They're not even hawks, they're full blown psychopaths. How they run the highest levels of government boggles my mind. There are so many intelligent people that want and know how to make a cooperative society and world. The people that actually make the world go would make it so much better than what we have with religious fanatics, politically backwards, intelligently lacking, and last but not least the greedy profiteers blocking the works of reason and good. How did we get the psychopaths in control?!
It was a long process and we didn't notice it until lately. But ruthless people who killed a million people in Iraq, many sovereign country heads of state, bombed sovereign countries without compunction - "for their own good" - and ruined them, supported al Qaeda and Isis when it suited their purpose etc., - these people will not hesitate to marginalize, wage economic war against their own. What led us to believe otherwise?
Psychopaths are like creme - they rise to the top. Seeking power over others satisfies something sinister and depraved in their psyches. Worst of all, they have absolutely no empathy for others, which allows them to run roughshod over the rest of humanity without internal conflict or concern. How does it happen that the human race can produce such vile human beings?
What do you mean “human race”? This is white American males aided and abetted by their Eva Braun’s. Don’t blame the race for what the white boys have done!!!!
It would be a mistake to blame it on a specific demographic- whether white, male, or otherwise. Don't forget Margaret Thatcher, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland, Lloyd Austin, Janet Yellen, .... shall I go on? The common denominator is that they are presumed human beings with neoliberal and neocon outlooks, and war-mongering, imperialist impulses, and a great deficiency of empathy for others.
It’s a mistake to think that throwing in a few females—all of them weak loser sisters who can’t survive without sucking up to the patriarchy—somehow explains 250 years of white American men demolishing the land, demolishing 3 races, and demolishing their own constitution in their headlong quest for gold, power and immortality! Paleese! Read history and stop trying weasel out of responsibility.
Don’t “Jean” me. It’s an old dominance trick to use someone’s name to gain ascendency. Michael. Moreover, I’m not dividing us. Men have been dividing us all up for centuries, women in their place, man on top. Now that the time has coming to apportion responsibility, many men are running like rats off the ship, fleas off a dog. And often end up defending the very perps that they say they hate, just to make sure no one identifies males as the patriarchs who have been doing all this damage. Its pathetic. And I heard all these arguments in the 70’s from white guys who couldn’t stand to see the Women’s Movement have a clear idea of who caused what. So don’t tell me dividing makes us weak. Solidarity with liberated women makes us strong. And liberated men can join us any time, but they don’t get to make the arguments, Michael.
I sense that you are wedded to, and need to explain things in such a framing , and I note your rather angry attack on at least one other, so there may be no point in further discussing this with you.
However, against better judgment, I'll just say that I am fully aware of the history of patriarchy(ies), and its dominance, in particular but not solely western cultures. I wouldn't try to obscure that even if I could.
I'm further aware that many of the women (including examples I cited) achieved power by adopting or emulating presumably male traits- i.e. aggressive pursuits of power, pandering to power to get it, suppressing the presumably more feminine traits of nurturing, empathy, etc. Margaret Thatcher probably fancied herself a new Churchill, as likely did Theresa May and Liz Truss.
Yet I, as what many hsve (probably correctly) described as 'an empath' am also male (and white!), and I know many others with similar natures; i.e. nurturing, fair, peace-loving, cooperation-oriented, etc. At the same time I know plenty of females (many who attain to positions of public power) who are less so. Though this is anecdotal and wouldn't itself contradict any notion that males are genetically more aggressive, more likely to become violent and/or domineering, still, I firmly reject any notion that the problems we both acknowledge are solely or even mostly a problem of maleness or even patriarchy ; or that just changing the gender of leadership would be the solution.
After all, it is ultimately human greed, which is given free reign and ascendancy in our rapacious form of capitalism, that drives most public policy. And in my many decades of public involvement /activism, etc., it's my observation that greed and power seeking are not gender-defined traits. And I reject your disrespectful, condescending orders and implication that I have personal responsibility for those conditions. If I were plagued with such anger, I'd do some internal reflection to see how much I'm projecting outside of myself.
Okay I think you're all partly wrong. Males may be innately more aggressive than women but the real problem is psychopaths, who arise in all societies but in tribes are easily controlled; everyone knows what they are, having observed them from birth. They no doubt reach for power in those situations too but will generally be denied it because the wise elders see the problem. But in the mass societies that agriculture made possible, sociopaths can hide their nature and scheme their way to power. The real problem is a sociopathic CULTURE, which has been taking over other tribes and countries for several millennia. No one has ever found a way to stop a--tribe that grew into a city-state, a country, and is now a world-dominating empire. This culture is based on domination, of females by males children by adults, "lower classes" by "upper classes" (what an absurd notion) and other animals by humans. Native Americans have been able to hold on to elements of their wiser culture through one to four centuries of physical and cultural genocide--but "white" people no doubt also once had ancestors with wiser cultures and values. The difference is that they were overtaken by the dominator culture millennia ago, and no one can hold onto anything that long. So it happens that we now embody--literally--the dominator culture. But it has nothing to do with genes. Yes, currently it's mostly white males causing all this harm. But it could have played out differently. The problem is not whites or males, the problem is a domination-based culture taking its insanity to the limit.
They're hawks, and these hawks are willing to risk a nuclear war because of their political philosophy which is the US alone should be number one. They're fanatical about their position and they are not going to allow China, or Russia be a threat to our being number 1 in this world. You can look up their philosophy on line. After the fall of Russia we were number one, but no more, and by our rhetoric and actions we are making our position very clear. Cheney is a primary signatory on the Project for a New American Century, and so was Jeff Bush, and I just know the 2001 election was stolen. Cheney makes himself vice president and we have wars in the Middle East to bring them into line. They didn't go after countries like Turkey or Saudi Arabia, since they're aligned with us, but countries like Iran are not, and god knows what's going to happen there. Russia and China have become more powerful and are perceived as a threat to our number 1 position in the world and we won't let that happen and I believe they are willing to go to war with both. They're hawks, and psychopaths. Those that want a cooperative society usually don't pursue political office unfortunately, and the few that due eventually sell their souls for money and power. It is amazing that few people are paying any attention to the real possibility of a nuclear war. I don't get it. Maybe it's just to horrible. to contemplate. Now you can't even depend on an objective press to tell the truth.
Name names. Who's the "they" you're talking about.
Let me tell you: they are celebrated in Fortune magazine every year.
I call them the US Oligarchy. If you have a better name, great, let us know.
Warren Buffet is (or was) a huge shareholder in Norfolk Southern Railroad. The one that totally contaminated East Palestine, Ohio. Are you going to let him walk away from his responsibilities?
Look up the Project for a New American Century. They'll give you a list of the primary signatories, Americans, like Cheney, Rumsfeld. Jeff Bush Wolfowitz, etc. https://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-pilger.html
Focus on their agenda for the US. John Pilger wrote the page I sent. the Project for a New American Century was based on a clean break, by Richard Perle.
Also on the the Powell Memo, a 60 page tantrum by a white guy on the Supreme Court after Nixon was taken down. And it haughty recommends an organ if propaganda for the Rethuglican Party, hence Fox. Roger Alles, Murdock, Flush Limpbough, and Clinton. (Clinton killed the Fairness Doctrine, thus leaving media wide open to corporate takeover.)(the prick)
You don't know what the PNC is, and what it's objectives are, or it's origin. Sorry. We are pursuing a neocon agenda in Ukraine and that is to bring down Russia. There is no question in my mind the 2014 coup under the Obama administration was to push that agenda into Russia's backyard, in other words what Biden is doing now. Clinton was going to pick up that mantle, but lost to Trump, although you wouldn't know it by the way the democrats acted, and tried to oust Trump from office with their Russia-gate lies. Clinton would have picked up our agenda in 2016 if she had won, and I suppose she might have had us all dead by now. Kidding, just most of us.
Without the "money men" PNAC would have gone absolutely no where.
Where would Michael Corleone be without his hitmen?
If you want to waste your time on the low-level thugs and not go after the "Gus Frings", that's your problem. What's worse here, even when Fring was eliminated, the Blue stuff kept flowing.
Yes, but also we promised Gorbachev no more countries into NATO then Clinton put in three and it went on from there. Then came Yeltsin whom we really played, because he didn't know what he was doing, and we sucked the Russian economy dry along with the Russian oligarchs. The economy went down hill reducing life expectancy in Russia for every age range by ten years.
Its horrifying that there are such a relatively small number of people that are holding the levers of power and steering us all in this crazy direction. What it does demonstrate is that we in the west do not live in real democracies and that the propaganda we are subjected to is so subtle and all pervasive that the majority do not realise or do not even want to consider the possibility they are subject to this authoritarianism but happy to believe that only in places like Russia and China have authoritarian governments. Our "freedom" is an illusion. I cant see a way out.
