John Bolton is a veteran U.S. diplomat and foreign policy hawk. As the man’s Wikipedia page notes, he is “an advocate for military action and regime change by the US in Iran, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, Yemen, and North Korea”. So you could say he wants America to ‘have a role in the world’.
Bolton served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006, and as National Security Advisor to President Trump from 2018 to 2019. But he spends most of his time writing op-eds calling for the U.S. to bomb various countries, or to topple their governments.
While Bolton is known for his provocative statements (such as when he openly called for “regime change” in Iran), yesterday he really said the quiet part out loud.
Discussing the events of January 6th with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Bolton denied that Trump was behind a “carefully planned coup d’etat”. Tapper retorted that “one doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup”. And Bolton replied, “I disagree with that. As someone who has helped plan coup d’etats – not here, but you know, other places – it takes a lot of work.”
Perhaps even more amazing than Bolton’s admission was the fact Tapper – a leading American journalist with over 3 million Twitter followers – just nodded along while he was speaking. Tapper then asked Bolton a friendly follow-up question about his “expertise having planned coups”, while the two chuckled. This is what speaking truth to power looks like at CNN.
Of course, the levity with which Bolton and Tapper treated the former’s admission is extremely ironic given the subject they were discussing at the time: the alleged coup at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th – which many people (including Tapper himself) regard as a ‘fundamental attack on democracy’.
For Tapper, then, attempting a coup in the U.S. is a ‘fundamental attack on democracy’, but attempting coups in other countries – ah, well, that’s just something America gets up to every now and again. It’s certainly not something he should be concerned about.
What’s the relevance of all this? As I’ve noted before, the event that put Ukraine and Russia on a collision course was the 2014 Western-backed coup. The ‘Revolution of Dignity’, as it’s officially known, saw the replacement of Ukraine’s democratically elected (though highly corrupt) pro-Russian government with a government made up of (similarly corrupt) pro-Western nationalists.
Incidentally, we know it was a ‘coup’ thanks to the leaked phone call between Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, in which the former specifies who the new Prime Minister of Ukraine will be two weeks before the pro-Russian government was toppled. (What we don’t know is whether the U.S. had prior knowledge of the Maidan Massacre.)
Fast forward to 2022, and we have John Bolton bragging on TV that he has “helped to plan coup d’etats”. Now, I have no evidence that Bolton was involved in the ‘Revolution of Dignity’. After all, the U.S. plans a lot of coups, so different people may be involved in each one. But his statement shows there’s nothing conspiratorial about pinning regime change on the U.S.
Now, you might say, ‘The U.S. deeply cares about democracy, which is why they backed the 2014 coup’. But that argument doesn’t work. Ukraine was already a democracy (albeit a highly corrupt one). And if the U.S. really cared about democracy, they would back coups in places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Instead, the U.S. buys oil from those places, and sells them weapons – which they then use (in Saudi Arabia’s case) to bomb civilians in Yemen.
No, the most plausible reason why the U.S. backed the 2014 coup was to antagonize Russia, since the long-term goal of many neoconseratives (like Bolton) is to “see Russia weakened” or even to partition that country.
Don’t get me wrong: just because the U.S. was trying to antagonize Russia, doesn’t mean Russia’s invasion was justified. As Aaron Maté notes, “Even if a case could be made that Russia has the right to defend besieged ethnic Russians, that argument is undercut by Russia’s decision to attack far deeper into Ukrainian territory.”
But it does suggest this war might have been avoided if the U.S. hadn’t sought to change the status quo in 2014.
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Why are non-white people vastly over-represented in TV commercials? It’s now incredibly rare to see a white man in TV commercials who is not a simpering clown.
The ad agencies are DEI obsessed. To be fair, my bank balance is looking really healthy now that I avoid spending with companies that hate me, my family and my values.
“The ad agencies are DEI obsessed.”
They have taken it to a whole new level. I would love to know why. I would love to be a fly on the wall. Do the clients ask for this (somehow I doubt it) or are they too afraid to call it out when they are presented with the finished product, for fear of being called racist? I mean, they are spending serious money, and you’ve got to think that these firms have a damn good idea of their target markets.
