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Why the U.S. Regime Hates Vladimir Putin

by Eric Zuesse

Posters across the city of Lviv in Ukraine compare Putin with Hitler

Here is Putin in extemporaneous discussion and interview (translated into English):



The second of those videos shows Putin offering Russia’s billionaires the choice between being dispossessed of their companies by the Government, or else signing an agreement with the Government, promising that they will henceforth place the welfare of their workers and of the people of Russia, above their own personal welfare and wealth, and only one billionaire there, Oleg Deripaska, hesitated, at which point Putin treated him contemptuously and Deripaska promptly signed.
Here is how Britain’s Express newspaper, on 7 October 2015, described that second video:

It shows the 63-year-old [Putin], who has launched a blitz of more than 50 airstrikes against the terror regime [Syria’s ISIS] in recent days, directly confronting Russian oligarchs and ranting at them that they are good for nothing COCKROACHES.
In the incredible footage, Putin humiliates Oleg Deripaska, one of the world’s richest men with a fortune of $6m [Deripaska’s fortune in 2009 was actually $3.5 billion], and treats him like his personal lapdog.
It was filmed on a tour of Pikalevo, a struggling factory town where families had been venting their anger over job losses and unpaid wages.

Back when the Putin-Deripaska encounter happened, the right-wing British newspaper Telegraph had bannered, on 4 June 2009, “Vladimir Putin takes Oleg Deripaska to task”, and it placed their hostile slant on the event by sub-heading: “Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, publicly criticised his most faithful oligarch on Thursday in an attempt to deflect growing social discontent on to the country’s unpopular super-rich.” (Of course, the U.S. regime would ignore why Russia’s super-rich were “unpopular,” much less the fact that America’s super-rich were involved in these heists from Russia that had caused so much of Russia’s post-Soviet depression.)
On 27 April 2018, Deripaska ceded control over the world’s second-largest aluminum-producer, Russal, and he did it because the United States regime had recently placed him and his corporations under new economic sanctions, which are allegedly focused against Russian billionaires who support Putin politically. If Deripaska wouldn’t cede control, then the sanctions-hit would be harder and more damaging to Russia’s economy, so Deripaska — in fulfillment of his agreement signed with Putin — ceded control.
In other words, Deripaska, whom Putin had actually forced to commit to placing Russia’s interests above their own, is now being treated by the U.S. regime as one of the chief people to ‘blame’ for Putin’s being in office, in Russia’s ‘dictatorship’.
This threat, by Putin, to Russia’s wealthiest (Deripaska having been one of the billionaires whom Putin didn’t dispossess when coming into power in 2000), wasn’t a staged PR event, but instead was simply the best-filmed instance of Putin’s standard policy, ever since becoming Russia’s leader: his policy that an aristocrat can lose everything if he places his interests above the nation’s interests.
This policy was the fundamental change from the prior, Boris Yeltsin, years, when Harvard’s economics department and the World Bank, during the immediate post-Soviet 1990s, came into Russia and set up the system, working in conjunction with Yeltsin’s friends, to funnel the future profits from Russia’s vast undervalued natural resources, into partnerships between Yeltsin’s friends and U.S. billionaires and affiliated investors. That American-led corruption sent the Russian economy into a tailspin, from which the new Russian President, Putin, rescued it, by laying down the law to the billionaires: that their interests were subordinate to, not dominant above, the nation’s interests. This is the principal difference between the ideology of today’s America, and of today’s Russia.
My 3 June 2014 article, “How and Why the U.S. Has Re-Started the Cold War (The Backstory that Precipitated Ukraine’s Civil War)”, showed, by means of graphs, that the economic depression which engulfed Russia (and which was totally ignored by the Western press) during 1990-2000, ended and reversed immediately following (when Putin came into power), and especially ever since around 2004, so that Russia’s economic growth-rate under Putin, at least the rate prior to America’s economic sanctions against Russia in 2014, was one of the world’s best and looked likely to pose serious competition to the U.S. aristocracy in the future. From the pits that were brought by the U.S. regime in Russia — including the massive heists from the Russian public — to the period of Putin’s rule in Russia, has been a sea-change, and the U.S. regime cannot tolerate it; they want the U.S. elite’s looting of Russia to return.
This is necessarily a simplified overview of the conflict between the U.S. regime and Russia, but it’s nonetheless true. In order to understand it more deeply, filling in the details during the period after the end of the Soviet Union — and of its communism, and of its Warsaw Pact military alliance mirror-image to America’s NATO alliance, till now — cannot meaningfully be done outside the context of the U.S. regime’s swindle of Russia ever since the night of 24 February 1990, when U.S. President George H.W. Bush told America’s allies that it was a lie to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev when Bush’s people had promised Gorbachev that if the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact ended, then NATO would not expand, not move “one inch to the east” toward Russia’s border — which the U.S. and those allies have since done all the way up to Russia’s border. (In reverse, it’s as if Russia now were placing its soldiers and its missiles on or near the Mexican border, and the Canadian border.) This swindle of Russia meant that though the Cold War did end on Russia’s side, it never yet has ended on America’s. The greed of the U.S. regime — and of its allies — seems to be endless, including, ultimately, grabbing Russia itself. Putin resists, and so they hate him. That’s the reality.
To the U.S. regime and its propagandists, Putin is “The Pariah” and “The West’s Public Enemy Number One”, but to the Russian people, he is the protector of their nation against the U.S. regime’s threats to Russia’s national sovereignty. More diametrically opposite views of the same man, could hardly even be imagined.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

