Yeah well, the empire (little gangster state) is just as likely to turn on its colony (usA), by the looks of it. Something I have been warning about for decades, what you support doing to others, coming back and biting you in the posterior. And how.
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909–1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
"I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotions. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents."
- Smedley D. Butler, U.S. Marine Corps general, two time Medal of Honor recipient
****
"The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag."
- Smedley D. Butler, U.S. Marine Corps general, USMC 1933
American Imperialism saw that the Spanish Empire was quickly loosing control over some of its Latin American colonies and swooped in to take them over (Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, and later Hawaii, American Samoa, Panama canal and the Virgin Islands).
Tail wagging the dog shows the dog is weak… But the tail is still a part of the same dog.
***
The U.S. has funded Israel for decades, not the other way around.
According to the US State Department, between 1946 and 2023 US gave Israel at least $212 billion, it's only officially.
In 2024 alone, the U.S. government sent at least $17.9 billion in military funds to Israel
AIPAC doesn't print dollars. FED does. Just follow the money.
***
"Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect our interests in the region"
-FJB, 1986-2024
***
One should think of Israel as the biggest of 800+ overseas U.S. military bases, "Unsinkable ? carrier", created to control (bomb) this whole oil-rich region.
Especially the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz, the world's most important oil transit chokepoint.
David Lloyd George, the UK Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922, was one of the 20th century's most pivotal Christian Zionists. His alignment with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann is widely recognized by historians as the critical "sine qua non" period for the foundation of Israel
***
Pax Britannia became Pax Americana after WW2. It is all part of globalism (Imperialism) that was carried out by the fascists of the 19th-21st Centuries.
U.S. Sen. Scoop Jackson started the project after 1967 to use Israel as a major U.S. proxy in the Middle East.
I don't think the issue is "no resistance" (as we already see resistance on a global level all over the world across people from all cultures, societies, ages, etc.).
The issue (IMHO) is - will those that resist win the fight/struggle against those in positions of power and authority (that have more 'resources' to fight with) ?
>>"Those in power and authority become haughty, arrogant and eventually self destruct."
You seem to 'underestimate' power (as many others have done throughout history). I'd rather be realistic and prepare with more force/vigor for the upcoming war/battle/fight against 'power' than assume "...oh, such people will eventually self-destruct and the empire will end".
Unfortunately, history's not on your side on this line of reasoning.
Agree. We are doing nothing as MAGA has all but destroyed the institutions of the US. I was trying to be consoling.
My favorite revolution was the French. And they hadn’t lost their spirit. Several years ago tens of thousands were demonstrating daily because retirement age was to be raised a few years. I might be exaggerating a bit.
Actually, Chang, empires always do fall eventually. All have and this one is on that downhill slide right now and Israel is going with it, along with its western sycophants.
Yes that’s the sign. The Soviet Union and now the US (us). This administration is destroying the military right before our eyes. And a 40 Trillion dollar deficit and there are mountains of personal debt. A whole list. I’ll just name two. Medical debt leading to bankruptcies for some. We stand alone in that regard. And college debt.
There is resistsnce, but people aren't enraged enough. When you see a resistance such as Hmas or Hezb, they've gone all in. The resistance around the world is very passive and in danger of fading away.
"Aren't enraged enough" doesn't really answer what I asked. I was asking about outcomes — will resistance actually win against opponents with more resources — and rage level isn't the same variable as likelihood of winning. Highly "all in" movements lose to better-resourced opponents all the time; that's arguably the most common outcome in asymmetric conflict historically.
On Hamas/Hezbollah as the benchmark — if "went all in" is the standard for real resistance, it needs to also be shown that this standard actually produces the outcome in question (Palestinian sovereignty, Lebanese sovereignty free of conflict). Intensity of commitment and effectiveness of strategy aren't the same thing.
And on "passive and fading away" — that's actually verifiable analytically, and the data says the OPPOSITE. Multiple independent trackers (CSIS, Verisk Maplecroft, Bloomberg Economics) show global protest frequency rising by an average of 11.5%/year, with 2026 expected to be more disruptive than 2025. Gen Z-led protests have already toppled governments in Nepal, Madagascar, and Bulgaria this cycle, and the US just recorded the sharpest increase in protest size of any country in the world. That's not a movement fading — it's an escalating one.
Comes down to being a decent human, and putting THAT above nationalist rubbish. Shouldn’t be “rocket science” just common decency: the latter having become sadly UN common these days.
Yes. One of the things that disturbs me most about this system is that it encourages us to hate others. The other day, a person sitting in the park told me that mother nature would set us straight as happened in Nepal. When I said that wasn't mother nature that caused that, it was humans, he just looked blank. This system would encourage him to disparage me and me to look down on him. Solidarity means solidarity with all who are not exerting power over the rest of us. Even if those people don't entirely "get" the situation.
I refuse to debate climate deniers. Their denial will not change the harsh reality of it one bit; all of us will experience it regardless of our beliefs - it will kill us regardless of our beliefs.
I think we all need to realize that the current capitalist system, driven by an unquenchable greed for more power and money, only promotes a certain type of people to positions of power. We usually call them "psychopaths." And one of the specific traits these kinds of people have is the lack of empathy.
***
Pathocracy is a political term describing a system of government led by individuals with severe personality disorders—typically psychopathy, narcissism, sadism, or Machiavellianism. The term was notably used by psychiatrist Andrew Lobaczewski in his book Political Ponerology (written in the 1960s–70s, published much later).
Key characteristics of a pathocracy:
Leaders are psychopaths or sociopaths who rise to power by exploiting social chaos and normal people's psychological weaknesses.
Truth is systematically replaced with a controlled, distorted reality.
Cruelty, paranoia, and corruption become institutionalized.
Normal, empathetic individuals are weeded out or destroyed.
***
"We're a society of Altruists being ruled by Psychopaths.":
I want to put Caitlin's insights nto the context of rebellion. It was Camus who fit neither into the neat liberal nor neat leftist camp, who said that in a savage world, the only way we can find our humanity is by rebelling against it. That is a lonely path when we one day find we no longer fit into the conformed norms and beliefs we grew up in and with...and so we find ourselve alienated from old friends, family (my brother stopped speaking to me after we argued 55 yrs ago about Vietnam) and even our jobs may become a source of unhappiness. Rebellion begins in the mind and heart and leaves us in the first stage alone, alienated and isolated and thus unhappy. But it is courage and a basic decency that enables us to endure that kind of unhappiness. We become like steel in fire stronger for our pain and almost always our rebellion arose out of compassoin for the injustices and love for the victims of those injustices...and itis this deep love that keeps us from surrendering and retreating
Then something amazing happens...perhaps it has happened to many thru partipating in the community of rebels that Caitlin has created with her writing and painting....we find other we also have taken the step back from the conforming community and expericneed the isolation we have felt and then we bond and this is what Camus called "a strange form of love," because it is deep trust and appreciation that form with strangers (in the sense we are not personal friends)....and that is where the greeting of comrad arose, to identify those who rebel with us, making of me a we, of an alienated rebel harboring his love for the victims of the system she rebels against into an ally in a relationship called comradeship.
