John Chuckman
COMMENT ON POSSIBLE BREAKING EVENTS IN SAUDI ARABIA
Is something big about to happen in Saudi Arabia, big, as in the replacement of the Crown Prince?
In Paris, Le Figaro reports Saudi King Salman wants to replace Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In Britain's Guardian, a former head of MI6 said all the evidence suggests Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was behind the death of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and that the theory of rogue (a word Trump has used) elements was “blatant fiction”
Sir John Sawers’ remarks are extraordinary for a man of his past position, and they are not likely to be received well in Washington. In American power establishment circles, the ruthless Crown Prince is much valued as a key player in bloodily rearranging the Middle East to please their vision of how things should be.
The Prince has amply demonstrated that he doesn’t hesitate when it comes to killing lots of people. Israel’s government, whose chief members are cut from the same cloth as this wealthy thug, just loves the guy.
It is said that Trump’s administration officials are pressing the Crown Prince to blame one of his favourite generals, the deputy head of Saudi intelligence.
That ruse is thought to provide a way out of the embarrassing crisis, but I’m not so sure that would work at this point. The horses are out of the barn, so to speak.
We already know enough, thanks to leaks from Turkey, to be confident the Crown Prince himself was involved. And Turkey, for its own reasons, is “out there” dropping more clues and hints.
Could the ugly Crown Prince be the victim of a plot? Not an innocent victim of course, but a guilty victim in the same sense that Saddam Hussein was a guilty victim of the H W Bush administration which secretly led him to believe they would wink at an invasion of Kuwait. He didn’t have to take the bait, but he did, as they knew he would, and he paid the price.
The ruthless, likely psychopathic, Crown Prince, good friend to Washington and Israeli power interests, may well have been offered the same kind of temptation by someone with regard to eliminating Khashoggi, assured it would be winked at if he did a thorough job.
Who might do that? The Prince has many powerful enemies, including, importantly, other major branches of the Royal Family whose relatives he kidnapped, imprisoned, and from whom he extracted tens of billions in ransom.
Clearly, there are also interests in Turkey who are hostile, or we would never have learned anything about this affair beyond the fact Khashoggi disappeared. Turkey has certainly heavily bugged Saudi government facilities for the reason that it does not trust the Crown Prince, and with good reason. Some of these bugs captured the whole ghastly event. Although Turkey claims not to have let any foreign source actually hear the material, there is an ongoing flow of hints and leaks.
This is one of the more fascinating episodes of dirty work to come along for watchers of international affairs in years, revealing as it does so much hypocrisy and flat-out lies from actors, especially from the United States, hypocrisy which is quite the norm but is usually kept well hidden from the public, as in Syria or Yemen or Libya or, indeed, in Israel.
The threat to the stability of so important an American imperial friend in the Middle East is serious stuff.
By the way, on the secret friendship and alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia, I recently listed in a comment some of the realities supporting that relationship. Well, here’s another. Saudi Arabia has become Washington’s biggest customer for armaments, overwhelmingly so with hundreds of billions committed to sophisticated weapons.
Even fifteen years ago, Israel would not have permitted that to happen. It would have pulled out all stops to halt such sales to a potential “existential threat,” but that is no longer the case. The Crown Prince has earned Israel’s overwhelming confidence through all his blood-letting and his refusal even to speak against Israel’s atrocities, as Saudi Arabia commonly used to do years ago.
AFTERWORD:
It will be of continuing interest to see whether the phony story Saudi Arabia has just put out to explain the killing - one suggested earlier by Pompeo, such is America's keenness not to see justice done when it means losing their beloved Killer Crown Prince, and one Trump immediately warmly embraced - will be able to stand.
Anyone who thinks about just the facts we know, understands that it simply cannot be true.
But we do now live in a nightmarish world where fairly obvious lies are regularly solemnly recited and supported when they have a bearing on American imperial power. We see Theresa May's contrived Skripal Affair, America's "Israel's Army is showing restraint," American forces openly encamped in Eastern Syria where they have no business, America's insane mantra about Russia and influencing the election, etc, etc, etc.
Interestingly, here is a new bit of information. I think Khashoggi, in his last interview, makes it clear what his killer's motives were, blindingly clear:
https://sputniknews.com/world/201810201069059153-khashoggi-secret-interview-death-confirmed/
Friday, October 19, 2018
Thursday, October 18, 2018
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE ISRAELI-SAUDI DE FACTO ALLIANCE - WHAT THE MURDEROUS CROWN PRINCE REPRESENTS FOR AMERICA - RE-MAKING THE PLANET AND HITLER'S WILLING HELPERS
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN MONDOWEISS
“The US mainstream media is ignoring the Israel-Saudi Arabia de facto alliance”
Yes, and it's all part of American effort to reshape the entire Middle East, an effort which so far has cost about 2 million lives.
The Crown Prince is regarded as a key part of the future of that effort.
He serves the hyper-aggressive new American drive for empire worldwide.
And, of course, Israel really is a de facto American colony in the Mideast.
Actually, the Saudis and Israelis have always had a lot in common, contrary to popular notions.
Both represent privilege in the region, extreme privilege.
Both represent forms of wealth. The Saudis, oil. The Israelis, American and British dual-citizen investors.
Both want to have a lot of "clout" in the region. That’s the problem with Iran for both of them. Its size - about the population of Germany – and oil wealth make it the “natural” dominant country in the region.
Israel’s problems with Iran have nothing to do with anti-Semitism. That accusation is just another weapon for beating down an unwelcome competitor for influence.
Importantly, both represent outsider interests. The House of Saud only goes back a little while, a decade or so, before re-created Israel. It is not an ancient kingdom, although they like to create that impression.
Israel was re-created and is run by Ashkenazim, a group of Germanic origin whose native language is Yiddish, a derivative of German. The word Ashkenazi means "German." Nothing Middle Eastern about it, except a sentimental attachment to the land of the Bible for believers, but belief gives you no legitimate real estate claims. If it did, the world would be an even bigger mess than it is.
After 9/11, the Saudis were desperately looking for ways to improve their standing in Washington's eyes.
They did not "do" 9/11 but there were lots of shady matters that made them look bad. Payments to Osama intended only to keep him out of Saudi Arabia. Saudi citizens in the hijack crowd.
After all, from almost any point of view, America’s invading Saudi Arabia, even though they weren’t guilty, would have made immensely more sense than the pointless invasion of Afghanistan. So, the Saudis felt keenly the need to please.
Cozying up to Israel was one of their main methods of attacking the problem. They've been working on it now for years. The tone of all press and publicity coming out of Saudi Arabia is unrecognizable from, say, 15 years ago.
And the Crown "usurper" Prince takes things even further, just what Washington wants.
Washington loves men with highly flexible morals and principles. They are useful to the cause of empire. A version of Hitler's willing helpers, if you will.
The Saudis won creds for covertly supporting the slaughter in Syria, a pet project of Israel's.
Bombing the crap out of Yemen gave them some gold stars too.
As did their internal assaults on a small Shia minority, Shia Islam being identified with some of Israel's most hated states.
The Khashoggi Affair is an embarrassment, but they're doing their best to work around it.
The extra couple of days Pompeo gave them for a "thorough" investigation is for them to get their story straight and decide on the fall guys.
Interestingly, Turkey keeps revealing grisly details to pressure for things they want. They do know exactly what happened.
Here is some additional information on the Saudi-Israeli alliance:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/10/19/john-chuckman-comment-is-something-big-about-to-break-in-saudi-arabia-we-have-the-most-fascinating-bit-of-dirty-work-in-years-revealing-flat-footed-lies-and-hypocrisy-from-the-united-states-it/
Readers may enjoy:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/john-chuckman-comment-here-is-what-the-turks-know-about-the-khashoggi-murder-there-really-cannot-be-a-doubt-that-this-was-planned-to-happen-exactly-as-it-did-and-no-doubt-authority-came-from-the-to/
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN MONDOWEISS
“The US mainstream media is ignoring the Israel-Saudi Arabia de facto alliance”
Yes, and it's all part of American effort to reshape the entire Middle East, an effort which so far has cost about 2 million lives.
The Crown Prince is regarded as a key part of the future of that effort.
He serves the hyper-aggressive new American drive for empire worldwide.
And, of course, Israel really is a de facto American colony in the Mideast.
Actually, the Saudis and Israelis have always had a lot in common, contrary to popular notions.
Both represent privilege in the region, extreme privilege.
Both represent forms of wealth. The Saudis, oil. The Israelis, American and British dual-citizen investors.
Both want to have a lot of "clout" in the region. That’s the problem with Iran for both of them. Its size - about the population of Germany – and oil wealth make it the “natural” dominant country in the region.
Israel’s problems with Iran have nothing to do with anti-Semitism. That accusation is just another weapon for beating down an unwelcome competitor for influence.
Importantly, both represent outsider interests. The House of Saud only goes back a little while, a decade or so, before re-created Israel. It is not an ancient kingdom, although they like to create that impression.
Israel was re-created and is run by Ashkenazim, a group of Germanic origin whose native language is Yiddish, a derivative of German. The word Ashkenazi means "German." Nothing Middle Eastern about it, except a sentimental attachment to the land of the Bible for believers, but belief gives you no legitimate real estate claims. If it did, the world would be an even bigger mess than it is.
After 9/11, the Saudis were desperately looking for ways to improve their standing in Washington's eyes.
They did not "do" 9/11 but there were lots of shady matters that made them look bad. Payments to Osama intended only to keep him out of Saudi Arabia. Saudi citizens in the hijack crowd.
After all, from almost any point of view, America’s invading Saudi Arabia, even though they weren’t guilty, would have made immensely more sense than the pointless invasion of Afghanistan. So, the Saudis felt keenly the need to please.
Cozying up to Israel was one of their main methods of attacking the problem. They've been working on it now for years. The tone of all press and publicity coming out of Saudi Arabia is unrecognizable from, say, 15 years ago.
And the Crown "usurper" Prince takes things even further, just what Washington wants.
Washington loves men with highly flexible morals and principles. They are useful to the cause of empire. A version of Hitler's willing helpers, if you will.
The Saudis won creds for covertly supporting the slaughter in Syria, a pet project of Israel's.
Bombing the crap out of Yemen gave them some gold stars too.
As did their internal assaults on a small Shia minority, Shia Islam being identified with some of Israel's most hated states.
The Khashoggi Affair is an embarrassment, but they're doing their best to work around it.
The extra couple of days Pompeo gave them for a "thorough" investigation is for them to get their story straight and decide on the fall guys.
Interestingly, Turkey keeps revealing grisly details to pressure for things they want. They do know exactly what happened.
Here is some additional information on the Saudi-Israeli alliance:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/10/19/john-chuckman-comment-is-something-big-about-to-break-in-saudi-arabia-we-have-the-most-fascinating-bit-of-dirty-work-in-years-revealing-flat-footed-lies-and-hypocrisy-from-the-united-states-it/
Readers may enjoy:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/john-chuckman-comment-here-is-what-the-turks-know-about-the-khashoggi-murder-there-really-cannot-be-a-doubt-that-this-was-planned-to-happen-exactly-as-it-did-and-no-doubt-authority-came-from-the-to/
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: HERE IS WHAT THE TURKS KNOW ABOUT THE KHASHOGGI MURDER - THERE REALLY CANNOT BE A DOUBT THAT THIS WAS PLANNED TO HAPPEN EXACTLY AS IT DID AND NO DOUBT AUTHORITY CAME FROM THE TOP - TRUMP IS TRYING TO LIE HIS WAY THROUGH BUT IT WILL BE HARD IN VIEW OF THIS EVIDENCE - AND WHERE'S THERESA MAY'S VOICE?
John Chuckman
COMMENT ON THE KHASHOGGI MURDER – FACTS REVEALED BY TURKISH SOURCES
Here is a summary of the known facts. They come from several major newspaper reports which I have consolidated.
The Turks have recordings – audio ones from inside the Saudi Consulate and video from security cameras outside - and they know exactly what happened, and they know the identities of the perpetrators.
A 15-man squad, all from the Crown Prince’s personal security detail, arrived to do the job.
Khashoggi was attacked almost immediately as he showed up for some documents he needed.
The Consul himself was in the room.
The body was dragged, not yet dead, from the Consul’s office to his study next door.
A Saudi military forensics expert, after putting on some headphones with music, began to cut the body up right on top of a table in the study. He advised others, including the Consul, to leave the room.
The man with headphones and the cutting tool holds a senior position in Saudi Interior Ministry.
Obviously, with that kind of person assigned in the first place and with him having brought the necessary tools to cut the body up, this was a meticulously planned murder, not an interrogation that somehow went wrong.
Is there anyone on the planet, outside of Trump’s office, who can believe that the order for this did not come from the top? I sincerely hope not.
Oh, Theresa May, where is your brave voice when it comes to an authentic, proven state murder?
I guess it makes a difference when the killer is someone who buys billions of pounds of armaments?
"Rogue elements," Trump? "Something went wrong in an interrogation"? Clearly lies.
COMMENT ON THE KHASHOGGI MURDER – FACTS REVEALED BY TURKISH SOURCES
Here is a summary of the known facts. They come from several major newspaper reports which I have consolidated.
The Turks have recordings – audio ones from inside the Saudi Consulate and video from security cameras outside - and they know exactly what happened, and they know the identities of the perpetrators.
A 15-man squad, all from the Crown Prince’s personal security detail, arrived to do the job.
Khashoggi was attacked almost immediately as he showed up for some documents he needed.
The Consul himself was in the room.
The body was dragged, not yet dead, from the Consul’s office to his study next door.
A Saudi military forensics expert, after putting on some headphones with music, began to cut the body up right on top of a table in the study. He advised others, including the Consul, to leave the room.
The man with headphones and the cutting tool holds a senior position in Saudi Interior Ministry.
Obviously, with that kind of person assigned in the first place and with him having brought the necessary tools to cut the body up, this was a meticulously planned murder, not an interrogation that somehow went wrong.
Is there anyone on the planet, outside of Trump’s office, who can believe that the order for this did not come from the top? I sincerely hope not.
Oh, Theresa May, where is your brave voice when it comes to an authentic, proven state murder?
I guess it makes a difference when the killer is someone who buys billions of pounds of armaments?
"Rogue elements," Trump? "Something went wrong in an interrogation"? Clearly lies.
AFTERNOTE:
The next day, we had this:
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: ONE MORE REMINDER OF THE BIZARRE STRANGELOVIAN WORLD IN WHICH WE NOW LIVE - "CERTIFICATES OF APPRECIATION" FOR MASS MURDER - YES, I KID YOU NOT
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON MPN NEWS
“IDF Awards Israeli Soldiers for Deadly Crackdown on Gaza Protests”
“The chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Gadi Eisenkot, awarded the IDF’s Gaza Division with a “certificate of appreciation” for contributing to “Israel’s security” by brutally suppressing protests, ongoing since March in the Palestinian enclave.”
A “certificate of appreciation”?
For sniper killings of unarmed civilians?
For firing indiscriminately into crowds of thousands only demonstrating for basic human rights?
This has almost a sense of black comedy.
Only in Israel are such things thought worthy of praise.
Which should tell us a lot about Israel's ability to live in peace with its neighbors.
Readers may enjoy this on related matters:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/10/11/john-chuckman-comment-a-writer-says-we-can-be-hopeful-about-palestine-i-wish-it-were-so-but-i-see-no-reason-for-optimism-quite-the-opposite-when-you-appreciate-the-actual-behavior-of-israel-and/
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON MPN NEWS
“IDF Awards Israeli Soldiers for Deadly Crackdown on Gaza Protests”
“The chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Gadi Eisenkot, awarded the IDF’s Gaza Division with a “certificate of appreciation” for contributing to “Israel’s security” by brutally suppressing protests, ongoing since March in the Palestinian enclave.”
A “certificate of appreciation”?
For sniper killings of unarmed civilians?
For firing indiscriminately into crowds of thousands only demonstrating for basic human rights?
This has almost a sense of black comedy.
Only in Israel are such things thought worthy of praise.
Which should tell us a lot about Israel's ability to live in peace with its neighbors.
Readers may enjoy this on related matters:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/10/11/john-chuckman-comment-a-writer-says-we-can-be-hopeful-about-palestine-i-wish-it-were-so-but-i-see-no-reason-for-optimism-quite-the-opposite-when-you-appreciate-the-actual-behavior-of-israel-and/
Monday, October 15, 2018
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON IN SAUDI ARABIA AND TURKEY WITH THE APPARENT BRUTAL MURDER OF JOURNALIST JAMAL KHASHOGGI INSIDE A SAUDI CONSULATE IN TURKEY? - TRUTH AND JUSTICE UNDER AMERICAN EMPIRE - IF SOMETHING SERVES THE EMPIRE IT SERVES GOD
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS BY AS’AD ABUKHALIL
"The Strange Disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi
"Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist, who disappeared in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week is not quite the critic of the Saudi regime that the Western media says he is, writes As’ad AbuKhalil."
Sorry, but I think this article a bit of what they call a "straw man" argument in logic.
You might even call it a red herring.
Refuting the hyped and exaggerated claims of the "western press" about an event like this has almost nothing to do with the actual event or its importance.
It's rather like entering the ridiculous set of false and uninformed arguments, on all sides of the American political establishment, about Russian influence, which, in fact, any critical observer instantly can see is virtually zero, all while Washington and those allies under its thumb scream and whoop, "the sky is falling."
