Great post. I have just one quibble--Russia has NOT been weakened by either the war or the sanctions. The ruble is as strong as it ever has been. Russia has found new, and lucrative, trading partners in China, India, Africa and South America.
Even from an American imperialist perspective, the Ukraine gambit to weaken and dismember Russia has spectacularly failed.
The other part of the gambit, to weaken Europe and to make it more dependent on the US, has succeeded brilliantly. Along with hundreds of billions in MIC, Big Oil, and Wall Street profits, of course.
They have--not nearly as heavy as the Ukrainians have, but they have. The Nordstream destruction wasn't as much of a blow as you think because they already had other buyers for their natural gas and oil lined up.
I really don't know, either. I think Russian losses must be far less simply because they were on the defensive much of the time, and because the Russians have a habit of successfully adapting their strategy and tactics over the course of a war THEY consider defensive.
That said, truth is always the first casualty of war. I just don't think the Russians are lying as much as NATO and the Ukrainians because they don't have to as much in order to serve their interests. I cannot prove that now. Perhaps years from now.
One thing is certain: Ukraine has suffered far more because the war is being fought on its land. Imagine all the land mines, unexploded ordnance like cluster munitions, DU shells, and the general detritus and poison of war.
JESUS, GAZA, AND THE MURDER OF USELESS PEOPLE by Edward Curtin
Jesus was a Palestinian Jew born in Bethlehem. He grew up in Nazareth and was executed as a criminal in Jerusalem. It is because of him that we celebrate Christmas. But it is in spite of him that what we celebrate is the opposite of what he stood for.
The different stories of his birth, told by Mathew and Luke in the New Testament, which are the bases for Christmas, are not filled with sugar plum fairies and sleighs filled with useless, unnecessary consumer goods. There’s nothing about a Jolly Old St. Nicholas or baked ham or candy canes. No gifts to return in a frenzied rush that replicates their purchase. No credit card bills that come due in the new year. No “Jingle Bell Rock” with Brenda Lee or “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby.
Just a poor child’s birth to fulfill a prophecy that out of life would come death and out of death would come life. That hope was improbable but possible with faith.
These birth narratives, which tell of a nativity that concludes with the grown child’s suffering, public crucifixion, death, and Resurrection – a story that lives on with the suffering of so many innocents – are, as Gary Wills puts it in What the Gospels Meant, “. . . far from feel-good stories. They tell of a family outcast and exiled, hunted and rejected. They tell of children killed, of a sword to pierce the mother’s heart, of a judgment on the nations.” They are stories of rejection, massacre, and a desperate flight from death at an early age. They are not what most people now consider to be the essence of Christmas since a radical Palestinian Jew’s story has been almost totally erased by the glitz and greed of getting and spending to fuel an economy geared for war and killing.
Mathew and Luke’s birth narratives are replicated again and again throughout history, presently and most conspicuously in Gaza and the West Bank, as the massacre of the innocents continues under today’s King Herod, Benjamin Netanyahu, the client king of Washington, not Rome, while U.S. politicians, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who claims to be a defender of children and opposed to U.S. war policies, support this genocide with rhetorical justifications that the Trappist monk Thomas Merton called the unspeakable:
It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience . . .
To the shock of so many of Kennedy’s early supporters, he claims, among other unspeakable assertions, that the Israelis have been the innocent victims of the Palestinians for 75 years, and they “could flatten Gaza” if they chose to, but instead have kindly used high-tech explosives “to avoid civilian casualties”; that they are not committing genocide intentionally. Indeed, his defense of the indefensible Israeli war crimes is widely shared by the compromised political leadership of both parties in Washington, D.C., a place Kennedy is hoping to reach as the top of the heap, but he is contradicting all his talk about spiritual renewal and healing the divide, and it is especially galling and hypocritical as we try to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.
While the genocide of Palestinians is being documented every ongoing day now, the Gospel stories are different in that they were written after the fact and were not based on eyewitness testimony but are narratives of deep symbolic faith significance, historically wrong in places, but told to signify religious truths of the early Christian faith community.
