A few years after WW I, the poet T.S. Eliot opened his famous poem “The Wasteland” with these words: “April is the cruelest month … “ I think he may be wrong, for this October may be the cruelest month of all, followed by November. Unprecedented. You can hear the clicking and grating of spades if your antennae are attuned.
We are on the brink of ominous events created by the U.S. war against Russia. Yet so many people prefer to turn away and swallow the lies that the U.S. wants peace and not war and is the aggrieved party in the crisis.
A friend of mine, who is constantly charging me with having turned right-wing because of my writing that accuses many traditional liberal/leftists of buying the national security state’s propaganda on the JFK assassination, “9/11,” Syria, Ukraine, Covid-19, censorship, the “New” Cold War, etc., and whose go-to news sources are The Guardian, CNN, The New York Times, NPR, ABC, seems oblivious to the fact that right and left have become useless terms and that these media are all mouthpieces for the CIA and their intelligence allies in the new Cold War; that the so-called right and left are joined at the hip with their obsession with Pax Americana.
There are no right and left anymore; there are only free and independent voices or those of the caged parrots repeating what they have been taught to say:
“Polly wants a war!” “Polly wants a war.”
I am afraid that I will never convince this dear friend otherwise and I find that depressing. Yet I know such views are shared by millions of others and that even if nuclear war breaks out their minds will not change. Propaganda runs very, very deep into their psyches, and they desperately want to believe. Hitler said it clearly in Mein Kampf:
The masses … are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
Hitler learned so much about “manufacturing consent” from his American teachers Edward Bernays, Walter Lippmann, et al., who accomplished so much brainwashing of the American people. They were all masters of the lie and millions continue to believe their followers.
If nuclear weapons are again used (and everyone knows the only country to have used them), these believers will blame their use on Russia, even though Russia has made it very clear that it would only resort to such weapons if the country’s existence were threatened, while the U.S. continues affirming its right to preemptively use nuclear weapons when it so chooses.
And even if nuclear weapons are not used, the recent sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines and the bombing of the Crimean Bridge, both clearly the work of U.S./NATO/Ukrainian forces, have raised the ante considerably. The door to hell has just been opened wider, and I suspect not by accident, as the U.S. elections approach.
In his recent television talk, Vladimir Putin made Russia’s nuclear position very clear, mentioning nuclear weapons only in the context of Western threats of using them, as Moon of Alabama reported. Putin said:
They [the U.S./NATO/Ukraine] have even resorted to the nuclear blackmail. I am referring not only to the Western-encouraged shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which poses a threat of a nuclear disaster, but also to the statements made by some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO countries on the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction – nuclear weapons – against Russia.
I would like to remind those who make such statements regarding Russia that our country has different types of weapons as well, and some of them are more modern than the weapons NATO countries have. In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff.
The citizens of Russia can rest assured that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will be defended – I repeat – by all the systems available to us. Those who are using nuclear blackmail against us should know that the wind rose can turn around.
When the long-planned U.S. war against Russia, so obvious to anyone who sees past the propagandist headlines and studies the matter, soon explodes into full-scale open war for all to see in horror, as it will, these true believers will dig in their heels even more. They will find new reasons to justify their faith, and it is akin to religious faith. The infamous Rand Corporation’s 2019 report cited above, “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia,” cites the following as part of the war process, as summarized in the Strategic Culture article, but it will have no impact on the faithful believers:
- Providing lethal military aid to Ukraine
- Mobilizing European NATO members
- Imposing deeper trade and economic sanctions
- Increasing U.S. energy production for export to Europe
- Expanding Europe’s import infrastructure to receive U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies
I keep thinking of the U.S. false flag Gulf of Tonkin “incident” in 1964 and how effective that was in convincing the gullible population and the complicit U.S. Congress – by a vote of 88 to 2 in the Senate and 414 to 0 in the House of Representatives (try to imagine such criminals) – that U.S. destroyers were innocently attacked by the North Vietnamese and that Lyndon Johnson should be given the authority to respond to repel “communist aggression,” which, of course, he did by bombing North Vietnam and sending 500,000 troops to savagely destroy Vietnam and Vietnamese nearly 9,000 miles from the United States. Johnson simply lied to wage war and Biden is doing the same today. But far too many people love their leaders’ lies because it allows them to secretly feel justified in the lies they themselves tell in personal matters. And what may be true of the distant past, can’t be true today.
