Cluster Munitions for Ukraine

11 thoughts on “Cluster Munitions for Ukraine”

1. Reblogged this on Unorthodox Truth.

   LikeLike

2. As I read this post, I was thinking of Andrew Napolitano’s piece on the editorial page of the Sun-Gazette (reprinted from the Standard-Examiner under the heading of Napolitano: War and honesty) on July 3: “A Constitution in the hands of dishonest hacks.”

   I didn’t vet his “facts.” If they are true, the thought raised the hair on the back of my neck as I read this portion:

   “…Congress has only authorized weapons and cash to be sent to Ukraine, but Biden has sent troops as well. The U.S. involvement in Vietnam began the same way: no declaration of war, yet a gradual buildup of American troops as advisers and instructors, and then a congressionally supported war — based on made-up reports of an attack on an American ship in the Gulf of Tonkin — that saw half a million American troops deployed, 10% of whom came home in body bags.

   We don’t know how many American troops are in Ukraine, as they are out of uniform and their whereabouts a secret. We do know that they are involved in hostilities, since much of the hardware that Biden has sent requires American know-how to operate and maintain. And some of the weaponry has American troops actually targeting Russian forces and pulling the triggers….”
   Bill, are we heading for another Vietnam scenario? And could we survive it? I know that the support for Ukraine has increased greatly across the country, just like it did for Vietnam in the beginning.

   Then I heard of other weapons to be sent to Ukraine and read “US plans to send controversial cluster munitions to Ukraine” on bbc.com where it was noted that “…more than 120 countries have committed to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, agreeing not to use, produce, transfer or store such devices.

   The US, Ukraine and Russia are not party to the agreement,…”

   I feel we are heading into territory that most of us do not want to consider. Given that there was condemnation of the possibility Russia was using cluster bombs when this military action between Russia and Ukraine started, are we (collective) saying we cannot be accused of war crimes? “…Early on in the war, the White House was asked about allegations that Russia was using cluster bombs, and then-press secretary Jen Psaki said it would be a “war crime” if true….” (bbc.com).

   Is this all another case of “we can do no wrong because we are the United States of America, the greatest country on earth?” Our arrogance is no better than other countries we condemn for similar actions. We definitely need better leadership but will even that save us at this point? Or is it possible to find a sane person to lead us that will be accepted by the masses? Living here in central PA makes me doubt it.

   LikeLiked by 1 person

   1. I don’t see a Vietnam scenario; not in the sense of committing more than 500,000 U.S. troops directly to the war.

      That said, what’s ahead in the future remains very unclear — this war could easily escalate; in fact, it already is escalating with respect to the weapons the U.S./NATO is providing.

      LikeLiked by 1 person

3. How So Many Americans Learned to “Stop Worrying” and “Love the Nukes”

   Social psychosis is widespread. In the words of the British psychiatrist, R. D. Laing, “The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man.”

   He was not referring to raving, drooling, hitting-your-head-against-the-wall lunacy but a taken-for-granted acceptance of a world long teetering on the edge of nuclear extinction, to take the most extreme example, but surely only one of many. The insouciant acceptance and support of psychotic rulers who promote first-strike nuclear war is very common. First strike nuclear policy is United States policy.

   I recently wrote an article about the dangers of the fourteen U.S. Trident submarines. These subs constantly cruise under the oceans carrying 3,360 nuclear warheads equivalent to 134,400 Hiroshima bombs. All are on first strike triggers. And of course these are supplemented by all the land and air based nukes. My point was not very complicated: now that the United States government has abrogated all nuclear weapons treaties and continues to escalate its war against Russia in Ukraine, we are closer to nuclear annihilation than ever before.

   This conclusion is shared by many esteemed thinkers such as the late Daniel Ellsberg who died on June 16, 2023 and whose 2017 book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, makes clear that nuclear war, waged intentionally or by mistake or accident, is very possible. In the months before he died, he warned that this is now especially true with the situation in Ukraine and the U.S. provocations against China………………………………………………………………….

   LikeLike

   1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-so-many-learned-stop-worrying-love-nukes/5825007

      LikeLike

4. WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?

   [Note: The same Question can also be asked about the next Pandemic Event]

   What will you do when your government once again fails its Constitutionally-mandated duty and responsibility to preserve and protect the Life, Liberty, Property, Privacy, and The Pursuit of Happiness of America’s citizens from all enemies, foreign and domestic? Will you meekly and absent-mindedly accept the fact that, once again, not one single elected politician, not one single entrenched civilian or military career bureaucrat, not one single anointed political appointee is to be held accountable or made to be responsible and to pay for his or her failures?

   WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?

   What will you do when thousands more of your countrymen are murdered before your very eyes on live television? Will you once again dutifully and diffidently shrug off your absolute, inalienable, and unconditional Right to know the Real, Whole Truth about WHAT actually happened, about HOW it actually happened, about WHY it actually happened, about WHO actually made it happen, and about Who actually LET it happen? Will you once again passively and patriotically accept the Official “conspiracy theory” version of events as explained to you by your government, and as packaged and presented, marketed and sold to you by its experts, cheerleaders, gatekeepers, and champions in what used to be called The Media – mainstream, corporate, liberal, alternative, conservative, progressive, patriotic, radical, which, what, and/or wherever?

   WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?

   What will you do when the so-called War Against so-called Terrorism abroad and at home is transparently, clearly, and undeniably demonstrated to be a total, abject failure and thus lie, scam, hoax, and sham? Will you once again give even more untaxed money, unchallenged political power, and unchallengeable legal authority to the very people, offices, organizations, and agencies by whose failures this “War” was created and is waged, and who can promise you only that your — and their — investment in it will last forever?

   WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?

   What will you do when your elected and appointed officials further dismantle Constitutional government in the name of “civilization,” further diminish individual and civil liberties in the name of “freedom,” and finally destroy the last vestiges of whatever power We, the People, may have once commanded, all in the name of “democracy” and “security”? Will you obediently and obsequiously once again hide and watch the next stage in the biggest seizure of government power on this planet since Stalin’s Russia in the 20s, Hitler’s Germany and Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 30s, and Mao’s China in the 40s?

   WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?

   Will you rush out to buy brand new flags and ribbons and bumper stickers, buttons, posters and signs, to replace the torn, shredded, faded, matted, pealed, and rusted ones you rushed out to buy after the first 9/11? And then once again go on with your lives, desperately hoping that you can somehow continue pretending to pretend that nothing has really changed, that life does indeed go on the Day After The End of The World As We Knew It, Once Again.

   WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?

   Will you piously, stoically, and heroically accept a Draft as part of the necessary, national sacrifice demanded in this time of new national peril and challenge? Particularly if you get to keep your tax breaks and gas in your SUVs, and your kid gets to get his or her Deferment?

   WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?

   Will you, the so-called “peace, anti-War, and social justice” community of America, once again walk right past GROUND ZERO — The Real, Whole Truth — looking for something more significant, something more relevant, something more important? Will you once again rush to hold your episodic, Gatherings Of The Tribe to rail and rant and beat your breasts and massage your gums and egos against the newest extension and expansion and endless continuation of this so-called “War” at home and abroad?

   This War about which you have — from DAY ZERO, from September 11, 2001 — completely refused and thus failed to “think the unthinkable,” and thus understand, and thus first prevent and then and now stop?

   Will you ever succeed? Will you ever stop ANY War? Will you ever really want Peace instead of just Power, Justice instead of the Judicial Authority that comes with that Power, and Truth instead of nothing more or less than simply your fair share of the Loot?

   WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN 9/11 HAPPENS ONCE AGAIN?

   What will you do when those who benefited most from its happening the first time determine that the time has come for another major Terror Event, because maximal strategic and tactical political, economic, and, above all, psychological gain and advantage is to be achieved with another, with a second “New Pearl Harbor”? Will you once again feign ignorance of their — and your — history?

   WHAT WILL YOU DO, AMERICA, WHEN THOSE WHO BENEFITED MOST FROM THE FIRST 9/11 DETERMINE THAT THEY STAND TO GAIN EVEN MORE WITH A SECOND ITERATION?

   Who and/or What is going to stop them?

   DO YOU HAVE THE COURAGE TO EVEN ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS? LET ALONE ANSWER THEM?

   [Originally written and posted online in late December, 2001.]

   LikeLike

5. FIFTEEN USEFUL FACTS by Caitlin Johnstone 070223

   ~ 1. It’s easier to understand what’s going on in the world when you mentally “mute” people’s narratives about what’s going on and just look at the material movements of wealth, resources, weapons, and people. That’s how you separate what’s real from the manipulations and empty narrative fluff, how you see who’s doing the taking and hoarding, and how you figure out who the real aggressors are in international conflicts.