And so we see the circle of rebellion, representing a return to wholeness in an opposition that shredded our relationship with the community of support of the system, rooted in a deeper love for the suffering of the victims of that system, which then when we join togethe in our opposition, forms a new kind of community that circles back to loving those who share our love for justice. Along the way there will be hecklers, calling us names, traitors, bots, controlled opposition, posers, etc but this is the impotent insults of those who lacking the inner love cannot share the greater love of a community of opposition.
And it is in the community we find only if we are willing to expatraite ourselves from what is called normal life that we become free in the deepest sense, which is not formal freedoms but rather the existential freedom to be ourselves, which is possible only when we feel surrounded by those we trust.
I like to find the origins of words to get a sense of their radical meaning, going back to the roots, and if we look at rebel, we find it means to fight again, to wage war once more. Why again? I turned to AI (shoot him!) to find out: "Without “again,” the translation would reduce to “to fight”, which loses the nuance that the action is repeated or resumed, reflecting a revolt against an existing condition or authority.
The notion of rebelling inherently implies resisting an established order, which requires the sense of doing something once more—thus “again” is integral to the precise etymological meaning.
"
And cognates have the same nuance: resist, revolt...always again. I think I glimpse the reason; It goes back to the historical division,thru the replacement of the shared commons among equals with private property, which created a new order of the haves and have nots, and that is where Marx's concept of history as class struggle begins. Again, to re-bel (bel being war) is not an act like starting a war but repeating the struggle over and over and over......suggesting indeed, the trajectory of history as a re-petition of rebellions by slaves, workers, the oppressed...revolts resistence, not just opposition but over and over re-suming the struggle, and it is in joining that re-petition of oppositions that we find our community of comrades and the freedom that can only exist when we feel we are among those who share our values and whom we trust.
i am sorry this got so long but at 85, some thoughts have been forming for 60 or 70 yrs and come like a freight train full of ideas and intuitions that once tapped, spill out and over the
decades of cargo cars and fueled by Caitlin's inspirational call to arms to share our moral outrage and find in that sharing, some solace and understanding.
If you know of a protest near you, go join and you will feel "the strange form of love" of finding those who share your rebellion. We are hundreds of millions worldwide, and that is your tribe.
Absolutely! But if you're in Europe, beware, you might get beaten and arrested. Free speech is only free if you're saying what they want you to say… ;)
Yeah, I managed to get to the antifa one in London but I've been living out in the sticks, 6 hours from a big city. However our tiny village did recently host a Palestinian film festival with films all weekend and raised £4k, not bad for about 800 inhabitants.
Thanks for writing, I'm sure many of us have those feelings of isolation. I find all topics interesting, even politics and religion, but have learned that some thoughts cannot be shared with others of your social group b/c you will be ostracized - "You're a Putin apologist." It does take a great deal of courage to remove from such company, but it is also the case that, while you may disagree strongly about the Ukrainian-Russian war or the genocide in Gaza, or the suppression of speech that the government finds uncomfortable, you do share many of the same beliefs. Most of our friends, horrified at the way things are going, are working for the Democratic party right now. We seem to be the dropouts, I b/c I no longer give a fig for the party and the lousy candidates it proposes, and my partner b/c he thinks we need to toss the Constitution and write a new one, and do this through Deliberative Democracy.
The Democratic Party was once the champion of slavery but then became the champion of racial justice. It is not a party but a struggle right now to repalce the centrist establisht Dems with radical progressives and democratic socialist, anti war and anti Israel and pro universal healthcare, green energy, etc. The times they are a changin so you can ignore it or lend a hand and join. I am 85 and never in my life was socialism mainstream and socialits winning elections and the majority of Democrats preferring socialism to capitalism. This is the opportunity I have waited a lifetime for so I am all in on replacing oligarchy with democracy ... and bringing to represent us a new generation of people working to change the system.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. At 81, I have recently found there are a lot of unresolved questions that I could never have addressed in a continuing discussion, because there wasn’t anyone on the other end to keep the conversation going. FWIW, that is the one thing LLMs can do, put up with you, reply to you, without you having to agree with whatever they respond with.
You don’t even have to read the reply. It just allows the discussion to remain open, until, that is, you use up all your tokens!
Interesting: I use ai to test my logic and to challenge it's concusions. I have long, deep conversations in which I learn much and AI sometmes bends to my logic and evidence. Since AI has no ego, the discussion can proceed with personal bias...often leading to a deeper understanding, adjusted thinking and clarity. Those who have not used this tool distrust it, but it's a simple equation; garbage in/garbage out. INteligent questions, prompts, and challenges in, meaningful discourse out. Many mock but all new ideass, inventions, and perspectives meet with mockery by the ignorant and smug.
These are very good points you made, Caitlin. People have to be willing to lose friendships and even risk alienation from some family members. When I have engaged in conversations with acquaintances, friends and/or some family members I have received propagandized talking points b/c they still are watching legacy/mainstream media or they are evangelical/ Christian Zionists and take every word in the Bible literally, not understanding that the Bible was written by man and was written eons ago and has been interpreted differently down through the ages. Honestly I don’t know how some of these so called Christians sleep at night while supporting an ethno state such as Israhell. I found it difficult to explain to a family member that Israel is murdering children and is committing genocide b/c he just refused to believe it simply b/c I’m sure his church says it isn’t committing genocide when anyone with their eyes wide open and scrolling on their phones can see it plain as day.😢😪
It beggars belief that some can still argue against plain, obvious facts while keeping a straight face. It's painful, but these people can't be friends (or family). Not until they wake the fk up
Given that the Bible is pretty much full-on genocidal, he would be more believable by saying genocide is ok, if god tells them to do it, as someone I knew once answered me.
OTOH, there quite a few sayings in the Bible, both old and New Testaments that cut very sharply the opposite way. Perhaps, he is in need of reminding of these:
“Justice, justice shalt thou pursue,”Deuteronomy 16:20, kjv, is one that comes to mind.
As does “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God,” Matthew 5:9.