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John Gilberts
John Gilberts
May 2, 2018 9:37 PM

Canada’s Ukrainian Lobby Urges World Cup ‘Remove’ From Russia…
‘Don’t Give Putin His Berlin Moment’
https://twitter.com/ipolitics.ca/status/991708990244556800
“The free world must send a strong message to Putin that the threat to international peace posed by Russia will be met with a strong response. Removing the World Cup from Russia would be an important signal that Russia must change its behavior…” Paul Grod: UCC, VP World Ukrainian Congress

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 2, 2018 9:53 PM
Reply to  John Gilberts

Is there ANY expression MORE vile than ‘Free World’ particularly when hissed through the lizard mouth of a Ukronazi fascist, living in the most captive nation, to the USA, Zionism and Ukronazism, on Earth, and one that treats its Indigenous people ABOMINABLY, even to today.

Tunde
Tunde
May 2, 2018 2:11 PM

It’s not just the globalised superclass and their political minions that claim Putin is stupendously wealthy. Robert Eringer, who as head of the Monegasque intelligence service, investigated Russian money flows through Monaco also asserts the same. His conclusion is very clear ; namely that Putin and his inner circle have laundered billions of dollars through the principality. Eringer also documents that the Monaegasque royal family has been compromised in their dealings with various cronies of Putin who operate shell companies in Monaco. I would like to say, I agree with the tone of most of the commenters, that the Western elites have no moral right to demonize Putin, when their bankruptcy on the issue is manifest by the discontent of their various publics towards the direction of this globalised world we live in. I can, however, still be clear eyed about who Putin is. If Russians believe he is a leader that will restore their past stature and prestige on the global stage, that is their choice. But I’m willing to bet that 90% of posters would not like him to be their PM or president in the type of political environment he controls absolutely in Russia. I’m all for exposing Western neo-liberal hypocrisy, but I’m not at all convinced that Putin is a bellwether for good governance in a democracy. This is just my humble opinion.

Admin
Admin
May 2, 2018 3:54 PM
Reply to  Tunde

You agree, though, that this is simply yet another person alleging things? they may well be true, but equally well, without evidence, they may be false. There is so much clear motive to invent smear on Russia/Putin, we need to evaluate evidence-free claims with much scepticism.

Tunde
Tunde
May 2, 2018 5:37 PM
Reply to  Admin

Admin,
Totally agree. As it is it’s just a single data point in the negative in which to assess Putin. He has way more positive points than negative to my mind and I appreciate his forthrightness (as far as I can reasonably see).

