Tuesday 24th of December 2024
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miraculously surviving a painfully tumescent paroxysm of anticipation of some unimaginably horrible event...

treasonous

So it appears America and democracy have miraculously survived the dreaded Trump-Putin summit … or Trump’s meeting with his Russian handler, as the neoliberal ruling classes and their mouthpieces in the corporate media would dearly like us all to believe. NATO has not been summarily dissolved. Poland has not been invaded by Russia. The offices of The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC have not been stormed by squads of jackbooted Trumpian Gestapo. The Destabilization of the Middle East, the Privatization of Virtually Everything, the Conversion of the Planet into One Big Shopping Mall, and other global capitalist projects are all going forward uninterrupted. Apart from Trump making a narcissistic, word-salad-babbling jackass of himself, which he does on a more or less daily basis, nothing particularly apocalyptic happened.

And so, once again, Western liberals, and others obsessed with Donald Trump, having been teased into a painfully tumescent paroxysm of anticipation of some unimaginably horrible event that would finally lead to Trump’s impeachment (or his removal from office by other means) were left standing around with their hysteria in their hands. It has become a sadistic ritual at this point … like a twisted, pseudo-Tantric exercise where the media get liberals all lathered up over whatever fresh horror Trump has just perpetrated (or some non-story story they have invented out of whole cloth), build the tension for several days, until liberals are moaning and begging for impeachment, or a full-blown CIA-sponsored coup, then pull out abruptly and leave the poor bastards writhing in agony until the next time … which is pretty much exactly what just happened.

In the days and weeks leading up to the summit, the global capitalist ruling class Resistance deployed every weapon in its mighty arsenal to whip the Western masses up into a frenzy of anti-Putin-Nazi fervor. While continuing to flog the wildly popular baby concentration camp story (because the Hitler stimulus never fails to elicit a Pavlovian response from Americans, regardless of how often or how blatantly you use it), the corporate media began hammering hard on the “Trump is a Russian Agent” hysteria. (Normally, the corporate media alternates between the Hitler hysteria and the Russia hysteria so as not to completely short-circuit the already scrambled brains of Western liberals, but given the imminent threat of a peace deal, they needed to go the whole hog this time and paint this summit as a secret, internationally televised assignation between Hitler and … well, Hitler).

In order to render them even more repugnant in the eyes of Western liberals (as if being two Hitlers wasn’t repugnant enough), The New York Timesproduced this short porno graphically depicting Trump and Putin as insatiably horny homosexual lovers. A fusillade of apocalyptic op-eds followed, the most shamelessly paranoid and hysterical of which was Roger Cohen’s experimental dystopia, in which “The Alliance of Authoritarian and Reactionary States” trick the inherently fascist Europeans into launching a Second Holocaust with a “fake news” story about Moroccan migrants abducting poor little “Tatiana” from a beach resort in Fuengirola.

While faithful New York Times-reading liberals were still struggling to regain control of their sphincters and doubling up on their alprazolam prescriptions in a desperate attempt to banish these visions of the coming butch-gay Putin-Nazi Reich, go-to propagandist, Jonathan Chait, who has obviously been watching way too much Homeland, published this paranoid spec-fic novella (complete with a “Carrie is off her meds” flow chart) about how Trump has probably been “a Russian intelligence asset” since 1987. At the same time, MSNBC’s Malcolm Nance took to Twitter to denounce Glenn Greenwald as a treasonous “agent of Trump and Moscow” for physically traveling to a conference in Russia and speaking with several Russian people. Nance, who usually just makes things up, was actually telling the truth this time. Greenwald really did visit Russia, and was selfied in the company of Edward Snowden, on top of which he’s totally gay, and God knows what kind of Commie orgies go on in the Kremlin dungeon!

