Listen to a reading of this article:

We’re risking a very fast, very radioactive World War 3 to defend the “democracy” of a nation whose government bans opposition parties, imprisons political opponents, shuts down opposition media, and takes all its orders from Washington due to a US-backed coup in 2014.

“Defending Ukrainian democracy” makes as much sense as “Defending Mongolian seaports”.

The powers responsible for destroying Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen are the same powers we’re trusting to carefully navigate extremely delicate nuclear brinkmanship escalations without ending the world.

“Relax, nobody’s gonna start a nuclear war” is a belief that is premised upon the assumption that the empire which laid waste those nations, while destroying our environment and making everyone crazy and miserable, is competent enough to walk that precarious and unpredictable tightrope.

I keep getting comments like “You’re saying we just can’t strike Russia AT ALL, just because they have nukes??”

Yes. Fucking duh. What are you an idiot? What the fuck is wrong with people? Did everyone forget what nuclear weapons are? Did schools stop teaching this or something?

You can’t fix a problem you don’t understand. And right now with Ukraine the entire western political/media class is pouring a tremendous amount of energy into keeping people from understanding the problem.

If they were telling us the truth about Russia they wouldn’t be censoring Russian media.

Kinda odd how defending freedom and democracy requires such copious amounts of censorship.

Don’t worry, I’m sure all those socialist and antiwar Americans that were platformed by RT America can just get jobs criticizing the murderousness and corruption of their government in the free press of the western mainstream media.

I wonder if we should be concerned that the entire western world is propagandizing and censoring like it’s on war footing?

Socialists and anti-imperialists should never accept platforms on Russian media to get heard. They should wait until a respectable western mainstream outlet agrees to platform them, and keep waiting, and waiting, and just keep on waiting until we all die in a nuclear holocaust.

People tend to overestimate the power of the US war machine and underestimate the power of the US propaganda machine.

Remember when US officials kept saying “We’re not trying to start a war, we’re trying to prevent one” while refusing to make reasonable low-cost concessions that would have prevented a war, then, when war started, launched operations which serve the long-term goals of US hegemony?

Russia gets control of Kyiv with this war, while the US gets international consensus for unprecedented economic warfare and support for NATO, plus giving Moscow another Afghanistan. NATO powers could have prevented this war but chose to egg it on instead. Looks like a classic sacrifice a pawn to get the queen move.

Choose one:

A) It’s a coincidence that we were bombarded by hysterical anti-Russia narratives for five years before this started.

B) Bogus Russia scandals were cooked up by US intelligence to start manufacturing consent for a confrontation with Russia to preserve US unipolar hegemony.

It would bring a lot of clarity for a lot of people if we replaced the term “no-fly zone” with “Directly Attack the Russian Military Zone”.

“Whataboutism” is a common misspelling of “Damning evidence that western powers are lying about their motives and values.”

Yes, Smart Internet Person, I love Vladimir Putin. Can’t possibly be that I’m criticizing the known wrongdoings of the mightiest power structure in the world, it’s that I fell in love with some random government official on the other side of the planet and want to suck his cock.

It’s not like the US or its allies have ever done anything wrong, so they couldn’t possibly have done anything to give rise to our current situation, therefore it must be that I’m just kookoo for Putin Puffs. We’re very good thinkers, you and I. Let’s go watch cartoons.

Of course I am aware that Vladimir Putin is no girl scout. That’s why I’ve been warning for years that the west’s refusal to pursue detente could lead us to nuclear war. There’d be nothing to worry about if the guy was a cuddly wuddly snugglepoo.

Having a shit fit about someone criticizing the most powerful empire of all time for actions which led to a fucking war is a great way to let everyone know you have an infantile worldview and a piss weak argument. If you say you hate this war but get upset when people talk about the known ways the US-centralized empire helped cause it, then your interest is not in peace, nor in freedom, nor in truth, but in loyalty to that empire.

Learn more and think harder about the role NATO powers have played in starting this war.

Learn more and think harder about what sanctions are and what they do to people.

Learn more and think harder about what nuclear war is and what might cause it.

Whenever I talk about the frightening escalation in censorship and propaganda we’re seeing in the west I get people telling me that Russia is censoring and propagandizing even worse. Like “We’re a bit better than Russia!” is a sane response to this assault on truth and freedom.

If you feel the need to restrict and manipulate people’s speech, even if what they’re saying is true, then your actions aren’t based on truth. They’re based on something else, like geostrategic conquest.

Everything the empire says it opposes Russia for is a lie. Everything the empire criticizes Russia for are things the empire itself does. Everything we’re told is on the line in this showdown — freedom, democracy, truth, justice — are things the empire has been actively stomping out.

______________________________

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99 responses to “Is This Russian Propaganda? Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”

  1. “If there had been no decision to move NATO eastward to include Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbass would be part of Ukraine today, and there would be no war in Ukraine”.
    .

    John Mearsheimer
    .

    (From wikipedia entry: John Joseph Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation).

  2. Ok, one more try.
    Yes, I mocked the main stream media coverage of “the Russian attack” or “the Russian shelling” of the nuclear power complex in two of my comments, because I found the main stream narrative of the occurance at the power plant, beyond INSANE, and I guess that upset people, and I apologize for that.
    However, I did make it clear several times, as the Russian column advanced toward the plant, that it would not be in their best interests upon arrival, to aviod engagements of any kind, because to do so might lead their own destruction, the immediate failure of the invasion, and to a catastophe for Europe.
    What I thought they would do when they arrived, and I believe I pointed this out either on day one or two, is they would negotiate, agreement would be reached, and they peacefully take over the facility.
    This is what did happen five or six days later, and I reported this.
    I also reported, after the our main stream media told us that the Russians were “shelling” the plant, that this seemed to me highly unlikely, for the reasons I listed above, and for the reason that the Russians had already taken over the facility, so why would they shell it? Or start a firefight? Or hold the staff at gunpoint, who were not at gunpoint in the video of the staff in the control room, as they made annoucements over loudspeakers to stop the shooting?
    On top of this, I made a case, counter to what CNN was reporting, that this was likely not “an act of terror,” nor logical to think this might be small part of the Russian’s attempt to implement a “scorched earth policy,” because again, I simply did not think it that Russians would risk killing themselves and their army, and there had also been no evidence provided that the Russian’s were retreating. In fact, the main stream media did it make it known to us that the Russians were advancing, albiet slowly, and rarely, if ever, is it an Army’s best interest to pursue a ‘scorched earth policy” while advancing, for simple reason they may have to retreat through the same territory they have burnt to the ground.
    Lmao … I am trying not to mock this narrative, but as you can see, it is nearly impossible not to do so, no matter how hard you try.

    The Russian Federation did better than I did, as the accusations of terror and shelling and attacks is being hashed out at the UN, but they did make it clear, it is illogical to committ suicide mid-operation.

    1. CNN (or Corrupt News Network) have been such liars for such a long time that you can easily find the truth by believing the exact contrary of what they say. My assumption is that they’re artists who find there’s not enough creativity in truth telling.

    2. Your narrative illustrates by omission Clausewitz’ principle of the Fog of War. The longer war continues and the faster its tempo, the more reality loses its distinction and the more persuasively propaganda claims the stage. Lies have a deceptive feel of solidity. What is sensible and obvious becomes contemptible and repulsive, and so the opposite. Did the Russian Army shell a civilian nuclear plant? Logic is no longer a guide in the fog. Perhaps so; perhaps not. From Babyn Yar to Nagasaki to the Katyn Forest, our species leaves an atlas of evil, bound together by the presence of war. Stop this war, even a pause to clear the fog and stay for a few moments the unneeded slaughter of humans. Let the UN come in to bandage the wounds. The armies can resume battle, they too need food and rest. To stop for a while threatens that the war may not start again. Can we be so brave as to face that threat?