Look at the ppl who work at ad agencies. They arent exactly sound Christian folk.
I don’t know anyone who works at an ad agency so I can’t really say. My gut feel is that they are, like so many professions these days, full of people who want to change the world, or think they want to change the world, and their chosen profession is secondary to “doing good”. The Lord preserve us from do-gooders.
I like Jordan Peterson’s take on people who want to make the world a better place. Most of them, he observes, are barely capable of managing their own lives well.
That includes most politicians.
Indeed. I like this from Krishnamurti:
4th Question: Won’t we find the truth you speak of through loving service to humanity, through acts of love and compassion?
Oh, this is a lovely question!
The do-gooders are always helping society, the poor, devoting their life to poverty and helping others to accept the poverty or to move out of that poverty. This is going on, recognised by religious people as a great act, making them into saints. You know all this, you read about it almost every day in the papers. The missionaries that go out. It’s all so ridiculous!
Now, the questioner says, through acts of love, compassion, service, do we find that truth which is not yours or mine or doesn’t belong to any religion? Now, do you love? Do you have compassion? Do you want to help or serve another? When you set out to serve another, to help another, it means you know much better than the other fellow does. I think there is a great deal of vanity in all this, in the name of service, in the name of love. Don’t you think so? A great deal of self-expression. I want to fulfil myself through various activities, maybe service, maybe that which is called love, or through what we call love and compassion. Isn’t it natural and a healthy indication to help another? That’s natural. Why do we make a dance and a song about it?
3rd Question & Answer Meeting | J. Krishnamurti (jkrishnamurti.org)
Why indeed do they. Probably just another expression of the will to power. One that is very influenced by the modern day meme of making the world a better place. Few things concur status and bloats the ego in the modern world as someone supposedly committed to making the world a better place.
I don’t think it’s like that, ToF. I think they don’t actually ‘think’ because they are already indoctrinated into thinking that this is normal and OK. It’s sort of in-built without any desire to change the world plus the main advertisers who do TV commercials are mostly based in London. It’s ‘their’ world they reflect, not the one normal people live in.
Maybe. At some point there must have been a big drive to have way more non-whites – it’s now beyond a joke
The road to hell……
I think this works at the level of dogma, which means that it’s on autopilot and not much discussion takes place.
It’s the zeitgeist. Colour good, white bad.
if any of these people actually thought, we wouldn’t be where we are.
Where and how did this zeitgeist start? What were the key milestones that got us to where we are today?
My brief experience of commissioning ad agencies in the ’90s showed they are quite arrogant. They are the experts, they say, and then generally ignore their client’s wishes.
Failure of the advertising is then levelled at the product, not the execution of the ad.
I enjoyed sacking one very large agency as a consequence.
I can well believe that.
“I enjoyed sacking one very large agency as a consequence.” I’m jealous!
They were so upset that they didn’t get the balance of their £225k annual fee that they sued. Unfortunately I had a letter from the deputy MD apologising for not giving us the service we had paid for. It was a sweet moment as they didn’t have a leg to stand on.
This agency had been forced on me by my company chairman who wanted the kudos of saying he was using a big agency.
I ended up working with my choice of smaller agency who was my choice from the 2 shortlisted.
With the big agency we were way down their client list, behind a car manufacturer, a soap powder maker and many other FMCG brands.
With the smaller agency we were their biggest client. You can imagine the difference in attitude and level of service.
Sweet.
Working for a small firm myself that I believe gives good service, I agree about attitude.
It’s not just about customers they have, it’s about customers and a market they *want* to have. British Rail did this with some stations. Bushey station is in Oxhey, but they wanted to appeal to potential passengers who lived in Bushey. So they called it Bushey and Oxhey. And now it’s just called Bushey.
OK, so the clients are all desperate to capture the huge, wealthy “ethnic” market?
Whilst the advertising agencies are very likely to be willing accomplices, the fact that this change from white to non-white happened so fast and so thoroughly is, I suspect, because the Advertising Standards Agency have made it a requirement https://www.asa.org.uk/.
Could be. The link just takes me to the home page – do you have something more specific?
