NATO support for the war in Ukraine, designed to degrade the Russian military and drive Vladimir Putin from power, is not going according to plan. The new sophisticated military hardware won't help.
The war was entirely intentional on the part of the United States.
The problem is the sunk cost of weapons, treasure and support, of whitewashing self-proclaimed Nazis and calling them freedom fighters, all that means that the West will continue to double down.
Or, as Senator Lindsey Graham put it, the United States will fight to the last Ukrainian rather than make peace.
Graham is an absolute idiot, and anyone who listens to him is simply stupid. As I said in my comment, we need a smart, effective solution, not just trying to win a war that has no end.
You may consider Miss Graham a closeted gay RINO fascist and I may consider Miss Graham a RINO gay-fascist and even George Orwell who died in 1950 might consider Graham a Gay RINO closeted gay-fascist but the people of South Carolina believe in the holiness of Chik Fil-A.
There are no Chik-Fil-As in Quebec. Religion and politics don't mix.
The Chik-A-Contract is illegal under our laws and charter.
YES, the only structure that could explain the U.S. is two Vichy (double government) duopoly facade of parties posing as a form of government, and a totally controlling "Quiet American Empire", such as Michael Glennon's "National Security and the Double Government", or as:
Arron Good relates:
American officials, meanwhile, have asserted that the US “will not accept policies or actions that threaten or undermine the rules-based international order [emphasis added], even as the US (often aided by allies) routinely conducts foreign policy in violation of international and domestic US law.
Thus, it should be understood that when pro-US figures use the term, “rules-based international order,” they are not referring to anything analogous to the rule of law.
Quite the opposite, they are using Orwellian language to describe a system in which essentially no rules can be established and/or observed, given that the dominant state has the prerogative to violate and/or rewrite “rules” at its whim.
Good, Aaron (2022-06-20T23:58:59.000). American Exception: Empire and the Deep State. Kindle Edition.
I wonder how many people are following the murders in Peru, the protests, the jailing of the President and the fascist government?
Few.
All roads lead to Rome.
But do not despair:
In the United States, All Roads Lead to Rome: every vector of amerikan politics at the present moment points towards the maintenance of the fascist imperialist occupation government and its parasitic relationship with the rest of the world. This series will attempt to map the current terrain of internationalist politics in the United States.
All political movements inside the United States are aligned with its fascism and global imperialism, regardless of the ideologies they espouse. The relatively small groups which claim opposition to imperialism are controlled opposition tied to monopoly capital and/or United States intelligence agencies.1 The 'movements' they represent are powerless by design.
It is not an exaggeration to say that, at present, there exists no above-ground US-based organizations whose practices and class interests genuinely oppose the United States and its unipolar imperialist domination. If any such organizations exist they tiny and are far below ground.
We know this because there is no substantive resistance inside the core against United States hybrid warfare (i.e. sanctions) against Cuba, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, or any other of the dozens of countries on the US’s shitlist. There are no strategies being formulated and enacted to put an end to the US occupation of Syria and Iraq, or the blockade of Yemen, or the proxy-occupation of Haiti, or the pumping of weapons into Taiwan province and Ukraine. Genuine opposition requires politico-military strategy and material action. There is no mass movement inside the US of any kind taking material action against US hegemony.
The crucial thing to understand about this article is that the United States is the most advanced form of fascism on the planet. Every amerikan has been subjected to the most advanced forms of psyop and fascist technologies that the United States occupation government has at its disposal.2 In other countries, especially those that oppose the empire, governments must dedicate enormous resources to defend against US/Imperialist information warfare and psychological warfare.3 It is almost impossible to combat this form of warfare inside the United States where all forms of community assistance are funneled through imperialist “Non-Governmental Organizations” and where there are no alternative communications or media infrastructure whatsoever.
Amerikan political consciousness is held so completely captive by the neo-colonial psyops and hybrid counterinsurgency program that there is currently no means for exploited and oppressed people to organize a politico-military strategy. Even when conditions for many reach crisis proportions.
This is not a statement to imply "oh pity these amerikans they are so sad" but simply to see things for how they are Right Now and to not get misdirected by false internationalists and CIA assets who propose otherwise.
Importantly, for readers and friends in other countries: there is no substantive support for you from amerikans or any amerikan political movements, from reactionaries to communists. You cannot rely on people in the US to challenge their government’s extreme violence inflicted on the world. Factor that into your decision-making calculus.
For our readers and friends inside the Imperial Core, specifically the United States: do not lose hope. Countries around the planet are rapidly moving to cast off the chains of imperialist domination and build national & social self-determination. In all likelihood the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA) and the Quds Axis (AKA Axis of Resistance) will drag the amerikan left — kicking and screaming, repeating psyops — into the multipolar world. There are, however, still things to be done…
The Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International, founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938, are not, and never have been "tied to monopoly capital and/or United States intelligence agencies." The SEP and the World Socialist Web Site are completely independent and contain no advertising, or other commercial support and are only supported by contributions of members and followers. It is the party I have supported for more than 20 years. Funny how all you people succumbing to the U.S. empire always seem to forget the existence of the SEP and ICFI. It would destroy your so-called argument.
Oh, and your declaration that there being "no existing no above-ground US-based organizations . . . whose practices and class interests genuinely oppose the United States", etc., I cannot believe that you have never heard of the WSWS or the SEP which, by the way, is an internationalist Marxist party.
I have returned to Canada . I came back in 2006 from the Midwest. We have a lot of American wannabees but I would suggest more than 60% of us do not want to be Americans. America is America; it is not the West anymore.
We fear America more than we love it and we are your friendly neighbour.
Quebec says religion and politics don't mix. Lindsay Graham believes crazy shit.
America doesn't believe in real 2023 democracy. Graham is a Theocrat.
I am a crazy old man but I grew up in Montreal with escapees from both sides of the Viet Nam conflict.
War is always about conflicting theologies and soldiers don't question theology.
Thomas Jefferson was a Deist. Deists shun theology but Jefferson was a moral coward and his bible written for a secular humanist liberal democracy wasn't published until the 20th century because Holy Wars are always the bloodiest.
You might want to read Jefferson's Bible . It is free from the Smithsonian. My wife just read it it took her less than an hour but she is a Doctor of Philosophy and Graduated from a Rockefeller sponsored Baptist University in Chicago where they built an atomic bomb.
It was why it took so long for U.S. troops to be pulled out of Vietnam. Lying Generals and vain politicians were cowards in the face of inevitability.
For those who continue to doubt - Ukraine was close to a peace deal with Russia, but the United States scotched that.
For that matter, Zelenskii was elected in 2019, over vociferous American objections, on a policy of peace and reconciliation with Russia. After taking office, he secured the agreement of the military to implement the Minsk-2 peace agreement, which his predecessor, Poroshenko, as well as Hollande and Merkel (France and Germany were guarantors of Ukraine's obligations under Minsk-2) all stated that Ukraine had entered into in bad faith.
The United States refused its consent, with the Nazi paramilitaries serving as the United States' enforcers.
The only problem with that logic is that Zelenskiy is a multimillionaire who could live very well in Tallahassee Singapore or Wellington. Zelensky is new to politics but he is a celebrity because of his genius and talent. He is not a thug, a bully or a goon.
He is a comedian's comedian like Diogenes who grew up in the same neck of the woods.
He is a multimillionaire only due to his homage and servitude to the oligarch that launched him.
He has made off nicely on this war but he would never have even been in this position had it not been for the oligarch he works for and the NATO fascists that support them all.
He made his millions as a writer, actor and comedian. He was doing what he loved to do. You can't make someone a writer, actor and comedian they have to be sick to begin with. Kinda like Duck Soup in 1933.
Great movie Washington yesterday, today and maybe if there is a tomorrow.
I remember Reagan in his Time for choosing speech 1933 was the beginning of America's worst nightmare. He said that in 1964 in support of Barry Goldwater and I guess they lost the battle but are winning the war.
The trans-migration caused by US imperialism and war is perhaps the greatest seen in the world, simply in sheer numbers.
Not just Ukraine, but all of Europe is in transit with Hungary seeing hundreds of thousand of its citizens leave due to fascist policies.
Poland already has suffered the ravages of war and forced migration. One might recall the “Polish plumbers”, who first fled last century to England and who were used as cheap labor for Trump’s casinos.
Europe has become a dumping ground for human beings fleeing planetary climate change and war.
Not only due immigrants, as we saw with the boat from Haiti last week turned back by the US, suffer from the degradation of an underground economy that most people would never recognize.
From coyotes and transport, to documents and work, this underground economy is one that is run by organized criminals who profit of human trafficking which is what is happening now in Ukraine.
I think it was Carlin who said, “Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
That Ukrainian citizens are being decimated is no surprise.
They have no chance of winning, as Chris and Scott Ritter have noted.
But the stock market and the military intelligence industrial complex have penetrated into every form of American life.
The entire staggering economic machine that is America rests on its pumping money into the military.
And this is also why the war rages on and will, awaiting that delayed and inept military machinery that the Ukrainians cannot even repair.
But it is the economic necessity of Military-Keynsianism, otherwise known as fascism, that has force-fed these monstruous military contractors, of which five are the biggest.
The head of the US Defense Dept. Austin sat on the board of Raytheon, merely one of the death merchants involved in Ukraine.
And although Taibbi revealed the Russiagate lies, his boss, Elon Musk and Space Link sends satellites to Ukraine and other military hardware, showing once again how these billionaire puppets manage perceptions at home while profiting off war abroad.
There is a fascinating book written in 2009 entitled: The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (American Empire Project) by Nick Turse.
Turse sets the book within the lives of a family, Nick, Steve and their son.
Here is a short synopsis:
“Now in paperback, a stunning breakdown of the modern military-industrial complex―an omnipresent, hidden-in-plain-sight system of systems that penetrates all our lives.
From iPods to Starbucks to Oakley sunglasses, historian Nick Turse explores the Pentagon's little-noticed contacts (and contracts) with the products and companies that now form the fabric of America. He investigates the remarkable range of military incursions into the civilian world: the Pentagon's collaborations with Hollywood filmmakers; its outlandish schemes to weaponize the wild kingdom; its joint ventures with Marvel Comics and NASCAR. Similarly disturbing is the way in which the military, desperate for fresh recruits, has tapped into the "culture of cool" by making "friends" on MySpace.
