Those of us living in the US have no right to condemn other countries. We live in a country that was founded on stealing, lying, war mongering, and colonizing, and we are still doing it to this very day. Anyone who thinks we live in a free country quite obviously has no idea of what freedom really is. I am also so tired of the people who are sleepwalking through life and continually buying into the mainstream narrative. Are they blind? Do they not see the prices of everything going up? The rising epidemic of homelessness? The state of perpetual fear and endless wars? The current, western way of life is so psychopathic and destructive that it beggars belief that people actually want others to have this way of life.
Morals of a Einsatzgruppen Commander, no not bad enough. Morals of a Southern Baptist Preacher, nope, nope. Morals of a K-Street Consultant, sheesh, nothing seems disgusting enough. Aha! Of Course! John McCain had the shite morals and trail of evil of a John McCain!
There are situations/incidents/reactions so ridiculous they make any serious response incoherent.
What, you're supposed to mumble homilies, bow the head on the anniversary of the death of a heartless murderer? Does death nullify all evil? Wipe the slate? George W. Bush seems to think so, but that's an easy way out, and a bad example to other mass murderers and their applauders. The dead have not been raised, and will not be. Their relatives and neighbours are perhaps still around, and they haven't forgotten. Neither should we.
And anyone who thinks taking insults and threats from idiots because you must stand up for your convictions against evil systems passed off as inevitable and just- is an easy way to make
a few bucks - doesn't live on planet Earth: it is the liars, truth benders, exploiters and manipulators who have it easy. Those cowards who ingratiate themselves with the "powerful," and have no conscience to speak of, although they speak of high principles and superior morals and values, all the time.
Personally, I find it rather disgusting to celebrate the dead the way Hilary did on television, and a few other disgusting politians, and if anybody died who should have died, remember that they were children once themselves and someone made them very sick. Every evil that happens in this world is the result of good people not having the guts to stand up against it, John was a tragic failure of a human being that anyone supported him, shows how many other failures there are in our society. We should concentrate on cleaning up the sickness rather than celebrating the dead.
well said, and you make an excellent point here that celebrating the death of an individual tends to remove the focus from the system that created them (and as Caitlin herself has often said our system persists unaltered across changes on individuals).
Despite the best attempts of Western Mainstream Media to suggest otherwise, this war is going exactly according to the Putin-Shoigu plan and has been since the February 24th invasion.
The fall of Odessa to the Russians will be assured after Nykolaiv is taken, giving Moscow strategic control over the entire Black Sea coast.
The Jewish Drag Queen Comedian in Kiev will then be given an ultimatum to settle. If that ultimatum is rejected, Zelensky, Biden, Stoltenberg, Blinken, Nuland, Sherman, Obama, Clinton, Soros and his Open Society Foundation, Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum, the Atlantic Council, the EU heads of state, and American Mainstream Media and Social Media Conglomerates will awaken one morning or night to a Russian occupation of all of Ukraine including Kiev and Lviv. The LGBTQ flag will have to be lowered, as it was in Kabul when the Afghan National Army and their Zio-Con backers had to get out of Dodge.
Only a fool would fail to see that the American Century is long past with postmortems soon to be the subject of historical and political analysis.
In contemporary Geo-Political developments, the two most critical in recent times are the apparent developing reapproachment of Assad and Erdogan over Syria which would finish the Zio-Con/Jihadic intervention in that country, and the Chinese President’s visit to Riyadh. If Saudi Arabia joins BRICS as it reportedly is interested in, the American Petrodollar as the global reserve currency is toast. If that happens, kiss the Zio-Anglo-American-New World Order goodbye.
What, we're not supposed to sing "Ding dong the witch is dead!" anymore?
The only problem is that focusing John on McCain doesn't fix the system that gave us McCain. The old creep tipped over and the system never so much as skipped a beat.
Accelerated even! McCain temporary replacement is a revolving door monkey who doubled down so he could really make rain on returning to his consulting/lobbying firm. Jon Kyl is a Mike Pence to McCain as Trump, a more effective evil. He didn't even have to clean McCain's desk, as he has one opposite it (as well as one opposite Sin-enema's desk).
yeah and celebrating the death of an individual inevitably shifts the focus from the system to the individual. It's a bad idea for that reason alone (though also for many other reasons)
Thanks for your morning shot of clarity and sanity about the world we live in today. Actually, this world is terrifying beyond words. We may not have to worry about drastic climate change with all this cavalier talk about 'winning" a nuclear war. I'm a nuclear physicist and I studied how nuclear radiation can affect and slowly kill a person - witness that Russian agent in the UK slowly dying of radioactive Polonium poisoning a few years ago.
