The Trump administration is reportedly close to moving the Houthi rebels in Yemen onto its official list of designated terrorist organizations with the goal of choking them off from money and resources. The head of the UN’s World Food Program along with many other experts caution that this designation will prolong the horrific war which has claimed over a quarter million lives and create an impenetrable barrier of red tape stopping humanitarian aid from getting to the Yemeni people.
The United Nations conservatively estimates that some 233,000 Yemenis have been killed in the war between the Houthis and the US-backed Saudi-led coalition, mostly from what it calls “indirect causes”. Those indirect causes would be disease and starvation resulting from what UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls “the worst famine the world has seen for decades”.
When people hear the word “famine” they usually think of mass hunger caused by droughts or other naturally occurring phenomena, but in reality the starvation deaths we are seeing in Yemen (a huge percentage of which are children under the age of five) are caused by something that is no more natural than the starvation deaths you’d see in a medieval siege. They are the result of the Saudi coalition’s use of blockades and its deliberate targeting of farms, fishing boats, marketplaces, food storage sites, and cholera treatment centers with airstrikes aimed at making the Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen so weak and miserable that they break.
In other words, the US and its allies have been helping Saudi Arabia deliberately kill children and other civilians on mass scale in order to achieve a political goal. Which would of course be a perfect example of any standard definition of terrorism.
https://twitter.com/AhmadAlgohbary/status/1334243698586992641
We are the terrorists. Saudi Arabia, the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, France and every other nation which has facilitated the horrific mass atrocity in Yemen–this tight globe-spanning power alliance is a terrorist organization the likes of which the world has never seen before. The unfathomably savage and bloodthirsty US empire designating the Houthis as a terrorist organization is the least funny joke that has ever been told.
We are the terrorists. I say “we” instead of our governments because if we are honest with ourselves, we as a civilian population are complicit in this slaughter. The horrors in Yemen are without question the worst thing that is happening in the world right now, yet they comprise barely a blip in our social consciousness. The overwhelming majority of us have seen the pictures and videos of starving Yemeni children, thought something along the lines of “Oh a famine, that’s so sad” and gone back to thinking about sports or whatever other insipid nonsense occupies most of our attention.
We are the terrorists. Yes it is true that we have been propagandized into our complicity with this terrorism and if the news media were doing its purported job Yemen would be front and center in our attention, but we are still complicit. We are still participating in it, still living in a society that is woven of the fabric of slaughter and brutality without rising up and using the power of our numbers to force a change. Just because you are unaware that you sleep on a bed of butchered children doesn’t mean you’re not lying in it.
At least 233,000 Yemenis have died in the US-UK-Saudi war on their country, in a new (conservative) United Nations estimate.
This criminal war started in March 2015 (under Obama, then expanded by Trump), and continues today, with little media coveragehttps://t.co/up2PJajURj
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 2, 2020
We are the terrorists. But we don’t need to be.
We can begin waking up together. Waking up our friends and neighbors, spreading consciousness of what’s going on, raising awareness of the horrors our governments are perpetrating in Yemen and in other nations in the name of imperialist domination, helping each other see through the veils of propaganda to how much life and how many resources are being spent on inflicting unspeakable acts of terror upon our world instead of benefiting humanity.
The US government could force an end to the horrors in Yemen almost immediately if it really wanted to. If maintaining unipolar hegemony were suddenly advanced by giving the Houthis victory in Yemen instead of fighting to ensure Washington-aligned rule, the Saudis would withdraw and the war would be over within days. We could make this happen if we could spread enough awareness of the reality of what’s happening in Yemen.
Real Journalists Would Grill Biden On Yemen At Every Opportunity
Biden campaigned on ending the war. He should therefore be pushed on that issue constantly, at every interview and press conference. There's no legitimate reason for this not to happen.https://t.co/5i0VRblTiR
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) November 8, 2020
Break the silence on Yemen. Pressure Biden to fulfil his campaign pledge to end the war which was initiated under the Obama-Biden administration. Oppose US imperialism. Weaken public trust in the mass media which refuse to give us a clear picture of what’s going on in the world. Help people realize that their perception of reality is being continually warped and distorted by the powerful.
We end our role in the terrorism of the empire by awakening the citizens of that empire to its acts of terror.
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61 responses to “We Are The Terrorists”
St. Ambrose of Optina (lived 1812-1891) was a clairvoyant Russian monk and staretz (elder) whom thousands of pilgrims came to for pastoral and spiritual advice.
Beginning in 1860, he served as the igumen, or spiritual superior, of the renowned Optina Monastery for over thirty years until his death.
