John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JONATHAN COOK IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“Liberal Elite Still Luring Us Towards the Abyss”
This is an interesting piece, but as with so much of the journalism concerned with Liberalism, it gets a bit confused and loses its way.
The massive interventions of our era are often referred to as part of Liberalism.
I do not agree.
Genuine Liberalism never espouses interference in the affairs of others and certainly not war.
The truth is that governments like that of the United States and Britain have never embraced Liberalism, no matter what words they and journalists discussing them may use.
They've certainly never for a moment in decades hesitated to attack someone they don't approve of. They also assist in coups and insurrections, and it is just a misuse of language to say it has anything to do with Liberalism.
About sixty years ago, the United States started putting into place the elements of its intervention in Vietnam. Actually, it started earlier than that, in the early 1950s, as French colonialism approached defeat.
That "intervention" became a modern holocaust with about three million killed, many in the most horrible ways. And it had nothing to do with democracy or human rights, the artificially-created rump state of South Vietnam never having experienced democracy and serving only as a pied-a-terre for America in Asia.
Sixty years later, we see the United States having killed or help kill about two million in its Neocon Wars, which countries like Britain supported. Millions more were made into desperate refugees. This reflected considerations similar to those for Vietnam. Israel is in fact an American pied-a-terre in the Middle East, a special kind of colony, and the wars were intended to create a cordon sanitaire around it.
There was no pause or shift between those huge and destructive events for anything that could fairly be called Liberalism. Nothing has really changed. Disregard for the rule of law, belief in national exceptionalism, and accepting that might makes right are, in fact, what characterize much of our American-dominated international environment.
What I see is just a modern form of imperialism, an especially bloody form owing to modern weaponry and the acceptance of killing more civilians than soldiers that has come with them, especially with air power. Where’s the Liberalism?
The author writes: “The loss of traditional social bonds – tribal, sectarian, geographic – has left people today lonelier, more isolated than was true of any previous human society. We may pay lip service to universal values, but in our atomized communities, we feel adrift, abandoned and angry.”
And I agree that that is the case. I don’t agree that it is remotely related to Liberalism.
Two tendencies explain it.
One, technology within a society tends to be decentralizing. People can do more than ever before at home alone. Shop and buy stuff. Be entertained. Have chats without getting dressed. Order food. Some even work from home. This represents a social problem for all advanced societies, and it’s only going to become more intense. Some regard this as liberating, and it is in many ways, but it also has consequences that certainly are not all attractive.
Two, governments which are constantly involved in affairs abroad, such as wars and intervention, have no time or inclination for matters at home. Young up-and-comer leaders know where a career future is to be had in an imperial establishment like the United States, and it definitely is not in domestic social matters. They have almost become the butt of jokes in many circles.
And politicians have no resources left anyway for such matters, the military (plus its related security establishment) being one of most costly and wasteful parts of government. Modern weapons are breathtakingly costly. Billions for a single ship.
Another important aspect of all such discussions is the relentless march of globalization. I do not mean what the Alt-right means when it contemptuously speaks of “globalism.” No, I mean one of the inevitable economic side-effects of advancing technology.
Since the time, five hundred years ago, when most people never travelled outside their local village until now, when much of what is in your stores comes from other countries, the important thing working away and causing the changing arrangements is advancing technology – better roads, better vehicles, better ships, airplanes, better communications, etc. – all lowering the costs of moving more things farther.
[This is a process that is never going to stop, unless we have a catastrophe. Indeed, technological change – always dragging along more economic and social impacts – is only going to intensify. Its graph is a steeply upward one. We may well reach a point when the rates of change in technology and their accompanying impacts upon society literally exceed the ability of most ordinary people to adjust and cope, creating yet another and greater social problem.]
And with globalization, there grows a need for international regulation and law and treaties. Everyone with products or services to sell wants to reach others, and everyone wants to receive from others – all safely and securely. An imperialistic country like the United States enjoys arguing that its military supplies that very security, but that is less than honest. Its military supplies a whole lot else that is not wanted by most people, and, in any case, cannot substitute for negotiated and agreed legal arrangements. It tends, and increasingly, to impose its own national laws and attitudes upon others.
Arguments berating Liberalism tend to diminish the importance of this and, in my view, tend to support American military dominance. We simply cannot have that in our emerging multi-polar world. The need for a whole new set of arrangements is going to be acutely felt.
When I think about contemporary discussions of Liberalism, I can’t help thinking of Gandhi’s wonderful saying, “What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.”
Thursday, January 31, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ON TALK OF LIBERAL ELITES AND "GLOBALISM" - LIBERALISM POOH-POOHED WHEN IN FACT IT HAS NEVER BEEN EMBRACED BY THE WEST - MODERN IMPERIALISM AND A TERRIBLE MILITARISM ARE WHAT AMERICA EMBRACES - THE IMMENSE IMPACT UPON SOCIETY OF CHANGING TECHNOLOGY - DECENTRALIZATION AND LONELINESS AND GLOBALIZATION
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: IS PUTIN TOO SOFT IN HIS RESPONSES TO THE ATTACKS OF THE WEST? DOES HE NEED TO BE MORE LIKE KHRUSHCHEV WAS? - THOUGHTS ON HIS LEADERSHIP QUALITIES AND ON THE TIME OF KHRUSHCHEV
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY GILBERT DOCTOROW IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Putin Is Soft. He Should Learn to Scare the West Like Khrushchev Did”
I understand the author's concerns, but I don't quite share them.
While Premier Khrushchev has long been a minor hero of mine - minor because there was too much blood on the hands of this otherwise brave and wily and often admirable leader - I don't think all of his public rhetoric was wise.
Of course, it is hard to judge. He faced a Pentagon that literally had drawn up plans for a massive first nuclear strike on the USSR. When the plans were presented to Kennedy, the President was quoted by an associate as saying he literally left the briefing room feeling sick to his stomach.
Putin faces an ugly self-made opponent, but so far, we have nothing quite that intense.
I admire Putin's ability to demonstrate openness and flexibility and calm in many hard situations. That is part of what makes him a great man, and I don’t lightly call him that. He seems the outstanding statesman of our era.
It is possible that sometimes he has been a little "soft" with a hyper-aggressive America, but the sheer fact that he has gained the respect of so many people abroad and is respected by many influential people shows that he is doing something right.
I do think there is something of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous saying in Putin, the saying about walk softly but carry a big stick. He has definitely, without squandering the vast amounts squandered by the Pentagon, overseen the supplying of Russia with formidable, ultra-modern weapons. They arrive at a time when America does seem hellbent on various complex forms of aggression.
He has bared his teeth occasionally, and when he does, it has a real impact owing to its being so different from his regular demeanor.
It is hard to judge from outside just what the balance should be, not knowing the details of many of the situations he must deal with.
But I think Russia and the world can be grateful he is around. The American establishment seems determined to demonstrate a whining lack of reason, and the comparison between the two affects very much even America's unfortunate allies over time. Smart people, allies or not, can tell America’s behavior is often just plain idiotic and dangerous.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY GILBERT DOCTOROW IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Putin Is Soft. He Should Learn to Scare the West Like Khrushchev Did”
I understand the author's concerns, but I don't quite share them.
While Premier Khrushchev has long been a minor hero of mine - minor because there was too much blood on the hands of this otherwise brave and wily and often admirable leader - I don't think all of his public rhetoric was wise.
Of course, it is hard to judge. He faced a Pentagon that literally had drawn up plans for a massive first nuclear strike on the USSR. When the plans were presented to Kennedy, the President was quoted by an associate as saying he literally left the briefing room feeling sick to his stomach.
Putin faces an ugly self-made opponent, but so far, we have nothing quite that intense.
I admire Putin's ability to demonstrate openness and flexibility and calm in many hard situations. That is part of what makes him a great man, and I don’t lightly call him that. He seems the outstanding statesman of our era.
It is possible that sometimes he has been a little "soft" with a hyper-aggressive America, but the sheer fact that he has gained the respect of so many people abroad and is respected by many influential people shows that he is doing something right.
I do think there is something of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous saying in Putin, the saying about walk softly but carry a big stick. He has definitely, without squandering the vast amounts squandered by the Pentagon, overseen the supplying of Russia with formidable, ultra-modern weapons. They arrive at a time when America does seem hellbent on various complex forms of aggression.
He has bared his teeth occasionally, and when he does, it has a real impact owing to its being so different from his regular demeanor.
It is hard to judge from outside just what the balance should be, not knowing the details of many of the situations he must deal with.
But I think Russia and the world can be grateful he is around. The American establishment seems determined to demonstrate a whining lack of reason, and the comparison between the two affects very much even America's unfortunate allies over time. Smart people, allies or not, can tell America’s behavior is often just plain idiotic and dangerous.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: IS THERE APPRECIABLE RACISM IN QUEBEC? MY EXPERIENCE SAYS ABSOLUTELY NOT - BUT WE DO HAVE A PROBLEM FOR IMMIGRANTS IN GETTING ASSISTANCE WITH THEIR FRENCH LANGUAGE
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MARTIN PATRIQUIN IN CBC NEWS
“Quebec nationalism could once claim to be colour- and country-blind. Not anymore
“Pining for European immigrants would be quite a statement from any politician. From Legault, it is gobsmacking”
An interesting and well-written piece by Martin Patriquin. A delicate subject is well-handled.
I personally see no racism in Montreal. It is a rather wonderfully cosmopolitan city. I have never seen any racial or religious hostility.
But in today's world, many things get described as racism when they really are not. The fact is that with any people anywhere, too much change too rapidly in population make-up can become unsettling. Change in faces, change in religion, change in language, change in manners and customs, change in cultural values – and all in considerable numbers. I think this is under-appreciated in much press discussion of racism.
The huge movements of people in today's world are not like historical experience for anyone. They of course are the result of ease of transportation, flows of information as never before, hugely varying differences in opportunity between countries, population growth, and now America's almost ceaseless imperial wars driving people from their homes.
One of the best things the Premier could do is to acquire some excellent help with learning French for immigrants.
I can attest to the difficulty of learning French after moving to Quebec.
I'm an old man who came to Montreal out of pure love for the city.
The province has absolutely no adequate assistance with newcomers learning French. Its on-line course is virtually useless, badly designed.
I do use two on-line courses, both of them American in origin. I work conscientiously every day on my French, but, at my age, ca va lentement. I work this way not out of any necessity but out a sense of affection for Quebec, and French is a very beautiful language.
I am happy from the comments of a few people that my accent is good, but there is so much to learn. There is the difficulty of my age with everything becoming so slowed down, and I realize now that French is a difficult language. I had long regarded English as being a difficult language - it has that reputation - but I think French may be about as difficult with its prepositions, genders, and verb tenses. I can speak more than I can understand others. Je fais de mon mieux.
You may enjoy:
https://chuckmanmontreal.wordpress.com/
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MARTIN PATRIQUIN IN CBC NEWS
“Quebec nationalism could once claim to be colour- and country-blind. Not anymore
“Pining for European immigrants would be quite a statement from any politician. From Legault, it is gobsmacking”
An interesting and well-written piece by Martin Patriquin. A delicate subject is well-handled.
I personally see no racism in Montreal. It is a rather wonderfully cosmopolitan city. I have never seen any racial or religious hostility.
But in today's world, many things get described as racism when they really are not. The fact is that with any people anywhere, too much change too rapidly in population make-up can become unsettling. Change in faces, change in religion, change in language, change in manners and customs, change in cultural values – and all in considerable numbers. I think this is under-appreciated in much press discussion of racism.
The huge movements of people in today's world are not like historical experience for anyone. They of course are the result of ease of transportation, flows of information as never before, hugely varying differences in opportunity between countries, population growth, and now America's almost ceaseless imperial wars driving people from their homes.
One of the best things the Premier could do is to acquire some excellent help with learning French for immigrants.
I can attest to the difficulty of learning French after moving to Quebec.
I'm an old man who came to Montreal out of pure love for the city.
The province has absolutely no adequate assistance with newcomers learning French. Its on-line course is virtually useless, badly designed.
I do use two on-line courses, both of them American in origin. I work conscientiously every day on my French, but, at my age, ca va lentement. I work this way not out of any necessity but out a sense of affection for Quebec, and French is a very beautiful language.
I am happy from the comments of a few people that my accent is good, but there is so much to learn. There is the difficulty of my age with everything becoming so slowed down, and I realize now that French is a difficult language. I had long regarded English as being a difficult language - it has that reputation - but I think French may be about as difficult with its prepositions, genders, and verb tenses. I can speak more than I can understand others. Je fais de mon mieux.
You may enjoy:
https://chuckmanmontreal.wordpress.com/
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: SOME STRANGE CRIMES IN AMERICA ACCOMPANIED BY STRANGE OR STRANGER POLICE INVESTIGATIONS OF THEM
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY TYLER DURDEN IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“FBI Has New Conspiracy Theory About Bizarre 2017 Las Vegas Shooting”
It is stunning that with such a monumental crime, American police - and especially the resource-rich FBI - are able to produce no plausible explanation of what happened in Las Vegas.
It just has to be one of the most bizarre countries on earth, the United States, with its astounding crimes accompanied by equally astounding police incompetence.
It does tend strongly to suggest that they are hiding something important about events in Las Vegas.
Just look at the FBI's feeble work on the Kennedy assassination or on 9/11, cases where we absolutely know they were hiding things.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY TYLER DURDEN IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“FBI Has New Conspiracy Theory About Bizarre 2017 Las Vegas Shooting”
It is stunning that with such a monumental crime, American police - and especially the resource-rich FBI - are able to produce no plausible explanation of what happened in Las Vegas.
It just has to be one of the most bizarre countries on earth, the United States, with its astounding crimes accompanied by equally astounding police incompetence.
It does tend strongly to suggest that they are hiding something important about events in Las Vegas.
Just look at the FBI's feeble work on the Kennedy assassination or on 9/11, cases where we absolutely know they were hiding things.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: HOW CENSORSHIP IN AMERICA HAS BEEN RATIONALIZED - POLITICAL IDEOLOGY IS A FORM OF SECULAR RELIGION - WHY PROPAGANDA DOES INDEED WORK - AND BACK TO WASHINGTON'S EFFORT TO BE IMPERIAL ROME
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOE LAURIA IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“How Russia-gate Rationalized Censorship
“Russia-gate mania spread beyond a strategy for neutralizing Donald Trump or removing him from office into an excuse for stifling U.S. dissent that challenges the New Cold War”
Yes, but I think a good deal of this goes back to 9/11.
That event justified everything from the NSA’s high-tech Stasi operation to wars with all the censorship and limits wars always impose.
It is clear that “Russia-gate” is just an echo coming from something much larger.
And that something is the American establishment’s realization how relatively in decline America is compared to its halcyon post-WWII days and its determination to use force in trying to regain its position.
Force, rather than competition, is now more or less openly being used to extract benefits and privileges and to harm competitors abroad.
Of course, that is not explained to ordinary citizens and, instead, a sense of dread and threat from abroad is used to do what is always done in conflicts, and that is to censor.
In that establishment effort, Russia is viewed as ancient Carthage was by Rome. Neutralizing it in every way short of outright war is what Washington busies itself with.
It’s an extremely dangerous business, and, as far as I can tell, most Americans still do not know what is going on.
___________________
Response to another reader’s comment:
Religion always blinds people to seeking truth.
Political ideologies are just secular religions, and American Patriotism is the most egregious of these.
______________________
Response to another reader’s comment:
“Propaganda works…”
Yes, indeed, it does.
It is a close relative – politically-oriented rather than product-oriented – of advertising.
And we all know that advertising works. Companies spend countless billions on it year after year.
When commercial television first started, many companies had reservations about the effectiveness of advertising on it.
But as the returns came in from those who did advertise, and they were phenomenal, there was a revolution. Everyone wanted to advertise on television, and the big early networks and stations exploded with growth.
Advertising and propaganda are both forms of suggestion, carefully manipulated and targeted suggestion, and we know to a certainty the human mind is susceptible to suggestion.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOE LAURIA IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“How Russia-gate Rationalized Censorship
“Russia-gate mania spread beyond a strategy for neutralizing Donald Trump or removing him from office into an excuse for stifling U.S. dissent that challenges the New Cold War”
Yes, but I think a good deal of this goes back to 9/11.
That event justified everything from the NSA’s high-tech Stasi operation to wars with all the censorship and limits wars always impose.
It is clear that “Russia-gate” is just an echo coming from something much larger.
And that something is the American establishment’s realization how relatively in decline America is compared to its halcyon post-WWII days and its determination to use force in trying to regain its position.
Force, rather than competition, is now more or less openly being used to extract benefits and privileges and to harm competitors abroad.
Of course, that is not explained to ordinary citizens and, instead, a sense of dread and threat from abroad is used to do what is always done in conflicts, and that is to censor.
In that establishment effort, Russia is viewed as ancient Carthage was by Rome. Neutralizing it in every way short of outright war is what Washington busies itself with.
It’s an extremely dangerous business, and, as far as I can tell, most Americans still do not know what is going on.
___________________
Response to another reader’s comment:
Religion always blinds people to seeking truth.
Political ideologies are just secular religions, and American Patriotism is the most egregious of these.
______________________
Response to another reader’s comment:
“Propaganda works…”
Yes, indeed, it does.
It is a close relative – politically-oriented rather than product-oriented – of advertising.
And we all know that advertising works. Companies spend countless billions on it year after year.
When commercial television first started, many companies had reservations about the effectiveness of advertising on it.
But as the returns came in from those who did advertise, and they were phenomenal, there was a revolution. Everyone wanted to advertise on television, and the big early networks and stations exploded with growth.
Advertising and propaganda are both forms of suggestion, carefully manipulated and targeted suggestion, and we know to a certainty the human mind is susceptible to suggestion.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ANYONE ATTACKED BY AMERICA'S NEW DISINFORMATION-FOR-PROFIT SCAM CALLED NEWSGUARD SHOULD WEAR IT AS A BADGE OF HONOR
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY WHITNEY WEBB IN MINTPRESS
“Newsguard Turns to EU to Push Controversial Ratings System on Tech Companies, Smears MintPress as “Secretly Supported” by Russia”
Being attacked by NewsGuard is just about the contemporary equivalent of being attacked by Senator Joe McCarthy back in the early 1950s.
It should be worn as a badge of honor.
All that it means is that you have displeased some guys running an ugly American scam operation offering disinformation-for-profit.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY WHITNEY WEBB IN MINTPRESS
“Newsguard Turns to EU to Push Controversial Ratings System on Tech Companies, Smears MintPress as “Secretly Supported” by Russia”
Being attacked by NewsGuard is just about the contemporary equivalent of being attacked by Senator Joe McCarthy back in the early 1950s.