A striking vision of this brave new world of remote-controlled rats and super-soldiers who need no sleep, The Complex will change our understanding of the militarization of America. We are a long way from Eisenhower's military-industrial complex: this is the essential book for understanding its twenty-first-century progeny.”
What Turse described 14 years ago was the militarization of everyday life: from products to identity.
America is weened on war, having had only 7 years of peace in its existence; and war underlies the economy and culture while violence rages.
The Levis and Disneyland have been replaced by the Khakis and mass murderers and killer cops.
The US is a war economy and has been for over a century.
Take a look at the spy culture that is America, its films, novels, culture, art and you will see the red stain of war.
The tragedy is that a war economy not only leads to war, it leads to fascism as war become intolerable in the form of austerity and loss of civil rights for those at home who subsidize it, be they European or American.
Chris, I wish you had been more even handed. I wouldn't dispute most of your points about America's military folly but loading them in the scale without giving the same treatment to Russia, and not giving credence to western and northern European responses to Russia's 2014 theft of Crimea and the blatant fact that they have been the military aggressors in Ukraine is unfair to your readers. The US did not coerce Sweden and Finland, two of the most socially wise and empathetic countries in the world, to ask for NATO membership. You and I know from experience that the only way to tame a bully is to resist (as did the Afghans, the Iraqis and our numerous other failures). Our country now is being ruined by fossil fuel interests and military contractors and spends an obscene amount on non-productive consumables. They are the enemy, our government is in their thrall thanks, largely to Citizens United. Fight the war against our enemies not our utterly prostrate and failed government. Please, be more even handed, it is obvious that Russia's bullying must be stopped.
Russia hasn't been bullying anyone. People talk as if empires are accretions of nation states. They are not. They are blobs that are broken up into manageable subdivisions at the whim of the central government. Crimea was a part of the Russian empire for centuries and was associated with no fewer than 14 different oblasts over the centuries. The only reason that the Ukraine wants Crimea is because their master, the US and NATO, want Sevastopol so they can have a NATO base in the Black Sea. The real aggressor is the US. Kindly remember that it was the US and not Russia that fomented the coup that put the Ukrainian Nazis in power in Kiev. When you talk about bullying, look in the mirror. Just now, for a tiny example, the US is running around threatening other countries who are not abiding by the US's unilateral sanctions. Unilateral sanctions do not have the approval of the UN and are, therefore, a violation of the UN charter and international law.
Yes, the US contravenes the UN Charter whenever it sees fit. The US government is totally in the thrall of a Military Industrial Complex, the US Department of Defense is the largest consumer of fossil fuels on Earth, and between the fossil fuel industry and the MIC, the US has bankrupted itself many times over to buy crap designed to be expended to no good end. So, how can the US get rid of the corrupting effect of Citizens United which keeps our government in service to murderers? There is no sign our governors are even giving it a thought. The Executive is in the hands of a man who in his youth was referred to as "the Senator from Dow Chemical," our Congress is comprised of an upper house loaded with billionaires and a lower house typified by millionaires. Please, offer solutions, don't just bitch.
Biden also was a principal congressional architect of The War On Iraq, and introduced a bill similar to the so-called "Patriot Act" in the 1990s. (It sank like a stone.)
Anyway, to answer your concluding question: the only language sociopaths understand is reward and punishment, however, they understand this language quite well.
Even Pew Research, Forbes magazine and Ukrainian sociologists recognize that almost everybody in Crimea wanted rid of Ukraine.
When I lived there, Crimea was considered a hardship post for army conscripts, as the locals considered Ukraine a hostile occupier and treated its soldiers accordingly.
As a little anecdote I hope I can provide some useless idiot understanding.
The occupational therapist came to see my wife and I on Monday. We are160 and live with each other as we have for decades. We have lived in many different cultures and wife does not speak Quebecois.
Our healthcare , education and welfare is provided by the University of Sherbrooke under contract from our government in Quebec city. In Montreal McGill University provided those services to Montreal's Anglophones and the University of Montreal provided the French language services. My wife has both undergraduate and gradute degrees from the University of Chicago.
I am in many ways retarded but I love talking philosophy with everyone and when we talked about regional health, education and welfare my wife finally understood the reality of Quebec is that its 8.5 million inhabitants do not share common understandings and values. The ethical philosophers that run the University of Sherbrooke are far more liberal than those at McGill or the University of Montreal.
Tell me about Crimea. Tell me about how conservative one can be if you were the battle ground from before Alexander the Great to World War two and conflict always brought about pain and sorrow.
"Into the Valley of the Shadow of Death rode the six hundred" Crimea 1853
World War minus one.
Russia vs Ottomans, English, Austro-Hungarians middle Europeans and The Holy Roman Empire.
Germany began in 1866 it is one year older than Canada.
A) Crimea is an historically ethnical and Russian region, and it is of paramount strategic importance to Russia. it ended up in Ukraine because in the 50s it was moved to readjust USSR internal administrative borders. It didn't want to be part of Ukraine in 1991 and 2014 Galicians far-right nationalist coup, insigated and supported by US just pushed the issue over the edge
B) Northern and western European gave up to US\NATO pressure and, for their own confession, signed and guaranteed Minsk agreement only to give Ukraine time to be de facto intgrated in NATO
C) In Donbass there was a bloody civil war running from 2014, selecting 02\24\2022 as war starting date to make Russia "the aggressor", is naive and\or misleading, and useless, unless in order to claim a higher moral standpoint that doesn't withstand a deeper investigation
D) Sweden and Finland might have been wise and empathetic countries in the past but a lot of water, immigration and socioeconomic changes went under the bridge from then... they are fully integrated in the politic-economic 4th reich and are US empire vassals exactly like any other EU member; ther was no coercion because US already installed a compliant viceroy over there
E) It is true the only way to tame a bully is to resist , but it is Russia whom has been bullied into this corner, make no mistakes, and after trying almost every possible trick and swallowing all sort of humiliations for 30 years to avoid it
To assume Russian bullying I suspect we have to look judiciously away from everything that was going on in Ukraine since the 2014 coup. We also might have to erase our memory of American interference around the globe since the end of WWII.
That is the history that everyone pretended didn't exist, when we cheer led western invovement in this war. Had NATO considered that pushing for Ukrainian membership was an obvious red flag for Russia (not to mention of immanent danger to the west)...and agreed on Ukrainian neutrality we'd have been living in a far different world now.
But America needs constant war....and it has the sticks and CIA operatives to forment crises wherever a crises seems useful. There was 0 to be gained by forcing Russia's hand...and I for one, wonder what Russia's oil has to do with it all.
We do know that America has fracked the bejesus out of her backcountry to regain fossil fuel supremacy do we not???? We've done our research on how expensive and debt ridden that operation has been yes??? And we've connected the dots of the climate emergency and the need to transition off fossil fuels and fools, have we not???
In such a world a fossil fuel driven war, engaged in in part because Russia still has the sweet light crude shit.........is a form of suicide on many fronts.
But not just suicide. America murders many in its single minded pursuit of its own demise. And from the statistics on mass shootings in the first month of this year......it does seem the suicide of the American Empire is proceeding apace.
It's a sickening feeling knowing the US government has channeled $113 billion for war in Ukraine, including the development of sophisticated tanks. I think about the Apollo 11 and For All Mankind documentaries and how extraordinary (and ordinary) people can create extraordinary things/events. Think what we could do for climate change, universal health care and the homeless, to name just a few issues.
Putin handed the war machine a huge gift by invading Ukraine. Now they can look forward to decades of profits keeping this cash cow flowing. The War Industry doesn't want victory, they want a long lasting stalemate which keeps the factories humming and the profits outrageous. But by pushing this agenda they risk nuclear war. Not since the Cuban Missile Crisis have we seen what is now brewing between nuclear superpowers.
It's impossible to not see this pattern of unending wars against so called " enemies" since the end of WW2 as what it really is . Eisenhower famously warned us about the unchecked power of the War Industry as he left office but he didn't do anything counteract its power while in office. By locating military bases and weapons factories in all 49 states the War Industry has unassailable political influence when it comes to weapons contracts that promise good paying jobs if politicians go along . And if they don't follow the playbook of the weapons manufacturers the threat of closing factories brings everybody around to the side of the weapons makers. Corporate welfare is bad but when it results in killing millions it is just plain evil.
After the Russian Revolution, the West backed first a military invasion and then the White armies against the new Soviet state. When these efforts failed, the West then backed Polish leader Joseph Pilsudsky and Ukrainian nationalist Simon Petlyura’s Russo-Polish war based on the dual concepts of Intermarium and the Prometheus project.
Once again, now led by the U.S., rightwing anti-Russia forces are looking to Poland and its ultra-anti-Russian allies to lead an increasingly aggressive front against Russia.
The U.S. has been pouring weapons into Eastern Europe, backed up by an aggressive program of military training and military exercises. An aggressive system of bilateral military agreements between the U.S. and its East European allies threaten to pull Western Europe into a multilateral conflict with Russia via Article 5 of the NATO charter.
The authors trace these historical developments as a resurrection of the Intermarium—a geopolitical concept that envisaged an alliance of countries reaching from the Baltic Sea over the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea that would serve as a alternative power bloc between Germany and Russia.
Marlene Laruelle, Ph.D., is an Associate Director and Research Professor at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Elliott School of International Affairs. Ellen Rivera is an independent researcher specialized in the post-war German far-right, with a particular focus on post-war anti-communist organizations. – Editors]
Well-researched pieces like this are a key reason why I read Chris Hedges. Can the US governmental leadership please focus more attention on economic insecurity here at home, and on fending off pending global environmental collapse instead of adding potential nuclear war to the already grim equation?
If you'd like your US governmental leadership to do something for you, its best to write them and request it directly. Have you? You have a Representative in the House and two in the Senate. That's three letters you could send in which you voice your call for action. Add one to Biden, if you like. You're likely pissing in the wind voicing your desire for that here.
