NORDSTREAM SABOTAGE: A NEW LOW FOR WESTERN MAINSTREAM MEDIA
By Dimitri Lascaris | October 7, 2022
The Guardian’s coverage of the recent Nord Stream sabotage highlights the increasingly absurd lengths to which Western media will go to promote the U.S. government’s hegemonic agenda.
Guardian coverage of this portentous event has included at least three, shameless exercises in propaganda-masquerading-as-journalism.
On September 28 – two days after natural gas began belching into the Baltic Sea due to multiple blasts targeting Nord Stream – the Guardian published an article by Philip Oltermann, the Guardian’s Berlin bureau chief, entitled “Nord Stream blasts could herald new phase of hybrid war, say EU politicians”.
By focusing attention on the perspective of EU politicians, the title of Oltermann’s article left no doubt as to its bias: E.U. governments have flooded Ukraine with weapons and have imposed sanctions on Russia that were plainly designed to destroy its economy. None of the E.U. officials quoted in the article can plausibly claim to be independent, objective arbiters of the debate over who attacked the Nord Stream pipelines.
According to Oltermann:
Roderich Kiesewetter, a member of parliament for the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told the Guardian the pipeline attack had the hallmarks of the “hybrid warfare approach” Russia has pursued for the last decade, with the aim of “dividing the European Union not by military but through social and diplomatic means”.
“We have to ask who has an interest in destroying this infrastructure,” said Kiesewetter, a member of the Bundestag’s committee on foreign affairs. While it was in the interest of the US, states in central and eastern Europe and the Baltics that Nord Stream 2 would never be activated, he argued that an act of state-sponsored sabotage by a Nato ally would have come attached with too large a risk of a political backlash.
“Russia, on the other hand, has an interest in sending us a signal: to threaten it could cause similar damage to pipelines between Algeria and France, to our power lines or submarine fibre-optic cables […] I consider it likely that Russia was behind this attack.”
What does Keisewetter mean by “hybrid warfare approach”, and why is this approach uniquely that of Russia? For decades, the U.S. military has degraded and destroyed the civilian infrastructure of its official enemies – for example, in Iraq and Libya. Therefore, one could just as easily argue that this act of sabotage has all “the hallmarks” of U.S. aggression.
Keisewetter does acknowledge that the U.S. (as well as certain unnamed European states) had an interest in killing the Nord Stream pipelines (more on that later), but he claims that the political backlash from their sabotage of Nord Stream would constitute “too large a risk”.
Yet, if recent history teaches us anything about relations between the United States and the E.U., it’s that the U.S. can get away with just about any betrayal of the E.U.’s trust.
In 2014, the Guardian and other Western media outlets revealed, thanks to whistleblower Edward Snowden, that the U.K. intelligence agency, GCHQ, had tapped into fibre-optic cables carrying global communications, and that GCHQ had shared vast amounts of data with its U.S. counterpart, the NSA. The targeted fibre-optic cables included three undersea cables with terminals in Italy.
The Snowden documents also disclosed that the U.S. had spied on E.U. internal computer networks in Washington and the E.U.’s United Nations office in New York, and that the NSA had conducted an electronic eavesdropping operation in a building in Brussels, where the E.U. Council of Ministers and the European Council were located.
At the time, Western media outlets also reported that the U.S. had secretly intercepted and monitored cell phone conversations of Angela Merkel, who was then Germany’s Chancellor.
What was the “backlash” resulting from U.S. spying on Merkel and other top E.U officials? What price did the U.S. government pay for undermining the integrity of telecommunications infrastructure in the E.U.?
Apart from a few theatrical, you-hurt-our-feelings protestations from E.U. leaders — for example, Merkel’s pathetic complaint to Obama that U.S. spying on her cell phone conversations was “completely unacceptable” — there was no meaningful “backlash”.
The E.U. imposed no sanctions on the U.S. It did not sever diplomatic relations with the U.S.. It did not close down a single U.S. military base. Indeed, since the Snowden revelations emerged, U.S.-E.U. relations have been conducted essentially on a business-as-usual basis.
Predictably, Oltermann mentions none of these facts in his article of September 28. In fact, Oltermann evinces no scepticism that the political backlash would be too great if, indeed, the U.S. and/or its proxies had sabotaged Nord Stream.
Oltermann continues:
Nord Stream has been at the heart of a standoff between Russia and Europe over energy supplies since the start of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, but it is not immediately clear who stands to benefit from the destruction of the gas infrastructure.
Several paragraphs earlier, Oltermann had revealed that a member of the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee had acknowledged that the U.S. and certain European states had an interest in preventing the activation of Nord Stream, yet it was “not immediately clear” to Oltermann who stands to benefit from the destruction of that infrastructure?
Oltermann then acknowledges that, in Germany, there had been calls recently “to open the pipeline as an energy crisis looms over Europe”, but he dismisses those calls as having come from “political parties on the far right and the far left.”
The reality is that, due to the inaccessibility of affordable Russian gas, Germany’s economy is now on the verge of collapse. That is why, immediately prior to the sabotage of Nord Stream, German protesters took to the streets to demand that Nord Stream be reopened and that a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine war be pursued.
Oltermann evidently believes that only Germans on the “far right” and “far left” are alarmed about the immense hardships that Germany’s economic collapse will inflict upon their families and millions of ordinary Germans.
On September 29, the day after the Guardian published Oltermann’s article, it published an editorial focused on the Russian Federation’s just-completed annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts. In that editorial, the Guardian’s editors wrote:
The annexations come alongside the mobilisation order, and, many believe, the damage to the Nord Stream pipelines (while Russia clearly appears the most plausible culprit, US intelligence has been notably cautious about ascribing blame).
Nowhere in the editorial, however, does the Guardian explain the basis for its claim that “Russia clearly appears the most plausible culprit”. Its editors do not offer a scintilla of evidence or logic to support their eye-popping claim that Russia may have blown up its own pipelines. Nor do they explain why U.S. intelligence would hesitate to accuse Russia of sabotage if Russia “clearly” was “the most plausible culprit”. When has U.S. intelligence been reluctant to level evidence-free accusations of criminality at Russia’s government?
Finally, on September 30, the Guardian published an article by Kate Connolly, the Guardian’s Berlin correspondent, entitled “Size of Nord Stream blasts equal to large amount of explosive, UN told”. Connolly wrote:
Intelligence sources quoted in the news magazine Spiegel believe the pipelines were hit in four places by explosions using 500kg of TNT, the equivalent to the explosive power of a heavy aircraft bomb. German investigators have undertaken seismic readings to calculate the power of the blasts.
