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Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, and Chris Hedges have lent their expertise to the subject of the war in Ukraine with some recent comments that help bring some much-needed clarity to an often confusing and always contentious issue. Here they are:
“I’ve spent my career working in the mainstream, and I’ve covered probably seven, eight, nine shooting wars; I’ve never seen coverage so utterly consumed by a tsunami of jingoism, and of manipulative jingoism as this one.”
~ John Pilger
This comment comes from a recent interview with the legendary Australian journalist by the South China Morning Post, and it says so much about the information ecosystem we now find ourselves floundering around trying to understand things in.
From the earliest days of the invasion it was clear that the western world was being smashed with a deluge of propaganda unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. In the first full month of the conflict, American network TV stations gave more coverage to the war in Ukraine than any other war that the US has been directly involved in, including Iraq and Vietnam. Literal Iraq war architects were some of the first pundits sought out for analysis of the conflict by the mainstream press, and calls for insane escalations against Russia succeeded in pushing the Overton window of acceptable debate in the direction of warmongering extremism and away from support for diplomatic solutions.
And this was all easily piped into mainstream consciousness because the way had been lubricated by years of Russia hysterica resulting from the mass scale psychological operation known as Russiagate. America’s most dangerous confrontation in generations just so happens to have been preceded by years of media-generated panic about that very same country, despite the Ukraine invasion having ostensibly nothing whatsoever to do with the conspiracy theory that the Kremlin had infiltrated the highest levels of the US government. Heckin’ heck of a coincidence right there, buddy boy.
“It’s quite interesting that in American discourse, it is almost obligatory to refer to the invasion as the ‘unprovoked invasion of Ukraine’. Look it up on Google, you will find hundreds of thousands of hits. Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise they wouldn’t refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion.”
~ Noam Chomsky
This quote, from an interview last month with Ramzy Baroud, is self-evidently true and should be pointed out more often.
People don’t go adding the same gratuitous adjectives and modifiers to something over and over again unless they’re trying to manipulate how it’s perceived. If your neighbor always referred to his wife as “my wife who I definitely never beat,” you’d immediately become suspicious because that’s not how normal people talk about normal things. We don’t say “round Earth” or “the Holocaust that totally happened,” we just say the words, because their basic nature is not seriously in dispute and we’ve got nothing invested in manipulating or obfuscating people’s understanding about them.
The need of the political/media class to continually bleat this phrase “unprovoked invasion” over and over again is itself a confession that they know they’re not telling the whole truth. It’s the imperial propaganda version of this classic tweet:
My "Not involved in human trafficking" T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.
— mike ginn (@shutupmikeginn) November 21, 2013
Chomsky outlines many of the provocations the US/NATO power structure engaged in prior to the conflict, which many western analysts spent years warning was coming as a result of the provocative actions that were already being taken by the empire. The invasion could easily have been prevented with a little diplomacy and some low-cost, high-reward concessions ike honoring the Minsk agreements and providing assurances of neutrality for Ukraine, but they chose provocation and escalation instead. Add to that the exponentially increased shelling of the Donbas by Kyiv immediately prior to the invasion and you can understand why empire spinmeisters are working so hard to push the “unprovoked” line.
None of this is to say that Russia is blameless in this war; if I provoke someone into punching somebody they are still morally responsible for having thrown the punch, but I am also responsible for having provoked it. Russia is responsible for its actions, and the US/NATO/Ukraine power structure is responsible for its actions. Putin is responsible for invading, the western empire is responsible for provoking that invasion. Not complicated.
In the same interview Chomsky also says that “censorship in the United States has reached such a level beyond anything in my lifetime” regarding this war. That assessment plus Pilger’s testimony about war propaganda unlike anything he’s ever seen shows that imperial narrative management is at an all-time high, which wouldn’t be happening unless the empire had some major agendas it wanted to roll out in the coming years.
“At no time, including the Cuban missile crisis, have we stood closer to the precipice of nuclear war.”
~ Chris Hedges
— Chris Hedges (@ChrisLynnHedges) July 10, 2022
Echoing the urgent warnings that Stephen Cohen was making at the end of his life, a new article by Hedges outlines the profoundly dangerous games the empire is playing with a nuclear superpower in its continually escalating proxy war against Moscow.
The observations by Pilger and Chomsky about how much effort is going in to manipulating people’s understanding of this war make sense when you realize that the agendas the empire is trying to roll out against Russia now and then China later down the road stand not only to throw the world into poverty and starvation, but to wipe us off the face of this planet.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s no good reason the world’s most powerful government needs to risk the life of everyone on earth in a bid to secure planetary domination. It is possible for all nations and peoples to simply get along and collaborate toward the common good together. All that would need to happen is for these agendas of total hegemony to be abandoned.
Unfortunately the managers of empire don’t seem to have any plans to abandon their goal of global conquest anytime soon, so we the ordinary people of this world may end up having to force the issue with them at some point in the interests of our very survival.
This is a hell of a time to be alive, but man they’ve been keeping it interesting.
