McCain has been hot under the collar lately... He hates everybody... Give him a bone to chew on, please...

John McCain said on Friday that Donald Trump’s administration was in “disarray” and that Nato’s founders would be alarmed by the growing unwillingness to “separate truth from lies”.

The Republican Senator broke with the reassuring message that US officials visiting Germany have sought to convey on their debut trip to Europe, telling a Munich security conference the resignation of the new president’s security adviser, Michael Flynn, over his contacts with Russia reflected deep problems in Washington. 

“I think that the Flynn issue obviously is something that shows that in many respects this administration is in disarray and they’ve got a lot of work to do,” said McCain, a known Trump critic, even as he praised Trump’s defence secretary. “The president, I think, makes statements [and] on other occasions contradicts himself. So we’ve learned to watch what the president does as opposed to what he says,” he said.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/18/john-mccain-savages-dona...

 

"The founding fathers of the Munich Security Conference," said John McCain, would be “be alarmed by the turning away from universal values and toward old ties of blood, and race, and sectarianism.”

McCain was followed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who called for a “post-West world order.” Russia has “immense potential” for that, said Lavrov; “we’re open for that inasmuch as the U.S. is open.”

Now McCain is not wrong. Nationalism is an idea whose time has come again. Those “old ties of blood, and race, and sectarianism” do seem everywhere ascendant. But that is a reality we must recognize and deal with. Deploring it will not make it go away.

But what are these “universal values” McCain is talking about?

Democracy? The free elections in India gave power to Hindu nationalists. In Palestine, Hamas. In Lebanon, Hezbollah. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, then overthrown in a military coup welcomed by the world’s oldest and greatest democracy. Have we forgotten it was a democratically elected government we helped to overthrow in Kiev?

Democracy is a bus you get off when it reaches your stop, says Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, autocrat of Ankara, a NATO ally.

Is freedom of religion a “universal value”?

reach or proselytize for Christianity in much of the Islamic world and you are a candidate for martyrdom. Practice freedom of speech in Xi Jinping’s China and you can wind up in a cell.

As for the Western belief in the equality of all voluntary sexual relations, in some African and Muslim countries, homosexuals are beheaded and adulterers stoned to death.

 

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/is-russia-an-enemy/

 

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday reiterated his call for an independent commission to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election, comparing the current situation to the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when his initial requests for an independent commission eventually gained steam.

"Back after 9/11, Sen. [Joe] Lieberman and I said we ought to have a select commission, and nobody wanted it, and then eventually it happened," McCain told reporters in the Capitol. "The pressure will grow, particularly in light of the events of the last 24 hours."

McCain was referring to the actions of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who drew criticism Wednesday for telling the press and President Donald Trump that the intelligence community may have picked up communications by Trump and his aides during the transition. Nunes did so without consulting his colleagues on the committee, and he may have disclosed classified information. Nunes' actions, McCain said, are "another reason for a select committee."

Nunes apologized to his colleagues on Thursday. But criticism continued to mount, including from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also investigating Russian interference. "Not telling his members and briefing the president does not meet my definition of doing textbook, bipartisan oversight," Wyden told reporters in the Capitol.

read more:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/mccain-says-pressure-indepen...

 

Let's shout again here a million times from the rooftops that Donald's victory in the US Presidential elections had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE RUSSIANS. It was Hillary's bad campaign management, Uncle Rupe's clever game and the deluded Christians who got him across the line. That Donald's team spoke with the Ruskies or not during the campaign is irrelevant. To see Mother Jones get in bed with that loony McCain is mind-boggling... McCain is in favour of war with the Russians. He will say anything to promote this silly DANGEROUS desire. Here Mother Jones is using McCain to get rid of Trump, to promote the cause of their scorned defeated woman, but this shows that Mother Jones soul is darker than black.

See toon at top

 

 

From the idiot box:

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a bigger threat to world security than the Islamic State group, US senator John McCain has told the ABC.

The Republican also admitted in an exclusive interview with 7.30 that President Donald Trump sometimes made him "nervous".

During a visit to Canberra, Senator McCain said Mr Putin was the "premier and most important threat, more so than ISIS".

"I think ISIS can do terrible things," he said. "But it's the Russians who tried to destroy the fundamental of democracy and that is to change the outcome of an American election.

"I've seen no evidence they succeeded, but they tried and they are still trying to change elections.

"They just tried to affect the outcome of the French election. So I view Vladimir Putin — who has dismembered Ukraine, a sovereign nation, who is putting pressure on the Baltics — I view the Russians as the far greatest challenge that we have."

He said the US needed to respond to Russia with sanctions.

"We have done nothing since the election last November to respond to Vladimir Putin's attempt to change the outcome of our elections. So, way to go Vladimir. We haven't responded at all," he said.

"Hopefully when we get back from recess the Senate will enact sanctions on Russia."

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-29/putin-a-bigger-threat-than-islamic...

 

McCain is an idiot trying to become more idiotic. The ABC is stupid for not challenging his idiocy. Read from top... ISIS is certainly far more dangerous than Russia, if Russia is dangerous at all.

