Despite all the havoc (puinhoop. svh) Mr. Johnson’s Conservatives have caused, the party is in a stronger position than ever.
LONDON — Boris Johnson, Britain’s freewheeling, clownish prime minister, is about to play host.
On June 11, the day after a private meeting with President Biden, Mr. Johnson is scheduled to welcome other Group of 7 leaders to Cornwall, on the southwestern coast of England, to discuss climate change, the global pandemic recovery and the retreat of liberal democracy around the world.
Yet Mr. Johnson may have other things on his mind. Over the past few months, a series of scandals and allegations has put the prime minister under unusual pressure. There have been accusations of corruption, reports of bitter rivalries on his closest team and, to top it off, explosive testimony from his former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, that laid responsibility for the handling of the pandemic in Britain — where over 125,000 people have died of Covid-19 — squarely at Mr. Johnson’s door. Story by story, scandal by scandal, Mr. Johnson has been exposed as a slapdash, venal, incompetent leader.
But it doesn’t seem to matter. The Conservatives, despite the controversy, are still comfortably ahead in the polls — and even managed to defeat the opposition Labour Party in a recent by-election, claiming the northeastern constituency of Hartlepool for the first time. And Mr. Johnson, for all the outrage and acrimony, can greet his fellow global leaders in a spirit of triumph. With healthy approval ratings and at the helm of a party boasting an 80-seat majority, his power is assured.
Given Mr. Johnson’s inaptitude for office, bracingly illuminated by Mr. Cummings’s testimony, that’s quite remarkable. Speaking to Parliament for over seven hours on May 26, Mr. Cummings, who masterminded Mr. Johnson’s election win in December 2019 — but who was ousted from his role as chief adviser a year later — tore into the government’s catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic, eviscerated the prime minister’s character and declared him 'unfit for the job.' […]
The revelations came against a backdrop of reports exposing the Conservatives’ dodgy dealings during the pandemic: Covid-19 contracts worth billions of pounds going to friends of Conservative lawmakers with no experience in the health sector, business tycoons with direct lines to the prime minister to push their interests and a lavish renovation of the prime minister’s residence at Downing Street that involved a secret donation by a Tory backer. Talk of sleaze and Britain’s ‘chumocracy’ (heerschappij van vriendjes. svh) has permeated even the typically loyal pages of the right-wing press.
But Mr. Johnson (whose reputation for not just surviving career-ending controversies but thriving on them has earned him nicknames like ‘Teflon Johnson,’ ‘Houdini’ and, less flatteringly, ‘the greased piglet’) has coasted through the turbulence. Engulfed in scandal, unassailably popular — this has always been the essence of brand Boris. In his testimony, Mr. Cummings recalled complaining to Mr. Johnson that the handling of the pandemic was ‘chaos.’ ‘Chaos isn’t that bad,’ the prime minister replied, according to Mr. Cummings. ‘Chaos means that everyone has to look to me to see who’s in charge.’
The chaos may suit Mr. Johnson, but for Britain it has been devastating. The ultimate proof of the prime minister’s failings during the pandemic lies not with Mr. Cummings but in the concrete numbers: Mr. Johnson has led Britain to one of the highest Covid death rates in the world, overseen one the worst economic downturns in the Group of 7 and imposed the third-strictest lockdown globally. The success of the nation’s vaccination program — Britain has delivered more doses than any other country in Europe — has let Mr. Johnson reframe this tragedy as a triumph. But for tens of thousands of grieving families, it comes as little consolation.