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87 responses to “Three Illuminating Quotes About The War In Ukraine”
i would not have sex with the writer of this article
There are many smart and understanding people in this world – looking at all these comments but they are all WRONG, including the owner of this site.
Why?
01. Even if all is fully true what is published in here and elsewhere it cannot change the world and if it would create bigger uncontrolled waves, all of you would be “removed” from this platform faster than anyone would imagine…
02. All “engaged people” are talking about problems and mistakes and characterizing others in good or bad which means you are doing exactly the same what the others are doing with different goals. There is no doubt about that!
03. There are billions of people worldwide who don’t like what is going on and you can find millions in protesting movement and other agendas – did it change anything yet? Is there any reason to think that there was some success these protesters could claim for their own activities? You know and I know – NOTHING has changed except that more people are complaining and more people were killed – that’s all what we got.
04. I am missing from ALL engaged people that they are talking about REAL SOLUTIONS but instead having endless and useless discussions in forums and other sites or at any other place where people meet in public.
It’s wasted time, energy and money since ever – there is not yet a SINGLE PUBLICATION found, giving usable advice how a running system can be CHANGED LEGALLY!!!!
Under the line current publishers are nothing else than people who are looking for attention and “rewards” for their (useless “engagement”.
I know, this sounds cruel but everyone may go into a silent corner and just mirrors what one has really done to this world until now….there is not much to find one could be really proud about.
Just to make it clear – I am not talking about the nice little things billions are doing every day – like helping your neighbor or whatever – we are talking about GLOBAL problems – okay!!??
05. So if you want real changes, people like you should understand that only using the existing systems is the only chance to create changes and convincing the “helpless slaves” plus TEACHING them how to do it themselves to become as successful as you could be if you are WILLING to collaborate on an international basis TOGETHER!!!
That’s something else what is never really practiced. Instead most want their personal success and reward – which is pretty cheap, isn’t it.
Changing the systems with their own means leaves those who are controlling these only two options….
a) Either following their own given rules (and we know they are breaking the rules quite often because nobody dares to put this to another public case!!!) and they will loose their power step by step (which usually resulted until now that the new leaders are just changing from GOOD to BAD like their predecessors jumping into the old rules and again making others to slaves as well…so you must watch yourself all time not just doing the same what you are now criticizing!!)
OR
b) doing what they all have started already – killing the unwanted ones – which would happen anyway sooner or later (I think most of you realized that worldwide the military is now getting more resources and more people and the same is done to every police corps worldwide! So that is only the preparation for expected huge riots in all countries which will come up sooner or later if no changes will take place as needed!!)
07. One other option is available for you and us at any time …. just to calm down, keeping away from all what’s going on and waiting until this world will collapse. Then it will be sorted out fast who will survive and who won’t.
Also a very simple way to get problems off the road latest in one or two generations….
But these verbal or physical riots are so useless and wasted time and money and killing others for nothing….And it’s probably playing into the hands of those you don’t want anymore.
THINK more and TALK less but find a SMART way to change this world to BETTER – and sure it’s not done in one week or one month…it needs patience and resilience….
2022-07-17 E. H. A.
Well expressed thought out case for passivity Ernst, but I can’t subscribe to it. Historically social progressive evolution has only been achieved by those in power being challenged peacefully or by force.
You are doing yourself no favors by citing to, relying on the likes of Chomsky and Pilger. Noam is so not critically thinking and so reflexively anti-US that he served as apologist par excellence for the Red Khmers. If there’s any justice, there’s reincarnation, and he can come back and have his head bashed against a tree at Choeung Ek until he’s no more.
IMO, noam chomsky is not anti_US.
he’s rather anti_US interventionism, anti_US hegemony,
anti_US seeing itself, insatiably arrogant, as “the only
indispensable nation”. american exceptionalism?
pax americana?
john bellamy foster’s collection of essays, “exposing
the american empire” is aptly titled: “pox americana”.
countless people around the globe are S.A.T, sick and tired,
– of US proxy wars,
– of US_backed dictators being installed against people’s will,
– of CON_tinous disrespect, denigration, destruction, hunger, death,
all in the name of “freedom+democ[k]racy”.
even the governments of my [european] country
have been agreeing for decades to violate our
constitution and int’l law, by hosting europe’s hugest
US airbase and helping US killer drones along their
way to the muslim world, among other things.
i, for one, am thankful to noam chomsky
and many of his courageous colleagues
to help me see what others try their best
to keep from me.
i am sick and tired of the double-standardry,
the hypocrisy, the lack of accountability our
ruling oligarchs expect me to swallow while
THEY do NOTHING towards global justice,
environmental protection + PEACE on earth.
Well said! Tubularsock couldn’t agree more!
The US is a global mass shooter. The rest of the world is it’s victim. Eventually it will turn its guns on itself.
1. This all started when an illegally elected prez, Truman, decided to drop two h-bombs on two “virgin cities’ to a)show the next enemies, Russia, that we were number 1 in balls, and (2 to use these Japanese cities as petri dishes to see the effects on structures, human flesh and fauna that an h-bomb would have. Even though Japan was getting ready to sign documents of unconditional surrender.
