Category: President Biden

Republicans/Democrats — Two Different Shades of the Same Anti-Democratic, Corporate Masters

In anticipation of tomorrow’s national elections, Chris Hedges’ most recent post is appropriately titled “Destroyers of Democracy.”

If you know anything about Hedges, then you already have guessed that his critique of our electoral system and the political options given to us includes a condemnation of both political parties.

Democrats and the Republicans are equally corrupt.

Neither party has the needs or the interests of working people on their lists of political, social priorities.

Though their styles are different, both parties are equally authoritarian. Biden’s recent speech about the preservation of American democracy was nothing more than a blatant attempt at fear-mongering undecided voters into casting their ballots for the do-nothing shills that march in lock-step behind Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer.

Don’t fall for it.

Though I will vote tomorrow, I have no expectation that my vote — nor your vote, nor anyone else’s who doesn’t make enough money to be listed among the Fortune 500 — will make any difference in the state of my country or its future.

Am I too gloomy? No. I am old, experienced and thus realistic.

Thankfully, I know that my true citizenship is in the kingdom of God. I know that God’s kingdom will one day make all things right, as they should be.

I eagerly anticipate that day and pray for its speedy arrival. With all the saints from the past, all Christians can pray, “Come Lord Jesus. Come!”

In the meantime, I do the best I can to live out a kingdom lifestyle pleasing to my Lord; to explain Jesus’ kingdom values to others; to work, agitate, and yes to vote in ways that may help to spread the benefits of Jesus’ kingdom values to others.

But I place no hope in any political party or its candidates.

I have no expectations that any candidate will remain true to his/her campaign promises — unless, of course, those promises offer more money, influence and power to the wealthy.

I am too old to naively imagine that our current, corrupt political system will ever change for the better — though I am certain it will continue to deteriorate and become worse.

Don’t listen to the mindless muttering of the feckless false prophets, the modern-day soothsayers of evangelical idolatry, men and women who have sold their souls to the godless architects of Republican political power.

You know their names…

These blind guides have betrayed the kingdom of God in exchange for a lukewarm bowl of tasteless political porridge.

Thus they have already earned their only reward:  a millisecond of Twitter fame that will one day condemn them as wasteful servants who failed to prepare for eternity.

Their anti-Christ foolishness seems to know no bounds while they feverishly expand the selfish boundaries of their own ministry domains filled to the brim with thoughtless flocks of misguided followers.

No. Instead, do this: Memorize the Sermon on the Mount.

Give great thought to how your political commitments ought to be molded by Jesus’ own ethical priorities and instructions.

Plant yourself on the side of the poor and the needy.

Speak up for the voiceless. Labor for those who lack the resources needed to improve their lives by themselves. Give yourself away to those who have nothing left to give back to you.

Remember that money is not speech, its power.

Remember that power ALWAYS corrupts.

Remember that every government lies.

All politicians, but especially winning politicians, are compromised by their largest donors.

No interest is as powerful as self-interest.

In this world, money will always rule the roost.

Remember the social commentary of Thucydides who lamented the fact that “The rich always do as they choose, while the poor suffer as they must.”

Then decide to spend your life working to overturn the status quo, for the rules of wealth and power are as true today as they were in the days of Thucydides.

Obediently following hard after Jesus is the only way to get this right.

Remember, the ends never justify the means. In fact, corrupted means only lead to corrupted ends. Sure, compromise may win you a seat at the table, but you’ll find yourself dining with the devil rather than serving with Jesus.

Our only hope is found in the Jesus prayer: Father in heaven, cause your kingdom to come and your will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen

And now for an excerpt from Chris Hedges’ prophetic article:

With the U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday, Biden and other establishment politicians hope to paper over the rot and pain of the system they created with the same decorum they used to sell the country the con of neoliberalism.

The bipartisan project of dismantling U.S. democracy, which took place over the last few decades on behalf of corporations and the rich, has left only the outward shell of democracy.

The courts, legislative bodies, the executive branch and the media, including public broadcasting, are captive to corporate power. There is no institution left that can be considered authentically democratic. The corporate coup d’état is over. They won. Americans lost.

The wreckage of this neoliberal project is appalling: endless and futile wars to enrich a military-industrial-complex that bleeds the U.S. Treasury of half of all discretionary spending; deindustrialization that has turned U.S. cities into decayed ruins; the slashing and privatization of social programs, including education, utility services and health care — which saw over one million Americans account for one-fifth of global deaths from Covid, although the U.S. has 4 percent of the world’s population; draconian forms of social control embodied in militarized police, functioning as lethal armies of occupation in poor urban areas; the largest prison system in the world; a virtual tax boycott by the richest individuals and corporations; money-saturated elections that perpetuate our system of legalized bribery; and the most intrusive state surveillance of the citizenry in U.S. history. . .

