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Trump Deathwatch

CJ Hopkins

The latest “Trump Deathwatch” began on Tuesday, August 21, 2018. It began in a courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, when Paul Manafort, sleazebag beltway operator and former chairman of Trump’s campaign, was pronounced guilty by a jury of his peers on ten counts of various types of fraud — tax fraud, bank fraud, and failure to disclose thirty-one foreign bank accounts which he was using for the purposes of fraud. Or maybe it began in another courtroom, this one miles away in New York City, when, almost at the exact same moment, Michael Cohen, Trump’s ex-lawyer, pleaded guilty to eight unrelated charges of fraud and campaign finance violations, the latter charges stemming from “hush money” paid to two of Trump’s former bimbos.

In any event, whichever came first, it began with these two sleazebag characters, both of whom had been indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is doggedly investigating allegations that the President of the United States is a devious Russian intelligence asset personally planted in the Oval Office by Vladimir Putin, the Russian mob, and a conspiracy of crackerjack “cyber-influencers,” who brainwashed millions of American voters into betraying Hillary Clinton, and the nation, with a bunch of emails and some Facebook posts, and who are even now waging “a chaos campaign to undermine faith in American democracy.”

Mueller, who had previously indicted thirteen Russian “cyber-influencers” who he was certain would never appear in court to laugh derisively in his face, needed to put a “win” on the board, and he needed to do it before the midterm elections. The Resistance® and the corporate media have been desperate for something juicy that they can relentlessly milk for the next ten weeks. They need the Democrats to take the House so they can pretend to try to impeach Trump, or at least subpoena a buttload of folks to appear before a series of congressional hearings that they can drag out all the way to 2020. Naturally, they were hoping Mueller would deliver someone even vaguely connected to their ridiculous, James Bondian “Russiagate” narrative, but Cohen and Manafort were the best he could do, so they went ahead and made the most of it.

Television networks interrupted programming. Most of them did that split-screen thing. News readers broke out their “serious” voices. Legal “experts” were rushed into studios to nod their heads and agree that this was “very serious,” or “extremely serious,” or “potentially extremely serious,” or, in any event, “very, very bad for Trump.” The press, who were still recuperating from the exertion of  their synchronized attack on Trump for attacking them for attacking him day after day for the last two years in an only marginally less synchronized manner, instantly went into full Trump attack mode.

The Guardian immediately went to live, moment-by-moment “Trump Deathwatch” coverage. Their opinionists started pumping out pieces proclaiming that “Trump’s reckoning has finally arrived,” and demanding he be impeached before “the cancer on his presidency” metastasizes. The New York Times Editorial Board (which is obviously getting a bit fed up with the riff-raff questioning its journalistic integrity) announced that, starting from that very moment, anyone doubting that Donald Trump is a dirty, rotten, Russian agent is a “fantasist” and a member of his “cult.” CNN began babbling about impeachment, as did the BBC, and more or less every organ of the corporate media.

The Washington Post Editorial Board authored a rather lengthy example of the speech that “a presidential president” would deliver in Trump’s circumstances (which she wouldn’t be in), confessing that the Russians have “attacked our democracy,” and that we’re under “ongoing assault” by the Kremlin, and welcoming special counsel Mueller’s further indictments of this “presidential” president’s inner circle of sleazebag operators, dirty tricks specialists, PR hacks, corporate lobbyists, and political consultants (which, of course, this “presidential” president wouldn’t have … well, except for sleazebags like David Brock, secret agent Christopher Steele, Marc Elias, of the law firm Perkins Coie, Jeremy Bash and Philippe Reines, of Beacon Global Strategies, LLC, “a unique Washington consulting firm,” and innumerable other distinguished sleazebags).

By the morning of Saturday, August 25, this latest “Trump Deathwatch” (like those that have preceded it) had been cancelled due to declining ratings. The corporate media started running those features reminding Americans how difficult it is to impeach, or otherwise remove from office, a treasonous Russian intelligence asset who is openly working with Vladimir Putin to destroy America, and Western civilization, and establish a global fascist dictatorship ruled by Putin, Trump, Corbyn, that Italian bozo, and Bashar al-Assad. The corporate media run these features in the wake of every “Trump Deathwatch” episode to taper liberals off the effects of the mindless hysteria they have just finished generating.

