Out of fury against President Trump, many liberals have enlisted in the ranks of the New Cold War against Russia, seeming to have forgotten the costs to rationality and lives from the first Cold War, warned the late William Blum.
A memorial service was held on Sunday in Washington for William Blum, a former State Department official whose disillusionment with the Vietnam War turned him into a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy. In books such as Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II; Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, as well as on his blog, The Anti-Empire Report, Blum educated a generation of Americans about the rapacious aims of the U.S. abroad, debunking the myth of Washington’s good intentions for the peoples of the world. Blum died on December 9, 2018. He was a contributor to Consortium News and we reprint one of his last articles that appeared here. Originally published on Dec. 6, 2017.
By William Blum
Cold War Number One: 70 years of daily national stupidity. Cold War Number Two: Still in its youth, but just as stupid.
Trump being sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. (Whitehouse.gov)
“He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.” – President Trump re Russian President Vladimir Putin after their meeting in Vietnam. [Washington Post, Nov.e 12, 2017]
Putin later added that he knew “absolutely nothing” about Russian contacts with Trump campaign officials. “They can do what they want, looking for some sensation. But there are no sensations.”
Numerous U.S. intelligence agencies have said otherwise. Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, responded to Trump’s remarks by declaring: “The president was given clear and indisputable evidence that Russia interfered in the election.”
As we’ll see below, there isn’t too much of the “clear and indisputable” stuff. And this of course is the same James Clapper who made an admittedly false statement to Congress in March 2013, when he responded, “No, sir” and “not wittingly” to a question about whether the National Security Agency was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. Lies don’t usually come in any size larger than that.
Virtually every member of Congress who has publicly stated a position on the issue has criticized Russia for interfering in the 2016 American presidential election. And it would be very difficult to find a member of the mainstream media who has questioned this thesis.
What is the poor consumer of news to make of these gross contradictions? Here are some things to keep in mind:
How do we know that the tweets and advertisements “sent by Russians” -– those presented as attempts to sway the vote -– were actually sent by Russians? The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), composed of National Security Agency and CIA veterans, recently declared that the CIA knows how to disguise the origin of emails and tweets. The Washington Post has as well reported that Twitter “makes it easy for users to hide their true identities.” [Washington Post, Oct. 10, 2017]
Russians! Russians! Russians!
Even if these communications were actually sent from Russia, how do we know that they came from the Russian government, and not from any of the other 144.3 million residents of Russia?
Red Square in Moscow with a winter festival to the left and the Kremlin to the right, in December 2016. (Robert Parry)
Even if they were sent by the Russian government, we have to ask: Why would they do that? Do the Russians think the United States is a Third World, under-developed, backward Banana Republic easily influenced and moved by a bunch of simple condemnations of the plight of blacks in America and the Clinton “dynasty”? Or clichéd statements about other controversial issues, such as gun rights and immigration? If so, many Democratic and Republican officials would love to know the secret of the Russians’ method. Consider also that Facebook has stated that 90 percent of the alleged-Russian-bought content that ran on its network did not even mention Trump or Clinton. [Washington Post, Nov. 15, 2017]
On top of all this is the complete absence of even the charge, much less with any supporting evidence, of Russian interference in the actual voting or counting of votes.
After his remark suggesting he believed Putin’s assertion that there had been no Russian meddling in the election, Trump – of course, as usual – attempted to backtrack and distance himself from his words after drawing criticism at home; while James Clapper declared: “The fact the president of the United States would take Putin at his word over that of the intelligence community is quite simply unconscionable.” [Reuters, Nov. 12, 2017]
Given Clapper’s large-size lie referred to above, can Trump be faulted for being skeptical of the intelligence community’s Holy Writ? Purposeful lies of the intelligence community during the first Cold War were legendary, many hailed as brilliant tactics when later revealed. The CIA, for example, had phony articles and editorials planted in foreign newspapers (real Fake News), made sex films of target subjects caught in flagrante delicto who had been lured to Agency safe houses by female agents, had Communist embassy personnel expelled because of phony CIA documents, and much more.
The Post recently published an article entitled “How did Russian trolls get into your Facebook feed? Silicon Valley made it easy.” In the midst of this “exposé,” The Post stated: “There’s no way to tell if you personally saw a Russian post or tweet.” [Washington Post, Nov. 2, 2017]
A Case or Not?
So … Do the Cold Warriors have a case to make or do they not? Or do they just want us to remember that the Russkis are bad? So it goes.
Vladimir Putin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, May 10, 2015, at the Kremlin. (Russian government)
An organization in Czechoslovakia with the self-appointed name of European Values has produced a lengthy report entitled “The Kremlin’s Platform for ‘Useful Idiots’ in the West: An Overview of RT’s Editorial Strategy and Evidence of Impact.” It includes a long list of people who have appeared on the Russian-owned TV station RT (formerly Russia Today), which can be seen in the U.S., the U.K. and other countries. Those who’ve been guests on RT are the “idiots” useful to Moscow. (The list is not complete. I’ve been on RT about five times, but I’m not listed. Where is my Idiot Badge?)
RT’s YouTube channel has more than two million followers and claims to be the “most-watched news network” on the video site. Its Facebook page has more than 4 million likes and followers. Can this explain why the powers-that-be forget about a thing called freedom-of-speech and treat the station like an enemy? The U.S. government recently forced RT America to register as a foreign agent and has cut off the station’s Congressional press credentials.
The Cold War strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically: “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”
Writer John Wight has described the new Cold War as being “in response to Russia’s recovery from the demise of the Soviet Union and the failed attempt to turn the country into a wholly owned subsidiary of Washington via the imposition of free market economic shock treatment thereafter.”
So let’s see what other brilliance the New Cold War brings us. … Ah yes, another headline in the Post (Nov. 18, 2017): “British alarm rising over possible Russian meddling in Brexit.” Of course, why else would the British people have voted to leave the European Union? But wait a moment, again, one of the British researchers behind the report “said that the accounts they analyzed – which claimed Russian as their language when they were set up but tweeted in English – posted a mixture of pro-‘leave’ and pro-‘remain’ messages regarding Brexit. Commentators have said that the goal may simply have been to sow discord and division in society.”
Was there ever a time when the Post would have been embarrassed to be so openly, amateurishly biased about Russia? Perhaps during the few years between the two Cold Wars.
In case you don’t remember how stupid Cold War Number One was …
- 1948: The Pittsburgh Press published the names, addresses, and places of employment of about 1,000 citizens who had signed presidential-nominating petitions for former Vice President Henry Wallace, running under the Progressive Party. This, and a number of other lists of “communists,” published in the mainstream media, resulted in people losing their jobs, being expelled from unions, having their children abused, being denied state welfare benefits, and suffering various other punishments.
- Around 1950: The House Committee on Un-American Activities published a pamphlet, “100 Things You Should Know About Communism in the U.S.A.” This included information about what a communist takeover of the United States would mean: ?Q: What would happen to my insurance?? A: It would go to the Communists.? Q: Would communism give me something better than I have now?? A: Not unless you are in a penitentiary serving a life sentence at hard labor.
Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisconsin, who led the “Red Scare” hearings of the 1950s.
- 1950s: Mrs. Ada White, member of the Indiana State Textbook Commission, believed that Robin Hood was a Communist and urged that books that told the Robin Hood story be banned from Indiana schools.
- As evidence that anti-communist mania was not limited to the lunatic fringe or conservative newspaper publishers, here is Clark Kerr, president of the University of California at Berkeley in a 1959 speech: “Perhaps 2 or even 20 million people have been killed in China by the new [communist] regime.” One person wrote to Kerr: “I am wondering how you would judge a person who estimates the age of a passerby on the street as being ‘perhaps 2 or even 20 years old.’ Or what would you think of a physician who tells you to take ‘perhaps 2 or even twenty teaspoonsful of a remedy’?”
- Throughout the cold war, traffic in phony Lenin quotes was brisk, each one passed around from one publication or speaker to another for years. Here’s S. News and World Report in 1958 demonstrating communist duplicity by quoting Lenin: “Promises are like pie crusts, made to be broken.” Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used it in a speech shortly afterward, one of many to do so during the cold war. Lenin actually did use a very similar line, but he explicitly stated that he was quoting an English proverb (it comes from Jonathan Swift) and his purpose was to show the unreliability of the bourgeoisie, not of communists. ?“First we will take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia, then we will encircle the United States, which will be the last bastion of capitalism. We will not have to attack. It will fall like an overripe fruit into our hands.” This Lenin “quotation” had the usual wide circulation, even winding up in the Congressional Record in 1962. This was not simply a careless attribution; this was an out-and-out fabrication; an extensive search, including by the Library of Congress and the United States Information Agency failed to find its origin.
- A favorite theme of the anti-communists was that a principal force behind drug trafficking was a communist plot to demoralize the United States. Here’s a small sample:? Don Keller, District Attorney for San Diego County, California in 1953: “We know that more heroin is being produced south of the border than ever before and we are beginning to hear stories of financial backing by big shot Communists operating out of Mexico City.”? Henry Giordano, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1964, interviewed in the American Legion Magazine: Interviewer: “I’ve been told that the communists are trying to flood our country with narcotics to weaken our moral and physical stamina. Is that true?”? Giordano: “As far as the drugs are concerned, it’s true. There’s a terrific flow of drugs coming out of Yunnan Province of China. … There’s no question that in that particular area this is the aim of the Red Chinese. It should be apparent that if you could addict a population you would degrade a nation’s moral fiber.”? Fulton Lewis, Jr., prominent conservative radio broadcaster and newspaper columnist, 1965: “Narcotics of Cuban origin – marijuana, cocaine, opium, and heroin – are now peddled in big cities and tiny hamlets throughout this country. Several Cubans arrested by the Los Angeles police have boasted they are communists.”? We were also told that along with drugs another tool of the commies to undermine America’s spirit was fluoridation of the water.
A scene from “Dr. Strangelove,” in which the bomber pilot (played by actor Slim Pickens) rides a nuclear bomb to its target in the Soviet Union.
- Mickey Spillane was one of the most successful writers of the 1950s, selling millions of his anti-communist thriller mysteries. Here is his hero, Mike Hammer, in “One Lonely Night,” boasting of his delight in the grisly murders he commits, all in the name of destroying a communist plot to steal atomic secrets. After a night of carnage, the triumphant Hammer gloats, “I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. I pumped slugs into the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw. … They were Commies. … Pretty soon what’s left of Russia and the slime that breeds there won’t be worth mentioning and I’m glad because I had a part in the killing. God, but it was fun!”
- 1952: A campaign against the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because it was tainted with “atheism and communism,” and was “subversive” because it preached internationalism. Any attempt to introduce an international point of view in the schools was seen as undermining patriotism and loyalty to the United States. A bill in the U.S. Senate, clearly aimed at UNESCO, called for a ban on the funding of “any international agency that directly or indirectly promoted one-world government or world citizenship.” There was also opposition to UNESCO’s association with the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights on the grounds that it was trying to replace the American Bill of Rights with a less liberty-giving covenant of human rights.
- 1955: A U.S. Army 6-page pamphlet, “How to Spot a Communist,” informed us that a communist could be spotted by his predisposition to discuss civil rights, racial and religious discrimination, the immigration laws, anti-subversive legislation, curbs on unions, and peace. Good Americans were advised to keep their ears stretched for such give-away terms as “chauvinism,” “book-burning,” “colonialism,” “demagogy,” “witch hunt,” “reactionary,” “progressive,” and “exploitation.” Another “distinguishing mark” of “Communist language” was a “preference for long sentences.” After some ridicule, the Army rescinded the pamphlet.
- 1958: The noted sportscaster Bill Stern (one of the heroes of my innocent youth) observed on the radio that the lack of interest in “big time” football at New York University, City College of New York, Chicago, and Harvard “is due to the widespread acceptance of Communism at the universities.”
- 1960: U.S. General Thomas Power speaking about nuclear war or a first strike by the U.S.: “The whole idea is to kill the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!” The response from one of those present was: “Well, you’d better make sure that they’re a man and a woman.”
- 1966: The Boys Club of America is of course wholesome and patriotic. Imagine their horror when they were confused with the Dubois Clubs. (W.E.B. Du Bois had been a very prominent civil rights activist.) When the Justice Department required the DuBois Clubs to register as a Communist front group, good loyal Americans knew what to do. They called up the Boys Club to announce that they would no longer contribute any money, or to threaten violence against them; and sure enough an explosion damaged the national headquarters of the youth group in San Francisco. Then former Vice President Richard Nixon, who was national board chairman of the Boys Club, declared: “This is an almost classic example of Communist deception and duplicity. The ‘DuBois Clubs’ are not unaware of the confusion they are causing among our supporters and among many other good citizens.”
- 1966: “Rhythm, Riots and Revolution: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music, The Communist Master Music Plan,” by David A. Noebel, published by Christian Crusade Publications, (expanded version of 1965 pamphlet: “Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles”). Some chapters: Communist Use of Mind Warfare … Nature of Red Record Companies … Destructive Nature of Beatle Music … Communist Subversion of Folk Music … Folk Music and the Negro Revolution … Folk Music and the College Revolution
Photos of victims of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam galvanized public awareness about the barbarity of the war. (U. S. Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle)
- 1968: William Calley, U.S. Army Lieutenant, charged with overseeing the massacre of more than 100 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai in 1968, said some years later: “In all my years in the Army I was never taught that communists were human beings. We were there to kill ideology carried by – I don’t know – pawns, blobs, pieces of flesh. I was there to destroy communism. We never conceived of old people, men, women, children, babies.”
- 1977: Scientists theorized that the earth’s protective ozone layer was being damaged by synthetic chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons. The manufacturers and users of CFCs were not happy. They made life difficult for the lead scientist. The president of one aerosol manufacturing firm suggested that criticism of CFCs was “orchestrated by the Ministry of Disinformation of the KGB.”
