What To Do About Saudi Arabia

Tags

9/11 terrorists, Bush family, China, Donald Trump, Islamic State funding, Jered Kushner, Kashoggi murder, Military-industrial complex, Mohammed bin Salman, Noam Chomsky, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Saudi-UU relations, Trump family, Wahhabism

It seems that Mohammed bin Salman is about to admit that the journalist Jamal Kashoggi has been murdered, but he has no idea who did the deed or why. Some think he’ll say a “rogue element” did it, but if so it had nothing to do with him. If such an admission comes, what will we, the West, do about it? Nothing comes to mind, l mean doing nothing. If overwhelming evidence points to you as a murderer, and the police arrive with questions, would “I know nothing about it” have the cops thanking you and going on their way? No. Call it the Russian gambit, and it only works if you’re the absolute despotic ruler of a country. When a Putin or a bin Salman are asked if they committed a crime, they deny it. Does anyone ever say, “Yep, it was me, I’m the one”? It seems laughable when the media report these denials as if they might even be true. Last month MBS was threatening Canada with punishment for criticizing what’s risibly termed his “human rights record” – a broken record if ever there was one. Our critique was not only justified, it was absolutely essential to clarifying Canada’s position vis a vis international law. Now MBS is quite clearly the man who ordered a murder on sovereign territory of someone whose crime was… what? Criticizing MBS, and doing it reasonably and justifiably. If we attempt sanctions or some other punishment for this barbarous and illegal act, says MBS, he’ll punish us back and harder. Am I missing something here?

 

It’s been a while since any head of state asserted his right to do whatever he feels like doing, since absolutist monarchies pretty much died out in 1793, when Louis XVI went to the guillotine. Even North Korea seems to know those days are gone now. So the kingdom of al-Sa’ud stands alone, one man at the helm and doing whatever he wants to do with no opposition at all. I explained a few blogs back how Saudi Arabia functions, its royal princelings and princesses in the thousands, it’s religion a travesty supposedly based on Islam, its reins of power now in one man’s hands – one man who exemplifies the cliché of absolute power corrupting absolutely. But let’s be clear about this religion of theirs. Wahhabism has as much to do with Islam as Mormonism does with Christianity, and its central doctrines are ones of hatred and intolerance, vehemently towards “infidels” of course, but also towards all sects of Islam with the exception of Sunnis, who are nominal patrons. The lucrative control of Islamic holy sites, Mecca and Medina, is in Saudi hands, meaning the Shia, Ismailis, Sufis and many others cannot make the prescribed Haj pilgrimage under Wahhabi law. This law also condones mistreatment of non-believers, particularly us infidels, who can be robbed, cheated, defrauded, lied to, and abused in numerous other ways with impunity and the sanction of the Wahhabi faith, if you can call it that. So MBS has no spiritual qualms about lying to most of the world, although I doubt if the fate of his soul is something he gives much thought at all to. So here we have this barbaric throw-back to a medieval sensibility acting as if it’s a superpower, waging a unjust and brutal war in its back yard, treating women as chattels, beheading homosexuals, imprisoning anyone for any reason, with no rule of law worth the name, and now assassinating critics on foreign soil for reasons so flimsy they’re not even mentioned anymore. This is not some impoverished cess pit in the lower third of the Third World either. It is per capita one of the richest nations on earth, although these riches are controlled by around a millionth of one percent of the population. But to keep the hoi polloi docile the amenities and infrastructures are good, a hospital on every block, the cities clean and virtually brand new. There are really no rural areas to worry about since the rest of the country is basically a beach. Besides the total lack of any rights, there’s not much to complain about – unless you’re female.

 

Here’s a story I heard from a horse next to the horse’s mouth. One of the Saudi princesses, one of the thousands, went to study at the American University in Cairo. She found the slums and poverty of Egypt intoxicating, “so real” she said “after the sterility of my homeland”. Real life was appealing, as it can be. At university she met and fell in love with a westerner, a tall blond American boy. She told her family she intended to marry him and live in the US. The family blew up, ordering her home. She knew enough not to return, because she knew what happened to girls like her. But her brother, who she was close to, persuaded her to meet him in Cairo and discuss the situation amicably. She went to the meeting, where she was kidnapped and flown back to Riyadh in a private jet. She was locked in a special room on the roof of her family house. There were no windows, and she was forbidden any visitors and all conversation. Food was shoved in through a slot in the door. She’s been in that room now for fifteen years. Her food is still taken in, so she’s alive. But those aware of the situation believe she is now completely insane. This is Saudi Arabia. This is the place we are wondering how to punish for a state-sanctioned murder on foreign soil. And Donald Trump found MBS thoroughly convincing when he denied all knowledge of malfeasance. What exactly is going on between the US and Saudi Arabia?

 

The United States of Amnesia no doubt forgets now that the only airplane allowed to fly after the Twin Towers fell on 9-11-01 was the one taking members of the Saudi Royal family out of America. Why them and no one else? Well, the Saudi ambassador in those days, Prince Bandar, was to so close to the Bush family that he was affectionately known as “Bandar Bush” – and of course the Bush family business is oil. There’s another factor too: most of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers were Saudis (the rest were Egyptians), something never properly explained, researched or really even pursued. Instead, Afghanistan was bombed, and then Iraq was invaded. The fog of war conceals most irritating details. It does not, however, occlude the fact that funding for al Qaeda and Islamic State, along with other violent factions, comes principally from the Wahhabi clerics, who share Saudi wealth with the princes. It’s an hereditary clan, like the Mafia. Fast forward to now, and what do we find going on? Well, Trump’s son-in-law, the ubiquitous Jered Kushner, is said to have close ties with MBS, who himself is reported to have said, “Trump’s family is in my pocket”. Breaking with tradition, the first state visit Trump made as president was, not to reliable allies like Canada or the UK, but to, yes, Saudi Arabia. Why? What was discussed? We don’t know. But Jered Kushner is not a government employee, so his close ties must be about private business, no? The president burbles on about this $110 billion deal that’s in jeopardy, apparently, if the US imposes sanctions on Saudi Arabia. Oh, the jobs in danger, the GDP tanking, the sheer horror of losing any deal! But $110 billion is a pittance compared with the Saudi trillions invested in US corporations (they’ve got a pile in Canada too), especially aerospace and the arms mega-business. There’s been a lot of Saudi-US chatter over the past few days, and I imagine it’s about these invested trillions. MBS makes a few hundred million daily, so a few billion isn’t even worth his while. The question is this: Are the Saudis threatening to pull out their trillions and invest them in China or, God forbid, Russia? Or are the Americans threatening to confiscate Saudi assets wherever they’re to be found? This long and mysteriously chummy relationship can only be about money, money mainly in the form of oil. The combo of oil and money leads us inexorably to the venerable old Military-Industrial complex, which lives entirely on oil and money. The Trump family, individually and collectively, are heavily invested in this hydra-headed monster churning out death in a myriad of forms, and consequently needing many small wars running all the time to keep the supply-line busy. The Saudis obviously have a spanner somehow poised to be thrown into these works; otherwise who’d care what happened to them?

