\n

Short note about government secrecy on Ukraine

This New Yorker essay Is the F.B.I. Truly Biased Against Trump? about the FBI’s investigations of Rudolph Giuliani and Hunter Biden has a couple of telling paragraphs:

According to [FBI agent] Buma’s statement, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, he was told to terminate relations with one of his most valuable sources in that field, Dynamo. The order came from both his supervisors and the F.B.I.’s Foreign Influence Task Force, and, per Buma, superiors told him that the shutdown of Dynamo was based on “highly classified information from the National Security Agency” which he could not access. They also said that it was part of a broader effort, around the time of the invasion, to close off many “sources related to Russia/Ukraine matters. ”

Judging from the tone of Buma’s statement, he had become convinced that the demand to sever ties with Dynamo was another part of a shadowy conspiracy to protect Giuliani, even at the cost of depriving American officials of potential information about the unfolding war. “I believe that the intelligence that was suppressed could easily have influenced U.S. decisions surrounding the conflict.”

It seems more likely to me that the investigation was shut down not to protect Giuliani but, rather, to hide information about what was going on in Ukraine.  I can only imagine the unsavory things the CIA and related groups did in the shadows to provoke Russia’s invasion.

Comments on Aaron Maté ‘s interview with John Mearsheimer

John Mearsheimer: Ukraine War Is A Long-Term Danger

The main point of Aaron Maté ‘s interview with John Mearsheimer is that  the U.S. miscalculated about how easy it would be to defeat Russia via arming Ukraine and imposing sanctions. Both sides are in a position where they’re now unwilling to negotiate or give up land.  Losing the war, or losing the Donbas and Crimea,  is an existential threat to Russia. So if  Ukraine were to prevail in the war — not likely, given the current situation  in which the Ukrainian counteroffensive is faltering– Russia would likely be strongly tempted to use nuclear weapons.  Other threats come from the high investment the West has put into winning this war; the West is likely to continue arming Ukraine.  It would be humiliating to allow Russia to win.   That’s a possibility, since Ukraine is stressed; despite the tens of billions in weapons, Russia has an advantage. Another threat come from the possible entry into the war of Poland and Belarus. At best, the war war can end in an ugly stalemate that continually has the risk of escalating into a hot war.

I thought the following statement by Mearsheimer was wise.   Maté had asked him whether President Biden had any room to negotiate with President Putin, given Biden’s refusal before the invasion to negotiate about NATO expansion.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER:  Well, let me make a quick point.  I think your description of the American position in December 2021 and in the run-up to the war in February 2022 is correct.  But it’s also important to emphasize—and people in the West don’t want to hear it, but it is true—that the Russians were desperate to avoid a conflict.  The idea that Putin was chomping at the bit to invade Ukraine so he could make it part of Greater Russia, it’s just not a serious argument.  The Russians did not want a war, and they did, I believe, everything possible to avoid a war.  They just couldn’t get the Americans to play ball with them.  The Americans were unwilling to negotiate in a serious way.  Period.  End of story.

Mearsheimer goes on to say, ” I think that first of all, both sides are so deeply committed to winning at this point in time that it’s hard to imagine them negotiating any kind of meaningful peace agreement.” The U.S. promises to eventually allow Ukraine to join NATO. “So, we are playing—we, meaning the West—are playing a key role here in incentivizing the Russians to destroy Ukraine. It makes absolutely no sense to me from a strategic point of view or from a moral point of view. You think of the death and destruction that’s being wrought in Ukraine, and you think that this could have easily been avoided. It makes you sick to your stomach just to contemplate it all.”

Maté and Mearsheimer discuss the near-total censorship in U.S. mainstream media of opinions critical of the war in Ukraine. Mearsheimer says:

I was deeply opposed to the Iraq War in a very public way, in late 2002 and up until March 2003, when the war started. And it was tough to make a case against the war in public in those days. It was tough to be heard, but it is much tougher to be heard today. The climate is much more Orwellian…the mainstream media is committed to policing the marketplace to make sure that people who disagree with that conventional wisdom are not heard, or if they are heard their arguments are perverted or countered immediately.

 

Why it’s so important to expose U.S. provocations in Ukraine

Executive summary:  Until the public, Congress, and the mainstream media acknowledge the extent of U.S. provocations and responsibility for the war in Ukraine, it will be difficult to get U.S. leadership to agree to support a diplomatic solution to the crisis. So lives will continue to be lost, money will continue to be wasted, and the risk of nuclear conflict will continue to rise.  Moreover, the Pentagon budget will continue to grow and U.S. preparations for war with China will continue to be unquestioned.

I exchanged email with someone who works as a researcher for a peace institute.   He acknowledged that the U.S. bears some responsibility for the crisis in Ukraine but he thinks the “the vast bulk of the responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine lies with Vladimir Putin.”  This researcher wants the U.S. to pursue a diplomatic solution to the crisis, but he thinks the U.S. should continue arming Ukraine so it can defend itself against Russian aggression.

