106 Comments
User's avatar
gypsy33's avatar
3hEdited

Ah ha ha ha. And some people believe we can achieve this without a revolution involving firearms.

Do y’all wanna live on your knees or die on your feet?

ChatterX's avatar

The main problem in the U.S. is the unshakable belief of ordinary Americans that the benefits of the "rule of the elite" will "trickle down" to everyone.

They are conditioned to believe that wealth is magically created by the "elite" because the elite knows how to manage capital and it is better to have the crumbs than nothing. Americans at large fail to understand that that most of the wealth of the "elite" is extracted from the working ppl all over the world, including Americans themselves, and the crumbs they enjoy are only an insignificant percentage of what has been taken.

Americans are having REALLY hard time realizing they have been exploited like cattle by their own "Elite".

***

youtu.be/0V71NSM3A1A?t=110

youtube.com/shorts/ox7Qh_N8LwQ

Chuck Nasmith's avatar

Don't let them kill kids for the Epstein Class. Blowback is not a Beach.

ChatterX's avatar

"Our real enemies are not those living in a distant land whose names or policies we don’t understand; The real enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it’s profitable, the insurance companies who deny us health care when it’s profitable, the banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable. Our enemies are not 5000 miles away. They are right here at home."

"The Real Terrorist Was Me"

- Michael Prysner, U.S. Army veteran

Chuck Nasmith's avatar

When will the USA troops do an About Face to stop Machine?

ChatterX's avatar

"Once large numbers of U.S. troops are committed to direct combat, they will begin to take heavy casualties in a war they are ill-equipped to fight in a non-cooperative if not downright hostile countryside. Once we suffer large casualties, we will have started a well-nigh irreversible process.

Our involvement will be so great that we cannot - without national humiliation - stop short of achieving our complete objectives. Of the two possibilities I think humiliation would be more likely than the achievement of our objectives - even after we have paid terrible costs."

-George Ball, Undersecretary of State, Confidential Memo to President Johnson on Vietnam War. July 1, 1965

***

www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~ppennock/doc-George%20Ball.htm

Feral Finster's avatar

What ended the Vietnam 3wsd not the protests. Those were manageable.

What ended the war was the breakdown in army discipline, which began in earnest in around 1970 in units stationed in-country and started to spread rapidly to Marine units and units outside the theater.

That put a scare into the generals.

Feral Finster's avatar

You are absolutely right, but the left are terrified of guns and prefer to dissipate their energies on word games, Wokemon contests, and endless struggle sessions over minor PC violations.

jamenta's avatar
1hEdited

Well also Bethseda's latest DLC release for Starfield, which was atrocious.

Veronica Baker's avatar

Brilliant idea, when those prepared to do something and go forward, everyone find someone strong who they know is into gaming, go grab their 🎮 and they'll chase you all into battle and bump up the numbers.

Veronica Baker's avatar

Use your imagination, cats are wise and have to work out how to get certain creatures into the open, nicking their games controller to get them to chase you isn't so different.

jamenta's avatar
2hEdited

Listening to Chris Hedges yesterday doing a Q&A in his library (Chris lives in a library), he talked about (I paraphrase here since I don't have an eidetic memory) - that because humans throughout our entire history have always had a certain percentage of "human predators" that feed upon and exploit other humans (slave owners, business exploiters, corrupt politicians) and could really care less about the fate of humanity, and are pathologically focused on their own lives and own self-serving ends - that a civilized free society must maintain a system of laws and regulations to control these psychopathic predators, or else, as Caitlin writes so well here, they become the plantation slave owners and abusers of an entire society.

Trump is the epitome of such a predator. No respect for the laws of the US. No interest in the fate of humanity. More interested in making money for his billionaire friends (every week the stock market closes) rather than ending the several raging wars in the world.

And let us not forget, we would not have ended up with Trump if it weren't for the pathological corruption of the Democratic party as well.

Joy in HK fiFP's avatar

The Uniparty is always successful. Until it isn't.

jamenta's avatar
44mEdited

Yes - and all those blue no matter who folks, until it finally sinks in - that both parties supported a heinous genocide where 10s of thousands of children were butchered for no other reason than an Israeli land grab - Americans will just keep on getting more Trumps in the future.