The "empire" is on its last legs, Caitlin, you and I and Chris Hedges know this. It's scrambling for all it's worth to prevent its demise, even if it takes down the whole world with it. The coup d'etat that took place in the US on November 22, 1963, has led to where we and the world are today. JFK was truly the last non- war criminal president we ever had. Yes, he and his brother were following the dictates of the empire in harassing Castro with exploding cigars and other foolish activities, while he was establishing a line of communication with Fidel - secretly, of course, and exchanging letters with Khrushchev in an attempt to end the cold war that mass murderer, Truman, began after WWII. Both JFK and Khrushchev knew how dangerous their secret talks were, and which ended in Dealy Plaza with an assassin's bullet shot from the grassy knoll.
Thank you for bringing to our attention the crimes of empire aided and abetted by John McCain and so many others in the name of the US empire. The "chickens are coming home to roost" as Malcolm X opined on the murder of JFK. His insight applies to the terror we all face today.
I note that victims of "ras-putin" always seem to "hamlet" - that is, soliloquy across the world stage as they expire (or, more likely, do not) and leave the msm railing against the dastardly
Putin. I get tired of the absurdity: Putin is an evil genius that does not understand that poisoning his enemies as they command the world's attention will adversely affect the perception of Russia to the western world. The rest of your comment was spot on, though. Whether you meant it or not, I wanted to comment in this manner to that particular mention.
This was a big international story about 15 years ago, I think. This man, Alexander Litvenenko, was poisoned with radioactive Polonium added to his tea he always had in a small restaurant in London. He died in hospital in excruciating pain, except for massive pain killers he was given.
Interesting you mention the "rehabilitation of George Bush". I have been saying this for years in anger. I remember seeing him on the news with his yellow pancho in the rain sitting in between Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton. Trump was in office at the time and Bush became a coddled teddy bear. We were supposed to forget about the war crimes under his administrarion, i.e., "weapons of mass destruction ploy" to take us into the Iraq war and the "rebuilding" of Iraq which never took place. We sent a few consultants there under Haliburton and the promises were never fulfilled by The Masters Of War except for $$$$ pockets.
Nicely Stated. Trump appears to me to be the Presidential "Heal" - a term used in WWE wrestling circles, meaning an actor playing the part of the bad guy. His entire Presidency with all it's imperfections was done on purpose - to rehabilitate the image of his War Criminal Predecessors. Remember, Trump was on the campaign trail with both Bushes trying to convince them to make him their VP. Trump is and always has been a Washington Insider - the continued nonsense of him being too "rogue" or too much of an outsider is pure nonsense..
I always enjoy reading Caitlin's perspectives even when I disagree with her. In this case, it's so bizarre to see anyone engage in the "Pointing to Another Wrong" Fallacy: If I don't like the war in Ukraine, and support Caitlin's ideas there, then I'm just supposed to ignore the 400,000,000 forced abortions in China, and the endless censorship and mass murder that regime has engaged in. I'm supposed to let "China do China."
No. Evil is evil. Period. I don't have to adhere to obvious fallacies of reasoning to like any author.
Even so, even when Caitlin is being inexplicable, she is often brilliant about how everything coming out of the governments and complicit media is simply propaganda. I've learned a lot in reading about 100 articles from her. For that: thank you, Caitlin.
If you don't like the uni-party, like me, I recommend Tucker Carlson, Michael Malice, Russell Brand, and many others. My unifying moral ethos centers around maximizing your freedom.
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.
Very good and very true I believe. I am not, however, convinced China will do better than America. We shall see. If China takes over it will in all likelihood create its own shit show.
You'd have a hard time finding a monkey who could not do better at not messing up as badly as USA. You just look at it from the doing the beating end of the stick and benefiting from all the crumbs spilt robbing the world blind. Now that you might be beaten back you moan as if you were Capo about to have his turn in the showers.