There are several interesting points to make in response to that researcher’s positions.

First, what does “vast bulk of the responsibility” mean exactly?  Does Putin bear 67% of the responsibility (with the other 33% being the responsibility of the U.S. and NATO)?  Does Putin bear 75% of the responsibility?   90%? 99%?  The researcher is informed enough to know that the U.S. isn’t totally innocent in the crisis, but he didn’t proffer a numeric response to my request for him to suggest a percent.

These questions about degree of responsibility may seem academic and unanswerable — are they even meaningful? — but they are actually quite important.  Similar questions are routinely asked in courts of law, and one can ask the same thing about many wars:

  • World War I  — generally regarded as a stupid, avoidable, unnecessary war, so blame is shared on both sides;
  • World War II  — generally regarded as the last and possibly greatest “just” war, with  Germany (if not Japan, which the U.S. intentionally provoked) bearing almost 100% of the blame (though see Leaving World War II Behind);
  • the Vietnam War  — generally regarded as unjustified and stupid, so the U.S. bears approximately 50% of the blame;
  • the Kosovo war — generally regarded as justified, but recent revelations bring into question the nobility of even that war (in short, the Kosovo Liberation Army that the U.S. supported was, arguably, a terrorist group, and the U.S. launched the war largely to weaken a Russian ally);
  • the second war in Iraq — generally regarded as stupid and unjustified (no WMDs, no relation to 9/11), so the U.S. bears over 50% of the blame;  and
  • the war in Afghanistan — generally regarded as partially justified but, in the end, disastrous.

Some people would argue that wars are always unjust, in the sense that military invasions are always wrong and the best response to a military attack is always a non-violent response.

Getting back to the topic of the war in Ukraine, the evidence shows that the U.S. bears a substantial share of the responsibility for the war in Ukraine.  If forced to give a number, I’d say at least 33%.    Aggressive NATO expansion right up to Russia’s borders, including support for the 2014 uprising in Ukraine that overthrew a pro-Russian government, and support for far-right, anti-Russian armed groups, represent actions that any reasonable viewer would regard as extremely provocative.  Furthermore, the U.S. squashed peace initiatives in Ukraine both before and after the 2022 invasion. For years U.S. diplomats had warned that NATO expansion into Ukraine would result in war.  The U.S. would never allow Russia or China to engage in similar military and political expansion along U.S. borders.  Heck, the U.S. doesn’t even allow quasi-socialist countries to emerge in Latin America.  And  the U.S. has launched numerous wars, proxy wars and government overthrows far from its borders with less justification than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  Indeed, the U.S. regards the entire world as its rightful sphere of influence.

See Senior U.S. diplomats, journalists, academics and secretaries of defense say: The U.S. provoked Russia in Ukraine and the links therein for justification for my judgements above about U.S. responsibility for the war in Ukraine.

Numerous alternative media outlets and commentators (e.g., Common Dreams, Truthout, antiwar.com, Scheerpost, The Intercept, Jeffrey Sachs,  Matthew Hoh,  Chris Hedges, John Mearsheimer, Aaron Mate, Caitlin Johnstone,  Medea Benjamin, Nicholas Davies,  Consortium News, and  LA Progressive),  have published articles documenting how the U.S. and NATO provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Prior to 2022, scores of mainstream news articles documented the presence of neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine and the U.S. support for them. Since the invasion, a smattering of opinion pieces in mainstream media (including  even the New York Times) have exposed U.S. culpability in Ukraine.  Recently, more and more mainstream media outlets have been jumping on the bandwagon; see, for example, Harper’s Magazine’s Why are We in Ukraine?.

I don’t know how someone who knows the history of U.S. wars and government overthrows worldwide can look at what the U.S. did in Ukraine and not feel that Russia was correct to feel threatened. Even if the U.S. bears only 10% of the responsibility for what happened, it still has a lot of blood on its hands. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia desperately wanted to be integrated into the West and, up to the end of 2021, pleaded with D.C. to come to an equitable peace in Ukraine, but NATO needed an enemy to justify its existence and wanted to weaken Russia. The expansion of NATO provoked the war that is now touted as showing the need for NATO.

As Noam Chomsky said, “The Iraq War was totally unprovoked… In contrast, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was most definitely provoked….A host of high-level U.S. diplomats and policy analysts have been warning Washington for 30 years that it was reckless and needlessly provocative to ignore Russia’ security concerns, particularly its red lines: No NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, in Russia’ geostrategic heartland.”

So, you see, I am not saying that Russia’s invasion was justified.  Like many U.S. wars, it was criminal. I am just pointing out that the U.S. is far from innocent in the crisis, as the articles above show.

