I’m afraid what we are seeing is just a preview for what’s in store for the lot of us. All of the horrors we are seeing in Gaza and Ukraine are coming to a neighborhood near you and me eventually. So take these lessons, as hard as they are to endure, in order to prepare yourself for what is coming.
>>"Does anyone think were so fucking privileged that we DON’T?"
Unfortunately, Gypsy, too many people think that they are privileged and superior to others. That IS the problem - this superiority complex that many humans have.
Were you to boil down into one or two or three words the essence of Gaza and Ukraine - what comes up for you? For me right now the words are "dis-connection" and "billionaire control". What might the antidotes to these two words be? "relationship" and "building citizen power" - come right now to me. We have been controlled by a narrative that breaks apart relationships. Apartheid is a structure that is a metaphor for broken and/or denied relationship. The" immigrant" separates me from him/her. As are the other labels today.
At one time - briefly - a long time ago, we were the government. And we still are. We just have to realize it and say NO! Then we have to reclaim what is ours.
I don’t think we are witnessing the birth of this evil entity devouring the world, I think it’s been here for a very long time. We were just too propagandized to see it. I think Covid woke a lot of people up and we are just now aware of the reality of the world.
Amen, sister. Gaza is just the test lab. Genocide is coming to your town. If you're white, you're lucky…you’re at the back of the line. But you ARE in the shower line.
I was just saying that (minus the shower lines part) to my husband the other day. Gaza isn't a showcase for the "human capital" it's for these War Expos. I guess Israel is selling a formula of sorts to their "client states".
Make NO MISTAKE...when the goal is to pare down the world population by 7 BILLION...NO ONE (even those complicit Satanists who think they are) is safe!
I agree but I think it's a bit more complicated. The Colonialist West is dying, other nations are rising. There will be a resources war first. Populations will be dispatched as needed
All the governments know what's going to happen, what has been happening for decades.
They know humans have to flee from their wars, their hired guns, their replacement of our elected governments, their deliberate genocides of which there have been many, their shipping people of disparite cultures to countries that can't stop them or understand these Interlopers, their distruction of our environments, the stealing of our water, soil and minerals, their never ending desire for more to extract from others' land, families and children.
It seems the Oligarchs have already decided that humans and animals are a nuisance to the world they want. There's the evil draconian refugee/asylum laws the Western Governments already have in place, that they talk of not being restrictive enough. They know they are collapsing the world. Now, because they can't control their greed they have to herd the peoples of the world, conduct more genocides. They don't care or want to bother with a just and equitable plan. Is this why they are deadening are minds? Is it so that we can't feel psychic, emotional, bodily pain and empathy (something they don't understand) while the Oligarchs choose who gets to live and the many that don't
The war in Syria was recorded as the first climate change war. The farmers wanted to drill deeper wells to water their crops. The government said No. They would have to tap the dwindling aquifer that belongs to everyone. Why? Is it because Assad and his cohorts know that they themselves will need it and they want to preserve it for their future?
I think my depression has got me here. But, I'm worried about the damage to all of us. Will it stay? Is there a cure?
You're not depressed, you're empathic 🤗 you're also very perceptive of what's going on. The food & water has already come under their control. A new documentary came out today called "The Grab" about that. I saw the trailer and it's terrified me. You're right about minerals and other resources too.Humans & animals are considered the same thing really. I think there is hope in all of this. Despite their head start, we're getting wise and are fighting mad! Worldwide there's an awakening and people are coming together in defiance. I think people on substack who share this concern should come together as a type of think tank for possible ways to deal with this.
I'm bloody tired of the proper noun "Israel", which invades my mind as I'm brewing coffee and slicing fruit each morning. The fact that it appears there, anticipatory to what new lies and disastrous inhumanity I may discover when I sit down at my desk, constitutes yet another Zionist crime. Certainly, this offense pales by comparison to all the others, but I nonetheless add it to the long list of reasons why I would celebrate the confinement of every Zionist on the planet in a special dungeon on some mosquito-engorged sinking island with Ukrainian Banderite Nazis as their prison guards.
I understand the sentiment of "celebration" but that is another thing that this war and other wars do to us. We lose the understanding that even the loss Zionists and Nazis will be a painful loss for someone. I wish we could just give them something to make them less vile and more prone to finding non lethal solutions that respected the earth and all that lives on it.
Certainly, your wish is noble if likely unachievable. Perhaps my use of "celebrate" was a bit strong, but it does illustrate the extent of my exhaustion with the daily excuses, the daily prevarication spewed by this -- and any other -- philosophy of group exceptionalism. If there's a drug we need, it's an exceptionalist antidote, a hubris detoxifier that restores the reality in bent psyches that humans are all imperfect animals, just a baby step removed from other primates biologically. Individuals are often exceptional in their talents or insights, but when I hear this exceptionalist/chosen people rubbish seriously proffered by supposedly intelligent folks, it seems to automatically trigger a vast wave of brain inflammation in my head.
"If there's a drug we need, it's an exceptionalist antidote, a hubris detoxifier that restores the reality in bent psyches that humans are all imperfect animals, ..." -
But isn't that what proper religions advocate? Not those various orgiastic evangelical sects and supremacist mormon-like cancers, but properly applied Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Islam etc? Don't they point out the everyday Joe/Jane's failures and need to watch and check themselves constantly?
Fair point, indeed, indeed. My go-to passage in the Christian NT is Matt. 11:28-30, which includes "Take my (Jesus') yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest for your souls." If only....
The West and Isrealhell has had a severe mental disorder for hundreds of years called
Chauvinistic Culture Syndrome (I created this term for the undeniably real personality syndrome that has been on display for a very long time). It's the very destructive illness that's worse than being raised by two narcissistic parents. It's been postulated by phychologists that there isn't really a cure for narcissism, IDK. Is there a cure for CCS? To address that question the first step would have to be recognition of the syndrome.
The Chauvinistic Culture Syndrome might be contained at first by enforced International Laws. Then the International Organization has to establish the steps needed to restore the health of those corrupted by the illness. However, getting these powerful entities to submit to a possible cure would be, probably, a violent endeavor.
