Bear baiting was long ago banned as inhumane. Yet today, a version is being practiced every day against whole nations on a gigantic international scale.
NATO officials visit Ukraine, April 7, 2021. (NATO)
By Diana Johnstone
in Paris
Special to Consortium News
In the time of the first Queen Elizabeth, British royal circles enjoyed watching fierce dogs torment a captive bear for the fun of it. The bear had done no harm to anyone, but the dogs were trained to provoke the imprisoned beast and goad it into fighting back. Blood flowing from the excited animals delighted the spectators.
This cruel practice has long since been banned as inhumane.
And yet today, a version of bear baiting is being practiced every day against whole nations on a gigantic international scale. It is called United States foreign policy. It has become the regular practice of the absurd international sports club called NATO.
United States leaders, secure in their arrogance as “the indispensable nation,” have no more respect for other countries than the Elizabethans had for the animals they tormented. The list is long of targets of U.S. bear baiting, but Russia stands out as prime example of constant harassment. And this is no accident. The baiting is deliberately and elaborately planned.
As evidence, I call attention to a 2019 report by the RAND corporation to the U.S. Army chief of staff entitled “Extending Russia.” Actually, the RAND study itself is fairly cautious in its recommendations and warns that many perfidious tricks might not work. However, I consider the very existence of this report scandalous, not so much for its content as for the fact that this is what the Pentagon pays its top intellectuals to do: figure out ways to lure other nations into troubles U.S. leaders hope to exploit.
The official U.S. line is that the Kremlin threatens Europe by its aggressive expansionism, but when the strategists talk among themselves the story is very different. Their goal is to use sanctions, propaganda and other measures to provokeRussia into taking the very sort of negative measures (“over-extension”) that the U.S. can exploit to Russia’s detriment.
The RAND study explains its goals:
“We examine a range of nonviolent measures that could exploit Russia’s actual vulnerabilities and anxieties as a way of stressing Russia’s military and economy and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad. The steps we examine would not have either defense or deterrence as their prime purpose, although they might contribute to both. Rather, these steps are conceived of as elements in a campaign designed to unbalance the adversary, leading Russia to compete in domains or regions where the United States has a competitive advantage, and causing Russia to overextend itself militarily or economically or causing the regime to lose domestic and/or international prestige and influence.”
Clearly, in U.S. ruling circles, this is considered “normal” behavior, just as teasing is normal behavior for the schoolyard bully, and sting operations are normal for corrupt FBI agents.
This description perfectly fits U.S. operations in Ukraine, intended to “exploit Russia’s vulnerabilities and anxieties” by advancing a hostile military alliance onto its doorstep, while describing Russia’s totally predictable reactions as gratuitous aggression. Diplomacy involves understanding the position of the other party. But verbal bear baiting requires total refusal to understand the other, and constant deliberate misinterpretation of whatever the other party says or does.
What is truly diabolical is that, while constantly accusing the Russian bear of plotting to expand, the whole policy is directed at goading it into expanding! Because then we can issue punishing sanctions, raise the Pentagon budget a few notches higher and tighten the NATO Protection Racket noose tighter around our precious European “allies.”
For a generation, Russian leaders have made extraordinary efforts to build a peaceful partnership with “the West,” institutionalized as the European Union and above all, NATO. They truly believed that the end of the artificial Cold War could produce a peace-loving European neighborhood. But arrogant United States leaders, despite contrary advice from their best experts, rejected treating Russia as the great nation it is, and preferred to treat it as the harassed bear in a circus.
The expansion of NATO was a form of bear-baiting, the clear way to transform a potential friend into an enemy. That was the way chosen by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and following administrations. Moscow had accepted the independence of former members of the Soviet Union. Bear-baiting involved constantly accusing Moscow of plotting to take them back by force.
Russia’s Borderland
An unpaved road to Lysychansk, Lugansk, March 2015. (Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
Ukraine is a word meaning borderlands, essentially the borderlands between Russia and the territories to the West that were sometimes part of Poland, or Lithuania, or Habsburg lands. As a part of the U.S.S.R., Ukraine was expanded to include large swaths of both. History had created very contrasting identities on the two extremities, with the result that the independent nation of Ukraine, which came into existence only in 1991, was deeply divided from the start. And from the start, Washington strategies, in cahoots with a large, hyperactive anti-communist anti-Russian diaspora in the U.S. and Canada, contrived to use the bitterness of Ukraine’s divisions to weaken first the U.S.S.R. and then Russia. Billions of dollars were invested in order to “strengthen democracy” – meaning the pro-Western west of Ukraine against its semi-Russian east.
