jeanluc_discard

Pax Americana is definitely crumbling before our eyes.

Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs said the same on Bloomberg yesterday.

Next, rubles will be backed by gold/silver -- and then we officially mark the start of a new world order.

It was never this bad. The "Freedom Fries" thing was a small subset and not taken seriously. What's going on now, however, is frightening. It's terrifying.

Years ago, when the US invaded Iraq under the pretense that they had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and they were an existential threat that needed to be acted on, protesters like me said, "No, it's about Iraq's massive untapped oil reserves." The US said, "We know where they are; they're in the North, South, East and West." Both the UN and NATO said we don't see any evidence of WMD and it should have stopped there.

The US invaded anyway. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found. Did the US leave immediately, horrified at the war crime? Or did it stay and place its military bases at all the large oil wells? (We're still there, by the way. I guess like OJ we're still looking for those WMD/the real killer?)

And how did the media, PR, and other popularity-based professions act? Did they condemn the war crime? Or did they smile and say, "Support the troops?" Hollywood made movies, not exposing the crime, but rather how our soldiers were killing kids and how that made them sad.

I don't know if there were reasons for this action in Ukraine. We do know that the US had several biolabs there but the verdict whether it was producing bioweapons is currently split between NATO saying no and other nations (China, Brazil, India) saying yes.

But the cancel culture of anything Russian is gross and, given the last 80 years of US history, deeply hypocritical. Worse, the way the media is colluding to suppress discussion is terrifying to me in a way I can't really express. My main account here on HN is from 2007 but I can't use it. I just want us to discuss things rationally.

What we're witnessing is the end of an era. As Lenin said, "There are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen." Lion prides work where there is one dominant male until either it gets too old or a young male gets too strong. Then, in a moment, it all changes. No empire lasts forever.

The US is fiscally bankrupt and has pissed off its opposition too long. It spent a fortune on tanks and missiles, and then technology came and made that all essentially redundant.

My guess? Russia and China (and probably India) will base their currencies on gold. They will want payment for energy, rare minerals, chips, etc. in that gold-based currency. NATO will dissolve and the US will become deeply poor.

I've been on HN since 2007 but only recently have I been afraid to voice some opinions on my main account.

This isn't, "We did this bad and so we can't condemn you now." This is, "We did this over decades, constantly, everywhere, and it was consistently sanctioned and approved." The media smiled and the US people "supported their troops."

You call this a "mistake in the past?" First, the US is still illegally there, taking Iraq's oil, a war crime, as it jumps up and down in moral outrage about this. Second, more importantly, they're not calling a mistake.

The next step for us is to listen to why Russia is concerned with NATO expanding into the Ukraine.

Russia just offered peace under one main circumstance, that the Ukraine declare itself neutral so that there is a buffer zone. Seems reasonable, especially considering that the US already has military bases in 50 countries -- maybe it can skip this one country. Maybe it's up to the Ukraine now.

Have all parties, not just Putin's, condemned the expansion of NATO? Did NATO clarify that they wanted to expand into the Ukraine and the Ukraine invited that expansion, even up until days before this started?

Would the US be happy if the Russia/China military alliance invited Cuba or Mexico and planned to put military on its border?

Russia just offered peace under four circumstances, the main one being that Ukraine declare itself neutral so that there is a buffer zone. Let's sit down like adults and talk this out.

There are a lot of people in my country, America, who are morally outraged and it confuses me because our country doesn't seem to have any problem invading sovereign nations and, as someone who protested those actions, my fellow citizens and our media have consistently smiled and supported those actions. Hollywood doesn't make films about the injustices of this aggression but rather, how it makes American soldiers sad to shoot little kids.

A recent example is Iraq. It started with allegations from the US that weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were an existential threat that needed to be acted on. Most of us who consume media critically charged that the real reason was closer to Iraq's massive untapped oil reserves. The US went to the UN with these allegations and the UN said, we don't see the evidence of WMD. The US went to NATO and NATO didn't see it either.

Some thought, that's it. Surely America won't just invade Iraq anyway. And... we did. And no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. Did we leave immediately, horrified at the war crime? Or did we stay and place our military bases at all the large oil wells?

Journalism is so important because it plays a vital role in informing us. If we don't have good journalism, we end up just thinking and feeling what we're told.

So maybe what we can do is to ask, "Were you and are you outraged about invading a sovereign for its resources -- which is a war crime? Have you posted or protested about that? Jumped up and down? And if not, why now with this? Is the difference because this time it's how you've been told to feel?"