Republican-aligned rightwing billionaires are gleeful at the prospect of further government dysfunction gutting social programs while Putin, Xi & the leaders of Hamas are reveling in the chaos...
I've been impressed with the way Anthony Blinken and Biden have worked together lately on a couple of major crises. Causes me to wonder why Blinken hasn't been suggested as the next Democratic leader? He seems to share the values that Biden has for America. It's looking more and more likely that the only thing that will sort out American dysfunction will be the 2024 election - hopefully it will lead to a saner attitude at the House, but also in the Senate. Of course, it won't be an easy battle, which is already being fought on several fronts.
Blinken for President, Good Idea, but he is Jewish, and America hasn't got over the first black President, part of the reason for the rise of the MAGAt right.
Thom: How do you deal with the likes of people who call Biden a warmonger, and the likes of people like this "Kaufman" fellow who use your good graces to spread, Putin's lies and make outrageous and false accusations.?
NOT my 'fantasy world' it is uneducated American fantasy world.
For years you spent/spent/spent/didn't vote. As long as you were happy you didn't care what was going on.
Now you are coming out of the 'woodwork' and refuting World History and Geography which you did not learn in school.
All the Chinese goods you bought/garages full of thrown away stuff.
I lived there for 23years and it was impossible to talk politics in the USA..noone cared.
Luckily we lived in a very left-wing Canyon.
There was/is a Theatre there called the Theatricum Botanicum.
Will Geer started this up with the help of Woody Guthrie. They were called Communists and shut down during the McCarthy era.
MY daughter was in school in the Canyon (Elementary) which was good. but then she went to Junior High School where she learned nothing but American History....NO Geography.
I bet most Americans had no idea where Ukraine was before the war!
In Europe we see dumb Americans all the time..not to mention coach loads of US tourists who are too scared to go on their own.
I am a progressive. I know that the U.S. has orchestrated, financed, and organized coups and revolts in behest of corporations like Exxon Mobil, United Fruit, Chiquita Banana (Bush family). I know that they helped MI-6, overthrew Mossadegh. But supporting Ukraine against an aggressive,psychopath like Putin and Israel against blood thirsty, consciousless Islamic Terrorists is the right thing.
As regards Innocent civilians in Gaza, infants and babies, but the IDF is not going through Gaza and slaying civilians. HAMAS however has.
I blame the Israeli right, for the present situation, I've seen reports of the religious right, killing and dispossessing Arabs in the West Bank, and of course, Palestinians strike back.
The problem is not those families that HAMAS slaughtered but Netanyahu and the Orthodox right wing Jews, that have wrested control of the government, just like our own right wing Christians have wrested control of our government.
Per the Muslims, there will be no peace in the Mideast, until all the Jews are dead, the haddith of al Bukharie and article 7 of the covenant of HAMAS.
I interpret you as being so far left that you are on the side of the Islamic terrorists., and I suppose that you are on the side of Putin.
The extreme left is no different than the extreme right, and I, a progressive, am sickened. Both are ideologically hide bound reactionaries.
I deserve a harsh response. I assure I'm a left-wing Democrat who has never voted for any Republican. I also don't have garages full of throw-away stuff. I agree that too many Americans of all stripes live in their own bubbles. I'm just not one of them.
Fiscally conservative is the excuse voiced by racists, whose real motive is their war on American Descendants of Slaves, either that or stupids who have absorbed propaganda, disinfo and lies by our corporate media., and know jack squat about how a national economy operates, because of the power of financial institutions and corporations.
1991-2001 Japan suffered a depression, which the media calls a recession or staglation. Instead of cutting back government spending, Japan followed the lead of FDR, and spent money on Education and propping up the nation. This is called Keynesianism for the theory of John Maynard Keynes and it worked, it worked for FDR and it worked for Japan.
The right has been bombarded with anti Keynesian propaganda, and one of the financiers of the onslaught is the Koch family trust. The John Birch Society was pumping out this bilge in the 1980's.
Get lost. Biden a warmonger? Because he stands with Israel against terrorists, who slaughter, personally in cold blood, women, children, the elderly, burning babies alive.
Yegads who are you, one of those mornic brain dead, Democratic Socialists, even they are split. There is Ilhan Omar and Rashad Tlaib, Muslims who will always side with Muslims and AOC who refuses to side with barbarism. Apparently you stand with the terrorists.
Great comment. I have an overview and an understanding, but I appreciatge your links.
My question is this. You are absolutely correct, and I must ask why isn't Biden moving on that, the same with the Budget and the Supreme Court and the USPS, and the list is endless. He could even declare a national emergency, because Tuberville is a danger to national security, and appoint the general and flag officers, Schumer could change the rules to take that power out of of Tubervilles hands.
I search and search for a rational explanation, and have zero tolerance for apologetics and excuses, They have the power and don't use it, leads me to ask, Whose side are they on?
And I answer the question, the financial institutions, corporations and our home grown Plutocrats (similar to oligarchs as most people aren't familiar with the word Plutocrats, doesn't have the bite that Oligarchs doesn't.
The reason why the "Palestinians" (Arabs) don't want their own state and a two state solution is rejected is because they are hidebound by the same ideology as HAMAS, Sahih 1296 and 1295, book 56 haddith 139, al Bukhari. and article 7 of HAMAS covenant
The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem)
What the corporate media does not report is the complicit of all of those "innocent women" and young children, who sat in front of their TV and cell phones, ulating and cheering when HAMAS and Islamic Jihad were slaughtering and kidnapping Israels. And what they do take, without question or analysis is the lies of HAMAS, which presents itself to the world as
Palestinian Health Ministry" just another lying propaganda organ of HAMAS, and we, but not the media, knows that it lies and exaggerates.
Any idea of how Fox is handling this, after all Rupert, along with Putin, were feted by Algemeiner. An eclectic cast of characters gathered inside Broadway’s Gotham Hall on Monday night where The Algemeiner, a conservative-leaning Jewish-American newspaper, unveiled its “Jewish 100” list.
This year’s “Jewish 100” (2016) includes the billionaire media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, British Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ivanka Trump (who is married to the publisher of the Observer). These five, along with the 95 others, were honored and celebrated at the gala because they were deemed by The Algemeiner to have a “positive influence on Jewish life.” https://observer.com/2016/03/algemeiner-celebrates-power-jews-at-packed-manhattan-gala/
Murdoch was slammed as antisemite (a ridiculous charge) because he said "He doesn't understand the anti Israel attitude of the Jewish owned media. I guess he wasn't suppose to say the quiet part out loud.
The up front and personal slaughter of elderly, disabled, women and children is the most barbaraic thing I've seen or heard of, ever, Worse than ISIS, if that is possible, and yet the corporate media and UN treat collateral damage of Gaza the same as HAMAS up front and personal slaughter, and as a frigging Numbers Game, as if there is some kind of tit for tate, and whoevere kills the most is the most deplorable. , when the Israelis have dropped leaflets warning them their goal is HAMAS. As it should be, and they should get out of the way, pronto. HAMAS comes along and tells them to stay put, because it needs what it calls shahids (Martyrs) for it's propaganda machine.
Just like they steal fuel that comes into Gaza for their generators, their rocket launchers, their vehicles, and the feckless media and UN whines on and on about how it is affecting the Palestinian Health Ministry (HAMAS), and hospitals.
There is no both sides ism, here, but the media treat as if there is. Especially those hosts and reporters in the media, that are Muslim , or have ties to Iran and the Mideast.
There were a lot of Italian Americans and German Americans who were fans of Mussolini and Hitler, we even had the Silver Shirts, American NAZI's, that filled Madisan Square Garden in the 1930's with a backdrop of a NAZI banner and humungous poster of George Washington.
But they shut up on Dec 8, 1941 and many of them fought and died in France and Germany.
Thank you Thom for tackling the absolute most critical issue of our time. It is an uncomfortable topic, hence an unpopular one to receive. I applaud your willingness to speak about the biggest elephant (ironic) in every room right now. We can't afford to continue pretending we're not on the verge of global disaster.
And I absolutely concur that President Biden has handled the seemingly impossible with grace. He is the right person for this moment, no matter how much my idealistic friends claim otherwise. What Biden walked into was a building engulfed in flames and structurally failing. Job 1 is to suppress the fire and shore up the structure.
The House Vladonald caucus needs to be outed and replaced if anything is to change.
If Trump is reelected, there probably will be a world war - he is so easily manipulated that we soon would be in a situation where we would have to fight a war. However, all the 'aggressor' nations also have serious problems not mentioned. Russia will probably lose Crimea next year - the Ukrainians MUST have Crimea to be a viable country in the future, but the loss of Crimea will mean an end to Putin's regime in Russia. Russia is also in a demographic slide to ethnic irrelevance by the end of this century, but long before that (10-20 years) Russia will no longer have enough young men to field the army they would need to meet their imperial expansionist wishes. As for China, Xi is facing the worst financial disaster the world has seen since the Great Depression - simply to keep people employed and to run their skewed economic system, China has built enough new homes to house TWICE the current Chinese population, and they are on track to lose HALF their current population due to critically low birth rates and the effects from the "one child" policy in effect for 40 years. There is no "soft landing" from this, and no Chinese leader has any experience handling an economy so bent out of normal operating parameters. In addition, an attack on Taiwan or the US would trigger a sea blockade of China that would cut off most of their fuel supplies and much of their food - they would experience a famine more severe than any they have known and lose half their population in a year. Xi knows this, and I am sure we have made it clear what we would be prepared to do if China goes to war against Taiwan or any other country in the western Pacific. The Party would lose everything.....
