Not long now for the real presidential meeting in Washington with the Nazi-like Netanyahu once again showing the rest of the world what the USA has really become.
Not sure why you call it a joke. It's ultimate democracy on full display. People deserve their governments, as governments continue doing what they're doing having received the license from the people to. There's no way around it.
The fact that most in this blog might not think that way doesn't matter. At all.
The Democratic Primaries have been rigged three cycles in a row. The government of the US is uniquely unresponsive to the demands and preferences of the governed.
No one voted for endless wars. No one voted for private corporations to have private courts from which they can sue private citizens. Only a very few people at the top voted for tax cuts for Billionaires and tax increases on workers.
Thanks to a series of Supreme Court decisions, money is speech and corporations are people. There is no equal protection or semblance of one man / one vote.
The United States is neither a Democracy nor Representative Republic. The US is, by Mussolini's own definition, a Fascist State run by a system of inverted totalitarianism. Both 'wings' of the party are right by varying degrees.
"B-b-but it's not democracy. Real democracy has never been tried."
Are things what they are in theory, or how they turn out in practice?
Assuming (assuming!) democracy always devolved into anarcho-tyranny, would you be for putting the idea to rest forever or would you persist in trying it out?
The Greeks invented the system, and soon after were ringing alarm bells warning people against its dangers.
"No one voted for endless wars." - was there an item to tick for that?
It is democracy in the sense that these politicians/governments are put there/set up with the participation of people. Obviously, a majority of them. Now, you can try twisting "democracy" to suit your own views, but the facts are there, right in front of you.
Say you are starving, and given the choice of eating a shit sandwich or a puke salad. You have a choice; 1. starve or 2. Pretend the shit sandwich or puke salad is the best option, depending on your personal preferences. I guess if you choose number 2, one could argue you were given a free, fair choice.
Yeah, we kind of do. Year after year, we are offered a shit sandwich or a puke salad, and anything appetizing is taken off the menu. This is especially true for the Democrats.
We were brought to this situation by a series of Supreme Court decisions which made corporations people, money speech, and ruled that the parties are not accountable to their voters and essentially private corporations/
You're right. De facto, it's not a democracy. But it still is an *ostensible* democracy, which is where the battle must be joined. I and so many others are having epic philosophical 'wars' among friends and in our own families.
Even highly intelligent people are now bamboozled to rationalize the normalization of lying, and believe that nothing can really be done about the consequences of this development. But lying (common as it is and always will be), and the consequent treating people primarily as objects to be manipulated instead of (moral) equals to communicate with, is at the very center of social breakdowns of all kinds.
If you're asserting the US is a de facto democracy (through representatives), then you're asserting that it functions as one. But if education is unacceptably corrupted, and public discourse is unreasonably stifled, such that people don't understand what they vote for -- then no, there is no de facto democracy, and no, they don't deserve that state of affairs. That is because from toddlerhood they have been channeled, not simply after reaching adulthood, where your argument could have made sense. That's what we have now.
Again, we'll have to define "democracy" in order to argue details. But if, for simplification purposes, we say it's "what people want" then we must agree that it is indeed democracy. What do you see in the USA right now? Every morning there's peaceful commute by people to work, businesses are open, construction is taking place. No bombs are falling. The majority of people are content.
That is, unless you don't believe your eyes and project your thoughts and discontent unto others.
"Every morning there's peaceful commute by people to work ..."
Come visit me in NYC.
",... businesses are open, ....
Ditto. You might want also to check into the ferocious consolidation post-COVID all across the country, any small-to-midsize businesses, esp restaurants, and what that has done to 80% of the country. ...
"... construction is taking place. ..."
Where it is profitable. For the vast majority of residential buyers looking for (literally) affordable housing, not so much. That said, get back with me re CRE next year (if not this fall, as it will still be receiving furious life-support in advance of the [s]election).
"No bombs are falling.'
We'll likely find out again terrorism is a thing if DJT is [s]elected. And God knows what will happen internationally with blowback to the US if the Dem's deep state puppet (Kamala or not) is instead the new (as well as current) occupant.
"The majority of people are content."
You must be having meaningful relationships (i.e. where they tell you the truth) mainly with your own cohorts, rather than a wide variety of people. That, and you believe the MSM packaging, and the comm. output of fed bureaucracies (e.g. the CPI, stuff from BLS in general, etc.)
"Come visit me in NYC." - that's too vague. What do you mean about NYC? Be as specific and detailed as possible, there might be people intimately familiar with NYC wanting to comment.
The rest of your notes are just showing slightly paranoid person who's projecting his/her own state of mind onto others. I'd hold my horses if I were you.
"Only the paranoid survive." Although lifted from another context, I think that well applies to many aspects of living in 2020s, especially in America, especially in densely populated parts. The downside, of course, is that without acting skills one comes across as paranoid.
Commuting via certain subway and especially bus lines can be scary as there are rarely escape routes away from (usually) unpredictable outbursts from randos. But In recently I had done so clear across the city (6-7 miles?) for 6 years. The actual violent crimes incident rates are still quite low, but as I get older I'm not interested in russian roulette. For that reason, these days I often walk the 4 miles (draw a circle) or so to Manhattan when I need to, and can do so timewise. I don't know what info you want that can't be sifted by a poseur from that publicly posted.
Well, there is some good news from the Middle East. Israel is running out of tanks and ammunition and human fodder as it keeps spreading its warmongering self thinner and thinner. And its economy appears to be in freefall. You wouldn't know that from corporate media reporting here, but it's a hot topic in nearly all Israeli news media. A more permanent end may be on the horizon.
Thanks to the Houthis for bankrupting the Israeli port on the Red Sea. Ritter talks about that in the expanded episode of the Judge Nap show.
Now, isn't it just incredible how my opinion of the Judge has changed from when he used to be on Fox News. There's something important here we need to figure out. I don't know what it is though.
In addition to Jill Stein and Cornell West, there is Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party candidate, who has said "End the genocide" - and it seems pretty clear that he means Gaza.
