Apr 14, 2022·edited Apr 14, 2022Liked by Michael Tracey
Let's remember that the WMD "dodgy dossier" which created the narrative for the Iraq war was put out by 10 Downing Street, ultimately by British intelligence. Fast-forward to 2016. Another curious "dirty dossier" appeared in just the nick of time to cripple an in-coming president. Funny enough, it just so happens that Sir Richard Dearlove (then MI6 director) who oversaw the release and distribution of the "dodgy dossier" was none other than a mentor to guess who? Christopher Steele.
It's funny to think that two of the most pivotal developments in recent US history were both sparked by British Intelligence.
I think people overlook the actual nature of the "Five Eyes," which goes much beyond just the US intel community. The Five Eyes is ultimately the intelligence arm of the Wall Street/City of London nexus, with the US only being one of the "Five Eyes."
If people want to see the bigger picture, I think it means zooming out from a purely American Empire view to recognizing the much older institutions that actually operate in the background, with the Five Eyes simply being the most modern incarnation of something that has been around for a very long time, and is now in trouble as a new global operating system comes online. Hence, the desperate suicidal attempts to create all out chaos and flip the chess board.
I was about to say all this but you got there first, and did a better job of it than I would have.
I would only add that it has been a conceit of Britain and especially its intelligence services and Foreign Ministry, that the US, while strong, lacks the traditions and intellect to play a leadership role, and the UK must guide it, show it the way as it were. This goes back to WW2 when the US became the decisively stronger of the two, and was foreshadowed even in WW1 and its aftermath. Clearly, this attitude is still strong.
There is a great documentary by Michael Oswald that examines the rise of the "Second British Empire," i.e. the modern City of London financial octopus and its web of offshore havens.
The City of London remains the world's greatest financial center, despite Wall Street being the more popular. If we're being historically accurate, much of what we know as the modern Wall Street system was in essence created by the City of London and its agents -- the Anglophile pro-empire factions within America.
After all, Aaron Burr, who was directly coordinating his operations within the USA with the British foreign office (and was also the guy who killed Alexander Hamilton) is the one who set up the first Manhattan Bank, which is today known as Chase Manhattan. Chase Manhattan itself merged with JP Morgan, established by another Anglophile family that was hardly American in its pedigree... This is one of the more insidious traditions within the USA. If we fast-forward, people like "Sir" Henry Kissinger actually bragged about how he kept the British Foreign office more informed than his own state department while he was serving. "Sir" Colin Powell was bestowed with the "Order of the Bath" by Her Majesty after the Iraq War "yellow cake" business. There are more instances of this kind of thing than most people are probably comfortable admitting.
Now throw in brain trusts like the Rhodes Scholars (who saturate Biden's White House and were instrumental in the Obama White House), along with the various other nodes embedded throughout academia (like the Straussians or "libertarian" schools) and things get pretty interesting.
As usual, Whitney Webb and her collaborators have done some wonderful work that explores these things in good detail.
In his book, "The Deluge," Adam Tooze spends a fair amount of time and effort on how in WW1 the House of Morgan and related Northeastern banks loaned immense amounts to the Entente powers and then pushed the US to enter the war on the Entente side, both out of sympathy and self interest that the loans be repaid.
Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar as was his close confidante, Strobe Talbot.
The CIA grew out of the WW2 OSS, which was put together by Americans with no experience and a lot of British advice and counsel, and a lot of MI5/MI6 DNA was injected and remains 80 years later. James Jesus Angleton was shattered to learn that Kim Philby was a traitor. You can trace patterns from the 1940s-50s MI5/MI6 directly into the CIA of the 2020s.
If there was any "foreign interference" in the US 2016 election, it was not Russia but the UK, which at a minimum green-lit Christopher Steele to provide oppo research to the Clinton campaign, and may have done more. Then, the Democrats blamed Russia for all sorts of things for which there was no evidence. If you draw a line back through time, antipathy to Russia, with the exception of 1907-1917 and 1941-45, when Germany was the bigger threat, just screams out at you, from London to New York to Washington. and especially relevant, from 1989 to today and the many provocations by the US and NATO that led to the current conflict in Ukraine (which I believe is in the same class as the assassination of the duc d'Enghien: Worse than a crime, it is a blunder. But a somewhat understandable blunder).
