Oct 3, 2023·edited Oct 3, 2023Liked by Bill Astore
Indeed the moral abyss that these ghouls have fallen into is bottomless. Undergirding this is the obviously propagandistic bullshit that if the US does not stop Russia in Ukraine then Putin will soon be strolling down Pennsylvania Avenue in full control of America.
We need to get the high priests of war to stop and defend the proposition that a nation with an economy the size of Italy's (less on a per capita basis) is going to reconstitute the Soviet Union, run the table to the English Channel, cross the Atlantic in force and conquer the United States. Clearly they cannot defend this nonsense, and will fall back to it is in US "interests" to engage in endless wars.
Then we strike with the demonstrable truth that it is only in the interests of a politically connected elite that has parasitically attached itself to the economy, and unrighteously lined their pockets off the backs of ordinary taxpayers and the blood of foreign innocents. An uphill battle I know, but as always the only battle worth waging is the one for peace.
Boot has long been a monster. The disturbing reveal is what his being bold and confident in posting this warmonger tract to a mainstream (well, Beltway mainstream) pub shows how mainstream warmongering now is. The incoherence of the warmongers is that they (pols, pundits, gofos) will at times wail that our forces are soon to be if not are already hopelessly outmatched unless we spend on X, Y, Z, etc. but also at other times boldly assert the U.S. military preeminence. Both are types of threat inflation designed to justify the money-pumping imperialism.
Absolutely beautifully put! And "souless" seems to be the order of the day throughout our entire government from President (no matter who recently - including Obama with this kill lists) and the Pentagon, the State Department (thank you Mme. Nuland, Blinkin, and nod) and 98% of Congress (both parties) along with our entire MSM. Thank God for Substack, Consortium News, Jimmy Dore, and others that give us access to the sanity that still resides in this country, though you have to hunt hard for it. So thank you, Bill, for being one of the ones we rely on to keep us informed and give us hope that there is still a possibility for soul and sanity left in this country.
I think it's ironic too that Trump is on trial in New York for overestimating the value of his real estate holdings. No one ever goes on trial for overestimating the value of war. Maybe they should.
Oct 8, 2023·edited Oct 8, 2023Liked by Bill Astore
"No one ever goes on trial for overestimating the value of war."
Exactly. There are zero consequences, even at the ballot box.
Nor (in the West) do they even go to trial for *confessed war crimes* any more. Just one example, here quoted from The Guardian, 1 Aug 2014: "Obama banned the use of torture – which the CIA prefers to call 'enhanced interrogation techniques' – shortly after he took office in 2009"
But this ban was superfluous. Torture is already banned in the *U.S. Constitution*, meaning in *all* jurisdictions of the U.S. -- and has been from 1791 onward by the Eighth Amendment. Which means it was banned the entire time from 9/11 on. So, when *U.S. President* Obama, in charge of the *U.S. Department of Justice*, publicly said we "crossed a line" and "tortured some folks", how did he mean? Legally? And he knew who the U.S. citizens doing the torturing are? Then, when were they arrested and put to trial?
The in-your-face mind-fuckery is everywhere. But they seem to think people don't process or even notice this stuff, and that serious consequences to the body politic won't eventually emerge. And here we are...
All of the depraved, nefarious individuals that inhabit the US government (Executive and Congress) along with all those that inhabit the National Security State (CIA, Pentagon, NSA, etc.) who think that this war (or any war) is a "good investment" should be forced to put their money where their mouth is. How? Namely, by signing up all their military-age relatives---children, cousins, nephews, nieces, etc.--to go fight in Ukraine. And if, for any reason, they are not willing to do so, then they should be diagnosed for who they are---sociopaths and psychopaths one and all---and sent away to an institution, so that the rest of us can live safely and securely in peace and harmony with nature and other like-minded human beings.
Oct 8, 2023·edited Oct 8, 2023Liked by Bill Astore
I have held for a long time that all military expenditure is an investment in the Broken Window Fallacy. The weapons of war and the jobs and profits from making them and selling them to governments is what is seen. What is not seen is the death and destruction caused by those weapons, usually far away from where they were made. The best one can hope from such an investment is that they not be used! But if they are used, they will result in broken windows, broken bodies, broken lives. Hardly a productive investment.
So true, Bill. I couldn’t agree with you more strongly. You’re supplying, you’re voicing, what’s most missing in all the current MSM bullshit about the decade-long cascade of dire events in and around and about Ukraine: MORAL OUTRAGE.
I suspect that for the neocons a rump Ukraine is indeed the second Israel they mentioned, it is my Dear Fellow Americans a return to The Tsarist Russian Pale, where indeed many have ancestral roots.
I always wonder about what makes an economy. Especially digging ditches to fill them back in and such.
War is especially interesting because the money to create weapons is returned, in part, through taxes, and the wages and profits benefit the local economy which then also pay taxes.