The 2014 U.S.-backed coup that overthrew President Viktor Yukanovych, solidly supported by the east of the country, brought to power pro-West forces determined to bring Ukraine into NATO, whose designation of Russia as prime enemy had become ever more blatant. This caused the prospect of an eventual NATO capture of Russia’s major naval base at Sebastopol, on the Crimean peninsula.
Since the Crimean population had never wanted to be part of Ukraine, the peril was averted by organizing a referendum in which an overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted to return to Russia, from which they had been severed by an autocratic Khrushchev ruling in 1954. Western propagandists relentlessly denounced this act of self-determination as a “Russian invasion” foreshadowing a program of Russian military conquest of its Western neighbors – a fantasy supported by neither facts nor motivation.
Appalled by the coup overthrowing the president they had voted for, by nationalists threatening to outlaw the Russian language they spoke, the people of the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk declared their independence.
March 2015: Civilians pass by as OSCE monitors the movement of heavy weaponry in eastern Ukraine. (OSCE, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Russia did not support this move, but instead supported the Minsk agreement, signed in February 2015 and endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution. The gist of the accord was to preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine by a federalization process that would return the breakaway republics in return for their local autonomy.
The Minsk agreement set out a few steps to end the internal Ukrainian crisis. First, Ukraine was supposed to immediately adopt a law granting self-government to eastern regions (in March 2015). Next, Kiev would negotiate with eastern territories over guidelines for local elections to be held that year under OSCE supervision. Then Kiev would implement a constitutional reform guaranteeing eastern right. After the elections, Kiev would take full control of Donetsk and Lugansk, including border with Russia. A general amnesty would cover soldiers on both sides.
However, although it signed the agreement, Kiev has never implemented any of these points and refuses to negotiate with the eastern rebels. Under the so-called Normandy agreement, France and Germany were expected to put pressure on Kiev to accept this peaceful settlement, but nothing happened. Instead, the West has accused Russia of failing to implement the agreement, which makes no sense inasmuch as the obligations to implement fall on Kiev, not on Moscow. Kiev officials regularly reiterate their refusal to negotiate with the rebels, while demanding more and more weaponry from NATO powers in order to deal with the problem in their own way.
Meanwhile, major parties in the Russian Duma and public opinion have long expressed concern for the Russian-speaking population of the eastern provinces, suffering from privations and military attack from the central government for eight years. This concern is naturally interpreted in the West as a remake of Hitler’s drive to conquest neighboring countries. However, as usual the inevitable Hitler analogy is baseless. For one thing, Russia is too large to need to conquer Lebensraum.
You Want an Enemy? Now You’ve Got One
Germany has found the perfect formula for Western relations with Russia: Are you or are you not a “Putinversteher,” a “Putin understander?” By Putin they mean Russia, since the standard Western propaganda ploy is to personify the targeted country with the name of its president, Vladimir Putin, necessarily a dictatorial autocrat. If you “understand” Putin, or Russia, then you are under deep suspicion of disloyalty to the West. So, all together now, let us make sure that we DO NOT UNDERSTAND Russia!
Russian leaders claim to feel threatened by members of a huge hostile alliance, holding regular military manoeuvers on their doorstep? They feel uneasy about nuclear missiles aimed at their territory from nearby NATO member states? Why, that’s just paranoia, or a sign of sly, aggressive intentions. There is nothing to understand.
So, the West has treated Russia like a baited bear. And what it’s getting is a nuclear-armed, militarily powerful adversary nation led by people vastly more thoughtful and intelligent than the mediocre politicians in office in Washington, London and a few other places.
U.S. President Joe Biden and his Deep State never wanted a peaceful solution in Ukraine, because troubled Ukraine acts as a permanent barrier between Russia and Western Europe, ensuring U.S. control over the latter. They have spent years treating Russia as an adversary, and Russia is now drawing the inevitable conclusion that the West will accept it only as an adversary. The patience is at an end. And this is a game changer.
First reaction: the West will punish the bear with sanctions! Germany is stopping certification of the Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline. Germany thus refuses to buy the Russian gas it needs in order to make sure Russia won’t be able to cut off the gas it needs sometime in the future. Now that’s a clever trick, isn’t it! And meanwhile, with a growing gas shortage and rising prices, Russia will have no trouble selling its gas somewhere else in Asia.
