John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“Maria Butina: Russian agent who tried to infiltrate the NRA released from prison and deported”

 

Just the headline is ridiculous.

The Independent should be ashamed.

She admitted to what her torturers insisted. Otherwise, she faced never again seeing the light of day.

Imagine, a gun enthusiast from another country who was a university student in the United States being accused of “spying” for joining a private organization that lobbies for gun owners?

The case provides a powerful measure of the extent of America’s Russia-phobia mental disorder. She was effectively tortured and intimidated for months by American officials.

Just absurd… and vicious.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JUSTIN RAIMONDO IN RUSSIA INSIDER

 

“The New Cold War Flops, The American People Are Not Buying

“Poll shows anti-Russia campaign had little effect”

 

Justin Raimondo, as he has shown in other articles, often just does not “get it.”

It simply does not matter whether the American public embraces the power establishment’s disinformation efforts.

There is almost no connection between what average Americans want and believe and what Washington does.

And this has been true for a very long time. Did the public want the holocaust in Vietnam or a list of other horrors?

They are simply dragged along for the ride when Washington is determined to do something. They have nowhere to turn with their votes even. Republican or Democrat, the results in terms of war and empire will be the same.

The United States’ power establishment doesn’t care what anyone thinks anymore when it wants to do something. Oh, I’m sure they’d rather the public “bought in,” but whether they do or not simply is not a “deal breaker.”

Washington ignores the UN. It ignores international law. It ignores many traditions and norms. Oh, it will offer up some excuse, some flimsy excuse for what it is doing, but, in the end, it doesn’t matter what the American public believes, any more than it matters what the other 95% of humanity represented by the UN believes.

The American public is virtually uninformed about what goes on abroad anyway. Their press and government representatives work hard towards that end. And the truth is the American public is largely uninterested. Bored with foreigners and even knee-jerk hostile to many. So many people also are just trying to keep body and soul together in the changed economic realities of contemporary America. They have no time to be concerned about what goes on “out there.” America’s establishment actually counts on such realities in its imperial calculations.

The only time America’s public ever gets really worked up over such matters is when Americans die in considerable numbers. Foreigners, who cares? But America has arranged its foreign dirty work so that numbers of Americans do not die.

The numbers at a certain point during Vietnam began to generate something like the national divisions of the American Civil War. Through many mechanisms, that has never been allowed to happen again.

Look at the dirty work in Syria. We know, right now, a new phony gas attack is being planned around Idlib. There is significant intelligence on the matter. And it is only a set-up for a new round of bombing Syria, a country with which America is not legally at war and a country where it has no business having any forces without permission.

John Bolton’s ugly public threat about even more devastating bombing if chemical weapons are used again – “again,” entirely begging the question of whether such weapons had ever been used by the government, with virtually all indicators saying they had not – serves as a public invitation to the paid mercenaries in al-Nusra and such affiliates as the phony humanitarians of the White Helmets, to get on with the job of generating a needed provocation.

And will even one newspaper or network in America question the fraud? Or question the excessive response?

And what will it matter if the public supports it or not? They know absolutely nothing anyway about what goes on in Syria and America’s big, long-term role in it on behalf of Israel and others, including Saudi Arabia, to work towards destroying a legitimate government and cripple a beautiful country.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DAN GLAZEBROOK IN RUSSIA INSIDER

https://russia-insider.com/en/war-iran-has-already-begun-and-russia-must-end-it/ri23373

 

“The War on Iran Has Already Begun — and Russia Must End It

“The destruction of states such as Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Iran will isolate Russia when its own turn comes”

 

An interesting and perceptive article.

While offering genuine insight into what is taking place, it also is rather bleak and distressing.

Russia is in a critical position, and failure to act, after all the hard work in Syria and other places, would be extremely dangerous long term.

Iran is clearly in Washington’s cross-hairs, and largely owing to the inordinate influence and rather savage demands of Israel, its de facto colony. America has already worked to destroy Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and others for the benefit of Israel and what it narrowly sees as its interests in the Middle East.

