Random thoughts on turning 78

Woke up today at floor 78 on the escalator of life. First thing I noticed…the air’s getting a bit more rarified up here. Also noticed more folks below me and less above me. That’s a bit unsettling. If you go high enough, say floor 115 or so, you’ll find yourself all alone. No interest in that.

Glanced at the heartbeat meter: 2,730,000,000 without missing a tic. Thanks for good DNA mom and pop. Been playing running sports for last 72 years. That likely helps too.

Birthday 78 a tad unique. First time on the Disabled List from all that running. Unlike the heart, my right pedal extremity stopped working. Here I lay with it up in the air after foot surgery. During those 72 years I’ve been knocked down, knocked out, cut, piled on, bounced my head off a wooden beam chasing a tennis overhead. But it took a stubbed toe years ago that went rogue to land me on the DL.

Early thought that comes to mind each morning: Make a difference. Discovered that’s a good motivator not to waste the day. Tho often fall short, very gratifying when I occasionally do.

One thought on entering my 79th year is not random. Have it every year. My birth date March 10, 1945, always congers up the Dylan lyric “He who isn’t busy being born is busy dying.” While I was busy being born in a safe, clean Chicago suburban hospital, a hundred thousand Japanese were being incinerated under 1,510 tons of napalm bombs dropped on Tokyo by 282 B-29s. A million were left homeless from the disappearance of 268,000 mostly wooden homes.. It was the deadliest single day of human destruction from war in history, a dubious distinction I cannot separate from my entrance to life. I learned about it early on, staring in horror at pictures of the man-made firestorm devouring one of the world's largest cities. The Cold War was raging. McCarthy was rampaging. I feared a similar fate awaited me from nuclear war, having to practice ‘Duck And Cover’ in school. Seventy years on still fear the Big One, not so much for me but for the kids and grandkids. Guess that’s why I work in the Peace Movement. We’re in a new Cold War against not just pipsqueak Russia, but also gargantuan China as well. The Doomsday Clock is 90 tics from midnight, the closest in my life. That is not progress.

Onward to 79.

US schools need to teach kids about proxy war

The Russo Ukraine war has brought up a concept sorely lacking in the American vocabulary: Proxy War

Most folks are familiar with the word proxy. Ask and they might respond ‘Oh yes, like when I sign over my right to vote stock shares to another who votes as my proxy.’ But throw in ‘war’ after ‘proxy’ and you’ll likely get an eye roll.

Given how prevalent US reliance on proxy war has become in foreign policy, ignorance of proxy war has a debilitating effect on an informed electorate crucial to fostering a peaceful world.

OK, for the uninformed, Webster advises: Proxy War

Noun. A war instigated by a major power which does not itself become involved. “The end of the Cold War brought an end to many of the proxy wars thru which the two sides struggled to exert their influence.

Today the US is involved in two devastating proxy wars that have taken over half a million lives. One is our proxy war against imagined US enemy Iran. Tho the targeted enemy, not a death has occurred on Iranian soil. Over are 400,000 dead, mainly in Yemen, inflicted by neighboring Saudi Arabia since 2015. The Saudis intervened in the Yemeni civil war to prevent the Houthi faction from controlling Yemen. We’re been supplying much of the air power, bombs, maintenance, logistics and moral support for Saudi Arabia to kill all those Houthis. Why? We view the Houthis as proxies for Iran to extend its influence in the Middle East. We deem that an existential threat to US national security interests. Regardless of how delusional and senseless, the US has been fueling this proxy war against Iran for 8 years now.

The other US proxy war is infinitely worse: our 8 year long proxy war against Russia that provoked their invasion of neighboring Ukraine 13 months ago. At that point the proxy war clueless respond incredulously, ‘Are you crazy? Putin woke up one morning and decided to reestablish the old Soviet Empire, starting with Ukraine. Once he takes Kyiv, he’ march westward into Western Europe. I know, read it in the NY Times and Washington Post.’

That is the problem. In the US national security state and its compliant media, proxy war is the term that dare not speak its name.

