Hello Bill Astore... Shifting Of Populations?... Many of the Japanese-American Internment Camps were close to American Indian Reservations... We found that We had much in Common... We Became Friends...
My grandfather drove a school bus to Sacatone to pick up and drop off Indian children going to school in Casa Grande Arizona. After the war he and his brother brought one of the buildings from the internment camp there and turned it into two houses. Might have the spelling of Sacatone wrong, don’t know.
Hello Edgar.... Thanks.... The American Indian Reservations were the first Interment Camps... Staring across the Wire, the Japanese-American, and American Indigenous realized that We Shared Brown Skin... Now ICE is raiding Indigenous Lands looking for Brown-Skinned People...
I’m white as can be, but to me that makes no difference. People are people. To me the ICE raids are just one more symptom of our country falling apart. I have given up on it. Moving to Russia asap. I’m sure there will be things I don’t like about it, but it is getting worse here quickly and I think that will continue for a long time.
Considering our history, --pretty much wiping out the Indigenous people, our history of slavery, keeping women down, our prison system, all of our wars, our treatment of immigrants, Jim Crow laws, what the CIA has done in other countries, I could go on, - I seriously doubt that we ever had the ideals we say we had. I believe it was all a big myth foisted upon us by our purported leaders and those who are behind them. The truly good people of this country, those who do have those values, have not been represented for a long, long time.
Not to detract from your trenchant observations, rather to underscore the exasperation, it was Eleanor Roosevelt, and how much more expressive of the truly good people of this country is there, was responsible for getting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations. Of course ignored and maligned, as is the wont of the human animal, but still it suggests there are better angels to our nature.
In a column yesterday, Alastair Crooke cited Nietzsche's "Will to Power", where the thesis was losing all values and reason means the end of Truth. Will to Power describes every tyrant in the modern era - their only truth is power.
Trump is the latest and is the first one drunk on power who controls nuclear weapons. We are in extreme peril.
It is often said "it's a means which has become an end" as if that was a bad thing. The truth is good means are good ends in themselves. A messy slow inefficient democratic means is always a good means when measured against efficient means.
Making the trains run on time is the very efficiency Mussolini's fascism promised. The Department of Government Efficiency was Trumps triumph of fascism.
When you hear a man emphasizesing efficiency over other values he is exposing his fascistic inclination.
I have to add that DOGE was not "efficient"--it was destructive. And to my knowledge, it did nothing to trim the least efficient Department--the aptly renamed Dept. of War.
My point is efficiency as the highest value does not result in efficiency but is destructive in that it excludes other higher values. Efficient thinking is the hallmark of fascustic thinking.
Of course the father of fascism Mussolini was destructive as he efficiently removed democracy.
Trump is doing an efficient job of destroying democracy breaking all norms and laws....but there is hope in non compliance...All the guardrails have not yet been hurdled.
No question Russia interfered in Ukraine politics when it invaded Ukraine to assist its Russian speaking Ukrainians citizens for basic DEI rights within the Ukranian politics. The 2014 Maiden coup assisted by USA certainly helped precipitate post 2014 civil war. Russian invasion was wrong. The USA assist in the coup was very wrong. Now we are seeing bloodshed from both USA and Russian meddling.
I appreciate your comments, but I'm not sure what else Russia could have done. They had no one with whom to negotiate.
They had the attempted coup in Georgia in 2005 (backed by the CIA) - after they had said both Georgia and Ukraine were off limits; they had thousands of Russian speaking Ukrainians killed by shelling in the period of 2014-2022, and there was a report Ukraine had planned to move into the Donbas in March, 2022 and had approximately 16 brigades deployed for that invasion.
Putin had repeatedly indicated he wanted things worked out through the Minsk Accords (which we know now were never intended to succeed - only to buy time to rearm Ukraine).
I think the West got the war it wanted. Now several million Ukrainians are dead, thanks to the ongoing efforts of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.
Jeff, I agree with that correction. Just speaking at the nation-state level, given we citizens don't really seem to matter.
I'm just not sure where they're going to get all the warm bodies for all Trump's planned wars. Signing up overweight "patriots" to wear body armor, beat up illegal immigrants and kill US citizens is one thing; getting those same dudes to sign up to fight in actual wars against trained militaries is something else.
