Friday, March 25, 2016

JOHN CHUCKMAN ESSAY: RUNAWAY TRAIN: AMERICA'S ELECTION AND ITS INABILITY TO ALTER THE NATION'S DEADLY COURSE


RUNAWAY TRAIN

America’s election and its inability to alter the nation’s deadly course

John Chuckman

America is engaged in another of its sprawling and costly national election campaigns. A few of the events, such as the New Hampshire primary or the Iowa Caucus, I’m sure have participants seeing themselves as Thomas Jefferson’s sturdy yeomen doing their civic duty. But such humble and misty-eyed tableaux can be deceiving for the big picture is quite disturbing, including, as it does, billions of dollars spent and a lot of noise generated about things which will not change in any outcome.

America is, despite all the noise and expense of its election campaigns, not a democracy, and, as the world’s greatest imperial power, it is not a place which genuinely honors human rights, either at home or abroad although its politicians never stop talking about them. It is a country controlled by wealth whose purpose is the acquisition of still more wealth, equipped with a military that in scores of wars and interventions has fought, arguably, precisely once for the country’s defense.

It marked a fateful time in the modern era when America, under Harry Truman, decided to partner with the emerging state of Israel, a very fateful time indeed. Today much of the Middle East is in ruins, whole states and societies have been destroyed, at least a million have died, and some of the world’s great archeological and historical treasures have been destroyed as though by a gang of gleeful wanton young men.

Accompanying America’s long march of destruction through the Middle East – the work both of its own armed forces and of various proxies - has been the rise of a phenomenon called international terrorism. Our newspapers and broadcasters all focus on this last, leaving the preceding great acts of destruction unquestioned. After all, America’s much-consolidated press is an industry like any other and is owned by a relatively small number of wealthy people, and it depends upon good relations with other great industries for its revenue and with the government for its operating environment. It never questions policies, no matter how brutal, and it never scrutinizes what those policies are doing to people. America’s major allies all carry on in exactly the same fashion for they have become highly dependent on America’s goodwill.   

Day after day, our press gives horrifying accounts of events such as the bombing in Brussels or the attacks in Paris, and it has been doing so since 9/11, providing a relentless war chant of “See what these bastards do!” These horrors are always treated as though they had no context, having sprung full-blown from the minds of bizarre people who think nothing, for example, of blowing themselves up. But I’m pretty sure that virtually every person who does such things sees himself or herself in the same light as the Japanese Kamikazes everyone once fearfully admired.

When was the last time your newspaper or broadcaster featured life in Gaza or in Syria or in Iraq or in Libya or in Yemen? It simply does not happen, and except for the rare independent article or book, our information about these places and the terrible assaults they are under is deliberately constrained. I am convinced that the natural human sympathy of most people, including many residents of imperial America, would respond to such sights and reports, but you are simply not given the opportunity to do so.

For me, this subject is the pivotal matter in the upcoming American election. Donald Trump, despite many unpleasant views and much careless rhetoric, seemed to have a spark of something new, an independent mind not shaped by America’s political establishment, and he an extremely successful and self-confident man in business not beholden to the special interests which shape the insincere news and own the loyalty of a great many politicians. He has made a number of encouraging statements, saying America should get along with Russia and China, leave Syria for Russia to clean-up, and talked about making deals instead of conflicts, but, most remarkably, he said that Israel should pay for its own defense. That last, something most timorous American politicians wouldn’t dream of uttering, is an example of bravery under the threat of fire, a quality I admire and one sorely needed to ever have a hope of having America extricated from the its Middle East’s Gordian Knot.

But two things just recently have given me pause: Trump’s words about using torture and the recent appointment to his foreign relations team of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. Torture is unacceptable, ever. Legally innocent people are kidnapped and hurt in the mere hope they know something of interest, and in the process many die, convicted of nothing. The CIA has killed a number of prisoners in its Rendition Gulag since 9/11, whether accidentally or deliberately almost doesn’t matter, but their filthy work violates every principle we hold dear.

Calls for more torture are not new thinking, and they are repulsive. They ignore the actual cause of terror, which is America’s treatment of countless people in societies swept aside and rudely rearranged as though their homes and places were toy living room furniture being tossed by an angry child giant. As for Senator Sessions, there is a man who gets along just fine with the bloodiest people in Washington doing the rearranging. 

Perhaps I should not have allowed a glimmer of hope that at least in one part of America’s domain a few things might change for the better. After all, seven years ago, I had hopes for a young black man with a charming smile and a tendency to talk and act with more independence than we usually see in Washington, not afraid sometimes to wear sandals and do without the primordial totem of an American flag pin always fixed to his lapel, but look what happened to him. He joined the great game and became nothing less than a mass murderer. Oh, he had one or two modest successes, as in stopping Israel’s raging demands to attack Iran, a country which has attacked no one in its entire modern history, but otherwise his is a long and dreary tale.

He has America still killing in Iraq, still killing in Afghanistan, destroying a decent civilization in Libya, supporting destruction in beautiful Syria, re-inserting an absolute dictator into Egypt to keep its prickly neighbor Israel happy, and creating an armada of drones to assassinate people in far off places guilty of no crime, killing in the process many others besides the innocent targets. Oh, and there are many other Neanderthal stupidities, from creating a coup and ensuing civil war in Ukraine to demanding Europe join in destructive economic sanctions and a huge military build-ups tight on Russia’s borders. And then there are all the efforts to intimidate China in its own sphere of influence.

You see, these are all the brutal stupidities of America’s establishment which our press would have you ignore while it goes on and on with its war chant about mindless international terror, virtually all of which is simply a pathetic human response to the stupidities, a response likely as unavoidable as having accidents if you go around driving drunk.

I say unavoidable, but that is not absolutely true. If a society goes far enough into the suppression of rights, terrorism can be almost eliminated. Stalin’s Russia did not experience much in the way of terrorism. Neither does Netanyahu’s Israel. And there is no doubt that America’s huge effort to suppress traditional rights and freedoms since 9/11 reflects that understanding, and the effort at suppression is not over. New surprises await Americans and their allies without question. It is an interesting sidelight to this ongoing process of building a super-security state that it just happens also to leave the ruling establishment increasingly unchallenged and unchallengeable. It is, indeed, a very dark path America has taken.

Is it any wonder I would grab at straws to see some change, even a modest re-think about what is being done? But I do fear that’s just what it is, grabbing at straws. The only realistic alternative is Hillary Clinton, a proven killer and serial liar and someone who much resembles Tony Blair for repulsive insincerity and selling herself to wealthy interests.

Indeed just at this writing, Radovan Karadzic has been convicted of war crimes during the Serbian war. I think it would be impossible to convincingly distinguish a great deal of what he did to Muslims in Bosnia and what Hillary Clinton did in Libya, which included running a program to gather small armies of thugs and arm them for insertion into Syria where they helped kill more than a quarter of a million people and create devastation. Her satanic laughter over her own bizarre joke about the leader of Libya, “We came, we saw, he died,” speaks volumes about her. This was a leader who had for decades given his people enlightened state policies and who ended being murdered in an American-created chaos.

 It has been interesting to see the reactions to organized opposition against Trump, opposition taking a form sadly resembling 1930’s German Brownshirts shoving, threatening, and shouting at political rallies. Trump’s base, which is not only part of the Right but includes people who decades ago would have been Democrat-voting union people before their jobs disappeared, has very confusingly attributed all the organized opposition to “liberals.” Well, George Soros and Hillary Clinton are not, by any stretch of the imagination, liberals. Soros is in the CIA’s pocket, as Russia well knew when it recently banned his NGOs from operating there, and Hillary is just a plain killer.  I’m pretty sure America has no liberals anymore, at least as an organized body. George Soros and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are perhaps best described as neocon “fellow travellers.”

Now, in case you don’t know who the neocons are, they are a group of influential people in the Washington establishment and in Right-wing publishing who forcefully advocate that America use its full might to re-order the planet to its liking. Many of the best known of them are Jewish Americans who never have Israel far from their concerns. There was a natural meshing of interests in supposedly re-making and stabilizing the Middle East with support for Israel. All the countries flattened or decimated in recent years effectively represent a collective effort to make the Middle East safe for Israel, to surround it with a vast cordon sanitaire, eliminating virtually all independent-minded leaders in an almost continent-sized region, and assuring Israel’s hegemony as a kind of regional miniature replica of what the United States has become in the world.