His campaign website says " It’s time we focus our foreign policy on Peace. We should end our policy of sending drones around the world and instead foster international goodwill by defending free trade and free markets. Our nation has long had the moniker ‘leader of the free world.’ It is time we earn that distinction by insisting that Peace is the way forward. End the wars. End the drones. End the policy of constant intervention. It’s easy to drop a bomb, it’s much harder to serve as a beacon of Peace. We must take the more difficult but necessary path"
FWIW: I've scratched West off my list after his betrayal of the Peoples' Party and the Greens. His agenda is way too narrow for me.
But let's be "real", West isn't going to be on the ballot for 46 out of 50 states.
Stein may not be on New York's ballot.
We should all remind ourselves how Kir Starmer's party only received 33% of the vote, but now has an overwhelming majority in Parliament.
We should also remember that there were no debates leading up to Biden accepting the nomination. Now that he's out, the Democrats don't know which way to turn. Our political system is just a farce.
Simplicius had an excellent column recently highlighting the fraud that we call "Democracy". I'd take a Putin or a Xi any day over the monopoly capitalists who control the USA and EU. (I highly recommend his column)
"I'd take a Putin or a Xi any day over the monopoly capitalists who control the USA and EU." Sure you would, until they lock your dumb ass up for mouthing off, beat the shit of you on a daily basis, starve you to death, then dump your body at your Mom's house (Russia) or just simply bury you in the quiet countryside, never to be seen or heard from again (China). Revolutionary wanna-be.
I don’t read WaPo any longer because it’s such garbage (for instance “Israel estimates” the 10/7 death toll, but Palestinian deaths are
Reported with credulity, even with their demonstrated history of lying and the statistical
Impossibility the number represents) so I had missed that article. Having now read it, however, it doesn’t change things one iota. If you consider the Secret Service or FBI threats to your safety (and I say this despite my growing contempt for both organizations), then you must be engaged in some questionable shit. Not unlike most of the pro-Palestinian activists. And of course you have less to fear from Putin or Xi - you aren’t in Russia or China. Why don’t you meander into one of those friendly regimes and start “reporting” their dirty laundry. You’d be mopped up right quick.
Gosh, isn't that what that WaPo article was all about? Why, yes indeed it was about several billionaires who organized the cops to brutally beat the pro-Palestinian protestors. How many journalists have been murdered in the USA or by the USA over the last decade. Not saying Xi and Putin wouldn't do the same thing, but they are less a threat to me than the Secret Service or FBI are.
It's true that the 2 main parties have made it absurdly difficult to introduce a viable 3rd party candidate. I would agree that "democracy" in the US is in dire straits, maybe even to the point of calling it a fraud.
I also think choosing Putin or Xi over the unelected backroom boys funded by oligarchs running the US is the same sort of Hobson's choice as the choice between the Democrat and Republican candidates. As Caitlin points out over and over, its time to choose a new path for the country, for the human race, and for the whole planet.
.....remembering how nobody suffered any consequences for the invasion of Iraq. Everything just went back to the same dystopian “normal”, despite our just having watched them lie the world into an unforgivable mass atrocity with the full complicity of our news media. It was like a family watching a father casually behead his daughter over Thursday night dinner, and then everyone just returning to their meal and going on as though nothing had happened....."
I went to Iraq just as the invasion started with a group of 20 other Australian Anti War Activists and saw horrors which wl ll never leave me and we were lucky to get out of the country alive. That the Zionists headed and controlled 'West' is anything else but but a passive mass of people pacified by lack of knowledge and subdued by the drug of the mainstream media while the leaders constantly commit genocide is truly Orwellian.
This is a world where a person convicted of drug use can to to jail for months or even years, but those committing genocide aren't convicted of anything and they go on murdering. The big news on CBC tonight was the greening of government buildings and how it doesn't go far enough. Not a word about how wars produce more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels or buildings.
Honestly the so called green agenda is a depopulation agenda that hides behind environmentalism and instilling fear and guilt in the people. War achieves the same objective. That is what makes it acceptable and off limits to massive protest and boycotting that would otherwise be promoted by the neo liberal establishment. How is it the anti war left of the Vietnam era are now so silent? Because the establishment propaganda and narrative will not give any support to the peace/ antiwar movement.
I think a big part of the "green agenda" is making money. Many of us from the Vietnam era are still opposing wars, including, of course, the genocide in Gaza. Many are dead which does tend to silence them. The establishment propaganda has never given support to the peace/antiwar movement. Not for Vietnam, not for Iraq, not for Afghanistan, not for any of the other wars and genocides that have been committed in recent decades.
Susan absolutely, also consolidation of power and transfer of wealth. Many of the ultra rich global elite who push the zero carbon agenda (which is the actual "existential crisis" others have invoked.) Have invested heavily in Chinese companies and Chinese energy infrastructure that is growing at an unprecedented pace. They advocate the US elimination of coal power but collect dividends from the booming expansion of the same industry in the East. The effects on the planet are still the same. Shutting down use of nitrogen based fertilizers is crippling farmers production yields and what does that mean for the world's poor and starving populations? Also Send i'm glad that people like you are still making a stand for peace and are speaking out against the perpetual war. I suppose I'm disappointed there isn't more protest, demonstrations and activism, people in the streets about the wars we're funding but I am grateful for the people who do speak out even though their voices are tiny
without the echo chamber of the press. It's also become obvious that the nature of our two party system is a dialectic that is not what it portrays itself as, rather it is a uniparty. This becomes apparent every time a vote comes up to fund the wars in Ukraine & Gaza.
Climate change and the near-terminal harms due to capitalist exploitation of our natural environment are as real as you can get, and they constitute an existential crisis for humanity.
Crony capitalists hijacking that crisis - one that THEY CREATED - to then devise new methods for their own exploitation and mass slavery agenda, is an inevitable follow on problem. It reflects how relentless and blind and suicidal their greed is…..but does not in any way mean the underlying problem is not there. It is.
Furthermore, the movement to focus on preserving this planet and reversing the ravaging of the planet for its resources…..is the biggest rallying point to put a handbrake on the endless wars - they are wars in service of finding more human and natural resources to be subjected capitalist exploitation!!!
The entire thing is a vicious cycle driven by endless greed of capitalism.