In 1965, the folk singer Tom Paxton put Johnson’s lies to music with “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation.” In those days, art was used as a weapon against U.S. propaganda.
Today we can ask: Where have all the artists gone?
We know that the U.S. has, for the time being, abandoned sending hundreds of thousands of troops into another country; now it is drones, air warfare, special forces, the CIA, mercenaries, terrorists, and intermediaries such as the Ukrainian conscripts, Azov Nazis, and NATO surrogates. Such was the lesson of Vietnam when the draft led to massive protests and resistance. Now war is waged less obviously and the propaganda is more extensive and constant as a result of digital media.
There are many such examples of U.S. treachery, most notably the attacks of September 11, 2001, but such history is only open to those who take it upon themselves to investigate.
Now there is the corrupt Ukrainian U.S. puppet government, which is nearly 6,000 miles from the United States, and must be defended from Russian “aggression,” just like the corrupt South Vietnamese U.S. puppet government was.
To those who buy the mass media propaganda, I ask: Why is the U.S.A. always fighting to kill people so far from its shores? Doesn’t it sound a bit odd that our wonderful leaders destroyed Libya, Vietnam, Serbia, the Philippines, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc., countries so far away, and now that Russia defends itself from U.S./NATO encroachment a few miles from its borders, it is accused of being the evil aggressors and Vladimir Putin called another Hitler like all the leaders of the countries we attacked? Have you completely lost your ability to think? Or do you, like little children, actually believe the disembodied newsreaders who deliver your prepackaged television propaganda?
If I ask such an obvious question, does that make me a “right-winger”?
If I state two facts: that Donald Trump – whom I consider despicable and part of the divide and conquer game as Biden’s flip side, and have said so – did not start a war against Russia and that Russia-gate was a Democratic propaganda stunt and is false, does that make me a right-winger? My friend would say so. Do telling facts define your political allegiances, whether they be facts about Republicans or Democrats?
No. I will tell you what it makes me: A disgusted human being sickened by all the lies and people’s gullibility after decades of evidence that should have awakened them to the truth about all these politicians and the war against Russia underway. I have lost patience with it. For decades I have been writing about such propaganda to no avail. Yes, those who tended to agree with me might have moved a little closer to my arguments, but the vast majority have not budged an iota.
I wish it were different. It is my desire. Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan sage of the Americas, who knew what was up and what was down when he wrote Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World in 1998, said this about Desire:
A man found Aladdin’s lamp lying around. Since he was a big reader, the man recognized it and rubbed it right away. The genie appeared, bowed deeply, and said, ‘At your service master. Your wish is my command. But there will be only one wish.
Since he was a good boy, the man said, ‘I wish for my dead mother to be brought back.’
The genie made a face. ‘I’m sorry, master, but that wish is impossible. Make another.’
Since he was a nice guy, the man said, ‘I wish the world would stop spending money to kill people.’
The genie swallowed. ‘Uhh … What did you say your mother’s name was?’
The desire for peace and security is a universal dream. Sometimes it is hidden in people’s hearts because they have swallowed the lies of the evil ones who wish to wage war against those who insist on security for their country, as Russians are demanding today.
It is very frustrating to try to wake people out of their manufactured consent and the insouciance that follows as we are being led into the abyss.
But I will not stop trying. Galeano did not. He left us these words of universal resistance:
We shall be compatriots and contemporaries of all who have a yearning for justice and beauty, no matter where they were born or when they lived, because the borders of geography and time shall cease to exist.
