11. Babykilling. Don't forget the babykilling. We're stopping babykilling.
Then they told us we were in Afghanistan to protect women's rights. This was done by killing their children, husbands, parents, and selves. I found this confusing.
As an aside, the Pentagon commissioned a survey in the 2010s which concluded that women's rights was the most effective way to convince the American public to support continuing the war in Afghanistan.
I looked into it briefly and never really got an answer. Surely it's in some document somewhere, but what? As far as I could tell, to have the sanctions lifted the Iraqis had to depose Saddam. Presumably they then had to then do whatever the USA told them to do.
Same with Syria. I never could get a clear statement as to why US troops were there. Constitutional scholar Obama asked Congress for support. I thought that was a good thing. I didn't follow it closely but as far as I recall Congress wouldn't give approval and the US army went in there anyway. Huh. That told me who was really in charge.
Then there was a time Congress amazed me by trying to make peace somewhere or other. Trump vetoed the bill. I thought, Congress has the power to declare war but not to declare peace?
"Causal or not, there is a marked correlation between war industry funding and hawkish positions. “Think tanks with financial ties to the arms industry often support policies that would benefit the arms industry,” the report noted. "
My brother-in-law worked for a think tank. He wasn't there to think. He was just a hired salesman pushing a prescribed political agenda until he escaped into retirement. They should be called "sales tanks" instead.
Not surprisingly what comes out of the various sales tanks is remarkably uniform. They even use the same key phrases. Whatever the boss says, goes.
The US government is a criminal enterprise run by serial killer like committees who could care less about you, the average Ukrainian or anyone else for that fact of the matter. Revolting against the barbarism of the US is our imperative
Yes. I write my representative, my senators, the VP and the President on the regular, and have since early days, asking for peace. No one is interested in what I want nor in what I say now or ever. We are being force-fed a war and a system of control.
Have you received any reply to your mailings? They have never answer my questions and concerns but, apart from the usual letter thanking my input, they have subscribed me to their mailing list for their political propaganda which subsequently I report as spam. Our democracy is truly disgusting these days.
Those form letters are worse than nothing. You write about peace and they reply "we will continue to do our utmost to defend freedom here and abroad" or something like that.
Anyone that followed this horrid affair and did a modicum of independent research instead of wasting time listing to the U.S. propaganda Mainstream Legacy Media outlets has to agree with your analysis. However, as a small aside, this time the lunatics in the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon and their stooges in the U.S. Congress have really screwed up. If our civilization survives this episode, then Russia will emerge STRENGTHENED as will China. It is the U.S. military with its 800+ bases around the world, countless massive aircraft carriers, nuclears subs, etc. that has overextended itself and it is the near-fascist U.S. that will be weakened. This is what scares me. Will the lunatics in the State Department, Pentagon, etc. allow this to happen or will they go "all in"?
But isn't the whole point to provoke military buildups in Russia and China in order to justify domestic budget increases? I don't believe that they are serious about defeating these countries. Quite the opposite.
The problem with calling their bluff is the sneaky suspicion that the frauds cannot control the true believers in their ranks. This IMO is why the present is so fraught with danger. The totally untrustworthy tossers making decisions are forced to trust the maniacal zealots in their charge.
“These brass hats have one great advantage,” Kennedy told his longtime aide Kenny O’Donnell. “If we … do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.”
Thank you - one more of your seminal articles -- truly outstanding. We are drowning in lies - we live in an “Empire of Lies” as the intelligent leader of Russia called our country.
Russia has no choice but to win this “unprovoked” war. And -- we should stand with Russia -- it fights for all of us.
I am not a fan of barbarism. One thing I do know is Mark Twain was the Russia expert in the 19th century. He wrote to Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky the only good Russian oligarch is a dead Russian oligarch.
For me the USA is an existential threat to my country but Russian oligarchs love killing the meekest of the meek.
Read Twain's Russian journals nothing has change since Russia was the most powerful Empire on the planet.
Can I just hate Imperialism and not choose sides.
I remember The Alamo. America invaded Mexico claimed Mexican territory, re-established slavery and made Roman Catholics subhumans in the name of the Prince of Peace.