JudyJ
JudyJ
May 2, 2018 6:20 PM
Reply to  Tunde

“…Putin and his inner circle have laundered billions of dollars through the principality”. What you recount in terms of Eringer’s conclusion is, I am afraid to say, a typical cliché of the anti-Putin rhetoric and I very much doubt that Monaco – even their so-called intelligence service, as we see in most Western nations – is immune to this attitude. Whenever there is ANY misdeed by a wealthy Russian, Western commentators find it impossible not to link them and their activities to Putin: murder, tax dodging, money laundering, property deals… the list goes on. It is just second nature for them, a sort of journalistic Tourette’s. Any newspaper about Russian oligarchs, without exception, finds it impossible not to refer to them in the header or sub-heading as “Putin cronies” when the truth is he regards most of them with complete disdain and vice versa. We saw it with the Panama Papers – articles about the dodgy tax affairs of Russians all purportedly connected in business to Putin and therefore we were supposed to infer that he must be involved too when in fact even the reporters admitted there was no evidence whatsoever that this was so. But naturally we were supposed to assume that there must be some foundation in the headlines so he must just be exceedingly clever at covering it up .
And you can count me in the [by your reckoning] 10% of posters who would be ecstatically happy to have Vladimir Putin as the UK PM.

BigB
BigB
May 2, 2018 8:30 PM
Reply to  JudyJ

The Panama Papers were a Soros smear. The element aimed at Putin was a fictitious attempt to trace $2bn ‘stolen’ from Bill Browder’s Hermitage Capital Management and laundered through to Sergei Rodulgin, a cellist and close friend of Putin. Andrei Nekrasov, who made the banned anti-Browder film, concluded that the neither the maths or the timeline added up. Plus, the money was never stolen from Hermitage in the first place (it was Hermitage the defrauded the Russian tax office of $232mn in a tax rebate fraud). So, all in all, a pretty crude fabrication and part of the Putin demonisation campaign (Operation Beluga). If Robert Eringer has any evidence, he needs to put it forward.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/02/a-blacklisted-film-and-the-new-cold-war/

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 2, 2018 9:59 PM
Reply to  JudyJ

Me too! The idea of having an intelligent and honest man of great personal integrity as a leader, when one dwells in the moral, intellectual and spiritual sewer that is Austfailure, where 99% or so of public figures in politics, business and the fakestream media are scum, most imbeciles, most ignoramuses and most utterly unprincipled, is very inviting.

Tunde
Tunde
May 4, 2018 4:55 PM
Reply to  JudyJ

Judyj,
I have worked in the presidential office of a democratic autocrat who regarded his country’s monopolizing oligarchs with disdain. Yet had cronies and relatives as his representatives on their boards. At the two election cycles he contested, he extorted money from these CEOs by threat of arrest (an unpleasant experience in the African context). Those that refused were hounded out of the country.
Public disdain of the wealthy class is obviously an election winner in Russia.

JudyJ
JudyJ
May 4, 2018 6:42 PM
Reply to  Tunde

Tunde
Thank you for your interesting comments. I understand your points but it ultimately, of course, comes down to the individuals concerned, how we perceive them and how they choose to manage their affairs. I have long been of the view (rightly or wrongly) that Vladimir Putin is essentially “an intelligent and honest man and of great personal integrity” (description courtesy of Mulga Mumblebrain, and I have read of VP also being described as such by staunch political Russian critics of him). You might be interested to read an article by Sharon Tennison entitled “Understanding Russia, Un-demonizing Putin” who also feels that he is unfairly portrayed in the West.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 2, 2018 9:55 PM
Reply to  Tunde

And your ‘humble opinion’ is mendacious garbage-but you know that, don’t you.

Tunde
Tunde
May 4, 2018 4:34 PM

I have never met an “intelligent and honest man of great personal integrity” who is a politician. You’ve seen one in Russia! All the way from Australia ! Time to revise my “opinion” then.
Thanks for that.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 5, 2018 5:09 AM
Reply to  Tunde

You’re talking of Western politicians, where, plainly, the requirements to serve the rich, the USA and Israel have removed all decent, sane and intelligent people from political life. But Russia is not the West. Putin is some sort of miracle, of the type that can arise in a society in the throes of social collapse.

Deb
Deb
May 2, 2018 5:12 AM

I love the way Putin asked for his pen back. It’s a small thing but still it’s stealing. I like Putin he us a very intelligent man.