   ~ 2. The three most overlooked and under-appreciated aspects of the human experience are consciousness, the extent to which conditioned thought patterns dictate our lives, and the influence of propaganda.

   ~ 3. We live in a civilization that’s so pervasively steeped in lies and manipulations that the only way to have a truth-based relationship with reality is to drop all your assumptions and premises about what’s true and begin examining everything from the very beginning with fresh eyes.

   ~ 4. The phenomenon known as spiritual enlightenment is a real thing which we are all capable of realizing, and the fact that this potential exists within our species has many far-reaching implications for what we are capable of attaining as a civilization.

   ~ 5. Everything is beautiful. Not seeing the beauty in something is always the failure of the perceiver, not the thing being perceived.

   ~ 6. Happiness is the natural default position of human consciousness. It’s only through egoic delusions that we trick ourselves into unhappiness.

   ~ 7. There are strange untapped potentials within our species which our philosophies don’t touch on, our religions don’t anticipate, our academia doesn’t acknowledge, and our common worldviews don’t account for.

   ~ 8. Reality is nondual. There’s no real separation between the perceiver and that which is perceived, or between any of the objects in sense perception. All is indivisible.

   ~ 9. The self is an illusion held together by believed mental narratives and fear-based energetic fixations. This illusion can be seen through and transcended.

   ~ 10. It’s possible for two people to keep falling more and more deeply in love with each other for their entire lives, as long as they’re both intensely curious about each other and both keep growing and discovering new parts of themselves to love.

   ~ 11. The feeling of guilt is useless and can safely be dropped entirely. The only people who might benefit from feeling some guilt are the sociopaths and psychopaths among us who never experience it anyway. For those among us with healthy empathy centers, guilt is unnecessary to motivate good behavior and often becomes a tool that manipulators use to control us.

   ~ 12. Antisocial personality disorder, more commonly known as sociopathy and psychopathy, is one of the greatest obstacles to human thriving. That there really are creatures among us who don’t think or feel like the rest of us do and frequently use their lack of empathy to climb the ladders of wealth and power sounds made up (and even sounds like the basis of many racist belief systems), but it is a fact. Not until our species becomes so emotionally intelligent and awake that sociopaths and psychopaths are unable to thrive in it or go unseen will this problem disappear.

   ~ 13. You can recognize sociopaths, psychopaths, and other narcissists in your life by paying attention to how much energy they pour into convincing you to believe stories about others, about themselves, and especially about you. Someone who often spends energy trying to get you to believe negative things about yourself is someone you should get out of your life as quickly as possible.

   ~ 14. There really is a struggle in our world between light and darkness, though it doesn’t look how the movies tell us to expect it. Those in power seek to keep their dark deeds hidden in darkness by maintaining government secrecy, propaganda and censorship. The manipulators in our own lives seek to keep their manipulations and misdeeds hidden in the same way. Even within our own personal psychology there are dysfunctional structures which seek to remain hidden in the unconscious. Humanity’s struggle is to bring that all into the light.

   ~ 15. A sincere devotion to knowing the truth is the path toward happiness, health and harmony, for humans as individuals and for humanity as a collective. Knowing what’s true about ourselves uncovers our inner dysfunctionality and leads to healing and enlightenment. Knowing what’s true about our world leads to an understanding of the abusive nature of our power structures and societal systems. Continually striving toward the light of truth will bring us all home.

   Source: https://substack.com/@caitlinjohnstone/note/c-18042682 .

   LikeLiked by 1 person

6. FFF’s Jacob Hornberger’s conclusion is as follows: “The national-security state is a malignant tumor on the American body politic. Although our nation faces lots of problems, the priority should be given to the removal of this cancer and to the restoration of our founding governmental system of a limited-government republic, before it is too late.”

   THE CANCER OF THE NATIONAL-SECURITY STATE by Jacob G. Hornberger / The Future of Freedom Foundation 062923

   Suppose that after you visit your doctor for a physical examination, he informs you that you are suffering from the following ailments:

   A stiff knee, which requires six months of physical therapy.
   Being overweight, which requires a big change in diet.
   Kidney problems, which require you to give up drinking.
   A growing malignant tumor on your stomach that can be removed by surgery.
   The doctor recommends that you give priority to ailment 4, but you instead decide to give priority to the first three ailments.

