War is about money, first and foremost. The armaments industry and its major suppliers make very, very big money out of war. Secondarily, it’s about power, hegemony, ego and domination. And manipulating populations though the creation of external enemies. But the US Empire’s primary driver is the accumulation of massive wealth in the hands of a tiny cabal of oligarchs.
And these oligarchs want both energy hegemony in the Middle East to stop brown people having it and to cut off oil from China because they can't bear that Chinese people are economically outdoing them. War is about white supremacy as much as it is about the money.
This war I think you are wrong about. This is a resource war like our u.s. war on Russia and Iraq. Saudi Arabia is pumping 2.5 Million barrels of water a day to pressurize Gahwara to pump 3.8 Million barrels a day of oil. Without the water no oil. That tells you something about remaining resources and we don't listen to physics : (
Yep, this war is all about little white boys playing at 'I'm the king of the castle'. They simply can't bear that Chinese people are now top dogs and these boys in men's bodies will stop at nothing to bring China down.
Didn't you know that the Ukraine war is Victoria Nuland's creation after HRC stoked Russia hatred for 4 years? That most Ukrainian soldiers are forced to go to battle? This is just the typical feminist short sighted view and historical cherry picking.
There are of course women in power who behave like wannabee strongmen ... Thatcher comes to mind ... and of course there are others ... and there are decent men ... my sons and sons-in-law for example.
But Netanyahu and Donald Trump are prime examples of what I wrote.
Forever it seems that old men make war and sacrifice young men ... and now women and children ... on the altar of their fragile egos ... and in the case of these men ... as a way to
Yes, I should have put 'and a very few little girls'- However, they're all brought up under the white western patriarchy that rewards dominance (or submission) over people other than white, women, animals and the planet.
The patriarchy is the problem not whether one happens to be a man, woman, black or white.
Yes, I did know that a very few women, generally if they behave even more aggressively than men, are allowed into power and yes I should have put 'and a very few little girls'- However, both men and women, black and white are all brought up under the white western patriarchy that rewards dominance (or submission) over people other than white, women, animals and the planet.
The patriarchy is the problem, opposed by feminism, not whether those in power happen to be men, women, black or white.
In the interest of accuracy, Nuland was not a creator of anything momentous. Her husband, Robert Kagan is a writer who co-founded The Project For An American Century in 1997, and went on to write voluminous tomes about the uniquely moral American potential to save humanity. His books became the bases for regime change in Iraq and Lebanon and Syria and Libya and Sudan and Somalia. I think if those countries are all studied today they share one characteristic: They are all dysfunctional. Iran was the last intended regime targeted for change by the neocons. Iran, formerly Persia is where empires go to die.
I have always said that women will never be completely free until we recognize that they can be just as horrible as men. People of colour can be just as horrible as white people. Poor people can be quite horrible, but they are limited by funds in being all out cruel and horrible to a whole lot of people at once.
"This war is not about protecting anyone. It is about being the bully in the neighbourhood."
Of course. The only question is whether it works.
The United States and its vassals waged aggressive war on Iraq, a war based on lies. Nobody in the United States, britain, etc. paid any price for that war and they all are raring to go for more war.
no war has ever been worth dying for. All wars have been about money. Even the second war which was partly about the Nazis committing genocide, but even more about the rich getting richer. Now, Israel, with the help of the US and the UK, is committing genocide as an excuse for people to keep getting richer and to keep Netanyahu out of jail. The US has wanted war with Iran for a long time. Lots of resources to be had and lots of money to be made manufacturing things that will kill people. And the climate damage will hasten the demise of all of us. Even the rich. Their money will not protect them from the ravages of the coming climate catastrophe.
Barbara Scott. Well written. Add an overdose of testosterone to a megalomaniac like Trump (as if the people in the USA din't know this before they voted him in) and you will see mayhem throughout the world.
And it has only been 5 months.......... 3 years and 7 months to go.
