Just Saying No,
To what degree is our human species programmed to commit mass suicide in hard times?
Genetically, we respond differently to different situations, emotionally, not with rational assessment.
We look at the Jim Jones followers all drinking the poisoned Kool-Aid at the same time, or at German blindness to genocide in WW-2 with disbelief.
A quote attributed to Joseph Mengele MD, speaking to imprisoned subjects, who he was testing to death, haunts me.
"The more we do to you, the less you believe it."
Stress is very hard on us. If we cannot escape, why have stress?
If we can escape, it is worth the "eternal vigilance" if we can break out and survive.
At what point do we decide that stress is not needed for a fake threat, or not needed because "resistance is futile"?
It looks like individuals and cohesive human groups behave differently under inescapable, relentless threat of death.
Individual humans, prepared or unprepared, have a wide range of endurance capabilities.
Special forces troops are trained in how to resist psychologically. Some fold, and other wills cannot be broken.
Cohesive groups support each other emotionally under stress, and usually maintain group cohesion.
The followers of Jim Jones died together after drinking poison together at the same moment.
Azov-Brigade nationalists, trapped underground at the Mariupol steel factory complex, face a fairly certain death if they do not surrender.
They are not surrendering. It appears that they kill deserters who try to surrender.
They are ordered to hold their positions.
Those giving them this order are ordering their suicide-by-Russian.
Those orders are being followed.
After 3 days freezing in a cattle-car would you remove all of your clothes and go naked with your children to the shower?
People did this. It looks like everybody went to the showers, whole families, but men separated from women.
I'm sure that it was easier to go to the showers. Resistance was futile at that point.
We have the ability to look at history, to look at our human nature in different situations and to look at how people may be gradually driven into situations where there is "no way out". Some consciousness plans many small steps along the way to the trap, and makes the choice of each step easy, with rewards and punishments.
No single step suggests the ultimate destination of genocide or personal death. Those threats are hidden until the final and inescapable moment.
When we begin to have suspicions, what do we do?
How early in the process do we become suspicious, based upon our reading of history?
This question does not plague most people, but it always haunted me.
How would a German Jew, who had options to give up everything and go to another country, know when it was the right action?
We can look back and see that the beginning of depersonalization of a group of humans marks the point of departure from their having the same rights as "good Germans". This also happened during the Spanish Inquisition, and in the "killing fields" of Cambodia. It happened to "decadent intellectuals" in the Cultural Revolution.
Last year, when I saw the de-humanization of "the unvaccinated" beginning, I knew that I had to "stand naked with the Jews".
Anything less than putting myself openly in that group would be the beginning of subtle capitulation to the beginning of a genocide.
We had taught the children to look out for a sign. We traveled to the Anne Frank House, Dachau prison camp, and to the Tuol Sleng "museum" of Cambodian genocide. In each place we saw that normal people had slowly been turned to do this to other normal people.
Guards often became suspects and prisoners themselves, were imprisoned, tortured and killed.
Did that spare their souls?
I really have nothing to present but these questions. We are already on the road to mass killings, but it's not in our neighborhoods.
We're safe here, right? Food and fuel shortages won't be bad, and certainly won't lead to mass killings where we live.
Nobody would go along with that, no matter how hungry, no matter how broadly some local minority might be blamed, no matter how long it lasted, no matter who was already doing it.
No matter if people started calling them a "Putin-lover"... Right?
"Slavic genocide", say some...
Without artillery support in good quantity the Ukrainian military has no chance to hold the line and to stop Russian moves. Any unit which attempts is hold the line will simply be mauled by Russian artillery until it is no longer able to fight. That is happening now. As the Ukrainians have orders not to leave or move their defense lines they either have to give up or die defending them.
By giving 'hold the line' orders the Ukrainian leadership is contributing to the Russian demilitarization of the Ukraine.
Why is it doing that? The situation for the Ukraine is hopeless and has been for some time. Why has its President Zelensky not given up? Why does he not agree to Russia's peace conditions? ...
..It is the 'west' that is preventing Zelensky from suing for peace.
This article raises the question in my mind of how long I would need to be under repeated artillery barrage before I would choose death instead. Ukrainian soldiers face this day and night, without real respite, and without much hope. Their comrades have already died from shelling. Humans break. Thanks Dan.
Ukraine's Army Is In Very Bad Shape - More Fighting Will Only Destroy It , Moon of Alabama (German)
Elsewhere I saw the view that training of Ukrainian troops , near Lviv, in Western Ukraine, to fight Russia has had to move to Germany, in a much smaller operation. All of the seasoned soldiers are already being chewed up by war. These new weapons take time to learn and much more time to learn to use effectively in battle.
Many are not applicable to battle, like anti-tank missiles with range a little over a mile, when enemy tanks are behind the artillery batteries, which are pounding you from 20 miles away. The West has some time to prepare other troops for the meat-grinder, if the Ukrainians can appear to hold out until September.
Poles and Romanians seem to be next in that line-up.
US Ramps Up Training of Ukrainian Troops
Hundreds (not tens of thousands) of Ukrainians are being trained on howitzers, drones, radars, and armored vehicles provided by the US
https://news.antiwar.com/2022/05/04/us-ramps-up-training-of-ukrainian-troops/
NATO member states are bravely sending their end-of-life weapons systems, and depleted-uranium weapons to the killing fields of Ukraine.
Go Ukrainians! Thanks J.A.W.
Since the very special battery packs are so long expired, the missiles do not seem to hit the tanks, but they still explode and spread the uranium.
"Mission-accomplished", I guess.
UKRAINIAN POW REVEALS PROBLEMS WITH US-MADE JAVELIN & BRITISH-MADE NLAW ANTI-TANK MISSILES
About that Canadian general who surrendered in Mariupol. Thanks Eleni.
