Shallows of the Deep State

Tags

attorney general, cia, Donald Trump, jeff sessions, mi6, russian collusion, russian spies, secretary of state, sergei kisliak, United States of America, vladimir putin

 

The Deep State is not a conspiracy of dark forces but rather the branches of government that do not change with each new administration. Their heads may change but the core staff does not. Prominent among these in the US – and the main reason for suspicion – are the security-intelligence agencies, all seventeen of them. It is from some of these agencies that we are now hearing and seeing a marked reaction against the shambles that is Donald Trump’s administration. This reaction has already resulted in the discovery that Trump’s campaign chair, Attorney General, and his Secretary of Defense took and lied about meetings with staffers at the Russian Embassy, both during and subsequent to the election. Jeff Sessions, Attorney General, met with the Russian Ambassador just three days after President Obama announced sanctions to punish Russian cyber malfeasance. We have learned today that present at a meeting denied by Defense Secretary Flynn was Mr. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and now a kind of roving diplomat without any conspicuous credentials. The net is tightening around the President – who has now been shown unambiguously lying about his own relationship with Russian premier Putin – and I am told investigators are trying to ascertain whether or not the Trump team was colluding with Russian operatives to interfere in the election. Mere contact is not sufficient for charges to be laid. Collusion, however, is treason – a death sentence,  or life in jail at the very least. Some of those in the deep state are convinced collusion has occurred and believe they will be able to prove it.

 

Whenever Trump most complains about “fake news” it is over the stories circulating about this Russian involvement. Why? Because, if proven, it would potentially and probably chop up support in his base. Such people may like the bombast and racist innuendo, but many of them will not be able to tolerate the idea of a covert alliance with America’s traditional enemy. Some perhaps even think of the Soviets still, and the Red Peril. And we know how the President likes to play to his base almost exclusively.

 

Tuesday’s address to the Congress was a striking example of this administration’s proclivity for staging events that can only be compared with the Nazi Nuremberg rallies of the 1930s – crowd-pleasing spectacles designed to glorify and magnify the Fuhrer. The address said nothing, besides a wish-list of prospective actions phrased to sound like accomplishments, yet each hollow statement was greeted with fantastically overdone applause. Bereaved or unusually accomplished ordinary citizens – unusual because of race or class and the concomitant adversity – were shamelessly dragged in for emotional effect. What was supposed to be a serious talk outlining propositions to an assembly of serious people was a mere carnival. The large number of members not supporting Trump – less still the demonstrators outside – were invisible, except for the odd person looking glum and not clapping. This was a spectacle staged to present the American TV audience with an image of the President wholeheartedly supported and adored by a united House. It was in effect fake news. CBC Radio, however, chose largely to ignore the address, and certainly didn’t dissect the speech for its accuracy or vacuity. The CBC has been particularly thin on US news of late, and I hear the Government of Trudeau le Petit has pressured the Corp to lay off Trump to protect our American trade. If true, this is beneath contempt.

 

Major voices on the Right in the US are speaking out fearlessly. One was even interviewed on the CBC, presumably because no one here is allowed to do it. David Frum, senior editor of the Atlantic magazine, ex-speech writer for George W. Bush, ex-Canadian, active supporter of the Iraq catastrophe, is no bleeding-heart liberal. He says the allegations of Russian collusion in election meddling are going to be provably true. Far from overreacting to this story, as we are told is happening by some news agencies, we ought to beware of underreacting. It is probably the most devastating incident in American political history – if true, of course. Richard Nixon spied on the Democratic Party, but at least he used American agents to do it. In Mr. Frum’s opinion, Trump is heading down the road to autocracy. The 21str-century version won’t be like Stalin or Hitler, he says. Violence and coercion will be replaced by “deceit and corruption”. These are very serious issues, yet the CBC glosses over them or ignores them, dredging up the usual trivia and, sports, entertainment and local flim-flam. It’s sad, and it’s irritating when our powerful neighbor is on the verge of what could well be a new civil war.

 