Which, in this case, that turned out to be unnecessary, as liberals and other Trump obsessives, who by now are used to having The Resistance® whip them up into these gibbering fits over Russians or Nazis on a regular basis, were already onto the next big story. On the Wednesday after “the worst day of his presidency,” Trump (perhaps on Putin’s orders) had tweeted about “white South African farmers,” which had set off yet another round of global denunciation of racism, white supremacy, Nazis, and so on. Trump, who either is a master manipulator or has the attention span of a chihuahua, or both (and yes, folks, I’m afraid that’s possible), had seen something on  the White Genocide Channel that he felt he needed to share with the world (or use to force the corporate media to switch back from the Russia hysteria to the Nazi hysteria they’d been relentlessly flogging until the Manafort conviction and Cohen plea deal allowed them to switch back to the Russia hysteria they’d been relentlessly flogging since the Traitor Summit).

And on and on, and on, it goes … and will continue to go until 2020, unless Trump decides to attack Iran, which I doubt The Resistance® will let him do, because that would get extremely weird, as they would somehow have to simultaneously support another US war of aggression and condemn Trump as Adolf Hitler for starting it. Oh, and also, they would have a hard time explaining why Putin had ordered his stooge in the White House to attack Russia’s ally in the Middle East. So, probably, no attack on Iran.

Which means we are in for another two years of alternating Russia and Nazi hysteria, mostly on a low-intensity basis, with the occasional new segment of “Trump Deathwatch” thrown in. Personally, I’m rooting for the Democrats to take control of the House in the midterms, purely for the sake of entertainment. After calling this ass clown a Russian spy and Literal Hitler for the last two years, they’re going have to at least pretend to impeach him, or else stage a series of internationally-televised neo-McCarthyite congressional hearings to root out the diabolical networks of Putin-Nazis that have infested America, and Britannia, and the rest of the West.

That’s the main thing, after all. Yes, the corporatist ruling classes need to make an example of Trump to dissuade any future billionaire ass clowns from running for high office without their permission, but even more so, they need to put down the “populist” opposition to the spread of global capitalism and the gradual phase-out of national sovereignty that began with Brexit and continued with Trump, so they can transform the smoldering remains of the Earth into one big happy neoliberal market run by supranational corporations and the “democratic governments” they have bought and paid for … which, by that time, folks won’t even notice because we’ll all be shuffling around like zombies staring down into the screens of our phones.

Damn, I think I may have gone and opened a rather enormous can of leftist worms right at the end of this essay by mentioning the “national sovereignty” thing. So, leftists, please ignore the previous paragraph. National sovereignty is the same as nationalism. Nationalism is very, very bad. Internationalism is good. Internationalist socialism is what we all want. Okay, admittedly, the forces of internationalist socialism appear to be … well, somewhat marginal at the moment (or possibly virtually non-existent), but that’s not a problem, because the global capitalists will be happy to internationalize everything for us, and to do away with all those nasty nationalists, and that national government-subsidized healthcare and university education and all that stuff.

So let’s forget that I mentioned national sovereignty, because that’s all Putinist Trumpism, and so on. There’s absolutely no reason at all for leftists to discuss that subject, or to view it in any kind of larger historical or geopolitical context or anything. Once the global corporate empire finishes their Privatization of Everything, I’m sure they will be open to considering socialism. They’ll probably even let us vote on it. By then, they will have cleansed the Internet of all the discord-sowing Putin-Nazis … so there won’t be any danger of being “influenced” to vote the wrong way or anything.

In the meantime, don’t forget to do your part in the War on Trump, Putin, Assad, Corbyn, and whoever else the corporate media tell us we’re at war against. Forget about global capitalism. Keep obsessing about Donald Trump. And if you get tired of obsessing about Donald Trump, you can always call Corbyn an anti-Semite, or accuse Glenn Greenwald of working for Putin, or, if you’ve got some free time and want to get creative, compile a Directory of International Assadists, or some other paranoid pseudo-blacklist. Every little contribution counts!

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Fair dinkum.
Fair dinkum.
Sep 3, 2018 12:46 PM

‘attention span of a chihuahua’ ?
Fair go.
Our chihuahua can focus on one of his toys for several minutes at least.
Trump, on the other hand _ _ _ _

vexarb
vexarb
Sep 3, 2018 12:35 PM

Deathwatch on Dead End FUKU$I capitalist outpost in Libya:

Supporters of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi gathered to celebrate the 49th anniversary of the 1 September Revolution in the city of Sabha late on Thursday, with celebrations going on until the early hours of Friday morning.

Gaddafi supporters marched through the city waving green flags and holding portraits of the socialist Libyan leader.

Clashes in Tripoli over the past few days have been jointly-condemned by French, British, American and Italian Occupation authorities, who say they destabilise the region.

elenits
elenits
Sep 3, 2018 11:05 PM
Reply to  vexarb

Bravo & good for them! Some good news for once.

