JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE FOOLISHNESS OF AUSTRALIA’S PRESENT MORRISON GOVERNMENT IN DISRUPTING RELATIONS WITH CHINA JUST FOR THE SAKE OF A PAT ON THE HEAD FROM TRUMP – CHINA’S NEAR-TERM PROSPECTS ARE THE STRONGEST OF ANY MAJOR ECONOMY BY FAR – ONLY BACKWARD THINKING AVOIDS ENGAGING WITH CHINA – CHINA BUILDS, EVERYWHERE, WHILE AMERICA IS BENT ON DESTRUCTION – IRRATIONAL IMPULSES CANNOT GIVE US RATIONAL RESULTS - CHINESE PRESIDENT XI’S BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE (BRI, OR THE NEW SILK ROAD) IS THE GREATEST PROJECT OF OUR ERA AND WILL CHANGE THE WORLD – IT DESERVES THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE BUT THAT PRIZE HAS LONG BEEN CORRUPTED TO SERVING AMERICAN GEOPOLITICAL INTERESTS

 John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN GLOBAL TIMES

Canberra’s possible axing of Victoria State agreement with Jiangsu [China’s BRI or New Silk Road] an ‘alarming signal’

 

It would be a very short-sighted thing for Morrison’s Australian government to do.

At a time of global economic problems, we need every bit of investment and growth possible.

And Australia has already hurt itself economically by damaging its valuable export market in China with foolish words.

There can be no doubt that China, having been so spectacularly successful in defeating the pandemic, will be the world’s engine of growth next year.

A new study by London’s Centre for Economics and Business Research also says China is on target to take over America’s place as the world’s largest economy in 2028. Actually, by some measures, it has already achieved that position.

Only backward thinking avoids engaging with China.

The hard truth is that America works with some of its allies, like Australia, to subvert China because it fears it cannot compete in many things, yet it still wants to lead. Irrational impulses cannot give us rational results in world affairs.

_____________

Response to an unthinking comment from Australia:

I’ve always thought it was good advice to know the words to the song before standing up to sing. You seem to disagree with that principle.

Your words display the kind of reflexive ignorance we see so often from divisive and unthinking folks like Trump and Pompeo.

And there is no excuse for it. Look me up. I am widely known, having many Websites and published articles. A brief bio is on all my sites.

What I am known for is being strongly anti-war and having a passionate desire for honesty, the rule of reason, and concern for human decency. I am a fierce and independent critic, retired from an economics career.

I am also known for my love of history and culture and beautiful images (I have a number of image sites). I freely confess to a deep affection for China, and I dislike seeing the country treated unfairly as it has been by devotees to Trumpism.

How does it get any lower than treating the world’s first victim of COVID as its cause? In hopes of grabbing some economic or political advantage? And not just a victim, but a heroic fighter against the disease.

In COVID, as in so many matters, China builds while America is focused on destruction.

We have so many genuinely bad actors in the world, and China is not one of them.

 

NOTE

President Xi’s Belt and Initiative (aka, the New Silk Road) is the greatest economic initiative of our lifetimes.

Its impact will be monumental and extremely positive, and how important that it comes at a time of great stress in the world.

It will reshape the world’s economic geography and improve the lives of hundreds of millions in many lands.

It builds healthy relationships and partnerships across the globe.

Meanwhile America continues threatening and attacking people and telling people in many lands how they should run their affairs, even though it is obvious America cannot even run its own.

Were the Nobel Peace Prizes not heavily under the influence of American geopolitics – as they clearly are, with none of the most obvious and worthy candidates ever winning – Xi would be a tremendously worthy winner for this project. 

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE POLITICAL CONTRADICTIONS WE ARE TAUGHT TO BELIEVE - A FEW THOUGHTS ON CHURCHILL, TRUMAN, AND JOHNSON AS WAR CRIMINALS

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICE GREANVILLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER 

'Let's Be Honest - Stalin Was Less of a Criminal Than Churchill, Truman, and LBJ'

 

I don’t know about the author's "less of a criminal," but there is no doubt that Churchill, Truman, and LBJ were war criminals, criminals on a rather gigantic scale.

The point is simply factual, not controversial, as you may see by reading some solid histories and biographies.

Truman’s carpet-bombing of North Korea was estimated by the Pentagon to have wiped out one-fifth of the country’s population. The US also experimented with biological weapons against North Korea and nearby China.