Unsurprisingly, Trump never once mentioned the most damaging issue dogging his administration during his autohagiography to Congress. Not a word about Russia – nyet. Not a peep. One might well ask how the Russians are taking all these allegations and accusations. You can’t really discover that, however, since Czar Putin controls all the media. But you can discover what he, Putin, is thinking – or what he wants us to think he’s thinking. A recent newspaper headline bemoaned the state of America since Trump’s election, calling it “a madhouse”. True enough. One headline today read, “Time to End the Honeymoon with Trump?” This is clearly Moscow telling the world it has no special ties to Trump, is dismayed by his first month in office, and will be content to work with whomever replaces him. Other recent press articles complain about Russia being used as a punching-bag in Washington. Putin is creating a distance between himself and the White House. Why? Probably because he’s fairly certain that the shit will soon hit Trump’s fan, and, knowing that shit as intimately as Putin indubitably does, he must be well aware of the consequences that must inevitably follow any exposure of Russian collusion in election tampering or possibly even worse high crimes and misdemeanors. These consequences will of course leave any Russian nationals unscathed, and, wearing his Teflon suit, Putin can deny all knowledge of this crazy Yankee fantasy. But Deep State officials know it is not a fantasy. The CIA has said so, and if the NSA – which has the metadata on every phone call made every minute of every day in the entire world – cannot come up with some irrefutably conclusive evidence against this administration, well, then their trillion-dollar budget should be kicked down to Langley. Some months ago I cited examples of Russian interference in previous US and other elections. There is no doubt that they do it. There’s no doubt that America indulges in some shady cyber activities too. But Russia does have a long relationship with computer crimes. Back in the nineties, Moscow hand-picked the best and brightest techno-geeks, furnished them with state-of-the-art equipment, installed them somewhere deep in the remotest Urals, and instructed them to wait for the most glorious and secret project. This project never arrived, though. It was not a good time for the Kremlin. Putin was just another KGB agent, and the post-Communist nation was floundering under a crew of oligarchic kleptocrats who stripped Russia’s assets and bought the lot themselves for a few kopecs. Meanwhile, back in the Urals, our techno-geeks were amusing themselves playing havoc on the Internet. They hacked anything worth hacking. They went shopping on your credit cards. And they wrote the first really destructive viruses and worms. Objectively, they did brilliant work. Subjectively, I had to buy two new desktops inside a year. When highly gifted or inordinately intelligent people are allowed to play, not only do they learn what no one is teaching, they also come up with ideas and discoveries no one else could have possibly stumbled upon. With this isolated group of brainy nerds the whole concept of Russian cyber warfare was developed far in advance of any Pentagon efforts. If Russians did hack Democratic Party computers, you can be sure it would be a very sophisticated job, hard to detect, and perhaps impossible to trace to any specific server, less still any individual. I think the Deep State already knows this, and has thus shifted its attention towards the physical meetings. As I write this, the Secretary of State has been linked to a Russian bank specializing in money-laundering. That is now the four most important offices in Trump’s administration linked to shadowy dealings with Moscow. No wonder that Putin, the master strategist – and apparently a great chess player – is edging Trump to where he can be easily thrown under the bus. But let’s not rush to judgement. Is there anything to suggest that Russia might be innocent in all of this?

 

