Our beautifully democratic wars
Philip Roddis
Of course the people don’t want war. That is understood … But after all it is the leaders who determine the policy and it is a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
>Herman Goering, on trial for his life at Nuremberg
This week, on the seventy-fifth anniversary of America’s militarily unnecessary[1] use of the atom bomb at Hiroshima, John Pilger wrote an excellent piece on the horrors of that day and its long bleak aftermath, linking them to the insanity of the drive currently underway for war on China.
(It’s in Consortium. The days are gone when Guardian or Mirror gave house room to Pilger.)
Our passive consent is once more being manufactured for another Empire Strike. Vilification of China in mainstream Western media, right wing and ‘liberal’ alike, is the new normal. Even the de rigeur demonising of Putin now takes second place to evidence-lite tales – “… intelligence sources say … it is believed that …” – of dastardly doings by the Yellow Man[2] in Beijing.
(Though of course, Moscow – knowing its turn would come next – could hardly sit idly by as full scale war was waged on China.)
Slavoj Zizek said it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Since its non negotiable demands for profits appear as existential truths – “of course we can’t produce wealth if it isn’t profitable to do so … of course we can’t feed the world, have clean streets or breathe clean air: who will pay for such things?” – an obscene global order is defended as far from perfect, to be sure, but the best one attainable by mere mortals …
…while those, like Jeremy Corbyn, who beg to differ draw the fury of an establishment which, however divided on lesser issues, will close ranks on matters of non negotiable importance ….
…ditto those, like Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, whose very acceptance of the logic of capital in its monopoly phase of imperialism puts them on a collision course with Wall St, Washington and their junior partners in London and Paris …
…ditto those like Julian Assange, who breach media omerta to deliver hard evidence on how the state monopoly on violence is actually exercised, and for that crime must be humiliated, reviled and finally broken.[3]
That closing of ranks by our rulers is why the substantive positions of the Daily Mail on the one hand, Guardian on the other, are essentially the same in respect of those named in the previous three paragraphs. Sadly, such unity is widely taken, including by people who deem themselves critical thinkers, as a sign of incontestable truth.
Even when such ‘truth’ cannot stand up to the slightest scrutiny. This from my post of July 15:
Try today’s Guardian and tell me where – in the story on Russian state-sponsored hackers targeting Covid-19 vaccine researchers, or that on Russia interfering in the 2019 election – an iota of evidence is produced.
Unsurprisingly, I’ve had not a single reader take me up on this. The two articles – and thousands like it which make up a relentless demonising of America’s greatest military rival (Russia) and its greatest economic rival (China) – are spun from thin air by intelligence sources and journalists who have shown time and again that they cannot be trusted.
I’ve written many posts, most frequently on Syria, about “our” wars on the global south, waged in the name of lofty ideals but always, in ways direct or indirect[4], in the interests of profit.
But now we are not speaking of states helpless in the face of the West’s might. Moral aspects of 500 years of colonial then imperialist[5] bullying aside, the difference between Latin America and the Middle East on the one hand, China and Russia on the other, points us to the reality that not since 1945 has a Western power confronted an adversary of remotely comparable weight.
So why now?
One answer is that the MAD (mutually assured destruction) doctrine is being challenged, in the corridors of US power, as never before. See this piece from 2014 by former Reagan appointee, Paul Craig Roberts. Those within the Beltway, and across the Potomac in the Pentagon, who believe a nuclear war with Russia and/or China can be won are no longer outliers on the far fringes of Sensible Discourse.
(Witness presidential contender Hillary Clinton’s plan to impose no-fly zones on Syria, a move that could not but provoke head on confrontation with Russian forces there at the behest of its lawful but equally demonised government.)
Here’s a second, complementary, answer from my January post, Talking WW3 Blues.
I can think of no precedent for a pre-eminent world power sitting back as the economic basis of its military might ebbs away. And Russia and China have time on their side.
Let’s take Russia first. This from a 2018 piece, again by Paul Craig Roberts:
Two factors are driving the world to nuclear war. One is the constant stream of insults, false accusations and broken agreements that the West has been dumping on Russia year after year. The other is Russia’s response, or, perhaps more correctly, the lack thereof.
… the Russian government’s factual, diplomatic, and legal responses actually produce more provocations and insults. See here and here and here.
Russia should turn her back on the West. The future lies in the East of which Russia is a part. She should focus on the partnership with China, and relationships in the East, and stop responding to blatantly false accusations and provocative insults.
Russia can be part of the West only by surrender to Washington’s hegemony. [Russia should] by now have figured out that Washington is determined to marginalize and isolate her, discredit her government, dislodge Putin and install a puppet [or] failing these efforts, push her to the point that her only alternatives are to surrender or go to war.
Did it ever occur to Lavrov or Putin that Russia’s President would be called a murderer by a British foreign secretary, on the basis of a fabrication created by the British government?
Are Lavrov and Putin finally getting the message that it is self-defeating to appeal to facts and law when the West has no respect for either?
Like his fellow Reagan appointee, Russia expert Stephen Cohen – and for that matter Reagan himself – Roberts had thought the cold war over with the fall of the USSR. Which goes to show that none of these three – for two of whom I have considerable respect – truly understood what the first cold war was about.
Here’s something I wrote three years ago:
Suppose the old cold war was not about ‘defending our freedom’. Suppose it was instead about one sixth of the world’s land mass – its vast resources and markets – being closed off to Profit. Why suppose any such thing? Because for reasons beyond my current remit, capitalism’s inner laws of motion demand ceaseless accumulation, even as they drive a tendency to falling profits. I haven’t the space here to prove these things, nor do I ask anyone to accept them on my say so. I ask only that for purposes of inquiry we suppose them true. Things that don’t otherwise make much sense suddenly snap into focus.
Reagan won the old cold war for western capitalism. He forced the USSR into ever greater arms-spend when every rouble on defence bled the Soviet economy whereas, such is the insanity of capitalism, every dollar the Pentagon spent boosted a $10trn for-profit arms sector, biggest driver of the US economy. By this and other means – sanctions, funding terror in Afghanistan, manipulating world oil prices – Washington, aided by the USSR’s ossified leadership and brittle top-down economy, prevailed.
Such was Reagan’s vacuity, and such the figurehead nature of his office, he genuinely believed the cold war over.
And so for a while it seemed. As free-market capitalism sent Russia into a tailspin of chaos and gangsterism, Yeltsin did everything asked of him. He did his own rolling over on Yugoslavia, its dismemberment exposing Russia while unleashing the corrupt state of Kosovo. With touching faith he believed Clinton on NATO ‘not advancing an inch’, and opened up the economy. That’s where things went off-script for the West.
I don’t doubt that squadrons of glassy-eyed Chicago Schoolers really do buy their own voodoo economics. I’m even prepared to deem some at least of the IMF Taliban naive enough to toke the smoke on liberalisation as economic cure-all. But to believe the same of the wolves of Wall Street? Sorry, no can do.
For them, liberalisation means nothing if not boosted bottom lines and eye-watering bonuses. Read Naomi Klein: a good writer who documents meticulously. Chapters 10-11 of The Shock Doctrine chart exactly what went down in Russia.
The fruits of privatisation, you see, had been stamped ‘for western hands’. Instead – this is funny if you’re in a good mood – they were trousered by ex KGB; the now semi-feudal oligarchy that blossomed and flourished under Yeltsin.
In comes strongman Putin. He cracks down on corruption (but must play a long game, so is with breathtaking chutzpah accused of deeds done by his predecessor to nods in Washington). He fixes a torched economy, allowing him among other things to beef up defence – now why would he want to do that? With Russia once more a global player, he stands up to NATO and effects his own rapprochement, with China, in part discussed in Perilous Days.
All this, mind, coinciding with the slow economic decline – making it triply dangerous – of the most powerful and reckless nation on earth.
As you see, I’m less inclined to look favourably on Reagan than Roberts and Cohen are. Less inclined too to take the West’s rationale for Cold War 1 at face value. On the other hand I’m kinder on Putin and Lavrov, whom I watch with guarded approval.
(Not that this matters much. As with Syria, my alarm and disgust at Western recklessness and venality are not premised on a Russia pure as the driven snow. And as with Assad, my refusal to damn Putin is not premised on his combining wisdom, nerves of steel and a pure heart with the strategic vision of a chess grand master.)
But what about China? This from The Guardian two weeks ago:
It has taken too many horrors, but at last the world is paying heed to China’s treatment of the Uighurs. Satellite pictures of detention camps, and procurement requests for spiked clubs, have been supplemented by leaked internal documents warning “allow no escapes”, and growing testimony from relatives and former inmates whose desperation has overcome their fear of retaliation for speaking out.
And this from The Grayzone last December:
Claims that China has detained millions of Uyghur Muslims are based largely on two studies. A closer look at these papers reveals US government backing, absurdly shoddy methodologies, and a rapture-ready evangelical researcher named Adrian Zenz.
You believe the Guardian if you like. For me, its credibility on matters of core importance ran out years ago. But even if every word on the Uighurs, the Spratly Isles (Washington’s ‘justification’ for insane but not illogical acts of provocation in the South China Sea), on TikTok and Huawei spyware and all the rest of the Empire Narrative were true, they’d add precisely nothing to our understanding of why America, its lesser partners riding its coat tails, is gunning for China.
Are we seriously expected to buy Washington’s concern for human rights?
Here are Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies, writing in CounterPunch on the eve of that seventy-fifth anniversary of the Japanese people’s living nightmare:
…until recently, Western firms were glad to make the most of China’s huge pool of cheap labor, weak workplace and environmental protections, and growing consumer market …
So what has changed? Companies like Apple, once glad to outsource US jobs, are now confronting the reality that they have also outsourced skills and technology.
The global rollout of 5G is a flashpoint not because EMF radiation may be dangerous, a real concern, but because Huawei and ZTE have patented critical infrastructure, leaving Silicon Valley in the unfamiliar position of playing catch-up.
Also, if 5G is built by Huawei and ZTE instead of AT&T and Verizon, the U.S. government can no longer require “back doors” for the NSA to spy on us all, so is stoking fears that China could insert its own back doors. Left out of the discussion is the real solution: repeal the Patriot Act and ensure technology used in our daily lives is secure from the prying eyes of all governments.
China is investing in infrastructure across the world. 138 countries have joined its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), to connect Asia with Africa and Europe via land and sea.
Obama and Trump tried to “pivot to Asia” to confront China. The US military-industrial complex needs more substantial enemies to justify budget-busting costs. Lockheed Martin is not ready to switch from billion-dollar warplanes, on cost-plus contracts, to wind turbines and solar panels.