The promotion of a Western Liberal International Order based upon human rights and inviolable sovereignty was simultaneously undermined by Western imperial pursuit of naked national self-interest, that well recognized duality between power and principle that has characterized every global order for the past several hundred years.
Attempting to forge a liberal world order while simultaneously conducting several centuries of slavery, slaughter and colonial conquest has brought us to the present moment with its numerous internal contradictions.
This includes an unrestrained and entirely profligate approach to fossil-fuel consumption that both ignored and misrepresented the damaging effects of a hydrocarbon based economy, one that has become the defining and most damaging feature of the Anglo-U.S. World System. This economic success paradigm is no longer sustainable against vastly superior economic systems and military states - Russia and China. Outcome?
WaPo demonstrates here just how low they've become as a mouthpiece of the Empire's propaganda and a censor of those who'd challenge it. Along with NYT, they have over the decades become the go-to cheerleaders for all wars against any the Imperium sees fit to call enemy. Direct invasion or proxy war, it matters not. Long gone are the days when they, as members of the so-called 5th Estate, might actually ask a probing question or offer an opinion advising caution, restraint, humanitarian concern. Instead, they serve up softballs based on the presumption that their 'anonymous sources' feed them a priori truth.
The closer you get to the truth the closer you get to a suspension. I've been watching "The Tower", a 2012 German film about life in East Germany in the years leading up to the fall of the Berlin wall. Their citizens had to learn the same lesson in order for them to live (relatively) peacefully.
Indeed the moral abyss that these ghouls have fallen into is bottomless. Undergirding this is the obviously propagandistic bullshit that if the US does not stop Russia in Ukraine then Putin will soon be strolling down Pennsylvania Avenue in full control of America.
We need to get the high priests of war to stop and defend the proposition that a nation with an economy the size of Italy's (less on a per capita basis) is going to reconstitute the Soviet Union, run the table to the English Channel, cross the Atlantic in force and conquer the United States. Clearly they cannot defend this nonsense, and will fall back to it is in US "interests" to engage in endless wars.
Then we strike with the demonstrable truth that it is only in the interests of a politically connected elite that has parasitically attached itself to the economy, and unrighteously lined their pockets off the backs of ordinary taxpayers and the blood of foreign innocents. An uphill battle I know, but as always the only battle worth waging is the one for peace.
A fishmonger sells fish. A warmonger sells war. That's what they do.
Boot has long been a monster. The disturbing reveal is what his being bold and confident in posting this warmonger tract to a mainstream (well, Beltway mainstream) pub shows how mainstream warmongering now is. The incoherence of the warmongers is that they (pols, pundits, gofos) will at times wail that our forces are soon to be if not are already hopelessly outmatched unless we spend on X, Y, Z, etc. but also at other times boldly assert the U.S. military preeminence. Both are types of threat inflation designed to justify the money-pumping imperialism.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a [Max B]oot stamping on a human face—for ever." - 1984, George Orwell
Well played.
Absolutely beautifully put! And "souless" seems to be the order of the day throughout our entire government from President (no matter who recently - including Obama with this kill lists) and the Pentagon, the State Department (thank you Mme. Nuland, Blinkin, and nod) and 98% of Congress (both parties) along with our entire MSM. Thank God for Substack, Consortium News, Jimmy Dore, and others that give us access to the sanity that still resides in this country, though you have to hunt hard for it. So thank you, Bill, for being one of the ones we rely on to keep us informed and give us hope that there is still a possibility for soul and sanity left in this country.
I think it's ironic too that Trump is on trial in New York for overestimating the value of his real estate holdings. No one ever goes on trial for overestimating the value of war. Maybe they should.
"No one ever goes on trial for overestimating the value of war."
Exactly. There are zero consequences, even at the ballot box.
Nor (in the West) do they even go to trial for *confessed war crimes* any more. Just one example, here quoted from The Guardian, 1 Aug 2014: "Obama banned the use of torture – which the CIA prefers to call 'enhanced interrogation techniques' – shortly after he took office in 2009"
But this ban was superfluous. Torture is already banned in the *U.S. Constitution*, meaning in *all* jurisdictions of the U.S. -- and has been from 1791 onward by the Eighth Amendment. Which means it was banned the entire time from 9/11 on. So, when *U.S. President* Obama, in charge of the *U.S. Department of Justice*, publicly said we "crossed a line" and "tortured some folks", how did he mean? Legally? And he knew who the U.S. citizens doing the torturing are? Then, when were they arrested and put to trial?
The in-your-face mind-fuckery is everywhere. But they seem to think people don't process or even notice this stuff, and that serious consequences to the body politic won't eventually emerge. And here we are...
Amen!
Well said!
All of the depraved, nefarious individuals that inhabit the US government (Executive and Congress) along with all those that inhabit the National Security State (CIA, Pentagon, NSA, etc.) who think that this war (or any war) is a "good investment" should be forced to put their money where their mouth is. How? Namely, by signing up all their military-age relatives---children, cousins, nephews, nieces, etc.--to go fight in Ukraine. And if, for any reason, they are not willing to do so, then they should be diagnosed for who they are---sociopaths and psychopaths one and all---and sent away to an institution, so that the rest of us can live safely and securely in peace and harmony with nature and other like-minded human beings.
