Written by Paul Craig Roberts; Originally appeared at paulcraigroberts.org
Among the ruling interests in the US, one interest even more powerful than the Israel Lobby—the Deep State of the military/security complex— there is enormous fear that an uncontrollable President Trump at the upcoming Putin/Trump summit will make an agreement that will bring to an end the demonizing of Russia that serves to protect the enormous budget and power of the military-security complex.
You can see the Deep State’s fear in the editorials that the Deep State handed to the Washington Post (June 29) and New York Times (June 29), two of the Deep State’s megaphones, but no longer believed by the vast majority of the American people. The two editorials share the same points and phrases. They repeat the disproven lies about Russia as if blatant, obvious lies are hard facts.
Both accuse President Trump of “kowtowing to the Kremlin.” Kowtowing, of course, is not a Donald Trump characteristic. But once again fact doesn’t get in the way of the propaganda spewed by the WaPo and NYT, two megaphones of Deep State lies.
The Deep State editorial handed to the WaPo reads: “THE REASONS for the tension between the United States and Russia are well-established. Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine, instigated a war in eastern Ukraine, intervened to save the dictatorship of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, interfered in the U.S. presidential election campaign to harm Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump, poisoned a former intelligence officer on British soil and continues to meddle in the elections of other democracies.”
The WaPo’s opening paragraph is a collection of all the blatant lies assembled by the Deep State for its Propaganda Ministry. There have been many books written about the CIA’s infiltration of the US media. There is no doubt about it. I remember my orientation as Staff Associate, House Defense Appropriation Subcommittee, when I was informed that the Washington Post is a CIA asset. This was in 1975. Today the Post is owned by a person with government contracts that many believe sustain his front business.
And don’t forget Udo Ulfkotte, an editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, who wrote in his best seller, Bought Journalism, that there was not a significant journalist in Europe who was not on the CIA’s payroll. The English language edition of Ulfkotte’s book has been suppressed and prevented from publication.
The New York Times, which last told the truth in the 1970s when it published the leaked Pentagon Papers and had the fortitude to stand up for its First Amendment rights, repeats the lies about Putin’s “seizure of Crimea and attack on Ukraine” along with all the totally unstantiated BS about Russia interferring in the US president election and electing Trump, who now kowtows to Putin in order to serve Russia instead of the US. The editorial handed to the NYT insinuates that Trump is a threat to the national security of America and its allies (vassals). The problem, the NYT declares, is that Trump is not listening to his advisors.
Shades of President John F. Kennedy, who did not listen to the CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff about invading Cuba, nuking the Soviet Union, and using the false flag attack on America of the Joint Chiefs’ Northwoods Project (look it up online). Is the New York Times setting up Trump for assassination on the grounds that he is lovely-dovey with Russia and sacrificing US national interests?
I would bet on it.
While the Washington Post and New York Times are telling us that if Trump meets with Putin, Trump will sell out US national security, The Saker says that Putin finds himself in a similar box, only it doesn’t come from the national security interest, but from the Russian Fifth Column, the Atlanticist Integrationists whose front man is the Russian Prime Minister Medvedev, who represents the rich Russian elite whose wealth is based on stolen assets during the Yeltsin years enabled by Washington. These elites, The Saker concludes, impose constraints on Putin that put Russian sovereignty at risk. Economically, it is more important to these elites for financial reasons to be part of Washington’s empire than to be a sovereign country. http://thesaker.is/no-5th-column-in-the-kremlin-think-again/
I find The Saker’s explanation the best I have read of the constraints on Putin that limit his ability to represent Russian national interests.
I have often wondered why Putin didn’t have the security force round up these Russian traitors and execute them. The answer is that Putin believes in the rule of law, and he knows that Russia’s US financed and supported Fifth Column cannot be eliminated without bloodshed that is inconsistent with the rule of law. For Putin, the rule of law is as important as Russia. So, Russia hangs in the balance. It is my view that the Russian Fifth Column could care less about the rule of law. They only care about money.
