Agencies critical to US security have suffered "enormous damage" at the hands of the Trump administration, US President-elect Joe Biden has said.

Mr Biden said his team was not getting the information it needed, including from the Department of Defense, as it makes its transition to power.

He spoke after a briefing by national security and foreign policy aides.

Mr Biden takes office on 20 January but President Donald Trump has refused to accept defeat in November's election.

For weeks after the 3 November election, Mr Biden was blocked from receiving key intelligence briefings, an essential and normally routine part of a presidential transition. 

Following Mr Biden's remarks on Monday, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller said officials had been "working with the utmost professionalism to support transition activities".

"The Department of Defense has conducted 164 interviews with over 400 officials and provided over 5,000 pages of documents - far more than initially requested by Biden's transition team," he said.

A spokesman said the Pentagon had been "completely transparent" with the Biden team.

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55470625

I though Biden was above the ridiculous and a bit more intelligent than an average sewer cleaner. But no. There must be 100s of people able to come to the fore in the 250,000 employees working for the "intelligence" industry in the USA, and lead. Trump did no damage to the agencies, he tried to clean them up... The agencies punched themselves in the face by being part of the Russiagate conspiracy which was the equivalent of the porkies they had worked out to go to war against Saddam Hussein, way before 2003. 

What is annoying is the way the main stream media is yet buying the sauce about the "intelligence" agencies. These are designed to tell porkies, bullshit, lies, deceit, disinformation to suit the desires of the government of the day. 

See: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/11276

by Daniel Larison

President-elect Joe Biden’s proposal to host a “summit for democracy” in his first year in office reflects some of the important flaws in the former vice president’s foreign policy worldview. This proposal takes for granted that the U.S. and other democracies are in some sense all on the same side in opposition to a vaguely-defined authoritarianism. It presupposes that the U.S. is the undisputed leader of the democratic side. It assumes that other nations of the world are craving the American “leadership” that has been lacking for the last four years. It substitutes a focus on regime type for a serious reappraisal of U.S. interests in the world. Finally, it focuses on authoritarian bogeymen in other states when we can see that the greatest threats to a healthy democracy are to be found at home.

Earlier this year, Biden described the summit as an effort “to renew the spirit and shared purpose of the nations of the free world.” This might not have seemed out of place 25 years ago when the U.S. was still held in high regard and talk of the “free world” didn’t sound like an outdated propaganda slogan. That’s no longer the case today. This is one area where Biden’s preference for throwback foreign policy ideas is particularly ill-suited to the world we live in.

The arguments in favor of Biden’s summit are predictable and borrow heavily from the rhetoric and framing of the Cold War. Alexander Vindman’s essay for Foreign Affairs at the start of the month is a good example of this. Vindman talks about U.S. leadership of the “free world” in earnest, as if this description has much relevance for international politics in 2021, and he insists on dividing the world in two antagonistic ideological camps where the opposing ideology isn’t even unified or coherent. Authoritarianism serves as a catch-all umbrella term for many different kinds of governments, but it doesn’t do a very good job of describing what their leaders believe or why they do the things they do. That choice of splitting the world into two camps leads him to conclude that Biden’s democracy summit is just what needs to be done: “Under a new administration, the United States must organize a concerted effort, by democracies and for democracies, to counter the rise of illiberalism and authoritarianism. The United States must host a democracy summit.”

There have already been several trenchant responses to Biden’s proposal and Vindman’s essay, and they highlight some of the main weaknesses in both. As James Goldgeier and Bruce Jentleson point out, hosting a democracy summit requires deciding which governments qualify to attend, and that is bound to lead to snubbing quasi-authoritarian and illiberal allies or including governments whose commitment to liberal democracy is questionable. David Adler and Stephen Wertheim have made similar criticisms, and they note that some of the most pressing global problems can’t be addressed if the world is once again carved up into competing blocs. It’s worth adding that the solidarity among democracies that Biden and Vindman are counting on doesn’t exist.

