Thank you, Max, for all your work in getting at what's really happening in an attempt to save what's left of the functioning biosphere because that's what will determine carrying capacity after the Ecological Overshoot Unraveling stage. The point of the spear that enforces society's rules (even omnicidal rules) are not the people who guide the spear. Whose are the Hands That Guide The Spear?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGijAhtuzt8
Linda G. Ford's "Women Politicals in America: Jailed Dissenters from Mother Jones to Lynne Stewart."
"I am being jailed because I have advocated change for equality, justice, and peace. … I stand where thousands of abolitionists, escaped slaves, workers and political activists have stood for demanding justice, for refusing to either quietly bear the biting lash of domination or to stand by silently as others bear the same lash."
— Marilyn Buck, at her 1990 sentencing (epigram in Linda Ford’s book, Women Politicals in America)
The three presidents in charge from 1990s until 2018, have had somewhat different doctrines of global empire: Clinton prepared the way, Bush implemented the 9/11 unleashing of new military adventures, and Obama (continued somewhat clumsily by Trump) streamlined, codified and expanded Bush’s new global warmongering.
A world of smart bombs, Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Taliban, collateral damage. Invasions of Iraq. A world of 300 nuclear bombs in Israel, Saudi Arabia aligned with the Zionists, Israel First pledges by US elected politicians. A world of Exxon more powerful than most nation states. This new spasm of fascism was codified with the Bush Doctrine. Chalmers Johnson stated this concept of World Domination by the USA was laid out in 2002 at a West Point Academy gathering: Bush stated that “. . . our policy would be to dominate the world through absolute military superiority and to wage preventive war against any possible competitor.”
Things from the ‘60s through the ‘90s are dramatically different in terms of how the police state operates and how far-reaching now the American project to dominate, steal, harass, kill and contain has grown. Let’s look at Chalmers Johnson in an article for the Nation September 27, 2001 and then from his 2004 book, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, which Ford includes in her book:
The suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001, did not “attack America,” as our political leaders and the news media like to maintain; they attacked American foreign policy. Employing the strategy of the weak, they killed innocent bystanders who then became enemies only because they had already become victims. Terrorism by definition strikes at the innocent in order to draw attention to the sins of the invulnerable. The United States deploys such overwhelming military force globally that for its militarized opponents only an “asymmetric strategy,” in the jargon of the Pentagon, has any chance of success. When it does succeed, as it did spectacularly on September 11, it renders our massive military machine worthless: The terrorists offer it no targets. On the day of the disaster, President George W. Bush told the American people that we were attacked because we are “a beacon for freedom” and because the attackers were “evil.” In his address to Congress on September 20, he said, “This is civilization’s fight.” This attempt to define difficult-to-grasp events as only a conflict over abstract values–as a “clash of civilizations,” in current post-cold war American jargon–is not only disingenuous but also a way of evading responsibility for the “blowback” that America’s imperial projects have generated.
— The Nation, Johnson
Americans like to say that the world changed as a result of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It would be more accurate to say that the attacks produced a dangerous change in the thinking of some of our leaders, who began to see our republic as a genuine empire, a new Rome, the greatest colossus in history, no longer bound by international law, the concerns of allies, or any constraints on its use of military force. The American people were still largely in the dark about why they had been attacked or why their State Department began warning them against tourism in an every-growing list of foreign countries . . . . But a growing number finally began to grasp what most non-Americans already knew and had experienced over the last half century – namely, that the United States was something other than what it professed to be,, that it was, in fact, a military juggernaut intent on world domination.
I know I write certain things with a hell of a lot of bombast, but I am still an old socialist radical who taught English and writing and literature at more than a dozen colleges, so those old days of MLA and APA and Chicago Style, and then 45 years as a journalist, mostly following the Associated Press guid book, those days are fucking FAR gone, so, yep, rattling cages.
Front and center.
And, yep, you stated you run into cente- right democrats who can't get over "how Trump has changed what was once good about America . . . can't we get back to that."
Later, Max:
Subsidize the Cunts of Military Murder Hardware and the Nuclear Power Generators and Data Centers -- But let the masses eat cake
After 80yrs. as a rebel and medical activist, I have come to realize the big picture: too many humans are using/depleting too many natural resources and producing too much pollution, including GHGs and climate collapse. We are 3,000 times more numerous than were our egalitarian ancestral Hunter-Gatherer/pastoralist clan/band fellows (150- Dunbar number) who of necessity maintained a steady population and lived in an ecological balance with the rest of Nature for millennia, were self-sustaining. Massively overpopulated populations naturally form "hierarchies" and the serfs rebel, only to be swatted down by the far more powerful overlords/kings. History repeats itself. Good luck with your rebellion. Have a blessed day.
