This article is hilarious, but it has a serious message. The US is a nation of hypocrites. Not that most nations aren’t. Nations” are a NEW thing and they depend on lies and dehumanization, with hierarchy enforced by overt or subtle violence. Human beings did not evolve to live in national states based on various kinds of dominance systems. “
Ninety percent of humanity’s existence was spent in that “state of nature”. Modern “civilizations” usually last only a couple of centuries. They are jerry rigged adaptations that fail quickly. Their “dominance” systems are unequal and depend on enforcing degrees of humanity — meaning you are “human” according to your level or status in a society. And, if you are “other”, your humanity is nominal. So, Americans have killed perhaps 30 million innocents in other countries since 1945 and don’t care. Genocide is just a number.
The US is called the Empire of Lies. But let us every nation depends on lies. And, especially hypocrisy, which is a special kind of lie.
Let us keep in mind that the Few who rule us are…yes…FEW! And the Many who are ruled or owned are…yes…MANY. Why do we acquiesce? Why do we conform? We are NOT powerless. The fault is in ourselves as Shakespeare says.
For, we also evolved to be lazy and to live in the moment. Which worked well in hunting and gathering societies. We are permanent children.
Caitlin Johnstone, who I great admire, has criticized me for suggesting the “propaganda” is interactive, as much generated by our comfort needs and prejudices as is manipulative. I disagree. You can blame the Media. You can blame the Few. But ultimately, we must blame ourselves.
Mozart Group Training Ukrainian Troops from Newsweek
Count me amused by the Westerners voicing shock and outrage over the fact that Russia is using a group of former convicts to help fight the new Nazis in Ukraine. This was not Putin’s unique idea. He obviously is a Lee Marvin fan:
See the principle? If it is American convicts fighting Nazis, that is a good thing. But if it is Russian convicts doing the same thing in the 21st Century, it is baaad!!
But wait, there is more. Do you remember this scene from the HBO series, The Pacific?
Blood thirsty Marines who escaped from insane asylums and prisons? Sounds like potential recruits for Wagner.
Newsweek has its panties in a knot and is looking for a fainting couch as it decries Russia’s Wagner Group — a contract military unit (e.g., like Blackwater?) because it includes former Russian convicts:
The grinding assault on the city and its surrounding area is a rallying point for Russia’s military bloggers and propagandists, and a showcase of the capabilities of the Wagner Group and leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, one oligarch ally of President Vladimir Putin whose profile has increased dramatically since February 24.
Prigozhin and his Wagner fighters—their ranks swollen by the mass recruitment of Russian convicts—seemingly have another target in their sights: the Mozart Group NGO which is helping train Ukrainian troops and evacuating civilians from the front lines, including around Bakhmut.
The Mozart Group is under the command of a retired U.S. Marine Colonel, Andrew Milburn. It is trying to train Ukrainian troops to fight the Russians. Shades of The Pacific! A friend of mine, a retired Marine General, knows Andy but only worked with him after both left active duty. My friend says Milburn is a solid guy. Retired Colonel Milburn insists that his Mozart Group has nothing in common with the Wagner Group:
Milburn dismissed Prigozhin’s description of Mozart as a private military company. “People call us a PMC because that’s all they have as a frame of reference,” he said. “We don’t carry weapons, our tasks are humanitarian—and I mean, seriously, legally humanitarian.”. . .
The Mozart Group’s name was intended as a counterpoint to Wagner, whose fighters adopt neo-Nazi imagery and have developed a reputation for extreme brutality in operations in Syria, Libya, and the Central African Republic. Previously used as a deniable, shadow arm of Russian foreign policy, the group has emerged as one of Moscow’s more effective and feared formations in Ukraine.
Milburn, to his credit, speaks candidly about the dire plight of the Ukrainian forces fighting in the meat grinder of Bakhmut:
“Bakhmut is like Dresden, and the countryside looks like Passchendaele,” he said, referring to the German city destroyed by allied bombing in World War II and the infamously muddy and bloody World War I battlefield. “It’s just a horrible and miserable place.”
Ukraine closely guards its casualty figures, but its forces are believed to be suffering badly around Bakhmut.
“They’ve been taking extraordinarily high casualties,” Milburn said of the units training with Mozart. “The numbers you are reading in the media about 70 percent and above casualties being routine are not exaggerated.”
Despite their “tremendous morale,” Milburn said the defenders “have an acute ‘regeneration problem,’ which means getting new recruits into the line as quickly as possible.” This means those being thrown into the fight have little beyond basic training.
“Typically about 80 percent of our intake who are coming off of the line have never even fired a weapon before,” Milburn said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”
The Mozart Group’s training mission is akin to the crew of the Titanic trying to bail water from the sinking ship with a thimble. None of their training will make a bit of difference on the battlefield in terms of the tactical situation with one exception — their training may help some of the poorly trained and equipped Ukrainians survive.
