165 Comments

“ The Midas Touch” - Best analogy ever for American foreign policy!

Expand full comment

A great song by the Hollies (and written by Graham Nash) is King Midas in Reverse. Spreading democracy actually spreading mayhem and misery, as we've seen countless times. And psychopathic charlatans pontificate with indispensable nation bullshit. But in Netanyahu the US has found the perfect partner, waltzing to hell in a "danse macabre" if ever there was one. The trouble is they're taking us with them.

Expand full comment

I think we should stop the music and toss the damn musicians OUT.

Expand full comment

If anything I think we’ve led them! Palistine was always meant to be the British/American Bulwark in the Middle East- the Balfour Arrangement was completed by Roosevelt’s deal with the Saudi leader “unlimited oil for perpetual military defense!”!

Expand full comment

Brilliant piece. Thank you as always. Speaking truth to insane psychopaths takes courage, especially when they don't listen. You have been doing it for many years. Current DC power brokers are truly insane.

Expand full comment

100% correct.

How many nations has the USA ruined in their greed?

Expand full comment

I've read that between 1798 and 1994 the US is responsible for 41 changes of government south of its borders. This creates a constant stream of political and military refugees (gosh, I wonder why immigration is such a problem!). More recently NAFTA allowed the US to ship subsidized Iowa corn to Mexico. The big farmers got a bailout, but the little subsistence farmers, the ones growing the obscure varieties of this important crop that keep the disease resistance a diversity of the corn genome alive...they got to come mow US lawns and paint US houses, because the treaty bankrupted them. In the wake of NAFTA, Mexico's median, real income declined 34%, a figure not seen in the US since the Great Depression.

Expand full comment

Well stated Adam.

BRICS will change this.

Expand full comment

Their people are still begging for NON GMO corn imports ( since now they HAVE to rely on imports) and the US (Biden) refused!

Expand full comment

Yeah, and I don't think BRICS will make anything better... we shall see...

Expand full comment

Is there an intervention that hasn't been a catastrophic disaster for the country "helped" by Uncle Sam?

Expand full comment

I don't think so.

Expand full comment

So many they can’t be counted on one hand.😢☮️🇵🇸

Expand full comment

Yes, a good analogy, Scott and regardless anyone's evaluation of its appropriateness, an excellent summation of the American Empire and it's exceptional pursuit of "democracy". Perhaps tactless things to say to a patriotic American but of course you understand, just as I understand that very few thinking Americans (ignoring the rump mindless and gormless masses all over the Western World who simply accept what CNN and the BBC tell them) subscribe to the project of American hegemony. The fundamental problem is that true democracy is nowhere to be found anywhere in the Western World and that reality is coming unravelled as we speak. As an Australian who witnessed democracy destroyed in his country (with the aid of treasonous Australians like Rupert Murdoch) in 1975 and the complete subjugation to the US Empire, I remain an angry young man and no friend of America.

Expand full comment

As an American I don’t blame you at all. I don’t even like my government. It’s sickening.😢☮️🇵🇸

Expand full comment

"As an Australian" I'm ambivalent now about my national heritage (I actually live in the UK, have done for 30 years, people ask, astonished, "Why?". I tell them that "Climate isn't everything"). The capitalist elites who send people off to die for king and country certainly don't think in patriotic terms, they have their choice pieces of real estate dotted around the world, rambling estates, city apartments, island retreats and they fly their private jets or sail their yachts between them. Come to the ordinary masses, most of them are comfortably numb and blissfully ignorant, aspirationally inclined to the illusion that they too can one day be like the global elites. And then there is "US", we the people who think and therefore we matter. Not the technical geniuses like Einstein and Oppenheimer who give the psychopaths dark tools "because it seemed like a good idea at the time" and then decide "we shouldn't have done that". We are the people who now understand that these psychopaths are leading humanity into an abyss, a technological feudal system, and if we are not careful, we will be herded in with the sheep to the same fate. The question is: "how do we overcome, avoid that fate, set ourselves apart or awaken the masses, defeat the psychopaths". I'm thinking.

