John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“Trump Will Not Accomplish Anything Unless the Republican Party Is Destroyed

“Trumpism is not the problem, establishment conservatism is”

 

“Trump Will Not Accomplish Anything…”

For an accurate headline, you should have stopped right there.

Looking for excuses, such as the old-line Republican Party standing in Trump’s way, suggests that the author simply has not studied his subject.

Trump has proved himself a loudmouth who gets little done, loud and uncouth, uncouth because he calls everyone names, setting shabby standards for diplomacy and politics and ordinary civility.

And it’s his cowardice that has put the foreign policy of the United States into the hands of truly vicious men. He was so frightened of losing his office – in fact, something that was always an extremely remote possibility, for, as we saw in the Clinton case, impeachment is an arduous, resource-eating matter, and it is undertaken only with great reluctance – that he horse-traded for some security, and part of the price he paid was appointing vicious men unfit to hold their posts – Bolton, Pompeo, and Abrams.

He is genuinely ignorant about many important matters, but what else would you expect from someone who never, literally never, reads anything? Or ever listens to anyone, even the best experts?

He has started a major trade war with China, and he hasn’t the least idea what he is doing. He’s an illiterate in economics.

Only the other day, his public words ignored basic economic truth. He does not understand that it is the citizens of the country imposing tariffs who mainly end up paying them in the increased cost of goods.

Everything in Walmart and Costco and in every general store is going to cost more, hitting his political base hard in their pocketbooks.

And earlier, when he talked about winning trade wars and how trade wars were good things, he resembled Groucho Marx giving a lecture in economics.

His economic “policy” is to “beggar his neighbor,” and that just doesn’t work in the end. Trade is not, as they say, a zero-sum game where everything one party loses, the other party gains, and vice-versa, but Trump sure thinks that is how it works. It’s the untutored thinking of a 14-year old.

And it’s no different in anything else he’s done. Everything he touches becomes blighted.

International affairs? He’s pretty much made a fool of himself on North Korea, blunder after blunder, and in the end, the North is never going to give up all its nuclear weapons, and if they were to give up any, they’d need to receive something handsome in return. Trump offers squat and barks orders, or rather he lets Bolton and Pompeo bark the orders while he takes another stroll in the garden with Kim.

The North Koreans see their nuclear weapons as a matter of survival, and they very much are. That’s a far truer claim for North Korea than it is for Israel, which enjoys support from America’s arsenal, rather than being threatened by it. After all, the United States, during the Korean War, conducted a brutal campaign of three years of carpet-bombing which snuffed-out one-fifth of the country’s entire population, and that’s a Pentagon estimate.

America keeps a sizable, well-equipped army on the North’s border, it runs regular, large-scale, intimidating war games with the South, and it has nuclear weapons within reach at Okinawa, Japan and at Guam. Yet not the least meaningful concession was offered to North Korea in exchange for harshly demanded disarmament. Talk about arrogance and having no idea of what negotiation is?

Withdrawal from Syria? One phone call from Tel Aviv, and the idea was never heard again. And just the fact that Trump so abruptly brought the matter up, without having consulted before opening his mouth, says a great deal about him.

A coup in Venezuela, a place that is none of his business? He set a Keystone Cops example of how to do it. It would be hilarious, if it weren’t for all the Venezuelans he’s making miserable with extreme sanctions and dirty tricks like turning off their electricity.

The Wall, his red-meat offering to his political base? He hasn’t achieved anything. And Mexico was going to pay for it? The man makes very lame jokes.

Tear-up a perfectly good international treaty with Iran, a country every expert and major leader said was scrupulously following the terms? Impose harsh new sanctions on Iran for having done absolutely nothing?

And, by the way, just as in the case of Venezuela, sanctions hurt ordinary people, never leaders and elites. That’s just the way they work, always, but Trump doesn’t understand how they work any more than he understands how tariffs work.

Send in the Navy and Air Force to threaten Iran still further with war?

None of it makes an ounce of sense. He’s only doing these things because Netanyahu wants them done. So, America carries on before the entire world like an asylum full of madmen because one shabby Israeli politician, who just happens regularly to kill and steal, says it should?

There is absolutely not one genuine American national interest involved in this entire dumb show. But there sure are Trump interests, as in his building a huge war chest for the 2020 election, money from various extremely wealthy American partisans of Israel and from America’s numerous Israel Lobbies. Self before country, that’s Trump. Ego before thinking or ethics.

He doggedly served the same special interest again when he gave away what was not his to give, in Syria and in Jerusalem. In doing so, he had America breaking international laws and protocols and treaties.

Oh, he has used a lot of pretty foul language about migrants and refugees and Muslims, setting such a fine example. He likely views his ugly words as some kind of compensation offered to his political base after having failed to get anywhere with their beloved wall.

The man is close to a total failure. And from past tax returns recently obtained and analyzed by The New York Times, failure has long been a major activity for Trump. Years of being deeply in debt.

Just like lying, something he does constantly, right down to petty matters like his score when he plays golf, something recently reported by several sources who should know.

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JONATHAN COOK IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“UK Israel Lobby Adds Muscle as US Lobby Weakens

“British politics are being plunged into a stifling silence on the longest example of mass human rights abuses sanctioned by the West in modern history”

 

Worth reading, as are most things Jonathan Cook writes.

But I’m not sure I accept his notion of The Lobby’s hold in the United States weakening in any way.

Yes, there finally are a few people in Congress who speak truth for the first time ever.

But look at the choke-hold Israel has on the county, despite those minor influences.

Many of Trump’s most senior appointments are people serving Israeli interests to a record degree – Bolton, Pompeo, Abrahams, Kushner, and others.

And look at the things, not his to legally dispose of at all, that Trump has “given” Israel. It’s shocking, but there are almost no voices in the United States saying so.

And by all accounts, Trump’s big “peace plan” could have been written by members of Netanyahu’s staff. There is no pretense of working with two sides to solve a problem involving two sides.

We have matters like Trump’s “Syria withdrawal” reduced to dust under Israeli influence, for there is no other serious known interest keeping American military, illegally, in northwestern Syria.

Israel just wants instability for Syria and to deprive that state of the use of its own resources. It’s just gangsterism, but America fully goes along.

And the steady drumbeat against law-abiding Iran is becoming deafening.

There is only one interest pushing this pointlessly destructive policy, Israel with its intense desire to dominate its region and benefit from all the favor of the United States in doing so.

America’s own long-term interests all dictate that it should work to establish good relations with Iran, a major and peaceful state with many things to offer in trade and friendship, but America cannot do so under Israel’s withering influence. It just keeps flagellating itself to exhibit its reverence towards one small and extremely belligerent state.

Israel is under absolutely no threat from Iran. It’s just empty rhetoric, an excuse for itself promoting threats and belligerence.

Imagine a non-nuclear state attacking a nuclear state such as Israel, one with a sizable arsenal? One, moreover, doubly protected by America’s nuclear arsenal. It’s a darkly laughable idea, but it is never laughed at by anyone in Washington, it is only ritualistically honored and repeated.

Israel’s destructive viewpoint prevails in almost all important matters. Even much of America’s intense Russophobia reflects stoking by Israeli interests. Israel simply views Russia, without saying so publicly, as a big stumbling block to the kind of American international dominance Israel would be very happy seeing.

There is not much to be hopeful about that I see. Perhaps, if Israel keeps so grotesquely over-playing its hand, there will be a backlash in the United States. But that’s only a “perhaps.” Americans, on the whole, just go right along with things, much resembling a herd of cattle quietly grazing in a pasture while just over the distant hills, vicious armies clash and threaten their future.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

No wonder The Guardian keeps running the smarmy words of the world’s greatest a$$hole, Tony Blair, against Corbyn. You really are trying to sink his candidacy.

By the way, it really is unfair for newspapers to make political recommendations.

It’s not part of legitimate journalism, although I grant it has a long tradition.

____________________________

Israel is reported as not happy about the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn.

And it has nothing to do with “anti-Semitism,” although without a doubt that now-tired canard will be used, or suggested subtly, yet again.

It has really to do with Corbyn’s independence of mind. And I would suggest The Guardian shares this view.

Right now, much of Europe marches in lockstep with America, and America’s foreign policy allows for almost no independence of mind, especially when places like the Mideast are involved.

America’s campaign contribution system – a disgrace which has close to eliminated effective democracy in the country – is at the root of the problem.