The only targets to justify a $740-billion military budget and 800 overseas bases are Russia and China. Both expanded their military budgets after 2011, when the US and allies hi-jacked the Arab Spring to launch proxy wars in Libya, where China had substantial oil interests, and Syria, a long-term Russian ally. But in 2019, China’s military budget was $261 billion. That of the US is $732 billion. The U.S. still spends more on its military than the ten next largest powers combined.
Russian and Chinese military forces are almost entirely defensive, emphasising anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems. Neither Russia nor China has invested in carrier strike groups or U.S.-style expeditionary forces to attack countries on the other side of the planet. But they do have the means to defend themselves from U.S. attack and both are nuclear powers, making a major war against either a more serious prospect than the US has faced anywhere since WW2.
China and Russia are deadly serious about defending themselves, but it is U.S. imperialism and militarism driving the escalating tensions.
In fact, as with Stephen Cohen and Paul Craig Roberts, Benjamin and Davies are accurate but incomplete in their reasoning. For a deeper analysis try Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar, the American economist Michael Hudson and Greece’s former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. The first two – see my January Reads post – site renewed Sinophobia in the context of Eurasia rising, and consequent threat to dollar hegemony.
So does the third but, see the Global Minotaur, it points also to a reality not widely grasped. China’s domestic markets can’t yet absorb the vast profits its capitalists accumulate, courtesy China’s role as workshop of the 21st century world. As with other capitalist economies, these profits are recycled through the US economy in the form of Treasury Bonds.
This places China (and others) in a weird love-hate dance with America’s dollar advantage. An elephant-in-the-room truth about the US Economy, the first ever to make colossal debt an advantage, is that it will never repay those bonds – though for now it does pay interest on them.
Washington, in its lawless arrogance, could easily fabricate a pretext for turning off the tap altogether. One way of looking at the Belt and Road Initiative Benjamin and Davies cite is as evidence of Moscow and Beijing making precisely the tilt from the West (and dollar hegemony) which Paul Craig Roberts advocates while failing to acknowledge as already happening.
So let’s set aside the blather on human rights, electoral interference (on which Israel and USA have far darker records) and fictitious aggressions. Let’s instead get real on what is happening and why.
The stakes could hardly be higher.
[1] Eisenhower: ‘The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing …’ Admiral Leahy, Chief of Staff to Roosevelt and Truman: ‘… the barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan …’ More here. A far likelier reading of those atrocities is that, as cold war dawned, America wished to show the USSR what it and it alone could do.
[2] Only the very naive would fail to note the deep wells of orientalism now being tapped in the manipulations of our narrative managers.
[3] It’s mooted by some that all charges against Assange may be dropped. It’s too early to call but I see the logic. Mission accomplished: a chilling message sent to the world. Fuck with the US Empire at your peril.
[4] Direct gains to imperialism may include oil (as resource or commodity) or arms-length access to cheap labour. Indirect gains may include oil (as leverage). This from Stephen Gowans’ book, Israel: a Beachhead in the Middle East:‘The purpose of dominating another country is to secure opportunities for business. The dominated country may provide direct opportunities, or be a stepping stone to profit-making opportunities in a third country [which] may become the target of an imperialist power because favorably placed. Perhaps it bounds important shipping lanes and is prized as a naval base from which the movement of goods can be protected from rival imperialist powers that might choke off the flow. Or perhaps the aim is to position military power at a shipping choke point. Or maybe the territory is close to enticing targets that could be absorbed through military coercion. Maybe the dominated country is close to another imperialism and attractive for encircling it. There are scores of reasons why an imperialist power might dominate a country that offers no immediate or direct economic benefit, but all are traceable to a perceived economic advantage for the dominating country’s major investors.’
[5] For my purposes the distinction between colonialism and modern imperialism (the north-south export of monopoly capital, and south-north repatriation of profits) can be reduced to that between direct rule and financial domination. Both necessitate, in logic and in historic fact, military and other forms of technological asymmetry.
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Roddis is a Jew, kill him
Another ludicrous comment.
Slavoj Zizek I stopped reading as soon as I read a quote from this Commie Ass Clown!
What hardly anyone here (maybe noone) seems to realise is that so-called “nuclear weapons” very likely do not even exist. You may laugh unless you’re a deep level researcher familiar with the names of Miles Mathis, Anders Bjorkman, Akio Nakatami and others… There’s also a very good article from the Daily Bell called “On This Atom Bomb Anniversary You’re Being Lied to About Hiroshima – and Much More to Make You Fearful”
The entire “Cold War” was but smoke and mirrors. $5 trillion hoax according to the late Eustace Mullins.
We are all living under a great deception. Perhaps it’s time we all woke up.
So good that someone else is saying the same thing. Did you see my comment below, no more lies?
I just went to your Daily Bell link and read this:
In my comment I point out that supposedly 66 Japanese cities were bombed in WWII.
Honestly, it makes you wonder. After my father died we learnt that he was a miracle survivor of a torpedoeing by the British of the Italian navy ship, the Duca d’Aosta, in WWII. My father didn’t mention it to us and we only learnt of it from a book written by someone from my father’s village which most annoyingly cannot be found now. I’ve never seen this book but my mother told me about it. Today, I was thinking, “Could it be that my father didn’t miraculously survive the torpedoeing as he didn’t tell us about it? Could it be the man from his village just made his story up?” That’s what it’s come to. I can’t see how he would have as obviously if my father had come across the book he might have called it out but who the hell knows? The story of his miracle survival did sound compelling I have to say but …
I remember reading that the sinking of the Belgrano was staged in the Falklands War. Seriously.
I’ve just seen your comment, I believe the overall conspiracy is so monstrous very few could even begin to countenance such. It’s my opinion the biggest lie is the record of history (HIS story) itself, nothing but a tissue of falsehoods. It’s all horribly spun, some of it completely manufactured. “They who control the present control the past; they who control the past control the future” Being at this level of awareness isn’t easy, in fact it’s totally draining. I knew taking the red pill was precarious, that it would almost certainly lead to a feeling of isolation but I took it anyway, going as far down the rabbit hole as it’s possible to go, but ultimately it leads to an impenetrable warren resulting in levels of doubt, introspection, disorientation and consternation. It helps that I’m a loner by nature; I’ve never sought the approval of the masses, nor do I care for their preoccupation with the materialistic. I eschewed all the controlled forms of mainstream media, all their garbage, narcissism and vapid drivel years ago; I do not follow any “sport” nor do I vote, it’s all bread and circuses. I do not even carry a smart phone (how many realise “smart” in context also means “painful”), I even ended up throwing my cheap disposable cell phone away. I use no wireless devices, my PC is a fixed location desktop. Still I know the Google/Borg machine is monitoring and storing everything. Deep machine learning, AI, 4th Industrial Revolution, biometrics, transhumanism, the beast system, 666, coming food insecurity, I feel we do not have much time left. Most people will not wake up, they’re too invested in this matrix. As a dissenter I will be prevented from buying, selling, travelling, I guess this world whatever all this really is is… Read more »
Thanks, no good lies. Totally relate to what you say. On the one hand I feel frustrated with my friends and family for refusing to swallow the red pill and on the other I can perfectly understand why they don’t. Then again, one friend who really doesn’t have any interest in these events but listens to me patiently gets it all without it affecting her life as her concerns are so much more about her immediate world and all the hoaxery she considers as remote (apart from the COVID hoax which does affect her and annoys her but she sees as something outside her control and something she just has to put up with).
The most clear-thinking 9/11 analyst in my opinion was Gerard Holmgren, a guitar teacher, who sadly died of a brain tumour in 2010, four years before I had the slightest clue about anything. He wrote a brilliant satire, Debunking Conspiracy Theorists – Paranoid fantasies about 9-11 detract from real issues.
If you’re interested I’ve written a post, 9/11 and COVID-19: The Parallels.
I know it seems hard to believe but there is compelling evidence that the existence of nuclear weapons and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are myths. Those cities were bombed but not by nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons is yet another bogeyman in their terror arsenal to instil fear and trembling.
Think about it.
— The Hiroshima bomb was called Little Boy.
— The Nagasaki bomb was called Fat Man.
— The pilot named the plane that would carry Little Boy to destroy the city of Hiroshima and kill at least 90,000 people, Enola Gay, after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbetts.
— The name of the plane that carried Fat Man was Bockscar. An image of Bockscar showing a cartoonish painting of a boxcar with wings on a track with the words Salt Lake and Nagasaki on each side with the Masonic number 77 to the left – remember Flight 77, the phantom plane that wasn’t caught by 84 cameras crashing into the Pentagon?
And then we have the good ‘ol miracle survivor story … the good ‘ol miracle survivor story. Doncha love ’em. We’ve had ’em for 9/11, COVID, Pearl Harbour, Christchurch, Las Vegas and so very many more.
The Incredible Story of the Miracle at Hiroshima
https://www.bluearmy.com/the-incredible-story-of-the-miracle-at-hiroshima/
So Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Pearl Harbour all staged even though there was obviously serious bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki and other Japanese cities – supposedly a total of 66, another Masonic number. What kind of deals were the US and Japan doing?
This is a compelling book about the nuclear hoax.
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Object-Exploding-Nuclear-Weapons/dp/1545516839
Another channel supporting the nuclear hoax: Mordechai Vanunu, accused of leaking Israeli nuclear weapons secrets. Yeah, right. His adventures are an amusing read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu.
An excellent, insightful article. Some of Philip’s output has been shooting in all directions from his Marxist hip, but this piece is well researched and nuanced and bang on point. Much appreciated and one to print and archive.
If there is one thing I have learned is never to try and analyze anyone unless you yourself have been in their shoes. You cannot then understand the entire situation. In short, unless you drove a truck don’t try to tell the driver how to shift the gears. ALL of you are looking at this from your own side of the fence and everyone believes themselves to have a valid opinion based on only half of the picture. Try to think like an extremely rich oligarch with very old money. Why would he want to risk what he has for the sake of an army of looters, rioters and the people who elected the government that allows it all to happen? How is he and his family safe? What could he do when the mob shows up at his front gate? Is he only doing what he can do to protect himself and his family? Should he return everything his family has accumulated over the last 500 years to the mob? THINK from HIS side of the fence, for once.
I guess your comment is tongue-in-cheek, but to correct one point…
The Russian Oligarchs haven’t acquired money over 500 years. They either stole it or were gifted it in the 1990s by Yeltsin.
I believe that all except one had Israeli political connections, but if someone can correct me on this point I’d appreciate it, I don’t aim to make incorrect comments.