The Crown Prince is a usurper, kidnapper, extortionist, murderer, and a war criminal, full stop.
He is also a supreme narcissist and is well known for having a very thin skin.
Look at the way he furiously retaliates at anything he regards to be a slight, as at Trump and his “pay for your security,” and as at Canada and its pitifully little squeak of a remark about human rights.
The Washington power establishment likes the prince, exceedingly. Remember how he was taken around on a grand goodwill tour, meeting American officials and important people, almost as though he were the new President of France rather than a murderous, usurper absolute monarch of a desert kingdom? He’s proven his worth in waging aggressive war in Syria, covertly, and, openly, in Yemen.
He has also proven his worth in ending Saudi Arabia’s old antagonisms towards Israel and, indeed, in becoming virtually a secret ally of that state. Just the kind of thing the Neocon empire-builders in Washington want to see. So, he is a key player in Neocon plans for the Middle East. He has embraced Israel’s antagonism towards Iran, too, which has nothing to do with threats and security and anti-Semitism but everything to do with who is to be the most influential country in the region.
The Crown Prince, also, something rarely noticed, has a great deal in common with Israel, representing monied privilege in the region, relative newcomers ruling over ancient residents (the Royal Family does not go back much longer than re-created Israel itself), antagonists against both indigenous democracy in the region and independent-minded other leaders, and both are shills for American influence.
This is an extremely dangerous man, even though our mainline press has dedicated itself, at least until now, to building him up in an almost laughable manner with lines straight out of a disinformation crib sheet from Langley Virginia. Our press made a huge big deal out of a few privileged women in Saudi Arabia now getting driver’s licences while this Crown Prince busied himself slaughtering thousands of women in Yemen and in Syria and in brutally suppressing Shia minorities in parts of Saudi Arabia itself – all of the latter activity going without comment.
It would not have taken much for Khashoggi to earn the prince’s enmity. Stuff about being Khashoggi being a resistance figure for enlightened values is as silly as the streams of garbage about Putin determining American national elections. It represents noise covering other matters. He only had to look vaguely like a threat or roadblock, for whatever reasons, to the path of a murderous prince. The prince is also quite nervous about opposition to himself by other clans of the large Royal Family - people he has already deeply offended and committed crimes against, his acts generating opposition both open and covert. The usurper Prince’s position is not a one-hundred percent stable and secure.
My guess is that the prince arrogantly over-played his hand in getting rid of someone he resented, for whatever reasons, overplayed his hand because now at least part of western interests cannot just ignore such obvious butchery.
God, we even have security-camera views of the gang of Saudi security forces-related killers (some identified) coming and going, and the Turks have secret recordings of Khashoggi being tortured and killed. Our good old dependable press tried a planted story about how maybe Khashoggi’s smart-watch had recorded his torture and execution, but the recording likely came from planted Turkish security spyware in the Saudi consulate. We have Khashoggi photographed going into the Saudi consulate and never coming out. We have his fiancé waiting for him. We have pictures of a van parked by the consulate, a van whose licence was not immediately traced.
They are now going through the dumb-show of allowing Turkey to search the Saudi consulate, after a considerable delay. Unless they bring a gallon jug of luminal (to check for invisible blood traces), they won’t find a thing. And unless they were simultaneously searching the Saudi consul’s house and digging up the garden where Khashoggi’s butchered body parts were likely buried, they still won’t find a thing. Everything will have been disposed of.
Current delays in the West are just cover for behind-the-scenes scrambles, scrambles to create a covering story, for a way to exonerate this very useful murderer-prince, and perhaps to create a fall-guy. After all, Putin only has to hiccough to be instantly subjected to new sanctions and condemnations.
But here we have something close to an open-and-shut case of high-level political murder, and we see no sanctions, we see no slowing-up in hundreds of billions in arms sales, we hear no false clamoring over human rights or even journalistic freedom. We see no diplomatic personal being expelled, as we saw Theresa May doing against Russia without a shred of evidence anyone could credit.
It all makes Theresa May’s unsupported claims in the Skripal Affair really look silly. Here’s the real thing, right out a John le Carré novel, but we see no ethics-inspired acts or hear no histrionic words by British or American or Canadian authorities which might endanger hundreds of billions in arms sales.
You see, it really isn’t that anyone cares about the fate of a man like Khashoggi, whether he was a decent man or not, whether he was a journalist or not. These events concern the very public tipping of the imperial apple cart, which cannot be just ignored. The prince’s blundering act threatens a vast, partly-secret engineering project in the Middle East. Now, in Washington, that has to be taken seriously.
Here, once again, is the kind of ugly business to which we are regularly exposed in Washington’s vast new drive for world dominance.
Just as we see the regular line-up of Israel snipers shooting unarmed demonstrators in Gaza from behind a fence, including women and children and medics and journalists. And then we have the brutally black humor of Israel’s halting fuel shipments into Gaza until “the violence stops.” Do we see one serious effort in the West to question public butchery? Do we see one serious call for a mass-murderer Prime Minister to receive justice?
No, because if something serves the American empire, it serves God.
AFTERWORD:
Only just now I read this in The Guardian:
'After speaking to the Saudi king by phone, the US president said Salman “denies any knowledge of whatever may have happened” to the journalist and was “working closely with Turkey” to find out what happened to him.
'“The denial was very, very strong,” Trump told reporters. “It sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers. Who knows?”
"Rogue killers"? So, the games of cover-up begin. That's the morality of America's empire.
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS BY AS’AD ABUKHALIL
"The Strange Disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi
"Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist, who disappeared in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week is not quite the critic of the Saudi regime that the Western media says he is, writes As’ad AbuKhalil."
Sorry, but I think this article a bit of what they call a "straw man" argument in logic.
You might even call it a red herring.
Refuting the hyped and exaggerated claims of the "western press" about an event like this has almost nothing to do with the actual event or its importance.
It's rather like entering the ridiculous set of false and uninformed arguments, on all sides of the American political establishment, about Russian influence, which, in fact, any critical observer instantly can see is virtually zero, all while Washington and those allies under its thumb scream and whoop, "the sky is falling."
The Crown Prince is a usurper, kidnapper, extortionist, murderer, and a war criminal, full stop.
He is also a supreme narcissist and is well known for having a very thin skin.
Look at the way he furiously retaliates at anything he regards to be a slight, as at Trump and his “pay for your security,” and as at Canada and its pitifully little squeak of a remark about human rights.
The Washington power establishment likes the prince, exceedingly. Remember how he was taken around on a grand goodwill tour, meeting American officials and important people, almost as though he were the new President of France rather than a murderous, usurper absolute monarch of a desert kingdom? He’s proven his worth in waging aggressive war in Syria, covertly, and, openly, in Yemen.
He has also proven his worth in ending Saudi Arabia’s old antagonisms towards Israel and, indeed, in becoming virtually a secret ally of that state. Just the kind of thing the Neocon empire-builders in Washington want to see. So, he is a key player in Neocon plans for the Middle East. He has embraced Israel’s antagonism towards Iran, too, which has nothing to do with threats and security and anti-Semitism but everything to do with who is to be the most influential country in the region.
The Crown Prince, also, something rarely noticed, has a great deal in common with Israel, representing monied privilege in the region, relative newcomers ruling over ancient residents (the Royal Family does not go back much longer than re-created Israel itself), antagonists against both indigenous democracy in the region and independent-minded other leaders, and both are shills for American influence.
This is an extremely dangerous man, even though our mainline press has dedicated itself, at least until now, to building him up in an almost laughable manner with lines straight out of a disinformation crib sheet from Langley Virginia. Our press made a huge big deal out of a few privileged women in Saudi Arabia now getting driver’s licences while this Crown Prince busied himself slaughtering thousands of women in Yemen and in Syria and in brutally suppressing Shia minorities in parts of Saudi Arabia itself – all of the latter activity going without comment.
It would not have taken much for Khashoggi to earn the prince’s enmity. Stuff about being Khashoggi being a resistance figure for enlightened values is as silly as the streams of garbage about Putin determining American national elections. It represents noise covering other matters. He only had to look vaguely like a threat or roadblock, for whatever reasons, to the path of a murderous prince. The prince is also quite nervous about opposition to himself by other clans of the large Royal Family - people he has already deeply offended and committed crimes against, his acts generating opposition both open and covert. The usurper Prince’s position is not a one-hundred percent stable and secure.
My guess is that the prince arrogantly over-played his hand in getting rid of someone he resented, for whatever reasons, overplayed his hand because now at least part of western interests cannot just ignore such obvious butchery.
God, we even have security-camera views of the gang of Saudi security forces-related killers (some identified) coming and going, and the Turks have secret recordings of Khashoggi being tortured and killed. Our good old dependable press tried a planted story about how maybe Khashoggi’s smart-watch had recorded his torture and execution, but the recording likely came from planted Turkish security spyware in the Saudi consulate. We have Khashoggi photographed going into the Saudi consulate and never coming out. We have his fiancé waiting for him. We have pictures of a van parked by the consulate, a van whose licence was not immediately traced.
They are now going through the dumb-show of allowing Turkey to search the Saudi consulate, after a considerable delay. Unless they bring a gallon jug of luminal (to check for invisible blood traces), they won’t find a thing. And unless they were simultaneously searching the Saudi consul’s house and digging up the garden where Khashoggi’s butchered body parts were likely buried, they still won’t find a thing. Everything will have been disposed of.
Current delays in the West are just cover for behind-the-scenes scrambles, scrambles to create a covering story, for a way to exonerate this very useful murderer-prince, and perhaps to create a fall-guy. After all, Putin only has to hiccough to be instantly subjected to new sanctions and condemnations.
But here we have something close to an open-and-shut case of high-level political murder, and we see no sanctions, we see no slowing-up in hundreds of billions in arms sales, we hear no false clamoring over human rights or even journalistic freedom. We see no diplomatic personal being expelled, as we saw Theresa May doing against Russia without a shred of evidence anyone could credit.
It all makes Theresa May’s unsupported claims in the Skripal Affair really look silly. Here’s the real thing, right out a John le Carré novel, but we see no ethics-inspired acts or hear no histrionic words by British or American or Canadian authorities which might endanger hundreds of billions in arms sales.
You see, it really isn’t that anyone cares about the fate of a man like Khashoggi, whether he was a decent man or not, whether he was a journalist or not. These events concern the very public tipping of the imperial apple cart, which cannot be just ignored. The prince’s blundering act threatens a vast, partly-secret engineering project in the Middle East. Now, in Washington, that has to be taken seriously.
Here, once again, is the kind of ugly business to which we are regularly exposed in Washington’s vast new drive for world dominance.
Just as we see the regular line-up of Israel snipers shooting unarmed demonstrators in Gaza from behind a fence, including women and children and medics and journalists. And then we have the brutally black humor of Israel’s halting fuel shipments into Gaza until “the violence stops.” Do we see one serious effort in the West to question public butchery? Do we see one serious call for a mass-murderer Prime Minister to receive justice?
No, because if something serves the American empire, it serves God.
AFTERWORD:
Only just now I read this in The Guardian:
'After speaking to the Saudi king by phone, the US president said Salman “denies any knowledge of whatever may have happened” to the journalist and was “working closely with Turkey” to find out what happened to him.
'“The denial was very, very strong,” Trump told reporters. “It sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers. Who knows?”
"Rogue killers"? So, the games of cover-up begin. That's the morality of America's empire.
Saturday, October 13, 2018
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: HOW THE "RUSSIA HOAX" IS USED AND ABUSED ON ALL SIDES - NEITHER AMERICA'S PRESS NOR ANY POLITICIAN SEEKS TRUTH ABOUT THE NATION'S PROBLEMS BECAUSE THEY ARE JUST TOO DARK AND UGLY AND BASIC TO FACE
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Sean Hannity Is Doing a Great Job Covering Russia Hoax
“Hannity’s bottom line point is: if we don’t win the mid-terms, we’re never going to get to the bottom of any of this. It's a very big deal.”
Sean Hannity is just conducting a more sophisticated form of propaganda. We are talking about Fox News, after all, not one of the world’s seekers after truth.
The bottom line here is that the people Hannity represents are afraid of big Democratic gains in the Congressional elections, which are indeed expected.
This would turn Trump into a "lame duck" for his last two years.
There simply are no truths “anyone is going to get to the bottom of” in this corrupt matter, any more than Trump is going to “drain the swamp” or “send Hillary to jail.”
It’s all laughable. America’s is simply not a rational, rule-of-law government. It more resembles what it must have sounded and smelled like after forty days on Noah’s Ark. A huge cesspool, and those playing in the filth have completely lost their sense of smell.
Of course, all the noise on all sides over matters like this keeps the people occupied and distracted from the country’s real problems, problems which are never even discussed.
The truth is dirty behavior occurs regularly by both American political parties and that American agencies like the FBI are used and bent in all directions to serve power, over and over.
America is just plain corrupt, but it never stops pretending otherwise.
There’s that stupidly childish illusion about “if you could just drain the swamp, everything would be okay." The only cleansing of American government that would actually mean anything would be shutting it all down and starting over from scratch. The reality is truly that bad, but that, obviously, is not going to happen.
So, the world is stuck with this corrupt, selfish, and unthinking giant, stumbling along into its decline, hurling threats and challenges in every direction, spending money like a drunken sailor, money it doesn’t even have, wasting immense resources on destruction and dominance rather than improving anything anywhere, making enemies and offending friends and only effectively speeding its own decline. Hating Russia is just part of the establishment’s new cult of “America first everywhere and in everything.”
And it's all as American as apple pie, as they say, America having gone through past periods of temporary insanity, insanity not of all its people but of its privileged leaders and their powerful servants. Power is power, no matter how it is obtained, and those with real power in America have no thoughts for all the people, ever.
“All the people” simply do not count for much, although lip service is paid. The increasing anger in American political discourse on all sides and from top to bottom, I believe, in part reflects a perception – almost a kind of vague, dumb animal perception rather than any clear understanding – by great parts of the population that some things are very wrong.
And they are right, some things are very wrong, but they aren’t the fault of Muslims or refugees or illegal aliens or liberals or gays or Russians or Chinese. What is wrong is that plutocracy has become the day-to-day reality of American government, and all the agencies of government serve it slavishly as do both political parties.
A world empire driven by plutocratic government and frighteningly powerful agencies in its service has no time for “all the people,” ever, and most of what it spends resources and effort on is utterly selfish and corrupt.
“All the people” are kept misinformed by streams of prejudiced nonsense from leaders and the faithful press – all in the service of billionaires, gigantic corporations, and a world empire which operates like a giant gambling casino generating wealth and opportunity for its owners.
The "Russia hoax" thrived, and survives still, not because of Hillary, not because of Democrats, not because of the FBI, but because the entire American establishment is united in its Russophobia, as in a new cult religion. It’s just one tenet of the “Full spectrum dominance” cult violently embraced by an American establishment that sees itself being diminished by the natural growth and development of others coming up in the world. We hear members of the establishment saying the same things day after day, not just Democrats.
The American Naval commander on the aircraft carrier, Harry S. Truman, going into Norwegian waters made truly stupid remarks earlier today concerning Russia. He does not speak for a party. And his boss, Commander-in-Chief Trump, obviously accepted both the aggressive naval move and the dumb words from a subordinate commander.
We all hoped Trump could bring some end or diminishment to the dangerous Russophobia, but he has absolutely proven that he is not able to do so, that he is, indeed, weak despite his constant bluster.
For hopeful people in the world, Trump is a total failure. He hasn't made any progress on any things worth talking about - like relations with Russia or getting out of Syria - he has only made a lot of noise and threats and created still other problems. He represents no hope of any kind.
So, it is good if the mid-term elections paralyze him for the next two years. Very good.
Getting wound-up about Clinton - who indeed is as crooked as they come - removes attention from the next important goal, paralyzing Trump and his many stupidities.
Look at the hideous cabinet Trump has appointed. Look at Trump insulting friends and allies while pursuing chaotic goals. Look at the way the mass murderer who leads Israel has been treated as a favorite son. Look at the threats against the volume of world trade and a fragile world economy.
He's best hog-tied in November.
That won't change the total outlook - Russophobia we have to live with, I fear, for a long time - but it will change enough other, perhaps not-quite-so-big things so that it can be counted a gain.
Any expectations that someone will come along and change or enlighten America’s establishment with facts and rationality and courage are just foolish. And there are no knights on white chargers waiting in the wings.
Why, just in the last day, there was presidential-hopeful, Joe Biden, waving his arms, bugging his eyes, and saying things about Russia for which he should have been laughed out of the room. But he wasn’t, and neither is Britain’s Prime Minister May, someone just totally under America’s imperial thumb, making unsupported charge after unsupported charge.
Trump has proven more of a drunken, farting fool riding an ass than a knight on a charger, but his desperate followers manage to convince themselves they see something else.
The biggest danger he represents is upping the ante constantly with the establishment. He’ll literally do anything to stay in office. He already literally sold American foreign policy in the Middle East for the promise of tens of millions in campaign funds in 2020. His is about as dangerous a motivation as I can imagine, whining to the super-rich establishment: “Please, just keep me in office, and I’ll give everything you ever wanted, and more!”