A great global analysis. Nixon is ultimately responsible for the China problem. Kissinger too, in fact Kissinger was the mastermind behind his trip to China, which opened the door for cheap Chinese labor, to replace the more expensive American labor, and thus motivate corporation to move out of America. Dubya and Clinton added fuel to the fire, especially neo liberal Clinton, who in my opinion was a self aggrandizing narcissist currying favor with the powers that be.
American corporations shifted their factories first to Mexico, then when the Mexicans demanded better wages, to Central America and Asia and the pacific islands, like American Samoa, and then even technology and contracts to China, as it has a huge pool of cheap labor.
Almost everything I buy these days, from Oxygen concentrators to wrist watches are made in China, because America produces jack squat. We don't even make cars. VW, Hyundi, Toyota, Honda assemble cars in cheap labor states, so they can say Made in America. The wings of Boeing passenger aircraft are made in China, think of that the next time you fly.
Remember too that Bill Clinton signed the law that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, paving the way for the banking misbehavior that caused the 2008 Great Recession..... Clinton was a neoliberal Democrat.....
I don't need to remember it. It is just one of the many things that the horny, bought dude did to destroy our democracy and country. like the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Omnibus Crime Bill, the Defense of Marriage act, and NAFTA and his and Bush's version of GAAT, both of which are responsible for the rust belt aka swing states.
The man is a disaster so is his self aggrandizing wife, who plays the role of a liberal, while being a captive of financial instiutions like her husband, and the anti union Chamber of Commerce
Firing squad please. You don't know if you will get the Sgt Woods treatment (he gave the Nuremburg criminals the slow strangulation hanging, or the The clean drop Saddam treatment long drop, clean break. Baghad Bob gained weight and the drop decapitated him.
There is a lot to be said here. There are many reasons why the world wars occurred, and future historians might see I and II as simply a continuation of the same conflict. After all, the Thirty Years War (1618-48) was really 4 separate interrelated ones (and a fifth that went on for another 11 years). Having read a lot of history, including plenty of alternative stories about both the past and the future, there are many possibilities.
And I will say that all of the sane actors realize a full scale nuclear conflict would likely destroy civilization, if not the world. So it’s unlikely anyone this side of Hamas would allow such a conflict, not that this couldn’t happen. Having just read The Guns of August about the 1914 drift into war, Kennedy was careful to avoid that with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and probably Biden is equally sharp. As for Putin, he grew up in the shadow of the disastrous 1941-45 Soviet-German war and certainly doesn’t want anything on that scale, or worse. But Trump? Like Bush II he’s more like the German Kaiser, a stupid man with a big mouth who totally lost control of the situation.
But for all that we certainly could end up in at least a continuous lower level big power conflict. A sort of Warm War, if you will, with few or no nuclear weapons but all sides (Orwell’s 3 big powers, perhaps) clawing at one another in ruinous fighting while the rest of the world is impoverished by their demands. Throw in climate change and it is a bleak millennium, and after everyone battles themselves to exhaustion without victory it could take as long as the medieval period to recover from, if ever.
Personally my guess is that China will ally itself with the Middle Eastern powers (never mind what they are doing to their own Muslim population) with the Russians, using Wagner’s established base there, also become more active in Africa. But there are many other possible scenarios. On the other hand it doesn’t have to be like this, and given how fast things can change (think of the difference in Spain between 1970 and 1990, or Germany from 1939 to 1959) we might just turn this time period around. But as Thom has said, it won’t be by wishing for a miracle or electing a strong man to save us. Not everyone has to be an extra in a Shakespearean tragedy, and while I have no easy answers it is obvious that despair is not one to use.
Mid east Muslims have myopia, they don't know about China's oppression of the Uyghers, and those that do, don't care, because their one and only interest is the Jews.
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." (Preamble of HAMAS covenant)
The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7 of the HAMAS covenant.. and the haddith of al Bukhari, which is holy writ to Muslims.
What we have in the Mideast is a religious war, the worst of all wars. Christians have warred against other Christians they consider heretics, and the wars (internal and external) were horrendous. Until Hitler the worst they did to the Jews was expel them, but what they did to other Christians is horrendous. The Inquisition supposedly started out as a mans to uncover crypto Christians, but was really a way for the Crown and Inquisitors to acquire the property of the wealthy.
Islam is violently at war with itself. When Mo died, his followers declared themselves the rightful heir (Sunni is from Sunnah.. meaning followers), there was a faction that felt that Mo's cousin and first student should have been the successor they are the Shia. This cousin was named Ali ibn abi Talib, which is not a name at all but a descriptor like Sitting Bull, or Runs Fast. It means The exalted son of the father of the student(or cousin Ali means Exalted ibn means son, Abi means father, Talib means student.
The two cults have been at war over who is the rightful successor, and back in the 80's, Iran sent agents on a mission to Mecca under guise of a haj (pilgrimage) to attack Mecca.
The Saudi's had initiated a rapprochement, with Iran. I have no idea how that is going to turn out now. Suffice it to say their are Shia in Saudi Arabia, but restricted to the oil fields, were they are used as low priced labor, and the Houti, which the Kingdom has been fighting are Shia.
There is an eternal hostility between Arab and Iranian.
The much respected Iranian Poet Ferdowsi said, in his Book of Kings, Shahameh,
From feeding on desert lizars and camel's milk
so have he afairs of the Arabs prospered.
That they long for the empire of Khosrau
Shame on thee, O circling Heaven, shame.
Then this, which every educated Iranian can recite
Damn on this World, Damn on this Time,Damn on Fate. That uncivilized Arabs have come to force me to be Muslim.
As you can see there is a long hostility between Arabs and Iranians, a hostility that Saddam employed in his war with Iran, he used the chauvinism and "martydom" of Arabs to incite his Shia in Iraq to war with the Shia of Iran. If religion doesn't work, then use racism.
In one thing Sunni and Shia are united, and that is the death of Israel, and the death of Jews.
Shame,shame on Jared, the Jewish Judas would betray his people for a couple billion dollars.
It would take too long to go into all this, William. But European Christians did far worse than expel Jews--just for a start read about the Crusaders' happily murdering every one they found in the Rhine Valley or what the Russians did in their pogroms. And while I disagree that Muslims are united on their hatred of Jews since they consider the religion and its prophets in a line from Adam to Mohamed, I do agree about the Arab-Iranian division. In Iran back when the Shah was there I saw almost all of that magnificent country and had to be careful to keep it in mind as the people well remembered their proud Persian history. The U.S. never understood this when it overthrew their government in 1953, starting all the trouble we have today. Don't expect to find a serious discussion of that root cause in any popular news story.
Doc, you aren't telling me anything that I don't already know. My 1st avocation has been history, ancient to present, and especially about the massacres perpetuated by religions, all of them .
I now all about the pogroms and the Pale of settement including the persecution and murder of Jews in Ukraine and the Baltic states, how ironic is it then that the President of Ukraine is a Jew which Putin declares a NAZI.
I also know that Iran had a vibrant Jewish population, that lived the life of a dhimmi (a second class citizen) until the 1973 war.
And I am ahead of you on the fact, that the CIA and Mi6, are ultimately responsible for the Mullahcracy of Iran, when they overthrew (or rather financed and supported) the overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh, who like Chavez, made the fatal mistake of thinking that Iran was sovereign and owned the oil in it's wells.
And isn't it convenient that the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi died of cancer, just shortly after being deposed and fleeing to America.
Did you know that Ayatollah Khomeini had a British mother, I am so on top of all of this and more.
However if your intent was not to educate me, but to educate the reader, then go for it. I concur, just being defensive here, don't assume that I am ignorant of these facts. I am not and know so much more, that if I posted all I knew, I would be met with slander, charges and denials.
National Security. All politics is local. Down here in Baghdad By the Sea, both Russia and China have outposts in Cuba, 90 miles from Key West, 180 miles from Brickell Avenue and Calle Ocho, home territory and defacto capitols of many central and south American countries. You would think that the House members here, all Cuban American Republicans representing Democratic majority districts, would be all over the issue. Think again.
Moreover our Senator, the disingenuous Lil' Marco Rubio, is more loyal to the forces of evil than to his own physical well being. Think the Cuban Missile Crisis.
We are also under attack economically, politically and from a national security standpoint by OPEC/Saudis/Russia, a cabal that fixes energy prices to fund Putin and to hurt the US and sink the economy.
The speaker fiasco may be an opportunity for Biden to threaten Republicans with their own strident unitary executive theory. Straighten up ---or else.
Every iPhone is made in China and Chinese laws and practice specify that each company in China making such products must incorporate a "back door" for their intelligence availability. Supposedly Apple is strong on security but the chips are made in China and that is very, very, very low level (the machine's innermost innards). The IOT "Internet of Things" is even worse, most such IOT devices built in China, with no security but with possible open access to China. And the same for most of the security cameras sold. And we lap it up as convenience.
I was with a company back in 2001 that got hacked by the Chinese. I spent day and night for most of a week rebuilding the servers and replacing the databases we used for selling (largely third-party equipment for Caterpillars).
There didn't seem to be any good reason for that. That was also just coming out of the period of time when I did a lot of service provider switching because several of my ISPs were infected with viruses, again from China (there were a couple varieties of "red" something or other virus). Back then I just thought it was vandalism.