Big B
Big B
Sep 3, 2018 12:21 PM

Slightly OT: did anyone else notice that Gordon Bildeberg-Brown-noser turned the argument on its head when he exhorted the NEC to accept the full IHRA definition of ‘semitism’.

It seems the Fraudian and the rest of the MSM corrected his sin of ommission, or was that a sin of commi$$ion. A Freudian satire that exposed the truth, if ever I heard one …

Yonatan
Yonatan
Sep 3, 2018 4:05 PM
Reply to  Big B

The Zionists and their hangers-on accuse anyone of ‘singling out’ Israel as being ‘anti-Semitic’. It seems with this Israel-specific law, its proponents are singling out Israel as the only country that cannot be criticised. That makes them, by their own definition, ‘anti-Semitic’.

vexarb
vexarb
Sep 3, 2018 5:41 PM
Reply to  Big B

BigB, declaration of interest: You forgot to mention that Iraq War Finance Minister and Quantitative Easing for Bankers PM, Son-of-the-Manse Brown is director of Carlyle Finance, a Rothschild arms company. So his twisted apologia for Rothschild’s pet Zionazi project in the ME is not disinterested.

Francis Lee
Francis Lee
Sep 3, 2018 12:20 PM

‘In any event, whichever came first, it began with these two sleazebag characters, both of whom had been indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is doggedly investigating allegations that the President of the United States is a devious Russian intelligence asset personally planted in the Oval Office by Vladimir Putin, the Russian mob, and a conspiracy of crackerjack “cyber-influencers,” who brainwashed millions of American voters into betraying Hillary Clinton, and the nation, with a bunch of emails and some Facebook posts, and who are even now waging’
“a chaos campaign to undermine faith in American democracy.”

This whole Russiagate brouhaha has become not just surreal, but has become a parody of surrealism. It simply goes from bad, to worse, to insanity. Either these people are stark raving mad, or pretending to be so, and trying to convince their named enemies, and including the unnamed elephant in the room, the American people, that they are unhinged and capable of starting and winning a nuclear war.

These retards must be aware, as most people are, that a nuclear exchange would be terminal for the extinction of the species. So this option is I believe off the table. What is happening is an information, psyops, propaganda war. A war psychosis is being created to frighten populations both of friendly and enemy states into compliance or surrender. In addition to the propaganda front, financial instruments, as well as actual minor conflicts in areas adjacent to Eurasian heartlands, in Ukraine, the ME, and Russia’s western borders, and in the South China Sea, where South Korea and Japan serve as American bases for a possible (probable?) war with China.

Yet time and again this approach has resulted in humiliating defeats for the US and its proxies, in Indo-China, Afghanistan, Iraq and lately, Syria. Yet never has any retrospective analysis of this militarized foreign policy taken place: same old recycled (failed) policies overseen by the same group of dunderheads in the State Department, NSA MIC, CIA, neo-con ‘think’-tanks, media, academia, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and elsewhere.

It is precisely these people who, whether they are aware of it or not, are de facto ‘waging a chaos campaign to undermine faith in American democracy.’ Given a leadership of this calibre of mediocrity, America’s decline has become predictable, palpable and seemingly inexorable.

I always used to think that in geopolitical terms America’s most potent weapon was not the USMC but its ‘soft power’.
Any country that can produce cultural products like Jazz and Blues music (the first of which was termed ‘our finest ambassador’ by none less a person than Eisenhower) writers like John Updike, Saul Bellow, John Steinbeck, Henry James, Jack London, F Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner; playwrights like Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee; composers like …. You know the rest. The above named are a credit to their country in creating a culture which cannot be all bad.

Of course there is also the trash which has been exported around the globe: Facebook, MacDonalds, the more recent Hollywood films, Die Hard, Rambo, Terminator – to infinity …

All of this cultural Americana sold very well around the globe, and the US was much admired and mimicked. However, the ‘soft-power’ has now been shoved aside by the armchair warriors of hard-power, which has been much less effective, and even counter-productive. Such is the law of unintended consequences.

The stupidity and provincialism of the US elites is self-evident. This, however does not make them any less dangerous.

summitflyer
summitflyer
Sep 3, 2018 3:18 PM
Reply to  Francis Lee

“This whole Russiagate brouhaha has become not just surreal, but has become a parody of surrealism”
Very much like the Skripal incident.

rtj1211
rtj1211
Sep 3, 2018 7:55 AM

How to tune out of the media corporatocracy twaddle:

