I love this man.
From: William Blum <bill=williamblum.org@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of
William Blum
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2018 3:51 PM
To: miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: The Anti-Empire Report #160
The Anti-Empire Report #160
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(read on williamblum.org)
William Blum takes on the Washington Post again, in the person of columnist Max
Boot, formerly of the Wall Street Journal
Dear Mr. Boot,
You write: “Every administration since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s has tried to
improve relations with Moscow.”
I stopped. Frozen. Can the man be serious? Yes, he is. God help us. I’ve
published 5 books which give the lie to that statement, detailing all the
foreign governments the US has overthrown, or tried to, because they were too
friendly with Moscow, or were themselves too communist or too socialist, or
simply too liberal. China, France, Italy, Greece, Korea, Albania, Iran,
Guatemala, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Haiti, British Guiana, Iraq, Vietnam, Laos,
Cambodia, Congo, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Ghana, Uruguay, Chile,
Bolivia, Australia, Portugal, East Timor, Angola, Jamaica, Nicaragua,
Philippines, Grenada, Suriname, Libya, Panama … I’m only up to 1989 … God help
us … Read my books …
William Blum
Reply from Mr. Boot:
How does your email contradict my statement? I didn’t say the US hadn’t tried
to oppose the Soviet Union and Communism. I said that every president had also
tried to improve relations with Moscow.
Reply from Mr. Blum:
So, overthrowing governments and assassinating their leaders because they’re
friendly to the Soviet Union is not a contradiction to trying to improve
relations with the Soviet Union. Interesting. The CIA also connived to get
Soviet diplomats expelled from various countries and did various things to
block Soviet international financial transactions, etc., etc. All signs of
trying to improve relations with Moscow? Silly me for not thinking of that.
I’ll have to revise my books.
================== No reply received =====================
The above is one example of how conservatives rationalized their being Cold
Warriors -– The United States always meant well. No matter how bad their
foreign interventions may have looked, America’s heart was always in the right
place. The current US secretary of Defense, James Mattis, recently stated: “We
are the good guys. We’re not the perfect guys, but we are the good guys. And so
we’re doing what we can.” [1]
Russian interference in US election – The new Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction
The Washington Post has a regular “fact checker”, Glenn Kessler, who checks the
accuracy of statements made by politicians and other public figures. On
September 3 he announced that President Trump’s first 592 days in office had
produced 4,713 false or misleading claims; that’s about 8 per day.
The article included a list of the types of claims, including the investigation
into “Russian interference in the 2016 election” and whether people in the
Trump campaign were in any way connected to it. Kessler believes they were.
“All told, more than 200 times the president has made claims suggesting the
Russia probe is made up, a hoax or a fraud.”
The “fact checker” needs to be fact-checked. He takes it as gospel that Russia
consciously and purposefully interfered in the election, but like all the many
other commentators offers no evidence. It’s conceivable that evidence of such
has actually been presented and I was in a coma that day. (Would I remember
that I was in a coma? Probably only if someone told me. So far no one has told
me that I was in a coma.)
Keep in mind that a statement from the CIA that Russia interfered in the
election does not count as evidence. It’s merely a statement.
Keep in mind that a statement from the FBI that Russia interfered in the
election does not count as evidence. It’s merely a statement.
Keep in mind that a statement from the NSA that Russia interfered in the
election does not count as evidence. It’s merely a statement.
Keep in mind that a statement from a dozen other US intelligence agencies that
Russia interfered in the election does not count as evidence. It’s merely a
statement.
Here’s James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence: “To me it
stretches credulity to think that the Russians didn’t have profound impact” on
the outcome of the election. [2] Clearly if the man had any evidence to
substantiate his statement he would have provided it at the time. He did not
provide any. So all we get is another statement.
There are not many government bureaucrats who would publicly contradict the
CIA, the FBI and the NSA on an important intelligence matter. How impressed
would you be if a dozen Russian intelligence agencies all declared that Russia
did not interfere in any way in the US 2016 election?