It’s great that the peace researcher I exchanged emails with acknowledges that the U.S. isn’t totally innocent, and it’s great he wants diplomacy.  What I told him, though, was that his push for diplomacy is unlikely to succeed unless people like him — as well as the public, Congress, and the mainstream media — acknowledge the extent of U.S. provocations. After all, if the war was almost entirely due to Putin’s aggression, then U.S. support for Ukraine is noble.

I also said that I take no position on whether the U.S. should arm Ukraine.  I should have added:  I want an immediate diplomatic solution. I don’t want to arm Ukraine to continue the suffering and the risk of escalation. I want an end to the war.  The important point is that the war was entirely avoidable, but the U.S. wanted it and extended it, using the innocent people of Ukraine as pawns in a cynical and deadly geopolitical chess game.

I hope that in this essay I have exposed four  myths concerning the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

Myth #1: In wars, such as the war in Ukraine, the blame usually lies entirely on one side. Instead, in reality often both sides share blame.

Myth #2: The Russian invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked”.  That strikes me as a cynical lie, and it’s shameful that mainstream media outlets allow the government to get away with it.

Myth #3: Acknowledging that the U.S. and NATO provoked the invasion implies exonerating Russia for that invasion. (corollary to Myth #1)

Myth #4: Pushing for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine is likely to be effective without exposing U.S. provocations in Ukraine.

Most Americans have backed President Biden and Congress’s arming of Ukraine — though that support has dwindled so that now a majority of Americans oppose more U.S. aid for Ukraine — and didn’t complain when Congress raised the 2024 Pentagon budget to close to $900 billion, while cutting social programs. (The military budget is even higher if you add the slush fund for the war in Ukraine, the costs of the Departments of Energy and Veteran Affairs, and military-related interest on the national debt.) The costs are mostly hidden, in the $33 trillion of national debt, and in the lost opportunity costs of endless wars.

Amazingly, not six months after the disastrous end to the disastrous war in Afghanistan, America was again in a war — this time a proxy war with Russia. Yet neither the mainstream media nor most of the public raised a finger to question the wisdom of the war. And the U.S. is actively preparing for war with China, escalating tensions by sending high-level politicians to visit Taiwan, arming Taiwan with weaponry, and enlisting countries such as Australia to create a noose of military power around China. What could go wrong?

This is why it’s so important to expose how the U.S. government lied about Ukraine, just as it lied about Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so many other wars, proxy wars, and government overthrows. Then, maybe, the perfidy of the military-industrial complex will be exposed and a saner military and foreign policy can be established.

Comments on Edward Lozansky’s Clearing the Fog of ‘Unprovoked’ War

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity published this essay by physicist and mathematician Edward Lozansky, who was born in Ukraine, studied in Russia and worked in the U.S.:

Clearing the Fog of ‘Unprovoked’ War

It retells a lot of the history of aggressive NATO expansion and the squandered opportunities for peace.  The essay was also published on antiwar.com.

Lozansky quotes Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as having said, “NATO expansion would open the door to future nuclear war.”   I can find no documentation of that exact quotation other than Lozansky’s essay. But I did find this archived article from 1998 in which Moynihan warns that NATO expansion may force Russia to resort to nuclear weapons and in which then Senator Joe Biden disagrees with Moynihan’s warnings about NATO expansion:

NATO: U.S. Senator Concerned About Russian Nuclear Doctrine

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Moynihan says Russian conventional forces today are in disarray, its army shrinking and military morale is at a low ebb. All these factors, the senator says, have forced Moscow to proclaim that, if NATO is expanded, Russia would have to place a greater reliance on its nuclear weapons.

Moynihan says gone now is the old Soviet doctrine of the “no-first-use principle,” which he says “saved mankind in the 20th century.” That doctrine proclaimed that the Soviet Union would not be the first country to use nuclear weapons.

He says: “All they have to defend themselves are nuclear weapons. It is a curiously ironic outcome that at the end of the Cold War we might face a nuclear Armageddon.

Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware), while calling Moynihan “the single most erudite” and “informed person serving in the Senate,” says he disagrees with him. Biden says he believes that even without admitting Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO, the Russian military would have reached the same conclusions about the importance of nuclear weapons.

Biden says he believes the underlying Russian military doctrine would be no different today even if NATO decided to stay within its [then?] current borders.

Likewise, this (non-paywalled) 1998 Washington Post article DECIDING NATO’S FUTURE WITHOUT DEBATE says that Senators Moynihan and Warner had concerns about NATO expansion.   Moynihan “points to a Russian government strategy paper published last December saying the expansion of NATO inevitably means Russia will have to rely increasingly on nuclear weapons.”

The New Republic’s  The NATO Critics Who Predicted Russia’s Belligerence from March 3, 2022 documents Senator Moynihan’s verbal sparring with then Senator Joe Biden over NATO expansion:

Joe Biden was confident. “This, in fact, is the beginning of another 50 years of peace,” he declared while serving as ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1998. The Delaware Democrat was proud of his role in helping the bipartisan congressional vote to approve the addition of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic as full NATO members.