   At the end of six months, you have resolved your knee problem, you have brought your weight down to an acceptable level, and you have totally given up drinking. At your six-month review, your doctor commends you on your accomplishments.

   There is just one big problem, however. Your malignant tumor has grown so large that it can no longer be removed. Worse, the cancer has spread throughout your body. Your doctor advises you to get your affairs in order because you only have three months to live.

   That’s the situation that the American people face with respect to the society in which we live. There are multiple problems facing our nation. But the biggest one is the national-security state form of governmental structure under which we have been living for some 75 years. It is this governmental structure that is a malignant tumor on the American body politic. This political cancer is taking us down from within. That’s why it is imperative that Americans make its removal their top priority.

   Consisting of the Pentagon, the vast military-industrial complex, the enormous empire of domestic and foreign military bases, the CIA, and the NSA, along with its foreign policy of interventionism, the national-security establishment is the root cause of the perpetual wars in which the United States has been embroiled since 1947, when the federal government was converted from a limited-government republic to a national-security state.

   The Cold War. The Korean War. The Vietnam War. The Persian Gulf War. The war on terrorism. The war on Islam. The War on Afghanistan. The War on Iraq. The war on Syria. The war on Yemen. The war on China. The war on Iran. Multiple military incursions. Multiple coups and state-sponsored assassinations. And now the renewed Cold War on Russia, which has gotten us perilously close to all-out, life-destroying nuclear war, just like it did back in October 1962.

   Of course, there is lots of focus on ending America’s “endless wars.” But that’s akin to focusing on our knee problem rather than on our cancer problem. Ending one forever war accomplishes nothing from a long-term perspective because always around the corner is another forever war. That’s because the national-security state apparatus is the root cause of each forever war in which they embroil America.

   A national-security state necessarily depends on forever wars or, at the very least, crises, dangers, and threats from official enemies, adversaries, opponents, and competitors in order to justify its existence and its ever-growing taxpayer-funded largess. The wars, crises, dangers, and threats keep people agitated and afraid. They become convinced that without the national-security establishment keeping them safe, the nation would inevitably be conquered by the Reds, the terrorists, the Muslims, the illegal immigrants, the drug dealers, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, or some other scary boogeyman.

   There is, of course, the out-of-control federal spending, debt, and monetary debauchery that comes with all this to consider. It’s not just the welfare state (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, etc.) that is taking us down from within. It’s also the warfare state, which is costing American taxpayers close to a trillion dollars a year.

   There is also the omnipotent, totalitarian-like, dark-side powers that come with a national-security state, such as assassination, kidnapping, torture, and indefinite detention. Such powers are able to be exercised against both foreigners and American citizens.

   For many years, I have been recommending a book titled NATIONAL SECURITY AND DOUBLE GOVERNMENT by Michael J. Glennon, who is a professor of law at Tufts University and served as counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee.

   Glennon’s thesis is a simple but extremely ominous one. He persuasively makes the case that it is the national-security branch of the government — that is, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — that is actually running the federal government, especially in foreign affairs. The other three branches — the executive, legislative, and judicial — are permitted to maintain the veneer of power. But that’s all it is — an appearance. The real power, Glennon argues, lies with the national-security establishment.

   That means that it is the Pentagon, not the deferential executive or legislative branches, that is calling the shots and running the show in Ukraine. Given the extreme anti-Russia hostility that drove the national-security establishment and its willingness to risk nuclear war during the Cold War, Glennon’s thesis does not bode well for the long-term future and well-being of the American people.

   The national-security state is a malignant tumor on the American body politic. Although our nation faces lots of problems, the priority should be given to the removal of this cancer and to the restoration of our founding governmental system of a limited-government republic, before it is too late.

   Source: https://www.fff.org/2023/06/29/the-cancer-of-the-national-security-state/ .

   LikeLike

   1. Like the title of the runaway Oscar winner of Hollywood this year!
      I think the title is prescient, ‘EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE’

      LikeLike

7. Meanwhile in Other News: There is something almost poetically profound [or profoundly poetic] about the fact that July 4, 2023 ~ the 247th birthday of The United States of America ~ broke the all-time record for the hottest single day globally on record. Which was set on July 3, 2023. And then that the July 4 record was subsequently broken again on July 5, and then again on July 6.

   According to the World Meteorological Organization: “It was the hottest June on record globally, with record-high sea surface temperatures, especially in the Atlantic Ocean. Antarctic sea ice extent at unprecedented low values for the time of year.”