Once there was a mother and father with their child on the run to safety in Egypt; today there are millions of Palestinian refugees on a bombed-out unarmed road of flight to nowhere but a dead-end.
War is quagmire, and some quagmires endure long after the actual war stops. (Our own civil war comes to mind as we are as divided now as before the war. Probably more so.) So, I will agree that the Ukraine war is a quagmire for the Russians, but I don't see how it is a stalemate. Russia has troops and industrial production that Ukraine does not. A bigger army now then when they started. "Atrit, atrit, atrit," as Ray McGovern puts it. The well-dug-in Russians need do little to advance when Zelensky and his quarrelsome generals just keep dumping less and less trained men into suicide missions. It is not pretty for either side, but one side if far from defeat and the other teetering on total collapse.
This is something I plan to share with friends, family (and Facebook) on New Year's, but it fits well into both the might makes right and our exceptional belief in defining the rules by which the world is to abide. Sorry for its length, but I see I'm not the only longer winded responder.
The New Year, 2024
I am the rarest of humans. You may think me fictitious—my claim, almost certainly preposterous. You will doubt my sincerity. Of this, I have earned such skepticism. My life was given to great power. I declared with certainty that which I knew we must do—not just here, but in every corner of the world. The years piled up into decades. I clung to my privilege as though I possessed some industrial Velcro—impossible to pull away without great force that no one around me seemed willing or able to rip from the fabric of the system I helped to maintain. My great weapons, the binding power of fear and always the endorsement as a lesser evil. I learned well the art of selective outrage—a master of deception and sleight of hand to draw your attention away from the horrors done in your name. How easy it was to get others to hate the peoples of far off lands and to hate the neighbor they are called to love. Oh, the narratives I could spin! The simplicity with which my words could divide. At the slightest resistance: call opponents naive; question their patriotism; label them with whatever inflames the crowd. It is not important that these are fabrications—the more exaggerated, the better. Proclaim, “Disinformation, disinformation!” While deliberately spreading the real lie. For this, the mighty presses of the world showcased my words as though indisputable. A favored guest of the Sunday circuit. They would have proclaimed my greatness upon my death, but that was then.
I am the rarest of humans for I am the repentant politician. My power exchanged for contrition. The ill-gotten gains forfeited like those of the repentant tax collector of old. Now, I am unelectable, but I have retrieved my soul from hell at last. Rarely had a day passed when I had not done wrong. I had turned a blind eye to the ways of peace. My sanctions another cynical tool in a tool chest of cruelty toward the poor. I approved massive borrowing for waste, abuse, corruption and war with no regard for suffering children in foreign lands. Even the children of my own land meant little to me. But in my hubris, the children of my children will one day be forced to reckon with all I have piled upon their life and legacy. I was not the lessor evil. I was not the great defender of democracy. If you believe such might have even a grain of truth, you have bought the lie. I was, plain and simple, the defender of might makes right. The humanitarian hypocrite quick to call out every nation but my own. For my love of money and love of power superseded love of this fine land or the fine lands of our well-earned enemies.
I cannot ask for your forgiveness for I have not earned it. Such forgiveness can only be a gift from hearts more generous than my own. But this I do plead of you—resist. Peacefully, courageously, consistently, but resist! When they lie you must not let the lie stand. When they fear monger, hate monger, war monger, you must shut them down and throw them from the halls of power.
Resist! Stop sleepwalking into the abyss. You are more complicit than you are willing to admit! Your comfort and own blind eye ensure their grasp. They are given a free proxy to do as they please, (or as those who line their pockets please. It is with them they truly make common cause.)
It is not enough to speak truth to power if you are only shouting someone down without a vision and heart for healing. You are just more noise in our ever-deepening divide. More nails in the coffin of joyous, cultural expression. Divide and conquer is power’s tactic and a betrayal of our sacred unity. It knows nothing of hope, generosity, stewardship, mercy. Nothing of genuine justice or reconciliation.