. . . Biden, morally vacuous and of limited intelligence, is responsible for more suffering and death at home and abroad than Donald Trump. But the victims in the U.S. Punch-and-Judy media shows are rendered invisible. And that is why the victims despise the whole superstructure and want to tear it down.

These establishment politicians and their appointed  judges promulgated laws that permitted the top 1 percent to loot $54 trillion from the bottom 90 percent, from 1975 to 2022, at a rate of $2.5 trillion a year, according to a study by the RAND corporation. 

The fertile ground of our political, economic, cultural and social wreckage spawned an array of neo-fascists, con artists, racists, criminals, charlatans, conspiracy theorists, right-wing militias and demagogues that will soon take power. . .

To read the entire essay, click here.

Imperialist Biden Reverses Trump’s Policy on Somalia

Did you know that we have US troops fighting and dying in the African country of Somalia? Well, we do.

President Trump had begun the process of withdrawing those troops and

US Marines in Mogadishu, Somalia

bringing them home. One of his foreign policy decisions that I supported.

But president Biden has reversed that decision and is redeploying US troops to the African country, just as a good imperialist country should. And the US is nothing if not an imperialistic beast with an endless appetite for dominating and interfering in other nations whenever, wherever we choose.

Below is an article from the GrayZone by T. J. Coles. It is titled “A History of Naked Imperialism Continues as Biden Approves Somalia Redeployment.”

Below is an excerpt:

Biden has reversed Donald Trump’s withdrawal of US forces from Somalia and will redeploy Special Operations Forces. It is just the latest move in a long history of destructive US-UK meddling in the Horn of Africa.

Almost as soon as the administration of President Joseph Biden announced a redeployment of US Special Operations Forces to Somalia on May 16, the Western media began to spin the intervention.

As the BBC framed it, Biden’s deployment would “support the fight against militant group al-Shabab” (sic). The intervention coincides with the re-election of former Somalian President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who governed between 2012 and ‘17.

Similarly, the New York Times (NYT) reported that “Biden has approved a Pentagon request for standing authority to target about a dozen suspected leaders of Al Shabab, the Somali terrorist group that is affiliated with Al Qaeda.”

But are these motives true? Does Washington really want merely to defeat al-Shabab? Is al-Shabab actually linked to al-Qaeda and, if so, to what degree? As usual, the mainstream state-corporate media reportage is missing context and reference to international law.

As we shall see, the context behind the US redeployment is naked imperialism using counterterrorism as the latest in a long line of excuses to interfere in the politics of the strategically-significant country on the Horn of Africa. In terms of international law, signatories of the UN Charter have legal responsibilities to gain authorization from the Security Council before launching military operations –– something the Biden administration and its predecessors have never done in Somalia, or anywhere else, for that matter.

Click here to read the entire piece.

“The United States and Europe are Lost as Far as the Palestinians are Concerned”

It is mind-numbingly absurd to hear the president of the United States seriously referring to “the two state solution” as the best hope for the Palestinian people.

The supposed “two state solution” died years ago, asphyxiated beneath the weight of 700,000 illegal Jewish settlers occupying hundreds of illegal,  Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank; buried beneath the unending

U.S. President Joe Biden signs the visitors book as Israeli President Isaac Herzog looks on at his residence in Jerusalem, July 14, 2022. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Israeli land grabs, government annexations of “military zones,” illegal home demolitions, unremitting crop destruction, orchards butchered, olive trees and vineyards uprooted, not to mention the brutal, suffocating military occupation now entering its 75th year.

As Israeli journalist Gideon Levy explains, Biden’s appeal to the future prospects of a two-state solution, one for Israel and one for Palestinians, expresses America’s surrender to Israel’s stone-cold hard-heartedness, inflexibility, and Zionism’s blinding belief in Jewish, ethnic entitlement.

Posing as a neutral mediator, while never — no never — acting as anything of the sort, the US has encouraged decades of false hope and wasted effort in supposed “Peace Talks” between Israel and the Palestinian leadership.

Granted, Yasser Arafat was a foolish negotiator — but never the intransigent deceiver that Israel and the USA always made him out to be — and the PLO made plenty of irresponsible mistakes while betraying their own people.

But as Israel’s greatest political supporter, financier, and supplier of military hardware and technology, the US never intended to assist the Palestinians in their efforts to escape Israeli’s colonial domination.

For instance, when dealing with the Likud negotiators under Begin and Netanyahu, the US never — never — challenged the Likud party platform proclaiming that Israel would never permit the creation of a Palestinian state.

If that’s not reprehensible collusion, I don’t know what is.

