"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished, unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” --Attributed to Voltaire
I am very sorry, and Communism is condemned by Holy Mother Church. the only thing it did was give benefits to a few while murdering hundreds of millions. And legalizing abortion in 1917... for which many will go to hell.
The fact that you can utter "Holy Mother Church." is just so so illustrative. You must mean, "Corrupt Robber, Illusion-Peddler, Kiddie-Diddler Church No?
on corruption… I live in Tx. My Priest flies from Ohio to Austin to offer Holy Sacrifice of the MAss, give us sacraments, give us counseling and contact. usually about 40 of us.
There is not a resident Catholic Priest in Tx. Great Apostasy.
how much do you think this greedy corrupt Priest makes? Or maybe he loses money? I think he is a living Saint
Listen here, John. I was a fucking altar boy for a couple years and had a young priest try to put his hand on my genitals. The diocese ignored this man. I was a microsecond from breaking his face. The Church hierarchy is corrupt top to bottom. End of fucking story. That's my final -- and deeply personal -- response to your feeble attempts at this redemptive bullshit.
this has become a kind of a proverb among tankies. 'ask a liberal or conservative what's wrong with communism and they immediately start to describe capitalism'. what you're describing is now under capitalism: giving benefits to a few (there's no commie billionaires) and murdering hundreds of millions (by sheer waste, uneven distribution and warmongering), all under the watchful eye of holy mother church.
Under the watchful eye of Holy Mother Church... what a nasty and dishonest comment. The Catholic Church has condemned publically communism, nazism, socialism, freemasonry.
Pope Pius XII condemned coerceed medical expirementation . But people would like to hate on the Catholic Church and thus relished, it seemed, when false pope francis coerced it
The pitiful on substack would take no heed of my posting of Pius XiI.
The taxation at Federal level is grossly unjust, and I have brilliant sermons on this… by Catholic Priests.
There are extraordinarily wealthy commies - if you deny this, you should be dismissed as ignorant or a liat.
The Catholic Church preaches the Just War Theory. She wants peace while in some narrow cases, war must be tolerated. (Czechs and Poles had a right to defend themselves against Nazis. You agree?)
I guess you have not read what I probably have said many times, the Catholic Church lost the Vatican in 1958 to her enemies, we are without a pope etc, and are in eclipse. I bet less than 5% on this thread can even name a Catholic or a local Catholic institution (Church, seminary etc ). We have no hospitals or colleges in USA , probably none in the world, except for seminiaries…
you're probably not a worker since you're opposing a worker's paradise all over the world? commies differ from the wef in that we strive to own the means of production (it all) and be happy instead of 'owning nothing and being happy' (wef likes your kind very much, commies ... not so). commies generally understand that the fearmongering about a future 'new world order' mainly comes from the present 'old world order', the existing world government of blackrock and vanguard, billionaires and old colonial fortunes whose biggest fear is that they'll one day will have to clean their own toilet. i know only of a 'top commie' (marxist vijay prashad) that regularly points out that the world produces enough food to feed 11 billion people and while we're 8 billion, people starve. top commies are the only ones who give a damn about feeding everyone. i'm not naive enough to believe that you would care about feeding anyone, lest they'd start to believe they're in a 'worker's paradise'.
Maybe Voltaire was only partially correct.... All murderers are not always punished... he forgot to include himself in that quote... much like most people would. If there's a war in your neck of the woods and you say nothing, they you are in that army.
Yes sir. So I guess I must confess that as a stupid brainwashed American teenager of 14, I was likely mute on Vietnam. Then at 15, they assassinated JFK, and some rumbles began in my synapses, so that by 17, I was fucking outraged at this country and far better educated, never to freely call it "my country" again. Should I be on your indicted list? Folks do wake up, after all.
fI you were brainwashed at 14, you were not alone. I don't know what "Synapses" are, and if you were "fucking outraged" at 17, and "far better educated" what woke you up the most?
"Folks do wake up after all" .... Really ? Is that why us folks (humans) are on the brink of nuclear annihilation?
Please enlighten me as to what woke you up ? cause I see darkness all around,
Sorry, John, connections between nerve cells. Two things woke me up. Breaking away from HS pabulum and reading stuff like Zinn's "A People's History"; and also the bodies of some older friends and cousins coming back from 'Nam in flag-draped coffins. Sometimes shock value is required.
And I speak only for myself, certainly not for the majority of my countrymen, nor apparently for most of Western Europe where I hear the beating of even louder drums for war. I wish I could disabuse you of the darkness, but I cannot make any arguments to that effect.
If the polls are to be believed, Americans have woken up. Only 16% of Americans support war with Iran. The politicians aren’t asleep, they’re actively doing what is best for them and their campaign funds, to Hell with their constituents being sent to die. Of course if this becomes a nuclear war they’ll be toast as well.
Just a wish, but I would love to see more "Citizen Journalists" writing. I would like to see something other that paid journalist giving us information. It's like paying for sex. Silly I know, but just an idle wish. ( I know I will be hated as a bigot and asshole, but I get a crick in my neck every time I read a "Jewish" reporter. I know this is wrong, and I feel shitty for even saying it. Forget I said it. It's just that it feels like paying a hooker every time I read a paid - especially Jewish- reported. I am sure this is stupid, but there you have it.