It's a point that needs to be driven home often: we have a corrupt Uniparty that commits genocide, has maintained mass surveillance on all Americans, and only serves the Oligarchs in this country. The electoral process is a rigged scam.

Change is going to have to come from Americans organizing themselves in Unions etc.- it's not going to come from the two corrupt political parties - that are doing diddley squat for ordinary Americans.

Paul Vonharnish's avatar

Heh, heh... It's hard to hold a taco in one hand, whilst shooting with the other...

gypsy33's avatar

Or a Big Mac.

Ahenobarbus's avatar

If only it just required a group of people with firearms... Yes, force is required but the organization and orientation of that force is primary. In other words, we require a revolutionary party. People with guns and no political orientation, leadership, discipline, plan or class consciousness would just serve up another tagedy. We don't need new martyrs. We have plenty now. We need an organization that can actually take power from the tiny Zio Imperialist ruling class. Hint: we do all the work to make their society run.

Veronica Baker's avatar

Pitchforks are a grand implement with well sharpened points, if you live in a country like mine with no guns. They also have a good long reach.

dacoelec's avatar

The problem with that is the people that rule you have guns.

Veronica Baker's avatar

True, but people in the past in England didn't have guns either, only the monied people could afford them, so it really was things like pitchforks, laying tripwires for the horses, little things like that. Okay no soldiers on horses going to take us out like in the last successful revolution, so my mind thinks to things like spike strips, potatoes up the exhaust pipes, holes that look like solid ground. No one said it was going to be easy.

gypsy33's avatar

Veronica: I believe you and I may have been burned at the stake together at one point 😉

Veronica Baker's avatar

😆 Once burnt, twice shy in our case it would seem. Why do I get this feeling my sister in arms is adding a pitchfork to have handy.

gypsy33's avatar

Veronica, as a horse owner I have pitchforks to spare and am willing to loan some out 😁

Ismaele's avatar
3hEdited

Well said! I recently urged Americans to do something about it:

https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/christians-living-in-iran-oppose

Trump (and his ilk*) may have temporarily stepped back from his recent threat of terminating Iranian civilization, but he can still bring the world to the brink of a World War. It's high time for a revolution in the West!

* It is not just Trump: he is just a puppet, as any US President before him. It's a whole global class, the Epstein class. If it was just a matter of one crazy President, we would have never arrived at this point and either US Congressmen or US Generals would have stopped this madness - instead Dems and Reps keep playing kabuki theatre at the Congress and US Generals and troops keep executing orders coming allegedly from above. The people need to take their matter in their own hands!

ChatterX's avatar

It’s a gangster. It has been called a gangster state, for just such reasons. And other countries are afraid of what the United States can do, not only under Trump, but what it has been doing for the last 50 years. It is simply confiscating, and destabilizing, and overthrowing.

The US has basically declared war against any attempt to create an international trade and investment system that the Alglo-murican Oligarchy does not control, in its own self-interest, wanting all of the earnings from it, all of the revenue from it, not just part of it.

It’s a greedy empire.

Ismaele's avatar

That's why Karl Sanchez and I call it "the Outlaw US Empire".

ChatterX's avatar

"The wealth that's extracted from Imperialism goes into the coffers of the select few, whereas the costs of empire are paid out of the common treasure of the people."

-Thorstein Veblen, 1906

***

youtube.com/shorts/w5jxUYkXQZU

youtube.com/shorts/Ms9MXILqsK4

ChatterX's avatar

"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 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, U.S. Marine Corps general, two time Medal of Honor recipient

Ismaele's avatar
2hEdited

At least, centuries ago kings and/or their sons would go to war and lead their armies in the battlefields, putting their own lives at risk: there are plenty of cases of kings and high-ranking generals who were killed or captured in war.

Now it's allegedly "democratically-elected" Presidents and Prime Ministers who wage war against billions of innocent civilians from the comfort of their armchair. I bet they wouldn't do that, if they had ever fought in a war or if they (and/or their children) were forced to go and lead their armies in the battlefield!

