John Chuckman
COMMENT – THE ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS – FURTHER WORDS ON THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF MODERN ISRAEL
People easily forget or ignore the fact that the Holocaust was a European event, essentially a bloody effort by one group of Germans to eliminate another group of Germans, the Ashkenazim, whose religion is Judaism and whose language is Yiddish, a dialect of German.
A truly terrifying event, one I studied at some length in the past and one that vividly demonstrates just how savage human beings can be. Murderous chimpanzees are not our nearest evolutionary relatives, but we mimic some of their behavior closely.
But who is it that ended up paying much of the cost for that massive crime in Europe?
The Palestinians, people who live on a different continent, speak a different language, have different religions – people often are not aware that there are many Christian Palestinians – and had nothing to do with Germany’s crimes.
Their treatment has been a monumental injustice, an injustice ignored by all the powerful states of Europe and North America. Over seventy years of conquest and oppression. Even an attempt to wipe out their identity with the refrain, “There is no such thing as a Palestinian.” Plus a massive set of name changes for ancient villages and towns and changes even to the names of foods, such as “Israeli cous cous.” Palestinian Jaffa oranges became Israeli Jaffa oranges.
It has been slow-motion terror for all that time. Despair and hopelessness deliberately applied to millions of people. How can anyone feel good about that? Israel’s behavior towards them is, and has been, appalling. Just as is the acceptance of it by “the West,” countries who regard themselves as enlightened and ceaselessly talk about human and democratic rights.
After General Dayan’s victory in the Six Day War – a war known by experts to have been deliberately planned to achieve the ideal of Greater Israel, Israel with its American support and weapons knowing full well it could defeat disorganized Arab armies – he said that it would be necessary to make the Palestinians miserable so they would want to pick up and leave. And that hellish advice has pretty much informed Israeli policy for over half a century.
But the Palestinians have not left, despite ceaseless abuse – blockades, check-points, property theft, and shootings. The Palestinians endure. They are the true “facts on the ground,” an expression used from time to time by arrogant Israeli politicians as they illegally seized yet another slice of land in the West Bank.
Albert Einstein advocated that Jews who wanted to leave Europe should migrate to Palestine with all its ancient associations with Judaism, but he said they should live peacefully with the inhabitants, forming no army and no exclusive state. His words were ignored in the mad rush to recreate ancient Israel with a different people, a largely European people.
Such an approach was destined from the beginning to create a great deal of human misery, and that is just what it has done. People who look at and admire Israel’s successes deliberately avoid gazing on its many horrors. Perhaps the most searing example is Gaza, a place that resembles nothing so much as a gigantic prison camp surrounded by fences and automated machine gun towers, and it is even tightly controlled on the sea by Israeli gunboats ready to shoot fishermen straying beyond very restrictive limits.
It is a squalid, unhealthy place because Israel doesn’t even permit the materials necessary to repair the heavy damage of so many Israeli attacks and bombings to be imported. It is home to about a million and a half people. Desperate people who can go nowhere without Israeli permission, permission frequently denied. American and European officials visiting Israel virtually always avoid it. They hide their eyes from the shame. It is perhaps the greatest shame we have in the advanced world. Literally, a perpetual large-scale crime against humanity.
The great irony on top of all the other injustices is that it is most likely that the Palestinians are the actual descendants of the Bible’s Hebrew people. The Romans were well known for not expelling the tax-paying farmers and tradesmen residing in their conquered territories, and there is no record of such an expulsion by those meticulous record-keepers. Two millennia of history in a volatile region have changed the religion and language of the original inhabitants.
Had Einstein’s wise words been followed, we would have no crisis in the Middle East. We would not have had all the many wars, the so-called Neocon Wars really representing Washington’s bloodbath efforts to re-create the Middle East for Israel’s comfort. Just as with all Washington’s many colonial wars since WWII, they have been huge failures, a very costly failure in terms of innocent blood and well-run and advancing societies such as Libya or Syria.
Had Einstein’s wise words been followed, we would have had peace.
Monday, August 31, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE HOLOCAUST WAS A EUROPEAN EVENT YET PEOPLE IN ANOTHER CONTINENT AND HAVING NOTHING TO DO WITH IT HAVE PAID THE GREATEST PRICE FOR GERMANY’S CRIMES – TERROR AND OPPRESSION FOR OVER SEVENTY YEARS – THE WEST HIDES ITS EYES AND IGNORES ALL OF ITS PRINCIPLES ABOUT HUMAN AND DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS – THE SIX DAY WAR AND GENERAL DAYAN’S HELLISH ADVICE – TRYING TO BLOT OUT THE PAST OF A PEOPLE – ALBERT EINSTEIN’S WISE ADVICE TO EUROPEAN JEWS WHO WANTED TO SETTLE IN PALESTINE WAS IGNORED BY THOSE EAGER TO TRY RE-CREATING ANCIENT ISRAEL WITH NEW PEOPLE – AN EFFORT SUPPORTED BY AMERICA BOTH AS PART OF ITS GLOBAL EMPIRE AND AS A WAY TO AVOID HUGE NUMBERS OF JEWISH REFUGEES ITSELF – THE BLOODY NEOCON WARS UNDERTAKEN BY WASHINGTON ON ISRAEL’S BEHALF – THE SURPRISING IDENTITY OF THE PALESTINIANS – GAZA AS ONE OF THE GREATEST SHAMES OF THE ADVANCED WORLD – HAD EINSTEIN’S WORDS BEEN FOLLOWED
Friday, August 28, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MEANING AND CONSQUENCES OF AMERICA’S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION – WHY IT IS MEANINGLESS ON MANY LEVELS – WHAT DEFINES THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PARTIES – BOTH ARE WAR PARTIES - THE LACK OF EMPATHY IN AMERICA ABOUT OTHERS – AMERICA’S HISTORICAL SUCCESS IN CONQUEST COMPARED TO NAPOLEON’S FRANCE OR HITLER’S GERMANY EXPLAINED – DOMESTIC POLICY IN AMERICA – AN EMPTY KIND OF POLITICS AND A THREADBARE DEMOCRACY – INTENSITY AND ENTHUSIASM AND BIG EXPENCES OVER NOT MUCH – TRUMP’S LANGUAGE OF THE ALT-RIGHT, THE LANGUAGE OF THE GUTTER – ME, MINE, AND FUCK YOU – LITTLE DIFFERENCE IN CHARACTER BETWEEN BIDEN AND TRUMP – SOME GAIN ON THE PERSONALITY LEVEL WITH BIDEN OVER TRUMP – AMERICANS GET TO CHOOSE A FULL BOWL OF SHIT (TRUMP) OR A HALF BOWL OF SHIT (BIDEN)
John Chuckman
COMMENT – SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS ABOUT THE AMERICAN ELECTION, ITS MEANING AND CONSEQUENCES
On many levels, no matter what partisans may earnestly insist, the American election is close to meaningless.
On the level of American foreign policy, something which perhaps would be better called American global belligerence, virtually nothing will change – both parties, Republicans and Democrats, being dedicated war parties. Virtually all of the money required to run the two large political organizations comes from the same kind of sources, the sources which gain through empire and the brutal institutions required to keep it going.
There is nothing new about that fact. There is only many Americans’ scattered understanding of it. Democratic Presidents – Truman, Johnson, Clinton, Obama – are fully responsible for more than half the horrific slaughter America has inflicted upon the world since WWII. Note that the big exception was Kennedy, who actually tried to do something quite forceful against entrenched interests, and we all know how he ended up. See:
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/
Biden might change a few details of Trump’s policies, but, judging by his own words, no one should expect much. God, the man actually accused Trump of being too soft on destroying the elected government of Venezuela. Of course, Biden has a long record of embracing coups and wars and incursions, and he even participated in some of the activity, as in Ukraine – in other words, a long record of hurting other people and working towards destroying their homes and institutions just for the pleasure and benefit of America’s ruling establishment. It is nothing of which to be proud and offers little promise for the future.
Of course, I tend to emphasize foreign policy, both because it affects more than seven billion people in the world and because I do not live in the United States. People who do live in the United States put great emphasis on domestic policy. Indeed, they tend to ignore foreign policy with an attitude that it doesn’t affect them.
There is, and always has been, a definite lack of empathy in the United States for other people. Many Americans just cannot help themselves believing that the United States is the only part of the world worth being concerned with. They are of course baptized from birth with the viewpoint in the press and from their politicians, both creatures of the ruling establishment. The rather selfish and hedonistic nature of a great deal of American culture contributes to the result too. And of course, the entire history of the United States is just one long march for dominance.
The United States has been far more successful than states like Napoleon’s France or Hitler’s Germany only because for much of its epoch, it faced weak and easily-defeated opponents – as, Indigenous people, Mexico, Hawaiians, and a decrepit Spanish empire. Today, as it works on a global level, that has changed with it making opponents of China and Russia and effectively serving as a catalyst for new Eurasian alliances and arrangements.
It is domestic policy that distinguishes the two parties. Democrats speak kindly about some social measures that will never be enacted because the empire cannot truly afford them, while Republicans speak kindly of keeping government out of citizens’ affairs, except where national security is concerned. That is the real difference between the two parties, two wings of one imperial war party.
Since the country cannot afford social policies people in other advanced states enjoy owing to its immense spending on military and security and imperial matters plus a carefully-nurtured political culture of selfishness, the differences today between the parties often com down to either destroying or not destroying long-existing policies, policies which date from the Roosevelt era to the Johnson era. Things like Social Security and Medicare for the elderly.
It is a pretty empty kind of politics. When combined with the politics of death and destruction in foreign affairs, American elections are actually grim events, if you are paying attention. But most Americans are not paying attention. They are intensely taken up by differences in rhetoric and style. And elections as events are heavily tarted-up by glitzy advertising, huge flags, celebrities, brassy music, ghost-written speeches loaded with dramatic (but empty) phrases, and heavily-choreographed campaign rallies.
It all amounts to intensity and enthusiasm over not very much. That pretty much sums up American politics because it is a politics structured to change not very much while captivating and entertaining people. Those who own America do not like change. Just so those who administer the empire, the Pentagon and security intelligence services and the State Department. Huge, rigid, wealthy bureaucracies with change representing only a threat.
On the level of personality, there is a gain to be made with Biden not having Trump’s abrasive, foul-mouthed, insulting habits. That is one gain to which I would look forward. It has been depressing to read the language at America’s highest level. Almost as though everything you were taught by fine teachers and in church and by your mother had become worthless. The language of the angry, belly-over-the-belt, Alt-right mob streaming from the Oval Office. The language of the gutter.
It may prove to be a bit more than just aesthetic too. There can be little doubt that, at times, in international affairs words do make a difference. Trump has experienced that in his own ghoulish entourage, as with North Korea and the destructive words of John Bolton.
On the character level, there is little difference between the two men except in the particular focus of abuse and corruption they each favor. Biden has a dark record of dealings in corruption, nepotism, faithfulness to money and power, and some genuinely unpleasant dealings with women. See:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/03/12/john-chuckman-comment-objections-to-joe-biden-a-consolidation-of-points-from-several-earlier-comments-the-feeble-state-of-american-democracy/
Trump never has done anything other than for himself, and he leaves a long trail of betrayed and disillusioned people behind him. The record number of early tell-all books by family and close associates, with more scheduled soon to come, says that eloquently. But isn’t that exactly the nature of America’s Alt-right, me and mine and fuck you?
I do take the view of one clever wag who said the election sums up to a choice between a full bowl of shit (Trump) and a half bowl of shit (Biden). It is one of the clearest examples ever of the threadbare nature of the term American democracy.
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/
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/08/18/john-chuckman-comment-the-nature-of-republics-versus-democracies-the-instructive-example-of-the-united-states-a-country-yhat-has-gone-from-a-very-undemocratic-early-republic-at-it/
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/01/14/john-chuckman-comment-on-the-nature-of-trumps-leadership-and-of-his-followers-some-perhaps-not-widely-understood-aspects-of-american-society/
COMMENT – SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS ABOUT THE AMERICAN ELECTION, ITS MEANING AND CONSEQUENCES
On many levels, no matter what partisans may earnestly insist, the American election is close to meaningless.
On the level of American foreign policy, something which perhaps would be better called American global belligerence, virtually nothing will change – both parties, Republicans and Democrats, being dedicated war parties. Virtually all of the money required to run the two large political organizations comes from the same kind of sources, the sources which gain through empire and the brutal institutions required to keep it going.
There is nothing new about that fact. There is only many Americans’ scattered understanding of it. Democratic Presidents – Truman, Johnson, Clinton, Obama – are fully responsible for more than half the horrific slaughter America has inflicted upon the world since WWII. Note that the big exception was Kennedy, who actually tried to do something quite forceful against entrenched interests, and we all know how he ended up. See:
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/
Biden might change a few details of Trump’s policies, but, judging by his own words, no one should expect much. God, the man actually accused Trump of being too soft on destroying the elected government of Venezuela. Of course, Biden has a long record of embracing coups and wars and incursions, and he even participated in some of the activity, as in Ukraine – in other words, a long record of hurting other people and working towards destroying their homes and institutions just for the pleasure and benefit of America’s ruling establishment. It is nothing of which to be proud and offers little promise for the future.
