The President spoke as Ray was winding up 12 days of speaking/interviews/etc. in northern California – mostly at colleges. En route to Santa Rosa from Sacramento, Ray took some notes on Obama’s fulsome rhetoric, found a quiet corner at a McDonalds, and gave this interview to Jeffrey Blankfort of KZYX, Mendocino. The conversation begins with the “howlers” that leap out of a speech that could have been written by Franz Kafka in his prime. Ray is asked to address other issues, as well – including Syria, Ukraine, and “wise-man” Bobby Gates. (35 min.)
On the 2nd day of the NATO summit (Sept. 5), Ray gave an interview in Berlin to Nadja Vancauwenberghe, Editor of “Exberliner Magazine.” The resulting article, published in English on Sept. 11, addresses the summit then under way and also includes in one convenient write-up a lot of what Ray has been saying/writing about Ukraine/NATO/Russia over recent months.
In Moscow, Ray joins RT’s Crosstalk program with Gilbert Doctorow, Nicolai Petro, and host Peter Lavelle to discuss this issue against the background of Ukraine.
Not to hold your breath; it is a case of Waiting for Godot – a pas de deux being danced by CIA Director John Brennan and Sen. Dianne Feinstein with Obama humming the music. A brief year ago, Feinstein sat atop Brennan’s dance card, but he kept stepping on her feet.
The elderly Senator has shown she can still dance. Indeed, she cannot afford to be a wallflower, because she and her co-opted colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee have had guilty knowledge of horrific (as well as just plain unconstitutional) intelligence abuses and have kept their mouths shut. And so the complicity is uneasily shared by both sides (three, if you count the faux judges who acquiesce in frequent invocation of the “State Secret Privilege,” as well as the co-opted judges of the feckless FISA court).
And so the dance goes on and Obama keeps humming. He would probably like to stop the music and release the report on CIA torture but, in doing so, he would cross Establishment Washington. Besides, he lacks the guts. So does Feinstein, who is empowered under the law to publish the report herself, with the approval of the whole Senate (though nobody seems to know that). Ray thinks Obama and Feinstein live in fear of retaliation from the unsavory thugs let loose during the Cheney/Bush years – who are cut from the same cloth as those who killed John F. Kennedy.