- 1978: Life inside a California youth camp of the ultra anti-communist John Birch Society: Five hours each day of lectures on communism, Americanism and “The Conspiracy”; campers learned that the Soviet government had created a famine and spread a virus to kill a large number of citizens and make the rest of them more manageable; the famine led starving adults to eat their children; communist guerrillas in Southeast Asia jammed chopsticks into children’s ears, piercing their eardrums; American movies are all under the control of the Communists; the theme is always that capitalism is no better than communism; you can’t find a dictionary now that isn’t under communist influence; the communists are also taking over the Bibles.
- The Reagan administration declared that the Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan – the so-called “yellow rain” – and had caused more than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone, (including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths attributed to 47 separate incidents between the summer of 1979 and the summer of 1981, so precise was the information). Secretary of State Alexander Haig was a prime dispenser of such stories, and President Reagan himself denounced the Soviet Union thusly more than 15 times in documents and speeches. The “yellow rain,” it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by huge swarms of honeybees flying far overhead.
- 1982: In commenting about sexual harassment in the Army, General John Crosby stated that the Army doesn’t care about soldiers’ social lives – “The basic purpose of the United States Army is to kill Russians,” he said.
- 1983: The U.S. invasion of Grenada, the home of the Cuban ambassador is damaged and looted by American soldiers; on one wall is written “AA,” symbol of the 82nd Airborne Division; beside it the message: “Eat shit, commie faggot.” … “I want to fuck communism out of this little island,” says a marine, “and fuck it right back to Moscow.”
- 1984: During a sound check just before his weekly broadcast, President Reagan spoke these words into the microphone: “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I have signed legislation to outlaw Russia, forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” His words were picked up by at least two radio networks.
Reagan meeting with Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt.
- 1985: October 29 BBC interview with Ronald Reagan: asked about the differences he saw between the U.S. and Russia, the President replied: “I’m no linguist, but I’ve been told that in the Russian language there isn’t even a word for freedom.” (The word is “svoboda.”)
- 1986: Soviet artists and cultural officials criticized Rambo-like American films as an expression of “anti-Russian phobia even more pathological than in the days of McCarthyism.” Russian filmmaker Stanislav Rostofsky claimed that on one visit to an American school “a young girl trembled with fury when she heard I was from the Soviet Union, and said she hated Russians.”
- 1986: Roy Cohn, who achieved considerable fame and notoriety in the 1950s as an assistant to the communist-witch-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy, died, reportedly of AIDS. Cohn, though homosexual, had denied that he was and had denounced such rumors as communist smears.
- 1986: After American journalist Nicholas Daniloff was arrested in Moscow for “spying” and held in custody for two weeks, New York Mayor Edward Koch sent a group of 10 visiting Soviet students storming out of City Hall in fury. “The Soviet government is the pits,” said Koch, visibly shocking the students, ranging in age from 10 to 18 years. One 14-year-old student was so outraged he declared: “I don’t want to stay in this house. I want to go to the bus and go far away from this place. The mayor is very rude. We never had a worse welcome anywhere.” As matters turned out, it appeared that Daniloff had not been completely pure when it came to his newsgathering.
- 1989: After the infamous Chinese crackdown on dissenters in Tiananmen Square in June, the U.S. news media was replete with reports that the governments of Nicaragua, Vietnam and Cuba had expressed their support of the Chinese leadership. Said the Wall Street Journal: “Nicaragua, with Cuba and Vietnam, constituted the only countries in the world to approve the Chinese Communists’ slaughter of the students in Tiananmen Square.” But it was all someone’s fabrication; no such support had been expressed by any of the three governments. At that time, as now, there were few, if any, organizations other than the CIA which could manipulate major Western media in such a manner. [Sources for almost all of this section can be found in William Blum, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (2005), chapter 12; or the author can be queried at [email protected] ]
NOTE: It should be remembered that the worst consequences of anti-communism were not those discussed above. The worst consequences, the ultra-criminal consequences, were the abominable death, destruction, and violation of human rights that we know under various names: Vietnam, Chile, Korea, Guatemala, Cambodia, Indonesia, Brazil, Greece, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and many others.
William Blum (1933-2018) was an author, historian, and renowned critic of U.S. foreign policy. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, among others. [This article originally appeared at the Anti-Empire Report, https://williamblum.org/ .]
Another damaging effect this first Cold War had on American society is the the way myopic, shortsighted “conservatives” have associated things like soccer and the metric system with “socialism” and “communism”, even when both have existed long before Karl Marx ever walked on this earth, let alone created socialism.
At this rate those conservatards will smear anyone who wishes that America would join the rest of the world in just about anything (e.g. compliance with international law) as communist, socialist or globalist. The last one is problematic because those who make these accusations ignore the notion of American culture seeping into other countries, but would autistically scream at the reverse (i.e. non-American culture seeping into America).
I wonder what the millions of people how died in Gulags think about your assertion that the Cold War Number One was stupid. Or the hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of Eastern Europe who were either sent to camps in Siberia, tortured or killed. Soviet Union was an evil empire and there is no denial of that. There is also no denial that they worked on influencing the West via useful idiots.
Unfortunately, the West was not always most efficient or smart in fighting against the Soviets.
Most all wars are based on wealth and stupidity. Actually humans do all kinds vile and stupid things for wealth and power. His assertion has some truth.
It might e hard to ask. Apparently, it did not help them.
Apropos recent events in Venezuela and Washington, here’s a passage from William Blum’s 2013 book, America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy – The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else [pages 220-221].
“when Venezuelan President Hugo Cha?vez announced plans to nationalize telephone and electric utility companies to accelerate his ‘socialist revolution,’ the spokesperson for Capitalism Central, White House press secretary Tony Snow, was quick to the attack: ‘Nationalization has a long and inglorious history of failure around the world,’ Snow declared. ‘We support the Venezuelan people and think this is an unhappy day for them.’
“Snow presumably buys into the belief that capitalism defeated socialism in the Cold War. A victory for a superior idea. The boys of Capital chortle into their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the past century has been corrupted, subverted, perverted, or destabilized… or crushed, overthrown, bombed, or invaded… or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement – from the Russian Revolution to Cuba, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FMLN in Salvador, from Communist China to Grenada, Chile and Vietnam – not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home. Even many plain old social democracies – such as in Guatemala, Iran, British Guiana, Serbia, and Haiti – which were not in love with capitalism and were looking for another path, even those too were made to bite the dust by Uncle Sam.
“It’s as if the Wright brothers’ first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And the good and God-fearing folk of America looked upon this, took notice of the consequences, nodded their collective heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Man shall never fly.