NATO, the North Atlantic Terror Org. was created for One reason only, control, and that by their mantra, to Keep the Imperial banana republic inn, the pesky Ruskies out, and the whipped to submission Germans down, and thats is stil the main mantra to this day and never forget the second fact, Germans are as far I can judge histroricaly speaking the most demonised people stil living on this earth, nobody speaks about that, and ask any, just to give you an example, Norwegian about Germans and you will get the Nazi narrative, they are all Nazis, period, and that line is stil prevalent in the minds of the morons of the world, you cant turn on an Netflix idiotic serial where sooner or later that also comes up on, ugh…. some Nazis doing this or that, the only difference to day, is that now they have divided that into Chines/Chinks and Russians/mafia/whores, and the villan is clear. To debate the insanity and blood thirst of the Empire and its banana throwers is more or less like pissing against the wind, and even when the truth is that the UssA is indeed the worst scums that walk on this planet, I could write mile long list regarding their footprints from Ecology to eCONomy, you are automaticly an anti-american, yeah, like anti-semit, anti-vaccines, anti-CONvid, and so on to anti-catholic witch level of mayhem is aonly beaten by the large empires, like the Mongols, Brits, Roman, to the present UssA, and to then start an hagle about political directions, left or right is what I found out years ago, an even worse waist of time than trying to explain to any AmeriTard what your gov have done thru the centurys, and since their propaganda is all encompasing, in the west, not that… Read more »
Please do not link directly to e.g. the Guardian. You can spoil their desire for hits and ad revenue by copying the Guardian link to http://www.archive.is then posting THAT resulting link here to your article. Then you and your readers can bypass it and help to fight back against the powerful, dirty money that had John Pilger’s voice removed from our newspapers.
They don’t need revenue – never have – they have been funded ever since being set up in Manchester by ancient financiers who were building mills, trading slaves and pillaging the news world’ as they had the ‘old’.
They are nearing my the end of the thousand year empire!
Even with all their supposedly unrelated family in power across the world…
Using http://www.dumptheguardian.com provides a convenient shortcut to such links.
Guardian admits on its home page: We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes: Store and/or access information on a device…
I fear war might be the ultimate end game because of frustration with ineffective economic warfare policies. When you look at the extent and detail of the latest round of sanctions you can’t help feeling that practically the only real growth industry in the US is identify individuals and entities to sanction, devising sanctions and then enforcing them (especially as the enforcement is derivative — you’ve not only got to track the sanctioned but everyone and everything they interact with). This is an immense waste of national effort. Meanwhile the sanctioned are carrying on as usual, growing, developing and devising mechanisms to rid themselves of the sanctions irritant. The logical end game for this is that we (that’s the US) will find ourselves increasingly isolated and impotent with most of the rest of the world — the bit that’s not in lock step with us — going about its business and prospering without us. The latest revelations about electoral interference strike me as an act of desperation. I’d guess that neither Russia nor China is particularly bothered about who’s in charge in the US so long as its a bona-fide adult. Their politicians may have opinions one way or another but there’s really no going back so it really doesn’t matter which individuals are in charge, R&C are damned if they do, damned if they don’t so its just a matter of trying to find adults who can generate some semblance of order from the chaos that we’re rapidly descending into. This chaos is dangerous because we might be getting weaker and weaker but we’re still armed to the teeth and capable of causing serious damage to the world. We shouldn’t go down this path, we should be spending our efforts rebuilding and renewing, but based on the history of… Read more »
Contrary to propaganda, capitalism is “an immense waste of national effort”. Plutocracy, rigged competition and kleptocracy ensure that. Obama reportedly admitted that rationalising medical care, even if he retained its current form heavily dependent on insurance, would eliminate a large part of the insurance industry including jobs.
STILL A PIPEDREAM On June 10, 1963 five months before the CIA assassinated JFK he delivered a “peace speech” at American University in Washington D.C.: “Today, should total war ever break out again — no matter how — our two countries will be the primary target. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many countries, including this Nation’s closest allies, our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combat ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle, with suspicion on one side breeding suspicion on the other, and new weapons begetting counter-weapons.” Fifty-seven years later peace is still a pipedream as rival nuclear powers are heading for a clash. The axiom Philip Roddis cites is true: “Capitalism’s inner laws of motion demand ceaseless accumulation, even as they drive a tendency to falling profits.” Capitalist nation-state rivalries are historically what drives every war. This economic conundrum is described by Nick Beams in an article entitled: “The Drums of Economic Nationalism Are Beating Louder “: “The view in sections of the foreign policy establishment in the 1990s and early 2000s that integration of China into a free market liberal international economic order would lead to the emergence of a leadership in Beijing prepared accept American global dominance. But the increasing turn by the Chinese Communist Party leadership under Xi Jinping to its own national agenda, based on high-tech and industrial development and its expanding global reach under conditions of palpable US… Read more »
Wrong conclusion.
The ancient slave owners and financiers are finally being stood upto.
China has lifted its poorest the most and faster than ever thought possible.
It is exporting that model to the row and using its profits for real infrastructure in the poorest places.
Thus reducing poverty and need for economic migration.
Allied with security it will also alleviate chaotic migration from war zones.
China would be better off if the CCP changed its name to the Chinese Capitalist Party.
FTA: Our passive consent is once more being manufactured for another Empire Strike. I’ll repeat the question: Which empire is Philip Roddis referring to? In his three-part account of WWI, James Corbett describes a cabalistic insurgency which manipulated much of the World (along with both the UK and US) into war; and then constructed a post-war, New World Order. That empire still seems to be the most powerful on the planet, although it is perhaps fatally flawed. — https://www.corbettreport.com/wwi/ What was World War One about? How did it start? Who won? And what did they win? Now, 100 years after those final shots rang out, these questions still puzzle historians and laymen alike. But as we shall see, this confusion is not a happenstance of history but the wool that has been pulled over our eyes to stop us from seeing what WWI really was. . . . In retrospect, the machinations that led to war are a master class in how power really operates in society. The military compacts that committed Britain—and, ultimately, the world—to war had nothing to do with elected parliaments or representative democracy. When Conservative Prime Minister Arthur Balfour resigned in 1905, deft political manipulations ensured that members of the Round Table, including Herbert Henry Asquith, Edward Grey and Richard Haldane—three men who Liberal leader Henry Campbell-Bannerman privately accused of “Milner worship”—seamlessly slid into key posts in the new Liberal government and carried on the strategy of German encirclement without missing a step. In fact, the details of Britain’s military commitments to Russia and France, and even the negotiations themselves, were deliberately kept hidden from Members of Parliament and even members of the cabinet who were not part of the secret society. It wasn’t until November 1911, a full six years into the negotiations, that the… Read more »
All good as far as it goes.
Completely missing WHO they worked for!
Who financed Rhodes?
Follow the Money – back in history and forward to today – it is hidden in plain sight.
It’s rarely pointed out the security concerns about radical Jidhadists among the Uighur has good basis in fact. An army of some 7-8000 Uighur fighters have occupied a Syrian town on the Southern border of Idlip. They are particularly disliked by Syrians for their exceptional cruelty. If/when Russia or Syria kicks them out they will flee to Turkmenistan and if they can re-start the Chechen war. China calls it re-education and the UK calls it Prevent.
“All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” This but it’s a virus “attacking” us and the “peacemakers” are non-mask-wearers and it’s not a lack of “patriotism” but a lack of concern for public health. From “we’re all in this together” follows “you’re either with us or against us.” Its a simple formula yet it works spectacularly all the same still a century later. This is what a lack of historical knowledge, critical thinking, and class conciousness gets you. To those who have managed to develop those capacities against all odds and vast efforts of TPTB, it’s clear what’s going on is but another iteration of the same phenomena. The same way they seamlessly transitioned from communism to terrorism, they’ve now conjured up an “invisible enemy” out of thin air, which will require us to give up all of our rights and bodily autonomy so the state can have access to all of our activities at all times in order to “protect us” for the endless waves of “invasions”. And it will give the fascist global health imperialists a new pretext for knocking off the governments that don’t adhere to the diktats of the WHO. They already used this crisis to scapegoat China, demonize Iran, and are slandering those governments that didn’t lockdown or mandate face masks, as well putting Belarus in the crosshairs for a coup. Similarly as they push for the Global Green New Deal fraud, they’ll use phony accusations of failing to protect the environment and meet the sustainability goals – in fact that’s exactly what was done to Evo Morales in Bolivia in the end up to the fascist coup that forced him to flee. Extinction Rebellion and… Read more »
Joopy, your analysis isn’t droopy. In fact it’s spot on.
A lot of people know this. They are also not as capable and powerful as Americans think. They are actually clumsy and crude. Their vision on the future isn’t possible. They will lose. The only question is will they take the rest of us down too.
Not one single word of this article makes the least sense…IF you continue your merry jaunt down Primrose Lane still believing those who own America are sane. There is not a shred of evidence to back up such a Pollyanna view.
But IF you assume the ruling class of today’s world to be just as insane as rulers throughout history, then every single word Mr Roddis sets to paper makes perfect sense.
yes. They are completely insane.
“Let’s instead get real on what is happening and why.” Let’s condemn China’s imprisonment of 1.5m Muslims, Tibetans and political dissidents in hundreds of ‘re-education’ camps where they face family separation, torture, rape, enforced sterilisation, murder, organ harvesting, but no release. Why? Because China is led by brutal communist fanatics and supremacists with global ambitions, just like Hitler and Stalin.
CNN, NYT, MSNBC, WaPo, The Guardian, BBC, Fox News and every other establishment media outlet does this 24/7 for evil China’s alleged atrocities. Does that make you an
establishmentCIA shill?If what you say were true, then you couldn’t say it. If indeed China were “led by brutal communist fanatics” then there is no way China would be practicing the kind of capitalistic hocus-pocus it practices on such a grand scale today; and it would not be such a threat to Western capitalist interests. Please put down your Epoch Times before the real world passes you by completely.
We get bogged down with terms. The globalists want communism for the serfs – not for themselves.
They want totalitarianism. They dont care what the plebes believe in as long as they don’t challenge their power
I think you ascribe the term capitalist loosely (if at all) to china’s economy, its a planned economy under heavy government control, thats not what i call capitalist.
Objective, the historical meaning for capitalism is “private ownership of means of production, exchange and distribution” of life-sustaining goods and socialism is the social movement that rose against it calling for the common ownership of the means of production, exchange and distribution.
When the means of production are private in a country (either owned by individuals or groups of individuals or being at the disposal of socially-removed bureaucracies), people cannot feed themselves by directly working the land; they instead have to earn a wage by getting a job. Thus, in all capitalist countries there must necessarily exist a monetary system and a wage system. Inversely, in a country where exist monetary and wage systems, the means of production must be private because people wouldn’t need money, and hence working for someone else, if they are at liberty of working the land and enjoying its fruits.
This is the historical definition of capitalism, and it follows from it that all the countries in the so called “civilized world” are capitalist countries. All and everyone of them.