The first signs of explosions were registered on Monday morning by a Danish earthquake station after suspicious activity in the waters of the Baltic Sea. A monitoring station on the Danish island of Bornholm measured severe tremors.
A representative of the Swedish coastguard told AFP: “There are two leaks on Swedish territory and two on the Danish side.”
It remains a mystery as to how the explosives reached the pipeline. According to initial reports, the explosions happened at depths of between 70 and 90 metres.
There has been speculation that mini submarines might have been used to deliver the explosives. However, the amount of explosives that would have been necessary to cause such large blasts make this theory increasingly unlikely.
Instead, experts are suggesting that maintenance robots operating within the pipeline structure may have planted the bombs during repair works.
If this theory proves to be right, the sophisticated nature of the attack as well as the power of the blast would add weight to suspicions that the attacks were carried out by a state power, with fingers pointed at Russia. Moscow has repeatedly underlined its capability to disrupt Europe’s energy infrastructure.
On Friday, Vladimir Putin blamed the US and its allies for blowing up the pipelines, raising the temperature in the crisis. Offering no evidence for his claim, the Russian president said in a speech to mark the annexation of four Ukrainian regions: “The sanctions were not enough for the Anglo-Saxons: they moved on to sabotage. It is hard to believe but it is a fact that they organised the blasts on the Nord Stream international gas pipelines.”
Three elements of Connolly’s report merit commentary.
First, who are “the experts” who suggest that maintenance robots operating within the pipeline may have planted bombs during maintenance? Connolly doesn’t tell us, nor does she explain why she omitted to reveal their identities. Are they government “experts”? Were they not authorized to speak publicly? If they were government experts, to what governments do they belong? Without this information, Connolly’s readers are unable to assess whether her sources do indeed have relevant expertise and are truly objective.
Second, Connolly claims that Moscow has repeatedly “underlined” its capability to disrupt Europe’s energy infrastructure. Really? I have never seen a threat from the Russian government to disrupt Europe’s energy infrastructure. If indeed the Russian government ever issued such a threat, then why doesn’t Connolly tell us when, how and by whom that threat was issued?
By contrast, the President of the United States explicitly threatened earlier this year to “bring an end” to Nord Stream if Russia invaded Ukraine. That threat was issued in a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz:
What is most damning about Biden’s threat is his response to a reporter’s question about Germany. When the reporter points out to Biden that Germany – a supposedly key ally of the United States – is part-owner of Nord Stream, Biden doesn’t flinch. He simply disregards Germany’s stake in the project and declares (with the hapless, weak-kneed Scholz standing near him) “I promise you, we will be able” to bring Nord Stream to an end.
For the sake of appearances and diplomacy, Biden could have dissembled. He could have said something like “of course, we will consult with our German partners before taking any action to end Nord Stream” or “the decision about ending Nord Stream will be made jointly with the German government”. Yet Biden said no such thing, evidently believing that the whole world should know that Germany’s view of the matter was irrelevant to the U.S. government.
Connolly says nothing in her article about Biden’s recent, explicit threat to ‘bring an end’ to Nord Stream, but she does make an unsubstantiated claim that Moscow had “underlined” its capacity to disrupt Europe’s energy infrastructure.
Finally, Connolly reports that Putin blames “the Anglo-Saxons” – presumably, the British and Americans – for the Nord Stream sabotage.
Let us contemplate that fact for a moment.
If in fact Russia did not blow up its own pipelines, and if the Russian government is convinced that the British and Americans sabotaged Nord Stream, the world is likely heading toward a very dark place, both figuratively and literally. The Russian government is not likely to tolerate Western attacks on vitally important Russian energy infrastructure. Somehow, at some point, Russia is liable to retaliate against the West’s energy infrastructure. The disabling of key energy infrastructure may well have dire consequences for Western economies that are already reeling from a global energy crisis.
If one or more Western governments are behind the sabotage of Nord Stream, they have crossed a red line that will expose Western economies and citizens to heightened energy insecurity in the months and years ahead. They may well have hurt the West far more than they have hurt Russia.
The Case Against Russia
I am a lawyer. I was first called to the bar in the State of New York thirty years ago. For most of my career, I have specialized in class action litigation. Typically, on behalf of my clients, I’ve prosecuted claims of fraud and other forms of corporate wrongdoing. Often, the claims I advance involve potential criminality. The complex evidence underlying these claims must be assessed and interpreted with meticulous attention to detail, but also with a healthy dose of scepticism and common sense.
Like any case of potential criminality, I approach the question of who sabotaged Nord Stream like a lawyer. I bring to bear my experience litigating claims of wrongdoing. Among other things, I ask: who possessed a motive to commit the crime? Who had both the ability and the opportunity to carry it out? Are the protagonists and the witnesses marshalled for and against those protagonists credible? What do qualified experts say? Are those experts unbiased? Taking into account these and other considerations, what are the most rational inferences to be drawn from all available evidence?
Certainly, the Russian military possessed the capacity to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, but what possible motive would it have to do so?
Gazprom, a fossil fuels behemoth that is controlled by the Russian state, invested over US$5 billion in Nord Stream 2. Moreover, had Russia wanted to stop the flow of gas to Europe through Nord Stream, all it had to do was turn off the gas taps in Russia. There was no need for Russia to destroy those pipelines and jeopardize a state-owned entity’s multi-billion-dollar investment.
As long as Nord Stream remained functional, the Russian government was able to offer an enticement to Germany to remove sanctions on Russia. As long as Nord Stream remains non-functional, Russia’s leverage over Germany is diminished considerably.
Moreover, it is questionable whether the Russian military had the opportunity to commit this sabotage.
The explosions occurred near Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic Sea. Bornholm is surrounded by states that are either members of NATO or have applied to join NATO (Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Poland). It is only 100 km from the Polish coastline.
NATO heavily monitors and effectively controls the western Baltic Sea, where the sabotage occurred. How could Russian saboteurs execute this challenging operation while escaping detection by NATO?
The Case Against the United States
Arguably, no government had a greater motivation to destroy Nord Stream than the United States government.
Joe Biden was by no means the first U.S. politician to express a desire to see Nord Stream terminated. For years, U.S. government officials have condemned Nord Stream 2 and have pressured Germany’s government to abandon the project.
Here are but a few examples.
In 2014, former U.S. Secretary of State and unrepentant war criminal Condoleeza Rice gave an interview in which she was asked whether Germany had been sufficiently “aggressive” with Russia. In response, Rice expressed her desire that Europe “depend more on the North American energy platform” and “the tremendous bounty of oil and gas we are finding in North America.” “You want to have pipelines that don’t go through Ukraine and Russia,” she added. “For years, we’ve tried to get the Europeans to be interested in different pipeline routes. It’s time to do that.”