This piece paints a vivid moral picture, but it falls into the exact trap that keeps modern activism politically isolated and practically powerless. Weaponizing shame by comparing everyday citizens to 1940s Germans isn't a strategy for building power—it's an exercise in alienation. Real movements don't demand that ordinary people strip away their basic humanity to prove their worth; they construct broad, welcoming coalitions that give regular people practical ways to force structural change.
This perspective confuses moral posturing with political leverage. When a movement prioritizes its own ideological purity over the unglamorous, tactical work of policy lobbying, targeted economic pressure, and institutional building, it stops being a threat to the status quo and becomes a self-serving echo chamber. Publicly condemning comfortable Westerners might offer a temporary burst of self-righteous satisfaction, but it doesn't shift a single vote, alter a budget, or stop a single weapon transfer.
Worse, reducing all human value down to one's posture against "the empire" is fundamentally dehumanizing. It strips the intrinsic worth out of raising a family, serving a local community, practicing a faith, or creating art—the very elements of human flourishing that political struggle is supposed to protect in the first place. You cannot save the world by demanding that people destroy everything that makes it worth living in.
Where has the lesser of two evils gotten us? Nowhere fast. The Democratic party just announced Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Wesley Bell will be joining the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Jared Moskowitz - will become a ranking member of the Middle East and North Africa subcommittee. Greg Meeks will likely be the next chair of HFAC.
Those 3 appointed to important positions says it all. I totally agree with you. But, I am once again struggling with the lesser of two evils, anticipating the next presidential election. In the last I voted for Jill Stein and have never regretted it. However, the world seems to be spiraling downward at an even faster pace. No candidate mentioned by the Democratic party is someone I would consider voting for. However after a slightly heated argument with my brother, who believes that with a Democratic president, the following things will quickly follow: Chuck Schumer will be gone, the filibuster will be abolished and the SC will be stacked, I'm unsure.
Assuming there is another election. Chris Hedges last article on the Right-Wing attempt to rig the next election cycles was pretty ominous (worth reading).
I understand why one would vote just to try to get MAGA out of office. But it is a band-aid put on a disease.
And the democratic party and the oligarchs who run it know this. But they sell it to you every time. Similar to the American healthcare insurance system. Everyone knows it's an extortion racket but Americans have little to no other choice. And it's the number one cause for financial bankruptcy in the US: healthcare costs.
And things will just continue to get worse - both with healthcare and the democratic party.
I don't have an answer to this dilemma other than to say as loudly as I can - people should not be brainwashed into believing that the "Lesser of Two Evils" is some kind of politically, reasonable way forward. Or that the lives of ordinary Americans will improve any time soon by voting for the Democratic party. The descent into fascism will continue - just more slowly, but not much more slowly. You might be satisfied with that for the time being - but your children and grandchildren will not. But I suppose by that time, there won't be much left of the planetary ecosystem anyway.
Both parties are corrupted by Big Money. That's the disease. Voting for either one of these venal parties won't cure the disease.
I DISAGREE with your "framing and characterization" of this article.
The article isn't proposing shame as a coalition-building tactic — it's making a claim about relative moral significance, addressed to the individual reader's self-conception, not a movement strategy memo. So judging it by "did this shift a vote or a budget" applies a standard it was never trying to meet. By that bar you'd have to throw out most writing meant to shift consciousness rather than legislate directly.
And "reduces all human value down to one's posture against the empire" isn't what Caitlin wrote. She explicitly says: "I mean no disrespect to your other wonderful attributes when I say this." That's a direct statement that raising a family, art, community — all of it — still has worth. The claim is that it's 'less significant, by comparison', than material complicity in empire — not that it's worthless or that people should "destroy everything that makes life worth living." That's a big gap between what she argued and what's being rebutted here.
None of this is an argument against tactical organizing, lobbying, or coalition-building either — she doesn't say don't do those things. Believing your personal complicity matters morally and doing the "unglamorous tactical work" aren't in tension; you can hold both.
this is democratic socialism. it is counter revolutionary imo. this does not work and one would be lying to people and trying to manipulate them again. standing on the sidelines during a live streamed genocide is the actual exercise in alienation. voting and lobbying ourselves out of this will not work. family, religion, art, community were all part of the ideological framework of 1940's fascism. one would be be lying to people when one says these things will not be touched if real change is the goal (they constantly are anyways). condemning comfortable westerners isn't done half enough and whining about moral posturing is often moral posturing in itself.
I agree in principle but I think we've run out of time. Doing everything by the book ...carefully, respectfully, the accepted way...will not save on Palestinian. By the time we have voted out way to a better world, most of West Asia, and beyond, will be rubble.
"Humanity invented the atom bomb. No mouse in the world would think of building a mousetrap." ~ Werner Mitsch. This also applies to the surveillance of humanity: Digital ID, Digital Currencies & SMART Cities https://www.theylied.ca/DigitalControlGrid/
Yes, opposing the empire is our duty. Thank God we have beautiful people who provide truthful information and reality based analysis! Dialog Works, Transition Protocol, Judging Freedom, the Electronic Intifada, Consortium News are among the best. Einstein is reported to have said Any fool can know facts. The point is to understand.
Zen aphorism: "Prayer is not asking God to carry your water. Prayer is carrying your water."
There is Universal Consciousness, of which you are part.
"Gods" with hierarchical religions that give people orders to kill pther eople are not Universal Consciousness, though I believe that the Buddha and Jesus sought to teach people to engage Universal Consciousness themselves, by going past obscurations of their own true nature as Universal Consciousness.
Try it out ;-} "They" are also inherently Universal Consciousness, and don't know it. It is obscured.
Entering a body is REALLY DISTRACTING.
With incarnation, we forget "who" we are, and our intended purpose.
I always wondered how the German people could have supported Hitler. Now I know because it's happening in America.
The only difference between Trump and Hitler is Hitler brought Germany out of a depression and numerous other things beneficial to the German people, while Trump is causing a depression and destroying the American people in every way possible from the start.
Everything you have been taught about WWII and Hitler in particular is a pack of lies. There were no Gas Chambers and Six Million Jews did not die during WWII. Hitler's Plan for the Jews was Expulsion not Extermination. Stop believing Jewish lies.
The "Industrielleneingabe" was a petition signed by 19 representatives of industry, finance, and agriculture Capitalists on 19 November 1932 that requested for German President Paul von Hindenburg to make Adolf Hitler the German Chancellor.
***
German Big Business and The Rise of Hitler, by Henry Ashby Turner,Jr.:
The financial crisis in Germany during the late 1920s, particularly the Great Depression, created an environment where various groups sought to align with the Nazis for survival or political gain.