Sadly, the responsible citizen writing to their Representative or Senator or, risibly, the cadaver currently inhabiting the Oval Office is truly pissing into the wind. There was a corporate coup d'etat in the past forty years that rolled over the heads of those [ Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel ] who actually cared about serving the American people. Now everyone in Congress and Washington are bought by the lobbyists who represent the arms manufacturers, big pharma, petrol giants, oligarchs, and so forth. This is why polls have indicated, across the political spectrum, that what people in the U.S. most want - Medicare for all, forgiveness of student debt, free university, a livable wage, an end to perpetual war - WILL NEVER HAPPEN. Hence, writing to corporate shills is a bankrupt gesture.
I anticipated such a remark. It is the position of the lazy citizen that cannot be bothered with participating in a Republic. Benjamin Franklin warned of this outside of Independence Hall in 1787 at the close of the Constitutional Convention. I'd ask you to look his comment up yourself, but I'm sure you can't be bothered with that either. Such an attitude, indeed a long time in coming...and is sadly why we at this pathetic point of not having a functioning Republic that the majority no longer wishes to work for.
Yes. One might get a letter back from the Representative or Senator where they confirm their position and that they won't budge, but someone on their staff *does* read letters/email. The effort is worthwhile.
Bye Bye Byeden only keeps letters if they are 'mistakenly' secured in the glove box of his 'Vet --- otherwise he is an 'empty-suit' --- since he learned
Here is my song about Biden:
Bye Bye Byeden
the Empire's got you now
Bye Bye Byeden
you're a real cow---ward
Sung to the tune of Ann Margert's 1963 "Bye Bye Birdie"
Thanks for the condescending yet ineffectual suggestion, random stranger. How about I organize with other like-minded people to restore our democracy, and support political leaders who aren't beholden to superpacs?
Our military support for Ukraine is necessary and effective. However, if we just keep doing that without some effort in the UN and with Russia directly to make a political solution that will incentivize Russians to stop Czar Vladi from his return to older days and control of Eastern Europe, things could, indeed get worse, as they immediately would anyway, if we stop supporting the defense of Ukraine. The solution needs to be assertive and smart, not just giving in to the wannabe czar.
This is not like the war in Iraq (or Afghanistan), which I've always known was just for politics and money...if we fail to do the right stuff with Ukraine, both military and political (especially through the UN) though, nothing will turn out right.
If we wanted to do "the right stuff" with Ukraine, we might have not sponsored a coup there and we might have allowed Zelenskii, elected in 2019 over vociferous American objections, to fulfill Minsk-2, which he was elected to do.
The idea that Ukraine is anything other than geostrategy is a laugh.
As I said, we could have done a lot of the right stuff if we wanted anything but politics and money. However, supporting Ukraine in this moment isn't so much about Ukraine's past as it is about Russia's present goals. I know Ukraine isn't a perfect nation, but then if we want to stop the nationalist thing that happened over time there, why aren't we stopping the ongoing nationalist thing here, which is part of the ideology for doing what we did there? If we can't help ourselves, we cannot help anyone else effectively, either. We have done wrong in virtually everything we've gotten into since Korea, but it's right to criticize supporting Ukraine in this matter to stop Russian aggression?
Ukraine had no beefs with Russia before we got involved.
For that matter, why did Putin force the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics to sign Minsk (which Ukraine promptly broke at US urging) and then Minsk-2, which Ukraine never fulfilled? Why did Putin then spend eight years trying get Ukraine to carry out Minsk-2, while the United States made sure it did not?
Ukraine didn't start this war...and again, if we were doing right things rather than just acting for politics and money, things would be better...Putin is not the victim here...
I do know the background of Ukraine...learned it a long time ago. But even though Ukraine is not a perfect nation, neither are we, nor is any other. We must support efforts against nationalist expansion if we want a better world, and keeping Putin out of control of Eastern Europe is a primary need. If we had done the right things with Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed, things would not be as they are over there. We had an opportunity, but failed to act on it then, just as we failed to make a good solution in Korea in the late 1970's when we had the opportunity to form a good relationship with China toward a better Asia with the outcome of the Axe Murder Incident on the Korea DMZ in 1976. We, the people need to push our government to act smartly in the better interest of things, not just bow to money and some given, stupid ideology.
If we want a better world...U.S. imperialism, and the war economy that necessitates it, has to cease. Putin has neither the military heft nor the desire to expand Russia’s borders.
I agree with your first comment, but wait...Putin doesn't want to expand Russia's borders? Wow...then why is he going after Ukraine, controlling Crimea and other small countries while threatening nuclear holocaust to everyone opposed to him...? It's a fact that Putin doesn't want to rebirth the Soviet Union...he wants to be Czar Vladi and control the whole continent...which is unlikely to happen, but nonetheless it's his dream. Given current circumstances with his health, though, I'm thinking he's more likely to end just like the puppet Shah Reza Pahlavi we installed in Iran back in the 1950's...he got older and sick, lost political power, and the people did the 1979 Revolution, which not only stopped our control there, but our presence, too...it would be good if we were pushing a political agenda to the people to form a "more perfect union" for themselves, as we have abandoned here for us, for so long...
The current elected Russian Government only entered Ukraine reluctantly after public opinion about the need for Russia to assist the population of Donetsk because 14,000 civilians had been slaughtered in Donetsk by the ukie nazis between 2014 and 2022. Slaughtered by artillery installed on the heights surrounding the Donetsk Peoples Republic and fired by Galacians who came from the extreme west of Ukraine.
Ordinary Russian citizens were upset because those people being killed by the Galacian nazis were friends and family of Russian citizens, after all before 1989 they had all lived in the same nation.
For the first time ever - well since Yeltsin's shelling of the Duma, Russia's parliament the CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) was running ahead of the governing United Russia Party in opinion polls. The CPRF which had only gained 11.5% of the vote in the last presidential election was now neck and neck with President Putin, their major point was that Russia needed to to protect their brothers and sisters in Ukraine.
Russians were deeply upset at what they saw as being a racist slaughter of slavs (Galacians are Germanic and describe Slavs as untermensch, check out Stepan Bandera's butchery of ethnic Hungarians and Lvov Poles during ww2 after his death squads claimed they had run out of Jews to slaughter, if you require proof of this).
Some wealthy Russians had provided financial support to the populations of the DPR & LPR, but actual support from the RF government had not been forthcoming.
Mid 2021 was when the Russian government finally woke up to the fact that they could no longer ignore the Donbass and so worked on a way to end the problem without further conflict. November 2021 they presented Nato & amerika with a document detailing what they believe needed to occur to prevent war.
People forget that the current Russian government is intensely capitalist and sees war as being pointless and destructive as it stymies international trade.
However by January 2022 it became aparent that amerika/nato was not backing off, the Ukrainian nazi gangs armed & trained by that pair were massing on the border of the DPR preparing to launch a major offensive in spring.
The Russian government realised that they must get involved or forget about staying a government so the Parliament passed a motion recognising Donetsk & Luhansk as independent states which they fully supported so a few days later the RF armed forces were requested to move into Ukraine and demilitarise & denazify the aggressors.
Even amerikan pollsters had conceded by March 2022 that the decision to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine had restored President Putin's popularity and had in fact taken it to new heights.
I agree with your major points, but some of the details are not correct. It's "Galicians" "Galicia" of eastern Eur. and not to be confused with a people in Spain. They are not Germanic or German speaking but yes, western Galicians were Nazi allies.
The area has a very complex history as to who ruled, including Lithuania-Poland, the Austro-Hungarian empire, and Ruthenia. Look up "Ruthenians" and "Rusyns" as ethnic groups and languages. In the US, most refer to themselves as Carpatho-Russians. They are subgroups of eastern Slavic peoples and not actually Russian per se. There are disagreements as to whether or not Rusyn, spoken in southern areas of Ukraine, is a separate language, as the Rusyns themselves think, or just a dialect of Ukrainian.
Several nearby countries, including Poland, Hungary, and Croatia, recognize Rusyn as a protected minority language. So did Ukraine until 2014. We can guess why.
All of this is evidence that it isn't just the Russian speaking eastern areas that have a problem with the current government of Ukraine. Nor do they favor the reincarnation of the Galician SS as the Azov battalion.
I'd like your post if not for the pejorative spelling of the name commonly given to my favorite empire, though I prefer USA. But truly I appreciate the history lesson. It seems a little ironic that Rafi, whose knowledge and perspective on history I also appreciate, took you to task for not using the preferred spelling of "Galician" (which always confused me until now) but might feel that your moniker places you in an opposing camp. I wonder if that's really the case, but either way I look forward to learning more from you both, and encourage you not to waste time, energy and type on who is properly educated on the complexities of Eastern European history, as you both obviously are, and keep the focus on classic debate tactics like data points, logic, etc.
No, I've learned the truth over time from my experience and from people who lived the circumstances, as well as the background of a lot of things through my Army experience.
The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff estimate of an equal number [100.000] of Ukrainians and Russians killed is a suspect one. The numbers commented on by Scott Ritter and Douglas Macgregor are far more asymmetrical in Russia's favour. In the battle of Kharkiv, though Ukrainian forces prevailed, according to Ritter the death ratio was 15 Ukrainians for every Russian killed. This may be the closest that the JCOS can come to admitting that fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian isn't working out as planned. The "best scenario," would seem to be a "victory" for Russia and a Ukraine reduced to a bombed out failed state, swarming with parasitic investors. But a deranged U.S. game of chicken with Russia [the most heavily nuclear armed nation] should be terrifying to everyone. When diplomacy, detente, or a cease fire have become verboten, it's certain that mad desperation and delusional hubris have taken hold of the antagonists. But most Americans probably remain ignorant of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientist's Doomsday Clock; recently moved to 90 seconds to midnight.
So, we should abandon Ukraine to it’s fate? Let Putin have it. Is that what you are saying Chris? There seems to be more involved here than the military industrial complex. There are obviously people in the Ukraine who want to have the kind of freedom and human rights that more democratic countries offer, and they will fight for that even as they are destroyed by yet another bully. I think most people might find it hard to stand around and watch though admittedly it happens all the time.
In the early '70s, there was a joke that called out the assumptions behind use of the 1st person plural pronoun. The Lone Ranger and Tonto are surrounded by what appears to be hostile Indians. The Lone Ranger says "we have to fight them, Tonto!" To which Tonto replies "what's this 'we,' white man?!"