It should be worn as a badge of honor.
All that it means is that you have displeased some guys running an ugly American scam operation offering disinformation-for-profit.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AMERICAN BRAIN SICKNESS STRIKES CANADA - GOVERNMENT PROPOSES SETTING UP A "WARNING TEAM" AGAINST POTENTIAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE - NO DEFINING THE THREAT OR IDENTIFYING WHO MIGHT OFFER IT OR ANY BASIS FOR EVEN MAKING THE CLAIM
John Chuckman
COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“Ottawa setting up new team to warn Canadians of potential election interference
“Panel will alert the public to 'disruptive' threats, according to officials”
Has everyone in Ottawa caught America’s brain sickness? The boogeyman is coming to get us?
What kind of vague threat is this supposed to be? And from whom? And on the basis of what?
American election interference? Not from outside. From inside, yes. Hillary Clinton cheated to get the nomination. The Democrats and some of the FBI worked against seating a newly elected President.
And the DNC papers, we know from experts, were the result of an insider leak, not any hacking.
And talk about election interference, how about what Trudeau and Freeland have done to the twice-elected government of Venezuela? And the recognition of a self-appointed man who did not even run for the office?
That is serious election interference.
And I never would have believed I'd see it coming from Canada.
_______________________
Response to a comment:
Well, I don't see how our government could be under more foreign influence than this one is already.
Our entire foreign policy, even the words used by our leaders, comes from a desk somewhere in the State Department.
__________________
Response to a comment:
The key issue here is, what problem?
No threat has been defined. None.
All we have is the kind of dark, vague rhetoric we get out of Washington almost daily.
Of course, with Washington, the threat is always from Russia, even though there is never a single documented case.
It's all part of a psychological warfare project being waged by Washington.
The same Washington which itself promotes coups and supports tyrants and runs warfare in half a dozen places.
And the same Washington which Canada’s government supports in its current efforts to destroy an elected government in Venezuela.
And the same Washington we openly support, much to our own national disadvantage, in its efforts to hurt a world-leading Chinese technology company, and that is absolutely all the arrest of Ms. Meng is about.
COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“Ottawa setting up new team to warn Canadians of potential election interference
“Panel will alert the public to 'disruptive' threats, according to officials”
Has everyone in Ottawa caught America’s brain sickness? The boogeyman is coming to get us?
What kind of vague threat is this supposed to be? And from whom? And on the basis of what?
American election interference? Not from outside. From inside, yes. Hillary Clinton cheated to get the nomination. The Democrats and some of the FBI worked against seating a newly elected President.
And the DNC papers, we know from experts, were the result of an insider leak, not any hacking.
And talk about election interference, how about what Trudeau and Freeland have done to the twice-elected government of Venezuela? And the recognition of a self-appointed man who did not even run for the office?
That is serious election interference.
And I never would have believed I'd see it coming from Canada.
_______________________
Response to a comment:
Well, I don't see how our government could be under more foreign influence than this one is already.
Our entire foreign policy, even the words used by our leaders, comes from a desk somewhere in the State Department.
__________________
Response to a comment:
The key issue here is, what problem?
No threat has been defined. None.
All we have is the kind of dark, vague rhetoric we get out of Washington almost daily.
Of course, with Washington, the threat is always from Russia, even though there is never a single documented case.
It's all part of a psychological warfare project being waged by Washington.
The same Washington which itself promotes coups and supports tyrants and runs warfare in half a dozen places.
And the same Washington which Canada’s government supports in its current efforts to destroy an elected government in Venezuela.
And the same Washington we openly support, much to our own national disadvantage, in its efforts to hurt a world-leading Chinese technology company, and that is absolutely all the arrest of Ms. Meng is about.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: CANADA'S TRUDEAU CONTINUES TO BLUNDER IN RELATIONS WITH CHINA - WHAT AMERICA'S CHARGES AGAINST CHINA ARE REALLY ALL ABOUT
John Chuckman
COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“Canada should immediately appoint high-level envoy to China, ex-ambassador says Canada needs representative who can 'lower the temperature' of diplomatic dispute, says Guy Saint-Jacques”
This is better than doing nothing, but I can't believe it will be too helpful.
Trudeau and Freeland have blundered badly in a fundamental matter.
The Chinese are a people you don't insult, and that is just what the arrest was, an insult.
It is stunning that Trudeau knows so little that he didn't appreciate what the arrest would do.
I'm not sure how we can recover, although releasing Ms. Meng would really help.
Given Trudeau's actions on Venezuela, though, which can only be interpreted as joining Washington's war party enthusiastically - the godawful likes of Pompeo and Bolton - I would be surprised if the Chinese haven't begun looking at us in a new light altogether.
Firing the ambassador was not a good idea either. Although he had broken diplomatic protocol, he was a liked and trusted man. Undoubtedly American considerations played a key role in the firing, either through general concern about the ambassador’s having offended the United States or through the actual receipt of an angry phone call saying so.
What we've already done in Venezuela far exceeds the minor sin of breaking diplomatic protocol. We've joined a campaign to recognize a man who appointed himself and never ran for office while ignoring the man legally elected twice.
On that last, readers may enjoy:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/01/27/john-chuckman-comment-a-nightmare-orwell-never-anticipated-washingtons-politburo-now-tells-countries-a-couple-of-thousand-miles-away-who-should-be-elected-politburo-chief-pompeo-puts-on-a-stage/
_______________________
Response to a comment saying “next generation of Mass Global Communication technology, 5G, is what this is all about”:
To a degree you are right, but the conclusion to be drawn is not about China but about the United States.
It is trying to crush China’s 5G technology just as it would like to crush Russia's Nordstream II pipeline.
The United States has taken to using muscle where it can't compete economically.
It represents a very dangerous development.
COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“Canada should immediately appoint high-level envoy to China, ex-ambassador says Canada needs representative who can 'lower the temperature' of diplomatic dispute, says Guy Saint-Jacques”
This is better than doing nothing, but I can't believe it will be too helpful.
Trudeau and Freeland have blundered badly in a fundamental matter.
The Chinese are a people you don't insult, and that is just what the arrest was, an insult.
It is stunning that Trudeau knows so little that he didn't appreciate what the arrest would do.
I'm not sure how we can recover, although releasing Ms. Meng would really help.
Given Trudeau's actions on Venezuela, though, which can only be interpreted as joining Washington's war party enthusiastically - the godawful likes of Pompeo and Bolton - I would be surprised if the Chinese haven't begun looking at us in a new light altogether.
Firing the ambassador was not a good idea either. Although he had broken diplomatic protocol, he was a liked and trusted man. Undoubtedly American considerations played a key role in the firing, either through general concern about the ambassador’s having offended the United States or through the actual receipt of an angry phone call saying so.
What we've already done in Venezuela far exceeds the minor sin of breaking diplomatic protocol. We've joined a campaign to recognize a man who appointed himself and never ran for office while ignoring the man legally elected twice.
On that last, readers may enjoy:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/01/27/john-chuckman-comment-a-nightmare-orwell-never-anticipated-washingtons-politburo-now-tells-countries-a-couple-of-thousand-miles-away-who-should-be-elected-politburo-chief-pompeo-puts-on-a-stage/
_______________________
Response to a comment saying “next generation of Mass Global Communication technology, 5G, is what this is all about”:
To a degree you are right, but the conclusion to be drawn is not about China but about the United States.
It is trying to crush China’s 5G technology just as it would like to crush Russia's Nordstream II pipeline.
The United States has taken to using muscle where it can't compete economically.
It represents a very dangerous development.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: JUST TO STATE THE TRUE MEANING OF THE WORD "LIBERALISM" HIGHLIGHTS WHAT IS WRONG IN ISRAEL AND WHY ISRAEL ATTACKS CRITICS AND CALLS THEM NAMES
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN MONDOWEISS
“Anti-Zionism is a rejection of racism and imperialism, not just criticism of Israel”
Of course, absolutely.
But also, more broadly, a rejection of the anti-liberalism which dominates Israel.
I’m referring to “liberalism” not as a political alignment, but in its true sense, in the great Western tradition of supporting democratic and human values.
Israel represents direct conflict with those precious values.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN MONDOWEISS
“Anti-Zionism is a rejection of racism and imperialism, not just criticism of Israel”
Of course, absolutely.
But also, more broadly, a rejection of the anti-liberalism which dominates Israel.
I’m referring to “liberalism” not as a political alignment, but in its true sense, in the great Western tradition of supporting democratic and human values.
Israel represents direct conflict with those precious values.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ON ISRAEL RESEMBLING A MODERN SPARTA
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JONATHAN COOK IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“Israel’s Drive to Become a Modern-Day Sparta
“A former army chief may present a challenge to Benjamin Netanyahu, but his campaign’s exultation of destruction and oppression is chilling”
Good piece.
And I think the comparison with Sparta very apt. That was a society actually designed for war, right down to the way it raised its children.
Remember, too, the advice of a leading early Zionist, Jabotinsky, about building an “iron wall.”
That is precisely the advice Israelis embraced at the beginning.
There never has been any effort at peace and good, helpful relations with neighbors.
Israel resembles a Crusader fortress sitting amidst people for whom it has only contempt. A heavily-armed garrison state with no regard for any neighbor, except a few absolute kings and tyrants – e.g., Saudi Arabia or Egypt – who are ready for their own reasons to assist in its work.
Modern Israel has proven a tragedy for most of the people in the region. Not just by means of its own continuous state of war. Israel is the fundamental mover for the Neocon Wars, that horror-show effort to remake the Mideast. A total and very bloody failure.
There isn’t a neighbor Israel itself hasn’t attacked, some several times. And it has on a number of occasions committed outright atrocities. It is never held liable in “the West” because Israel’s lobby has such a hold on politics there, a fact which only encourages still more outrageous behavior. Israel holds a permanent “Get out of jail free” card covering aggression and atrocity.
The word "peace" from the mouth of any Israeli politician with whom I am familiar is pretty much a bitter sarcasm.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JONATHAN COOK IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“Israel’s Drive to Become a Modern-Day Sparta
“A former army chief may present a challenge to Benjamin Netanyahu, but his campaign’s exultation of destruction and oppression is chilling”
Good piece.
And I think the comparison with Sparta very apt. That was a society actually designed for war, right down to the way it raised its children.
Remember, too, the advice of a leading early Zionist, Jabotinsky, about building an “iron wall.”
That is precisely the advice Israelis embraced at the beginning.
There never has been any effort at peace and good, helpful relations with neighbors.
Israel resembles a Crusader fortress sitting amidst people for whom it has only contempt. A heavily-armed garrison state with no regard for any neighbor, except a few absolute kings and tyrants – e.g., Saudi Arabia or Egypt – who are ready for their own reasons to assist in its work.
Modern Israel has proven a tragedy for most of the people in the region. Not just by means of its own continuous state of war. Israel is the fundamental mover for the Neocon Wars, that horror-show effort to remake the Mideast. A total and very bloody failure.
There isn’t a neighbor Israel itself hasn’t attacked, some several times. And it has on a number of occasions committed outright atrocities. It is never held liable in “the West” because Israel’s lobby has such a hold on politics there, a fact which only encourages still more outrageous behavior. Israel holds a permanent “Get out of jail free” card covering aggression and atrocity.
The word "peace" from the mouth of any Israeli politician with whom I am familiar is pretty much a bitter sarcasm.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: BREXIT GOES ON AND ON - HOW POINTLESSLY DESTRUCTIVE GOVERNMENT CAN BE - BRITAIN'S DAVID CAMERON AND THERESA MAY
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“U.K. Parliament approves Brexit amendment on replacing Irish backstop”
Good God, what long-running farce Brexit has become.
Theresa May has done little else but run around for many months trying to patch together some kind of departure compromise, and she has completely failed on all sides.
It has become tiresome just reading about it all, much of the effort resembling the verbal convolutions of Medieval scholastics, and what a colossal waste of government resources.
Of course, in her party's case, I suppose there is little else worthwhile they'd be doing anyway. The country has all kinds of ignored problems. Her second biggest activity has been articulating Russophobia, but that is not a very demanding activity, requiring little real effort and less thought.
Surely, David Cameron, the man who left this mess as his legacy, must go down as one of the most incompetent prime ministers in British history.
It was all completely unnecessary. The problems were doubtlessly predicted by experts, if you bothered listening to them.
The entire effort, from Cameron to May, does give us a textbook example of how pointlessly destructive governments can be.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“U.K. Parliament approves Brexit amendment on replacing Irish backstop”
Good God, what long-running farce Brexit has become.
Theresa May has done little else but run around for many months trying to patch together some kind of departure compromise, and she has completely failed on all sides.
It has become tiresome just reading about it all, much of the effort resembling the verbal convolutions of Medieval scholastics, and what a colossal waste of government resources.
Of course, in her party's case, I suppose there is little else worthwhile they'd be doing anyway. The country has all kinds of ignored problems. Her second biggest activity has been articulating Russophobia, but that is not a very demanding activity, requiring little real effort and less thought.
Surely, David Cameron, the man who left this mess as his legacy, must go down as one of the most incompetent prime ministers in British history.
It was all completely unnecessary. The problems were doubtlessly predicted by experts, if you bothered listening to them.
The entire effort, from Cameron to May, does give us a textbook example of how pointlessly destructive governments can be.
Sunday, January 27, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: A NIGHTMARE ORWELL NEVER ANTICIPATED - WASHINGTON'S POLITBURO NOW TELLS COUNTRIES A COUPLE OF THOUSAND MILES AWAY WHO SHOULD BE ELECTED - POLITBURO CHIEF POMPEO PUTS ON A STAGE SHOW WHERE SOMEONE WHO DIDN'T EVEN RUN FOR OFFICE SWEARS HIMSELF IN AND THEN ALL THE POLITBURO'S LOYAL DEPENDENCIES DEMAND HIS RECOGNITION ON CUE - VENEZUELA IS THE BUSINESS OF VENEZUELANS
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
“Venezuela crisis: UK, France, Germany and Spain demand Maduro calls election within eight days
“The UK has already thrown its weight behind opposition leader Juan Guaido”
Leaders demanding that another country hold an election within eight days? It does sound a bit like an ultimatum to a small European state hurled from the Reich Chancellery in 1939.
Leaders of traditional supposedly democratic countries giving ultimatums concerning another country’s internal affairs? A country thousands of miles away, no less?
And note that they all said the same thing at virtually the same time, as though all reading from a script, which is, undoubtedly, what they were doing.
Where does such arrogance come from?
Such complete ignoring of all diplomatic norms and courtesies?
And contempt for the rule of law, both national and international law?
From America. The country which runs its own affairs so very well it feels qualified to tell others how to run theirs.
These sad leaders in Europe, of course, are doing what they have been told to do. Just as Canada’s leader has already done.
So, we have a new kind of international theatrical production, a kind of elaborate international farce, which starts with an American Secretary of State suddenly announcing to the world who should and who should not be president of another country.
And he does so not long after that country’s own elections? A man elected two times is told by someone a couple of thousand miles away that he can’t be president again? A man elected under an election system that Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Institute often was called upon to scrutinize elections abroad and whose integrity in such matters cannot be questioned, declared back in 1998, when this man’s late predecessor was first elected, to be one of the world’s best?
A man still popular with a lot of ordinary people, despite all the economic hardship imposed by American threats, sanctions, sabotage, and black operations and by an opposition minority encouraged to do almost anything? We’ve all seen in recent years what America can do to a country when it wants to. In Syria, in Libya, in Yemen, in Honduras, and in still other places, it has created hell on earth. Much like Israel’s efforts in Gaza, a horror America watches with unblinking acceptance.
Then we have the staging of an absurd Monty Pythonesque skit with an opposition leader in this targeted country, a man who never even ran for the office of president, “swearing himself in” to be just that, president.
It has been reported that he was reluctant at first, but just like the leaders of other states now making inappropriate demands here, he accepted his assigned role, ridiculous as it may have seemed. You aren’t allowed to laugh at the Empire or its demands. It’s a form of lèse-majesté.
Now a set of countries, all long demonstrated doggedly loyal to American wishes and whims, either each recognize this self-declared president as the new president or demand new elections from the just-elected legitimate president within eight days. I guess the American Secretary of State offered them two options, just so there would be some appearance of everyone’s not being orchestrated.
In any event, none of it is any of their business, clearly. Venezuela is the business of Venezuelans, although you might think you wouldn’t need to remind the people in Washington of that, the very people who now go around preaching that “countries mean something” as they busy themselves dismantling many international organizations.
We have here, on a grand scale, the most heavy-handed interference in the internal affairs of others, immense arrogance, and the manners of the barnyard creature Pompeo most resembles, one so obvious I don't think I even need to name it.
This all from an America which has undergone two solid years of twitches and spasms and outbursts of lunatic righteous indignation over the very suggestion that Russia might have tried, feebly, to influence their own last election. Oh, if only Washington’s Politburo only stuck to a few feeble Facebook ads and computer hacks in other countries.
Is this really the kind of world we want for our future? Orchestrated international extortion and threats, all carried on from behind a threadbare veil of hypocrisy, whenever someone Washington doesn’t like wins an election somewhere?
It’s quite a nightmare really. One George Orwell never anticipated.
NOTE:
Just four months ago President Trump said at the UN: “I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.”
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
“Venezuela crisis: UK, France, Germany and Spain demand Maduro calls election within eight days
“The UK has already thrown its weight behind opposition leader Juan Guaido”
Leaders demanding that another country hold an election within eight days? It does sound a bit like an ultimatum to a small European state hurled from the Reich Chancellery in 1939.
Leaders of traditional supposedly democratic countries giving ultimatums concerning another country’s internal affairs? A country thousands of miles away, no less?
And note that they all said the same thing at virtually the same time, as though all reading from a script, which is, undoubtedly, what they were doing.
Where does such arrogance come from?
Such complete ignoring of all diplomatic norms and courtesies?
And contempt for the rule of law, both national and international law?
From America. The country which runs its own affairs so very well it feels qualified to tell others how to run theirs.
These sad leaders in Europe, of course, are doing what they have been told to do. Just as Canada’s leader has already done.
So, we have a new kind of international theatrical production, a kind of elaborate international farce, which starts with an American Secretary of State suddenly announcing to the world who should and who should not be president of another country.
And he does so not long after that country’s own elections? A man elected two times is told by someone a couple of thousand miles away that he can’t be president again? A man elected under an election system that Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Institute often was called upon to scrutinize elections abroad and whose integrity in such matters cannot be questioned, declared back in 1998, when this man’s late predecessor was first elected, to be one of the world’s best?