In 1884 he founded the Shamordino convent, where he pursued a policy of allowing all women to stay who sought spiritual discernment and refuge at the monastery, even the blind and the deaf.
He profoundly inspired Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose character Fr. Zossima in “Brothers Karamazov” is based off the monk
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/fatherzosima
https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-war-and-end-the-famine-in-yemen
https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/what-we-do/countries/yemen
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/cargo-ship-attacked-off-yemen-unclear-circumstances-74553834 December 5, 2020
Hi Girls and guys, all the comments, well most, are spot on but how the hell do we get this out to the masses who are living in coocoo land? Because of censoring and shadow banning those who really need to see your comments are refused access. We need to start writing pamphlets and putting them on car windows in supermarket and church car parks. Alas, the public do not have access to the kind of commentaries they need to read, instead most are glued to the MSM propaganda via Fox, MNBC, BBC, etc., and of course all the main news papers which are owned by the plutocracy/corporate monsters. All these media channels are told what to say hence them all repeating the same script. We must think out of the box to get our message to the masses otherwise we are just in an echo chamber spinning our wheels.
Hand out Pamphlets, as did Tom Paine. Good Idea!
It’s too late, most are brainwashed to believe the media, anything u say or do they will question your loyalty to the states or at worst label you as Chinese wumao or Russianphilie shills.
If ever there was a piece of liberal tommyrot from a deranged 2020, ‘We are the terrorists’ is close to taking the biscuit. As a literary device perhaps it has some ‘impact’, but it’s also the kind of thing the Nazis and other oppressive butchers used in justifying collective punishment. Whole communities, peoples, nations are blameworthy and therefore must be exterminated.
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But leave aside the collective punishment implications of this claim and consider its guilt-tripping purpose. The majority may not know about Yemen as it’s been suppressed by the corporate media, but deep down people do understand and know at some and varying levels that everyone is forced to partake of this horribly racist, exploitative capitalist system. Mild psychopathy (ie, apathy) manifests to cope, along with rationalisations and justifications for children and the untutored who often ask the most pertinent questions especially of inherently irrational belief systems.
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‘We’ pay taxes that fund the imperialist war machine, the bourgeoisie’s cops and all manner of repression, exploitation; and never forget also the generous ‘socialism for the rich’ those taxes provide. ‘We’ purchase goods or services produced under sweatshop conditions so mean and vicious that would make Dickens blush. And many of us live on land ‘purchased’ by genocide. ‘We’ may comply with and ‘benefit’ from all this, as history and as present. Yemen is just the horrible tip of the iceberg today, yet by such logic if ‘We are all terrorists’, then ‘we’ are all capitalists, imperialists, exploiters, warmongers and genocidists too. Where does this spiral down into meaninglessness stop?
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For guilty liberals it doesn’t, but it does divert blame from the actual perpetrators who invariably commit their heinous crimes without common or popular knowledge, except until recently, after the fact if ever, and of course never with a popular vote ‘legitimating’ them in doing so. But now, ‘we’ do have an unprecedented ability, albeit still not perfect and perpetually under threat, to expose the ruling class’s crimes in real time and put names to the criminals. Consequently, there are less grounds for the perpetrators to have success in burdening us with blame when they’re less protected in their criminality than ever before by anonymity, their veils of secrecy, and ‘we’ll never really know’.
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That leaves everyone being ‘complicit’ because ‘we’ haven’t yet ‘risen up’ against it all. That means revolution, and revolution doesn’t just happen inside people’s skull cases, with vague notions of ‘rising up’ even though the first baby steps toward revolution most certainly involve a fundamental change in consciousness and a burning, life-saving desire to ‘rise up’. This appears to be not far off, especially in the US.
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But to carry out an actual social revolution is a far more serious business that requires leadership which won’t be compromised, and a disciplined organisation and program of the Bolshevik type that’s forged in struggle and in pitched class battles against the rulers — not only on the streets but in taking the factories, mills, mines, transport hubs, distribution centres and all the remaining productive resources from them, and putting these to rational use for benefit of the vast majority. They won’t be given up peacefully, and civil war is the highly likely eventuality that can never be discounted or not prepared for, except at everyone’s peril.
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‘We’ are not the terrorists. The ruling class and their state are. They, their malfeasance and their motives need to be exposed in every way possible, by name where possible and repeatedly. But a practical and concrete program also needs promulgation that can provide the only rational solution to the mortal, never-ending and ever-increasing threat against humanity that the irrational capitalist system poses.
We accept, and by logical extension, we ‘ARE’ what we walk past, what we tolerate, what we allow to continue by keeping silent in the face of its perpetration.