Of course, I tend to emphasize foreign policy, both because it affects more than seven billion people in the world and because I do not live in the United States. People who do live in the United States put great emphasis on domestic policy. Indeed, they tend to ignore foreign policy with an attitude that it doesn’t affect them.
There is, and always has been, a definite lack of empathy in the United States for other people. Many Americans just cannot help themselves believing that the United States is the only part of the world worth being concerned with. They are of course baptized from birth with the viewpoint in the press and from their politicians, both creatures of the ruling establishment. The rather selfish and hedonistic nature of a great deal of American culture contributes to the result too. And of course, the entire history of the United States is just one long march for dominance.
The United States has been far more successful than states like Napoleon’s France or Hitler’s Germany only because for much of its epoch, it faced weak and easily-defeated opponents – as, Indigenous people, Mexico, Hawaiians, and a decrepit Spanish empire. Today, as it works on a global level, that has changed with it making opponents of China and Russia and effectively serving as a catalyst for new Eurasian alliances and arrangements.
It is domestic policy that distinguishes the two parties. Democrats speak kindly about some social measures that will never be enacted because the empire cannot truly afford them, while Republicans speak kindly of keeping government out of citizens’ affairs, except where national security is concerned. That is the real difference between the two parties, two wings of one imperial war party.
Since the country cannot afford social policies people in other advanced states enjoy owing to its immense spending on military and security and imperial matters plus a carefully-nurtured political culture of selfishness, the differences today between the parties often com down to either destroying or not destroying long-existing policies, policies which date from the Roosevelt era to the Johnson era. Things like Social Security and Medicare for the elderly.
It is a pretty empty kind of politics. When combined with the politics of death and destruction in foreign affairs, American elections are actually grim events, if you are paying attention. But most Americans are not paying attention. They are intensely taken up by differences in rhetoric and style. And elections as events are heavily tarted-up by glitzy advertising, huge flags, celebrities, brassy music, ghost-written speeches loaded with dramatic (but empty) phrases, and heavily-choreographed campaign rallies.
It all amounts to intensity and enthusiasm over not very much. That pretty much sums up American politics because it is a politics structured to change not very much while captivating and entertaining people. Those who own America do not like change. Just so those who administer the empire, the Pentagon and security intelligence services and the State Department. Huge, rigid, wealthy bureaucracies with change representing only a threat.
On the level of personality, there is a gain to be made with Biden not having Trump’s abrasive, foul-mouthed, insulting habits. That is one gain to which I would look forward. It has been depressing to read the language at America’s highest level. Almost as though everything you were taught by fine teachers and in church and by your mother had become worthless. The language of the angry, belly-over-the-belt, Alt-right mob streaming from the Oval Office. The language of the gutter.
It may prove to be a bit more than just aesthetic too. There can be little doubt that, at times, in international affairs words do make a difference. Trump has experienced that in his own ghoulish entourage, as with North Korea and the destructive words of John Bolton.
On the character level, there is little difference between the two men except in the particular focus of abuse and corruption they each favor. Biden has a dark record of dealings in corruption, nepotism, faithfulness to money and power, and some genuinely unpleasant dealings with women. See:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/03/12/john-chuckman-comment-objections-to-joe-biden-a-consolidation-of-points-from-several-earlier-comments-the-feeble-state-of-american-democracy/
Trump never has done anything other than for himself, and he leaves a long trail of betrayed and disillusioned people behind him. The record number of early tell-all books by family and close associates, with more scheduled soon to come, says that eloquently. But isn’t that exactly the nature of America’s Alt-right, me and mine and fuck you?
I do take the view of one clever wag who said the election sums up to a choice between a full bowl of shit (Trump) and a half bowl of shit (Biden). It is one of the clearest examples ever of the threadbare nature of the term American democracy.
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/
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/08/18/john-chuckman-comment-the-nature-of-republics-versus-democracies-the-instructive-example-of-the-united-states-a-country-yhat-has-gone-from-a-very-undemocratic-early-republic-at-it/
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/01/14/john-chuckman-comment-on-the-nature-of-trumps-leadership-and-of-his-followers-some-perhaps-not-widely-understood-aspects-of-american-society/
Thursday, August 27, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AN AUTHOR’S CONCERN OVER POSSIBLE FUTURE MILITARY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MACHINES SEEMS MISPLACED – HOW ABOUT CONCERN WITH ACHIEVABLE MATTERS LIKE AMERICA’S TERRIBLE MILITARY MACHINE TODAY? – OR AMERICA’S APPROACH TO NUCLEAR WEAPONS? – OR AMERICA’S APPROACH TO NUCLEAR TREATIES AND AGREEMENTS? – THE EFFORT TO DOMINATE THE GLOBE? – WE HAVE FAR MORE REAL AND IMMINENT THREATS THAN POSSIBLE FUTURE MACHINES AND, BESIDES, NO POWERFUL EMERGING TECHNOLOGY CAN BE STOPPED WHEN IT IS READY – THE USE OF THE DATED AND INAPPROPRIATE TERM “AMERICAN GI’S”
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MICHAEL T. KLARE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“US Military Robots on Fast Track to Leadership Role”
“It’s time for Congress to ask tough questions about automating combat decision-making before pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into the enterprise”
The author’s "American GIs" is a dated and inappropriate phrase.
Its use calls up the notion of citizen soldiers in WWII, cartoonist Bill Mauldin’s sentimental soldiers.
But that's not what you have today at all in America.
You have a gigantic mercenary army, murderously well-equipped, with bases in 800 to 1,000 places, and it is used against people who have not attacked or threatened the United States. It is even organized along some especially ferocious lines like special forces.
You know, the special forces that in Vietnam used to go out at night, crawling into villages on their bellies to slit the throats of village eiders and officials with big knives?
It was called Operation Phoenix, was run under the guidance of the CIA, and at least 40,000 people were executed in that fashion.
Never mind distractions over a fantasy future of military machines. Anyway, no one ever stopped a powerful new technology from emerging when it was ready.
If ever there were a good candidate for doing that, it was nuclear weapons, but instead what do we see? Over fifteen thousand of them in nine countries, and a country like the United States updating its arsenal with new “more usable” ones whose yield can be dialed up or down like the suction on a vacuum cleaner.
What about just focusing on something more achievable, like stopping the killing and destruction America practices right now around the globe? If that malicious activity were ended, there would a much more promising environment for dealing with new threats.
America also is the world’s greatest arms dealer, by far, dumping huge quantities of sophisticated weapons into precarious regions like the Middle East. That hardly benefits the cause of peace or genuine security.
And still further on the matter of nuclear weapons, over many decades we had some limited success in controlling deployment and proliferation through various hard-won treaties and agreements. But even those are now being eaten away, piece by piece (INF, Open Skies, Space Weapons Treaty, and now Start) by a United States eager and determined to dominate the globe.
What can you say about such a philosophy? It is far more real and imminent a threat than some possible future machines.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MICHAEL T. KLARE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“US Military Robots on Fast Track to Leadership Role”
“It’s time for Congress to ask tough questions about automating combat decision-making before pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into the enterprise”
The author’s "American GIs" is a dated and inappropriate phrase.
Its use calls up the notion of citizen soldiers in WWII, cartoonist Bill Mauldin’s sentimental soldiers.
But that's not what you have today at all in America.
You have a gigantic mercenary army, murderously well-equipped, with bases in 800 to 1,000 places, and it is used against people who have not attacked or threatened the United States. It is even organized along some especially ferocious lines like special forces.
You know, the special forces that in Vietnam used to go out at night, crawling into villages on their bellies to slit the throats of village eiders and officials with big knives?
It was called Operation Phoenix, was run under the guidance of the CIA, and at least 40,000 people were executed in that fashion.
Never mind distractions over a fantasy future of military machines. Anyway, no one ever stopped a powerful new technology from emerging when it was ready.
If ever there were a good candidate for doing that, it was nuclear weapons, but instead what do we see? Over fifteen thousand of them in nine countries, and a country like the United States updating its arsenal with new “more usable” ones whose yield can be dialed up or down like the suction on a vacuum cleaner.
What about just focusing on something more achievable, like stopping the killing and destruction America practices right now around the globe? If that malicious activity were ended, there would a much more promising environment for dealing with new threats.
America also is the world’s greatest arms dealer, by far, dumping huge quantities of sophisticated weapons into precarious regions like the Middle East. That hardly benefits the cause of peace or genuine security.
And still further on the matter of nuclear weapons, over many decades we had some limited success in controlling deployment and proliferation through various hard-won treaties and agreements. But even those are now being eaten away, piece by piece (INF, Open Skies, Space Weapons Treaty, and now Start) by a United States eager and determined to dominate the globe.
What can you say about such a philosophy? It is far more real and imminent a threat than some possible future machines.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE ALEXEI NAVALNY AFFAIR – NONE OF THE FACTS THAT WE HAVE SO FAR SUPPORT ASSERTIONS OF POISONING – THIS IS BEGINNING TO RESEMBLE BRITISH PRIME MINISTER THERESA MAY’S DISGRACEFUL PERFORMANCE IN THE SERGEI SKRIPAL AFFAIR OF 2018 – DARK SUGGESTIONS AND NAME-CALLING WITH NO PROOF – HYSTERIA AND NO INFORMATION – ANYTHING IS GOOD ENOUGH TO SMEAR SOMEONE THE UNITED STATES DOES NOT LIKE, AND IT REALLY HATES RUSSIA ABOUT THE SAME WAY ROME HATED CARTHAGE – THERE CAN NEVER BE ENOUGH RUSSO-PHOBIA – THE SUSPICIOUS-SOUNDING OUTFIT THAT WENT TO THE HUGE COST OF BRINGING NAVALNY TO GERMANY FROM SIBERIA BY AIR AMBULANCE
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“Comatose Russian dissident Alexei Navalny stable upon arrival in Germany”
“Supporters of fierce critic of Vladimir Putin believe his tea was laced with poison”
We are experiencing almost total misinformation in our press about Navalny and this incident.
First, from the Russian doctors’ information, it seems likely that what he experienced was diabetic shock (Hypoglycemia). Tests were conducted in both countries, Russia and Germany, and there is a problem with one of his systems, as they found alcohol in his urine, but that problem has many potential causes, including some drugs, and no agent has yet been identified.
Russia has nothing to hide. It allowed Navalny quickly to be taken to Germany, and the Siberian hospital shared all of its information about the patient.
Second, he has never been a threat to Putin. He is not taken seriously by great numbers of Russians. He's regarded as a bit of a flake. Yet our press suggests that he is more important than he is.
Third, the only thing he ingested before the incident was tea, and it came from the hands of his own companion. The airport restaurant or bar where it was purchased had absolutely no idea for whom it was intended. Security cameras recorded the purchase.
Russia has announced a preliminary investigation, but it is largely to please Angela Merkel who insisted on it.
All the dark suggestions and name-calling we read have no basis in fact. The approach is starting to resemble former British Prime Minister Theresa May’s disgraceful handling of the Skripal Affair, the supposed poisoning of former-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yullia, in Salisbury, England by means of an exotic nerve agent. No proof ever was supplied concerning a single claim about that mysterious event, and the supposed victims literally disappeared at the hands of British security services.
The outfit that promptly sent an air ambulance all the way to Siberia to bring Navalny to a hospital in Germany is called the Cinema for Peace Foundation, a rather odd-sounding and well-financed entity based in Germany with a rather vague declared purpose. Its web site says, “We are here to encourage greater awareness of global social, political and humanitarian challenges of our time through film.”
I know nothing about the organization and make no claims, but its odd name and declared purpose and its richly-resourced activity in this case do remind one of the CIA’s many well-financed front organizations, which include NGOs abroad.
These events are typical of what we see so often these days. Hysteria with no information. Just so someone whom the United States doesn’t like can be smeared or belittled. As far as American authorities are concerned, there can never be enough Russophobia.
A final note, Navalny is no hero. The very fact that he is promoted that way is suspicious. He has publicly compared migrants to cockroaches.
LATER UPDATE
“The German government says tests performed on samples taken from Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny showed the presence of Novichok, the Soviet-era nerve agent”
I simply do not believe this report. Why?
Because military nerve agents like Novichok kill within minutes, and they do so after the tiniest drop of exposure. That is not at all what happened to Navalny.
This is a cheap reprise of Britain’s phony Skripal Affair of a couple of years ago. Something indeed happened to Sergei Skripal and his daughter, but it was definitely not exposure to nerve agent.
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/07/13/john-chuckman-comment-trump-wants-extradition-of-ex-british-spy-christopher-steele-the-problem-with-america-is-much-bigger-than-trumps-many-stupidities-the-same-kinds-of-things-a/
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“Comatose Russian dissident Alexei Navalny stable upon arrival in Germany”
“Supporters of fierce critic of Vladimir Putin believe his tea was laced with poison”
We are experiencing almost total misinformation in our press about Navalny and this incident.
First, from the Russian doctors’ information, it seems likely that what he experienced was diabetic shock (Hypoglycemia). Tests were conducted in both countries, Russia and Germany, and there is a problem with one of his systems, as they found alcohol in his urine, but that problem has many potential causes, including some drugs, and no agent has yet been identified.
Russia has nothing to hide. It allowed Navalny quickly to be taken to Germany, and the Siberian hospital shared all of its information about the patient.
