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Émeute dans la maison des fous

A n’en pas douter une seconde, le sommet d’Helsinki a été un succès. Les deux acteurs le voulaient, ils l’ont eu. Savoir ce qu’il sortira, ce qu’il en restera, ce qu’on en fera, c’est une toute autre affaire pour laquelle nous nous empressons de renvoyer nos lecteurs au texte d’hier de PhG dans son Journal dde.crisis :

« Ainsi est-il assez logique que j’en vienne à vous dire qu’il ne faut pas trop attendre de ma plume quelque analyse assurée et réflexion d’une précision extraordinaire quant aux choses décidées ou non, quant aux événements produits par les deux hommes, au cours de cette rencontre Trump-Poutine qui a lieu ce jour même ; et je le dis tout en admettant sans aucun doute que la raison est fondée d’y voir un événement d’importance... »

Dans tous les cas et pour l’instant, Trump apparaît aux yeux de tous comme un véritable président antiwar  tel que le rêvent depuis plusieurs années, sinon deux ou trois décennies, des commentateurs tels que le libertarien-isolationniste Justin Raimondo(« It’s Trump versus the War Party). C’est une singulière et remarquable performance, en même temps qu’une énigme savoureuse et bien dans la forme de cette époque étrange de voir ce président plein de détours et de lacets claironnants, de plaies et de bosses, de tweets sans fin et d’excentricités aussi longues, – du désordre enfin, encore du désordre, toujours du désordre, –en arriver pour ce moment, à cet instant, pour cet événement, à cette position du “président-antiwar” qu’il avait promise durant sa campagne avec un tel entourage, ses principaux conseillers et ministres dans les matières de sécurité nationale, connus sous les noms de Bolton, Mattis et Pompeo, qui sont tous des archi-faucons d’une façon ou l’autre

C’est un signe de plus, dans tous les cas, que le désordre, dont Trump est le maître incontesté, est plus fort que tout, notamment que le minable DeepState, qui n’a rien pu faire de sérieux contre lui malgré ses moyens considérables et la domination de tous ses outils d’influence et de coercition. Force est de constater qu’à mesure que passe le temps Trump ne cesse toujours pas à n’en faire toujours plus qu’à sa tête, et souvent contre les conceptions bien rangées et bellicistes du DeepState en  question ; s’il est profond cet “État”, ce dont on ne doutera pas une seconde, sa sottise semble l’y accompagner… Quoi qu’il en soit et pour l’instant, on en restera malgré tout à cet instant d’une rencontre aussi symboliquement importante, en laissant venir pour voir les effets et les conséquences de la rencontre sur les relations internationales et les relations entre les USA et la Russie.

S’il est par contre, après ce sommet d’Helsinki qui fut couronné d’une conférence de presse houleuse, une certitude qui tranche sur notre position général d’Incertiutude à propos de ce sommet, c’est la relance furieuse de l’incendie du Russiagate, avec la colère tonitruante et voyante, et faite pour être vue et entendue, des parlementaires démocrates qui débusquent la trahison partout, comme autant de défécations de ce président-félon, et surtout le déchaînement absolument extraordinaire de la presseSystème, qui a réagi comme d’une seule voix pour ce qui est des habituels grands réseaux et journaux. Ainsi peut-on dégager deux constats qui sont autour de nous depuis longtemps mais qu’il est bon, à l’occasion de cet événement d’importance que fut ce sommet d’Helsinki entre les deux présidents, de fixer ici d’une manière plus solennelle et plus décisive pour l’état de la situation à “D.C.-la-folle”.

• D’une part, la disparition devant être considérée de oplus en plus comme définitive de toute possibilité de grande politique étrangère bipartisane (à moins de s’entendre sur la destruction complète d’un pays [la Russie, ce serait bien], d’une zone complète ou de l’espèce en général si on en arrivait aux armes nucléaires). La disparition de ce qui faisait l’efficacité de la direction washingtonienne, parfaitement rodée depuis 1945-1948, est désormais en train de prendre une allure structurelle qui ne peut que faire s’interroger sur la durabilité à très court terme du système de l’américanisme. La solidarité, l’intérêt commun de caste, une psychologie conceptuelle commune, une complicité de brigands avec une sorte de code d’honneur comme dans la Cosa Nostratout cela constituait le ciment semblant indestructible du pouvoir du système de l’américanisme. Aujourd’hui, et cela depuis désormais trois ans, chaque grande occasion, chaque événement, – et celui-ci l’est plus qu’aucun autre puisqu’il pulvérise le tabou créé par le Système lors des présidentielles de 2016, – servent à conforter un peu plus l’irréversible fracture introduite dans la structure de “D.C.-la-folle”, c’est-à-dire l’irréversibilité de sa folie, et par conséquent la confirmation de sa pente de l’autodestruction.

