War and Empire Links: special McCain edition

1 less demented evil war hawk plaguing the world.

John McCain's death makes the world a better (less nasty and evil) place.

But, sadly, only ever-so-slightly so.

From Kissinger to Madeline Albright to Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld to Killary Klinton to Drone-King Barrack Obama and all their henchmen and supporters, including the authors of the Project for a New American Century, Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, to Kagan's wife Victoria Nuland (not to mention our very own Chrystia Freeland) to Lindsey Graham to John Bolton, to... the list of warmongering psychopaths ruling the world is endless, and though McCain's death is worth celebrating, just like Cheney's and Rumsfeld's will be, it won't change much of anything.


John McCain is dead. By Willy B via Sic Semper Tyrannis. Aug. 26, 2018.

Of course, you already know that because the headlines are dominating the news coverage. Most of the coverage is also lionizing him as some kind of hero who defended America from his time as a POW in Vietnam to his attacks on Russia for supposedly trying to undermine American democracy. The fact is, and I know this because I've documented some of it in the course of my own work in recent years, he was a warmonger supreme. McCain never met a war–especially a regime change war–he didn't like, nor a terrorist he couldn't endorse as a "freedom fighter," especially, as in the case of Syria, if that terrorist was in the service of the regime change war he endorsed. In Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine, a million or more people have died and tens of millions more are suffering as a result of these wars that McCain did so much to bring about. 

In a short but to-the-point piece. Sputnik summarizes McCain's extreme Russophobia and his love for the Nazi regime in Kiev. Vladimir Putin was being charitable when, as Sputnik recounts, he told Oliver Stone that McCain was a patriot, but one who couldn't accept that the world had changed. "People with such convictions, like the Senator you mentioned, they still live in the Old World," Putin said. "And they're reluctant to look into the future, they are unwilling to recognize how fast the world is changing." That Putin was able to say that says more about his genuine humanity than it does about McCain, who gave up whatever humanity he had a long time ago.

Anyone fighting for a genuine peace in the world will not mourn the passing of John McCain.

Why you should celebrate loudly and unapologetically when John McCain [finally fucking] dies. Caitlin Johnstone. May 8, 2018.

Arizona Senator and murderous psychopath John McCain is rumored to be at death’s door, and already the world is being admonished by high-profile empire loyalists not to voice any criticism of his blood-saturated, obnoxiously long career. 

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“These repressive decrees prohibiting criticisms of John McCain as he dies are like those who insist gun control not be spoken of after mass shootings,” tweeted journalist Glenn Greenwald. “Discussions of his life are inherently political. If you’re going heap praise on & sanctify him, you can’t also silence critics.”

"Insisting on the right to convert every US political leader into a heroic & noble saint upon death, while condemning critics as gauche & classless, is propaganda. It's easy to dismiss all the deaths McCain has caused because they're distant and invisible, but they still matter."
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 7, 2018

I would take it a few clicks further, personally. I say it is the duty of everyone who opposes acts of mass military slaughter for power and profit to cheer loudly and unapologetically when John McCain dies. 

We should all celebrate McCain’s death. Not in a spirit of vengeance for the lives his relentless warmongering has helped end. Nor because his death may save innocent lives, though that possibility is surely an added perk. No, we should celebrate the end of McCain’s despicable life first and foremost to prevent such bloodthirsty depravity from being normalized, or worse, immortalized as heroism. 

Many people will recoil from such a notion in horror, like the pearl-clutching ladies onThe View did when discussing my article “Please Just Fucking Die Already” which I wrote about McCain shortly before his cancer diagnosis. 

These people are cowards. They have compartmentalized themselves away from the horrors that McCain has helped inflict upon this world because it is more psychologically comfortable than acknowledging that such a pervasively evil presence has been working so intimately with the nexus of power in their country.

If everyone could be forced Clockwork Orange-style to look at all the death, destruction and suffering that John McCain has helped inflict upon our species, they would feel nothing but relief upon his departing from this world. It is only the aforementioned power to dissociate and compartmentalize which enables people to spew nonsense about McCain being a hero and a good man. 

It is this pocket of compartmentalization that we are being bullied into by establishment loyalists who demand solemn reverence for this unforgivable monster simply because his time here is almost up. They are doing this because it benefits and protects them. The ability of the servants of empire to proudly show their faces in public after helping to ensure the deaths of countless thousands of human beings is absolutely essential for the survival of the Orwellian oligarchy which rules over us. If we could see these murderous beasts for what they truly are, the illusion would be shattered and we’d never consent to being ruled by a system which empowers them. 

To truly see John McCain for what he is and what he has done is to see the face of the oppression machine that rank-and-file Americans have been manipulated into supporting. The empire which spends medicine money on bombs overseas and insists on an economic system that is propped up with the barrel of a gun depends on keeping its most hands-on servants normalized and celebrated. Mainstream Americans seeing McCain clearly will also be seeing themselves and what they’ve been duped into consenting to. Rejecting this illusion and pissing on McCain’s grave is a direct act of rebellion against the oppressive, war profiteering oligarchs and their allied defense and intelligence agencies. 