So for what "we" do you speak here? Are all real Americans required to just believe the MSM and MIC? Actually knowing anything about the area is unnecessary, and we must choose either/or. Ukie good, Russky evil. With us or against us; dissent by definition is against us.
For what "we," as if the US were the sterling example of "freedom and human rights"? Ask us BIPOC people about that. Ask us who fought the center-right unfriendly takeover of the Dem party by people who ditched the New Deal and abandoned labor. The same who have now allied with the neocons and their ideas of empire through war. if you doubt that, consider Victoria Nuland, the diplomat cheerleader for the current mess, having served the Obama and Biden administrations. Never mind she was an advisor to Dick Cheney and is married to one of the major architects of the neocon PNAC. (look it up)
And for what Ukraine, as if history were irrelevant and the entire population monolithic? What about Ruthenians, and Rusyns in the south? People who aren't happy about the reincarnation of the Galician SS of WWII as the neo-Nazi Azov battalion. Do "we" approve of the recent parades in Kyiv and Lviv celebrating the Galician SS? How about the continuing revelations about the intense corruption of Ukrainian government officials? How about the fact that maybe 30% of donated military equipment gets to where it's supposed to be going?
This might well have turned out better in the 1944 election conference, if FDR's brilliant and Socialist VP, Henry Wallace, had not been torpedoed by the OSS, DNC, Dixiecrat racists, and several middle-American 'Big-City' Bosses.
At the Convention, Wallace (who was very popular with 'we the people') initially gained popular support from over 65% of the Delegates on the First Vote. However, he was "physically blocked" from going to the podium, and the Convention was recessed despite loud and continuing cheering for Wallace --- who would have continued to hold the office of VP on FDR's certain death in April of 1945. But, hell, that might have obviated the need for a Cold War. and maybe even the need for Michael Glennon's "The National Security State and the Double Government" [which might have reduced the need to feed "The Merchants of Death", eh?]
I often refer to this as the first obvious 'Silent and bloodless coup d'état' in America --- until JFK's unfortunate passing.
Wallace was criticized for being far too idealistic for the harsh realities of trench politics. Maybe that was true. But on the other hand, why not have someone decent, unselfish, and creative in office? Besides, it doesn't have to be either/or.
The advantage to Wallace was that he knew well the agrarian populist movements and Social Gospel history. Plus he supported integration and women's rights. So he would have been able to help continue movements that brought together poor rural whites, Black people, and labor in a common cause.
Wallace was called Communist because of his left wing views and because he was influenced by Theosophist spiritual ideas, particularly the Russian artist Nicholas Roerich. Ridiculous since both Wallace and Roerich, as esotericists, were vehemently anti-Bolshevik. As an old blue collar union activist trained by left wing New Dealers and an admirer of Roerich, that's a big plus for me. It wouldn't be for dogmatic leftists, though.
Worth thinking about. History could be very different.
I would say that few know the history of the US alliance with fascists in Ukraine and the stay behind armies under Gladio in Ukraine specifically.
As long as you know that you are supporting Nazis, literally, The Right Party, C14, Azov etc. then you have concluded.
However the deeper you dig you find the fingerprints of Allan Dulles and the war hawks that lead right into the GOP.
Real Russ Bellant: New, Nazis old Nazis and see how Ukrainian exiles in the US, most fascists, were used by the Republican party to get Nixon elected.
The Hungarian National Cross is represented in the US by Sebastian Gorka who wore his grandfathers fascist colors on stage during Trump's presidential speech.
O.S.S. Document: U.S. Intelligence Planned on Using Stephan Bandera Against U.S.S.R. in 1946
"Stephan Bandera’s OUN/B by elements of U.S. intelligence to use as combatants against the Soviet Union. Having staffed SS and Gestapo ranks and participated in war crimes against Poles, Jews, Russians and other “racial undesirables,” this Third Reich ally conducted guerilla warfare against the Soviets until the early 1950’s.
Transitioning from Nazi Germany to the Office of Policy Coordination (a CIA/State Department operation administered by Frank Wisner), the OUN/B combatants essentially switched uniforms from the Third Reich to American intelligence.
A declassified document from the Office of Strategic Services–America’s World War II intelligence agency and the forerunner of the CIA–discloses that Bandera and his organization were targeted for recruitment in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
The document features discussion of Yaroslav Stetsko, the wartime leader of Ukraine whose Nazi puppet regime fulfilled the Reich’s ethnic cleansing doctrine with brutal thoroughness. In understanding the Ukraine crisis, the unbroken line of political succession from Stetsko/Bandera to the present should be borne in mind, as should the synthesis of U.S. covert operations and the GOP, specifically the Crusade For Freedom.
An illegal domestic covert operation, the CFF brought Nazi allies such as the OUN/B, the Croatian Ustachi, the Romanian Iron Guard, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, the Bulgarian National Front and others into the United States in order to drive the political spectrum to the right.
As of 1952, the CFF became inextricably linked with the GOP, with Arthur Bliss Lane playing a key role in the GOP’s 1952 campaign, as well as being centrally involved in the CFF. The CFF spawned the GOP’s ethnic outreach organization, which was able to deliver the swing vote in five key states in Presidential election years. It eventually became a permanent part of the GOP."
Ever increasing budgets for war are approved without the teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing that accompany any proposal to provide assistance to average citizens. We cannot afford a host of critical social needs unless they are revenue neutral or are offset by spending cuts in other areas (usually Social Security and Medicare), but war spending is automatic. Debate not required. Dissent not allowed. It's madness.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again — despite the FACT that it doesn’t WORK (for shit).
This insane repeated action, IMHO, is what is happening in the insane and unproductive DIVISION of ‘Issues’ and ‘contributed begging for MONEY’ — which is the exact opposite of employing the “Strategic Advantage” [Michael Porter HBS] of focusing ‘like an effin laser’ on one single winning Strategic Factor — calling it out, and clearly targeting it against all the varied little issues and minuscule money we have.
You can’t beat Money with less Money. And you can’t beat Focus with a shit load of hundreds of distractive little ‘issues’.
WAKE TF-up to a winning strategy.
Call-out one single thing as being the cancerous cause of all these distracting and divided little ‘Issues’ and lack of money, advertising, and power — then Strategically focus on the EMPIRE that is the cancer in “The Quiet American EMPIRE” — which hides behind it’s soft, advertising, propaganda Vichy facade.
Given the recent discusson on this substack about "Bowling Alone" and individual suicide, it's interesting to watch a nation, the U.S., commit suicide. Not having won a war since WWII, and from the exit without honor from Vietnam to the ignoble exit from Afghanistan, one would think the U.S. could take a hint. Apparently, not. I shall buy popcorn in anticipation of watching this fiasco on tv---and hope I live to see it thru to the end.
That the U.S. seems determned to push China, Russia, and Iran into a defensive pact, means that if any of the three decides to use nukes, the Americans who diie instantly as a result of an attack may be the lucky ones.
Yeah, I already reserved first row at ground zero. In that pact China would benefit with the great arsenal of nuclear weapons that Russia has and Russia with the economic power of China, and Iran would be relieved of its undeserved archenemies. Hope nothing happens.
The war was entirely intentional on the part of the United States.
The problem is the sunk cost of weapons, treasure and support, of whitewashing self-proclaimed Nazis and calling them freedom fighters, all that means that the West will continue to double down.
Or, as Senator Lindsey Graham put it, the United States will fight to the last Ukrainian rather than make peace.
Graham is an absolute idiot, and anyone who listens to him is simply stupid. As I said in my comment, we need a smart, effective solution, not just trying to win a war that has no end.
Graham is a roaring ass, granted.
He also is a United States senator and he enjoys considerable influence and authority within thst body.
I think it is obvious now or should be that the US government is partially controlled by assassinations and murder.
Graham is a perfect example of not simply a supplicant but one that is blackmailed.
Can't prove it but it is my assumption.
I doubt it. Graham is simply a sociopath, one who knows well on which side the power lies and who will do anything to get him a piece of it.
That mental anomaly applies to Biden, Nuland, Sullivan, and Blinken for sure. I have never seen such a concentration of warmongering sociopaths.
You are insulting Miss Graham - the closeted RINO gay-fascist
You may consider Miss Graham a closeted gay RINO fascist and I may consider Miss Graham a RINO gay-fascist and even George Orwell who died in 1950 might consider Graham a Gay RINO closeted gay-fascist but the people of South Carolina believe in the holiness of Chik Fil-A.
There are no Chik-Fil-As in Quebec. Religion and politics don't mix.
The Chik-A-Contract is illegal under our laws and charter.
YES, the only structure that could explain the U.S. is two Vichy (double government) duopoly facade of parties posing as a form of government, and a totally controlling "Quiet American Empire", such as Michael Glennon's "National Security and the Double Government", or as:
Arron Good relates:
American officials, meanwhile, have asserted that the US “will not accept policies or actions that threaten or undermine the rules-based international order [emphasis added], even as the US (often aided by allies) routinely conducts foreign policy in violation of international and domestic US law.
Thus, it should be understood that when pro-US figures use the term, “rules-based international order,” they are not referring to anything analogous to the rule of law.
Quite the opposite, they are using Orwellian language to describe a system in which essentially no rules can be established and/or observed, given that the dominant state has the prerogative to violate and/or rewrite “rules” at its whim.
Good, Aaron (2022-06-20T23:58:59.000). American Exception: Empire and the Deep State. Kindle Edition.
Think of both Team R and Team D as cutouts for The National Security State.
I wonder how many people are following the murders in Peru, the protests, the jailing of the President and the fascist government?
Few.
All roads lead to Rome.
But do not despair:
In the United States, All Roads Lead to Rome: every vector of amerikan politics at the present moment points towards the maintenance of the fascist imperialist occupation government and its parasitic relationship with the rest of the world. This series will attempt to map the current terrain of internationalist politics in the United States.
All political movements inside the United States are aligned with its fascism and global imperialism, regardless of the ideologies they espouse. The relatively small groups which claim opposition to imperialism are controlled opposition tied to monopoly capital and/or United States intelligence agencies.1 The 'movements' they represent are powerless by design.
It is not an exaggeration to say that, at present, there exists no above-ground US-based organizations whose practices and class interests genuinely oppose the United States and its unipolar imperialist domination. If any such organizations exist they tiny and are far below ground.