After all, what are 4.5 million Palestinian refugees when compared to two colonial, nuclear armed super-powers pledged to watch each other’s backs? The strategic interests of neither America nor Israel has ever included the moral imperative of justice for oppressed, brown-skinned, Arab human beings.

Why has anyone ever been foolish enough to imagine otherwise?

Mr. Levy’s latest article in Haaretz newspaper is titled “Biden Signs the Palestinians’ Death Certificate.”

Read Levy’s analysis below (all emphasis mine):

At Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem, of all places, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a death certificate. The two-state solution died a long time ago, and now so has the Palestinians’ strategic choice of relying on the West in their struggle for their national rights.

This hope drew its last breath at Augusta Victoria. In his speech Biden mused at great length about his and his family’s time in the hospital; he remembered the intensive care ward. A flat line on the monitor meant death, he learned there. About an hour later, in Bethlehem, the monitor flatlined. The path the Palestinians embarked on 50 years ago has come to an end. They have reached a dead end.
At the beginning of the ‘70s, a new star appeared in the political skies: the cardiologist Issam Sartawi, a refugee from Acre, a student in Iraq, an exile in Paris and an architect of the plane hijackings. He underwent a complete change. He became the Palestinians’ trailblazer to the West’s heart; until then they had relied on nonaligned countries. Sartawi led the Palestinians to Bonn, Vienna, Paris and Stockholm instead of Moscow, Jakarta, Delhi and Kuala Lumpur.

This was depicted as an excellent choice. The protégé and even the darling of Western Europe’s social democratic stars of those days – Willy Brandt, Bruno Kreisky, Olof Palme and François Mitterrand – continued on to the Israelis’ hearts. Sartawi began with meetings with representatives of the Israeli left. Yasser Arafat enthusiastically joined the path his adviser had blazed. It seemed much more promising than winning support from Karachi.

Fifty years later this road has reached its end, with the Palestinians bleeding on the ground. An American president only gives them a few hours – on a visit that gives new meaning to the terms doing the minimum and lip service. So the time has come to awaken from the dream that Europe and America will ever do something for the Palestinians that won’t be to the satisfaction of their unassailable cherished one, Israel.

It’s a president who doesn’t bother to correctly pronounce the name of Shireen Abu Akleh, [Biden mispronounced her name as Abu Al-Qaeda!] the journalist killed almost certainly by Israel, becoming a national and international symbol. Jamal Khashoggi he knows how to pronounce. The Palestinians no longer have anything to look for in this arena. When Biden quoted from a poem that says how “hope and history rhyme” and threw them $100 million for Augusta Victoria, it was clear that it’s lost with the United States.

With an American president who promises them a two-state solution, but “not in the near term,” you get to the end of the story. You feel like asking Biden: “What will happen ‘not in the long term’ that will achieve this solution? Will the Israelis decide on their own? Will the settlers return on their own? When there are a million of them instead of 700,000, will that satisfy them?

Will America ever think differently? Why should this happen? With the laws against BDS and the new and distorted definitions of antisemitism, the United States and Europe are lost as far as the Palestinians are concerned. The battle has been decided, Israel has all but beaten them, and their fate might be the same as that of the indigenous peoples in the United States.

It’s enough to look at the picture of the meeting in Bethlehem: Twelve grim Palestinian men in ties around the two leaders in a group photo of despair. It’s enough to recall Biden’s words in 1986 to the secretary of state at the time, George Shultz: “I hate to hear an administration … refusing to act on a morally important point. … I’m ashamed that this country puts out a policy like this, that says nothing, nothing.”

Biden was referring to U.S. policy on the previous apartheid country, South Africa. Amazingly similar remarks can be hurled now at Biden because of his approach to the second apartheid country. But there’s no Biden to hurl them.

The US Has Thrown Ukraine Under the Russian Bus, Just as It Did to Afghanistan

The Carter administration was very candid about its intentions for the people of Afghanistan in 1979: Draw the Soviet Union into its own Vietnam-like quagmire in order to drain its resources just as the war in Indo-China had drained America.

During a candid interview with a French newspaper in 1998, president Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski explained the American strategy (emphasis mine):

Brzezinski revealed the truth to the French paper Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998: “According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on Dec. 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was on July 3, 1979, that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”

Asked by the interviewer if he now regretted anything, Brzezinski replied, “Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?” (Le Nouvel Observateur, Jan. 15-21, 1998)

Caitlin Johnstone explains how and why current US actions suggest that the Biden administration has been manipulating Ukraine in the same ways the US previously manipulated Afghanistan.