Expand full comment

Like you - and climate isn’t everything! This country is a broke joke with the majority of the people still “ monkey see,monkey do” with the US. The US is going to save us from big bad China 😒🤦‍♀️

Expand full comment

Yeah! Sure they will. Like they saved Europe from the big bad NAZIs, whom they financed and supplied oil throughout, until the massive NAZI armies were defeated by the Soviets, leaving only the new recruits and ragtag aging soldiers tired of the Eastern front sent to maintain security on the Western front where Britain offered no challenge. Times are different now. The Empire uses proxies. Like Iraq - to harass Iran for 8 years, and to teach the Kuwaitis a lesson - sending the royal family off to Saudi in panic, where the Saudis could help them understand the rules. Like the Mujah'adeen, sent to create the Soviet Union's "Vietnam". Like Ukraine, sent to "Privatise" Russian assets - after Putin had used the KGB to foil their first efforts back in the 1990s, seeing off the drunkard Yeltsin and bring his corrupt gang of oligarchs into line and for which he has the support of 90% of Russians smart enough to realise he's a committed Russian Patriot. Like Australia, where the "born to rule" class would be only too willing to send thousands of Australian conscripts to die in a futile effort to prod the Panda. Australian conscripts like me, who as a naive 20 year old believed the bullshit about the Yellow Peril and the Domino Theory. I HATE those C--TS.

Expand full comment

It’s my opinion that this corrupt and failing system is what it takes to get the attention of the Prozac generation—the somnolent citizens of imperial nations who loved all that gold so much you completely ignored the creeping corporate coup, and in fact promoted it for the last 40 years while you filled your pockets and wanted to be Them—the filthy rich. There were plenty of warnings, plenty of Cassandra’s, plenty of justice warriors whom you ignored, mocked or couldn’t be bothered with. NOW, finally you’re ambivalent? It takes a genocide and a burning planet to get your attention? No. All it takes is a shot to your wallet and you’re ready to “overcome” the “psychopaths”. But honey, you are the psychopaths. You’re the dolts without whom “capitalist elites” could not have taken over. You have met the enemy and it is YOU! Now what’s your question?

Expand full comment

Have to agree with you Jeano, there is plenty of complicity in the "nothing we can do about it" generation of Western consumers.

Expand full comment

Indeed. And it’s shot through the 5 Eyes countries, not just the US as your fellow Aussie Caitlyn Johnstone is making bank on promoting. We are all complicit. The great crime is in excusing it, not owning it, not taking to the streets over it, not giving up our privilege, greed, conspicuous consumption and easy living for the sake of life itself continuing on this planet. The West is crumbling because it has no soul. Find one and get to work.

Expand full comment

We shall overcome, but only if We the People stand up and take back our sovereignty as Human Beings, and stop this global genocide that has been going on for a looooong time, and is currently amplifying... and soon to be a Global Tyranny, if we allow it.

Expand full comment

I understand you well, Allen. Only, consider that the originally free democratic republic USA have been overtaken by a bunch of non-solidary ultra-rich money aristocrats of British origin.

These were the ones who cursed the whole West with their greed.

So, if we want to take that evil curse away, we have te identify its roots - and then re-integrate these greedy subjects into our societies as solidary members. The agreement should be to abstain of legal persecution against profound reforms on the monetary system and on dismantling the (incredible) privileges of international corporations (as the two main sources of gigantic undeserved incomes).

Expand full comment

I'm not sure that the Dulles brothers or Edgar Hoover (for example) were British aristocrats. Certainly, there is a high degree of rolling forward the snowball of ill-gotten gain through the ages. How we break that cycle is the big challenge. It needs a global unity of smart people committed to decent values, peace and rationality, enlightened awareness of humanity's place in the Earth environment and the Universe at large. We need to overcome a system that has accumulated massive inertia and promoted psychopaths to manage it. Not sure humanity is up to it really, so perhaps the human experiment is near its end.

Expand full comment

He may be referring to the wealthy of the earlier American experience, before, during and after the "Revolution," which was simply a means of extricating the wealthiest men from the grip of the British Crown, while giving THEM the power to behave very much in the same way. Corporations only exacerbated the whole damn thing...

Expand full comment

Yes, I understand. One might say that the American Revolutionaries were used as a Proxy to fight off the Crown. Certainly, the seeds of the deep state were sown early. Your CONstitution was clearly a CON - same as in Australia. It parallels Religion in that the Bible was in Latin and could ONLY be interpreted for the unwashed masses by the Church. The modern Church is the high court and their Bible is the law, which they can interpret as they like.

Expand full comment

Our Constitution was/is not FOLLOWED, and it was tailored, and weakened, against the will of people like Thomas Jefferson (yes, he had slaves, but he was still a purist about most of the political arguments), to allow for the WEALTHY men, land owners, etc, to run things, change some of the important parts of the Constitution (like giving ONE MAN -- the POTUS, or a governor of a state-- the ability to VETO something that the People voted on, or even just the Representatives and Senators, just as an example. Or that a Treaty was, and supposedly still is, the most powerful agreement possible, and Every. Single. One of the made with Native Peoples was trashed by the US Gov.

