The thinking is that once you've decided on the goal (Ukraine victory) anything that inhibits you from reaching the goal is nonsensical, regardless of the risks involved. In the old days we would have called that fanaticism.
1000 FAITH LEADERS CALL FOR A CHRISTMAS TRUCE IN UKRAINE: Inspired by the miraculous Christmas truce of 1914, leaders petition the Biden administration to push for negotiations
Here's a recent discussion by Chris Hedges and Dennis Kucinich that speaks to wars and escalation. Many readers here have probably seen it, but in case not:
Thanks for another impassioned plea for principled peace.
I hope it will grow into a loud chorus but am afraid that the overwhelming propaganda flood of the last 8 or 6 years has been so effective as to remove questioning and indeed, critical thinking from the abilities of possibly a majority of Americans as well as those in other places where western media saturation is so thorough. So it's going to take either a significant, mass emotional crisis, personal economic losses, or a lot of time (a luxury we may not have) to build a public pressure to counter the influence of the MICIMATT complex and persuade the Administration and/or Congress and NATO to do the right thing here.
As for the Russian leadership: while they've been at least vocally open to negotiations for the last 8 years if not longer and even since the SMO (Invasion) began, their willingness is probably declining with each escalatory step by NATO/ the U.S. Biden's most recent remark about not having our "security policy" dictated by Russia is itself provocative, given that our real national security interests have never been threatened but Russia's has been - directly, and by us.
I hope that things have not gone already too far. That people like Stoltenberg and others can speak of fears that things will cascade out of control even as they continue to push the escalation buttons - says that there is stark raving lunacy among those determining the outcomes- at least in the West. And we can never know how real existential fear (as wiser heads have warned that Russia has) will translate into action.
I just hope that 'my fellow Americans' will, before too long, begin searching their hearts and minds to find again their valuing of a peaceful world.
Thanks, Dennis. I haven't heard today's Mercouris commentary, but will listen later. I think he usually presents a fairly objective perspective (well, as objective as one might be) and it echoes that of others like Scott Ritter, Col. Macgregor, et al.
In any case it is indeed only a matter of time before this insane, unnecessary war is over, one way or another. We can't foresee the outcome because the escalations add to or present new risk factors including thermonuclear devastation. Ironically or as shockingly as this may seem to some, Putin seems to be the most rational figure in this crisis. Yet, as we know, when dangerous beings are forced into a corner with no reasonably secure escape, they can be far more dangerous because of that.
US VETERANS CALL FOR HOLIDAY TRUCE, CEASEFIRE, AND NEGOTIATIONS TO END WAR IN UKRAINE:
“We want urgent, good-faith diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine, not more U.S. weapons, advisors, and endless war.” by Gerry Condon 121822
Winter's arrival in the northern hemisphere brings increased concern about the war in Ukraine—now in its tenth month. Concern about the suffering of civilians under siege, and the fate of millions of refugees. Concern about the energy crisis and militarization in Europe. Concern about war-related food shortages in Africa. And concern about the possibility of a civilization-ending nuclear war.
In the face of these compounding disasters, the world’s people are confronted by the apparent readiness of Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., and NATO to dig in for a long war in which there will be no winners.
VETERANS FOR PEACE (VFP) shares all of these concerns. As far back as 2015, we called for the withdrawal of all NATO forces from Ukraine's borders with Russia. Like many observers, we saw this unnecessary and totally avoidable war coming. On February 24, 2022, the day that Russia invaded Ukraine, we issued an urgent call for Diplomacy Not War. VETERANS FOR PEACE is part of the Peace In Ukraine Coalition, which is calling for a ceasefire and diplomacy to end the war before it is too late.
Now, with the holiday season almost upon us, we join in the calls by religious leaders and others for a temporary truce in Ukraine, harkening back to the storied "Christmas Truce" in 1914 during World War I, when German and British soldiers came out of their trenches to celebrate together.