Vindman asserts, “Uniting the democratic world against the clear and present danger of rising authoritarianism is not an act of idealism but of realism.” The trouble here is that there is no one “democratic world,” nor is there ever likely to be one because the interests of major democracies around the world are bound to be different. While many Americans may see Russia and China as adversaries, other large democracies do not necessarily share these views. For example, Russia is more of a partner to India than a foe, and Indonesia doesn’t want to antagonize China by joining an anti-Chinese bloc. We should expect democratic states in different parts of the world to have divergent interests, and if our government tries to shoehorn them into an ideological coalition it is more likely to damage relations with these other democracies. Even many of our most important European allies are reluctant to divide up the world along ideological lines, because they know that their economic interests will be among the first to be sacrificed as part of this “concerted effort.”

Vindman continues: “To convene a summit of democracies will not therefore drive authoritarian states together so much as it will acknowledge the stark reality of a world bifurcated into authoritarian and democratic camps.” Advocates of democracy promotion have been saying something like this for the better part of the last twenty years, and during that time they have succeeded in driving authoritarian powers closer together. To the extent that this “stark reality” exists, it is partly because the U.S. pursued a misguided “freedom agenda” in the 2000s and then kept pressing the issue by supporting uprisings in the 2010s. As the U.S. has linked democracy promotion with its other policy goals, this has tended to encourage the tightening of authoritarian controls in other states, and the repeated pursuits of regime change have caused authoritarian regimes to make common cause.

There are other reasons why such a summit is unlikely to achieve anything. Some democratically-elected governments may not want to align themselves with anything resembling a “League of Democracies” for fear of antagonizing other great powers. Others may object to letting the U.S. act as the arbiter of which countries are sufficiently democratic in light of our own institutional weaknesses and political dysfunction. Some governments will see the “concerted effort” Vindman calls for as the reinforcement of a two-tiered international system where states aligned with the U.S. are held to a different and lower standard than everyone else. Others will see it as a potential threat and a prelude to pursuing regime change in those countries under authoritarian rule. No doubt more than a few will be wary of yet another U.S.-led coalition preaching the virtues of democracy after decades of destructive meddling in the affairs of other states.

Perhaps the most important objection to a democracy summit is that a new Biden administration does not have time to waste on organizing such a gathering. In addition to the pandemic and economic crises at home, the new administration will be faced with an entrenched domestic political opposition and multiple urgent international issues that will need to take priority. Extending New START, rejoining the JCPOA, ending U.S. involvement in the war on Yemen, and managing the fallout from the failed “maximum pressure” campaigns against North Korea and Venezuela make for an extremely challenging and time-consuming agenda for a new president even at the best of times. These are the practical and immediate foreign policy problems that Biden will have to address in his first year, and the more time that is spent on pageantry and photo ops the less there will be for everything else.

There are a few things that Biden can do to combat corruption and strengthen democratic government that don’t require this summit and the grandiose ideological statements associated with it. First, he can support a renewed role for Congress in matters of war in order to restore greater democratic control over these decisions. Second, he can rule out appointing wealthy donors and corporate leaders as ambassadors, and choose qualified diplomats and regional experts for these positions instead. He can also endorse and sign legislation cracking down on tax havens and shell companies that have allowed the U.S. to become the playground of the world’s kleptocrats. As for opposing authoritarianism in the rest of the world, the first and best thing that the U.S. could do is to reduce or end its support for its many authoritarian clients.

The other key objection to the summit is that the U.S. must first get its own house in order before it presumes to lead or lecture anyone else about democratic government. Our political institutions are more feeble and vulnerable than most people believed possible just a few years ago. In just the last few months, we have seen how easy it would be for our system to break down after decades of neglect, corruption, and cynical abuse. Instead of being an example to the world, the U.S. has come alarmingly close to being a cautionary tale of what can happen when a government is obsessed with exporting democracy to the far corners of the globe while letting it deteriorate and wither at home. Rather than chasing after authoritarian monsters abroad, the U.S. would do well to attend to its own failings and repair itself.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-u-s-shouldnt-bother-with-a-summit-for-democracy/

Note from Jules Letambour: We all (we all should) know what a bidet is, but in French the word also means "a horse" like a hobby horse or a nag... "A cheval sur mon bidet, it trotte et fait des crottes..." is a famous children song. "sitting on my horse, it trots and shits..."

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by Finian Cunningham

CIA-backed death squads are running amok in Afghanistan, murdering civilians and terrorizing the population. When Joe Biden becomes president in three weeks, he should prioritize ending this “Murder Inc.”