Its noticeable the past few years there is an astotufted sock puppet movement that aims to completely muddy the waters - and lure the people with the most to lose from capitalism’s sustainability crisis, into knee jerk rejecting that there is a crisis. So that the capitalist exploitation can continue unabated.
Unfortunately there is no shortage of dimwits who have zero resistance to lies, as they don’t think at all or evaluate situations or incoming messaging. They just repeat it like parrot.
Internet as a communication medium is seriously vulnerable to disinformation campaigns of this type.
No, I'm not muddling anything. I am pointing to the depopulation agenda that is being pushed & carried out by the very same groups of people. These same think tanks and globalist organizations who are intertwined throughout all of the Western governments and many prominent NGO's, corporations.
Telecommunications, and energy producers worldwide have agreed to this agenda. In the 1970s, with state department memorandum 200 Henry Kissinger created a report that cited global population rise as the number one threat to global stability. Henry Kissinger was a protege of John. D Rockefeller and later a mentor of Klaus Schwab who founded the World Economic Forum. John D. Rockefeller created the trilateral commission with It's counterpart being the CFR or council on foreign relations. Shortly after state department memorandum 200 was enacted, the club of Rome put out limits to growth, which was a Malthusian report that marked the beginnig of the green movement and the UN & WEF are at the head of it as well as deeply involved in the Ukraine war and the war in Gaza. The UN and the Rothschilds basically created the state of Isreal after ww2 setting off nearly a century of warfare. THEY DO NOT MIND WAR BECAUSE IT IS NOT IN CONFLICT WITH THE AIMS OF DEPOPULATION.
I think it depends on which environmentalists you are referring to. There are citizen environmentalists who are fucking rightfully terrified of the ongoing destruction of our planet.
Then, there are the wealthy who believe they can build luxury bunkers and wait out the apocalypse. Business is booming in this particular real-estate sector.
The problem is that under capitalism as we now understand it, all incentives are perverse. Any notion of solving a problem because it's existential to humanity can ONLY be attempted if the problem is profitable to solve. Therefore, corporations are incentivized to create profitable crises, and then in turn to make unimaginable profits by pretending to solve them.
The climate crisis isn't a hoax. We can go outside and see for ourselves. The issue is that this crisis, like all others - manufactured or not - must return value to shareholders.
Don't you just love CBC lately? It's the fake left on steroids, it's narrative control truly Orwellian. Whenever I see someone with a CBC shirt or mug I now look at them suspiciously, whereas it used to be the opposite. Tara Henley left because of all the insane identity politics censorship.
God Caitlin... you just keep pushing yourself to author perfect pieces that have these thoughts inside all of our minds and hearts. I want to scream these words to everyone I know but unfortunately a number of them are so damned indoctrinated they wouldn't hear it as the documented facts based truth that it genuinely is!
So, it's going on social media and making it's rounds as it should. It is the most craziest time to be alive in this insane upside down world.
The only good thing to have happened is that Julian Assange IS finally FREE and your article, "Anything's Possible", gave all of us a shot of optimism we so sorely needed to carry on. And this... the article is brilliant, thank you!
"You can’t “lesser evil” a genocide. That’s not a thing. Past a certain line a candidate is just plain evil, and if genocide is not on the other side of that line for you, then it no longer makes sense for you to talk about “evil” — or any other moral distinction for that matter. "
Well said. If your candidate can't pass a simple "litmus test" that says, "Does NOT aid or condone genocide" then this person isn't worth voting for--or even worth listening to. They should be locked up for life.
Queen Victoria was never put on trial for the atrocities of the British Empire.
These folk believe - not without justification - that they are above domestic and international law.
The only 'rulers' ever put on trial for their serious crimes are those defeated in a war, or Global South country's leaders who get on the West's bad side.
"The law will exist not to protect us from the worst of our society, but to protect the worst of our society from us." - it has and does exist for that purpose. Good morning!
The thing is, Caitlin has also pointed out that we haven't reached a critical mass needed for an actual revolution. I'm upset that all the candidates have pledged to continue support for the Gaza genocide, but I don't think refusing to vote in and of itself will be helpful either. If there is a side that seems more authentically antiwar, I think we should vote that side and then lean on them as hard as we can to cut Israel loose.
Scuba Cat. I agree. Not voting is in November would be foolish.
So please use these pages to advise us all the moment you see a "side more authentically antiwar" than the other. Now that is a challenge especially after the visit and resulting circus event in Washington with Harris and Trump (with identical policies) down on their knees for all to see
You'd rather support genocide more than deal with your irrational fear of "big government"? Sorry, but that's the most cowardly response for not voting for a pro-peace/pro-worker/anti-genocide candidate I've ever heard. How about once Jill cuts the military budget by more than 50% the federal government is that much smaller?
Gaza is not my only concern. And it’s not irrational. Nothing good will happen with corrupt agencies having more power to ‘protect us’. Colonialism and ethnic cleansing wont stop either until laws are changed to reduce influence of oligarchs who benefit from land/resource grabbing. There’s no order to Jills platform. Looks like a wish list
Not a huge fan of Marx, but he had a point with that one. Harkens back to the Roman empire's bread and circuses. There are many people in this country who are already desperate, but as you say, most of us are comfortable enough.
Marx was wrong about many things, but had some valuable insights into others.
I treat no human as infallible. I've been known to quote for truth thinkers as radically different as Marx, L.N. Tolstoi, Goebbels, Goering, Chomsky and others. When they are right, they are right.
That is certainly the issue - the REAL issue - facing the candidates and the country in this election. And of course the candidates, as they tend to do, will duck, dodge, evade, then obfuscate and distort, and then continue their proxy wars and genocides because their owners want war - anywhere and under any circumstances - to continue fueling their bottom lines. THAT IS UNLESS, AND UNTIL, the people speak. And by speaking I mean revolting against the same old shit: hitting the streets by the hundreds of thousands and, yes - the millions! This is possible! This is desirable, and the only thing to even possibly effect a change in that policy of mass murder. The problem is that so much of the population are easily-persuaded, sheepish dolts or JUST DON’T CARE to disrupt their lives even for the sake of peace and sanity. Are the people, the citizenry of the US, up to the task? We’ll see…..