We must save the world before it is too late.
This may interest you Edward, if you haven’t already seen it;
https://www.winterwatch.net/2022/10/re-examining-the-untimely-death-of-a-presidents-son-john-f-kennedy-jr/
Thanks, Johnny. I have done a lot of research on JFK, Jr.’s death, and it was clearly an assassination. I saw him and his wife in my town a few weeks before, at a bakery. His death hit me hard.
Ed,
Your words and your references and your experience bring me to tears again… I too have wondered, poked, questioned the narrative enough to be black listed as so far left I’ve gone right they say. But that isn’t what induced the tears… Its that with such eloquence you compose a symphony or reason it seems only 3% can really understand.
It got a little less lonely reading this piece and the comments below. Thank you Master Ed
with great respect, Martin Wayne
I remember the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis when we had JFK with competent US diplomats to avoid catastrophe. But now we are on a train to disaster with lunatic warmongers in the US in control. Do we expect the brain addled Biden and neocon/neolib infested White House to lead us out of this? Or the Republicans if they take control of Congress?
Russia has said very clearly that a new security arrangement must be negotiated in Europe – or God help us. They are forcing us forward to decide how then will end. It might just end us.
Good article that says what must be said and that cannot be repeated often enough.
As for the laudatory comments in favour of Eduardo Galeano, especially his Memoria del fuego, I feel these are not entirely justified, if only because it is rather a lengthy and repetitive elaboration of his prior work Las venas abiertas, which is a magnificent political statement. Alongside Pino Solanas’ La hora de los hornos, and Gutierrez Alea’s Memoria del subdesarrollo, Galeano’s earlier book is essential for understanding the 1960s and 1970s in Latin America.
As a matter of fact, familiarising oneself with Latin American history and culture, especially from that period, may be crucial to understand what is happening around us in these days.
Many generations ago, an elderly woman once said; “if you don’t know what kind of society you live in, get a job on an assembly line”!
I knew someone who worked in the coal mines at the age of 13 !
Today, everything is worse.
No matter how terrible the horrors are today, I don’t think it has fully sunk in yet !
I feel frightened and yet this is the time to share grief, personal feelings, fear, those things that many, most people feel/think are too personal to speak about. Yet, ‘feeling’s are the common bond among all humans, regardless of age, ethnic group, nationality, country of origin and so forth! Today, fear is the only thing many people have, and this is very sad to tears.
So how do we remedy the situation?
We’re agreed it needs remedy.
The problem is the way we are being governed. The systems of democracy have disappeared behind a cloud of emergency measures needed to protect us from some world disaster. The MMP system of representatives can now be dispensed with because thanks to internet technology we can represent ourselves personally.
A system which allows us to voice our opinion, vote and vote again on issues of the day is easy to set up. Look at this page for example, a microcosm of the NZ government page through which we will voice our opinions and be responsible for the outcome. Couldn’t be easier.
Bravo, Edward, as usual…
People are extremely quick to dismiss any dissenting information as having already been discredited. If the information doesn’t fit with the master narrative, they’ll reflexively say, “Oh, that’s just a far right conspiracy theory.” Or, “Oh, that‘s just Russian propaganda.”
People will say, “Oh, you always believe that they’re lying”. As if everything were a matter of ‘beliefs’, rather than facts or knowledge… As if I just pulled my ‘beliefs’ out of my ass, rather than having arrived at my ‘beliefs’ as a result of decades of research, study, investigation and experience…
People will demand, “How do you know your information is accurate?” They’re like people who’ve been taught that eating fast food is healthy, and who’ve been eating fast food every day for their entire lives, demanding, “How do you know your food is healthy?” They have absolutely no perspective.
It doesn’t matter how much factual evidence I present to support my point. Even if they have zero factual evidence to support their point, they’ll simply reply, “Well, someone somewhere out there will present information that counters your evidence. So there!”