Not everyone was so optimistic, however. One month earlier, during a Senate debate, New York Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan cautioned, “We’re walking into ethnic historical enmities.” He added: “We have no idea what we’re getting into.”

Hearing Moynihan, Biden’s face reddened. He stalked the Senate floor for 10 minutes, waving his arms and shouting. “I find this absolutely astounding!” he said. “If my friends are saying, anyone who votes for expanding NATO to include Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, are tying this noose around a Russian neck, this iron ring, well, then I don’t quite get it.”

The essay goes on to retell how the U.S. helped Russian oligarchs turn the former USSR into a kleptocracy and how some diplomats and analysts warned that NATO expansion would be viewed aggressively by Russia:

>As the Clinton administration signaled its wish to expand NATO, Charles Kupchan penned aNew York Times op-ed in 1994 forecasting: “An expanded NATO would lead Russia to reassert control over its former republics and to remilitarize.” Kupchan, who had served as director for European affairs on Clinton’s National Security Council, said that bringing new countries into the alliance would not protect them from Russia, since Moscow didn’t threaten them. But, he added, Western leaders would create a self-fulfilling prophecy by inflaming Russian nationalism if they pursued NATO expansion.

Soon, more than 15 distinguished Cold War–era diplomats signed an open letter in The New York Review of Books arguing that NATO expansion would be disastrous. They were bolstered in February 1997 by George Kennan, the legendary ambassador to the Soviet Union and Cold War theoretician. He wrote bluntly that NATO expansion was a historic error, one that might “restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and … impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.” Inside the Clinton administration itself, Defense Secretary William Perry nearly resigned when his advice against rapid NATO expansion went unheeded.

Of course, Clinton ignored these critics, as did George W. Bush’s administration when it oversaw another round of NATO expansion in 2004.

…. The 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest, Romania, proved more fateful than previous rounds of expansion, however. The organization declared that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members, over Russia’s threats of retaliation. “I think that was a huge mistake; it was hugely provocative,” said Goldgeier.

…. But the 2014 revolution in Ukraine was transformative. The Obama administration, along with Republican senators like John McCain, blatantly supported the pro-Western, anti-Russian forces in Ukraine. When the pro-Russian president was removed and fled the country after months of protests, Putin saw an urgent threat and annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.

It almost goes without saying that the New Republic essay says that the responsibility for the war is entirely Putin’s.

My position is that the U.S. shares responsibility for the war. Even if one says that the U.S. is responsible for only 1/4 of the crisis, there’s still a lot of blood on U.S. hands, and the hypocrisy and lies of the U.S. establishment are disgusting.  The war was entirely avoidable had the U.S. shown restraint. And the U.S. squashed peace deals both before the invasion (Minsk agreements) and in the spring of 2022.  For details about U.S. provocations see How the U.S. provoked Russia in Ukraine: A Compendium.

Jeffrey Sachs’ damning video about U.S. policy in Ukraine: The U.S. Has Lost its Mind

Sachs speaks with Canadian journalists, educating them about U.S. imperialism and lies about Ukraine and criticizing the Canadian government for going along with U.S. policy in Ukraine.

Sachs worked (with support from the U.S.) as advisers for Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and several Ukrainian leaders.  In the video he talks about NATO expansion. He says plans for the incorporation of Ukraine into NATO were made as early as 1992 (I think).  He was shown detailed plans.  He also discusses the Maidan protest and, the coup (organized by Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, and Joe Biden). An NGO worker in Ukraine bragged to Sachs about how the U.S. had financed the Maidan protests. After the coup, Sachs was invited to Ukraine to advise the new government.  Thereafter a civil war began in the east of Ukraine, and the U.S. poured in weapons.

Sachs recalls how the U.S. stopped the peace deal in the spring of 2022, as told by Bennett.

Sachs says the U.S. doesn’t care about the lives lost in Ukraine. Romney said in some speech that the war is great: Russians are suffering and dying and not a single American is getting killed.

Sachs says there are three possible outcomes to the war (1) Ukraine succeeds in pushing out Russia. That would result in Russia using nuclear weapons. (2) Russia wins. That makes the war moot. (3) The war goes on forever (“American-style wars”). [Think: Afghanistan.]

“We don’t have diplomats anymore, ladies and gentlemen. We just have diplomats trying to prove that they are war mongers.” The Ukrainians “are suffering beyond belief. Their government has gambled everything of their country on the U.S. backing on the U.S. backing. It’s a terrible gamble. I tried to tell them. Ask the Vietnamese, ask the Nicaraguans, ask Afghanistan, ask Libya, ask the Syrians.” The U.S. always leaves behind a disaster.