Gaza is the single defining moment in the 21st century to date. The gears of war must grind on for the western states to remain relevant. They all know that colonialism is dead but they don't want to admit it. Unipolarism is coming to an end. Multipolarism is gaining steam. The United States is fighting this for all its worth and losing badly. The U.S. can no longer fund these wars they keep losing, yet they persist, I think mostly out of habit more than common sense. It will hasten their downfall no matter who is president in the short term. A radical shake up is sorely needed if the citizens want to have a chance to survive the collapse.
I'm neither left nor right, because many years ago I learned the parties were inwardly the same in grift, corruption, and flaws, and outwardly they just had a different paint job. They'd say whatever they needed to say to "fire up the people" and then as soon as they got in they'd revert back to form.
If you think about how many successive US and UK administrations of supposedly "the other side" there have been, and how every single one has managed to bomb, invade, or war with some chunk of the middle-east since, gosh... at least the 1990s (that's 30+ years of perpetual warmongering)... you start to see the facade crumble.
They don't give a shit about you. They scarcely care for your votes. What was UK Kier's lazy slogan? "Change". Change from what? What are we changing? Tories were open border, Labour are open border, Tories are pro-war, Labour are pro-war, both rabidly support Ukraine whilst butchering any sort of meaningful local services (how comes they can ship billions to Ukraine but can't patch potholes on major roads?).
Meanwhile what choices do you have in the US? You've got pro-war NeoLib Zionist Biden, soon to be replaced with, hum... pro-war NeoLib Zionist Kamala (she makes a good *show* of pretending to hate Netanyahu but her husband is a staunch Zionists who wants to stamp out any criticism of Israel under the guise of anti-semitism)... or the alternative is the nicknamed "Zion Don" who pledges his Trump Heights in the occupied, war-torn Golan Heights with... whatever children's spilled blood is there, complete with J.D. 'I'm pro-Israel' Vance.
That's it? Those are the choices? Pro-war Party 1 and Pro-war Party 2, with a deep flavour of Israel-ball licking? They're so indistinguishable Trump banned bumpstocks and Biden withdrew from Afghanistan (wasn't it supposed to be Trump withdrawing from Afghanistan and Biden banning bumpstocks? Did their scripts get swapped in the mail?).
Now to rub it in your faces, Congress will wave and march around a wanted criminal, wanted, supposedly by the ICC (whether or not they've been intimidated or are just part of the machine and doing theatrics remains to be seen), where Mike Johnson threatens to arrest anybody who dare disrupt Mein Furher's speech. But when it came to all the disruptions Congress has done historically (fire alarm, anybody?) where were the arrests then? Oh, that's right, only licking up the eyeballs of a scumbag mass murdering criminal is on the agenda today.
Fitting for today's government. A bunch of warmongers protecting a warmongering President as they replace yet another warmongering President with *another* warmongering President. This system is a joke.
If Mrs. Harris's position was to end funding for Ukro-Nazistan and Zionazistan she would have had my full support. There's just no sense in voting. The Donors call the shots. Oops, they recently missed!
- appalled the Biden transition team by pushing to get his relative an appointment in the Biden cabinet
- shown Trump-family style morals by forcing himself into the official U.S. govt delegation to the Davos World Economic Forum this year, to use the cover of govt office to networks and flex status and influence for personal gain
{...morals by forcing himself into the official U.S. govt delegation to the Davos World Economic Forum this year...} Really ??? 🤔🤔🤔
... and I thought, the official U.S. govt delegation to the WEF was INSTRUCTED to include him ...
{...He is just another DC swamp reptile...} 😲😲😲
... and I thought he belongs to "The Team" that decides upon which AIPAC-domesticated, locally-bred reptile gets access to "The Team's" private swamp ...
Thanks for the info, I've still lots of things to learn ...
Not long now for the real presidential meeting in Washington with the Nazi-like Netanyahu once again showing the rest of the world what the USA has really become.
A sick democratic joke.
Not sure why you call it a joke. It's ultimate democracy on full display. People deserve their governments, as governments continue doing what they're doing having received the license from the people to. There's no way around it.
The fact that most in this blog might not think that way doesn't matter. At all.
In what way is this 'democracy'?
The Democratic Primaries have been rigged three cycles in a row. The government of the US is uniquely unresponsive to the demands and preferences of the governed.
No one voted for endless wars. No one voted for private corporations to have private courts from which they can sue private citizens. Only a very few people at the top voted for tax cuts for Billionaires and tax increases on workers.
Thanks to a series of Supreme Court decisions, money is speech and corporations are people. There is no equal protection or semblance of one man / one vote.
The United States is neither a Democracy nor Representative Republic. The US is, by Mussolini's own definition, a Fascist State run by a system of inverted totalitarianism. Both 'wings' of the party are right by varying degrees.
Good to see the cooler heads are represented here.
"B-b-but it's not democracy. Real democracy has never been tried."
Are things what they are in theory, or how they turn out in practice?
Assuming (assuming!) democracy always devolved into anarcho-tyranny, would you be for putting the idea to rest forever or would you persist in trying it out?
The Greeks invented the system, and soon after were ringing alarm bells warning people against its dangers.
"No one voted for endless wars." - was there an item to tick for that?
It is democracy in the sense that these politicians/governments are put there/set up with the participation of people. Obviously, a majority of them. Now, you can try twisting "democracy" to suit your own views, but the facts are there, right in front of you.
Say you are starving, and given the choice of eating a shit sandwich or a puke salad. You have a choice; 1. starve or 2. Pretend the shit sandwich or puke salad is the best option, depending on your personal preferences. I guess if you choose number 2, one could argue you were given a free, fair choice.
Except that it's not a choice. You don't have to eat your vote.
Yeah, we kind of do. Year after year, we are offered a shit sandwich or a puke salad, and anything appetizing is taken off the menu. This is especially true for the Democrats.
We were brought to this situation by a series of Supreme Court decisions which made corporations people, money speech, and ruled that the parties are not accountable to their voters and essentially private corporations/
You're right. De facto, it's not a democracy. But it still is an *ostensible* democracy, which is where the battle must be joined. I and so many others are having epic philosophical 'wars' among friends and in our own families.