 

As I said last time, seizing Saudi assets would be an appropriate and deservedly painful punishment, because a punishment there surely has to be? The kingdom would make an amusing theme park, Despotworld or Tyrantland. But the situation is not really amusing enough for satire. Instead I will leave you with some wise words from one of the few wise men left in America:

“Let me finally return to Dwight Macdonald and the responsibility of intellectuals. Macdonald quotes an interview with a death-camp paymaster who burst into tears when told that the Russians would hang him. “Why should they? What have I done?” he asked. Macdonald concludes: “Only those who are willing to resist authority themselves when it conflicts too intolerably with their personal moral code, only they have the right to condemn the death-camp paymaster.” The question, “What have I done?” is one that we may well ask ourselves, as we read each day of fresh atrocities in Vietnam—as we create, or mouth, or tolerate the deceptions that will be used to justify the next defense of freedom.

— Noam  Chomsky, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” (1967).

The beat goes on and on and on, so where are those intellectuals willing and able to take responsibility for this latest abomination? What is it that is all it takes for evil to succeed?

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Who Breaks a Butterfly Upon a Wheel?

Tags

america, Anti-prostitution laws, call-girls, corrupt politics, cowards, Donald Trump, escort ads, FOSTA, fundamentalist Christianity, harming women, hookers, hypocrisy, injustice, lawyers, media-cowardice, Mid-Term elections, pimping, Republicans, scapegoating, SESTA, sex ads, sex-trafficking, underage sex

 

It’s a line by Alexander Pope:

Let Sporus tremble –”What? that thing of silk,

Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk?

Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,

This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;

Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,

Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys…

 

Sporus was a male sex-slave favoured by the Roman Emperor Nero, who also personally castrated him. The wheel is an excruciatingly painful instrument of torture and death.

 

Whenever you hear of politicians banning prostitution it’s always either due to feeble-mindedness or because elections are nigh. You can take your pick with the US Congress’s recent fantastically imbecilic and heartlessly cruel piece of legislation, which targets sex-workers, websites and newspapers running “escort” ads. Habitually gutless and unprincipled, these media immediately jumped when the ringmaster’s whip cracked down, dumping all such personal ads. Who cares? Such is the expected reaction from the housewives of America. Their hypocritical spouses know when to remain silent, even in the face of a monstrous injustice – well, most accept these as quotidian: after all,  they’re Americans. No one cares about the media losing ad-revenues, of course. Why would they? What we all should care about profoundly, however, are the many thousands of women whose livelihood has just been trashed, whose means of safeguarding themselves against psycho johns and intemperate weather has been ripped from under them, and who will now be forced to ply their trade under conditions of substantial danger, ill-health and chronic anxiety. Serves them right; they should get themselves proper jobs, you say. If you do say this, though, you’re a fucking bestial moron, unfeeling and mindless.

 

Prostitution may not be the oldest profession, but it’s definitely been around longer than politics – and it will be thriving long after the greed-heads in their suits and ties are scrambling over the world’s edge to flee society’s wrath. This current fool’s errand is largely an attempt by Republicans to play to their base among the trenchantly unchristian Christians and the immoral yapping moralists. Half the escort clientele in Washington are congressmen and senators – and you can be sure their female stables will be unaffected by the current bitch-hunt.

 

The new laws need to be examined closely, however, because they’re really not very new and of questionable legality. There are States’ Rights and Constitutional issues here, which we’ll leave to the Civil Liberties’ people. The two main prongs of this pincer attack are just anachronistic sheep in 21^st-century wolves’ clothing – the garb being what it usually is: semantics, or language-harassment. Pimping, or “living off the avails of prostitution”, has always been illegal, just as brothel-keeping has in the majority of states. The same is true for sex acts involving minors. These three antiques are now cloaked in the new sex-crime tag that involves something called “sex-trafficking”. This makes it sound like the slave trade, of course, hides it under a cowl of more-frightening darkness; whereas in reality – apart from a few exceptions, statistically very few in fact – these villainous “traffickers” are just the same old low-rent pimps and specious petty criminals we’ve always had. And this is another time-honoured line of work, one that may seem repugnant and objectionable, yet also one that has its indisputable advantages and value for the women involved.

 

Accepting money for sex per se cannot be made illegal without potentially making every housewife a criminal. So what these laws have done is frighten a lot of often desperate, downtrodden women, removing the means by which they conducted business in reasonable safety. We can understand why the media fled in fear. You run a thousand sex ads daily and get charged with “facilitating sex-trafficking”, you’re facing a thousand very tricky law suits. Because you have no way of knowing what lies behind each ad – and you’ll have to prove in court that none involve any so-called trafficking. A nightmare – ruinously expensive too. So you have to shut them all down. Common sense and pragmatism demand it.

 

But a woman charged under this same act only has to convince a court she’s not being trafficked (or pimped) – case closed. Some 85 percent of sex-workers say they have no pimp or coercer. Yet the fear generated by these laws makes it all seem so much worse than it this. The really sad thing is that when you persecute the outcasts and underdogs of any society hardly anyone will step up to defend them. It’s the same with smoking and the “vice Taxes” (e.g. booze and tobacco).

 

These women are thus being scapegoated in exactly the same way as the Jews, gays and gypsies were in Nazi Germany. A conspiracy of silence was the enabler then, and it is now. No one has the guts to stand up in defense of these oppressed ladies. And all it’s about, most disgracefully of all, is winning votes from the prurient, the priggish, the hypocrites, and those self-righteous Sunday-Christians whose knowledge of scripture can be engraved on an eyelash and certainly doesn’t involve the frequent and compassionate attitude toward prostitutes Jesus is recorded displaying. As he says of the woman taken in adultery: “Let he who is without sin among you throw the first stone…”

 

I don’t know what American “fundamentalist” Christians believe, but it’s scarcely fundamental and seems contrary to every core teaching allotted to Christ. “Blessed are… Do unto others as you would have others do unto you…” In all the ranting hyperbole and twisted hellfire nonsense, I don’t see much Jesus at all. Hypocrisy may not be listed by Thomas Acquinas as a “deadly sin”, but it sure as hell is one. And hate is the worst one of all. These church-going, Bible-thumping sinners have another woeful strike against them too: How sad is it that they’re unable to perceive the self-serving machinations of their alleged representatives in the capital? How pathetic is it that these pious prudes think Donald Trump is on their side? God assuredly isn’t.