Truman of course used two atomic bombs on Japan, and a series of a dozen was planned. That happened after Japan had clearly signaled that it was ready to surrender. Truman’s government wanted unconditional, abject surrender, and for that he destroyed two cities of no military importance.

LBJ started the Vietnam War on a colossal scale, and the carpet-bombing there would eventually extinguish about three million lives. Another million were killed in Cambodia. Vietnam had been a small-scale conflict ever since the French left their former colony.

LBJ’s crimes included the heavy use of napalm and early forms of cluster bombs. American troops on the ground fought a very dirty war with torture, rape, and mass night time assassinations of village leaders.

And what was the glorious purpose? To keep an artificially-created rump state, South Vietnam, run by dictators, going as an American pied-a-terre in Southeast Asia.

Churchill was an arch-imperialist who never hesitated using machine guns and fighter planes on peasants who were out of line.

Churchill, and not Hitler, was actually the one who started the bombing of cities, rather than just military targets like airfields, in early WWIl. Eventually, these raids grew to horrific levels, as with the fire-bombing of Dresden, equivalent in every way to an atomic attack. The target was also one of the greatest historical and artistic treasures of Europe.

If you read Churchill's war memoirs, you get a definite feeling of a certain admiration he had for Stalin.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ISRAEL’S UNSCRUPULOUS METHODS OF DEFLECTING LEGITIMATE CRITICISM – CRITICISM OF A HEAVILY-ARMED POWER ABUSING MILLIONS IS NOT THE SAME THING AS THE PREJUDICE OF ANTI-SEMITISM – THE DEFINITIVE EXAMPLE OF CRITICIZING A BRUTAL SOVIET UNION BUT NOT HATING RUSSIANS

 John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JONATHAN COOK IN CONSORIUM NEWS

Charges of Anti-Semitism & the Silencing of Dissent in Europe

 

The emptiness of the argument about criticism of Israel being a form of anti-Semitism becomes blindingly clear with a comparison from history.

The Soviet Union was a state a great many people criticized and even hated, people of many political beliefs. And that was despite the USSR’s having some worthy declared goals and ideals in its constitution.

Yet, the claim was never made that such criticism of the USSR was hatred of the Russian people.

I certainly criticized the Soviet Union, yet I have always felt affection for Russian culture – its literature, its music, its food, its architecture, its vibrant history, its science, and, although I speak no Russian, even the sound of its language.

Just so, Israel.

Like the old USSR, Israel is a state bristling with heavy arms and secret police and intelligence services, even nuclear weapons. Its behavior for over seventy years towards millions of Palestinians closely parallels that of the Soviet Union towards dissidents and critics and some minorities – the people Stalin called “wreckers.” It is oppressive, arbitrary, and often extremely violent.

If you cannot criticize a state for injustice and violence without being accused of hate and prejudice, absolutely all our Western ideals – from the Enlightenment to the great struggles for freedom and fair treatment – are removed from our political culture.

I regard that as a sick prospect, one that in the long term actually supports all the hateful and murderous interests of the earth.

A society defended in this fashion is not worthy of defense.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE DEMONSTRABLY FALSE NOTION OF ISRAEL AS A FOUNDATION FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN MONDOWEISS

“Israel is ‘anchor and foundation for democracy in the region’”

 

Of course, quite the opposite is true.

Israel is friendly with the worst tyrants and 13^th century princes in the region.

It likes them because they keep their people in line brutally just as Israel does the Palestinians.

Israel has never favored – except in phony political speeches – democracy for its neighbors.

Hamas was genuinely democratic. Israel attacked it, kidnaped members of its government, threatened the life of its leader, and got it stupidly listed as a terrorist organization by its servants in Washington.

After thirty years of oppressive government in Egypt, government Israel was on good terms with, a brief experiment with democracy was ended with a coup which put a Field Marshal in charge. The prisons are stuffed.

The coup was undoubtedly assisted by CIA at Israeli insistence. Israel absolutely hated the democratic government.

Of course, Israel’s own government hardly counts as a democracy. Pretty much only one kind of people is welcome, and it has about 5 million other kinds of people under its harsh rule who have no rights, not even secure rights to their own homes and farms, and certainly no votes. And the Prime Minister of Israel rules with an almost-perpetual minority.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WHY IRAN, A COUNTRY WHICH HAS NEVER STARTED A WAR, IS SO HATED BY THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL, COUNTRIES ALMOST CONTINUOUSLY AT WAR – IT HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS

 John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN PRESS T V

‘Iran's strategic patience, most decisive response to scientist’s assassination for now’

 

I think everyone knows that Iran does not have a nuclear-weapons program, just as they knew perfectly well that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

But we live in a world of constant deception in many things because it covers the real intentions and dark acts of predatory countries like the United States and Israel. And of course, the world’s major English language news sources are American and faithfully serve its power establishment’s interests.

