From a non-Australian the most despicable thing that country has done is complete abandonment of Julian Assange. Prime example of brown-nosing the US and the UK demand. And Australia delivers.
Agree. I've been so saddened and disgusted by the abuse that Julian Assange has endured. The guy is a freaking political prisoner. Early on, I was like, uh, isn't he Australian? Why isn't Australia getting him back?
Equally disgusted by failed U.S. journalism. Even 15 years ago, journalists would have rallied around freeing Assange. The Fourth Estate is pretty much dead here in America, except for a few independent journalists who have the $s to keep doing what they're doing (Glenn Greenwald) or others with integrity who are building reader-funded bases.
... what will ultimately kill off this American Imperialism will be the death of the petro-dollar - until the ability to fund such adventurism is ended, the status quo will continue to pervade... we await...
I think that may be coming, and it will be extremely ugly if it does for us in America. We have no freaking idea how much pain may be coming our way. I hope the soul-less ghouls perpetrating these horrors can be displaced.
... the feeling of momentum towards something as yet unseen and the cutting of old frayed and irrelevant threads seems to be picking up pace everywhere i turn ... I dont think there is any way the old visage of the world can be put back in place - the genie has been let out for all to see ... it will get worse before it gets better but in the melee and chaos that will necessarily ensue, the prospect of something brighter and better for the world beyond the decayed, decadent and unrepresentational mess we now have seems like a very real prospect... Fourth Turning will not be denied!
That's the topic of my latest Substack/YT video: Ukranian Peace & US Petropocalypse on Robert Malone & Michael Hudson. I agree with Maria that it will be ugly but ultimately it will make an honest nation out of us. And I quote Caitlin a few times, including the Intercept video of Ryan Grim. Here's the link: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/ukranian-peace-and-us-petropocalypse
... one might even proffer that all this Fourth Turning momentum will lead to the emergence of an even better version of the world yet to be seen; my greatest wish would be for the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide and for them never to be permitted again but this is probably a step too far... enjoyed your work!
I think that we are in agreement at a very deep level, and what you call the Fourth Turning might be the result of what I call the Third Paradigm. The elimination of all WMDs (biological, chemical, nuclear) isn't a step too far, it's only a step on a path that will lead even further. Thanks for letting me know that this is a topic someone is interested in. The unprecedented success of posting my Ukraine video (in one day 900 views of my YT channel, 5000 of my Substack page) has made me afraid I'll lose my new audience if I talk about the "something bigger and brighter," in your words. But I'd rather have an audience of 1 who wants to hear what I have to say than 5M who want to hear what they already think. At least that's what I'm telling myself ;-)
Ukraine would be better off with 100 enemies than one friend like the US. And they make bad enemies too, if you are defenceless, as were Iraq and Libya. When it comes to law, they wing it, make it up as the situation demands. They want Putin charged with war crimes while the very suggestion they be tried with much more cause, sends shock waves around the world. Julian Assange is a martyr to that cause, a living monument to monumental, lies, treachery and hypocrisy. But the truly astonishing thing is how Zelensky is seen as a patriot: a man with $5.5 billion, and no visible means of support other than as a figurehead who asks Ukrainians to die to the last man, or woman, or child. He goes thousands of miles seeking NATO interference, and is either too ignorant or too callous to consider what his request means: it means, if granted, we are brought to the edge of a deep abyss whose edge is about to crumble. This is not the CV of someone I would normally put my trust in.
Perhaps one becomes so brainwashed by US mainstream media propaganda that one can't see the forest for the trees... One can't see that Ukrainians are being used as cannon fodder in a US proxy war against Russia because to do so might make one finally realize how used by the oligarchy Americans have been all along. (It takes cannon fodder to know fellow cannon fodder.)
"Cannon fodder" was what Americas were when they accepted French assistance to oppose the British Empire in 1776. Ukrainians are big people and can make their own choices.
So ordinary Ukrainians wanted NATO to provoke a possible nuclear war so Ukrainian oil billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky could make even more money by shutting down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline? Yeah, sure!
