The Disintegration of the American Body Politic 154


These are extremely dangerous times for the world. North Korea is exposing the futility of deterrence theory and causing nuclear weapons all over the world to be dusted down, at a time when a maverick outsider in the White House has been captured by a bunch of Generals who make Dr Strangelove look rational. Anybody who thinks sending occupying troops into Afghanistan is ever going to work is clearly certifiable.

The febrile state of the American political system has resulted in a peculiar McCarthyist witch-hunt against Russia, in which people who you would presume must have some capacity for rational thought, such as the editors of the Washington Post and New York Times, have abandoned that rationality in favour of anti-Russian hysteria.

As a British diplomat I cultivated contacts with Ken Saro Wiwa and his circle in Nigeria as they pushed against the tyrannical regime of President Abacha and the environmental destruction of their region, most notably by Shell. I cultivated Alexander Kwasniewski as a young opposition leader who eventually defeated the great Lech Walesa. I cultivated John Kufuor, opposition leader in Ghana, who like Kwasniewski went on to be President. I cultivated Mohammed Solih’s people in Uzbekistan. The later stages of all this are covered in my books The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Murder in Samarkand.

As a diplomat it is your job to have relations not only with those in government, but to prepare in case the government changes. It is also your job, where you can get away with it, to push the political landscape in the direction your own government wishes. That is of the very essence of diplomacy.

If the Russians – and every other major government – had not been putting work into cultivating Trump and his circle, they would not have been carrying out the functions of diplomacy in the way they are carried on by every single country in the world – and by none more than the United States. For every contact between any Russian and anyone connected to Trump’s circle, now to be dredged up one after another and conflated into some master plot by Putin to take over the whole world, is complete nonsense. It is not just nonsense but dangerous nonsense because it is pumping up international tension between nuclear powers beyond cold war levels, and there is no shortage of potential flashpoints where things could go horribly wrong.

Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump both reflected disillusionment at the massive exploitation of ordinary people by the ruling Establishment, though unfortunately the American people were cheated – most instrumentally by Clinton, the DNC and the rigged primary contest – into getting Trump rather than Sanders. The political system has still not adjusted to a new reality. Radical change is coming in both the US and the UK, but in both countries the Establishment for now still controls enough of the legislature and judiciary to hold the line. But I do not anticipate the demand for greater social justice will die down. The successful diversion of the revolutionary impulse by the Establishment media to the cause of the alt right in the United States and of racist Brexit in the UK, I believe will prove a temporary phenomenon.

But when so much bad blood is rushing around the body politic, the odd boil will erupt through the skin. One such boil is Louise Mensch, the former British Tory MP and multi-millionaire now recast as anti-Russian cheerleader in the United States, where she is given an astonishing amount of mainstream media space for her crazed theories.

Yesterday I got Louise Mensch all excited:

The tweet that made her say “On my God” was this one. We got not just an “Oh my God” out of Louise but also a “Christ!”:

Precisely what Mensch’s new God-fearing chums make of her choice of expletives I know not. But a rational person may wonder what about these tweets could cause such ecstasy in Ms Mensch.

Louise has taken up online with one of the crazed self-styled security experts who is jumping on the anti-Russian bandwagon in the United States, named Chris Nethery. Mr Nethery believes and has convinced Ms Mensch (so far as I can judge) that Sarah Kendzior, Uzbek opposition leader Mohammed Solih and I are members of a Russian intelligence cell which is undermining America. Those tweets appear to the rather strange mind of Ms Mensch to prove compelling evidence of this.

Ms Kendzior is a journalist. About seven or eight years ago she did some excellent academic work on Uzbekistan which I praised on this blog. I may have met her at that time but do not recall doing so. I have certainly not heard from her since. I have no emails from her. But still more hilarious is Nethery’s evidence that Mohammed Solih is a Russian agent. Mohammed is in exile in Turkey and like many opposition figures would be rather likely to be handed over for execution to the Uzbek regime should he come into Putin’s clutches. The Russian “expert” Nethery’s evidence of Solih being a Russian agent is that “Solih participated in the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968”.

It is not a secret that Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union. In 1968 Mohammed Solih was 18 years old and would have been compulsorily conscripted into the Soviet armed forces. Nethery’s accusation is ludicrous. It is like blaming the vets for the Vietnam war.

The Trump White House is dysfunctional and that clearly indicates the rottenness of the American political system. Xenophobia has become the rule. The anti-immigrant xenophobia of Trump’s supporters is mirrored by the equally irrational anti-Russian xenophobia of Trump’s opponents. Laughable figures like Mensch get to write columns in formerly great newspapers. I did not expect to see the United States decline so quickly.

SAVE CRAIG MURRAY

I face a libel suit in the High Court in England brought by Jake Wallis Simons, Associate Editor of the Daily Mail Online, and his lawyer Mark Lewis. The judge has approved over £100,000 in costs for Mr Lewis and £40,000 damages are sought in addition. I have been directly threatened with bankruptcy. All help against England’s draconian anti-free speech laws is much appreciated.