 

To all those women whose trade is their own flesh, I say: Chin up, ladies. It isn’t as bad as it seems. When I was a kid we saw postcards in doorways: FRENCH LESSONS FIRST FLOOR, or SWEDISH MODEL – RING BELL. No one thought it was about linguistics or Scandinavia. There never were, or ever will be laws prohibiting advertisements for language-tutoring and freelance modelling. An escort agency only providing dinner companions for ladies or gents alone in a strange city is not responsible for whatsoever their escorts do by themselves on their own initiative, and agents cannot be prosecuted for it. There can also never be a law against anyone in any occupation receiving gifts from and/or having a brief fling with someone they meet during the course of their work or leisure.

 

This most ancient of professions has always found a way – and it always will. But it would help now if someone courageous and principled, ideally a lawyer or legal authority, stood up and fought these two-faced, duplicitous scumbags back into the rank sty where they belong. But when the Mid-Terms are over in November it will all fade away… until the next halfwit or the next election comes around, naturally. In the meantime, America, try a little tenderness, thought and compassion – they work wonders. History attests to the fact.

 

robertspaulwilliam@gmail.com

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

Paganaissance?

Tags

Donald Trump, god in america, paganism, politics, truth and lies, USA Election

 

I have often wondered what happens to old gods when their worshippers move on to greener Elyssian fields, Where do they go, and what do they do? But perhaps they are just patient? We all know that so-called paganism, especially in the hybrid form of Wicca, has enjoyed a little resurgence in bosky groves and ancient stone circles in the West. Yet it would seem that Icelandic pagans have gone one better. For the first time in a thousand years – when Iceland was very forcibly converted to Christianity – a new temple to the thunder god, Thor, has been constructed there and is, by all accounts, now doing a brisk business. Although a chicken was ritually slaughtered on the altar during opening ceremonies, blood sacrifices are apparently not to be a regular feature – although Thor once liked them to be. But feasting still plays a major role, as it always did back in the mead halls of yore. Horse flesh is consumed in large quantities, as are “sour testicles” and “rotten shark”. Well, if the god can’t have his human sacrifices, I suppose one cannot begrudge him a few favourite delicacies. A spokesperson for the temple told the CBC that interest in the old gods has been growing over recent years, because the standard religions are too wrapped up with corrupt corporate and political interests. Frey and Freya – a husband and wife team of divinities, ostensibly for war and love – have devotees similarly hoping to build them a fine new temple. The Pope can’t be happy, and Martin Luther must be ranting away furiously in Hell – but it strikes me as a harmless and beneficial trend. Those old religions are so refreshingly free of dogma and so deeply connected to realities, like cycles of nature and the sanctity of Mother Earth. Whereas orthodox Christianity and Islam in particular can all too often seem to be political appendages of the state, with an unseemly interest in wars and obesience.

 

Talking of which, what most surprised me about Donald Trump’s inauguration speech was not the groaning banality or the ranting jingoism but the numerous references to “God”. Correct me if I’m wrong, but he’s not a religious man, and God never came up on the campaign trail – except, perhaps, for the one who is always perfunctorily urged to bless America, yet never required to respond. Suddenly, however, we have a God who looks over America and will protect her, a God who will bless possibly all Trump supporters – less possibly all listeners – and of course a God who is told in no uncertain terms to bless America. Twice – for the Donald never says anything important once. Is he so vacuously cynical that he just threw in Amerigod along with all the other emotive claptrap about pride, wealth, safety and greatness, because his purpose was merely to please those who believed in him more than they did in God? “I will never, never let you down,” he said, telling all those whose voices had been ignored that they would never, never be ignored in future – that the great country and its government was theirs again. Again? Theirs and the three billionaires and numerous millionaires now running it, alongside people of – how shall we put it? – rather dubious and suddenly furtive intent. I thought, man, O man, if ever words were custom designed to come back and haunt you nightly like Marley’s ghost, these were they – but then I realized that this was Trump. He’ll just deny he said it, or that his words were taken out of context – the media are all liars, terrible, terrible people, the news is fake, it’s all fake, and everything is rigged against him. If he even talks to most media by then. I dislike the expression “post-truth”, since truth is an absolute. This must then be the Age of the Liar, no? No, because, as I.F. Stone used to say, “All politicians lie about everything all the time.” When I heard Stone say that at the opening of a talk in the seventies, I thought he was exaggerating for effect. I’ve since realized he wasn’t.

The only slight attraction Trump held for me was the prospect of a new broom in Washington. It is clear that much of the public has wanted a change for years – it was, after all, the clarion call of Obama’s campaign message – and that they have now decided politicians cannot effect change. But billionaire businessmen can and will? Surely this is not getting rid of “elites”? I didn’t like Hilary Clinton’s reference to “deplorables” either – and I didn’t like her – but you have to admit that anyone who believes Trump can achieve even a few percent of what he promised upon taking the oath of office is… well, quite a lot naïve. And that includes him – if, that is, he believes it. Despite relying heavily on a healthy economy, a nation is not a business, and it cannot be run like one to generate quick profits. None of Trump’s much-advertized plans for domestic or foreign policy will be quick or easy to achieve – and many are not even remotely viable. He must know this, so is he lying?

Is this why he’s suddenly set his sights on a more manageable goal? From a very reliable source – although I haven’t personally verified it yet– I am told that he now intends to close down National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System – much as the Harper government here sorely wished they could dismantle the CBC. Why? The short answer is that public broadcasting is independent, not tied to vested corporate interests, and presents a reasonably balanced version of current affairs. In other words, it isn’t Fox News or the Rebel – and it cannot be. It has to represent the public as a whole, and virtually all coherent political views. This would seem to be a principal criterion of the news media in general – yet it is not. For whatever reasons – and I don’t dispute their right to it – some people prefer the news to reflect only their political opinions – which is to say they do not really want the truth. This would be no problem at all in a healthily diverse media market, such as the one in which I grew up in England during the fifties and sixties. In North America today, however – and this cannot be stated too often – all major media are owned and controlled by corporate interests which have much invested in a certain political outlook that favours them and their future prosperity. It amounts to an attack on free speech. In the recent US election, most mainstream media initially favoured Clinton, because her outlook was seen to guarantee business as usual. Trump was seen as a wild card, the Uncertainty Principle – and business hates undertainty. But something changed the corporate mind, and the stock market mysteriously rose after his electoral win. The opinion of media changed too, to one of it won’t be as bad as you think. This can only mean that corporate Titans and media-owners were reassured, during the many recent covert and overt meetings in Trump Tower, that the new President would be on their side.

For a long time, the lines have been tenuously drawn – the 99 percent against the one percent – but nothing tangible has emerged from this sloganeering. Yet something other than impotent outrage ought to emerge. The Constitution that Trump swore to uphold and defend, from enemies foreign or domestic, was written at a time when the structure of American society could hardly have been different from what it is now. Then, 95 percent of the population was self-employed – now only five percent is. There was no standing army, just a militia – which thus needed everyone to be familiar with firearms. 95 percent of the gross national income was from farming or manufacturing, and only five percent was from rentier sources, or other non-productive activities. These figures are now reversed, with most income derived from various forms of ownership and non-productive investment – much of it in the stock, bond and commodity markets, which, as any honest financier will admit, are a gigantic scam that only benefits a small handful of people, and actually harms many businesses and, most all, the smaller farmers. The America for which that Constitution was written has long gone, along with its relevance to anything. Like most state rituals, they are just hollow words.

