Listen to a reading of this article: ❖ America has the single worst government in the world. Shut the fuck up about Cuba. Hands off Cuba and regime change America. ❖ "Stop saying the US is the worst government on earth! Others are way worse!" Name one. Name one that's currently doing anything that rises to the level of
According to UN and various NGO accountings of civilian casualties abroad resulting from US “interventions”, US backed coups, US wars abroad (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Syria), and US sanctions (e.g. Cuba, Venezuela, Iran) since WW2, TENS of millions of innocent human beings have been killed in service of “fighting communism”, "spreading democracy", conducting a “war on terror”, “wars on drugs”, and creating a “new world order”, when in reality we were (and are) spreading death, destruction, disease, poverty, and forced migration in the Middle East and Latin America.
Korean War deaths: 5 million. General Curtis Lemay bragged that “we killed 20% of their population." 'The war in the air, however, was never a "stalemate". North Korea was subject to a massive US bombing campaign. The Korean War was among the most destructive conflicts of the modern era, with approximately 3 million war fatalities and a larger proportional civilian death toll than World War II or the Vietnam War. It incurred the destruction of virtually all of Korea's major cities, thousands of massacres, including the mass killing of tens of thousands of suspected communists by the South Korean government, and the torture and starvation of prisoners of war by the North Koreans. North Korea became among the most heavily bombed countries in history." —Wikipedia (of all places)
May 12, 1996 CBS interview with Madeline Albright: https://youtu.be/FbCAOdNRp_4 Approximately a total of 880,000 civilians died as a result of the sanctions alone.
"The idea that America is a defender of democracy, liberty and human rights would come as a surprise to those who saw their democratically elected governments subverted and overthrown by the United States in Panama (1941), Syria (1949), Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Congo (1960), Brazil (1964), Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos (1964–1975), Chile (1973), Iraq (2003), Honduras (2009), Syria (2010), and Egypt (2013). And this list does not include a host of other governments that were viewed as inimical to American interests and destroyed, in each case making life for the inhabitants of these countries even more miserable."
Our booming stock market is largely based on the burgeoning profits of weapons manufacturers, Wall Street banks, insurance companies, government contracted mass surveillance provided by Silicon Valley giants, and bears no resemblance the declining physical and financial health of our domestic economy, our diminished manufacturing sector, and crumbling infrastructure. Focusing on the real domestic economy could have created millions of jobs for American citizens in manufacturing, construction, green energy, and health care, all of which would have greatly improved America’s real economy and (ironically) our national security.
The bipartisan utter lack of concern let alone guilt for the countless millions of innocent human beings killed, maimed, and displaced in US "interventionist wars" and coup d'états subsequently proven to be based on lies is astounding. The sociopathic zeitgeist that describes current US foreign and domestic policy is unconscionable. Republican president Eisenhower, whose credentials and military experience surpassed all other US presidents, warned of a military-industrial- complex coup in his critically important farewell speech, and no one listened —especially our most “respected journalists”.
"It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism” Yea, It's like saying "Throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
I think we should realistically reevaluate how we define ourselves, and our place in the world. And then ask ourselves the question: Where should we go?
The whole basis of Capitalist Economics is the idea, accepted as fact, that man acts out of self-interest. Yet, why should self-interest be accepted as that which should guide everyone’s behavior? The second assumption is the idea that growth should be the precondition of macro and microeconomic policy in order to bring about prosperity. But how do we define prosperity?
Ending growth for its own sake would be a great start. I think Ecomonic Growth has become this behemoth, out of control elephant in the room, Machine on auto-pilot, that no one thinks is possible to reign in.
The idea of “productivity” has been hammered into us for generations as a remnant of the industrial revolution and the christian work ethic. But how do we even define human productivity now? It is not assembling widgets on a treadmill anymore. Yet we are still on that treadmill and it has been without purpose for a long long time already.
