John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN INTERVIEW BY NICK LEHR WITH DAVID BROMWICH IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“Why Barack Obama Was Particularly Unsuited to Live up to the Ideals of the Nobel Peace Prize

“A new book is unsparing in its assessment of Obama’s legacy”

 

I can’t believe how many people still are fooled by Obama’s boyish smile and baritone voice.

Perhaps the sheer contrast in style to the rude, incessant bombast and repulsive insults from his successor in office contributes to sustaining some illusion.

Perhaps also his being the first black man elected as president lends him a special aura, associations in people’s minds that do not really fit the man.

As though he were somehow associated with all those struggling people in the Third World and in the vast sprawl of ghettos which pockmark most of America’s cities.

(Of course, when he ran for office, he played off those very things, as when speaking to crowds of black Americans in the rhythms of old-style preachers with a much-repeated phrase like, “Yes, we can!”)

As though he weren’t at all associated with the brutal, soulless officials of Washington’s vast imperial establishment. Men who sit at meetings around large polished oak tables and decide the fates of others thousands of miles away. Who will live, and who will die. Men, women, and children.

Although much reduced from his earliest days in office, he does still have a following.

I agree with the author that early on he was seen as something of an anti-war figure. I saw him that way myself, briefly regarding him as almost heroic, but it really did not take very long to see how wrong that assessment was.

Indeed, by the time he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, it was already clear what sort of man he was. Of course, many of the Peace Prizes have been awarded on the basis of airy hopes, somewhat better than the numerous awards to outright killers and terrorists.

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/on-obamas-nobel-peace-prize/

Not only did he not keep his own promises, such as closing that shameful place called Guantanamo, this man spent eight solid years killing people.

He bombed somewhere every day of his two terms.

And he holds the distinction of having created an industrial-scale extrajudicial killing system, incinerating people far away who were never legally charged or tried for anything. The method frequently kills bystanders, too, but even the targets are legally guilty of nothing.

All in the name of freedom, the same freedom as is used in the name of the medal he awarded to Joe Biden, his Vice President, a strong inside advocate for creating the mass hi-tech operation for “disappearing” people.

Obama turned an extremely well-run country like Libya – maybe not a democracy, but a place where no one did without clean water and housing and free education and health care, and a place that remained at peace for decades – into a vision from hell. It remains so to this day.

And he worked very hard to do the same for Syria, having his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, oversee the transfer of savage fighters and storehouses full of weapons from the ruins of Libya through devious channels to the beautiful, historic land of Syria.

We even know from one of our finest living investigative reporters, Seymour Hersh, that she had a small amount of Libya’s stock of poison nerve agent shipped for ultimate use in Syria. Gaddafi, just as several Arab leaders had done, kept such stocks as a counter to Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal.

They wanted to create an incident so that Obama’s public warning about Syria’s government “not crossing red lines” (in its fight against the terrorizing mercenaries sent to destabilize the country) could be used to bomb the crap out of the place, just as had been done in Libya.

He only failed because of immense efforts by others (especially Russia’s Vladimir Putin).

He signed off on a coup against an elected government in Ukraine, something done for no other reason than to threaten and harass Russia, creating a series of conflicts and problems we have to this day, including a civil war in the country’s East, the Donbass, that has killed thousands.

He once quietly joked with words to the effect, ‘Hey, I’m pretty good at this killing stuff.’ I have no idea why he spoke in that strange way, but his words were recorded.

A penchant for brutal humor seemed to be part of the environment of his government. After the unspeakably grisly death of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi (there is a video you could not pay me to watch), his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was recorded saying, “We came, we saw, he died! Ha, ha, ha!”

He pressed hard against the elected government of Venezuela with economic measures that served only to reduce the lives of millions of ordinary people.

In addition to the immense amount of violence Obama oversaw as President, he had a very strong tendency towards secrecy, and went after whistleblowers with a vengeance.

Poor dear Chelsea Manning was imprisoned under him, an ordeal she almost didn’t survive.

Edward Snowden was forced into exile under his watch.

John Kiriakou went to prison under him for revealing the CIA’s use of torture.

And it was in his time as President that Julian Assange sought asylum from Ecuador.

The intelligence community’s massive new Utah Data Center, designed to hold unholy amounts of secret data about people was opened under this President.

He often was remarkably arrogant, something not widely noticed, but you can see it clearly in his posture and finger-pointing in some old photos.

https://chuckmangrotesques.blogspot.com/2016/10/john-chuckman-grotesque-obama-best.html

This truly was a monster, just one with a deceptively pleasant face.

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS ABOUT THE AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY DEBATES

 

“Biden clashes with Warren, Sanders on health care in 3rd Democratic debate

“Candidates pare back some of the bickering that marked 2 earlier debates”

 

Pretty sad field.

The Party killed off the best candidate it had in years, Tulsi Gabbard.

None of these people really challenge the American war machine. Not one. Bernie comes closest, but he has mainly supported it and doesn’t seriously challenge it.

Elizabeth Warren has not only always voted for the hideous budgets, she openly says things like we’ve got to fight our way out of the situations in which we’ve become mired, whatever that stupidity means.

They are all establishment figures of little real promise. Not one of them is stirring or genuinely interesting.

Talk about this or that social program, which is what many of these candidates do, is a waste of breath when you’re spending a trillion dollars a year on the military, security, and spying.

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Response to a comment saying, “The richest country in the world cannot afford healthcare, only more weapons to ‘help’ those who disagree with them”

Well, yes, and just look at the urban and rural hellholes that pockmark the United States.

Genuine Third-World stuff, without even decent drinking water or schools.

That is the reality of America.

Plutocracy and empire and squalor and constant turmoil to serve and expand empire.

The people? Who are you kidding? They simply do not count, except in insincere political speeches.

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Response to a comment saying, “Biden and Obama bombed 6 countries while in office”

Yes, and very importantly, they started the industrial-scale extrajudicial killing program which uses drones and Hellfire missiles to incinerate people legally guilty of nothing. Thousands of them.

And Joe Biden advocated hard to Obama for starting it.

Wonderful people. Doing the same work as Argentina’s old military junta did when it “disappeared” thousands of people it didn’t like.

Only Obama and Biden both smile all the time.

And a lot of people believe their smiles are benign.

 John Chuckman

COMMENT ON AN ARTICLE AND VIDEO IN CITIZEN FREE PRESS

 

‘I Was the CIA Director – We Lied, We Cheated, We Stole’ – Mike Pompeo

 

https://www.citizenfreepress.com/breaking/i-was-the-cia-director-we-lied-we-cheated-we-stole/

 

What we see here is big fat Mike Pompeo, ensconced comfortably in a chair on stage, smiling and laughing away in front of an audience at Texas A & M University about lying, cheating, and stealing in the CIA.

 ‘…a Christian religious news broadcaster was the only media that seemed to pick up on Pompeo’s words last week, and described it as follows: “that’s not the resume of the Secretary of State… that’s the resume of Satan.”’

The person writing the brief piece at Citizen Free Press characterized the religious broadcaster’s words as “extreme overreaction.”

Sorry, I’m not a fundamentalist, not even a Christian, yet I regard the religious broadcaster’s words as no overreaction at all. Just bitter truth, put into religious terms, about a man in very high office who brags of leaving his Bible open on his desk at work and who claims to be a “born again” Christian.

I don’t see the point or meaning of either claim, Bible or Christian identity, if what you do is cheat, lie, and steal – and, of course, we should add, left out in the piece, kill – laughing about it all.

The writer of this sick little squib in Citizen Free Press clearly shares Pompeo’s humorous attitude towards depravity and power. Any means to an end. We all knew anyway, so big deal.

Well, yes, I did know, but seeing this kind of treatment of the ugly facts tells us yet something new.

No ethical or moral standards and no principle beyond getting what you want, anyway you want. And laughing about it? I’m not sure America hasn’t touched bottom.

My God, what do words even mean?

And why should the words of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights mean anything either? Or of international law or protocols?

They don’t. As we’ve amply seen in the CIA’s International Torture Gulag for “rendered” (kidnapped) innocent people? And in its industrial scale extrajudicial killing program, America’s hi-tech version of what the old Argentine junta used to do when it “disappeared” thousands of legally innocent people grabbed off the street?

I find this sick and frightening, both Pompeo’s psychopathic words and humor and the response of the anonymous writer of the little piece. We hear no objection from the audience either.

But it all has the great value of ripping away the covers and exposing with the extreme clarity and sight and smell of a bleeding carcass, American values at the highest level of power, at a gathering in a major university, as well as at the level of some anonymous Internet scribbler.

If you’re really paying attention, you understand how profoundly corrupt America has become.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

 

If Obama uses a so-called Executive Order to change the rules for gun ownership, the results will almost certainly not be what he intends.

America has many levels of jurisdiction and a good many local police and sheriffs and prosecutors, people who owe no political loyalty to the President, likely will simply refuse to enforce “the law.”

Executive Orders are a comparatively modern expansion of presidential authority, and many Americans don’t rebel against them only because they are generally used for matters that do not so directly affect individuals.

America’s Constitution clearly requires a new law to pass both houses of Congress and to be signed by the President.

Using Executive Orders is akin to saying a new law needs only the President’s signature.

Few Americans would agree, and virtually no gun-owning Americans would agree.

Attempts to enforce such an order with federal officials will not have a happy outcome in many instances. There simply aren’t enough of them to do anything but selective, spotty enforcement.

And since we are dealing with a presumed Constitutional right – although it is arguable whether the Second Amendment gives such a right – federal officials will be challenged in attempted enforcement.

It is hard for outsiders to understand the complexities and rather chaotic nature of American government, but they are a real part of the country’s fabric.

An elected Prime Minister is close to being an elected dictator under the parliamentary party system.

But an elected American President has remarkably little power in domestic affairs. The Constitution was deliberately designed that way. He does have substantial powers in military affairs by virtue of being designated as Commander-in-Chief.

I fear an Executive Order along these lines could be a very dangerous path for Obama to take. America already is a highly divided and angry place.

I really do not understand why he keeps coming back to it.

Yes, of course, he is right about gun violence in America, but not only does he not have legal authority to solve it by himself, he has no moral authority, having established a murderous record as President.

He has killed, or is killing, people in half a dozen lands without any pretence of legality.

He runs a junta-like system for “disappearing” people with no charges, due process, or legal representation. And he has killed thousands that way.

He also has troops in a number of countries on missions that are not well defined or understood, and he winks at the filthy work of Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Israel in Syria.

He never says a thing about Israel’s unending suppression of millions and its periodic mass killings, as in Gaza.

He is totally a creature of the CIA and Pentagon.

So why does he insist on this?

He is a very strange and unpleasant man. Perhaps he just feels guilty.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY MARK MACKINNON IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Sorry, but I think Aung San Suu Kyi is a bit off her nut.

The press – that creation of American imperial interests and huge corporations – has treated her as some kind of sainted person standing against the forces of darkness.

I don’t see that at all, and she has made many statements which do not even make a lot of sense.

First, of all the world’s tyrannies, Burma is not one of the worst by a very good measure.

In a really ugly place, she would simply have been “disappeared” long ago.

Instead, she was given house arrest with the occasional access to press and other outsiders.

And of course, when a bloody monster like Hillary Clinton praises her, we know something is not quite right.

As to the Nobel Peace Prize, well, other winners include Barack Obama, who is now busy slaughtering thousands of people by drones; Henry Kissinger, a genuine war criminal if there ever was one; Andrei Sakharov, father of the Russian hydrogen bomb; Simon Peres, political father of Israel’s nuclear arsenal; Menachim Begin, an old Irgun terrorist with lots of blood on his hands; Al Gore, the biggest phony pitchman since Oral Roberts; and Mother Teresa, a religious zealot of questionable ethics.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

Imagine my surprise to learn that most people in the world don’t accept extrajudicial murder by governments?

And one has to say, the murdering agency here is not just any government, but a government which blubbers and drones day and night about human rights and democracy and freedom. America’s Secretary of State, just for one, has become practically a recording device playing slogans on loudspeakers as the murders go on.

It wasn’t that many years ago that the world was appalled to learn that juntas in some South American countries made thousands “disappear” by rounding them up, drugging them, and throwing their bodies out of planes over the ocean.

What America is doing – and it is doing it in half a dozen places, including Yemen and Somalia – is indistinguishable from the juntas “disappearing” citizens they didn’t like.

The word “terrorist” in this context is meaningless, serving only as an Orwellian excuse to murder those with whom you disagree and to intimidate others by the example.

It is a measure of the sheer arrogance and corruption of power that the government of the United States assumes it has a right to act in this fashion.

Of course, in this, America closely copies the brutal and unethical practices of Israel, a country which cheers them on as at a big sports event. And Israel is such an example of success, isn’t it?

None of the world’s so-called rogue states – places like North Korea or Burma – are known for this level of lawless savagery.

It is estimated recently that American drone-missile strikes, just in Pakistan, have killed 3,000 people in a few years.

The Pentagon says that “only 20%” of the dead were civilians, and that that is an acceptable level of performance.

600 civilians – over and above the 2400 targets, themselves, each and every one, legally innocent – murdered is acceptable?

But, of course, numbers on deaths coming from the Pentagon always have a large element of hazy fantasy. They murdered 3 million souls in Vietnam, and you never heard a word from them on the extent of that holocaust. All for nothing but an insane Ahab-like compulsion to kill communists.

A million or so people were killed in Iraq, America’s compulsion having changed to Muslims, but no mention of numbers there either.

You cannot have a government of laws unless you are yourself willing yourself to obey them.

When we choose not to be governed by laws, it is the powerful and psychotic who inherit the earth.
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“Iran embarks on $1b. cyber-warfare programTehran has embarked on an ambitious plan to boost its defensive cyber-warfare capabilities and is investing $1 billion in developing new technology and hiring new computer experts…”

Idiot, the most dangerous examples of cyber warfare we’ve ever seen are the Stuxnet and Flame pieces of malware.

It is even possible that Stuxnet – which escaped its intended target of Iran to spread – caused part of the nuclear plant horror in Japan by making controls unusable.

We know from analysis that these two pieces of malware were developed by the same people.

The United States and Israel are the authors.