John Chuckman

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

 

“An apology & Explanation, Two Years On”

 

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/29/an-apology-and-explanation-two-years-on/
 

“Facts and logic no longer mattered. It was a case of using whatever you had to diminish and destroy your opponent.”

 

Indeed.

And I think that reflects the general decline and corruption of the United States’ establishment. The observations are not just things found in the country’s politics or journalism.

Look at the long record abroad of wars and coups, killing millions and serving no good purpose, plus all the lying and hypocrisy required to support them.

Are they the handiwork of a sound, productive society? Of enlightened leadership? Of strong national values? Respect for the rule of law?

America’s establishment – which consists of both political parties plus their financial supporters and the corporate press plus other institutional helpers – really no longer has a lot worth saying to anyone.

It does pretty much as it pleases with little regard for the bulk of American citizens and none at all for the other 95% of humanity.

Only the existence of a small number of other fairly powerful states prevents it becoming completely tyrannical.

It is a global version of what the French Aristocracy was in the late 18^th century, an era of immense privilege and abuse.

Any notions of dedication to democratic ideals are fanciful. People with that kind of power don’t give it up, either through elections or principled acts.

And agencies like the Pentagon and the CIA and the FBI operate under principles the polar opposite of democracy. The more pervasive and powerful they are in a society, the less it can possibly be democratic.

America’s establishment serves a plutocracy, the people who pay its bills.

At home, it runs an elaborate and costly political system which has some appearance of democracy but with a basic unspoken rule that most of the establishment and all of the plutocratic corporations and individuals cannot be replaced or adversely affected.

There is a corollary rule that indeed nothing in the society is to be greatly changed.

But in its imperial efforts abroad – its wars, its coups, its sanctioning, its threatening – even that pretence of democracy is dropped.

How can you be democratic and treat countless millions and their governments as though they were your property? Perhaps the attitude that you can is a holdover from America’s long years of slavery?

The parties impose empire on the world and shovel money at destructive, completely anti-democratic institutions like the Pentagon and CIA and FBI who are their willing helpers.

Change will only come with decline and replacement by new global arrangements whose sketchy outlines already are to be seen.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JAMES CARDEN IN CHECKPOINT ASIA

 

Trump’s Withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty Jeopardizes US National Security

Clueless Trump clearing another impediment to an arms race with Russia

 

https://www.checkpointasia.net/trumps-withdrawal-from-the-open-skies-treaty-jeopardizes-us-national-security/

 

Good piece. Trump is nicely and accurately characterized at the beginning.

We are all living through the deliberate setting-up of a nightmare world, one where international law and order and institutions count for little or nothing.

But note that we do not see Congress making any efforts to stop Trump’s abusive efforts abroad.

I don’t think the impeachment investigation counts because that is about politics, the politics of realizing they do not have a leading candidate for the 2020 election who likely can defeat Trump.

And the politics around the possible opening of the whole “can of worms” involved in the American-induced coup in Ukraine with all of its aftereffects.

Not to mention, the insane Russia-gate fantasies which seem to have acquired a life of their own simply because they are so useful to so many important figures.

The fantasies do not die away because America has been conditioned for three-quarters of a century to hate and fear Russia. It was ferocious conditioning in everything from the language of the press and politicians to the entertainment industry with its streams of shows and films like the old J Edgar Hoover-approved “FBI” series or “I Led Three Lives” or “The Manchurian Candidate” and scores of others.

Anyone pointing out the many merits of today’s Russia, so immediately in stark contrast with the Russia of the prime Soviet period, only risks being called a Russian “troll” or “bot” or “asset.”

The Congress is under exactly the same set of influences as Trump.

He’s just loud and ugly about it, and they gladly let him take the blame for going where they want to go themselves, but they really do nothing to stop him.

All of these matters – from the destruction of important treaties to the horrors of Syria and support for one of the world’s bloodiest tyrants in Saudi Arabia – ultimately reflect America’s awareness of its relative decline in the world and its refusal to accept new realities.

It perhaps has come to believe in its own myths of exceptionalism too much, of its inherent goodness, of its rightness, of its entitlement. Patriotism as it is practiced in America is, after all, a form of religion with its own sacred myths and tenets and blind spots, and it has a fierce hold on the country still.

