Thursday, March 16, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: NOW WE KNOW FOR SURE NOTHING WORTH CHANGING WILL CHANGE WITH TRUMP - EXCEPT FOR RANTS ABOUT PRESS AND MIGRANTS YOU MIGHT AS WELL HAVE OBAMA OR EVEN HILLARY - U.S. ELECTIONS JUST DON'T MATTER



COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN SPUTNIK


“Trump's 'Reaffirming the Right of CIA to Decide Whom to Kill and Where'”

Well, that about does it for me with Trump. What a waste of time he has proved in people’s hope for change.

He is going to change nothing worth changing.

He is identical to Obama or Clinton when it comes to the things which really count, such as war and destruction. His only difference is in style and noise about things that don’t matter much.

Extrajudicial killing continues, and it remains in the hands of the unaccountable psychopaths running the CIA.

I could never have imagined such things when I was growing up in America.

It is beyond sickening.

So, with this, Trump effectively confirms that elections in America mean almost nothing.

He will go on ranting about the press and ranting about migrants – fairly trivial matters in the lives of most Americans - and everything else will be just the same as if Hillary Clinton had been elected.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: TRUMP MEETS SAUDI DEPUTY CROWN PRINCE AND WE HEAR CHARGE OF MEETING MY HUSBAND'S MURDERER FROM A 9/11 WIDOW - BUT SAUDIS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT AND FACTS SUGGESTING INSIDE JOB ARE IGNORED



COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER


"9/11 Widow: 'Why Is Trump Meeting with My Husband's Murderer?'"

I'm sorry, but this woman does not what she is talking about.

Saudi Arabia, an unpleasant place for sure, had nothing to do with 9/11.

Just because they made payments to bin Laden to stay away from his homeland means nothing, no matter what creepy American politicians like Chuck Schumer may say.

And, further, the US has never provided a scrap of proof that bin Laden himself was even involved in 9/11.

Afghanistan’s Taleban government of the time, when they received an extradition request from America following 9/11, asked for some evidence, as is the normal procedure with international extradition, but the US highhandedly refused to provide anything.

Then the US just attacked mindlessly.

There are so many things about 9/11 that suggest some kind of inside job, and it is bizarre the way they have been ignored.

Readers may enjoy this analysis:



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AMERICAN SECRETARY OF DEFENSE MATTIS SAYS CHANGING CLIMATE AFFECTS SECURITY - THIS IS NOT NEWS - CLIMATE CHANGE IS VERY OLD STUFF - BUT WE STILL CAN'T SAY HUMANITY CAUSED IT OR CAN ALTER IT IF IT DID



COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY IAN JOHNSTON IN THE INDEPENDENT


'I agree that the effects of a changing climate — such as increased maritime access to the Arctic, rising sea levels, desertification, among others — impact our security situation'

This, actually, is not news.

The Pentagon issued official reports on this matter years ago. At any rate, it is kind of stating the obvious when you are discussing things like shorelines or temperatures or precipitation.

Perhaps, Gen. Mattis was in a high position there then.

The issue has never been, I would like to remind Independent editors, whether there is climate change or not.

There is, and always has been climate change. Tacitus, two thousand years ago, wrote of North Africa as "the granary of Rome."

The issue is whether the particular change we think we see today is caused by human acts.

That is quite a different matter, almost always glossed over by enthusiasts. And it has not been scientifically proved.

And there is an even greater, less certain issue, and that is whether what we think we see can be, in any way, affected by our society's deliberate acts.

That is a totally unanswered question, and it ain't trivial when you are talking of vast projects and plans on a planetary scale, costing trillions of dollars.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MORE ON THE APPOINTMENT OF CHRYSTIA FREELAND AS CANADA'S FOREIGN MINISTER - A FEW OBSERVATIONS ON JUSTIN TRUDEAU AS PRIME MINISTER



COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOHN HELMER IN RUSSIA INSIDER


I was not at all happy about this appointment of Chrystia Freeland as Foreign Minister by Justin Trudeau.

I don't even understand what he intended by it.

So far as I know he harbors no anti-Russian feelings.

But I think it clear this woman may well.

In general, folks who insist on speaking the old language of their parents at home, as she does, are not the kind of minds I find at all attractive.

I've known members of Canada's Ukrainian community in the past, and they are not a progressive or open-minded bunch, being the sons and daughters of people who left the Soviet Union ages ago.

She is not even a seasoned politician or a long-serving Member of Parliament.

We had a very classy guy representing our country, M. Dion, but Trudeau has moved him to the EU.

Was Trudeau thinking this kind of person would appeal to Trump? If so, I don’t know why. Or was he just trying to give some of the more conservative communities in Canada more front row representation?

Whatever, it is not an attractive or promising appointment at all, even without Nazi skeletons in her family background.

Trudeau has now made several blunders or bad calls now, and I am finding myself thinking, despite his superficial charm, he is not proving an especially attractive or effective leader.

Although, it is easy to forget the horror he replaced, absolutely the darkest and most twisted political figure in Canada's history, Stephen Harper.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE SHEER LUNACY OF TALKING ABOUT THE PROGRESSIVE AGENDA IN AMERICA - AMERICA HAS BECOME A PLACE WHERE ALMOST ALL POLITICAL STATEMENTS HAVE NO MEANING



COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENTWATCH


"... free from any views or opinions that do not fit the “progressive narrative”. '

Sorry, but you do persist in using the wrong words.

That should be "the establishment's narrative" or "the official narrative."

Progressive and establishment are not the same thing.

There is nothing "progressive" about Obama or The New York Times or the CIA or the Pentagon or indeed the Democratic Party or any of America's major broadcasters or the Clintons or any of America's massive corporations.

These are all elements with decided interests in maintaining a world empire with endless wars and invasions and coups. A world with immense Pentagon and CIA budgets. A world with immense intrusions into citizens' privacy. A world of supporting such great injustices as Israel's treatment of millions of Palestinians. A world of regarding Russia and China as opponents.

How does anyone regard "progressive" and "maintaining a world empire" as the same?

They really could not be more different.

That's why America has virtually no liberals or progressives.

Everyone of any influence in America supports the empire.


No one, not even Bernie Sanders, speaks against all the wars and interference and security. The best you get is "I didn't vote for that."

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: REPUBLICAN STEVE KING PROVIDES A PRIZE EXAMPLE OF THE CONFUSED AND INDEED MEANINGLESS RHETORIC OF AMERICAN POLITICS - ON MIGRATION AND BIRTH RATES



COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENT WATCH


“’We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.’ The statement is open ended, mildly confusing, and leaves a plethora of room for interpretation.”

Mildly confusing?

It's unbelievably brainless and extremely confusing.

The simple scientific facts are these.

Populations in advanced countries do not have enough children to replace their existing populations.

Therefore, declines in size are the future without migration.

So, legal migration is a necessity everywhere in the advanced world.

And, if you want also to have a decent, ethical society, you must accept some of the world's many refugees, too.

After all, America has signed binding international treaties to that end.