A man still popular with a lot of ordinary people, despite all the economic hardship imposed by American threats, sanctions, sabotage, and black operations and by an opposition minority encouraged to do almost anything? We’ve all seen in recent years what America can do to a country when it wants to. In Syria, in Libya, in Yemen, in Honduras, and in still other places, it has created hell on earth. Much like Israel’s efforts in Gaza, a horror America watches with unblinking acceptance.
Then we have the staging of an absurd Monty Pythonesque skit with an opposition leader in this targeted country, a man who never even ran for the office of president, “swearing himself in” to be just that, president.
It has been reported that he was reluctant at first, but just like the leaders of other states now making inappropriate demands here, he accepted his assigned role, ridiculous as it may have seemed. You aren’t allowed to laugh at the Empire or its demands. It’s a form of lèse-majesté.
Now a set of countries, all long demonstrated doggedly loyal to American wishes and whims, either each recognize this self-declared president as the new president or demand new elections from the just-elected legitimate president within eight days. I guess the American Secretary of State offered them two options, just so there would be some appearance of everyone’s not being orchestrated.
In any event, none of it is any of their business, clearly. Venezuela is the business of Venezuelans, although you might think you wouldn’t need to remind the people in Washington of that, the very people who now go around preaching that “countries mean something” as they busy themselves dismantling many international organizations.
We have here, on a grand scale, the most heavy-handed interference in the internal affairs of others, immense arrogance, and the manners of the barnyard creature Pompeo most resembles, one so obvious I don't think I even need to name it.
This all from an America which has undergone two solid years of twitches and spasms and outbursts of lunatic righteous indignation over the very suggestion that Russia might have tried, feebly, to influence their own last election. Oh, if only Washington’s Politburo only stuck to a few feeble Facebook ads and computer hacks in other countries.
Is this really the kind of world we want for our future? Orchestrated international extortion and threats, all carried on from behind a threadbare veil of hypocrisy, whenever someone Washington doesn’t like wins an election somewhere?
It’s quite a nightmare really. One George Orwell never anticipated.
NOTE:
Just four months ago President Trump said at the UN: “I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.”
Saturday, January 26, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: CLOSING THE GOVERNMENT - TRUMP'S BLUSTER AND COWARDICE - WHY HE REALLY GAVE IN - NOTE ON TULSI GABBARD - NOTE ON FBI HISTORY - NOTE ON U.S. AS A CLOSED SOCIETY - IMPORTANT NOTES ON THE DESIGN OF "AMERICAN DEMOCRACY" FROM ITS CREATION
John Chuckman
COMMENT ON TRUMP’S DEAL WITH CONGRESS ABOUT CLOSING THE GOVERNMENT
“Trump signs bill to end US government shutdown
“Temporary measure does not include border wall funds demanded by president” The Financial Times
It is hard to understand how anyone keeps any faith in this man.
Here he is, once again, playing the coward, and doing so over his own key issue.
All the bluster and noise over a wall just disappear like air being let out of a balloon. Just days ago, there were public threat-promises from America’s man-child president that things would stay closed a very long time.
Of course, it just happens that recent public opinion on the government’s closing tends to blame Trump, so he has effectively bowed out.
Just which side would be blamed for the embarrassing conflict has always been the key political issue, not any matter of “principle.”
There is no principle involved in shutting down the government beyond the already well-established one of the United States not being capable of governing its own affairs.
But this was Trump’s red-meat issue for his “trailer park, NASCAR, Walmart, gun show” political base, and he has just effectively abandoned them.
With his failures to do anything meaningful about reduced war in the Middle East or improved relations with Russia, matters that gave him votes he would not have otherwise have received in 2016, he lost the crossover vote that put him over the top. (see FOOTNOTE). Now, we can add offending his political base. He is going to be very vulnerable in 2020.
I shouldn’t exclude the frenetic and crazed possibility of his declaring some kind of national emergency after the agreed weeks of consultation with Congress, but that would be a mighty big step into the unknown, and it is fraught with political and other consequences and legal challenges. Still, of course, anything is possible for this genuinely chaotic figure, but I tend to doubt he will take things that way after the experience of effective political defeat in the shut-down.
He will be vulnerable, of course, if he makes it to 2020. I tend to doubt his impeachment, but resignation in the face of a mass of charges, revelations, and anger - whether related to Russia or not - might be a real possibility. The “coward factor” would come into play.
Impeachment, as we saw with Clinton, is just a huge, expensive, and tedious effort, one neither party welcomes unless they see a real political advantage to be gained.
The votes against him just do not exist in the Senate to start with, and they are the only votes that count. There would have to be the clearest criminal behavior established for Republicans to vote substantially for conviction, the Constitution requiring a two-thirds majority of the Senate to convict.
At any rate, this development of “the wall matter” gives the Democratic Party candidacy a new allure and excitement. I would expect that contest, pretty insipid so far, to heat up.
This, of course, is purely a political matter, not a matter of substance for the nation or the world. In the end, nothing in American politics is a matter of substance for people at home or abroad. The Democrats have just about as little to offer people as the Republicans. More war, more threats, more hatred against Russia, Iran, and China. More throwing away money on the military and invasive security. More mindless noise and propaganda.
In fact, the whole game of blaming Russia for Trump, which the Democrats have embraced from the beginning, contains exactly the promise of just those things.
There is one potential candidate of interest, Tulsi Gabbard, but she has about as much chance as I would have.
Apart from the fact that she comes from the politically insignificant state of Hawaii, forces are already at work tarring her with such gracious charges as being an “Assad toady,” that one, courtesy of the “liberal” New York Times. You see, as soon as you touch the Middle East and America’s Neocon Wars, Israel’s interests pop up, and the unblinking eyes of the Israel lobby in America take note and prepare.
That’s what you get in America for so much as talking to other people, especially abroad, and wanting to understand what is really going on. You are not supposed to ask real questions or to seek real answers. It’s un-American.
America actually is a very closed society, remarkably so when you consider all the accusations it levels against, say, China or Iran or Syria.
America preserves its closed nature through fairly intense social pressure, even public name-calling and shaming, constant propaganda, a politically-compliant press, and political bombast - these prove adequate most of the time.
But it also is not above the more heavy-handed methods of legal intimidation and police abuse. The whole history of the FBI, for example, from J. Edgar Hoover’s earliest dark activities right up through events around Trump’s election campaign, demonstrates that decisively.
FOOTNOTE - IMPORTANT NOTES ON THE NATURE OF “AMERICAN DEMOCRACY”
When I say “the crossover vote” that put him over the in 2016, I do not mean to imply that he won a majority. He is, very much, a minority president, Hillary Clinton having won a few million more votes. And he is just one of a number of minority presidents in the history of American “democracy,” George Bush having been the last one. The Constitution’s provision of the rather bizarre Electoral College makes this always a possible outcome.
The Founding Fathers mostly did not like the idea of democracy and included a number of safeguards against it, the Electoral College being just one of them. The Founders were men of property, and they viewed democracy as carrying the threat of the mob voting the privileged out of their property.
That’s also why they insisted on calling America a republic, that least-defined of all political terms, meaning mainly that you did not have a king. Ironically, by the time of writing the American Constitution, a king like Britain’s had already lost most of his power to Parliament over centuries of change, so the distinction of a republic wasn’t great.
America has always given more weight to property and “economic freedom” than to political freedom. That’s what it really means when it speaks of “freedom” abroad in its various wars and interventions. It’s a built-in national prejudice, you might say. Democracy certainly is not. And economic freedom abroad means opportunity for American corporations. It becomes a way of building an empire while talking about freedom.
The immense importance of money in American elections was strengthened by a Supreme Court ruling that “money was equivalent to free speech.” Today with the immense amounts of campaign finance money required to compete (literally billions are spent in any presidential election year now), the existing political duopoly of Republicans and Democrats is firmly set. Along with that, the system approaches plutocracy since only very wealthy people and organizations can give in the required amounts.
Some of the Founders’ anti-democratic measures have been altered over a couple of centuries, as the Senate going from being appointed to being elected (not until 1913), but its complex, deliberately-calculated manner of election and many of its special voting rules render it still a pretty undemocratic body. The record of overwhelming re-election of incumbents, about 90%, plus some seats becoming almost hereditary emphasize this further. Given the fact that is the most powerful legislative body, by far, this is not an unimportant matter.
The Electoral College remains for at least two reasons. One, any change to the American Constitution is an immense undertaking. It was designed that way as yet another anti-democratic measure. The Electoral College system tends to give some additional importance and weight to the individual states, too, and many of them would be reluctant to give that up.
Under the system, you must win, not an overall majority - which of course would be democratic – but a majority in key local places. Since America’s election system is money-driven, there being virtually no limits on how much money you can use, money resources are then focused on these places. That was just what Trump did, so that the right local victories added up to an “Electoral College majority” and a total vote minority.
COMMENT ON TRUMP’S DEAL WITH CONGRESS ABOUT CLOSING THE GOVERNMENT
“Trump signs bill to end US government shutdown
“Temporary measure does not include border wall funds demanded by president” The Financial Times
It is hard to understand how anyone keeps any faith in this man.
Here he is, once again, playing the coward, and doing so over his own key issue.
All the bluster and noise over a wall just disappear like air being let out of a balloon. Just days ago, there were public threat-promises from America’s man-child president that things would stay closed a very long time.
Of course, it just happens that recent public opinion on the government’s closing tends to blame Trump, so he has effectively bowed out.
Just which side would be blamed for the embarrassing conflict has always been the key political issue, not any matter of “principle.”
There is no principle involved in shutting down the government beyond the already well-established one of the United States not being capable of governing its own affairs.
But this was Trump’s red-meat issue for his “trailer park, NASCAR, Walmart, gun show” political base, and he has just effectively abandoned them.
With his failures to do anything meaningful about reduced war in the Middle East or improved relations with Russia, matters that gave him votes he would not have otherwise have received in 2016, he lost the crossover vote that put him over the top. (see FOOTNOTE). Now, we can add offending his political base. He is going to be very vulnerable in 2020.
I shouldn’t exclude the frenetic and crazed possibility of his declaring some kind of national emergency after the agreed weeks of consultation with Congress, but that would be a mighty big step into the unknown, and it is fraught with political and other consequences and legal challenges. Still, of course, anything is possible for this genuinely chaotic figure, but I tend to doubt he will take things that way after the experience of effective political defeat in the shut-down.
He will be vulnerable, of course, if he makes it to 2020. I tend to doubt his impeachment, but resignation in the face of a mass of charges, revelations, and anger - whether related to Russia or not - might be a real possibility. The “coward factor” would come into play.
Impeachment, as we saw with Clinton, is just a huge, expensive, and tedious effort, one neither party welcomes unless they see a real political advantage to be gained.
The votes against him just do not exist in the Senate to start with, and they are the only votes that count. There would have to be the clearest criminal behavior established for Republicans to vote substantially for conviction, the Constitution requiring a two-thirds majority of the Senate to convict.
At any rate, this development of “the wall matter” gives the Democratic Party candidacy a new allure and excitement. I would expect that contest, pretty insipid so far, to heat up.
This, of course, is purely a political matter, not a matter of substance for the nation or the world. In the end, nothing in American politics is a matter of substance for people at home or abroad. The Democrats have just about as little to offer people as the Republicans. More war, more threats, more hatred against Russia, Iran, and China. More throwing away money on the military and invasive security. More mindless noise and propaganda.
In fact, the whole game of blaming Russia for Trump, which the Democrats have embraced from the beginning, contains exactly the promise of just those things.
There is one potential candidate of interest, Tulsi Gabbard, but she has about as much chance as I would have.
Apart from the fact that she comes from the politically insignificant state of Hawaii, forces are already at work tarring her with such gracious charges as being an “Assad toady,” that one, courtesy of the “liberal” New York Times. You see, as soon as you touch the Middle East and America’s Neocon Wars, Israel’s interests pop up, and the unblinking eyes of the Israel lobby in America take note and prepare.
That’s what you get in America for so much as talking to other people, especially abroad, and wanting to understand what is really going on. You are not supposed to ask real questions or to seek real answers. It’s un-American.
America actually is a very closed society, remarkably so when you consider all the accusations it levels against, say, China or Iran or Syria.
America preserves its closed nature through fairly intense social pressure, even public name-calling and shaming, constant propaganda, a politically-compliant press, and political bombast - these prove adequate most of the time.
But it also is not above the more heavy-handed methods of legal intimidation and police abuse. The whole history of the FBI, for example, from J. Edgar Hoover’s earliest dark activities right up through events around Trump’s election campaign, demonstrates that decisively.
FOOTNOTE - IMPORTANT NOTES ON THE NATURE OF “AMERICAN DEMOCRACY”
When I say “the crossover vote” that put him over the in 2016, I do not mean to imply that he won a majority. He is, very much, a minority president, Hillary Clinton having won a few million more votes. And he is just one of a number of minority presidents in the history of American “democracy,” George Bush having been the last one. The Constitution’s provision of the rather bizarre Electoral College makes this always a possible outcome.
The Founding Fathers mostly did not like the idea of democracy and included a number of safeguards against it, the Electoral College being just one of them. The Founders were men of property, and they viewed democracy as carrying the threat of the mob voting the privileged out of their property.
That’s also why they insisted on calling America a republic, that least-defined of all political terms, meaning mainly that you did not have a king. Ironically, by the time of writing the American Constitution, a king like Britain’s had already lost most of his power to Parliament over centuries of change, so the distinction of a republic wasn’t great.
America has always given more weight to property and “economic freedom” than to political freedom. That’s what it really means when it speaks of “freedom” abroad in its various wars and interventions. It’s a built-in national prejudice, you might say. Democracy certainly is not. And economic freedom abroad means opportunity for American corporations. It becomes a way of building an empire while talking about freedom.
The immense importance of money in American elections was strengthened by a Supreme Court ruling that “money was equivalent to free speech.” Today with the immense amounts of campaign finance money required to compete (literally billions are spent in any presidential election year now), the existing political duopoly of Republicans and Democrats is firmly set. Along with that, the system approaches plutocracy since only very wealthy people and organizations can give in the required amounts.
Some of the Founders’ anti-democratic measures have been altered over a couple of centuries, as the Senate going from being appointed to being elected (not until 1913), but its complex, deliberately-calculated manner of election and many of its special voting rules render it still a pretty undemocratic body. The record of overwhelming re-election of incumbents, about 90%, plus some seats becoming almost hereditary emphasize this further. Given the fact that is the most powerful legislative body, by far, this is not an unimportant matter.
The Electoral College remains for at least two reasons. One, any change to the American Constitution is an immense undertaking. It was designed that way as yet another anti-democratic measure. The Electoral College system tends to give some additional importance and weight to the individual states, too, and many of them would be reluctant to give that up.
Under the system, you must win, not an overall majority - which of course would be democratic – but a majority in key local places. Since America’s election system is money-driven, there being virtually no limits on how much money you can use, money resources are then focused on these places. That was just what Trump did, so that the right local victories added up to an “Electoral College majority” and a total vote minority.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ARTICLE ON ROGER STONE'S INDICTMENT REGURGITATES THE UNPROVED (AND LIKELY UNTRUE) IDEA OF RUSSIAN HACKING PROVIDING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY MATERIAL TO WIKILEAKS DURING ELECTION - NO WONDER PEOPLE BECOME SICK OF MAINLINE NEWS OUTLETS - ADDITIONAL PERSPECTIVE
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MATT KWONG IN CBC NEWS
“Why this key line from Roger Stone's indictment could shine a bright light on Trump
“The charges stem from Stone's connection to WikiLeaks, the organization that released stolen Democratic emails taken by Russian hackers to meddle in the 2016 presidential election."
I would be the last person to defend Trump in any matter, but I very much object to the last part of that statement.
A number of true technical experts, independent experts, have said that the e-mails were not hacked, they were leaked by an insider who downloaded them.
Julian Assange has also strongly said the same thing, only vaguely hinting who the leaker might have been.
Assange is a principled man, and a fundamental policy of Wikileaks is never to reveal sources, so he has not.
But American authorities will not even talk to or about Assange and have him effectively illegally imprisoned, so he becomes a mighty convenient hook on which to hang unproved “Russian hacking” charges.
When you assume the unproved statement about "Russian hackers," it only helps keep Washington's current mania about Russians going, a pretty dangerous game, given the number of thermonuclear warheads between the two countries.
It also, whether intended to do so or not, serves the purposes of America’s imperial establishment in its aggressive new drive to dominate everywhere. In that drive, Russia is regarded almost as ancient Carthage was by Rome. Again, a dangerous game.
I always bow to facts, so if someone could prove a Russian hack, I'd accept it, but no one, absolutely no one, has done so. We just keep getting the assumption repeated over and over in the press, the very kind of thing which generates so much suspicion and hostility towards the press and its motives today.
By the way, even were it proved to have been a hack, there still is no issue of national security. The papers were not state papers. They contained no national security revelations. They contained no top secrets. They were the papers of a political organization, one, as it happens, up to its own unscrupulous and undemocratic activities. So, getting those papers was little different than what top-notch investigative reporters do when they secure a cache of photocopies of confidential private or corporate papers on which to report about wrong-doing. I regard that as a very important distinction.
Of course, the key candidate for the leak is the late Seth Rich, who worked for the Democratic Party, and that possibility opens dark new avenues in the whole ugly mess of Washington.
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MATT KWONG IN CBC NEWS
“Why this key line from Roger Stone's indictment could shine a bright light on Trump
“The charges stem from Stone's connection to WikiLeaks, the organization that released stolen Democratic emails taken by Russian hackers to meddle in the 2016 presidential election."
I would be the last person to defend Trump in any matter, but I very much object to the last part of that statement.
A number of true technical experts, independent experts, have said that the e-mails were not hacked, they were leaked by an insider who downloaded them.
Julian Assange has also strongly said the same thing, only vaguely hinting who the leaker might have been.
Assange is a principled man, and a fundamental policy of Wikileaks is never to reveal sources, so he has not.
But American authorities will not even talk to or about Assange and have him effectively illegally imprisoned, so he becomes a mighty convenient hook on which to hang unproved “Russian hacking” charges.
When you assume the unproved statement about "Russian hackers," it only helps keep Washington's current mania about Russians going, a pretty dangerous game, given the number of thermonuclear warheads between the two countries.
It also, whether intended to do so or not, serves the purposes of America’s imperial establishment in its aggressive new drive to dominate everywhere. In that drive, Russia is regarded almost as ancient Carthage was by Rome. Again, a dangerous game.
I always bow to facts, so if someone could prove a Russian hack, I'd accept it, but no one, absolutely no one, has done so. We just keep getting the assumption repeated over and over in the press, the very kind of thing which generates so much suspicion and hostility towards the press and its motives today.