"The Five Eyes is ultimately the intelligence arm of the Wall Street/City of London nexus, with the US only being one of the "Five Eyes."
Abso-frigging-lutely spot on mate! Here's one of my favorite lesser known bits of history; even within Australia it was dubbed conspiracy theory until just over a decade ago and CIA coup linked below.
Pine Gap is Langley down under, The Falcon and The Snowman immortalized some of that tale. Christopher Boyce has added much to the puzzle pieces since then.
"The CIA's aim in Australia was to get rid of a government they did not like and that was not co-operative… it's a Chile, but in a much more sophisticated and subtle form."
You don't have to invent some theoretical construct to explain British involvement in the Steele dossier. There was none. Steele and Simpson were former associates and Simpson wanted to sell the story as having been produced by a former MI6 Russia desk analyst so that journalists could pretend to take it seriously. Nobody would take the story seriously if they admitted it was all written by some nobody at Brookings with no access to anyone that would have the kind of information he was reporting. Frankly, it was barely credible than an ex-MI6 analyst would be able to collect that kind of information.
Britain went out of their way after the election specifically to inform the lame duck Obama Administration that their actual intelligence services did not credit the tale told by the Steele Dossier. Similarly, Australia went out of its way to inform the U.S. government that notwithstanding Downer's reporting of his conversation with Papadopoulos to the State Department, its own intelligence service dismissed the Steele claims as little more than "internet rumor."
We should be careful not to blame American political plots and media hype on malign foreign intelligence services just because they have some tangential relationship to events.
Smooth defence of British intelligence. I guess they just genuinely believed in the WMD stuff and weapons expert Dr. David Kelly’s death was just pure chance.
British and Australian officials trying to entrap Trump associates, including Papdopoulos, was also just an unrelated coincidence.
As was the role of British government created and funded psychological warfare nodes shaping the covid-19 narrative from day one.
I haven't done the kind of work necessary to know what British intelligence did or did not genuinely believe before the Iraq war. I have done that kind of work on Russiagate and the answer is clear that despite an incredibly hostile relationship between British and Russian intelligence services (not without reason), they concluded the Trump allegations were inconsistent with their own assessment. And told the U.S. that. Who was the British official that tried to entrap Trump associates? It seems relatively clear the requests all came from the other direction. FBI sought British approval to conduct surreptitious interviews of Trump associates on British soil (OCONUS lures, Halper and Turk) to avoid U.S. legal process. I've seen precious little evidence of British, Australian or Italian active involvement in this matter.
I'm not reading that link. I can't make myself care about "British psychological warfare nodes" shaping covid 19 narratives. I just can't.
I feel very lonely. I am bewildered by the people I agree with. I am aghast that the Republican Party is demanding war in Ukraine. The American interest is peace in Ukraine. We should be seeking peace.
Unfortunately, while the left side of the spectrum has increasingly gone bananas, I think that has sort of masked how snake-like and bonkers MOST of the "conservative" political class is. They have conserved virtually zero. But there's also a much more glaring ideological blind spot, which is the following: most of the current dystopian liberal culture war stuff was only able to really spread and take hold the way is has because there was a previous war and psyops wave, which was economic. All the "Free Trade" (ironically extremely liberal) economic policies are what actually made the cutting of the US industrial and manufacturing base possible. That was the first step to dismantling the US as a nation. Imposing an insane free trade system (spearheaded by "conservatives") which then made the flooding of cheap goods and creation of the modern decimated city hellscapes possible.
So the conservative side seems somewhat reasonable now, but if we're being serious here and not operating within the kind of lobotomized binary thinking that's used to keep everyone locked into a certain mind and polarized linguistic matrix, then we have to recognize that evil that has actually made today possible.
Despite their problems, the reasons countries like China have been able to unleash what by any standard constitutes an economic miracle is because they actually still have control over their sovereign credit mechanisms, and are essentially using the same kind of financial model, which is an American one, of nation credit -- Hamilton's system. Instead, through liberalization (ironically spearheaded by "conservatives"), the US has lost control of its own sovereign credit creation, which is now completely controlled by a small merchant banking interest.
This has always been at the heart of the attempts to destroy and undo the American system throughout its history, and it's been done several times, with only very minor "re-branding" of these efforts. "Freedom," "free trade," "free market" were shouted over and over again, but it was always a fraud.
