The Evening Blues - 2-21-24
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Andrew Brown. Enjoy!
Andrew Brown - It's My Own Fault
"Galileo probably would have escaped persecution if his discoveries could have been disproved."
-- Richard Whately
News and Opinion
Worth a full read:
Assange’s lawyers expose US-UK persecution on first day of High Court hearing
For the last three years, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s appearances in court have been limited to arguments over his health and risk of suicide in the event of extradition to the United States to face charges under the Espionage Act. This was due to District Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s carefully crafted January 2021 ruling against extradition on the single point of the risk of suicide. ... On Tuesday at the UK’s High Court, Assange’s legal team finally had the opportunity to break out of this procedural straitjacket and raise the issues of rampant state criminality and denial of democratic rights which are really at the heart of this case, and which were systematically overlooked by Baraitser.
Across five hours of submissions to Mr Justice Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp, Edward Fitzgerald KC and Mark Summers KC argued for Assange’s right to make a full appeal of Baraitser’s findings before the High Court. They also challenged the British Home Secretary’s decision to order extradition in line with the court’s recommendation. Assange was given permission to attend the hearing in person but again could not, even by video link, due to his worsening ill health after nearly five years incarcerated in Belmarsh maximum security prison.
Assange’s case against his prosecutors is devastating. It establishes that the US government is waging a campaign of political persecution in retribution for Assange’s exposure of US government crimes. In doing so, it is violating his most essential democratic rights: to life, freedom from torture and inhuman and degrading punishment, freedom of expression, and freedom from abuse of legal process and arbitrary power.
Summers delivered the most significant evidence, arguing that the US is illegally using its prosecution of Assange as a means of punishing his activity with WikiLeaks which exposed “US state-level crimes, crimes which sit at the very apex of the legal hierarchy,” including “extrajudicial assassinations, renditions, torture, dark prisons, rogue killings.” What Assange’s work disclosed, Summers continued, was a type of “criminality which permeates, is approved, tolerated, within the very fabric of the American government.” His case therefore falls within a class of cases where “state retaliation makes use of the criminal justice system.” ...
Lawyers for the US and UK governments will respond to Assange’s arguments on Wednesday, in the second and final day of the hearing.
Julian Assange: WikiLeaks Founder Faces Final U.K. Appeal to Avoid U.S. Extradition
Truth Defence: LIVE - On the Julian Assange extradition hearing
Gabriel Shipton: Julian Assange’s Brother on British “Justice”
US vetoes Arab-backed UN resolution demanding ceasefire in Gaza
The US has vetoed a UN security council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza for the third time, arguing that it would undermine negotiations over a hostage deal.
The US was the lone vote against a ceasefire resolution put forward on Tuesday by Algeria. The UK was the sole abstention, with 13 votes in support, including those of close allies of Washington who insisted the humanitarian needs of Palestinians outweighed any reservations over the Algerian text.
Washington was widely lambasted for using its veto again at a time when nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2 million people are under threat of famine.
“A vote in favour of this draft resolution is a support for the Palestinians right to life,” the Algerian envoy to the UN, Amar Bendjama, told the council. “Conversely, voting against it implies an endorsement of the brutal violence and collective punishment inflicted upon them.”
The Algerian resolution also called for the implementation of provisional measures ordered in January by the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague, which instructed Israel to mitigate its offensive to protect civilians, lift impediments on the flow of aid into Gaza, and take action against Israeli politicians using genocidal language.
After Gaza Cease-Fire Veto, Biden to Attend Fundraiser at Home of Pro-Israel Billionaire
Hours after his ambassador to the United Nations vetoed the third cease-fire resolution to be proposed at the U.N. Security Council since Israel began its U.S.-backed bombardment of Gaza in October, President Joe Biden was scheduled to attend a high-dollar fundraiser at the home of an influential pro-Israel billionaire on Tuesday.
Tickets for the event hosted in Los Angeles by media mogul Haim Saban started at $3,300 and cost as much as $250,000. Other exclusive fundraising events for Biden, who is seeking reelection in November, have been disrupted in recent months by protesters demanding that the U.S. end its support for Israel, which has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October.
American Taxpayers Fund IDF WEAPONS STOCKPILE For ME War
"Moral Failure": Democrats Urge Biden to Change Gaza Policy
Will Netanyahu Bring Down Biden?