By the way, even were it proved to have been a hack, there still is no issue of national security. The papers were not state papers. They contained no national security revelations. They contained no top secrets. They were the papers of a political organization, one, as it happens, up to its own unscrupulous and undemocratic activities. So, getting those papers was little different than what top-notch investigative reporters do when they secure a cache of photocopies of confidential private or corporate papers on which to report about wrong-doing. I regard that as a very important distinction.
Of course, the key candidate for the leak is the late Seth Rich, who worked for the Democratic Party, and that possibility opens dark new avenues in the whole ugly mess of Washington.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: JAPAN'S AMBASSADOR SAYS SOME VERY SILLY THINGS TO CANADA ABOUT RELATIONS WITH CHINA - SOME PERSPECTIVE
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CBC NEWS
“It's 'high time' Canada shifted its Asia focus away from China: Japanese ambassador
“China dispute opens up other avenues for trade in Asia-Pacific, says Kimihiro Ishikane”
We already have good relations with Japan. We have lots of trade, but that has always, in fact, been limited by Japan’s own quiet protectionist policies, of which it has many.
And no one, not speaking from narrow self-interest, would say we should somehow reduce or deemphasize a good relationship with China. China’s population is roughly ten times the size of Japan’s, and this year China is expected to overtake the United States as the world’s largest consumer market.
Many aren't aware of it, but there are still some very strong feelings between China and Japan over WWII. Japan's behavior, if you study the details, was appalling. Every bit as terrible as the German government's behavior of the day. A whole list of major war crimes.
And Japan recently has been bowing a little more deeply than usual towards America with its new aggressive posture in the region, something very much to take account of in understanding the ambassador’s comments.
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CBC NEWS
“It's 'high time' Canada shifted its Asia focus away from China: Japanese ambassador
“China dispute opens up other avenues for trade in Asia-Pacific, says Kimihiro Ishikane”
We already have good relations with Japan. We have lots of trade, but that has always, in fact, been limited by Japan’s own quiet protectionist policies, of which it has many.
And no one, not speaking from narrow self-interest, would say we should somehow reduce or deemphasize a good relationship with China. China’s population is roughly ten times the size of Japan’s, and this year China is expected to overtake the United States as the world’s largest consumer market.
Many aren't aware of it, but there are still some very strong feelings between China and Japan over WWII. Japan's behavior, if you study the details, was appalling. Every bit as terrible as the German government's behavior of the day. A whole list of major war crimes.
And Japan recently has been bowing a little more deeply than usual towards America with its new aggressive posture in the region, something very much to take account of in understanding the ambassador’s comments.
Friday, January 25, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE SITUATION IN VENEZUELA AND THE GENERAL OPERATING PRINCIPLES AND METHODS EMPLOYED BY THE UNITED STATES IN ITS IMPERIAL AFFAIRS
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
“Venezuela crisis: Theresa May throws weight behind opposition leader Juan Guaidó “
____________________
Response to a reader comment:
Yes, the oil is important.
But that isn't the sole motivation here, maybe not even the primary one.
America has always worked hard to protect the giant plantation system it operates in Latin America, and anyone who could even vaguely threaten that becomes an enemy. Venezuela’s Maduro is very much seen in that light.
As just one of many examples, the CIA spent years and countless millions of dollars trying to destabilize or kill Castro for the same reason. It ran an operation in the early 1960s which made Osama bin Laden's training camps in the mountains of Afghanistan resemble boy scout gatherings.
Whether a leader survives America’s covert and overt attempts to topple him depends a great deal on his status with the people of his country. Again, Castro was the key example. He was widely viewed as a hero in Cuba, and because Cuba has a substantial population, it was able to offer significant mobilized opposition to Washington, and Castro loyalists did a remarkable job of protecting him against many CIA plots, including the CIA’s use of at least one high-up insider.
This does not prove to be the case for many places undermined by covert efforts, and the CIA has a long record of “achievements” over decades in Latin America. Whether Maduro will survive the constant American assaults is largely a question of how much his domestic situation parallels that of Castro.
For various reasons, in our time, the United States has been reluctant to resort to open military invasion of such countries. “Send in the Marines” is not often heard in recent decades. America prefers to use sanctions, blockades, CIA black operations, assassination, and the cooperation of friendly interests in countries neighboring its target.
It also often secretly arms and supplies “rebels” in the same fashion as we see done in the Middle East, as with ISIS, al Nusra, and others. These "rebels" may be anything from pre-existing anti-government guerilla groups to just plain rag-tag mercenaries. The world has an inexhaustible supply of people ready to fight for something or other if they are reasonably supported and rewarded. It is just part of the human condition which an outfit like CIA exploits over and over again.
Also, as in so many places, the US does not like independent-minded leaders. You are okay so long as you toe the US policy line, even if you are a bloody tyrant. A leader’s degree of violence or tyranny has absolutely nothing to do with American opposition to a government, although you will hear it cited regularly in self-righteous, self-serving words from Washington about those it opposes.
That is a key operating principle of the American empire. It tends not to appoint, as imperial Britain did, viceroys and governors, instead allowing local rulers, however selected and maintained in power, to carry on, just so long as they do nothing to disturb American interests. In many cases, these leaders are encouraged and rewarded with bribes and privileges.
You see this principle applied with almost embarrassing openness in the Middle East where we have horrifically bloody leaders like the Saudi Crown Prince, Egypt’s Field Marshal El-Sisi, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, and others - none of them honoring either democratic or human rights. But all of them are just fine and acceptable while Syria’s Assad or Libya’s Gaddafi – men who worked to run their countries fairly well for the general people’s interests and who never caused a war but who opposed American policies – are berated as bloody monsters.
NOTE:
Just four months ago President Trump said at the UN: “I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.”
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
“Venezuela crisis: Theresa May throws weight behind opposition leader Juan Guaidó “
____________________
Response to a reader comment:
Yes, the oil is important.
But that isn't the sole motivation here, maybe not even the primary one.
America has always worked hard to protect the giant plantation system it operates in Latin America, and anyone who could even vaguely threaten that becomes an enemy. Venezuela’s Maduro is very much seen in that light.
As just one of many examples, the CIA spent years and countless millions of dollars trying to destabilize or kill Castro for the same reason. It ran an operation in the early 1960s which made Osama bin Laden's training camps in the mountains of Afghanistan resemble boy scout gatherings.
Whether a leader survives America’s covert and overt attempts to topple him depends a great deal on his status with the people of his country. Again, Castro was the key example. He was widely viewed as a hero in Cuba, and because Cuba has a substantial population, it was able to offer significant mobilized opposition to Washington, and Castro loyalists did a remarkable job of protecting him against many CIA plots, including the CIA’s use of at least one high-up insider.
This does not prove to be the case for many places undermined by covert efforts, and the CIA has a long record of “achievements” over decades in Latin America. Whether Maduro will survive the constant American assaults is largely a question of how much his domestic situation parallels that of Castro.
For various reasons, in our time, the United States has been reluctant to resort to open military invasion of such countries. “Send in the Marines” is not often heard in recent decades. America prefers to use sanctions, blockades, CIA black operations, assassination, and the cooperation of friendly interests in countries neighboring its target.
It also often secretly arms and supplies “rebels” in the same fashion as we see done in the Middle East, as with ISIS, al Nusra, and others. These "rebels" may be anything from pre-existing anti-government guerilla groups to just plain rag-tag mercenaries. The world has an inexhaustible supply of people ready to fight for something or other if they are reasonably supported and rewarded. It is just part of the human condition which an outfit like CIA exploits over and over again.
Also, as in so many places, the US does not like independent-minded leaders. You are okay so long as you toe the US policy line, even if you are a bloody tyrant. A leader’s degree of violence or tyranny has absolutely nothing to do with American opposition to a government, although you will hear it cited regularly in self-righteous, self-serving words from Washington about those it opposes.
That is a key operating principle of the American empire. It tends not to appoint, as imperial Britain did, viceroys and governors, instead allowing local rulers, however selected and maintained in power, to carry on, just so long as they do nothing to disturb American interests. In many cases, these leaders are encouraged and rewarded with bribes and privileges.
You see this principle applied with almost embarrassing openness in the Middle East where we have horrifically bloody leaders like the Saudi Crown Prince, Egypt’s Field Marshal El-Sisi, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, and others - none of them honoring either democratic or human rights. But all of them are just fine and acceptable while Syria’s Assad or Libya’s Gaddafi – men who worked to run their countries fairly well for the general people’s interests and who never caused a war but who opposed American policies – are berated as bloody monsters.
NOTE:
Just four months ago President Trump said at the UN: “I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.”
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ISRAEL'S NEW "APARTHEID HIGHWAY" IN THE WEST BANK - ISRAEL'S FUTURE WITH THE PALESTINIANS HAS ONLY FOUR POSSIBLE OUTCOMES - HERE THEY ARE WITH THE STATUS OF EACH
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY YUMNA PATEL IN MONDOWEISS
“Israel’s ‘Apartheid Road’ brings renewed home demolitions, land confiscations for Palestinian town”
The Apartheid Highway [a new, Israeli-built highway on Palestinian land in the West Bank with two sets of lanes divided by a tall concrete wall topped with a tall metal fence] is just plain ugly, both in sheer physical appearance and in ethical/moral meaning.
Yet, what could be a more fitting symbol for Israel and its future than this bizarre road?
You know, there really are only a few possible outcomes for the social/political/humanitarian horror Israel has itself created.
One, a single state.
Two, two states.
Three, all of the Palestinians are somehow made to go away.
Four, apartheid.
Israel has itself ruled out the first two of these.
The third is not realistically possible, although a good many prominent Israelis have advocated for it. The world has accepted a great deal of violent lawlessness from Israel, but ethnic cleansing on the scale of millions of souls just will not be tolerated.
Anyway, there is no place for millions to go. No state or states would accept such an immense burden. Just listen to the cacophony about refugees and migrants from so many lands today.
Which leaves the fourth, apartheid, and it is what Israel is vigorously working towards, without ever announcing the fact or using the word.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY YUMNA PATEL IN MONDOWEISS
“Israel’s ‘Apartheid Road’ brings renewed home demolitions, land confiscations for Palestinian town”
The Apartheid Highway [a new, Israeli-built highway on Palestinian land in the West Bank with two sets of lanes divided by a tall concrete wall topped with a tall metal fence] is just plain ugly, both in sheer physical appearance and in ethical/moral meaning.
Yet, what could be a more fitting symbol for Israel and its future than this bizarre road?
You know, there really are only a few possible outcomes for the social/political/humanitarian horror Israel has itself created.
One, a single state.
Two, two states.
Three, all of the Palestinians are somehow made to go away.
Four, apartheid.
Israel has itself ruled out the first two of these.
The third is not realistically possible, although a good many prominent Israelis have advocated for it. The world has accepted a great deal of violent lawlessness from Israel, but ethnic cleansing on the scale of millions of souls just will not be tolerated.
Anyway, there is no place for millions to go. No state or states would accept such an immense burden. Just listen to the cacophony about refugees and migrants from so many lands today.
Which leaves the fourth, apartheid, and it is what Israel is vigorously working towards, without ever announcing the fact or using the word.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: TRUTH ABOUT "TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME" - AND TRUMP IS A SADLY RECOGNIZABLE PART OF WHAT AMERICA IS - CHANCES TO CHANGE AMERICA IN OUR TIME ARE PRETTY MUCH NONEXISTENT
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“Mainstream Media Is Literally Making People Sick”
“The most obvious and significant culprit in ‘Trump Anxiety Disorder’ is the mass media, which has been fanning the flames of panic”
Trump Derangement Syndrome affects millions.
But Trump’s own actual derangement affects millions more.
You couldn’t come up with a better formula for chaos in government.
No wonder Putin worked so hard to get him elected.
He is a secret weapon.
(Just sarcasm, guys)
As far as changes in America, there simply are not going to be any of the least significance (always excluding major catastrophes such as war and depression) for the foreseeable future.
It’s a bleak outlook, and I fully expect things to become worse in the near future. The establishment has no impulse for change, and it is really on a roll, a big ugly roll, quite full of itself. Hard to see what would stop the momentum.
Articles which contain sentences such as, “If the Democrats would only…” or “When the Democrats…” just serve the cause, keeping a sense of hope or expectation going, keeping a sense of there really being a kind of democracy in America.
But there is not. The basic political system is designed that way, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Again, I think I stated it fairly well here:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/john-chuckman-comment-how-american-politics-really-work-why-there-are-terrible-candidates-and-constant-wars-and-peoples-problems-are-ignored-why-heroes-like-julian-assange-are-persecuted-and-r/
_____________________
Response to a comment about how awful Trump is:
Yes, he is, but, sadly, he does represent a very substantial portion of American attitudes and opinions.
If you stop and look really hard at what America has been doing in the world for years, you will see that Trump is not something from another planet.
He’s a very recognizable part, a big part, of what America is.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“Mainstream Media Is Literally Making People Sick”
“The most obvious and significant culprit in ‘Trump Anxiety Disorder’ is the mass media, which has been fanning the flames of panic”
Trump Derangement Syndrome affects millions.
But Trump’s own actual derangement affects millions more.
You couldn’t come up with a better formula for chaos in government.
No wonder Putin worked so hard to get him elected.
He is a secret weapon.
(Just sarcasm, guys)
As far as changes in America, there simply are not going to be any of the least significance (always excluding major catastrophes such as war and depression) for the foreseeable future.
It’s a bleak outlook, and I fully expect things to become worse in the near future. The establishment has no impulse for change, and it is really on a roll, a big ugly roll, quite full of itself. Hard to see what would stop the momentum.
Articles which contain sentences such as, “If the Democrats would only…” or “When the Democrats…” just serve the cause, keeping a sense of hope or expectation going, keeping a sense of there really being a kind of democracy in America.
But there is not. The basic political system is designed that way, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Again, I think I stated it fairly well here:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/john-chuckman-comment-how-american-politics-really-work-why-there-are-terrible-candidates-and-constant-wars-and-peoples-problems-are-ignored-why-heroes-like-julian-assange-are-persecuted-and-r/
_____________________
Response to a comment about how awful Trump is:
Yes, he is, but, sadly, he does represent a very substantial portion of American attitudes and opinions.
If you stop and look really hard at what America has been doing in the world for years, you will see that Trump is not something from another planet.
He’s a very recognizable part, a big part, of what America is.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: TALK ABOUT INTERFERENCE IN THE AFFAIRS OF OTHER STATES - IN A SCENE FROM A LOONEY TUNES CARTOON VENEZUELA'S OPPOSITION LEADER SWEARS HIMSELF IN AS UNELECTED "PRESIDENT" - AMERICA AND CANADA JUMP RIGHT IN TO RECOGNIZE HIM - CANADA'S JUSTIN TRUDEAU AS TONY BLAIR-LIKE LAPDOG
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CBC NEWS
“Within minutes, Global Affairs confirmed Canada will recognize Guaido in the role. U.S. President Donald Trump issued a statement doing the same, and encouraging other Western governments to recognize Guaido as interim president.”
"Venezuela's Opposition leader takes oath as interim president, endorsed by Canada, U.S."
The timing tells us that it was all pre-planned.
You might think Trump would be more sensitive about behavior which truly shows no respect for the laws and internal politics of another country.
After all, he and his political followers have never stopped yapping about Obama and the FBI and Hillary Clinton trying to deprive him of Constitutionally lawful office.
And remember, too, all that noise in Washington about Russian interference in an American election? Unsubstantiated nonsense, of course, but this isn't nonsense. This is about seriously interfering in another country's internal affairs.
Well, I just read on another major news site that the country's military has come out in support for President Maduro, as they very much should. He was legally elected to office for a second time.
Imagine Canada’s Andrew Scheer, Conservative Leader of the Opposition, declaring himself Prime Minister and taking such an oath?
We would laugh him out of Parliament. He might even be required to undergo an evaluation for mental competency.
But this event in Venezuela is no different at all, and no one is laughing. It’s being supported by some foreign political leaders, and our mainline press treats it with no sense of the bizarre or inappropriate.
It is just stunning that Trudeau is a participant.
But it does serve as a sharp reminder of the kind of political world in which we now find ourselves living. If America wants something changed somewhere in the world, nothing – not national laws, not international treaties, not ethics, not decency, not diplomatic tradition – is allowed to stand in the way of getting it.
Canada has long had a kind of unofficial colonial status vis-Ã -vis America, deriving from the facts that so much of our economy is owned by American corporations and that our major borders are all shared only with America. But still, we had our moments from time to time. Lester Pearson stood up to Washington over Vietnam. Pierre Trudeau stood up to Washington over Vietnam and Cuba. Jean Chretien stood up to Washington over the invasion of Iraq.
But now, Canadians must accept that their country’s leader, Justin Trudeau, has accepted a role much resembling that of Tony Blair vis-a-vis George Bush, a role widely described years ago as that of lapdog.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CBC NEWS
“Within minutes, Global Affairs confirmed Canada will recognize Guaido in the role. U.S. President Donald Trump issued a statement doing the same, and encouraging other Western governments to recognize Guaido as interim president.”
"Venezuela's Opposition leader takes oath as interim president, endorsed by Canada, U.S."
The timing tells us that it was all pre-planned.
You might think Trump would be more sensitive about behavior which truly shows no respect for the laws and internal politics of another country.
After all, he and his political followers have never stopped yapping about Obama and the FBI and Hillary Clinton trying to deprive him of Constitutionally lawful office.
And remember, too, all that noise in Washington about Russian interference in an American election? Unsubstantiated nonsense, of course, but this isn't nonsense. This is about seriously interfering in another country's internal affairs.
Well, I just read on another major news site that the country's military has come out in support for President Maduro, as they very much should. He was legally elected to office for a second time.
Imagine Canada’s Andrew Scheer, Conservative Leader of the Opposition, declaring himself Prime Minister and taking such an oath?
We would laugh him out of Parliament. He might even be required to undergo an evaluation for mental competency.
But this event in Venezuela is no different at all, and no one is laughing. It’s being supported by some foreign political leaders, and our mainline press treats it with no sense of the bizarre or inappropriate.
It is just stunning that Trudeau is a participant.
But it does serve as a sharp reminder of the kind of political world in which we now find ourselves living. If America wants something changed somewhere in the world, nothing – not national laws, not international treaties, not ethics, not decency, not diplomatic tradition – is allowed to stand in the way of getting it.
Canada has long had a kind of unofficial colonial status vis-Ã -vis America, deriving from the facts that so much of our economy is owned by American corporations and that our major borders are all shared only with America. But still, we had our moments from time to time. Lester Pearson stood up to Washington over Vietnam. Pierre Trudeau stood up to Washington over Vietnam and Cuba. Jean Chretien stood up to Washington over the invasion of Iraq.
