Those Magical, Fantastical Russians vs. U.S. Empire
Glen Ford in Black Agenda Report:
“This induced ‘state of emergency’ is designed to prepare the American public, politically and psychologically, to maintain the momentum of the U.S. imperial offensive in the world.”
The only people that can make Russiagate fade away are the ones that invented it in the first place: the spooks, Wall Street Democrats and institutional servants of capital that gathered in Hillary Clinton’s overstuffed campaign tent, last year, to plot the next moves of a beleaguered U.S. empire.
Although a Bernie Sanders’ upset in 2016 had always been a statistical impossibility, Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican Party machinery had destabilized the duopoly political system at a time of great stress for U.S. imperialism.
The previous year, the Russian military had set up shop in Syria, blocking U.S.-backed jihadists from ousting the secular, Arab nationalist government of Bashar al Assad. It was Vladimir Putin’s answer to the global military offensive launched by Barack Obama in 2011, with NATO’s overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, followed immediately by the jihadist push into Syria; the Washington-engineered 2014 coup in Ukraine, on Russia’s doorstep; and, also beginning in 2011, Obama’s military “pivot” to the Pacific to confront China.
“Putin changed the game board in 2015.”
U.S. imperialism was on a roll, with a vengeance, occupying most of Africa and recovering the momentum lost with George W. Bush’s humiliating defeat in Iraq. But Putin changed the game board in 2015, militarily intervening in Syria and declaring, with the world as his witness at the opening of the UN General Assembly, that the U.S. had been acting as a de facto ally of the very jihadists that it claimed to be fighting in its global war on terror. The 21st century’s biggest lie had been exposed with a Russian megaphone, and confronted by Russian arms. America’s jihadist foot soldiers were put on the run.
Perhaps even more fundamental, the bell tolled resoundingly on the terminal decline of U.S. empire when the International Monetary Fund announced that China had surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest economy , based on “purchasing power parity.” The “American Century” — whenever it was supposed to have begun — was now definitively over, despite the U.S. expending more on weapons than the rest of the world, combined. As 2014 came to end, Washington’s mood turned morbid, yet meaner and more desperate than ever.
“The bell tolled resoundingly on the terminal decline of U.S. empire when the International Monetary Fund announced that China had surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest economy, based on ‘purchasing power parity’.”
That same year, the domestic U.S. pot boiled over, as Black protest reawakened in Ferguson, Missouri, after a fitful, two-generation-long sleep. The centrality of race was reasserted in the world’s first white settler state, further darkening the mood of a white populace whose skin privilege could not save them from the ravages of capitalist austerity and enforced, general precariousness. Donald Trump decided to make his move to seize the commanding heights of the White Man’s Party.
The Orange Menace, a calculating real estate racist whose mass media marketing strategy is mistaken for “populism,” ran a counter-establishment campaign that challenged the Lords of Capitals’ right to move money and jobs across borders at will, and — horror of horrors! — questioned the need for the U.S. to wage endless wars around the world.
President Obama’s Trans Pacific Partnership was already dead as the general election campaign began, but Trump’s capture of the Republican Party — the most reliable backer of the free flow of capital — was deeply disturbing to the capitalist order. When Trump’s mass base — top-heavy with self-styled American “patriots” — failed to recoil at their candidate’s apparent willingness to explore some kind of détente with Russia, the national security state descended into utter panic. If Trump’s “middle American” (white, socially right-wing) fans could not be counted on to give unquestioning support to U.S. imperial war policy, then where was the popular base to sustain Washington’s military offensive in the world?
“Their actual agenda was preservation of the global capitalist order and sustaining the momentum of the U.S. military offensive that was begun in 2011.”
From that point on, Trump was viewed as an existential threat by most of the U.S. ruling class and its attendant national security and military-industrial complex sectors, and by the corporate media that represents their interests. They rushed into Hillary Clinton’s Big Tent, claiming to make common cause with Blacks and other minorities. However, their actual agenda was preservation of the global capitalist order and sustaining the momentum of the U.S. military offensive that was begun in 2011.
The CIA, in particular, made Trump their National Security Enemy #1. They are the main architects of Russiagate — a “conspiracy” in which the predicate Kremlin “crime” of DNC document-stealing remains unproven, and which pales into almost laughable insignificance when compared to decades of U.S. wars of regime change, economic strangulation, assassinations, and outright genocide around the world. Syria and Congo (6 million-plus dead) are crimes of the worst order known to humankind. Russiagate is a lie that would be no more than a Russian diplomatic blunder, even if true.
“Russiagate is an artificial crisis that was made necessary by the actual crisis of U.S. imperialism.”