Veronica Baker's avatar

The Danish King is the only one I've known to do what all other soldiers do no matter how hard or dangerous. Unlike the Royals here if they join the army or navy in England, the one common complaint by soldiers who have to have them in their unit is that the others have to protect them first, plus a whole host of other privileges they expect. The Danish King has done two separate stints out on the two man dog sledges they take out for six months without expecting food drops or someone checking on them.

Veronica Baker's avatar

I think it's a case of pretending to back from any threats he's made, it's the stock markets he's playing and giving a heads up to some of his capitalist friends so they can play it too. It's always about the money.

Ismaele's avatar

Yes, that's for sure, but the war has not ended. We are just going through a ceasefire expiring in a matter of days and, as things currently stand, I do not see any extension, actually... it may get ugly (if not uglier!) once again, considering that the USS George H. W. Bush aircraft carrier strike group is on its way towards Iran and is expected to arrive there just when the truce expires!

In addition to the above, earlier today IRGC Major General Naqdi said on Iranian national TV that... "It may be that if the war continues, it’ll become a world war" (source: https://t.me/Middle_East_Spectator/31158)

Veronica Baker's avatar

I know, but for Trump it still makes the stock markets shift rapidly. Like Strait of Hormuz open, up they go, because USA didn't remove their blockade and Iran has once more closed the Strait, they'll go down again.

ennui_mcgee's avatar

It won't happen. This idea of revolution is a fever dream. Not because ppl are too scared or too stupid, though there is some of that. It's because we insist on maintaining a fucked up relationship with our own ideas as individuals and nothing in western history has ever taught us to do otherwise.

jamenta's avatar
2hEdited

I don't know. You're already seeing warehouses starting to burn down. Americans now are routinely having to pay over $100 bucks to fill up their gas tanks. There has been no relief from the healthcare industry in the US which is obviously a predatory profit making pariah upon the American people. More and more Americans can barely even afford the housing they live in, from rentals to homes - even while there is an estimated 30+ million vacate homes year round in the US - owned by the top 1%. More Millennials are fed up than ever before - the American dream of just owning a home, a garage, raising two kids, and having a secure job - is pretty much dead now - for a good number of Millennials.

We see more than ever the ruling Wealth class tighten its grip with classic Totalitarian rule - such as the emergence of ICE, and the continued resolutions of mass surveillance via FISA. Both obviously Unconstitutional ongoing power grabs. We see now war abroad become a norm without any real input from the American people.

Cracks are beginning to form everywhere. There will be Americans who will fight back. And there will be anti-establishment leaders that will arise. There will also likely be blood in the streets (eventually). How and when, who knows. But ordinary Americans are beginning to wake up to the fact that they are living in an oppressive, corrupt State - that no longer gives a flying fuck about them, or their children.

Veronica Baker's avatar

That's why you have to do it the right way and not expect a social media post to call a revolution into being. One individual talks to another individual, those two become three, four, five and so on. Only individuals coming together in that way can get together a trusted fighting force of thousands and it doesn't take as long as you may think. If every one is bringing in another one, it's like a wave turning into a tsunami, but like anything else, if you're not prepared as individuals to be dedicated to the cause, forget it.

John Turcot's avatar

Sometimes the tyrants are us. When we deny each other a right to live and shelter ourselves, we are the tyrants. If we threaten each other by eviction if we don’t pay our pipers, we are the tyrants.

Paul Vonharnish's avatar

Hello John Turcot. Indeed, we are the champions... The administrative classes have promoted themselves into every nook and cranny of existence. I call these persons: "Administrative twats". You can put lipstick on a pig. But it's still a pig...

John Turcot's avatar

Who writes the by-laws about what to do about homeless encampments? The rich, or the 99%?

Veronica Baker's avatar

At the same time, how many of the 99% protest against those laws, or as they sit in their house and hear the latest gumpf being told them, do they give a sigh of relief inside and think thank goodness I won't have to feel that tinge of guilt about anyone who could do with my spare change.

John Turcot's avatar

“How many of the 99% protest against these laws?”