Maybe it was vandalism as the motive and there was vandalism damage. But looking back at the long trail of events, now I have to wonder whether those were also probes and ways of determining where to place digital assets, for a later time, such as now and to determine what kinds of damage they could do.
Can’t we all just get along? Well, apparently not.
Belligerence, extremism, radicalism, violence, etc., are by-products or the end products of chronic and pervasive fearfulness, rage, xenophobia, and the felt need to gain or regain control. They are driven by the perceived need for and positive value of arbitrary authority and external influence and power over the masses.
Arbitrary authority and peace are incompatible. They are mutually exclusive. If some person or group has the ability to control any other person or group, there will be strife and there will be resistance. Therefore, the universal promotion of arbitrary control is the promotion and perpetuation of violence. Forcing a nine year old child of any gender or description to sit in a seat for four hours every day is control and it is violence. There is a learning process for certain. However, what is being learned in a significant percentage of cases is not what we desire. Instead, what we get is a predisposition for authoritarianism either as followers or leaders. What we get is a tolerance, if not a preference, for control, violence, hatred, indifference, and judgmentalism.
You reap what you sow. You want arbitrary authority; you get what inevitably comes with it. You get people who feel like victims or who experience some mix of rage, frustration, or victimization, or superiority and control, often in alternating cycles depending on circumstances, and they play their roles quite well in many instances. We have all played with matches. We are going to get burned.
Mr. Elliott I agree with you heartily. But I am wondering about how appropriate your use of the word arbitrary is. Power, authority and influence are sought out for easily recognizable reasons. Power is the ability of the possessor to control the behavior of others even against their own will. This is accomplished through the use of force against the victim or control over resources the victim needs or wants. These are usually, but not always, economic resources. Power comes through the barrel of a gun. Those with power and its institutional expression, which we call authority, utilize these things to their own benefit and to the detriment of the victims. Influence is the ability to control the behavior of others by getting them to agree with the influencer. It is the cousin of power, propaganda. Power is not really so arbitrary as it is directed and purposeful, for reasons we all understand.
Or perhaps I misunderstand your use of the term "arbitrary?"
I conceptualize arbitrary authority as unregulated authority or authority which is assigned to a position or function with little oversight and little or no recourse for those who are under the control of the authority figure. I’m not sure what your question is or why you are defining terms with such specificity.
Authority is not always illegitimate, nor is arbitrary authority. However, I believe that authority must be used very sparingly, for very specific purposes, and without malice, paternalism, cruelty, indifference, or the pretense of superiority.
Arbitrary authority is extremely hazardous in my estimation and is only legitimate in certain very limited circumstances. When it is utilized to control people with the assumption or claim that it is for their own good or for the good of a nation, red lights should be flashing all over the place.
As I believe you know, my primary concern is always with how children and young people are inculcated into the society and the work force. My point is that worldwide, the mythology prevails which has students as uneducated, undisciplined, immature, self-centered, lacking knowledge or wisdom, and needing constant adult supervision, control, and “teaching”. The consensus broadly is that school provides them with the training, experience, and instruction that they need and that they will, at least in many cases, not avail themselves of those wonderful benefits unless coerced, browbeaten, evaluated, monitored, supervised, and made aware of the consequences of any failure to participate and cooperate. I call BS to most of that nonsense.
Control always risks abuse and in a paradigm based on force abuse is inescapable and a feature of many of the institutions tasked with that control. Suppressing a child’s spirit, autonomy, or curiosity under the specious and arrogant presumption that you are teaching them to me is violence. Who do we think we are? Have they ask any questions yet, or do we imagine that we have all of the questions as well as the answers?
There is no organization or institution which uses propaganda more effectively and more inappropriately than the traditional school.
I was educated in Philadelphia and then Louisiana, and have seen indoctrination close up and personal, such as being told in Phillie that the Civil war wasfought to frfee the slaves (it wasn't) and in Louisiana that it was a war of Northern Agression by an Industrial north against an Agrarian South (it wasn't) and no where have I learned History, that I uncovered in my own adult research and from Thom's dissertattions.
And my knowledge of "Hidden History" came about before Howard Zinn's books, it came about, of all things, in my research as a genetic genealogist and a project manager of a DNA project.
Mr. Elliott I have aways believed that the first step in creating knowledge is to name things and define them. What subset of phenomena does it fall in? what is it? What is it not? Simply Aristotelian definitions.
I think I see what you are saying about arbitrary power and authority. When my grandson asks why I want him to not do something? "Why not Grandpa?" I try to explain why not. Give him reasons he can grasp. I never say "Because I said so." If he wants to do it anyway. That's OK with me. As long as he is not creating danger. He is six yrs. old and if he wants to disagree with me; so be it .
My daughter never graduated from our home-town High-school. She ran off to a place called Interlochen, Michigan to the Academy of Arts located there. She managed to swing a scholarship for the steep tuition. I was sad about her going off on her own, away from home at such a young age. But I kept my mouth shut about .that. It turned out to be a good decision by her to go and by me to stay quiet. She
worked like a beaver and graduated with honors. From there she repeated the performance and ran off to New York and college. Again, I was sad. But held back.
When it was my son's turn my wife drove him to Ohio to look at Oberlin, Kenyon and Antioch. My wife and I are convinced small schools do a better job than large ones. He said those places were too narrow, limited and provincial. So he went to Michigan State; which is huge, impersonal, but Cosmopolitan. I kept my nose out of his business even though I thought it was a mistake. He made out OK and I have kept my mouth shut. At those small schools I believe he would have been treated more like a human being, less like a number and had a better educational experience. Thanx for responding so quickly.
Good post Gerald, but I must say we don't create knowledge, we either acquire it, or it is shoved down our throats like pablum
As regards raising children. True you can't explain things to children, your reasons bounce off their shield of "I don't care, I want it". People have to learn the meaning of the word No, and that life is not fair, less they arrive at adulthood or semi Adulthood, such as a job or a freshman in college, only to be hit with a hard reality, and that can lead to serious trouble, for themselves and with society.
Our society is awash, and troubled by the "beneficiaries" of Dr Benjamin Spocks books on babies and child care. Me thinks that the extremes of the right and left are the residue of Dr Spock. Spoiled children, angry because they can't have their way.
Stuart Stevens said it best on his PBS interview tonight---he stated the GOP no longer has a higher purpose. That is it!
Republicans have decided to serve Trump and the oligarchs. If money is talking, they are listening. Being hard working, protecting the nation, or building up community won't merit their attention. The only general welfare they are interested in is their own.
Stuart Stevens just authored the book, "The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy Towards Autocracy.". Welcome to the light Mr. Stevens.
Mr. Hartman. It frightens me that people talk blithely about nuclear war and WWThree as though it would be a larger version of previous wars. Nothing could be further from the truth. A war between The U.S. and Russia or China would end all human civilization. A nuclear exchange of any kind between these three powers would kill most life on Earth, certainly all human life.
1) The nuclear Winter caused by the clouds which the explosions would send extremely high into the atmosphere would not be localized; but would spread out and cover the entire globe. The clouds would blot out the sun so thoroughly that it would cause a tremendous drop in temperature for at least a decade, maybe more than one decade. This nuclear Winter would deprive living things of food for long enough for all animals to become extinct. The entire ecological food chain on Earth would be destroyed. Nothing larger than a cockroach would survive on the land. Maybe not even them. Nothing larger than krill in the oceans, maybe. The altitude of the clouds from atom bombs is so great that the material in them settles to Earth extremely slowly.
2) If by some miracle the bombs failed to completely block the sun worldwide; we would eventually all succumb to radiation poisoning. No place on the Globe can escape this. Some of the radiating materials in the bombs remain lethally high emitters of radiation for thousands of years. The half life of strontium 90 is about 40 years. The half life of plutonium is 240 years. Do the elementary arithmetic! We cannot survive it. Wealthy Americans are buying land in New Zealand in the futile hope of escaping Nuclear Winter. Read ON THE BEACH by neville Shute, it is also in film; LEVEL SEVEN by Mordecai Roshwald; DOCTOR STRANGELOVE OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB, which is also a classic film by the greatest director of all time: Stanley Kubrick.
The Biden administration is playing with human extinction, for what?
It is past time to talk about the possibility of nuclear exchanges. It is time to talk about stopping this mad rush toward armageddon and extinction. We will not survive.
For decades after WWll the U.S. government understood that China considered Taiwan as part of China. It was called the "One China Policy"; and the U.S. formally agreed to it. In the interim U.S. leadership has gradually let this agreement slip into oblivion. While at the same time starting a new cold war with China. The U.S. is the country with its war-ships thousands of miles away from our shores and off the coast of China. How many military bases does China have in Mexico or Canada? Where is the powerful Chinese naval fleet just off our shores? The U.S. has 11 aircraft carrier task forces with a 12th in the planning stage. China has 2 aircraft carriers which are much smaller and far less powerful. The "free press" in the U.S. is in lockstep hysterically telling us that China has a larger navy than the U.S. The overwhelming majority of China's naval ships are troop and materiel transports, not attack-type ships like in the U.S. navy. This is a phony military scare; just like the "missile gap" when I was young in the 1950s and 60s. Back then the U.S. Air Force insisted their intelligence service had proof that the Russians had many more deliverable atom bombs than the U.S. This was a lie; perpetuated by the Air Force to justify more tax money for building bombers and fighter planes. Army and Naval intelligence did not agree with the Air Force claims. But the public was fed the Air Force lies. War planners at the Rand Corporation and the Pentagon knew U.S. atom bombs out numbered Russian bombs by ten to one. Russia did not come close to catching up with the U.S. until after the Cuban missile crisis of 1969.