Jesus, no Marx wasn’t god & his definitions of capitalism surprisingly aren’t the only view on what it means!
Most western countries in the “civilized world” are socialist! NOT capitalist in a libertarian sense.
You’re right; let’s not use the word capitalism as it is subject to more than one interpretation these days. Do you agree that in all the countries the means of production of the necessities of life (land, factories, etc.) are privately owned and that in every country most people (nearly everyone of us) must sustain ourselves by earning wages?
As for socialism, I believe that if you wanted to find out the meaning of a word and avoid confusion, the best thing is to research the history of that word in its first uses in the literature, so if you study the literature of the pioneers of the social movement that rose against the private ownership of the means of production and called themselves socialists, you’ll find out what they were calling for and how they described their movement; you’d come to the conclusion that there are no socialist countries in existence today, and never have been in this or in the last century. Every attempt to establish it has been smashed. There are only “so called socialist” countries and parties and this fact has been known ever since the overthrow of the tsar in 1917 (you can check this also if you research the socialist literature of the time).
If we keep changing the meaning of words, there is no hope of gaining any understanding in using them; it would be the conversation between deaf people. The only way in this case, and in all cases really, is to go beyond the words to the realities they convey.
I disagree. No i dont think we do need to be wage slaves, banks are simply there to control us.
I also disagree to a point about the term socialist its not exactly an old term (in the human evolution) maybe a few hundred years, but i think most people recognize it doesn’t just mean a working class movement against an oppresive upper middle class management. As the class divide changed so has the definition
I partly agree you shouldn’t change the meaning of words, but socalist never was just one activist group same as communist in fact i’d suggest the likes of Lenin & even Marx hijacked those terms like pirates.
Capitalism to me is a freemarket a non regulated world but you have to take into consideration i’m a libertarian not a neoliberal, i dont believe their should be billionaires, but i dont care if some one is greedier & richer than me, capitalism for me isn’t about wealth. And as there is no other words to describe a free-market economy so then i use the term capitalism. And when i use the term socalist i mean collectivism. Words always have different meanings for different people language evolves too.
I also disagree with you about there being no socialist countries, the UK is socialist to an extent it has a welfare system, free public health care, democracy is a socialist endeavour it is (on the surface) collectivism following the will of the largest minority i dont like democracy either. We certainly have never had an unregulated free market & i dont inlcude banks because banks are regulation of money to control the people.
I hope your first disagreement is not with me; I didn’t state to be for the wage regime, simply asked whether you agreed that it is today the dominant one, so do you? I think it is and should be abolished and I see you don’t like it either, but are you for reforming it (e.g., people getting better wages), or abolishing it altogether as, from what I read, libertarian philosophy advocates self-employment, with no interference from removed bureaucracies (that should not exist in the first place); or are you for a mixed economy of self-employment and wage earning? About the word socialism, I agree with you, it’s first uses must have occurred at the time an international movement appeared, large and organized enough, and with sufficiently homogeneous ideas to be distinguished from the other groups, and that must have happened around the 19th century, at the time, in France for example, thousands of children and adolescents were working in factories like adults but paid the fourth part of an adult’s wage, showing how ugly and cruel the system can be. By pioneers I just meant that group. That group was identifying the “enemy” as “the private ownership of means of production”and by “means of production” it was never meant individual property for use, like one’s tools or one’s house or one’s plot of land or one’s business. In this matter I’m as fiercely against somebody taking away from me my means of sustaining myself, as you may be as a libertarian. It was meant property disproportionately larger than one’s needs for use, that will be destined to making profit through the wage system; and it didn’t matter if the owners are individuals or a bureaucrat apparatuses). That group calling itself socialists went against that kind of ownership because by… Read more »
Lets condemn the genocidal Zionist Apartheid Regime instead, with its vast Gaza Concentration Camp, its reign of terror in the Occupied West Bank, its daily war crimes and atrocities, the daily murders by the IDF Kiddie Killers, its constant aggression against its neighbours.
Rather than fantasy narratives against China concocte in the Neocon Lie Factory of the MSM.
An Iraqi man tortured by Americans and displayed as art . A new and horrific aspect of the American atrocity porn. Eros meets Thanatos ? A reason most Americans are now willing to wear face-nappies becomes clearer , shame !
I wonder if OG will remove my critical questioning of anti-Americanism today, so joining those who prevent free thought and discussion, just like the Graun did to those setting up OG.
An artist highlighting what Islamists did to their Christian victims and their kids all across the Middle East in recent years would be showing real courage.
Been done a lot ! Hebrews sexually mutilate their male offspring while Islam chooses to indulge the same fetish on their females.
Wrong, actually, FGM has cultural roots in certain African tribes, some muslim, some Christian, some pagan, but vast majority of Muslims elsewhere do not practice FGM, however, like the Jews, and many Americans, they do mostly practice male circumcision, FYI
The never ending Great Game and centuries of poking the bear by the banker masters and ancient Pathocracy is FINALLY about to end – even as the Ancient City tried to rabble rouse it’s traditional proxies into destroying themselves again by setting them against the great bear – yet again! How many centuries has that driven the City’s wars? The Germans aren’t dancing this time and neither will the French (regardless of the new mini Napoleon/ sun king chimera Macaroon -who will disappear at the next election) and it looks as if the Danes have seen the light finally and not impeding the completion of Nordstream2. Guaranteeing the EU’s energy security for decades, with much cheaper gas than the US fracked and shipped product. Turkey (the ex Ottomans) is also not going to repeat the mistake of nearly a century and a half ago. Trying to wind up the Pacific flank by trying to reignite Japanese psychos with further Manchurian/ Russian plunder (as they did over a century ago) is the latest straw grasping. So today the unrepresentative BoD has marshalled its snivelling religious leaders to push the Uighar concentration camp and Holocaust lie (apparently they are allowed to use the term but no one else is in relation to other persons – the absurd notion of getting the Abrahamic religions and the CIA’s laughing boy Dalai Lama too. What’s left? The 5+1 eyed Gollum stretched across the planet? Brittannias rule of the Seas? Yeah – the BRI has addressed that conundrum and the remaining Commonwealth flunkies will soon attain a real independence of the Empire with that choice. I really wish Philip Roddis will realise before it is too late that ‘Marxism’ was created as the shadow of the equally created ‘Capitalism’ as a veil for the ancient City… Read more »
I was already aware that you thought that “Marxism” was a creation of evil lizard overlords ot whatever. I didn’t know you thought “Capitalism” was too. So are we looking for some kind of pure human spontaneity to erupt once we have performed the requisite mass exorcism?
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873),[10] usually cited as J. S. Mill, was an English philosopher, political economist, and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, and political economy. Dubbed “the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century”,[11] his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control.[12]
Karl Heinrich Marx[12] (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883)
was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary. Born in Trier, Germany, Marx studied law and philosophy at university. He married Jenny von Westphalen in 1843.
researching in the reading room of the British Museum. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1883). His political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic and political history,
See?
Not really. But the fact that you can copy/paste two dictionary entries that are supposed to make your point (whatever that is) indicates you are operating on some metaphysical plane beyond a mere mortal line me.
Ok – you wilfully turn a blind eye.
So take it step by step.
A. Mill invented the modern notion of Capitalism- hence ignoring the Finance behind it.
B. Marx invented anti- capitalism again ignoring the Financial controllers.
C. They were CO-CURRENT in time and geography.
D. Mrs Marx in many ways neatly encapsulates the ancient forces that gave us nation states in Europe from whence the global seafaring empire building and slavery sprung.
A is Coca-Cola, B is Pepsi! Both selling the sugar of their masters while they hide behind the branding.
No copy and pasting facts there – happy ?😂😂😂
Capitalism isn’t a “notion” although there are plenty of entertaining notions about it. And there were plenty of people who objected to capitalism long before Marx. As for “Mrs Marx”? Possible typo? It’s hard to tell!
One of them famously hated Jews and negroes, supported himself his whole life by scrounging off others, bullied women, and after impregnating his maid, threw her out onto the street.
I thought the maid was working in the Rothschild household and gave birth to Alois Schicklgruber.
Maybe I mixed up my maids. 🙂
You’ll need to wait for NicS and DunG’s upcoming “History of the World Through the Bottom of a Pint Glass”!
You and DunG should team up to write a book on world history. I’d buy it!
Hate it? don’t you guys?
There are many of us and just a few of you.
😂😂😂
Oh I think there’s only one of you, DunG! But I’m sure you could team up for an entertaining double act with NicS.
Oh shit you’re a fence sitting, centrist! “a classic liberal” one empathizes, it dismays me to say it but i’ve come to the uncomfortable realization i may also be one.
Just. Follow. The MONEY.
All else is smoke and mirrors.
Putin beefs up Russian defence, Philip? He and his compatriots have done more than that: At about a tenth the cost of the US rich-gits’ cargo-cultish ‘defense’ gravy train (isn’t the F-35 a pretend, vaguely fighter-like, just-flying white elephant? Dumbo on steroids! Pure cargo-cult. Lots of other examples…). He and colleagues have checkmated any chance the Anglozionist empire might have had to attack Russia without bringing about its own utter demise. Russia can now fend off the best – not very good – US weaponry from attacking with either nuclear or non-nuclear strategies (as Saker points out, any attempt at a land invasion would be a mass-suicide pact for the NATO blimp-farts); and at the same time it can annihilate huge numbers of US military personnel and major weapons such as carrier battle groups; and it can also do a multiple Hiroshima/Nagasaki on numerous US cities – and on entire US coastlines. And the effete and paper-tigerish, multiple-small-war-losing US military has – literally – zero defence against these dreadful new-generation Russian weapons. They can’t do a thing to fend them off, from their ships, or their cities. Russia, otoh, is now virtually missile-proof. Even the many insane members of the DC-Swamp community – Tigoo, The Insane Geriatric Walrus, or Michael Pompous-Hippo, for example – must be able to see this calamitous – to them – reality. And if they ever gave sign of refusing to see it, and began pressing for imminent aggression against Russia – or China for that matter – out of their ludicrous reality-detached insanity, then they would likely be arrested/assassinated by the still-sane Swampies, especially those amongst the US military, simply out of self-preservation instinct; and the instinct to preserve anything that can be salvaged from the current USSR-style collapse which is now happening to the… Read more »
There is no “covid”, bro. You’ve been hoodwinked.
