Midas in Reverse

New York City NY

Description

The prevailing view, at least in the Western Hemisphere, is that Russia and Putin are solely responsible for the crisis. But this opinion is far from the truth. In general, we have long since stopped presenting the full picture in detail regarding any topic, as well as here, because it doesn’t “fit” the prevailing narrative - dumbed down to the lowest common denominator - that Russia, through Putin, is the bad side, the Ukrainian people are a victim, and the west is the good side - a savior. The truth is that much of what we see now in Ukraine is a byproduct of a confused and detached American foreign policy over the years. One needs to understand issues at a fundamental level before simply believing in the conventional wisdom. The problem is that most people understand things very superficially while believing that their superficial understanding is expertise. The Russians now have a reason for their paranoia. They are scared right now that they could be under attack, and here's one of the reasons. This is a map of the former USSR (image 1), which after World War II had taken control of countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and so on. Then we have here the eastern bloc countries: Poland, Romania, East Germany and so on, and this is what was called the “Iron Curtain”. You'll notice here that the USSR, through their allies here, had direct access to the Mediterranean and access to the Atlantic, through the straits of Gibraltar, or from their bases in the Black Sea, through the little straits there at Turkey - very narrow straits. Then, in 1949 NATO was created: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The U.S. and Canada are not on this map, but basically it's the United States protecting countries that sign up with it, and the deal is that if you're a member of this organization and somebody attacks you, it's like they're attacking everybody in the organization. it’s a promise to come to each other's defense should any one of them be attacked. So here we have NATO in 1949 and then we've got Turkey and Greece added in 1952 and then in 1955 we've got West Germany, and Spain in 1982, and then in 1990 East Germany. The Iron Curtain retracted closer to the USSR. (image 2) Albania, a few years before, left the Warsaw pact countries - the eastern bloc countries - and so the Russians lost their direct access to the mediterranean. Then we've got 1990 to 91 - the warsaw pact imploded and all of the former eastern bloc countries that were allies of the USSR are now doing trade deals and stuff with the west, and then in 1999 the USSR implodes and they lose all of the former territories that were just like states or provinces of the USSR, they now become independent countries. And former eastern bloc countries of Poland and Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and former territories Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania who were all part of the USSR, they've now changed sides. They’re allied with the Americans now. Then some more countries in 2009. This is what it looks like today. (image 3) This is what it looked like in 1949. (image 4) Look at the buffer zone that Moscow had from everywhere and look at where it is today. The threat is now right on their borders, and to get to the Atlantic from any port here, they have to go from the Black Sea through these straits that are now monitored by NATO countries. So their subs and their warships and they retained this little area right here is Russia but they've got to go through those straits at denmark that are also monitored by NATO and it takes nine more hours now to get a ship from this little piece of Russia right there to the atlantic than it used to so they've got a good reason to think they're under threat. Russia feels surrounded. (image 6) Now, about 6 years ago, in 2016, Putin held a press conference. The United States left the Anti-ballistic missile treaty of 1972, in 2004. They left that treaty. The whole thing dissolved and the U.S. since then has been installing anti-ballistic missiles in Romania. And so, Putin is giving this warning. And you know what's really funny about this, is the shoe is now on the other foot. Back in 1967, Lyndon Johnson met with premier statesman of Russia, Alexei Kosygin and Russia had just created anti-ballistic missiles and an installation to protect Moscow. The problem with that, is that the United States’s response was to create more offensive weapons. They were not going to invest in anti-ballistic missiles as the thought at the time was that they're very expensive and they don't work that well. So they developed things like the Multi-Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles - the MIRV warheads, where they could hold 10 nuclear bombs on one missile, each one carries 24 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. And so, you've got 240 times the Hiroshima atomic bomb coming in and 10 of them are independently targetable. (image 7) All of that was to overwhelm the anti-ballistic missile defense system of Moscow. So now Putin is saying the same thing that the secretary of defense Robert McNamara told the premier of Russia back in 1967. So the shoe is on the other foot. But the U.S. has started a major arms race here and there, and they are deploying these anti-ballistic missiles in Romania, and if you remember that map, Romania is much closer to Moscow. (image 8) The U.S. has been deploying them to prevent the Iranian nuclear threat and back in 2016 it had a treaty with