“Tony Snow would have us believe that the government is no match for the private sector in efficiently getting large and important things done. But is that really true? Let’s clear our minds for a moment, push our upbringing to one side, and remember that the American government has landed men on the moon, created great dams, marvelous national parks, an interstate highway system for a huge land, the peace corps, built up an incredible military machine (ignoring for the moment what it’s used for), social security, Medicare, insurance for bank deposits, protection of pension funds against corporate misuse, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the Smithsonian, the G.I. Bill, and much, much more. In short, the government has been quite good at doing what it wanted to do, or what labor and other movements have made it do, like establishing worker health and safety standards and requiring food manufacturers to list detailed information about ingredients.
“When George W. Bush took office one of his chief goals was to examine whether jobs done by federal employees could be performed more efficiently by private contractors. Bush called it his top management priority. By the end of 2005, around 50,000 government jobs had been studied. And federal workers had won the job competitions more than 80 percent of the time.
“The American people have to be reminded of what they’ve instinctively learned but tend to forget when faced with statements like that of Tony Snow: that they don’t want more government, or less government; they don’t want big government, or small government; they simply want government on their side.”
Excellent excerpt. Thanks for sharing it with us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjS0ZVa8oyI&t=13s&ytbChannel=null
Malcolm X made his remarks over 50 years ago. No white “liberal” heard him the white left was stunned and feared him.
His message applies across US policy and culture.
No US “liberal” needs sucking into war, they are the warmongers.
Clearly Malcolm X was a visionary at least 50 years ahead of his time.
Excellent article. Unfortunately, the exaggerations are not over yet: Russiagate is only more of the same.
The fact is the entire Russia-gate ruse was created by Hillary to cover for her cheating and defeat by her own pied piper cheeto baboon.The Neo cons in the FBI and CIA were only too happy to help since they were as shocked with Trump as she was and they all thought she was the sure deep state candidate and winner……
My father was among the people who signed the petition to put Henry Wallace on the ballot who were publicly named and called Communists by the Pittsburgh Press. The same man who had been VP under FDR from 1941-45. He never said more about it than that, but i’m Sure from the tone of his voice it caused him some problems. Glad to see this incident singled out as important enough to mention by Mr. Blum. There were so many to choose from.
I have all Bills’ books, and while have had only a couple personal discussions w/ him, consider Bill a very good and trusted friend and believe he felt much the same.
As far as our in-depth conversations went, we were 100% simpatico to put it simply.
Incidentally, we were/are the same age, 85 at present.
William Blum is a very significant loss and will not be forgotten as long as the quest for common decency, freedom and justice are necessary.
We do not have enough people like William Blum.
Some of the points he makes cannot be made enough or too often.
I didn’t know him, but we exchanged a few e-mails, and he gave me an autographed copy of one of his books.
Sadly, everything he wrote about is still at work.
That’s the nature of great power and privilege, the wealth and corruption that the United States represents in the world.
You missed the most important fact about Roy Cohn. His job was to turn “conservatives” into horrible parodies of “conservatism”. After he did the job on McCarthy, he ran the Birchers in the ’70s. The Birchers had always been wild but occasionally hit a real target. Roy switched them into a weird useless theory about CFR and Trilateral. Shortly before his death, he did the same job on Trump.
Reported quietly and incidentally by CNN last year:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/24/opinions/lawyer-trump-wants-has-been-dead-32-years-callan/index.html?utm_source=quora
This is also the most important fact about Trump. He was turned by Roy. Nothing he says can be treated as a sincere purpose or goal. His job is to make Deplorables look Horrible so we can be identified and exterminated. He is the Pied Piper.
I’m afraid we Americans just can’t imagine life without a cosmic enemy.
The “British” – or, anyway, the Establishhment in / of the UK – also appear to need a Manachean opponent. There was a rush, in the early 1970s, to identify the IRA with Moscow
Then came the ‘split’ and while one section did end up identifying with Moscow (or Pyongyang) the other ‘The Provisionals’ were definitely not.
A problem was (still is, to some extent) that Irish people are inherently stupid (that’s why we starved in the 1840s – it had nothing to do with large flotillas of the Royal Navy, and about a quarter of the Army, as well as a large militarised police force forccing he exportion of huge quantities of food out of the island.
Without outside enemies, we would be at risk of too-closely examining our own government, and that could be dangerous to those in power.
The military industrial complex must be fed. Excuses must be offered. Mistakes must be made. Same as it ever was.
https://opensociet.org/2019/03/18/the-pentagons-bottomless-money-pit/
So Tulsi Gabbard tweets the following indisputable truth and she is immediately savaged by the amoral war mongers controlling both parties. Amazing.
Tulsi’s tweet: (“Short-sighted politicians & media pundits who’ve spent last 2 years accusing Trump as a Putin puppet have brought us the expensive new Cold War & arms race. How? Because Trump now does everything he can to prove he’s not Putin’s puppet?—?even if it brings us closer to nuclear war.”)
Caitlin Johnstone’s assessment (linked below) of the response is spot on, per her usual. It would appear that in America a politician can be forgiven for just about anything, except of course that most heinous of crimes, “telling the truth.” That is the one and only unforgivable sin.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/responses-to-this-tweet-show-how-people-fixate-on-narrative-over-fact-b43925719952
Rest In Peace, William Blum. Truly a great man. And, as long as we are discussing great men, because of their brave and insistent truth-telling in the face of the demented lies and bullshit Bill Blum fought all of his life, let’s honor Greg Palast-while he is still with us and working. The 2016 election WAS fixed, of course, by a criminal conspiracy called Interstate Crosscheck, in which every GOP Secretary of State in the country was a full participant. It was run out of the Kansas Secretary of State’s office-a fellow named Kobach. It was not done for Trump, of course. It was done for the GOP candidates for the House, the Senate, and whoever emerged from the dumpster fire of the 2016 GOP Presidential primaries and convention. He made a movie about it, because no one in the so-called liberal media would even talk to him, and released it BEFORE the election. The movie is called “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.” It explains quite clearly what was going to happen, and it DID happen. No one in the Clinton campaign or the DCC paid a bit of attention. Why? My theory (not Palast’s) is that the Uber-wealthy corporate criminals who fund the “mainstream “ democrats would not be pleased if the fraud of their preferred GOP friends was exposed. Whatever it was, despite the fact that Hillary was a God-awful candidate, and never bothered to even turn up in Wisconsin, and all the rest, the greatest likelihood is that she would have won anyway if all of the ballots were counted, including the “provisional” ballots given to over a million black, Hispanic and Asian citizens for reasons totally contrary to law. But what do they blame it on? THE RUSSIANS! Wow. Of course, that absurdity is perfectly ok with the big-time Democrat donors. So they run with that. Please watch the movie, if you haven’t done so already. Thank you Bill Blum, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Greg Palast, Chris Hedges, and everyone else, living or dead, who did and are doing all they can to keep truth alive.
One point remains absent from the efforts to understand the 2016 election. In spite of much Dem voter opposition to the Clinton right wing (which, in fact, did split the voting base apart), Clinton got the most votes. Trump is president because he got the most electoral votes. How many Americans understand the electoral college process? For several reasons, Trump is almost certain to be re-elected, at which point the question becomes, “Who will Democrats blame?” Stick with Russia?
