John Chuckman

COMMENT ON FACEBOOK NOT TAKING DOWN THE “ASSASSINATE DONALD TRUMP” SITE BECAUSE IT “DOESN’T VIOLATE OUR COMMUNITY STANDARDS”

 

This is appalling. The people running Facebook regularly censor the most innocuous postings, such as the picture of the breast of a woman who wanted to teach people something about breast cancer.

It is the neo-cons and Israel Lobby and that portion of the American establishment in bed them which represent the most serious and determined threat to Trump. And Facebook clearly represents a segment of those combined interests, it having a definite reputation for its willing cooperation with American security agencies.

These interests are afraid that years of meaningless American wars – meaningless, that is, in terms of genuinely American interests, quite apart from their assault on the world’s peace and good order – and belligerent policies which serve Israel’s most selfish interests might be coming to an end.

And many of us, while not great admirers of Trump, also believe that this is one policy area of some promise from this very independent-minded man.

However, Trump and his supporters greatly overestimate the power of a president to get anything done, anything that is which goes against established policies.

John and Robert Kennedy discovered this truth in the early 1960s. The CIA and the Pentagon simply ignored them on more than one occasion.

The Pentagon also kept pushing big plans such as an all-out nuclear attack on Russia as late as 1961. Kennedy more than once left big meetings feeling sick at his stomach and keenly aware he did not have the control a president should in theory have.

Truly, any change in the policies covering the Middle East would be met by massive (although not open) opposition from all those who’ve worked on it for years and all those who benefit by it, and that is a very powerful and wealthy group.

I’m convinced that all the noise over Trump – Mitt Romney’s ridiculous and irresponsible speech to George Clooney’s precious-boy name-calling, the Pope’s unprecedented blundering comments, Facebook’s behavior to The Weekly Standard’s hectoring – represents only the first grumblings of these interests.

If Trump does get the nomination – after all, the establishment, much like security agencies in their black operations, does not do things in plain view, so I tend to doubt there will be a slamming of the doors against his nomination – we are going to have the dirtiest political campaign on record.

This kind of behavior from a guy like Mark Zuckerberg, who usually tries very hard to put on a meek and mild public face, represents just the first whiff of a very dirty war to come.

It will be fun to watch, but the outcome will certainly launch us into unknown territory with a Trump victory.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON SPUTNIK

 

What many readers in Russia undoubtedly do not understand is Washington’s election campaign finance rules and their relationship to special interest groups like the Israel lobby and the never-ending turmoil of Israel-Palestine.

There are basically – despite a complex web of rules – no limits on money given to candidates for election to office.

The Supreme Court, under the influence of decades of conservative appointments, has ruled that money is free speech.

Well, you could not come up with a more corrosive rule for democracy if you tried.

The best organized and financed special interest in the United States – the Israel lobby – is able essentially to buy the loyalty of most congressmen and senators and presidential candidates.

That sounds like exaggeration, but it absolutely is not.

Money is so important in Washington elections because you must travel extensively, buy television air-time, have professional commercials produced, commission endless polls and studies, and purchase the services of costly experts. It all precisely resembles the marketing and selling of a product by a great multi-national company rather than an exercise in democracy.

This is especially true of American presidential elections, which effectively stretch out over a year including primaries and caucuses.

A year of spending like a drunken sailor!

Imagine the vast costs?

That is the American presidential campaign system in a nut shell.

This system achieves several things. One, an entrenched, well-financed special interest can stay entrenched indefinitely. Two, all the serious candidates – those with hundreds of millions in their pockets from donors and the promise of more (the Hillary Clintons or Jeb Bushes) – are effectively vetted by their existing establishment donors. They are safe bets on key matters. Nothing can really change, including major policies. The system is built to achieve that result.

Then along comes an ambitious character like Donald Trump who can finance his own campaign, there being very few people who have or are willing to spend a billion dollars of their own on a campaign.

This is part of what makes the Israel lobby in the U.S. extremely suspicious of him. Then add the fact that he is very independent-minded and says America should get along with Russia and China and that it shouldn’t be in places like Syria, and a form of panic ensues.