When “our values” include refusal to understand, there is no limit to how much we can fail to understand.
To be continued.
Diana Johnstone was press secretary of the Green Group in the European Parliament from 1989 to 1996. In her latest book, Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher (Clarity Press, 2020), she recounts key episodes in the transformation of the German Green Party from a peace to a war party. Her other books include Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Pluto/Monthly Review) and in co-authorship with her father, Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning (Clarity Press). She can be reached at [email protected]
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
thanks for this illuminating and conscientiously thought-through piece. Thanks SO much, Diana !
Here’s a simple idea.
Let each country decide for itself who it’s friends are. And agree not invade others.
Thank you Ms Johnstone for your insightful article.
In my host country Australia, the US narrative is wall to wall not only from our state-funded MSM the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and multicultural Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) but also the supposedly liberal media, The Guardian etc. As if that isn’t enough for ‘shaping the narrative’, yesterday our conservative government with bipartisan support from the opposition including The Greens, have banned Russia Today (RT) and SBS’ Russian News. I won’t be surprised that if other Russian outlets such as TASS and Pravda are also silenced. This then paves the way for imposing similar censorship on Chinese media eg People’s Daily, China Daily etc.
Common sense dictates that in any contentious issue, there is always multiples sides to the story. Hearing Russia’s (and China’s) side of the story is essential. Russia’s concern of existential threat from USA/NATO, it’s participation in the Minsk agreements, and, since 1991, it’s long adherence to diplomacy in the face of non-compliance by Ukraine, Germany and France, is commendable.
Since mid December 2021, when Russia submitted reasonable proposals for resolving the Ukrainian crisis and guaranteeing its own security, the US/NATO have responded with disdain and contempt, all the while supporting Zelensky’s government shelling the Donbass region since 2014, and delivering military aid.
Since Friday, Zelenky’s government suggested a willingness to negotiate on the Ukrainian neutrality issue. Russia responded immediately indicating its willingness to negotiate and halted Russian troup advancements. By Saturday, the Ukrainian government withdrew because the negotiations weren’t to their liking. As of Monday, a further round of negotiations are unfolding in Belarus, despite the US/NATO ramping up its sabre-rattling.
None of these diplomatic efforts are reported in the Australian MSM. Only Russian aggression.
As a norwegian I am grateful for your clear mind and correct description of what is going on. hope all good forses will pull together and prevent a spell over of this crises into other counties in Europe. If we want peace we will have to understand the motives of President Putin……..
The contextualization and the cutting analogy is so valid. Kudos to the author for enabling us to understand this cooked up Ukrainian crisis and how the mediocre politicians in the West and their minions in the Rest are totalling cocking it up !
No it’s not easy to sell gas.
You need a pipeline to sell gas.
You can put petro on a boat.
But not gas–gas on a boat needs special handling.
Costs billions to set up for volume sales.
Russia is stuck with Germany and visa versa.
For the foreseeable future……
It’s not that hard. Australia ship Liquid Natural Gas to the world to such places as Japan.
Japan importing 74,463,881 tons of LNG in 2020.
Australia could also supply Germany quite easily (stable supply) and has massive reserves.
This is one I recommended for my wife to read when she asked how to get up to speed on what’s going on.
Fomenting civil war (in other countries): all it takes is beaucoup dollars & no conscience
Could it be said that the US “strategists” of global dominance are cowardly for using the lives & homes of ordinary people on their game board as shields for the last seven years to hide their own blame for instigating the suffering, carried out by their hired guns to almost no fanfare at all?
For that matter, doesn’t it also make cowards of those who finance their “strategies” and of mass media and all else who push their dominance theory?
Used to be called the domino theory. They don’t seem to like change in modus operandi very much. Maybe just a vowel & a couple of consonants here & there.
“Blame” is not the word. “Responsibility” makes more sense.
Very good. Like Upton Sinclair said, “It’s hard to make a man understand when his salary depends on his not understanding.”
To Diana J… I send you a big hug from Denver, Colorado… In fact a little while ago, I said to myself.. hmmm, I wonder if Diana is going to weigh in on this. Merci mille fois, encore une fois pour ta sagesse, tes principes… et pour l’honnêteté et la férocité de tes analyses; on va fair un programme sur ce sujet avec mon ami iranien mardi prochain. Warm regards Diana… Rob P. Denver
Excellent! Thank you Diana Johnstone and CN.
