.Gangsters of Capitalism.: Jonathan Katz on the Parallels Between Jan. 6 and 1934 Anti-FDR Coup Plot We speak to award-winning journalist Jonathan Katz about his new book .Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, ...
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I just finished reading Jonathan Katz's Gangsters of Capitalism. It helped me understand what's really going on in Ukraine, where they're at it again. I mean they're fighting yet another White People's inter-capitalist war between Mafia dons. I'm talking about Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden.
Let me explain the connections by first identifying those involved as no better than blood thirsty mafiosi, then linking them to Katz's book, and finally suggesting the shocking conclusion thoughtful people might draw after considering the gangland realities of the Ukraine fiasco.
White People's Inter-capitalist War
To begin with, like everyone else, I'm appalled by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Nothing can justify such blatant transgression of the UN Charter. Putin's a thug.
However, I'm even more dismayed by our nation's part in provoking the conflict, and its apparent reluctance to help bring it to conclusion. Biden's a thug too.
[On that latter point about wanting to prolong the war, Hillary Clinton's recent pronouncements are telling. She apparently wants to turn the Ukraine war into a decades-long disaster modeled on Afghanistan's. Think about that. Clearly, from the safety of her mansion in Chappaqua New York, her faux heroism provides courage to continue the fight (6000 miles away) to the very last Ukrainian.]
Most outrageous of all however, is both sides' entertainment of the possibility of nuclear war -- over Ukraine, a place most Americans can't find on the map! Mr. Putin's explicit threats and and Zelenskyy's appeals for a suicidal "no fly zone" should scare the hell out of anyone.
All of that should also make us doubt the sanity and validity of "leadership" on both sides. That's my main point here. These people are insane!
And I'm not just talking about Putin and Biden. The real powers in question are the deeper, darker forces that the two front men represent. In Russia we refer to the latter as "the oligarchs." Over here, we call them the "deep state" - you know, the military industrial complex, fossil fuel magnates, bankers, financiers, the CIA, FBI, NSA -- the whole disaster.
Like the Mafia, those forces and the sock puppets just mentioned are accountable to no one - only to their own personal and class welfare including most prominently their bank accounts. They're like Cosa Nostra bosses - willing to kill bystanders as they've "gone to the mattresses" fighting over protection money, gun running, "territory," "credibility," "reputation" and "respect" on behalf of conflicting "families."
Let me say it again: neither Putin nor Biden represent anyone resembling you or me or ordinary Ukrainians and Russians. For instance, Biden and his henchmen can find billions and billions for war, but nothing for a Green New Deal, infrastructure, universal health care, guaranteed incomes, or free university education.
No doubt, we should feel for these godfathers' victims. But allegiance to either side and what they represent is entirely misplaced.
Gangsters of Capitalism
Such realizations have come home to me starkly as I finished Katz's eye opening Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire. It's one of the saddest books I've ever read.
It has made me realize how despite my supposed sophistication, I've been completely duped over the last month of conflict in Ukraine into taking the sides of capitalist gangsters fighting over those traditional Mafia concerns just mentioned.
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