Dear Caitlin...couldn't agree with you more of the warhawking maverick from Arizona. He is one of those who is sure to have had blood on his hands. Though I have some difficulty with your characterization of those of us who have been lifelong opponents of the American Empire but who, given dire realities, support the fight of the Ukrainians against the neofascist Putin regime, as in league with that same American Empire. What I find you overlook is that some of us cling to the concept of universal human rights and who see the beyond the provocation of the USA and NATO, the kleptocracy that is Russia today and the abandonment of any pretense for standing up for anything beyond the grifting of the ruling elite in league with the despicable Putin. What exactly has Russia gained thus far with the mayhem it has chosen to rain down of the Ukrainian people? No country on the face of the Earth is without some evil people. At least many of the Ukrainians are willing to sacrifice their safety and well being for the sovereignty of their country. Zelensky did not flee. Most of his government did the same. Caitlin, I have some ancestral skin in this game, my grandparents having grown up in Zhytomer and fled Odessa for the USA in 1906 so my grandfather, married and father of two, would not be drafted into the Tsar's army on a mandatory thirty year contract. I take the freedom and the social progress of the Enlightenment more than seriously and now have lived and worked in China for the last 12 years. The betrayal of the Democratic Party in the USA by LBJ and the rest of the neoconservative and then neoliberal donor class was front and center to me from age 17. I have paid a high personal price for being one of the marginalized you referred to, losing friends during the battle for civil rights and for 12 years in the fight against the American invasion of Vietnam. I have embraced you as a treasured fellow traveller in the fight against The Machine but sometimes find it hard to understand your intolerance of those whose concern for the suffering being imposed by Russia on Ukrainian civilians informs their view that the Russian oligarchy must be defeated.
Such immature attacks may make you feel better but are totally divorced from reality. I am almost 80 years old and have been a constant combatant against American imperialism. Marvel Comics do serve their purpose in beckoning to the universal desire for people to become their own heroes, to rescue themselves from abusive societies as well as rescuing others. In that sense, Marvel Comics actually become a potentially effective way to keep alive the hope that people will rise up against The Machine.
So much rhetoric, so little substance. That you suggest myths and fantasies as inspiration speaks volumes. Most humans stop playing action heroes when they turn four or so.
I prefer to focus on the real world. and I probably know more of Russia and Ukraine than you.
Feral....why make this into a competition about how much you or I know about Russia and Ukraine. For those of us who are working hard to understand the complexities that is the current proxy war in Ukraine, there is much to try to understand. Mearshimer, Chomsky, Haque, Tanner, Vexler, Snyder and a host of others have done a great job of laying out facts and interpretations of what is taking place now to even further threaten world peace. Frantz Fanon in his historic Wretched of the Earth famously said that every generation must discover its mission and then proceed to realize its mission or betray it. I am a very early Baby Boomer and my generation has terribly fumbled our mission ball. Post World War II we were to keep world peace, step back from nuclear confrontation and go forward in laying down frameworks to ensure sustainable civilizations. What a mess we have left the younger ones.
The mess is undeniable and the blown opportunities?
1) 1/60 of the $21 trillion pissed away on IraqNamAfgan would abolish world hunger
2) with the collapse of the USSR the US could have led nuclear disarmament but went for more nukes, and more “defense” spending than ever.
3) America leads the world in pollution and leads by a mile in.the total pollution since the Industrial Revolution.. instead of leading reduction of its pollution, it has not reduced it a bit.
Any sensible species would never have allowed nuclear weaponry sufficient to end our lease on this planet. But nooo.
Absolutely not....a childhood toy I despised. My father was a hand-to-hand combat trainer in World War II and shifted over his lifetime from an FDR New Deal Democrat to a Nixon and Reagan supporter....poles apart of where I grew. At age 17 I told him that his values and politics indicated he fought on the wrong side in World War II
Despite their obvious faults, Nixon and Reagan look good compared to the crowd in Washington today. Nixon took the US out of Vietnam and forged d'etente with Russia and China, while Reagan negotiated peacefully and respectfully with Gorbachev. Both would be amazed at the crudity and aggression of the US today.
Feral, Superman or any other superhero is either primarily a protector of the good and ally of Eros or a promulgator of evil and an ally of Thanatos. That is the essence of all cultures and the morality plays that define the human condition. Superheroes in the Nietzsche sense is abhorrent as it is a justification for domination of the few over the many and the philosophical basis for fascism. Comic books can be a tool in either direction, both yin or yang. What is it that you choose?
Am I alone in being fed up with the ubiquity of 'superhero' bullshit today? I can't believe that adults watch movies based on comic books. The whole thing is weird and sinister. IMO people are seeking increasingly infantile forms of escapism. Creepy and demoralising.