• Le caractère de complète incontrôlabilité de la presseSystème, dont nous disons plus haut, volontairement de manière caractéristique, qu’elle “réagit comme d’une seule voix pour les habituels grands réseaux et journaux”, comme s’il s’agissait d’une entité collective, d’une sorte de monstre aux multiples tentacules réagissant à une perception unique et dépendant, pour la formation de ses jugements, d’une psychologie également unique. Nous préférons sans aucun doute cette sorte d’analyse plutôt que de parler d’une “direction” d’une “influence”, notamment du fait des quelques grands conglomérats et milliardaires (type-Bezos pour le Washington Post, acquis grâce à une intervention financière de la CIA) qui, aujourd’hui possèdent l’essentiel de cette presseSystème. Ce sont des “nouveaux riches” sans la moindre conscience des enjeux, avec le millième de l’intelligence d’un Rockefeller ou d’un Pierpont Morgan qui surent construire un système avec ses solidarités, tout juste bons à devenir des pions de la CIA ou de la NSA, qui laissent aller les événements d’un yacht serti d’or à un jet privé décoré de diamants.

Pour nous, la presseSystème répond par sa nature et sa perception conceptuelle à tous les stéréotypes postmodernes et du progressisme-sociétal qui sourdent  de l’écrasante présence diabolique à l’intérieur du Système, ce qui la met sans nécessité de la moindre consigne, chacun dans son style, nécessairement du côté du Système, de la postmodernité, de la poussée déstructurante et entropique, c’est-à-dire naturellement du côté néo-libéral et de toutes les valeurs fortunées envisageables aujourd’hui. Leur réaction est donc naturelle, spontanée, si l’on veut d’une complète franchise par rapport à leur nature maléfique. Ainsi en a-t-il été de leur réaction à Helsinki : une révolte, une fureur, – une “émeute dans la maison des fous” puisque fous ils sont sans nul doute, – devant cette manifestation impudente de la trahison, de la corruption psychologique, du mépris de toutes les “valeurs” postmodernes auxquelles notre avenir est invinciblement lié et ainsi de suite... . Le réflexe anti-Trump qui rassemble en un personnage symbolique et des circonstances créées à partir d’une narrative utopique tout ce qui représente quelque chose qui pourrait se référer au Mal-absolu selon la métaphysique hollywoodienne (“le côté sombre de la Force”, quelque chose de la sorte), ce réflexe a joué bien au-delà d’une mécanique pavlovienne.

(La métaphysique hollywoodienne, évidemment progressiste-sociétale camarade, pourrait être considérée comme une variante sublimée de la mécanique pavlovienne, – bref, une “métaphysique pavlovienne”.)

Sur ce dernier sujet du comportement de la presseSystème par rapport à Helsinki, on s’arrêtera à l’excellent article de Joe Lauria pour ConsortiumNews du 16 juillet 2018, qui nous fait bien saisir l’aspect dément et hystérique des réactions des médias US de la presseSystème aujourd’hui, à l’occasion de la conférence de presse conjointe Poutine-Trump. (Titre complet :« US Media is Losing Its Mind Over Trump-Putin Press Conference. ») Lauria (rédacteur-en-chef de ConsortiumNews), en plus de nous donner quelques informations sur le sommet lui-même, passe en revue les réactions déchaînées, totalement irrationnelles, complètement marquées par l’affectivismeet le déterminisme-narrativistequi garantissent la plus complète bonne foi dans la réaction, c’est-à-dire la certitude complète de la persévérance aveugle dans cette conception, cette analyse, ce jugement, ce regard. Rien, jamais, ne pourra les réconcilier avec ce que représente l’administration en place et son président, et la “guerre civile de la communication”, l’“émeute des fous” grondent plus que jamais. Un autre article, également excellent, de Bill Van Auken sur WSWS.org, complète notre dossier sur l’accueil catastrophique de la communication, et suggère la possibilité de nouvelles tentatives de coup d’État, ou coup d’éclat, du DeepState contre Trump. Il est toujours revigorant pour l'esprit général de voir un pur et dur trotskiste pur-jus sauter, après les réserves d'usage, à la rescousse d'un Donald Trump en sabrant avec un bel entrain dans la horde déchaînée des progressistes-sociétaux poudrés, parfumés et enturbannés. 

