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https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/10/18/rushing-into-catastrophe/

Rushing Into Catastrophe

The Biden regime refuses to defend US borders but does not hesitate to rush aircraft carrier task forces and the 101st US Airborne Division to defend Israel’s borders.  “We have Israel’s back,” endlessly proclaims America’ Jewish Secretary of State.  “America can afford two wars,” proclaims America’s Jewish Secretary of the Treasury.  But forget protecting our own border and the burdens on American taxpayers.

It seems our government is captured and risks our lives and welfare in the interest of another country.

It seems everyone in Washington, Republicans and Democrats, especially Republicans, have intense war fever.  While Washington quickly escalated the conflict by deploying US military forces to the area, the Republican Senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, blames  escalation on Iran and issues a threat: “if you escalate this war, we’re coming for you.” Graham continues with his threats, in our name, to Iran saying the US will “knock Iran out of the oil business.”  Like Israel and the Jewish-American neoconservatives, Graham’s target is the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah:  “I am poised to use military force to destroy the source of funding for Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Another House Republican, this one from Texas, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, says he is writing legislation for authority to commit the US military to Israel’s war on Palestine.

What we are witnessing is Republicans who are as extreme as Hamas.  Is this insanity real, or is this showmanship, with political campaign funding in mind, for the US military/security complex who will greatly benefit from America “affording two wars?”

We are also witnessing the total failure of Western leadership, not only in Washington but throughout the Western world.  Instead of escalating the situation by sending military forces, Washington should have used its offices to calm matters down.  Why did not Washington calm the situation down instead of blowing it up?

This website — https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/10/us-deploys-large-force-eyes-on-syria.html — speculates that the US forces accumulating in the war zone are a “war fleet,” the purpose of which is to finally bring regime change to Syria and kick out the Russians in an act of revenge for the Russians preventing President Obama’s planned overthrow of the Assad government.  

I can understand that the Biden regime’s neoconservatives want to continue their policy of cleansing the Middle East for Israeli expansion, but how safe is it to assume that Putin will run away with his tail between his legs?  This would finish Putin as a leader of the dissident world and probably also finish him inside Russia.  A show of Russian cowardice would certainly provoke an escalation of NATO’s involvement in Ukraine.  It seems certain that a US attack on Syria would result in military conflict between the US and Russia.

The Israelis have been massacring Palestinians and stealing their country bit by bit since 1947, and no one has ever done anything about it.  The UN passes resolutions, but the US vetoes them.  So this final time Netanyahu expects no opposition, indeed, he expects  help from the US and its empire in the commission of his war crimes.  

It is clear to me that the situation is awash in miscalculations. Hezbollah is a match for Israel.  Indeed, the militia has twice defeated the vaunted Israeli Army and driven them out of Lebanon despite Israel’s air power. Syria’s army is battle hardened from fighting the mercenaries Washington sent to overthrow Assad.  Like Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran has fervor and a large number of missiles that can hit Israel.  If, as is claimed, 5,000 missiles from Hamas overwhelmed Israel’s Iron Dome, the Iron Dome has no chance against 100,000 or 200,000 missiles.

If Israel’s army is sent into Gaza, Hamas will keep it there, and Israel risks being overrun by Hezbollah, Syria, and Iraq and Iran should they care to participate.  Faced with Israel’s defeat, Washington would commit its forces with catastrophic consequences.

We are experiencing on the part of Israel and the US a total lack of judgment.  The risks are being ignored.  It is starting to look like the Armageddon that Revelation describes.  

The problem for humanity is that it has developed weapons that are capable of destroying all life, and these weapons are in the hands of emotional people incapable of restraint and reason.  

I have been, and continue to be, concerned about the conflict in Ukraine spiraling out of control.  The situation developing in the Middle East is more dangerous.  There doesn’t seem to be sufficient recognition of this danger.  The war propaganda from the presstitutes is extreme and blinds people to reality.  Those in office think they are in control, but they are not. 

Possibly Russia could prevent a wider conflict by raising its military presence in Syria, but Putin is not proactive.  

You tell me, where are the leaders to prevent a catastrophe?

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https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/22_years_of_blowback_from_the_usa_patriot_act

Postcards from a Police State: 22 Years of Blowback from the USA Patriot Act

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."—Hermann Goering, German military commander and Hitler's designated successor

For those who remember the days and months that followed 9/11, there is an unnerving feeling of déjà vu about the Hamas attacks on Israel.

The same shocking images of carnage and grief dominating the news. The same disbelief that anyone could be so hateful, so monstrous, so evil as to do this to another human being. The same outpourings of support and unity from around the world. The same shared fear that this could easily have happened to us or our loved ones.

Now once again the drums of war are sounding on the world stage, not that they ever really stopped. Israel is preparing to invade Gaza, the Palestinians are nearing a humanitarian crisis, and the rest of the world is bracing for whatever blowback comes next.

Here in the United States, as we approach the 22^nd anniversary of the USA Patriot Act on October 26, we’re still grappling with the blowback that arises from allowing one’s freedoms to be eviscerated in exchange for the phantom promise of security.

Here are a few lessons that we never learned or learned too late.

Mammoth legislation that expands the government’s powers at the citizenry’s expense will not make anyone safer. Rushed through Congress a mere 45 days after the 9/11 attacks, the USA Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, undermined civil liberties, expanded the government’s powers and opened the door to far-reaching surveillance by the government on American citizens.