Actually, he got his views from the CIA and DOD, who hired Manstein, etc, to write military history, counter-insurgency manuals, etc. It's pretty hard for any graduate of West Point or Colorado to not become a fellow traveler, and then they spread out into academia, mass media, etc. In his case, I'd not be surprised if his father took him to one of the Nazi SS memorials in upper New York or Ontario, sent him to summer camp. He's a victim of his family.
Yasha Levine has a number of articles on his substack, some not paywalled, which cover the Ukraine diaspora indoctrination and application as Nazi, then uber-Nazi (IE: American), including the schools and summer camps for indoctrination. The independent news organ CanadaFiles has quite a lot of articles also on the Ukraine Nazi movement in Canada, where it's even more pernicious. In the USA they mostly penetrated the State Department, but in Canada even the Deputy PM is one.
An acquaintance of mine in Australia tells me that his sister-in-law's family were part of the Ukrainian scouting movement and that they train teenagers how to us guns. Sick. If they loved their children, they'd drop the hatred.
NATO and the Biden regime had years of opportunity to prevent the Ukraine war. Right up to the point of the start of the war Putin and Lavrov were asking for a peace summit with their goal being to have the Mink agreement enforced by NATO. Not only did NATO ignore the requests, they belittled and joked about Russian attempts at peace. Anyone who was watching both sides of the conflict before war broke out saw that.
Maybe you can speak to the suffering being imposed on Ukrainian civilians by their own government over the last 8 years ?
Multiple incidence of Ukrainian military attacking civilians in the Donbas has been documented but you seem to be ignorant of those attacks - why ?
Not to mention the Ukrainian regime shutting down opposition media and arresting opposition politicians - before the war.
And nobody has mentioned that nasty Ukrainian habit of lionizing actual live Nazi collaborators and naming their military formations after SS units. Or how Ukraine and the United States voted against a Russian-sponsored UN resolution denouncing Nazism.
The past is bad enough (and should never be forgotten) but the present stuff is urgent and horrifying: the torture of POWs, the kidnappings and assassinations, suppressing the teaching of Russian literature in schools. People who find Pushkin or Tolstoy a threat...they are the embodiment of criminal insanity. And the ideology is deranged: claiming that Ukrainians are Scandinavians and that Russians are Slav-Asiatics (as if that is anything to be ashamed of) or that they, Ukrainians, are indigenous and everyone else is some kind of colonist/trespasser.
I expect (hope) that ordinary Ukrainians are simply too frightened to say what they think. The moderates who want coexistence, pragmatism and respect are in danger from the sadists and gangsters. Several generations after WW2 it is amazing that this is still possible in Europe.
The fact that the Kiev regime is busily hunting down and murdering dissenters, without so much as a peep of protest from the West tells us all we need to know.
I lived much of my adult in Ukraine. Plenty of people want the regime gone.
Perfectly true, though IMO the ultimate insult is brainwashing kids in Kharkov and Odessa to hero-worship those who tried to enslave and kill their grandparents and great-grandparents and then send those kids off to die in a war that they simply cannot win. I'll happily let fools argue over history that they do not understand, so long as they leave the rest of us to live.
Because NATO, Biden & company don’t want peace of any sort. Their policies no matter where they are applied is aimed at maximum disruption. Perpetual war for perpetual peace - including in the USA. These two named suspects have lots of cronies who wish the same.
Very good comment thanks. I believe we tend to be too provincial in our thinking, too restricted to a concept of “nations” and not sufficiently concerned with overall human rights. The history and current practices of all nations are not without sin. As someone said about casting the first stone…I have some skin in the game too with an ancestry of WASPY famous (or sometimes infamous) politicos and related rabble rousers with a sprinkling of Native American leaders and nobody’s too. I am relegated in this lifetime to being an American. I have two grandchildren living epic lives here who were born in the Ukraine. We all descend from a motley crew but we are not defined by this alone. We are all capable of being and becoming better human beings. That is our evolutionary task.