Instead, the US Federal Reserve (which is just a bad bank at this point), should be completely shut down and converted to a national banking system (like Alexander Hamilton designed the US system to be), and then go for the kinds of major infrastructure and development programs that have always been at the heart of the US's economic thriving, from Hamilton's days to Lincoln's completion of the trans-continental railway system, to the Tennessee Valley Authority, to the interstate highway system etc...
Most US infrastructure is D-grade by engineering standards, and has something like a 4 trillion dollar deficit. That will never be rebuilt unless the monetary system is systemically retooled, and sovereign credit creation is taking back from the private merchant banking interests.
Feeling your pain. I guess the loneliness I have experienced as an unjabbed person was just the warm up to the loneliness of being anti-war in this case!
Very few Republicans are demanding war in Ukraine. They are just trying to put their thumbs on the scale of one side of a war that is already happening whether they demand it or not. Personally, I'm sympathetic to the instinct and I think some people are wildly over-estimating the likelihood that involvement of this type will result in WWIII.
It must be understood that the British "left" is arguably one of the most deluded constituencies ever in existence. And by deluded, I do #actually mean: utterly divorced from reality. Remember that these are the same people who believe that the distinction between "man" and "woman", or between "male" and "female", is either impossible, or meaningless, or undesirable. More to the point: they seem to believe that sexual dimorphism is (morally) undesirable and *consequently* (conceptually) impossible! This is not just some eccentric, singular or one-off bit of article of faith; it's part of larger package that includes, for example, the conviction that a child's "inner" fantasies and perceptions about their sex/gender are more "real" than their external, physical-biological bodies, and hence that the latter must be made to conform to the former (whether via castration, hysterectomy or other forms of mutilation). ... Put in more general terms, they fundamentally believe that reality is subordinate to fantasy, or that the material is merely secondary, and ultimately yields to, the ideal ... and not vice-versa.
And so, people like this have no trouble whatsoever believing the proposition that a war against Russia can be somehow, magically, be won without actually fighting a war against Russia; indeed, they don't just believe this, they are able to espouse this view with militancy and belligerence. Because, again, for these people, this not #actually "magical thinking" ... it's merely "thinking"!
"It's 1938 all over again... again!" What is it with Brits and their obsession with the Second World War? There is hardly anyone alive who even remembers it.
So somehow they think the Russians would be less angry about us sinking their ships than shooting their planes down.
And these people do realize that the Ukraine is an oligarchy, which means the "working class" wouldn't really be any better off under Russian rule than Ukrainian rule. Practically speaking, it matters nothing to them.
"The UK is Trying to Drag the US into World War III"
Slight disagreement as it seems to me there is no bloody, money laundering operation Congress loves more than another armed conflict and UK "War is Peace" campaign one more tentacle of its global PR campaigns. Loopholes and excuses are staples. George Galloway had a Russian media warning slapped on his Twitter justified by his RT show years ago.
"An old saying goes that the Conservative Party and the Labour Party are really “two cheeks of the same backside.” On the subject of Ukraine, that’s eminently applicable. And you can throw in the Democrats and Republicans as well — another a pair of pimples on the same “arse.”"
Lucky for weapon industry who sit on those pimples.
As always, Mr. Tracey, you are wonderful at exposing hypocrisy in public life.
But saying that we shouldn’t follow the advice of people who wouldn’t know a coherent, principled position if a pack of rabid ones bit them on the ass isn’t enough. It’s a great start, but it isn’t enough.
The truly difficult question is not what NATO and the West shouldn’t do about Ukraine, but what they should do. Getting to an answer on that questions means answering two preliminary ones:
1. What should be the objective of western policy in Ukraine?
2. What concrete steps are open to the West that can reasonably be expected to accomplish that objective?
What do you have to suggest, Mr. Tracey? At this stage of this war, that is really what I would like to see some serious thought given to.
Are we just “peace at any price”, or are there useful things to be done? At the moment, negotiating with Russia doesn’t seem to be moving the needle at all. What things can NATO do to change the current balance of forces so Russia has sufficient incentive to come to the table with a deal that the West can force Ukraine to accept—and what would that deal look like?
I often get questions like this -- basically some variation of "so what would YOU do" -- and I'm not trying to "duck." But I really don't think of myself as operating in some kind of advisory capacity for NATO and/or "the West." Why would I want to provide counsel to the military-industrial complex? I'd rather just chronicle the distortions they foist upon everyone else.