The cabinet of Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is filled with religious extremists who believe that Israel’s brutality in Gaza is at God’s command. According to the Book of Joshua in the Hebrew Bible, dated by scholars to the 7th century BC, God promised the land to the Jewish people and instructed them to destroy the other nations living in the promised land. This text is used by extreme nationalists in Israel today, including by many of the 700,000 or so Israeli settlers living in occupied Palestinian lands in violation of international law. Netanyahu pursues the religious ideology of 7th century BC in the 21st century.
Of course, the vast majority of the world today, including the vast majority of Americans, are certainly not in line with Israel’s religious zealots. The world is far more interested in the 1948 Genocide Convention than in the genocides supposedly ordained by God in the Book of Joshua. They don’t accept the Biblical idea that Israel should kill or expel the people of Palestine from their own land. The two-state solution is the declared policy of the world community, as enshrined by the UN Security Council, and of the U.S. government.
President Joe Biden is therefore caught between the powerful Israel Lobby and the opinion of American voters and of the world community. Given the power of the Israel lobby, and the sums it expends in campaign contributions, Biden is trying to have it both ways: supporting Israel but not endorsing Israel’s extremism. Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken hope to entice the Arab countries into yet another open-ended peace process with the two-state solution as the distant goal that is never reached. Israeli hardliners would of course block every step of the way. Biden knows all of this but wants the fig leaf of a peace process. Biden also hoped until recently that Saudi Arabia could be lured into normalizing relations with Israel in return for F-35 fighter jets, access to nuclear technology, and a vague commitment to an eventual two-state solution... someday, somehow.
The Saudis will have none of it. They made this clear in a declaration on February 6, stating:
The Kingdom calls for the lifting of the siege on the people in Gaza; the evacuation of civilian casualties; the commitment to international laws and norms and international humanitarian law, and for moving the peace process forward in accordance with the resolutions of the Security Council and the United Nations, and the Arab Peace Initiative, which aims to find a just and comprehensive solution and establish an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as capital.
Domestically, Biden confronts AIPAC (the innocuously named American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the lead organization of the Israel lobby. AIPAC’s long-running success is to turn millions of dollars of campaign contributions into billions of dollars of U.S. aid to Israel, an amazingly high return. Currently, AIPAC aims to turn around $100 million of campaign funding for the November election into a $16 billion supplemental aid package for Israel.
So far, Biden is going along with AIPAC, even as he loses younger voters. In an Economist/YouGov poll of January 21-23, 49% of those aged 19-29 held that Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian civilians. Only 22% said that in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, their sympathies are with Israel, versus 30% with Palestine, and the remaining 48% “about equal” or unsure. Only 21% agreed with increasing military aid to Israel. Israel has utterly alienated younger Americans.
While Biden has called for peace based on the two-state solution and a reduction of violence in Gaza, Netanyahu has brazenly brushed Biden aside, provoking Biden to call Netanyahu an asshole on several occasions. Yet it is Netanyahu, not Biden, who still calls the shots in Washington. While Biden and Blinken wring their hands at Israel’s extreme violence, Netanyahu gets the U.S. bombs and even Biden’s full backing for the $16 billion with no U.S. red lines.
To see the absurdity—and tragedy—of the situation, consider Blinken’s statement in Tel Aviv on February 7. Rather than putting any limits on Israel’s violence, made possible by the U.S., Blinken declared that “it will be up to Israelis to decide what they want to do, when they want to do it, how they want to do it. No one’s going to make those decisions for them. All that we can do is to show what the possibilities are, what the options are, what the future could be, and compare it to the alternative. And the alternative right now looks like an endless cycle of violence and destruction and despair.”
This morning, the U.S. used its veto power to kill the Algerian draft resolution in the UN Security Council calling for an immediate cease-fire, with U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield calling the effort to pass the measure "wishful" and "irresponsible." Biden has put forward a weak alternative, calling for a ceasefire “as soon as practicable,” whatever that means. In practice, it would also surely mean that Israel would simply declare a cease-fire to be “impracticable.”
