Saturday, April 29, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: SOME FACTS AND HISTORY CONCERNING AMERICA'S DANGEROUS AND DISHONEST POSITION IN NORTH KOREA - THE PENTAGON AND NUCLEAR WAR



COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


"US wants North Korea nuclear talks, says Rex Tillerson"

Sounds reasonable, if you don't know much.

It is the US which has always refused even to speak directly with North Korea.

It is the US which maintains a sizable army at North Korea’s border.

It is the US which regularly puts on threatening war game displays offshore and in South Korea.

It is the US, during the Korean War, which conducted a horrific bombing campaign against North Korea. This is seldom discussed in the West, but North Korean cities were nearly levelled the bombing was so intense.

It is the US which keeps nuclear weapons - against Japanese law - in Okinawa.

It is the US which has been on a 15-year rampage through the Middle East, killing about 2 million people, setting an example to the contemporary world of arbitrary and brutal use of power.

It is the US which has ramped up a new Cold War in Europe, sending tanks, planes, and troops right up against Russia’s border, expanding NATO membership aggressively, building THAAD anti-missile systems, while making lots of provocative statements and periodically sending spy planes towards Russia with their transponders turned off, a dangerous practice – all this while declaring various economic sanctions for no sound reason.

It is the US which is placing the THAAD system in South Korea, something both China and Russia oppose.

This missile system is a much more provocative act than many understand because the ostensible purpose of the system is said to be defensive, and for several reasons.

The THAAD missile tubes and radars can be used covertly for entirely different kinds of missiles such as short-range ground-to-ground nuclear-armed ones. Just this possibility so near to China or Russia is inherently destabilizing.

They can also be used with other types of anti-missile missiles covertly substituted, to bring down ICBMs in their most vulnerable phase of early take-off. This always means the possible threat of launching a nuclear assault coordinated with neutralizing any response.

Even in John Kennedy’s time, the Pentagon was advocating detailed plans for a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Russia. He once left a Pentagon briefing saying it made him sick to his stomach. Does anyone believe that kind of thinking has just melted away?

Of course, both Russia and China are taking counter-measures, and they have many that they can take, but does anyone in his or her right mind think we need an arms race?

You do not have to like North Korea's government to understand their fears and why it is they have "gone nuclear."

I think it fair to say, too, that North Korea's reasons are precisely the same as those of Israel.

But, in the case of North Korea the US periodically gets worked up to possible warfare while in the case of Israel, it just pretends the nuclear weapons do not exist.

There is simply no rationality or balance or respect for others in US foreign policy.

It is always just a matter of, "This is what I want," and I’m pretty sure anyone else behaving that same way would be called a bully.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: HOW THE SECURITY SERVICES ASSISTED BY THE CORPORATE PRESS TURNED AN ELECTED PRESIDENT INTO A BIZARRE VERSION OF THE DEFEATED CANDIDATE - SO MUCH FOR ELECTIONS IN AMERICA


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


“How relations between White House and intelligence agencies crumbled in Donald Trump's first 100 days
“Mr Trump cannot shake off the allegations that he was the 'Muscovite Candidate'”

American intelligence agencies have already ended the Trump presidency, in case you hadn't noticed.

And the corporate press, never checking facts and always quoting intelligence officials as though they were dependable, helped in the job of wresting power from an elected president. Look at you still using a stupid, baseless expression like “Muscovite Candidate,” even if you place it in quotes to cover your ass.

Trump, who was something of an interesting maverick, has totally collapsed to the internal pressures.

He proved a coward, something no one expected.

But then those hugely unaccountable, immensely well-financed, and dirty-tricks-oriented security services can be very scary.

And far be it from the corporate press ever to question anything that gang of life-long liars and dirty-tricks guys say. Rather, you only serve to amplify their volume and validate their authority.

Everyone should be concerned that what has been proved conclusively in three months is that American elections are noisy, expensive shows with no real meaning.

We now have killer Hillary sitting in the Oval Office in reverse-drag.
_______________________

Response to another reader calling Hillary the lesser of two evils:

I don't see how you can say that with any knowledge.

She has an appalling record of killing and brutality.

Remember her psychopathic, "We came, we saw, he died. Ha! ha! ha!" on Gaddafi's murder?

He had been a good ruler for his people - free education, good water systems, many good services, and kept them out of war - but Obama and Hillary knew better. Now Libya is in ruins and full of violence.

And that's just one of her achievements.

She made the call on the FBI attacking Waco because she wanted it out of the political headlines. Bill could never stand up to her demands because his long record of reckless sexual behavior gave her immense leverage over him. Eighty people were incinerated, including women and children. They were kooks, but they did not deserve that.

Hillary was also responsible for stocks of Gaddafi's chemical weapons, including Sarin nerve gas, being transferred to Syria to kill women and children. It was all part of an elaborate plan to topple another decent, but too independent-minded, leader in the Mideast, Assad. We know this from journalist Seymour Hersh.



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WIKIPEDIA TAKES UP THE CAUSE OF FIGHTING "FAKE NEWS" - JOINING AMERICA'S OTHER INTERNET GIANTS IN A PHONY CRUSADE FOR WHICH NONE OF THEM IS THE LEAST QUALIFIED


EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN SPUTNIK


“Wikipedia Founder to Fight 'Fake News' Epidemic With New Online Service

Just plain silly.

But also amazingly pretentious.

How is Wikipedia qualified in any way to do anything approaching this?

They are not, of course.

And, of course, you are right to point out that their own site’s embarrassing shortfalls in accuracy and substance. On some subjects, Wikipedia resembles a spinning toilet-paper roll of changes to what are supposed to be facts.

Some entries are actually amusing because of the obvious efforts of posters to create an impression rather than give facts. PR flacks, celebrities, and special interest groups often write material shining a favorable light on themselves or a subject of interest. What we may call “partial truth” abounds on the site.

I'm sure all controversial entities - from CIA and FBI to Israel and the Pentagon - have low-level employees constantly churning out crap for this site, factual enough to stay posted but avoiding all unwanted complexities or subtleties or divergent interpretations - in other words, propaganda, the most effective kind which is always built on some truth, partial truth. I don’t know whether there is open complicity or just a bit of winking going on at Wikipedia.

This Wikipedia initiative is just one more effort by America's huge Internet corporations to pretend they are something more than what they are.

Facebook, Google, Wikipedia, Amazon plus others - all have some legitimate areas of effort and service, but they all serve the American establishment constantly in various ways from collecting personal information to spreading propaganda. And they all pride themselves in posing as deciders of truth.

They all are involved in giving security services users’ personal information. They all are involved in various degrees of misrepresentation about what they do. They all are involved in "serving the cause" of American world empire, sometimes embarrassingly so. They all, for example, through one mechanism or another, displayed blatant partiality for the official presidential candidate of the War Party, possibly the most corrupt candidate in American history, Hillary Clinton.

I can't help laughing every time I think of Google – once, long ago, a seemingly honest operation - inserting absurd warning-of-danger pages whenever I used to hit my link for Sputnik. The page included a button marked "back to safety" as though you were approaching serious malware.

I haven't seen it in a little while. Perhaps they realized how ridiculous it made them look.

But intelligence services do a lot of not-very-intelligent things at times, as does anyone who is dedicated to “getting out a story” rather than just performing an honest job or explaining something truthfully.

I still think Facebook is the most laughably absurd of all of them in this regard. A truly stupid site that has done everything from running fraudulent trending news story lists to suffering plagues of false “likes” (which affect advertising rates) to abusing its members’ privacy, without ever informing them, by using malware which tracks them everywhere they go on the Internet.