According to Google's AI Overview: "Automatic Draft Registration for Men: Starting December 18, 2026, men aged 18-26 will be automatically registered using data from other federal systems (like DHS, SSA), replacing the previous requirement for individuals to sign up themselves."
It will be interesting to see:
1. How this impacts America's Peace "movement."
2. How many Devotees of The Church Of Trump will seek and get deferments to avoid becoming one of those WB4Ws.
Hello TomR... You forgot Barron... He is of Military Age... Yeah, I can see them Walking Point in a South American Jungle... Hah!!!... According to DJT, that is Suckers & Losers...
Yes.., Trump & Co. has not calmed the world stage On the contrary he has made it worse, maybe even setting the stage for civil war as well. His goal seems to be the whole Western Hemisphere. These are not times for the weak hearted what with the rising use of our forces in the Caribbean, Iran strikes, his lawlessness on the homefront ICE, DOGE, wresting control of Greenland etc. etc. What will he do this year? His quick fixes have not turned into any durable peace at least not yet. So much for The Art of the Deal... not!! Interesting times we are living for the moment. My Atomic Clock is set!!
Hello Fireman1110.... You were SAC Air Police... Ever look at the HAMAS Breaches of 7-Oct-2023?... I thought that the Israeli Defenses were Rudimentary, and Over-Hyped...
Yes Hamas did a very effective attack of uncrewed drones as I understood it to knock out IDF communications along the border, and jamming IDF alert systems before their Rocket attacks. So much for "Iron Dome."Then Hamas fighters took advantage of IDF confusion & dysfunction...
Hello Fireman... The Israeli Defenses were terrible... It took over two hours for an organized Ground Response... The Israeli Gunships that were the 1st organized responders, wound up firing indiscriminately into that Concert Crowd... If a SAC Base had been involved, how long would have been the response time?... Obviously HAMAS miscalculated, and the Israelis were too Arrogant especially since they were forewarned over a Year in Advance...
I could tell you about a time a bunch of brother Sky-cops dared me to set- off a "Slap Flare" I saved from our Air Base Ground Defense Training from our Barracks Roof-Top, and then we bugged out off the Base till the heat was off lol Needless to say we got away with it, but they weren't happy. Def-Con 3 was reached, and I'm sure getting busted would've been a forgone conclusion!! But, what a Blast...:/ :o) Right up there with "Snipe Hunting" a new Guy...!
Another capital piece, WJA. From "Condor."- Houseman: "I go even further back than that. Ten years after the Great War, as we used to call it before we knew enough to number them."
Robertson: "Do you miss that kind of action?"
H: "No. I miss that kind of clarity."
Whom better to look at for moral clarity than MLK, Jr.? Much can be learned from a study of contrasts. I think it worthwhile to juxtapose Hans Bethe in the April 1950 edition of "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" seventeen years later with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church, April 4, 1967 (exactly one year before his assassination), in which he called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
Is there some truth to T.S. Eliot's characterization of April as "the cruelest month," suggesting "that spring, often associated with renewal and hope, can also bring pain and awakening of memories, reflecting the poem's themes of disillusionment and despair"?
The times are despairing, much of that despair due to this country. How many times has it failed to learn from its interventions, subversions, adventurism, hypocrisies all, since the end of WWII to the present? It's enough to make one think it's in this country' DNA, and immutable. There is the backdrop of this being America's 250th birthday year. Coincidentally the average duration of empires is precisely that figure. Care to place your bets?