You know exactly what I am saying. You are a barbarian. Putin is a blood thirsty tyrant just like Nicolas and Ivan and Catherine and Torquemada and Hitler and Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan and Oliver Cromwell and John Adams and Richard the Lionhearted and Constantine. As for Biden and his troops . They are are not my troops . I remember the Alamo and the Maine and The Boston Massacre and Fort McHenry and the Charge of the Light Brigade. I remember the Crusades and the Inquisition and Pogroms and slaughters of the the innocents in China and India and the genocides in Ireland and the Americas because that is God's will and God is good and always hates life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
.America was more democratic under the toleration Act of 1689, July fourth is a celebration of rule and subjugation
Lets liberate Russia and America and only the Truth can set you free.
War is about lies.
Without lies there would be no purpose in being Boris.
Damn! I wished I could write like Chris Hedges. What a great overview of the failed war in Ukraine and how the Neo-cons in US government are edging us ever closer to economic stagnation and nuclear holocaust. And yet, Americans have NO choice this coming election season...both Republicans and Democrats are two sides of the same coin. More of the same...and this is all by design. Gotta keep that war industry busy!!!
Thanks Chris. If the government is doing things that they don't want citizens to know, they have to distract, obfuscate and lie. They really have no choice if they want to avoid public backlash. Once the news media had been fully captured by The Blob, you have a perfect symmetry where narrative management and the resultant public misunderstanding of events provides all the cover necessary to continue endless wars of aggression.
Not even public backlash will work today. They ignored the massif demonstrations against the war in the middle east. In my opinion, as long as the sanctioned bribery of our politicians continues we cannot expect any change.
Lucid, thoughtful situation analysis, from start to finish. Thank you for giving voice to the millions of Americans out there who have long had serious misgivings about the war and propaganda machine that has a stranglehold on our democracy, three branches of government and media. This is the kind of op-ed that should be appearing on the pages of America's once great newspapers but they are all lost at sea. Thank you, Chris Hedges, for speaking up and for carrying the water for what's left of U.S. journalism.
I do wish people would stop referring to this conflict as a unprovoked war crime. Ukranians were slaughtering ethnic Russians in the Donnbass - Mr Hedges cites 14,200 of them - and after repeated attempts to negotiate and finally a warning, Russia stepped in to protect and defend those people.
By my reading, that is not a war crime.
But should I compare this war with US actions against mythical WMDs or fabricated genocide, people start squawking 'Whataboutism'.
But here's the thing, if a Defence Attorney in a court of law cites precedent to support her case, the Prosecution can hardly scream 'Whataboutism. It' not whataboutism, she hasn't just thrown a dead cat on the Judges bench, it's a fkn Precedent! An established principle, under which the US should be judged the war criminals.
Whataboutism is a ridiculous term invented by hypocrites for the purpose of defending yet other hypocrites from the consequences of their hypocrisy.
It’s used by the incognoscenti as a kind of get out of jail free card in response to any reality-based testing. If there is one defining characteristic of living biological systems, it is to compare sensory inputs to prior experience. Whataboutism, if you like.
What were ethnic Russians doing in the Donbass other than occupying foreign territory?
What gave the Holy Romans the right to draw borders and slaughter the aboriginal populations? It was all Scandinavia and before that it belonged to Homo Neanderthalis..
What is an ethnic Russian is he Chinese or Swedish or simply a stupid schmuck like all of us. Germany is one year older than Canada and in Canada everyone is Canadian even those of us in Quebec who refuse to sing Oh Canada in French or English because there is no God or gods in Quebec only stupid schmucks like me.
I think the word you need is Juglans nigra from the Black Walnut
Juglandize
The black walnut puts out a toxin that prevent competitors from setting up competing franchises in the neighbourhood we call it neoliberalism or that old time conservative religion.
The ethnic Russians in the Donbass now were mostly there when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. In fact Brezhnev was Ukrainian, but Russia and Ukraine were interconnected for hundreds of years, if not longer before the Soviet Union was created. Their history is long and and complex and intermingling and interbreeding between neighbouring peoples, is a commonly occurring process that can be traced back at least as far as the Neanderthalensis you cite.