China's new "Belt and Road Initiative" scares hell out of America's billionaire owners of our country because it is positioning China to become the most important trader on Earth. The isolated, gullible and uninformed American public is being fed a constant barrage of warnings about China's increasing military belligerence by the lockstep "free press" in the U.S. China's threat is economic, not military. If we had not allowed Reagan and Clinton to destroy our industrial base with agreements like NFTA, we might be in better shape economically. But American corporate owners wanted to move factories out of the U.S. to low wage countries, especially China, so owners can increase their profits from the cheaper labor.
We are and have been talking about the wrong subject for some time now. We must talk about nuclear annihilation. Nuclear-caused extinction of humankind.
Now wait a minute Thom. Last I checked it was Biden and "progressives" like you enthusiastically sending weapons of war around the globe, 57% of which have been sent to autocratic regimes, while you blame Putin and Trump and China for our downward spiral. Biden should be roundly condemned for his enabling of the Trump of Tel Aviv Netanyahu in his wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people (his hug of Netanyahu reminded me of the fistbump with MBS), yet all you can do is tell callers who say Isreal is the victim that you agree with everything they said. Instead of being honest, Biden is parroting neoliberal political rhetoric to sanction the genocide of Palestinians while he uses Ukrainians as cannon fodder to weaken Putin. Biden has been inflaming xenophobia against Asians and Muslims while he excuses the crimes against humanity of his political and economic "allies." Unfortunately, the only moral compass today's liberalism points towards involves Trump, Putin and China, while your fearless leader does his obscene Charles Bronson act and takes the path of least resistance in enriching transnational corporations with his escalation of war. His grotesque actions in enabling Israel's massacre will stoke terrorism in the region for years to come. He should be calling for an end to Israel's illegal occupation and a rescinding of the settlements, but of course his history proves him a complete political coward on the wrong side of most issues.
There you go again Boris. Spouting lies in service to Putin. I don't think anyone hear believes your screen name, which is Jewish. If so then a self hating Jew. A real Barry J Kaufman would not survive if dropped into Gaza (or Iran for that matter)
You over reach talking of genocide of Palestinians.. .hardly. Yes there have been murders and dispossession of Muslim Arabs by right wing Orthodox Jews, and criminals Like Netanyahu who courts them like Trump courts and use the self righteous Christian bigots.
But genocide? Well lets talk about Genocide:
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." (Preamble of HAMAS covenant)
The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7 of the HAMAS covenant.. and the haddith of al Bukhari, which is holy writ to Muslims.
As far as I can discern, your whole purpose here is to obliguely discredit Biden and the Democrats, and play stalking horse for Putin, XI and other anti democratic forces.
And you do it, by tweaking, the sensibilities of "liberals" and the left.
News for you just because we are disappointed with the Democratic party because it is let's itself b e put on he back foot, we aren't so stupid as to stay out of the voting booth or vote for Trump (directly or indirectly) but there are some, who have succumbed to your siren song, like the Democratic Socialists of America,rather their idiot flank.
Just because we are disgusted and disappointed with the DNC, and just because we are liberal and pro democracy and equality, doesn't mean that we are fools to fall for your disinfo campaign of diversion.
There are a few exceptions, who think that you speak truth, who just react to b.s. that triggers them and their non thinking reflexes. I have to hand it to you, you are good at what you are doing, turning the question in on itself, and making the Democrats and Biden the enemy, while obliquely advancing the cause of dictators like Putin and Xi, is Iran the next on your agenda, you have already taken up with terrorists.
Dr. Kaufman. Don't you think "complete political coward" is a statement just a bit outside the bounds of our political discourse? Joe Biden has been a phenomenally successful politician in the oldest democratic republic on the globe. He never loses in competition. As long as I have been aware of political life in the U.S. (I am 81) Biden's opponents have continuously underestimated his ability. Call him wily, cunning, slippery, clever, artful, astute. But don't call him coward. It does not fit. Democracy, by the very nature of the system requires compromise in order to accomplish anything. Unfortunately Historians talk endlessly about the "Great Man" who all too often caused untold pain and misery: the "Strong Man", "Strong Leader."
The American voting public has a notoriously short memory. And when voters go into the booth in 2024 they will not be much concerned with ethnic issues like unreasonable violent conflict between Palestinians and Israelis on the other side of the globe. They will be concerned more with domestic issues, what my mother called"kitchen table issues." Unemployment is at the lowest in decades, crime rates are at the lowest in decades, unions are feeling charged up, everyone, young and old, are concerned about Social Security, health and Medicare, food on the table, rent or house amortization payments, buying a car, and their kid's education. Biden is well aware of this and he has sometimes rapidly, sometimes patiently aided the public in all these areas.
This is not to say he never makes mistakes. He does. He is only human. For instance; he should have stopped Clarence Thomas from ascending to the Supreme Court when it was in his power to do so. But he didn't when he was chair of the Judiciary Committee. I agree that Netanyahu, Hamas and the Arabian Sheik should be held accountable, stopped. His most dangerous current mistake is going along with the Military-Industrial-Complex as it drives us into another Cold war with, again, the very real danger of nuclear annihilation for Humankind.
I'm sorry if this sounds cynical.
But imagine what it would be like with Trump's finger over the button! Or any of the other Republican Oligarch-worshipping, lunatics with the launch codes! Romney excluded. He is an oligarch, but note an unprincipled suicidal lunatic.
My god, look at the choices the republicans have brought us down to!
Thanks for reminding us that Bidens vote was the clincher for Clarence Thomas. Assuming good faith, and Biden being a pragmatist, I can only assume it was because Clarence is black, and Biden had aspirations otherwise and wanted to be on the good side of American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS).
On the other hand, 40% of America is MAGA, not because of kitchen table issues, of that seem not to care, but it is the culture war, be it male control of women and children (Augustus law of Pater Familia, resurfaced), religion, LGBT or POC, all of which are seen as threatening of "masculine prerogative and power".
If you can't be King of the realm, they simply redefine the realm as "A man's home is his castle".,and it is all psychosexual, one proof being the popularity of Viagra, which I now understand is OTC.
"The period from the end of WWII to today is often referred to by historians as “the long peace.” You forgot to mention our generation war in Vietnam where millions of our men/women were killed in the name of stopping communism. Another unnecessary war. There were men from before the babyboomer that got slaughtered in the jungles of Asia. Angry men came home, wounded men came home to what? Yes they had GI bill and many took part but there remained many on the streets and mentally handicapped from the killings and war machine. I was married to two of them, didn't learn from the first and did it again. That's on me.
Please desist from making negative comments to Thom like you forgot to mention. I doubt that he did, as he was maintaining consistency with a theme.
If you want to interject your own ideas, do so with out referencing Thom. This is about the third time I've seen this tactic.
Apples and oranges. You can interject your opinions without saying "you forgot to mention", perhaps it is a lack of imagination or insecurity. What ever it is stop it, please.
You have a good rant, but it is a totally different subject, not at all about the possible lead up to WWIII
Sorry fellas but I disagree that Vietnam was a totally different subject as Thom was talking wars and I would never mean to actually criticize Thom Hartmann. I must have a lack of imagination and am insecure? Glad you are keeping track.
As long as there is is oil coming out of the ground and China is able to turn a profit by our manufacturing jobs, it is my opinion that there will not be any wars even for Taiwan because the Chinese don't want to run the risk of destroying the nation and just owning a pile of rubble. But once the natural resources run out, the autocrats will steal from each other like the thugs that they are! Capitalism doesn't work when you run out of other people's natural resources.
The oligarchs have never wanted democracy in the USA or anywhere else in the world. They want a fascist state with a single leader making all the decisions, much as with Italy with Mussolini and Germany with Hitler. Leader in the USA and in Great Britain wanted the same control in their countries. Post WW II the USA and European countries supported the return of colonies (nations) to their former controllers in France, Belgium, Great Britain, and the USA. The U.S. government has acted to overthrow democratic governments in Latin America and the Middle East and this has been supported by every president since Truman.
The party bosses in 1943 decided that a progressive president with Henry A. Wallace would be terrible and so after his three terms as vice president he was pulled from the party ticket and replaced by Harry Truman and a few months into 1944 their man became the next president and they bypassed the electoral process.
I've been impressed with the way Anthony Blinken and Biden have worked together lately on a couple of major crises. Causes me to wonder why Blinken hasn't been suggested as the next Democratic leader? He seems to share the values that Biden has for America. It's looking more and more likely that the only thing that will sort out American dysfunction will be the 2024 election - hopefully it will lead to a saner attitude at the House, but also in the Senate. Of course, it won't be an easy battle, which is already being fought on several fronts.
Blinken for President, Good Idea, but he is Jewish, and America hasn't got over the first black President, part of the reason for the rise of the MAGAt right.
Is this a right wing media chat show going on.
Biden is a warmonger and as for Blinken..................
No Jenny, we are talking about the real world, not your fantasy world.
Let's not personalize our comments.