Her article is entitled “More Evidence that the US is Trying to Prolong this War.” I have excerpted the article below. You can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above (all emphasis in mine):

The Washington Post has a new article out bemoaning the fact that Russian military commanders are declining calls from the Pentagon to discuss their operations in Ukraine (I dunno guys, might have something to do with the fact that the US is sharing extensive military intelligence on exactly those operations directly with the Ukrainian government). Tucked all the way down in the eighteenth paragraph of the article, we find a much more interesting revelation: that Washington’s top diplomat has made no attempt to contact his counterpart in Moscow since the war began on the 24th of February.

“Secretary of State Antony Blinken has not attempted any conversations with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, since the start of the conflict, according to U.S. officials,” The Washington Post reports.

So the US government is continuing its policy of refusing to attempt any high-level diplomatic resolutions to this war despite its public hand-wringing about the horrific violence that’s being inflicted upon the people of Ukraine. This revelation fits nicely with a recent report by Bloomberg’s Niall Ferguson that sources in the US and UK governments have told him the real goal of western powers in this conflict is not to negotiate peace or end the war quickly, but to prolong it in order “bleed Putin” and achieve regime change in Moscow.

Building on an earlier report from The New York Times that the Biden administration “seeks to help Ukraine lock Russia in a quagmire,” Ferguson writes that he has reached the conclusion that “the U.S. intends to keep this war going,” and says he has other sources to corroborate this. . . 

. . . The US empire doesn’t care about Ukrainian lives, and it’s insulting that its operatives continually pretend to. The empire will happily feed every man, woman and child in the entire nation into the mouth of this war if it means unseating a disobedient leader from a nuclear-armed seat of power which has become unacceptably cozy with Beijing and intolerably comfortable with intervening against US imperial agendas. . . 

Caitlin Johnstone: 12 Thoughts on Ukraine

First, a few words from Stephen Cohen, now deceased, on the absurdity and of our current situation in Ukraine, which could have been avoided. Cohen was a professor of Russian history and p0litics at Princeton and NYU.

Caitlin Johnstone has another good article detailing what the US ought to be doing right now. I’ll give you a hint: it’s nothing at all like what is actually happening.

The article is entitled “12 Thoughts on Ukraine.”

Here is an excerpt:

The U.S. power alliance has a choice between escalating aggressions against Russia to world-threatening levels or doing what anti-imperialists have been begging them to do for years and pursue detente.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the goal of which he claims is not to occupy the country but to “demilitarize” and “de-Nazify” it. We’ve no reason to put blind faith in any of those claims. Only time will tell.

As of this writing dozens have reportedly been killed. All war is horrific. We can only hope that this one winds up being the least horrific a war can be.

Some thoughts:

  1. This whole thing could very easily have been avoided with a little bit of diplomacy. The only reason that didn’t happen was it would have meant the U.S. empire taking a teensy, weensy step back from its agenda of total planetary domination. I’ve seen people call it “sad” or “unfortunate” that Western powers didn’t make basic low-cost, high-yield concessions like guaranteeing no NATO membership for Ukraine and having Kiev honor the Minsk agreements, but it’s not sad, and it’s not unfortunate. It’s enraging. That they did this deserves nothing but pure, unadulterated, white hot rage.
  1. Narrative managers have been working furiously to quash all discussion of No. 1, however. Like our good friend Michael McFaul here:

This is one of the most influential Russia “experts” in the Western world decrying propaganda while demanding media outlets enact propaganda. Saying what your government wants said instead of objective reporting the truth is the thing that propaganda is.

Please don’t report facts on your media platforms. Don’t let anyone talk about the known actions by NATO powers and Kiev, which experts have long warned would lead to this situation. You’re not allowed to talk about the known U.S./NATO/Ukraine actions which demonstrably led us to where we’re at. You’re only allowed to say Putin attacked Ukraine completely unprovoked, in a vacuum, solely because he is evil and hates freedom. Your loyalty is to the U.S. empire, not to truth. . . 

The primary risk of nuclear war is not that anyone will choose to start one, it’s that one could be triggered by miscommunication, malfunction or misunderstanding amid the chaos and confusion of escalating Cold War tensions. This nearly happened, repeatedly, in the last Cold War. Cold War brinkmanship has far too many small, unpredictable moving parts for anyone to feel confident that they can ramp up aggressions without triggering a nuclear exchange. Nobody who feels safe with these games of nuclear chicken understands what they really are. We survived the last Cold War by sheer, dumb luck. We were never once in control. We just got lucky. There’s no reason to trust that we’ll get lucky again. We need to abandon this madness and pursue detente immediately. . .

8. It would now seem the U.S. power alliance has a choice between either (A) escalating aggressions against Russia to world-threatening levels or (B) doing what anti-imperialists have been begging them to do for years and pursuing detente. This is exactly where anti-imperialists have been warning we could wind up if the U.S. didn’t work toward detente with Russia. . . 