And the neoliberal “Resistance” was just getting started. As Trump was arriving at Stansted Airport to begin his “destruction of British diplomacy” (and possibly poison the Queen with more of that Novichok oatmeal that has been plaguing the UK), The Guardian‘s Owen Jones was personally preparing cells of the “London Resistance” for “the biggest demonstration in British history,” or “the biggest weekday protest in British history,” or a very large protest in any event. The London Resistance’s secret weapon was the baby Russian Agent Hitler blimp, which forced Trump and his Nazi goons to retreat to one of his Scottish golf resorts, but not before humiliating America, and horrifying The Washington Post, by failing to grovel before the British monarch. Still, the point is, London was saved. The forces of hatred, bigotry, and Russianness were roundly defeated by the forces of love, and goodness, and democracy, and tolerance, and whatever. If only the French had been willing to deploy a baby Hitler blimp in 1940 … or had been able to unite the corporate media, the intelligence agencies, the capitalist ruling classes, and thousands of virtue-signaling liberals to disapprove of the original Hitler!

But that wasn’t all … oh no, far from it. No, the weeks of white-eyed editorials warning us of the dangers of peace, the neo-McCarthyite smear campaigns, the virtue-signaling Stop Trump protests, all that was just an extended edition of Orwell’s famous Two Minutes Hate, designed to generate mass hysteria and paranoia in the run-up to the summit. By Friday, the Intelligence Community was issuing warnings of imminent Russian “attempts to undermine America” with September 11 scale “cyber attacks!” National Intelligence Director Dan Coats personally told the AssociatedPress that the little “Imminent Russia Attack” lights he has on his desk were all “blinking red.” Apparently, Trump and the Putin-Nazis are preparing “a crippling cyber attack” against “critical US infrastructure,” like “a power outage in New England in January,” or even “a cyber attack on banks” that will erase Americans’ entire life savings but somehow spare all the Russian accounts, or at least another devastating round of division-sowing Facebook ads!

Then, just in time for the corporate media to milk it throughout the weekend, special counsel Robert Mueller, III released a 29-page indictment accusing a bunch of Russian spies of, well, basically, being Russian spies. The indictment alleges that these Russian spies destroyed the campaign of Hillary Clinton, who everyone knows is supposed to be President, by “hacking” the Democratic Party’s servers and stealing and disseminating emails revealing both Clinton and the Democratic Party to be the soulless neoliberal hypocrites most people already knew they were. The indictment of these Russian intelligence officers (and no Americans, nor any other parties who can ever actually be brought to trial, requiring special counsel Mueller to offer evidence to support his allegations) was followed up by a chorus of voices demanding that the summit be cancelled and that Trump slink home in complete disgrace to confess his crimes to a vindicated nation, and then presumably fire his entire administration, resign, and appoint Hillary Clinton President.

Sometime early Sunday morning, after hours of careful deliberation over cheeseburgers and sodas on Air Force One with the Gorilla Channel streaming on his smartphone for ambiance, Trump decided to go ahead with the summit. This left the Resistance no other choice than to turn up the dial on the manufactured hysteria by repeating the words “treason,” “treasonous,” and “traitor” as many times as humanly possible on every news site, television channel, and social media platform in existence, and just generally running around like lunatics shrieking about an “IMMINENT RUSSIAN ATTACK!”

On the morning of the summit, Charles M. Blow, maestro of alliteration and subtlety, in The New York Times (which, we must remember, holds itself to the highest journalistic standards and in no way resembles a rabble-rousing tabloid), published this impassioned piece entitled “Trump, Treasonous Traitor,” accusing the President of “betraying the nation,” and basically demanding that he be tried for treason. “America is under attack,” Blow announces, “and its president absolutely refuses to defend it.”

If Mother Jones‘ David Corn has his way, Senator Rand Paul, who Corn denounces as “a traitor,” would also be taken outside and shot for the crime of noting that the Attack on America® Russia allegedly perpetrated is fairly standard clandestine behavior, engaged in by most developed nations, including the United States of America, whose history of election interference, coup-fomenting, assassinations, and other, more hamfisted forms of regime change is common knowledge, or at least it was, until the ruling classes and the corporate media turned the majority of Western liberals into paranoid McCarthyite fanatics denouncing anyone who questions the honesty of the US Intelligence Community as a “traitor,” and seeing Russians and Nazis coming out of the woodwork.