Thom: How do you deal with the likes of people who call Biden a warmonger, and the likes of people like this "Kaufman" fellow who use your good graces to spread, Putin's lies and make outrageous and false accusations.?
I'm sorry for the personal attack. I should have asked Jenny for evidence. Jenny, I apologize.
NOT my 'fantasy world' it is uneducated American fantasy world.
For years you spent/spent/spent/didn't vote. As long as you were happy you didn't care what was going on.
Now you are coming out of the 'woodwork' and refuting World History and Geography which you did not learn in school.
All the Chinese goods you bought/garages full of thrown away stuff.
I lived there for 23years and it was impossible to talk politics in the USA..noone cared.
Luckily we lived in a very left-wing Canyon.
There was/is a Theatre there called the Theatricum Botanicum.
Will Geer started this up with the help of Woody Guthrie. They were called Communists and shut down during the McCarthy era.
MY daughter was in school in the Canyon (Elementary) which was good. but then she went to Junior High School where she learned nothing but American History....NO Geography.
I bet most Americans had no idea where Ukraine was before the war!
In Europe we see dumb Americans all the time..not to mention coach loads of US tourists who are too scared to go on their own.
I am a progressive. I know that the U.S. has orchestrated, financed, and organized coups and revolts in behest of corporations like Exxon Mobil, United Fruit, Chiquita Banana (Bush family). I know that they helped MI-6, overthrew Mossadegh. But supporting Ukraine against an aggressive,psychopath like Putin and Israel against blood thirsty, consciousless Islamic Terrorists is the right thing.
As regards Innocent civilians in Gaza, infants and babies, but the IDF is not going through Gaza and slaying civilians. HAMAS however has.
I blame the Israeli right, for the present situation, I've seen reports of the religious right, killing and dispossessing Arabs in the West Bank, and of course, Palestinians strike back.
The problem is not those families that HAMAS slaughtered but Netanyahu and the Orthodox right wing Jews, that have wrested control of the government, just like our own right wing Christians have wrested control of our government.
Per the Muslims, there will be no peace in the Mideast, until all the Jews are dead, the haddith of al Bukharie and article 7 of the covenant of HAMAS.
I interpret you as being so far left that you are on the side of the Islamic terrorists., and I suppose that you are on the side of Putin.
The extreme left is no different than the extreme right, and I, a progressive, am sickened. Both are ideologically hide bound reactionaries.
I really think William you should look up who supported Hamas against the PLO?
Mossad.
I deserve a harsh response. I assure I'm a left-wing Democrat who has never voted for any Republican. I also don't have garages full of throw-away stuff. I agree that too many Americans of all stripes live in their own bubbles. I'm just not one of them.
No you don't, and don't go on the defense against an attack by a Maoist or Tankie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie#:~:text=Tankie%20is%20a%20pejorative%20label,Leninism%2C%20whether%20contemporary%20or%20historical.
Fiscally conservative is the excuse voiced by racists, whose real motive is their war on American Descendants of Slaves, either that or stupids who have absorbed propaganda, disinfo and lies by our corporate media., and know jack squat about how a national economy operates, because of the power of financial institutions and corporations.
1991-2001 Japan suffered a depression, which the media calls a recession or staglation. Instead of cutting back government spending, Japan followed the lead of FDR, and spent money on Education and propping up the nation. This is called Keynesianism for the theory of John Maynard Keynes and it worked, it worked for FDR and it worked for Japan.
The right has been bombarded with anti Keynesian propaganda, and one of the financiers of the onslaught is the Koch family trust. The John Birch Society was pumping out this bilge in the 1980's.
A warmonger? Joe Biden? the Democratic President? A warmonger??
Yes.
Have you ever looked up Biden's history?
Get lost. Biden a warmonger? Because he stands with Israel against terrorists, who slaughter, personally in cold blood, women, children, the elderly, burning babies alive.
Yegads who are you, one of those mornic brain dead, Democratic Socialists, even they are split. There is Ilhan Omar and Rashad Tlaib, Muslims who will always side with Muslims and AOC who refuses to side with barbarism. Apparently you stand with the terrorists.
Nice to know.
Great comment. I have an overview and an understanding, but I appreciatge your links.
My question is this. You are absolutely correct, and I must ask why isn't Biden moving on that, the same with the Budget and the Supreme Court and the USPS, and the list is endless. He could even declare a national emergency, because Tuberville is a danger to national security, and appoint the general and flag officers, Schumer could change the rules to take that power out of of Tubervilles hands.
I search and search for a rational explanation, and have zero tolerance for apologetics and excuses, They have the power and don't use it, leads me to ask, Whose side are they on?
And I answer the question, the financial institutions, corporations and our home grown Plutocrats (similar to oligarchs as most people aren't familiar with the word Plutocrats, doesn't have the bite that Oligarchs doesn't.
The reason why the "Palestinians" (Arabs) don't want their own state and a two state solution is rejected is because they are hidebound by the same ideology as HAMAS, Sahih 1296 and 1295, book 56 haddith 139, al Bukhari. and article 7 of HAMAS covenant
The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem)
What the corporate media does not report is the complicit of all of those "innocent women" and young children, who sat in front of their TV and cell phones, ulating and cheering when HAMAS and Islamic Jihad were slaughtering and kidnapping Israels. And what they do take, without question or analysis is the lies of HAMAS, which presents itself to the world as
Palestinian Health Ministry" just another lying propaganda organ of HAMAS, and we, but not the media, knows that it lies and exaggerates.
Any idea of how Fox is handling this, after all Rupert, along with Putin, were feted by Algemeiner. An eclectic cast of characters gathered inside Broadway’s Gotham Hall on Monday night where The Algemeiner, a conservative-leaning Jewish-American newspaper, unveiled its “Jewish 100” list.
This year’s “Jewish 100” (2016) includes the billionaire media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, British Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ivanka Trump (who is married to the publisher of the Observer). These five, along with the 95 others, were honored and celebrated at the gala because they were deemed by The Algemeiner to have a “positive influence on Jewish life.” https://observer.com/2016/03/algemeiner-celebrates-power-jews-at-packed-manhattan-gala/
Murdoch was slammed as antisemite (a ridiculous charge) because he said "He doesn't understand the anti Israel attitude of the Jewish owned media. I guess he wasn't suppose to say the quiet part out loud.
The up front and personal slaughter of elderly, disabled, women and children is the most barbaraic thing I've seen or heard of, ever, Worse than ISIS, if that is possible, and yet the corporate media and UN treat collateral damage of Gaza the same as HAMAS up front and personal slaughter, and as a frigging Numbers Game, as if there is some kind of tit for tate, and whoevere kills the most is the most deplorable. , when the Israelis have dropped leaflets warning them their goal is HAMAS. As it should be, and they should get out of the way, pronto. HAMAS comes along and tells them to stay put, because it needs what it calls shahids (Martyrs) for it's propaganda machine.
Just like they steal fuel that comes into Gaza for their generators, their rocket launchers, their vehicles, and the feckless media and UN whines on and on about how it is affecting the Palestinian Health Ministry (HAMAS), and hospitals.
There is no both sides ism, here, but the media treat as if there is. Especially those hosts and reporters in the media, that are Muslim , or have ties to Iran and the Mideast.
There were a lot of Italian Americans and German Americans who were fans of Mussolini and Hitler, we even had the Silver Shirts, American NAZI's, that filled Madisan Square Garden in the 1930's with a backdrop of a NAZI banner and humungous poster of George Washington.
But they shut up on Dec 8, 1941 and many of them fought and died in France and Germany.
Thank you Thom for tackling the absolute most critical issue of our time. It is an uncomfortable topic, hence an unpopular one to receive. I applaud your willingness to speak about the biggest elephant (ironic) in every room right now. We can't afford to continue pretending we're not on the verge of global disaster.
And I absolutely concur that President Biden has handled the seemingly impossible with grace. He is the right person for this moment, no matter how much my idealistic friends claim otherwise. What Biden walked into was a building engulfed in flames and structurally failing. Job 1 is to suppress the fire and shore up the structure.
The House Vladonald caucus needs to be outed and replaced if anything is to change.
A thunderous standing ovation for you, John.
If Trump is reelected, there probably will be a world war - he is so easily manipulated that we soon would be in a situation where we would have to fight a war. However, all the 'aggressor' nations also have serious problems not mentioned. Russia will probably lose Crimea next year - the Ukrainians MUST have Crimea to be a viable country in the future, but the loss of Crimea will mean an end to Putin's regime in Russia. Russia is also in a demographic slide to ethnic irrelevance by the end of this century, but long before that (10-20 years) Russia will no longer have enough young men to field the army they would need to meet their imperial expansionist wishes. As for China, Xi is facing the worst financial disaster the world has seen since the Great Depression - simply to keep people employed and to run their skewed economic system, China has built enough new homes to house TWICE the current Chinese population, and they are on track to lose HALF their current population due to critically low birth rates and the effects from the "one child" policy in effect for 40 years. There is no "soft landing" from this, and no Chinese leader has any experience handling an economy so bent out of normal operating parameters. In addition, an attack on Taiwan or the US would trigger a sea blockade of China that would cut off most of their fuel supplies and much of their food - they would experience a famine more severe than any they have known and lose half their population in a year. Xi knows this, and I am sure we have made it clear what we would be prepared to do if China goes to war against Taiwan or any other country in the western Pacific. The Party would lose everything.....