I firmly agree, We cannot consume our way out of this. We’ve got to stop buying shit that we don’t need. We’ve got to see that our actions have consequences that destroy our ecosystem. For example by boycotting plastics we would make a huge difference in everyone’s health including the health of the planet. We’ve got to end BIgPharma and BigAg. We’ve got to support each other on a local level and help form decentralized local economies to prosper in ways that encourage human health, happiness and interdependence. And the answer is NOT communism or centralized control by elites; even elites running things who are claiming to be benevolent is a very dangerous precedent.
There's a fanciful part of myself that's imagined that all the crap the American government's doing is actually to realize some twisted yet begrudgingly awesome goal, worthy of a big reveal.
But when you realize that there is no James Bond Bad Guy Skull Shaped Island, and that all this petty squandering of the blazing mystery that is life is for nothing more than to slake those most mundane lizard brain-driven frailties of profit, power, control, and ego-stroking, the measure of disgust involved reaches Krakatoa levels, and we all know what happened there.
"There's a focus on profit-driven solutions to climate collapse because our profit-driven global model always values making more things ("men's work") and never values cleaning things up ("women's work")."
That entire part blew my mind. I've never quite looked at it like that.
We also cannot “technology” our way put of Global Ecosystems Collapse. The majority of ppl still really believe solar and wind farms are going to save us, when in fact these technologies are not at all sustainable—these “technologies” require mining rare earth minerals and the equipment barely lasts 10 years so we have to keep producing them over and over. That’s not at all sustainable
The only answer is to CONSUME LESS **stares at the wealthy**
I won't ask what you think the solution is, because the most obvious solution is for Americans to force their government to obey their own laws and for the rest of the world to do the same. Free speech, for example. The US, the UK, Australia and virtually every country in the world is spitting on this "value" every minute Julian Assange remains imprisoned -- the first three most directly and culpably, and other countries for their tacit support of(= failure to protest against) this travesty of justice.
It's tempting to say this is not the formal US government or the US people, that the government and people are controlled by international elites who generate the necessary misinformation. But a sizable proportion of people are aware of the manipulations of BOTH US political parties and continue to vote for them anyway, because they think the other one is "worse." Nothing will change until large numbers of people routinely vote for 3rd party candidates and Republocrats truly fear losing control.
Caitlin makes an important point when she writes, "Its [the oligarchic empire's] real objection is to people having the ability to share information which it does not control." Thus, whenever you attempt to shut someone down who questions or disagrees with official narratives by calling them a "conspiracy theorist," a term invented by the intelligence community to smear and discredit those skeptical of the Warren Report, you are supporting this evil empire. It's not a "conspiracy theory" to question the claims of Russian or Chinese interference in our elections. Just the opposite: those claims are themselves conspiracy theories because there is no evidence after a four year investigation to validate them. It's not conspiracy theory to point out the manipulation and corruption of data used to create fear and boost the Covid-19 narrative. It's not conspiracy theory to point out the official misinformation and attempts to block early treatment of Covid-19 with HCQ, Ivermectin or Fluvoxamine, or the neglect of the role of vitamin D in protection against all respiratory illness. It's not conspiracy theory to point out government-published VAERS data or prior studies showing that only 1% of all adverse reactions are reported through VAERS.
While I agree with Caitlyn's point about Cuba (in fact all of Central & S. America), calling the US the "Single worst government in the world" is an accusation that by many criteria is inaccurate. Okay, we get that the DC is falling short of what we wish it would do. But places like Myanmar and Haiti, Belarus too, are not only terrible, their citizens are in poverty, and some are dying there for no just reason other than that they complain about conditions. In America, we just beat you over the head when you complain. After a brief stop at the hospital Emergency Department (many countries have few hospitals at all), you can go home and post selfies of your latest Capitol Hill break-in on Facebook.