No, I couldn’t be bothered to read all the way through, but I bet it is in there in the standards required ie they will demand ethnically representative adverts. And, if an advert has just two people in it, then one black one white is required. If a family, then mixed race parents and some suitably curly haired kids will be required.
A quick search on their site for “ethnic” just throws up stuff about non-discrimination and not stereotyping – nothing about “representative”.
I wonder if they have rules about not stereotyping white men as effete clowns?
Secret revenge of the advertising nerds on white van man who bullied them at school… Oh dear, here I am stereotyping people…
Yes, I did read that. It doesn’t nail the point down, but a nod and a wink is all it takes. I note the ASA does have rules about not stereotyping, but doesn’t seem to have a problem with the hapless white man stereotype.
I am sure there are plenty of nods and winks, yes
And every family seems to be mixed race. Haven’t the advertising agencies learnt from Budweiser?
Beats me. The ads seem like such crap as well. Who on earth takes any notice of them? I can’t see how many of those ads would increase sales. You’d think they’d be better off just sticking the name up for 90 seconds with a bit of music or a picture of the product.
It’s the same when your buy clothes online the ethic models male and female are vastly over represented. Anyone would think the black/white population in this country was 50/50 when it’s more like 10/90. We know what they’re doing.
Down here in the still largely monocultural South West, where one might not see a POC for days, it was news to us that the country is now all POC.
They forgot to tell us. Maybe we should black up so we can join in?
You don’t have to go far from London to see the demographic change very quickly, and it varies hugely from area to area even in London. Incomers naturally congregate.
Saville is dead, he cannot therefore be pursued (or defend himself).
The questions the ‘fearless’ BBC should be asking are: Who knew what, when, and why did they fail to act. Anyone still with us, with knowledge of what was going on but failed to act, should be on trial.
The BBC facilitated a show called top of the pops, filled the studio with young girls, so that persons like Savile could be let loose. Let’s not let John Peel off the hook either who I am very reliably informed was just as bad.
Before any comment is made on the whys and wherefores about this program, the real question is how can the bbc be allowed to profit from the concealement of a paedophile in their midst for many years?
Anybody except the bbc should have made this documentary!
Totally f ing disgusting!
It wasn’t a documentary and it wasn’t made by the BBC.
It was commissioned by the BBC and shown on the BBC, but it was made by ITV.
So some people here are now downvoting facts!
Ok thank you for that detail that does not reflect well at all on ITVBBC or MSM!
I did not down tick it is good to give detail.
BBC employed JS in the first place they had a bigger responsibility to check it and not show it and expose the inaccuracies.
The BBC showed it and presumably they paid for it. The point still stands. Not technically a documentary but a dramatisation of real events – again the point stands.
So the BBC have not started to make untainted, for want of a better word woke drama, I wouldn’t know because I don’t watch anymore.
The funding they have means they will visually make the settings look convincing and perhaps lavish; nothing to lose they think as they brainwash all the viewers young and old.
Done this for many years but in recent times it is brazen propaganda. Constant rewriting history and context.
At my school teachers show ‘horrible history’ clips which change the colour of our ancestors and lots more lies but the teachers do not open any discussion and the children are them brainwashed too.
That poor girl who suffered due to the BBC looking away, has now been cancelled in death, she did not exist they say and replaced, rather than telling her true sad story.
As usual the BBC employees are liars, evidenced again in this drama, as they changed Claire’s character to be Asian, she was a white girl !!
Liars.
It is supposed to be a true story they have made this drama fiction. Unwatchable.
Wonder why the BBC didn’t cast Lenny Henry as Savile?
Because maintaining the rainbow of diversity is more important to the morally deranged imbeciles at the BBC than accurately telling the story of horrific child abuse perpetrated by one of its highest paid stars. Abuse that they absolutely knew about but did nothing.
Diversity & Inclusion™️ innit.
With the BBC it’s carefully constructed social engineering, supported by cunningly worded, pre-prepared justifications, one after, as if on a conveyor belt. With most others It’s just groupthink. That’s all – just low-calibre people incapable of abstract thought, gormlessly following protocol for fear of losing their jobs. Not a jot or iota of philosophical or moral principle out there. Just awful.
Are they referred to as “Naan’s People” on Top of the Pops?