Actually, the only danger that Russia presents to the US is that it does not bend the knees to the US Empire and this is fair enough. Russia does not want war at all -- and does not want to create trouble. RUSSIA DID NOT INTERFERE WITH THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS contrarily to what idiots like McCain are still madly spruiking WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE. That Donald and some of his troops were talking to Russians, does not mean the Russians interfered with the elections, nor did they interfered with the French elections. Russia is only after cooperation with all the nations of the world but this would "weaken the US's big tits" which states that "we rule, you obey -- or we bomb you".

 

Meanwhile:

Oliver Stone has been called a lightning rod for controversy, and his latest project about Russian President Vladimir Putin is no exception.

The veteran movie director believes Mr Putin is misunderstood and the image the West has of him is wrong.

"It's a politically, ideologically driven image," he told the ABC's 7.30 program.

"He's not a Communist and he doesn't think like one. He thinks like a person who is educated, who is a lawyer."

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-29/oliver-stone-says-vladimir-putin-i...

 

One thing for sure, Putin is far cleverer, erudite, more savvy and more educated than McCain...

 

 

The news the ultra-hawkish, pro-war US Senator John ‘Bomb, Bomb, Iran’ McCain has been diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer has led to gushing eulogies to a great ‘hero’ of ‘freedom’ in elite circles in the US and other Western countries.

Brain cancer is a terrible disease, and no humane person would wish it on anyone. But does McCain‘s illness mean we have to sanitize his record of relentless warmongering and portray him as a 21st Century version of Mahatma Gandhi? It’s one thing not to jump on people when they are fighting for their life, but it’s quite another to ludicrously distort the historical record.

where are the heart felt statments for the victims of US foreign policy? The cancer caused by agent Orange used in Vietnam.

— Pat Brady (@BradyPatbrady) July 20, 2017

 

Take the Washington Post. They ran a hagiographic article at the weekend entitled “What we can learn from John McCain.”

“All over this world, Mr. McCain is associated with freedom and democracy. He has championed human rights with verve and tirelessness — speaking out against repression and authoritarianism,” the neocon newspaper bellowed.

But McCain’s champion of human rights and ‘freedom and democracy’ has been highly selective, to say the least, and has involved him associating with and supporting some very dubious characters.

In Ukraine, he met with far-right forces who wanted the forcible overthrow of the democratically elected government.

He shared a platform with the ultra-nationalist Oleh Tyahnybohk, who in 2004 had attacked what he called “the Moscow-Jewish mafia ruling Ukraine.”

Imagine the furor if say, the British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had met with such a figure. But the very neocon gatekeepers who attack Corbyn 24-7 were silent when McCain did.

In 2011, McCain praised the ‘heroic’ rebels in Libya - having repeatedly called for the anti-government fighters to be armed. But the ‘rebellion’ against Gaddafi was dominated by hardcore jihadists, many with links to Al-Qaeda, such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi and his father were associated with.

In one photograph, McCain can be seen presenting a gift to the former LIFG emir, Abdel Hakim Bel-Hadj. Again, just imagine if this had been Jeremy Corbyn.

In Syria, as in Libya, McCain repeatedly lobbied for ‘rebels’ to be given military aid by the US, as well as calling for cruise missile strikes on government positions.

Important visit with brave fighters in #Syria who are risking their lives for freedom and need our help pic.twitter.com/tx4uX572ZP

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) May 28, 2013

In 2013, the man described as “America’s leading advocate of intervention in the Syrian crisis” met with Syrian ‘rebels’- crossing into Syria illegally (little things like national sovereignty don’t matter much to neocons like McCain).

Two years later, the great ‘human rights crusader’ led a delegation of US Senators to meet that other well-known champion of human rights, Crown Prince Salman of Saudi Arabia and the commander of Saudi Arabia’s Syrian ‘rebel’training and equipment program.

Just think of the hundreds of thousands killed in Syria because of these McCain supported ‘training and equipment’ programs.

Most members of the human race think of sex (or going to the toilet) when they first wake up in the morning. But not John McCain. War is always on his mind.

“When John wakes up in the morning the first thing he says is Air strikes!’’ his friend Sen. Dick Lugar once said.

Do we think this is normal- and something to cheer? If so, heaven help us.

Having played his part in keeping the fires burning in Syria McCain reacted to the presence of ISIS there- by outrageously claiming that Russia’s Vladimir Putin was a greater threat than Islamic State.

One wonders what the families and loved ones of those killed in ISIS terrorist atrocities in the Middle East, Africa and around the world thought of that statement.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/397482-mccain-us-hero-war-hawkish/

 

Meanwhile McCain swims in the sewer:

 

The US Senate will move forward on a debate the repeal President Barack Obama' signature healthcare reform law.

Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voted no, however, with the help of a recently returned US Senator John McCain —who is battling brain cancer- they were able to pass the motion with Vice President Mike Pence's tie-breaking vote. 

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/news/201707251055873621-us-senate-skinny-repeal-...

 

Read from top...