1) Stop buying ‘newspapers’ which are now ‘fake news papers’;
2) Switch off CNN, BBC, MSNBC, Fox and any number of Goebbelsesque propaganda channels;
3) Identify the wife of a media drongo who isn’t getting enough, seduce her and take pictures of/video the proceedings. Make sure the drongo’s colleagues get an ‘exclusive’ by letting them know his dick has been absent without leave.
4) Refuse to vote for any candidate who supports the media party line and if possible vote for a candidate proposing jail sentences for media executives who do not campaign to impeach any Democrat-voting Head of News. Just so they know what it is like.
5) Release details of which banks are used by media executives and organise a boycott of those banks until they refuse to provide banking services to these media parasites. Help organise the founding of a new bank which refuses any media employee as a customer.
6) Daub the windscreen of media reporters daily with uncomplimentary smears. Make sure everyone sees the messages. ‘Supporter of Press Madness’ and worse…
7) If you bump into one of those media vultures, spit in their face and call them something derogatory like ‘spineless, unprincipled nazi’. Do not use any bad language…
8) Boycott the products of the top 50 media advertisers by budget spend.
9) Refuse to perform jury service if media harassment campaigns demand McCarthyite show trals. Inform judge that you are unable to consider a verdict of guilty, hence making it impossible for a fair trial to take place.
10) Sell all MSM media stocks in your portfolio.

Whether it would do any good, who knows, but at least a few media hypocrites will have wives giving their dicks a bit of solitary confinement…..

manfromatlan
manfromatlan
Sep 3, 2018 11:26 AM
Reply to  rtj1211

“3: Identify the wife of a media drongo who isn’t getting enough, seduce her and take pictures of/video the proceedings. Make sure the drongo’s colleagues get an ‘exclusive’ by letting them know his dick has been absent without leave.”

Wendy Deng/Rupert Murdoch? 😉

dahoit
dahoit
Sep 4, 2018 6:47 PM
Reply to  manfromatlan

Rupert has married the exwife of Jagger.

vexarb
vexarb
Sep 3, 2018 7:32 AM

Deathwatch Dead End U$A — de mortuis nil nisi bonum. “Let us now observe a minute of silence in honor of John McCain, for upon his passing the American Collapse Party has lost a true leader”.

Here is the link to this gem posted by B.F BTL The Saker.. Please remember, do not copy and paste whole articles:

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-senator-masquerading-as-gas-station.html

manfromatlan
manfromatlan
Sep 3, 2018 12:53 PM
Reply to  vexarb

A comment posted on this excellent article:

Okpik of the North said…
In 1967, the USS Forrestal suffered near catastrophic damage from a fire that raged on-board for nearly two days. John McCain was stationed on the Forrestal at the time and was quite likely responsible for the fire that killed 134 sailors and injured 62 others.

Hot dog pilots were well known for their “wet-starts,” a process which allows fuel to build up in the engine before hitting the plane’s start switch. The result of the wet-start is a long flame erupting from the tail of the plane. It was done simply for effect, a showy procedure meant to draw attention to the pilot.

On June 29, 1967, John McCain is alleged to have used a wet-start to “shake up” a pilot in the plane behind him. The result was a fired rocket, dropped bombs and a fire that raged for nearly two days. 134 sailors lost their lives and another 62 were badly injured.

McCain never had to answer for the incident. His father and grandfather were Navy admirals with a great deal of sway.

Three months after the Forrestal disaster McCain was shot down over North Vietnam. You know the rest of the story.

Is this man a maverick or a dangerous lunatic? Should we wait until he is president to know the answer?
Tuesday, August 28, 2018 at 2:14:00 PM EDT

Jen
Jen
Sep 4, 2018 12:20 AM
Reply to  manfromatlan

Not only a maverick or a dangerous lunatic … Jurassic John aka Insane McCain was also potential Godfather to the Arizona mob.

“John McCain’s Mob Connections”
https://www.nolanchart.com/article3151-john-mccains-mob-connections-html

Jerome R Corsi, “McCain Fortune traced to organized crime”
https://www.wnd.com/2008/02/57354/

McCain’s involvement in the USS Forrestal incident is still disputed. There are websites that state the tail of his jet was facing out to sea. His links to organised crime through his father-in-law and his role as one of the Keating Five in an S&L real estate fraud scheme on the other hand are in no doubt.

vexarb
vexarb
Sep 3, 2018 6:16 AM

Death Watch on Dead End U$A. The Vineyard of the Saker [edited by Vexarb]:

Iran after Trump’s JCPOA pull out — We can wait

by Islamic socialist Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog

For the sake of argument, let’s be honest about what concrete steps Iran would have to take in order to finally get the sanctions called off. They want Iran’s natural resources and a compliant government – that’s AZC capitalism-imperialism. So what exactly could Iran do to placate “the West”?

