John Chuckman
COMMENTS - RECENT BITS AND PIECES FROM MANY PLACES – VOLUME
TWO
Completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project with gas flowing from Russia to Europe, is a crucial test for Europe: follow your own best interests or continue to follow arbitrary American directions.
The pipeline has already been long-delayed by America’s countless destructive efforts, even though it is more than ninety-percent finished.
And Europe, under American pressure concerning non-existent Russian aggression in Ukraine after an American coup there, already has punished itself by maintaining sanctions against Russia costing its own industries many billions of dollars.
But what is at stake with the pipeline is more than just economics.
If Europe is to have a real future as an important state in the emerging multi-polar world, it must stand up for its own vital interests. And the pipeline is vital.
The United States in all things is always looking out for itself with little care for the welfare of friends or allies.
Friends and allies for America are tools to use and manipulate.
America’s ravings about the dangers of a peaceful and cooperative and business-oriented Russia have reached delusional levels, and they are hurting the economic interests of hundreds of millions of people.
Nord Stream 2 is as important to the industrial strength and security of Germany and the other European industrial states as secure supplies of iron and steel and flows of immigrants to replace a population which is no longer growing.
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The United States exercises no proper diplomacy or even ethics anymore.
Imagine an embassy publishing the times and routes for unpermitted demonstrations against the local government, as the US embassy did in Moscow? Talk about interfering in another country’s internal affairs.
The behavior is just shabby.
By the way, rallies without permits are illegal in just about every country, including the United States.
It is pure propaganda to make a big deal of the rallies in Russia being halted.
And importantly, as Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, has said, the number who voted for President Putin is immensely greater than the number taking part in the rallies.
We also have to keep in mind that America now uses, regularly, induced public demonstrations in many countries as a technique to promote instability.
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The South China Sea is 8000 miles from the coast of the US.
The huge volume of trade passing through there is largely trade with China, and China is protecting it from the possibility of a future US chokehold.
China permits all peaceful actors to carry on. Indeed, it supplies services in the area like search and rescue.
So why is the US sending warships there?
For the same reason it tries to starve the people of Iran and Venezuela and Cuba and Yemen and other places.
Control.
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A recent CBS News poll showed stunning results of how Americans today view “other people in America and domestic enemies” as the biggest threat to their way of life.
The division in America is not something Joe Biden’s rhetoric can possibly heal.
It is weak rhetoric, and the division is deep.
The depth of the division does not reflect just disappointment in politics.
America’s terrible inequality in wealth serves to magnify all the country’s other divisions. The poverty you can see in many parts of America is shocking, and it is not that far from extreme, sickening wealth.
The privileged are just not willing to give up anything to help their fellow citizens, yet that is exactly what is required.
America’s resources and the attention of its leaders go to the global empire.
A trillion dollars a year is wasted on the Pentagon and the security services while America is the only advanced country in the world lacking a national healthcare system for ordinary people.
The country’s politics are for money, by money, and of money. Both parties are richly supported by the donations of the wealthy.
No matter which party you vote for, you get the Pentagon, the CIA, unlimited money in politics, wars, and empire.
America is in fact a plutocracy with a bit of democratic window-dressing, a plutocracy which maintains an empire, at great cost to its ordinary people, to enrich itself.
And it is starting to show serious cracks and strains at home.
Joe Biden puts on a pleasant face, and many welcome it after the foul and ignorant Trump, but Biden is in a position to change very little.
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More advanced weapons dumped by the United States into a fragile Middle East.
But promises of advanced weapons were an important part of Trump's "normalization" scheme.
He "bought" these states with a combination of threats, giving them what was not his to give (as the Western Sahara), and big sales of advanced weapons.
Some normalization. Some diplomacy. Some peace.
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Very interesting developments, pointing to the multi-polar world which is emerging.
And everyone with eyes can see that China builds, everywhere, while the US threatens and intimidates and destroys.
Which path do you think leads to a better future?
There is not a sign of aggression from contemporary Russia. It has become everything we could have dreamed it would become during the Cold War. It cooperates, it is ready to do business with anyone, and it calls everyone partners.
I hope it will not be too long before Europeans see the pointlessness of NATO. The USSR and the Red Army are long gone.
America has tried to pump new life into NATO by dragging its allies into wars like the Neocon Wars in the Middle East.