Dear Caitlin...couldn't agree with you more of the warhawking maverick from Arizona. He is one of those who is sure to have had blood on his hands. Though I have some difficulty with your characterization of those of us who have been lifelong opponents of the American Empire but who, given dire realities, support the fight of the Ukrainians against the neofascist Putin regime, as in league with that same American Empire. What I find you overlook is that some of us cling to the concept of universal human rights and who see the beyond the provocation of the USA and NATO, the kleptocracy that is Russia today and the abandonment of any pretense for standing up for anything beyond the grifting of the ruling elite in league with the despicable Putin. What exactly has Russia gained thus far with the mayhem it has chosen to rain down of the Ukrainian people? No country on the face of the Earth is without some evil people. At least many of the Ukrainians are willing to sacrifice their safety and well being for the sovereignty of their country. Zelensky did not flee. Most of his government did the same. Caitlin, I have some ancestral skin in this game, my grandparents having grown up in Zhytomer and fled Odessa for the USA in 1906 so my grandfather, married and father of two, would not be drafted into the Tsar's army on a mandatory thirty year contract. I take the freedom and the social progress of the Enlightenment more than seriously and now have lived and worked in China for the last 12 years. The betrayal of the Democratic Party in the USA by LBJ and the rest of the neoconservative and then neoliberal donor class was front and center to me from age 17. I have paid a high personal price for being one of the marginalized you referred to, losing friends during the battle for civil rights and for 12 years in the fight against the American invasion of Vietnam. I have embraced you as a treasured fellow traveller in the fight against The Machine but sometimes find it hard to understand your intolerance of those whose concern for the suffering being imposed by Russia on Ukrainian civilians informs their view that the Russian oligarchy must be defeated.
You need to stop getting your views on Ukraine and Russia from Marvel Comics.
Such immature attacks may make you feel better but are totally divorced from reality. I am almost 80 years old and have been a constant combatant against American imperialism. Marvel Comics do serve their purpose in beckoning to the universal desire for people to become their own heroes, to rescue themselves from abusive societies as well as rescuing others. In that sense, Marvel Comics actually become a potentially effective way to keep alive the hope that people will rise up against The Machine.
So much rhetoric, so little substance. That you suggest myths and fantasies as inspiration speaks volumes. Most humans stop playing action heroes when they turn four or so.
I prefer to focus on the real world. and I probably know more of Russia and Ukraine than you.
Feral....why make this into a competition about how much you or I know about Russia and Ukraine. For those of us who are working hard to understand the complexities that is the current proxy war in Ukraine, there is much to try to understand. Mearshimer, Chomsky, Haque, Tanner, Vexler, Snyder and a host of others have done a great job of laying out facts and interpretations of what is taking place now to even further threaten world peace. Frantz Fanon in his historic Wretched of the Earth famously said that every generation must discover its mission and then proceed to realize its mission or betray it. I am a very early Baby Boomer and my generation has terribly fumbled our mission ball. Post World War II we were to keep world peace, step back from nuclear confrontation and go forward in laying down frameworks to ensure sustainable civilizations. What a mess we have left the younger ones.
The mess is undeniable and the blown opportunities?
1) 1/60 of the $21 trillion pissed away on IraqNamAfgan would abolish world hunger
2) with the collapse of the USSR the US could have led nuclear disarmament but went for more nukes, and more “defense” spending than ever.
3) America leads the world in pollution and leads by a mile in.the total pollution since the Industrial Revolution.. instead of leading reduction of its pollution, it has not reduced it a bit.
Any sensible species would never have allowed nuclear weaponry sufficient to end our lease on this planet. But nooo.
We need heroes, new ones with ideals and principles. Redaction heroes won’t do.
You’re not including G.I. Joe in that, are you?
Absolutely not....a childhood toy I despised. My father was a hand-to-hand combat trainer in World War II and shifted over his lifetime from an FDR New Deal Democrat to a Nixon and Reagan supporter....poles apart of where I grew. At age 17 I told him that his values and politics indicated he fought on the wrong side in World War II
Despite their obvious faults, Nixon and Reagan look good compared to the crowd in Washington today. Nixon took the US out of Vietnam and forged d'etente with Russia and China, while Reagan negotiated peacefully and respectfully with Gorbachev. Both would be amazed at the crudity and aggression of the US today.
Since you like comic books so much, here's one:
https://dsss.be/hitler-vs-stalin/index.php?img=0
Some of the jokes don't really translate from the original Russian.
That's the thing about fantasies and superheroes. Anyone with an imagination can make one up and play at Superman.
Feral, Superman or any other superhero is either primarily a protector of the good and ally of Eros or a promulgator of evil and an ally of Thanatos. That is the essence of all cultures and the morality plays that define the human condition. Superheroes in the Nietzsche sense is abhorrent as it is a justification for domination of the few over the many and the philosophical basis for fascism. Comic books can be a tool in either direction, both yin or yang. What is it that you choose?
You, sir, are beginning to suggest the characteristics of a troll.
Am I alone in being fed up with the ubiquity of 'superhero' bullshit today? I can't believe that adults watch movies based on comic books. The whole thing is weird and sinister. IMO people are seeking increasingly infantile forms of escapism. Creepy and demoralising.
Sez you.
And what sez you?
Good comment.
Exactly!!!