As veterans who have experienced the carnage of war, we feel great empathy for the young soldiers on both sides of this bloody war who are being killed and injured in the tens of thousands. We know all too well that the survivors will be traumatized and scarred for life. We say Enough is Enough—War is Not the Answer.
We want urgent, good-faith diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine, not more U.S. weapons, advisors, and endless war. And certainly not a nuclear war. We want to see those billions of dollars going for climate, jobs, healthcare, and housing, not for weapons manufacturers and war profiteers.
As soldiers who have resisted wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, we support war resisters on all sides, including Conscientious Objectors, draft resisters, deserters, and all who refuse to participate in killing. We especially encourage U.S. military personnel to refuse to participate in training, arming, advising, or otherwise engaging in this and other wars of empire. We furthermore call on the U.S. government to end all its wars and withdraw our troops from multiple countries around the world.
It is time to reverse course now. Drop the weapons. Embrace diplomacy and peace. For the sake of Ukraine. For the sake of Russia, Europe, and the United States. For the sake of all the peoples of the world. A holiday truce could be the first step toward peace.
Enough Is Enough—War Is Not the Answer!
Ceasefire Now—Negotiate, Don’t Escalate!
Support Soldiers Who Refuse to Kill!
Signed,
Enya Anderson, VFP National Board
Ellen Barfield, Past Vice President, VFP National Board; Co-founder, Baltimore VFP
Medea Benjamin, VFP Advisory Board, CODEPINK Women for Peace
Marjorie Cohn, VFP Advisory Board; Past President, National Lawyer’s Guild
Gerry Condon, Past President, VFP National Board
Paul Cox, VFP National Board
Michael Dempsey, VFP National Board; President, Monterey, CA, VFP
Jim Driscoll, VFP Climate Crisis and Militarism Project
Mike Ferner, Past President, VFP National Board
Mark Foreman, Past Treasurer, VFP National Board
Gerald Hassett, Vice President, New York City VFP
Matthew Hoh, VFP Advisory Board
Helen Jaccard, Manager, VFP Golden Rule Project
Eric Johansson, Past President, San Francisco VFP
Tarak Kauff, Past Member, VFP National Board
Bob Keilbach, Secretary, New York City VFP
Kathy Kelly, VFP Advisory Board; Board President, World Beyond War
Barry Ladendorf, Past President, VFP National Board
Gene Marx, Past Secretary, VFP National Board
Ray McGovern, VFP Advisory Board; co-founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Maj. (ret'd) Ken Mayers, USMCR; VFP National Board
Nick Mottern, VFP National Board; Co-coordinator, BanKillerDrones
Barry Riesch, Past President, VFP National Board
Doug Rawlings, Co-founder, VFP; Past Vice President, VFP National Board
Denny Riley, USAF, Our war in Vietnam
Susan Schnall, President, VFP National Board
Joshua Shurley, Secretary, VFP National Board
Alice Slater, VFP Nuclear Abolition Working Group
Rick Staggenborg, President, Mid-Valley Oregon VFP
David Swanson, VFP Advisory Board, World Beyond War
Mike Tork, Treasurer, VFP National Board
Michael Wong, Vice President, San Francisco VFP
Col. (Ret) Ann Wright, VFP Advisory Board; Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
THE EMPIRE IS BUILT ON OUR CLOSED EYES by Caitlin Johnstone 121622
You don't live in a free country. And no, it's not because they make you pay taxes or that time they made you wear a mask or whatever. The real reason you don't live in a free country is much, much bigger than that: you don't live in a free country because the minds of your countrymen are imprisoned.
Westerners think they're free because they can say whatever they want and vote however they want, but what they want is controlled by mass-scale psychological manipulation. Being able to speak and vote as you wish is meaningless if the powerful control what it is that you wish.
