W.J. Astore
Sequels Are Often Far Worse than the Originals
It began in August 1914, a war in Europe that was supposed to be over by Christmas of that year. But it exploded out of control, becoming the “Great War” or “The World War” or even “The War to End All Wars.” And when it finally ended on 11/11 in 1918, something like ten million troops were dead.
We know it as World War I or the First World War because we know what came after it: yet another calamitous world war, a sequel, one that was far worse than the original. And after that war finally ended in 1945, something like 75-80 million people were dead around the world, including 25 million in the Soviet Union, six million Jews in the Holocaust, and 250,000 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Of course, World War II also wasn’t the end of the killing. The so-called Iron Curtain descended in Europe, leading to the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that almost ended with Armageddon in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That Cold War came to an end in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The U.S. celebrated its apparent victory, even calling briefly for “peace dividends” in the 1990s. It was not to be.
Thirty years after the (First) Cold War, we now hear of a “new Cold War.” We hear again that China and Russia are America’s enemies, a new “Axis of Evil,” notes Caitlin Johnstone. America is already engaged in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Now America’s leaders are posturing over Taiwan and threatening war with China if the Chinese military makes aggressive moves against that country. (Of course, the Chinese consider Taiwan to be China, a “One China” policy the U.S. used to support.)
It does seem as if “my” Cold War, when I served in the U.S. military, may be remembered to history as the First Cold War, and that America has already begun a Second Cold War. And, just as World War II was far worse than World War I in casualties and destruction, Cold War II could conceivably be a LOT worse than Cold War I if we choose to continue to wage it.
Sequels, as a general rule, are usually worse, sometimes far worse, than the originals. We had better stop this nonsense of a new Cold War before we relearn this in the hardest way possible.
Bracing Views 
Presidential Candidate Pompeo Says Biden Needs to be Even More Aggressive in Pushing for War with Russia and China.
The US government is making “an enormous strategic mistake” by downplaying the importance of rapidly expanding Russia-China ties, Mike Pompeo, who served as the country’s secretary of state under former president Donald Trump, has warned.
The alliance between Moscow and Beijing “may be a shotgun wedding, but they’re still married,” Pompeo told Fox News on Wednesday.
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I’ve got a Faux Noise interview for you, Ray. What with Trump now getting hit again with the porn-actress/mistress thing, I thought you might appreciate the relevant Biblical allusions.
<blockquoteMaligned Madam Does Fox News
(An ahistorical, speculative interview)
“And now we have, for our next guest,
A lady of the night,
Who has, for reasons none too clear,
Agreed to speak what we shall hear:
Some ‘answers’ meant to bring a leer
To lips that freely grin or sneer
When overhearing questions queer,
Profound, or simply trite.”
“We thank you, Madame Magdalene,
For giving of your time
To scandalize the girls and boys
With lurid tales of wanton joys
Supplied for rent to Jews and Goys
Entrapped by your seductive ploys
While honest men, your hapless toys,
Must suffer from your crime.”
“But au contraire! I say to you,
My bogus blowhard host:
I only serve your vain desire
And offer up what you require,
And, yes, I do it all for hire,
While you ejaculate, retire,
And afterwards feel only ire,
Or else the urge to boast.”
“I only see the truth too well,
And live by what I do.
I understand men’s vanity,
And lives filled with inanity
Till driven to insanity
By Murdoch, Fox, and Hannity
You use me like profanity
And swear: ‘GAWD told me to!’”
“But, Madam, what of Juliet,
Whose virtue fiction tells?
Does not her pure, Platonic love
Deflect the need to rudely shove
Some Romeo without a glove
Into an orifice above,
Below, or in the region of
Some pulchritude that sells?”
“Oh, no, dear sir! Such fantasies
Just fan the flames of lust.
As I have often told the priest,
My holes are not for sale, just leased
To poles whose sweaty palms have greased
My own with cash, and not the least
With ‘love’ for me, a meager feast
For wretched lives gone bust.”