Exactly!

John Turcot's avatar

Exactly! The trouble with democracy is that it sometimes shows what people want. Trump and his ilk were not elected by Romulans from the planet Zork.

jamenta's avatar

Well, what choice were the American people given via "election"?

1) Romulans from the planet Zork (Republicans)

2) Klingons from the planet Zirk (Democrats)

And that was it. Well Americans had the Klingons under Uncle Joe Biden and didn't seem too happy about it. Everything was till getting worse - from FISA to Genocide.

I think Caitlin even mentions it here in this post, that the electoral process itself has been hijacked by these human predators.

How can you blame the slave working in the fields for his own slavery when he's only given two choices to represent him? And both those choices are either the Romulans or the Klingons?

John Turcot's avatar

Jamenta,

You are right in the choices we are given, but only partially. In most states, there were other candidates on the ballot, some of whom offered the electorate with much more favourable options. ?

Stein would have been my choice, but there were others. Some of the “slaves” were given choices.. Yes ?

Veronica Baker's avatar

I can tell you from experience here in England, the more parties, the more lies you're told.

John Turcot's avatar

So true… how often can you hear this phrase: “I’m just doing my job” ?

Really?

Veronica Baker's avatar

Here they say " it's more than my jobs worth".

Luc Lelievre's avatar

That's absolutely right.

My next articles (Unbekoming and others) will explore a different perspective on these aspects.

The lockdown is progressing, and it's very real. The control tools are more sophisticated than ever. Yet, history and daily observation show the same thing: no system, however complex, has ever managed to completely stifle human ingenuity. Sometimes, a few moments of lucidity are enough to reveal a flaw. A silent refusal, an unexpected improvisation, a precise observation that changes everything.

Technocracies, past and present, have often been astoundingly stupid, precisely because they believed they could reduce human beings to a predictable variable. The intrinsic nature of humanity—its capacity to think, to adapt, to circumvent, to refuse—remains the greatest weakness of any lockdown system. That's why, even when everything seems locked down, the lockdown is never total. It remains fragile. And it can collapse much faster than we imagine. Human ingenuity has not yet had its final say. When we watch documentaries composed of period footage (unseen images from the Second World War or Soviet archives), we are often struck by the same thing: the incredible stupidity of the technocracies of yesteryear. Grandiose projects, thousands of civil servants, tons of paperwork, total control systems… and yet, everything collapses because a farmer hides grain, a worker discreetly sabotages (The doctor who treated the first Chernobyl patients – before the diagnosis was classified... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28zPs2XF9GM), a mother finds a way to feed her children despite the quotas (Gagarin's widow knew the truth – and remained silent for 40 years. Here's why... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiMAJvnVP2c), or a soldier simply decides to disobey (Felix Steiner – The SS general who refused Hitler's last order and saved thousands of lives... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBBYibYELmw).

https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/the-silent-drift-of-western-institutions

Hassan Al-Mosawi's avatar

Well done for publishing and saying - Peace be upon you by Gaza and Jerusalem - Honour and victory are the allies of the axis of resistance and its allies, and humiliation and shame are for the axis of evil, Epstein Class (USA, Britain, France, Turkey, Qatar, UAE, NATO Governments, Zionist and Israel) and its allies.

Robert Billyard's avatar

More so, they are caught in the terror they created for themselves. So ignorant and jumping into a situation they had no experience or qualifications to deal with. Now the whole entourage is showing themselves to be the vacuous clowns they are, their hysteria is reaching a fevered pitch. In lock step they are drifting toward total collapse.

Michael McKinley's avatar

The point is, Robert, that we know this and have known it for years. We have the power, we are the ones who could stop it yet don’t, so what does that make us? What does that make you? What does that make me? The challenge is that trying to stop it with mere guns is an illusion, violence alone will only be co-opted and backfire on us. Our only hope is the hard work of building the replacement for capitalism/imperialism ourselves. Starting now. Democratic enterprises and citizen assemblies, federated locally, then bioregionally. We must learn how to do democracy, at last.

