Stephen F Cohen, the renowned American scholar on Russia and leading authority on US-Russian relations, has died of lung cancer at the age of 81.
As one of the precious few western voices of sanity on the subject of Russia while everyone else has been frantically flushing their brains down the toilet, this is a real loss. I myself have cited Cohen’s expert analysis many times in my own work, and his perspective has played a formative role in my understanding of what’s really going on with the monolithic cross-partisan manufacturing of consent for increased western aggressions against Moscow.
In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohen’s death is a blow to humanity’s desperate quest for clarity and understanding.
https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1307228268265963521?s=20
I don’t know how long Cohen had cancer. I don’t know how long he was aware that he might not have much time left on this earth. What I do know is he spent much of his energy in his final years urgently trying to warn the world about the rapidly escalating danger of nuclear war, which in our strange new reality he saw as in many ways completely unprecedented.
The last of the many books Cohen authored was 2019’s War with Russia?, detailing his ideas on how the complex multi-front nature of the post-2016 cold war escalations against Moscow combines with Russiagate and other factors to make it in some ways more dangerous even than the most dangerous point of the previous cold war.
“We’re in a new cold war with Russia that is much more dangerous than the preceding cold war for various reasons,” Cohen told The Young Turks in 2017. “One is that there are at least three cold war fronts that are fraught with hot war: that would be Ukraine, that would be the Baltic Black Sea region where NATO is undertaking an unprecedented military buildup on Russia’s border, and of course in Syria, where American and Russian aircraft are flying in the same airspace. And I would add to those three cold war fronts what is now called Russiagate, because the accusation that Trump needs to be impeached because he’s somehow a Russian agent so distorts and cripples the possibility of the White House making Russia policy that I think it’s a cold war front.”
Cohen repeatedly points to the most likely cause of a future nuclear war: not one that is planned but one which erupts in tense, complex situations where anything could happen in the chaos and confusion as a result of misfire, miscommunication or technical malfunction, as nearly happened many times during the last cold war.
“I think this is the most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations, at least since the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen told Democracy Now in 2017. “And arguably, it’s more dangerous, because it’s more complex. Therefore, we—and then, meanwhile, we have in Washington these—and, in my judgment, factless accusations that Trump has somehow been compromised by the Kremlin. So, at this worst moment in American-Russian relations, we have an American president who’s being politically crippled by the worst imaginable—it’s unprecedented. Let’s stop and think. No American president has ever been accused, essentially, of treason. This is what we’re talking about here, or that his associates have committed treason.”
“Imagine, for example, John Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen added. “Imagine if Kennedy had been accused of being a secret Soviet Kremlin agent. He would have been crippled. And the only way he could have proved he wasn’t was to have launched a war against the Soviet Union. And at that time, the option was nuclear war.”
“A recurring theme of my recently published book War with Russia? is that the new Cold War is more dangerous, more fraught with hot war, than the one we survived,” Cohen wrote last year. “Histories of the 40-year US-Soviet Cold War tell us that both sides came to understand their mutual responsibility for the conflict, a recognition that created political space for the constant peace-keeping negotiations, including nuclear arms control agreements, often known as détente. But as I also chronicle in the book, today’s American Cold Warriors blame only Russia, specifically ‘Putin’s Russia,’ leaving no room or incentive for rethinking any US policy toward post-Soviet Russia since 1991.”
“Finally, there continues to be no effective, organized American opposition to the new Cold War,” Cohen added. “This too is a major theme of my book and another reason why this Cold War is more dangerous than was its predecessor. In the 1970s and 1980s, advocates of détente were well-organized, well-funded, and well-represented, from grassroots politics and universities to think tanks, mainstream media, Congress, the State Department, and even the White House. Today there is no such opposition anywhere.”
“A major factor is, of course, ‘Russiagate’,” Cohen continued. “As evidenced in the sources I cite above, much of the extreme American Cold War advocacy we witness today is a mindless response to President Trump’s pledge to find ways to ‘cooperate with Russia’ and to the still-unproven allegations generated by it. Certainly, the Democratic Party is not an opposition party in regard to the new Cold War.”
“Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden policy pursuit, but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and the world,” Cohen wrote in another essay last year. “No American president can achieve it without substantial bipartisan support at home, which Trump manifestly lacks. What kind of catastrophe will it take—in Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on Russia’s electric grid—to shock US Democrats and others out of what has been called, not unreasonably, their Trump Derangement Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national security? Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight.”