As Leonard Cohen would say, everybody knows this – that the boat is sinking but the rich get richer – yet no one is able to, or capable of acting to change it. Perhaps, as Karl Marx said, action only occurs when all that is solid melts into air? And the only possible actors are the proletariat.

In this light, destroying public broadcasting is a very canny move. Who listens to or watches it? Liberal middle-class intellectuals, for the most part. In that sense, it would be like destroying Harper’s magazine – which, as I noticed in Iraq, didn’t bother US authorities at all, because it was only read by a few hundred thousand bookworms. What the mainstream national media did, or where they went, bothered the commandants a lot, however – because their audience is tens of millions of average citizens. So this move – if indeed it is to be – is just a spiteful lashing-out at that small minority Trump knows beyond all doubt despise him.

The Women’s March today was too decorus and generally-focussed to have any real impact as a protest – and do well-organized and well-behaved protests really ever have anything beyond a symbolic effect? It remains to be seen if the disaffected half of America will or can do anything truly pragmatic and transformative about a situation that they all, though in vastly differing ways, find intolerable. But, at least in Marxian terms, the country has not been more ripe for revolution since the late sixties. As always, though, it depends upon a small cadre of people who know what they are doing, and, ultimately, on which way the army decides to go – and, with the number of blacks and Hispanics in the armed forces, this is by no means certain anymore. It is true, though, that an overthrow of the status quo is nothing like as easy today as it was for the Paris mob in 1789, or for a rural middle-class in mid-17^th=century England. Ironically enough, Trump, as he now still is, reminds me of an Oliver Cromwell, with business as a religion, and manufactured outrage as zeal. The question is will he turn out to have unpredicted qualities of genius in areas of endeavour he has never tackled before? Cromwell went with amazing agility from farmer to political activist to impressive military leader and to admired statesman. Can Trump go from entrepreneurial huckster to reality-TV star and thence to globally-renowned statesman? Nothing is impossible.

Unless something too awful to ignore emerges, however, I have resolved to give him six months before deciding that the revolution must happen before we’re all sunk…and everybody knows this too…

 

Paul William Roberts

 

The Tower of Babble

Tags

Donald Trump, politics, state of media, United States of America, vladimir putin

 

I want to be open-minded about Donald Trump, and see positive signs emerging from his gilded Tower, but he is making this task onerous indeed with his unending barrage of tweeted falsehoods and willful ignorance. I wonder how long the mainstream media will be prepared to tolerate his customary response to any well-founded accusation – “It’s a lie” – and what they will end up doing about it. It is hard, and rather saddening to picture the New York Times running headlines like PRESIDENT LIES YET AGAIN, but, however an incident like that is recorded, the national paper of record must record it one way or another, and in the most objective, non-partisan tone possible. Similarly, the screen networks, stations and web-sites should attempt to shed the auras of bias that have, until now, both typified them and defined their audiences. This gimmick will no longer work in the Trump Era. It worked when the Donald and his supporters felt themselves to be a beleaguered minority – as most Republicans laughably believed they were too during the Obama years – but when the Underdog becomes the Overdog righteous indignation doesn’t play so well. Fox News can only thrive as Fox Opinions as long as the tautological assumption that the real news is too distasteful to report exists. With their hero in the White House, the hacks at Fox will have to report on what he actually does and says, rather than their opinions of what is done and said. This is going to involve some hard decisions, and a major overhaul of the modus operandi there, because it will surely be deeply embarrassing to report favorably but ignorantly on an event that is rightly and factually excoriated by other news outlets. The people who only watch Fox, or only read the more scurrilous tabloids, are not completely unaware of what is on the Internet and in the more respectable media, and they also probably know that their information-of-choice has always come from a somewhat tainted and biased source. Again, this is fine for the Underdog, when all there is to do is express hostility and complain, but it leaves the Overdogs and their Emperor rather naked. Opinions are fine and necessary, but they belong in editorials, columns and places like this. To be credible, any news organization must devote most of its time and space to the objective and unselective reporting of events, leaving perhaps five percent to the opinionated bias of interviewees and columnists – and even this portion should reflect a balance of glower. This is undeniably not easy, and hardly anyone pulls it off. Journalists and writers are only human – maybe — and humans have their specific opinions and beliefs, none of which are wrong unless they clash with truth.

 

It is too simplistic to say that the flagrantly outrageous bias of right-wing media has goaded the left-wing into reacting in kind – it’s the chicken-or-egg scenario – but I think it is safe to say that they have both encouraged excesses in each other. The response from the right to Trump’s pathological tweeting will perhaps settle the issue once and for all, because, as we have just seen, this is going to become a very serious problem, and one that cannot be overlooked, since the Internet provides everyone with access to all global media, at least one outfit of which will not overlook a presidential catastrophe even if every source in America does.

 

 

As I said, I want to give Trump a chance and believe that his more unacceptable outbursts were just campaign tactics, but this recent tirade against Meryl Streep’s remarks at the Golden Globes endorses the views of those who have long claimed that the President-Elect cannot tolerate any criticism and reacts to it with blind rage. Back in the old money-grubbing days of bricks-‘n-mortar scams, he could probably say anything at all to that handful of people trapped in some business venture with him and get away with it. Prior to The Apprentice, and certainly prior to his most recent show, The Candidate, Twitter, and indeed most of Big Social Media did not of course exist – but if they had, how many followers and FB-Friends would the Donald have had? Ten? Endlessly amusing as the stereotypical Bad Capitalist for as long as I can remember, he is infinitely unamusing as Leader of the Free World. Does he not realize the nature of that medium he uses with such a frothing frenzy of childish intemperance and glee? Admittedly, it is questionable whether or not Streep should have used the podium and massive audience of an awards show to express her heartfelt dismay over Trump’s vile mimicking of a disabled person – but she did, and she too has a right to her opinion. Except it wasn’t an opinion. Maybe Trump watches too much Fox, but he obviously cannot easily tell the difference between stark fact and self-serving fiction. Immediately – he must always be glued to a TV screen – he tweeted that Streep was lying, that he had never done such a foul thing; and then, predictably, he threw in some puerile slights about the actress. These might have resonated with some and would have probably stung the recipient badly had she been some bimbo starlet. But to call one of the finest screen actors in America “overrated” is just pathetic and hi-lights his churlishness and the helplessly infantile nature of his reactions to adverse criticism. It also indicates that he is mindlessly dumb at times. For the media response was to run a clip of him mimicking the unfortunate disabled person a hundred times an hour. We should also not forget Trump’s Hollywood addiction, which no doubt explains why he was wasting time on an awards show he dearly wishes he could be a winner on instead of defining his foreign policy or ways to make America meek again. Some time ago, he was outraged not to receive a Grammy for his fine TV series, and griped that the awards were “rigged”, just as the election was going to be until he won it. It has long been observed that some German art gallery should have given Hitler a successful one-man show in the 1920s, to spare the world a decade of misery; so, similarly, the Academy in LA ought to give the Donald an Oscar to keep his dopamine flowing and the rest of us alive. Best impression of Homer Simpson as a financial Titan, perhaps?