Firstly, ending the post of the Supreme Leader (held by Khomeini and now Khamenei), the “soul of the government” – the post is basically one non-stop civic exhortation to patriotism, morality, social justice and international justice. That requires rewriting the democratically-approved and democratically-supported constitution, which is entirely too modern & revolutionary by “Western standards”. Iran would have to adopt a bourgeois consumerist model to finally win the approval of “Western” regimes, media and NGOs. The Iranian socialist Basij cooperatives are impossible to dissolve, but once the post of the Supreme Leader is gone they can be put under the ideological control of the military and be reduced to a purely jingoistic and neo-fascist group. The military can no longer include the Revolutionary Guards and must be replaced by the Capitalist Guards. Compulsory Secularism must be enforced, and that logically translates into some sort of formal edict by the Shia religious establishment that clerics cannot hold civil power, as the Roman Catholic church did in 1983. It is intolerable to “the West” that in 2013 Iran voted in a good man like Rouhani, even though he was the only cleric among eight candidates. Forget about the hijab law, no matter what Muslim women say. Legalisation of alcohol is a must, and also drugs eventually (even though drugs are already incredibly cheap in Iran because they are right next to the CIA poppy fields of Afghanistan). Iran has to recognise the Zianazi colonisation of Palestine, and also do a 180-degree shift in their policies towards Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, reversing Iranian democratic support for such victims of AZC imperialism.

The above are the big Ideological issues, but below are the Lucrative Capitalist-Imperialist prizes.

Above all, the only thing which will calm the West is economic domination: Iran needs to go full-globalisation and sell off majority control of their companies to foreign stockholders. Iran has, per my estimates detailed in this series, roughly 100% state control of the non-Black Market economy – there is no doubt that Iran is a socialist country economically. That would have to be slashed to window-dressing levels, perhaps to French standards: the French state, following the sell-offs of Chirac and all who followed him, now only has $100 billion of shares in national corporations, even though their CAC40 stock index is worth $1.9 trillion. I can’t imagine Western capitalists ever being content with allowing the current 10-20% of the Iranian economy to be legally controlled by the Islamic Bonyads, or state-controlled religious charity cooperatives, so that must be Privatized by Law.

I think you are crazy if you think the West would make peace with Iran while Iran kept any of these – without a doubt – revolutionary, anti-capitalist & pro-socialist policies.

And Iranians know this, and they know it now more than ever: It has fully hit home that there will be no real detente, but only more totally-unjust Cold War against us.

And pain for the average Iranian has truly increased since 2012, because that’s when the sanctions really went to war siege levels – non-Iranians just don’t understand how unprecedented these UN-US-EU sanctions are, and how unjust & devastating they are. I’m very sorry to report that in the past six years Iranians as a whole has become less secure, more desperate, more coarse, more greedy, less humane – Iranians have become more like a Western capitalist country. That is terrible, because Iranians are incredibly warm, gentle and generous people, but Iranians admit this change is taking place. It is no exaggeration to write that “the West” want to starve Iran into acting like animals until they start biting each other, then install a Dog Catcher to rule them – that’s capitalism-imperialism.

The same is true for North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and other socialist-inspired nations – it is the West who provokes the most pain, by far, and not their systems & vanguard parties.

And yet there is no way – NO WAY – Iran will take any of those steps I listed in order to appease the Western aggressors. It will not even be considered by the Iranian man and woman on the street, I can assure you.

The good news is: Iran is fundamentally quite healthy, thanks to the fruits caused by 40 years of a modern political revolution. This fever will pass because Iranians know there is no other solution but to sweat it out.

Hillary would have been no different than Trump – betrayal is what the US does

Unlike in the US, Iran grasps that “blame Trump” is a pathetic, near-sighted political analysis….

Fully implementing the JCPOA meant one thing: Iran becomes the first successful transition to a post-oil economy in the Muslim world – that’s historic. Trump or Obama or Clinton or Bush notwithstanding.

tutisicecream
tutisicecream
Sep 3, 2018 4:52 AM

The future’s dark the future’s Orange.

In the land of the fake [news not excluded], that global hamburger bar run by a clown, glowers. Apparently we’re all doomed. Just listen to the boom-box doom-watch of the WMSM.

But it’s not so with me.

These historical revisionists are all singing off the same sheet, be they liberal progressives or conservatives. For they see in Trump an unmasked dark side of their inner selves. Just watching the historical revisionism dressed up in sycophantic eulogies for the dearly departed McCain -war hero, made you realise just how far they can outstrip anything that the so called purveyors of fake news are capable of.

Trump the monster is really a Frankenstein a creation of their own making the same twisted ideology of their free market unfettered capitalism + consumerism turbo-charged by credit. But most of all their endless Wars to feed the hydra. Obama said in the cathedral of war criminals, although he and McCain were diametrically opposed they were together on one thing “American Exceptionalism”.

