John Chuckman

COMMENT TO A RE-PUBLISHED ARTICLE BY THE LATE ROBERT PARRY IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

 

“More Second Amendment Madness”

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/08/10/more-second-amendment-madness/

 

“… false notion that the Framers of the U.S. Constitution incorporated the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights so an armed population could fight the government that the Framers had just created.”

 

The historical truth in a nutshell.

However, when you are dealing with fanatics and ideologues – literally, adherents of a secular religious cult such as American Patriotism – truth has about the same impact as pointing out the absurdity of Lot’s wife or Noah’s Ark or Jonah and the whale or the loaves and the fishes.

There is a fundamental divide in human beings when it comes to matters of belief, and especially intensely-held and fear-forged beliefs. Rational argument, evidence, and logic all get tossed, rejected vehemently because they conflict with what the adherent wants to believe, the adherent perhaps not even fully conscious about why it is he or she so desperately wants to believe.

It is just a fact that an awful lot of Americans want guns. They have paranoid fears, and guns make them feel more secure. They are conditioned by a national history and mythology literally built around the importance of guns, in everything from the frontier and cowboys and cavalry and Rough Riders to Prohibition and threats of communism and terror. And today’s vast American military and empire only provide a constant reinforcing sense of how important guns are in the affairs of state.

This issue is one of those which mark the limits of human rationality.

Considering that we are descendants of animals related to chimpanzees, it perhaps really should not surprise anyone.

Just think of how charming and appealing a chimpanzee can be with its big eyes and smile and stunts and remarkably human child-like intelligence.

And yet we now know from long and careful studies in the wild that part of the chimps’ basic behavior includes clans marching out for surprise attacks on neighboring chimp clans, fracturing skulls and driving the living from their homes and food supply. Sound familiar?

The problem around guns and violence in America is the country’s existing form of government. What the early government, so admirable in high school civics textbooks, began morphing into not many years after its creation.

You have an aristocratic, imperial form of government, itself hostile and belligerent to so many things in the world. It governs an empire built on violence, both inside the continental United States and outside in its possessions abroad.

It is truly incapable of dealing with many domestic matters. It is not really interested or concerned, except for a brief show of mollifying speeches to constituents and meetings after some terrible mass killing. Then it’s back to business as usual.

America’s government responds to money and power, and not to ideas or ideals or human appeals. It pretty much lets “the people” continue in whatever unpleasant social situations they find themselves – violence, injustice, lack of medical care, poor public schools, immense poverty – while it wheels and deals in the lives of still other people living abroad.

Just think about it. What could you actually expect at home from the kind of politicians who created Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and dozens of coups and blockades and interventions, killing and maiming millions? Hurling millions from their homes as desperate refugees? Refugees then often despised and ridiculed by the very same politicians? That, sadly, characterizes the very fabric of American government.

The kind of politicians who tolerate, and even praise as “restrained,” the behavior of Israel at Gaza where it literally ambushes unarmed crowds, week after week after week, demonstrating for rights? And the kind of politicians who continue arming Israel, heavily, even in violation of their own “showcase” laws concerning the use of exported American weapons?

No, you cannot expect much at home from a government displaying that kind of behavior abroad.

And, no, you cannot possibly have rational gun laws in the domestic chaos of jurisdictions that is American society. Where any one local jurisdiction even tries – as in some cities responding to their desperate residents – it is surrounded by a sea of gun-running and legal sales from neighboring jurisdictions. It can achieve nothing, except providing the true Patriot fanatics with yet another example of how gun control fails, something for them to smirk at.

Gun control must be national, but what are the chances of that in America?

_______________________

Response to another comment who used the term ‘snowflake’ to describe the concerns of Consortium News with guns:

 

Truly, for those aware of the realities of history, few expressions are more devoid of meaning than “rights.”

It remains a favorite American refrain, but it is about as meaningful as “privacy” is today with the NSA and intrusive corporate internet monopolies.

Such words resemble those of a child about Santa Claus.

Talk about “snowflake.”

