One of the most disheartening aspects of this is the collection of Boomers (many personally known to me) who stringently opposed and marched against Vietnam in '68/'69, but who are now beating the drums of war against Russia, with precious little thought about poking the hornet's nest of a nuclear power and even less understanding of the last 30 years of history in that region. The worst aspect of that historical amnesia is missing — or willfully ignoring — the connection between 21st and 20th-Century US imperialism. While I once called these folks brothers and sisters of the left, they have since succumbed to the barrage of propaganda; degraded themselves into the seemingly huge community of otherwise decent people rendered warmongers by the narcissist nerve gas of American exceptionalism. This feels like the stamp of the demon of impending demise because the irrationality augurs poorly for a clear-headed approach to the "other existential crisis" facing the planet. Anger and grief mix together in my gut with gratitude that I'm old and might luckily be dead by the time such this other cataclysm reaches full expression, but I now have anxiety thrown into that mix. It's mostly anxiety that the biosphere will be so completely devastated by nuclear holocaust that even should the offending species (Homo) go away, this most beautiful complex adaptive system known to us could be too pauperized to recover. As far as I'm concerned, Earth First is the sanest path because were we to follow the principles of ecological economics, war would also be treated as an impossibly destructive insult, eco-economically ridiculous to pursue. Quite frankly, the theater of hand-wringing for the Ukrainian people makes me even angrier because it entirely misses the larger context — that war is implicit in the anti-human and anti-ecological postures of Capitalism.
Don't paint us all with one brush. Some of us are truly anti-war now as we were back then. I'm glad to be old now too, with an end to this life on the near horizon.
That's a superb comment. I'm a younger boomer, but I do remember MLK saying we had to keep our eyes on the prize.
For me, and I think most Americans, the prize is a reasonable standard of living for our children and grandchildren. Too many people of our generation don't even give a damn about their own kids or grandkids. I'm sure we've both seen the comments about the younger generation being lazy or whatever.
I think it's due to the capitalist propaganda of rampant individualism to which the boomers were the first to be experimented upon by the science of psychology, the trade of advertising, and the use of new technologies on unsuspecting people.
IOW, it's not all their fault. They have been propagandized.
To be fair, there was a "generation gap" in the '60s as well.
To the extend protesters of Vietnam have become cheerleaders of a "no-fly zone" over Ukraine (certainly unproven), I think one difference then vs now is that back then, I don't recall any genuine fear of Russia or China invading the US, while today people were genuinely spooked by Covid-19. There has also been a hate motive. Both emotions can and have been transferred from one villain to another.
OTOH, in the '60s many protesters had a genuine fear of being drafted. That fear has been eliminated for the younger generation.
During the Obama terms of office, the politicians overturned the Smith/Mundt Act of 1948 which had been in place to outlaw US propaganda in US newsmedia. Many changes over the years in other areas followed of what we the people no longer get from journalism.
not sure whether the said Act had made much of a meaningful difference before it was thrown out. it is more likely that some of us woke up recently. just a silverlining for that cloud.
America's ongoing war on free thought -- and I didn't say free speech, because a war on thought is what's really going on here -- is incontestable. All forms of censorship are, unless you're a hack partisan merely dressing up in the costume of a patriot, which, judging from our corporate media, is a gig that pays exceedingly well. Our media is drenched in it, our politics is broken by it, and a frighteningly large part of our citizenry are hypnotized by it. And in such soiled apparel do we go prancing about on the world stage. Careers are made in doing so. Of course, people also die because of it, but never the ones who matter.
Being told what to think is the sign of mental immaturity, as is surrounding yourself only with people and ideas you already cling to. I'd say most people seem to gravitate to this at a young age and then just calcify there. For the rest of us, there's censorship, manipulation, stigmatization, and a kind of personal sanctions designed to poison and isolate our point of view.
Go back and read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution and see if you can mentally ask the Founders what they'd think about censoring Joe Rogan, plowing billions into the maintenance of a foreign Jewish State, or being led to war by the president and not the congress. Go ahead; I'll wait.
Damn. Second superb reply I've seen on this thread. I'm a Marxist, but I'm also a descendant of a Quebecois who fought in the Continental Army all the way through the American Revolution.
And he didn't fight for censorship, manipulation, stigmatization, and personal sanctions to poison and isolate our point of view. He CERTAINLY didn't fight for thought control.