The information is out there but one must dig to get it. Try exploring the US supported coup of 2014 that deposed elected Ukrainian President Yanukovych to prevent Ukraine from partnering economically and politically with Russia. Check out the murderous civil war the coup started resulting in thousands of dead Russian leaning Ukrainians in Donbas. Learn how hundreds of millions in US weapons helped the US picked Ukrainian post-coup government kill those hapless Ukrainians. Investigate the 2015 Minsk II Agreement that was designed to give the Donbas independence under nominal Ukraine sovereignty, but free from further Ukraine government violence. One will find that France, Germany, the US and most especially Ukraine neither supported nor intended Minsk II from providing Donbas independence. That would have been viewed as a Russian ‘win’, totally unacceptable to the US proxy war agenda.

Why is the US proxy war against Russia infinitely worse than our proxy war against Iran in Yemen? The former could pivot from proxy war to nuclear war in a heartbeat. It could take just one mistake, one miscalculation, one deranged ‘Dr. Strangelove’ military renegade to trigger an unstoppable nuclear onslaught.

The forces of ignorance have won the narrative. Every media report on the war begins with ‘Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine.’ The term proxy war never has and never will appear.

Might be too late but time for grammar and high school curriculums to add a chapter, maybe even a semester, on proxy war in US foreign policy history and current events classes. After horrendous debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq, killing 6,879 Americans, the US only does proxy wars. No Americans die in proxy wars, only proxies in designated countries like Yemen and Ukraine. Maybe the next generation will gain enough wisdom to recognize a proxy war when it occurs, and possibly push back to keep it from devolving from proxy to nuclear.

Active

US brokers war; China brokers peace – Who’s winning the 21st century?

A seismic shift in world power politics occurred March 10. But the US government and its compliant corporate media largely yawned, ignored it and moved on.

Five days ago Iran and Saudi Arabia announced they were reestablishing diplomatic relations, ending their 7 year long diplomatic estrangement. This represents a huge development toward possible peace in the Middle East between the 2 largest powers, Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran.

But it’s not just possible Middle East peace that’s significant. The deal was not brokered by the US, which invariably controls Middle East political developments, but China. In one historic move, China has essentially replaced the US as the dominant Middle East power broker.

Uncle Sam is not thrilled about the chance for Middle East peace, nor that it comes from China, its primary rival for world hegemony. A US spokesperson tepidly said that the rapprochement may be good but only if untrustworthy Iran honors its commitments. This from the US which rarely honors its commitments. Truth is the US is not interested in Middle East peace. If we were we wouldn't have blown up the Iran nuclear agreement, the most pro peace initiative there this century. Instead the US revs up conflict by promoting an anti Iran coalition centered around Saudi Arabia. China’s brokered agreement shatters that US strategy, laying bare to the world that it’s China, not the US, that promotes peace.

This seismic shift is happening worldwide. China offered a 12 point peace agreement for the Russo Ukraine war the US dismissed out of hand. All the US could sputter is that we can’t trust Chinese peace efforts cause they’re on the brink of sending weapons to Russia. As usual, the US offered not a shred of evidence to back up this hyperbolic claim. After squandering over a hundred billion in weapons to keep Ukrainians dying for 13 months now, US is in no position to cry about who sends weapons wherever.

Look around. The US maintains over 700 military bases worldwide. China? 8. The US is on track for a $900 billion offence budget in Fiscal ’24. China? $225 billion with over 4 times as many people. The US is bombing and sanctioning dozens of countries, killing untold thousands, many from lack of food or medicine. China? Promoting peace while investing hundreds of billions in infrastructure and economic development everywhere.

Back to the title question. Like a match race between Secretariat and the second fastest horse, it’s China by 20 lengths.

Is Sen. Duckworth taking 'hard look' at pushing WWIII with F-16 letter?

My IL Sentator Tammy Duckworth signed on to a bi-partisan letter to President Biden promoting possible US F-16's to fight in our proxy war against Russia destroying Ukraine.