I'd also like to point out that the possible answers to the "so what would you do" question have become more limited over time due to the types of escalatory measures encouraged by the "so what would you do" crowd.
At this point, my only answer to these people is to shrug my shoulders and tell them to stop digging.
The actual destruction of Ukraine was never even under any consideration until the intelligence industrial complex started screaming about the destruction of Ukraine.
The only Senators who voted on S.3522 are the twenty-two of them from the Committee on Foreign Relations, isn't that right? I ask because you mentioned Cruz (TX) and Hawley (MO) over on the Internet's Town Square. Hawley wouldn't be on a roll call bc Cornyn (TX)'s bill left the Senate via parliamentary-theatrical "voice vote," correct? It is more useless legislative posturing, as I understand it in current year?
We’ve seen the movie before. The Kindle version of “The Guns of August” is $8. Here’s Amazon’s blurb:
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • “A brilliant piece of military history which proves up to the hilt the force of Winston Churchill’s statement that the first month of World War I was ‘a drama never surpassed.’”—Newsweek
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time
In this landmark account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players, Tuchman’s magnum opus is a classic for the ages.
Let's remember that the WMD "dodgy dossier" which created the narrative for the Iraq war was put out by 10 Downing Street, ultimately by British intelligence. Fast-forward to 2016. Another curious "dirty dossier" appeared in just the nick of time to cripple an in-coming president. Funny enough, it just so happens that Sir Richard Dearlove (then MI6 director) who oversaw the release and distribution of the "dodgy dossier" was none other than a mentor to guess who? Christopher Steele.
It's funny to think that two of the most pivotal developments in recent US history were both sparked by British Intelligence.
I think people overlook the actual nature of the "Five Eyes," which goes much beyond just the US intel community. The Five Eyes is ultimately the intelligence arm of the Wall Street/City of London nexus, with the US only being one of the "Five Eyes."
If people want to see the bigger picture, I think it means zooming out from a purely American Empire view to recognizing the much older institutions that actually operate in the background, with the Five Eyes simply being the most modern incarnation of something that has been around for a very long time, and is now in trouble as a new global operating system comes online. Hence, the desperate suicidal attempts to create all out chaos and flip the chess board.
I was about to say all this but you got there first, and did a better job of it than I would have.
I would only add that it has been a conceit of Britain and especially its intelligence services and Foreign Ministry, that the US, while strong, lacks the traditions and intellect to play a leadership role, and the UK must guide it, show it the way as it were. This goes back to WW2 when the US became the decisively stronger of the two, and was foreshadowed even in WW1 and its aftermath. Clearly, this attitude is still strong.
There is a great documentary by Michael Oswald that examines the rise of the "Second British Empire," i.e. the modern City of London financial octopus and its web of offshore havens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_ylvc8Zj8&t=0s
The City of London remains the world's greatest financial center, despite Wall Street being the more popular. If we're being historically accurate, much of what we know as the modern Wall Street system was in essence created by the City of London and its agents -- the Anglophile pro-empire factions within America.
After all, Aaron Burr, who was directly coordinating his operations within the USA with the British foreign office (and was also the guy who killed Alexander Hamilton) is the one who set up the first Manhattan Bank, which is today known as Chase Manhattan. Chase Manhattan itself merged with JP Morgan, established by another Anglophile family that was hardly American in its pedigree... This is one of the more insidious traditions within the USA. If we fast-forward, people like "Sir" Henry Kissinger actually bragged about how he kept the British Foreign office more informed than his own state department while he was serving. "Sir" Colin Powell was bestowed with the "Order of the Bath" by Her Majesty after the Iraq War "yellow cake" business. There are more instances of this kind of thing than most people are probably comfortable admitting.
Now throw in brain trusts like the Rhodes Scholars (who saturate Biden's White House and were instrumental in the Obama White House), along with the various other nodes embedded throughout academia (like the Straussians or "libertarian" schools) and things get pretty interesting.
As usual, Whitney Webb and her collaborators have done some wonderful work that explores these things in good detail.
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2022/03/investigative-reports/the-rhodes-scholars-guiding-bidens-presidency/
Yes, and thanks for the links.