Unless I've been hallucinating, victim perhaps of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" [ :-) ], I recall cash rewards being offered early in the anti-migrant crackdown for tips on whereabouts of undocumented individuals. Though I may be conflating this with solicitation of info on "anti-Christian" activities. Let it not be forgotten an official commission, I think approved by enuf GOP Members of Congress on some committee to make it official, has been established to collect such allegations, the plan being for this to lead to prosecution of the imaginary heinous individuals who have the unmitigated gall to point out that the USA was founded as, intended to forever be, A SECULAR SOCIETY/GOVERNMENT. Some kind of "Commission on Religious Liberty." This liberty of course to be reserved for Christian Nationalist White Supremacists. Totally shades of Orwell's "1984." :-(
"Again, there was no magical time in America’s past when we lived up to our high ideals—but at least we used to have high ideals." -- that sentence says a lot. We can't excuse the ugliness of our nation, past and present, but there was a time when more people would have outraged by what is going on openly today. People of the past, before internet connection, may have been ignorant of what Smedley Butler called "the racket of war". They did not have 24/7 "news" to muddle their clarity of their thinking. While history is of vital importance, we won't find the answers to today's problems in being wistful for past times (no matter how comforting that may be). AI has added an unprecedented situation to contend with today.
I would say that the ridiculous and immoral behavior of our government has less to do with Trump, and more to do with it being a dying empire. The more dominant an empire has been, the more it thrashes around breaking things at the end. At the beginning of WW2 we were producing 58 percent of the world’s oil. By the end of the war we were producing more than half of the manufactured goods, with less than 5 percent of the population. No one else had nukes. All of the other developed nations had been destroyed, or nearly so. Even on the “winning” side the Soviets had lost something like 27 million people. Globally we became the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. China has done this before. If we don’t kill everyone with a nuclear war, they will do it again.
Another Outstanding Thought-Provoker, Bill. But be careful: Words like that can get You classified as a “domestic terrorist.”
But any pretense ~ or illusion and delusion ~ that the United States was “a defender of the free world against a far darker alternative” ended [or should have ended] in late 1991 with the disintegration of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, and the demise of European Communism.
Consider what the United States has inflicted, perpetrated, and perpetuated all over this Planet since 1991: Starting with the “liberation” of Kuwait, leading eventually to the so-called “Global” so-called “War On” so-called “Terrorism” after 9/11, to the proxy War with Russia in Ukraine and the Genocide with Israel in Palestine, to, now, the War In Venezuela, and the ramping up of the 45+ year War On Iran. [Note: And that ignores completely what the United States inflicted, perpetrated, and perpetuated as that “defender” after World War II in the course of Cold War I.
Scott Ritter concludes his 12 Jan 26 piece IRANIAN RESILIENCE with an explanation of the linkage between Venezuela and Iran as follows:
“The Iranian government is on the verge of fundamentally defeating the foreign supported opposition in Iran today. This has Israel in a panic, because they have burned the totality of their resources in Iran in support of the current unrest. The United States as well is concerned that an Iranian government victory today will make it impossible to change the regime in Tehran. THERE IS A REAL DANGER THAT THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL MAY LAUNCH ATTACKS ON IRAN IN THE NEAR FUTURE DESIGNED TO WEAKEN AND DISCREDIT THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT WHILE PROVIDING MILITARY COVER FOR THE OPPOSITION FORCES CARRYING OUT ACTS OF VIOLENCE IN IRAN TODAY.
“IT IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY THAT THESE ATTACKS WILL SUCCEED IN THEIR OWN RIGHT. THEY WILL, HOWEVER, TRIGGER AN IRANIAN RESPONSE THAT WILL DISRUPT OIL PRODUCTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST FOR A SIGNIFICANT PERIOD OF TIME.
“THIS APPEARS TO BE THE GOAL OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, AND EXPLAINS IN LARGE PART THE TIMING OF THE UNITED STATES ATTACK ON VENEZUELA, WHICH SOUGHT TO SECURE VENEZUELAN OIL IN ANTICIPATION OF A NEW ENERGY CRISIS TRIGGERED BY A JOINT US-ISRAELI ATTACK ON IRAN.
“THE WORLD IS LOOKING AT A DELIBERATE ATTACK ON GLOBAL ENERGY SECURITY AS A MEANS OF BRINGING DOWN IRAN, WEAKENING RUSSIA, AND DESTABILIZING BRICS.” [EMPHASES added.]
“THIS APPEARS TO BE THE GOAL OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, AND EXPLAINS IN LARGE PART THE TIMING OF THE UNITED STATES ATTACK ON VENEZUELA, WHICH SOUGHT TO SECURE VENEZUELAN OIL IN ANTICIPATION OF A NEW ENERGY CRISIS TRIGGERED BY A JOINT US-ISRAELI ATTACK ON IRAN.