them and inspections going on. So the nuclear threat really doesn't exist that much. But look at what he's saying here: “how can you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? From what I can see, we are in grave danger. I don't know how to get through to you anymore. I don't know how this is all going to end. I think this is gravely dangerous. I not only think it, I am sure of it.” (https://youtu.be/kqD8lIdIMRo) This is the president of the Russian federation in a press conference and it didn't get aired to western media at all. You’ve got to go to YouTube to find that no major media outlet covered this. It's shameful that our population doesn't know what's going on on this planet and we've got a lot of the same problems happening with China. A Bear Pushed to a Corner I understand Putin. I do not agree with his decisions. They are not to my taste, but I understand him. I understand that over the years the west has repeatedly pushed him further and further into a corner until the straw breaks the back of the Russian bear. And so, the bear goes on a rampage. It's like a zoo, when you hear about someone who provoked some wild animal and the animal killed them. And I never manage to understand why in the end the animal always has to be euthanized for that. Human beings are an odd creature. We project human qualities on animals and expect they abide by them and when they don't we kill them. A beast is a beast. That it’s nature. If we provoke it, if we push it into a corner we will find it’s wrath. American foreign policy, backed up by europe, at least for the last 14 years since the NATO’s Bucharest conference in 2008, thought they could provoke a Russian bear and that the Russian bear would do nothing. Not only did they think that, they held the premise that they could eventually convert him into a teddy bear. And that's just not a recipe for success. It’s not even a reflection of intelligence. Eventually we will be paying a huge price for that kind of detached and disconnected approach. That's what's dangerous, precisely because the U.S. has no process of introspection whatsoever. It seems we never learn. We never learn lessons from history. And I hope you can see the danger that lies in the fact that we are adopting the same strategy over and over again. A strategy that says if something doesn't work, let’s double down. We are still caught on the trip that we’re a benign hegemon who has descended from the sky to do good in this world by sowing the seeds of democracies. It's like being crusaders of the 20th century. We believe everyone should think and be like us. And of course when we invade other countries it's all okay, it’s “essential”, it’s “ required”, and it’s “necessary”. Shall I remind you how President Bush Jr. took the whole world for a ride manipulating everyone that it is absolutely necessary to invade Afghanistan to chase after an ex-American rich guy who converted into a 12th century fundamental retro, and stay there for 20 years? And yet, each time it’s the same story. We learn the hard way that it does not work, all too often too late; after thousands of civilians are killed, after hundreds of thousands are injured, after thousands of families are destroyed and displaced. We never learn because we never make mistakes. It’s the rest of the world that is always in the wrong. Us?! Nah. We never make mistakes. And I ask myself when will we understand this? When will we understand that it’s propaganda nonetheless, just from the other side? When will we understand that there is no such thing as a right side and a wrong side? When will we realize that every leader, doesn't matter from what side of the spectrum, is always trying to take us for a ride to be able to maintain their power and influence? The basic mindset of people in the west is that you can punish the Russians economically and they'll throw their hands up. My argument is, when security considerations are at stake, when core strategic interests are at stake - and there's no question in Russia's case, this is a core strategic interest - countries will suffer enormously before they throw their hands up right. So you can inflict a lot of pain on the Russians and they're not going to quit. They're not going to quit because Ukraine matters to them. By the way, Ukraine is not important to the United States. You do understand that, don’t you?! No one is calling on American citizens to fight Ukraine. Ukraine is not a vital strategic interest to the west. It is a vital strategic interest for the Russians. They made it very clear, not just Putin. So in terms of the balance of resolve, it's all on their side. Looking at this image (image 5), you can see how much economic leverage the Russians have because of all that natural gas going westward. So the west, and that includes the U.S., are playing a losing hand here. But let's assume that I'm wrong. Let's assume that the U.S. is playing a winning hand and that they are capable of backing Putin into a corner and they're getting closer to pushing them off a cliff. Is this good? You're talking about a country that's got thousands of nuclear weapons and the only circumstance really, under which states use nuclear weapons, is when they're desperate; when they think their survival is at stake. So what you're talking about is putting Putin in a situation where he's desperate. What's truly amazing about all of this is that we were talking about incorporating Ukraine into NATO when we have now acknowledged by not taking military action over Ukraine that it's not a vital strategic