Second, he has never been a threat to Putin. He is not taken seriously by great numbers of Russians. He's regarded as a bit of a flake. Yet our press suggests that he is more important than he is.
Third, the only thing he ingested before the incident was tea, and it came from the hands of his own companion. The airport restaurant or bar where it was purchased had absolutely no idea for whom it was intended. Security cameras recorded the purchase.
Russia has announced a preliminary investigation, but it is largely to please Angela Merkel who insisted on it.
All the dark suggestions and name-calling we read have no basis in fact. The approach is starting to resemble former British Prime Minister Theresa May’s disgraceful handling of the Skripal Affair, the supposed poisoning of former-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yullia, in Salisbury, England by means of an exotic nerve agent. No proof ever was supplied concerning a single claim about that mysterious event, and the supposed victims literally disappeared at the hands of British security services.
The outfit that promptly sent an air ambulance all the way to Siberia to bring Navalny to a hospital in Germany is called the Cinema for Peace Foundation, a rather odd-sounding and well-financed entity based in Germany with a rather vague declared purpose. Its web site says, “We are here to encourage greater awareness of global social, political and humanitarian challenges of our time through film.”
I know nothing about the organization and make no claims, but its odd name and declared purpose and its richly-resourced activity in this case do remind one of the CIA’s many well-financed front organizations, which include NGOs abroad.
These events are typical of what we see so often these days. Hysteria with no information. Just so someone whom the United States doesn’t like can be smeared or belittled. As far as American authorities are concerned, there can never be enough Russophobia.
A final note, Navalny is no hero. The very fact that he is promoted that way is suspicious. He has publicly compared migrants to cockroaches.
LATER UPDATE
“The German government says tests performed on samples taken from Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny showed the presence of Novichok, the Soviet-era nerve agent”
I simply do not believe this report. Why?
Because military nerve agents like Novichok kill within minutes, and they do so after the tiniest drop of exposure. That is not at all what happened to Navalny.
This is a cheap reprise of Britain’s phony Skripal Affair of a couple of years ago. Something indeed happened to Sergei Skripal and his daughter, but it was definitely not exposure to nerve agent.
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/07/13/john-chuckman-comment-trump-wants-extradition-of-ex-british-spy-christopher-steele-the-problem-with-america-is-much-bigger-than-trumps-many-stupidities-the-same-kinds-of-things-a/
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION AND THE ROLE OF HUMAN CREDULITY IN POLITICS – I SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF EXPLAINING WHY AMERICAN EVANGELICAL RELIGIOUS PEOPLE SUPPORT A TOTALLY IRRELIGIOUS AND IMMORAL MAN LIKE DONALD TRUMP – A FEW MORE WORDS ON TRUMP’S CHARACTER – IRRATIONALITY’S ROLE IN SOCIETY AND POLITICS – NOTE ON INTELLIGENCE AND POLITICAL LEANING
John Chuckman
COMMENT ON TRUMP AND THE EVANGELICALS AND HUMAN CREDULITY IN POLITICS
I think I just solved a problem, one which has bothered me since I became aware of it.
And that is the loyalty of American Evangelicals to Trump, a totally irreligious and immoral man. He is embraced by people, many of them, who put religious conviction and principles first, or think they do.
Reading references to what has been staged at the Republican convention – I haven’t watched television for many years – It all became clear. The convention itself is staged to tell people about a reality that simply doesn’t exist. Trump’s concern for the American people. Trump’s decisive leadership. Trump’s good relations with minorities. Trump’s close family ties.
It is all virtually the opposite of what we can plainly see in the world plus what a record number (for so early in a political career) of important insider books have revealed, yet obviously there are many who believe it because they want to believe it, and perhaps they never look at reality or read books, just as Trump never does.
These are highly credulous people, and credulity, the more I think about it, is characteristic of many on the Right. It certainly is of the religious Right, people like the Evangelicals. After all, their own basic set of religious beliefs is pretty unworldly stuff - from virgin birth to dying for the sins of others and rising from the dead – yet they cling to them tenaciously.
And so it is with Trump, a prejudiced man, an inherently unfair man, a liar, a cheat, a thief, even an assassin, a man faithless to associates and family, someone out only for himself. Credulous types really do want to believe otherwise and welcome the kind of cheap-glitz stage show being presented by Republicans, a political version of a giant tent-revival meeting, complete with stand-up testimonials from some of the faithful.
Recall, in the early days of America’s current massive urban social protests, when Trump had the square in front of the White House cleared of protesters, and he marched himself over to briefly stand in front of a church for a photo-op, holding, of all things, a Bible.
To critical thinkers, and that certainly includes some people of faith, it was bizarre and comical, a Monty Python moment. You might share in the words of Charles Laughton from the film, “Witness for the Prosecution,” that “I’m astonished the Testament didn’t leap from his hand.” But Trump – lifelong conman, grifter, flim-flamer – understands instinctively human credulity. It comes as naturally as breathing for him. I think there can be little doubt that for millions that photo was reassuring and comforting.
Intelligence may just play a role too. It has been convincingly demonstrated by psychologists that more liberal or Leftish beliefs, in general, are associated with higher average intelligence than Right-wing beliefs.
Note that I am not saying Democrats didn’t do the same kinds of things in their convention. It’s just that the contrast between story and reality is so much more extreme with the Republicans, insanely so, because Trump himself is so extreme, insanely so. He is, almost certainly, the most ruthless and unethical man ever to be President, a true sociopath, and that is saying something because American history has a large cast of ugly characters, contrary to the pleasant stories presented in high school history and civics texts.
You would have a mighty hard time convincing loyal Trump followers – not the sleazy operators and criminal types who do know better and share the spoils with Trump, but the many humble types – that reality is entirely night-and-day different than what they watched. Here is one of many places where human irrationality plays an important part in society’s affairs.
We do see the same kind of irrationality in other parts of American society and politics, from the belief that Russia is evil and that China is a cheat to the belief that America’s Constitution is perfection and American society defends and preserves, for all, justice and respect for law.
No wonder we make so little progress.
COMMENT ON TRUMP AND THE EVANGELICALS AND HUMAN CREDULITY IN POLITICS
I think I just solved a problem, one which has bothered me since I became aware of it.
And that is the loyalty of American Evangelicals to Trump, a totally irreligious and immoral man. He is embraced by people, many of them, who put religious conviction and principles first, or think they do.
Reading references to what has been staged at the Republican convention – I haven’t watched television for many years – It all became clear. The convention itself is staged to tell people about a reality that simply doesn’t exist. Trump’s concern for the American people. Trump’s decisive leadership. Trump’s good relations with minorities. Trump’s close family ties.
It is all virtually the opposite of what we can plainly see in the world plus what a record number (for so early in a political career) of important insider books have revealed, yet obviously there are many who believe it because they want to believe it, and perhaps they never look at reality or read books, just as Trump never does.
These are highly credulous people, and credulity, the more I think about it, is characteristic of many on the Right. It certainly is of the religious Right, people like the Evangelicals. After all, their own basic set of religious beliefs is pretty unworldly stuff - from virgin birth to dying for the sins of others and rising from the dead – yet they cling to them tenaciously.
And so it is with Trump, a prejudiced man, an inherently unfair man, a liar, a cheat, a thief, even an assassin, a man faithless to associates and family, someone out only for himself. Credulous types really do want to believe otherwise and welcome the kind of cheap-glitz stage show being presented by Republicans, a political version of a giant tent-revival meeting, complete with stand-up testimonials from some of the faithful.
Recall, in the early days of America’s current massive urban social protests, when Trump had the square in front of the White House cleared of protesters, and he marched himself over to briefly stand in front of a church for a photo-op, holding, of all things, a Bible.
To critical thinkers, and that certainly includes some people of faith, it was bizarre and comical, a Monty Python moment. You might share in the words of Charles Laughton from the film, “Witness for the Prosecution,” that “I’m astonished the Testament didn’t leap from his hand.” But Trump – lifelong conman, grifter, flim-flamer – understands instinctively human credulity. It comes as naturally as breathing for him. I think there can be little doubt that for millions that photo was reassuring and comforting.
Intelligence may just play a role too. It has been convincingly demonstrated by psychologists that more liberal or Leftish beliefs, in general, are associated with higher average intelligence than Right-wing beliefs.
Note that I am not saying Democrats didn’t do the same kinds of things in their convention. It’s just that the contrast between story and reality is so much more extreme with the Republicans, insanely so, because Trump himself is so extreme, insanely so. He is, almost certainly, the most ruthless and unethical man ever to be President, a true sociopath, and that is saying something because American history has a large cast of ugly characters, contrary to the pleasant stories presented in high school history and civics texts.
You would have a mighty hard time convincing loyal Trump followers – not the sleazy operators and criminal types who do know better and share the spoils with Trump, but the many humble types – that reality is entirely night-and-day different than what they watched. Here is one of many places where human irrationality plays an important part in society’s affairs.
We do see the same kind of irrationality in other parts of American society and politics, from the belief that Russia is evil and that China is a cheat to the belief that America’s Constitution is perfection and American society defends and preserves, for all, justice and respect for law.
No wonder we make so little progress.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: A GOOD ARTICLE ON AMERICA’S TOXIC POLITICAL ELECTION CHOICE – THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM OF AMERICA’S EXTREME DIVISIONS TODAY – NOT EVEN THE COMMON ENEMY OF A PANDEMIC BRINGS AMERICANS TO RALLY AND WORK TOGETHER – AN UNSTABLE SITUATION PERHAPS PRESAGING MORE DESTRUCTIVE EVENTS
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY TOM LEONARD IN MADNESS HUB
“America's toxic choice: Two deeply flawed candidates, a nation riven by Covid and racist violence... and what promises to be the dirtiest fight for the White House ever.”
http://www.madnesshub.com/2020/08/americas-toxic-choice-two-deeply-flawed.html?showComment=1598448482921#c6226168096035450843
A very good, thoughtful piece.
From my point of view, the fundamental problem today is America's division.
It is divided along many lines as I have never seen it before.
Even the pandemic has not reduced the divisions as one expects national emergencies to do, to bring people together. It has perhaps only emphasized them further, as with battles over masks and medications and the vile accusations towards China, the pandemic’s first victim.
It is the kind of unstable situation one expects to see presaging big destructive events like civil war or revolt.
And in a changing world, with America losing its unique post-WWII place, even its power establishment is uncertain and fearful. Full of envy about China. Afraid for their position of privilege.
The very worst kind of person to throw into a situation like that is a vicious narcissist like Trump, a man of absolutely no principles.
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/06/14/john-chuckman-comment-americas-civil-unrest-is-unlikely-to-produce-real-change-in-any-of-the-matters-distubing-so-many-protests-likely-will-loose-steam-gradually-american/
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/07/14/john-chuckman-comment-a-perfect-storm-brewing-in-america-a-mismanaged-pandemic-economic-and-financial-turmoil-great-unrest-over-social-in-justice-and-severe-economic-inequality/
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/04/19/john-chuckman-comment-many-things-seriously-wrong-with-the-way-america-is-organized-and-governed-a-writer-says-no-sense-of-the-public-good-in-the-country-why-this-is-so-and-why-it-cannot/
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY TOM LEONARD IN MADNESS HUB
“America's toxic choice: Two deeply flawed candidates, a nation riven by Covid and racist violence... and what promises to be the dirtiest fight for the White House ever.”
http://www.madnesshub.com/2020/08/americas-toxic-choice-two-deeply-flawed.html?showComment=1598448482921#c6226168096035450843
A very good, thoughtful piece.
From my point of view, the fundamental problem today is America's division.
It is divided along many lines as I have never seen it before.
Even the pandemic has not reduced the divisions as one expects national emergencies to do, to bring people together. It has perhaps only emphasized them further, as with battles over masks and medications and the vile accusations towards China, the pandemic’s first victim.
It is the kind of unstable situation one expects to see presaging big destructive events like civil war or revolt.
And in a changing world, with America losing its unique post-WWII place, even its power establishment is uncertain and fearful. Full of envy about China. Afraid for their position of privilege.
The very worst kind of person to throw into a situation like that is a vicious narcissist like Trump, a man of absolutely no principles.
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/06/14/john-chuckman-comment-americas-civil-unrest-is-unlikely-to-produce-real-change-in-any-of-the-matters-distubing-so-many-protests-likely-will-loose-steam-gradually-american/
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/07/14/john-chuckman-comment-a-perfect-storm-brewing-in-america-a-mismanaged-pandemic-economic-and-financial-turmoil-great-unrest-over-social-in-justice-and-severe-economic-inequality/
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/04/19/john-chuckman-comment-many-things-seriously-wrong-with-the-way-america-is-organized-and-governed-a-writer-says-no-sense-of-the-public-good-in-the-country-why-this-is-so-and-why-it-cannot/
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AN ABLE CRITIQUE OF A ZIONIST IDEOLOGUE’S NASTY ATTACK ON THE LATE EDWARD SAID – A FINE AND GENTLE AND LEARNED MAN TREATED AS A TERRORIST BY A WRITER WHO SHOULD BE ASHAMED – IDEOLOGUES ARE PRONE TO DANGEROUS FANTASIES AND ARE THEREFORE DANGEROUS PEOPLE
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY LAWRENCE DAVIDSON IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
"An Attack on Edward Said’s Legacy"
"Caroline Glick’s tirade, picked up by Newsweek, against the late American-Palestinian scholar"
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/24/an-attack-on-edward-saids-legacy/
Caroline Glick provides the world with yet another example of the absurdities committed by intense ideologues defending Israel’s bloody excesses.