It is shameful that Europe has gone along. By refusing to participate, Europe might have prevented some of the mindless destruction that saw millions killed and wounded, millions more reduced to hopeless refugees, and entire well-run societies, like Libya, destroyed, leaving chaos.
It does take time to adjust to a new world after 75 years of following the US and letting it occupy Europe, but I think the time is approaching.
An independent Europe offers one more important voice in a multi-polar world, instead of serving as an echo chamber for American rhetoric.
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Why would Trump want such a legacy [pardoning Assange]?
This man who pardons grifters, cronies, and genuine, convicted war criminals?
It is out of keeping with everything he has ever said or done.
He has his legacy, and it is a very shabby one.
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A ridiculous claim of genocide. Absolutely ridiculous if you know anything about the Uighurs.
The Uighur population has actually been on the increase in China, growing at a healthy rate.
The word "genocide" means an effort to kill all of a certain type of people.
Pompeo is a genuine idiot.
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“US presidential politics is ‘a big pointless tug of war’”
That is a good summary of the situation.
All the noise and drama help to keep America’s people believing they do have a democracy.
And the huge amounts of money spent by the two parties act as a barrier to entry of other parties.
You can’t sit down at the card table without a gigantic stake, a stake which can only come from extremely wealthy people and corporations.
The truth is America is a plutocracy with democratic window dressing, working to enrich itself through world empire.
The two parties differ only on domestic social program, program which mostly never get enacted because there aren’t enough funds left for them with a trillion dollars a year going to the Pentagon and security services.
No matter which party you vote for you get plutocracy, money-dominated politics, brutal empire, the Pentagon, and the security services
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I don't see any point in "should haves."
China, when it understood what was happening in Wuhan, acted heroically. It set world standards.
Just compare the disaster in the United States, the world's richest country but one without leadership of any kind.
Even now, the US cannot manage to vaccinate at any decent rate. And more than 400,000 people have died. The record really could not be much worse.
The head of WHO is a good and competent man.
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What a shame.
I lived for some years on a major Monarch butterfly migration path, from Canada to Mexico, at Port Dover, Ontario.
It was a delight to see the height of this migration.
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If all leaders of the world’s major countries behaved the way Pompeo and Trump behave, our world would be in a constant state of tension and arguments and hostilities. There would be no cooperation, no fair dealing, and only the constant threat of war.
That truly is the legacy of these poisonous men.
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All of Trump’s many pardons consist mainly of political intimates and grifter supporters with a generous sprinkling of genuine, convicted war criminals.
Not a single act of decency or heroism or humanity in the bunch
Meanwhile, he executed 13 people in Federal prisons.
My God, what a shabby man.
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You can have a decent country or you can have an empire. You cannot have both.
An empire consists of a relatively small and privileged group telling hundreds of millions of others what to do.
An empire has no genuine respect for democracy or human rights or rule of law. Speeches don’t count. Actions do.
That is the United States today, and it does not matter who is President. Only the tone and relatively small matters change. Basic policy is fixed like a concrete foundation.
Republicans and Democrats are just two wings of an imperial party, differing only in proposed domestic policies that will never see the light of day because there is no money and no interest by those in power.
The Pentagon and security services burn through a trillion dollars a year trying to control the world.
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Moving more troops into Syria is hardly a promising start for Joe Biden.
I think it fair to say we are back to the same old imperial arrogance of the US, only minus the insulting, foul, and ignorant ranting of Trump.
And, yes, as one reader below suggests, why not use pinpoint missiles to destroy the pipeline America is using to steal Syrian oil?
You would have to strike it in a number of places because a single break in a pipeline is fairly soon repaired.
By the way, recently, Biden, in speaking about getting out COVID aid to Americans, said "This is America and no one should go hungry."
Well, I guess the women and children of Yemen, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and other places just don't count as people in Washington.
Because the United States has certainly caused many to be hungry and to do without medicines and other needs.
Such words by Biden sound nice to an American audience, make him appear decent and caring, but, given what America is doing in so many places, the words are hypocrisy.
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Yes, indeed, but does he really have any choice in the matter?
American Presidents do not set the most basic foreign policy matters. The Dark State – Pentagon, CIA, State Department – does. It does so for continuity and to protect the immense investments of the Dark State and the empire.
Presidents are free to make adjustments only so they don’t appear hogtied, and even then only with heavy consultation.
The last President who thought being elected entitled him to set policy left the right side of his head on the streets of Dallas.