interest. So the U.S. puts itself in a position where it’s willing to risk a possible nuclear war over a piece of real estate that is not a vital strategic interest to it. I hope you can see how discombobulated American foreign policy is. In Greek mythology, King Midas is popularly remembered for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold. And here we have the Midas’ touch in reverse. There's nothing that the U.S. does that doesn't go south: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine. I could go on. So the point I'm making to you is, this is not going to work, but if it does work I'm not sure it's a good thing. Those of us who believe it's a partisan problem, they're deeply mistaken. As far as I'm concerned, the republicans and the democrats are like tweedledee and tweedledum. There's just no meaningful difference between them. They both have the Midas touch in reverse. The Ukrainian-Russia conflict could have ended so easily. The rightful approach all along from the beginning was to create a neutral Ukraine as a buffer state between NATO and Russia. Going back to the status quo before the west got this foolish idea in their heads that they could peel Ukraine away from Russia and make it part of NATO, make it part of the EU, and make it more generally part of the west. Only now has the German Chancellor remembered to say that Ukraine will not be annexed to NATO. “Good for you to remember! Sorry, too late. Take a number. “ By the way, it’s very similar to covid-19's strategy. A strategy of pretentious certitude: masking incompetence and doubt by presenting to the world that we know what we’re doing. So now the contrived certainty is all about presenting to the world that we are on the right side of history. What's mind boggling is that none can understand that it's not going to matter who’s one the right side of history when we march towards a precipice. Talk about vanity. I have said this many times; we have lost the ability to see the interdependence of things; how each decision has an array of sub-layers that are affected by it. And I hope you can see that it is precisely America foreign policy that is engaging in unstable behavior, and just like Covid-19, pretending to be certain, along with unresolved emotionality, it leads to detached decisions that create unprecedented consequences that cannot be seen at the moment of their making but will only come to the surface later, often too late. The irony is that Putin is much more calculated than the west. Although we try very hard to portray him as reckless; as unhinged who has a loosened screw in his head. Just like Covid-19, - remember how in the beginning we clobbered anyone who was Asian just because they represented the "Chinese enemy who spreads disease", so here. We decapitate anyone who’s Russian. Exemplified by the French Revolution, where the idea of who was deserving of punishment was cruelly extended to an entire class. An excellent reflection of humanity’s level of awareness. Cancel culture is having a ball. Individual Responsibility All of us are all responsible for what is happening right now. Each and every one of us is responsible for what’s happening in the world. The great fall of humanity is the herd mentality. And the herd mentality is characterized as the ‘follow mentality’; giving our authority to an external factor. Whether it's following a leader, or any other point of authority. We do it to evade the burden of personal responsibility to ourselves. Being responsible for ourselves and all our choices is a very big burden for most people, so the prevailing assumption is that if we choose someone else, outside of our lives who will tell us where to go and where to look, it will ease a lot of that burden. But in no time is the herd mentality so pervasive. Through our narcissistic, complacent and selfish existence in a bubble, we cohesively form the basis for the oppressions that we then live their outcome in our personal lives. And we do it more efficiently than at any other time in our history because we are all plugged-in 24/7. We have actually given up our ability to see uniquely for the sake of a homogenized seeing in which we all see the same thing; where we are all brought to the same pattern in an instant: "who is the boogieman of the day to be afraid of, who’s the witch of the week to crucify, who needs to be canceled, who’s to hate and who’s to glorify as a the hero of the week...". And all of it can be done in a flash. How easy it is to create hyperbolas and inflate the fear bubble on a minute by minute basis. How easy it is to dumb down the information load to the lowest common denominator. How easy it is to present everything as an extreme binary that breaks down each subject into ones and zeros, black and white, good and bad, believers and non-believers and denounces the gradient gray that is actually the closest thing to the truth - all, in order to bring everyone to the same line. The average person can no longer see what is going on around them because they are constantly looking down at their new deity appendix - the dumbphone - through which they exist and live their life; through which they "see" the world. But there are layers of what can be seen in the moment, and there are layers of what can be seen in front of us. There are all kinds of seeing. It's so magical because it's what focuses our pattern system. But if everyone looks in the same direction, there is no longer the ability to filter these layers uniquely. And if we add the fact that our attention span is