I dislike most of Trumps’ views, but on the Middle East and some foreign policy he could represent important and overdue change. The Israel lobby understands that and already on many fronts is getting ready for one ugly fight. We see former New York Mayor, and billionaire, Bloomberg talk of running as an independent, The Weekly Standard, voice of Neo-cons and the Israel lobby is screaming about Trump, and some newspapers have already engaged in underhanded stuff like reporting that a distant relative of Anne Frank’s says “Trump sounds like Hitler.”

If Trump gets the nomination, there’s going to be a really dirty fight with the Middle East at its center, but Trump’s opponents will not openly make the Middle East the issue as it is much safer with the general public and easier to talk about Trump’s sometimes wild words and more extreme ideas. But the intensity of the fight will be about the Middle East.

It will be an interesting political year.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

There is some truth in the idea that the Republican establishment is shaken by the possibility of a Trump candidacy.

But the folks who are really shaken by Trump, without question, are the Neo-cons and the Israel lobby, already extremely influential groups in America.

They do not trust Trump’s independence of mind with regard to Israel and the American foreign policy which keeps that failed venture afloat. This is the one leaning of Trump’s which many people, doubtful or disliking most of his views, would welcome as a relief and a fresh start from the sick status quo of endless wars, many of them catering to Israel.

Of course, Trump’s more extreme statements on other matters give the Israel lobby plenty of ammunition to make it seem as though they are concerned with issues of interest to a wider audience of Americans. But when you consider the people vociferously engaged against Trump, you know that is not the case. They simply are not people with any record of great concerns over human rights, genuine democratic values, and imperial aggression.

Michael Bloomberg, former Mayor of New York who is exploring running as an independent candidate, is well connected with Israel lobby crowd.

As is the publication, Weekly Standard, which has been making very loud noises about Trump. Founded and run by William Kristol, the publication functions as a major mouthpiece for Neo-cons and the Israel lobby.

It would appear possible now that not only does Israel determine a good deal of American foreign policy, it may as well play a key role in the next election.

That’s a pretty bizarre situation when you think about it: a nation of about 7 million weighing so heavily in the most intimate affairs of a nation of about 320 million. Not only do Israel’s narrow self-interests constitute a supremely influential special interest in the internal affairs of the United States, but Israel’s long-term interests are often directly at odds with America’s long-term interests. America’s own election-finance system is responsible for the situation, but that is something unlikely to be sorted out within the lifetime of any reader.

The relationship between Israel and the United States resembles one of those marriages we read about now and then in the news that is so dysfunctional one of the spouses kills the other.

Readers may enjoy this analysis of a while ago:

 

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/john-chuckman-essay-donald-trump-is-electable-as-president-but/

COMMENT ON A PIECE BY DANIEL HALPER IN THE WEEKLY STANDARD

John Chuckman

 

It really does not get more uninformed and deliberately provocative than “U.S. Threatens Sanctions Against Israel, Makes Excuses for Iran.”

This stuff reads like an official news release from the old Politburo.

There is no need for excuses for Iran. It has done absolutely nothing requiring excuses.

It hasn’t attacked anyone in its modern history, is a member of the international treaty on nuclear weapons permitting inspections, and every intelligence service, including Israel’s, knows it has not been trying to build a bomb.

The genuine madman running Israel, on the other hand, has yelled for years that Iran is building a bomb, going against his own intelligence service. The madman just won re-election by promising no state for the Palestinians, so presumably five million people will be kept without any rights or votes forever? Or perhaps expelled in a future massive ethnic cleansing?

Without outside pressure on Israel, clearly nothing will happen to correct this shameful, longstanding, and potentially deadly situation.

Israel, in contrast to Iran, has attacked every neighbor that it has, some more than once. The madman himself killed 2,200 people only recently in a senselessly brutal assault. The madman’s yelling about Iran is about nothing other than wanting complete dominance of the region and as a distraction against the very bad economic conditions in Israel for ordinary people and against the tremendous tensions he has created in Jerusalem with his regular theft of property and mistreatment of ancient residents.

Israel, again in contrast to Iran, does not belong to the international nuclear arms treaty and does not allow inspections of nuclear facilities, and it does have a stockpile of thermonuclear bombs. Moreover, it participated in a deadly serious secret proliferation of nuclear arms with the former apartheid South Africa, then a good friend and trading partner.

Does it feel good to go to bed each night knowing you’re making every effort as a writer to promote war with a peaceful country, Iran, and continued mass slavery in Israel?