People are never actually ‘discussing’ the topic that I think we’re discussing. Regardless of whichever topic we’re ‘discussing’ (9/11, Donald Trump, COVID-19, Ukraine), what’s actually happening is… I’m saying, “What we’re being told isn’t true.” And they’re saying, “Yes, it is.”
The Gap In Understanding World Affairs
It is becoming increasingly evident to me that the big question has to be: How is it possible for all the evil work carried out by DaDeepState all over the world, even considering the financial incentives involved to the co-conspirators and their natural propensities for evil – all coordinated with seemingly amazing effectiveness for centuries?
Well, the Bible actually has the answer and I have posted this thread before – There are several factors…. beginning with this question: Are We Governed by Humans? – https://crushlimbraw.blogspot.com/2020/11/are-we-governed-by-humans.html?m=0 – and that reference is just the starting point for our research.
This is a hard thing for both secularists and churchians, but that is the gap which needs to be filled. There is a dimension to life which most folks never see, and I don’t mean just non-believers, because Christianity of the Apostles has been changed to Churchianity – you can check that out at my library as well.
When Paul said ‘we’re not just dealing with flesh and blood, we’re dealing with wicked spirits in high places’ he wasn’t talking about Halloween tricks.
Just to give you hint where this is going, in order for DaMasterDeceiver (Satan) to rule over humanity, his first order of business is to infiltrate and corrupt the church……the rest is easy peasy.
Worldwide that is basically mission accomplished, except for a few outposts here and there – notably Catholic Abp Vigano, the Russian Orthodox church and a collection of small independent congregations around the world, including the US.
There is another interesting ‘coincidence’ – both Satan himself and his synagogue have convinced the world that they don’t exist. How about that, eh?
God ALWAYS has a remnant which carries on the work and gives them eyes to see…..and the picture is becoming clearer every day!
Ed of course you’re writing splendidly states the state we’re in regarding the cognitive divides.
I would, as I do on occasion, assess those whom I’ve thought of as “friends”, how I thought they were and where I was (psychologically and in general) at to have considered that person a friend now that they clearly aren’t.
None of this happened yesterday, nor February 2022 with Russia, or 2020 with Operation Covid…all the way back to the murder of JFK which revealed so many inconvenient truths, nine eleven, all the false flags going at least back to the Maine, the complete obliteration of the constitution under Lincoln and so much more.
But with Russia, the West and today mostly the US already invaded her back in and around 1917. Other powers (re: financial) kept the Soviets going for decades. Certainly, Eurasia is part of the full spectrum domination strategy long in effect by US Pentagon officials and state departments.
World leaders (or better stated, actors) are a different breed in that there is much unstated to the public, and much stated between them. The US has been importing at least a billion dollars of goods from Russia each month since the Russian special operation began. That’s $6 billion through August from a nation Biden said we must not do any business with. Pipeline explode, but at least one is still intact and gas continues to flow through Ukraine, no less to European importers. What’s one to make of these apparent contradictions?
There is obviously a much bigger picture that falls on the heels of Operation Covid – the mass mind-adjustment (likely of your friend) which some of us avoided (is your friend anymore inscrutable that you or me?).
But Ed, I sense the great angst, aside from the obvious recent lies and the drift of friendships, and deaths as a direct result of the “special” operations wherever they are occurring (we, the people have long been the target, the enemy). The notion of WWIII with nukes keeps coming up. Why? I would say we should question this major fear threat that has been over our heads for 77 years or more. Is our species really able to destroy, once and for all life on the planet? Does the threat even require the latter be true at all? Do TPTB really want to lose everything to a “bomb”?
Ed, as always, Pax!
Degenerates can only degenerate…., from the accumulative effect of 246 years of practice!
When everyone around you is immobile in their views of reality despite anything you might tell them or show them, it can result in a very lonely feeling. That is more or less what I have experienced since the fiascos of the last couple of years got underway.