Well, yes and no. Most of the contentious meetings were with Sergei Kisliak, the Russian Ambassador in Washington. He’s an amiable man, laid-back, and well-liked by all. He knows almost everyone on the Hill, is very sociable, so if you’ve been in town for a while you will probably have met him. Unlike Putin and his cronies, who all come out of the intelligence services, Kisliak was originally a physicist, a background that initially made him useful in Washington as a knowledgeable negotiator in arms-reduction talks. It is of course part of a diplomat’s job in any embassy to identify and meet up-and-coming politicians, people who may well form a future administration, so there is ostensibly nothing dramatically unusual in the meetings with men slated to be Trump’s most senior officials. Nothing that is, except the uniform lying by those officials about the meetings. If it is all so innocent and routine, why lie? The only possible reason is that an official meeting would require someone to take minutes, and then a report on what was discussed in detail to be written up. The meeting would almost certainly be recorded too, whether overtly or covertly. By claiming their meetings were just casual chats – about what precisely no one seems to remember clearly – the three officials obviate the need for these formal requirements. It is of course what was discussed that lies at the heart of this major debacle. If Russian cyber spooks were at work in the US – even if based elsewhere – Sergei Kisliak would almost certainly know about it. It’s his job. As said, he’s companionable, highly social and well-known. He regularly meets sociably with politicians and diplomats of all stripes from all over the globe. If you’re seen slurping a cappuccino with him in the mall or some club, no one will think twice about it. But the meetings in question were not casual socializing. They were formal and held in private, at the embassy itself or in an office nearby. Thus they are unquestionably official unofficial affairs and ought to have been documented for future reference and posterity. They were not. The Attorney General claims he talked with Kisliak about terrorism, religion, war, and things he can’t remember. You do not schedule an official meeting to have such a fantastically general and risibly rambling yack. You do that over drinks or coffee somewhere, or on the phone – where calls are recorded or can be retrieved by NSA tech wizardry. It seems that whatever was discussed had to be discussed face to face, in private, at a secure location (secure for the Russians at least), and ideally in secret.  Since the accused officials have already been caught lying, there is no reason to expect a word of truth from them regarding the nature of these meetings, one of which, as I pointed out above, came 72 hours after the Obama sanctions against Moscow. Naturally, Putin and his countrymen would like the punitive sanctions lifted, and no one would blame them for pursuing any promising route to do this. If Trump intended to lift the sanctions, though, what was there to discuss? Obviously, a quid pro quo was involved – we will lift the sanctions if you… The question is what, if you what? Since most meetings occurred after the election, the what cannot have been more Dem-hacking. Hail-fellow-well-met Mr. Kisliak most certainly is, but what else is he, besides a former physicist and career diplomat, that is? The answer is interesting. He is known in intelligence circles – most notably MI6 – to be a skilled spymaster, able to recruit and run highly sophisticated networks engaged in various forms of advanced espionage and black ops. One of these forms is the undetectable international transfer of enormous amounts of money, to be used, one assumes, for nefarious purposes – or possibly just moved offshore to render the loot invisible. Another related form is plain old money-laundering. These networks span the underworld, from gangland, through narco-lords, to the major crime syndicates, and, as is the norm in espionage, many of those involved have no idea for whom they are really working. You are recruited to work for, say, the Mossad, so you believe you’re with the Israelis. You can’t go anywhere to inquire, to check out your control’s legitimacy. It’s spying – it’s all a secret. You drop off whatever you’re supposed to ferret out or spy into. You pick up your cash payments from a left-luggage locker, or somewhere. Chances are you will never find out you were working for the Russians all this time. It’s the stuff of novels, yet it also goes on in reality – although these days the computer has mostly replaced lock-picks, firearms and hidden micro-transmitters. This is the sort of work Sergei Kisliak probably thinks of as his day job.. If you’re the Russian Embassy, of course, for a start you have diplomatic immunity, but you’re also at liberty to perform financial transactions that, for a US citizen, would have red flags waving and alarm bells ringing. We now know the Secretary of State has had ties to a Russian bank notorious for money-laundering. So is it stretching the imagination to suggest that the other three officials, as well as Mr. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, were meeting Kisliak in connection with his expertise in fiduciary legerdemain? Why would Kushner even attend such a meeting if it were not on his father-in-law’s account? He has no brief or mandate of any kind to be dealing with the Russians over anything at all – lest it be on behalf of the Trump empire, or on matters too secret for anyone to discover. Since we know that some kind of quid pro quo is being haggled over regarding the lifting of sanctions – not yet lifted, you will note – the only question left would seem to be one of money. Is it coming in as payment, or going out as a tax dodge? These are extremely rich men with sticky fingers in many pies, including the vast pastry known as organized crime. They will have hundreds of millions to hide. But they may also have tens of millions to use for illicit political machinations, including the construction of a media conglomerate to overshadow and then oust the old fashioned networks which peddle outmoded virtues like integrity, accuracy and reliability. Steve Bannon as William Randolph Hearst and Ted Turner combined. The news operation will be cheap too, since you don’t need reporters in the field when all you broadcast are opinions and fiction. More money for the execs. It will be a winner. Fear not for the grave new future, however, for, as we have said, Czar Putin knows something, and he’s the great dark spider at the centre of this web. What he seems to know is that Trump’s star is not just waning – it’s shooting down through the sky into the deep dark ocean. I predict that the Oval Office will have a new occupant by summer, but we have five rocky months ahead still. This would make a great video or board game. And it is surely comforting to know that Trump is very expendable in Moscow. Ra-Ra-Vlad-Putin, lover of succession scenes.…  

 

Paul William Roberts

Travails of Trudeau le Petit

Tags

america, cia, communist revolution, cuba, Fidel Castro, justin trudeau, Pierre Trudeau

 

So, he won’t be going to the funeral of Fidel Castro, because his “schedule does not permit it”. Fidel came to the funeral of Trudeau le Grand. When major world leaders die, their counterparts usually attend obsequies, even though no one’s schedule probably permits it. It’s pathetic really – since it is not the schedule but public opinion that prevents him from going. Having said that Fidel was “a remarkable politician”, and received the usual backlash of hate from right-wing no-nothings, le Petit ought to have delivered a little history to those who think yesterday is long ago. But, since he did not, I will.

In 1959, the youthful Fidel overthrew Juan Batista, a brutal puppet-dictator, controlled largely by the American Mafia, whose members regarded Cuba as their personal fiefdom, a cess-pit for smuggling, gambling, drugs, prostitution, and other forms of exploitation. No one in Washington then thought this was such a bad idea, and Fidel was invited to the US in 1963, for what should have been talks to normalize relations between the two nations. But, because of the usual hysterical reactions to anything progressive – mainly from the demented Republican-fringe – exception was taken to Fidel’s appropriations of land and property, taken from fleeing millionaire gangsters and given back to the poor farmers from whom it had been stolen, these talks ended in acrimony. Bagman for the Mob, Meyer Lansky’s relatives even recently tried to reclaim his illicit Cuban properties. In 1963, Fidel addressed the United Nations, saying that he had been looking for friends in the West, but had only found one in Soviet Russian Premier, Nikita Krushchev. Encouraged by Moscow, he then conceived the idea of fomenting revolutions across Central America – something the area was ripe for, yet also something guaranteed to raise Washington’s hackles. Fidel’s sister, Juanita Castro, who has lived in Miami for the last fifty years, says that this was when her brother turned his back on the democratic revolution he had initially proclaimed, adopting the hard-line dictatorial stance favoured by Moscow.