The doomsday clock ticks ever-closer to midnight. Join me now, rise up and resist. Let the dawn of peace illumine your soul.
TP Graf (unpublished, edited here from free-verse form)
Dennis, very kind words! Indeed, all is well for us. Our move from the US to Cuenca Ecuador happened in August with an unbelievable level of zero stress, and now we are getting fully immersed into a cultural richness that blows our mind! Of course, it requires studying a new language--a daily but very slow task for these old dogs ... Paz to you and yours.
A historical precedent is Israel's control of US foreign policy. Can anyone think of a parallel all the way back through ancient history?
As I may have mentioned, FDR spoke of the US as the arsenal of democracy. Now it is the arsenal of Israel, making Israel for the moment the world's only superpower because everyone in power in DC is a helpless puppet for a madman in Jerusalem. Israel in general and he in particular have worked the levers in DC far more effectively than the Wizard of Oz did in Oz.
Regarding the religious issue, it is the holocaust that drives Israeli psychology. Certainly there is pride in the history of the area of Palestine/ancient Israel but far more important is the learned self-righteousness that will abide, even applaud, any act of cruelty toward the Palestinians as justified. A poll in Israel revealed a great majority believed the IDF has not acting harshly enough in Gaza. What a flash in the pan is Gaza compared to six million dead at the hands of the Nazis. The mental transfer of Nazism to any opponent of Israel is easily done. Netanyahu even made the outrageous statement that Arabs had given Hitler the idea of the final solution!
Widely used by Israelis has been "they want to kill us!" attributed to the Palestinians while in actuality the killing ratio has been 10:1, 20:1 (P killed: I killed) since the first Gaza assault in 2008/9 and who can say what the current slaughter will show? We don't know the final toll, but there is no evidence the Israelis care with even gov't officials easily failing the ritual mention of HAMAS when hailing the elimination of a people.
This substitution of accusation for truth was on display at the hearing of Rep. Stefanik who roasted the three university presidents about a hypothetical call on campus for "genocide of the Jewish people" when she had no evidence of this phrase being used, though it is certainly possible it could be. The presidents afterward groveled to clear themselves of...what? Of nothing more than defending freedom of speech! This roasting of the presidents was taking place while mass killing was underway by Israel, leading more than a few to say it was the real thing - genocide.
We should be greatly concerned with something someone might say and not at all concerned with what people are actually doing?
Israel has used the holocaust as a mighty shield, to intimidate any and all who oppose what Israel does and to justify by comparison what Israel does. Just as nobody but an untutored boy would call out that the emperor had no clothes, so will no one call out this grotesque misuse of a monumental tragedy to cover for another one. Israelis are blind to this shameless use of the dead to cover dealing in death.
The US government is doing the same thing to its citizens as it is doing to the rest of the world. Conquering. If the government were controlled by the citizens none of this would be happening. The entire federal government is corrupt - all the branches now. I would extend that down to the state and local level in many cases. I wonder how much say the German citizenship had in 1938 Germany. If we take care of our own problems here the rest will follow.
Like climate change, civilization has reached a "tipping point". The tipping point for climate change is caused by the insatiable greed of those in control of the economy, and the quest for ultimate power with no thought of long term consequences. Mainly the US.
Civilizations can collapse just as readily as climate. Mass extinctions can occur from either. The dinosaurs went extinct( most likely) from an asteroid causing climate change - not of their own doing. Humans are doing it to themselves.
Humans as a species have just enough brains to be dangerous.
Thanks Dennis. Sincere question - do you have any idea why you seem to be a target for abuse? I've never seen anything you posted to be offensive in any way. The "dear" comment on Caitlins substack really got me.
Maybe it's your NZ accent?
Mainly partisans ? That's a small part of it I believe. You can't be a centrist these days as I well know. Fiscally conservative and socially liberal gets you spit upon.
I say vote for Good Kitty in '24! Peace prosperity and sanity from the Feral Feline Federation!