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/04/12/john-chuckman-comment-a-few-observations-on-the-idea-of-rights/

 

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/john-chuckman-essay-the-illusion-of-rights/

 

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ALEX KRAINER IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“I Wrote a Book Exposing Bill Browder’s Deceptions Because He Could Trigger a Major War With Russia

“Having experienced, first-hand, a vicious war in Yugoslavia, caused by the same kind lying Browder engages in, this author felt he had to speak up.”

 

https://russia-insider.com/en/i-wrote-book-exposing-bill-browders-deceptions-because-he-could-trigger-major-war-russia/ri24782

 

This is a well-written piece. I hope it stimulates people to read the book.

“Today most westerners seem ready to believe that Putin is a tyrant, that he routinely has critics and political rivals assassinated, that he amassed a vast personal fortune and that he runs Russia as his own personal fiefdom.”

Yes, and why is that? Our newspapers and broadcasts are larded with negative stuff about Russia all the time. I can’t recall a time recently seeing a good story about Russia, a huge country with all kinds of diverse and interesting things going on. Some of the stories reach frightening levels of paranoia, as this, following, not long ago in The Guardian (I could cite many more from that truly threadbare excuse for a newspaper, but this one marks a peak in their relentless efforts):

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-pravda-atta/

When it isn’t actual accusations of some unproved event, such as Theresa May’s weird Skripal Affair, it is just a clear assumption and tone that our press – always following our dishonest politicians as closely as baby ducks imprinted to waddle behind their mothers – is speaking about a country that is somehow “other,” a country that doesn’t operate by the same rules good old America does.

But it really shouldn’t surprise anyone who has a little history and who observes and thinks about things.

First, we must always remember that America waged a 24 hour-a-day internal propaganda war for decades on the subjects of Russia and communism. The FBI worked tirelessly on the subject, as did the CIA, and the press simply was constantly putting attitudes and perspectives “out there” instead of news or facts.

I still remember, as a young man in my home town of Chicago, when Lyndon Johnson first started committing men towards what would literally become an American-created holocaust in Vietnam, seeing a disturbing editorial in one of the more “liberal” papers in the city, the Chicago Sun-Times – liberal, that is, only by comparison with something like the Chicago Tribune, an unrelenting advocate for all things on the extreme Right. The editorial was headlined, I still remember, “The Reds Are at the Gates!”

Well, decades of that kind of stuff does leave some toxic residue, even after the world has changed. That’s why Germany carried on a long and intense campaign against Nazism after the Hitler years. But voraciously anti-Russia, anti-communist America never has made any effort to expunge the memories and results of the likes of J. Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles and James Jesus Angleton.

And, today, America’s establishment has new reasons for not doing so and indeed for re-igniting the old fires. It is determined to dominate the globe and force advantages from other nations as a means of avoiding its inevitable relative economic decline and the future change in political influence that that entails. The Neocon Wars in the Middle East have been only one part of an effort in many directions and through many means, including threats and sanctions and coups and attacking international organizations of every description.

Russia and China, naturally enough, are seen as barriers against this intense new effort, but Russia’s geography, touching, as it does, America’s unofficial satrapy of Europe and with proximity to the Middle East containing America’s much-privileged colony of Israel, plus its capacity to literally obliterate the United States, make it the greatest target of establishment hate. Russia today and a number of other states welcome a coming multi-polar world. America’s establishment regards it only with fear and loathing.

America has done nothing now abroad but bomb and kill people for over a decade and a half. I don’t know the actual number of deaths – American sources are very coy about how many people they kill, as we learned in the First Gulf War where the number of Iraqis killed was never offered, although we know it was huge with B-52s dropping full loads on sand forts in the desert – but I’m sure the total comes in at no less than two million.

They’ve destroyed, or attempted to destroy, a number of societies – Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and others. And they work away at threatening and manipulating still others, everywhere from Iran to Venezuela or Nicaragua. They also tolerate atrocities by Saudi Arabia and Israel, and, to somewhat a lesser extent, by Egypt, because those governments serve and support their overall purpose. Browbeaten governments like Britain and France work as willing helpers while constantly misrepresenting to their own people what it is they actually are doing, as with the cutthroats of ISIS or al Nusra in Syria, whom they have supported and assisted.

And then there are the millions of desperate refugees created by all that destruction, so many they nearly destabilized Europe, and discussion of refugees in the United States, in its politics and in some popular culture, has turned into a national festival of hate, as though refugees did nothing but rob and rape and kill. And I am not exaggerating in the least.