We know this because there is no substantive resistance inside the core against United States hybrid warfare (i.e. sanctions) against Cuba, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, or any other of the dozens of countries on the US’s shitlist. There are no strategies being formulated and enacted to put an end to the US occupation of Syria and Iraq, or the blockade of Yemen, or the proxy-occupation of Haiti, or the pumping of weapons into Taiwan province and Ukraine. Genuine opposition requires politico-military strategy and material action. There is no mass movement inside the US of any kind taking material action against US hegemony.
The crucial thing to understand about this article is that the United States is the most advanced form of fascism on the planet. Every amerikan has been subjected to the most advanced forms of psyop and fascist technologies that the United States occupation government has at its disposal.2 In other countries, especially those that oppose the empire, governments must dedicate enormous resources to defend against US/Imperialist information warfare and psychological warfare.3 It is almost impossible to combat this form of warfare inside the United States where all forms of community assistance are funneled through imperialist “Non-Governmental Organizations” and where there are no alternative communications or media infrastructure whatsoever.
Amerikan political consciousness is held so completely captive by the neo-colonial psyops and hybrid counterinsurgency program that there is currently no means for exploited and oppressed people to organize a politico-military strategy. Even when conditions for many reach crisis proportions.
This is not a statement to imply "oh pity these amerikans they are so sad" but simply to see things for how they are Right Now and to not get misdirected by false internationalists and CIA assets who propose otherwise.
Importantly, for readers and friends in other countries: there is no substantive support for you from amerikans or any amerikan political movements, from reactionaries to communists. You cannot rely on people in the US to challenge their government’s extreme violence inflicted on the world. Factor that into your decision-making calculus.
For our readers and friends inside the Imperial Core, specifically the United States: do not lose hope. Countries around the planet are rapidly moving to cast off the chains of imperialist domination and build national & social self-determination. In all likelihood the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA) and the Quds Axis (AKA Axis of Resistance) will drag the amerikan left — kicking and screaming, repeating psyops — into the multipolar world. There are, however, still things to be done…
https://fleawar.substack.com/p/all-roads-lead-to-rome-part-1
The Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International, founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938, are not, and never have been "tied to monopoly capital and/or United States intelligence agencies." The SEP and the World Socialist Web Site are completely independent and contain no advertising, or other commercial support and are only supported by contributions of members and followers. It is the party I have supported for more than 20 years. Funny how all you people succumbing to the U.S. empire always seem to forget the existence of the SEP and ICFI. It would destroy your so-called argument.
Oh, and your declaration that there being "no existing no above-ground US-based organizations . . . whose practices and class interests genuinely oppose the United States", etc., I cannot believe that you have never heard of the WSWS or the SEP which, by the way, is an internationalist Marxist party.
Feral,
I do not share this conviction.
I have returned to Canada . I came back in 2006 from the Midwest. We have a lot of American wannabees but I would suggest more than 60% of us do not want to be Americans. America is America; it is not the West anymore.
We fear America more than we love it and we are your friendly neighbour.
Quebec says religion and politics don't mix. Lindsay Graham believes crazy shit.
America doesn't believe in real 2023 democracy. Graham is a Theocrat.
Absolutely...and we, the people should be standing up to fix that, but it's not happening...
Thank you Dave.
I am a crazy old man but I grew up in Montreal with escapees from both sides of the Viet Nam conflict.
War is always about conflicting theologies and soldiers don't question theology.
Thomas Jefferson was a Deist. Deists shun theology but Jefferson was a moral coward and his bible written for a secular humanist liberal democracy wasn't published until the 20th century because Holy Wars are always the bloodiest.
You might want to read Jefferson's Bible . It is free from the Smithsonian. My wife just read it it took her less than an hour but she is a Doctor of Philosophy and Graduated from a Rockefeller sponsored Baptist University in Chicago where they built an atomic bomb.
https://www.si.edu/exhibitions/jeffersons-bible-life-and-morals-jesus-nazareth%3Aevent-exhib-4677
of course there is George Orwell's essay on Nationalism
That explains Russia Ukraine anything but a Proxy War.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/
and then being an old Canadian fart there is Buffy Sainte Marie's
Universal Soldier
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYEsFQ_gt7c
Yes, it is partially what is called the 'cost-sunk fallacy', which basically is easily described this way:
You push the elevator button for the elevator to come down and you wait.
If the time exceeds your expectations you can use the stairs or say, "Well, I invested this much time in waiting, I guess I should wait some more."
The cost-sunk fallacy is at play, along with a host of other morbities.
The abuse of the Sunk Cost Fallacy is entirely intentional.
This was used, among other times, to extend our occupation of Afghanistan. Except now imagine the Taliban with ICBMs.
It was why it took so long for U.S. troops to be pulled out of Vietnam. Lying Generals and vain politicians were cowards in the face of inevitability.
As confirmed by The Pentagon Papers.
For those who continue to doubt - Ukraine was close to a peace deal with Russia, but the United States scotched that.
For that matter, Zelenskii was elected in 2019, over vociferous American objections, on a policy of peace and reconciliation with Russia. After taking office, he secured the agreement of the military to implement the Minsk-2 peace agreement, which his predecessor, Poroshenko, as well as Hollande and Merkel (France and Germany were guarantors of Ukraine's obligations under Minsk-2) all stated that Ukraine had entered into in bad faith.
The United States refused its consent, with the Nazi paramilitaries serving as the United States' enforcers.
Zelinskii, like many Latin American 'leaders' was threatened no doubt, by the Nazis.
I would think he was told that his whole family and he would be taken out if they did not follow NATO/Azov commands.
Once in, he becomes a culprit.
That is no secret. The various paramilitaries openly promised to hang him.
The only problem with that logic is that Zelenskiy is a multimillionaire who could live very well in Tallahassee Singapore or Wellington. Zelensky is new to politics but he is a celebrity because of his genius and talent. He is not a thug, a bully or a goon.
He is a comedian's comedian like Diogenes who grew up in the same neck of the woods.
He is a multimillionaire only due to his homage and servitude to the oligarch that launched him.
He has made off nicely on this war but he would never have even been in this position had it not been for the oligarch he works for and the NATO fascists that support them all.
He made his millions as a writer, actor and comedian. He was doing what he loved to do. You can't make someone a writer, actor and comedian they have to be sick to begin with. Kinda like Duck Soup in 1933.
Great movie Washington yesterday, today and maybe if there is a tomorrow.
I remember Reagan in his Time for choosing speech 1933 was the beginning of America's worst nightmare. He said that in 1964 in support of Barry Goldwater and I guess they lost the battle but are winning the war.
That is the narrative I know. That is the narrative I believe because I was watching Zelenkiy play piano.
He made his millions in a rather unusual way he used his talent and intellect to make people understand freedom.
Zellenskiy is an adult and Putin, Johnson and Trump are Peter Pans.
I have only one quibble how can you be feral when Felix was never really Domesticus?
We are Homo Domesticus. It is we who have become feral.
We need Chris' voice , with his unfailing integrity I return to his writing when the insanity of American imperialism feels overwhelming.
The trans-migration caused by US imperialism and war is perhaps the greatest seen in the world, simply in sheer numbers.
Not just Ukraine, but all of Europe is in transit with Hungary seeing hundreds of thousand of its citizens leave due to fascist policies.
Poland already has suffered the ravages of war and forced migration. One might recall the “Polish plumbers”, who first fled last century to England and who were used as cheap labor for Trump’s casinos.
Europe has become a dumping ground for human beings fleeing planetary climate change and war.
Not only due immigrants, as we saw with the boat from Haiti last week turned back by the US, suffer from the degradation of an underground economy that most people would never recognize.
From coyotes and transport, to documents and work, this underground economy is one that is run by organized criminals who profit of human trafficking which is what is happening now in Ukraine.
I think it was Carlin who said, “Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
That Ukrainian citizens are being decimated is no surprise.
They have no chance of winning, as Chris and Scott Ritter have noted.
But the stock market and the military intelligence industrial complex have penetrated into every form of American life.
The entire staggering economic machine that is America rests on its pumping money into the military.
And this is also why the war rages on and will, awaiting that delayed and inept military machinery that the Ukrainians cannot even repair.
But it is the economic necessity of Military-Keynsianism, otherwise known as fascism, that has force-fed these monstruous military contractors, of which five are the biggest.
The head of the US Defense Dept. Austin sat on the board of Raytheon, merely one of the death merchants involved in Ukraine.
And although Taibbi revealed the Russiagate lies, his boss, Elon Musk and Space Link sends satellites to Ukraine and other military hardware, showing once again how these billionaire puppets manage perceptions at home while profiting off war abroad.
There is a fascinating book written in 2009 entitled: The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (American Empire Project) by Nick Turse.
Turse sets the book within the lives of a family, Nick, Steve and their son.
Here is a short synopsis:
“Now in paperback, a stunning breakdown of the modern military-industrial complex―an omnipresent, hidden-in-plain-sight system of systems that penetrates all our lives.
From iPods to Starbucks to Oakley sunglasses, historian Nick Turse explores the Pentagon's little-noticed contacts (and contracts) with the products and companies that now form the fabric of America. He investigates the remarkable range of military incursions into the civilian world: the Pentagon's collaborations with Hollywood filmmakers; its outlandish schemes to weaponize the wild kingdom; its joint ventures with Marvel Comics and NASCAR. Similarly disturbing is the way in which the military, desperate for fresh recruits, has tapped into the "culture of cool" by making "friends" on MySpace.
A striking vision of this brave new world of remote-controlled rats and super-soldiers who need no sleep, The Complex will change our understanding of the militarization of America. We are a long way from Eisenhower's military-industrial complex: this is the essential book for understanding its twenty-first-century progeny.”
https://www.amazon.com/Complex-Military-Invades-Everyday-American/dp/0805089195
What Turse described 14 years ago was the militarization of everyday life: from products to identity.
America is weened on war, having had only 7 years of peace in its existence; and war underlies the economy and culture while violence rages.
The Levis and Disneyland have been replaced by the Khakis and mass murderers and killer cops.
The US is a war economy and has been for over a century.
Take a look at the spy culture that is America, its films, novels, culture, art and you will see the red stain of war.
