#caitlin johnstone

[theculturedmarxist]

In a new article titled “Ukraine’s Lack of Weaponry and Training Risks Stalemate in Fight With Russia,” The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Michaels reports that western officials knew Ukrainian forces didn’t have the weapons and training necessary to succeed in their highly touted counteroffensive which was launched last month.

Michaels writes:

“When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew Kyiv didn’t have all the training or weapons — from shells to warplanes — that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day. “They haven’t. Deep and deadly minefields, extensive fortifications and Russian air power have combined to largely block significant advances by Ukrainian troops. Instead, the campaign risks descending into a stalemate with the potential to burn through lives and equipment without a major shift in momentum.”

The claim that western officials had sincerely believed Ukrainian forces might be able to overcome their glaring deficits through sheer pluck and ticker is undermined later in the same article by a war pundit who says the US would never attempt such a counteroffensive without first controlling the skies, which Ukraine doesn’t have the ability to do:

“America would never attempt to defeat a prepared defense without air superiority, but they [Ukrainians] don’t have air superiority,” the U.S. Army War College’s John Nagl told WSJ. “It’s impossible to overstate how important air superiority is for fighting a ground fight at a reasonable cost in casualties.”

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes the following on the latest WSJ revelation:

“Leading up to the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which was launched in June, the Discord leaks and media reports revealed that the US did not believe Ukraine could regain much territory from Russia. But the Biden administration pushed for the assault anyway, as it rejected the idea of a pause in fighting.”

So the empire is still knowingly throwing Ukrainian lives into the meat grinder of an unwinnable proxy war, even as western officials tell the public that this war is about saving Ukrainian lives and handing Putin a crushing defeat whenever they’re on camera.

This attitude from the empire is not a new development. Last October The Washington Post reported that “Privately, U.S. officials say neither Russia nor Ukraine is capable of winning the war outright, but they have ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table.”

Now why might that be? Why would the western empire be so comfortable encouraging Ukrainians to keep fighting when it knows they can’t win?

We find our answer in another Washington Post article titled “The West feels gloomy about Ukraine. Here’s why it shouldn’t.”, authored last week by virulent empire propagandist David Ignatius. In his eagerness to frame the floundering counteroffensive in a positive light for his American audience, Ignatius let slip an inconvenient truth:

“Meanwhile, for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s most reckless antagonist has been rocked. NATO has grown much stronger with the additions of Sweden and Finland. Germany has weaned itself from dependence on Russian energy and, in many ways, rediscovered its sense of values. NATO squabbles make headlines, but overall, this has been a triumphal summer for the alliance.”

Anyone who believes this proxy war is about helping Ukrainians should be made to read that paragraph over and over again until it sinks in. The admission that the US-centralized power structure benefits immensely from this proxy conflict is revealing enough, but that parenthetical “other than for the Ukrainians” aside really drives it home. It reads as though it was added as an afterthought, like “Oh yeah it’s actually kind of rough on the Ukrainians though — if you consider them to be people.”

The claim that this war is about helping Ukrainians has been further undermined by another new Washington Post report that Ukraine is now more riddled with land mines than any other nation on earth, and that US-supplied cluster munitions are only making the land more deadly.

That’s right kids! We’re turning Ukraine into an uninhabitable wasteland of death and dismemberment to save the Ukrainians.

We should probably talk more about the fact that the US empire is loudly promoting the goal of achieving peace in Ukraine by defeating Russia while quietly acknowledging that this goal is impossible. This is like accelerating toward a brick wall and pretending it’s an open road.

The narrative that Russia can be beaten by ramping up proxy warfare against it makes sense if you believe Russia can be militarily defeated in Ukraine, but the US empire does not believe that Russia can be militarily defeated in Ukraine. It knows that continuing this war is only going to perpetuate the death and devastation.

“Beat Putin’s ass and make him withdraw” sounds cool and is egoically gratifying, and it’s become the mainstream answer to the problem of the war in Ukraine, but nobody promoting that answer can address the fact that the ones driving this proxy war believe it’s impossible. In fact, all evidence we’re seeing suggests that the US is not trying to deliver Putin a crushing defeat in Ukraine and force him to withdraw, but is rather trying to create another long and costly military quagmire for Moscow, as western cold warriors have done repeatedly in instances like Afghanistan and Syria.

Wanting to weaken Russia and wanting to save lives and establish peace in Ukraine are two completely different goals, so different that in practice they wind up being largely contradictory. Drawing Moscow into a bloody quagmire means many more people dying in a war that drags on for years, with all the immense human suffering that that entails.