You can read the entire article here.

As a follower of Jesus, I am a staunch anti-imperialist, as I believe every Christian should be.

Whether or not we all agree on that issue, I am convinced that every Christian must be committed to:

  • Insisting that our government avoid military escalation and conflict by pursuing rigorous diplomacy. It is wiser to be called “weak” by a warmonger than to enter a potentially nuclear conflict through foolish bluster.
  • Recognizing that we are not the only group of people with legitimate, national security interests. We must recognize that Russia has its own security concerns that have been seriously magnified by NATO, western forces arrayed along its western border. Who is the aggressor here? Seeing issues from the other’s perspective is an essential, Christian virtue.
  • Closing our eyes and ears to the patriotic, nationalistic, pro-America chanting that accompanies every new military excursion. We are citizens of God’s kingdom first and foremost.  Christ’s kingdom is always a peaceable kingdom that never calls anyone to war and never justifies anyone else’s bloody conflict. Do not be deceived by the heresy, idolatry, and blood-lust now bombarding America’s airwaves.

John Pilger: War in Europe & the Rise of Raw Propaganda

John Pilger is an independent, British war-journalist and documentary

Independent journalist and documentary film maker, John Pilger

film-maker who does journalism the old-fashioned way: he goes to the scene and talks to the people involved.

His article, posted today at Consortium News, is entitled “War in Europe & the Rise of Raw Propaganda.” He ably discusses both the tsunami of warmongering propaganda about Ukraine that has swept across American media, as well as the needlessly reckless behavior — principally from the American side — unfolding around Ukraine.

Did you know that Ukraine has been in the midst of a civil war since 2014, a war where the US is backing the side that includes neo-Nazi, fascist militias?

Did you know that the US was a major player in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014, an action that helped to stir the civil war ravaging eastern Ukraine today?

Below is an excerpt of Pilger’s article:

Russia’s security proposals ought to be welcomed in the West. . . But who understands their significance when all the people are told is that Putin is a pariah?

Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy that “the successor to politics will be propaganda” has happened.  Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the U.S. and Britain. . . 

On matters of war and peace, ministerial deceit is reported as news. Inconvenient facts are censored, demons are nurtured. The model is corporate spin, the currency of the age. In 1964, McLuhan famously declared, “The medium is the message.” The lie is the message now.

But is this new? It is more than a century since Edward Bernays, the father of spin, invented “public relations” as a cover for war propaganda. What is new is the virtual elimination of dissent in the mainstream. . .

The No-Evidence Rule

The Russians are coming. Russia is worse than bad. Putin is evil, “a Nazi like Hitler,” salivated the Labour MP Chris Bryant. Ukraine is about to be invaded by Russia – tonight, this week, next week. The sources include an ex CIA propagandist who now speaks for the U.S. State Department and offers no evidence of his claims about Russian actions because “it comes from the U.S. Government.”

You can read the entire article here.

Is Expanding NATO “the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War”?

Jack F. Matlock served as US ambassador to the USSR from 1987 to 1991, which means that he witnessed the fall of the Iron Curtain and watched the

Jack F. Matlock, former US ambassador to the Soviet Union

emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev, glasnost, and perestroika from a ringside seat inside Russia.

This means that he is better informed than most when it comes to the post-Soviet history of Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, Ukraine, and Russia.

Mr. Matlock is now a member of the board of directors of the American Committee for US-Russia Accord (ACURA).

In  1997, Ambassador Matlock was asked to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. When asked about whether or not more member states should be added to NATO, he said that it was unwise; that, in fact, “it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War.”

Several days ago Matlock penned a wise and compelling op-ed about the current crisis involving Ukraine, Russia, and the US.

He is thoroughly familiar with all the countries involved. His analysis is rooted in history not hysteria. If only he were inside Biden’s White House.

Below is a selection of excerpts from one of the best analyses of this situation you will find anywhere:

Today we face an avoidable crisis [in Ukraine] that was predictable, actually predicted, willfully precipitated, but easily resolved by the application of common sense. . . Maybe I am wrong—tragically wrong—but I cannot dismiss the suspicion that we are witnessing an elaborate charade, grossly magnified by prominent elements of the American media, to serve a domestic political end. Facing rising inflation, the ravages of Omicron, blame (for the most part unfair) for the withdrawal from Afghanistan, plus the failure to get the full support of his own party for the Build Back Better legislation, the Biden administration is staggering under sagging approval ratings just as it gears up for this year’s congressional elections. Since clear “victories” on the domestic woes seem increasingly unlikely, why not fabricate one by posing as if he prevented the invasion of Ukraine by “standing up to Vladimir Putin”? . . .

