The USA – What Democracy?

Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist

Joe Biden will very probably be re-elected. No incumbent President has ever lost a primary (though it should be remembered the current primary system is younger than me). Only one sitting President has ever not been selected by their party to stand again, and that was knocking on two hundred years ago.

Both Biden’s main primary challenger, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and his likely Republican opponent, Donald Trump, are less than enthusiastic about promoting massive war in Europe and risking nuclear obliteration. (I hope everyone in the UK enjoyed the nationwide new alert test the other day and spent a few moments contemplating whether they would die instantly or slowly in agony).

The military industrial complex simply cannot permit a non-hawkish President. The sums of money at stake are enormous.

Trump, for all his many faults, was the only President in recent memory not to have started any wars. I know he continued some, but his entire Presidency needs to be seen as a dialectic between Trump and the intelligence service/military power base, in which to his credit Trump was never captured as completely as Obama. (Clinton and the Bush family did not need to be captured, they were always true believers).

Thirteen months ago, I wrote this:

The Biden laptop was leaked on 14 October 2020, three weeks before voting day in the Presidential election. Its suppression by the mainstream media, Twitter and Facebook, at the behest of the security services, is the biggest illegitimate interference in an election in modern western history.

The evidence has piled up since. It is truly astounding that incalculable volumes of media coverage have been given to largely groundless accusations of Russian intelligence in US Presidential elections, when this actual, entirely proven interference in a US Presidential Election, which arguably was key to Biden’s election, has in itself been largely suppressed.

The letter released by 51 former US intelligence officials, telling what we know know to be the outright lie that the Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinformation”, was initiated by the Biden campaign, according to sworn testimony from former Acting CIA Director Mike Morell – who was willingly a part of it with the declared aim of wanting Biden to win.

If you are not fully up to speed with this, this Wall Street Journal podcast is excellent.

It should be recalled that, apart from all the sex and drugs, the laptop contained emails showing plainly Hunter Biden leveraging his father’s influence to obtain lucrative business deals with, inter alia, Ukraine and China.

Three weeks before a close election, the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop could undoubtedly have swayed it, if it had not been massively and falsely derided as a Russian hoax by almost the entire mainstream media, and censored to death by Twitter and Facebook.

Since Elon Musk released Twitter files, we have known for certain that the FBI orchestrated the suppression of the story on social media. This Twitter thread is five months old but remains a must read.

It is, I think, the epitome of the corruption of modern mainstream media that, if you go to the CNN website you can still find a “fact check” item from CNN which states that Donald Trump was promoting Russian disinformation by referring to the Hunter Biden laptop.

Google searches differ depending on the person making them. But try this. Google for the exposure of the Hunter Biden laptop “Russian hoax” as itself misinformation. How many stories come up for you from the “liberal” media, from the BBC, New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NBC, Guaridan etc?

I get nothing on from them on the front page of my google search except the old CNN misinformation. That says a great deal both about the legacy media – and about Google.

So we have conclusive evidence from the Hunter Biden laptop story that the security services, corporate media and corporate internet gatekeepers were in cahoots to ensure the election of Joe Biden. What we see now is the same forces working to ensure that he is re-elected.

Now read this from Robert F Kennedy’s campaign website:

In the long term, a nation’s strength does not come from its armies. America spends as much on weaponry as the next nine nations combined, yet the country has grown weaker, not stronger, over the last 30 years. Even as its military technology has reigned supreme, America has been hollowing out from the inside. We cannot be a strong or secure nation when our infrastructure, industry, society, and economy are infirm.

A high priority of a Kennedy administration will be to make America strong again. When a body is sick, it withdraws its energy from the extremities in order to nourish the vital organs. It is time to end the imperial project and attend to all that has been neglected: the crumbling cities, the antiquated railways, the failing water systems, the decaying infrastructure, the ailing economy. Annual defense-related spending is close to one trillion dollars. We maintain 800 military bases around the world. The peace dividend that was supposed to come after the Berlin Wall fell was never redeemed. Now we have another chance.