The tragedy is that a war economy not only leads to war, it leads to fascism as war become intolerable in the form of austerity and loss of civil rights for those at home who subsidize it, be they European or American.
Chris, I wish you had been more even handed. I wouldn't dispute most of your points about America's military folly but loading them in the scale without giving the same treatment to Russia, and not giving credence to western and northern European responses to Russia's 2014 theft of Crimea and the blatant fact that they have been the military aggressors in Ukraine is unfair to your readers. The US did not coerce Sweden and Finland, two of the most socially wise and empathetic countries in the world, to ask for NATO membership. You and I know from experience that the only way to tame a bully is to resist (as did the Afghans, the Iraqis and our numerous other failures). Our country now is being ruined by fossil fuel interests and military contractors and spends an obscene amount on non-productive consumables. They are the enemy, our government is in their thrall thanks, largely to Citizens United. Fight the war against our enemies not our utterly prostrate and failed government. Please, be more even handed, it is obvious that Russia's bullying must be stopped.
Russia hasn't been bullying anyone. People talk as if empires are accretions of nation states. They are not. They are blobs that are broken up into manageable subdivisions at the whim of the central government. Crimea was a part of the Russian empire for centuries and was associated with no fewer than 14 different oblasts over the centuries. The only reason that the Ukraine wants Crimea is because their master, the US and NATO, want Sevastopol so they can have a NATO base in the Black Sea. The real aggressor is the US. Kindly remember that it was the US and not Russia that fomented the coup that put the Ukrainian Nazis in power in Kiev. When you talk about bullying, look in the mirror. Just now, for a tiny example, the US is running around threatening other countries who are not abiding by the US's unilateral sanctions. Unilateral sanctions do not have the approval of the UN and are, therefore, a violation of the UN charter and international law.
Yes, the US contravenes the UN Charter whenever it sees fit. The US government is totally in the thrall of a Military Industrial Complex, the US Department of Defense is the largest consumer of fossil fuels on Earth, and between the fossil fuel industry and the MIC, the US has bankrupted itself many times over to buy crap designed to be expended to no good end. So, how can the US get rid of the corrupting effect of Citizens United which keeps our government in service to murderers? There is no sign our governors are even giving it a thought. The Executive is in the hands of a man who in his youth was referred to as "the Senator from Dow Chemical," our Congress is comprised of an upper house loaded with billionaires and a lower house typified by millionaires. Please, offer solutions, don't just bitch.
I thought Biden was the Senator from MBNA?
Biden also was a principal congressional architect of The War On Iraq, and introduced a bill similar to the so-called "Patriot Act" in the 1990s. (It sank like a stone.)
Anyway, to answer your concluding question: the only language sociopaths understand is reward and punishment, however, they understand this language quite well.
Even Pew Research, Forbes magazine and Ukrainian sociologists recognize that almost everybody in Crimea wanted rid of Ukraine.
When I lived there, Crimea was considered a hardship post for army conscripts, as the locals considered Ukraine a hostile occupier and treated its soldiers accordingly.
As a little anecdote I hope I can provide some useless idiot understanding.
The occupational therapist came to see my wife and I on Monday. We are160 and live with each other as we have for decades. We have lived in many different cultures and wife does not speak Quebecois.
Our healthcare , education and welfare is provided by the University of Sherbrooke under contract from our government in Quebec city. In Montreal McGill University provided those services to Montreal's Anglophones and the University of Montreal provided the French language services. My wife has both undergraduate and gradute degrees from the University of Chicago.
I am in many ways retarded but I love talking philosophy with everyone and when we talked about regional health, education and welfare my wife finally understood the reality of Quebec is that its 8.5 million inhabitants do not share common understandings and values. The ethical philosophers that run the University of Sherbrooke are far more liberal than those at McGill or the University of Montreal.
Tell me about Crimea. Tell me about how conservative one can be if you were the battle ground from before Alexander the Great to World War two and conflict always brought about pain and sorrow.
"Into the Valley of the Shadow of Death rode the six hundred" Crimea 1853
World War minus one.
Russia vs Ottomans, English, Austro-Hungarians middle Europeans and The Holy Roman Empire.
Germany began in 1866 it is one year older than Canada.
Tom, I disagree with you on several points:
A) Crimea is an historically ethnical and Russian region, and it is of paramount strategic importance to Russia. it ended up in Ukraine because in the 50s it was moved to readjust USSR internal administrative borders. It didn't want to be part of Ukraine in 1991 and 2014 Galicians far-right nationalist coup, insigated and supported by US just pushed the issue over the edge
B) Northern and western European gave up to US\NATO pressure and, for their own confession, signed and guaranteed Minsk agreement only to give Ukraine time to be de facto intgrated in NATO
C) In Donbass there was a bloody civil war running from 2014, selecting 02\24\2022 as war starting date to make Russia "the aggressor", is naive and\or misleading, and useless, unless in order to claim a higher moral standpoint that doesn't withstand a deeper investigation
D) Sweden and Finland might have been wise and empathetic countries in the past but a lot of water, immigration and socioeconomic changes went under the bridge from then... they are fully integrated in the politic-economic 4th reich and are US empire vassals exactly like any other EU member; ther was no coercion because US already installed a compliant viceroy over there
E) It is true the only way to tame a bully is to resist , but it is Russia whom has been bullied into this corner, make no mistakes, and after trying almost every possible trick and swallowing all sort of humiliations for 30 years to avoid it
The war was entirely intentional on the part of the United States.
Witness the Rand report, titled "Extending Russia".
To assume Russian bullying I suspect we have to look judiciously away from everything that was going on in Ukraine since the 2014 coup. We also might have to erase our memory of American interference around the globe since the end of WWII.
That is the history that everyone pretended didn't exist, when we cheer led western invovement in this war. Had NATO considered that pushing for Ukrainian membership was an obvious red flag for Russia (not to mention of immanent danger to the west)...and agreed on Ukrainian neutrality we'd have been living in a far different world now.
But America needs constant war....and it has the sticks and CIA operatives to forment crises wherever a crises seems useful. There was 0 to be gained by forcing Russia's hand...and I for one, wonder what Russia's oil has to do with it all.
We do know that America has fracked the bejesus out of her backcountry to regain fossil fuel supremacy do we not???? We've done our research on how expensive and debt ridden that operation has been yes??? And we've connected the dots of the climate emergency and the need to transition off fossil fuels and fools, have we not???
In such a world a fossil fuel driven war, engaged in in part because Russia still has the sweet light crude shit.........is a form of suicide on many fronts.
But not just suicide. America murders many in its single minded pursuit of its own demise. And from the statistics on mass shootings in the first month of this year......it does seem the suicide of the American Empire is proceeding apace.
Good luck with it
Not “obvious” in the least. #Washington and #Lincoln both warned against “foreign ‘alliances’ & ‘entanglements’,” respectively.
It's a sickening feeling knowing the US government has channeled $113 billion for war in Ukraine, including the development of sophisticated tanks. I think about the Apollo 11 and For All Mankind documentaries and how extraordinary (and ordinary) people can create extraordinary things/events. Think what we could do for climate change, universal health care and the homeless, to name just a few issues.
Putin handed the war machine a huge gift by invading Ukraine. Now they can look forward to decades of profits keeping this cash cow flowing. The War Industry doesn't want victory, they want a long lasting stalemate which keeps the factories humming and the profits outrageous. But by pushing this agenda they risk nuclear war. Not since the Cuban Missile Crisis have we seen what is now brewing between nuclear superpowers.
It's impossible to not see this pattern of unending wars against so called " enemies" since the end of WW2 as what it really is . Eisenhower famously warned us about the unchecked power of the War Industry as he left office but he didn't do anything counteract its power while in office. By locating military bases and weapons factories in all 49 states the War Industry has unassailable political influence when it comes to weapons contracts that promise good paying jobs if politicians go along . And if they don't follow the playbook of the weapons manufacturers the threat of closing factories brings everybody around to the side of the weapons makers. Corporate welfare is bad but when it results in killing millions it is just plain evil.
It is far more complex. Yes, the war machine profits and will. Putin was bated for the real fight is with China.
War is a bonanza for weapon manufactures, this we know.
But geopolitically this is far larger than quick profits.
This is the US/Stratford Plan for the Intermarian:
Ukraine and Intermarian/Promethean Network
Recruiting Nazis Covert Action Quarterly
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2019/03/23/imagined-geographies-of-central-and-eastern-europe-the-concept-of-intermarium/
After the Russian Revolution, the West backed first a military invasion and then the White armies against the new Soviet state. When these efforts failed, the West then backed Polish leader Joseph Pilsudsky and Ukrainian nationalist Simon Petlyura’s Russo-Polish war based on the dual concepts of Intermarium and the Prometheus project.
Once again, now led by the U.S., rightwing anti-Russia forces are looking to Poland and its ultra-anti-Russian allies to lead an increasingly aggressive front against Russia.
The U.S. has been pouring weapons into Eastern Europe, backed up by an aggressive program of military training and military exercises. An aggressive system of bilateral military agreements between the U.S. and its East European allies threaten to pull Western Europe into a multilateral conflict with Russia via Article 5 of the NATO charter.
The authors trace these historical developments as a resurrection of the Intermarium—a geopolitical concept that envisaged an alliance of countries reaching from the Baltic Sea over the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea that would serve as a alternative power bloc between Germany and Russia.
Marlene Laruelle, Ph.D., is an Associate Director and Research Professor at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Elliott School of International Affairs. Ellen Rivera is an independent researcher specialized in the post-war German far-right, with a particular focus on post-war anti-communist organizations. – Editors]
To understand the Pentagon, you have to understand it as an "endowment". All endowments are run to:
1) preserve capital
2) maximize yield on capital
This is why US wars are periodic, and don't result in anything. don't leave us safer.
Well-researched pieces like this are a key reason why I read Chris Hedges. Can the US governmental leadership please focus more attention on economic insecurity here at home, and on fending off pending global environmental collapse instead of adding potential nuclear war to the already grim equation?
If you'd like your US governmental leadership to do something for you, its best to write them and request it directly. Have you? You have a Representative in the House and two in the Senate. That's three letters you could send in which you voice your call for action. Add one to Biden, if you like. You're likely pissing in the wind voicing your desire for that here.