Exactly, though the propaganda to me is not subtle at all but it is all pervasive and the masses are entirely swept by it. So much so they will argue for it. I consider the authoritarianism to be on par with 1930s Europe but with a modern twist. The outside look of it is friendly. Everyone believes they're free. They don't realize in the slightest that everything they think, everything they do, everything they want is entirely dictated for them. They don't know that they're marching to an insidious directive of profiteering and psychopathic war mongering oligarchs.
The West is not just wrong: it has lost its collective mind. An article in a prominent Canadian newspaper states that "rumblings of a coup" are emanating from Moldova, which "needs the West's help." Like a hole in the head. They are protesting the high price of energy , and think the West will help? The West caused the high price of energy in Moldova and everywhere else when it blew up Russia/Germany pipelines. I thought pain and deprivation might turn the tide in the direction of reason and truth. Now I don't know what it would take.
Of course it isn't accurate, but it is significant of the quality of reportage of leading Canadian newspapers and the heights of inanity anti Russia propaganda can take.
The "new intelligence" of COVID originating from a lab leak couldn't have happened at a more convenient time.
Just like Cheney claimed to have Secret Squirrel Intelligence that Iraq was behind 9/11, right when the Bush Administration was seeking a pretext to make war on Iraq.
You notice that even those who mention the Wuhan (CHINA!) Lab leak, none say that the work was US FUNDED.
The fact that the US Dept. Of Energy made that finding should open up Pandora's box on bioweapons research. But it won't. Everyone is afraid to go there. And of course it proves that Fauci lied to Congress.
Something similar happened with the Pfizer head of R&D sting. Total news blackout.
Just yesterday I heard some rightwinger or other, on a video, make the precise point that the Wuhan lab was funded by the US. His theory seemed to be that there is a _global_ conspiracy of rich people and bigdeals to reduce the population.
"His theory seemed to be that there is a _global_ conspiracy of rich people and bigdeals to reduce the population."
I have been hearing this for decades. Alex Jones favored this hypothesis. If I'm in the mood to respond I say, well, they're doing a quite poor job of it.
However I believe a nuclear war would do the trick so maybe they are just getting warmed up for the Big Event.
There is NO WAY the rich could protect themselves from nuclear fallout or a nuclear winter. So this theory makes no sense. I have actually thought that they must know that climate change and other environmental crises are real and I can imagine them deciding that pruning the excess population would help--but the obvious way to do it would be with a germ, as that could have no effect, if they're lucky, on anything but humans. But I assume they would want, before releasing said germ, to have an antidote that's 100% reliable for themselves as surely their own asses are the most precious thing to them. COVID doesn't really look like a candidate as it hasn't pruned enough (as you said--and it doesn't look like there's a real antidote. AND it has the undesirable element of long COVID. I suppose it could have been a trial run. But all this supposes that there is a cabal of the rich and powerful working in secret and in concert--much of the time it looks to me like they're all just obsessively trying to build up their own towering incomes and heedless of consequences.
There are sets of people who have interests in common. If they are smart enough to recognize one another and the commonality of their interests they don't necessarily need an organization.
I'm listening to an audiobook called Working in the Ruins, by Dougald Hine, which is mostly about climate change--but its threat to the human future comes from the same roots as the threat from nuclear war. Here's a quote: "Those whose ways of living put the most strain on the system will be the last to notice." I think this is a key reason for the collapse of empires--an elite, over the generations, finds way to enrich itself and lock in its power and its privilege, more and more. This results in a generation that is only interested in partying, but it also means that the elite manage to completely exempt themselves from the consequences of their decisions, ensuring that the costs land entirely on the poor majority. This works beautifully until the crash comes...
That's one of the challenges facing humanity. Lots of people are distracted from actual facts and action on the real dangers (and evidence of real conspiracies) by their fascination with 'theories' (baseless conjecture in many cases) involving putative conspiracies. Many of these require belief that ignores the lack of evidence, implausible scale of coordination, etc.
I've read similar comments about various government programs (e.g., Vaccinations) being the tools of some plan for massive population reduction.. All the while, ignoring what Caitlin writes about here- the steadily increasing risks of global thermonuclear ecocide - mass extinctions - from the decisions of a few soulless neocons in the State Department and their enablers.
Yes, the U.S. funded programs at the Wuhan Lab; and yes, it has looked for some time that SARS-Cov2 virus was lab-created. And as Sam Husseini has written, there's more than a passable likelihood that the W. African Ebola outbreak may have similar origins. But to take the giant leap to conclusion that these possible origins suggest a great plan to kill off a big segment of humanity, instead of being coincidental to biowarfare research, or even, simply, public and commercial interests in development of pharmaceuticals and technologies, is simply a failure of critical thinking.
This is no less dangerous, in my opinion, then the lack of critical thinking that has allowed so much of the population to be so easily brainwashed into believing that America is Exceptional and altruistic in its policies; while Russia and China are jealous and out to 'destroy our (so-called) democracy' .
I think this is what "tribalism" is about. And we've devolved in some ways to be more and more tribal. Our ideological & political conflicts with others, coupled with the need to feel connected to others, leads many to reject out of hand anything the opposing group says and to believe as truth whatever is said by one's own tribe (often, in the U.S., it's the Blue Tribe or Red Tribe or perhaps the anti-government / Libertarian tribe).
By this logic, we could not be at the brink of nuclear war, with a massive nuclear upgrading at the cost of over a trillion in the US alone. That's obviously utterly insane and yet we're told it's real.
It could have been me that you heard. I'm in the category of right wing free market capitalists who hate monopolists, and think they are the most dangerous people alive, and that they control the U.S. government.
Most of the program was about Dr. Fauci. It was not a well-organized lecture in terms of rhetorical structure, but I did learn that Fauci was supposed to have been involved in gain-of-function research, which is (1) illegal and (2) catastrophically dangerous. I think this needs to be followed up.
Your lame attempt to imply a right wing conspiracy theory (and smear) the established fact of US funding of Wuhan lab's gain of function research failed miserably.
Did you see the video of two Big Pharma executives talking about how successful the Covid epidemic was and how much money they made but that one what they needed was a pandemic, so that they could keep taking it in. It was on the Rising when Krystle Ball was still there. It wasn’t a conspiracy, and it wasn’t secret. It was right out there. And low and behold, Covid is now a pandemic. Read Michael Parenti on this idea of conspiracies.
Maybe we can get the "left" on board by explaining how nuclear war is - according to scientific consensus - actually an extremely accelerated form of global warming! (followed rapidly by global cooling!) It kills plants and animals too! It hates LGBTQ+ people too!
Or that Trump supports the war and opposes negotiations.
Why not just join Code Pink?!? They are fighting and fighting hard and have been doing so since Shrub went to Crawford to hide from Cindy Sheehan. You can put down the US middle class Yuppie Left all you want, but the real, the actual, the radical Left is out there fighting everyday. The kind of Left that Micheal the great Parenti (sp? ) has always been out there espousing. Thank you Caitlyn for referring to him.
Bill, the only problem with your post is that Trump is against the war and supports negotiations, but I detect humor throughout your post, and enjoyed it.
Yes, I know that Trump is against the war and supports negotiations (and he also wanted to abolish NATO and bring home US troops from Europe and Jana and Korea (I think).
I wrote that seriously, because there is reflexive Trump disorder out there. Anything Trump is reflexively opposed regardless of the merits. That explains some of the Wuhan suppression.
Love your articles Caitlin. Yes you are absolutely right about the left either not getting it, or not homing in on the whole US hegemony thing. Re Ukraine, in Europe the UK and in the US. In Europe and the UK there have protests but the press just blank them. Once you start any serious attempt to discredit NATO, state actors get involved. The first venue secured by the No2Nato group (for their recent meeting) withdrew after pressure on them, then the No2Nato website was compromised. Meeting went ahead at an alternative venue and tickets sold out in the end. Just seen interview with Bernie Sanders where he says he hasn't really wngaged with the Ukraine conflict but supports Bidens policy - utterly ridiculous and depressing
There is no substantial, politically effective Left, so no use blaming it or disparaging it. I don't know how they got rid of it, but for Dog's sake look around and see if you see any Left beyond tiny fragments.
I want to add something to this. The fact that the Left is not effective and does not have any substantial revolutionary (or even reformist) potential, means that raw dissident political energy will flow to the Right. At least some rightists are willing to act on their beliefs. For example, who showed up at the East Palestine disaster?
He might be afraid of death. He’s old enough to know and remember what happened to Dr. King after his Viet Nam speech. One attacks the Pentagon at great personal risk. And also remember, the Patriot Act requires our so-called leaders to keep the security state’s secrets on pain of imprisonment. And also remember that Ofucka, our constitutional scholar, brought the espionage act forward from the WW1 battlefields to effectively silence all possible dissent by “Assanging” truth tellers. It’s harder than you think to fight back, so QUIT PICKING ON THE FIGHTERS!!!!