What I think he was talking about was the clan of the elites. The “either you’re with us or against us” cabal of war mongers and murderers.

Who said Comic Noire was dead?

Dungroanin
Dungroanin
Sep 2, 2018 10:51 PM

While TPTB build these AI super computing centres in the artic regions to facially recognise and monitor the billions from the sky and aim to manipulate us with their propaganda and MSM, the internet is connecting 4 BILLION people of the world using simple hand held devices – each one a functioning brain as capable as any supercomputer. 4 billion mainframes connected to make a omniscient hybrid AI – self willed, not owned, uncontrollable, democratic.
So says Caitlin johnstone.
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/check-out-my-presentation-how-to-win-a-grassroots-media-rebellion-at-the-ron-paul-institute-6ea5e7ea985d

Enjoy and laugh at their predicament. .

Who is pulling the string?
Who is pulling the string?
Sep 2, 2018 8:47 PM

A) Intelligence agencies, in both US and UK, didn’t want Trump to win, and still do not want him to succeed as a president.

B) Mainstream media are in overdrive mode, doing their utmost best to undermine everything Trump does or says.

Why is the connection, between A) and B), rarely talked about?

elenits
elenits
Sep 3, 2018 11:01 PM

Why is the connection, between A) and B), rarely talked about?

Good Question! Because one is a subdivision of the other…?

manfromatlan
manfromatlan
Sep 3, 2018 11:11 PM
Reply to  elenits

Because one sub-division passed on crap intelligence to the other? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/11/trump-russia-report-opposition-research-john-mccain

Brian Eggar
Brian Eggar
Sep 2, 2018 8:19 PM

I get a vague feeling that I should know the difference between national sovereignty and nationalism but I would be grateful if somebody might put it into simpler terms that I might understand.

I find it amazing how all roads seem to lead back to Christopher Steele and the golden shower. It seems that however high a person’s status becomes, it is all based on pretty basic functions.

There again, I must be one of those confused minority that sees Putin as a model of moderation and far sightedness and even an ideal candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. Although, I would like to see Prof Noam Chomsky receive it before he pops his clogs.

There are not many people who deserve this prize but maybe somebody could name a few more?

Dominic Pukallus
Dominic Pukallus
Sep 2, 2018 11:14 PM
Reply to  Brian Eggar

In my mind the difference is between the two poles of the natural Human phenomenon of Enthnocentricsm, “We love each other” and “We hate others”. Since this is a part of being Human, one would like ideally to emphasise the “love” bit while hoping to see the continuation of the historical enlargement the “each other” circle of perception.

Political satire died when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace, according to political satirist Tom Lehrer. These days it’s probably just a chance for much-needed gallows humour though I’d love to be wrong, and this piece is excellent in that regard. I’d go further that the Nobel itself finally became completely meaningless when Obama was awarded his.

Jen
Jen
Sep 2, 2018 11:52 PM

A listing of past Nobel Peace Prize recipients could very well read like a listing of people who used to be on the CIA payroll.

🙂

manfromatlan
manfromatlan
Sep 3, 2018 12:05 AM

Going further back, the Nobel ‘peace prize’ was dead to me when Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu who was nominated every year from 1987-2010 never received it, or that Julian Assange who arguably was the most deserving ever was denied by the Swedes under Carl Bildt https://professorsblogg.com/2014/09/24/swedish-official-reaction-to-alternative-nobel-prize-given-to-edward-snowden-carl-bildt-outs-organization-awarding-the-prize-from-swedish-foreign-office-premises/

JJ139
JJ139
Sep 3, 2018 6:17 AM
Reply to  manfromatlan

Carl Bildt is a proven CIA asset.

Jen
Jen
Sep 2, 2018 11:44 PM
Reply to  Brian Eggar

“National sovereignty” refers to the right of self-determination on the part of a community or a set of communities of people. It need not be based on these people having a language, ethnicity or any other cultural belief or belief system in common; they need only to assert their independence, have an organised government and have their right to exist as one self-contained unit respected by other nations.

The original thirteen colonies that became the United States in 1776 did not have a great deal in common (in religion, culture, history and social structures) other than having English as a common language and being ruled by England (later Britain). Yet they claimed the right of self-determination based on their perceptions of how they were being treated by the British.