Moreover, keep in mind that numerous notices and advertisements posted to
Facebook and other social media calling for the election of Trump and/or the
defeat of Clinton do not count as evidence of Russian interference in the
election even if some or most of the postings were seemingly made by Russians.
Countless other notices and advertisements called for the election of Clinton
and/or the defeat of Trump.
Moreover, many of these social-media postings (which members of Congress and
the media like to make so much of) were posted well before the candidates were
chosen, or even after the election took place.
So what do we make of all this? Well, it’s been pointed out that most of these
postings were to so-called “click-bait” Internet sites that earn payments based
on their volume of traffic. I have not come across any other explanation of the
huge number of electoral postings during 2014-2017.
And forget about Trump aides like Paul Manafort and his partner Rick Gates,
who’ve been charged with various financial crimes such as money laundering, tax
and bank fraud, failure to register as a lobbyist, and more; in part the
charges involve Ukraine – But NOTHING to do with Russian interference in the
2016 US election, although their cases have undoubtedly fed that story.
The idea of Russian interference in the US election has been repeated so many
times in so many places that it’s now taken as unquestioned history. Guardian
reporter Luke Harding has a book out called “Collusion: Secret meetings, dirty
money, and how Russia helped Donald Trump win”, which reinforces this myth, and
wouldn’t be worth mentioning except that Harding was interviewed by that rare
breed, a skeptical journalist, Aaron Maté. Harding repeats one anti-Russian
cliché after another, but Maté refuses to allow him to get away with any of it.
It’s indeed refreshing.
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Have a look.
Even if you assumed that all the charges made about “Russian interfering in the
elections” were true, and put them all together, they still wouldn’t have a
fraction of the impact on the 2016 elections as did Republicans in several
states by disenfranchising likely Democratic voters (blacks, poor, students,
people in largely Democratic districts), by purging state voting lists.
Noam Chomsky has pointed out that Israeli intervention in US elections “vastly
overwhelms” anything Russia has done. Israeli leader Netanyahu goes directly to
speak to Congress without even consulting the president.
The United States joined a grand alliance with the forces of the communist
Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin in World War II, but Washington can’t even
talk civilly now with capitalist Russia. When your goal is world domination any
country that stands in the way of that is an enemy. American conservatives in
particular have a most difficult time shaking this mind-set. Here’s the
prominent conservative host of National Public Radio (NPR), Cokie Roberts,
bemoaning Trump’s supposed desire to develop friendly relations with Russia,
saying: “This country has had a consistent policy for 70 years towards the
Soviet Union and Russia, and Trump is trying to undo that.” [3]
If Trump were to establish good relations with Russia the lack of a European
enemy would also leave NATO (= the US) even more obviously unnecessary.
Then we have the Skripal poisoning case allegedly carried out by Russia in the
UK: There are just two things missing to support this allegation: 1) any
verifiable evidence, AT ALL, and 2) any plausible motive for the Russian
government to have carried out such a crime. But stay tuned, the Brits may yet
find Vladimir Putin’s passport at the scene of the crime.
Lest we forget. One of Washington’s greatest crimes
The world will long remember the present immigrant crisis in Europe, which has
negatively affected countless people there, and almost all countries. History
will certainly record it as a major tragedy. Could it have been averted? Or
kept within much more reasonable humane bounds?
After the United States and NATO began to bomb Libya in March 2011 – almost
daily for more than six months! – to overthrow the government of Muammar
Gaddafi (with the completely phoney excuse that Gaddafi was about to invade
Benghazi, the Libyan center of his opponents, and so the United States and NATO
were thus saving the people of that city from a massacre}, the Libyan leader
declared: “Now listen you people of Nato. You’re bombing a wall, which stood in
the way of African migration to Europe and in the way of al Qaeda terrorists.
This wall was Libya. You’re breaking it. You’re idiots, and you will burn in
Hell for thousands of migrants from Africa.” [4]
Remember also that Libya was a secular society, like Afghanistan, Iraq and
Syria, all destroyed by America while supporting Saudi Arabia and various
factions of al Qaeda. It’s these countries that have principally overrun Europe
with refugees.