But now, Canadians must accept that their country’s leader, Justin Trudeau, has accepted a role much resembling that of Tony Blair vis-a-vis George Bush, a role widely described years ago as that of lapdog.
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ON RE-OPENING THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION INVESTIGATION - WHY IT WOULD BE A WASTE OF TIME - THE NATURE OF TRUTH WHERE EMPIRE OR GREAT POWER IS INVOLVED - SOME TRUTHS ABOUT THE FBI, WHO BY THE WAY DID ALL THE INVESTIGATING FOR THE SHABBY WARREN COMMISSION
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“A Call to Reinvestigate American Assassinations”
While I am completely in sympathy with the idea that the major American political assassinations need re-investigation, I know, at the same time, that it is pretty much a waste of breath to advocate for it.
Why were the original investigations, endowed with large resources of money and personnel, so badly handled?
And, as a long-time student of the John Kennedy case, I can say flatly that the investigation of his assassination was more than badly handled.
It was deliberately and consistently mishandled. It was manipulated.
Who had such power to see that it was mishandled?
Well, those same interests have not gone away. There are new names a couple of generations later, of course, but the interests remain.
Indeed, I think it easy to argue that those interests have only become more powerful inside American society, a society where the disparity between the great bulk of citizens and the privileged has grown immensely since John Kennedy’s time. The country, in many ways, is not recognizable as the same place, the place in which I grew up. Hopes, aspirations, and opportunities have all been blunted or diminished for the bulk of Americans while the privileged establishment has burgeoned to become more powerful than ever.
All of the evidence we have about the American power establishment’s reinvigorated efforts to dominate the globe (following its quiet, grim recognition that America’s relative economic position in the world has seriously deteriorated since the halcyon decades after WWII) - its efforts to pursue “full-spectrum dominance,” its efforts in the bloody Neocon wars, its efforts against Russia and against China, its efforts in Latin America, and its horrific level of spending on the military and on security, including an entirely new kind of security involving the compromise of every single American’s intimate privacy – tells us that the interests which deliberately mishandled investigating Kennedy’s assassination, and did so in two major efforts, are very much still around.
America’s power establishment today lies pretty much around the clock about many subjects. It is simply a way of life for those pursuing great power and undertaking many dark deeds.
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/john-chuckman-comment-the-first-genuine-information-in-the-kennedy-assassination-records-release-to-give-us-some-genuine-information-about-what-happened/
_______________________
Response to a comment about Americans must not surrender but demand the truth:
Oh, yes, I certainly do see a lot of Americans fighting for this, or any other, truth.
Sorry, but your rhetoric achieves little beyond raising your blood pressure.
Americans, in general, today seem quite indifferent to truth of any kind. From embracing nonsense claims about “healthy stuff” and burying their minds in “social media” to accepting the almost continuous military atrocities abroad by America and its close allies.
Americans, for the most part, couldn't care less about what America does in the Middle East and in other distant places. They certainly don’t want to hear about what really causes all those unpleasant, desperate refugees in the Middle East or in Central America – that is, the activities of their own armed forces. They certainly don’t want to hear about all the massive amounts of death and destruction, none of which would have happened without America’s efforts. And America’s press accommodates the wish completely, never honestly investigating such matters, always supporting the establishment’s “narrative.”
As the melodramatic, much-quoted movie-script line goes, “You can’t handle the truth!” Interestingly, that script line and the movie from which it comes were themselves dishonest defenses of Pentagon interests. So constant and penetrating so deeply into society are the establishment’s efforts to propagandize that popular entertainment is enlisted to the task.
Truth in America has become a rhetorical, argumentative word, devoid of any real meaning. It is even often used pejoratively.
In an empire where wars, coups, dirty operations, and assassinations are part of the week-to-week efforts of government - always lying as it does its dirty work - there is no such thing as truth. There is only “controlling the narrative,” getting our “story out there,” and countless big and little lies. The best of literature, art, music, and certainly science honors truth. Politics and the pursuit of power tend to avoid it completely.
Much of the rhetoric in the American "fake news" controversies is on the level of Baptist tent preachers blubbering about Satan rather than saying anything genuine about truth. Truth, despite all kinds of twisted arguments and insincere discussions, in most cases, actually isn’t that difficult a concept to understand or to adhere to. There really is something of the elegant simplicity of Keats’ lines about truth being beauty and beauty truth.
Something either happened or it didn’t, and honest investigators, whether journalists or criminal investigators or special commissions, either report it or they don’t. But it should be obvious that where whole areas of potential information are simply ignored – as in the Middle East today where never once is the Syrian or Iranian or Russian point of view reported or discussed. Always, the same sources are quoted on almost everything. It should be obvious there is no honest effort to report truth.
But most humans are just built that way. Whether in religious, political, or social matters, the original endowment of understanding and point of view provided by society from birth is not questioned and certainly not deeply investigated. The limited number who do question or investigate end up being regarded as eccentrics or kooks or geniuses not understood by most.
Going back to Kennedy’s death, a great many witnesses and valid pieces of evidence were simply ignored while, in a number of cases, lesser witnesses and highly dubious, even compromised, evidence was admitted into the record. Of course, that is only a fraction of what was done badly in the Warren report.
It is the same for every aspect of America’s imperial involvement in the world. Interests totally overshadow truth. Truth indeed becomes quite “inconvenient.”
The Kennedy and King assassinations revolved around this same central gravitational mass. Kennedy’s assassination was about American establishment concerns with Cuba, and to a lesser extent with Russia, and King’s was about an establishment frightened at the prospect of millions of young black men being mobilized against wars and for greater justice at home.
If you doubt that assertion about establishment concerns with King, just look, all these decades later, at the huge bellowing, angry noise in America over some black football players briefly, respectfully kneeling at a game during the national anthem in protest against police violence on the streets, where American police kill about three people every single day, people who are mostly unarmed, many of them being black, and the police involved almost never are charged with anything.
King was okay, could be tolerated at least, when he just gave “Sermons on the Mount,” so to speak, about justice and equality. But when he later began actively opposing a major war and made fiery speeches to striking black workers in various cities, well, that became a very different matter. With his fame and eloquence, he was starting to challenge the interests of those who really ran America.
The same establishment was furious about Castro, whose magnetism appealed even to some young Americans, and who very much challenged the traditional American Plantation System in Latin America, and great resources were spent by CIA trying to do everything from killing him or toppling his government and to sabotaging the economy and demonizing his words and acts. Unless you go into the literature of the time, it is hard today to appreciate the fierce intensity of that reaction. And those horrible Russians, imperial America’s damned Carthaginians, were actually helping him.
The only acceptable response was the square-jawed, fierce-eyed, ready-to-kill one displayed by innumerable American players of the time – Guy Bannister, J. Edgar Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, or Richard Nixon kind of stuff. John Kennedy completely lacked that quality, even though he delivered some pretty martinet-sounding speeches at times which I found rather unsettling.
His gross failures - as judged by the square-jawed set of powerful American figures - in the Bay of Pigs invasion and in the Cuban Missile Crisis, made him a marked man. His firing the CIA’s top three men, all establishment darlings, after Kennedy’s being humiliated by the CIA’s fiasco at the Bay of Pigs didn’t help. Nor did his angry promise to one day splinter the CIA into pieces, especially when combined with the fact that he made concessions to Russia over Cuba – my God, a promise never to invade again! Can you imagine that? - and established back-channel communications with Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It was all even further fired up by insider knowledge of Kennedy’s intimate relationship with Mary Pinchot Meyer, an eastern establishment family dissident and non-conformist artist-type, and his reportedly having been introduced to some drugs by her in their trysts. She was, we learn from later accounts, the only woman with whom he had a relationship of equals and perhaps the only woman he ever came close to loving, and she was what later would be called very much a peacenik.
Truth and bloody empire cannot coexist. Lies are an inherent part of all the killing and oppression required by imperial enterprises, and since America’s enterprise is global in extent, its crimes and lies are many. We see this clearly in the contemporary case of Israel with its efforts to establish itself as a kind of miniature replica of imperial America in its region. Some of its many ruthless efforts do get recorded, but it is only some, and a compliant Western press minimizes what they report and uses all the euphemisms they can muster. The participants in empire always avoid, as much as possible, direct observation or reporting of their efforts. Always. That’s why secret security services are called secret and why classifying things is virtually an industry in Washington.
That’s why we can still look at old photos of Winston Churchill and think of him as that great cherubic-faced defender of democracy and all good things Western. He was in fact a dedicated imperialist, a man ready to do anything from machine-gunning revolting peasants to making ugly deals with criminals. The only reason he was not willing to do a deal with Hitler, who offered him one around guarantees for the British Empire, was his inability to accept having one country dominate the Continent, reflecting a very long-standing, basic principle of British foreign policy, and his own vanity – and he was immensely vain - in regarding himself as a greater figure than Herr Hitler, as he called him in his memoirs. He was not an enemy of tyrants in general. He was certainly not a defender of human rights in general. And he often laughed at aspects of democracy. In his World War II memoirs, you can clearly sense, too, some admiration of Stalin.
I don't care which aspect of American government you talk about, it's always the same. The FBI is a perfect example. The history of that organization is extremely dark and unpleasant. Yet today, we get all these assertions, during the controversy concerning Trump and the FBI, about this or that besmirching the FBI's reputation. The FBI, in fact, has no reputation, beyond one manufactured by its public relations organization and the ever-supporting main-line press. The arguments about it all are phony.
Below is a piece about the FBI I wrote years ago, and nothing has really changed. It could readily be updated to double its length with a variety of tales.
Now, apart from other matters, they are in the business of trying to influence American elections, but even that is not new. It was learned just the other day in an interview with a former senior FBI official that a regular part of the FBI’s counterintelligence operations inside the United States involved working to prevent any seriously progressive or leftish politicians from being nominated for seats in Congress.
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/the-dreadful-record-of-the-fbi/
Here are a few other points:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/john-chuckman-comment-i-am-amazed-at-how-some-americans-get-so-worked-up-only-now-about-an-fbi-that-has-always-been-political-and-corrupt-americas-stasi/
Here is a brief discussion around one of the only truly valuable documents ever released by government on the John Kennedy assassination.
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/john-chuckman-comment-the-first-genuine-information-in-the-kennedy-assassination-records-release-to-give-us-some-genuine-information-about-what-happened/
Yet there has been no public controversy or big discussion about the document, which contains, unmistakably, threads of the real truth. It has been all but been completely ignored by the press.
The authorities releasing this were so confident in the public's unquestioning mindset that they weren't concerned when they did so, and it appears they were right to think that way. Either that or they blundered, but it still had almost zero impact.
Which is to say, that none of this historical stuff, the stuff that would be pored over in yet another investigation, can make any difference unless the structure under which investigations must operate, the very structure of the way America is governed, is changed, and just what are the chances of that?
Here is a good summary of what I mean:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/john-chuckman-comment-how-american-politics-really-work-why-there-are-terrible-candidates-and-constant-wars-and-peoples-problems-are-ignored-why-heroes-like-julian-assange-are-persecuted-and-r/
EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“A Call to Reinvestigate American Assassinations”
While I am completely in sympathy with the idea that the major American political assassinations need re-investigation, I know, at the same time, that it is pretty much a waste of breath to advocate for it.
Why were the original investigations, endowed with large resources of money and personnel, so badly handled?
And, as a long-time student of the John Kennedy case, I can say flatly that the investigation of his assassination was more than badly handled.
It was deliberately and consistently mishandled. It was manipulated.
Who had such power to see that it was mishandled?
Well, those same interests have not gone away. There are new names a couple of generations later, of course, but the interests remain.
Indeed, I think it easy to argue that those interests have only become more powerful inside American society, a society where the disparity between the great bulk of citizens and the privileged has grown immensely since John Kennedy’s time. The country, in many ways, is not recognizable as the same place, the place in which I grew up. Hopes, aspirations, and opportunities have all been blunted or diminished for the bulk of Americans while the privileged establishment has burgeoned to become more powerful than ever.
All of the evidence we have about the American power establishment’s reinvigorated efforts to dominate the globe (following its quiet, grim recognition that America’s relative economic position in the world has seriously deteriorated since the halcyon decades after WWII) - its efforts to pursue “full-spectrum dominance,” its efforts in the bloody Neocon wars, its efforts against Russia and against China, its efforts in Latin America, and its horrific level of spending on the military and on security, including an entirely new kind of security involving the compromise of every single American’s intimate privacy – tells us that the interests which deliberately mishandled investigating Kennedy’s assassination, and did so in two major efforts, are very much still around.
America’s power establishment today lies pretty much around the clock about many subjects. It is simply a way of life for those pursuing great power and undertaking many dark deeds.
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/john-chuckman-comment-the-first-genuine-information-in-the-kennedy-assassination-records-release-to-give-us-some-genuine-information-about-what-happened/
_______________________
Response to a comment about Americans must not surrender but demand the truth:
Oh, yes, I certainly do see a lot of Americans fighting for this, or any other, truth.
Sorry, but your rhetoric achieves little beyond raising your blood pressure.
Americans, in general, today seem quite indifferent to truth of any kind. From embracing nonsense claims about “healthy stuff” and burying their minds in “social media” to accepting the almost continuous military atrocities abroad by America and its close allies.
Americans, for the most part, couldn't care less about what America does in the Middle East and in other distant places. They certainly don’t want to hear about what really causes all those unpleasant, desperate refugees in the Middle East or in Central America – that is, the activities of their own armed forces. They certainly don’t want to hear about all the massive amounts of death and destruction, none of which would have happened without America’s efforts. And America’s press accommodates the wish completely, never honestly investigating such matters, always supporting the establishment’s “narrative.”
As the melodramatic, much-quoted movie-script line goes, “You can’t handle the truth!” Interestingly, that script line and the movie from which it comes were themselves dishonest defenses of Pentagon interests. So constant and penetrating so deeply into society are the establishment’s efforts to propagandize that popular entertainment is enlisted to the task.
Truth in America has become a rhetorical, argumentative word, devoid of any real meaning. It is even often used pejoratively.
In an empire where wars, coups, dirty operations, and assassinations are part of the week-to-week efforts of government - always lying as it does its dirty work - there is no such thing as truth. There is only “controlling the narrative,” getting our “story out there,” and countless big and little lies. The best of literature, art, music, and certainly science honors truth. Politics and the pursuit of power tend to avoid it completely.
Much of the rhetoric in the American "fake news" controversies is on the level of Baptist tent preachers blubbering about Satan rather than saying anything genuine about truth. Truth, despite all kinds of twisted arguments and insincere discussions, in most cases, actually isn’t that difficult a concept to understand or to adhere to. There really is something of the elegant simplicity of Keats’ lines about truth being beauty and beauty truth.
Something either happened or it didn’t, and honest investigators, whether journalists or criminal investigators or special commissions, either report it or they don’t. But it should be obvious that where whole areas of potential information are simply ignored – as in the Middle East today where never once is the Syrian or Iranian or Russian point of view reported or discussed. Always, the same sources are quoted on almost everything. It should be obvious there is no honest effort to report truth.
But most humans are just built that way. Whether in religious, political, or social matters, the original endowment of understanding and point of view provided by society from birth is not questioned and certainly not deeply investigated. The limited number who do question or investigate end up being regarded as eccentrics or kooks or geniuses not understood by most.
Going back to Kennedy’s death, a great many witnesses and valid pieces of evidence were simply ignored while, in a number of cases, lesser witnesses and highly dubious, even compromised, evidence was admitted into the record. Of course, that is only a fraction of what was done badly in the Warren report.
It is the same for every aspect of America’s imperial involvement in the world. Interests totally overshadow truth. Truth indeed becomes quite “inconvenient.”
The Kennedy and King assassinations revolved around this same central gravitational mass. Kennedy’s assassination was about American establishment concerns with Cuba, and to a lesser extent with Russia, and King’s was about an establishment frightened at the prospect of millions of young black men being mobilized against wars and for greater justice at home.
If you doubt that assertion about establishment concerns with King, just look, all these decades later, at the huge bellowing, angry noise in America over some black football players briefly, respectfully kneeling at a game during the national anthem in protest against police violence on the streets, where American police kill about three people every single day, people who are mostly unarmed, many of them being black, and the police involved almost never are charged with anything.
King was okay, could be tolerated at least, when he just gave “Sermons on the Mount,” so to speak, about justice and equality. But when he later began actively opposing a major war and made fiery speeches to striking black workers in various cities, well, that became a very different matter. With his fame and eloquence, he was starting to challenge the interests of those who really ran America.
The same establishment was furious about Castro, whose magnetism appealed even to some young Americans, and who very much challenged the traditional American Plantation System in Latin America, and great resources were spent by CIA trying to do everything from killing him or toppling his government and to sabotaging the economy and demonizing his words and acts. Unless you go into the literature of the time, it is hard today to appreciate the fierce intensity of that reaction. And those horrible Russians, imperial America’s damned Carthaginians, were actually helping him.
The only acceptable response was the square-jawed, fierce-eyed, ready-to-kill one displayed by innumerable American players of the time – Guy Bannister, J. Edgar Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, or Richard Nixon kind of stuff. John Kennedy completely lacked that quality, even though he delivered some pretty martinet-sounding speeches at times which I found rather unsettling.
His gross failures - as judged by the square-jawed set of powerful American figures - in the Bay of Pigs invasion and in the Cuban Missile Crisis, made him a marked man. His firing the CIA’s top three men, all establishment darlings, after Kennedy’s being humiliated by the CIA’s fiasco at the Bay of Pigs didn’t help. Nor did his angry promise to one day splinter the CIA into pieces, especially when combined with the fact that he made concessions to Russia over Cuba – my God, a promise never to invade again! Can you imagine that? - and established back-channel communications with Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It was all even further fired up by insider knowledge of Kennedy’s intimate relationship with Mary Pinchot Meyer, an eastern establishment family dissident and non-conformist artist-type, and his reportedly having been introduced to some drugs by her in their trysts. She was, we learn from later accounts, the only woman with whom he had a relationship of equals and perhaps the only woman he ever came close to loving, and she was what later would be called very much a peacenik.
Truth and bloody empire cannot coexist. Lies are an inherent part of all the killing and oppression required by imperial enterprises, and since America’s enterprise is global in extent, its crimes and lies are many. We see this clearly in the contemporary case of Israel with its efforts to establish itself as a kind of miniature replica of imperial America in its region. Some of its many ruthless efforts do get recorded, but it is only some, and a compliant Western press minimizes what they report and uses all the euphemisms they can muster. The participants in empire always avoid, as much as possible, direct observation or reporting of their efforts. Always. That’s why secret security services are called secret and why classifying things is virtually an industry in Washington.