Milburn minces no words in confirming the catastrophic casualties the Ukrianian forces are suffering — 7 out of every ten soldiers are killed or wounded. It underscores the reality that the Russians are firing six artillery rounds for every one round fired by Ukraine.
Here is a Ukrainian unit confirming Col. Milburn’s assessment. They are not cowards. They are fed up with crappy leadership and indequate supplies:
“This is a message we are conveying to the command of the Airborne Troops and the command of the AFU from the 3rd Airmobile Company of the Separate Airmobile Battalion of the 25th Secheslav Airmobile Brigade.
We were sent on a combat mission to hold separate combat positions. We did not receive proper armament and artillery support. As a result, 70% of the company was killed or wounded. We did not have and do not have combat equipment and proper armament. We did not even have the equipment to evacuate the injured, due to which several wounded did not survive.
We spent more than a month in the trenches transmitting coordinates never fired upon by artillery. Platoon sergeants fled their positions in the first days and were transferred by Chief of Staff Kipinach, now acting battalion commander. We are demanding the transfer of the entire unit.”
So the United States is sending billions of dollars of military gear and weapons to Ukraine and the guys on the front lines are not getting any of it? Marjorie Taylor Greene is right. We need an audit. What the hell is Zelensky and his gang of thieves doing with all of the U.S. aid? Please, please subscribe and share. I need your help.
I am 76. Yes, I know—my profile picture, which is recent, looks younger. There is a reason my book is called "Ageing Young-- You're Never Too Old To Rock and Roll", the title given to me by David Bowie's lead guitarist and songwriter, Mark Pritchett.
I write a lot about health issues, ageing successfully, cognitive issues like ASD—and… umm…genius. (Oh, I wish! But I will have to learn to tie my shoes first). I am pretty much “dys” everything. You will notice lots of typos. Dyslexia. Correct me please.
Recently, I have turned to geopolitical issues.
I have worked in the media for almost 50 years. I was a stringer in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Then I was in Korea. And after that in Japan where I studied martial arts and Buddhism and did a lot of things: union organizer, writer, broadcaster, media analyst, beer and pizza.
I am neither Left nor Right. It’s a cognitive disability, an aspect of my ASD. I have trouble with that: tell me to turn right and I may go left and vice versa. Politically, I prefer to say I am "multipolar". Multipolar Personality Disorder?
Which is probably what most people have. People who label themselves "left" or "right" seem to be limiting themselves to an ideology.
Guess that is OK if you are paying membership dues to a political party. But I don't have money for that.
Some really interesting comments on my book. I am currently revising it--so this feedback is REALLY helpful. Thank you all! Pleased read my reply to Anna's first comment.
Hello Julian, thank you for your blog, and the signpost to your book, which I have just read. It's an interesting read. However, I must disagree with your analysis of musical culture, and in particular your dismissal of high culture as 'mostly effete snobbery'. You may not like classical music, but to imply that it is worthless is shockingly narrow and uninformed, and reveals a lack of insight about the relative cultural impact of different forms of music.
From a technical perspective, popular music is incredibly limited and repetitive in comparison to classical music, with the same few chords, the same monotonous rhythms and the same few instruments used over and over again. You have focused on Jethro Tull, and it is true that they are less repetitive than most, but they are also hardly typical of popular music, so if you are going to appeal to the overall superiority of popular music we must look at that genre as a whole.
In general, popular music is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator within the human psyche. With the lyrics being at best over-simplifying, and at worst driven by self-pity, rage, sex, violence and general hedonism, complex realities are reduced to soundbites, and the focus is on pandering to human excesses and weaknesses. The repetition of rhythm and motif has a powerful hypnotic effect that drives the negative message of the lyrics home. In the last few decades, popular music has played an important role in bestialising and coarsening society, as people have wanted increasingly shocking and sexualised music in order to titillate their jaded palates. It is amazing to me that you have cited Keith Richards in a positive way, given his rampant drug use. His brand of hedonism has ruined countless lives all over the world; we simply cannot cope with the impact of having such people as role models.
The development of people's intellectual capacities is primarily fostered by exposure to more complex and challenging ideas and stimuli. With respect to music, classical music embodies more sophisticated patterns that require greater concentration over longer periods of time in order to discern themes and resolutions. Popular music, on the other hand, is formulaic and simplistic for the most part. It may soothe or stimulate, but it is never going to edify. At a time when culture is increasingly dumbed-down, and people are becoming noticeably less intelligent, this is a major concern.