It is stoked regularly as an important reinforcing mechanism for all those pointless imperial wars and insane military costs.

The country’s relative decline represents no malign forces at work, as the bizarre words of Trump often suggest. It is a quite natural outcome of the growth and development of other states plus changing technologies, but it is an outcome America’s establishment is desperate to somehow correct by almost any means, except the straightforward one of working hard to compete.

With prestige and authority and wealth at stake, virtually all pretenses of still being Jimmy Stewart’s America of, say, 1953, are gone. There is simply no room for tears or sentimentality or wanting the reputation of being a nice guy.

America’s establishment is much quietly encouraged in this by Israeli interests because Israel sees its best interests in the Middle East as being supported by an aggressive America, not a polite and diplomatic one. It can’t be kingpin in its region if America isn’t feared.

And despite its own good relations with Putin, Israel, beneath the surface, does not like Russia. It does not want Russia’s influence in the Middle East, and it very much sees Russia as a stumbling block to the desired America supremacy and aggression in many areas.

To start with, Russia is friendly with too many Arabs, and that’s an automatic black mark in Israel’s power calculous. The fact that Putin’s Russia strives to have good relations with all states means nothing to Israel, a state which deliberately maintains terrible relations with a number of others.

The growing sense of Russia’s increasing prestige in the Middle East and America’s declining prestige also generates quiet animosity.

The only way I can see this changing is with a turnaround in Israel’s view of its place in the region and of its neighbors. And just what are the chances of that?

But even without Israel’s influential encouragement, Washington’s power establishment does seem set on maintaining a dangerous course out of its own motives of pride and arrogance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY AURAL BRAUN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

More intellectual crap from Aural Braun.

Mr Braun is a full-time lobbyist for the interests of the Israeli-U.S. effort to re-shape the planet.

Mr Putin, as one of the true independent-minded statesmen of our time, is of course at odds many times to a dangerous vision of world affairs.
___________________________

“Please, Obama is a joke. He is a complete amateur, never worthy or prepared to be president.”

I wish it were true that Obama’s behavior could be explained by “amateur” status.

But it cannot be.

He came to office with dreams and enthusiasms and some sound thinking, but in the face of the forces which truly govern America, he quietly threw up his hands and has become effectively a hostage.

He undoubtedly feared assassination, but it is not just such a dark threat which likely influenced him.

Day to day, he works with a relatively small group of people – military and intelligence officials, members of the imperious Senate, big money political contributors, including the powerful Israel Lobby – and that group is not friendly to the language of an Obama before election.

Look at any other notable American politician and presidential aspirant, and you see the same thing at work.

Hillary Clinton, over the last 20 years or so, has gone from a rather idealistic person to an unpleasant, acerbic advocate of Imperial America. She has told bald-faced lies in public countless times and uttered words which might have been written by an old crypto-Nazi like Dick Cheney.

Her husband was once a man of some ideals, too, but his two terms in office were marked by not one achievement of any worth, and he became little more than a kind of giant vacuum cleaner for political donations, setting some ghastly precedents like selling nights in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House or pardoning a big-time criminal at the end of his term in exchange for many millions of political dollars.

This is the modern reality of imperial America: elections at the highest level simply do not matter. By the time a politician has managed to scrabble to become a contender, with all the endless secret begging for campaign funds, he or she has become part of the problem, not the solution.

In economics, we speak of barriers to the entry of markets. The American campaign finance system requiring truckloads of private money to run is effectively a barrier to entry in the political market, a barrier against the idealistic or those who would do anything to interfere with America’s entrenched governing establishment: the military-industrial-intelligence complex along with such powerful special interests as the Israel Lobby.

This barrier is reinforced by a duopoly of parties in that market, each being not very different than the other, except in some volatile social interests of no concern to the establishment.

And anyone who even chances to pass over those barriers faces everyday life with some dark and powerful people who will not watch their power diminished.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

Sorry, this article is delusional.

Remodeling America is an imaginary concept.

Despite changes over the last two centuries such as universal franchise, America manages a great deal to be what it was two centuries ago.