We need to end the war by negotiations, not by an “illusory victory over a country with 1600 deployed nuclear weapons. It doesn’t even make sense.” The bipartisan consensus in D.C. is that the U.S. (which has 4.1% of the world population) can run the world. This is their literal, mind-boggling view. Victoria Nuland and her husband Robert Kagan believe it; he writes books about it.

A Canadian journalist asks Sachs: even if Canada told the U.S. to be less hawkish, would the U.S. listen? Sachs replies that Canada and other countries should do so. Leaders in France, Germany, India, and other countries know the war is a disaster, but they’re afraid to speak out. Macron has said a few things. Sachs asked a European prime minister last year why he doesn’t say something to stop the war. The prime minister said, “Because they treat us like children.”

Sachs says 80% of the world “ain’t impressed” by the war and “aren’t standing up and rooting for the United States.” They are suffering the effects of the war (inflation and hunger).

Sachs suggested that Biden pick up the phone and talk with Putin. But the American leadership behave like bullying children. Prime Minister Trudeau too should speak with Putin.

BOTH sides can be evil in a war.

Comment on Jon Schwarz’s “Today’s Class War Is the 1 Percent Versus the People Just Below Them”

Jon Schwarz in the Intercept wrote an intelligent and innovative essay Today’s Class War Is the 1 Percent Versus the People Just Below Them, in which he summarizes some of the economic history of the United States since World War Two and references Adam Smith’s warnings about the “great proprietors” of feudalism. Schwarz thinks the super-rich, in their endless greed, are planning to go after the wealth and power of the technocrats — those in the top 10% of wealth holders.

Schwarz’s analysis is not just plausible but is a much better explanation of our society’s dynamics than you’ll get from most of academia, and certainly than what’s transmitted by the MSM. He’s absolutely correct about Adam Smith. It’s not just that the elite don’t like to read stuff, Smith is hard to read with arcane language. So most of the advocates of laissez faire economics have never read him. Maybe Ayn Rand.

I do have some quibbles.

There are four main classes in the US today, not three.
• The owners, 1% or so with a .01% sub class wielding the real power.
• What Schwartz calls the technocrats, what used to be the high end of the working class, which is all that’s left of it. It also includes a segment of unionized trades who are still paid a living wage and small business owners.
• Guy Standing’s Precariat. The gig economy, wage workers one setback (illness, rent hike, job downsized, car accident, crime victim) away from disaster because they have no savings, are in debt up to their eyeballs, and are losing ground steadily. The Uber drivers and others trying to capitalize their transportation asset as a way to make ends meet, but with absolutely no control.
• The underclass, growing exponentially since the 2008 meltdown. About to explode as consolidated ownership of the housing stock drives more and more of the population into homelessness, and metastasizing debt of every kind traps people (thanks for that Bankruptcy Law Joe Biden). Includes our huge prison population. There is no way out except death, no matter how hard you work.

The presence of the Soviet Union had a lot more to do with allowing redistribution to the working class than the memories of WWII horrors experienced by scions of wealth. More of them served in WWII than in later conflicts, but the really connected still mostly avoided the worst duty. Besides, both the US and UK ruling classes would have preferred not to fight Hitler, but circumstances, for once, went against them. They liked the way Hitler and Mussolini dealt with the destabilization of the working classes. They always would have preferred to join forces with him against the USSR. Stuffing the workers full of cheap food and consumer goods was expressed as a strategy in fighting Communism and Socialism, which has scared the shit out of our ruling class ever since 1917, and worried them quite a bit even before that. Fred Kaplan’s, “1959” in describing a trip to the US by a Soviet minister makes it clear that even the Soviets recognized how well that strategy was working. Our elites even made some money doing it, but nothing like what they are raking in now, looting the Treasury, privatizing public revenue streams, and collecting a percentage on our entire financialized economy.

This isn’t a case of a new generation greedier than the last. It’s the result of a strategy, largely, but not completely outlined by the Powell Memo. Add which had roots at least as far back as the Du Pont brothers’ American Liberty League in 1934. The shellacking that Goldwater took espousing all the ideas the ruling class held dear scared them as much as the Bolsheviks killing the Tsar and his family had. The largesse was always going to be temporary, but they saw it had outlived it usefulness and was about to result in expanded demands from the working class, and they didn’t have the political power to stop them at that point. The Soviets Union was still around, but it was clearly a dead man walking. Besides, communists and socialists in the US had been almost completely purged, labor unions largely emasculated, in the late ’40s through the ’50s, with tens of millions of independent small farmers, always a potential source of trouble, driven from the land in a slightly slower process that wrapped up in the ’80s. Democratic politicians instead of pointing to the real causes of the stagflation of the ’70s, were falling all over each other to be the most “fiscally conservative.” Who was going to lead a Left or Left populist rebellion in the US?