The chief problem here has been the murder of huge numbers of people and the perfectly natural reactions of many to revenge what has happened to their families, friends, and lands. If that is to be called terror, so be it, but in other times we have called the same reaction everything from the resistance or national liberation to war by other means or simple vengeance. The most important thing to understand about it is that it is not some unnatural eruption of insane extremists as our press constantly makes every effort to impress upon us.

The only way to control terror is to stop your part in it. The biggest part of all modern terror is the work of the United States, unless you regard a family blown up in Damascus or Tripoli or Fallujah or Gaza City or Sana'a as being somehow different in kind to the victims in Brussels or Paris. America also pressures all its traditional allies to support the work with efforts of one kind or another, anything from arms to training, always maintaining the stance that it opposes terror and insisting they do the same. Well, it does oppose terror, but only the wrong kind of terror, the terror which does not support or advance America’s efforts. America’s destruction and mass killing in recent years are the great bulk of what any reasonable person, one not dedicated to the silly idea that America is a benign force, would call terror. Events in Brussels or Paris or even New York have been only the results of what America and its allies have been doing, the “blowback” as they quaintly put it in intelligence circles.

Well, it has been my faint hope that Trump might represent at least some progress in this horrible business, but I am growing to doubt that possibility. I do think for many reasons things are rather out of control, hence my reference to a runaway train. The American establishment of wealth along with its Praetorian Guard of military and security services is firmly in control and the ability of any elected individual to redirect things seems remote, as does the initial likelihood of such a person even being elected to office.

In my heart of hearts I do still believe that Obama was the kind of man who wanted things otherwise, but the realities of those meetings at huge conference tables surrounded by square-jawed generals in uniforms stiff and glittering with brass and medals and the sneering, elusive country-club types of the security services, impenetrably self-confident in all their secret operations and resources, many of which will never even be known to a president, made him what he has become. That and the pressing demands of hugely wealthy individuals and corporations, powerful lobby groups, and the virtually daily calls from people like Netanyahu (we do know that “daily calls” is no exaggeration from a slip of Obama’s tongue several years back) have given us this failed man who may well have had good intentions at the start.

The cause of so much of the war and terror in the world, the artificial re-creation of Israel and its endless demands for the re-ordering of its region, will likely just have to run its course. It is a state which, rather surprisingly, shares a great many features with the former Soviet Union. It is monstrously over-militarized, occupied by vast and invasive security services, with no guarantees of any rights, holding millions down who don’t want to be held, and boasts an inefficient economy only kept afloat by huge subsidies from outside. I do think, just like the Soviet Union, it eventually will collapse on its own weak foundations.

As for the United States, I have long believed that the era of its unquestioned authority in the world, which it has always greatly abused, is drawing to a close. The world is not only becoming multi-polar, the United States simply cannot govern itself in many of its activities, almost like a great spoiled child who cannot stop gobbling ice cream cones. It is always pushing to excesses. Its finances are in appalling shape and it can only be a matter of time before huge corrections occur with all the terrible consequences they entail for many. It is spending unconscionable amounts it doesn’t even have on its military and security, and the exaggerated, paranoid perceptions of need motivating these expenditures reflect all that we’ve discussed above. But perhaps most important of all, it has no effective leadership, and its absolutely corrupt political system is unable to provide any, allowing the inside ruling coterie to just keep stumbling along towards we don’t know quite what.



   





Thursday, March 24, 2016

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE GUARDIAN'S ANNE PERKINS SAYS YOU SHOULD NOT JUST TWEET BUT DO SOMETHING USEFUL FOR AN EVENT LIKE THE BOMBING IN BRUSSELS - BUT WE LIVE IN A WORLD FILLED WITH RAGING TERROR AND MOST OF IT IS NOT EVEN CALLED TERROR BY THE PRESS - HOW YOU GENUINELY END TERROR


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: THE WIDOW OF MURDERED CHARLIE HEBDO CARTOONIST SPEAKS OUT ABOUT HOW ANGRY SHE STILL IS


COMMENT POSTED TO ANARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN


Yes, but please, your husband’s cartoons made a lot of other people angry also.

He had the right, of course, in a free country, but did he display any judgment or consideration or even compassion for others in his vicious work?

I very much think not.

We are reading these words in a newspaper which regularly erases comments which its editors judge as too harsh.

You can't have it both ways in a logical world: sympathy for grotesque inconsiderateness in cartoons (Hebdo, absolutely the case) and no sympathy for inconsiderate comments.

Or I suppose you can, but is that a rational point of view? And isn’t irrationality at the base of the horrors we experience now?

About a million people destroyed in the Middle East over the last decade.

I do not believe in censorship, but I am offended by a publication like Hebdo which made vicious and often obscene fun of others, and its meanness was limited to only certain targets.



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE EU SIGNS A DEAL ON REFUGEES WITH TURKEY - THIS MARKS THE SUPREME LOW POINT FOR THE EU UNDER MERKEL'S INFLUENCE


COMMENT POSTED TO A COLUMN IN THE GUARDIAN


This is the supreme low point for the EU under Merkel's influence.

A deal forged with one of the most evil and ruthless leaders on the planet, and it involves giving him lots of money and encouragement to become a future part of the EU.

We've had a lot of garbage propaganda about Russians doing this or that, including an idiotic claim that Russia has weaponized migration.

But here is a pay-off deal with the very man who really has weaponized migration, Erdogan.

Paying a mass murderer - Syria and his own Kurds - to help alleviate the very problem he created.

Oh, I am sick at the thought of the EU today, where once, in de Gaulle's day, I much admire

How does any Western politician ever again open his or her mouth to speak of ethics or morality or rights?

Of course, I am sure that the murderous empire of the United States has been pushing hard for this.

None of this would have happened had Europe stood up to the United States - and its evil proxies - Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel - five years or so ago.

They are the ones who caused all of this.

Yet our governments and press cannot stop calling Putin - who has done nothing but defend Russia's interests in the face of another American aggression - names.

Then they sign a deal with a mass murderer, thief, and tyrant against free speech.

A monumental disgrace.

I suspect strongly that intense American pressure is at work to achieve just that, Turkey always been having been viewed as a key geo-political spot in the endless hostility towards Russia.





JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: BRITISH MINISTER OF DEFENSE SAYS CLASSIFIED ANALYSIS ASSURES HIM TRIDENT WILL NOT BECOME OBSOLETE - BUT BECOMING OBSOLETE IS NOT THE ISSUE FOR MOST


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN


Trident’s becoming obsolete seems a trivial concern, indeed I think likely it is used as a red herring.

Uselessness and draining costs are, on the other hand, real and pressing issues.

If you want to subsidize the Pentagon to the tune of tens of billions while getting nothing for it but the ability of folks like Michael Fallon to go for fun rides, then by all means buy Trident.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ONCE AGAIN THERE'S THAT MATTER OF DEMOCRACY IN ISRAEL - BUT YOU CAN ONLY SEE DEMOCRACY IN ISRAEL IF YOU SIMPLY ARE NOT LOOKING


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN


Response to a reader referring to Israel’s democracy:
Democracy?

Where do you see that?

Israel is exactly as much a democracy as the former American Confederacy or former Nationalist South Africa.

They, too, had elections and legislatures and the window dressing of democracy.

Unfortunately they also had millions with no rights, no vote, and limits on what they even could own.

Well, that unarguably describes modern Israel.

We can only be glad there are not more such democracies in the world.



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: DAWN FOSTER SAYS TONY BLAIR HAS MADE AN ART OF PROFITING FROM OTHERS' MISERY - WELL SAID INDEED - THE CREEPIEST POLITICIAN ON THE PLANET


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DAWN FOSTER IN THE GUARDIAN


"Tony Blair has turned profiting from others’ misery into an art form"

Couldn't have put it better, Dawn Foster.

There are several politicians who give me the creeps, but I do think Tony Blair remains unchallenged as number one with his war, his profits, and his pathetic show of religion.



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: COMMENTS BY JONATHON JONES ON A PHOTO OF HILLARY HUGGING BUSH SHOW US TO WHAT ALMOST LUNATIC ENDS SOME COLUMNISTS CAN GO


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JONATHON JONES IN THE GUARDIAN


"How can she embrace the man who invaded Iraq? Because the alternative is Donald Trump’s world of hate and resentment"

Just off the top of my head, I do believe Jonathan Jones has set a new record in The Guardian for truly repellent writing.