  3. James Charles Avatar
    James Charles

    “54:39 if you take a look at what was going on
    54:40 in nato last year 20 000 nato troops
    54:44 were on ukrainian soil
    54:48 dozens of american fighter aircraft were
    54:50 rotating through hundreds of american
    54:53 military personnel had established a
    54:55 permanent mission
    54:57 we don’t want to call it a base because
    54:58 then we’d have to report to congress
    55:00 there was a mission
    55:01 which was a base where we trained the
    55:04 ukrainians on nato tactics using nato
    55:07 equipment
    55:08 uh the navy the ukrainian army dressed
    55:10 like a nato army
    55:12 they were starting to be organized like
    55:14 a nato army
    55:16 and what happens when you look like a
    55:17 duck just
    55:19 it’s quack like a duck walk like a duck
    55:21 you’re a duck
    55:22 so
    55:23 even though people say well ukraine
    55:24 wasn’t a nato member they were they were
    55:26 a de facto member of nato they had an
    55:28 army that was an extension of nato so
    55:30 much so that ukrainian troops were
    55:32 deploying overseas in support of nato
    55:35 missions
    55:37 um when when nato holds an exercise in
    55:39 europe
    55:40 ukrainian troops go and train with the
    55:43 nato forces so the the idea that
    55:46 you know russia had nothing to fear from
    55:48 uh from ukraine is absurd in the extreme
    55:51 uh nate you know ukraine was very much
    55:54 a um
    55:55 a a nato member . . . “

    1. James Charles Avatar
      James Charles

      “07:50 just read the books
      07:51 to see how the the CIA has relationships
      07:55 with the security services in Ukraine
      07:57 and as soon as the coup was launched it
      08:00 took over control of those security
      08:03 services and it started drawing of the
      08:05 hit lists that of targeting people that
      08:08 it could go after and the reason it’s
      08:10 targeting the people that target targets
      08:13 most highly or the people that are
      08:14 sitting on natural resources that
      08:18 American businessmen want . . . “ ?

  4. Stephen Morrell Avatar
    Stephen Morrell

    The imperialists are on a war footing, but like every war they’ve instigated since WWII, they won’t declare it. But they’re mobilising their militaries right now while ordinary Ukrainians, especially the Russian-speakers, are sacrificed as their casus belli. As far as the imperialists are concerned, this is the beginning to WWIII they’ve planned for and wanted. As soon as Zelensky is hanging from a lamp post, only then might they actually ‘declare’ war and drag the world into a godawful conflagration of their making — especially now they’re well on the way to manufacturing the consent for it.
    .
    As in WWI and WWII, with Germany and Japan goaded and provoked into war by the Anglophone imperialist powers to redivide the world in their favour, WWIII will prove to be no different. Except that Russia won’t be Balkanised and otherwise dismembered, nor will China. These aren’t ‘insignificant’ powerless countries with the misfortune of resources that the imperialists want, to simply walk in and take. They have the historical memory and the means to stop the marauding, but the US and Anglophone ruling classes in particular who are racist down to the bone, have utter contempt for these Asiatic ‘untermenschen’, and have no qualms about using nuclear weapons to annihilate them. Like good Greens, part of their program of conquest is to reduce the world’s population by over half, and ridding the world of its untermenschen is their only means to that end.
    .
    We must defend LPR, DPR, China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Yemen, Nicaragua, Syria, Venezuela and all the other intended victims of the rapacious imperialists and their local henchmen. Not pacifism, but a program of revolutionary defeatism, to turn the guns the other way, to turn imperialist war into civil war, to hang the rulers from lamp posts before they destroy everything. The only ‘peace’ these swine deserve is that of the graveyard.
    .
    But it does look like WWIII is upon us.

    1. Let’s try to picture this whole stuff for now like in the 1993 legal drama “Philadelphia”,
      Tom Hanks asks Denzel Washington;
      “What do you call a thousand lawyers (US-UK-EU-Israel-Saudis war criminals in this actual context) chained together at the bottom of the ocean?”
      “A good start.”

      1. I call it Pollution.

  5. It would be nice if all the scumbags who run the world would just fall in a hole somewhere but it ain’t gonna happen. Neither is free speech, democracy, fairness, and laissez faire government. Unfortunately, it is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. It eventually will get better but not until the general public awakens from its propaganda induced sleep and that won’t happen until the pendulum reaches its maximum oscillation and people start to say, “Wait a minute. I think I am being lied to.” Meh. Probably won’t ever happen.

    1. Probably. Because a sucker is born every minute. It’s a race against time :o)

  6. “Don’t just do something, stand there!” Now the fog of war is blurring any ability to see what is happening NOW, not last week.
    Cease firing for a few days. Russia can stand their ground on occupied lands. Starving people can be fed. The IEAE can investigate the nuclear fuckshow and see if they’re safe. Settle down. Move refugees. Agree to a no-fly zone over NATO and Ukraine. Stop it for two weeks. Give it up for Lent. Talk, don’t shoot.
    Then if nothing changes, get it on again. But stop and think. That’s what the point of all the reforms after WWII. If Putin won’t agree, let slip the dogs of NATO and risk annihilation of our mistake of a species. But hurry up and stop.

  7. I know a lot of people reasoning and bringing the truth to the light who don’t get paid for anything at all. But if you wanna understand how the CIA-Pentagon-WhiteHouse hire former generals to go on TV and MSM listen to this podcast aired today 03/05/2022 with Scott Ritter. It is a must for everyone.
    https://podur.org/2022/03/05/aer-104-will-ukraine-be-putins-afghanistan-with-scott-ritter/

  8. I love it when you talk dirty to me. But I don’t love it so much when you talk dirty to everyone in the room.

  9. Got to admit it – I’m a beer swilling armchair anarchist. My idea of striking out is to vote Green every three or so years.
    But nothing has pissed me off more than to find out my own government (that I share with the banks, major polluters and weapons manufacturers) has decided that I can’t inform myself on the state of play in the world.
    Who in the f**k do they think they are!! I don’t tell Scotty he can’t wipe his arse with pages from the New Testament. Yet government funded sites like the ABC and SBS are doling out shit encrusted screeds of the most blatant propaganda I have ever seen.
    How’s this for f**ked up priorities – flood victims in Coraki NSW went for days without sanitation or even fresh water while landlocked on the only street still above the water. In my own town of Murwillumbah NSW there are heartbreaking scenes over and over of the sad pile of discarded toys, furniture, mattresses, bedding all piling up in front of muddied houses.
    Yet we are sending lethal aid to Ukraine???