And then there is its preposterously pretentious owner who plays t-shirted, regular-guy guru and who also plays at the claim of being a great philanthropist by announcing he’ll give away most of his fortune someday. Oh sure, but don’t hold your breath.

The last immensely wealthy man in America who actually did that was Andrew Carnegie, and his kind of old-school Scottish conscientious character has not been a popular model since. Neither has his interest in philosophy and ideas and friendships with important thinkers of his day been adopted by other immensely wealthy Americans.

I don’t understand why anyone even uses the Facebook site, but it benefits from great numbers of people intimidated by the Internet in general and glad to find “one-stop shopping” so to speak. It is a highly controlled and regulated space which gives the illusion of the nearly-infinite variety and diversity and freedom of the Internet itself.

In sum, if there is such a thing as “fake news,” it is as likely to be found on the sites of the American Internet giants as anywhere else, and perhaps even more likely, since we see their clear set of declared intentions and biased behaviors rather than dealing strictly in facts.

Thursday, April 27, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WHAT SO MANY AMERICANS SIMPLY DO NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT THEIR OWN COUNTRY - PARALLELS OF AMERICA TODAY WITH 16TH CENTURY CHURCH


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RINF


“FOR WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN, IF HE SHALL GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD, AND LOSE HIS OWN SOUL?”

Absolutely.

And what so few Americans even begin to appreciate is the simple fact that you can either have a world empire or you can have a decent society, but you cannot have both.

Whether Patriot-types or just ordinary party loyalists or genuine liberals (albeit there are mighty few of the latter in America) the entire gamut of American political society misses this point. They all pretend they have an explanation for who or what is responsible for all the things which are so clearly wrong, but almost none of them touches the truth.

Everything about Imperial America works against having a decent country.

Huge, intrusive security services. Intrusive everywhere abroad, causing great pain and injustice, and not the least reluctant to practice the same well-honed arts at home.

A massive military which influences all of society and, especially young people, daily, its fundamental principles being necessarily the opposite of free and democratic principles. The military is authority-oriented and no believer in democracy in anything it does. The larger it is, the more its values permeate. And that’s in addition to the destructive fact that its very existence provides a constant temptation for politicians to use it for more wars.

An entrenched, privileged political class which essentially lives off of the vast donations of America's wealthy. The best government money can buy is a joke often heard, but it is a joke with a bitter truth to it. Special interests are almost all that matter in American politics.

And with all of these institutions, Lord Acton's dictum about power is in full force.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Nothing truer was ever said, and it is unbelievably naive to think America is somehow exempt.

Waving the good old Stars and Stripes, a folded copy of the constitution in your wallet, a framed copy of The Declaration of Independence on the wall, reading endless blather about rights and freedoms – it all counts for nothing under the insidious, ongoing influence of great and corrupting power.

I think a good comparison for the extremely naive beliefs of so many Americans is found in the Catholic Church of, say, the Sixteenth Century.

High official principles. Glorified sense of purpose in the world. The words of Jesus. The genuine naive belief of many millions of humble followers. Pious painting and statues everywhere. Beautiful churches and music.

But the unquestioned reality of a power structure which worked only for power, both in money and political influence, and almost nothing else. Wars. Slaughters and massacres. Corrupt church officials with lifetime sinecures. Great temporal lords who know that money given to the right church official will buy whatever you want, from the appointment of a cardinal to a divorce or support for some claim.

Yes, the Catholic Church of that period closely parallels the reality of America’s establishment today, and it will take a grindingly long time or some great catastrophe for it to change.

I’m sure for some, especially for the American Patriot-types, the notion of repeating one of humanity’s many past rebellions and revolutions in history springs to mind, but that is a hopelessly naive thought because it ignores the reality of an establishment now so well-armed, it is untouchable. You cannot rebel against Zeus hurling thunderbolts from Olympus.

A fair number of people did believe Trump was going to go to the Temple and whip some money-changers until they ran away, but, instead, the money-changers intimidated him into complete submission. He is indistinguishable along any important line from the person many regarded as America’s genuine Political Satan, Hillary Clinton.

The American establishment is far too powerful and entrenched ever to be changed by the almost-silly ritual of America’s money-drenched elections, and any figure who is elected quickly faces, gathered around massive polished tables in Washington, the true face of American power.

Immensely-rich special interests, immensely-rich corporate owners and management, and their faithful servants, crinkly-faced Senators with lifetime sinecures, the brass-and-ribbon bedecked figures of the Pentagon and the Armani-clad, arrogant, almost unaccountable figures of the CIA and other security services.

But they all dutifully salute Old Glory and subscribe to all the words about rights and democracy, Just like the College of Cardinals and the Pope embracing the Holy Bible in the Sixteenth Century. A magnificent wine-drenched lunch in a church palace with a blessing for God’s Grace just before viewing a group of heretics being burned alive or having a quiet meeting with a great duke, seeking favors and carrying a heavy bag of gold.


Monday, April 24, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WHY ISRAEL HATES HAMAS - IT COMES FROM THE SAME PLACE AS ALL ITS OTHER RELATIONSHIPS WITH NEIGHBORS: EXTREME DISCOMFORT WITH REAL DEMOCRACY


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


“US Jewish organization condemns Pope Francis for comparing refugee centers to 'concentration camps'’
_____________________________

Response to another reader’s comment accusing someone of supporting Hamas terrorists:

Yours is an uninformed response, seemingly taken right from the official Israeli government crib sheets for making comments in newspapers abroad.

Honest and informed people do not regard Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Indeed, in the organization’s early days, Israel secretly supported Hamas in hopes of destroying Arafat’s Fatah.

Then, when Hamas had some political success as a result of its many effective charitable and organizing efforts, it suddenly became a terrorist organization according to Israel. And using its intimate political connections to get the United States to agree was a mere formality. So, Hamas became a terrorist organization by the same process we read of in Alice in Wonderland when the roses were painted red.

We have no less a figure than Jimmy Carter, one of the most intelligent and conscientious statesmen of his time, who has described the realities of Hamas vis-à-vis Israel, having met all the parties involved.

Israel only uses the "terrorist" ploy to prevent an effective democratic party from unifying the Palestinians.

That is what is really feared. Just as Israel hates democracy in any neighboring countries, a fact relatively few outsiders understand. Israel’s good friends in neighboring countries are all kings or tyrants. Tyrant in Egypt. Absolute monarch in Saudi Arabia. King in Jordan. Relationships with these and others run deep, and the word “democracy” never passes anyone’s lips.

The House of Saud and Israel are close friends and virtually secret allies, sharing many mutual interests including fears around democratic and human rights and concerns around defending the influence of wealth in the region. They often work secretly together on the same projects, as in Syria. It was not always so, but after 9/11, the House of Saud was terrified that the United States would attack them, and it started bending over backwards to cooperate.

The King of Jordan is a virtual servant of Israel, and he is well known in his own country for having no independence of thought or action. That’s why any critic in Jordan pointing out the fact out ends up in prison.

Israel got on extremely well with Egypt’s dictator, Mubarak, for thirty years, Mubarak receiving his annual “assistance” payments from America so long as that continued to be the case. Egypt’s flirtation with democracy was brought to a quick and deadly end shortly after its first elected president dared make a few brief statements angering Israel. Through a combination of covert activities by Israel and the United States, a new tyrant was installed in Egypt, again a man with whom Israel has good relations, a man doing Israel such favors as building a section of wall between Sinai and Gaza which extends a metallic skirt deep underground.