A newly published investigative report has uncovered a systematic assassination program conducted by the CIA in several provinces across Afghanistan.

In just one six-month period during 2019, it was found that over 50 civilians, including women and children, were murdered in 10 separate massacres studied, according to author Andrew Quilty. That was merely a sample of killings in one province, Wardak.

The death squad, known as “Unit 01”, comprises locally recruited Afghans but they are trained, equipped and directed by American operatives.

There is no doubt that the clandestine CIA operation would have top-level clearance from the White House. It is carried out under so-called “Title 50” military code which shields the operatives from prosecution of war crimes. Only the president can sign off on that level of clearance.

Joe Biden, the incoming Democrat president-elect, has complained that the incumbent Trump administration has denied him access to classified national security briefings. Well, Biden will soon get full access after his inauguration on January 20. In that case, the new president will inevitably be apprised of the Afghan “counter-terror operations” and its death squads. He faces a choice on whether to terminate the program.

he evidence for the CIA murder operations is overwhelming. Afghan community leaders and security officials testified that “Unit 01” and its counterparts in other provinces are run by shadowy American officers who accompany the death squads during their raids on villages and farms.

Dozens of Afghan residents and survivors of the attacks also describe US-led operations.

Furthermore, the death squads are supported with US Chinook transport helicopters, fighter planes, gunships and drones.

The official American position is that its military forces are tasked with defeating the Taliban militants who oppose the US-backed regime in Kabul. But the killings carried out by the CIA-led squads target civilians in what appears to be a bludgeoning policy of terrorism and intimidation. In most of the atrocities investigated there were no links between the victims and the Taliban.

Under Donald Trump and then head of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, who later became Secretary of State, the US military operations in Afghanistan underwent a shift in late 2017. There was more emphasis on clandestine operations and a loosening of rules of engagement.

During Trump’s term in office, there has been a huge surge in civilian deaths in Afghanistan, partly from increased airstrikes, but also from the CIA death squads running amok. At the same time, however, Trump has crowed about withdrawing conventional troops from Afghanistan under a supposed peace deal with the Taliban. This has allowed the Republican president to claim that he is delivering on election promises to wind down overseas wars like Afghanistan – which at two decades’ duration is the longest foreign war ever waged by the United States.

What Joe Biden does about this remains to be seen, but the signals are not good. For a start, almost every American president has signed off on CIA murder programs, from Guatemala and Iran in the 1950s, to Cuba and Vietnam in the 1960s, to El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1970s and 80s, and many, many more besides. It’s a routine part of the dirty business of being an American president.

That’s why it is so contemptible and absurd for Biden and others to have lambasted Trump over unsubstantiated US media reports of Russia allegedly running bounty-hunter schemes in Afghanistan to kill American troops. There was never any evidence for such a fable, which even the Pentagon was obliged to dismiss as unfounded. And as usual, the media furore evaporated as quickly as it erupted, belying its credibility.

Meanwhile, it emerges that under Trump’s watch the Americans have been carrying out systematic assassinations of Afghan civilians with CIA death squads. Where are Biden’s condemnations?

Biden is associated with urging former President Barack Obama to take a more aggressive military line in Afghanistan when he was vice president (2008-2016). Biden favoured “kick-the-door-down” night raids by special forces. It is therefore very unlikely that he will repudiate the Murder Inc which Trump has unleashed in Afghanistan.

What Biden brings to the new White House regime is an extra layer of moral corruption and hypocrisy under the guise of being a “liberal Democrat”.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/202012301081612473-biden--cia-death-squads/

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Trump walked into the DC ‘Forum’, and ended ‘stabbed to death’, as had Julius. It has been truly Shakespearean, Alastair Crooke writes.

The ‘Ides of March’, they came early this year – on 6 January, at least for one current U.S. ‘Caesar’. What happened; how it happened; who concocted the Capitol events, will be long debated. However, the daggers had long been sharpened for Caesar, well before the invasion of the Capitol. In a sense, the stage was already set – Trump walked into the DC ‘Forum’, and ended ‘stabbed to death’, as had Julius. It has been truly Shakespearean.