Biden needs to take back U.S. policy from the Israel lobby. The U.S. should stop backing Israel’s extremist and utterly illegal policies. Nor should the U.S. spend any more funds on Israel unless and until Israel lives within international law, including the Genocide Convention, and 21st century ethics. Biden should side with the UN Security Council in calling for an immediate ceasefire and indeed in calling for an immediate move to the two-state solution, including recognition of Palestine as the 194th UN member state, a move that is more than a decade overdue since Palestine requested UN membership in 2011.
Israeli leaders have shown not the slightest compunction in killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians, displacing 2 million Gazans, and calling for ethnic cleansing. The International Court of Justice has determined that Israel may well be committing genocide, and the ICJ could make a definitive determination of genocide in the next year or two. Biden would enter history as an enabler of genocide. Yet he still has the chance to be the U.S. president who prevented genocide.
Palestinian child starves to death in Gaza City
An eight-year-old Palestinian girl has died from dehydration and starvation in Gaza City, the NGO, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported on Saturday.
The organisation’s teams in northern Gaza said that Hanin Saleh Hassan Jumaa died from a severe calcium deficiency caused by starvation.
“I [cannot] forget the night of my daughter Hanin’s death when she asked me for food, and I told her, ‘Sleep, I will bring you in the morning,” her father said.
He said that the following morning, she began to moan. “When I sat next to her, I found her as if she was preparing to die.
“I rushed her...to the hospital on a donkey cart due to the lack of cars, only for the doctor to tell me that my daughter had died from dehydration and lack of food."
The rights group warned in January of the growing risk of famine especially among children and the elderly. It cited the earlier death of infant Jamal Mahmoud Jamal Al-Kafarna on 18 January, who died "of hunger in his mother's arms".
Euro-Med Monitor also reported the death of one-year-old Baraa al-Haddad from hunger and dehydration on 30 December, and 14-year-old Jana Deeb Qudeih, who had cerebral palsy, on 8 December.
"This tragic incident of a young girl dying from hunger is a stark reminder of the severity of the crisis in Gaza, with hunger at catastrophic levels and children being particularly vulnerable to starvation," Jean-Michel Grand, Executive Director of Action Against Hunger UK told Middle East Eye.
Houthis Say They Shot Down US MQ-9 Reaper Drone
Yemen’s Houthis said on Monday that their forces downed an American MQ-9 Reaper Drone that was flying over Yemen. US officials have acknowledged that a US drone crashed and say they’re investigating the cause.
“Yemeni air defenses were able to shoot down an American plane (MQ-9) with a suitable missile while it was carrying out hostile missions against our country on behalf of the Zionist entity,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a statement, according to The New York Times.
“Yemeni armed forces will not hesitate to take more military measures and carry out more qualitative operations against all hostile targets in defense of beloved Yemen,” Sarea added.
Russia adds Republican senator Lindsey Graham to ‘terrorists and extremists’ list
The Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a key ally of Donald Trump, has been added to a list of “terrorists and extremists” kept by Russia’s state financial monitoring agency.
Tass, the state-run news agency, first reported the move by Rosfinmonitoring, which allows authorities to freeze Russian bank accounts, though in Graham’s case is likely to be chiefly symbolic.
Russian space nukes
Polish farmers dump grain in protest as Ukraine dispute deepens
Poland’s bitter dispute with Ukraine over farm imports has escalated as Polish farmers dumped grain from a freight train as part of nationwide protests and Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Warsaw of “mockery” In a video address on Monday, Ukraine’s president described the blockade by Polish farmers as absurd at a time when Russia was bombing his country. “The situation is not about grain, but rather about politics,” he said, after a visit to the frontline town of Kupiansk.
He added: “Near Kupiansk, not far from the Russian border where enemy artillery is constantly active, the news from the Polish border looks like a mockery. We need joint decisions, rational decisions to get out of the situation.” Zelenskiy said only 5% of Ukraine’s agricultural exports went through Poland and complained that the slowdown was undermining “solidarity” on a daily basis. The two countries, plus anyone who cared “about the fate of Europe”, needed to resolve the problem, he added.
Farmers in France, Belgium, Portugal, Greece, Spain and Germany have been protesting against constraints placed on them by EU measures to tackle the climate crisis, as well as rising costs and what they say is unfair competition from abroad. In Poland, the protests have taken on an anti-Ukrainian character. The farmers allege that cheap agricultural goods have undermined their businesses. They want to stop the import of Ukrainian grain and to extend the ban to other goods including fruit, eggs and meat.