 

 

 

RT’s list of top 10 Russophobes has been greeted with joy on social media by the lucky few who made the cut, most seeing it as proof that at least someone has taken notice of their years of relentless, baseless Russia-bashing.

READ MORE: RT rates the top 10 Kremlin critics & their hilarious hate campaigns

Number 1 on RT’s list was Senator John McCain. Who else? The veteran Russophobe and former presidential candidate certainly knows what losing feels like, so he was very happy to find he’d bagged the much-coveted top spot.

https://www.rt.com/uk/405035-russophobes-react-mensch-mccain/

Another recognition from my friends in the Kremlin! https://t.co/VMmgcR0ZA7

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) September 28, 2017

No tweet from NATO, which came second, but the alliance is still stuck in the Cold War era so is probably not quite as Twitter-savvy as the rest.

Welcome @NATO as the true global Russophobehttps://t.co/vBH9U7zYLapic.twitter.com/SRgLN0uevG

— RT (@RT_com) September 28, 2017

Louise Mensch popped her head over the parapet of paranoia to say thanks for the validation. She even pinned the list at the top of her page.

This is so flattering. You guys are so sweet, @RT_com. #blushing

Shucks to be RU.https://t.co/B6YWKg95dX

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) September 28, 2017

Silence from Hillary Clinton. She may have written something, possibly on the wrong server.

Thanks @HillaryClinton for being the convenient Russophobehttps://t.co/vBH9U7zYLapic.twitter.com/DiiEC2lJ8f

— RT (@RT_com) September 28, 2017

Ed Lucas and Anne Applebaum were 5 and 6 on our list. Lucas seemed pretty happy about his inclusion and was kind enough to point out a factual error, so thanks for that. He was clearly content that everything else was true though.

wow I make the top ten Russophobes listed by @RT_comhttps://t.co/RaY462hJXX btw@anneapplebaum doesn’t work at @cepa

— Edward Lucas (@edwardlucas) September 28, 2017

We’ve heard nothing from Morgan Freeman and Rob Reiner. They’re most likely waiting for the script to tell them what to say.

‘Weaponizing’ Hollywood: #MorganFreeman & @robreiner the red-carpet Russophobeshttps://t.co/vBH9U7inmApic.twitter.com/Xbr0T8mdCE

— RT (@RT_com) September 28, 2017

BuzzFeed tweeted this.

19 things everyone who drinks way too much coffee will relate tohttps://t.co/OaCSWRGfaCpic.twitter.com/ZmTVYVaMKT

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) September 28, 2017

We’re not able to confirm whether it is a coded response to their ninth place on the list.

But most heartwarming of all is analyst Molly McKew. She was so over the moon that her rantings have been recognized, her timeline consists of no fewer than eight tweets or retweets linked to her 10th place. We can expect her to be working hard to move up that list.

I'm in good company on RT's enemies list:@SenJohnMcCain@edwardlucas@anneapplebaum@NATO@buzzfeed@morgan_freemanhttps://t.co/Z8Oz8Csojw

— Molly McKew (@MollyMcKew) September 28, 2017

Apologies go to the hardcore Russophobes who failed to make the cut. There’s always next year.  You know who you are!

I used to be somebody. These days, I don't even make the Russophobe rankings.https://t.co/0w7uW6htEzpic.twitter.com/Em7ey4AQa6

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) September 28, 2017

I'm gutted. I didn't even make the list https://t.co/g6fI9mjk9c

— Bill Browder (@Billbrowder) September 28, 2017

 

 

Most Americans support stronger gun laws — laws that would reduce deaths. But Republicans in Congress stand in the way. They fear alienating their primary voters and the National Rifle Association.

Below are the top 10 career recipients of N.R.A. campaign money, among both current House and Senate members, along with their statements about the Las Vegas massacre. These representatives have a lot to say about it. All the while, they refuse to do anything to avoid the next massacre.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/04/opinion/thoughts-prayers-nra-funding-senators.html

 

At the top of the list is ... you've guessed it.... John McCain who got $7,740,521.00 from the NRA... "“Cindy & I are praying for the victims of the terrible #LasVegasShooting & their families.”

 

Read also:

 

looking for "a reason"...

 

 

 

 

The other night in Philadelphia, Senator John McCain delivered one heckuva speech. Uplifting and inspirational, it was also unsparing and at times almost savage. One passage in particular garnered favorable attention from our Trump-obsessed media. This occurred when the senator, obliquely going after the president, uncorked this monster of a sentence:

"To fear the world we have organized and led for three quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain “the last best hope of earth” for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history."

One the one hand: ideals, obligations, and duty. On the other hand: half-baked, spurious, and unpatriotic. Get the sense that McCain is more than slightly affronted by the ongoing circus-cum-soap opera that is the Trump administration? Think maybe he’d like to see Donald Trump himself tossed onto the ash heap of history?

Well, if McCain is pissed, he has every right to be. Long may he rail. Long may this octogenarian senator persevere in discomfiting the current occupant of the White House.