There. Got it off my chest and I will never say it again.
aaron maté, max blumenthal, katie halper,... don't think it is really necessary to read any of the bad stuff. there's really plenty of alternative reporting around, imo. plenty of reporting on how bad the bad reporting is too.
The business of war has been highly profitable for the manufacturers of weapons, uniforms, military equipment and other materiel throughout History. Such manufacturers do not care about which side of any conflict wins or loses as long as one or both of the sides will continue to purchase goods or services from them.
Yes, but the fascist zionist colonial-settler western societies do not agree with you. They LOVE war and especially if they can shoot unarmed civilians. The RoW must be heavily armed, angry, and aggressive if it wants to survive the onslaught of the genocidal western culture and their BS "democracies" and "freedoms".
The first time I heard the phrase ‘Thank you for your Service’ was when Gene Simmons of Kiss visited the troops in Ft Hood in a 2011 episode of Family Jewels. Now I hear it ALL the time - it’s like we were slowly being conditioned to spout off those words every time someone says they served in the military. People never say it to firefighters or police officers, only to military personnel. It’s a subtle way to glorify war.
It's not too subtle. Yet, the treatment of many military families and veterans is inadequate. Many enlisted military personnel cannot afford to support their families. Many businesses discriminate against hiring veterans. The Veterans Administration is underfunded and understaffed.
All military personnel and veterans should receive salaries and lifetime pensions that are at least equal to the salaries of members of Congress. The billionaires and mega-millionaires of the USA can easily afford to show their appreciation for the armed forces by paying the necessary taxes to support such pensions and care for the persons who defend, or defended, their wealth. Otherwise, the USA cannot afford wars.
During the Vietnam War, the mainstream media opposed that war, and movies stars and journalists were telling the public to spit on any American soldier in uniform. Now, we are told to buy them a drink.
I think this was a propaganda stunt. The only incidents I ever heard of where returning soldiers were called "baby killers" took place in venues ripe for filming, such as a publicized returning military plane landing. No one I knew ever denigrated Vietnam vets, and these guys were a part of the hippie/anti-war crowd I hung with in the late 60s. I can't speak for others, but I mostly felt sorry for what they'd endured. I, too, think this was a bullshit myth.
Opposing the Vietnam War had as much effect as buying soldiers a drink today. The Vietnam War lasted for more than 10 years and only stopped after it was determined even a victory-- which was unlikely--- would no longer be cost-efficient. As far as the media was concerned, more than half of it were still supporting the war to the end. Since the draft affected millions of Americans who were against the war, parts of the media felt compelled to give them a voice if they wanted to remain relevant.
The insane war mongers of the West refuse to the accept that with 8 billion people on planet Earth wars are no longer affordable. Not only must we settle our differences through diplomacy we must instill a much higher level of competence in who gets to govern us. The West has become a cesspool of corruptions and fallacious assumptions. Our enemies are not on foreign shores they are within. In the mean time the decline of the West only gains more momentum.
The West is hostage to a war culture controlled and perpetrated by morons whose only loyalties are to power, money, and damn the consequences.
The fundamental requirements to become successful beloved politician in the west is to be corrupt, liar, zionist, warmonger, a$$hole, hypocrite, morally vacuous, and dishonest to the core. Plenty of examples.
The big question is how do we get people with the right stuff into government? There is going to have be massive reform in a lot of Western countries before things get better.
Maybe humanity (I mean mostly western societies) deserves it. Dinosaurs survived for 400 million years and would still be around if it were not for the giant asteroid. Humanity will be lucky if it survives 10,000 years - no asteroid or God required.
Sometimes I feel that way. But then I think of all the beauty of humankind, all the remarkable accomplishments. The beauty of children's laughter. Spending a few days on the beach soaking in the sun. The beauty of a good novel, or a well created film.
And then it's just sad -sad that we are so dominated by a kind of death cult, people in power who lack any empathy for other life, not only other human life, but animal life. Have next to no curiosity about the immense mystery that surrounds them - they just want what they can get and to hell with everything else.
It's just very sad and tragic. All the human lives and money lost to the irrationality and colossal stupidity of war.
We are inherently born to fight or die in a War depending on where we live
I never saw this coming as I feel I have lived in a shelter and only now emerged to put the puzzle together .
Certainly I understand now how Jeremy Corbyn certainly the most popular Leader in the UK Labour Party for years , could not ever have won the Election that would have taken us on a different trajectory to the one we are now on with the Labour Party “plant “ Kier Starmer . Just recalling his mission to destroy JC and most of his Supporters through Anti Semitic Slurs changing the Labour Party into the disaster it now is .
Just the words Anti Semitic tell you why a life long Pro Palestinian Leader could never have followed the way that now finds Israelis in every department of Government and the the Rich Zionists paying for lobbyists and MPs to be PRO ISREAL . That is why the UK lost the most genuine and honest Man in British Politics , whose popularity in the Country with the Young and old alike bringing people back into Labour after it turned Blue under Blair . I swear as a person who doesn’t believe in conspiracy theorists etc that the Election was rigged . How could it not have been ? The amount of Backstabbing behind the scenes was overwhelming and the Former “ Friend and colleague” of Jeremy Corbyn was truly a Paid up Member of the Labour Party Friends of Israel scythed his way through the Party beginning with Jeremy Corbyn . Even prominent former Friends of Palestine UK MPs jumped ship into the Israel Friends of Isreal Party one and all into Kier Starmers “ Labour “ party which is now further Right than the Tory Party in many respects , as he has no Political grounding he has made too many mistakes and is now considering taking us into yet another unpopular unwarranted War against Iran to back a Genocidal State already well on its Way to being destroyed by Netanyahu and the Far Right Zionists murdering hundreds of thousands by bombing , starvation thirst with no sanitation homes or medical Aid while the World watches the Ethnic Cleansing of another Holocaust .