Last autumn, Polish lorry drivers blockaded border crossings with western Ukraine, claiming they faced unfair practices. Tractor-driving farmers joined in. The action ended in December, after a new Polish coalition government led by Donald Tusk took over. Last week, the protests resumed. On Tuesday, Polish farmers dumped Ukrainian grain from freight cars parked at the Medyka-Shehyni border crossing. Protesters waved Polish flags and chanted: “This is Poland, not Brussels. We do not support Ukrainians.”
AL Court RULES Embryos Are KIDS, Trump Team PLOTS ABORTION BAN
Alabama supreme court rules frozen embryos are ‘children’
In a first-of-its-kind decision, the Alabama supreme court ruled Friday that frozen embryos are “children”, allowing two wrongful death suits against a Mobile fertility clinic to proceed. The decision could have sweeping implications for people seeking in vitro fertilization (IVF) or other assisted reproductive technology treatments and could increase criminalization of expectant people.
In 2021, a patient at Mobile’s Center for Reproductive Medicine wandered into the clinic’s cryogenic nursery and removed several embryos. According to the lawsuit, “the subzero temperatures at which the embryos had been stored freeze-burned the patient’s hand, causing the patient to drop the embryos on the floor, killing them”.
The three couples who lost their frozen embryos sued for wrongful death, but the clinic claimed that Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act did not apply to embryos outside of the womb. Mobile county circuit court judge Jill Parrish Philips agreed with that argument and ruled to dismiss the case, but the state’s supreme court threw it out last week.
Alabama supreme court justice Jay Mitchell wrote that embryos are indeed protected under the state’s existing law: “The central question presented in these consolidated appeals, which involve the death of embryos kept in a cryogenic nursery, is whether the act contains an unwritten exception to that rule for extrauterine children – that is, unborn children who are located outside of a biological uterus at the time they are killed,” he wrote. “Under existing black-letter law, the answer to that question is no: the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.”
‘I refuse to quit’: Nikki Haley declares no fear of retribution from Trump
A defiant Nikki Haley on Tuesday declared no fear of retribution from Donald Trump as she persists in her efforts to compete against the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, saying: “I feel no need to kiss the ring.”
Haley approaches the South Carolina primary on Saturday, her home state where she was previously governor, a long way behind Trump but turning up the rhetorical heat.
“We’ve all heard the calls for me to drop out,” she said in a speech in Greenville, South Carolina, on Tuesday. But she also said: “I refuse to quit.”
And in an interview with the Associated Press, she vowed to stay in the fight at least until after Super Tuesday’s slate of more than a dozen contests on 5 March.
“Ten days after South Carolina, another 20 states vote. I mean, this isn’t Russia. We don’t want someone to go in and just get 99% of the vote,” Haley said, adding: “What is the rush? Why is everybody so panicked about me having to get out of this race?”
FBI LYING About Jan 6 Pipe Bomb?! Michael Shellenberger Breaks Down The COVER-UP
FBI informant who lied about Bidens’ Ukraine ties had contact with Russians – prosecutors
A former FBI informant charged with making up a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company had contacts with officials affiliated with Russian intelligence, prosecutors said in a court paper on Tuesday.
Prosecutors revealed the alleged contact as they urged a judge to keep Alexander Smirnov behind bars while he awaits trial. He’s charged with falsely reporting to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and the president $5m each in 2015 or 2016. The claim has been central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress. ...
David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld, the defense attorneys, said in a statement ahead of the hearing that they were asking for Smirnov’s release while he awaits trial “so he can effectively fight the power of the government”.
Prosecutors said that during an interview before his arrest last week, Smirnov admitted that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter. They said Smirnov’s contacts with Russian officials were recent and extensive and said Smirnov had planned to meet with one official during an upcoming overseas trip.
They said Smirnov has had numerous contacts with a person he described as the “son of a former high-ranking government official” and “someone with ties to a particular Russian intelligence service”. They said there is a serious risk that Smirnov could flee overseas to avoid facing trial.
At least 60% of US population may face ‘forever chemicals’ in tap water, tests suggest
About 70 million people are exposed to toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” in US drinking water, new testing from the Environmental Protection Agency has found.