I remember reading about forty or fifty years ago that the West was often described as being chauvinistic. I think I recall correctly that it was a common reference when discussing the U.S.'s predilection for foreign 'Interventions' such as the Korean, Vietnam, Cambodia and Global South corporate distructions and murderous colonialism.
Somehow that description disappeared from publications in reference to any Western country and I only noticed that change now. It's an excellent diagnosis of MICCA(?)'s raison d'etre in pursuit of global domination.
"However, getting these powerful entities to submit to a possible cure would be, probably, a violent endeavor."
You can consider what's going on now - the rebellion of the rest of the world led by Russia, the apparent unbending will of the Palestinians to keep going against the Zionist cancer, etc - as such violence. As the "International Organizations" got taken over by those same chauvinists and are totally ineffective, if not outright enabling.
Yes. I believe it will take that and I think that in this country the militias have to learn to discard their neo-nazi ideology to help. For right now they are serving the ruling class, the DeSantis and Trump personalities, though they don't appear to recognize that. They need to learn that the we need the opposite of fascism and to unite and learn them Chauvinists some gods damn manners (and much bigger lessons)
Thanks for thinking my wish is noble, but really, it is not. I just do not like feeling glee, even momentarily when I hear that the Israeli system of defence has been disabled and that there have been hundreds of drones that have hit Israel. I am more concerned about how I feel, really, than about how others feel. At least in this instance.
"I wish we could just give them something to make them less vile and more prone to..." - that's been tried and failed after the WWII. Nazis were being saved and tucked away by the West. Banderites were pardoned summarily by Khrushev. Zionists were given land to settle down and pacify themselves. Germany was allowed to unite and prosper, and get back to its inner Nazism. As Stalin said: "Hitlers come and go but German people remain". No shit, they do. Here they are again.
With you on this. We have to carry each other…like we see them do in Gaza…this is how we keep our compassion alive and keep space for joy when the killing does finally stop.
I wasn't able to get into the essay this time, because of the age old question, "what did you know and when did you know it?" The last essay, in the comments a Russian bot brought up the subject of psychotics; in which using metaphoric language implied that he was behind the murders of all those Palestinians, and now as you all know, thousands of Israelis are being killed, also him; obviously, too important to fail.
You are not alone. I used to weep daily for the souls in Gaza. I’ve lost my ability to weep and I wonder if anything in my future will ever cause me to shed tears.
What I have NOT lost, however, is RAGE. It doesn’t feel good to maintain constant rage, but it’s NECESSARY. I’m in such a constant state of rage that I’ll probably have a heart attack at some point. Again, though, it’s vital to maintain it.
If anyone feels themselves losing their rage, watch Sabby Sabs, Owen Jones, Judge Napolitano, Danny Haiphong, or any number of those who present the atrocities committed against Palestinians (and that includes the West Bank as well.)
If you want to CHEER, watch Richard Medhurst, who regularly shows IDF getting wiped out by Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as the bravery of the Hout’hi. Grimly satisfying.
It is not human to see a civilian population fenced in and starved and bombed daily, without getting angry. They don't have an airforce, so it is like shooting fish in a tank. The Indian bitch is signing a bomb to kill the Palestinian kids? Just because she married a joo, she lost her humanity? This bitch wants to be our President WTF?
It is not human to see a civilian population fenced in and starved and bombed daily, without getting angry. They don't have an airforce, so it is like shooting fish in a tank. The Indian bitch is signing a bomb to kill the Palestinian kids? Just because she married a joo, she lost her humanity? This bitch wants to be our President WTF?
Thank you Gypsy. Your comment made me feel better. I too feel so much rage! I am constantly trying to find healthy outlets (pro-palestine protests, sitting/protesting/blocking in front of politicians' offices) for this rage, lest I start making bad, emotional decisions...
Do understand it is somewhat self-protective. We are not built to hold on to this kind of visual trauma indefinitely. Yes, part of your limbic system is resting but I suspect it will come back. As a true crime journalist I've been through this before. The difference is that world leaders weren't cheering on and funding Ted Bundy.
People working in hospitals hit the point when trauma doesn’t bother them anymore.
I was in my 20's when it hit my. Xmas eve and a guy fatally shot himself , but didn’t die immediately. Someone cracked a joke after he died and the team walked out of the room smiling and laughing and the family was right there….I felt horrible and that has stayed with me for 40 years. It did come back when I watched a 39 year old man die of chickenpox. That’s stayed with me the.
As a career soldier for the U.S., I became immune to all of that until I went to Afghanistan in 2002. I lived amongst the people for ten months and discovered just how badly the U.S. propaganda machine is and decided I wanted no more part of it. That decision got me into a spot of trouble with the higher ups. I retired soon after. It didn't take away the numbness. I still have it today, twenty two years later. That doesn't mean that I don't care. It just means that I can see around the death and destruction and fight to do something about it without the emotional baggage. Once you smell death, you never forget it. Once you see death, you never unsee it. I use that to fight back against the leadership that provokes wars for profit. Even though I am just one soldier, I like to think I am part of a larger unit around the world fighting for what's right and humane.
I am one of those who caught the tail end of the Vietnam War in 1974. I didn't spend more than a couple of months sailing up and down the coast that winter in a small boat so I don't qualify as much as the guys who tramped through the jungles. I was only 18 at the time. But, I did deploy seven other times after that with my last trip being to Afghanistan with the 489th Civil Affairs Batt. in 2002. I am all about being a Veteran for Peace now.
What an excellent article. Clearly, you retain a lot more compassion and empathy than most. Sadly, our society is run by sociopathic narcissists, who do everything possible to deprive us of our innate ability to care for one another.
John Turcot, our neighbourhoods may consist of some harsh and difficult people, but they are not running things. It is the billionaires and millionaires who are running things and they don't care a hoot about our neighbourhoods or the people in them. They care about what they see in the mirror and their bank accounts.
Do you know how many pawns are in a chess game? What is your probability of being in a Rook or Knight Line or circle? They are all exterminated before Bishops, King, or Queen.