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154 thoughts on “The Disintegration of the American Body Politic

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  • Geejay

    From Wikipedia: ” Mensch, as well as her website Heat Street, has published multiple unverified claims, and promoted hoaxes and conspiracy theories about the Trump administration and Russia.” I believe she also wrote fiction.

  • Martinned

    Cultivating Trump is one thing, actually spending money and resource to help getting him elected is something else entirely. You say so yourself when you qualify your statement with “where you can get away with it”. Hopefully this is an instance where the Russians will not get away with it.

    • lysias

      Are you aware of how many countries’ elections the U.S. government has sought to influence by spending money and resources?

      To say nothing of more active interventions like promoting coups and mounting military invasions.

      • Martinned

        Yes, and that’s called a tu quoque fallacy. It’s illegal when the US do it – and they mostly did it during the Cold War, as far as anyone is aware – and it’s illegal when other people do it.

        • lysias

          Mostly during the Cold War? Like the interference in Yeltsin’s re-election? Like the invasions of Iraq, Libya, and Syria?

        • Phil

          The ‘tu quoque’ is a fallacy in logic because truth or validity is not dependent on matters external to the logical structure of the argument. However politics doesn’t work like that so when stronger powers are seen to act hypocritically they can’t expect much sympathy if they encounter similar behaviour visited on them in return.
          So really you are guilty of the tu quoque fallacy whereas your interlocutor is not. He/she saw hypocrisy in American meddling, you saw hypocrisy in some form of double standard but using the power of logic to disguise naked politics is a familiar right-wing tactic these days and is decidedly hypocritical. Doesn’t Madsen Pirie teach this sort of thing? Friend of yours?

    • Loony

      I think you will find that the Russians are completely pissed off with the lunacy emanating from the US and the deranged Anglo-American media.

      They are locked and loaded and ready to fire. So if your hope is that the “Russians will not get away with it” then you are in fact hoping for all out nuclear war.

      • Laguerre

        “They are locked and loaded and ready to fire.”

        Oh yes? You have a powerful imagination. Putin doesn’t go to war unless he has to. He is a much better estimator of world politics than most other leaders today.

  • Sharp Ears

    Imagine he used the word ‘beautiful’ when referring to weapons and armaments? He was speaking at a press conference attended by the Emir of Kuwait, up whose fundament he was crawling.

    ”Q from ‘John CBS’

    Thanks. Mr. President, on the question of North Korea, the country feels that a crisis is coming. Some lawmakers, Lindsey Graham among them, have almost described the situation as inevitably leading to war. I don’t want to ask you if you think it’s inevitable. What I do want to ask you is, as President of the United States, would you tolerate a nuclearized North Korea that is contained and deterred but still nuclear? Or would it have to abandon nuclear weapons? And would military action on the part of the United States be one of the options necessary to achieve that goal?

    PRESIDENT TRUMP: Military action would certainly be an option. Is it inevitable? Nothing is inevitable. It would be great if something else could be worked out. We would have to look at all of the details, all of the facts. But we’ve had Presidents for 25 years now — they’ve been talking, talking, talking — and the day after an agreement is reached, new work begins in North Korea, continuation on nuclear.

    So I would prefer not going the route of the military, but it’s something certainly that could happen. Our military has never been stronger. We are in a position now — and you know the new orders. You see the new numbers just like I see the new numbers. It’s been tens of billions of dollars more in investment. And each day new equipment is delivered — +++new and beautiful equipment, the best in the world, the best anywhere in the world, by far+++.

    Hopefully we’re not going to have to use it on North Korea. If we do use it on North Korea, it will be a very sad day for North Korea.’
    https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/09/07/remarks-president-trump-and-emir-sabah-al-ahmed-al-jaber-al-sabah-Kuwait

    Trump went on to discuss Israel and Palestine. Jared has been chosen to further the ‘peace process’. As if.

    • giyane

      Trump called his equipment beautiful because while Russian cruise missiles go up then fly a long way and hit a military target, US Trident missiles go up and start flying towards the US mainland of Florida. Apart from the visual aesthetics there are very few other adjectives that are positive.

  • M.J.

    Trump could lose credibility, since he threatened Kim Fat-One* with Fire and Fury if KF1 made any more threats against the USA. KF1 called his bluff and made more threats, including claims to set off an H-bomb. Result: no Fire or Fury.

    If KF1 miscalculates and attack Guams though, that could be a disastrous, deadly mistake. Remember Pearl Harbor,

    *there being possibly only One Fat citizen in North Korea

    • Laguerre

      Perhaps you didn’t notice the introductory conditional clause to the NK threat against Guam. “If the US attacks us…” It was mainly omitted from Western media reports.

  • KingofWelshNoir

    It really is astonishing that folk in the US can get into such a lather over the alleged interference by Russia in the US election. With the exception perhaps of Bhutan I don’t think there is a country in the world that the US hasn’t interfered with.