Eat me's avatar

Sounds good. When's the revolution. Who's gonna take the lead and a few bullets doing it. But in theory remove the orange freak' and his repellent fascist corrupt amoral fellow thugs and of course the Punk in isrehell. Arrest the ICC indicated war mongering coward now

Joy in HK fiFP's avatar

Definitely past time to oust the Pathocracy currently in power.

David's avatar
2hEdited

That is why the ruling class relies so much on the Kool Aid Fountain to dole out fake news and shift our focus to imaginary threats so we remain in serf like conditions. A nation of indoctrinated zombies will never upset the boat -- they will thank their oppressors and support the predatory system they live under.

Chris He's avatar

Right. So, what's keeping us? Being cowards. And the old story: "First they came for the immigrants."--- "But I wasn't an immigrant, so I let it go."

If we don't start thinking like islanders, as parts of a community, we're done. They pick us off one by one.

Same with 'izrael': Too many people think"Horrible!" "But there are others to take care of it."

We are in a crunch position now. The zioNazi Jews have every intention to control us all, like they already do the US. Germany. UK... If we don't kill them, they'll kill us. They already got to our Free Speech right! It's illegal to criticize 'izrael'!!!

Illegal! We're supposed to be Democracies!

They have an estimated 400 to 500 nuclear warheads.- In 2003 they had "several hundred ", according to a scientific consultant insider in TelAviv.-

The worst possible thing the Germans did: They built and gifted the terrorists 6 Dolphin Class submarines!

These are loaded with ca. 40 nuclear missiles! Ready to deploy. Nobody knows WHERE THEY ARE. Does that make you think of BenGvir? National Security Minister!? N'yahoo? - So, we must do something. It's very late.

George McFetridge's avatar

The power-infested non-indigenous are at war with Nature. The ruination follows from that.

Paul Vonharnish's avatar

Sorry; this article represents little insight into the blind alleys of corporate dictate. IT"S THE CORPORATE SYSTEM, folks. Corporate system. Not "elites". Not political agency. Not Lawful order. The "invisible" corporate system was set up as an artificial hierarchy in which extreme wealth is monopolized and held by those invested in the primary constructs of same. It ain't rocket science.

Corporate Charters are Revocable in Chancery Courts of law. I've posted reference to this obvious remedy for nearly two decades. The non-acknowledgement of fact is ignorant and repetitive.

“A tyrant needs above all a tyrant-state, so he will use a million little civil servant tyrants who each have a trivial task to perform, and each will perform that task competently, and without remorse, and no one will realize that he is the millionth link in the final act.” >>> From: Henri Verneuil‘s film I Comme Icare >>> Release date: December 19, 1979

Timothy Skeers's avatar

Good point, but it is actually civilization itself. Corporate civilization is worse, but even just plain civilization is bad and doesn't work. Humans evolved to live in small, tribal groups, a couple hundred at most and probably many fewer. Dunbar's Number was an estimate of it, around 150. There are critiques of Dunbar's methodology and conclusions and the number may not be correct, but the concept is. Large groups of humans become hierarchical and authoritarian sooner or later. Is it possible humans could evolve to make civilization work? Maybe, but we are quickly running out of time.

Paul Vonharnish's avatar

Hello Mr Skeers. Yes, thank you. Mr Dunbar was not alone in his analyses. It would appear that early cultures made their way in small extended families or tribal clans. According to numerous anthropological analyses, many survived as nomadic hunter-gatherer groups. These societies were apparently quite egalitarian and peaceful.

The development of agriculture in early history and invasion of small scale agricultural communities made protection of group efforts mandatory. There are no evidence of city walls or fortress prior to about 9,000 B.C.

“Man joined the eternal abyss - When food became a commodity” - Paul Vonharnish - (January 2, 2020)

George McFetridge's avatar

Yes. We're all responsible, and there's no actual sign of required psychological revolution.

jamenta's avatar

The corporate system is what the Elites use to keep themselves in power and maintain their obscene amounts of wealth. But they do use that wealth to then bribe the politicians so increased deregulation (of those same corporations) and new interpretations of laws (Citizen's United) are then used to maintain their abusive iron grip over society.