The corporate media are the public agents of the mass psychological operation. With media consolidation at such an advanced state, it turns out to be not all that difficult for a handful of media conglomerates, each tied inextricably to finance capital and in close collaboration with one of the corporate parties and all of the intelligence outfits, to create and sustain a “state of emergency” for a long period of time — more than year, so far. This induced “state of emergency” is designed to prepare the American public, politically and psychologically, to maintain the momentum of the U.S. imperial offensive in the world, by demonizing Russia as an internal, as well as external, threat to the United States. In other words, Russiagate is an artificial crisis that was made necessary by the actual crisis of U.S. imperialism — its economic decline and military dependence on jihadist foot soldiers, and just as importantly, the utter collapse of U.S. moral authority in the world.
The U.S. imperial orbit is shrinking, dramatically. Russiagate is the domestic response to this geopolitical reality. The real “conspirators” – the spooks, Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the Clintonite leaders of the Democratic Party, and the corporate media that serves them all — are shrinking the American people’s political vision to Halloween dimensions. Not only are there Russians lurking in every dark corner and under every bed, but they can buy a U.S. election or foment civil disturbance and political unrest for about $100,000 — the price of a luxury car.
They are magical, fantastical, unreal.
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Yes and of course Lloyd Blankfein of the USA is not interfering in Uk politics by calling for a second Brexit Referendum, is he?
I call for global sanctions on Goldman Sachs, making it a crime to be a counterparty in any GS trade of any kind.
I call on the people of Europe to press charges against Goldman Sachs for criminal misrepresentation of Greece’s economy prior to joining the Euro, calling for 3* total bail out costs to be taken from Goldman Sachs, all its Directors’ assets, its entire pension fund, all its real estate etc etc. And specifically 100% of Lloyd Blankfein’s family assets, ensuring he lives as a beggar on the streets until he is dead…..as it will a crime punishable by death for him to ever work again…..
He is acceptable collateral damage as much as Middle Eastern children are……
Of course, it should go without saying that the Goldman Sachs Alumni include inter alia Carney, Barroso, Draghi, Mnuchin, Paulson inter alia. These are the people who serve the 0.1% of the globalist elite. It hasn’t changed much since the great American social theorist, C.Wright Mills exposed the oligarchy in ‘The Power Elite’ first published in the 1950s. The only thing which has changed is the fawning, slavering, adulation of the liberal class and the political elite – in practice if not in theory – to the new world order, beginning with Blair and Bush, and establishing an ongoing counter-revolutionary momentum ever since.
The media, in particular, has played a key role in this process. Essentially reactionary economic and geopolitical ideas have been dusted down polished up and reconfigured into trendy, consumer-friendly, pseudo-radical notions devoid of any substantive content, but superficial enough to pass muster. Of course in a neo-totalitarian age, the journalists or writer has two alternatives. As Trotsky once put it: ‘Every bourgeois has a gendarme in his head so that the external one is unnecessary.’ Or, perhaps more cynically, the stock phrase of any social climber on the make ‘I am not Spartacus’
A very good piece however the US military offensive started a long time prior to 2011. It probably started with the attempted genocide of the native Americans, the factional war of the states created new dictators who proceeded to unleash the US military upon any that opposed white manifest destiny. The US, God directed mission to save the world has resulted in millions of deaths and untold misery. Truly is the road to hell paved with good intentions.
Reblogged this on Worldtruth.
For those with strong stomachs, I couldn’t manage the whole thing… I just couldn’t… life’s too short, there’s a truly shameful, disgraceful and wild-eyed paranoid rant by Luke Harding in today’s Guardian… it’s also awfully written… about Trump and Putin… how Trump walked into Putin’s web, a web the evil Russians have been secretly spinning around Trump… for years and years. All one can conclude is that the Guardian’s role is to groom the educated middle class for war with Russia and make sure any dissent or opposition is gagged.
I bet people weren’t allowed to leave a reply. Too many people are catching onto the lies now. Both Democracy Now and The Real News tend to be excellent, but in their quest to try to cover a wide variety of views they sometimes cover a subject which is Western propaganda. I don’t think they want to put out propaganda but they get caught out. Well, on the occasions I’m thinking about the public in the comments section would have none of it. Every person replying called it out as fake news and propaganda.
More and more people must be going to the alternative media to get their news and they are getting savvy. Never before have we been able to get real news like this because of the internet, and this is freaking out the ruling elite.
Glen Ford provides perfect clarity here. The historical crisis of US imperialism is the window to understanding the new McCarthyism, whose latest component is of internet censorship. The US elite loves democracy and freedom of thought. https://flashpointssite.wordpress.com/2017/11/13/explosive-new-book-film-on-the-threat-of-nuclear-war/
That brutal, blood covered behemoth, the Military Industrial Complex, will not be swayed from its course.
