Week 41, 2017

Stephen Cohen, the top US expert on Russia, continues his lonely battle against the MSM [1, 2]. As usually, he debunks the lies told by the MSM and the danger of this anti-Russian hysteria. Probably the most surprising news for the Westerners will be to hear that Russia has overcome the recession caused by the low oil prices and successfully battles the Western sanctions. Contrary to what you hear on the MSM, what is failing is the policy of isolating Russia. The only thing that these sanctions can achieve is to cement the Russia-China alliance, but as it should be clear from Prof. Mearsheimer this can only benefit China, at the USA expense...

Now I want to turn to another topic, because I had a conversation this week where we talked that we need more women in politics. I agree in principle - women are more cooperative, and on average, could give us better politicians. But the most famous women politicians do not fulfill our expectation. This could be because there are not enough of them, but it could also be because the political problems we have a systemic. I think that the leaders we get are largely the product of the system in place. Therefore, when a woman comes on top as a leader in USA for example, we should not expect much change. I could give Thatcher and Madeleine Albright as example of terrible female politicians, who are responsible for the death and suffering of a lot of people, but our conversation turned to Hillary Clinton and I promised to back up with facts my claim that she was, and still is, a horrible choice for the USA, and even more so for the World.
There are already books on why Hillary Clinton lost the presidential elections last year, including by Hillary herself. So, there is plenty of information out there, but many people still believe in the fantasy that she and her supporters are presenting. Clinton's wing of the democratic party, which de facto controls the party, is one of the main forces behind the Russia-gate. The tragedy is that in pursuit of this fantasy the Democrats are going in bed with the neocons. As a result, there is practically no opposition to war in the US politics anymore. There are plenty of peace loving people in the USA, and the strongest peace activists that I know of are American, but they are outside the mainstream, and they have no way of stopping anything the USA government does.
So, contrary to what the MSM is telling us (mainly blaming Putin), here are some real reasons for Hillary's loss:

• Hillary had no policy that could convince people to vote for her - this is probably not a very important reason because in US most people do not vote on issues, but on images. However, despite all the money she got, she and her election machine failed to create a convincing image. They struggled to overcome everything that made her look bad. Things like her foundation, speeches to Wall Street, the rigging of the primaries against Bernie Sanders, etc. Therefore, it should not be a surprise, that:
• Hillary lacked support - you could not see this on the MSM because she had the support of the US rich and powerful elites. To see the truth, one had to rely on social media or sources outside the mean-stream. The picture presented by the MSM was so disconnected from the reality, that the reality became the domain of the comedians: here is Jimmy Dore, showing the crowds for Bernie and Hillary. And here is what people could see on social- and other non-MSM media.
• Hillary, together with her opponent, were the most hated presidential candidates in US history.
• Hillary could not win the working-class people because her voting track-record and positions were well known. People knew her hypocrisy because she supported NAFTA and was the candidate of Wall Street and the rich elites... (I used Barack Obama's words here, but I can show that he was not less of a hypocrite) 
• Hillary, as the Democratic candidate, should be the opposite of the climate-denying Republican party, but she could not excite even the environmentalists. And finally,
• Hillary was the candidate of the war machine. 

Of course, I cannot show all the reasons why Hilary is bad and why she lost. I simply tried to list some of the stuff that I have seen since the US elections started. And please, note that I did not point to right-wing, or Republican-leaning sources. If my goal was to throw mad at her, or bring some extreme points of view, I could have looked in other places...

week 40, 2017

This post could be called "The Russia-Gate Hysteria".
For the last year I had to read or listen something on this topic almost daily because it was impossible to avoid it. From the start it was looking like a propaganda effort because it either lacked facts, or it was based on "anonymous", or "intelligence" sources (that is, sources specialized in misinformation).
Even the occasional news that claimed to have been based on some facts, rather than earlier propaganda, turned out to be exaggerations, or were later retracted. Despite this the anti-Russian hysteria continues. It reached such scale that it is accepted as an axiom, i.e. without proof, and most Americans do not realize that it is based on racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and demagoguery.
I listen to the excitement of some friends (and tried to cool them down) who probably continue to hope that Russia gate will bring down Trump, but I did not write anything on this issue since January because what I wrote then is still valid. There have been new "developments" only in the sense that the hysteria grows bigger and bigger. There are no new facts. Only more efforts to cast a large enough net with the hope that something real will get caught.
It is astonishing to watch how most of the Western intellectuals play their role, like this highly paid journalist and author, instead of fulfilling their responsibility (which is to question the actions of those in power). I remember how I tried to explain to an American friend that nowadays the Western media is making propaganda on a level that I haven't seen in my life in communist Bulgaria. His response was that he cannot believe that there are no good people among the hundreds of professionals that work in his favorite Washington Post. Of course, there are good people in WaPo, but they are not the ones determining its editorial policy. The fact that WaPo is owned by a super-rich and unscrupulous Jeff Bezos should be enough to doubt anything in that newspaper, but my American friend, like most Westerners, believe in the objectivity of their news media.
There are a few truth warriors that dare to question or criticize the wisdom behind this propaganda, but they have no platform, and now the "deep state" is trying to squeeze even the few small independent (still surviving) news outlets by starving them from funding. One of these truth warriors is Stephen F. Cohen. Thanks to his high credentials as Russia expert, he was a leading commentator in the MSM for decades, but since the Ukrainian crisis he is no longer allowed there for the obvious reasons. Luckily, his wife is the editor of The Nation, and he can still publish there. Another one is Chris Hedges, who left The New York Times soon after he delivered this speech, in his efforts to educate his brainwashed fellow Americans...
To end this post on the anti-Russian hysteria, I recommend this article by a Professor of History at the Central Washington University. I have not seen any better, or more in dept analysis of the issue.