Israel then began a War on Iran without any need or provocation which is in danger of beginning WW3 along with the Top Trump of The World who imagines his personal desires can take place anywhere anytime .
He is destroying America seemingly not knowing where he is and speaks in public as if to his own family , his pronouncements like a King Canute of America or a Star Trek Captain saying “Make it so “
and BOOM - the Countdown to Death for our Planet will begin .
Don't forget that a potential nuclear war didn't start that way.... it started when we human walked out of the forests in which we were living and started competing with each other with wooden club and bows and arrows... mushroom clouds just happen to come later.
It’s mystifying to me, the original post by Caitlin Johnstone and nearly all the comments…except yours. The less crazy ones just talk about how war is a terrible thing, as though it’s optional, and we could avoid it if we just all got along. The more crazy ones get into the far reaches of religious fundamentalism/fanaticism. But you, Mr. Turcot, correctly observe that war isn’t an option for our species. We are animals. We evolved from warring tribes of apes…but only a little. We evolved our human cognition maybe a couple of hundred thousand years ago, a brief flash on the multi-billion-year evolutionary timeline. Our prefrontal cortex is the most recently evolved part of our brain. It was for many centuries an adaptive trait, allowing us to wipe out the other species of evolved hominids and become (in our own view) some kind of apex predator. It allowed us to develop increasingly lethal tools, along with other ever-more-disruptive technologies. But the older lizard sub-brain is still very much in charge. We pretend that our subjectively rational selves (whose function we have near-zero comprehension of) are making the decisions and are capable of riding herd on our ancient animal essence. But that’s bullshit. The tech evolves fast, now exponentially fast. The people don’t evolve much at all. The human cognition that was adaptive 200,000 years ago is proving maladaptive now. Probably half the people in the world wake up every day believing we were magically created in the image of an omnipotent deity. So what we have is hubris. What we desperately need is humility and honesty, both of them quite hard to find among humans. Humility and honesty would at least give us a slim chance to recognize what we are and try to mitigate what we do.
Thank you. much appreciate your input and insights. To complement your rendition of the human hubris that followed us out of our primordial digs, and following his observation of a nuclear bomb test at Los Alamos, Einstein was quoted as saying: "The discovery of the power of the atom has changed everything, SAVE OUR MODE OF THINKING, and we thus drift into unparallelled catastrophe".
We have indeed taken ourselves out of jungle environments, but we did not take the jungle mentality out of our species. What is happening in the world of humanity at the present moment is as pure an example of that mentality as it gets. I'm surprised we have lasted this long before Murphy's Law ran its course. If the climate changes that may be in the pipeline ever materialize, they could represent a double-whammy on the potential existential bucket list of human existence. It reminds me of Tennessee Ernie Ford's song (Sixteen Tons) of a coal miner's threats, when talking about his fists: " If you see me coming better step aside, cause if the right one don't get ya then the left one will"... Enviromental apocalypse or nuclear war. At the present moment of human existence, it's may just be "take your pick".
Your comments were most appreciated and heartfelt. I have been writing a manuscript for decades about our way of life and I believe there is so much more we could have done. Your comments regarding the human condition almost completely mirror my own to the letter. We may still have some kind of chance in changing our way of living but it's much like convincing wolves to act like doves.... It's reading comments like these that offer hope, no matter how fleeting.....
Excellent analyses of recent British politics, Alyson Price. Watching from afar we were buoyed by the mass support for Jeremy Corbyn. It was beautiful to see how the people rallied round him and his ideas. We thought a fresh start at last after " the son of Thatcher " took Labour to the far right.
It was not to be. The Israeli lobby took over weaponising "antisemitism" and good people like Ken Loach ( self-loathing Jew? ) joined Corbyn's fate and was tarred with the antisemitism brush, which now is a powerful weapon of the - bought - ruling class of the West.
"War Is a Racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."
- Smedley D. Butler
__
Remember, MLK did not do a BLACK people's march against the war in Vietnam, he did the POOR people's march.
The ONLY real divide is CLASS divide.
No struggle but class struggle, no war but CLASS war
Poignant use of Smedly Butler’s and MLK’s words Chatter! The billionaire class profits, while “We the Serfs” either die, or find ourselves deeper in a country divided!!