Even highly intelligent people are now bamboozled to rationalize the normalization of lying, and believe that nothing can really be done about the consequences of this development. But lying (common as it is and always will be), and the consequent treating people primarily as objects to be manipulated instead of (moral) equals to communicate with, is at the very center of social breakdowns of all kinds.
If you're asserting the US is a de facto democracy (through representatives), then you're asserting that it functions as one. But if education is unacceptably corrupted, and public discourse is unreasonably stifled, such that people don't understand what they vote for -- then no, there is no de facto democracy, and no, they don't deserve that state of affairs. That is because from toddlerhood they have been channeled, not simply after reaching adulthood, where your argument could have made sense. That's what we have now.
Again, we'll have to define "democracy" in order to argue details. But if, for simplification purposes, we say it's "what people want" then we must agree that it is indeed democracy. What do you see in the USA right now? Every morning there's peaceful commute by people to work, businesses are open, construction is taking place. No bombs are falling. The majority of people are content.
That is, unless you don't believe your eyes and project your thoughts and discontent unto others.
"Every morning there's peaceful commute by people to work ..."
Come visit me in NYC.
",... businesses are open, ....
Ditto. You might want also to check into the ferocious consolidation post-COVID all across the country, any small-to-midsize businesses, esp restaurants, and what that has done to 80% of the country. ...
"... construction is taking place. ..."
Where it is profitable. For the vast majority of residential buyers looking for (literally) affordable housing, not so much. That said, get back with me re CRE next year (if not this fall, as it will still be receiving furious life-support in advance of the [s]election).
"No bombs are falling.'
We'll likely find out again terrorism is a thing if DJT is [s]elected. And God knows what will happen internationally with blowback to the US if the Dem's deep state puppet (Kamala or not) is instead the new (as well as current) occupant.
"The majority of people are content."
You must be having meaningful relationships (i.e. where they tell you the truth) mainly with your own cohorts, rather than a wide variety of people. That, and you believe the MSM packaging, and the comm. output of fed bureaucracies (e.g. the CPI, stuff from BLS in general, etc.)
"Come visit me in NYC." - that's too vague. What do you mean about NYC? Be as specific and detailed as possible, there might be people intimately familiar with NYC wanting to comment.
The rest of your notes are just showing slightly paranoid person who's projecting his/her own state of mind onto others. I'd hold my horses if I were you.
"Only the paranoid survive." Although lifted from another context, I think that well applies to many aspects of living in 2020s, especially in America, especially in densely populated parts. The downside, of course, is that without acting skills one comes across as paranoid.
Commuting via certain subway and especially bus lines can be scary as there are rarely escape routes away from (usually) unpredictable outbursts from randos. But In recently I had done so clear across the city (6-7 miles?) for 6 years. The actual violent crimes incident rates are still quite low, but as I get older I'm not interested in russian roulette. For that reason, these days I often walk the 4 miles (draw a circle) or so to Manhattan when I need to, and can do so timewise. I don't know what info you want that can't be sifted by a poseur from that publicly posted.
"Come visit me in NYC" - do not duck. I'll remember this.
That's so thoughtful of you. Kind of like a stalker. But I'm paranoid, remember?
De facto they are. Of course they'll whine and bitch about it, but the governments are there, aren't they?
Well, there is some good news from the Middle East. Israel is running out of tanks and ammunition and human fodder as it keeps spreading its warmongering self thinner and thinner. And its economy appears to be in freefall. You wouldn't know that from corporate media reporting here, but it's a hot topic in nearly all Israeli news media. A more permanent end may be on the horizon.
Now there's some good news you can really use ... thanks Joycelyn! 🤙🏻😎
~~ j ~~
A short clip of Ritter expanding on your point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV1C3ieW2Nc
Thanks to the Houthis for bankrupting the Israeli port on the Red Sea. Ritter talks about that in the expanded episode of the Judge Nap show.
Now, isn't it just incredible how my opinion of the Judge has changed from when he used to be on Fox News. There's something important here we need to figure out. I don't know what it is though.
You can’t “lesser evil” a genocide.
Exactly. A vote for Harris or Trump or RFK Jr is a vote for genocide. If you do vote, vote Jill Stein or Cornell West.
In addition to Jill Stein and Cornell West, there is Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party candidate, who has said "End the genocide" - and it seems pretty clear that he means Gaza.
His campaign website says " It’s time we focus our foreign policy on Peace. We should end our policy of sending drones around the world and instead foster international goodwill by defending free trade and free markets. Our nation has long had the moniker ‘leader of the free world.’ It is time we earn that distinction by insisting that Peace is the way forward. End the wars. End the drones. End the policy of constant intervention. It’s easy to drop a bomb, it’s much harder to serve as a beacon of Peace. We must take the more difficult but necessary path"
FWIW: I've scratched West off my list after his betrayal of the Peoples' Party and the Greens. His agenda is way too narrow for me.
But let's be "real", West isn't going to be on the ballot for 46 out of 50 states.
Stein may not be on New York's ballot.
We should all remind ourselves how Kir Starmer's party only received 33% of the vote, but now has an overwhelming majority in Parliament.
We should also remember that there were no debates leading up to Biden accepting the nomination. Now that he's out, the Democrats don't know which way to turn. Our political system is just a farce.
Simplicius had an excellent column recently highlighting the fraud that we call "Democracy". I'd take a Putin or a Xi any day over the monopoly capitalists who control the USA and EU. (I highly recommend his column)
"I'd take a Putin or a Xi any day over the monopoly capitalists who control the USA and EU." Sure you would, until they lock your dumb ass up for mouthing off, beat the shit of you on a daily basis, starve you to death, then dump your body at your Mom's house (Russia) or just simply bury you in the quiet countryside, never to be seen or heard from again (China). Revolutionary wanna-be.
