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https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/04/04/pundits-who-advocate-hot-war-with-russia-are-enemies-of-humanity/

Pundits Who Advocate Hot War With Russia Are Enemies Of Humanity

In an appearance on the MSNBC show Velshi, The Modern War Institute’s John Spencer explicitly advocated direct US military conflict with Russia due to allegations of war crimes in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

“I’m ready to commit at this moment — unlike I was before this day — to put people in direct contact with Russia, to stop Russia,” Spencer said. “Call it peacekeeping. Call it what you will. We have to do more than provide weapons. And by ‘we,’ I mean the United States. Yes, we’ll do it as a coalition with lots of other people, but we are the example. So put boots on the ground, send weapons directly at Russia.”

Notice the bizarre verbal gymnastics being used by Spencer to obfuscate the fact that he is advocating a hot war with a nuclear superpower: “put people in direct contact with Russia,” “send weapons directly at Russia”. Who talks like that? He’s calling for the US military to fire upon the Russian military, he’s just saying it really weird.

To be clear this isn’t just some arms industry-funded think tanker saying this; The Modern War Institute is part of the Department of Military Instruction for the United States Military Academy, which is operated directly by the Pentagon.

Asked by the show’s host Ali Velshi what he thought of warnings that direct military confrontation with Russia could lead to nuclear war, Spencer said, “It is a huge risk, I understand that. But today is different.”

Velshi himself was much more to the point than his guest, both online and on social media.

“We are past the point of sanctions and strongly-worded condemnations and the seizing of oligarchs’ megayachts,” Velshi told his MSNBC audience. “If this is not the kind of moment that the United Nations and NATO and the UN and the G-20 and the Council of Europe and the G-7 were made for, what was the point of these alliances if not to stop this? The world cannot sit by as Vladimir Putin continues this reign of terror.”

“The turning point for the west and NATO will come when the sun rises over Kyiv on Sunday, and the war crimes against civilian non-combatants becomes visible to all,” Velshi said on Twitter over the weekend. “There is no more time for prevarication. If ‘never again’ means anything, then this is the time to act.”

Asked what specifically he meant by this, Velshi clarified that he was advocating “Direct military involvement.”

“Lines have been crossed and war crimes have been committed by Putin that make direct military intervention something NATO now must seriously consider,” Velshi added.

When I called Velshi a fucking lunatic for expressing these views (to my mind the only sane response to such madness), he argued that going to war with Russia for Ukraine would not necessarily lead to nuclear war, claiming that “A no fly zone is not so different from the endless supply of weaponry the west is sending in to Ukraine.”

These are not sane or acceptable things for mainstream pundits to be telling people. Directly attacking the Russian military would indeed risk unleashing a chain of rapid escalations that could easily lead to full-scale nuclear war; there would be far too many small, moving parts for this to be anywhere remotely close to predictable or controllable. A no-fly zone over Ukraine would immediately put NATO powers in direct hot war with Russia, which is in fact completely different from shipping weapons to Ukrainian forces.

The fact that a nuclear superpower cannot be regarded in the same way as a nation without nukes has been basic, common sense orthodoxy for all major powers since Stalin got the bomb. This is not some kind of advanced esoteric understanding that you can only grasp if you’ve been studying this stuff for years; as far as I know children are still learning about the history of nuclear weapons and Mutually Assured Destruction in grade school. This isn’t something you should have to explain to grown adults, much less influential mainstream news media pundits.

But it’s becoming more and more common. The line that we’re already in World War 3 and need to begin acting accordingly is showing up more and more often. The idea that NATO powers might be able to get away with attacking the Russian military in Ukraine without sparking a nuclear exchange is fast becoming its own genre of western foreign policy punditry, and that trend looks to accelerate with the latest (arguably pretty dubious) claims of Russian atrocities in this war.

Already we’ve got Velshi’s cries for World War 3 joined by the likes of Human Rights Foundation Chairman Garry Kasparov, who apparently spent so long training to beat a machine that he turned into one:

You’ve also got opinion makers in outlets like The New York Times telling people that “The United States and NATO should be less deferential to Mr. Putin’s attempt to wield the threat of nuclear weapons — not only for the sake of supporting Ukraine but also to ensure global geopolitical stability in the future.”