The fears generated by the accusation about nuclear weapons are useful for the United States and Israel to manipulate.

Israel hates Iran just for being a large state in the neighborhood it regards as its own, a neighborhood it wants to dominate. It does have visions of itself as a miniature replica of the United States concerning all things Middle Eastern. The reality of Iran intrudes on that fantasy.

The US hates Iran because it hates any country that does not listen to instructions from Washington. It prefers bloody tyrannies who listen to its voice over peaceful states that do not, as we can see from its close embrace of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and some others.

After all, under the late Shah, installed by the US and Britain in a 1953 coup, the US did call the shots in Iran, and Iran played a role in America's notions of what the Middle East should be.

There can be no doubt that the US misses that relationship, and it simply hates those who destroyed it.

Tyrants and bullies do not like independent thinking. And local people’s opinion does not matter. Iran was a working democracy before an American-British coup in 1953 installed the Shah and his brutal SAVAK secret police who had the practice of pulling out the finger nails of captives.

Empires are built on the basic concept of a small number of privileged people in one country telling tens of millions of others how to live their lives.

Empires are not humane or democratic or law-abiding in spirit. And the fact that the US runs a rather bloody empire negates all of its claims about democracy and human rights. You cannot be both an international tyrant and a democratic, law-abiding state.

And just so, Israel, which truly represents a kind of specially privileged American colony in the region, one with absolutely no regard for the interests of the hundreds of millions around it. Indeed, it cultivates relations with the tyrants who oppress them.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ON THE NATURE OF WAR MONUMENTS – EVEN IF TOU ARE AS ANTI-WAR AS I AM, YOU CAN BE MOVED BY SOME OF THEM – RUSSIA’S “THE MOTHERLAND CALLS” CAN BRING TEARS – IT MOVINGLY RECALLS THE MOST TERRIBLE EVENT IN HUMAN HISTORY - BRITAIN’S BRAND NEW ARMED SERVICES MEMORIAL IS STERILE AND OPPRESSIVE – THE CREATORS REVEAL THE EMPTINESS OF THEIR PURPOSE

 John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOHN PILGER IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

The Most Lethal Virus is Not Covid-19. It is War

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/12/14/john-pilger-the-most-lethal-virus-is-not-covid-19-it-is-war/

 

Even though I am very anti-war, I can admire a great war monument.

There are a number of them in the world, but the one that almost gives me chills is the gigantic “The Motherland Calls” in Volgograd (renamed from Stalingrad).

Its gigantic size is justified in that it represents the bloodiest battle ever fought in the most destructive event in all of human history, Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union.

The USSR lost roughly a hundred times the entire American losses on all fronts in WWII. Maybe, that’s why America is so cavalier about war – it never really experienced it.

The intensity of feeling of “The Motherland Calls” is enough to bring tears.

I actually find the British Armed Services Memorial exceedingly sterile. It possesses a kind of oppressive ugliness.

There is definitely a surreal quality to the sculpture groups, unpleasantly so. Nothing inspiring about any of it.

Well done in terms of technical quality, but with a sickening sense of dreary nightmare figures set in a rigid stone framework that very much reminds me of Italian and German totalitarian architecture.

Its creators have unwittingly revealed its emptiness of purpose and soul.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: OBAMA AND THE DEATH OF HOPE – AMERICAN POLITICAL HOPE ACTUALLY DIED IN THE !960S, BUT OBAMA, EARLY-ON, RAISED A NEW FLICKER – BUT NOT FOR LONG – WHAT THE PENTAGON THOUGHT OF OBAMA AND HOW THEY USED HIM

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JAMES BOVARD IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

Barack Obama & the Death of Idealism

The former president’s deception and warmongering killed the “hope and change” he promised on the campaign trail

 

“Death of hope” is a good descriptive phrase applied to Obama, even though it is somewhat inaccurate.

I think ideals in and about America died long ago, in the mid- to late-1960s.

Obama’s running did ignite a flicker of hope that a miracle was somehow underway, but it really lasted a brief time, a few months, before it resembled a cigarette butt in an ashtray.