Yet for all the specific peculiarities of Mr. Johnson’s persona — a dizzying blend of deception, bravado and self-deprecation — the jarring dissonance that defines his government, at once electorally successful and socially destructive, is not particular to the current prime minister. In many ways, it is the story of the modern Conservative Party. The party’s founding promise, laid down in Robert Peel’s Tamworth Manifesto in 1834, was to stop Britain from becoming a ‘perpetual vortex of agitation.’ Since the Conservatives regained power in 2010, Britain has become just that, with two referendums, three prime ministers and four general elections.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/opinion/boris-johnson-g7-biden.html
Kortom, in een respectabele westerse democratie maakt het niet uit dat een ‘clowneske,’ ‘glibberige’ en ‘corrupte’ minister-president een ‘incompetente’ premier is, een brokkenmaker die een ‘voortdurende draaikolk van opschudding’ genereert, en wel omdat de meerderheid van de kiezers zich herkent in zijn ‘duizelingwekkende cocktail van bedrog, bravoure, en zelfverloochening.’ De Britse schijn-democratie heeft mede onder invloed van de ‘corporate media’ liever een lachwekkende ‘paljas’ dan een serieuze leider van een nucleaire mogendheid. Het maakt de meerderheid niet uit dat Boris geen rekening houdt met een wereld, die aan de vooravond staat van een dreigende confrontatie tussen het bellicose Westen enerzijds en Rusland en China anderzijds.
Hoe oorlogszuchtig bijvoorbeeld de polderpers is blijkt uit de onbesuisde columns van de NRC-correspondente Caroline de Gruyter. Elke week schrijft zij ‘over politiek en Europa’ een opiniestuk, dat hooguit twee minuten leestijd kost, en daarom niet uitblinkt in inzicht en diepgang. Op 7 mei 2021 schreef zij onder de kop ‘De grens tussen oorlog en vrede in Europa is dunner dan we denken’:
NAVO-landen, waaronder achttien EU-landen, wezen 144 Russische diplomaten uit — een move die de Russen, in de gebruikelijke ontkenningsmodus, meteen pareerden.
Dit is militaire agressie van een staat op het grondgebied van een andere staat, lid van de NAVO en EU. Toch toonden maar vijf EU-landen zich solidair met Tsjechië. Er zijn weinig Russische diplomaten – of wat ervoor doorgaat – meer om uit te zetten. En Europa is verdeeld over de vraag wat het hiermee moet. Dit is grey zone warfare: geen oorlog, geen vrede. Sommigen willen hard zijn, anderen – zie Angela Merkels CDU-speech woensdag – willen de Russische beer niet op de staart trappen.
Precies wat Rusland wil, betoogt Jan Sir van de Karel Universiteit in Praag: ‘Het rekt de grens tussen oorlog en vrede op om te kijken hoe westerse landen reageren: hebben die dezelfde perceptie van een gebeurtenis? Nee. Dus kan Rusland doorgaan met deze operaties.’ Zo vervaagt Rusland het bestaande internationale regelsysteem — zoals ‘gij zult geen andere landen annexeren’ – steeds verder. Zodat het zijn gang kan gaan.
Twee uitdagingen die niet bij vredestijd horen, in één week. Waar ligt de grens? Betekent artikel 5 nog iets?
De stukjes van De Gruyter verraden een hetze tegen Rusland, die zo kenmerkend is voor het werk van de polderpers. Juist daardoor is de basis gelegd voor een Tweede Koude Oorlog. Nu nagenoeg alle westerse geopolitieke deskundigen van oordeel zijn dat het einde nadert van de westerse hegemonie moet kennelijk de geest rijp worden gemaakt voor een laatste, alles verwoestende oorlog met massavernietigingswapens. De zelfbenoemde kwaliteitskrant NRC Handelsblad loopt in dit proces voorop, net zoals zij, wat betreft collectieve stemmingmakerij, op 20 maart 2003 — de dag van de illegale inval in Irak — voorop liep toen de voltallige redactie en hoofdredacteur van de krant in een commentaar opriepen:
Nu de oorlog is begonnen, moeten president Bush en premier Blair worden gesteund. Die steun kan niet blijven steken in verbale vrijblijvendheid. Dat betekent dus politieke steun — en als het moet ook militaire.
Tegelijkertijd liet het avondblad weten dat zij aan ‘de casus belli tegen Irak’ twijfelde. Met andere woorden, de krant wist dat het hier een ‘agressieoorlog’ betrof, waarvan de rechters tijdens het Neurenberg Proces in 1946 bepaalden dat ‘to initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.’ Hoewel de toenmalige NRC-hoofdredacteur een jurist was, die wist dat hij opriep tot het plegen van een ‘supreme war crime,’ is hij nooit voor deze grove schending van het internationaal recht vervolgd, laat staan veroordeeld. En dit terwijl toch de Amerikaanse hoofdaanklager tijdens het Neurenberg Proces in 1946, Robert H. Jackson, destijds opgemerkt heeft dat:
If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.