Referring to Edward Said – a fine, gentle, humane man of exceptional intellectual ability – in terms of terrorism is just stone-stupid.
It is comparable in its angry blindness to the line, “There’s no such thing as a Palestinian,” first uttered by Golda Meir and repeated occasionally by some American politicians looking for a large campaign-finance handout.
Or, even worse, some American views of 2018-19 events in Gaza with heavily-armed Israeli troops ambushing unarmed people demonstrating for some basic rights. Israel’s brave army killed more than two hundred, wounded thousands, and the tally included women and children. In America, the slaughter was characterized by several prominent figures as “restrained.”
Ideologues of any description are prone to dangerous fantasies and are therefore dangerous people.
This is true of all such extremists, of which there are many in American society itself.
Israel is built on the same brutal sense of “exceptionalism” as the American empire is. Indeed, it is really just part of it.
Thanks for including the photo of Edward Said with Daniel Barenboim, a man of principle and one of my favorite pianists.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY LAWRENCE DAVIDSON IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
"An Attack on Edward Said’s Legacy"
"Caroline Glick’s tirade, picked up by Newsweek, against the late American-Palestinian scholar"
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/24/an-attack-on-edward-saids-legacy/
Caroline Glick provides the world with yet another example of the absurdities committed by intense ideologues defending Israel’s bloody excesses.
Referring to Edward Said – a fine, gentle, humane man of exceptional intellectual ability – in terms of terrorism is just stone-stupid.
It is comparable in its angry blindness to the line, “There’s no such thing as a Palestinian,” first uttered by Golda Meir and repeated occasionally by some American politicians looking for a large campaign-finance handout.
Or, even worse, some American views of 2018-19 events in Gaza with heavily-armed Israeli troops ambushing unarmed people demonstrating for some basic rights. Israel’s brave army killed more than two hundred, wounded thousands, and the tally included women and children. In America, the slaughter was characterized by several prominent figures as “restrained.”
Ideologues of any description are prone to dangerous fantasies and are therefore dangerous people.
This is true of all such extremists, of which there are many in American society itself.
Israel is built on the same brutal sense of “exceptionalism” as the American empire is. Indeed, it is really just part of it.
Thanks for including the photo of Edward Said with Daniel Barenboim, a man of principle and one of my favorite pianists.
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MORE AMERICAN DISINFORMATION ABOUT TALIBAN SOLDIERS BEING PAID TO KILL AMERICANS – THIS TIME SUPPOSEDLY PAID BY IRAN INSTEAD OF RUSSIA – WHY NOT THROW IN CHINA TOO? – WHY THE TALIBAN NEED NO BOUNTIES TO SHOOT AMERICANS – DETAILS OF AMERICA’S BRUTAL, POINTLESS CAMPAIGN IN AFGHANISTAN – ONE ACHIEVING ONLY DEAD CIVILIANS AND A TIDAL WAVE OF HARD DRUGS ON WORLD MARKETS PLUS ANOTHER GLORIOUS AMERICAN DEFEAT – IMPORTANT AND STILL-IGNORED FACTS ABOUT OSAMA BIN LADEN AND 9/11
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA TODAY
“US intelligence agencies have another bounty case in Afghanistan, alleging Iran paid the Taliban to attack American forces”
America paid Afghan Mujahideen groups big money to kill Russians in the 1980s. A few billion dollars went for the purpose, which makes these recent American accusations both hypocritical and paltry.
One of the Mujahideen they paid was Osama bin Laden himself. He was regarded then as an exemplary recruit in the CIA’s covert war against Russia, a judgment that would be altered just a tad later.
Following 9/11, America invaded Afghanistan for no good reason and spent nineteen years killing Taliban plus lots of other people. I say “no good reason" because there has never been any evidence that the Taliban were involved in 9/11. Their crime was having given refugee shelter to Osama bin Laden, a man regarded as a devout Muslim and a heroic fighter against the Russians, when he was told to stay out of his home country, Saudi Arabia.
In fact, we have never received any evidence worth discussing that Osama bin Laden himself was involved in 9/11. When the US asked the country’s then Taliban government for his extradition, they said we need some evidence, a response that is both normal and legal in extraditions requests. Instead of offering any, America shortly invaded.
Wedding parties were frequently shot-up or bombed, with scores killed, because Afghan men traditionally fire their rifles into the air at such events, a kind of mountain man’s celebratory fireworks, but after the American invasion, the harmless practice drew helicopter gunships or fighter-bombers or shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later American patrols.
Here is something I wrote more than a decade ago about America’s brutal methods in Afghanistan – the full essay from which it comes is linked at the bottom of the page:
“From several ex-soldiers comes a vivid image of America’s house-to-house methods of searching for “insurgents.” A small block of C-4 plastique is fixed to the front door of a house, the door is blown in, and several armored giants rush through the shock and smoke with their automatic weapons at the ready. Women and children are held to one side at gunpoint, while any men are taken roughly for questioning. In most cases, the men have nothing worthwhile to say, but they and other members of their families are left with a terrifying experience they will never forget. These violent procedures have been repeated thousands of times.”
No one in that country needs a bribe to kill Americans.
What is the easy way for America to be done with this all, the ceaseless lies and killing and waste?
Get out, completely out of Afghanistan. Not piecemeal, like Trump is attempting, but out. Right away. You are doing absolutely nothing worth doing there.
And you never have done anything worth doing there. It has been nineteen years of vicious stupidity against a people who never were your enemies until you invaded them.
The invasion never made sense, and nineteen years of sustained effort has ended in another American defeat. How very glorious.
The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11, and despite America’s bombing and shooting rampages, they still control much of the country.
What was the one tangible achievement of America’s invasion and occupation, apart from the deaths of tens of thousands of Afghan civilians?
Bringing back the opium poppy production which the Taliban government had previously banned and flooding world markets with cheap hard drugs. We see the evidence weekly in the United States with violent street-gang shootings over turf and unpaid bills in every major city. The bounteous drug supply lowered prices and created desperate competition in markets for hard drugs.
Imagine spending countless billions of dollars to achieve something like that?
America often just does not make sense anymore. Immense expenditures on death and destruction to achieve nothing. Much as in Vietnam.
The world really would be altogether a better place without the blundering violence and lies of the “indispensable nation.”
Readers may enjoy this essay of more than a decade ago:
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/americas-brutal-tactics/
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA TODAY
“US intelligence agencies have another bounty case in Afghanistan, alleging Iran paid the Taliban to attack American forces”
America paid Afghan Mujahideen groups big money to kill Russians in the 1980s. A few billion dollars went for the purpose, which makes these recent American accusations both hypocritical and paltry.
One of the Mujahideen they paid was Osama bin Laden himself. He was regarded then as an exemplary recruit in the CIA’s covert war against Russia, a judgment that would be altered just a tad later.
Following 9/11, America invaded Afghanistan for no good reason and spent nineteen years killing Taliban plus lots of other people. I say “no good reason" because there has never been any evidence that the Taliban were involved in 9/11. Their crime was having given refugee shelter to Osama bin Laden, a man regarded as a devout Muslim and a heroic fighter against the Russians, when he was told to stay out of his home country, Saudi Arabia.
In fact, we have never received any evidence worth discussing that Osama bin Laden himself was involved in 9/11. When the US asked the country’s then Taliban government for his extradition, they said we need some evidence, a response that is both normal and legal in extraditions requests. Instead of offering any, America shortly invaded.
Wedding parties were frequently shot-up or bombed, with scores killed, because Afghan men traditionally fire their rifles into the air at such events, a kind of mountain man’s celebratory fireworks, but after the American invasion, the harmless practice drew helicopter gunships or fighter-bombers or shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later American patrols.
Here is something I wrote more than a decade ago about America’s brutal methods in Afghanistan – the full essay from which it comes is linked at the bottom of the page:
“From several ex-soldiers comes a vivid image of America’s house-to-house methods of searching for “insurgents.” A small block of C-4 plastique is fixed to the front door of a house, the door is blown in, and several armored giants rush through the shock and smoke with their automatic weapons at the ready. Women and children are held to one side at gunpoint, while any men are taken roughly for questioning. In most cases, the men have nothing worthwhile to say, but they and other members of their families are left with a terrifying experience they will never forget. These violent procedures have been repeated thousands of times.”
No one in that country needs a bribe to kill Americans.
What is the easy way for America to be done with this all, the ceaseless lies and killing and waste?
Get out, completely out of Afghanistan. Not piecemeal, like Trump is attempting, but out. Right away. You are doing absolutely nothing worth doing there.
And you never have done anything worth doing there. It has been nineteen years of vicious stupidity against a people who never were your enemies until you invaded them.
The invasion never made sense, and nineteen years of sustained effort has ended in another American defeat. How very glorious.
The Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11, and despite America’s bombing and shooting rampages, they still control much of the country.
What was the one tangible achievement of America’s invasion and occupation, apart from the deaths of tens of thousands of Afghan civilians?
Bringing back the opium poppy production which the Taliban government had previously banned and flooding world markets with cheap hard drugs. We see the evidence weekly in the United States with violent street-gang shootings over turf and unpaid bills in every major city. The bounteous drug supply lowered prices and created desperate competition in markets for hard drugs.
Imagine spending countless billions of dollars to achieve something like that?
America often just does not make sense anymore. Immense expenditures on death and destruction to achieve nothing. Much as in Vietnam.
The world really would be altogether a better place without the blundering violence and lies of the “indispensable nation.”
Readers may enjoy this essay of more than a decade ago:
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/americas-brutal-tactics/
Monday, August 17, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE NATURE OF A REPUBLIC – THE INSTRUCTIVE EXAMPLE OF THE UNITED STATES – A COUNTRY THAT HAS GONE FROM A VERY UNDEMOCRATIC EARLY REPUBLIC AT ITS FOUNDING TO A PLUTOCRACY WITH DEMOCRATIC WINDOW-DRESSING – THE ROLE IN AMERICAN POLITICS OF “THE CULTURE OF COMPLAINT” – THE NATURE OF ELECTIONS TODAY IN AMERICA – THOMAS JEFFERSON WAS THE FOUNDING FATHER OF TODAY’S “ALT-RIGHT” – THE FOUNDERS’ LACK OF BELIEF IN DEMOCRACY – AMERICA’S VERY COSTLY ELECTIONS WHICH CHANGE ALMOST NOTHING AT HOME OR ABROAD BUT GET PEOPLE VERY EXCITED
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“Why Queen Elizabeth and the 'nuclear option' won't likely come into play in the Governor General Payette controversy”
“Revelations of unusual spending and allegations of a toxic work environment at Rideau Hall have raised questions about the fate of Canada's current governor general. And that fate, in theory, could rest in the Queen's hands”.
To those who write about becoming a republic, Canada actually avoids a lot of political turmoil and cost just by going along with what we have, imperfect as it is. It is pragmatic. And there is no magic in being a republic. The example of the United States could not be more instructive.
The word “republic” pretty well means only that you have no symbol of monarchy and that you are “represented” in some fashion, even if it is by a privileged class. It is vague political term, not at all synonymous with democracy.
The long-ago Venetian Republic was not at all democratic. The Dutch Republic, the world’s first independent modern state, was not democratic.
The arrangements of the Dutch Republic influenced framers of America’s Constitution, who were mostly unfriendly to the idea of democracy, regarding it much the way J. Edgar Hoover regarded communism in the 1950s. The elites who founded America felt that democracy risked property being taken from them by a political hoi polloi. And that kind of attitude echoes still in America. The country was, and remains, a “republic.”
Originally, only the votes cast by the elites appointed to the Electoral College counted in elections for President.
The Senate, the most powerful legislative body by far since it approves all presidential appointments and all treaties, was an appointed body until the early twentieth century. The “Great Compromise” of the 1787 Constitutional Convention set representation in the House according to population but fixed representation in the Senate at the same number for each state, two.
That gave inordinate influence to small states and small thinking. It is a totally outmoded concept and produces bizarre contemporary effects. It means nearly twenty million people in California receive the same representation in the powerful Senate as about three hundred thousand in Vermont. Of course, those proportions greatly affect citizens’ access to their Senator and the relative cost of Senate political campaigns.
Originally, the only voters were white, adult males with a certain financial net worth, a pretty exclusive group, a very tiny percentage of the population, effectively America was a backwater aristocracy.
There was also a compromise with Southern states, for representation in Congress, of counting every slave as three-fifths of a person. This raised the weight and influence in Congress of the thinly populated, largely rural Southern states. It gave slaves no representation, it just increased the representation of slaveholder interests. It is also very revealing of the thinking and values of many American Founders, allowing slaves to be counted as a fraction of a human being.
Things have evolved and changed in the US, but all good studies of American government conclude that although most people can now vote – not all, but most, convicts and ex-convicts generally are excluded, a huge population in America - it is not very democratic even today.