Something is causing a nasty illness, Reg. A flu quite a bit worse than the average, it seems. Simply denying that it exists, on the strength of whatever unproven hypothesis takes your fancy, is a way to get yourself swept aside by the continuing unfolding of reality, which does what it does, whatever any of us happen to believe. This reality contains long-evolved processes which sometimes lay sickness on some unlucky elements of the whole system, to which they they must then adapt, or vanish from the pattern: novel species, troublesome effects, survivors adapt, immunity builds up. Been watching this process demonstrate itself all through a long life; with rabbits and elms, for a couple of examples. If you’re convinced that ‘there is no covid’, what causes the illness? Something is doing it. I know at least one doctor who I’m persuaded is a straight honest witness, having known him for some time, front-line consultant in an ICU in London hospital right through the worst hot-spot period, and he has had dreadful bout of something, much worse than the average flu. Put whatever label on it suits your belief system, but – objectively speaking – there’s something causing it. That’s about all I’m willing to engage with unsupported statements of counter-intuitive, and counter-reason belief systems. Have fun with it. But have plenty of powdered vitamin C on hand in case you catch a dose of this non-existent illness. 30 grams a day, in water, in divided doses right through each twenty-four hours, till it scarpers, could save your life. It seems to have been vital in staving off the attack of – something – that I copped earlier this year. Theorise all you like, but have the C handy. When the chips are down and your life’s on the line,… Read more »
No coronavirus has YET to be isolated from a victim of CoVid1984.
Oh THAT, I think is quite probably true. Scientists conventionally deemed to be expert in these matters like to convey the impression – often – that they know and understand more than they really do. It’s a standing temptation, especially if big pay and fancy status go with giving off the ‘right’ vibes. Sad to say, many seem to succumb. But – nonetheless – despite all that being true, *something* is causing a nasty flu-like illness, that can kill unlucky people. My doctor informant, still quite young and fit, thought he might die, at the height of his encounter with it.
Thanks for the anecdote.
This is a huge commonality amongst Pro-CoVidiots: the irrational fear of death.
Oh tell me, Ernest! 🙂 Names at The Lifeboat News, with whom I’ve been on good terms for years, and whose savvy, intelligent dissident credentials were clearly sound before, have suddenly gone ape-shit on what I called – to their considerable slagging annoyance (cognitive dissonance, perhaps? :)) – TDS: Terror Derangement Syndrome. They are piling on – with lots of snarly ad-hominem insults, but very, very scant fact-supported logic – to any such as me who dare to express any doubt about the wisdom, or even the bare need, for masks, anti-social distancing, general house arrest, and all the rest of the control freakery – of virtually no known and proven efficacy.
Very true! I love when my neighbour spoke of the travesty of her 94 yr. old relative dying “before his time” 😳 Geez is that what Pharma has done to people, made them think they will all live to be 120 along with their co-morbitities?
Not very scientific thought by your doctor informant. He clearly didn’t read the available reports nor analysis by the rest of us in the field
No, maybe not. His knowledge of the whole field, as with all of us, is bound to be patchy. Staff within the NHS seem to have their hands constantly full to overflowing with fires to put out, sick people to try to help, and a plethora of unnecessary ‘management’ stiffs constantly on their backs. And all the poor sods on stagnant and frequently inadequate pay.
It pisses him off a good deal, I know. And this is before we mention powerful and inveterate enemies of any public health system that isn’t for naked commercial profit, who have been gunning to destroy our public-service, non-commercial, open-to-all system ever since its inception. I’ve watched them doing it since 1948: Damaging anything they could, and peeling away all the profitable bits they could lay hands on, any time an opportunity appeared. And to hell with a dilapidating service, and – as in the US – the prospect of millions of poor people with no access to adequate medical help at tolerable cost. The gangster-capitalist scum are always with us! In moments of nihilistic weakness I fantasise about pitchforks and lamp-post nooses.
Its called the flu– it happens every year. Some years the virus is worse than others.
Yep, exactly so T. I think that when the dust has settled, that’s how we’ll interpret it – as sanity after Terror Derangement Syndrome re-asserts itself.
Certainly there was a spike in deaths in April/May, Rhisiart. I see no reason why a novel virus was not responsible for some of the deaths. I have no clear idea what that number would be. I do know that greater than 99% of the population were in no danger of dying. I do know those who did sadly, die, were those already in poor physical condition and over the age of 70. With a few exceptions. I do know that every death in a care home was tantamount to government sponsored euthanasia. The government sat on their fat arses and did bugger all to stop it. I do know that the NHS was working at half capacity at most. I suspect that this will cause untimely deaths in the future. This novel viral outbreak burnt itself out by the end of May. Yet here we are in August and still the government can enforce draconian lockdowns and restrict the free movement of citizens. My greatest fear is that our rights as humans and citizens will never be given back. SC2 is a corona virus. It is now in the wild. There will be outbreaks from time to time. That’s life. But it will be continually be used as an excuse to control citizens. Governments have extended their authority by fixating on ‘cases’ and tests. If you tested positive 2 or 3 weeks ago and have not died in the meantime, you can in no way be classified as a ‘case’. As for tests. You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to apply Bayes Theorem to the results of ‘test and trace’. The low prevalence of ‘positives’ in society means that a positive result is almost meaningless. And yet here we are. Slaves to the mask. I will be… Read more »
Bravo Finn! Can’t quarrel with any of that.
US v. Russian military expenditure.
$1,134 v. 65 billion.
True figures.
Let the Exceptional Folk bankrupt themselves.
‘One answer is that the MAD (mutually assured destruction) doctrine is being challenged, in the corridors of US power, as never before. See this piece from 2014 by former Reagan appointee, Paul Craig Roberts. Those within the Beltway, and across the Potomac in the Pentagon, who believe a nuclear war with Russia and/or China can be won are no longer outliers on the far fringes of Sensible Discourse.’
The only way there is any logic for challenging this is if those challenging it locate themselves in extremely isolated and rural communities, below the radar, or in bunkers deep underground.
If they stayed inside the Beltway, any sane response to US nuclear aggression would be the simultaneous annihilation of:
You could of course add to that wiping out the organised crime centre of Chicago, the extremely dodgy morals of the state of Florida.
But if the genocidalists are hiding like cowards under the Rockie Mountains, what good would that do?
However, a pre-emptive strike inside the Beltway might catch the madfolk on the hop, I guess?
It all makes you wonder what the communist Chinese and Islamist Iranians plan with their own nukes. One clue is that the Iranians reportedly wrote ‘death to Israel’ on the ballistic missiles they keep testing. BTW Rhys, do you think OG mods will remove my comments today like they did yesterday, so joining the Guardian and all the other outlets busily silencing critical opinion and impoverishing debate?
Iran doesn’t have any “nukes.” Unlike the Zionist Terror Regime with its huge illegal arsenal of 400 warheads targeted at all its neighbours, gifted to it wholly free of charge by its bought and paid for Shabbos whores in America/ Britain/ France/ Norway. Of course the Zionist billionaires who run all the media will be ready to justify whatever bloodthirsty antics the Chosen Folk choose to indulge in, as always, like Clinton promising to “obliterate” Iran to please her Zionist paymasters.
This guy is “soft” Hasbara.
Only Israel or U$A has the right to destroy another country.
Israeli children wrote death epithets on Israel missiles and shells in the losing war with Hezbollah.
They were taken on picnics and barbecues to watch the pogroms in Gaza.
Good clean fun for all the Chosen family.
It’s interesting the way that embarrassing little facts which might show the AZ-Empire in a rather unprepossessing light are usually despatched down the memory hole pronto. Here’s one for the books. In 1978 hostilities broke out between the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge on the Vietnam/Cambodian border. Of course there were big outside players involved, Russia on the Vietnamese side and the US/China on the lovely Khmer Rouge side. The Vietnamese Army easily knocked over the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot who were forced to the border of Thailand from which they waged long-term guerrilla warfare. The interesting thing was that the United States, that bastion of freedom and democracy both armed and fed the Khmers. According to journalist Elizabeth Becker, U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski “himself claims that he concocted the idea of persuading Thailand to cooperate fully with China in its efforts to rebuild the Khmer Rouge.” Brzezinski said, “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. I encouraged the Thai to help the D.K. [Khmer Rouge government-in-exile of Democratic Kampuchea]. The question was how to help the Cambodian people. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.” In fact, U.S. support went well beyond encouraging others to rebuild the Khmer Rouge. In neighbouring Thailand, the Khmer Rouge formed a large guerrilla army, while Cambodian politician Son Sann established an army that would be ultimately named the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front (KPNLF). Prince Norodom Sihanouk launched his private army, the Armée Nationale Sihanoukiste (ANS). On the political front, in 1979 the United States and China wielded their influence and pushed through a vote in the UN General Assembly in favor of granting Cambodia’s UN seat to the ousted Khmer Rouge regime, and terminated a UN investigation into Khmer Rouge crimes. The following year, the… Read more »
Yes, but you have to realise these were the “moderate” Khmer Rouge. (Maggie Thatcher.)
As foreign policy goes both the UN and Russia/China are still playing by the Westphalian system of relations between sovereign states – a system brought about by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 when ended the wars of the Reformation. The precepts of the Treaty was based on the following premises.
1. States operated within defined borders.
2. Each states sovereignty was recognised by the others.
3. Principles of non-interference were agreed.
4. Religious difference between states were tolerated.
5. States might be monarchies or republics.
6. Permanent state interests or raison d’etat was the organizing principle of international relations.
7. War was not always eliminated, yet it was mitigated by diplomacy and balance of power politics.
8. The object of the balance of power was to prevent one state from becoming so powerful it could conquer others and destroy the world order.
Similar in many ways the UN precepts – but the UN doesn’t have any real power.
The AngloZionist playbook is, to say the least, rather different. Might is right. I would call it the Mafia playbook. How come the ‘left’ got dragged into this obscene, stinking milieu? They appear to be more concerned with Transgender toilets rights than the future of humanity. The capitulation of the ‘left’ to abject imperialism and he insanities of ‘Responsibility2Protect’ is the greatest crime against humanity in the 21st century.
Are you also critical of the Chinese communist playbook, or do you only see Yellow Man Good and Orange Man Bad? If so, that seems a bit limited and inconsistent. Those hating injustice should surely protest tyrants who put minority populations in concentration camps where they face death and organ harvesting. BTW, the treaty of Westphalia strikes me as so much wiser than most of today’s geopolitics.
Your counterarguments are empty.
Ask for the playbook on how to deal with Iraq previously and it will illuminate you that this approach goes nowhere.
You sure are impatient, young fella … If we can get the Leviathan out of the way (you know who, Nici), then we’ll take on the next level; and then the next level …
Take it easy; one day at a time; first things first.
If one means by the ‘left’, the CIA Party (formerly known as the SEP) and its ilk, has one considered that they are nothing more than disinformation operations of “Langley-land”, in its attempt to discredit Socialism.
One asks, would Eugene Debs or any honest Socialist be calling for the closing of public schools, the wholesale abandonment of civil liberties or espousing policies that threaten large numbers of the populace to homelessness, hunger, destitution and death? Not to mention the matter of the oligarch psychopath Billy Eugenics and his “racist/classist” Euthanasia Death Shot.