And now Stephen Cohen is dead, and that clock is inching ever closer to midnight. The Russiagate psyop that he predicted would pressure Trump to advance dangerous cold war escalations with no opposition from the supposed opposition party has indeed done exactly that with nary a peep of criticism from either partisan faction of the political/media class. Cohen has for years been correctly predicting this chilling scenario which now threatens the life of every organism on earth, even while his own life was nearing its end.
And now the complex cold war escalations he kept urgently warning us about have become even more complex with the addition of nuclear-armed China to the multiple fronts the US-centralized empire has been plate-spinning its brinkmanship upon, and it is clear from the ramping up of anti-China propaganda since last year that we are being prepped for those aggressions to continue to increase.
We should heed the dire warnings that Cohen spent his last breaths issuing. We should demand a walk-back of these insane imperialist aggressions which benefit nobody and call for détente with Russia and China. We should begin creating an opposition to this world-threatening flirtation with armageddon before it is too late. Every life on this planet may well depend on our doing so.
Stephen Cohen is dead, and we are marching toward the death of everything. God help us all.
______________________________
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84 responses to “Stephen Cohen Has Died. Remember His Urgent Warnings Against The New Cold War.”
This article, and the comments, are especially interesting to read in light of the current (March 2022) situation in Ukraine!
In the event of nuclear war it’s not death I’m worried about. But surviving.
I sometimes wonder what my loved ones and I have ever done to deserve being stuck on a ball of rock with a bunch of psychopaths hell-bent on destroying everything. With no other planet for me to migrate to in order to escape the machinations of the said psychopaths.
Well, hopefully in my next life I’ll be reborn on a safer planet. One where psychopaths and their nonsense will not be tolerated and will be put to the sword with extreme prejudice the moment they are identified.
Biological warfare/fear of plagues seems to be the drop in replacement for Nuclear obliteration/ Islamic terrorism these days ? Relax there are millions of well paying jobs available for those willing to be “machine tenders” in the coming cull of humans
Mr Cohen was a Liberal in the classical sense , and a moderate caring individual . However ultimately his belief in US exceptionalism , Interventionism , and Incrementalism served to stabilize and tighten the grip of the status quo’s new religion neoliberalism on the masses . In balance his 50 year presence on the American political stage has not made things better globally.
QUOTE: ***However ultimately his belief in US exceptionalism , Interventionism , and Incrementalism served to stabilize and tighten the grip of the status quo’s new religion neoliberalism on the masses . ***
Gee, I didn’t know he believed such things…
Russia-gate fueled by a greater goal of preventing détente. Serious wheels within wheels.
–
‘ There are wheels within wheels in this village, and fires within fires!
–
What bubbles in this witches cauldron you don’t want to see.
U.S. vs. Russia (new McCarthyism) propaganda is diver$ion; nothing but bridge propaganda to China, with whom U.S. is competing new tech. The world stands at total transition point, Americans di$informed, regarding. Rather than extrapolating “new tech” during period of pandemic to replace healthPROFITeering with healthCARE, period of environmental emergency with renewable energy-new tech, financial $ector piracy-fraud-government domination-taxpayer bailout, endless MIC wars (supersonic missile tech) based upon lie$, “the people” are propagandized to accept return to non-existent “normal”. Meanwhile ameriKans have no concept said tech today has already achieved such length and breadth leading to 50% of today’s “jobs” becoming irrelevant within next decade:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyGEejOBdFc
The promise and perils of AI, from fears about work and privacy to the U.S.-China rivalry.
One: China Has a Plan – 00:07:17
Two: The Promise – 00:22:19
Three: The Future of Work – 00:42:38
Four: The Surveillance Capitalists 01:07:01
Five: The Surveillance State 01:33:03
Danial Andrews has gone insane!
Draconian Legislation passed! ALL other states WILL follow folks, take note! THIS IS WAR AGAINST WE THE PEOPLE! THIS MAN IS A THREAT TO AUSTRALIA, A THREAT TO TRUTH & LIBERTY!
https://www.bitchute.com/video/hGrdS6D89zOl/
Some people concern themselves with ” climate change “; some people ignore it.
Tomgram: Engelhardt, A Vote for the Apocalypse By Tom Engelhardt
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176751/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_a_vote_for_the_apocalypse/#more
since it is far more of a threat than the virus, and it’s based on science that started in the 1800’s, that is something to concern themselves with. other people have fallen for fossil fuel propagand, and pretend that giant corporations that have vast influence on foreign policy and legislators are helpless victims of a worldwide conspiracy of scientists.
Mum’s & Dad’s, pay attention! This should ring alarm bells in every parent!
“Kids Poisoned by Disinfectant”
Amen! R.I.P., Dr. Cohen. Always enjoyed your articles and the scholarly wisdom behind them. May this foolhardy rush toward oblivion not cause the rest of us to join you any time soon.