That said, McCain’s remarks reflect an abiding commitment to a “tired dogma” of his own. By no means is that dogma his own invention. Indeed, it’s one that he shares with legions of other politicians and pundits predisposed to see the last “three quarters of a century” as a good news story in which America delivers the world from evil and brings it within sight of the Promised Land. Take that claim at face value and America’s present-day duty is plain to see: It’s to finish the job so that all will enjoy the fruits of freedom and democracy.

True, in his remarks McCain did make passing reference to America’s flaws, mistakes, and frailties. We’re not perfect. But all in all, he insists, “we have been a blessing to humanity.”

Now, made by a Russian about Russia, a German about Germany, or a Chinese about China, such a broad judgment would invite mockery and derision. Uttered by a respected American statesman about his own country, it becomes a sure-fire applause line

read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/john-mccains-tired-dogma/

John McCain has responded to an alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government by…blaming the president of the United States:

“President Trump last week signaled to the world that the United States would prematurely withdraw from Syria,” the Arizona senator said in a statement. “Bashar Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers have heard him, and emboldened by American inaction [bold mine-DL], Assad has reportedly launched another chemical attack against innocent men, women and children, this time in Douma.”

McCain unwittingly revealed the absurdity of the hawkish interventionist position on Syria with these comments. First, he faults Trump for “signaling” a withdrawal from Syria, but there has been no decision to withdraw and there is no timetable for when it might happen. Merely suggesting that it could happen is supposedly enough to sway the actions of foreign governments, but there is no evidence that Trump’s comments had anything to do with the attack in question. It is post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacious reasoning that hawks have employed in the Syria debate for years. 

McCain also ignores that the Syrian government and its allies have their own reasons for doing things. If Trump had not made his unscripted remarks about withdrawal last week, does anyone really think that the Syrian government would have behaved significantly differently than it did? If McCain believes that, he is ascribing near-magical powers to presidential rhetoric with a degree of conviction that would embarrass the most credulous believers in superstitions. Other states act according to their own interests as they perceive them, and it is a measure of our national narcissism and self-importance that our political leaders routinely assume that every foreign state’s action is somehow our fault or our responsibility to “fix.” Most things around the world are entirely beyond our government’s control, and it is important that we understand that there are some things that the U.S. can’t and shouldn’t try to “fix.”

 

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/mccain-blames-america-first/

 

Read from top... Read also:

of salami making and swimming pool chemicals...

81-year-old US Senator John McCain, who is currently battling brain cancer, is known for his hawkish stance on Russia and critical remarks about President Donald Trump.

Twitter has temporarily removed an account of Australian anti-war journalist Caitlin Johnstone over "abusive behavior" after she posted a tweet suggesting that the death of Senator John McCain would make the world a better place to live in.

A self-described "bogan journalist", Johnstone tweeted that McCain "devoted his entire political career to slaughtering as many human beings as possible at every opportunity", adding that "the world will be improved when he finally dies."

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/world/201808181067293356-mccain-johnstone-twitte...

 

We wish McCain well but he should retire quietly... Read from top.

 

 

 

US senator John McCain, the maverick Republican who survived a Vietnam War prison camp and ran unsuccessfully for president, is discontinuing medical treatment for an aggressive form of brain cancer, his family has said in a statement, a year after he announced his diagnosis.

...

Mr McCain has a reputation for speaking his mind, which led to a running feud with President Donald Trump.

The McCain-Trump relationship grew heated in 2015 when Mr McCain said Mr Trump's candidacy had "fired up the crazies".

Mr McCain provided one of the most dramatic moments in recent Senate history in July 2017 when he voted against a Trump-backed bill that would have repealed the healthcare law pushed through by former president Barack Obama.

Mr Trump was furious about Mr McCain's vote and frequently referred to it at rallies but without mentioning Mr McCain by name.

Mr McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, denounced Mr Trump for his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other foreign "tyrants" and lambasted Mr Trump in The Restless Wave, a memoir released in May. 

Mr Trump retorted that the senator was "not a war hero" and referred to Mr McCain's years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese by saying, "I like people who weren't captured".

Sources close to Mr McCain said Mr Trump would not be invited to the funeral.

 

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-25/john-mccain-stops-brain-cancer-tre...

 

We wish him and his family the best... Who knows, the world would have been different with McCain at the helm of the US Empire. Could have been more peaceful or uglier...

 

Read from top

WASHINGTON — Arizona Sen. John McCain, the war hero who became the GOP’s standard-bearer in the 2008 election, has died. He was 81.

His office says McCain died Saturday. He had battled brain cancer.

In 1967, his plane was shot down on a bombing mission over North Vietnam. He was severely injured and spent more than five years as a prisoner of war.

He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1982 and the Senate in 1986. A conservative on most issues, he pushed for campaign finance reform and the effort to account for those missing in Vietnam.

He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, then won it in 2008. But he and running mate Sarah Palin lost to Barack Obama.

 

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2018/08/25/senator-john-mccain-dead-at-81/

 

Codolences to his family... Good or bad, John McCain was a fighter. We all loose this last fight in the end. 

requiescat in pacem...