Israel’s long-existing list of governments which it wanted the United States to topple - including Iraq, Syria, and Iran, Ariel Sharon having been quite open at times about his murderous demands in the name of “democracy” in the Middle East – were all governments which did not toe the line with Washington, preserving for themselves some portion of their own legitimate national interests, something not accepted by Israel. That really is the key fact for any government’s having been listed, not any lack of democracy, because Israel simply has some of its best relationships with non-democratic (and extremely corrupt) governments.

Well, the principles applying to Israel’s major neighbors apply also to its closest and smallest, Palestine. That's why Israel still props up Mahmoud Abbas as “president,” a man who has not faced an election for years and has no basis in fact for his title.

Abbas also is a rather Stepin Fetchit type of personality, someone Israel finds useful even though they almost never talk even to him.

Hostility to democracy in its neighborhood is why Israel, early on after an observed clean election in Gaza, sent troops charging in to arrest properly elected representatives, a totally illegal act.

That's why Israel openly threatened the head of Hamas with assassination, a totally illegal act.

That's why Israel did assassinate some Hamas officials, totally illegal acts.

That's why we had the Nazi-like blockade of Gaza declared, Nazi-like because in its early period it actually included a calorie count of the minimum necessary calories to sustain life, that count controlling the level of allowed food imports. You could not buy a candy bar in Gaza.

That extreme measure, once it was known to the public, came under US pressure, and it was eased, but the Palestinians of Gaza still sit in many ruins from Israel’s bombing because they cannot import many basic building materials. And I don’t think anyone with an open mind believes Israel has any right – beyond might - to even impose any blockade.

It is absolutely savage, and no one who is not a partisan of the genuine terrorists, the Netanyahu government, can accept it.

By the way, not all readers may be aware but recently, for the third time I believe, Israel sprayed herbicides on large swaths of Gaza limited arable land.

Imagine, in that crowded place with many, many children, spraying herbicides? America’s arrogant use of Agent Orange in Vietnam is still causing birth defects and deaths all these years after the war.

Israel previously used this horrible technique of spraying herbicides, multiple times, on Bedouin in the Negev region they wanted to force away from where they lived.

That’s getting awfully close to Nazi methods I think all decent people can agree.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM IN BILBAO OFFERED AS AN EXAMPLE OF GREAT NEW ARCHITECTURE GIVING FRESH LIFE TO TIRED PLACES - WHY THIS IS NOT SO


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


“How stunning architecture like the Guggenheim in Bilbao breathes new life into tired cities”

It just ain't so.

Bilbao, if it is indeed considered great architecture, is an example making just the opposite point.

It is like a daunting fortress dropped from the sky with no relationship to its surroundings.

Even your photo demonstrates the opposite of your claim.

There's no life at the place. I've yet to see a photo showing any life around it.

The truth is, of course, that this is not great architecture.

It is a monumental sculpture which has no relationship with people who come near it or with the city in which it resides.

It is simply a monstrous memorial to a wealthy family.

It almost reminds me, in its “tone,” of the kind of monstrous buildings Hitler had planned for Germany's future.

Sunday, April 23, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: IN FIFTY YEARS AMERICA'S TWO BOUTS OF MASS KILLING AND DESTRUCTION - HOW THE WEST HAS CHANGED IN ITS REACTIONS OVER THAT TIME


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


“Britain could join US in Syria air strikes against Assad without parliamentary approval, Boris Johnson says”

Lovely statement.

Britain has reached a new low since the mass murders of Tony Blair.

Syria has attacked no one.

Its government is one of the better ones in the region.

Its minority of Christians support Assad, who has always protected them.

The country is fighting desperately against gangs of armed thugs, collected, trained, supplied, and paid by America and Israel and Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Oman plus lots of past help from Britain and France.

Since when does an honorable country or an honorable statesman support attacking a country like Syria? That opposes every principle of rule of law and human decency.

Welcome to the world of the Neocon Wars. Fifteen years of bombing and killing anyone you don't happen to like. Like hateful little boys crushing butterflies or smashing birds’ eggs underfoot, just because they can.

All that death and horror and destabilizing armies of refugees created by just this very thing.

Why? Because America and its nasty Middle East colony want Syria treated like Iraq or Libya or Yemen.

A total disgrace for every person of conscience on the planet.

While smaller in scope, these wars are ethically and morally indistinguishable from those of Mussolini or Hitler.

I consider how much things have changed, and not for the better, since Lyndon Johnson failed to get most NATO countries to join with his insane crusade in Vietnam, something which turned into a holocaust killing three million people, achieving nothing.

Fifty years later, most are on board for an equally insane round of barbarism which has already killed a couple of million and sent millions running from their homes.

Two mindless bouts of mass murder and destruction just to get something you want and only decades apart.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: PATRIOT-TYPES WHO DREAM OF REBELLION - MINDS COMICALLY STUCK IN TWO CENTURIES AGO - AND THE COMPLETE AND DEVASTATING FAILURE OF TRUMP TO DO EVEN ONE WORTHWHILE THING


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN GOVERNMENT SLAVES


“THE SIMPLE REASON WHY A SECOND AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MAY BE INEVITABLE”   

Just total non-think.

Good God, civil war cannot happen in contemporary America.

Neither can any meaningful rebellion or uprising.

Americans are literally buried under countless layers of police and military and security, all with the most advanced weapons and intrusive security mechanisms.

Perhaps, silly stuff like this just proves where the brains of some Americans are stuck.

The best part of two centuries ago.

__________________________
Response to another reader’s bizarre comment about how I’ve missed all the change happening in America:

And you need a brain transplant.

Virtually nothing real has happened. Trump's election was a pathetic illusion of change.

As anyone can see, he is now married to the Neocons and the military/security establishment, exactly like Hillary or Obama.

He is pushing aggressive tactics in Syria, Iran, and against Russia.

Israel is as happy as a kid with a new toy under Trump. It appears to get anything it wants and suffers absolutely no reproach for its countless brutalities and injustices and its total disregard for the rule of law.

Trump has not created one meaningful change for the American economy. We only hear a lot of blubbering about the terms of trade with some countries. Tearing up this or that treaty. Believe me, trade wars are not a route to prosperity.

He has not made any serious cuts in the outrageous levels of government spending, outrageous at many levels but especially in the non-productive and risk-generating expenditures of the military/security complex.

And, remember, all of that spending is with non-existent funds, just more debt piled on debt.

Congress is still bought and paid for. Completely.

Your rights are disappearing daily. Everything you write or see is now stored as data with the NSA.

And the total armed establishment controlling your society - my original point you managed to miss completely - is beyond anything ever seen before in history.

The total of military, armed security, secret services, and police forces at all different levels means Americans are virtually frozen in place by immense force.

A colossal set of forces, including all those city police ready to shoot anyone at the drop of a hat. They now kill more than 1,100 Americans every year, three per day, and they send 50,000 to hospitals every year, mostly with no consequences for themselves.

Well, P.T. Barnum said it best, "There's a sucker born every minute."


Saturday, April 22, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ELECTION ACCUSATION AGAINST LE PEN USING "TERROR FEARS" SILLY - THAT'S ALL WESTERN POLITICIANS HAVE DONE FOR 15 YEARS WHILE THEIR GOVERNMENTS PAY TERRORIST MERCENARIES TO CREATE HELL IN OTHER PLACES


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


“Marine Le Pen seeks to exploit Champs Elysees shooting amid fears killing could influence election”

"Terror fears" have been fueling politicians in the West for 15 years, so pointing a finger at Le Pen is hypocritical and quite dishonest.