If indeed we are not the ghouls who invoke and perpetrate these atrocities, then we need to step away from such atrocity and actively denounce those actions and their agents. That would serve to seriously impede, if not completely stop, such events. Not doing something that can be done to stop a crime is to effectively participate in that crime.
Your last paragraph implies that it is up to the ruling class and the State to cease and desist. By what miracle might that occur without public intervention?
All of those clergy, administrators and ordinary family members who turned their eyes and contrived narratives that obscured and enabled the ongoing depravity of paedophile priests were innocent beings? Funny, that’s not how the law saw it in that instance. How is it any different to avert our common eyes from Yemen whilst sucking on the teat of the empire that perpetrates it?
This is a perfect example of guilty liberalism run amok. Millions of crimes are committed every day against the oppressed, and ‘actively denouncing those actions and their agents’ in no way will ‘serve to seriously impede, if not completely stop, such events’. That’s cloud cuckoo land stuff.
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Purely on its own, denouncing and exposing all the horrors of capitalism and imperialism gives guilty liberals something to wring their hands over, so they can virtue signal. But together with ‘What Is To Be Done’ that goes beyond ‘woe is me’ to bring down the whole rapacious system that commits the innumerable crimes — such denunciations and exposures can be powerful motivation and serve as the fuse that ignites the much needed conflagration.
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Finally, there’s no implication in the last paragraph that somehow it’s up to the ruling class to do anything, much less come up with a program to stop what it does innately, compulsively and thereby commit suicide. It’s the second last paragraph which puts paid to that silly supposition, which the last paragraph simply repeats and summarises.
Stephen, I was struck by the hard truths in your original comment and in the above response. For example: “That leaves everyone being ‘complicit’ because ‘we’ haven’t yet ‘risen up’ against it all,” and “(m)illions of crimes are committed every day against the oppressed, and ‘actively denouncing those actions and their agents’ in no way will ‘serve to seriously impede, if not completely stop, such events’.” I tend to see things much like you do when it comes to the past and the present, but as I’ve said in a previous conversation, I have a quite different take on the future, assuming we have one. Instead of revolution along Bolshevik lines, I place my hope in something utterly new, ahistorical, “biological”–an evolutionary leap in the young human species propelled by unprecedented changes in the conditions of its environment: the twin existential crises of potential nuclear war and ongoing ecocide, now suddenly joined by the socioeconomic and political pressures brought by the global pandemic, which are just beginning to unfold. I know that you would consider my thinking unrealistic and my hope forlorn, but as farfetched as it may be, I reiterate that such an evolution seems more possible to me than the direct political overthrow of our neoliberal overlords. So while I prefer Bellamy to Marx, you, I suspect, and most other leftists, wouldn’t put the thinking of the former anywhere near that of the latter, and history–so far– is on your side. But to stop beating a dead horse (brutal expression, is it not?), let me just again express my appreciation of your commentary on this blog, which elevates it even when, especially when, it takes sharp issue with Caitlin’s views and those of others.
You seem to have an overly monochrome view of things. Evil abusers vs all of the hapless victims. The situation is much more layered, and far more nuanced, than that.
Fundamentally the machine, and each of its myriad toxic programs, grind along due, and only due, to people’s participation. That vital participation is coerced by fear, and it is protected by ignorance and confusion. However it is also induced by varying degrees of bribery and collusive partnership. Individuals do buy-in to the program. This personal buy-in is a strong factor within people’s fear as it provides a connection to something they might lose by acting differently. Thus it also motivates people’s disinterest, even hostility toward, hearing ‘inconvenient’ truths. Rationalising why it’s ok to do something that one is emotionally attached to doing is a core human function. This behaviour can actually bind us into willingly assisting our abuser(s). Being consciously aware of the harm our actions are doing is vital to developing the will to cease those destructive actions that we have become personally attached to. A selfish person will apply such awareness to help themselves. A more compassionate person will extend that motivation across a broader range.
The other monochromatic distortion that is starkly implicit in your summary is that only evil people do bad things. That is just nonsense.
The function of alerting people to the manifest consequences of their deadly, daily delusion is not about victim-blaming. Indeed it is quite sad that you are so fixated on that unnecessary dimension of possibility. Indeed the extreme circumstances of collective punishment that you refer to are far more likely if people generally are left oblivious to their capacity to do harm by their action/inaction.
The critical point of the exercise is to empower the ‘victims’, not vilify or humiliate them. Enormous change could be wrought via the realisation of two critical understandings. 1) It is not OK to do nothing different because that is killing people and it is killing the planet. 2) If enough individuals are motivated, by awareness of this element or whatever, to simply, loudly and persistently say no to key programs of destruction, significant change will occur.
