"It’s a sign of a deep sickness how much more political attention is given to domestic policy in our society than the fact that our governments are butchering human beings on other continents."
It's even sadder and sicker that so much attention is given to celebrities and senseless materialistic pursuits. For example, the recent Met Gala. Every time I landed on a news page, there were photos and articles about the useless people wearing overpriced fashion (some of it downright stupid and ugly). No mention of what's happening in Gaza or Lebanon or even Iran. Just stupid celebrities doing overpriced stupid things. The West has sold its soul to the zionist mass murderers and we're not better than they are.
Smedley Butler understood this. He said the only things worth fighting for were “the defense of our homes and the Bill of Rights.” The prepublication review system violates the Bill of Rights in service of institutional embarrassment. By Butler’s standard, it is the system itself that should be fought.
In his book Endless Holocausts: Mass Death in the History of the United States Empire, the political scientist David Michael Smith calculates that the US has been responsible or shared responsibility for the death of 54 million people between 1945 and 2020. Add in domestic social killing and move the time back to the founding of the American Empire in 1776 and the body count climbs to 300 million. In his 2013 book America’s Deadliest Export, William Blum reported that the United States after World War II: worked to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments; interfered in elections held by 30 sovereign nations; tried to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders; bombed more than 30 nations; and tried to suppress nationalist, leftist, and populist movements in at least 20 nations. (These numbers need to be updated for the last three years of the Obama administration and the Trump and Biden presidencies to include, among other things, US funding and protection of Israel’s 2023-20?? genocide in Gaza, Trump’s boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s sovereign elected president, and Trump’s reckless and failing fiasco of a war on Iran.) The United States is the only country to have attacked human beings (unnecessarily) with nuclear weapons (twice) and has brought the world remarkably close to nuclear annihilation on multiple occasions. It is the clear leader in the global march to societal collapse if not human extinction via climate collapse, ecocide (broadly understood), nuclear proliferation, pandemicide, and artificial intelligence
And so much of all that on the pushing from israel since the US pushed for them to get part of Palestinian land, which never satisfies the zionist regime. How much war have they caused from behind the scenes since they were allowed to make it a Jewish state, apart from all the deaths they have caused daily in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and now Iran, and America bends the knee and asks, 'Which country do you want us to bomb next?'
As Einstein said the very idea of there being a state of israel went against the very ethics of Judaism. Yes, finish off Israel. Iran is our best hope.
Makes me think of the level of attention now being given to members of our Australian Jewish community, speaking at the Royal Commission. It breaks my heart ( and makes me furious) that the experience of the Palestinians is given barely any attention at all, so much for humanity
It is in line with everything else the West has ever done. Hitler runs a campaign of extermination against fellow Europeans and it scars the European psyche. But what about the 20 million Africans killed by Leopold? Or the other tens or hundreds of millions killed by colonial Europe? They care for the Jews only because they are white. This was the psychological taboo Hitler committed. Doing to whites what whites had done to non-whites for centuries.
I feel like we live in a nightmare. This is all surreal to me. I cannot believe the horrors i am witnessing. It's like this is 1938 but with social media and live streaming and we are witnessing all the horrors that we read about in history books and that we were assured would never happen again, and no one is doing anything about it. On the contrary, we are being gaslit into believing that opposing mass killing is “hate,” that genocide is “self-defense,” and that demanding an end to slaughter is “terrorism.” Language itself has been inverted. Up is down. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength
It's like the universe has put all the lessons we should have learned from history, all the dystopian literature that served as cautionary tales, into reality for us, twilight zone style.
The collective trauma Israel is causing us all, in addition to the actual horrors it is inflicting on the people of the middle east and especially the Palestinians, is unfathomable. I walk around every day thinking "this can't be real."
I never imagined that in my lifetime I would casually scroll past videos of children being shot in the head, people collapsing lifeless in the street, entire families erased in seconds, images of torture, children with entrails hanging from walls...while the rest of the world continues on as if this is normal and their leadership indicts those who dare to notice!