Sadly Riff, as it appears to me, being led to war by the president is really little different today to being led to war by any of the elected representatives. A little while ago, it was Trump. Now if it wasn't Biden, someone else of like mind (the majority so it seems to me) would take up the cudgel and arrogantly wave it around, as there are so few voices in support of reason. But not just over there in your country but in some ways, even worse with pathetic little sycophantic countries like Australia, Britain (used to be Great Britain) and now, Canada, as extreme a government as one can find, anywhere. As you would well know, Australia has an arrogant misfit called Morrison, a conman, a liar and a religious freak. Britain has a dishevelled and disrespected ex-Mayor, full of banter and bluster with little in the way of truth as a priority and Trudeau, apparently controlled by big money which seems to have resulted in total arrogance towards the people he rules in Canada like a dictator.
For the first time in my life, I am glad I am older. I really don't have to skip avoiding the news for much longer. It sickens me to hear all the lies, to read about the subservient US dominated lemmings as one by one, in differing ways, they unknowingly head for the cliff. Then to have to listen to the sad, plaintive calls from sections of the thinking younger generations as they contemplate their anticipated future under the New World order, seeing this same future based on misrepresentations and outright lies, a lack of respect between nations and peoples growing daily and in the main, generated by the US and its need for total control with priorities that favour the wealthy. Finally, perhaps the most humiliating for your country, being controlled to by a hated and inhumane foreign state like Israel.
Add to that the total disregard for climate, seen all over the world as having decidedly reached a crisis. It is indeed a crisis. Does anyone really give a damn?
So patronising the military industrialists by way of trillions of dollars, bowing down to parasitical foreigners and having to hear about it day after day as directed by dictatorial governments all seemingly controlled by the BlackRocks and Vanguards of this world, is not much fun for anyone, and when you have been part of a better world, not perfect ever by any means, but better, it does make you sick, mainly because there is nothing as an individual you can do to change it.
It is the new normal. Lay back and accept it.
A small but strong light on the hill are people like Caitlin, writing against the odds, together with the majority of the concerned commenters on these pages who share her views. Now that is indeed rewarding.
the thought of the slaves, the poor, and the women were already completely silenced when a tiny group of the propertied white male were writing the Constitution. there was no internet accessible to anyone with a phone or laptop anywhere either. we don't need to refer to the Consitution when discussing right and wrong. we have conscience, intelligence, ad integrity.
Thank you Caitlin. It becomes so obvious what is going on with American media propaganda and American war mongers. After 20 years of lies and deception in order to feed Americans with their propaganda to gain our favor in each and every war you think American's would wake up and choose a different path. It's not a Democrat/Republican issue because both of them feed their own propaganda at different times. The only thing that both parties agree on appears to be war and controlling the rest of the world.
I believe our government size and our governments over governing is a major problem. The FBI the CIA the DHS are all corrupt and all have their own agenda's. It's been obvious from the days President Kennedy when it first became obvious that the CIA built and push more propaganda to control the world and who knows what else.
When I hear current government officials talking it disgust me that our leaders are so ignorant.
I do not believe America media should be displaying anything about the war in Ukraine. I had been watching Fox News lately because I felt it was the only place to hear honest news as compared to CNN etc. however if you watch Fox Now now the only thing you hear and see is Ukraine and Zelensky a completely one sided view of a war that were we should not even be involved with. At least Tucker Carlson and Greg Gutfield have different views than the rest.
What I can say is that I agree 100% with Caitlin and most of her opinions about the wests imperialistic approach to the world and NATO has to stop.
I do not believe America should be in NATO. I believe NATO members are being fed lies via American propaganda.
I myself was an Aircraft Mechanic on F4 Phantoms back in 1973 stationed in Germany during the end of the Vietnam war. I also have worked for a top defense company until recently retired because they were forcing us to get vaccinated and for other reasons related to changing the definition of equality to equity and forcing us to admit being white made me an oppressor.
so you would have been happily and enthusiastically and proudly working for that top defense company unless you were forced to retire..... and you deny your white privilege that has allowed you to have never, not even for a minute, been subject to discrimination or disadvantage based on your skin. have you ever taken your 12 year daughter and her best friend to a nice restaurant on her birthday only to be told to stand outside the door for our turn while other white people arrive later and get seated right before your eyes and you are never called for 2 hours?
Fuck your white privilege BULLSHIT. Racism goes many directions. Fuck your equity over equality. I have been a victim myself of Racist blacks against whites. Racism goes multiple ways so to think your the Fucking victim is not always visible by the color of your skin.
so have you had the experience that all the non-white people are subject to every minute of their life? let me hear it. of course there are other discriminations and privileges, but i asked you about your skin-color-related privilege specifically. stop deflecting. and are you proud of your willing contribution to war crimes against black, brown, and yellow peoples around the world?