As challenged as Putin might be, Chris Hedges, one of the surviving great American journalists, who is not always right but when he is he is incisive, explains the situation faced by the American people. It is beyond correction. American civil liberties and prosperity appear to be lost. https://russia-insider.com/en/politics/america-shows-many-signs-impending-catastrophic-collapse-pulitzer-prize-winner-explains
In my opinion, Hedges leftwing leanings caused him to focus on Reagan’s rhetoric rather that on Reagan’s achievements—the two greatest of our time—the end of stagflation, which benefited the American people, and the end of the Cold War, which removed the theat of nuclear war. I think Hedges also does not appreciate Trump’s sincerety about normalizing relations with Russia, relations destroyed by the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes, and Trump’s sincerety about bringing offshored jobs home to American workers. Trump’s agenda puts him up against the two most powerful interest groups in the United States. A president willing to take on these powerful groups should be appreciated and supported, as Hedges acknowledges the dispossessed majority do. If I might point out to Chris, whom I admire, it is not like Chris Hedges to align against the choice of the people. How can democracy work if people don’t rule?
Hedges writes, correctly, “The problem is not Trump. It is a political system, dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which we [the American people] don’t count.”
Hedges is absolutely correct.
It is impossible not to admire a journalist like Hedges who can describe our plight with such succinctness:
“We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowlege, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and banks destroy the economy.”
Read The Saker’s explanation of Russian politics. Possibly Putin will collapse under pressure from the powerful Fifth Column in his government. Read Chris Hedges analysis of American collapse. There is much truth in it. What happens if the Russian people rise up against the Russian Fifth Column and if the oppressed American people rise up against the extractions of the military/security complex? What happens if neither population rises up?
Who sets off the first nuclear weapon?
Our time on earth is not just limited by our threescore and ten years, but also humanity’s time on earth, and that of every other species, is limited by the use of nuclear weapons.
It is long past the time when governments, and if not them, humanity, should ask why nuclear weapons exist when they cannot be used without destroying life on earth.
Why isn’t this the question of our time, instead of, for example, transgender toilet facilities, and the large variety of fake issues on which the presstitute media focuses?
The articles by The Saker and Chris Hedges, two astute people, report that neither superpower is capable of making good decisions, decisions that are determined by democracy instead of by oligarchs, against whom neither elected government can stand.
If this is the case, humanity is finished.
Here are the Washington Post and New York Times editorials:
Washington Post
June 29, 2018
Editorial
Trump is kowtowing to the Kremlin again. Why?
Ahead of a summit with Putin, Trump is siding with the Russian leader, with dangerous results.
THE REASONS for the tension between the United States and Russia are well-established. Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine, instigated a war in eastern Ukraine, intervened to save the dictatorship of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, interfered in the U.S. presidential election campaign to harm Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump, poisoned a former intelligence officer on British soil and continues to meddle in the elections of other democracies. Yet on Wednesday in the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin brushed it all aside and delivered the Russian “maskirovka,” or camouflage, answer that it is all America’s fault.
Meeting with John Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, Mr. Putin declared that the tensions are “in large part the result of an intense domestic political battle inside the U.S.” Then Mr. Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov insisted that Russia “most certainly did not interfere in the 2016 election” in the United States. On Thursday morning, Mr. Trump echoed them both on Twitter: “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!”
Why is Mr. Trump kowtowing again? The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russia did attempt to tilt the election using multiple campaigns, including cyberintrusions and insidious social media fakery. Would it be so difficult to challenge Mr. Putin about this offensive behavior? A full accounting has yet to be made of the impact on the election, but Mr. Bolton did not mince words last year when he described Russian interference as “a true act of war” and said, “We negotiate with Russia at our peril.” And now?
Summits can be productive, even – maybe especially – when nations are at odds. In theory, a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, now scheduled for next month in Helsinki, could be useful. But a meeting aimed at pleasing Mr. Putin is naive and foolhardy. A meeting aimed at pleasing Mr. Putin at the expense of traditional, democratic U.S. allies would be dangerous and damaging.
Just as Mr. Bolton was flattering Mr. Putin, Russia was engaging in subterfuge on the ground in Syria. The United States, Russia and Jordan last year negotiated cease-fire agreements in southwestern Syria, along the border with Jordan and the Golan Heights. In recent days, the United States has warned Russia and its Syrian allies not to launch an offensive in the area, where the rebel forces hold parts of the city of Daraa and areas along the border. The State Department vowed there would be “serious repercussions” and demanded that Russia restrain its client Syrian forces. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, saying an offensive would be unacceptable. All to no avail; Syria is bombing the area.
This is what happens when Mr. Trump signals, repeatedly, that he is unwilling or unable to stand up to Russian misbehavior. We are on dangerous ground. Either Mr. Trump has lost touch with essential U.S. interests or there is some other explanation for his kowtowing that is yet unknown.