That’s why we can still look at old photos of Winston Churchill and think of him as that great cherubic-faced defender of democracy and all good things Western. He was in fact a dedicated imperialist, a man ready to do anything from machine-gunning revolting peasants to making ugly deals with criminals. The only reason he was not willing to do a deal with Hitler, who offered him one around guarantees for the British Empire, was his inability to accept having one country dominate the Continent, reflecting a very long-standing, basic principle of British foreign policy, and his own vanity – and he was immensely vain - in regarding himself as a greater figure than Herr Hitler, as he called him in his memoirs. He was not an enemy of tyrants in general. He was certainly not a defender of human rights in general. And he often laughed at aspects of democracy. In his World War II memoirs, you can clearly sense, too, some admiration of Stalin.
I don't care which aspect of American government you talk about, it's always the same. The FBI is a perfect example. The history of that organization is extremely dark and unpleasant. Yet today, we get all these assertions, during the controversy concerning Trump and the FBI, about this or that besmirching the FBI's reputation. The FBI, in fact, has no reputation, beyond one manufactured by its public relations organization and the ever-supporting main-line press. The arguments about it all are phony.
Below is a piece about the FBI I wrote years ago, and nothing has really changed. It could readily be updated to double its length with a variety of tales.
Now, apart from other matters, they are in the business of trying to influence American elections, but even that is not new. It was learned just the other day in an interview with a former senior FBI official that a regular part of the FBI’s counterintelligence operations inside the United States involved working to prevent any seriously progressive or leftish politicians from being nominated for seats in Congress.
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/the-dreadful-record-of-the-fbi/
Here are a few other points:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/john-chuckman-comment-i-am-amazed-at-how-some-americans-get-so-worked-up-only-now-about-an-fbi-that-has-always-been-political-and-corrupt-americas-stasi/
Here is a brief discussion around one of the only truly valuable documents ever released by government on the John Kennedy assassination.
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/john-chuckman-comment-the-first-genuine-information-in-the-kennedy-assassination-records-release-to-give-us-some-genuine-information-about-what-happened/
Yet there has been no public controversy or big discussion about the document, which contains, unmistakably, threads of the real truth. It has been all but been completely ignored by the press.
The authorities releasing this were so confident in the public's unquestioning mindset that they weren't concerned when they did so, and it appears they were right to think that way. Either that or they blundered, but it still had almost zero impact.
Which is to say, that none of this historical stuff, the stuff that would be pored over in yet another investigation, can make any difference unless the structure under which investigations must operate, the very structure of the way America is governed, is changed, and just what are the chances of that?
Here is a good summary of what I mean:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/john-chuckman-comment-how-american-politics-really-work-why-there-are-terrible-candidates-and-constant-wars-and-peoples-problems-are-ignored-why-heroes-like-julian-assange-are-persecuted-and-r/
Sunday, January 20, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE TRUTH ABOUT "STATE OF THE UNION" SPEECHES - AMERICAN POLITICS BECOME MORE MEANINGLESS EACH PASSING DAY
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENTWATCH
"Nation Worried About Having No Idea What’s Going On If There’s No State Of The Union Address"
Quite the contrary, no one ever learned anything worth knowing from listening to one of these stagey political speeches.
And the current sand-throwing fight between Trump and Pelosi has reached a farcical level with withdrawn rights to enter the halls of Congress and, in return, withdrawn rights to use government flights. The building in which Congress meets does not belong to Nancy Pelosi, and the planes officials use to go places do not belong to Donald Trump.
In general, the entire tactic of "shutting down" a national government to get legislation you want just spotlights America's inability to govern itself. And, as we know from its immense deficits and debt, America cannot even pay for the things it does legislate. It just keeps making new entries in a bad set of books to create the illusion of paying. The nation which thinks it is entitled to govern the planet literally cannot run its own affairs.
By the way, a good half or so of American Presidents did not give such a speech.
Jefferson, who had a high-pitched voice, was a terrible, self-conscious public speaker, and just hated giving speeches, instead submitted a written report. He claimed it was because the speech was too much like the King of England's Speech from the Throne.
Jefferson also was quite the subversive opponent of President George Washington and many of his practices, and it was Washington who started the tradition of the speech. Jefferson treated Washington-associated matters in much the same stubborn-child fashion as Trump treats anything with Obama's name on it.
Jefferson's practice of submitting a written report became the norm up until well into the Twentieth Century with Woodrow Wilson.
What a lot of silliness we read over this speech, an event which is genuinely insignificant at the best of times.
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENTWATCH
"Nation Worried About Having No Idea What’s Going On If There’s No State Of The Union Address"
Quite the contrary, no one ever learned anything worth knowing from listening to one of these stagey political speeches.
And the current sand-throwing fight between Trump and Pelosi has reached a farcical level with withdrawn rights to enter the halls of Congress and, in return, withdrawn rights to use government flights. The building in which Congress meets does not belong to Nancy Pelosi, and the planes officials use to go places do not belong to Donald Trump.
In general, the entire tactic of "shutting down" a national government to get legislation you want just spotlights America's inability to govern itself. And, as we know from its immense deficits and debt, America cannot even pay for the things it does legislate. It just keeps making new entries in a bad set of books to create the illusion of paying. The nation which thinks it is entitled to govern the planet literally cannot run its own affairs.
By the way, a good half or so of American Presidents did not give such a speech.
Jefferson, who had a high-pitched voice, was a terrible, self-conscious public speaker, and just hated giving speeches, instead submitted a written report. He claimed it was because the speech was too much like the King of England's Speech from the Throne.
Jefferson also was quite the subversive opponent of President George Washington and many of his practices, and it was Washington who started the tradition of the speech. Jefferson treated Washington-associated matters in much the same stubborn-child fashion as Trump treats anything with Obama's name on it.
Jefferson's practice of submitting a written report became the norm up until well into the Twentieth Century with Woodrow Wilson.
What a lot of silliness we read over this speech, an event which is genuinely insignificant at the best of times.
Saturday, January 19, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ABUSE OF NGOs BY INTELLIGENCE SERVICES - CASE OF AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL - BUT JUST ABOUT ALL INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS END UP SERVING CREEPS LIKE CIA, WILLINGLY OR OTHERWISE - NOTE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN IN MPM NEWS
“Amnesty International’s Troubling Collaboration with UK & US Intelligence
“Some troubling connections contradict Amnesty’s image as a benevolent defender of human rights and reveal key figures at the organization during its early years to be less concerned with human dignity and more concerned with the dignity of the US and UK’s image in the world”
https://www.mintpressnews.com/amnesty-international-troubling-collaboration-with-uk-us-intelligence/253939/
Good piece.
Unfortunately, NGOs represent an irresistible target for security services and those who would influence the direction of events.
NGOs provide such great camouflage with their seeming benevolence. A bit like a drug gang using a nun as a drug mule.
That is why NGOs are targets of security-service penetration, and it is why some percentage of them are out-and-out frauds from the beginning, tools to be used for manipulation and propaganda, created just for the purpose. As an example of that last, the White Helmets in Syria come immediately to mind.
The United States has used so many of them. Some of its fomented coups and insurrections in other countries are assisted by such undercover NGO operatives. Some of the NGOs of George Soros have this reputation.
CIA has branched out over the years, too, beyond NGOs and into organizations as diverse as the Nobel Prize administration and the UN. How often do we see, for example, a Peace Prize winner worth talking about?
There are only a couple of exceptions in many decades to what appears to be the rule of picking relatively unimportant, politically innocuous organizations or minor individual achievements or no achievements at all, Obama having been the best recent example of the last.
And more important than the inappropriate people regularly receiving Peace Prizes are the truly deserving ones ignored, year after year, the ones whose work should be publicized and celebrated. You will never see the award going to the likes of Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning, truly deserving candidates and inspirations for others.
Obviously, the actual selections do not represent the kinds of individuals which a group of insightful, genuinely peace-loving, and politically independent committee members would choose.
None of this should surprise. The CIA for many decades has used and abused the press in the same way.
It has used big friendly press companies as a cover for agents penetrating other countries as well as for “getting stories out there.” Time-Life, for example, was pretty well known as a friend of CIA in this way. Reuters had a similar reputation.
It has penetrated some American publishers themselves, perhaps without the owner's knowledge, as in the case of The New York Times. In other cases, it has secretly contributed to publishers to keep them afloat so they are available for a variety of purposes.
There are so many ways publications can be useful apart from just “getting the story out there.” A left-wing publication, for example, gives you, with its subscribers and contributors, a detailed and regularly updated list of people in your society sympathetic to a cause. Even their addresses and other information. The old Saturday Review magazine was reputedly used this way by CIA during the Cold War.
We do live in a highly synthetic world in which so much is not what it seems, a reality shaped by the needs and drives of power. The cause of world empire and the use of dark operations go hand-in-hand with the regular abuse of international organizations. Even the seemingly good are bent, one way or another, to serve the needs of abusive power.
______________________
Response to a comment about the difficulty of finding sound human-rights organizations to which to contribute:
In a world run by scoundrels, there is very little room left for the well-intentioned. By design.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN IN MPM NEWS
“Amnesty International’s Troubling Collaboration with UK & US Intelligence
“Some troubling connections contradict Amnesty’s image as a benevolent defender of human rights and reveal key figures at the organization during its early years to be less concerned with human dignity and more concerned with the dignity of the US and UK’s image in the world”
https://www.mintpressnews.com/amnesty-international-troubling-collaboration-with-uk-us-intelligence/253939/
Good piece.
Unfortunately, NGOs represent an irresistible target for security services and those who would influence the direction of events.
NGOs provide such great camouflage with their seeming benevolence. A bit like a drug gang using a nun as a drug mule.
That is why NGOs are targets of security-service penetration, and it is why some percentage of them are out-and-out frauds from the beginning, tools to be used for manipulation and propaganda, created just for the purpose. As an example of that last, the White Helmets in Syria come immediately to mind.
The United States has used so many of them. Some of its fomented coups and insurrections in other countries are assisted by such undercover NGO operatives. Some of the NGOs of George Soros have this reputation.
CIA has branched out over the years, too, beyond NGOs and into organizations as diverse as the Nobel Prize administration and the UN. How often do we see, for example, a Peace Prize winner worth talking about?
There are only a couple of exceptions in many decades to what appears to be the rule of picking relatively unimportant, politically innocuous organizations or minor individual achievements or no achievements at all, Obama having been the best recent example of the last.
And more important than the inappropriate people regularly receiving Peace Prizes are the truly deserving ones ignored, year after year, the ones whose work should be publicized and celebrated. You will never see the award going to the likes of Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning, truly deserving candidates and inspirations for others.
Obviously, the actual selections do not represent the kinds of individuals which a group of insightful, genuinely peace-loving, and politically independent committee members would choose.
None of this should surprise. The CIA for many decades has used and abused the press in the same way.
It has used big friendly press companies as a cover for agents penetrating other countries as well as for “getting stories out there.” Time-Life, for example, was pretty well known as a friend of CIA in this way. Reuters had a similar reputation.
It has penetrated some American publishers themselves, perhaps without the owner's knowledge, as in the case of The New York Times. In other cases, it has secretly contributed to publishers to keep them afloat so they are available for a variety of purposes.
There are so many ways publications can be useful apart from just “getting the story out there.” A left-wing publication, for example, gives you, with its subscribers and contributors, a detailed and regularly updated list of people in your society sympathetic to a cause. Even their addresses and other information. The old Saturday Review magazine was reputedly used this way by CIA during the Cold War.
We do live in a highly synthetic world in which so much is not what it seems, a reality shaped by the needs and drives of power. The cause of world empire and the use of dark operations go hand-in-hand with the regular abuse of international organizations. Even the seemingly good are bent, one way or another, to serve the needs of abusive power.
______________________
Response to a comment about the difficulty of finding sound human-rights organizations to which to contribute:
In a world run by scoundrels, there is very little room left for the well-intentioned. By design.
Thursday, January 17, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN: HOW TO SOUND RIDICULOUS AS YOU PREACH TO OTHERS ABOUT RUNNING THEIR AFFAIRS - THE STUNNINGLY DUMB CAIRO SPEECH BY AMERICAN SECRETARY OF STATE POMPEO
John Chuckman
COMMENT ON SECRETARY OF STATE POMPEO’S CAIRO SPEECH
The American Secretary of State gave a big speech recently in Cairo, Egypt, a speech about the Middle East and America’s role there as a force for good.
Of course, just putting those two thoughts together - America as a force for good and the Middle East - would be bizarre enough, in view of the fact that America has killed, or helped kill, a couple of million people in the region over the last fifteen years or so, all while creating many millions of refugees and bringing chaos to what were some well-ordered societies.
But the Secretary of State’s speech ventured even further into the bizarre and included an anecdote about his always having an open Bible on his office desk, an anecdote told as though it were somehow a merit or claim for good.
My God, the Bible, with all its superstitious myths and tales of destruction and human perversion and hatreds and, yes, even the promise of the world’s coming to a terrifying end, and here’s the highest-ranking cabinet member in the world’s most powerful country bragging about its influence on his work. Well into the Twenty-first Century. How very reassuring.
One thinks of the late Jerry Falwell having been appointed to high office to help run the planet. Even the blubbery looks are a good match.
And to say nothing of the fact that Pompeo was giving the speech in and about a region, the Middle East, where the Bible does not enjoy quite the position it does in rural South Carolina. The Middle East is a region where the Bible is way down the list of best sellers.
But we can at least agree that a good deal of the Bible - from the blood-drenched barbarities of the Old Testament to the New Testament's frenzied nightmares in the Book of Revelations - does read like antique inspiration for America's march through the region. So, perhaps the anecdote was not completely misplaced.
COMMENT ON SECRETARY OF STATE POMPEO’S CAIRO SPEECH
The American Secretary of State gave a big speech recently in Cairo, Egypt, a speech about the Middle East and America’s role there as a force for good.
Of course, just putting those two thoughts together - America as a force for good and the Middle East - would be bizarre enough, in view of the fact that America has killed, or helped kill, a couple of million people in the region over the last fifteen years or so, all while creating many millions of refugees and bringing chaos to what were some well-ordered societies.
But the Secretary of State’s speech ventured even further into the bizarre and included an anecdote about his always having an open Bible on his office desk, an anecdote told as though it were somehow a merit or claim for good.
My God, the Bible, with all its superstitious myths and tales of destruction and human perversion and hatreds and, yes, even the promise of the world’s coming to a terrifying end, and here’s the highest-ranking cabinet member in the world’s most powerful country bragging about its influence on his work. Well into the Twenty-first Century. How very reassuring.
One thinks of the late Jerry Falwell having been appointed to high office to help run the planet. Even the blubbery looks are a good match.
And to say nothing of the fact that Pompeo was giving the speech in and about a region, the Middle East, where the Bible does not enjoy quite the position it does in rural South Carolina. The Middle East is a region where the Bible is way down the list of best sellers.
But we can at least agree that a good deal of the Bible - from the blood-drenched barbarities of the Old Testament to the New Testament's frenzied nightmares in the Book of Revelations - does read like antique inspiration for America's march through the region. So, perhaps the anecdote was not completely misplaced.
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: SOME DEMOCRATS COMING TO ACCEPT THE REALITY OBAMA WAS A BAD PRESIDENT - BUT A VITAL POINT IS LOST - TRUMP IS AS BAD AND THE TWO CASES SUPPORT REALITY OF THE "DARK STATE"
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN ZEROHEDGE BY TYLER DURDEN
"Democrats Turn On Obama's "Establishment" Legacy As 2020 Approaches
"As Vanity Fair's T.A. Frank notes, Democrats surveying their options going into 2020 have begun to genuinely question the state of their party - and an increasing number of them are settling on the conclusion that Obama was a bad president"
The proposition that Obama was a failed president, it seems to me, is beyond dispute.
Obama’s eight years of bombing, intervention, war, and mass extrajudicial killings – all by a sometimes sandal-wearing Peace Prize winner – were demonstration enough.
But added to that horrible record was his total failure to do anything serious for better regulation of a financial system that had failed through excess and poor regulation. And now, again, a huge financial threat hangs over the country and the world.
And, yes, there was his awful health-care program, an ugly, costly compromise which made almost no one happy, instead of a new initiative.
I would add his failure to do anything for his own people. He lured their votes and hopes with preacher-sounding, caring words, and then he did nothing for them.
I actually view him as close to a total failure, except that he did create the Iran nuclear agreement despite Israel's intense advocacy for war. That was his only really good moment in eight years.
Destroying a stable society in Libya? Fomenting a right-wing, anti-elected government in Ukraine? Pushing American forces towards the Russian border? Starting a dirty proxy-mercenary war in Syria? Playing with poison gas in Syria to create an excuse for bombing? Allowing Egypt’s first democratically-elected president to be overthrown and tossed into prison like a common criminal? Starting an industrial-scale extrajudicial killing program? Shameful, all of them.
I still am not certain whether he was just weak in office (vis-a-vis the power establishment) or whether he was a secret devote of American imperialism. I tend to believe the former.
It is an amazing reflection on American society that in the press and from the mouths of many figures, Obama’s baritone voice and boyish smile are still regarded as having been something worthy. This l tend to see as the influence of the "Dark State," or American Power Establishment, on public perceptions.
Of course, Trump has been a terrible disappointment, too.
As we have seen, especially in the case of the Syria "withdrawal" decision, Trump's words carry little weight inside Washington's power establishment.
His own appointees go abroad and contradict him. His own military does not respond promptly to his orders, unless those orders are to hurl missiles at someone, in which case, the response is instant.
Much of what Trump says is treated by officials as though just part of his verbal-diarrhea stream of “tweets.”
That, of course, is his own fault to some degree. He talks too much without giving the words much thought. And he jumps around from topic to topic, without ever seeming to finish his thought on any of them.
But the ugly situation in Washington goes well beyond that.
I do believe that what we have seen in recent years vividly demonstrates the serious power of what is called by some, and ridiculed by others as, the "Deep State."
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN ZEROHEDGE BY TYLER DURDEN
"Democrats Turn On Obama's "Establishment" Legacy As 2020 Approaches
"As Vanity Fair's T.A. Frank notes, Democrats surveying their options going into 2020 have begun to genuinely question the state of their party - and an increasing number of them are settling on the conclusion that Obama was a bad president"
The proposition that Obama was a failed president, it seems to me, is beyond dispute.
Obama’s eight years of bombing, intervention, war, and mass extrajudicial killings – all by a sometimes sandal-wearing Peace Prize winner – were demonstration enough.
But added to that horrible record was his total failure to do anything serious for better regulation of a financial system that had failed through excess and poor regulation. And now, again, a huge financial threat hangs over the country and the world.
And, yes, there was his awful health-care program, an ugly, costly compromise which made almost no one happy, instead of a new initiative.