There’s also the galling White House press conferences in which ambitious reporters aggressively demand to know why the Biden administration isn’t doing more to escalate against Russia, as clear an illustration as you could ask for of the fact that the mainstream press are only allowed to be pushy and confrontational with US government officials when they’re demanding more bloodshed.

As we’ve discussed previously, even if these increasingly loud calls for hot war between nuclear superpowers don’t immediately succeed, what they do is push the Overton window of mainstream discourse all the way over toward the most warmongering extreme possible so that calls for more escalation seem moderate and calls for de-escalation look like extremist apologia for Vladimir Putin. In the very best-case scenario they leave people far more open to consenting to far more nuclear brinkmanship than any thinking person should ever consent to.

This is not okay. It is not okay for them to do this to us. It is not okay for them to normalize the idea of escalations that could easily end humankind. That is the most insane position that any person could possibly take. More insane than Nazism, or any other extremist ideology you could think of. Supporting actions that may lead to human extinction makes these people enemies of our entire species.

Ukraine is still accepting foreign volunteers. If these omnicidal war sluts are so horny for “direct military involvement” against Russia, I wish they would just get on a plane and go do it themselves without trying to drag all of humanity into it with them.

You want direct military involvement? Fine. Go do it yourself. Be the direct military involvement you want to see in the world.

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https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2022/04/04/hats-off-to-florida-governor-ron-desantis-an-american-leader/ 

IHats Off to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, An American Leader

Florida citizens were extremely fortunate that they got Ron DeSantis for governor.  The Democrats almost succeeded in stealing the election.  The corrupt Democrats might succeed next time, because the Biden Department of Justice (sic) is trying to discredit fair election safeguards as “racist violations of civil rights laws.” The DOJ is very close to taking the position that it is a violation of US civil rights laws to prevent an illegal alien from voting.  New York city now allows non-citizens to vote.

Governor DeSantis kept Florida free of lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates.  He said that a virus that has such a low mortality rate does not require destroying businesses, jobs, family and business income, and disrupting the lives of Florida’s millions of citizens.   Instead of forcing people to accept a highly dangerous and untested “Covid vaccine,” Governor DeSantis established monoclonal antibody clinics where people were treated.  President Biden, a pawn of the pharmaceutical industry, closed down Florida’s highly effective treatment clinics by withholding supplies of monoclonal antibodies.

Governor DeSantis was demonized by the whore media, including Florida’s own presstitutes, for protecting the health, civil liberty, and jobs of Florida citizens.  As the blue states succumbed to tyranny, Florida remained a beacon of freedom.  It was amazing to watch elsewhere so many governors, legislators, and Americans accept the devastating Covid protocols imposed by Fauci and Big Pharma.  I saw then that the American people did not have the leadership required for the United States to survive as a free country.

Florida suffered none of the dire predictions that the whore media said would follow DeSantis’ refusal to obey Fauci and Big Tech, two of America’s worst enemies.  Florida residents escaped the ravages of the Covid protocols and paid no price for remaining a free state.

Having defied the elite’s agenda, Governor DeSantis has a target on his back.  The ruling elite cannot stand insubordination.  And DeSantis is shoving insubordination down the throats of the corrupt American elite.  DeSantis refuses to defund the police. He protects election integrity. He protects parental rights. He defends the border, understanding that it is pointless to spend $1 trillion annually on national defense while keeping the country’s borders wide open to immigrant-invaders.  In short, the ruling elite hate DeSantis because he represents the interests of the people, not the interests of the elite.

DeSantis is even willing to take on the powerful media giant, Disney, which has degenerated  into a LGBTQ lobby and opposes Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” law.  DeSantis said that the Florida legislature might take away Disney’s special privilege to self-govern granted by the Reedy Creek Improvement Act. Instead of falling under the authority of Orange and Osceola counties, Disney was granted special privilege to rule itself.  DeSantis said, “there are certain entities that have exerted a lot of influence through corporate means to generate special privileges in the law. I don’t think we should have special privileges in the law at all.”

