Dispatches from Eric Zuesse

As part of their campaign for Hillary Clinton to become President, Huffington Post bannered their home-page on the night of Tuesday August 16th, “TRUMP BRINGS KREMLIN APOLOGIST TO INTEL BRIEFING!”, and linked to their news story that’s headlined against Trump, “Donald Trump To Bring Adviser With Russia Ties To Classified Briefing: Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn will join Trump at Wednesday’s top-secret session.” Those “Russia Ties” consist of Flynn’s having appeared as a commenter at Russia’s international television network, RT, which is Russia’s equivalent of Britain’s BBC. This was the day’s big news? Really? Is there an editorial agenda here — or only a low-news day, when the Olympics are on, records are being broken, and the Presidential contest is getting under way?

This is not only a HuffPo problem; and, so, on July 28th, I reported (with contemporary examples) that, generally, “America’s press cover the Trump campaign with barely concealed hostility toward it, and with an obsessive emphasis upon the candidate’s positions regarding Russia; they’re attacking Trump as being (wittingly or unwittingly) an agent of Russia — and portraying Russia as being America’s enemy.”

How much of this blatant intellectual abuse can America’s news-readers take? No one reasonably alleges that today’s Russia is a dictatorship, such as the Soviet Union unquestionably was. ⁽¹⁾ Today’s Russia is perhaps more of a democracy than the U.S. is. Russia’s President shows, even in Western-respected polls, as having an approval-rating of over 80% from the Russian public, whereas our own President has an approval-rating of only more than 40% from the U.S. public. Given the heavy ‘news’-slant of Huffington Post and other major American ‘news’ sources, a reasonable question can be raised as to which of these two nations actually has the freer press, and the more representative government. Is the reason why America’s leader is so low-approved, and Russia’s is so high-approved, that America’s top leader does what the American people want, while Russia’s top leader doesn’t do what the Russian people want? Hardly. The American Establishment want us to believe that our government — the one they control — represents us, more than Russia’s government represents the Russian people. The American Establishment still hate the Russians, and want the American masses (the people who read such media as Huffington Post and the Washington Post) to hate the Russians too. Regardless of whether Russia’s government is trying to destroy America, America’s government (and the aristocracy that control both it and the nation’s newsmedia) is still trying to destroy Russia. The ideologues for this American ideology are commonly called “neoconservatives,” and now neoconservatives represent the mainstream amongst America’s oligarchs. They’re not at all ashamed of pumping it. 

The American Establishment has lost the excuse of there being an ideological reason for their hostility against Russia; so, scare-tactics are used, such as that “Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.” That “red scare” used to be the particular demagoguery of Republicans — back when there was an ideological excuse for it. But now, it’s even the way of the U.S. press, as it presses forward with the Hillary Clinton campaign, to make her the next U.S. President. With her as the candidate, they’ve got to make it ‘respectable’.

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]estern media-watchdog organizations demand U.S.-government-approved standards of ‘press freedom’. However, slanting the ‘news’ as HuffPo and other major U.S. ‘news’ media do, is being treated by those organizations as if it were okay, and were a ‘free press’, when perhaps it isn’t, really. Thus, for example, wikipedia’s article on “Media Freedom in Russia” notes that ‘According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, ‘All three major television networks are now in the hands of Kremlin loyalists.’” Aren’t all television networks in the U.S. now in the hands of U.S. loyalists? There’s no more media-diversity here than there. America has its own issues regarding freedom of its press, and is in no valid position to use its standards to evaluate other nations’ standards. America’s main agencies to evaluate ‘press freedom’ in nations around the world are Freedom House, and National Endowment for Democracy. Robert Parry reported, on 8 January 2015: “Documents from the Reagan presidential library reveal that two major institutions promoting ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ — Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy — worked hand-in-glove, behind-the-scenes, with a CIA propaganda expert in the 1980s.” And there’s lots from other U.S. Presidencies that still hasn’t been released; cover-ups are instead the norm, in our ‘democracy’ — if we have one.

25 years after the communist Soviet Union and its military alliance the Warsaw Pact ended, General Flynn’s serving RT as an expert commentator about American national-security concerns was the day’s big news on August 16th? Really? Would things have been lots better for HuffPo’s management if Flynn were instead serving as a commentator on the BBC? Really? The ‘Big News’ of the day?

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n true 1950s Joseph R. McCarthy fear-mongering form — but now after the end of communism — HuffPo opened this, their top news story, of the day: 

Donald Trump will bring Michael Flynn ― a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who was paid by a Russian state-funded television network to speak at its 10th-anniversary gala ― to his first national security briefing on Wednesday.

Flynn, a retired lieutenant general and high-profile adviser to Trump, has attracted attention since he was pushed out of government in 2014 for criticisms of what he says is the Obama administration’s failure to confront “radical Islam,” his role as an analyst on the Russian network RT, and his embrace of Trump. 