It has evolved into a two-party state, with each of the two official parties completely dependent on huge financial donations from the country’s elites – a form of plutocracy. Elections in so large a country, one with such a propensity for marketing, polling, advertising, and theatrical campaign show-tours are extremely costly affairs, and there really is only one class of people who can pay for them. They of course give with the expectation of a return, at the very least, future access.
Election campaigns could of course be mandated to be shorter, to be less elaborate, and could even be paid from the public purse, but entrenched American attitudes about government make that impossible, and the last people who would want to see any of that are the plutocrats and their creatures in government. Those who benefit from any system do not favor change.
America’s plutocracy has an elaborate democratic window-dressing, so there is a lot of noise and excitement during an election, but the public’s political participation influences very little. Almost nothing but the rhetoric changes, no matter which of the official parties wins.
A very thoughtful writer some years ago, Robert Hughes, wrote in a critique of American society, “The Culture of Complaint,” about the tendency in so many so matters for Americans to form highly argumentative factions, with vocal and melodramatic leaders, doing endless battle but settling very little of substance.
That same characterization fits American elections. In a sense, all the noise and drama disguise the fact that almost nothing is happening. The press and people fall into the same pattern every time.
The country’s policies, at home and abroad, reflect the interests of the elites who finance its political parties. That is why we have a brutal empire supported by a trillion-dollar-a-year military-intelligence service complex, and that is why there is no national healthcare, no daycare, and many other social services common in other advanced countries.
And please note that among the most vociferous defenders of America’s identity as a republic, in contrast to a democracy, is its large Right-wing. Many of the attitudes you can read from that group are just restatements of things life-long slaveholder and anti-democrat, Thomas Jefferson, for example, said about two hundred and thirty years ago. He was the Alt-right’s Founding Father.
Readers might also enjoy:
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/
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/lessons-from-the-american-revolution/
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CBC NEWS
“Why Queen Elizabeth and the 'nuclear option' won't likely come into play in the Governor General Payette controversy”
“Revelations of unusual spending and allegations of a toxic work environment at Rideau Hall have raised questions about the fate of Canada's current governor general. And that fate, in theory, could rest in the Queen's hands”.
To those who write about becoming a republic, Canada actually avoids a lot of political turmoil and cost just by going along with what we have, imperfect as it is. It is pragmatic. And there is no magic in being a republic. The example of the United States could not be more instructive.
The word “republic” pretty well means only that you have no symbol of monarchy and that you are “represented” in some fashion, even if it is by a privileged class. It is vague political term, not at all synonymous with democracy.
The long-ago Venetian Republic was not at all democratic. The Dutch Republic, the world’s first independent modern state, was not democratic.
The arrangements of the Dutch Republic influenced framers of America’s Constitution, who were mostly unfriendly to the idea of democracy, regarding it much the way J. Edgar Hoover regarded communism in the 1950s. The elites who founded America felt that democracy risked property being taken from them by a political hoi polloi. And that kind of attitude echoes still in America. The country was, and remains, a “republic.”
Originally, only the votes cast by the elites appointed to the Electoral College counted in elections for President.
The Senate, the most powerful legislative body by far since it approves all presidential appointments and all treaties, was an appointed body until the early twentieth century. The “Great Compromise” of the 1787 Constitutional Convention set representation in the House according to population but fixed representation in the Senate at the same number for each state, two.
That gave inordinate influence to small states and small thinking. It is a totally outmoded concept and produces bizarre contemporary effects. It means nearly twenty million people in California receive the same representation in the powerful Senate as about three hundred thousand in Vermont. Of course, those proportions greatly affect citizens’ access to their Senator and the relative cost of Senate political campaigns.
Originally, the only voters were white, adult males with a certain financial net worth, a pretty exclusive group, a very tiny percentage of the population, effectively America was a backwater aristocracy.
There was also a compromise with Southern states, for representation in Congress, of counting every slave as three-fifths of a person. This raised the weight and influence in Congress of the thinly populated, largely rural Southern states. It gave slaves no representation, it just increased the representation of slaveholder interests. It is also very revealing of the thinking and values of many American Founders, allowing slaves to be counted as a fraction of a human being.
Things have evolved and changed in the US, but all good studies of American government conclude that although most people can now vote – not all, but most, convicts and ex-convicts generally are excluded, a huge population in America - it is not very democratic even today.
It has evolved into a two-party state, with each of the two official parties completely dependent on huge financial donations from the country’s elites – a form of plutocracy. Elections in so large a country, one with such a propensity for marketing, polling, advertising, and theatrical campaign show-tours are extremely costly affairs, and there really is only one class of people who can pay for them. They of course give with the expectation of a return, at the very least, future access.
Election campaigns could of course be mandated to be shorter, to be less elaborate, and could even be paid from the public purse, but entrenched American attitudes about government make that impossible, and the last people who would want to see any of that are the plutocrats and their creatures in government. Those who benefit from any system do not favor change.
America’s plutocracy has an elaborate democratic window-dressing, so there is a lot of noise and excitement during an election, but the public’s political participation influences very little. Almost nothing but the rhetoric changes, no matter which of the official parties wins.
A very thoughtful writer some years ago, Robert Hughes, wrote in a critique of American society, “The Culture of Complaint,” about the tendency in so many so matters for Americans to form highly argumentative factions, with vocal and melodramatic leaders, doing endless battle but settling very little of substance.
That same characterization fits American elections. In a sense, all the noise and drama disguise the fact that almost nothing is happening. The press and people fall into the same pattern every time.
The country’s policies, at home and abroad, reflect the interests of the elites who finance its political parties. That is why we have a brutal empire supported by a trillion-dollar-a-year military-intelligence service complex, and that is why there is no national healthcare, no daycare, and many other social services common in other advanced countries.
And please note that among the most vociferous defenders of America’s identity as a republic, in contrast to a democracy, is its large Right-wing. Many of the attitudes you can read from that group are just restatements of things life-long slaveholder and anti-democrat, Thomas Jefferson, for example, said about two hundred and thirty years ago. He was the Alt-right’s Founding Father.
Readers might also enjoy:
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/
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/lessons-from-the-american-revolution/
Friday, August 14, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: TRUMP ENGAGES IN VOTER SUPPRESSION AND FLIRTS WITH RACISM AS ELECTION WEAPONS – HIS EFFORTS TO DAMAGE MAIL-IN VOTING – HE SAYS HE FEARS FRAUD BUT WHAT HE REALLY FEARS IS AN INCREASED EFFECTIVE TURN-OUT RATE FOR DEMOCRATIC VOTERS, ESPECIALLY THOSE IN POORER COMMUNITIES – WHY HE IS AMERICA’S “ALT-RIGHT” PRESIDENT – A RECENT ARTICLE I READ SAID WITCH HUNTS STILL EXIST IN SOME POOR PARTS OF THE WORLD WHERE PEOPLE BELIEVED TO BE WITCHES LITERALLY ARE HUNTED DOWN – BUT HARSH IRRATIONALITY IS NOT LIMITED TO SUCH PLACES, IT IS FOUND IN PARTS OF AMERICA, INCLUDING THE OVAL OFFICE
John Chuckman
COMMENT - SOME GOOD MEASURES OF TRUMP’S IRRATIONALITY
Nationwide mail-in balloting represents a big surge in costs for the United States Post Office in the Fall, a Post Office already long underfunded. Trump supports no additional funding, and we learn that hundreds of high-speed mail sorting machines in urban areas are being removed, supposedly in an effort to cut costs. This will greatly slow the delivery of ballots.
Actively working against mail-in voting is a particularly nasty thing to do, given the pandemic, which is expected to hit hard with a second wave in the Fall. Indeed, the overlap with the annual flu season could make things very difficult.
Trump constantly says mail-in ballots will produce the most corrupt election in history, an assertion with absolutely no basis in fact. Absentee (mail-in) ballots have been in use for a very long time, and they are no more subject to fraud than other forms of balloting, all of which have experienced fraud of one kind or another in the past – paper ballots, voting machines, and computer voting systems.
So, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that both Trump and his wife have requested mail-in absentee ballots for Florida's primary election, a fact in today’s news.
What Trump really fears from national mail-in voting is an increase in the effective turn-out rate of Democratic voters, especially in poorer communities where people are not always motivated enough to go through the effort to vote in person and may lack transportation to get to a polling place. It is in such communities, especially in parts of the South, where “voter suppression” has been practiced in the past.
Voter suppression takes many forms, from closing a polling place early while people are still waiting in line outside to using false printed notices misinforming people about the location of their polling place or to operating the polling place with such deliberate slowness that people become very tired of waiting in line. These are historic fraudulent election practices in parts of the United States.
Trump adds a new twist to old practices by opposing any extra funding and removing post office sorting machines to suppress mail-in ballots.
Trump is already flirting with racism in the election. At a press conference, he referred to whether Kamala Harris was qualified to run, suggesting she was not born in the country, as the Constitution requires.
But she was born in Oakland, California, and Trump surely knows that. Whether he knows it or not, questioning her qualification is simply not something people should hear from a President. There are appropriate officials who deal with such matters. Of course, Trump always maintained that Obama, too, wasn’t qualified by birth, Obama and all his acts being special targets of Trump’s rage. I wonder why that should be?
This is the Alt-right President. If you ever look at Alt-right Internet sites, as I do sometimes, trying to understand society’s undercurrents, you know they are thickly layered with prejudice and racism and just plain venom towards those who disagree with their views. Those are parts of a spectrum of ignorance over many topics, from calling medical masks a form of tyranny to insisting that proved ineffective, and dangerous, drug treatments are effective. Labelling opponents or those they especially dislike with vicious nicknames is common, a practice much followed by Trump in his obsessive tweeting.
I read recently that there are still parts of the world where witch hunts are conducted – literally, people regarded as witches being hunted down and killed. This occurs in backward locations, places heavy with superstition, in parts of Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
Well, it isn’t just in backward places that such irrationality exists. It exists in parts of contemporary American society, as the words of the Alt-right clearly announce to the world, and they have the President with them, just as he many times has said that football players who kneel in protest should be punished and that Confederate names on American military posts were fine.
NOTE:
In the recent tell-all book about Trump by his niece, psychologist Mary Trump, she quotes Trump’s older sister, Maryanne, a retired judge, as having said he was too much of a racist to be President.
FURTHER NOTE:
Expanding his efforts at mail-in voter suppression, Trump now has the Post Office removing mailboxes from many streets and reducing the number of hours postal stations are open.
Readers may enjoy this sarcastic essay of some years ago somewhat related to the topic:
INSANITY IN AMERICA
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/insanity-in-america/
COMMENT - SOME GOOD MEASURES OF TRUMP’S IRRATIONALITY
Nationwide mail-in balloting represents a big surge in costs for the United States Post Office in the Fall, a Post Office already long underfunded. Trump supports no additional funding, and we learn that hundreds of high-speed mail sorting machines in urban areas are being removed, supposedly in an effort to cut costs. This will greatly slow the delivery of ballots.
Actively working against mail-in voting is a particularly nasty thing to do, given the pandemic, which is expected to hit hard with a second wave in the Fall. Indeed, the overlap with the annual flu season could make things very difficult.
Trump constantly says mail-in ballots will produce the most corrupt election in history, an assertion with absolutely no basis in fact. Absentee (mail-in) ballots have been in use for a very long time, and they are no more subject to fraud than other forms of balloting, all of which have experienced fraud of one kind or another in the past – paper ballots, voting machines, and computer voting systems.
So, it comes as something of a surprise to learn that both Trump and his wife have requested mail-in absentee ballots for Florida's primary election, a fact in today’s news.
What Trump really fears from national mail-in voting is an increase in the effective turn-out rate of Democratic voters, especially in poorer communities where people are not always motivated enough to go through the effort to vote in person and may lack transportation to get to a polling place. It is in such communities, especially in parts of the South, where “voter suppression” has been practiced in the past.
Voter suppression takes many forms, from closing a polling place early while people are still waiting in line outside to using false printed notices misinforming people about the location of their polling place or to operating the polling place with such deliberate slowness that people become very tired of waiting in line. These are historic fraudulent election practices in parts of the United States.
Trump adds a new twist to old practices by opposing any extra funding and removing post office sorting machines to suppress mail-in ballots.
Trump is already flirting with racism in the election. At a press conference, he referred to whether Kamala Harris was qualified to run, suggesting she was not born in the country, as the Constitution requires.
But she was born in Oakland, California, and Trump surely knows that. Whether he knows it or not, questioning her qualification is simply not something people should hear from a President. There are appropriate officials who deal with such matters. Of course, Trump always maintained that Obama, too, wasn’t qualified by birth, Obama and all his acts being special targets of Trump’s rage. I wonder why that should be?
This is the Alt-right President. If you ever look at Alt-right Internet sites, as I do sometimes, trying to understand society’s undercurrents, you know they are thickly layered with prejudice and racism and just plain venom towards those who disagree with their views. Those are parts of a spectrum of ignorance over many topics, from calling medical masks a form of tyranny to insisting that proved ineffective, and dangerous, drug treatments are effective. Labelling opponents or those they especially dislike with vicious nicknames is common, a practice much followed by Trump in his obsessive tweeting.