   Yale Climate Connection’s Eye On The Storm’s Bob Henson asks: THE WORLD JUST BROKE A STUNNING SLEW OF HEAT RECORDS. WHY RIGHT NOW? [ Full article at https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/07/the-world-just-broke-a-stunning-slew-of-heat-records-why-right-now/ .]

   “Mid-2023 seems destined to go down as a pivotal period in climate change history — a time when planet Earth seemed to go from a simmer to a full rolling boil in a matter of weeks. What’s jumping out isn’t a single heat wave, but a one-after-another series of global and regional heat records astounding in both scope and persistence.

   “What’s happened in recent weeks to turn the drip-drip-drip of climate warming into a full-on torrent?” …..

   Henson then provides a detailed, graphically illustrated overview of current data and historical context look at several of the most prominent global and regional records and some of the factors that may be leading to the recent spikes:

   ~ HOTTEST SINGLE DAYS GLOBALLY ON RECORD [cited above].
   ~ HIGHEST GLOBAL MONTHLY AVERAGE FOR ANY JUNE.
   ~ WARMEST GLOBAL SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURES ON RECORD, RELATIVE TO AVERAGE.
   ~ SLOWEST-GROWING ANTARCTIC SEA ICE ON RECORD..

   He then provides what he calls A ROGUE’S GALLERY OF CULPRITS; again with details:

   ~ First and Foremost of All: GLOBAL WARMING.
   ~ EL NIÑO.
   ~ JET-STREAM WEIRDNESS.
   ~ THE AZORES HIGH.
   ~ REDUCTION IN SULFUR DIOXIDE AEROSOLS BELCHED OUT BY SHIPPING.
   ~ THE JANUARY, 2022 ERUPTION OF THE HUNGA TONGA–HUNGA HA’APAI VOLCANO.

   If 1967 has been termed “The Long Hot Summer” of American History because of the more than 150 Race Riots that happened [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long,_hot_summer_of_1967 ], the Summer of 2023 may be even Hotter in many more ways than one.

   And not just because of the Heat.

   LikeLike

8. The Rutherford Institute’s John & Nisha Whitehead begin their 27 June piece A STATE OF MARTIAL LAW: AMERICA IS A MILITARY DICTATORSHIP DISGUISED AS A DEMOCRACY as follows:

   “What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?”—Thomas Jefferson

   The government is goosestepping all over our freedoms.

   Case in point: America’s founders 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.

   Yet sometime over the course of the past 240-plus years that constitutional republic has been transformed into a military dictatorship disguised as a democracy.

   Most Americans seem relatively untroubled by this state of martial law.

   Incredibly, when President Biden bragged about how the average citizen doesn’t stand a chance against the government’s massive arsenal of militarized firepower, it barely caused a ripple.

   As Biden remarked at a fundraising event in California, “I love these guys who say the Second Amendment is—you know, the tree of liberty is water with the blood of patriots. Well, if [you] want to do that, you want to work against the government, you need an F-16. You need something else than just an AR-15.”

   The message being sent to the citizenry is clear: there is no place in our nation today for the kind of revolution our forefathers mounted against a tyrannical government.

   For that matter, the government has declared an all-out war on any resistance whatsoever by the citizenry to its mandates, power grabs and abuses.

   By this standard, had the Declaration of Independence been written today, it would have rendered its signers extremists or terrorists, resulting in them being placed on a government watch list, targeted for surveillance of their activities and correspondence, and potentially arrested, held indefinitely, stripped of their rights and labeled enemy combatants.

   This is no longer the stuff of speculation and warning.

   For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.

   A 2008 Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report goes on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.” …..

   And they conclude it with:

   Brace yourselves.

   There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

   Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by political theater and public spectacle that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware.

   Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

   And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

   The architects of the police state have us exactly where they want us: under their stamping boot, gasping for breath, desperate for freedom, grappling for some semblance of a future that does not resemble the totalitarian prison being erected around us.

   The government and its cohorts have conspired to ensure that the only real recourse the American people have to express their displeasure with the government is through voting, yet that is no real recourse at all.

   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, what is unfolding before us is not a revolution. This is an anti-revolution.

   We are at our most vulnerable right now.

   The full article is at https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/a_state_of_martial_law_america_is_a_military_dictatorship_disguised_as_a_democracy .

   LikeLiked by 1 person

Comments are closed.