Poutine, le pauvre, a souhaité dans une de ses interventions que les polémiques intérieures n’interfèrent pas sur les politiques extérieures. Au moins, le président russe ne manque pas d’ironie...

 

dedefensa.org

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U.S. media Is Losing Its Mind

The reaction of the U.S. establishment media and several political leaders to President Donald Trump’s press conference after his summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday has been stunning.

Writing in The Atlantic, James Fallows said:

“There are exactly two possible explanations for the shameful performance the world witnessed on Monday, from a serving American president.

Either Donald Trump is flat-out an agent of Russian interests—maybe witting, maybe unwitting, from fear of blackmail, in hope of future deals, out of manly respect for Vladimir Putin, out of gratitude for Russia’s help during the election, out of pathetic inability to see beyond his 306 electoral votes. Whatever the exact mixture of motives might be, it doesn’t really matter.

Or he is so profoundly ignorant, insecure, and narcissistic that he did not  realize that, at every step, he was advancing the line that Putin hoped he would advance, and the line that the American intelligence, defense, and law-enforcement agencies most dreaded.

Conscious tool. Useful idiot. Those are the choices, though both are possibly true, so that the main question is the proportions … never before have I seen an American president consistently, repeatedly, publicly, and shockingly advance the interests of another country over those of his own government and people.”

As soon as the press conference ended CNN cut to its panel with these words from TV personality Anderson Cooper: “You have been watching perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president at a summit in front of a Russian leader, surely, that I’ve ever seen.” 

David Gergen, who for years has gotten away with portraying himself on TV as an impartial political sage, then told CNN viewers : 

“I’ve never heard an American President talk that way buy I think it is especially true that when he’s with someone like Putin, who is a thug, a world-class thug, that he sides with him again and again against his own country’s interests of his own institutions that he runs, that he’s in charge of the federal government , he’s in charge of these intelligence agencies, and he basically dismisses them and retreats into this, we’ve heard it before, but on the international stage to talk about Hillary Clinton’s computer server …”

“It’s embarrassing,” interjected Cooper.

“It’s embarrassing,” agreed Gergen.

White House correspondent Jim Acosta, ostensibly an objective reporter, then gave his opinion : “I think that sums it up nicely. This is the president of the United States essentially taking the word of the Russian president…over his own intelligence community. It was astonishing, just astonishing to be in the room with the U.S. president and the Russian president on this critical question of election interference, and to retreat back to these talking points about DNC servers and Hillary Clinton’s emails when he had a chance right there in front of the world to tell Vladimir Putin to stay the HELL out of American democracy, and he didn’t do it.” 

In other words Trump should just shut up and not question a questionable indictment, which Acosta, like nearly all the media, treat as a conviction. 

The Media’s Handlers 

The media’s handlers were even worse than their assets. Former CIA director John Brennan tweeted : “Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors,.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???”

Here’s where the Republican Patriots are, Brennan: “That’s how a press conference sounds when an Asset stands next to his Handler,” former RNC Chairman Michael Steele tweeted.

Representative Liz Cheney, the daughter of the former vice president, said on Twitter: “As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I am deeply troubled by President Trump’s defense of Putin against the intelligence agencies of the U.S. & his suggestion of moral equivalence between the U.S. and Russia. Russia poses a grave threat to our national security.” 

All these were reactions to Trump expressing skepticism about the U.S. indictment on Friday of 12 Russian intelligence agents for allegedly interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election while he was standing next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the press conference following their summit meeting in Helsinki. 

“I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be” Russia, Trump said. “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”

The indictments, which are only unproven accusations, formally accused 12 members of the GRU, Russian military intelligence, of stealing Democratic Party emails in a hacking operation and giving the materials to WikiLeaks to publish in order to damage the candidacy of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. The indictments were announced on Friday, three days before the summit, with the clear intention of getting Trump to cancel it. He ignored cries from the media and Congress to do so.

Over the weekend Michael Smerconish on CNN actually saidthe indictments proved that Russia had committed a “terrorist attack” against the United States. This is in line with many pundits who are comparing this indictment, that will most likely never produceany evidence, to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. The danger inherent in that thinking is clear. 