Sometimes we over-awfulize and forget that, relatively speaking, most of us can shoot our mouths off and not get shot for it. Our own military disabled a recent domestic coup. In Myanmar and Haiti their militaries were in on it (Belarus still pending while Putin dithers). Orwellian China has a decent standard of living unless you are a Muslim, then it is off to the gulag for you or just a bullet in the head. OK, I skipped Hong Konk [sic].
In my spouse's home country in E. Europe, if you put your savings in a bank account, the bank owners will steal it, the bank will collapse, and your money is not insured - personal bankruptcy without the fuss of paperwork. In fact, the last bank to collapse there even lost some of the government's money - and - nobody went to jail for the rip-off. In the US, your money in the bank is relatively safe from such things. Even our stock and commodities markets are regulated enough that you are likely to make a little profit.
I think calling American "the most disappointing rich country in the world" is more accurate. While the US squanders its treasure bullying other countries instead of feeding its own citizens, calling American "disappointing" asserts that there is room for improvement - if America ever chooses to improve.
"The oceans are our planet's best carbon sink, for example, and their ability to do that is being choked to death by plastic. Removing plastic from the oceans will not be profitable; it will cost a lot. So there's no big push to do this. It's being ignored."
A mind blowing point made by Zach Bush in a recent web presentation pointed out the overlooked carbon sink in our soils, the microbiome responsible for health of all plant and animal life on terra firma. He said that the calculations done by scientists he networks with have worked out that if we just took care of that population of soil microbes, i.e. not spraying them with toxic glyphosate - which holds one patent as an antibiotic, another as a chelator - we could restore the reabsorption half of the carbon cycle and reduce atmospheric CO2 dramatically.
So you're dead on right about that never being considered, because it would hit the corporatocracy's bottom line both by taking away their trillion dollar blockbuster glyphosate, and also the ridiculously complicated, expensive and ultimately futile high tech "solutions" being promoted as the next big deal.
“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein
According to UN and various NGO accountings of civilian casualties abroad resulting from US “interventions”, US backed coups, US wars abroad (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Syria), and US sanctions (e.g. Cuba, Venezuela, Iran) since WW2, TENS of millions of innocent human beings have been killed in service of “fighting communism”, "spreading democracy", conducting a “war on terror”, “wars on drugs”, and creating a “new world order”, when in reality we were (and are) spreading death, destruction, disease, poverty, and forced migration in the Middle East and Latin America.
Korean War deaths: 5 million. General Curtis Lemay bragged that “we killed 20% of their population." 'The war in the air, however, was never a "stalemate". North Korea was subject to a massive US bombing campaign. The Korean War was among the most destructive conflicts of the modern era, with approximately 3 million war fatalities and a larger proportional civilian death toll than World War II or the Vietnam War. It incurred the destruction of virtually all of Korea's major cities, thousands of massacres, including the mass killing of tens of thousands of suspected communists by the South Korean government, and the torture and starvation of prisoners of war by the North Koreans. North Korea became among the most heavily bombed countries in history." —Wikipedia (of all places)
May 12, 1996 CBS interview with Madeline Albright: https://youtu.be/FbCAOdNRp_4 Approximately a total of 880,000 civilians died as a result of the sanctions alone.
"The idea that America is a defender of democracy, liberty and human rights would come as a surprise to those who saw their democratically elected governments subverted and overthrown by the United States in Panama (1941), Syria (1949), Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Congo (1960), Brazil (1964), Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos (1964–1975), Chile (1973), Iraq (2003), Honduras (2009), Syria (2010), and Egypt (2013). And this list does not include a host of other governments that were viewed as inimical to American interests and destroyed, in each case making life for the inhabitants of these countries even more miserable."
Our booming stock market is largely based on the burgeoning profits of weapons manufacturers, Wall Street banks, insurance companies, government contracted mass surveillance provided by Silicon Valley giants, and bears no resemblance the declining physical and financial health of our domestic economy, our diminished manufacturing sector, and crumbling infrastructure. Focusing on the real domestic economy could have created millions of jobs for American citizens in manufacturing, construction, green energy, and health care, all of which would have greatly improved America’s real economy and (ironically) our national security.