The American sickness must run its course until it abates. So, plan for the worst, and you cannot go too far wrong. We are past hoping for America in this generation. With its continued inevitable relative decline plus the realization of all the damage to relationships being done by throwing its weight around, eventually realism must set in.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Sean Hannity Is Doing a Great Job Covering Russia Hoax
“Hannity’s bottom line point is: if we don’t win the mid-terms, we’re never going to get to the bottom of any of this. It's a very big deal.”
Sean Hannity is just conducting a more sophisticated form of propaganda. We are talking about Fox News, after all, not one of the world’s seekers after truth.
The bottom line here is that the people Hannity represents are afraid of big Democratic gains in the Congressional elections, which are indeed expected.
This would turn Trump into a "lame duck" for his last two years.
There simply are no truths “anyone is going to get to the bottom of” in this corrupt matter, any more than Trump is going to “drain the swamp” or “send Hillary to jail.”
It’s all laughable. America’s is simply not a rational, rule-of-law government. It more resembles what it must have sounded and smelled like after forty days on Noah’s Ark. A huge cesspool, and those playing in the filth have completely lost their sense of smell.
Of course, all the noise on all sides over matters like this keeps the people occupied and distracted from the country’s real problems, problems which are never even discussed.
The truth is dirty behavior occurs regularly by both American political parties and that American agencies like the FBI are used and bent in all directions to serve power, over and over.
America is just plain corrupt, but it never stops pretending otherwise.
There’s that stupidly childish illusion about “if you could just drain the swamp, everything would be okay." The only cleansing of American government that would actually mean anything would be shutting it all down and starting over from scratch. The reality is truly that bad, but that, obviously, is not going to happen.
So, the world is stuck with this corrupt, selfish, and unthinking giant, stumbling along into its decline, hurling threats and challenges in every direction, spending money like a drunken sailor, money it doesn’t even have, wasting immense resources on destruction and dominance rather than improving anything anywhere, making enemies and offending friends and only effectively speeding its own decline. Hating Russia is just part of the establishment’s new cult of “America first everywhere and in everything.”
And it's all as American as apple pie, as they say, America having gone through past periods of temporary insanity, insanity not of all its people but of its privileged leaders and their powerful servants. Power is power, no matter how it is obtained, and those with real power in America have no thoughts for all the people, ever.
“All the people” simply do not count for much, although lip service is paid. The increasing anger in American political discourse on all sides and from top to bottom, I believe, in part reflects a perception – almost a kind of vague, dumb animal perception rather than any clear understanding – by great parts of the population that some things are very wrong.
And they are right, some things are very wrong, but they aren’t the fault of Muslims or refugees or illegal aliens or liberals or gays or Russians or Chinese. What is wrong is that plutocracy has become the day-to-day reality of American government, and all the agencies of government serve it slavishly as do both political parties.
A world empire driven by plutocratic government and frighteningly powerful agencies in its service has no time for “all the people,” ever, and most of what it spends resources and effort on is utterly selfish and corrupt.
“All the people” are kept misinformed by streams of prejudiced nonsense from leaders and the faithful press – all in the service of billionaires, gigantic corporations, and a world empire which operates like a giant gambling casino generating wealth and opportunity for its owners.
The "Russia hoax" thrived, and survives still, not because of Hillary, not because of Democrats, not because of the FBI, but because the entire American establishment is united in its Russophobia, as in a new cult religion. It’s just one tenet of the “Full spectrum dominance” cult violently embraced by an American establishment that sees itself being diminished by the natural growth and development of others coming up in the world. We hear members of the establishment saying the same things day after day, not just Democrats.
The American Naval commander on the aircraft carrier, Harry S. Truman, going into Norwegian waters made truly stupid remarks earlier today concerning Russia. He does not speak for a party. And his boss, Commander-in-Chief Trump, obviously accepted both the aggressive naval move and the dumb words from a subordinate commander.
We all hoped Trump could bring some end or diminishment to the dangerous Russophobia, but he has absolutely proven that he is not able to do so, that he is, indeed, weak despite his constant bluster.
For hopeful people in the world, Trump is a total failure. He hasn't made any progress on any things worth talking about - like relations with Russia or getting out of Syria - he has only made a lot of noise and threats and created still other problems. He represents no hope of any kind.
So, it is good if the mid-term elections paralyze him for the next two years. Very good.
Getting wound-up about Clinton - who indeed is as crooked as they come - removes attention from the next important goal, paralyzing Trump and his many stupidities.
Look at the hideous cabinet Trump has appointed. Look at Trump insulting friends and allies while pursuing chaotic goals. Look at the way the mass murderer who leads Israel has been treated as a favorite son. Look at the threats against the volume of world trade and a fragile world economy.
He's best hog-tied in November.
That won't change the total outlook - Russophobia we have to live with, I fear, for a long time - but it will change enough other, perhaps not-quite-so-big things so that it can be counted a gain.
Any expectations that someone will come along and change or enlighten America’s establishment with facts and rationality and courage are just foolish. And there are no knights on white chargers waiting in the wings.
Why, just in the last day, there was presidential-hopeful, Joe Biden, waving his arms, bugging his eyes, and saying things about Russia for which he should have been laughed out of the room. But he wasn’t, and neither is Britain’s Prime Minister May, someone just totally under America’s imperial thumb, making unsupported charge after unsupported charge.
Trump has proven more of a drunken, farting fool riding an ass than a knight on a charger, but his desperate followers manage to convince themselves they see something else.
The biggest danger he represents is upping the ante constantly with the establishment. He’ll literally do anything to stay in office. He already literally sold American foreign policy in the Middle East for the promise of tens of millions in campaign funds in 2020. His is about as dangerous a motivation as I can imagine, whining to the super-rich establishment: “Please, just keep me in office, and I’ll give everything you ever wanted, and more!”
The American sickness must run its course until it abates. So, plan for the worst, and you cannot go too far wrong. We are past hoping for America in this generation. With its continued inevitable relative decline plus the realization of all the damage to relationships being done by throwing its weight around, eventually realism must set in.
Thursday, October 11, 2018
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF A SAUDI JOURNALIST WHO WORKED FOR THE WASHINGTON POST WHILE VISITING A SAUDI CONSULATE IN TURKEY TELLS US SOMETHING IMPORTANT ABOUT THE BRAVE NEW WORLD AMERICA IS BUSY CREATING
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN MOON OF ALABAMA
“U.S. Intelligence Had A 'Duty To Warn' Khashoggi - Why Didn't That Happen?”
An excellent piece which covers many aspects of this dark affair in which a well-known Saudi figure, a critic of the Crown Prince, was simply “disappeared” while visiting Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul to get some papers.
And you are right, no one even questions the Saudi Usurper over mass killing in Yemen. Or his dark work in Syria. Or his abuse of Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia. So, why expect a lot of to-do over journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, Washington Post connection or not?
It does appear that we increasingly live in a world where the right kind of people can get away with murder, more or less in broad daylight.
To my mind, it's all just part of the damage done by American hyper-aggressive efforts to assert Washington's authority in every corner of the world.
Saudi Arabia is important because of the new relationship it has formed with America's privileged imperial colony, Israel. The United States is using the murderous Crown Prince as part of its campaign to re-make the Middle East, an effort which has already cost about two million lives.
After all, Israel doesn't have to account for its savage line-ups of soldiers behind fences shooting into unarmed crowds at Gaza, people who are only demonstrating for basic human rights.
These big-game hunting parties with human beings as targets make the old days of Bull Connor in Alabama look almost gentle by comparison.
Yet our press and politicians say almost nothing.
Well, not quite.
The savages are actually publicly praised for their "restraint" in an increasingly-bizarre America.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN MOON OF ALABAMA
“U.S. Intelligence Had A 'Duty To Warn' Khashoggi - Why Didn't That Happen?”
An excellent piece which covers many aspects of this dark affair in which a well-known Saudi figure, a critic of the Crown Prince, was simply “disappeared” while visiting Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul to get some papers.
And you are right, no one even questions the Saudi Usurper over mass killing in Yemen. Or his dark work in Syria. Or his abuse of Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia. So, why expect a lot of to-do over journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, Washington Post connection or not?
It does appear that we increasingly live in a world where the right kind of people can get away with murder, more or less in broad daylight.
To my mind, it's all just part of the damage done by American hyper-aggressive efforts to assert Washington's authority in every corner of the world.
Saudi Arabia is important because of the new relationship it has formed with America's privileged imperial colony, Israel. The United States is using the murderous Crown Prince as part of its campaign to re-make the Middle East, an effort which has already cost about two million lives.
After all, Israel doesn't have to account for its savage line-ups of soldiers behind fences shooting into unarmed crowds at Gaza, people who are only demonstrating for basic human rights.
These big-game hunting parties with human beings as targets make the old days of Bull Connor in Alabama look almost gentle by comparison.
Yet our press and politicians say almost nothing.
Well, not quite.
The savages are actually publicly praised for their "restraint" in an increasingly-bizarre America.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: A WRITER SAYS WE CAN BE HOPEFUL ABOUT PALESTINE - I WISH IT WERE SO - BUT I SEE NO REASON FOR OPTIMISM - QUITE THE OPPOSITE WHEN YOU APPRECIATE THE ACTUAL BEHAVIOR OF ISRAEL AND AREN'T BLINDED BY IDEOLOGY AND FANCIFUL MYTHS
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PETER F COHEN IN MONDOWEISS
“Why we can be hopeful on Palestine”
I very much wish the title represented something more than a new version of Candide’s optimism.
The single state solution is an idea that has been around a long time.
If I'm not mistaken, the late Edward Said embraced it many years ago.
It's perfectly rational, but that is part of the reason that the bitter, brutal men running Israel will never accept it.
They are harsh ideologues, embracing a dark fantasy, the re-creation of an ancient land based on doubtful religious texts of 2,500 years, or more, ago. Texts in which people are stoned for doing things we do every day. Texts in which certain kinds of cloth and certain kinds of food, things we all use, are forbidden. Texts in which a great many events are either fantasies – Jonah and the whale or Lot’s wife as a pillar of salt or the Tower of Babel or Noah’s Ark - or things which never occurred – Israel’s captivity in Egypt and the reign of King David.
Those are hardly a sound basis for modern political affairs and the founding of a state which is heavily armed. But the truth is they provide only the start of a grim list of problems associated with today’s Israel.
Jews in fact flourish in a number of places in far better situations than they do in Israel. It seems to me that there is something in the Israeli temperament resembling the reclusive religious institutions of the Middle Ages, the ones where self-flagellation and other extremes were the norm – not the kind of people ready to embrace large numbers of outsiders with different ways. We find the same qualities in cults sometimes, the desire for separateness and unwillingness to mingle with others.
If Zionists had taken Albert Einstein’s advice, embracing the native people and living among them without iron walls, there could have been something harmonious and peaceful and constructive for everyone over the last 70 years.
But they did not embrace that vision. They embraced instead a bitter and hostile vision of iron walls and racial segregation. And militarism and police and security forces everywhere.
Moreover, Israel is the most heavily subsidized entity on earth, counting both government and private subsidies, and we all know the highly debilitating effects of subsidy over time. And subsidies cannot continue indefinitely. People do not endlessly give away money and resources, particularly when they see the recipient makes absolutely no progress at creating an improved situation.
It would be wise to seriously start making peace with the neighbors and cooperating because what we see today in Israel simply is not a situation which can be sustained long term, that is, without the kind of endless harshness we see, much the same kind of harshness we saw in the old Soviet Union, a state whose circumstances also were not sustainable. But fanatics, like the men who run Israel, do not look at hard realities.
Israel deliberately maintains an embattled situation, making life far more difficult for most there than in, say, Canada or the US or France or many other places.
Israel’s open abuse of millions causes its citizens to be greatly disliked in the world, too, and I don't really think most people enjoy being disliked.
The place is an armed camp, a crusader fortress. The level of military and security services make it in many ways resemble the old USSR. A state top-heavy with military and police and spies is not a healthy one for the long term. A recent book revealed that Israel’s security services have conducted 2,700 assassinations. Serial murder, then, is a founding value of the nation.
The cost of living in Israel is very high, houses are hard to buy, and career opportunities are quite limited. It is a small place, with about half the population of Ecuador. It can never enjoy great economies of scale, and its international trade literally is force-fed by American subsidies and pressures on others.
People only voluntarily live that way - having actually gone out of their way to create the circumstances - when a fantasy or a fanatical belief dominates rational thinking. Fanatical beliefs provide no sound foundation for anything.
I wouldn't care if Israelis wanted to indulge their fantasies, providing they could do so without hurting and abusing millions of others.
But they are hurting and abusing millions of others. That fact is at the heart of the matter.
It is not a matter of a war or conflict, as it is so often inaccurately and lopsidedly presented in our press and by our politicians, when you have a situation where other people’s farms and houses are regularly stolen. It represents a state where the rule of law does not apply, a kind of ongoing criminal enterprise with no justice for its victims.
The rule of law simply is not to be found in Israel and the territories it occupies. Something called the law exists, but it is the same kind of law we saw in places like the American Confederacy and in Nationalist South Africa. It is law to protect only a specific group of residents, and it is law which oppresses all others.
You simply cannot have a viable country in the long term without the stability of the rule of law, yet the people running Israel appear to believe that you can.
You know, it is impossible to look at images of Gaza and not immediately think of a giant concentration camp. And what we see there is Israel’s doing completely. Penning people in with fences and guard towers, including towers with automated, radar-activated machine guns. Bombing them frequently, invading them periodically, blockading their imports, even the materials required for repairs and rebuilding. Curtailing all their natural rights such as how far fishermen can go out in their boats and whether people can travel anywhere, even for medical care or education.
Just imagine how Israel would thrive treated the same way. Of course, it wouldn’t. It couldn’t. It would stagnate and begin to rot. In a way, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians provides a self-fulfilling prophecy for them. Many Israelis really do believe it is only themselves capable of making a thriving place. You can very much see that notion on display in propaganda films and lobbying efforts. It surely represents a form of racism which just jumps out at us periodically.
And when peaceful, desperate people protest for rights to which they are entitled by all the reckonings of Western tradition, Israel can only think of lining up firing squads of soldiers to shoot into the crowds from behind fences. Where in God’s name does such behavior take you? It is a one-way trip to nowhere.
The idea of a mixed state is abhorrent to a great many Israelis because it violates the confused dream that dominated the founders’ thinking.
It would only be possible if the United States used its inordinate power and authority to push for justice. Indeed, that is the reality for any settlement, whether two states or one. But how likely is that? It is not only unlikely, it is impossible given the political realities of America with its money-driven elections and its tolerance for powerful lobbies to supply money along with other assistance such as favorable press treatment.
The lobby for Israel in the United States is one of the most powerful and well-run in the country. It is for many a political death sentence to oppose it. It will maintain the status quo so long as the leaders in Israel want it to be so. There is a kind of vicious circle involved in all discussions of Israel-Palestinian peace.
Only in the remote case of American Jews becoming convinced that Israel should no longer be supported so vigorously, or in the equally remote case of America changing its terrible laws around money in politics and the governance of political lobbies, would there be a possibility for America to use its strength and influence for justice. Well, it’s gone on the way it is for seventy years, and there seems little reason to expect change in either of those American circumstances which support Israel.
Further contributing to Israel’s distaste for a single-state solution is the fact that, in general, Arab birth rates are higher, considerably, than Israeli ones. Of course, keeping Palestinians in relative poverty only helps to extend that reality since we know birth rates invariably drop with prosperity. So, how long would it be before Jews became a minority? I know Israel’s leadership is keenly aware of this reality and greatly fears it.
Israel plays an intellectual game around the concept of democracy, always trying to gain plaudits as the “only democracy in the Middle East.” But what kind of democracy is it where only certain people can immigrate, become full citizens, and vote? Yes, there is a minority population of Palestinians who are citizens (now about 20% of total population), but their status was an accident of history, of events around 1948.
It was never intended to be so, and many Israelis would like to change their status. Prominent people have addressed that very subject. Netanyahu once described them as a “demographic bomb,” such are his fair-minded views.
And this minority is treated unfairly with specialized laws against their interests. It is even spoken out against and threatened by some Israeli politicians, men of the caliber of Avigdor Lieberman, of which Israel has considerable numbers, their presence being consistently required in the formation of governments under Israel’s political system.
In effect, some of the darkest voices in Israel always have a seat at the table of government. They provide the required margin to form a government, and they employ that margin to maintain disproportionate influence.
As well, whenever Israel meets democracy in the Arab world around it, it treats it with open hostility. It loved the long-term dictator of Egypt, Mubarak, hated and worked against Egypt’s one brief democratic government, and now embraces the new Egyptian dictator, el-Sisi. It embraces the bloody tyrant in Saudi Arabia. It embraces the King of Jordan.
It tried to totally destroy democratically-elected Hamas in Gaza, whose original non-corrupt and democratic ways only got it labelled as “terrorist.” It somewhat supports the so-called President of Palestine, Abbas, a man whose legitimate mandate ended many years ago and who has not faced an election since. Its tepid tolerance for Abbas is based only on his relative ineffectiveness and his opposition to Hamas in Gaza.
Israel has little prospect for healthy future in-migration of Jews. Indeed, it experiences some years with net out-migration. Jews are a relatively small group in the world, and not many would trade their prosperity and opportunity and freedom for the intense stress and unpleasant realities of Israel.