Personally I grew up a military brat in war time living on base after base of all colors with black and brown neighbors as we grew up together, we were best friends while our parents were defending our country. I had no different privileges than my black and brown neighbors. When I spent 4 years in 1973 in Germany in the Air Force during the Vietnam War my best friends were all colors. We worked, protected each other drank together and there was no color. Only now with CRT are we trying to make innocent children look at their color. This is a serious mistake, equity separates by placing people into groups while trying to define one group over the other. The final outcome depends on who is doing the evaluation.
Looks like war, of semantics to start with, and who knows from there? - and we're all supposed to be good little soldiers. The West has been able to float two contradictory balloons - 1)we are the open society - and 2) those of us who don't agree with the propaganda are traitors. So the market-place of ideas is really a closed shop? Who knew?
Thank you, Caitlin. Word of mouth still rules, and is slower but much richer for so much beautifully intrinsic human bs-detection. Trust is the only real currency. Stay strong and look out for each other. Freedom for Assange! Peace for All!
I think that when the Ukraine phase of this war finishes (and its just the first of many phases I believe), Russia should go on a diplomatic offensive. Putin should give a speech re-presenting the December security guarantees treaty demands, saying, in terms everyone can understand, that agreeing to the treaty means nothing more than returning NATO military forces to their 1997 dispositions. Did NATO populations and governments feel in the least insecure in 1997? So how can returning to those same dispositions be harmful to anyone's security now? Given Russia now has the world’s attention, Western media will no longer be able to suppress Russia's conditions for peace -- the promise that, by agreeing, all Europeans, including Russians, can feel secure. At the very least, that should give a boost to nascent Western peace movements, encouraging them to focus their demands on their governments to support Russia’s peace offensive. Force Western governments to negotiate, stop the process before Russia starts turning up the heat on NATO countries themselves:, e.g. the US missile emplacements now installed in Romania and soon in Poland that can nuke Moscow in seven minutes. This new phase of the war could turn seriously ugly, especially if people like Scott Ritter are right that Russia can defeat NATO armies in Europe if it comes a hot war. Hopefully that will cause cooler heads to prevail and eventual agreement to Russia's terms. But isn't it better not to go there in the first place? Agree to Russia's terms now should be our call. Negotiate a new European security arrangement! End this now!
I live in the US, but if I were Ukrainian, I would take a jaundiced view of committing to a one-sided disarmament based on the word of a 20 year autocrat who is currently bombing civilian targets and nuclear facilities while at home handing out 15 year jail sentences for anyone who simply declares themselves against the war. Some peace you're endorsing for them.
Although this is all theoretical; I've protested wars since Vietnam and noticed that no one in government listens to Western peace movements, nascent or otherwise.
Listen to Caitlin and believe nothing you hear about US adversaries in the media. Maduro is not a dictator, Assad isn’t a murderous fiend, the Yemenis are not Iranian pawns, Iran isn’t a hotbed of crazed terrorist fanatics, China is not committing genocide, the US is not a democracy, etc etc. When a country is backed into a corner and given no choice but war, war is inevitable. My sources suggest the war is going as much according to Russia’s plans as these things ever do. The main body of the Ukrainian army (in Donbass, not Kiev) is surrounded and in the process of being obliterated. Russia will soon have regime changed the regime the US put in after it regime changed the previous government in 2014. Russia will probably split Ukraine into three or more countries. Unrest will continue for months or years but be contained. AMeanwhile, the confrontation with NATO will move west. But the main war will be economic, and there will probably be severe recession or worse before the year’s end and it will only get worse.
The US being a lying global-spanning power does not turn Putin into a boy scout. Liberals in the 30s were famous for idealizing Stalin and denying anything wrong with Soviet Communism; I've no wish to repeat their mistake. Putin recently blamed protest in Russia on American efforts to undermine him, exactly as our current democrats blame everything from Clinton losing an election to Trump's presidency on Russian interference. Both takes are full of a certain amount of shit. I read Caitlin daily and very often agree with her but I remain wary of extremes in the current situation.
I have sources as well, and they don't speak favorably of life under an unaccountable corrupt autocrat.