I would add his failure to do anything for his own people. He lured their votes and hopes with preacher-sounding, caring words, and then he did nothing for them.
I actually view him as close to a total failure, except that he did create the Iran nuclear agreement despite Israel's intense advocacy for war. That was his only really good moment in eight years.
Destroying a stable society in Libya? Fomenting a right-wing, anti-elected government in Ukraine? Pushing American forces towards the Russian border? Starting a dirty proxy-mercenary war in Syria? Playing with poison gas in Syria to create an excuse for bombing? Allowing Egypt’s first democratically-elected president to be overthrown and tossed into prison like a common criminal? Starting an industrial-scale extrajudicial killing program? Shameful, all of them.
I still am not certain whether he was just weak in office (vis-a-vis the power establishment) or whether he was a secret devote of American imperialism. I tend to believe the former.
It is an amazing reflection on American society that in the press and from the mouths of many figures, Obama’s baritone voice and boyish smile are still regarded as having been something worthy. This l tend to see as the influence of the "Dark State," or American Power Establishment, on public perceptions.
Of course, Trump has been a terrible disappointment, too.
As we have seen, especially in the case of the Syria "withdrawal" decision, Trump's words carry little weight inside Washington's power establishment.
His own appointees go abroad and contradict him. His own military does not respond promptly to his orders, unless those orders are to hurl missiles at someone, in which case, the response is instant.
Much of what Trump says is treated by officials as though just part of his verbal-diarrhea stream of “tweets.”
That, of course, is his own fault to some degree. He talks too much without giving the words much thought. And he jumps around from topic to topic, without ever seeming to finish his thought on any of them.
But the ugly situation in Washington goes well beyond that.
I do believe that what we have seen in recent years vividly demonstrates the serious power of what is called by some, and ridiculed by others as, the "Deep State."
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MORE ON "FACT-CHECKING" AND AN OMINOUS NEW AMERICAN OUTFIT CALLED NEWSGUARD - WHAT FREE SPEECH AND FREE PRESS AND A FREE SOCIETY REALLY MEAN - EMPIRE AND FREEDOM?
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Ominous New 'Fact Checker' Approves MSM Lies to Start Wars While Attacking Alternative Media
"Newsguard attempts to set itself outside of the other allegedly “unbiased” fact checkers like Snopes and Politifact by setting out to monetarily cripple independent media sites by having their ads pulled"
I don't see a lot of point in citing a selection of past transgressions by the mainstream press. It has never done anything but support the establishment, including supporting every conflict in which America engages.
That is, almost by definition, part of its job. It is the corporate mouthpiece for a corporate government establishment. It is beholden to the establishment for its place and patronage and privileges, so that it could not do otherwise if it tried.
Just as one example, The New York Times has been described as the house organ of the American establishment. You could not come up with a more apt description. And surely, we all understand that the house organs you find provided to employees in any large corporation are provided to make employees feel good about their company, to make them feel proud, and to support what the company undertakes, not to search for truth.
Anyone who believes that the principles of journalism, as espoused in schools, are applied in the mainstream press and broadcasting simply is confessing to the fact that he or she does not read or listen with much understanding.
The old saying, attributed to more than one author, about the only way to have a free press is to own one, is one of the truest things ever said on the subject of journalism and publishing.
Well, that, of course, is just what the many diverse writers and publishers in our Internet universe have done – gone and got their own presses.
Technology has made it possible to have more and more diverse publications and perspectives published than anyone could have imagined just fifty years ago.
We all understand how new technology made the Industrial Revolution possible, but similar revolutionary effects come from any important new technology, such as home computers and the Internet.
Of course, the establishment house organs do not like it, and they like it even less in a new technology-driven environment which has stripped them of traditional revenue sources, revenue such as want ads, once a gold mine for many of them.
The only opinion that counts about any news source is the opinion of its readers. That is the only way it should be in a free society.
NewsGuard is a genuinely insidious concept which effectively tries to put up old-fashioned "quarantined" notices on the front doors of houses to prevent anyone from visiting. But we are not talking about deadly disease here, we are talking about ideas and free speech.
Free speech comes with risks, inherently. Some speech will be misinformed, some prejudiced, some just dumb, but you cannot have free speech without its accompanying messiness. There is no such thing as scrubbed, pre-washed, lab-tested free speech. To even think that you can have it so is to think along the lines of the Soviets.
All of NewsGuard’s interviews and research efforts are intended to give the appearance almost of a scientific research operation supporting their judgments. But, in the end, it is all as phony as the guys with fellowships and titles from “think-tanks” or “institutes” who pose as independent scholars and thinkers while, in fact, being full-time paid advocates for a cause, all much resembling the actors who wear white lab coats and carry clip boards in television ads as they advise you, in authoritative baritone voices, about which headache remedy to buy.
Judgments are what NewsGuard is peddling, judgments and absolutely nothing else. Judgments as dependable as the customer product reviews on many large Internet sales sites, which is to say, not at all. These are then applied with a mechanism intended to destroy revenue sources for the publications they target. You really need to know nothing more than that to reject and condemn this effort to control the flow of free speech.
The very concept is inhibiting, controlling, and unwarranted in a free society.
But who ever regarded an empire as a free society? The American empire is somewhat unique in history as being one that has been carefully tailored over generations to provide a good illusion of a free society. Operations like NewsGuard only remind us of the reality.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Ominous New 'Fact Checker' Approves MSM Lies to Start Wars While Attacking Alternative Media
"Newsguard attempts to set itself outside of the other allegedly “unbiased” fact checkers like Snopes and Politifact by setting out to monetarily cripple independent media sites by having their ads pulled"
I don't see a lot of point in citing a selection of past transgressions by the mainstream press. It has never done anything but support the establishment, including supporting every conflict in which America engages.
That is, almost by definition, part of its job. It is the corporate mouthpiece for a corporate government establishment. It is beholden to the establishment for its place and patronage and privileges, so that it could not do otherwise if it tried.
Just as one example, The New York Times has been described as the house organ of the American establishment. You could not come up with a more apt description. And surely, we all understand that the house organs you find provided to employees in any large corporation are provided to make employees feel good about their company, to make them feel proud, and to support what the company undertakes, not to search for truth.
Anyone who believes that the principles of journalism, as espoused in schools, are applied in the mainstream press and broadcasting simply is confessing to the fact that he or she does not read or listen with much understanding.
The old saying, attributed to more than one author, about the only way to have a free press is to own one, is one of the truest things ever said on the subject of journalism and publishing.
Well, that, of course, is just what the many diverse writers and publishers in our Internet universe have done – gone and got their own presses.
Technology has made it possible to have more and more diverse publications and perspectives published than anyone could have imagined just fifty years ago.
We all understand how new technology made the Industrial Revolution possible, but similar revolutionary effects come from any important new technology, such as home computers and the Internet.
Of course, the establishment house organs do not like it, and they like it even less in a new technology-driven environment which has stripped them of traditional revenue sources, revenue such as want ads, once a gold mine for many of them.
The only opinion that counts about any news source is the opinion of its readers. That is the only way it should be in a free society.
NewsGuard is a genuinely insidious concept which effectively tries to put up old-fashioned "quarantined" notices on the front doors of houses to prevent anyone from visiting. But we are not talking about deadly disease here, we are talking about ideas and free speech.
Free speech comes with risks, inherently. Some speech will be misinformed, some prejudiced, some just dumb, but you cannot have free speech without its accompanying messiness. There is no such thing as scrubbed, pre-washed, lab-tested free speech. To even think that you can have it so is to think along the lines of the Soviets.
All of NewsGuard’s interviews and research efforts are intended to give the appearance almost of a scientific research operation supporting their judgments. But, in the end, it is all as phony as the guys with fellowships and titles from “think-tanks” or “institutes” who pose as independent scholars and thinkers while, in fact, being full-time paid advocates for a cause, all much resembling the actors who wear white lab coats and carry clip boards in television ads as they advise you, in authoritative baritone voices, about which headache remedy to buy.
Judgments are what NewsGuard is peddling, judgments and absolutely nothing else. Judgments as dependable as the customer product reviews on many large Internet sales sites, which is to say, not at all. These are then applied with a mechanism intended to destroy revenue sources for the publications they target. You really need to know nothing more than that to reject and condemn this effort to control the flow of free speech.
The very concept is inhibiting, controlling, and unwarranted in a free society.
But who ever regarded an empire as a free society? The American empire is somewhat unique in history as being one that has been carefully tailored over generations to provide a good illusion of a free society. Operations like NewsGuard only remind us of the reality.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: POLL SHOWS AMERICAN MILITARY OCCUPATIONS ARE SUPPORTED MORE BY DEMOCRATS THAN REPUBLICANS - WHY THIS SHOULD NOT SURPRISE - WHAT LIBERALS ARE AND WHY THERE ARE NONE IN AMERICA
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE IN ZEROHEDGE
“US Military Occupations Now Supported By Far More Democrats Than Republicans”
This shouldn't be a big surprise.
Truman was a war president. As very much was Lyndon Johnson. Clinton too. And Obama. And we could go back and add Woodrow Wilson.
All of them Democrats and all of them killed lots of people.
The truth has always been that both American parties are just wings of the establishment imperial party.
And references to "liberals" when you are talking about America seem a bit silly to me.
There are virtually no liberals in America.
Elizabeth Warren, for example, voted for the obscene Pentagon budget, makes hostile and unwarranted comments about an Iran, a country that has never started a war and scrupulously abides by the nuclear agreement.
She parrots Israel, the most aggressive and lawless society we have.
That is not my idea of being liberal.
Real liberals honor human rights, rule of law, democratic government, and peace.
And there just ain't room for much of that in the imperial corporate state of America.
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/11/02/john-chuckman-comment-article-on-american-patriots-not-even-knowing-who-the-real-enemies-are-americas-stage-show-national-politics-with-two-parties-capable-of-doing-nothing-the-realities-of-the-2/
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE IN ZEROHEDGE
“US Military Occupations Now Supported By Far More Democrats Than Republicans”
This shouldn't be a big surprise.
Truman was a war president. As very much was Lyndon Johnson. Clinton too. And Obama. And we could go back and add Woodrow Wilson.
All of them Democrats and all of them killed lots of people.
The truth has always been that both American parties are just wings of the establishment imperial party.
And references to "liberals" when you are talking about America seem a bit silly to me.
There are virtually no liberals in America.
Elizabeth Warren, for example, voted for the obscene Pentagon budget, makes hostile and unwarranted comments about an Iran, a country that has never started a war and scrupulously abides by the nuclear agreement.
She parrots Israel, the most aggressive and lawless society we have.
That is not my idea of being liberal.
Real liberals honor human rights, rule of law, democratic government, and peace.
And there just ain't room for much of that in the imperial corporate state of America.
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/11/02/john-chuckman-comment-article-on-american-patriots-not-even-knowing-who-the-real-enemies-are-americas-stage-show-national-politics-with-two-parties-capable-of-doing-nothing-the-realities-of-the-2/
Saturday, January 12, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: CANADA'S CHRYSTIA FREELAND MAKING A CHEAP SHOW WELCOMING ONE AFFLUENT RUNAWAY SAUDI GIRL AS A REFUGEE - A PUBLICITY STUNT WHILE IGNORING NUMBERLESS VICTIMS' SCREAMS
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO CBC NEWS
“Saudi teen [claiming refugee status] on the run from her family arrives in Canada”
I am glad for the girl if she is what she claims to be.
But, first, that truly is not at all clear.
Look at that beautiful smile of hers in the photos, full of perfectly manicured teeth, unmistakably the teeth of a child from a well-off family who took care of her.
Second, we do have kids run away from home, daily, in Canada. They don't have the knowledge or the resources, most of them, to do what this girl has done in moving through several countries. They certainly receive no special attention or help.
Third, and most important to my mind, there are so many hundreds of thousands of others in terrible plights, and Freeland is silent about all of them.
We have families literally being blown apart in Yemen. Blown apart not just by the Saudi princes but by the Americans through their direct assistance, armament sales, and behind-the-scenes moral and diplomatic support, Americans with whom Ms. Freeland appears to be on the best of terms.
We have three million refugees living in tents in Turkey, all pretty much thanks to America's bombing and wars in the Mideast, but I never hear a word of objection from Freeland.
We have the piteous people of Gaza whose situation is as outrageous as that of the Rohingya of Burma. Do we hear a word of objection from this government? Do we see any serious effort to help? How can you watch people struggle miserably in the world’s largest concentration camp without a word? How can you watch gangs of Israeli army snipers behind a fence shoot thousands of unarmed people, including women and children, only demonstrating for their rights, and say nothing?
There are the people of Eastern Ukraine, the Donbas region, who are shelled regularly by the Poroshenko government in Ukraine. Thousands have died, and the entire population lives under threat, but Ukraine’s president, Poroshenko, is well-received by Freeland. After all, he represents American policy in action.
And there is Freeland regularly echoing American attacks on Maduro, a man twice democratically elected as President of Venezuela. Canada goes beyond just echoing America, it has been active in the unofficial outfit called the Lima Group whose aim it is to support American interference in Venezuela. The Lima Group represents far less than half the members of the Organization of American States, the long-standing official organization which has avoided supporting American claims about Venezuela.
So, Freeland effectively supports the misery America has inflicted on Venezuela through threats (including the threat of invasion), dirty tricks, severe sanctions, an assassination attempt, and constant interference in its internal affairs.
Freeland’s Russophobia, made clear in many statements, undoubtedly reflects American influence, although there may well be an element of her own native prejudice, coming as she does from a Ukrainian-Canadian family, many such families being virulently anti-Russian as a heritage of the Soviet era. But her Russophobia represents an unwelcome voice speaking for Canada.
This one small, small act in a dubious case – accepting as a refugee one affluent-looking teenage runaway who claims to be afraid of her family - resembles a publicity stunt to me, especially with all the photos of the girl with Freeland, complete with silly props like the girl’s brand-new Canada hat and shirt. It might prove otherwise, but that is what it strongly resembles.
The girl is a poster child for this government's tenuous claims to humanity and traditional Canadian human rights values, a rather costless claim supported by taking in and being photographed with one well cared-for, middle-class kid, while ignoring the numberless screams out there.
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO CBC NEWS
“Saudi teen [claiming refugee status] on the run from her family arrives in Canada”
I am glad for the girl if she is what she claims to be.
But, first, that truly is not at all clear.
Look at that beautiful smile of hers in the photos, full of perfectly manicured teeth, unmistakably the teeth of a child from a well-off family who took care of her.
Second, we do have kids run away from home, daily, in Canada. They don't have the knowledge or the resources, most of them, to do what this girl has done in moving through several countries. They certainly receive no special attention or help.
Third, and most important to my mind, there are so many hundreds of thousands of others in terrible plights, and Freeland is silent about all of them.
We have families literally being blown apart in Yemen. Blown apart not just by the Saudi princes but by the Americans through their direct assistance, armament sales, and behind-the-scenes moral and diplomatic support, Americans with whom Ms. Freeland appears to be on the best of terms.
We have three million refugees living in tents in Turkey, all pretty much thanks to America's bombing and wars in the Mideast, but I never hear a word of objection from Freeland.
We have the piteous people of Gaza whose situation is as outrageous as that of the Rohingya of Burma. Do we hear a word of objection from this government? Do we see any serious effort to help? How can you watch people struggle miserably in the world’s largest concentration camp without a word? How can you watch gangs of Israeli army snipers behind a fence shoot thousands of unarmed people, including women and children, only demonstrating for their rights, and say nothing?
There are the people of Eastern Ukraine, the Donbas region, who are shelled regularly by the Poroshenko government in Ukraine. Thousands have died, and the entire population lives under threat, but Ukraine’s president, Poroshenko, is well-received by Freeland. After all, he represents American policy in action.
And there is Freeland regularly echoing American attacks on Maduro, a man twice democratically elected as President of Venezuela. Canada goes beyond just echoing America, it has been active in the unofficial outfit called the Lima Group whose aim it is to support American interference in Venezuela. The Lima Group represents far less than half the members of the Organization of American States, the long-standing official organization which has avoided supporting American claims about Venezuela.
So, Freeland effectively supports the misery America has inflicted on Venezuela through threats (including the threat of invasion), dirty tricks, severe sanctions, an assassination attempt, and constant interference in its internal affairs.
Freeland’s Russophobia, made clear in many statements, undoubtedly reflects American influence, although there may well be an element of her own native prejudice, coming as she does from a Ukrainian-Canadian family, many such families being virulently anti-Russian as a heritage of the Soviet era. But her Russophobia represents an unwelcome voice speaking for Canada.
This one small, small act in a dubious case – accepting as a refugee one affluent-looking teenage runaway who claims to be afraid of her family - resembles a publicity stunt to me, especially with all the photos of the girl with Freeland, complete with silly props like the girl’s brand-new Canada hat and shirt. It might prove otherwise, but that is what it strongly resembles.
The girl is a poster child for this government's tenuous claims to humanity and traditional Canadian human rights values, a rather costless claim supported by taking in and being photographed with one well cared-for, middle-class kid, while ignoring the numberless screams out there.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE COMING OF NEWSGUARD TO A WEBSITE NEAR YOU - AMERICA SLIPPING INTO INSANITY
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
"Neocons Unleash New Weapon to Crush Independent Media
"While even a quick glance at its advisory board alone would be enough for many Americans to decline to install Newsguard’s browser extension on their devices, the danger of Newsguard is the fact that it is diligently working to make the adoption of its app involuntary"
https://russia-insider.com/en/neocons-unleash-new-weapon-crush-independent-media/ri25862
My God, this is genuinely Orwellian.
NewsGuard, the name and logo resemble a brand of toothpaste or deodorant, a harmless consumer product.
But the actual substance is closer to a form of rat poison.
I really do think the United States is slipping into a state of national insanity.
All thinking people understand that the world's greatest purveyor of falsehoods and "fake news" is the American government itself.
In all its huge web of international sanctions and punishments and threats and wars and protection of monsters, there is not an honest word to be heard.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
"Neocons Unleash New Weapon to Crush Independent Media
"While even a quick glance at its advisory board alone would be enough for many Americans to decline to install Newsguard’s browser extension on their devices, the danger of Newsguard is the fact that it is diligently working to make the adoption of its app involuntary"
https://russia-insider.com/en/neocons-unleash-new-weapon-crush-independent-media/ri25862
My God, this is genuinely Orwellian.
NewsGuard, the name and logo resemble a brand of toothpaste or deodorant, a harmless consumer product.
But the actual substance is closer to a form of rat poison.
I really do think the United States is slipping into a state of national insanity.
All thinking people understand that the world's greatest purveyor of falsehoods and "fake news" is the American government itself.