S.A. Hogan, horror/thriller author
The last interview with him that I saw he began to acknowledge the vicious xenophobia of the current hysteria. I think he saw it but did not say so in public hoping Americans would be rational and not degenerate into the type of hatred spewed by the real German Nazis about Jews and Slavic peoples. History echoes.
Yesterday had a few sobbing fits after hearing about his death.
Breaking News!!!!
Trump has assassinated Supreme Court Justice Ginsberg with Novichuk!
Ms Johnstone ” the writing is already of the wall ” this is our future!
In applauding the extra-judicial paramilitary execution of the anti-fascist Michael Forest Reinoehl outside Olympia, Washington two weeks ago, Donald Trump told Fatherland (FOX) News’ neo-Nazi host Jeanine Pirro last Saturday that “there has to be retribution.”
The self-described Chosen One told Frau Pirro that “I put out, ‘When are you going to go get him?’ And the U.S. Marshals went in to get him. This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I’ll tell you something—that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution.”
~
Spoken like the Philippines strongman and death squad leader Rodrigo Duterte, one of the many blood-soaked authoritarian heads of state Trump seeks to emulate.
No arrest, trial, jury, or judge – just “retribution” in the streets. Revenge.
The rule of force over the rule of law.
An eye for an eye.
This article can be read here:
For Real Resistance: The Fascist Trump-Barr Regime Can’t Simply Be Voted Out by Paul Street
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/18/for-real-resistance-the-fascist-trump-barr-regime-cant-simply-be-voted-out/
This is an existential fight against fascism.
For the first time in American history, Trump’s corrupt Attorney General has seized the right to say that he decides who does and does not get prosecuted by federal prosecutors.
In the same Faux News interview cited above, Trump threatened to declare any protests against his inevitable, fraudulent declaration of victory in the election to be insurrection, and that he will ‘put down’ any who opposed him. Just like he’s already ‘put down’ 200,000 Americans.
If you like America under Trump, that’s one thing.
But if you can envision and want to fight for any other sort of America beyond a fascist police state at war with the world, Trump must be defeated this fall. After this, it will be like trying to stage a protest against Adolf in Berlin in 1938.
..nothing will ever again be as has been prior; lives we lived no longer exist: humanity + technology are transitioning = “cross-over”…ultimate transition, A.I.: https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-neuralink-neuron-demonstration-event/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyGEejOBdFc
The promise and perils of AI, from fears about work and privacy to the U.S.-China rivalry.
One: China Has a Plan – 00:07:17
Two: The Promise – 00:22:19
Three: The Future of Work – 00:42:38
Four: The Surveillance Capitalists 01:07:01
Five: The Surveillance State 01:33:03
Thanks Caitlin, for this moving tribute to a great scholar and man of peace. Never did we need him more.
I have long been fascinated by, and so a student of, Russian history and culture. My discovery of Stephen Cohen was a godsend. His death will have enormous effect on me, once I become totally aware of it, and the rest of the world. Gone is the by far most effective voice of reason regarding Russia. I fear that without him, the psychopaths will now have their way, whatever insanity that may encompass. The fact that he was ignored, if not castigated by the US MSM and the Psychopaths In Charge speaks volumes. It goes to a fact I’ve noticed. The freedom of speech is of paramount importance, but only so long as people are willing to listen, which becomes more rare as time passes.
People won’t listen because there are insane oligarchs with extraordinarily loud megaphones drowning everything out. People might listen to a sane voice for peace. In fact, they always have. But, what they hear is 100 extremely loud voices for war. The oligarchs control what people are allowed to hear, and the oligarchs need war to prop up a collapsing system. Thus, all the people hear are 100 loud voices insisting their must be war. Freedom of speech is meaningless when you are assured of being unheard. A society that truly believed in freedom of speech would insist on mechanisms that allow people to be heard.
People are always ready to listen to peace. That is why the oligarchs insist that peace is the word that can never be spoken.
RIP? Who wants to nap forever, especially with a mind as expansive and dynamic as Professor Cohen’s? If he, or any of us who have passed, is still there in some form, may he encounter many new adventures and learn new truths to the end of time. Personally, I go without the sleep they say we all need most every day in pursuit of satisfying my craving for more knowledge and greater understanding. I’d go mad just confined to some kind of perpetual resting mode. Enjoy the peace, professor, it’s something you pursued all your life for the sake of all humanity, but please do more than rest. In the infinite sea of minds, yours is one I will have to look up if there remains a me to do any checking on anything after my own time runs out here.