Not disagreeing with your evil empire thesis one bit. I disagree that we should let China be China since China with our help is on the way to exacting revenge on all those who raped China for the past 200 years. Japan, Russia, UK, Germany, and U.S.. Who flooded China with Opium and Why would China want to over supply fentanyl to us? Context, history and past behavior supply the necessary reference points for a successful anticipation of future behavior and events. China’s reading your criticism and taking notes and if you’re right about the worlds most evil empire why wouldn’t China want to take it on?
Yes, it is entirely possible for the “evil empire” thesis to coexist with current & historical realities. None of our governments, corporations, institutions is without sin. There’s a great deal of “ the pot calling the kettle black” going on. Hypocrisy is rampant with a simultaneous big show of virtue signaling to show how good and pure of heart we are.
I like to think that there is a deeper wisdom somewhere which will prevail over 100% Gonzo-bent self destruction. We all have everything to lose.
We should never celebrate the death of anyone, but we are entitled to feel relieved that McCain can't hurt anyone any more. He was more than nasty...he was batshit crazy, emotionally unstable, a militarist whose commanding officer recommended that he get charged with treason and a willing supporter of the cover up of missing POWs in Vietnam. If he were alive today he'd be egging on war with Russia and China. He was a danger to his country and the world.
"The evil that men do lives on after them" as they say.
To shift the subject, you may be interested in this, an eye-opening discussion of the Alfred Herrhausen assassination and the end of the Cold War, packed full of revelations about how the empire really works. Herrhausen was a German banker who planned a Marshal Plan for post-Cold War Russia. Truly significant.
It certainly helps explain why the Euro elites are so keen not to upset Washington. You don't need to kill too many people to send a message. What infuriates me was how clueless I was when all this was going on. I don't feel guilty, but I do feel a degree of complicity by way of passivity and ignorance.
It also places Obama's comment in a new light, that he had to perform if he didn't expect to have a short and maybe early retirement, but of course he was looking for any excuse to sell himself on what he really wanted to do anyway.
There is no comparison. Obama was never at any risk from the Deep State. None. He is third generation IC. He was outed by Angelo Codevilla, the onetime ranking civil servant on the Senate intelligence committee. When Obama was first emerging as a possible presidential candidate an investigative journalist in Chicago (Sherman Skolnick, the last of the great muckrakers) alleged that Obama was an intelligence asset...Skolnick died a fortnight later of previously undiagnosed cardiac problems. Webster Tarpley wrote a biography of Obama that also demonstrated the Deep State context of Obama and his closest advisers. Tarpley predicted (in 2008, I think) that if Obama were elected the country was certain to end up in a civil conflict.
The US Left is a Cold War era controlled opposition. Both the domestic and foreign policies of his administration make a lot of sense when you consider things from this perspective.
I celebrated his death, happily admit that the man was a lying, worldwide instigator of terrorism and war. McCain and his ilk are a pox on humanity. Now we many more RINO war pushers in congress than ever before. The latest joke I heard was Eye-Patch McCain !
The US is a glass house and the arrogance of our bureaucrats, politicians, media and too many voters says to the world “we can do what we want to you, so shut up and take it”. The Lack of introspection about the systemic refusal for our policy makers to accept responsibility for past atrocities committed like torture, indiscriminate killing of foreigners and spying on your own citizens is only topped by their response to journalists brave enough to embarrass them. I hope you are right since I inherently believe most people not in power know right from wrong and will ultimately rise up and save the world from the evil we now face. Where is Ray Epps and why isn’t he being held in solitary?
People who study these things for a living tell us we have 3-5 seconds to keep people from moving on from our posts. I don't know of anyone who spends those 3-5 seconds looking for the F-bomb that will keep them reading, but I know many who will see one and move on. What you have to say is too important to be polluted with things that will repulse fence-sitters who would come over if they could be emotionally engaged—or were not reflexively disengaged—with your substance.
Jimmy Dore’s line about being called a grifter - “that’s right, I’m in the pocket of Big Peace”.
Those of us living in the US have no right to condemn other countries. We live in a country that was founded on stealing, lying, war mongering, and colonizing, and we are still doing it to this very day. Anyone who thinks we live in a free country quite obviously has no idea of what freedom really is. I am also so tired of the people who are sleepwalking through life and continually buying into the mainstream narrative. Are they blind? Do they not see the prices of everything going up? The rising epidemic of homelessness? The state of perpetual fear and endless wars? The current, western way of life is so psychopathic and destructive that it beggars belief that people actually want others to have this way of life.