A great global analysis. Nixon is ultimately responsible for the China problem. Kissinger too, in fact Kissinger was the mastermind behind his trip to China, which opened the door for cheap Chinese labor, to replace the more expensive American labor, and thus motivate corporation to move out of America. Dubya and Clinton added fuel to the fire, especially neo liberal Clinton, who in my opinion was a self aggrandizing narcissist currying favor with the powers that be.
American corporations shifted their factories first to Mexico, then when the Mexicans demanded better wages, to Central America and Asia and the pacific islands, like American Samoa, and then even technology and contracts to China, as it has a huge pool of cheap labor.
Almost everything I buy these days, from Oxygen concentrators to wrist watches are made in China, because America produces jack squat. We don't even make cars. VW, Hyundi, Toyota, Honda assemble cars in cheap labor states, so they can say Made in America. The wings of Boeing passenger aircraft are made in China, think of that the next time you fly.
Remember too that Bill Clinton signed the law that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, paving the way for the banking misbehavior that caused the 2008 Great Recession..... Clinton was a neoliberal Democrat.....
I don't need to remember it. It is just one of the many things that the horny, bought dude did to destroy our democracy and country. like the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Omnibus Crime Bill, the Defense of Marriage act, and NAFTA and his and Bush's version of GAAT, both of which are responsible for the rust belt aka swing states.
The man is a disaster so is his self aggrandizing wife, who plays the role of a liberal, while being a captive of financial instiutions like her husband, and the anti union Chamber of Commerce
Yeah, sometimes we just don't have that much of a choice - hanging or firing squad.....
Firing squad please. You don't know if you will get the Sgt Woods treatment (he gave the Nuremburg criminals the slow strangulation hanging, or the The clean drop Saddam treatment long drop, clean break. Baghad Bob gained weight and the drop decapitated him.
There is a lot to be said here. There are many reasons why the world wars occurred, and future historians might see I and II as simply a continuation of the same conflict. After all, the Thirty Years War (1618-48) was really 4 separate interrelated ones (and a fifth that went on for another 11 years). Having read a lot of history, including plenty of alternative stories about both the past and the future, there are many possibilities.
And I will say that all of the sane actors realize a full scale nuclear conflict would likely destroy civilization, if not the world. So it’s unlikely anyone this side of Hamas would allow such a conflict, not that this couldn’t happen. Having just read The Guns of August about the 1914 drift into war, Kennedy was careful to avoid that with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and probably Biden is equally sharp. As for Putin, he grew up in the shadow of the disastrous 1941-45 Soviet-German war and certainly doesn’t want anything on that scale, or worse. But Trump? Like Bush II he’s more like the German Kaiser, a stupid man with a big mouth who totally lost control of the situation.
But for all that we certainly could end up in at least a continuous lower level big power conflict. A sort of Warm War, if you will, with few or no nuclear weapons but all sides (Orwell’s 3 big powers, perhaps) clawing at one another in ruinous fighting while the rest of the world is impoverished by their demands. Throw in climate change and it is a bleak millennium, and after everyone battles themselves to exhaustion without victory it could take as long as the medieval period to recover from, if ever.
Personally my guess is that China will ally itself with the Middle Eastern powers (never mind what they are doing to their own Muslim population) with the Russians, using Wagner’s established base there, also become more active in Africa. But there are many other possible scenarios. On the other hand it doesn’t have to be like this, and given how fast things can change (think of the difference in Spain between 1970 and 1990, or Germany from 1939 to 1959) we might just turn this time period around. But as Thom has said, it won’t be by wishing for a miracle or electing a strong man to save us. Not everyone has to be an extra in a Shakespearean tragedy, and while I have no easy answers it is obvious that despair is not one to use.
Mid east Muslims have myopia, they don't know about China's oppression of the Uyghers, and those that do, don't care, because their one and only interest is the Jews.
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." (Preamble of HAMAS covenant)
The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7 of the HAMAS covenant.. and the haddith of al Bukhari, which is holy writ to Muslims.
What we have in the Mideast is a religious war, the worst of all wars. Christians have warred against other Christians they consider heretics, and the wars (internal and external) were horrendous. Until Hitler the worst they did to the Jews was expel them, but what they did to other Christians is horrendous. The Inquisition supposedly started out as a mans to uncover crypto Christians, but was really a way for the Crown and Inquisitors to acquire the property of the wealthy.
Islam is violently at war with itself. When Mo died, his followers declared themselves the rightful heir (Sunni is from Sunnah.. meaning followers), there was a faction that felt that Mo's cousin and first student should have been the successor they are the Shia. This cousin was named Ali ibn abi Talib, which is not a name at all but a descriptor like Sitting Bull, or Runs Fast. It means The exalted son of the father of the student(or cousin Ali means Exalted ibn means son, Abi means father, Talib means student.
The two cults have been at war over who is the rightful successor, and back in the 80's, Iran sent agents on a mission to Mecca under guise of a haj (pilgrimage) to attack Mecca.
The Saudi's had initiated a rapprochement, with Iran. I have no idea how that is going to turn out now. Suffice it to say their are Shia in Saudi Arabia, but restricted to the oil fields, were they are used as low priced labor, and the Houti, which the Kingdom has been fighting are Shia.
There is an eternal hostility between Arab and Iranian.
The much respected Iranian Poet Ferdowsi said, in his Book of Kings, Shahameh,
From feeding on desert lizars and camel's milk
so have he afairs of the Arabs prospered.
That they long for the empire of Khosrau
Shame on thee, O circling Heaven, shame.
Then this, which every educated Iranian can recite
Damn on this World, Damn on this Time,Damn on Fate. That uncivilized Arabs have come to force me to be Muslim.
As you can see there is a long hostility between Arabs and Iranians, a hostility that Saddam employed in his war with Iran, he used the chauvinism and "martydom" of Arabs to incite his Shia in Iraq to war with the Shia of Iran. If religion doesn't work, then use racism.
In one thing Sunni and Shia are united, and that is the death of Israel, and the death of Jews.
Shame,shame on Jared, the Jewish Judas would betray his people for a couple billion dollars.
It would take too long to go into all this, William. But European Christians did far worse than expel Jews--just for a start read about the Crusaders' happily murdering every one they found in the Rhine Valley or what the Russians did in their pogroms. And while I disagree that Muslims are united on their hatred of Jews since they consider the religion and its prophets in a line from Adam to Mohamed, I do agree about the Arab-Iranian division. In Iran back when the Shah was there I saw almost all of that magnificent country and had to be careful to keep it in mind as the people well remembered their proud Persian history. The U.S. never understood this when it overthrew their government in 1953, starting all the trouble we have today. Don't expect to find a serious discussion of that root cause in any popular news story.
Doc, you aren't telling me anything that I don't already know. My 1st avocation has been history, ancient to present, and especially about the massacres perpetuated by religions, all of them .
I now all about the pogroms and the Pale of settement including the persecution and murder of Jews in Ukraine and the Baltic states, how ironic is it then that the President of Ukraine is a Jew which Putin declares a NAZI.
There is and always have been tension between Shia and Sunni. see for example the Iranians, Persia, Islam and the soul of a nation https://www.amazon.com/Iranians-Persia-Islam-Soul-Nation/dp/0525940057/ref=sr_1_1?crid=7G0IWPG9U8EZ&keywords=the+iranians+by+sandra+mackey&qid=1698181310&sprefix=the+iranians+by+sandra+mackey%2Caps%2C206&sr=8-1
I also know that Iran had a vibrant Jewish population, that lived the life of a dhimmi (a second class citizen) until the 1973 war.
And I am ahead of you on the fact, that the CIA and Mi6, are ultimately responsible for the Mullahcracy of Iran, when they overthrew (or rather financed and supported) the overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh, who like Chavez, made the fatal mistake of thinking that Iran was sovereign and owned the oil in it's wells.
And isn't it convenient that the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi died of cancer, just shortly after being deposed and fleeing to America.
Did you know that Ayatollah Khomeini had a British mother, I am so on top of all of this and more.
However if your intent was not to educate me, but to educate the reader, then go for it. I concur, just being defensive here, don't assume that I am ignorant of these facts. I am not and know so much more, that if I posted all I knew, I would be met with slander, charges and denials.
National Security. All politics is local. Down here in Baghdad By the Sea, both Russia and China have outposts in Cuba, 90 miles from Key West, 180 miles from Brickell Avenue and Calle Ocho, home territory and defacto capitols of many central and south American countries. You would think that the House members here, all Cuban American Republicans representing Democratic majority districts, would be all over the issue. Think again.
Moreover our Senator, the disingenuous Lil' Marco Rubio, is more loyal to the forces of evil than to his own physical well being. Think the Cuban Missile Crisis.
We are also under attack economically, politically and from a national security standpoint by OPEC/Saudis/Russia, a cabal that fixes energy prices to fund Putin and to hurt the US and sink the economy.
The speaker fiasco may be an opportunity for Biden to threaten Republicans with their own strident unitary executive theory. Straighten up ---or else.
Every iPhone is made in China and Chinese laws and practice specify that each company in China making such products must incorporate a "back door" for their intelligence availability. Supposedly Apple is strong on security but the chips are made in China and that is very, very, very low level (the machine's innermost innards). The IOT "Internet of Things" is even worse, most such IOT devices built in China, with no security but with possible open access to China. And the same for most of the security cameras sold. And we lap it up as convenience.