Trump has been a keen promoter of these views and attitudes, but his words do not go out to an unreceptive audience. There are large portions of American society very receptive to such stuff, just as they are receptive to crude stuff about Russia.

And, of course, we have a hi-tech state-operated extrajudicial killing machinery that carries on day and night murdering people no one even knows anything about. The victims are selected by the very folks doing the killing, the thugs and psychopaths at the CIA. And when I say “victims” I’m not even referring to the many innocents killed in the explosions of Hellfire missiles, deemed as “collateral damage,” I’m referring to the targets themselves, victims in every sense of the word, people condemned to be burned alive with no charges or lawyer or trial or rights of any kind.

Now, while all that inhumanity and brutality from their own government goes on, you would be hard put to find large numbers of Americans who know much about it. Their press and politicians never directly speak in such terms. Everything reported is couched in euphemism or they just recite downright lies. And there is the fact that Americans often take very little interest in what is going on abroad – in part because America is itself such a large and noisy and dynamic and time-consuming society. But it is an attitude which very much assists the government in its great volume of dirty work. Surprisingly few people abroad I think appreciate this important fact.

When George Bush was running for president, he once bragged and laughed over telling people he never read the international section of his newspaper. It was the kind of stupid joke you expect from a very stupid man, but the anecdote is notable in that Bush felt very comfortable in making it while appealing for votes. The irony of the presidency now being an office having more to do with events abroad (in the imperial wars and manipulations of others around the world) than events at home is lost on many Americans. Their attitudes are extremely naïve.

There is also the tendency in people – especially people with strong ideological beliefs as many Americans have, which work to insulate the mind against outside influence, exactly the way strong religious beliefs do – to not really see what they are looking at. The best example of many I could cite, is Israel’s current relentless slaughter of unarmed marchers in Gaza. Organized gangs of snipers behind fences, week after week, shoot into crowds of people demonstrating for some rights. Something like 18,000 have been injured and something like 180 killed in cold blood, including women and children and even well-marked medics. Yet, Americans see this atrocity and cling to the narrative that Israel is only defending itself from terror, even showing “restraint,” and their press and politicians faithfully work hard to reassure them of that.

Of course, all of this stresses the importance of the press abroad, Russia’s being extremely important today because the press in American-dominated places like Britain and France reads and sounds a great deal like the press in America, mostly making the same assumptions and promoting the same narratives. It is actually quite a distressing phenomenon to anyone seeking decent information or even a little different perspective on events.

No critically-minded person automatically accepts the truth of everything in the Russian press either. Russia has its own efforts at persuasion and motives for evasion at times, but on many international issues it is clear that some valid information is supplied by Russia. That can be confirmed in many ways, from the voices of truly independent, respectable journalists to the rare authoritative voice speaking out from within a country such as Britain or the United States.

And even where it cannot be confirmed, the time-honored analytical technique of comparing what two very different sources, like the United States and Russia, claim about a story can be quite helpful in revealing roughly where the truth is. After all, that’s precisely what judges and juries in our courts do all the time. It is a valid technique, but you must have that other side of the story to use it.

If you are someone in the United States or Britain, say, who relies, day-in, day-out, on some single news source such as CBS or The Washington Post or the BBC or The Guardian, I can absolutely assure you, at least on the matters discussed here, that you are misinformed.

That’s a sad reflection on our Western society, with its claims to Enlightenment and humanitarian principles, but I can’t think of another broad statement that is any truer. The motives for deception and the size of the stakes for doing so rise tremendously with the dirty work of empire and aggression, the very work in which the American government is now engaged full-time.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO A VIDEO ARTICLE BY JONATAN FREEDLAND IN THE GUARDIAN

 

More propaganda from Jonathan Freedland – there really is no other word to adequately describe this verbal output short of an unfortunate bout of severe verbal diarrhea.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, Trump has said or advocated is not being done already in other places.

Immigrants? Look to your own Prime Minister for inspiration. He plainly just does not want them. Then look to Israel which takes only one kind of immigrant and no other. Walls? Israel has them going up in a number of places, and various states of Europe are building strong fences.