World drama every day from here on in.!
It has started and the USA is in there, boots and all, pushing all the buttons. Just hiding at the moment but asking the subservient Western media not to remind the world that with 750 military bases around the globe, on the increase, it is damned hard not to be close to one wherever you go. All their militarist planners dying for a large scrap to justify their trillion dollar budget.
Exactly. A call to each and every person that is enlisted in armed services - get out asap. Refuse to obey, obedience is the enemy. We have inherited the vengeances and delusions of our elders, mostly emotionally underdeveloped men.
Our war is for survival as a species, not with each other. The weapons we need in our hands are shovels and spades to grow food. Simple. as. that.
If we work in any tendril of the finance industry or are in anyway cogs in the machine of capitalism, and that’s pretty much most of us, walk away. We’re entering mass unemployment in not only white collar sectors, so all of us, our ‘unemployment’ is imminent.
Grow food, live locally get to know our neighbours and sort out our differences - we’re going to need each other. War is bullshit propagated by a handful of sick men with power … power only in as much as we go along with their 2 dimensional narratives. Man-babies throwing us all under the bus, men with boy scout understanding of geopolitics.
I challenge us all to find our own personal ‘Out’s’ to walk away from this sick machine that’s been hundreds of years in the making.
And you'll never see a single son or daughter of those man-babies anywhere near where the actual war is. Not a single one. John Fogerty wrote "Fortunate Son" 51 years ago and nothing has changed in all that time since.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
"To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather." - Mao Zedong
Easy to say don't join the military when you have an income, education and skills and haven't been deliberately impoverished as slave labour in prisons or as canon fodder.
I’ve known several kids out of HS who went military because it was their best/only job available. They’re not heroes, they’re mercenaries. I worked 35yr refining oil. Saw much enemy fire. Coworkers got killed. Yet nobody who ‘served their country’ by refining oil is regarded as a national hero. Why not? I guess because we were in it voluntarily for the money. Same as every soldier or LEO.
What if there was a war and nobody came? This is the war that should make this old saying real. People have to stop believing the propaganda of the west. No one should support a country that commits genocide and starts unprovoked wars.
Propagandised, dumbed-down populations are manipulated into believing that war is inevitable, unavoidable and justified. Until enough people in the imperial-controlled countries refuse to be manipulated, the world is pretty much fucked.
With the best will in the world, when deep emotions are evoked by attacks on Americans on American soil, like 9/11, it's hard for people not to react. That's why they'll be a false flag by the Empire itself, on itself, though they may later claim it was Israel pretending to be Iran.
“But when all the young men refuse to kill for the sake of peace, and when all the women forbid their men to kill for the sake of peace, and when you realize that no peace will come through killing, and that the end does not justify the means, and when you grow full and light with thoughts of peace, there will be an end to war. But as long as any men go to war for the sake of peace, there will be war. And, as long as any woman teaches her sons to go to war because of love of the peace, there will be war.
You make your world. When you populate your world with ideas of peace, then peace will grow. When you think thoughts of aggression, you attract aggression and you draw it out from others in daily contact, and on the part of nations.
...Now you cannot understand this now, and yet I tell you that your own preoccupation with arms, as a country, is received by others, and your own thoughts are materialized and you create wars in your minds that then must be faced with your flesh and your blood.
The reality that you have is a replica of your thoughts. If you do not like the world, you must change your thoughts and no exterior manipulation will change the face of your experience one iota, if you do not change your dreams and your thoughts.
...Unfortunately, you equate aggression with strength, so you are afraid to elect a peaceful man. And all the other countries feel the same, so they are afraid to put into power, by whatever means, peaceful men. And so your world situation is the result of your individual beliefs, en masse.
...Now, when individually you believe in peace, and when you no longer believe that good is weak and evil is powerful, then, on countrywide bases, you will put people into power who believe in the active nature of peace. And, again, there is no other answer.”