The biggest business on the planet will not tolerate a downturn in profits.
They would sell their weapons of mass murder to alien invaders if the opportunity arose.
Psychopaths RULE.
Glen’s right about the the role played by the corporate media – over at the Guardian any BTL comment that dare question the evil Russians narrative is sent straight to the memory hole.
Apparently Putin caused Brexit, Trump, and Ronaldo submitting a transfer request at Real Madrid – basically its WMD with knobs on.
Glen Ford gets it.
But SEAMUS PADRAIG the ‘ Black Agenda ‘ report appears to have failed to note the single issue of the current state of USA imperial politics; was the the pre-election statement by candidate Trump, that if elected he would reorganise the 17 odd secret services agencies under a single authority reporting direct to the USA presidency !
And it was this threat to these criminals who were running these lawless oganisations, acting as agencies which acted against the Governments mandates.
And spur them to jointly destroy the current Trump presidency. As the Donald Trump was only trying to consolidate power in the mafi gangster style, which he learnt from his own working anteceedents from the less than lawful parts of lower New York.
I thought the whole alphabet soup of the intelligence agencies had been under the control (and I use that word in its loosest sense ) of the Director of National Intelligence since 2004? He reports directly to the President: so isn’t that the way it already organised?
“Although a Bernie Sanders’ upset in 2016 had always been a statistical impossibility, ”
Not true. Bernie would have won a fair fight. He probably got more votes that HRC did anyway.
The ‘super-delegate’ mechanism ensured that sanders could only win if he won so many primaries so well that even the machine democrats who were the super delegates felt obliged to bow to public opinion. Given that most of them regard the public with absolute contempt that was most unlikely to happen.
As the DNC lawyers pointed out in court earlier this year-while defending the DNC from Sanders supporters claiming damages- the Democratic Party considers that it has the right to select any candidate without reference to party supporters or members. These gangsters,their smoke filled rooms and their conspiracies were the inspiration for right wing Labour from Morrison and Mandelson to the Taffia and the incredibly obtuse rulers of Southside.
Sanders would have won vs Trump, according to most polls at the time, which always had much stronger numbers for him rather than Hillary. I, for one, would have definitely voted for him but when he was not selected, I could never vote for Hillary, due most particularly for what she did in Libya, so I voted for Trump, as the least militaristic candidate.
You must be a bit disappointed in how things have turned out.
Well, America did stay out of the Syrian conflict, which, for now, seems to be winding down. He has said he wants to be friends with Kim Jong-in, something that may or may not eventuate, but it surprised me when I read it and it sounds good to me, if true. The media hates him, which shows that he must threatening the status quo, somehow, a positive in my view. I don’t know. He is an unusual politician, that is for sure!
Well, America did stay out of the Syrian conflict……………………..
You assume the DNC narrative that the SDs were locked in is true. Had the momentum been allowed to swing they may well have voted for Sanders.
They changed to Obama in 2008 after all. (Admittedly Obama was an establishment candidate.)
Bernie probably would have won NY without all the fraud going on and California was outright stolen.
Polls always had Bernie Sanders as much stronger as a candidate vs. Trump than Hillary. He would have won, in view. Many voters, like me, were not enthused at all by Trump as a candidate, but couldn’t stand Hillary because of her aggressive, militaristic mentality (Libya!!!). No way on Earth I would have voted for her. So, the only rational choice was Trump, as he clearly denounced America’s regime-change approach to foreign policy. However, Sanders also was not a hawk, and voted against the Iraq war. He would have been elected, in view, had he been the Democratic candidate.
He would be like all potus. A war criminal.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html
Sanders is on board with the RussiaDidIt crowd and has no problem with F-35s being built in his constituency. In fact his foreign policy “credentials” are pretty much non-existent and he sounds like a typical establishment Democrat when he talks about the role of the US military in the world today. On domestic issues he talks a good line….sort of… but he still can’t bring himself to fully support single-payer healthcare. Probably he’d be less of a loose cannon than Trump but he doesn’t seem to have much of a backbone either.
I understand but it doesn’t change the fact that he was blocked from the Presidency by the powers that be.
To your point, I don’t normally subscribe to lesser evilism but in Bernie’s case he was so much the lesser of evils that I would have made an exception.
It is almost unbelievable that the Democrat Mr B Sanders continues to support ‘ .
A total waste of USA public money in the impossibly undeliverable F-35 projects, which was to produce three overpriced variants which have failed to meet both delivery promises and their performance guarantees – a public contract scandal which one day will lead to more than heads rolling off !