Kathy
Kathy
May 1, 2018 10:39 AM

It appears that talking of cooperation and peaceful trade is anathema to the wicked ones. Maybe it works like holy Water!. Every time peace is proffered. They go into a melt down hissy fit of epic proportion. Each time they do this they lose a little more credibility among their flock. This seems to encourage their media into ever more outrageous narratives of hate filled bile against Putin Corbyn and even Trump{When he starts talking peace that is}. Their acts of hate and fear mongering become ever more demented and unbelievable. It would seem that the prospect of peace is drawing them out and exposing their false actions. The more the people can see them for what they are. The more power the people will have over them. I do believe.Peace will happen if enough of the people believe it can happen.

michael major\\
michael major\\
Apr 30, 2018 10:20 PM

It is an important article with its point well illustrated in the included videos where Vladimir Putin’s views and actions are represented.
The following quote from the article distinguishes anglo-american corporate oriented financial globalization from economic nationalism and its wisdom offers us much to consider.
“…Russian President, Putin, rescued it (the national political economy), by laying down the law to the billionaires: that their interests were subordinate to, not dominant above, the nation’s interests. This is the principal difference between the ideology of today’s America, and of today’s Russia”.
If it were emulating Putin’s Russia, my country Canada would preside as thoughtfully and constrain as proactively, the expansive ambit of our foreign “investors” and domestic oligarchs. But with neither debate nor parliamentary division nor referendum, Canada has most essentially committed to corporate globalization and is now unable to assert any national interest which is not also a high priority for corporate globalization.
In Canada, all parliamentary political parties are neo-liberal and they salute and endorse corporate centred globalization. In return they receive support and encouragement for maintaining an immutable status quo in favour of liquidating and converting Crown assets, public infrastructure, land, water and natural resources into globalized corporate wealth with the least possible domestic value enhancement.
The travesty of unconstrained national plunder which occurred under Yeltsin in 1990’s Russia is still happening in Canada and it translates into social impoverishment, jobless economic growth, rapid resource pillage and utterly insane environmental plunder. The benefits of this politically accelerated corporate priority are removed from our economy and concentrated in bankster havens like the City of London from which our government then offers grants, privileges, licences, perks, deregulation and subsidies to encourage its domestic reinvestment.
In Canada, it appears that corporate globalization’s most persistent “national” priority is the corporate media managed strangulation of informed citizenship and responsible government. We need some unconfused “national” leadership in Canada, perhaps someone like Vladimir Putin. m\

tomiejones
tomiejones
Apr 30, 2018 8:34 PM

Reblogged this on circusbuoy.

mohandeer
mohandeer
Apr 30, 2018 5:10 PM

Reblogged this on Worldtruth.

Fair dinkum
Fair dinkum
Apr 30, 2018 10:33 AM

Because he doesn’t do what’s expected of him.
Like the lickspittle sycophants in every Western Government.

Jen
Jen
Apr 30, 2018 1:48 PM
Reply to  Fair dinkum

Another possibility is that Vladimir Putin, as far as I’m aware, cannot be bought. He is said to have billions stashed in bank accounts around the world (and in other people’s names, apparently) but the leakage of the 11+ million Panama Papers in 2016 failed to turn up any information that might suggest Putin has an offshore bank account or trust fund in some exotic Caribbean island locale. Putin is supposed to own luxurious palaces around Russia though on closer inspection these buildings turn out to be state-owned “grace and favour”-type residences that Russian taxpayers seem not unhappy about and even proud of.
Then of course there was that Off-Guardian article on the declaration of their financial assets by the Presidential candidates before mid-March 2018, revealing that Putin’s personal finances were very modest and limited to his salary as President. If it is indeed true that Putin prefers to live modestly and frugally, what that may well suggest is that he possesses a level of personal integrity that few Western politicians can understand.

stevehayes13
stevehayes13
Apr 30, 2018 3:02 PM
Reply to  Jen

The accusations from the west’s elites that Putin has amassed a fortune, which he hides in tax havens, sounds like nothing so much as projection.