I don’t read WaPo any longer because it’s such garbage (for instance “Israel estimates” the 10/7 death toll, but Palestinian deaths are
Reported with credulity, even with their demonstrated history of lying and the statistical
Impossibility the number represents) so I had missed that article. Having now read it, however, it doesn’t change things one iota. If you consider the Secret Service or FBI threats to your safety (and I say this despite my growing contempt for both organizations), then you must be engaged in some questionable shit. Not unlike most of the pro-Palestinian activists. And of course you have less to fear from Putin or Xi - you aren’t in Russia or China. Why don’t you meander into one of those friendly regimes and start “reporting” their dirty laundry. You’d be mopped up right quick.
Gosh, isn't that what that WaPo article was all about? Why, yes indeed it was about several billionaires who organized the cops to brutally beat the pro-Palestinian protestors. How many journalists have been murdered in the USA or by the USA over the last decade. Not saying Xi and Putin wouldn't do the same thing, but they are less a threat to me than the Secret Service or FBI are.
https://archive.ph/u8RUt#selection-773.76-773.92
It's true that the 2 main parties have made it absurdly difficult to introduce a viable 3rd party candidate. I would agree that "democracy" in the US is in dire straits, maybe even to the point of calling it a fraud.
I also think choosing Putin or Xi over the unelected backroom boys funded by oligarchs running the US is the same sort of Hobson's choice as the choice between the Democrat and Republican candidates. As Caitlin points out over and over, its time to choose a new path for the country, for the human race, and for the whole planet.
.....remembering how nobody suffered any consequences for the invasion of Iraq. Everything just went back to the same dystopian “normal”, despite our just having watched them lie the world into an unforgivable mass atrocity with the full complicity of our news media. It was like a family watching a father casually behead his daughter over Thursday night dinner, and then everyone just returning to their meal and going on as though nothing had happened....."
I went to Iraq just as the invasion started with a group of 20 other Australian Anti War Activists and saw horrors which wl ll never leave me and we were lucky to get out of the country alive. That the Zionists headed and controlled 'West' is anything else but but a passive mass of people pacified by lack of knowledge and subdued by the drug of the mainstream media while the leaders constantly commit genocide is truly Orwellian.
This is a world where a person convicted of drug use can to to jail for months or even years, but those committing genocide aren't convicted of anything and they go on murdering. The big news on CBC tonight was the greening of government buildings and how it doesn't go far enough. Not a word about how wars produce more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels or buildings.
Honestly the so called green agenda is a depopulation agenda that hides behind environmentalism and instilling fear and guilt in the people. War achieves the same objective. That is what makes it acceptable and off limits to massive protest and boycotting that would otherwise be promoted by the neo liberal establishment. How is it the anti war left of the Vietnam era are now so silent? Because the establishment propaganda and narrative will not give any support to the peace/ antiwar movement.
I think a big part of the "green agenda" is making money. Many of us from the Vietnam era are still opposing wars, including, of course, the genocide in Gaza. Many are dead which does tend to silence them. The establishment propaganda has never given support to the peace/antiwar movement. Not for Vietnam, not for Iraq, not for Afghanistan, not for any of the other wars and genocides that have been committed in recent decades.
Thank you, Susan.
I’ve been protesting every war from Vietnam to the present, and I ain’t “silent” about it either!
Susan absolutely, also consolidation of power and transfer of wealth. Many of the ultra rich global elite who push the zero carbon agenda (which is the actual "existential crisis" others have invoked.) Have invested heavily in Chinese companies and Chinese energy infrastructure that is growing at an unprecedented pace. They advocate the US elimination of coal power but collect dividends from the booming expansion of the same industry in the East. The effects on the planet are still the same. Shutting down use of nitrogen based fertilizers is crippling farmers production yields and what does that mean for the world's poor and starving populations? Also Send i'm glad that people like you are still making a stand for peace and are speaking out against the perpetual war. I suppose I'm disappointed there isn't more protest, demonstrations and activism, people in the streets about the wars we're funding but I am grateful for the people who do speak out even though their voices are tiny
without the echo chamber of the press. It's also become obvious that the nature of our two party system is a dialectic that is not what it portrays itself as, rather it is a uniparty. This becomes apparent every time a vote comes up to fund the wars in Ukraine & Gaza.
You’re muddling two separate issues.
Climate change and the near-terminal harms due to capitalist exploitation of our natural environment are as real as you can get, and they constitute an existential crisis for humanity.
Crony capitalists hijacking that crisis - one that THEY CREATED - to then devise new methods for their own exploitation and mass slavery agenda, is an inevitable follow on problem. It reflects how relentless and blind and suicidal their greed is…..but does not in any way mean the underlying problem is not there. It is.
Furthermore, the movement to focus on preserving this planet and reversing the ravaging of the planet for its resources…..is the biggest rallying point to put a handbrake on the endless wars - they are wars in service of finding more human and natural resources to be subjected capitalist exploitation!!!
The entire thing is a vicious cycle driven by endless greed of capitalism.
Wake up.
Thank you, Klonda56 for not being stupid. The stupid I see really hurts my feelers, and it is wonderful to see someone who really gets it.
Global warming denial has taken a very stupid turn these days:
"AGW doesn't exist because Al Gore is rich."
"AGW doesn't exist because the oligarchs are using it to restrict freedom."
Just stupid.
Indeed.
Its noticeable the past few years there is an astotufted sock puppet movement that aims to completely muddy the waters - and lure the people with the most to lose from capitalism’s sustainability crisis, into knee jerk rejecting that there is a crisis. So that the capitalist exploitation can continue unabated.
Unfortunately there is no shortage of dimwits who have zero resistance to lies, as they don’t think at all or evaluate situations or incoming messaging. They just repeat it like parrot.
Internet as a communication medium is seriously vulnerable to disinformation campaigns of this type.
No, I'm not muddling anything. I am pointing to the depopulation agenda that is being pushed & carried out by the very same groups of people. These same think tanks and globalist organizations who are intertwined throughout all of the Western governments and many prominent NGO's, corporations.