He's also old enough to consider his last few years worth sacrificing for something so important. Human survival is at stake! King knew they were gunning for him and he said it anyway.
That’s true, but we each have our ways of influencing policy. Plus, easy for you to say he should sacrifice his life because he’s old. Why don’t you, for human survival for god’s sakes, sacrifice YOUR life. Greta is. Plus, I’m not sure I’d sacrifice anything to protect people with such narcissistic, murderous, let’s you and him die for MEEEEE ideas.
I'd like to be Greta but I can't find sponsors. Can you tell me how I could round up some? So I could sail across the oceans and fly to events and be arrested in a staged manner.
Well you could try to contribute like she did. Go sit outside your business by yourself every Friday for some cause that you believe in while people mock you and try to change you and your supposed friends disregard you. And try doing that for a year. Then you might get to be Greta instead of the weak minded sabotaging bitter little cretin that you are.
"Go sit outside your business by yourself" - right, and there'll be dozens of cameras documenting my protest and the news will be splashed all over the world media.
You must be trolling about the squad and little greta, else there are serious doubts about the level of your understanding of the politics.
One thing is for sure, though. Your "weak minded sabotaging bitter little cretin" tirade shows you have quite a foul mouth, "lady".
Sanders is in a position where he could RISK his remaining years to make a real difference potentially. I am not--I'm nobody. I do speak out but whether it has any effect...
I'm not asking anyone to "die for me" --I'm saying that someone who refuses to even try to make a difference because of the risk of retaliation by the powerful is wasting a chance to help the whole damn world. Not ME. Although I suspect that a reason so few speak out, a reason the European countries are knuckling under, may have to do with personal threats--and likely it's more effective to threaten a person's loved ones or perhaps, their whole country, if they don't comply. I wouldn't doubt that the sociopaths in the CIA/NSC/ETC would make such threats and even carry them out.
The left has disappeared. The Democratic Party created the Reagan Republicans in 1972 when it savaged the last real anti-imperialist who ever got a real shot at the Presidency. Ever since, the war against the ‘excess of democracy’ proclaimed by IIRC the Trilateral Commission has been waged very successfully. The complete defeat occurred with the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court in about 2010. Since then, there’s not been a war at all; more like the bi-partisan imperial war machine wandering amongst the corpses and bayoneting them just to make sure. We are here, with you, but we have no presence in the ‘mainstream’ because the cost of being present there cannot be paid by anyone who is really on the left. Those who are exceptions to the rule are treated like they are predicting the appearance of JFK, Jr. during the Super Bowl halftime show. Sigh.
I think I said this before, but it is long past time to pay close attention to Dr. Helen Caldicott. This amazing woman was born in 1938, and has dedicated much of her life to actively opposing nuclear weapons. helencaldicott.com (skip www; just copy and paste Helen's name.com, or you won't likely get there).
I spent much of my life actively worked against these Weapons from Hell, starting in 1971, when I showed the film Helen takes relevant parts from, I think two weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima. It had been hidden from public for many decades. I was using 16mm films from our local library at the time. One of my brilliant fourth grade students, whom I'll call Michael, went into the hall and vomited hard. Called to the Headmaster's Office on that one, to get a gentle suggestion to hold back on these kind of things. NOW I strongly say every adult should see this... If every adult saw Helen's 25 minute speech to college students, I can only imagine we'd have many "anti-nuclear 'weapons warriors' in short order."
In 1978, I interviewed the late, great David Brower for Mariah Magazine (now extinct). Here is part of that:
Mariah: What is your greatest source of dismay at what we are doing to this planet?
Brower: Proliferating nuclear technology in the attempt to harness the atom for peace. As Indira Gandhi proved, atoms for peace are very easily changed to atoms for war. I refer here to the fact that Canada and the United States provided the nuclear technology that enabled India to fashion and detonate its first atomic bomb. What India did, any country with any reasonably intelligent people can do, without any help other than what is in the public domain, in the libraries.
The burden of my argument is that the atom in the fist and the atom in the glove are the same atom; the only thing that makes them different is whatever human determination there is to maintain a barrier between the two. To keep that barrier intact requires an infallibility that does not exist. It requires a stability of government that has never existed. The way to avoid proliferation is to stop it where it starts, and that is with the peaceful atom. Once we do this [the United States], other countries will see that we are serious, that we are not just trying to stop their export of reactors so that we can get the business. We want to stop the whole thing, so that nobody gets the terminal business the atom promises. (Whole interview here https://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_daniel_g_061116_has_jesus_come_and_g.htm)
Daniel, I believe I saw that same film about Hiroshima with my church youth group over 50 years ago. It made a huge impression on me, and I believe made me the anti-war person I am today.
Caitlin, I had the privilege of attending a few lectures from Michael Parenti, and your style of direct, frontal attack is so reminiscent of Parenti that I, more than once, thought of him after reading you.
One area where Parenti was pretty clear, and where you diverge, is in promoting the concept of conflict among elites. It is practical and slightly demagogic to argue that, because our government apparently is inching closer to planetary annihilation, that there are no persons in government with any courage or integrity because they don’t speak up. If I’m being honest, this is simplistic. And simple sells. I think you are right in that this issue cannot be permitted to get intellectualized into hot air, but I also think that people have to be adults and understand that there are moral people who follow their beliefs, who take a step up and are forced to surrender their freedom to say what they believe when it undermines the platform to which they have risen. It is life.
Parenti used to say that elites have power, and power buys anonymity. But he would also stress that elites regularly disagree, sometimes strongly, and those fractures among them, are often not reported or are given very quick mention in the media. This matters, I think, because you want those who follow you to understand nuance and subtle distinction. I read one of your passionate diatribes that indicts everyone who has not taken a stand on the issue you are addressing, and comment after comment recite disgust and condemnation of “them.” Every leader is a psychopath or a sociopath or a murderer. I am as sick as I have ever been at the abject contempt that our government directs toward the public, but there are still firemen who save lives, nurses who comfort those in pain, and lawyers in elected positions who apply their knowledge to serve their constituents. It is too easy, I think, to expect that a capitalist system that is effectively owned by self-serving billionaires can be called out by a member of congress, or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice. These institutions are not run democratically, and they aren’t institutions that have agreement among their members.
So I take from this that making the effort to cite real distinctions may not feel germaine, but might be a closer approximation of the true reality. And here’s what I mean. In his many years as Senator Credit Card, from the Credit Card State, Joe Biden was a consummate careerist who shucked and jived his way to longevity, maligning women, African-Americans and thinking people along the way. Never voted against any war TMK, but, importantly, he never carried water for the Kaganite neocons before he assumed office in the WH. Biden was very quick to name Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan to his inner circle, and both of them are from the Kagan/Wolfowitz policy circles. From my uninformed perch, Biden, because his seat was purchased by oligarch money, was compelled to name Blinken and Sullivan, and, given our completely lame MSM, this happens in daylight without a whimper.
So while this doesn’t speak directly to Ukraine, the crisis du jour, it isn’t worth seeing all of the elected as cowards or warmongers or chickenshits, in my opinion. When Ilhan Omar stands up to have the law respect her right to criticize Israeli ethnic cleansing, or when AOC stands up to holler “Tax the Rich,” or when Bernie draws a direct line from low to no corporate taxes and the obscene cost of healthcare, these are all attempts to get accountability back into everyday government. And if accountability goes up oligarchic prerogative goes down.
Another aspect of elite conflict is understanding that the picture that we think we see may not be what is really there. So while Kagan is penning volumes of peons to the angelic American mission to bring freedom to every corner of the planet, and weapons are flowing into Ukraine, it looks as though the Wolfowitz Plan is in full swing. But if we can safely assume that there are people in power who do not subscribe to the Wolfowitz Doctrine, then ask again, “What are we seeing?” If the reports out of independent media are correct, Ukraine is already defeated, and they know it, Europe knows it, NATO knows it, and the only Americans who don’t know it are the ones getting their news from the MSM. This is important because it fits a pattern. The U.S. has not won a war since WWII, but it has been actively engaged in warfare from that time to the present, almost continuously. This perpetual war is the key to bilking the public for every last penny toward weapons manufacture and military installations throughout every continent on Earth. This serves to employ and pay generously millions of Americans, and it serves to scare and silence those opposed to this arrangement. So where this intersects the madness of the neocons, and the likely strong disagreement that many elites have with them, is maybe the mad bombers get the media mics and cameras, while those not on board are silent and invisible, but the ALL love the cha-ching of big checks pouring in ad infinitum for the beloved MIC.
Cailtlin, details may take some wind out of your impassioned pleas for people to care about our most dire potential reality, but if the scenario is us versus every last business vendor, bureaucrat, government official, every professional, then standing up is an invitation to lose whatever you have, which ain’t much. While it may be true that elections change nothing, it is the one arena where we are recognized to speak up, and do speak up we must.