In the wake of Trump’s Treasonous Traitor Summit, which Garry Kasparov has called “the darkest hour in the history of the American presidency” (darker than Truman dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki!), the neoliberal establishment and the corporate media appear to have gone full Joe McCarthy. Virtually every establishment mouthpiece, former spook, official state clown, from Thomas Friedman to Stephen Colbert, have been braying about “treason” and “traitorousness,” and suggesting that Donald Trump be removed from office by, you know, whatever means necessary. At least David Frum, senior editor at The Atlantic had the balls to openly call for a CIA-orchestrated military coup, because we can’t afford to wait for the legal process to take its course this time, as we are “facing a national security emergency!”

God knows where we go from here. It’s hard to believe the ruling classes can keep teasing liberals, and other Trump-obsessives, over and over and over like this, without eventually impeaching or shooting the guy … but then again, maybe they can. Perhaps they intend to continue conducting this experiment all the way up to 2020, just to see how paranoid and mindlessly conformist they make the majority of the Western public. 

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/07/19/trumps-treasonous-traitor-summit-or-...

after this...

After all this, it's hard to know how Trump has one single supporter left in Yankeedom... Even in his cabinet.

Well, we all know that trump is trying to "drain the swamp" and that a lot of the corpses from past Presidents (or stuffy effigies for those who are still alive) are showing up covered up in smelly silt, oozing mud and weeds of doom.

 

We need Russia, "as an enemy" — not as a friend, to survive and maintain our Western hubris, they all chant like a bunch of desiccated zombies.

We all know this. So, what does this mean? It's like fly-fishing, you need to cast a lure that is deceiving the trout, then you catch it, release it and catch it again and again. It's fun and passes the time. Or like golfing with a 37 handicap. You need the little holes to drop the ball in, otherwise there would be no point to hitting the ball with a crooked stick.

As a true gemini, Trump is caught between the genius twin hitting the ball and the devil twin digging little holes... 

Or is it the reverse?

The spy agencies and the Mueller investigation are professionally manufacturing painstaking administrative deception. Trump will have none of that. He has his own creative deception to deal with but then he can't tell the agencies that have been manufacturing deception since Jesus Christ to bugger off. He has to be polite... He has to wheel them in like trouts, but they are more like big sharks at the end of his two-pound line. And the "liberals" are mudding up the waters.

The Donald has to be patient and eventually he might throw a stick of dynamite into the pond. This explosive is of course supplied by Vladimir who offers to catch the crooks as long as he can be credited with the catch of his own crooks. Not on your Nellie says Mueller, who is hanging on to his manufactured novel close to his chest. Having the Ruskie do the completion of the investigation would reveal Mueller's own farty deception: he picked twelve Russian mugs, with their address, ranks and serial numbers in St Petersburg — out of the phone book. 

 

Read also:

agencies keeping us in the dark...

more than a bit gross...

Calls by top Democrats to have US President Donald Trump’s interpreter Marina Gross grilled in Congress about this week’s summit with Vladimir Putin is unprecedented and outrageous, Ronald Reagan’s former translator told Sputnik.

Senate Democrats want State Department translator Marina Gross to reveal what was discussed in private between Putin and Trump when they met on Monday in the Finnish capital of Helsinki.

"It’s the first time someone wants to call an interpreter to testify before Congress, and I think it is outrageous," Dimitry Zarechnak said in a written comment in Russian.

Zarechnak, who worked with the 66th US president during some of the most crucial times of his term, including the 1986 summit with Mikhail Gorbachev, said no foreign leader would ever agree to talk to a US official for fear of congressional exposure.