2. The Rand Corporation drew up plans to force Russia to invade immediately after WWII. First WE had to install a puppet regime headed by a drunken idiot, Boris Yeltsin, and get him to illegally declare Russia no longer the USSR. This lead to the auction of Russian assets via US/Western banks to the oligarchs for a fee, of course. The plan was to “bleed” Russian resources in a useless war with Ukraine after the US installed a Nazi gov’t using a Jew as a figurehead. The irony is ultimate.
3. I have seen videos of Victoria Nuland, of the Kagan PNAC Clan, and…our Hero a former, “fattest POW to get off the plane” John McCain present at the Maidan Square “insurrection” hailing it as a step toward democracy. Then the Nazi’s were installed. And the slaughter of 14,000 in the Donbass region began. Of course, our MSMedia was virtually SILENT during this slaughter. BTW, “Torie” Nuland is NOW the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, when she should be behind bars as a war criminal.
4 Zelensky was hand-picked by the US because the previous president of the Ukraine did NOT want to join NATO. Naughty, naughty, the US a k a NATO must be obeyed when they demand obedience. He has no power, in fact he was threatened wit prison, death if he went against the Nazi regime. When his lips move he is just a ventriloquist’s a k a the US of Armerica dummy.
5. I believe this is a manifestation of desperation by the US, since they see that the World does not believe their propaganda, Russia is gaining allies and the US is LOSING them by the dozen, and their strategies to maintain the Empire are proving ineffective and incompetent and ARCHAIC, since we have entered a different age. There is no room for a Number 1 any longer. We have entered the age of “last-stage capitalism”.
6. Capitalism’s deux ex machina is the few control, parasitize, drain the many to remain the few. That paradigm has been exposed for what it is…pure unadulterated, unflinching, sociopathic, rapacious consumption of whatever the many contain that the few need to survive. Those days of unfettered barbarity have come to an end. The earmarks of a New Paradigm are blindingly apparent. No Cold War hysteria will alter its procession.
7. Do NOT discount the influence of Zionism in the current state of world affairs. The same Neo-Cons that cooked up the regime change in Iwreck, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Iran have included Russia..many of the scions of PNAC hate Russia for the pogroms and ghettos, and have included China as the ultimate target. Even though they are bogged down with an obdurate obstacle called the Palestinians, which are preventing the eventual Master Plan of EXPANSION OF THE ZIONIST STATE which will usurp and control the entire Middle East. This is why Iran, the most powerful and daunting target of Israel needs help from the US to conquer. I have SEEN the plan on paper. The Zionist state was created by a character named Theodor Herzl and his legions are many and they are international in scope. Why does Israel remain unaccountable for the wistful slaughter of virtually ANY Palestinian, no matter what age, target of innocence?
8. The NYT has lost all credibility due to the whitewashing of Israeli atrocities vis a vis the innocents of Palestinian.
In essence, the US Empire, like all Empires, is crumbling under its own weight of lies, slaughter, and desperation to avoid sunlight:
“The blood never dries on the US Empire”
Yes, I see that it’s Groundhog Day yet again. How can I tell? Here’s how.
“………………………… so we the ordinary people of this world may end up having to force the issue with them at some point in the interests of our very survival.
Yeah, I agree. The ordinary people are going to have to force the issue. But WHAT exactly is forcing the issue — doing a Sri Lanka? We’ll soon see how that works out for ordinary people.
Caitlin and Tim must think that becauseThe People of the US have elected warmongers time after time after time, that they must not know the truth about something or someone; they’re just not well-informed enough. Otherwise, why continue writing?
IMO their belief matches that of those who believe that Trump is Putin’s puppet and that Putin meddled so much in US voters’ minds that that is the one and only reason why Trump is sitting in the Oval Orifice. Both sets of believers are IMO incapable of facing pretty harsh reality — part of which is that people kill for money, whether by pulling a trigger or providing the ammunition or placing a mark on a ballot. And that, when push comes to shove, people will do just about anything to survive.
There was no internet in the late 1920s, all of the 1930s and early 1940s Germany — in other words, during the post-WW1 march-up to WW2. Ordinary Germans (and Brits and the French and the Russians, as well) sometimes had literally no alternative sources of information to that of the (their) government.
In 1946 a German could IMO reasonably argue that he/she “didn’t know” what his/her government was doing to the world during the war. No such case can be made by those who have been living in the US for the first two+ decades of the 21st century. IMO, the latter (especially those financially dependent upon the MIC in one way or another) would have had to be either DELIBERATELY blind or willing accomplices to NOT realize what the US had been doing to the rest of the world for that period of time. And that is but the tip of the iceberg of pre-2000, post-1890 US aggression around the world. Maybe children could support this claim, but adults, no way.
The REALITY is that the US’s decades-long pattern of behavior PROVES BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT that the vast majority of people in the US FULLY SUPPORT what the US government has been inflicting on the rest of the world. Guilty as charged. Possibly as much as 20% of the adult US population is against their government’s behavior, but that is probably a generous over-estimate, not underestimate.