In the winter where we live, the homeless are instructed to use an area of town that is relatively safe for them. About 50 people live in tents in snowy conditions, but are asked every morning to take down their tents so as to not become too comfortable living on the streets. Without going into the intricacies involved in the city council decisions on this bylaw, city councillors are not billionaires or millionaires, but they do run municipal affairs and make by-laws which in this case make the poorest more miserable than they would otherwise be.
The above is but one example of making life miserable for the poor from people who are often just one paycheck away from also finding themselves in dire straights.
I wouldn't go as far as labelling such councillors narcissistic, but such by-laws are not enacted by billionaires. Councillors have a choice. ... and WE are THEM.
Yes, those councillors are some of the difficult people in our neighbourhoods. They are not the people who are running things on a larger level. They aren't, at this time, the ones who are deciding to involve us in wars. Their power is only in a small area. Nasty people, sometimes, but not the ones in control of countries.
I think that we are, all of us, the warriors that need councelling. Like a small fish will become a big fish, small wars will become big wars, nuclear wars. By definition, Webster's defines war as a state in which one's life is threatened by others, and if those miserable homeless people possibly freezing to death in my town are any examples of a society at war with its own people, city councillors are using their guns (by0laws) and firing on all fronts. AND they are not billionaires. If they were, they would not be sitting on city council seats, but in their private jets and yachts.
I do not see that the fact that councillors are nasty even though they are not billionaires is really relevant. When and if they make enough money they too will be able to buy their way into more power.
The implication of your comment is that the virulent contempt for life that is playing out before our eyes is not the behavior of monsters, but of our siblings. I can agree. I would add that there is a divisive, destructive choice that can reduce our sense of oneness to an either/ or calculation, and I think we are there. The powers that allow and sponsor grotesque inhumanity may be our kin, but as such those powers are susceptible to the consequences of their complicity and inaction. I don’t think it follows that “we can do nothing.” The universe is vast and contains its own forces and counter forces.
Glad to see someone can agree with me on some points now and then.
I think the human condition is not that different from the harsh and unforgiving conditions found in nature itself. I.e., we walked out jungles, but the jungles came along for the ride. The sooner we recognize our links to gorillas, the sooner we may be able to figure out how to escape nature's legacy... i.e., ... a Survival of the Fittest legacy. .
We are intelligent enough to recognize our needs, but stupid enough to make nuclear arsenals, displaying the jungle mentality that still lurks under the veneer that we call civilization. . i.e., In 'The Descent of Man'''.. Darwin had it right.... It's up to us to evolve, or perish.
I don’t think that it’s the “we are stupid” problem. In America, the comfortable are vigilantly attuned to their rickety perches, and that is the stuff of emotionalism. This is where education as a social service has left a black hole in the national profile.
Capital punishment is predicated on bombarding voters with venomous visions of human depravity, and personalizing the anger that victims feel. There was a presidential candidate named Michael Dukakis who was destroyed in a debate when he was flummoxed by a question, which he clearly didn’t anticipate. The question was in regard to Dukakis’s opposition to capital punishment, and posed a scenario where the candidate’s wife was heinously murdered, and the candidate held firm, but didn’t engage the moment. The question was a classic example of the reporter calculating his own celebrity, and to me, that should have been the essence of the candidate’s response. Do we want victims to dictate our social norms? Put another way, can we agree that emotional reactions are not going to achieve sound policies.
I feel that as social creatures we can recognize that certain principles like fairness and equanimity are more basic and critical than the satisfaction bequeathed by identity politics. Essentially, conducting elections via TV is closing the barn door after the horses have fled. Sound and fair policies are NEVER achieved in a sealed corporate bubble that peddles its narratives to entertain and distract. George Monbiot has argued that our present level of technology could proficiently articulate our collective needs and priorities and wills. That would only exist in a society hungry for peace and democracy.
Nice try7 unwarranted... but not enough bananas... No matter how you try to analyze it, aiming 15,000 nuclear warheads at each other, knowing that using most of the weapons in national arsenals could cause human extinction, is as stupid as it gets.
Webster defines stupidity as lacking intelligence or common sense. In that sense, it implies that intelligence would prevent humans from making nuclear weapons, and so if we are intelligent beings making nuclear weapons, we are therefore Stupid.
I think we may be individually intelligent, but collectively stupid,.... i.e., the lemming syndrome. If you know there are enough nuclear arsenals to end human existence, and you say nothing or do nothing about it, then the collective is you.
To me there’s no shame and no controversy in recognizing our ancestry and primordial roots. I suspect that you are either exhausted with human attempts at self- reflection, self-improvement and social justice, or you are possibly ideologically conservative, embracing a theological fatalism regarding temporal human existence. All humans struggle and I believe that a collective awareness of our shared options and limitations is available through institutional mediation and intervention.
I think the Austrian/American attraction to corporate socialization and value inculcation has proven over decades to be hugely successful, as Americans regurgitate the mindless, apolitical worldview that they are fed. America has been dumbed down intentionally and socially neutered by design.
I think it’s too easy to look at American society and draw negative conclusions about human nature and capacities.
“The Thousand Yard Stare,” a Vietnam war era term for a soldier with PTSD so severe that any and all humanity was absent, all feeling feedback completely numb, and a newly minted sociopathic weapon system at large—a warning to anyone who wants to make a difference. The key is learning to feel our feelings as they arise without fear, without giving into repressive need, and ultimately without identifying with the darkness that we must walk through within ourselves to arrive at “the deep within” where responsibility and resolution reside.
These dead children, killed and mutilated by bombs, snipers, starvation, are the symptom, the graphic illustration of the mental disease or ideology fuelling, running our world. Emerge from the depths of sentiments to tackle the underlying issue. For the children.