    Now they are trying to extradite UK hacker, Lauri Love, to spend the rest of his life in a US prison for having the gall to hack US government computers, even though the NSA seemingly feels itself entitled to routinely hack the whole planet.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    Anyone who thinks that Trump is a maverick outsider who has been simply captured by the generals really doesn’t know what is afoot with the POTUS who is out to take over the world by covert weapons..

  • Ba'al Zevul

    I’m not sure that the” anti-Russian hysteria” is down to anything much more than a wish, by enemies and notional allies alike, to get rid of Trump by any means possible. A laudable aim IMO, and excusable in similar terms to yours: ‘the other lot would do it, so we can.’

    Which is not to deny that Russian propaganda has increased hugely in reach, subtlety and effectiveness in the last decade or so, in order to encourage social division and discontent. The Russians will be sublimely unworried by ‘anti-Russian hysteria’ – it serves their purpose. I could draw a parallel with the place we do not mention.

    • MJ

      “Russian propaganda has increased hugely in reach, subtlety and effectiveness in the last decade or so, in order to encourage social division and discontent”

      Did you have anything particular in mind?

      • Ba'al Zevul

        If I told you, you’d know. If you don’t already. Clue: ” The heroic shock troops of the proletarian revolution must inevitably overcome the decadent bourgeois West”, nightly on Radio Moscow, is most certainly not what I have in mind.

    • joel

      How will this anti-Russia hysteria get rid of Trump? There’s no chance a Republican Congress will impeach a Republican president; and the “trump’s a tool of Putin” hysteria that filled the airwaves in the weeks before the election evinced no more success than the “Putin wants Brexit” line did over here. The only thing it’s achieving is bringing nuclear holocaust closer.

      • Ba'al Zevul

        How will this anti-Russia hysteria get rid of Trump? . On its own, it probably won’t. But in addition to everything else that can justifiably be thrown at the man, I wouldn’t be quite so sure the GOP wouldn’t impeach him if actual collusion in subverting the democratic process could be demonstrated. I don’t think the assaults on Trump are bringing any kind of holocaust (am I still allowed to say that word, or has it been copyrighted yet?) any closer than Trump’s own spectacular incompetence will.

        What the American dissidents from the failed orthodoxy thought they were voting for was strong and decisive government and radical change. What they got was an ignoramus who throws tantrums and doesn’t know when to shut up. Entirely believable that Putin is laughing up his sleeve.

        NB, Putin isn’t planning any holocaust. He’ll be happy gently to leak into Eastern Europe while the US disappears up its introspective bottom, its attention engaged by self-inflicted rolling crises in Syria, Afghanistan, Korea and anywhere else it can be sucked in, and its economy largely determined by China. I would be deeply disappointed in his intellect if he wasn’t involved in Trump’s election. The outcome was most devoutly to be wished…by Russia.

        • joel

          Two points: Firstly, the Republican party is devoted to subverting the democratic process itself. The only reason it has a majority in Congress – despite consistently winning millions fewer votes in congressional elections – is by gerrymandering electoral districts throughout the states it controls and by introducing voter ID laws designed to stop minorities from voting.
          As re nuclear war, it wasn’t Putin striking the US I was alluding to. If the bogus demonization of Russia continues to be ramped up, it’s far more likely to be instigated by the US side. And far from taking their eye off Russia militarily, the US currently surrounds it with 130 military bases and is conducting military operations right on Russia’s border. Turn that equation round the other way and you’d likely be indignant to the point of demanding that the US institute a strike on Russia.

    • Micah Parrish

      I also have been nursing this “conspiracy theory” for many years, that Russians are interested in helping out with propaganda anything that sows internal dissent. The more internal conflict in the US, the less effectively we can lead the free world. So every weird little group has some Russian dezinformatsiya amping it up. Even groups you or I might sympathize with could have propaganda resources assigned to putting out biased accounts of news items, etc. etc. Maybe it’s the Sovereign Citizens, the Neo-Nazis, the Occupiers, the BLMers, the Antifa, the Liberty movement, or just Conspiracy Theorists in general? Anything that has potential for strife seems to be systematically amplified by faceless online personalities. We’ve even allowed the NFL to become politicised and divisive, one of the few things Americans have in common. I don’t know how to counter it, but we need some kind of strategy besides the common enemy.

  • Matt

    I’ve been following Louise on Twitter for a month or two now, she’s batshit. I find her amusing. I would even go as far as to say I kinda like her, depsite agreeing with approximately 0% of her tweets.

    Bless her.