The Russians were the world’s last remaining large source for serious immigration, and now that's used up.
It is important for understanding Israel’s political psychology to realize that many of its leaders and leading economic citizens have dual citizenships, as American or British, and they are secure in the backs of their minds that they can always pack-up and leave should the situation become too nasty. That is not the case for many ordinary citizens now born there. They are stuck.
Israel’s prospects, with relatively low birth rates and limited in-migration are for population decline and a whole lot more of the same grief and violence, given the extreme ideologue beliefs of its leaders and the inherent instability of its situation.
It's a bleak long-term outlook.
But accept Palestinians? Whew, that's like telling devout, old-fashioned Catholics they should accept abortion and married priests and stop reciting the Rosary.
Modern Israel, by all objective evidence, is, in fact, a pretty racist society, too. We’ve seen ugly controversy and manipulation at every turn involving race. Black refugees were treated terribly. Black Jews from Africa, too, were not even allowed to live in some neighborhoods. Of course, the same is true for Arabs who cannot rent or buy in many places and face open hostility. Some national laws, too, are different for Jews versus non-Jews.
I just do not see how a hopeful future can come from that.
It really was a hopeless enterprise from the beginning, creating a nation based on ancient myths and mumbo-jumbo texts, an enterprise based on anger and desperation with no larger guiding vision. But, again, if it could have been done without hurting millions of others, that would be only Israel’s’ business. But it cannot be done without hurting millions of others, and things continues along that path without any signs of let-up.
There can be no repeat of the Holocaust. It was a unique event under unique circumstances, not to be repeated, which is indeed the case with all truly terrible events. New horrors will happen somewhere to someone, but they won’t be a repeat of the Holocaust. A brilliant ancient Greek compared history to a flowing river into which you could never step into the same place twice.
Yet the Holocaust is used almost as raison d’etre for Israel. It truly is not since most of the world’s Jews do not live there. Of course, this also ignores the fact that the Holocaust was an event in another continent, involving one group of Germans against another. The Ashkenazim who created Zionism and who dominate Israel are a Germanic, Eastern European people. The word Ashkenazi means German.
So, what are they doing in the Middle East generating misery for still another people, people who had nothing to do with the Holocaust? Well, again, who would care about them being in the Middle East so long as they respected their neighbors and lived in peace. But they do not.
It’s nonsense to believe that the Holocaust could be repeated, but holding it over people’s heads serves much like the threat of hell does in American Christian fundamentalism or did in the Catholic Church for centuries of the Dark Ages.
The phrase “never again” contains no hint of reality, both because history never repeats itself and because the very people uttering it have demonstrated insincerity and hypocrisy in their efforts. Again, just look at images of Gaza and see what Israel has consciously created while uttering the words. It’s beyond shameful.
I regret to say that I see virtually nothing in the entire situation about which to be optimistic.
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PETER F COHEN IN MONDOWEISS
“Why we can be hopeful on Palestine”
I very much wish the title represented something more than a new version of Candide’s optimism.
The single state solution is an idea that has been around a long time.
If I'm not mistaken, the late Edward Said embraced it many years ago.
It's perfectly rational, but that is part of the reason that the bitter, brutal men running Israel will never accept it.
They are harsh ideologues, embracing a dark fantasy, the re-creation of an ancient land based on doubtful religious texts of 2,500 years, or more, ago. Texts in which people are stoned for doing things we do every day. Texts in which certain kinds of cloth and certain kinds of food, things we all use, are forbidden. Texts in which a great many events are either fantasies – Jonah and the whale or Lot’s wife as a pillar of salt or the Tower of Babel or Noah’s Ark - or things which never occurred – Israel’s captivity in Egypt and the reign of King David.
Those are hardly a sound basis for modern political affairs and the founding of a state which is heavily armed. But the truth is they provide only the start of a grim list of problems associated with today’s Israel.
Jews in fact flourish in a number of places in far better situations than they do in Israel. It seems to me that there is something in the Israeli temperament resembling the reclusive religious institutions of the Middle Ages, the ones where self-flagellation and other extremes were the norm – not the kind of people ready to embrace large numbers of outsiders with different ways. We find the same qualities in cults sometimes, the desire for separateness and unwillingness to mingle with others.
If Zionists had taken Albert Einstein’s advice, embracing the native people and living among them without iron walls, there could have been something harmonious and peaceful and constructive for everyone over the last 70 years.
But they did not embrace that vision. They embraced instead a bitter and hostile vision of iron walls and racial segregation. And militarism and police and security forces everywhere.
Moreover, Israel is the most heavily subsidized entity on earth, counting both government and private subsidies, and we all know the highly debilitating effects of subsidy over time. And subsidies cannot continue indefinitely. People do not endlessly give away money and resources, particularly when they see the recipient makes absolutely no progress at creating an improved situation.
It would be wise to seriously start making peace with the neighbors and cooperating because what we see today in Israel simply is not a situation which can be sustained long term, that is, without the kind of endless harshness we see, much the same kind of harshness we saw in the old Soviet Union, a state whose circumstances also were not sustainable. But fanatics, like the men who run Israel, do not look at hard realities.
Israel deliberately maintains an embattled situation, making life far more difficult for most there than in, say, Canada or the US or France or many other places.
Israel’s open abuse of millions causes its citizens to be greatly disliked in the world, too, and I don't really think most people enjoy being disliked.
The place is an armed camp, a crusader fortress. The level of military and security services make it in many ways resemble the old USSR. A state top-heavy with military and police and spies is not a healthy one for the long term. A recent book revealed that Israel’s security services have conducted 2,700 assassinations. Serial murder, then, is a founding value of the nation.
The cost of living in Israel is very high, houses are hard to buy, and career opportunities are quite limited. It is a small place, with about half the population of Ecuador. It can never enjoy great economies of scale, and its international trade literally is force-fed by American subsidies and pressures on others.
People only voluntarily live that way - having actually gone out of their way to create the circumstances - when a fantasy or a fanatical belief dominates rational thinking. Fanatical beliefs provide no sound foundation for anything.
I wouldn't care if Israelis wanted to indulge their fantasies, providing they could do so without hurting and abusing millions of others.
But they are hurting and abusing millions of others. That fact is at the heart of the matter.
It is not a matter of a war or conflict, as it is so often inaccurately and lopsidedly presented in our press and by our politicians, when you have a situation where other people’s farms and houses are regularly stolen. It represents a state where the rule of law does not apply, a kind of ongoing criminal enterprise with no justice for its victims.
The rule of law simply is not to be found in Israel and the territories it occupies. Something called the law exists, but it is the same kind of law we saw in places like the American Confederacy and in Nationalist South Africa. It is law to protect only a specific group of residents, and it is law which oppresses all others.
You simply cannot have a viable country in the long term without the stability of the rule of law, yet the people running Israel appear to believe that you can.
You know, it is impossible to look at images of Gaza and not immediately think of a giant concentration camp. And what we see there is Israel’s doing completely. Penning people in with fences and guard towers, including towers with automated, radar-activated machine guns. Bombing them frequently, invading them periodically, blockading their imports, even the materials required for repairs and rebuilding. Curtailing all their natural rights such as how far fishermen can go out in their boats and whether people can travel anywhere, even for medical care or education.
Just imagine how Israel would thrive treated the same way. Of course, it wouldn’t. It couldn’t. It would stagnate and begin to rot. In a way, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians provides a self-fulfilling prophecy for them. Many Israelis really do believe it is only themselves capable of making a thriving place. You can very much see that notion on display in propaganda films and lobbying efforts. It surely represents a form of racism which just jumps out at us periodically.
And when peaceful, desperate people protest for rights to which they are entitled by all the reckonings of Western tradition, Israel can only think of lining up firing squads of soldiers to shoot into the crowds from behind fences. Where in God’s name does such behavior take you? It is a one-way trip to nowhere.
The idea of a mixed state is abhorrent to a great many Israelis because it violates the confused dream that dominated the founders’ thinking.
It would only be possible if the United States used its inordinate power and authority to push for justice. Indeed, that is the reality for any settlement, whether two states or one. But how likely is that? It is not only unlikely, it is impossible given the political realities of America with its money-driven elections and its tolerance for powerful lobbies to supply money along with other assistance such as favorable press treatment.
The lobby for Israel in the United States is one of the most powerful and well-run in the country. It is for many a political death sentence to oppose it. It will maintain the status quo so long as the leaders in Israel want it to be so. There is a kind of vicious circle involved in all discussions of Israel-Palestinian peace.
Only in the remote case of American Jews becoming convinced that Israel should no longer be supported so vigorously, or in the equally remote case of America changing its terrible laws around money in politics and the governance of political lobbies, would there be a possibility for America to use its strength and influence for justice. Well, it’s gone on the way it is for seventy years, and there seems little reason to expect change in either of those American circumstances which support Israel.
Further contributing to Israel’s distaste for a single-state solution is the fact that, in general, Arab birth rates are higher, considerably, than Israeli ones. Of course, keeping Palestinians in relative poverty only helps to extend that reality since we know birth rates invariably drop with prosperity. So, how long would it be before Jews became a minority? I know Israel’s leadership is keenly aware of this reality and greatly fears it.
Israel plays an intellectual game around the concept of democracy, always trying to gain plaudits as the “only democracy in the Middle East.” But what kind of democracy is it where only certain people can immigrate, become full citizens, and vote? Yes, there is a minority population of Palestinians who are citizens (now about 20% of total population), but their status was an accident of history, of events around 1948.
It was never intended to be so, and many Israelis would like to change their status. Prominent people have addressed that very subject. Netanyahu once described them as a “demographic bomb,” such are his fair-minded views.
And this minority is treated unfairly with specialized laws against their interests. It is even spoken out against and threatened by some Israeli politicians, men of the caliber of Avigdor Lieberman, of which Israel has considerable numbers, their presence being consistently required in the formation of governments under Israel’s political system.
In effect, some of the darkest voices in Israel always have a seat at the table of government. They provide the required margin to form a government, and they employ that margin to maintain disproportionate influence.
As well, whenever Israel meets democracy in the Arab world around it, it treats it with open hostility. It loved the long-term dictator of Egypt, Mubarak, hated and worked against Egypt’s one brief democratic government, and now embraces the new Egyptian dictator, el-Sisi. It embraces the bloody tyrant in Saudi Arabia. It embraces the King of Jordan.
It tried to totally destroy democratically-elected Hamas in Gaza, whose original non-corrupt and democratic ways only got it labelled as “terrorist.” It somewhat supports the so-called President of Palestine, Abbas, a man whose legitimate mandate ended many years ago and who has not faced an election since. Its tepid tolerance for Abbas is based only on his relative ineffectiveness and his opposition to Hamas in Gaza.
Israel has little prospect for healthy future in-migration of Jews. Indeed, it experiences some years with net out-migration. Jews are a relatively small group in the world, and not many would trade their prosperity and opportunity and freedom for the intense stress and unpleasant realities of Israel.
The Russians were the world’s last remaining large source for serious immigration, and now that's used up.
It is important for understanding Israel’s political psychology to realize that many of its leaders and leading economic citizens have dual citizenships, as American or British, and they are secure in the backs of their minds that they can always pack-up and leave should the situation become too nasty. That is not the case for many ordinary citizens now born there. They are stuck.
Israel’s prospects, with relatively low birth rates and limited in-migration are for population decline and a whole lot more of the same grief and violence, given the extreme ideologue beliefs of its leaders and the inherent instability of its situation.
It's a bleak long-term outlook.
But accept Palestinians? Whew, that's like telling devout, old-fashioned Catholics they should accept abortion and married priests and stop reciting the Rosary.
Modern Israel, by all objective evidence, is, in fact, a pretty racist society, too. We’ve seen ugly controversy and manipulation at every turn involving race. Black refugees were treated terribly. Black Jews from Africa, too, were not even allowed to live in some neighborhoods. Of course, the same is true for Arabs who cannot rent or buy in many places and face open hostility. Some national laws, too, are different for Jews versus non-Jews.
I just do not see how a hopeful future can come from that.
It really was a hopeless enterprise from the beginning, creating a nation based on ancient myths and mumbo-jumbo texts, an enterprise based on anger and desperation with no larger guiding vision. But, again, if it could have been done without hurting millions of others, that would be only Israel’s’ business. But it cannot be done without hurting millions of others, and things continues along that path without any signs of let-up.
There can be no repeat of the Holocaust. It was a unique event under unique circumstances, not to be repeated, which is indeed the case with all truly terrible events. New horrors will happen somewhere to someone, but they won’t be a repeat of the Holocaust. A brilliant ancient Greek compared history to a flowing river into which you could never step into the same place twice.
Yet the Holocaust is used almost as raison d’etre for Israel. It truly is not since most of the world’s Jews do not live there. Of course, this also ignores the fact that the Holocaust was an event in another continent, involving one group of Germans against another. The Ashkenazim who created Zionism and who dominate Israel are a Germanic, Eastern European people. The word Ashkenazi means German.
So, what are they doing in the Middle East generating misery for still another people, people who had nothing to do with the Holocaust? Well, again, who would care about them being in the Middle East so long as they respected their neighbors and lived in peace. But they do not.
It’s nonsense to believe that the Holocaust could be repeated, but holding it over people’s heads serves much like the threat of hell does in American Christian fundamentalism or did in the Catholic Church for centuries of the Dark Ages.
The phrase “never again” contains no hint of reality, both because history never repeats itself and because the very people uttering it have demonstrated insincerity and hypocrisy in their efforts. Again, just look at images of Gaza and see what Israel has consciously created while uttering the words. It’s beyond shameful.
I regret to say that I see virtually nothing in the entire situation about which to be optimistic.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AMERICAN POLITICS' CONSTANT TOYING WITH ADVERTISING SLOGANS AVOIDS DEALING WITH REALITY - AMERICAN DREAM AND MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN ARE FANTASIES - HERE'S A FEW HARD REALITIES - A NEW GREAT DEPRESSION?
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENTWATCH
“Middle Class Erosion: 33 Million Americans Will Not Travel During The Holidays Because They Can’t Afford To Do So”
You are crying, as my mother used to say, over spilt milk.
The American Middle Class has been on the decline for decades.
The truth is that it was artificially fattened up in the glory days following WWII when the US had virtually no competition on the planet.
That was the fantasy time of "the American Dream."
It was unique. It is gone, and forever.
Now, there are many countries vying for their place in the sun, and the truth is that in many things America cannot compete with them.
Subsidies, whether direct or indirect, and special temporary privileged position, vis-a-vis others, does not breed competitive abilities and skills.
I think we all know that from our everyday lives.
So, why does anyone think it should be any different for a nation? It's not.
"The American Dream," always reflected a temporary special privileged position. It was never possible that it should be sustained indefinitely.
Trouble is that someone like Trump is playing politics with the nonsense of saying that it is possible.
"Make America Great Again" is just a new slogan for a tired, inaccurate, and out-of-date notion.
It much resembles the blind faith of a religion or cult.
There is absolutely no substance to it because it reflects fantasy notions in a changed reality, a world immensely different than that of, say, 1959.
The danger with it is that it will generate a permanent state of the kind of combative economic policies pursued by Trump. They lead nowhere but ruin for everyone.
The notion that you can enrich your own nation at the expense of others derives from centuries ago with Mercantilism and Imperialism.
It simply cannot work in a modern world, except to help destroy global economic and trade foundations, ultimately making everyone poorer.
Trump’s approach rather resembles - given America's vast and irresponsible accumulated debt and the weaknesses we see in many economies - a deliberate effort to bring on a new Great Depression.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENTWATCH
“Middle Class Erosion: 33 Million Americans Will Not Travel During The Holidays Because They Can’t Afford To Do So”
You are crying, as my mother used to say, over spilt milk.
The American Middle Class has been on the decline for decades.
The truth is that it was artificially fattened up in the glory days following WWII when the US had virtually no competition on the planet.
That was the fantasy time of "the American Dream."
It was unique. It is gone, and forever.
Now, there are many countries vying for their place in the sun, and the truth is that in many things America cannot compete with them.
Subsidies, whether direct or indirect, and special temporary privileged position, vis-a-vis others, does not breed competitive abilities and skills.
I think we all know that from our everyday lives.
So, why does anyone think it should be any different for a nation? It's not.
"The American Dream," always reflected a temporary special privileged position. It was never possible that it should be sustained indefinitely.
Trouble is that someone like Trump is playing politics with the nonsense of saying that it is possible.
"Make America Great Again" is just a new slogan for a tired, inaccurate, and out-of-date notion.
It much resembles the blind faith of a religion or cult.
There is absolutely no substance to it because it reflects fantasy notions in a changed reality, a world immensely different than that of, say, 1959.
The danger with it is that it will generate a permanent state of the kind of combative economic policies pursued by Trump. They lead nowhere but ruin for everyone.
The notion that you can enrich your own nation at the expense of others derives from centuries ago with Mercantilism and Imperialism.
It simply cannot work in a modern world, except to help destroy global economic and trade foundations, ultimately making everyone poorer.
Trump’s approach rather resembles - given America's vast and irresponsible accumulated debt and the weaknesses we see in many economies - a deliberate effort to bring on a new Great Depression.