It was well-known that Trump might well reject the election results, because of postal ballot potential fraud (as postal ballots assumed their disproportionate 2020 electoral predominance). The Transition Integrity Project (TIP) precisely(purposefully?) had taunted Trump last June with its forecast of a contested election in which Trump would lose – after “all of the mail-in ballots had been tallied”. The TIP then had turned to the prospective tactics and tasks for forcefully ousting a President-in-denial from the White House. (The media and ‘platforms’ had been participants in this early war-gaming of how to deal with a Trump, who contested the election result, and questioned the legality and authenticity of postal ballots).

It needn’t have been this way – but no compromise on rules on postal balloting was attempted (rather, the reverse). In any event, the Capitol invasion now stands as a major psychic event (the “Insurrection”) searing the American consciousness. Apart from unnerving the legislators, unused to experiencing a sudden loss of security, the invasion has become the sacrilege to a ‘sacred space’ (with all the additional connotations of America’s exceptional, divine mission). The daggers were gleefully plunged in – Trump is impeached again; he is to be tried in the Senate after the Biden inauguration; and he and his family, may expect the legal dismemberment that will follow.

The ‘Blue State’ has – from Trump’s first election – been determined to crush him. That is underway. And somehow sychronistically, we now have the Tech digital deletion of Red America from social platforms, with talk of a ‘purge’ and cultural ‘re-education’ for his supporters (and their children), as well. Biden is already speaking like a War President (and the Capitol now has taken the air of a theatre of war, with troops and weapons strewn about its corridors): “Trump”, said Biden, “has unleashed an all-out assault on our institutions of democracy, from the outset, and yesterday was but the culmination of that unrelenting attack”.

Here is the key first implication to that ‘psychic event’ – not just for Americans, but for the world spectating the unfolding events: Biden has called for measures against “domestic terrorism”, and used language that is usually reserved for combat with an external enemy state – language such as accompanies major wars. This is ‘revenge cycle’ material. In the case of two nations, literally at war, they do do this. This is a part of it. They hope to resolve their conflict through humiliation, repression and the forced submission of the other (i.e. Japan after WW2). But America is, at least nominally, one nation. What happens when a single nation splits, with one turning the ‘seditious’ elements into an ‘alien other’?

We do not know. But hatred is intense, both toward Trump and the ‘deplorables’. And now, these sentiments are reciprocated in the wake of the President’s humiliation, at a contents-free impeachment, reached in few hours. What seems certain is that the course of events likely will lead to a self-reinforcing cycle of ever greater polarisation.

The rise of Trumpism has created a new radical Manicheanism amongst the liberal élite. Tech, with its algos feeding like-minded material to the like-minded, has a lot to do with this digital and ideological divide. But the bottom line is that this divide is (falsely) cast as a death-struggle now underway between a monolithic liberalism and a monolithic illiberalism.

This carries a huge message for Russia, Iran and China (and others) – the U.S. is deeply divided, but its ‘new mission’ will be a ‘moral high-ground’ war against illiberalism – at home, firstly – and then overseas.

Yet of greater – and wider – significance is that the ‘noble lie’ – the mask concealing the cynical arrangement that is American ‘democracy’ – has been stripped away. The crucial import was underlined by the German FM, Heiko Maas, when he observed: “Without democracy in the U.S., [there is] no democracy in Europe”.

What might have Maas meant? Possibly, he was referring to the angry 75 millions of Red America that have now grasped the shocking magnitude of the fraud played on them. By fraud here is not a reference to the particular claims about 3 November, but to the much bigger fraud of a system rigged in the interests of the Establishment. This has been one of the basic props to the engineered consent upon which public order and social stability in America and Europe has rested for decades: the naïve belief in the democratic essence of the system.

This prop is being overturned by the ‘Blue State’ precisely in order to savour a sweet revenge on Trump for pulling aside the mask on so much else of ‘Establishment America’. Trump laid bare how corrupt the ‘swamp’ had become, and he articulated Red America’s deepest concerns and frustrations about off-shored jobs, economic precarity and ‘forever wars’. They, in turn, had projected their exasperation, bitterness, and illusions back onto him, turning him, by default, into their standard-bearer.