And it’s not only human lives being destroyed, Israel is annihilating history itself: ancient sites, museums, libraries, archives, artifacts that belonged not to one people but to humanity as a whole. Entire chapters of civilization are being incinerated. One museum in Gaza held the keys to the homes of displaced Palestinians - symbols of memory, exile, and the hope of return. Gone now too. They are not just killing people; they are attempting to erase history.
And beyond the immediate horror is the devastation inflicted on the planet itself: tens of thousands of toxic bombs poisoning land, air, water, and ecosystems that can never truly be restored.
Honestly, there is no punishment big enough to match the atrocities and horrors Israel is inflicting on humanity and this planet.
So true. It's incredible that so many can be so brainwashed that war and genocide are completely normalized. War should be obsolete. It's barbaric and it is not the way countries should solve problems between each other.
It sure is. Strip the skin off and everyone is the same underneath and, we all bleeding the same colour blood.
We are repeatedly told "We are made in God's image". Nowhere does it say - on the outside only, and nowhere does it say with pale skin, and blue eyes, or the shape of those eyes are .... only. The paintings of Christ are so wrong when they have him as a blue-eyed blonde - from West Asia?
I have told anybody within earshot for at least twenty years that until an actual, sustained shooting war occurs inside the borders of the United States, Americans will blithely go about their day, relatively unconcerned with the absolute depths of horror that war brings. Perhaps that will be the only way Americans will sober up when it comes to war.
Smedley Butler understood this. He said the only things worth fighting for were “the defense of our homes and the Bill of Rights.” The prepublication review system violates the Bill of Rights in service of institutional embarrassment. By Butler’s standard, it is the system itself that should be fought.
To stop the killing and destruction diplomacy is required.
The west has never primarily considered diplomacy when dealing with the global south. Diplomacy was the engagement between whites when dividing up the global south between themselves. Even then, they were often at each others' throats when diplomacy collapsed.
The west has always used coercion, military force and more recently embargoes and sanctions to impose imperial orders.
It is not going to be easy to socialise the whites into accepting the global south as equal partners at the table, and not consuming them as items on the menu.
There’s a huge portion of society that can’t or won’t believe that we’re committing mass murder & crimes against humanity. “Oh it’s just our enemies propaganda or it’s AI generated” is the easy thing to accept. They’re convinced we are good and moral, the land of Captain America no less. “Best country in the world”. Then there’s those that know this but are so blind with racism, they’re all for it. These are also the ones that would piss themselves if they had to fight in these wars. Immoral, cowards. Then there’s those that Caitlin might be referring to, so angered by domestic issues they can’t see beyond. I had a dear friend raging mad complaining about ‘the patriarchy “ and how more woman should be running things because…abortion, medical discrimination, voting rights, etc. her eyes glazed over when I tried to voice concern about wars and imperialism, the use of AI to crush us all. She again blamed men and went back into domestic issues MS Now told her to care about and who to blame. Depending on what media you consume, men are to blame, old white men, boomers, Trump solely, Christians, Muslims, immigrants, black people, communists, marxists, socialists, terrorists, Russia, Putin, liberals, democrats, republicans, Jews… never those that own the means to distract and confuse us all with the latest domestic injustice and the latest villain to blame.
I share your concern. But I am pessimistic that this message will land. In a moment, I will get on my bike to work, and for most people here in the Netherlands, the world will simply continue as normal. This disconnection is much more fundamental than a moral choice. In my view, it is how we have come to consume. It is how our daily lives have been shaped. We are, in fact, all drone pilots observing these events on a screen. Hatred spreads not only easily via algorithms, but the protection afforded by a fast internet connection between us makes us more uninhibited. Who realizes, when ordering a Bucket Meal of 28 Hot Wings at KFC, that 14 chickens are actually required for that? It is disconnection by design. And all forms and institutions aimed at appealing to moral consciousness are under fire. Whether it is the battle over language in media, it is nothing other than distracting and misleading advertising. For major interests and the small ones I cycle past on the street.