I expressed no opinion on Putin or the way Russia is run. I don’t know enough to opine what is true of him. I only said that what MSM says about him is almost certainly untrue, be it by omission or disinformation or outright falsehood. That people in Russia are not fond of Putin I readily believe, but I doubt if he is the autocrat of your caricature too. All leaders everywhere are one degree or another of terrible/psychopathic, none worse than Western leaders with the tens of millions they’ve killed since WWII via economic blockades, death squads and pograms (e.g. 1 million peaceful Indonesians slaughtered by the military at the behest of CIA in the 1960s), innumerable proxy wars, infrastructure sabotage, and outright invasions. Yemen, Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, etc. etc. etc. Putin is a pussycat next to them: he’s only killed thousands and never stooped to cutting off a country’s access to food, medicine, equipment to maintain water, power, sewage treatment, etc., much less done so in the middle of a pandemic. Get your priorities straight.
I don't watch MSM so I don't get my information from them. And since you're so eager to consign others to live under Putin, I suggest you take the time to learn more about him. Turning this into a political dick-wagging contest is most unhelpful.
What? Did Neil Young threaten to take his music off Spotify again if Putin doesn't leave Ukraine? I hear Neil can't understand why the Kremlin isn't listening to him.
Ukraine has been living under a government essentially held at gunpoint by fascists financed by oligarchs and working closely with CIA and US special forces, many of them out and nazis, who’ve burned dozens of peaceful Russian protesters in Odessa, locked up opponents, closed down opposition media, and killed 14000 civilians in the Donbass since 2014. I can only celebrate the destruction of such a regime and can’t feel too sorry for that country for being subjected to Russian suzerainty in place of the even worse US kind.
"Caitlin Johnstone" is a Russian propaganda plant to sow seeds of mistrust amongst real leftists. He/she has done its research on leftism and is very talented at nuance as it slips in pro-Russia propaganda into its articles. "Caitlin Johnstone" did not exist online prior to 2017. The name comes from a female sports player from Australia who was born in 2001. This comment will be deleted by this Russian plant. I hope somebody sees it before the truth is silenced.
Yes, Caitlin Johnstone, if that is your name...Vladimir Putin..ha! You've been rumbled! (I work as expert in a Think Tank, that can't reveal how I know this for security reasons...obviously)
More of the usual dreck from narrative managers and their hoards of bots and goons. If you criticize the empire then you're a Russian plant! I notice you have no critique of her arguments. I wonder why?
Fair play to the West for what they're doing to make Russia suffer for all the evil they're perpetrating and all the deaths they're causing in Ukraine. Now could someone in MI6 or the CIA tell me how to make Saudi Arabia, the US and the UK suffer for all the murders they've been committing directly and indirectly for years in Yemen. I'm perplexed about what to do. How can I contribute?
"...Humanity's immensely exploded ability to share ideas and information could have been a tool of the people to advance positive change..."
I think it actually was for a while. A whole lot more people learned the truth about Israel/Palestine than otherwise would have, Bernie (when he wasn't blatantly a Democratic Party sycophant) got a lot of votes he otherwise wouldn't have in the 2016 primary, and when that primary was rigged then a lot more people knew about it because of social media. Many more of us learned that the Western narrative on Syria was BS than otherwise would have. And so on...BUT, then the powerful got a better handle on how to not only limit the spread of what THEY call misinformation, but also how to use social media for their own way ends. And the result of that is that today, damn near everyone believes the establishment's narratives once again: on Covid, on Russia/Ukraine, etc.
thank you for sharing your life story. so, you have never experienced racial bigotry, discrimination, or disadvantage to speak of. that is the proof that there's no privilege? why don't you listen to your black, brown, and yellow friends, neighbors, and colleagues when they are telling you they experience it all day everyday everywhere, sometimes subtle and other times explicit? why do you deny their real first hand experience and its effect on them? do you believe they achieve less "success" academically or financially because they are indeed somehow inferior on average?