 

 

At this point, I am not sure how he has responded to such an extremely adverse critique, or rather the irrefutable revelation that he was lying – which in fact has always been his reaction when confronted with an inconvenient truth. He may not have noticed, but opinions cannot be refuted – and they are cheap for a network to put on air – but now it is increasingly easy to confirm or deny facts. No one has any right to an opinion based on lies or distorted facts – for free speech must have some limits (there are concrete ones too: you cannot falsely yell “fire” in a crowded public space, for instance, and you cannot publically deny the Shoah or Nazi Holocaust. Both of these prohibitions concern the tranquility of society, which is disturbed by panic or hate. We might ask ourselves how far anyone should be allowed to go in actions clearly disturbing the peace. At what point does freedom of speech become an enslavement?).

 

I was keen for a fresh wind to blow into fetid Washington, but I am decidedly less enthusiastic about a hurricane with a disgusting miasma in its wake to escalate the existing stench. It might have been simple to bamboozle a few eager businessmen with cooked books and skewed statistics, but the dealmaker as politician faces a very different prospect – one videoed on an immensely large and exposed stage – a performance in which there is no opportunity for, or possibility of retakes.

 

The episode I envisioned – Apprentice Meets the Czar – is already in preproduction, it seems, and thus needs some preparatory program notes to clarify its storyline. Faced with the disagreeable news from his sixteen security services that the Russians had undoubtedly hacked into US computer networks in order to influence the recent election, and, moreover, that this venture was authorized by Vladimir Putin, Trump’s response was, “I don’t believe it – you can’t prove that!” Again, this reveals his confused attitude towards truth – because they could and did prove it. Of course, Putin’s objective in the scheme was to discredit Democrats and assist Trump’s campaign, so it is understandable that he, the Donald, wouldn’t want to believe it publically – and he cannot possibly be angry about it – but, as President, he is going to be obliged to feel slightly concerned about the Kremlin Hackers and what they might be tampering with next.

 

Revealed by the Panama Papers as someone with billions stashed offshore, Putin has handled his personal hacking scandal adroitly – what scandal? – but the temporary embarrassment must have given him food for thought. No doubt he views with derision the relative freedom of western media. The reason few Russians are aware of his large-scale and undeniable corruption is because he has a foolproof method for guaranteeing media reliability: he orders journalists and publishers threatened with ruin or simply murdered. Pravda, long the Russian newspaper of record, has enjoyed nearly a century of reporting the Truth, as its name suggests, but this truth has generally been officially sanctioned, or, you might say, cooked up near Red Square. Russian media function much like the medieval Church, with the Pope in his Kremlin determining dogma, any objective free-thinkers excommunicated, and all heretics burned at the stake, or else left to rot in the bleak dungeons of Lubianka Prison. Even those intrepid souls who escape the secret police end up poisoned or otherwise terminated, even in the apparent safety of Reformist European Media capitals. It’s a grim situation, and one that ought to give us pause – for Russian media are not a bow-shot from where the likes of Trump, and the plutocrats behind Fox et al, would like to drag US media. To assist the pushback against this nefarious trend, let us clarify the classic Russian position on interfering with western elections with a few hard facts – whether or not Mr. Trump believes them.

 

In 1968, Soviet Russian agents offered then presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey a considerable sum of money in return for several kinds of favorable treatment during his term of office. Humphrey refused the offer and reported the incident to authorities – which probably had nothing to do with him losing the election.

 

In 1976, Senator Henry Jackson, a rabid anti-communist, was for some time a hot Republican candidate for the presidency, and Moscow feared for its safety if he was elected. Again, Soviet Russian agents went to work with a campaign of lies about Jackson – allegations of homosexuality etc. – that seem to have found it ridiculously easy to gain an eager audience in the US media. They may well have scuttled the Senator’s hopes of a win, since, after a fiery start, he dropped out before the ballot.

 

In 2007, the new Russia was revealed to be interfering in Estonia’s electoral process, using the old tried and trusted methods. By then, of course, Putin was at the helm, and satellites of the old Empire seemed most to interest him. And ‘interest’ is the key word in these forays. If Moscow’s interests are in some way involved, it would seem, then any kind of underhand adventure is sanctioned, as the two best-documented US cases show. Just as Kremlin interests in, say, the Ukraine, the Baltic States and Crimea are easy to understand, so should the advent of Trump be. I doubt if Mr. Putin ever imagined an American presidential candidate would one day sing his praises, but one did, and he was clearly not slow to jump at the opportunity, lavishly rewarding that noble American friend with all the considerable resources at his disposal. It remains to be seen how grateful and loyal Trump will prove to be, but the Czar has played a deft hand of late. His cards may never be particularly good, but he always plays them with consummate skill.

 

As usual, however, US outrage at Russian malfeasance in tampering with democracy is a Himalayan summit of hypocrisy. It is not as if Washington is itself innocent of trashing democratic governments and movements all around the globe, is it? They may well also do it by computer these days – although the Iraqis will dispute this – but America’s history of violence against democracies has been unremittingly bloody and hands-on for over sixty years. It probably began officially in Iran, where the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh was overthrown in 1953 and replaced with a brutal military dictatorship run by the US puppet, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a.k.a the Shah. This may help explain half a century of very strained relationships between Teheran and Washington. Main reason: Oil. After such a glorious early triumph, there seems to have been no holding back the CIA, which conducted dozens of assassinations, staged coups, backed rebels, or just called in the troops to trash democratic governments in South-East Asia, West Asia, the South Pacific, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and God only knows where else. I doubt if anyone has a correct number, but it is well over fifty countries, with a body-count approaching forty million. Reasons: ideology, oil, military bases, and a good ol’ land-grab. Number of US bases worldwide: approaching 1,000. Cost of wars plus bases: over a quadrillion dollars. In every case, the American public was lied to or fed propaganda to justify the expense of wars lacking rhyme, reason and any tangible benefit. Even their ideological benefit was surprisingly meagre, since few US allies – always ingrates – could perceive any real threat to their well-being since Hitler went down in flames. The unnecessary nuking of two Japanese cities – over 200,000 civilians dead in one day [ Reason: to test an atomic weapon and rub Stalin’s nose in it] – appalled some European leaders, because Japan was then trying to surrender, but it set the stage for hideous things to come, as well as revealing a characteristic disregard for international law that has burgeoned over the last twenty years into a frightening psychopathology.  I advise anyone seriously interested in learning why the United States is currently the most barbaric nation on earth, and the greatest threat to world peace there has ever been, to watch Oliver Stone’s 14-hour documentary, The Untold History of the United States, which is currently available on Netflicks. I’d be eager to hear from anyone who can find a factual error in this monumental series, which every America ought to see in order to understand how deeply flawed and dangerous their governmental system really is, as well as how many good men and women have been denied political office, persecuted, or murdered by the very dark forces that gained a stranglehold over the country around a century ago. This is very far from a conspiracy theory, for Stone names names and cites solid sources for every contention. His documentary – clearly a labor of love – is a sad and sobering experience, but a necessary one for all of us entering the greatest era of uncertainty yet in a highly uncertain world. I guarantee that anyone watching it will dismiss Putin’s little hackathon as poor stuff, not even worth a response when compared with the global ravishment of a dozen occupants of the Oval Office. Never say never, but Trump can hardly do worse than his predecessors – except, alas, he can. I really don’t want to hear Armageddon announced by a tweet…