The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the US populace fears atoning for its blatantly obvious mortal sins so much that it fully supports a perpetually-increasing war budget in order to AVOID punishment by the millions who have been victims of US hegemony. In other words, at this point in US history, the vast majority of the population of the the US believes that the US must CONTINUE its unjustified, world-wide killing spree or be subjected to probably very harsh, Versailles-Treaty/Nuremberg-trial-like punishment / blow-back. The voters know that the US collectively saying “we’re sorry” definitely ain’t going to cut it. They know this because if the roles were reversed, they themselves would never accept such an apology.
Caitlin and Tim, in a recent article your rightly stated that ”War is the glue that holds the empire together. A politician can get away with opposing some aspects of the status quo when it comes to healthcare or education, but war as a strategy for maintaining global dominance is strictly off limits.”
Just exactly WHY is this the case, Caitlin and Tim? It is because Job 1 of the Elite-owned MSM is to keep the present fatally-flawed Matrix exactly as it is – one which ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES a perpetually expanding human population AND a perpetually expanding MIC. That job includes destroying candidates who stand for office against the US’s 70+ year-old tradition of using military force to threaten and, when necessary, outright destroy nations that resist US diktat, under the lie of spreading freedom and democracy.
This is the reason that Trump got what he got from the MSM after committing the Mortal Sin of shaking hands and making nice with Mr. Putin in Helsinki, because that mere handshake threatened to end the US Elite’s perpetual war for USD hegemony and, thus, the justification for the MIC whose end would literally mean the end of the US economy as it is presently “designed”.
Once again with feeling, no antiwar candidates are ever going to be elected by US voters. That is NEVER, repeat NEVER, repeat NEVER going to happen UNLESS those candidates spell out in great detail a plan in which the present DoD contract system is MAINTAINED, but the contracts from here to eternity will be for the production of bullet trains instead of bullets; a Liberty-Ship-like production system for building wind turbines, solar panels, vanadium-flow storage batteries, etc. and to rebuild vital infrastructure.
CNN, etc. are never in a million years going to allow a candidate to elucidate such a plan during their carefully stage-managed “debates”, so what are these candidates to do? They should use their precious, fleeting, on-air time to accuse the script-writers and CNN of doing exactly what they are doing – restricting discussion — and to direct the millions of viewers to their YouTube videos, or their own web sites, in order to find out exactly what their “new plan for America” is “because the Elite that control what you are seeing tonight are not going to allow me to state what this new plan for America is during this phony debate. What I have to say takes some time. You’ll have to go somewhere else to find out what my detailed plan is. I think you’re going to love it. It’s the only way out of our war-addicted economy.”
Ever hear of Ron Paul?
If you’re waiting for the republicans to save us, I advise you not to hold your breath.
puuuuuhh ……
Tubularsock agrees with your comprehensive analysis. However for the bulk of non-reading Americans Tubularsock would condense your work to the simple truth, “As a people, we’re fucked!”
There was a saying from the great war LIONS LED BY DONKEYS but now we should say that we are SHEEP LED BY CRIMINALS
This war against Russia perpetrated by the United States of America with the connivance of its gangster horde called Nato is nothing short of a geopolitical gang bang by a pack of barbarians who pose as some imagined circle of noble philosopher kings. Their savagery is only surpassed by their deceit. It’s as clear as the long noses on their faces, they avidly want this war in the worst way, but don’t really know why, other than it’s what Washington demands of them. Look, Otan is deliberately oppressing their own people both physically and fiscally to keep their American overlords happy. Their only benefit is to stay off Lord Biden’s shit list.
~
Even Washington could not legitimately tell you why they must hold total hegemony over the entire planet, other than to once again trot out the lie about protecting “freedom” and “democracy” while they thuggishly murder, maim, starve and displace millions of unworthy foreigners. Is all that murder and mayhem worth it? It shouldn’t even be a rational question, but they’ve already decided and pronounced their answer as a decisive “yes!” They are even up for massacring children wholesale–the lady who formalised that policy just recently having gone to her eternal reward. They are a blight on humanity. This is how the West sacks, pillages and rules like Sauron: with the most modern and efficient weapons technology, like when the Mongols invented the stirrup which made possible vast cavalries, never with the force of logic, reason, compassion or true ethics and morals. There can’t really be anyone left who truly believes their unending effluvia of pure bull shit. Sorry, but Homo sapiens occidentalis has forfeited its membership in the big Hominin club on grounds of extreme moral turpitude and crimes against humanity.
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Do I make my point?
Yes. However I’ve been wondering since the beginning of the Russian invasion why the European leaders of Nato have been the willing executioners of the US hegemonic policies while all there is in it for their countries is energy and food shortages, inflation, protests and riots which could trigger civil wars on the spur of any moment.
Of course, corruption is a good explanation considering that Brussels is essentially a lobbyist nest, starting with weapons, Pharma and Agro.
The hypothesis that they don’t know what they’re doing and just obey Washington’s demands falls a bit short considering these guys must have something more or less resembling a brain somewhere.
Of course they have advisers who are the number one targets of the lobbyists. Getting rid of their obsolete weapons by flogging them to Ukraine and buying new ones from the US MIC to fight Putin’s planned invasion of Western Europe as described on American TV by Max Boot – and probably other such delusional and/or utterly corrupt neocons – must have been a powerful argument. Except that… the EU is broke, was broke before Covid, issued trillions of euros in Covid relief and is therefore up to its eyebrows in… guess what? Debt. That, I think, is the crux of the matter: debt slavery.
The four leading economies of the EU are heavily indebted: in decreasing order, France (230% of GDP), Spain (170%), Germany (165%), Italy (141%).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ex ternal_debt
The rating agencies are no ingenuous players as shown in the subprime crisis to which they contributed heavily by fooling investors about junk securities that they rated triple A.
Credit rating agencies (CRAs)—firms which rate debt instruments/securities according to the debtor’s ability to pay lenders back—played a significant role at various stages in the American subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–2008 that led to the great recession of 2008–2009.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agencies_and_the_subprime_crisis
So they’re really a tool of the American banking system. Now what if the rating agencies downgraded the Eurozone as they have threatened to do in the past?
Foreign investment would take a dive and interest rates a hike.
And who could be wielding this existential threat?
There might be some kind of explanation there too for the apparent brain death of the EU leaders…
It seems NATO wants to destroy Russia to lay claim to the Arctic for gas and oil reserves.
NATO leadership now is Norvegian, they are getting paid tor more expensive oil and gas. Not only Russia, Norway also is reaping benefits of high prices bcs of this conflict, but only Russia gets negative coverage in western news.
Ditto, except you’re overestimating the species if you think “There can’t really be anyone left who truly believes their unending effluvia of pure bull shit”, though it’s still a good line. And when it comes to staying off “Lord Biden’s shit list” I think more attention needs to be paid to the omnipresent threat of government blackmail. It would take more naivete than I have left to believe that all that government surveillance and the dirt that comes from it isn’t turned into power as a matter of course.
As U.S. Funnels Money & Arms to Ukraine, Independent Media Faces Pressure to Parrot Official Narrative
July 12, 2022 JUAN GONZÁLEZ: “Well, Joe, I wanted to ask you, in terms of the roots of the conflict — I’ve been really impressed by a lot of the coverage that Consortium News has been producing, from people who used to be covered a lot by folks on the left, like Scott Ritter and John Kiriakou and Caitlin Johnstone and Jeffrey Sachs, but are now sort of ignored because they’re not going along with the main narrative. But there was an interesting piece that came out in The New York Times in July, five months into the war, which says — the headline is “Commando Network Coordinates Flow [of] Weapons in Ukraine.” And deep in that story, there’s this amazing fact thrown in, and I want to quote it: “From 2015 to early this year, American Special Forces and National Guard instructors trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine, near the city of Lviv, Pentagon officials said.” This is the first time I hear of this enormous training operation that was going on inside Ukraine by U.S. soldiers for the last seven years. If you could talk about this whole issue of Ukraine not being in NATO, but effectively being a U.S. ally now for years?”
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/7/12/consortium_news_says_it_faces_censorship
JULY 12,2022
“This is the first time I hear of this enormous training operation that was going on inside Ukraine by U.S. soldiers for the last seven years.”
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Both you and the rest of the world! How astoundingly remiss Russian intelligence must have been to not know everything about this program.
~
Russian intel, living right next door to a country with a huge ethnic Russian population is clueless? But the Americans on the other side of the world not only know chapter and verse of what goes on there but organises and runs most of it? What is wrong with this picture?
~
It’s as bad as Russia not being able to intercept every piece of American weaponry shipped to Ukraine by Nato. Their own troops are dying because they fail to seal the borders and destroy internal transportation lines. No excuse for letting the Yanks fly sophisticated rockets and artillery pieces into Kiev, and transport them by rail to the Donbas front where they are used to ravage both Russian troops and civilians. Yeah, the Ruskies are killing mucho Ukies, but the costs (even if the Western news reports are 90% lies) are not sustainable over the long term that Washington has planned for this war.
~
Moreover, because of this Russian ineptitude, Ukraine’s whole attitude toward fighting Russians has changed from “lemmie outa here!” to “hey, we can win this thing if we just keep committing war crimes against Russian troops and civilians because they won’t fight back, especially when we use them as human shields.”
~
Paul Craig Roberts was right about the need for a quick Russian victory to preclude a more expansive war with Nato fully engaged in it, one which can easily escalate to a nuclear exchange. Unfortunately, a quick end to this seems no longer possible under the Russian rules of engagement.
If life is a disease, which billions would agree, then nuclear war is chemo. I find it interesting that most religions preach that life after death is better than life after birth. Maybe we should …? But maybe it’s all an elaborate scam. Maybe life after birth is just a spark in the dark.
Here’s an interesting take on that. Part 1 of 2:
The US dollar remains the international currency because so many nation states hold its monetized debt, and whatever value can be wrung out from treasury bills would disappear as surely as did the value of the pre-civil war currency of the US Confederacy.
Nobody holding US treasury bills wants to see their collapse, each holder wanting to preserve their value.