One of the most disheartening aspects of this is the collection of Boomers (many personally known to me) who stringently opposed and marched against Vietnam in '68/'69, but who are now beating the drums of war against Russia, with precious little thought about poking the hornet's nest of a nuclear power and even less understanding of the last 30 years of history in that region. The worst aspect of that historical amnesia is missing — or willfully ignoring — the connection between 21st and 20th-Century US imperialism. While I once called these folks brothers and sisters of the left, they have since succumbed to the barrage of propaganda; degraded themselves into the seemingly huge community of otherwise decent people rendered warmongers by the narcissist nerve gas of American exceptionalism. This feels like the stamp of the demon of impending demise because the irrationality augurs poorly for a clear-headed approach to the "other existential crisis" facing the planet. Anger and grief mix together in my gut with gratitude that I'm old and might luckily be dead by the time such this other cataclysm reaches full expression, but I now have anxiety thrown into that mix. It's mostly anxiety that the biosphere will be so completely devastated by nuclear holocaust that even should the offending species (Homo) go away, this most beautiful complex adaptive system known to us could be too pauperized to recover. As far as I'm concerned, Earth First is the sanest path because were we to follow the principles of ecological economics, war would also be treated as an impossibly destructive insult, eco-economically ridiculous to pursue. Quite frankly, the theater of hand-wringing for the Ukrainian people makes me even angrier because it entirely misses the larger context — that war is implicit in the anti-human and anti-ecological postures of Capitalism.
Don't paint us all with one brush. Some of us are truly anti-war now as we were back then. I'm glad to be old now too, with an end to this life on the near horizon.
That's a superb comment. I'm a younger boomer, but I do remember MLK saying we had to keep our eyes on the prize.
For me, and I think most Americans, the prize is a reasonable standard of living for our children and grandchildren. Too many people of our generation don't even give a damn about their own kids or grandkids. I'm sure we've both seen the comments about the younger generation being lazy or whatever.
I think it's due to the capitalist propaganda of rampant individualism to which the boomers were the first to be experimented upon by the science of psychology, the trade of advertising, and the use of new technologies on unsuspecting people.
IOW, it's not all their fault. They have been propagandized.
To be fair, there was a "generation gap" in the '60s as well.
To the extend protesters of Vietnam have become cheerleaders of a "no-fly zone" over Ukraine (certainly unproven), I think one difference then vs now is that back then, I don't recall any genuine fear of Russia or China invading the US, while today people were genuinely spooked by Covid-19. There has also been a hate motive. Both emotions can and have been transferred from one villain to another.
OTOH, in the '60s many protesters had a genuine fear of being drafted. That fear has been eliminated for the younger generation.
During the Obama terms of office, the politicians overturned the Smith/Mundt Act of 1948 which had been in place to outlaw US propaganda in US newsmedia. Many changes over the years in other areas followed of what we the people no longer get from journalism.
not sure whether the said Act had made much of a meaningful difference before it was thrown out. it is more likely that some of us woke up recently. just a silverlining for that cloud.
America's ongoing war on free thought -- and I didn't say free speech, because a war on thought is what's really going on here -- is incontestable. All forms of censorship are, unless you're a hack partisan merely dressing up in the costume of a patriot, which, judging from our corporate media, is a gig that pays exceedingly well. Our media is drenched in it, our politics is broken by it, and a frighteningly large part of our citizenry are hypnotized by it. And in such soiled apparel do we go prancing about on the world stage. Careers are made in doing so. Of course, people also die because of it, but never the ones who matter.
Being told what to think is the sign of mental immaturity, as is surrounding yourself only with people and ideas you already cling to. I'd say most people seem to gravitate to this at a young age and then just calcify there. For the rest of us, there's censorship, manipulation, stigmatization, and a kind of personal sanctions designed to poison and isolate our point of view.
Go back and read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution and see if you can mentally ask the Founders what they'd think about censoring Joe Rogan, plowing billions into the maintenance of a foreign Jewish State, or being led to war by the president and not the congress. Go ahead; I'll wait.
Damn. Second superb reply I've seen on this thread. I'm a Marxist, but I'm also a descendant of a Quebecois who fought in the Continental Army all the way through the American Revolution.
And he didn't fight for censorship, manipulation, stigmatization, and personal sanctions to poison and isolate our point of view. He CERTAINLY didn't fight for thought control.
Sadly Riff, as it appears to me, being led to war by the president is really little different today to being led to war by any of the elected representatives. A little while ago, it was Trump. Now if it wasn't Biden, someone else of like mind (the majority so it seems to me) would take up the cudgel and arrogantly wave it around, as there are so few voices in support of reason. But not just over there in your country but in some ways, even worse with pathetic little sycophantic countries like Australia, Britain (used to be Great Britain) and now, Canada, as extreme a government as one can find, anywhere. As you would well know, Australia has an arrogant misfit called Morrison, a conman, a liar and a religious freak. Britain has a dishevelled and disrespected ex-Mayor, full of banter and bluster with little in the way of truth as a priority and Trudeau, apparently controlled by big money which seems to have resulted in total arrogance towards the people he rules in Canada like a dictator.