But America has an even bigger ethical obligation than most countries for the simple reason that its imperial wars have in fact caused so much of the up-rootedness and destruction we see in places such as Syria, Libya, Yemen, etc.

America is the single greatest manufacturer of refugees as well as dead bodies.

And so, America resembles the world's horror state when it claims the right to go bombing and destroying in many lands and then says of the results, "It's none of our concern.”

So far, Trump is proving a terrible disappointment.

He hasn't ended any war. We don’t have even a hint of his trying to do so. Certain noises suggest he may even increase some. Yet he and his loyal followers rail on about refugees as though they came from another planet.



Monday, March 13, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: BRITAIN'S NEW MONUMENT TO AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ - WE HAVE FAKE NEWS SO WHY NOT FAKE MONUMENTS? - A TONY BLAIR VISION OF INSPIRATION DEDICATED TO MASS MURDER - A WORD ON THE TWO COUNTRIES INVADED FOR NOTHING



COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


"The British Iraq and Afghanistan war memorial celebrates those who destroyed my country"

It could not be said better than that.

This monument to acts of idiocy is actually a form of fake news, a fake historical memorial, trying to render heroic what was cowardly, trying to make significant what was shameful.

The establishment just never stops trying to tell us what kind of a world it is arranging for us without our consent, a kind of fantasy story to cover the actual nastiness we can all see for ourselves.

I have to add, too, that this particular piece of sculpture almost inadvertently reveals its poor intent.

It is just plain ugly, strongly resembling what we might have expected the Soviets to build in Hungary, 1956.

A Tony Blair vision of something inspiring, an ugly lump cast in bronze and stone and dedicated to mass murder.

Ugh!

The ugly monument may be seen here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iraq-afghanistan-war-memorial-blair-destroyed-my-country-a7626906.html
------------------------------------
Response to another reader’s comment:

If you had an ounce of knowledge, you'd know Afghanistan really wasn't even a country in the sense that we understand it, so religion could hardly overwhelm country.

It was a loosely organized area of tribal people living a hardscrabble life. There were even few roads. The border with Pakistan was never even formally settled.

Fighting between tribal groups went on incessantly, as the Northern Alliance versus the Taleban.

Indeed, they were, and are, all Muslims although they adhered to different factions, as Catholics fighting Lutherans in 16th century Europe.

There was no reason on earth to invade the place beyond American fury and demands for vengeance. Simply insane. The Taleban were in no way responsible for 9/11.

The US has never provided a scrap of evidence that even Osama bin Laden, a Saudi in exile in Afghanistan, was responsible either.

The Taleban government would have extradited him after 9/11 and said so, if the US had presented any credible evidence, but they refused to do what is normal procedure for extraditions.

And if you had an ounce of knowledge, you'd know for sure Saddam Hussein allowed no religious extremists or terrorist to flourish in Iraq. None. It was actually in many ways the most advanced country in the Arab world.

He was a tyrant, true, but that's just the kind of people the US and Britain support anyway so long as they toe the American policy line -eg, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, etc., etc.

Iraq was only invaded to reduce it to a set of rump states for Israel's benefit. The same effort has been underway in Syria for six years, only using covert operations and proxy armies instead of direct invasion.

It was only after the Bush-Blair illegal invasion of Iraq, we get the likes of ISIS and Al-Nusra.

You are, frankly, just appallingly ignorant.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: CIA IS THE POWER ESTABLISHMENT'S ARMY OF THUGS - AN OPEN ENEMY OF FREEDOM - IT'S NOT GOING AWAY OR BEING DIMINISHED ANYTIME SOON - TRUMP HAS MADE NO EFFORT TO CHANGE ANYTHING THERE


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN WASHINGTON BLOG


“CIA Stresses Loyalty to the AGENCY Over Loyalty to the Constitution”

I don't know why this would surprise anyone.

You start a covert agency which is pretty close to unaccountable, you fund it beyond its ability even to spend sensibly, you see it hire armies of bright psychopathic personalities, you watch it play dirty tricks all over the planet, and you watch it lie at every turn about what it is doing or has done.

Clearly, a formula for disaster.

Clearly, something incompatible with democratic or human values.

And clearly why Trump can no more drain the swamp than he can lift the earth.

I think all the American Patriot-types are living in cloudcuckooland.

Nothing much is going to change.
___________________________

Response to a comment about JFK being right in wanting to smash the CIA:

JFK left the right side of his head splattered across the streets of Dallas if I’m not mistaken.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: SUCKED INTO THE SWAMP - THREAT OF FURTHER WAR IN MIDEAST - WHY OTHERS IN THE WORLD GET THE IMPRESSION AMERICANS JUST LOVE WAR AND KILLING - WHAT VIETNAM DID



EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN SPUTNIK


“Washington 'Risks Getting Drawn Into Yet Another Ground War in Middle East'”

Donald Trump, from all evidence so far, appears to have been sucked into the same swamp bog that Obama was.

The imperial concerns of America's unelected military/security/corporate establishment take precedence over everything else, including elected government.

It does seem Trump has been trumped.
________________________________

Response to another reader’s comment; “It's not a risk. Americans love war, they are a nation of sick individuals.”

There is truth in what you say, but there is an understandable reason for it.

America has no first-hand knowledge of serious war.

All of its wars since 1865 have been abroad, inflicting suffering on others from which its own population is pretty much secure.

Even in WWII, a war which claimed more than 50 million lives, America’s losses were small, about 300 thousand. The gigantic battles and the horrific bombing were never seen once in America.

Had Americans experienced what Russia and Europe experienced over the last century, their views might well be different.

I've long observed how few Americans really care about what is happening to "foreigners."

It was that way in the Vietnam Holocaust, a ten-year exercise in extreme brutality serving little point.

Americans only got excited over the relatively small number (small, given the world’s experience of war) of Americans coming home in boxes, especially when those boxes contained draftees.

The estimated 3 million Vietnamese slaughtered in various horrible ways - napalm, early cluster bombs, carpet-bombing – literally meant almost nothing in America.

Nor did the horror America left behind matter much - land mines, cluster munitions, and a sea of Agent Orange, etc. - things which kept killing Vietnamese for many years and do still.

The death of about 60 thousand "boyz" in achieving all that was the only thing that mattered and still matters.

I remember how enraged American officials were when they lost the war. They refused to undertake any obligations like reparations or land-mine clearance.

And when they talked to the Vietnamese, which was rarely, they insisted on crazy things like having suspected crash sites for American planes dug up to find some old bones and buttons, as though the Vietnamese hadn’t huge and urgent problems with which to deal. But, no, they had to find America’s bones and buttons and ship them home. It was insane.

The entire war was utterly insane, but to this day you will not find large numbers of Americans who admit that, so indoctrinated were they on the “threat” of communism. Feelings towards Russia today still reflect that indoctrination because the Pentagon has always found it useful to have a boogeyman in pushing for still larger budgets.