'Healthcare? Very important. Immigrants’ rights? Very important. Social justice and equality? Very important. But imagine if you lived in a place where western-made bombs were tearing your family and neighbors to shreds and then catching sight of a western social media post about the supreme importance of LGBTQ issues or ending discrimination against neurodivergent people. Just pause and put yourself in those shoes for a minute'.
Spot on. The whole tactic of 'NeoLiberalism' is to sell the message with progressive sounding ideas when the real intention is to capture the economy. When these result in war, the progressive messages engineered by organisations like the National Endowment for Democracy bite the dust. Just look at Iran....
The biggest problem I see is that the genocide really doesn't hurt most people at all, not even psychologically. The few who are plugged in, of course, are deeply affected, but most Americans are immersed in an infantile entertainment/news system that takes up all of their bandwidth, and the daily attrocities their country is inflicting on others don't even register. Even if you try to approach the subject with them, they are too conditioned to ignore suffering and pursue comfort and entertainment, and they will simply look the other way.
What passes as politically engaged in America today is calling Trump an idiot and betting that everything will be ok once the Democrats are back. Some bitch about paying a dollar more for gas, nevermind they are willing to spend $20 for an ice cream sundae.
And then they're back to their Netflix shows. These people are not affected at all.
Yes. It says we are not civilized. The rest of the world has long ago identified all of this about the west. We have to civilize ourselves. But how to do this when both left and right think we are the peak of civilization? I'm of the mind it will come only slowly over the course of centuries after a major collapse. Nobody reading this will be around for it. The best we can do today is plant the seeds.
"It’s a sign of a deep sickness how much more political attention is given to domestic policy in our society than the fact that our governments are butchering human beings on other continents."
It's even sadder and sicker that so much attention is given to celebrities and senseless materialistic pursuits. For example, the recent Met Gala. Every time I landed on a news page, there were photos and articles about the useless people wearing overpriced fashion (some of it downright stupid and ugly). No mention of what's happening in Gaza or Lebanon or even Iran. Just stupid celebrities doing overpriced stupid things. The West has sold its soul to the zionist mass murderers and we're not better than they are.
What on earth is this met gala I keep hearing about, anyway?
Smedley Butler understood this. He said the only things worth fighting for were “the defense of our homes and the Bill of Rights.” The prepublication review system violates the Bill of Rights in service of institutional embarrassment. By Butler’s standard, it is the system itself that should be fought.
https://griobhtha1.substack.com/p/wake-up-ratm-because-what-you-reap
"War is a racket. I was a gangster for capitalists." Butler was certainly right about that.
And don't forget Madeleine Albright:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oK4bN1y4O-M
In his book Endless Holocausts: Mass Death in the History of the United States Empire, the political scientist David Michael Smith calculates that the US has been responsible or shared responsibility for the death of 54 million people between 1945 and 2020. Add in domestic social killing and move the time back to the founding of the American Empire in 1776 and the body count climbs to 300 million. In his 2013 book America’s Deadliest Export, William Blum reported that the United States after World War II: worked to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments; interfered in elections held by 30 sovereign nations; tried to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders; bombed more than 30 nations; and tried to suppress nationalist, leftist, and populist movements in at least 20 nations. (These numbers need to be updated for the last three years of the Obama administration and the Trump and Biden presidencies to include, among other things, US funding and protection of Israel’s 2023-20?? genocide in Gaza, Trump’s boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific, Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s sovereign elected president, and Trump’s reckless and failing fiasco of a war on Iran.) The United States is the only country to have attacked human beings (unnecessarily) with nuclear weapons (twice) and has brought the world remarkably close to nuclear annihilation on multiple occasions. It is the clear leader in the global march to societal collapse if not human extinction via climate collapse, ecocide (broadly understood), nuclear proliferation, pandemicide, and artificial intelligence
And so much of all that on the pushing from israel since the US pushed for them to get part of Palestinian land, which never satisfies the zionist regime. How much war have they caused from behind the scenes since they were allowed to make it a Jewish state, apart from all the deaths they have caused daily in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and now Iran, and America bends the knee and asks, 'Which country do you want us to bomb next?'