You are building your revolution on what? A union of hapless victims who will become so angry over their personalised disabilities that they’ll rage forth and hunt down the ‘Evil’ people? Just one question of many: how exactly will they identify these dark souls? Is there a 666 ingrained somewhere within a secret skin-fold?
Apt comments, Greg, about the kind of evolution in which I put my hope. I’m not sure that you and Stephen are as far apart as you both think. Obviously, perceptive and well-meaning people can have constructive disagreements about the most efficacious tactics and tone to achieve the good. I suspect that the two of you would agree more than differ on “the complicity of the average citizen” issue. You believe that calling it out is productive; he deems it counterproductive. Perhaps there’s a way to call it out that would work for both of you and most all of us. If so, we need to find it, so I hope the two of you keep talking.
It’s not at all about making a revolution based on a ‘union of hapless victims who will become so angry over their personalised disabilities that they’ll rage forth and hunt down the ‘Evil’ people? Just one question of many: how exactly will they identify these dark souls? Is there a 666 ingrained somewhere within a secret skin-fold?’
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The situation indeed is rather ‘monochrome’ and stark and not that nuanced at all. Revolution is what’s needed, which can never be accomplished by victims with no power. It’s about those with the social power who can make revolution, but who yet don’t realise they have the power and have little to no experience in exercising it. The working class, with its hands on the machinery of production and distribution, can bring capitalism to a screeching halt if so motivated. The working class thus uniquely has the power to make a revolution, unlike all the other victims of bourgeois society.
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Indian workers recently staged the largest general strike in human history, numbering 250,000,000, which for very good reasons went largely unreported in the corporate media. That’s just a small taste of what can happen and it’s the consciousness in the working class that really counts, not in you, I or other atomised internet ranters, that needs to be changed — to transform the working class from ‘a class in itself’ to ‘a class for itself’. The main game with the education system, religion and the ideological apparatus is always to make sure that never happens, but when it does then we’ll see real change. Until then, all the ‘enlightened’ individuals count for nothing — 666 is the working class ‘for itself’.
I am making a good salary online from home.I’ve made 97,999 dollar.s so for last 5 months working online and I’m a full time student. I’m using an online business opportunity I’m just so happy that I found out about it……..Read More
Caitlin Johnstone wrote:
> We Are The Terrorists
Yes.
Is the price worth it?
A few excerpts on this by Edward S. Herman, who developed with Noam Chomsky a model to explain how propaganda works in corporate mass media:
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“‘The price is worth it’ . . .
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“The phrase has been only rarely cited in the mainstream, and there has been no indignation or suggestion that the mass killing of children in order to satisfy some policy end was immoral and outrageous.
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“Since the morning hours of Tuesday, September 11, the civilian dead in the WTC/Pentagon terrorist bombings have been the subject of the most intense and detailed and humanizing attention, making the suffering clear and dramatic and feeding in to the sense of outrage.
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“In contrast, the hundreds of thousands of children dead in Iraq are very close to invisible, their suffering and dying are out of sight . . .
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“Their indignation at the immorality of killing civilians as collateral damage to make a political point ends, because the Iraqi children die by U.S. policy choice–and in this case the media will not even allow the matter to be discussed. . . .
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“The media focus on whether Saddam Hussein will allow UN inspections to prevent him getting ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ not on the mass death of children. (And of course the media regularly fail to note that the United States and Britain had helped Saddam Hussein obtain such weapons in the 1980s, and didn’t object to his using them, until he stopped following orders in August 1990.)
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“Because the media make the suffering and death of 500,000 children invisible, the outrage produced by the intense coverage of the WTC/Pentagon bombing victims does not surface on their behalf. . . .
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“This reflects the work of a superb propaganda system.”
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“The price is worth it”, by Edward S. Herman
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/wtc/hermantheprice.html
Trump Administration purges Kissinger, Albright, Military Brass from Defense Policy Board
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/26/politics/trump-administration-defense-policy-board/index.html
Thank you for keeping this issue alive. You have prompted me to make a donation through Islamic Relief for the first time in a long while
Obama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the most admired man in the world, was -with his drones and sanctions – a terrorist. So was Bush. So is Trump. So is Biden.
Of course the drone strikes and sanctions weren’t enough to sate his appetite for “being good at killing people”, hence air cover and other goodies for terrorists in Syria while giving the Saudis refuels and “intelligence” for air strikes in Yemen and helping with the blockade. Fomenting of terrorist groups in parts of Africa, participation in the obliviation of Libya, winks and nods for strikes on Palestinians, and…oh Jesus, it’s insane what these terrorists do.