She's not saying every businessperson and professional. She's maybe saying every media personality and politician, as they bear responsibility for this madness, and if they aren't speaking out , yes they're culpable! Yes Omar and AOC and Sanders have said great things in the past but where are they on this occasion?
Grenada. Panama. Gulf War (Iraq I). Bombed Serbia into submission. Deposed Khaddaffi.
Now there are people who in on at least some of the plot who are appalled by the whole thing. If they speak up they are whistleblowers. What if for the sake of the wife and kids they instead don't speak up and soldier on, going with the flow? I've been trying for weeks to think of a name. Not careerist. Careerists don't care. They aren't bothered by what's happening.
There appears not to be such a word extant. Invention is hereby authorized.
I don’t think massive military assaults, if they are over in an hour or a week or a month, fit the criteria of “war,” at least not how I use the word. Even The Gulf War was a defined action that had overt policing and enforcement as its end, and barely met resistance. But I am not suggesting that the U.S. military is a paper tiger, but simply that our unending involvement in wars and military actions is the proof that we must devote over .55 cents out of every tax dollar toward the war machine.
As for whistleblowers: Do the names Assange, Manning, Snowden, Kiriakou resonate? All of them paid a price for speaking up, and none were widely honored for their decision to stand up.
Well I think you wrote that those who speak up would be whistleblowers, which has taken on a much darker definition with the rise of the oligarchs. In the present environment, righteous people are highly induced not to open their mouths. As for a better description if those folks, how about “silent insurgents?”
You think the dems after four years of BS about Trump and selling themselves as holier then thou they don't know they're hypocrites? They just sell their BS better then the republicans.
Overt vs covert. Red tells you straight up front what they're doing and they do it at breakneck speed while Blue pretends to alter course and goes slower, then goes the same direction. The two legs of the marching oligarchs. Marching fast with one leg then slower with the other. When the people realize it's not working with the one administration, they switch to the next and only choice without realizing it's the same direction just a different speed.
This all boils down to money. You can have the brains of a chicken but as long as you can pay for another chicken brain to do your egg laying you've got it made. Money doesn't mean smart! This is truly evident in the amount of complete idiots in our government. I noticed something that is off track here in a way but this train wreck in Ohio shows how there is only one party that shows a false act of differences. Biden canned the rail workers strike (which also had to do with SAFETY!) and here a prime opportunity for the repubs to say look what happened and what? Crickets. They don't want unions either. I am waiting hopefully for the 18th to see the outcome of this our latest protest but I am afraid protest no longer have any affect and there is no peaceful resolution to this. When it comes down to it it will be us or them and catching them on the way to their bunkers will be too late!
"The difference between western liberals and the Proud Boys is that the Proud Boys are self-described "western chauvinists" who promote the belief that "west is best", whereas western liberals espouse these positions without voicing them out loud."
Thank you, that one sentence nails a whole lot of the problem. Western liberals have become converts to a new religion of social justice activism, which sounds good on the surface. But scratch beneath, and the ideals they adore are entirely based on (1) Maximal individual identity and (2) Maximal individual autonomy. Both of these are perfectly compatible with global free-market capitalism. And as long as you don't rock that boat you are welcome aboard. The supposedly liberals are so intoxicated by their puritan virtue that they cannot see they have been coopted by the system of capitalism.
"Iceberg ahead? What iceberg? Who cares? Our ship is unsinkable!"
To clarify: the so-called 'left progressive movement' is a reimagination of America Manifest Destiny as the ethical and moral saviours of the World. In other words, Humanitarian Imperialism.
Yes, Power is a perfect example! She's made a very good career out of pretending to care about human rights. She pushed for the invasion of Libya as a member of Obama's National Security Council. She supports the US war against Syria. All in the name of 'humanitarian intervention'.
I read one of her books -- a biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello -- and was convinced she cares about human rights. Though I'd say that the idea of war as humanitarian aid has been tested and failed. From now on I'd would classify such talk as feminine warmongering. Besides, I don't give a damn if someone cares or not. It's their actions and the results thereof that matter.
I would further say that the liberalism of the Ds can be summed up as giving women and minorities preference in hiring as torturers, warmongers, propagandists, and other oppressors of the weak. Is this a good thing?
politicians go cheap! They keep talkin about the "huge" amounts of lobbying money" etc etc. They throw figures out on tv screen...millions! LOL. This is a 23 trillion economy! for a 150K / year job at Apollo, senator Toomey sold how much legislation down the river for private equity? CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP.
"The fact that we are closer to nuclear annihilation than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis is not some act of God or fate or something that's passively happening like the weather; it's the result of concrete decisions made by concrete people with names and addresses."
WE KNOW WHERE THEY LIVE. If that major detail doesn't give impetus to the left to fight back hard to save the world from nuclear annihilation, what else will? It's time to confront these so-called "elected officials" and "leaders" and let them know how much we despise them and all that they stand for and take them out of the positions where they can continue to threaten our lives and our planet's future.
If we don't act now, we might as well not know where they live because we'll know where we'll die.
China and Russia are each individually capable of annihilating the United States in less than 55 minutes, and each capable of surviving an American nuclear attack much better than handful of obese Americans who survive the first Russo-Chinese 1,000-missile volley.
US fleets are no match for Chinese and Russian fleets in their areas of influence, ditto air forces. And 1951 told us all we need to know about China's land forces and Russia's on its worst day can always lick America on its best, as we saw in 1921 and '25.
Armies and fleets win battles, but economies win wars.
China's wartime (productive) GDP is three times America's: one the PLAN's thirteen shipyards is bigger than all of the US Navy's combined. In December it will launch five Burke Class destroyers, simultaneously .. The State Department report this week that China leads the USA by large margins in 37 of 44 new technologies (and draws in the remaining 7). There are reality moments like this every week.
Besides, China hasn't played a single card in this game, and she has a strong hand. A joint announcement that the PRC and ROC Coast Guards will jointly patrol the SCS? A new reserve/settlement currency? Deployment of their new quantum radar or the opening of the first industrial photonic chip fab.
China appears to see things as you do, and so does Russia, and Xi is Putin's biggest fan (for real) and between them they have the world's smartest people and more money than God.
Of course, the White House could follow Japan's famous 1938 Cabinet decision, after the General Staff told them Japan had no chance of winning a war.
Washington would commence hostilities knowing that the US has no chance at all of prevailing – at either end of the Continent – and would watch on TV as each American city turned to vapor on the first afternoon of the war.
I don't think even Victoria Nuland would support that.
Sy Hersh's latest piece tldr was: JFK dint really care about war with Soviet Union, war in Vietnam, ....he just wanted to be a "great president", and that required war....so be it.. Literally, that was his job one. Twinkle dust.
Even Chomsky has very openly said the provocations against Russia and China are insane. So what if we destroy the world as long as the psychopaths get whatever it is they want. Countries all over the world and populations are against what is going on and the neocon technocrat eugenicists pretend not to notice. Hate for u.s. government around the world has never been higher.
They're not even hawks, they're full blown psychopaths. How they run the highest levels of government boggles my mind. There are so many intelligent people that want and know how to make a cooperative society and world. The people that actually make the world go would make it so much better than what we have with religious fanatics, politically backwards, intelligently lacking, and last but not least the greedy profiteers blocking the works of reason and good. How did we get the psychopaths in control?!
It was a long process and we didn't notice it until lately. But ruthless people who killed a million people in Iraq, many sovereign country heads of state, bombed sovereign countries without compunction - "for their own good" - and ruined them, supported al Qaeda and Isis when it suited their purpose etc., - these people will not hesitate to marginalize, wage economic war against their own. What led us to believe otherwise?
Psychopaths are like creme - they rise to the top. Seeking power over others satisfies something sinister and depraved in their psyches. Worst of all, they have absolutely no empathy for others, which allows them to run roughshod over the rest of humanity without internal conflict or concern. How does it happen that the human race can produce such vile human beings?
What do you mean “human race”? This is white American males aided and abetted by their Eva Braun’s. Don’t blame the race for what the white boys have done!!!!
It would be a mistake to blame it on a specific demographic- whether white, male, or otherwise. Don't forget Margaret Thatcher, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland, Lloyd Austin, Janet Yellen, .... shall I go on? The common denominator is that they are presumed human beings with neoliberal and neocon outlooks, and war-mongering, imperialist impulses, and a great deficiency of empathy for others.
It’s a mistake to think that throwing in a few females—all of them weak loser sisters who can’t survive without sucking up to the patriarchy—somehow explains 250 years of white American men demolishing the land, demolishing 3 races, and demolishing their own constitution in their headlong quest for gold, power and immortality! Paleese! Read history and stop trying weasel out of responsibility.
Dividing us is what makes us weak, Jean. But maybe you know that.