Telecommunications, and energy producers worldwide have agreed to this agenda. In the 1970s, with state department memorandum 200 Henry Kissinger created a report that cited global population rise as the number one threat to global stability. Henry Kissinger was a protege of John. D Rockefeller and later a mentor of Klaus Schwab who founded the World Economic Forum. John D. Rockefeller created the trilateral commission with It's counterpart being the CFR or council on foreign relations. Shortly after state department memorandum 200 was enacted, the club of Rome put out limits to growth, which was a Malthusian report that marked the beginnig of the green movement and the UN & WEF are at the head of it as well as deeply involved in the Ukraine war and the war in Gaza. The UN and the Rothschilds basically created the state of Isreal after ww2 setting off nearly a century of warfare. THEY DO NOT MIND WAR BECAUSE IT IS NOT IN CONFLICT WITH THE AIMS OF DEPOPULATION.
I think it depends on which environmentalists you are referring to. There are citizen environmentalists who are fucking rightfully terrified of the ongoing destruction of our planet.
Then, there are the wealthy who believe they can build luxury bunkers and wait out the apocalypse. Business is booming in this particular real-estate sector.
The problem is that under capitalism as we now understand it, all incentives are perverse. Any notion of solving a problem because it's existential to humanity can ONLY be attempted if the problem is profitable to solve. Therefore, corporations are incentivized to create profitable crises, and then in turn to make unimaginable profits by pretending to solve them.
The climate crisis isn't a hoax. We can go outside and see for ourselves. The issue is that this crisis, like all others - manufactured or not - must return value to shareholders.
Look out for Abby Martin’s new film (currently in production):
https://youtu.be/rphBWk15_h4?si=lKuLFdM1tHcCnDNO
Don't you just love CBC lately? It's the fake left on steroids, it's narrative control truly Orwellian. Whenever I see someone with a CBC shirt or mug I now look at them suspiciously, whereas it used to be the opposite. Tara Henley left because of all the insane identity politics censorship.
God Caitlin... you just keep pushing yourself to author perfect pieces that have these thoughts inside all of our minds and hearts. I want to scream these words to everyone I know but unfortunately a number of them are so damned indoctrinated they wouldn't hear it as the documented facts based truth that it genuinely is!
So, it's going on social media and making it's rounds as it should. It is the most craziest time to be alive in this insane upside down world.
The only good thing to have happened is that Julian Assange IS finally FREE and your article, "Anything's Possible", gave all of us a shot of optimism we so sorely needed to carry on. And this... the article is brilliant, thank you!
"You can’t “lesser evil” a genocide. That’s not a thing. Past a certain line a candidate is just plain evil, and if genocide is not on the other side of that line for you, then it no longer makes sense for you to talk about “evil” — or any other moral distinction for that matter. "
Well said. If your candidate can't pass a simple "litmus test" that says, "Does NOT aid or condone genocide" then this person isn't worth voting for--or even worth listening to. They should be locked up for life.
I came up with my "litmus test" last November and plan to stick with it. https://therevolutioncontinues.substack.com/p/the-new-litmus-test
Queen Victoria was never put on trial for the atrocities of the British Empire.
These folk believe - not without justification - that they are above domestic and international law.
The only 'rulers' ever put on trial for their serious crimes are those defeated in a war, or Global South country's leaders who get on the West's bad side.
Be awesome if that changed soon.
Queen Victoria had no say: Parliament rules.
True, but Victoria isn't the only example that could be used here of a rulers who committed monstrosities and died peacefully in their bed.
In THEORY. In practice, the UK Head of State has considerable influence and real power.
Recall the Yanks wanted to behead Hiro-hito.
She was still the British Empire's Head of State. And she definitely had more input into policy than Cabbage Emperor Biden has had as HoS.
Sorry this is not correct.
You're more than welcome to your own opinion, Jenny.
Thank you.
"The law will exist not to protect us from the worst of our society, but to protect the worst of our society from us." - it has and does exist for that purpose. Good morning!
The thing is, Caitlin has also pointed out that we haven't reached a critical mass needed for an actual revolution. I'm upset that all the candidates have pledged to continue support for the Gaza genocide, but I don't think refusing to vote in and of itself will be helpful either. If there is a side that seems more authentically antiwar, I think we should vote that side and then lean on them as hard as we can to cut Israel loose.
Scuba Cat. I agree. Not voting is in November would be foolish.
So please use these pages to advise us all the moment you see a "side more authentically antiwar" than the other. Now that is a challenge especially after the visit and resulting circus event in Washington with Harris and Trump (with identical policies) down on their knees for all to see
How could a country have fallen so low.
Jill Stein is anti-genocide. If we don’t challenge power in November, what comes after will be on us.
The problem with her is she’s pro big government, so giving MORE POWER to the corrupt federal government. I’d vote for her but….
You'd rather support genocide more than deal with your irrational fear of "big government"? Sorry, but that's the most cowardly response for not voting for a pro-peace/pro-worker/anti-genocide candidate I've ever heard. How about once Jill cuts the military budget by more than 50% the federal government is that much smaller?
Some of these irrational comments, I suspect are being spread by sock puppet armies/troll farms of the duopoly.
What’s irrational?
Gaza is not my only concern. And it’s not irrational. Nothing good will happen with corrupt agencies having more power to ‘protect us’. Colonialism and ethnic cleansing wont stop either until laws are changed to reduce influence of oligarchs who benefit from land/resource grabbing. There’s no order to Jills platform. Looks like a wish list
Who will enforce those laws? And believe me, those laws would be obeyed only if enforced.
I hate how conservatives conflate good government with big government.
I hate when progressives think adding more programs, more money, more power to a corrupt system is the answer. Solve root causes first.
It's Congress that decides how big government is.
I disagree with you and Scuba. Go read the article again.
If Marx teaches nothing else, it is that revolution is downstream from economics.
When the masses can no longer stock up on Cheez Doodles and their credit cards no longer work.
Not a huge fan of Marx, but he had a point with that one. Harkens back to the Roman empire's bread and circuses. There are many people in this country who are already desperate, but as you say, most of us are comfortable enough.
Marx was wrong about many things, but had some valuable insights into others.
I treat no human as infallible. I've been known to quote for truth thinkers as radically different as Marx, L.N. Tolstoi, Goebbels, Goering, Chomsky and others. When they are right, they are right.
I think Marx's analysis of the problem is insightful, but his proposed solutions are way off.
Certainly, his track record for predictions has not panned out.