Finish israel and all these wars will stop.
As Einstein said the very idea of there being a state of israel went against the very ethics of Judaism. Yes, finish off Israel. Iran is our best hope.
Makes me think of the level of attention now being given to members of our Australian Jewish community, speaking at the Royal Commission. It breaks my heart ( and makes me furious) that the experience of the Palestinians is given barely any attention at all, so much for humanity
It is in line with everything else the West has ever done. Hitler runs a campaign of extermination against fellow Europeans and it scars the European psyche. But what about the 20 million Africans killed by Leopold? Or the other tens or hundreds of millions killed by colonial Europe? They care for the Jews only because they are white. This was the psychological taboo Hitler committed. Doing to whites what whites had done to non-whites for centuries.
I feel like we live in a nightmare. This is all surreal to me. I cannot believe the horrors i am witnessing. It's like this is 1938 but with social media and live streaming and we are witnessing all the horrors that we read about in history books and that we were assured would never happen again, and no one is doing anything about it. On the contrary, we are being gaslit into believing that opposing mass killing is “hate,” that genocide is “self-defense,” and that demanding an end to slaughter is “terrorism.” Language itself has been inverted. Up is down. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength
It's like the universe has put all the lessons we should have learned from history, all the dystopian literature that served as cautionary tales, into reality for us, twilight zone style.
The collective trauma Israel is causing us all, in addition to the actual horrors it is inflicting on the people of the middle east and especially the Palestinians, is unfathomable. I walk around every day thinking "this can't be real."
I never imagined that in my lifetime I would casually scroll past videos of children being shot in the head, people collapsing lifeless in the street, entire families erased in seconds, images of torture, children with entrails hanging from walls...while the rest of the world continues on as if this is normal and their leadership indicts those who dare to notice!
And it’s not only human lives being destroyed, Israel is annihilating history itself: ancient sites, museums, libraries, archives, artifacts that belonged not to one people but to humanity as a whole. Entire chapters of civilization are being incinerated. One museum in Gaza held the keys to the homes of displaced Palestinians - symbols of memory, exile, and the hope of return. Gone now too. They are not just killing people; they are attempting to erase history.
And beyond the immediate horror is the devastation inflicted on the planet itself: tens of thousands of toxic bombs poisoning land, air, water, and ecosystems that can never truly be restored.
Honestly, there is no punishment big enough to match the atrocities and horrors Israel is inflicting on humanity and this planet.
So true. It's incredible that so many can be so brainwashed that war and genocide are completely normalized. War should be obsolete. It's barbaric and it is not the way countries should solve problems between each other.
It sure is. Strip the skin off and everyone is the same underneath and, we all bleeding the same colour blood.
We are repeatedly told "We are made in God's image". Nowhere does it say - on the outside only, and nowhere does it say with pale skin, and blue eyes, or the shape of those eyes are .... only. The paintings of Christ are so wrong when they have him as a blue-eyed blonde - from West Asia?
I have told anybody within earshot for at least twenty years that until an actual, sustained shooting war occurs inside the borders of the United States, Americans will blithely go about their day, relatively unconcerned with the absolute depths of horror that war brings. Perhaps that will be the only way Americans will sober up when it comes to war.
Smedley Butler understood this. He said the only things worth fighting for were “the defense of our homes and the Bill of Rights.” The prepublication review system violates the Bill of Rights in service of institutional embarrassment. By Butler’s standard, it is the system itself that should be fought.
https://griobhtha1.substack.com/p/wake-up-ratm-because-what-you-reap
NOMOREWAR !
To stop the killing and destruction diplomacy is required.
The west has never primarily considered diplomacy when dealing with the global south. Diplomacy was the engagement between whites when dividing up the global south between themselves. Even then, they were often at each others' throats when diplomacy collapsed.