Actually, he got his views from the CIA and DOD, who hired Manstein, etc, to write military history, counter-insurgency manuals, etc. It's pretty hard for any graduate of West Point or Colorado to not become a fellow traveler, and then they spread out into academia, mass media, etc. In his case, I'd not be surprised if his father took him to one of the Nazi SS memorials in upper New York or Ontario, sent him to summer camp. He's a victim of his family.
Yasha Levine has a number of articles on his substack, some not paywalled, which cover the Ukraine diaspora indoctrination and application as Nazi, then uber-Nazi (IE: American), including the schools and summer camps for indoctrination. The independent news organ CanadaFiles has quite a lot of articles also on the Ukraine Nazi movement in Canada, where it's even more pernicious. In the USA they mostly penetrated the State Department, but in Canada even the Deputy PM is one.
An acquaintance of mine in Australia tells me that his sister-in-law's family were part of the Ukrainian scouting movement and that they train teenagers how to us guns. Sick. If they loved their children, they'd drop the hatred.
NATO and the Biden regime had years of opportunity to prevent the Ukraine war. Right up to the point of the start of the war Putin and Lavrov were asking for a peace summit with their goal being to have the Mink agreement enforced by NATO. Not only did NATO ignore the requests, they belittled and joked about Russian attempts at peace. Anyone who was watching both sides of the conflict before war broke out saw that.
Maybe you can speak to the suffering being imposed on Ukrainian civilians by their own government over the last 8 years ?
Multiple incidence of Ukrainian military attacking civilians in the Donbas has been documented but you seem to be ignorant of those attacks - why ?
Not to mention the Ukrainian regime shutting down opposition media and arresting opposition politicians - before the war.
And nobody has mentioned that nasty Ukrainian habit of lionizing actual live Nazi collaborators and naming their military formations after SS units. Or how Ukraine and the United States voted against a Russian-sponsored UN resolution denouncing Nazism.
But Russia are the fascists.
The past is bad enough (and should never be forgotten) but the present stuff is urgent and horrifying: the torture of POWs, the kidnappings and assassinations, suppressing the teaching of Russian literature in schools. People who find Pushkin or Tolstoy a threat...they are the embodiment of criminal insanity. And the ideology is deranged: claiming that Ukrainians are Scandinavians and that Russians are Slav-Asiatics (as if that is anything to be ashamed of) or that they, Ukrainians, are indigenous and everyone else is some kind of colonist/trespasser.
I expect (hope) that ordinary Ukrainians are simply too frightened to say what they think. The moderates who want coexistence, pragmatism and respect are in danger from the sadists and gangsters. Several generations after WW2 it is amazing that this is still possible in Europe.
The fact that the Kiev regime is busily hunting down and murdering dissenters, without so much as a peep of protest from the West tells us all we need to know.
I lived much of my adult in Ukraine. Plenty of people want the regime gone.
Philip: With the ultimate insult being that Kiev was the traditional capital of the Kievan Rus empire. If anyone is Russian it is the Ukrainians.
Perfectly true, though IMO the ultimate insult is brainwashing kids in Kharkov and Odessa to hero-worship those who tried to enslave and kill their grandparents and great-grandparents and then send those kids off to die in a war that they simply cannot win. I'll happily let fools argue over history that they do not understand, so long as they leave the rest of us to live.
"NATO and the Biden regime had years of opportunity to prevent the Ukraine war."
should read
"NATO and the last 10 POTUS/Permanent State led regimes had 60+ years of opportunity to lay the grounds for the Ukraine war."
with that kind of investment and momentum, 8+ years of hard work by the Kremlin hardly slowed the beast down.
You are absolutely right.
I try to avoid becoming the master class history teacher in the comments.
What, you enjoy repeating it? I guess there are good moments in History, but so few get recorded.
Because NATO, Biden & company don’t want peace of any sort. Their policies no matter where they are applied is aimed at maximum disruption. Perpetual war for perpetual peace - including in the USA. These two named suspects have lots of cronies who wish the same.
Very good comment thanks. I believe we tend to be too provincial in our thinking, too restricted to a concept of “nations” and not sufficiently concerned with overall human rights. The history and current practices of all nations are not without sin. As someone said about casting the first stone…I have some skin in the game too with an ancestry of WASPY famous (or sometimes infamous) politicos and related rabble rousers with a sprinkling of Native American leaders and nobody’s too. I am relegated in this lifetime to being an American. I have two grandchildren living epic lives here who were born in the Ukraine. We all descend from a motley crew but we are not defined by this alone. We are all capable of being and becoming better human beings. That is our evolutionary task.
No.
Think again.
Zelinsky is supported/sponsored by a Ukrainian oligarch.