Yet – astonishingly – this toppling of the pillar of an engineered ‘noble lie’ is being done precisely by those (the Establishment), who one might have thought, had the most interest in keeping it intact. But they cannot resist it. They just cannot forgive ‘outsider’ Trump’s intrusion into their neatly constructed illusions: trashing their elaborate ‘construct’ of reality, simply by magicking up new ‘facts’ to contest their ‘science’.

Isn’t this what is so frightening for Merkel and Maas? The EU has its own, more fragile, ‘noble lie’. It is this: States – by relinquishing a portion of their sovereignty – might hope to participate in a ‘greater sovereignty’ (i.e. the European Project), and still believe that it is ‘democratic’.

This cynical European arrangement only stands if Merkel and Macron can hold up American ‘democracy’ as the guiding principle to the European Project (however misleading that may be). But now, with the ‘lights going out’in the ‘City on the Hill’, and with only a broken democracy ideal under which EU leaders may shelter, how will the dreary formula of a diluted sovereignty, with no real democracy; with no roots in the ground below; with the EU moving to ever closer oligarchy, and led by an unaccountable, and secretive ‘politburo’, survive?

The point is that European ‘democracy’ is also rigged towards Germany and the élites. And ordinary Europeans have noticed, (especially when only one part of the community bears a disproportionate burden of the Covid economic pain). The élites fear Trump: he may lay it all bare, for all to see.

Some EU leaders may hope that Trumpism will be so completely crushed, and its voice silenced, that Europe’s own fracturing engineered public consent can be contained. Yet they must know, in their hearts, that recourse to identity and gender ideology (as pretext for greater state-ism), will only armour-plate the bubbles and divisions because they prevent people from hearing each other. It is the post-persuasion, post-argument politics of polarisation.

For sure, the rest of the world are taking close note. They will not be accepting moral lectures from Europe in the future (though undoubtedly, they will still get them), and states will look to build ‘public consent’ around quite different ‘poles’ – loose concerts of states, traditional culture and the historic narratives of their communities.

Read more:

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/01/17/without-democracy-in-us-can-simulacra-democracy-survive-elsewhere/

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See also:

a "russian" platform for exclusive analysis

Alastair Crooke CMG, sometimes erroneously referred to as Alistair Crooke, (born 1949) is a British diplomat, the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum, an organisation that advocates for engagement between political Islam and the West.[1] Previously he was a ranking figure in both British intelligence (MI6) and European Union diplomacy.[2]

Crooke was a Middle East advisor to Javier Solana, High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union (CFSP) from 1997 to 2003,[3] facilitated a number of de-escalations of violence and military withdrawals in the Palestinian Territories with Islamist movements from 2000 to 2003 and was involved in the diplomatic efforts in the Siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.[2][4] He was a member of the Mitchell Committee into the causes of the Second Intifada in 2000.[2][4] He held clandestine meetings with the Hamas leadership in June 2002. He is an active advocate of engagement with Hamas to whom he referred as "Resistants or Resistance Fighters".

Read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alastair_Crooke

By Larry Romanoff

 18.02.2021 17:50

The American people, as a people, are criminally insane

Opinion » Columnists

I have in the past been accused of being 'anti-American' and, while that was perhaps true, those sentiments were directed primarily to the US government and its agencies and not the people of the nation, on the grounds that, democracy notwithstanding, the people were not responsible for the atrocities of the psychopathic criminal enterprise acting as their government.

My stance has changed. Just as leaves cannot turn color and roots cannot wither without the silent knowledge of the whole tree, no government can commit centuries of unremitting wars and atrocities against other peoples and nations without the knowledge and approval of the great majority of its population.

In America, violence is a universal value, like democracy and pet food. This is how it was several hundred years ago, and not much has changed:

The truth of "The First Thanksgiving", if we can identify one such event as representative, is rather less harmonious than the mythical schoolbook narrative. (1) Here is one typical celebration reported by an eyewitness, when a group of White settlers trapped about 700 natives, mostly women and children, at the Mystic River near Boston. The Governor of the area, a Mr. William Bradford, wrote in his diary the following graphic description: "To see them frying in the fire, and the streams of their blood quenching the same, and the stench was horrible; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice and they Gave Praise Thereof to God". There were many more similar events, not to thank God for the harvest but to celebrate murderous victories over the natives. During some of these multi-ethnic Thanksgiving feasts in New York City, residents cut the heads off natives and made sport of kicking them through the streets of Manhattan like soccer balls.