In December 2021, as fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine intensified, Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, was questioned by Republican Senator Ron Johnson about the Biden administration’s plans for sanctioning Russia. Johnson prefaced his questions by noting that, despite their differences, Republicans and Democrats were united in their hostility to Russia. Johnson also stated that it was important to make Vladimir Putin understand how “harmful” U.S. sanctions would be to the “Russian people”. Then, after noting the Senate’s strong support for sanctions on Nord Stream, Johnson asked Nuland whether the Biden administration was contemplating sanctions that “would prevent Nord Stream 2 from ever being completed.” Nuland replied “absolutely”.
If Victoria Nuland is familiar to you, that might be due to her infamous 2014 conversation with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. A leaked recording of that conversation revealed that the U.S. government had handpicked the next Prime Minister of Ukraine in advance of a coup that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych. In Nuland’s conversation with Pyatt, Pyatt noted that E.U. officials did not agree with Washington’s choice for Ukraine’s next PM. In response, Nuland said to Pyatt “fuck the E.U.”
One cannot overstate the U.S. government’s contempt for the priorities of its European allies vassals.
Despite the extensive and unambiguous record of U.S. government hostility to Nord Stream, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken laughably claimed, on the day after the sabotage, that the destruction of Nord Stream was in “no one’s interest”. If that were true, why would anyone destroy it?
It took the dim-witted Blinken less than one week to publicly contradict himself. On October 2, he giddily declared in a press conference with Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly that the destruction of Nord Stream presented to the United States a “strategic” and “tremendous opportunity” to end Europe’s dependence on Russian gas.
Even in the absence of these and similar statements by U.S. officials, it would be obvious that the U.S. government has a motive to “bring an end” to Nord Stream.
The neocons who control U.S. government foreign policy covet, above all else, global hegemony. Maintaining U.S. global hegemony requires that the U.S. effect regime change in Russia and that it replace Russia’s nationalist government with a Yeltsin-like buffoon who will slavishly do the bidding of his American handlers. Only then will it be possible for the U.S. to isolate and ‘contain’ China, whose growing wealth and power is the primary impediment to U.S. hegemony. As long as the powerful German economy is closely intertwined with that of Russia, the U.S. government’s ability to undermine Russia’s economy will be limited.
Quite apart from that, the U.S. fossil fuels industry stands to gain enormously from the E.U.’s rejection of Russian fossil fuels. As Blinken acknowledged, U.S. gas producers are undoubtedly licking their chops at the “tremendous opportunity” created by Nord Stream’s destruction.
Not only did the U.S. have the motive to destroy Nord Stream, it had both the technological capability and the opportunity to do so.
The site of the sabotage lies in waters that are effectively controlled by NATO.
According to Flightradar24 data, U.S. military helicopters habitually and on numerous occasions circled for hours over the site of the Nord Stream sabotage near Bornholm Island earlier in September.
Moreover, in June of this year, the U.S. military conducted the BALTOPS naval exercise off the coast of Bornholm to demonstrate NATO’s mine hunting capabilities. According to an official publication of the Navy League of the United States, this exercise was used as “an opportunity to test emerging technology”:
In support of BALTOPS, U.S. Navy 6th Fleet partnered with U.S. Navy research and warfare centers to bring the latest advancements in unmanned underwater vehicle mine hunting technology to the Baltic Sea to demonstrate the vehicle’s effectiveness in operational scenarios.
Experimentation was conducted off the coast of Bornholm, Denmark, with participants from Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport, and Mine Warfare Readiness and Effectiveness Measuring all under the direction of U.S. 6th Fleet Task Force 68.
By contrast, I’m aware of no reports of the presence of Russian military assets at or near the site of sabotage in the months leading up to the incident. (If you have seen such reports, I encourage you to share them with me.)
Immediately before the explosions that disabled Nord Stream, German protesters had taken to the streets to call for the reopening of Nord Stream in the face of skyrocketing energy bills. What better way to prevent the German government from acceding to public pressure than making it impossible for Nord Stream to deliver gas to Germany?
Of course, this circumstantial evidence does not prove definitively that the U.S. military or a proxy acting with the consent and support of the U.S. government sabotaged Nord Stream, nor does it disprove definitively that Russia sabotaged its own pipelines.
Nonetheless, the totality of the circumstantial evidence makes a mockery of claims by the Guardian and other pro-NATO, Western media outlets that Russia is ‘the most plausible culprit’.
By any rational measure, the United States government is, by a wide margin, ‘the most plausible culprit’.
Another plausible culprit is Poland.
Not only is Poland closer to the site of the sabotage than Russia, Poland’s government is intensely hostile to Russia.
Poland’s government detests the Nord Stream pipelines. Using highly undiplomatic language against a fellow NATO and E.U. member, the Polish government has repeatedly castigated Germany’s government for the Nord Stream project. In 2021, for example, it accused Germany of forming a “brutal alliance” with Russia against the interests of other European states.
Shortly after the sabotage was revealed, Radek Sikorski, the former foreign and defence minister of Poland, tweeted an image of natural gas spewing from the site of the Nord Stream sabotage, along with the words “Thank you, USA.” He quickly deleted the tweet after it went viral.
It may well be that Poland played a role in the attacks on Nord Stream, but it is difficult to imagine that it would commit a crime of this magnitude without the consent and support of the U.S. government, NATO’s dominant member.
Where do we go from here?
Danish and Swedish authorities are reportedly conducting an investigation into the Nord Stream attacks. The Kremlin claims that it has not been invited to participate in the investigation, while Nord Stream operators say that they were unable to inspect the damaged sections of the pipelines because of restrictions imposed by Danish and Swedish authorities who had cordoned off the area.
Denmark is a member of NATO, while Sweden has applied for NATO membership.
If Germany was a truly sovereign state, its government would demand an independent, international investigation into the attacks on Nord Stream.
Moreover, no investigation supervised by a NATO or a wannabe-NATO government could be truly independent, especially if Russian authorities have been excluded from the investigation. All NATO states, and particularly NATO’s most powerful member (the U.S.), have a strong interest in pointing the finger at Russia.
The fact that Germany’s government has not demanded a truly independent investigation speaks volumes about Germany’s supposed sovereignty, but the German government’s feeble response should surprise no one. At the behest of their masters in Washington, German ‘leaders’ committed their country to economic suicide months ago.