And the only ones taking innocent American lives and destroying American businesses and property are…
other Americans.
“We are the terrorists. I say ‘we’ instead of our governments because if we are honest with ourselves, we as a civilian population are complicit in this slaughter…. they comprise barely a blip in our social consciousness.”
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“We”… are not the handful of dark and bleak individuals leading the Great Democratic?? Nations into their policy of death and slaughter. “We” is reserved for We the People. Not the death merchants or their numerous hired guns. While tax money taken from our wallets might be financing these atrocities, this money is pilfered without our consent. “We” have no interest or intention of hurting anyone. It is those handful of Dark Death Dispensers who have to answer for and reap their karma for their actions. We are not the terrorists. We know who They are… and they sure ain’t us.
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Why don’t “We” care more about these world horrors? Because We are under attack ourselves and have been for years. We have been trying to survive multiple attacks on several fronts from many of the same sources… and when you’re walking among the mine field and trying to survive it’s tough to look up and see the mess that other people are dealing with. Yes, we do care. But we’ve got our own problems right now. Maybe that’s selfish. Or maybe that’s just us trying to survive. All the world could use a good dose of help right now.
There are countless people in every country struggling to support themselves and their family. Instead we get reality tv which is not reality at all. Instead of helping the poor survive we give them tiktok to keep them amused in their misery.
There’s really not much to add, except that I’ve spoken up and written about this ad infinitum – and I still have not given my country the right to commit these atrocities in my name. they are not what I am about, nor of what I would ever approve.
It was disturbing, long ago, to discover that the U.S. is the most imperialistic in the history of the world, nor that it is based in the belief that we have the right to steal the resources of those countries that cannot resist our military.
I believe Rome and Britain tried it as well but just lacked the technology. GB did a good job of imperialism considering the time it occurred.
Once again the wonderful Buddha, Ms Caitlin Johnstone, appeals to the hearts, minds, and souls of this planet through her great website! Very Unfortunately, most of my fellow United States citizens are deaf, dumb, and blind to anything that is not to their personal benefit. Yemen? Who cares? Only ” pinkos ” care about ” them towelheads “! The Evil Empire is totally without any shame whatsoever about the death and starvation it causes; massive amounts of money can be made making weapons and using them on helpless human beings! Everything here is all about the money.
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.
—60 Minutes (5/12/96)
Every day I continue to ” need my daily fix of Donald Trump ” news. For today there is this:
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But now General Flynn has been liberated by presidential pardon to speak and act, and he’s doing both in startling terms. On Wednesday, he joined with retired three-star general Thomas McInerney in calling for the president to declare martial law in order to use military tribunals to investigate and prosecute treason in the election. They’re not the only ones chattering about that. They allege that Dominion Systems — which is not an American-owned company — invited meddling by several foreign nations and, in fact enabled it through connections to the Internet. There is evidence that Chinese companies linked to the CCP are majority investors in the holding company out of Switzerland, UBS Securities, that owns Dominion. And lurking in the background of that is the evidence exposed from Hunter Biden’s laptop, of multi-million dollar deals for the Biden Family to represent Chinese companies affiliated with China’s Intel service.
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This relevant article can be read here:
A Hall of Smoke and Mirrors by James Howard Kunstler!
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/a-hall-of-smoke-and-mirrors/
With these pardons of their “own”, this reminds of Hollywood awards, where they give awards to each other.
We’re all insane:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fatal-attraction/
The largest general strike in history occurred on Nov. 26 in India. I read the headlines at only one MSM site and saw nothing about it there. No surprise, but this is the first I’ve seen of it in the alt media.
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India’s One-Day General Strike Largest in History
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https://consortiumnews.com/2020/12/04/indias-one-day-general-strike-largest-in-history/
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The strikes were initiated by a coalition of farmers, but they should resonate with peace activists. Food security, social justice, medical care, housing, breaking up banks and monopolies, stopping the great reset, and ending war . . . are all related to the humane treatment of people. The poor are most affected by them.
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Boycotts and strikes are the most effective, peaceful ways to bring about real change.
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“Around 250 million people across India joined the general strike, making it the largest strike in world history. ”
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“They carried placards with slogans against the anti-farmer, pro-corporate laws that were passed by India’s Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) in September, and then pushed through the Rajya Sabha (upper house) with only a voice vote. ”
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“We are now entering a period in this pandemic when more unrest is possible as more people in countries with bourgeois governments get increasingly fed up with the atrocious behavior of their elites. Report after report shows us that the social divides are getting more and more extreme, a trend that began long before the pandemic but has grown wider and deeper as a consequence of it.”
