By Steven Yates
February 25, 2023
“The first casualty, when war comes, is truth.” —Hiram W. Johnson (1866-1945; R-Cal., 1917-1945).
I’ve no meaningful memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was five years old. What I learned years later: the use of nuclear weapons was on the table as a live option. We avoided Armageddon because President John F. Kennedy, not perfect by any means but overall a man of lucidity and sanity, was able to negotiate with Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviet leader, also not perfect by a long shot but also lucid and sane, agreed to remove Soviet missiles from our backyard: Cuba.
Those watching also saw the difference between lucidity/sanity and psychopathy. Reportedly, Fidel Castro was livid. He told Khrushchev he would have preferred Armageddon to being excluded from the negotiations. Maybe there was a reason both Kennedy and Khrushchev excluded him? Do you think?
Only a psychopath would choose nuclear Armageddon over negotiation and pragmatic de-escalation, even if the latter leads to disempowerment and multipolarity.
According to numerous observers, we’re now closer to a nuclear World War III than at any time since 1962. The octogenarian in the White House, moreover, is no John F. Kennedy, despite scripted stunts such as his appearing in Kyiv, Ukraine the other day to the sound of air raid sirens although there were no air raids going on.
Reviewing the relevant history: following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western powers made agreements with Russia that NATO, a cold war product, would not expand eastward toward Russian territory. These were quickly violated, as Eastern European nations joined, one by one. Russia tolerated this. Until Vladimir Putin came along, the Russians had little choice. Their country was dysfunctional.
Now it isn’t, and its restoration to superpower status drives Russo-phobes nuts. This is the main reason “our” government has military bases in Russia’s backyard.
In Ukraine, in February 2014, the U.S. and NATO backed an engineered coup that ousted the democratically elected but pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich. After three months of violent instability, a new election was held. Petro Poroshenko won. A businessman, Poroshenko was clearly a U.S./NATO puppet.
By this time, Crimea had held a referendum in which voters on the Black Sea peninsula overwhelmingly elected to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. There was substantial support for a similar move in Ukraine’s eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk by majority populations of ethnic Russians. The Poroshenko regime forcibly quashed the effort. Fighting continued off and on for the rest of the decade. The Kyiv government instituted humiliating discriminatory measures against ethnic Russians. These included an injunction against speaking their native language in public.
Russia left Ukraine alone, but President Putin drew lines in the sand. He warned that if Ukraine tried to join NATO, obtain nukes, or retake Crimea, the result would be war.
More recent puppet-president Volodymyr Zelenskyy refused to listen. In 2021, he talked openly about the prospects of Ukraine applying for NATO membership. Then, in mid-February 2022, he attended the Munich Security Conference and publicly announced a plan to go nuclear.
That was the last straw. Less than two weeks later — on February 24, one year ago — Putin invaded, intending to liberate the “breakaway” provinces and send a clear warning that a nuclear Ukraine would not be tolerated. According to the official Western corporate media narrative, this was an “unprovoked attack.” The narrative demonized Putin and made the fact-free claim that he planned to reclaim all the countries the Soviet Union had relinquished in his drive to build a new Russian Empire.
More official narrative: Russia is losing in Ukraine, and losing badly. Simultaneously, however: the Russian army is murderous, wantonly killing civilians, bombing hospitals, and committing other atrocities.
The Bidenistas have already sent hundreds of millions to Ukraine, because a Russian victory is “unthinkable.” Supporting Ukraine is clearly politically correct, as the multitudes of Ukrainian flags by virtue-signalers all across the West testify.
What the money going to Ukraine won’t do is help the growing populations of homeless people in the U.S. as housing, rental costs, and prices for basic food staples skyrocket. It is not going towards repairing our collapsing infrastructure, or cleaning up the messes this has caused. Ask the people of E. Palestine, Ohio, if they could use some of that money right about now.
They can’t look to Bidenista Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who owes his job not to his qualifications — he has none — but to the fact that he’s gay. He is serving in an administration that places Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion above public health and safety concerns. The population of E. Palestine is mostly conservative white people who voted overwhelmingly for Trump. As a result, they’ve been effectively canceled.
Returning to Ukraine, who’s really winning? I’ll briefly hand my digital mike to Jeff Thomas, writing for Doug Casey’s International Man Communiqué:
Kiev has been continually desperate for more from NATO in order to survive, and the U.S. and other countries never seem to be offering enough material, advisors, and funding for Ukraine to win. Eventually, rumors began to leak out of Ukraine. Their casualties are eight to Russia’s one. The seasoned Ukrainian troops have been decimated. Kiev is barely surviving with green conscripts, outside contractors and depleting resources. Meanwhile, Russia has built up a force of over 500,000 fresh troops that are well-trained and well-armed with substantial supply lines. A winter campaign is under way that’s expected to make short work of the collapsing Ukrainian defense.
This comes from on-the-ground sources, not CNN or MSNBC or The New York Times or The Washington Post.