Westerners think they're free because they can speak their minds, and sure, it's pleasant to be able to do that. It would be pleasant to have your body trapped in a vat with your brain plugged into a blissful virtual reality world, too — but it wouldn't be freedom. It would be prison disguised as freedom. And that's what we have here: prison disguised as freedom. The science of modern propaganda has been developing alongside all the other sciences for over a century, and it has advanced just as much as the others have. And now it's at a point where it can control our very desires.
It's generally harder to recognize psychologically abusive relationships than physically abusive ones, because the abuse isn't as overt, and because the psychological faculties you would normally use to assess situations have been twisted and warped. That's what's happening here: people are being psychologically manipulated at mass scale into thinking, speaking and acting in a way that serves the powerful, and their minds have become too propaganda-addled to recognize that this is happening. We're not free, and most can't even recognize how unfree we are.
And that's our real problem: very few of us understand how profoundly unfree we are. Just how much our minds are being squished down into these teeny tiny boxes to prevent us from expanding and realizing our true power and our true potential, and the kind of world we could have. Our slavery is so pervasive that few can even see the full extent of it. Many will say they don't feel they live in a
free country, but if you ask them to explain why, they might say something about drug laws or government regulations on their business or whatever. The abuse is too big for them to truly perceive how bad the whole thing is.
So we march along to the drumbeat of our rulers, thinking, speaking, shopping, spending, consuming, scrolling, viewing, listening, voting and behaving exactly how they want us to, and mistaking all this for freedom, because we've been manipulated into wanting to do those things.
We won't ever know true freedom until we find a way to end this. To un-jack our minds from the propaganda matrix they have built for us and begin perceiving reality clearly. Our world. Our country. Our society. Our own minds. Our own authentic desires, free from manipulation.
Our task, then, is to help awaken as many people as we can to the reality of how unfree we truly are. To be voices whispering in the matrix, beckoning the dreamers toward the real world in as many varied and creative ways ways as we can come up with. To coax those eyes open.
If we can get a critical mass of people waking up from their propaganda-induced comas, the primary control mechanism holding our enslavement in place will have been shattered. The primary obstacle to a healthy world will be removed.
An entire empire has been built upon our closed eyelids. When we finally snap them open, it will have to fall.
As far as the invitation sponsorship goes, the process is that government officials go to the corporations and make them an offer they can't refuse. They don't need to bring along a Luca Brasi - I'm sure the corporations know the drill by now.
Does what sound reasonable, Ray? That Putin believes the US supports a preemptive first strike policy? Or that the US claims the right to launch nuclear missiles whether it has been attacked or not?
Because that same article stated: "US Nuclear Doctrine is the polar opposite of Russia’s because the US will not abandon its support for a first strike. And what’s more troubling, is that US Doctrine has been so grossly expanded that could be construed to include almost anything. For example, according to the recently-released Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), nuclear weapons can be used: 'in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.'
"Chew on that for a minute. That could include anything from a serious threat to national security to the sudden emergence of economic rival. Are we going to nuke Beijing because their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is projected to be bigger than America’s within the decade?
We can’t answer that, but it certainly meets the NPR’s grossly expanded criteria."
The thinking is that once you've decided on the goal (Ukraine victory) anything that inhibits you from reaching the goal is nonsensical, regardless of the risks involved. In the old days we would have called that fanaticism.
1000 FAITH LEADERS CALL FOR A CHRISTMAS TRUCE IN UKRAINE: Inspired by the miraculous Christmas truce of 1914, leaders petition the Biden administration to push for negotiations
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Ariel Gold | ariel@forusa.org | 510 599 5330
Bill McGarvey | bill@mcg-media.com | 201-725-4202123
A diverse and quickly growing coalition of nearly 1000 faith leaders in the United States–representing
a massive number of believers from every major tradition–have signed onto a Christmas Truce
statement demanding a temporary ceasefire in the War in Ukraine.