I am so angry at the Zionist government of Isreal that I can't even cry any more. I am stone cold at this point in respects to the evil perpetrated upon the Palestinean people. I am equally angry at our own government and others that allowed this evil to continue on. It easily could have been stopped. 1. No foreign aid to bomb. 2. Sanctions. 3. Peacekeeping forces. 4. Mass shipping of aid in food and neccessary items by force with armed guards. There were absolutely no execuses for the USA, Britain, and the European Nations no to make this an impossibility for Isreal to continue the mass murder of civilians. What Isreal has done to Palestine they will gladly do to us also. I am permanently boycotting anything and everything from Isreal. I'm done! That includes supporting our grifting politicians who are in bed with AIPAC. Which is a whole another sorded situation.
Amen. I remember around two years ago finding out about Donetsk's Alley of Angels, commemorating some 400 children killed by Ukrainian shelling since 2014, and feeling sick with anger that this is what the side that I was being mocked and disparaged for not supporting was doing. I even feel a little guilty for not feeling the same bubbling rage as I did then, for something many times worse
Alastair Crooke, Israel and the Misjudgement of Reality
The core tension within the Western-Israeli calculus is that the U.S. and the EU are moving in one direction – back to the failed Oslo approach – whilst polling underscores Jewish electors firmly marching in the other direction.
A recent survey conducted by the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs shows that since 7 October, 79% of all Jewish respondents oppose the establishment of a Palestinian State on 1967 lines (68% were opposed prior to 7 Oct); 74% are opposed even in exchange for normalisation with Saudi Arabia. And reflective of the internal Israeli divide, “only 24% of left-wing voters support a [Palestinian] State without conditions”.
In short, as the western institutional leadership clings to the shrinking Israeli secular liberal Left, Israelis as whole (including the young) are moving hard Right. A recent Pew poll shows that 73% of the Israeli public support the military response in Gaza – albeit a third of Israelis complained it had not gone far enough. A plurality of Israelis think Israel should govern the Gaza Strip. And Netanyahu, in the aftermath of the ICC arrest threat, is overtaking Gantz (leader of the National Union) in approval ratings.
If your spiritual guide (Talmud) is telling you that only Jews are human, and the Jews are supreme and entitled 2800 slave each? The Jews should kill Edom goyims (7 billion peoples)? It is no wonder that the monstrous Israeli soldiers are filming themselves peeing on and kicking a dead Palestinian man?
Having said so, we should be grateful to Jews who see these monstrosity as evils. Like Max Blumenthal, Matt Taibbi, Norm Finkelsein,...
I worry that decades of absorbing a constant trauma narrative around the holocaust has damaged Israelis in psychological ways that haven't been examined. Living one's life, generational as hunted people may have created something ugly, never seen before. I don't know how else to explain it.
The people that were in concentration camps of WWII essentially are all deceased. But boy oh boy did the Isreali's ever learn how to hate. They have become the neu nazi's.
Not all holocaust survivors are deceased. The zionists who are around now, wanting supremacy over others and committing genocide use the holocaust as an excuse for their behaviour. That is completely not caring about people who were really in the holocaust and who don't want to see anything like it again for anyone. There are a lot of people, Jewish and not Jewish, who think that way. There are holocaust survivors who have spoken against what Israel is doing to Gaza right now. I think that the main quality of those in power in Israel and in the US is that they want power and control and money for themselves. I don't even think hatred is a motivator for those in power. The people with power brainwash others with zionist ideology and get others to hate, but they themselves feel nothing except the desire for more money and power.
The Israelis are mostly khazarians converts to Judaism. Their heritage is not from the ME, and their language was never Hebrew. They are living a supremacist lies.
At least we in America never claimed to be born here 2000 years ago, and the Indians never existed, and God gave us this land. Truth is difficult for the sociopaths.
All Israelis do is appropriate: others’ pain (wwII survivors), others’ land, food, culture and continue taking taxpayer funds from foreign nations to fuel their hateful war sprees
I still feel it when I see the horrors. I still cry, and shake and loose sleep. I don't know if it's worse that - this week at least - I chose not to look, to spare myself the grief that Palestine cannot avoid.
Caitlin, You are being honest and not afraid to confront your worst fears of getting numb with too much feeling. The sage says compassion is feeling and realising another's misery with your heart open to their suffering, but somehow not let it consume you.
I do not yet know how to do that. I am not as honest as you to own and confront my fears that I am losing my caring; was ashamed that I no longer want see the daily carnage. The words itself were beginning to lose its impact, groping to put words to the pictures.
Then I stop myself and feels like shit - I remind myself that my feelings are minuscule, does not matter at all ,compared to the Palestinian mother holding her dead child, unable even to cry; the father weeping over the dead bodies of his family; the starving children with their battered pans waiting for gruel; the bewildered faces of little children with their amputated limbs; the body bags piling up - the indefatigable Palestinians giving them a fitting farewell.
When they are bearing such pain and grief who am I to worry about my feelings - then my heart thaws out and I become one with their suffering.
I’m afraid what we are seeing is just a preview for what’s in store for the lot of us. All of the horrors we are seeing in Gaza and Ukraine are coming to a neighborhood near you and me eventually. So take these lessons, as hard as they are to endure, in order to prepare yourself for what is coming.
@SherriRoach I completely agree with you on this point. We're seeing our future if we can't stop this.
If we don’t stop this carnage it’s the future we DESERVE.
Does anyone think were so fucking privileged that we DON’T?
>>"Does anyone think were so fucking privileged that we DON’T?"
Unfortunately, Gypsy, too many people think that they are privileged and superior to others. That IS the problem - this superiority complex that many humans have.
Were you to boil down into one or two or three words the essence of Gaza and Ukraine - what comes up for you? For me right now the words are "dis-connection" and "billionaire control". What might the antidotes to these two words be? "relationship" and "building citizen power" - come right now to me. We have been controlled by a narrative that breaks apart relationships. Apartheid is a structure that is a metaphor for broken and/or denied relationship. The" immigrant" separates me from him/her. As are the other labels today.
Another phrase that comes to mind for me, Selina, is ‘colonial mindset’ to sum up the situation.
Also, ‘shit show’
We could if our government wanted to.
Katlheen....
"We could if our government wanted to.""" Not so fast! .... WE are the governments. YOU are the governments.
We are not the government. That's bullshit they teach you in elementary school.
S>L.
"Bullshit" or not, then who is the government.? ..... Aliens from the planet Klingon?