May we hope it is so, but still our focus must follow Thoreau’s advice: “One world at a time.”
i’m currently trying to convince people on the local neighborhood app that russia is not constantly attacking the united states, interfering with its elections, etc, but rather we are the aggressor. i had heard stephen cohen’s name on various podcasts, but didn’t realize he had written so much on russiagate. there’s a new edition of the war with russia book due april 2021, but i think i will go ahead and order this one. i grew up in the 60’s and 70’s, and the level of the current anti russia hysteria reminds me of those times, although i don’t think it matches it yet.
given the insane persistence and even escalation of the propaganda against russia, i’m thinking biden is even more dangerous than trump. but really we’re screwed either way, because trump is pushing many of the same failed policies despite gestures about getting out of afghanistan.
Trump lied about being against war to defeat Bush in the ’16 primaries, then kept using it against the militarist Hillary with some success.
But of course, any notion that Trump is against war is now quite laughable. The Trump-Netanyahoo-MBS alliance wants a war with Iran. Pompeo was just this week promoting war against Venezuela, and Trump is throwing gasoline on the fire of Taiwan with silly visits by high officials. When the head of Health in the US should have been at home fighting a pandemic, instead he was stirring up war with China.
At this point, anyone who believes Trump is against War is a flaming idiot detached from reality.
And I’d take a sane Biden who is not against war over a deranged Trump who is not against war. Any day!
Of course, even without starting a war, Trump has killed 200,000 Americans, and is plainly saying that he’ll gladly kill anyone and everyone opposed to him in order to achieve his goal of ‘herd mentality’.
what sane biden “against war”??? there isn’t one. biden has never been against war, not in iraq, not in syria, not in libya. he is fullly on board with the demented russiagate propaganda, and criticizes trump for not being aggressive enough against putin. at this point, anybody that believes either of these warmongers is against war is a flaming idiot detached from reality. and since biden advocates being even more aggressive against russia, he represents a greater danger than kicking off ww3, which would dwarf all the people covid 19 will ever kill.
leaving aside the question of exactly how far biden’s dementia has progressed.
The human race, collectively, is simply not capable of managing itself or its habitat. Our destruction is only a matter of time, not if but when and how.
When the most powerful (militarily) country in the world elects a series of governments over several decades that build more and more destructive capability (far more than needed to destroy the planet several times over) and actively and deliberately escalates more and more major conflicts, it is only a matter of time before a series of unstoppable events occur that will cause it to wipe us all out.
Then it will be able to rule over a radioactive and toxic world with few survivors and no hope of re-establishing any kind of human society again.
As a species we are well and truly doomed, simply because we can’t live peacefully with ourselves and can’t sustainably manage our environment.
It is very sad that our species truly intends to destroy this entire planet; but that break future can not be avoided.
To believe that thousands of nuclear weapons will stay concealed underground and in the bellies of killing machines for another fifty years is naive and/or ignorant.
To believe that aging psychopaths with collective death wishes will hesitate before destroying most of humanity is equally naive.
Why do so many oligarchs hate their children?
This gentleman Mr Cohen was a good man. I remember watching him interviewed many years ago.
He will be missed.
Keeping my Rosary on hand!
I don’t know about “God help us all”, but we might be better served by “Duck and Cover” for all the good
that would do.
Cohen was the go-to source and now we are left with memories….
If there is nothing transcendent to help us at this point and place in history, as we face twin existential crises of nuclear war and ecocide, then we’re TOTALLY fucked. It’s time for the new atheism to admit the utter failure of humanity’s experiment at governing itself and to bring whatever wisdom it possesses (such as that shown in the deconstruction of ossified traditions) to the crucial task of re-linking (root word of religion) us to some sort of transcendent truth and guidance. This need not involve metaphysical speculation, as Schweitzer made clear, but must involve REVERENCE for life.
Oh well, big deal if all the humans and every large form of life dies; except for what I can count on one or two hands there’s nothing worth saving, and all those s*** people with their, ‘New World Order’, sure as hell, don’t deserve to live, and life sure as hell isn’t worth living while they’re alive so f*** it we may as well kill ourselves in masse.
I’ll carry on just on just for the slim chance that I can save the next George Floyd.
Nice.
Pretty much my sentiments exactly.
His accurate, well-educated voice leaves a gap in the national conversation. Thank you and RIP, Dr. Cohen.
“Stephen Cohen Has Died. Remember His Urgent Warnings Against The New Cold War… he spent much of his energy in his final years urgently trying to warn the world about the rapidly escalating danger of nuclear war, which in our strange new reality he saw as in many ways completely unprecedented.”
.