New York Times
June 29, 2018
Editorial
Trump and Putin’s Too-Friendly Summit
It’s good to meet with adversaries. But when Mr. Trump sits down with Mr. Putin, it will be a meeting of kindred spirits. That’s a problem.
It’s good for American presidents to meet with adversaries, to clarify differences and resolve disputes. But when President Trump sits down with President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Finland next month, it will be a meeting of kindred spirits, and that’s a problem.
One would think that at a tête-à-tête with the Russian autocrat, the president of the United States would take on some of the major concerns of America and its closest allies. Say, for instance, Mr. Putin’s seizure of Crimea and attack on Ukraine, which led to punishing international sanctions. But at the Group of 7 meeting in Quebec this month, Mr. Trump reportedly told his fellow heads of state that Crimea is Russian because everyone there speaks that language. And, of course, Trump aides talked to Russian officials about lifting some sanctions even before he took office.
One would hope that the president of the United States would let Mr. Putin know that he faces a united front of Mr. Trump and his fellow NATO leaders, with whom he would have met days before the summit in Helsinki. But Axios reported that during the meeting in Quebec, Mr. Trump said, “NATO is as bad as Nafta,” the North American Free Trade Agreement, which is one of Mr. Trump’s favorite boogeymen.
Certainly the president would mention that even the people he appointed to run America’s intelligence services believe unequivocally that Mr. Putin interfered in the 2016 election to put him in office and is continuing to undermine American democracy. Right? But on Thursday morning, Mr. Trump tweeted, “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!”
More likely, Mr. Trump will congratulate Mr. Putin, once again, for winning another term in a sham election, as he did in March, even though his aides explicitly warned him not to. And he has already proposed readmitting Russia to the Group of 7, from which it was ousted after the Ukraine invasion.
Summits once tended to be carefully scripted, and presidents were attended by senior advisers and American interpreters. At dinner during a Group of 20 meeting last July, Mr. Trump walked over to Mr. Putin and had a casual conversation with no other American representative present. He later said they discussed adoptions – the same issue that he falsely claimed was the subject of a meeting at Trump Tower in 2016 between his representatives and Russian operatives who said they had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
It’s clear that Mr. Trump isn’t a conventional president, but instead one intent on eroding institutions that undergird democracy and peace. Mr. Trump “doesn’t believe that the U.S. should be part of any alliance at all” and believes that “permanent destabilization creates American advantage,” according to unnamed administration officials quoted by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic.
Such thinking goes further than most Americans have been led to believe were Mr. Trump’s views on issues central to allied security. He has often given grudging lip service to supporting NATO, even while complaining frequently about allies’ military spending and unfair trade policies.
The tensions Mr. Trump has sharpened with our allies should please Mr. Putin, whose goal is to fracture the West and assert Russian influence in places where the Americans and Europeans have played big roles, like the Middle East, the Balkans and the Baltic States.
Yet despite growing anxieties among European allies, Mr. Trump is relying on his advisers less than ever because, “He now thinks he’s mastered this,” one senior member of Congress said in an interview. That’s a chilling thought given his inability, so far, to show serious progress on any major security issue. Despite Mr. Trump’s talk of quick denuclearization after his headline-grabbing meeting with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, experts say satellite imagery shows the North is actually improving its nuclear capability.
While the White House hasn’t disclosed an agenda for the Putin meeting, there’s a lot the two leaders should be discussing, starting with Russian cyberintrusions. Mr. Trump, though, has implied that Mr. Putin could help the United States guard against election hacking. And although Congress last year mandated sweeping sanctions against Russia to deter such behavior, Mr. Trump has failed to implement many of them.
In a similar vein, should Mr. Trump agree to unilaterally lift sanctions imposed after Moscow invaded Ukraine and started a war, it would further upset alliance members, which joined the United States in imposing sanctions at some cost to themselves. Moreover, what would deter Mr. Putin from pursuing future land grabs?
Mr. Trump could compound that by canceling military exercises, as he did with South Korea after the meeting with Mr. Kim, and by withdrawing American troops that are intended to keep Russia from aggressive action in the Baltics.
Another fraught topic is Syria. Mr. Trump has signaled his desire to withdraw American troops from Syria, a move that would leave the country more firmly in the hands of President Bashar al-Assad and his two allies, Russia and Iran. Russia, in particular, is calling the shots on the battlefield and in drafting a political settlement that could end the fighting, presumably after opposition forces are routed.