The Democrats were stunned into disbelief as their infallible hero Hillary Clinton lost the election and so they were open to any reason at all for their unexpected loss.
There were many domestic reasons she lost but the democrats were wary of the old election problems that years of fighting had netted them nothing to take home. They could have focused on the obvious but they didn’t. What was obvious?
Comey reopening the server gate investigation with lurid details of Wiener’s emails on a laptop confiscated by the FBI would be a number one or two reason that the October Surprise damaged Hillary’s chances. The facts surrounding Comey’s October Surprise were however lost on the media and Congress. Nobody revisited the DOJs warning to Comey that reopening the case days before the election would be seen as election influencing. Comey was never stood up in front of Congress to explain how ignoring DOJ warnings influenced the election. Instead he was called to testify if Trump tried to obstruct justice in his investigation about Russia. Here was a man who clearly had the most influence over the last election never being asked one question about that but asked to spill the beans on Russian interference and what Trump knew about it. Clearly the democrats were not interested in the truth but were sucked into a lie that Russia was responsible and that Trump was a Russian agent doing the bidding of Putin. They were not interested in an analysis of their loss but were hoping to undo an election they felt they should have won. They signed on to the Russia Gate story because they knew it would gain a lot of traction within Washington and the western economic interests eager to marginalize an old foe that was making inroads into the economy of the West.
It did gain a lot of traction and the Russian Boogeyman was paraded around as the sole reason for the defeat of the democrats. The economic interests were quite happy with their diversion since it caused many sanctions to be levied against Russia prying them away from access to the west.
An entire defense industry had been built over decades funded by the fear of Russia. Trump was seen as a threat to that giant armaments factory consuming hundreds of billions of dollars a year of the Federal budge. To justify the continuation of the cold war with Russia they needed Trump to be turned from a friend of Russia into a Enemy of America. What better a foil for blaming the election results on Trump and Russia and it was music to democrats ears. If Trump could be framed as colluding with the enemy then he could be impeached and the democrats would have their vengeance for the “stolen” election.
Whether or not any of this was true was of no concern to democrats who had over the years enviously watched election season after election season where the media ignored their platforms and derided them over their socialist leanings and caused them to lose the House and the Senate because of the right wing echo chamber of republicans in Congress and the main stream media primarily broadcasted their mutual agendas with devastating effect.
When offered the bone to latch onto of Russian interference as the reason for their loss they were consumed by their own vanity as the new defenders of democracy fighting a Manchurian president who had stolen the election by colluding with America’s old enemy.
This single point they felt was a far easier sell in the right wing dominated government than fighting along many domestic fronts which they had tried for years to fight unsuccessfully. They had long suffered and had lost many battles due to republican tactics such as gerrymandering and the money lavished by the rich corporations and billionaires legally enshrined by laws that removed campaign finance limits. They were facing a media which refused to cover stories such as the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United or McCutcheon vs. FEC. They had no way to officially complain to the rest of America that the game had been rigged against them. Proof of this is the utter lack of media coverage of these events. The media won’t cover these realities because it benefits them to keep their mouths shut. All of that cash unleashed by the Supreme Court ultimately flows to their coffers as candidates have to spend giant sums to get elected. In fact, the worse the republican agenda is for Americans the more they have to spend to win and all of that is a big win for the commercial media outlets that rake in the cash the republicans pay for their smear campaigns that ultimately fool Americans and win elections.
With the microphone cut off for the democrat whiners about gerrymandering, voter discrimination laws, campaign finance laws and whatever else they didn’t like about the new status quo they turned to a new theory supported by the intelligence agencies that magically somehow Putin stole the election and Trump was in on the fix.
It was a miraculous happening. Suddenly the whiners that had had their voices cut off found themselves as the heroes to pomp and fanfare and ticker tape parades in the media as long as they clung to the story which served the defense industry and its 700 billion dollar a year budget. They eagerly joined in supporting sanctions against Russia without evidence. Their power grew as they stripped the president of his rights to undo sanctions against Russia. They were emboldened by the Mueller investigation sure that he would find that Trump was a Russian Mole. The defense industry was laughing all the way to the bank as a new cold war against an old enemy they depended on for their reason for existence emerged out of thin air backed by none other than the liberal democrats.
Russia gate was prepared for them on a platter and like starving people drawn by the smell of a feast, the democrats eagerly scarfed up the kibbles laid down for them by the intelligence agencies.
In the end, they signed onto a fools errand and even if Trump was a general in the Russian Army the Attorney General will never let that cat out of the bag. The same thing happened in the 911 report when every page of Saudi involvement was redacted. Complaining about it did not accomplish the release of the redacted information. In the end the intelligence agencies and the administrative branch control what Congress is allowed to see.
What has or will be accomplished by this great misadventure? The answer is not much. Some underlings will go to jail and the band will play on. Russia will bear the brunt of the blame and little will be blamed on the administration or the intelligence agencies. Consortium News has done an admirable job of ferreting out the BS foisted by the intelligence agencies but in the end it will be just a small footnote lost on the last page of history.
In the meantime, all of the ways that elections are rigged domestically have sadly been taken off the burner and the contents quietly dumped in the garbage can of history. A few fight on to end gerrymandering and the many ways that elections are rigged by the laws laid down by our Supreme Court which decided that unlimited money in elections would not lead to corruption.
Some hope remains. The Democrats now control the House and their ability to launch investigations could turn to face the very real domestic reasons that the election was lost. They could investigate themselves and how their party rigged its own defeat by supporting the reviled Hillary Clinton. But that is not going to happen. Waiting in the wings are a cadre of new democrats eager for the cash that has been lavished so long on republicans by the wealthy. They see their careers and fortunes by towing the right wing agenda while pretending to be democrats. If the democrats step out of line then they will face the same economic juggernaut that threatens every republican that tries to deviate from the conservative dictates of the billionaires. Will any democrat risk their seat to confront the new reality? Will they dare to do so in a government where the right wing billionaires now call all of the shots and replace anyone who deviates? Not likely. In the end, self preservation and their privileged financial position will dictate that they play along to get along or else they will be out.
It was necessary for the right to hide the passage Citizens United from all of us to get it passed into law. Now there is a snowballs chance in Hell that any major media outlet will ever speak about it. There is a possibility that some fool will try to call attention and if they do the microphone will go silent again as they are simultaneously muted and punished and ultimately defeated in the next election which will be funded by the dark money now controlling Washington politics.
Need proof? Just look for any main stream media coverage of how granting billionaires the ability to have unlimited influence over elections to upend democracy have resulted in the situation we have today. You won’t find much.
We collectively just presume it was the Russians after all.
I can’t remember the last time in a national election changed anything important. There’s always new war, no matter who is in the White House. Homeless & food insecurity keep getting worse, no matter which team wins the pennant.
There is one simple point that Democrats and liberals remain hell-bent on avoiding: Most voting choices (years of research have consistently confirmed) come down to economic issues. “Are you better off?” The De voting base had long consisted of the poor and middle class, for the common good. The Clinton “New Democrat Party” split this base wide apart in the 1990s, and the Obama years confirmed that this split is permanent.