And speaking of immigrants, we have a flood of refugees today which is why fences are going up in Europe.

Why is that? Because America, Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia five years ago make a decision they had no right to make: to seek to destroy the government of Syria and hurtle that beautiful, historic land into chaos, sending millions running for their lives.

There is no other explanation for the horrors we see than geopolitics over humanity and human rights and, yes, even democracy, because Assad has popular support in Syria and is a defender of religious rights.

And America, in consultation with Israel, has made what can only be termed Hitlerian decisions more than once, destroying a well-run society in Libya and utterly devastating Iraq.

And poor Egypt, finally free of a hideous dictatorship after thirty years, was quickly turned around, its young democracy destroyed, and is back saddled with dictatorship. Why? Bottom line is that Israel detested the democratic government of Egypt.

All of this was to create a cordon sanitaire for Israel and to eliminate rulers who looked to their own countries’ interests rather than toe the line of America’s authoritarian policies.

And what can we say of the country for whose benefit so much of this horror was launched? It builds walls everywhere, and on other people’s land. It destroys houses that have stood for centuries. It regularly just helps itself to parcels of other people’s land. It holds thousands as prisoners. It holds five million or so effectively in bondage with no rights, no votes, and no future.

This is what Mr Freedland effectively is defending.

It is simply a fact that Israel’s government intensely dislikes Donald Trump because it sees him as an independent decision-maker, and it is simply a fact that apologists for Israel now all work hard to bad mouth Trump. You can see it in American publications and in British publications like The Guardian, ranging from subtle to vitriolic attacks.

I actually dislike being put in the position of being a defender for Trump because he does not represent most of my views, but I do believe he could bring a desperately-needed fresh approach to foreign affairs. Sometimes it takes a bastard to get a vital job done.

As for Hillary, she is nothing less than a blood-soaked goddess of war, and Ted Cruz is a dishonest, insincere, and intensely unlikable man who frequently sounds like a salesman for Israel Bonds. You want more stupid war and destruction and refugees, you vote for either of them.

Trump may well prove an important agent of change, ushering the world into a new, more promising era, but of course the unspoken agenda for so many attacking him is that they like things just as they are. It is very much at least worth a try.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ANNE PERKINS IN THE GUARDIAN

 

“When terror strikes, do something useful…”

I am sorry, Anne Perkins, but your words are meaningless because we live surrounded with almost constant terror today.

And I do not mean (the still comparatively rare) events such as Brussels.

Look at what the poor people in beautiful Syria have endured for five years.

That is terror on a scale which dwarfs Brussels or Paris, yet I don’t read writers such as you saying anything about it.

Perhaps non-Europeans don’t count?

That serious terror in Syria is the work of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and America, with Britain and France sitting on the sidelines applauding.

How about the horrors in Libya? A decent society smashed for no good reason and never a tear shed.

There’s the grotesque situation now in Ukraine, induced entirely by the United States.

How about the horrors in Yemen as David Cameron’s friends in Saudi Arabia bomb women and children?

And there’s the absolutely pitiless situation in Gaza?

Terror is everywhere, but the mainline press only describes as terror those relatively few and smaller-sized events in Europe or America.

I believe that our quiet acceptance of what is taking place in the world on a grand scale actually makes our journalists morally unfit to comment upon such events as Brussels. At any rate, it leaves them totally lacking in crucial facts around such events, and writing without facts is a perilous business indeed.

So long as our governments either engage in, or tolerate, the terrible things now going on in half a dozen places, there is likely to be no end to what are essentially “blowback” events like Brussels.

You stop terror by stopping your own share of it.

Are you listening, David Cameron, friend and supplier to King Salman for instance?

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO A COLUMN IN THE GUARDIAN BY PAUL MASON

 

Paul, if you are aware of even one week in human history when the world was not awash with hatred, please let me know.

We are nothing but chimpanzees with larger brains, and, as we know, modern studies of those cute and appealing creatures have demonstrated them as being quite vicious and murderous.

I don’t know what Mein Kampf returning to Germany has to do with anything serious or dangerous, but just bringing it up and associating it with some other larger events demonstrates bias.

This is a tedious, antiquated book which would not even be understood by many today. There is no magical mumbo-jumbo in this book to capture people’s minds.

