CHAUNCEY DEVEGA - America's political class: They knew, and did nothing / The real crime Gen. Milley exposed: the cowardice of Senate Republicans
NB: The criminalisation of the state in the USA has been fairly obvious for some decades now. But our op-ed fraternity persists in spinning American interventions abroad (for example in this editorial) as attempts to 'remake other societies in the name of US global leadership.' Were the 1953 coup in Iran, the prolonged bombing of Vietnam after a staged provocation (the Gulf of Tonkin incident) in 1966; or the murderous coup-d'etat in Chile in 1973; or the assassination of Mujibur Rahman in 1975 - were all these 'efforts to remake' these societies? Or were they outright attempts at terrorist intimidation for the purpose of enforcing American interests? Criminal behaviour by ruling establishments is now a global trend which no-one attempts to hide any longer. There is a global breakdown of law and restraint. Only a concerted international satyagraha can confront it. DS
At times during the last five or so years, some of us have been living in the future. Sometimes just a day or two, but at other times it has felt like a week or perhaps even a month. During rare moments of immense clarity, it's like being in a time warp, a year or two ahead of the rest of the world. I'm talking about those of us, both with and without prominent public platforms, who have consistently sounded the alarm about Trumpism, American neofascism and the escalating crises to come. We were mostly ignored, and sometimes mocked and derided. The truth, one suspects, was too painful to accept for those Americans who for reasons of self-interest, cowardice, willful ignorance or indifference found it convenient to ignore our warnings.
It's clear that far too many Americans held tightly to the illusion of "normalcy" and a naive faith in the "institutions" of democracy. That was a bit like trying to hold onto a life preserver in a hurricane. For those who have understood the rising tides of American neofascism and the associated evils of Trump and his movement, the entire experience has often felt futile and frustrating. So why do we persist? …
The real crime Gen. Milley exposed: the cowardice of Senate Republicans
The Joint Chiefs
chairman, Gen. Mark Milley, stepped outside the realm of his
constitutional power to prevent Donald Trump from starting nuclear war with
China or Iran. It was definitely unconstitutional and probably
illegal. But he's not the true villain in this story; the true
villain is almost never mentioned in the press.
Trump's advisers
aren't the villains, either, although Trump was just the latest Republican
president advised by Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, whose partner in the years
after they advised Nixon, Lee Atwater, had passed away from brain cancer after making
a public apology for all the damage he did to our nation in the service of
Nixon's party and, later, George H.W. Bush (Willie Horton, et al).
And Nixon, too,
presented such a threat to world peace and democracy in America that his own
defense secretary, James Schlesinger, took actions remarkably similar to
Milley's, as was revealed by the Washington Post on Aug. 22, 1974. Schlesinger
and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs George S. Brown (who'd just taken that post on July 1, 1974), the Post wrote,
"kept a close watch to make certain that no orders were given to military
units outside the normal chain of command."…
https://www.salon.com/2021/09/22/heres-the-real-gen-milley-exposed-the-cowardice-of-senate_partner/
The Broken Middle - on the 30th anniversary of 1984
September
14, 1981, Forty Years Ago: Report on riots
Vanessa Thorpe: MI 6, the
coup in Iran that changed the Middle East, and the cover-up
Victor Jara murder:
ex-military officers sentenced in Chile for 1973 death
Tom
Engelhardt: Biden's indirect admission highlights the steady decline of
American empire
Guantanamo Bay - President Obama's shame: The
forgotten prisoners of America's own Gulag
Conversation with Lawrence Lifschultz: The American reporter who
investigated the assassination of Mujibur Rahman
Mohammed Hanif: The rest of
the world has had it with US presidents, Trump or otherwise
Donald Trump's gift to
America: Realizing we've never been a liberal democracy. By PAUL ROSENBERG
Chauncey DeVega: Trump is mentally ill but our real
sickness runs much deeper
TOM
ENGELHARDT: A World at the Edge
Alfred McCoy: The
crumbling delusion of Washington's endless world dominion
Andrew Bacevich:
High Crimes and Misdemeanors of the Fading American Century