Good on you Dennis...BTW I also have a love for Appy horses-- my faves. as well. I also like how you and I are not the delicate man type, ask courageous ques., and w/o exception question with utmost scrutiny all sanctimonious, preachy comments!!! Keeping it real.
I've been celebrating the winter solstice for years now as a substitute for Xmas. Has a lot more meaning to me now. Unfortunately it was cloudy but thanks to modern advances I knew the correct date unlike the Stonehenge society. Of course I don't think they were as anal about the exact time and date as we are today as debated amongst the archeo-astronomers and archeologists. Being an atheist you might want to switch to the solstice too. It actually has meaning. Backwards for you but who cares? So happy solstice to you and your family!
Good Kitty is my cat who I'm trying to get on the ballot as a substitute for the idiots currently running. He's far more stable and is being joined by team Orca as his cabinet. They have stable societies and no wars or need of junk shipped from China. Hopefully AI can crack their language since we aren't smart enough. It's less of a joke than you think.
Love the dale Carnegie advice. The trouble today is you just get called a liar about your experience. We live in an incredibly sick society now. Be glad you're down under.
Sorry to hear about the leukemia. I think that NZ probably has better health care than here. I'm diabetic and the medical industry is completely useless. 5 doctors in 5 years who have done nothing and now I don't have one. The medical industry is sick and needs to cure itself. It's all about money now.
Get well and be well and my thoughts are with you and yours.
Freeman was the translator for Nixon in China. A genuine veteran diplomat who I REALLY hoped Trump would select for his SoS. Of course, we know the dregs for which he opted. He has a lot of experience both with China (and thus an understanding of Russia) and the Mid East--sadly, a great resource completely ignored.
Great post. I have just one quibble--Russia has NOT been weakened by either the war or the sanctions. The ruble is as strong as it ever has been. Russia has found new, and lucrative, trading partners in China, India, Africa and South America.
Even from an American imperialist perspective, the Ukraine gambit to weaken and dismember Russia has spectacularly failed.
The other part of the gambit, to weaken Europe and to make it more dependent on the US, has succeeded brilliantly. Along with hundreds of billions in MIC, Big Oil, and Wall Street profits, of course.
Perhaps so. But Russia has also taken heavy losses from the war -- and the Nordstream pipelines were a tough blow.
They have--not nearly as heavy as the Ukrainians have, but they have. The Nordstream destruction wasn't as much of a blow as you think because they already had other buyers for their natural gas and oil lined up.
That hurt Germany far more than Russia.
With respect to battlefield losses, my guess is that Russia and Ukraine have suffered roughly equally in symmetrical trench warfare conditions.
Ukraine supporters insist their losses have been far lower than Russia's. As usual, truth is the first casualty of war.
I really don't know, either. I think Russian losses must be far less simply because they were on the defensive much of the time, and because the Russians have a habit of successfully adapting their strategy and tactics over the course of a war THEY consider defensive.
That said, truth is always the first casualty of war. I just don't think the Russians are lying as much as NATO and the Ukrainians because they don't have to as much in order to serve their interests. I cannot prove that now. Perhaps years from now.
One thing is certain: Ukraine has suffered far more because the war is being fought on its land. Imagine all the land mines, unexploded ordnance like cluster munitions, DU shells, and the general detritus and poison of war.
JESUS, GAZA, AND THE MURDER OF USELESS PEOPLE by Edward Curtin
Jesus was a Palestinian Jew born in Bethlehem. He grew up in Nazareth and was executed as a criminal in Jerusalem. It is because of him that we celebrate Christmas. But it is in spite of him that what we celebrate is the opposite of what he stood for.
The different stories of his birth, told by Mathew and Luke in the New Testament, which are the bases for Christmas, are not filled with sugar plum fairies and sleighs filled with useless, unnecessary consumer goods. There’s nothing about a Jolly Old St. Nicholas or baked ham or candy canes. No gifts to return in a frenzied rush that replicates their purchase. No credit card bills that come due in the new year. No “Jingle Bell Rock” with Brenda Lee or “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby.