As President, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will start the process of unwinding empire. We will bring the troops home. We will stop racking up unpayable debt to fight one war after another. The military will return to its proper role of defending our country. We will end the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations, coups, paramilitaries, and everything else that has become so normal most people don’t know it’s happening. But it is happening, a constant drain on our strength. It’s time to come home and restore this country.

In Ukraine, the most important priority is to end the suffering of the Ukrainian people, victims of a brutal Russian invasion, and also victims of American geopolitical machinations going back at least to 2014. We must first get clear: Is our mission to help the brave Ukrainians defend their sovereignty? Or is it to use Ukraine as a pawn to weaken Russia? Robert F. Kennedy will choose the first. He will find a diplomatic solution that brings peace to Ukraine and brings our resources back where they belong. We will offer to withdraw our troops and nuclear-capable missiles from Russia’s borders. Russia will withdraw its troops from Ukraine and guarantee its freedom and independence. UN peacekeepers will guarantee peace to the Russian-speaking eastern regions. We will put an end to this war. We will put an end to the suffering of the Ukranian people. That will be the start of a broader program of demilitarization of all countries.

This is astonishing stuff to be put before the American people from the scion of one of the great American political dynasties.

(I am aware of his chequered past, his support for Hillary over Bernie, and his Covid vaccine scepticism, though the latter appears to be more based on his long term commitment to tackling the profiteering and corrupt influence of big Pharma than an actual anti-vaccine stance).

I did not predict that the USA would become a gerontocracy. Biden shows signs of the mental decay that is a natural part of the human condition. He will not have to face Kennedy in any Primary debates – the NDC could be relied on to stitch up that potentially huge hurdle for him – but the risk of Biden detariorating further mentally in a way that is impossible to hide must exist for anyone of his age. So the Kennedy challenge is not without a slim hope.

A slim hope for a declared opponent of the military industrial complex is one hope too many, therefore the twin agencies of social media suppression and corporate media ridicule have already swung in to action against Kennedy.

The challenge must be choked at birth. The range of acceptable opinion to the US Establishment is now extremely narrow.

Trump remains an enigma. He is a mixture of far right prejudice and serious outbursts of commonsense. I do not doubt that he does have interests beyond the personal advancement of Donald J Trump, but only in an incidental way.

In Ukraine we are either going to see death and destruction on a scale well beyond the terrible horrors already inflicted, or there is ultimately going to be a deal involving the ceding of some territory to Russia (Crimea+, as my FCO sources tell me it is currently called in Beijing based diplomacy).

Trump says this. It is the kind of thing that makes the US military-industrial-security service complex hate him, as they are seeing super profits, massive resources and political influence stretching ahead for at least another five years. They don’t care at all how many Eastern Europeans die.

Trump is a much greater threat to Biden, and the full weight of the state is therefore being thrown into stopping him through lawfare. Some of this is very dubious, and subject to the perfectly true response that Bill Clinton was never prosecuted for remarkably identical behaviours.

Watching the agencies of the state find a way to stop Trump is going to be fascinating.

Russiagate was a hoax. There is however a real interference with what the public are allowed to know which makes the notion of “democracy” in the USA meaningless, and that is the interference of the security state of the USA itself.

Those interests got Biden into power, and will do everything and literally anything to help him stay there.

The British security state is of course complicit. A final thought.

It is fast approaching a year since Julian Assange submitted his High Court appeal against extradition, and still the High Court has not even decided if it will hear the appeal or not. We had initially hoped the actual hearing might be before last Christmas.

The Assange prosecution is not popular in the USA, where even the mainstream media have come out against charging a journalist with espionage.  In addition everybody can now see the parallel with Evan Gershkovich and potential impact of Assange’s treatment on Gershkovich.

Assange’s arrival in Washington would be a free speech cause celebre with the potential to alienate some liberal support from Biden in a close election. The US security services therefore still very much want Julian imprisoned for life – but they do not want him extradited until after Biden is safely re-elected.

The British government therefore need to keep Julian in maximum security in Belmarsh for another two years, to keep the Biden campaign and its security service backers happy.

This can only be done by introducing lengthy and unnecessary delays into the judicial process. We see that happening, or rather we see it “inexplicably” not happening, before our very eyes.

The senior British judiciary do what the security services tell them to do. Discreetly suggested, in the club.

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