    1. Ukraine is already a top recipient of US aid.

  10. Now it’s Lindsey Graham who wants to get Putin assassinated, in spite of a law passed by Congress in 1974 IIRC forbidding the CIA to go on whacking politicians abroad. He’s calling for an illegal action against the head of a State he’s not even at war with – because it’s also Congress that decides that and it hasn’t. Gotta pinch yourself! And it’s this kind of guys who keep breaking your balls about law and order and insist on jailing people because they grow weed in their backyard. I’m asking you…
    Is this the kind also who wanted Kennedy assassinated by any chance?
    No, I’m just asking, that’s all… Or thought that 3,000 people was a small price to pay to build back better the already most heavily funded military in the world?
    Sorry, I didn’t ask that… Please erase it from your memory. As they say in courts, “the jury will disregard”…
    Let’s move to something more pleasant, like this British general (I think he was) that Glenn Greenwald exposed the other day for arguing that the Russian operation in Ukraine (don’t know how to call it, some say invasion, some say liberation) was unbearable because the Ukrainians “look like us”.
    Wow! Like whom? Lloyd Austin that he would certainly love to see calling for a US intervention like Colin Powell in 2003 at the call of Condoleeza Rice?
    Funny enough, he or another top brass, I’m not sure, said the same thing later to a black British journalist who snapped back: “Because you mean it would be OK if they were black or brown?” Oops…
    Maybe there’s a bit of hypocrisy around that woke PR in the military. Just saying…
    And what about the Germans? Don’t they look like the Brits? They’re the same people for Chrissakes! Came from Northern Germany and Jutland the Anglo-Saxon wave! Even their queen is of German ancestry and her fambly had to change their names from Saxe-Coburg and Battenberg to Windsor and Mountbatten during WW1 so that people could tell the difference! This guy never heard how Churchill ordered them bombed back to the Stone Age in Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden and all over the joint actually? Eight million dead including the soldiers! Not the same people? I’m asking you…
    Not that it makes the rest look less atrocious but even within their own breed, they slaughtered each other for centuries going back all the way to Rome! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot are they breaking our balls now about the Ukrainians being like them?
    Is there a bad faith section in the Guinness? And how are the Ukrainian Orthodox Slavs different from the Russian Orthodox Slavs while we’re at it?
    Or did this guy feel that the Ukronazis were more particularly like him by any chance? Talking of which, we’re gonna have a bloodbath in Mariupol and the Western media are gonna go through the roof over it (I’m a fortune-teller in my spare time). Is it going to be as bad as this for instance?
    https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/03/l-reichard-white/so-are-putin-and-the-russians-as-good-as-these-guys-you-decide/

    1. Re: Mariupol. Russian news said during the ceasefire the NeoNazis did not let civilians leave the city, while the Ukrainian troops moved around and reinforced their positions.
      The US side reported that Russian military did not let the civilians leave the city.
      Yes, Victoria Nuland, I am tired of the CON lies too.

      1. Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland is a goddamn terrorist. It’s likely the Ukronazis kept the (predominantly Russian-speaking) Mariupol civilians hostages. Here’s what these lovely allies of ours who allegedly look like us actually look like:
        https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/03/zelensky-and-the-fascists-he-will-hang-on-some-tree-on-khreshchatyk.html

        1. PS: Don’t tell Pelosi’s Lonely Hearts Woke Band but it looks very much like our beloved allies in Ukraine are anti-LGBT white supremacists :o)

          1. Especially don’t tell Lindsey Graham …

  11. …..amerikkkants are a consumate variety of the species homo asshollus….they see a nuclear war as a tv show…..just like the “news”…..amerikkkants don’t see much beyond their noses, let alone smell the bullshit about their “exceptionalism” that’s going to kill us all…..the entitlement of their “exceptionalism” has consolidated the “innocence” so clear in all justifications of imperialism that amerikkkant society thrives on…..so we get to see the historically established insanity proving itself again……i can stay tuned for a short time….then i have to scrape off the shit on my overton windshield……….

  12. NO – there won’t be a clash !

    The ZIO/US/NATO has been completely EXPOSED !!

    They have NO answer to Russia’s sophisticated weaponry !

    NOBODY realizes how significant SYRIA was !

    When Russia went into Syria in 2015 – well – that was the beginning of the end of the ZIO/US/NATO !

    NOBODY had stood up to the ZIO/US/NATO/ROTHSCHILDS until then !

    Russia has crushed the WEST !

    There is NO road back from here !

    LOOK what the ZIO/US/NATO did to SYRIA with their barbaric ISIS ‘ proxies’ !

    Endless propaganda resulted in half a MILLION Syrian deaths and another 2.5 million displaced !

    CRUSH them Vlad !

    https://syrianews.cc/jaafari-interview-nato-ukraine-propaganda-identical-to-that-of-syria/

  13. NO – there won’t be a clash !

    The ZIO/US/NATO has been completely EXPOSED !!

    They have NO answer to Russia’s sophisticated weaponry !

    NOBODY realizes how significant SYRIA was !

    When Russia went into Syria in 2015 – well – that was the beginning of the end of the ZIO/US/NATO !

    NOBODY had stood up to the ZIO/US/NATO/ROTHSCHILDS until then !

    Russia has crushed the WEST !

    There is NO road back from here !

  14. Superb !!!!! Catlin, great job.

    On the bright side. In America many boneheads are finding out Putin is not a communist.


    * And now they can find Ukraine on a map too!

    1. About the map. – I mean they are getting close and are only off by hundreds of miles.

  15. Russia is being attacked, and knew it would be attacked, with the full force of the money and media powers of a unipolar neoliberal world. It will either crumble under this massive, unrelenting pressure or somehow weather the storm. If the latter, then a multipolar world order, for better or worse, will have been born earlier than most imagined. We’re about to find out whether we’ve reached the end of history or only closed one chapter to begin another. Interesting times we’re living in–aren’t they?–in the apocryphal Chinese sense.

      1. Thank you for sharing.

  16. Here’s exactly WHY the US is a mess and push, push, pushing the world to nuclear WWIII.
     
    US voters go to the polls in November, 2022 and November 2024. Among those voters will be Mainers and Virginians. I was born in 1950 and was raised in a small town in the state of Maine, about 15 miles as the crow flies from Bath Iron Works (BIW) — a place that for many, many decades has manufactured, and to this day continues to manufacture, warships (which the locals who work there worship). Read all about this wonderful place with all of its investment and employment opportunites.
    http………s://www.gd.com/our-businesses/marine-systems/bath-iron-works
    In the late 1950s and early 1960s my family used to drive by BIW on our way to Reid State Park and ignorantly marveled at those warships. 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 well-paying jobs, and that includes voting for proven warmongers when they enter the voting booth on Groundhog November voting days. They always have. They always will. (The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, is another well-paying war-employer that employs thousands of voters living in both southern Maine and southeastern New Hampshire. They are ALSO going to do their solemn duty every November election day.)
     
    Then there are Virginia’s voters. Let’s look at a few Virginia statistics.
     
    Population of Virginia = 8.6 million
     
    Number of Registered Voters in Virginia = 5.98 million
     
    Dollar Amount of Defense Contracts Awarded to Contractors in Virginia in 2020 alone = $53.8 billion
     
    Dollar Amount of Defense Contracts Awarded to Contractors in Virginia from 2000 to 2020 = $846.6 billion
     
    Number of Defense Contracts Awarded to Contractors in Virginia from 2000 to 2020 = 1,617,422
     
    Number of Defense Contractors in Virginia = 18,227
     
    (To confirm my above statistics, go to h……….ttps://www.governmentcontractswon.com/ and select “contractors by state” on the right side of the page and then select Virginia on the drop-down list.)
     
    Now pull your heads out of the mystical sand and ask some REAL WORLD questions about “the people” of Virginia.
     