Sooner or later, however, the truth about Nord Stream may well emerge. If it is ultimately demonstrated that the United States or a U.S. proxy attacked Nord Stream, and did so at a moment when Germany’s economy is collapsing under the weight of an energy crisis, the consequences will be enormous, not only for Russia’s relations with the West, but also for Germany’s (and the E.U.’s) relations with the United States and NATO.
Indeed, the Nord Stream sabotage may ultimately prove to be one of the most consequential crimes of the twenty-first century. If the U.S. committed the crime, Western media will have played a key role in protecting the criminals who did it.
I leave you with this video clip of an October 3, 2022 interview of Professor Jeffrey Sachs, former director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. When Dr. Sachs has the temerity to suggest that the U.S. government is behind the Nord Stream sabotage, two Bloomberg reporters freak out and attempt, unsuccessfully, to shut him down. (Check out his priceless facial expression when the Bloomberg reporters lose it.)
Monkeypox is quickly evaporating, but the liability-free shots continue
By Meryl Nass | October 7, 2022
A long WaPo nothing piece discusses how the intradermal injection of Jynneos leaves a nasty lesion for up to six weeks, marking gay men. The article fails to touch on the evidence that it does or does not actually work, nor why the shot causes this prolonged misery. TB tests given intradermally only left a lesion for about a day, so what is so noxious about the Jynneos vaccine, which was diluted to only 20% of the original strength, that it causes such a prolonged lesion of the upper arm?
CDC buried the graph below, but eventually I found it. New monkeypox cases are only one fifth what they were in August, a mere 8 weeks ago. Soon it will be gone.
Before that happens, however, NYC wants to inject as many people as possible. It has expanded eligibility to anyone who wants the vaccine, and has advertised 30,000 newly available doses.
Whodunit?
By Way of Deception, Thou Shalt do War
By Doug E. Steil | Aletho News | October 7, 2022
With the mainstream crying Russia, which makes zero sense… (I have the keys to the taxi I’m driving, which pays my bills but to turn it off, I’ll blow it up also:
On 25 July 2022, Gazprom announced it will reduce gas flows to Germany to 20% of the maximum capacity, or 50% of the current throughput. The company shut down the pipeline for 10 days because of maintenance.
On 31 August 2022, Gazprom halted any gas delivery through Nord Stream 1 for three days, officially because of maintenance. On 2 September 2022, the company announced that natural gas supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline would remain shut off indefinitely until the main gas turbine at the Portovaya compressor station near St Petersburg was fixed from an engine oil leak.
And the alternative mainstream crying USA, which makes more sense, but the plethora of memes and ease in which the ‘almost mainstream’ talks about this option… including the infamous ‘thank you USA’ tweet from the (Jewish) former Polish foreign minister, Sikorski, who then deleted it (after millions of views and re-tweets)… it all looks remarkably ‘black or white’; and this, as always, should be a red flag.
Who? How? Why? are the questions everyone is asking… but no one asked when?
So when did this happen?
On 26 September 2022, Danish and Swedish authorities reported a number of explosions at both Nord Stream lines (only string A in NS2): the resulting damage causing a series of gas leaks. The European Union considers the incident to be intentional sabotage.
Anything else occured on September 26, 2022?
Rosh Hashanah 2022 began in the evening of Sunday, September 25 and ended in the evening of Tuesday, September 27.
Ah… but what is Rosh Hashanah ?
Rosh HaShanah (Hebrew: רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה, Rōʾš hašŠānā, lit. “head of the year”) is the Jewish New Year. The biblical name for this holiday is Yom Teruah (יוֹם תְּרוּעָה, Yōm Tərūʿā), literally “day of shouting or blasting.” It is the first of the Jewish High Holy Days (יָמִים נוֹרָאִים, Yāmīm Nōrāʾīm; “Days of Awe”).
Literally day of shouting or BLASTING?
Who suffers most with Nordstream being blown up? Germany. Do a little google search for « germans to freeze this winter »… there are thousands of articles… most written even before september…
Nordstream was a way for Germany to get gas direct from Russia, without paying expensive transit costs through Eastern European middlemen… Eastern European middlemen.
Putin and Clausewitz
Politics By Other Means
By Big Serge | October 5, 2022
With the sole possible exception of the great Sun Tzu and his “Art of War”, no military theorist has had such an enduring philosophical impact as the Prussian General Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz. A participant in the Napoleonic Wars, Clausewitz in his later years dedicated himself to the work that would become his iconic achievement – a dense tome titled simply “Vom Kriege” – On War. The book is a meditation on both military strategy and the socio-political phenomenon of war, which is heavily laced with philosophical rumination. Though On War has had an enduring and indelible impact on the study of military arts, the book itself is at times a rather difficult thing to read – a fact that stems from the great tragedy that Clausewitz was never actually able to finish it. He died in 1831 at the age of only 51 with his manuscript in an unedited disorder; and it fell upon his wife to attempt to organize and publish his papers.
Clausewitz, more than anything, is famous for his aphorisms – “Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult” – and his vocabulary of war, which includes terms such as “friction” and “culmination.” Among all his eminently quotable passages, however, one is perhaps the most famous: his claim that “War is a mere continuation of politics by other means.”
It is on this claim that I wish to fixate for the moment, but first, it may be worthwhile to read the entirety of Clausewitz’s passage on the subject:
“War is the mere continuation of politics by other means. We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. All beyond this which is strictly peculiar to War relates merely to the peculiar nature of the means which it uses. That the tendencies and views of policy shall not be incompatible with these means, the Art of War in general and the Commander in each particular case may demand, and this claim is truly not a trifling one. But however powerfully this may react on political views in particular cases, still it must always be regarded as only a modification of them; for the political view is the object, War is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception.”
On War, Volume 1, Chapter 1, Section 24
Once we cut through Clausewitz’s dense and verbose style, the claim here is relatively simple: war-making always exists in reference to some greater political goal, and it exists on the political spectrum. Politics lies at every point along the axis: war is begun in response to some political need, it is maintained and continued as an act of political will, and it ultimately hopes to achieve political aims. War cannot be separated from politics – indeed, it is the political aspect that makes it war. We may even go further and state that war in the absence of the political superstructure ceases to be war, and instead becomes raw, animalistic violence. It is the political dimension that makes war recognizably distinct from other forms of violence.
Let us contemplate Russia’s war-making in Ukraine in these terms.
It is often the case that the most consequential men in the world are poorly understood in their time – power enshrouds and distorts the great man. This was certainly the case of Stalin and Mao, and it is equally true of both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. Putin in particular is viewed in the west as a Hitlerian demagogue who rules with extrajudicial terror and militarism. This could hardly be farther from the truth.