Tuesday, October 09, 2018
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AMERICA'S UNMISTAKABLE RELATIVE ECONOMIC DECLINE - THE HOPELESS AND DANGEROUS ASSAULTS OF TRUMP AND THE AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT ON THE WORLD - A CLEAR DRIFT TOWARDS FASCISM - IMPOVERISHMENT THROUGH DEPRESSION MIGHT MAKE IT DECISIVE
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Trump’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad National Security Team”
_____________________________
Response to a comment which said, “America is declining and has been for years. It struggles on and the question is, will it give up gracefully as the USSR did, or will the current neocons go out with a bang?”:
The decline is very real.
In the postwar period, America's glory days and the time when the expression "the American Dream" was popularized, America was responsible for over 40% of the globe's output.
After all, everyone else was flat on their backs.
Today, that has declined to 20-odd %.
It isn't just America falling behind, it's others, inevitably, coming up.
The Washington power establishment's new efforts at being aggressive everywhere are in large part based in recognition of this fact. It is also vociferously supported by the influential Neocons who see an aggressive America as the best possible thing for Israel.
They want to use Washington's still-immense military and financial strength to push their way to advantages all over the globe. Literally, a kind of Mafia protection-racket approach.
Clearly, some of the people in Trump's crew - Haley, Pompeo, Bolton, and others - couldn't be distinguished from Mafiosi, or perhaps fascists. He appointed these horrible creatures to appease an establishment which does not like him.
It is obviously a very dangerous philosophy and is not all that different than old-fashioned imperialism.
Trump's silly slogan about "Making America Great Again" comes right out of this reality. It's just a new formulation of “the American Dream,” but you cannot re-create 1953, so it will remain a largely empty phrase. But it is also a dangerous phrase in a number of ways, including its potential to leave his followers extremely enraged by failure.
And if he keeps attacking global economic and trade arrangements - activity which appears to be his only strategy to “making America great again” - he is, in fact, going to make America a whole lot worse off, with global recession, changed arrangements among other countries resentful of American belligerence, perhaps losing the dollar's privileged position, and new alliances forming.
Very short-sighted, to say the least.
However, for now, his ugly, bellowing rhetoric about other countries is somewhat in step with the power establishment's new goals, who also I believe are destined to fail utterly unless America really does transform itself into a fascist, aggrandizing state.
It already has taken many steps in this direction, in matters as wide-ranging as violating every American’s privacy to pushing the enforcement of American laws onto other countries and to supporting a number of governments who work against human rights and working to destroy international institutions dedicated to fairness among nations.
America's becoming a fascist state is a genuine possibility, and we have Israel, already one in all but name with the way it holds millions as prisoners and regularly steals their land and ignores all international law and custom, pushing America in that direction every step of the way.
Clear back in the 1930s, the great American journalist and chronicler of Nazi Germany, William L. Shirer, said he believed it was possible America could be the first country to go fascist by choice.
He was referring to attitudes and sympathies he observed in America, and not to the same world situation we see, but those attitudes and sympathies are still there, as we are reminded often when Trump or other senior American officials open their mouths.
Just give America another Great Depression, which the combination of Trump’s browbeating trade and America’s recklessness with its financial affairs both work towards, and all bets are off. Nazism arose out of the despair of millions crushed by economic catastrophe.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Trump’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad National Security Team”
_____________________________
Response to a comment which said, “America is declining and has been for years. It struggles on and the question is, will it give up gracefully as the USSR did, or will the current neocons go out with a bang?”:
The decline is very real.
In the postwar period, America's glory days and the time when the expression "the American Dream" was popularized, America was responsible for over 40% of the globe's output.
After all, everyone else was flat on their backs.
Today, that has declined to 20-odd %.
It isn't just America falling behind, it's others, inevitably, coming up.
The Washington power establishment's new efforts at being aggressive everywhere are in large part based in recognition of this fact. It is also vociferously supported by the influential Neocons who see an aggressive America as the best possible thing for Israel.
They want to use Washington's still-immense military and financial strength to push their way to advantages all over the globe. Literally, a kind of Mafia protection-racket approach.
Clearly, some of the people in Trump's crew - Haley, Pompeo, Bolton, and others - couldn't be distinguished from Mafiosi, or perhaps fascists. He appointed these horrible creatures to appease an establishment which does not like him.
It is obviously a very dangerous philosophy and is not all that different than old-fashioned imperialism.
Trump's silly slogan about "Making America Great Again" comes right out of this reality. It's just a new formulation of “the American Dream,” but you cannot re-create 1953, so it will remain a largely empty phrase. But it is also a dangerous phrase in a number of ways, including its potential to leave his followers extremely enraged by failure.
And if he keeps attacking global economic and trade arrangements - activity which appears to be his only strategy to “making America great again” - he is, in fact, going to make America a whole lot worse off, with global recession, changed arrangements among other countries resentful of American belligerence, perhaps losing the dollar's privileged position, and new alliances forming.
Very short-sighted, to say the least.
However, for now, his ugly, bellowing rhetoric about other countries is somewhat in step with the power establishment's new goals, who also I believe are destined to fail utterly unless America really does transform itself into a fascist, aggrandizing state.
It already has taken many steps in this direction, in matters as wide-ranging as violating every American’s privacy to pushing the enforcement of American laws onto other countries and to supporting a number of governments who work against human rights and working to destroy international institutions dedicated to fairness among nations.
America's becoming a fascist state is a genuine possibility, and we have Israel, already one in all but name with the way it holds millions as prisoners and regularly steals their land and ignores all international law and custom, pushing America in that direction every step of the way.
Clear back in the 1930s, the great American journalist and chronicler of Nazi Germany, William L. Shirer, said he believed it was possible America could be the first country to go fascist by choice.
He was referring to attitudes and sympathies he observed in America, and not to the same world situation we see, but those attitudes and sympathies are still there, as we are reminded often when Trump or other senior American officials open their mouths.
Just give America another Great Depression, which the combination of Trump’s browbeating trade and America’s recklessness with its financial affairs both work towards, and all bets are off. Nazism arose out of the despair of millions crushed by economic catastrophe.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: A LIST OF REASONS TO DOUBT THE OFFICIAL STORY OF 9/11 IS INTERESTING BUT IT MISSES SOME VITAL POINTS - I THINK YOU CAN ONLY REJECT THE OFFICIAL STORY OF 9/11 IF YOU INFORM YOURSELF EVEN A LITTLE
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN GOV’T SLAVES
“Top 40 Reasons To Doubt The Official Story Of 9/11”
https://govtslaves.info/2018/10/07/the-top-40-reasons-to-doubt-the-official-story-of-9-11/
This is an excellent summary so far as it goes, but it does miss vitally important points.
What were the two groups of Mossad spies doing as they followed the presumed 9/11 actors?
How could Mossad run at least two gangs of spies inside the United States for an extended period of time without CIA being aware?
There is no doubt of their extensive activity - from a gang of "art students" travelling around, as in Florida where Atta was, to the fake “house movers” in New York area who filmed the plane strike and were witnessed high-fiving gleefully?
Indeed, sometimes Mossad does work for CIA where it would not be possible for CIA to work, the CIA supposedly not able to work inside the US by law.
What about the former CIA operative, Malcom Howard, a building demolition expert, who died recently and made a deathbed confession to having wired Building 7?
What about the State Department employee who spoke with concern about the large number of visas from abroad he was pressured by CIA to issue in advance of 9/11 events?
Osama bin Laden is endlessly assumed to have been involved, but we have never been given a single credible piece of evidence supporting the notion. You might think that if any evidence existed, officials would be only too happy to produce it.
Indeed, when the US requested his extradition from Afghanistan, the Taleban government did not refuse but it simply requested some evidence first, a request which is normal in all such extradition requests, but the United States refused and, a short while later, they invaded.
As to physical and other circumstances, again, readers might enjoy:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2016/09/11/john-chuckman-comment-a-survivor-says-even-the-simplest-questions-around-911-have-not-been-answered-by-government-yes-and-some-disturbing-truths-around-those-events-the-saudi-arabian-nonsense/
Or, indeed, any of the items contained in this search of one of my Internet sites:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/?s=9%2F11
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN GOV’T SLAVES
“Top 40 Reasons To Doubt The Official Story Of 9/11”
https://govtslaves.info/2018/10/07/the-top-40-reasons-to-doubt-the-official-story-of-9-11/
This is an excellent summary so far as it goes, but it does miss vitally important points.
What were the two groups of Mossad spies doing as they followed the presumed 9/11 actors?
How could Mossad run at least two gangs of spies inside the United States for an extended period of time without CIA being aware?
There is no doubt of their extensive activity - from a gang of "art students" travelling around, as in Florida where Atta was, to the fake “house movers” in New York area who filmed the plane strike and were witnessed high-fiving gleefully?
Indeed, sometimes Mossad does work for CIA where it would not be possible for CIA to work, the CIA supposedly not able to work inside the US by law.
What about the former CIA operative, Malcom Howard, a building demolition expert, who died recently and made a deathbed confession to having wired Building 7?
What about the State Department employee who spoke with concern about the large number of visas from abroad he was pressured by CIA to issue in advance of 9/11 events?
Osama bin Laden is endlessly assumed to have been involved, but we have never been given a single credible piece of evidence supporting the notion. You might think that if any evidence existed, officials would be only too happy to produce it.
Indeed, when the US requested his extradition from Afghanistan, the Taleban government did not refuse but it simply requested some evidence first, a request which is normal in all such extradition requests, but the United States refused and, a short while later, they invaded.
As to physical and other circumstances, again, readers might enjoy:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2016/09/11/john-chuckman-comment-a-survivor-says-even-the-simplest-questions-around-911-have-not-been-answered-by-government-yes-and-some-disturbing-truths-around-those-events-the-saudi-arabian-nonsense/
Or, indeed, any of the items contained in this search of one of my Internet sites:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/?s=9%2F11
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: PUTIN'S CHARMING CUSTOM OF HAVING VERY LARGE FAMILIES TO DINNER - BUT THE INEVITABILITY OF POPULATION DECLINE IN ADVANCING NATIONS - LONG-TERM REALITIES OF DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Want To Have Dinner With Putin? Have 7 Kids and Become a Russian Citizen and You're In!
“Let Western media label these photos as "creepy"; we find Putin's personal interest in traditional families--and the families themselves--downright charming. What do you think?”
I find this charming.
However, I do not really believe such practices can turn around birth rates.
As societies advance, births decline, always.
It is a universal experience.
Declining births represent real economic incentives.
With better medicine and food, people come to understand that most babies will survive.
That, of course, was not always the case.
Babies died in large numbers, so people responded by having more of them.
Rural farmers also saw a large family as a kind of guarantee for their old age and decline, young people with strong backs to keep the farm going.
But part of modernity, a big part, is people leaving farms for cities. Farms become consolidated and run as huge corporate enterprises, with lots of the best machinery and with limited need for workers.
Except at picking time, a time in most places where migrant labor comes in temporarily to do the job.
But technology may even end that because new kinds of harvesting and picking machines are invented regularly.
Also, traditional family farms cannot compete with vast corporate farm systems. Their costs are too high.
So traditional incentives for large farm families, over time, disappear. Of course, there are always little pockets here and there, but overall, that is the story.
New specialty crops can affect this somewhat for a time, as the organic farming in North America requires more intense labor and commands premium prices for crops and encourages some smaller farms.
But the effects of that cannot last as technology continues to do new tasks.
In cities, people want to pursue careers, including women, and having too many children is a serious barrier. Costs go up. work opportunity, especially for women, goes down.
And urban carers require a good deal of preparation too in the way of education, again an incentive against having children in any numbers.
So, young urban people generally do not want more than two kids.
Well, it is just a fact that if every couple in any country has only two kids, population will decline. Any degree of infant mortality, and there is always some, means the total couples have less than replaced themselves. And not everyone marries either.
Then, of course, given an increasingly good life with careers in cities and two incomes, there are many couples who will choose not to have children at all.
This whole phenomenon has a name in economics. It's part of what is called Demographic Transition.
It is not a fanciful idea, but a reality, a concept proved in every advanced society.
When incentives for changed behavior are real – real as in “the real economy” economists speak of – then they can only ever be effectively countered by real counter-incentives.
That’s why many states give money to families with children, but it generally cannot be enough to compensate for the lost economic gains of having more children. It in fact costs many tens of thousands of dollars to raise just one child to adulthood, and if you add parents’ paying for higher education, a phenomenon of the late 20th century, you can add tens of thousands more. And then there is the lost income of a spouse who can’t work.
So, monetary incentives in general are not too helpful, simply because governments cannot afford to hand out sizeable incomes for those having children.
In the long term, and we see this in every advanced society in the world, only immigration can make up for declining births.
So, such celebrations as President Putin does are pleasant, and they communicate a certain sense of values, but they cannot make a really big difference in the long term.
The recent history of every modern North American, European, and Asian Rim country demonstrates it convincingly.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Want To Have Dinner With Putin? Have 7 Kids and Become a Russian Citizen and You're In!
“Let Western media label these photos as "creepy"; we find Putin's personal interest in traditional families--and the families themselves--downright charming. What do you think?”
I find this charming.
However, I do not really believe such practices can turn around birth rates.
As societies advance, births decline, always.
It is a universal experience.
Declining births represent real economic incentives.
With better medicine and food, people come to understand that most babies will survive.
That, of course, was not always the case.
Babies died in large numbers, so people responded by having more of them.
Rural farmers also saw a large family as a kind of guarantee for their old age and decline, young people with strong backs to keep the farm going.
But part of modernity, a big part, is people leaving farms for cities. Farms become consolidated and run as huge corporate enterprises, with lots of the best machinery and with limited need for workers.
Except at picking time, a time in most places where migrant labor comes in temporarily to do the job.
But technology may even end that because new kinds of harvesting and picking machines are invented regularly.
Also, traditional family farms cannot compete with vast corporate farm systems. Their costs are too high.
So traditional incentives for large farm families, over time, disappear. Of course, there are always little pockets here and there, but overall, that is the story.
New specialty crops can affect this somewhat for a time, as the organic farming in North America requires more intense labor and commands premium prices for crops and encourages some smaller farms.
But the effects of that cannot last as technology continues to do new tasks.
In cities, people want to pursue careers, including women, and having too many children is a serious barrier. Costs go up. work opportunity, especially for women, goes down.
And urban carers require a good deal of preparation too in the way of education, again an incentive against having children in any numbers.
So, young urban people generally do not want more than two kids.
Well, it is just a fact that if every couple in any country has only two kids, population will decline. Any degree of infant mortality, and there is always some, means the total couples have less than replaced themselves. And not everyone marries either.
Then, of course, given an increasingly good life with careers in cities and two incomes, there are many couples who will choose not to have children at all.
This whole phenomenon has a name in economics. It's part of what is called Demographic Transition.
It is not a fanciful idea, but a reality, a concept proved in every advanced society.
When incentives for changed behavior are real – real as in “the real economy” economists speak of – then they can only ever be effectively countered by real counter-incentives.
That’s why many states give money to families with children, but it generally cannot be enough to compensate for the lost economic gains of having more children. It in fact costs many tens of thousands of dollars to raise just one child to adulthood, and if you add parents’ paying for higher education, a phenomenon of the late 20th century, you can add tens of thousands more. And then there is the lost income of a spouse who can’t work.
So, monetary incentives in general are not too helpful, simply because governments cannot afford to hand out sizeable incomes for those having children.
In the long term, and we see this in every advanced society in the world, only immigration can make up for declining births.
So, such celebrations as President Putin does are pleasant, and they communicate a certain sense of values, but they cannot make a really big difference in the long term.
The recent history of every modern North American, European, and Asian Rim country demonstrates it convincingly.
Saturday, October 06, 2018
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: GOOD CRITICAL REVIEW OF NEW BOOK "PREVENTING PALESTINE" - I THINK THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM IS ALMOST NEVER DISCUSSED - AMERICA IS JUST TOTALLY UNFIT TO BRING PEACE - IT AIMS ONLY TO KEEP A MIDEAST COLONY AND ITS POLITICAL SYSTEM IS CUSTOM-DESIGNED TO GUARANTEE THAT
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO A BOOK REVIEW BY AS’AD ABUKHALIL IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“The Trouble With ‘Preventing Palestine’
“Seth Anziska’s new book on the Arab-Israeli “peace process” is a useful primer on the conflict, but it does not fully examine the paradox of the Carter administration’s solution that we are still living with, argues As’ad AbuKhalil”
An excellent, thoughtful criticism of the book.
The points made are valid and important.
I'll just mention another consideration, often overlooked, but I believe it is at the heart of the problem.
Israel really is an American colony, a pied-a-terre, in the Middle East.
Its history has nothing to do, for successive American governments, with sympathy for the Jews or the horrors of the Holocaust.
America's establishment was always quite biased against Jews at home, and it didn't lift a finger to help the situation in 1930s Germany. It even turned away boatloads of Jewish refugees Hitler allowed to leave.
Men like Henry Ford were admired by Hitler, his picture was on the wall near Hitler’s Chancellery desk. As he admired America’s laws supporting sterilizing “the unfit,” under which tens of thousands were involuntarily sterilized before Germany ever did the same.
The great journalist and chronicler of the Nazis, William Shire, remarked in the 1930s that he believed it quite possible America might be the first nation to go fascist voluntarily, such were the realities he observed.
But once Washington establishment interests, bent after WWII on world domination, were sold on the notion of Israel providing a great American wedge into the Middle East, the picture changed remarkably.
