In thinking about my own views on the American Empire, I considered the process of changing my own views. This after being told that I never I change my views. Not true, as I once believed that Oswald shot Kennedy, which means in retrospect I believed the most obvious (albeit state supported) lie in history, but later came to understand that Kennedy was a threat to the Military Industrial Complex and the secret, permanent government.
Basically I have reversed my opinion on Russia-gate. I once believed it was obvious that Putin supported Trump's election in 2016 by hacking the Democratic Party server and releasing information damaging to Clinton's campaign as well as using social media to break away Bernie Sander's supporters by amplifying our hatred of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party elite. I certainly believed it without reservation during the impeachment trial.
At the time, although I respected Ray McGovern, I dismissed his opinion that Russia-gate was a contrived event. I disagreed with Joe Lauria on this subject until he blocked me on FB. Later, when Matt Taibbi reported his findings as a result of a deep dive into the Twitter files, I dismissed him as most dedicated leftists did at the time. I dismissed heroic Glen Greenwald, who mirrored Taibbi's reporting, for the same reason.
In considering this question, I became troubled by the realization that any President or Presidential candidate who wanted to reverse the American Empire's lust for war would face exactly what Trump faced during his first term. He faced the fact that the Empire has decided that Russia must be America's enemy, and the deep state...then and now...will not allow peace to break out. I realized that the forces supporting the perpetual warfare state easily dismantled the possibility of peaceful coexistence before the idea could even be birthed in 2016.
After some reading and research regarding Russia, I learned that upon taking power Putin wanted a reset in Russia's relationship with the Europe and with the Empire. I learned that he was very serious about this, while at the same time opposing the expansion of NATO into former Soviet bloc countries. Reagan/Bush had promised that NATO would not be expanded, but what good is it to have an Empire if you cannot unilaterally break treaties and change course? After 9/11, Russia offered to cooperate with the Empire in the war against terror, but GW Bush and his neocon administration nixed this possibility. I learned that Russia did indeed cooperate with the Empire in defeating ISIS, while at the same time protecting Assad's regime in Syria. My point being that Russia and America did work together briefly and successfully under the Obama administration on this problem.
After reading Scott Horton's important book “Provoked” which described how the Biden administration provoked Russia's attack on Ukraine, the Empire's quest for war became obvious. Briefly, Biden immediately discarded the Empire's investment in Afghanistan (19 years, 2.3 trillion dollars, 2500 American deaths) in order to confront Russia. I learned that the Empire sent Boris Johnson to scuttle the Minsk II peace talks which were on the verge of success. Ukraine was told to end negotiation and to fight instead, with the promise that the Empire would support Ukraine. Neocon thinking in Washington understood fully that Ukraine could not defeat Russia but that Ukraine could weaken Russia, using young Ukrainian men to further that goal.
Horton's book “Provoked” explains in detail American Empire involvement in the 2014 Maiden revolution that replaced Ukraine's fairly elected leader to be replaced with an Empire friendly government, in order to further the goals of regime change in Russia.
I decided to learn about Putin's thinking and behavior prior to the invasion of Ukraine, so I decided to read “War with Russia?: From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate” by Stephen F Cohen. Cohen was an American scholar of Russian studies who wrote for the Nation Magazine. The book in a collection of articles which challenged America's prevailing attitude and behavior toward Russia. Cohen challenged the vilification of Putin in real time, as he realized that Putin and Russia wanted peace, but the Empire wanted war and conflict. As far as I recall, I was not aware of Cohen's writings at the time.
The American political left, of which I include myself, reacted poorly to Matt Taibbi's reporting, as he correctly reported that the Clinton team created the Russia-gate narrative in order to offset the negative news cycle regarding Clinton's illegal server and her deleted emails, as well as her behavior which prevented Bernie Sanders from any chance of begin the Democratic candidate for President. At the time Taibbi was revealing these facts, he was also revealing the efforts of the Biden administration to silence critics of it's Covid policies and it's support of the experimental mRNA vaccine, which I have written about at the Free Press and Substack. I did not want to hear this from Taibbi but I did expose myself to his writing on some level.
As an aside, Clinton and her supporters including John Brennan understood that Trump was a threat to democracy itself, and so they amplified the information in the famous Steele dossier. They blamed Russia for the hack of the Democratic server although the evidence was lacking. I may have done the same thing if I were her.
As a severe critic of the American Empire and having firm antiwar beliefs, I began to realize how impossible it is for anyone in America to stop the war machine. Michael Flynn resigned in light of reports that he had lied regarding conversations with Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak prior to the election. I failed to consider that all candidates for President communicate with other countries and that there was not necessarily anything nefarious in this. Along those same lines, Paul Manafort's behavior could be construed as efforts to establish a working relationship with Russia, which could result in peace, not war. However, in both situations, the behavior is nefarious if one assumes that Putin is an intractable evil enemy who wants to conquer the world.
In the middle of this 10 year process of changing my mind, America exploded the Nordstream II pipeline at Biden's direction. The Empire, aware of how the American public is uninformed and easily manipulated into believing almost anything, actually floated the idea that Putin blew up his own pipeline. While this is beyond ridiculous, and while Seymour Hersh reporting indicates that the Empire is responsible, a simple google search shows that this is still in dispute. This despite the overwhelming means, motive and opportunity of the Empire, as well as Biden telling reporters prior to the event that Nordstream II would be destroyed.
Even prior to the Empire's proxy war against Russia, I believed that Putin was a much more rational actor on the world stage than the American Empire. In my mind, there is no doubt that that the nexus of American Empire/Israel is the most likely entity to initiate a nuclear war. Every other country on the planet is in a defensive posture as the ever expanding military Empire encroaches.
I hope that the reader understands the process of demonizing the leadership of another country in order to feed the voracious war machine, as was done to Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Manuel Noriega, Bashar al-Assad and others. It is important because it is currently happening as the great Jeffrey Sachs describes here. At about 5 minutes in Sachs refers to a 2015 article by ambassador Robert Blackwell for CFR which openly says that America's goal is primacy, and it suggests military intervention in order for the Empire to achieve economic dominance. Repeating for emphasis, the paper suggests a military intervention not as a reaction to a military threat, or even a human rights violation, but instead suggests the response to China's economic success should be a military intervention. The entire report is here. The American Empire loves to kill people.
Imagine an attack on China. The Empire could bomb high speed rail, or this bridge or that one, the largest damn in the world, the largest glass elevator in the world, their AI technology centers or any of these 10 projects, or some future projects, Imagine the glee from American psychopaths as they celebrate this destruction.
Sachs notes that it does not really matter who the President is, none can stop this.
Today, the Orange King retreats from his meeting with Putin having achieved nothing. The war party will respond by amplifying the perceived threat and working to extend the conflict at the expense of Ukraine.
Meanwhile, we must recognize that the reason China is defeating the Empire economically is that the military industrial complex war machine is bankrupting the country, creating conditions for it's own economic failure. It plans to mitigate the economic failure with bombs, death and destruction.
Conclusion: I no longer believe that Russia made significant efforts to influence the 2016 due to facts learned over ten years. I also recognize how this is another in a long line of self initiated conflicts designed to prevent peace. I believe this is important because the American Empire intends to attack China in the long term, as ridiculous as that sounds. Observers should watch as the Empire works to foment a military conflict with a country that is defeating them economically and is not in any way a military threat.
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