A US Governor Joseph Dudley declared in 1704 a "General Thanksgiving for God's infinite goodness to extend His favors in defeating the expeditions of the [natives] against us, and the good success given us against them, by delivering so many of them into our hands". Another Christian, thankful for the invention of smallpox, wrote, "It pleased God to visite these Indeans with a great sickness, and such a mortalitie that of a 1000 and a half of them dyed, and many of them did rott above ground for want of burial."

For years, some of the best-paying jobs in America were of killing Indians, and The Boy Scouts of America was conceived to prepare small boys for this career. John Kozy wrote, "The United States of America was conceived and nurtured by violence. The Europeans who colonized America were neither tolerant or enlightened; they were the dregs of society, and they even despised each other." (2) America as a nation was spawned in a violence that has existed uninterrupted for 500 years. The guns and killings in society, the hundreds of wars initiated against innocent nations and peoples, the century-long history of torture, the constant daily violence on television, in childrens' games, and in the streets and schools, are all merely symptoms of a deeply-ingrained pathological violent nature of America. Karl Weiss observed that America today is "a society of force so shot through with violence that any other value has little or no meaning".

The US is the most heavily armed civilian society in the world, with only 4% of the world's population owning more guns than all other citizens in the entire rest of the world. American civilians own more firearms (about 400 million) than do all the police forces and military (about 225 million) in the world. The American Military News states, "US civilians own 400 million guns compared to military's 4.5 million." (3) (4) (5)

The US has hundreds of mass killings in schools, at least one per week. In one 6-month period from 2012, there were 40 of these at universities and 40 in kindergartens and elementary schools. American schools have armed officers and kindergarten children wear bulletproof backpacks. Many nations and provinces have their national flower or animal, but US States have a "State gun". In China, parents look for new homes near good schools but Americans use the number of killings by neighborhood as their main reference when buying a new home.

Let's turn to some foreign affairs examples and see how they relate to the people of the US.

We can recall the US military destroyed supplies of potable water in Iraq, resulting in more than 500,000 infant deaths, with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright saying those deaths were "worth it" to teach Saddam a lesson. How did the American people react, to the fact of Albright's genocide and to her casual appreciation of her own handiwork? They didn't. I could find no trace anywhere of objection by the American people to this inhumanity.

The US military fired into Iraq millions of artillery rounds containing depleted uranium which vaporises and permeates everything including humans, with Iraq experiencing several hundred thousand hideously deformed births; babies with anywhere from no heads to three heads, babies born with their internal organs or brains entirely outside their body cavities or crania, babies with any number of limbs emanating from any and every part of their bodies, and a great many categorised by UN physicians as "unidentifiable lumps of flesh". How did Americans as a people react to this revelation? They didn't. Not a murmur that I could find anywhere.

One hospital in Iraq was cataloguing all the deformed births, preserving the fetuses, maintaining accurate records and photographs, evidence the US government did not want exposed. Their solution was to launch an airstrike, bombing the entire hospital to rubble, not only destroying all the records and evidence but killing all the victims along with the medical staff who were cataloguing it. This wasn't a secret. How did Americans as a people react to this unspeakable crime? They didn't. No complaints anywhere.

Still with Iraq, the US government was displeased with the foreign news emanating from the country during the invasion, providing evidence contrary to the official cone of silence desired. In response the US military ran a tank into downtown Baghdad, adjacent to the hotel where foreign journalists were encamped, and blew out the entire floor of the hotel. This wasn't a secret. The American people and their media were completely silent to this deliberate murder of many reporters, to say nothing of suppressing freedom of the press.

For many decades, the US military employed no snipers. Military adventures were conducted with brute force, and snipers were universally depicted in books and movies asthe lowest form of cowards who avoided "a fair fight" by hiding in trees and bushes while killing people who didn't even know they were there. That changed. Now that the US has them, snipers are the highest level of hero; witness Chris Kyle, sniper extraordinaire who killed more than 100 people. Kyle was good at his job and loved it: "I loved killing. I only wish I could have done more of it." In one account he claimed his favorite kill was a 1,000-yard shot where he blew the brains out of an infant's head while it was cradled in its mother's arms. How did Americans as a people react to this event-ridden news? They celebrated it with movies and books, and they built bronze statues in commemoration of the man. The movie was directed by Clint Eastwood - "Dirty Harry" in more than name. Amazon included the film in "Best Sellers - TV Shows Kids & Family - Legend of the American Sniper". Kyle's memoir was the #1 New York Times bestselling book for nearly a year, and the movie was nominated for six academy awards, including best picture. San Antonio, Texas erected a 9-foot statue as "A fitting tribute to an American hero."