Spiritual leaders from across the spectrum of faith communities and a diversity of ideological
perspectives have become signatories in recognition of the fact that the way out of the war in Ukraine
will not be a military solution. They have signed on with the belief that a temporary ceasefire offers an
opportunity for moral clarity that could be the first step toward a negotiated peace.
Signers include Bishop William J. Barber II, president of Repairers of the Breach; Dr. Cornel West,
Union Theological Seminary; Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rainbow Push Coalition; Rev. Liz Theoharis,
Director of the Kairos Center for Religion; Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Jewish Renewal movement; Mary
Novak, Executive Director of NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice; Thay Phap An, the
Plum Village Buddhist community; Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, General Secretary Emeritus,
Reformed Church in America; Rev. Jim Wallace, Georgetown Center on Faith and Justice; (a full list
is available at forusa.org/Ukraine.
Full Press Release at https://forusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Christmas-Truce-in-Ukraine.PR_.12.13.pdf
Here's a recent discussion by Chris Hedges and Dennis Kucinich that speaks to wars and escalation. Many readers here have probably seen it, but in case not:
https://therealnews.com/dennis-kucinich-how-the-war-machine-took-over-the-democratic-party
Thanks for another impassioned plea for principled peace.
I hope it will grow into a loud chorus but am afraid that the overwhelming propaganda flood of the last 8 or 6 years has been so effective as to remove questioning and indeed, critical thinking from the abilities of possibly a majority of Americans as well as those in other places where western media saturation is so thorough. So it's going to take either a significant, mass emotional crisis, personal economic losses, or a lot of time (a luxury we may not have) to build a public pressure to counter the influence of the MICIMATT complex and persuade the Administration and/or Congress and NATO to do the right thing here.
As for the Russian leadership: while they've been at least vocally open to negotiations for the last 8 years if not longer and even since the SMO (Invasion) began, their willingness is probably declining with each escalatory step by NATO/ the U.S. Biden's most recent remark about not having our "security policy" dictated by Russia is itself provocative, given that our real national security interests have never been threatened but Russia's has been - directly, and by us.
I hope that things have not gone already too far. That people like Stoltenberg and others can speak of fears that things will cascade out of control even as they continue to push the escalation buttons - says that there is stark raving lunacy among those determining the outcomes- at least in the West. And we can never know how real existential fear (as wiser heads have warned that Russia has) will translate into action.
I just hope that 'my fellow Americans' will, before too long, begin searching their hearts and minds to find again their valuing of a peaceful world.
Thanks, Dennis. I haven't heard today's Mercouris commentary, but will listen later. I think he usually presents a fairly objective perspective (well, as objective as one might be) and it echoes that of others like Scott Ritter, Col. Macgregor, et al.
In any case it is indeed only a matter of time before this insane, unnecessary war is over, one way or another. We can't foresee the outcome because the escalations add to or present new risk factors including thermonuclear devastation. Ironically or as shockingly as this may seem to some, Putin seems to be the most rational figure in this crisis. Yet, as we know, when dangerous beings are forced into a corner with no reasonably secure escape, they can be far more dangerous because of that.
US VETERANS CALL FOR HOLIDAY TRUCE, CEASEFIRE, AND NEGOTIATIONS TO END WAR IN UKRAINE:
“We want urgent, good-faith diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine, not more U.S. weapons, advisors, and endless war.” by Gerry Condon 121822
Winter's arrival in the northern hemisphere brings increased concern about the war in Ukraine—now in its tenth month. Concern about the suffering of civilians under siege, and the fate of millions of refugees. Concern about the energy crisis and militarization in Europe. Concern about war-related food shortages in Africa. And concern about the possibility of a civilization-ending nuclear war.
In the face of these compounding disasters, the world’s people are confronted by the apparent readiness of Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., and NATO to dig in for a long war in which there will be no winners.
