Trump Is Being Moved Aside So That Conflict with Russia Can Proceed
July 26, 2017 Categories: Articles & Columns
Trump Is Being Moved Aside So That Conflict with Russia Can Proceed
Paul Craig Roberts
What is the Congress up to with their stupid bill that imposes more sanctions and removes the power of President Trump to rescind the sanctions that President Obama imposed?
Congress is doing two things. One is that Congress is serving their campaign contributors in the military/security complex by being tougher with Russia, thus keeping the orchestrated threat alive so that Americans denied health care don’t start looking at the massive military/security budget as a place to find money for health care.
The other is to put President Trump in a box. If Trump vetos this encroachment on presidential power, Congress and the presstitute media will present the veto as absolute proof that Trump is a Russian agent and is protecting Russia with his veto. If Trump does not veto the bill, Trump will have thrown in his hand and accepted that he cannot reduce the dangerous tensions with Russia.
In other words, the bill is a lose-lose for Trump. Yet Republicans are supporting the bill, thus undermining their president.
Yesterday I heard an orchestrated, staged “interview” between two women on NPR’s “All Things Considered” (on NPR all things are never considered). It was a propaganda show focused on Trump’s expression of disappointment in Jeff Sessions, whom Trump mistakenly appointed Attorney General.
When Trump nominated Sessions, the Democrats and the presstitutes went berserk. Sessions was “unqualified,” a “racist,” blah-blah. But now Sessions is the hero of the presstitutes and Democrats. They love him, because he has sold out Trump on the question of the justification for an investigation of Trump as a suspect “Russian agent” by an independent prosecutor who happens to be a member of the anti-Trump ruling establishment.
In other words, Sessions, who has been beat up previously by the establishment, is too afraid to do his job.
In other words, Trump had, as I predicted, no idea what he was doing when he chose his government.
So now he suffers for his ignorance.
What was the point of the staged NPR interview between the two women? The point was that Sessions, unlike Trump, respects the rule of law whereas Trump wants to bend the law in order to cover up for himself. The interview was staged so that without the two women having to say it, Trump’s anger at Session was proof that Trump was guillty of some illigitimate “Russian connection.”
In other words, it was carefully constructed innuendo. Who constructed the innuendo? NPR’s women were just reading from a script.
As far as I can tell, there is no one in Trump’s government who is loyal to Trump or who is willing to back Trump’s effort to stop provoking the Russians and to cease serving as Israel’s military force in the Middle East. As far as I can tell not only the Democratic Party but also the Republican Party supports the left-wing’s view that Trump’s election was illegitimate, because he was elected by the votes of illegitimate people—“the deplorables” to use Hillary’s term.
Who are “the deplorables?” They are the remnants of the American working class. They are the people whose jobs were sent overseas to Asia by the global US corporations in order to enrich their shareholders and executives via higher profits from lower labor costs. They are the people who in order to stay afloat had to rely on debt in place of the missing income and whose debt is now so high that they have no disposable income. A huge proportion of the American population is incapable of raising a measly $400 without having to sell personal possessions.
In other words, they are refugees from a destroyed American middle class.
Trump stood up for them against the rich who ruined them, and now the rich are going to ruin Trump.
It will teach a lesson. Henceforth in the United States no one will dare to stick up for the American people. America is not for Americans any more than the world is for the peoples of the world. America and the world are for the One Percent. No one else. Russia, China, and Iran are in the way, and, thus, they are on Washington’s hit list.
It is heartbreaking to watch the Russians continue to believe, lesson after lesson to the contrary, that they can reach a deal with Washington. This unrealistic hope will destroy Russia. The Russian government will continue to grasp at straws and be put off guard.
It is utterly amazing that the Russian government can believe after its extensive history of being left hanging in the wind by its agreements with Washington that any agreement with Washington is worth anything.
Perhaps Russia is aware of the evil that they face in Washington. Perhaps the Russian emphasis on diplomacy is just a way of gaining time to get prepared for the war that Washington intends to bring to them.
There is little doubt that the great and wonderful beacon of light that is Democracy in Washington, also known as the government of the “exceptional” people and the “indispensable” country, is lost in hubris and arrogance and will destroy life on earth.
⧫
A Ray of Hope — Paul Craig Roberts
July 26, 2017 Categories: Articles & Columns
A Ray of Hope
Paul Craig Roberts
America has been a discouraging landscape ever since the neoconservatives took over US foreign policy during the Clinton regime and started the two decades of war crimes that define 21st century America and ever since US corporations betrayed the US work force by moving American jobs to Asia.
The outlook became darker when the Obama regime resurrected the Russian Threat and elevated the prospect of military conflict between the nuclear powers.
As Europe is caught in the middle, in normal circumstances European countries would have insisted that Washington cease the gratuitous provocations of Russia. But normal circumstances have not existed. Since the end of WW2, European countries have been vassals without independent economic and foreign policies. Europe hosts US military bases that threaten Russia.
Europe has backed Washington’s wars of aggression against Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Washington’s air attacks on provinces of Pakistan, and Washington’s use of Saudi Arabia to fight its proxie war against Yemen.
Europe has backed Washington’s gratuitous economic sanctions against Iran and Russia, sanctions that have cost Europe much and Washington little. Accustomed to having its way with Europe, Washington commits Europe without even consulting the vassal governments.
Now it seems Washington’s extraordinary arrogance and hubris has resulted in overreach. Confronted with a new round of sanctions against Russia, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission told Washington that the time has passed when Washington can put its interests first and Europe’s last.
The new sanctions have devastating economic and political consequences for Europe. Juncker said that if Europe’s “concerns are not taken into account sufficiently, we stand ready to act appropriately within a matter of days.”
The German and French foreign ministries added their support to Juncker. The German foreign ministry said: “It is not in the Americans’ right to judge or stipulate which way European companies may engage in cooperation with any third parties – particularly, with Russian energy companies.”
The French foreign ministry said: the sanctions “contradict international law” due to their “extraterritorial reach.”
Europe views the sanctions as a tool of US industrial policy that elevates US business interests over Europe’s business interests.
Let’s hope that Washington’s arrogance will not permit Washington to back down and that Europe will give Washington the finger and disengage from the American Empire. Without Europe to host its military bases and to parrot its propaganda, Washington’s ability to threaten Russia would significantly decline. Indeed, a continuation of the hostile threatening attitude toward Russia would leave Washington isolated in the world. No country wants the risk of experiencing nuclear war merely for the sake of Washington’s unilateralism.