Morals of a Einsatzgruppen Commander, no not bad enough. Morals of a Southern Baptist Preacher, nope, nope. Morals of a K-Street Consultant, sheesh, nothing seems disgusting enough. Aha! Of Course! John McCain had the shite morals and trail of evil of a John McCain!
Right! And I can't wait to dance on as many Bush graves as possible before they run me off!
There are situations/incidents/reactions so ridiculous they make any serious response incoherent.
What, you're supposed to mumble homilies, bow the head on the anniversary of the death of a heartless murderer? Does death nullify all evil? Wipe the slate? George W. Bush seems to think so, but that's an easy way out, and a bad example to other mass murderers and their applauders. The dead have not been raised, and will not be. Their relatives and neighbours are perhaps still around, and they haven't forgotten. Neither should we.
And anyone who thinks taking insults and threats from idiots because you must stand up for your convictions against evil systems passed off as inevitable and just- is an easy way to make
a few bucks - doesn't live on planet Earth: it is the liars, truth benders, exploiters and manipulators who have it easy. Those cowards who ingratiate themselves with the "powerful," and have no conscience to speak of, although they speak of high principles and superior morals and values, all the time.
Don't they though all the while finding a better way to stab you in the back and take your wallet!
Personally, I find it rather disgusting to celebrate the dead the way Hilary did on television, and a few other disgusting politians, and if anybody died who should have died, remember that they were children once themselves and someone made them very sick. Every evil that happens in this world is the result of good people not having the guts to stand up against it, John was a tragic failure of a human being that anyone supported him, shows how many other failures there are in our society. We should concentrate on cleaning up the sickness rather than celebrating the dead.
well said, and you make an excellent point here that celebrating the death of an individual tends to remove the focus from the system that created them (and as Caitlin herself has often said our system persists unaltered across changes on individuals).
Despite the best attempts of Western Mainstream Media to suggest otherwise, this war is going exactly according to the Putin-Shoigu plan and has been since the February 24th invasion.
The fall of Odessa to the Russians will be assured after Nykolaiv is taken, giving Moscow strategic control over the entire Black Sea coast.
The Jewish Drag Queen Comedian in Kiev will then be given an ultimatum to settle. If that ultimatum is rejected, Zelensky, Biden, Stoltenberg, Blinken, Nuland, Sherman, Obama, Clinton, Soros and his Open Society Foundation, Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum, the Atlantic Council, the EU heads of state, and American Mainstream Media and Social Media Conglomerates will awaken one morning or night to a Russian occupation of all of Ukraine including Kiev and Lviv. The LGBTQ flag will have to be lowered, as it was in Kabul when the Afghan National Army and their Zio-Con backers had to get out of Dodge.
Only a fool would fail to see that the American Century is long past with postmortems soon to be the subject of historical and political analysis.
In contemporary Geo-Political developments, the two most critical in recent times are the apparent developing reapproachment of Assad and Erdogan over Syria which would finish the Zio-Con/Jihadic intervention in that country, and the Chinese President’s visit to Riyadh. If Saudi Arabia joins BRICS as it reportedly is interested in, the American Petrodollar as the global reserve currency is toast. If that happens, kiss the Zio-Anglo-American-New World Order goodbye.
By Mark Dankof
The full version appeared in Veterans Today
Wow, that was good thx
What, we're not supposed to sing "Ding dong the witch is dead!" anymore?
The only problem is that focusing John on McCain doesn't fix the system that gave us McCain. The old creep tipped over and the system never so much as skipped a beat.
Accelerated even! McCain temporary replacement is a revolving door monkey who doubled down so he could really make rain on returning to his consulting/lobbying firm. Jon Kyl is a Mike Pence to McCain as Trump, a more effective evil. He didn't even have to clean McCain's desk, as he has one opposite it (as well as one opposite Sin-enema's desk).
yeah and celebrating the death of an individual inevitably shifts the focus from the system to the individual. It's a bad idea for that reason alone (though also for many other reasons)
Only for those who can't live for more than one thing, which yeah, is probably is quite a %.
Hi Caitlin,
Thanks for your morning shot of clarity and sanity about the world we live in today. Actually, this world is terrifying beyond words. We may not have to worry about drastic climate change with all this cavalier talk about 'winning" a nuclear war. I'm a nuclear physicist and I studied how nuclear radiation can affect and slowly kill a person - witness that Russian agent in the UK slowly dying of radioactive Polonium poisoning a few years ago.