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“The demands include the reversal of the anti-worker, anti-farmer laws pushed by the government in September, the reversal of the privatization of major government enterprises, and immediate relief for the population, which is suffering from economic hardship provoked by the coronavirus recession and years of neoliberal policies.”
“We are the terrorists. But we don’t need to be. We can begin waking up together. Waking up our friends and neighbors, spreading consciousness of what’s going on, raising awareness of the horrors our governments are perpetrating in Yemen and in other nations in the name of imperialist domination….” Yes, most certainly this is our crucial task, but how we do it is of utmost importance if we are to succeed. We must direct our criticism and condemnation at the current actions of American government, as Caitlin indicates, not at the American people or at American ideals. Do we have the wisdom and discipline to exercise such restraint even though we know that the former (including ourselves) are complacent/complicit, and that the latter have never come close to being realized?
Great points here.
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Too many people are ignoring these horrendous actions of their government. I think most, in some way, feel they have to in order to survive in this society/system. Yes, blame the government, but I think most of the workers and elected members also feel they are doing what they need to do to survive in this society/ system.
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Of course it’s no excuse for allowing genocide, war crimes and countless other crimes against humanity.
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Blaming the global, robber baron crime syndicate, that controls everything, gets to the heart of it.
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The truth is no longer hidden. People are hiding from the truth.
People are just a nuisance which must be neutralized. This throttling of food to starve out the poor is just beginning. The world is ruled by terrorists and supported by power hungry ruthless people. I cannot say it strongly enough, food shortages are coming with much of the world facing starvation. Yemen, hondurus and much of central america are full of hungry people. Most of Africa as well. Not enough water or food. It is all part of the great reset, starve the poor all in the name of saving the resources of the planet. Climate change requires us to drastically reduce the population to save the rest. Oh yea, be sure to wear your mask and be one of the first to get your vaccination. Doesnt this all strike you as just too damn convenient. The world has been herded into this moment for the last 30 years. Wake up. Prepare.
Not much chance of that. People are now so obsessed with testing positive for the flu, they have no interest in anything outside themselves. Perfect environment for the great reset. Yes, it’s happening right before our eyes.
There is one, and only one thing that any government has excelled at, and that is killing people. Their very existence is predicated on their assumed authority to hold a gun to people’s heads and force them to comply or die. Not a big surprise that gun goes off now and then. Not a big surprise they export the process either.
In the 1960s (yes, I’m old) I read a soldier’s lament that “In school we learned about the evil Redcoats who came over here and killed us as we were trying to be free. In Vietnam, I learned that we are the Redcoats.” That comment started a process of opening my eyes which continues today. We are still the Redcoats, and we are still terrorists. This is, unfortunately, nothing new. I voted Green Party because I couldn’t stand the thought of voting for the billionaire-backed terrorists in the major parties of our own government. Maybe someday we will change, but I don’t see it happening soon.
If you recall, Mike, back in the early 60s, we didn’t see it “happening soon,” either. Then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the zeitgest shifted, inverted, and the young saw clearly what the old had been denying. The lesson we learned, and must pass on to today’s young while we can, is that major shifts in consciousness can happen unexpectedly and unexpectedly FAST.
I can only hope so, Newton. Caitlin thinks we are on the brink of change, and maybe she’s right. Also, remember that the zeitgeist of the 60s didn’t last all that long. Maybe we’ll be better at it next time.
Sadly true, Mike. It surely didn’t last long, was more like a brief renaissance than a genuine revolution. But there were all of those potentially lucrative career ladders waiting for us after leaving campus, and many of us, I’m afraid, climbed onto them and gave our working lives to “the system” and “the man” we had condemned. This time around, however, those seductive career ladders are few and far between, so maybe a new youth renaissance, should it occur, will morph into a lasting revolution. Or so an old man can hope.
From one old man, to another, I too was alive and well during that period. But I was on the ground in the “funny Country” where my eyes were opened widely as a direct result. Set me on a learning curve for the rest of my life. However, I have discovered sadly these days, the youth of which we are all relying upon to remedy or rectify these issues, have basicly “gone out to lunch” and really could care less at what’s going on. Until they are on the streets, homeless and destituet, hungry and sick, the penny will not drop. Only then, will they see the wood for the trees, and it’ll be all too late. These events a driverless trains speeding flat out towards a cliff, and nothing anyone can do, will stop it. Prepare ourselves for the worst. That’s it.