Now, we have hypocritical scenes of American politicians - the very kinds of people, in many cases, who would have embraced restrictions on Jews in the 1930s - wearing yarmulkes and pretending to reverently touch the Wailing Wall. Irreligious men, brutal men, ruthless men – such reverence.
All for the sake of the raw drives of imperial power, and absolutely nothing else.
American politicians even get to pat themselves on the back today for supposedly having done something worthwhile and humane for Jews so hurt in Europe.
And there's an extra bonus, besides having that colony in a strategic and economically important place, under America's "money is free speech" notion of democracy, a major money-distributing and influence-distributing lobby has grown up, almost into a major industry in America.
America's hypocritical politicians, supporting Israel invariably and without question no matter what abuses it is guilty of, get not only get to feel good about what they do for Jews abroad but to assure themselves of comfortable support from the country's best-organized lobby. It's a good day's work.
But the intractable and shameful problem of millions of Palestinians living in oppression and with no rights and no future and receiving endless abuse cannot be solved ever under such a basic political structure.
I don’t even understand how anyone can look at images of Gaza today and not think of a vast concentration camp, for that is what it really is. And anyone should understand why about a million and half people might horribly resent being forcefully kept in that way for generations.
But politicians generally, both in America and Israel, are not empathetic characters. Most of them are narcissists, and fair numbers of them are sociopaths. The profession just draws such people. And world empire is hardly a charitable or generous activity.
But those millions are not going away, no matter how much brutal killers like Netanyahu and Lieberman try to make them. Israel has greedily created a problem it cannot solve.
America is, under its political structure, totally unfit for solving the world’s greatest suppurating human-rights wound.
Something is going to explode one day. That’s why Israel literally has rows of snipers behind fences shooting people by the thousands, unarmed demonstrators at Gaza, right now. It’s like a savage big-game hunt, one with humans as game, and not one American politician speaks out, except to praise Israel for “restraint.”
You simply cannot go on like that indefinitely.
You might think that Israelis, of all people, would appreciate that injustice and brutality have terrible consequences.
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO A BOOK REVIEW BY AS’AD ABUKHALIL IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“The Trouble With ‘Preventing Palestine’
“Seth Anziska’s new book on the Arab-Israeli “peace process” is a useful primer on the conflict, but it does not fully examine the paradox of the Carter administration’s solution that we are still living with, argues As’ad AbuKhalil”
An excellent, thoughtful criticism of the book.
The points made are valid and important.
I'll just mention another consideration, often overlooked, but I believe it is at the heart of the problem.
Israel really is an American colony, a pied-a-terre, in the Middle East.
Its history has nothing to do, for successive American governments, with sympathy for the Jews or the horrors of the Holocaust.
America's establishment was always quite biased against Jews at home, and it didn't lift a finger to help the situation in 1930s Germany. It even turned away boatloads of Jewish refugees Hitler allowed to leave.
Men like Henry Ford were admired by Hitler, his picture was on the wall near Hitler’s Chancellery desk. As he admired America’s laws supporting sterilizing “the unfit,” under which tens of thousands were involuntarily sterilized before Germany ever did the same.
The great journalist and chronicler of the Nazis, William Shire, remarked in the 1930s that he believed it quite possible America might be the first nation to go fascist voluntarily, such were the realities he observed.
But once Washington establishment interests, bent after WWII on world domination, were sold on the notion of Israel providing a great American wedge into the Middle East, the picture changed remarkably.
Now, we have hypocritical scenes of American politicians - the very kinds of people, in many cases, who would have embraced restrictions on Jews in the 1930s - wearing yarmulkes and pretending to reverently touch the Wailing Wall. Irreligious men, brutal men, ruthless men – such reverence.
All for the sake of the raw drives of imperial power, and absolutely nothing else.
American politicians even get to pat themselves on the back today for supposedly having done something worthwhile and humane for Jews so hurt in Europe.
And there's an extra bonus, besides having that colony in a strategic and economically important place, under America's "money is free speech" notion of democracy, a major money-distributing and influence-distributing lobby has grown up, almost into a major industry in America.
America's hypocritical politicians, supporting Israel invariably and without question no matter what abuses it is guilty of, get not only get to feel good about what they do for Jews abroad but to assure themselves of comfortable support from the country's best-organized lobby. It's a good day's work.
But the intractable and shameful problem of millions of Palestinians living in oppression and with no rights and no future and receiving endless abuse cannot be solved ever under such a basic political structure.
I don’t even understand how anyone can look at images of Gaza today and not think of a vast concentration camp, for that is what it really is. And anyone should understand why about a million and half people might horribly resent being forcefully kept in that way for generations.
But politicians generally, both in America and Israel, are not empathetic characters. Most of them are narcissists, and fair numbers of them are sociopaths. The profession just draws such people. And world empire is hardly a charitable or generous activity.
But those millions are not going away, no matter how much brutal killers like Netanyahu and Lieberman try to make them. Israel has greedily created a problem it cannot solve.
America is, under its political structure, totally unfit for solving the world’s greatest suppurating human-rights wound.
Something is going to explode one day. That’s why Israel literally has rows of snipers behind fences shooting people by the thousands, unarmed demonstrators at Gaza, right now. It’s like a savage big-game hunt, one with humans as game, and not one American politician speaks out, except to praise Israel for “restraint.”
You simply cannot go on like that indefinitely.
You might think that Israelis, of all people, would appreciate that injustice and brutality have terrible consequences.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WRITER ACCUSES NEW YORK TIMES AND SECURITY AGENCIES OF TRYING TO DRIVE TRUMP INSANE LIKE IAGO WHISPERING IN OTHELLO'S EAR - AT THIS POINT WHO CARES? - TRUMP BROUGHT IT ON HIMSELF AND HE IS A DISASTER - AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION? IT HAS BEEN DEAD ON ITS FEET FOR DECADES
John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DIANA JOHNSTONE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“The New York Times Continues to Outdo Itself in the Production of Fake News
“The NYT and the intelligence services behind it have an ingenious ploy -- they want to undermine Trump and drive him insane by having him distrust everyone around him”
Yes, there are people in the United States doing very questionable things to undermine Trump.
But what this writer importantly forgets, as do all the others who rail against the opposition to Trump and the tactics used, is the nature of Trump himself.
Trump is the most dangerous man ever to be President. I thought George Bush was bad. He was indeed a moron who was led around by the nose by the near-Nazis, Rumsfeld and Cheney, but Trump is something even worse.
He will accept anything from anyone who helps keep him in power. The Pentagon. The Israel Lobby. The CIA. Billionaires. They all get whatever they want so long as he is kept in power. He really is a friend to no one but himself, just as he is loyal to no one or to any principle but himself. His complete lack of loyalties, whether to staff or to his marriage, are almost the stuff of a grotesque novel.
And the results, in terms of reaction to him, are entirely things he has brought down upon his own head.
You can't go stomping around in this world, expressing contempt for almost everyone you see, publicly insulting individuals, humiliating others, almost spitting on people, without consequences.
Now, added to frightening, uncouth, and unacceptable manner, what the man has steadily worked towards is nothing less than economic ruin and quite possibly a major war. A world economy with many fragilities, much the result of America’s own past ungovernable excesses, is being subjected to an all-out assault in terms of trade and international institutions and the use of coercive methods like massive amounts of sanctions.
And the world’s peace and security are being seriously undermined by efforts to threaten and intimidate major countries such as Russia and China and Iran and, again, international institutions, such as the United Nations. And the effects ad efforts at massive enforcement of a genuinely sick sanctions regime make everyone feel threatened by an all-demanding United States.
We have seen nothing like this in generations. It is, of course, not all the work of Trump, but he has cheerfully pitched in and enlarged the malignant work, again with an eye to nothing else but his own meaningless (to anyone but himself) survival in office.
I once believed that he had something to offer, something only in limited areas but very important areas, relations with Russia and bringing some reason to the Middle East, but I no longer believe that at all.
He has nothing to add to the world but disorder, incivility, and threats, plus he sells national policy to the highest bidder who can help him to remain in power.
He will, by the way, literally do anything to try staying in office. His wanton destruction of the Iran Nuclear Agreement, an internationally supported and effective arrangement, and his illegal move, in terms of international agreements, of America’s embassy to Jerusalem are the most conspicuous examples, and they are both extremely dangerous examples whose full effects have yet to be felt.
Why did he do these absolutely wrong-headed things? To please American billionaire Sheldon Adelson and the man Adelson works around the clock to support with money and press and pressure, mass-killer Prime Minister Netanyahu. Trump’s lurches in policies will put many tens, or even hundreds, of millions of dollars into his campaign war chest for 2020, plus gain him some additional lobbying support.
So, the American people and the entire world are forced to pay with added fear and uncertainties and injustice so that this man can be re-elected. That’s some statesmanship. It’s nothing less than a nightmare.
Just compare his crude ways, his sudden lurches, his words about almost any subject, his many impulsive personal attacks, to Putin’s typically calm and methodical behavior in world affairs, even when under immense pressure from abroad.
There is no comparison. One man is a narcissist with no talent except for an audibly-throbbing ego and making noise and intimidating people and an unprincipled willingness to do almost anything which helps himself. The other is a statesman, one who thinks about what he is doing and acts calmly, willing to talk intelligently and respectfully with any of the people he typically calls “partners.”
No, I don’t even think there is anything to bemoan even if those after Trump are successful with underhanded methods. All the stuff we read about an attack on the Constitution is bogus. America’s Constitution has been dead on its feet for decades.
You can’t name a right Americans thought they had that Washington has not abused, again and again. And the political system has become a giant, costly, money-driven dumb-show with almost no trace of genuine democracy and not a lot of respect for citizens. The very election of Trump demonstrates it, too. What was the choice for voters? Trump or Hillary Clinton, both dreadful people, neither fit to lead a great nation and neither with any respect for others.
No, in America, no matter which candidate you vote for, you get exactly the same result, rule of the power establishment: the billionaires and giant corporations and powerful lobbies – all faithfully served and protected by dangerously malignant institutions like the CIA and the Pentagon. National elections have become a shell game.
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DIANA JOHNSTONE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“The New York Times Continues to Outdo Itself in the Production of Fake News
“The NYT and the intelligence services behind it have an ingenious ploy -- they want to undermine Trump and drive him insane by having him distrust everyone around him”
Yes, there are people in the United States doing very questionable things to undermine Trump.
But what this writer importantly forgets, as do all the others who rail against the opposition to Trump and the tactics used, is the nature of Trump himself.
Trump is the most dangerous man ever to be President. I thought George Bush was bad. He was indeed a moron who was led around by the nose by the near-Nazis, Rumsfeld and Cheney, but Trump is something even worse.
He will accept anything from anyone who helps keep him in power. The Pentagon. The Israel Lobby. The CIA. Billionaires. They all get whatever they want so long as he is kept in power. He really is a friend to no one but himself, just as he is loyal to no one or to any principle but himself. His complete lack of loyalties, whether to staff or to his marriage, are almost the stuff of a grotesque novel.
And the results, in terms of reaction to him, are entirely things he has brought down upon his own head.
You can't go stomping around in this world, expressing contempt for almost everyone you see, publicly insulting individuals, humiliating others, almost spitting on people, without consequences.
Now, added to frightening, uncouth, and unacceptable manner, what the man has steadily worked towards is nothing less than economic ruin and quite possibly a major war. A world economy with many fragilities, much the result of America’s own past ungovernable excesses, is being subjected to an all-out assault in terms of trade and international institutions and the use of coercive methods like massive amounts of sanctions.
And the world’s peace and security are being seriously undermined by efforts to threaten and intimidate major countries such as Russia and China and Iran and, again, international institutions, such as the United Nations. And the effects ad efforts at massive enforcement of a genuinely sick sanctions regime make everyone feel threatened by an all-demanding United States.
We have seen nothing like this in generations. It is, of course, not all the work of Trump, but he has cheerfully pitched in and enlarged the malignant work, again with an eye to nothing else but his own meaningless (to anyone but himself) survival in office.
I once believed that he had something to offer, something only in limited areas but very important areas, relations with Russia and bringing some reason to the Middle East, but I no longer believe that at all.
He has nothing to add to the world but disorder, incivility, and threats, plus he sells national policy to the highest bidder who can help him to remain in power.
He will, by the way, literally do anything to try staying in office. His wanton destruction of the Iran Nuclear Agreement, an internationally supported and effective arrangement, and his illegal move, in terms of international agreements, of America’s embassy to Jerusalem are the most conspicuous examples, and they are both extremely dangerous examples whose full effects have yet to be felt.
Why did he do these absolutely wrong-headed things? To please American billionaire Sheldon Adelson and the man Adelson works around the clock to support with money and press and pressure, mass-killer Prime Minister Netanyahu. Trump’s lurches in policies will put many tens, or even hundreds, of millions of dollars into his campaign war chest for 2020, plus gain him some additional lobbying support.
So, the American people and the entire world are forced to pay with added fear and uncertainties and injustice so that this man can be re-elected. That’s some statesmanship. It’s nothing less than a nightmare.
Just compare his crude ways, his sudden lurches, his words about almost any subject, his many impulsive personal attacks, to Putin’s typically calm and methodical behavior in world affairs, even when under immense pressure from abroad.
There is no comparison. One man is a narcissist with no talent except for an audibly-throbbing ego and making noise and intimidating people and an unprincipled willingness to do almost anything which helps himself. The other is a statesman, one who thinks about what he is doing and acts calmly, willing to talk intelligently and respectfully with any of the people he typically calls “partners.”
No, I don’t even think there is anything to bemoan even if those after Trump are successful with underhanded methods. All the stuff we read about an attack on the Constitution is bogus. America’s Constitution has been dead on its feet for decades.
You can’t name a right Americans thought they had that Washington has not abused, again and again. And the political system has become a giant, costly, money-driven dumb-show with almost no trace of genuine democracy and not a lot of respect for citizens. The very election of Trump demonstrates it, too. What was the choice for voters? Trump or Hillary Clinton, both dreadful people, neither fit to lead a great nation and neither with any respect for others.
No, in America, no matter which candidate you vote for, you get exactly the same result, rule of the power establishment: the billionaires and giant corporations and powerful lobbies – all faithfully served and protected by dangerously malignant institutions like the CIA and the Pentagon. National elections have become a shell game.
Thursday, October 04, 2018
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AUTHOR SAYS 9/11 WAS AN OPERATION BY ISRAEL - I DON'T KNOW BUT IF ISRAEL WAS INVOLVED I KNOW TO A CERTAINTY SO WAS THE CIA - REVIEW OF SOME DARK CHAPTERS IN RECENT AMERICAN HISTORY WITH NO EXPLANATIONS - WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE DIRTY WORKS OF EMPIRE
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“The Case That 9/11 Was an Israeli Attack on the US Is 'Overwhelmingly Strong'
" ... the attacks must have been the work of a highly sophisticated organization with access to advanced military technology ..."
Overall, a somewhat confusing article, sprawling, as it does, in many directions and reaching satisfactory conclusions in virtually none.
I do find the following, however, very interesting:
"I would argue that the only important aspect of these technical issues is whether the overall evidence is sufficiently strong to establish the falsehood of the official 9/11 narrative and also demonstrate that the attacks must have been the work of a highly sophisticated organization with access to advanced military technology rather than rag-tag band of 19 Arabs armed with box-cutters. Beyond that, none of those details matter."
I believe we do have such evidence, or perhaps I should more accurately say we have many tidbits and anecdotes that such evidence did exist. Unfortunately, virtually all real evidence, of the kind you might present in court, was deliberately destroyed or disposed of.
Beams showing clear evidence of destructive effects other than those caused by aviation jet fuel burning, for example. Officials made a mad rush to dispose of it all permanently. We have only testimonies and some photographs.
I don't know who actually "did" 9/11, but I know to a certainty it wasn't the rag-tag guys with box-cutters. Clearly, Israel had interests in these events. Clearly Israel was present in various fashions before and during the event - the dancing spies on the moving van and the roving band of Israeli "art students."
And the known presence of at least two Mossad groups following the “box-cutter” guys around suggests a number of things. One, of course, is, why they would not warn the United States, as through CIA contacts, about what was underway? But perhaps they did.
Virtually all such Mossad operations in the United States are either known or “permitted” by CIA. CIA often uses outsiders like Mossad where it might be difficult to operate directly itself.
We also had, near the time of the events, the highly suggestive testimony of an American diplomatic official about the very large number of visas his post had been pressured to issue to mysterious Middle Eastern characters.
We also recently had the fascinating, although little noted in the press, death-bed confession of a demolition contractor for CIA who swore he wired Building 7 for controlled demolition. And, of course, the images of its falling corroborate such a story. It was a text-book example of controlled demolition, even the speed of the collapse, which has been carefully measured, supporting the idea.
You know, we have had many instances of the American government working against the apparent interests of ordinary Americans in the pursuit of world-empire goals for America’s power establishment. I don’t know why anyone automatically rejects the possibility, given the record.
The pursuit of world empire is a huge and extremely brutal topic, and it involves many activities which are kept as dark secrets.
The events around Israel’s desperately serious attempt to sink the USS Liberty, American surveillance ship, in 1967 have never been explained. Lyndon Johnson just shut everything down and everyone up, which was very odd behavior for a man of his furious temperament, virtually the opposite of what you would expect.