War is absolutely an evil. No doubt, the people who enlist in militaries know this. No doubt, they enlist because they believe in their countries, and their neighbours, and believe they are Good. How awful that these same people, whose ideals are essentially noble, and who were prepared to sacrifice themselves for the Good of their people, are now being asked to sacrifice themselves for Israel. The Great Evil. The Great Threat to Civilisation. The absolute underminer of International Law, and decency. Far from defending their own friends and neighbours, these poor saps are being commanded to participate in a war of land theft, genocide, and religitard ethno-supremacy. All whilst being considered 'subhuman animals' by the people they're being asked to give their lives for, for being the wrong religions, by the scumbag racist holocaust perpetrators whose flag they have exchanged for their own. War is absolutely an evil. When it is being fought by people whose willingness to die for noble human values - which absolutely exclude those of the contemptible flag they have been ordered to wave - and who certainly never signed up to fight for racism anyway, it becomes unspeakably disgusting.
It is, or was once, considered 'noble' to be willing to risk your own life to protect friends, neighbours, and even the merely oppressed. Pro patria mori, and all that. A willingness to sacrifice oneself for others does not, to the extent it was ever noble, become less so because AIPAC has spent decades lying about who the enemy actually is. If it is true that Americans join the military for racist, hate-filled reasons, we should be desperately sad that their money-grubbing government members made them so vulnerable to racist propaganda. Though stupidly, their nobility lies in believing they thought they were dong 'a right thing'. A 'Good Thing'. Even 'An Admirable Thing'. It'll no doubt dawn slowly, but the discovery that they're being sent to sacrifice themselves for the selfish good of an openly genocidal gang of religitard land thieving racists, instead of the country they actually enlisted to kill for, must come as a bit of a shock. They will be flying the flag of the greatest evil on earth. The values they'll be fighting to defend will be the evilest on earth. They will be, instead of the admirable fighters for goodness and liberty they thought they would be, fighters for land theft, and oppression, and colonial brutality. Israel is the nation of videotaped anal gang rape, in specially-built torture centres - often to death. Whatever the ideals of recruits in America or anywhere else might be, only Israelis sign up expressly to do evil. And, if there really are Americans who signed up just to kill 'sand n*****s' then, for once, the Israeli categorisation of everyone who isn't Jewish is accurate. They really are 'subhuman animals'.
"War is absolutely an evil. No doubt, the people who enlist in militaries know this."......... The majority who enlist in the military do not know that. The rest either don't care, or have been indoctrinated to believe they are doing something patriotic.
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished, unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” --Attributed to Voltaire
I love this quote
Voltaire was a wicked freemason. Freemason do come up with some good sounding quotes... like their father, the father of lies.
Freemasons and commies are the worst of the worst. they stole Vatican in 1958
commie here, ty.
I am very sorry, and Communism is condemned by Holy Mother Church. the only thing it did was give benefits to a few while murdering hundreds of millions. And legalizing abortion in 1917... for which many will go to hell.
The fact that you can utter "Holy Mother Church." is just so so illustrative. You must mean, "Corrupt Robber, Illusion-Peddler, Kiddie-Diddler Church No?
Hell is what the ego makes of the present moment.
Illusion peddler? you mean Salvation of souls?
people who say this are profoundly lazy in examing whether Jesus is God and whether He founded the Catholic Church.
research it now, before your eternity
so she is Holy Mother Church. She is sole and unique means to salvation. Outside of her, there is no salvation….
you really need to think a bit… this is all logic and observable facts.
on corruption… I live in Tx. My Priest flies from Ohio to Austin to offer Holy Sacrifice of the MAss, give us sacraments, give us counseling and contact. usually about 40 of us.
There is not a resident Catholic Priest in Tx. Great Apostasy.
how much do you think this greedy corrupt Priest makes? Or maybe he loses money? I think he is a living Saint
so 1958 we lost Vatican.
Rape of children and vile coverup of this became huge in 1970s. When our enemies controlled Vatican, chanceries, parishes.
Did they enjoy these wicked crimes occurring on vast scale, and their mortal enemies, Catholic Church, being blamed ? I think so.
If you are serious about disgust of rape of children you need to look into this.
Listen here, John. I was a fucking altar boy for a couple years and had a young priest try to put his hand on my genitals. The diocese ignored this man. I was a microsecond from breaking his face. The Church hierarchy is corrupt top to bottom. End of fucking story. That's my final -- and deeply personal -- response to your feeble attempts at this redemptive bullshit.
this has become a kind of a proverb among tankies. 'ask a liberal or conservative what's wrong with communism and they immediately start to describe capitalism'. what you're describing is now under capitalism: giving benefits to a few (there's no commie billionaires) and murdering hundreds of millions (by sheer waste, uneven distribution and warmongering), all under the watchful eye of holy mother church.
Under the watchful eye of Holy Mother Church... what a nasty and dishonest comment. The Catholic Church has condemned publically communism, nazism, socialism, freemasonry.
Pope Pius XII condemned coerceed medical expirementation . But people would like to hate on the Catholic Church and thus relished, it seemed, when false pope francis coerced it
The pitiful on substack would take no heed of my posting of Pius XiI.
Better to hate on Catholic Church
The taxation at Federal level is grossly unjust, and I have brilliant sermons on this… by Catholic Priests.
There are extraordinarily wealthy commies - if you deny this, you should be dismissed as ignorant or a liat.
The Catholic Church preaches the Just War Theory. She wants peace while in some narrow cases, war must be tolerated. (Czechs and Poles had a right to defend themselves against Nazis. You agree?)