Almost every aspect of the western caricature of Putin is deeply misguided – though this recent profile by Sean McMeekin comes much closer than most. To begin with, Putin is not a demagogue – he is not a naturally charismatic man, and though he has over time greatly improved his skills as a retail politician, and he is capable of giving impactful speeches when needed, he is not someone who relishes the podium. Unlike Donald Trump, Barack Obama, or even – God forbid – Adolf Hitler, Putin is simply not a natural crowd pleaser. In Russia itself, his imagine is that of a fairly boring but level headed career political servant, rather than a charismatic populist. His enduring popularity in Russia is far more linked to his stabilization of the Russian economy and pension system than it is to pictures of him riding a horse shirtless.
Trust the plan, even when the plan is slow moving and boring
Furthermore, Putin – contrary to the view that he wields unlimited extralegal authority – is rather a stickler for proceduralism. Russia’s government structure expressly empowers a very strong presidency (this was an absolute necessity in the wake of total state collapse in the early 1990’s), but within these parameters Putin is not viewed as a particularly exciting personality prone to radical or explosive decision making. Western critics may claim that there is no ruleof law in Russia, but at the very least, Putin governs by law, with bureaucratic mechanisms and procedures forming the superstructure within which he acts.
This was made vividly apparent in recent days. With Ukraine advancing on multiple fronts, a fresh cycle of doom and triumph was set in motion: pro-Ukrainian figures exult in the apparent collapse of the Russian army, while many in the Russian camp bemoan leadership which they conclude must be criminally incompetent. With all of this underway on the military side, Putin has calmly ushered the annexation process through its legal mechanisms – first holding referendums, then signing treaties on entry in the Russian Federation with the four former Ukrainian oblasts, which were then sent to the State Duma for ratification, followed by the Federation Council, followed again by signature and verification by Putin. As Ukraine throws its summer accumulations into the fight, Putin appears to be mired in paperwork and procedure. The treaties were even reviewed by the Russian constitutional court, and deadlines were set to end the Ukrainian hryvnia as legal tender and replace it with the ruble.
This is a strange spectacle. Putin is plodding his way through the boring legalities of annexation, seemingly deaf to the chorus which is shouting at him that his war is on the verge of total failure. The implacable calm radiating – at least publicly – from the Kremlin seems at odds with events at the front.
So, what really is going on here? Is Putin truly so detached from events on the ground that he is unaware that his army is being defeated? Is he planning to use nuclear weapons in a fit of rage? Or could this be, as Clausewitz says, the mere continuation of politics by other means?
Of all the phantasmagorical claims that have been made about the Russo-Ukrainian War, few are as difficult to believe as the claim that Russia intended to conquer Ukraine with fewer than 200,000 men. Indeed, a central truth of the war that observers simply must come to grasps with is the fact that the Russian army has been badly outnumbered from day one, despite Russia having an enormous demographic advantage over Ukraine itself. On paper, Russia has committed an expeditionary force of less than 200,000 men, though of course that full amount has not been on the frontline in active combat lately.
The light force deployment is related to Russia’s rather unique service model, which has combined “contract soldiers” – the professional core of the army – with a reservist pool that is generated with an annual conscription wave. Russia consequentially has a two-tiered military model, with a world class professional ready force and a large pool of reserve cadres that can be dipped into, augmented with auxiliary forces like BARS (volunteers), Chechens, and LNR-DNR militia.
This two-tiered, mixed service model reflects, in some ways, the geostrategic schizophrenia that plagued post-Soviet Russia. Russia is an enormous country with potentially colossal, continent spanning security commitments, which inherited a Soviet legacy of mass. No country has ever demonstrated a capacity for wartime mobilization on a scale to match the USSR. The transition from a Soviet mobilization scheme to a smaller, leaner, professional ready force was part and parcel of Russia’s neoliberal austerity regime throughout much of the Putin years.
It is important to understand that military mobilization, as such, is also a form of political mobilization. The ready contract force required a fairly low level of political consensus and buy-in from the bulk of the Russian population. This Russian contract force can still accomplish a great deal, militarily speaking – it can destroy Ukrainian military installations, wreak havoc with artillery, bash its way into urban agglomerations in the Donbas, and destroy much of Ukraine’s indiginous war-making potential. It cannot, however, wage a multi-year continental war against an enemy which outnumbers it by at least four to one, and which is sustained with intelligence, command and control, and material which are beyond its immediate reach – especially if the rules of engagement prevent it from striking the enemy’s vital arteries.
More force deployment is needed. Russia must transcend the neoliberal austerity army. It has the material capacity to mobilize the needed forces – it has many millions in its reservist pool, enormous inventories of equipment, and indigenous production capacity undergirded by the natural resources and production potential of the Eurasian bloc that has closed ranks around it. But remember – military mobilization is also political mobilization.
The Soviet Union was able to mobilize tens of millions of young men to blunt, swamp, and eventually annihilate the German land army because it wielded two powerful political instruments. The first was the awesome and far reaching power of the Communist Party, with its ubiquitous organs. The second was the truth – German invaders had come with genocidal intent (Hitler at one point mused that Siberia could be turned into a Slav reservation for the survivors, which could be bombed periodically to remind them who was in charge).
Putin lacks a coercive organ as powerful as the Communist Party, which had both astonishing material power and a compelling ideology which promised to bring about an accelerated path to non-capitalist modernity. Indeed, no country today has a political apparatus like that splendid communist machine, save perhaps China and North Korea. So, in the absence of a direct lever to create political – and hence military – mobilization, Russia must find an alternative route to creating a political consensus to wage a higher form of war.
This has now been accomplished, courtesy of western Russophobia and Ukraine’s penchant for violence. A subtle, but profound transformation of the Russian socio-political body is underway.
Putin and those around him conceived of the Russo-Ukrainian War in existential terms from the very beginning. It is unlikely, however, that most Russians understood this. Instead, they likely viewed the war the same way Americans viewed the war in Iraq and Ukraine – as a justified military enterprise that was nevertheless merely a technocratic task for the professional military; hardly a matter of life and death for the nation. I highly doubt that any American ever believed that the fate of the nation hinged on the war in Afghanistan (Americans have not fought an existential war since 1865), and judging by the recruitment crisis plaguing the American military, it does not seem like anyone perceives a genuine foreign existential threat.