The one thing that came out of Vietnam for Americans was an end to the draft. A very-well paid professional armed force also offers job opportunities in a society which increasingly has trouble generating jobs, at least for young people without good skills.

The Pentagon also determined to become as hi-tech as possible, minimizing the actual exposure of soldiers. They learned in Vietnam that the coffins coming home in even modest numbers literally created civil unrest.

These new ways of doing things enable the Pentagon to pursue America’s many colonial wars – and that’s all any of America’s wars since WWII have been, dirty little colonial wars – with a minimum of disturbance “back home.” Americans mostly now never give a thought to what is being done to “foreigners.”

And, of course, as we know well, America’s corporate news media make sure Americans never see the gruesome results of the professional army’s work. The only time broken bodies and pools of blood ever appear in America’s press is when the deaths are misattributed to the very governments America’s establishment is trying to destroy, as in Syria.

So, we live in a strange world of shadows in which most of what America’s government does abroad is never even explained to Americans, and so long as great numbers of coffins are not being shipped home, Americans just don’t care.

This is a near universal reality in America including most parts of the political spectrum. You don’t hear even a self-declared “socialist” like Bernie Sanders railing against the horrors America inflicts abroad. Never. He’ll only brag something like having voted against the Iraq invasion many years ago, and that’s it.

It is nation of affluent navel-gazers whose ruling establishment pretty much has a free hand to kill and destroy abroad on a grand scale. After all, in the years of Obama and Bush, America killed maybe 2 million people in its Neocon Wars, absolutely none of them a threat to the United States.

Friday, March 10, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE UN AS CELEBRITY ENTERTAINMENT VENUE - KNOW-NOTHING SPEECHES WITH RED CARPETS AND COCKTAILS - APPLAUSE FOR IGNORANCE - BUT THE IGNORANCE SERVES AMERICAN IMPERIAL AIMS IN AN EMASCULATED INSTITUTION - ISIS AND GENOCIDE


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY EDITH LEDERER IN THE INDEPENDENT


“Amal Clooney urges world leaders not to let Isis get away with genocide in passionate address to UN”

Amal Clooney, like so many celebrities making speeches, simply does not know what she is talking about.

Her ignorance on this topic should be embarrassing, but celebrities are never embarrassed by the silliness of their words or they would never rise to speak in the first place.

Besides such events at the UN have almost become entertainments, complete with red carpet, interviews, cocktails, and endless flattery. America’s behind-the-scenes efforts have made it so, emasculating the UN so it never today is a source of attack on the world’s actual sources of evil.

Amal Clooney’s performance actually reminds me of another celebrity who spoke at the UN in a similar fashion, Angelina Jolie.

Ms. Jolie made a showy appearance at the UN, complete with interviews and cocktails, about stopping rape in war, surely about as realistic a goal as having rules against killing in war.

Jolie then proceeded, a short time later, making a plea for the West to get more aggressive against Assad, a plea, in other words, for more killing in Syria. It just does not get more brainless than that.

Whatever Amal Clooney thinks, ISIS is not in the genocide business.

“Genocide” means unequivocally the effort to destroy an entire class of people of one kind or another, as a religious or an ethnic group.

No informed person can claim this for ISIS, ugly though they be.

But I forget myself, “genocide” has become one of those terms for the red-carpet-cause set that requires almost daily denouncement even when it is not happening and what they are talking about is something else entirely.

Indeed, how very convenient to go around denouncing a concept such as evil in theory while you ignore genuine, dripping-with-blood evil before your eyes.

No mess, no complications, no political difficulties, no effort – just self-praise for denouncing what almost everyone on the planet already denounces. And America and its murderous allies can carry right on with mass killing and destruction which is not genocide.

ISIS is the creation of Saudi Arabia, the United States, Israel, Turkey, Oman, with lots of assistance from Britain and France.

Its only real jobs were to get rid of the past government of Iraq which the US disliked and, more importantly, help destroy the government of Syria and turn that country into a broken-up set of rump states. This last was the big goal, a goal Israel absolutely cherishes.

ISIS succeeded in the first objective early on. It has failed in the second, although it remains a potent force. Why is it potent? Because it receives money and weapons and assistance from some or all of the countries named above, still.

ISIS is such a rag-tag bunch of thugs (all the dark armies that the CIA helps pull together in places under American proxy attack are like that: collections of the world’s filth, lunatics, and violent opportunists - given weapons and money and permission to go kill and destroy to their hearts’ content) that some of its lunatics pulled off insanely bloody and pointless stunts which they videotaped.

But even some of the bloody stunts may have been deliberate for intimidation purposes, and, in the case of the former leader of Iraq, they worked because he simply ran away as they approached.

Those stunts did force people like Britain’s David Cameron to respond to public concerns and pretend that he was fighting ISIS. The same for the US, which ended doing two different things at the same time, seeming attacks on ISIS and continuing secret support. Much of the supposed attacks on ISIS were actually bombing Syrian infrastructure which hurt the country’s government more than it did ISIS. Ditto for Cameron’s efforts.

The only people who have unequivocally gone after ISIS (and other equally horrible American-supported proxy armies, such as Al-Nusra) are Syria and Russia. Russia's intervention has changed the whole dynamic and balance in Syria, and the US and its allies have struggled to deal with the fact and come to a new position there.

The US establishment deeply resents the Russian intervention because it helped thwart long worked-for goals, a fact which is very much at work in current security service machinations against Trump, who famously said before the election Russia should just be given a free hand in Syria.

America and its allies have never stopped wanting President Assad's head, which for Israel is the sine qua non of the whole dirty business.

Were folks like ISIS really what fools like Amal Clooney think they are, they would long ago have turned to attack Israel in an all-out (suicidal) assault, but, no they never fight Israel. They never kill a single Israeli or attack an Israeli interest. They fight only Israel's enemies. Funny, that, for a bunch of supposed fanatical, genocidal, Muslim fundament terrorists.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE AGE OF TRUMP AND 21ST CENTURY FASCISM - PEOPLE WHO CANNOT DISTINGUISH BETWEEN ELECTIONS AND FASCISM SHOULD NOT WRITE ARTICLES - REMARKS ON FRANCE'S LE PEN


COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY YOUSSEF EL-GINGIHY IN THE INDEPENDENT


"The age of Trump and 21st century fascism”

No analysis. No facts. No information offered.

Just one more commissioned dump of propaganda.
________________________

Response to another reader’s comment:

How right you are.

It's remarkable how many people cannot distinguish between elections and fascism.

How many news sources.

How many article-writer hacks.

The entire unthinking claim about fascism has reached lunatic proportions.
______________________

Response to another reader’s comment:

Of course, we are not in a situation of fascism.

But you are wrong in using the expression, "a very nasty and dangerous authoritarian right-wing populist revolt."

It just ain't so.

We have a revolt against an establishment which has abused its position for decades.

As in Syria. As in Libya. As in Iraq. As in Yemen. As in Ukraine. As with all kinds of secret projects and universal spying. As with politics run solely by money. As with an establishment serving only its own interests, ever. As with the endless lies about all these matters and more.

