CHUCKMAN'S WORDS ON WORDPRESS: COMMENTS FROM THE WORLD'S PRESS   A COLLECTION OF COMMENTS ON JUST ABOUT ANY SUBJECT POSTED TO THE WORLD'S PRESS. NOTE TO READERS: SINCE STARTING THIS PROJECT, MANY OF THE WORLD'S QUALITY PAPERS HAVE PUT UP PAY WALLS AND ACCEPT COMMENTS ONLY FROM SUBSCRIBERS, SO MY OPPORTUNITIES TO CONTRIBUTE ARE NOW PRETTY LIMITED.

John Chuckman

There are many reasons to criticize Meghan and Harry for what they have done in their self-indulgent and destructive television interview.

But perhaps none is more telling than the fact that the Queen is nearly 95 years old and Prince Philip is 100 and quite ill.

It is widely recognized, no matter what you may think of monarchy, that the Queen has served well and honorably. She commands great respect, and not just because of her title.

What kind of people deliberately create immense stress for two such aged and venerable figures?

Utterly thoughtless and unpleasant ones, for sure.

Just pure poison from a woman who could not handle the responsibilities she voluntarily assumed and, I am sure, was extremely closely advised of. She earned a reputation right from the start as a demanding, raging person in private. And a lot of that came from servants, not big shots. What kind of a person abuses servants? And later makes toxic excuses against others for the reputation she has earned?

As for Harry, he has a long track record of not just bad judgment, but genuinely unbalanced behavior, from demanding to be sent to Afghanistan in the Army and afterward bragging about killing a man there to once wearing a set of custom-made pajamas designed to resemble a Nazi officer’s uniform at a cocktail party (see the third photo here: https://www.rt.com/uk/517524-piers-morgan-skeptical-meghan-markle/  ).

Some judgment, but if you look back at the Spencer family, his maternal line, going back to the 18th century, you will find a good deal of that sort of thing.

The couple well suit each other, but it would demonstrate a little class – and people pretending to royalty are supposed to demonstrate class if nothing else – to keep these self-serving stories to themselves.

By the way, here is a superb example of Meghan’s grotesque lack of judgment.

Meghan was given a wedding gift of earrings by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, certainly one of the world’s bloodiest tyrants.

Despite warnings from others about their source, she proudly wore them at a State Dinner three weeks after Jamal Khashoggi’s grisly murder on orders from the Crown Prince. She still has them. There are many photos of her wearing them.

They are dazzling long dangles of diamonds.

Some effort toward making the world a better place, as she pretentiously likes to talk about doing in her self-promotional publicity, and just another example of stunningly bad judgment.

I wonder just whose ears the Crown Prince had them ripped from?

John Chuckman

There can be little doubt that Donald Trump will contest the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 2024, and I think there can be little doubt that the nomination is his for the asking. Who else brings such a massive base of support to the party?  Tens of millions, brimming with enthusiasm.

As for the notion that two impeachments will stop him, that is just silly. In many people’s eyes, those rather lame efforts at impeachment only succeeded in diminishing the austere and rarified sense of the term. For his people, they only mean he beat the rap, twice.

If you note the statements of various Republicans who reportedly had set their sights on the same prize – Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo – you will note a definite change in the tone of their rhetoric from the days around the “insurrection” in the Capitol, a low point for Trump. You observe the same change in tone of Republican figures who have no intention of running for president, notably Mitch McConnell, leader of the Senate’s Republicans.

Being a bastard in Washington is no disadvantage, so long as you are a successful bastard. That is a value of a militaristic society. After all, the military has always valued psychopaths and other “natural-born killers.” Look at some of the pardons Trump granted, to the most grotesque war criminals. There are many reasons to believe that not only will Trump return, but that he has a very good chance at being re-elected. This possibility hangs like a dark cloud over domestic politics as well as international affairs.

The international community was set back on its heels by four years of Trump’s crude brutality. There were very strong words quietly uttered, like America can no longer be depended upon, extraordinary words for an alliance going back three-quarters of a century. Its more intelligent leaders I’m sure recognize that the threat is not gone.

Joe Biden’s fatuous slogan, “America is back,” is recognized for what it is, a feel-good advertising slogan. It almost sounds like something for a breakfast cereal. It is wrong on two levels. First, on basic drives and policies – like American global supremacy – Biden represents no change but one of tone and civility, with a bit of embroidery around the edges in an effort to make threadbare goods look fresh.

Second, they have now seen, under Trump, an America many of them did not know existed, the America of Trump’s base, a huge segment of extremely unhappy and bellicose people. Even if Trump goes away, these demanding people remain. They add a strong element of instability and threat to what was once regarded as a settled social order.

And note, even before the next presidential election, mid-term Congressional elections could easily wipe away what little influence Biden has.

Trump’s people reflect many influences, but I think the greatest is one I’ve written about many times, the relative decline of America’s economy since the halcyon days of the 1950s. Many of these are people who do not understand and cannot accept the hard reality.

Having competition in anything makes a world of difference. In the 1950s, America had no competition in a war-flattened world. In 2020, it has lots of competition, very strong competition, with more coming along. The good jobs and incomes which once were treated by Americans as entitlements have of course migrated to the places doing great business.

Opportunities and resources shift with relative success. It represents no underhandedness, just the relentless fact of competition.

Americans, right down to the most modest workers, took that lucky and temporary situation of the postwar period as the way things were meant to be. America was just the best. God had especially blessed her. But that belief had no more substance than the many conflicting beliefs of various religions. It was comforting for the believers, but that is all. Beliefs don’t build cars or ships or create new technology or launch space craft.

Trump promised discontented Americans that he could do something for them, but, as in so many matters, he was wrong. Starting trade wars will not enrich American workers. But his people do not understand that he was wrong. They simply believe strongly that he was not given a chance to finish his work. It is a version of Hitler’s politically-effective “stab in the back” claim. So, they await his return or the coming of an equivalent figure.

There is more than a little of the Second Coming of Christ in these matters, the Lord returning to set things right for his people, which is why the irreligious Trump does stunts like pose for pictures with a Bible.

Trump’s people are not going away. They represent a genuine political force now in America. A very large one.

Joe Biden is proving even more ineffective than some believed he would be. Already he has broken promises for domestic policy. Notable ones, such as the kind of assistance people can expect from the COVID recovery efforts. In foreign affairs, he has made – with one or two exceptions, like renewing the New START Treaty with Russia – the same major errors as Trump. Aggression towards China, aggression towards Iran, aggression towards Russia, aggression towards Venezuela and Cuba and a number of other states. Support for 13th century princes and tyrants and war criminals, just so long as they serve America’s purposes in their region.

He has greatly increased troops in Iraq, where they are not welcome. He has re-supplied troops illegally occupying Syria while stealing its resources, and it appears he will not leave Afghanistan. He has also bombed the Syrian border and killed twenty-two government militia who had every right to be there and are in the business of genuinely fighting the terrorists of ISIS. And so far, he has made a complete mess of returning to the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA) Trump stupidly discarded.

It is not a promising start. Exactly such action leaves Trump room to come along and say. “See, I told you about forever wars,” and there are a good many who will listen. Given his large base, Trump only needs an increment from the center to win again.

America’s attention remains focused on telling others how to run their affairs. It is a dead-end policy that does not recognize the many ongoing changes in the world. And, of course, continued focus on empire and the military means ignoring the needs of your own people. The need for better education and training, for infrastructure of every description, the need of alleviating poverty – in sum, the need to make Americans more competitive than they are.

But Biden is dutifully following the elites and their interest in maintaining control and their own privileged positions in the world. It is a pursuit that does nothing for a great many Americans while consuming vast resources.

Can you even imagine what it costs to send an aircraft carrier and its accompanying ships to the South China Sea? Thousands of men to be fed morale-boosting meals every day? Eight thousand miles from the coast of America? And for what? So arrogant men like Secretary of State Blinken can feel important.

I do not think Biden is going to be a very successful president. That creates an opening for Trump and his red-meat crowd.

Clearly, a political system which offers voters a choice between Biden and Trump is bankrupt. It reflects the elites looking only after themselves. The resources of the country – physical, monetary, and human capital – are focused on the system of empire which benefits America’s plutocracy and its serving elites.

America’s long-term political irresponsibility, through such matters as taxation and anti-trust, has allowed a monstrously unequal society to evolve. And this comes at a time of great and rapid change in the world, change which America is not really equipped to handle.

We likely face a great deal of disappointment and grief before America can come to grips with the fact that it is not exceptional.

AFTERNOTE:

Joe Biden will be too old to contest the next election, and likely Kamala Harris will be the Democrats’ candidate. While Harris has a number of appealing qualities, I think it clear she is pretty much Biden with a warm smile and a white pants suit.

John Chuckman

COMMENTS – RECENT BITS AND PIECES – VOLUME NINE

“Biden’s Waning Outrage at MbS”

I don’t believe there ever was outrage.

Biden and Obama helped kill so many people, many hundreds of thousands, and create so many millions of refugees, I don’t see how outrage over one more death could possibly affect them.

And the truth is, we have learned nothing new about the murder.

From Turkish President Erdogan’s first revelations of the butchery, using espionage recordings and photos, we really have known.

The people doing the grisly work were insiders, a privileged elite group in Saudi Arabia. There was no way the gang of them could just fly somewhere and kill someone without top-level authority.

Shortly later, Gina Haspel, Director of CIA, was reported to have told Trump the Crown Prince was responsible.

Still later, the truly sick Trump made a public joke about having protected the Crown Prince and how the Prince owed him for doing so.

The hideous Crown Prince is central to the American Dark State’s intentions for the region.

No one was ever going to disturb that cozy, settled arrangement over the mere dismembering of an unconscious man with a bone saw, spattering his blood all over the floor of the study in the Saudi Istanbul Consulate, even a man with good American connections like Jamal Khashoggi who wrote for the Washington Post.

The report really adds nothing.

The story of America’s global empire since the end of WWII is one running with rivers of blood – all the wars and coups and incursions and assassinations, all of them about brutal control, having nothing to do with principles or self-defense.

It has been estimated the US has killed 20 million through it all.

Joe Biden was around for nearly fifty years of that effort and supported everything.

Gee, he even got the Medal of Freedom, joining such American humanitarian luminaries as Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger.

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Here is a well-done article on Xinjiang Region of China and the real situation of the Uighur (Muslim) people there, not the sick American fantasy of genocide.

I think readers would find it interesting.

https://journal-neo.org/2021/03/02/western-attempts-to-smear-china-over-its-uighur-population-will-fail/

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“Reminiscent of Trump era, US secretary of state speaks with Venezuela’s Guaido”

American democracy in action.

Ignore the seven-times elected government of the country, one it does not like, and sneak around dealing illegally with an unelected “opposition.”

Can you imagine what American officials would say and do if another major country behaved that way inside the United States?

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China builds, everywhere. It forms partnerships, everywhere. HI-speed railroads, highways, dazzling bridges, tunnels through mountains, airports, ports. It works to improve life for hundreds of millions of people.

While America conducts wars and coups and blockades and makes constant threats and sanctions even against sick people and spends a trillion dollars a year on its military and security services.

Which approach do you think builds a better world?

Americans like Secretary of State Blinken are just afraid of losing their class’s privileged positions dating back to the postwar period. They want to lead everyone and tell everyone what to do even though they cannot compete. They want gold medals for losing the race.

China has the world’s most dynamic economy. And China threatens no one. Talk about containing it is like talk about containing a hurricane, a force of nature.

The words of proud fools.

I very much like what President Xi said recently, “The biggest source of chaos in the present-day world is the United States.”

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“U.S. stands with Canada on efforts to free Kovrig, Spavor from China: secretary of state”

What is news about that?

Only the stock photo of the American Secretary of State has changed over two years.

Trudeau and Blinken know perfectly well what should be done to resolve this problem – releasing the inappropriately-detained Meng Wanzhou of Huawei, a victim of Washington’s jealous rage and resentment over China’s economic success – but they will not do it.

Not only that, but Canada just got through insulting China once again with its absurd American-generated “genocide” charges – these around an ethnic population that is actually growing healthily.

This is leadership?

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Australia’s Prime Mister Morrison may well go down as the most destructive leader in the country’s history.

He has managed literally to destroy a good fraction of the country’s vital trade and spoil its relations with the country which one glance at a map will tell you represents Australia’s future prosperity.

His reward? A pat on the head from Washington.

Let’s just see how important that empty gesture is as China overtakes the American economy in just a few years and, after that, proceeds to build an economy several times the size of America’s.

John Chuckman

COMMENT – JOE BIDEN’S OWN WORDS

What follows are two quotes from a recent speech by Joe Biden. They illustrate with unusual clarity what is wrong, when it come to foreign affairs, with Biden and with the United States, a country with immense problems it refuses to face. Of course, if the United States has problems, then almost by definition, the world does. The United States is the world’s epicenter for conflict.

“I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions — interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens — are over.  We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people.”

“If we invest in ourselves and our people, if we fight to ensure that American businesses are positioned to compete and win on the global stage, if the rules of international trade aren’t stacked against us, if our workers and intellectual property are protected, then there’s no country on Earth — not China or any other country on Earth — that can match us.”