ABC News reported on Tuesday that Flynn, along with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, would accompany Trump to his first top-secret briefing, heightening critics’ fears that the Trump camp would gain access to secrets it could potentially leak to contacts in the Kremlin. But former intelligence officials familiar with the the briefings process said it’s unlikely that the presidential nominees or their advisers will be looped in on critical secrets until after the election in November.

What this supposed skullduggery is actually about is Huffington Post’s attacking Trump for his wanting to focus American military expenditures away from the old Cold War, and instead toward the current problem, of overcoming jihadism — a refocus so as to fit a world in which the present and future threats to U.S. security are coming from invasions (such as 9/11, and the other, even lone-jihadist, acts) by Islamic terrorists, and not from any invasion by communists, the Soviet Union, or any part of the former Soviet Union, including Russia.

Hillary Clinton favors the overthrow of Russia-friendly leaders, especially Gaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria, and Yanukovych in Ukraine. (So far, we’ve finished two of those three jobs.) Thus, we’ve now had the burgeoning rise of ISIS in Syria and Libya, and a thoroughly unproductive and bloody civil war in the until-then-peaceful nation of Ukraine, following the bloody U.S. coup there that overthrew the nation’s democratically elected President Yanukovych, who had won the votes of 90% of the people in its far-eastern Donbass region, and 75% of the votes of the people in its far southern Crimean peninsula, both of which regions then rebelled against, and refused being ruled by, Obama’s imposed Ukrainian fascist regime, which was selected by Hillary’s friend and protégé Victoria Nuland, who had been Vice President Dick Cheney’s foreign-affairs advisor. Huffington Post is a mouthpiece today for Dick Cheney’s brand of neoconservatism? That’s right — it’s actually far right: it’s the ‘liberal’ Huffington Post, to steer liberal fools to vote for the hard-line neoconservative Hillary Clinton. (Of course, in order to do this, they have to placate the Democratic Party’s traditional liberal base by reporting the domestic U.S. injustices against Blacks and other minorities, but those aren’t the issues that could blow up the world — and Democrats have done virtually nothing for those groups, in reality, anyway.)

Hillary’s neoconservatism has been fought against by her successor at the State Department, John Kerry; but, when he tried to rein-in her protégé (and now Kerry’s subordinate) Nuland, who was exceedingly eager to press for war against Russia, President Obama sided with Nuland against Kerry, in perhaps the most embarassing incident in Kerry’s entire career. And now, HuffPo’s management want the hyper-neoconservative Hillary to become the U.S. President, and are campaigning against Trump as if he and not she is the traitor to the American people. It’s as if the U.S. ‘news’ media were agents of America’s manufacturers of bombs and bombers and submarines etc., to pump for increasing America’s bloated military budget, which drowns out spending for highways and other infrastructure that serves the public. Melvin Goodman in his terrific book about that, asks trenchant questions (p. 371):

Why did the United States have more than one and a half million men and women in uniform two decades after the end of the Cold War? Why was the end of the Cold War considered a triumph instead of a challenge and an opportunity? Why are so many troops stationed in Europe and Japan more than six decades after the end of the Second World War? Why are so many troops stationed in South Korea sixty years after the end of the Korean War? Why are there still hundreds of U.S. bases and operational facilities in Europe and Asia, particularly in view of the overwhelming U.S. ability to project power? Why did the United States spend more than a trillion dollars on military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost so much blood and treasure but contributed nothing to American national security?

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]ow corrupt has America become? Isn’t that the basic question here. Can the ‘news’ media really deal with it if they are themselves part of it?

Huffington Post’s point in emphasizing Trump’s being ‘soft on Russia’, is that Trump’s plan to refocus U.S. national-security priorities upon the threats coming from international terrorist organizations, must be blocked, at all costs, and that the current increasing U.S. military focus against Russia (and against the leaders of any nation who are friendly toward Russia) must increase and bring us closer-and-closer to the nuclear brink with Russia, instead of ending this counterproductive anti-Russian conflict by means of a negotiated mutual withdrawal, of NATO-U.S. forces, from Russia’s borders — and also ending U.S. anti-Russian invasions, such as of Iraq, Libya and Syria, and ending U.S. coups such as of Ukraine, on and near Russia’s borders.

Trump’s basic message is: Get over the Cold War; it ended 25 years ago; instead, let’s rebuild America’s infrastructure, and focus national defense on the challenge of defeating jihadists and their ideology. However, America’s Establishment is invested in the Cold War, and they won’t feel that they have won that war until both Russia and China have become conquered by them — are controlled by them.

That’s what the 2016 U.S. Presidential election will really be about.

How would Americans feel if, 25 years after ending its NATO alliance, the Warsaw Pact continued, and were now massing its forces on America’s borders? Would that be “provocative”? Would we tolerate it? Huffington Post’s management apparently think that it’s what the U.S. government ought to be doing to Russia. America’s moving forces right up to Russia’s borders is happening right now, and how much opposition to that is there in America’s ‘free press’?