But the testing completed to date has only checked about one-third of the nation’s public water systems, meaning the agency is on pace to find over 200 million people are exposed, or at least 60% of the US population.
The figure does not include private wells, and the federal government previously estimated about 8 million people who draw water from those are exposed to PFAS.
The EPA’s continuing testing is the first comprehensive nationwide assessment aimed at understanding the scale of PFAS contamination in US drinking water. So far, the government figures match up with independent estimates that found about 200 million people drink tainted water, and the widespread contamination cuts across geographic and socioeconomic boundaries.
‘Energy turmoil’ looms unless demand is checked, says Cop28 president
The problem of the ever-growing demand for power must be addressed if the world is not to risk descending into “energy turmoil” as it transitions towards clean energy, according to the president of last year’s Cop28 summit. In a discussion hosted by the International Energy Agency, Sultan Al Jaber warned governments that they must be “honest and transparent” about the potential costs of transition, and the trade-offs involved in transforming energy supplies.
Al Jaber said: “The energy transition will lead to energy turmoil … if we only address the supply side of the energy equation.
“We must be balanced, we must tackle the demand side … We cannot and should not pursue the energy transition by only looking and working on one side of the equation.” ...
The ballooning world demand for energy is expected to continue growing, with the oil company ExxonMobil predicting that global demand will rise another 15% from 2021 levels by 2050. Unless that demand can be reduced, it is unlikely that global carbon reduction targets can be met, but many governments are reluctant to look at the complex issues around this area.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
DAY ONE: Assange Timeline Exposes US Motives
For Biden, ending Israel’s mass murder in Gaza is a ‘non-starter’
Patrick Lawrence: Grand Delusions
Screw The Facts - Europe Commits Itself To Further Escalation
Colonialism, Occupation & Apartheid: African Countries See "Shared Experiences" with Palestinians
Biden Spox GLITCHES Over IDF Sexual Assault HYPOCRISY
IDF Chief: STOP Posting TikTok War Crimes
Truckers BOYCOTT New York City To Support Trump!
Munich in despair as EU sinks, Russia surges and Trump looms
A Little Night Music
Andrew Brown - Something Can Go Wrong
Andrew Brown - You Better Stop
Andrew Brown - Losing Hand
Andrew Brown - You Ought To Be Ashamed
Andrew Brown - I Got News For You
Andrew Brown - Blues Do Something To Me
Andrew Brown - You Made Me Suffer
Andrew Brown - Two Years
Andrew Brown - On The Case & This Time You Gonna Pay
Comments
Maybe it's just me, but there is something different
.
....about tonight's news line-up.
Every one of the stories tonight could be a mortal blow to a person's sense of humanity — if they regarded themselves as a citizen of the United States. Or if they thought that the US was their sole international protector in this world, and the staunch defender of their civil and political rights at home. Or if they trusted the US as the unwavering guardian of their human rights and their committed supporter in times of extreme upheaval. Or, it they understand they would need a favorable discharge of obligations from the US in order to leave the country and be granted a path to citizenship in a better nation. Or if they realized that the fee for leaving the US might actually cost far more money than they have. Or if they knew that they could easily be denied justice by a vindictive government at any level..
On another note, I am unable to read any articles about Julian Assange. The injury and betrayal are too deep to tolerate any reminder of what has taken place here.
Remember the artist Weiwei, who sought refuge in the US because he was censored in China and elsewhere?
.
Any promise that the US held for humanity is dead.
That explains why everything the US touches will eventually turn to shit.
The only protected class — legally and financially — is the very wealthy,
a condition that unleashed corruption in government and across the land.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
evening pluto...
it's getting increasingly difficult to read the news these days and not see that the u.s. has been taken over and is being progressively subjugated by a malevolent force.
Said with a straight face
.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
evening snoopy...
nancy seems to be getting better at lying through her dentures. she no longer appears worried about getting caught spouting completely obvious falsehoods.
Well no one has ever held her accountable for her lies
But to blatantly lie to the world like she did…I really have no words.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Jon Stewart explains why we have crime bad infrastructure
I did not play the video. I am read the transcripts. I am not sure if Stewart was being facetious or if he was being serious. The ills of American society can be explained because that is the price we pay for freedom. All the poverty, illness, hunger, homeless, drug addiction are small prices to pay for being free.
evening mr w...
heh, so we have to watch out for mr putin because he forces people to be housed, healthy, prosperous and not dependent on drugs against their wills?