In all its huge web of international sanctions and punishments and threats and wars and protection of monsters, there is not an honest word to be heard.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE DEMOCRATS' REAL REASON TO DENY TRUMP FUNDING FOR A WALL - IT AMOUNTS TO NOTHING MORE THAN PUTTING HIS NATIVE QUALITIES ON DISPLAY FOR VOTERS TO SEE
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENTWATCH
"The Dems don’t want Trump to have a win on his signature policy, because they figure that will cement his re-election. Everything else is noise.”
Not quite.
It is not an overwhelmingly popular idea, the wall. And there are many sound arguments against it.
It is very important to his political base, though, but they are a minority, and you must remember he is a minority president.
And I think he might not even be able to secure the same minority because he has badly failed on much more crucial issues of peace and war, his views as expressed during the campaign having caused him to receive a fair number of crossover votes.
But because the wall is his signature issue, denying it to him puts him up for re-election looking weak and ineffectual.
Truth be told, that is exactly what he is, weak and ineffectual, beneath all the noise and bluster and bullying.
And just wait for him to help send the world’s economy crashing, something towards which he is working very hard. Herbert Hoover déjà vu.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENTWATCH
"The Dems don’t want Trump to have a win on his signature policy, because they figure that will cement his re-election. Everything else is noise.”
Not quite.
It is not an overwhelmingly popular idea, the wall. And there are many sound arguments against it.
It is very important to his political base, though, but they are a minority, and you must remember he is a minority president.
And I think he might not even be able to secure the same minority because he has badly failed on much more crucial issues of peace and war, his views as expressed during the campaign having caused him to receive a fair number of crossover votes.
But because the wall is his signature issue, denying it to him puts him up for re-election looking weak and ineffectual.
Truth be told, that is exactly what he is, weak and ineffectual, beneath all the noise and bluster and bullying.
And just wait for him to help send the world’s economy crashing, something towards which he is working very hard. Herbert Hoover déjà vu.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: TRUMP'S SPEECH FOR HIS WALL - IF THERE IS ONE THING TRUMP KNOWS IT IS HIS CUSTOMERS
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“Trump used the Oval Office to make his border wall pitch — but experts doubt it will sway voters”
Our world is threatened by many serious problems.
Trump addresses few of them.
But he goes on and on over this waste of time and money, a wall, something which somehow hasn't been missed in two and a half centuries.
Why does he do that?
Because it is an issue which speaks powerfully to his political base, as few others do.
A wall and foreigners and guns.
If there's one thing Trump knows, it's his customers.
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“Trump used the Oval Office to make his border wall pitch — but experts doubt it will sway voters”
Our world is threatened by many serious problems.
Trump addresses few of them.
But he goes on and on over this waste of time and money, a wall, something which somehow hasn't been missed in two and a half centuries.
Why does he do that?
Because it is an issue which speaks powerfully to his political base, as few others do.
A wall and foreigners and guns.
If there's one thing Trump knows, it's his customers.
Wednesday, January 09, 2019
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: JOHN BOLTON IN ISRAEL - AMERICA IN SYRIA - HOW TO OPENLY IGNORE AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT - SOME FACTS ABOUT SYRIA AND ABOUT IRAN AND ABOUT ISRAEL - AMERICA'S DECLINING INFLUENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
John Chuckman
COMMENT ON JOHN BOLTON’S TRIP TO ISRAEL
John Bolton has been on a trip to Israel to reassure Israel’s Netanyahu that Trump really didn’t mean what he said about withdrawal from Syria.
At least that is what Bolton’s actual words boil down to.
Bolton said that any withdrawal from Syria is “conditioned on the security of Israel and other allies and defeat of ISIL.”
That might sound good to an untutored ear, but it is, in fact, utter rubbish, rubbish carefully constructed to keep American troops in Syria as long as possible against Trump’s withdrawal decision. Hell, what do a mere President’s words mean anyway?
The United States only uses the presence of ISIS as an excuse to remain in northeastern Syria. For most of the history of the war in Syria, the United States did not fight ISIS, not at all. It viewed them quietly as welcome grief for Assad. Much of America’s (and Britain’s) early bombing effort basically provided ISIS and other mercenary cutthroats with a de facto air force by destroying Syrian national infrastructure. It was only Syria’s army, still loyal to Assad after a long and grievous war, with the invited help of Russia and Iran, who consistently fought ISIS.
And why would internal events in Syria have anything to do with Israel’s security? They do not, except in the sense that Israel’s main goals in the deliberately-constructed proxy war, the destruction of Syria and the toppling of Assad, have failed.
Plus, if there is anything Israel hates more than Assad, it is Iran. That very large (ten times the population of Israel) and potentially wealthy (oil and gas) country, which if viewed by any objective third party, would be understood as the region’s natural long-term regional power (exactly how America saw them back in the days of the Shah), but that is the role Israel has determined must be its own.
Israel needs to keep a hold on Washington because without the public and private subsidies pouring in from America, it would soon be seen for what it is, a small and relatively poor country located, much like a Crusader fortress, in a region of people for whom it largely has contempt.
Israel uses the legitimate presence of Iran in Syria (legitimate because it was invited by Syria’s government to help fight a war) much the way the United States uses the presence of ISIS in the Northeast – that is, as an excuse to do other things. Ergo, Israel’s estimated two hundred bombing runs against a country, Syria, with which it is not at war. Plus, lots of other nasty stuff like large covert shipments of weapons, expert advice, intelligence information, helicopter ferrying, and even medical assistance.
Well, at least ISIS is something worthy of our hatred. Iran is not, never having started any wars in its modern history and legitimately working to better its people and having demonstrated its willingness to cooperate and keep its word, as with the international nuclear agreement. Indeed, when America recently arbitrarily tore up that agreement, its only genuine reason for doing so was one that it could not state in public: tearing up the agreement was what Israel wanted.
Compare the record, and a fair-minded observer could only say Iran is much of what Israel is not. Israel with its secret nuclear weapons. Israel with its past record of secret nuclear cooperation with apartheid South Africa (which briefly, before its end, became a small nuclear power thanks to Israeli assistance). Israel with its dozens of broken United Nations’ resolutions and broken international laws. Israel with its unwelcome occupation of millions of people. Israel with its near-constant war and aggression for seventy years. And Israel with its long record of dark operations and assassinations throughout the region.
Even in terms of religious and ethnic tolerance, Iran has some favorable comparisons despite its being a theocratic state. A good-sized Jewish community in Iran flourishes. Compare that with the state of non-Jews or even Jews who happen to be black, as from Africa, in Israel. The property of Jews and other groups is secure in Iran, and you have only to turn on your television news to know that that is not the case in Israel.
By the way, part of Assad’s popular support in Syria comes from the fact that he is seen as a protector of religious minorities. The country’s many Christians definitely view him that way and were in great fear about what kind of government might emerge if Assad lost the war. Assad is sometimes seen walking with his wife on the streets of Damascus, something many leaders would fear doing. His troops, as I said, have stayed loyal through a long and bloody war.
Our press’s treatment of Assad has been consistently unbalanced. It has consistently been an Israeli government view of Assad, much as is the case with our press’s treatment of Iran.
Israel has a poisonous narrative it has developed and pushed about Iran surrounding them through its relationships with other states such as Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Never mind the nonsense of a non-nuclear nation being truly capable of threatening a nuclear one with an arsenal a third the size of France’s. Here’s where never acknowledging your illegal weapons comes in handy. You can pretend to be afraid of someone like Iran.
So why are American troops in Syria’s northeast, openly against the will of the county’s government?
They are there to assist Syria’s Kurds - who would like a separate state, a rather unrealistic expectation given Turkey’s intense feelings against a Kurdish state on any of its borders - in disrupting the reunification of Syria.
In the pettiest possible fashion, any disruption of Syria is viewed as positive by Israel and the United States. The same motive is at work in the United States having announced that it will not contribute to the rebuilding of Syria so long as Assad remains in power. Not contribute, despite having been a major contributor to the destruction.
Kurdish disruption in the northeast is a kind of consolation prize to Israel for having lost the main dirty war. It benefits Saudi Arabia, too, the main original financiers for ISIS, but the princes running that country these days quietly work hand-in-glove with Israel, so anything benefitting the one benefits the other.
That’s how you earn the right to buy more than a hundred billion dollars in the latest American military hardware, as Saudi Arabia did recently, and gain a new sense of self-importance in the region. Otherwise, that sale could not possibly have happened given Israel’s influence in Washington. Just as a measure of the massiveness of Saudi Arabia’s purchases, Russia, a country more than four times the land mass and more than four times the population, with a far more complex economy, has a defense budget of about $46 billion.
The proxy war of the last half dozen years - inaccurately called a civil war regularly in our press - has been a barely-disguised effort to destroy Syria and topple its leader, President Assad.
Israel’s leaders hate Assad - just as they hate all independent-minded Arab leaders, especially ones with any popular support who serve as unifying forces in their societies – and they hate him especially because he remains adamant about the return of the slice of Syrian territory Israel has (illegally) occupied since 1967, the Golan Heights.
Israel pretends to itself that it has formally annexed this land, but the world does not recognize the claim as valid, and it is against international law to annex land you occupy following a war. Indeed, Netanyahu took the opportunity of Bolton’s visit to once more push the idea of America’s recognizing the annexation.
It would all become easier with Assad out of the way, and there were potential additional benefits from his removal. Israel had hoped to seize a further slice of Syrian territory as a “buffer zone” for the stolen Golan Heights against the violence in Syria (the violence deliberately induced by Israel and its proxy-war associates), something Israel spoke about a number of times. In these objectives, the proxy war against Syria, which Israel worked hard to foster and supply, has failed.
That’s why we now have the effort to secure the consolation prize of encouraging trouble and division with the Kurds in the northeast. It would weaken Syria, especially since the region is Syria’s major oil-producing area.
But anything involving Kurds, a people without a state and scattered across several countries of the Middle East, anywhere near Turkey’s border is viewed as a genuine threat, Turkey having fought Turkey’s own Kurdish separatists quite viciously for years. Bolton made Turkey’s Erdogan extremely angry with words suggesting Turkey was interested in slaughtering Kurds in Syria’s northeast.
There are also reports of talks between Syrians and Kurds, talks aimed at the Kurds accepting the Syrian army as a protector against a Turkish invasion. It does seem likely that in the end, by one means or another, Syria will reclaim the Kurdish region.
So, the American-Israeli scheme to see Syria partitioned is likely to fail. Maybe then, Trump can have his troop withdrawal and show the world he is a man of his word and not a man whose generals and senior officials go around contradicting him days after he orders something done. Of course, they’ll only withdraw to new bases in Iraq near the Syrian border. America keeps building bases in Iraq even though the government there has told them it does not want continued occupation.
It seems that you just can’t tell those glorious defenders of freedom that you don’t want them. America just ignores the government of Iraq.
Overall, despite years of bloody war, the Neocon Wars, America has lost influence in the region, and largely because it has bet on the wrong horses. The effort has been pointless, destroying millions of lives, toppling some perfectly good governments, and leaving chaos in a number of places.
COMMENT ON JOHN BOLTON’S TRIP TO ISRAEL
John Bolton has been on a trip to Israel to reassure Israel’s Netanyahu that Trump really didn’t mean what he said about withdrawal from Syria.
At least that is what Bolton’s actual words boil down to.
Bolton said that any withdrawal from Syria is “conditioned on the security of Israel and other allies and defeat of ISIL.”
That might sound good to an untutored ear, but it is, in fact, utter rubbish, rubbish carefully constructed to keep American troops in Syria as long as possible against Trump’s withdrawal decision. Hell, what do a mere President’s words mean anyway?
The United States only uses the presence of ISIS as an excuse to remain in northeastern Syria. For most of the history of the war in Syria, the United States did not fight ISIS, not at all. It viewed them quietly as welcome grief for Assad. Much of America’s (and Britain’s) early bombing effort basically provided ISIS and other mercenary cutthroats with a de facto air force by destroying Syrian national infrastructure. It was only Syria’s army, still loyal to Assad after a long and grievous war, with the invited help of Russia and Iran, who consistently fought ISIS.
And why would internal events in Syria have anything to do with Israel’s security? They do not, except in the sense that Israel’s main goals in the deliberately-constructed proxy war, the destruction of Syria and the toppling of Assad, have failed.
Plus, if there is anything Israel hates more than Assad, it is Iran. That very large (ten times the population of Israel) and potentially wealthy (oil and gas) country, which if viewed by any objective third party, would be understood as the region’s natural long-term regional power (exactly how America saw them back in the days of the Shah), but that is the role Israel has determined must be its own.
Israel needs to keep a hold on Washington because without the public and private subsidies pouring in from America, it would soon be seen for what it is, a small and relatively poor country located, much like a Crusader fortress, in a region of people for whom it largely has contempt.
Israel uses the legitimate presence of Iran in Syria (legitimate because it was invited by Syria’s government to help fight a war) much the way the United States uses the presence of ISIS in the Northeast – that is, as an excuse to do other things. Ergo, Israel’s estimated two hundred bombing runs against a country, Syria, with which it is not at war. Plus, lots of other nasty stuff like large covert shipments of weapons, expert advice, intelligence information, helicopter ferrying, and even medical assistance.
Well, at least ISIS is something worthy of our hatred. Iran is not, never having started any wars in its modern history and legitimately working to better its people and having demonstrated its willingness to cooperate and keep its word, as with the international nuclear agreement. Indeed, when America recently arbitrarily tore up that agreement, its only genuine reason for doing so was one that it could not state in public: tearing up the agreement was what Israel wanted.
Compare the record, and a fair-minded observer could only say Iran is much of what Israel is not. Israel with its secret nuclear weapons. Israel with its past record of secret nuclear cooperation with apartheid South Africa (which briefly, before its end, became a small nuclear power thanks to Israeli assistance). Israel with its dozens of broken United Nations’ resolutions and broken international laws. Israel with its unwelcome occupation of millions of people. Israel with its near-constant war and aggression for seventy years. And Israel with its long record of dark operations and assassinations throughout the region.
Even in terms of religious and ethnic tolerance, Iran has some favorable comparisons despite its being a theocratic state. A good-sized Jewish community in Iran flourishes. Compare that with the state of non-Jews or even Jews who happen to be black, as from Africa, in Israel. The property of Jews and other groups is secure in Iran, and you have only to turn on your television news to know that that is not the case in Israel.
By the way, part of Assad’s popular support in Syria comes from the fact that he is seen as a protector of religious minorities. The country’s many Christians definitely view him that way and were in great fear about what kind of government might emerge if Assad lost the war. Assad is sometimes seen walking with his wife on the streets of Damascus, something many leaders would fear doing. His troops, as I said, have stayed loyal through a long and bloody war.
Our press’s treatment of Assad has been consistently unbalanced. It has consistently been an Israeli government view of Assad, much as is the case with our press’s treatment of Iran.
Israel has a poisonous narrative it has developed and pushed about Iran surrounding them through its relationships with other states such as Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Never mind the nonsense of a non-nuclear nation being truly capable of threatening a nuclear one with an arsenal a third the size of France’s. Here’s where never acknowledging your illegal weapons comes in handy. You can pretend to be afraid of someone like Iran.
So why are American troops in Syria’s northeast, openly against the will of the county’s government?
They are there to assist Syria’s Kurds - who would like a separate state, a rather unrealistic expectation given Turkey’s intense feelings against a Kurdish state on any of its borders - in disrupting the reunification of Syria.
In the pettiest possible fashion, any disruption of Syria is viewed as positive by Israel and the United States. The same motive is at work in the United States having announced that it will not contribute to the rebuilding of Syria so long as Assad remains in power. Not contribute, despite having been a major contributor to the destruction.
Kurdish disruption in the northeast is a kind of consolation prize to Israel for having lost the main dirty war. It benefits Saudi Arabia, too, the main original financiers for ISIS, but the princes running that country these days quietly work hand-in-glove with Israel, so anything benefitting the one benefits the other.
That’s how you earn the right to buy more than a hundred billion dollars in the latest American military hardware, as Saudi Arabia did recently, and gain a new sense of self-importance in the region. Otherwise, that sale could not possibly have happened given Israel’s influence in Washington. Just as a measure of the massiveness of Saudi Arabia’s purchases, Russia, a country more than four times the land mass and more than four times the population, with a far more complex economy, has a defense budget of about $46 billion.
The proxy war of the last half dozen years - inaccurately called a civil war regularly in our press - has been a barely-disguised effort to destroy Syria and topple its leader, President Assad.
Israel’s leaders hate Assad - just as they hate all independent-minded Arab leaders, especially ones with any popular support who serve as unifying forces in their societies – and they hate him especially because he remains adamant about the return of the slice of Syrian territory Israel has (illegally) occupied since 1967, the Golan Heights.
Israel pretends to itself that it has formally annexed this land, but the world does not recognize the claim as valid, and it is against international law to annex land you occupy following a war. Indeed, Netanyahu took the opportunity of Bolton’s visit to once more push the idea of America’s recognizing the annexation.
It would all become easier with Assad out of the way, and there were potential additional benefits from his removal. Israel had hoped to seize a further slice of Syrian territory as a “buffer zone” for the stolen Golan Heights against the violence in Syria (the violence deliberately induced by Israel and its proxy-war associates), something Israel spoke about a number of times. In these objectives, the proxy war against Syria, which Israel worked hard to foster and supply, has failed.
That’s why we now have the effort to secure the consolation prize of encouraging trouble and division with the Kurds in the northeast. It would weaken Syria, especially since the region is Syria’s major oil-producing area.
But anything involving Kurds, a people without a state and scattered across several countries of the Middle East, anywhere near Turkey’s border is viewed as a genuine threat, Turkey having fought Turkey’s own Kurdish separatists quite viciously for years. Bolton made Turkey’s Erdogan extremely angry with words suggesting Turkey was interested in slaughtering Kurds in Syria’s northeast.
There are also reports of talks between Syrians and Kurds, talks aimed at the Kurds accepting the Syrian army as a protector against a Turkish invasion. It does seem likely that in the end, by one means or another, Syria will reclaim the Kurdish region.
So, the American-Israeli scheme to see Syria partitioned is likely to fail. Maybe then, Trump can have his troop withdrawal and show the world he is a man of his word and not a man whose generals and senior officials go around contradicting him days after he orders something done. Of course, they’ll only withdraw to new bases in Iraq near the Syrian border. America keeps building bases in Iraq even though the government there has told them it does not want continued occupation.
It seems that you just can’t tell those glorious defenders of freedom that you don’t want them. America just ignores the government of Iraq.
Overall, despite years of bloody war, the Neocon Wars, America has lost influence in the region, and largely because it has bet on the wrong horses. The effort has been pointless, destroying millions of lives, toppling some perfectly good governments, and leaving chaos in a number of places.
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