I am curious as to how a blockade is so effective blocking food and medical supplies yet totally ineffective blocking weapons. I seem to recall, though I don’t remember where or when it was, that humanitarian efforts in certain areas are prone to be met by men with guns serving local warlords who seize control of both supplies and services (the populace be damned). One school of thought is that it is the true faces of human misery itself (easy enough to produce) that becomes the chief export by which the leadership of the local status quo enrich themselves, apparently callus to the misery they deliberately prolong. Call it a tax? Sounds like attacks? Perhaps there’s some problem in translation or the understanding of just what some cultures have evolved into but it seems to have infested globally like any successful pandemic. What is the name of that child burning ceremony the world elites perform on an altar in front of the giant concrete owl? The Death and/or cremation of “something”? (This is where the reader can look it up if they don’t already know).
When I was a kid in Belfast in 1969 British troops were brought in (Practically overnight, mind) to “keep Catholics safe from Protestant aggression” ( burning people out of their homes in Bombay St, Falls Road area) we all know how that turned out.
Point is, the Brits complained that it was difficult to conduct operations there, since their previous deployment was in Aden ( Yemen) where it was obvious who the “enemy” were.
50 years to make that bed of “ butchered children “ you generously guilt out, but I remember living in occupied U.K. where Bobby Sands M.P. died in English prison after 43 day hunger strike, where today Julian Assange gets the same archaic punishment despite 60 medical doctors pleading for his release to hospital in vain.
Why did KSA buy 1 million specialist high velocity sniper bullets in 2011.? Evil always has a plan.
Any simple solutions to this (or any other) complex problem gratefully welcomed.
Yemen and every war is so shocking to me. I don’t understand how people in power sleep at night or live in their own skins. I always picture Trump at the moment, soon to be Biden walking up to a child, pouring gasoline on them and setting them on fire. If there is a God, please make this evil war stop.
They can sleep at night because they are psychopaths. They are quite literally insane. Their minds do not work the same as yours. They do not contain any of the characteristics that you would call humanity, no sympathy, empathy, guilt, charity, etc. Such makes it quite difficult to comprehend just how evil they can be, since we DO harbor such humanity. Unfortunately, governments usually employ a considerable number of them, since it’s their perfect environment.
Caitlin, don’t expect anything from Biden. He is not only a serial liar but was also responsible, together with the black “shining light” Obama, for starting this genocide in Yemen. Just look at the Harris/Biden cabinet and the people who come with them. They are just a bunch of warmongers of the neoliberal and neoconservative brand. Don’t believe in their phony “liberal” and “humanistic” rhetoric. One can only be fooled once, but not all the time. The real terrorists are sitting in D. C., London, Paris, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Australia, Germany, and Israel.
Saudi Arabia needs to move south taking over Yemen as israel wants to expand into greater israel as part of its territorial ambitions. It’s all been planned. Do your research. Yemenis are the new Palestinians.
KSA needs to get out – Russia and Iran will force them out !
Remember Qatar used to sponsor and arm the ‘proxy’ ZIO/US terrorist group ISIS in Syria.
So Russia sold Qatar a 15% share in Rosneft – never hear from Qatar anymore !
You really should all pay more attention – It is no coincidence that Russia has provided the majority of the worlds chess champions !
Russia has always stood up for the wretched of this earth !
ZIO/US has been behind EVERY terrorist group that has ever existed – wherever there is OIL – you will find a US terrorist ‘proxy’ !!
Boko Haram – Nigeria – largest OIL producing nation in Africa !
Things are NEVER as they seem – you are being deceived – the world should say ENOUGH of the BS !
http://themillenniumreport.com/2020/10/finally-conclusive-proof-michelle-obama-really-is-big-mike/
Sometimes hope seems as far away as the furthest star.
Russia is strangling the ZIO/US war machine.
Putin tried to buy some ‘leverage’ with the KSA a few years ago ( by allowing the KSA access to oil exploration contracts in Russia ) and stop the Yemen genocide .
There was talk about the KSA pulling out at that point – however the ZIO/US must have had other ideas.
KSA are running out of oil – it is the worst kept secret in the ME – I don’t think Yemen has had oil exports since the Iraq war.
This is what the ZIO/US does – stops the oil export market through sanctions (ditto Iran ditto Iraq ) so they can STEAL it at a later date.
Unfortunately for the US – the FREE oil scam is over.
https://cluborlov.blogspot.com/
Great link – thank you.
Great set of bullet points attributed to PCR (Paul Craig Roberts) and excellent analysis.
Shared
It was OK, according to Madeline Albright, for 500,000 Iraqi children to die to accomplish U.S. goals. What’s the difference with Yemen, even with lesser numbers of victims involved? Horror show upon horror show: how do you wake up the crazy people perpetrating this nightmare?