The bipartisan utter lack of concern let alone guilt for the countless millions of innocent human beings killed, maimed, and displaced in US "interventionist wars" and coup d'états subsequently proven to be based on lies is astounding. The sociopathic zeitgeist that describes current US foreign and domestic policy is unconscionable. Republican president Eisenhower, whose credentials and military experience surpassed all other US presidents, warned of a military-industrial- complex coup in his critically important farewell speech, and no one listened —especially our most “respected journalists”.
"It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism” Yea, It's like saying "Throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
I think we should realistically reevaluate how we define ourselves, and our place in the world. And then ask ourselves the question: Where should we go?
The whole basis of Capitalist Economics is the idea, accepted as fact, that man acts out of self-interest. Yet, why should self-interest be accepted as that which should guide everyone’s behavior? The second assumption is the idea that growth should be the precondition of macro and microeconomic policy in order to bring about prosperity. But how do we define prosperity?
Ending growth for its own sake would be a great start. I think Ecomonic Growth has become this behemoth, out of control elephant in the room, Machine on auto-pilot, that no one thinks is possible to reign in.
The idea of “productivity” has been hammered into us for generations as a remnant of the industrial revolution and the christian work ethic. But how do we even define human productivity now? It is not assembling widgets on a treadmill anymore. Yet we are still on that treadmill and it has been without purpose for a long long time already.
I firmly agree, We cannot consume our way out of this. We’ve got to stop buying shit that we don’t need. We’ve got to see that our actions have consequences that destroy our ecosystem. For example by boycotting plastics we would make a huge difference in everyone’s health including the health of the planet. We’ve got to end BIgPharma and BigAg. We’ve got to support each other on a local level and help form decentralized local economies to prosper in ways that encourage human health, happiness and interdependence. And the answer is NOT communism or centralized control by elites; even elites running things who are claiming to be benevolent is a very dangerous precedent.
There's a fanciful part of myself that's imagined that all the crap the American government's doing is actually to realize some twisted yet begrudgingly awesome goal, worthy of a big reveal.
But when you realize that there is no James Bond Bad Guy Skull Shaped Island, and that all this petty squandering of the blazing mystery that is life is for nothing more than to slake those most mundane lizard brain-driven frailties of profit, power, control, and ego-stroking, the measure of disgust involved reaches Krakatoa levels, and we all know what happened there.
"There's a focus on profit-driven solutions to climate collapse because our profit-driven global model always values making more things ("men's work") and never values cleaning things up ("women's work")."
That entire part blew my mind. I've never quite looked at it like that.
We also cannot “technology” our way put of Global Ecosystems Collapse. The majority of ppl still really believe solar and wind farms are going to save us, when in fact these technologies are not at all sustainable—these “technologies” require mining rare earth minerals and the equipment barely lasts 10 years so we have to keep producing them over and over. That’s not at all sustainable
The only answer is to CONSUME LESS **stares at the wealthy**
I won't ask what you think the solution is, because the most obvious solution is for Americans to force their government to obey their own laws and for the rest of the world to do the same. Free speech, for example. The US, the UK, Australia and virtually every country in the world is spitting on this "value" every minute Julian Assange remains imprisoned -- the first three most directly and culpably, and other countries for their tacit support of(= failure to protest against) this travesty of justice.
I keep hoping that somewhere, somehow, someone might be able to say, just at the right moment in the right place, "Sir, have you no shame?"
It's tempting to say this is not the formal US government or the US people, that the government and people are controlled by international elites who generate the necessary misinformation. But a sizable proportion of people are aware of the manipulations of BOTH US political parties and continue to vote for them anyway, because they think the other one is "worse." Nothing will change until large numbers of people routinely vote for 3rd party candidates and Republocrats truly fear losing control.