We now know that, over the succeeding years, there were over 600 risibly unsuccessful attempts by the US Government to assassinate Fidel. If someone tried to kill you over 600 times, in what kind of light would you regard them? Nonetheless, during the hopeful presidency of Jimmy Carter, a former staff member of the US Embassy in Havana – closed in 1961 – was sent to Cuba as an envoy to re-open talks between the two nations. There seemed to be a chance in those years, but, again, paranoid agents of big business in Washington, ever-fearful of the commie plague that would end their own form of tyranny, stymied all attempts at a reasonable compromise. And when the Messiah, Ronald Reagan, came to power, he naturally had no desire to parley with any pinko lair of Satan – not that affable Ronnie knew anything at all about Cuba, beyond the smuggled cigars he offered to guests. The relationship fell into decay until Obama, who, to his everlasting credit, used his Executive Order – one of the few tools left him by a stacked Congress – in an attempt to open up dialogue. By then, the Soviet Union had collapsed, Fidel was ailing, and his brother, Raoul, led the country. Russia’s new czar, Vladimir Putin, showed no interest in the Caribbean nation, and Cuba was, and is, in need of powerful friends.

As part of his new Art of the American Deal, Herr Trump has, unsurprisingly, threatened to close down what little has been opened up with Cuba, unless his particular demands are met. Of course, typically, we have no real idea what these demands will be – but it is not looking good. No doubt, Fidel is glad not to be obliged to see the future.

In a very minute nutshell, that is the history lesson. In any accounts of the 20^th century, Fidel will always have his own chapter, and many of these accounts may well note that the Canadian Prime Minister, son of Fidel’s good and lifelong friend, could not be bothered to attend his funeral – in a pallid attempt to salvage a rapidly sinking public image. It will be interesting to see what his hectic schedule actually entails for the dates in question. Boo!

 

Paul William Roberts

 

Fidel Castro RIP & The Travels of Trudeau le Petit

Tags

Bay of Pigs, cia, cuba, Fidel Castro, Francophonie, human rights, John F Kennedy, justin trudeau, USA, Women's Rights

Fidel Castro RIP

 

Without any doubt, Fidel Castro will remain one of the 20^th-century’s major historical figures. But there are two stories about Fidel – just as there are two stories about everyone and everything. To some, Fidel will always be the heroic revolutionary who rescued Cuba from a corrupt kleptocracy and instituted an egalitarian society in defiance of Washington and the West. To others, he was a brutal tyrant who crushed all opposition and trampled over human rights. In fact, both stories are true. To the Marxist, however, the “opposition” crushed would be greedy class-traitors, and the human rights trampled over would be those of people seeking to debase the moral climate of society. It is worth remembering that Plato’s vision for his Socratic Republic entailed expelling all the poets and artists as social debasers – even though Socrates himself was sentenced to death for “corrupting the morals of youth”.

It is often indicative of character when people rejoice over the death of a figure beloved of many – and this is what is happening now in the Floridian Cuban community. Many of these people escaped the island, or were expelled by Fidel, either as criminals or class-traitors. It is easy to understand both points of view, but I have been to Cuba a number of times, and am inclined to think that Fidel did far more good than bad. The complaints of emigres are all too often that their purloined wealth was confiscated, either in the form of land returned to the peasants who farmed it, or from confiscated rentier properties, which contribute nothing to national productivity. Few seem to remember the state Cuba was in before Fidel’s revolution. Run by a puppet dictator, it was ostensibly owned by the American Mafia, which had turned it into a private fiefdom of gambling and prostitution. The crime colony island of Spectre in Ian Fleming’s excellent James Bond novels is based on Cuba – Fleming himself lived in nearby Jamaica. Before this period, Cuba had been invaded and plundered by the US as part of a burgeoning would-be tropical empire. The United Fruit Company, active across the Caribbean and Central America, was owned by the Mafia. Like many Third World nations, the island was still in the 17^th-century when the 20^th-century dawned. Fidel Castro seized it by the neck and dragged it forwards, as Mao had done in China, and Stalin had done in Russia. When absolute power corrupts absolutely, what happens? It would seem to be a galloping paranoia, a fear of all critics and criticism – real or imagined. In Fidel’s case, however, it seems to have been more real than imagined. We know for a fact that the CIA were trying to kill him – preposterously at times. Someone was once hired to put a poisonous powder into his shoes that would make his hair and beard fall out – presumably on the premise that such an un-American beard must be the source of his power. Then, of course, there was the disastrous Bay of Pigs attempt at invasion. True, Fidel had allowed the Soviets to place nuclear missiles on the island, but he seems to have realized he was just a pawn in a far larger game, ordering the missiles disarmed and returned to Russia – and thereby averting the Apocalypse. John F. Kennedy’s sensible withdrawal from conflict with Cuba is said by some to be the cause of his assassination – which seems to have been a plot by the Mafia and Cuban exiles.