Without the US military occupation of most fossil fuel fields, use of other currencies would put the US dollar at risk.
So no war is too expensive for the US because the greater cost would be competing currencies being able to purchase the absolute real value of energy without US Dollars.
“So no war is too expensive for the US”
Well the Ukraine war is actually a new generation of wars since:
1/ It is fought by others, so you don’t have US voters complaining that their dear child came home in a box
2/ It sells weapons just the same. Better still, the US convinced its allies to sell their old weapons to Ukraine, so they could buy new ones – essentially from the US – to defend themselves against Putin’s future invasion of Western Europe as promoted by the deranged neocons.
So it’s not even expensive. It’s 100% profit born out of shooting bull on steroids.
Point 1/ is not true. Afghanistan, among many others, was a proxy war minimizing “dear children coming home in a box.”
Point 2/ is in total agreement with my “So no war is too expensive for the US” statement, so much so that it is not costing, but profiting.
Of course point 1/ is true! Gotta be kidding! 2,000 Americans have lost their lives in Afghanistan!
That’s 2,000 boxes.
How many in Ukraine?
4,000 Americans have lost their lives in Iraq.
How many in Ukraine?
In all, that’s twice the Twin Towers.
You’ve got 12,000 parents/voters plus fambly and friends here having a chip on their shoulders – seeing as neither of them wars got anywhere and a general even declared in the Afghanistan Papers that nobody had any idea of what winning that war would look like anyways.
How many such grudges from the Ukraine war?
Point 2/ I didn’t say I was in disagreement, only that we’re not in the realm of expensive here but in that of remunerative.
PS: And what is this American aversion for boots on the ground if not the awareness of the political damage of having kids back in boxes?
Won’t happen with Ukraine…
Was a proxy war minimizing “dear children coming home in a box.”
You missed minimizing.
Twelve thousand (if that number is accurate) is far less than the 58, 000 plus in Vietnam.
That’s for sure!
While sitting with a friend at a local park, I commented that I believed the war in Ukraine to be Biden’s fault, i.e. provoked by the USA. My friend became upset and left. I’ve posted some of Caitlin’s observations on Facebook and then noticed that I couldn’t post anymore. It’s incredible just how out of touch with reality the USA is.
So glad Chomsky got vaccinated against covid so he could keep fighting against crazy propaganda.
…guess it’s my turn to butt the troll.
a) He needed it: 107-year-olds are in the high risk group.
b) I didn’t need it, even though I’m over 65. I tested positive for it twice, in two different years, mildly ill both times.
c) Nobody under 65 who is not already dying of something else should take the vaccine; healthy people under 65 have mild covid symptoms or none, mostly none.
d) Contrary to The Troll Book of Lore, being the most obnoxious jackass in a blog’s comments section does not make you anything but an obnoxious jackass.
Proof?
Gotta remember “butt the troll”.
Typo: obknoxious. Just knoxious will do too… :o)
So no proof, just angry words.
Trolling is attention-seeking behavior, that’s right. You don’t know anything about Covid or the Covid vaccine, and you don’t want to know. You’re just being a jackass because you are too lazy to comment for real.
Covid was over for smart people in my state when the lockdown ended here on May 1st, 2020. Our numbers are slightly better than average since then. Plenty of jurisdictions demonstrate the same experience.
If you were willing to think about what that means, you would have to find a new contrarian position to paint on your exposed rump for the sake of attention, so you’re not about to do that thinking, are you?
it seems like no entity is really in control. it might be time our overlords came up with some scenarios in which there will not be a nuclear confrontation. i can’t imagine one.
The tenor of the posting is melancholic by far but also factual. The US and its NATO have always engaged in aggressive and unprovoked wars against weaker nations to the point where they can’t see why Russia and China can’t be next? All along their populations were duped and lied to, to go along with the unjustified ‘crusades’ against innocent people of other religions and countries. As an African, this isn’t new at all. We have always known the violence and impoverishment visited upon us by the barrel of western invaders’ gun who today want to lecture us about the so-called invasion of another country. It is heartening to note that more and more of those of the West today see the danger that their secret society rulers are, something which for many of us which apartheid referred to us as ‘non-whites’ has always been our daily experience.
I love that scene in the movie Gandhi:
Wisdom of leaving…
The irony is that after being a pain in the ass of England for over half a century and freeing his country from its yoke, he was finally assassinated by a fellow countryman at the behest of an ultra-nationalist organization, Hindu Mahasabha, whose leaders thought he’d given too much to the Muslims – which one of the British protagonists of the above scene kinda predicted. Can’t make that stuff up!
Chomksy acknowledges that this war is about NATO expansion, but then says that Russia has no “moral justification” for launching the war. Does Russia need to wait until NATO attacks Moscow? Would they have a moral justification for resisting at that point?
Russia does not need to wait that long to obtain moral justification. They have that now.
Read Chomsky’s books and then apply what you have learned to Chomsky. He is a gatekeeper. When a certain point he reached, he ultimately always backs the empire. He is a jackass.