    What is the likelihood that the vast majority of voters in Virginia are going to vote for a peacenik for POTUS or federal legislator on any future November election day? Correct, real-world answer: 0%
     
    What is the likelihood that the vast majority of voters in Virginia are going to vote for a warmonger for legislator or POTUS on any future November election day? Correct, real-world answer: 100%
     
    Now, you thoroughly-woke, logical-thinking commenters, is the reason that voters in Virginia have selected warmongers for POTUS and the legislature election after election after election, that they are brainwashed and un-woke, or is it because, in Virginia’s case, those voters vitally depend upon that yearly DoD injection of well over $50 billion dollars, literally forever? Correct, real-world answer: It’s the $50 billion!
     
    The awful truth that people living both inside and outside the US, especially those living in Russia and China, must fully understand is that Virginians know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it! As far as Virginia’s voters are concerned, Biden or Trump or Pompeo or Bolton are all perfectly qualified to hold the title of POTUS and you-already-know-their-names warmongering legislators, because ALL will increase the war budget from here to eternity. Virginia’s voters don’t give a shit how many people are killed by the weapons they help to produce and they are not going to vote for a peacenik during the next thousand years! They’re perfectly willing to risk nuclear war rather than vote for their unemployment. How’s THAT for a “wake-up call”?
     
    Virginia’s political/economic situation is a microcosm of the USA. Americans say they want peace, but what they, the vast majority of voters, have voted for, time and time and time again, is perpetual war and “full spectrum dominance” of the world which, again, justifies the annual, annual, annual, not-just-once-but-from-here-to-eternity DoD money-injection.
     
    Will Americans vote for perpetual war yet again this November and on every November election day in the future and will they, as they have many times in the past, ignore any candidate who wants to seriously cut the war budget? You tell me.

    1. Cannot imagine that these defense contractors are worried about Russian Propaganda.
      More like when Obama signed the law about American Propaganda being allowed in the US, it came with new funding for the MSM, so they are just being paid a lot for pushing the CIA news. Sick that we the taxpayers cannot stop this. It is a CON job.

    2. Benito Mussolini Avatar
      Benito Mussolini

      “Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day.
      Every anarchist is a baffled dictator.
      The truth is that men are tired of liberty.
      Socialism is a fraud, a comedy, a phantom, a blackmail.
      It’s good to trust others but, not to do so is much better.
      War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it.
      Fascism is a religious concept.
      Let us have a dagger between our teeth, a bomb in our hands, and an infinite scorn in our hearts.
      The League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out.
      We become strong, I feel, when we have no friends upon whom to lean, or to look to for moral guidance.”
      ― Benito Mussolini

      1. Funny how he ended up swinging in a (Rockefeller) Esso gas station, hung there by communist resistants. Talk about having no friends! :o)

  17. Worldwide leadership will have to restructure itself towards a future not so relying in US-UK interests over national interests.
    In the last 50 years what’s the status of all ambassadors and diplomatic staff from all countries deployed worldwide:
    1) A bunch of local rednecks nominated to occupy a diplomatic position more because of being a part of local elites traditionally attached to it.
    1.1) As a result they become more relevant as a beacon for smuggling expensive clothes, jewels and private-personal tourism at the expense of their own countries. The diplomatic stance which they were supposed to represent is obstructed and neglected.

    Countermeasure to fix it – A high skilled intellectual diplomatic staff aligned with national interests and worldwide. scenario. Ambassadors and assistants should grasp historical knowledge related to the countries where they will be stationed for years. not mentioning a pre-requirement in philosophy, sociology, anthropology in order to understand the whole scope related to the geopolitical scenario. As an example of this I question if a dozen of American and British ambassadors understood Putin’s discourse a 12 days ago about Ukraine’s. military ops. I’m 100% certain that none of them understood Xi Jinping discourse when addressing the Chinese people a two years ago where Chinese history and mythology mixed in the political-philosophical rhetoric. Worldwide leadership and diplomatic staff will have to go back to the elementary school and grow up to become adults. Lavrov staff is a high skilled group of diplomats. To sit with such individuals will require more than political animals with an. intellectual. background shaped inside of a redneck kindergarten.
    Time to go back to the school and to dismiss all industrial representatives offering bribery to skip the lesson and governmental parasites doing nothing useful in the diplomatic-political scenario.

    1. The US is especially pitiful in the woefully ignorant and arrogant attitudes of the State Department embassies and ambassidolts in other countries. Embassies of course communicate with host governments. They are also most effective in speaking with people and conveying US opinions. They are most useful when they shut up and listen.
      A good embassy can accomplish more than espionage and propaganda operations can.
      The US has the habit of sending political party hangers-on who don’t speak the language, and gravitate towards the powerful and greedy in poor, small countries.
      One can say this is national policy. It certainly renews every four years. It is destructive to the ends of the people, at home and abroad.

  18. It should perhaps not come as a total surprise that there is a religious dimension to this mess too. The previous US Ukrainian Presidential proxy Petro Poroshenko manipulated the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to declare its independence from the Russian Orthodox Church in 2018. This was intended as a calculated insult to Russia, since the Russian Orthodox Church originated in Kiev. Although the media demonize him, Putin himself is an intensely religious Orthodox Christian. His devout mother baptized him in secret in the atheistic Soviet era. Vlad the Terrible still wears his baptismal cross and has cast himself at the true defender of Christian values, in a world that has largely outgrown what is in fact the most violent of the three Abrahamic religions, by far.
    *
    The primeval passions ignited by religious faith factor in the desperate attempt by the west to weaken Russia and, if possible dismember it, as they did to former Yugoslavia, another Eastern Orthodox Slavic country. What have been termed the “two sentinels of Roman Catholicism,” France and Poland, and the “gladiator of Protestantism”, Germany, are cheerleading the US effort of using Ukraine to destroy Russia. And the shocking rhetoric against Putin and Russia is the language of the Holy Inquisition, infamous for the severity of the tortures promised to the infidel.
    *
    Putin poignantly said recently that it is increasingly difficult for a Christian in the West to distinguish between “the belief in God and the belief in Satan.” It is equally difficult for the rest of us to distinguish between the followers of Christ and the followers of Satan, save that the latter is less judgmental, if no less imaginary.

  19. Russia declares war on the Straussians:

    https://www.voltairenet.org/article215855.html

    How can a Jewish president of Ukraine ( Volodymyr Zelenskyy ) be in bed with the Nazis???

    Does he think a nuclear war a good joke?

    Is it all about the money? A man from Texas carried a sign that says “war is business and business is good”.

    Is all history fake new??

  20. My favorite part is, “You’re saying we just can’t strike Russia AT ALL, just because they have nukes??”

    Americans are so used to getting and having anything they want, they just can’t understand how they can’t just do whatever to whomever when the notion strikes them. It just doesn’t register in their minds.

  21. Nice article from five years ago by an independent Canadian explaining what the problem is in Ukraine under the western propaganda wall. spoiler – real nazis
    http://whattherussia.wordpress.com/2017/04/08/ukraines-neo-nazi-battalions-bending-government-policy-to-their-will/

  22. Talking to Russian friends in US, even they cannot see the core issue because of all the verbal warfare around the war in Ukraine: Russia does not want American or Ukrainian nuclear weapons within 5 min of strike on Moscow, it is not enough time to react to the nuclear strike. Maybe it suits Americans and thats why they cannot recall this.
    Everybody wants to relieve their anxiety by talking, or arguing, almost nobody doing deep listening.

  23. Richard Guillemette Avatar
    Richard Guillemette

    write on caitlin. the cabal is horrendous

  24. Have you noticed that the Corporate Owned News (CON) is frantically playing up “anti-war protests” in Russia? When was the last time they focused positively on anti-war protests here in the US? Or even mentioned them?

    1. “CON” is yummy-I’m stealing it.