The reason the US-centralized war machine is able to get away with unleashing unspeakable horror after unspeakable horror upon our world is because that war machine has become normalized and celebrated. So it is therefore our duty to call John McCain the wicked witch that he is and celebrate like munchkins when he dies.

In a healthy world, war-peddling neoconservatives like John McCain will be treated with the same social stigma as child molesters and serial killers. So let’s create that world. 

Abnormalize war. Abnormalize the campaigns of mass slaughter for power and profit by the US-centralized war machine. Abnormalize the system which tries to normalize John McCain. 

Normalize peace. Normalize an expectation that leaders will not advocate war at every opportunity. Normalize an environment where someone seeking out opportunities to push for war will be recoiled from in horror like the demonic freaks that they are. Normalize a world with no John McCains. 

Oppose the calls of the social engineers for reverence and good behavior. The war machine is not entitled to our politeness. McCain’s family is not entitled to force the entire world to pretend that he wasn’t evil child-killing monster. We need to drag this abomination out into the light where everyone can see it and call it what it is. 

When the time comes (hopefully sooner than later), join me in celebrating John McCain’s death. Here’s to a world where such vile ghouls are treated like what they are.

DO NOT let them make a saint of this asshole. Caitlin Johnstone. Aug. 25, 2018.

McCain is at the top of the trends list on Twitter in the US as I write this, and clicking on his name brings up countless blue-checkmarked establishment loyalists from both sides of the imaginary partisan divide sternly admonishing us all to put aside our differences and show reverence for this brave, noble hero in his final days. They are using guilt, sympathy and patriotism to bully their followers into showing reverence for a man who has dedicated his entire political career to facilitating the violent slaughter of human beings at every opportunity, and in so doing they are sanctifying his legacy. 

One of the most aggressively protected narratives in corporate liberal circles is that John McCain is a hero whose very name should be uttered with the greatest reverence. It gets traction with rank-and-file Democrats because supporting McCain for his opposition to Trump allows them to feel as though they are non-partisan free thinkers, in exactly the same way Trump supporters believe their hatred of McCain makes them non-partisan free thinkers. In reality, McCain is just one of the many bloodthirsty neocons like Bill Kristol and Max Boot who have aligned themselves with the Democratic party in recent years in order to better advance their warmongering agendas. 

It is those agendas that are being promoted with the hero worship of John McCain. By committing the outrageous heresy of mocking, ridiculing and scorning that sacred cow, we are fighting the attempts of the empire loyalists and war propagandists to normalize and sanctify the act of inflicting neoconservative military bloodbaths upon innocent people around the world.

Map: All the Countries John McCain Has Wanted to Attack. Mother Jones. Sep. 6, 2013.


The Real John McCain. Navy Releases McCain's Records. Edward Morgan. Sep. 11, 2017.

The narrative propagated by McCain, of his five and a half years as a Prisoner of War in North Vietnam is about as far from the truth as one could possibly imagine. They allege that McCain, from the very first moments of his capture behaved as a COLLABORATOR and propaganda tool for his North Vietnamese captors.

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McCain’s disgraceful and wholly reprehensible conduct (along with that of John Kerry) during the 1991-93 Senate Committee on POW/MIAs, where McCain made massive efforts to block the release of classified documents and is described here as the person who did the “most harm” to the movement of families who wanted to rescue any remaining loved ones, left behind in Vietnam and Laos. 

McCain is described by those interviewed in this clip as perhaps the person who did the most to quash this movement – and they suspect that this was because he didn’t want the truth to be revealed by them.

The Manufactured McCain: Lifting Up A Bloodstained, Lying, Venal Servant of Capitalist Empire. Bruce A. Dixon, Black Agenda Report. Aug. 30, 2018.

The Manufactured McCain and the Real McCain 

There’s a real John Sidney McCain III and there’s a fake one, manufactured for the public relations of US empire. Imperial PR needs to justify, even sanctify the ecocidal and genocidal rule of the rich by portraying its servants not as the venal and bloodthirsty thieves they are, but as the brightest, the best, the most noble and deserving among us. The Manufactured McCain whom the corporate media will spend another week on top of the previous one lifting up to the heavens bears only passing resemblance to the real John McCain. The real McCain was no hero. He was a lying, bribe taking, neo-nazi sympathizing politician and war criminal, who served the US empire and himself for all of his long life.

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The manufactured war hero VS the real accident-prone pilot. 

The Manufactured McCain sometimes called himself a “fighter pilot.” That’s not what the US Navy called the Real McCain. In navy language, fighter pilots are the elite of the elite, the ones who fight other planes in the air. The Real McCain flew ground attack aircraft, which in Vietnam meant bombing mostly undefended civilian ground targets.
The real McCain was a slipshod and reckless pilot who totaled 3 aircraft in incidents where navy investigators pinned the cause of the crash upon lapses in pilot’s judgment, in each and every case contradicting the Real McCain’s official reports of those accidents.

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During his 32 years in the US Senate, the real John McCain was a consistent warmonger, advocating US military intervention in Africa, South America, Korea, and almost everywhere. He sang “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” before a veterans group, and called demonstrators against Henry Kissinger “despicable scum.” The record of his public calls for coups, invasions, blockades, bombings and assassinations to advance US military and economic domination of the planet is far too long to list. 