I was with a company back in 2001 that got hacked by the Chinese. I spent day and night for most of a week rebuilding the servers and replacing the databases we used for selling (largely third-party equipment for Caterpillars).
There didn't seem to be any good reason for that. That was also just coming out of the period of time when I did a lot of service provider switching because several of my ISPs were infected with viruses, again from China (there were a couple varieties of "red" something or other virus). Back then I just thought it was vandalism.
Maybe it was vandalism as the motive and there was vandalism damage. But looking back at the long trail of events, now I have to wonder whether those were also probes and ways of determining where to place digital assets, for a later time, such as now and to determine what kinds of damage they could do.
Can’t we all just get along? Well, apparently not.
Belligerence, extremism, radicalism, violence, etc., are by-products or the end products of chronic and pervasive fearfulness, rage, xenophobia, and the felt need to gain or regain control. They are driven by the perceived need for and positive value of arbitrary authority and external influence and power over the masses.
Arbitrary authority and peace are incompatible. They are mutually exclusive. If some person or group has the ability to control any other person or group, there will be strife and there will be resistance. Therefore, the universal promotion of arbitrary control is the promotion and perpetuation of violence. Forcing a nine year old child of any gender or description to sit in a seat for four hours every day is control and it is violence. There is a learning process for certain. However, what is being learned in a significant percentage of cases is not what we desire. Instead, what we get is a predisposition for authoritarianism either as followers or leaders. What we get is a tolerance, if not a preference, for control, violence, hatred, indifference, and judgmentalism.
You reap what you sow. You want arbitrary authority; you get what inevitably comes with it. You get people who feel like victims or who experience some mix of rage, frustration, or victimization, or superiority and control, often in alternating cycles depending on circumstances, and they play their roles quite well in many instances. We have all played with matches. We are going to get burned.
Mr. Elliott I agree with you heartily. But I am wondering about how appropriate your use of the word arbitrary is. Power, authority and influence are sought out for easily recognizable reasons. Power is the ability of the possessor to control the behavior of others even against their own will. This is accomplished through the use of force against the victim or control over resources the victim needs or wants. These are usually, but not always, economic resources. Power comes through the barrel of a gun. Those with power and its institutional expression, which we call authority, utilize these things to their own benefit and to the detriment of the victims. Influence is the ability to control the behavior of others by getting them to agree with the influencer. It is the cousin of power, propaganda. Power is not really so arbitrary as it is directed and purposeful, for reasons we all understand.
Or perhaps I misunderstand your use of the term "arbitrary?"
Professor Dobbertin (if I remember correctly),
I conceptualize arbitrary authority as unregulated authority or authority which is assigned to a position or function with little oversight and little or no recourse for those who are under the control of the authority figure. I’m not sure what your question is or why you are defining terms with such specificity.
Authority is not always illegitimate, nor is arbitrary authority. However, I believe that authority must be used very sparingly, for very specific purposes, and without malice, paternalism, cruelty, indifference, or the pretense of superiority.
Arbitrary authority is extremely hazardous in my estimation and is only legitimate in certain very limited circumstances. When it is utilized to control people with the assumption or claim that it is for their own good or for the good of a nation, red lights should be flashing all over the place.
As I believe you know, my primary concern is always with how children and young people are inculcated into the society and the work force. My point is that worldwide, the mythology prevails which has students as uneducated, undisciplined, immature, self-centered, lacking knowledge or wisdom, and needing constant adult supervision, control, and “teaching”. The consensus broadly is that school provides them with the training, experience, and instruction that they need and that they will, at least in many cases, not avail themselves of those wonderful benefits unless coerced, browbeaten, evaluated, monitored, supervised, and made aware of the consequences of any failure to participate and cooperate. I call BS to most of that nonsense.
Control always risks abuse and in a paradigm based on force abuse is inescapable and a feature of many of the institutions tasked with that control. Suppressing a child’s spirit, autonomy, or curiosity under the specious and arrogant presumption that you are teaching them to me is violence. Who do we think we are? Have they ask any questions yet, or do we imagine that we have all of the questions as well as the answers?
There is no organization or institution which uses propaganda more effectively and more inappropriately than the traditional school.
I was educated in Philadelphia and then Louisiana, and have seen indoctrination close up and personal, such as being told in Phillie that the Civil war wasfought to frfee the slaves (it wasn't) and in Louisiana that it was a war of Northern Agression by an Industrial north against an Agrarian South (it wasn't) and no where have I learned History, that I uncovered in my own adult research and from Thom's dissertattions.
And my knowledge of "Hidden History" came about before Howard Zinn's books, it came about, of all things, in my research as a genetic genealogist and a project manager of a DNA project.
Mr. Elliott I have aways believed that the first step in creating knowledge is to name things and define them. What subset of phenomena does it fall in? what is it? What is it not? Simply Aristotelian definitions.
I think I see what you are saying about arbitrary power and authority. When my grandson asks why I want him to not do something? "Why not Grandpa?" I try to explain why not. Give him reasons he can grasp. I never say "Because I said so." If he wants to do it anyway. That's OK with me. As long as he is not creating danger. He is six yrs. old and if he wants to disagree with me; so be it .
My daughter never graduated from our home-town High-school. She ran off to a place called Interlochen, Michigan to the Academy of Arts located there. She managed to swing a scholarship for the steep tuition. I was sad about her going off on her own, away from home at such a young age. But I kept my mouth shut about .that. It turned out to be a good decision by her to go and by me to stay quiet. She
worked like a beaver and graduated with honors. From there she repeated the performance and ran off to New York and college. Again, I was sad. But held back.
When it was my son's turn my wife drove him to Ohio to look at Oberlin, Kenyon and Antioch. My wife and I are convinced small schools do a better job than large ones. He said those places were too narrow, limited and provincial. So he went to Michigan State; which is huge, impersonal, but Cosmopolitan. I kept my nose out of his business even though I thought it was a mistake. He made out OK and I have kept my mouth shut. At those small schools I believe he would have been treated more like a human being, less like a number and had a better educational experience. Thanx for responding so quickly.
Good post Gerald, but I must say we don't create knowledge, we either acquire it, or it is shoved down our throats like pablum
As regards raising children. True you can't explain things to children, your reasons bounce off their shield of "I don't care, I want it". People have to learn the meaning of the word No, and that life is not fair, less they arrive at adulthood or semi Adulthood, such as a job or a freshman in college, only to be hit with a hard reality, and that can lead to serious trouble, for themselves and with society.
Our society is awash, and troubled by the "beneficiaries" of Dr Benjamin Spocks books on babies and child care. Me thinks that the extremes of the right and left are the residue of Dr Spock. Spoiled children, angry because they can't have their way.
Stuart Stevens said it best on his PBS interview tonight---he stated the GOP no longer has a higher purpose. That is it!
Republicans have decided to serve Trump and the oligarchs. If money is talking, they are listening. Being hard working, protecting the nation, or building up community won't merit their attention. The only general welfare they are interested in is their own.
Stuart Stevens just authored the book, "The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy Towards Autocracy.". Welcome to the light Mr. Stevens.
Mr. Hartman. It frightens me that people talk blithely about nuclear war and WWThree as though it would be a larger version of previous wars. Nothing could be further from the truth. A war between The U.S. and Russia or China would end all human civilization. A nuclear exchange of any kind between these three powers would kill most life on Earth, certainly all human life.
1) The nuclear Winter caused by the clouds which the explosions would send extremely high into the atmosphere would not be localized; but would spread out and cover the entire globe. The clouds would blot out the sun so thoroughly that it would cause a tremendous drop in temperature for at least a decade, maybe more than one decade. This nuclear Winter would deprive living things of food for long enough for all animals to become extinct. The entire ecological food chain on Earth would be destroyed. Nothing larger than a cockroach would survive on the land. Maybe not even them. Nothing larger than krill in the oceans, maybe. The altitude of the clouds from atom bombs is so great that the material in them settles to Earth extremely slowly.
2) If by some miracle the bombs failed to completely block the sun worldwide; we would eventually all succumb to radiation poisoning. No place on the Globe can escape this. Some of the radiating materials in the bombs remain lethally high emitters of radiation for thousands of years. The half life of strontium 90 is about 40 years. The half life of plutonium is 240 years. Do the elementary arithmetic! We cannot survive it. Wealthy Americans are buying land in New Zealand in the futile hope of escaping Nuclear Winter. Read ON THE BEACH by neville Shute, it is also in film; LEVEL SEVEN by Mordecai Roshwald; DOCTOR STRANGELOVE OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB, which is also a classic film by the greatest director of all time: Stanley Kubrick.
The Biden administration is playing with human extinction, for what?
It is past time to talk about the possibility of nuclear exchanges. It is time to talk about stopping this mad rush toward armageddon and extinction. We will not survive.