One man kills a million people and destroys a prosperous land for a generation, and does it covered in lies.

The other man is often rude and loud and says some unpleasant things, but somehow he is more horrible than the mass killer?

Apart from being a rather sick way of looking at things, this is profoundly dangerous thinking.

it's along the lines, only far worse, of those who think its okay for gangs of thugs to break up political meetings with fists and shouts and threats - a la Hitler's Brown Shirts (the SA) in about 1931, because they are fighting in a good cause. Just sick.

Trump can be unpleasant, but so what? You don't have to vote for him. And the country in which he is being unpleasant is not only generally unpleasant it has a record that goes infinitely beyond unpleasant.

Years of horror in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and other places. "Disappearing" people by drone in half a dozen lands. Supporting the endless bloody excesses of Israel, never putting pressure on them to stop and make peace.

And Trump's "worst" proposals are nothing but things already being practiced elsewhere, most notably in Israel itself which builds more walls and turns away all migrants and refugees except for one small group.

Trump would never get most of his domestic proposals approved by Congress, but efforts in foreign and military affairs, where a president has more authority, could do some real good in the world.

I say "could" advisedly, but in Hillary's case, I know to a certainty there is only more bllod and horror. She is a sick and dangerous woman, but she is friends with some other sick and dangerous leaders who've given us the bloody mess we have in the world.

But is the loss represented by this last possibility that folks like Jonathon Jones are in fact fearful for, and I'm sure he shares a lot of attitudes with Hillary who has worked for years on the neocon agenda of destroying major parts of the Middle East.

Actually, when you think about it, there is nothing odd about the photo. These people are both remorseless killers who've shared in shedding the same blood.



Thursday, March 17, 2016

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: A COLUMN BY OWEN JONES WHICH REALLY DOES NOT MEAN WHAT IT SAYS BECAUSE IT REFLECTS A PROPAGANDA AGENDA AGAINST LIBERALS ESTABLISHED BY ISRAEL


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY OWEN JONES IN THE GUARDIAN


"Antisemitism is a poison – the left must take leadership against it"

Owen Jones, I don't quite know what to say about such an idiotic assertion.

To whom do you think you are preaching? Those who genuinely are anti-Semitic – just as those with other special hates - are certainly not going to heed or even read your prattle.

And why in God's name does "the left" have a special, or any, responsibility here?

I'll tell you where this fraudulent notion of yours comes from: Israel has always castigated the Left in Western countries.

And why?

Because liberals and progressives have long criticized Israel's brutal behavior towards the Palestinians, as they very much should do.

A person who embraces liberty and democratic values can never approve of what Israel has done to the people of Palestine for more than half a century.

Israel’s leaders know that, so they play the ugly game of throwing around the epithet “anti-Semitism.”

We even get books written about imagined contemporary huge increases in “anti-Semitism,” when an honest author would call it what is, an increase in the abhorrence of the government of Israel. 

The government of Israel has so overplayed its hand for years in this – always, mind you, supported by the press, as here with Owen Jones – that the epithet literally is losing not only its force, it is losing its meaning.

So, despite the historical fact that real anti-Semitism has always been associated with the Right, especially the brutally ignorant Right, we have the Left being charged with anti-Semitism, or in the case of this column, charged with a special responsibility for anti-Semitism.

Simply outrageous.

You cannot defend what you have written here, just as Israel’s government – a truly Right-wing, fascist-oriented government which makes Donald Trump seem open-minded by comparison – cannot sustain its name-calling nonsense.





JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: A COLUMN BY JEFFREY LORD REFLECTS THE DECPTIONS OF ISRAEL ON WHAT LIBERALS ARE - THE RECORD OF THE MOVEON ORGANIZATION - SOME TRUTH ABOUT GEORGE SOROS - AND THE ENDLESS MISINTERPRETATION OF WHAT A TRUE LIBERAL IS IN AMERICA


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JEFFREY LORD FROM THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR IN FREEDOM WATCH


"The American Left has a horrendous history of flat out racism and bigotry, liberally salted with violence."

I think that an extremely stupid thing to have written.

The author is ostensibly criticizing the campaign behavior of MoveOn in their violent disruptions of campaign rallies, while in fact using the opportunity to plant his own hateful propaganda points along the way. 

Jeffrey Lord is, of course, feeding off Israel's long-term contempt for western liberals because they criticize Israel's brutal behavior. After all, this is from the American Spectator, a neocon-oriented publication, in which he writes.

His prattle is just another version of:  if you criticize Israel, you are anti-Semitic, and since liberals do criticize Israel, they are anti-Semitic and any other bad thing we can think of calling them. Literally, this twisted thinking is ridiculous.

Now, this same intellectual garbage is being dragged into the camp of those who support Trump – whom, by the way, Israel detests - by Trump’s own supporters in search of any kind evidence against nasty outfits like MoveOn.

This is an utterly wrong and self-defeating thing to do.

Outfits acting the way MoveOn does are not, by any stretch of the imagination, liberal. Liberals have no attraction to imitating Hitler’s Brownshirts.

George Soros, one of the original forces behind MoveOn, is not, a liberal either, possessing, as he does, a long history of association with the CIA in dirty projects like coups.

Russia, for example, is well aware of Soros’s associations, and it has banned his NGOs.

Liberals, real ones, are not attracted to the thugs of the CIA. That is the home territory of ugly folks like Hillary Clinton or John Kerry, people often bizarrely called "liberal" but who, in fact, represent the raw domestic political face of American imperialism. Both Kerry and Clinton are stained in blood up to their armpits working for America's arrogant efforts to remake the world to its pleasing, a project strongly supported by Israel because it in turn supports Israel.

It is dangerous to confuse these things – vicious anti-liberalism and a justified attack on phony liberals such as MoveOn - a bit like letting a violent criminal into your home when he says he's the gasman come to read the meter.


But America is a very confusing place, whipped by many contradictory winds and rages, with little thought and virtually no ethics, about what is being done.



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: JOHN KERRY REVEALED TO HAVE ADVOCATED FOR CRUISE MISSILE STRIKES TO MAKE ASSAD RESIGN - JUST ONE MORE DISMAL PIECE OF EVIDENCE DOCUMENTING THIS MAN'S UTTERLY SHABBY LIFETIME CAREER


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER


I have had a pretty low opinion of Kerry since his days in Vietnam, a shabby set of acts if ever there was.

Nothing he has done since ever improved my view.

Now, this previously-unknown secret advocacy of his to use cruise missiles on Assad confirms again the opinion of decades.

This is what passes for a liberal in America.

Pathetic man. If you check his record, you find a frequent coward, and a rather murderous one in Vietnam, a man eager to establish his own importance and career at any cost, a rich phony posing as liberal, and a generally ineffectual and unattractive human being.

I've written on the subject of Kerry a number of times. Readers may enjoy and learn from:











JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: DAVID CAMERON TO TURN BRITISH SCHOOLS INTO ACADEMIES - A PROVEN FAILED IDEA EMBRACED BY A FAILED PRIME MINISTER - THE CHICAGO EXPERIENCE


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN


Turning failing schools into "academies" has long been a practice in the city of Chicago.

This was done mainly in neighborhoods where schools once were okay to superior, but with changing population patterns - the neighborhoods having become mainly black - school results dropped like a brick.

The re-designation has achieved nothing - and a few schools have even been re-designated more than once - other than in confirming Orwell's views on politics and the English language.

It is part of a game to buy time, giving the politicians and school authorities some years afterward to say, "Just wait and see."

But in Chicago, they have waited and waited. These schools still perform badly.

All the schools I went to as a boy - schools which ranged from mediocre to excellent - are now called academies, and do you know what? Performance in them has not changed from the time they first became failed schools decades ago. One can know this because the Chicago Board of Education is required to publish stats on each school on the Internet.


This new British policy is a sure sign of desperation and dishonesty. Well, what else to expect from David Cameron?



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ANOTHER BONE-HEADED AMERICAN GENERAL BUTTS INTO EUROPEAN POLITICS - BUT HIS DUMB WORDS SUGGEST A POT OF GOLD BEYOND BREXIT


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


“Brexit could weaken Nato alliance”

More bone-headed propaganda from another bone-headed American general.

His argument might well be regarded by thinking people as a merit of Brexit.

