Two yawning chasms separate me, politically, from most of my fellows. One, they haven’t yet grasped – though the evidence is out there in spades: more visible than at any point in my seventy years on the planet – that we are ruled by criminals. The other’s a corollary. While our mass media may be critical – indeed, for credibility and market positioning must be critical – of individuals and factions within that gangster cabal, those media are systemically incapable of prioritising truth over the servicing of power on matters vital to this tiny and morally insane but formidable class.
Whereas I and a good few others have grasped these things. Deeply and irrevocably. Does that make me a tad cracked and more than a tad obsessive? If you say so. Care to take me up on it in formal debate? Once I’d gotten over the hit to my ego – ten days, tops – I’d be weeping for joy should you prove me wrong.
Meanwhile here’s Caitlin Johnstone today.
Ukraine alone makes Biden The Worst US President In A Long Time
Listen to a reading of this article:
Antiwar libertarian hero Scott Horton has a viral tweet going around which reads simply, “Biden’s refusal to attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine is the greatest scandal in American political history.”
Kind of smacks you in the face, doesn’t it? I’ve never seen anyone put it quite like that before, but if you think about it, how could it not be true?
It’s just a simple fact that the Biden administration is actually hindering diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to this war, and that it has refused to provide Ukraine with any kind of diplomatic negotiating power regarding the possible rollback of sanctions and other US measures to help secure peace. Washington’s top diplomats have consistently been conspicuously absent from any kind of dialogue with their counterparts in Moscow.
Statements from the administration in fact indicate that they expect this war to drag on for a long time, making it abundantly clear that a swift end to minimize the death and destruction is not just uninteresting but undesirable for the US empire.
And this isn’t just another war. This is a proxy war being waged by one of the world’s two top nuclear forces against the world’s other top nuclear force. This is more serious than Iraq. It is more serious than Vietnam. It is more serious than any US war that has happened in the lifetime of anyone likely to be reading these words, because Russia has increasingly valid reasons to believe its very existence as a nation is being threatened. This is therefore a war that could very easily result in the death of everyone on earth.
The US Secretary of “Defense” has openly said that America’s goal is to “weaken” Russia in this war. Biden himself has made statements which can only be interpreted as calls for regime change in Moscow. US officials have been leaking to the press claims that US intelligence has directly facilitated the killing of Russian generals and the sinking of a Russian war ship.
The imperial political/media class are not even denying that this is a US proxy war anymore. In an alarmingly rapid pivot from the mass media’s earlier position that calling this a proxy war is merely an “accusation” promoted solely by Russia, we’re now seeing the use of that term becoming more and more common in authorized news outlets. The New Yorker came right out and declared that the US is in “a full proxy war with Russia” the other day, and US congressman Seth Moulton recently told Fox News that the US is at war with Russia through a proxy.
“At the end of the day, we’ve got to realize we’re at war, and we’re not just at war to support the Ukrainians,” Moulton said. “We’re fundamentally at war, although it’s somewhat through proxy, with Russia. And it’s important that we win.”
How fast did that happen? How fast were we paced from “It’s Russian propaganda to call this a proxy war” to “Obviously this is a proxy war and we need to make sure we win”? Fast enough to make your head spin, that’s for sure.
And it’s not just a proxy war, it’s a proxy war the US knowingly provoked. We know now that the US intelligence cartel had clear vision into Russia’s plans to launch this invasion, which means they also knew how to prevent it. A few low-cost maneuvers like promising not to add Ukraine to NATO as well as promising Zelensky that the US would protect him and his government from the violent fascist factions who were threatening to kill him if he honored the Minsk agreements and made peace with Russia as Ukrainians elected him to do. That’s all it would have taken.
Many, many western experts warned for many years that the actions of the US and NATO would lead to the confrontation we’re now being menaced with. There was every opportunity to turn away from this war, and instead the US-centralized empire hit the accelerator and drove right into it. Knowingly.
The whole thing was premeditated. All with the goal of weakening Russia and effecting regime change in Moscow in order to secure US unipolar hegemony.
The Biden administration was the last in a long line of decision makers to choose this world-threatening confrontation over peace. There was an opportunity to avert this horror, and that opportunity wasn’t taken.
Allowing the world to come this close to nuclear war already makes Biden the worst US president since Bush. At least. History may well show his to be the single most depraved presidency of all time.