All this explains why corporate media are lifting up their whitewashed and manufactured version of John McCain. He’s one of their own, a genuine war criminal and loyal servant of capital. Lifting him up, creating and embellishing his heroic story lifts up and legitimizes the rule of the rich.

A senator masquerading as a gas station. Dmitry Orlov. Aug. 28, 2018.

His “martyrdom” as a POW helped pave his way to a political career, first in Congress, then in the Senate. During his obscenely long career in national politics, McCain did what he could to make American “democracy” look like a complete joke and to hasten America’s collapse. This, by the way, wasn’t a tall order: American “democracy” had long been a cesspool—a playground for lobbyists and political technologists based on a fully gerrymandered system of fake elections. But he did his thing, and is therefore twice the hero. 

Defecating into the cesspool of American politics doesn’t alter its chemistry much, but McCain pushed the limits here as well. If only he and the native genius that is Sara Palin had won the Presidency!

Bathwater. Ilargi, The Automatic Earth. Aug. 26, 2018.

Let’s try a different angle. How about the world through the eyes of children’s? I don’t want to dwell on John McCain, too many people already do today, but I would suggest that your thoughts and prayers are with the souls of the hundreds of thousands of children that died because McCain advocated bombing them. Or, indeed, 50-odd years ago, were bombed by him personally. I wanted to leave him be altogether, don’t kick a man when he’s down, but I can’t get the image out of my head of him singing “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”. 

To remember that, perhaps the most vile and infamous thing he’s ever done (it’s in the top ten), and then see someone like Ocasio-Cortez say he was an “unparalleled example of human decency”, it’s almost comedy. But not as funny as when in the 2008 campaign the woman in the red dress asked him if Obama was an Arab, and he responded: “No, ma’am. No, ma’am. He’s a decent, family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about”. 

That is full-blown hilarious. And hardly a soul caught it, which makes it many times worse. It made him a decent man in the eyes of Americans to defend Obama by declaring that Arabs are per definition neither decent nor family men. Yeah, well, you might as well bomb them all then. But enough about McCain: it’s about the children, and their souls, not his. 

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Abroad, Americans treat children even a lot worse than they do their own. With the shining example of John McCain in mind, they have supplied the Saudis with much of the weaponry needed to murder many thousands more children in Yemen. 1.2 million human beings are estimated to have died in Iraq alone. Thanks John. That’s what, half a million children there alone?

The Real John McCain. Jack Kerwick, Lee Rockwell.com. July 25, 2017.

McCain is not alone in having their blood on his hands. Yet in a Regime, a Government-Media-Complex, comprised of warmongers, McCain enjoys the dubious distinction of being the warmonger par excellence.

Best Way to Say Farewell to McCain: Piss on His Grave. Mike Mish Shedlock. Aug. 26, 2018.

McCain's "Legacy" Lives On: What "Legacy" Is That? Mike Mish Shedlock. Aug. 26, 2018.

McCain's Legacy 

1. In the 15-year war in Afghanistan wasting over a trillion dollars.
2. In drone policy, where the US military gets to act as prosecutor, judge and jury, where innocent lives are tossed aside as "collateral damage".
3. in support of useless weapons systems like the F-35 that McCain supported.
4. In asinine foreign policy in Syria and Iran.
5. In hypocrites and comedians like Kathy Griffin singing the praise of McCain.
6. In mainsteam media looking the other way when thousands of innocent children are killed in Yemen.
7. In support of torture programs despite McCain himself being tortured.
8. In support of holding people with no charge in prisons in Cuba.
9. In support of meddling in Ukraine while accusing Russia of meddling in the US.
10. In support of sanctions that kill or harm innocent people.
11. In support of no-fly zones along with Hillary that may have meant direct confrontation with Russia.
12. In ISIS, a direct result of misguided US policies that McCain strongly supported

John McCain and the POW cover-up. Sydney Schanberg, The American Conservative, Via Unz Review. May 25, 2010.


John McCain as Metaphoric Myth. Edward Curtin. Sep. 2, 2018.

It’s still the same old story. The best propaganda places individual stories within a larger framework. The individual is extolled or damned in the service of the controlling myth. 

Senator John McCain is a case in point. As an individual, he is not important, except as the glorified stories about him and his own confabulations about himself can be used to enhance the controlling myth. 

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The recent spectacle over John McCain’s death is a perfect example of myth creation. McCain is, however, a metaphor for the larger ongoing narrative that has been going on for centuries and seems to have no end.

John McCain requests ashes be launched onto Iraq. The Onion. Aug. 24, 2018.


Comment. Gary Weglarz, Medium.

I appreciate the Onion’s comments about McCain wanting his ashes launched into Iraq. However, I think the most karmically perfect ending might be to watch John Bolton, Lindsey Graham, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of that whole cabal of war-mongering psychopathic vampires in Washington — “snort”- McCains ashes off a blood soaked copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the U.S. is the only industrialized country that has still failed to ratify it). Just saying.