The American Lobby for Israel – not a figment of anyone’s fetid imagination but a hard reality documented by scholarly work – is the most well-organized and financed in the country, and Congressmen and Senators listen when it speaks.

Not only are substantial contributions at risk in opposing them, but there is always the threat of the major news sources going negative on such opponents in their local constituencies. Owing to unlimited corporate mergers, now only a half dozen mega-corporations control most of what Americans read and see on television. They are all friends of Israel if you judge by their words. The situation is very much like the Rupert Murdoch situation in Britain, only more so.

That is why freshmen Congressmen all dutifully attend the free trips for “information” Israel provides after every election. Declining to go is risky indeed, for you will be marked down as “not being a friend of Israel.”

That is why the American Congress today listens to the raging nonsense of Netanyahu’s violent government against their own elected President over an important international agreement. It is a scandal almost beyond describing for the government of the world’s greatest power to behave in this way.

And that is why Jeremy Corbyn can expect some rough treatment ahead. There is no allowance for independence of mind or, for that matter, ethical standards.

Tony Blair, as most readers know, has zero independence of mind, and he appears to have been born and educated without any ethical compass. He’s proved that scores of times. And being so had its rewards: amongst other prizes that tumbled into his lap after he helped kill a million Iraqis was the Israel Peace Prize, a one million dollar thank you for a job well done.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

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

Too early to write-off direct talks?

Please.

Representatives for these “direct talks” on the Palestinian side in a sense do not even exist: Abbas’s election mandate timed out a year ago, and he stays in office under emergency measures – i..e,, he has absolutely no democratic legitimacy.

But even poor Abbas, a kind of Palestinian “step’n’fetch it” figure if ever there was one, wanted nothing to do with such talks while Israel continued stealing land. The American administration browbeat him for months, threatening him with loss of all aid, into attending.

The only genuinely elected government in any of the territories of Palestine, Hamas in Gaza, remains under Israel’s brutal blockade and imprisonment – that is, those elected representatives who were not illegally arrested by Israel or murdered in assassinations or murdered in Operation Cast Lead.

Representatives for these “direct talks” on the Israeli side are from the Netanyahu government, a group of people who have not the least interest in what any normal person would call peace. The “foreign minister” qualifies surely as a David Duke figure.

Now David Duke in the United States – former Klu Klux Klan chief and minor politician – is treated anytime in the press as a lowlife. Avigdor Lieberman is every bit the hateful racist as Duke, but he is far more poisonous, being the foreign minister he is in a position to make his hate wreck the lives of millions. Because he is an Israeli, Lieberman is treated with respect he does not deserve.

Does anyone but a madman believe anything can come out of that set of circumstances?

The only possibility is that Abbas is virtually beaten down into signing something utterly inappropriate for his people. In that case, the “agreement” won’t be worth the paper on which it is written.

This entire matter is utterly meaningless as statesmanship, it is brutal political theater, intended to please the Israel Lobby in the U.S. to get the Democrats through the mid-term elections without a catastrophic loss of campaign contributions.
_________________

The Six Day War was an elaborate black operation by Israel. It prodded the Arabs over and over with many aggressive acts into hostility, and then it attacked first.

The intention was to seize the lands not seized in 1948 with the terrors of Irgun and Stern – that is, to create Greater Israel, a self-defined concept that has always motivated Israel’s government.

The attack on the USS Liberty, a US spy ship on station in the Mediterranean, was intended to blind the US administration while General Dayan turned around his armor to attack in the North.

It was not a “mistake.” It was a deliberate two-hour attack on a well-marked ship, one moreover that Israel had been advised would be on station to guard against its ambitions.

Dayan felt that if he had the slot of time, he could achieve all Israel’s goals of conquest, and he pretty much did, presenting the world with the fait accompli whose ghastly consequences we have endured since.

It was all a neat trick, wage a lightning war of conquest while getting sympathy as little David fighting off hoards of nasty Philistines, but Israel knew from its first planning it was sure to win.

And we’ve learned since that the “little David” image is a sentimental fairy tale: Israel behaves the part brutal bully in its part of the world, attacking and terrorizing every neighbor that it has, even now threatening people a thousand miles away who have never attacked anyone.

See:
http://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/was-einstein-right/