And as long as these same people have all the power and the money to keep them at the top - the system will continue and will not change. You have to challenge and either reduce or remove altogether their power and their money in order to change the system itself.

Paul Vonharnish's avatar

You are quite correct. Perhaps you will find this page interesting. Chartering a New Course >>> Revoking Corporations' Right to Exist >>> by Charlie Cray >>> Multinational Monitor magazine >>> October/November 2002 >>>

https://thirdworldtraveler.com/Controlling_Corporations/NewCourse_CorpsRights.html

The State of Delaware (Court of Chancery) provides Charter record for hundreds upon hundreds of Corporate Charter. Why such secrecy? Why a 'specialized' court?

There are also remedy such as Writs of Quo Warranto. https://www.google.com/search?q=Quo+Warrato&oq=Quo+Warrato&aqs=edge..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Very few persons bother to read links. Very frustrating...

dale ruff's avatar

If we want peace, we cannot justify violence (force to prevent or stop violence yes).

Violence begets violence: the "war to end all wars" that killed 20 million led to a war that killed 80 million.

"

"If there were a thousand people living on an island, and one of them began making life miserable for everyone else, there would soon be 999 people living on the island."

This is not the way we evolved: for 300,000 years, humans (homo sapiens) lived without a single case of lethal group violence.....according to archeological science. Then, with the Agricutureal Revolution, suddenly massacres, then wars, became as common as wind. The wars never ended wars but only produced worse wars.

For 300,000 years, if an individual tried to dominate or violated the egalitarian sharing norms, he was not killed but shunned, isolated, given the silent treatment. By avoiding violence, they did not breed it; they prevented it. And that is the real story: not to encourage killing but to use shame and shunning to isolate those who kill.

In the real world, one individual would not make life miserable without support from many others and so you would have to kill off the entire group. Our evolutionary legacy teaches us that human thrived, sharing, equal, and peacefully, without lethal group conflict, massacres, etc. Only when property was invented (replacing the shared commons) did the world fall into a pattern of haves and have nots, and with that, the group violence began and has only gotten worse over the centuries. Violence begets violence: that is the lesson of both human evolution and history.

The first strike feels like ending pain,

a clean subtraction—one less stain.

But blood remembers what we’ve done,

and counts begin again from one.

A hand raised once becomes a law,

each answer forged in tooth and claw.

We cut the weed, but seed the ground—

and call it peace when none is found.

kristofarian's avatar

Bravissimo.

.

(substk refuses to/won't recognize my Likings)

Theresa Maloney's avatar

The Epstein Class has never been more exposed and vulnerable.. This would be a great moment to change the status quo… enlighten and educate.. the rest would automatically follow

Veronica Baker's avatar

I can think of many things I feel about tyrants, disgust, intense dislike etc; the one thing I will never do is fear them. I learnt that lesson very young, if someone knows you fear them, you might as well give up without trying, they thrive on your fear, they own you if you fear them. Fear is the one emotion you should never hand over to them.

Even if you're trembling deep inside, put your brave face on, stand up straight and look them in the eye. Once you've done it a few times you will suddenly find they no longer have any power over you. Fake it until you make it if you have to.

The Strait of Hormuz is closed once again because of more lies dripping from Trump's mouth who to the Iranians had said the USA blockade would end, not that I suppose they had any faith in anything he says, so they're not exactly surprised. Someone should fill the centre of those gummy bears he likes with super glue and hope that finally shuts him up.

jamenta's avatar
22mEdited

Wherever there is human abuse and sordid exploitation, the stench of fear is everywhere. The entire premise of an out-of-control "security state" and of "tyrants" throughout history - has always been about fear. Fear of the other. Fear of not being safe unless you give up more of your human rights. The abuser almost always rules with fear.

Veronica Baker's avatar

I agree but if you decide not let them make you live in fear or at least make a good pretence of it to start with, you take away their power.

It's like Trump, he can't stand being laughed at, instead of reacting with words to crappy statements like they've knocked out all Iran's Navy, people laughed at him when he said it, he'd be a lot more wary of telling lies so quickly. The trouble there is, he has so many around him kissin' ass.