What Is wrong with these statements?

The first one, about Russia, is a fabrication from beginning to end. It represents just another big glob of regurgitated Hillary Clinton Russophobia. Rather than being informative or helpful, it promotes hostility and misunderstanding.

Putin has little patience for fools, so I doubt Biden spoke to him in this “I made it clear” tone. If Biden truly did touch on any of this nonsense, then I’m sure it was in a vein which allowed Putin to listen politely, fully understanding the strange demands made by politics, while perhaps briefly rolling his eyes for listening associates.

How can you build anything, much less international relationships between major powers, based on statements which simply are not true?

You cannot, but the real truth, hidden under the lies and braggadocio, is that the United States does not want to build a relationship with Russia. Not at all. It must pretend to want to do so for appearances to allies and the world.

America views Russia as a competitor and a potential competitor in many things. And America does not welcome competitors. Particularly when it comes to matters like Europe. America, for seventy-five years has kept Europe in a “friendly occupation,” cutting it off from developing relationships with Russia which any glance at a map will tell you are natural and inevitable. European industry with Russian energy and resources becomes a much stronger world competitor with America.

Over time, America has made many adjustments in the relationship with Europe to make Europe feel more like a partner than a dependent. Europe is held captive in part by its own geopolitical Stockholm Syndrome, identifying with its captor. America has also turned Europe into a captive market for costly military goods, becoming in effect a kind of “company store.” Still, in the end, economics will tell, and the economics are with a European-Russian relationship.

Keeping Russia as a kind of enemy is a way to hide fear of competition, quite apart from a convenient excuse and motivator in domestic politics. The spillover effects don’t hurt America’s voracious defense industry either.

So, what is wrong with Biden’s second statement, the one about “no one matching us”?

It is just pure childish fantasy, but it, too, is larded with lies, like the one about the rules of international trade being stacked against the United States. For decades after WWII, America’s heyday on the world scene, America itself helped create those rules and build the organizations to which they belong.

Suddenly, new competitors come along, notably China, and somehow the rules are “stacked against” poor old America. It is a ridiculous thing to say. And it comes out of the hard fact that in many things, America cannot compete with China. China will overtake America before very long and ultimately have an economy several times the size of America’s.

And just the same for the “protection of intellectual property.” Intellectual property is protected, but it is something by its very nature impossible to do perfectly, especially in the Age of Electronics. Anyway, the use of other people’s intellectual property is not a one-way street. America uses its massive, intrusive NSA facilities and other means to steal intellectual property, including from its own allies.

And if you study the history of the United States, you will learn that it was notorious for stealing inventions and copyrighted materials from Europe from the late Eighteenth Century right through much of the Nineteenth. Charles Dickens was angered on his visit to America to find his latest book from London reprinted in a new edition in Boston for which he received no royalties.

It was the same with all kinds of gadgets and farm implements. A visitor to Britain would buy or steal a copy or a drawing and bring it home where craftsmen worked hard to duplicate it.

The sense of much of the statement is right in keeping with Trump’s colossally ignorant stuff about making America great again. It is comic-book stuff about a superhero being tied down by rules and pygmies.

The lies are a little more palatable for being embedded in wishful childish thinking rather than hostility to others, as in the first statement. But they are still lies, and you cannot build sound policy or relationships based on lies.

Both statements demonstrate what a limited man Biden is, limited in powers of observation and limited in thinking.

Saying that is to give Biden maximum credit.

What he really may be doing here is just retailing fables to the public with every intention of ultimately letting the Dark State – Pentagon, CIA, State Department – clear the matter up in its own inimitable way. He has always been a friend of the military and of empire. He is not the least squeamish about spilling other people’s blood.

In either case, we have nothing to feel comfortable about – an ignorant man spouting ignorance or a shill for the Dark State

SOME BACKGROUND REFERENCES READERS MAY ENJOY:

BIDEN HIMSELF:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/03/12/john-chuckman-comment-objections-to-joe-biden-a-consolidation-of-points-from-several-earlier-comments-the-feeble-state-of-american-democracy/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/john-chuckman-comment-america-is-made-whole-again-waring-that-title-is-a-sarcasm-insights-into-the-man-leaving-office-and-the-man-coming-in-weighing-the-gains-and-losses/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/john-chuckman-comment-joe-biden-as-televangelist-and-as-lifelong-phony-politician-utterly-without-principles-no-one-in-washington-gives-a-damn-about-ordinary-people-no-one-and-it-sickens-you-wh/

THE NATURE OF AMERICAN POLITICS:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/john-chuckman-comment-how-american-politics-really-work-why-there-are-terrible-candidates-and-constant-wars-and-peoples-problems-are-ignored-why-heroes-like-julian-assange-are-persecuted-and-r/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/12/29/john-chuckman-comment-when-facts-and-logic-no-longer-matter-how-americas-power-establishment-works-at-home-and-abroad-why-it-cannot-be-changed-by-americans-change-is-coming-though-from-outs/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2020/04/19/john-chuckman-comment-why-the-idea-of-a-viable-third-party-in-america-is-a-flight-of-fancy-americas-current-plutocratic-structure-and-what-keeps-it-in-place-the-dark-unde/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/14/john-chuckman-comment-theres-effectively-only-one-political-party-in-the-united-states-when-it-comes-to-key-matters-and-it-wins-every-election-as-surely-as-did-the-communist-party-in-the-ussr/

NATO:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/john-chuckman-comment-trump-walk-away-from-nato-why-it-will-not-happen-even-if-he-has-the-authority-which-is-not-clear-natos-changed-purposes-serve-american-interests-so-why-shouldnt-it-pay/

WORLD AFFAIRS:

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/08/06/john-chuckman-comment-china-russia-and-the-united-states-in-the-21st-century-some-difficult-and-dangerous-times-ahead-as-the-world-now-rapidly-evolves-in-ways-america-rejects/

https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2019/04/27/john-chuckman-comment-being-on-the-wrong-side-of-history-the-ugly-reality-of-american-policies-in-every-sphere-of-international-relations-where-we-are-headed-the-religious-like-blindness-of-ideo/

John Chuckman

COMMENTS – RECENT BITS AND PIECES – VOLUME EIGHT

President Xi’s wonderful program to eradicate extreme poverty makes a second achievement worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.

It is simply not the kind of massive national task we see undertaken by many states. China can be proud.

The other reason President Xi deserves the Peace Prize is his Belt and Road Initiative (the BRI -the New Silk Road).

It connects many parts of the world in worthy tasks. It promotes cooperation and understanding. It will change the world’s economic geography while improving the lives and prospects of hundreds of millions.

But, sadly, the US has long had a lock on who gets the prizes.

Norway would never dare offend American geopolitical sensitivities, which is the reason so many mediocrities and nobodies receive the Prize.

For example, worthy figures like Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning would never be considered.

Much as in the days of the British Empire, the world’s most notable peace figure, Gandhi, never received the Prize for fear of offending Britain.

Peace Prize or not, President Xi is a truly exceptional national leader, one of the greatest we’ve seen.

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America looks after its wealthy corporations and people and, to some extent, the armies which maintain and expand its empire.

It has never looked after its people.

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“Why is the US obsessed with smearing Xinjiang through gimmicks?”

Obsession is an American national trait.

The long-term history of the United States is packed with obsessions. Aboriginal people. Black slavery. The Spanish Empire. Guns. Mexico. Alcohol. Drugs.

A good many Americans have roots back to the Puritans (called the Pilgrims in the US), an extreme Protestant sect known to serious historians for a great deal of ugly behavior.

For example, after the Reformation, they ran through the ancient cathedrals of England, breaking glorious stained-glass windows and monuments and even destroying the burial places of ancient saints.

They were kicked out of some European countries for just that reason. But when they came to America, they came to be regarded as religious refugees. Religious terrorists might be closer to the mark.

Puritanism is in the gene pool of America. Here is just a sample of the destructive obsessions it generated.

America was for decades obsessed with communism. It was said that the American Communist Party only survived with all the membership dues of undercover FBI agents.

It was obsessed with Cuba and Castro and literally had a small army of CIA people working full-time against their interests. There were literally hundreds of attempts on Castro’s life.

It was obsessed with Russia during the Cold War. The fading Cold War obsession has taken on a new form and central importance, so we just had a Pentagon general dangerously talking about Russia as an “existential threat.”

It is obsessed by poor Venezuela and its seven-times elected government, and it is doing everything it can think of to destroy it. It hurts millions of ordinary people.

It has been obsessed by Iran for over forty years. It encouraged war against Iran by Iraq and saw Iraq supplied with illegal chemical weapons. It has used sabotage and terror and assassination against Iran.

It was obsessed by Vietnam and spent ten years there killing and destroying and achieving absolutely nothing. For the last twenty years, it has had a similar obsession with Afghanistan, where it has killed many peasants and achieved nothing.

It is obsessed with China today because in many things it cannot compete. It is intensely resentful and jealous of China’s success and fears losing its leading position in the world. I say “leading position” because for the most part the United States does not offer genuine leadership, leadership being much larger than just your own interests.

Extreme obsession is a form of madness, and madness takes no interest in facts.

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Actually, there is no country on earth which less deserves to be on the UN Human Rights Council than the US.

Since WW II, the US is estimated to have killed about 20 million people with all its many wars, coups, and incursions – none of them having anything to do with defense.

Many died horribly from weapons like napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, and poison gas (as supplied to Iraq in the terrible Iran-Iraq War), It also has left such departing gifts as tons of Agent Orange, tons of depleted uranium dust, the unholy pollution of “burn pits,” and countless landmines.

It hurt and injured still more, and it generated many millions of desperate refugees. A very substantial part of America’s population, including the last President, treats those refugees with contempt, too.

It has befriended and supplied some of the world’s worst dictators and tyrants and war criminals where it was geopolitically advantageous to do so. It still does in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Gulf States, Israel, plus other places.

The terrible torture of prisoners of conscience, like Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning, means nothing. It long maintained an international gulag of black sites to do its own torturing.

Human rights, democratic values, and rule of law are only phrases for America’s government.

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“Enjoy this new normal of Canada-U.S. relations while it lasts”

What “new normal” relations?

I see no change at all, except the superficial change of tone and language.

It is still, in every important detail of Canada’s external affairs under this government, a relationship of doing just as Washington suggests.

Canada today stands for no important principles, as against the persecution of Julian Assange or the mass killing of Saudi Arabia or the tyranny of Egypt or America’s endless wars or terrible treatment of Venezuela.

We sell weapons to monsters in Saudi Arabia. We support the toppling of a seven-times elected government in Venezuela and favor an unelected Washington servant, Juan Guaido. We regularly make unsupported statements about China, about Russia, and about Iran.

We support the baseless claim that Russia’s Alexei Navalny – a convicted felon, a man of prejudice, an extreme nationalist, and a frequent liar – is a prisoner of conscience. Even Amnesty International has dropped that tissue of lies.

We do nothing to see a just settlement for the suffering in Eastern Ukraine in line with the Minsk Accords, which Russia helped negotiate. Instead, we jump on the American bandwagon of “What can we do today with ships and tanks to irritate Russia?”

So much so, it is rather depressing. We have an echo chamber, not a government.

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Nothing better demonstrates what a mindless servant of the United States the EU has become than it creating more sanctions on Venezuela, a country which has suffered terribly under US abuse.

The government of Venezuela has been freely elected seven times, counting the political party’s previous leader.

If that isn’t democracy, I don’t know what is.

And just look at the farce that passes for democracy in the US.

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“Canada’s Parliament Votes to Condemn Genocide in China”

What is genocide, which, for many reasons is one of the misused words of our day?

The effort to kill a great number of a particular kind of people.

Is this happening in China?

Absolutely not, and the facts speak for themselves.

The Uighur (Muslim) population in China is growing healthily. Indeed, faster than the Han population.

Canada should be ashamed to be talking about “genocide” in China.

Trudeau again has taken some of the worst of American vicious politics to embrace in Canada. Did he not learn with such fiascos as Huawei or his repulsive support for overthrowing an elected government in Venezuela?

Do our Parliamentarians know anything about the internal workings of China?

Absolutely not. So why do they discuss what they know nothing about when there are important matters that should be dealt with?

By the way, those who follow affairs even know where this shabby rumor, promoted by the US in its jealousy and resentment of China, originated. It is totally without credibility.

If there really were genocide in China, or anywhere, does anyone in his or her right mind think a call to move the Olympics would be a proper response?

Of course not.

This is just a cheap stunt.

John Chuckman

COMMENT – THE PROMISE OF CHANGE FROM BIDEN HAS QUICKLY ASSUMED THE SHAPE OF “MORE OF THE SAME”

Biden hasn’t even begun to undo all the damage inflicted by Trump, both at home and abroad, let alone launching any new, imaginative initiatives.

Yet we have constant press coverage of him as though he were FDR lifting up a broken-down nation. The American mainstream press has been cloyingly dishonest.

Biden is lifting up nothing, and he certainly is no FDR. Both in domestic and foreign affairs his efforts are paltry, although the press coverage is in CinemaScope and Technicolor.

The work of the press just brings home once again a basic truth of American government. The people are being conditioned to believe their wonderful democracy has delivered big changes for them, but there is not the slightest truth in that daydream fantasy when it comes to matters of any importance, especially, as we will see, in foreign affairs.