What progress could be made at this summit, then? Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin may find it easier to cooperate in preventing a new nuclear arms race by extending New Start, a treaty limiting strategic nuclear weapons that expires in 2021.
Another priority: bringing Russia back into compliance with the I.N.F. treaty, which eliminated all U.S. and Soviet ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, until Russia tested and deployed a prohibited cruise missile.
Mr. Trump’s top national security advisers are more cleareyed about the Russian threat than he is. So are the Republicans who control the Senate. They have more responsibility than ever to try to persuade Mr. Trump that the country’s security is at stake when he meets Mr. Putin, and that he should prepare carefully for the encounter.
NYT & Washington Post are only fit for toilet paper
Agreed! They are bought and paid for.
My ass is too good to be touched by either rag. The pyre! The pyre!!
I would not even let my cat take a shit on those rags.
What I expect to happen between now and the scheduled summit is false flags attacks against both the Russians and the Americans. Every devious trick in the book is going to be considered and implemented to prevent the summit from happening.
Ships, planes, trains, buses, schools, sports, and common place gatherings of all kinds….
The deep state know that they are being cornered.
South front starts to publish the same crap “RI” is publishing. How unfortunate development to read same rubbish everywhere and these (would be) Western self proclaimed “experts” on Russia PCR and Saker.
All we now need is some pro-NAZI and few liberal articles and it will be another “RI”.
jako, you haven’t realized yet butt your days are done. You and your ilk are being ignored or ridiculed – your pov’s discredited by anyone with any intelligence whatsoever. You have FAILED.
Time to flock off with the rest of the bird brains infesting and infecting the online sites that actually provide solid information rather than infotainment and the propaganda you spew 24/7.
” In my opinion, Hedges leftwing leanings caused him to focus on Reagan’s rhetoric rather that on Reagan’s achievements—the two greatest of our time—the end of stagflation, which benefited the American people, and the end of the Cold War, which removed the theat of nuclear war. ”
In my opinion , PCR’s participation in the Reagan admin “achievements” causes him to gloss over the fact that the Reagan-Thatcher dynamic duo ushered in the disastrous Washington Consensus era – financialized , debt-fueled economics , compounded by tax policies increasingly favoring the already rich , that has led us to our current , no-way-out predicament. This was not a result of “rhetoric” , it was a result of conscious policy-making.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=kjnW
The New York Times is definitely the new “Flagship” of the ZioNazi propaganda armada. It used to be the International Herald Tribune, but that seems to have changed recently. I used to always say that you can tell what the ZioNazis are planning next by reading their international shit sheets . .
If you follow the money trail, all the big media is owned by banks. Rothschilds controls the Guardian newspaper, and if you look up who controls most of the American media, you find the names of the key people are all Jewish. Fox is the only non Jewish media outlet in the USA, and the only one to print stories about the corruption within the FBI, DOJ and the Democratic party.
That’s why Comcast wants Fox, to censor the news.
What stupor must grip a man willing to nod his head at those editorials?
Especially in how the war against Syria is represented.
There are no finer examples of fake news.
That was the most disappointing article I’ve seen from Roberts. It is not patently obvious that Trump is a tool of the deep state? An actor, paid to be outrageous, to distract, to make the Establishment seem wise and virtuous in contrast to him? They are using the pretence of discord between Trump and the Establishment to sell the Establishment to the people once more. Trump was hired for that job.
They will use him as an icon around which to gather all the things they wish to eliminate, which will be accomplished by his using his deliberately provocative and stupid statements and acts, as well as the band of useful idiots he gathers to aire in the media, to condemn it all. By associating things like decent relations with Russia, the 2nd Amendment, or refusing their Climate Change plot, with a hateful demogogue and his throngs of racist, sexist, xenophobic morons, they hope to discredit those things once and for all to the rest of society.
And Reagonomics? Really? This is pitiful stuff, Mr. Roberts.
How could you pass this comment over, JS:
“…Is the New York Times setting up Trump for assassination on the grounds that he is lovely-dovey with Russia and sacrificing US national interests?
I would bet on it…”
Who will be president if that happens? Yup – Mike ‘The Undertaker’ Pence, who will usher in the amped-up authoritarian state, ‘correct’ the situation in Syria (=destroy it) for Israel’s security, start the war to destroy Iran (for the same reason) and then move on to the big one if it hasn’t started by then: Putin and Russia.