I have no disagreement. I am an Alexander after the Macedonian Emperor. It was The Holy Romans who drew the map. What is a nation state? Canada is only one year older than Germany and yet America's largest ethnic group is supposedly German? Even the Pennsylvania Dutch speak German and don't believe much of Calvin's Christianity. The second amendment was written to protect Quakers from being forced to join local militias. Quakers were good English conforming Protestants who refused to take up arms. That was the draft in 1776 you joined the militia or joined your ancestors. That is what is called real history and is easy to fact check.
miltia: The trainbands of a nation. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language. 1755 It is a superb dictionary I use it every day.
The Unholy Romans ( nothing very holy about the Inquisition, even if it did come much later ) may have drawn lines on the existing map of the then known world. But that was a long time ago - since then the map itself has been redrawn and white Europeans from remote countries if not continents, have drawn arbitrary lines on that map, with no regard to ethnicity, culture, religion, language or lore. The Middle East or Africa both being examples and just as an aside, the drawing of the border between The Irish Republic and Northern Ireland is brilliantly described in Spike Milligans' novel 'Puckoon'.
The result of those arbitrary lines has been such as the plight of the Kurds, the Ugandan genocide, the Sri Lankan civil war.
But what is ethnicity and in the face of that intermingling, how long does it survive? 100 yrs, 500 yrs 1,000 yrs? After all, we all carry 2 - 4% Neanderthal DNA. Does that make us Neanderthal?
My answer would be No Fkn Way! Neanderthals would never have done to their world what we Homo not so fkn Sapiens have done to ours.
1648 was not that long ago but is still Number one with a bullet in the Ukraine conflict because the Russians are Orthodox and The Holy Romans are Holy Romans.
My ancestors were not Russians or Holy Romans they were just peasants trying to survive while two groups of barbaric Imperialists killed each other over whom Jesus believed was holier.
Meanwhile back in Britain Cromwell was slaughtering Catholics preparing for the bloodiest war in British history the English Civil war which is essentially the same war going on in Washington which has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with Divine Right.
It was the Toleration Act of 1689 that ended the English Civil War and the Quebec Act of 1774 that started the American revolution which was about tolerating other religions but limiting their access to power. The Quebec Act of 1774 was intolerable because Catholics would have access to power.
Only in England were Jews spared the slaughter because from Richard's return from the war against civilization till Cromwell there were NO Jews permitted on English soil.
The same thing was happening in the Russian Empire where Jews were confined to the Pale of Settlement and had little choice but to die at the hands of the Czars and Czarinas and their savages as they stole from the poor and built palaces for their scum and garbage. My ancestors lived in UKRAIINE before Jesus was purported to be born and they were never Russian. If you controlled the land you owned what today we consider people north of The Mason Dixon.
The establishment clause did not include non acceptable religions such as the Deism of Thomas Jefferson. That is why in 1800 John Adams never conceded that Jefferson was legitimate.
When I was in the US Army back in the Dark Ages, the majority of my fellow soldiers were either Black or poor Southern White boys. They often referred to the Army, or the military in general, as "The War" as if there were only one and it was an ongoing thing. I thought it was a cute, simple-minded cultural tic, but now I know they were onto something I hadn't perceived yet.
Same here. Although I've never served in the military, in fact I joined anti-war marches here in Aust. and refused to register for the draft ( ours was a lottery ) for Vietnam.
But if I talk to somebody in the pub about the war these days, I always have to clarify - "which war?"
American ignorance was on display in WW2 when Nazi interrogators questioned US POW's. They were incredulous to the fact that US G.I.'s had no inkling of what they were fighting for. New nothing of fascism, communism or capitalism. In WW1 And WW2, poor half starved shoeless, illiterate cannon fodder lined up for a paying job and three squares a day. The backlash to WW1 as in "Never Again" cast into Orwell's Memory Hole. The backlash after WW2 and Civil Rights became Communist dupes. One of the few silver linings of WW2 clouds of war and periods of boredom was many soldiers read like never before. The GI bill went along way in paving the way for civil disobedience and an educated disillusioned liberal class and countervailing power from below. The merchants of death called the MIC have been destroying it ever since!
“The war industry, not Putin, is our most dangerous enemy.”
The 3 branches of government and the 4th estate of media are captives of corporate rule, hand puppets of Wall Street’s wants and desires.
The oligarch owners of Wall Street have designed and constructed the cattle chute for young conscripts who without choice or options will necessarily line up to feed the body needs of the meat grinder war scheduled for China, a profitable party for oligarch’s expectations for sure.