The "empire" is on its last legs, Caitlin, you and I and Chris Hedges know this. It's scrambling for all it's worth to prevent its demise, even if it takes down the whole world with it. The coup d'etat that took place in the US on November 22, 1963, has led to where we and the world are today. JFK was truly the last non- war criminal president we ever had. Yes, he and his brother were following the dictates of the empire in harassing Castro with exploding cigars and other foolish activities, while he was establishing a line of communication with Fidel - secretly, of course, and exchanging letters with Khrushchev in an attempt to end the cold war that mass murderer, Truman, began after WWII. Both JFK and Khrushchev knew how dangerous their secret talks were, and which ended in Dealy Plaza with an assassin's bullet shot from the grassy knoll.
Thank you for bringing to our attention the crimes of empire aided and abetted by John McCain and so many others in the name of the US empire. The "chickens are coming home to roost" as Malcolm X opined on the murder of JFK. His insight applies to the terror we all face today.
Um... to whom are you referring when you claim that a 'russian agent' died from radiation poisoning ?
I note that victims of "ras-putin" always seem to "hamlet" - that is, soliloquy across the world stage as they expire (or, more likely, do not) and leave the msm railing against the dastardly
Putin. I get tired of the absurdity: Putin is an evil genius that does not understand that poisoning his enemies as they command the world's attention will adversely affect the perception of Russia to the western world. The rest of your comment was spot on, though. Whether you meant it or not, I wanted to comment in this manner to that particular mention.
This was a big international story about 15 years ago, I think. This man, Alexander Litvenenko, was poisoned with radioactive Polonium added to his tea he always had in a small restaurant in London. He died in hospital in excruciating pain, except for massive pain killers he was given.
Look up the story here: https://www.bing.com/search?q=polonium+poisoning+of+alexander+litvinenko&form=ANNTH1&refig=5d2427d140c47619f154787184076187&sp=2&qs=SC&pq=polonium+poisonimg&sk=PRES1SC1&sc=10-18&cvid=5d2427d140c47619f154787184076187
Let's take Julian Assange as a counterpoint; I won't bother to type in the rest- you can do it yourself.
Interesting you mention the "rehabilitation of George Bush". I have been saying this for years in anger. I remember seeing him on the news with his yellow pancho in the rain sitting in between Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton. Trump was in office at the time and Bush became a coddled teddy bear. We were supposed to forget about the war crimes under his administrarion, i.e., "weapons of mass destruction ploy" to take us into the Iraq war and the "rebuilding" of Iraq which never took place. We sent a few consultants there under Haliburton and the promises were never fulfilled by The Masters Of War except for $$$$ pockets.
Nicely Stated. Trump appears to me to be the Presidential "Heal" - a term used in WWE wrestling circles, meaning an actor playing the part of the bad guy. His entire Presidency with all it's imperfections was done on purpose - to rehabilitate the image of his War Criminal Predecessors. Remember, Trump was on the campaign trail with both Bushes trying to convince them to make him their VP. Trump is and always has been a Washington Insider - the continued nonsense of him being too "rogue" or too much of an outsider is pure nonsense..
I always enjoy reading Caitlin's perspectives even when I disagree with her. In this case, it's so bizarre to see anyone engage in the "Pointing to Another Wrong" Fallacy: If I don't like the war in Ukraine, and support Caitlin's ideas there, then I'm just supposed to ignore the 400,000,000 forced abortions in China, and the endless censorship and mass murder that regime has engaged in. I'm supposed to let "China do China."
No. Evil is evil. Period. I don't have to adhere to obvious fallacies of reasoning to like any author.
Even so, even when Caitlin is being inexplicable, she is often brilliant about how everything coming out of the governments and complicit media is simply propaganda. I've learned a lot in reading about 100 articles from her. For that: thank you, Caitlin.
If you don't like the uni-party, like me, I recommend Tucker Carlson, Michael Malice, Russell Brand, and many others. My unifying moral ethos centers around maximizing your freedom.
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.
Very good and very true I believe. I am not, however, convinced China will do better than America. We shall see. If China takes over it will in all likelihood create its own shit show.
You'd have a hard time finding a monkey who could not do better at not messing up as badly as USA. You just look at it from the doing the beating end of the stick and benefiting from all the crumbs spilt robbing the world blind. Now that you might be beaten back you moan as if you were Capo about to have his turn in the showers.