I’ve always been curious, and my constant compulsion to learn more and know more may even be the one passion that keeps me going in my later years. While I’m no genius, I’ve always shown myself a good deal more capable than average in almost everything I have attempted, and what I am finding discouraging is that only now towards the end of my seventh decade on the planet do I feel like I’m finally starting to figure out a few important things and see through the BS cloud. I was always too busy to pull on all those loose threads, and I think this may also be the problem all those other people have–you know, the ones that you can never seem to convince.
Thanks for another great piece, Ed.
Eduardo Galeano told us so much about how the world works per Euro-Anglo domination. Thank you Ed for mentioning his valiant work.
Beautifully put, Ed. But . . .
You say the U.S. is not “the aggrieved party in the crisis.” Perhaps it feels aggrieved because the United States and Europe need Russia’s resources and policymakers see the destruction of Russia as the only way to get them.
It’s worth noting that Presidents Johnson and Biden were consummate members of the Senate club, and that the House has become more of a club although less exclusive. Both are overly peopled by “professionals,” lifers beholden to the corporations that write the laws and can employ incumbents who lose their seats.
Putin is “called another Hitler”; that’s when he is not called another Stalin who wants to re-establish the Soviet Union.
Keep it up!
Ahh, Galeano cited. “Memory of Fire.” The Anglo Saxons, the Iberians, the rotten French and Germans and Spaniards, what they did to the “New World”?
A unique and epic history, Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire trilogy is an outstanding Latin American eye view of the making of the New World. From its first English language publication in 1985 it has been recognized as a classic of political engagement, original research, and literary form.
“From pre-Columbian creation myths and the first European voyages of discovery and conquest to the Age of Reagan, here is ‘nothing less than a unified history of the Western Hemisphere… recounted in vivid prose.'”–The New Yorker.
But Armageddon? Imagine that, FDR, and our so-called social security net. Republicans want us to work flipping burgers till 70, now, when in fact we do not live longer and better, and the health care system, and the mRNA injury fun?
This is a sane and caring and democratic nation? SS on the cutting block so we can throw trillions at Blackrock, Pharma, MIC, AI-VR-AR, the entire FIRE perversions — finance insurance real estate!
Here, Nasser, on that FDR’s spinelessness:
Roosevelt wanted to design Social Security in such a way as “to preserve the system of private enterprise for profit…[and] compete as little as possible with private enterprises.” The program was to deliver what the market by itself could not, yet at the same time should embody to as great an extent as possible the principles of capitalism. To Roosevelt, this meant that a plan for social insurance must conform as closely as possible to the existing system of private insurance; it must reflect actuarial principles. A capitalist conceptual framework models the provision of public benefit such that the individual is prior to the social, the private prior to the public. Social Security was made to inhabit and accommodate itself to the space within which private profit is made.
Roosevelt’s conception of Social Security required, then, an economic counterpart to the private individual insurance premium. This was to be the payroll tax, a deduction from the wage. Roosevelt held to this conceit well before he was elected and he reiterated the same commitment years after the Social Security Act was passed. As early as 1930 he declared that any benefits accorded to workers through legislation should “be a result of their own efforts and foresightedness” so that they would “be receiving not charity, but the natural profits (sic) of their years of labor and insurance.” In 1934 he instructed Congress that the program’s funds “should be raised by contribution rather than by general taxation.” In his first meeting with the drafters of the legislation he reiterated that old age insurance “must be self-supporting, without subsidies from general tax sources.” Shortly thereafter he told an assemblage of experts on social insurance programs that Social Security “must not be allowed to become a dole through the mingling of insurance and relief….[and] must be financed by contributions, not taxes.” In response to strong objections from Rexford Tugwell, one of his most articulate underconsumptionist advisors, the president emphasized that he was “inclined toward a wholly contributory scheme with the government not participating.” Two years after SSA was passed Roosevelt reiterated his basic conception of social insurance, and its grounds: “[A]s regards social insurance of all kinds, if I have anything to say about it, it will always be contributed, both on the part of the employer and the employee, on a sound actuarial basis. It means no money out of the Treasury.” (7)
Not only did the contributory scheme mean no money out of the Treasury, it could become a cash cow for Treasury. Roosevelt and his fiscally conservative Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau were in accord that the contributory system had the double economic advantage of linking social benefits to work and ameliorating some of government’s financial problems. Morgenthau anticipated that Social Security taxes could be lent to the Treasury to finance New Deal deficits (much as Lyndon Johnson in 1967 concealed deficits by creating the “unified budget,” counting Social Security surpluses as part of the government’s general operating budget), reducing government’s borrowing needs. Funding Social Security out of general revenues would not have permitted this gambit.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/12/how-franklin-d-roosevelt-botched-social-security/
So, Ed, death by a thousand social net cuts, death by environmental racism, death by social impact investing, death by universal basic putz income? Death by chemicals in baby’s formula and mamma’s breastmilk and papa’s sperm? Right, this country, capitalism, is the cancer that keeps on giving, even before we are born and beyond our graves!