Ms. Johnstone,
Thank you very much for your insightful comments. It is very refreshing to read an objective analysis rather than a rehash of the war mongering blather of the U.S. and NATO representatives and their mainstream media propaganda agents. You are certainly correct that the Russian leaders are more thoughtful and intelligent than those in Washington and London and “a few other places.” Observing the execution of U.S. foreign policy raises the question of whether there are any adults in Washington, London and those other places. If so, I do not who they are. I would add that the diplomatic corps of Russia and China are also seasoned professionals. In contrast, their U.S. counterparts are rank amateurs whose performance is made even worse due to bad manners.
You indicate that your comments are to be continued. I look forward to reading them.
Your voice is always and will remain in my consciousness a beacon of thoughtful analysis and understanding, Ms Johnstone.
(Although admittedly, my private thoughts address you as Lady Diana.”)
I do wonder, based upon your description of Mr Putin as a “necessary autokratic dictator,” just how true that is when comparing thoughts ascertained and articulated by longtime Russia-watchers whom I’ve followed for quite some years now. Not to detract from your excellent summary of how the West perpetrates its foul schemes.
Certain of these Russia watchers contend that Mr Putin has an intimate select group of counselors with and to whom he presents issues of magnitude before taking consequential if not controversial steps. If the resulting decision is his alone to take, then it has been quite well-vetted by this committee, if not voted upon. According to these certain sources. This is my understanding of how policies are effected in the Russian Federation, based upon the observations of people much more well-versed than myself. Then again, if he is to be rightfully described as autocratic dictator, (in the best sense of the word,) then it is most certainly the overwhelming choice of the Russian people to keep him as such. Perhaps ‘benevolent’ dictator might be construed in your description? It is understood you recognize his historical significance in the trials and tribulations he has been forced by the West to endure—along with his people.
Muammar Qadafi was another so-described by much of the world press, when his ascension to power-by-coup was first described, and of course, carried forward to his ghastly end. Further reading told me that it was the chiefs of Libya’s tribes (12?) with whom he convened originally and I think(?) annually regarding Libya’s internal affairs especially. I don’t have a full enough sense of his part in the history of our times to come to any firm conclusions, unlike Vladimir Putin whose prominence on the world’s stage is assured a large part for posterity.
Curious as to your further thoughts. Most of all, I remain your ardent #1 fan. Cheers. Always.
“Germany is stopping certification of the Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline.”
That already happened informally several months ago, as anyone followed those developments knew. The only difference is that now it has been announced formally; this will please the “agent of influcence” Greens in the government coalition.
As usual, Diana Johnston is the go-to on international affairs.
Brilliant analysis!
Good stuff. Thanks. I’m guessing this won’t be published in the New York Times.
Excellent analysis from the always perceptive Diana Johnstone. It speaks volumes that she, along with her namesake Caitlin Johnstone, were among those jettisoned from the leftwing website Counterpunch in the wake of the CIA-led PropOrNot brouhaha about five years ago. Thus did a once first-rate dissident forum willingly sack many of its best writers to become a stooge of a fake-left top-heavy with “cognitive infiltrators.”
Consortium News, luckily, has never caved to the spooks. Thank you for that.
Thank you, Diana Johnstone.
I am sending this to my list.
I hope they will read it and think about it.
So many supposed “progressives” have been successfully propagandized.
Jews who are now aligning themselves with Nazis.
They are ignorant of the years of windup to the current confrontation, both before and especially after the Maidan coup.
I expect not a single one of them has actually listened to Putin’s address to the nation, and the world. Link is in Consortium News Article : Putin on the Causes & Aims of Russia’s Military Action
Excellent summary of the current situation. The EU will be the big loser, and hopefully this will begin the long slow process whereby the EU realizes that the greatest threat to Europe is NATO, not Russia.
Excellent piece and thank you DJ and CN (again.)
Would only add to this what I have regarded as the most disastrous expression of human failure in my lifetime: GHWB – I can’t cite the venue or the exact date, but during his presidency – “There will be NO peace dividend!”
So well written. The incompetence of US politicians pushing NATO and the corporate US newsmedia repeating the outright lies about Russia are overwhelming. This is truly an evil nation. Overturning the Smith Mundt Act of 1948 shows how deliberate it all is.