The concept of “national sovereignty” has its roots in the Peace of Westphalia (1648) which was a series of peace treaties upholding the inviolability of nation states and their borders, and non-interference by foreign agents in a nation’s domestic affairs. These peace treaties ended decades of religious wars in Europe and Roman Catholic Church influence (and sometimes interference) in the affairs of states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty

“Nationalism” as an ideology came much later and is based on the notion that self-determination depends on a people having cultural characteristics (like language, religion, ethnicity, a common history, political and economic systems) in common. Nationalists may demand that two nations that happen to have a language in common, or something else in common, should “merge” (that is, one should take over the other), over the interests of the citizens of those nations. Plus those who call themselves “nationalist” or are called “nationalist” may hold other beliefs that have nothing to do with the concept of national sovereignty.

Antonyl
Antonyl
Sep 3, 2018 2:52 AM
Reply to  Jen

Mono cultural nations existed long before, even in Europe. Central China, Iran, Egypt, parts of India etc. Then the first wave of internationalism called Muslim imperialism started off and homogenized many of these like Egypt or Irak. The next wave was European mercantilism with its East India companies. Then Western regions started to join in the US, Germany and Italy and thus weakened European colonialism. WWII killed physical colonialism, powered by Hitler’s and Japanese military’s misuse of their national emotions. International Leninism/Stalinism ran parallel and failed.

Jen
Jen
Sep 3, 2018 1:21 PM
Reply to  Antonyl

Where’s the evidence that monocultural nations existed in Europe and other parts of the world in ancient and mediaeval times?

For most of its history, Persia / Iran has been host to different groups with their own languages and cultures. There are still many minority groups in Iran and their languages belong to at least four different language families (Indo-European [Iranian and its relatives, Armenian], Turkic, Semitic [Arabic, Assyrian] and Georgian). Same can be said for China: there are still many minority groups in that country, of which 56 ethnic groups have been officially recognised by Beijing.

Other Middle Eastern nations host ethnic and religious minorities. Before 2003, Iraq was home to several groups including Christian Assyrians, Yazidis and Jews. After 2003, many such groups fled the country. Egypt still hosts several million Christians.

While it lasted, the Ottoman empire generally left Christian, Jewish and other non-Muslim communities within its boundaries to govern themselves. The major demands made of these groups were to pay the jizya taxes to the Ottomans for protection and to surrender youths during periodic round-ups to the army and the bureaucracy. That was not necessarily a bad thing for young men: being a Muslim soldier or public servant could be a better life than remaining Christian in a poor and backward farming village.

A paradox that arose during the 19th century is that once the Ottomans began adopting Western political, legal and economic reforms, and started applying them across all their subject peoples, the non-Muslim communities lost their special privileges and rights of self-government. This is when they started seeking independence from the Ottomans.

While there has been assimilation to the ruling language, religion and culture in the regions mentioned, the assimilation has tended to be gradual and not usually forced, though this depended on the whim of individual rulers in individual states.

Antonyl
Antonyl
Sep 4, 2018 9:36 AM
Reply to  Jen

Just for Europe: England and France after 1100 were pretty centralized and mono cultural, so was Spain after 1492. Sweden and Russia later on.

China or Iran not ancient nations: Are you kidding? They both have huge majorities speaking one language and sharing one culture.

Moscow Exile
Moscow Exile
Sep 3, 2018 3:57 PM
Reply to  Jen

From 1706 until 1783, when, by the Treaty of Paris, the sovereignity of the independent United States of America was recognized, the 13 colonies in North America that declared their independence in 1776 were ruled by the United Kingdom, not England.

An Act of Union, whereby the Kingdom of England was united with the Kingdom of Scotland was passed by the Parliament of England in 1706, and the Union with England Act was passed in 1707 by the Parliament of Scotland.

Before 1706, the North American colonies that became the USA in 1783 were ruled by England.

Prior to the Acts of Union, the Kingdom of Scotland once had a colony, Darien, in the Panama isthmus, which existed from 1689 until 1702. It was a financial disaster and almost bankrupted Scotland, which led to the Scottish nobility petitioning Westminster to wipe out the Scottish national debt and to accept the political union of Scotland with England.

Paul X
Paul X
Sep 3, 2018 4:21 PM
Reply to  Moscow Exile

In the 1660’s the American States were independent of each other and not always friendly. Charles II decided to bring them under central (London) control as a punishment for protecting the Two Judges, Whalley and Goffe who had both been Generals in the Parliamentary Army and Major Generals in the 1650’s. They were also Regicides, having sat as Judges at Charles I’s trial and signed the Death Warrant They were therefore exempted from any pardons. Bodies (like Cromwell’s) were dug up, beheaded and disembowelled. Only 3 still alive survived including Whalley and Goffe. In 1660 they escaped to New England by boat. Despite years of scouring the colonies they were never captured moving from place to place under the protection of fellow Puritans. They famously lived in a cave near Hertford but were equally welcome in Governor Davenports own home. They became American heroes because they were Republicans and King Slayers. It was said Goffe once beat back an Indian attack on a small frontier town using his Civil War skill with a sword. Immediately after the battle he disappeared underground before the Redcoats arrived.
The new administrative structure did give London greater control and was a factor in the Revolution. If the States had remained Independent things might have been very different.
Unsurprisingly perhaps the Americans soon lost interest in Lefties who put Kings on trial and then executed them. Terrorists surely?