I read recently that there are still parts of the world where witch hunts are conducted – literally, people regarded as witches being hunted down and killed. This occurs in backward locations, places heavy with superstition, in parts of Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
Well, it isn’t just in backward places that such irrationality exists. It exists in parts of contemporary American society, as the words of the Alt-right clearly announce to the world, and they have the President with them, just as he many times has said that football players who kneel in protest should be punished and that Confederate names on American military posts were fine.
NOTE:
In the recent tell-all book about Trump by his niece, psychologist Mary Trump, she quotes Trump’s older sister, Maryanne, a retired judge, as having said he was too much of a racist to be President.
FURTHER NOTE:
Expanding his efforts at mail-in voter suppression, Trump now has the Post Office removing mailboxes from many streets and reducing the number of hours postal stations are open.
Readers may enjoy this sarcastic essay of some years ago somewhat related to the topic:
INSANITY IN AMERICA
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/insanity-in-america/
Thursday, August 13, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: BIDEN’S CHOICE OF KAMALA HARRIS – WHAT IT MEANS – HER STRENGTHS – TRANSITION TO A NEW GENERATION OF POLITICIANS – OVERALL PROSPECTS FOR THE COUNTRY – I DO THINK TRUMP’S TIME ON STAGE AS STAR OF A LUNATIC PASSION PLAY WILL END, BUT HE HOLDS A VERY POWERFUL OFFICE AND HE COULD START A WAR TO RALLY AMERICANS AND THERE ARE POWERFUL ANTI-CHINA AND ANTI-IRAN INTERESTS WHO WOULD SUPPORT HIM
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CHRIS RIOTTA IN THE INDEPENDENT
“By choosing Kamala Harris, Joe Biden just torpedoed Trump's top election tactic with issues of law and order”
Indeed, and she is a good strong choice by many measures, including high intelligence and the ability to charm with her smile. She also is tough, a former courtroom prosecutor, well able to stand up to blowhard Trump or his creepy zombie assistant, Pence.
She may well become the first female President, given the fact of Biden's now often-failing memory, clearly suggesting the onset of dementia.
Some think he won't make it through the first term.
I do believe now that Trump has little chance, given no dramatic developments.
However, he holds a very powerful office, and he just could start a war. Certainly, no principles would interfere since he has none. Perhaps some level heads at the Pentagon would stand in the way, which, if you think about it, is quite a statement to make. But I’m not overly confident. There are powerful pro-war interests at home and abroad in the anti-China and anti-Iran power establishment. And given all the turmoil and crisis in America, judgments are not calm.
In the end, America’s inadequate, antique Constitution makes Trump Commander-in-Chief. So, we have an unbalanced mind with a harshly aggressive personality in charge of the world’s most powerful armed forces, and he has surrounded himself with some of America’s most frightening men. One should perhaps be concerned over the news that Trump wants to replace the Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, who opposed his rash demand that troops be used against American demonstrators in the streets.
Trump also just appointed the smilingly vicious Elliott Abrams as Special Envoy for Iran, a man convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra Affair (pardoned by H. W. Bush) and with a long history of promoting hostility and violence in international affairs.
Americans, like frightened puppies, cling to the legs of literally any President in time of war. It’s become something of a national habit with all of the country’s many wars. Just look at the case of George Bush after 9/11. There was an extraordinarily inept, blundering, and unintelligent man who gained a heavy following and was handily re-elected.
Whatever happens, don’t expect great change in America’s many horrors, especially those abroad. The wars and coups and bombings will go on. They are just part of what America does. Empires are not kind and gentle places. They are brutal, without exception.
And I wouldn’t be too optimistic on the home front either.
Biden is a lifelong party apparatchik. And Harris has no credentials as a progressive. She’ll be out to prove to the power establishment that she, as a woman of color, provides safe hands for the Presidency.
Picking Ms. Harris, for other reasons, is likely the most creative thing Biden has ever done. At least we should see an end to the obscenest political act ever staged in America, the lunatic passion play of Donald Trump.
And a woman of color in high office does provide something hopeful for millions. Although It is important to keep in mind the example of Obama. There were deep currents of hope when he first ran for office, but they were all for nothing as he carried right on with vicious wars and did virtually nothing at home for the people who supported him so passionately.
Maybe Biden sees his term as providing a watershed event in domestic politics with a transition to quite a new generation of politicians.
A new generation, yes, but not a serious force for change. Change, if it comes at all, comes grindingly slow to an imperious, plutocratic state with fanatical beliefs in its destiny and its right to tell others what to do. Powerful people believing themselves to be exceptional do not easily relinquish their power or their beliefs.
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CHRIS RIOTTA IN THE INDEPENDENT
“By choosing Kamala Harris, Joe Biden just torpedoed Trump's top election tactic with issues of law and order”
Indeed, and she is a good strong choice by many measures, including high intelligence and the ability to charm with her smile. She also is tough, a former courtroom prosecutor, well able to stand up to blowhard Trump or his creepy zombie assistant, Pence.
She may well become the first female President, given the fact of Biden's now often-failing memory, clearly suggesting the onset of dementia.
Some think he won't make it through the first term.
I do believe now that Trump has little chance, given no dramatic developments.
However, he holds a very powerful office, and he just could start a war. Certainly, no principles would interfere since he has none. Perhaps some level heads at the Pentagon would stand in the way, which, if you think about it, is quite a statement to make. But I’m not overly confident. There are powerful pro-war interests at home and abroad in the anti-China and anti-Iran power establishment. And given all the turmoil and crisis in America, judgments are not calm.
In the end, America’s inadequate, antique Constitution makes Trump Commander-in-Chief. So, we have an unbalanced mind with a harshly aggressive personality in charge of the world’s most powerful armed forces, and he has surrounded himself with some of America’s most frightening men. One should perhaps be concerned over the news that Trump wants to replace the Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, who opposed his rash demand that troops be used against American demonstrators in the streets.
Trump also just appointed the smilingly vicious Elliott Abrams as Special Envoy for Iran, a man convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra Affair (pardoned by H. W. Bush) and with a long history of promoting hostility and violence in international affairs.
Americans, like frightened puppies, cling to the legs of literally any President in time of war. It’s become something of a national habit with all of the country’s many wars. Just look at the case of George Bush after 9/11. There was an extraordinarily inept, blundering, and unintelligent man who gained a heavy following and was handily re-elected.
Whatever happens, don’t expect great change in America’s many horrors, especially those abroad. The wars and coups and bombings will go on. They are just part of what America does. Empires are not kind and gentle places. They are brutal, without exception.
And I wouldn’t be too optimistic on the home front either.
Biden is a lifelong party apparatchik. And Harris has no credentials as a progressive. She’ll be out to prove to the power establishment that she, as a woman of color, provides safe hands for the Presidency.
Picking Ms. Harris, for other reasons, is likely the most creative thing Biden has ever done. At least we should see an end to the obscenest political act ever staged in America, the lunatic passion play of Donald Trump.
And a woman of color in high office does provide something hopeful for millions. Although It is important to keep in mind the example of Obama. There were deep currents of hope when he first ran for office, but they were all for nothing as he carried right on with vicious wars and did virtually nothing at home for the people who supported him so passionately.
Maybe Biden sees his term as providing a watershed event in domestic politics with a transition to quite a new generation of politicians.
A new generation, yes, but not a serious force for change. Change, if it comes at all, comes grindingly slow to an imperious, plutocratic state with fanatical beliefs in its destiny and its right to tell others what to do. Powerful people believing themselves to be exceptional do not easily relinquish their power or their beliefs.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AMERICA’S LACK OF RESPECT FOR LAW – WE HAVE NO INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS CAPABLE OF DEFENDING OR ENFORCING INTERNATIONAL LAW – AMERICA’S LONG HISTORY AS A SCOFFLAW AT HOME AND ABROAD – FINE WORDS OF FOUNDING DOCUMENTS NEVER TREATED AS UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES – ATTACKING INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND TREATIES – EUROPE’S INEFFECTUAL CHARACTER AFTER 75 YEARS OF OCCUPATION – CHINA RUSSIA AND IRAN MUST WORK TOGETHER UNDER THE ASSUMPTION OF THE UNITED STATES BEING UNFRIENDLY TO THEIR VITAL INTERESTS
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER MOHAMMAD ZARIF IN GLOBAL TIMES
“International community must stop US destroying the world of laws”
I agree completely with Foreign Minister Zarif. He is a very sympathetic and intelligent spokesman.
But the ugly truth is that America has never been a nation with much regard for laws.
Its entire history is a long parade of wars and conquests and contempt for others. Native Americans, Mexico, Spain, Cuba, South America, the Philippines, Hawaii, and on into much of the rest of the world after WWII.
The fine words of America’s founding documents have never been treated as universal principles. They are reserved for application only to Americans, and, in fact even a great many Americans have been, and are, excluded.
In America’s own domestic affairs, there is often contempt for the rule of law.
That's why America has so many guns in private hands. Contempt for rule of law has a great deal to do with America’s fanatical gun culture.
I like Zarif's appeal, but who is there to defend or enforce international law?
America has manipulated and terribly weakened the UN and other great international organizations. Right now, it owes about two billion dollars in past dues set by treaty obligations. As well, it has quit several vital UN agencies and stopped all support, as with UNESCO and the WHO.
It has corrupted and bent other international organizations to do its will, as it did with the OPCW to enable America to bomb Syria without cause.
Europe, after seventy-five years of occupation, has demonstrated how ineffectual it is in the face of America’s demands. Instead of resisting America’s terrible destruction in the Middle East, it accepted the consequences of millions of desperate refugees nearly destabilizing its societies, refugees largely the result of American bombing.
And just look at the contempt for treaties today by the US. The Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA) arbitrarily ripped up. The INF Treaty ripped up. The Open Skies Treaty ripped up. Even the Start Treaty is in question. Every one of these American actions throws away immense amounts of past careful work by intelligent and dedicated people and makes the world a more dangerous place.
We see American lawlessness in Iran, in Venezuela, in Cuba, in Bolivia, in Brazil, in Ukraine, in Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq, and in still other places. America uses acts of war, like blockades, it uses illegal sanctions, it uses covert dirty tricks, it steals national assets, and it even murders leaders sometimes. Hard to imagine a less law-abiding set of behaviors, short of outright wars of aggression.
I do think major states like China and Russia and Iran must work together under the clear assumption that the US is not going to be at all friendly to their vital interests over the foreseeable future. It is an unfortunate thing to have to say, but I think it is just the truth.
“None are so blind as those who will not see” perfectly describes America’s power establishment today.
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER MOHAMMAD ZARIF IN GLOBAL TIMES
“International community must stop US destroying the world of laws”
I agree completely with Foreign Minister Zarif. He is a very sympathetic and intelligent spokesman.
But the ugly truth is that America has never been a nation with much regard for laws.
Its entire history is a long parade of wars and conquests and contempt for others. Native Americans, Mexico, Spain, Cuba, South America, the Philippines, Hawaii, and on into much of the rest of the world after WWII.
The fine words of America’s founding documents have never been treated as universal principles. They are reserved for application only to Americans, and, in fact even a great many Americans have been, and are, excluded.
In America’s own domestic affairs, there is often contempt for the rule of law.
That's why America has so many guns in private hands. Contempt for rule of law has a great deal to do with America’s fanatical gun culture.
I like Zarif's appeal, but who is there to defend or enforce international law?
America has manipulated and terribly weakened the UN and other great international organizations. Right now, it owes about two billion dollars in past dues set by treaty obligations. As well, it has quit several vital UN agencies and stopped all support, as with UNESCO and the WHO.
It has corrupted and bent other international organizations to do its will, as it did with the OPCW to enable America to bomb Syria without cause.
Europe, after seventy-five years of occupation, has demonstrated how ineffectual it is in the face of America’s demands. Instead of resisting America’s terrible destruction in the Middle East, it accepted the consequences of millions of desperate refugees nearly destabilizing its societies, refugees largely the result of American bombing.
And just look at the contempt for treaties today by the US. The Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA) arbitrarily ripped up. The INF Treaty ripped up. The Open Skies Treaty ripped up. Even the Start Treaty is in question. Every one of these American actions throws away immense amounts of past careful work by intelligent and dedicated people and makes the world a more dangerous place.
We see American lawlessness in Iran, in Venezuela, in Cuba, in Bolivia, in Brazil, in Ukraine, in Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq, and in still other places. America uses acts of war, like blockades, it uses illegal sanctions, it uses covert dirty tricks, it steals national assets, and it even murders leaders sometimes. Hard to imagine a less law-abiding set of behaviors, short of outright wars of aggression.
I do think major states like China and Russia and Iran must work together under the clear assumption that the US is not going to be at all friendly to their vital interests over the foreseeable future. It is an unfortunate thing to have to say, but I think it is just the truth.
“None are so blind as those who will not see” perfectly describes America’s power establishment today.
Sunday, August 09, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THOUGHTS ON THE CATASTROPHE AT THE PORT OF BEIRUT LEBANON – IN FACT THERE WERE TWO BIG EXPLOSIONS – WHAT WE KNOW - UNEXPLAINED MATTERS – ISRAEL CLEARLY GAINS FROM THIS – SOME NOTES ON THE NATURE OF HEZBOLLAH, WHICH RESIDES IN LEBANON AND IS ALWAYS MALIGNED BY ISRAEL
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN PRESS TV
“Hezbollah chief says impartial probe necessary into Beirut blast
“Secretary General of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has urged an impartial investigation into the blast that rocked Beirut on Tuesday”
Ammonium nitrate was undoubtedly the cause of the main explosion. There was a huge volume of It (2,750 tonnes), and it was stored inappropriately.