The US does not want peace in Ukraine, it wants to overextend Russia, shore up military and energy dominance over Europe, expand its war machine and enrich the military-industrial complex. That’s why it knowingly provoked this war. It’s posing as Ukraine’s savior while being clearly invested in Ukraine’s destruction.

It is not legitimate to support this proxy war without squarely addressing this massive contradiction using hard facts and robust argumentation. Nobody ever has.

[hussyknee]

[never-was-has-been]

She's not wrong and history clearly shows this...if you're willing to do a bit of reading & critical thinking...Give it try..🤔 🤨

[nando161mando]

[Caitlin Johnstone] Trump Puts An Appropriately Ugly Face On A Very Ugly Empire - The only thing I like about Trump is exactly what so many empire managers hate about him: he says the quiet parts out loud.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/11/09/trump-puts-an-appropriately-ugly-face-on-a-very-ugly-empire/

[thefreethoughtprojectcom]

To come to terms with the reality that the power structure you were raised to trust and the political party you were raised to side with are responsible for some of the worst things that have ever happened in our world isn't easy.

Read More: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/the-human-spirit/to-be-an-authentic-person-is-to-stare-deeply-into-the-face-of-uncomfortable-truths

#TheFreeThoughtProject

[fairest]

As the Lights Go Out in Gaza

In America they killed all the buffalo just to take away food from the natives,

made mountains of their skulls and posed proudly in photos

like they posed proudly in front of burnt bodies after lynchings in the south.

In Australia they stole the brown children and gave them to pale families

and watched their ancient civilization disappear into the toxic fumes of industry

like a sailboat into the mist.

In Israel teenagers play with buttons that cause explosions on screens

and look forward to the end of the Gaza operation

so they can leave and go play better video games.

In Gaza mothers clutch tattered pieces of flesh and clothing to their chests

and scream names that will never again be answered

and call out questions to the heavens that will also go unanswered.

And the ghosts of the buffalo roam through the ruins 

looking for their heads

while the people of Gaza comb through the rubble 

looking for their dead,

and the rest of us stare at screens and cry like babies

and ask our own unanswered questions 

of heavens clouded by the fumes of industry,

vanishing stars above a dying world

as the lights go out in Gaza

one by one.

— Caitlin Johnstone

[attheexactlyrighttimeandplace]

[lostfunzones]

'It clears up a lot of confusion when you understand that the US empire is not a national government which happens to run nonstop military operations, it’s a nonstop military operation that happens to run a national government. The wars are not designed to serve the interests of the United States, the United States is designed to serve the interests of the wars. The US as a country is just a source of funding, personnel, resources and diplomatic cover for a nonstop campaign to dominate the planet with mass military violence and the threat thereof.'

[thisisabernieblog]

[kramlabs]

“I don’t oppose the butchery in Gaza because I love Hamas or hate Jews or love Islam or hate America.

I don’t oppose the butchery in Gaza because I’m a lefty or a commie or an anarchist or an anti-imperialist.

I oppose the butchery in Gaza because I’m not a fucking psychopath.”

Via: https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/05/06/i-oppose-israels-atrocities-in-gaza-because-im-not-a-psychopath/

[theculturedmarxist]

It’s not the big, glaring, obvious lies that get you. The New York Times is the world’s most destructive propaganda outlet not because it publishes giant ham-fisted whoppers, but because it appears trustworthy. Its reporting looks authoritative. Children are taught in school that it’s what credible news media looks like. This lets the well-crafted propaganda slide into people’s minds, undetected and without resistance.

❖

The western media are so ridiculously deceitful and propagandistic that the fact that popular comedy shows and famous comedians aren’t making fun of them constantly proves those shows and comedians are themselves part of the propaganda network.

❖

Most mainstream western reporting on Chinese military activity essentially amounts to “OMG you guys China isn’t just passively sitting there while we militarily encircle it and prepare to attack it!”

Example:

That’s what all the banging on about China’s “military build-up” is doing too; acting like it’s alarming and sinister that China isn’t just passively allowing itself to be surrounded with war machinery amid glaringly obvious western preparations for war without doing anything to defend itself.

China’s still spending vastly less on its military than the United States, both overall and as a percentage of GDP. Yet we’re meant to act like China is the obvious aggressor nation, even as it’s being rapidly surrounded by US war machinery and increasingly militarized US allies.