He proved to be a death’s head with the gifts of an alluring smile and a rich voice

It is only recently that we have learned the Pentagon secretly came to view Obama as an asset for their mighty work of destruction in the Middle East, a smiling Peace Prize-winner front-man who never flinched at bombing an killing for all of his eight years.

He is almost the very definition of a psychopath, superficial charm combined with the ability to manipulate while harboring murderous impulses and possessing no conscience.

Looking back at his campaign, his ability to assume the warm rhythms of traditional Black preachers with, “Yes, we can!“ while in fact offering, and then doing, nothing for his own people reconfirms the diagnosis.

He serves almost as a poster child for America’s brutal empire. A bright man of modest means with a career as an untenured lecturer was able to retire from the White House worth many tens of millions of dollars. That is what America’s empire is all about.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: A HARD ASSESSMENT OF THE LATE JOURNALIST ROBERT FISK FROM AN EXPERT IN MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS – IT HAS TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY GIVEN THE EVIDENCE SUPPLIED – HOW VERY LITTLE WE KNOW ABOUT THIS REGION OWING TO AMERICAN IMPERIAL INTERESTS AND WARS WHICH ALWAYS MAKE A VICTIM OF TRUTH – BUT THEN AGAIN HOW LITTLE AMERICANS KNOW OF WHAT DRIVES THEIR OWN SOCIETY

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY AS’AD ABUKHALIL IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

Robert Fisk & the Decline of Western Reporting on the Middle East

“Just because Fisk was brave against Israel and opposed Western intervention in the Middle East, it should not stop us from pointing out his incompetence, especially on things Lebanese”

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/12/01/the-angry-arab-robert-fisk-the-decline-of-western-reporting-on-the-middle-east/

 

A remarkably hard assessment of Robert Fisk, but one that I think must be taken seriously because of the many cohesive bits of internal evidence the author offers.

I liked Fisk years ago, but had pretty much stopped reading him because I thought in recent years he was really off his game. A column often offered little that was new or interesting, a sure sign that a reporter is no longer doing the hard work of being investigative.

Perhaps many of us were just impressed by a man living in the region for a long period also reporting on it. I very much did assume he spoke Arabic. We were also grateful to see a Western name in print critical of some of Israel’s many terrible abuses, something avoided by every major Western news source.

I remember the American actor, John Malkovich, seriously saying once that he’d like to kill Fisk (for his reporting on Israel), the kind of ugly incident which spurs one coming to the defense of Fisk.

The region is for most of us a kind of information black hole, owing to the dark interests of the United States, Israel, and the effects so many wars, truth being often called the first victim of war.

But I’m not sure that is much different than is the case for many other places, including very much the United States, where great power is at stake. How little is reported about the forces really driving American society.

Most Americans genuinely believe they have a democracy, rather than what they do have, a plutocracy with window dressing. The great Trump-Biden passion play will leave many Americans grateful democracy survived; a delusional notion that will serve to keep the colossal, corrupt wreck decently covered for a few more years.

Most Americans undoubtedly also believe that the Pentagon bravely defends America, instead of understanding its brutality in enforcing and expanding a global empire to serve the country’s plutocrats.

No, most Americans do not even understand their own society, let alone the societies of the Middle East, where their armies have inflicted immense pain and destruction. If ever there was a case fitting that wonderful line, “ignorant armies clash by night,” it is the Middle East.

The opposite will of course be true for Trump’s crowd about believing American democracy has been saved, but those kinds of deep and fundamental divisions in a society cannot be hidden even by America’s corporate press and vast government apparatus 

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE GREAT “CYBER-ATTACK” ELICITED IMMEDIATE AND UNWARRANTED STATEMENTS AGAINST RUSSIA BY SENIOR AMERICAN POLITICIANS – IT NOW APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN THE SAME KIND OF EMPTY POSTURING AS THE INFAMOUS “POISONING” CASES AGAINST RUSSIA – ARRIVING AT A PLACE WHERE EVERYTHING AMERICANS BELIEVE ABOUT WORLD AFFAIRS IS FALSE

John Chuckman

COMMENT – EARLY THOUGHTS ON THE “CYBER-ATTACK”

Actually, it is incorrect to call this exploit an “attack.” It clearly is a large-scale effort to collect information, not to damage anything.

Collecting information about others is what America’s NSA, CIA, FBI, and other massive agencies do around the clock. Ditto, Britain’s GCHQ and MI6.