He clearly was either complicit ahead in the effort or he was blackmailed over other matters by Israel. In either case, a very important event has never been explained, and the strange behavior of an American President around acts or war remains a complete mystery.
The same for the entire Six Day War, so clearly a deliberately-planned event which Israel knew it could easily win and which effectively gave Israel its longed-for Greater Israel. Of course, it also gave the world the horrible suppurating wound of Israel’s occupation and endless abuse of several million people, which continues to this day.
The same for the invasion of Iraq. There was absolutely no clear or compelling reason to invade, destroying an advanced and stable Arab society for generations. There were no “weapons of mass destruction,” as weapons inspectors and other experts clearly told us ahead of time.
Hussein was awful, but he was no more awful than plenty of dictators America has worked with and continues to work with. Indeed, at times, America covertly worked closely with him.
If Iraq had been allowed to continue its advance – it was advancing rapidly, and matters like women’s rights and a secular state were far better off there than in such states as good American friends, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - the time would have come, after Hussein, for peaceful transition to another form of government. No, someone simply wanted Iraq’s token pushed off the game board.
As for Saddam Hussein’s mini-invasion of Kuwait, we saw an actual video of the American ambassador meeting ahead of events with Saddam Hussein and effectively nodding acceptance of the idea without actually uttering quotable words.
Everyone understood that Hussein wanted that tiny enclave of Kuwait, which was artificially carved out of Iraq and which caused many conflicts with Iraq over shared or close-by oil fields. It was a very shady business, highly suggestive of the United States deliberately setting Hussein up for invasion.
By the way, after that destructive and largely pointless invasion, George Bush made a little-noted comment about Ariel Sharon who was pressuring him to go after other Arab states (all pretty well the ones now destroyed by the Neo-con Wars in the Middle East, another set of conflicts completely at odds with the interests of ordinary Americans). Bush said something along the lines of, “Geez, what’s the guy want? I invaded Iraq for him!”
And the invasion of Afghanistan. It simply made no sense. The Taleban are not charming people, but they were in no way responsible. Indeed, the Taleban government was willing to extradite Osama bin Laden if provided some evidence of his involvement, providing such evidence being the normal procedure in extradition cases.
But the United States arbitrarily refused, and just plunged ahead with a pointless and destructive invasion. And, to this day, despite endless blubbering by politicians and the establishment press, we have never been provided with one solid piece of evidence for bin Laden’s guilt.
There are many such events in the march of empire by America. They go unexplained, and the CIA disinformation people even provided us the demeaning phrase, “conspiracy theorists” back in the late 1960s to use on anyone asking questions then about Kennedy’s assassination, another never-explained major event, the official explanation being as flimsy and unsubstantial as that for 9/11.
On 9/11, readers may enjoy these comments:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2016/09/11/john-chuckman-comment-a-survivor-says-even-the-simplest-questions-around-911-have-not-been-answered-by-government-yes-and-some-disturbing-truths-around-those-events-the-saudi-arabian-nonsense/
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2017/11/18/john-chuckman-comment-more-crap-about-the-saudis-and-9-11-this-time-from-a-retired-fbi-agent/
On the Kennedy assassination readers may enjoy these comments responding to first real piece of evidence we’ve seen in decades:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.cm/2018/07/30/john-chuckman-comment-the-kennedy-assassination-and-a-documentary-in-which-a-man-claims-he-fired-the-fatal-shot-from-the-grassy-knoll-i-was-interested-enough-to-watch-but-it-is-a-clear-fraud-agai/
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“The Case That 9/11 Was an Israeli Attack on the US Is 'Overwhelmingly Strong'
" ... the attacks must have been the work of a highly sophisticated organization with access to advanced military technology ..."
Overall, a somewhat confusing article, sprawling, as it does, in many directions and reaching satisfactory conclusions in virtually none.
I do find the following, however, very interesting:
"I would argue that the only important aspect of these technical issues is whether the overall evidence is sufficiently strong to establish the falsehood of the official 9/11 narrative and also demonstrate that the attacks must have been the work of a highly sophisticated organization with access to advanced military technology rather than rag-tag band of 19 Arabs armed with box-cutters. Beyond that, none of those details matter."
I believe we do have such evidence, or perhaps I should more accurately say we have many tidbits and anecdotes that such evidence did exist. Unfortunately, virtually all real evidence, of the kind you might present in court, was deliberately destroyed or disposed of.
Beams showing clear evidence of destructive effects other than those caused by aviation jet fuel burning, for example. Officials made a mad rush to dispose of it all permanently. We have only testimonies and some photographs.
I don't know who actually "did" 9/11, but I know to a certainty it wasn't the rag-tag guys with box-cutters. Clearly, Israel had interests in these events. Clearly Israel was present in various fashions before and during the event - the dancing spies on the moving van and the roving band of Israeli "art students."
And the known presence of at least two Mossad groups following the “box-cutter” guys around suggests a number of things. One, of course, is, why they would not warn the United States, as through CIA contacts, about what was underway? But perhaps they did.
Virtually all such Mossad operations in the United States are either known or “permitted” by CIA. CIA often uses outsiders like Mossad where it might be difficult to operate directly itself.
We also had, near the time of the events, the highly suggestive testimony of an American diplomatic official about the very large number of visas his post had been pressured to issue to mysterious Middle Eastern characters.
We also recently had the fascinating, although little noted in the press, death-bed confession of a demolition contractor for CIA who swore he wired Building 7 for controlled demolition. And, of course, the images of its falling corroborate such a story. It was a text-book example of controlled demolition, even the speed of the collapse, which has been carefully measured, supporting the idea.
You know, we have had many instances of the American government working against the apparent interests of ordinary Americans in the pursuit of world-empire goals for America’s power establishment. I don’t know why anyone automatically rejects the possibility, given the record.
The pursuit of world empire is a huge and extremely brutal topic, and it involves many activities which are kept as dark secrets.
The events around Israel’s desperately serious attempt to sink the USS Liberty, American surveillance ship, in 1967 have never been explained. Lyndon Johnson just shut everything down and everyone up, which was very odd behavior for a man of his furious temperament, virtually the opposite of what you would expect.
He clearly was either complicit ahead in the effort or he was blackmailed over other matters by Israel. In either case, a very important event has never been explained, and the strange behavior of an American President around acts or war remains a complete mystery.
The same for the entire Six Day War, so clearly a deliberately-planned event which Israel knew it could easily win and which effectively gave Israel its longed-for Greater Israel. Of course, it also gave the world the horrible suppurating wound of Israel’s occupation and endless abuse of several million people, which continues to this day.
The same for the invasion of Iraq. There was absolutely no clear or compelling reason to invade, destroying an advanced and stable Arab society for generations. There were no “weapons of mass destruction,” as weapons inspectors and other experts clearly told us ahead of time.
Hussein was awful, but he was no more awful than plenty of dictators America has worked with and continues to work with. Indeed, at times, America covertly worked closely with him.
If Iraq had been allowed to continue its advance – it was advancing rapidly, and matters like women’s rights and a secular state were far better off there than in such states as good American friends, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - the time would have come, after Hussein, for peaceful transition to another form of government. No, someone simply wanted Iraq’s token pushed off the game board.
As for Saddam Hussein’s mini-invasion of Kuwait, we saw an actual video of the American ambassador meeting ahead of events with Saddam Hussein and effectively nodding acceptance of the idea without actually uttering quotable words.
Everyone understood that Hussein wanted that tiny enclave of Kuwait, which was artificially carved out of Iraq and which caused many conflicts with Iraq over shared or close-by oil fields. It was a very shady business, highly suggestive of the United States deliberately setting Hussein up for invasion.
By the way, after that destructive and largely pointless invasion, George Bush made a little-noted comment about Ariel Sharon who was pressuring him to go after other Arab states (all pretty well the ones now destroyed by the Neo-con Wars in the Middle East, another set of conflicts completely at odds with the interests of ordinary Americans). Bush said something along the lines of, “Geez, what’s the guy want? I invaded Iraq for him!”
And the invasion of Afghanistan. It simply made no sense. The Taleban are not charming people, but they were in no way responsible. Indeed, the Taleban government was willing to extradite Osama bin Laden if provided some evidence of his involvement, providing such evidence being the normal procedure in extradition cases.
But the United States arbitrarily refused, and just plunged ahead with a pointless and destructive invasion. And, to this day, despite endless blubbering by politicians and the establishment press, we have never been provided with one solid piece of evidence for bin Laden’s guilt.
There are many such events in the march of empire by America. They go unexplained, and the CIA disinformation people even provided us the demeaning phrase, “conspiracy theorists” back in the late 1960s to use on anyone asking questions then about Kennedy’s assassination, another never-explained major event, the official explanation being as flimsy and unsubstantial as that for 9/11.
On 9/11, readers may enjoy these comments:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2016/09/11/john-chuckman-comment-a-survivor-says-even-the-simplest-questions-around-911-have-not-been-answered-by-government-yes-and-some-disturbing-truths-around-those-events-the-saudi-arabian-nonsense/
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2017/11/18/john-chuckman-comment-more-crap-about-the-saudis-and-9-11-this-time-from-a-retired-fbi-agent/
On the Kennedy assassination readers may enjoy these comments responding to first real piece of evidence we’ve seen in decades:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.cm/2018/07/30/john-chuckman-comment-the-kennedy-assassination-and-a-documentary-in-which-a-man-claims-he-fired-the-fatal-shot-from-the-grassy-knoll-i-was-interested-enough-to-watch-but-it-is-a-clear-fraud-agai/
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: AUTHOR ASKS FAIR QUESTION: WILL SAUDI ARABIA BECOME NEXT FAILED STATE? - BUT WHEN HE MENTIONS POTENTIAL THREAT FROM ISIS OR AL QAEDA HE LITERALLY BABBLES - WHAT ISIS REALLY IS - THE PURPOSES AND NATIONS IT SERVES FAITHFULLY - ATTACK ON AN IRANIAN MILITARY PARADE AND A GLARING TRUTH REVEALED IN IRAN'S REPRISAL - THE FOLKS WHO GAVE YOU OVER A HALF MILLION DEAD IN SYRIA
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DANIEL LAZARRE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“Is Saudi Arabia the Middle East’s Next Failed State?”
I like some of the collection of anecdotes.
As for the Ibn Khaldun theme, it might equally have been taken from other historical figures.
It is an ongoing theme because it clearly has a lot of truth in it.
Not everyone would agree with the number of generations required, but a general pattern has been observed that the generations succeeding the vigorous founders of any dynasty tend to become corrupt or simply enfeebled over time.
We even see this with powerful family dynasties, families which are not the rulers of countries but are captains of industry and commerce.
When we get to the threat of ISIS or al Qaeda for Saudi Arabia, I disagree completely with the author.
The vision of these outfits offered here is just one more iteration of the official American narrative. Disinformation, whether innocently repeated or not by the author.
ISIS has never, not once, attacked the very targets that would come most naturally to them were they indeed what America and its allies claim.
Those targets are Israel and its interests and the corrupt Saudi Princes and their interests.
No, instead this supposedly wild-eyed bunch of jihadi-types has busied itself with people whom Israel regards as enemies for the most part, and whom Israel regards as an enemy, whether legitimately or not, Washington, ipso facto, regards as an enemy.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some weird jihadi types in the herd, but they have never run things. They are an inevitable result of creating such a group, financing it, and putting out calls for recruits from all over the world. The military and the security services have used this technique many times now in many places, as they did in Libya.
In Afghanistan, the United States avoided a lot of ground fighting by aligning with the Taleban’s arch rival, the Northern Alliance, cutthroats indistinguishable from the Taleban except in being their opponents in vying for power. America mostly supplied them with an air force, killing a lot of innocent civilians in the effort. It then violently occupied strategic points.
Who were the people Israel regarded as enemies? The government of Syria and the previous administration in Iraq. Interesting, to say the least.
Suddenly a few years back, ISIS showed up riding around in the desert in brand new Toyota pick-up trucks and waving AK-47s.
Who bought the trucks? Who supplied the weapons? Who paid their salaries and bought their food?
When they went to first attack some Iraqi tanks – an impossible task with pick-up trucks and light weapons, no matter how many you claim to have beheaded in an effort to scare people – the tank operators simply left their tanks and fled, supposedly because they were so terrified. Clearly, they had been paid off to do so, likely by the Saudis. So, that gave ISIS some serious weapons, and away they went from there.
When ISIS turned towards Iraq’s capital, the head of government disliked by both the United States and Israel, fled. Later ISIS turned back to Syria to complete its main task of helping foreign interests topple the government and maybe divide the country.
A good deal of American and British bombing of ISIS a few years back was anything but. They were almost providing ISIS with an air force in their attacks on Syrian infrastructure. Later, at various places, Americans really did bomb some ISIS, reflecting undoubtedly a combination of their having exceeded their brief and of the disposable nature of such rag-tag mercenaries. And ISIS excesses, intended to create fear and loathing in their theater of operation, created a very negative public backlash in parts of the West. There is, of course, no honor nor much loyalty in such dirty schemes. The Mafia demonstrates the same standard of behavior in our civilian experience.
Limited amounts of poison gas agents were also supplied to some of these mercenaries. There was an incident, a discovery which was quickly covered up, at the Turkish border once, a transshipment point. We also know from the incomparable investigative reporter, Sy Hersh, that Hillary Clinton was involved in a scheme to take small amounts of poison gas from the murdered Qadhafi’s stocks in Libya and have them shipped to these guys in Syria. The idea was to give Obama his “red line” excuse to bomb the crap out of Syria as he had done Libya. Only some clever Russian diplomacy prevented him.
The whole business at Benghazi, the truth always having been suppressed, was about a scheme to collect weapons and cutthroats to be shipped from the chaotic induced-horror of Libya and to be sent into Syria to create more of the same.
It all went terribly wrong, as can happen when you deal secretly with bloody thugs, and some of the cutthroat types the American State Department was dealing with preferred an American Ambassador as a ready target of opportunity. Who knows what their aims were, but the result was clear enough.
Of course, America is not, any time soon, going to explain that Hillary Clinton’s State Department was responsible for its own ambassador’s death. Anymore than they are going to explain sending small quantities of poison gas to rag-tag mercenaries in Syria to kill people just to open a window of opportunity for a whole lot more killing in a massive bombing campaign Obama would have launched.
Saudi Arabia and its associates, have had a little "club" for more than a half dozen years, a club dedicated to toppling a legitimate and reasonably popular government just because it doesn’t toe the line on American policy in the region. The “club” includes the United States, Israel, Britain, and France. Turkey was also part of the group originally. They are responsible for the terror and war in Syria. All the hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of desperate refugees.
Time and again, the Syrian Army has unearthed weapons’ caches of Israeli-made and American-made armaments as it advances and captures areas.
As they have for other terror outfits, such as al Nusra, an outgrowth of al Qaeda. Israel has been observed many times actually treating al Nusra fighters at hospitals in Israel near the border.
Britain and the United States financially supported the White Helmets, a phony NGO operation closely associated with al Nusra. We know they are associated both from some hard-working independent journalists and from Russian military sources. Moreover, Israel recently busied itself with extracting a large bunch of them from a region about to fall to the Syrian Army, along with, it so happens, a group of other mysterious Israeli operators.
The United States has been observed several times, transshipping in helicopters, leaders of some of these groups from areas that were falling to Syrian government forces.
We actually have photos of John McCain, America’s premier promoter of war and terror in the Middle East, at a meeting with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Even what we know of al-Baghdadi’s biography is mysterious, leaving many questions about just whom he works for and who protects him, his having once been a prisoner of the United States, perhaps having been turned to work for them.
In Iran’s recent successful missile attack in eastern Syria against ISIS, the organization having taken credit for the attack on an Iranian military parade, it has been noted that the ISIS base attacked is just a very short distance from an (illegal) American base. Coincidence? I think not.
Moreover, it is interesting to ask why ISIS would be attacking Iran, fellow Muslims and people who are definitely in the crosshairs of the United States and Israel? That is not what jihadi-types do. Iran’s successful launch of the missiles went beyond reprisal. It signaled that Iran now has extremely accurate missiles, having landed them on a target a short distance from American troops, and the United States did not even attempt to shoot them down since it was apparently unaware of them.
No, I don’t think these outfits represent any threat to Saudi Arabia.
And now that Israel and Saudi Arabia are virtually covert allies, sharing many interests in the region, this is even more true. The main interest of both these governments is protecting their privileged positions in the region. Both are, in a sense, outsiders, interlopers with big money behind them, the Saudi Royal family having no great long history and being viewed by many as occupying opportunists, not all that different to Israel’s own circumstances with its Washington backers.
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: BILL CLINTON'S "IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID" AND THE RATIONALITY OF VOTERS CALLED INTO QUESTION BY RECENT DEFEAT OF A GOVERNMENT IN CANADA'S PROVINCE OF QUEBEC WHICH HAS PRESIDED OVER A VERY HEALTHY ECONOMY
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DON PITTIS ON CBC NEWS
“Quebec vote shows it's no longer 'the economy, stupid'
“Politicians must reconsider the idea that a booming economy wins elections
“It is almost impossible to be sure exactly why Quebecers voted the way they did, says Ming Li, an economist at Montreal's Concordia University who has studied the psychology of voting.”
I think Li has it mainly right.
I've never felt that voting, as with almost any human activity you care to name, is wholly rational.
