This article was prompted by an address former U.S. Director of National Intelligence
Gen. James Clapper gave at Australia's National Press Club on June 8, 2017, evidently for the purpose of keeping Australia on side with the Anglo-American intelligence operation against President Donald Trump’s forging a cooperative relationship with Russia. Clapper, who served under President Barack Obama, is notorious for his false testimony in March 2013, when he claimed that the National Security Agency does not spy on Americans. It was seeing Clapper "lie under oath to Congress" that prompted whistleblower Edward Snowden to go public with documentation of NSA domestic spying. Thus Clapper is not the concerned American patriot he presents himself to be, but a dishonest shill for the so-called "intelligence community" of the "Five Eyes" (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand). This apparatus is the single greatest obstacle to world peace, responsible as it is for the rise of the al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorist menace, and for fabricating the blatant lies used to justify launching disastrous wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, which fueled more terrorism. This Anglo-American faction remains committed to a showdown against Russia and China, which can turn into a hot war.

The article appeared in the Australian Alert Service of June 21, 2017, which also printed
annotated excerpts of Clapper’s speech (available in English, at bottom of article).

The first time I heard it asserted that “17 intelligence agencies” of the United States,
civilian and military, had “all” concluded that the Kremlin ordered cyber-attacks on the U.S.
elections, it came from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, in her third debate with Donald
Trump last October. Who could imagine that seventeen investigations of Russia had been going on, and we hadn’t been told about them!

​At a Senate hearing on May 6, 2017, however, James Clapper finally clarified that there
were only three: the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI), and the National Security Agency (NSA). And the October 7, 2016 statement upon which
Clinton’s script-writers based her wild claim had been issued by only two agencies: the
Homeland Security Department and then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper’s own office.
It was Clapper himself who opened the door to the “17 agencies” formulation—which to this day continues to be repeated early and often by Russia-bashing members of Congress—by saying in that October release, “U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations.” The USIC formally includes 17 agencies, such as subsections of the Defense Department and State Department, most of which had nothing to do with the “Russian meddling” probe.

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                                                         Still ‘dressed to kill’

Over a number of years now the BCN (British Church Newspaper) has exposed the warmongering adventures of the transformed post-Cold War NATO (issues 280, 292, 301, 304, 319, 324, 328, 332). Of particular significance was “The 15th anniversary of NATO aggression against Serbia” published in issue 280, where I called the new NATO in reality the ‘North American Terrorist Organisation’.

NATO is still rightly remembered by many as the defensive alliance which successfully withstood the Soviet threat; but since the post-USSR Russian Federation no longer poses such a threat, NATO had to invent and exploit an imaginary continuing Russian threat in order to justify its existence today. By expanding NATO since the 1990s right up to Russia’s very borders, in blatant breach of a pledge not to do so if the Red Army would withdraw from Eastern Europe, the US recklessly created a perpetual provocation to Moscow and altered the whole purpose of the alliance’s continuing existence. Edward Spalton put the transformation well when he memorably described NATO’s unprovoked attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 as marking the “malign metamorphosis of NATO from a highly successful, limited, defensive alliance into a dangerous, all-purpose vehicle for unlimited aggressive ambitions, masquerading as ‘humanitarian intervention’”.

                                                                ‘Obsolete’...

In the current military and geopolitical context NATO is a redundant organisation which should have been completely disbanded in 1991 when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact collapsed. Thereafter NATO served no useful purpose other than being what former US diplomat and Senate policy adviser James Jatras called “an American-made mechanism for geopolitical control of Europe”. After Russia thwarted NATO’s attempts to take over Ukraine and establish a foothold in Crimea in the Black Sea, NATO chose Montenegro as its latest target for chaos in 2016 in an attempt to control the Adriatic Sea instead. Its ongoing aggression against this small Balkan state must be the subject of a separate detailed study.

During his Presidential campaign Donald Trump made it very clear that he considered NATO to be “obsolete” and that it did not contribute to – and was even dangerous to – American security. Unfortunately, like many of Trump’s other policies and promises, his attitude to NATO after his election weakened and changed. One suspects that when he dismissed the alliance as “obsolete” what he really meant was not the intention of the US to withdraw from the military pact, but rather to offload its running costs onto those 23 European nations which have not paid their fair share of contributions to their so-called ‘defence’ by NATO.