. . . So far as Ukraine is concerned, U.S. intrusion into its domestic politics was deep—to the point of seeming to select a prime minister. It also, in effect, supported an illegal coup d’etat that changed the Ukrainian government in 2014, a procedure not normally considered consistent with the rule of law or democratic governance. The violence that still simmers in Ukraine started in the “pro-Western” west, not in the Donbas where it was a reaction to what was viewed as the threat of violence against Ukrainians who are ethnic Russian. . . 

Things got worse during the four years of Donald Trump’s tenure. Accused, without evidence, of being a Russian dupe, Trump made sure he embraced every anti-Russian measure that came along, while at the same time flattered Putin as a great leader. Reciprocal expulsions of diplomats, started by the United States in the final days of Obama’s tenure continued in a grim vicious circle that has resulted in a diplomatic presence so emaciated that for months the United States did not have enough staff in Moscow to issue visas for Russians to visit the United States. . . 

. . . What President Putin is demanding, an end to NATO expansion and creation of a security structure in Europe that insures Russia’s security along with that of others is eminently reasonable. He is not demanding the exit of any NATO member and he is threatening none. By any pragmatic, common sense standard it is in the interest of the United States to promote peace, not conflict. To try to detach Ukraine from Russian influence—the avowed aim of those who agitated for the “color revolutions”—was a fool’s errand, and a dangerous one. Have we so soon forgotten the lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis?

You can read the entire article here.

Aaron Mate: “The Ukraine Crisis, Sponsored by US Hegemony and War Profiteers”

The investigative journalist Aaron Mate, has a good piece at his blog today about the American tensions with Russia over Ukraine. I encourage you to

Journalist Aaron Mate

check it out.

Below is an excerpt:

If Biden can interrupt NATO expansion and war profiteering, the US-Russia standoff over Ukraine can be resolved.

The US-Russia standoff over Ukraine has sparked bellicose threats and fears of Europe’s biggest ground war in decades. There are ample reasons to question the prospects of a Russian invasion, and US allies including France, Germany’s now-ousted navy chief, and even Kiev itself appear to share the skepticism.

Another potential scenario is that Russia draws on the Cuban Missile Crisis and positions offensive weapons within the borders of Latin American allies. Whatever the outcome, the crisis has underscored the perils of a second Cold War between the world’s top nuclear powers.

If the path forward is unpredictable, what got us here is easy to trace. The row over Ukraine is the outgrowth of an aggressive US posture toward Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago, driven by hegemonic policymakers and war profiteers in Washington. Understanding that background is key to resolving the current impasse, if the Biden administration can bring itself to alter a dangerous course.

Russia’s central demands – binding guarantees to halt the eastward expansion of NATO, particularly in Ukraine, and to prevent offensive weapons from being stationed near its borders – have been publicly dismissed by the U.S government as non-starters.

In rejecting Russian concerns, the Biden administration claims that it is upholding “governing principles of international peace and security.” These principles, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says, “reject the right of one country to change the borders of another by force; to dictate to another the policies it pursues or the choices it makes, including with whom to associate; or to exert a sphere of influence that would subjugate sovereign neighbors to its will.”

The US government’s real-world commitment to these principles is non-existent. . .

. . . The standard narrative of the origins of the current Ukraine crisis, as the New York Times recently claimed, is that Ukrainians revolted in street protests that ousted “pro-Russian leader” Viktor Yanukovych, “prompting [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to order the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and instigate a separatist war in eastern Ukraine.” In reality, the US backed a coup that overthrew Ukraine’s elected government and sabotaged opportunities to avoid further conflict.

The immediate background came in the fall of 2013, when the US and its allies pressured Yanukovych to sign a European Union association agreement that would have curtailed its ties to Russia. Contrary to how he is now portrayed, Yanukovych was not “pro-Russian”, to the point where he even “cajoled and bullied anyone who pushed for Ukraine to have closer ties to Russia,” Reuters reported at the time. . . 

Read the complete article here.

 

 

We Are the Aggressors, Not Russia: America’s Flirtation with War Over Ukraine is Belligerent Insanity

The American Establishment is feverishly propagandizing us into preparing ourselves for a confrontation with Russia over Ukraine.

Day after day more anonymous sources – who never provide any evidence to substantiate their “frightening” revelations, and are never asked by the corporate media to produce whatever evidence they may have – drop another scary soundbite into our vapid, undiscerning public discourse.

Fear-mongering among the uninformed is one of propaganda’s most useful strategies because the uninformed are easy to mislead.

Fortunately for energetic propagandists, the average American imagines that world history began yesterday, which makes the general public a sucker for lies and disinformation about that scary world looming beyond our glistening shores.