Bolstering the notion of “American democracy” is a constant and demanding task, almost like the effort the CIA puts into the stream of manufactured publicity it generates for one of its many coups, so that the real work of the nation may proceed unhindered, serving its plutocracy and the global empire by which it enriches itself.

In just one vital area of foreign affairs, the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA) Trump ignorantly destroyed, Biden has made absolutely no real effort. It should be a relatively simple thing – and in agreement with what Iran, the aggrieved party here, expects – to return to what was a working agreement, but, no, we see no honest effort that way.

Biden’s advisors insist on putting the cart before the horse – that is, holding talks about an agreement of which America is no longer a part and while punishing, unwarranted sanctions remain in place, The sanctions are illegal and were laid by Trump when Iran had done nothing wrong and had abided by all its obligations in the nuclear agreement. He wanted to strong-arm a new and different agreement.

I’ll remind readers that the original agreement was about removing then-existing harsh sanctions on Iran in return for its compliance with restrictions designed to allow it to do needed scientific work – Iran has  a sizable and growing nuclear power industry – while blocking any work towards creating weapons, Although there has never been any credible evidence that Iran worked towards nuclear weapons and the country stands committed to a  policy of never developing them, Iran gladly accepted the restrictions, and the agreement worked smoothly for almost four years.

Biden’s people appear determined to change an agreement of which they are no longer part, although every kind of roundabout and dishonest language is used to camouflage the intent. That was Trump’s very goal. Iran has always said it is willing to talk to the United States about any concern, once the US rejoins the agreement and assumes obligations it has ignored.

Truly, what is the point of discussing new terms for an agreement when the United States has not even fulfilled its obligations under the original terms?

Judging by the fact that some other co-signers (there were a total of six alongside the US and Iran) to the original agreement have intervened – Germany and France – and in ways that are quite revealing, it is clear Israel is behind Biden’s ineffectual efforts.

What Israel has always wanted is literally to disarm Iran by destroying its highly successful, pinpoint-accurate missile program, its major element of defense against two relentlessly hostile states, the United States and Israel.

Israel hates Iran because it is so large (more than 80 million people) and stands in the way of Israel’s dominating the region. It has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, but that makes a good, fear-filled excuse. We know from the best authorities that Israel has about 90 nuclear warheads and fissile material for maybe 60 more. Iran has none. By the way, Israel’s bomb-making factory, the Dimona reactor, is undergoing expansion, as captured in independent satellite images. Our mainline press does not discuss it, nor are we given any explanation for a very disturbing matter.

Iran will not agree to change what was a working agreement it never violated. It certainly will never sacrifice its national defense to please two hostile states, both of which have committed major terrorist acts against it. And if the United States does not agree to end its illegal sanctions – and they are illegal, having no authority other than America’s own say-so – that agreement isn’t worth the paper it is written on. It will almost certainly wither on the vine. How’s that for successful diplomacy?

Iran has been taking very gradual steps away from the pattern it previously followed under the agreement in order to pressure the United States. It has said clearly, many times, these steps will all be reversed if the US just rejoins the agreement and meets its obligations. Iran remains part of the agreement. The steps it has taken are actually permitted as remedial measures under the agreement.

There are other worrying moves by Biden’s people in the Middle East, despite Biden’s promise to end “forever wars.“ The unwanted American occupation in Eastern Iraq is now to be heavily reinforced with four times the number of troops. The illegal occupation in Eastern Syria was just reinforced with weapons and supplies. The evacuation of Afghanistan, after twenty years of killing peasants, it now appears may not take place. Remember, many of the “forever wars” were the work of Obama with Joe Biden serving as vice President.

There are serious new signs of hostility towards Russia, too. Biden has made several totally unwarranted statements about a peaceful Russia. America’s Charlie McCarthy NATO ventriloquist dummy, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, has been making noises about new measures against Russia.

The hopeless, blundering words of the EU’s Josep Borrell around a visit to Russia were met by Russia’s incomparable  Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, telling him that if Europe laid any truly damaging new sanctions on Russia’s vital interests, Russia could end relations with the EU, regarding it as an undependable partner.

New attacks on Russia have been made over the Navalny Affair, an obviously stage-managed stunt by Western security services. It has been so clumsily handled; it should be more of an embarrassment than anything else. But nothing is too low a farce when it comes to attacking Russia. Russia is peaceful and willing to cooperate, but it is not willing to bend the knee to America’s self-proclaimed indispensable status and authority.  Carthago delenda est remainsAmerica’s secret working goal for Russia.

See for background on the Navalny nonsense, see:

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

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

It is reported that new sanctions against Russia’s work on construction of the Nord Stream Ii gas pipeline (Russia to Germany and about 95% complete) are being prepared in Washington.

NATO – and please note, whenever you read “NATO,” it really Is just the Pentagon in geopolitical drag – Is making new noises in the Black Sea, Russia’s backyard. It is to build naval facilities in Ukraine, which shares the coast of the Black Sea. America’s coup in Ukraine, 2014, against an elected government – a coup now rebaptized in CIA outlets like Wikipedia as “the Revolution of Dignity” – is proving its value (an American State Department official, Victoria Nuland, was overheard some years ago saying that it cost five billion dollars)  by providing new opportunities to threaten Russia.

The current elected government in Ukraine – under the ever-watchful eyes of outfits like the Azov Battalion and Right Sector, genuine 1930s-style fascist street gangs covertly supported by the US to keep elected post-coup Ukrainian governments on the path of righteousness – is making no effort to solve the mess the coup created In Eastern Ukraine, the Donbass. Europe makes no effort to push it either, even though Germany and France were part of creating the Minsk Accords, the accepted formula for Eastern Ukraine to be reincorporated into post-coup Ukraine. All the focus seems to be on what Ukraine can contribute to irritating Russia.

What I really fear about relations with China is a move away from the violent economic acts of Trump towards greater militarization. Biden appointed several people who sound like General Ripper in “Doctor Strangelove” when talking about China. The effort to form blocs of nations against China begins to resemble the formation of military alliances, although it Is not at all clear this will be successful.

And there is no letting up on the destructive American nonsense about Taiwan and the South China Sea. America conveniently forgets that it recognized Taiwan as part of China in 1972. It keeps toying with the idea of encouraging Taiwan’s independence, a guaranteed path to war.

China has assumed a role in the South China Sea because that is such a vital pathway for its massive global trade. There are also some historical documents supporting its claims. There is free passage for all countries with no hostile intentions. China even provides services such as search and rescue. China is ready to settle any dispute amicably.

There is no need for naval fleets from a country 8,000 miles away to guarantee anything, much less free passage. Sending them only communicates hostility and creates opportunities for deadly error.

Despite the silly Valentine’s photos of Joe and Jill Biden kissing, I’m afraid there is not a lot to feel good about. Indeed, quite the opposite.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN GLOBAL TIMES

“US is losing leadership, attempt of ‘Western unity’ through G7 hard to tick off: experts”

Who wants the leadership of a lunatic, which is exactly what the United States offered the world for four years?

But even now, with the lunatic gone, who wants the leadership of a country that simply does not recognize new realities, that insists on fantasies of the past?

That last describes Joe Biden’s America.

On almost every matter, Biden’s actions and words demonstrate that he does not see the multi-polar world that is emerging. His America sees itself as central to the planet’s welfare – an impoverished concept to ask others to embrace. It looks backward, not forward. It is selfish, not generous. It is small, not large. It is anti-scientific, almost religious in nature.

Biden doesn’t spit in people’s faces as did Trump, but he is just as small and unrealistic about America’s place in the world. He and his key advisors really think, just as did Trump’s mob, that it can be 1959 again, and the whole world will look gratefully to America for leadership.

Sorry, America, but the world does not need the kind of leadership you offer, leadership which is not cooperative and partnering, but demanding. Leadership which does not see realities, but wishes only to shape reality for its own benefit. Leadership based on a kind of Cult of America.

Many new economic successes have arisen since America had its heyday as “Leader of the Free World.” Still more are coming, and many new international arrangements are underway, plus new great trading blocs have been established. The world’s economic geography has changed and is changing more rapidly still.

None of that great change pre-ordains any country as leader. Rather the opposite, the changes mean new international leadership arrangements must be established. America, your expectations and demands are out-of-date and inappropriate.

No one wants leadership whose goal is to turn the clock back to serve itself. It really is an almost laughable idea. Perhaps the clearest measure of that is your effort to start a new Cold War. Russia and China are both peaceful and cooperative countries today, ready to do business with anyone.

Yet your ceaseless new propaganda and very aggressive military arrangements treat them almost as enemies. This is dangerous and self-serving, self-serving because you want everyone else to follow and do business only with you, even if you are uncompetitive.

You genuinely fear new and efficient competitors, and you try to disguise the fear as fear of potential military aggressors. Well, you have between 800 and 1,000 military bases abroad. China and Russia have a couple. You spend about three times what China spends on its military and about ten times what Russia does.  

In fact, the only thing Russia and China are enemies of is your delusional claim to be the center of humanity’s future. It is to be a shared future, whether you like it or not, and a far more prosperous future than can be imagined under your notions. The more trade, the more projects, the more investment, the more competition, the more room for new ideas, the greater is the wealth to be shared by all. 

As one example of many, your recent witch-hunt against Huawei cost Western economies tens of billions of dollars and set them all back technologically. Just foolish and destructive, but beneficial to your control of affairs. China has already constructed about 700,000 5G stations and is far ahead of Western countries in its ability to do new things at a distance. Of course, that leads to all kinds of new inventions too.

I say ‘almost laughable” because the relatively declining United States remains, for a while, a military Frankenstein, and it proves, time and time again, that it is willing to use brute force to cripple or crush others who stand in its way.

We see it cruelly treating people in many lands, such as Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen.

We see it interfering in the internal affairs of countries everywhere, even in the affairs of its allies, like Germany or Turkey, telling them, as though they were children, what products or services they may buy and from whom.

And we see America genuinely helping no one, as with the pandemic it mismanaged with its own people.

We see it working to intimidate and insult, effectively flirting with war, countries like China and Russia and Iran on their borders or nearby territories.  Each of them peaceful countries at war with no one.

We also see America’s political system in tatters, its social system exposed to international shame and ridicule, its medical system for ordinary people revealed as nonexistent, its public education as poor, and we see the most grotesque poverty widespread across the country. What do you think entitles you to lead anyone, United States?

John Chuckman

COMMENTS – RECENT BITS AND PIECES – VOLUME SEVEN

“NATO ready for peace with Moscow…or confrontation, Stoltenberg claims after ordering funding boost for troops on Russian border”

Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO, has to be the worst possible advertisement for tourism to Norway.

Who on earth would want to go to a place this bizarre and confusing man might be said to fairly represent?

Europe has had peace with Russia for decades.

And not because of NATO’s spending more money or sending more troops or soliciting more members.

What Stoltenberg’s NATO is really doing is securing America’s hold on the continent. It’s America’s mechanism for continuing to occupy Europe, a potential world competitor.

America feels that is more necessary than ever because Putin’s Russia is attractive and ready to do business with anyone. America doesn’t want new economic relationships forming which could strengthen Europe and weaken America’s relative position.

That’s why America wanted all those insignificant new members with old grudges against Russia to join. They can outvote the old stable members who might want change.

The new states have little to contribute to any alliance, either militarily or economically, but additional risks and liabilities. However, they put NATO threateningly right on Russia’s border, and they are very grateful to the United States for wanting them to join, almost like homely girls being asked on a date by a football hero.

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“Troops in Washington Are Disaster Waiting to Happen”

No more than they are in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Latvia, Poland, and dozens of other places.

The military, always and everywhere, represents exactly the opposite of good government, human and democratic values, and rule of law.

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“WHO experts slam NYT for twisting, misquoting their words on virus origins probe”

For those who’ve followed international events closely over the years, the New York Times’ reputation for integrity is not high, and in recent years of intense American efforts abroad, it has only declined.

The Times has even been discovered in the past with CIA associates on its staff.

Some of its regular staff writers, people like, say, Thomas Friedman, might just as well be members of the security service. Tliey literally eat and breathe the American Gospel in everything they say and write. It’s appalling stuff to an open-minded outsider.

The Times’ reputation for being “liberal” is a mystery, at least when it comes to foreign affairs and matters of the American empire.

 I think it is only by comparison with an American press that is mostly Right-wing. The Times has supported the United States in every ugly war, coup, and dirty trick it has ever been involved with. It regularly has beat the drum leading to war – no matter how unjust.

The Times is a fierce defender of Israel and everything it does, much of it being illegal and inhumane. Israel is, of course, in reality a de facto American colony in the Middle East, and it was the foundation cause of all America’s many recent wars in the region, a set of wars which killed a couple of million people, injured millions more, and made refugees of many millions more. It also reduced several well-run societies, like Libya, to chaos.

And, please remember, all of these imperial wars – often collectively called the Neocon Wars – involved immense lies and deception, just like the lies being hurled at China. And immense wars like Vietnam were nothing but a tissue of destructive lies.