De reden waarom er niet juridisch is opgetreden tegen de redactie en hoofdredacteur van de NRC is eenvoudig: de gevestigde orde heeft de mainstream-media nodig om oorlogen te verkopen aan het grote publiek. Bij de NRC komt hier nog een ander element bij, te weten het ‘Atlantisch Beginsel’ van de krant, dat, ironisch genoeg, veelvuldig de geclaimde ‘veiligheid van de wereld’ ernstig heeft geschonden. Caroline de Gruyter past naadloos in de NAVO-propaganda van haar krant. Tegelijkertijd is het veelzeggend dat goed geïnformeerde voormalige, prominente functionarissen van Amerikaanse inlichtingendiensten op zondag 13 juni 2021 het volgende memorandum aan president Biden stuurden:
With your meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Geneva just three days away, mainstream media are barely reporting — and at times distorting — olive-branch remarks by Putin, and are at pains to ‘accentuate the negative.’ We are particularly concerned over the incessant media commentary on ‘Russian hacking,’ which seems to be aimed at mousetrapping you into an ill-advised confrontation with Putin. Revelations since the last summit in July 2018 — including testimony under oath to Congress — give President Putin some very high cards. Should things get acrimonious, he might decide to put them into play.
Putin’s interview by NBC’s Keir Simmons Friday is a case in point. Little media attention has been given to Putin’s most salient remark (the language itself was given a sloppy, voice-over translation into English). Putin highlighted the welcome difference he sees in you in contrast to former President Trump. You, he said, are ‘a different kind of person, and I very much hope that… there will not be any impulsive acts from him’ (‘him’ meaning you). The NBC translator rendered the Russian, more ambiguously and somewhat misleadingly, saying Putin was very much hoping ‘there will not be any impulse-based movements on behalf of the sitting president.’
Similarly, speaking on Russia’s Channel 1 on June 4, Putin called you ‘an experienced, balanced,’ and ‘akkuratny’ politician. U.S. news services lazily translated that Russian word ‘akkuratny’ into ‘accurate.’ But the word means ‘cautious.’ The (invidious) comparison, of course, is with the highly impulsive, incautious Trump. Putin added that he hoped that those qualities would have a positive effect at the summit. These remarks grabbed no headlines in the Western Establishment media, which continues to demonize Putin and ‘all his works and all his pomps.’
Putin incurs some risk in going out on such a cordial limb before the summit. He is fully aware that important Russian politicians and personalities will pounce on him for having been naive in assuming a readiness on your part to do business, should the summit be a bust. Thus, to an extent, Putin may have been mirror-imaging when he pointed recently to the political pressures any US president faces in trying to improve relations with Russia. Putin conceded that ‘to a certain extent, Russia-American relations have become hostage to internal political processes in the United States itself.’ It would be a mistake to think that Putin does not have to deal with similar domestic pressure.
The NBC report on the Putin-Simmons interview featured the de rigueur bromide about Trump’s ‘shocking’ behavior at the July 16, 2018 summit in Helsinki (former CIA Director John Brennan called it ‘treasonous’).Therein hides an unambiguous warning to you that you must not succumb to the wiles and snares of ‘devil’ Putin, but rather hew to the party line.
Trump’s most grievous sin at Helsinki was his open distrust of the narrative promoted by US intelligence and its media allies that Putin personally ordered Russian intelligence to hack into the DNC server and exfiltrate emails highly embarrassing to Clinton, in order to help Trump win. How dare Trump shed doubt on this article of faith! How dare anyone cast aspersions on US intelligence ‘assessments’ — even if they are evidence-free!
Just two weeks before that summit, former Ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock wrote a review of the evidence, such as it was. (https://consortiumnews.com/2018/07/03/former-us-envoy-to-moscow-calls-intelligence-report-on-alleged-russian-interference-politically-motivated/) This, and the body of analysis prepared by VIPS on this neuralgic issue, may have contributed to Trump’s ‘shocking’ departure from orthodoxy.