Sadly, the responsible citizen writing to their Representative or Senator or, risibly, the cadaver currently inhabiting the Oval Office is truly pissing into the wind. There was a corporate coup d'etat in the past forty years that rolled over the heads of those [ Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel ] who actually cared about serving the American people. Now everyone in Congress and Washington are bought by the lobbyists who represent the arms manufacturers, big pharma, petrol giants, oligarchs, and so forth. This is why polls have indicated, across the political spectrum, that what people in the U.S. most want - Medicare for all, forgiveness of student debt, free university, a livable wage, an end to perpetual war - WILL NEVER HAPPEN. Hence, writing to corporate shills is a bankrupt gesture.
I anticipated such a remark. It is the position of the lazy citizen that cannot be bothered with participating in a Republic. Benjamin Franklin warned of this outside of Independence Hall in 1787 at the close of the Constitutional Convention. I'd ask you to look his comment up yourself, but I'm sure you can't be bothered with that either. Such an attitude, indeed a long time in coming...and is sadly why we at this pathetic point of not having a functioning Republic that the majority no longer wishes to work for.
Your utterances are a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding.
Until recently, they didn't even show up at their office. The mail just laid on the floor.
Yes. One might get a letter back from the Representative or Senator where they confirm their position and that they won't budge, but someone on their staff *does* read letters/email. The effort is worthwhile.
Bye Bye Byeden only keeps letters if they are 'mistakenly' secured in the glove box of his 'Vet --- otherwise he is an 'empty-suit' --- since he learned
Here is my song about Biden:
Bye Bye Byeden
the Empire's got you now
Bye Bye Byeden
you're a real cow---ward
Sung to the tune of Ann Margert's 1963 "Bye Bye Birdie"
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Bye+Bye+Birdie&atb=v187-1&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DC9C2CXsLS1c
There is no proof that Bye Bye Byeden learded that trick from Sandy Berger.
Thanks for the condescending yet ineffectual suggestion, random stranger. How about I organize with other like-minded people to restore our democracy, and support political leaders who aren't beholden to superpacs?
Our military support for Ukraine is necessary and effective. However, if we just keep doing that without some effort in the UN and with Russia directly to make a political solution that will incentivize Russians to stop Czar Vladi from his return to older days and control of Eastern Europe, things could, indeed get worse, as they immediately would anyway, if we stop supporting the defense of Ukraine. The solution needs to be assertive and smart, not just giving in to the wannabe czar.
We heard similar fairy tales during the run up to the War on Iraq.
It is incredible.
For more information as to how Ukrainians were used in both the Nixon and Reagan White House see: The Gipper and the Third Reich
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-465-the-gipper-and-the-underground-reich/
Basically, the people who think that the wrong side won WWII.
They think the US defeated Fascism and do not understand the US financed and supported both Mussolini and Hitler.
The "Greatest Generation" came back from war thinking they had beat not just Hitler but an idea.
Little did they know the same Nazis were used to set up the Eastern Front for the 'New' West Germany which was the old Nazis.
Nor did they know that these same Nazis were used by Nixon after Dewey lost the election for president and blamed it on the Jewish vote.
Nixon set up the network with Dulles to smuggle in communities of Ustasi, Iron Cross, Hungarian Arrow Party and Bandera fascists to wed to the GOP.
All in my posts above.
This is not like the war in Iraq (or Afghanistan), which I've always known was just for politics and money...if we fail to do the right stuff with Ukraine, both military and political (especially through the UN) though, nothing will turn out right.
If we wanted to do "the right stuff" with Ukraine, we might have not sponsored a coup there and we might have allowed Zelenskii, elected in 2019 over vociferous American objections, to fulfill Minsk-2, which he was elected to do.
The idea that Ukraine is anything other than geostrategy is a laugh.
As I said, we could have done a lot of the right stuff if we wanted anything but politics and money. However, supporting Ukraine in this moment isn't so much about Ukraine's past as it is about Russia's present goals. I know Ukraine isn't a perfect nation, but then if we want to stop the nationalist thing that happened over time there, why aren't we stopping the ongoing nationalist thing here, which is part of the ideology for doing what we did there? If we can't help ourselves, we cannot help anyone else effectively, either. We have done wrong in virtually everything we've gotten into since Korea, but it's right to criticize supporting Ukraine in this matter to stop Russian aggression?
Ukraine had no beefs with Russia before we got involved.
For that matter, why did Putin force the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics to sign Minsk (which Ukraine promptly broke at US urging) and then Minsk-2, which Ukraine never fulfilled? Why did Putin then spend eight years trying get Ukraine to carry out Minsk-2, while the United States made sure it did not?
Ukraine didn't start this war...and again, if we were doing right things rather than just acting for politics and money, things would be better...Putin is not the victim here...
Military support for Ukraine is military support for the Azov Battalion, fascists, now in the army.
It is support for national Bandera fascism and if you do not know this by now, you probably will never know it.
I find it incredible that denial and dis-association has colonized the American mind but not surprised.
The military is everywhere, consciously and subconsciously.
I do know the background of Ukraine...learned it a long time ago. But even though Ukraine is not a perfect nation, neither are we, nor is any other. We must support efforts against nationalist expansion if we want a better world, and keeping Putin out of control of Eastern Europe is a primary need. If we had done the right things with Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed, things would not be as they are over there. We had an opportunity, but failed to act on it then, just as we failed to make a good solution in Korea in the late 1970's when we had the opportunity to form a good relationship with China toward a better Asia with the outcome of the Axe Murder Incident on the Korea DMZ in 1976. We, the people need to push our government to act smartly in the better interest of things, not just bow to money and some given, stupid ideology.
If we want a better world...U.S. imperialism, and the war economy that necessitates it, has to cease. Putin has neither the military heft nor the desire to expand Russia’s borders.
I agree with your first comment, but wait...Putin doesn't want to expand Russia's borders? Wow...then why is he going after Ukraine, controlling Crimea and other small countries while threatening nuclear holocaust to everyone opposed to him...? It's a fact that Putin doesn't want to rebirth the Soviet Union...he wants to be Czar Vladi and control the whole continent...which is unlikely to happen, but nonetheless it's his dream. Given current circumstances with his health, though, I'm thinking he's more likely to end just like the puppet Shah Reza Pahlavi we installed in Iran back in the 1950's...he got older and sick, lost political power, and the people did the 1979 Revolution, which not only stopped our control there, but our presence, too...it would be good if we were pushing a political agenda to the people to form a "more perfect union" for themselves, as we have abandoned here for us, for so long...
The current elected Russian Government only entered Ukraine reluctantly after public opinion about the need for Russia to assist the population of Donetsk because 14,000 civilians had been slaughtered in Donetsk by the ukie nazis between 2014 and 2022. Slaughtered by artillery installed on the heights surrounding the Donetsk Peoples Republic and fired by Galacians who came from the extreme west of Ukraine.
Ordinary Russian citizens were upset because those people being killed by the Galacian nazis were friends and family of Russian citizens, after all before 1989 they had all lived in the same nation.
For the first time ever - well since Yeltsin's shelling of the Duma, Russia's parliament the CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) was running ahead of the governing United Russia Party in opinion polls. The CPRF which had only gained 11.5% of the vote in the last presidential election was now neck and neck with President Putin, their major point was that Russia needed to to protect their brothers and sisters in Ukraine.
Russians were deeply upset at what they saw as being a racist slaughter of slavs (Galacians are Germanic and describe Slavs as untermensch, check out Stepan Bandera's butchery of ethnic Hungarians and Lvov Poles during ww2 after his death squads claimed they had run out of Jews to slaughter, if you require proof of this).
Some wealthy Russians had provided financial support to the populations of the DPR & LPR, but actual support from the RF government had not been forthcoming.
Mid 2021 was when the Russian government finally woke up to the fact that they could no longer ignore the Donbass and so worked on a way to end the problem without further conflict. November 2021 they presented Nato & amerika with a document detailing what they believe needed to occur to prevent war.
People forget that the current Russian government is intensely capitalist and sees war as being pointless and destructive as it stymies international trade.
However by January 2022 it became aparent that amerika/nato was not backing off, the Ukrainian nazi gangs armed & trained by that pair were massing on the border of the DPR preparing to launch a major offensive in spring.
The Russian government realised that they must get involved or forget about staying a government so the Parliament passed a motion recognising Donetsk & Luhansk as independent states which they fully supported so a few days later the RF armed forces were requested to move into Ukraine and demilitarise & denazify the aggressors.
Even amerikan pollsters had conceded by March 2022 that the decision to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine had restored President Putin's popularity and had in fact taken it to new heights.
I agree with your major points, but some of the details are not correct. It's "Galicians" "Galicia" of eastern Eur. and not to be confused with a people in Spain. They are not Germanic or German speaking but yes, western Galicians were Nazi allies.
The area has a very complex history as to who ruled, including Lithuania-Poland, the Austro-Hungarian empire, and Ruthenia. Look up "Ruthenians" and "Rusyns" as ethnic groups and languages. In the US, most refer to themselves as Carpatho-Russians. They are subgroups of eastern Slavic peoples and not actually Russian per se. There are disagreements as to whether or not Rusyn, spoken in southern areas of Ukraine, is a separate language, as the Rusyns themselves think, or just a dialect of Ukrainian.
Several nearby countries, including Poland, Hungary, and Croatia, recognize Rusyn as a protected minority language. So did Ukraine until 2014. We can guess why.
All of this is evidence that it isn't just the Russian speaking eastern areas that have a problem with the current government of Ukraine. Nor do they favor the reincarnation of the Galician SS as the Azov battalion.
PS--For some of us, Debs is very much alive.
I'd like your post if not for the pejorative spelling of the name commonly given to my favorite empire, though I prefer USA. But truly I appreciate the history lesson. It seems a little ironic that Rafi, whose knowledge and perspective on history I also appreciate, took you to task for not using the preferred spelling of "Galician" (which always confused me until now) but might feel that your moniker places you in an opposing camp. I wonder if that's really the case, but either way I look forward to learning more from you both, and encourage you not to waste time, energy and type on who is properly educated on the complexities of Eastern European history, as you both obviously are, and keep the focus on classic debate tactics like data points, logic, etc.
correct. Ukraine is under Martial law. Any opposition finds a knock on the door and knifepoints. the whole scene is FUBAR.