Read from top.

 

The death of Senator John McCain has provoked the predictable outpouring of mawkish and mendacious “tributes” from across the American political and media establishment.

Invariably, McCain the "maverick", which was one of his monikers, is being hailed as a "war hero" and "patriot". A nationwide orchestration of public emotion is underway to elevate a dubious, mean-spirited politician into some kind of saintly statesman.

The New York Times trumpeted with its top story: ‘John McCain, War Hero, Senator, Presidential Contender, Dies at 81'.

American news channels, from CNN, CBS to ABC and the others, were wall-to-wall in broadcasting misty-eyed venerations of the Arizona senator.

McCain, who died from brain cancer at the weekend, was certainly a maverick figure, but hardly in a way that can be ascribed as valorous.

READ MORE: Late John McCain Always Was Russia's 'Honest Enemy' — Russian Lawmaker

Like has-been pop stars whose record sales soar posthumously, so too McCain's passing proves the adage that "death can be a good career move". His tawdry, even reprehensible, biographical stock has suddenly become valuable political capital.

The former Republican senator was one of the most aggressive, warmongering politicians in the US, frequently calling for war or confrontation with Iran, Russia and other foreign nations. Yet this politician whose intemperate words violated international law for inciting war on multiple occasions is now being deified as some kind of honorable elder statesman and paragon of "American virtues".

Barack Obama, who won the presidency in 2008 against rival candidate McCain, led the official mourning and myth-making when he said: "we shared, for all our differences, a fidelity to something higher — the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched and sacrificed."

READ MORE: US Politicians From Carter to Trump React to Death of Senator McCain

Another former president, George W Bush, described McCain as "a patriot of the highest order".

What utter balderdash. Two presidents who should be prosecuted for launching criminal wars — from Afghanistan, Iraq to Libya — have the audacity to proclaim McCain a figure of "American ideals".

Of course, the sycophantic American news media indulge this grotesque ritual of embalming a dead politician with lies and falsification.

The person they eulogize was a bomber pilot during the Vietnam War and who thus was complicit in the US genocide of millions of Vietnamese.

That was the war that GW Bush, like incumbent President Donald Trump, were too cowardly to fight in, both dodging the draft for imperial service.

Bush — who later waged war on Iraq killing over a million people — and his estimation of McCain as "a patriot of the highest order" have therefore no value whatsoever.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201808261067485380-mccain-carrer-death/

 

Read from top.

 

...

Patrick Henningsen: Yeah, I think that if anybody embodies the deep state or embodies the unofficial forces that really conduct power in Washington along the lines of the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense in general, it is John McCain; he embodies that unseen sort of hidden hand.

The problem with John McCain is that, I think, sneaking into Syria and being photographed with militants, being on stage with Svoboda and Right Sector lobbying for lethal aid to the Ukraine and aligning himself with neo-Nazi factions there prior to the Maidan coup, he’s going to attract a lot of warranted criticism, unfortunately. But because he represented the deep state interests, he was absolutely ring-fenced and protected by the mainstream media in the United States.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201808261067488240-mccain-deep-state-re...

 

Read from top.

“McCain’s Death Leaves Void” ran the Wall Street Journal headline over a front-page story that began: “The death of John McCain will leave Congress without perhaps its loudest voice in support of the robust internationalism that has defined the country’s security relations since World War II.”

Certainly, the passing of the senator, whose life story will dominate the news until he is buried at his alma mater, the Naval Academy, on Sunday, leaves America’s interventionists without their greatest champion.

No one around has the prestige or media following of McCain.

And the cause he championed, compulsive intervention in foreign quarrels to face down dictators and bring democrats to power, appears to be one whose time has passed.

After 9/11, America was united in its desire to crush the al-Qaeda terrorists who had perpetrated the atrocities. John McCain then backed President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, which had no role in the attacks.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, McCain slipped into northern Syria to cheer rebels who had arisen to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, an insurgency that led to a seven-year civil war and one of the great humanitarian disasters of our time.

McCain supported the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe and the Baltics, right up to Russia’s border. When Georgia invaded South Ossetia in 2008 and was expelled by the Russian army, McCain roared, “We are all Georgians now!”

He urged intervention. But Bush, his approval rating scraping bottom, had had enough of the neocon crusades for democracy.

McCain’s contempt for Vladimir Putin was unconstrained. When crowds gathered in Kiev to overthrow an elected pro-Russian president, McCain was there, cheering them on.

He supported sending arms to the Ukrainian army to fight pro-Russian rebels in the Donbass. He backed Saudi intervention in Yemen, a war that has also proved to be a humanitarian disaster.

John McCain was a war hawk, and proud of it. But by 2006, the wars he had championed had cost the Republican Party both houses of Congress.

In 2008, when he was on the ballot, those wars cost him the presidency.

By 2016, the Republican majority had turned its back on McCain and his protege, Senator Lindsey Graham. They instead nominated Donald Trump, who said he would seek to get along with Russia and extricate America from the wars into which McCain had helped plunge the country.