      Perhaps that’s the indicator of a useful protest…the CON ignores it.

      And “positive” is subjective, so depending on the range of your meter, I would say when DoD/uncleG wanted support for the 1033 program?

  25. Today Russia declared a temporary ceasefire to allow civilians to leave the encircled Azov Sea port city of Mariupol. Another humanitarian corridor was established for the nearby town of Volnovakha, also controlled by the Ukrainians. Russia and Ukraine are allowing safe passage for civilians before the fall of those 2 cities. Meanwhile in the MSM no one is making a proper headline about this. They are focused in the Pentagon military mission to send soldiers inside of. the Ukrainian territory to deliver who knows what. This will not end up well for America. They are risking to escalate the conflict doing this. I hope they will not use this ceasefire to force passage which I think. they will do it eventually in my opinion. Zelensky criticizing NATO powerless status made allies in the Baltic Sea and Europe to hesitate about keeping up the alliance. Blinken, Kamala Harris, the best Americans to deal with a sensitive historical moment will make a European tour to sooth the nerves of allies. I don’t know why I don’t feel any relief. America has a strong curriculum vitae fucking up everything.

    1. LOL ar recalling Obama’s own phrase: “Never underestimate Biden’s capacity to fuck up!” And he will too because it’s in his nature :o).

  26. First time commenting. Caitlyn, you speak for me. Your words carry the power of truth. I live in the SF Bay Area, which I’m sure is particularly vulnerable to nuclear attack, and I’m a beginning birder and would just like for birds and people to survive and maybe thrive. I wish birds were in charge. There are so many many decent humans but we seem to have lost every capacity to promote peace. I can’t even bear to read the news any more; even leftist sites exhaust me with their political complexities and factual (albeit true) arguments. I appreciate your direct moral clarity. Thank you.

    1. Thanks. I wish birds were in charge too.

    2. I am a birder too and I was thinking a couple days ago that I will feel particularly bad about my chickens and all birds dying in nuclear holocaust..

    3. Let me add some propaganda.
      You know how they say “bird brain”? Birds actually have a different brain structure than humans. Of course you know magpies and crows are highly intelligent. I had a pigeon staying at my place while he was recovering, and pigeons are smart and brave and are known for helping people to deliver messages. Sounds like carrier pigeons could help after the Internet gets shut down.
      Birds wake up singing; after I put food in the feeder, they stay in the trees and say “thank you” a whole lot.
      Because they are happy and grateful, they can fly and soar.
      We could all be happy if we had bird brains, or had birds in charge of us.
      My wildbirds are already in charge of me LOL.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cher_Ami

      1. Important! Birds are the only other species capable of reproducing human speech.

  27. zbigniew dzwonkowski Avatar
    zbigniew dzwonkowski

    Why did the USA tell Ukraine to ignore the Minsk Agreement , some years ago ? … Is this a major thing , the world should know to End the present conflict ?…. And now, Russians go to Kiev to solve that problem of the Ukrainian atrocities in Donbass…. they bombed and sabotaged their own people ….

  28. Allyson Bedene Avatar
    Allyson Bedene

    Three of the past ten days I have woken up to find my Facebook account has gone to brand new page default. No friend’s lists, groups and the messenger list is gone too. There have been no warnings, no violating community standards notices. Nothing /Nada. After “violation number 2 I am finally told I violated community standards. I am not provided with a reason; I am asked to provide a mobile phone number. I gave them a number and the machine say oops we were wrong carry on. Now I don’t feel I can ask people to friend me for the third time. The situation is not fixed/repaired whatsoever, I’ll pass out my email address. Perhaps start a blog if I could figure out how to do that in the meantime snail mail is an option. This worries me. It feels like it is about the mid-terms. My “Meta” crime seems to be about financing progressive candidates $5.00 at a time…

    1. I quit Meta when the best of friends started to talk trash about China.
      Quality of life improved, and China is still there.
      I do not miss trash talk on Meta.

  29. ““Defending Ukrainian democracy” makes as much sense as “Defending Mongolian seaports”.”
    Thanks for making my day with that one, and for giving me pause for reflection, that a nation-state is better off with a seaport than without, and the question of seaports has yet to be decided here, in this grand old geopolitical game.
    “When you have an opportunity to show mercy, do it, without pause or reget,” my own personal Buddha told me in a dream. “But I am not a nation-state,” I replied, but my Buddha only smiled and drifted off.
    Day 9. Speaking of pauses, this seems to be the day for it. There are to be three cauldrons it seems, a medium sized one in the south, a small one in the north, and huge one in the middle. The one in middle may turn out not to be cauldron at all. It’s size of, I don’t know, New York? And it’s far from being closed on the West hand side, and perhaps our Stalled/Rolling Column is most responsible for this failure. In order to close it, and begin the process of reducing it, would require a week or more of titanic effort, and the reduction would require heavy bombers, and we don’t want that.
    Do we?
    The small caulron in the north, that one likely to be formed east of Kyiv, I predict will be a pocket that will come to known as the Pocket of Life. There will be brothers and sister in it, so it will not be harmed, once it is formed, unless events events dictate otherwise.
    The medium sized one in the south, will be given an ultimatum, surrender, or die. I don’t know how the modern Russian army goes about these things, I am more familar with the Red Army protocals of the past, but my guess is, the 15 Nazi brigades in command of the pocket will given 24 hours to decide the fates of so many innocent souls they have no business being in charge of.
    Note: Sasha is a brave young man. When I my form my Army to storm the Gates of Hell, I will give him command, of my 1st Division. We will be slaughtered of course, we outnumbered few.

    1. Caleb Maupin made an excellent point yesterday, that’s gone unnoticed, at least by me, that Russian military excercises last year in Belerus (although not routine, could certainly fit in the category of “normal”), were denounced in the Western media as being “menacing” and “aggressive,” as per usual, and with some justification, as they were a bit larger than previous ones and there was some extra special manuevering this way and that; but, they did finish what they doing, and most of them packed up and left and went back to wherever they came from.
      It was during the packing up and leaving phase that the Donbass region recieved its heaviest shelling of the 8 year standoff in the southeast.
      It was almost as if someone was crying out, “Hey, where are you going! Come back!”
      Beau of the 5th believes Nato can crush the Russians in Ukraine anytime they want, but to do this would add to civilian death counts there and it might well bring the spectre of nuclear war into play.
      And we don’t want that, but what we do want, is for comat-ready mercs from Blackwater, and other such private military organizations, that are right now establishing bases of operation in eastern Polish, to enter the fray because they have “plausible deniabiliy,” as they are volunteers that can fight for whomever they want, and in this case, they want to fight for freedom and democracy in Ukraine.
      After all, according to Beau, these freedom fighters are really no different from the American “Flying Tigers” in Burma, in 1940 (often led by John Wayne in the movies).
      These days when I visit the 5th, I always seem to get a lesson in American military operations from the past. This is welcome, I admit, and the accuracy of these history bites is not in question.

      1. It was as I thought. A dedicated breakaway Russian suicide column, racing at top speed and moving northward, headed directy toward helpless nuclear power plant and attacked it, with the intentions, of blowing themselves up, and cause the “Death of Europe,”according to Zelensky.
        Their attack failed, to due to poor logistal planning, and left with no other options, they took over the plant, and moved on, seeking to carry on with their “scorched earth policies” elsewhere.

        Sam Kiley of CNN is roughly 50 miles West of the plant. Kudos Sam, for your bravery, but why you were brought in on this one is hard to say, because clearly Wolf could have handled this story all by himself.