“After speaking with US, Ukrainian, and foreign leaders working to support Ukraine at the Munich Security Conference last month, we believe the US needs to take a hard look at providing F-16 aircraft to Ukraine."

Duckworth joined 4 other Democrats and 3 Republicans in welcoming a frightening escalation in the war that could possibly lead to all out nuclear confrontation with Russia.

Presdient Biden, who early on warned the US proxy war could go nuclear with direct US involveemnt, tepidly pushed back saying 'No F-16 fighters to Ukraine 'for now'. But he has welcomed 2 Ukrainian pilots to America to 'assess' their ability to command those high teck warplanes.

Sen. Duckworth is one of the most virulent supporters of perpetual war and US exceptionalism worldwide in Congress. She parlayed her service in our monstrous, criminal war in Iraq 20 years ago to ascend the peak of US poltical power, barely losing out in the 2020 VP race to Kamala Harris. She clearly has presidential ambitions.

Every Illinoisan, indeed ever American, should take a 'hard look' at supporting a senator who has a diabolical affinity for endless war. Please write Senator Duckworth and plead with her to take her name off that insane, nuclear war endangering letter that could push the war in Ukraine past the point of no return.

Progressives’ Democratic tribalism forces their support of US proxy war on Russia

As a proud progressive libertarian, I support virtually every Democratic position on domestic issues. In that regard the Democratic Party is my tribe. Nearly every other political partisan has now gravitated to political tribalism in the US, either 100% Democratic or 100% Republican. That relatively new phenomenon has unintended consequences.

One is that is snuffs out nearly all policy debate that could lead to compromise.

The most problematic to our planet’s survival, however, is the current unified Democratic support for proxy war against Russia. This proxy war did not start with the February 24, 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. It began 31 years earlier with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Not just Democrats, but Republicans and the entire US national security establishment, signed on to maintaining the now pipsqueak Russia as a mortal enemy to be isolated and weakened.

How? Instead of abolishing NATO as unnecessary, the US expanded it from 16 to 30 countries, right up to Russia’s borders in former Soviet Republics. In the West’s version of the Iron Curtin, NATO could now put troops and nuclear capable weapons on Russia’s doorstep.

Why? Maintain Europe’s dependence on the US to sell expanded NATO hundreds of billions in weapons to protect against a now phantom enemy. In addition, keep Russia from engaging in the European political economy so US could maintain economic control over Europe. Allowing Russia in commercially would wean Europe off that economic dependence. Resource rich Russia was a threat to that gravy train.

From 1991 till 2014, this proxy war simmered largely out of sight. That changed abruptly in February, 2014, when the US intervened to birth a nationalist Ukrainian coup against their President Yanukovych on the brink of linking Ukraine to Russia economically. Besides stopping Russian engagement with Europe, the coup ignited a murderous civil war in the Donbas against Russian leaning Ukrainians. Over 14,000 dead now with the help of hundreds of millions in US weapons to kill Donbas Ukrainians.

Eight years later, after fruitless negotiations and pleas to deny Ukraine NATO membership and give independence to Donbas, Russia had enough and invaded.

Thirteen months later too many good, peace loving progressives, tied to their Democratic tribalism, remain in denial of the US proxy war on Russia that made their illegal Ukraine invasion virtually inevitable.

They are oblivious to the fact that their Democratic leader Biden was an enabler of the Iraq war 20 years ago as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden’s hearings the summer before, promoted Bush administration lies without allowing a single dissenting witness. His committee staff director Tony Blinken, who helped Biden orchestrate those hearings, now serves as Secretary of Proxy War (opps, State). His third highest official at State is Victoria Nuland, another Iraq war enabler as assistant to VP Dick Cheney. Nuland also was Obama’s chief facilitator of the US war on Ukraine democracy that birthed the 2014 coup in Ukraine.

Progressives supporting endless weaponizing of Ukraine, helping bankrupt America while destroying Ukraine, need to check their Democratic tribalism at the doorway to peace. I did and will continue to do so till my last breath.