NATO is now nothing more than a mechanism for American dominance of Europe.


Anything which would hasten its end has merit.



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: OXFAM SYRIA HEAD SAYS IT'S NOT JUST RUSSIA'S FAULT - WELL, THERE'S AN UNDERSTATEMENT


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


"It's not just Russia to blame...”

Please, it's not Russia at all.

Who is responsible for 5 years of terrorizing Syria with thugs smuggled in, weapons and training supplied, and fulsome talk about freedom?

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United States, and Israel, with folks like Cameron and Hollande sitting on their rears applauding.


Saying anything else is just a lie.



Monday, March 14, 2016

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: DISRUPTING TRUMP CAMPAIGN RALLIES - THE NATURE OF THESE ACTS - THE MEANINGLESSNESS OF CALLING TRUMP NAMES IN A PLACE LIKE AMERICA WHERE VIOLENCE AND HATE ARE ALREADY AS COMMON AS RAIN


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN


This disruption of Trump rallies is an organized effort to disturb an election, full stop.

Everyone, no matter what you may think of Trump or his views, should condemn this effort.

Instead, we have the spectacle of those who are the beneficiaries of this thug-like effort, his opponents, blaming it on Trump.

If you really think about it, it is this effort which represents fascism. Sending in gangs of shouting, fist-fighting thugs to disturb and intimidate others is exactly what the Nazi Brownshirts did as standard practice during the early 1930s.

But I remind readers again of the real nature of American society.

It is a great throbbing engine of a place, and it has a pretty cavalier attitude towards violence. People torn apart by its whirling machinery are of no interest or account. Only “vets” now and then receive lip-service, as in political speeches, but they too are so often ignored or treated roughly.

There are a lot of angry people on the streets. It seethes in some places.

You read in The Guardian that about 1,100 people were killed by America’s police there in one year. People just shot dead in the street, three times a day. And of course, that means a lot of others merely wounded or brutalized.

In a city like Chicago, on any given weekend, 20 to 25 people will be shot, mainly blacks shot by other blacks. Most don't die, but many do. It makes for a horrifying atmosphere in many parts of the city.

The United States has more people in prison than any other country.

Its murder rate exceeds by far that of any other advanced country.

It retains capital punishment and is even gleeful about it.

But that's only a small part of the violence.

People allowed no due process are being summarily executed by Obama's government week-in, week-out, in half a dozen lands in a fashion much resembling the old Argentine junta’s practice of making people “disappear.”

America's CIA ran an entire secret torture gulag for years, kidnapping people off streets anywhere and flying them to dark holes for "rendition." When it was through with them, it just dumped them somewhere one night. Guantanamo’s unfortunates will remain there until death, having had no proper trials or legal representation.

America has laid waste to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, and others by direct action or through proxies. At least a million human beings have been slaughtered in recent years. Countless others were injured or lost homes. All lost jobs and a peaceful life. And of course, there were the millions, literally millions, killed in Viet Nam and Cambodia and other places by America’s war machine.

America winks at the murderous horrors of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Israel. These are countries which abuse and kill as a regular part of their practices. You never hear a word of complaint from an American government official or an American news source.

All America's half-crazed ex-soldiers, shell-shocked and disoriented - many having joined the armed forces because there are no jobs and they were bribed by the promise of money for "college" they possibly now can make no use of  - come home from these insane colonial wars in various marginal mental states, some destroyed for life, some murderous.

America has many monuments in Washington to its many wars, yet strangely, there is no memorial to the massive, centuries-long blight of slavery.

America is a harsh, mean place, and that is something casual visitors on holidays don't see. You will never see the real workings of America at Disneyworld, at Times Square, or at the fishing piers of San Francisco. What you see there is the glossy, carefully-maintained surface of things, much like a well-kept garden in front of an insane asylum.

Remember, America thinks nothing of staging coups and black-ops interventions in many, many places, and that includes against many democratic governments. Countless ordinary people are killed or wounded or displaced by these acts which serve only the narrow purposes of America’s powerful. The American government feels entitled and the general population does not in the least object.

So to say Trump’s language is something extraordinary is to speak from sheer ignorance.

If you play in enough filth, you get very dirty.





JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: OXFORD STUDY SHOWS THAT DESPITE BETTER QUALIFICATIONS AND 50 YEARS OF EDUCATIONAL REFORMS, STUDENTS TODAY HAVE MADE NO GAIN IN UPWARD MOBILITY - SOME OF THE LIKELY REASONS


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN


'...despite having gained much better qualifications..."

Aye, there's the rub.

It is only superficially true that they have better qualifications.

What has really happened is that Britain followed the American approach to education along many lines, producing a value-eating inflation into much of higher education.

Among other things, this means that you can get a degree now in almost anything you care to name - film, sports, television, women's studies, black studies, even circus (yes, in the United States) - subjects many of which offer no prospect of a profession or serious career and amount to little more than hobby interests.

Well, I’m not speaking against hobby interests, just saying that anyone who associates them with rigorous education is seriously misguided, and just so anyone who gains credentials in a hobby and expects to rise in the world.

Many of these courses of study are not academically challenging, so kids graduate without much effort. They also gain entrance far more easily since standards of acceptance are lowered. This last becomes even more serious when the public schools feeding the universities and colleges gradually reduce their standards by giving easy grades, inflating the grades of everyone applying. In most American high schools, for example, you cannot fail if you try. 

The universities and colleges move away from rigorous academics and in a sense treat their swollen student populations as piggy banks to break open. Even at the graduate level, the impact of all this is felt. Once accepted, you will graduate, short of never handing in assignments.

It’s all a great game for a while – more university jobs, more public schools with “improved” records of success, more students at university – but we all know what happens when you inflate anything, such as money, enough – it simply loses value. While it takes a while to see the results, in the end the results will become clear, as in this study.

The system has the added negative, especially in the United States, of leaving young adults with huge student loans to pay with low or non-existent job prospects. And, remember, in the real world of making things and making a living, genuine talent or exceptional ability count perhaps more than ever. Also, for such talented people moving from one to another country is encouraged by governments and corporations, so apparent prospects are even more reduced for others.


Now, add to all that an economy which is in in serious trouble and one where machines keep replacing people, and I think it is fair to say our senior educators have been “out to lunch.”  



Thursday, March 10, 2016

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WILLIAM PERRY, FORMER AMERICAN SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, SAYS AMERICAN-RUSSIAN HOSTILITY PARTLY AMERICA'S FAULT - I CAN'T IMAGINE WHERE HE GETS "PARTLY"


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN


Partly caused? Well, William Perry was always a cautious man and he is not going say the things which would make him persona non grata in his own land.

Please, Putin and his key staff, such as Foreign Minister Lavrov, are amiable, gifted, and very civil people. They had no motive for any hostilities, looking forward to increased trade and cooperation with the west. They have reacted only to America’s extremely hostile acts.

The Ukraine coup was engineered and paid for by the CIA. We even known the dollar amount, thanks to the State Department’s most bizarre neocon, the close-to-incompetent Victoria Nuland, a hateful person inexplicably put in charge of this file who has offended just about every senior person involved.

The coup was a flagrant challenge and insult to Russia, much comparable to Russia’s doing the same in Mexico. You only have to imaging how Washington would react to that. I can almost guarantee the reaction would not show the same restraint. In a way, the insult is even worse because Ukraine and Russia have such an ancient common history with many connections.

The coup toppled a democratically-elected government, but that is nothing new for the CIA. It has toppled many democratic governments in the past, including Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s.

It is a bit stunning that Obama would support this kind of thuggery, but it is pretty clear in this and other cases – Syria or Libya, for example – that he is pretty much a prisoner of the ongoing unelected government in Washington, the massive defence/security apparatus. Either that or Obama is much more like Dick Cheney in temperament than any of us would have guessed years ago.

The government installed in Ukraine has proved a disaster for the country and its people. Right-wing thugs, like the Azov Battalion, run loose in the country, threatening even its coup-installed government. (Here again, imagine Russia arming and supporting American malcontents such as the Minutemen or Aryan Church?) The new government is divided and has made a long series of incompetent and destructive decisions.

It attacked Russian-speaking portions of the country, creating a civil war in which thousands have died, and even tried making their language illegal. Its armed forces are so badly led and incompetent they could not prevail against a much smaller enemy. When Ukraine tried raising more troops in Western Ukraine by conscription, there were massive run-aways.