As to the interference in the governments of other nations, the US media have voiced no objections and aside from a few brave souls writing books that Amazon suppresses or refuses to sell, there is nothing from the American people. They seem happy they are being taught to hate Chinese, Russians and Iranians, and voice no objection to their government's current attempted destruction of Venezuela, the decades-long suppression of Cuba, nor the horrific misery and death toll their government has inflicted on the nations of South and Central America, Asia and Africa. Since Vietnam, the American people increasingly approve of their nation's criminal misadventures abroad, this approval transformed now into active praise.

The American people seem proud that their country has removed more than 50 legitimate governments and replaced them with brutal dictatorships. The same is true of the American record of assassinations of world leaders. Not a peep from Americans anywhere. Today these assassinations are so popular (Khadaffi, binLaden, Solemani) that the people party in the streets on the news that their President has killed someone in another country that he didn't like.

It was the same with the revelations of the immense torture regime established by Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney. Not a murmur anywhere. Moreover, torture became embedded in the new definition of democracy for many Americans, Hollywood celebrating it with a popular TV series where the American hero tortures people in the name of Good. Congress was, if anything, worse than the American people. President Obama at first threatened to make public the entire photo and video record of the atrocities. Having been convinced otherwise, packages of the entire affair were prepared for each member of Congress and stored in a secure location for individual pick-up. Shortly thereafter, the CIA began having second thoughts and obtained an order for the repossession of those torture packages. But they needn't have worried; the packages were still in their original secure location. The Members of Congress didn't even care enough to pick them up.

The American people, as a people, raise no objection to the widely-known and undisputed fact that their government, military and CIA have interfered in virtually every election in every foreign country during the past 75 years. In total, of the 200 or so main countries in the world today, only three have not been either directly invaded, subjected to brutal military, diplomatic and/or financial pressures, been overwhelmed with American propaganda in their media, encountered huge interference in their national elections, and/or otherwise suffered massive interference from the US government. Results include poverty, misery, illiteracy, and tens of millions of deaths. While the American people may be unaware of the specifics and details in each case, almost no American is unaware of the circumstances of all these cases. And what is the response of the American people, as a people, to this litany of 100 years of unremittingbullying and abuse of all nations including so-called 'allies'? Only silence. There are no signs that Americans care of the damage their nation inflicts on the world on a daily basis.

Fidel Castro is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the person to have survived the most assassination attempts. In 2006, the BBC produced a documentary titled "638 Ways to Kill Castro". The US media dismissed it as a description of "the various ways people and governments have tried to assassinate Fidel Castro over the years". But it wasn't various "people and governments"; it was entirely the US government behind those plots. The media further dismissed this by categorising many of the attempts on Castro's life as "humorous", and average Americans appear to share that sentiment. For sixty years, no Americans have been unaware of any of this, and for sixty years no Americans have objected to any of it.

Cuba is of course only one of a great many nations the US government has destroyed or maintained in abject poverty. There are at least 100 of these, and still counting. Most of Latin America is in this position, with Venezuela today being driven into poverty and famine from a refusal to permit wholesale American looting of the country, as are Iran, Syria, and many others. Trump has, for four years, done his very best to ruin China's economy and major corporations. No Americans are unaware of this. Do Americans as a people object to this devastating bullying? Not that I'm aware of. If anything, they seem proud of it.

Are Americans as a people inherently evil? Yes, I would say so, for the most part. Are Americans as a people, and from their government down, criminally insane? I don't see how we could avoid answering in the affirmative.

Mr. Romanoff's writing  has been translated into 28 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English-language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai's Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney's new anthology 'When China Sneezes'. His full archive can be seen at https://www.moonofshanghai.com/ and http://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/

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