Don’t “Jean” me. It’s an old dominance trick to use someone’s name to gain ascendency. Michael. Moreover, I’m not dividing us. Men have been dividing us all up for centuries, women in their place, man on top. Now that the time has coming to apportion responsibility, many men are running like rats off the ship, fleas off a dog. And often end up defending the very perps that they say they hate, just to make sure no one identifies males as the patriarchs who have been doing all this damage. Its pathetic. And I heard all these arguments in the 70’s from white guys who couldn’t stand to see the Women’s Movement have a clear idea of who caused what. So don’t tell me dividing makes us weak. Solidarity with liberated women makes us strong. And liberated men can join us any time, but they don’t get to make the arguments, Michael.
I sense that you are wedded to, and need to explain things in such a framing , and I note your rather angry attack on at least one other, so there may be no point in further discussing this with you.
However, against better judgment, I'll just say that I am fully aware of the history of patriarchy(ies), and its dominance, in particular but not solely western cultures. I wouldn't try to obscure that even if I could.
I'm further aware that many of the women (including examples I cited) achieved power by adopting or emulating presumably male traits- i.e. aggressive pursuits of power, pandering to power to get it, suppressing the presumably more feminine traits of nurturing, empathy, etc. Margaret Thatcher probably fancied herself a new Churchill, as likely did Theresa May and Liz Truss.
Yet I, as what many hsve (probably correctly) described as 'an empath' am also male (and white!), and I know many others with similar natures; i.e. nurturing, fair, peace-loving, cooperation-oriented, etc. At the same time I know plenty of females (many who attain to positions of public power) who are less so. Though this is anecdotal and wouldn't itself contradict any notion that males are genetically more aggressive, more likely to become violent and/or domineering, still, I firmly reject any notion that the problems we both acknowledge are solely or even mostly a problem of maleness or even patriarchy ; or that just changing the gender of leadership would be the solution.
After all, it is ultimately human greed, which is given free reign and ascendancy in our rapacious form of capitalism, that drives most public policy. And in my many decades of public involvement /activism, etc., it's my observation that greed and power seeking are not gender-defined traits. And I reject your disrespectful, condescending orders and implication that I have personal responsibility for those conditions. If I were plagued with such anger, I'd do some internal reflection to see how much I'm projecting outside of myself.
Okay I think you're all partly wrong. Males may be innately more aggressive than women but the real problem is psychopaths, who arise in all societies but in tribes are easily controlled; everyone knows what they are, having observed them from birth. They no doubt reach for power in those situations too but will generally be denied it because the wise elders see the problem. But in the mass societies that agriculture made possible, sociopaths can hide their nature and scheme their way to power. The real problem is a sociopathic CULTURE, which has been taking over other tribes and countries for several millennia. No one has ever found a way to stop a--tribe that grew into a city-state, a country, and is now a world-dominating empire. This culture is based on domination, of females by males children by adults, "lower classes" by "upper classes" (what an absurd notion) and other animals by humans. Native Americans have been able to hold on to elements of their wiser culture through one to four centuries of physical and cultural genocide--but "white" people no doubt also once had ancestors with wiser cultures and values. The difference is that they were overtaken by the dominator culture millennia ago, and no one can hold onto anything that long. So it happens that we now embody--literally--the dominator culture. But it has nothing to do with genes. Yes, currently it's mostly white males causing all this harm. But it could have played out differently. The problem is not whites or males, the problem is a domination-based culture taking its insanity to the limit.
Oops, my bad. I should have known that. Thanks for fixing it for me. Cream may be sweet, but you can't polish a turd.
They're hawks, and these hawks are willing to risk a nuclear war because of their political philosophy which is the US alone should be number one. They're fanatical about their position and they are not going to allow China, or Russia be a threat to our being number 1 in this world. You can look up their philosophy on line. After the fall of Russia we were number one, but no more, and by our rhetoric and actions we are making our position very clear. Cheney is a primary signatory on the Project for a New American Century, and so was Jeff Bush, and I just know the 2001 election was stolen. Cheney makes himself vice president and we have wars in the Middle East to bring them into line. They didn't go after countries like Turkey or Saudi Arabia, since they're aligned with us, but countries like Iran are not, and god knows what's going to happen there. Russia and China have become more powerful and are perceived as a threat to our number 1 position in the world and we won't let that happen and I believe they are willing to go to war with both. They're hawks, and psychopaths. Those that want a cooperative society usually don't pursue political office unfortunately, and the few that due eventually sell their souls for money and power. It is amazing that few people are paying any attention to the real possibility of a nuclear war. I don't get it. Maybe it's just to horrible. to contemplate. Now you can't even depend on an objective press to tell the truth.
Name names. Who's the "they" you're talking about.
Let me tell you: they are celebrated in Fortune magazine every year.
I call them the US Oligarchy. If you have a better name, great, let us know.
Warren Buffet is (or was) a huge shareholder in Norfolk Southern Railroad. The one that totally contaminated East Palestine, Ohio. Are you going to let him walk away from his responsibilities?
Look up the Project for a New American Century. They'll give you a list of the primary signatories, Americans, like Cheney, Rumsfeld. Jeff Bush Wolfowitz, etc. https://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/nc-pilger.html
Focus on their agenda for the US. John Pilger wrote the page I sent. the Project for a New American Century was based on a clean break, by Richard Perle.
Also on the the Powell Memo, a 60 page tantrum by a white guy on the Supreme Court after Nixon was taken down. And it haughty recommends an organ if propaganda for the Rethuglican Party, hence Fox. Roger Alles, Murdock, Flush Limpbough, and Clinton. (Clinton killed the Fairness Doctrine, thus leaving media wide open to corporate takeover.)(the prick)
It's the same agenda applied on a world wide level, world wide hegemony. In other words no matter what we'll be number 1 always.
okay.
Wrong.
Those guys are front men hired by the true criminals to shield them from the "average American".
Yeah, their names are attached to PNAC, but PNAC wouldn't have happened without money.
Follow the money.
You don't know what the PNC is, and what it's objectives are, or it's origin. Sorry. We are pursuing a neocon agenda in Ukraine and that is to bring down Russia. There is no question in my mind the 2014 coup under the Obama administration was to push that agenda into Russia's backyard, in other words what Biden is doing now. Clinton was going to pick up that mantle, but lost to Trump, although you wouldn't know it by the way the democrats acted, and tried to oust Trump from office with their Russia-gate lies. Clinton would have picked up our agenda in 2016 if she had won, and I suppose she might have had us all dead by now. Kidding, just most of us.
You, of course, mean PNAC.
And you've totally missed my point.
Sorry.
Without the "money men" PNAC would have gone absolutely no where.
Where would Michael Corleone be without his hitmen?
If you want to waste your time on the low-level thugs and not go after the "Gus Frings", that's your problem. What's worse here, even when Fring was eliminated, the Blue stuff kept flowing.
PNAC is small potatoes.
Fran, did you mean "after the fall of USSR?
Yes, but also we promised Gorbachev no more countries into NATO then Clinton put in three and it went on from there. Then came Yeltsin whom we really played, because he didn't know what he was doing, and we sucked the Russian economy dry along with the Russian oligarchs. The economy went down hill reducing life expectancy in Russia for every age range by ten years.
Its horrifying that there are such a relatively small number of people that are holding the levers of power and steering us all in this crazy direction. What it does demonstrate is that we in the west do not live in real democracies and that the propaganda we are subjected to is so subtle and all pervasive that the majority do not realise or do not even want to consider the possibility they are subject to this authoritarianism but happy to believe that only in places like Russia and China have authoritarian governments. Our "freedom" is an illusion. I cant see a way out.
Exactly, though the propaganda to me is not subtle at all but it is all pervasive and the masses are entirely swept by it. So much so they will argue for it. I consider the authoritarianism to be on par with 1930s Europe but with a modern twist. The outside look of it is friendly. Everyone believes they're free. They don't realize in the slightest that everything they think, everything they do, everything they want is entirely dictated for them. They don't know that they're marching to an insidious directive of profiteering and psychopathic war mongering oligarchs.
The West is not just wrong: it has lost its collective mind. An article in a prominent Canadian newspaper states that "rumblings of a coup" are emanating from Moldova, which "needs the West's help." Like a hole in the head. They are protesting the high price of energy , and think the West will help? The West caused the high price of energy in Moldova and everywhere else when it blew up Russia/Germany pipelines. I thought pain and deprivation might turn the tide in the direction of reason and truth. Now I don't know what it would take.
Just because a proiminent Canadian newspaper says that doesn't mean it's an accurate take.
Of course it isn't accurate, but it is significant of the quality of reportage of leading Canadian newspapers and the heights of inanity anti Russia propaganda can take.
The "new intelligence" of COVID originating from a lab leak couldn't have happened at a more convenient time.
Just like Cheney claimed to have Secret Squirrel Intelligence that Iraq was behind 9/11, right when the Bush Administration was seeking a pretext to make war on Iraq.