There is a terrible ‘hotchpotch’ thinking that is coming out of the West. It is hard to make sense of it all. Not just Biden comes across as sick but even the supposedly bright minds are not convincing in their utterings. I am afraid the West is sleepwalking to hell under their headless rulers.
I agree that the West is sleepwalking to hell. Hurray!! At that point humans can resume working towards a brighter future. Just read an article that explains all this very well:
https://thesaker.is/michael-hudson-the-end-of-western-civilization-why-it-lacks-resilience-and-what-will-take-its-place/
That “brighter” future may came from a nuclear flash.
Very true.
Twenty five years ago it looked like the psychos were going to succeed in ruling the world. If they had succeed, nuclear war would not have happened, but what would the future have looked like?
Today, we are certainly very close to a nuclear war, but that is because it now looks like good will triumph over evil. That might mean the end, but if it doesn’t end, the future is bright.
I would rather go through this and have a chance for the bright future rather than have a safe future ruled by psychos. Personally, I think the good guys win. If I am wrong, we won’t be here for you to tell me I was wrong.
Agree on both counts. Hedges’ stance on this war is blatently hypocritical, and every four years Chomsky wants me to vote for a right-wing, neo-liberal, pro-war, pro-censorship party on the grounds that they are not the most evil organization in world history.
Which may be true, but is also irrelevant.
And not for nothing but both men run like frightened bunny rabbits whenever 9/11 talk is the air, which tells me everything I need to know about their willingness to seek the truth wherever it might lead.
I understand why some writers stay away from the truth with respect to issues such as 9/11, Covid, global warming, etc.
Caitlin does this, but I think she has a good reason. If you tell too much of the truth, you are put into the “crazy” category and end up posting on sites like rense.com. Some writers prefer to leave those issues to others and to instead reach a larger audience by ignoring the subjects that would put them in the “crazy” category.
But you can ignore those issues without trying to steer people away front them. IMO, Chomsky is not doing this. Chomsky actively tries to lead people astray.
caitlin doesn’t fall for fossil fuel propaganda. she is telling the truth about global warming. she doesn’t ignore it.
Caitlin gives people all the tools they need to find out the truth of all subjects, even without addressing all the subjects herself. Her message is invaluable.
Is it possible that honest people, ones of good character, can disagree with each other in their/our interpretation?
Re your specific example, I have maintained that EXPLAINING why Russia felt like it needed to take a certain action in Feb ’22 does not necessarily EXCUSE what they did. There are good and cogent explanations of why Russia may have felt threatened by NATO’s continued (because, remember, NATO was ALREADY at Russia’s front stoop in the Baltics) expansion into Ukraine, especially in re to potential for sourcing “color revolution” actions in Russia itself sourced in the large Russia speaking population of Ukraine.
However, whether NATO moved one step closer towards Russia here does NOT excuse an offensive national war. Whether or not poor backwards Ukraine was added to NATO, the existence of Russia’s huge nuclear force would continue to guarantee its national security from military attack. NATO would never militarily attack Moscow, as you put it; because that would be the end of life on earth.
Russia’s attack can’t be excused. It can be explained: great powers do what they feel they need to do in their near-abroad. That’s what Russia’s doing here … similar to what the US has done for 200 years in the Americas.
imo, the trigger for the russian military operation was the increased shelling of the donbass, a prelude to the slaughter of the republics. it was a humanitarian intervention.
Yes, how could they just stand by?
And the other issue is course the fact that Russia had to, at some point, demonstrate resolute resistance to threatening problems created by CIA’s desecration of Ukrainian sovereignty (an “invasion” if there ever was one), including state-sponsored terrorism and de facto NATO weaponisation at your underbelly.
Quite right. The “war” was already ongoing. Russia merely decided they must step in because the Donbas was at risk of being immanently overrun by 190,000 Ukie troops even as they were already being shelled. Besides, the Russians were requested in by the locals, the ethnic Russians being aggressed upon by the Ukies to the tune of 14,000 already dead. I thought Chomsky’s specialty was linguistics, the study of language, its rules and usage in the conveyance of MEANING. It’s quite clear what all parties meant to do and what they were saying in the circumstance. Russia did nothing that the USA didn’t also due in Bosnia and Kosovo when it deliberately sliced and diced Yugoslavia. Why is the USA in Syria? Besides to steal the oil? That’s an occupation meant to wrest away a big piece of Syria (nominally to give it to the Kurds but to control it from Washington. You will never get an honest answer from a conquering, expansionist power, the worst of which is the United States.
Atlanta is farther from DC than Kyiv is from Moscow.
He also vehemently declared that folks who refused vaccination should not eat.
We’re all wrong about stuff sometimes.
I think you’re right about the gatekeeper status, though. Why he’s still allowed his pontificating when so many others are gagged.
Proof?
Is Fort fambly?
Is that you Joe Biden?
The 1962 “Missile Crisis” is, of course, completely misunderstood. The phony “threat of nuclear war” permitted Kennedy and Khruschchev to accomplish the seemingly impossible–to remove US nuclear missiles from Anatolia and eliminate the threat of a US invasion of Cuba, to the great political credit of both men (as well as leading to the assassination of one and the rustication of the other, but that’s, as they say, another story…)
what a crock. the invasion threat was not eliminated, and the missiles could have easily been removed by Kennedy before the confrontation. he even got the USSR to agree not to publish the fact that the US withdrew the missiles from Turkey, so he could continue to pose as the president who faced down the USSR to protect freedom.