In his book, "The Deluge," Adam Tooze spends a fair amount of time and effort on how in WW1 the House of Morgan and related Northeastern banks loaned immense amounts to the Entente powers and then pushed the US to enter the war on the Entente side, both out of sympathy and self interest that the loans be repaid.
Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar as was his close confidante, Strobe Talbot.
The CIA grew out of the WW2 OSS, which was put together by Americans with no experience and a lot of British advice and counsel, and a lot of MI5/MI6 DNA was injected and remains 80 years later. James Jesus Angleton was shattered to learn that Kim Philby was a traitor. You can trace patterns from the 1940s-50s MI5/MI6 directly into the CIA of the 2020s.
If there was any "foreign interference" in the US 2016 election, it was not Russia but the UK, which at a minimum green-lit Christopher Steele to provide oppo research to the Clinton campaign, and may have done more. Then, the Democrats blamed Russia for all sorts of things for which there was no evidence. If you draw a line back through time, antipathy to Russia, with the exception of 1907-1917 and 1941-45, when Germany was the bigger threat, just screams out at you, from London to New York to Washington. and especially relevant, from 1989 to today and the many provocations by the US and NATO that led to the current conflict in Ukraine (which I believe is in the same class as the assassination of the duc d'Enghien: Worse than a crime, it is a blunder. But a somewhat understandable blunder).
"The Five Eyes is ultimately the intelligence arm of the Wall Street/City of London nexus, with the US only being one of the "Five Eyes."
Abso-frigging-lutely spot on mate! Here's one of my favorite lesser known bits of history; even within Australia it was dubbed conspiracy theory until just over a decade ago and CIA coup linked below.
Pine Gap is Langley down under, The Falcon and The Snowman immortalized some of that tale. Christopher Boyce has added much to the puzzle pieces since then.
https://thefalconandthesnowman.wordpress.com/
THE CIA IN AUSTRALIA: AMERICA'S FOREIGN WATERGATE
"The CIA's aim in Australia was to get rid of a government they did not like and that was not co-operative… it's a Chile, but in a much more sophisticated and subtle form."
- VICTOR MARCHETTI, ex-CIA officer, 1980
https://jaraparilla.blogspot.com/2012/08/lessons-of-history-cia-in-australia.html
You don't have to invent some theoretical construct to explain British involvement in the Steele dossier. There was none. Steele and Simpson were former associates and Simpson wanted to sell the story as having been produced by a former MI6 Russia desk analyst so that journalists could pretend to take it seriously. Nobody would take the story seriously if they admitted it was all written by some nobody at Brookings with no access to anyone that would have the kind of information he was reporting. Frankly, it was barely credible than an ex-MI6 analyst would be able to collect that kind of information.
Britain went out of their way after the election specifically to inform the lame duck Obama Administration that their actual intelligence services did not credit the tale told by the Steele Dossier. Similarly, Australia went out of its way to inform the U.S. government that notwithstanding Downer's reporting of his conversation with Papadopoulos to the State Department, its own intelligence service dismissed the Steele claims as little more than "internet rumor."
We should be careful not to blame American political plots and media hype on malign foreign intelligence services just because they have some tangential relationship to events.
Smooth defence of British intelligence. I guess they just genuinely believed in the WMD stuff and weapons expert Dr. David Kelly’s death was just pure chance.
British and Australian officials trying to entrap Trump associates, including Papdopoulos, was also just an unrelated coincidence.
As was the role of British government created and funded psychological warfare nodes shaping the covid-19 narrative from day one.
https://canadianpatriot.org/2022/01/05/breaking-the-spell-mindspace-trance-warfare-and-neuro-linguistic/
It’s pure chance. Those who think otherwise have mental health problems and shouldn’t be paid any attention.
I haven't done the kind of work necessary to know what British intelligence did or did not genuinely believe before the Iraq war. I have done that kind of work on Russiagate and the answer is clear that despite an incredibly hostile relationship between British and Russian intelligence services (not without reason), they concluded the Trump allegations were inconsistent with their own assessment. And told the U.S. that. Who was the British official that tried to entrap Trump associates? It seems relatively clear the requests all came from the other direction. FBI sought British approval to conduct surreptitious interviews of Trump associates on British soil (OCONUS lures, Halper and Turk) to avoid U.S. legal process. I've seen precious little evidence of British, Australian or Italian active involvement in this matter.