Trump’s visit to the NATO summit in Brussels on 25 May 2017 proved that he had in fact reversed the position taken during his campaign. Instead of being a critic of an “obsolete” NATO that was potentially dangerous to American security, he seemed “to have been sucked into the establishment position on NATO” and thus to have made the NATO leaders “very, very happy”. That established position has often been summarised as ‘to keep the Americans in Europe, keep the Russians out, and keep the Germans down’: the purpose has not changed, even if the Russian threat has now been proven as an imaginary one.

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​Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

As you prepare for the G20 summit on July 7–8 , 2017 in Hamburg, Germany,  I write you with the sense of extreme urgency. 

Today the whole world lives in the shivers of extreme exacerbation of militarism, belligerence and intolerance that threaten the Planet's very survival. Along with a number of peace-loving people, I appeal to your reason and moral courage to include in the Summit's agenda a dialogue on how best to assure the Safety and Health of the Planet with freedom, prosperity and dignity for all nations as the UN Charter commands.

I urge you to support the initiative of a NEW DIALOGUE o­n GLOBAL PEACE IN THE SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM formulated on the site of the Global Harmony Association 
http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=757

Please voice your support for this initiative to terminate the endless arms race and escalation of war rhetoric which may lead to a nuclear annihilation of the world by accident if not design.

At the time when the governments of leading democracies are in disarray, the o­nly way that remains open for the ordinary citizens of all countries is to appeal to the sanity and moral courage of an assembly of political leaders who hold the keys of peace and war. 

O­nly the New Dialogue on Global Peace is able to "Shift the arms race into a peace race," as the peace champion Martin Luther King Jr. bequeathed to us. We do not see ANY OTHER WAY to ensure this most necessary shift and to meet the most vital challenge to humanity in the 21st century!
http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=home

Sincerely,

Vladislav Krasnov, Ph.D. (aka W. George Krasnow)
President, Russia & America Goodwill Association (www.RAGA.org)
Formerly professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, CA, USA
http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=752
http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=697
http://www.raga.org/news/the-folly-of-the-new-cold-war-by-vladislav-krasnov
http://www.raga.org/news/dubrovnik-the-pearl-of-civilization-at-peaceby-vladislav-krasnov

On July 4, 1776, USA Gained Independence from Britain and Democracy was achieved. Daily there are thousands who leave their country to go to the “land of the free and the home of the brave” so they can start their American Dream. 

The United States is genuinely a diverse nation comprised of passionate (and sometimes boisterous individuals) who love their country. Every year on July 4th, Americans celebrate their independence and freedom with grill outs, picnics, fireworks and family reunions. Over the last 26 years of the world wide web we have been able to reach out and connect effortlessly across the world with individuals who share various dialects and distinctive cultures. We can learn from failure, teach about success and by continuing to work towards a global community guided by understanding and knowledge we can strive to improve the lives of all who we share the world with. 

Happy Birthday, America! 

Stupidity, stupidity everywhere – and not a word to witness.

“Stupid” is a commonplace term casually used in every day conversation. Much less so in writing – especially when the subject is political personalities. It is heavily weighted with inhibition. Why this hesitation? Why at a time when manifest stupidity in speech and action is rampant?

“Stupid” is both blunt and conclusive. Straight-forward. It does not welcome qualification or discussion. It implies: matter settled, closed. Moreover, it suggests a character flaw as well as low intelligence. That somehow makes us uncomfortable. So we prefer: dense, slow, thick, dim or dim-witted; or elaborate euphemisms, e.g. “not the sharpest tool in the kit,” or “none too swift” or “slow on the uptake.” In addition, there are those that refer directly to intelligence: moron, imbecile, idiot. They, too, are in currency but suffer from the disability of taking in vain a descriptive word that refers to the poor souls who are born with mental deficiencies.

 

“Stupid” is used as an epithet 95% of the time. Not as a depiction of someone’s Intelligence Quotient (IQ). To do so in the latter sense is to complicate matters. Intelligence, as we now are aware, is a broad concept that covers 5 or 6 or 7 mental attributes whose correlations are quite low. So, almost no one thinks that through before throwing the word around. To the degree that one might consider meanings, it implies lack of logic – the core characteristic of conventional IQ intelligence.

