John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“CNN Continues to Implode After RussiaHoax, It’s Much Worse Than People Realize

“They’re paying the price for lying relentlessly about the RussiaHoax, and a lot of other things”

 

CNN has always been both incompetent and dishonest.

I haven’t seen it in many years, but I can think of a number of prominent examples from the 1990s or the early 2000s.

As when it ran a truly idiotic piece of fraudulent video about Osama bin Laden’s supposed scientific laboratories in the mountain caves of Afghanistan where he was said to be developing poison agents for use as “weapons of mass destruction.”

It literally was a laughable piece of work by one intelligence outfit or another, and CNN’s using it showed no journalistic integrity or judgment at all. It was just gung-ho support for war.

Osama’s caves were, in fact, primitive, uncomfortable places of refuge and hiding, not fantastic and well-equipped places resembling scenes from Flash Gordon’s 1936 movie serial.

CNN did many such clownish stunts, and not just ones involving foreign affairs. Its work, for example, on the Richard Jewell affair, following the Atlanta Olympics bombing, was about as shabby and worthless as it comes. CNN always tried to fill airtime by spending almost no money or resources. Journalism had almost nothing to do with its activities of filling airtime and selling advertising spots, whose appeal was juiced-up with anything controversial.

For some reason, the network never was seriously attacked, as it is being attacked now, attacked for supposedly being part of the political Left, but CNN’s countless past idiocies had nothing to do with the political Left or Right. They stood on their own.

It seems that only with the failure of Special Counsel Mueller’s report to astonish anyone are CNN’s deficiencies being proclaimed, at least by a certain segment of those concerned with public affairs on the Internet. But of course, Mueller’s investigation was problematic from the start.

What Trump represented for many in America’s establishment had little to do with Russia, although the establishment’s enduring hatred of Russia provided a convenient tool for getting at him. I don’t know, but perhaps the people plotting the efforts against Trump were influenced in their choice of Russia by the fact that, long ago, Trump was helped through some of his real estate messes by Russian oligarchs extending financial assistance. It had nothing to do with politics or election campaigns.

The American public was, after all, brainwashed and harangued – in magazines, books, movies, television shows, speeches, and even prayers – about Russia for decades of the Cold War, and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, no effort was ever made to detoxify a poisoned environment. That environment remains a nurturing place for all things Russo-phobic, Russia-gate being just one example. America’s establishment wants it that way because America’s establishment hates Russia.

You do not have to be a Trump supporter or a conservative to see the fraud in Russia-gate. It has always been pretty clear from the early rhetoric of people like CIA Director John Brennan. His words were silly, and just the fact that a CIA Director would speak out in that fashion on a domestic political matter told you a big game was being played. CIA Directors simply don’t do that.

The so-called Steele Dossier lacked respectability and believability from the start, and the people who pushed it were insincere. After all, you don’t pay big fees to a private agency like Steele’s if you want reliable confidential information. What are America’s seventeen security agencies in the business of doing? Steele’s private agency resembles an international-intrigue version of a shabby, old-fashioned detective agency, manufacturing dirt for a living. Again, from the statements of various people, it was clear the FBI was involved in the big game.

Now, when senior people from the FBI and the CIA behave the way they did, it can only mean that the president himself is sitting back in approval. It could not happen otherwise. Obama had served the establishment faithfully for eight years and had been richly rewarded for doing so, leaving the White House a man worth tens of millions of dollars after having entered it as a man of fairly ordinary middle-class means.

He was serving the same interests again when Russia-gate was devised and implemented.

The Special Counsel’s Report continued the game to the end. It investigated nothing worth investigating, such as Julian Assange’s receipt of leaks or the death of Seth Rich or a number of other eyebrow-raising events, and it just assumed Russia had been at work in shadowy ways. It looked only for evidence connecting Trump to those shadowy efforts and found none.

As far as calling CNN liberal or Left because of the slant of this or that host or commentator on prospects for the Mueller Report in the months before its publication, that claim is no more accurate than CNN’s own reporting is. The hosts’ efforts were just the same cheap trick of juicing things up to sell ad spots for months and months.

The network is not from the political Left, but it has been anti-Trump. Lots of people in the political Center and even a number of traditional, sound conservatives hate Trump and regret his being in office.

And, as we saw with Obama’s CIA and FBI, some who disliked Trump tried to prevent him from ever taking office. That, of course, is a serious matter warranting investigation, but it will never happen. How can you investigate America’s establishment, the power behind the throne? It cannot be done, any more than troops in the field can investigate Pentagon brass.

Virtually the entire American corporate press in the United States has shared the same viewpoint. They are embarrassed by Trump, as they should be. But originally, and far more importantly, they feared a few things that he might attempt as a political maverick, although those are no longer a concern.

Please note that when Trump acts in the establishment’s clear interests, he is supported. And that includes very much activities against Russian and Chinese interests. For America’s establishment, Russia remains the hated thing that it was in 1952. Only the words used and the volume of the rhetoric have changed.

It cannot be overemphasized that the one country that can obliterate the United States – China not quite having arrived at that point, although it is fast approaching it with new weapons such as longer-range ICBMs – and necessarily stands in the way of America’s doing some things, is not going to be warmly embraced by a class of people trying to have their own way with everyone everywhere.

Trump has his own game that he has played, a game of survival. Whether it was ever genuine or just a vote-getter designed for segments of voters, he has abandoned entirely the role of political maverick, one who just might shake-up parts of the establishment. He has become instead its most ardent supporter. He’s noisy, rude, and gauche in the way he does it, but that’s just fine as long as he does the right things.

People will go a long way to get what they want in politics, to accommodate someone they believe will give it to them, a stunning example being Trump’s Christian fundamentalist supporters. They ignore the fact that the man is not a Christian, something usually important to evangelical Christians. They ignore his long record of immoral and treacherous behaviour with everyone from staff and business associates to his wife. They ignore his incessant lying in almost every task he undertakes. They ignore his rudeness and name-calling. They ignore his ready use of threats and violence. They ignore, in other words, much of what their own faith supposedly represents, just so that can obtain a few other things they value highly.

With the power establishment, as with any large group or organization, there are differences within their ranks, but those differences must never be confused with fundamental disagreements. When it comes to what it is that America actually represents today – maintaining or expanding its empire, conducting its colonial wars, supporting the Pentagon generously, never questioning the dirty operations of the CIA, and pursuing deep and destructive involvement in the Middle East – all individuals and parties are united and with no distinctions of liberal or conservative.

Oh, sure, Trump can still be seen as a maverick in his outbursts of outrageous language, but he cannot be seen that way in his actions. And he can be disliked for his words and manners, but words and manners aren’t what count where serious power is concerned. They can be tsk-tsked and effectively tolerated, so long as his actions are in keeping with the order of things, and with Trump, they very much are.

The Middle East remains on fire, hundreds of thousands having died and millions having been made refugees. America’s military and security services get their cups filled to overflowing. The Pentagon and CIA never had it so good. In the case of Obama’s massive extrajudicial killing enterprise with drones and missiles, for example, Trump even told the CIA that it can decide who dies. He doesn’t need to sign-off on “kill lists.” Countries like Venezuela that were under covert assault from Obama for years remain under assault, only the effort is even more intense and out in the open, as is so often the case with Trump. The mess Obama made of Ukraine remains a mess.

Some of the very people Trump has appointed, such as John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, are such loud and crude operators that they make little effort to hide what they do. They are proud of their ugly behavior, the kind of psychopathic behavior we see with serial killers keeping trophies of their victims.

The appointment of those men was directly influenced by the desires of Israel, as expressed through lobbyists and apologists in the United States to whom Trump turned for support against all the hostility he felt working against him. Israel now gets everything it asks for, including violent, unwarranted acts against Iran, and the genuine threat of war. And you don’t find Democrats opposing or criticizing any activities related to Israel. That just never happens.

And now, China very much shares in receiving hatred once mainly reserved for Russia, and that is owing to its new influence and prestige in the world, its increasing military might, its technological advances, its competitiveness, and its new associations with Russia. Those are all bad things in the eyes of people who work aggressively to tighten their hold on the world’s affairs, having experienced an unpleasant sense of impending loss through America’s relative economic decline over recent decades.

As he has amply demonstrated during his last two years in the spotlight, Trump is a loathsome man, a man without ethics or morals, a man of no principle beyond that of self-advancement, and a man without understanding in a great many matters, one who is literally at work disturbing the entire planet. But so long as he is disturbing it in ways that largely coincide with establishment interests, he is under no threat.

CNN has always been pro-establishment. Always been pro-American empire. Always been pro-Pentagon. To call it liberal or Left is absurd, but then much the same is true for any assertions about liberals and leftists in America. There are none. And when a few do appear, they are attacked tirelessly and viciously, as we see right now with a small group of junior Congresswomen.

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT ON STILL MORE LEAKS FROM FORMER BRITISH AMBASSADOR KIM DARROCH’S CONFIDENTIAL NOTES TO HIS GOVERNMENT

 

We have today yet more revelations in leaked documents written as advisory notes to the British government by Sir Kim Darroch, its recent former Ambassador to the United States.

Darroch called Trump’s tearing-up of the Iran nuclear agreement an act of “diplomatic vandalism.” Now, that is a characterization completely on the mark. It is difficult to see what anyone would even find objectionable in it, beyond the fact of its being leaked by someone unknown.

After all, every government in Western Europe and other major states like Russia and China and major world organizations publicly expressed their opposition to Trump’s rash action. All agreed that Iran had kept to its commitments and that the agreement had worked well for about four years.

Darroch went on to explain that tearing up the agreement was done to spite his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Yes, there is no question Trump has been out to destroy or undo everything that he can that was ever done by Barack Obama. He literally hates the man. We’ve seen that in a number of matters, including Obamacare.

But there is another reason for Trump’s dangerous blundering in Iran, a far more powerful one, one completely ignored by Darroch. I’ll come back to it after a few more words about Trump’s loathing for Obama.