Yet while interventionism is now without a great champion and has proven unable to rally an American majority, it retains a residual momentum, one that’s compelled us to continue backing the Saudi war in Yemen and consider regime change in Iran.

Still, if either of those enterprises holds any prospect of bringing about a more peaceful and prosperous Middle East, no one has made the case.

While the foreign policy that won the Cold War, containment, was articulated by George Kennan and pursued by presidents from Truman to Bush I, no grand strategy for the post-Cold War era has ever been embraced by a majority of Americans.

Bush I’s “New World Order” was rejected by Ross Perot’s economic patriots and Bill Clinton’s Baby Boomers who wanted to spend America’s peace dividend on America’s home front.

As for the Bush II crusades for democracy “to end tyranny in our world,” the fruits of that Wilsonian idealism turned to ashes in our mouths.

But if the foreign policy agendas of Bush I and Bush II, along with McCain’s interventionism, have been tried and found wanting, what is America’s grand strategy?

What are the great goals of U.S. foreign policy? What are the vital interests for which all, or almost all, Americans believe we should fight?

“Take away this pudding; it has no theme,” said Churchill. Britain has lost an empire, but not yet found a role, was the crushing comment of Dean Acheson in 1962.

Both statements appear to apply to U.S. foreign policy in 2018.

We are fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen—that’s John McCain’s legacy. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has sent a virtual ultimatum to Iran. We have told North Korea, a nuclear power with the world’s fourth-largest army, either to denuclearize or face America’s military might.

We are challenging Beijing in its claimed territorial waters of the South China Sea. From South Korea to Estonia, we are committed by solemn treaty to go to war if any one of dozens of nations is attacked.

Now one hears talk of an “Arab NATO” to confront the ayatollahs’ Iran and its Shiite allies. Lest we forget, ISIS and al-Qaeda are Sunni.

With all these war guarantees, the odds are excellent that one day we are going to be dragged into yet another conflict that the American people will quickly sour upon.

Where is the American Kennan of the new century?

 

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/the-interventionists-lo...

see also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/32347

...John McCain is an elected US Senator, and is also president of one of the branches of the National Endowment for Democracy, one of the secret services of the ‘Five Eyes’ (USA-UK-Australia-Canada-New Zealand).

 

...

We need not wait long to learn more. Senator McCain admitted that he was in permanent contact with the heads of the jihadists, including the commanders of Daesh.

His strategy against Syria is comparable to that of the war against Vietnam – any alliance is worth making in order to defeat the enemy.

 

Confronted with a recording of one of his telephone conversations, OkabSakr admitted that he had supervised the transfers of weapons to Syria.
Saudi General Anwar Al-Eshki, bragged that Riyadh had previously delivered weapons to the Al-Omari mosque. Although they were the only ones to have benefited from this, the Israelis continue to deny their role in the attack on the centre of Military Intelligence center in Deraa which surveils the Golan Heights, a good part of which is still illegally occupied by the Israelis.

However we interpret these events, we are forced to note that they had nothing popular about them, but were the fruit of a conspiracy which implicated, at that moment in time, at least the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel.

 

 

Read more:

http://syrianfacts.com/en/2018/08/15/رمزيــة-درعــا/

InsideClimate News’  Marianne Lavelle published a long piece this weekend, chronicling Senator John McCain’s rise and fall as a climate leader.  The story highlights a campaign I worked on in 2000, where we asked all the presidential candidates the simple and still pertinent question, “What’s Your Plan?” on global warming. McCain was one of the only candidates that took it on. He went back to Washington in the middle of 2000, having been defeated by George W. Bush in the primaries, and immediately started holding hearings on climate change science.

As always, there is more to the story.  When McCain emerged as “Captain Climate” in the early 2000s, and introduced the first serious bipartisan legislation to cut emissions, he became the target of a multifaceted attack by anti-regulatory free market organizations.  It turns out, many of these organizations and front groups were quietly being funded by ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers.

This pressure may partly explain why McCain later abandoned climate change when he ran for President in 2008 and attacked his colleagues’ efforts during the 2009 push for climate legislation.  By that point McCain had succumbed to the now standard Republican talking points on climate.  Oh, and lest we forget, he also picked Sarah Palin as a running mate and starting down the “Drill, Baby, Drill” path (the opposite of sane climate policy) and the rest is history.  

 

Read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/08/30/covert-attack-john-mccain-s-climat...

 

Here, one has to think wide — a bit like our Malcolm and his exclusive model for an "Australian Republic" which for all intent and purposes was going to be shot down by the public. Malcolm "had been used by John Howard as a foil... It is possible that McCain was also used a foil to confuse the commitment of the Republicans to the cause and get people vote for Bush instead of Al Gore. We know the tricks because of course McCain gave up on climate, in the same way as Malcolm did on the "republic"... I rest my case.

...

Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late Republican Senator from Arizona who died last Saturday, also issued blistering criticism of Trump’s politics when she spoke at the event at America’s national cathedral.

Delivering his eulogy from in front of McCain’s flag-draped coffin, Obama said: “So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean and petty, trafficking in bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage.”