Preventing nuclear war is a US president’s single most important job. It’s so important you shouldn’t even really have to talk about it, because it’s so self-evidently the number one priority. And this administration is just rolling the dice on nuclear conflict with increasing frequency every day.
Even if humanity survives this standoff (and the one with China that’s next in line), Biden will still have been an unforgivably depraved president for allowing it to get this close. There’s no excuse whatsoever for just casually rolling the dice on all terrestrial life like this.
Just seriously meditating on what nuclear war is and what it means should be enough to show anyone that any flirtation with the remotest possibility of inflicting it on our world is unforgivable. It’s the worst crime anyone could possibly commit short of actual nuclear war.
Now all we can do is hope some small spark of sanity ignites deep within our species before we snuff ourselves out for good.
* * *
Thanks Phil. Caitlin, of course, has said it all. Many years ago I understood that the US would not let go of it’s pole position and would lash out with a nuclear threat rather than give it up. We are now seeing that threat becoming a reality.
Dr. Strangelove played by Sellers was meant to be a kind of joke about madmen but it was almost prescient looking back at it now.
Many of my neighbours do not want the truth because that would mean they would have to acknowledge that the future for their children, nephews, nieces and the generation to come, who as yet have no voice in this matter, may also have no future and therefore, by deliberately remaining ignorant, can abdicate responsibility for the end result. I know I use the term too much, but that’s because I have seen and heard it too much. It is so much easier to get on with life with your head buried in the sand rather than think about “may” happen, but by their very silence in reflecting on the truth, they have indeed helped orchestrate what may be a total impasse in averting the greatest disaster this planet has faced.
Planet earth and it’s rich diversity of life does not need humans in order to survive, but what it will not survive is thermo-nuclear war on a massive scale.
With things the way they are, Russia may not have a choice between surviving the US war as a country and nation without doing the unthinkable(at least in their minds, since the US has already done the unthinkable in ’45)but if I were a Russian, realization would dawn and the response would be “it’s them or us and I could not blame them.
Our only chance is if China and possibly a few other nations intervene and band together in outright defiance and confrontation with Western kamikaze adventurism. Their lives are at stake also. Many of those who are considered US competitors are among the saner thinkers and may be our best chance in surviving this chaotic brinkmanship the west thinks is a powerplay on a game board.
A strange analogy came to mind thinking about the current situation and it kept repeating throughout the night.
“Onward Christian soldiers,
marching as to war,
with the cross of Jesus,
going on before”
the words evoked a scary vision of mindless, glassy eyed, fervour infected zealots, staring ahead as though heedless of consequence with the notion of their inherent righteousness their only thought.
I may not talk to God but I sometimes hope there is such a thing but fear he is bitterly disappointed in us and not at all inclined to intervene in our survival. It’s why I wondered if instead of nuclear Armageddon, he would direct us toward biowarfare to preserve Planet A rather than see life on earth utterly destroyed. He might be able to start again but we cannot.
As I said, I hope the realists like China, pragmatic and determined, see the catastrophe unfolding and intervene.
Stay safe.
Susan
Yes – that’s it!
The options seem to be somewhat stark:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/05/07/is-satan-11-a-game-changer/
Particularly given the low calibre of those in the Western World to negotiate anything with.:
– Declan Hayes
Even what purports to be the Western left seems bereft of anyone capable analysing the blindingly obvious:
https://thesaker.is/on-wars-propaganda-and-outright-lies/
Indeed, from their default effective support for imperialism’s Fascist knuckle dragger’s in Ukraine to its war against women & biological reality in favour of the WEF’s Transhumanism Great Reset, too many of those who claim to be on the ‘left’ in the West are so far up their own arses they have ceased to be fit for purpose.
Like the supposed ‘difference’ between the three main UK Westminster party’s + the SNP, you cannot insert piece of fag paper between Momentum, Red Pepper, Socialist Worker, AWL et al & their spokespeople & the Western Empires imperialist agenda.
They have long ceased to be ‘left’ and are now merely controlled opposition. Mirror images of those pulling their strings. All incapable of the necessary quality required of the moment.
Is Sergey Lavrov “the greatest diplomatic voice of our age”?
Anyone who has seen him speak at any length – and our corporate media will go to any length to avoid our being able to do so – will know the notion is not lightly dismissed.