 

Paul William Roberts

To 2017

Tags

Donald Trump, justin trudeau, the future, the new year, the old year, vladimir putin

 

        He was livin’ on a high note

        But everything changed

        And all of his high hopes

        Were washed down the drain…

 

• Mavis Staples

 

To whom will this grim fate apply in the year that now yawns ahead of us? Someone, to be sure. Will it perhaps be Czar Putin? With 2016 such a triumph behind him, he has every reason to expect more munificence ahead – which in itself is never a good sign. Having achieved – so far at least – the first effective cease-fire in six years for the Syrian civil war, he has positioned Russia as a major player in the Middle East for the first time in fifty years – or since the Egyptian government of General Nasser was replaced by an American hegemony under President Sadat. Furthermore, Putin now has the distinct promise of closer ties with a United States run by President Trump, and operated internationally by a Secretary of State with whom he is, by all accounts, on very friendly terms. But, historically, Russia has never proved to be a reliable ally to anyone for very long. Even Napoleon was bamboozled by the apparent friendship of Czar Alexander – and Trump is certainly no Napoleon. I take it for granted that Putin is far more savvy than Trump’s whole cabinet put together. So what will he want from this evidently proffered amity? Well, globally, besides the unlikely demise of America, it will be a weakening of China, and an increase in Russian stature on the world’s shaky stage. This is going to require all of Putin’s considerable ingenuity to pull off, entailing, as it must do, the abandonment of some old Russian client-states, like Iran and North Korea. Since the current Syrian cease-fire permits the US to continue attacking bases of the Unislamic State in Iraq, there would seem to exist already a tacit agreement in which, effectively, America gets to control Iraq, and Russia gets Syria. Necessity may make for strange bedfellows, but such fellows do not sleep easily in their beds. The present hubbub about Russian hacking of US computer networks is not going to die away quickly, and it is hard – though not impossible – to imagine President Trump ignoring the evidence presented by his own numerous security agencies. Of course, America is also hacking into networks worldwide, so it is conceivable that two rational Titans could mutually agree to cut the nonsense out – and let that be an end to it. Conceivable it may be, but it is also unlikely. Perhaps Putin’s greatest test will be in not blowing the first offer of US friendship since the halcyon era of Premier Gorbachev – halcyon, that is, from America’s perspective. In order to resume the old familiar hostility, the Russian Czar would have to find something that put Washington firmly in the wrong – but since he has a stranglehold on Russian media this might not prove that onerous.

Will it be Donald Trump who sees his hopes washed down the drain? History seems to indicate that the American Presidency can greatly compress even the most stalwart ego. Who had the most stalwart ego? In the post-war era, there was Truman, dumb enough to imagine he had the job because of his own brilliance. Then there was Eisenhower, too much a soldier to think he controlled anything. Next came Kennedy, who knew his father had bought him the post. Lyndon Johnson merely succeeded to the Oval Office. Nixon’s self-esteem was never high. Ford got there by default. God put Jimmy Carter in the White House. Reagan was too genially air-headed to think much at all. George Bush the First believed he was there by doit de seigneur. Perhaps Clinton thought he had clambered up there through his own merits and hard work. Bush the Second saw it as the family business. Obama seems to have known who he had to be grateful to, along with a cheerful dash of tokenism. Before this rather sorry crew, of course, there was Franklin D. Roosevelt, the last President who actually had some ideas. Which leaves us with Trump, who undoubtedly ascribes his success to a Himalayan range of personal genius. But will he prove to be a weary self-deluded Truman, or a battered but still ebullient Clinton? To say the least, it is not an easy job, and nothing goes as you planned it should. As far as one can see, the Pentagon generals will be handling most of the more iffy aspects of US foreign policy, along with a free rein to indulge in their real career of prospering the trillion-dollar US arms industry by continually fomenting small but long wars, as well as trumpeting omnipresent threats by various satanic forces. This will leave Trump more or less free to concentrate on domestic issues – and that is the area where most of those who voted for him will be relying on some genuine action. Jobs are what people really care about, not immigration or a wall. Yet it is hard to picture Trump threatening to penalize corporations for outsourcing jobs. For a start, corporate law forbids the making of decisions that will negatively impact shareholders. Hence it is actually illegal to consider implementing expensive ways to handle toxic waste, and so forth. As a businessman not averse himself to employing cheap wetback labour, Trump would have a very hard time explaining to corporations that, in order to make America great again, their profits have to become less great. As we know all too well, he thinks politics is all about making deals, but it is not – politics is all about making compromises. Whatever the old Trump scorned, the new Trump will eventually have to embrace, if his term in office is not to be an embarrassing disaster. I do wish him well, but it will not be an easy year.

Will it be Trudeau le Petit’s hopes that wash away here in Canada? With the Sesquicentennial, it ought to be a banner year – but he has promises to keep, and many miles before he sleeps (even though he took a road much-travelled by his family). My Oxford college recently celebrated its 800^th anniversary (even though a part of it is 1200 years old), so 150 doesn’t seem very old at all. Can Canada possibly only be twice my age? 150 years might not be long, but I’ll wager that 2017 will seem like eternity to le Petit. With a 30 billion debt and scant sign of any serious economic recovery, the Prime Minister will have to concentrate on boring domestic issues, rather than the tinsel and frippery of state visits and international charity. Even his more frivolous and wantonly inessential pre-election vows – like legalizing marijuana (who care?. It’s been easily available and tax-free for my whole life) – are proving inconceivably pricey, and are now probably understandably regretted. The far graver problems of indigenous peoples are also proving to be impermeable to money – really, who ever thought they would be? Even the police are turning into a problem. Then there are the intractable provinces with their uniquely local issues and peculiarly self-interested demands (ah, the perils of federalism!). Add to this mountain of woe the prospect of a US President who, as CEO of our largest trading partner, will not be – how shall I put it? –exactly easy to deal with. No, Trudeau le Petit will be ten years older by this time next year. When the best you can hope for is that things will not get any worse, you are very close to being hopelessly embroiled and helpless to extricate yourself from the mire that time, not you, has created.