The Fed has mined the economy with steep and unnecessary interest rates while ignoring the facts of the root cause of inflation in a corporate feeding frenzy of profiteering.
A resulting recession is conveniently set to commence alongside two developments originating at the Supreme Court.
The ruling to strike student loan forgiveness from administrative efforts guarantees penury to an entire generation of educated youth, while the second ruling holds Federal Law against the use of affirmative action for advancement beyond the barricades of systemic racism and poverty.
The synchronization of the three events are perfectly aligned to heat the economic environment of a generation of educated and kettled paupers and induce their option towards conscription into a meat grinder of wartime military service, which offers, surprise!- a promise of debt relief, paid education and a social structure within a permitted affirmative action military career to those who survive their service within the economic necessity of the war industry.
Americans inhabit a nation oblivious to the systemic economic requirement for death and violence, the blood bath ritual that guarantees another day of capitalism where war is the engine of an oxymoron “capitalist democracy”.
But those who create it can mold it to their will. I'm impressed how thoroughly ChatCPT has been been trained to support orthodox views and avoid controversy.
Actually I think the US gvt. considers what is happening to Ukraine a plus. The neos have no love for any other nation.
Harry Truman said, "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances." While this was going on they told us how jolly Uncle Joe was. I don't see the current situation as any different.
" The U.S. is reviled abroad, drowning in debt, has an impoverished working class and is burdened with a decayed infrastructure as well as shoddy social services. "
But for the Congress, looters, polluters, corp vultures & billionaire class it's nothing but upside!
The debt is a convenient construct. It provides leverage for punishing the vulnerable. The growing impoverishment is an insidious threat that probably won’t lead to any organized resistance, but can more readily impact the economy negatively, threatening business as usual.
Don't believe the propaganda about human wave assaults and the like.
Lord Posonby's Ten Commandments of War Propaganda:
1. We don’t want war, we are only defending ourselves.
2. Our adversary is solely responsible for this war.
3. Our adversary’s leader is inherently evil and resembles the devil.
4. We are defending a noble cause, not our particular interests.
5. The enemy is purposefully committing atrocities; if we are making mistakes this happens without intention.
6. The enemy makes use of illegal weapons.
7. We suffer few losses, the enemy’s losses are considerable.
8. Recognized intellectuals and artists support our cause.
9. Our cause is sacred.
10. Whoever casts doubt on our propaganda helps the enemy and is a traitor.
11. Babykilling. Don't forget the babykilling. We're stopping babykilling.
Then they told us we were in Afghanistan to protect women's rights. This was done by killing their children, husbands, parents, and selves. I found this confusing.
As an aside, the Pentagon commissioned a survey in the 2010s which concluded that women's rights was the most effective way to convince the American public to support continuing the war in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile:
https://annebonnypirate.org/2021/08/17/afghanistan-the-end-of-the-occupation/amp/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/the-other-afghan-women
Finster, I subscribe to only 20% of the Substacks you subscribe to, and can't keep up. Do they ever let you go outside?
I am feral. A lot of Substacks only publish sporadically, BTW.
and the transmogrification of the Nazi's - all while attacking the Orthodox Church.
That sort of story goes back at least as far as World War the First. Then it was bayonets.
A few add-ins:
Get rid of the draft and we will offer our young men and women an attractive good paying job with benefits.
The people we fight are subhuman, and certainly commies.
The financial sanctions we impose will turn the people against their evil leaders.
"The financial sanctions we impose will turn the people against their evil leaders."
History is a big place so I may have missed something, but I believe that never has anything like that ever worked. https://science1arts2and3politics.substack.com/p/why-sanctions-never-bring-regime
Yes. Correct. It’s a lie. The sanctions cause hunger, starvation, health care deprivation of the people, and anger toward the instigator.
If you polled the US public as to what the Iraq sanctions in the 90's were for, I bet fewer than 1% would get it right.
Let me take a wild guess, to stop Hussein from switching from the US petrodollar to a different world reserve currency.
I looked into it briefly and never really got an answer. Surely it's in some document somewhere, but what? As far as I could tell, to have the sanctions lifted the Iraqis had to depose Saddam. Presumably they then had to then do whatever the USA told them to do.