“Chomsky also says that “censorship in the United States has reached such a level beyond anything in my lifetime” regarding this war.”
This is quite wrong. The level of censorship regarding this war is identical to the censorship of the November 1963 coup d’état–where have you ever seen, in the mainstream media, even momentary acknowledgement that the murderers of JFK and their coopted continuers have dominated the US military-political apparatus ever since with the “Warren Report” serving as a massive clup to protect their anonymity? Or, to this day, even a momentary acknowledgement by Prof. Chomsky of his own role in perpetrating and perpetuating the Cover-Up?
“None of this is to say that Russia is blameless in this war; if I provoke someone into punching somebody they are still morally responsible for having thrown the punch, but I am also responsible for having provoked it.
–
MH17 left Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport at 10:31 GMT on 17 July 2014 and was due to arrive at Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 22:10 GMT.
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The plane lost contact with air traffic control at 13:20 GMT, when it was about 50km) from the Russia-Ukraine border.
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Unprovoked attack or not blameless. That is the same thing Catlin, your Brits heritage poked through.
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Too many people have died to the false gods of nationalism and ethnic division in eastern Ukraine in the last decade there. Thousands in Ukrainian missel attacks. Carpetbagging neo-liberals from the U.S. have been on Ukraine like flies on rotten meat. The Biden and Clinton families are not the only ones.
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War is war and innocents die. America is Omelas.
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And these days damn few are wanting to walk away.
–
https://chasingthesquirrel.com/
If you want to know about US politics watch professional wrestling, which is a more honest and entertaining version of it. Americans, including American politicians, will wake up to the threat of nuclear war between the flash and the shock wave.
nailed it
When I tell others that Russia has to prevent placement of the US nukes on its borders because they will target Russian cities and there is not enough time to intercept them, I get absolutely no response, not even a stare. People want to just avoid thinking and talking about it.
Of course nobody ever thinks about their personal responsibility in case of the nukes being used, it was somebody else, maybe Truman is to blame.
People should start objecting to nuclear weapons. Besides the UN banned them.
The nukes are illegal under the international law.
The Achilles heel of American democracy is that most Americans know essentially nothing.
I get the same non-response from Russians as well.
I think people avoid thinking about their most likely cause of death, nuclear war. Or environmental destruction.
Basically we avoid the biggest issues instead of facing them. Which is the surest way to fail.
“Their most likely cause of death” might be stretching it a shade. What about Covid which has already killed almost 0,1% of the world population and counting? !
now, now, don’t be obknoxious
I meant to say people avoid thinking about their own death.
I was just joking
Irony is my life. Just taking a side-pole at the silly troll.
There is a very good reason all of this happening. The West is near financial ruin and they know it. When their debtors default on the periphery the rot will move toward the center. To preserve their wealth they must crash the system, issue digital currency and start over. That is why Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and others are rushing to disconnect from the West. War is needed and necessary for the West. It will also fit into the agenda to reduce population. Afterwards they fully expect to rebuild using the commodity wealth of Russia. This war will see bombs fall on the homeland of all participants.
Money isn’t what you think it is.
Who would have thought…
Caitlyn,
Is it that surprising after 2 years of covid apocalypse fear mongering?
This is all they know how to do.
Hmmmm…. closer to nuclear war at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis? I don’t agree. The Empire maybe the equivilent of an enraged and desperate sociopath but it ain’t suicidal.
And surely, the entire point about what used to be called, in the days of the USSR, Deténte, was that the Russians had the nukes then and they’ve still got them now! Those Red (or not so Red) nukes have ensured a kindof peace, if not the real deal and as long as Russia/China retain those nukes, the Empire dare not take on Russia directly. Surely, that’s why the Empire is ALWAYS getting some other fool to so the fighting for it?
it was pretty suicidal to take on the USSR directly with a blockade, which almost led to nuclear war, instead of just withdrawing the missiles from Turkey in the first place.
Agree. Politicians are not smart, just hungry for power. Same goes for upper military leadership.
Your faith in the US government’s common sense is misplaced.
Who said anything about common sense? Not me. If I have any faith at all (i’m not religious) it’s that the ruling class want to enjoy their riches in this life, not the next.
BTW, this wn’t remember me, so I have to go thru the rigmarole every time.
The people with the perks certainly want to enjoy them in this life, but the possibility of them blithering us all over a nuclear cliff is very real.
The empire isn’t suicidal (but like the hubris of a gunslinger) they believe 1) they can intimidate Russia into backing off and 2) if Russia does go nuclear they can respond and WIN!
Millions of Americans, Europeans, and Russians dead? No big deal as long as they survive to divvy up what’s left.
They will make the first strike, claiming that “intelligence” revealed Russia was about to go nuclear, and their action was “pre-emptive”. This is how the “Empire”, which has regularly used WMD and got away with it, behaves.