The contributions from industrialists and bankers were part of a broader strategy to stabilize the economy and counteract leftist movements, which many viewed as a threat during this tumultuous period.
***
The financial support of the Nazi Party by figures like Fritz Thyssen is well-documented in historical accounts and biographical studies. Thyssen openly admitted to his support for the Nazis, considering them a solution to Germany's economic issues at the time.
***
BTW One of the main contributors to the Hitler's Nazi party rise to power was bank of England headed by Montagu Norman.
After the cession of German-speaking Czechoslovakia to the German Reich in 1938 (Munich Agreement), Rothschilds gave all Czechoslovakia's gold to Nazi Germany.
In May 1939, Bank of England’s Montagu Norman turned over to Germany the £6,000,000 in Czech gold reserves that were held in London. When the news of this transfer leaked out, the cabinet hid behind the preposterous excuse that the British government could not control the actions of the Bank of England: their innocent hands were tied, you see.
Caitlin, I'm sure you have good intentions and you mean well, but I doubt "The only way to truly have dignity and integrity as a westerner..." is going to work (or have the effect you think it might) for westerners. Most of them either aren't aware - or if they are - they don't really care too much about it and it's likely very low in their list of priorities. (I don't mean to put a damper in all this, but this is the 'vibe' I get from those in the West - could be that my observation is anecdotal and of an insufficient sample size).
CJ>>"That’s you right now. You’re the German in 1940."
💯 That's how I feel too. I really do think the U.S. is currently in the same kind of position, though I don't think 90% of the people in the West realize this (just as most Germans in 1940's Germany didn't realize/understand it then).
The tragedy (IMHO) is that humans rarely seem to learn from history, have short attention-spans, selective retrograde amnesia, and often seem to care primarily about themselves and those closest to them (not all of course, but the majority it seems).
Try as I might to be hopeful and optimistic, I'm currently pretty pessimistic about 'humans as a species' (though this could be more because of my psychological makeup than an objective analysis).
"[T]hat’s just the reality of what it means to be born into this particular slice of spacetime."
Very true. I had previously held the all not that unreasonable - though unproven - notion that human civilization generally progressed over the millennia, from understanding and applying science, engineering, human rights, beating back poverty, even more responsive, democratic government. Again, in the aggregate, over a long time, with fits and starts, but generally moving forward.
I don't adhere to that now. Virtually all energies have to applied to halting, reversing what Churchill warned, that we "will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science." To hell with the dubious new features of the latest iPhone.
Me too! I think it's a comfortable fiction, a self-serving (or self-placating) bias to think that human societies and civilizations always progress for the better eventually (or ever in just one direction).
I think we need to see more research on alternative perspectives...
I often wondered how the theory of evolution would of been different if Darwin was a Buddhist or something other than a British christian. Why is it important to "move forward(become evolutionary advanced)" if God supposedly created a perfect world modeled in His image? This concept has been used to market us to death.
Why were we given only one perspective on a very central concept in biology? Why is the stinky, bald ape with a well healed retirement portfolio considered the top dog advancement? What if, the bacteria has his shit together?
The system sorta beats the dignity outta you. But somehow, you need to keep the flame alive in your soul. Though the system tells you - you don't have one. So, without a soul - where do you go?
It's been a period of introspection for most Westerners as the genocide in Palestine wears on. But if they haven't come to realize how much their ignorance and lack of empathy has created the situation there yet, then there's no hope for them. They might need to be locked up with the rest of the sociopaths.
If there is no resistance, whatever has happened in Palestine/Lebanon will be felt in any country the parasitic empire feeds off of.
Yeah well, the empire (little gangster state) is just as likely to turn on its colony (usA), by the looks of it. Something I have been warning about for decades, what you support doing to others, coming back and biting you in the posterior. And how.
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909–1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
"I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotions. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents."
- Smedley D. Butler, U.S. Marine Corps general, two time Medal of Honor recipient
****
"The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag."
- Smedley D. Butler, U.S. Marine Corps general, USMC 1933
The essence of Imperialism
American Imperialism saw that the Spanish Empire was quickly loosing control over some of its Latin American colonies and swooped in to take them over (Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, and later Hawaii, American Samoa, Panama canal and the Virgin Islands).
youtu.be/F_pxZ-Rl6DM?t=1056
***
In 1899, 60 000 US troops invaded the Philippines - a massacre and genocide of women and children, the new “Open Door Policy”.
substack.com/home/post/p-201348278
U.S. Corps like Dupont acquired territories of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia and Venezuela.
***
The National Security Act of 1947 is the legal framework for American Empire.
Today, 800+ overseas US military bases around the world provide constant export of Imperiali.. "democracy" and "freedom"
youtu.be/8w7MFJZA9_w?t=206
youtu.be/zHBYevzaNIE?t=707
youtu.be/NpjDyhGyjNk?t=817
***
"United States" to Imperial America:
youtube.com/watch?v=Df4R-xdKvpM
youtu.be/NpjDyhGyjNk?t=817
youtube.com/shorts/UHlKN22zThw
Israel is but an extension of the Anglo-American empire
youtu.be/nXOHNgalVvQ?t=375
Tail wagging the dog shows the dog is weak… But the tail is still a part of the same dog.
***
The U.S. has funded Israel for decades, not the other way around.
According to the US State Department, between 1946 and 2023 US gave Israel at least $212 billion, it's only officially.
In 2024 alone, the U.S. government sent at least $17.9 billion in military funds to Israel
AIPAC doesn't print dollars. FED does. Just follow the money.
***
"Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect our interests in the region"
-FJB, 1986-2024
***
One should think of Israel as the biggest of 800+ overseas U.S. military bases, "Unsinkable ? carrier", created to control (bomb) this whole oil-rich region.
Especially the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz, the world's most important oil transit chokepoint.
youtu.be/tOfXpW5lSMM?t=93
youtube.com/shorts/A-WThZHZpEw
youtube.com/watch?v=mVVtDd9c94c
It allows Western Imperialist Oligarchy to control the Oil prices and maintain the hegemony of PETRODOLLAR.
***
Iraq Petroleum:
British Petroleum: 23.75%; Shell: 23.75%; Compagnie Francaise des Petroles: 23.75%; Exxon: 11.875%; Mobil: 11.875%
Iran Petroleum Consortium 1954-1979:
British Petroleum: 40%; Shell: 14%; Gulf: 7%; Exxon: 7%; Mobil: 7%; Chevron: 7%; Texaco: 7%; Compagnie Francaise des Petroles: 6%
youtube.com/shorts/Cn1JTw_z-Qw
Abu Dhabi Petroleum Co.:
British Petroleum: 23.75%; Shell: 23.75%; Compagnie Francaise des Petroles: 23.75%; Exxon: 11.875%; Mobil: 11.875%
Bahrain Petroleum Co.