Government in America, and I believe in Britain, has stopped serving those who vote and pay taxes. It manipulates them and treats them as a herd unfit to be trusted.

An awful lot of people today understand these fundamental truths or at least some fraction of them.

They are voting against them, just as they should.

What we had under Obama - and what was threatened even to a greater degree by Clinton - was exactly what resembled fascism in many of its worst qualities. Fascism with a benign face, so to speak.
________________________

Response to another reader’s comment saying he didn’t understand how anyone on the left could vote for Le Pen:

No, you don't get it.

But many do. I am a good old-fashioned liberal spirit, and I understand it perfectly.

When you elect a leader, you always, always get a bundle of policies.

And always, always some of these will be unacceptable to a great many people.

You must pick what is most important to you, knowing you will get some things you do not like.

Remember, the old saying, a wise one, you must pick your battles?

You cannot fight them all, and certainly cannot win them all.

The definitions of many of the old-line parties are as obsolete as Commodore 64 computers.

That really is what the American election was about, and it is what the French election will be about.

Moreover, the terrible policies of recent governments - such as Obama’s in America and all other Western governments supporting him such as Hollande’s or Cameron’s or Merkel’s - have driven national and international affairs to new extremes and new divisions and to ugly new problems.

Good God, France has endured the most horribly-failed President in its modern history with Hollande. He failed everywhere. He pleased no one. He has no principles. He achieved absolutely nothing but impoverishing his country.

You might enjoy:

________________________

Response to another reader’s comment:

Yours are ignorant words indeed.

Calling people "scum" is exactly what Joseph Goebbels and his master did all the time. Mussolini too.

I almost cannot believe how many people today, such as yourself, feel free to call others ugly names and believe they are being self-righteous in doing so.

You are pitifully undereducated and far too ready to open your mouth to say nothing.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ABUSING A PROFESSIONAL POSITION - SOME PSYCHIATRY PROFESSORS WANT TRUMP REMOVED - WELL THE CIA ALWAYS DID FIND SOME OF THESE GUYS TO ASSIST IN ITS DARK PROGRAMS AND BLOODSHED


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY KATIE FOSTER IN THE INDEPENDENT


“Psychiatry professors say 'dangerous' US President must be removed from post for public safety’

No responsible doctor, let alone psychiatrist, ever would presume to diagnose a patient he has not even seen.

And, even if a doctor did see Trump, the presumption of talking about removing him from his elected post is beyond all ethics and all norms for the profession.

These "professors" actually condemn themselves out of their own mouths as ignoring professional ethics and as exceeding a doctor's prerogatives.

I think that should be obvious to all, but in the case of Trump there appears to be almost no limit of the number and low quality of attacks permitted and publicized.

This is a direct assault on democratic government and rule of law.

I do hope readers appreciate what articles like this say about The Independent, something quite unpleasant.

And this is not the first time the paper has used this psychiatric theme right out of the old USSR where dissidents were often put into mental hospitals.

These doctors are cut from the same cloth. After all, America managed to find doctors for horrors like Guantanamo or psychiatrists to assist in developing torture techniques, didn’t it? Every society contains such people.
------------------------------------
Response to another reader’s comment:

Good point.

Remember the other candidate, indeed. A murderous, corrupt horror, but one always smilingly supported by the corporate press.

Because the corporate press always supports the corporate state with its vast security and military establishment to keep the American empire going.

That really is the underlying story in all of these events.

Wednesday, March 08, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: SECOND-RATE REPORTERS USING WORDS THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND - AND TRUMP'S OBAMA ACCUSATIONS PLUS WIKILEAKS' VAULT 7 OPEN ONE OF THE DARKEST MATTERS OF OUR TIME: THE VERY FUTURE OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT MAY BE AT RISK


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MATT BROOMFIELD IN THE INDEPENDENT


“The former president is said to be 'livid' about the accusations”

Livid?

Your writer should look up the definition before using a word he does not understand.

When we get angry, we become red-faced, not dark-faced.

Lividity in a corpse is bluish-black coloration.

Anyway, it would be difficult for a person of Obama's complexion to become dark-faced, wouldn't it?

Of course, I'm being pedantic, but I am also pointing out a truth about reportage in The Independent.

The inaccuracy, if you will, is highly symbolic.

Oh, and by the way, Obama is simply lying, as he did for eight years.

He killed several hundred thousand people, made millions homeless and sent them packing into refugee camps. He also christened the NSA super-centers and, oh yes, the CIA's elaborate program of extrajudicial assassination.

And he lied about all of it every step of the way.

In light of WikiLeaks Vault 7 material, I think Trump's accusations take on new meaning.

The American National Security Surveillance State has reached new and dangerous levels.

Unaccountable people in faraway bunker-like buildings can pick through the private lives of politicians, businessmen, social-cause leaders, union leaders, and they can gather material of potentially immense power in blackmail and threats of every kind, to say nothing of industrial espionage.

They can also manipulate world affairs, as we see the CIA had some while ago the ability to hack into a system and leave the appearance of someone such as Russia having done it with deliberately left clues.

And how about their exploration of hacking into auto systems as a means of untraceable assassination? If that doesn't make your blood run cold, nothing will.

We are entering a dangerous era, as never imagined by George Orwell. And I thank Trump for helping us understand by opening the door a crack.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: OLD PHONY AND CIA-SHILL DAN RATHER CITED SECOND TIME RECENTLY AGAINST TRUMP - FAKE NEWS FROM ONE OF THE CORPORATE PRESS'S OLD EXPERTS IN FAKERY - THE RECORD ON THE ZAPRUDER FILM


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY SAMUEL OSBORNE IN THE INDEPENDENT


'I have a real question if President Trump actually believes what he is saying. Even Richard Nixon, the most paranoid president to date, ruled for years with a relatively calm hand'

Why do you keep quoting Dan Rather on Trump? This is at least the second article in The Independent doing so. I guess where the subject of Trump is concerned, anything goes? At least it seems so.

Rather is an entirely disreputable man despite his years of being the face of CBS News. In fact, he is the classic example of a corporate journalist who has long served establishment interests, including those of the CIA.

 Readers should see:


This was a shameless set of lies, and you do not have to be a conspiracy-oriented person to know it.

 We've all seen the Zapruder now, and hardly a word Rather spoke was true.

 If you've never seen it, here it is:


and here in a different presentation:


Oh, and don't forget Rather's career with CBS ended over his report of some material about George Bush which he failed to adequately scrutinize. Some of the material proved to be faked.

Tuesday, March 07, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: YES OBAMA IS RESPONSIBLE FOR CRIMEA AND THE MESS IN UKRAINE - JUST PART OF HIS RECKLESS FOREIGN POLICY WHICH KILLED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS AND LEFT MILLIONS HOMELESS - YET CORPORATE PRESS STILL TREATS HIM AS MR. GOOD GUY


EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY SAMUEL OSBORNE IN THE INDEPENDENT


“Donald Trump blames Barack Obama over Russia's annexation of Crimea”

Well, if Obama isn't to blame for Crimea, who is? Of course, using the word “annexation” is not factually accurate and deliberately provocative, but, whatever you choose to call the set of events, Obama is unquestionably responsible.