“THE WORLD IS LOOKING AT A DELIBERATE ATTACK ON GLOBAL ENERGY SECURITY AS A MEANS OF BRINGING DOWN IRAN, WEAKENING RUSSIA, AND DESTABILIZING BRICS.”
In the realm of global power, numbers are not neutral; they are signatures of intent, and dates are the ledgers where accounts are kept.
By holding this word until the thirteenth day of this new year to publish, this is something far beyond reporting—this a forensic audit of a half-century of history, serving a foreclosure notice on an imperial grudge that has finally come due.
The number 13 was ASSIGNED to me as a trademark, sealed and published in newspaper ink years ago. TODAY it serves as the divine boundary line for this final accounting, the precise demarcation where the empire’s ledger is closed and its violent claims are, at last, foreclosed...
Hello Bill Astore... Shifting Of Populations?... Many of the Japanese-American Internment Camps were close to American Indian Reservations... We found that We had much in Common... We Became Friends...
My grandfather drove a school bus to Sacatone to pick up and drop off Indian children going to school in Casa Grande Arizona. After the war he and his brother brought one of the buildings from the internment camp there and turned it into two houses. Might have the spelling of Sacatone wrong, don’t know.
Hello Edgar.... Thanks.... The American Indian Reservations were the first Interment Camps... Staring across the Wire, the Japanese-American, and American Indigenous realized that We Shared Brown Skin... Now ICE is raiding Indigenous Lands looking for Brown-Skinned People...
I’m white as can be, but to me that makes no difference. People are people. To me the ICE raids are just one more symptom of our country falling apart. I have given up on it. Moving to Russia asap. I’m sure there will be things I don’t like about it, but it is getting worse here quickly and I think that will continue for a long time.
Considering our history, --pretty much wiping out the Indigenous people, our history of slavery, keeping women down, our prison system, all of our wars, our treatment of immigrants, Jim Crow laws, what the CIA has done in other countries, I could go on, - I seriously doubt that we ever had the ideals we say we had. I believe it was all a big myth foisted upon us by our purported leaders and those who are behind them. The truly good people of this country, those who do have those values, have not been represented for a long, long time.
Not to detract from your trenchant observations, rather to underscore the exasperation, it was Eleanor Roosevelt, and how much more expressive of the truly good people of this country is there, was responsible for getting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations. Of course ignored and maligned, as is the wont of the human animal, but still it suggests there are better angels to our nature.
In a column yesterday, Alastair Crooke cited Nietzsche's "Will to Power", where the thesis was losing all values and reason means the end of Truth. Will to Power describes every tyrant in the modern era - their only truth is power.
Trump is the latest and is the first one drunk on power who controls nuclear weapons. We are in extreme peril.
Hello TomR.... The Danger Grows Every Day As DJT's Dementia Grows...
Absolutely true - and surrounded by sycophants who will not say 'no', no matter what he says he wants.
First image; Country Joe of Woodstock comes to mind!
.......next stop is I-eye- ran".
I am a SAC veteran. Repentant!
There is and never was nothing so wonderous about the US, or so odious about Iran, that apologizes it destroying the world if Russia is winning!
We're fighting for Caligula's personal empire.
It is often said "it's a means which has become an end" as if that was a bad thing. The truth is good means are good ends in themselves. A messy slow inefficient democratic means is always a good means when measured against efficient means.
Making the trains run on time is the very efficiency Mussolini's fascism promised. The Department of Government Efficiency was Trumps triumph of fascism.
When you hear a man emphasizesing efficiency over other values he is exposing his fascistic inclination.
I have to add that DOGE was not "efficient"--it was destructive. And to my knowledge, it did nothing to trim the least efficient Department--the aptly renamed Dept. of War.
My point is efficiency as the highest value does not result in efficiency but is destructive in that it excludes other higher values. Efficient thinking is the hallmark of fascustic thinking.
Of course the father of fascism Mussolini was destructive as he efficiently removed democracy.
Thanks for your clarification.