        1. Yeah, Wolf is good at that:
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOulrBXgmfU
          You’d better drop CNN and Zelensky if you want to have a clear view of things. And even Beau of the 5th whose considerations about Nato remind me of the famous phrase: “My husband is very clever. He says it himself” :o)

          1. I am not “following” them Pascal. If you’ve read any of my comments I’ve made in here, you would know that I am one of the .001 percent of Americans that understands what’s going on, and one of the main reasons is, I get my information from the most primary sources I can find, and I’m willing to deep dive in multiple rabbit holes to find it.
            I watch the MSM here and there, as we progress, only to see what levels of madness we they have ascended to.

            1. As for Beau of the 5th, he is either a bloodthirsty fool, and man who will go to any lengths to gain subscribers, including telling them exactly what they want to hear, and nothing else, or he is getting paid, to lie.

      2. When we exchanged some comments I thought you were more like a “free thinker” looking from a perspective distant from a common shortsighted lecture. I was wrong, I must admit with no offense. taken. It’s. a nice thought and move. though to step in bringing it on into discussion. A 23 years ago, of course. I wonder if this is the new NSA-CIA squad internet tactics to infiltrate. and to spread out confusion. and misunderstandings.

        1. Are you saying I am trying support the Western narrative of this invasion by systematically debunking every aspect of it?
          And not just debunking it, mocking it for not being absurd, but insane instead.
          And providing reports on the operational situation in Ukraine, pretty goods one I believe, far more advanced and far more up to date than ANY I’ve encountered in the West, and telling you what is going happen next in detail, like informing everyone 5 days in advance that the nuclear power plant on lower Dneiper will play a role this, because it must, because there are NO other possible scenarios, if you know how to look at map?
          Because at the operational level this invasion is kindergarten, anyone above the rank of corporal could have told you it could only come to two things, once the Russian forces established air supremecy on day one, would they be brutal, or would be merciful? Clealy, they have chosen the latter course.
          Or is that you support slaughter, and wish to see an uptick in it, in order to bleed the Russians, and you are willing to risk nuclear war in order to do it?
          This is the strategy, and the Western narrative is supporting it wholeheartedly, so are you saying that I am disloyal, or a triple-double agent of some kind, for not supporting this?
          What are you saying?
          This is kindergarten!

  30. American propaganda is a memory hole. I remember 9/11 and the hysteria whipped up in the populace. I had coworkers who almost had nervous breakdowns, demanding death for Saddam Hussein. Now it was just a forgettable mistake. That fever is building again. Thank you, Caitlin.

  31. Anyone got an example of Russian censorship? Anyone?

    1. They’ve shut down the BBC & VOA in retaliation for censorship of RT & Sputnik. They’re probably not done and neither is the US.

      1. Yes, you used the correct term; retaliation . It was not an initiation, it is in response.
        Both sites you refer to are government prop sites (UK & US respectively), So you argue they are indi sites?
        What about RFE ? Are they included ? After all, they are a US prop site.
        I trust I’m using the right pronouns on mardi gras night…

  32. Propaganda is smth that is made or paid by the state and only if it is false.
    If it is true it is not propaganda.

  33. BBC, CNN & Bloomberg pull out of Russia. Several Western news organizations halt operations after Moscow criminalized the spread of ‘fake news’. The BBC, CNN and Bloomberg have suspended operations in Russia after President Vladimir Putin enacted a law that makes the deliberate spread of disinformation punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

    1. Punishment for lying. As kids we were given a severe punishment. Some folk never grow up. Or think they can get away with it … maybe they did as kids.

  34. Great post Caitlin! Thank you!

  35. I absolutely agree with you. Russia is undoubtedly the aggressor here. The ultimate red line is physically attacking your neighbor, I can find no excuse for crossing that. And CJ seems not yo grasp that…

    1. I agree excuses are NOT allowed, by anyone! Did the you catching CondiRice doing her head bob to HarrisFaulkner? This kind of thing CANNOT continue! Warmongers should be denounced and disallowed in polite society!

      You got any connections at the FCC, or is your current gig working out okay?

    2. I don’t understand why people keep babbling about “attacking your neighbor” as though it’s somehow magically worse than attacking a nation on the other side of the planet. If anything it’s less bad, because at least you can argue that you’re protecting our own security interests with some degree of legitimacy.

    3. How is Russia the aggressor here? How do you define “aggressor?” The United States started the entire sequence of events with its putsch against the legitimate elected government in February of 2014. Crimea and the Donbas oblasts did not choose to recognise nor subject themselves to the extreme Russophobic Nazi regime formed in Kiev. They had no obligation to do so and it would have been suicidal–just look at all the ethnic murders throughout Ukraine, especially in Odessa and Kharkov, not just in Donbas. Fascist and racist Kiev in turn has waged war against the Dobas for eight straight years, in spite of co-signing an agreement called the Minsk2 Accords with the US, Germany, France and the UN Security Council which promised to give the Donbas its autonomy and cease hostilities. In spite of the signed papers, Kiev has kept large artillery pieces illegally close to the line of contact and have bombarded the civilians non-stop with them for 8 years. They have killed 16,000 of them. They have tried to invade and conquer the ethnic Russians twice but were repelled both times. In recent weeks Zelensky stationed approximately 150,000 troops encircling the Donbas Russians and continued the barrage. Zelensky pissed and moaned about the proximity of Russian (RF) troops to his border–as did the deliberately unhelpful United States. It is not fantasy to think that if Zelensky had removed his troops from the Donbas, instead of keeping up the attacks (going on to this very minute), and if they and the US agreed upon the legal neutrality of Ukraine and ban on its membership in NATO that the Russians would never have crossed any borders nor attacked anyone.
      ~
      But to continue the actual sequence of events. In the absence of any Ukrainian cease fire Russia recognised the formal independence of the Donbas republics and promised to give them aid, including military, if asked. Russia had still not invaded nor attacked! Ukraine still had the chance to stand down and prevent any hostilities. What did it do? It escalated its attacks on the Donbas. The Donbas requested assistance and ONLY THEN did Russian troops cross the border and start the process of restructuring the depraved public order in Ukraine. You see, Ukraine could have even kept its beloved Nazis if they were not so intransigent and slavish to American bad advice. So, I most definitively call bullshit on your claim that Russia was the aggressor or that Russia started this war. Ukraine was the military aggressor at every point since the Maidan coup d’etat fomented by Washington and Washington started the war by giving Ukraine the screen play for its every action since that revolt, including all the military hostilities. Plus they were given several billion dollars worth of modern weapons, complete with extensive training, by NATO to use in their suicidal run against the assistance Russia would provide Donbas. Ukraine was destined to lose this futile war pushed on it by the United States. The US damned well knew this, but were using the country as a pawn in America’s insane attempt to destroy Russia for good during this revival of the Cold War that Obomber had savagely arranged. The Russians well knew this and used to say that the US and NATO were willing to “defend” Ukraine to the last dead Ukrainian, but would never have the guts to send their own troops to another American-sponsored meat grinder.
      ~
      All this focus on the “immorality” of engaging in hostilities with ones neighbor is a lot of hogwash. I daresay that MOST wars throughout history have been between neighbors because what are the chances that you will have the most and the biggest beefs with those neighbors? Most of the biggest and most transformative wars have been between neighbors. For the US, it was not a fight against Canada or Mexico, though we did attack both–stealing half of Mexico and getting a hiding by the Canadians in 1812. No, it was a fight of Americans against Americans in the Civil War. The vitriol has never stopped flowing since. Ukraine was purposefully chosen and groomed by Washington to antagonise and function as an all purpose tool against Russia. If its not the common resources that embroil neighbors in frequent conflict it is the political power, the ethnic population base or the principles chosen to live under that most pit peoples against one another. A German is not likely to often come to loggerheads with Tasmanians, but he possibly has a lot of gripes about the neighboring Poles or French.
      ~
      Once hooked and thoroughly bribed by Washington to sabotage all manner of Russian affairs the corrupt leaders of Ukraine, who found a lucrative niche even for Sleazy Joe Biden’s worthless son Hunter, were not going to be let off the hook, denying Washington the war it had wanted for Russia since Afghanistan. Hence the full court press placed on Zelensky and Ukraine to start the war, which, I repeat, was the actual trigger, not Russia’s requested assistance to safeguard the Donbas.
      ~
      Now, if anyone wants to see how Washington habitually uses its sham principle of R2P (“right to protect”) to justify the numerous forever wars it has started strictly out of choice, but NEVER necessity, I will tell you to go and review the detailed histories of their infamous conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. (You could also read up on how they conduct cold wars, not just against Russia, but many other countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Iran. Very undistinguished actions, like the drug running from Columbia to the streets of California.) All were incontrovertibly based on mountains of lies, lies told to the UN, the World at large, and the American people. Then there are the many atrocities committed both in country and at black ops sites for “extreme rendition” (another cherished American tradition) and endless incarceration at Guantanamo under NO charges. Just gratuitous life imprisonment (another fine Yankee tradition). But you should already know that every one of those historical events were a hideous betrayal of the standards and morals we (merely) claim to base our entire civilisation upon, resulting in the deaths, maiming and displacement of millions of fellow human beings over the course of just the past 25 years, if we begin counting from Clinton and his deliberate destruction of Yugoslavia (no we haven’t forgotten Korea, Southeast Asia, and Centro America, America’s sins are simply too numerous to contemplate in one sitting). And for those deluded cretins who believe the propaganda about “Mad Vlad Putin,” be apprised that this is his FIRST war and only Russia’s second since they were trapped into their Afghanistan quagmire by America’s would be grand chessmaster. There is overwhelming evidence that they are a much more peaceable people than any random selection of Americans. And the CIA moles assigned to this beat can get off their high horses: I am not a “Russian troll” or whatever characterisation you loons need to manufacture to reconcile all the lies you confect and distribute. You undoubtedly earned your paychecks with the vast smear you laid on Putin and all the “fog of war” you have conjured up out of thin air since Russia was forced to fight rather than watch its relatives in the Donbas be decimated by the barbarians in Kiev and Washington. But, eventually your sins WILL be discovered, and like all the history presently being cancelled throughout America, the same will happen to your names and your fake “heroes.”