Our feudal overlords, I suppose.
Therefore, WE are responsible for getting out there and stopping it. As in millions surrounding the white mans house shouting STOP!
Right. We have to *restore* this to de facto, even if it is currently only de jure.
At one time - briefly - a long time ago, we were the government. And we still are. We just have to realize it and say NO! Then we have to reclaim what is ours.
Agreed. We are witnessing the birth of something dark and really evil. This nightmare is meant to be a salutary lesson.
I don’t think we are witnessing the birth of this evil entity devouring the world, I think it’s been here for a very long time. We were just too propagandized to see it. I think Covid woke a lot of people up and we are just now aware of the reality of the world.
Well said Sherri.
Amen, sister. Gaza is just the test lab. Genocide is coming to your town. If you're white, you're lucky…you’re at the back of the line. But you ARE in the shower line.
I was just saying that (minus the shower lines part) to my husband the other day. Gaza isn't a showcase for the "human capital" it's for these War Expos. I guess Israel is selling a formula of sorts to their "client states".
Make NO MISTAKE...when the goal is to pare down the world population by 7 BILLION...NO ONE (even those complicit Satanists who think they are) is safe!
I agree but I think it's a bit more complicated. The Colonialist West is dying, other nations are rising. There will be a resources war first. Populations will be dispatched as needed
All the governments know what's going to happen, what has been happening for decades.
They know humans have to flee from their wars, their hired guns, their replacement of our elected governments, their deliberate genocides of which there have been many, their shipping people of disparite cultures to countries that can't stop them or understand these Interlopers, their distruction of our environments, the stealing of our water, soil and minerals, their never ending desire for more to extract from others' land, families and children.
It seems the Oligarchs have already decided that humans and animals are a nuisance to the world they want. There's the evil draconian refugee/asylum laws the Western Governments already have in place, that they talk of not being restrictive enough. They know they are collapsing the world. Now, because they can't control their greed they have to herd the peoples of the world, conduct more genocides. They don't care or want to bother with a just and equitable plan. Is this why they are deadening are minds? Is it so that we can't feel psychic, emotional, bodily pain and empathy (something they don't understand) while the Oligarchs choose who gets to live and the many that don't
The war in Syria was recorded as the first climate change war. The farmers wanted to drill deeper wells to water their crops. The government said No. They would have to tap the dwindling aquifer that belongs to everyone. Why? Is it because Assad and his cohorts know that they themselves will need it and they want to preserve it for their future?
I think my depression has got me here. But, I'm worried about the damage to all of us. Will it stay? Is there a cure?
You're not depressed, you're empathic 🤗 you're also very perceptive of what's going on. The food & water has already come under their control. A new documentary came out today called "The Grab" about that. I saw the trailer and it's terrified me. You're right about minerals and other resources too.Humans & animals are considered the same thing really. I think there is hope in all of this. Despite their head start, we're getting wise and are fighting mad! Worldwide there's an awakening and people are coming together in defiance. I think people on substack who share this concern should come together as a type of think tank for possible ways to deal with this.
Indeed, they're making you get used to it so you don't object much when they call you to arms.
I know you are right.
What is coming has already come. Again. And Again. And again.
🎯🎯🎯
I'm bloody tired of the proper noun "Israel", which invades my mind as I'm brewing coffee and slicing fruit each morning. The fact that it appears there, anticipatory to what new lies and disastrous inhumanity I may discover when I sit down at my desk, constitutes yet another Zionist crime. Certainly, this offense pales by comparison to all the others, but I nonetheless add it to the long list of reasons why I would celebrate the confinement of every Zionist on the planet in a special dungeon on some mosquito-engorged sinking island with Ukrainian Banderite Nazis as their prison guards.
I understand the sentiment of "celebration" but that is another thing that this war and other wars do to us. We lose the understanding that even the loss Zionists and Nazis will be a painful loss for someone. I wish we could just give them something to make them less vile and more prone to finding non lethal solutions that respected the earth and all that lives on it.
Certainly, your wish is noble if likely unachievable. Perhaps my use of "celebrate" was a bit strong, but it does illustrate the extent of my exhaustion with the daily excuses, the daily prevarication spewed by this -- and any other -- philosophy of group exceptionalism. If there's a drug we need, it's an exceptionalist antidote, a hubris detoxifier that restores the reality in bent psyches that humans are all imperfect animals, just a baby step removed from other primates biologically. Individuals are often exceptional in their talents or insights, but when I hear this exceptionalist/chosen people rubbish seriously proffered by supposedly intelligent folks, it seems to automatically trigger a vast wave of brain inflammation in my head.
"If there's a drug we need, it's an exceptionalist antidote, a hubris detoxifier that restores the reality in bent psyches that humans are all imperfect animals, ..." -
But isn't that what proper religions advocate? Not those various orgiastic evangelical sects and supremacist mormon-like cancers, but properly applied Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Islam etc? Don't they point out the everyday Joe/Jane's failures and need to watch and check themselves constantly?
Fair point, indeed.
Fair point, indeed, indeed. My go-to passage in the Christian NT is Matt. 11:28-30, which includes "Take my (Jesus') yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest for your souls." If only....
The West and Isrealhell has had a severe mental disorder for hundreds of years called
Chauvinistic Culture Syndrome (I created this term for the undeniably real personality syndrome that has been on display for a very long time). It's the very destructive illness that's worse than being raised by two narcissistic parents. It's been postulated by phychologists that there isn't really a cure for narcissism, IDK. Is there a cure for CCS? To address that question the first step would have to be recognition of the syndrome.
The Chauvinistic Culture Syndrome might be contained at first by enforced International Laws. Then the International Organization has to establish the steps needed to restore the health of those corrupted by the illness. However, getting these powerful entities to submit to a possible cure would be, probably, a violent endeavor.
I remember reading about forty or fifty years ago that the West was often described as being chauvinistic. I think I recall correctly that it was a common reference when discussing the U.S.'s predilection for foreign 'Interventions' such as the Korean, Vietnam, Cambodia and Global South corporate distructions and murderous colonialism.