God knows, Theresa May made a huge deal out of a mentally ill man with a record of violence who stabbed people in London.

It was the kind of unfortunate event which has happened in cities all around the world for centuries, never being given any political interpretation, until now, when certain governments want to instill fear regularly in support of their own brutal international policies.

That killer in London was no more a terrorist than my little pet dog.

And just so for the police killer in Paris. He had a long record of violence towards police, apparently having served long years in prison.

He was not a terrorist. He was a sick, violent man. All societies do have them, you know.

And papers like The Independent and The Guardian have expended countless words ginning-up needless fears of terror in support of British government policy.

So, it would be nothing new for Le Pen to gain some support from this manufactured constituency.

I do hope she wins, not for fear of terror but for some intelligent and bold policies for France.

Hollande has been an utter disaster.

Paris's past genuine terror attacks relate more to his slavish groveling after American policy in the Mideast than anything else. Young men seeking revenge for what was done to their homes and families.

Hollande was always right in there along with the pathetic David Cameron doing America's dirty work in secret while pretending for the public that he was fighting terror.

The dirty work is simply the self-proclaimed, God-like right to decide who rules in other countries, an arrogant and violent idea that is about as far from democracy and decency as you can get.

The only governments genuinely fighting terror right now are Syria, Russia, and Iran.

And the terror they fight - mercenaries like al-Nusra and ISIS - were created and supplied by America and its allies (Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Oman with help from Britain and France) for the purpose of destroying a beautiful country which just does not happen to march to America's commands.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ON AHMADINEJAD BEING BARRED FROM RUNNING AGAIN FOR PRESIDENT OF IRAN - THE REASON FOR ISRAEL'S CONTINUING HOSTILITY TOWARDS IRAN


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 'barred from standing in Iran's presidential elections'”

Ahmadinejad is in many ways a good and decent man, but he has a penchant for poking fun at sacred cows, and it was this tendency which got him into so much controversy previously.

Insanely exaggerated accusations were leveled at him previously. There was even a deliberate mistranslation of his words put out and repeated in the press many times to the effect that he threatened Israel's future.

He did not.

But additional controversy and phony attacks are the last things Iran needs now with Trump's people ratcheting-up Israel lobby-inspired accusations against a country which has faithfully kept its international agreements.

Israel is after blood, both in Syria and in Iran, and all sense of integrity has vanished suddenly from Trump's administration with the Syria missile attack based on a fake event.


Iran has always been in Israel's sights, not because it is a threat to Israel but because Israel wants to be the unquestioned power for a thousand miles around, and bought-and-paid-for American politicians just keep saying 'Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full!"

Thursday, April 20, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ISRAEL’S 1967 ATTACK ON INTELLIGENCE SHIP U.S.S. LIBERTY DURING ITS SIX DAY WAR OF CONQUEST – THE ONLY MYSTERY HAS ALWAYS BEEN LYNDON JOHNSON’S BIZARRE REACTION – WHAT HE CREATED


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON INVESTMENTWATCH


“Did you know that On June 8, 1967, the USS Liberty, a U.S. Navy intelligence ship, was attacked in international waters? The attack killed 34 U.S. servicemen and wounded at least 173. And we still give billions per year to the aggressor”

There is no question of Israel’s responsibility in attacking the USS Liberty, of course, but I've often wondered whether there was some kind of complicity by Lyndon Johnson.

He was a very dark and devious man. Played dirty politics his entire career, including his very first election in Texas which he won by vote fraud. And he sure wasn't reluctant to see people killed, launching, as he did, the mindless Vietnam War in which an estimated 3 million Vietnamese were killed eventually, a true holocaust.

I've never understood the way he just shut everything down right after the attack - called off emergency responders and made no big diplomatic storm over the event and made no great effort to make Israel pay for what it had done, pay in any way.

It was the chance of a lifetime to put Israel in its proper place, a small nation with defined borders. Instead, his response allowed Israel to grow into a Frankenstein monster. His is great burden of guilt for Israel’s next fifty years of brutal abuse.

It doesn't make sense, especially considering his volatile temperament. I think his reasons have never been examined, but I know there were reasons. He had a motive, if nothing other than a huge secret effort to buy him off by the Israel Lobby.

It has been speculated that Israel’s knowledge of Johnson’s complicity in President Kennedy’s assassination was used to shut him up. This is distinctly possible, however, while we know the Warren Commission’s version of the assassination was a complete fantasy, we do not know just what really happened. Johnson was from the beginning a highly plausible suspect, but we do not have the necessary proof.

Israel's motive for the attack is quite clear. They wanted to turn their armor in the south to head north, something they had been advised against.

So, they shut down the American intelligence ship. This, of course, also shut down reporting of Israel's atrocities in Sinai, which the ship's gear would have picked up.

Israel was in such a mad rush to turn the armor around, the army just machine-gunned all the Egyptian prisoners of war they had in Sinai. Hundreds of them.

But for Israel, this was from the beginning a war of conquest. It was carefully planned, and Israel knew it could win against the disorganized Arab states that it had deliberately provoked a number of times leading up to the actual conflict.

Of course, fifty years later, we all still live with the hideous results, seeing millions live with absolutely no rights, no citizenship, no votes, constant abuse, and even the degrading insult of having additional homes and farms stolen periodically.

Moshe Dayan, the victorious general of the Six Day War, made numerous statements to the effect of Israel's having to make the Palestinians feel miserable enough, they would leave.

Well, Israel certainly has done its part in making millions miserable, but they greatly underrated the courage and stamina of the Palestinians, who are not leaving.

Here are some details of the event: http://www.rense.com/general39/pilot.htm


JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: BRITAIN'S PRINCE HARRY - THE PRESS KEEPS TRYING TO GAIN PUBLIC SYMPATHY FOR THIS UNPLEASANT AND UNBALANCED MAN WITH RUBBISH ABOUT SUFFERING FROM THE LOSS OF HIS MOTHER


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


“Prince Harry was right to talk about his mental health, but the media’s obsession with ‘stigma’ isn’t helpful”

There is no "treatment" for what Harry has.

It has nothing to do with "stigma."

It really has nothing to do with the loss of his mother.

Harry has demonstrated on many occasions a serious mental problem.

In fact, if you read history, you'll know some mental problems run in the Spencer family gene pool.

Despite her obvious charms, his mother's instability is what really killed her, her drive for recklessness and almost hysterical behavior out of the public spotlight.

Readers may enjoy:



P.S. Do we know who his father was? Nothing of Prince Charles' physical or emotional make-up is to be seen in Harry, things we very much see in his brother.

Sunday, April 16, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WE LIVE IN THE MOST DISHONEST AND HYPOCRITICAL AND VIOLENT TIMES - WHY? - HINT: IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA OR THE PRESIDENT OF SYRIA - THE DARK FANTASIES OF 1984 SURPASSED BY A NEW GLOBAL REALITY


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN SPUTNIK


“Boris Johnson Urges Russia to Stop Supporting Bashar Assad’

The UK government just keeps throwing crap everywhere, hoping some of it will stick. It is a method adopted from America, one of the world’s most hypocritical governments and one whose members actually wear hip-wader boots when they walk through the streets of Washington, so deep is the layer of crap covering it.