Many years ago, an old CIA publicity/propaganda specialist spoke about sitting down to his giant Wurlitzer organ and hitting the keys to “get the story out there,” the keys on the organ being certain cooperative key media outlets.

The New York Times has always been one of those keys, perhaps the first one hit.

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“Biden calls on Congress to ban assault weapons, pass gun control laws’

Why stop with the US?

The world would a happier place if the US banned its weapons from the streets of all the other countries where they are used to intimidate and threaten people.

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“New UN Report: Millions of Yemeni Children Face Acute Malnutrition”

You could end this savagery, Joe Biden, in a heartbeat.

Stop playing games about this filthy war America helped start and has supplied and supported.

All you have done is try to improve America’s public-relations profile, not end the slaughter.

Get on the phone and tell the Prince it is to stop, immediately. Good God, it is American weapons they mainly use. You could sign an executive order halting all sales.

But I know you won’t do that.

You are a fifty-year veteran of supporting America’s brutality abroad and its alliances with human monsters like the Crown Prince and the Generalissimo of Egypt and the war criminal Prime Minister of Israel.

And I don’t recall a single act of courage in your career.

Politicians like you are a big part of what is wrong with America.

The games being played here I am afraid presage future events in the Middle East.

Just as the other day, the pirate American soldiers in Syria apparently secretly brought in a new supply of weapons to secure their illegal occupation and theft of resources – all intended, of course, to keep Syria weak and in ruins and its millions of refugees painfully scattered.

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“US hard to form anti-China choir in G7 summit; China engine for world economy rather than challenge: experts”

It is the height of folly to speak of forming anti-groups against a country that is, by a huge measure, the most important in its region.

A country that is growing rapidly, offering new opportunities to everyone, and is soon to become the most important in the world.

And, importantly, a country which is engaged in no serious hostilities and certainly no wars.

A country that is setting a new global standard of partnership and cooperation with the BRI and other efforts.

And just who is it trying to organize destructive efforts against it? 

A country which has been almost continuously at war since the end of WWII.

A country whose primary national purpose is telling others what to do and even what they may buy or not buy.

A country which thinks nothing of starving and depriving others of necessities to get what it wants – as we’ve seen amply demonstrated in Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Yemen, Palestine, and many other places.

A country noted for helping no one without hefty charges, a place where cooperation and genuine partnership are treated as words sissies use.

If ever an idea was doomed to fail from the start, this is it.

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“US sanctions on Venezuela have failed to achieve anything but needless death and misery. Against all reason, they are set to stay”

So much for the public-relations garbage about a kinder, gentler Joe Biden.

But so much, too, for the morals and ethics of Europe, conscienceless, do-nothing states who stand by and watch human misery.

Remember poor, brave little Cuba? America beat it to a pulp for sixty years, achieving nothing but the satisfaction of a sadistic bully.

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“Russian prosecutors demand fine against Navalny in slander trial”

In the United States, with its hyper-patriotic excesses, insulting a war veteran can get you a punch in the nose, or worse.

Russia fought the bloodiest war in all of human history, losing 27 million people to Germany’s invasion.

Yet Navalny feels entitled to insult an old WWII veteran just because he supports Putin, the leader of the country?

The incident only reveals further what an idiot Navalny truly is.

Of course, his entire “poisoning” adventure was a charade choreographed by western security services. There is not an ounce of proof provided to support any of it. (See my site, Chuckman’s Comments on WordPress for some analysis)

Cooperating with western security services, as he did, could certainly be viewed as betraying his country in light of the fact that they are working very hard with the US to hurt or topple a peaceful Russia.

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Agreed. But when did logic ever count with people who don’t think?

Justin Trudeau, Canada’s Prime Minister, has a long record of acting without thinking.

From his “blackface” minstrel routines as a school drama coach to his numerous serious scandals in political office and his embarrassing, farcical antics abroad, as famously on a trip to India, and, worst of all, his thoughtless echoing of Donald Trump’s every vicious and inhumane foreign policy. 

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What a disappointment Sweden has become.

It was once admirably independent, much like Switzerland.

Today, it follows American imperial policy like a baby duckling waddling after its mother.

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“Rouhani tells Merkel: Adding anything to nuclear deal ‘impossible’”

Germany’s Chancellor Merkel is just carrying out a task assigned by the United States and Israel, something she sadly has done a great many times. A woman of great natural talent – she has a doctorate in physics and an agreeable temperament, and she leads a powerful country – has often acted the part of a flattering courtier.

The US and Israel are especially interested in attacking Iran’s marvelous missile defenses, leaving the country open to two states which have demonstrated only hostility and hatred for over forty years, states which have committed many acts of terror, including murder and sabotage.

The idea she presents, expanding the JCPOA, is a non-starter. The concept of the nuclear agreement (JCPOA) was about nuclear matters, and Iran faithfully kept its obligations for almost four years until the lunatic Trump decided suddenly to tear up a working treaty, an act which earned him praise from Israel’s war-criminal Prime Minister, Netanyahu, and, undoubtedly, additional political donations from fanatical supporters of Israel in the US, American foreign policy in the Middle East being virtually for sale.

Indeed, Iran, at the highest level of government, has recently renewed its commitment to never pursue nuclear weapons, although technologically it would be perfectly capable of doing so. The country’s current nuclear work is more open than that of anyone else, being subject to regular close international inspection. There are no secrets, quite unlike the case of Israel.                            

It is the United States which must bring matters back to the status quo ante, a statement which summarizes Iran’s reasonable position.

In addition, the co-signatories to the nuclear agreement, including Germany, have done virtually nothing since Trump unilaterally destroyed a treaty which included half a dozen others. Germany and France and Britain and the EU have done nothing worth talking about to fulfill their obligations as co-signatories.

And now, they attempt to put new obligations on Iran. I believe the fact vividly demonstrates what complete servants they are of American empire. They show no independent thought, no sense of keeping their obligations, and not even any decent sense of pride.

How is it now that Iran, and Iran alone, is suddenly obligated to new steps? It is an illogical and unfair position.

President Rouhani gave her just the right answer.

John Chuckman

COMMENTS – RECENT BITS AND PIECES – VOLUME SIX

Just one added thought.

When we discuss such dark matters as biological warfare, it is important to understand, just as with nuclear weapons, we are talking not about something theoretical but something the United States has actually used in the past.

During the Korean War, the United States used extremely brutal methods. It carpet-bombed North Korea for three years, destroying one-fifth of its entire population. (Note, that brutality was a major reason for North Korea’s costly pursuit of nuclear weapons as a deterrent.)

The US committed a number of terrible atrocities like the massacre at No Gun Ri, where it shot hundreds of civilians, including women and children, as they were fleeing and looking for refuge.

And, it used biological weapons in North Korea and nearby China. This is documented, although the US always denies it.

Japan’s infamous Unit 731 was set up in occupied China in 1938. Many Chinese were killed by its biological weapons and many suffered from hideous Nazi-like “experiments.’

The American occupation forces in Japan decided not to prosecute any of the war criminals and indeed covered up Unit 731’s existence. Undoubtedly, American officials learned something about the use of such weapons from investigating the Unit’s past work.

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“US sells over a million barrels of seized Iranian fuel headed for Venezuela”

It is simply piracy and theft by the United States.

US laws written by and for Americans have absolutely no legal authority over others in the absence of support from the United Nations.

Every time the US engages in this kind of behavior, its moral and ethical credibility is only further reduced.

It has foolishly “weaponized” its dollar. And it has foolishly grabbed other people’s assets. If you think that kind of behavior will not have a long-term effect on trust and faith in the United States, I suggest you study some economic history.

America’s political reputation is already in tatters. Few anymore regard it as a model.  Its social problems, especially its inequality and division, are immense, and they are ignored by its government. And its economic status is in steady relative decline because it simply cannot compete with some other countries.

Effectively, America’s government, not knowing how to respond to its many problems but muscle-bound with ignorant military power, participates in accelerating its own decline.

It truly is a sad spectacle.

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It is almost a waste of time to talk to Macron about anything serious.

He is ineffective, he is visibly servile to the interests of others, and, as he demonstrated on the streets of Paris, he is quite a brutal thug pretending to be a very civilized man.

He has lied countless times, and I have a hard time even thinking of any sensible idea he has contributed to international affairs. Good God, Saudi Arabia should join a new JCPOA?

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Electric vehicles are assuming a place in the transportation mix.

But it will remain a minor part until some serious new technology comes along, especially in batteries.

Electric power cannot even begin to replace the totality of trucks and buses and trains and other vehicles.

We are going to need hydrocarbons for a good long while. And we should take care of the industry that produces them.

As far as the generation of electricity itself, it is hard to see where any great progress can be made without either nuclear or natural gas.

A real economy cannot be run on pipedreams if you want real jobs and real growth.

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Given China’s latest hypersonic anti-ship missiles, it’s possible to imagine American aircraft-carrier pilots in the South China Sea one day taking off and returning only to find nowhere to land.

Carriers still make intimidating displays, especially against smaller countries, but against a major opponent, they are reduced to very costly targets.

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The very continued existence of Iran with its several regional allies and its remarkable weapons program is proof of a kind of victory after more than forty years of the most intense hostility from the US and Israel.

Even overcoming the terrible ordeal of a long war encouraged by the US in which many war crimes were committed.

It is a set of achievements of which to be proud, and I hope Iran will continue to uphold its worthiest principles in the region.

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It’s about 8,000 miles from the South China Sea to the West Coast of the US.

What on earth are American warships doing there?

As though these thousands-of-year-old Asian societies could not work out their own practices?

And we’ve certainly seen from recent events, how very well America runs its own society and how much it has to offer others.

It’s beyond arrogant. It is just plain stupid.

And that kind of stupidity by America’s privileged elites is just part of why China is going to inherit the earth.

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The WHO findings in China confirm what thoughtful people have believed from the beginning.

We have a long history of viruses in nature changing slightly and jumping from one host to humans, as was the case, famously, with AIDS.

As for the world’s supply of ignorant and hateful people, no facts will ever stand in the way of their promoting malicious ideas.

It is just a shame that one such person happened to be President of the United States at the time of this virus’s emergence.

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“EU-Russia ties far from satisfactory: Top EU diplomat”

Do you think the mere fact that the EU has accused Russia of poisoning a man and done so with no evidence it will provide could possibly have something to do with the state of relations?

In fact, it’s the second time such an ugly, unsupported accusation has been made. The elaborate and costly charades in both cases were certainly the work of Western security services.

And then there’s all the nonsense about Ukraine when in fact the source of all problems there is Ukraine itself, the Ukraine as governed after an American coup the EU doesn’t even acknowledge.

It is almost impossible to believe the asinine level on which many foreign relations are conducted today.

But that’s what happens when an international bully dominates everyone and demands its sick lies and fantasies be supported.

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“Nuclear war with China, Russia is ‘real possibility’: US commander”

A truly stupid thing for anyone to say.

But still immensely more stupid for a high-ranking general to say.

Perhaps, the United States has too many of these uniformed, beribboned popinjays sitting at desks in the Pentagon with little real to do?

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Biden lacks clarity in most large foreign-policy issues. Already, his statements in many matters are contradictory or confused.

For example, with Russia he has taken the positive step of renewing the New START Treaty.

At the same time, though, he makes ridiculous accusations about election interference and Navalny and other matters which are Russia’s internal affairs.

And he is still trying to stop Russia from supplying natural gas to Germany, a grotesque interference into the business affairs of others.

In the matter of Iran, he talks of going back to the JCPOA (Iran Nuclear Agreement) yet makes statements ignoring Iran’s reasonable expectations, statements almost guaranteeing no return to a working treaty that the United States, and the United States alone, destroyed.

Iran only asks for a return to the status quo ante, but Biden’s statements suggest Iran must act first and the need for other terms That is, understandably for Iran, a non-starter. Not a hopeful situation.

I think the basic problem is that Biden and his people want him to appear fair and reasonable, but underneath, when it comes to foreign affairs, the same intense hostilities and jealousies are hard at work, the ones that motivated Trump.

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Economists and serious statesmen and economic historians do not like trade wars, and for very good reasons. They are destructive, and they always carry the risk of exploding into real wars.

The only authority for the benefits of trade wars is Donald Trump, a man so ignorant he suggested fighting COVID by injecting antiseptic products like counter cleaners. He is a thoroughly discredited man who failed at almost everything he tried and created a lot of human misery along the way.

One quality study recently showed that at the height of Trump’s malignant efforts against China, the United States actually lost 245,000 jobs.

The illusion of a strong Trump economy is just that, an illusion. It was the result of monstrous tax cuts for the wealthy and the continued easing of money creation – neither of which is sustainable for any time and both of which have negative long-term consequences.

Trump was about as astute in his assessment of trade wars as he was in the management of America’s COVID crisis.

In a post-pandemic world, we will need every bit of trade and investment possible. Letting political attitudes prevail over economics only will impoverish all of us more than need be.

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“We consider any move that does not end the siege and aggression against Yemen as just a formality and do not pay any attention to it,”

Wise words from Yemen.

If the US were determined to end this ugly war, it could do so in a moment.

The Saudis would absolutely not act against direct instructions from the US.

What Biden is doing is just a cheap public relations ploy to separate the US from all the terrible publicity associated with this filthy war it helped start.