They prefer to invest their money--and Ukrainian youth.
Speaking of investments, here's an interesting article from today's NYT. I think it's encouraging that this little town pushed back on endless war.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/world/europe/germany-defense-ukraine-war-weapons.html?unlocked_article_code=98czv5_QQOxelqslcQwq3ZUB9-IdJOycol-6nN4_9_jnTDYpQPat_jr7-QwvbAwaPWxJ7OSSy2JNHbMKyQMvWbT2utpvsW1LWqM3yL_pk33NQOlnAjtjVFq-o9l1HEmBzoQ-SRAcSkz5kRHjdqLvApXnBpGTfs80LCGov3jhZh0bIk1KUhFv_G9z03R-H4rlk1kTrVKeVc5ZZtGOa5iOBGDEQLLyrflYLpmSyzEuu6wexBwSZqY_HI6u13sJUkHAvRmkeyV34ouwc6F71sPUU3iTsM00DFa_Se5IcxPbzWCJRvO2O-IBoKtlI2xiBEXP3_T87WCRlkxatADhBH1bKlndfVQAwS0yOpw2L665IRQCvg&smid=url-share
It's refreshing to see that not everyone wants to make money off of weapons that kill.
Yes! I guess there's at least some hope for learning the lessons of history.
I think that was the 1st album I bought, Ray: "Wings at the speed of sound."
Good read, Bill. Linking once again @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
War is most definitely an investment, especially for the neocons and in "Empire" building!!!
Liz Cheney, Victoria Nuland, John Bolton and the rest are loving it!!!
Those who are promoting this war should be put into uniforms and sent to the front lines in Ukraine.
I have held for a long time that all military expenditure is an investment in the Broken Window Fallacy. The weapons of war and the jobs and profits from making them and selling them to governments is what is seen. What is not seen is the death and destruction caused by those weapons, usually far away from where they were made. The best one can hope from such an investment is that they not be used! But if they are used, they will result in broken windows, broken bodies, broken lives. Hardly a productive investment.
So true, Bill. I couldn’t agree with you more strongly. You’re supplying, you’re voicing, what’s most missing in all the current MSM bullshit about the decade-long cascade of dire events in and around and about Ukraine: MORAL OUTRAGE.
Since the 2014 coup US has been militarizing Ukraine.
Hitler 'remilitarizing' the Rhineland in 1936 was a great investment as well!
All those citing Munich 1938 are really dense!
More reason to hold Lockheed stock.
I suspect that for the neocons a rump Ukraine is indeed the second Israel they mentioned, it is my Dear Fellow Americans a return to The Tsarist Russian Pale, where indeed many have ancestral roots.
Further it’s a backup plan to Israel proper.
I realize that sounds mad.
It’s not my madness.
Analysis isn’t advocacy.
I always wonder about what makes an economy. Especially digging ditches to fill them back in and such.
War is especially interesting because the money to create weapons is returned, in part, through taxes, and the wages and profits benefit the local economy which then also pay taxes.
So what is the true net cost?
The promotion of a Western Liberal International Order based upon human rights and inviolable sovereignty was simultaneously undermined by Western imperial pursuit of naked national self-interest, that well recognized duality between power and principle that has characterized every global order for the past several hundred years.
Attempting to forge a liberal world order while simultaneously conducting several centuries of slavery, slaughter and colonial conquest has brought us to the present moment with its numerous internal contradictions.
This includes an unrestrained and entirely profligate approach to fossil-fuel consumption that both ignored and misrepresented the damaging effects of a hydrocarbon based economy, one that has become the defining and most damaging feature of the Anglo-U.S. World System. This economic success paradigm is no longer sustainable against vastly superior economic systems and military states - Russia and China. Outcome?
The Decline of The West . . . https://les7eb.substack.com/p/ukraine-notes-the-long-proxy-war
I might have to suspend you for this, Ray.
Just kidding.
WaPo demonstrates here just how low they've become as a mouthpiece of the Empire's propaganda and a censor of those who'd challenge it. Along with NYT, they have over the decades become the go-to cheerleaders for all wars against any the Imperium sees fit to call enemy. Direct invasion or proxy war, it matters not. Long gone are the days when they, as members of the so-called 5th Estate, might actually ask a probing question or offer an opinion advising caution, restraint, humanitarian concern. Instead, they serve up softballs based on the presumption that their 'anonymous sources' feed them a priori truth.
The closer you get to the truth the closer you get to a suspension. I've been watching "The Tower", a 2012 German film about life in East Germany in the years leading up to the fall of the Berlin wall. Their citizens had to learn the same lesson in order for them to live (relatively) peacefully.
How remarkably ironic that “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is the Post’s slogan!