That is certainly the issue - the REAL issue - facing the candidates and the country in this election. And of course the candidates, as they tend to do, will duck, dodge, evade, then obfuscate and distort, and then continue their proxy wars and genocides because their owners want war - anywhere and under any circumstances - to continue fueling their bottom lines. THAT IS UNLESS, AND UNTIL, the people speak. And by speaking I mean revolting against the same old shit: hitting the streets by the hundreds of thousands and, yes - the millions! This is possible! This is desirable, and the only thing to even possibly effect a change in that policy of mass murder. The problem is that so much of the population are easily-persuaded, sheepish dolts or JUST DON’T CARE to disrupt their lives even for the sake of peace and sanity. Are the people, the citizenry of the US, up to the task? We’ll see…..
Is the citizenry of my country up to the task? The pain dial hasn't been turned up enough. Yet.
I’m afraid that you could be right….
There's only a few more days for you to join me in doing this:
Seize the moment! Take a small step for Palestinian human rights. Ask the IOC to ban Israel from the Olympics https://support.olympics.com/hc/en-gb/requests/new
"Oxfam: Israel Has Reduced Water Access in Gaza by 94 Percent Since October."
Words? Someone
...please explain how this is different from the Nazis.
No how. Better question is how come people still don't seem to realize it.
The difference is: the Nazis never had the entire North Atlantic mainstream media serving them. Rank amateurs when it came to propaganda.
Gaza is the single defining moment in the 21st century to date. The gears of war must grind on for the western states to remain relevant. They all know that colonialism is dead but they don't want to admit it. Unipolarism is coming to an end. Multipolarism is gaining steam. The United States is fighting this for all its worth and losing badly. The U.S. can no longer fund these wars they keep losing, yet they persist, I think mostly out of habit more than common sense. It will hasten their downfall no matter who is president in the short term. A radical shake up is sorely needed if the citizens want to have a chance to survive the collapse.
I'm neither left nor right, because many years ago I learned the parties were inwardly the same in grift, corruption, and flaws, and outwardly they just had a different paint job. They'd say whatever they needed to say to "fire up the people" and then as soon as they got in they'd revert back to form.
If you think about how many successive US and UK administrations of supposedly "the other side" there have been, and how every single one has managed to bomb, invade, or war with some chunk of the middle-east since, gosh... at least the 1990s (that's 30+ years of perpetual warmongering)... you start to see the facade crumble.
They don't give a shit about you. They scarcely care for your votes. What was UK Kier's lazy slogan? "Change". Change from what? What are we changing? Tories were open border, Labour are open border, Tories are pro-war, Labour are pro-war, both rabidly support Ukraine whilst butchering any sort of meaningful local services (how comes they can ship billions to Ukraine but can't patch potholes on major roads?).
Meanwhile what choices do you have in the US? You've got pro-war NeoLib Zionist Biden, soon to be replaced with, hum... pro-war NeoLib Zionist Kamala (she makes a good *show* of pretending to hate Netanyahu but her husband is a staunch Zionists who wants to stamp out any criticism of Israel under the guise of anti-semitism)... or the alternative is the nicknamed "Zion Don" who pledges his Trump Heights in the occupied, war-torn Golan Heights with... whatever children's spilled blood is there, complete with J.D. 'I'm pro-Israel' Vance.
That's it? Those are the choices? Pro-war Party 1 and Pro-war Party 2, with a deep flavour of Israel-ball licking? They're so indistinguishable Trump banned bumpstocks and Biden withdrew from Afghanistan (wasn't it supposed to be Trump withdrawing from Afghanistan and Biden banning bumpstocks? Did their scripts get swapped in the mail?).
Now to rub it in your faces, Congress will wave and march around a wanted criminal, wanted, supposedly by the ICC (whether or not they've been intimidated or are just part of the machine and doing theatrics remains to be seen), where Mike Johnson threatens to arrest anybody who dare disrupt Mein Furher's speech. But when it came to all the disruptions Congress has done historically (fire alarm, anybody?) where were the arrests then? Oh, that's right, only licking up the eyeballs of a scumbag mass murdering criminal is on the agenda today.
Fitting for today's government. A bunch of warmongers protecting a warmongering President as they replace yet another warmongering President with *another* warmongering President. This system is a joke.
I wish it were a joke.
Power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats.
If Mrs. Harris's position was to end funding for Ukro-Nazistan and Zionazistan she would have had my full support. There's just no sense in voting. The Donors call the shots. Oops, they recently missed!
Just Google to learn who & what is Mrs. Harris' husband ...🤔🤔🤔
Lol I already know. I also know who FDT's son in law is.
Which means that you well know that both puppets are just two cheeks of the same a*s ...🤣
No shit!
I often hear this two cheeks ditty but no one ever elaborated on the actual ass. No one wants to go deep it seems. How about you, Pete?
It is with great pleasure to let you go first and having had the honor of receiving some of your silly comments on this platform before,
I'm pretty sure, you'll find yourself as comfortable as in a mirror-cabinet and never reappear again ...
Btw: Who's Pete ??? ... 🤔🤔🤔
The pleasure is all mine, Pete. After you!
An open Zionist who is corrupt enough to have :
- appalled the Biden transition team by pushing to get his relative an appointment in the Biden cabinet
- shown Trump-family style morals by forcing himself into the official U.S. govt delegation to the Davos World Economic Forum this year, to use the cover of govt office to networks and flex status and influence for personal gain
Lessor of two evils my…..
He is just another DC swamp reptile.
BINGO !!!
{...morals by forcing himself into the official U.S. govt delegation to the Davos World Economic Forum this year...} Really ??? 🤔🤔🤔
... and I thought, the official U.S. govt delegation to the WEF was INSTRUCTED to include him ...
{...He is just another DC swamp reptile...} 😲😲😲
... and I thought he belongs to "The Team" that decides upon which AIPAC-domesticated, locally-bred reptile gets access to "The Team's" private swamp ...
Thanks for the info, I've still lots of things to learn ...
Thanks for the invitation !!
I have NO smart-phone and will NOT disclose my phone-# to them ...
Only way of contact is via gmail ...
Do you maintain the channel between the cheeks?
Where did you get your Masters in stupidity ???
Check your gmail.