He instigated a stupid coup against an elected government in Ukraine.

We know, thanks to arrogant big-mouth Victoria Nuland, formerly of the State Department, that the CIA blew $5 billion on the project.

In order to make it happen, all kinds of weird right-wing militias and crypto-Nazis were used, the same kind of people that you may easily find living in Aryan Nation compounds or abandoned missile silo sites across the Western United States. Only Ukraine’s ugly tribes are heavily armed and financed, many having military uniforms and regalia, thanks to Obama and the CIA.

These ugly folks still threaten Ukraine’s internal security, including Poroshenko's own rule and life. Poroshenko, America’s appointed seemingly-decent face of the coup, likely lives in more secret fear of these nasty groups than he does from Russia, but he can’t say that or he’d be through. So, he blubbers on about Russia to keep the plug-uglies happy, both those from outfits like the Azov Battalion and from the CIA.

The government America installed proved utterly incompetent and block-headed, trying among other things to suppress the Russian language, which is the language of nearly one-third of the nation’s residents.

Well, you can't carry on like that without consequences. So, Russian speakers in two regions rebelled and did so successfully.

The coup-government of Ukraine proved so divided and incompetent that it failed in trying to suppress the rebellions, despite having overwhelming superiority in numbers and weapons.

The people of Crimea, who are overwhelmingly Russian-speakers and have a history as part of Russia since Catherine the Great, only being joined to Ukraine as an administrative move under the former USSR, opted for independence from Ukraine and for renewing their centuries-old ties to Russia.

Their efforts were at least as legitimate as those in Kosovo or indeed what eventually happened to East Germany, where, by the way, Mrs. Merkel grew up.

The battle in Eastern Ukraine, still going on, is kept alive by crypto-Nazi outfits like the Azov Battalion, outfits the central government cannot really control. There are other such large organizations, too, such as the Right Sector.

The incompetent central government tried hard to raise levies of men in Western Ukraine, but people there just ran away, wanting nothing to do with the army and an unnecessary war.

Of course, along the way with so many other disasters, the incompetents running Ukraine managed to shoot down a civilian airliner, MH-17, but the US stepped in and largely made the consequences disappear. Clearly, the public shock at the truth would have collapsed the infant coup government, so a couple of years later we have an American-pressured Dutch investigation which, after a record of extreme carelessness in even collecting evidence, still has solved nothing in a case which should have taken weeks.

Ukraine's economy has done nothing but seriously decline. It cannot even pay for adequate energy supplies. And the break-away Eastern provinces have now nationalized Ukrainian industrial assets in their regions and ceased shipping coal to Ukraine.

The main lesson to be learned from all of this is that it is absolutely stupid and destructive to do what Obama did in Ukraine. I believe American officials in private actually understand that, but they do not want to be embarrassed over an admission of such complete failure and pretty much hate Putin for outplaying them in geopolitical chess.

If you recall, at the end of the Vietnam War, a truly pointless ten-year long exercise in massive brutality, American officials were so angry and embarrassed about having lost that they wouldn’t talk to the Vietnamese for years and never paid the war reparations they were obliged to pay. Immense power such as America’s comes with immense arrogance.

Obama was largely incompetent in foreign affairs, and by listening to the wrong people in Washington, he managed to kill several hundred thousand and destroy the lives of millions. The bodies produced by his policies lie rotting in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Eastern Ukraine, and a few other spots. The millions of refugees he created are huddled in temporary shelters at various locations, and their very movements in such large numbers have helped de-stabilize the EU and create waves of bad feelings against refugees in the West.

But the corporate press still treats Obama as a worthy figure. He is always in their pages and broadcasts the smiling-boy face with a good heart. That fact should tell us all something.

Monday, March 06, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ON THE GREAT MYSTERY OF INTENSE HOSTILITY TOWARDS LIBERALS IN AMERICA - IT MUCH RESEMBLES ISRAEL - MORE ON OBAMA'S PAST AND HIS ALMOST CERTAIN PHONE-TAPPING OF TRUMP



COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENTWATCH


“lib·er·al·ism (lÄ­b′É™r-É™-lÄ­z′É™m, lÄ­b′rÉ™-)
“A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.
“An economic theory in favor of laissez-faire, the free market, and the gold standard.
“Now what part of this definition fit the behavior and actions you describe as liberal? When did you decide to change the definition of liberal?”


I completely agree with that comment by "spirittoo," on the definition of Liberals. Saying anything else is just nonsense, but we do hear and read a lot of nonsense on the subject, especially from Americans.

For much of my adult life, the word, “liberal,” has been twisted and abused beyond recognition in America.

There's long been what I can only call an intense, years-long hate campaign, and it is difficult to understand just why that should be.

The great irony is most of the people or institutions referred to in all the spew of hatred are not even liberal, by any stretch of the imagination.

Hillary, queen of corruption and killer, a liberal? Obama, the mass killer, a liberal? The New York Times, the establishment's official propaganda machine and supporter of every single imperial war, liberal?

America in fact has damned few real liberals. It is not a nurturing place for liberal values.

I can only guess that all that stream of sewerage aimed at liberals is intended to keep America as unfriendly a place for them as possible. It serves as a kind of preventative spraying.

But it is strange, and it can’t help but remind me of the visceral hatred of liberals we often see from Israel or apologists for Israel. Liberals are, of course, hated there because they are the kind of people who oppose suppression of rights, anti-democratic behavior, abuse, and aggression, and they are also the kind of people who speak up on such matters, and their words go head-on against the official myth of Israel as the Middle East’s only democracy, indeed it is often phrased the Mideast’s only liberal democracy.

Could the hatred for liberals in America come from similar dark places? I think it quite possible because America, despite its official advertising brochures about rights and liberty, is in fact the metropolitan center of a world empire.

Now, empires are not generally known as places overly friendly to rights and liberty and democratic values, and this particular empire is held together, and its rules are enforced, by the world’s most terrifying military machine and a set of secret security organizations which make the former East Germany’s Stasi seem a troupe of amateur bumblers.

It is hard to see a rational explanation otherwise for all the endless ranting about “liberals,” although I do accept that irrationality plays a considerable part in American politics.

However, the article's point about Obama having done the same to Merkel is a true and important one: her personal phone was indeed tapped, just as Trump says his was.

By all accounts, when she first found out, she was quite upset and required some considerable soothing of her ruffled feathers.

So there is very little reason to doubt Obama tapped Trump's phone, too, no matter what various hack officials may assert otherwise. After all, the business of spies is lying, at least a major part of it.

Many people just do not seem to grasp that Obama is a very dark figure and nothing like his public persona of smiling-faced bright boy.

I've long felt he is likely CIA, as, we know to a certainty, was George Bush pere.

Nothing could make CIA happier than having a "made man" in the executive mansion.