The notion that Shakespeare is some kind of analogue to popular music is plain nonsense. Shakespeare was a classically educated scholar whose plays and sonnets reveal his deep knowledge of the high culture of his day - the history of the known world, the Greek and Roman classics, contemporary literature, and the Bible. He was a virtuoso writer who displayed great creativity and variety in his works - far more than any popular musician. He was also strongly focused on complex patterns of behaviour, and moral issues, and gave his characters great emotional depth and sophistication. How can any of this ever be said of popular music?
Of course it would be wrong to claim that listening to classical music can guarantee mental and intellectual health, and in any case not all classical music is equally helpful in its effect, but experiment after experiment has demonstrated the power of classical music to evince positive responses from humans and animals, whilst popular music has negative or at best neutral effects. In a time when people are increasingly subject to dangerous and negative influences, we should be all the more careful that we only listen to music that can help us become the best version of ourselves.
Popular music is juvenile - and I disagree with you that being called juvenile could ever be said to be positive. You are confusing being juvenile with the capacity to play, but they are not the same. To use Huizinga's definition, playing is the ability to enter into an alternative world that has been consciously created with its own rules and norms, purely for its own sake. Being juvenile means having childish patterns of thinking and behaviour, to the detriment of the person and those around them. Playing implies a lack of limits to possibilities, but being juvenile means that the person is unable to free themselves from the limitations of immaturity. The latter is not a condition of the former, and it is a mistake to confuse the two.
Some really interesting comments on my book. I am currently revising it--so this feedback is REALLY helpful. Thank you all! Pleased read my reply to Anna's first comment.
Hello Julian, thank you for your blog, and the signpost to your book, which I have just read. It's an interesting read. However, I must disagree with your analysis of musical culture, and in particular your dismissal of high culture as 'mostly effete snobbery'. You may not like classical music, but to imply that it is worthless is shockingly narrow and uninformed, and reveals a lack of insight about the relative cultural impact of different forms of music.
From a technical perspective, popular music is incredibly limited and repetitive in comparison to classical music, with the same few chords, the same monotonous rhythms and the same few instruments used over and over again. You have focused on Jethro Tull, and it is true that they are less repetitive than most, but they are also hardly typical of popular music, so if you are going to appeal to the overall superiority of popular music we must look at that genre as a whole.
In general, popular music is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator within the human psyche. With the lyrics being at best over-simplifying, and at worst driven by self-pity, rage, sex, violence and general hedonism, complex realities are reduced to soundbites, and the focus is on pandering to human excesses and weaknesses. The repetition of rhythm and motif has a powerful hypnotic effect that drives the negative message of the lyrics home. In the last few decades, popular music has played an important role in bestialising and coarsening society, as people have wanted increasingly shocking and sexualised music in order to titillate their jaded palates. It is amazing to me that you have cited Keith Richards in a positive way, given his rampant drug use. His brand of hedonism has ruined countless lives all over the world; we simply cannot cope with the impact of having such people as role models.
The development of people's intellectual capacities is primarily fostered by exposure to more complex and challenging ideas and stimuli. With respect to music, classical music embodies more sophisticated patterns that require greater concentration over longer periods of time in order to discern themes and resolutions. Popular music, on the other hand, is formulaic and simplistic for the most part. It may soothe or stimulate, but it is never going to edify. At a time when culture is increasingly dumbed-down, and people are becoming noticeably less intelligent, this is a major concern.
The notion that Shakespeare is some kind of analogue to popular music is plain nonsense. Shakespeare was a classically educated scholar whose plays and sonnets reveal his deep knowledge of the high culture of his day - the history of the known world, the Greek and Roman classics, contemporary literature, and the Bible. He was a virtuoso writer who displayed great creativity and variety in his works - far more than any popular musician. He was also strongly focused on complex patterns of behaviour, and moral issues, and gave his characters great emotional depth and sophistication. How can any of this ever be said of popular music?
Of course it would be wrong to claim that listening to classical music can guarantee mental and intellectual health, and in any case not all classical music is equally helpful in its effect, but experiment after experiment has demonstrated the power of classical music to evince positive responses from humans and animals, whilst popular music has negative or at best neutral effects. In a time when people are increasingly subject to dangerous and negative influences, we should be all the more careful that we only listen to music that can help us become the best version of ourselves.
Popular music is juvenile - and I disagree with you that being called juvenile could ever be said to be positive. You are confusing being juvenile with the capacity to play, but they are not the same. To use Huizinga's definition, playing is the ability to enter into an alternative world that has been consciously created with its own rules and norms, purely for its own sake. Being juvenile means having childish patterns of thinking and behaviour, to the detriment of the person and those around them. Playing implies a lack of limits to possibilities, but being juvenile means that the person is unable to free themselves from the limitations of immaturity. The latter is not a condition of the former, and it is a mistake to confuse the two.