I guess I cannot resist complaining about how horrible DOGE was/is even if it digresses from your point.
Trump is doing an efficient job of destroying democracy breaking all norms and laws....but there is hope in non compliance...All the guardrails have not yet been hurdled.
No question Russia interfered in Ukraine politics when it invaded Ukraine to assist its Russian speaking Ukrainians citizens for basic DEI rights within the Ukranian politics. The 2014 Maiden coup assisted by USA certainly helped precipitate post 2014 civil war. Russian invasion was wrong. The USA assist in the coup was very wrong. Now we are seeing bloodshed from both USA and Russian meddling.
I appreciate your comments, but I'm not sure what else Russia could have done. They had no one with whom to negotiate.
They had the attempted coup in Georgia in 2005 (backed by the CIA) - after they had said both Georgia and Ukraine were off limits; they had thousands of Russian speaking Ukrainians killed by shelling in the period of 2014-2022, and there was a report Ukraine had planned to move into the Donbas in March, 2022 and had approximately 16 brigades deployed for that invasion.
Putin had repeatedly indicated he wanted things worked out through the Minsk Accords (which we know now were never intended to succeed - only to buy time to rearm Ukraine).
I think the West got the war it wanted. Now several million Ukrainians are dead, thanks to the ongoing efforts of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.
i'm not sure if "the West" got the war it wanted, TomR.
But America's Military Industrial Congressional Complex [aka MICIMATT[SH]T] certainly did.
And now, it has a whole bunch of Wars right here in North, Central, and South America to supply.
No wonder Trump is seeking a 50% increase in America's War Budget, eh? There's WARS TO BE WON, and that can get expensive.
Correction: There's WARS TO BE HAD, not necessarily WON.
MICIMATT[SH]T gets its cut regardless of Victory or Defeat.
Jeff, I agree with that correction. Just speaking at the nation-state level, given we citizens don't really seem to matter.
I'm just not sure where they're going to get all the warm bodies for all Trump's planned wars. Signing up overweight "patriots" to wear body armor, beat up illegal immigrants and kill US citizens is one thing; getting those same dudes to sign up to fight in actual wars against trained militaries is something else.
Good question about "Warm Bodies for Wars", TomR.
According to Google's AI Overview: "Automatic Draft Registration for Men: Starting December 18, 2026, men aged 18-26 will be automatically registered using data from other federal systems (like DHS, SSA), replacing the previous requirement for individuals to sign up themselves."
It will be interesting to see:
1. How this impacts America's Peace "movement."
2. How many Devotees of The Church Of Trump will seek and get deferments to avoid becoming one of those WB4Ws.
I'm sure both Don Jr and Eric will seek age exemptions so they can be in on the first assault into hostile territory. And mustn't forget about Jared.
If only...
Hello TomR... You forgot Barron... He is of Military Age... Yeah, I can see them Walking Point in a South American Jungle... Hah!!!... According to DJT, that is Suckers & Losers...
Yes.., Trump & Co. has not calmed the world stage On the contrary he has made it worse, maybe even setting the stage for civil war as well. His goal seems to be the whole Western Hemisphere. These are not times for the weak hearted what with the rising use of our forces in the Caribbean, Iran strikes, his lawlessness on the homefront ICE, DOGE, wresting control of Greenland etc. etc. What will he do this year? His quick fixes have not turned into any durable peace at least not yet. So much for The Art of the Deal... not!! Interesting times we are living for the moment. My Atomic Clock is set!!
Hello Fireman1110.... You were SAC Air Police... Ever look at the HAMAS Breaches of 7-Oct-2023?... I thought that the Israeli Defenses were Rudimentary, and Over-Hyped...
Yes Hamas did a very effective attack of uncrewed drones as I understood it to knock out IDF communications along the border, and jamming IDF alert systems before their Rocket attacks. So much for "Iron Dome."Then Hamas fighters took advantage of IDF confusion & dysfunction...
Hello Fireman... The Israeli Defenses were terrible... It took over two hours for an organized Ground Response... The Israeli Gunships that were the 1st organized responders, wound up firing indiscriminately into that Concert Crowd... If a SAC Base had been involved, how long would have been the response time?... Obviously HAMAS miscalculated, and the Israelis were too Arrogant especially since they were forewarned over a Year in Advance...