JudyJ
JudyJ
Apr 30, 2018 3:28 PM
Reply to  Jen

I would support the view that he is a man of modest wealth and material aspirations. I read an article two or three years ago (I regret that I do not have a reference) in which two well-known and respected political commentators in Russia who were known to challenge openly many aspects of Putin’s politics endorsed the reality of his modest lifestyle. They were very much of the opinion that whatever you could criticise him for he was fundamentally honest and a man of integrity, and that the rumours about his hidden wealth were spread by people wishing to detract focus from the true hub of corruption in the West, primarily LONDON. Apparently his two material ‘vices’ are collecting watches and wearing smart suits – pretty harmless hobbies if you ask me! He has never been someone to indulge in fancy cars, properties or holidays.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 1, 2018 12:37 AM
Reply to  Jen

When Western kakastocrats accuse others of greed, it’s just psychopathological projection. All Western political and fakestream media apparatchiki are psychopaths, of varying malignancy. Greed is an essential feature of this type. They cannot comprehend anyone who could live with a decent sufficient and find their self-actualisation through being, not having.

passerby
passerby
Apr 30, 2018 9:39 AM

When Germany invaded Russia, the Russians moved their factories east. The results are still with us today: while Shukhoi aircraft are designed in Moscow, the factory is in Russia’s Far East (Komsomolsk-on-Amur).
Similarly, when Europe joins the economic boycot of Russia, the Russians move their business east. The next stretch of high-speed rail being built in Russia is Moscow-Beijing. It could have been Moscow-Berlin.

BigB
BigB
Apr 30, 2018 9:37 AM

I don’t have time to detail it this morning, but the entire Russophobia campaign (which should really be known as the Putinophobia campaign) is underpinned by one phenomena: flight capital. There is an economic and diplomatic battle to control Russia’s wealth: the ideal being a return to Yeltsinism. But Eric misses out one of the key players, certainly the loudest voice: William Browder. He has been pushing his Magnitsky sanctions regime since 2010/11. This is now a Corbyn and Labour party agenda which they pushed aggressively during the Skripalgate provocation. But rather than being a measure to counter human rights abuses and capital flight and money laundering flows INTO London (for instance, see the Guardian’s “Global Laundromat” series): it can only be to frieze, asset seize and prevent capital flight OUT OF London, returning to Russia under Putin’s amnesty. This stands to reason, as the whole raison d’etre for the City is to launder capitalism’s ransom and blood money, no questions asked (and deposit it offshore). Stopping global capital flight into London is an utterly ridiculous premise: and we know how much capitalists care about human rights – unless it suits them?
[There is also an interesting backstory to the video linking Deripaska, McCain, Paul Manafort, Rick Davis, Nathaniel Rothschild and Montenegro. Interestingly, Deripraska is also a client of Christopher Steele and Orbis. No suggestion of a meta-conspiracy, just that there are links among the global elite that suggest that things may not be as they seem at first sight.]

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Apr 30, 2018 8:45 AM

Of all the places to have (contrived) pictures of Hitler – Lviv! The hub of Ukrainian neo-nazism which in 1941 put out the red carpet for Hitler’s legions a mere one week after the invasion and proceeded to murder six thousand Jews who were killed by Einsatzgruppen, (SS Death Squads) some Ukrainian nationalists and Ukrainian militia, often in the most grotesque manner. Lviv was and still is the home of the Bandera neo-nazi groups including Right Sector, Svoboda and Patriots of the Ukraine. Mass murder by the German Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators got to be a habit as the military wing of the OUB-N the Ukrainian Insurgent ~Army (UPA) murdered up to 100,000 Jews, Poles and Russians in 1943-45.
The ironies of history!

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
Apr 30, 2018 8:12 AM

Imagine the gall of Ukronazis in the homeland of Lvov, in Galicia, where their forebears committed their worst genocides, of Poles in particular, but Jews and Russians, too, during WW2, comparing ANYONE to their beloved ally and role model, Hitler. The USA has been the patron saint, protector and ally of the very worst human detritus, worldwide, since WW2, just as they have been in Latin America for over 200 years. In Austfailure you get an invariably accurate idea of just how vile a public figure is by the degree of enthusiasm they display while their tongues are saving our Yankee Masters the bother of wiping their own backsides.

rtj1211
rtj1211
Apr 30, 2018 6:57 AM

The reason the US does this is that no one murders US senators for lying about it.
There needs to be horrifying personal consequences for US wastrels who perpetuate these lies. CIA, NSa, Wall Street, Billionaires, Senators, oil CEOs. Whoever. The only things that they will value more than their money will be their genitals and their children. Those must be targeted….and if they are childless overs 50s, they must be executed….
When you have created wastrels with no genitals and no children, parade them as pariahs. Pour encourager les autres….
Revolution in USA letting the wastrels escape is no good. They will start their nonsense again from overseas. Tag the wastrels for life using satellites or exterminate them. Do not negotiate with them. They never honour negotiations….