One moment, you’re sitting at your desk watching The Magic Box of Dancing Pixels in front of you while snacking on stale cheesy bits. Suddenly, you hear a massive blast coming from the horizon. What the F is that? you wonder. Thunder? Car crash? But you go right back to your magic screen and your fingers covered with orange goo. Then, another huge blast. Then another. Damn! Again? What the hell is going on? So you actually get up out of your chair and go to the window. And you see these sickly clouds rising high up from the ground in several places which begin to swallow up all the day’s sunlight as it grows ever bigger. You begin to wonder. No, this couldn’t be. They really couldn’t have been that stupid and actually DID IT, could they? They know better than that, right?
.
And then the dreadful realization begins to crawl over your body like a deranged army of sick insects. Oh my God, THEY DID! I can’t believe it! Why didn’t I do anything? Why didn’t I say anything?! How could They be so F’ing stupid to do this?
.
And then you get real quiet and realize… you did this to yourself. YOU TRUSTED them. You trusted that they would never be that stupid to ever let this happen. You didn’t believe that this could really happen. You realize that… YOU did this to yourself and everyone that you love. And the worst part? You know it’s too late now to do anything about it. The Devil has been unleashed from the depths. It’s out of control. And you’ll never see some of your loved ones ever again.
.
Fade to black… for Humanity.
Great comment!
But maybe you’ll be one of the “lucky” ones like Caitlin and Tim living in “Australia” and get to live for a few more months than those living in the nuclear-powered nations. What will you do with your remaing few months? Here’s how you’ll likely pass the time — chewing the fat with some of your likewise lucky neighbors:
Frightening but illuminating response.
Frightening but illuminating comment.
In 1965 BCC produced a docu-drama called The War Game. It showed in dramatic format what happens during an actual nuclear attack. It was so horrific, the government banned it as people would be against nuclear war. A lot of the results were based on what happened at Dresden as the TNT equivalent of the Hiroshima bomb was dropped on the city. BTW if you sense a flash of light and suspect the worse, do not look up as you will be blinded permanently.
http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/warGame.htm
I was born in 1950, so my age is really easy to calculate. I was raised in a small town in the state of Maine, USA, about 15 miles as the crow flies from Bath Iron Works (BIW) — a place that manufactured, and still to this day manufactures, warships (which the locals who work there worship).
Like the tens of millions of people living in The Greatest Nation On Planet Earth who are directly or indirectly employed by the MIC, the 6 thousand or so human beings employed at BIW will do absolutely anything to keep their jobs and that means doing you-know-what when they enter the voting booth in November. They always have. They always will.
I lived through the hottest part of the first Cold War — the “duck and cover” era. When I turned 18 in 1968, my birth day of the year was put in a container along with 364 others in the so-called draft lottery; the basket was supposedly mixed; all the birth dates we removed from the container, one by one; the order in which they were removed was the order in which those who had those birth days were involuntarily “called up” for “service” in the US military which had invaded and occupied a certain part of SE Asia. Luckily, my birth date was pulled late enough so that I did not have to participate in the murder of, what, 4 or 5 million people I had never met in order to make US war corporations great profit. (At one point in my early work career as a laboratory technician, I had a boss whose duty in that illegal war was to load bombs onto B52 bombers. He was proud of what he did.)
What Russians must somehow understand is that the US has a war-based economy. Nobody put it better than VIP George Kennen did in the mid-1980s, just a few short years before the completely unexpected end of the Soviet Union.
“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”
In the years that have transpired since the USSR’s dissolution, Kennan’s prediction has been proven to be dead-on (pun definitely intended) accurate. Kennan’s statement must still be taken very seriously, to the extreme. At the time he said it, Kennan meant exactly what he said. What we average people, particularly the Russian people, have a duty to fully realize and fully appreciate is that what Kennan said is even more true today than it was in Kennan’s time!
To elaborate, the US “system” would undergo very serious financial, social and political upheaval if its wars of hegemony and its MSIC were to suddenly be halted without an alternative economic system being fully “designed” prior to them stopping. Here’s just one example of the poilitical/financial/economic/social impact of the MSIC in just one of the 50 United in Perpetual Warfare States of America — the state of Virginia:
Population of Virginia = 8.4 million
Number of Registered Voters in Virginia = 5.7 million
Dollar Amount of Defense Contracts Awarded to Contractors in Virginia from 2000 to 2019 = $781.6 billion
Number of Defense Contracts Awarded to Contractors in Virginia from 2000 to 2019 = 1,291,034
Number of Defense Contractors in Virginia = 17,877
(To confirm my above statistics, Google “governmentcontractswon”, go to that site, select “contractors by state”on the right side of the page and select Virginia on the drop-down list.)