In front of the thousands gathered, including leaders from both sides of the political aisle – but excluding Trump, who was expressly not invited, Obama continued: “It’s a politics that pretends to be brave and tough but in fact is born of fear. John called on us to be bigger than that. He called on us to be better than that.”

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/01/john-mccain-funeral-obam...

 

John McCain was a warmonger (destroy Russia, NK, China, etc), a failed climate change advocate (read above) as he would have lost support (and cash) from business in the USA for his bids to office. He often was a cantankerous guy in public. He made deals with Daesh (read above and from top) to topple Assad.

He could have been very nice in private...

 

See the movie with Robin Williams "The Final Cut"...

 

And read from top...

John McCain’s death has inspired a slew of whitewashed obituaries, cringeworthy plaudits and declarations of love from both sides of the political divide — but as historical revisionism goes, his funeral was a step too far.

If there is anyone who owns the right to whitewash John McCain’s legacy, it is his daughter, Meghan McCain. In her hour of grief, we can permit her to rewrite her father’s personal history, to cast him as a hero among men. That much is to be expected — and few would take much issue with it.

But we cannot permit her to stand in front of the world, on the huge platform that she has been given, to rewrite and whitewash the Vietnam War — and that is exactly what she attempted to do at her father’s funeral.

It gives me no pleasure to be writing something like this about a person who has just died, or to take aim at a grieving daughter — but this is bigger than the McCain family and their hurt feelings. This is about a historical revisionism at its most disgusting and unacceptable.

As Meghan McCain spoke, even the most willing sycophants must have been discreetly raising their eyebrows and shifting uncomfortably in their pews. Standing before a cathedral packed to the rafters with politicians and high ranking military figures, she recast Vietnam, America’s most brutal and barbaric war, as a noble fight “for the life and liberty of other people’s in other lands”.

In her tribute to her father’s service, McCain reminded her audience, with a noticeable hint of venom in her voice that Vietnam was a “most distant and hostile corner of the world” in which to fight. Perhaps, she too shares her father’s well-known distaste for the Vietnamese, about whom he once wrote: "I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.”

McCain insisted his use of the term was only ever in reference to his captors during his time as a prisoner of war, but the jury is out on that one. When McCain’s plane was shot down over Vietnam, securing his legacy as an American “war hero,” he was on his way to bomb a civilian light bulb factory — one of 23 bombing missions he flew as part of Operation Rolling Thunder, during which the US dropped 643,000 tons of bombs on the country.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/437454-mccain-funeral-historical-revisionism/

 

Read from top.

Amid a worsening in U.S.-Russian relations that renowned scholar and left-wing journalist Stephen Cohen has recently characterized as being worse that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a veritable onslaught of intense and unrelenting anti-Russian sentiment has been unleashed in the U.S.

The supposed rationale for this initiative is hostility toward President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, though it’s surely possible to discover other grounds for the first’s opponents to criticize him, and the anti-Russian venom is by no means limited to the nation’s government.

Unlike its prototype that began shortly after World War II, however, this time it’s not being spearheaded by an array of rock-ribbed conservatives, leaders of traditional religious groups, immigrants from Eastern Europe and the broader military-industrial complex but by coalition of media personalities (a disproportionate amount of whom are comedians and late-night television hosts), Hollywood celebrities, prominent Democrat elected officials, former intelligence agents and directors, webzine journalists and what during the years of the George W. Bush presidency were known as neoconservatives. As a whole this somewhat ragtag assembly consists of people who describe themselves as liberals, progressives and leftists.

The initial rallying cry for this xenophobic crusade was signaled by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election campaign when, among other illiberal and unsubstantiated claims, she denounced her then-opponent Donald Trump as someone Russian President Vladimir Putin would "have as a puppet" [1] and routinely slandered Julian Assange and Wikileaks as being under Russian control [2]. In her exact words, "there’s no difference."

The drumbeat of Russophobia intensified in the final days of the campaign and rather than dissipating, only increased after the election, soon taking center stage in American political discourse, with the "Russian hacking" of state voting systems having been decided upon as a strategy for invalidating the election result. The topic has been resurrected in recent days, notably by former Clinton Administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich, in calling for annulling the election of Donald Trump, though the earlier accusation of tampering with voting machines and systems, now largely refuted, is no longer alluded to.

As all such politically-motivated initiatives aimed at the lower emotions and in this case at a several-decade-long history of deeply (perhaps ineradicably) ingrained anti-Russian fear and animus, this one has swept caution, healthy scepticism, moderation and decency aside.

Immediately after the election filmmaker Michael Moore (who’s made a lucrative career out of straddling the divide between liberals and progressives) made inflammatory statements appealing to "patriotic generals" and praising the role of the Central Intelligence Agency, both in clear reference to saving the republic from President Trump.