This is Hillary Clinton’s campaign; it’s not journalism; it is propaganda. Maybe ‘Freedom House’ and the ‘National Endowment for Democracy’, would give it top marks — for herding ‘liberals’ into fascism.

⁽¹⁾ While we agree with the author on many things, and that’s why we publish him, we do not see eye to eye in his Cold War reasoning regarding the Soviet Union. Whatever the USSR was, it was not a dictatorship in the way that Chile’s Pinochet was, or Francos’ Spain, or Sukarno’s brutal Indonesia regime, etc., where murders of dissidents were commonplace, and the system was nakedly designed to serve the 0.00001% of the population and their corporate/plutocratic international associates. Even today, Honduras—as a recent case— boasts, along with quite a few other US client states, a regime which is as criminal as they come, and completely merits the label of “de facto dictatorship”. Comparing such regimes to the Soviet Union by using that label is in our view untenable, and an insult to what the Soviet Union accomplished in the 20th century. Furthermore, and in this we concur with the author, the US is no longer a democracy if it ever was. The aristocratic class nature of its system of government is clearer than ever before, as wealth becomes ever more concentrated and government is increasingly emboldened by its actual owners to disregard public opinion and wants. This is not as shocking as it may sound, since the US, as the author knows being a historian, was born an aristocratic republic, and it has remained so to this day, except that the old feudal class of large landowners to which the Founding Fathers belonged, has been replaced by the rule of global financial capitalists—a puny superrich segment of the population— and their best compensated shills in media, the military, academia, and politics (like Hillary Clinton, etc.) The antidemocratic nature of this system is obvious to any moderately educated observer, let alone a well educated one. We therefore believe this is clearly a matter of disagreement about class analysis, and an emotional subject clearly influenced by the hangover from Cold War propaganda, which even some of the most honest, outspoken, and lucid progressives in the West seem to suffer from.—PG

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THE MEDIA LIES

“By constantly denying, deforming, and upending the truth, the Corporate Media protect a global system of breathtaking hypocrisy and criminality, and the principal threat to the survival of all life on this planet.”

by Stephen Lendman

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The Times is more an instrument for justifying, supporting and facilitating America’s imperial project than a legitimate source of news, information and analysis.

Dean Baquet, NYT’s Executive Editor, right after being named to replace Jill Abramson, in 2014. It is people like this who create the climate for endless wars and continuing human, animal, and natural exploitation.  The publisher, of course, bears full responsibility.

It reached new lows in one-sided support for Hillary, the most ruthlessly dangerous presidential aspirant in US history, while disgracefully carpet-bombing Trump with daily fabrications, exaggerations and hate-mongering. ( …

It’s one thing to attack a presidential aspirant irresponsibly, quite another to serve as a virtual Pentagon press agent for war – practically promoting conflict with Russia, pushing Cold War II politics to turn hot.

 …

Despite no evidence suggesting it, The Times baselessly blames Russia for hacking DNC emails, showing primary season was rigged for Hillary.

That’s the issue, not irresponsible finger-pointing. Nothing suggests Russian meddling in US politics or anywhere else – in contrast to America doing it virtually everywhere to assure regimes it supports are in power and keep it.

 ..

On August 10, The Times went further. Citing unnamed US officials, the customary tactic for proliferating misinformation, it said “(a) Russian cyberattack that targeted Democratic (sic) politicians was bigger than it first appeared and breached the private email accounts of more than 100 party officials and groups.”

 ..

NYT’s publisher, Arthur Sulzberger. He has allowed (or commanded) his paper to be “a virtual Pentagon press agent for war…”

Maybe so but no evidence points to Russian involvement. Governments spy on each other for national security and other reasons, none more aggressively than America and likely Israel.

 ..

When US officials claim “high confidence” about anything of significance relating to Russia, China, Iran and other nations it targets for regime change, rest assured it’s patently false or greatly exaggerated – propaganda to attack an adversary.

 ..

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ikiLeaks released thousands of damning DNC emails proving election rigging for Hillary, stealing the nomination from Sanders, she without question approving or being directly involved in what happened. That’s a serious criminal offense.

 ..

Headlines should demand she be held accountable and disqualified as Democrat party nominee, becoming standard bearer by foul means – suggesting a greater issue.

 ..

Given overwhelming establishment and scoundrel media anti-Trumpism, he’s right about possible election rigging to anoint her next US president – a terrifying prospect given her rage for war and willingness to use nuclear weapons against Iran if it attacked Israel, based on her earlier comments.

 ..

If willing to use WMDs against Iran, perhaps against Russia, China or any other nation she wants attacked. The core issue of this year’s political season is preventing the most belligerent presidential aspirant in US history from becoming commander-in-chief of its military – able to launch WW III on her say.