What has happened in the months since February 24 is rather remarkable. The existential war for the Russian nation has been incarnated and made real for Russian citizens. Sanctions and anti-Russian propaganda – demonizing the entire nation as “orcs” – has rallied even initially skeptical Russians behind the war, and Putin’s approval rating has soared. A core western assumption, that Russians would turn on the government, has reversed. Videos showing the torture of Russian POWs by frothing Ukrainians, of Ukrainian soldiers calling Russian mothers to mockingly tell them their sons are dead, of Russian children killed by shelling in Donetsk, have served to validate Putin’s implicit claim that Ukraine is a demon possessed state that must be exorcised with high explosives. Amidst all of this – helpfully, from the perspective of Alexander Dugin and his neophytes – American pseudo-intellectual “Blue Checks” have publicly drooled over the prospect of “decolonizing and demilitarizing” Russia, which plainly entails the dismemberment of the Russian state and the partitioning of its territory. The government of Ukraine (in now deleted tweets) publicly claimed that Russians are prone to barbarism because they are a mongrel race with Asiatic blood mixing.
Simultaneously, Putin has moved towards – and ultimately achieved – his project of formal annexation of Ukraine’s old eastern rim. This has also legally transformed the war into an existential struggle. Further Ukrainian advances in the east are now, in the eyes of the Russian state, an assault on sovereign Russian territory and an attempt to destroy the integrity of the Russian state. Recent polling shows that a supermajority of Russians support defending these new territories at any cost.
All domains now align. Putin and company conceived of this war from the beginning as an existential struggle for Russia, to eject an anti-Russian puppet state from its doorstep and defeat a hostile incursion into Russian civilizational space. Public opinion is now increasingly in agreement with this (surveys show that Russian distrust of NATO and “western values” have skyrocketed), and the legal framework post-annexation recognizes this as well. The ideological, political, and legal domains are now united in the view that Russia is fighting for its very existence in Ukraine. The unification of the technical, ideological, political, and legal dimensions was, just moments ago, described by the head of Russia’s communist party, Gennady Zyuganov:
“So, the President signed decrees on the admission of the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions into Russia. Bridges are burned . What was clear from the moral and statist points of view has now become a legal fact: on our land there is an enemy, he kills and maims the citizens of Russia. The country demands the most decisive action to protect compatriots. Time does not wait.”
A political consensus for higher mobilization and greater intensity has been achieved. Now all that remains is the implementation of this consensus in the material world of fist and boot, bullet and shell, blood and iron.
One of the peculiarities of European history is the truly shocking extent to which the Romans were far ahead of their time in the sphere of military mobilization. Rome conquered the world largely because it had a truly exceptional mobilization capacity, for centuries consistently generating high levels of mass military participation from the male population of Italy. Caesar brought more than 60,000 men to the Battle of Alesia when he conquered Gaul – a force generation that would not be matched for centuries in the post-Roman world.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, state capacity in Europe deteriorated rapidly. Royal authority in both France and Germany was curtailed as the aristocracy and urban authorities grew in power. Despite the stereotype of despotic monarchy, political power in the middle ages was highly fragmented, and taxation and mobilization were highly localized. The Roman capacity to mobilize large armies that were centrally controlled and financed was lost, and warfare became the domain of a narrow fighting class – the petty gentry, or knights.
Consequentially, medieval European armies were shockingly small. At pivotal English-French battles like Agincourt and Crecy, English armies numbered less than 10,000, and the French no more than 30,000. The world historical Battle of Hastings – which sealed the Norman conquest of Britain – pitted two armies of fewer than 10,000 men against each other. The Battle of Grunwald – in which a Polish-Lithuanian coalition defeated the Teutonic Knights – was one of the largest battles in Medieval Europe and still featured two armies that numbered at most 30,000.
European mobilization powers and state capacity were shockingly low in this era compared to other states around the world. Chinese armies routinely numbered in the low hundreds of thousands, and the Mongols, even with significantly lower bureaucratic sophistication, could field 80,000 men.
The situation began to shift radically as intensified military competition – in particular the savage 30 years’ war – forced European states to at last begin a shift back towards centralized state capacity. The model of military mobilization shifted at last from the servitor system – where a small, self-funded military class provided military service – to the fiscal military state, where armies were raised, funded, directed, and sustained through the fiscal-bureaucratic systems of centralized governments.
Through the early modern period, military service models acquired a unique admixture of conscription, professional service, and the servitor system. The aristocracy continued to provide military service in the emerging officer corps, while conscription and impressment were used to fill out the ranks. Notably, however, conscripts were inducted into very long terms of service. This reflected the political needs of monarchy in the age of absolutism. The army was not a forum for popular political participation in the regime – it was an instrument for the regime to defend itself from both foreign enemies and peasant jacqueries. Therefore, conscripts were not rotated back into society. It was necessary to turn the army into a distinct social class with some element of remoteness from the population at large – this was a professional military institution that served as an internal bulwark of the regime.
The rise of nationalistic regimes and mass politics allowed the scale of armies to increase much further. Governments in the late 19th century now had less to fear from their own populations than did the absolute monarchies of the past – this changed the nature of military service and at last returned Europe to the system that the Romans had in millennia past. Military service was now a form of mass political participation – this allowed for conscripts to be called up, trained, and rotated back into society – the reserve cadre system that characterized armies in both of the world wars.
In sum, the cycle of military mobilization systems in Europe is a mirror of the political system. Armies were very small during the era where there was little to no mass political participation with the regime. Rome fielded large armies because there was significant political buy-in and a cohesive identity in the form of Roman citizenship. This allowed Rome to generate high military participation, even in the Republican era where the Roman state was very small and bureaucratically sparse. Medieval Europe had fragmented political authority and an extremely low sense of cohesive political identity, and consequently its armies were shockingly small. Armies began to grow in size again as the sense of national identity and participation grew, and it is no coincidence that the largest war in history – the Nazi-Soviet War – was fought between two regimes that had totalizing ideologies that generated an extremely high level of political participation.
That brings us to today. In the 21st century, with its interconnectedness and crushing availability of both information and misinformation, the process of generating mass political – and hence military – participation is much more nuanced. No country wields a totalizing utopian vision, and it is inarguable that the sense of national cohesion is significantly lower now than it was one hundred years ago.
Putin, very simply, could not have conducted a large scale mobilization at the onset of the war. He possessed neither a coercive mechanism nor the manifest threat to generate mass political support. Few Russians would have believed that there was some existential threat lurking in the shadow – they needed to be shown, and the west has not disappointed. Likewise, few Russians would likely have supported the obliteration of Ukrainian infrastructure and urban utilities in the opening days of the war. But now, the only vocal criticism of Putin within Russia is on the side of further escalation. The problem with Putin, from the Russian perspective, is that he has not gone far enough. In other words – mass politics have already moved ahead of the government, making mobilization and escalation politically trivial. Above all, we must remember that Clausewitz’s maxim remains true. The military situation is merely a subset of the political situation, and military mobilization is also political mobilization – a manifestation of society’s political participation in the state.