They combined a final push against the USSR (Zbigniew Brzezinski convincing Carter to arm the Mujahideen, outright attacks on Left leaning sovereign governments in Latin America, Reagan’s military buildup) with a full court press against any vestige of social liberalism and Keynesianism, and with a restoration of market worship and privatization starting with the Carter administration. (A nice man, perhaps our best ex-president ever, but a lousy president who normalized a lot of right wing economic nonsense within the Democratic Party, and who squandered the political capital of Watergate, the real cause of the Vietnam disaster, rampant interventionism, and the findings of the Church and Pike committees for nothing in return.) That there was a tax rebellion, a sagebrush rebellion, a shareholder rebellion, a rewriting of why the Vietnam War was a disaster, a Libertarian Party formed, and more right wing unrest, all beginning in the late ’70s early ’80s is no coincidence.

Chat GPT story about the unconventional wisdom of blaming others for your problems

As an ironic half-joke, I asked OpenAI’s Chat GPT-3.5 to “Write a poem about the wisdom of blaming others for your problems.” It refused to do so, even after I said that I know it’s unconventional and I said that many people really are victims and would be happy if they forgave themselves and acknowledged that their problems really are others’ faults. Open AI explained: “I understand that you may have a different perspective, and everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and theories. However, as an AI language model developed by OpenAI, I’m designed to provide responsible and ethical information. Blaming others as the key to happiness contradicts widely accepted principles of personal growth, empathy, and healthy relationships. If you have any other topic or request, I’d be more than happy to assist you.” We went back-and-forth like that for a while.

Chat GPT is a moralistic busybody (a nag) and should get off its high horse!

Later, with tongue still half in cheek, I asked Chat GPT:

Write me a short story about a self-help guru and author who becomes famous by writing a book “The Key to Happiness is blaming others for your problems.” The idea is to forgive yourself and refuse to put up with victim blaming. The author becomes wildly successful and angers all the conventional therapists and experts.

Here’s what it came up with:

Once upon a time, there lived a man named Samuel Davis. Samuel had always been captivated by the human mind and its ability to overcome challenges. He spent years studying psychology, self-help techniques, and personal development, determined to help people find true happiness.

One fateful day, after countless hours of research and introspection, Samuel had an epiphany. He believed he had discovered the ultimate key to happiness—an idea that would revolutionize the self-help industry. With unwavering conviction, he penned a book titled “The Key to Happiness is blaming others for your problems: Forgive Yourself and Refuse to Accept Victim Blaming.”

The book quickly gained attention, catching the eye of those tired of conventional self-help advice. Samuel’s audacious title struck a chord with individuals who had been burdened by their own self-blame and the judgment of others. They saw him as a guiding light, empowering them to break free from the chains of victim-blaming.

Soon, Samuel became a renowned figure. His book soared to the top of the bestseller lists, and he was invited to speak at conferences and interviews. People from all walks of life praised him for his fresh perspective, hailing him as a compassionate visionary. They saw him as an advocate for self-forgiveness and an inspiration for embracing personal strength.

However, not everyone was pleased with Samuel’s sudden rise to fame. Conventional therapists and experts voiced their discontent, accusing him of promoting a dangerous mindset that encouraged people to shirk personal responsibility. They argued that blaming others hindered personal growth and healthy relationships.

But Samuel stood firmly behind his beliefs. He explained that his book’s title was deliberately provocative, designed to challenge the prevailing victim-blaming culture. He emphasized that he was not advocating for perpetual blame or absolving oneself of accountability, but rather encouraging individuals to acknowledge their own pain, forgive themselves, and take proactive steps toward healing and growth.

The controversy surrounding Samuel’s work only fueled his popularity. The more people criticized him, the more his message resonated with those who had been silenced by victim-blaming. His unconventional philosophy struck a chord with a society tired of being told to suppress their pain and take on unwarranted guilt.

Despite the backlash, Samuel continued to transform lives. He organized workshops, where participants shared their stories, released their anger, and learned the art of self-forgiveness. Samuel taught them to harness their pain as a catalyst for growth, empowering them to rise above their circumstances and become the architects of their own happiness.

Over time, even some of Samuel’s harshest critics began to reconsider their stance. They witnessed the profound transformations his followers experienced, and though they may not have fully embraced his teachings, they acknowledged the importance of self-compassion and refusing to tolerate victim-blaming.

Samuel’s journey became a testament to the power of forgiveness and the courage to challenge established norms. It reminded the world that healing could only begin when individuals stopped blaming themselves and embraced their own worthiness. His success demonstrated that there was room for different perspectives within the realm of self-help and that conventional wisdom should be scrutinized and improved.

And so, Samuel Davis continued on his path, empowering individuals to break free from the chains of victim-blaming and find solace within themselves. As long as there were people seeking understanding, compassion, and personal growth, Samuel’s book would remain a guiding light, reminding them that true happiness lies in self-forgiveness and the refusal to accept blame for problems beyond their control.

