John Chuckman
COMMENT ON AN ARTICLE BY PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS IN RUSSIA INSIDER
"Is Europe Too Brainwashed to Normalize Relations with Russia?'
I think the author has used the wrong word.
Not "brainwashed," "intimidated."
Europe hasn’t a single bold leader to challenge anything the United States says or does.
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Response to a comment:
You conveniently forget one thing, the passage of time.
Citing American-Russian relations in Gorbachev's time is irrelevant to the situation which exists today.
We have an altogether different America, and in so many unpleasant ways.
Just to start, there is America’s widespread use of mercenary terrorists, people who pose as independent jihadi-types, in its efforts to destroy a number of legitimate governments it doesn’t like. Outfits like al Nusrah and ISIS serve effectively as American allies, having received everything they have – weapons, transportation, intelligence, and money - through dark channels under American control.
This murky world has many dark aspects, including hellish outfits like the Western government-supported White Helmets. They are ceaselessly proclaimed to be humanitarian, but they are known in fact to be affiliated with terrorist groups in Syria, having been investigated closely by a number of independent journalists.
They were involved inciting totally-illegal American missile attacks against Syria by staging faked chemical weapons incidents, producing disinformation videos for public consumption. Earlier, they may well have staged real incidents, too. We know with certainty that there was an elaborate American effort some years ago to supply small amounts of chemical weapons to some terrorist outfits in Syria from the murdered Qaddafi's stocks. Hillary Clinton ran it.
And there’s good old Hollywood ready to give a “documentary” about this crummy organization an Oscar. Perhaps some technicians in Hollywood supplied the White Helmets with the equipment, know-how, and props they use in making disinformation videos?
We’ve even had photographic proof of White Helmets using make-up on children who would be filmed as poison-gas victims. Of course, it is the same Hollywood which each year puts on a huge gala dinner to raise money for Israel’s army. Millions of dollars every year. And Israel is known to be one of the main sponsors of efforts for Syria’s destruction.
All of the ugly stuff in Europe labelled as “international terror,” such terrible activity as in Paris for example, is in fact direct “blowback” from the American- Israeli-Saudi efforts in the Middle East, which are well supported covertly by France and Britain, the countries where it is easiest to carry out reprisals.
We have America’s Neocon Wars burning through the Middle East with at least two million killings and countless refugees over the last decade and a half. We have Europe almost destabilized by armies of refugees from bombing and American-supported mercenaries, with America itself not willing to lift a finger to help.
“Full-spectrum dominance” has become a stated national purpose of the United States, a goal the German Wehrmacht might well have embraced.
America now conducts aggression across a huge front in many lands, bombing daily, somewhere or other.
We have the stunning establishment of a permanent American industrial-scale machinery for extrajudicial killing, absolutely no different in its legality or morals to what the old much-hated junta in Argentina did by "disappearing" people it did not like.
But while this is stunning to someone of my age and sensibilities, we see no reaction of any degree against such an unholy institution from inside the United States. No reaction by political leaders. No reaction by the public. No reaction by the press.
This, in my view, might be the most-convincing measure of what a vastly changed-for-the-worst place America is. Give someone a name like “terrorist,” which, after all, is not so very different or scientifically-established a concept than calling someone “witch,” and it is perfectly okay to murder them with no evidence or charges or rights.
Of course, the entire concept of this kind of “witchery” has been adopted from calmly watching Israel’s grisly operations in de-legitimizing an entire people from whom they have taken everything, right down to their dignity as human beings.
American (and the now greatly American-influenced European) reaction to Israel’s small army of snipers, week after week, shooting down thousands of unarmed people in Gaza, killing many and permanently crippling many others through the use of illegal dum-dum bullets has been appalling. If you ever wondered how something like the Holocaust could happen, here is your number-one contemporary lesson in the poisonous nature of human psychology intermingling with politics and power.
How about the President of the United States, Trump, telling the CIA, not long ago, that it should decide who is killed by drones and missiles? The CIA as judge, jury, and executioner? The concept simply leaves anyone with either a sense of justice or morality gasping. But was there any great protest? Organized mass killing by a security agency now quietly operates in the background almost like some air-conditioning equipment switched on.
We had the breathtaking establishment of an American International Torture Gulag with a number of dark sites used for victims who were simply kidnapped right off the streets of the world and shipped off, every one of them legally guilty of nothing. All secretly subject to torture by the psychopaths of the CIA. And then, we have one of the reputedly bloodiest practitioners appointed to head the CIA by Trump. It is a changed America indeed.
We now have the established, systematic abuse of the rights and privacy of American citizens, with practices and technology which make the old East German Stasi look amateurish. While Trump and others go on over gun ownership, all of the truly vital parts of the Bill of Rights are being gutted with each passing day. The FBI enjoys close to unlimited powers to interfere and spy and incite and play dirty tricks. The CIA now openly interferes in domestic matters, its head actually having spoken out on political matters several times, all in complete violation of its own charter. Does anyone protest?
At home in the United States, a galaxy of massive NSA super-computer dark sites now work around-the-clock against the rights Americans thought they had. And here is an outfit whose very product, vast files of recordings of the most intimate communications, endangers ultimately every aspect of American life, certainly including elections.
The work of the NSA creates powerful opportunities for everything from blackmail to intimidation, and, in my observation over time, when something becomes a real possibility, it eventually emerges as a reality. That’s just the way power and human psychology work.
Today, we see America’s piece-by-piece work to bend to its will, or destroy, international organizations such as the United Nations. It feels entitled to withhold or end legal treaty obligations such as dues to various UN agencies. And we actually see open, public intimidation of members just before a vote. Has there ever been a more intimidating and disgraceful spectacle than Nikki Haley and Donald Trump warning people about the consequences of their votes? That’s some support for democratic rights. But where is the protest?
America now has a United Nations ambassador with such retrogressive and outlandish views that she might happily have "worked towards the Fuhrer," as the Germans used to say, had she been born a century earlier and in Germany. And she boldly punctuates all of her excesses with crass public statements any decent person should be ashamed of.
Yes, indeed, it is a changed America, one infinitely worse than in the past cited, and it has very little to do with Putin or Russia, beyond the fact that he is a target for a great deal of the aggression and hatred we see coming from America. Why? Simply because he is seen as opposing much of the American aggression and unbalanced insistence on its own exceptionalism. He is not a saint, but at any given time in world political affairs, you must carefully choose your battles and you must choose allegiances which least threaten peace and cherished values.
We have an American power establishment, utterly corrupted by money and unchallenged power, now playing the 21st century-version of the Ancien Regime in 18th century France before the Revolution.