For the first time in my life, I am glad I am older. I really don't have to skip avoiding the news for much longer. It sickens me to hear all the lies, to read about the subservient US dominated lemmings as one by one, in differing ways, they unknowingly head for the cliff. Then to have to listen to the sad, plaintive calls from sections of the thinking younger generations as they contemplate their anticipated future under the New World order, seeing this same future based on misrepresentations and outright lies, a lack of respect between nations and peoples growing daily and in the main, generated by the US and its need for total control with priorities that favour the wealthy. Finally, perhaps the most humiliating for your country, being controlled to by a hated and inhumane foreign state like Israel.
Add to that the total disregard for climate, seen all over the world as having decidedly reached a crisis. It is indeed a crisis. Does anyone really give a damn?
So patronising the military industrialists by way of trillions of dollars, bowing down to parasitical foreigners and having to hear about it day after day as directed by dictatorial governments all seemingly controlled by the BlackRocks and Vanguards of this world, is not much fun for anyone, and when you have been part of a better world, not perfect ever by any means, but better, it does make you sick, mainly because there is nothing as an individual you can do to change it.
It is the new normal. Lay back and accept it.
A small but strong light on the hill are people like Caitlin, writing against the odds, together with the majority of the concerned commenters on these pages who share her views. Now that is indeed rewarding.
the thought of the slaves, the poor, and the women were already completely silenced when a tiny group of the propertied white male were writing the Constitution. there was no internet accessible to anyone with a phone or laptop anywhere either. we don't need to refer to the Consitution when discussing right and wrong. we have conscience, intelligence, ad integrity.
From the point of view of the People Who Matter, this is a feature, not a bug.
Thank you Caitlin. It becomes so obvious what is going on with American media propaganda and American war mongers. After 20 years of lies and deception in order to feed Americans with their propaganda to gain our favor in each and every war you think American's would wake up and choose a different path. It's not a Democrat/Republican issue because both of them feed their own propaganda at different times. The only thing that both parties agree on appears to be war and controlling the rest of the world.
I believe our government size and our governments over governing is a major problem. The FBI the CIA the DHS are all corrupt and all have their own agenda's. It's been obvious from the days President Kennedy when it first became obvious that the CIA built and push more propaganda to control the world and who knows what else.
When I hear current government officials talking it disgust me that our leaders are so ignorant.
I do not believe America media should be displaying anything about the war in Ukraine. I had been watching Fox News lately because I felt it was the only place to hear honest news as compared to CNN etc. however if you watch Fox Now now the only thing you hear and see is Ukraine and Zelensky a completely one sided view of a war that were we should not even be involved with. At least Tucker Carlson and Greg Gutfield have different views than the rest.
What I can say is that I agree 100% with Caitlin and most of her opinions about the wests imperialistic approach to the world and NATO has to stop.
I do not believe America should be in NATO. I believe NATO members are being fed lies via American propaganda.
I myself was an Aircraft Mechanic on F4 Phantoms back in 1973 stationed in Germany during the end of the Vietnam war. I also have worked for a top defense company until recently retired because they were forcing us to get vaccinated and for other reasons related to changing the definition of equality to equity and forcing us to admit being white made me an oppressor.
The most important question to ask ourselves is exactly what Caitlin wrote about here: https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-single-most-important-question?s=r
Wake the Fuck Up America.
so you would have been happily and enthusiastically and proudly working for that top defense company unless you were forced to retire..... and you deny your white privilege that has allowed you to have never, not even for a minute, been subject to discrimination or disadvantage based on your skin. have you ever taken your 12 year daughter and her best friend to a nice restaurant on her birthday only to be told to stand outside the door for our turn while other white people arrive later and get seated right before your eyes and you are never called for 2 hours?
Fuck your white privilege BULLSHIT. Racism goes many directions. Fuck your equity over equality. I have been a victim myself of Racist blacks against whites. Racism goes multiple ways so to think your the Fucking victim is not always visible by the color of your skin.
so have you had the experience that all the non-white people are subject to every minute of their life? let me hear it. of course there are other discriminations and privileges, but i asked you about your skin-color-related privilege specifically. stop deflecting. and are you proud of your willing contribution to war crimes against black, brown, and yellow peoples around the world?