 Squirt kerosene on a simmering barbecue – that’s stupid. Sending more troops to Afghanistan when you’ve failed miserably to achieve your (undefined) objective over the past 15 years with much larger contingents is stupid, i.e. illogical. Threatening North Korea with a military strike by a naval task force and sending said task force in the opposite direction is stupid, i.e. illogical. Silently letting Turkey provide crucial backing to ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria while decrying terrorist acts in France or England is stupid, i.e. illogical. Bestowing praise and honors on the Saudi leaders as declared brothers in the “war on terror” when in fact these very persons have done more to propagate the fanatical creed that inspires and justifies acts of terror is stupid, i.e. “illogical.”

These instances of stupid behavior draw us to the connections between intelligence and knowledge – between “stupidity” and “ignorance.” Stupid (illogical) behavior is more likely when you don’t know what you’re doing because important information is missing. In the examples cited, though, the information at the heart of logical thinking is known to the parties taking those actions. Not just accessible – it is lodged (somewhere) in the brain of the actor. “Dumb”* in popular usage is the word that combines “stupid” and “ignorant” – with the connotation that the ignorance is willful. That is a pertinent notion to which we’ll return.

Assuming that the “stupid’ actors are not mentally deficient, why do they act as if they are? That is the persistent question that crops us as we see and read the antics of public officials, commentators, and a host of celebrity personalities. Several explanations, not excuses, come to mind.

One is that there exists an implicit logic that is not acknowledged but salient for the person(s) involved. The Pentagon brass may well be less concerned about “winning” in Afghanistan, whatever that means, than they are living with the intolerable perception that they “lost.” No general cum security policy-maker wants to be saddled with the label of “loser.” That sensitivity can become institutionally generalized; Generals Mattis and McMaster are in little danger of being blamed personally for failure in Afghanistan. What seems to count is that they do not want the U.S. military to be stigmatized as a failure. They are acutely aware of how much the image of the uniformed military suffered as a result of America losing its first war in Vietnam. It follows that they might hope against hope that the outcome can be fudged enough so as to escape that fate.**



There is a practical side to this concern, too. Failure, as perceived in the public eye, could tarnish the resplendent image so successfully cultivated during the “war on terror” era. That could translate into less support for bigger budgets, less lucrative consultancies after retirement, and less acclaim. And a weaker voice in policy debates.

If one were to postulate that these are cardinal objectives, then campaigning to send several thousand more troops on a strategically pointless mission is logical – and the plan’s promoters not as stupid as they appear. What of senior policy-makers in and around the White House who do not share those particular interests? They, indeed, are stupid.

A second reality to keep in mind is that governments are plural nouns – or, pronouns with multiple antecedents. The numerous organizations, bureaucracies and individuals involved in decision-making typically lead to a convoluted process wherein it is easy to lose track of purposes, priorities and coordination. Where little discipline is imposed by the chief, the greater the chances that the result will be contradictory, disjointed, sub-optimal and often poorly executed policies. That’s why the White House cried havoc about North Korea’s threat while the presumed coercive instrument sailed blissfully in the opposite direction heading for an extended shore leave.



​Finally, we should recognize that rigorous thinking is far from the norm - at the highest levels of government as well as in everyday life. It takes a combination of education/training, intellectual integrity, a cultivated sense of responsibility, discomfort with deciding on the basis of skimpy or suspect information, and an ingrained preference for knowing why you’re doing something instead of flying by the seat of your pants. True, when practiced and reinforced, rigorous thinking can become habitual – just like other modes of human behavior. There are multiple influences, though, that militate against that habit taking root and being sustained. They include the lure of celebrity, time pressures due to an excess of travel and/or summonses to mind-numbing TV interviews, long-tedious-inconclusive meetings (such as those presided over by Susan Rice which drove Chuck Hagel out of government), endless bureaucratic games-playing, distracted Chief Executives who demand ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers to complex issues. Altogether, the tumult can soften the toughest mind. Weaker minds simply latch onto whatever conventional wisdom and catch phrases are floating around in order to remain minimally functional in the kaleidoscopic setting of most administrations.

All of these patterns with attendant adverse consequences are more likely to crystallize into stupid acts when the man nominally in charge lacks the intelligence, emotional stability, self-awareness and/or advisors to recognize either the requirements for sound policy-making or for implementation. A lack of capacity to accept responsibility and to be held accountable exacerbates matters.

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