Yes! Please don’t enlist in the military. Please don’t throw your lives away! All you are is cannon fodder to the ruling elite. There is not a just cause, you will not be heroes, you will be complicit in atrocities against humanity. The USA is always on the wrong side, don’t you get it? The evil oligarchs who run this country have the morals of snakes. They use the military like a mafia boss uses enforcers. There is absolutely nothing honorable or glamorous about it.
I feel this so strongly.
This is the 21st century. Are the men who make war ever going to learn to use their words instead of killing one another?
And war is even more stupid than two testosterone driven adolescents duking it out to settle an argument.
It is their grandfathers on libido enhancement feeding them into a killing machine.
This war is not about protecting anyone. It is about being the bully in the neighbourhood.
War is about money, first and foremost. The armaments industry and its major suppliers make very, very big money out of war. Secondarily, it’s about power, hegemony, ego and domination. And manipulating populations though the creation of external enemies. But the US Empire’s primary driver is the accumulation of massive wealth in the hands of a tiny cabal of oligarchs.
And these oligarchs want both energy hegemony in the Middle East to stop brown people having it and to cut off oil from China because they can't bear that Chinese people are economically outdoing them. War is about white supremacy as much as it is about the money.
As if Ukraine isn’t a perfect example.
Also, does Vietnam come to mind?
Yes, thank you for that. I wish the people of Iraq we murdered for their oil could thank you.
This war I think you are wrong about. This is a resource war like our u.s. war on Russia and Iraq. Saudi Arabia is pumping 2.5 Million barrels of water a day to pressurize Gahwara to pump 3.8 Million barrels a day of oil. Without the water no oil. That tells you something about remaining resources and we don't listen to physics : (
You seriously don’t think resources are related to money, power, hegemony and domination?
I'm not as stupid as you imply. No comment.
You said I was wrong. I asked you a polite question. Please don’t accuse me of engaging in ad hominem.
Yep, this war is all about little white boys playing at 'I'm the king of the castle'. They simply can't bear that Chinese people are now top dogs and these boys in men's bodies will stop at nothing to bring China down.
Didn't you know that the Ukraine war is Victoria Nuland's creation after HRC stoked Russia hatred for 4 years? That most Ukrainian soldiers are forced to go to battle? This is just the typical feminist short sighted view and historical cherry picking.
There are of course women in power who behave like wannabee strongmen ... Thatcher comes to mind ... and of course there are others ... and there are decent men ... my sons and sons-in-law for example.
But Netanyahu and Donald Trump are prime examples of what I wrote.
Forever it seems that old men make war and sacrifice young men ... and now women and children ... on the altar of their fragile egos ... and in the case of these men ... as a way to
avoid prison for criminal acts.
Yes, I should have put 'and a very few little girls'- However, they're all brought up under the white western patriarchy that rewards dominance (or submission) over people other than white, women, animals and the planet.
The patriarchy is the problem not whether one happens to be a man, woman, black or white.
I understood and no need to explain the theme of your writing. All is true.
Power selects strongly for sociopathy.
Yes, I did know that a very few women, generally if they behave even more aggressively than men, are allowed into power and yes I should have put 'and a very few little girls'- However, both men and women, black and white are all brought up under the white western patriarchy that rewards dominance (or submission) over people other than white, women, animals and the planet.
The patriarchy is the problem, opposed by feminism, not whether those in power happen to be men, women, black or white.
In the interest of accuracy, Nuland was not a creator of anything momentous. Her husband, Robert Kagan is a writer who co-founded The Project For An American Century in 1997, and went on to write voluminous tomes about the uniquely moral American potential to save humanity. His books became the bases for regime change in Iraq and Lebanon and Syria and Libya and Sudan and Somalia. I think if those countries are all studied today they share one characteristic: They are all dysfunctional. Iran was the last intended regime targeted for change by the neocons. Iran, formerly Persia is where empires go to die.
