While We Take a Break from Fighting Wars, We Fight Proxy Wars Cheered on By the News Media

Dave Smith:

I just I hate them so much and I really think they deserve it. And it's not just that they lie about everything. It's like they lie about everything and then they have the nerve to morally judge us. If you just watched even just the last few weeks of the Trump election, they're not in the business of reporting the news. They're totally just in the business of making you feel like you're a bad person if you don't fall in line with the regime.

America has this giant war machine, right? We're always at war. We're the most war-hungry country in the world. Even if we're taking a little bit of a break from a war, we'll fight two more proxy wars while we do that. America looks back at the 90s--Bill Clinton--as the time of peace and prosperity. We call it peace because we only fought a war in Serbia and had a blockade around Iraq, and we're bombing the crap out of Iraq, with a few other military interventions in there too. You know, the UN estimated that Bill Clinton's sanctions and bombing regime of Iraq--everyone just thinks of George H.W. Bush's war and W's war--but Bill Clinton was bombing Iraq and he had a full blockade around the country. The UN estimated that 500,000 children died of starvation or malnutrition due to the blockade. Now, I've heard people argue, by the way, that that number is exaggerated. Maybe it wasn't 500 that maybe it was only 100,000. So that's the time that we consider "peace" when we were just starving 100,000 children to death in Iraq. And everybody in the corporate media are in the business every single one of those wars. You've sold them. Everyone. My entire life. The media sold those wars and you're gonna morally look down on me. You're gonna judge me, motherfucker? You're in the business of baby murder. Get the fuck out of here. You're looking down, judging an American because maybe I'm going to vote for Donald Trump? Or maybe I dare to question the results of the last election? Fuck you!

Continue ReadingWhile We Take a Break from Fighting Wars, We Fight Proxy Wars Cheered on By the News Media

Kamala Harris and Nuclear War

I disagree with RFK, Jr. about the need to elect Donald Trump. IMO, he is not a good choice for President based on his unprofessional rhetoric, his unstable personality and his poor decision-making on many issues. I agree with everything else RFK, Jr. says in this video. Voting for Kamala Harris and her neocon buddy Dick Cheney (along with current Biden administration neocons, including Anthony Blinken and Victoria Nuland) is a vote for non-ending wars of discretion and an existentially high risk of nuclear war. I know we have tragically limited bad choices in this election, but based on this one issue alone, I am convinced that a vote for Harris is self-destructive

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War is Murder

I'm to the point now where I don't think I fought for the country. I fought for some politician's view on something. I remember one dude in particular that I killed him. I shot his buddy, and then I came through his room. I killed him in front of his wife in a bedroom because he went for a gun.

And I think about him now, and it's like, all right, why did I kill that guy? Well, because he went for a gun. Okay, but why did he go for a gun? Well, because I was in his fucking room at two in the morning. Well, why was that in his room at two in the morning? Well, because George fucking Bush was pissed that Saddam Hussein allegedly wanted to kill his dad. So we invaded.

And then I start to think, was this guy funny? What if I met him in Paris over a coffee? Would we actually have liked each other? I just killed him because a politician sent us here for weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist.

War is Murder. Time to kill the euphemism

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Chris Hedges Comments on the U.S. Security State and the DNC

Chris Hedges was recently on Glenn Greenwald's System Update offering a wide-ranging analysis of current events. I copied the following excerpts concerning the U.S. Security State and the disturbing transformation of the DNC:

G. Greenwald: Anyone covering foreign policy and covering wars as you did for so long, obviously has to deal with, in all sorts of ways, the U.S. security state, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, and sort of how it influences a lot of these policies. There's no way to understand one without the other. After 9/11, we saw this series of whistleblowers from within the U.S. Security State, and people like William Binney, Thomas Drake, and, of course, culminating with Edward Snowden, all have the same grievance, namely, that the whole foundation of this secret part of our government that would act without democratic accountability and outside of any transparency would be the one taboo would ever be turning their power inward to manipulate the American population and domestic population. And a lot of that came forward primarily based on their grievance, that that was the thing that they thought would never happen. And they were seeing that more and more and more and more, that almost as much as these agencies were focused on foreign governments, they were focused on our domestic politics as well. I know there's been a lot of that since the creation of the U.S. Security State, but do you agree that that has gotten worse and more dire, more evident – the idea that the U.S. Security State now plays a bigger role than ever before in our domestic politics?

Chris Hedges: Yeah, it's completely unaccountable and you can't control it. That's the problem. And Arnold Toynbee when he writes about the decline of the Empire, talks about these rogue intelligence, military complexes, institutions that essentially can no longer be regulated, can no longer be constrained. All of the people who led us into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya, you know, there should be accountability there. Not only is there no accountability, but the same people are leading us into the disasters in Ukraine and funneling weapons to sustain the genocide in Gaza. And that's very dangerous because, at the beginning of an empire, empires are very judicious, usually about the use of force. What characterizes declining dying empires is military adventurism, where they seek to gain a diminishing or a loss to Germany through a military fiasco. And I think we can start with Vietnam and go basically right through just one military debacle after another. What we've done in the Middle East is probably the greatest strategic blunder, you know, in American history.

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Where Did All of Those Blue and Gold Flags Go?

Those blue and gold flags used to be all over social media, on front porches and on car bumpers. Where did they go? It demonstrates the shallowness of our reasons and the strength of our tribalism.

Next time we are thinking about going to war, we should keep in mind the U.S. track record for "success" through war:

The near hysterical calls to support Ukraine as a bulwark of liberty and democracy by the mandarins in Washington are a response to the palpable rot and decline of the U.S. empire. America’s global authority has been decimated by well-publicized war crimes, torture, economic decline, social disintegration — including the assault on the capital on January 6, the botched response to the pandemic, declining life expectancies and the plague of mass shootings — and a series of military debacles from Vietnam to Afghanistan. The coups, political assassinations, election fraud, black propaganda, blackmail, kidnapping, brutal counter-insurgency campaigns, U.S. sanctioned massacres, torture in global black sites, proxy wars and military interventions carried out by the United States around the globe since the end of World War II have never resulted in the establishment of a democratic government. Instead, these interventions have led to over 20 million killed and spawned a global revulsion for U.S. imperialism.

Also from Chris Hedges: The biggest problem with war it that it generates an illusion that war provides its own meaning:

The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those who have the least meaning in their lives, the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the legions of young who live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world, are all susceptible to war’s appeal.

Many of us, restless and unfulfilled, see no supreme worth in our lives. We want more out of life. And war, at least, gives a sense that we can rise above our smallness and divisiveness.

It is part of war’s perversity that we lionize those who make great warriors and excuse their excesses in the name of self-defense

As war gives meaning to sterile lives, it also promotes killers and racists.

Continue ReadingWhere Did All of Those Blue and Gold Flags Go?