And for those who’ve studied the case carefully, there isn’t a doubt that Ukraine’s poorly-led and incompetent armed forces shot-down MH-17. Believe me, if it had really been the Russians, there would have been a storm from Washington, including the release of American radar and satellite data, which have not been released to this day. The Dutch investigators are working under immense American pressure to creep along at a snail’s pace and let time do its work in forgetfulness. Of course, had the world early discovered what really happened, America’s coup-installed government likely would have collapsed immediately.

At the same time as generating all this hostility, the US has increased its armed forces near Russia’s borders, pushed Europeans to do the same, provocatively staged huge war games, and initiated a long series of completely unwarranted anti-Russian economic sanctions. The truth is, almost certainly, all this violence and fear-mongering represents a studied effort to separate Russia from Europe in what had been a growing friendly and economically beneficial set of relationships. It represents a harsh declaration that Europe is more or less American territory, and the ineffective current leaders of Europe don’t seem even capable of saying no.

It is all shameful, and I am sorry Europe’s major countries are today so poorly led that they support America’s dirty work without objection.






JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: POLL SUGGESTS ABOUT HALF OF ISRAEL SUPPORTS ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS - HARDLY A SURPRISE - ISRAEL'S DOUBTFUL FUTURE - COMPARING ISRAEL AND THE SOVIET UNION, TWO GREAT MISTAKES IN HISTORY


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


I find this no surprise at all, although in any important matter, it's nice to have confirmation.

Israel has had slow-motion ethnic cleansing going on for years.

And someone as important as former House Majority Leader, Dick Armey - a long time recipient of pro-Israel money and a rather crass man in general - said a few years back it would be fine with him if Israel just removed all Palestinians.

Israel, I believe, faces its collapse in not many years, and the collapse will come because this utterly failed enterprise resembles in many of its characteristics the old Soviet Union.

It builds walls, it limits who can come and go, its military is a Frankenstein for the size of the place, its security forces are the equivalent in every way of the KBG or Stasi, it holds millions against their will, it steals private property regularly, it has more than one class of citizen, its economy is terrible and it only keeps up appearances by huge subsidies from outside, it claims to be a democracy but behaves as anything but one, it is a place seething with hatreds and discontent, and many of its acts break all international law and convention.

Founding the new Israel was a great historical mistake, especially founding it on someone else's property, a sure way to create endless conflict.

Moreover this modern effort at reconstruction of Israel is by a people with almost no connection to the Middle East other than sentimental associations through religion. The Ashkenazi people are a European people largely, indeed, a Germanic people.


The whole thing has become pretty much a disaster for human rights and rule of law, much as the Soviet Union.



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MATTHEW NORMAN OFFERS MORE ATTITUDE, AND A GOOD DISPLAY OF IGNORANCE, ON TRUMP - CHEAP TRICK OF INDIRECT COMPARISON TO HITLER - CALLING TRUMP A CHARLATAN IS LIKE REACHING FOR ANY INSULT YOU CAN FIND BECAUSE THAT IS THE LAST THING TRUMP IS


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MATTHEW NORMAN IN THE INDEPENDENT


This is an utterly ridiculous column. Since when is it appropriate to write columns which display just plain ignorance?

"Trump isn’t Adolf Hitler… Hitler was not a two-bit charlatan with an arrestable-offence spray tan. He had unshakable beliefs"

Wrong on all counts.

The author obviously has not read the serious biographies of Hitler. Hitler liked saying he had an unshakeable will (and it was "will," not "beliefs"), but the facts don't support him.

He changed his views and even direction on a number of things over time.

It is also a cheap, really cheap, propagandist's trick to say "Trump isn't Hitler" - it's so clearly a way of associating the two names without writing slander. It’s just the old, “Is it true you beat your wife?” question recast.

And I want to know why Trump is a "charlatan"?

He isn't, not a bit. He's the real thing, as they say. In fact, his emerging into mainline politics is a remarkable phenomenon. And that fact, undoubtedly, is what is truly annoying this author.

Trump is loud and vulgar at times, but that's how America itself is. And only a person as pushy as he is can get anything done in that great swamp called Washington.

I think readers can gain some insight on the topic here:


_________________________
Response to another reader’s comment:

And by the way, the same was said of Abraham Lincoln.

Journalists called Lincoln "an obscene ape."


Matthew Norman, undoubtedly, would have been one of them.



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MERKEL'S POLICIES, ESPECIALLY THOSE ABOUT MIGRANTS, FACE TEST IN REGIONAL GERMAN ELECTIONS - THE MYSTERY OF HER FAILURES - MERKEL AND AMERICA


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN


This very gifted woman (a PhD in physics and she speaks fluent Russian), who might have proved a great chancellor, has been close to an unqualified disaster.

I just don't know how she could get so many things so wrong.

The migrants.

The Russians and Ukraine.

Dealing with the greatest thug on the continent, Erdogan, paying him off in billions of Euros, ignoring his devilish role in destroying Syria, ignoring his dirty schemes with stolen oil, ignoring the fact that his troops shoot migrants at the border, ignoring his attacks on the press, ignoring his assassinations of opponents, and ignoring his murderous treatment of the Kurds.

And many of these matters are interrelated, so that action on one or two might have prevented some others.

I strongly suspect very intense American pressure on her in private.


But what a colossal disappointment she is, and I can only hope she does poorly in elections.



Tuesday, March 08, 2016

JOHN CHUCKMAN ESSAY: WHAT IS REALLY AT STAKE IN THE ODDEST AMERICAN ELECTION SEASON OF A LIFETIME


WHAT IS REALLY AT STAKE IN THE ODDEST AMERICAN ELECTION SEASON OF A LIFETIME

John Chuckman

I keep reading stuff in British papers about what America’s Left must do in an election where Donald Trump “has thrown caution to the wind.” Each time I read anything along that line, invariably, I ask myself, “What Left are they talking about?” As perhaps few in Europe understand, there is no Left in the United States.

Bernie Sanders comes closest to being Left, but he is not only from one of the very smallest states in the Union, it is a state known for its liberal bent, something which exists in very few corners of that huge “pounding fist” of a country.

It would be refreshing if Sanders could win, but he cannot. The odds are completely stacked against him. I believe the unexpected force of his campaign, this man whose name was widely unknown west of New England in a campaign against someone whose name and face are, by contrast, as well known as Hershey bars, is a quiet wave of public recognition of just how repulsive a person Hillary Clinton is. It seems a miracle that he has run so well against her, sometimes beating or virtually tying her. 

But remember, this is America we’re talking about, a plutocratic imperial power, not a democracy, and one engaged in vast military and secret state security operations. There is simply no room for a self-declared “democratic socialist.” America has no truck with socialists, even rather nice and soft ones.

Money counts hugely in politics, as it does in every nook and cranny of American life. An accurate motto for America might well be, “If it can’t be bought, it ain’t worth having.” Hillary is exceptionally well connected with, and financed by, the people who really count in shaping American government. Short of a tidal wave of support, any primary lead by Sanders would be stripped of delegates or would be defeated by "super-delegates" at the convention by party insiders.

As for Hillary being elected, nothing in my view could be a greater disaster. She has a murderous record, and I doubt she has told the truth twice in her entire life.

There is simply no question about her tendency to brutal violence. She pushed husband Bill on the needless war in Serbia. She advocated inside the administration for what became the Waco horror. She voted for the illegal invasion of Iraq. She ran at least part of what went on in Libya, a black operation to gather weapons and men to send to Turkey for terrorizing Syria. And we have her brutal idea of humor, complete with sneering laughter, about Gadhafi, a man who on the whole did a decent job of governing in a difficult part of the world: "We came, we saw, he died." She supports Israel’s worst bloody excesses with a smile and regularly takes money from some of the people who work strenuously to keep them going.

Trump carries a great deal of heavy baggage, and has said many things with which I totally disagree, but he does not have Hillary’s record of death and destruction on a grand scale. He may often be quite unpleasant, but Hillary is almost certainly a psychopath whose narcissistic personality feels driven and entitled to be President so she can continue toying with human beings. I reject 90% of what Trump says, but I reject just about 100% of what Hillary has actually done.

There is one area, and a very important one, where possibly Trump can do something good for the world, and that is foreign affairs. Some of his views there are sound, sounder by far than Hillary's. His views on matters like Syria and Russia are entirely rational and not weighed down by America’s malicious policies of the last quarter century, policies which Hillary not only supports but helped to establish and execute.