I guess you have not read what I probably have said many times, the Catholic Church lost the Vatican in 1958 to her enemies, we are without a pope etc, and are in eclipse. I bet less than 5% on this thread can even name a Catholic or a local Catholic institution (Church, seminary etc ). We have no hospitals or colleges in USA , probably none in the world, except for seminiaries…
The Catholic Church’s condemnation of communism is not an endorsement of capitalis: https://novusordowatch.org/2021/02/brief-catholic-critique-of-communism/
of course it is. its endorsement of capitalism is the only reason why it is allowed to exist.
Unfortunately, that is an admission you're supposed to apologize for in the US, But please don't ever do so, Martin.
commies want a worker's paradise they say, spread all over the world.
Please compare with WEF, other secret societies, NWO - if you win, people can thank you know for helping bring in a HELL ON EARTH.
you don't think top commies give a damn about feeding anyone...I hope you are not that naive.
Same goes for any human-led institution, including church.
Nothing's final, everything is in motion and constant struggle. As soon as you fall asleep you're taken advantage of.
Jesus founded Catholic Church and made astounding promises to it.
We have no Pope, no cardinals , no bishops with ordinary juristdiction.
So we have no human leader at this pt, 67 yrs
sede groups do fight much because we have no Pope.
But Jesus is protecting remnant Catholic Church.
you're probably not a worker since you're opposing a worker's paradise all over the world? commies differ from the wef in that we strive to own the means of production (it all) and be happy instead of 'owning nothing and being happy' (wef likes your kind very much, commies ... not so). commies generally understand that the fearmongering about a future 'new world order' mainly comes from the present 'old world order', the existing world government of blackrock and vanguard, billionaires and old colonial fortunes whose biggest fear is that they'll one day will have to clean their own toilet. i know only of a 'top commie' (marxist vijay prashad) that regularly points out that the world produces enough food to feed 11 billion people and while we're 8 billion, people starve. top commies are the only ones who give a damn about feeding everyone. i'm not naive enough to believe that you would care about feeding anyone, lest they'd start to believe they're in a 'worker's paradise'.
top Commies like Lenin, Stalin and Mao? teddy bears . I am not defending capitalism, or endless wars in any sense.
It won’t be a worker’s paradise! My gosh you actually believe this.
It will be a totalitarian state that makes all others look like a summer picnic
"my gosh you actually believe this." :-).
For two cents, I'd piss on the Vatican. We have different values, quite obviously.
well, Vatican is controlleed by freemasonry and commies… that is why Catholic Church is almost dead and world is in freefall
Where's God in all this?
God is allowing this chastistement. What has happened in the past, there will be a glorious exaltation as the Catholic Church gets a Pope.
What has been prophesized is the Great Age of Mary, Triumph of Immaculate Heat of Mary, Social Kingship of Jesus Christ...
Currently this is hte Passion of the Catholic Church.... she will suffer what her Founder, Jesus suffered... except death.
So like the Resurrection, the Church will be exalted... and the world will benefit beyond words...
The world is in a freefall because hte Catholic Church is in eclipse, almost dead
*Doctors give drugs of which they know little, into bodies, of which they know less,
for diseases of which they know nothing at all.*
Voltaire
That quote is worth the price of admission and could not be more true even a few hundred years later.
i DID NOT MEAN TO RESTACK YOURS!
satan has to give some truth, just like controlled opposition, spies, sabatuers.
Voltaire looks good on this. He still was a freemason… bloody French Revolution has his name all over it. Murdering many, many inncents.
Where is he now?
Maybe Voltaire was only partially correct.... All murderers are not always punished... he forgot to include himself in that quote... much like most people would. If there's a war in your neck of the woods and you say nothing, they you are in that army.
Yes sir. So I guess I must confess that as a stupid brainwashed American teenager of 14, I was likely mute on Vietnam. Then at 15, they assassinated JFK, and some rumbles began in my synapses, so that by 17, I was fucking outraged at this country and far better educated, never to freely call it "my country" again. Should I be on your indicted list? Folks do wake up, after all.
Vin, I
fI you were brainwashed at 14, you were not alone. I don't know what "Synapses" are, and if you were "fucking outraged" at 17, and "far better educated" what woke you up the most?
"Folks do wake up after all" .... Really ? Is that why us folks (humans) are on the brink of nuclear annihilation?
Please enlighten me as to what woke you up ? cause I see darkness all around,
,
Sorry, John, connections between nerve cells. Two things woke me up. Breaking away from HS pabulum and reading stuff like Zinn's "A People's History"; and also the bodies of some older friends and cousins coming back from 'Nam in flag-draped coffins. Sometimes shock value is required.
And I speak only for myself, certainly not for the majority of my countrymen, nor apparently for most of Western Europe where I hear the beating of even louder drums for war. I wish I could disabuse you of the darkness, but I cannot make any arguments to that effect.
If the polls are to be believed, Americans have woken up. Only 16% of Americans support war with Iran. The politicians aren’t asleep, they’re actively doing what is best for them and their campaign funds, to Hell with their constituents being sent to die. Of course if this becomes a nuclear war they’ll be toast as well.
Well, the maniacs just dropped bunker busters on Iran's nuclear sites, for no good reasons whatsoever. Cross fingers.
Wow! Just Wow! Such absolute truths! Thank you! 🙏
Crash the propaganda media. Maybe then we can get some truth!