My hat is doffed for you, Barbara Mulllin. Thank you for your very timely comment, especially regarding your last sentence.
(If a mud puddle appears in your path, my cape too is at your disposal.)
EXCELLENT ARTICLE DE DIANA JOHNSTONE!
Very well stated and argued. Of course the bear-baiting “game” is the policy of a government controlled by bribes from the factions that benefit, in this case the MIC and Israel, which has already begun attacking Syria more often to test whether Russia is weakened there.
Such an excellent article. Many thanks. I have been struggling to explain some of these realities to friends and family..all so brainwashed and wanting nothing more than to remain so. There is a strange mesmeric hostility to facts and history and truth that tempts me to despair. Peter Hitchens made many important observations on his last MailonSunday blog. Especially important to differentiate between “Russians” and “the Communists”. Far too many opinionated Westerners have no real understanding of either.
The RAND study sounds just like the new torture science methods practiced on individuals..many totally innocent – from the Iraq “war” (Abu Ghraib et al) on. Stress positions, magnifying perceived anxieties, humiliation, constant insults, sex smears etc. The US is using the same psychological weapons to try to break the Bear. It will never work. We will end by betraying everything that is good and decent and principled in the attempt to “win” and because of that….we will lose.
Excellent analysis, unfortunately buried by the avalanche of State Media Propaganda. You are preaching to the choir on the CN site, but Biden and friends will limit the spread of such “misinformation”.
How many people actually know what happened in Eastern Europe (our staunch allies) during the German invasion 1941-44. Well first of all we have those charming little states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia who made mass-murder of their own people into an art form.
With the beginning of the German attack against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 anti-soviet, pro-nazi oriented Latvians formed so-called self-defense units which took up the war against the Red Army and against Soviet installations. Frequently these units were under the leadership of agents of the German military counter-intelligence or the SS einsetzgruppen secret service which had set up a network with almost complete coverage of the Baltic region long before the attack. In June of 1941 auxiliary police units and special troops were formed from these units that were initially under the command of the Wehrmacht and a short time later under the command of SS departments. In a report of Task Force A of the Security Police and the Security Service of the SS of July 15, 1941 it is stated that the Latvian Auxiliary Police and two additional Special Units of the SS were assigned “…to carry out pogroms”. The preliminary estimate of the report states that , “Many Synagogues were destroyed and so far 400 Jews have been liquidated.” On August 10, 1941 the “Senior SS and Police Commander of Ostland” supplemented the report with, “…for the shooting of Communists the police team was brought in as well.” The “indigenous” units, armed and led by the SS were the main force of the process of human destruction in the Baltic.
Of course none of this is discussed in polite political circles. It never happened, or in the British playwright Harold Pinter’s famous words, ”even when it was happening it wasn’t happening’ – although Pinter was talking about Latin America is was equally applicable in the Baltics.
Ameircan marketeers
Hang-on to your children & tears
For if they see you cry
They’ll spit in yer eye
And infect you with all of their fears
Early childhood jump-rope song
Circa 2042
Interviewer: do you think children will really know what marketeer and infect mean
Subject: they damn well better
Interviewer: is that the correct pronunciation of American
Subject: it is now
You seem weird and cool. Good combo for a brave new world in which I hope consumer choices aim at regenerative. May the life force by with us, eh?
Spot on. I will say again, Citizens of Europe stand up and throw/keep America out. America is now the US “blob” and it is identical to a cancer metastasizing in the human body. The elected leaders of the EU are shallow and pathetic. Through their cowardliness, they have bequeathed nothing but misery to generations of Europeans to come.
My deepest appreciation for the article. I am looking forward to part 2, the Green party did an unbelievable turnaround from what it used to be, they are part of the governing party alliance now, and Frau Baerbock, the new Foreign Secretary of state is a member of the Green party, she is much like the German Sarah Palin. Ms. Johnstone is so right, Western powers have mediocre people in government. Mr. Putin is an intellectual next to small-minded Mr. Biden. Blinken and Baerbock next to Mr. Lavrov make one want to hide under a stone. We have nothing close to a real statesman/woman.
We could use a JFK, DeGaulle, Brandt, Schmidt, Adenauer. The same can be said about the quality of our MSM journalists, the really great journalists don’t make it in today’s MSM.