If stored appropriately, the pure chemical is safe. But it is sensitive to heat which starts decomposing it, and it becomes explosive.
It also can become explosive if contaminated with other materials. The Oklahoma City bombing some years ago used ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil, a deadly explosive.
I do think sheer incompetence was responsible for huge bags of the material, tightly packed together, being left for years in an unventilated metal storage room in a hot climate. The chemical’s purity is not known either. It had been seized from a ship that afterward was abandoned.
We have a few explanations offered about what set it off. One was a welder working nearby, a welder given no information about potential danger.
Although it dramatically illustrates the kind of carelessness and poor supervision which prevailed at the port, the idea of the welder does not explain two distinct explosions recorded.
Another explanation offered is fireworks. Apparently, there was a quantity – described as “30-40 nylon bags of fireworks,” whatever that means – inside the same warehouse
There are some important issues. One, there were in fact two explosions, and that has not been explained.
Two, I read an expert say that ammonium nitrate burns with greyish smoke. While we see greyish smoke in the photos, we also see quite a huge cloud of deep red smoke and it is even shaped differently. Clearly something else, something substantial, also exploded.
Was it the fireworks? Were there enough of them – whatever “30-40 nylon bags” means, a phrase that could cover anything from a very small to a very large amount – to produce so huge a cloud as we see in the photos? Literally a cloud like a terrific bomb explosion. Were the fireworks set off by the welder?
Or was there another element altogether to cause an explosion and to ignite a second explosion with the ammonium nitrate stored there, a situation of which the intelligence service of a neighboring, unfriendly state likely would have been aware?
We do have to keep in mind that there is one major beneficiary of this catastrophe, and that is very much Israel. It comes at a convenient time with all the recent tensions there have been on the Israeli-Lebanese border. It terribly weakens Lebanon. Already there has been disinformation about Hezbollah, an organization which resides in Lebanon, being responsible.
Hezbollah already has offered to assist and house survivors. Much as Hamas in Gaza, the organization has always had helping its society as a strong part of its identity. In 2006, during Israel’s Second Lebanon War, Israel committed the horrific act of dropping about a million cluster-bomb bomblets along the country’s southern regions, it was Hezbollah who worked with bulldozers clearing the horror that would have killed and maimed innocent people for decades. Israel had refused even to identify where its munitions had been dropped.
Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization. Israel has labelled it as that simply because it is effective, and it has embarrassed Israel several times. Hezbollah was born as a resistance movement to Israel’s illegal long-term occupation of southern Lebanon, 1985-2000. It drove the Israelis out, but it never invaded Israel, as Israel has more than once invaded Lebanon, killing a great many people.
We won’t know until all the evidence is in, but then again, as with so many possibly politically-connected disasters, we may never know.
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN PRESS TV
“Hezbollah chief says impartial probe necessary into Beirut blast
“Secretary General of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has urged an impartial investigation into the blast that rocked Beirut on Tuesday”
Ammonium nitrate was undoubtedly the cause of the main explosion. There was a huge volume of It (2,750 tonnes), and it was stored inappropriately.
If stored appropriately, the pure chemical is safe. But it is sensitive to heat which starts decomposing it, and it becomes explosive.
It also can become explosive if contaminated with other materials. The Oklahoma City bombing some years ago used ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil, a deadly explosive.
I do think sheer incompetence was responsible for huge bags of the material, tightly packed together, being left for years in an unventilated metal storage room in a hot climate. The chemical’s purity is not known either. It had been seized from a ship that afterward was abandoned.
We have a few explanations offered about what set it off. One was a welder working nearby, a welder given no information about potential danger.
Although it dramatically illustrates the kind of carelessness and poor supervision which prevailed at the port, the idea of the welder does not explain two distinct explosions recorded.
Another explanation offered is fireworks. Apparently, there was a quantity – described as “30-40 nylon bags of fireworks,” whatever that means – inside the same warehouse
There are some important issues. One, there were in fact two explosions, and that has not been explained.
Two, I read an expert say that ammonium nitrate burns with greyish smoke. While we see greyish smoke in the photos, we also see quite a huge cloud of deep red smoke and it is even shaped differently. Clearly something else, something substantial, also exploded.
Was it the fireworks? Were there enough of them – whatever “30-40 nylon bags” means, a phrase that could cover anything from a very small to a very large amount – to produce so huge a cloud as we see in the photos? Literally a cloud like a terrific bomb explosion. Were the fireworks set off by the welder?
Or was there another element altogether to cause an explosion and to ignite a second explosion with the ammonium nitrate stored there, a situation of which the intelligence service of a neighboring, unfriendly state likely would have been aware?
We do have to keep in mind that there is one major beneficiary of this catastrophe, and that is very much Israel. It comes at a convenient time with all the recent tensions there have been on the Israeli-Lebanese border. It terribly weakens Lebanon. Already there has been disinformation about Hezbollah, an organization which resides in Lebanon, being responsible.
Hezbollah already has offered to assist and house survivors. Much as Hamas in Gaza, the organization has always had helping its society as a strong part of its identity. In 2006, during Israel’s Second Lebanon War, Israel committed the horrific act of dropping about a million cluster-bomb bomblets along the country’s southern regions, it was Hezbollah who worked with bulldozers clearing the horror that would have killed and maimed innocent people for decades. Israel had refused even to identify where its munitions had been dropped.
Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization. Israel has labelled it as that simply because it is effective, and it has embarrassed Israel several times. Hezbollah was born as a resistance movement to Israel’s illegal long-term occupation of southern Lebanon, 1985-2000. It drove the Israelis out, but it never invaded Israel, as Israel has more than once invaded Lebanon, killing a great many people.
We won’t know until all the evidence is in, but then again, as with so many possibly politically-connected disasters, we may never know.
Saturday, August 08, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MICHELLE OBAMA SPEAKS OF HER “LOW-GRADE DEPRESSION” – TRIGGERED BY TRUMPS’S HYPOCRISY AND RACIAL STRIFE – THOSE ARE INDEED DEPRESSING MATTERS – BUT WITH GLOWING IMAGES OF HER WITH HER HUSBAND, AS IF TO PRESENT A CONTRAST WITH TRUMP, SHE OVERLOOKS OTHER VERY TROUBLING MATTERS – SHE IS A SYMPATHETIC AND WELL- INTENTIONED WOMAN BUT NOT A WELL-INFORMED ONE - SOME FACTS ABOUT HER HUSBAND BARACK OBAMA’S KILLING AND LYING – TRUTH IS THAT AMERICA’S POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT IS NO LONGER CAPABLE OF DOING ALMOST ANY GOOD IN THE WORLD – ITS DRIVES AND INTERESTS ARE ABOUT AS FAR REMOVED FROM DOING GOOD AS YOU CAN GO
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN YOURDESTINATIONNOW
“Michelle Obama reveals she is suffering from 'low-grade depression' that she says has been triggered by Trump's 'hypocrisy', 'racial strife' and the stress of the pandemic”
“The 56-year-old uploaded episode two of 'The Michelle Obama Podcast' on Spotify today, featuring a discussion with NPR's Michele Norris”.
http://www.yourdestinationnow.com/2020/08/michelle-obama-reveals-she-is-suffering.html
I regard Michelle as sympathetic and well-intentioned, but she is not well-informed on some matters of great importance. Perhaps she is just in denial of certain truths.
It depresses any thoughtful person to see photos of Trump’s scowling or grimacing face and to read some of his outrageous and primitive language.
The man has proven himself violent, uncooperative, greedy, prejudiced, and deceitful.
He serves as a living, daily reminder that evil is a very real thing in our world.
But then. sadly, that same thing is true of Michelle’s husband, Barack Obama, a man responsible for a whole series of wars and coups and bombings, having killed a huge number of people.
Unfortunately, over my lifetime of observation, it is invariably the case that Americans get worked up about anything affecting their domestic ease and comfort while being fully capable of ignoring the most horrendous crimes American armed forces and security services commit abroad. It actually doesn’t speak well for the society’s values or its empathy.
Michelle’s husband has the kind of smile that makes him appear benign in photos. He has a talent, too, for selecting words that make him seem soothing. He doesn’t call people and countries foul names or stab his finger towards someone while threatening them the way Trump does.
But the hell he unleashed in Syria and in Libya and in Yemen and in Ukraine and still other places belies the smile and the well-chosen words. So do the countless lies used to hide what was going on.
Obama bombed someone somewhere every single day of his eight years in office. He helped destroy several well-run societies. And he is responsible for creating America’s industrial-scale extrajudicial killing system which now has killed thousands of legally-innocent people with no charges or day in court. He even joked once about being “pretty good at this killing stuff.” Does that sound comforting or humane or even decent?
They are both hateful political figures, Trump and Obama, each in his own way. Trump is cruder and more obviously prejudiced and less intelligent, but neither of them represents much that is good in the world.
They happily represent a brutal power trying to lord it over the other 96% of the world’s people who are not Americans. Actually, that percentage should be something like 99.9% because most of the roughly 4% of the world’s population who are Americans are almost as unimportant to the country’s establishment as the “foreigners,” which is part of the reason for so much hatred and police brutality inside American society. The two leaders just do so with widely differing styles. Many might prefer Obama’s classier style, but the results of his work are still horrendous.
The plain truth is that America’s political establishment no longer is capable of doing much good in the world, no matter who holds the office of President. It is no longer capable even of doing much good for its own people. It is utterly corrupted by money and answers only to the needs of those who can supply the money.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN YOURDESTINATIONNOW
“Michelle Obama reveals she is suffering from 'low-grade depression' that she says has been triggered by Trump's 'hypocrisy', 'racial strife' and the stress of the pandemic”
“The 56-year-old uploaded episode two of 'The Michelle Obama Podcast' on Spotify today, featuring a discussion with NPR's Michele Norris”.
http://www.yourdestinationnow.com/2020/08/michelle-obama-reveals-she-is-suffering.html
I regard Michelle as sympathetic and well-intentioned, but she is not well-informed on some matters of great importance. Perhaps she is just in denial of certain truths.
It depresses any thoughtful person to see photos of Trump’s scowling or grimacing face and to read some of his outrageous and primitive language.
The man has proven himself violent, uncooperative, greedy, prejudiced, and deceitful.
He serves as a living, daily reminder that evil is a very real thing in our world.
But then. sadly, that same thing is true of Michelle’s husband, Barack Obama, a man responsible for a whole series of wars and coups and bombings, having killed a huge number of people.
Unfortunately, over my lifetime of observation, it is invariably the case that Americans get worked up about anything affecting their domestic ease and comfort while being fully capable of ignoring the most horrendous crimes American armed forces and security services commit abroad. It actually doesn’t speak well for the society’s values or its empathy.
Michelle’s husband has the kind of smile that makes him appear benign in photos. He has a talent, too, for selecting words that make him seem soothing. He doesn’t call people and countries foul names or stab his finger towards someone while threatening them the way Trump does.
But the hell he unleashed in Syria and in Libya and in Yemen and in Ukraine and still other places belies the smile and the well-chosen words. So do the countless lies used to hide what was going on.
Obama bombed someone somewhere every single day of his eight years in office. He helped destroy several well-run societies. And he is responsible for creating America’s industrial-scale extrajudicial killing system which now has killed thousands of legally-innocent people with no charges or day in court. He even joked once about being “pretty good at this killing stuff.” Does that sound comforting or humane or even decent?
They are both hateful political figures, Trump and Obama, each in his own way. Trump is cruder and more obviously prejudiced and less intelligent, but neither of them represents much that is good in the world.
They happily represent a brutal power trying to lord it over the other 96% of the world’s people who are not Americans. Actually, that percentage should be something like 99.9% because most of the roughly 4% of the world’s population who are Americans are almost as unimportant to the country’s establishment as the “foreigners,” which is part of the reason for so much hatred and police brutality inside American society. The two leaders just do so with widely differing styles. Many might prefer Obama’s classier style, but the results of his work are still horrendous.
The plain truth is that America’s political establishment no longer is capable of doing much good in the world, no matter who holds the office of President. It is no longer capable even of doing much good for its own people. It is utterly corrupted by money and answers only to the needs of those who can supply the money.
Tuesday, August 04, 2020
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF AMERICA’S UNFORGIVABLE ATOMIC BOMBING OF JAPAN – THE COUNTRY WAS READY TO SURRENDER BUT THEY WERE BOMBED ANYWAY – AMERICA WANTED TO DEMONSTRATE ITS POWER AND RUTHLESSNESS AS IT ENTERED ITS GOLDEN AGE OF “THE AMERICAN DREAM” – NOTE ON TRUMAN’S COLD-BLOODEDNESS, MUCH RESEMBLING THAT OF OBAMA – AND TODAY WE HAVE RECKLESS, MALICIOUS RHETORIC BEING HURLED TOWARDS ANOTHER “YELLOW PEOPLE,” THE PEOPLE OF CHINA
John Chuckman
COMMENT ON A VIDEO DISCUSSION IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“ATOMIC BOMBINGS AT 75: Scholars Speak Out Against ‘Unnecessary’ Attacks”
Just the simple truth. Japan had sent out feelers about surrendering. Keeping the Emperor was their only condition.