Needless to say, Cheney was lying.
You notice that even those who mention the Wuhan (CHINA!) Lab leak, none say that the work was US FUNDED.
The fact that the US Dept. Of Energy made that finding should open up Pandora's box on bioweapons research. But it won't. Everyone is afraid to go there. And of course it proves that Fauci lied to Congress.
Something similar happened with the Pfizer head of R&D sting. Total news blackout.
Just yesterday I heard some rightwinger or other, on a video, make the precise point that the Wuhan lab was funded by the US. His theory seemed to be that there is a _global_ conspiracy of rich people and bigdeals to reduce the population.
"His theory seemed to be that there is a _global_ conspiracy of rich people and bigdeals to reduce the population."
I have been hearing this for decades. Alex Jones favored this hypothesis. If I'm in the mood to respond I say, well, they're doing a quite poor job of it.
However I believe a nuclear war would do the trick so maybe they are just getting warmed up for the Big Event.
There is NO WAY the rich could protect themselves from nuclear fallout or a nuclear winter. So this theory makes no sense. I have actually thought that they must know that climate change and other environmental crises are real and I can imagine them deciding that pruning the excess population would help--but the obvious way to do it would be with a germ, as that could have no effect, if they're lucky, on anything but humans. But I assume they would want, before releasing said germ, to have an antidote that's 100% reliable for themselves as surely their own asses are the most precious thing to them. COVID doesn't really look like a candidate as it hasn't pruned enough (as you said--and it doesn't look like there's a real antidote. AND it has the undesirable element of long COVID. I suppose it could have been a trial run. But all this supposes that there is a cabal of the rich and powerful working in secret and in concert--much of the time it looks to me like they're all just obsessively trying to build up their own towering incomes and heedless of consequences.
There are sets of people who have interests in common. If they are smart enough to recognize one another and the commonality of their interests they don't necessarily need an organization.
I have learned in life that the vast majority of people do not behave rationally.
You'd think, and the shopping would be a lot less fabulous.
However, I could see the rich taking a stance something like in "Don't Look Up".
I'm listening to an audiobook called Working in the Ruins, by Dougald Hine, which is mostly about climate change--but its threat to the human future comes from the same roots as the threat from nuclear war. Here's a quote: "Those whose ways of living put the most strain on the system will be the last to notice." I think this is a key reason for the collapse of empires--an elite, over the generations, finds way to enrich itself and lock in its power and its privilege, more and more. This results in a generation that is only interested in partying, but it also means that the elite manage to completely exempt themselves from the consequences of their decisions, ensuring that the costs land entirely on the poor majority. This works beautifully until the crash comes...
That's one of the challenges facing humanity. Lots of people are distracted from actual facts and action on the real dangers (and evidence of real conspiracies) by their fascination with 'theories' (baseless conjecture in many cases) involving putative conspiracies. Many of these require belief that ignores the lack of evidence, implausible scale of coordination, etc.
I've read similar comments about various government programs (e.g., Vaccinations) being the tools of some plan for massive population reduction.. All the while, ignoring what Caitlin writes about here- the steadily increasing risks of global thermonuclear ecocide - mass extinctions - from the decisions of a few soulless neocons in the State Department and their enablers.
Yes, the U.S. funded programs at the Wuhan Lab; and yes, it has looked for some time that SARS-Cov2 virus was lab-created. And as Sam Husseini has written, there's more than a passable likelihood that the W. African Ebola outbreak may have similar origins. But to take the giant leap to conclusion that these possible origins suggest a great plan to kill off a big segment of humanity, instead of being coincidental to biowarfare research, or even, simply, public and commercial interests in development of pharmaceuticals and technologies, is simply a failure of critical thinking.
This is no less dangerous, in my opinion, then the lack of critical thinking that has allowed so much of the population to be so easily brainwashed into believing that America is Exceptional and altruistic in its policies; while Russia and China are jealous and out to 'destroy our (so-called) democracy' .
The great majority of people are incapable of critical thinking. They will believe whatever their friends believe. The results can be most random.
It may not make "sense," but it is a good way to have lots of friends so it makes sense in a sense.
I think this is what "tribalism" is about. And we've devolved in some ways to be more and more tribal. Our ideological & political conflicts with others, coupled with the need to feel connected to others, leads many to reject out of hand anything the opposing group says and to believe as truth whatever is said by one's own tribe (often, in the U.S., it's the Blue Tribe or Red Tribe or perhaps the anti-government / Libertarian tribe).
Patrick's Laws of Tribal Thinking.
First Law : Everything We do is good.
Second Law: Everything They do is bad.
By this logic, we could not be at the brink of nuclear war, with a massive nuclear upgrading at the cost of over a trillion in the US alone. That's obviously utterly insane and yet we're told it's real.
It could have been me that you heard. I'm in the category of right wing free market capitalists who hate monopolists, and think they are the most dangerous people alive, and that they control the U.S. government.
Most of the program was about Dr. Fauci. It was not a well-organized lecture in terms of rhetorical structure, but I did learn that Fauci was supposed to have been involved in gain-of-function research, which is (1) illegal and (2) catastrophically dangerous. I think this needs to be followed up.
Was it a replay of Jon Stewart's bit on Steve Colbert's show?
Was it a replay of Fauci's testimony to Congress?
Or was it the NIH Spokesperson confirming the fact? see:
https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-function-research/
Your lame attempt to imply a right wing conspiracy theory (and smear) the established fact of US funding of Wuhan lab's gain of function research failed miserably.
Not so sure it’s a conspiracy, more like a plan. A well laid, well financed, well gaslighted plan.
A secret plan is a conspiracy. There is no overt plan to wipe out a chunk of humanity, so what you suggest IS a conspiracy
Did you see the video of two Big Pharma executives talking about how successful the Covid epidemic was and how much money they made but that one what they needed was a pandemic, so that they could keep taking it in. It was on the Rising when Krystle Ball was still there. It wasn’t a conspiracy, and it wasn’t secret. It was right out there. And low and behold, Covid is now a pandemic. Read Michael Parenti on this idea of conspiracies.
I think "conspiracy" usually means an agreement to commit a crime. Many people have secret plans which are not plans to commit crimes.
The sentence "Cheney was lying" is redundant.
I believe Bio Clandestine (https://bioclandestine.substack.com/) who believes that the U.S. created Covid 19 in a lab in Ukraine.
This thread explains his reasoning:
https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/1619121813258207233
I think our sociopaths decided that bioweapons are much better for enslaving the world and killing their enemies than are nukes.
Then why are they spending trillions on new nukes, why are they playing around with, or threatening to use, nukes?
Maybe we can get the "left" on board by explaining how nuclear war is - according to scientific consensus - actually an extremely accelerated form of global warming! (followed rapidly by global cooling!) It kills plants and animals too! It hates LGBTQ+ people too!
Or that Trump supports the war and opposes negotiations.
Why not just join Code Pink?!? They are fighting and fighting hard and have been doing so since Shrub went to Crawford to hide from Cindy Sheehan. You can put down the US middle class Yuppie Left all you want, but the real, the actual, the radical Left is out there fighting everyday. The kind of Left that Micheal the great Parenti (sp? ) has always been out there espousing. Thank you Caitlyn for referring to him.
Bill, the only problem with your post is that Trump is against the war and supports negotiations, but I detect humor throughout your post, and enjoyed it.
Yes, I know that Trump is against the war and supports negotiations (and he also wanted to abolish NATO and bring home US troops from Europe and Jana and Korea (I think).
I wrote that seriously, because there is reflexive Trump disorder out there. Anything Trump is reflexively opposed regardless of the merits. That explains some of the Wuhan suppression.
Love your articles Caitlin. Yes you are absolutely right about the left either not getting it, or not homing in on the whole US hegemony thing. Re Ukraine, in Europe the UK and in the US. In Europe and the UK there have protests but the press just blank them. Once you start any serious attempt to discredit NATO, state actors get involved. The first venue secured by the No2Nato group (for their recent meeting) withdrew after pressure on them, then the No2Nato website was compromised. Meeting went ahead at an alternative venue and tickets sold out in the end. Just seen interview with Bernie Sanders where he says he hasn't really wngaged with the Ukraine conflict but supports Bidens policy - utterly ridiculous and depressing
There is no substantial, politically effective Left, so no use blaming it or disparaging it. I don't know how they got rid of it, but for Dog's sake look around and see if you see any Left beyond tiny fragments.
I want to add something to this. The fact that the Left is not effective and does not have any substantial revolutionary (or even reformist) potential, means that raw dissident political energy will flow to the Right. At least some rightists are willing to act on their beliefs. For example, who showed up at the East Palestine disaster?