      1. When the US shuts down all opposition voices online (and is met with cheering by ex CIA employees), it reminds me of American parenting method of sending kid to his/her room to experience isolation and “regain the boundaries”. Such censorship works using the psychological mechanism of this “parenting” method.
        Have you noticed how many people in government and media, and influencers, used to work for the CIA? The CIA has grown huge, their expertise is to mess up other countries, and this is the only thing they can do in the US. Available to you thanks to the law Obama signed that went into effect in 2013.
        https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/americans-finally-have-access-american-propaganda/313305/

      2. Robert Harrow Avatar
        Robert Harrow

        Most excellent! At least someone still has a functioning brain.

    4. So, the ongoing bombardment of eastern districts that want to separate from an illegal coup is OK
      There has been no aggression for the last 8 or so years?
      Simples eh ???
      Not withstanding the separate vector of HATO expansionism (sic- do note the spelling, must be a Rooskie stooge).

      I can’t believe someone can be so ignorant of facts.

  36. CJ, please hang in there, you’re doing great & it’s a relief, really. My spam box is chock full of an armada from the “left” nonprof org soft power industrial complex all lifting their skirts revealing their true selves underneath as trekkien villains (& honorary americans) Borg. It has absolutely blown my mind how many faux left/false left have drank the koolaid.

    1. Could you forward those emails/spam to me-I need a new cause that will allow me to feel better about myself for having been a cheerleader on the last dehumanzing effort. Are there many words with more than 7 letters or two syllables? I struggle sometimes…

  37. Caitlin, the West is far from perfect. But why are you taking the side of Putin. I am not in love with the United States. They have committed numerous crimes over the course their history. I have to admit though, that I am disturbed by your constant apologizing for Putin’s aggression. After all, it was Putin who pulled the trigger. A fact you seem to forget

    1. BB Benderhaus Avatar
      BB Benderhaus

      Who is the bad guy. The bully who keeps pushing you into a corner or you when you have had enough and resort to violence. War is wrong but there is always a progression of wrongs and injustices that lead up to any war.

    2. I think you missed her point – she’s not siding with or apologising for Putin, she’s criticising the empire. One doesn’t mean the other.
      Anyway, let’s get past this ridiculous and illogical ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ mentality.
      And as for triggers, the US-backed overthrow of the Ukraine president in 2014 was the first one, pulled by the US. Read the history.

    3. I like you-you’re fun. I need help defining black & white and obviously you have both down cold. Are you looking for work? I only offer full medical that takes 60% of your base wages or no medical at all. Also, there’s only regular coffee or decaf in the work place-no tea, so soda, etc. Can you start this week?

      1. Also, there’s a uniform. Pleated slacks or flat front ONLY, and either a polo shirt or camp shirt in either red or blue. Really need to fill the position-let me know.

        1. Double pleated chinos please. Flat fronted do not complement the bulge.
          Is that OK?

          1. If anything (or ideally everything) was okay, why would anyone communicate?

            As the boss, it’s important to know every day is ‘pink Speedo optional’ day, but I usually work from home, so I only bring it up to get attention…and uncomfortable facial expressions from those who think in images.

    4. Criticizing extremely dangerous misdeeds by the most powerful and murderous power structure on earth is not “taking the side of Putin,” it’s doing the sane and normal thing that everyone should be doing. You’re just so accustomed to seeing people take the side of the US empire that the sane and normal thing looks weird to you.

      1. Speaking of which – you wanna see something really scary that has been reported in a subdued fashion in the news?
        “…four B-52s from the 69th Bomb Squadron, 5th Bomb Wing, Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, touched down at RAF Fairford February 10. The aircraft arrived using the callsigns HATE11 to HATE14” (I can’t make this shit up.)
        “On Feb. 21, 2022, shortly after 15.00LT, one of the four B-52H Stratofortress bombers deployed to RAF Fairford, UK, as part of BTF (Bomber Task Force) 22-2 carried out a quite unusual visit to Leoš Janáček Airport in Ostrava, Czech Republic.” and on Feb 22, “US B-52 bombers flew over Europe to conduct theater familiarization.”
        “The B-52s then flew to Romania, where they conducted more close air support training as part of the bomber task force (BTF) missions.”
        From Bucharest to Moscow is 1500 km, to Kiev 750 km, to Crimea is 600 km. From the Baltics to Moscow is 800 km, to St Petersburg is 360km. It was reported that they visited the Baltics on Friday.
        The B-52 flies at 1000 km/h. The maximum weapon-payload is about 32,000 kg.
        The B-52H is about as useless as a pig on skis in defending against a border threat. It is a museum piece, designed 40 years after the Wright Brothers flew, and has been in service for over 65 years. But it symbolizes its former purpose, which was to deliver large numbers of thermonuclear weapons to Russian cities.
        The MSM had not made much of the B-52H visits to the Baltics and Romania, or their current deployment today. I do not think that the deployment conveys a helpful message to resolution of the current conflict.