Absolutely agree. I was a Green voter until the end of the Nineties. The problem is that the war veterans of WW2 are mostly dead by now. They were witnesses and participants of war as civilians and soldiers and knew what war means. These were the citizens and policymakers who warned and kept saying . That was the main reason to found the predecessor of today’s EU. The EC was never meant to be a military power or even a war party. But those days are over.
Thank you Diana for a very thorough and informative description of the events in Ukraine. It bothers me dearly of the total incompetence in our United States government. Does anyone ever think they would come to admit the arrogance and cruel attempts to force our dominance over the world? Sad but what’s happening in Ukraine is well deserved on the US side and until we treat the world powers with respect we are in for serious consequences.
Great article.
It has long been said that those whom the gods want to destroy the first make mad. We are witnessing this madness in the internal politics and International conduct of the US, Canada, Australia and the UK.
God grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change
the courage to change what I can change
and the wisdom to know the difference
Absolutely brilliant because it explains so much so simply. However, also very tragic because it leads to the inevitable logical conclusion that my country is fully vested in and dedicated to the dissemination of abject evil throughout this world.
It immerses all of its new citizens at the moment of their birth with lies about its standards, values, objectives, expectations, and promises to you as a member of this society. You are propagandised ceaselessly from the moment you enter preschool, being told that you live in a paradise created by the most beneficient creatures ever to populate God’s glorious Earth. All others walk behind you, in shame and envy. Whether Jew or Gentile you and you alone are one of the Lord’s chosen people with a mission, nay a command, to put the rest of the riff raff on this planet in their place. God cares so much about what happens here and only HERE that we praise him and our government even before every public athletic event with great over-hyped pageantry. If the venue of that match is in another country, it is our duty to denigrate everything about the place, the people, their hospitality and competence to run a social event in the civilised world.
We are constantly reminded that we are the most noble and moral of creatures, especially our extraordinary leadership, even if the code of conduct accompanying those morals seem variable and subject to change almost continuously. In other words absolutely maximum hubris, arrogance, extreme chauvinism and disdain for the other is always the order of the day for Americans. There’s really only one vocalisation you really need to learn for it will last you a lifetime of insulation and isolationism: USA! USA! USA! If you add any additional words it might damage your brain, so be careful. As long as you can appreciate your apical good fortune in being an American citizen, you really shouldn’t need anything more to make you happy. You are complete and fulfilled just breathing American air, regardless of the CO/2 content. Let he who would strive to understand Putin, the Russian, or the Communist mind, or the Chinese, or the Iranian, or the Venezuelan mind that would embrace Putin and all his works be cast out from the American Paradise where there shall be eternal darkness and the wailing and gnashing of teeth!
I assume that you are an American. The evidence that the United States has been disseminating abject evil throughout the world was obvious long before the Ukraine crisis. Think Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, Chile, Central America. Think also of starvation economic sanctions placed on tens of millions of people around the globe. If you are just now awakening to the malevolence of the US-dominated empire, I can only say “better late than never.”
Are you kidding? Do these sound like new revelations to me? I’m an old man, born right after WWII. I saw Uncle Sam come to draft my cohorts in the mid-60’s to go kill around the globe during Vietnam. MANY of my personal friends and former schoolmates were killed there. I was lucky to escape that fate. Relatives in my parent’s generation fought in WWII and right after in Korea with some being wounded for life. My grandparents fought in WWI, against, of all countries, Russia in the secret war this country fought against the Bolsheviks during their revolution. I’m giving you a picture of the brainwashing that Americans receive from moments after their birth to make it possible for the government to so easily pack them off to war to kill and be killed. Some of us, however, develop a more appropriate disgust for these things at an early age and spend our lifetimes observing, judging and despairing of our country. There are limits to the amount of personal background biography I can use to preface my essays here and still keep them readable. You don’t need to jump to conclusions that are, frankly, not even relevant to the lesson being conveyed.
Thank you Diana!! Your essay is the perfect explanation of what is going on here. I look forward to whatever you say next – and please let it be soon!
I’ve been going bananas listening to and reading the remarks of other journalists. Especially ones who should know better!. Thom Hartman has an op ed and though he gets some of it right, a good deal of it shows he has bought in to our propaganda, and so has Bernie Sanders I’m so disappointed to say! Maybe you could sent him this essay you wrote with a note? He seriously needs to be put back on track. I wrote to him abut the history of Nazis etc. in Ukraine last week, but I don’t think he’ll ever see it, but he might, if someone he knows of, like you write to him.