Remember, Britain is the country that teamed up with America for the totally illegal invasion of Iraq, killing about a million people and creating horror for a generation in what had been one of the Arab world's most advanced societies.

I didn't hear any criticism from Boris Johnson or Theresa May about their war-criminal prime minister, Tony Blair, did you?

This is the country, too, which under that grotesque joke of a leader, David Cameron, supported outfits like Al-Nusra and ISIS and Al-Qaeda while pretending to do just the opposite.

It’s all a kind of big, dirty private-schoolboy joke which helped kill over 300,000 people, create millions of refugees, destabilize Europe, and did much to destroy one of the region's most beautiful and historic lands.

Ditto for Libya, a place whose leader gave his people everything from free schools to good water and peace. He was summed up by America’s leading psychopath, Hillary Clinton, with her memorable line, “We came, we saw, he died. Ha, ha, ha!

And then, after so much help in killing and creating refugees, British leaders like Boris Johnson have the gall to talk about Assad, a man respected by most of Syria's people and a man who almost set a standard for tolerance of other religions in an intolerant region (certainly including Israel).

The Christians of Syria support Assad while the Christians in Britain and the United States try to kill him and destroy a peaceful land, throwing the Christians of Syria to the wolves of the packs of killer thugs who are supported and supplied by Britain among others.

It is all quite stunning if you think about it.

And just who are some of the other players in the British charade in Syria? Saudi Arabia, Oman, Turkey, Israel – well, there is a remarkable list of free countries with high values for tolerance indeed. A human and democratic rights gang of thugs, supported by America so that it can get what it wants.

And what does it want? To be rid of a decent leader Israel hates. Israel of course wants to hang on to the things it has stolen, like the Golan Heights. It also wants a region around it in which every country accepts its ugly values of conquest, theft, killing, and endless abuse of millions.

The US also wants to run a pipeline or two through a country that is not its own, pipelines opposed by Assad’s government. What does Saudi Arabia want? It wants what the US and Israel want, ever since 9/11, having been extremely careful that what it says and does is not offensive to America and its colony for fear of being blamed for the twin towers.

America’s other tyrant-allies in the region have similar motives. They are extremely rich and privileged and unaccountable rulers, all of them, and they do not want what they regard as the rubbish of democratic values, human rights, and religious tolerance anywhere near them – not even a hint.

Of course, critically-minded readers might note the record in the trail of wreckage America and Britain have left behind. Isn’t it shining democracy and good government we see in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Somalia and Yemen and Egypt? No? Why something must have gone terribly wrong because surely that was the intention in all that killing and destruction?

Boy, that’s some cause you support there, Boris.

Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Russia could support independence for Scotland and the end of British rule in Gibraltar? It certainly would be nothing more than a parallel effort to Britain’s secret savagery in Syria.

But we’d hear the screams to high heaven about Russian interference in Western affairs. Well, that’s the kind of totally hypocritical view you marry yourself to when you join up for America’s imperial march to control the globe.  It much resembles Napoleon’s Grande Armée with stirring speeches about enlightenment while you set about conquest and pillage.

Violence for selfish ends supported by lies and abuse of every description, all in the names of peace and freedom and democracy – that’s America today. Move over, George Orwell, your brilliant stuff in 1984 has been surpassed by a new and far more shameless brute force than Big Brother and the Inner Party.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: A PROFESSOR SAYS KIM JONG UN AND DONALD TRUMP ARE BOTH UNSTABLE BULLIES - WHY THE ANALYSIS IS WEAK AND MISSES THE POINT WITH TRUMP


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA TODAY


“Kim Jong Un & Donald Trump ‘both unstable bullies’

I do not agree with the professor’s analysis.

We know too little about Kim Jong Un to make such statements.

I also very much believe that it is the military running North Korea.

There is almost never a picture of Kim without senior army officers around him.

We really do not know whether he rules in fact or whether he is a figurehead much like Queen Elizabeth.

As for Trump, the bully part isn't what is important.

The important part is his unprincipled and cowardly turning on a matter of global importance.

Unforgivable.

One cannot help thinking the undoing of Trump was the heavy influence of Ivanka, his undoubtedly smart and capable daughter, who happens to know little in world affairs and who just happens to be married to a closet-Neocon.


JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WHY A RUNAWAY EX-SYRIAN GENERAL'S CLAIM ABOUT TONNES OF CHEMICALS IN SYRIA IS GARBAGE - AND ANOTHER TRUE STORY ABOUT CHEMICALS AND SYRIA IS ALWAYS IGNORED BY CORPORATE PRESS


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY HARRY COCKBURN IN THE INDEPENDENT


“Syrian regime has 'at least 2,000 tonnes' of chemical weapons hidden away, says Brigadier-General Zaher al-Sakat”

Well, if there is dog crap to find, The Independent will find it.

It is, if you will, a perverse form of investigative reporting frequently featured.

Certainly, what most people think of as investigative reportage long ago disappeared from The Independent.

No one knows or cares who this clown of a general is, Assad's giving up his poison gas weapons was absolutely genuine, as every informed person knows.

It was done under a crisis situation, with both the United States and Russia signing off on it. Russia did the direct supervision, removal, and destruction.

Assad himself and Putin both had the strongest incentive to do things right with Obama threatening a "no-fly" zone, a gimmick America has used time and time again to basically seize control of the air and start bombing at will pretending it is responding to bad guys.

And just the very idea that anyone could jerk Putin around this way is proof of the general's brutal ignorance or deliberate dishonesty.

How anyone who has followed current affairs, anyone with a brain, and anyone with no propaganda motive, could imply that about Putin is laughable.

Here is the supreme statesman-leader of our time, without question, and this goofy, runaway general, hoping to make himself important in exile, claims nonsense about him? Speaks for itself.

And, please, just once, wouldn't it be right to discuss all the poisons the United States has sent to Syria over the last five years via Turkey - where some of it was actually caught at the border by guards, guards who got themselves in trouble with the secret service, doing too scrupulous a job - and Saudi Arabia.

Hillary Clinton oversaw a project in Libya - another well-run country America destroyed - removing some of the murdered Gaddafi's weapons, including poisons like Sarin, and shipping them around the Mediterranean for smuggling into Syria.

She was ready to repeat in Syria the ugly play done in Libya, as was her mass-murderer boss, Obama.

Unlike the asinine general's daydreams, we absolutely know this to be true from the world's last genuine investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh.

By the way, here is another reliable independent reporter's story on what happened at Idlib:


In this account, Israel is involved, as it has been covertly the whole time in the project to destroy and partition Syria. That's what the phony civil war is about, what Israel wants in its region. Good reason for killing 300,000 people don't you think?


Friday, April 14, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ALL THAT'S FIT TO PRINT ABOUT THE GOOD SHIP NEW YORK TIMES AND ITS GROTESQUE BOW FIGUREHEAD THOMAS FRIEDMAN - NOTE ON PULITZER PRIZES


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER


“Tom Friedman has a 'brilliant' Syria plan for Trump: use ISIS to force Damascus into a power-sharing deal with al-Qaeda”

Friedman is one of the greatest blowhard phonies of the age, sometimes as unintentionally hilarious as a fundamentalist tent preacher, alternately bawling and beaming, trying desperately to sway souls for Christ.

He frequently trips over his own lack of logic, resembling an awkward kid tripping on his own shoelaces, while churning out his endless stream of propaganda for the Pentagon and Israel, the two entities he holds tightly to his bosom.