He might be afraid of death. He’s old enough to know and remember what happened to Dr. King after his Viet Nam speech. One attacks the Pentagon at great personal risk. And also remember, the Patriot Act requires our so-called leaders to keep the security state’s secrets on pain of imprisonment. And also remember that Ofucka, our constitutional scholar, brought the espionage act forward from the WW1 battlefields to effectively silence all possible dissent by “Assanging” truth tellers. It’s harder than you think to fight back, so QUIT PICKING ON THE FIGHTERS!!!!
He's also old enough to consider his last few years worth sacrificing for something so important. Human survival is at stake! King knew they were gunning for him and he said it anyway.
That’s true, but we each have our ways of influencing policy. Plus, easy for you to say he should sacrifice his life because he’s old. Why don’t you, for human survival for god’s sakes, sacrifice YOUR life. Greta is. Plus, I’m not sure I’d sacrifice anything to protect people with such narcissistic, murderous, let’s you and him die for MEEEEE ideas.
I'd like to be Greta but I can't find sponsors. Can you tell me how I could round up some? So I could sail across the oceans and fly to events and be arrested in a staged manner.
Well you could try to contribute like she did. Go sit outside your business by yourself every Friday for some cause that you believe in while people mock you and try to change you and your supposed friends disregard you. And try doing that for a year. Then you might get to be Greta instead of the weak minded sabotaging bitter little cretin that you are.
"Go sit outside your business by yourself" - right, and there'll be dozens of cameras documenting my protest and the news will be splashed all over the world media.
You must be trolling about the squad and little greta, else there are serious doubts about the level of your understanding of the politics.
One thing is for sure, though. Your "weak minded sabotaging bitter little cretin" tirade shows you have quite a foul mouth, "lady".
Sanders is in a position where he could RISK his remaining years to make a real difference potentially. I am not--I'm nobody. I do speak out but whether it has any effect...
But you’re a fool for advocating that others die for you. So yuppie. So neo lib. So narcissistic.
I'm not asking anyone to "die for me" --I'm saying that someone who refuses to even try to make a difference because of the risk of retaliation by the powerful is wasting a chance to help the whole damn world. Not ME. Although I suspect that a reason so few speak out, a reason the European countries are knuckling under, may have to do with personal threats--and likely it's more effective to threaten a person's loved ones or perhaps, their whole country, if they don't comply. I wouldn't doubt that the sociopaths in the CIA/NSC/ETC would make such threats and even carry them out.
The left has disappeared. The Democratic Party created the Reagan Republicans in 1972 when it savaged the last real anti-imperialist who ever got a real shot at the Presidency. Ever since, the war against the ‘excess of democracy’ proclaimed by IIRC the Trilateral Commission has been waged very successfully. The complete defeat occurred with the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court in about 2010. Since then, there’s not been a war at all; more like the bi-partisan imperial war machine wandering amongst the corpses and bayoneting them just to make sure. We are here, with you, but we have no presence in the ‘mainstream’ because the cost of being present there cannot be paid by anyone who is really on the left. Those who are exceptions to the rule are treated like they are predicting the appearance of JFK, Jr. during the Super Bowl halftime show. Sigh.
They even wrote it all down - Google The Powell Memo.
Who the f... is "they"?
Yes, Powell wrote the memo -- who was he addressing it to?
Let me tell you again, it is the 400 people who show up every year in Fortune magazine.
Unless you know who "they" are, you can't mount a resistance to them.
It's the Oligarchy -- Stupid!
I think I said this before, but it is long past time to pay close attention to Dr. Helen Caldicott. This amazing woman was born in 1938, and has dedicated much of her life to actively opposing nuclear weapons. helencaldicott.com (skip www; just copy and paste Helen's name.com, or you won't likely get there).
I spent much of my life actively worked against these Weapons from Hell, starting in 1971, when I showed the film Helen takes relevant parts from, I think two weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima. It had been hidden from public for many decades. I was using 16mm films from our local library at the time. One of my brilliant fourth grade students, whom I'll call Michael, went into the hall and vomited hard. Called to the Headmaster's Office on that one, to get a gentle suggestion to hold back on these kind of things. NOW I strongly say every adult should see this... If every adult saw Helen's 25 minute speech to college students, I can only imagine we'd have many "anti-nuclear 'weapons warriors' in short order."
In 1978, I interviewed the late, great David Brower for Mariah Magazine (now extinct). Here is part of that:
Mariah: What is your greatest source of dismay at what we are doing to this planet?
Brower: Proliferating nuclear technology in the attempt to harness the atom for peace. As Indira Gandhi proved, atoms for peace are very easily changed to atoms for war. I refer here to the fact that Canada and the United States provided the nuclear technology that enabled India to fashion and detonate its first atomic bomb. What India did, any country with any reasonably intelligent people can do, without any help other than what is in the public domain, in the libraries.
The burden of my argument is that the atom in the fist and the atom in the glove are the same atom; the only thing that makes them different is whatever human determination there is to maintain a barrier between the two. To keep that barrier intact requires an infallibility that does not exist. It requires a stability of government that has never existed. The way to avoid proliferation is to stop it where it starts, and that is with the peaceful atom. Once we do this [the United States], other countries will see that we are serious, that we are not just trying to stop their export of reactors so that we can get the business. We want to stop the whole thing, so that nobody gets the terminal business the atom promises. (Whole interview here https://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_daniel_g_061116_has_jesus_come_and_g.htm)
Take away nuclear weapons, and the Empire would be seeking to make war on Russia and China by any pretext.
Daniel, I believe I saw that same film about Hiroshima with my church youth group over 50 years ago. It made a huge impression on me, and I believe made me the anti-war person I am today.
Caitlin, I had the privilege of attending a few lectures from Michael Parenti, and your style of direct, frontal attack is so reminiscent of Parenti that I, more than once, thought of him after reading you.
One area where Parenti was pretty clear, and where you diverge, is in promoting the concept of conflict among elites. It is practical and slightly demagogic to argue that, because our government apparently is inching closer to planetary annihilation, that there are no persons in government with any courage or integrity because they don’t speak up. If I’m being honest, this is simplistic. And simple sells. I think you are right in that this issue cannot be permitted to get intellectualized into hot air, but I also think that people have to be adults and understand that there are moral people who follow their beliefs, who take a step up and are forced to surrender their freedom to say what they believe when it undermines the platform to which they have risen. It is life.
Parenti used to say that elites have power, and power buys anonymity. But he would also stress that elites regularly disagree, sometimes strongly, and those fractures among them, are often not reported or are given very quick mention in the media. This matters, I think, because you want those who follow you to understand nuance and subtle distinction. I read one of your passionate diatribes that indicts everyone who has not taken a stand on the issue you are addressing, and comment after comment recite disgust and condemnation of “them.” Every leader is a psychopath or a sociopath or a murderer. I am as sick as I have ever been at the abject contempt that our government directs toward the public, but there are still firemen who save lives, nurses who comfort those in pain, and lawyers in elected positions who apply their knowledge to serve their constituents. It is too easy, I think, to expect that a capitalist system that is effectively owned by self-serving billionaires can be called out by a member of congress, or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice. These institutions are not run democratically, and they aren’t institutions that have agreement among their members.
So I take from this that making the effort to cite real distinctions may not feel germaine, but might be a closer approximation of the true reality. And here’s what I mean. In his many years as Senator Credit Card, from the Credit Card State, Joe Biden was a consummate careerist who shucked and jived his way to longevity, maligning women, African-Americans and thinking people along the way. Never voted against any war TMK, but, importantly, he never carried water for the Kaganite neocons before he assumed office in the WH. Biden was very quick to name Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan to his inner circle, and both of them are from the Kagan/Wolfowitz policy circles. From my uninformed perch, Biden, because his seat was purchased by oligarch money, was compelled to name Blinken and Sullivan, and, given our completely lame MSM, this happens in daylight without a whimper.
So while this doesn’t speak directly to Ukraine, the crisis du jour, it isn’t worth seeing all of the elected as cowards or warmongers or chickenshits, in my opinion. When Ilhan Omar stands up to have the law respect her right to criticize Israeli ethnic cleansing, or when AOC stands up to holler “Tax the Rich,” or when Bernie draws a direct line from low to no corporate taxes and the obscene cost of healthcare, these are all attempts to get accountability back into everyday government. And if accountability goes up oligarchic prerogative goes down.
Another aspect of elite conflict is understanding that the picture that we think we see may not be what is really there. So while Kagan is penning volumes of peons to the angelic American mission to bring freedom to every corner of the planet, and weapons are flowing into Ukraine, it looks as though the Wolfowitz Plan is in full swing. But if we can safely assume that there are people in power who do not subscribe to the Wolfowitz Doctrine, then ask again, “What are we seeing?” If the reports out of independent media are correct, Ukraine is already defeated, and they know it, Europe knows it, NATO knows it, and the only Americans who don’t know it are the ones getting their news from the MSM. This is important because it fits a pattern. The U.S. has not won a war since WWII, but it has been actively engaged in warfare from that time to the present, almost continuously. This perpetual war is the key to bilking the public for every last penny toward weapons manufacture and military installations throughout every continent on Earth. This serves to employ and pay generously millions of Americans, and it serves to scare and silence those opposed to this arrangement. So where this intersects the madness of the neocons, and the likely strong disagreement that many elites have with them, is maybe the mad bombers get the media mics and cameras, while those not on board are silent and invisible, but the ALL love the cha-ching of big checks pouring in ad infinitum for the beloved MIC.