Russia made their vaccine voluntary
I followed the Sputnik vaccine and it appeared to be pretty effective and not built on mRNA technology. But Russians were not mandated to be vaccinated. Of course Western officials lied about it. But used in India. The Indians require that any vaccine used in country must re-do trials. Sputnik passed and handed it over for local production. Pfizer went to India and did not want to do the trials wanted instead emergency approval. Indians to their credit refused--had to do the trials. What happened after that not sure but I would speculate Pfizer just walked away.
Stewart is trying to split the baby
On his first episode shitlib we’re livid that he called Biden old. He also called Trump old, but they still flipped their lids that he said that about Biden. So now he’s trying to not piss them off while still playing to the other side. But where’s the lie? Biden is 81 and I’m pretty sure that everyone would call that old.
We have enough dem bootlickers in Colbert, Dillan Noah someone and one’s whose name I’ve forgotten. Stewart should be true to himself and stop trying not to upset people.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Code pink leader called him a slacktivist.
Stewart wants dissent in neat contained boxes. He went after Assange and called him a self serving egotist. He lambasted Code Pink for their tactics (hey freedom). At first he really looked down on the WI teachers as being weird. Greenwald had to scold him for accusing leftists as being too extreme over calling Bush a war criminal. There was plenty of evidence of US torture in Iraq which is a war crime.
He will most likely carry water for shitlib establishment and now and then foray near the edge of the ranch, but no further.
He should have remained
in full retirement.
Shame he couldn't resist making an ass of himself.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Didn’t he make an ass out of himself long before his
new show? I don’t remember the details, but he’s showed his true colors before this.
New shitlib talking point:
Nice to know that the anti war left doesn’t have a problem with genocide. I tweet that with a link to DK daily. They’re pushing hard to get out the vote for Genocide Joe. But just imagine how they will react once it’s Trump supporting Israel’s genocide. And do you think any of them would have gotten jabbed if Trump won the election after Joe said that he’d never take the Trump vaccine because not enough time had determined whether it was safe?
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Grand delusions
As usual Patrick Lawrence is on target.
Maybe I'm too cynical, is it self delusion or just self serving lies? Above the pure corruption of greed and lust for power, is there is an intermediate level between venality and self delusion one might indulge in, if one was just ignorant or only poorly informed? That middle ground perhaps involves "the end justifies the means," the calculation of self imagined Machiavelli types in leadership roles. They tell themselves "I know the policy line I'm promoting is pure propaganda, but I'm doing it because my realpolitik calculation tells me it's the best thing for the US." It just so happens the Machiavellian analysis works politically because the policies purported to favor the US national interest, also favor the individual interests of the principal proponents. The fact that the Machiavellian analysis misconstrues, whether deliberately or not, the current balance of power or changes in "world historical forces" prompts the effort to aggressively foreclose the rising challengers Russia and China. This is something Japan and Germany did before and during WWII: "It's now or never." I feel like Matlock maybe alluded to this in a recent video he made where he (diplomatically) avoids making the perhaps obvious inference, that western leadership has been acting in bad faith since 1991 with respect to Russia.
The video is 47 minutes long. I'll just put the link here-
Last US Ambassador to USSR Reveals USA Doctrine Of Hegemony | Amb. Jack Matlock.
I watched Martyanov and Ritter discuss what is absent from US policy makers formulating NATO anti-Russian efforts. It was a remarkable discussion and some of the points are so well taken. I'll only mention two. One, the comparison of Jack Matlock as a statesman to Michael McFaul. McFaul simply had zero interest in Russia as a civilization worthy of respect, and a deserved place in the world. That is, Matlock as a diplomat of the old school, and McFaul as a shill for power. Scott dwelled appropriately, on Russia as a great culture with a great people. Martyanov made what I think is the most profound observation concerning Putin as a Russian leader; that he was the one current Russian leader who could synthesize and articulate the continuity of Russian character as an historical experience, whether of past imperial era, the Soviet Union, or as the current Russian state.