No, but ordinary Ukrainians absolutely want to be more aligned with the EU/NATO than Russia. Denying that simple fact and bringing up irrelevant nonsequiturs doesn't actually change anything. And ironically, they are even MORE true now that Russia has taken away the most Russian parts of Ukraine---they overwhelmingly voted in pro-EU politicians such as Zelinsky and will continue to do so as long as they are allowed to actually have fair and free elections.
Zelenskii was elected in 2019, over vociferous American objections, on an explicit policy of peace and reconciliation with Russia.
He was not allowed to implement that policy.
For that matter, his predecessor, Petr Poroshenko, was a relative moderate who promised a negotiated solution to the War On Donbass within 48 hours. Of course, his American masters had other plans.
And before that, Yanukovych was elected on an explicit policy of integrating with EU, proving my theory that Ukrainians had brain chips implanted to make them vote that way. Fortunately he managed to remove his implant and did whatever Putin told him, which is how normal humans are supposed to act.
Now we just need to find a way to remove the implanted chips from all the other Ukrainians who are fighting so hard against Putin's valiant efforts to liberate them.
You misremember. Yanukovych talked out both sides of his mouth, but was always regarded as pro-Russian. Do you not remember the first Maidan, or, for that matter, how pro-Europeans wailed at Yanukovych's election? I do - I was there.
Professor Adam Tooze explained why the EU offer to Yanukovych was much weaker than what Russia offered.
I think in the case of Ukraine there was plenty of agency to go around, and the leadership of all three contenting parties wanted war, although not the one they're getting. As in World War 1, the leaders overestimated their power to control the events they stirred up, and now things are out of hand. However, I did read a few days ago that one of the major American neocons considered the present situation to be a success. It's a funny kind of success. Since nobody could win World War 1, the riled-up proles of many countries displaced and in some cases executed their leaders when (inevitably) they didn't get anything out of the war in exchange for their sacrifices. I think that's coming for this war, too. If the economic consequences of the current business are as generally predicted, the US regime will be the first to be changed, although at first only to the extent of the party now in power being wiped out in the next election. Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelenskyy also need to be looking over their shoulders, however, where the physical consequences may be more dire.
As an ordinary American, I don't feel like I have much agency to stop the monstrous oligarchs in charge here. It's intensely frustrating watching all these impending train wrecks and not be able to do anything.
Not being on Twitter, the “Ukrainian agency” remark immediately strikes me as odd. The implication is that the Ukrainians chose to be in this conflict. You know people are brainwashed when they start arguing that the citizens of a country want to be invaded and at war.
> “When you’re at war, you’re at war,” the saying goes, and if so, you have to accept the implications. So too in the present circumstance. The United States and its NATO allies are engaged in a proxy war with Russia.
Eliot A. Cohen wrote in The Atlantic March 14 2022.
My only sorrows for this whole sordid mess lies with Ukrainian citizenry whose lives had been irrevocably destroyed by the west firstly, and then Russia that sees Ukraine and the neo-Nazis that the US has installed to draw out, indefinitely , a manufactured civil war. Set up in the US launched coup back in 2014 under Obama, Biden, Clinton, Neuland, et al. It's always the civilians that pay the most. Even here in the US a manufactured increase of inflation has made life much harder for our poor. And the Ukrainians are caught in a quagmire by the west, and a Russia that's fighting for their nation to not be totally encircled by US/NATO hegemony, including the toxic ideology of the neo-Nazis.
There is a proposal from Russia on the table that lets Ukrainian leadership stay in place. The west pretends that this is folly, or doesn't, if fact, exist at all. The west could end this tomorrow if they accept Putin's terms. Any guess as to where this leads? I'm still hoping that this can end peacefully between the two big powers, Russia, and Empire, led by the US. All bets are off though as to what actually occurs. Peace
I agree 100%. This is one of Caitlin's best! And it address the #1 objection of my friends. "But Ukrainians wanted NATO protection. Why deny them of a right to that?" (Actually, in polls in 2012 only 28% of Ukrainians wanted Ukraine to join NATO. And NATO Article 5 membership is not a "right" but a "privilege" requiring the approval of a consensus of members. And NATO itself is a warmongering abomination of the cold war which should not ever have existed, and most definitely not after 1991.)
Whenever I hear people say "Ukrainians want ..." I think to myself "which Ukrainians, and after how many billions of western propaganda, organizing, weapons and two (2004,2014) coups?"