DeSantis is a brave person. Disney dominates media with a 52% market share.  Disney owns the ABC television network, cable networks including ESPN, other TV, 277 radio stations, and publishing companies. Disney, under its leftwing “woke” leadership, is out to get DeSantis and the parental rights of Florida’s citizens.  It would be wonderful if DeSantis could nationalize Disney’s holdings in Florida.

The elite have the media completely under their thumb and will make sure that DeSantis only receives negative coverage.  We have reached the point where the real leaders Americans need are made invisible by media non-coverage or are intentionally destroyed by lies.

We will see if Florida residents comprehend their governor’s worth to them and have the sense to rally to his support.  

The United States is in grave difficulty, because the interests of the elite differ fundamentally from the interests of the people.  Consider globalism, for example.  The American elite benefitted enormously from offshoring American manufacturing to Asia.  Profits flowed in to the owners of the companies from the lower labor and compliance costs abroad.  But for the American people, high productivity, high value-added jobs and, thereby, high wage jobs, flowed out.  The income and wealth of the elite rose, and that of everyone else fell, as did opportunities for their children. 

In Russia and China, Putin and Xi resist the elite and seek stability in government representing interests of the people.  Electoral politics tends to produce weak leaders, because so many different and opposed interests have to be represented. This is why the Chinese confine voting to the party.  In Russia, leadership has been obtained by measures that have kept Putin as president.  In the United States it is the powerful private elites who have longevity of leadership.

On January 17, 1961, outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans that the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the US military-industrial complex was a threat to American democracy.  35 months later a budding leadership dynasty was erased by the military-security complex’s assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  Four and one-half years later, the CIA assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy.  Thus did the military-security complex protect its profits and power from 16 years of leadership that would have brought the Cold War to an end.  President Reagan, despite an assassination attempt, managed to end the Cold War. The Clinton regime renewed it, and when President Donald Trump expressed his intention of re-establishing normal relations with Russia, he was demonized, framed, and driven from office.

In the United States–indeed, throughout the Western world–official lies or narratives have more power than the people.  The Western media functions as public relations agent or as propaganda ministry for the ruling elites.  Anyone who dissents from the narratives is demonized.  Putin is “the new Hitler” because he dissents from US unipolarity.  If you dissent from Covid vaccination mandates, you are a “domestic terrorist” who goes around infecting others. If you use gender pronouns, you are oppressing the transgendered.  If you object to your child being programmed with critical race theory, you are a white supremacist.

In this type of system there is no way to correct mistakes, because dissent is not tolerated.  Those of us who said that Washington was destroying with sanctions the role of the dollar as world reserve currency, thereby bringing down its empire, were dismissed as “Russian agents.”  

The United States is in for many crises that the corrupt and desperate elite will use to chip away at the US Constitution and civil liberty.  For example, the US has a massive trade deficit, because greed-driven Wall Street and greed-driven US corporations took US manufacturing offshore.  When Apple computers and Nike shoes are brought to the US to be sold, they enter the country as imports.  The US trade deficit has been financed by the willingness of foreign central banks to hold their reserves in the form of US Treasury bonds and bills.  As a result of sanctions that seized the foreign reserves of Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, and now Russia, the willingness to hold reserves that can be confiscated disappears.  How is import-dependent America going to be able to finance her balance of payments deficit?

Dollar depreciation will result in exchange controls–or digital money–to prevent Americans from protecting their wealth by holding it in different forms.  Gold will be confiscated and its ownership by Americans forbidden in order to prevent flight from the dollar into gold.  Import quotas will be used to reduce the trade deficit, and a rationing system introduced.  

In short, Americans have little idea of the hard times ahead, and the media will not be allowed –indeed, hasn’t the competence–to prepare them for the new world that is coming.

In the few US states where leadership is visible, where people matter more than Bill Gates and Big Pharma’s pocketbooks and the power of the military-security complex, residents must form a protective cordon around the leaders, or the leaders will be taken from them.