  • John Goss

    Julian Assange, The Duran, Craig Murray, Russia Insider, The Guardian, a daughter of hers and many others have concluded that Louise Mensch has serious problems in her vitriolic hatred of Russia. Her Twitter account tends to confirm this. I am not a doctor but Mrs Mensch does have a genuine attention deficit illness which may be responsible for the tweets others consider odd.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10044694/Louise-Mensch-reveals-her-battle-with-attention-deficit-disorder.html

    Therefore it is not her fault. Pandering to this illness is a bit like pandering to trolls. The temptation is there but we should not be led into it. At the same time we should be delivered from this kind of evil which governs the United States of America.

    https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201709081057204599-syria-deir-ez-zor-daesh-evacuation/

    • John Goss

      Credit has got to be given to Mrs Mensch for launching an alternative to Twitter called Menshn.com even though it appears this never took off.

      https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/jun/19/lousie-mensch-rival-twitter

      Perhaps she gave it the wrong name. Zhenshchin (женщин) the Russian genetive of women might have been better. Her surname however is German for man. I understand it can also be used for hussy or wench. What about Menshnzhenshchinwenchin.com? It would probably catch on in Germany – they like long words.

      • Sharp Ears

        Her judgement is deficient.

        She partnered with one Luke Cholerton=Bozier to found Menschn. He had been BLiar’s online comms advisor.

        She dobbed him in to the boys in blue who gave him a caution which he accepted.

        Louise Mensch’s former business partner Luke Bozier accepts caution
        Menschn co-founder says ‘six months of turmoil’ have ended after arrest on suspicion of viewing indecent images of children https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/20/louise-mensch-luke-bozier-caution

        ‘Ending what he called “six months of sheer turmoil”, Bozier said he was pressing police to investigate the hacking and was also considering setting up a campaign to raise awareness of sex addiction. In January, he claimed Mensch had been “covering her back” by publicly distancing herself from him after the allegations and reporting him to police.

        Mensch denied at the time she had been disloyal to Bozier but said she felt a duty to report him to police after reading internet allegations. Their business, Menschn – a Twitter-like social networking site – shut soon afterwards.’

        • Ba'al Zevul

          So that’s what happened to it. I’d wondered. I can’t fault her for grassing on a paedo, though. She rises a little in my estimation. A little.

  • Ow My Balls

    CIA propaganda always serves multiple objectives, and the RUSSIA INTERFERENCE mass hysteria is no exception. One handy thing accomplished by CIA’s Russia hacking disinformation is to obfuscate the fiasco in which CIA got its cyber-weapons carted off wholesale and auctioned off in public. It’s much less embarrassing to get pwned by diabolical Russians than by Iran. Especially when the Iranians made fools of you while you were conducting illegal undeclared war on them.

  • lysias

    I’m afraid you’re now in the crosshairs of the deep state, Craig. Nobody who interferes with their Russiagate mythology can be allowed to go unpunished.

  • Ishmael

    American establishment needs to chill the F out. Ok your “no1”, we get it.

    Mensch is just doing what advantages US hyper aggressive foreign policy, namely panting it as victim to all the really bad guys out to get America.

    My feeling is many Americans aren’t really that stupid. As if it hasn’t been proven over and again nobody wants to mess with them, just like with Iraq bending over backward to advantage them to avoid invasion. Or NKs peace deal offer. Countries establishment doesn’t know what’s good for it. “look it’s a nail”

    Will they ever be dragged onto the more civilised world? …One can only hope I guess.

    What I do know is all the bending over people from in this country isn’t helping. …I mean come on, lets retain some self respect, it would do us and them some good.

  • Manda

    “Anybody who thinks sending occupying troops into Afghanistan is ever going to work is clearly certifiable.”

    Only if you believe the narrative of ‘fighting terrorism’ and ‘winning’. It is clear to me US is increasing its presence in Afghanistan for other reasons… China, Russia, minerals, oil pipes and of course the opium crop which has increased exponentially under US/allied occupation…

    • lysias

      Interesting fact: over the year preceding the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban had succeeded in stopping almost completely the production of opium poppies.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    Craig,

    I loved every word of your post except “‘racist’ Brexit”. You are a fine Statesman & Diplomat, yet whilst you are being sued for being “racist”, which you aren’t – well certainly not on the charges that you are being sued for, you are accusing 52% of the voting population of The UK (including me) for being racist for voting for Britain to extricate itself from the American controlled EU Dictatorship.

    Why not apply for your old job back? It wouldn’t be the first time, that someone has done this. You were obviously very good at it, fastest, youngest to be promoted to a very senior position, and you only lost your job, because you were incredibly honest, and protective towards your employers, with regards to the issue of Torture, which you had uncovered, knowing that it was completely illegal and immoral, and did not want your employers “The British Government”, in any way implicated, in such illegal and immoral behaviour.

    No one is perfect, so I will forgive you for labelling me as a racist, for voting for Brexit.

    Good luck with your court case.

    Tony

    • Loony

      Aint it funny how Brexit voters are routinely smeared as racist.

      Yet never a word about Hungary whose foreign minister has only this week accused the EU of “raping European law and values” Is it better to be a Brexit voting “racist” or a collaborator in the “rape of Europe”

      Also those keen to smear Brexit voters are also strangely silent on Poland. Do all of the non racist EU supporters agree of disagree with the Polish government that Germany owes them somewhere in the region of $1 trillion in war reparations. It may well be argued that those so welcoming of Polish migrants into the UK are i fact collaborating through time with Nazi’s. Clearly if Poland was $1 trillion richer then its citizens may have options other than travelling to the UK for low paid work.