Few countries are suited to immediate democracy, and Cuba is certainly one of them. This, of course, assumes that democracy is even viable anywhere. Yet, whatever Fidel did, he was adored by the vast majority of Cubans for over fifty years. Most had seen their lives improve dramatically. When I was first there, the Leader would drive himself around Havana in a jeep, cigar clenched in his teeth, and stop to chat with anyone he encountered. He was not a man of the people – he was educated at a private Jesuit school with Pierre Elliot Trudeau – yet he understood the people, and they responded to him with love. At least ten million people will be mourning him tonight. Cuba is definitely a far better place because of him – and the greater good is a Marxist principle.

One of my favourite anecdotes about Fidel is from the memoirs of Kenneth Tynan, the eminent theatre critic and playwright. He was on the island with Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway and others. Cuba’s most famous resident, Hemingway had not left after the revolution, as some seem to think he did. Indeed, understanding the island better than most, he approved of Fidel, who, like most of his close revolutionary comrades, was still very young at the time. This lustrous crew were awaiting an audience with young Fidel, when Truman Capote said, to whoever was listening, “Do you think that boy over there would go get us some tacos if I gave him the money?”

“Unlikely,” said Hemingway, “he’s the Minister of Health…”

 

The Travels of Trudeau le Petit

 

He’s swanning around Africa now, bleating about women’s rights, and denying his party fund-raising is dubious. A PM used to be able to avoid these embarrassing questions on foreign trips – but not anymore. Like his bromancee, Obama, he seems to be so thoroughly decent and innocent that one is inclined to believe his protestations. But, with innocence, comes naivety. At the Madagascar Francophonie, countries seem to have issues far more pressing than those Trudeau is blabbing about. Mali, for example. The French want Canadian troops in there and elsewhere to help quell chaos. But le Petit seems more concerned with women’s rights across the continent. Perhaps this is a grave problem to many western industrial women, who only hear about Africa in the media. But, to the Liberians or South Sudanese, the appearance of this bright and bushy white kid preaching modernity must be perplexing. Imagine if he had beamed himself down into 19^th-century England, during the Industrial Revolution, declaring votes for women and a fair minimum wage. Even the Proletariat, whose average age of death was then nineteen, would have thought he was out of his tree. Change comes slowly, and if it comes quickly there is upheaval and mayhem – and then no improvement at all. Karl Marx understood this, and he advocated gradual change from the top down to avoid catastrophe. He believed the revolution, when it came, would happen in England – because he thought it depended upon general education. What happened in Russia would have surprised him, and he wouldn’t have approved of it in any way. It is hard to accept that le Petit is so naïve he thinks western social values can be instantly implemented by nations that are still effectively in the late 18^th-century. They have many other more pressing issues than human rights, so why keep harping on the topic? I hate to think that Trudeau is only doing it to court favour with his dewy-eyed fans back home…

 

Paul William Roberts

The End of Iraq

Tags

arab history, cia, foreign policy, george w bush, Iraq, ISIS, washington

 

In my book, A War Against Truth, mercilessly persecuted by the scum running America, I outline in great detail the nefarious deeds and self-serving decisions that led up to George W. Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, and its calamitous consequences, all of them obvious to any clod-brained half-wit in the State Department, or even in the CIA – where intelligence may be the middle-name, but is rarely the modus operandi. I added an epigraphic chapter to the paperback version of that book, following these consequences a further few years on, when the chaos was becoming entrenched, a way of life for the victims of a deplorable and poisonous foreign policy, one that is the sole cause of most man-made misery on earth – and has been for over half a century. In Iraq, back in 2003, I did have hopes that the situation would resolve itself – not high hopes, but still hopes. Arabs are a resilient people, accustomed to being cheated and abused by the West, yet always enduring with pride.