An aristocracy of wealth and influence, where only a small number of people’s views genuinely count and one bent on imperial expansion.

The entire political system is stacked against serious change.

Congress is the best money can buy, and that goes for both parties.

The two parties are an opportunistic duopoly representing almost no principles at all.

The Washington establishment of the Pentagon/CIA/NIA/FBI actually form an unelected continuing government behind the elected government.

The last president who tried challenging that unelected government died in Dallas November 22, 1963.

Obama is personally an enlightened man of considerable depths, but he is ambitious to be and remain president. That wish is virtually incompatible with “remolding America.”

American exceptionalism is now everywhere and always the rule, whether it is making a war crime/ invasion into legitimate foreign policy or the Secretary of State putting pressure on Italy over a woman, one from a well-off family, fairly convicted of murder.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY JUSTIN WEBB IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

America is a very conservative country. That is why the great journalist William Shirer, covering events in NAZI Germany, asked whether America would not itself become a fascist country by election.

‘Right-wing’ has characterized its entire history, except for a brief period of the Franklin Roosevelt era.

The nation’s history is characterized by conquest – although its victims were weak compared to those taken on by, say, Germany, including native people, Spanish settlers, and Mexicans – and extreme acquisitiveness. Those are facts largely glossed over in general histories, and few abroad truly appreciate them. They are facts also glossed over in all Fourth of July speeches by local Congressmen and Senators looking for campaign funds.

The higher-sounding words of America’s main founding documents have always been treated the same way most Christians treat the Gospels – that is, they are recited, praised, engraved on monuments, and immediately ignored in day-to-day matters.

And, after all, it is the most superstitiously religious advanced nation on earth, and nothing good comes out of superstition, except fear and killing of every description, killing of devils, killing of communists, killing of Muslims, killing of native people, and killing of any threat perceived by religious paranoia.

And further, the U.S. establishment – really a government within a government, including the CIA, the FBI, the NIA, the Pentagon, and at least a dozen other intelligence agencies not generally known – is not going to permit drastic change. It has things the way it wants them and works daily to keep them so.

The Pentagon alone spends the entire GDP of some countries each year, and it has on many past occasions obstructed presidential policies. The CIA spends a fortune and makes a significant part of its occupation the overthrowing of governments, the interfering in elections abroad (as its doing in places like Iran today), and the getting rid of unwanted foreign leaders. And these powerful institutions are supported by America’s immensely rich Borgia-like families. Does anyone seriously believe such forces will tolerate any real shift in American goals and budgets?

Obama cannot possibly change those circumstances, and without changing those circumstances there is no way he can take significant measures towards creating a more humane and decent America. Kennedy was probably the last president hoping to achieve such huge changes.

Obama has put a pleasant and intelligent face on a government that for eight years was guided by thugs and ignoramuses, and he established a precedent for people of color that gives the U.S. further bragging rights about principles.

Going beyond those modest achievements brings an American leader into highly dangerous territory.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED COMMENT TO A COLUMN BY LAWRENCE MARTIN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Lawrence Martin, this piece is a little pathetic.

I like Obama and wish him well, knowing full well no one can seriously alter the course of America’s paranoid imperial policies.

After all, the combination of all the vested interests of the FBI, the CIA, the dozen other intelligence agencies, the Pentagon, America’s Borgia-like wealthy clans, and its immense corporate interests reduce the voice of the people in an election to a little squib.

It’s nice to see that charming smile at the White House, but it hardly compensates for all the things that are terribly wrong.

The Iraq withdrawal has turned into a game of words.

Fighting has intensified in Afghanistan.

America is busy interfering in Iran and lying about it.

Guantanamo continues, as do horrid places like Bagram Air Base.

The ugly laws of the Patriot Act continue.

Some military bureaucrat daily sits down to a control panel somewhere in the US and lines up a Predator Drone to fire Hellfire missiles down at some poor people in Pakistan who are promptly incinerated with no arrest, no trial, not even any proper charges. Then the operator happily goes to lunch, having done his morning’s work.

Israel got away with mass murder in Gaza, and now it continues to block entry even of building materials to help clean up the mess. More than a million tortured people and Obama doesn’t say or do anything so far as we can see.