A vote for Hillary is a vote for more American bullying and terror in the world, and that is not in the least an exaggeration.  Terror is the right word for what America has done in the Middle East: it has crashed and raged through the region, leaving it in blazes. Hillary has served as a “willing executioner” in that hellish effort.

If you look at the groups and individuals who are key Hillary supporters, it is a pretty grim picture. It includes many corrupt and brutal foreign governments such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and Israel, and a vast collection of gigantic international corporate special interests, even financial terrorists like the firm of Goldman Sachs who played a key role in the collapse of 2008 and who have never really been called to account for bringing so many to ruin. There is not a glimmer of genuine liberalism or democratic ideals in the people paying and easing her way, although she likes to put on her best clownishly little-girl face and claim how interested she is in the welfare of ordinary Americans at campaign stops.

If we could only gain some sense and rationality in America’s foreign affairs, it would be a genuine advance for the entire world. Almost certainly you have to pay a price for doing that in a place like the United States. Nothing comes free in a throbbing plutocratic power. That price may be living with Trump's many unpleasant aspects.

The neocons especially see that possibility in Trump, which is why they hate him beyond telling. Already many have said really ugly things in public. And, remarkably, the word "assassination" keeps popping up in those circles. That fact alone should tell us how destructive the impact of the neocons has been upon America’s own society.

It would have been unthinkable fifty years ago for prominent Americans to talk or joke of assassinating a political candidate.  That is how low American society has sunk during its long march with neocons, bombing, invading, promoting terrorism through proxies, and assassinating in the Middle East and in places like Ukraine - virtually all of which derives from the special influence of the neocons.

The political poverty of America was embarrassingly displayed in the original field of Republican candidates which resembled nothing so much as Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors. Fortunately, most of them are gone. As for Ted Cruz, the neocons’ possible “go to” man for stopping Trump, he is, just for a start, a right-wing religious wacko. There is a video of him on-line sitting at breakfast holding hands with his perfect little suburban family praying over the Sugar Pops. Staff working for Cruz include neo-con and CIA-types, and his wife is associated with Goldman Sachs. He is intellectually gifted, but many of his old associates in government say he is an extremely unpleasant man with which to work, extremely arrogant, and one not to be trusted, being given to treacherous turns. His former roommate at Princeton tells of getting e-mails from other students asking why he didn’t suffocate Cruz with a pillow while he had the chance. At least one person has commented on his resemblance to a serial killer. It would be a pretty desperate move by Republicans to try stopping Trump by loading Cruz, a man they simply don’t like, with money and influence. And I tend to feel the effort would fail in any event.

You get nothing free in a big, ugly place like America, so if you would like to see some end to a quarter century of brutal wars and the savage practices which have taken root under Bush/Clinton/Obama, perhaps you need to take a chance.

As few non-Americans realize, in domestic affairs the American President's office is a rather weak one. It was designed to be that way. We have seen the frustration of Obama trying increasingly to govern by executive order, a pernicious practice not much different than imperial fiats, but even with that practice he has made little headway in this rigidly structured society. And no one, certainly no genuine liberal, ever can, without fundamental changes we have no reason to expect any time soon. America in its governance much resembles a giant wearing a huge, thick suit of concrete.

It is only in the area of military and foreign affairs that the American President has some real power, and that is an area which needs serious change. It won't happen under bloodthirsty Hillary, loyal servant to neocon interests.

As far as ugly stuff like great walls or drastic changes to migration, Trump could do nothing without both houses of Congress, so they are proposals unlikely to become realities. Even on such domestic subjects, however, we do hear echoes of the neocon influence. After all, Israel has built many walls and builds more now, all on other people’s land and all of which prevent normal life for millions of others. It couldn’t be more unfair and anti-democratic, but the same people viciously attacking Trump for his proposals are the last ones to say a word about Israel’s actual practices. So those most violently attacking Trump cannot claim concerns for human decency or human rights motivate them, although they very much pretend to do so rather than being open about their real motives. Calling Trump a fascist over mere rhetoric and proposals is pretty ridiculous when we see Israel’s actual practices left unquestioned by crowds of prominent people.



Saturday, March 05, 2016

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: COCKTAIL-PARTY POLITICAL COMMENTATOR GEORGE CLOONEY PAUSES OVER HIS DRINK A MOMENT TO CALL TRUMP A "XENOPHOBIC FASCIST" - CLOONEY OBVIOUSLY COMPLETELY UNAWARE OF WHAT A FASCIST STATE AMERICA HAS BECOME AND IT DIDN'T GET THAT WAY FROM TRUMP


COMMENT TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN


“Donald Trump is a xenophobic fascist”

I'm sorry, but I just do not see how George Clooney is qualified to speak to the matter.

First, what does a jet-set, wealthy screen actor, who likely lives in a gated community, know about such matters?

His are just empty words, stagey lines, indicating a set of attitudes.

Second, is Clooney unaware of what a fascist country America has become, regardless of who is president?

I doubt it - which of course makes him even less qualified to speak - and being the kind of country that it has become, it is now impossible to have good presidential candidates. Sanders never had a chance.

Today, America murders people in a half dozen parts of the globe, day-in, day-out, and it does so in the cowardly fashion of the old Argentine military junta.

It has kept a constant national hate campaign whipped-up against a billion people since 9/11.

It is responsible for horrible bloodshed in its march of terror across the Middle East.

It never utters a word over the predation and murders and slavery of its semi-official colony in the same region.

American police kill 1,100 American citizens on the streets each year - a record which exceeds the bloodshed of any so-called terrorists.

As far as the only realistic alternative in this election, Hillary Clinton, I'd take a chance with Trump. At least he is not a proven cold-blooded killer and non-stop liar. And it is his independence of mind which is bringing out a regular chorus of people like Clooney to call him names in public.

Hillary genuinely, with no exaggeration in the words, is a murderous fascist.

Readers might appreciate this analysis:


By the way, as some British people might not know, the symbol of the Italian Fascists, the bundle of axes wrapped together called fasci plural and fascio singular, which had been a Roman imperial symbol of power, has been a feature on the back of the American 10-cent coin for a very long time. It also features in decorative motifs in Washington’s Capitol.
________________________________

What is really sad is the state of America today, a huge, rich place which can only manage as serious candidates Clinton and Trump.

It is absolute political poverty, but that's because America is not really a democracy. It is a plutocracy - muscle-bound with a gigantic military and state security apparatus – with a lot of stage trappings of democracy.

A really independent candidate, even if he or she could be elected, is in danger, without question, of repeating the fates of John Kennedy and his brother.

And guys like cocktail-party political commentator George Clooney haven't a clue.





JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: "HARNESSING ENERGY AND PASSION" OF SANDERS AND CLINTON CAMPAIGNS TO DEFEAT TRUMP - ONE MORE ATTACK - THIS ONE REALLY INEFFECTUAL


COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MARIA CARDONA IN THE GUARDIAN


"We should be harnessing the energy and passion of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters to defeat Donald Trump"

What silly rubbish.

How do you "harness energy and passion"? Just empty words.

I am not an admirer of Trump's, but I have to say - and this is really important - Hillary, the almost certain Democratic candidate, is simply disgusting.

The cute clown faces she puts on for pictures hide one of the bleakest souls in America.

Readers may enjoy:

https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/john-chuckman-essay-hillarys-secret-letter-and-the-whole-matter-of-endless-war-and-the-almost-complete-corruption-of-americas-government/

____________________
Response to another reader comment:

I like many things about Sanders, but I cannot imagine who ever believed that a self-declared "democratic socialist' could be elected America's leader.

It just cannot happen.

America is an imperial plutocratic state running wars in half a dozen places. It does not elect socialists. It does elect progressives. What passes for a liberal today in America is a bloodthirsty conservative who smiles a lot, Hillary Clinton being an excellent example.

For British people who may not know, Sanders comes from a tiny state, Vermont, often called the most liberal in America. America as a whole represents almost nothing that Vermont does.

The substantial votes Sanders has received outside of his home state are because people are absolutely sick of "Hills."

The woman is a moral and ethical throwback to some of the hordes that attacked Rome.

Note that the Democratic turnout has dropped significantly, while over at the Republicans offering Trump, turnout has jumped up.