 ..

Trump is an unknown with no political background. I’ve said before he’s more interested in profiting from planet earth than destroying it.

Clinton’s deplorable record speaks for itself, her rage for endless wars well known. The threat of her starting a global conflict with nuclear weapons able to kill us all is too great a risk to take.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.  His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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ALL IMAGES, CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

VOLPONE FERITO

Naples.
The Daily Kos has long fascinated amateur left political  anthropologists, folks who remain almost eternally frustrated by the sheer political opportunity wasted by this mammoth liberal site. The Daily Kos is so  massive, and so self-important, that it merits its own encyclopedia, of sorts, that is, the Kosopedia. Problem is, like the Democratic party it is affiliated with, the DK soaks up much of the oxygen in the “online progressive spectrum” of the US population, thereby blocking such people from bumping into and exploring far more radical and thereby closer-to-the-truth blogs. Given the acute crisis the US and the world are in, much of it precipitated by the former, this is no small objection.

The blog’s rank and file are, as we might expect from a conglomeration of ordinary folks, decent enough, with liberal instincts after all, but, like most self-conscious establishment American liberals, they suffer from the capital national sin, a pervasive form of hubris. This manifests itself in the following: Kossacks think they are (a) far better informed than the rest, (b) nicer and better intentioned than their political foes, (c) better judges of political character, not to mention policies, and, the oldest conceit among comfortable, upper middle class poltroonish liberals, (d) that they represent the American left (such as it is).

Parochial to a fault despite their self-image as political sophisticates, they may be wrong—woefully wrong— on all counts, but that doesn’t seem to stop anyone at the DK corral from adhering to their staked positions as if life depended on it, which these days may be much more of a literal than metaphorical flourish.

Being ideologically immutable is not something to celebrate.  We should all remain flexible enough to adjust our positions when properly challenged with irrefutable proof, or at least what seems like cogent analysis. Unfortunately, the US is a deeply divided nation today, almost irreconcilably so, as the mainstream media, which could and should have acted as a gradual amplifier and softener of wrongheaded but deeply rooted ideological positions, a veritable educator and mediator for the masses through sheer cumulative and systematic exposure to diverse, truthful reports on social reality, has utterly and deliberately failed to do so.  That, naturally, is a subject for another article.

The tyrannical rule of abject liberaloid wisdom

Markos Moulitsas

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]iberaloid wisdom has kicked in with a vengeance this electoral season, and liberal wisdom when packaged by the Democrats is always a matter of Lesser Evilism, writ large. Lesser Evilism is indeed the Democrats only raison d’etre, even if that, too, is a fraud.

The catalyst for such  uniformity of thought is Donald Trump’s fractious personality, and his obviously outrageous statements, as it is rather clear (even suspicious to some) that Trump has been and remains his own worst enemy in terms of imprudent talk. While plausibly calibrated to please some of the most rightwing and racist elements in a crowd that feels justly betrayed and neglected by the Obama regime (in reality Obama has betrayed all Americans, except for his real controllers, the plutocratic 0.00001%), Trump’s Big Mouth statements have exceeded his need to consolidate his core and ended up giving the Hillary camp (which has always included a silent but powerful segment of establishment Republicans) a wealth of material with which to destroy him in the court “of respectable public opinion”, a fief in which liberal pundits predominate. But stupidity, random irrationality, blatant ignorance, immanent criminality or personal venality have never been a disqualifier for the White House before, as GWB proved so conclusively, so what exercises the establishment worthies is surely something else. Crazy, loose talk like “Obama founded ISIS.” Or, “why the hell do we need NATO now…” (This one sends shivers down the spine of the imperial Pentagon/spook establishment). Yea, the man sounds crazy, not to be trusted, petulantly whimsical, but some of things he says will never be said or even entertained by Hillary, and they do not sit well with the powers that be, comfortable with the current course of endless imperialist wars and confrontations and systematic immiseration of the Great Unwashed at home. From the standpoint of the establishment then, it’s clear Trump won’t do. (More on this later.)

But let’s continue with our analysis of DK’s baleful role in this election.

While DK’s self-complacent herd prides itself in observing individual autonomy, the site’s overall tone and direction are set by a bunch of often obnoxious, petty conservative liberals—”extremists of the center”—that have no problem in proudly proclaiming that their site is an official Democratic party appendage, and critics better beware! At the DK, the DNC mafia rules! (In fairness, honorable exceptions do exist, but we are again talking about the weight of the misguided multitude.)  “Kos”, by the way, is the US-Army/screen nickname of the founder of Daily Kos, Markos Alberto Moulitsas Zúniga.

