John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE UNZ REVIEW

 

“The New Russian Government, A much-needed evolution but not a revolution”

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Response to a comment which referred to the Guardian newspaper as very “left wing”

The Guardian is a terrible newspaper nowadays.

But it is not accurate to describe it as “left wing,” not at all.

Using that description is playing the Guardian’s own game.

The newspaper uses a great deal of window dressing that makes it appear “leftish” and progressive, features and filler material about minorities and women and the unfortunate. I suppose it’s intended to connect with the newspaper’s historic past and to provide a kind of sugar coating for what it truly advocates.

The Guardian’s heart and soul are pretty close to Tory in spirit. That is revealed through its choice of news stories covered, the slant given the stories, its editorials, the various public figures given regular favorable publicity, and even its highly-controlled and restrictive comment policies. Liberals don’t censor. The Guardian does, heavily.

It virtually led the howling mob attacking Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, and it used some really underhanded techniques, like running little human-interest items about British Jews who were afraid and were going to leave Britain to take up residence somewhere else. It did this several times in the course of its campaign. Once, the person’s destination was even Germany. Of course, any Jewish person who had anything unpleasant to say about Corbyn was given space to say it.

The paper raised no objections to direct interference in British domestic politics by several Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu, who chimed in on Corbyn and anti-Semitism, and he was even mistaken in the facts he cited.

The Guardian is staunchly pro-Israel and pro-American empire, the two, of course, being tightly associated.

The Guardian has supported all of America’s bloody Neocon Wars and coups. It never raises any doubts or questions about matters like the externally-induced horrors in Syria. President Assad is always treated with disdain. Syria, in the Guardian’s manufactured reality, uses poison gas against its own people and deserves cruise missile attacks.

It has no problem with America’s torrent of invective and threats and sanctions against Iran, a country which has done in fact nothing wrong. It has no problem with severe war-like sanctions being used against tens of millions of innocent people to cause starvation and to deprive them of medications, vicious actions taken by the United States against Iran and Venezuela.

It despises Putin and Russia. It literally sometimes prints gutter-quality literature on those topics. It stands shoulder-to-shoulder with those who insist Putin has virtually invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea. And of course, he or his henchmen shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine, even though the Prime Minister of Malaysia says that is not the case.

It has no problem with NATO, closely under American direction, running tanks up against the Russian border, sending risky, intrusive spy flights towards Russian airspace, doing armed cruises on the Black Sea, and carrying on with large-scale practice sea battles in the Baltic.

As far as The Guardian is concerned, the Salisbury Skripal Affair with Putin directly responsible for it – that indigestible mass of Theresa May accusations containing not a single proven fact – is a settled matter of history. It occasionally makes an effort to warm up the kettle, burning new bits flogged by security service outlets.

The Guardian played a sizable role in building up the public-relations image of that good friend of Netanyahu’s, the tyrant Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. He was to be a dynamic and progressive new force in the Middle East. It even used chirpy little features about a few upper-class women being allowed to drive now to emphasize his fine qualities between executions, kidnappings, and launching wars.

It has attacked and lied about Julian Assange, one of the truest heroes of our time and a great investigative reporter/editor. But you see, Assange’s work works against America’s appalling injustices, and that just isn’t allowed. And it worked against candidate Hillary Clinton, world’s leading purveyor of Russophobia, killer of Libyans and Syrians as Secretary of State, and a favorite of Guardian editors.

I could cite many examples of how dreadful the Guardian has become, but here is my favorite:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/05/21/john-chuckman-comment-absurd-lengths-to-which-our-press-goes-to-attack-russia-britains-guardian-holds-hate-russia-day-today-some-of-its-stuff-is-so-ham-fisted-it-reads-like-1959-

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY GILAD ATZMON IN UNZ REVIEW

“For the 0.5% Not the 99.5%”

“Our Labour leadership candidates have attended to whims uttered by a tiny privileged voice while ignoring at least 99.5% of the British public.

“Instead of returning to universal anti racist politics consistent with so-called ‘Labour values,’ the compromised contenders for party leadership bow to the demands made by the Board of Deputies…”

There is some important truth here.

Labour leadership candidates Emily Thornberry and Jess Phillips literally make your toes scrunch uncomfortably up inside your shoes when you read some of their squishy, self-serving pleas being passed off as principles.

But I regard their words and behavior more a matter of sheer political incompetence than anything else. Incompetence is to be found in politicians far more than is commonly realized.

As well, of course, we have corruption, as we saw with Tony Blair, who literally became wealthy in gratitude for his helping kill a million Iraqis to please Aerial Sharon. Tony’s “New Labour” meant a party dedicated to lobby funds and strongly pro-Israel policies. Tony helped lead the charge against Corbyn, too.

We saw no complaints about “anti-Semitism in Blair’s heyday. Somehow, after he left power, anti-Semitism just suddenly exploded inside the Labour Party the way Athena exploded from the forehead of Zeus. Extraordinary.

I long defended Corbyn as a decent and humane politician – qualities frequently missing in the profession – and I still believe that of him. The idea that he was ever “anti-Semitic” is bitterly laughable. And as a matter of fact, we have very little active anti-Semitism today in the West, and much of what self-serving Jewish fraternal organizations call anti-Semitism and enter as incidents in their computer records is just fair criticism of the barbaric policies of Israel, a heavily armed state abusing the powerless.

The whole campaign against Jeremy Corbyn was McCarthyism resuscitated in the service of a new cause. It should have been confronted exactly that way. Truth well-spoken can still be a powerful weapon. We have far too little of it in Western politics.

In the end, Corbyn did prove weak vis-a-vis the Israel lobby, but that’s easier to judge from the outside than when you are being libeled and insulted and pelted with eggs week after week.

The lobby uses an old established principle. Throw enough crap at the wall, and some it will stick. It is a standard principle of the advertising industry and has always been instinctively applied by groups like Germany’s 1930s Brownshirts.

The lobby and Israel do not want fairness and decency anywhere near the affairs of Israel. You are not allowed to be fair. You must be totally for Israel and against anyone Israel regards as undesirable.

That was Corbyn’s unforgivable sin, being fair. And he could not be allowed near power. And talk about external interference, several Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, got directly involved in British party politics over the period of Corbyn’s leadership.

Israel – like a major part of racist cowboy America, notably all of Trump’s crowd holding pick-up truck meets in Walmart parking lots – simply has no use for genuine liberals or progressives.

Why?

The essence of being a genuine liberal is deep regard for human and democratic rights. Obviously, Israel could not exist as it is today were liberal views to hold any sway.

And the same goes for America’s imperialism abroad and its defense of the Plantation System in many parts of the world, as we see repeatedly in Latin America.

There almost are no liberals in America or Israel.

You do not even have a country in fact when you have an empire. Empire and military and security concerns dominate and provide most of the attractive career paths for talented people, crowding out everything else. The privileged rule, and ideology replaces thought. Resources are dedicated to war and secret security.

And what is Israel but a privileged strategic colony of the American empire? One pretending to represent high principles when the truth is literally the opposite. Israel’s best friends in the region are tyrants – Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince or Egypt’s Generalissimo – who keep their people suppressed and bloodied. Israel calls democratic organizations like Hamas “terrorists” for the same reason people such as Corbyn are attacked.

Some democratic values. But we do live in a world where painting the roses red has become an accepted practice. We see that in every word and activity of Donald Trump or Boris Johnson. And there are uncomfortable echoes today of what authoritarian states always busy themselves with doing.