Protest outside Mainstream Media Offices and TV Stations.
Protestations against mainstream media is difficult. We can and have to stay out of it. Create ours.
No both. Protest against MSM and create new alternate fact-based media. Drown the fascist western MSM.
Rubbish!
Are you British ?
No. Are you?
"Create ours" ??? Not sure I get it ??
Just a wish, but I would love to see more "Citizen Journalists" writing. I would like to see something other that paid journalist giving us information. It's like paying for sex. Silly I know, but just an idle wish. ( I know I will be hated as a bigot and asshole, but I get a crick in my neck every time I read a "Jewish" reporter. I know this is wrong, and I feel shitty for even saying it. Forget I said it. It's just that it feels like paying a hooker every time I read a paid - especially Jewish- reported. I am sure this is stupid, but there you have it.
There. Got it off my chest and I will never say it again.
Harry,
I couldn't agree more.... As I wrote a few days ago, every letter in the word 'liars' can be found in the word ISRAEL.... Karma maybe ??
aaron maté, max blumenthal, katie halper,... don't think it is really necessary to read any of the bad stuff. there's really plenty of alternative reporting around, imo. plenty of reporting on how bad the bad reporting is too.
Harry Ziboo says it perfectly, here beneath.
"Protest outside Mainstream Media Offices and TV Stations." yes, but don't' forget to protest near your own back yards.
War should be obsolete. It serves no purpose. Disputes between countries should be solved peacefully.
The business of war has been highly profitable for the manufacturers of weapons, uniforms, military equipment and other materiel throughout History. Such manufacturers do not care about which side of any conflict wins or loses as long as one or both of the sides will continue to purchase goods or services from them.
War is endemic to the species... and "peacefully" is notably a no-show within most governmental institutions.
Yes, but the fascist zionist colonial-settler western societies do not agree with you. They LOVE war and especially if they can shoot unarmed civilians. The RoW must be heavily armed, angry, and aggressive if it wants to survive the onslaught of the genocidal western culture and their BS "democracies" and "freedoms".
The first time I heard the phrase ‘Thank you for your Service’ was when Gene Simmons of Kiss visited the troops in Ft Hood in a 2011 episode of Family Jewels. Now I hear it ALL the time - it’s like we were slowly being conditioned to spout off those words every time someone says they served in the military. People never say it to firefighters or police officers, only to military personnel. It’s a subtle way to glorify war.
It's not too subtle. Yet, the treatment of many military families and veterans is inadequate. Many enlisted military personnel cannot afford to support their families. Many businesses discriminate against hiring veterans. The Veterans Administration is underfunded and understaffed.
All military personnel and veterans should receive salaries and lifetime pensions that are at least equal to the salaries of members of Congress. The billionaires and mega-millionaires of the USA can easily afford to show their appreciation for the armed forces by paying the necessary taxes to support such pensions and care for the persons who defend, or defended, their wealth. Otherwise, the USA cannot afford wars.
Agreed!
During the Vietnam War, the mainstream media opposed that war, and movies stars and journalists were telling the public to spit on any American soldier in uniform. Now, we are told to buy them a drink.
Bullshit.
I NEVER knew anyone returning from Nam who was spit on, and I knew plenty.
We were happy to have them returning at all. @ Mois 78
I think this was a propaganda stunt. The only incidents I ever heard of where returning soldiers were called "baby killers" took place in venues ripe for filming, such as a publicized returning military plane landing. No one I knew ever denigrated Vietnam vets, and these guys were a part of the hippie/anti-war crowd I hung with in the late 60s. I can't speak for others, but I mostly felt sorry for what they'd endured. I, too, think this was a bullshit myth.
Couldn’t agree more Marci.
Opposing the Vietnam War had as much effect as buying soldiers a drink today. The Vietnam War lasted for more than 10 years and only stopped after it was determined even a victory-- which was unlikely--- would no longer be cost-efficient. As far as the media was concerned, more than half of it were still supporting the war to the end. Since the draft affected millions of Americans who were against the war, parts of the media felt compelled to give them a voice if they wanted to remain relevant.
My favorite was if you can’t get behind the troops then get in front of them.
I forget who said it, but it bears repeating: “War is the ultimate failure of the human spirit.”
: “War is the ultimate failure of the human spirit.” Whoever said it knew the species.
The insane war mongers of the West refuse to the accept that with 8 billion people on planet Earth wars are no longer affordable. Not only must we settle our differences through diplomacy we must instill a much higher level of competence in who gets to govern us. The West has become a cesspool of corruptions and fallacious assumptions. Our enemies are not on foreign shores they are within. In the mean time the decline of the West only gains more momentum.
The West is hostage to a war culture controlled and perpetrated by morons whose only loyalties are to power, money, and damn the consequences.
Hi Robert
“We have met the enemy and it is us”
—-Pogo
The fundamental requirements to become successful beloved politician in the west is to be corrupt, liar, zionist, warmonger, a$$hole, hypocrite, morally vacuous, and dishonest to the core. Plenty of examples.
The big question is how do we get people with the right stuff into government? There is going to have be massive reform in a lot of Western countries before things get better.
This is a very moving post. Thank you once more.
Thanks, Caitlin!
The USA just bombed Iran 🇮🇷
“Giant tar pits of inertia.” Perfect description of Congress today while Trump rolls out his war against the American people and the world.