Chevron: 50%; Texaco: 50%
Aramco Saudi Arabia:
Exxon: 30%; Mobil: 10%; Chevron: 30%; Texaco: 30%
***
Dedollarization: How Iran challenges US dollar dominance and the petrodollar system:
youtube.com/watch?v=_ziGNmvOh6k&t=215s
Yes, but like most all other empires, they eventual become vessels. I never claimed we weren't an empire, just that we are now a colony.
Too many ppl still prefer to remain willfully ignorant of the fact that Zionism/Israel has always been an Anglo-American Imperialist colonial project
***
youtube.com/watch?v=IZjSVkkAjVk
youtube.com/watch?v=vEGVSvL6yQU
***
The first words of the Balfour Declaration define it pretty well: "My dear Lord Rothschild"...
The most vigorous Zio engineers in the UK:
Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, Lord Balfour, Mark Sykes. Serving Alfred Milner’s Round Table system. Liaison agent: Chaim Weizmann.
youtube.com/shorts/hZ9pI-lLICw
***
David Lloyd George, the UK Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922, was one of the 20th century's most pivotal Christian Zionists. His alignment with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann is widely recognized by historians as the critical "sine qua non" period for the foundation of Israel
***
Pax Britannia became Pax Americana after WW2. It is all part of globalism (Imperialism) that was carried out by the fascists of the 19th-21st Centuries.
U.S. Sen. Scoop Jackson started the project after 1967 to use Israel as a major U.S. proxy in the Middle East.
I don't think the issue is "no resistance" (as we already see resistance on a global level all over the world across people from all cultures, societies, ages, etc.).
The issue (IMHO) is - will those that resist win the fight/struggle against those in positions of power and authority (that have more 'resources' to fight with) ?
Those in power and authority become haughty, arrogant and eventually self destruct. It’s how empires collapse.
It just takes too long. The US and Israel are beginning their slide into the abyss.
>>"Those in power and authority become haughty, arrogant and eventually self destruct."
You seem to 'underestimate' power (as many others have done throughout history). I'd rather be realistic and prepare with more force/vigor for the upcoming war/battle/fight against 'power' than assume "...oh, such people will eventually self-destruct and the empire will end".
Unfortunately, history's not on your side on this line of reasoning.
Agree. We are doing nothing as MAGA has all but destroyed the institutions of the US. I was trying to be consoling.
My favorite revolution was the French. And they hadn’t lost their spirit. Several years ago tens of thousands were demonstrating daily because retirement age was to be raised a few years. I might be exaggerating a bit.
The US? apathy reigns.
Actually, Chang, empires always do fall eventually. All have and this one is on that downhill slide right now and Israel is going with it, along with its western sycophants.
Every Empire has ended with an over extended military & a mountain of debt..
youtube.com/watch?v=NpjDyhGyjNk
youtube.com/watch?v=stgBVvz5RIM
youtube.com/watch?v=zHBYevzaNIE
Yes that’s the sign. The Soviet Union and now the US (us). This administration is destroying the military right before our eyes. And a 40 Trillion dollar deficit and there are mountains of personal debt. A whole list. I’ll just name two. Medical debt leading to bankruptcies for some. We stand alone in that regard. And college debt.
Yes, our empire is imploding.
There is resistsnce, but people aren't enraged enough. When you see a resistance such as Hmas or Hezb, they've gone all in. The resistance around the world is very passive and in danger of fading away.
A few things here:
"Aren't enraged enough" doesn't really answer what I asked. I was asking about outcomes — will resistance actually win against opponents with more resources — and rage level isn't the same variable as likelihood of winning. Highly "all in" movements lose to better-resourced opponents all the time; that's arguably the most common outcome in asymmetric conflict historically.
On Hamas/Hezbollah as the benchmark — if "went all in" is the standard for real resistance, it needs to also be shown that this standard actually produces the outcome in question (Palestinian sovereignty, Lebanese sovereignty free of conflict). Intensity of commitment and effectiveness of strategy aren't the same thing.
And on "passive and fading away" — that's actually verifiable analytically, and the data says the OPPOSITE. Multiple independent trackers (CSIS, Verisk Maplecroft, Bloomberg Economics) show global protest frequency rising by an average of 11.5%/year, with 2026 expected to be more disruptive than 2025. Gen Z-led protests have already toppled governments in Nepal, Madagascar, and Bulgaria this cycle, and the US just recorded the sharpest increase in protest size of any country in the world. That's not a movement fading — it's an escalating one.
You make a salient and valid argument.
That's what I fear and expect.
Do all this situations have any problems with single men ?
It ain't just dignity, just basic non-sociopathic decency.
Comes down to being a decent human, and putting THAT above nationalist rubbish. Shouldn’t be “rocket science” just common decency: the latter having become sadly UN common these days.
"Be ruthless to systems, and kind to individuals" - Michael Jamal Brooks
Yes. One of the things that disturbs me most about this system is that it encourages us to hate others. The other day, a person sitting in the park told me that mother nature would set us straight as happened in Nepal. When I said that wasn't mother nature that caused that, it was humans, he just looked blank. This system would encourage him to disparage me and me to look down on him. Solidarity means solidarity with all who are not exerting power over the rest of us. Even if those people don't entirely "get" the situation.
At least he was on the right track. Nature reacts to what we do to it. He could have blamed a deity!
Climate deniers, however, who see nothing wrong, are more difficult to argue with, and to feel empathy for.
I refuse to debate climate deniers. Their denial will not change the harsh reality of it one bit; all of us will experience it regardless of our beliefs - it will kill us regardless of our beliefs.
I think we all need to realize that the current capitalist system, driven by an unquenchable greed for more power and money, only promotes a certain type of people to positions of power. We usually call them "psychopaths." And one of the specific traits these kinds of people have is the lack of empathy.
***
Pathocracy is a political term describing a system of government led by individuals with severe personality disorders—typically psychopathy, narcissism, sadism, or Machiavellianism. The term was notably used by psychiatrist Andrew Lobaczewski in his book Political Ponerology (written in the 1960s–70s, published much later).
Key characteristics of a pathocracy:
Leaders are psychopaths or sociopaths who rise to power by exploiting social chaos and normal people's psychological weaknesses.
Truth is systematically replaced with a controlled, distorted reality.
Cruelty, paranoia, and corruption become institutionalized.
Normal, empathetic individuals are weeded out or destroyed.