A SAC Base GMAFB it would be immediate, and yes the IDF had a terrible response..!
Hello Fireman... Yeah, I've lived around SAC Bases.... Yet, the IDF is probably the most over-hyped, and arrogant Military in the World....
I could tell you about a time a bunch of brother Sky-cops dared me to set- off a "Slap Flare" I saved from our Air Base Ground Defense Training from our Barracks Roof-Top, and then we bugged out off the Base till the heat was off lol Needless to say we got away with it, but they weren't happy. Def-Con 3 was reached, and I'm sure getting busted would've been a forgone conclusion!! But, what a Blast...:/ :o) Right up there with "Snipe Hunting" a new Guy...!
Another capital piece, WJA. From "Condor."- Houseman: "I go even further back than that. Ten years after the Great War, as we used to call it before we knew enough to number them."
Robertson: "Do you miss that kind of action?"
H: "No. I miss that kind of clarity."
Whom better to look at for moral clarity than MLK, Jr.? Much can be learned from a study of contrasts. I think it worthwhile to juxtapose Hans Bethe in the April 1950 edition of "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" seventeen years later with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church, April 4, 1967 (exactly one year before his assassination), in which he called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
Is there some truth to T.S. Eliot's characterization of April as "the cruelest month," suggesting "that spring, often associated with renewal and hope, can also bring pain and awakening of memories, reflecting the poem's themes of disillusionment and despair"?
The times are despairing, much of that despair due to this country. How many times has it failed to learn from its interventions, subversions, adventurism, hypocrisies all, since the end of WWII to the present? It's enough to make one think it's in this country' DNA, and immutable. There is the backdrop of this being America's 250th birthday year. Coincidentally the average duration of empires is precisely that figure. Care to place your bets?
Unless I've been hallucinating, victim perhaps of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" [ :-) ], I recall cash rewards being offered early in the anti-migrant crackdown for tips on whereabouts of undocumented individuals. Though I may be conflating this with solicitation of info on "anti-Christian" activities. Let it not be forgotten an official commission, I think approved by enuf GOP Members of Congress on some committee to make it official, has been established to collect such allegations, the plan being for this to lead to prosecution of the imaginary heinous individuals who have the unmitigated gall to point out that the USA was founded as, intended to forever be, A SECULAR SOCIETY/GOVERNMENT. Some kind of "Commission on Religious Liberty." This liberty of course to be reserved for Christian Nationalist White Supremacists. Totally shades of Orwell's "1984." :-(
"Again, there was no magical time in America’s past when we lived up to our high ideals—but at least we used to have high ideals." -- that sentence says a lot. We can't excuse the ugliness of our nation, past and present, but there was a time when more people would have outraged by what is going on openly today. People of the past, before internet connection, may have been ignorant of what Smedley Butler called "the racket of war". They did not have 24/7 "news" to muddle their clarity of their thinking. While history is of vital importance, we won't find the answers to today's problems in being wistful for past times (no matter how comforting that may be). AI has added an unprecedented situation to contend with today.
Hello Aunty.... A.I. is the Ultimate Evil Sith...
I would say that the ridiculous and immoral behavior of our government has less to do with Trump, and more to do with it being a dying empire. The more dominant an empire has been, the more it thrashes around breaking things at the end. At the beginning of WW2 we were producing 58 percent of the world’s oil. By the end of the war we were producing more than half of the manufactured goods, with less than 5 percent of the population. No one else had nukes. All of the other developed nations had been destroyed, or nearly so. Even on the “winning” side the Soviets had lost something like 27 million people. Globally we became the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. China has done this before. If we don’t kill everyone with a nuclear war, they will do it again.
Another Outstanding Thought-Provoker, Bill. But be careful: Words like that can get You classified as a “domestic terrorist.”
But any pretense ~ or illusion and delusion ~ that the United States was “a defender of the free world against a far darker alternative” ended [or should have ended] in late 1991 with the disintegration of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, and the demise of European Communism.