Caitlin makes an important point when she writes, "Its [the oligarchic empire's] real objection is to people having the ability to share information which it does not control." Thus, whenever you attempt to shut someone down who questions or disagrees with official narratives by calling them a "conspiracy theorist," a term invented by the intelligence community to smear and discredit those skeptical of the Warren Report, you are supporting this evil empire. It's not a "conspiracy theory" to question the claims of Russian or Chinese interference in our elections. Just the opposite: those claims are themselves conspiracy theories because there is no evidence after a four year investigation to validate them. It's not conspiracy theory to point out the manipulation and corruption of data used to create fear and boost the Covid-19 narrative. It's not conspiracy theory to point out the official misinformation and attempts to block early treatment of Covid-19 with HCQ, Ivermectin or Fluvoxamine, or the neglect of the role of vitamin D in protection against all respiratory illness. It's not conspiracy theory to point out government-published VAERS data or prior studies showing that only 1% of all adverse reactions are reported through VAERS.
Yes, Caitlin, the answer is indeed right Here, Now, Life. With where we are as a planet and culture, the clearer name is World 5.0
While I agree with Caitlyn's point about Cuba (in fact all of Central & S. America), calling the US the "Single worst government in the world" is an accusation that by many criteria is inaccurate. Okay, we get that the DC is falling short of what we wish it would do. But places like Myanmar and Haiti, Belarus too, are not only terrible, their citizens are in poverty, and some are dying there for no just reason other than that they complain about conditions. In America, we just beat you over the head when you complain. After a brief stop at the hospital Emergency Department (many countries have few hospitals at all), you can go home and post selfies of your latest Capitol Hill break-in on Facebook.
Sometimes we over-awfulize and forget that, relatively speaking, most of us can shoot our mouths off and not get shot for it. Our own military disabled a recent domestic coup. In Myanmar and Haiti their militaries were in on it (Belarus still pending while Putin dithers). Orwellian China has a decent standard of living unless you are a Muslim, then it is off to the gulag for you or just a bullet in the head. OK, I skipped Hong Konk [sic].
In my spouse's home country in E. Europe, if you put your savings in a bank account, the bank owners will steal it, the bank will collapse, and your money is not insured - personal bankruptcy without the fuss of paperwork. In fact, the last bank to collapse there even lost some of the government's money - and - nobody went to jail for the rip-off. In the US, your money in the bank is relatively safe from such things. Even our stock and commodities markets are regulated enough that you are likely to make a little profit.
I think calling American "the most disappointing rich country in the world" is more accurate. While the US squanders its treasure bullying other countries instead of feeding its own citizens, calling American "disappointing" asserts that there is room for improvement - if America ever chooses to improve.
Love it. You on a roll baby. Keep given it to 'em!!
I think it's time that "Someone" subscribed to my substack: The Gala Report: https://thegalareport.substack.com/ :-)
Making and unmaking... nice...and an important reframing of the false “makers vs takers “ talking point.
"The oceans are our planet's best carbon sink, for example, and their ability to do that is being choked to death by plastic. Removing plastic from the oceans will not be profitable; it will cost a lot. So there's no big push to do this. It's being ignored."
A mind blowing point made by Zach Bush in a recent web presentation pointed out the overlooked carbon sink in our soils, the microbiome responsible for health of all plant and animal life on terra firma. He said that the calculations done by scientists he networks with have worked out that if we just took care of that population of soil microbes, i.e. not spraying them with toxic glyphosate - which holds one patent as an antibiotic, another as a chelator - we could restore the reabsorption half of the carbon cycle and reduce atmospheric CO2 dramatically.
So you're dead on right about that never being considered, because it would hit the corporatocracy's bottom line both by taking away their trillion dollar blockbuster glyphosate, and also the ridiculously complicated, expensive and ultimately futile high tech "solutions" being promoted as the next big deal.
“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein