JOHN CHUCKMAN

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY NATALIE NOUGAYREDE IN THE GUARDIAN

Response to another reader’s comment:

Merkel is indeed a disaster.

Across the board, in every major area of policy.

And the main reason for that is that she is a slavish follower of American policy, exactly as is Natalie Nougayrède in her own way.

And American policy today is the most destructive by any major power in many decades, indeed, since the pre-WWII world.

America’s establishment feels things slipping away, and it reacts by being hyper-aggressive, trying to secure their control of affairs.

The world is unquestionably moving towards a multi-polar reality, and the American establishment – which had after WWII the world as its oyster, so to speak – does not want to accept the growing new reality of its relative diminishment.

That is the basis of the ghastly policies which have given us 15 years of Neocon Wars as America’s establishment seeks to hold onto “full-spectrum dominance” everywhere that counts.

Weak leaders in Europe – Merkel, Hollande, Sarkozy, Cameron, Blair – have greatly assisted in this effort.

I almost think Merkel still thinks as an old East German, fearful of Soviet power and eternally grateful to the United States for being there. She is utterly blind to what America does today, accepting, for example, with never a whimper of opposition horrible things like America’s proxy war in Syria.

And to show she actually has a kind heart, she accepts the floods of refugees created by the very policy she has accepted. It might all have been prevented by a real statesman standing up to the United States years ago.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

There are at least two reasons for this provocation by Turkey.

ISIS has been financing itself by stealing Syrian oil and selling it to Turkey at a discount.

Putin’s recent heavy bombardment of the trucks and facilities involved undoubtedly irritates Erdogan, and I believe his own son is involved in this whole operation.

The second reason for this is that it was meant to put a stop to a genuine anti-ISIS coalition.

When I say “genuine,” I mean one which actually targets the terrorists – as Russia is doing – and not one which targets Syria and effectively protects ISIS, which is the pattern of America’s efforts, the ones supported by a disingenuous David Cameron.

Turkey is the last country wanting a genuine coalition since it is a major supporter of ISIS. It uses those murderous thugs against both the Kurds Erdogan so hates and of course against the government of Syria, a reasonable government which opposes some of Erdogan’s fetid dreams of empire.

Of course, in any matter involving Erdogan, there is always the sheer fact of his mental instability as an explanatory variable. This man who built himself a grotesque, one thousand-room palace recently, makes contradictory statements on important matters every few days, and hates some groups like the Kurds with an intense white heat is a genuinely erratic and unstable man.

It’s all a dirty business, and the only honest major player is Putin. Cameron, Obama, Erdogan, and Netanyahu are outright liars and supporters of terror. They are also guilty of supporting criminal invasion of a peaceful country. Hollande was with them but has been wavering.

The various words by American Defense Secretary Ash Carter over recent time sound just like something from Dr. Strangelove, full of dark threats and anger over America’s dirty plans being thwarted by Putin.

If what these people were doing in Syria was honorable and acceptable to public opinion, why do they keep lying and hiding what they are doing?

There is no doubt Turkey’s act was premeditated. If the plane was in Turkish airspace, it would have been only for seconds over the point of land which sticks down into Syria.

You do not shoot someone for that, especially when it is well known what they are doing.

The plane crashed 4 kilometers inside Syria.

And we have the surviving pilot saying there was no warning at all.

In the end, I very much believe Erdogan will regret this rash act. Already, Russia is building a no-fly zone in the area.

The missile cruiser Moskva is to be stationed in the area with instructions to attack threats.

Putin is also putting the S-400 anti-aircraft system, the world’s most formidable, at the Russian base.

Still further, fighters will accompany all bombers now.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

Once again, here is an article of which The Guardian, so long as it pretends to genuine journalism, should be ashamed.

Contrary to the completely uninformed words of the article, Putin does not work to keep “the West off-balance.” He is keen to cooperate and work together with Europe and America, as he has demonstrated many, many times. Do you not see the ugly, needless throwback-to-the-Cold War implications of the language used in this article about Putin versus the West?

Putin is cautious – combined with a keen intelligence and decisiveness – this makes him the likely most superb leader in the world today.

Any reader of character can see that Cameron, Hollande, and Obama are missing some of these qualities in various proportions. Cameron virtually comes off as a Music Hall parody of a Prime Minister making overly-pompous pronouncements and demands while Hollande cannot rise above the role of limp-shouldered provincial school master. Obama is an ambitious blunderer who only plays official spokesperson for the Pentagon and CIA. None of that is Putin’s fault.

Putin waited a long time before entering Syria, and when he did so it was under the invitation of what remains the only legitimate government, no matter what Cameron or Obama assert in strained words. That government is a legitimate ally of Russia’s and is entitled to assistance against terrorist forces introduced and armed by third parties. But even now, Putin’s natural caution sees Russia working only with air and missile forces with the Syrian Army doing the fighting under them.

Now that he has made the decision, he gives it the effort it deserves. And while I hate war, much as Jeremy Corbyn does, I cannot help seeing Putin as a courageous and right-thinking figure. He stands a good chance of bringing the horrors of Syria to an end. He works towards peace and stability while America’s public record for years now is almost non-stop war and deceit.

And all the phony mainline press stories and all the dumb statements from the ridiculous man who heads NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, and all the Pentagon threats and name-calling cannot change that. Newspapers running such propaganda only reduce themselves in the minds of thoughtful people to being the modern equivalents of the old Soviet apparatchiks constantly generating bone-headed propaganda no one could possibly believe.

Putin fights only the same terrorists that The Guardian and every other mainline newspaper have screamed about now for several years, giving great publicity to their beheadings and other atrocities, although your effort now to question Putin’s motives does make me question your previous motives. It was so easy to run stories about the gruesome horrors of ISIS while doing nothing about it, wasn’t it? Indeed, you claimed the satisfaction, along with that silly puff-ball of a Prime Minister, David Cameron, of morally pooh-poohing ISIS while remaining secretly satisfied with the dirty work it did to destroy Syria. And all the publicity and pompous speeches just happened to play comfortably into supporting the shameless and continuous stream of Islamophobia with which we’ve been inundated in Europe and America since 9/11.

Nothing could be more hypocritical and completely dishonest.

Yet again, the horrors of Syria have nothing to do with Assad. He started nothing. And such horrors as use of chemical weapons had nothing to do with him. And they certainly have nothing to do with Mr. Putin. The people responsible for the deaths of a quarter million, countless atrocities, and the piteous streams of refugees are Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar working under the auspices and complete approval of the United States and its brutal Middle East colony, Israel.

That group of nations wants Syria reduced to the same kind of divided, helpless mess as Iraq – a bleeding body left on the ground with its limbs hacked off – but they don’t want to take direct responsibility for the criminal assault, as America and Britain did, often to their regret, in Iraq.

You, The Guardian, only effectively work to continue the horror by publishing dishonest stuff, but I’m sure I waste my breath on senior editors who already know much of what I’ve said. Now, for general readers I’ll only say that if this is what appears in a paper of The Guardian’s traditional liberal and non-corporate reputation, you can only imagine what garbage is regularly strewn over the pages of The Times, The Telegraph, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. It is extremely difficult for ordinary people to get even a glimpse of truth through a phalanx like that defending brutal government deceit. And that is just what is intended.