It is hypocrisy. And it is the kind of dishonesty which promises no great changes for the Middle East.

Biden is, after all, a fifty-year political veteran of supporting wars and coups and death.

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“Ankara says US behind 2016 abortive coup in Turkey against Erdogan”

I’ve never doubted it from the beginning.

The US had motive, means, and opportunity.

The big opportunities for Turkish (disloyal) officers and American officers to exchange information were at the Incirlik Air Base.

Erdogan is too independent-minded for America’s liking.

The coup did provide a great opening for Russia, and Russia’s masterful statesman, President Putin, took full advantage of It. He has even managed to sell Turkey the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system.

Not a lot of people realize it, but apart from the system’s excellence, a key reason Erdogan wanted it was that, unlike the US or France or Britain, Russia does not keep a control key to the missile systems it sells.

Libya’s Ghaddafi had just bought an expensive system from France when his country was attacked. The French simply switched the missile system off, so that he was completely vulnerable to air attack.

That’s why Erdogan will not give up his S-400s just because the US demands it.

I wish Iran were in a position to buy these missiles also. It is rumored, too, that their radar can see America’s F-35 stealth jets.

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“Canadian government designates ‘Proud Boys’ as terrorist group”

Just a ridiculous, cheap stunt to gain some credit in progressive political circles.

Trudeau’s own record as a leader for human and democratic rights in the world is nonexistent. And genuine terror, on a vast and grisly scale, has simply been ignored by Justin Trudeau.

The Proud Boys may be distasteful and unwelcome, but they are not terrorists. I consider that an abuse of language, and, God knows, we already have far too much of that in our politics.

Trudeau has never objected to the terrors of Saudi Arabia, both at home and abroad – indeed, Trudeau has sold the good Prince billions of dollars’ worth of armored cars while the Prince’s armies slaughtered thousands of women and children in Yemen and oppressed minorities at home.

Trudeau never objected to America’s horrific treatment of Venezuela and its seven-times elected government – rather, he joined right in calling for an end to the government and welcoming the sleazy, unelected Juan Guido, as though Venezuela’s politics were any of Canada’s business.

Trudeau never raised his voice once against crude dirty tricks like America’s shutting down Venezuela’s electricity grid several times. You can just imagine the misery and difficulties that caused for millions of ordinary people.

Trudeau never objected to Israel’s shooting down unarmed protesting Palestinians in Gaza with soldiers ambushing them from behind a wall. A couple of hundred were killed and thousands wounded, some mangled for life.

Trudeau never objected to the American horrors imposed on Iran, a country that did nothing wrong and met its obligations under a treaty Trump decided to rip up. America assassinated a number of important people, put eighty million innocent people under siege, and contributed to death and disease with its sanctions in a pandemic.

Trudeau closely aligned himself with Trump’s foreign policies for four years, demonstrating no independence and no courage and certainly no conscience.

And who is the honorary godfather of the Proud Boys? The very same Trump whose policies Trudeau slavishly followed. He even destroyed Canada’s once excellent relations with China in doing so.

_____________________________

“Iran’s Islamic Revolution set the stage for a new global anti-imperialist struggle”

That is a very true and interesting observation.

Of course, it is part of why the US has maintained such vicious hostility towards Iran for over forty years.

John Chuckman

COMMENTS – RECENT BITS AND PIECES – VOLUME FIVE

At least so far as public statements go, there is little basis for optimism concerning the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA).

Both President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have said things which are not encouraging. Only today, Blinken said: “Iran is ‘weeks away’ from enough nuclear material for a bomb.”

Every physicist on the planet knows that statement is false. Iran has never enriched uranium beyond the 20-percent level, and nuclear fission requires enrichment to at least the 90-percent level, a far more difficult and costly goal to achieve.

And we even have Macron of France, one of Europe’s most ineffective and unethical leaders (just look at his smilingly brutal record of treating demonstrators in France or his ignorant remarks about Muslims), throwing in his own notions. France is, of course, a signatory to the original agreement, although its efforts to preserve the agreement since Trump’s lunacy in destroying it, are best described as contemptible.

Iran’s position is simple and reasonable. The US must first return to the status quo ante, that being the state of affairs which existed before Trump impulsively tore up an international treaty which had worked well for almost four years.

That means rejoining the agreement with no precondition and removing the illegal sanctions (and they are illegal) the US has imposed on Iran since withdrawing.

Once that situation is established, Iran is ready to discuss any matters of concern to the US.

It is a reasonable and legally-proper position, but for the US, “reasonable” and “legal” often have no meaning, a statement attested to by a great many of its actions in the world, from Syria and Iraq to Venezuela and Ukraine.

And the reason for that is Israel’s inordinate influence on an extremely corrupt American national politics where lobbies and political donations know no limits and gain the loyalties of both political parties. The state of political corruption is at least as bad in France, a fact which explains Macron’s motivation.

It was whisperings in the ear of Trump that caused him in the first place to rip up a valid treaty that every expert and responsible statesman agreed was working extremely well. Iran’s nuclear work was the most open in the world, subject to detailed examinations by experts.

Israel won’t say so, but what it really wants is for Iran to be virtually disarmed. A country of over eighty million should leave itself open to the abuses and threats of the United States and Israel, countries which have been continuously hostile to it for over forty years.

This absurd demand is made of a country which has started no war in its entire modern history by two other countries which have been almost continuously at war.

___________________________________

“Jared Kushner is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Abraham Accords and helping normalize relations between Israel and Arab nations.”

It is only a nomination, but it is such an outrageous nomination that it should have been pitched into the bin before anyone finished reading it.

The fact that it was not is another demonstration of how meaningless the Nobel Peace Prize has become.

Here is a man who spoke contemptuously of the Palestinians, all the millions of them, on a number of occasions, who never consulted the Palestinians about matters concerning their homes and futures, who essentially brokered deals with 13^th century tyrants to dump huge new quantities of American hi-tech weapons into their fragile region, and who effectively worked to guarantee the tyrants’ survival against the democratic impulses of their own populations – and he called it all peace. His efforts in fact have nothing to do with peace and certainly nothing to do with human rights and decency.

The prize is now a tool for advancing American geopolitical interests in various parts of the worlds. The winners include mass killers, terrorists, good old-fashioned tyrants, and seeming nonentities. Here or there, a reasonably worthy candidate wins just to help the prize keep some luster, but even the worthies are never the kind who would upset America’s power establishment.

Of course, we know from history that those who truly work for peace and human dignity often are people who very much disturb power establishments. It really cannot be otherwise. Examine the history of anti-war and anti-slavery and anti-oppression movements, and you will find plenty to disturb the privileged and powerful.

Such a prize in theory is a way to lend prestige and credibility and authority to the efforts of those who are not powerful. If the Nobel Peace Prize doesn’t do that, it pretty much means nothing. Instead, we have a prize to lend credibility to the privileged and powerful. I see the contemptible Donald Trump has again been nominated by his friends for imaginary achievements.

There are hundreds of truly worthy potential candidates – Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning would be outstanding examples – who will never be considered.

Behind the scenes, the US would simply not allow such awards to be made by Norway, just as it quietly guides the paths of many supposedly independent international organizations. The ability to do that is a real measure of raw power.

John Chuckman

COMMENTS – RECENT BITS AND PIECES – VOLUME FOUR

America’s recent activities in Taiwan have been among its most dangerous abroad, and I fear nothing is going to improve under Biden.

Taiwan is an historic part of China, and the US even solemnly agreed under Richard Nixon.

However, since Nixon’s day, the US has gone back on its word, not an unusual pattern as we’ve seen with many treaties and agreements. America’s word is worth very little beyond what advantage it can extract for the day.

China has shown great restraint in the face of American provocation, but its patience, while great, is not unlimited.

I think there can be little doubt that China will fight for Taiwan if pushed to it.

Is that really what the US wants?

A BRIEF LATER NOTE:

China’s Defense Ministry has just said: “Independence [for Taiwan] means war.” I don’t recall China ever speaking so bluntly on the matter.

_____________________________

The joint South Korean-American military exercises, regular events, have long been a very troubling thing for North Korea, as indeed they are meant to be.

When a hostile country holds large-scale military exercises on your border, it is always something about which you must be on very high alert because you never know when such an exercise will suddenly become a genuine attack. It is a ploy used by others in the past.

It would be comparatively easy for the US to end these exercises, and a signal of good will, but it refuses to do so.

And it is just the same for the American-organized large-scale military exercises with NATO in Europe on Russia’s doorstep. Russia must be on high alert when these take place.

Such situations greatly increase the possibilities of error among anxious troops. That is exactly what we saw in Iran with the accidental downing of a civilian aircraft when Iran was put under tremendous military pressure by the US after it wantonly assassinated General Soleimani, an Iranian national hero.

In all these instances and others, it is the US staging an elaborate and threatening war dance. Do you think that fact might just point to something about the highly aggressive nature of America?

North Korea, on its own, bothers or threatens no one, And the same for Russia. Indeed, today’s Russia is ready to cooperate and work with anyone on economic projects. From Washington’s point of view, that is likely its greatest crime.

And whenever we speak of North Korea, we cannot neglect America’s atrocities in the Korean War. Three years of carpet bombing which killed one-fifth of the entire population. A series of war crimes like the massacre of civilians at No Gun Ri. And documented efforts with biological weapons in North Korea and nearby China.

Those are the real reasons for North Korea’s sacrificial efforts at creating a credible nuclear defense.

When it comes right down to it, almost all the serious problems on the Korean Peninsula have American roots. Today’s reasonable and intelligent South Korean President, Moon Jae-in, isn’t even allowed to deal with North Korea as he was inclined to do.

———————————————-

If you look at what China has been doing with education, with elimination of poverty, with high-speed trains, with airports, with sophisticated ports, you will be amazed.

And of course, the greatest economic initiative of our era is China’s BRI, the New Silk Road. It will change the economic geography of the world while building good international relations and improving the lives of hundreds of millions.

America spends a sickening amount of money on trying to control the world. Some 800-1000 military bases all over the world, all to be constantly supplied. A vast bureaucracy for imposing and enforcing illegal sanctions on others. Threats. Blockades. Black operations. Assassinations. Coups. Hybrid wars. Bombing. Support for some of the world’s worst tyrants.

And all of that is costly, destructive, and economically unproductive.

China is totally focused on progress and growth. And it emphasizes cooperation, both at home and abroad. It is an unbeatable combination.

___________________________

Putin is a remarkable statesman, and he sets a very high standard for political discourse, as he displays here.

I can’t think of any of our Western leaders who speak in these truthful and philosophic terms. Some of his recorded talks, like this one, have almost the feeling of hearing an off-the-cuff discussion by an eminent professor at a gathering of students.

What we hear in the West are slogans and jingoism and whining and bald-faced lying. Constantly. There is no room for honesty or directness where purposes are devious. After all, it is not a national purpose of Russia to overthrow the US, only to defend itself from it.

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I believe Alexey Navalny is quite a dishonest man despite big efforts by the Western press and politicians to portray him as a heroic Russian dissident.

I say this for many reasons, and those who know my writing know that I am the kind of person who supports heroic dissidents, not one who opposes them.

First, there is the Navalny “poisoning” Affair. I have already written about it at length, and I just do not see how it can be anything but fraud contrived by Western security services. I regret that Angela Merkel dirtied her hands with it, but Ms. Merkel has dirtied her hands with a number of unpleasant things under pressure from the United States, including the horrors of Syria, Yemen, and Libya

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

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

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

Now, we have the Putin’s Palace matter. A video from Navalny tried to pass off images of an exotic, palatial home belonging to an unknown wealthy Russian as Putin’s personal secret property. Apparently, there were even images of its luxurious indoor swimming pool interspersed with crops of Putin swimming in some river or sea.

Now, additional up-to-date photos of this this “palace,” once grand, show that it is in a state of decay. Much of the inside is rotted out. The Navalny video images were either very old or were “photoshopped.”

What kind of man makes such deliberate misrepresentations? This is a man entitled to call Putin dishonest?

Furthermore, even if Putin ever did use such a palatial home as guest of its wealthy owner, there is absolutely nothing unusual about that when it comes to world leaders.

For example, Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, hardly regarded as a tyrant, in 2016 spent a luxurious vacation on the private island of the Aga Khan in the Bahamas.

You probably cannot name an American President who was not a guest at the palatial homes of some America’s wealthiest.

It’s just not much of an accusation. Even if it happened, and we have no reason to believe it did.

But claiming, as Navalny did, that Putin secretly owns the home, without any evidence, is extremely dishonest and an important measure of Navalny’s credibility.

I will just add, that the Western press, in an effort to build up his “hero” credentials, ignores many of Navalny’s less-appealing views. For example, he is a strong nationalist and is not sympathetic to immigrants.

I think the entire Navalny saga provides a fine case study of what we face in all of our efforts to learn about events in international affairs. America’s efforts to dominate leave no room for truth. And other countries we might think we can turn to for information only echo Washington.

___________________________________

“Suspicion of Chinese-Born Researchers Threatens US Innovation”

Just one more advantage to China, one owing to American superstition, prejudice, and ignorance.

By the way, China has roughly eight times the number of university students that America has enrolled in the sciences, math, and engineering.