Ukraine’s offensive phase continues on multiple fronts. They are pushing into northern Lugansk, and after weeks of banging their heads against a wall in Kherson, they have finally made territorial progress. Yet, just today, Putin said that it is necessary to conduct medical examinations of the children in the newly admitted oblasts and rebuild school playgrounds. What is going on? Is he totally detached from events at the front?
There are really only two ways to interpret what is happening. One is the western spin: the Russian army is defeated and depleted and is being driven from the field. Putin is deranged, his commanders are incompetent, and Russia’s only card left to play is to throw drunk, untrained conscripts into the meat grinder.
The other is the interpretation that I have advocated, that Russia is massing for a winter escalation and offensive, and is currently engaged in a calculated trade wherein they give up space in exchange for time and Ukrainian casualties. Russia continues to retreat where positions are either operationally compromised or faced with overwhelming Ukrainian numbers, but they are very careful to extract forces out of operational danger. In Lyman, where Ukraine threatened to encircle the garrison, Russia committed mobile reserves to unblock the village and secure the withdrawal of the garrison. Ukraine’s “encirclement” evaporated, and the Ukrainian interior ministry was bizarrely compelled to tweet (and then delete) video of destroyed civilian vehicles as “proof” that the Russian forces had been annihilated.
Russia will likely continue to pull back over the coming weeks, withdrawing units intact under their artillery and air umbrella, grinding down Ukrainian heavy equipment stocks and wearing away their manpower. Meanwhile, new equipment continues to congregate in Belgorod, Zaporizhia, and Crimea. My expectation remains the same: episodic Russian withdrawal until the front stabilizes roughly at the end of October, followed by an operational pause until the ground freezes, followed by escalation and a winter offensive by Russia once they have finished amassing sufficient units.
There is an eerie calm radiating from the Kremlin. Mobilization is underway – 200,000 men are currently undergoing refresher training at ranges around Russia. Trainloads of military equipment continue to flood across the Kerch bridge, but Ukraine’s offensive plods on with no Russian reinforcements to be seen at the front. The disconnect between the Kremlin’s stoicism and the deterioration of the front are striking. Perhaps Putin and the entire Russian general staff really are criminally incompetent – perhaps the Russian reserves really are nothing but a bunch of drunks. Perhaps there is no plan.
Or perhaps, Russia’s sons will answer the call of the motherland again, as they did in 1709, in 1812, and in 1941.
As the wolves once more prowl at the door, the old bear rises again to fight.
Sliding doors
The publication of Prozac Nation was a societal inflection point that ushered in multiple pharmacological disasters
By Toby Rogers | October 5, 2022
I. The Promise
In the late 1980s/early 1990s my parents spent a small fortune to send me to what was, at the time, the top-ranked small liberal arts college in the country. While the Ivies train up the future ruling class, small private liberal arts colleges offered something far more alluring.
Hanging in the air at these small private colleges was a promise that went something like this: the social sciences, particularly psychology and sociology, have figured things out. If we just follow their wise teachings, we will emerge in a utopian society where there is depth and meaning, people are decent and real with each other, differences are worked out (through “I” statements and “position switching” amongst other tools), and above all people are happy.
I imagine it began with Freud and Jung, accelerated with Foucault and Butler, but it was also present in the pragmatic psychologists including Barry Schwartz and the later happiness researchers.
The promise co-opted the central notion of many 20th century revolutions — that a new man and new woman were being born from the ashes of the old system and that we would find better ways of relating to each other than any society heretofore.
This promise was EVERYWHERE — from the new student orientation to the mandatory date rape prevention workshops to resident advisor trainings to student clubs and late-night conversations in the common areas of the dorms. A better world was possible and we were the ones to usher it in. The promise was going to radiate out to the rest of society like a pebble dropped into a pond.
It’s heartbreaking to reflect on this now because: 1.) the promise was never fulfilled (perhaps because it was always just a fantasy); and, 2.) to the extent that this vision soldiers on in some form it has taken an incredibly dark turn and now resembles fascism more than anything else.
II. An inflection point
Elizabeth Wurtzel was a fierce talent. Yes, she went to Harvard but she was the embodiment of the promise. A third wave feminist, she was unabashed in her celebration of sexuality and pleasure. As a writer she was a sorceress — able to pull magic, truth, and wisdom out of thin air.
Ms. Wurtzel popularized the Pain & Suffering Memoir genre with the publication of her book Prozac Nation in 1994. The book was raw, confessional, and witty. It felt like she had discovered capital T Truth. She went inside, as the psychologists (and Buddhists) had trained us to do, explored her emotional pain with all of its searing intensity, and redeemed it by giving it meaning. Ms. Wurtzel modeled how to be vulnerable, ironic, and strong. By the end of the book she was our friend and shrink. She had gone through the dark night of the soul and had come out on the other side, victorious.
I loved Prozac Nation and I’m devastated by what has transpired since.
III. The misuse of a once-in-a-generation talent
There was always a strange sleight of hand involved in Prozac Nation. In spite of the extraordinary psychological heavy lifting for over three hundred pages — the remedy in the end was a magic little pill.
In retrospect, Elizabeth Wurtzel and all of us got played by the most corrupt industry in the history of the world.
The success of Prozac Nation was not an accident. For a while, the book was everywhere — on magazine covers, on all of the chatty morning shows, and in doctors’ waiting rooms. It was part of a wave of books including Listening to Prozac that assured the public that the scientists have it figured out and this magic little pill will make all of your troubles go away. I am almost certain that behind the scenes Pharma spent millions of dollars to promote this book and turn Ms. Wurtzel into a household name.
With the success of Prozac Nation an entire generation abandoned the century-long promise of the social sciences and said, “just write me that script doc.”
The tragedy of Elizabeth Wurtzel is that Pharma took a spectacularly talented thinker and writer and used her to betray her whole generation. The end result has been the gradual enslavement of Generation X (and the rest of society) to the cartel.
IV. The demise of Elizabeth Wurtzel
Things did not turn out well for Ms. Wurtzel. Her next book was Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. Apparently, the Prozac had stopped working so she resorted to snorting upwards of 40 crushed Ritalin tablets a day — and when that didn’t work she turned to cocaine. That led to rehab and another memoir — this time about dealing with addiction (More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction). By this point she had lost the plot to her own story. She managed a brief reset by going to Yale Law School (always the best) and working for super lawyer David Boies for a few years. At 47 she developed breast cancer and she wrote about that in her trademark style. At 52 she was dead from leptomeningeal cancer.