VETERANS FOR PEACE (VFP) shares all of these concerns. As far back as 2015, we called for the withdrawal of all NATO forces from Ukraine's borders with Russia. Like many observers, we saw this unnecessary and totally avoidable war coming. On February 24, 2022, the day that Russia invaded Ukraine, we issued an urgent call for Diplomacy Not War. VETERANS FOR PEACE is part of the Peace In Ukraine Coalition, which is calling for a ceasefire and diplomacy to end the war before it is too late.
Now, with the holiday season almost upon us, we join in the calls by religious leaders and others for a temporary truce in Ukraine, harkening back to the storied "Christmas Truce" in 1914 during World War I, when German and British soldiers came out of their trenches to celebrate together.
As veterans who have experienced the carnage of war, we feel great empathy for the young soldiers on both sides of this bloody war who are being killed and injured in the tens of thousands. We know all too well that the survivors will be traumatized and scarred for life. We say Enough is Enough—War is Not the Answer.
We want urgent, good-faith diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine, not more U.S. weapons, advisors, and endless war. And certainly not a nuclear war. We want to see those billions of dollars going for climate, jobs, healthcare, and housing, not for weapons manufacturers and war profiteers.
As soldiers who have resisted wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, we support war resisters on all sides, including Conscientious Objectors, draft resisters, deserters, and all who refuse to participate in killing. We especially encourage U.S. military personnel to refuse to participate in training, arming, advising, or otherwise engaging in this and other wars of empire. We furthermore call on the U.S. government to end all its wars and withdraw our troops from multiple countries around the world.
It is time to reverse course now. Drop the weapons. Embrace diplomacy and peace. For the sake of Ukraine. For the sake of Russia, Europe, and the United States. For the sake of all the peoples of the world. A holiday truce could be the first step toward peace.
Enough Is Enough—War Is Not the Answer!
Ceasefire Now—Negotiate, Don’t Escalate!
Support Soldiers Who Refuse to Kill!
Signed,
Enya Anderson, VFP National Board
Ellen Barfield, Past Vice President, VFP National Board; Co-founder, Baltimore VFP
Medea Benjamin, VFP Advisory Board, CODEPINK Women for Peace
Marjorie Cohn, VFP Advisory Board; Past President, National Lawyer’s Guild
Gerry Condon, Past President, VFP National Board
Paul Cox, VFP National Board
Michael Dempsey, VFP National Board; President, Monterey, CA, VFP
Jim Driscoll, VFP Climate Crisis and Militarism Project
Mike Ferner, Past President, VFP National Board
Mark Foreman, Past Treasurer, VFP National Board
Gerald Hassett, Vice President, New York City VFP
Matthew Hoh, VFP Advisory Board
Helen Jaccard, Manager, VFP Golden Rule Project
Eric Johansson, Past President, San Francisco VFP
Tarak Kauff, Past Member, VFP National Board
Bob Keilbach, Secretary, New York City VFP
Kathy Kelly, VFP Advisory Board; Board President, World Beyond War
Barry Ladendorf, Past President, VFP National Board
Gene Marx, Past Secretary, VFP National Board
Ray McGovern, VFP Advisory Board; co-founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Maj. (ret'd) Ken Mayers, USMCR; VFP National Board
Nick Mottern, VFP National Board; Co-coordinator, BanKillerDrones
Barry Riesch, Past President, VFP National Board
Doug Rawlings, Co-founder, VFP; Past Vice President, VFP National Board
Denny Riley, USAF, Our war in Vietnam
Susan Schnall, President, VFP National Board
Joshua Shurley, Secretary, VFP National Board
Alice Slater, VFP Nuclear Abolition Working Group
Rick Staggenborg, President, Mid-Valley Oregon VFP
David Swanson, VFP Advisory Board, World Beyond War
Mike Tork, Treasurer, VFP National Board
Michael Wong, Vice President, San Francisco VFP
Col. (Ret) Ann Wright, VFP Advisory Board; Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
THE EMPIRE IS BUILT ON OUR CLOSED EYES by Caitlin Johnstone 121622
You don't live in a free country. And no, it's not because they make you pay taxes or that time they made you wear a mask or whatever. The real reason you don't live in a free country is much, much bigger than that: you don't live in a free country because the minds of your countrymen are imprisoned.