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/02/10/the-calamity-of-americas-divine-mission/
please note that I wrote another short piece that recognizes that women in power can also
be as bad and there was a response about the culpability of the patriarchal
system and another about power and sociopaths.
I am a feminist but I prefer the term
humanist as I think that it is important to create a world that is not toxic for any of us.
I have always said that women will never be completely free until we recognize that they can be just as horrible as men. People of colour can be just as horrible as white people. Poor people can be quite horrible, but they are limited by funds in being all out cruel and horrible to a whole lot of people at once.
you just believe that because you know all people are equal! ;-)
I do
"This war is not about protecting anyone. It is about being the bully in the neighbourhood."
Of course. The only question is whether it works.
The United States and its vassals waged aggressive war on Iraq, a war based on lies. Nobody in the United States, britain, etc. paid any price for that war and they all are raring to go for more war.
I was in Kenya when the Iraq war started and a toutbon a matatu screamed at mevtl get the hell
out of Iraq.
I turned to show him my Canadian flag on my pack and said (thankfully) that Canada was not in Iraq.
A young Japanese American
woman in Kenya at the time
with a US organization whose prime goal was to encourage appreciation of the USA by sending young people to do
good deeds in the developing world. During the Iraq war she said was. anadoan or Japanese
And yet Kenya still takes orders from the United States.
no war has ever been worth dying for. All wars have been about money. Even the second war which was partly about the Nazis committing genocide, but even more about the rich getting richer. Now, Israel, with the help of the US and the UK, is committing genocide as an excuse for people to keep getting richer and to keep Netanyahu out of jail. The US has wanted war with Iran for a long time. Lots of resources to be had and lots of money to be made manufacturing things that will kill people. And the climate damage will hasten the demise of all of us. Even the rich. Their money will not protect them from the ravages of the coming climate catastrophe.
Because they can.
Barbara Scott. Well written. Add an overdose of testosterone to a megalomaniac like Trump (as if the people in the USA din't know this before they voted him in) and you will see mayhem throughout the world.
And it has only been 5 months.......... 3 years and 7 months to go.
World drama every day from here on in.!
It has started and the USA is in there, boots and all, pushing all the buttons. Just hiding at the moment but asking the subservient Western media not to remind the world that with 750 military bases around the globe, on the increase, it is damned hard not to be close to one wherever you go. All their militarist planners dying for a large scrap to justify their trillion dollar budget.
What a sham.
Thank you for the words of wisdom
Thank you Barbara.
It ain't nothing but a heart-breaker
It's got one friend that's The Undertaker
Oh, war, has shattered many a young man's dreams
Made him disabled, bitter and mean
Life is much too short and precious
To spend fighting wars each day
War can't give life
It can only take it away, oh
War, huh (good God y'all)
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, say it again --Edwin Starr ‧ 1970
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZJRJpbGkG4
Thanks. Good recording; great sound.
Thank you for that. I can always count on you finding the core : )
I completely agree. Thanks for all you do Caitlin.
Exactly. A call to each and every person that is enlisted in armed services - get out asap. Refuse to obey, obedience is the enemy. We have inherited the vengeances and delusions of our elders, mostly emotionally underdeveloped men.
Our war is for survival as a species, not with each other. The weapons we need in our hands are shovels and spades to grow food. Simple. as. that.
If we work in any tendril of the finance industry or are in anyway cogs in the machine of capitalism, and that’s pretty much most of us, walk away. We’re entering mass unemployment in not only white collar sectors, so all of us, our ‘unemployment’ is imminent.
Grow food, live locally get to know our neighbours and sort out our differences - we’re going to need each other. War is bullshit propagated by a handful of sick men with power … power only in as much as we go along with their 2 dimensional narratives. Man-babies throwing us all under the bus, men with boy scout understanding of geopolitics.
I challenge us all to find our own personal ‘Out’s’ to walk away from this sick machine that’s been hundreds of years in the making.