Now we have the murderous attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere, blamed on US, the Unislamic State, a useful acronym since the rise of these bloodthirsty, pseudo-Islamic psychopaths can be blamed on the US of A, and Washington’s fuck-witted, addle-pated, thoughtless, febrile plot to overthrow Saddam and replace him with… what? This lame-brained non-idea was hatched by wealthy Shia emigres, who viewed themselves as the rightful heirs, the inheritors of Iraq, yet changed their minds when they saw the vicious mayhem erupting after Ba’athism fell – a mayhem easily predictable, had anyone thought it through, or even thought at all.  The oppressed Shia Muslim Iraqis had been trodden under jackboots of a powerful Sunni Muslim minority for well over a generation, and were bound to seek a gory revenge when Sunni chips were down. But who was to blame for the Ba’athist tyranny? Well, that would be the greedy French and British colonizers who carved up West Asia in the wake of World War One, conveniently forgetting that Feisal and his Hashemites had been promised their own Arabia as the reward for helping defeat Ottoman Turks, under the supervision of T.E. Lawrence – who probably committed suicide out of shame for a promise reneged on. That promise still exists on paper in a letter filed at the British Arab Office. The wantonly disastrous Euro-Mid-East policy was bequeathed to oil-fevered Americans, who populated Arab governments with their own dictatorial military brutes, propped up by aid in the billions and an army to watch their vulnerable puppet-backs.

So the trail of blame ends right in the Oval Office, or really in the Pentagon and out at Langley. The purpose of this blunder through a history of which scarcely an American is aware may well now elude everyone in those festering rat-holes. Or this chaos may be that elusive purpose. Every time I concede that these Neanderthal oafs are clever, however, they do something egregiously stupid to change my mind.

Is there a solution to West Asia’s serial nightmare? Yes, and it’s the same solution we would want for ourselves if the diabolism were in our back yard. Communicate with the Unislamic State, and tell them to leave the world alone and, if they do, they’ll be left with their own problems. Assuming they agree to this – by no means certain with slobbering maniacs –then leave those turbulent nations to work out their own catastrophes. If war and slaughter is their choice, stand back and let them bring it on. The fittest always survive, right? So when the dust settles and the blood drains from the alleys, what will remain must be the fittest society to which they can aspire. If it not, they’ll change that one too, and keep on until they get it right – or until everyone’s dead. But, whatever happens, we won’t be involved, our money will not be squandered, and our people won’t needlessly die.

Should the sociopaths and drooling killers professing to be an Unislamic State – their leaders mainly now-full-bearded ex-Republican Guardsmen from the old Sunni Iraq, if the truth be told – should they decline this generous offer, then, of course, off with their heads, hang ‘em high. But, all the same, it does seem mysterious that a military alliance once capable of defeating and trashing the mighty Nazi war machine, along with its homeland, cannot handle a few hundred lightly-armed lunatics, does it not? It makes you wonder if the plan – assuming these dolts still have plans – is not to destroy Iraq entirely and lease the remnants out to whoever wants or needs them, remembering, naturally, that the big oil kleptocracies already have contracts for the bits they want.

 

Paul William Roberts

 

C.I.A.: R.I.P.

Tags

castro, cia, cuba, dick cheney, fox news, george bush, United States of America

 

                ^{Some years ago I was talking with a man who had been Canadian Ambassador to Iran in the 1970s, before Ayatollah Khomeini’s Revolution. A decent, highly-intelligent man, with an open mind, he spent much of his free time in the holy city of Qom, discussing Islam with the mullahs, imams, and ayatollahs there. Returning one day from Qom to Teheran, he ran into then CIA Bureau Chief, Richard Helms, who asked him where he had been. After hearing the answer, Helms said, “Why do you waste your time with those guys; they’re of no account here.” As we know, the Iranian clergy were the heart and soul of the Revolution. I asked the Ambassador how it was that the CIA could have overlooked the radical influence of clerics, and he replied, “Well, Intelligence may be the Agency’s middle name, but it is not its modus operandi…”}

                ^{Fast forward to today, and we find:}

1. ^{The disastrous scandal of the Senate report on CIA torture practices.}
2. ^{The embarrassing failure of a CIA attempt to co-opt Cuban hip-hop artistes and train them in subversive activities, with cash incentives. This resulted in the Cuban government’s ban on a previously untampered-with hip-hop festival in Havana, thus defeating its own purpose.}
3. ^{Now, today we hear that the US Government intends to normalize relations with Cuba, a nation unjustly persecuted on ideological grounds for 55 years now, not only by trade embargoes, but by covert CIA operations, ranging from the Bay of Pigs fiasco to attempts to poison Fidel Castro, and even make his beard fall out by placing toxins in his shoes.}

^{Do we need to list all the other botched CIA operations, from coups and assassinations in Central and South America, to the laughable attempt to deploy New York abstract expressionist art, and Encounter magazine as a Cold War weapon against Soviet Russian social realism and the lack of creative freedom typical of totalitarian states?}

                ^{No, I think not. My memory is good, although my sight is non-existent, so I cannot check on the CIA’s rate of success in its dastardly operations, all – including the proven drug-trafficking – protected by the magic cloak of National Security, a shield behind which most political abominations hide. I have interviewed a couple of ex-CIA directors and found them to be pathological liars. George Bush the First was a CIA director, before becoming Vice-President, then President. As VP, he held important portfolios – rare to the post – including those of the so-called War on Drugs, to Terrorism, both of which activities flourished on his watch. It should, perhaps, thus not be so surprising to find out how many subsequent CIA directors were close friends of the elder Bush and his close buddy Dick Cheney.}