Personally I grew up a military brat in war time living on base after base of all colors with black and brown neighbors as we grew up together, we were best friends while our parents were defending our country. I had no different privileges than my black and brown neighbors. When I spent 4 years in 1973 in Germany in the Air Force during the Vietnam War my best friends were all colors. We worked, protected each other drank together and there was no color. Only now with CRT are we trying to make innocent children look at their color. This is a serious mistake, equity separates by placing people into groups while trying to define one group over the other. The final outcome depends on who is doing the evaluation.
Looks like war, of semantics to start with, and who knows from there? - and we're all supposed to be good little soldiers. The West has been able to float two contradictory balloons - 1)we are the open society - and 2) those of us who don't agree with the propaganda are traitors. So the market-place of ideas is really a closed shop? Who knew?
Thank you, Caitlin. Word of mouth still rules, and is slower but much richer for so much beautifully intrinsic human bs-detection. Trust is the only real currency. Stay strong and look out for each other. Freedom for Assange! Peace for All!
I think that when the Ukraine phase of this war finishes (and its just the first of many phases I believe), Russia should go on a diplomatic offensive. Putin should give a speech re-presenting the December security guarantees treaty demands, saying, in terms everyone can understand, that agreeing to the treaty means nothing more than returning NATO military forces to their 1997 dispositions. Did NATO populations and governments feel in the least insecure in 1997? So how can returning to those same dispositions be harmful to anyone's security now? Given Russia now has the world’s attention, Western media will no longer be able to suppress Russia's conditions for peace -- the promise that, by agreeing, all Europeans, including Russians, can feel secure. At the very least, that should give a boost to nascent Western peace movements, encouraging them to focus their demands on their governments to support Russia’s peace offensive. Force Western governments to negotiate, stop the process before Russia starts turning up the heat on NATO countries themselves:, e.g. the US missile emplacements now installed in Romania and soon in Poland that can nuke Moscow in seven minutes. This new phase of the war could turn seriously ugly, especially if people like Scott Ritter are right that Russia can defeat NATO armies in Europe if it comes a hot war. Hopefully that will cause cooler heads to prevail and eventual agreement to Russia's terms. But isn't it better not to go there in the first place? Agree to Russia's terms now should be our call. Negotiate a new European security arrangement! End this now!
I live in the US, but if I were Ukrainian, I would take a jaundiced view of committing to a one-sided disarmament based on the word of a 20 year autocrat who is currently bombing civilian targets and nuclear facilities while at home handing out 15 year jail sentences for anyone who simply declares themselves against the war. Some peace you're endorsing for them.
Although this is all theoretical; I've protested wars since Vietnam and noticed that no one in government listens to Western peace movements, nascent or otherwise.
Listen to Caitlin and believe nothing you hear about US adversaries in the media. Maduro is not a dictator, Assad isn’t a murderous fiend, the Yemenis are not Iranian pawns, Iran isn’t a hotbed of crazed terrorist fanatics, China is not committing genocide, the US is not a democracy, etc etc. When a country is backed into a corner and given no choice but war, war is inevitable. My sources suggest the war is going as much according to Russia’s plans as these things ever do. The main body of the Ukrainian army (in Donbass, not Kiev) is surrounded and in the process of being obliterated. Russia will soon have regime changed the regime the US put in after it regime changed the previous government in 2014. Russia will probably split Ukraine into three or more countries. Unrest will continue for months or years but be contained. AMeanwhile, the confrontation with NATO will move west. But the main war will be economic, and there will probably be severe recession or worse before the year’s end and it will only get worse.
The US being a lying global-spanning power does not turn Putin into a boy scout. Liberals in the 30s were famous for idealizing Stalin and denying anything wrong with Soviet Communism; I've no wish to repeat their mistake. Putin recently blamed protest in Russia on American efforts to undermine him, exactly as our current democrats blame everything from Clinton losing an election to Trump's presidency on Russian interference. Both takes are full of a certain amount of shit. I read Caitlin daily and very often agree with her but I remain wary of extremes in the current situation.
I have sources as well, and they don't speak favorably of life under an unaccountable corrupt autocrat.
I expressed no opinion on Putin or the way Russia is run. I don’t know enough to opine what is true of him. I only said that what MSM says about him is almost certainly untrue, be it by omission or disinformation or outright falsehood. That people in Russia are not fond of Putin I readily believe, but I doubt if he is the autocrat of your caricature too. All leaders everywhere are one degree or another of terrible/psychopathic, none worse than Western leaders with the tens of millions they’ve killed since WWII via economic blockades, death squads and pograms (e.g. 1 million peaceful Indonesians slaughtered by the military at the behest of CIA in the 1960s), innumerable proxy wars, infrastructure sabotage, and outright invasions. Yemen, Venezuela, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, etc. etc. etc. Putin is a pussycat next to them: he’s only killed thousands and never stooped to cutting off a country’s access to food, medicine, equipment to maintain water, power, sewage treatment, etc., much less done so in the middle of a pandemic. Get your priorities straight.