      • Laguerre

        Oh yes, Brexiters love whataboutery. Those countries aren’t leaving the EU, so scarcely a parallel. Funny that it was Britain, under the leadership of Blair, who brought them into the EU. So you’re criticising British policy. Why do you not say it?

        • Matt

          I wouldn’t waste your time attempting to draw Craig into this. He’s stubbornly wrong on this matter. He really does think Brexiteers are racist, and claiming you’re a non-racist Brexiteer will fall on deaf ears. He’ll repeat the accusation again and again.

          Everyone is wrong sometimes.

          • giyane

            For any racial group I can think of I can think of some who are devils, some who are seeking a path to truth and some who are saints. So if I was to exclude any of those racial groups from my own sphere of existence I would lose the saints whose moral vision is going to lead me out of the hole of ignorance I myself live in.

            Lech Walesa, what a bloody miracle of a man to stand up to Stalinism. Jacky Sutton flying out to investigate Erdogan’s Daesh’s sexual perversions against women, what a bloody miracle of a woman to stand up to USUKIS Nato and Saudi Islamist aggression.

            IMHO we should join EFTA like Iceland to get a tarriff-free trade deal, keep free movement , ban racism, keep the European Court of Justice, and fuck off Merckel and Macron. we need all those immigrants – one of them will teach us how not to be aggressive ,colonial bullies and how not to be racist. Craig is not wrong about our Tory leader fanning the flames of racism after the Brexit referendum. He is wrong about the EU being a benign federal institution.

        • Loony

          I am happy to confirm that I despise substantially all aspects of British policy in almost all matters. I especially and specifically despise British policy in relation to the EU.

          I despise how British “ruling classes” are seeking to frustrate the will of the people and I despise those who smear the British people for their strength of character and strength of purpose in seeking to throw off their EU imposed chains.

          Is that clear enough for you?

          Do you agree with EU member state Hungary that the EU is “raping European law and values”?

          • Laguerre

            It is very common for Little Englanders to both reject the “evil” EU, and at the same time wash their hands of the problems their country has created, which led to the description in the first place.

            Evidently everybody wants to reject responsibility for what they’ve done, if it’s turned out badly. Leave others to sort out the mess. The question will be: can you get away with it?

            Obviously I’m pro-EU. You’re either in it, or quasi-in it. I suspect Britain will end up quasi-in it. Standing proud and alone, will work for a year or two, but not more.

            Evidently the fascistic regimes of Eastern Europe have to be dealt with, a mess left by Britain. A year or so ago, the idea was to create a two-speed Europe, with Eastern Europe relegated to an outer circle. Good idea, but I haven’t heard about it recently. It could come back, once the current problems are over.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    Whilst, I don’t know the full story re the US elections, this is what I think happenned from memory with a few links.

    1. The Democrats overwhelmingly voted for Bernie Sanders to be their candidate. They were massively and obviously cheated by The Clinton mob in control of the DNC. The faslification and corruption was so obvious.
    2. The Podesta stuff – and the (under age) island – some of this stuff is very incriminating, though sorting the art from the bollocks, is not a territory that I have the stomach to investigate. I am a Dad.
    3. “Hillary Clinton on Gaddafi: We came, we saw, he died” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgcd1ghag5Y
    4. The dead Seth Rich, Julian Assange’s nod, Craig Murray’s post (Seymour Hearst’s contribution was also interesting (but I don’t believe it all)
    5. What had a massive effect on swinging the Election to Trump was of all people Michael Moore “Michael Moore Explains Why TRUMP Will Win” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKeYbEOSqYc

    The vast majority of Americans are honest, nice people, and they do not like being lied,and cheated to, and having their jobs and lives destroyed. They voted for Donald Trump, because, he didn’t seem quite as evil as the Rest of The Mob.

    Tony

  • Sharp Ears

    Rolling on the floor etc.

    Heat Street Is Folding
    The conservative digital media outlet, which is owned by News Corp and originally led by Louise Mensch, will be shuttered as a standalone operation on August 4.
    Originally posted on June 29, 2017, at 10:12 p.m.
    https://www.buzzfeed.com/stevenperlberg/heat-street-is-folding?

    Yet another of her silly ventures fail. She had one (forget what it was called) where she gave advice on fashion, hair and make up.

    Wish she would retreat and take up knitting or something. Highly irritating.

  • Njegos

    Louise Demenschia, Fraude Taylor and Eric Garbage are The 3 Cyberstooges. Their tweets are pure intelligence-comedy slapstick. One has to wonder whether they are part of an elaborate plot by Putin to discredit Russophobia.

    Adam Johnson of “Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting” put together an early list of Demenschia’s Greatest Hits:

    http://fair.org/home/conspiracy-theorists-welcome-in-corporate-media-if-they-have-the-right-targets/

    To this we can add her blacklist of over 200 “Russian agents” (including erstwhile anti-Putin Twitter allies) that she claims to have “outed” as well as falling for the Trump model agency – prostitution hoax.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/28/trump-tweets-hoax-louise-mensch-claude-taylor

    Demenschia came to prominence in Russiagate through her stream-of-consciousness blog “Patribotics”. She began one famous post with the line “Mr. Putin – Let’s Play Chess.” but clearly even checkers are beyond her. Or tic-tac-toe, for that matter.