The site’s longstanding and defining allegiance to the Dems is stated up front:

This is a Democratic blog, a partisan blog. One that recognizes that Democrats run from left to right on the ideological spectrum, and yet we’re all still in this fight together. We happily embrace centrists like NDN’s Simon Rosenberg and Howard Dean, conservatives like Martin Frost and Brad Carson, and liberals like John Kerry and Barack Obama. Liberal? Yeah, we’re around here and we’re proud. But it’s not a liberal blog. It’s a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory. And since we haven’t gotten any of that from the current crew, we’re one more thing: a reform blog. The battle for the party is not an ideological battle. It’s one between establishment and anti-establishment factions. And as I’ve said a million times, the status quo is untenable. (Kosopedia, 2004)

No surprise then that Kossacks were among the first to go gaga over Obama, as this crowd is rich in natural suckers for identity politics, and remain, despite some nagging doubts, enthralled by the First Black POTUS, a master demagog born to fool people like these. Consistent with such character trait, DK’s loyalties have seamlessly switched from Obama to Hillary Clinton, and the trickle of support at the start of the primaries has now become a veritable torrent—the herd again stampeding on cue at the thought of Big Bad Trump wolfing down the nation.

Let’s get something up front at this point. How do you think the Kossacks would react were a statement like this, written by respected Black Agenda Report senior columnist Margaret Kimberley, cross their mindscape?

Wikileaks latest revelations of the Democrats’ corruption prove that the party is nothing but a neo-liberal marketing scheme meant to fool progressive voters. As with the Republicans, its goal is to aid and abet the dictates of the ruling classes. The contents and substance of the hacked emails had to be disappeared so as not to ruin the Democratic convention and its well-honed image of inclusion. (Trump, Russia, and Democratic Lies, BAR, 8.3.16)

Yea, that’s right.  Sister Kimberley is spot on—as usual. “A neo-liberal marketing scheme meant to fool progressive voters.” That’s what the Democratic party is all about these days. Truth, however, no matter how expressed, has little impact on insulated minds. Incautious souls attempting to open the eyes of this crowd—traditionally one of the most thankless tasks in American politics, comparable to preaching racial equality to a Klan assemblage—are liable to be viciously pelted, their arguments receiving cruel sarcasm or worse. The really unlucky may also receive a gratuitous lecture on the topic, as many Kossacks fancy themselves “experts” in various fields: history, politics, science, culture, race, you name it. How they can boast clear vision about world realities while living deep in the folds of the conventional wisdom that shields the rotten status quo they profess to criticize is one of their great contradictions, but then, again, they are not liberals for nothing.

Mirroring the Big Media offensive against Trump

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]aving heard the bugle to stop the media-manufactured anti-Christ, the Kossacks are now in full mobilization mode. I got one of their reading recommendations mails this morning. The obsessive list points to Trump as the capital danger to humanity in just about every article. While Trump is no doubt heinous enough, a despicable maniacal narcissist and terminal ignoramus, and he wears his fascistic and racist tendencies on his sleeve, he’s not demonstrably a worse threat to the planet than corporate flack, certified war criminal and military/security-apparatus favorite Hillary Clinton. So, in our view, what DK and its horde of wannabe activists should be doing is seeking a true alternative to this dual malignancy, like endorsing Green Party candidate Jill Stein, in measurable ways a far more consistent progressive than Sanders ever was. That, however, for reasons, elaborated elsewhere, is not their path. They have clearly chosen the establishment course of demonizing Trump (which is fairly easy for reasons stated), and vibrantly endorsing Clinton, which is as dumb as it gets, for this is indeed an election opportunity when Third Party voices and unconventional moves are in order. In any case, see for yourself and note the silly triumphalist/celebratory tone of some of their potshots (click on image):

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or good measure this volley includes a post that is in many ways totalizing in its allegory for what the Daily Kos is and does: a shameless shill for imperialist politicians. The title says it all: “The most thorough, profound and moving defense of Hillary Clinton I have ever seen.”  It’s written by one Michael Arnovitz, and was first published on Facebook, where Kossack NewDealer first found it and later threw into the DK hopper.

The character witnesses summoned by the author(s) of this contrived collage of apologetics for Clinton are all utterly compromised themselves; all to a fault creatures similarly embedded in the very putrid establishment that Hillary personifies, from Henry Louis Gates, an establishment-coddled African American Harvard don who Black Agenda Report editors correctly denounce as anything but an honest historian, to the likes of Jill Abramson, a former Executive Editor for the New York Times and reporter for the Wall Street Journal, among other high corporate media positions.

Abramson as a Hillary character witness really sticks in my craw. For to believe that Abramson is a credible reference in this case would necessitate that we also believe in the purity of the mainstream media, especially the New York Times, which excels at the craft of —for lack of a better label—”authoritative disinformation”. While they are at it, while not throw in the Immaculate Conception?