Somehow that description disappeared from publications in reference to any Western country and I only noticed that change now. It's an excellent diagnosis of MICCA(?)'s raison d'etre in pursuit of global domination.
"However, getting these powerful entities to submit to a possible cure would be, probably, a violent endeavor."
You can consider what's going on now - the rebellion of the rest of the world led by Russia, the apparent unbending will of the Palestinians to keep going against the Zionist cancer, etc - as such violence. As the "International Organizations" got taken over by those same chauvinists and are totally ineffective, if not outright enabling.
Yes. I believe it will take that and I think that in this country the militias have to learn to discard their neo-nazi ideology to help. For right now they are serving the ruling class, the DeSantis and Trump personalities, though they don't appear to recognize that. They need to learn that the we need the opposite of fascism and to unite and learn them Chauvinists some gods damn manners (and much bigger lessons)
Thanks for thinking my wish is noble, but really, it is not. I just do not like feeling glee, even momentarily when I hear that the Israeli system of defence has been disabled and that there have been hundreds of drones that have hit Israel. I am more concerned about how I feel, really, than about how others feel. At least in this instance.
"I wish we could just give them something to make them less vile and more prone to..." - that's been tried and failed after the WWII. Nazis were being saved and tucked away by the West. Banderites were pardoned summarily by Khrushev. Zionists were given land to settle down and pacify themselves. Germany was allowed to unite and prosper, and get back to its inner Nazism. As Stalin said: "Hitlers come and go but German people remain". No shit, they do. Here they are again.
Yeah, that worked out great!
This brought tears to my eyes. We can hold the grief for you for the moment, Caitlin.
With you on this. We have to carry each other…like we see them do in Gaza…this is how we keep our compassion alive and keep space for joy when the killing does finally stop.
I wasn't able to get into the essay this time, because of the age old question, "what did you know and when did you know it?" The last essay, in the comments a Russian bot brought up the subject of psychotics; in which using metaphoric language implied that he was behind the murders of all those Palestinians, and now as you all know, thousands of Israelis are being killed, also him; obviously, too important to fail.
Dearest Caitlin
You are not alone. I used to weep daily for the souls in Gaza. I’ve lost my ability to weep and I wonder if anything in my future will ever cause me to shed tears.
What I have NOT lost, however, is RAGE. It doesn’t feel good to maintain constant rage, but it’s NECESSARY. I’m in such a constant state of rage that I’ll probably have a heart attack at some point. Again, though, it’s vital to maintain it.
If anyone feels themselves losing their rage, watch Sabby Sabs, Owen Jones, Judge Napolitano, Danny Haiphong, or any number of those who present the atrocities committed against Palestinians (and that includes the West Bank as well.)
If you want to CHEER, watch Richard Medhurst, who regularly shows IDF getting wiped out by Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as the bravery of the Hout’hi. Grimly satisfying.
It is not human to see a civilian population fenced in and starved and bombed daily, without getting angry. They don't have an airforce, so it is like shooting fish in a tank. The Indian bitch is signing a bomb to kill the Palestinian kids? Just because she married a joo, she lost her humanity? This bitch wants to be our President WTF?
"This bitch wants to be our President WTF?" - makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
Yes, she or someone like her, there's so many, would keep our cruel and disastrous course.
It is not human to see a civilian population fenced in and starved and bombed daily, without getting angry. They don't have an airforce, so it is like shooting fish in a tank. The Indian bitch is signing a bomb to kill the Palestinian kids? Just because she married a joo, she lost her humanity? This bitch wants to be our President WTF?
She’s worse than a bitch, Mois. She’s the C-word, plain and simple.
Succubus don't have names. They survive a while for Beelzebub and live on and in you.
Thank you Gypsy. Your comment made me feel better. I too feel so much rage! I am constantly trying to find healthy outlets (pro-palestine protests, sitting/protesting/blocking in front of politicians' offices) for this rage, lest I start making bad, emotional decisions...
Do understand it is somewhat self-protective. We are not built to hold on to this kind of visual trauma indefinitely. Yes, part of your limbic system is resting but I suspect it will come back. As a true crime journalist I've been through this before. The difference is that world leaders weren't cheering on and funding Ted Bundy.
People working in hospitals hit the point when trauma doesn’t bother them anymore.
I was in my 20's when it hit my. Xmas eve and a guy fatally shot himself , but didn’t die immediately. Someone cracked a joke after he died and the team walked out of the room smiling and laughing and the family was right there….I felt horrible and that has stayed with me for 40 years. It did come back when I watched a 39 year old man die of chickenpox. That’s stayed with me the.
As a career soldier for the U.S., I became immune to all of that until I went to Afghanistan in 2002. I lived amongst the people for ten months and discovered just how badly the U.S. propaganda machine is and decided I wanted no more part of it. That decision got me into a spot of trouble with the higher ups. I retired soon after. It didn't take away the numbness. I still have it today, twenty two years later. That doesn't mean that I don't care. It just means that I can see around the death and destruction and fight to do something about it without the emotional baggage. Once you smell death, you never forget it. Once you see death, you never unsee it. I use that to fight back against the leadership that provokes wars for profit. Even though I am just one soldier, I like to think I am part of a larger unit around the world fighting for what's right and humane.
You are. Veterans For Peace was begun by conscientious men and women of your generation, but old guys like me from Vietnam are also present.
I am one of those who caught the tail end of the Vietnam War in 1974. I didn't spend more than a couple of months sailing up and down the coast that winter in a small boat so I don't qualify as much as the guys who tramped through the jungles. I was only 18 at the time. But, I did deploy seven other times after that with my last trip being to Afghanistan with the 489th Civil Affairs Batt. in 2002. I am all about being a Veteran for Peace now.
Good Pawns wish they could be Rooks or Knights.
What an excellent article. Clearly, you retain a lot more compassion and empathy than most. Sadly, our society is run by sociopathic narcissists, who do everything possible to deprive us of our innate ability to care for one another.
Susan....
"Sadly, our society is run by sociopathic narcissists." Are the narcissists from Planet Mork, or from our neighborhoods?