Who else kills thousands of women and children as Obama has done while smiling except a psychopath, and who is a bigger employer of bright psychopaths in the United States than the CIA?

Obama’s whole business of starting up the massive extrajudicial assassination program - which, please note, is run by CIA - screams CIA associations.

There are holes in his resume a number have noted, as we might expect from a CIA recruit.

The whole blurriness around his birth also supports this notion. The CIA often plays with the official records of its people to fog-up their backgrounds.


On the subject of liberals in America, readers may enjoy these analyses:






Sunday, March 05, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ON QUOTING THE FOUNDING FATHERS - THE NATURE OF AMERICA'S CIVIC RELIGION (A.K.A. PATRIOTISM) AND JUST WHY IT IS SUCH A DANGEROUS FAITH IN TODAY'S WORLD - A FORM OF ULTRA-ORTHODOXY TO HELP THE ESTABLISHMENT KEEP DOING THE AWFUL THINGS IT DOES


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MICHELLE MALKIN IN CNS NEWS


"America's Founding Fathers, I submit, would vehemently disagree.'

Not that I am an Obama admirer, far from it, but this piece is silly rubbish.

I do not understand anyone quoting some guys from over two centuries ago on vital issues of our own day.

Would you quote any of them on how to run a big estate? With slaves, of course.

Would you quote any of them on the best way to maintain your carriage?

Or about heating and cooling your house?

I actually do understand it, but the truth is sad.

The Patriot types are people embracing a religion, for this kind of Americanism is a religion as surely as Islam or Catholicism. Indeed, it a fundamentalist form of religion and not just the Sunday-morning-hour-in-church type.

It goes beyond the normal range of affection for one's own country we find in most places. It is far fiercer and more demanding. And I believe dangerous because all fierce, fundamentalist religions are dangerous, without exception.

It is a secular religion, but it is no less intense in its beliefs or replete with myths and legends.

It has its own holy writ with documents like the Declaration and Constitution, documents which in many details are as outdated and backward as Leviticus.

It has its own Commandments, the Bill of Rights.

It has its own temples and monuments. Washington is packed with them.

It has a whole list of secular saints from Jefferson to Lincoln, many of them having great public alters.

It has its own version of Jesus and Satan in Washington and Benedict Arnold.

It has its own regularly repeated mumbo-jumbo stuff, its version of the Apostles' Creed, in the Pledge of Allegiance and the Star-Spangled Banner.

And then there's that strange tenet of faith called "original intent," as though a group of slave-holding planters from backwater locations more than two centuries ago had a direct revelation from God of eternal truths.

There's even something combining elements of the Last Supper and Jesus in the desert with Satan. It's called Valley Forge.

Well, I don't care if people embrace any religion. It's their business, so long as it doesn't hurt others.

But that's exactly what is wrong about the American Civic Religion, as it was nick-named by a clever Irish scholar some decades back, it does have the effect of hurting others.

Others are hurt in all the pointless imperial wars abroad. And people, terribly afflicted by those very wars as today's refugees from the Syria and Libya America worked to destroy, are given no help and often maligned.

It's much the same with making any real progress of rights and freedoms and democracy inside the country, too. Look how long it took to give millions even a degree of equal rights. Concepts like Original Intent and States' Rights kept black Americans without any rights for a century after the Civil War.

There is a fundamental problem in trying to maintain a world empire and in trying to have a decent society. It actually cannot be done.

But faith in the American Civic Religion is just what mightily assists the imperial machine and keeps it going. Blind believers following an establishment which couldn't care less about their lives or welfare, in many ways resembling poor believing peasants in Europe deeply revering the Pope as he conducted his wars and infamies.

Trump was elected in part over a concern in society that America's establishment had become a self-perpetuating machine, conducting endless wars abroad and ignoring its own people. And that was, and remains, an accurate perception.

But nothing can really change so long as Patriotism in America is virtually exactly the same thing as Ultra-orthodoxy in Israel.




JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE GO-NOWHERE ARGUMENT REPEATED ABOUT WHO WAS THERE FIRST IN THE HOLY LAND - AN IMPORTANT LIST OF FACTS FOR CLEAR THINKING ABOUT THE EXISTING MESS IN THE MIDDLE EAST


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY FATHI NEMER IN MONDOWEISS


Pretty good piece.

But there is a major flaw in starting from the question, “So, in the end, who was there first?”

You are playing Israel’s own crooked game by even trying to answer.

The fact is that that is a totally irrelevant question for any territory or country you care to name.

Should Turkey be Greek owing to the Trojan War three thousand years ago?

Should Israel be Lebanese owing to the ancient Phoenicians who were there before Hebrews?

If you want to get ridiculous, you could say Europe belongs to descendants with Neanderthal genes (and there are such).

What possibly could be more ridiculous than basing anything in modern affairs on words from old manuscripts which speak of turning a woman into salt and a big fish swallowing a man?

It’s not only intellectually obtuse, it is guaranteed formula for conflict.

The fact is that the people running and populating most of today’s Israel are of European descent, the Ashkenazi.

Their native language, Yiddish, is related to German, and their food and physical culture point to central and eastern Europe – Latkes, schmaltz, bagels, etc. None of it is Middle Eastern.

DNA testing indicates two origins. One, a group arising near Italy about a thousand years ago which migrated north into Germany. Other tests support the old Khazars hypothesis, a people from around Ukraine about a thousand years ago.

At some point, it seems clear that the Hebrews became evangelical, seeing the immense success of Christianity which started as an obscure Hebrew cult. The two groups above both were converts.

Ashkenazi DNA shows some admixture of Semite people, but that is to be expected with movements in and out of various Jewish groups over the centuries.

The Hebrew language, except among some scholars and religious students, died. It was artificially revived by modern Israel.

The bottom line is that the Ashkenazi of Israel are not descendants of the Hebrews.

Indeed, the great irony is that the Palestinians have the best claim to that title. The Romans who were excellent record keepers recorded no expulsion of Jews in the conquest of the Holy Land. Indeed, it was not their habit to expel local populations in their various conquests.

The whole story of the wandering Jews of the last two thousand years is a myth, as complete a myth as Jonah being swallowed by a big fish or Noah and the Ark.

The Hebrews in Palestine themselves suffered conquests, conversions, and migrations, but that body of people is as close as we have to the ancient Hebrews.



JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE PHONY AND OFTEN-REPEATED IDEA OF LEFT VERSUS RIGHT BEING BEHIND TODAY'S POLITICAL PROBLEMS - NO IT IS REALLY BLOCKHEADS ARGUING WHAT THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND


COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RINF


"The left per definition lacks self-insight — the moderate leftist has little to no idea of how far his serious fellow leftist is willing to go, similar to how the moderate Muslim denies how far the serious Muslim is willing to go."

Truly, the words of an idiot.

That is a confession of understanding nothing, absolutely nothing.

You see, this whole controversy brings out the blockheads, on all sides.

The problem is not Left and Right.

The problem is blockheads arguing over what they do not understand.