Putin said the allegations are “utter nonsense, just like [Trump] recently mentioned.” He added: “The final conclusion in this kind of dispute can only be delivered by a trial, by the court. Not by the executive, by the law enforcement.” He could have added not by the media. 

Trump reasonably questioned why the FBI never examined the computer servers of the Democratic National Committee to see whether there was a hack and who may have done it. Instead a private company, CrowdStrike, hired by the Democratic Party studied the server and within a day blamed Russia on very dubious grounds.

“Why haven’t they taken the server?” Trump asked. “Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee? I’ve been wondering that. I’ve been asking that for months and months and I’ve been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know, where is the server and what is the server saying?”

But being a poor communicator, Trump then mentioned Clinton’s missing emails, allowing the media to conflate the two different servers, and be easily dismissed as Gergen did.

At the press conference, Putin offered to allow American investigators from the team of special counsel Robert Mueller, who put the indictment together, to travel to Russia and take part in interviews with the 12 accused Russian agents. He also offered to set up a joint cyber-security group to examine the evidence and asked that in return Russia be allowed to question persons of interest to Moscow in the United States. 

“Let’s discuss the specific issues and not use the Russia and U.S. relationship as a loose change for this internal political struggle,” Putin said.

On CNN, Christiane Amanpour called Putin’s clear offer “obfuscation.”

Even if Trump agreed to this reasonable proposal it seems highly unlikely that his Justice Department will go along with it. Examination of whatever evidence they have to back up the indictment is not what the DOJ is after. As I wroteabout the indictments in detail on Friday:

“The extremely remote possibility of convictions were not what Mueller was apparently after, but rather the public perception of Russia’s guilt resulting from fevered media coverage of what are after all only accusations, presented as though it is established fact. Once that impression is settled into the public consciousness, Mueller’s mission would appear to be accomplished.”

Still No ‘Collusion’

The indictmentsdid not include any members of Trump’s campaign team for “colluding” with the alleged Russian hacking effort, which has been a core allegation throughout the two years of the so-called Russia-gate scandal. Those allegations are routinely reported in U.S. media as established fact, though there is still no evidence of collusion. 

Trump emphasised that point in the press conference. “There was no collusion at all,” he said forcefully. “Everybody knows it.” 

On this point corporate media has been more deluded than normal as they clutch for straws to prove the collusion theory. As one example of many across the media with the same theme, aNew York Times storyon Friday, headlined, “Trump Invited the Russians to Hack Clinton. Were They Listening?,” said Russia may have absurdly responded to Trump’s call at 10:30 a.m. on July 27, 2016 to hack Clinton’s private email server because it was “on or about” that day that Russia allegedly first made an attempt to hack Clinton’s personal emails, according to the indictment, which makes no connection between the two events.

If Russia is indeed guilty of remotely hacking the emails it would have had no evident need of assistance from anyone on the Trump team, let alone a public call from Trump on national TV to commence the operation.

More importantly, as Twitter handle “Representative Press”pointed out: “Trump’s July 27, 2016 call to find the missing 30,000 emails could not be a ‘call to hack Clinton’s server’ because at that point it was no longer online. Long before Trump’s statement, Clinton had already turned overher email server to the U.S. Department of Justice.” Either the indictment was talking about different servers or it is being intentionally misleading when it says “on or about July 27, 2016, the Conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third party provider and used by Clinton’s personal office.”

This crucial fact alone, that Clinton had turned over the server in 2015 so that no hack was possible, makes it impossible that Trump’s TV call could be seen as collusion. Only a desperate person would see it otherwise. 

But there is a simple explanation why establishment journalists are in unison in their dominant Russian narrative: it is career suicide to question it.

As Samuel Johnson said as far back as 1745: “The greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in fashion …since vanity and credulity cooperate in its favour.”

Importance of US-Russia Relations

Trump said the unproven allegation of collusion “as had a negative impact upon the relationship of the two largest nuclear powers in the world. We have 90 percent of nuclear power between the two countries. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous what’s going on with the probe.”

The American president said the U.S. has been “foolish” not to attempt dialogue with Russia before, to cooperate on a range of issues.

“As president, I cannot make decisions on foreign policy in a futile effort to appease partisan critics or the media or Democrats who want to do nothing but resist and obstruct,” Trump said. “Constructive dialogue between the United States and Russia forwards the opportunity to open new pathways toward peace and stability in our world. I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics.”