Mr. Blum was a year older than I am. His passing saddens me. Sanity in high places is always a blessing. His mention of a 1955 Army pamphlet on how to spot a communist made me recall one of my duties was as a TOE NCO in Germany. The T stood for troop, the E for education and I don’t know what the O stood for. I was asked to give a lecture about the evils of communism to a bunch of guys my age. I probably had that pamphlet in my hand as I explained to indifferent young men just how evil communism was. Trying to gin up some enthusiasm for the subject was a challenge and the bored expressions of my audience demonstrated I failed. Most of the enlisted men back then were draftees who volunteered to be drafted because they couldn’t get a civilian job. Europe was a great place to be back then and the idea that we would actually have to fight Russians very remote. Seeing what has happened since, I guess we were lucky some dumb ass didn’t start a war.
To add to what William Blum was describing watch this 1961 US Army Pictorial Center movie titled ‘the Challenge of Ideas (part 1).
https://archive.org/details/Challeng1961
If only we Americans could become our mythical rhetoric and, our scrubbed pristine history. The propagandized version of the USA being a liberator of sorts is completely destroyed by the ruins of many a R2P mission launched under said good intentions. Promises of freedom and democracy for our third world salvation are unanswered with chaos, or stacked with criminal regimes to run rampant amongst it’s citizenry or as is often the case both. Sadly after all is said and done we Americans had or may still have a chance to do better…. let’s do it.
My, My….That’s what we need. Another narrative forced upon the citizens of the world that will cause WWIII. You can count on it! Be prepared for this event! Why? Because we are at the end of the economic system of debt…..It takes $3.75 of debt to create $1.00 of economic growth…..The party is OVER folks! The tables must be overturned by world war. It will be a winner take all control of what’s left of this planet……This isn’t a f*%king joke.
To understand the origins of America’s current war “groupthink” we need to heed that timeless advice, “follow the money”.
Here’s Chris Hedges’ recent take.
“Israel’s Stranglehold on American Politics”
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/israels-stranglehold-on-american-politics/
Israel’s financial manipulation of American presidents from Truman to Trump.
“Don’t accept the rules for how to criticize the Israel lobby”
https://mondoweiss.net/2019/03/accept-criticize-israel/
A historical sketch of how we got here.
“War Profiteer Story”
http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com
The Czech outfit European Values receives much of their funding for George Soros. They pursue his neocon foreign policy agenda. Soros now funds a number of organizations, including once reputable NGO’s such as Amnesty International. He has even gotten his mitts on Democracy Now. Anyone wondering why Amy Goodman and her colleagues sound like Washington neocons when it comes to Russia and Syria, it is because of Soros and his money.
Ah yes, gotta have a scapegoat.
In every prior case of threatening behavior towards countries in South America, Middle East or Eastern Europe / Russia / China the threatened party has backed off and Washington DC has thumped its chest in victory.
Now we have North Korea standing up and declining to be bullied, indeed threatening back.
Formerly we kept disobedience quiet but the MSM is not in control of news distribution any more and “all the news that’s fit to print” is really being printed at last. Its intoxicating.
For over half a century the west has alleged its the peaceful one. It changed its War Departments to Departments of Defense to publish its peace-loving nature. Instead of declaring war we now provoke and irritate any country we dislike using cyber or literary weapons to stimulate abuse from our side and hatred from theirs, to which, if it becomes violent, we respond in kind.
Now we have NK publicly doing the same stuff we do. At least the South Americans, East Europeans and Russians were polite about it and kept their responses to diplomatic channels. The NK people don’t care who knows. We are being daily insulted and the whole world knows it.
In the UN the foremost western spokes-person hardly makes sense to our own side let alone persuades others to join us. We have struck a rock and we are diplomatically foundering. Meanwhile the BRICS see investors putting more and more money into Bitcoin while China sells bonds with repayment in physical gold at buyer’s option. We are not only diplomatically foundering but financially as well.
Now would be a good time, before things go too far, for a statesman-like person in Washington DC, or perhaps London / Berlin / Moscow / Beijing / Brasilia / Delhi, to call the conference that the world requires, Bretton Woods 2, and start to sort out the mess we are in.
The U.S. would likely start a war to prevent a Bretton Woods 2. As it stands, efforts by China and the other BRICS to move away from the dollar will probably result in WW III.
Blum……… ya da man!
“Czechoslovakia”
Really?
Perhaps the name can be defended as describing the geographic region of the former federal state of Czechoslovakia. There is a collaborative Czech-Slovak effort to identify “conspirators”, because pdf I have seen did not allow me to swipe and paste, I can write here that the name is “Konspiratori”, but “s” comes in two versions, one with hachek and one with “acute accent”, I guess reflecting the differences between Slovak and Czech (hachek should produce “sh”, while “accent” should produce palatalized “s”, I am not sure if an English speaker can say it). It seems that this is indeed an international Central European collaboration, so the guys responsible for accessing if Mr. Blum is a “useful idiot” could have some slackers.
So much of the world is still unfair and not politically correct:
1] First we defeat the backwoods rubes in the Red States of America.
2] Then we go after authoritarian Russia.
3] Then on to the intolerant Islamic countries that don’t believe in Western Humanism.
4] Then after that is Confucian China, which stifles individuality
5] Then finally, if we have to, India will be last with it’s discriminatory caste system.
But we Progressives need to be smart and employ the old safari hunting tactic: when
confronted by a pack of charging wild elephants, shoot the leader and the rest
will scatter!
I’m sometimes surprised that raging against India hasn’t joined raging against Russia and China. Maybe slaughteting Pakistanis is close enough.
Dear Mr Blum,
Do not worry, you are on the complete list of the “useful idiots”. The link you had in the article leads only to a short version.
I studied the full list some months ago and saved it for myself. Don’t remember how I came to it, by some link somewhere else. And believe me, you are in good company.
The names include such celebrities and famous persons as Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Seymour Hersh, Robert Kennedy jr., Ray McGovern, Dyson Freeman (look him up, if unknown to you), Janet Yellen, James Galbraith, Sepp Blatter, Dalai Lama, Cesar Millan – there are hundreds and hundreds of names. Who would have thought that Kremlin has managed to recruit them all? (sarc)
That would be Freeman Dyson.
We are closer to a Hot war than Cold war 2.
First off just who is the WE [certainly not everyday humanity on either side; I am just as much a Russia as I am an American when it comes to being a human].. could it be the manics at the helm? I doubt it, top side are petty politicians; dunces at best; if the bankers told them to eat the poison on their dinner plates, they would gulp it down no questions asked?