There is one real villain in the piece and that America's corporate establishment, and believe me, they ain't "liberal' or "left" or anything else but insanely driven for profit and control and supported by America’s cancerous military and security services.


JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: TRUMP'S CLAIMS OF OBAMA WIRETAPS - SOME SPECULATION ON THE REAL NATURE OF OBAMA'S CHARACTER AND PAST ASSOCIATIONS


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY WILL WORLEY IN THE INDEPENDENT


“Donald Trump claims Barack Obama ordered wiretap on Trump Tower, but provides no evidence”

I don't think there is any reason to doubt this.

For those who've studied Obama over the years, secretiveness and a kind of opaque quality in his public character - despite the big boyish smile - are distinguishing characteristics.

Past colleagues, as at the University of Chicago where he taught but was not a professor, have made this quality very clear. Not sociable at all outside of the face put on for politics. Same for dinner at the White House.

Some people have long speculated on whether Obama was CIA, as was very much the case for George Bush pere. There are unexplained openings in his resume, there is his secretiveness, and the CIA is known to recruit or support highly prospective politicians as he was viewed early in Chicago.

The CIA loves having "made men" in office, anywhere it can get them. It has long had a number of European and Latin American politicians receiving "pensions."

Of course, it just happens to be the case that elements at CIA are now clearly working against Trump. Obama would be a handy helper, just as papers like The Washington Post and New York Times very much are, both papers having long histories of involvement and support for CIA projects.

He also appears to have a somewhat psychopathic character with lots of superficial charm when he chooses to turn it on and yet the ability to regularly kill. He instituted the CIA's extrajudicial killing-by-drone program, and he has signed off on countless "kill orders" placed in the Oval Office in-box.

Just speculations, but informed and interesting ones. He is definitely not the straightforward, charming bright boy figure so many people seem to believe he is. Something else, much darker, is there for sure.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: A NEW ATTACK BOOK ON EDWARD SNOWDEN - WELL WHO BETTER TO WRITE IT THAN THAT OLD CIA SCRIPTWRITER EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN? AN AUTHOR WITH AN ENTIRE CAREER BUILT ON MANUFACTURING DISINFORMATION


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY RAY MCGOVERN IN RINF


The hatchet jobs against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden keep on coming with a new book whose author says he applied James Angleton’s counterintelligence techniques to Snowden

Edward Epstein has been in bed with CIA his entire career.

He wrote, many years ago, a trio of books on the Kennedy assassination: Inquest, Counterplot, and Legend

The first of them questioned some limited aspects of the Warren Commission, gaining "creds" for Epstein among assassination critics.

But the next two books are virtually unreadable by anyone well-informed on the matter.

Epstein proceeded to support all the key findings of the Warren Commission. He also proceeded to attempt destroying Oswald as a person.

It is an old intelligence trick. Give something to establish your creds, then proceed to do what you really want to do. A pat on the back just before a violent kick in the ass.

If you look back at the publications in which Epstein was typically published, you'll find the kind of outfits CIA used to secretly subsidize and use as outlets for disinformation.

The CIA had a whole stable of well-known magazines and publications in the United States and abroad it used as outlets for people like Epstein.

So, here's Epstein in his old age once again doing what he does best, write scripts for the CIA.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AH THAT FAVORITE BUGBEAR OF CONSPIRACY THEORY RAISED YET AGAIN - NOW TRUMP IS THE CONSPIRACY-THEORY PRESIDENT - ON THE WASHINGTON POST AND JEFF BEZOS AND THE CIA



COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CHRIS CILLIZZA IN THE INDEPENDENT


“Donald Trump has evolved from being a conspiracy-theory candidate to a conspiracy-theory president
Trump's roots in the conspiracy theory world go deep”

What a tiresome offering from Chris Cillizza.

Just a pile of clichés of a certain coloration. Actually, they are not even clichés because clichés are truths, although very stale ones.

As I've written before, any piece using the term "conspiracy-theory" should immediately raise a red flag for readers.

This term was manufactured by CIA publicity people as a put-down for Americans seeking honest information about dark, unexplained events like John Kennedy's assassination.

It has been dutifully perpetuated and re-validated by the corporate press ever since. I believe we've seen something like half a dozen pieces in The Independent in the last year or so using the term as a central point.

I see this piece of rubbish comes from The Washington Post.

That is a newspaper which has a long record of being in the CIA's pocket. Their record over the last half century is much the equivalent of the old Pravda in the USSR.

It has never told the American people anything they needed to know, and it has told them a great many lies.

Moreover, now it is owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, big supporter of Hillary and long a vest-pocket associate of CIA.

One of his earliest acts on buying the paper was to gather 20 reporters into a team to go out and get all the dirt on Trump they could find.

Well, they pretty much failed, so the paper went ahead with series of fake news stories like the one from the former MI6 spy who served as a paid private detective for a rich American of unknown identity.

None of it worked, but it helped kick up a lot of blinding dust..

By the way, Bezos, owner of the journalistic streetwalker otherwise known as The Washington Post, recently signed a huge contract for Amazon services to CIA, on the order of $600 million.

I don't know about you, but I do feel a certain lack of propriety in getting "news" from sources like that.

Friday, March 03, 2017

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: COLUMNIST SAYS BE PATIENT ABOUT TRUMP'S NOT YET PURGING WASHINGTON'S "POWER MINISTRIES"- I HOPE HE IS RIGHT BUT HERE IS EXACTLY WHY I TEND TO DOUBT IT


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY GILBERT DOCTOREAU IN RUSSIA INSIDER


“Patience: Trump Is Waiting For the Right Time to Purge Washington's 'Power Ministries'”

I very much hope the author is right, but I am not at all sure that he is.

Trump is clearly under attack from elements of the security establishment.

The endless whining of Democrats and a self-righteous and irresponsible press, which feels displaced in its privileges, Trump can take with no trouble. He has an exceptionally strong mental and emotional constitution and amazing energy for a man of his age.

But the security forces are another matter. The CIA is loaded with bright psychopaths with access to virtually endless resources, restrained by little accountability, endowed with a quasi-religious sense of purpose as though coming from God, and possessing, as with all psychopaths, no conscience or ethics whatever.

Of course, we have the old-boy networks in the State Department, too, and those are people who work hand-in-glove with CIA in embassies abroad. Trump has culled a small number, but there are likely hundreds of questionable figures in significant positions.

The Democrats and the press - and now I include huge hi-tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon as a new hybrid branch of the press as well as cooperative partners with CIA - give the weirdos at Langley lots of contacts and support.

The situation much resembles when an undercover spy abroad works on building a local network. In this case, there already is in place a vast and well-resourced network.

If the author's analysis is valid, we must see the $54 billion giveaway to the already-bloated Pentagon as something with which to buy the military's loyalty as he comes gradually to confront "the enemy within."

But any such scenario does sound more like a novel from someone like Robert Ludlum than what usually goes on in Washington. It means really big fireworks ahead.

But I really am quickly coming to the conclusion Trump is going to change nothing much worth changing.