I don't watch MSM so I don't get my information from them. And since you're so eager to consign others to live under Putin, I suggest you take the time to learn more about him. Turning this into a political dick-wagging contest is most unhelpful.
What? Did Neil Young threaten to take his music off Spotify again if Putin doesn't leave Ukraine? I hear Neil can't understand why the Kremlin isn't listening to him.
Ukraine has been living under a government essentially held at gunpoint by fascists financed by oligarchs and working closely with CIA and US special forces, many of them out and nazis, who’ve burned dozens of peaceful Russian protesters in Odessa, locked up opponents, closed down opposition media, and killed 14000 civilians in the Donbass since 2014. I can only celebrate the destruction of such a regime and can’t feel too sorry for that country for being subjected to Russian suzerainty in place of the even worse US kind.
Great. There is hope. Rumble, Substack, and Odyssey are the most important proxy wars.
"Caitlin Johnstone" is a Russian propaganda plant to sow seeds of mistrust amongst real leftists. He/she has done its research on leftism and is very talented at nuance as it slips in pro-Russia propaganda into its articles. "Caitlin Johnstone" did not exist online prior to 2017. The name comes from a female sports player from Australia who was born in 2001. This comment will be deleted by this Russian plant. I hope somebody sees it before the truth is silenced.
LOL wtf?
Yes, Caitlin Johnstone, if that is your name...Vladimir Putin..ha! You've been rumbled! (I work as expert in a Think Tank, that can't reveal how I know this for security reasons...obviously)
delete and block these jokers if you can, Caitlin, as their goal is not to engage but to trash your site.
Wow. That came in from somewhere around Uranus. Hey! I didn't exist online until 2016. What kind of plant does that make ME?
And how do you define, pray tell, a real leftist?
Please answer. This should be good. (Warning: The English language may be used as a weapon in subsequent replies)
Yep, Caitlin Johnstone is really agent Natasha Fatale who runs with Boris Badinoff. they are usually pursued by a squirrel and a moose!
Off topic, but man, when I was a kid, I had such a crush on Natasha!
More of the usual dreck from narrative managers and their hoards of bots and goons. If you criticize the empire then you're a Russian plant! I notice you have no critique of her arguments. I wonder why?
Being a plant to sow seeds was very subtle and poetic, Dave.
If you believe what you just posted, please get some professional help!
Real leftists? Seeing as how I still dislike Putin, she's doing a shitty job.
Fair play to the West for what they're doing to make Russia suffer for all the evil they're perpetrating and all the deaths they're causing in Ukraine. Now could someone in MI6 or the CIA tell me how to make Saudi Arabia, the US and the UK suffer for all the murders they've been committing directly and indirectly for years in Yemen. I'm perplexed about what to do. How can I contribute?
https://youtu.be/xsh9V8UxenI
Col. Douglas Macgregor has advice for Zelensky
------------------------------------------------
Ukraine and Russia: What the Media Wants You To Think!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1W5o3Xz5OI
"...Humanity's immensely exploded ability to share ideas and information could have been a tool of the people to advance positive change..."
I think it actually was for a while. A whole lot more people learned the truth about Israel/Palestine than otherwise would have, Bernie (when he wasn't blatantly a Democratic Party sycophant) got a lot of votes he otherwise wouldn't have in the 2016 primary, and when that primary was rigged then a lot more people knew about it because of social media. Many more of us learned that the Western narrative on Syria was BS than otherwise would have. And so on...BUT, then the powerful got a better handle on how to not only limit the spread of what THEY call misinformation, but also how to use social media for their own way ends. And the result of that is that today, damn near everyone believes the establishment's narratives once again: on Covid, on Russia/Ukraine, etc.
thank you for sharing your life story. so, you have never experienced racial bigotry, discrimination, or disadvantage to speak of. that is the proof that there's no privilege? why don't you listen to your black, brown, and yellow friends, neighbors, and colleagues when they are telling you they experience it all day everyday everywhere, sometimes subtle and other times explicit? why do you deny their real first hand experience and its effect on them? do you believe they achieve less "success" academically or financially because they are indeed somehow inferior on average?