John Turcot, our neighbourhoods may consist of some harsh and difficult people, but they are not running things. It is the billionaires and millionaires who are running things and they don't care a hoot about our neighbourhoods or the people in them. They care about what they see in the mirror and their bank accounts.
Do you know how many pawns are in a chess game? What is your probability of being in a Rook or Knight Line or circle? They are all exterminated before Bishops, King, or Queen.
Susan T.
In the winter where we live, the homeless are instructed to use an area of town that is relatively safe for them. About 50 people live in tents in snowy conditions, but are asked every morning to take down their tents so as to not become too comfortable living on the streets. Without going into the intricacies involved in the city council decisions on this bylaw, city councillors are not billionaires or millionaires, but they do run municipal affairs and make by-laws which in this case make the poorest more miserable than they would otherwise be.
The above is but one example of making life miserable for the poor from people who are often just one paycheck away from also finding themselves in dire straights.
I wouldn't go as far as labelling such councillors narcissistic, but such by-laws are not enacted by billionaires. Councillors have a choice. ... and WE are THEM.
Yes, those councillors are some of the difficult people in our neighbourhoods. They are not the people who are running things on a larger level. They aren't, at this time, the ones who are deciding to involve us in wars. Their power is only in a small area. Nasty people, sometimes, but not the ones in control of countries.
Susan T..
I think that we are, all of us, the warriors that need councelling. Like a small fish will become a big fish, small wars will become big wars, nuclear wars. By definition, Webster's defines war as a state in which one's life is threatened by others, and if those miserable homeless people possibly freezing to death in my town are any examples of a society at war with its own people, city councillors are using their guns (by0laws) and firing on all fronts. AND they are not billionaires. If they were, they would not be sitting on city council seats, but in their private jets and yachts.
I do not see that the fact that councillors are nasty even though they are not billionaires is really relevant. When and if they make enough money they too will be able to buy their way into more power.
The implication of your comment is that the virulent contempt for life that is playing out before our eyes is not the behavior of monsters, but of our siblings. I can agree. I would add that there is a divisive, destructive choice that can reduce our sense of oneness to an either/ or calculation, and I think we are there. The powers that allow and sponsor grotesque inhumanity may be our kin, but as such those powers are susceptible to the consequences of their complicity and inaction. I don’t think it follows that “we can do nothing.” The universe is vast and contains its own forces and counter forces.
unwarranted...
Glad to see someone can agree with me on some points now and then.
I think the human condition is not that different from the harsh and unforgiving conditions found in nature itself. I.e., we walked out jungles, but the jungles came along for the ride. The sooner we recognize our links to gorillas, the sooner we may be able to figure out how to escape nature's legacy... i.e., ... a Survival of the Fittest legacy. .
We are intelligent enough to recognize our needs, but stupid enough to make nuclear arsenals, displaying the jungle mentality that still lurks under the veneer that we call civilization. . i.e., In 'The Descent of Man'''.. Darwin had it right.... It's up to us to evolve, or perish.
I don’t think that it’s the “we are stupid” problem. In America, the comfortable are vigilantly attuned to their rickety perches, and that is the stuff of emotionalism. This is where education as a social service has left a black hole in the national profile.
Capital punishment is predicated on bombarding voters with venomous visions of human depravity, and personalizing the anger that victims feel. There was a presidential candidate named Michael Dukakis who was destroyed in a debate when he was flummoxed by a question, which he clearly didn’t anticipate. The question was in regard to Dukakis’s opposition to capital punishment, and posed a scenario where the candidate’s wife was heinously murdered, and the candidate held firm, but didn’t engage the moment. The question was a classic example of the reporter calculating his own celebrity, and to me, that should have been the essence of the candidate’s response. Do we want victims to dictate our social norms? Put another way, can we agree that emotional reactions are not going to achieve sound policies.
I feel that as social creatures we can recognize that certain principles like fairness and equanimity are more basic and critical than the satisfaction bequeathed by identity politics. Essentially, conducting elections via TV is closing the barn door after the horses have fled. Sound and fair policies are NEVER achieved in a sealed corporate bubble that peddles its narratives to entertain and distract. George Monbiot has argued that our present level of technology could proficiently articulate our collective needs and priorities and wills. That would only exist in a society hungry for peace and democracy.
Nice try7 unwarranted... but not enough bananas... No matter how you try to analyze it, aiming 15,000 nuclear warheads at each other, knowing that using most of the weapons in national arsenals could cause human extinction, is as stupid as it gets.
Webster defines stupidity as lacking intelligence or common sense. In that sense, it implies that intelligence would prevent humans from making nuclear weapons, and so if we are intelligent beings making nuclear weapons, we are therefore Stupid.
I think we may be individually intelligent, but collectively stupid,.... i.e., the lemming syndrome. If you know there are enough nuclear arsenals to end human existence, and you say nothing or do nothing about it, then the collective is you.
No offense... just my thoughts...
To me there’s no shame and no controversy in recognizing our ancestry and primordial roots. I suspect that you are either exhausted with human attempts at self- reflection, self-improvement and social justice, or you are possibly ideologically conservative, embracing a theological fatalism regarding temporal human existence. All humans struggle and I believe that a collective awareness of our shared options and limitations is available through institutional mediation and intervention.
I think the Austrian/American attraction to corporate socialization and value inculcation has proven over decades to be hugely successful, as Americans regurgitate the mindless, apolitical worldview that they are fed. America has been dumbed down intentionally and socially neutered by design.
I think it’s too easy to look at American society and draw negative conclusions about human nature and capacities.
Thomas Aquinas noted that if you can live amidst injustice without anger, you are immoral.
You're right Caitlin, as usual.
“The Thousand Yard Stare,” a Vietnam war era term for a soldier with PTSD so severe that any and all humanity was absent, all feeling feedback completely numb, and a newly minted sociopathic weapon system at large—a warning to anyone who wants to make a difference. The key is learning to feel our feelings as they arise without fear, without giving into repressive need, and ultimately without identifying with the darkness that we must walk through within ourselves to arrive at “the deep within” where responsibility and resolution reside.