                ^{Now, however, it seems that the Agency is in its death-throes, with even its most reliably, if irrationally, hated of foes, Cuba, being extracted from the hoary old hit-list. One must conclude that the cowboys of Langley, Virginia, will soon be seeking employment in the booming private-sector security business – if, indeed, anyone there can concoct a resume demonstrating skilled success in any aspect of their previous career. I await with keen anticipation the well-researched book detailing all CIA operations since 1950, revealing the resounding successes – if any – and the ignominious failures, of which we seem to know already so much more, implying that either success is modestly concealed, or failure is laudably admitted to.}

                ^{If the American people could tune out Fox “News” and the rest of their propaganda machine – whose success is measured by its apparent objectivity: lies don’t work if you know they’re lies – and, possibly read some reputable sources, like Gore Vidal or Noam Chomsky – or Counterpunch.org — they would be hollering for a full investigation of their own terrorist organization, condemned by half the world, yet still operating with impunity in the USA. Such an investigation would, and, I believe, will, result in the arrest and prosecution of many, and the dismantling of this lair of bungling criminal half-wits at Langley, who have lied to the taxpayers funding their calamitous, illegal schemes for over sixty years.}

Love from Paul William Roberts.

Facebook and Other Media Travesties

Tags

amazon, cia, dick cheney, facebook, kindle, literature, media, publishing, social media

                Full disclosure: I think Facebook is crap, possibly of use to businesses, inchoate revolutions, the socially-challenged, and those too lazy to personally contact their ‘friends’ or family. My wife, an artist, admittedly uses it, and had one of her paintings, featuring a nude – or, in fact, merely bare-breasted female taken down from the site for ‘obscenity’. Like any fascist state, no explanation was offered, nor any appeal possible. One wonders what would happen to any national art gallery. Yet, on hearing that Dalhousie University male dental students could post a Facebook page detailing how they would chloroform and ‘hate-fuck’ some of the female co-students, one also wonders who or what is in charge of censorship on the staff of this overrated, self-important, tyrannical, and utterly ill-thought-out website, whose negatives far outstrip its positives. There are far better ways of communicating with clients, relatives, or friends – such as personal websites lacking arbitrary censorship, e-mail, the telephone, and, god-forbid, actual letters, which few admit they still enjoy receiving because they reveal genuine affection. When Facebook has to remind you of someone’s birthday, you don’t really care about that person at all.

 

Kindle and Amazon

 

When I hear that an author has received an e-mail from Amazon telling him that his online Kindle book has been taken down because it contains too many hyphenated words – 100 or so in 90,000 – I wonder into whose hands we have placed our literary culture. The author referred the writer of this ludicrous e-mail to the Oxford English Dictionary’s section on the rectitude of hyphenated words, only to receive an automated reply claiming that terms like ‘blood-soaked’ and ‘razor-sharp’ must be deprived of their hyphens. The mind is boggled. For a start, there are no grammatical rules in literary fiction – need I cite but two of the 20^th century’s very greatest authors, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett? What would Kindle Publishing do with Finnegans’ Wake, for example? Secondly, upon what criteria do the illiterates at Kindle-Amazon base these risible decisions? Evidently, we learn, upon a reader’s complaint that the book in question had too many hyphenated words. This is like banning Ulysses – consistently voted the best novel ever written – because some functionally-illiterate idiot complained that the last 100 pages contained only two sentences and no punctuation at all. I suggest that, unless these vast corporations start employing staff familiar with literature, with the appropriate qualifications to prove it, then they ought be boycotted by any serious author, if not legally prevented from publishing themselves altogether. A cultural decline like this is a slippery slope, although I have just heard that Kindle Publishing is trying to make amends to the author in question. Readers still ought to keep an eye on these monolithic cultural tyrants.

 

Dick Cheney, CIA, Media

 

Is it just my connection – which works fine on other sites – or is their a problem with every website featuring the Dick Cheney confession, justification of, and scapegoating regarding the CIA’s torture program? From CNN to Al-Gezeera, the video of his desperate attempt to escape criminal prosecution – which, being blind, I could only listen to – stopped every few seconds, and for up to a minute, before continuing for a few more seconds, making it unintelligible and impossible to tolerate. We know that anyone can slow down or stop a site by flooding it with traffic, so why not the CIA? There is also now a curious media silence regarding this monstrous scandal. Perhaps it is just paranoia, but readers can judge this for themselves when I put Mr. Cheney on trial in an upcoming entry. A very bad man, and a disgrace to his country.