Just a poor child’s birth to fulfill a prophecy that out of life would come death and out of death would come life. That hope was improbable but possible with faith.
These birth narratives, which tell of a nativity that concludes with the grown child’s suffering, public crucifixion, death, and Resurrection – a story that lives on with the suffering of so many innocents – are, as Gary Wills puts it in What the Gospels Meant, “. . . far from feel-good stories. They tell of a family outcast and exiled, hunted and rejected. They tell of children killed, of a sword to pierce the mother’s heart, of a judgment on the nations.” They are stories of rejection, massacre, and a desperate flight from death at an early age. They are not what most people now consider to be the essence of Christmas since a radical Palestinian Jew’s story has been almost totally erased by the glitz and greed of getting and spending to fuel an economy geared for war and killing.
Mathew and Luke’s birth narratives are replicated again and again throughout history, presently and most conspicuously in Gaza and the West Bank, as the massacre of the innocents continues under today’s King Herod, Benjamin Netanyahu, the client king of Washington, not Rome, while U.S. politicians, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who claims to be a defender of children and opposed to U.S. war policies, support this genocide with rhetorical justifications that the Trappist monk Thomas Merton called the unspeakable:
It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his obedience . . .
To the shock of so many of Kennedy’s early supporters, he claims, among other unspeakable assertions, that the Israelis have been the innocent victims of the Palestinians for 75 years, and they “could flatten Gaza” if they chose to, but instead have kindly used high-tech explosives “to avoid civilian casualties”; that they are not committing genocide intentionally. Indeed, his defense of the indefensible Israeli war crimes is widely shared by the compromised political leadership of both parties in Washington, D.C., a place Kennedy is hoping to reach as the top of the heap, but he is contradicting all his talk about spiritual renewal and healing the divide, and it is especially galling and hypocritical as we try to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.
While the genocide of Palestinians is being documented every ongoing day now, the Gospel stories are different in that they were written after the fact and were not based on eyewitness testimony but are narratives of deep symbolic faith significance, historically wrong in places, but told to signify religious truths of the early Christian faith community.
Once there was a mother and father with their child on the run to safety in Egypt; today there are millions of Palestinian refugees on a bombed-out unarmed road of flight to nowhere but a dead-end.
Continued at https://informationclearinghouse.blog/2023/12/21/jesus-gaza-and-the-murder-of-useless-people/
War is quagmire, and some quagmires endure long after the actual war stops. (Our own civil war comes to mind as we are as divided now as before the war. Probably more so.) So, I will agree that the Ukraine war is a quagmire for the Russians, but I don't see how it is a stalemate. Russia has troops and industrial production that Ukraine does not. A bigger army now then when they started. "Atrit, atrit, atrit," as Ray McGovern puts it. The well-dug-in Russians need do little to advance when Zelensky and his quarrelsome generals just keep dumping less and less trained men into suicide missions. It is not pretty for either side, but one side if far from defeat and the other teetering on total collapse.
This is something I plan to share with friends, family (and Facebook) on New Year's, but it fits well into both the might makes right and our exceptional belief in defining the rules by which the world is to abide. Sorry for its length, but I see I'm not the only longer winded responder.
The New Year, 2024
I am the rarest of humans. You may think me fictitious—my claim, almost certainly preposterous. You will doubt my sincerity. Of this, I have earned such skepticism. My life was given to great power. I declared with certainty that which I knew we must do—not just here, but in every corner of the world. The years piled up into decades. I clung to my privilege as though I possessed some industrial Velcro—impossible to pull away without great force that no one around me seemed willing or able to rip from the fabric of the system I helped to maintain. My great weapons, the binding power of fear and always the endorsement as a lesser evil. I learned well the art of selective outrage—a master of deception and sleight of hand to draw your attention away from the horrors done in your name. How easy it was to get others to hate the peoples of far off lands and to hate the neighbor they are called to love. Oh, the narratives I could spin! The simplicity with which my words could divide. At the slightest resistance: call opponents naive; question their patriotism; label them with whatever inflames the crowd. It is not important that these are fabrications—the more exaggerated, the better. Proclaim, “Disinformation, disinformation!” While deliberately spreading the real lie. For this, the mighty presses of the world showcased my words as though indisputable. A favored guest of the Sunday circuit. They would have proclaimed my greatness upon my death, but that was then.