These dead children, killed and mutilated by bombs, snipers, starvation, are the symptom, the graphic illustration of the mental disease or ideology fuelling, running our world. Emerge from the depths of sentiments to tackle the underlying issue. For the children.
I am so angry at the Zionist government of Isreal that I can't even cry any more. I am stone cold at this point in respects to the evil perpetrated upon the Palestinean people. I am equally angry at our own government and others that allowed this evil to continue on. It easily could have been stopped. 1. No foreign aid to bomb. 2. Sanctions. 3. Peacekeeping forces. 4. Mass shipping of aid in food and neccessary items by force with armed guards. There were absolutely no execuses for the USA, Britain, and the European Nations no to make this an impossibility for Isreal to continue the mass murder of civilians. What Isreal has done to Palestine they will gladly do to us also. I am permanently boycotting anything and everything from Isreal. I'm done! That includes supporting our grifting politicians who are in bed with AIPAC. Which is a whole another sorded situation.
Dr. Jill Stein in November.
Ask anyone assigned to USS Liberty that is still alive.
Amen. I remember around two years ago finding out about Donetsk's Alley of Angels, commemorating some 400 children killed by Ukrainian shelling since 2014, and feeling sick with anger that this is what the side that I was being mocked and disparaged for not supporting was doing. I even feel a little guilty for not feeling the same bubbling rage as I did then, for something many times worse
It wasn't being live streamed back then.
I cried again. Thank you. Yes, we are all being desensitized, but words like yours help bring back the gentleness.
Alastair Crooke, Israel and the Misjudgement of Reality
The core tension within the Western-Israeli calculus is that the U.S. and the EU are moving in one direction – back to the failed Oslo approach – whilst polling underscores Jewish electors firmly marching in the other direction.
A recent survey conducted by the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs shows that since 7 October, 79% of all Jewish respondents oppose the establishment of a Palestinian State on 1967 lines (68% were opposed prior to 7 Oct); 74% are opposed even in exchange for normalisation with Saudi Arabia. And reflective of the internal Israeli divide, “only 24% of left-wing voters support a [Palestinian] State without conditions”.
In short, as the western institutional leadership clings to the shrinking Israeli secular liberal Left, Israelis as whole (including the young) are moving hard Right. A recent Pew poll shows that 73% of the Israeli public support the military response in Gaza – albeit a third of Israelis complained it had not gone far enough. A plurality of Israelis think Israel should govern the Gaza Strip. And Netanyahu, in the aftermath of the ICC arrest threat, is overtaking Gantz (leader of the National Union) in approval ratings.
It seems that the ‘western consensus’ prefers not to notice these uncomfortable dynamics. https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/06/10/israel-and-misjudgement-of-reality/
Sacrificing hundreds of innocents in Nuseirat to save others unacceptable, Lavrov says https://tass.com/politics/1802249
If your spiritual guide (Talmud) is telling you that only Jews are human, and the Jews are supreme and entitled 2800 slave each? The Jews should kill Edom goyims (7 billion peoples)? It is no wonder that the monstrous Israeli soldiers are filming themselves peeing on and kicking a dead Palestinian man?
Having said so, we should be grateful to Jews who see these monstrosity as evils. Like Max Blumenthal, Matt Taibbi, Norm Finkelsein,...
I worry that decades of absorbing a constant trauma narrative around the holocaust has damaged Israelis in psychological ways that haven't been examined. Living one's life, generational as hunted people may have created something ugly, never seen before. I don't know how else to explain it.
The people that were in concentration camps of WWII essentially are all deceased. But boy oh boy did the Isreali's ever learn how to hate. They have become the neu nazi's.
Not all holocaust survivors are deceased. The zionists who are around now, wanting supremacy over others and committing genocide use the holocaust as an excuse for their behaviour. That is completely not caring about people who were really in the holocaust and who don't want to see anything like it again for anyone. There are a lot of people, Jewish and not Jewish, who think that way. There are holocaust survivors who have spoken against what Israel is doing to Gaza right now. I think that the main quality of those in power in Israel and in the US is that they want power and control and money for themselves. I don't even think hatred is a motivator for those in power. The people with power brainwash others with zionist ideology and get others to hate, but they themselves feel nothing except the desire for more money and power.
Please look into Talmud. It is totally psychopathic, and supremacist.
What is happening in Gaza has nothing to do with any religion. I look at what they are doing and that is what makes me sad, angry and frustrated.
You understand, Susan T. Thank you.
I think I saìd mostly deceased but if not I appolagise.
you said they "essentially are all deceased". No need to apologize though
The Israelis are mostly khazarians converts to Judaism. Their heritage is not from the ME, and their language was never Hebrew. They are living a supremacist lies.
At least we in America never claimed to be born here 2000 years ago, and the Indians never existed, and God gave us this land. Truth is difficult for the sociopaths.
All Israelis do is appropriate: others’ pain (wwII survivors), others’ land, food, culture and continue taking taxpayer funds from foreign nations to fuel their hateful war sprees
I still feel it when I see the horrors. I still cry, and shake and loose sleep. I don't know if it's worse that - this week at least - I chose not to look, to spare myself the grief that Palestine cannot avoid.
Caitlin, You are being honest and not afraid to confront your worst fears of getting numb with too much feeling. The sage says compassion is feeling and realising another's misery with your heart open to their suffering, but somehow not let it consume you.
I do not yet know how to do that. I am not as honest as you to own and confront my fears that I am losing my caring; was ashamed that I no longer want see the daily carnage. The words itself were beginning to lose its impact, groping to put words to the pictures.
Then I stop myself and feels like shit - I remind myself that my feelings are minuscule, does not matter at all ,compared to the Palestinian mother holding her dead child, unable even to cry; the father weeping over the dead bodies of his family; the starving children with their battered pans waiting for gruel; the bewildered faces of little children with their amputated limbs; the body bags piling up - the indefatigable Palestinians giving them a fitting farewell.
When they are bearing such pain and grief who am I to worry about my feelings - then my heart thaws out and I become one with their suffering.
That last line…