 

The testimony is not a done deal yet. Zarechnak confirmed to Sputnik that the State Department and the White House could invoke executive privilege to block a congressional subpoena that would require Marina Gross to testify.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201807201066524858-usa-congress-trump-helsink...

 

See also:

slowly bringing them in...

the unelected dictators...

The madness that gripped liberals and neocons within the Western political, media, and security establishments, over the sight of a US president having the temerity to treat his Russian counterpart – Vladimir Putin – as an equal rather than colonial vassal who knows his place, was and is more pronounced than anyone could have expected.

Indeed in the wake of the Helsinki Summit between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, the tsunami of madness that ensued can only be described as unhinged. Treason, they cried — a surrender summit, they declaimed — to thus reveal that for such people peace and stability is tantamount to disaster while conflict and chaos is nirvana.

READ MORE: Trump Says Looking Forward to Second Meeting With Putin

In light of this collective madness, spewed out from every mainstream US media platform in response to Helsinki, the backlash from within the Beltway reached such heights of intensity that we were witness to the astonishing sight of a sitting president going public with a mea culpa as he rolled back on his original denial — Trump claiming he had ‘misspoke' during his joint press conference with the Russian president when the question of Russian state interference came up.

It confirms that whoever runs America it sure ain't guy the people elect to run it.

 

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201807191066508338-us-president-gover...

media madness and democrat delusions...

 

The American backlash against President Trump over his summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin has been as ferocious as it was predictable.

Every possible vilification has been thrown at him. But it is the slur of Trump as "traitor" that puts this president in grave danger.

Democrats, Republicans, state intelligence pundits, hawkish media, liberal media — all have launched a torrent of attacks on Donald Trump for daring to meet with Putin in Helsinki this week.

The Washington Post accused Trump of "openly colluding with the criminal leader of a hostile power". Let those extreme words sink in for a moment. The implication is as serious as it can get.

As with other politicians and media outlets, the Post said the president had "betrayed" American intelligence services by siding with President Putin in denying that Russia had interfered in US elections.

READ MORE: Did House Dem Cohen Just Call for a Military Coup Against Trump?

Former CIA chief John Brennan denounced Trump as a "traitor" who had "committed high crimes" in holding a friendly summit with Putin.

It can't get more seditious than that. Trump is being denigrated by almost the entire political and media establishment in the US as a "treasonous" enemy of the state.

Following this logic, there is only one thing for it: the US establishment is calling for a coup to depose the 45th president. One Washington Post oped out of a total of five assailing the president gave the following stark ultimatum: "If you work for Trump, quit now".

 

The US political class have cast their verdict that Trump is a state enemy, and are openly calling for a mutiny against the White House.

Trump's political survival is the balance. Possibly the only thing staying the hands of his enemies for now is their wariness about how the ordinary American citizens would react to a deep state maneuver to overthrow the elected leader.

Despite the torrid hysteria in the US political elite over the meeting with Putin, the mass of American citizens seem rather sanguine about the development. It's fair to say that many Americans would applaud the attempt by Trump to normalize relations with Moscow. After all, that was one of the main reasons why they voted him into the White House in 2016.

READ MORE: Republicans Slam Trump for Failing to Confront Putin on Meddling in US Election

The American political class are agog to get rid of Trump, but they are apprehensive to make a decisive move just yet, because such a gambit to depose the president may engender a wider social revolt against the elites. There is a strong sense that US society is seething from numerous grievances. Poverty and abysmal social inequality as well as popular alienation from the Washington establishment are all too rife for a potential civil war or revolution if stoked too much.

One can anticipate that the media campaign to pillory Trump as a traitor will go into overdrive in the coming days, with the calculation by his powerful enemies within the deep state that public opinion can be turned decisively against him for "betraying America" to a "hostile enemy". If that manipulation of public opinion is achieved, then Trump is a goner.