Not disagreeing with your evil empire thesis one bit. I disagree that we should let China be China since China with our help is on the way to exacting revenge on all those who raped China for the past 200 years. Japan, Russia, UK, Germany, and U.S.. Who flooded China with Opium and Why would China want to over supply fentanyl to us? Context, history and past behavior supply the necessary reference points for a successful anticipation of future behavior and events. China’s reading your criticism and taking notes and if you’re right about the worlds most evil empire why wouldn’t China want to take it on?
Because they're not psychopaths
Just the same, when our planet currently is being dominated by certifiable psychopaths….
Yes, it is entirely possible for the “evil empire” thesis to coexist with current & historical realities. None of our governments, corporations, institutions is without sin. There’s a great deal of “ the pot calling the kettle black” going on. Hypocrisy is rampant with a simultaneous big show of virtue signaling to show how good and pure of heart we are.
I like to think that there is a deeper wisdom somewhere which will prevail over 100% Gonzo-bent self destruction. We all have everything to lose.
We should never celebrate the death of anyone, but we are entitled to feel relieved that McCain can't hurt anyone any more. He was more than nasty...he was batshit crazy, emotionally unstable, a militarist whose commanding officer recommended that he get charged with treason and a willing supporter of the cover up of missing POWs in Vietnam. If he were alive today he'd be egging on war with Russia and China. He was a danger to his country and the world.
His legislative history is a gift that will keep on giving for decades, if we're around that long.
"The evil that men do lives on after them" as they say.
To shift the subject, you may be interested in this, an eye-opening discussion of the Alfred Herrhausen assassination and the end of the Cold War, packed full of revelations about how the empire really works. Herrhausen was a German banker who planned a Marshal Plan for post-Cold War Russia. Truly significant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFzBvavbUXg&list=PLkEoOmUevw4KSf-8orNQDlcg5qtv4b45Y&index=60
Thanks. That really was interesting.
It certainly helps explain why the Euro elites are so keen not to upset Washington. You don't need to kill too many people to send a message. What infuriates me was how clueless I was when all this was going on. I don't feel guilty, but I do feel a degree of complicity by way of passivity and ignorance.
It also places Obama's comment in a new light, that he had to perform if he didn't expect to have a short and maybe early retirement, but of course he was looking for any excuse to sell himself on what he really wanted to do anyway.
There is no comparison. Obama was never at any risk from the Deep State. None. He is third generation IC. He was outed by Angelo Codevilla, the onetime ranking civil servant on the Senate intelligence committee. When Obama was first emerging as a possible presidential candidate an investigative journalist in Chicago (Sherman Skolnick, the last of the great muckrakers) alleged that Obama was an intelligence asset...Skolnick died a fortnight later of previously undiagnosed cardiac problems. Webster Tarpley wrote a biography of Obama that also demonstrated the Deep State context of Obama and his closest advisers. Tarpley predicted (in 2008, I think) that if Obama were elected the country was certain to end up in a civil conflict.
The US Left is a Cold War era controlled opposition. Both the domestic and foreign policies of his administration make a lot of sense when you consider things from this perspective.
Codevilla's piece is worth consideration.
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-chosen-one/
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I celebrated his death, happily admit that the man was a lying, worldwide instigator of terrorism and war. McCain and his ilk are a pox on humanity. Now we many more RINO war pushers in congress than ever before. The latest joke I heard was Eye-Patch McCain !
The US is a glass house and the arrogance of our bureaucrats, politicians, media and too many voters says to the world “we can do what we want to you, so shut up and take it”. The Lack of introspection about the systemic refusal for our policy makers to accept responsibility for past atrocities committed like torture, indiscriminate killing of foreigners and spying on your own citizens is only topped by their response to journalists brave enough to embarrass them. I hope you are right since I inherently believe most people not in power know right from wrong and will ultimately rise up and save the world from the evil we now face. Where is Ray Epps and why isn’t he being held in solitary?
People who study these things for a living tell us we have 3-5 seconds to keep people from moving on from our posts. I don't know of anyone who spends those 3-5 seconds looking for the F-bomb that will keep them reading, but I know many who will see one and move on. What you have to say is too important to be polluted with things that will repulse fence-sitters who would come over if they could be emotionally engaged—or were not reflexively disengaged—with your substance.