Same with Syria. I never could get a clear statement as to why US troops were there. Constitutional scholar Obama asked Congress for support. I thought that was a good thing. I didn't follow it closely but as far as I recall Congress wouldn't give approval and the US army went in there anyway. Huh. That told me who was really in charge.
Then there was a time Congress amazed me by trying to make peace somewhere or other. Trump vetoed the bill. I thought, Congress has the power to declare war but not to declare peace?
Follow The Money:
https://fair.org/home/report-shows-how-military-industrial-complex-sets-media-narrative-on-ukraine/
"Causal or not, there is a marked correlation between war industry funding and hawkish positions. “Think tanks with financial ties to the arms industry often support policies that would benefit the arms industry,” the report noted. "
My brother-in-law worked for a think tank. He wasn't there to think. He was just a hired salesman pushing a prescribed political agenda until he escaped into retirement. They should be called "sales tanks" instead.
Not surprisingly what comes out of the various sales tanks is remarkably uniform. They even use the same key phrases. Whatever the boss says, goes.
The US government is a criminal enterprise run by serial killer like committees who could care less about you, the average Ukrainian or anyone else for that fact of the matter. Revolting against the barbarism of the US is our imperative
Thank you for continuing this phenomenal work and fighting the good fight Chris.
Yes. I write my representative, my senators, the VP and the President on the regular, and have since early days, asking for peace. No one is interested in what I want nor in what I say now or ever. We are being force-fed a war and a system of control.
Have you received any reply to your mailings? They have never answer my questions and concerns but, apart from the usual letter thanking my input, they have subscribed me to their mailing list for their political propaganda which subsequently I report as spam. Our democracy is truly disgusting these days.
Same for me, canned responses. I can tell when they really don't want to respond when I receive the most generic letters.
Those form letters are worse than nothing. You write about peace and they reply "we will continue to do our utmost to defend freedom here and abroad" or something like that.
It's their way of saying "Peon, be happy with your crumbs."
Yes si have I. But oue voices fall on deaf ears
We don"t grease their campaign funds with 10 of thousands if dollars; the MIC does. The think tanks are echo chambers for the MIC
Our whole system needs a reboot including the constitution and the SCOTUS and the electoral college. Our votes should count not the EC.
Anyone that followed this horrid affair and did a modicum of independent research instead of wasting time listing to the U.S. propaganda Mainstream Legacy Media outlets has to agree with your analysis. However, as a small aside, this time the lunatics in the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon and their stooges in the U.S. Congress have really screwed up. If our civilization survives this episode, then Russia will emerge STRENGTHENED as will China. It is the U.S. military with its 800+ bases around the world, countless massive aircraft carriers, nuclears subs, etc. that has overextended itself and it is the near-fascist U.S. that will be weakened. This is what scares me. Will the lunatics in the State Department, Pentagon, etc. allow this to happen or will they go "all in"?
But isn't the whole point to provoke military buildups in Russia and China in order to justify domestic budget increases? I don't believe that they are serious about defeating these countries. Quite the opposite.
The problem with calling their bluff is the sneaky suspicion that the frauds cannot control the true believers in their ranks. This IMO is why the present is so fraught with danger. The totally untrustworthy tossers making decisions are forced to trust the maniacal zealots in their charge.
1962 Cuba crisis
“These brass hats have one great advantage,” Kennedy told his longtime aide Kenny O’Donnell. “If we … do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.”
these sociopaths of high seas piracy apparently have no borders
sovereignty seems moot to the ever expropriation of the planet in their name of profiteering intellectual property of life
Thank you - one more of your seminal articles -- truly outstanding. We are drowning in lies - we live in an “Empire of Lies” as the intelligent leader of Russia called our country.
Russia has no choice but to win this “unprovoked” war. And -- we should stand with Russia -- it fights for all of us.
I am not a fan of barbarism. One thing I do know is Mark Twain was the Russia expert in the 19th century. He wrote to Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky the only good Russian oligarch is a dead Russian oligarch.
For me the USA is an existential threat to my country but Russian oligarchs love killing the meekest of the meek.
Read Twain's Russian journals nothing has change since Russia was the most powerful Empire on the planet.
Can I just hate Imperialism and not choose sides.