I'm not reading that link. I can't make myself care about "British psychological warfare nodes" shaping covid 19 narratives. I just can't.
I feel very lonely. I am bewildered by the people I agree with. I am aghast that the Republican Party is demanding war in Ukraine. The American interest is peace in Ukraine. We should be seeking peace.
Severing your partisan ties -- even if just psychologically -- is pretty liberating. Highly recommended.
Hard to do!! Reading a book about Montaigne, seemed to see multiple sides. Trying to get away from dogmatism
Unfortunately, while the left side of the spectrum has increasingly gone bananas, I think that has sort of masked how snake-like and bonkers MOST of the "conservative" political class is. They have conserved virtually zero. But there's also a much more glaring ideological blind spot, which is the following: most of the current dystopian liberal culture war stuff was only able to really spread and take hold the way is has because there was a previous war and psyops wave, which was economic. All the "Free Trade" (ironically extremely liberal) economic policies are what actually made the cutting of the US industrial and manufacturing base possible. That was the first step to dismantling the US as a nation. Imposing an insane free trade system (spearheaded by "conservatives") which then made the flooding of cheap goods and creation of the modern decimated city hellscapes possible.
So the conservative side seems somewhat reasonable now, but if we're being serious here and not operating within the kind of lobotomized binary thinking that's used to keep everyone locked into a certain mind and polarized linguistic matrix, then we have to recognize that evil that has actually made today possible.
Despite their problems, the reasons countries like China have been able to unleash what by any standard constitutes an economic miracle is because they actually still have control over their sovereign credit mechanisms, and are essentially using the same kind of financial model, which is an American one, of nation credit -- Hamilton's system. Instead, through liberalization (ironically spearheaded by "conservatives"), the US has lost control of its own sovereign credit creation, which is now completely controlled by a small merchant banking interest.
This has always been at the heart of the attempts to destroy and undo the American system throughout its history, and it's been done several times, with only very minor "re-branding" of these efforts. "Freedom," "free trade," "free market" were shouted over and over again, but it was always a fraud.
Instead, the US Federal Reserve (which is just a bad bank at this point), should be completely shut down and converted to a national banking system (like Alexander Hamilton designed the US system to be), and then go for the kinds of major infrastructure and development programs that have always been at the heart of the US's economic thriving, from Hamilton's days to Lincoln's completion of the trans-continental railway system, to the Tennessee Valley Authority, to the interstate highway system etc...
Most US infrastructure is D-grade by engineering standards, and has something like a 4 trillion dollar deficit. That will never be rebuilt unless the monetary system is systemically retooled, and sovereign credit creation is taking back from the private merchant banking interests.
Feeling your pain. I guess the loneliness I have experienced as an unjabbed person was just the warm up to the loneliness of being anti-war in this case!
Hang in there.
Got the “vaccine”. Really not sure it was the right thing. Would have lost my job. Refused the “booster”.
Same here. I’m not second guessing my decision. No more shots for me. Hang in there
Very few Republicans are demanding war in Ukraine. They are just trying to put their thumbs on the scale of one side of a war that is already happening whether they demand it or not. Personally, I'm sympathetic to the instinct and I think some people are wildly over-estimating the likelihood that involvement of this type will result in WWIII.
Let’s hope your right 😃
When you remember that war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength, it all makes perfect sense.
It must be understood that the British "left" is arguably one of the most deluded constituencies ever in existence. And by deluded, I do #actually mean: utterly divorced from reality. Remember that these are the same people who believe that the distinction between "man" and "woman", or between "male" and "female", is either impossible, or meaningless, or undesirable. More to the point: they seem to believe that sexual dimorphism is (morally) undesirable and *consequently* (conceptually) impossible! This is not just some eccentric, singular or one-off bit of article of faith; it's part of larger package that includes, for example, the conviction that a child's "inner" fantasies and perceptions about their sex/gender are more "real" than their external, physical-biological bodies, and hence that the latter must be made to conform to the former (whether via castration, hysterectomy or other forms of mutilation). ... Put in more general terms, they fundamentally believe that reality is subordinate to fantasy, or that the material is merely secondary, and ultimately yields to, the ideal ... and not vice-versa.
And so, people like this have no trouble whatsoever believing the proposition that a war against Russia can be somehow, magically, be won without actually fighting a war against Russia; indeed, they don't just believe this, they are able to espouse this view with militancy and belligerence. Because, again, for these people, this not #actually "magical thinking" ... it's merely "thinking"!
