On the 16 February 2025 Sunday Morning edition of CBS News, Marvin Kalb gave a good example of what a "seasoned" well-respected journalist is all about. Respected by the imperial establishment, that is, for, at 94, this relic of legacy journalism, the age when the media's lies, huge biases and omissions went largely unremarked by the mass public, shows no sign of moral introspection or repentance for a career as a professional disinformer in the service of Western imperialism. Not surprising, then, that everything he said in his 3-minute intervention last Sunday was alarmingly misleading, not to mention pettily partisan (CBS is a prominent cog in the anti-Trump "blue media" machine).

The highly predictable honchos at CBS, still attached to Biden's liberal-authoritarian script, and dying to derail the Trump locomotive, thought a man like Kalb could ooze the requisite gravitas to insidiously warn that a peace agreement in Ukraine, "might betray Ukraine and send a chilling message to the rest of the world about America's position as a trusted global leader." Global leader indeed! Who the hell thinks and talks in these fatuous terms these days except for self-regarding hacks deep in the bowels of the imperial beltway and the national security state? Well, let's face it. It's all part of the pervasive and, yes, malignant corporado culture, the skin of capitalism, so to speak, something that most Americans hardly notice, like the air that surrounds them.  In any case, corporados—like the oligarchs they represent—are always obsessed with power, hierarchy and competition. Of which endless wars are a natural outgrowth. They can't see the world differently. 

But, we may ask, what would Kalb and his ilk want us to do now in Ukraine, with probably a million dead and wounded, incalculable suffering, and a devastated country eviscerated by war and fascism? We know the answer to that. It's the same answer that the morally bankrupt Biden administration and the degenerate vassal EU politicians pursued for three long years and still strive for: endless war. 

Galactic-size mendacity
As liberated minds have long recognised, all wars started and prosecuted by the imperial West operate within a cocoon of gobsmacking mendacity. Without the Big Lie machine, which CBS and Kalb so amply embody, such wars would be simply impossible. Why? Because they are first and foremost utterly dishonourable.  As repugnant as a big bully beating a baby in the crib. Their aim is always to subjugate, exploit and oppress—none of which can ever be openly admitted. And, besides, they are "grifters wars", sordid conflicts in which well positioned elites make unconscionable profits. It was so with Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and so it is with Ukraine and Palestine. So, yes, there is huge problem. For a nation like America, by far the most brainwashed and sanctimonious country on earth, a country that has been bred on the notion we march by the catechism of Marvel Comics, the truth about our foreign policy would be politically cataclysmic.  It's quite a predicament for the 0.001% that actually controls the US and much of "the collective West" behind the mask of democracy.  Indeed, tried as they have, this highly arrogant and insulated crowd, along with their well paid counsellors, have never found a workable answer to the threat of instability and illegitimacy that hangs over their rule. Their position has now become almost untenable due to the pressures of the digital revolution. This technology has dramatically aggravated the capitalists' "overproduction" crisis, and broken their narrative control, making mounting censorship and free speech repression necessary.  That's the world we inhabit today, a world that more and more Americans are beginning to find unrecognizable. For, as parts of the truth emerge (reality, after all, being eventually unstoppable), the elites' "solution" has been simply to kick the can down the road and double down on the enforcement of the Big Lie. The upshot has been totalitarian mendacity. 

As stated earlier, this regime of pervasive, insolent mendacity has allowed our rulers to perpetrate enormous crimes in our name. The Ukraine war has been sold, accordingly, to defend a non-existent democracy and deter an equally non-existent imperialistic Russia. Meanwhile, the genocidal massacre of Palestinians—righty (if belatedly) condemned at last by both international justice tribunals, ICC and ICJ—has been presented to public opinion as the Zionist apartheid state's "right to self-defence," a right, incidentally, that international law denies an occupier nation.  The simple but most unpalatable facts, that the Ukraine mess originated in America's longstanding desire to weaken, conquer, and balkanise Russia, and that the Palestinian tragedy stems directly from Anglo-American imperial designs for Mideast dominance, have been denied the court of public opinion. It must be noted in this context that Biden's appallingly criminal tenure in both Ukraine and Palestine pushed the world to the actual brink of nuclear war, a risk that only recently has become slightly less urgent due to the peace overtures initiated by the Trump administration, efforts that, I should add, are being pooh-poohed and otherwise obstructed by the Democrats and the Deep State's assets in media and other policy-shaping institutions. 

Which brings us back to Kalb and his old-school "professional" journos, the tribe that, for at least 80 years, has given us numerous wars, coups, political charlatans, anti-labour legislation, a rotten healthcare system, and the constant degradation of an already largely vestigial democracy. Considering the masters he serves, Kalb's grave intonations about the perennial Russian danger and Trump's incompetence sound hollow; they suggest that he has always been too busy, just too busy, yeah, disinforming us, to be historically and politically literate, (assuming access to truth makes a man honest, an idealistic assumption, I admit), so I suppose he never laid hands on Rand's notoriously evil tract outlining how "to extend Russia"—the coily-named blueprint to defeat Russia and rob her of her hard-won sovereignty. It's all there in black and white, such brutal transparency perhaps one of the good and refreshing things surviving in US culture. I doubt, however, that Kalb might have shaken off his marching dogma, for, after all, missionwise, the richly-rewarded think-tank/national security mob and the mainstream media scribes are largely interchangeable. —PG

CBS—
Marvin Kalb on how a Trump-Putin summit could lead to disaster

Feb 16, 2025 (Deck by CBS News)

CBS Sunday Morning
Veteran CBS and NBC journalist Marvin Kalb discusses why he believes an agreement between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that betrays Ukraine could send a chilling message to the rest of the world about America's position as a trusted global leader.

ABC News

U.S. allies and Ukraine react to Trump’s shift towards Russia