America will go right on trying to order around everyone on the planet, fighting and killing just to change some situations its establishment doesn't approve of, spending countless billions on a trouble-making military and security establishment which is itself far more of a genuine threat to what Americans like to think their country is about than any imaginable threat from abroad.

Democracy and freedom and human rights cannot, absolutely cannot, flourish in a vast garrison-security state. You do not get Thomas Paine in East Germany with the Stasi.

Trump, in my eyes, is coming to resemble Obama redux, only with a decidedly different tone.

“The swamp” - which very much includes the Pentagon and the psychopaths in Langley, Virginia, - is far more treacherous than Trump or his followers ever imagined.

Meanwhile, nothing he has done - outside of his personal war with the corporate press and stirring up a lot of unhappiness around migrants, neither of which is of any immediate concern or help to average Americans or to peace in the world - is much different to what – ugh! - Hillary Clinton might have done.

More money to the bloated Pentagon.

Threaten Iran.

Threaten China.

Keep up tensions with Russia.

Keep the horror in Syria going.

Give the war criminal leading Israel whatever he wants.

So far, absolutely nothing of consequence for the American people.

It is all very disheartening, tending to confirm the idea that America is ungovernable, fat and layered, as it is, with privileged and unaccountable classes and groups who bend its wealth and influence to serve only their own interests.

I dearly hope I'm wrong, but I am not a religious or ideological person who sets hopes for things which likely cannot be. I believe what I see and experience.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: YET MORE IGNORANT GOSSIP AND INNUENDO ABOUT TRUMP AND RUSSIA - THIS ALL REMINDS ME OF INSANE PAST AMERICAN CAMPAIGNS AGAINST PROCTER & GAMBLE OR HARRY POTTER CHARGING DEVIL WORSHIP - IT REALLY IS THAT DUMB


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PETER WALKER IN THE INDEPENDENT


“Unelected husband of Ivanka Trump sat down with Sergey Kislyak for '20 minutes' “

Even if this were one of those rare times that you got your facts right, the obvious response from a thinking person is, "So what?"

Russia is part of the world in case you hadn't noticed.

And a rather important one. Becoming more so.

We want people to talk to each other, not huddle in dark corners making paranoid guesses about each other.

This stuff is sick, 1950s' McCarthyite demonization.

It almost reminds me of events, some years ago, down in the Bible Belt of the United States – which includes places where millions actually do believe that the Second Coming is coming soon.

The Procter and Gamble corporation had a lovely traditional logo of a moon and stars, quite charming. But the "Second Coming" crowd decided that it represented devil worship and conducted a big, intense campaign against the company.

Oh, and the same fate befell J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books in that neck of the woods. They were removed from some libraries and schools.

The world, sadly, has great numbers of blindly-unthinking people, and that's the main audience for all of this utterly stupid Russia-contact, Russia-hack, Putin-Trump rubbish.

America, despite its immense power in the world and its hi-technology and appearance of modernity, has an inordinate number of such people. Many in Britain, with no first-hand experience, might actually be shocked at the extent.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MORE IDIOTIC CHARGES OF TRUMP LINKS WITH RUSSIA - WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


“US media turn screw on Donald Trump administration with fresh reports of Russia links”

Who is in the least concerned with whether someone in the administration spoke to a Russian? Good God, it's a country just as any other. There, indeed, should be good communications.

This Russian business has become even a more extended and vicious campaign of McCarthyism than The Independent's and Guardian's vicious attacks on Corbyn over non-existent "anti-Semitism."

This entire matter is a joke, a dark joke, but it keeps being given new life.

I believe that is because elements of the security services are working towards the same goals as the endlessly-whining Democrats.

After all, many senior people there go back to the last several administrations. And outfits like CIA have been deeply involved in dirt stuff like Syria and the Ukraine coup. We know that for a fact.

Some of them want to protect the fruits of their dirty work of recent years and undoubtedly see Trump as a threat.

And that makes this more than a bad joke.

Government by unaccountable officials?

That is an idea far more immediately dangerous than anything possible from Russia. And I believe it is real.

Nevertheless, there is a joke aspect in the constant repetition of the vague expression about "Russia hacking the American election."

That phrase plays on the general public's ignorance deliberately. Voting machines cannot be hacked from abroad. It cannot happen.

As for the idea Russia supplied WikiLeaks the information that helped sink crooked Hillary, that is even more bitterly funny.

Everyone involved has said that is not so. Indeed, to a certainty, the information was leaked from an insider, likely a Democrat, one candidate for the work now being dead.

But, to my mind, that is neither here nor there.

The information was not about American security. The information was exactly the kind of stuff some good investigative journalists, were there any such thing anymore, might have uncovered.

Notes and letters between individuals in a private organization, individuals discussing their own corrupt behaviors.

So, what are clowns like Schumer and Pelosi endlessly going on about?

We don't agree that this man should have been elected.

Only that and nothing more.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: EU PARLIAMENT MAKES ITSELF EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS BY REMOVING SPEECH IMMUNITY FROM MEMBER MARINE LE PEN - BUT LACK OF LEADERSHIP IS WHY WE SEE EU CRUMBLING BEFORE OUR EYES


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN SPUTNIK


EU Parliament Votes in Favor of Waiving Le Pen's Immunity

Ridiculous act from a ridiculous body of politicians.

Her intention in making a strong statement against the horrors of ISIS could not be clearer, and that was a valid thing for a conscientious politician to do.

Instead of just accepting the fact, we have the deliberate misapplication of a law intended for entirely different purposes, and we have a wishy-washy group of EU politicians violating basic principles free speech to suspend her immunity and make her vulnerable to the misapplied law.

Of course, it is all about stopping her rise to power, having nothing whatever to do with any moral or ethical principle pretended.

Is it any wonder that the EU is crumbling before our eyes? That so many hold it in some degree of contempt?

It has no leadership anywhere worthy of the title.

And it seems to have little purpose anymore beyond assisting the United States in dominating Europe with its anti-Russian and anti-good sense policies.

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT:YO U SIMPLY CANNOT BELIEVE WHAT YOU HEAR FROM ISRAEL - PHONY TERROR CLAIMS AND ISRAEL'S HATRED FOR DEMOCRACY IN ANY OF ITS NEIGHBORS


COMMENT TO AN ARTICLE IN SPUTNIK


“Israeli Forces Hit Hamas Targets in Response to Cross-Border Shooting”

Response to cross-border shooting?

Who knows, but with Israel you can almost bet it didn't happen or was contrived to give an excuse to bomb Hamas.

Israel hates Hamas, not because it is a terrorist organization, but because it represents a kind of political cohesiveness Israel does not want to see for the Palestinians.

It also has a democratic history, and Israel hates all democracies anywhere near its borders (while always pretending otherwise).

Israel likes the completely unelected Abbas, the unelected King of Saudi Arabia, the unelected current president of Egypt, the King of Jordan (under Israel's thumb), and others.

Israel is effectively a force for the suppression of democracy in the region.

And it is so simply because it knows the views of most neighboring populations are not admiring.