I remember The Alamo. America invaded Mexico claimed Mexican territory, re-established slavery and made Roman Catholics subhumans in the name of the Prince of Peace.
Your response to my comment does not make much sense.
Thanks Boris,
You know exactly what I am saying. You are a barbarian. Putin is a blood thirsty tyrant just like Nicolas and Ivan and Catherine and Torquemada and Hitler and Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan and Oliver Cromwell and John Adams and Richard the Lionhearted and Constantine. As for Biden and his troops . They are are not my troops . I remember the Alamo and the Maine and The Boston Massacre and Fort McHenry and the Charge of the Light Brigade. I remember the Crusades and the Inquisition and Pogroms and slaughters of the the innocents in China and India and the genocides in Ireland and the Americas because that is God's will and God is good and always hates life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
.America was more democratic under the toleration Act of 1689, July fourth is a celebration of rule and subjugation
Lets liberate Russia and America and only the Truth can set you free.
War is about lies.
Without lies there would be no purpose in being Boris.
Damn! I wished I could write like Chris Hedges. What a great overview of the failed war in Ukraine and how the Neo-cons in US government are edging us ever closer to economic stagnation and nuclear holocaust. And yet, Americans have NO choice this coming election season...both Republicans and Democrats are two sides of the same coin. More of the same...and this is all by design. Gotta keep that war industry busy!!!
Your analysis is right on the money, so to speak.
Thanks Chris. If the government is doing things that they don't want citizens to know, they have to distract, obfuscate and lie. They really have no choice if they want to avoid public backlash. Once the news media had been fully captured by The Blob, you have a perfect symmetry where narrative management and the resultant public misunderstanding of events provides all the cover necessary to continue endless wars of aggression.
Not even public backlash will work today. They ignored the massif demonstrations against the war in the middle east. In my opinion, as long as the sanctioned bribery of our politicians continues we cannot expect any change.
Lucid, thoughtful situation analysis, from start to finish. Thank you for giving voice to the millions of Americans out there who have long had serious misgivings about the war and propaganda machine that has a stranglehold on our democracy, three branches of government and media. This is the kind of op-ed that should be appearing on the pages of America's once great newspapers but they are all lost at sea. Thank you, Chris Hedges, for speaking up and for carrying the water for what's left of U.S. journalism.
I do wish people would stop referring to this conflict as a unprovoked war crime. Ukranians were slaughtering ethnic Russians in the Donnbass - Mr Hedges cites 14,200 of them - and after repeated attempts to negotiate and finally a warning, Russia stepped in to protect and defend those people.
By my reading, that is not a war crime.
But should I compare this war with US actions against mythical WMDs or fabricated genocide, people start squawking 'Whataboutism'.
But here's the thing, if a Defence Attorney in a court of law cites precedent to support her case, the Prosecution can hardly scream 'Whataboutism. It' not whataboutism, she hasn't just thrown a dead cat on the Judges bench, it's a fkn Precedent! An established principle, under which the US should be judged the war criminals.
Kosovo : breakaway region good
Donbas: breakaway region ungood
Yes, it's amazing how many and how quickly people are becoming fluent in Owellian NewSpeak and DoubleThink. Most of them don't seem to realise it.
I think it is an instinct that goes all the way back to ants and bees. They have war too.
Whataboutism is a ridiculous term invented by hypocrites for the purpose of defending yet other hypocrites from the consequences of their hypocrisy.
It’s used by the incognoscenti as a kind of get out of jail free card in response to any reality-based testing. If there is one defining characteristic of living biological systems, it is to compare sensory inputs to prior experience. Whataboutism, if you like.
Thanks Patrick,
What were ethnic Russians doing in the Donbass other than occupying foreign territory?
What gave the Holy Romans the right to draw borders and slaughter the aboriginal populations? It was all Scandinavia and before that it belonged to Homo Neanderthalis..
What is an ethnic Russian is he Chinese or Swedish or simply a stupid schmuck like all of us. Germany is one year older than Canada and in Canada everyone is Canadian even those of us in Quebec who refuse to sing Oh Canada in French or English because there is no God or gods in Quebec only stupid schmucks like me.
I think the word you need is Juglans nigra from the Black Walnut
Juglandize
The black walnut puts out a toxin that prevent competitors from setting up competing franchises in the neighbourhood we call it neoliberalism or that old time conservative religion.