This time-dishonored tactic is now being exploited with wild abandon by every major American news outlet, without exception. I am urging you: do not believe a word of what you hear on this subject from ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, FOX, or Newsmax.

Now that the US is firmly rooted in a “second Cold War” with Russian – a needless and very dangerous antagonism manufactured out of whole cloth by our military-industrial-media complex – its time to beat the drums of war again. Or so the Establishment believes.

Why? Because war always makes a lot of money for the military-industrial complex, including US corporations.

The beast must be fed. It’s hungry. It can’t devour Afghanistan anymore, so it needs fresh meat. God help us all.

Here is what every American needs to know, remember, or investigate concerning the history of US, Russian, Ukrainian relations:

(By the way, for one of the best, most sensible discussions of the current

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (retired). Former chief of staff for Colin Powell during the George W. Bush administration

problems, please watch Medea Benjamin’s informative conversation with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson – a man who knows his stuff inside and out — right here.)

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 much of eastern Europe was thrown into turmoil. Two events were particularly troubling for Russia as it watched its empire disappear.

First, the Warsaw Pact, the eastern European counterpart to NATO which had served as the guardian of Soviet security, was quickly disbanded.

Second, East Germany reunited with West Germany, creating a unified German republic as a part of NATO.

Russia, quite reasonably, saw these two developments as an immediate threat to its national security. Not only had NATO, Russia’s historic antagonist, expanded, it had just taken a monumental step eastward towards the Russian border. And many other formerly Eastern-bloc countries were lining up to follow suit.

Mikhail Gorbachev (Photo by: Sovfoto/UIG via Getty Images)

The Russian leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev – who was responsible for the new openness that led to the collapse of Soviet communism – quickly asked for a US guarantee that NATO would not invite any former members of the Soviet Union to join its western alliance.

President George H. W. Bush agreed.

Bush promised that NATO would stop in its tracks, moving no further east

George H. W. Bush

towards the Russian border. (I have always held that NATO should have immediately disbanded along with the Warsaw Pact. I was once arrested for demonstrating for this cause. But no one in Washington D. C. listens to me. Alas.)

Unfortunately, Bill Clinton quickly ignored Bush’s pledge to Gorbachev. By manhandling the easily manipulated Boris Yeltsin, Clinton began to expand NATO further eastward.

NATO membership requires that new entrants must possess a certain level of military capability. After all, NATO members all pledge to defend one another in case of an attack.

US weapons companies make a bundle of cash selling new, advanced, American-made weaponry to these fledgling member states. And, of course, all of those missiles, rockets, and guns are generally pointed, you guessed it, towards Russia.

For 30 years, then, Russia has watched its old nemesis, NATO, moving further and further east, coming closer and closer to its western border, in direct violation of the promise given by an American president.

Most recently, NATO invited Ukraine, which borders Russia, to join its

Vladimir Putin

military club. The US wants to begin selling advanced weaponry to Ukraine. Is it any surprise that Russian president Vladimir Putin sees NATO and the United States as a direct threat to Russia’s national security?

Of course, not. He would be stupid not to, and one thing Putin is not, is stupid.

In the current negotiations, Putin’s primary demand is that president Biden not allow Ukraine into NATO. Behaving like a typical American politician, Biden told Putin to drop dead.

And here we are. Unnecessary, dangerous escalation on every front.

Let’s stop and put ourselves in Putin’s shoes.

How would the US respond if an antagonistic country, let’s say China, began to move its military into Canada or Mexico, cheek-to-jowl with the US border?

We all know the answer to that question.

Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis?

President Kennedy learned that the Soviets were moving nuclear missiles

President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, June 3, 1961. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)

into Cuba. He immediately told Soviet president Nikita Khrushchev that the US would not tolerate Soviet weapons near its borders. We came close to a nuclear war over this, and Khrushchev withdrew the missiles.

Why should we expect Putin and the Russians to react any differently?

What we need right now is an American president who will demonstrate the wisdom and humility of Nikita Khrushchev.

There are no two ways about it folks. In this current “confrontation,” the United States is the threatening aggressor. We have always been the mangy wolf salivating at Russia’s western doorstep. We are the ones causing these problems. Not Russia. Not Putin.

No wonder Putin has become antagonistic!

All of the blame – all of it! – falls on the US and now onto president Biden.

Recall that war-mongering is a bipartisan habit in this country. The US loves to be at war. Powerful people make a lot of money, billions of dollars, from it.

But American saber rattling must stop! Please call or write your senators and representatives. Tell them that you strongly oppose this administration’s position on Russia and Ukraine.

Tell them you do not want a new Cold War with Russia, and they need to stop bad mouthing president Putin in public. It doesn’t help. Putin is not the bad guy in this particular drama.