They are a naturally gifted people in those fields.

I do think almost every detail you examine argues for the future belonging to China.

Their current investment in infrastructure is jaw-dropping, while the US throws money away on the Pentagon and security services.

China now has two-thirds of the entire world’s high-speed rail lines. It has a brand-new constellation of airports all over the country. Its subway lines are amazing. The bridges and huge tunnels through the mountains, for rail and vehicles, are like nothing found anywhere else. It has already installed 700,000 5G stations.

Its investment in education and elimination of poverty are beyond admirable.

The total investment in human and physical capital is unparalleled. It will support decades of strong growth.

Just look at the Wuhan experience. Once China understood what was happening, it put on a war-time effort and defeated the virus.

Now, it is the only major country showing growth. It will be the engine of growth in the world economy this year.

It has joined a number of important trade blocs which will give it new opportunities.

President Xi’s BRI project (the New Silk Road) is the great economic project of our era. It will change the economic geography of the world while establishing many excellent new relationships and improving the lives of hundreds of millions.

Meanwhile the US has established a massive new bureaucracy for imposing  and enforcing illegal sanctions, runs several destructive blockades, supports criminals like the Saudi Crown Prince and Israel’s Prime Minister, sells tens of billions of dollars in new weapons in the Middle East, works on an unbelievably-costly program to improve its nuclear arsenal, has troops in a number of countries who’ve said they don’t want them, and never stops lying about what it has done in Ukraine, Yemen, Venezuela, and other places.

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“US military refusal to pull out troops to be met with Iraqi nation’s resistance, MP warns”

America’s behavior in Iraq has been disgusting.

Nearly 18 years after invading the country, it still keeps troops there, against the local government’s wishes.

It uses all kinds of excuses, such as fighting ISIS, something it has never seriously done. Indeed, it uses ISIS as an excuse to occupy and bomb various places, including Syria. In fact, there are many reasons for believing ISIS and other terror organizations in the region have always been subsidized by America and some of its allies.

Iran’s General Soleimani is the Iranian hero who genuinely fought ISIS in Iraq, and America chose to murder him.

On top of everything else, America’s invasion of Iraq was illegal. It was just plain aggression under international law. In its respect for international law, the American invasion was indistinguishable from some of the assaults by 1930s’ Germany in Europe. Indeed, its Shock and Awe horror, given great publicity at the beginning of the invasion, was an adaptation of the Third Reich’s Blitzkrieg.

During the invasion, America destroyed Iraq’s power grid, leaving the people of an advanced Arab country to suffer for years, destroying opportunities to work for years.

To this day, much of it is not repaired. Reports have it that America demanded a share of Iraqi oil production to repair what it destroyed in an illegal war. Iraq has now made arrangements with China to do the work on favorable terms.

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“The New START extension is welcome, but it won’t deliver stability. The last thing the US wants is improved relations with Russia”

The headline says it all. It is a deadly truth.

And I am glad the author has said “the US” instead of “the West,” an expression often used to diffuse American responsibility for destructive behavior.

Countries like France and Britain and Germany are dragged along like children by the US, hurting even their own interests – billions in trade with Russia, for example – to please the international bully.

And despite the foul Trump’s departure, it remains an international bully, causing pain and suffering and deprivation in a great many places.

The world could become a better place almost overnight if the US just released everyone from its unjustified demands and threats.

World growth in the wake of COVID could be considerably stronger if only the US would mind its own business.

John Chuckman

COMMENTS – RECENT BITS AND PIECES FROM VARIOUS PLACES – VOLUME THREE

I view these poll results about China’s citizens being among the most willing to be inoculated as evidence of the spirit of cooperation among China’s people.

That very quality is a powerful one contributing to China’s economic success.

The contrast with the US could not be starker.

I think we all know from our personal lives how much more powerful and constructive cooperation is than belligerence and divisiveness.

When a young Amish or Mennonite farmer (minor, very old-fashioned rural Christian religious sects) in the American Midwest needs a barn, the whole community comes together and gets it built remarkably fast. The example has never had widespread appeal for Americans.

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“Trump impeachment trial has to happen: Biden”

Yes, it is necessary to demonstrate rejection of Trump’s horrible behavior.

And conviction, the best of all possible worlds, would prevent him from again entering politics, as he plans to do in 2024. He has already collected a war chest of the best part of a hundred million dollars towards that goal.

But politics always distort realities and often disappoint hopes.

Biden has been quoted as saying that the Democrats do not have the votes in the Senate for conviction. Yes, they have some Republican support, but not enough for the two-thirds vote required for conviction.

There are serious political costs for some Republicans who would vote to convict Trump. Remember, almost half the entire American electorate voted for this man despite his many failures and stupidities. It is actually hard to underestimate the judgment of large portions of the American electorate. Just look at Trump’s own political career as well as the careers of a good many well-known American politicians.

And Trump is working overtime to deflect any efforts to convict hum. That is what his threat of starting a third political party is about. Its only purpose would be to punish Republicans by dividing the vote on the Right. Trump has lots of money to work with and plenty of fanatical followers to help.

A divided vote on the Right would make any Republican victory impossible.

For those reasons, I think a conviction is unlikely, though I wish it were otherwise.

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Policies like “Buy American” always reflect a kind of desperation, and they go against sound economics.

They appeal to emotions and not to minds and will not contribute anything to American success.

Their only real purpose is as a war chant to hype-up Americans against people abroad.

From this and a few other acts, I think we can expect little from Joe Biden worth having except cancellation of some of Trump’s more lunatic diktats.

Biden has just been quoted as saying he thinks the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline – a large project to supply Europe with additional Russian natural gas – Is “a bad deal for Europe.”

That sounds like Trump without the grimace and abusive language.

Are hundreds of millions of Europeans incompetent to judge such important matters for themselves? Gas is needed for their economic future, and Russia, just next door, is where they can get it. It has massive reserves.

America in the past has pushed the unsatisfactory alternative of American liquified natural gas, a much more expensive option which would diminish European competitiveness and sell a commodity for which America has inadequate markets. That is certainly looking after your friends and allies.

It is America trying to control the planet.

—————————————————–

It is nonsense to write of a new significance in the street demonstrations in Russia. They represent the US using its now classic technique of street crowds to stir things up and promote instability. They’ve used the technique many times in many places.

Please, something like a thousand times this many people voted for Putin. Perspective is everything.

You can find discontent in any country, if you look for it.

The United States is bristling with it. A foreign power could easily exploit it, if it weren’t for the fact the United States maintains seventeen different national security agencies, including, of course, undercover members in any organization regarded as at all questionable. They used to say, jokingly, that America’s pathetic communist party was kept alive by FBI agents paying dues.

Navalny remains a fairly minor figure in Russia despite American efforts to blow him up into something important. And those efforts have been huge in the last couple of years (see my discussions on the Navalny “poisoning” case.  Also, the equally fraudulent Skripal “poisoning” case of a couple of years ago.).

The American Moscow embassy even rudely broke all diplomatic protocol by publishing the routes and times of unpermitted, anti-government demonstrations. Talk about interfering in another country’s internal affairs. Just shabby.

———————————————

Rejoining the Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA) is one of the most important things Biden can do.

However, it is difficult and complex despite the fact that the agreement ran smoothly for almost four years before the lunatic Trump suddenly tore it up and inflicted great harm on Iran for doing absolutely nothing wrong.

It is made difficult and complex because Israel has now high-handedly threatened several times to attack Iran if the US rejoins the agreement. Of course, Iran’s inevitable response to an Israeli attack would almost certainly drag the US into the conflict. Such are the disastrous possibilities that come from America’s being hogtied to an aggressive and unreasonable Israel.

Iran’s position in this matter is fair and reasonable: the US must rejoin the agreement without qualifications and end all illegal sanctions before the two nations can discuss anything.

The European signatories to the agreement could in theory be helpful here, but they have been of no help and almost spineless since Trump first destroyed the agreement, so I wouldn’t put much faith in them, the main European countries involved being just about as subservient to Israel’s unreasonable demands as the US itself.

I think it makes an interesting side note here the way one or two sick men can inflict so much damage in the world. For surely, Trump and Netanyahu are as close to lunatics running countries as we’ve had for a while. It is quite amazing how small a role reason and logic and dedication to law and justice often play in international affairs.

Just look at the genuine mass killer running Saudi Arabia, a barbaric horror terrorizing his own citizens and others, yet Trump and Netanyahu both love and protect him because he serves their interests.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN PRESSS T V

“US government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world”

Dr. King, a man I greatly admired, was, of course, right, although few Americans then would speak in such terms, days when intense, unquestioning patriotism was expected.

It was quite ordinary for even the most minor critic of American policy then to be threatened and shouted down with “Love it or leave it!” The “it” being their country, the United States.

Recall that Dr. King was speaking in the early days of the Vietnam War, the most massive war crime of the era.

America’s deliberately-induced war slaughtered 3 million Vietnamese and a million Cambodians and left a lush and beautiful land a hellhole of bomb craters and poisons, including 20 million gallons of Agent Orange, and millions of landmines and unexploded cluster bombs.

Many victims died hideous deaths, as being burned alive by napalm, a substance which clings to you like sticky jelly while it burns ferociously.

Rapes and torture were commonplace, and there were many atrocities, perhaps the greatest being Operation Phoenix which saw belly-crawling night-time intruders into villages cut the throats of 40,000 village leaders over time.

America’s Vietnam War is rightly called a holocaust.

Dr. King’s growth, from a leader in civil rights to becoming a devastating critic of American government, likely cost him his life.

The FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover loathed Dr. King. He even had a secret COINTELPRO program to discredit King and drive him to suicide with terrible, threatening letters. I am sure a number of other power establishment figures had similar attitudes. Power deeply resents being embarrassed by truth.

Many regard King’s death, with its great many unexplained details and contradictions, as likely the work of such establishment figures who began to see him as a risk to national security.

Why would such people hesitate when America had become comfortable with assassinating foreign leaders quite regularly?

Such is the reward for genuine support of human rights and freedom in America, a place where only power and money count, and “human rights” is a line used in Fourth of July speeches.

I remember the evening his death was announced on television, and I couldn’t stop weeping.

John Chuckman

COMMENTS – RECENT BITS AND PIECES FROM MANY PLACES – VOLUME TWO

Completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project with gas flowing from Russia to Europe, is a crucial test for Europe: follow your own best interests or continue to follow arbitrary American directions.

The pipeline has already been long-delayed by America’s countless destructive efforts, even though it is more than ninety-percent finished.

And Europe, under American pressure concerning non-existent Russian aggression in Ukraine after an American coup there, already has punished itself by maintaining sanctions against Russia costing its own industries many billions of dollars.

But what is at stake with the pipeline is more than just economics.

If Europe is to have a real future as an important state in the emerging multi-polar world, it must stand up for its own vital interests. And the pipeline is vital.

The United States in all things is always looking out for itself with little care for the welfare of friends or allies.

Friends and allies for America are tools to use and manipulate.

America’s ravings about the dangers of a peaceful and cooperative and business-oriented Russia have reached delusional levels, and they are hurting the economic interests of hundreds of millions of people.

Nord Stream 2 is as important to the industrial strength and security of Germany and the other European industrial states as secure supplies of iron and steel and flows of immigrants to replace a population which is no longer growing.

________________________________

The United States exercises no proper diplomacy or even ethics anymore.

Imagine an embassy publishing the times and routes for unpermitted demonstrations against the local government, as the US embassy did in Moscow? Talk about interfering in another country’s internal affairs.

The behavior is just shabby.

By the way, rallies without permits are illegal in just about every country, including the United States.

It is pure propaganda to make a big deal of the rallies in Russia being halted.

And importantly, as Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, has said, the number who voted for President Putin is immensely greater than the number taking part in the rallies.

We also have to keep in mind that America now uses, regularly, induced public demonstrations in many countries as a technique to promote instability.

____________________________

The South China Sea is 8000 miles from the coast of the US.

The huge volume of trade passing through there is largely trade with China, and China is protecting it from the possibility of a future US chokehold.

China permits all peaceful actors to carry on. Indeed, it supplies services in the area like search and rescue.

So why is the US sending warships there?

For the same reason it tries to starve the people of Iran and Venezuela and Cuba and Yemen and other places.

Control.

___________________________

A recent CBS News poll showed stunning results of how Americans today view “other people in America and domestic enemies” as the biggest threat to their way of life.

The division in America is not something Joe Biden’s rhetoric can possibly heal.

It is weak rhetoric and the division is deep.

The depth of the division does not reflect just disappointment in politics.

America’s terrible inequality in wealth serves to magnify all the country’s other divisions. The poverty you can see in many parts of America is shocking, and it is not that far from extreme, sickening wealth.

The privileged are just not willing to give up anything to help their fellow citizens, yet that is exactly what is required.

America’s resources and the attention of its leaders go to the global empire.

A trillion dollars a year is wasted on the Pentagon and the security services while America is the only advanced country in the world lacking a national healthcare system for ordinary people.

The country’s politics are for money, by money, and of money. Both parties are richly supported by the donations of the wealthy.

No matter which party you vote for, you get the Pentagon, the CIA, unlimited money in politics, wars, and empire.