The ethnic Russians in the Donbass now were mostly there when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. In fact Brezhnev was Ukrainian, but Russia and Ukraine were interconnected for hundreds of years, if not longer before the Soviet Union was created. Their history is long and and complex and intermingling and interbreeding between neighbouring peoples, is a commonly occurring process that can be traced back at least as far as the Neanderthalensis you cite.
Thanks dave,
I have no disagreement. I am an Alexander after the Macedonian Emperor. It was The Holy Romans who drew the map. What is a nation state? Canada is only one year older than Germany and yet America's largest ethnic group is supposedly German? Even the Pennsylvania Dutch speak German and don't believe much of Calvin's Christianity. The second amendment was written to protect Quakers from being forced to join local militias. Quakers were good English conforming Protestants who refused to take up arms. That was the draft in 1776 you joined the militia or joined your ancestors. That is what is called real history and is easy to fact check.
miltia: The trainbands of a nation. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language. 1755 It is a superb dictionary I use it every day.
https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=militia
Johnson was a conservative conservative but he didn't speak Newspeak
Cabal The secret science of Hebrew Rabbins Soros no doubt
https://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/views/search.php?term=cabal
The Unholy Romans ( nothing very holy about the Inquisition, even if it did come much later ) may have drawn lines on the existing map of the then known world. But that was a long time ago - since then the map itself has been redrawn and white Europeans from remote countries if not continents, have drawn arbitrary lines on that map, with no regard to ethnicity, culture, religion, language or lore. The Middle East or Africa both being examples and just as an aside, the drawing of the border between The Irish Republic and Northern Ireland is brilliantly described in Spike Milligans' novel 'Puckoon'.
The result of those arbitrary lines has been such as the plight of the Kurds, the Ugandan genocide, the Sri Lankan civil war.
But what is ethnicity and in the face of that intermingling, how long does it survive? 100 yrs, 500 yrs 1,000 yrs? After all, we all carry 2 - 4% Neanderthal DNA. Does that make us Neanderthal?
My answer would be No Fkn Way! Neanderthals would never have done to their world what we Homo not so fkn Sapiens have done to ours.
By the way this is today's cartoon in the local newspaper.
The banning of books in Quebec is banned but the Bible is only banned is science class
https://www.latribune.ca/opinions/caricatures/2023/07/03/la-caricature-de-cote-YWL3JCWHXFB65GK3CK5RJ365H4/
The cartoon challenged my very limited french but I think I got the gist: the Bible is indeed full of begetting and / or smiting.
Cheers and thanks for the chat.
Thanks Dave
1648 was not that long ago but is still Number one with a bullet in the Ukraine conflict because the Russians are Orthodox and The Holy Romans are Holy Romans.
My ancestors were not Russians or Holy Romans they were just peasants trying to survive while two groups of barbaric Imperialists killed each other over whom Jesus believed was holier.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Westphalia
Meanwhile back in Britain Cromwell was slaughtering Catholics preparing for the bloodiest war in British history the English Civil war which is essentially the same war going on in Washington which has nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with Divine Right.
It was the Toleration Act of 1689 that ended the English Civil War and the Quebec Act of 1774 that started the American revolution which was about tolerating other religions but limiting their access to power. The Quebec Act of 1774 was intolerable because Catholics would have access to power.
https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/862/continental-congress-letter-to-the-inhabitants-of-the-province-of-quebec
Only in England were Jews spared the slaughter because from Richard's return from the war against civilization till Cromwell there were NO Jews permitted on English soil.
The same thing was happening in the Russian Empire where Jews were confined to the Pale of Settlement and had little choice but to die at the hands of the Czars and Czarinas and their savages as they stole from the poor and built palaces for their scum and garbage. My ancestors lived in UKRAIINE before Jesus was purported to be born and they were never Russian. If you controlled the land you owned what today we consider people north of The Mason Dixon.
https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/862/continental-congress-letter-to-the-inhabitants-of-the-province-of-quebec
The establishment clause did not include non acceptable religions such as the Deism of Thomas Jefferson. That is why in 1800 John Adams never conceded that Jefferson was legitimate.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Toleration-Act-Great-Britain-1689
Happy fourth of July
Ain't religion just grand.