I am 79: I have witnessed and rebelled against how many wars in my lifetime started by the goons on top of the USA? I was born in 1941 and I have watched the nazis running the USA attack and invade country after country. I headed out West during the Vietnam War propelled by images of babies being napalmed. I dropped out. The wars are stil on, right now. All volunteers i.e. mercenaries more than fill the ranks. Create and maintain endless poverty and recruits flock to the call of the military, and then come home and commit suicide because of what they had gone and done in the resource wars that never–I say never–benefited any man or woman born in poverty.
me too. same everything: birds of a feather: one of the best days of my life was when my parents vowed to support me with what little they had no matter what I decided to do about going to Vietnam. my Mother said, “This is not like our war. our war was a ‘good’ war.”
i told them it might be canada or sweden, but i chose the USAR and lucked out for 6 years: no call up. Bush called up the Reserves for Iraq, taking up new fathers et al.
no one should support our troops for murdering so many “collateral” casual-ties…and now i read we have convoys of oil trucks leaving Syria for Iraqi ports filled with oil.
outrageous crass criminal theft and greed. oil is “Blood Oil” from now on.
Few people ever stop to consider why so-called terrorists do what they do. And when they do think about it, they mostly believe the official narratives that basically label the terrorists as fanatics, crazy, deranged, and all the other labels for people who challenge the status quo.
All terrorism starts with a complaint against a government or business organisation for crimes it has committed against one or more people. The affected people try following ‘official channels’ to complain but most of the time it doesn’t work. So when the USA invades your country, writing a letter to the US president isn’t going to make any difference at all.
That’s the problem, most terrorism ends up using violence / destruction because nothing else gets the attention of the government that has caused the complaint in the first place. The trouble is that it doesn’t work and makes the problem worse, so it becomes a vicious circle, one which the governments use as excuses to commit even more crimes – which in turn generates more terrorism.
That’s why Caitlin is right. We are the terrorists, or at least our government and business organisations are. If we stop committing these crimes then the terrorism will also stop.
In America a half a million dead Iraqi children are officially considered – “worth it,” by our psychopathic elites. And now we can quietly and with as little fanfare as possible add Yemeni children to the same – “dead” & “worth it” categories. Of course all such mayhem quietly passes unnoticed among those who consider themselves the oh so “woke,” “progressive” and “liberal” denizens of what passes for the “left” in America.
“Yes it is true that we have been propagandized into our complicity with this terrorism and if the news media were doing its purported job Yemen would be front and center in our attention…”
Not exactly. Many (in the so-called middle class mainly) believe that they are getting some crumbs from the war profits table and so should ignore inconvenient signs; anyway even if we don’t believe that we are somehow profiting from imperial wars we all know that there is a price to be paid for not conforming. So, whenever we have an easy excuse (“We didn’t know!” duh) we studiedly insist in not knowing. That protects our nice-guy self image and at the same time our comfy status as a conforming member of society.
Otherwise it’s materially impossible, no matter how heavy the propaganda and the entertainment culture, not to smell a rat. Once you smell a rat, without a conscious effort to ignore things it’s materially impossible for a person with even below-average intelligence and below-average curiosity not to get at some other version of the facts.
I agree with much of your commentary, but I’m not so sure about the ease with which people who have begun to smell a rat can get another version of the facts. 24/7, they are bombarded with MSM propaganda and the pressures of their gerbil-wheel lives, working harder and harder to keep themselves and their families afloat. And if they’re older rather than younger, their ability to explore the net and find sites like this one is limited at best. So if, apart from work, they screw around with e-communication at all, it’s likely going to be scoping out their friends Facebook, enjoying the diversion of cat videos, etc. The alleged words from the cross apply much more to the average citizen than to their leaders: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
I would be one of those “older rather than younger” at 66 years old. You might be surprised how many of us are quite computer literate. After all, I spent the last ten years of my working life using one all day, every day. I found Caitlin, and I’m not even a socialist. I find it quite useful to come here and stop the echo, and perhaps help others from the socialist side do likewise. No, I’m not a fan of the oligarchy we live under, but also not of those who believe in a free lunch either. I found Caitlin on Lew Rockwell’s site, and occasionally on Zero Hedge,
Hope there are many more like you, JWK, whatever their politics. Most friends around my age (early 70s) can’t even handle receiving text messages, much less sending them, on their cell phones. The last time I had a pizza with one of them, he bitched the whole time about the voice in his car, which he couldn’t figure out how to shut off/up, telling him to turn here or there for the familiar 40 miles he had to drive. Yet the kids take to the tech like they’d been using it in momma’s tummy.
Agreed,but our voice is never heard. It is the oligarchs who control the killing machines for money. The system is broken and we are the great Satan.