FS
FS
Apr 30, 2018 8:36 AM
Reply to  rtj1211

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

BigB
BigB
Apr 30, 2018 10:02 AM
Reply to  rtj1211

Am I the only person on this site that is disturbed by this type of comment? Not just the comments, but the approval that is encouraging a series of indefensible anti-American racism? The globalised oligarchy is not solely Western, or American, but has representation from most of the nations under the sun. The billionaire superclass is internationalised and works through nearly every national agenda (show me a country that works for its people and you will also find that country on a sanctions hit-list). One of the main reasons for the Putinophobia is that he is not a puppet. If he rolled over, would the overclass ideologues hate Russia? So we are dealing with a universalised superclass wealth acquisition agenda that murdering US Senators will do nothing to alleviate. It’s just misdirected, misdiagnosed vitriol that is frankly quite demeaning.

Hugh O’Neill
Hugh O’Neill
Apr 30, 2018 11:07 AM
Reply to  BigB

I am with you BigB. Though I loathe and detest oligarchs, I would never stoop to their level. There is a saying about peering into the abyss only to see yourself reflected. Talk of murder and mutilation is ultimately self defeating. Le diable est mort. Vive Le Diable?

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 1, 2018 12:47 AM
Reply to  Hugh O’Neill

Violence is PRECISELY what the global parasite class want. It is their strongest suit. They enjoy killing, and violent resistance will give them the excuse they need for oppression and extermination of the ‘useless eaters’. On the other hand, if they don’t see violent resistance emerging, they will manufacture it, just like on 9/11. We saw another example of Evil agitating for genocide in the fiend Netayahoo’s odious lying concerning Iran, just today, and the local fakestream media were besides themselves in histrionic acquiescence in the war push.

FS
FS
Apr 30, 2018 12:06 PM
Reply to  BigB

Yes, it’s all quite demeaning to talk about killing the psychopaths who are driving humanity into the ground. Hopefully if we just go on protesting on the internet and telling them we’re wise to their misbehaviour they’ve have a jolly good look at themselves in the bathroom mirror and then apologise.

FS
FS
Apr 30, 2018 12:07 PM
Reply to  FS

*they’ll

BigB
BigB
Apr 30, 2018 2:42 PM
Reply to  FS

Fantasising assassination is not a terribly practical revolutionary praxis either. One that psychologically does more to damage the thinker than actualise a peaceful world?

FS
FS
May 1, 2018 10:39 AM
Reply to  BigB

Who’s fantasising? Providing these otherwise wholly unaccountable bastards with a deterrent for their actions is an obvious pragmatic necessity. Let their executioners do the fantasising.

Constantine
Constantine
Apr 30, 2018 12:15 PM
Reply to  BigB

It is absolutely not anti-American racism. Your supposition is a complete inversion of reality. It is the US Americans who are indoctrinated practically from birth that they belong to ”the indispensable nation” (i. every other nation is dispensable) that may trust in God because God has blessed America. The staunch belief to this extreme messianic chauvinism is what makes them incapable of meaningfully opposing (if at all) horrific crimes committed in their name and demanding accountability.
You are right, of course, the there is a supra-national oligarchy on a global scale. But the most powerful oligarchs use the US as their stronghold and the country’s citizenry as their foot-soldiers. Decisive action against this caste would be most beneficial to the US of A as a nation and normal country. But since the greater part of the US citizenry continues to back its corporate overlords’ worldwide rampage, don’t expect rational people to perceive this national community, from the top 1% downwards, as anything else than a menace.