A lot of "Ukrainians" wanted Novorossiya instead of Ukraine in 1991...most of the ones that lived in that region at the time, and later in 2014, which most international institutions recognize today as "east Ukraine." Why did Novorossiya not happen?
"Hey there, Ukrainian citizens. You have no agency, because CIA. Ignore Putin's tanks and bombs, because, you know, again, CIA. Remember how I told you those tanks on the border were just western propaganda? Yeah, well. No price for being 100% wrong about that. For me, I mean." Seems being cannon fodder works both ways.
America bad, everyone else good? Why don't you just admit that. If arguments about Ukrainian agency bug you so much, maybe it is because there is actual legitimacy to them? Beyond just NATO, Ukrainians overwhelming support joining the EU---a political organization that at least theoretically stands to create along with the US and China a multi-polar world. Denying that Ukrainians see themselves more as Europeans than Russians is on you, they are ENTIRELY free to align with the EU vs. Putin et al. Honestly, this screed of a post carries a lot of water for authoritarian governments and does very little for actual on the ground people facing Russian invaders and bombs on a daily basis. If you actually care about Ukrainians you would feature their stories and interests vs. the nebulous aims of US foreign policy goals which you cannot actually nail down concretely because guess what they are constantly changing and it is a moving target. Your desire to paint America as bad and Russia as "Good" only reveals your ideological biases and utter incompetence at understanding these complicated times.
I didn't see anything about Russia being "good." Additionally, I have to add that no one is really free to threaten other persons or groups without risking unpleasant consequences, especially if those threatened are "bad."
From a non-Australian the most despicable thing that country has done is complete abandonment of Julian Assange. Prime example of brown-nosing the US and the UK demand. And Australia delivers.
Agree. I've been so saddened and disgusted by the abuse that Julian Assange has endured. The guy is a freaking political prisoner. Early on, I was like, uh, isn't he Australian? Why isn't Australia getting him back?
Equally disgusted by failed U.S. journalism. Even 15 years ago, journalists would have rallied around freeing Assange. The Fourth Estate is pretty much dead here in America, except for a few independent journalists who have the $s to keep doing what they're doing (Glenn Greenwald) or others with integrity who are building reader-funded bases.
Thanks for your writing, CJ!
... what will ultimately kill off this American Imperialism will be the death of the petro-dollar - until the ability to fund such adventurism is ended, the status quo will continue to pervade... we await...
I think that may be coming, and it will be extremely ugly if it does for us in America. We have no freaking idea how much pain may be coming our way. I hope the soul-less ghouls perpetrating these horrors can be displaced.
... the feeling of momentum towards something as yet unseen and the cutting of old frayed and irrelevant threads seems to be picking up pace everywhere i turn ... I dont think there is any way the old visage of the world can be put back in place - the genie has been let out for all to see ... it will get worse before it gets better but in the melee and chaos that will necessarily ensue, the prospect of something brighter and better for the world beyond the decayed, decadent and unrepresentational mess we now have seems like a very real prospect... Fourth Turning will not be denied!
That's the topic of my latest Substack/YT video: Ukranian Peace & US Petropocalypse on Robert Malone & Michael Hudson. I agree with Maria that it will be ugly but ultimately it will make an honest nation out of us. And I quote Caitlin a few times, including the Intercept video of Ryan Grim. Here's the link: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/ukranian-peace-and-us-petropocalypse
... one might even proffer that all this Fourth Turning momentum will lead to the emergence of an even better version of the world yet to be seen; my greatest wish would be for the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide and for them never to be permitted again but this is probably a step too far... enjoyed your work!