“Then might I ask, Ms Magdalene,
About Ophelia’s tale?
You know, the Danish maid who pined
For Hamlet’s love: the crazy kind,
Both unrequited and resigned
To ambiguity; designed
By Shakespeare, meaning: ‘Never mind.
Such tragic love must fail.’”
“Ophelia, just like Juliet,
My case could never plead.
Because – as fiction, unlike me –
She lives in books for men who flee
From nature, like the urge to pee;
Who make up tales that don’t agree
(Except when offered on TV)
With what they really need.”
“So have you any final thoughts
Here as we end the hour?
Do you not have a heart of gold
Despite the johns that you have rolled
Together with your pimp who sold
Your services to young and old
Who wanted heat but got the cold
Of sordid sex gone sour?”
“Mais oui, Monsieur! but let me say
To males by us enthralled:
That we who ply the oldest trade;
Who make our living in the shade;
Who walk our alley promenade
Until our looks begin to fade
Know men will call a heart a spade
To get their ashes hauled.”
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2009
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Who’s the prostitute?
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“Who is the prostitute?”
To the Republican Party’s sex-obsessed evangelical base, Donald Trump substitutes for Jesus Christ; Stormy Daniels plays the role of Mary Magdalene; and Mike Pompeo does a credible imitation of Judas Iscariot. Of course, for the frivolous, scandal-mongering Rupurt Murdoch media we previously had “Democrats” Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky and the late Linda Tripp of whom one rather cruel pundit observed — after she had availed herself of liposuction (fat removal) treatments — “She looks like a new man.” I’ve read similar appraisals of Mike Pompeo who seems to have shed much of his former plumpness in preparation for his run for the Republican nomination in 2024 against his former boss and benefactor, Donald Trump. “Poetic License,” naturally, applies to all metaphorical verse compositions whereas crass political interpretations of such may or may not accord with contemporary personalities.
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And the Lord said, to what then shall I compare the men of this generation? and to what are they like?
They are like children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and you have not danced; we have mourned to you, and you have not wept.
For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and you say, He has a devil.
The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and you say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!
But wisdom is justified of all her children.
Luke 7:31-35; Matthew 11:16-19
If you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, for God’s sake, do something!
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A 2 hour discussion with Scott Ritter & Ray McGovern: Intelligence and Integrity
March 25, 2023
— lies & truth: on arms control, Iraq, Ukraine, etc. —
Intelligence Round table moderated by Mike Krupa
March 23, 2023
https://raymcgovern.com/2023/03/25/scott-ritter-ray-intelligence-and-integrity/
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“The Putin–Xi summit.”
25 MARCH—Now that Vladmir Putin and Xi Jinping have concluded their summit in Moscow, an unusually long series of meetings over three days, are those purporting to lead the United States prepared to drop their wishful thinking, their miscalculations, and their illusions as to the significance and durability of the Sino–Russian relationship and get with the 21st century?
Our no-hesitation answer is, “Not a chance.” The policy cliques in Washington signaled daily last week their determination to misread the Russian and Chinese presidents’ 40th summit so as to carry on hallucinating as to America’s “global leadership” and its position at the center of a Ptolemaic universe, the U.S. the sun around which all other nations revolve.
The magnitude of the Putin–Xi summit lies beyond question. They got a lot done in all sorts of spheres—trade, energy, resources, infrastructure, investment, high-technology collaborations. If TASS, the Russian wire service, is to be believed, and I don’t see why we should not take its word on this occasion, Sino–Russian relations just took a surprising turn on the security side by way of the depth of their mutual commitments. More on this point anon.
Of these matters you have read little to nothing if you rely on our corporate press. What you have read is a lot of truly bad reporting—this because if Washington is into the game of pretend, so must be the press that serves it…………………………………………………………………….
https://thescrum.substack.com/p/the-putinxi-summit?
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