Former Nato Officer interview with Aaron Mate. Important interview for those who have not seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4zReg7Bhu8
"It's 1938 all over again... again!" What is it with Brits and their obsession with the Second World War? There is hardly anyone alive who even remembers it.
So somehow they think the Russians would be less angry about us sinking their ships than shooting their planes down.
And these people do realize that the Ukraine is an oligarchy, which means the "working class" wouldn't really be any better off under Russian rule than Ukrainian rule. Practically speaking, it matters nothing to them.
Well since they drug us into the first two world wars, why shouldn’t they drag us into another one…third time’s a charm
Yes. It will truly this time be the war to end all wars. Nuclear winter will make sure of that.
"The UK is Trying to Drag the US into World War III"
Slight disagreement as it seems to me there is no bloody, money laundering operation Congress loves more than another armed conflict and UK "War is Peace" campaign one more tentacle of its global PR campaigns. Loopholes and excuses are staples. George Galloway had a Russian media warning slapped on his Twitter justified by his RT show years ago.
"An old saying goes that the Conservative Party and the Labour Party are really “two cheeks of the same backside.” On the subject of Ukraine, that’s eminently applicable. And you can throw in the Democrats and Republicans as well — another a pair of pimples on the same “arse.”"
Lucky for weapon industry who sit on those pimples.
As always, Mr. Tracey, you are wonderful at exposing hypocrisy in public life.
But saying that we shouldn’t follow the advice of people who wouldn’t know a coherent, principled position if a pack of rabid ones bit them on the ass isn’t enough. It’s a great start, but it isn’t enough.
The truly difficult question is not what NATO and the West shouldn’t do about Ukraine, but what they should do. Getting to an answer on that questions means answering two preliminary ones:
1. What should be the objective of western policy in Ukraine?
2. What concrete steps are open to the West that can reasonably be expected to accomplish that objective?
What do you have to suggest, Mr. Tracey? At this stage of this war, that is really what I would like to see some serious thought given to.
Are we just “peace at any price”, or are there useful things to be done? At the moment, negotiating with Russia doesn’t seem to be moving the needle at all. What things can NATO do to change the current balance of forces so Russia has sufficient incentive to come to the table with a deal that the West can force Ukraine to accept—and what would that deal look like?
I often get questions like this -- basically some variation of "so what would YOU do" -- and I'm not trying to "duck." But I really don't think of myself as operating in some kind of advisory capacity for NATO and/or "the West." Why would I want to provide counsel to the military-industrial complex? I'd rather just chronicle the distortions they foist upon everyone else.
I'd also like to point out that the possible answers to the "so what would you do" question have become more limited over time due to the types of escalatory measures encouraged by the "so what would you do" crowd.
At this point, my only answer to these people is to shrug my shoulders and tell them to stop digging.
The actual destruction of Ukraine was never even under any consideration until the intelligence industrial complex started screaming about the destruction of Ukraine.
I shudder to imagine what you must be reading to write that last line. Nothing with any connection to reality to it, certainly.
The only Senators who voted on S.3522 are the twenty-two of them from the Committee on Foreign Relations, isn't that right? I ask because you mentioned Cruz (TX) and Hawley (MO) over on the Internet's Town Square. Hawley wouldn't be on a roll call bc Cornyn (TX)'s bill left the Senate via parliamentary-theatrical "voice vote," correct? It is more useless legislative posturing, as I understand it in current year?
I really appreciate your reporting, Michael. Just signed on as a paid subscriber.
Thanks!
We’ve seen the movie before. The Kindle version of “The Guns of August” is $8. Here’s Amazon’s blurb:
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • “A brilliant piece of military history which proves up to the hilt the force of Winston Churchill’s statement that the first month of World War I was ‘a drama never surpassed.’”—Newsweek
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time
In this landmark account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players, Tuchman’s magnum opus is a classic for the ages.
Keep in mind that in the UK, there's the Left and there's the Labour Party. And in their Venn diagram, there aren't many points of intersection.
It's gotten easier for them to manipulate the Herd. I'm old enough to remember when they had to work really hard to manipulate opinion.
Great article. Reads like old time reporting. So glad to be a supporter.
If the British left supports it, not gonna win.