This main reason for summits between Russian and American leaders was also ignored: to use diplomacy to reduce dangerous tensions. “I really think the world wants to see us get along,” Trump said. “We are the two great nuclear powers. We have 90 percent of the nuclear. And that’s not a good thing, it’s a bad thing.” 

Preventing good relations between the two countries appears to be the heart of the matter for U.S. intelligence and their media assets. So Trump was vilified for even trying. 

Ignoring the Rest of the Story

Obsessed as they are with the “interference” story, the media virtually ignored the other crucial issues that came up at the summit, such as the Middle East. 

Trump sort of thanked Russia for its efforts to defeat ISIS. “When you look at all of the progress that’s been made in certain sections with the eradication of ISIS, about 98 percent, 99 percent there, and other things that have taken place that we have done and that, frankly, Russia has helped us with in certain respects,” he said. 

Trump here is falsely taking credit, as he has before, for defeating ISIS with only some “help” from Russia. In Iraq the U.S. led the way against ISIS coordinating the Iraqi and Kurdish security forces. But in the separate war against ISIS in Syria, Russia, the Syrian Arab Army, Kurdish forces, Iranian troops and Hizbullah militias were almost entirely responsible for ISIS’ defeat. 

Also on Syria, Trump appeared to endorse what is being reported as a deal between Russia and Israel in which Israel would accept Bashar al-Assad remaining as Syrian president, while Russia would work on Iran to get it to remove its forces away from the northern Golan Heights, which Israel illegally considers its border with Syria. 

After a meeting in Moscow last week with Putin, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he accepted Assad remaining in power.

“President Putin also is helping Israel,” Trump said at the press conference. “We both spoke with Bibi Netanyahu. They would like to do certain things with respect to Syria, having to do with the safety of Israel. In that respect, we absolutely would like to work in order to help Israel. Israel will be working with us. So both countries would work jointly.”

Trump also said that the U.S. and Russian militaries were coordinating in Syria, but he did not go as far as saying that they had agreed to fight together there, which has been a longstanding proposal of Putin’s dating back to September 2015, just before Moscow intervened militarily in the country. 

“Our militaries have gotten along probably better than our political leaders for years,” Trump said. “Our militaries do get along very well. They do coordinate in Syria and other places.”

Trump said Russia and the U.S. should cooperate in humanitarian assistance in Syria.

“If we can do something to help the people of Syria get back into some form of shelter and on a humanitarian basis…that’s what the word was, a humanitarian basis,” he said. “I think both of us would be very interested in doing that.”

Putin said he had agreed on Sunday with French President Emmanuel Macron on a joint effort with Europe to deliver humanitarian aid. “On our behalf, we will provide military cargo aircraft to deliver humanitarian cargo. Today, I brought up this issue with President Trump. I think there’s plenty of things to look into,” Putin said. 

Joe Lauria

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Democrats incite “deep state” action against Trump

Monday’s meeting in Helsinki has unleashed a torrent of wild denunciations that verge on a direct appeal to the military and intelligence agencies to take action to force Donald Trump’s removal from the White House.

The Democratic Party, the corporate media and leading figures within the US military and intelligence apparatus have joined in branding Trump a traitor who is functioning as an agent of the Kremlin.

Trump and his cohorts have many crimes to answer for. But the objectives that motivate the anti-Trump hysteria in the media and the conspiratorial methods to which the Democrats are resorting are utterly reactionary.

The summit in Helsinki was preceded by the strategically timed announcement of an indictment of 12 alleged Russian military intelligence officers by Special Counsel Robert Mueller on charges of hacking into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta.

This indictment, which consists of a series of unsubstantiated allegations, was seized upon by top Democrats and sections of the media to demand that Trump call off his meeting with Putin.

When the Republican president ignored these demands and went ahead with the trip to Helsinki, the Democrats and their allied media outlets were prepared to erupt as soon as the talks had ended. This was made clear by a particularly reactionary piece by New York Times columnist Charles Blow headlined “Trump, Treasonous Traitor” published on the morning of the meeting, which accused Trump of “committing an unbelievable and unforgivable crime against this country …”

The hysterical tone had already been decided upon in advance of the Trump-Putin meeting, and the reaction once it was over was instantaneous.