Admittedly, Trump has many flaws and much of his foreign policy is in keeping with the usual criminal conduct of American imperialism. But one thing that can be said in his favor is that he is not driven by an irrational Russophobia nor a hellbent determination to have a confrontation with Moscow — unlike many in the US establishment.

Trump is often guilty of peddling fake news himself. But one thing he gets right is his dismissal of the "Russia-gate" narrative as a hoax. The US establishment created that farce as a way to undermine Trump and overturn his intention of normalizing relations with Russia.

For two years, Trump's political enemies have been flogging the "Russia interfered in our democracy" trope — to no avail. The latest wheeze was the unsubstantiated indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence personnel only days before the Helsinki summit.

To be fair to Trump, he wasn't dissuaded by that effort to sabotage his summit with Putin. But the trap was set. As soon as the meeting was over in Helsinki, all hell has broken lose in the deep state-controlled US media and politicians, condemning Trump.

Russia's Putin called the tedious allegations of Russian interference in US democracy "the biggest nonsense ever". Trump said he agreed with that assessment. Probably many ordinary American citizens also agree that the whole affair has been cooked up by political elites who were never happy with the democratic mandate given to Trump.

Trump is right to reject the so-called US intelligence assessment claiming that Russia under Putin's orders meddled in the presidential race. Putin told the Helsinki press conference that he wanted Trump to win the election in order to improve bilateral relations. So what? Are foreign leaders not entitled to have opinions on who comes to power in rival countries?

 

In any case, the US intelligence assessment is not conclusive nor a consensus of all 16 state agencies, as former American ambassador Jack Matlock recently pointed out. In other words, the claim is only partial and far from definitive. It was "politically motivated," said Matlock, a veteran diplomat.

The American political class is sick. It is suffering from a psychosis that prevents any understanding of reality. It is living in abject denial of reality, convinced of its delusions about Russia being a hostile enemy, and Trump being a "Kremlin stooge".

The problem for the American establishment is that it doesn't like the way democracy worked out. The people voted for a candidate who wanted to restore relations with Russia. For the elite, that outcome is unacceptable, and they have tried every dirty trick in the book to overturn the democratic process. Ironically, they claim that Russia tried to subvert American democracy, when it is the effete elite in Washington and the deep state apparatus that are subverting the country's constitution.

How ludicrous can these people get? An American president holds a long-overdue meeting with the leader of the world's second nuclear power. The meeting was a success in terms of opening a friendly dialogue between the two leaders. And yet the US ruling class excoriate this event as a "disgrace" and "criminal collusion".

The interests of ordinary American citizens, as with the mass of people around the world, are not served by irrational hostility towards Russia. It is in our interests to have peaceful dialogue and to develop mutual understanding between the US and Russia to avert confrontations.

It is only an unrepresentative elite who could possibly want hostility. War and conflict is profitable for a tiny few. But this cabal in the US, and among its European allies, driven by Russophobia and war profits, is nevertheless extremely powerful. They control the mainstream media and politicians with their money and intelligence assets.

When the interests of the ruling elite in the US are threatened anything is possible. Assassinations and coups are par for the course for these plutocrats and their agents.

The livid reaction to Trump's eminently reasonable engagement with Putin this week — a reaction that is vicious and coordinated — is an ominous sign that powerful forces are moving against this president.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201807171066432951-us-coup-trump/

the list is long...

In the hysterical wake of the Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki, President Donald Trump was roundly criticised in the media for taking the side of a “hostile state” over his own intelligence agencies. The Guardian referred to Mueller as a “heroic marine” who Trump disbelieved in favour of a “Russian dictator”.

In the past, when Trump has criticised the FBI, CIA or NSA he has been accused of “undermining faith in our institutions”. He’s been blamed for a collapse of trust in the government. But was this trust ever earned?