America is in fact a plutocracy with a bit of democratic window-dressing, a plutocracy which maintains an empire, at great cost to its ordinary people, to enrich itself.

And it is starting to show serious cracks and strains at home.

Joe Biden puts on a pleasant face, and many welcome it after the foul and ignorant Trump, but Biden is in a position to change very little.

_______________________________

More advanced weapons dumped by the United States into a fragile Middle East.

But promises of advanced weapons were an important part of Trump’s “normalization” scheme.

He “bought” these states with a combination of threats, giving them what was not his to give (as the Western Sahara), and big sales of advanced weapons.

Some normalization. Some diplomacy. Some peace.

___________________________________

Very interesting developments, pointing to the multi-polar world which is emerging.

And everyone with eyes can see that China builds, everywhere, while the US threatens and intimidates and destroys.

Which path do you think leads to a better future?

There is not a sign of aggression from contemporary Russia. It has become everything we could have dreamed it would become during the Cold War. It cooperates, it is ready to do business with anyone, and it calls everyone partners.

I hope it will not be too long before Europeans see the pointlessness of NATO. The USSR and the Red Army are long gone.

America has tried to pump new life into NATO by dragging its allies into wars like the Neocon Wars in the Middle East.

It is shameful that Europe has gone along. By refusing to participate, Europe might have prevented some of the mindless destruction that saw millions killed and wounded, millions more reduced to hopeless refugees, and entire well-run societies, like Libya, destroyed, leaving chaos.

It does take time to adjust to a new world after 75 years of following the US and letting it occupy Europe, but I think the time is approaching.

An independent Europe offers one more important voice in a multi-polar world, instead of serving as an echo chamber for American rhetoric.

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Why would Trump want such a legacy [pardoning Assange]?

This man who pardons grifters, cronies, and genuine, convicted war criminals?

It is out of keeping with everything he has ever said or done.

He has his legacy, and it is a very shabby one.

____________________________

A ridiculous claim of genocide. Absolutely ridiculous if you know anything about the Uighurs.

The Uighur population has actually been on the increase in China, growing at a healthy rate.

The word “genocide” means an effort to kill all of a certain type of people.

Pompeo is a genuine idiot.

__________________________

“US presidential politics is ‘a big pointless tug of war’”

That is a good summary of the situation.

All the noise and drama help to keep America’s people believing they do have a democracy.

And the huge amounts of money spent by the two parties act as a barrier to entry of other parties.

You can’t sit down at the card table without a gigantic stake, a stake which can only come from extremely wealthy people and corporations.

The truth is America is a plutocracy with democratic window dressing, working to enrich itself through world empire.

The two parties differ only on domestic social program, program which mostly never get enacted because there aren’t enough funds left for them with a trillion dollars a year going to the Pentagon and security services.

No matter which party you vote for you get plutocracy, money-dominated politics, brutal empire, the Pentagon, and the security services

____________________________

I don’t see any point in “should haves.”

China, when it understood what was happening in Wuhan, acted heroically. It set world standards.

Just compare the disaster in the United States, the world’s richest country but one without leadership of any kind.

Even now, the US cannot manage to vaccinate at any decent rate. And more than 400,000 people have died. The record really could not be much worse.

The head of WHO is a good and competent man.

_______________________________

What a shame.

I lived for some years on a major Monarch butterfly migration path, from Canada to Mexico, at Port Dover, Ontario.

It was a delight to see the height of this migration.

_____________________________

If all leaders of the world’s major countries behaved the way Pompeo and Trump behave, our world would be in a constant state of tension and arguments and hostilities. There would be no cooperation, no fair dealing, and only the constant threat of war.

That truly is the legacy of these poisonous men.

______________________________________

All of Trump’s many pardons consist mainly of political intimates and grifter supporters with a generous sprinkling of genuine, convicted war criminals.

Not a single act of decency or heroism or humanity in the bunch.

Meanwhile, he executed 13 people in Federal prisons.

My God, what a shabby man.

____________________________

You can have a decent country or you can have an empire. You cannot have both.

An empire consists of a relatively small and privileged group telling hundreds of millions of others what to do.

An empire has no genuine respect for democracy or human rights or rule of law. Speeches don’t count. Actions do.

That is the United States today, and it does not matter who is President. Only the tone and relatively small matters change. Basic policy is fixed like a concrete foundation.

Republicans and Democrats are just two wings of an imperial party, differing only in proposed domestic policies that will never see the light of day because there is no money and no interest by those in power.

The Pentagon and security services burn through a trillion dollars a year trying to control the world.

_________________________

Moving more troops into Syria is hardly a promising start for Joe Biden.

I think it fair to say we are back to the same old imperial arrogance of the US, only minus the insulting, foul, and ignorant ranting of Trump.

And, yes, as one reader below suggests, why not use pinpoint missiles to destroy the pipeline America is using to steal Syrian oil?

You would have to strike it in a number of places because a single break in a pipeline is fairly soon repaired.

By the way, recently, Biden, in speaking about getting out COVID aid to Americans, said “This is America and no one should go hungry.”

Well, I guess the women and children of Yemen, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and other places just don’t count as people in Washington.

Because the United States has certainly caused many to be hungry and to do without medicines and other needs.

Such words by Biden sound nice to an American audience, make him appear decent and caring, but, given what America is doing in so many places, the words are hypocrisy.

_________________________________

Yes, indeed, but does he really have any choice in the matter?

American Presidents do not set the most basic foreign policy matters. The Dark State – Pentagon, CIA, State Department – does. It does so for continuity and to protect the immense investments of the Dark State and the empire.

Presidents are free to make adjustments only so they don’t appear hogtied, and even then only with heavy consultation.

The last President who thought being elected entitled him to set policy left the right side of his head on the streets of Dallas.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OFA COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN INVESTMENT WATCH

Hillary:” I would love to see his phone records to see if he was talking to Putin the day the insurgents invaded our Capitol”

That has to be the most idiotic thing Hillary Clinton has ever said, and she has said a great many idiotic things.

First, does she not know that the NSA and CIA and FBI would immediately be on to any such communication?

Is she really that naïve? No, of course not, she is simply a grotesque liar.

Second, I have studied and written about Putin fairly extensively.

He is a calm, pragmatic, and highly intelligent man, one with Russia’s best interests always at heart.

The last thing he would want to see is instability in the United States with all the immense dangers that would represent.

It is precisely American politicians like Hillary who are a threat to global stability.

And it is certainly not limited to Democrats. Trump was a genuine menace in world affairs, just with a different style and emphasis than people like Hillary. He contributed nothing positive.

The basic problem is America’s insistence on having a global empire and dominating other people with its Frankenstein military and security services. That really is the primary purpose of the Pentagon. America has fought no wars of defense since WWII, yet it has fought a great many wars. And its CIA has precipitated about sixty coups, many against democratic governments, and carried out many grisly tasks.

Note that Trump was just as big a supporter of this, His law-breaking giveaways in Palestine set a record for serving Israel’s interests, Israel in many ways being almost an unofficial member of America’s political establishment. His insane acts in Iran and Syria served the same purpose and nearly started a major war.

 It was all done to garner huge political donations from the Israel Lobby. Foreign policy is for sale in a country that puts no limits on money in politics or on the work of lobbies. If the political establishment is “the swamp” Trump childishly liked to harangue his followers about, then he ranks as one of its outstanding supporters, not as an opponent.

And what can you say about tearing up a stack of important nuclear treaties? Those were acts only serving an American Dark State keen on dominating the planet with new weapons and placements of weapons which those treaties had made impossible. Tearing up the treaties made no one, neither Americans nor others, safer. Quite the opposite, the risk of nuclear war has risen.

America is a plutocracy with democratic window dressing, a plutocracy which maintains a brutal empire, at great expense to its own ordinary people, to enrich itself. That makes it inherently predatory. That also makes its genuine regard for democratic and human values purely rhetorical. Empires, where one group of people dominates much larger groups of people and tells them what to do, and under threat, simply can never be places with decent concerns for humanity, no matter how many empty speeches are made.

This reality is also the source of many of America’s internal problems, the terrible division in wealth causing so much resentment and anger plus the lack of so many essential services such as national healthcare.

All the resources and all the government careerists’ attention go to the machinery of empire, not to helping ordinary Americans.

Joe Biden will change none of this, the same as Trump changed absolutely none of it. Indeed, Trump’s huge tax cuts for the rich and huge military budgets only made the situation worse.

As a footnote, a recent expert study showed that Trump’s erratic efforts with China actually cost the US economy 240,000 jobs at the time. Some help for ordinary Americans.

America has no leadership. None, in either political party. The politicians are all creatures of the existing system. And such a system leaves little room for the nurturing and growth of worthy new political talent. America is literally immobilized by the ugly realities of its political system and its policies abroad and at home, just as though it were immersed in a heavy jelly aspic.

All the happy noises over Joe Biden’s victory only reflect relief at being rid of the crudest and most ignorant man ever to be President. The change reinforces for millions of Americans the illusion that their democracy works. The people who really run America, those who own it, are largely indifferent, so long as their goals are pursued, as they very much will be.

America’s immense waste of its resources, in fact, only assists the economic rise of new competitor nations. China invests and builds, everywhere, while the United States threatens and destroys.

John Chuckman

EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY WILLIAM J ASTORE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

Americans Are All Prisoners of War

There were really no American POWs in Vietnam.

No legal state of war was ever declared.

South Vietnam was not even a legitimate country but an artificial enclave, hived off the empire of the departing French, run exclusively by dictators, and intended to serve as an American pied-a-terre in Southeast Asia.

Even its own captive people did not support it. That’s who the Viet Cong were, residents of South Vietnam fighting the dictators of South Vietnam. America’s war was a shabby effort from beginning to end.

John Kennedy’s refusal to support the charade any further likely contributed to his assassination, although his attitudes towards Cuba and Russia were the major contributing factors.

That is the nature of the “freedom” and “democracy” LBJ’s war was all about. When asked once by a reporter in the White House why America was in Vietnam, Johnson, an extremely crude man, unzipped his pants and pulled out his ample penis. “That’s why,” he said.

The men captured by North Vietnam could justifiably be classed as war criminals, but the North chose not to do so and to keep them as bargaining chips. They knew, for example, that John McCain’s father was one of America’s most senior Admirals.

Good old John McCain, when he was shot down, was bombing a civilian facility in Hanoi. Some war hero.

I think America made a great deal of the “POWs” because the war was so shameful, so degrading, and so unsuccessful, they desperately wanted something to feel good about.

Project Phoenix cutting the throats of forty thousand village leaders in the nights. Marines burning down villagers’ homes. Napalm. Early cluster bombs. Agent Orange. Countless land mines. B-52 carpet-bombing. Massacres of civilians. Throwing prisoners who refused to talk out of helicopters. Countless rapes. Three million killed in Vietnam and another million in Cambodia.

If Americans had learned the true, terrible lessons that Vietnam offered, the history of the last half century might have been very different, but they did not.

America’s establishment was able to carry right on with its brutal imperial ways with just a few adjustments, like getting rid of the draft and creating a well-paid mercenary army. And the chances of adverse stories getting out in future were smothered by “embedding” the press with the military.

A further new element would be added in the 21^st century wars by using in many cases recruited mercenaries, both corporate American ones and rabble recruited and armed from many places who passed as jihadi types but somehow always attacked what America wanted attacked and not what true jihadis would go after.

The horrors of America’s bloody march through the Middle East in the Neocon Wars of the last two decades were nearly as great as those of Vietnam, but almost no opposition at home arose. Americans were happy to go on with football and social networking while several million died, millions more were wounded, and tens of millions were reduced to desperate refugees.

Remnants of the Neocon Wars rage on still. American troops remain in parts of Syria and Iraq where they are not wanted. America’s ugly, complex proxy war in Syria continues to scar a beautiful land and prevent its healing. America and its partner, the monstrous Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, continue slaughtering civilians in Yemen. Libya, once an admirably-run and peaceful country, remains a smoldering ruin, overrun with armed gangs. America’s vicious, relentless efforts against Iran resemble a special kind of brutal, undeclared war. And America just flaunts international law by taking property from Syria and giving away the property of others in Palestine.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JOE LAURIA IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

Trump Impeached Amid Efforts to Silence Him

Trump has been impeached again and this time the Republican-controlled Senate may convict to keep him from running in 2024, as Democrat-aligned big tech moves to shut him up

I’m not sure any of the details and legalities of the Capitol gate-crashing event can ever be satisfactorily sorted. It was chaos, and it is hard to find patterns in chaos.

But in the aftermath, two things are certain.

America is a badly divided nation, one divided along some very dangerous lines.

And American politics, always under the withering influence of big money, are now also grown poisonous.

I see no easy fixes.

Joe Biden is not an inspired leader, and his political party is just about as dedicated to the status quo as the Republicans are.

At the same time, the country continues to waste a fortune on its military and security service ventures around the world.

While China builds, everywhere, America threatens and sanctions and blockades and assassinates and destroys in many places. Which approach do you think builds a healthy, long-term future?