It is a threat to no one except in some imaginations.

But ignorance very much is a threat to all of us.

The book is of interest to scholars and historians, so why shouldn’t it be available?

Indeed, in Hitler’s day, the book became a kind of social token, much like the Bible, with nice editions being presented as gifts on marriages or birthdays.

Virtually no one ever read it then, just as few read the Bible today.

And, if you want a written record of bloodshed, injustice and hatred, you would have a mighty hard time doing better than the Old Testament.

It was Hitler’s strange brooding personality and gift for fiery live speech that gave him any appeal, but we should always remember he never got more than 37% of the vote in free elections.

He was appointed Chancellor by the ancient President von Hindenburg trying to save his county from chaos in the streets.

After that, Hitler seized power through a series of dark operations, such as the Reichstag Fire, which together amounted to a coup.

Why had the streets of Germany become such a mess that Hindenburg, an old school German officer, appointed someone he genuinely didn’t like?

Because the fine, liberal-spirited government, known as the Weimar Republic, which arose in Germany after WWI was allowed to fall to pieces by Western interests. It wasn’t helped in its many serious problems.

We see such patterns today, but not in the places you may think. We see it in Syria where a tolerant and reasonably fair government is under savage attack by foreigner-subsidized lunatics.

We see it in Libya where America and others decided to destroy a man who once ran his state reasonably well.

We see it in Egypt where absolute government has returned.

We see it in Iraq, a once prosperous country with a growing middle class which undoubtedly would have become democratic eventually, left to its own devices.

None of these events were normal and a result of internal forces.

They all involve external interference and manipulation, the chief players being the United States and its associates in the region.

Now, there’s the real concern for thoughtful people who want peace and justice.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“… ISIS ideology stretches ‘deep into Muslim society…”

What a complete ass Tony Blair is.

First, he knows nothing about Muslim society, but that fact doesn’t stop him from making sweeping observations.

Second and most important, ISIS itself is an artificial construct, as the duplicitous Blair well knows. It includes many Westerners, even special forces under cover from several nations. It is supported and armed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and America. It is led by people associated with Western powers. It cannot be therefore an accurate representation of anything about Muslims.

Third, it is really important to remember that the Muslim world has been treated horribly in recent years, country after country having been attacked or destabilized by America and smarmy allies like Tony Blair. There is a wealth of abuse and grievances behind the decision of any young man who does join such an organization.

Drones are killing people in half a dozen countries.

Syria is under terrible attack from outside.

Yemen is under attack by the absolute monarch of Saudi Arabia.

Libya is in a shambles.

Iraq is a broken rump state.

Egypt is back to a dictatorship.

Israel, as usual, abuses millions with no one even taking serious notice.

And the religion of more than a billion people is almost daily maligned in our press, as you have done in publishing Tony Blair’s malign musings.

John Chuckman

COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

Why does The Guardian quote a man like Ash Carter saying absolutely nothing?

This is puke tossed from high places, so much so that it is almost comic but for the deadly serious underlying facts.

All thinking people who keep informed on world affairs know it is America putting the world increasingly at risk.

Good God, America has killed millions in the last half century in many pointless wars and interventions.

And the entire, insane war on terror is largely its responsibility, a result of its arrogant and terribly unjust policies in the Middle East for decades.

Russia is a civilized and relatively peaceful country by comparison.

And all of today’s disasters – Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Palestine – are either America’s direct doing or benefit from America’s cooperation and support.

And virtually every tyrant we see – Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Turkey – has America’s blessings.

This is propaganda so completely twisted from truth, it resembles a bad dream.

______________________

Response to a reader referring to MH-17:

Yes, one of America’s “keyhole” satellites was overhead at the time of MH-17 being shot down.

These satellites have cameras comparable to the Hubble Space Telescope plus many other technologies of observation.

The Russians knew this of course, and they said so very early.

But not one scrap of data was ever submitted to investigators by America.

Clearly, there was a cover-up of MH-17’s downing to protect America’s infant coup-government in Ukraine.

And the pathetic Dutch, under America’s thumb, worked a year to produce a report containing nothing but the bits we already knew.

And in this case in Egypt, after days we have idiots asserting what happened with no evidence.

