War Madness

If Vietnam was a mass neurosis, Ukraine is flat-out bonkers. It has never been clearer that our political leaders have no regard for human life and are determined to control the world even at the risk of nuclear war. The US, with all the European NATO countries dutifully following their leader, is waging a proxy and economic war against Russia that is killing untold numbers of Ukranians and Russians and wreaking economic havoc not only in Russia but primarily in Europe and also in the rest of the world, including the USA. (See Michael Hudson here, from 28:30.)

On May 1, on Face the Nation, Representative Adam Kinzinger said "Congress is vastly and largely united on the issue of Ukraine. We recognize Ukraine is fighting for all of us." He continued:

I just introduced an AUMF, an authorization for the use of military force, giving the president basically congressional leverage or permission to use it if WMDs, nuclear, biological or chemical are used in Ukraine.

The next day Oliver Stone pointed out in a Facebook post that the US (and Ukraine) may be "setting the stage for a low-yield nuclear explosion, of unknown origin," which nonetheless would be blamed on Russia to provide a pretext for the US/NATO to engage in direct combat, very likely with "retaliatory" nuclear weapons. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists confirmed recently that "many in the US defense establishment - the military, government, think tanks, and industry - promote the perception that a nuclear war can be won and fought" (see here), which is a bewildering insanity but unfortunately a real one that must be reckoned with.

The level of stupidity and willful ignorance displayed by Kinzinger and, if he is right, virtually all of the US Congress and the president is mirrored 100% in the mainstream media. This is the first time I can remember, and it seems to be the first time ever, including the McCarthy period, that the MSM have been so tightly controlled and the general population, as a result, so thoroughly brainwashed that the Russophobic march to Armageddon seems unstoppable, despite the insanity of this trajectory.

RussiaToday.com and SputnikNews.com and official Russian government websites (with transcripts of speeches and press conferences of government officials, in English!) have been banned in the US and in Europe. Although there are some "outliers of people," as Kinzinger puts it, "that seem to show some Putin sympathy," those who stray from the accepted doctrine - that Putin, aka "Hitler," launched an unprovoked aggressive war against plucky, freedom-loving Ukraine because he wants to recreate the Soviet Union and must be stopped by all means necessary - are being excluded not only from the MSM but also from social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even PayPal with no explanation, much less justification.

This is unprecedented. In Vietnam days we didn't have the internet, but there were major protests starting in1964 and plenty of protests and sit-ins, teach-ins, SDS meetings and so on after that. There is nothing comparable today, either on the right or the left. There is no antiwar movement, just a few dissident voices on the internet that, with almost no exceptions (like Tucker Carlson), are banned from the major newspaper and television outlets. Unless you seek them out, you will not hear from people like (in no particular order) John Mearsheimer, Stephen Cohen (RIP), Noam Chomsky, Michael Hudson, Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Pepe Escobar, Jimmy Dore (yes, the comedian!), Chris Hedges, Caitlin Johnstone, Dan Kovalik, Tulsi Gabbard, Rand Paul, Richard Medhust, Eva Barlett or websites like ConsortiumNews.com, TruthOut.org, AntiWar.com, OpEdNews.com, TheGrayZone.com, MintPressNews.com, Telesurtv.net, Multipolarista.com, OrinocoTribune.com, MoonofAlabama.org, TheSaker.is, et al. As they are banned from Facebook and Twitter and YouTube they migrate to new, smaller outlets like Substack.com, Telegram.org, and Rumble.com.

But it is foreseeable that even these smaller alternative media will soon be threatened by the newly formed Disinformation Governance Board of the US Dept. of Homeland Security, whose task will be to "protect national security by combating foreign misinformation and disinformation." This is now headed by a 33-year-old named of Nina(compoop) Jankowicz, whom Tucker Carlson has appropriately lampooned, though I'm afraid it is no joke. Caitlin Johnstone also devoted a few choice words to this absurdity, to which I commented:

The US government can no longer be taken seriously, except to oppose it. It is exactly on a par with its Ukrainian puppet, and the EU/NATO states as well, as exemplified by Boris Johnson and Annalena Bareback (Ms. Trampoline, German Foreign Minister). And Joe Biden. I don't think they even want to be taken seriously. They are telling us (as I have been saying for years): "We have you all by the balls, we don't give a f*ck what you think, and this is what you're going to get so just do what you're told or we'll get serious and just obliterate you." The Russians, I think, have received this message and are reacting to it. "We the people" have not. By a long shot. We are still wasting our time trying to be reasonable and argue with facts and logic. This just won't work, and I think the "deep message" that the "Deep State" has for us is that we had better realize that before they show us what it is really like to live in a totalitarian -- the totalitarian -- state.

What can we expect of a nation that pays lip service to "freedom of speech" but persecutes the foremost journalist of our time, Julian Assange, who has dared to report the crimes of the state and the powerful? (And there are many more examples.) It cannot be surprising that the history of the Ukraine conflict is generally ignored, with few exceptions. On the day of the invasion, Ted Galen Carpenter wrote on 19fortyfive.com, reprinted in The Guardian on Feb. 28:

History will show that Washington's treatment of Russia in the decades following the demise of the Soviet Union was a policy blunder of epic proportions. It was entirely predictable that NATO expansion would ultimately lead to a tragic, perhaps violent, breach of relations with Moscow. Perceptive analysts warned of the likely consequences, but those warnings went unheeded. We are now paying the price for the U.S. foreign policy establishment's myopia and arrogance.

"Perceptive analysts" like John Mearsheimer and the late Stephen F. Cohen, not to mention Putin himself, have indeed been warning about US "myopia and arrogance" for years. But now it is no longer acceptable in the MSM to mention the neo-Nazis in the Ukraine government and military, the eight years of Ukrainian terrorism against the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass resulting in 14 thousand deaths since 2014, the failure of the Ukrainians to implement the 2015 Minsk 2 agreement, the 32 years of NATO eastward expansion despite Russian protests and warnings, and now, bringing all this to a head, the continuing refusal of the US/NATO and Ukraine to commit themselves to excluding Ukraine from NATO.

This is the reason for the Russian invasion, and the key to ending the war, but even now, after almost three months of devastation, it is seldom even mentioned. What one hears in the Western media, instead, from both the left and the right, is how important it is to continue supplying Ukraine with ever-more sophisticated weapons so that they can defend themselves against the evil Russians who have attacked them for no good reason and must be stopped at any cost.

Germany is especially to blame for ignoring the history that made it possible for Germany even to exist as a state in its current form. It was the primary beneficiary of the 1990 treaty that allowed reunification, on the condition that no foreign troops or nuclear weapons would be deployed in the former East German territory. There has been controversy about the "legality" of the promises made by the US in 1990 that after German reunification NATO would not expand "one inch eastward" (Baker), but there has never been any question about the Russian objections to any such expansion.

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