How did North Korea, Viet Nam and now Russia and Iran become your enemy. (not because Russia interfered with our election(if they did), not because Iran has nuclear ambitions[Israel has enough for both of them], but because in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and just about everywhere else, there is oil, gas, fracking, and LNG[either as mineral in the ground or as money making market for the mineral]; virtually nothing else seems to be involved since 1896 in Switzerland when the bankers first determined they could use the the plight and suffering of the Jews as their carrier frequency (the so called Zionist movement). The carrier circuit would allow propaganda and population control technologies to condition the people to the idea that stealing the oil and gas from the Arabs in the middle east would be ok. No other goal exist (Israel, Arab vs. Jew as a race, religion or culture is just an expression of the Bankers goal; these are subjects which have two sides, they allow to impose the divide and conquer [D&C] strategies that so effectively weaken all political will). So why are WE [live and let live humans] so stupid that we would allow the bankers to convert our entire existence (out nation, our money, our lives, and that of our future generations) to support their FOG thefts, by wars which drain our blood? Humanity need not be victims of the few fog BANKERS that are distributed among us? Where is the journalism, the political leadership, the refusal to be called to die so the crooks can steal the FOG? Call out these Fog players, sort them into teams, buy them some uniforms and put them in a stadium, televise the game, encourage the fans of the sides to buy some FOG team tee shirts, and cheer their teams and promote the winners to rag time propaganda TV. Is humanity that stupid, to let the most corrupt among us, nation state leaders or some Fog backed media, to push its children into a war over who owns the fracking oil & gas [FOG]?
Quit talking about who done it or what was done last week, last year or ever-in-the-past and start saving your ass and the ass of your children and their children.. Wake up, the house is on fire..and the arsonist are fanning the flames.
Some of them are in Russia, some in the middle East, and some In the USA, some in Israel, some in Iran, some in Saudia Arabia, UAE, some are in Africa, some are in South America so lets select them [draft them to one of the teams] and end this XXXX before the world is allowed to burn up. Can you imagine, us, we humans, letting Saudi Arabia and UAB murder by starvation and bombs the people of Yemen? I don’t know anyone in Yemen, but I identify with the plight of the parents there, no food, no education, no quality of life, and many, many death. Today its Yemen tomorrow it will be the people of your nation state. Select out these fracking, oil, gas (the FOG) players, make of them, the warriors they planned to make of you or your children. The Fogs are the real cause of this so called war(cold or hot); set up an Olympic style stadium and sell humanity tickets to watch the FOG warriors fight in true Roman amphitheater style for the whole world to see. The threat of war is not about big bad Russians, or North Koreans, or Yemens or Ukrainians, or Chinese, or Africans, or Americans, or Israelis, its about FOG.
I don’t know much about most of the instances cited by Mr. Blum, but one of them is way out of line.
How on earth could a University president be expected to know the exact numbers of a famine in secretive China? And as Mr. Blum ought to know, that famine was a real one, and modern estimates for the death totals range from 23 million to 55 million dead Chinese as a consequence of them being governed by a dictator at least as dumb as Trump in his later years.
Clark Kerr was merely stating a fact, and just because his underestimated guess reflected badly on some terribly evil Communists is not a valid reason to damn him. A glance at Kerr’s wiki shows he was also a victim of the dumbass Ronald Reagan. IMO it’s time to stop kicking a decent man who has been dead since 2003.
You are correct. For a more accurate understanding concerning the millions of people whom have been murdered under Communist regimes, check out “The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression” — which is a 1997 book edited by Stéphane Courtois This book includes contributions by European scholars who document the history of repressions, both political and civilian, by Communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and artificial famines.
Welcome back Bill! I recall a lot of what you describe. It makes me wonder if the CIA, FBI etc. are going back and looking up what they did then and doing it all over again. It worked so well for them then, and they have a ready playbook to use – with, of course, some modern updates.
Who remembers the best seller book “I led Three LIves” or the early tv show essentially based on that?
I’m surprised that the government didn’t shut down the recent series “Person of Interest” which had nothing good to say about the NSA who turn out to be one the major villains of the plot. I’ve often wondered what TV executive had the guts to put that series out – and keep it there for 6 years.
Yes ranney, “Person of Interest” covered a lot of feelings that I have had regarding the state of affairs in this country. Now, we have this current distraction which I hope is going to wrap up now so we can get to focus on what was covered on that six season show. Lot of ground to reverse there as it focused on how we as a nation have changed since 2001.
You do realize he’s dead, right?
“A memorial service was held on Sunday in Washington for William Blum, a former State Department official whose disillusionment with the Vietnam War turned him into a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy.’
Nothing like a common enemy to unite people, and the US used their common enemy, Russia, to commit all manner of crimes around the globe and extend it’s power after WWII. No doubt the same applies now in our desire for world wide hegemony. It really is the same old, same old and for the same reason.
Disturbing article. and it reminded me of the Salem witch trials I learned about in H.S. It was a cautionary tale about false accusations and lapses in due process and extremism. I guess Americans are hard of learning.
That’s quite a history Mr. Blum has put together on the original cold war, which I am sure just scratches the surface. The long litany of sheer meanness and pettiness is stupifying, and I wouldn’t enjoy the assignment of recounting it myself, but we should be grateful for his efforts in this onerous task. None of these perverse actions contributed a single positive thing to human existence, they only threatened it and made life hell for millions of humans. Now the same insanity is back with a vengeance. And it’s MY country, not the Russians or anybody else responsible for putting the existence of all humanity on a knife’s edge once again. Moreover, there is no logic or common sense to be seen among anyone with real power in the entire American inside establishment.
The whole rotten system, trapped in its own groupthink, seems locked into a death spiral wherein every day brings new provocations, threats, boasts and rash actions by the jackasses running the power axis of Washington and New York. The key variable is whether these lunatics will “push the button” to end it all before simply running out of the psychopathic energy fueling their mania.
None of this reflects well on the human species, especially not on the “enlightened” minds of Western civilisation. I’d say if we are all just unwitting characters in an intergalactic reality show, comparable to the “Truman Show,” we are either very close to cancellation or scheduled for the series’ finale any day now.
In the Truman Show, most everyone knew it was a show except Truman. In our present “reality” everybody is clueless that democracy, progress, justice etc. is just a show, a fake fantasy – except for a relative few who are aware that they are being played, who are however unable to convey this to the entranced many who believe this complete societal travesty is as real as it gets.
“except for a relative few who are aware that they are being played, who are however unable to convey this to the entranced”
Perhaps there are additional hypotheses you failed to mention and/or failed to perceive?
A possible hypothesis of current consideration by the opponents and others may be formulated through pondering the question of “How to encourage sustainable motivation and practices from all participants to facilitate regime change ?”.
William Blum is number one on the A-List of Realist historians documenting ‘Americas’ international crimes against humanity..
The John Birch Society was RIGHT! It is still right today. The Russia-gate conspiracy theorists on the other hand are stark raving NUTS!
Thomas — By what criteria do you arrive at the conclusion that “The John Birch Society was RIGHT”?
For its entire existence (59 years), the JBS has declared that the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover was our nation’s most knowledgeable, authoritative, and reliable source of factual information about the Communist movement in our country and about internal security matters generally.