So, what is the likelihood that the voters of Virginia are going to vote for a peacenik for POTUS in November?
Zero.
Is the reason that voters in Virginia select warmongers for POTUS election after election after election that they are brainwashed, or haven’t studied their navels or their inner selves long enough, or haven’t smoked enough pot or eaten enough magic mushrooms,? Or is it because they vitally depend upon that yearly DoD injection of well over $50 billion dollars, literally forever?
It’s the $50 billion!
The awful truth is that Virginians (or Mainers) know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. As far as they’re concerned, Mr. Potato-Head or the Tangerine Jackass are both perfectly qualified to hold the title of POTUS because BOTH will increase the war budget from here to eternity. They don’t give a shit how many people are killed by the weapons they help produce.
The shocking truth is that the voters in Virginia are not going to vote for a peacenik during the next thousand years.
Virginia is a microcosm of the USA. Americans say they want peace, but what they really want is perpetual war which justifies the annual DoD money-injection (which, in turn, requires the Fed to print literally “whatever it takes” amount of USD out of thin air which will pay for those injections from now to eternity) …………… until the bombs drop on Main Street, USA, anyway. Then there will be a very serious, nearly-instantaneous, nation-wide “attitude adjustment”…… in the heads of those still “living”, of course.
With the above and relatively recent US historical action in mind, IMO, Ukraine is the US’s new “test tube” that Colon Powell waved in the UN prior to destroying Iraq (and then destroying Libya and then trying to destroy Syria). IMO, what the US will test this time is Russian resolve, using a serious probing action. Just exactly WHAT are the gentle-men Mr. Lavrov and Mr. Putin going to do if the wonderful US capo in Ukraine, Zelenski, orders the Ukrainian military to move eastward to the Russian border and kill anyone who’s not standing along its path waving a white flag and offering McCain cookies to the advancing forces? Will these gentle men destroy those advancing forces, or will these gentle men demand a meeting of the UNSC so that the UNSC will somehow force the Ukrainian military to retreat to the former contact line and then “hope for the best” from their “partners”?
Here is the kind of “language” that the US truly understands and “respects” (fears).
https://www.rt.com/news/501126-iran-trump-hair-threat/
These two gentle Russian men had better get a refresher course in early- post-WWII USSR rhetoric or the Borg is just going to keep provoking and provoking and provoking until the gentle men realize that their “partners” are in reality their mortal enemies and start treating them as such.
Wake up, Russia! Wake up!
Here’s what’s going on the the US (Deep) State Department today:
You say you were born in 1950, I was born in 1947. Apparently we were both imprinted as young teens with a disdain for war and the insanity that leads to it by some of the best anti-war movies ever made during that era. You picked the right exemplars with “On the Beach” and “Fail Safe.” I also read most of these in the book form at the time. I was primed to oppose the absurd war in ‘Nam right out of the gate, as soon as I qualified for the draft in ’65. You might have attached clips of “Doctor Strangelove” and “Seven Days in May,” the latter of which might come to pass fairly soon if the coming election can only be decided by which political party plans and executes the most effective coup d’etat amidst the prevailing chaos sure to come. Right now I see advantage Dems and the Queen of Warmongers, no matter who is posing as the official candidate…Biden or Harris, or Harris and Biden? They’ve got most of the establishment insiders from all the power centers lined up on their side. What the people say or want will be irrelevant.
Realist, don’t forget “The Bedford Incident”. After the “accident” shown in the video below (the result of which is the destruction of a Russian submarine but only after that submarine’s retaliatory launch of a nuclear torpedo at point-blank range), Sidney Poitier follows Richard Widmark up onto an upper, outside deck, where, for the first time in the movie, Widmark really looks helpless and forlorn. Poitier is truly lost in desperation over his inevitable death in the last few seconds of his life. I believe that of all the great anti-war movies, “the end” of humanity from all-out nuclear war will begin (yes, the proberbial “beginning of the end”) in a very similar, “accidental” way that is protrayed in this movie.
Thank you Caitlin!
P.S.
Very telling to observe different reactions in the media and “liberal” Dems regarding the recent death of Ginsberg vs. death of Cohen…
no kidding, for ginsberg it is nonstop adulation, for cohen it’s radio silence.
Great response. Worth noting that cognitive dissonance abounds ., as millions of Orwellian Winston’s constantly edit history in real time in order to maintain the status quo.
I am so saddened to hear this news. Stephen Cohen was truly the voice of sanity in a world gone mad with Russia hate. May he RIP and his voice live on.