I wonder how long it will be before a critical mass of Americans realizes that this war is just the latest thing they’ve been lied to about, and with stakes much higher! With diplomatic relations between Russia and the U.S. deteriorating rapidly over the past year, and Putin just having suspended Russia’s participation in the START Treaty signed back in 2010 which caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads the countries can legally deploy, this is now the most dangerous faceoff since 1962.
Behind-the-scenes Bidenista / Deep State conversation seems to suggest that “limited nuclear war” is a live option.
Lunatic arch-neocon globalist Victoria Nuland, Bidenista Undersecretary of State (and a primary architect of the 2014 coup) has stated that Russian facilities in Crimea are “legitimate targets” — one of the very things Putin warned against! Small wonder he has accused the U.S. of trying to escalate the war!
People like that are loons, because they seem oblivious to the fact that Russia is ahead of the U.S. in nuclear technology. This should not surprise us. Russian high schools teach four years of math and science. Russian universities graduate engineers, not gender studies majors. I bet that among Russian faculty you’ll not find a single leftist goofball who says math is racist.
Nor is the Russian army headed by a Wokester who wants to understand “white rage.”
What are the Russians dead set against? The very thing we were against back in 1962! The establishing of bases capable of firing missiles able to reach Russian cities in a matter of minutes! Who can blame them for that, and for not trusting an international alliance (NATO) that breaks every agreement it makes?
But would Putin allow the present situation to escalate, especially if Ukraine and countries like Finland (which also borders Russia) are admitted into the alliance?
Putin is a pragmatist. He surely sees the consequences of pushing that first button. He’s holding a lot of the cards, moreover. The Russian economy is expanding. U.S.-led sanctions backfired, making Russia stronger and more independent. Russia and China are being pushed into an alliance which will control not just far more territory but will have a far larger population than exists in the West. It would constitute the largest economy in the world. Jeff Thomas again:
The U.S. sanctions have caused two-thirds of the world to seek new treaties with Russia and China. The new agreement between China and Saudi Arabia will effectively end the petro dollar. And the U.S. is not only broke but in debt beyond the ability to even pay the interest.
You know who warned that this could happen? Donald Trump, years ago. He may not have been a diplomat, but his geopolitical instincts tended to be sound.
With the Bidenistas in charge and the GOP in disarray — and the EU disintegrating — Putin can bide his time and let the West grow increasingly dysfunctional.
The real danger, though, is Western power elites deciding they have nothing to lose.
Here is an indication of how the results might play out (and remember, as you watch, that members of America’s billionaire class have their private bunkers set up in places such as remote corners of New Zealand).
Given the evidence that the U.S., not Russia, destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines (why, after all, would the Russians destroy their own gas-delivery system? Some official narratives are just stupid!), and given the usual denial, it is possible that the U.S./NATO axis will launch a tactical nuke somewhere inside Ukraine and blame Russia. An hysterical corporate media chorus will then call on all of Europe to stand against the insane Russians!
The problem, however: both the U.S. and Russia have pre-programmed missile systems. Watch the video I linked to above. These computerized systems would take over, and in a matter of a few hours, devastate three regions: Europe, major U.S. cities, and Western Russia. Estimates are that 91.5 million would die immediately in the missile strikes, with added deaths from severe burns and radiation sickness, other injuries sustained in collapsed buildings, and eventual starvation following the loss of critical food supply lines. The death toll would quickly rise to well over 100 million.
It would be the worst catastrophe in human history!
I do not see how Western civilization could recover, especially if you factor in the psychological toll that would be taken on survivors many of whom would soon find themselves in brutal fights with other survivors over fast-dwindling supplies of food and clean water. Mad Max would look like Mother Goose by comparison!
Not to mention the environmental impact. Particulate matter thrown high into the atmosphere could block out sunlight over much of the northern hemisphere for days, with continued disturbances causing a cold wave that could last several years.
Read Cormac McCarthy’s horrific, post-apocalyptic The Road (2006), and you’ll get the idea.
I do not know what would happen with China, but if the Chinese either backed Russia or invaded Taiwan they would doubtless be pulled into World War III. The death rate would be even higher!
Incidentally, I doubt anywhere in South America would be targeted. The southern hemisphere generally, with its separate atmospheric systems, would suffer far fewer environmental effects. But since southern hemispheric nations such as Chile, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, others, are tied into global commercial networks, and since these would be decimated, all would face sudden economic disruption and probably spiral into a massive depression. No more cheap goods from China. Their peoples would learn to manufacture previously imported goods or do without.
“But none of this can happen!” some will frantically respond. “Surely no one will be so stupid as to fire off that first nuke!”
Go back and read my opening lines. At the start of the 1960s, we had a president of lucidity and common sense. Major institutions were not drowned in Woke lunacy. Crazy existed, but it was under control.
Does any informed person think this is true today?
© 2023 Steven Yates – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Steven Yates: freeyourmindinsc@yahoo.com
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Steven Yates’s latest book What Should Philosophy Do? A Theory (2021) is available here and here. His earlier Four Cardinal Errors: Reasons for the Decline of the American Republic (2011) is available here.
While admittedly the real world can be scary enough, he has also written a novel of cosmic horror. The Shadow Over Sarnath will be published soon.
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