You have drank the main stream media cool aide !
No, I've learned the truth over time from my experience and from people who lived the circumstances, as well as the background of a lot of things through my Army experience.
The clearest sign you didn’t learn jack shit in the Army is how wet your pussy is for war.
The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff estimate of an equal number [100.000] of Ukrainians and Russians killed is a suspect one. The numbers commented on by Scott Ritter and Douglas Macgregor are far more asymmetrical in Russia's favour. In the battle of Kharkiv, though Ukrainian forces prevailed, according to Ritter the death ratio was 15 Ukrainians for every Russian killed. This may be the closest that the JCOS can come to admitting that fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian isn't working out as planned. The "best scenario," would seem to be a "victory" for Russia and a Ukraine reduced to a bombed out failed state, swarming with parasitic investors. But a deranged U.S. game of chicken with Russia [the most heavily nuclear armed nation] should be terrifying to everyone. When diplomacy, detente, or a cease fire have become verboten, it's certain that mad desperation and delusional hubris have taken hold of the antagonists. But most Americans probably remain ignorant of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientist's Doomsday Clock; recently moved to 90 seconds to midnight.
,
Mr. Fish, is a genus. After Caravaggio, he is my favorite artist.
So, we should abandon Ukraine to it’s fate? Let Putin have it. Is that what you are saying Chris? There seems to be more involved here than the military industrial complex. There are obviously people in the Ukraine who want to have the kind of freedom and human rights that more democratic countries offer, and they will fight for that even as they are destroyed by yet another bully. I think most people might find it hard to stand around and watch though admittedly it happens all the time.
In the early '70s, there was a joke that called out the assumptions behind use of the 1st person plural pronoun. The Lone Ranger and Tonto are surrounded by what appears to be hostile Indians. The Lone Ranger says "we have to fight them, Tonto!" To which Tonto replies "what's this 'we,' white man?!"
So for what "we" do you speak here? Are all real Americans required to just believe the MSM and MIC? Actually knowing anything about the area is unnecessary, and we must choose either/or. Ukie good, Russky evil. With us or against us; dissent by definition is against us.
For what "we," as if the US were the sterling example of "freedom and human rights"? Ask us BIPOC people about that. Ask us who fought the center-right unfriendly takeover of the Dem party by people who ditched the New Deal and abandoned labor. The same who have now allied with the neocons and their ideas of empire through war. if you doubt that, consider Victoria Nuland, the diplomat cheerleader for the current mess, having served the Obama and Biden administrations. Never mind she was an advisor to Dick Cheney and is married to one of the major architects of the neocon PNAC. (look it up)
And for what Ukraine, as if history were irrelevant and the entire population monolithic? What about Ruthenians, and Rusyns in the south? People who aren't happy about the reincarnation of the Galician SS of WWII as the neo-Nazi Azov battalion. Do "we" approve of the recent parades in Kyiv and Lviv celebrating the Galician SS? How about the continuing revelations about the intense corruption of Ukrainian government officials? How about the fact that maybe 30% of donated military equipment gets to where it's supposed to be going?
Freedom and human rights. Uh-huh.
This might well have turned out better in the 1944 election conference, if FDR's brilliant and Socialist VP, Henry Wallace, had not been torpedoed by the OSS, DNC, Dixiecrat racists, and several middle-American 'Big-City' Bosses.
At the Convention, Wallace (who was very popular with 'we the people') initially gained popular support from over 65% of the Delegates on the First Vote. However, he was "physically blocked" from going to the podium, and the Convention was recessed despite loud and continuing cheering for Wallace --- who would have continued to hold the office of VP on FDR's certain death in April of 1945. But, hell, that might have obviated the need for a Cold War. and maybe even the need for Michael Glennon's "The National Security State and the Double Government" [which might have reduced the need to feed "The Merchants of Death", eh?]
I often refer to this as the first obvious 'Silent and bloodless coup d'état' in America --- until JFK's unfortunate passing.
"And the beat goes on, and the beat goes on"
Wallace was criticized for being far too idealistic for the harsh realities of trench politics. Maybe that was true. But on the other hand, why not have someone decent, unselfish, and creative in office? Besides, it doesn't have to be either/or.
The advantage to Wallace was that he knew well the agrarian populist movements and Social Gospel history. Plus he supported integration and women's rights. So he would have been able to help continue movements that brought together poor rural whites, Black people, and labor in a common cause.
Wallace was called Communist because of his left wing views and because he was influenced by Theosophist spiritual ideas, particularly the Russian artist Nicholas Roerich. Ridiculous since both Wallace and Roerich, as esotericists, were vehemently anti-Bolshevik. As an old blue collar union activist trained by left wing New Dealers and an admirer of Roerich, that's a big plus for me. It wouldn't be for dogmatic leftists, though.
Worth thinking about. History could be very different.
So many good points here. I'm going to find more of your comments and read them.
Read my post above.
We have led Ukraine to the precipice since the end of WWII.
Now, as Ollie North said recently: "Ukraine will win with American bullets and Ukrainian blood."
This is what you support?
Had you been old enough you might have believed the Soviets were going to invade Mexico, as Ollie stated during the Nicaraguan Contra War.
War, after war after war and people think this brings peace?
It is like screwing for virginity, as Carlin put it.
And read above to see how the Ukrainian nationalist/fascists were brought into the US to ally with the GOP.
I would say that few know the history of the US alliance with fascists in Ukraine and the stay behind armies under Gladio in Ukraine specifically.
As long as you know that you are supporting Nazis, literally, The Right Party, C14, Azov etc. then you have concluded.
However the deeper you dig you find the fingerprints of Allan Dulles and the war hawks that lead right into the GOP.
Real Russ Bellant: New, Nazis old Nazis and see how Ukrainian exiles in the US, most fascists, were used by the Republican party to get Nixon elected.
The Hungarian National Cross is represented in the US by Sebastian Gorka who wore his grandfathers fascist colors on stage during Trump's presidential speech.
O.S.S. Document: U.S. Intelligence Planned on Using Stephan Bandera Against U.S.S.R. in 1946
"Stephan Bandera’s OUN/B by elements of U.S. intelligence to use as combatants against the Soviet Union. Having staffed SS and Gestapo ranks and participated in war crimes against Poles, Jews, Russians and other “racial undesirables,” this Third Reich ally conducted guerilla warfare against the Soviets until the early 1950’s.
Transitioning from Nazi Germany to the Office of Policy Coordination (a CIA/State Department operation administered by Frank Wisner), the OUN/B combatants essentially switched uniforms from the Third Reich to American intelligence.
A declassified document from the Office of Strategic Services–America’s World War II intelligence agency and the forerunner of the CIA–discloses that Bandera and his organization were targeted for recruitment in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
The document features discussion of Yaroslav Stetsko, the wartime leader of Ukraine whose Nazi puppet regime fulfilled the Reich’s ethnic cleansing doctrine with brutal thoroughness. In understanding the Ukraine crisis, the unbroken line of political succession from Stetsko/Bandera to the present should be borne in mind, as should the synthesis of U.S. covert operations and the GOP, specifically the Crusade For Freedom.
An illegal domestic covert operation, the CFF brought Nazi allies such as the OUN/B, the Croatian Ustachi, the Romanian Iron Guard, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, the Bulgarian National Front and others into the United States in order to drive the political spectrum to the right.
As of 1952, the CFF became inextricably linked with the GOP, with Arthur Bliss Lane playing a key role in the GOP’s 1952 campaign, as well as being centrally involved in the CFF. The CFF spawned the GOP’s ethnic outreach organization, which was able to deliver the swing vote in five key states in Presidential election years. It eventually became a permanent part of the GOP."
https://spitfirelist.com/news/o-s-s-document-u-s-intelligence-planned-on-using-stephan-bandera-against-u-s-s-r-in-1946/
You can read more at: The Gipper and the Underground Reich
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-465-the-gipper-and-the-underground-reich/
The UC(orporate)SA is provocateur to its core, until hell freezes over, only to die fighting over possession, rule, and control of the ice.
Ever increasing budgets for war are approved without the teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing that accompany any proposal to provide assistance to average citizens. We cannot afford a host of critical social needs unless they are revenue neutral or are offset by spending cuts in other areas (usually Social Security and Medicare), but war spending is automatic. Debate not required. Dissent not allowed. It's madness.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again — despite the FACT that it doesn’t WORK (for shit).
This insane repeated action, IMHO, is what is happening in the insane and unproductive DIVISION of ‘Issues’ and ‘contributed begging for MONEY’ — which is the exact opposite of employing the “Strategic Advantage” [Michael Porter HBS] of focusing ‘like an effin laser’ on one single winning Strategic Factor — calling it out, and clearly targeting it against all the varied little issues and minuscule money we have.
You can’t beat Money with less Money. And you can’t beat Focus with a shit load of hundreds of distractive little ‘issues’.
WAKE TF-up to a winning strategy.
Call-out one single thing as being the cancerous cause of all these distracting and divided little ‘Issues’ and lack of money, advertising, and power — then Strategically focus on the EMPIRE that is the cancer in “The Quiet American EMPIRE” — which hides behind it’s soft, advertising, propaganda Vichy facade.
Given the recent discusson on this substack about "Bowling Alone" and individual suicide, it's interesting to watch a nation, the U.S., commit suicide. Not having won a war since WWII, and from the exit without honor from Vietnam to the ignoble exit from Afghanistan, one would think the U.S. could take a hint. Apparently, not. I shall buy popcorn in anticipation of watching this fiasco on tv---and hope I live to see it thru to the end.
Agreed. I'll eat my popcorn while watching Michael Moore's movie "Whom to invade next?"
Julio,
That the U.S. seems determned to push China, Russia, and Iran into a defensive pact, means that if any of the three decides to use nukes, the Americans who diie instantly as a result of an attack may be the lucky ones.
Yeah, I already reserved first row at ground zero. In that pact China would benefit with the great arsenal of nuclear weapons that Russia has and Russia with the economic power of China, and Iran would be relieved of its undeserved archenemies. Hope nothing happens.