Simple
Simple
Sep 2, 2018 6:03 PM

“Damn, I think I may have gone and opened a rather enormous can of leftist worms right at the end of this essay by mentioning the “national sovereignty” thing.”

As far as I’m concerned, the paragraph (third from last) beginning with this sentence sums up the most important conversation the West needs to have with itself before the proverbial hits the fan.
There is a trick being played by and it relies on the concept of national sovereignty being purposefully ‘mistaken’ for nationalism.
The BBC’s reporting of Daniel Hillig’s murder in Chemnitz is a perfect example. Just keep pushing that Jenny Hill narrative and see what you get when people give up caring about the label they are given.

summitflyer
summitflyer
Sep 2, 2018 5:19 PM

Love the satire ! I never would have believed this if someone would have described this to me 20 years ago.
Not sure if I am looking forward to the future .LOL

manfromatlan
manfromatlan
Sep 2, 2018 5:19 PM

Looking for signs of intelligent life on planet Media here, but all this deathwatch hysteria presupposes Democrats sweeping the mid terms, unlikely as most Independents are likely to say a pox on both their houses and stay home.

The richest man in the world seems content to whip up a frenzy so that when people are depressed about their ineffectuality to control their own lives, they turn to Amazon for consumer products, entertainment, and news content. (While it spies on you for the security state).

Materialism is the self-medicated opiate of the masses, as they react to the constant adrenal pumping of the MSM.

Paul X
Paul X
Sep 2, 2018 5:08 PM

The overwhelming bias of the US media against Trump is similar to that here against Corbyn and the Labour Party. It shares one great weakness; too much of it and there is a backlash. Nobody bothers reading it because it’s so predictable. It’s also pretty obvious if you scratched any US politician-businessman you’d uncover all manner of fraud and theft. The Clinton Outfit are best known for it. As for Russiagate I wonder if Trump will ever highlight the way British Intelligence was the main interferer in the election? As Steele told the press as he leaked them the urination dossier “I’d do anything to stop Trump becoming President”. Why doesn’t Muller call him for interrogation? He ought to be a credible witness as he was a Senior MI6 Officer for many years and ended his career ahead of the Russian desk. He set up the successful private spy firm Orbis.
He could be asked who gave him permission to write the dossier using his MI6 insider knowledge? (That it needed permission isn’t denied). Who agreed he could sell it to the Democrats knowing to what use it would be put? Did Sergei Skiripal help? ..hmm you can see why he isn’t invited to the party! Meanwhile Trump says nothing.
He is undoubtedly more manipulative than stupid; he must be saving it up for an appropriate moment such as when even Boris Johnson baulks at the ruinous conditions attached to a US-UK ‘free trade’ deal. Canny, not daft at all. Dangerous? Absolutely.

manfromatlan
manfromatlan
Sep 2, 2018 5:22 PM
Reply to  Paul X

Boris Johnson isn’t going to balk at the ruinous conditions, since otherwise, what would be the point of Boris Johnson? 🙂

bevin
bevin
Sep 2, 2018 4:29 PM

“..subpoena a buttload of folks to appear before a series of congressional hearings…”
CJ what is a buttload?
The mind buggles.

Michael Leigh
Michael Leigh
Sep 2, 2018 10:18 PM
Reply to  bevin

Presumably. up their “necks in the proverbial “.

flamingosarepink
flamingosarepink
Sep 3, 2018 7:08 AM
Reply to  Michael Leigh

Well gosh, if Trump goes down on the death watch list for cashing out a bimbo or two then what are we going to do about the slaughterers and war whores? I frankly don’t care who Trump porked or groped and under what circumstance.

There are Yankee serial killers out there who have slaughtered hundreds of thousands and are still walking the streets muttering about what a dreadful man is Trump, the groper, the bimbo humper, the real estate shyster etc., yet these same mumblers are sociopathic child and civilian murderers. Looking at you Hillary Clinton, Obama, Bushes, Henry Kissinger, Madelein Albright, all past CIA and military leaders and the whole list of grotesque killers.

We need a sense of proportion here folks. I say we garrote the biggest killers first and work down the list.

manfromatlan
manfromatlan
Sep 3, 2018 11:28 AM

Introduce to Madame Guillotine I say.