week 39, 2017

I decided that I should stop waiting for the time to write and publish a big blog piece because that time never comes...
Instead, I should simply write a few words each week, even if I don't have much time for research in order to find the best sources to make my point. Maybe that will lower the quality of my posts, but now I want to do it more as a record of my thoughts about the state of the world peace and the propaganda I see daily...
So, what am I thinking after week 39?
My biggest concern remains the USA - it goes crazier and drags Europe, and the rest of the World with itself. The hypocrisy and the propaganda to justify the wrongdoings of the West have no limits...
Let's look at the North Korea issue. We hear the demands that it abandons its nuclear program, we hear that Kim Jong-un is irrational, that N. Korea's nuclear and missile tests are provocations, etc. This all maybe true, but what if it all is in reaction to the American actions. As usual, the Western media does not tell us much about the history or circumstances that led to the "illegal", or "irrational" actions. So, please go to the trustworthy Consortiumnews.com and read about the Korean history, which may help you understand that "suicidal dictatorship" [1, 2]. The second of the two articles is especially important because it gives the policy options and analyzes them.
Even if we accept the propaganda that N. Korea is the worst dictatorship in the world, shouldn't we stop for a minute and ask ourselves: Why is it irrational to get WMD, if the evidence shows that the only way for a country to survive American efforts for "regime change" is to have WMD?
Every "dictator" that agreed to give up their pursuit of WMD got killed, and his country destroyed.
Is it irrational to fear a country that you are technically at war with, that has bombed you until its pilots complained that "there are no targets left", that is sanctioning you, and threatening you with "fire and fury like the world has never seen before"?
Let's not forget that this blog is also about propaganda. Today's media giants are instruments of propaganda, and the "Don't Be Evil" Google is showing us how it is done, but I will try to write more about that another time...
In relation to today's topic, I made a Google search for "Korean war casualties" and here is a snapshot of the result:

Do you notice something? You don't see North Koreans in the first page of search results although most of the human casualties were North Koreans. I guess for Google, or for the sources they rely on, North Koreans are not humans...
Anyway, after some digging, I found various numbers and it turns out that North Korea lost between 20% and 30% of its population! Here is a quote from General Curtis LeMay, as quoted in [Richard Rhodes, “The General and World War III,” The New Yorker, June 19, 1995, p. 53]:

“After destroying North Korea’s 78 cities and thousands of her villages, and killing countless numbers of her civilians, [General] LeMay remarked, “Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population.”

In order to comprehend what North Korea suffered, consider that during World War II the UK lost 0.94% of its population, France lost 1.35%, China lost 1.89% and the US lost 0.32%.
I know that my American friends find it difficult to believe that their nation can be seen as doing something evil, but that is probably because in every country the school history books are written to make the students in that nation feel good. If Americans could somehow comprehend what their leaders, secret services, and army, are doing to the rest of the world, they may not be so proud of their nation. Unfortunately, they are easily led to believe all kind of falsehoods in order to justify whatever their leaders want to do and make them feel good about it.
I mentioned Americans, but we, the Europeans are just as guilty, if not even more so. The reason is, because we can stand up to the American crazy policies. We, as their allies, can say "no" without fear of being destroyed, but we don't do it... We support them instead...
So, when we look at the facts (not the spin by the MSM) it should not be surprising that the North Koreans can be a little paranoid by their fear of a Goliath that they are technically at war with, but more importantly, we should understand that it is not irrational to seek a weapon that can deter that Goliath, i.e. the development of their own WMD.
This is not just the opinion of an amateur like me, this is also the opinion of six former high-level experienced U.S. government officials. You may have heard at least the names of the William Perry and George Shultz. They wrote that "Kim Jong Un is not irrational and highly values preserving his regime... Talking is not a reward or a concession to Pyongyang and should not be construed as signaling acceptance of a nuclear-armed North Korea. It is a necessary step to establishing communication to avoid a nuclear catastrophe. The key danger today is not that North Korea would launch a surprise nuclear attack. Instead the primary danger is a miscalculation or mistake that could lead to war.”
Unfortunately, we have US administration that is highly irrational and pushes the World on the path to destruction. Note that I am not saying Trump! The media makes a lot of noise about Trump, but he is just a clown. The problem is the "deep state", but almost all "progressives" in USA are now so busy getting rid of Trump that they support all war-mongers and that same "deep state" that keeps Trump on a leash.
The US democracy is a mirage. People vote, leaders and faces change, but the policy remains the same...
My few words for this week became quite a lot. So, it is time to stop.