lower than that of a goldfish; and the fact that we are explosive, because we are charged with unresolved inner turmoil, and the fact that we are frantic with pressure, we get a great recipe for becoming a block of clay that can be shaped and molded moment by moment by the homogenized narrative. Thus, preserving a perpetual state of herd culture. It is constantly said that cyber attacks are one of the greatest threats to humanity, but I want to show you that we, ourselves, are "hackers", just of a different kind. We regurgitate efficiently every piece of information we are exposed to, only to find out in retrospect that what we vomited to the other without scrutiny, was a lie. But already too late. Self restraint is practically non-existent. We gargle half-truths and share them at a dazzling pace and then we ask why the world is becoming so dark? Why is misinformation so rampant? Why is there such unprecedented confusion and misunderstanding? And when something like this happens - when the camel's back is broken - we all just look at the end result from a tiny frame - our own cubby hole - and judge the whole story based on that. It's like buying a 400 page book and only read the last 10 pages, which, by the way, is becoming the predominant way we study and learn. The vast majority of people do not know the details. That includes our journalists and reporters. They no longer do their job faithfully. And yet, we are all experts with the same superficial information that everyone has access to. This is the important point to understand in all this: we all have the same accessibility to the same (slanted) superficial data. Information which is manipulated constantly by leadership, by the mainstream media and by big-tech. And because we are constantly plugged-in, we fall into the illusion that we really know what's going on, that we can be experts on any topic at hand. After all, coming up with answers is the easiest thing, but asking the right questions is an entirely different story. Do not believe me. Do an experiment. Ask people why Russia attacked Ukraine. And once they give you an answer, ask them another question that goes a step or two deeper. In most cases you will see them get stuck. No one has a clue. No one really knows the background story; No one really knows the details. What they do know, for sure, is their emotional state in the context of the phenomenon. And their emotional state is what governs them. All of us are responsible. We are responsible for the reality that is developing in our world. We are responsible for the oppressions that are created and applied to human beings all over the world, because we - through our desensitized existence - cannot see that we create and maintain them. If you don’t want to be a putter in the hands of others, if you do not want to be part of the herd mentality, you must learn to step back. You need to understand that we are all being manipulated all the time. We all go through manipulations all the time. And to reduce the amount of manipulation we need to look at both sides of the narrative. We need to look at both sides of the official propaganda. There is propaganda coming out from the east and and there is propaganda that comes out from the west. Then, depending on where you are in the globe, the local media repeats that propaganda, refines it and then just pounds it on your brain nonstop, in order to mold and shape your opinion. And in order for our opinions not to be shaped by others, we have to look at both sides of official propaganda and then filter out the differences; What this side says, what the other side says, and by filtering out we find the basis; the root of what creates the situation, and then from there everything can be reduced to facts and data. If we let our opinion be formed from facts and data, the probability of us being shaped by outside forces is much, much lower. We do not want to be clay in anyone's hands and have our opinions echo their desires. Also, do not let your emotions overwhelm you. When you let your emotions guide you, this is the time when you are a putter in their hands. When you are finally able to get perspective, try to help others be less open to manipulation. You can be part of the solution instead of being part of the problem. You can help guide other people, whenever someone talks about Ukraine or the current crisis the world is in, right now. Guiding others on the importance of taking a step back. Not necessarily trying to persuade them, but showing them how they can see both sides and then decide for themselves, instead of being guided by homogenized communication. By doing so, you are actually empowering them to be responsible for themselves. All life is built on patterns. And these patterns are experienced by cycles. And so, we need to understand that history doesn't repeat itself but it always rhymes. This is a law. The same patterns are always repeated. And if we can gather the details, we can get to the root causes of what's happening in the world right. It gives us understanding. And when there is understanding it can be very liberating. We are treading a completely different future. And to know how to navigate an increasingly uncertain world we all need to take responsibility. Each one of us must be absolutely responsible for ourselves. Understand that every word we utter, every form of text we send and every action of ours has a ripple effect that cannot be seen at the time of their manifestation. But, oftentimes, whenever we don't know, silence and self restraint are always golden.