My sympathy to his widow and family, and especially to all of us who discovered that the Cold War was an American political and military/industrial requirement, not a strategic one. As Caitlin pointed out, we have lost “a voice of reason” in a world whose reason is reduced to economic advantage and personal profit. Thank you and RIP, Sir.
I am not worried about a war because all the ruling elites of every country are just one big club.
Between them, it is a show as it is a show between political parties inside a specific country. They all share the same goals.
At this moment, one of their main goal is to have you have a syringe in your b… (vaccine).
Decadence is everywhere… We are truly living the return of the days of Noah just before the return of Jesus.
Keeping my Rosary on hand!
the ruling elites have plenty of rosaries. just like you they’re not worried about nuclear war, cause jesus is obviously in their club.
Have a good vaccine and do not forget to wear your mask!
Keeping my Rosary on hand in this decadent world!
It’s a tremendous loss to the world. We are all dimished by his passing.
Our corporate media have mostly ignored NATO expansion and the billions of US tax dollars wasted to support this, via a slush fund known as the European Deterrence Initiative. Here is a FY2020 budget summary.
https://www.eucom.mil/document/39921/fy-2020-european-deterrence-initiative-fact-s
Americans are also unaware that the USA threatens Russia by installing missile launchers in Poland and Romania capable of hitting Russia with nuclear armed cruise missiles in a surprise attack. Here is a short video of all this:
You can clearly see the unprincipled imperial American mind at work through the statements of Admiral Kirby towards the end of this clip. Deny the only logical explanations for your actions (provocation and aggression) and substitute facile misleading gibberish in their place. For the most part American leaders are treacherous in their actions and deceitful in their words. It’s a high bar of depravity to achieve and only the most vile can make the grade for American high office.
You do have tame fantasies. Mine are too gruesome to print, but they don’t involve much waiting, more like hastening their enjoyment of whatever next life is in store for them. Still not ideal, but arguably a more practical solution! These ideas aren’t just quaintly anachronistic, they’re an existential threat to us all.
Sorry, that comment’s meant as a reply to NH’s “I have a fantasy” below.
Fascinating that the people who try to oppose the rise of Fascism are tarred with the quick, all-purpose, smear of “Trump Derangement Syndrome”, and that apparently we are told that only Donald Trump and American Fascism can save the world.
.
Donald Trump has killed 200,000 Americans with his dangerous incompetence.
Donald Trump has just clearly stated on national TV that in his second term he plans on killing 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 Americans with his deranged Herd Immunity Policy. Or actually, what he really said is that he’ll keep killing people until he’s developed a full “herd mentality”, which apparently means killing everyone who disagrees with Donald Trump ….. and yet, it is the people who oppose this who are ‘deranged.
.
It is Donald Trump who is clearly pushing the world to war. And yet, somehow, this is blamed on the Democrats?
It is Donald Trump who is gathering his crazy allies for a war against Iran.
It is Donald Trump who has as we type Armageddon Pompeo in South America pushing a war against Venezuela.
It is Donald Trump who is escalating the Taiwan crisis to a boiling point.
We’ve literally seen Donald Trump pushing for not one, not two, but three wars, and all within the last week. Yep, the guy who wants three wars in one week is supposed to be our last, best hope for peace?
Donald Trump has the deranged belief that wars can save him from the elementary fact that 60% of the American people hate his guts and want him gone. And yet, somehow this campaign fiction continues that Donald Trump is somehow against war?
Sorry, America has already seen the real Donald Trump and his love for war, and we know he was lying his fanny off when he said he opposed “regime change wars”. We know this because we can clearly and plainly see that Donald Trump has multiple regimes he wants to change in multiple wars, no matter how many bodies in rubber sacks he creates.
Donald Trump is the man who thought the answer to a hurricane was to nuke it.
Apparently Trump-land is deep into the Orwellian phrase of “War is Peace”.
I think TDS refers to the belief that Trump is obviously worse than any other US president, not that he is a saviour of any kind. That belief is often termed Trumpism.
We may soon find out if President Biden behaves any less dangerously and belligerently. The omens are not encouraging.
That they are not. Perhaps the only thing that will save us is the desire of the plutocrats to go on living so that they can enjoy their ill-gotten gain. Or will that thing called the death wish triumph, even over all the pleasures of this world?
Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are to Trump’s right – on nearly every war or potential war.