Thank you, for a little bit of common sense - very rare or entirely missing from mainstream media
War will make corpses of us all.
Maybe humanity (I mean mostly western societies) deserves it. Dinosaurs survived for 400 million years and would still be around if it were not for the giant asteroid. Humanity will be lucky if it survives 10,000 years - no asteroid or God required.
Sometimes I feel that way. But then I think of all the beauty of humankind, all the remarkable accomplishments. The beauty of children's laughter. Spending a few days on the beach soaking in the sun. The beauty of a good novel, or a well created film.
And then it's just sad -sad that we are so dominated by a kind of death cult, people in power who lack any empathy for other life, not only other human life, but animal life. Have next to no curiosity about the immense mystery that surrounds them - they just want what they can get and to hell with everything else.
It's just very sad and tragic. All the human lives and money lost to the irrationality and colossal stupidity of war.
What a true and honest piece of work
We are inherently born to fight or die in a War depending on where we live
I never saw this coming as I feel I have lived in a shelter and only now emerged to put the puzzle together .
Certainly I understand now how Jeremy Corbyn certainly the most popular Leader in the UK Labour Party for years , could not ever have won the Election that would have taken us on a different trajectory to the one we are now on with the Labour Party “plant “ Kier Starmer . Just recalling his mission to destroy JC and most of his Supporters through Anti Semitic Slurs changing the Labour Party into the disaster it now is .
Just the words Anti Semitic tell you why a life long Pro Palestinian Leader could never have followed the way that now finds Israelis in every department of Government and the the Rich Zionists paying for lobbyists and MPs to be PRO ISREAL . That is why the UK lost the most genuine and honest Man in British Politics , whose popularity in the Country with the Young and old alike bringing people back into Labour after it turned Blue under Blair . I swear as a person who doesn’t believe in conspiracy theorists etc that the Election was rigged . How could it not have been ? The amount of Backstabbing behind the scenes was overwhelming and the Former “ Friend and colleague” of Jeremy Corbyn was truly a Paid up Member of the Labour Party Friends of Israel scythed his way through the Party beginning with Jeremy Corbyn . Even prominent former Friends of Palestine UK MPs jumped ship into the Israel Friends of Isreal Party one and all into Kier Starmers “ Labour “ party which is now further Right than the Tory Party in many respects , as he has no Political grounding he has made too many mistakes and is now considering taking us into yet another unpopular unwarranted War against Iran to back a Genocidal State already well on its Way to being destroyed by Netanyahu and the Far Right Zionists murdering hundreds of thousands by bombing , starvation thirst with no sanitation homes or medical Aid while the World watches the Ethnic Cleansing of another Holocaust .
Israel then began a War on Iran without any need or provocation which is in danger of beginning WW3 along with the Top Trump of The World who imagines his personal desires can take place anywhere anytime .
He is destroying America seemingly not knowing where he is and speaks in public as if to his own family , his pronouncements like a King Canute of America or a Star Trek Captain saying “Make it so “
and BOOM - the Countdown to Death for our Planet will begin .
Don't forget that a potential nuclear war didn't start that way.... it started when we human walked out of the forests in which we were living and started competing with each other with wooden club and bows and arrows... mushroom clouds just happen to come later.
It’s mystifying to me, the original post by Caitlin Johnstone and nearly all the comments…except yours. The less crazy ones just talk about how war is a terrible thing, as though it’s optional, and we could avoid it if we just all got along. The more crazy ones get into the far reaches of religious fundamentalism/fanaticism. But you, Mr. Turcot, correctly observe that war isn’t an option for our species. We are animals. We evolved from warring tribes of apes…but only a little. We evolved our human cognition maybe a couple of hundred thousand years ago, a brief flash on the multi-billion-year evolutionary timeline. Our prefrontal cortex is the most recently evolved part of our brain. It was for many centuries an adaptive trait, allowing us to wipe out the other species of evolved hominids and become (in our own view) some kind of apex predator. It allowed us to develop increasingly lethal tools, along with other ever-more-disruptive technologies. But the older lizard sub-brain is still very much in charge. We pretend that our subjectively rational selves (whose function we have near-zero comprehension of) are making the decisions and are capable of riding herd on our ancient animal essence. But that’s bullshit. The tech evolves fast, now exponentially fast. The people don’t evolve much at all. The human cognition that was adaptive 200,000 years ago is proving maladaptive now. Probably half the people in the world wake up every day believing we were magically created in the image of an omnipotent deity. So what we have is hubris. What we desperately need is humility and honesty, both of them quite hard to find among humans. Humility and honesty would at least give us a slim chance to recognize what we are and try to mitigate what we do.
Thank you. much appreciate your input and insights. To complement your rendition of the human hubris that followed us out of our primordial digs, and following his observation of a nuclear bomb test at Los Alamos, Einstein was quoted as saying: "The discovery of the power of the atom has changed everything, SAVE OUR MODE OF THINKING, and we thus drift into unparallelled catastrophe".