Jen
Jen
Apr 30, 2018 1:33 PM
Reply to  Constantine

Let’s not forget though that the US belief in being exceptional may serve different purposes, and some of these may have as their ultimate goal the deception and subjugation of the American people themselves to international oligarchy who disdain national identity and the nation state. Believing in their own superiority separates Americans from finding common cause with others, that might unite them against their oppressors within and without US territory. It also renders them susceptible to appeals to patriotism and self-sacrifice in the service of their masters. I know that sounds paradoxical but we should never underestimate the cunning and expediency of those who would grind us into the dust. If a belief can be made to serve several useful if contradictory functions, it will.

BigB
BigB
Apr 30, 2018 2:37 PM
Reply to  Jen

Sorry Jen, but can you really characterise a nation of 325mn as all having a singular groupthink?

wardropper
wardropper
Apr 30, 2018 9:30 PM
Reply to  BigB

It’s not so far-fetched.
Among university-educated Americans I have of course encountered many who are highly critical of their own nation’s “exceptionalism”, but the millions of manipulated, uneducated Americans still carry the day.
After W. Bush, we thought nothing that idiotic would ever disgrace the White House again, but the Republicans just couldn’t wait to prove us wrong, and Westminster can’t wait to jump onto that screwy bandwagon either.

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 2, 2018 8:26 PM
Reply to  BigB

Yes, indeed you can.
But you need to think why they all have the same groupthink.
The USA gets its ideas about Russia (and indeed, about anywhere outside the United States) from a small coterie of semi-educated academics – professional bigots, whose true knowledge of Russia could be written on the back of a postage stamp. Most of them can’t read or write a word of Russian, and they rely on translations for their ‘knowledge”. Few of them have ever been to Russia, even on a one-week Moscow-Petersburg vacation trip. Condi Rice is a shining example of this kind of ‘American expert on Russia’.
Americans mine the very, very little they ‘know’ about Russia from the mass media. The mass media themselves know nothing either, but fill their webpages with fatuous garbage supplied to them by hatemongers paid to write bile for thinktanks.
This conspiracy of idiocy is what keeps the groupthink ignorance industry churning along.

BigB
BigB
Apr 30, 2018 2:55 PM
Reply to  Constantine

Constantine: my point is, senators are low hanging fruit. They do not matter to those who benefit from the fruits of the world’s Labour. Why not French or British politicians? So we eliminate the political class: then what? Murder the internationalised banking class, the lawyers, the academics? All, or just some? When does “the menace” stop? Rivers of blood leads to a secession of violent totalitarian states: where does it end?

Kathy
Kathy
Apr 30, 2018 3:31 PM
Reply to  BigB

I agree with Big B and Hugh O’Neill. Violence is not a solution to anything. Fantasizing such things is not very positive or productive as it is corrupting of the self. To force ones will upon another and cause harm is always a negative act of aggression. Some times it really is enough to expose the narrative and break the spell that keeps the people spellbound.

BigB
BigB
Apr 30, 2018 10:25 PM
Reply to  Kathy

We live in such a violent, unequal, and alienating world that peace, or the advocacy of peace, becomes an act of resistance. Violence begets violence: only peace can beget peace.

Sergei
Sergei
May 1, 2018 8:32 PM
Reply to  BigB

I do not believe that in the present reality “peace can beget peace”. But I also do not support the violent solution, out of principle. Luckily, there is a middle path: 1) spread the truth; 2) organize non-violent sit-ins, marches, boycotts, and strikes. These two things, if done on a sufficiently large scale, will be enough to re-sensitize the elites to the consequences of their actions.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 2, 2018 10:11 PM
Reply to  Sergei

I seriously doubt it. Just look at what happened to OWS, the massive infiltration of environmentalist groups by police provocateurs, the easy recourse to fakestream media demonisation of any groups that threaten elite rule and the complete control, by the elites, of a massive brainwashing apparatus that works 24/7/52. Then, when they take off the gloves you get COINTELPRO, massive surveillance of EVERYBODY, ‘anti-terror’ laws, and the Zionist definition of ALL criticism of Israel’s barbarity, ANY Jew, or even advocating ‘Leftwing policies’ as ‘antisemitism’. Then you have Colour Revolutions, astro-turf organs like CANVASS et al, jihadist butchers working for the USA, and, in the end, Rightwing armed militias and death-squads as have devastated Leftwing and other movements in the poor world, on US orders, and to the benefit of parasitic elites, for decades. I rather fear that humanity is done for.