Tell them that Ukraine has no business joining NATO. The US has no business sending American troops into Ukraine or the surrounding nations.

This is very, very serious business, folks.

 

 

Glenn Greenwald: Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled by Exploiting “Insurrection” Fears. Congress’s 1/6 Committee May Be the Worst Abuse Yet.

Glenn Greenwald has published a lengthy, detailed analysis of the many ways in which the Democratic party is currently exploiting the Capitol Hill riot on January 6 to implement drastic government overreach and the curtailment of American civil liberties.

The mechanism for this overreach is the House Select Committee currently  investigating the January 6 riot.

I have excerpted the heart of Greenwald’s conclusions below. However, I encourage you to read the entire article at Greenwald’s substack space. It is truly impressive and deeply disturbing.

The article is entitled “Civil Liberties Are Being Trampled by Exploiting ‘Insurrection’ Fears. Congress’s 1/6 Committee May Be the Worst Abuse Yet.”

Below is the excerpt:

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) arrive for the House Select Committee hearing investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on July 27, 2021 at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

This congressional committee is designed to be cathartic theater for liberals, and a political drama for the rest of the country. They know Republicans will object to their deliberately unconstitutional inquisitions, and they intend to exploit those objections to darkly insinuate to the country that Republicans are driven by a desire to protect the violent traitors so that they can deploy them as an insurrectionary army for future coups. They have staffed the committee with their most flamboyant and dishonest drama queens, knowing that Adam Schiff will spend most of his days on CNN with Chris Cuomo comparing 1/6 to Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust; Liz Cheney will equate Republicans with Al Qaeda and the Capitol riot to the destruction of the World Trade Center; and Adam Kinzinger will cry on cue as he reminds everyone over and over that he served in the U.S. military only to find himself distraught and traumatized that the real terrorists are not those he was sent to fight overseas but those at home, in his own party.

But the manipulative political design of this spectacle should not obscure how threatening it nonetheless is to core civil liberties. Democrats in politics and media have whipped themselves into such a manic frenzy ever since 1/6 — indeed, they have been doing little else ever since Trump descended the Trump Tower escalator in 2015 — that they have become the worst kinds of fanatics: the ones who really believe their own lies. Many genuinely believe that they are on the front lines of an epic historical battle against the New Hitler (Trump) and his band of deplorable fascist followers bent on a coup against the democratic order. In their cable-and-Twitter-stimulated imaginations, shortly following this right-wing coup will be the installation of every crypto-fascist bell and whistle from concentration camps for racial and ethnic minorities to death or prison for courageous #Resistance dissidents. At some point, the line between actually believing this and being paid to pretend to believe it, or feeling coerced by cultural and friendship circles to feign belief in it, erodes, fostering actual collective conviction and mania.

And when fanatics convince themselves that their cause is not only indisputably just but an imperative for survival, then any doubts or questions about methods and weapons can no longer be acknowledged. The war they are fighting is of such overarching importance and righteousness that there is no such thing as unjust or excessive means to achieve it. Just a cursory examination of liberal discourse is enough to see that they have long ago arrived at and flew past this point of sectarian zealotry. And that is what explains their overwhelming support for state and corporate censorship of the internet, increasing reverence for security state agencies such as the CIA and FBI, love for and trust in corporate media, and a belief that no punishment or level of suffering is excessive when it comes to retaliation against their political enemies, including but not only those who participated in any way in the 1/6 protests.

This is, after all, a movement that has long opposed the death penalty and whose more left-wing factions spent 2020 rioting in cities to protest police violence and chanting “Defund the Police!,” yet their only lament about Ashli Babbitt seems to be that she was the only pro-Trump “fascist” shot and killed by noble police officers on that day. They have pranced around for decades as criminal justice reformists, denouncing harsh prosecutorial strategies and judicial punishments, yet are indignant that people who put their feet on Nancy Pelosi’s sacred desk or vandalized the sacred halls of American power with their dirty and deplorable presence are not spending decades in a cage. They spent 2020 depicting police officers as racist savages, only to valorize the Capitol Police as benevolent public servants whom only barbarians would want to harm, then gave them an additional $2 billion to intensify their surveillance capabilities and augment their stockpile of weapons. Their fury that Trump officials did not end up spending decades in cages due to vague associations with Russians is exceeded only by their rage that pro-Trump protesters at the Capitol are being sentenced to months rather than years or decades in prison.

A political movement that operates from the premise that its cause is too important to be constrained is one that inevitably becomes authoritarian. That such authoritarianism is the defining feature of American liberalism has been evident for several years. And an investigative congressional committee that they control, aimed squarely at their political enemies, accompanied by demands that anyone resisting it be imprisoned, can only lead to very dark and dangerous destinations.

You can read the entire piece here.