If you were the deep state, would you use Trump as the end game, or the transitional clown to draw the lightning bolts first, paving the way for your real ‘candidate’? And if Pence, Ryan and Hatch (next in order of succession) are with the president and/or the deep state takes them all out, then – wonder of wonders – the our last CIA director Mike Pompeo becomes the new president. If Pence is Trump on steroids, then Pompeo is Trump on steroid and amphetamines.
Fair enough. I didn’t give that much thought, because I feel certain he is in on his role. However, I suppose that when I consider it, the possibility that a.) as a 72 year old Freemason, he might agree to be sacrificed after his years of fun b.) that they would fake said assassination, or c.) that they’d kill him without him knowing despite him otherwise being in on it, are all reasonable. Good call.
This is very insightful
I bet the states break up first.
USA = Israel = ISIS = EU
Putin = Netanyahu = Trump = Merkel
Putin is a jewboy and Trump is their toy: http://geopolitics-behind-the-mask.36089.n8.nabble.com/Sacred-Cow-Slaughterhouse-of-the-totally-non-kosher-kind-Look-out-below-td169.html
And YOU? You are as fake as the money in your pocket.
You ARE the problem. You don’t have a problem. Proof? You keep voting for the same governments even though you know they are evil = YOU are evil.
Isn’t it ironic that PCR and Saker both want Russia to act as if it were the Spoviet Union, and Putin, as if he were Stalin? At the same time, PCR worships Reagan, who famously brought down the Soviet Union (he did not, actually, not a nonentity like him), and the Saker idolizes Solzhenitsin, who was very intrumental in poisoning the minds and eventually bringing down the Soviet Union. PCR and the Saker both assisted in the undoing of the Soviet Union, and the Saker still shits on the SU at every opportunity *(otherwise he would have to disavow his Solzhenitsin cult and admit that much of his life was wasted working for the wrong cause). Now they want Russia to be the Soviet Union again (round up those “atlantic integrationists”).
That’s an interesting line of thought. If you manage to carry it further, do share.
PCR & Saker declared Russo-philes and “experts” (that can’t really care less about Russia & Russians)
I second here Joseph Scott “If you manage to carry it further” and develop it would be interesting. PCRoberts is ” to act as if it were the Soviet Union” yet he was instrumental in everything that was destroying the USSR. Interesting “line of thought”
It looks like those two are people with issues and want Russia to be instrument that blocks sources of their Western frustrations. But than huge number of US ( people from the West) here and on “RI” are like that. They all want that Russia do something to compensate their inability to act or resist or “punish” all the negative developing processes on the West.
You are making a good point here, Jako. They all want Russia to do things for them, to “punish the evil ones,” to wage wars on their behalf. Some are more patient than others. But many are impatient. “Onward, Christian Orthodox, post-Soviet, globalized, greedy capitalist, unconscionable, its own history-hating Russia!!!” they cry. “Fight this war for us, vanquish the evil!” In fact, i am no different. I also want Russia to do great things, tough and resolute things in the defense of good versus evil.
Thanks Mish ! That would do for me as an conclusion. I specially like that ————————————– “Onward, Christian Orthodox, post-Soviet, globalized, greedy capitalist, unconscionable, Tsar-killing, formerly Jew-controlled for 70 years, its own history-hating Russia!!!”they cry” :-))) —————————————————- I agree. People are too subjective, they project their frustrations and have expectations from Russia that have nothing to do with reality any more.
While I have no doubt there are forces behind out ‘elected’ government that have undermined the American ideal and made the US a rogue nation, your nostalgia for Reagan is sadly misplaced. The outrageous Iran Contra scandal was hardly a shining hour in US foreign policy and more attributable to the deep state than the senescent Reagan. While the ricos prospered with favorable tax laws, the 99% saw their hopes for the future evaporate under a spate of downsizing, offshoring and disastrous trade agreements and the ridiculous notion of trickle down. The scandal ridden administration gutted the EPA of anyone vaguely interested in conservation, the revolving door positively whistled (illegally) with members of Congress finding cushy billets in industry and visa versa. We had the S&L collapse, the beginning of visible homelessness with mental patients being pushed out onto the streets, Pentagon bid rigging and the beginning of the Mujahadeen and the disaster that became Afghanistan.