Has anyone on the left reading these lines ever seen the editors of the New York Times print any important story that comes anywhere close to the truth—particularly in matters of foreign policy? I mean when it matters, not 20, 50, 100 years after the events took place. Has the Times or its twin in evil manipulation, the WaPo, print anything truthful about the Ukraine before or after the US-sponsored fascist coup? Have they conducted any serious investigation of the demonstrators’ “massacre” in Kiev, a turning point in that supposedly “people’s revolt”? All evidence now points to a Western false flag, exculpating Yanukovych’s security forces (several of them were shot, in fact), but the US press has remained curiously uninterested in pursuing the story. Ditto the great MH17 scandal, a grand case of Western journalistic malfeasance, whereby Russia and Putin were instantly pilloried as the guilty party, before there was anything even remotely credible on which to pin such outrageous claims.

Have these papers denounced in urgent and stern terms (instead of cheering it on) the crazy Neocon-inspired warmongering games played by NATO —the Pentagon’s Cat’s Paw—on Russia’s doorstep? Why don’t the supposedly sober-minded, peace-loving editors of the Times use their huge megaphone to denounce the US government’s constant attempts at provoking and encircling Russia and China, thereby bringing the world ever closer to a nuclear Armageddon? Has either of those  great exemplars of American journalism admitted clearly and conclusively that the US was and remains behind the creation and perpetuation of Wahhabi fanaticism culminating with ISIS, the still expanding plague of retail terrorism, and the genocidal wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, the European refugee crisis, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum? Have either of these papers ever thrown their mighty resources behind a serious, systematic investigation of 9/11, one of the pivotal issues of the 21st century, instead of running cover for the still unpunished perpetrators?

Truth and priority assigned to such issues is the mark of good journalism, and by those simple standards these papers—along with the rest of the US media pack—fail the test abominably. Furthermore, if these media are so thoroughly tainted and compromised with the stink of shilling for US imperialism, for the American Deep State, why doesn’t intimate association with such criminal entities constitute a disqualifying factor? Does anyone believe that you can get to be Executive Editor for the paper of record of the US bourgeoisie—as Abramson was—without being thoroughly vetted as a dependable member of the club? And we are expected to believe that this woman is qualified to serve as a reliable source for Hillary’s honest nature?

But Aronovitz, assuming he is really serious about his panegyric, is too dense to see the obvious about Clinton, so he falls for the Lesser Evil with embarrassing alacrity. Except that in 2016 Hillary and the Dems do not represent anything like the “Lesser Evil” but quite probably “the More Effective Evil”, or, since Hillary’s tent, dissolving any pretense of a partisan divide, now encompasses the whole murderous corporate establishment, simply “the one and only Evil”.

The always astute Black Agenda Report executive editor, Glen Ford, put it this way:

While Democrats scream “fascist” at Donald Trump, actual fascists with real histories of mass murder at home and abroad gather in Hillary Clinton’s “Big Tent” Democratic Party. The melding of GOP and Democratic fat cats is “the most dramatic effect of the breakdown of the duopoly system set off by Donald Trump’s white nationalist, anti-‘free’ trade revolt.” Blacks and progressives will be shocked to find themselves at the margins of Hillary’s tent…

“Clinton has inherited the Republican money base, which means she is the candidate of the ‘bipartisan’ moneyed classes, period.”

Hillary Clinton is celebrating in the bloated expanse of the “Big Tent” Democratic Party she and Bill have dreamed of building since their days in the backwaters of Arkansas. Slick Willie and his wife have succeeded in assembling under one party roof nearly the whole of the U.S. ruling class and their hordes of attendants and goons. The scam that undergirded the duopoly system that has served the Lords of Capital so well for so long, has come undone. Thanks to a white nationalist billionaire who was too spoiled to play by the corporate rules, the two parties of the ruling class have become one.

(Hillary Stuffs Entire U.S. Ruling Class Into Her Big, Nasty Tent.)

Such clear-sightedness is alien to the likes of Arnovitz, or, for that matter the mainstream liberal mob, who remain happily imprisoned in a stupid cocoon of self-reinforcing delusions, political evasions, and Big Lies circulated in the mainstream media and their vast blogosphere. It is therefore hardly shocking to see this closing statement in Arnovitz’s tract:

Hillary is nobody’s idea of perfect. Fine. But in my view if a man with her qualifications were running in the Democratic primary, Bernie would have been done before he even started. And if a man with her qualifications had been running for the Republicans, they’d be anointing him the next Reagan while trying to sneak his face onto Mount Rushmore.

Most of the people who hate Hillary when she’s running for office end up liking her just fine once she’s won. And I have every confidence that history will repeat itself again this November. As for myself, I have been watching Presidential elections since Nixon. And never in my life has there been an easier or more obvious choice than now. Trump is not merely a bad choice, he is (as many leading Republicans have already admitted) a catastrophic choice, unfit in every possible way for the office of the Presidency.

