabia, greatly disliked him. When the United States demanded his extradition after 9/11, the Taliban only asked for some evidence, providing credible evidence being a normal part of every proper international extradition request. The United States said no and shortly invaded the place. That is how much sense the war in Afghanistan made from the very start.

America bombed the crap out of the country while its local ally, the clans of the Northern Alliance, traditional opponents of the Taliban, did most of the fighting on the ground. America terrorized countless towns and villages with heavily-armed patrols breaking into homes and removing the men for brutal interrogation, it installed another government, one from members of the Northern Alliance, no more admirable to Western eyes than the Taliban, and it committed, or allowed others to commit, a great many atrocities.

Along the way, in toppling the Taliban government, America released massive new waves of hard drugs into the world, drugs the Taliban had suppressed with its ban on growing opium poppies. The damage of that is felt to this day with large supplies lowering street prices and increasing addictions while urban gang wars are waged over turf, often making news of a weekend’s shooting toll in major American cities resemble reports from a war. A toll of as many as sixty or so shot in one weekend in Chicago, as just one example, has become common.

But did the United States defeat the Taliban? No, they remain a major player with whom the United States only now finally holds serious secret negotiations. Did they even capture bin Laden? No, he was finally murdered years later in Pakistan but even then, only because of a betrayal, not American military or intelligence skill.

Did the United States, after all of that, ever even prove to us that bin Laden was “the mastermind” of 9/11? No, it has never provided genuine evidence of anything, including what actually happened on 9/11. To this day, we honestly do not know. Yet none of that prevented it starting a long and unproductive war, a war it still has not extricated itself from.

(On 9/11 and the lack of any coherent explanation for it, see: 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/ )

Do we have some sense of déjà vu here, as in going back to the ten-year long mass slaughter in Vietnam which proved only that a poor but determined people can defeat the United States so long as it refrains from using atomic weapons? It certainly threw everything else it had at the Vietnamese, killing an estimated three million of them and leaving their country a nightmare of Agent Orange, landmines, and bomb craters.

That kind of ugly stuff unfortunately characterizes much of the foreign affairs history of the United States since WWII. One colonial war after another, and none of them achieving much except a great deal of death and destruction. Hatreds and hostilities on a grand scale serving no purpose other than to enforce America’s claim to the world that it is free to do as it damn well pleases anywhere.

There are lots of other examples. All the years of severe hostilities and genuine acts of terror against Cuba, and, more than half a century later, these are being stoked up yet again, Washington not able to absorb the fact that what people in other places want to do with their lives and resources may well be at odds with what America demands.

The seventy years of horror in Israel/Palestine provide another example. The United States could have put an end to all of that at any time by declaring proper borders and enforcing them, but it didn’t, and it still doesn’t. It just allows a long and destructive set of hostilities continue unimpeded, every once in a while, dabbling in some kind of silly “peace process” theatrics. In this case, America is involved through the American colonial identity of Israel and what it attempts to do in the Middle East. And America makes sure there are mountains of armaments to do it with.

For some reason Trump has chosen to talk to North Korea, but I’m not sure it has a great deal of meaning. After all, this is Donald Trump we are talking about here.

The same man leaked secret British diplomatic papers have just revealed is viewed as “inept,” “incompetent” and “erratic.” His policies towards Iran are actually called “incoherent.” I think we knew those things before the leak of state papers, but it is still nice to have confirmation.

I do think that apart from talking, Trump has totally failed in North Korea with what he originally aimed for, denuclearization. The North might make some concessions in exchange for American concessions, but it is not going to give up its nukes, and I think America’s establishment may be starting to understand that.

North Korea will not give up on its nukes, especially now that America is seen so clearly as a country which does not honor legal contracts, as in the glaring examples of tearing-up the Iran nuclear agreement and tearing-up the INF Treaty with Russia. That last is a terribly important treaty for Europe to avoid becoming the immediate battleground in a nuclear conflict. What incentive is there for a country like North Korea?

With its well-equipped army on the southern border and its regular war games and with nuclear weapons stashed in Japan and Guam, America represents a serious, ongoing threat to the North, and the North would be foolish to give up all its weapons. The United States has made no concessions to reduce the ever-present threat it represents while making all kinds of extreme demands.

Indeed, I think it is largely the credible nature of the North’s deterrent that saved it from Trump’s initial huge wave of gunboat diplomacy with aircraft carriers and nuclear bombers everywhere, just exactly what we now see arrayed against non-nuclear, law-abiding Iran.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“Three dead and hundreds injured as protests on Gaza border turn violent

Total killed now stands at 41 since unrest started in March”

 

A ridiculous headline because of its ambiguity.

From the start, Israel’s response has been violence, extreme violence.

The protests are noisy and unpleasant, but they have not really “turned violent.”

The demonstrators are unarmed, but Israeli snipers keep shooting batches of them, killing, among others, two well-marked journalists and some children. Something in the neighborhood of a thousand have received wounds from guns.

Israel’s only real purpose here is not in protecting itself from violence but to make the demonstrators feel the utter futility of their efforts, to demonstrate, yet again, Israel’s overwhelming military strength and its readiness to kill on very little provocation and without compunction.

It’s all stuff we knew, but this brutal state never tires of showing us again.

This week-long event is only rightly termed the Passover Massacre.

__________________________

Response to a comment, “Israel was established largely to provide a safe haven for oppressed Jewish people”:

Yes, as to why, in part, Israel was re-created, but the great tragedy of it is that it was always something of an unrealistic project, bound to be a moral and ethical failure in the face of millions of Palestinians whose towns and farms were stolen as well as the notion that Israel must have only one kind of people. I know there are a fair number of non-Jewish citizens, but their presence was an accident of 1948, and important Israeli leaders do not regard them as either desirable or permanent. More than a few have advocated their expulsion.

As for the many more Palestinians in the occupied territories, they aren’t going anywhere, no matter what horrors Israel inflicts on them. And just where would they go anyway? Who in the region is offering to take millions of refugees? Who anywhere is ready to take millions of refugees? The United States, whose grotesquely unbalanced support of Israel prevents a decent solution, isn’t ready to take even a limited number of refugees from its own bombing campaigns in places like Libya and Syria.

General Dayan, back in the days of the 1967 War, said Israel would have to make the Palestinians miserable enough to want to leave. And that’s just what Israel has never stopped working toward, just with highs and lows in the harshness of the effort. But they are not leaving. The ugly sniper killings plus countless other incidents show Israel’s violent frustration with this reality.

In a way, the demonstrations and Israel’s extreme brutality towards them hide something far larger and more fundamental and ongoing: conditions in Gaza, home to 1.5 million, are approaching the level of not being able to sustain human life, and that’s entirely Israel’s doing, its deliberate and immoral doing.

It is stunning that the world can sit back and watch this all happening. Virtually all of our Western press and politicians just shut their eyes. And even the press that does cover it in the smallest degree, often uses euphemisms to describe things.

It is simply the greatest single shame on earth at this time.

The men who lead Israel seem to have learned, from the suffering of their European ancestors under the Nazis, only how to be extremely brutal and vile themselves.

 

 

NOTE: While the deaths in Gaza appear to be reasonably consistently reported, the wounded are not. It is difficult to get a fix on the number, which, in any case is very high. Looking at different sources, one finds different numbers. The UN, in its latest rather ineffectual call for an end to the violence, cited more than 5,500 having been injured by gunshots.