Thank you Greeley. Yes, you're right. This is the pattern of civilizations going back centuries and even millennia. Knowing that history doesn't solve our immediate problem, but the context is essential to understand. Thankfully birth rates have begun to decline despite pro-natalist policies being enacted around the world, and — despite loving children — I hope that decline will continue.
It is, Jeffrey. And likely to only get worse in the future, rapidly. Again, the rise of AI-powered surveillance and the rapid breakdown of the few guardrails that existed on things like the deployment of military-grade spyware tech inside the United States is truly frightening. Which is exactly why they do it.
We’ll stated, organized to a reasonable perfection; if something like that could ever exist.??
This teaching will be kept in my hip pocket to share with everyone who is struggling with ... “what’s up?”;
asking themselves,.. I trusted them ...I can’t believe they could ever participate in such nefarious belligerence?
Love & gratitude for your scholarship; I know you’ve put a whole bunch of work studying for this time; there’s a wisdom in this statement from a respected teacher I knew...”everything is appropriate”; and all your heartfelt concerns most certainly are ...Appropriate for this moment.
Thank you for this important article and reminder of the constant onslaught against equality and social justice. The fight has never been more critical, the stakes being saving an inhabitable planet, if we're not already too late.
I hear you. It's very difficult to trust people, given how much harm people do, how messed up most of us are, and how much it hurts to be betrayed and disappointed. And yet, I think it's important to try. I explored that theme in this post, if you're interested: https://maxwilbert.substack.com/p/walking-in-my-grandmothers-footsteps
Thank you, Max, for all your work in getting at what's really happening in an attempt to save what's left of the functioning biosphere because that's what will determine carrying capacity after the Ecological Overshoot Unraveling stage. The point of the spear that enforces society's rules (even omnicidal rules) are not the people who guide the spear. Whose are the Hands That Guide The Spear?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGijAhtuzt8
Thank you.
Ahh, so far back, no?
Linda G. Ford's "Women Politicals in America: Jailed Dissenters from Mother Jones to Lynne Stewart."
"I am being jailed because I have advocated change for equality, justice, and peace. … I stand where thousands of abolitionists, escaped slaves, workers and political activists have stood for demanding justice, for refusing to either quietly bear the biting lash of domination or to stand by silently as others bear the same lash."
— Marilyn Buck, at her 1990 sentencing (epigram in Linda Ford’s book, Women Politicals in America)
https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/01/in-the-eye-of-the-beholder-usa-history-of-imprisoning-women-politicals/
https://paulhaeder.substack.com/p/long-live-the-armed-struggle
The three presidents in charge from 1990s until 2018, have had somewhat different doctrines of global empire: Clinton prepared the way, Bush implemented the 9/11 unleashing of new military adventures, and Obama (continued somewhat clumsily by Trump) streamlined, codified and expanded Bush’s new global warmongering.
A world of smart bombs, Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Taliban, collateral damage. Invasions of Iraq. A world of 300 nuclear bombs in Israel, Saudi Arabia aligned with the Zionists, Israel First pledges by US elected politicians. A world of Exxon more powerful than most nation states. This new spasm of fascism was codified with the Bush Doctrine. Chalmers Johnson stated this concept of World Domination by the USA was laid out in 2002 at a West Point Academy gathering: Bush stated that “. . . our policy would be to dominate the world through absolute military superiority and to wage preventive war against any possible competitor.”
Things from the ‘60s through the ‘90s are dramatically different in terms of how the police state operates and how far-reaching now the American project to dominate, steal, harass, kill and contain has grown. Let’s look at Chalmers Johnson in an article for the Nation September 27, 2001 and then from his 2004 book, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, which Ford includes in her book:
The suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001, did not “attack America,” as our political leaders and the news media like to maintain; they attacked American foreign policy. Employing the strategy of the weak, they killed innocent bystanders who then became enemies only because they had already become victims. Terrorism by definition strikes at the innocent in order to draw attention to the sins of the invulnerable. The United States deploys such overwhelming military force globally that for its militarized opponents only an “asymmetric strategy,” in the jargon of the Pentagon, has any chance of success. When it does succeed, as it did spectacularly on September 11, it renders our massive military machine worthless: The terrorists offer it no targets. On the day of the disaster, President George W. Bush told the American people that we were attacked because we are “a beacon for freedom” and because the attackers were “evil.” In his address to Congress on September 20, he said, “This is civilization’s fight.” This attempt to define difficult-to-grasp events as only a conflict over abstract values–as a “clash of civilizations,” in current post-cold war American jargon–is not only disingenuous but also a way of evading responsibility for the “blowback” that America’s imperial projects have generated.