I detest Trump as much as the next guy…but Biden is attacking Trump on Venezuela – from his right. Biden used ACTUAL NAZIS to stage an Anti-Russian Coup right on Russia’s border. What could possibly be more provocative? Except then ARMING the Coup Government with Raytheon’s Javelin missiles, for the ongoing Civil and Proxy war…
They tried to impeach Trump – for not arming the Ukrainian Nazis FAST ENOUGH. (While ignoring dozens of VALID reasons to impeach – some that could even have shamed a few Republicans into voting to remove him…perhaps even enough to have done it…but then how would they raise money?)
Nancy Pelosi tore up Trump’s speech – AFTER giving Guaido a standing ovation – and before criticizing Trump for try to get out of Syria and Afghanistan. If you can’t see the pattern emerging here – you may be suffering from TDS-related blindness – known as $hillary-Podesta syndrome. Dr. Neera Tanden has been doing “Gain of Function” research, on the virus behind this disease.
Thank you. I agree with you.
We don’t have to pick between Trump and Biden, there are other candidates. The two old parties only work for their donors, they cannot survive like that forever. We can vote for someone better.
The Dems have been spouting that they are the lesser evil for so long (certainly for decades by now) that they are now counting on you to firmly believe it and vote accordingly. All they’ve taught me with their endless bait and switch ruses is that they are as BAD as the GOPers. As warmongers, they’ve deliberately elevated their game to even greater bellicosity than those uber-patriotic Republicans. Joe Biden campaigns like an irascible old codger ready to bite your head off if you dare to question him…that’s if he is semi-coherent. Time to make a choice from some column outside of the “D’s” or the “R’s.”
YOU are a pretty good example of TDS…:-)
It’s always good to consider alternate points of view, Bill — Kim Iversen – “Three Ways Trump Is To The Left Of Joe Biden” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UslhCx3TPM
Before ranting all along, you should have proved that Bush and especially Obama were not worse, or what is in any way or wise better about gaga Mafia boss Biden, with regard to the only thing that counts: war and empire.
Until you do that, you’re a living illustration of what they call Trump Derangement Syndrome. My name for it is Empire Propaganda Soldier.
A far, far more important loss than that of RGB, Cohen was our best voice in speaking out against Russophobic xenophobia, and for peace.
But the tens of millions of pussyhatters weeping over the death of RGB can be roughly divided into two camps today:
98% of them: Stephen who?
2% or them: Good riddance to that agent of Putin.
Yes!
@Kim Dixon: You took the thoughts right out of my head and set them down here. A truly great man dies and so few will understand our terrible loss.
Thanks for a great article!
I was fortunate enough to have the best teacher ever in HS that taught Soviet History and Comparative Economic Systems. He taught both presenting facts, not opinion. This was in the 60’s during the height of the Cold War and everything I learned in those classes about the USSR, socialism, communism jived with what Stephen Cohen taught. It is very depressing to see where the Project Mockingbird press has led us. A complete revision of US-Russia history, fomenting hatred thru made up lies about Russia/Putin, driving us to very dangerous ends.
RIP Prof. Cohen and thanks for the bravery you showed in bringing truth to the American public.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment…
OMG. What a devastating loss for us all. RIP, Professor Cohen.
Howard Zinn, Bill Blum, Robert Parry, Stephen Cohen VS McCain and Bush Sr. The psychopaths are winning.
Surely seem to be, but as a young man in the late 60s and early 70s, I saw the zeitgeist unexpectedly turn on a dime. If it happened once…..
“What kind of catastrophe will it take—in Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on Russia’s electric grid—to shock US Democrats and others out of what has been called, not unreasonably, their Trump Derangement Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national security?”
Not even a US first strike leading to global nuclear war and nuclear winter, I fear. Just more proof of US moral superiority as they await the Rapture.
I have a fantasy about “nuclear winter.” I will derive some pleasure (I know it’s wrong) from observing and even taunting those “Rapturists” who have taken it upon themselves to fulfill some disturbed psychotic’s prophecy. I want to see them suffer and die right alongside me. I want to see the confusion, self-doubt and disappointment on their stupid faces while it sinks into their barely functioning brains that they won’t be jerked to Heaven as “special” people. That’s not an ideal fantasy; but it does offer some consolation.
Hey Caitlin !
What about all this totalitarian nonsense in Australia and New Zealand ?
Is this really fear of the dreaded pox, or a political opportunity ?
This is pressing and the World needs your comments.
Hmmm, yes, Australia is under an authoritarian, right-wing government that attacks journalists on a regular basis,that denies science while watching Australia and the world burn, and appears to really want to be a big part of World War III even if that means getting blasted to a cinder to please Uncle Sam. But New Zealand has seemed reasonably sensible. So, I’m not sure what you are referring to?
“these insane imperialist aggressions which benefit nobody”. The weapons merchants benefit.
A sad real loss.