(Photo credit: Dan Callister/Shutterstock)
In all of her brilliant writing, Ms. Wurtzel never criticized the white coats nor their pharmaceutical handlers in spite of the myriad ways that they failed her. Ms. Wurtzel blamed the BRCA gene mutation for her breast cancer and praised the heroic doctors and scientists who identified it and treated it (with a double mastectomy and reconstruction surgery).
The BRCA gene mutation very well could be the cause of her death. But there is another explanation that is also plausible — one that is not allowed in the mainstream media. Prozac is a fluoride compound (fluoxetine). Fluoxetine is 18.5% fluoride by weight.
Fluoride is toxic. Ms. Wurtzel’s miracle pill was actually depositing poison into her bone marrow, brain, thyroid gland, lymph nodes, fatty tissue, and vital organs, day after day, year after year.
It never cured her depression — any gains were short-lived and supplemented by drugs and alcohol.
The entire story of Prozac Nation was based a toxic and deadly lie.
V. The legacy of Prozac Nation
Things did not turn out well for the rest of us either.
Psychiatrist David Healy figured out the scam early on and went to great lengths to alert others with books including Let Them Eat Prozac (2002) and Pharmageddon (2004). He was later joined by Peter Gøtzsche (Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime, 2017) and many others.
But it took 30 years before the mainstream media admitted what was knowable on the first day — these products do not work as advertised. Even the usually reliable Pharma mouthpiece, The Guardian, was recently forced to admit that the entire theory of the case in connection with Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors was just glorified marketing copy:
The study in Molecular Psychiatry on which that article is based is (here). If you click through to read The Guardian article you’ll see defenders of the status quo at the end explaining that ‘it works even though there is no evidence that it works.’ Sound familiar?
By this point, about 1 in 5 American women and 1 in 10 men are on these drugs. They are given to pregnant women even though they are linked with autism (see literature review in my thesis). People are on them for decades in spite of no safety studies on long term use. They create dependency and once started, it is very difficult to stop.
It was not a foregone conclusion that Prozac would take off in the United States. German regulators (who actually examined the underlying data) rejected it and it was only approved in Sweden through outright bribery. But FDA regulators were primed to look the other way. In the meantime, Ms. Wurtzel made mental illness and these magic fluoride capsules sexy and cool. One can see how this set the stage for normalizing the other mass poisoning events that followed.
The adoption of SSRIs followed a pattern. Pharma pushed them, the FDA blessed them based on shoddy studies, the media and trusted messengers promoted them, and society gobbled up that snake oil like candy. Anyone who questioned the grift was shunned.
There was just too much money to be made for anyone to do the right thing. Once the pattern was set, more pharmacological disasters soon followed.
Next we were told that opioids, including OxyContin®, were not addictive. Once again the FDA blessed them based on shoddy data, the media promoted them, and society took these pills in massive quantities. On average, every year the U.S. now loses more Americans to opioids than died in combat in the entire (decade-long) Vietnam War.
Now it is happening yet again with Safe & Effective™️ Covid-19 shots that disable and kill at an astonishing rate. There is just so much money to be made from poisoning society that Pharma (+ the media and the political system that they own) cannot resist.
And millions of people who once believed in the promise of a better society are now mindless zombies who just want more pills, more injections, and more drugs to cure the human condition. But even that’s not enough — they want a society where Pharma idolatry is enshrined in law and everyone is forced to obey (setting up Pharma totalitarianism is basically the entire purpose of the California Democratic Party at this point).
VI. Sliding doors: imagine if Elizabeth Wurtzel had chosen differently
Hindsight is 20/20 and Ms. Wurtzel is not here to defend herself. But she was so incredibly talented. One can imagine a world where she might have chosen differently. Imagine if she had said, now wait, hang on, you’re telling me that several millennia of philosophy and a century of psychology are nonsense and that these drug dealers can solve the human condition with fluoride? That seems far-fetched.
One can imagine a world where Ms. Wurtzel used her fierce intellect to actually read the junk science clinical trials and study the FDA sham regulatory process instead of just surfing the zeitgeist. Any amount of honest due diligence would have quickly raised extraordinary doubts.
But the promise of magic pills was irresistible — for Ms. Wurtzel, society, and the drug dealers in white coats who stood to gain billions of dollars.
I want to be clear that it is not the responsibility of a 26 year old creative writer to save civilization. There should have been some adults in the room at her publisher (Houghton Mifflin) or the FDA who could have tapped the brakes on the rush to promote a fluoride compound as some sort of miracle cure. Ms. Wurtzel was uniquely influential but there were hundreds of thousands of others who also made ethically questionable choices in connection with this product. Furthermore, Ms. Wurtzel’s impulsiveness suggests that she may have already had some neurological damage, perhaps from the 10 to 13 shots that were common for Generation X. So perhaps she physically could not have chosen otherwise.
On the other hand, warrior mamas and Covid critical thinkers perform proper due diligence every day. As a result we are attacked by the mainstream media, hunted by the cartel, censored by the Stasi, and blacklisted by corporations and government. I guess if Elizabeth Wurtzel had chosen otherwise we never would have heard of her and they would have promoted someone else to fill that trusted spokesmodel role.
Here’s what I cannot figure out. Was the promise (that I began this article with) always a lie? Is the human condition such that we are always at the mercy of primitive instinct? Conservative Presbyterians believe in the doctrine of “total depravity” — that human beings are always flawed and fallen and the best we can hope for is divine grace that cannot be earned. Are they right?
I confess that I still believe in the promise (even though the last two years have shown me mountains of evidence that it’s not possible). I want to believe in a world where people are decent to each other, where we can find better ways to relate to each other that reduce strife and provide meaning and connection. It’s a far cry better than the alternative — magic pills & injections that are actually deadly, promoted by an entire society built on lies.
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From the Archives
The Balfour Declaration – A Century of Jewish Power
By Gilad Atzmon | May 17, 2017
This year, Palestinians and their supporters mark the 100th anniversary of The Balfour Declaration, a written statement from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, in favour of the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
For Palestinians, The Balfour Declaration was the beginning of their plight: a century of ethnic cleansing at the hands of European newcomers who claim Palestine as their historic home. Yet, for some reason, supporters of the Palestinians are desperate to suppress discussion of the motivation for the Balfour Declaration – how and why did it come about? … continue
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