Indeed, the assumption that a reasonably good economy assures voter loyalty always reminds me of "economic man,” the theoretical construct that is one of the assumptions of economic theory itself, a construct many find highly artificial.
But in any case, politics is a considerably messier subject than microeconomic theory.
Politics is multi-dimensional. Indeed, while it has theories associated with it, it is not theory, as is the case with economics.
It includes a thirst for theater. It includes hopes that some little change may directly benefit you, and not necessarily in a monetary way. It includes a certain amount of idealism, however unwarranted. And it very much includes human fears, themselves certainly not always clearly defined.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DON PITTIS ON CBC NEWS
“Quebec vote shows it's no longer 'the economy, stupid'
“Politicians must reconsider the idea that a booming economy wins elections
“It is almost impossible to be sure exactly why Quebecers voted the way they did, says Ming Li, an economist at Montreal's Concordia University who has studied the psychology of voting.”
I think Li has it mainly right.
I've never felt that voting, as with almost any human activity you care to name, is wholly rational.
Indeed, the assumption that a reasonably good economy assures voter loyalty always reminds me of "economic man,” the theoretical construct that is one of the assumptions of economic theory itself, a construct many find highly artificial.
But in any case, politics is a considerably messier subject than microeconomic theory.
Politics is multi-dimensional. Indeed, while it has theories associated with it, it is not theory, as is the case with economics.
It includes a thirst for theater. It includes hopes that some little change may directly benefit you, and not necessarily in a monetary way. It includes a certain amount of idealism, however unwarranted. And it very much includes human fears, themselves certainly not always clearly defined.
Tuesday, October 02, 2018
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: WHY MODERN PRESIDENTS CANNOT SET AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY EVEN IF THEY WANT TO DO SO - FOUNDING OF AMERICAN EMPIRE AFTER WW II - THE NEEDS ALL EMPIRES SHARE WHETHER AMERICAN OR SOVIET - CREATION OF CIA - IMPORTANT NOTE ON KENNEDY ASSASSINATION
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN FRN
"The United States has, in short, moved beyond a mere imperial presidency to a bifurcated system—a structure of double government—in which even the President now exercises little substantive control over the overall direction of U.S. national security policy”
That is a pretty accurate assessment of the situation.
I believe the change is owing directly to America's embracing the role of world empire following the end of WWII.
The very concept of world empire is a dark one when you include all the controls and pressures over others that necessarily come with it, and the role comes associated with a host of dark consequences. The loss of true civilian democratic control of government at home is just one of them. Much the same forces were at work in the Soviet empire.
I don’t know why anyone would think differently, just because good old America is running the empire as opposed to the Soviets or the Germans or the British. Empires simply are not either ethical or wholesome creations. And they all have certain basic requirements to operate.
They are about power and privilege and profit for elites, involve the suppression of rights for large numbers of people, and the rules for running one cannot be found in the American Constitution or in any other ethical and enlightened documents. Lip service is paid, but it truly is only lip service.
If you study the life of someone like Winston Churchill, always held up as a great democratic leader, you will easily discover how this quite ruthless proponent of British Empire was, in fact, anything but.
There is also a basic notion around something such as a world empire that it is just too complicated and too important to “leave it to the amateurs to run,” and in the sense intended by that, all elected American presidents are amateurs.
So, we have almost an industry, a covert one, of people regarded as experts in running empire - from those who study and work to manipulate various political parties and countries to those who study the required overall changing needs and strategies of empire and to those who study and practice how to bend people to your will.
These people, while nominally serving an elected president, regard themselves, and are regarded by others, as too important and expert to ignore. It takes considerable independence and strength of will even to disagree with them on one consequential matter.
And they are not ignored. It does not matter which party, Democrat or Republican, is elected, the winner will change little or nothing in this regard. Obama and Trump, while having great differences in style and even couth, are indistinguishable in the nitty-gritty of most of foreign policy.
When Truman signed off on the legislation creating CIA, the associated advertising was all about the need for organized expert intelligence to inform presidents in their decisions. All very plausible, but quite deceptive when you consider the essential nature of such institutions.
A true, pure information and consultative agency could have been created, but it was not.
The advertising claims around CIA’s birth do not represent what can possibly happen when you create an immense, well-financed, secret organization and task it with all kinds of dark responsibilities, such as examining whether certain leaders in certain countries are acceptable.
The CIA had a long boom period under Eisenhower, a popular former general who did not want the military to be seen as running everything abroad. The Allen Dulles’ CIA took care of all that in a shadowy world of influence, pay-offs, election manipulations, secret arrangements, coups, and, as required, assassinations.
And the agency grew very headstrong with the way it was permitted to run under Eisenhower. With the growing sense of threat from the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent from China – a sense of threat constantly stoked up and exaggerated by the CIA itself in its various highly inaccurate national estimates each year. It was all offered, of course, in the good cause of fattening budgets and expanding responsibilities.
No organization better illustrates the old wisdom about institutions being self-perpetuating and seeking growth and aggrandizement than does the CIA. The wisdom is even truer for secretive institutions. And is truer still for institutions lacking any powerful direction from outside.
There were many successful operations - successful from the point of view of CIA - over the Eisenhower years, including coups against disliked democratic governments such as those in Iran and Guatemala. And there were assassinations, as with the Congo’s Lumumba and, it is thought by some, the UN’s Dag Hammarskjöld. Kennedy came to the presidency as intense and costly efforts against Fidel Castro were underway.
Having such a free hand for so long meant certain conflict with a new President such as Kennedy. Kennedy wanted to use the powers of the presidency, not to be used by others. Having a freehand also, of course, contributed to growing CIA arrogance and a sense that only it knew what was best.
The last president, actually the only president, who seriously challenged the Truman-Eisenhower arrangements was John Kennedy, and he left half his head splattered in the streets of Dallas. You don’t have to be someone who loves dabbling with secrets and conspiracies to see the tremendous significance of that assassination.
Both in matters of cooperation with Russia and rapprochement with Cuba, Kennedy strayed much too far from the script.
No president since has done so. Indeed, the example was set by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, of complete submission to the desires of the CIA. He was also a great and loyal servant for the FBI.
On the Kennedy assassination and the likelihood that elements of CIA were involved, readers may enjoy:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/john-chuckman-comment-the-first-genuine-information-in-the-kennedy-assassination-records-release-to-give-us-some-genuine-information-about-what-happened/
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN FRN
"The United States has, in short, moved beyond a mere imperial presidency to a bifurcated system—a structure of double government—in which even the President now exercises little substantive control over the overall direction of U.S. national security policy”
That is a pretty accurate assessment of the situation.
I believe the change is owing directly to America's embracing the role of world empire following the end of WWII.
The very concept of world empire is a dark one when you include all the controls and pressures over others that necessarily come with it, and the role comes associated with a host of dark consequences. The loss of true civilian democratic control of government at home is just one of them. Much the same forces were at work in the Soviet empire.
I don’t know why anyone would think differently, just because good old America is running the empire as opposed to the Soviets or the Germans or the British. Empires simply are not either ethical or wholesome creations. And they all have certain basic requirements to operate.
They are about power and privilege and profit for elites, involve the suppression of rights for large numbers of people, and the rules for running one cannot be found in the American Constitution or in any other ethical and enlightened documents. Lip service is paid, but it truly is only lip service.
If you study the life of someone like Winston Churchill, always held up as a great democratic leader, you will easily discover how this quite ruthless proponent of British Empire was, in fact, anything but.
There is also a basic notion around something such as a world empire that it is just too complicated and too important to “leave it to the amateurs to run,” and in the sense intended by that, all elected American presidents are amateurs.
So, we have almost an industry, a covert one, of people regarded as experts in running empire - from those who study and work to manipulate various political parties and countries to those who study the required overall changing needs and strategies of empire and to those who study and practice how to bend people to your will.
These people, while nominally serving an elected president, regard themselves, and are regarded by others, as too important and expert to ignore. It takes considerable independence and strength of will even to disagree with them on one consequential matter.
And they are not ignored. It does not matter which party, Democrat or Republican, is elected, the winner will change little or nothing in this regard. Obama and Trump, while having great differences in style and even couth, are indistinguishable in the nitty-gritty of most of foreign policy.
When Truman signed off on the legislation creating CIA, the associated advertising was all about the need for organized expert intelligence to inform presidents in their decisions. All very plausible, but quite deceptive when you consider the essential nature of such institutions.
A true, pure information and consultative agency could have been created, but it was not.
The advertising claims around CIA’s birth do not represent what can possibly happen when you create an immense, well-financed, secret organization and task it with all kinds of dark responsibilities, such as examining whether certain leaders in certain countries are acceptable.
The CIA had a long boom period under Eisenhower, a popular former general who did not want the military to be seen as running everything abroad. The Allen Dulles’ CIA took care of all that in a shadowy world of influence, pay-offs, election manipulations, secret arrangements, coups, and, as required, assassinations.
And the agency grew very headstrong with the way it was permitted to run under Eisenhower. With the growing sense of threat from the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent from China – a sense of threat constantly stoked up and exaggerated by the CIA itself in its various highly inaccurate national estimates each year. It was all offered, of course, in the good cause of fattening budgets and expanding responsibilities.
No organization better illustrates the old wisdom about institutions being self-perpetuating and seeking growth and aggrandizement than does the CIA. The wisdom is even truer for secretive institutions. And is truer still for institutions lacking any powerful direction from outside.
There were many successful operations - successful from the point of view of CIA - over the Eisenhower years, including coups against disliked democratic governments such as those in Iran and Guatemala. And there were assassinations, as with the Congo’s Lumumba and, it is thought by some, the UN’s Dag Hammarskjöld. Kennedy came to the presidency as intense and costly efforts against Fidel Castro were underway.
Having such a free hand for so long meant certain conflict with a new President such as Kennedy. Kennedy wanted to use the powers of the presidency, not to be used by others. Having a freehand also, of course, contributed to growing CIA arrogance and a sense that only it knew what was best.
The last president, actually the only president, who seriously challenged the Truman-Eisenhower arrangements was John Kennedy, and he left half his head splattered in the streets of Dallas. You don’t have to be someone who loves dabbling with secrets and conspiracies to see the tremendous significance of that assassination.
Both in matters of cooperation with Russia and rapprochement with Cuba, Kennedy strayed much too far from the script.
No president since has done so. Indeed, the example was set by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, of complete submission to the desires of the CIA. He was also a great and loyal servant for the FBI.
On the Kennedy assassination and the likelihood that elements of CIA were involved, readers may enjoy:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/john-chuckman-comment-the-first-genuine-information-in-the-kennedy-assassination-records-release-to-give-us-some-genuine-information-about-what-happened/
Monday, October 01, 2018
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: MY DEFINITIVE POINTS AGAINST THE ONGOING SHABBY EFFORT TO CONFLATE CRITICISM OF ISRAEL'S BEHAVIOR WITH THE PREJUDICE OF ANTI-SEMITISM - THOSE TWO THINGS ARE NO MORE THE SAME THAN ARE CHALK AND CHEESE - AND THE SERIOUS DANGERS OF INSISTING THAT THEY ARE
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY YVONNE RIDLEY IN MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
“Palestine: Read all about it… but not in the mainstream media”
Conflating “anti-Semitism” with legitimate criticism of a heavily-armed state has always been absurd, absurd in ways quite apart from the clear effort to make a victim of an aggressor.
If Israel wants to be a state regarded by the world as being a state just like any other, and I think it does very much want that, then it must be subject to criticism, as all other states are.
Otherwise, Israel is granted a special place outside the laws and norms for nations. And, de facto, that is just the situation we have today.
Not yet through the effects of any laws, although we do see disturbing efforts being made along legislative lines, but through constant intimidation and name-calling of those who say what they are entitled to say - indeed, what they are obliged to say if they are supporters of Western traditions of human and democratic rights.
The granting of that kind of exceptional status to any national state is itself genuine prejudice, a form of reverse-prejudice.
My other favorite point on the absurdity of what we read all the time in false claims of anti-Semitism involves the former Soviet Union.
The “anti-Semitism” claim about criticism of Israel's actual behavior - not its identity, not its religion, not its ethnicity, but its actual behavior - is precisely parallel with someone's having claimed that criticism of the Soviet Union - and we all know there was a great deal, both at home and abroad, to criticize in the practices of the Soviet Union - was the same thing as hating Russians, what today we would call “Russophobia.”
Anyone can understand the absurdity of that.
It is time to call out all of the apologists and lobbyists for Israel on this matter. Israel is not entitled to a “Get out of Jail Free Card” when it commits crimes and starts wars and abuses great numbers of people. Nor indeed, were Israel’s intentions always honorable, would it even expect to receive one.
Yet there are ongoing efforts in many countries and in many states of the United States to get laws, wholly inappropriate laws, passed to do exactly that, just as there are efforts to suppress people’s right to support peaceful boycott to pressure Israel to change its ways.
The lobbying activity for such laws is totally inappropriate. It is the truest kind of interference in the internal affairs of other countries. It works to suppress people’s most basic rights in a free society. And it works to defend the indefensible when Israel commits obvious atrocities such as shooting into unarmed crowds of demonstrators or when it commits piracy on the high seas or when it bombs people with whom it is not even at war.
We all understand the dangers of treating any person in our society with such privileged status that he or she can do just as they please, disregarding all laws and norms. But how much more dangerous is the same practice in the case of a nation state, a very heavily-armed and often belligerent nation state?
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY YVONNE RIDLEY IN MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
“Palestine: Read all about it… but not in the mainstream media”
Conflating “anti-Semitism” with legitimate criticism of a heavily-armed state has always been absurd, absurd in ways quite apart from the clear effort to make a victim of an aggressor.
If Israel wants to be a state regarded by the world as being a state just like any other, and I think it does very much want that, then it must be subject to criticism, as all other states are.
Otherwise, Israel is granted a special place outside the laws and norms for nations. And, de facto, that is just the situation we have today.
Not yet through the effects of any laws, although we do see disturbing efforts being made along legislative lines, but through constant intimidation and name-calling of those who say what they are entitled to say - indeed, what they are obliged to say if they are supporters of Western traditions of human and democratic rights.
The granting of that kind of exceptional status to any national state is itself genuine prejudice, a form of reverse-prejudice.
My other favorite point on the absurdity of what we read all the time in false claims of anti-Semitism involves the former Soviet Union.
The “anti-Semitism” claim about criticism of Israel's actual behavior - not its identity, not its religion, not its ethnicity, but its actual behavior - is precisely parallel with someone's having claimed that criticism of the Soviet Union - and we all know there was a great deal, both at home and abroad, to criticize in the practices of the Soviet Union - was the same thing as hating Russians, what today we would call “Russophobia.”
Anyone can understand the absurdity of that.
It is time to call out all of the apologists and lobbyists for Israel on this matter. Israel is not entitled to a “Get out of Jail Free Card” when it commits crimes and starts wars and abuses great numbers of people. Nor indeed, were Israel’s intentions always honorable, would it even expect to receive one.
Yet there are ongoing efforts in many countries and in many states of the United States to get laws, wholly inappropriate laws, passed to do exactly that, just as there are efforts to suppress people’s right to support peaceful boycott to pressure Israel to change its ways.
The lobbying activity for such laws is totally inappropriate. It is the truest kind of interference in the internal affairs of other countries. It works to suppress people’s most basic rights in a free society. And it works to defend the indefensible when Israel commits obvious atrocities such as shooting into unarmed crowds of demonstrators or when it commits piracy on the high seas or when it bombs people with whom it is not even at war.
We all understand the dangers of treating any person in our society with such privileged status that he or she can do just as they please, disregarding all laws and norms. But how much more dangerous is the same practice in the case of a nation state, a very heavily-armed and often belligerent nation state?
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: THE NEW CANADA-UNITED STATES-MEXICO TRADE AGREEMENT - A FEW THOUGHTS FOR THOSE DISAPPOINTED IN ITS TERMS
John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE CBC NEWS
“Buried behind the cows and cars: key changes in NAFTA 2.0
“Higher drug prices, longer copyright terms, no reprieve on Buy America in new USMCA”
Thanks for the efforts at summarizing.
Of course, in answer to those who wanted something to be different than it turned out to be, you always have to keep in mind that such negotiations are not by equal parties.
The economic clout of an economy ten times the size of ours always means we step into the ring as a bantamweight against a super heavy-weight with iron bars in his boxing gloves.
And then there's the current American attitudes - contempt and bullying provide an atmosphere for every exchange of any kind.
Our one real underlying strength has always been the American power establishment's wish to not see a hostile Northern border begin to develop, so they do back-off a bit on some things.
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE CBC NEWS
“Buried behind the cows and cars: key changes in NAFTA 2.0
“Higher drug prices, longer copyright terms, no reprieve on Buy America in new USMCA”
Thanks for the efforts at summarizing.
Of course, in answer to those who wanted something to be different than it turned out to be, you always have to keep in mind that such negotiations are not by equal parties.
The economic clout of an economy ten times the size of ours always means we step into the ring as a bantamweight against a super heavy-weight with iron bars in his boxing gloves.
And then there's the current American attitudes - contempt and bullying provide an atmosphere for every exchange of any kind.
Our one real underlying strength has always been the American power establishment's wish to not see a hostile Northern border begin to develop, so they do back-off a bit on some things.
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