So... I think the main problem is how we allow GOVERNMENTS to function. By their nature, they do not REMAIN representative, the people "voted in" (if they actually ARE) soon learn that they can swindle and pervert what the people pay for and expect/vote for, and they DO. Give 99% of people the power to do as they will, and they will become thieves and cheats.

This, when central govts at best, and ALL govts at worst, are UNNECESSARY.

Expand full comment

Oh, and PS... The Bible was TRANSLATED into Latin, by the ROMANS, who had ample opportunity to EDIT it... !! The ROMANS are still running things, now, as these so-called "Illuminati" or "Black Nobility," or whatever you want to call the .001% who own 90% of the world's wealth... (Take THEM out, and we can work toward a Better Life for All.)

Expand full comment

And don't forget Robert Maxwell, his daughter Ghislane and American/Jewish son-in-law Jeffrey Epstein.

Expand full comment

Allen, you still have a King Charles, you are a subject. Then you feel qualified to comment. You are of the bunch that turned in their guns.

Expand full comment

Canada here. We still have our guns but, we prefer to use them for hunting, not mowing down innocent school children with AR15s or taking pot-shots at politicians.

Expand full comment

Yes, as I said "ANYWHERE in the Western World" (i.e. "true democracy is nowhere to be found"). The consequences ripple outwards: Reason and Truth can't prevail, we fail to develop a genuine legal system, psychopaths flourish untreated, greed and power create poverty, chaos destroys the environment etc. etc We need to regain control and we need to do it SOON. See www.rightofchoice.com User guide.

Expand full comment

All that "lone gunman" stuff is bs, so there's an excuse to TAKE OUR GUNS. If you can understand that there's an agenda to bring in a GLOBAL TYRANNY, you'll understand the need to reduce the guns! Here's what I do, and what I advise everyone: Question EVERYTHING.

Expand full comment

Yes! Look within - you are the Light itself - rely on yourself - do not rely on others!

Expand full comment

Absolute spot on analogy Scott! Each and every step the US takes is based on blind hegemonic, imperialistic, supremacist greed leaving a long historical trail of not only tears, but naked, wretched death. Death is US. The US train now undeniably a soul-less black, lurching behemoth, a downhill-runaway barrelling brakeless, arrow straight...the eternal death abyss its only future.

Expand full comment

In that sense ,I am glad that Israel has been touched by the Midas touch.

Expand full comment

The great question of our time is how can an American claim to love, and continue to support a country whose Capitalist owners have trashed and defiled anything that was ever admirable and good in their country. And what benefit is there in doing so? Should we cling on to an image of this vicious, sick tyranny of shallow, ugly, inferior "leaders"? How is that not a betrayal of self and ones principles and integrity?

Expand full comment

Find or form a Jural Assembly on your state or territory.

Expand full comment

A great piece on the lack of American public morality in terms of the conduct of the nation's imperial affairs. We will be remembered for our quite intentional evil empire seeking legacy and the many lies that have hidden the actual demonic conduct of the American empire, most importantly from its own people. Michael K.

Expand full comment

100 percent agree. I would say that US forgn policy is the most destructive thing produced by any nation or state.

Expand full comment

Say it loud brother!!

Expand full comment

(The United States, Biden asserted, “will continue to defend democracy around the world” grounded in the “basic belief that the rules-based order must remain the foundation for global peace and prosperity.”) Democracy based on the rules of one country in the world is not democracy, but a dictatorship for the whole world. This sounds pretty wild and those who came up with it don’t even realize it, just like mentally ill people who don’t realize that they are ill.

Expand full comment

For the 1890 genocide campaign, the US Army awarded 31 Medals of Honor, 19 specifically for service at the Massacre at Wounded Knee.

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Expand full comment

Scott Ritter would have to be one of the best contemporary writers on geopolitical issues.

I don’t read many of them, but I struggle to imagine any consistently better.

Expand full comment

It is no coincidence that endless war started with the founding of the central banks.

https://mises.org/mises-daily/how-central-banks-fund-our-age-endless-war

Expand full comment

The poem of disaster, a poisoned headstone raised on a plinth of congealed blood from around the world and still streaming forth on a battlefield of dishonour where only the echoes of death rattles converge, failing to convince that this system has the answer for nothing of any value.

This is the legacy of the West, and how proud they are.

Expand full comment

I stand in awe of your ability to summarize a complex phenomenon in one simple analogy.

Expand full comment

Scott has a formidable mind. That’s why they came after him, now 2 times. Once for his seeking peace in Iraq and 2nd for Ukraine. Scott is a Peace Warrior stranding pretty much alone against the MIC while the vast middle class, Prozaced up to the gills, looks dully on wondering what they do to keep their money safe. He is the Casandra of our time.

Expand full comment

Doroosteh

Expand full comment