But churn it out he does, literally small mountains of dog shit in columns, lectures, and books.

The establishment has fittingly recognized his amazing output by giving him three Pulitzer Prizes. For those not familiar with the Pulitzer, it was created by an American newspaper baron whose name it bears. It is awarded in a number of categories each year, but journalism and books are the best known.

In general, as with all such annual prizes, certainly including the Nobel Peace Prize and Hollywood's Oscar, it represents some mixture of annual marketing promotion for an industry or organization to gin-up its sales, self-congratulations by the members of an industry or organization, fun annual parties, and opportunities to make political statements to the world, largely propaganda statements.

The prizes all have rather dismal records, the Peace Prize frequently going to murderers and frauds, the Oscar going often to unwatchable films whose subject happens to be something Hollywood wants to crow about. Quality is only accidentally present is winners, although much of the public naively believes all such prizes inherently mean quality. That’s why we see blurbs in books or articles along the lines of, “As Pulitzer Prize winner so-and-so said.” This is always a cheap trick to inflate the authority of the writer being cited rather than letting the reader draw his or her own conclusions.

The Pulitzer is right in there with a terrible record of having been awarded in journalism several times to outright frauds for invented story series, frequently for undistinguished efforts ("It's my turn!"), and then to someone like Friedman who represents a powerful continuing force in American journalism, the so-called Israel Lobby, members of which own America's major broadcast networks and major old-line newspapers.

Its record in books is not a great deal more distinguished, mediocre works frequently having won while original, interesting, or highly critical work is ignored. Books about America itself and what a great history it has and what a great place it is seem to get secret bonus points at the start of the selection.

In Friedman's case, the New York Times, a paper which likes to style itself as the nation’s paper of record, has always, always supported every war and intervention of the national government. It has a long record of cooperating with outfits like the CIA and FBI, and several times it is known to have suppressed stories some smart reporter stumbled upon - famously, the Bay of Pigs invasion preparations. Several times, members of CIA or those entangled with CIA have been discovered on staff, creating a little scandal, but one suspects most were not discovered.

The paper has also taken secret tips from a frequently blundering FBI to go after individuals with no evidence at all – famously, nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, wrongly accused of giving top secrets to China, but there are many other examples including the man, Richard Jewell, wrongly accused of the Atlanta Olympics bombing. And then there was the woman it went after viciously, inappropriately revealing her identity in a rape case, who was accusing a member of the Kennedy clan of the rape.  It only recently was revealed that every single story on the Middle East concerning Israel in any possible way is dutifully sent by the New York Times to be passed by the Official Israeli Censor before being published.

The best description of the impossibly-pretentious New York Times ever given is “the house organ for America’s power establishment.” It runs enough sound and interesting material on non-controversial and non-political subjects to hold a reputation for quality. It also, remarkably, in the insanely-confused morass that is American politics, is regarded as “liberal,” something impossible for a genuine liberal to even understand.

Supporting every colonial war of the post-WWII American empire is anything but liberal, but the New York Times pretty consistently supports Democrats, and in America, that is somehow regarded as liberal, the party somehow having escaped the nickname it deserves, the War Party. Johnson, Clinton, Obama, and Mrs. Clinton – mass killers every one of them.

Anyway, that provides some context to understand why Friedman has been kept aboard for what seems like ages, pounding out rat shit propaganda and periodically being awarded another “Pulitzer.”

Here are several past pieces on Friedman – despite his awards and the pretentiousness with which he is treated, his bloated nonsense actually makes him a pretty easy target.  Readers may enjoy:



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WHY YOU MIGHT THINK THE MAFIA RUNS AMERICAN FOREIGN AFFAIRS - BUT THE OUTFIT REALLY RUNNING THINGS MAKES THE MAFIA SEEM PIKERS - JUST WHY THINGS ARE AS THEY ARE


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENTWATCH


“WHY Did The United States Really Topple LIBYA – Same Reason They Want To Topple ASSAD?’ 

It was all best said by Lord Acton long ago.

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The United States' establishment is very near the last stages of that inevitable process.

Israel and its greedy expansion against all rules of law and respect for human rights, by the way, are directly or indirectly responsible for virtually every horror in the Mideast for fifteen years. Some they handled directly, many the US handled for them.

What is mistakenly called "international terror" is nothing but the work of desperate young men trying to strike a blow back for what has been done to their homes and families.

Oh, there is another form of terror, and that is the one America deliberately uses in place after place to destroy governments it doesn't like. Mercenaries who just happen to be Muslim or pretend to be.

Outfits like ISIS and Al-Nusra, etc, all were created under American auspices and have been supplied by America directly or by American allies like Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Oman - all with covert assistance from Britain and France.

They are tools to get what you want, and when you have secured what it is that you want, the tools are quite disposable, as we see here and there. The hired mercenaries often end up killed themselves.

You could think the Mafia actually ran America's foreign affairs, but the Mafia is an amateur outfit compared to the American establishment with its supporting armies of CIA and the Pentagon - all with their filthy work nicely blessed by a meaningless corporate press.

The entire horror of massive refugee armies, nearly destabilizing Europe, is caused by the same thing, as America bombs half a dozen countries and sends rag-tag mercenaries to kill in many of them. The people run for their lives, and America, who caused their plight, refuses to even take them.

But, of course, Israel really is an American colony in the Mideast. It is no more meaningfully independent than Texas, and it serves a number of American imperial interests in the region, much the way the old corrupt Shah of Iran used to do. And most of its leaders are dual nationals.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: TULSI GABBARD IS THAT RAREST OF THINGS: AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN WHO THINKS FOR HERSELF AND IS HONEST - THAT IS WHY SHE CAN HAVE NO SERIOUS POLITICAL FUTURE


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN AGENDA 21 RADIO


“Gabbard: ‘We need to learn from Iraq’”

Yes, indeed.

But just as stupid people do not learn from experience, arrogant and greedy and violent people also do not learn.

"Arrogant and greedy and violent" is pretty much a good concise description of today's American establishment.

I really do not see how that can change in a country whose government has been called, accurately, the best that money can buy.

I like a lot of what Tulsi Gabbard says, but I feel confident in declaring her another Ralph Nader.

Those are not the kind of people who have even a remote chance at power.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: PUTIN'S PUT-DOWN OF NATO SUPPORT FOR AMERICAN ILLEGAL BOMBING: "NODDING LIKE BOBBLEHEADS" - SADLY CANADA'S DISAPPOINTING TRUDEAU FITS THE DESCRIPTION PERFECTLY


COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA TODAY


“‘Nodding like bobbleheads’: Putin slams NATO’s support for US violation of intl law in Syria”

"Nodding like bobbleheads"

Perfect.

A vivid image of the situation.

It is striking and at the same time pitiful that Europe behaves this way over a double violation of international laws and norms.

And I'm sorry to say, Canada's Justin Trudeau is right in there with them, head bobbing around and mouth making stupid sounds, a handsome bobblehead without a thought of his own.

His father, Pierre, was not such a man, but then Justin is not in almost any detail his father's match.
_________________________
Response to another reader’s comment on being disappointed in Trudeau:

Disappointed is an understatement.

Remember (his father) Pierre Trudeau’s "just society"?

Remember Pierre’s refusal to drop views which were independent of the American power structure, as in the case of Cuba?

Remember Pierre’s insistence on a nation of laws, as in the case of the FLQ?

Justin Trudeau is an immense disappointment who seems to possess little of his father’s best qualities.

He seems to stand for nothing.