If Iran is allowed to be destroyed or dismembered, it represents the loss of a very substantial ally, and there is little doubt who is next on the checklist.

I think there can be little doubt that somewhere in Pentagon and CIA vaults, there are plans – likely various and alternate ones – for the destruction of Russia, or at least for its dismemberment.

“Delenda est Carthago” is truly what the establishment in Washington thinks to itself. The place is rife with hostile words and the smell of aroused hormones twenty-four hours a day now. The American press, while it may not be much for conveying the news, conveys this reality unmistakably.

This is an establishment clearly dedicated to dominating the planet militarily now that it understands its economy is in relative decline in an evolving world, an economy with no hope of regaining anything like the accidental golden period of post WWII. And America’s Neocons, out of their own concerns for reborn Israel, are on the sidelines cheering all the way.

I am not even sure there can be any effective opposition anymore in America. Both major parties are committed to American imperial efforts completely. One is no better than the other, both hiding ugly drives under the guise of that American secular religion called Patriotism, much as the brutal Crusades of the Middle Ages hid their greed and bloodlust behind a symbol of Christianity.

And American society at large, under the pretext of international terror, has been totally wired and rigged to detect and deal with opposition. The gigantic security establishment – 17 agencies and all of them better funded than you can imagine – is unprecedented in American history for its elaborate spying and snooping and interfering, but then so is the entire arrogant, imperious attitude of America’s establishment.

That is an absolutely deadly mixture brewing and bubbling away. It is hard even to imagine it changing anytime soon.  An economic catastrophe, which in one form or another is definitely on the horizon, may contribute to its fizzling out, but that is not at all certain. The establishment in Washington is better insulated against shocks than most parts of American society. Trump’s maladroit efforts on trade and other matters will only hasten its coming and perhaps deepen its effects.

Russia is the only country now capable of obliterating America, so unless it chooses unilaterally to disarm and commit itself to Washington’s tender mercies, it will remain a menace to American plans for complete dominance.

We’ve already seen numerous moves – some big, some small – along this line with Chechnya, Ukraine, Armenia, sending tanks and troops to Russian borders, ringing Russia with anti-missile missiles, readiness to nullify important treaties like INF, committing a fortune to new-generation nuclear weapons, a stream of contrived personal attacks on Putin, sanctions and still more sanctions, pressuring other countries not to buy Russian goods and weapons, and many others, some of which would not be public knowledge.

It is already pretty close to war by another name.

John Chuckman

COMMENT WRITTEN IN RESPONSE TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

“Special prosecutor Robert Mueller ‘will take Donald Trump from frying pan to fire’ over Russia investigation”

 

Then there’ll be a mighty thin meal because there is no meat here. Not a scrap. None.

Fire, hot pans, shouting, cooks sweating in a hot kitchen and absolutely nothing to prepare. That is the ridiculous spectacle we see right now in Washington.

Not everyone understands that impeachment is, in fact, a trial – a long, complicated trial involving some of the nation’s finest legal minds at work.

I know the United States does many questionable and even brutally- stupid things, but I do think bringing someone important to a trial, a guaranteed international spectacle, with absolutely no evidence of any kind, just a lot of shouting and accusations, is not one of them. It is a guaranteed formula for failure. Does any thinking person, not a rabid partisan, believe the United States or the world deserve that?

It cannot happen because even the guys doing all the shouting know that they have nothing in the prosecutor’s brief. However, the efforts and noise and groundless accusations can paralyze the government, blunt its efforts at any reasonable policy (such as, establishing a peaceful relationship with Russia). Of course, there are many other important matters, like the health of the entire Western economy, that the effort can also damage. An executive branch paralyzed by continuous and complete nonsense is dangerous for us all.

The politicians know they only have the accusations of angry partisans like Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi plus the questionable assertions of Mr. Comey, an old Democratic Hillary partisan and a man who proved himself inept while in office if we are to believe that very same group of accusers – Hillary, Schumer, Pelosi, etc – by their own words of just months ago, all easily still found on the Internet.