No sooner had the US and Russian presidents finished their joint press conference than CNN’s anchor in Helsinki, Anderson Cooper, an heir to the Vanderbilt fortune who interned with the CIA before going into television news, announced to his viewers that they had been “watching the most disgraceful conduct by an American president…that I have ever seen.”

”The most disgraceful conduct by an American president”? That’s really saying something!

More disgraceful than George W. Bush’s launching of a war of aggression against Iraq based on lies, which claimed more than a million lives? More disgraceful than Barack Obama’s drone assassination campaign that murdered thousands? More disgraceful than Trump’s own savage war on immigrants, in which the deliberate torture of children has become a weapon?

What was Trump’s crime in Helsinki that eclipsed all of these war crimes and crimes against humanity? It was to question the campaign over Russian “meddling” in the 2016 election, in which the media treats the assertions of US intelligence agencies—the same agencies that gave us “weapons of mass destruction”—as proven facts, despite the lack of any substantiation.

In one of the few incisive moments of the press conference in Helsinki, Putin, the former KGB agent, commented that, as a former intelligence officer, he had some familiarity with “how these dossiers are made.”

The less traction this campaign gets within the American working population, the more frenzied its promotion by layers of the ruling oligarchy, the media corporations and the vast US intelligence apparatus. The vitriolic language employed in the denunciations of Trump’s statements in Helsinki has an ominous character.

John Brennan, the career CIA official who became the agency’s director under Obama, declared that Trump’s appearance with Putin in Helsinki “exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous.”

James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, charged that Trump “essentially capitulated and seems intimidated by Vladimir Putin.”

New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman, the chief media propagandist for the Iraq war, described Trump as “an asset of Russian intelligence,” adding sonorously, “My fellow Americans, we are in trouble and we have some big decisions to make today. This was a historic moment in the entire history of the United States,” given that Trump had “engaged in treasonous behavior.”

Friedman added: “Every single Republican lawmaker will be—and should be asked on the election trail: Are you with Trump and Putin or are you with the CIA, FBI and NSA?”

Such is the choice offered by the American ruling class to the population of the United States: Side with Trump or side with the unaccountable and murderous operatives of the “deep state.” Friedman and the Times, who reliably articulate the line of the Democratic Party, make clear that the Democrats are the party of the latter.

Unmentioned by Friedman or any of the dozens of other media pundits who spoke or wrote along similar lines are the enormous crimes carried out by these agencies, from coups and assassinations of foreign leaders to torture and domestic spying.

Friedman went on to assert that the only appropriate message for Trump to have delivered to Putin was a threat that Washington would regard Russian “meddling” as “an act of war,” and that “we will not only sanction you like never before, but you’ll taste every cyberweapon we have in our arsenal.” In other words, a threat of nuclear world war.

There is an unmistakable logic to this kind of language. To the extent that Trump cannot be ousted by means of impeachment, the door is open to a military coup.

This option was given concrete expression by Michael Hayden, the former four-star Air Force general who headed both the CIA and the National Security Agency. Interviewed by National Public Radio on Monday, he condemned Trump’s statements in Helsinki and added that “mid-range officers come and ask me what do I tell my people, and that’s a really telling question.”

Behind the scenes, sections of the active-duty military, CIA spooks and former heads of major US intelligence agencies are in discussions about what is to be done with Donald Trump.

If the military were to stage a coup against Trump, there is no doubt that the leadership of the Democratic Party would fall into line behind an American junta.

The concerns of Trump’s ruling class antagonists are threefold. They fear that Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, based on trade war and the disruption of longstanding alliances such as NATO, is undermining the drive for US global hegemony.

Second, those within the ruling class and the state apparatus opposing Trump view any attempt to reach a temporary accommodation with Moscow as a dangerous diversion from confrontation with a country they regard as a major impediment to US strategic interests.

Third, there is a growing fear within America’s ruling oligarchy that the conditions are emerging within the US itself for an explosion of class conflict, which the Trump administration will prove incapable of containing. Within the ruling class a consensus is growing that it will prove impossible to suppress the coming social upheavals within the limits of democratic forms of rule.

The dangers posed by the deepening of the political crisis, now driven above all by a growth of social opposition to capitalism among workers in the United States and internationally, can be answered only through the development of an independent political struggle of the working class in opposition to both parties and all factions of the capitalist class, and based on a program of workers’ power, the international unity of the working class, and socialism.

Bill Van Auken

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