Pictures cuddling pandas are charming, but their meaning is as lasting as having your shoes shined.

He gave up on vote reform without a real effort, the single most important domestic reform he could have done.

He dilly-dallies about other important matters.

He has made some terrible appointments, notably as with the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, a tedious old-line Canadian Ukrainian with a mentality stuck in 1963 and a personality totally unsuited to represent the best of our country in the world.

She’s the ethnic mental-emotional equivalent of someone from an old Italian peasant-origin family where the Duce is still revered.

He had a very good man in Dion and let him go? Why? To appoint an intellectual and emotional midget whose prejudices are in keeping with the American establishment's new brutal efforts to push Russia to the brink in getting its way to burn down half the Middle East. Her husband is a reporter for what has been called the house organ of America's power establishment, the New York Times.


Justin Trudeau's only merit was helping say goodbye to Stephen Harper, but that goodbye is beginning to seem no goodbye at all, much as is the case with Trump's turning, we might as well have the proven killer of thousands of women and their families, Hillary, running the empire.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: POSSIBILITY SYRIAN GAS ATTACK WAS A FRAUD - WHITE HELMETS ALWAYS DOUBTFUL ACTORS - ANOTHER POSSIBILITY - INTEGRITY OF CORPORATE JOURNALISM IS NON-EXISTENT TODAY


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


“Bashar al Assad: Syria chemical attack is '100 per cent fabrication'”

This is entirely possible.

Photos of the phony White Helmets show them handling Sarin victims without gloves and head cover.

You simply cannot do that.

One pin-point drop of Sarin nerve agent on your skin is fatal.

Of course, we've also seen other faked scenes from the Al-Qaeda-associate and covertly supported phony NGO called White Helmets, as ones of a little dusty-faced child in the back of truck at the height of the Aleppo campaign, an image proved fraudulent later.


Readers may be interested in this story on the gas attack:

_____________________________
Response to another reader who wrote:
"Can't our reporters even pretend to be objective?"

You are kidding, aren't you?

Classical journalism is dead.

The corporate press does nothing beyond echoing government claims and reporting every rumor which tends to do so.

The truth is, apart from being in bed with the establishment, corporate journalism is too broke to do the costly thing of real investigative reporting.

The economic model supporting the old press has collapsed under developments on the Internet, such as important advertising revenue having been lost to others.

Truly, for anyone to expect to find real reporting in today's corporate press is about as hopeless as waiting for Jesus to return.

One must read the corporate press just to get a sense of what is being "put out there" and then compare with a diversity of other sources.

It still isn't perfect, but it is a fool's errand today to expect to find honest reporting on any international relations topic and even many domestic political topics in your old regular newspaper or television broadcast.

Monday, April 10, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SYRIA AND AMERICA'S NEW COLD WAR WITH RUSSIA - AS AMERICA'S ESTABLISHMENT FIGHTS TO CONTROL THE EARTH - AN END TO RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS AS WE KNEW THEM IN A BRAVE NEW WORLD


EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON INVESTMENTWATCH


“Syria Is All About the Petrodollar, Assad Is the Victim of a False Flag from the CIA”

Mostly nonsense.

Syria is a key part of a long-term plan to create a new Middle East.

It's been in the works for years at the State Department in coordination with CIA and Israel, its main beneficiary and long-time advocate-lobbyist. The arrogant people running Washington, of course, do not announce such things to mere citizens, the people who vote and pay the costs in taxes and bear any consequences, which, in this case, absolutely includes the whole phenomenon of “international terror” – just angry young men trying to pay back for what’s been done to their countries - plus massive armies of miserable refugees created. 

But we’ve had several indirect or cryptic references over the years, including George Bush’s Condi Rice referring to “the birth pangs of a new Middle East,” her gracious way of describing the screams of thousands dying and being made homeless.

America's permanent establishment government, within the elected government, is busier than ever trying to extend American authority to every corner of the globe. There are many reasons for this, but they very much include the Neocons with their philosophy of “if you have the power use it to get what you want,” words with which Hitler would have had not the least quarrel, having gained an upper hand.

Plus, there has been a dawning awareness that America’s relatively carefree years of global dominance, built on the fortunate event of every competitor and potential competitor having been flattened in WWII, are drawing to a close as new, extremely serious competitors in everything rapidly emerge. It is the natural reaction of some of the more aggressive and greedy among us to simply strike out in every direction, hoping some of what they do can stop the process of natural evolution or at least slow it down.

What we have seen happening in the Neocon Wars and the phony CIA-induced Arab Spring (you always give a cheerful name to a dirty project, just as the example of “Patriot Act” being used to cover measures to suppress citizens’ rights) and in such recent events as the CIA-induced coup against a democratic Ukraine – a blatant effort to box-in and threaten Russia - plus all the public relations hype around a “resurgent” Russia, as it merely responds normally and cautiously to extremely provocative acts right next door, is simply aggression, and on a very broad front. There is no other word suitable to describe it although America seems able to come up with a whole corps of hacks like Nikki Haley or Samantha Power or John Kirby to try telling us that war is peace and slavery is freedom.

Israel, which is de facto America's colony in the region benefits by having all the independent-minded leaders eliminated and having a kind of cordon sanitaire created for hundreds of miles around it. But you will never hear that said in Washington.

Israel, in turn, is expected do whatever the American establishment's future bidding in the region is. It will serve as a kind of enforcer for the American empire. Once, this role was taken to some extent by the Shah of Iran, whom the U.S. heavily armed, after Washington assisted in creating a coup to end Iran’s democratic government in 1953. But the Shah bungled the job, generated a revolution by his brutality, and then he went and died.

Well, no chance of that happening in Israel with all those layers of hogwash about biblical homeland and thousands of years wandering. Yes, biblical homeland and thousands of years wandering for a European people, the Ashkenazi, who native language is a variant of German and who date back, by actual DNA tests, about nine or ten centuries in Eastern Europe. Besides, they come with a kind of naturally fanatical version of the Pretorian Guard in the sizable settler-ultra-Orthodox crowd.

And, bottom line, a great many Israelis come from the United States and maintain dual citizenship, a state the U.S. was once loath to recognize. People go back and forth all the time creating a web of attachments and privileges and access to important institutions. No one is better “connected.”

Israel could have itself done much of the dirty work in Middle East, but only at the cost of achieving an even worse reputation in the world than it already has as a pariah state with almost no regard for law and international norms and even rules of war.

No, the big part of the murderous job had to be taken on by America.

But even America could not afford, reputation-wise, to just go invading directly, country after country, as it did in Iraq. That outright aggressive invasion produced a great deal of negative publicity and lingering ill will.

So, it developed a system of using rag-tag mercenaries, giving them arms, supporting them covertly in many ways, and often ending up by demanding a "no-fly zone" from the UN, which sounds harmless but every time gets turned into an opportunity to bomb a country with no opposition and look like you are only responding to "bad guys."

It's all a terrible set of events allowing the CIA and Pentagon to play God in country after country, and, of course, playing God gets addictive, so we even have a faction ready to be extremely hostile to Russia.

Americans do not realize how much power these agencies of government have acquired for themselves in the process. So, the dirty works of empire also affect the homeland in many ways from an immense network of spying and limits of all kinds imposed to the distribution of military equipment to internal police agencies and the arming of outfits like Homeland Security (another one of those sunshine names for a nasty reality).