***
"We're a society of Altruists being ruled by Psychopaths.":
http://youtu.be/VQ4_y3rkX5Q?t=108
I want to put Caitlin's insights nto the context of rebellion. It was Camus who fit neither into the neat liberal nor neat leftist camp, who said that in a savage world, the only way we can find our humanity is by rebelling against it. That is a lonely path when we one day find we no longer fit into the conformed norms and beliefs we grew up in and with...and so we find ourselve alienated from old friends, family (my brother stopped speaking to me after we argued 55 yrs ago about Vietnam) and even our jobs may become a source of unhappiness. Rebellion begins in the mind and heart and leaves us in the first stage alone, alienated and isolated and thus unhappy. But it is courage and a basic decency that enables us to endure that kind of unhappiness. We become like steel in fire stronger for our pain and almost always our rebellion arose out of compassoin for the injustices and love for the victims of those injustices...and itis this deep love that keeps us from surrendering and retreating
Then something amazing happens...perhaps it has happened to many thru partipating in the community of rebels that Caitlin has created with her writing and painting....we find other we also have taken the step back from the conforming community and expericneed the isolation we have felt and then we bond and this is what Camus called "a strange form of love," because it is deep trust and appreciation that form with strangers (in the sense we are not personal friends)....and that is where the greeting of comrad arose, to identify those who rebel with us, making of me a we, of an alienated rebel harboring his love for the victims of the system she rebels against into an ally in a relationship called comradeship.
And so we see the circle of rebellion, representing a return to wholeness in an opposition that shredded our relationship with the community of support of the system, rooted in a deeper love for the suffering of the victims of that system, which then when we join togethe in our opposition, forms a new kind of community that circles back to loving those who share our love for justice. Along the way there will be hecklers, calling us names, traitors, bots, controlled opposition, posers, etc but this is the impotent insults of those who lacking the inner love cannot share the greater love of a community of opposition.
And it is in the community we find only if we are willing to expatraite ourselves from what is called normal life that we become free in the deepest sense, which is not formal freedoms but rather the existential freedom to be ourselves, which is possible only when we feel surrounded by those we trust.
I like to find the origins of words to get a sense of their radical meaning, going back to the roots, and if we look at rebel, we find it means to fight again, to wage war once more. Why again? I turned to AI (shoot him!) to find out: "Without “again,” the translation would reduce to “to fight”, which loses the nuance that the action is repeated or resumed, reflecting a revolt against an existing condition or authority.
The notion of rebelling inherently implies resisting an established order, which requires the sense of doing something once more—thus “again” is integral to the precise etymological meaning.
"
And cognates have the same nuance: resist, revolt...always again. I think I glimpse the reason; It goes back to the historical division,thru the replacement of the shared commons among equals with private property, which created a new order of the haves and have nots, and that is where Marx's concept of history as class struggle begins. Again, to re-bel (bel being war) is not an act like starting a war but repeating the struggle over and over and over......suggesting indeed, the trajectory of history as a re-petition of rebellions by slaves, workers, the oppressed...revolts resistence, not just opposition but over and over re-suming the struggle, and it is in joining that re-petition of oppositions that we find our community of comrades and the freedom that can only exist when we feel we are among those who share our values and whom we trust.
i am sorry this got so long but at 85, some thoughts have been forming for 60 or 70 yrs and come like a freight train full of ideas and intuitions that once tapped, spill out and over the
decades of cargo cars and fueled by Caitlin's inspirational call to arms to share our moral outrage and find in that sharing, some solace and understanding.
I like this.
I'm at what you call stage 1 - losing friends and seeking my tribe. I've moved to a new area, which may yield the results I seek!
If you know of a protest near you, go join and you will feel "the strange form of love" of finding those who share your rebellion. We are hundreds of millions worldwide, and that is your tribe.
Absolutely! But if you're in Europe, beware, you might get beaten and arrested. Free speech is only free if you're saying what they want you to say… ;)
Europe is 32 nations, many very free, some not. The same thing that might get you detained in the Uk might get you a free beer!
Yeah, I managed to get to the antifa one in London but I've been living out in the sticks, 6 hours from a big city. However our tiny village did recently host a Palestinian film festival with films all weekend and raised £4k, not bad for about 800 inhabitants.
Thanks for writing, I'm sure many of us have those feelings of isolation. I find all topics interesting, even politics and religion, but have learned that some thoughts cannot be shared with others of your social group b/c you will be ostracized - "You're a Putin apologist." It does take a great deal of courage to remove from such company, but it is also the case that, while you may disagree strongly about the Ukrainian-Russian war or the genocide in Gaza, or the suppression of speech that the government finds uncomfortable, you do share many of the same beliefs. Most of our friends, horrified at the way things are going, are working for the Democratic party right now. We seem to be the dropouts, I b/c I no longer give a fig for the party and the lousy candidates it proposes, and my partner b/c he thinks we need to toss the Constitution and write a new one, and do this through Deliberative Democracy.
The Democratic Party was once the champion of slavery but then became the champion of racial justice. It is not a party but a struggle right now to repalce the centrist establisht Dems with radical progressives and democratic socialist, anti war and anti Israel and pro universal healthcare, green energy, etc. The times they are a changin so you can ignore it or lend a hand and join. I am 85 and never in my life was socialism mainstream and socialits winning elections and the majority of Democrats preferring socialism to capitalism. This is the opportunity I have waited a lifetime for so I am all in on replacing oligarchy with democracy ... and bringing to represent us a new generation of people working to change the system.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. At 81, I have recently found there are a lot of unresolved questions that I could never have addressed in a continuing discussion, because there wasn’t anyone on the other end to keep the conversation going. FWIW, that is the one thing LLMs can do, put up with you, reply to you, without you having to agree with whatever they respond with.
You don’t even have to read the reply. It just allows the discussion to remain open, until, that is, you use up all your tokens!
Interesting: I use ai to test my logic and to challenge it's concusions. I have long, deep conversations in which I learn much and AI sometmes bends to my logic and evidence. Since AI has no ego, the discussion can proceed with personal bias...often leading to a deeper understanding, adjusted thinking and clarity. Those who have not used this tool distrust it, but it's a simple equation; garbage in/garbage out. INteligent questions, prompts, and challenges in, meaningful discourse out. Many mock but all new ideass, inventions, and perspectives meet with mockery by the ignorant and smug.