I cannot speak Russian and I've never been to the Bolshoi. I've studied some Russian history, the revolution in some depth, the world wars to some extent; I've read a few of the classic Russian novels. Nevertheless, I feel I know exactly what Martyanov means and think it's his most profound point. I experienced a similar revelation with respect to the Chinese experience not too long ago. China is more than the Chinese Communist Party. There are thousands of years of culture, philosophy, and historical experience that compose the modern Chinese character and even the current Chinese "communist" policies. Are they really even communist any more? To caricature Russia or China based on simplistic western ideological or realpolitik frames, undermines our understanding of world events and who we are demonizing, threatening, and aiming to destroy. Won't we ultimately be among the victims? US policy serves the destructive, dangerous self serving perspective of a very small group of US and allied elites. The expansionist policy of the US and NATO has more than outlived its useful life. World hegemony threatens our very existence. How much of this policy is the product of "delusion" from ignorance and how much is just lying in bad faith based upon an unwarranted sense of impunity?
Thanks as always for the EBs Joe.
語必忠信 行必正直
evening soryang...
i am not sure that delusion is the right term for what drives people to try to achieve global hegemony. i think that it is probably more related to greed or lust for power than delusion. it is clear that these people's reach exceeds their grasp as they cannot even successfully bring peace, prosperity and order to the country that they currently rule, in fact they have no interest in doing so. they want power without responsibility and they may possibly achieve it briefly, but as a long-term project it will become unstable and fall apart.
I will check out your vids
and thanks for posting them.
I think powerful people lusting for even more power, ignore facts that preclude that.
And what do they do? Persist.
That is delusional.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
My trip to Russia,
my personal experience with their ballet, their musicians...I could go on, but Ritter nailed it.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Ok, Soryang...
I was on this boat, going down the Volga. The place for beer or wine or whatever, was in the lounge, where a young Russian woman played pretty typical Russian lounge music, with some western stuff tossed in.
I caught her when virtually nobody was there, and had "that talk" with her. I played some of her music, discussed my background of training that traced right back to Russian composers who had been educated in the Vienna School of Music where my teachers had attended.
I told her to read the music, but find the song. Find the song.
She was mind blown about her rigidity, had never thought about interpretation, rubato, crescendo, diminuendo.
An experience of a lifetime. She promised me she would find the song.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Wow!
That is almost dreamlike. OTC, truly a wonderful story. Quite a contrast to my own limited "rigid" experience. I used to teach military subjects concerning Russia, "threat recognition." The only Russian I ever met personally was an exchange professor who was my advisor on my undergrad history thesis on the agrarian uprising as the key element of Russian revolution (from the Hoover document translations). Other than that, my big thrill was seeing Russian warships on my Med cruise. When I didn't get to go to the language school, that ended that.
Tim posted the link to his father's experience in the Far East. I didn't know that it began with him studying Russian at the language school, after he went into the Navy during WWII. After achieving proficiency, they said wait, we need you to study Japanese. That started an amazing personal adventure, for him and his family. I was truly moved by his story. I admire Tim's work as well. I'll just put the link to the 2004 video here-
Hallam Carey Shorrock Collection
When Hallam Shorrock was doing his missionary work in South Korea later, after the Korean War, he could communicate effectively because most Koreans who had any schooling had been forced by the Japanese to learn Japanese. I don't think that would have worked when I was stationed there. The older generation still spoke Japanese but not the following generations educated after the liberation. My mother in law was fluent in Japanese. I learned some basic Korean from living with her.
I finished an HSK 2 video today.
語必忠信 行必正直
The recent Munich conference calls to mind tonight's
required reading, a short story by Poe titled "The Masque of the Red Death"
It is a relatively short tale you may read or even have read to you here:
https://poemuseum.org/the-masque-of-the-red-death/
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
thanks for the appropriate tale, have a great evening!
MoA
.
I posted a tweet in the OT of her saying this. And no you blood thirsty woman we don’t agree with you. Especially because Israel has walked away from the discussion and not getting the food into Gaza means more children will die. An 8 year old girl died yesterday from starvation. How many more need to die to slake America's thirst?
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
heh...
israel and its chief supporter are looking for a "final solution."
And it is impossible for them to be too damned ignorant to
understand what they said, they said it and they meant it and they own it.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --