When it comes to U.S. presidents, experience has taught me to always assume the worst. Irrespective of what the winning candidate said on the campaign trail, a few things things tend to happen once they’re sworn into office. To name a few, we almost always end up with a further expansion of the imperial presidency, more pointless wars, growth in the surveillance state and continued unaccountable pillaging by Wall Street. The worst trends and elements of society tend to grow no matter who sits in the oval office.
As such, I’m genuinely heartened by those rare occasions when a U.S. president tries to reduce geopolitical tensions and prioritize peace. This isn’t to say such attempts will work out perfectly, or work at all, but in a world in which a hammer-focused American foreign policy tends to see every situation as a nail, attempts at peace should at the very least be supported by those who claim to care about such things.
Nevertheless, here in America we’ve encouraged and rewarded a peculiar class of people who tend to cluster within specialized niches of the imperial economy, namely the mass media and think tanks often funded by military contractors and foreign dictatorships. While these types always cheer U.S. overseas belligerence, nothing gets them clutching their pearls more fiercely than Donald Trump doing something reasonable.
When it comes to U.S. presidents I’m nobody’s cheerleader, but if the executive tries to make the world more peaceful I’ll support it. If they do the opposite, I’ll oppose. As such, I’m on board with Trump trying to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and I’m glad he’s doing it. Naturally, mass media pundits took the opposite approach and immediately resorted to their trademark creepy militarism and ignorance.
One of the most telling examples came courtesy of an interaction between Washington Post opinion writer and MSNBC pundit, Jonathan Capehart and a non-pundit human over Twitter.
Of course, there’s always MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow who can be consistently relied on to find a way to link everything that happens in the world to diabolical mastermind Vladimir Putin!
This from @maddow is a perfect window into the prevailing mindset of elite liberal punditry these days: coming at Trump from the right to lament his call to pause US war games in Korea, and — need i say it? — inferring that this horrible development must be the fault of PUTIN. pic.twitter.com/cuDgHyDQPs
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) June 13, 2018
What an utter lunatic, but this sort of thing’s to be expected from mass media in the era of Trump. As I noted in a recent piece, May You Live in Stupid, Corrupt and yet Fascinating Times:
If anything, the media’s gotten worse since its total failure during the 2016 election and shows no sign of even wanting to improve. Much like the status quo in general, the mass media is fully committed to propagating a culture of stupidity and corruption.
And these are the people who lecture us about fake news.
Incredibly enough, these professional propagandists get worse by the day. For example, just as militaristic Maddow was getting her audience into another Russia-conspiracy tizzy, the network canceled the appearance of an actual expert on Korea.
I was supposed to be on @MSNBC on @allinwithchris to talk about the Trump-Kim summit at this hour. My appearance from Singapore was scheduled over a week ago & I had cleared my schedule to make sure I could be on. But I was cancelled at the last minute for Democratic lawmakers.
— 'I just want you to know I can see thru your mask' (@TimothyS) June 13, 2018
Finally, just as mass media was having a uniform panic attack about a peace summit, those peacenik Middle East democracies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, were preparing an attack on the port of Hodeidah in Yemen, a move that could lead to the starvation of millions.
It’s worth remembering that the U.S. government plays a direct role in Yemeni atrocities by arming and refueling the planes of the Gulf states responsible for the greatest humanitarian disaster on earth at the moment, yet U.S. mass media barely pays it any mind.
As Reuters reported in late May:
GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations aid chief urged the Saudi-led military coalition that controls Yemen’s ports to expedite imports of food and fuel supplies, warning that a further 10 million Yemenis could face starvation by year-end.
Yemen is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations, with some 8.4 million people severely short of food and at risk of starvation.
For the past three years, the Yemeni government backed by Riyadh’s coalition which is armed and supported by the United States and Britain has battled Houthi fighters aligned to Iran.
“I am particularly concerned about the recent decline of commercial food imports through the Red Sea ports,” Mark Lowcock, U.N. emergency relief coordinator, said in a statement read out to a Geneva briefing on Friday.
For several weeks at the end of last year, the Saudi coalition imposed a blockade on Yemeni ports which it said was to prevent Houthis from importing weapons. This had a severe impact on Yemen, which traditionally imports 90 percent of its food.