These are very good points you made, Caitlin. People have to be willing to lose friendships and even risk alienation from some family members. When I have engaged in conversations with acquaintances, friends and/or some family members I have received propagandized talking points b/c they still are watching legacy/mainstream media or they are evangelical/ Christian Zionists and take every word in the Bible literally, not understanding that the Bible was written by man and was written eons ago and has been interpreted differently down through the ages. Honestly I don’t know how some of these so called Christians sleep at night while supporting an ethno state such as Israhell. I found it difficult to explain to a family member that Israel is murdering children and is committing genocide b/c he just refused to believe it simply b/c I’m sure his church says it isn’t committing genocide when anyone with their eyes wide open and scrolling on their phones can see it plain as day.😢😪
It beggars belief that some can still argue against plain, obvious facts while keeping a straight face. It's painful, but these people can't be friends (or family). Not until they wake the fk up
Given that the Bible is pretty much full-on genocidal, he would be more believable by saying genocide is ok, if god tells them to do it, as someone I knew once answered me.
OTOH, there quite a few sayings in the Bible, both old and New Testaments that cut very sharply the opposite way. Perhaps, he is in need of reminding of these:
“Justice, justice shalt thou pursue,”Deuteronomy 16:20, kjv, is one that comes to mind.
As does “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God,” Matthew 5:9.
This piece paints a vivid moral picture, but it falls into the exact trap that keeps modern activism politically isolated and practically powerless. Weaponizing shame by comparing everyday citizens to 1940s Germans isn't a strategy for building power—it's an exercise in alienation. Real movements don't demand that ordinary people strip away their basic humanity to prove their worth; they construct broad, welcoming coalitions that give regular people practical ways to force structural change.
This perspective confuses moral posturing with political leverage. When a movement prioritizes its own ideological purity over the unglamorous, tactical work of policy lobbying, targeted economic pressure, and institutional building, it stops being a threat to the status quo and becomes a self-serving echo chamber. Publicly condemning comfortable Westerners might offer a temporary burst of self-righteous satisfaction, but it doesn't shift a single vote, alter a budget, or stop a single weapon transfer.
Worse, reducing all human value down to one's posture against "the empire" is fundamentally dehumanizing. It strips the intrinsic worth out of raising a family, serving a local community, practicing a faith, or creating art—the very elements of human flourishing that political struggle is supposed to protect in the first place. You cannot save the world by demanding that people destroy everything that makes it worth living in.
Where has the lesser of two evils gotten us? Nowhere fast. The Democratic party just announced Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Wesley Bell will be joining the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Jared Moskowitz - will become a ranking member of the Middle East and North Africa subcommittee. Greg Meeks will likely be the next chair of HFAC.
That's what the lesser of two evils gets you.
Those 3 appointed to important positions says it all. I totally agree with you. But, I am once again struggling with the lesser of two evils, anticipating the next presidential election. In the last I voted for Jill Stein and have never regretted it. However, the world seems to be spiraling downward at an even faster pace. No candidate mentioned by the Democratic party is someone I would consider voting for. However after a slightly heated argument with my brother, who believes that with a Democratic president, the following things will quickly follow: Chuck Schumer will be gone, the filibuster will be abolished and the SC will be stacked, I'm unsure.
Assuming there is another election. Chris Hedges last article on the Right-Wing attempt to rig the next election cycles was pretty ominous (worth reading).
I understand why one would vote just to try to get MAGA out of office. But it is a band-aid put on a disease.
And the democratic party and the oligarchs who run it know this. But they sell it to you every time. Similar to the American healthcare insurance system. Everyone knows it's an extortion racket but Americans have little to no other choice. And it's the number one cause for financial bankruptcy in the US: healthcare costs.
And things will just continue to get worse - both with healthcare and the democratic party.
I don't have an answer to this dilemma other than to say as loudly as I can - people should not be brainwashed into believing that the "Lesser of Two Evils" is some kind of politically, reasonable way forward. Or that the lives of ordinary Americans will improve any time soon by voting for the Democratic party. The descent into fascism will continue - just more slowly, but not much more slowly. You might be satisfied with that for the time being - but your children and grandchildren will not. But I suppose by that time, there won't be much left of the planetary ecosystem anyway.
Both parties are corrupted by Big Money. That's the disease. Voting for either one of these venal parties won't cure the disease.
I DISAGREE with your "framing and characterization" of this article.
The article isn't proposing shame as a coalition-building tactic — it's making a claim about relative moral significance, addressed to the individual reader's self-conception, not a movement strategy memo. So judging it by "did this shift a vote or a budget" applies a standard it was never trying to meet. By that bar you'd have to throw out most writing meant to shift consciousness rather than legislate directly.
And "reduces all human value down to one's posture against the empire" isn't what Caitlin wrote. She explicitly says: "I mean no disrespect to your other wonderful attributes when I say this." That's a direct statement that raising a family, art, community — all of it — still has worth. The claim is that it's 'less significant, by comparison', than material complicity in empire — not that it's worthless or that people should "destroy everything that makes life worth living." That's a big gap between what she argued and what's being rebutted here.
None of this is an argument against tactical organizing, lobbying, or coalition-building either — she doesn't say don't do those things. Believing your personal complicity matters morally and doing the "unglamorous tactical work" aren't in tension; you can hold both.
I could say more, but I'll stop here.
this is democratic socialism. it is counter revolutionary imo. this does not work and one would be lying to people and trying to manipulate them again. standing on the sidelines during a live streamed genocide is the actual exercise in alienation. voting and lobbying ourselves out of this will not work. family, religion, art, community were all part of the ideological framework of 1940's fascism. one would be be lying to people when one says these things will not be touched if real change is the goal (they constantly are anyways). condemning comfortable westerners isn't done half enough and whining about moral posturing is often moral posturing in itself.
I agree in principle but I think we've run out of time. Doing everything by the book ...carefully, respectfully, the accepted way...will not save on Palestinian. By the time we have voted out way to a better world, most of West Asia, and beyond, will be rubble.
AI slop response. What do you actually think about it?
"Humanity invented the atom bomb. No mouse in the world would think of building a mousetrap." ~ Werner Mitsch. This also applies to the surveillance of humanity: Digital ID, Digital Currencies & SMART Cities https://www.theylied.ca/DigitalControlGrid/
.
No mouse could write like Jane Austen either.
Yes, opposing the empire is our duty. Thank God we have beautiful people who provide truthful information and reality based analysis! Dialog Works, Transition Protocol, Judging Freedom, the Electronic Intifada, Consortium News are among the best. Einstein is reported to have said Any fool can know facts. The point is to understand.
Growing a bunch of vegetables is good for your dignity, too, and helps your microbiome.
Better than becoming a vegetable I suppose.
Out-survive 'em in the hard times which approach...
Totally.
But it doesn't help Palestine.
Pray for Palestinians and pray for Israelis to comprehend that their murders are wrong. They constantly say the Palestinians are "not even people".
