Loud War Drums

NATO nukes will not be staged in Poland, but other developments are less calming. The US government is stockpiling drugs for treating radiation sickness, Putin just launched a big new offensive in Ukraine, and the also-crazy EU leaders just imposed a new round of sanctions even though the people of their countries are heading into an existentially-threatening winter as a result of the sanctions that they already-imposed. Most disturbing (nothing is really ‘surprising’ anymore), is that the the US government has been lying all along about no US ‘boots on the ground’ involvement in the Ukraine war. The US military has had deployments in the country operating under a “presidential covert action finding” for months (source: read here, beginning at paragraph six). Despite all such assurances to the contrary that we have received over all of that time, it now appears that United States forces have been operating in Ukraine in warfare against Russia. Biden was just asked about that in front of the White House. He turned-tail and walked away from the press corps without a word. Imagine if Trump…

Zelensky, who has been lauded in the western media and the other outlets of agitprop as a hero in this ‘fight for freedom’, just made some publicly statements that indicate he doesn’t care too much if the Ukrainian people get incinerated: “We need to launch preemptive [nuclear] strikes [against Russia] so that they know what will happen to them if they use it, and not vice versa….we need to eliminate the possibility that Russia will use nuclear strikes….NATO should be rethinking the use of pressure….the order in which nuclear weapons are used”. How is that for shrewd, responsible, level-headed strategic thinking ? Maybe he’s angry that the Russian parliament just ratified the referenda that gave it Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. Don’t bother looking for that news in the mainstream media.

Elon Musk tweeted this very sober and prudent thought: “I still very much support Ukraine, but am convinced that massive escalation of the war will cause great harm to Ukraine and possibly the world”. Lindsay Graham responded by gnashing his teeth: “Suggesting we end the Russian invasion by simply giving Russia parts of Ukraine – after all the suffering – is dumb. It is also an affront to the bravery of the Ukrainians fighting to defend their homeland.’ He went on to effectively threaten US government sanctions against Tesla over Musk’s comment: “While we’re at it, maybe the Congress should revisit the electric vehicle tax credit boondoggle.” The Ukrainian ambassador to Germany responded more curtly to another of Musk’s level-headed tweets on Ukraine that he made in the same thread: “Fuck off is my very diplomatic reply to you @elonmusk”.

Meanwhile, the US Treasury Department has stepped forward as the first branch of public sector administration to acknowledge the economic harm that the US government has inflicted on ordinary citizens, and to hint at future remediative measures it might take. Unfortunately, they would be based upon race rather than on direness-of-need. Here is some explanation from the Treasury’s website regarding its Advisory Committee on Racial Equity: “The Committee will identify, monitor, and review aspects of the domestic economy that have directly and indirectly resulted in unfavorable conditions for communities of color.”

The committee will be comprised of 25 members, none of whom have any financial experience. Michael Nutter, a former mayor who failed at managing his home city of Philadelphia, will be chairman. CEO of Roosevelt Institute Felicia Wong will act as Vice Chair. When she was at Democracy Alliance she argued that every policy has “racialized effects” and believes that capitalism favors the ‘patriarchy’ and ‘white supremacy’. She wrote that ‘true equity means rejecting the promise of ‘opportunity’ in favor of equity of outcome. It demands redistribution of resources, especially when wealth for some has been extracted from many, and redistribution of decision-making power.’ If she truly believes that Marxist view is a just and humane one, she is another blindered left-oriented ideologue who refuses to check her beliefs against the empirical data from history. Because where that doctrine has been applied before, it has produced much more deprivation, suffering, and woe society-wide than harmony, universal economic comfort, and happiness.

As Victor Davis Hanson said recently, when government demonizes working class people who have done no wrong against anyone, institutes policies that make it tough for them to continue to finance their basic needs, slaps censors and derogates them when they complain about it, and imposes punitive discriminatory policies against them, government is then “playing with fire”. Whether human or animal, if you back a creature minding its own business into a corner and relentlessly attack it, eventually the only sensible option it has left is to fight back.