At every corner, we are urged to simply believe what we are told. Whether it is about believing Porton Down and MI6 about “novichok”, or believing the White Helmets about Sarin, or believing the FBI about “collusion”, we are presented with no facts, just assertions from authority. Those who question those assertions are deemed “bots” at best or “traitors” at worst.

Well here, fellow traitors, are the Top Ten reasons to question anything and everything the CIA – or any intelligence agency – has ever told you.

 

Read all:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/07/20/democratic-institutions-10-lessons-f...

 

This list is small but not complete and each of the "cases" can be broken down into 100s of smaller operational deceits. See also: agent potato wriggles...

See also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33845

 

The helsinki summit meeting...

The Helsinki Summit meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin should have been hailed as a momentous event, considering the catastrophic state of US-Russia relations. But instead the US President Trump has been branded a traitor by the western media and political class, as John Wight and George Szamuely discuss.

 

"The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past of future agreement with him was impossible."

The aforementioned words, lifted from George Orwell's classic novel, 1984, describe to a tee the reaction to the Helsinki Summit by a Western liberal and political class for whom Russia can only ever be a vanquished enemy or an enemy which needs to be vanquished.

It leaves no doubt that for such people, a US president exchanging missiles with Russia's is preferred, to one exchanging a handshake with the Russian president.

While the egregious character of Donald Trump is not in doubt, the egregious character of his political and ideological adversaries in Washington is even worse. For them it is a case of hegemony or bust, of unipolarity come what may, with any president who dares evince even the slightest inclination to step back from this paradigm and revisit America's role in the world, guaranteed to be condemned as the enemy within; an enemy of the people no less.

Reaction to the Helsinki Summit has been frightening to behold, confirming that what we are dealing is beast whose appetite for full spectrum dominance is insatiable.

Joining us to wade through this swamp, Hard Facts is delighted to welcome journalist and author George Szamuely, whose most recent book, Bombs for Peace: Nato's Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia, is a must read for anyone looking to be educated as to the imperial realities of Western foreign policy in our time.

 

Hear more:

https://sputniknews.com/radio_hard_facts/201807181066463787-after-helsin...

 

Read from top...

 

See also : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvlu17P_YQk for the latest update on "democracy"

trouble in the local news business...

The New York Daily News, one of the city's two tabloid papers, is halving its editorial staff, the latest sign of trouble in the local news business.

The cuts will leave the newsroom with about 40 people, according to former employees.

They come less than a year after the paper was bought by Tronc, which has a reputation for low newsroom investment.

The New York Daily News started in 1919 and has won 11 Pulitzer Prizes, one of them last year.

Tronc faced backlash from staff at the Los Angeles Times, who formed a union and cast a spotlight on the cuts at Tronc-owned publications, despite high compensation going to top executives and other insiders.

Last year, Tronc said it was paying Merrick Ventures, a private equity firm led by Tronc's biggest shareholder, $5m (£3.8m) a year for "management expertise and technical services".

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44932802

 

See image at top... Please remind me what is the other tabloid paper?...

Yes we all know, it's the New York Post proudly sponsored (I mean published at a small loss) by our god and master Rupert Murdoch, who was seen holidaying on the French Riviera recently (picture available) with his squeeze... Yes the old boy is still virile in his dealings with media sell offs and acquisitions... Remember he recently sold Fox to Disney... Yes, you might ask, this would make him a rich man... 24 billions exactly BUT This is only part of the story... He now owns more than 20 per cent of Disney and is THE BIGGEST SHAREHOLDER IN THIS firm... So what does this means? This means that he still owns a lot of what "he sold" for a lot of cash, possibly until the time he owns 51 per cent of Disney...and still own his own cash...  

You've read it first here... We know the old boy... Not a fool errant... He elected trump, didn't he? Even better than get the unelectable Tony Abbott to the PMship of Australia... The Russians interfering in US Presidential elections? Please... give Uncle Rupe his dues...

secret meetings between the Syrian Arab and the Israeli armies..