Cailtlin, details may take some wind out of your impassioned pleas for people to care about our most dire potential reality, but if the scenario is us versus every last business vendor, bureaucrat, government official, every professional, then standing up is an invitation to lose whatever you have, which ain’t much. While it may be true that elections change nothing, it is the one arena where we are recognized to speak up, and do speak up we must.
She's not saying every businessperson and professional. She's maybe saying every media personality and politician, as they bear responsibility for this madness, and if they aren't speaking out , yes they're culpable! Yes Omar and AOC and Sanders have said great things in the past but where are they on this occasion?
"The U.S. has not won a war since WWII"
Grenada. Panama. Gulf War (Iraq I). Bombed Serbia into submission. Deposed Khaddaffi.
Now there are people who in on at least some of the plot who are appalled by the whole thing. If they speak up they are whistleblowers. What if for the sake of the wife and kids they instead don't speak up and soldier on, going with the flow? I've been trying for weeks to think of a name. Not careerist. Careerists don't care. They aren't bothered by what's happening.
There appears not to be such a word extant. Invention is hereby authorized.
I don’t think massive military assaults, if they are over in an hour or a week or a month, fit the criteria of “war,” at least not how I use the word. Even The Gulf War was a defined action that had overt policing and enforcement as its end, and barely met resistance. But I am not suggesting that the U.S. military is a paper tiger, but simply that our unending involvement in wars and military actions is the proof that we must devote over .55 cents out of every tax dollar toward the war machine.
As for whistleblowers: Do the names Assange, Manning, Snowden, Kiriakou resonate? All of them paid a price for speaking up, and none were widely honored for their decision to stand up.
Well I think you wrote that those who speak up would be whistleblowers, which has taken on a much darker definition with the rise of the oligarchs. In the present environment, righteous people are highly induced not to open their mouths. As for a better description if those folks, how about “silent insurgents?”
If you return to my question and read with a little more care you will notice I am looking for a word for people who are NOT whistleblowers.
I frame it this way: the difference between Dems and Repubs is, the Republicans KNOW they are hypocrites.
You think the dems after four years of BS about Trump and selling themselves as holier then thou they don't know they're hypocrites? They just sell their BS better then the republicans.
Overt vs covert. Red tells you straight up front what they're doing and they do it at breakneck speed while Blue pretends to alter course and goes slower, then goes the same direction. The two legs of the marching oligarchs. Marching fast with one leg then slower with the other. When the people realize it's not working with the one administration, they switch to the next and only choice without realizing it's the same direction just a different speed.
Thank you -- see Moscow university:
https://thedreizinreport.com/2023/03/05/dreizin-on-belief-and-unbelief/ -- March 5, 2023
This all boils down to money. You can have the brains of a chicken but as long as you can pay for another chicken brain to do your egg laying you've got it made. Money doesn't mean smart! This is truly evident in the amount of complete idiots in our government. I noticed something that is off track here in a way but this train wreck in Ohio shows how there is only one party that shows a false act of differences. Biden canned the rail workers strike (which also had to do with SAFETY!) and here a prime opportunity for the repubs to say look what happened and what? Crickets. They don't want unions either. I am waiting hopefully for the 18th to see the outcome of this our latest protest but I am afraid protest no longer have any affect and there is no peaceful resolution to this. When it comes down to it it will be us or them and catching them on the way to their bunkers will be too late!
may everyone please wake up from the one party shystem !
"The difference between western liberals and the Proud Boys is that the Proud Boys are self-described "western chauvinists" who promote the belief that "west is best", whereas western liberals espouse these positions without voicing them out loud."
Thank you, that one sentence nails a whole lot of the problem. Western liberals have become converts to a new religion of social justice activism, which sounds good on the surface. But scratch beneath, and the ideals they adore are entirely based on (1) Maximal individual identity and (2) Maximal individual autonomy. Both of these are perfectly compatible with global free-market capitalism. And as long as you don't rock that boat you are welcome aboard. The supposedly liberals are so intoxicated by their puritan virtue that they cannot see they have been coopted by the system of capitalism.
"Iceberg ahead? What iceberg? Who cares? Our ship is unsinkable!"
"Glub, glub."
To clarify: the so-called 'left progressive movement' is a reimagination of America Manifest Destiny as the ethical and moral saviours of the World. In other words, Humanitarian Imperialism.
it got Samantha Powers a "PhD" and a prestigious Job straight outta Ireland !
Yes, Power is a perfect example! She's made a very good career out of pretending to care about human rights. She pushed for the invasion of Libya as a member of Obama's National Security Council. She supports the US war against Syria. All in the name of 'humanitarian intervention'.
I read one of her books -- a biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello -- and was convinced she cares about human rights. Though I'd say that the idea of war as humanitarian aid has been tested and failed. From now on I'd would classify such talk as feminine warmongering. Besides, I don't give a damn if someone cares or not. It's their actions and the results thereof that matter.
I would further say that the liberalism of the Ds can be summed up as giving women and minorities preference in hiring as torturers, warmongers, propagandists, and other oppressors of the weak. Is this a good thing?
I'd say instead it is maximal accumulation of personal wealth that drives everyone in both parties. This is hardly a secret.
At a certain point one wants more than mere wealth. You want the things that wealth can buy, like politicians.
politicians go cheap! They keep talkin about the "huge" amounts of lobbying money" etc etc. They throw figures out on tv screen...millions! LOL. This is a 23 trillion economy! for a 150K / year job at Apollo, senator Toomey sold how much legislation down the river for private equity? CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP.
"The fact that we are closer to nuclear annihilation than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis is not some act of God or fate or something that's passively happening like the weather; it's the result of concrete decisions made by concrete people with names and addresses."
WE KNOW WHERE THEY LIVE. If that major detail doesn't give impetus to the left to fight back hard to save the world from nuclear annihilation, what else will? It's time to confront these so-called "elected officials" and "leaders" and let them know how much we despise them and all that they stand for and take them out of the positions where they can continue to threaten our lives and our planet's future.
If we don't act now, we might as well not know where they live because we'll know where we'll die.
Always wonderfully thought-provoking. Thanks again.
I see the cup half full.
China and Russia are each individually capable of annihilating the United States in less than 55 minutes, and each capable of surviving an American nuclear attack much better than handful of obese Americans who survive the first Russo-Chinese 1,000-missile volley.
US fleets are no match for Chinese and Russian fleets in their areas of influence, ditto air forces. And 1951 told us all we need to know about China's land forces and Russia's on its worst day can always lick America on its best, as we saw in 1921 and '25.
Armies and fleets win battles, but economies win wars.
China's wartime (productive) GDP is three times America's: one the PLAN's thirteen shipyards is bigger than all of the US Navy's combined. In December it will launch five Burke Class destroyers, simultaneously .. The State Department report this week that China leads the USA by large margins in 37 of 44 new technologies (and draws in the remaining 7). There are reality moments like this every week.
Besides, China hasn't played a single card in this game, and she has a strong hand. A joint announcement that the PRC and ROC Coast Guards will jointly patrol the SCS? A new reserve/settlement currency? Deployment of their new quantum radar or the opening of the first industrial photonic chip fab.
China appears to see things as you do, and so does Russia, and Xi is Putin's biggest fan (for real) and between them they have the world's smartest people and more money than God.
Of course, the White House could follow Japan's famous 1938 Cabinet decision, after the General Staff told them Japan had no chance of winning a war.
Washington would commence hostilities knowing that the US has no chance at all of prevailing – at either end of the Continent – and would watch on TV as each American city turned to vapor on the first afternoon of the war.
I don't think even Victoria Nuland would support that.
Sy Hersh's latest piece tldr was: JFK dint really care about war with Soviet Union, war in Vietnam, ....he just wanted to be a "great president", and that required war....so be it.. Literally, that was his job one. Twinkle dust.
She is a clueless twit and wouldn't understand what just happened.
.....a Marie biscuit in exchange for your soul, sir?
This apparently did not line up with the comment I was referring to! It was in regards to the "Nuland" twit! Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Nuland is the one distributing marie biscuits! in the maidan. I always refer to Nuland as the Marie Biscuit Faust-woman
GO to Global Research !
Even Chomsky has very openly said the provocations against Russia and China are insane. So what if we destroy the world as long as the psychopaths get whatever it is they want. Countries all over the world and populations are against what is going on and the neocon technocrat eugenicists pretend not to notice. Hate for u.s. government around the world has never been higher.