❖

One thing I’ve learned from interactions with Robert F Kennedy Jr supporters is that many of them sincerely don’t understand why his position of “unconditional support” for Israel is such a deal breaker for many anti-imperialists. They think it’s all about Palestinian rights, but it’s a lot more than that.

Unconditional support for Israel doesn’t just mean supporting apartheid abuses and frequent bombings of Gaza, it means supporting the regular bombing of Syria, the annexation of the Golan Heights, and Israel’s insane warmongering against Iran. Israel is always in a state of war.

“Unconditional support” for Israel means imperialist foreign policy throughout the middle east. This isn’t just conjecture — we already see it in RFK Jr’s other middle east foreign policy like his staunch opposition to the Iran deal.

It’s a nonsensical, self-contradictory position to claim you want to dismantle the empire out one side of your mouth and pledge “unconditional support” for a nation that’s never not at war out the other. If you’re saying both, there’s one you’re not being truthful about.

There’s not enough rage at the US empire for provoking and perpetuating the war in Ukraine. Objections you see to this proxy war are mostly just griping about how much it costs or whether it’s sound strategy or whatever, but how about the fact that human lives are being spent like pennies for the advancement US global hegemony?

Think about how much it hurts to have one death in your family. Think about how much it rocks an entire community to lose even one life to violence. Mountains of human bodies are being piled up in violent deaths, all to secure US geostrategic interests in Eurasia. It’s pure horror.

The empire had multiple opportunities to end this before it started. It had an opportunity to end it in April 2022. It had an opportunity to end it this past November. But it kept shoving it through to advance US interests, and young lives kept being sacrificed to the war god.

Meanwhile US officials openly gloat all the time about how much this war is serving US interests, while anonymously whining to the press that the counteroffensive is failing because Ukrainians are too cowardly to charge through Russian minefields under heavy artillery fire. This should draw white hot rage from everybody.

Basically the US empire’s strategy is to use Ukrainian bodies like a giant sponge to soak up as many expensive Russian military explosives as possible.

❖

For western war propagandists Syria was like a dress rehearsal for the war in Ukraine. The lies are being peddled mostly by the same people, using mostly the same methods, funneled up into the same mainstream media platforms. The only real difference is that the empire is on the side of the official government in Ukraine, so it can simply use its officials and its media platforms as on the ground sourcing instead of setting up a bunch of weird little propaganda constructs like the White Helmets etc. Syria marked a new era of imperial narrative management.

[shrinkrants]

"If we can find some way to shake off the conditioning which manipulates us into thinking revolutionary change is unnecessary, then anything becomes possible. If enough people can awaken to the urgent need for change, collective measures like national strikes and mass-scale civil disobedience could bring the capitalist empire to its knees without firing a shot. We own all the labor and purchasing power upon which the empire is built; that’s why a historically unprecedented amount of propaganda has gone into making sure we never make use of that power. But nothing like that can happen until we come to terms with the reality that we live in a civilization that is designed to make us powerless. Until then we’re stuck with ridiculous strategies which feed into the illusion that we have the power to do something meaningful within the current system, like “Vote for Kamala and then push her to the left” or “Vote for Trump and hope he does something unpredictable”.  So lean into the powerlessness of this historical moment. Point it out to people. In as many ways as you can, help show people that their political systems are controlled by the powerful, that their news media are propaganda services of the western empire, and that a better world is possible if we can shake off the chains of imperial narrative control and start forcing the advancement of the interests of ordinary human beings. You can do this using any means at your disposal. Talking to people. Distributing literature. Making videos. Making TikTok skits. Making tweets. Making art. Making memes. Writing on the wall. Writing blogs. Printing zines. Writing letters to the editor at your local paper. Anything you can do to help get unauthorized ideas into eyes and ears which may not otherwise have encountered them, using your own unique set of skills and personal conditioning." - Caitlin Johnstone

[the-inevitable-minor-fires]

"When you find yourself debating which openly genocidal presidential candidate will do a better job managing inflation, you know you have been duped into having the wrong conversations about the system you are living under."

[thefreethoughtprojectcom]

We’ll either transcend our unhealthy relationship with narrative, or we’ll wipe ourselves out via nuclear war or environmental destruction.

Read More: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/the-human-spirit/narrative-manipulators-have-made-our-civilization-deeply-unnatural

#TheFreeThoughtProject #TFTP

[shy-romantic-black-guy]

Our brains have been warped by propaganda and narrative manipulation to keep us obedient to the status quo of capitalism, militarism, mass surveillance and the gap between the rich and the poor. There is a better world we just have to be disobedient enough to make it happen.