Gaddafi, like Saddam Hussein, had a tyrant side to him but could in important
ways be benevolent and do very valuable things. He, for example, founded the
African Union and gave the Libyan people the highest standard of living in all
of Africa; they had not only free education and health care but all kinds of
other benefits that other Africans could only dream about. But Moammar Gaddafi
was never a properly obedient client of Washington. Amongst other shortcomings,
the man threatened to replace the US dollar with gold for payment of oil
transactions and create a common African currency. He was, moreover, a strong
supporter of the Palestinians and foe of Israel.
In 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was the prime moving force behind
the United States and NATO turning Libya into a failed state, where it remains
today. The attack against Libya was one that the New York Times said Clinton
had “championed”, convincing President Obama in “what was arguably her moment
of greatest influence as Secretary of State.” [5]
The American people and the American media of course swallowed the phoney story
fed to them, though no evidence of the alleged impending massacre has ever been
presented. The nearest thing to an official US government account of the matter
– a Congressional Research Service report on events in Libya for the period –
makes no mention at all of the threatened massacre. [6] Keep this in mind when
reading the latest accusations against Russia.
The US/NATO heavy bombing of Libya led also to the widespread dispersal
throughout North African and Middle East hotspots of the gigantic arsenal of
weaponry that Gaddafi had accumulated. Libya is now a haven for terrorists,
from al Qaeda to ISIS, whereas Gaddafi had been a leading foe of terrorists.
Oh my god, I’ve been called an anti-Semite!
British Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and many others in the UK and the US are
attacked for being anti-Semitic if they criticize Israel. But John McCain had
very friendly meetings, and posed for photos, with prominent neo-Nazis in
Ukraine and the Middle East – without being accused of being anti-Semitic.
People involved in political activity on the left have to learn to ignore
charges of anti-Semitism stemming from their criticism of Israel. These
accusations are just thrown out as a tactic to gain political advantage – like
with “anti-American” and “conspiracy theorist” – and do not deserve to be taken
seriously. Whenever possible, such name-calling should be made fun of.
There’s an unwritten rule in right wing circles: It’s okay to be anti-Semitic
as long as you’re pro-Israel. Evangelical preacher Pat Robertson is such an
example.
While in the past an “anti-Semite” was someone who hates Jews, nowadays it is
the other way around: An anti-Semite is someone the Jews hate.
“God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God
appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy and anyone
who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with
the enemy, and d) a terrorist.” – John LeCarré [7]
George Bush, Sr.’s Secretary of State, James Baker, famously said to a
colleague: “Fuck the Jews! They don’t vote for us anyway”. [8]
Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser under Jimmy Carter: “An
anti-Israel bias is not the same as anti-Semitism. To argue as much is to claim
an altogether unique immunity for Israel, untouchable by the kind of criticism
that is normally directed at the conduct of states.” [9]
What the man actually believes about his presidency
He keeps bragging about how he forced NATO to collect more money from members
other than The United States. Here he is in a phone conversation with Bob
Woodward of the Washington Post.
“You do know I’m doing a great job for the country. You do know that NATO now
is going to pay billions and billions of dollars more, as an example, than
anybody thought possible, that other presidents were unable to get more? … So
it’s a tremendous amount of money. No other president has done it. It was
heading down in the opposite direction.” [10]
Woodward said nothing to contradict Lord Trump. Someone other than the Post’s
star reporter might have – just might – have pointed out that giving NATO
billions more is not necessarily a good thing, that the member countries might
have – just might – have spent that money on health, education, the
environment, etc., etc. for their own people instead of more planes, bombs and
tanks.
If not at that very moment on the phone, Woodward or the Post could at least
have mentioned this subsequently in print.
Notes
1. CBS “Face the Nation”, May 28, 2017
2. New York Times Book Review, June 10, 2018
3. NPR, January 9, 2017
4. Sunday News, Zimbabwe, July 3, 2016
5. New York Times, February 28, 2016
6. “
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Libya: Transition and U.S. Policy”, updated March 4, 2016
7. London Times, January 15, 2003
8. The Independent (UK), May 17, 1998
9. Foreign Policy magazine, July 2006
10. Washington Post, September 5, 2018
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