The Syrian Arab Army regained control of the region along the line marking off the occupied Golan, previously under jihadi control.

The Syrian authorities confirm that the speed with which the Syrian Arab Army progressed in the most recent battles is the result of the decisions taken on June 16 2018 by Presidents Vladamir Putin and Donald Trump during their Helsinki Summit.

Following the Helsinki Summit, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov and General Valery Guerasimov, Head of the Chief of Staffs of the Russian Federation made a joint visit to several European countries – even though an entry ban to the EU had been imposed on General Guerasimov. The two of them also made a joint visit to Israel. On this tour, the Russian representatives repeated their commitment to respect the line of demarcation of the Golan.

Three secret meetings took place between the Syrian Arab Army and the Israeli armed forces, under the auspices of the UN and Russia.

The government of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, sealed off Israel’s borders to those that had previously collaborated with it and who were seeking refuge in Israel before the advance of the Syrian Arab Army. Prime Minister Netanyahu is now abstaining from continuing to provide them with ammunition.

Netanyahu also hopes to ensure that the Syrian Arab Army abstains from allowing pro-Iranian militias to set up camp along the line of demarcation.

For its part, the US forces present on Syrian soil should have to withdraw from the base that opened illegally in the Syrian region of Al-Tanf, which borders with Jordan.

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

 

Read moe:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article202238.html

if it was... it was a bad reason...

US President Donald Trump cited the recent incident in the Kerch Strait when canceling the meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Experts who spoke with RT doubt that this is the real reason behind the last-minute move.

Officially, Trump called off the meeting because “the ships and sailors have not been returned to Ukraine from Russia,”he tweeted on Thursday, referring to the three vessels seized by the Russian coast guard while attempting to pass from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov through Russian waters.

“I think if it was the reason for the meeting being canceled it was a bad reason,” Dan Kovalik, professor of human rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, told RT. “No matter how one views the Kerch strait situation and who was at fault there, I think it’s the very time to have a meeting between the US and Russia to try and sort that incident out, to try to deal again with all the tensions that are happening anywhere in Europe between Russia and NATO.”

Kovalik also argued that Trump might be feeling pressured not to look like he’s “colluding” with Putin – a charge leveled by his Democrat critics even before he defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election, and used since to challenge the legitimacy of his presidency.

“It is certainly to avoid bad publicity. As you’ve noted, last time he met with Putin somehow he was seen as a traitor. That’s how crazy things have gotten in this country,” he told RT.

US media reacted with outrage to the Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki, Finland, in July, with more than one outlet and talking head calling his remarks at a press conference there “treasonous.” That’s because Trump did not bring up Russian “meddling” in the 2016 election, which has become an article of faith in the US despite no actual evidence of it ever being produced.

Former US diplomat Jim Jatras says the cancellation is “a terrible development.”

“I think it’s more than a headline diversion,” he told RT, saying that it might be more related to the appearance of Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen in federal court and his guilty plea about discussing plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow that “all the anti-Trump people are chattering about today.”

“I think that’s the atmospheric reason why he feels he needs to cancel this meeting,” Jatras said.

Instead of being a statesman and starting a conversation with the leaders of Russia, India and China at the summit to resolve tensions from the Black Sea to the South China Sea, Trump is being dragged down by “these petty little political problems domestically here that are designed simply to undermine Trump’s presidency – and I’m sorry to say, he’s dancing like a monkey on a string,” Jatras said.

“I think he is afraid,” the former diplomat added.

Journalist Neil Clark thinks the only surprise about the cancellation is that anybody is surprised by it.

“I think that Trump in many ways was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t,” Clark told RT, noting that Democrats who called for him to cancel the meeting are now saying he should still meet with Putin, if only to criticize him over Russia’s alleged misconduct. If Trump had gone ahead with the meeting, he would’ve been accused of “appeasing Russian aggression” just like after Helsinki, Clark said.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/445193-trump-putin-cancel-g20-reasons/

 

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