Naturally, the Saudis (with U.S. approval and assistance) have decided to make the situation even worse. Here’s what went down earlier today:
(Reuters) – A Saudi-led alliance of Arab states launched an attack on Yemen’s main port city on Wednesday in the largest battle of the war, aiming to bring the ruling Houthi movement to its knees at the risk of worsening the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis…
The United Nations says 8.4 million Yemenis are on the verge of famine, and for most the port is the only route for food supplies.
Oh, and in case you missed it, the Saudis recently bombed a cholera treatment facility in Yemen.
But remember, Trump gave Kim Jong Un “legitimacy,” so let’s all obsess over that instead of potential U.S. sponsored genocide in Yemen.
I don't wanna hear lectures on North Korea from smug pundits who've supported every stupid war and been wrong about everything their entire lives.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) June 12, 2018
Finally, let’s never forget the following:
Brian Williams refers to this Pentagon video of missiles going to kill people as "beautiful" 3 times in 30 seconds pic.twitter.com/KBb3tP8qHT
— Trevor Timm (@trevortimm) April 7, 2017
That, ladies and gentlemen, is your mass media.
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Oh, would that this was getting beyond the choir …! For today’s BFF dictator (for history, Wiki Jean Kirkpatrick, and read Blum), I suspect Trump-Kim mtg was choreographed much earlier by backstage US and Chinese ‘planners’. NK is China’s puppet… but Iran is no one’s puppet… hence, requires war… not peace.
BTW, I read/’heard’ Tapper’s new book, ‘The Hellfire Club’… not much has changed. Seemed pretty evenhanded…maybe some non-choir will read it and see the light.
Anyone who thinks, knows the media, inc. NPR, is a joke, and merely corporate slaves. True journalists are outta work today.
Hilarious twitter feed from woke hoover! Love your work, Michael! The mass media (Matrix) is so desperate to regain the narrative, and thus control, that their efforts have become obvious and farcical. Yet, amazingly, the vast majority are still willfully blind, and believe that by watching and reading the news they are well informed.
It’s a nauseating time to be an American. Many of the so-called progressives have become frothing at the mouth warmongers, even moreso than the conservatives who supported Bush’s misadventures in the vein of resurrecting the Crusades. Many R’s have always reflexively supported wars, so being outdone by the D’s is no small feat. Hillary’s 2016 DNC rally was a military parade masquerading as a political campaign. The only thing missing was the goose stepping.
Now I find myself in league with Trump’s 9D chess worshipers because he doesn’t want war (at the moment) with the DPRK. For once Trump is doing the right thing and should be commended, but we know from conditioning that other misdeeds (Iran?) are probably lurking right around the corner. At that time I’ll be enemies with the Trumptards again. I shrug as I type that, I can’t even muster a reaction.
Worst of all, I can’t imagine how history will be kind to this American era. We’ll all be viewed (rightfully so) as crazed jingoists intent on leaving the world in flames. All this so that we can make the MIC a little more profitable. Were we bloodthirsty, stupid, or both? I hope the world learns the lessons of what’s gone wrong in 21st century America, but has a short memory about its people!
You ever try heroin, Tengen?
If not, you might wanna give it its day in court… might help you chill, brah.
The key to meaningful negotiation with any organization is to identify the decision-maker and only talk to that person, preferably in person.
Trump knows that so, that’s what Trump did.
I guess previous Presidents had difficulty identifying the decision-maker of this particular totalitarian dictatorship?
@Nightnthebox That’s a bit useless as a comment, don’t you think? Children understand how the power structure in NK works.
Don’t need heroin or any other mind altering substances when I’ve got American society at my fingertips. It’s as trippy as any chemical ever invented.
Is there a bigger whore in the MSM than Rachel Maddow?
They pay her 30K per show and she has an audience of 2m.
@tengen: first encounter with sarcasm, eh?
Don’t worry. You’ll get it.
Very impressing.
First I want to espress my relief that Trump made friends with NK. Yes, it appears maybe Trump is not really the madman hoping for any excuse to turn the earth surface to glass. There is a long well to climb out of. Trump cannot do anything to erase his war crimes. His worshippers conveniently forget the innocents murdered at weddings in Pakistan, the hundreds murdered by drones in various countries, the coddling of Israhell. If you do not think Trump is culpable, I invite you to hire a thug to kill someone you don’t like. Let’s see how that works out for you. I am not going to start worshipping any master/ruler. And to beat to the chase, I also hated Obama, the Clintons, Cheney, and the Bushes.
What is really amusing about the Putin accusation is that it steals all of Winnie the Pooh’s China credit for getting Kim to come to whatever senses he has thunder in the MSM.
In light of the fact that China is supposedly A-OK with the “resistance”, while Russia is the portal to Hades, it’s quite funny and richly ironic.
One of my “resistance” friends asked me what I thought of the summit. I said talking is always better than not talking, let’s hope something substantive comes out of it. There was a long pause and he replied,”yeah, I guess so.” I think ultimately these people are nostalgic. They refuse to accept that most people hated the status quo before Trump and that even if they succeed in getting rid of trump, we are never going back to the world that they knew.
The Kim photo op is irrelevant, except to the extent that it demonstrates a far different initial attitude from North Korea. Which it does, and that’s a good thing.
The real lever here is China, and always has been. What Trump’s team has done is take the antics of the Chinese faction that likes to use NK to cause trouble, and made them expensive to other factional interests within China. When the trouble-making faction gets its status lowered enough, the NK problem can be and will be addressed. That seems to be happening. We’ll see.
But the correct approach is being taken to the problem.
Oddly, the solution to NK requires the political wounding of the US Chamber of Commerce, and the political pieces are now in place to make that possible in America.
“The real lever here is China”
And the real lever for China is their deep seeded fear of Japan.
Kim firing missiles two different times over Japan in September was when he went too far for neo-Maoist Winnie the Pooh and Company to just continue to pay lip service to the NK problem while doing nothing of substance to help correct the NK/Kim problem.
I’m beginning to think that Kim did that on purpose to force China’s hand. Crazy like a Fox, comes to mind.
Regardless of the type of crazy, it definitely worked.
Genaro: “And the real lever for China is their deep seeded fear of Japan”
Yes and no. If Japan or South Korea had turned around and said “That’
s it, our only option is to develop nukes, our program starts tomorrow,” you would see an instant and total change in Chinese attitude. And probably a not-insignificant purge in their leadership. Thing is, neither country wants to do that, for different reasons; one might suspect Chinese intelligence has helped with those decisions, but they aren’t the only reason.
So what’s left is trade. But to threaten that, you have to go through China’s biggest American allies: the US Chamber of Congress. Well, that was just crazy talk.
Until the recent election, of course, when a left-right consensus began to form against the Chamber and its globalist policies. Trump’s going to fight these guys anyway… why not bring NK into the equation as a side benefit and also a stout club?
We’ll see how it works, but this does help to explain why the opening has suddenly appeared now and not before.
Brian Williams is a member of the Rockefeller CFR propaganda dept.
Raytheon, maker of “beautiful missiles”, is a CFR corporate sponsor along with Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop and DynCorp. David Rubenstein, billionaire founder of the Carlyle Group, is the current CFR chairman. Other notables include Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, John Bolton and George Soros. See lists in the CFR annual report.
Joe,
Keep in mind that Japan is already a nuclear threat to China because of the US-Japan alliance. Japan also has a superior Navy to China’s, and combined with US Navy in the Pacific they dwarf China’s Navy.
Another thing that’s been happening under the MSM radar is the fact that Japan has become much more militaristic both literally and figuratively (nationalistic sense) over the past decade. China is keenly aware of that fact.
Then there’s the fact that the Japanese have an extreme dislike for Koreans and the Chinese are a close 2nd on that list. Both are inu (Japanese word for dogs) as far the Japanese are concerned.
At this particular point in time from a geopolitical perspective with all of the things China has been up to in the eastern Pacific, the last thing Pooh Bear wants is a really pissed off Japan throwing a major spanner into the works.
Finally, as I have already pointed out the Chinese are innately afraid of the Japanese due to having their ass brutally and viciously handed to them by the Japanese for centuries whenever there’s a conflict.
There’s no substitute for experience when it comes to instinctive fear.
We’ll see America’s true colors about the Korean Peninsula, when and if North and South Korea start talking about re-unification. The U.S. is adamantly opposed to this. Which, of course, does not get reported in the MSM at all.
I would like to see North and South “talk together” about their peninsula and its future, without any U.S. involvement whatsoever. After all, both North and South Korea are sovereign nations capable of conducting their affairs without U.S. intervention.