America’s attitudes are virtually all bristling with various hostilities, and it can’t even summon the strength of cooperation and helpfulness in fighting a pandemic.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN GLOBAL TIMES

TCM [Traditional Chinese Medicine] as a cause of COVID-19? Viruses don’t talk politics: experts

Local British media reports interpreted Boris Johnson’s comments as criticism of China’s use of traditional medicine and an implication that the practice of harvesting pangolin scales is connected to the coronavirus, even though Johnson never mentioned China or Chinese traditional medicine (TCM) in his speech.

All viral diseases arise somewhere. They do so spontaneously with changed environmental conditions from time to time.

No one, as I recall, ever blamed any country for the rise of AIDS/HIV.

No one blamed any country for Hepatitis.

Nor was anyone blamed for Polio.

But for some mysterious reason, the rise of COVID is attributed to China, its first major victim.

And this blame is despite researchers now having found the disease existed in parts of Europe and other places in November, 2019, previous to the outbreak in Wuhan.

Does this blaming reflect prejudice? Does it reflect the spite and envy of those engaged in a new hybrid economic warfare against China?

Remember the source: the most discredited, foul-mouthed leader on the planet, Donald Trump, although his obscene theme has been more moderately echoed by a couple of other leaders seeking his favor.

That is not how we fight a disease or do anything else worthwhile.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY RAY McGOVERN IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

Can Burns Change the CIA?

The hope is that diplomat William Burns, tapped for CIA director by Joe Biden, will be able to change the culture at Langley and not be subsumed by it.

Change the CIA?

Sorry, but that does seem a bit silly.

Like speaking of changing Dracula’s lifestyle.

The CIA does what it was designed and long-practiced to do.

Pure intelligence, from the beginning, was only a part of its mission. One side of the house, so to speak.

Dark operations and killing are the practices of more than 70 years.

At least sixty coups, including against a number of democratic states the US doesn’t happen to like. Countless dirty tricks, like Operation Phoenix in Vietnam with about forty thousand village leaders’ throats cut in the night. Many assassinations, including, almost certainly, an American President, John Kennedy. Hideous practices abroad do come home to roost as they become accepted as normal.

Today it even runs an industrial-scale extrajudicial killing operation. Thousands of legally innocent people, incinerated just by having their names put on a list. A great many bystanders, too. Absolutely no different than the practices of the old Argentine military junta in “disappearing” people by the thousands.

The disgusting practice in Argentina, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, of kidnaping citizens off the streets, drugging them, and tossing them, bound-up, from planes over the ocean, with relatives left to wonder and grieve over what happened to them, was well known to the CIA and approved of..

A good and just and free society just would not have a CIA. Its very existence is an indictment.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DAVID R HOFFMAN IN PRAVDA

The folly of loyalty in Trump’s America

The folly of loyalty in Trump’s America?

Rather, the folly of all traditional ethical and moral values.

Honesty and integrity of every description have been dissolved away in the acid reality of contemporary America.

And it has little to do with Trump. He is a product of the same forces at work.

The country is run by money, and it is about money. By, for, and of money.  Its government is the product of big money. So is its foreign policy. So even are many aspects of its universities and many other institutions.

America is a plutocracy with window-dressing running an empire to enrich itself.

I see no room for values like keeping your word or not stealing or not lying. Even killing is an everyday business for America’s police, military, and security agencies.

I am a strong believer in the validity of Lord Acton’s Dictum, and America is best described as having arrived at the second part of its statement a long time ago.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY LARRY ROMANOFF IN PRAVDA 

“The Death of Osama bin Laden”

https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/145497-bin_laden_death/

The author has succeeded in putting the death of Osama just where it belongs, along with such other official tales as the assassination of John Kennedy and the events of 9/11, the last two being astoundingly important events which the general public does not question despite dozens of important details supplied and contradictions identified by some capable and scrupulous independent investigators.

In such matters, contradictions no longer even seem to matter for a great many Americans. They have been so immersed in the official state religion of America’s being exceptional and dedicated to worthy purposes.

Of course, it is not possible to have a global empire, as America does, without generating a huge number of lies to cover up what is really taking place. That fact is just one of a number of important ones explaining the moral and ethical rot of a country like the United States in its post-WWll activity, activity which pretty much boils down to telling hundreds of millions of other people how to run their affairs.

Empire and democracy and concern for the rule of law and human rights are inherently incompatible, yet surprisingly few Americans appreciate the fact. It is a great irony of contemporary American society that even many people on the Trump Right, including Trump himself, believe they are fighting the dark forces of the state when they are actually enthusiastic supporters of the whole massive military-security complex and its work of empire to benefit the plutocrats who genuinely run America.

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”    

Attributed to former CIA Director William Casey

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS

“Joe Biden has announced plans to roll out new domestic terrorism laws in the wake of the Capitol Hill riot.”

“He said he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism, and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight.”

Just what the world needs, more anti-terrorism legislation. Thanks, Joe Biden, for making that your first priority.

But, no matter what, we may be sure that in America free speech remains securely in control.

After all, didn’t the Supreme Court tell us that money is free speech?

I just wonder how long it will be before the extrajudicial killing-by-drone industry gets extended into the domestic market?

It would be perfect for all those groups living in hard-to-reach places or police no-go areas.

In the past, the CIA’s work with other methods of control, such as assassination of leaders, gradually was adapted to domestic needs, starting around 1960.

John Chuckman

COMMENTS – RECENT BITS AND PIECES FROM VARIOUS PUBLICATIONS

The Neocons, an extreme and influential American political faction, have been a deadlier disease even than COVID.

They are responsible for millions of deaths and injuries through the Middle East and tens of millions of refugees.  Plus, several well-running societies being turned into chaos.

They are strongly anti-Russian, too, because they view Russia as an obstacle to America’s having its way in the world, their fundamental belief being America should use its great military strength to get its way.

Victoria Nuland, to receive a Biden appointment, is an especially nasty representative of the political faction.

Even the classy and gracious Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, once was photographed avoiding shaking her hand.

___________________________________

Virtually the day before this announcement by American security services, again suggesting Russia as a source, independent experts announced that the big “Solar Winds” hack very much did originate in the United States.

Of course, that independent announcement received little corporate press in the US or Europe.

I would suggest this security-agency announcement, with all its heavy press coverage, was motivated by the independent finding.

_________________________________

If you study American history in some detail – as I have over years – you will find remarkably little concern for human rights inside the country and even less outside the country.

When you read or hear the phrase “human rights” coming from official American sources, it should be a red flag that something else is going on.

That country was founded in slavery, gained its territory by the mass slaughter of Aboriginals, endured countless killings and abuses even after slaves were technically free, a place where lynching was a way of life into the 1930s, had scores of race riots and a number of massacres of Blacks, has police today who kill an average of  three citizens every day, has prisons where hundreds disappear every year, has the world’s largest prison population, has some of the world’s most brutal prisons,  displayed sizable sympathies for Hitler before WWII with Hitler even keeping a photo of Henry Ford over his desk, had a longstanding set of prejudices against “yellow people,” passed laws against Chinese immigration, sent Japanese-Americans to prison camps during WWII while stealing their property, and has created wars and destruction almost non-stop since WWIl.

Words written on a piece of parchment which is kept as a museum display have meant remarkably little.

_________________________________

What on earth are Canadian Forces wasting time and resources in Latvia?

But, of course, I forgot, we’re faithfully following American foreign policy.

If Russia really meant to be aggressive in the Baltics, these forces and the Baltic countries would be over run in days. But Russia has no such intention.

Please, modern Russia has attacked no one. It threatens no one. It offers to cooperate with anyone.

The United States, by contrast, has a dozen countries under various forms of threat, and it has been at war, almost continuously, since WWIl.

It has ripped up a number of important and hard-won nuclear treaties recently despite Russia’s pleas not to do so.

__________________________

‘This is a time for extreme courage,’ says – “incites” might be a better word – the man who never once has displayed any.

He leaves office in a suitably ridiculous fashion and having achieved virtually nothing but insulting and hurting a lot of people.

____________________________

What a memorable and fitting exit for the worst President in history.

An absurd man receives an absurd send-off.

______________________________

Kim Jong-un may well be right.

Trump’s blundering efforts in North Korea, which produced zero results, gave the leadership more exposure in the world press than it has ever had.

Kim, I think, has made a mildly favorable impression on many.

He is always willing to talk. He has a sense of humor. He is dedicated to the purposes of his country.

Meanwhile, the country’s weapons programs have made steady progress.

__________________________________

Yes, indeed.

Jimmy Carter – former President and nuclear engineer, a true expert on the topic – told us some years ago that Israel had about 90 nuclear warheads plus fissile material for about 60 more.

We also saw in the Sunday Times actual photos of the Israeli bomb-making labs and work places smuggled out by Israeli nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu. He was later captured and sent to prison.

_______________________________

This absurd clown, this obscene bully, Trump, leaves office, after days of inflammatory language, with his “Proud Boys” storming the United States Capitol Building, with shooting inside, with five people dead, with both Houses of Congress first locked-down and then evacuated by emergency means. You just could not imagine a more fitting end to a truly shabby political career.

________________________________

China’s use of large UAVs for weather modification is simply ingenious. The vehicles can linger in the skies over a region for very long periods.

And how much more creative than the way the United States uses its fleet of comparable UAVs – for its day-in, day-out systematic extrajudicial killings with Hellfire missiles, killing thousands of people in a number of countries without trial or even legal charges and often killing bystanders.

__________________________________

This man offers a perfect example of just how confused America’s Right Wing is.

He fights and opposes what he regards as government interference in his own election, but then he completely buys into the lies of that same government concerning Venezuela.

It doesn’t even occur to him that the government of Venezuela – including the current President’s late predecessor – was elected seven times in clean elections with international observers.

It is the very government he opposes that says otherwise, including the absurd man he supports as President in the US.

https://www.rt.com/news/511776-maga-viking-venezuela-freedom/

________________________________

“Traitor” is a very strong word, and one with a specific meaning. Lately, a number of those on America’s Extreme Right have taken to recklessly abusing it, conflating personal loyalty to Trump with loyalty to their country.

A person guilty of treason is known as a traitor. The US Constitution gives a very specific definition of what treason is in its “treason clause”.

If you read it, I think you will find breaking with a political associate is not part of the definition.

It is this kind of harsh, thoughtless language which drives the violence of American politics.

Anyone who genuinely cared about his nation would not use it. It is destructive of society.

Trump uses such language, but Trump, always and everywhere, cares only about himself, as he has demonstrated countless times.

_______________________________

Iran has been treated very unfairly in this.

The destruction of Iran Air Flight 655 by Americans over Iranian territory in 1988 and killing 290 people, saw no punishment for any of the ship’s crew.

Indeed, the captain of the American warship responsible was awarded a medal.

No apology was ever given. Eventually, long afterward, some compensation was awarded quietly.

No one who understands the circumstances of the recent case, the accidental downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 in Iran, can regard Iran as a truly bad actor.

Iran was under immense pressure from the US after the US murdered General Soleimani, a national hero for his fight against terror. It murdered a number of others in Iraq too over a short period.

People make mistakes when terrorized, as the US terrorized Iran with threats from fighters, bombers, cruise missiles, and an armada of ships.

Iran has apologized and has now offered compensation. Remember, this is not a rich country, and the US has had it under severe illegal sanctions for years. It cannot even buy medicines thanks to Trump.

The government of the United States surely has the major responsibility for the crash.

________________________________

China’s “Global Times” online today offers an article with an excellent selection of contrasting quotes and photos to make a powerful point about the attitudes of American leaders.

But, truly, how can you not exude hypocrisy when you run a brutal global empire while claiming to be a democracy concerned with human rights?

Contemporary America is, in fact, a plutocracy with democratic window-dressing running an empire to enrich itself.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202101/1212080.shtml

____________________________

I have not watched the video. I never watch such videos.

Of course, it was wrong to kill the woman. Those responsible should be charged.

But, sadly, that is what so many American police do regularly, shoot people. They kill an average of three citizens each day with many more injured.

Indicative of just how intense this whole post-election mania has been, it is reliably reported that the woman’s last TWEET was, “Nothing will stop us.”

That is the kind of 1930s street-fighting politics Trump has encouraged, and he takes no responsibility at all for what he has done. He resembles a man who walked through a tinder-dry forest, tossing matches as he went, afterwards recognizing no connection with the ensuing wildfires.

He is reliably reported to have asked his staff to research his granting himself a pardon before he leaves office – a terrible precedent because he faces all kinds of legal action – civil, criminal, and taxes – once he leaves office. I view the power of granting pardons as just one of many flaws in the American Constitution. It has encouraged almost nothing but a long record of corruption and shame by both parties. The Justice Department has said in the past this is not possible because you cannot be both judge and defendant, but who knows what scheme Trump might come up with?

By the way, if you glance at some Extreme Right news sources online, you’ll see the idea promoted that they were provocateurs from the Left who assaulted the Capitol Building. A good measure of just how twisted American politics have become.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN GLOBAL TIMES

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only backward thinking avoids engaging with China.

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

_____________

Response to an unthinking comment from Australia:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTE

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

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

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

It builds healthy relationships and partnerships across the globe.

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

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

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PATRICE GREANVILLE IN RUSSIA INSIDER 

‘Let’s Be Honest – Stalin Was Less of a Criminal Than Churchill, Truman, and LBJ’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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