Of course, the real danger here is the massive effort to undo a properly-conducted election. A great deal of that effort is coming from the security services, especially the CIA, including some former members of that dark organization.

They don’t like Trump because he, early on, disparaged their importance (as many of us feel is more than fitting) and they have willing helpers in the arrogant walking wounded of the Democratic Party who just cannot believe both that they lost the election and that they had an insider (almost certainly the late Seth Rich) leak the official secrets of their corrupt internal workings. Better to blame the Russians on all counts, and blaming the Russians does also help feed the new Cold War fires now raging in Washington, fires set alight by that smiling psychopath, Obama, with his destructive drives and policies in Europe.

After all, isn’t that the kind of thing the CIA does abroad, often work to unseat legitimate governments? It did so in Ukraine. It did so in Libya. It did so in Egypt. It is working at doing so in Syria. And it did so in many other places. Well, now, the ugly activity has come home to roost, the ultimate form of what security agencies call “blowback.”

America is in the process of tearing apart what very little legitimacy it has left as a democratic state, and millions stand around and cheer because they have been hyped day-and-night by our pathetic corporate media who never work to explain what really is happening anywhere, only passing on the re-written press releases of officialdom.

If you want an accurate perspective on the matter, we have Stephen F. Cohen, distinguished Princeton professor and a genuine expert on Russian affairs, someone who many times in past years was consulted by the American government itself, saying this:

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/stephen-f-cohen-assault-trump-presidency-greatest-threat-us-national-security-today/ri19860

 

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE POSTED IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

One of my basic rules in sorting through the induced chaos of our world is: I believe absolutely nothing the Pentagon says, ever.

The Pentagon’s trail of lies and propaganda is so long and twisted, it’s not worth bothering to sort out any of its new statements. You will always stand a better chance of being informed just by following the simple rule of ignoring them.

But, even were the Pentagon right in this instance, there’s a simple response.

Stay in your own part of the world and quit trying to intimidate and threaten others in half a dozen places.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE NATIONAL POST

No one writing for The National Post ever gets the situation in Syria correctly.

All of our national press, like that in the United States, deliberately obscures these matters.

America and Russia both talk about stopping terror, but they each mean completely different things.

Not being at all the aggressive leader America never stops yapping about, Putin has not made up his mind about entering Syria, but if he does go to Syria to fight ISIS, among other terror groups working there, it will be precisely because he is supporting the government of Syria and genuinely fighting terror.

Obama doesn’t want Putin in Syria to fight ISIS because the United States is only making a show of fighting ISIS. You don’t fight the people you set up to do a job you want done. ISIS is doing America’s dirty work trying to topple the Syrian government.

When America talks of bombing, it means bombing which can help ISIS, and the other terrorists, complete their dirty work. America bombs Syrian infrastructure, as does Canada in Harper’s stupid effort to join in the American cause.

Sure, sometimes America actually kills some of their recruited ISIS members, but that is for show or because they have somehow exceeded their mandate. Quite possibly, once the government of Syria has been destroyed, America will go after ISIS, but that would only come after.

For Putin to talk of bombing means genuinely bombing ISIS and hampering its efforts to destroy Syria.

It’s all a filthy business, and the sponsors of all the killing and destruction and homelessness are the United States, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. They do everything from training, arming, equipping, and even giving refuge and medical help.

The terrible refugee crisis in Europe is ultimately the complete fault of these parties, none of which even has the decency to take the refugees they create. Harper’s Canada actually takes a token amount of refugees and at the same time joins in the bombing to create more.

The truth is, were Harper to genuinely fight ISIS, Israel would become extremely angry with him, and that could only mean some of Harper’s generous donors of campaign funds – the special interests for Israel he has groomed for years – would also become angry with him.

In this, as in so many things, Harper joins the United States in telling lies to us daily.