Starry Gordon wrote:
When I was in the US Army back in the Dark Ages, the majority of my fellow soldiers were either Black or poor Southern White boys. They often referred to the Army, or the military in general, as "The War" as if there were only one and it was an ongoing thing. I thought it was a cute, simple-minded cultural tic, but now I know they were onto something I hadn't perceived yet.
Same here. Although I've never served in the military, in fact I joined anti-war marches here in Aust. and refused to register for the draft ( ours was a lottery ) for Vietnam.
But if I talk to somebody in the pub about the war these days, I always have to clarify - "which war?"
American ignorance was on display in WW2 when Nazi interrogators questioned US POW's. They were incredulous to the fact that US G.I.'s had no inkling of what they were fighting for. New nothing of fascism, communism or capitalism. In WW1 And WW2, poor half starved shoeless, illiterate cannon fodder lined up for a paying job and three squares a day. The backlash to WW1 as in "Never Again" cast into Orwell's Memory Hole. The backlash after WW2 and Civil Rights became Communist dupes. One of the few silver linings of WW2 clouds of war and periods of boredom was many soldiers read like never before. The GI bill went along way in paving the way for civil disobedience and an educated disillusioned liberal class and countervailing power from below. The merchants of death called the MIC have been destroying it ever since!
“The war industry, not Putin, is our most dangerous enemy.”
The 3 branches of government and the 4th estate of media are captives of corporate rule, hand puppets of Wall Street’s wants and desires.
The oligarch owners of Wall Street have designed and constructed the cattle chute for young conscripts who without choice or options will necessarily line up to feed the body needs of the meat grinder war scheduled for China, a profitable party for oligarch’s expectations for sure.
The Fed has mined the economy with steep and unnecessary interest rates while ignoring the facts of the root cause of inflation in a corporate feeding frenzy of profiteering.
A resulting recession is conveniently set to commence alongside two developments originating at the Supreme Court.
The ruling to strike student loan forgiveness from administrative efforts guarantees penury to an entire generation of educated youth, while the second ruling holds Federal Law against the use of affirmative action for advancement beyond the barricades of systemic racism and poverty.
The synchronization of the three events are perfectly aligned to heat the economic environment of a generation of educated and kettled paupers and induce their option towards conscription into a meat grinder of wartime military service, which offers, surprise!- a promise of debt relief, paid education and a social structure within a permitted affirmative action military career to those who survive their service within the economic necessity of the war industry.
Americans inhabit a nation oblivious to the systemic economic requirement for death and violence, the blood bath ritual that guarantees another day of capitalism where war is the engine of an oxymoron “capitalist democracy”.
Maybe it's the cumulative effect, but on top of all these adventures in the past 60 years or so this one feel like the stupidest ever.
I'm ashamed of this military state with it entertainment branch.
It's beyond belief how dangerous it is and how the idiots in power don't seem to care as long as the military industry gets a cheerful profit.
Yes. We are governed by AI (Artificial Idiocy)
Oh, it's not artificial. Unfortunately, it's real.
That's why I don't get that people worry about artificial intelligence. Isn't the natural variety a lot more dangerous?
True. You cannot bribe AI.
But those who create it can mold it to their will. I'm impressed how thoroughly ChatCPT has been been trained to support orthodox views and avoid controversy.
"What happens to Ukraine is irrelevant. "
Actually I think the US gvt. considers what is happening to Ukraine a plus. The neos have no love for any other nation.
Harry Truman said, "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances." While this was going on they told us how jolly Uncle Joe was. I don't see the current situation as any different.
Hell, they have no love for the US, only the Empire.
We lavish tens of billions on Ukraine, while the citizens of East Palestine cannot get so much as a hotel voucher.
Or the original Palestine either!
East Palestine, eh?
https://science1arts2and3politics.substack.com/p/my-fake-news
" The U.S. is reviled abroad, drowning in debt, has an impoverished working class and is burdened with a decayed infrastructure as well as shoddy social services. "
But for the Congress, looters, polluters, corp vultures & billionaire class it's nothing but upside!
The debt is a convenient construct. It provides leverage for punishing the vulnerable. The growing impoverishment is an insidious threat that probably won’t lead to any organized resistance, but can more readily impact the economy negatively, threatening business as usual.