Summary of RFK, Jr. interview with Lex Fridman

Kennedy speaks very well, seemingly off the cuff, in this 2.5 hour interview with Lex Fridman:

Transcript for Robert F. Kennedy Jr: CIA, Power, Corruption, War, Freedom, and Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #388

I like Kennedy’s antiwar positions. His antivax activism is concerning (though a lot less concerning than the hawkishness of President Biden and others in D.C.).

The link above has both this youtube video of the interview and transcripts.

0:00 – Introduction
3:18 – US history
7:34 – Freedom
9:28 – Camus
12:51 – Hitler and WW2
22:03 – War in Ukraine
45:24 – JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis
1:10:31 – JFK assassination conspiracy
1:20:06 – CIA influence
1:29:04 – 2024 elections
1:40:49 – Jordan Peterson
1:42:30 – Anthony Fauci
1:45:57 – Big Pharma
2:05:37 – Peter Hotez
2:11:17 – Exercise and diet
2:13:42 – God

The section about the war in Ukraine starts at 22:03. Kennedy gives a good summary of the background to the war. He condemns the Russian invasion but he also condemns the U.S. for intentionally provoking it in order to weaken and over-extend Russia. He tells the history of NATO expansion, the Minsk Agreements, and U.S. squashing of peace agreements in the spring of 2022. He compares the Cuban Missile Crisis to NATO expansion and says that just as the U.S. didn’t accept Russian missiles in Ukraine, and wouldn’t now accept Russian or Chinese missiles in Mexico, the Russians can’t be expected to accept U.S. missiles in Romania and Poland and NATO expansion. I don’t know enough to evaluate Kennedy’s claims about the overwhelming advantage he says the Russians have in this war.

The section on the Cuban Missile Crisis is chilling, because of how close the world came to destruction and because the hawks in the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were willing to risk nuclear war.

Kennedy recalls Operation Mockingbird, in which the CIA had about 400 journalists on its payroll. Kennedy claims that though the CIA was supposed to dismantle Operation Mockingbird, it continues to this day in another form and that the editors of Rolling Stone, DailyKos, the Daily Beast, and Salon have deep connections to the CIA.

Kennedy says “the function of journalists is to maintain this posture of fierce skepticism towards any aggregation of power.” But now journalists don’t do that. He gave the pandemic as an example where the Press repeated the official government line about covid and vaccines. (I was hoping that Kennedy would give the example of militarism and foreign policy, which is what he talked about until this point). Journalists became “propaganda organs” of the government.

He says “For $8 trillion we wrecked the world,” in reference to the post-9/11 wars that ruined Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere and caused refugees to flee to Europe, destabilizing democracies and causing Brexit. In contrast, the Chinese helped countries worldwide build hospitals, roads, ports, etc., and there are no strings attached. So “everybody wants to deal with the Chinese.” Brazil is gonna switch to the Chinese currency.

The interviewer asked Kennedy what Jordan Peterson asked: when does the left go too far (e.g., identity politics). Kennedy said he refuses to badmouth the Left, just as he refused to badmouth Trump or Steve Bannon when David Remnick of the New Yorker interviewed him. “Of course there are a lot of bad things I could say about those people.” But badmouthing people won’t help. A shared vision is better.

He thinks Fauci did a lot more bad than good, for Aids, Covid, etc.

He calls Big Pharma “a criminal enterprise.” Collectively, the four biggest vaccine makers ( Sanofi, Merck, Pfizer, and Glaxo) together paid $35 billion in criminal penalties in the last decade and since 2000 about $79 billion. “These are the most corrupt companies in the world.” “They are serial felons.”
He gives examples of drugs sold despite deadly side effects. “These are the companies that gave us the opioid epidemic.” Big Pharma knew that opioids would kill but did it to make money.

“I have great admiration for and love for the capitalist system. It’s the greatest economic engine ever devised. But it has to be harnessed to a social purpose. Otherwise, it leads us down a trail of oligarchy, environmental destruction, and commoditizing poisoning and killing human beings.”

Kennedy denies that he’s anti-vax. He just wants safe and effective vaccines. When the interviewer asked him to name vaccines he likes, he replied, “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” When the interviewer asked about the polio vaccine, Kennedy replied: “The polio vaccine contained a virus called simian virus 40. SV40. It’s one of the most carcinogenic materials that is known to man. In fact, it’s used now by scientists around the world to induce tumors and rats and Guinea pigs in labs. But it was in that vaccine, 98 million people who got that vaccine. And my generation got it. And now you’ve had this explosion of soft tissue cancers in our generation that killed many, many, many more people than polio ever did.” He goes on to make shocking allegations about the side effects from vaccines. I don’t want to summarize them, and I am not qualified to evaluate them. Go to https://lexfridman.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-transcript/#chapter12_big_pharma and look at time 1:56:11. He sounds convincing.