  38. In response to your last note: HELL YEAH! That exemplifies what this “war” is about. They yammer about it being a war “to save democracy”. The hell with democracy;, in a place where democracy was never allowed to flourish. But do “they” really care? HELL NO!

    Last week, the despicable Senator from Virginia, a ddof named Mark Warner ( who is most tied by his cock to the social media dickshits) asked them specifically to censor ANY anti-Ukrainian press so we would be led into war over a country that only matters to the Warmonger Party, against a country that has as many nuclear weapons as the US, so that we could be seeing the end of all humanity for the momentary benefit of a few piles of shit that occupy the US Capitol Building.

    How did we get here? Answer: We let the personal grudges of creeps who despise Russia just because it’s…well, Russia…get in the way of using their brains in this situation.

    But I digress; they flushed their brains down the toilet the last time they sat down there.

    If those creeps think the right thing to do is to destroy the world just so they can have a shiv against Vlad Putin, then they are the worst possible humans alive.

  39. I don’t believe the Strangelove option is on the table, but it’s a mighty fine excuse to shut down domestic dissent, which proved to be a problem with the COVID experience.

    As such, no RT for me today. I don’t know if it’s the DNS, the browser, the ISP or what, but I’ve seen something like it before with PressTV on MooTube. CCTV9 (and CGTN on US cable) are still available far as I know, but no one can say which side they’re on, and they might not know themselves yet.

    I still say dueling narratives and the US goes dark-nothing but theG 24/7 with enough food to keep the sewers running and the mouth shut while the DeepCircus tries to rebuild the nation from inside, WPA2.0 style.

    Back to the nuke thing-was the ‘outdated, need to replace/rebuild’ thing a line to fuel theBeast, or it closer to ‘most of those things are useless’?

  40. I keep getting comments like “You’re saying we just can’t strike Russia AT ALL, just because they have nukes??”

    Yes. Fucking duh. What are you an idiot? What the fuck is wrong with people? Did everyone forget what nuclear weapons are? Did schools stop teaching this or something?

    This! I can’t comprehend the arrogant idiocy necessary to think we should engage in nuclear brinkmanship.

    1. It is quite easy to comprehend. If one surrenders one’s God-given ownership of conscience and reason, and deliberately spills it on the ground like water, idiocy is quite comfortable.
      Many people who want us to “Rah! Rah! GO NUCLEAR!” will be reassured at the brief incandescent end that they can say “But it wasn’t my fault! You can’t blame me personally!!”
      They should fervently hope that atheism is correct, for if the only one left to hear their complaints is God, don’t look for much sympathy.
      I do not come here to read with the expectation of feeling happy. Every adult bears the obligation to consider things they find displeasing. Propaganda, on the other hand, is a form of rhetoric which causes people to feel happy and self-satisfied by means of promulgating lies.
      I come here with the obligation to question my understanding of things. If you approach any narrative from the posture of humility, rather than masturbatory gratification, you are much less likely to be deceived.
      The lust for gratification by smooth words, and surrendering to them, is pretty well known by now. It is interesting that in the tradition of moral storytelling, a couple of people became enchanted by the gratifying proposition that if they ignored their conscience and reason, and just did what they were told, great things would happen to them. It was not the whispering of the propaganda, but the willingness to go with what inflamed their self-admiration, that was their downfall. The Talking Snake got kicked out of the Garden, too. Isn’t that the moral of the story? What does that make the MSM?

      1. Some time back I came to the conclusion some/many/most(?) wanted validation rather than information-they would prefer to be told they’re right rather than be challenged on being wrong.

        This seems to be a cultural issue in theWest [I blame EdwardBernays and all those that followed and built on his efforts], which will continue to destroy us slowly.

        As a classical liberal, I recognize the value of liberalism AND it’s dangers. The press as consumed by S/M/M is little more than an incrementalist comfort machine [JordanPeterson has said comfort will destroy the soul, FWIW] that satisfies the inculcated insecurity that makes us good little consumers, but there aren’t enough of us that afford product so we settle for ideas, most of which are focus-group/spin/poll-tested rhetoric built on the last line of failed bullshit.

        The problem (as poorly as I’m outlining it) seems everywhere when the subjective expectation, tribal ignorance, external locus of control is shaken off: representative democracy is a popularity contest, education is a credential, organized religion is a shepherd for theState, science is a bureaucratic priesthood, and then there’s the CON/MSM/thePress…a hot iron for curious minds.

        My nickel on this is that the ideals that emerged over centuries-science as a process, education as an ongoing/unending effort, democracy as a method to empower such people and muckrakers to keep them honest or at least accountable have all been compromised by interests S/M/M don’t know and don’t WANT to know.

        I was reading something about the Thanatos instinct that struck me, that being that willful ignorance and emotional complacency is a subtle form of death. If there is truth to that, it’s a condition that’s been encouraged by the institutions that emerged from ideas that were supposed to protect us, or at least make us less vulnerable.

        The last decade, culminating in CaptainTrips/COVID, has shown far more people how much rot there is in “the system”, and it’s not just (inter)national, it’s local as well where it more or less primes everyone for further blindness and a greater pull into the abyss.

        I’ll be optimistic and say that the decline of the US as a world power [which would have to involve the rise of Asia as the leader in the next century] would encourage a renewal of real liberalism rather than LibLibSmurf, BUT this being a local issue I don’t know as there’s many people that have an interest in rebuilding these institutions because they don’t seem to appreciate the ideas that spawned them-these concepts wouldn’t have declined/been co-opted/made hierarchical/other(?) in the first place.

        Supposedly there’s a fourth turning from time to time, and it’s necessary-a pruning of sorts, a kanishektsu ala Yunmen, a flush of the ever welcoming “we” with it’s inclusive demands and avoided costs before there’s a stain in the swirl-pool we all have to share, and I’m hopeful that the greatest experiment in recent history [self-government, bottom-up control, relentless inquiry and regular criticism] can leave the US like Switzerland, but I suspect theBeast [Welfare/WarfareState, BigPharma, BigTech, Big ___________] will take down any & every thing it can before it falls, which seems inevitable now.

    2. Psychologists say men do not like to admit feeling fearful.
      Instead some prefer to talk about attacking remote enemy, especially when it is just saying, and because they are confident that their government never listens to them.

      1. Some time back a guy introduced me to another guy as ‘being fearless’. I laughed and the second guy asked if it was true. I said something like, ‘not yet’.

        TsogyalRinpoche offered something about death, bardos and emotion, although I don’t remember how it goes (and nothing is absolutely reliable-it’s all brain food in the spin) but it didn’t sound like a good idea to take the last train with guilt, resentment, rage, hostility, etc in the old carry-on, if you know what I mean.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tibetan_Book_of_Living_and_Dying

        Ever look at Daoist healing sounds, the standard six or the eight from Yin style baguazhang? Do you think we harbor deadly emotions in our organs and then project the past onto the present, encouraging a bad outcome for the least among us and possibly perpetuating a silent killer?

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sloU04Zz1k

  41. Warren Stolmack Avatar
    Warren Stolmack

    Spot on once again,Caitlin. I wonder what it will take to wake a few more sheep up? Keep up the good work.

    1. What will they do differently after they’re “woke” than they did before they were woke? Specifically, will they vote differently, or will they, once again, vote for another R or D in November?

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