For decades after WWll the U.S. government understood that China considered Taiwan as part of China. It was called the "One China Policy"; and the U.S. formally agreed to it. In the interim U.S. leadership has gradually let this agreement slip into oblivion. While at the same time starting a new cold war with China. The U.S. is the country with its war-ships thousands of miles away from our shores and off the coast of China. How many military bases does China have in Mexico or Canada? Where is the powerful Chinese naval fleet just off our shores? The U.S. has 11 aircraft carrier task forces with a 12th in the planning stage. China has 2 aircraft carriers which are much smaller and far less powerful. The "free press" in the U.S. is in lockstep hysterically telling us that China has a larger navy than the U.S. The overwhelming majority of China's naval ships are troop and materiel transports, not attack-type ships like in the U.S. navy. This is a phony military scare; just like the "missile gap" when I was young in the 1950s and 60s. Back then the U.S. Air Force insisted their intelligence service had proof that the Russians had many more deliverable atom bombs than the U.S. This was a lie; perpetuated by the Air Force to justify more tax money for building bombers and fighter planes. Army and Naval intelligence did not agree with the Air Force claims. But the public was fed the Air Force lies. War planners at the Rand Corporation and the Pentagon knew U.S. atom bombs out numbered Russian bombs by ten to one. Russia did not come close to catching up with the U.S. until after the Cuban missile crisis of 1969.
China's new "Belt and Road Initiative" scares hell out of America's billionaire owners of our country because it is positioning China to become the most important trader on Earth. The isolated, gullible and uninformed American public is being fed a constant barrage of warnings about China's increasing military belligerence by the lockstep "free press" in the U.S. China's threat is economic, not military. If we had not allowed Reagan and Clinton to destroy our industrial base with agreements like NFTA, we might be in better shape economically. But American corporate owners wanted to move factories out of the U.S. to low wage countries, especially China, so owners can increase their profits from the cheaper labor.
We are and have been talking about the wrong subject for some time now. We must talk about nuclear annihilation. Nuclear-caused extinction of humankind.
Now wait a minute Thom. Last I checked it was Biden and "progressives" like you enthusiastically sending weapons of war around the globe, 57% of which have been sent to autocratic regimes, while you blame Putin and Trump and China for our downward spiral. Biden should be roundly condemned for his enabling of the Trump of Tel Aviv Netanyahu in his wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people (his hug of Netanyahu reminded me of the fistbump with MBS), yet all you can do is tell callers who say Isreal is the victim that you agree with everything they said. Instead of being honest, Biden is parroting neoliberal political rhetoric to sanction the genocide of Palestinians while he uses Ukrainians as cannon fodder to weaken Putin. Biden has been inflaming xenophobia against Asians and Muslims while he excuses the crimes against humanity of his political and economic "allies." Unfortunately, the only moral compass today's liberalism points towards involves Trump, Putin and China, while your fearless leader does his obscene Charles Bronson act and takes the path of least resistance in enriching transnational corporations with his escalation of war. His grotesque actions in enabling Israel's massacre will stoke terrorism in the region for years to come. He should be calling for an end to Israel's illegal occupation and a rescinding of the settlements, but of course his history proves him a complete political coward on the wrong side of most issues.
There you go again Boris. Spouting lies in service to Putin. I don't think anyone hear believes your screen name, which is Jewish. If so then a self hating Jew. A real Barry J Kaufman would not survive if dropped into Gaza (or Iran for that matter)
You over reach talking of genocide of Palestinians.. .hardly. Yes there have been murders and dispossession of Muslim Arabs by right wing Orthodox Jews, and criminals Like Netanyahu who courts them like Trump courts and use the self righteous Christian bigots.
But genocide? Well lets talk about Genocide:
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." (Preamble of HAMAS covenant)
The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7 of the HAMAS covenant.. and the haddith of al Bukhari, which is holy writ to Muslims.
As far as I can discern, your whole purpose here is to obliguely discredit Biden and the Democrats, and play stalking horse for Putin, XI and other anti democratic forces.
And you do it, by tweaking, the sensibilities of "liberals" and the left.
News for you just because we are disappointed with the Democratic party because it is let's itself b e put on he back foot, we aren't so stupid as to stay out of the voting booth or vote for Trump (directly or indirectly) but there are some, who have succumbed to your siren song, like the Democratic Socialists of America,rather their idiot flank.
Just because we are disgusted and disappointed with the DNC, and just because we are liberal and pro democracy and equality, doesn't mean that we are fools to fall for your disinfo campaign of diversion.
There are a few exceptions, who think that you speak truth, who just react to b.s. that triggers them and their non thinking reflexes. I have to hand it to you, you are good at what you are doing, turning the question in on itself, and making the Democrats and Biden the enemy, while obliquely advancing the cause of dictators like Putin and Xi, is Iran the next on your agenda, you have already taken up with terrorists.
Americans have been fed propaganda since I was born.
IF America has no-one to hate then the people are LOST!
Either it's the Chinese or Russians.
Get a grip and learn some History.
Somebody sane on here.
Really, really, check my response to your friend Barry, immediately above You are being suckered by someone who knows how to pull your strings.
Thanks for this William. I am never 'suckered' especially by men like you.
Thanks. I now understand which side of the fence you stand on.
A stand with Barre is a stand with Putin.
Dr. Kaufman. Don't you think "complete political coward" is a statement just a bit outside the bounds of our political discourse? Joe Biden has been a phenomenally successful politician in the oldest democratic republic on the globe. He never loses in competition. As long as I have been aware of political life in the U.S. (I am 81) Biden's opponents have continuously underestimated his ability. Call him wily, cunning, slippery, clever, artful, astute. But don't call him coward. It does not fit. Democracy, by the very nature of the system requires compromise in order to accomplish anything. Unfortunately Historians talk endlessly about the "Great Man" who all too often caused untold pain and misery: the "Strong Man", "Strong Leader."
The American voting public has a notoriously short memory. And when voters go into the booth in 2024 they will not be much concerned with ethnic issues like unreasonable violent conflict between Palestinians and Israelis on the other side of the globe. They will be concerned more with domestic issues, what my mother called"kitchen table issues." Unemployment is at the lowest in decades, crime rates are at the lowest in decades, unions are feeling charged up, everyone, young and old, are concerned about Social Security, health and Medicare, food on the table, rent or house amortization payments, buying a car, and their kid's education. Biden is well aware of this and he has sometimes rapidly, sometimes patiently aided the public in all these areas.
This is not to say he never makes mistakes. He does. He is only human. For instance; he should have stopped Clarence Thomas from ascending to the Supreme Court when it was in his power to do so. But he didn't when he was chair of the Judiciary Committee. I agree that Netanyahu, Hamas and the Arabian Sheik should be held accountable, stopped. His most dangerous current mistake is going along with the Military-Industrial-Complex as it drives us into another Cold war with, again, the very real danger of nuclear annihilation for Humankind.
I'm sorry if this sounds cynical.
But imagine what it would be like with Trump's finger over the button! Or any of the other Republican Oligarch-worshipping, lunatics with the launch codes! Romney excluded. He is an oligarch, but note an unprincipled suicidal lunatic.
My god, look at the choices the republicans have brought us down to!
Thanks for reminding us that Bidens vote was the clincher for Clarence Thomas. Assuming good faith, and Biden being a pragmatist, I can only assume it was because Clarence is black, and Biden had aspirations otherwise and wanted to be on the good side of American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS).
On the other hand, 40% of America is MAGA, not because of kitchen table issues, of that seem not to care, but it is the culture war, be it male control of women and children (Augustus law of Pater Familia, resurfaced), religion, LGBT or POC, all of which are seen as threatening of "masculine prerogative and power".
If you can't be King of the realm, they simply redefine the realm as "A man's home is his castle".,and it is all psychosexual, one proof being the popularity of Viagra, which I now understand is OTC.
"The period from the end of WWII to today is often referred to by historians as “the long peace.” You forgot to mention our generation war in Vietnam where millions of our men/women were killed in the name of stopping communism. Another unnecessary war. There were men from before the babyboomer that got slaughtered in the jungles of Asia. Angry men came home, wounded men came home to what? Yes they had GI bill and many took part but there remained many on the streets and mentally handicapped from the killings and war machine. I was married to two of them, didn't learn from the first and did it again. That's on me.
Please desist from making negative comments to Thom like you forgot to mention. I doubt that he did, as he was maintaining consistency with a theme.
If you want to interject your own ideas, do so with out referencing Thom. This is about the third time I've seen this tactic.
Apples and oranges. You can interject your opinions without saying "you forgot to mention", perhaps it is a lack of imagination or insecurity. What ever it is stop it, please.
You have a good rant, but it is a totally different subject, not at all about the possible lead up to WWIII
Sorry fellas but I disagree that Vietnam was a totally different subject as Thom was talking wars and I would never mean to actually criticize Thom Hartmann. I must have a lack of imagination and am insecure? Glad you are keeping track.
As long as there is is oil coming out of the ground and China is able to turn a profit by our manufacturing jobs, it is my opinion that there will not be any wars even for Taiwan because the Chinese don't want to run the risk of destroying the nation and just owning a pile of rubble. But once the natural resources run out, the autocrats will steal from each other like the thugs that they are! Capitalism doesn't work when you run out of other people's natural resources.
The oligarchs have never wanted democracy in the USA or anywhere else in the world. They want a fascist state with a single leader making all the decisions, much as with Italy with Mussolini and Germany with Hitler. Leader in the USA and in Great Britain wanted the same control in their countries. Post WW II the USA and European countries supported the return of colonies (nations) to their former controllers in France, Belgium, Great Britain, and the USA. The U.S. government has acted to overthrow democratic governments in Latin America and the Middle East and this has been supported by every president since Truman.
The party bosses in 1943 decided that a progressive president with Henry A. Wallace would be terrible and so after his three terms as vice president he was pulled from the party ticket and replaced by Harry Truman and a few months into 1944 their man became the next president and they bypassed the electoral process.
Great Observations