_____________________

If it was a bomb – and it is very premature to say it was – a strong suspect would be Israel’s secret service.

ISIS has no capacity for doing this on its own. Since ISIS and al-Nusra are very much doing Israel’s (and America’s) work in Syria, Israel’s displeasure with Putin is important.

Israel, as we know from many past events including in Iran, has often used timed explosive devices.

____________________________

 

Response to a comment from another reader:

Your words reveal you as one of the pathetic boys who diligently search internet sites for discussions in which Israel is mentioned, and then post crap like this, being paid so much a line for the work.

I know perfectly well “ISIS” claimed credit. So what?

Indeed, ISIS is in part an Israeli creation.

Ever note how ISIS never attacks Israel in any way, which is exactly what such a wild-eyed bunch would do, were they authentic. They are frauds, mercenaries supplied and paid by America, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to destroy Syria.

Now, Israel has used time bombs countless times, so involvement in the Russian airline downing would be nothing new. It used MEK members in Iran to murder a number of scientists with timed car bombs.

These ugly practices of Israel’s go all the way back to the Lavon Affair in 1954, when it was caught red-handed planting bombs in in Egypt. Even before, in 1946, there was the King David Hotel atrocity killing about a hundred people, the work of a Jewish terror group headed by Menachem Begin, a future prime minister. And need I remind readers yet again of Israel’s deliberate attack on an American surveillance ship, the USS Liberty, to cover up illegal activities in the Sinai during the 1967 War?

Yet another well-known example of deception involved President Reagan’s bombing of Gadhafi. That was the direct result of fake transmissions originating in Israel which succeeded in fooling the U.S. into attacking Gadhafi over his presumed guilt for an attack in Europe against American soldiers, something never proved, by the way, although innocents like Gadhafi’s young son died for it.

Israel also tried this dirty trick around the time of the sarin poison gas use in Syria. There were fake transmissions trying to make the Syrian Army look responsible for the attack in the hope America would bomb Assad, but in this case the truth became known in a timely fashion. It was the very terrorist forces Israel is known to support who used poison gas in Syria, gas perhaps supplied by Israel.

No one who criticizes such dirty work is guilty of hating anyone or anything except a government which behaves very much like that of the old Soviet Union.

People like you have pretty close to succeeded in making the term “anti-Semite” meaningless by using it dozens of times a day against people you don’t even know. For all you know, this writer could be Jewish.

How appallingly ignorant you are, and that is a pure fact and not name-calling.

People such as you are succeeding also in speeding the day when Israel collapses, again much like the Soviet Union, by trying to maintain a state built on endless injustice thickly coated with lies.

__________________________________

FOOTNOTE: A MUCH LATER STATEMENT FROM THE MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER AS QUOTED IN “SOUTHFRONT”

 

“WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?”: MALAYSIAN PM SLAMS MH17 INVESTIGATION AS NOT IMPARTIAL AND POLITICALLY MOTIVATED

 

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that the investigation into the 2014 crash of the Malaysia Airlines-operated Boeing in Ukraine was not conducted in an impartial manner, but was rather focused on simply pinning the blame on Russia for political reasons.

“For some reasons, Malaysia was not allowed to check the black box to see what happened. We don’t know why we are excluded from the examination but from the very beginning, we see too much politics in it and the idea was not to find out how this happened but seems to be concentrated on trying to pin it to the Russians. This is not a neutral kind of examination,“ the prime minister said, as quoted by the Malaysian National News Agency.

“They are accusing Russia but where is the evidence? We know the missile that brought down the plane is a Russian type missile, but it could also be made in Ukraine. You need strong evidence to show it was fired by the Russians, it could be by the rebels in Ukraine, it could be Ukrainian government because they too have the same missile”.

Both Malaysia and Russia were excluded from partaking in the investigation.

If one translates the recent remarks by the Malaysian prime minister from diplomatic language to direct speech, we see that he stated that Malaysia has little doubts that the MH17 was intentionally shot down by the Ukrainian government. He also points out that the side controlling the JIT and thus the investigation is concealing the criminals, hiding data, and limiting the participation of third parties in the ‘international’ investigation.

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

While the Klu Klux Klan is a nasty and rather ridiculous organization, as a source of evil in today’s world it is minuscule, almost non-existent.

