Catch-22 Plays Out in Ukraine
Soon the only “medium” left will be the streets and rebellion against the elites – if, that is, the Western public hasn’t been made totally comatose yet.
When Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky recently declared the war in his country “could go on for another 10 years”, the weapons industries in the United States and Europe must have been rubbing their hands with glee.
The U.S. and NATO partners have already plied billions of dollars worth of weapons into Ukraine. And the Russian military is destroying the gifted munitions as fast as they’re arriving – the destruction accelerating this week with Russia hitting depots with cruise missiles. Zelensky calls for more weapons to be sent and the Western states happily oblige.
The Ukrainian president, being a comic actor before his political career took off, will no doubt appreciate the absurdity of the situation. His country is the scene of a modern-day version of Catch-22 playing out. The 1961 novel by Joseph Heller is a classic satire on the absurdity of war driven by corporate profit. Violence is nothing but a messy means to an end of creating more profit. The messier, the better. Forget about platitudes invoking noble principles. That’s just for packaging the cruel, hideous cycle.
Zelensky and his Western supporters talk about “defending democracy”. What they mean is “defending profits”.
It is incredible the cruel parody. Workers and their families across the United States and Europe are suffering record economic hardships sharpened by rising living costs – and yet their governments are throwing billions of dollars and euros at a corrupt regime in Kiev whose military is infested with Nazi death squads. You could hardly make it up. Only it is happening. And not for the first time in history have Western states indulged fascism. Because ultimately, as we are seeing more clearly with each passing day, they are themselves prone to fascism once their veneer of liberal democracy is scrubbed.
Kiev’s Azov Battalion and other National Guard regiments were the perpetrators of the atrocities in Bucha, Kramatorsk and Mariupol. These NATO-trained paramilitaries who don SS insignia on their uniforms carried out the mass murders of civilians, dumping their bodies in graves, only to dig the corpses up again for the cameras. Blame it on the Russians and the Western media willfully oblige, of course, because they are part of the whole war racket.
The Western public is gaslighted with the reported graphic horrors. Any alternative media that convey a credible exposé of false flag provocations is all but shut down by Western government censorship. U.S. President Joe Biden denounces Russian savagery and war crimes. So, too, railing at the “barbarity” is Britain’s Boris Johnson, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, and the European Union’s Ursula Von der Leyen.
What to do?
Well, in the best Catch-22 logic, the response is to send even more and heavier weaponry to Ukraine to prop up the bankrupt swindling regime and its dwindling Nazi stormtroopers.
Biden has vowed to send another $800 million in military supplies. It’s hard to keep count of the largesse. That adds up to an estimated $3 billion in Pentagon pandering that his administration has afforded to Kiev since Biden took office over one year ago. Don’t ya just love the priorities while Americans are dying from poverty and sickness?
Germany’s Scholz has come up with a handy scheme to pile billions of euros into Kiev on the condition that it only uses the money to buy weapons from the Bundeswehr and its military-industrial complex. Don’t ya just love “German efficiency”?
The same goes for Britain, France, and other members of the NATO alliance.
Poland and the Baltic states are sending weapons to Ukraine and the United States has “vowed” to replenish their stocks with new supplies from the Pentagon’s corporations.
So hectic is this war and profit frenzy, the U.S. Secretary of Defense [War] Lloyd Austin has told the media that he is coordinating with Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and other manufacturers on how to maximize production lines for Ukraine.
Zelensky has appealed with a straight face for another handout of $50 billion in financial loans from the Group of Seven U.S.-led club of so-called rich nations. How many multi-billion-dollar loans have this regime received since the CIA-backed coup brought it to power in 2014?
The Western public is bailing out a regime with their taxes and through their higher costs of living. Western governments claim to have no money to spend on easing economic hardship and providing basic public services, but they evidently have no hesitation in lavishing public monies on a hateful regime of Nazis and embezzlers. And while you’re at it, take a cold shower to save on energy bills.
To keep the farcical fraud going, the U.S. ruling elite and their Western cronies are shipping weapons to Ukraine paid for ultimately by their hard-pressed citizens. The Russians promptly destroy the dead capital contained in weapons. And the whole process is recycled to generate ever-more profits for the military-industrial complex and ever-more poverty for the general population.
You may feel like screaming with frustration or protest. But don’t worry, they have that glitch sorted. There is now hardly any public fora or media by which to hear or commune with the dissent to this madness. The elites have censored or blacked out any dissenting voices – all while pontificating about defending democracy and freedom of speech.
At least when Heller published Catch-22 mocking the insanity of capitalist war, it was widely read and publicly acclaimed for its mordant exposition. It was made into a big-screen film. The same for Doctor Strangelove and other classic anti-war works of art.
What is truly disturbing about our present is there are very few alternative media left. What is going on in Ukraine is so blatantly absurd, that it should be tearing the house down with uproar. Instead, we see little but dulled public “consent” to keep the machine going, wearing down the same public, boosting profits for the elites, destroying lives, and driving the world to an even more catastrophic war.
Soon the only “medium” left will be the streets and rebellion against the elites – if, that is, the Western public hasn’t been made totally comatose yet.