The west has always used coercion, military force and more recently embargoes and sanctions to impose imperial orders.
It is not going to be easy to socialise the whites into accepting the global south as equal partners at the table, and not consuming them as items on the menu.
It is a psychological and spiritual defect that pervades white culture around the world.
Dishwashing or no, Caitlin, I think you've omitted one of the priorities. I think it is Numero Uno priority: the planet.
War is one of the top, if not the very top, cause of pollution on planet Earth.
There’s a huge portion of society that can’t or won’t believe that we’re committing mass murder & crimes against humanity. “Oh it’s just our enemies propaganda or it’s AI generated” is the easy thing to accept. They’re convinced we are good and moral, the land of Captain America no less. “Best country in the world”. Then there’s those that know this but are so blind with racism, they’re all for it. These are also the ones that would piss themselves if they had to fight in these wars. Immoral, cowards. Then there’s those that Caitlin might be referring to, so angered by domestic issues they can’t see beyond. I had a dear friend raging mad complaining about ‘the patriarchy “ and how more woman should be running things because…abortion, medical discrimination, voting rights, etc. her eyes glazed over when I tried to voice concern about wars and imperialism, the use of AI to crush us all. She again blamed men and went back into domestic issues MS Now told her to care about and who to blame. Depending on what media you consume, men are to blame, old white men, boomers, Trump solely, Christians, Muslims, immigrants, black people, communists, marxists, socialists, terrorists, Russia, Putin, liberals, democrats, republicans, Jews… never those that own the means to distract and confuse us all with the latest domestic injustice and the latest villain to blame.
NOMOREWAR !
I share your concern. But I am pessimistic that this message will land. In a moment, I will get on my bike to work, and for most people here in the Netherlands, the world will simply continue as normal. This disconnection is much more fundamental than a moral choice. In my view, it is how we have come to consume. It is how our daily lives have been shaped. We are, in fact, all drone pilots observing these events on a screen. Hatred spreads not only easily via algorithms, but the protection afforded by a fast internet connection between us makes us more uninhibited. Who realizes, when ordering a Bucket Meal of 28 Hot Wings at KFC, that 14 chickens are actually required for that? It is disconnection by design. And all forms and institutions aimed at appealing to moral consciousness are under fire. Whether it is the battle over language in media, it is nothing other than distracting and misleading advertising. For major interests and the small ones I cycle past on the street.
'Healthcare? Very important. Immigrants’ rights? Very important. Social justice and equality? Very important. But imagine if you lived in a place where western-made bombs were tearing your family and neighbors to shreds and then catching sight of a western social media post about the supreme importance of LGBTQ issues or ending discrimination against neurodivergent people. Just pause and put yourself in those shoes for a minute'.
Spot on. The whole tactic of 'NeoLiberalism' is to sell the message with progressive sounding ideas when the real intention is to capture the economy. When these result in war, the progressive messages engineered by organisations like the National Endowment for Democracy bite the dust. Just look at Iran....
The biggest problem I see is that the genocide really doesn't hurt most people at all, not even psychologically. The few who are plugged in, of course, are deeply affected, but most Americans are immersed in an infantile entertainment/news system that takes up all of their bandwidth, and the daily attrocities their country is inflicting on others don't even register. Even if you try to approach the subject with them, they are too conditioned to ignore suffering and pursue comfort and entertainment, and they will simply look the other way.
What passes as politically engaged in America today is calling Trump an idiot and betting that everything will be ok once the Democrats are back. Some bitch about paying a dollar more for gas, nevermind they are willing to spend $20 for an ice cream sundae.
And then they're back to their Netflix shows. These people are not affected at all.
"This says terrible things about us..."
Yes. It says we are not civilized. The rest of the world has long ago identified all of this about the west. We have to civilize ourselves. But how to do this when both left and right think we are the peak of civilization? I'm of the mind it will come only slowly over the course of centuries after a major collapse. Nobody reading this will be around for it. The best we can do today is plant the seeds.