As such, I happily voted for Hillary in my primary. And I will proudly vote for her in November. Yes she will disappoint us all on occasion. Who doesn’t? But I think she’s also going to surprise a lot of people. She will fear neither consensus when possible nor ass-kicking when necessary. She will safeguard us from the damage a right-wing Supreme Court would inflict on the nation. She will stand for the rights of women, LGBT Americans, and minorities. She will maintain critical global relationships, and she will react to dangerous situations with the temperament of a seasoned and experienced professional. And in a nation that didn’t even allow women to vote until 1920, she will make history by shattering the very highest glass ceiling, and in doing so forever change the way a generation of young women view their place in our Republic.

She’s going to be a fine President.

I’m with her.|

Willful idiocy of that caliber is sealing the fate of humanity. Wish us all a lot of luck after the January 2017 coronation. We’ll need it. Badly. 

can read the whole Arnovitz article here.

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Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

Former CIA chief Mike Morrell appears on Charlie Rose, CBS to endorse Hillary and attack Trump, as “Manchurian candidate”, doing the bidding for Moscow. Morrell’s mentality and delusions strongly suggest that top echelons of the US government are populated with sociopathic criminals.

POSTED AND WITH COMMENTARY BY D.F. ANDERSON

Rose receiving a Peabody Award: proof conclusive that “professional” journalism is a joke in the United States. Photo by Peabody Awards

Dateline: 8/8/16—
[dropcap]C[/dropcap]harlie Rose, a shameless disinformer for the US imperialist establishment, was obviously lending the prestige of his media platform to CIA operative Mike Morrell to permit him to disseminate his toxic and mendacious views in the guise of an urbane interview. Whilst it’s unlikely that Rose intended to have Morrell hang himself with admissions of guilt, or allow the curtain to be drawn on his guest’s true sordid nature or that of the organization and system he serves, things apparently didn’t go completely according to the script. Unwittingly perhaps, Morrell provided a candid picture of where these sinister forces really reside politically, and how they see the world. To say it’s sickening is a bit anticlimactic for anyone who understands US foreign policy, and has followed the trail of unbroken bloodstained international criminality and hypocrisy blazed by the CIA and the US government for the last 70 years.

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t’s worth noting that Rose, the ever suave but supposedly “quick on his feet” journalist seems beatifically oblivious to Morrell’s self-serving declarations. Couched in an atmosphere of mutual cordiality, it’s clear this is a “softball interview,” and that the legendary host sees no reason to interrupt when Morrell, high on his “American exceptionalist” conceit, talks without a trace of guilt about America’s criminal actions in Iraq, cheerfully brushing aside all historical context.

Indeed, in part evoking the sanctimony of a misguided Jesuit, Morrell is clearly unperturbed by the long record of US malicious interventions in Iran, a highlight of which was the young CIA-engineered overthrow of the country’s prime minister in the 1950s, the hapless Mossadegh, a caper for which dynasty scion Kermit Roosevelt would long receive accolades among his equally comfy pals, all to put a Washington gendarme in his place, the tyrannical Shah Reza Pahlevi.

In keeping with his script, designed to prepare the public for more aggressive policies throughout the Middle East and the world under Clinton, Morrell spills his petty venom against Iran and Russia, editing out history’s inconvenient facts. Thus he prefers not to dwell on what America did to that nation after the Shah’s fall, in 1979, including the arming and sicking of Saddam Hussein on Teheran, a maneuver that embroiled Baghdad and Tehran in a ghastly war —the Iran-Iraq War—and which ended up costing an ocean of blood to both nations, but which made fortunes for the arms merchants, and created further opportunities for Western interference. “When we were in Iraq,” says Morrell, evenly, almost blissfully, arguing for further bloodshed, as if the invasion and destruction of that nation (and others in the region) under false pretenses were all oh such a wonderful example of American goodness and generosity, “the Iranians were giving weapons to the Shia militia…who were killing American soldiers.” Ah, imagine that! Now we understand. As per the mind of Morrell and his ilk, a rogue imperial power an ocean away, with a long resume of atrocities in all continents, has the right to do as it pleases in the Middle East, but a regional power, long subjected to Washington’s treachery and foul ministrations, seeking legitimately to bolster its security, has none. Such is the moral caliber of those who lead us. Draw your own conclusions.

Incidentally, as might be expected since Charlie Rose is always ready to accommodate establishment worthies, Morrell has been a frequent guest of the program, as seen on the list below:

Other appearances by Morrell

June 2016
June 2016
March 2016
March 2016
January 2016
January 2016
December 2015
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015

BELOW: BONUS
The Daily Beast profile on this worm. Note that it is (coming from the Daily Beast, an establishment/rightwing outlet) rather complimentary to Morrell. 

Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com

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Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?

Dispatches from
STEPHEN LENDMAN

Hague Regulations along with Third and Fourth Geneva ban collective punishment. Applicable to armed conflicts, they have wider international humanitarian law implications. 

Putin with athletes. Russia and China should have simply boycotted the Olympics.