Such crocodile teared hypocrisy. Such slimy dishonesty and prevarication. Such lies and deception. Such fraudulence, misusing poor Socialism as a cheap agitprop for their calumnies. Shame on them! Oh wait, they have no shame.
The betrayal of the WSWS/SEP (and left in general) is staggering. The website has become wall to wall fear porn promoting the COVID hysteria. However, they are not alone: Counterpunch, Consortium News, Black Agenda Report, even the Grayzone has have for the most part drank the COVID Kool Aid. Is this all the work of the CIA? Or, are some so fearful of being labeled conspiracy theorists that they censor themselves? I don’t know, But I would like to know…
Conspiracy? There is no speculation there. Merely stating what “THE PANDEMIC” is, a mass fear panic hysteria propaganda campaign is stating the obvious for anyone who looks and thinks about it critically.
You know in a backhanded sort of way, those who are caught engaged in pernicious, and criminal, activities labeling as “conspiracy theorists” those who catch and take them to task for their abhorrent actions, are admitting, indirectly, their guilt– in the vein of “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
I feel like I am fighting a war right now, I know I am ready to riot, so pissed off with this and now those disgraceful money grabbing unethical lazy fucking health workers in the NHS the nurses are demanding more hush money, they have slogans that make them out to be like soldiers etc, it is fucking grating and makes ones blood boil, I would happily give all those compassionless self serving EVIL fucks their P45’s along with every Dr too, fuck it, we are not going to access them anyway.
Small success in this war, though it may be coincidence but the reach group who run the Walesonline and many other media outlets, have done a Graun and stopped comments, it could just be an update, but opinion was shifting towards this being a hoax, so those here who go to local media and make comments, it is having an effect, off course it gets replies from the usual suspects but fuck them too.
I agree with Dr Vernon Coleman about how we should have stoned the workers in the NHS not applauded them.
“disgraceful money grabbing unethical lazy fucking health workers in the NHS the nurses” .. did I miss something of huge importance? A shitload of them are clearly being played, but those adjectives belong elsewhere, my friend.
“now those disgraceful money grabbing unethical lazy fucking health workers in the NHS the nurses are demanding more hush money, they have slogans that make them out to be like soldiers etc, it is fucking grating and makes ones blood boil”
If that is what is happening, then street walkers are also health workers.
Instead of talking about that what everybody here knows for a long time (wars by the US), I would be very curious to know what side Phillip Roddis has chosen since he wrote on April 30 (1.5 months after the lockdown started) that ‘Whether or not the pandemic is overstated – and my view is it’s too early to call either way’
And that
‘On such matters we may pick the wrong side. Which side that is we can’t yet know, however much we make assertions to the contrary.’
https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/30/an-open-letter-from-philip-roddis-to-offg/
What side is Philip Roddis on now? Can he elaborate? Or is it still too early to call either way?
In a recent comment reply on his own blog, Philip stated that he is still ‘agnostic’ on the issue.
From his open letter:
I wonder what his view of the huge and ongoing censorship of one side of that opinion divide is?
As the govenment and academics in his old university (Sheffield) are drastically revising down the figures of ‘Covid deaths’, and the work of dismantling the unused ‘Nightingale hostitals’ goes ahead, I wonder how long it would take for history to show him (or us, in his view) how severe this pandemic has been? A couple of years maybe ? Yeah, a couple more years of oppressive lockdowns and economic restructuring should do it. At the end of that, the tech oligarchs would own and control absolutely everything, thereby “showing capitalism’s inability of putting people before profits”.
Like Caitlin Johnstone whom he has written admiringly of recently, he seems to have a desire to avoid the subject, or even claim that those raising questions are being ‘religious’ – the latter being a total inversion.
I have a high regard for Philip Roddis and want to stay on amicable terms with him. For one thing I share his socialist/Marxist interpretation which, it is clear, many on OffG do not. And here I see a familiar divide (9/11, here we go again!) The ruling class – or powers that be or vested interests or whatever you want to call them – are not much troubled by the Right because they themselves ARE on the Right. It therefore doesn’t matter if the Right explore conspiracy theory. But the Left are a perpetual menace to the rulers who therefore work hard to separate conspiracy theory from this Left. Philip was broad minded enough to eventually “come around” to the idea that 9/11 wasn’t what it was purported to be. However, having read what he has written on this, I have a depressing feeling of having to retrace my steps by about 20 years. I feel that the Left, or those on the Left who have finally come to mistrust the official account of 9/11, are, as it were, starting at the beginning i.e. covering ground already covered by those who suspected from the start. Philip has opened up to the notion that 9/11 was a case of “Let it happen”. I very much disagree – but the reasons are too long to go into here and don’t so much matter under the present circumstances. I only mention this to set the scene for my main idea: that Philip constantly complains about “fanaticism on both sides” with regard to the virus – but he very much means the skeptical side. Now the issue is this: as Marx once said, the ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of its ruling class. Thus, those ideas can present themselves in… Read more »
The ruling class – or powers that be or vested interests or whatever you want to call them – are not much troubled by the Right because they themselves ARE on the Right. It therefore doesn’t matter if the Right explore conspiracy theory. But the Left are a perpetual menace to the rulers who therefore work hard to separate conspiracy theory from this Left. There are many on the Right, what is called the ‘far Right’ (i.e. not conservatives) who would vehemently disagree with you there. I try to read all sides, and I have to say that they have a point. The degree of censorship of strong Rightwing opinion is at least as high as that bearing down on the Left – I would suggest it is higher. Pretty much the entire US political, media and corporate establishment are demonising the movement of white nationalists there. Rightly or wrongly, these people (and there are a lot of them) believe that their interests are unrepresented and are being discriminated against on a huge scale. They think their culture is being systematically destroyed. They are being driven from the internet. “Good” might be the response of many on the Left. However, it doesn’t really support the notion that the ruling class give the green light to rightwing conspiracy theory, or that they are straightforwardly ‘of the Right’. The Right are fundamentally nationalists. The ruling elites are not. NB The most obvious and ubiquitous rightwing conspiracy theory is illegal in many countries, and such illegality is spreading. I think that the reason that 9/11 cannot be discussed on the Left is that questions about it lead inevitably to Israel and Israeli supporters (and even those on the Left who do dare to question it, stop short of really looking into who perpetrated… Read more »
These people are perfectly correct that “their interests are unrepresented” but they are not “being discriminated against”. That is the language of “liberal democracy”. The vast majority are unrepresented by the political system because the wealthy elite are the only ones so represented. This has nothing to do with “white” or any other “nationalism”. Once again, we have terms set out in a language that is divisive – and deliberately so. “Their culture” is not being deliberately destroyed but simply rendered irrelevant by the relentless capitalist drive towards universal abstraction. And as for the ruling elites not being nationalist, they can be anything they want. The aforementioned capitalist drive renders all moot.
I don’t see why talk of 9/11 should necessarily lead to Israel. Again, the nationality is irrelevant. The ruling powers care nothing for these divisions, only with what furthers the cause of profit maximisation. Naming names is irrelevant. There are plenty more to fill any vacated positions.
I don’t see why talk of 9/11 should necessarily lead to Israel. Again, the nationality is irrelevant. The ruling powers care nothing for these divisions, only with what furthers the cause of profit maximisation. Naming names is irrelevant. It is not that it ‘should’ necessarily lead to Israel (and Jewish American zionists), it’s that it does. Yet such consideration is off limits to the Left. We all have to choose whether we start with the facts of events around us and build a political view from them (or at least one that addresses those facts); or we start with a political view and try to fit the facts (or the ones we care to admit) into that view. The Left, it would seem to me, choose the latter. Nationality in the broader sense, definitely does matter to those people (above). It might not matter to you, but it does to them, such that genuine national sentiment that might lead to nationalist policy is only permissable for one country : Israel. Again, the Left choose the ideal of ‘a politics of international class solidarity’ : something that sounds good on paper but has never really existed. Working class people generally have always wanted a sense of national identity combined with a fairer economic system. Yet who has really offered them that in the sense of a political platform ? Nobody in my lifetime. This is why the Left have fallen away into a middle class liberal flatulence. Naming the powers (not just names) is the first step to confronting the obstacles to a fairer more peaceful world. The Left, (and I write this as a former campaigner for the Left) are an obstacle to that first step, because they are hamstrung by their attachment to ‘correctness’. Truth is the only thing… Read more »
Yes, it’s important not to have presuppositions – and on that note, here is a question: What is more important – your own actual experience of your own actual life OR what the media tell you? I ask because I am working class as is – it goes without saying – everyone I work with and most I encounter. So, I tend to react badly to people who tell me “what the working class want”. So, let’s examine both sides here i.e. my actual experience and this odd construction I keep hearing about “what the working class want”. I am Scottish. Everyone knows what that “means”: tartan, tossing cabers, the Sky Boat Song and big brawny redheads who say things like “Och aye the noo!” Well some of that is true. And it matters not one jot. It’s mostly kitschy stuff to lure in the tourists. And I daresay there are plenty of Americans who walk with a swagger and a cowboy hat and say, “Hi y’all!” which matters just as little. What is important to me and to everyone I know is making money to have a livelihood. We live in a capitalist world and all is conditioned by the profit motive. And this capitalism itself cares not one jot for any of the cultural paraphernalia. But then there is “what the working class want”. Where does that come from? I sometimes hear people say it. And – here’s the thing: they are talking about class. Not nationality or religion or culture etc. It’s CLASS. And that really answers itself. But the construct you are using is the one constantly hammered in by the media who are anxious to sew division. Hence the emphasis on all that cultural paraphernalia whereby a term like “Jewish American zionists” can be used… Read more »
If cultural identity (NB not yours, but in the general sense to those who see value in it) is no more than ‘paraphernalia’ to you then there is no point in pursuing the conversation.
(I am sure many/most self identifying Jewish people would also reject your reduction.)
I am saying that people can have whatever notion of themselves they like – and this is encouraged by Western affluence. Yes, in previous times it really did matter that you belonged to this or that tribe but ironically, in those days, the various cultures really were separate and so, each one could see itself as the “only one”. Nowadays we live in an increasingly multicultural world where these differences are becoming increasingly superficial. And the ceaselessly repeated jeremiad against “multiculturalism” is just a way of trying to deny that. So the insistence on the importance of cultural identity is becoming increasingly irrelevant in a world where all are subjected to the constant demands of corporate capitalism. Indeed, such insistence is positively damaging to the causes of the working class – and the ruling class know it hence the constant emphasis on cultural identity.