Consider what the United States has inflicted, perpetrated, and perpetuated all over this Planet since 1991: Starting with the “liberation” of Kuwait, leading eventually to the so-called “Global” so-called “War On” so-called “Terrorism” after 9/11, to the proxy War with Russia in Ukraine and the Genocide with Israel in Palestine, to, now, the War In Venezuela, and the ramping up of the 45+ year War On Iran. [Note: And that ignores completely what the United States inflicted, perpetrated, and perpetuated as that “defender” after World War II in the course of Cold War I.
Scott Ritter concludes his 12 Jan 26 piece IRANIAN RESILIENCE with an explanation of the linkage between Venezuela and Iran as follows:
“The Iranian government is on the verge of fundamentally defeating the foreign supported opposition in Iran today. This has Israel in a panic, because they have burned the totality of their resources in Iran in support of the current unrest. The United States as well is concerned that an Iranian government victory today will make it impossible to change the regime in Tehran. THERE IS A REAL DANGER THAT THE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL MAY LAUNCH ATTACKS ON IRAN IN THE NEAR FUTURE DESIGNED TO WEAKEN AND DISCREDIT THE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT WHILE PROVIDING MILITARY COVER FOR THE OPPOSITION FORCES CARRYING OUT ACTS OF VIOLENCE IN IRAN TODAY.
“IT IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY THAT THESE ATTACKS WILL SUCCEED IN THEIR OWN RIGHT. THEY WILL, HOWEVER, TRIGGER AN IRANIAN RESPONSE THAT WILL DISRUPT OIL PRODUCTION IN THE MIDDLE EAST FOR A SIGNIFICANT PERIOD OF TIME.
“THIS APPEARS TO BE THE GOAL OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, AND EXPLAINS IN LARGE PART THE TIMING OF THE UNITED STATES ATTACK ON VENEZUELA, WHICH SOUGHT TO SECURE VENEZUELAN OIL IN ANTICIPATION OF A NEW ENERGY CRISIS TRIGGERED BY A JOINT US-ISRAELI ATTACK ON IRAN.
“THE WORLD IS LOOKING AT A DELIBERATE ATTACK ON GLOBAL ENERGY SECURITY AS A MEANS OF BRINGING DOWN IRAN, WEAKENING RUSSIA, AND DESTABILIZING BRICS.” [EMPHASES added.]
Full article at https://scottritter.substack.com/p/iranian-resilience .
“THIS APPEARS TO BE THE GOAL OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, AND EXPLAINS IN LARGE PART THE TIMING OF THE UNITED STATES ATTACK ON VENEZUELA, WHICH SOUGHT TO SECURE VENEZUELAN OIL IN ANTICIPATION OF A NEW ENERGY CRISIS TRIGGERED BY A JOINT US-ISRAELI ATTACK ON IRAN.
“THE WORLD IS LOOKING AT A DELIBERATE ATTACK ON GLOBAL ENERGY SECURITY AS A MEANS OF BRINGING DOWN IRAN, WEAKENING RUSSIA, AND DESTABILIZING BRICS.”
EMPHASES added.]
Full article at https://scottritter.substack.com/p/iranian-resilience .
'ABYSS AND THE ROGUE'
THE PREAMBLE: THE DIVINE BOUNDARY
In the realm of global power, numbers are not neutral; they are signatures of intent, and dates are the ledgers where accounts are kept.
By holding this word until the thirteenth day of this new year to publish, this is something far beyond reporting—this a forensic audit of a half-century of history, serving a foreclosure notice on an imperial grudge that has finally come due.
The number 13 was ASSIGNED to me as a trademark, sealed and published in newspaper ink years ago. TODAY it serves as the divine boundary line for this final accounting, the precise demarcation where the empire’s ledger is closed and its violent claims are, at last, foreclosed...
https://rayjc.com/2026/01/13/abyss-and-the-rogue/
"What We're Fighting For"
Are we "fighting" for something as citizens? I'm confused by your choice of words. How do you define 'fighting', Bill?
i don't think Bill is referring to Citizens fighting for or against something here, John.
i think he is talking about America's Ruling Political Class/Caste and its Deep State and Government, and what it and they are fighting for.