I think that we are in agreement at a very deep level, and what you call the Fourth Turning might be the result of what I call the Third Paradigm. The elimination of all WMDs (biological, chemical, nuclear) isn't a step too far, it's only a step on a path that will lead even further. Thanks for letting me know that this is a topic someone is interested in. The unprecedented success of posting my Ukraine video (in one day 900 views of my YT channel, 5000 of my Substack page) has made me afraid I'll lose my new audience if I talk about the "something bigger and brighter," in your words. But I'd rather have an audience of 1 who wants to hear what I have to say than 5M who want to hear what they already think. At least that's what I'm telling myself ;-)
Ukraine would be better off with 100 enemies than one friend like the US. And they make bad enemies too, if you are defenceless, as were Iraq and Libya. When it comes to law, they wing it, make it up as the situation demands. They want Putin charged with war crimes while the very suggestion they be tried with much more cause, sends shock waves around the world. Julian Assange is a martyr to that cause, a living monument to monumental, lies, treachery and hypocrisy. But the truly astonishing thing is how Zelensky is seen as a patriot: a man with $5.5 billion, and no visible means of support other than as a figurehead who asks Ukrainians to die to the last man, or woman, or child. He goes thousands of miles seeking NATO interference, and is either too ignorant or too callous to consider what his request means: it means, if granted, we are brought to the edge of a deep abyss whose edge is about to crumble. This is not the CV of someone I would normally put my trust in.
He was picked, groomed, and put in that position of figurehead for his talent in acting, lying, thieving, etc by the global zionist cabal.
Perhaps one becomes so brainwashed by US mainstream media propaganda that one can't see the forest for the trees... One can't see that Ukrainians are being used as cannon fodder in a US proxy war against Russia because to do so might make one finally realize how used by the oligarchy Americans have been all along. (It takes cannon fodder to know fellow cannon fodder.)
"Cannon fodder" was what Americas were when they accepted French assistance to oppose the British Empire in 1776. Ukrainians are big people and can make their own choices.
So ordinary Ukrainians wanted NATO to provoke a possible nuclear war so Ukrainian oil billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky could make even more money by shutting down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline? Yeah, sure!
No, but ordinary Ukrainians absolutely want to be more aligned with the EU/NATO than Russia. Denying that simple fact and bringing up irrelevant nonsequiturs doesn't actually change anything. And ironically, they are even MORE true now that Russia has taken away the most Russian parts of Ukraine---they overwhelmingly voted in pro-EU politicians such as Zelinsky and will continue to do so as long as they are allowed to actually have fair and free elections.
Zelenskii was elected in 2019, over vociferous American objections, on an explicit policy of peace and reconciliation with Russia.
He was not allowed to implement that policy.
For that matter, his predecessor, Petr Poroshenko, was a relative moderate who promised a negotiated solution to the War On Donbass within 48 hours. Of course, his American masters had other plans.
And before that, Yanukovych was elected on an explicit policy of integrating with EU, proving my theory that Ukrainians had brain chips implanted to make them vote that way. Fortunately he managed to remove his implant and did whatever Putin told him, which is how normal humans are supposed to act.
Now we just need to find a way to remove the implanted chips from all the other Ukrainians who are fighting so hard against Putin's valiant efforts to liberate them.
You misremember. Yanukovych talked out both sides of his mouth, but was always regarded as pro-Russian. Do you not remember the first Maidan, or, for that matter, how pro-Europeans wailed at Yanukovych's election? I do - I was there.
Professor Adam Tooze explained why the EU offer to Yanukovych was much weaker than what Russia offered.
A somewhat different situation, I believe.
I think in the case of Ukraine there was plenty of agency to go around, and the leadership of all three contenting parties wanted war, although not the one they're getting. As in World War 1, the leaders overestimated their power to control the events they stirred up, and now things are out of hand. However, I did read a few days ago that one of the major American neocons considered the present situation to be a success. It's a funny kind of success. Since nobody could win World War 1, the riled-up proles of many countries displaced and in some cases executed their leaders when (inevitably) they didn't get anything out of the war in exchange for their sacrifices. I think that's coming for this war, too. If the economic consequences of the current business are as generally predicted, the US regime will be the first to be changed, although at first only to the extent of the party now in power being wiped out in the next election. Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelenskyy also need to be looking over their shoulders, however, where the physical consequences may be more dire.
As an ordinary American, I don't feel like I have much agency to stop the monstrous oligarchs in charge here. It's intensely frustrating watching all these impending train wrecks and not be able to do anything.
So many opposing views can be held and be true at the same time.
This is a proxy war
Ukraine is a puppet state (currently for the US, previously for Russia)
Zelensky is a puppet leader
Ukraine is full of corruption
Putin should not invade another country
Deaths of civilians and soldiers is tragic when it is all down to politics
The list goes on and on but this isn't black and white as many would want you to believe.
