9.11.
The towers fell and the dust blew.
History was made but few noticed.
To the naked eyed, the US looked strong, resolute and united.
In fact, it was the end of American hegemony.
Osama Bin Laden was victorious.
But instead of looking within, the US lashed out in cruelty and folly.
There was nearly unanimous support for retribution.
It didn’t matter that killing Afghanis or Iraqis was definitely insane.
Led by George W. and the press almost everybody went along for the ride.
When I told my friend about my vehement objection to Iraq, he mentioned some article in Harper’s Magazine that defended the war. ‘These are smart people’.
Lies come back to haunt you. People who defend lies or who are fooled by them pay dearly.
Just look at Covid, where once again the government and the media used us like playthings making us stand two meters apart while wearing ineffectual cheap masks.
It wasn’t even a pandemic. Almost no healthy person was even remotely at risk of keeling over dead. Look at the statistics.
So here we are again with Ukraine.
There was a time when I was thankful it was the US running the world if only because the alternatives were so scary.
But is there anyone who can honestly claim that China and Russia don’t look eminently reasonable compared with the US?
The rats are jumping ship. Witness BRICS. Everybody, including France, is clamoring to get in.
It all started with 9. 11.
Despite what we read in the New York Times or the Washington Post, deep down we knew the permanent state of war that followed was pure evil.
Bush Doctrine or no.
The trauma of that surreal day when the planes crashed into Manhattan was of such a monumental nature that we haven’t been able to focus on reality ever since.
It’s like time itself was suspended.
Remember when we used to refer to the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s?
Come 9.11 every year and decade has just blended into the next.
Think about it. The 60s had hippies and the 70s bell bottoms.
What did the 00s, the 10s have?!
Or how about the 20s???
Witness the Nord Stream 2. See the treatment of Matt Taibbi. Look at Scott Ritter who is censored for explaining what the mainstream press will not.
Let’s be frank: when the leaders of China and Russia appear sane and rational by comparision it’s not a great sign.
America’s death spiral began with the sad precedent set by the media in its failure to call bullshit on Iraq.
Iraq was a country about which few knew anything and even fewer cared to.
To the average American, it didn’t matter if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or how many Iraqis were slaughtered.
America’s war machine wanted blood.
And the media went along for the ride.
To me, it was angering and extremely disappointing.
It was all so clearly wrong.
And yet we forget and try to move on.
Tell ourselves that things are back to normal.
That illusion was shattered in Ukraine.
The invasion by Russia once again took place in a country little known in the West.
The mainstream press endorsement of Nato’s intervention was at first therefore believable.
But watch YouTube enough and you will start to hear what is really happening by independent media.
The US started a coup that overthrew Ukraine’s rightful leader. Nazi Ukraine military bombed and killed tens of thousands of ethnic Russians in the Donbas. The Ukraine government banned the use of the Russian language. The US renegged on its promise to Gorbachev not to move one inch towards Russia and instead set up bases surrounded Russia and enticed Russia’s neighbours to join Nato.