They were once a true national organization in America, as was the NAZI-like Bund organization, but today they are few in few places and virtually unseen.

It seems to me almost a distraction from our many far more terrible events in the world to spend time on what today is a kind of goofy club for people with various degrees of mental problems.

Actually, it might be said that the modern KKK almost serves a slightly beneficial purpose in bringing such people together into one organization rather than let them all go their various ways, and that organization today is thoroughly penetrated by government agents, a task the creepy FBI of J. Edgar Hoover in his heyday scrupulously avoided. After all, Hoover wouldn’t even employ black agents.

On the measure of threats, the KKK today is close to non-existent.

Hate and twisted minds will never cease to be until science either re-engineers the human brain or replaces it with robots.

You must always take account of perspective in such social phenomena. America’s militarized local police alone kill between 1,000 and 1,500 citizens every year, injuring several times that number.

Americans murdering Americans has ranged over recent decades between 25 and 40 thousand each year. By the way, roughly half of that murder is black-on-black in America’s dreadful ghettos.

The President of the United States signs off regularly now on death-squad killings. Thousands have died this way with no charges, no trial, and no voice, drones and computer operators being the only difference from the old Argentine junta dropping people out of helicopters.

America killed more than a million people in Iraq and pretty much destroyed one of the Mideast’s most advanced and promising lands. It would have become a true democracy before too long under prosperity and a growing middle class. Today it is divided wreck.

America and its friends have created a living hell in Syria by supplying, training, and infiltrating lunatic factions into a beautiful and once relatively peaceful land, killing 200,000 and seeing millions of refugees created, refugees they do not even try to help.

Libya is a flaming wreckage today thanks to America and its spineless European associates.

And only four decades ago, America walked away from a true holocaust it created in Vietnam, 3 million dead from napalm and carpet bombing and fragment bombs and land mines and countless tons of Agent Orange.

Its blundering interference in Cambodia saw a neutral government fall and another million innocents die in the Killing Fields.

America’s quasi-colony in the Middle East just killed 2,200 people including about 500 children using American weapons, and that after a previous slaughter of about 1,200, and still they blockade the poor survivors and make weekly threats.

There are many more statistics I could cite, but truly the KKK is about as important as slipping on a banana peel as a source of genuine danger.

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

There simply is no doubt that this terrible set of events was “engineered” by the United States, and blame for the bloodshed belongs ultimately to Americans.

Much of what the press blithely calls “Arab Spring” started with Dick Cheney and the Neocons and the CIA, with Israel cheering while looking on, laying out an ambitious long-term program to disturb all the balance in the Middle East.

There was a huge budget appropriation created, hundreds of millions of dollars, at the time, and likely more secret funds provided.

Naturally, the aim was to disturb things in Israel’s favor, although, in many details as things have played through, it has not always gone that way.

The Syrian situation is especially flagrant with Israel and the U.S. having supplied arms to discontented groups – what country does not have these to one degree or another? – and Turkey agreeing to provide the same kind of safe refuge for rebels that parts of Pakistan supply to Afghan fighters.

The Russians are right to oppose this kind of massive covert effort to overturn the governments with which they are friendly.

The U.S. and Israel are total hypocrites here, yapping about democracy when they couldn’t care less about democracy so long as the next government is without Assad.

What kind of democracy do you see in Iraq? In Afghanistan? In Bahrain? In Yemen” In Saudi Arabia? Or in Libya, where American forces killed hundreds of people directly?

The United States itself is so full of dissidents, unhappy minorities, and far-out kooks, you could find hundreds of thousands, including Aryan Nation folks, Militia types, Millenialists, Separatists, down-at-the-heel minorities, and general discontents.

And if you were so inclined, you could secretly heavily arm these extremists and minorities and unbalanced types with guns and explosives and intelligence and fill them with propaganda.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be that difficult to get riots and revolts going in many places.

But all you have to do is look back to the black urban revolts of the 1960s and later to see what would happen. That’s when the National Guard shot hundreds in the streets, and no one said a word about democracy.

All such killing by governments is unacceptable, but it is even more unacceptable that far-away governments would cynically set such violence in motion and sit smiling contentedly, occasional interrupting their perverse pleasure with histrionic speeches about democracy and human rights.