Hills has so many, many skeletons in her closet, Trump almost seems a bit wholesome by comparison (!), and Trump will already have good people on the job of digging every dark fact on her.

I predict the dirtiest campaign in modern history, and that's saying something in America.

Note that Hills' supporters have already been caught a couple of times cheating in some of these primaries. I strongly suspect Sanders actually garnered a larger vote than we see, although for a "democratic socialist" in America he has done remarkably well.



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: FACEBOOK REFUSAL TO REMOVE "ASSASSINATE DONALD TRUMP" SITE BECAUSE IT "DOESN'T VIOLATE OUR COMMUNITY STANDARDS" - THE NEO-CON ASSAULT BEGINS


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: NORTH KOREA SAYS IT MUST BE ABLE TO DEPLOY NUCLEAR WEAPONS QUICKLY - AMERICA'S PRESENCE AND REFUSAL TO SIGN TREATY MAKE A CONSTANT THREAT IN KOREAN PENINSULA


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA TODAY


I'm sorry to say it but the North Koreans are right when they say they must be ready to deploy nuclear weapons quickly.

Most of the troubles on the Korean Peninsula are the result of America's presence and its refusal to sign a peace treaty.

The US, time after time, initiates big war games and other highly threatening displays of power.

What is the North supposed to do? It doesn't want to wind up like Syria.

Left to themselves, the North and South could eventually sort things out.



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MIGRANT MESS IN CALAIS FRANCE - EU FUNCTIONS AS JUST CHEERING SECTION FOR THOSE CAUSING DISASTERS - PART OF WHAT WILL RIP EU APART


COMMENT POSTED TO COLUMN IN THE INDEPENDENT


This is just one small part of a vast landscape of horrors brought to us by the teamwork of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and America.

So why does the EU not wake up to the realities and quit providing a cheering section for this brutal abuse of power?

The answer to that question is an important part of the forces at work now tearing the EU apart.



Tuesday, March 01, 2016

JOHN CHUCKMAN ESSAY: HILLARY’S SECRET LETTER AND THE WHOLE MATTER OF ENDLESS WAR AND THE ALMOST COMPLETE CORRUPTION OF AMERICA’S GOVERNMENT


HILLARY’S SECRET LETTER AND THE WHOLE MATTER OF ENDLESS WAR AND THE ALMOST COMPLETE CORRUPTION OF AMERICA’S GOVERNMENT

John Chuckman

An almost perfect measure of the decay of democratic values in American politics is found in a letter from Hillary Clinton to Haim Saban, a wealthy American-Israeli and a major contributor to the Democrats. It is a letter whose only purpose is to elicit funds, ingratiating its author to the recipient by condemning the perfectly legitimate right of free people to choose boycotting Israel over its appalling behaviors.  The letter is disturbing in some of its views and characterizations, but it has been reviewed and remarked upon by many, as here.

We were not supposed to know this, but there are actually two letters. The first letter was released by its recipient, but the second letter was intended only for its recipient’s eyes. Somehow, it managed to be leaked to The Guardian, although in searching the Internet to discover just what happened it seems Google has done a pretty good job of sweeping over the trail.

It is the second letter, the one we were not supposed to see, which goes beyond being disturbing.

I am not exaggerating when I characterize it as something comparable to words which might have been written by... well, choose the name of any grisly dictator, but Adolph Hitler’s would have to be the one jumping to the minds of most people. This second letter’s words are absolutely chilling. If you think I’m exaggerating, here are Hillary’s words:

“Quite frankly, Israel didn’t teach Hamas a harsh enough lesson last year. True to form, Obama was too hard on our democratic ally, and too soft on our Islamofascist foe.

“As president, I will give the Jewish state all the necessary military, diplomatic, economic and moral support it needs to truly vanquish Hamas – and if that means killing 200,000 Gazans, then so be it.

“We realist Democrats understand that collateral damage is an unavoidable by-product of the War on Terror, and me being a mother, grandmother and tireless children’s rights advocate does not mean that I will flinch even one iota in allowing Israel to obliterate every last school-cum-rocket launching pad in Gaza. Those who allow their children to be used as human shields for terrorists deserve to see them buried under one-ton bombs.”

Let’s just analyze a few of the more unacceptable and repugnant statements in this letter.

“Israel didn’t teach Hamas a harsh enough lesson…”

In 2014, Israel killed over 500 children plus another 1,700 adults in Gaza, and that came after another invasion, 2008, and a series of operations beginning in 2006, which saw Israel kill more than another 1,500 Palestinians. It should be noted that the Palestinian population is a young one, so a disproportion of children is always at risk in any attack. We had reliable reports that Israeli soldiers grabbed Palestinian children to hold in front of them in a number of instances. We also had first-hand reports of families being targeted.

Over this period, Israel has maintained a brutal blockade of Gaza, which in its first inception included an actual calorie count for the amount of food which could just keep a person alive, an idea we might want to credit to Himmler. International pressure brought an end to that aspect of the blockade, but even today the Palestinians cannot get cement to repair their sanitation and homes. Israel also launched its infamous Gaza flotilla raid in 2010, seizing half a dozen ships attempting to bring aid to Gaza and killing 10 crew members, all of them unarmed.

I remind readers just what Gaza is. It is essentially a huge refugee camp, a place where Palestinians huddled for protection from Israel’s 1948 terror campaign against residents of ancient villages long since bulldozed out of existence. Today, surrounded by fences and guards and towers with automated, radar-operated machine-guns, Gaza resembles a vast outdoor prison, or, if you will, a Bantustan or concentration camp. Even its fishermen are allowed to go only a short distance into the sea before being attacked by Israeli gun boats. Periodically, Israel does dirty work like cut its power or foul its water. Recently, a huge swath of land around its perimeter was sprayed with herbicides, cutting food supplies and insuring future malformation of children, just as we see in Vietnam as a result of America’s use of Agent Orange.

“…our democratic ally…”

Israel is certainly one of the world’s strangest “democracies.” About half the people living under its rule do not want to live under its rule, have no votes, have absolutely no rights, and are treated in the most abusive manner. Even their homes are not their own with Israel periodically seizing them for its own purposes.

Then we have the fact that only Jews are supposed to live in “the Jewish state.” Only Jews are welcomed. Indeed only Jews are accepted. Other kinds of refugees are turned away. There is a government program underway right now to clean out the Knesset, Israel’s legislature, of its few Arab members. These are the representatives of Arabs trapped in what became Israel in 1948 and reluctantly granted citizenship, although in daily practice and in many laws, Arab citizens are not deemed as full citizens, identity papers are stamped and they are subjected to hearing regular demagogic demands that they all be pushed across the Jordan River and out of the country.

If you consider Israel a genuine democracy, then you must also view the American Confederacy or South Africa under the National Party as democracies. They both held elections and had legislatures and the dress-up appearances of democracy. It was just that huge numbers of those countries’ people could not vote and could not own certain property and had no rights.

Israel’s so-called democracy has other serious impairments, including a structure for the role of money in politics that much resembles America’s. It is at best a plutocracy. Millions pour in to favored candidates like Netanyahu from sources like American billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

Israel has another highly undemocratic characteristic, and that is its aversion to democracy in countries or groups anywhere near it. It always has supported happily tyrants like Mubarak in Egypt and has worked assiduously to get what was a democratic organization like Hamas declared and treated as some kind of terrorists.

If Israel is, as Israelis like to say, the Middle East’s only democracy, I think we can be glad there are not more such democracies.

“…our Islamofascist foe…”

Since when are the Palestinians - who, as is often ignored, include both Islamic and Christian people - “our foe”? I don’t recall them threatening or attacking anyone? Women and children and hard-working men on farms and in shops are our foe? People without even the semblance of a military?

Since when are they “Islamofascists”? They are just people driven out of their own ancient homes and farms by groups of well-armed newcomers from Europe and America. And what is an “Islamofascist,” beyond a slur term coined in Israel for people who are resented, hated, and abused merely for the fact of their very existence? We did briefly see in the last assault on Gaza how ugly things get in Israel, something generally kept from our eyes, with video of Israelis in lawn chairs on the heights watching homes being bombed and cheering as though it were the home team scoring a goal at a football match.