Consequently, it is exceptionally significant to point out that FBI investigative files reveal that the FBI falsified virtually every major predicate of JBS ideology AND senior FBI officials (including Director Hoover), denounced and rejected the Birch Society as a hindrance to effective anti-communist efforts in our country because the JBS circulated false and inflammatory information. In fact, internal FBI memos by Hoover and senior FBI officials describe the JBS as “right wing extremist”, “irrational”, “irresponsible”, and composed of “fanatics” and “a lunatic fringe” — precisely because the JBS was NOT “right”
> The John Birch Society was RIGHT! It is still right today.
Yup — far right, indeed protofascist (their links with avowed fascists and Nazis were interesting), besides being a would-be terrorist group.
Far right
The groupthink is becoming relentless, absolutely relentless.
To say one mild tepid comment in favor of Trump’s policy of relative rapprochement with the Kremlin is to bring forth scorn, mockery, derision, and ridicule upon oneself, especially in the company of the Rachelle Maddow true believers’ camp. One will often be deemed a Trump apologist, even if one despises 90% of his policies.
To say one kind word about Russia (or Putin) and its independence, its recent victory over the ISIS/Daesh/al-Qeada/al-Nusra/Takfiri in Syria, its recent rising living standards after the kleptocracy, its proud history of fighting imperial military machines is to invite scorn, derision, mockery and ridicule upon oneself.
I’m sensing that more and more left liberal types are finally starting to succumb to this barrage of Gish Gallop, they’re throwing up their hands exclaiming, “well, there just must be something to all this Russia-gate…”
This is frightening; I wasn’t alive during the 1950s, but this must be reminiscent to those in the know of what went on during the McCarthyite hysteria of the ’50s and the Red Scare of the 1920s.
Being in the age group that still has a firm grip on all levers of power in this country, I can remember it. The grown-ups were still mostly sane back then. Most people were too focused on making a nice living for themselves in a country providing endless possibilities to seriously believe that the people in charge would end it all over a theory of government or economics, or even over who wanted a bigger piece of the pie. The rhetoric seemed more like posturing rather than the all-too-real threats of today.
The Cuban missile crisis was the only inflexion point that had people heading to church, and, in retrospect, it may have been a show simply to allow Kennedy and Kruschev to make an arms control deal behind the scenes, starting a process that both sides labored over for the next three decades… until Dubya started deconstructing the nuclear treaties once my crazy generation become permanently entrenched in power.
Maybe I was just too naive to understand the real truths then, as the liberals are certainly too deluded to comprehend reality today. I have hope that their mental disorder will only be transient, born out of the shock of losing at the ballot box a year ago. When I broach the subject amongst regular folks (which is a tricky business), I see only the diehard partisan Democrats really trapped in the groupthink promulgated by the DNC and the MSM. Most neighborhood folks with an international background or who work blue collar jobs seem to grasp that Russia-gate is a totally contrived bogus alibi concocted by Hillary and the Dems for her shocking loss, and they don’t like it. This is South Florida suburbia, so results may vary where you live. (I know for sure they do in hopeless California where my only other living relatives reside.)
Most anyone who has lived in more than one area or worked with their hands generally has what used to exist, namely common sense. They see through the one sided gossip. They see things differently. Not everyone in and around California is hopeless or clueless. So yes, results do very. As with either coast, the general consensus is the “fly over states” are the uninformed. I know that is not true.
Unfortunately geeyp, many, many Americans are starting to firmly believe that the Kremlin hacked the election to deliberately hand the presidency to Trump.
The missile was real enough that nuclear war was avoided only because one Russian sub commander did not respond to a USA depth charge aimed at his sub.
I was in college at U. of Chicago in the 50’s, and the media bullshit was up to your eyeballs. The then chancellor Robert Hutchins challenged the groupthink and was summoned to appear before the Illinois Congress. Hutchins was a master of debate, and made the cornball legislators rue the day they invited him to speak.
Plus Putin is advocating a 100% organic farming in Russia.
Well, I guess we can add Monsanto to the list of Putin haters.
When has the USA controllers not advocated for war?
And does anyone believe the American people are any more sane or well informed than they were in cold war days? If you think that, then take your place in the long line of truly useful idiots.
The infinite is that which has no end or limit – like human delusion and ignorance.
Some of the warmongers attended a forum in Canada Recently. See link below for info.
December 5, 2017
“Was This a Gathering of Ghouls?”
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2017/12/was-this-gathering-of-ghouls.html
Blum is too optimistic. We are closer to a Hot war than Cold war 2.
100% correct WC. And important to be aware of. We must not relax and think that this crisis will simply be a long boring reprise of the cold war. We barely came through that previous war without nuclear disaster, and even then several times by sheer luck. This time our luck may run out.
The Hot War has been raging at least since CIA-project Mikheil Saakashvili ate his tie back in 2008.
Moscow dared to disrupt the Israeli-Saudi-US Axis of Evil’s beloved “regime change” project in Syria, so deadly shots were fired in the center of Kiev in February 2014.
https://orientalreview.org/2017/11/23/cheap-dignity-of-the-ukrainian-revolution/
After the coup d’etat and a visit to Kiev from the US Central Agency Agency Director Director, the Hot War rapidly spread to Russia’s border.
The Hot War is now active on multiple European and Middle Eastern fronts and war propaganda is pervasive.
Abe. True, but not (yet) to the degree of being the kind of BIG “hot war” that has the capacity to kill us all.
I also do not believe the middle east and war with Iran is where the real trouble will start (although it might well end there) . Winning a boots-on-the-ground war with Iran is not possible without the use of nuclear weapons. Were that to happen, the Russians would not sit idly by. An air war (not something that wins wars on its own) could be carried out, but not without considerable cost given the array of Russian surface to air missiles in their inventory. And Moscow would have something to say about this action as well. A friend of mine summed up the Iran situation best by saying – I do not think war is the goal here, but threat of war which is good for both domestic control and business. One can hope that it does not get out of hand and take on a life of its own. This is what the opposition should be hammering on, fat chance though.
North Korea is an entirely different matter. There are no strategic interests such as oil pipelines and such for the Chinese or the Russians to seriously defend. The Chinese have also said they would not interfere if NK strikes first, which amounts to an open invitation. All they have to do is warn the Americans against using WMDs near their territories, and Washington dives into another conflict that will further drain the economy and cause more negative world opinion. One also has to consider, given the size of the Chinese economy, they would quickly control a unified Korea (regardless of who won) in the same way the USA does Canada and Mexico.
My concern is this. At the end of every economic cycle (I’m talking the boom and bust kind not the little blips) the ruling elite have taken us to war – either to blame someone else for their own misdeeds or to stimulate the economy out of a bust-type depression. This is a tried and true method that has worked before and the odds would favor them using it again. The idea(l) would be to start a big enough war to get everyone’s attention, but also keep it contained enough to advance whatever agenda they have in mind. Now we get back to what my friend said about hoping that it does not get out of hand and take on a life of its own. :)