— The Nation, Johnson
Americans like to say that the world changed as a result of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It would be more accurate to say that the attacks produced a dangerous change in the thinking of some of our leaders, who began to see our republic as a genuine empire, a new Rome, the greatest colossus in history, no longer bound by international law, the concerns of allies, or any constraints on its use of military force. The American people were still largely in the dark about why they had been attacked or why their State Department began warning them against tourism in an every-growing list of foreign countries . . . . But a growing number finally began to grasp what most non-Americans already knew and had experienced over the last half century – namely, that the United States was something other than what it professed to be,, that it was, in fact, a military juggernaut intent on world domination.
— Blowback, Johnson
Thanks for sharing those quotes. And for the interview yesterday.
We did a kick ass interview on KYQ.org, and Max and I will be breaking ground in 2026 Nov. 7, 6 pm, kyaq.org (Wednesdays)
Finding Fringe: https://kyaq.org/finding-fringe/
I know I write certain things with a hell of a lot of bombast, but I am still an old socialist radical who taught English and writing and literature at more than a dozen colleges, so those old days of MLA and APA and Chicago Style, and then 45 years as a journalist, mostly following the Associated Press guid book, those days are fucking FAR gone, so, yep, rattling cages.
Front and center.
And, yep, you stated you run into cente- right democrats who can't get over "how Trump has changed what was once good about America . . . can't we get back to that."
Later, Max:
Subsidize the Cunts of Military Murder Hardware and the Nuclear Power Generators and Data Centers -- But let the masses eat cake
https://paulokirk.substack.com/p/subsidize-the-cunts-of-military-murder
After 80yrs. as a rebel and medical activist, I have come to realize the big picture: too many humans are using/depleting too many natural resources and producing too much pollution, including GHGs and climate collapse. We are 3,000 times more numerous than were our egalitarian ancestral Hunter-Gatherer/pastoralist clan/band fellows (150- Dunbar number) who of necessity maintained a steady population and lived in an ecological balance with the rest of Nature for millennia, were self-sustaining. Massively overpopulated populations naturally form "hierarchies" and the serfs rebel, only to be swatted down by the far more powerful overlords/kings. History repeats itself. Good luck with your rebellion. Have a blessed day.
Thank you Greeley. Yes, you're right. This is the pattern of civilizations going back centuries and even millennia. Knowing that history doesn't solve our immediate problem, but the context is essential to understand. Thankfully birth rates have begun to decline despite pro-natalist policies being enacted around the world, and — despite loving children — I hope that decline will continue.
This is all so scary on many levels. Thank you for being brave enough, and focused enough, to share it.
It is, Jeffrey. And likely to only get worse in the future, rapidly. Again, the rise of AI-powered surveillance and the rapid breakdown of the few guardrails that existed on things like the deployment of military-grade spyware tech inside the United States is truly frightening. Which is exactly why they do it.
We’ll stated, organized to a reasonable perfection; if something like that could ever exist.??
This teaching will be kept in my hip pocket to share with everyone who is struggling with ... “what’s up?”;
asking themselves,.. I trusted them ...I can’t believe they could ever participate in such nefarious belligerence?
Love & gratitude for your scholarship; I know you’ve put a whole bunch of work studying for this time; there’s a wisdom in this statement from a respected teacher I knew...”everything is appropriate”; and all your heartfelt concerns most certainly are ...Appropriate for this moment.
✌🏼❤️🙏🕉
Thank you very much! That's kind of you to say. It is, unfortunately, quite appropriate for this moment.
Thank you for this important article and reminder of the constant onslaught against equality and social justice. The fight has never been more critical, the stakes being saving an inhabitable planet, if we're not already too late.
Absolutely, Geoffrey.
Nice work!
Thank you, Bart.
More on this topic: in Ecuador, the far-right government is arbitrarily freezing the bank accounts of left-wing and indigenous groups.
https://www.alianzaceibo.org/blog/gobierno-ecuatoriano-congela-las-cuentas-bancarias-de-fundacion-alianza-ceibo/
Roger Hallam isn't a revolutionary. He's a degenerate and a US asset. Why don't you know this Max Wilbert? You've ruined an otherwise good article by confusing who he is. https://medium.com/@hiraethland/roger-hallam-extinction-deception-ed621c78b9a9
I hear you. It's very difficult to trust people, given how much harm people do, how messed up most of us are, and how much it hurts to be betrayed and disappointed. And yet, I think it's important to try. I explored that theme in this post, if you're interested: https://maxwilbert.substack.com/p/walking-in-my-grandmothers-footsteps