And that comment about me denying the self-identification of Jewish people is disingenuous. The context in which you raised the issue of “Jewishness” was as a pejorative i.e. as if Jewishness was some essential ingredient in the planning of 9/11. Zionism may indeed benefit from that false flag, but “Jewishness” has nothing to do with it.
Willem, thanks for reminding me why I no longer read articles by Roddis, and why having read halfway through the one above I regretted the waste of time.
“Who were neither for God nor for Devil” — Dante, Inferno, The First Circle
Good article Phillip which begs the question, what does China do? If she stops being the workshop of the world, unemployment will follow. For the time being America holds the upper hand.
First strike? The Chinese can hit Washington DC within 20min, the Americans have already said they cannot defend against Chinese or Russian hypersonic missiles, when push comes to shove, give the bully a bloody nose, if it goes nuclear we can all say “bugger” as we glow in the dark which we wont, so I would be inclined to strike first and strike them hard.
@Lundiel: “For the time being America holds the upper hand.”
I seem to remember the U$ share of China’s export trade as 18%. When did Uncle $cam become sole customer of “the workshop of the world”?
The sole important customer actually. Why do you think China doesn’t concentrate on Euro bonds? Because US treasury bonds are the safe option in the global economy… Europe may not exist in its present form in the near future.
Also, as Phillip says, America has no intention of paying over a trillion dollars to China. The real reset through war is yet to come. Unlike the imagined reset through Covid-19.
China has not been spending their profits on US bonds for quite some time now.
They are investing in BRI infrastructure projects across the world.
Pisses our bankers off a lot that!
Chuckle, not ‘alf … it scares the living hell out of them, rightly so,
When just the mayor of Hainan had thirteen and a ‘alf tonnes of
Gold, buried in his back garden… do the math… how many mayors
Have a back garden in China?
Fun comment, DG
THAT would be a war that the US, Israel and good morning Cheltenham, could NEVER, EVER win… over nine time zones in Russia alone, let alone Chinese communications from the Dark Side of the Moon… lundiel, my friend, take a mo. To research for yourself how well developed the fully encryptable, Photon Internet functions. Not just from Space, but already tried & tested overland, at a range of one thousand two hundred kilometres, antenna to antenna… and there is ground zero chance of Bill Gates having a single clue, what to do, with electronic engineering way above Bill’s pay grade or intellect…
Excellent question L.
The answer is very simple. They will be selling to their OWN consumers.
Their burgeoning middle classes will all want mod cons and insurance and pension plans.
They will also transform primary, secondary to tertiary industries.
As has happened to us in the ‘first world’
The Chinese middle class will be close to half a billion soon! Bigger than the populations of the EU or USA.
Exactly!! this is the Achilles heel for the US and its greedy corporations. They have all tried really hard to get in the Chinese market. It will leave us here in N America (I am in Canada) with limited to NO manufacturing base. The Chinese are brilliant in the long game and we are so vulnerable–hence the US sabre rattling.
When China was stilllll 900 million farmers, back in the 80′ s, their average IQ was way higher than Western dumbed down model examples, symbolising Bush-Fires,
Prematurely…
A couple of factors that need to be borne in mind.
Mailman here. Pepe Escobar on Cui Bono:
“The narrative that the Beirut explosion was an exclusive consequence of negligence and corruption by the current Lebanese government is now set in stone, at least in the Atlanticist sphere. And yet, digging deeper, we find that negligence and corruption may have been fully exploited, via sabotage, to engineer it.”
https://thesaker.is/who-profits-from-the-beirut-tragedy/
This is all discussing the theatre on stage. For anyone more interested in the overall production : the backstage processes, the script writers, directors and the rest, they would have to read more widely than Benjamen, Cohen, Grayzone, Roberts or Zizek.
The Gowan citation kind of argues against his own book’s title. I contest that Israel cannot be understood as a ‘beachhead’, except through a sustained avoidance of many pertinent facts. Only by comprehending that country’s position vis a vis Russia, China together with the USA, as well as its position in cyberspace, can anyone make any kind of meaningful comment upon geopolitics in the post war period or today.
The anti-war Left, for all their principled stance on the very real imperialist aggression of the US, are ideologically hobbled and thereby incapable of really getting to grips with this.
Can the anti-war left get to grips with the reality of Islamist imperial aggression against Israel and others? Or will they continue to only ever condemn violence by non-Muslims? Do they realise they betray their own stated principles by doing so? Violence is just if it’s not American?
(I predict this blasphemous post will very soon be removed, as OG mods emulate the Graun approach to critical debate, the one they say they hate).
But if one takes the viewpoint that Israel has no right to exist, certainly the Palestinians would fill the void if Israel’s Muslim adversaries do take out Israel.
Only Israel and its vassals have the right to destroy countries.
Keep trying to get “suspended”, as your comments are somewhat of comic relief.
Eye rolling not comic relief for me– the comments are SO 2010– please Corbyn is gone– move on
That must be the imperialist aggressive kids in Gaza being gunned down by the IDF Kiddie Killers. Terribly aggressive, those kids.
Oh geez– playing the victim card now — sigh– when you cant make a real argument yup play the victim 🙄
“… can anyone make any kind of meaningful comment upon geopolitics in the post war period or today.[?]”
1:
https://youtu.be/AzL2UGaXp-M
2a:
https://www.unz.com/article/the-devils-trick-unmasking-the-god-of-israel/
2b:
https://merip.org/1988/05/shamir-on-terrorism-1943/
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/this-is-neoliberalism/
—
https://thoughtmaybe.com/topic/banking/
—
http://princesoftheyen.com/
—
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-spiders-web-britains-second-empire/
—
http://thirdworldtraveler.com/Globalization/Globalization_watch.html
Westerners are the most dangerous people on the planet they fall for every horror story imaginable and are quite frankly absurdly ill
Yup I will back that– here in Canada the average 65 year old is on 3-5 medications– WTF? Trying to get people to limit or get off their meds is probably easier with heroin addicts–
“So what has changed? Companies like Apple, once glad to outsource US jobs, are now confronting the reality that they have also outsourced skills and technology.”
Didn’t take our smart teckie businessmen very long to realize that fact. It was only around 1940 that the great French poet, Paul Valery, warned us that would happen.
Interesting to read your comment. As we know, many people in the West are still merrily working from home and are always eager to stress how convenient and workable it is. No one appears to point out to them that they may be committing professional suicide. I heard a commentator on the radio several weeks ago making the astute observation that the more people work ‘successfully’ from home, the more it sends the message to employers that such jobs could be outsourced abroad for a fraction of the salaries currently being paid.
excellent point
They knew– it was all short term gain (heh I want a plane and tons of money) with no thought of the future.
Trump clearly has his own unique set of issues (to put it lightly), but the establishment limousine liberals who pretend that he “ruined America” are living in a dystopian fantasy world bought and paid for by the blood of innocents. They’re very keen on saying things like “when people show you who they are, believe them” when it comes to anything Trump or Republican, but completely ignore the brutal massacres and famine sponsored by American
exceptionalismimperialism over the past 75 years. The same goes for Fox News watching Mountain Dew drinking neo-cons who blame ‘leftists’ and ‘Marxists’ for “ruining America” while Uncle Sam subsidize Wall Street fraud and criminal banksters who line their pockets with public funds.How people can live with such cognitive dissonance explains the psychology behind the present ‘pandemic’ hysteria. It also demonstrates the effectiveness of divide and conquer. Sadly, things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.
It’s quite easy to spot someone’s depth or lack thereof in political Know-how. If someone says it’s the commie Marxists you can tell they’re an idiot. If they’re of the left and say they don’t like maggie thatcher for taking school milk away then that shows the levels of knowledge on that evil wench
Lack of depth or political know-how is made most visible by making grand claims without a shred of reason and evidence to back them up. Such claims are called slander and typically seek to attack hated individuals, not ideas.
You mean like this?
“Those hating injustice should surely protest tyrants who put minority populations in concentration camps where they face death and organ harvesting. BTW, the treaty of Westphalia strikes me as so much wiser than most of today’s geopolitics.”
Geo-politics are West centered, which explains why you assert only Western ideas are of merit.
By the way, Israel also organ harvests.
Great piece!! Many thanks!!
One has a right to defend oneself, and others, but not to aggravate others, without any just cause. To often in the West we look back uncritically at the allies armies, as if they are, or were only heroic, and whilst there was great sacrifice, determination, courage and suffering, there were also war crimes committed by all sides, not just by German and Japanese armies, but also by the allies, when they killed civilians, in Germany, Japan, or elsewhere, and when whole cities are carpet bombed, killing and injuring children, the elderly, men and women of different professions and moral abilities, when infrastructure is destroyed so much it leaves a generation of poverty, disease, and the trauma of orphans and widows one must then question what are we fighting for ? It’s like the ” war on terror ” narrative, that is a contradiction when one considers certain exploits of warfare, like the deliberate targeting of civilians, is itself terrorism. When we describe a soldier only as a hero, and the enemy only as a villain we often neglect the complexity, the war heroes celebrated in the UK may have been considered war criminals too, by those injured, orphaned, or widowed, by their bombs. We need diplomacy, for people to consider all others intentions, and not assume some pantomime over simplified role. I will give an example, a young suicide bomber that killed dozens, in a real documentary I saw, is viewed by the family of the victims as an evil murderer, however the boy’s own family claim he himself was brainwashed and manipulated by a cult, and was too young and naive, told he wouldn’t go to Paradise if he didn’t make the sacrifice of Jihad, the poor 15 year old wept before committing the act, really he was… Read more »
War is business and the U.S of A always means business. Even someone else’s business. Democracy is how you register the business. Making sure everything is above board and legitimate. After all we do vote for these warmongers.
“After all we do vote for these warmongers.” You want to bet? Want to buy some bridges?
In SHAM DEMOCRACY USA it is all rigged. FAKE, FAKE, FAKE, FAKE. FAKE. FAKE. The American People do not have choices, they have owners. Their owners have now ordered them to muzzle themselves. Wonder if next they are going to order them to sit on their haunches and squeal like pigs. Will that be something to see and hear.
Well cooper in the UK of A the government did a half decent job for a short while of getting people to stand at their front doors and clap for a minute to nobody all to feel good about their new prison and it’s medical staff
Don’t need any bridges, thanks. Doesn’t matter if they’re rigged. People still vote. That’s what really matters to these owners.
voting is a huge ritual
To win elections in a democracy, candidates must win voters. That means representing voters’ interests and concerns and promising to deliver on them. If ruling elites fail to do this or turn out fraudulent, voters can remove them. Government performance is thus subject to the people’s judgement or verdict every few years. Politicians’ power is limited. But in autocracies, plebs have zero power over politicians, and can never remove them. How many longed for elections and a chance to vote out Hitler or Stalin, I wonder? For these reasons, I support government controlled by the people or demos, never government which controls the demos. Only democracy, with all its flaws and failures, offers that chance. Voting is not a huge ritual; it is power to the people, perhaps their only peaceful option. Any alternative system invites tyranny.