“I will give the Jewish state all the necessary military, diplomatic, economic and moral support it needs to truly vanquish Hamas…”

What in God’s name does that mean? America literally pours military, security, and technical assistance into Israel. There is continuous typhoon of it hitting Israel’s shores. And how would more help “truly vanquish Hamas”? What would be the shape of that? A couple of thermonuclear weapons lobbed into Gaza? But Israel already has its own thermonuclear weapons, albeit through lying and deceit and even theft and against the intent of all international law and organization, although with the secret contrivance and acceptance of a couple of generations of politicians like Hillary.

Why should Hamas be vanquished? It was elected to office in a clean election, likely cleaner than most American and Israeli elections. But I forget, Israel hates having democracies anywhere near its borders. It prefers dealing with – when it deigns even to speak to its neighbors – men like Mahmoud Abbas, who last legally held office in 2009 and has unilaterally extended his own term as President ever since, and who is completely ineffectual in his relations with Israel.

We shouldn’t forget that after Hamas’s internationally-supervised election, Israeli troops raced into Gaza and illegally arrested many of its elected officials. It also publicly threatened the leader’s assassination. Funny, but I don’t recall things going the other way from this supposedly terrorist organization. After all, it earned the “official” designation as terrorist from politicians like Hillary Clinton or Newt Gingrich or Dick Armey working to keep those pro-Israeli campaign funds flowing in.

All of the horrors of invasions, bombardments, and blockades came after that simple election. Israel hates Hamas because it does not do exactly as it is ordered to do. Always the excuse is used that Hamas won’t recognize Israel as “the Jewish state,” but that view deliberately hides many legitimate issues. In conflict or disagreement, countries typically do not extend formal recognition. The United States has done this countless times, including for the last half century with Cuba. It did it for years with the Soviet Union.

But Israel’s case is not just a matter of formal recognition. There is a subtle but immensely important difference. It wants recognition as “the Jewish state.” What would happen to those million or so Palestinians who hold Israeli passports and are now at least nominally Israelis? Forced marches across the Jordan River? What happens to the many important Palestinian claims on Israel? What claims do you think a non-Jew can have in “a Jewish state” under purely Jewish courts and laws? What happens to the entire West Bank, which exists under Israeli occupation and is regularly predated by sudden demands for non-Jewish properties? This is no simple issue as Israel repeatedly and tiresomely insists that it is.

You are not a terrorist because you refuse to accept Israel’s terms: you are a people looking out for your own interests, something all people have the right and need to do. Israel always insists that this acceptance come before any other matters can be dealt with, and it then turns to the press and says, “See, I told you, they are terrorists.”  Simply absurd, expecting people to just lie down and let you do whatever you want to them! 

“…and if that means killing 200,000 Gazans, then so be it…”

Only a person so exceedingly biased towards Israel as to be effectively blind would fail to recognize the tone of those words. They could easily have been written by Adolph Hitler or one his charming goons such as Heinrich Himmler or Joseph Goebbels.

In the churches and schools where I was brought up, such speech could never be countenanced, yet here it is, written by a woman who was Secretary of State now wants to be President. She obviously knows enough to keep this morally-filthy language secret, hence her method of the second letter. So, even in her, maybe there is some little remaining sense of shame? But I doubt it because she is writing these ghastly words for what purpose? To ask for a large amount of money.

Now, if you wrote words like that in Israel or in a number of countries, only changing the name of who are to be killed in mass, you would most certainly go to prison, besides being labelled a terrorist for life. Apparently, when Hillary learned that this letter leaked, she made the excuse that there had been a typo, that it should have read “20,000.” Her moral and ethical organs are so charred and twisted that she actually thinks 20,00 people killed sounds okay, just fine, maybe ten times as good as killing 200,000?

But of course, Hillary is grotesquely lying even in this excuse, as she has lied innumerable times over her adult life, an ongoing stage play we have all enjoyed in the news: watching her defend her predatory husband for the sake of future political success, watching her politically-motivated statement of being shot at in Bosnia in 1996, a claim almost instantly proved fraudulent by the press, watching her squirm and lie about what really happened during the murderous events at Benghazi, and watching her lie as she is investigated about using her private server for top secret material as Secretary of State.  

“Those who allow their children to be used as human shields for terrorists deserve to see them buried under one-ton bombs”

This statement is so sick and twisted, it is frightening. It begs the whole genuine issue of whether any Palestinian ever did this, while we know from witnesses that Israeli soldiers did. Just what is it here that we are talking about where children are said to have been used as shields? A full-fledged invasion by heavily-armed troops, supported with tanks and artillery and fighter planes into a densely-crowded civilian area, often aptly described as an open-air prison for a million and a half souls. How could children avoid becoming targets? In the poor places of the Middle East with their high birth rates, children are a greater portion of the population than in advanced countries. Only a genuine monster would launch such an invasion, and only an equal monster would defend it.

To my mind, this damnable behavior of Israel’s could be compared to, say, the Detroit Police Department, supported by the Michigan National Guard, invading the ghettos of Detroit to capture a few criminals and killing literally thousands of innocent people in the process and leaving the place a pile of rubble. The whole world would be appalled. But even that comparison is inadequate. Israel was not chasing criminals. What Israel was really hoping to do was murder the leaders of Hamas, a legitimate political party. But even if Hamas were not a legitimate party, Israel’s act is comparable to Detroit’s police and National Guard killing thousands to try getting a few members of the Black Panther Party in the 1970s.

We’ve surmised that things like this letter go on in private because we see our politicians countenancing mass murder and we see the entire Middle East in flames owing to the same cause. But having the paper in hand is another matter. For instance, we know Newt Gingrich received the best part of $20 million for his last nomination campaign from billionaire Sheldon Adelson and proceeded to make campaign speeches about there being “no such thing as a Palestinian.”

We know former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a man whose career was well financed by special interests, actually said in the late part of his career that Israel should just sweep all the Palestinians out of the country.

We know that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in response to a question about 500,000 deaths of children in Iraq, “We think the price is worth it,” and does anyone wonder why Albright not only strongly supports Hillary but recently spoke of “a special place in hell for women” who didn’t support Hillary?

It tells us a great deal of the lengths to which an American politician will go to secure large sources of funds. It tells us too something about her relationship with the recipient that Hillary believed she could freely address him in such an appalling fashion. Finally, it confirms everyone’s worst fears about the Israel Lobby and the extremes to which its supporters are prepared to go.

We all know there is a huge amount of behind-the-scenes, dirty dealing in American politics, but not just in politics, in foreign affairs. There is no other explanation for the murky, bloody swamp into which America’s government has towed the country. America has been continuously at war for a quarter century. It has killed great numbers of people and destroyed whole societies. And none of those people threatened the United States, not even the Taleban who were arbitrarily and without proof held responsible for the events of 9/11.

Virtually all of it relates directly or indirectly to Israel and making the Middle East comfortable for a state which itself never hesitates to threaten, attack, kill, imprison, torture to gain its objectives, its objectives being to enlarge itself far beyond its original accepted boundaries, to reduce the native Palestinian population of millions to such miserable discomfort that they flee their homes, and to assure itself of hegemony throughout the region, seeing independent-minded leaders like Assad or Gadhafi literally murdered and their countries torn apart.  

It is a program which parallels closely historical examples which none of us has been taught to admire or approve, historical examples which have caused great wars and massive human misery. We have established some of our greatest international institutions precisely out of the wreckage of history with the aim of not letting it happen again, but today every one of these institutions is compromised by American pressure on Israel’s behalf, the work of corrupt politicians like Hillary Clinton.

So it is happening again, although on a smaller scale – though I wouldn’t want the job of explaining to the people of Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, and a number of other places that their desolation and misery are on a smaller scale.    

The present Secretary General doesn’t even peep at America’s many appalling acts. Past Secretaries General who managed to get elected despite their opposition to American imperialism – an example was Boutros Boutros-Ghali – were removed in behind-the-scenes plots. Madeleine Albright for example won her State Department spurs arranging just that kind of thing. Combinations of threats and bribes do the job nicely, and, of course, the UN hasn’t forgotten the long period of time the United States simply refused to pay its treaty-required dues, a quarter of the institution’s budget.

But ordinary Americans and others rarely get even a peek at any of the details going into the shaping of their world. Here is one small instance where they do, and it is a telling one.


FOOTNOTE: It comes to my attention that there is reason to suspect the original source of the second letter. It may well have been a hoax. But even if that proves to be the case, I stand by my comments and observations as things which needed saying, having their own validity quite apart from that of the letter.