By dwelling on Trump’s unacceptable performance, the media is warning you, sotto voce, that you’d better not back down from the duly authorized Democratic Party/U.S. intelligence/major media/evidence-impoverished story about Russian interference in the 2016 election, its cornerstone being alleged Russian hacking of the DNC emails.
Verdict Is In: Russian Hacking of DNC a Proven Fraud
We titled our first Memorandum to you (as president-elect) ‘Don’t Be Suckered on Russia.’ (https://consortiumnews.com/2020/12/20/vips-memo-to-biden-dont-be-suckered-on-russia/) We draw from some of it below, on the chance you did not get to see it:
You may be unaware that horse’s-mouth testimony given on Dec. 5, 2017 to the House Intelligence Committee gave the lie to claims that there is persuasive technical evidence that Russia hacked the DNC emails that WikiLeaks published on July 22, 2016. There is no such evidence.
Four years ago we warned, in somewhat technical — but easily understandable terms — why the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC would have been impossible without the National Security Agency detecting it. We were helped by revelations from Edward Snowden, the expertise of two former technical directors at NSA (members of VIPS), and, not least, by applying the principles of science, which – thank goodness — are impervious to political pressure. See our VIPs Memorandum of Dec. 12, 2016 (https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-dispute-russia-hacking-claims/).
We had to wait from December 5, 2017 to May 7, 2020, for the House Intelligence Committee to publish the sworn testimony of Shawn Henry, head of the DNC-hired cyber security firm CrowdStrike. Establishment media has now ignored Henry’s testimony for more than a year. (For reasons best known to ex-FBI Director James Comey, the FBI deferred to CrowdStrike to perform the forensics on what Sen. John McCain was calling an ‘act of war’ by Russia.)
Mr. Henry admitted under oath that there was no technical evidence that Russia, or anyone else, hacked and exfiltrated those damaging emails from the DNC. We hope, but cannot be sure at this point that you have been briefed on this.
If you plan to confront President Putin with allegations of hacking into the DNC emails, it is altogether likely he will cite the testimony of CrowdStrike head Sean Henry and ask you what evidence you are relying on.
As we reminded you in our December 20 Memo, there are a whole lot of people — in intelligence, the media, and the weapons industry — who are determined to get you off on the wrong foot with President Putin — for reasons that will be obvious to you. A confrontation over this neuralgic issue of hacking, on which so much other ‘Russia-gate’ accusations depend, would suit them just fine.
FOR THE STEERING GROUP: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity:
William Binney, former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center (ret.)
Bogdan Dzakovic, former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security (ret.) (associate VIPs)
Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator
John Kiriakou, former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst; CIA Presidential briefer (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council & CIA political analyst (ret.)
Scott Ritter, former MAJ., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq
Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA
Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army reserve colonel and former US diplomat who resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPs) is made up of former intelligence officers, diplomats, military officers and congressional staffers. The organization, founded in 2002, was among the first critics of Washington’s justifications for launching a war against Iraq. VIPS advocates a US foreign and national security policy based on genuine national interests rather than contrived threats promoted for largely political reasons. An archive of VIPS memoranda is available at Consortiumnews.com.
Voor degenen die niet ingewijd zijn in deze materie, zoals De Gruyter, wijs ik er graag op dat deze ‘veteranen’ van Amerikaanse inlichtingendiensten nauwe contacten onderhouden met inlichtingenfunctionarissen die nog in dienst zijn, en dus weten wat zich binnen die gesloten wereld afspeelt. Gezien de hoerigheid van de ‘corporate press’ is het ‘irrelevant’ dat ook mevrouw De Gruyter volstrekt ‘incompetent’ is om het publiek serieus te informeren. Een outsider als Caroline, ver van het centrum van de macht, kent al deze informatie niet, en voor zover zij wel iets daarover toevallig heeft opgevangen dan nog verzwijgt zij die. Over waarom zij dit doet de volgende keer.
1 opmerking:
Een beer heeft geen staart om op te trappen, ook de Russische beer niet.
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