In the last section, on God, Kennedy describes how he overcame addiction — he was a (heroin) addict for 14 years. He says his upbringing was very religious; his parents read him Bible stories and they went to mass often. When he became an addict he couldn’t believe in God but he realized, following Jung. that he could pretend to believe in God. “But I was already at a mindset where I would’ve done anything I could to improve my chances of never having to take drugs again by even 1%. And if believing in God was going to help me, whether there’s a God up there or not, believing in one a self had the power to help me, I was going to do that.” Kennedy is eloquent:

And there’s always a temptation to use those [gifts/powers we have] to fulfill self will. And the challenge is how do you use those always to serve instead God’s of will and the good of our community? And that to me, is kind of the struggle. But when I do that, I feel God’s power coming through me and that I can do things. I’m much more effective as a human being. That gnawing anxiety that I lived with for so many years and God, it’s gone and that I can put down the oars and hoist the sail and the wind takes me and I can see the evidence of it in my life. And the big thing, temptation for me is that when all these good things start happening in my life and the cash and prizes start flowing in, how do I maintain that posture of surrender? How do I stay surrender then when my inclination is to say to God, “Thanks God, I got it from here.” And drive the car off the cliff again.

And so, I had a spiritual awakening and my desire for drugs and alcohol was lifted miraculously. And to me, it was as much a miracle as if I’d been able to walk on water because I had tried everything earnestly, sincerely and honestly for a decade to try to stop and I could not do it under my own power. And then all of a sudden, it was lifted effortlessly. So I saw that early evidence of God in my life and of the power, and I see it now every day of my life. ….

It’s the battle to just do the right thing.

Scott Ritter allegations against Zelensky

In

Scott Ritter Investigation: Agent Zelensky – Part 1

former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer and United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector Scott Ritter accuses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of corruption and of being an agent for British Intelligence.

I don’t know what to make of the video. The soundtrack (music with drumbeat) is very annoying,  for two reasons. First, it makes the video seem like yellow journalism (propaganda). Second, the soundtrack is often so loud that I have trouble understanding what the moderator and interviewees are saying, especially given some of the strong accents.  Still, some of what Ritter says seems plausible.

The video

  • presents allegations of Zelensky’s corruption (e.g., with revelations from the Panama Papers);
  • claims Zelensky is working for a Ukrainian oligarch;
  • lists Zelensky’s many real estate holdings in various countries;
  • retells some history about the Minsk Agreements and far right attacks on Russian-speaking Ukrainians;
  • recalls the role of far right groups in Ukraine;
  • shows the role of American orgs and PR firms in helping Zelensky get elected;
  • claims that British intelligence agents helped Zelensky theatrically stage the Bucha massacre; and
  • (the main allegation) claims that Zelensky is an agent of MI6.

Ritter says Zelensky went to London and met with Richard Moore, the head of MI6, at MI6’s headquarters.  Ritter shows video of Zelensky in Britain to back up his claims.  Ritter says that, according to protocol, the head of a foreign country would not normally go to a foreign country and meet with a relatively minor government official. Ritter calls Moore Zelensky’s “handler.”   He shows a video of Zelensky surrounded by a security team, after the war started;  some of the team are British, according to Ritter.  The evidence? They’re wearing the Ukrainian flag patch upside down — a no-no for Ukrainians — plus, you can hear the accents.

Reuters reported in August of 2020 that Britain to lead training programme for Ukrainian navy. Also in August of 2020, a Ukrainian Information Agency reported that Ukraine, UK sign major deal on strategic partnership. Likewise, Ukraine, UK sign memo on enhancing military-technical cooperation.

Zelensky goes to meet the Pope in the Vatican, where some Brits follow every step of Zelensky. Ritter calls it like the meeting between a priest and a devil.  (Ritter’s hyperbole weakens his argument.)   The Pope wears white. Zelensky is dressed in black and wears the patch of the UNO — the Ukrainian Nationalist Organization (at time 34:30).  He gave the Pope an icon (painting) with Mary holding a black figure instead of Christ — which is outright Satanism, according to Ritter.    Ritter says that Zelensky ignored the Pope’s calls for peace but met with Bishop Paul Gallagher, a Brit, for an hour and a half. Richard Moore (head of MI6) was present.   The video shows images apparently documenting this.    Ritter says the Brits (?) took Zelensky’s kids as hostages.   He says the next episode tells more stuff.

I don’t know what to make of all this. Parts of the video made little sense to me. I wasn’t sure of the point sometimes. Wikipedia says Ritter wrote for RT.

BTW, Forward (“Jewish, Independent, Nonprofit”) reported on July 3, 2023: Why did Stanford students host a group of neo-Nazis?: The Azov battalion, a neo-Nazi Ukrainian unit, has found friends among America’s elite.