The Russian armed forces arrested Canadian General Trevor Cadieu in Mariupol on the night of 2-3 May 2022. He is currently in Moscow awaiting to stand trial.
General Trevor Kadier was apparently not on a mission for his government, but was in charge of biolaboratory No. 1, with 18 staff working under his command.
The National Pulse reported that Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, and Christopher Heinz, John Kerry’s son-in-law, had organized subcontracting arrangements for Ukrainian research laboratories through their firm Rosemont Capital, on behalf of the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).
The (jealous?) Chinese Foreign Ministry revealed that the United States operates 336 biological and chemical weapons research laboratories abroad.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article216731.html
I like the line, "Zelensky will instruct Biden".
Hungary has announced they will not stop purchasing oil and gas from Russia and join a blockade of energy products by the 27 member EU alliance.
Hungary will not support sanctions that would make Russian oil and gas shipments to Hungary impossible, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said in a statement on Tuesday.
Speaking in Kazakhstan, Szijjarto said Russian oil shipments via the Druzhba pipeline accounted for about 65% of the oil Hungary needed and there were no alternative supply routes that could replace that. (link)
Slovakia has also announced they will not participate, which makes any collective EU action problematic. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is reported to be using his connection to the U.S. and Joe Biden in an effort to force the EU to deliver additional sanctions. Essentially, if an EU country does not fall in line, Zelenskyy will instruct Biden not to support that EU country with the money congress is preparing to use as blackmail...if you look closely at the $33 billion spending demand from the White House, it’s clear to see the U.S. State Dept, specifically those who are currently operating the proxy war along with the CIA, are positioning the funds for use as bribes to EU allies.
Any deal on Russian oil would require the consent of all 27 EU members, meaning it could not pass without Hungary and Slovakia’s approval. The bloc agreed on an embargo on Russian coal in the fifth package last month, while it has not yet ventured into gas.
Big-league doxxing":
Not only Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban but also Croatian President Zoran Milanovic and a Nobel Prize winner have been listed on Myrotvorets, the Ukrainian intelligence database which acts as a hit list.
Sputnik described the website on Monday as a “notorious Ukrainian kill list”. In April 2015, Myrotvorets, [translated as Peacemaker] published the home addresses of Ukrainian writer Oles Buzina and former Verkhovna Rada parliamentarian Oleg Kalashnikov, “just days before they were assassinated,” according to Wikipedia.
Myrotvorets has outed Orban as an “anti-Ukrainian propagandist”.
On Wednesday, (president) Biden suggested that the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade was a slippery slope.
Biden proposed a hypothetical situation, "What happens if you have states change the law saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children?"... (Huh, come again, Sir?)
"Because this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history, in recent American history," Biden said, making a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement...
(Former Hawaiian Congresswoman, Tulsi) Gabbard was incensed by Biden's incendiary remarks and slammed the president during an appearance on Fox News' "Hannity."
"When you look at the President of the United States of America calling millions of Americans, essentially terrorists, people who politically opposed him or voted against him, he's calling them terrorists in an attempt to intimidate them into silence. And we know this because we've heard this before from both him and his attorney general."
Gabbard pointed to the Justice Department's newly-formed "Domestic Terrorism Unit" that will target the "elevated threat from domestic violent extremists."
"You remember when his attorney general said, you know, anyone who holds extremist or anti-authority views will be targeted for investigation and potential prosecution by their domestic terrorist unit," Gabbard said. "So he's essentially saying that this, quote-unquote 'MAGA' crowd are worse than terrorists. This is outrageous."
https://www.theblaze.com/news/tulsi-gabbard-joe-biden-maga-terrorists
Glenn Greenwald: Homeland Security's "Disinformation Board" is Even More Pernicious Than it Seems
The power to decree what is "disinformation" now determines what can and cannot be discussed on the internet. It is now in the hands of trained disinformation agents of the U.S. Security State.
Death is a "serious side effect", of course.
A German study has found that the number of serious side effects after Corona vaccines was 40 times higher than previously reported. The Charité, a well-known hospital in Berlin, interviewed 40 000 vaccinated people after they had received their mandated jabs.
The interviews showed that the number of serious side effects was 40 times higher than previously reported by medical supervisors the Paul Ehrlich Institute...
Study of 23 Million People Shows Risk of Myocarditis After COVID Vaccines
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/study-myocarditis-covid-vaccines-jimmy-dore/?
That study is excerpted here:
SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination and Myocarditis in a Nordic Cohort Study of 23 Million Residents
Conclusions and Relevance: Results of this large cohort study indicated that both first and second doses of mRNA vaccines were associated with increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis. For individuals receiving 2 doses of the same vaccine, risk of myocarditis was highest among young males (aged 16-24 years) after the second dose.
Meryl Nass MD points out that people who got one shot, or even two, appear to mostly be avoiding the COVID vaccines at this point.
Most Americans Don't Want Those Shots
Me Neither (pictured with coffee in Austin garden this morning at sunrise)
Great garden y'all! When do you find time to write? A very complete post to digest, thanks. We could all sit down and read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", "The Diary of Ann Frank", or "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements", by Eric Hoffer. All would make excellent companions as we decide how to handle the next crisis.
Thanks for all the good news 🥴. The one that caught my eye most was the NATO & France using depleted uranium weapons on Ukrainian soil. Again, as the widow of the only radiologist I've known who supported Nukewatch for years, and was on public record speaking out against depleted uranium used in Iraq, I am struck by how UNloving that is for the Ukrainian people, putting the lie to all the crap about "standing with Ukraine."