BIG FUC***G FAIL!
“If ruling elites fail to do this or turn out fraudulent, voters can remove them.”
Do you actually believe this?!
You have really drunk the Kool-aid! Do you think voting is fair and representative anywhere? Even here in Canada its not!
Did Russians own the surprise US election result of 2016? So many claims, so little evidence.
This raises questions like: What about wars started by non-Americans? Do African or Islamic or communist warmongers and tyrants also exist? Are wars waged for financial profit worse than wars caused by religion or ideology, and if so, why? Why do so many posters here only criticise American violence, as opposed to Chinese or Iranian violence? I smell hypocrisy.
Posters criticize only U$A aggression because it is the gift that keeps on… TAKING! Virtually ALL confrontation since WW2 has been orchestrated by the U$A, with debilitating effects on the victim country’s inhabitants.
The Guardian now has glitches and gremlins in the comment functions when it comes to the topics of security, arms race, militarism etc. It’s not the browser and in trivial topics like sports it works again. They do not want people to promote peace, a word which has even been deleted from the vocab – it’s only security now. We cannot give up.
One of the topics we ought to pay more attention to is that the Americans bombarded countries like Vietnam and Laos, then left without taking their unexploded bombs with them. Unexploded ordnance is a huge issue, killing 1000 Vietnamese per anno, in addition to the birth defects from Agent Orange = dioxins. We need to put that out a little more that they stuff things up and then leave others with the damage.
Our current phase is especially dangerous as the war activities in Iraq, Afghanistan etc wind down and the war profiteering companies seek to construct another war outside the US.
Only mutton reads the Guardian.
It’s read by closet racist middle class yuppies with rich boy guilt
You are clearly familiar with the accusations against US intervention in Vietnam. The Guardian too. But you make no mention of the case in favour of opposing the communist takeover. How can we the jury judge without the full story? Also, do you have a defence case to show how the communist victory benefitted Vietnamese or Cambodian people in any way? I only recall genocide and ‘the killing fields’.
….it the unfortunate condition of the people that the few with appointed power are given the ability to send those same people to destoy others, and in turn, theirselves – That being the idea of this reshaped democracy, the anthropological destruction of being…..hence the repeated slaughter.
Capitalism is by far the best path to prosperity. Only problem is we don’t have Capitalism anywhere on the planet, though the nations closest to it do the best. For you people who think we do have a Capitalist system I simply have to point out that the value of 50% of EVERY transaction on the planet is dictated by the United States Federal Reserve. In a nation where people lack the imagination to see this scamdemic for what it is, try REALLY hard to imagine a world where 50% of every one of your personal transactions were dictated by Iran and let me know how you would feel about that! If you’re looking for things that you personally can do to scale back the influence/wealth of the powerful (In the US, Russia, China or anywhere else.), AND at the same time increase your own, start with these 3 things: 1) Save at LEAST 10% of all you earn. If you are not saving at least that amount you are no better than a slave living for what your master gives you to eat! (Get yourself a free PDF copy of “The Richest Man in Babylon”: http://horizonspeakers.com/wp-content/uploads/ebooks/the-richest-man-in-babylon.pdf Easiest book you’ll ever read on personal finance and is taught in parable so enjoyable to read as well.) 2) Keep your uninvested money in physical form. Either in Gold, Silver or, more pragmatically, physical currency (Remember in the most recent financial panics in the US (2008), Cyprus (2012), Greece (2015), etc. people were trying to get physical cash, not Gold or Silver.). If you must use the banking system only use Credit Unions or Savings and Loans. Keep only as much currency in it as you need for expenses over the course of a couple of weeks or a month tops (Business owners will need more because… Read more »
You even admit that a pure capitalist state does not exist. Nor have we ever had one. So what are you basing this rather bold statement on aside from McCarthyism driven CIA propaganda?
I apologize for the confusion. My reply can only be understood by those who have studied history, outside of the propaganda public school system of course.
But a quick way to see what I’m describing is pick ANY random nation and look at their history. On average when those nations gave the common man more freedom to trade with whomever and whenever they chose (Capitalism) things for them became dramatically better. When the common man’s choices were reduced then things ALWAYS got worse for them but relatively better for the powerful. If you are a powerful person then Capitalism also helps you. However, pretty much any other form of government will help the powerful more… which is why we have pretty much any other form of government BESIDES Capitalism. 🙂 I hope this helped to clear up any confusion I may have caused with my assumptions (And yes I realize this is an example of what happens when you “Assume”.).
But Marx said socialism would follow capitalism and replace it. Most of us believe that happened in places like Russia, China and Cuba. So are you saying a socialist state never existed either?
“Capitalism is by far the best path to prosperity.”
Those were old Kick-Them-To-The Curb Jone’s sentiments exactly But he put it in a more detailed and colorful way. “Grand Theft, Embezzlement, Stock Fraud, Armed Robbery and Murder are the best paths to general happiness.” On the sly he and JD Rockefeller use to slum around together down on the corner of Delancey and Bowery and throw nickels at the hoi polloi.
I address your concerns in my response to The Dude Abides
above your comment. I hope I was able to clarify my response and I apologize for any confusion I may have caused.
So do socialists produce wealth, or only seek to control it?
“Wealth?” Do not speak Gekko. “Greed is not Good”
Resource. “Public and democratic apportionment is the issue not CONTROL”
Not so sure about keeping currency. Might have worked in the past. But perhaps now the pragmatic option to keep silver. Up over 50% in recent months and the coins ,(Britannia, Maples,) double the price to buy. Still cheap though.
Financial disaster is around the corner – but as with everything else, the public are asleep to this fact. Id also suggest folk look at where there pension funds are invested (yes, a bore know) – as these will take a massive hit soon imo.
As they say in the financial world – DYOR.
(Do your own research)
Other good alternative forms of currency, toilet rolls, paracetamol, rice, flour and pasta. In that order.
During the start of the lockdown, these were judged as necessities by the public but they slowly moved from one to the other so there was time to stock up. Personally, I started with tins, rice and flour – easy to get while everyone else buying rolls. One good thing about the British public is their predictability in a crisis.
I suggest the £1 shop a good place to stock up slowly for the next wave. They do a great a range. And Lidl, and Sainsburies for their expiry date offers.
Not really suggesting, profiteering but stocking up makes sense, and avoids the dreadful queues we’ll see again soon.
By the way, now a good time to claim any benefits from the government. You’ll get an award within a week and they are literally chucking money away. Might not last long when they realise their tax raising abilities are totally screwed.
I live in the US so I can’t address the details of your reply. However, I do agree with your over all thought and thanks for increase the value of this thread! Thumbs up to you for helping others through this scamdemic.
I am a prolific accumulator of Silver myself. However, when was the last time you went into a store and tried to buy food or toilet paper with silver? “One experiment is worth a thousand expert opinions.”. Give it a try and see which is, “Pragmatically”, the best one to have when you need to feed your family next week! This is not to criticize you but to underscore what I said.
Thanks for the download
“Not weal capitalism” sit down you fucking tool
Advice for investors i.e. for the 1%.
CIA is attempting regime change in Iran, Venezuela, Lebanon, Syria, and now China via trade wars, and interference in China’s Red Sea region whilst the CCP are merely waiting for regime change in the USA via Trump’s outser.
Israel is most assuredly behind the Lebanon bombing, and we can expect much more on that false flag front running up to November’s election outcome.
USD is no longer a safe currency due to USA infrastructure degradation and lack of years of investment that all got off-shored into tax havens so that investors would not lose income to municipal tax upkeep in all the states of the disunion.
America cannot compete in the world of 5-G technology so they opted to blow up the monopoly game so that China would be forced into submission to American totalitarianism.
Xi knows Trump is a pure unadulterated confidence man with nothing up his sleeve for November.
MOU
Are any of your many claims based on evidence?
FTA: Our passive consent is once more being manufactured for another Empire Strike.
Which empire are you referring to?
The series of wars and revolutions (c. 1914-45) was a Globalist project to re-order the World. This is the Globalist empire; aka the New World Order. The US was conquered by the Globalists in 1913 with the formation of the Federal Reserve. That war (US vs the Globalists) is still continuing, but it appears to be coming to a conclusion; hence all the squealing.
The war is not against China, and it’s not even against the CCP (who most people seem to confuse with China); rather, it’s against an insurgency. — Covid911 – INSURGENCY 2,081,277 views Jun 28, 2020 Joe M – The Storm Is Upon Us You’re being scammed by enemies of America who occupy powerful positions in government and the media. November 2020 is the way we, the people, can fight back. Know your enemy. Ditch the masks. Rise. #Covid911 Please use this link to share on social media, because they have blocked the regular youtube link in an effort to suppress the information and help Democratic Party insurgents retain power in November. — Covid911.tk I expect a swift deletion, because the enemy we are fighting controls this battleground. Save this link on Bitchute just in case: https://www.bitchute.com/video/w64rFwcO2TSO/ Right now the country is being torn apart by the biggest political hoax and coordinated mass-media disinformation campaign in living history. You may know it, as Covid19. In 2015, as directed by the globalist criminal corruption network known as the Deep State, President Barack Obama authorized millions in funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the location now understood to be the epicenter of the Covid19 outbreak. The research carried out here was to provide the agent for a global biological attack on a scale never before seen – one that would be timed for release within an election year – starting the very day unsubstantiated efforts to impeach President Trump fell apart. With their base of operations in the Democrat establishment, the Deep State shadow corporation embarked on a coordinated irregular warfare insurgency, with multiple aims, all under the cover of a global pandemic they themselves manufactured for this purpose. Enabled by their owned and controlled corporate media monopoly, they instigated a heavy-handed… Read more »
It’s good to see people blaming the globalist elite rather than the evil USA or those very dumb and violent Americans in Trump hats.
“Mass Murder International. Making the planet safe and exploitable for corporate fascism, war racketeering, mass murder, grand theft on an industrial scale, terrorism, torture, mayhem and other depraved and deranged acts of criminal psychopathy.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Xp7whYQ1BAg/ViFaZuyLquI/AAAAAAAACK8/lv9lMHy4IhQ/s1600/bm5620528a.jpg
http://tonusperegrinus.blogspot.com/2015/10/maj-gen-smedley-butler-war-is-racket.html
I feel sorry for Nagasaki. All that immense suffering, and all it can hope for in the history books is to be an afterthought to Hiroshima, barely mentionable like some parasitic twin.
The Chinese population of Manchuria and the many hundreds of 1000s of POWs who suffered immensely in Japanese captivity might be less sympathetic than you are.
yep kleptomania