Hollywood veteran Rob Reiner and the newly-created Committee to Investigate Russia produced a video in which actor Morgan Freeman menacingly intones: "We have been attacked. We are at war." [3]

In recent days late-night TV host and comedian Bill Maher fawned over ex-CIA director John Brennan in a manner more befitting an aspiring poet flattering a Roman emperor on his HBO show. Maher, who has used the word before, coaxed a by no means reluctant Brennan into acknowledging the charge of treason against Trump for having met with Russian President Putin in Helsinki in July. [4]

As writer Michael McCaffrey put it, only in a highly-charged politically environment like that obtaining in the U.S. currently could "a former CIA director who has committed crimes and war crimes such as implementing and covering up Bush’s rendition and torture regime, spying on the US Senate, and masterminding Obama’s deadly drone program, get a delirious ovation from those on the left."

With the death of Senator John McCain on August 25, the quintessential imperialist who spent a disproportionate amount of the days in each year traveling the world inciting insurrections and wars - more than any other American official, and politician of any nationality, in history that I can think of - became the new icon of the American liberal-left self-styled resistance. He has been lionized, nearly beatified as a sterling example of what an American political leader should be, an Ahura Mazda to Trump’s Ahriman in the Zoroastrian scheme.

The current liberal-progressive (its own nomenclature) dispensation has traveled a long way from denouncing Joseph McCarthy’s red hunt - a sign at a recent anti-Trump march read "Joe McCarthy, where are you when we need you?" - and organizing to prevent the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to clamoring for the 21st-century equivalents of both.

Rick Rozoff

Read more:http://www.voltairenet.org/article202693.html

If you were a fan of the recently departed US senator John McCain, you will have seen the video clip of him at a large election rally defending his opponent.

A supporter says he's worried about Barack Obama mixing with domestic terrorists. He's picked up on an outrageous rumour mill designed to frighten Americans away from Obama. McCain tells him and the audience that they can trust Obama, they do not have to fear him as president. Plenty of the crowd are annoyed because he refuses to join the attack on his opponent.

read more :

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/ah-mccain-he-did-it-again-and-ag...

 

Starting with these deluded words, Amanda then gets stuck into Bill Shorten, who if the truth be said, is quite mild in the criticism of his adversary on the "right wing" of the political spectrum — compared to what crap they dish upon him or his predecessors.

Ah yes we remember "Mediscare"... Yes we do. Had the right wing of the "nasty" party — as the Gadfly calls the Liberal (CONservative) party — got a whiff of senate power after the last elections, Medicare would have been degraded to a turd on the pavement of life. Mediscare protected Medicare.

But the illusion that Amanda Vanstone lets fly like a scent of roses in the middle of shit smells is that McCain was a decent man. He was not. He played the game of appearing a decent man. He views were as horrid as the actions of Obama, who also was "a decent man" but managed to bomb and destroy more countries that Bush junior ever did... Had McCain been US President, World War 3 would have happened already. We would be living in caves with pustules everywhere on our body. 

Obama and McCain and Trump and Hilarious Hillary are all part of the nightmare... Same shit different style.

 

Read from top.

...

Donald Trump is feuding with a dead man.

It all began in 2015 when John McCain condemned then-candidate Trump's allegation that Mexico was sending rapists into the US. 

Mr Trump responded by questioning the Arizona senator's heroism as a prisoner during the Vietnam War. 

At the time there was a chorus of condemnation from across the Republican Party and predictions that the New York businessman's White House hopes were ruined.

It didn't turn out that way, of course. Mr Trump not only won the White House, he has moulded the Republican Party in his own populist, pugilistic image.

Now Mr Trump's outbursts against the late senator are met mostly with silence from within his own party. Georgia Senator Johnny Isakson stands out as one of the few to sharply rebuke the president's remarks. 

Mr Trump clearly believes leaning into this now one-sided fight benefits him politically. There are plenty of conservatives who never liked McCain, and they will love the president even more for not backing down. 

The feud helped launch Mr Trump's presidential bid, and it's a wave he will ride till the very end.

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47642335

 

Trump knows how to "notch" a victory in history with a disrespectful pen...

 

Read from top.

The White House made it clear that Donald Trump was not to catch sight of a warship named after his Republican nemesis, the late Arizona senator John McCain, during his visit to a naval base in Japan this week, according to media reports.

Citing an email dated 15 May from an official at the US Indo-Pacific Command to US navy and air force officials, the Wall Street Journal said the USS John McCain “needs to be out of sight” during Trump’s Memorial Day visit to Yokosuka base on Tuesday, the final day of his state visit to Japan.

The email asked officials to “please confirm” that directive “will be satisfied”.

When a navy commander expressed surprise at the instruction, the official replied: “First I heard of it as well,” according to the newspaper’s account of the email exchange.

The official said he would talk to the White House to get more information about the directive, the Journal reported.

The initial email also detailed plans for Trump’s arrival at the base, south of Tokyo, including instructions for the landing areas for helicopters, and preparations for the USS Wasp, where the president addressed US sailors.

The Journal published a photograph showing that tarpaulin was placed over the McCain’s name before Trump’s arrival in Japan last Saturday, adding that sailors were instructed to remove any coverings from the ship that included its name.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/30/out-of-sight-white-house...