We have indeed taken ourselves out of jungle environments, but we did not take the jungle mentality out of our species. What is happening in the world of humanity at the present moment is as pure an example of that mentality as it gets. I'm surprised we have lasted this long before Murphy's Law ran its course. If the climate changes that may be in the pipeline ever materialize, they could represent a double-whammy on the potential existential bucket list of human existence. It reminds me of Tennessee Ernie Ford's song (Sixteen Tons) of a coal miner's threats, when talking about his fists: " If you see me coming better step aside, cause if the right one don't get ya then the left one will"... Enviromental apocalypse or nuclear war. At the present moment of human existence, it's may just be "take your pick".
Your comments were most appreciated and heartfelt. I have been writing a manuscript for decades about our way of life and I believe there is so much more we could have done. Your comments regarding the human condition almost completely mirror my own to the letter. We may still have some kind of chance in changing our way of living but it's much like convincing wolves to act like doves.... It's reading comments like these that offer hope, no matter how fleeting.....
Excellent analyses of recent British politics, Alyson Price. Watching from afar we were buoyed by the mass support for Jeremy Corbyn. It was beautiful to see how the people rallied round him and his ideas. We thought a fresh start at last after " the son of Thatcher " took Labour to the far right.
It was not to be. The Israeli lobby took over weaponising "antisemitism" and good people like Ken Loach ( self-loathing Jew? ) joined Corbyn's fate and was tarred with the antisemitism brush, which now is a powerful weapon of the - bought - ruling class of the West.
We’re being led into war by monsters!
"We’re being led into war by monsters!" But be careful not to become one...
"When the rich make war, it’s the poor that die."
– Jean-Paul Sartre
___
"War Is a Racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."
- Smedley D. Butler
__
Remember, MLK did not do a BLACK people's march against the war in Vietnam, he did the POOR people's march.
The ONLY real divide is CLASS divide.
No struggle but class struggle, no war but CLASS war
Poignant use of Smedly Butler’s and MLK’s words Chatter! The billionaire class profits, while “We the Serfs” either die, or find ourselves deeper in a country divided!!
War is absolutely an evil. No doubt, the people who enlist in militaries know this. No doubt, they enlist because they believe in their countries, and their neighbours, and believe they are Good. How awful that these same people, whose ideals are essentially noble, and who were prepared to sacrifice themselves for the Good of their people, are now being asked to sacrifice themselves for Israel. The Great Evil. The Great Threat to Civilisation. The absolute underminer of International Law, and decency. Far from defending their own friends and neighbours, these poor saps are being commanded to participate in a war of land theft, genocide, and religitard ethno-supremacy. All whilst being considered 'subhuman animals' by the people they're being asked to give their lives for, for being the wrong religions, by the scumbag racist holocaust perpetrators whose flag they have exchanged for their own. War is absolutely an evil. When it is being fought by people whose willingness to die for noble human values - which absolutely exclude those of the contemptible flag they have been ordered to wave - and who certainly never signed up to fight for racism anyway, it becomes unspeakably disgusting.
Rod:
Must a disagree with your assessment that Amerikkkans who enlisted did so for “noble means”.
Following 9/11 (INSIDE JOB) young men joined the service in droves because they wanted to killed “ragheads and sand n*****s”.
WTF IS “noble” about that?
Trouble is, they were lied to about that as well. Iraq - weapons of mass destruction anyone?
False flags are nearly always the menacing message to further the agenda of saber rattling warlords!!
NO.
They were pissed about the false flag that was 9/11.
It is, or was once, considered 'noble' to be willing to risk your own life to protect friends, neighbours, and even the merely oppressed. Pro patria mori, and all that. A willingness to sacrifice oneself for others does not, to the extent it was ever noble, become less so because AIPAC has spent decades lying about who the enemy actually is. If it is true that Americans join the military for racist, hate-filled reasons, we should be desperately sad that their money-grubbing government members made them so vulnerable to racist propaganda. Though stupidly, their nobility lies in believing they thought they were dong 'a right thing'. A 'Good Thing'. Even 'An Admirable Thing'. It'll no doubt dawn slowly, but the discovery that they're being sent to sacrifice themselves for the selfish good of an openly genocidal gang of religitard land thieving racists, instead of the country they actually enlisted to kill for, must come as a bit of a shock. They will be flying the flag of the greatest evil on earth. The values they'll be fighting to defend will be the evilest on earth. They will be, instead of the admirable fighters for goodness and liberty they thought they would be, fighters for land theft, and oppression, and colonial brutality. Israel is the nation of videotaped anal gang rape, in specially-built torture centres - often to death. Whatever the ideals of recruits in America or anywhere else might be, only Israelis sign up expressly to do evil. And, if there really are Americans who signed up just to kill 'sand n*****s' then, for once, the Israeli categorisation of everyone who isn't Jewish is accurate. They really are 'subhuman animals'.
Rod Dawson, Have you seen Stanley Kubrick's " Full Metal Jacket"? Armies are trained to kill, specially invading ones.
I recall Mohamed Ali's words in refusing to enlist: " No Vietcong ever called me a nigger...".
Noble.What a load of bullshit . They are kids that are manipulated and brain washed. USA again leading it's young people on a path to death and misery
We need the good people there to stand up and be counted . The world's existence depends on the courage of Americans saying No More Wars.
👍👍👍
"War is absolutely an evil. No doubt, the people who enlist in militaries know this."......... The majority who enlist in the military do not know that. The rest either don't care, or have been indoctrinated to believe they are doing something patriotic.