The word “attack” only puts an unduly harsh name to the matter. I think it fair to say it is in keeping with America’s now-always aggressive tone towards Russia, China, and others.

And still, we have no information at all about who is responsible, with Trump suggesting China and Pompeo suggesting Russia, while neither of them has any information to support what he is saying.

Israel is just as likely as any other candidate to be responsible for this. The US intelligence community recognizes Israel in private as extremely aggressive at collecting information.

Its name of course does not come up in our sanitized press, and if it proves true that it is responsible, we’ll never see it reported.

Meanwhile, just as in the cases of Skripal or Navalny, great fun can be had with Russia.

 

LATER COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN ABC NEWS

Top Intelligence Democrat accuses Russia of cyber hack that resulted in 'big haul'

Sen. Mark Warner added that the breach "may be ongoing"

 

Calling someone guilty, not just before a trial, but even before an investigation?

The fact is there is a list of potential candidates for this operation, including one of America's own intelligence services and at least one of its allies.

Do we ever hear anything sensible or informed from Washington anymore?

Not really, and there is a good reason for that.

Prejudice dominates the nation's politics, along with money.

There are no honest expressions of opinion or efforts to understand, outside a very few cases.

But the irresponsibility of hyping hatred against Russia is a very foolish and dangerous game. Russia is, literally, the only nation on earth that can obliterate, entirely, the United States, China’s active nuclear forces, at least for now, being just a fraction of Russia’s. Of course, that fact itself is just one of the reasons Russia is hated with such passion by Washington’s elites who would like to control every corner of the planet.

I think we see here a good measure of the threadbare nature of contemporary American politics.

 

NOTE ON FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS AND SIMILARITIES TO RECENT-PAST ANTI-RUSSIAN EVENTS

The United States Treasury has just announced all classified systems appear to have been safe from the “attack.” Only unclassified systems were affected. To my mind, this raises questions about the authenticity of the entire “hacking” event.

Even more suspicious is the fact that American sources now say it was done by the same Russian group that hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2016, a group with the handle, “Cozy Bear.” Well, the only problem with that is that the Democratic National Committee was not hacked. As I’ve discussed before, the embarrassing WikiLeaks material was downloaded from inside the Democratic Party, as several top technical experts outside government have explained. A key suspect in doing that was the late, murdered Seth Rich. And can you imagine a Russian intelligence group using a handle like “Cozy Bear”? It’s preposterous.

The new “cyber-attack” was first headlined as being extremely serious and generated all kinds of immediate calls for reprisal against Russia from prominent American politicians. Their calls came despite no one’s yet knowing anything about the event, including who was responsible, what was the purpose, or the extent of the damage, if any.

The pattern much resembles recent-past British and German “poisoning” cases against Russia, cases where the victim survived what was impossible to survive with bizarre events following, as the disappearance from the earth of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the hands of British security services a couple of years ago.

The immediate flap raised by American politicians over “Russia’s cyber-attack,” politicians who had no evidence before they spoke, mimics the pattern of British Prime Minister Theresa May concerning the “poisoning” of Sergei Skripal  a couple of years ago and the pattern of Chancellor Angela Merkel concerning the “poisoning” of Alexei Navalny more recently. Both leaders made extremely serious charges against Russia in the absence of genuine evidence.

CNN is now headlining the idea that Navalny, was in fact poisoned by contaminated underpants. Previously, he was declared poisoned by a water bottle conveniently brought to Germany by one of his alert supporters who discovered it in a search of his room in Siberia.

Of course, we have never received any convincing proof that he was poisoned at all. Russian doctors had attended him first, certainly saving his life from what was suspected to be diabetic shock, and they even took blood samples showing no poison. I remind readers, too, that military nerve agents like Novichok, supposedly used in both cases, are among the deadliest substances known. They kill within a few moments of skin contact. See these summaries and analyses to appreciate fully the absurdities of the story:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/09/18/john-chuckman-comment-more-on-the-mysterious-navalny-case-we-have-been-provided-no-evidence-russias-criminal-investigators-have-also-not-been-provided-evidence/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/08/28/john-chuckman-comment-the-alexei-navalny-affair-none-of-the-facts-that-we-have-so- -support-assertions-of-poisoning-this-is-beginning-to-resemble-british-prime-minister-theresa/  

Have we indeed reached the stage in the workings of American empire anticipated by CIA Director William Casey many years ago when he reportedly said, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false"

At least in matters concerning Russia, that would seem to be very much where we’ve arrived.