This dehumanization is also what the Nazis used. It "works".
Most people (not sociopaths) feel wrong about cheating, hurting and killing other "people".
Who are "peoiple" and who are "animals" within the Zionist culture?
I don't pray to anything. Whosever god is allowing this is not worthy of worship.
I do continue to hope. If rather fruitlessly at the moment.
Zen aphorism: "Prayer is not asking God to carry your water. Prayer is carrying your water."
There is Universal Consciousness, of which you are part.
"Gods" with hierarchical religions that give people orders to kill pther eople are not Universal Consciousness, though I believe that the Buddha and Jesus sought to teach people to engage Universal Consciousness themselves, by going past obscurations of their own true nature as Universal Consciousness.
Try it out ;-} "They" are also inherently Universal Consciousness, and don't know it. It is obscured.
Entering a body is REALLY DISTRACTING.
With incarnation, we forget "who" we are, and our intended purpose.
I always wondered how the German people could have supported Hitler. Now I know because it's happening in America.
The only difference between Trump and Hitler is Hitler brought Germany out of a depression and numerous other things beneficial to the German people, while Trump is causing a depression and destroying the American people in every way possible from the start.
Everything you have been taught about WWII and Hitler in particular is a pack of lies. There were no Gas Chambers and Six Million Jews did not die during WWII. Hitler's Plan for the Jews was Expulsion not Extermination. Stop believing Jewish lies.
Why the middle classes supported fascism:
youtube.com/watch?v=RqESHNvmP20
youtu.be/PoT_NHoRKFI?t=526
youtube.com/watch?v=6kH8oKjmlHA
youtube.com/watch?v=7f_V9zZNzTY
***
For their own benefit: 49 German Corporations officially acknowledged responsibility for the Nazis' rise to power:
faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/erklaerung-deutscher-unternehmen-zum-8-mai-110461432.html
***
The "Industrielleneingabe" was a petition signed by 19 representatives of industry, finance, and agriculture Capitalists on 19 November 1932 that requested for German President Paul von Hindenburg to make Adolf Hitler the German Chancellor.
***
German Big Business and The Rise of Hitler, by Henry Ashby Turner,Jr.:
archive.org/details/german-big-business-and-the-rise-of-hitler
***
The financial crisis in Germany during the late 1920s, particularly the Great Depression, created an environment where various groups sought to align with the Nazis for survival or political gain.
The contributions from industrialists and bankers were part of a broader strategy to stabilize the economy and counteract leftist movements, which many viewed as a threat during this tumultuous period.
***
The financial support of the Nazi Party by figures like Fritz Thyssen is well-documented in historical accounts and biographical studies. Thyssen openly admitted to his support for the Nazis, considering them a solution to Germany's economic issues at the time.
***
BTW One of the main contributors to the Hitler's Nazi party rise to power was bank of England headed by Montagu Norman.
After the cession of German-speaking Czechoslovakia to the German Reich in 1938 (Munich Agreement), Rothschilds gave all Czechoslovakia's gold to Nazi Germany.
In May 1939, Bank of England’s Montagu Norman turned over to Germany the £6,000,000 in Czech gold reserves that were held in London. When the news of this transfer leaked out, the cabinet hid behind the preposterous excuse that the British government could not control the actions of the Bank of England: their innocent hands were tied, you see.
alexkrainer.substack.com/p/appeasement-the-shocking-truth-about-441
Caitlin, I'm sure you have good intentions and you mean well, but I doubt "The only way to truly have dignity and integrity as a westerner..." is going to work (or have the effect you think it might) for westerners. Most of them either aren't aware - or if they are - they don't really care too much about it and it's likely very low in their list of priorities. (I don't mean to put a damper in all this, but this is the 'vibe' I get from those in the West - could be that my observation is anecdotal and of an insufficient sample size).
CJ>>"That’s you right now. You’re the German in 1940."
💯 That's how I feel too. I really do think the U.S. is currently in the same kind of position, though I don't think 90% of the people in the West realize this (just as most Germans in 1940's Germany didn't realize/understand it then).
The tragedy (IMHO) is that humans rarely seem to learn from history, have short attention-spans, selective retrograde amnesia, and often seem to care primarily about themselves and those closest to them (not all of course, but the majority it seems).
Try as I might to be hopeful and optimistic, I'm currently pretty pessimistic about 'humans as a species' (though this could be more because of my psychological makeup than an objective analysis).
You nailed it, Caitlin.
The west has always done this, but it's visible to all of us now and is at a fever pitch.
This moment demands that we do all we can to get correct information so we actually know what's going on, and to act accordingly.
"[T]hat’s just the reality of what it means to be born into this particular slice of spacetime."
Very true. I had previously held the all not that unreasonable - though unproven - notion that human civilization generally progressed over the millennia, from understanding and applying science, engineering, human rights, beating back poverty, even more responsive, democratic government. Again, in the aggregate, over a long time, with fits and starts, but generally moving forward.
I don't adhere to that now. Virtually all energies have to applied to halting, reversing what Churchill warned, that we "will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science." To hell with the dubious new features of the latest iPhone.
>>"I don't adhere to that now."
Me too! I think it's a comfortable fiction, a self-serving (or self-placating) bias to think that human societies and civilizations always progress for the better eventually (or ever in just one direction).
I think we need to see more research on alternative perspectives...
I often wondered how the theory of evolution would of been different if Darwin was a Buddhist or something other than a British christian. Why is it important to "move forward(become evolutionary advanced)" if God supposedly created a perfect world modeled in His image? This concept has been used to market us to death.
Interesting conjecture. Do we so much advance as undergo a reiterative, directionless experience?
Why were we given only one perspective on a very central concept in biology? Why is the stinky, bald ape with a well healed retirement portfolio considered the top dog advancement? What if, the bacteria has his shit together?
"What if, the bacteria has his shit together?"
From my understanding of the microbiome and such, that increasingly seems to be the case.
But can you put food on the table with dignity alone? Asking for a friend.
Valid point
The system sorta beats the dignity outta you. But somehow, you need to keep the flame alive in your soul. Though the system tells you - you don't have one. So, without a soul - where do you go?
By an accident of birth and history “that’s just the reality of what it means to be born into this particular slice of spacetime.”
It's been a period of introspection for most Westerners as the genocide in Palestine wears on. But if they haven't come to realize how much their ignorance and lack of empathy has created the situation there yet, then there's no hope for them. They might need to be locked up with the rest of the sociopaths.
Seems to me the sociopaths in power are locking up non-sociopaths as being a threat to the rotten system they promote.