Recall, please, the United States cynically killed maybe a million people in Iraq, and it had nothing to do with democracy. It gave the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s several billion dollars’ worth of arms to kill Russians. It killed tens of thousands itself in Afghanistan without a sign of democracy. It cynically caused some of the Kurds to revolt in Kissinger’s day, resulting in their mass slaughter. It kills in Pakistan, Yemen, Bahrain, and other places, and democracy has nothing to do with it. And it carried out a holocaust in Vietnam, with 3 million horribly killed, and democracy had nothing to do with it.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO AN EDITORIAL IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Well, the day before, Hillary Clinton said in Libya the United States would welcome his killing.

It doesn’t get too much shabbier than that.

Her brutal words reminded me of Donald Rumsfeld’s statement, early on in Afghanistan, that all the Taleban prisoners should either be walled away or killed.

And, what do know, a short time later, 3,000 prisoners the U.S. had held disappeared.

We know today they were driven out in batches in sealed vans onto the desert to suffocate. Then their bodies were dumped into mass graves.

Americans didn’t do the actually murders, they just facilitated and encouraged them. Its soldiers – who were in charge everywhere – just stood around picking their noses while mass murder was carried out.

America is up to its hips in blood, and there no longer seems to be much in the way of limits.

Gaddafi’s blood is definitely on Hillary’s hands. I knew she was a rather nasty piece of work, but now she is a murderer.

As is her boss with his 2 to 3 thousand killings in Pakistan in the last couple of years, virtually all of them civilians.

There’s no use pretending that only bloody dictators will be subject to extra-judicial killing in future.

Indeed, the United States has over the years been close friends and patrons of many dictators, and it still is today.

It’s just a question of whether the leader or a group of people toe the American policy line in deciding whether they will be attacked.

The emerging nightmare scenario is the United States playing God across the entire planet, striking down anyone who disagrees seriously enough with it.

This is not a time for exultation over the death of a dictator, but shame and profound concern about the nature of our children’s world.
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“The purpose of a trial is to determine guilt

“Perhaps there are only a dozen or so people in the world who so blatantly admit their crimes to the world that a trial would be unnecessary.”

You could not be more incorrect.

A trial is never, never unnecessary, full stop.

The purpose of a trial also is very much to proclaim that there is rule of law and openness in handing out justice – indeed, that part of the meaning of trials is far more important than determining guilt.

Only people or countries with something to hide encourage this kind of lawlessness, and that very much is the case for the United States.

We either have a society of laws, or we do not. You cannot have it both ways.

Although both the United States and Israel very much act as though they can.

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

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

“…its members’ penny-pinching and lack of political will…”

Oh we sure know the United States isn’t “penny-pinching” when it comes to war.

It is fighting more wars than you can count, all on borrowed money, surely providing the example of the most mindless spend-thrift of all time.

What a ridiculous statement Gates makes, considering the mess – sorry, that is, messes – into which the United States has put itself.

 As for “political will,” of course, what Gates really means is the will to do what the United States wants done.

 No one else thinks it makes any sense to stay in Afghanistan.

 No one else – except the great idiot Tony Blair – thought it made any sense to invade Iraq.

 Already, the mandate for a no-fly zone in Libya has been distorted beyond recognition into a get-Gaddafi campaign.

 America’s drones in Pakistan are criminal hi-tech mass murder.

 And there are reportedly secret air operations in Yemen.

 Not only does all of this murderous activity reflect no ethics or human values, it all costs unbelievable amounts of money – money the United States simply does not have.

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NATO’s prime function, from America’s point of view, is that it serves as a way to maintain its hegemony in Europe under the pretense of cooperation and alliance.

NATO also is used by America as a convenient fig leaf for some of its ghastly behavior, as in “NATO planes bombed targets…” when we know they were American planes exclusively or overwhelmingly.

Eisenhower wisely warned us of the military-industrial complex more than half a century ago.

But things over that time have gone from bad to worse, worse than anything he could have imagined.

America has become a world-scale bully, a rather nightmarish quasi-police state, armed to the teeth, and, with no money, it is always sour when others neglect picking up the bill for its self-declared necessary tasks.