    Anyway, abundant material for a new sitcom: “Louise”.

  • nevermind

    ‘The anti-immigrant xenophobia of Trump’s supporters is mirrored by the equally irrational anti-Russian xenophobia of Trump’s opponents.’

    Yes and the same polarised split has been developing between the have’s and not haves, for decades. Poor mid/west America has had its industrial hearts mothballed and scrapped and there are few yobs around.

    I think the long term polarisation will tear the federal structure apart and lead to internal strife, Canada might want to build a fence in future, as well as preserve/protect their natural resources.

    Would it be a bad omen if Trumps Florida Golf cause and house are razed to the ground by Irma? would he dare to use the terms climate change or global warming after such an event, should it come to pass?

    A string of storms are sapping the latent energy from the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico and with Florida having had very high temperatures during the last two weeks, a lure to hurricane’s apparently, so the chances that this storm season, they are lining up like a string of angry pearls, will change the public’s perceptions somewhat, are great.

    • Tony_0pmoc

      nevermind,

      Whilst, I do not claim to be an “Atheist”, and am not that much into “God” either, nor Christ (though the basic morality of Christianity is O.K.), nor Mohammed (though he’s really big round here today) – never seen so many cars – neither the Catholics, nor Methodists are in the same league – and I have absolutely no idea where Craig Murray’s detractors have their Saturday gathering (probably in the same place)

      I am not into Buddhism either -Ying /Yang is it…and I couldn’t possibly believe in Karma – though I do like Radiohead – and was fine with them playing in not the promised land – they are just a band of musicians…

      But those who do believe in such things, are probably grieving and incredibly upset, about potentially most of Florida being wiped off the map tomorrow. Even Donald Trump can’t blame North Korea.

      I have never met The Saker, either, but I think he’s a decent bloke.

      What the hell was he doing living in Florida?

      “Dear friends, After a gruelling 16 hours on the road, I have safely arrived in southern Virginia. I am safe and comfy, just with a slow Internet connection. Thanks for your concern and good wishes. I will stay put up here at least until Tuesday and, depending on the conditions, it might take me 2 days go get back down to Florida”

      I am not going to send him any money either, but he is welcome to stay for free in my house.

      I have bought both his and Craig Murray’s books.

      Tony

      • nevermind

        Sorry for my inhumane sarcasm re Florida, Tony, I do not believe in any religion, but had some thoughts about Buddhism in my youth. But that has been thoroughly knocked out of me by Pol Pots and now Aung Su chi’s horrendous inhumane excesses.
        But if i could wish a storm on the houses of climate change deniers, so be it. I feel sorry for all those people in the Carribean who will have to go through these natural mechanisms of disposition of energies every year. It will only get worse, we now have a 2-5ppm increase in CO2 every year and we have no will to stop what we doing.

        We should have acted radically in the 1970’s but choose to call those who asked for action, the woolly jumper, beards and sandal brigade. The Greens were always right since the late 1880’s bu money and greed has got us into this cul de sac.

        Those deemed to be involved in genocide could/should be declared persona non grata globally, kept in their country of malice and shunned by us all. Why should there be no economic sanctions for excesses like this?

        • Sinister Burt

          Blaming Buddhism for Su Chi’s current stance and Pol Pot is as ridiculous as blaming the sermon on the mount for george bush’s ‘christian’ wars and the crusades. It doesn’t take much insight to find out that buddhism is not ok with mass murder and ethinic cleansing in principe, whatever anyone who calls themselves a buddhist gets up to (a skilled orator can make a flowery justifcation for what they want from whatever ideological base they find themselves in, religious or otherwise – not really the religion’s fault).

  • Stu

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/17/louise-mensch-trump-russia-ties-media-scoop

    This appeared in the Guardian in February. An article which is strangely fawning even if you don’t know that (1) Mensch is an imbecile (2) Mensch several days earlier had tweeted that former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger should be imprisoned for the Snowden revelations.

    The article confirms that Bolger – like almost every senior foreign correspondent – is a security services stooge.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    Whilst camping this week, we endured unusually strong winds. It was hard to sleep at night, and at any moment we were expecting our tents to be ripped away…but what we endured was nothing compared to what is almost certainly going to hit Florida very soon. The Daily Telegraph does not always lie..and I honestly do not think they are making this up or exaggerating. I still have family and friends who live in The USA. Those who experienced Katrina, moved back to the UK and now live in Germany.

    This is very serious…potentially almost like a nuclear attack. Are you sure you want these weapons? Cos they are even worse. Can’t we all just get along together instead?