But America's government insisted on "unconditional surrender." Complete humiliation.
There was a series of atomic bombings planned. I believe the number was a dozen for the number of bombs available.
You need to keep in mind, too, that Japan had already been horrifically bombed by General Curtis LeMay, a certifiable psychopath.
Massive bombings and fire-storm bombings.
It was said at one point before the atomic attack, that there were literally no primary or secondary targets left standing in Japan.
Hiroshima was of no military or strategic value.
The bombing was pure terror against civilians.
I remember reading that Eisenhower, a military man of some decency, was ashamed of it.
So that is the way America chose to enter its golden era, the time of “the American Dream.”
History is indeed biography because, just maybe, if Roosevelt hadn’t changed his Vice-presidential candidate for his fourth term, there might have been some resistance to this war crime from Henry Wallace. But not with Truman, a cold-blooded man just like Obama, good at killing. North Korea also was treated to massive carpet bombing in the early 1950s and had one-fifth of its entire population destroyed.
Many believe that the atomic bombing was actually intended as a demonstration for Stalin of America’s power and ruthlessness, a consideration that makes it even more reprehensible, using huge numbers of “yellow people” as lab rats in a large-scale experiment and demonstration.
And perhaps we should be very mindful of the kind of malicious language and hostile tactics now being used against China by American officials. It comes at a time when America has spent great sums updating its arsenal with new “more usable” nuclear weapons.
COMMENT ON A VIDEO DISCUSSION IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“ATOMIC BOMBINGS AT 75: Scholars Speak Out Against ‘Unnecessary’ Attacks”
Just the simple truth. Japan had sent out feelers about surrendering. Keeping the Emperor was their only condition.
But America's government insisted on "unconditional surrender." Complete humiliation.
There was a series of atomic bombings planned. I believe the number was a dozen for the number of bombs available.
You need to keep in mind, too, that Japan had already been horrifically bombed by General Curtis LeMay, a certifiable psychopath.
Massive bombings and fire-storm bombings.
It was said at one point before the atomic attack, that there were literally no primary or secondary targets left standing in Japan.
Hiroshima was of no military or strategic value.
The bombing was pure terror against civilians.
I remember reading that Eisenhower, a military man of some decency, was ashamed of it.
So that is the way America chose to enter its golden era, the time of “the American Dream.”
History is indeed biography because, just maybe, if Roosevelt hadn’t changed his Vice-presidential candidate for his fourth term, there might have been some resistance to this war crime from Henry Wallace. But not with Truman, a cold-blooded man just like Obama, good at killing. North Korea also was treated to massive carpet bombing in the early 1950s and had one-fifth of its entire population destroyed.
Many believe that the atomic bombing was actually intended as a demonstration for Stalin of America’s power and ruthlessness, a consideration that makes it even more reprehensible, using huge numbers of “yellow people” as lab rats in a large-scale experiment and demonstration.
And perhaps we should be very mindful of the kind of malicious language and hostile tactics now being used against China by American officials. It comes at a time when America has spent great sums updating its arsenal with new “more usable” nuclear weapons.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE GREAT HYPOCRISY AND CYNICISM OF WESTERN COUNTRIES NOT ALLOWING ISIS (AKA DAESH) RECRUITS TO RETURN HOME – WITHOUT A DOUBT ISIS SERVED AMERICAN PURPOSES – AND IN THE PAST MANY SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE SERVED ABROAD IN SOME PRETTY QUESTIONABLE CONFLICTS AND WERE ALLOWED TO RETURN HOME – THE NATURE OF ISIS AND AMERICAN HYBRID WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST
John Chuckman
COMMENT TO AN ARTICLE BY DAMIAN WILSON IN RUSSIA TODAY
“Britain taking back ISIS kids doesn’t mean Shamima Begum will walk free & it might strike a blow against terrorism”
There is an immense amount of hypocrisy and cynicism from Western governments concerning the return of citizens who been part of ISIS (aka, Daesh).
The fact is that terrorist groups like ISIS in Syria were supported and supplied by the various Western governments to topple the government of Syria. I have little doubt that even the resources for recruitment came from the same sources.
All such organizations, as also al Nusra, are not authentic jihadi groups. They are mercenary groups, recruited from all over the planet, mercenary groups disguised as jihadis. Part of a new kind of American hybrid warfare. It was used in destroying Libya.
Were they genuine jihadis, Israel along with the corrupt princes of Saudi Arabia would have been their first-priority targets.
But they have never attacked those targets. Never. Instead they attack a government that the US and Israel want to destroy. Very odd kind of jihad.
And where did they originally get all their weapons and transportation and supplies and finances and intelligence from? I remember early photos of them riding around in the desert equipped with a small fleet of brand new pick-up trucks and waving AK-47s. They also would need salaries and food and other support. They got it from a group of countries who worked together, functioning as a kind of secret club, for the purpose of destroying Syria – the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Britain, France, some Gulf States, and Turkey.
Numerous times, helicopters from the US or Israel have been observed ferrying members from one location to another. Al Nusra fighters have been seen treated by Israeli hospitals in the north. Arms caches discovered by the Syrian army at various points contain weapons made in America or Israel or Bulgaria (a source of arms often used for covert CIA operations).
Fighting ISIS has provided the US with a perfect excuse for staying in places where it is not wanted by authorities, as in Syria and Iraq. Fighting ISIS has also provided an excuse for the US to bomb what it wanted to bomb in those countries, the US effectively providing air force support by destroying national infrastructure in Syria or Iraq.
I can understand the reluctance of some to take back volunteers to such organizations, however since the organizations were actually working for, and supported by, Western interests, it is hypocritical and brutally cynical to not allow citizens to return. After all, we’ve always had people joining various causes abroad as soldiers of fortune – as in Spanish Civil War, or, more infamously, in the secret apartheid war in Nationalist South Africa (Nationalist interests used to run cryptic classified adds in Western newspapers about matters like joining a “turkey shoot”), and many more – and they were allowed to return home.
COMMENT TO AN ARTICLE BY DAMIAN WILSON IN RUSSIA TODAY
“Britain taking back ISIS kids doesn’t mean Shamima Begum will walk free & it might strike a blow against terrorism”
There is an immense amount of hypocrisy and cynicism from Western governments concerning the return of citizens who been part of ISIS (aka, Daesh).
The fact is that terrorist groups like ISIS in Syria were supported and supplied by the various Western governments to topple the government of Syria. I have little doubt that even the resources for recruitment came from the same sources.
All such organizations, as also al Nusra, are not authentic jihadi groups. They are mercenary groups, recruited from all over the planet, mercenary groups disguised as jihadis. Part of a new kind of American hybrid warfare. It was used in destroying Libya.
Were they genuine jihadis, Israel along with the corrupt princes of Saudi Arabia would have been their first-priority targets.
But they have never attacked those targets. Never. Instead they attack a government that the US and Israel want to destroy. Very odd kind of jihad.
And where did they originally get all their weapons and transportation and supplies and finances and intelligence from? I remember early photos of them riding around in the desert equipped with a small fleet of brand new pick-up trucks and waving AK-47s. They also would need salaries and food and other support. They got it from a group of countries who worked together, functioning as a kind of secret club, for the purpose of destroying Syria – the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Britain, France, some Gulf States, and Turkey.
Numerous times, helicopters from the US or Israel have been observed ferrying members from one location to another. Al Nusra fighters have been seen treated by Israeli hospitals in the north. Arms caches discovered by the Syrian army at various points contain weapons made in America or Israel or Bulgaria (a source of arms often used for covert CIA operations).
Fighting ISIS has provided the US with a perfect excuse for staying in places where it is not wanted by authorities, as in Syria and Iraq. Fighting ISIS has also provided an excuse for the US to bomb what it wanted to bomb in those countries, the US effectively providing air force support by destroying national infrastructure in Syria or Iraq.
I can understand the reluctance of some to take back volunteers to such organizations, however since the organizations were actually working for, and supported by, Western interests, it is hypocritical and brutally cynical to not allow citizens to return. After all, we’ve always had people joining various causes abroad as soldiers of fortune – as in Spanish Civil War, or, more infamously, in the secret apartheid war in Nationalist South Africa (Nationalist interests used to run cryptic classified adds in Western newspapers about matters like joining a “turkey shoot”), and many more – and they were allowed to return home.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE LACK OF “CRITICAL EDUCATION” IN AMERICA ASSISTS THE CARRYING ON OF EMPIRE’S UGLY EXCESSES – THE SECULAR RELIGION OF PATRIOTISM BLINDS PEOPLE – VESTED INTERESTS DO NOT WANT A BETTER COUNTRY, THEY WANT THE ONE THEY HAVE WHICH GRANTS THEM ALL THEIR PRIVILEGES – AMERICA’S BRUTAL POLICIES ABROAD ARE EVERY BIT AS HORRIFYING AS ARE ITS POLICE AT HOME BUT ON A FAR VASTER SCALE AND ALMOST NO ONE QUESTIONS THEM – BLIND RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY YIELDS THE CENTURIES OF ABUSE WE SAW BY THE CLERGY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CONSORTIUM NEWS
How right you are.
But people are weighed down by such a massive state machinery, and it just never stops lying.
It might be less effective if people had some skepticism about government, about the military, about the security services, and about the corporate press, but I fear that is only the case for a small minority.
No attempt is made in American public education to encourage critical examination or skepticism, just as no effort is made in the dominant corporate press.
The average American student does not receive what can be called “a critical education,” the kind of education that would make them better citizens and America a better society. The secular religion of Patriotism, not open to any form of examination or questioning, just as is the case for all true religions, provides the rigid framework for American public education.
Consider how much damage was done to countless thousands by predatory clergy while the Catholic Church’s traditional inviolable respect for authority prevailed. Centuries of abuse. Organized religion has that kind of power, and it is no less the case for secular forms of religion.
Vested interests do not want a better country, they want just the one they have, the one rewarding them with their positions of authority and wealth. Education officials at all levels never meddle in such matters because their jobs would immediately be at risk. And just the same for the corporate press and its day-to-day education of people. It knows, as the old saying goes, which side of its bread is buttered, and it never lets principles of journalism stand in the way of corporate patriotic duty.
Look at the bitter national controversy we saw over so simple a matter as some football players respectfully kneeling during the national anthem, a legitimate form of protest over a deadly concern. The airwaves and the Internet spluttered with stuff about players lacking patriotism and even accusations of treason. The vice President left the audience at a game once. The President was savagely calling for players or officials to be dismissed.
All over a gesture, one done with genuine respect, concerning a problem few Americans seemed to want to know about, and that is that American police on average kill three citizens every single day, and they seriously abuse and injure many times that. Every day. No terrorists could hope to match the achievement.
Only now, after massive demonstrations in the streets do we see perhaps some signs of relenting in the matter, although it is hard to tell when team sports are not being played in packed stadiums.
Imagine the fate of American school officials who encouraged the critical examination and questioning of the country’s frightful policies abroad, every bit as terrifying as brutal local police but on a far grander scale, or the country’s corrupt system of government by and for wealth?
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CONSORTIUM NEWS
How right you are.
But people are weighed down by such a massive state machinery, and it just never stops lying.
It might be less effective if people had some skepticism about government, about the military, about the security services, and about the corporate press, but I fear that is only the case for a small minority.
No attempt is made in American public education to encourage critical examination or skepticism, just as no effort is made in the dominant corporate press.
The average American student does not receive what can be called “a critical education,” the kind of education that would make them better citizens and America a better society. The secular religion of Patriotism, not open to any form of examination or questioning, just as is the case for all true religions, provides the rigid framework for American public education.
Consider how much damage was done to countless thousands by predatory clergy while the Catholic Church’s traditional inviolable respect for authority prevailed. Centuries of abuse. Organized religion has that kind of power, and it is no less the case for secular forms of religion.
Vested interests do not want a better country, they want just the one they have, the one rewarding them with their positions of authority and wealth. Education officials at all levels never meddle in such matters because their jobs would immediately be at risk. And just the same for the corporate press and its day-to-day education of people. It knows, as the old saying goes, which side of its bread is buttered, and it never lets principles of journalism stand in the way of corporate patriotic duty.
Look at the bitter national controversy we saw over so simple a matter as some football players respectfully kneeling during the national anthem, a legitimate form of protest over a deadly concern. The airwaves and the Internet spluttered with stuff about players lacking patriotism and even accusations of treason. The vice President left the audience at a game once. The President was savagely calling for players or officials to be dismissed.
All over a gesture, one done with genuine respect, concerning a problem few Americans seemed to want to know about, and that is that American police on average kill three citizens every single day, and they seriously abuse and injure many times that. Every day. No terrorists could hope to match the achievement.
Only now, after massive demonstrations in the streets do we see perhaps some signs of relenting in the matter, although it is hard to tell when team sports are not being played in packed stadiums.
Imagine the fate of American school officials who encouraged the critical examination and questioning of the country’s frightful policies abroad, every bit as terrifying as brutal local police but on a far grander scale, or the country’s corrupt system of government by and for wealth?
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