FS
FS
May 1, 2018 10:43 AM
Reply to  Kathy

“Some times it really is enough to expose the narrative and break the spell that keeps the people spellbound.”
When was this ever the case?

BigB
BigB
May 1, 2018 11:08 AM
Reply to  FS

What do you think the so-called fake news we are generating is: other than an expose? If it was so benign: why would it pose such a problem to the elite. Maybe there can be a first time exposition in history. The elite can only carry on by mass ignorance and apathetic indifference. If the subcultures of truth reach critical mass: the dominant culture withers away.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 1, 2018 12:51 AM
Reply to  BigB

I agree, but the Zionists, in destroying the mass movement that impelled Corbyn almost to office, have shewn us, yet again, where REAL power lies under capitalism, and how easy it is to ‘keep the rabble in line’.

Constantine
Constantine
May 2, 2018 1:15 AM
Reply to  BigB

If people can bring down the current system of neoliberal, scorched-earth capitalism with peaceful means, then why not? The political class just serves the system.
But my point was that the US Americans on the average seem very much content with the system. Nothing is more glaring than the turnabout of anti-war progressives into bloodthirsty hawks (better yet, mangy dogs) during the presidency of Obama. All that was needed was a pseudo-progressive figurehead with appropriate rhetoric for these people’s sensibilities and voila: they have turned into neo-McCarthyists, warmongers and first grade supremacists. Instead of fighting against the country’s long descend into fascism, they claimed that it actually started with Trump, who is a symptom of the whole problem.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 1, 2018 12:43 AM
Reply to  BigB

I agree. The Evil Ones are a global uberclass, drawing from the worst hereditary parasites and psychopaths empowered by capitalism. In every country there are good and bad individuals, but among the elites, self-selected for greed and hatred of others, and mostly long hereditary, there are only monsters. THEY are the enemies of Life on Earth.

Mulga Mumblebrain
Mulga Mumblebrain
May 1, 2018 1:25 PM
Reply to  BigB

I just sat through five excruciating minutes of a local presstitute, this one a ‘coconut’ as the blackfellas call them (‘Brown on the outside, white inside’.)fawning over the unspeakable Masha Gessen, as she spewed lie upon lie regarding Putin. By then the monument to several species of moral, intellectual and spiritual miscegenation had raised my blood pressure to shrieking levels. The lies, the hate, the Groupthink, the service to Imperial diktat, NEVER slacken. They just grow and grow in a maelstrom of hatred that IS going to sweep us all away.

reinertorheit
reinertorheit
May 2, 2018 8:47 PM

Masha Gessen feeds the sheeple with their favourite mixture of hatred. So much simpler and happier to have your ignorance confirmed by paid Judas, than to confront the awful moment – that everything you thought you know is a pile of worthless tripe.
There’s a whole army of poop pundits – Masha Gessen, Julia Ioffe, Michael Weiss (who’se never been to Russia in his life), Mark Galeotti, Ben Nimmo, Peter Pomerantsev. It doesn’t seem to worry readers who pays these pundits. Pomerantsev, for example, draws a salary from NATO, while also running his own thinktank (which is entirely funded by shady Saudi sources).
Such persuasive, well-oiled, bitesize, easy-to-swallow, lies – ready portioned appeal to even the feeblest of intellects.

mohandeer
mohandeer
Apr 30, 2018 5:25 PM
Reply to  rtj1211

@rtj1211
You do realize that you are lowering yourself to the level of those you despise and their total disregard for Law and Life. Whilst the sentiments might linger for a second or two before being dismissed as merciless and inhumane “pay back”, the actual practice if implemented would render the perpetrator no better than the worthless shitbags you wish to see punished. I would be happy to see them tried and found guilty then sentenced to life imprisonment, but to take things further than that would be to concur in the despicable “targetted killings” programme that is nothing more than evil assassination of anyone who gets in somebody’s way. Revenge is a dish best served cold, but not from Satan’s Freezer!

joekano76
joekano76
Apr 30, 2018 3:40 AM

Reblogged this on Floating-voter.