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/08/mapped-science-behind-hurricane-irmas-path-worst-possible-florida/

    Tony

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    At least American actress Jennifer Lawrence is claiming that Mother Nature may be punishing Donald Trump for denying climate change as the Hurricanes Harvey and Irma demonstate.

    She doesn’t realize though that the wonderful Donald is playing Mother Nature.

    • Tony_0pmoc

      Trowbridge H. Ford,

      I have just been accused of being someone famous. Has this ever happenned to you? The bloke who accused me, obviously knew who I was, and my name and address, cos he had just delivered my supermarket shopping, and dumped the lot in my rather nice hall..It was quite obvious he wanted to come into the kitchen and meet my “Rock Star” wife…but I said no mate – we’ve just come back from camping (obvious camping kit in the hall) – and she’s in her jim jams (pyjamas)

      I didn’t ask him who he thought I was, but he did make us both laugh….

      Such people are the salt of the earth – they are just so friendly and nice, and I did vaguely recognise him – but he didn’t see my wife….but could definitely hear her unpacking the stuff in the kitchen and going “wow”

      Whilst its still growing out of my head, I ain’t going to cut it.

      I’ll buy him a pint if I see him again (quite possibly tomorrow)

      Tony

      • Trowbridge H. Ford

        Oh sure, Tony. Many posters and others have stated that i am a famous example of Aspergers Syndrome.

        Recently an old friend who died sent me a Proclamation for my 65th birthday, stating the I was finally returning to the States to celebrate it, though I was never out of their thoughts, and that I had followed my own path rather than follow my father to the US Army via West Point.

        She had been a famous politician and elected official in one of the state’s Republican towns, and had never been out of my thoughts.

        Remember a handy man in Portugal, a Dudley Cripps as i recall, who was most solicitous of me, calling me Dr, Ford whenever he got the chance.. Learned ultimately that he thought that I was some kind of dangerous Mafioso, on the run fro the Feds.

        Naomi Kleun became famous when she stopped writing about disaster capitalism and GW playing God with the weather, settling instead for the neocons engaging in the shock doctrine and nothing about any god.

        • Tony_0pmoc

          How the hell do you know anything about Naomi Klein? I bought her book, but she has never said anything about 9/11, and neither has Noam Chomsky nor even John Pilger (except by mistake under severe questioning in Australia). If anyone sticks a camera in my face and a microphone close to my gob, I will tell them exactly what I think. It may not come out well..the camera might be covered in spit, and the microphone might be covered in puke…but I will try my best to be nice.

          Tony

    • giyane

      Well if he is I wish he wouldn’t because my daughter is in the British Virgin Islands. Why doesn’t he point his infernal machine over the Middle East?

  • Habbabkuk

    ” I cultivated Alexander Kwasniewski as a young opposition leader who eventually defeated the great Lech Walesa.”
    ______________________

    Strange that you call Kwasniewski an “opposition leader” given that he was- unlike Walesa – a committed Communist before 1990.

    • craig Post author

      Really strange that I call him an “opposition leader” given that when I first met him in 1994 Walesa was President of Poland and Kwasniewski was an opposition MP about to become leader of the opposition.

      That was a bit silly Habby.

      • Habbabkuk

        Yes, the future leader of a bunch of so-called former Communists rapidly transformed into Social Democrats. A Communist functionary (check it out).

        You know perfectly well that when writing about events in the early 1990s the word “opposition” usually refers to those who opposed Communism and not to those opposed to the person and party instrumental in Communism’s demise.

        • J Arther Rank

          To talk about opposition when referring to Polish politics in the 1990’s is to miss the point. By this time the Party was dead. Having run the economy off the cliff and making the cardinal error of becoming indebted to the money lenders the game had been up a decade before. the only committed communists were in jail. One such was Karol Modzelewski, who remarked ” I wouldn’t have spent a week nor a month, let alone eight and a half years in jail for capitalism.
          The business with Walesa was a charade; he was working for the Party, code name Bolek.
          So by the 1990’s it was two cheeks of the same free market arse.
          The transition has brought material gains, but they have been payed for. The cash nexus has largely replaced informal cooperative networks and the struggle for the life style has seen a decline in the birth rate to lower than that of Germany.

          • Habbabkuk

            @ “J Arthur Rank”

            “The business with Walesa was a charade; he was working for the Party, code name Bolek.”

            Sorry to see someone repeating that silly old smear emanating originally from disgruntled former Communist apparatchiks.

            Oh, how the overthrow of Soviet Communism still sticks in some peoples’ craw….

      • craig Post author

        Your last sentence is really, really daft. In Poland in the 1990s government meant government and opposition meant opposition. I never heard Walesa referred to as an opposition leader during his Presidency.

        Kwasniewki incidentally was a very, very much better President than Walesa. Which is why unlike Walesa he got a second term.

        I shared a garden wall with Jaruselzki.

        • John Goss

          So I suppose your ‘great’ epithet for Walesa is satirical, like Alexander and Catherine. Walesa was a tool of the west. we all thought in the eighties what a great trades’ unionist man this was until he got to power and engineered Poland’s entry into NATO. The CIA works through the unions too,

          • Kempe

            Kwasniewski took Poland into the EU and ratified Poland’s membership of NATO. Was he a “tool of the west” as well?