Pre-emptive strikes will only lead to further blowback. Not content to wage war against Afghanistan, which served as the base for Osama bin Laden, the U.S. embarked on a pre-emptive war against Iraq in order to “stop any adversary challenging America’s military superiority and adopt a strike-first policy against terrorist threats ‘before they're fully formed.’” We are still suffering the consequences of this failed policy, which resulted in lives lost, taxpayer dollars wasted, the fomenting of hatred against the U.S. and the further radicalization of terrorist cells.

War is costly. There are many reasons to go to war, but those who have advocated that the U.S. remain at war, year after year, are the very entities that have profited most from these endless military occupations and exercises. Thus far, the U.S. taxpayer has been made to shell out more than $8 trillion to wage wars abroad, including the lifetime price of health care for disabled veterans and interest on the national debt. That also does not include the more than hundreds of thousands of civilians killed, or the millions displaced from their homes as a result of endless drone strikes and violence.

The tactics and weapons of war, once deployed abroad, will eventually be used against the citizenry at home. The horrors that took place at Abu Ghraib, the American-run prison in Iraq, involved “US military personnel humiliating, hurting and abusing Iraqi prisoners in a myriad of perverse ways. While American servicemen and women smiled and gave thumbs up, naked men were threatened by dogs, or were hooded, forced into sexual positions, placed standing with wires attached to their bodies, or left bleeding on prison floors.” Adding to the descent into moral depravity, the United States government legalized the use of torture, including waterboarding, in violation of international law and in the so-called pursuit of national security. The ramifications have been far-reaching, with domestic police mirroring a battlefield mindset in their encounters with American citizens, including the use of torture tactics at secret locations such as Homan Square in Chicago.

Allowing the government to spy on the citizenry will not reduce acts of terrorism, but it will result in a watched, submissive, surveillance society. Not only did the USA Patriot Act normalize the government’s mass surveillance powers, but it also dramatically expanded the government’s authority to spy on its own citizens without much of any oversight. Thus, a byproduct of this post 9/11-age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere. We have all become data collected in government files. 

News cycle distractions are calibrated to ensure that you lose sight of what the government is doing. The average American has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the reality of the American police state. Whether these events are critical or unimportant, when we’re being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it’s difficult to stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this. In this way, regularly scheduled trivia and/or distractions that keep the citizenry tuned into the various breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles also keep them tuned out to the government’s steady encroachments on their freedoms.

If you stop holding the government accountable to the rule of law, the only laws it abides by will be the ones used to clamp down on the citizenry. Having failed to hold government officials accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the American people have found themselves saddled with a government that skirts, flouts and violates the Constitution with little consequence. Overcriminalization, asset forfeiture schemes, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, warrantless surveillance, SWAT team raids, indefinite detentions, covert agencies, and secret courts are just a few of the egregious practices carried out by a government that operates beyond the reach of the law.

Do not turn your country into a battlefield, your citizens into enemy combatants, and your law enforcement officers into extensions of the military. A standing army—something that propelled the early colonists into revolution—strips the citizenry of any vestige of freedom. How can there be any semblance of freedom when there are tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, Blackhawk helicopters and armed drones patrolling overhead? It was for this reason that those who established America vested control of the military in a civilian government, with a civilian commander-in-chief. They did not want a military government, ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, we in America now find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military and have just as little regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.

As long as you remain fearful and distrustful of each other, you will be incapable of standing united against any threats posed by a power-hungry government. Early on, U.S. officials solved the problem of how to implement their authoritarian policies without incurring a citizen uprising: fear. The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers). They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being. Most of all, they want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.

Once you trade your freedom for security, the terrorists win. We’ve walked a strange and harrowing road since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade a freedom-loving people to march in lockstep with a police state. And in so doing, we have proven Osama Bin Laden right. He warned that “freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”

It took a long time to clear away the rubble from the 9/11 attacks.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, 22 years after the USA Patriot Act was unleashed on a vulnerable nation, we are still reeling from the destruction it has wrought on our freedoms.

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https://www.okdoomer.io/10-reasons-our-civilization-will-soon-collapse/

10 Reasons Our Civilization Will Soon Collapse

A deep dive into the problems world leaders have let spiral out of control.

....Conclusion

For decades, it’s been obvious that our global industrial civilization has an expiration date, but only recently have many scientists come to realize that the expiration date could be during their own lifetimes.

Fifty years ago, humans overshot the carrying capacity of the planet. Since then, we have been exploiting the Earth’s resources faster and faster, stealing from future generations. Our civilization wouldn’t even exist without fossil fuels, but we are rapidly running out of them. And it appears green energy won’t be able to replace them as there aren’t enough metals in the ground.

Even if we had unlimited clean energy, we would still run out of crucial resources like rubber, sand, groundwater, and the ingredients for fertilizer. As the world’s topsoil erodes, it will get harder and harder to grow enough food for everybody.

Eventually, we might not be able to grow food at all. Water shortages are already becoming a major problem, and this is just the beginning. Climate change is drying up the rivers, burning down the forests, and causing disasters the likes of which we’ve never seen.

Meanwhile, life of all types—from tiny plants to giant mammals—are going extinct even faster than they did during previous mass extinction events. As the web of life falls apart, human societies will become impossible to maintain.

All this chaos will lead to the worst migration crisis in the history of the world. The political tension and fights over resources could very well lead to nuclear annihilation. But things are so bad that even without nuclear war, we could still see human extinction by the end of this century.

Believe it or not, there’s a lot more bad news that I didn’t cover in this post. I barely touched on climate tipping points, and I could have written about our crumbling infrastructure, the millions dying from pollution, the increasing risk of deadly pandemics, and much more, but this article is already far longer than I originally intended.

It doesn’t please me to share this information. Personally, I am terrified....