The establishment couldn't care less about the effects on normal Americans, just as it could not care about the two million or so they have killed in the Neocon Wars over the last decade and a half. The message could not be clearer from the behavior of the national government: you do not matter. We matter, and the security agencies which support us and extend our reach matter, and our dark allies abroad are important, but you are not.

Some thought this was the one crucial area in which Trump might make a difference, but the futility of that hope is crushingly apparent.

America's Bill of Rights has effectively been legally neutered, and you, the average American, think you still have rights which in fact you do not have anymore.

It all reminds me of science fiction scenarios about how robots - or the owners of the robots - will treat the general population of humans in the future when artificial intelligence has effectively taken control of jobs and professions and responsibilities everywhere.

Old East Germany and its Stasi seem primitive and almost comic-bookish compared to what is emerging in the US, what in fact has largely emerged.

"We the people" has become "We the herd." The establishment - the wealthy individuals and corporate senior people, whose tools the Pentagon and the CIA are along with the corporate press - is engaged in an effort to control just about everything. Today, it effectively rules in perhaps a more intense way than the Old Order in France did before the Revolution, but it is all hidden from direct view, and even scrutiny, of the public.

Two centuries of revolutions and democratic and human-rights principles and struggles of every kind are pretty close to being wiped out in America, while America’s establishment relentlessly works to control the world.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: NETANYAHU GIVEN BOX SEAT TO VIEW TRUMP'S BOMBING OF SYRIA - HOW FITTING IS THAT? HE IS ONE OF THE BEGETTERS AND THE MAIN BENEFICIARY OF AMERICA'S HORRORS



COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER


‘Israel's intelligence minister said Tel Aviv was given box seats for Trump's missile attack, which "restored" US prestige in Middle East’ 

Well, Netanyahu has spent his life demonstrating he likes killing and threatening people.

I'm sure he enjoyed the show, just like the ghouls who sat on lawn chairs up on the heights near Gaza when they watched and cheered as Israeli planes bombed women and children the last time Israel attacked that giant refugee camp-outdoor prison.

We do have a number of sick and frightening people in power in various countries of the world, but this creature from Madam Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors, Netanyahu, tops them all.

Most people in the world, I feel sure, understand this.

But he and his nasty little colony are protected night and day from criticism and even from the law by the same folks who pulled this ugly stunt in Syria.

He is one of the earth's monsters free to steal, kill, and imprison without any consequences.

And he is protected by the kind of people who give chemical weapons to rag-tag mercenaries to use on civilians to create an excuse for still more killing. How low can a great nation fall?

Sunday, April 09, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: FORMER BRITISH AMBASSADOR GIVES ONE OF THE CLEAREST AND MOST CONCISE ASSESSMENTS YOU WILL EVER SEE OF TRUMP'S SITUATION NOW


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


“Russia responsible for Syria chemical attack, UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon says”

For those who care, here is a distinguished former British ambassador's views on the gas attack and what Trump has very foolishly done.

You will never see a clearer, more concise assessment on an international situation.

This is a must-see for anyone wanting to understand:



Saturday, April 08, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: COMPLETE DEGRADATION OF A SELF-STYLED GREAT NATION WHICH ALLOWS PAID THUGS TO USE POISON GAS TO GIVE IT AN EXCUSE FOR STILL MORE KILLING - THE DARK PLACE WE ARE BROUGHT TO BY TRUMP'S PATHETIC SURRENDER TO THE CIA AND PENTAGON - RUSSIA AND CHINA


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MAX BENWELL IN THE INDEPENDENT


“After the Syrian air strikes, I can no longer get behind a President I admired”

Me too.

In the one area I very much hoped for some advance and change from Trump – change in America's unprecedented new aggressiveness in the world - he has just proved himself a waste of space.

He has set a world land-speed record for buckling to the demands of America's unelected inner-government and doing virtually the opposite of anything for which we had reason to hope.

In effect, in foreign affairs, we might just as well have mass-killer Obama still signing the orders for bombings and coups and drone kill lists with his big boyish smile.

Obama is responsible for the deaths of at least half a million in his term of office during the Neocon Wars and the phony CIA-induced Arab Spring plus incalculable damage in the creation of millions of refugees and vast destruction of societies.

Or we might just as well have the psychopath, Hillary Clinton, a woman with a record of damage and hatreds beyond telling. Her role, just at the Benghazi fiasco, has never been discussed, but thoughtful people can piece it together from scraps of information.

She, assisted by her dead ambassador, was running a dark operation to collect weapons from the murdered Gadhafi’s Libya, where they had been spread all over the place owing to the US having dumped carloads of them in support of the same kind of rag-tag mercenaries America runs in Syria today.

The Libyan rag-tag bunch's job was getting rid of a decent third-world leader the US and Israel simply hated, a man who gave ordinary Libyans everything from free education to good water supplies and peace.

Hillary was also collecting some of the murderous mercenaries. Both these things - weapons and mercenaries - were being transshipped around the Mediterranean to create the horrors we see in Syria. In the process, her ambassador was killed by some of them, who simply saw him as a more accessible and attractive target than Assad. Or perhaps they were angered by some of his demands. When you play with murderous thugs anywhere, all bets are off as to predictability.

Those weapons’ transfer virtually certainly included amounts of Sarin gas from the dead Gaddafi's stockpiles, which he had maintained as a counterthreat to Israel’s nuclear arsenal, and I think we all know what happened with those transferred poisons. In Libya, Syria, and others places, dear "women's candidate," Hillary, killed thousands of women and their children without the blink of an eye or the shedding of a tear.

The records of those two horrors, Obama and Hillary, plus the previous monkey-brain murderer, Bush, made a fair number of us hope for some change. Trump here and there gave important clues - not formal campaign promises, but revealing personal reflections, such as asking why the whole Middle East was on fire or why America didn’t leave it to Russia to clean-up the horror in Syria - that suggested to many we could possibly see important change.

But that has all disappeared, just vaporized, its last outburst being the administration statements about Assad's future and Syria very shortly before the insane false-flag gas attack conducted by America’s own supported mercenaries and Trump’s insane missile attack without a shred of evidence supposedly in response and the insane shrieking, self-glorifying claims of Trump’s Nikki Haley at the UN.

Some Russian press today call the United States the most unpredictable nation in the world, and they are absolutely right.

As for Trump's other, domestic issues - his dumb wall and his ranting about migrants - I have always regarded those parts of him as a waste of space.

We know progress with great powerful states comes very slowly, always, but the hope here was that this iconoclastic billionaire just might be a serious agent of change after fifteen years of pointless wars and the birth of a new Cold War. You need a man of Trump’s tough, egocentric type to stand against the collective, entrenched monsters at CIA and the Pentagon, but he has failed us all, failed completely.

I fear for our future, and the planet's, now that America's blood-lust is up, and we see virtually no strength anywhere to oppose it. Certainly, pushovers like May and Merkel and Hollande in Europe offer nothing. And the UN has been reduced by the same blood-lust to a toothless debating society.

Russia and China offer the only real hope for getting through a long and dangerous period ahead, but I think, for many reasons, this is truer of Putin’s Russia more than Xi Jinping’s China. And that fact explains just why a new Cold War against Russia has been launched. America’s insanely ambitious and greedy establishment – perhaps best personified by the glaring image of Hillary Clinton and her regular talk of “taking out” this or that person or place - cares nothing for other nations’ views and policies, so long as they do not conflict in any way with its march towards global domination.

As I wrote, above, concerning the dark events at Benghazi in 2012, “When you play with murderous thugs anywhere, all bets are off as to predictability.” And just so, the United States.