As always, my own hopes are for earthlings to wake up, treat one another with human dignity, and put this planet back on the path to Paradise it has always aspired to follow and can easily achieve (if you don’t believe me, read E.O. Wilson’s wise and wonderful books). I do also pity those whose hopes will be washed away, whoever they are. Happy New Year to all.

 

Love from Paul William Roberts

President Pence

Tags

Donald Trump, impeachment, mike pence, politics, United States of America

 

I should warn readers that my spellings tend to be phonetic, since, being blind, I can hear words or names but not see them.

 

A fellow named Professor Alan Lichtman, of the American University in Washington, has correctly predicted the result of numerous previous electoral campaigns, based, it seems, on the views of the electorate regarding White House incumbents and their parties. He predicted Trump’s win a year ago using such criteria. But he has also predicted Trump’s impeachment, this based, he says, more on “gut-feeling” than on any hard evidence. Yet he also points to the panorama of potentially egregious charges already levelled in the courts against the President-Elect. These include the fraudulent use of a charitable organization, several alleged business scams, and the extravagant embarrassment of the so-called Trump University rip-off. There are also a number of sexual-assault accusations, any one of which could effloresce into a reason for impeachment. It was, he says, the Paula Jones case that exacerbated Bill Clinton’s impeachment process. No one cares what kind of mire befalls Trump, of course, but, as Lichtman reminds us, impeachment would mean Mike Pence as President. And nothing would please hardcore Republicans more than having this Bible-bashing nonentity in the Oval Office. Gone would be LGBT rights. Gone would be women’s rights to control their own bodies. And gone would be the worldwide alliances upon which US foreign policy has relied for its imperial adventures. Given the potential causes, we must wonder what it is that justifies impeachment. I believe it was the accidental President Ford who, when trying to impeach a Supreme Court judge, was asked this question. He said that impeachment was whatever the Congress decided it was. There is in fact no clear legal definition. Given the Republican domination that will be, come late January, this ought to be worrying for the President-Elect. He should have picked Bernie Sanders as VP, not someone the Republican vultures would far prefer. Ever since the Friendly Red Giant, Ronald Reagan, they have adored the lovable marionette, the Prez so affable and decent he will persuade everyone that Up is Down, or Night Day. They have to know that Trump will not be so malleable -–if indeed he is malleable at all. Watch for a movement to impeach spearheaded by his own party. And then look out for real trouble, as the corporate lackeys try to make American investor-profits great again… and far from the IRS claws.

 

Paul William Roberts

 

Coming up: by popular request, some Leonard Cohen anecdotes.

Remembrance Week

Tags

carl marx, climate change, Donald Trump, election law, electoral college, federal reserve, leonard cohen, the future of america

 

 

If you are the Dealer

          I’m out of the game

• Leonard Cohen

 

‘Dealer’ is a common Cohen euphemism for ‘president’ or any kind of boss-man. Indeed, as far back as his poetry of the late-fifties, gambling appears as a metaphor for life itself, in which you are playing with the greatest dealer of all. The words and music of Leonard Cohen have been a staple of my life for fifty years, and his death was a harder blow than I’d ever anticipated it would be. My personal issues aside, what a diabolical week! Through the agency of my wife, I placed upon his Montreal doorstep this morning a box of chocolates and a long-stemmed rose. In his characteristically self-effacing way, Leonard would be amazed by the worldwide outpouring of love and grief. I can hear him saying, ‘It’s just the Lightforce of the Lord shining through me that they feel…’ Yes, indeed.

 

In retrospect, I was appalled by my attempt to put an optimistic spin on the election of Donald Trump. There is clearly little or nothing optimistic about a Trump presidency. I do not know enough about Constitutional Law to say whether or not a legal challenge to the election-result is viable. However, I do know that hardly any Americans can explain the phenomenon of Electoral College votes – which mean that the election goes to whoever wins over 270 such statewide votes, and not to whoever gains the most votes, as Hilary Clinton seems to have done last week. You elect electors and not candidates? It makes no sense. Like the private ownership of the Federal Reserve, it is one of those fundamentally inexplicable anomalies that breed theories of conspiracy, or at least of occluded double-dealing. It is a curious turn of events that has the Democrats questioning this election and not, as he’d suggested, Trump’s Republicans. The whole US system, with its usually ignored or down-played mid-terms, its Electoral College, and its general federal-state confusion has long been called into question. But I think it is democracy itself that needs to be questioned. One of its more modern pioneers, Rousseau, says, in his Social Contract, that it is a perfect system, yet one only suited to a perfect society of gods. He maintains that some peoples will never be able to handle democracy. The US seems to be one of these. The Socratic ideal, espoused in Plato’s Republic, theorizes a perfect rule by philosopher-kings, of which Piere Elliot Trudeau was once acclaimed by some as an example. But ancient Greece was hardly democratic – like the US, it was an oligarchy – and the Platonic republic suggests outlawing poets, writers, and perhaps artists of any kind. They’re a menace to societal tranquility.

I once wrote a piece – for Harper’s, I think – suggesting that a vote needed to be earned, and was not a right. There ought to be some kind of basic test before you could vote — state what the candidates’ platforms are about, for example. Nothing severe, but not multiple-choice either. Why would you vote, went the argument, if you do not know why you’re voting? The piece garnered great hostility – I was a fascist, mainly – yet I now wonder whence the hostility came. I’d assumed it was from the Left, but this recent election makes me think it may have been the Right. They do have more to gain from an ignorant electorate — those whose political views exist only as moronic slogans. There is of course also the great mystery of a proletariat consistently voting against its own best interests. Who has ever explained this, except by family tradition or amped-up media rhetoric? An earned vote would at least prevent millions from casting a self-destructive ballot. But those millions also comprise the most easily-swayed segments of society. Right-wing barkers and howlers have long accused universities in particular of being bastions of the Left. This has always struck me as a self-refuting allegation, inasmuch as it points to the most intelligent being drawn to liberal politics. It is natural that right-wing elites have always opposed state-subsidized further-ed for the needy. It is education alone that will change society for the better by ensuring a fully-informed vote. To this extent, America is still back where Europe was during the Industrial Revolution. And, in truth, no western nation will achieve democratic ideals until the system of private schools is abolished. I have lectured in such schools and can assure readers that their small classes and numerous other perquisites – not least of which are opportunities to socialize with others in elite strata of society – guarantee advantages way, way beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals. The very few exceptions – mainly, it seems, in venture capital or Silicon Valley – simply prove the rule. I have friends willing to pay for such offspring-benefits – and, no doubt, I would have too if the money had been there. But the playing-field must be levelled if we are to call ourselves a democracy. It is a simple fact that wealth ought not be hereditary – that merit alone must determine social status and its rewards.