I do believe Trump’s hatred for Obama is deeply tinged with racism. I can see no other explanation for it. There simply are no genuine liberal qualities in Obama for anyone on the political right to dislike, but there is the glaring fact of his being the first black president.

No one, examining the record of Obama’s eight years as president, can sensibly accuse him of being a liberal. In anything, except in the occasional vacuous and soon forgotten political speech. I know the Alt-right press regards Obama as a liberal, one of the most hated ever, but it’s a silly accusation from some extreme people. And that crowd, if you read through their stuff on the Internet, oozes with racism.

Obama led eight years of ugly American colonial wars, from invading Libya to getting the endless horrors of Syria going. From secretly supporting a coup to overthrow Egypt’s first-ever democratic government, one to which Israel had taken serious objection, to staging a coup against an elected government in Ukraine and pitching that country into turmoil, including civil war, all for the sake of intimidating Russia. From increasing ugly pressures on Venezuela to starting the tanks rolling up against Russia’s borders, there is no liberalism to be found in Obama’s activities abroad.

At home, we find the same thing. How can a man be regarded as liberal who passed no significant social legislation? And he did absolutely nothing to help his own people, the people to whom he appealed in the rhythms of a black preacher reciting the slogan, “Yes, we can!” He did nothing for the squalid, broken-down realities of vast stretches of urban America. His Obamacare legislation was a nasty, confusing, corporate-serving piece of work that a liberal can find just as hateful as a right-winger.

Further, Obama also did almost nothing to reform a financial system badly in need of reform, a system that had created a disastrous world-affecting financial crash. He signed off on all major military and security legislation. He actually started the shameful American system of extrajudicial killing abroad by hi-tech drone. And it was under Obama that the secretive NSA began expanding into an information-sucking monstrosity with its new constellation of secret buildings packed with super-computers and spying on literally everyone and everything.

Trump’s activities in Iran are about Israel’s interests, as they are communicated and pressed through the many channels of the American Israel lobby. Trump felt afraid and vulnerable about the future of his office at one period, and he turned to some extremely wealthy American oligarchs for support and money. These were men whose most burning concern is Israel, and several of them are on intimate terms with Netanyahu.

I am sure Trump got the support he sought, but all such support comes at a price. Trump’s price is readily seen in a whole series of acts, from putting the American Embassy into Jerusalem to recognizing Israel’s illegal annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights. From appointing a series of extremely ideologically committed men, genuinely fanatical men, like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to important posts to slashing support for a number of organizations whose work in any way supported the Palestinians.

It’s been a dramatic wave of events over a short period, and they reflect no authentic interests of the United States, and they certainly have nothing to do with Obama. They all increase tensions and hostilities and commit the United States to ignoring the rule of law. Matters in Iran are part and parcel of that activity.

Netanyahu has made years of insane claims about Iran and the security of Israel, all of them groundless, none of them supported by any evidence, and, indeed, in a number of cases, being directly contradicted by solid evidence. But he just continues his harangues and crusade against a country that has started absolutely no conflicts in its modern era, a fact, as it happens, totally the opposite of Israel’s own record of close-to continuous war.

Netanyahu has long wanted Iran to be hurt or reduced for the temerity of having some influence in the Middle East. Israel wants all of that influence with no one around to in any way oppose or question it. Netanyahu was intensely busy in just the same way during Obama’s time, but Obama ignored him, which is the only way he ever achieved the nuclear agreement.

Netanyahu also, like Trump, has a deep dislike for Obama. He showed this openly a number of times, coming close to expressions of public contempt. I assume his hatred is based on Obama’s ignoring him over Iran largely, although racism, too, could well play a role. Netanyahu’s Israel has been extremely hostile to black Jews from Africa and to black refugee claims. Netanyahu actually had a scheme to bribe some distant African states to take refugees off Israel’s hands.

At any rate, the shared distaste for Obama only makes the same years-old job of selling the threat Iran is supposed to represent, and there’s no need to sell it to those American oligarchs to whom Trump desperately turned for political help. They are onboard with about every outrageous claim Netanyahu ever made.

We should note that that nuclear agreement was signed by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and the United States – plus Germany and the European Union. They all still strongly support it, except, of course, for Donald Trump’s United States. Everyone, except Netanyahu’s Israel and Trump’s United States, agrees that it is a solid agreement and that Iran has conscientiously followed its obligations. All international technical experts and inspectors support that view too.

But along comes Trump suddenly to toss the agreement to the wind, ignoring everyone else. The only people with input and support for his rash behavior are Netanyahu and Trump’s American oligarch political supporters, close friends of Netanyahu.

Essentially, what we have is a man, Trump, who, in the interest of his campaign war chest for the 2020 election or against any attempt at his impeachment before that, is putting the entire world at risk of a serious war. He is threatening and economically crushing a law-abiding nation of more than eighty million souls for no other reason. Millions of ordinary Iranians are hurt by his severe and unwarranted sanctions. As is always the case with sanctions, they hurt mainly ordinary people. They are a blunt instrument, much like massive bombing.