          • Ba'al Zevul

            Obvious point – this was an incalculable improvement for the majority of Poles. And it was democratic. Tool of the West? or getting Poland out from under a military (yes) and political occupation? Jesus. Do you honestly think anyone in the East bloc – apart from the apparatchiks – wouldn’t have sold their souls to be free of the Stalinists?

            The essence of good propaganda, John, is that it has to conform in some way with the facts, twist them as you like. Time for a little re-education, I think.

          • John Goss

            I see Kempe appears when it suits him but on other threads disappears when the going gets tough. I don’t think he could give me any lessons on history, physics or politics, As to Habbabkuk, I think enough here have cut him up without me rubbing further salt in his wounds, Ba’al as usual brings in talk of Stalinism which was well dead and buried in the nineties. The reforms began with Krushchev in the fifties. There was no advantage to Poland being in NATO except to NATO. So back to school Ba’al.

          • Kempe

            ” Kempe appears when it suits him ”

            Doesn’t everybody? I’m not at your, or anyone else’s, beck and call.

          • Ba'al Zevul

            Porridge and parsnips, Goss. Bullshit on stilts. The Stalinist project was intact throughout the Cold War period, and Khruschev was dedicated to keeping it going. Now, ask a few Poles not in the pay of the CP how they liked it, and address the real issue. Or Hungarians, or Czechs. Even the Ostis were glad enough to pull the wall down. The evidence is clear, Russian Communism sucked. And its successor, with the leadership structure modified to avoid even the pretence of democracy, based ona clique of favoured oligarchs given the status of mediaeval princes as long as they toe the Putin line, sucks too.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    The British are as guilty as anyone. Whilst we we trying to give up our Empire and allow and help the Countries (and One Third of The World – such as INDIA) gain their Independence from us – we made mistakes.

    When I was 5 years old, My Dad, who helped get The Spitfires Back in the Air, and helped design and deploy The Mulbery Harbour under enemy fire (he survived)…He gave me a metal globe of the Earth made of Steel. I asked my Dad – what were the pink bits. He said – They are ours – They are all British…

    So I asked my Dad..but we are just this little island – just off the continent of Europe…

    How did we do that?

    I didn’t know – I was only 5 years old….and we had just gone through 2 World Wars. My Dad was born before the first one started.

    I honestly think The British – the likes of Craig Murray -were trying to bring the World to Peace and Independence…

    Then the Americans copied all our techniques – and tried to form The American Empire

    Us British did not approve, but we were infiltrated and infested by the same Nazi’s that we thought we had defeated.

    And The Nazi’s are now back in control.

    You can change NAZI for any label you like, but I am not a NAZI, my Dad was not a NAZI, Winston Churchill was not a NAZI, and neither is Craig Murray.. This Yorkshire School Teacher Explains it Really Well..and there is nothing much I can disagree with him..but you are all so brainwashed…and your attention span is so short, it is incredibly unlikely you will be able to watch this brilliant movie, before you hit pause after half an hour and make yourself a cup of tea. Dr Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia and even The Hobbit is easier to watch…

    But I am convinced that this is much closer to the truth.

    The Yorkshire history teacher made the film himself, and I am in awe.

    “JFK to 911 Everything Is A Rich Man’s Trick”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Qt6a-vaNM

    Tony

    • JOML

      Well, Tony, I think we have to accept that humans are flawed and are animals. The British Empire and the USA demonstrate how bad animals can be. However, not all animals, or countries are bad.
      On a separate note, I enjoyed hearing about your camping holiday with your grandchildren. If only all humans had the same opportunity.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    When you have lost absolutely everything cos the bomb or the hurricane hit you – and your wife and children and your home and everything are gone, and you crawl out of the rubble, it seems everything has gone…everyone is dead…and you see that wimpering child…and you crawl along to help her…there maybe other survivors.

    Keep your head up strong – and try and find cover just you and the child…because there is another US/UK bomb about to hit you. Double Tap.

    That is what we do. That is where our taxes go. We feed The Military Industrial Complex. We make war machines to kill people just to make profits for already extremely rich people.

    If we don’t stop doing this – we will kill all life on earth – even the cockroaches – and no one will ever see The Film.

    “Black Sabbath ~ War Pigs”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQUXuQ6Zd9w

    Tony

  • Tony_0pmoc

    When The Saker, was exposed with his real name, and photo, he published a current photo of himself drinking a pint of beer, with his wife and kids faded out. He asked on his blog, for advice on what he should do. He got a lot of responses. Mine was to stay “anonymous” – there are a lot of nutters in the USA, and he was obvioulsy worried about his kids. So he is still The Saker, and I certainly can’t remember his real name.

    He did 9/11 really well in his book. Its enormous. I bought it.

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Essential-Saker-trenches-emerging-multipolar/dp/1608880583

    I hope he is O.K.

    Tony

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