Obedience is the enemy.
And you'll never see a single son or daughter of those man-babies anywhere near where the actual war is. Not a single one. John Fogerty wrote "Fortunate Son" 51 years ago and nothing has changed in all that time since.
Why should they, when they can con or coerce others into risking their necks?
Yep that song summed it up
56 years ago. I can't count.
Absolutely Brilliant !!!
Oh, very well, then:
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
"To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather." - Mao Zedong
Throughout civilization's history, I am afraid, all of those wars, were for nothing. Nothing of any value for humanity.
mainly class wars.
Easy to say don't join the military when you have an income, education and skills and haven't been deliberately impoverished as slave labour in prisons or as canon fodder.
Are you willing to die for what you believe in? Rather than what someone else wants you to believe?
I meant some people just need a job to be able to eat.
Joining the military isn't "just a job." It's a moral choice, especially now.
Easy to have the privelidge of making moral choices when you have options.
I’ve known several kids out of HS who went military because it was their best/only job available. They’re not heroes, they’re mercenaries. I worked 35yr refining oil. Saw much enemy fire. Coworkers got killed. Yet nobody who ‘served their country’ by refining oil is regarded as a national hero. Why not? I guess because we were in it voluntarily for the money. Same as every soldier or LEO.
What if there was a war and nobody came? This is the war that should make this old saying real. People have to stop believing the propaganda of the west. No one should support a country that commits genocide and starts unprovoked wars.
Propagandised, dumbed-down populations are manipulated into believing that war is inevitable, unavoidable and justified. Until enough people in the imperial-controlled countries refuse to be manipulated, the world is pretty much fucked.
With the best will in the world, when deep emotions are evoked by attacks on Americans on American soil, like 9/11, it's hard for people not to react. That's why they'll be a false flag by the Empire itself, on itself, though they may later claim it was Israel pretending to be Iran.
Thank You Caitlin
Trump is a certified "Bullshit Artist". We all knew that but now it is obvious to the world.
Jane Roberts Seth:
“But when all the young men refuse to kill for the sake of peace, and when all the women forbid their men to kill for the sake of peace, and when you realize that no peace will come through killing, and that the end does not justify the means, and when you grow full and light with thoughts of peace, there will be an end to war. But as long as any men go to war for the sake of peace, there will be war. And, as long as any woman teaches her sons to go to war because of love of the peace, there will be war.
You make your world. When you populate your world with ideas of peace, then peace will grow. When you think thoughts of aggression, you attract aggression and you draw it out from others in daily contact, and on the part of nations.
...Now you cannot understand this now, and yet I tell you that your own preoccupation with arms, as a country, is received by others, and your own thoughts are materialized and you create wars in your minds that then must be faced with your flesh and your blood.
The reality that you have is a replica of your thoughts. If you do not like the world, you must change your thoughts and no exterior manipulation will change the face of your experience one iota, if you do not change your dreams and your thoughts.
...Unfortunately, you equate aggression with strength, so you are afraid to elect a peaceful man. And all the other countries feel the same, so they are afraid to put into power, by whatever means, peaceful men. And so your world situation is the result of your individual beliefs, en masse.
...Now, when individually you believe in peace, and when you no longer believe that good is weak and evil is powerful, then, on countrywide bases, you will put people into power who believe in the active nature of peace. And, again, there is no other answer.”
Thank you for your work and dedication
God bless you and all around you
Yes! Please don’t enlist in the military. Please don’t throw your lives away! All you are is cannon fodder to the ruling elite. There is not a just cause, you will not be heroes, you will be complicit in atrocities against humanity. The USA is always on the wrong side, don’t you get it? The evil oligarchs who run this country have the morals of snakes. They use the military like a mafia boss uses enforcers. There is absolutely nothing honorable or glamorous about it.
Better yet, put these war-horny assholes in a pit and let them go to it, rule #1 being that the last man standing has to shoot himself in the head!