No one should be held responsible for an offense unless guilt is conclusively proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. No one should be punished for offenses committed by others. Everyone should be treated equitably and fairly.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, its additional protocols, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international laws affirm the rights of everyone no authority may legally deny.

Rio 2016 above all else features illegal, immoral and unethical Russia bashing by banning many of its athletes from competition because of the doping violations of a few.

Banishing Russia’s entire Paralympic team was the latest shoe to drop – International Paralympic Committee (IPC) president Philip Craven announcing on Sunday the ruling by its governing board “to suspend (Russia’s entire Paralympian team) with immediate effect.”

Targeting its Paralympians is especially galling – athletes showing enormous physical and emotional fortitude to compete in athletic contests despite disabilities preventing their normal functioning.

Banning all Russian Paralympians from next month’s games because of doping violations of some team members is further proof of Olympian disgrace – politics overriding sport, US pressure to get all Russian athletes banned resulting in too many unjustifiably denied the right to compete.

In response to the IPC ruling, Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said an appeal will be submitted to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).”

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SIDEBAR
Read below the filthy editorial filed by the New York Times editorial board, on July 19th, 2016. Such is their moral mendacity that it is worth reading in toto. 

The NYT's editors fusillade against Russia. The empire's jackals never let go.

The Opinion Pages | EDITORIAL : Ban Russia From the Rio Olympics

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Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD JULY 19, 2016

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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he latest and most comprehensive report on Russia’s cheating at the 2014 Winter Olympics gives the International Olympic Committee all the evidence it needs to ban every Russian team from the forthcoming Rio Games. The report, commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency to investigate a fast-growing body of evidence against Russia, is damning and unequivocal.

Compiled by Richard McLaren, a Canadian expert on sports ethics, it affirms “beyond a reasonable doubt” a massive government-ordered program of feeding steroids to Russian athletes and covering up the evidence — a program that involved various organs of the Russian state, including the sports ministry, the security service and the agency charged with preparing national teams.

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The I.O.C. has already upheld a ban by the track and field ruling body to bar the Russian track and field team from the Rio Games. The integrity of the Games, the dreams of athletes the world over and the imperative to proclaim Russia’s behavior totally unacceptable all demand a blanket ban. Mr. McLaren’s report confirmed earlier revelations made to The Times by Russia’s former antidoping laboratory director, Grigory Rodchenkov, of an elaborate scheme to swap athletes’ urine samples during the 2014 Sochi Games. The scheme was part of a sweeping policy instituted after Russia’s poor showing in the 2010 Winter Olympics to conceal positive drug tests of athletes in “the vast majority of summer and winter Olympic sports.”

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Russia will loudly remonstrate, as it did when the cheating accusations first arose, that the report is another American-orchestrated political ploy to discredit Russia, that doping is universal, that Russia will punish those responsible, that it is unfair to penalize all Russian athletes for the offenses of isolated officials and athletes, and so on.

All these tiresome bleats are intended to avoid the central point of the accusations: that the doping was ordered, directed and controlled by the Russian government, including its feared security services. The key figure in the program, the report says, was Yuri Nagornykh, who was appointed deputy minister of sport in 2010 by none other than Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time.

Mr. McLaren says no more of Mr. Putin, but it is impossible to imagine that Mr. Nagornykh’s appointment would not have come without a clear understanding of what he was expected to do — or that the F.S.B., the Russian security service, would get involved without direct orders from the Kremlin. According to Dr. Rodchenkov, it was the F.S.B. that figured out how to open purportedly tamper-proof urine containers.

Even before the new report was made public in Toronto on Monday, several national antidoping agencies and athletic organizations were preparing to demand that the I.O.C. broaden its earlier ban to cover all sports. The head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart, said such action was essential “to ensure this unprecedented level of criminality never again threatens the sports we cherish.”

The head of the I.O.C., Thomas Bach, has promised to impose the “toughest sanctions available” when the committee’s board meets on Tuesday. There is really no question what these must be.

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REGULAR ARTICLE RESUMES HERE
“We will fight for our Paralympians,” he stressed. Given deplorable anti-Russian media pressure alone, Sunday’s ruling along with banning other Russian athletes didn’t surprise.

New York Times editors disgracefully led the assault. On July 19, they headlined “Ban Russia From the Rio Olympics,” outrageously accusing “organs of the Russian state, the sports ministry, the security service and the agency charged with preparing national teams” with systemic anti-doping violations.

No credible evidence proved it, trumped up charges alone because of heavy US anti-Russia pressure exerted.

The Chicago Tribune called “banning Russia from Rio a must.” The Los Angeles Times urged “ban(ning) Russia from the Rio Olympics.” Other Western print and electronic media expressed similar sentiments. 

With numerous Russian athletes barred from competition, along with its entire Paralympian team next month, the XXXI Olympiad is more politicized tragedy, farce and disgrace than sport at its best.

About the author

STEPHEN LENDMAN lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."  ( http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html ) Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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