As we have seen most clearly with Trump – yet it preceded him – further education, with its fancy big words, and its theorized scorn for the working man, is in fact undesirable, and even a social ill. It is what those of us who questioned Marx and Trotsky referred to fearfully as ‘a dictatorship of the proletariat’ – the idea of government by the under-educated for the uneducated. Of course, it would in fact be manipulation of the uneducated by the well-educated posing as blue-collar oafs. Marx saw the workers rising like Lazarus, yet he did not envisage this happening without universal education. He also saw the fiest revolution happening in relatively well-educated England, not serf-owning Russia. The Russian proletariat were only roused by leaders posing as fellow-workers. One thinks of that malevolent goblin Lenin in his worker’s cap, and of Mao in his custom-tailored Mao-jacket, which from a great distance resembled attire of the dispossessed hundreds of millions.

Trump doesn’t wear tacky Mafia-suits from his own line, nor one of his own frightening collection of cheap, sweatshop-made silk Trump Neckties. It is admittedly true that he has managed to find an expensive tailor to dress him with equal vulgarity. Yet one must assume that, with his pricey hair-weave or toupee, he closely resembles the self-image many a laid-off coal worker or dirt-poor farm labourer has of their lottery-winning selves. Trump has always been a vulgarian – whose excesses were only matched by his first wife – so I am not suggesting demonic cunning going back decades. His awful TV show probably showed us the real public man. His problem now is different, though. As my friend, Richard Sparks observed, he’s narcissistic, self-promotional, venal, greedy, power-hungry, and he needs to be loved – all of these being excellent qualities for a politician. The need to be loved by all, however, may be what saves us. We are now hearing a more reticent Trump – liked Obama, loved the concern and patriotism of anti-Trump demonstrators – so we can imagine a Trump already looking towards his historical record as another Lincoln, a healer of divisions, a political Titan. He will not enjoy being president – no one ever has – so all the job will hold for him is the explosive bloating of his baggy brand to interstellar dimensions. Resigned to being a minor footnote in financial history, he now faces the possibility of bestriding the known world like a Colossus, an American Caesar, a Yankee Frederick the Great,  or a Brooklyn Napoleon (minus Waterloo). We can only hope that the compromising minutiae of the job turn him to these greener pastures: Uncle Trump’s fireside chats-of-the-Union.

Trump’s victory aside, has there been anything more despicable than the Republicans who scorned him when the chips looked to be down now trying to crawl up his arse for positions and preferment? That shameless pawn of vested interests and extravagantly unprincipled Beltway whore, House Speaker Paul Ryan, taking Trump up to the Capitol’s mount to show him all the kingdoms of the world – truly sickening! And he’s just one of a disgusting troupe of hypocritical bum-lickers. One hopes Trump won’t forget so quickly the league of back-stabbers. Yet when you hear of such hoary old Nazi reptiles as Newt Gingrich and Rudolfo Giuliani – surely long since cast into the Lake of Fire? – you cannot help but think of replacing the Statue of Liberty’s slogan thus: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here… No wonder California wants to leave the Union.

 

As I’ve said, all US refugees welcome up here in the Laurentians. It’s inexpensive, and we ought to survive the Global Warming apocalypse longer than most – not hat having the last laugh will be very consoling.

 

Paul William Roberts

 

The Great Debate?

Tags

america, Donald Trump, election, Hilary Clinton, lies, politics, USA

Really. The Hilary versus the Donald. Has there ever been a more dispiriting spectacle than these two individuals presenting themselves before 100 million viewers as viable candidates for what is believed to be the world’s most important and powerful job? Well, yes – every previous election campaign for the last fifty years springs to mind. But this one still caps them in its stunning efflorescence of blabbering mediocrity. The Hilary started off with a remarkable appearance of competence that revealed her as another run-of-the-mill Democrat, ablaze with high ideals appealing to a vaunted ‘middle class’, yet no more certain of how these lofty goals were to be achieved than her opponent was of how his plans to aid the wealthy made it clear how the neo-trickle-down effect would work. For his part, the Donald began by assuring us he wanted ‘Secretary Clinton’ – as she now was – to be comfortable and happy. After all, she was just a woman. He was Trump the Proud – albeit with a nasal drip that sounded as if he’s just snorted a hefty line of cocaine. Unfortunately, and doubtless contrary to the advice of his advisers, he allowed the Hilary to press his well-known and easy buttons. And, equally unfortunately, she decided that pressing them was her objective in this so-called debate. Unsurprisingly, a free-for-all ensued, with both candidates displaying little more than how unsuited they each were for the world’s most important job. The Hilary avoided answering issues like why she had deleted 33,000 e-mails from her improper server – and largely because the Donald’s bullish responses to her taunts blinded him to questions worth pursuing. Pundits understandably excoriated him for bragging that his avoidance of income tax was ‘smart’, without taking into account the fact that everyone similarly burdened with taxes, no matter how slight, would agree that it was smart. The host, or beleaguered question-master, tied insinuating some relevant queries – ‘Why don’t you release your tax returns?’ – but the combatants had grown too belligerent to pay attention. The Donald tried to point out that the Secretary – no doubt a demeaning title in his world – had once raised the issue of where Obama had been born during her fight for the White House, yet he raised it in terms assuming viewers and listeners knew the names of principals involved. We did not, largely, but by then no one cared. It seemed clear that here were two thoroughly distasteful people, neither of whom ought to attain any prominent public position, less still the one they aspired to.

The question I most wanted answered, listening to the Donald’s oft-repeated slogan, was one of when exactly it was that America could have been considered ‘great’. Was it during the Korean War?  The coup d’etat in Iran overthrowing nascent democracy there? The Vietnam War? The invasions of Grenada, Panama et al? CIA coups in Chile, Nicaragua and elsewhere in the region? Afghanistan? Iraq? Libya? Or now the debacle in Syria? When was this greatness, and of what did it consist? The Donald’s answers to this question would have been as enlightening as the Hilary’s answers to why her new bold plans had not been at least partially implemented over the past thirty-odd years of her political career. Yet it was all the ringmaster could do to keep the slug-fest on its scheduled course to where the final issues weren’t dealt with either.

Ah, America, we aliens think. What became of your great idea? What are we to make of a nation that can only produce these two sad wretches as its potential leaders? Perhaps we should be frightened? As it is, though, we are merely bored by watching your decline and fall – as we were by watching that of every empire once so gripped by hubris and so willfully ignorant of which way the wind always blows.

The only undeniably true thing said last night was, uncharacteristically, by the Trump: no more dire and pressing an issue exists for this world than the existence and proliferation of atmomic eeapons. Unlike global warming, this is two buttons pressed and – zap! That’s all, folks. Like a thief in the nuclear night, all human aspirations vanish forever. What more pressing an issue could we want anyone posing as a world leader to face and solve?

 

Paul William Roberts

P.S. And talking about political liars, what of British foreign secretary Boris Johnston’s meeting with the Turkish leader, whom he recently called “a terrific wankerer very fond of goats…”?