Excellent article.
Not being on Twitter, the “Ukrainian agency” remark immediately strikes me as odd. The implication is that the Ukrainians chose to be in this conflict. You know people are brainwashed when they start arguing that the citizens of a country want to be invaded and at war.
Don't confuse the citizens with the government.
Moreover, the government wasn't given much of a choice.
> “When you’re at war, you’re at war,” the saying goes, and if so, you have to accept the implications. So too in the present circumstance. The United States and its NATO allies are engaged in a proxy war with Russia.
Eliot A. Cohen wrote in The Atlantic March 14 2022.
My only sorrows for this whole sordid mess lies with Ukrainian citizenry whose lives had been irrevocably destroyed by the west firstly, and then Russia that sees Ukraine and the neo-Nazis that the US has installed to draw out, indefinitely , a manufactured civil war. Set up in the US launched coup back in 2014 under Obama, Biden, Clinton, Neuland, et al. It's always the civilians that pay the most. Even here in the US a manufactured increase of inflation has made life much harder for our poor. And the Ukrainians are caught in a quagmire by the west, and a Russia that's fighting for their nation to not be totally encircled by US/NATO hegemony, including the toxic ideology of the neo-Nazis.
There is a proposal from Russia on the table that lets Ukrainian leadership stay in place. The west pretends that this is folly, or doesn't, if fact, exist at all. The west could end this tomorrow if they accept Putin's terms. Any guess as to where this leads? I'm still hoping that this can end peacefully between the two big powers, Russia, and Empire, led by the US. All bets are off though as to what actually occurs. Peace
I agree 100%. This is one of Caitlin's best! And it address the #1 objection of my friends. "But Ukrainians wanted NATO protection. Why deny them of a right to that?" (Actually, in polls in 2012 only 28% of Ukrainians wanted Ukraine to join NATO. And NATO Article 5 membership is not a "right" but a "privilege" requiring the approval of a consensus of members. And NATO itself is a warmongering abomination of the cold war which should not ever have existed, and most definitely not after 1991.)
Whenever I hear people say "Ukrainians want ..." I think to myself "which Ukrainians, and after how many billions of western propaganda, organizing, weapons and two (2004,2014) coups?"
A lot of "Ukrainians" wanted Novorossiya instead of Ukraine in 1991...most of the ones that lived in that region at the time, and later in 2014, which most international institutions recognize today as "east Ukraine." Why did Novorossiya not happen?
"Hey there, Ukrainian citizens. You have no agency, because CIA. Ignore Putin's tanks and bombs, because, you know, again, CIA. Remember how I told you those tanks on the border were just western propaganda? Yeah, well. No price for being 100% wrong about that. For me, I mean." Seems being cannon fodder works both ways.
America bad, everyone else good? Why don't you just admit that. If arguments about Ukrainian agency bug you so much, maybe it is because there is actual legitimacy to them? Beyond just NATO, Ukrainians overwhelming support joining the EU---a political organization that at least theoretically stands to create along with the US and China a multi-polar world. Denying that Ukrainians see themselves more as Europeans than Russians is on you, they are ENTIRELY free to align with the EU vs. Putin et al. Honestly, this screed of a post carries a lot of water for authoritarian governments and does very little for actual on the ground people facing Russian invaders and bombs on a daily basis. If you actually care about Ukrainians you would feature their stories and interests vs. the nebulous aims of US foreign policy goals which you cannot actually nail down concretely because guess what they are constantly changing and it is a moving target. Your desire to paint America as bad and Russia as "Good" only reveals your ideological biases and utter incompetence at understanding these complicated times.
I didn't see anything about Russia being "good." Additionally, I have to add that no one is really free to threaten other persons or groups without risking unpleasant consequences, especially if those threatened are "bad."
You don't get it. The Ukrainians had brain chips implanted to make them like the EU. Stop being such a sheeple.
Ah, brain chips. Yes, yes. Brain chips.
Thank you for this
the Australian submarine deal was a giveaway to the agenda
Who uses "agency" this way except Mormons? Is this a Mormon war?