Westerners think they're free because they can say whatever they want and vote however they want, but what they want is controlled by mass-scale psychological manipulation. Being able to speak and vote as you wish is meaningless if the powerful control what it is that you wish.
Westerners think they're free because they can speak their minds, and sure, it's pleasant to be able to do that. It would be pleasant to have your body trapped in a vat with your brain plugged into a blissful virtual reality world, too — but it wouldn't be freedom. It would be prison disguised as freedom. And that's what we have here: prison disguised as freedom. The science of modern propaganda has been developing alongside all the other sciences for over a century, and it has advanced just as much as the others have. And now it's at a point where it can control our very desires.
It's generally harder to recognize psychologically abusive relationships than physically abusive ones, because the abuse isn't as overt, and because the psychological faculties you would normally use to assess situations have been twisted and warped. That's what's happening here: people are being psychologically manipulated at mass scale into thinking, speaking and acting in a way that serves the powerful, and their minds have become too propaganda-addled to recognize that this is happening. We're not free, and most can't even recognize how unfree we are.
And that's our real problem: very few of us understand how profoundly unfree we are. Just how much our minds are being squished down into these teeny tiny boxes to prevent us from expanding and realizing our true power and our true potential, and the kind of world we could have. Our slavery is so pervasive that few can even see the full extent of it. Many will say they don't feel they live in a
free country, but if you ask them to explain why, they might say something about drug laws or government regulations on their business or whatever. The abuse is too big for them to truly perceive how bad the whole thing is.
So we march along to the drumbeat of our rulers, thinking, speaking, shopping, spending, consuming, scrolling, viewing, listening, voting and behaving exactly how they want us to, and mistaking all this for freedom, because we've been manipulated into wanting to do those things.
We won't ever know true freedom until we find a way to end this. To un-jack our minds from the propaganda matrix they have built for us and begin perceiving reality clearly. Our world. Our country. Our society. Our own minds. Our own authentic desires, free from manipulation.
Our task, then, is to help awaken as many people as we can to the reality of how unfree we truly are. To be voices whispering in the matrix, beckoning the dreamers toward the real world in as many varied and creative ways ways as we can come up with. To coax those eyes open.
If we can get a critical mass of people waking up from their propaganda-induced comas, the primary control mechanism holding our enslavement in place will have been shattered. The primary obstacle to a healthy world will be removed.
An entire empire has been built upon our closed eyelids. When we finally snap them open, it will have to fall.
Full article at https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-empire-is-built-on-our-closed
As far as the invitation sponsorship goes, the process is that government officials go to the corporations and make them an offer they can't refuse. They don't need to bring along a Luca Brasi - I'm sure the corporations know the drill by now.
I think you mean Luca Brasi, Alex.
In this case, government and corporations are together. No threats are needed. Luca Brasi isn't needed. The MIC Complex is marching in step here.
How right you are.
Does what sound reasonable, Ray? That Putin believes the US supports a preemptive first strike policy? Or that the US claims the right to launch nuclear missiles whether it has been attacked or not?
Because that same article stated: "US Nuclear Doctrine is the polar opposite of Russia’s because the US will not abandon its support for a first strike. And what’s more troubling, is that US Doctrine has been so grossly expanded that could be construed to include almost anything. For example, according to the recently-released Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), nuclear weapons can be used: 'in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.'
"Chew on that for a minute. That could include anything from a serious threat to national security to the sudden emergence of economic rival. Are we going to nuke Beijing because their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is projected to be bigger than America’s within the decade?
We can’t answer that, but it certainly meets the NPR’s grossly expanded criteria."