I am the rarest of humans for I am the repentant politician. My power exchanged for contrition. The ill-gotten gains forfeited like those of the repentant tax collector of old. Now, I am unelectable, but I have retrieved my soul from hell at last. Rarely had a day passed when I had not done wrong. I had turned a blind eye to the ways of peace. My sanctions another cynical tool in a tool chest of cruelty toward the poor. I approved massive borrowing for waste, abuse, corruption and war with no regard for suffering children in foreign lands. Even the children of my own land meant little to me. But in my hubris, the children of my children will one day be forced to reckon with all I have piled upon their life and legacy. I was not the lessor evil. I was not the great defender of democracy. If you believe such might have even a grain of truth, you have bought the lie. I was, plain and simple, the defender of might makes right. The humanitarian hypocrite quick to call out every nation but my own. For my love of money and love of power superseded love of this fine land or the fine lands of our well-earned enemies.
I cannot ask for your forgiveness for I have not earned it. Such forgiveness can only be a gift from hearts more generous than my own. But this I do plead of you—resist. Peacefully, courageously, consistently, but resist! When they lie you must not let the lie stand. When they fear monger, hate monger, war monger, you must shut them down and throw them from the halls of power.
Resist! Stop sleepwalking into the abyss. You are more complicit than you are willing to admit! Your comfort and own blind eye ensure their grasp. They are given a free proxy to do as they please, (or as those who line their pockets please. It is with them they truly make common cause.)
It is not enough to speak truth to power if you are only shouting someone down without a vision and heart for healing. You are just more noise in our ever-deepening divide. More nails in the coffin of joyous, cultural expression. Divide and conquer is power’s tactic and a betrayal of our sacred unity. It knows nothing of hope, generosity, stewardship, mercy. Nothing of genuine justice or reconciliation.
The doomsday clock ticks ever-closer to midnight. Join me now, rise up and resist. Let the dawn of peace illumine your soul.
TP Graf (unpublished, edited here from free-verse form)
Dennis, very kind words! Indeed, all is well for us. Our move from the US to Cuenca Ecuador happened in August with an unbelievable level of zero stress, and now we are getting fully immersed into a cultural richness that blows our mind! Of course, it requires studying a new language--a daily but very slow task for these old dogs ... Paz to you and yours.
A historical precedent is Israel's control of US foreign policy. Can anyone think of a parallel all the way back through ancient history?
As I may have mentioned, FDR spoke of the US as the arsenal of democracy. Now it is the arsenal of Israel, making Israel for the moment the world's only superpower because everyone in power in DC is a helpless puppet for a madman in Jerusalem. Israel in general and he in particular have worked the levers in DC far more effectively than the Wizard of Oz did in Oz.
Regarding the religious issue, it is the holocaust that drives Israeli psychology. Certainly there is pride in the history of the area of Palestine/ancient Israel but far more important is the learned self-righteousness that will abide, even applaud, any act of cruelty toward the Palestinians as justified. A poll in Israel revealed a great majority believed the IDF has not acting harshly enough in Gaza. What a flash in the pan is Gaza compared to six million dead at the hands of the Nazis. The mental transfer of Nazism to any opponent of Israel is easily done. Netanyahu even made the outrageous statement that Arabs had given Hitler the idea of the final solution!
Widely used by Israelis has been "they want to kill us!" attributed to the Palestinians while in actuality the killing ratio has been 10:1, 20:1 (P killed: I killed) since the first Gaza assault in 2008/9 and who can say what the current slaughter will show? We don't know the final toll, but there is no evidence the Israelis care with even gov't officials easily failing the ritual mention of HAMAS when hailing the elimination of a people.
This substitution of accusation for truth was on display at the hearing of Rep. Stefanik who roasted the three university presidents about a hypothetical call on campus for "genocide of the Jewish people" when she had no evidence of this phrase being used, though it is certainly possible it could be. The presidents afterward groveled to clear themselves of...what? Of nothing more than defending freedom of speech! This roasting of the presidents was taking place while mass killing was underway by Israel, leading more than a few to say it was the real thing - genocide.
We should be greatly concerned with something someone might say and not at all concerned with what people are actually doing?
Israel has used the holocaust as a mighty shield, to intimidate any and all who oppose what Israel does and to justify by comparison what Israel does. Just as nobody but an untutored boy would call out that the emperor had no clothes, so will no one call out this grotesque misuse of a monumental tragedy to cover for another one. Israelis are blind to this shameless use of the dead to cover dealing in death.
History will not be kind to Zionism.
The US government is doing the same thing to its citizens as it is doing to the rest of the world. Conquering. If the government were controlled by the citizens none of this would be happening. The entire federal government is corrupt - all the branches now. I would extend that down to the state and local level in many cases. I wonder how much say the German citizenship had in 1938 Germany. If we take care of our own problems here the rest will follow.
Like climate change, civilization has reached a "tipping point". The tipping point for climate change is caused by the insatiable greed of those in control of the economy, and the quest for ultimate power with no thought of long term consequences. Mainly the US.
Civilizations can collapse just as readily as climate. Mass extinctions can occur from either. The dinosaurs went extinct( most likely) from an asteroid causing climate change - not of their own doing. Humans are doing it to themselves.
Humans as a species have just enough brains to be dangerous.
Thanks Dennis. Sincere question - do you have any idea why you seem to be a target for abuse? I've never seen anything you posted to be offensive in any way. The "dear" comment on Caitlins substack really got me.
Maybe it's your NZ accent?
Mainly partisans ? That's a small part of it I believe. You can't be a centrist these days as I well know. Fiscally conservative and socially liberal gets you spit upon.
I say vote for Good Kitty in '24! Peace prosperity and sanity from the Feral Feline Federation!
Good on you Dennis...BTW I also have a love for Appy horses-- my faves. as well. I also like how you and I are not the delicate man type, ask courageous ques., and w/o exception question with utmost scrutiny all sanctimonious, preachy comments!!! Keeping it real.
I've been celebrating the winter solstice for years now as a substitute for Xmas. Has a lot more meaning to me now. Unfortunately it was cloudy but thanks to modern advances I knew the correct date unlike the Stonehenge society. Of course I don't think they were as anal about the exact time and date as we are today as debated amongst the archeo-astronomers and archeologists. Being an atheist you might want to switch to the solstice too. It actually has meaning. Backwards for you but who cares? So happy solstice to you and your family!
Good Kitty is my cat who I'm trying to get on the ballot as a substitute for the idiots currently running. He's far more stable and is being joined by team Orca as his cabinet. They have stable societies and no wars or need of junk shipped from China. Hopefully AI can crack their language since we aren't smart enough. It's less of a joke than you think.
Love the dale Carnegie advice. The trouble today is you just get called a liar about your experience. We live in an incredibly sick society now. Be glad you're down under.
Sorry to hear about the leukemia. I think that NZ probably has better health care than here. I'm diabetic and the medical industry is completely useless. 5 doctors in 5 years who have done nothing and now I don't have one. The medical industry is sick and needs to cure itself. It's all about money now.
Get well and be well and my thoughts are with you and yours.
Toma
Freeman was the translator for Nixon in China. A genuine veteran diplomat who I REALLY hoped Trump would select for his SoS. Of course, we know the dregs for which he opted. He has a lot of experience both with China (and thus an understanding of Russia) and the Mid East--sadly, a great resource completely ignored.
Nima just posted a conversation with Chas Freeman. Always interesting to hear from a real veteran diplomat.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58DptJJ8kQc&t=831s
Rhetorical question?
Thanks for the reference. Just downloaded it to my Kindle. Will be reading it soon.