Rereferring to Dissident Voice piece, which will I am sure host this one you wrote, and thanks for that.
https://dissidentvoice.org/2022/10/crucial-choices-ahead-for-beloved-besieged-social-security/
And, my piece: “Another 400 Acres Up for Sale! That would help with houselessness, aging in place, intergenerational cohesion, farm-centric living”
https://dissidentvoice.org/2022/10/another-400-acres-up-for-sale/
“The Nobodies
Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping
poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on
them—will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down
yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a
fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their
left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right
foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.
The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the
no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life,
screwed every which way.
Who are not, but could be.
Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.
Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.
Who don’t create art, but handicrafts.
Who don’t have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police
blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.”
― Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
Thanks Ed. Like Gary, I can empathize completely. Although “left” and “right” have lost their meaning, tribal membership remains more important for the muggles than evidence based, rational arguments. I think the invention of the TV changed the vast majority of people from critical thinkers and active citizens into passive consumers. They have indeed become “reality adverse.” Those of us who yearn for peace in a multi-polar world are swimming against a strong current.
I think you’re right Skip in identifying TV in turning people into “passive consumers” of reality. Sadly my dearest closest friends and family appear quite content to literally plop their derriers on the couch, push a button, and passively watch a screen as their pre-made, pre-packaged “opinions” on any and all important issues are conveniently delivered to the comfort of their homes. The fact that in many cases those “opinions” are being delivered by millionaires in the employ of billionaires seems to cause not the slightest reflection regarding the “nature” of the pre-packaged “reality” they are being daily indoctrinated with.
I think one of the most difficult aspects of the last few years emotionally, has been coming to terms with what it means that almost all of the people I love and hold dear now live in some sort of parallel universe completely separate from what I perceive to be “reality” – with all the levels of disconnection and lack of real intimacy that implies.
Such a strange surreal time we live in Ed. I sadly relate quite deeply to your situation with that friend. I think many of my friends and family alike see my willingness to personally examine everything from the 1960’s assassinations, to 9/11, to the official Covid narrative, to the Ukraine war, to whether I think I still know what a woman is – all as somehow indicative that I’ve morphed into a “right winger” of some sort. Though I personally agree with you that the labels “right” and “left” no longer have meaning.
I’ve always found truth to reside in the old Upton Sinclair quote:
“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.” But perhaps it needs updating to something like:
“It’s difficult to get a person to understand something when their comfort and their entire sense of reality depends on not understanding it.”
We seem as a people, particularly my “liberal,” “progressive” and “woke” friends and family, to have become completely “reality adverse.” As if facts and physical reality have now been relegated to the back seat because their “feelings” are more important than the truth of things. Talking about reality “triggers” them. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable. Having to examine one’s entire belief system is uncomfortable. Having to reevaluate it means in one’s life to no longer believe the old lies one has been indoctrinated in since childhood is uncomfortable. And God forbid we Americans should ever experience “discomfort.” Why, that would be positively “un-American.”
Thank you Ed.