 

Love from Paul William Roberts.

The C.I.A.: An American Inquisition

Tags

cia, dick cheney, george w bush, torture, United States of America

The Senate report on the CIA and torture has the George W. Bush administration, in the word often used by Donald Rumsfeld, “unravelling”. You know things are bad, very bad, when ex-Vice-President Dick Cheney gives an interview at all, let alone one calling Bush a liar, who authorized the illegal torture program, knew its details, and then told the American people that “we do not use torture”. CNN called this Cheney “throwing Bush under the bus” – this bus presumably being the one heading to cart Cheney off to jail and a trial at the International Criminal Court for knowingly violating international laws prohibiting torture.

Without getting into the fact that Cheney, in effect, ran the White House, with one of the Bush family’s herd of black sheep as personable figurehead, who signed anything shoved under his nose without reading it – partly because he was too lazy, and partly because he’s functionally illiterate – let us examine Cheney’s panicked defense of his collusion with CIA in authorizing what are euphemistically known as “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

Incomprehensibly, he compared torture with the events of 9/11, which is like comparing Spandau with Auschwitz. He then complained that the Senate report was a politically motivated and Democratically-biased piece of propaganda, which failed to interview any of the people actually involved. What he failed to say was that this 7000 page report uses and cites the hundreds of thousands of pages of actual CIA documents, including oral testimonies taken from agents at the time of the events detailed, and memoranda by the unqualified ‘psychologists’ and untrained operatives, paid a mysteriously excessive $80 million to devise and oversee the new versions of torture they had been hired to create, with Dick Cheney’s blessing. Ignoring the report’s statement, based on the CIA’s own files, that no useful information was gained through torture – a maxim known since the 16^th century – Cheney next claims that it was not torture, and then, to foul the waters, that the President did know of it, which the report said he did not – making the report, not himself and Bush and the CIA, the real liar. Fatuous and desperate, I would say; and worse than Nixon’s response to Watergate, which this scandal is going to dwarf in damage to Washington. Cheney’s last effort entailed denying that techniques used – often to get information from innocent men – were not, in his opinion, torture – as defined by whom, he didn’t say.

Let us settle the issue once and for all, yes? Have Cheney, Bush, and the others, submit to the ‘enhanced techniques’ themselves, and then decide if it was torture or not. Live on prime time, of course. Now, this is not going to happen, but I shall volunteer myself, along with anyone willing to join me, to undergo the following:

1. Being chained naked to the floor of a freezing cold room.
2. Being force-fed rectally with mush of some sort.
3. Being forced to stand for 48 hours on one leg with your hands in the air.
4. Being drowned, just to the point where you would be forced to inhale water and die.

Not torture?

We shall add to the list as more information comes in. Any takers?

Cheney termed rectal force-feeding a ‘medical procedure’, yet doctors questioned by CNN deny this is so.

My fellow Americans, you have a dilemma here: whether to arrest a president, vice-president, and other senior members of an administration, sending them off to court in Brussels, and thereby salvaging your reputation as global gunslingers, planetary outlaws; or else, as you usually like to do, try to forget about it all and hope it will go away. The choice is, allegedly, yours.

I shall get to the arch-criminal Dick Cheney in future blog entries, but anyone interested in this man’s many crimes ought to look at the astounding rise in his bank-account since he left Halliburton – accorded most privatized army business in Iraq – and became vice-president. A staffer of his said that no one had to be told in writing who accounts would go to – because they knew. Based now in tax-free Dubai, Halliburton has taken care of its old CEO, Dick, handsomely. Check out his tax returns. Let us hope this vile humanoid is behind bars before we are forced to reveal, with sources and references, Cheney’s betrayal of his office and country.

Read the 7000 page report, noting references and sources, before believing anyone calling it Democrat propaganda. Were the Nuremberg Trials British propaganda?

I highly recommend counterpunch.org for the most thorough examination of this subject I have yet encountered. It features numerous essays by people with unimpeachable credentials, diligent research, and penetrating insight. The website ought to be mandatory reading for anyone desiring a more than just superficial account of news events and contemporary issues.

Love from Paul William Roberts.

The C.I.A.

Tags

Canada, cia, human rights, liberalism, politics, United States of America

For the past 50 years, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has enjoyed a reputation for violence, murder, illegal warfare, political assassination, and large-scale drug trafficking, that has made organized crime look like shop-lifting. Thanks to one of the few consistently decent and honourable politicians in recent American history, Diane Feinstein, we now have the release of a 7000 page report detailing the criminal inhumanity and the psychopathic mendacity of the Agency. As I write, the story unfolds by every minute, so I shall certainly be commenting on it relentlessly, since I have long believed the CIA needs to be dissolved. Right now I have to attend a Liberal Party dinner in Ottawa, to support my friend and the ideal local candidate for MP, David Graham.