‘Blowback’ is the term used when a nation's efforts to damage a geopolitical opponent come back to haunt them.
The classic example of blowback is how the US for year supported an army of fanatically jihadis in Afghanistan to try to bleed the Soviet Union in a protracted guerrilla war there. The leader of those American-funded jihadis was none other than Osama Bin Laden. Al Qaeda was the army of radical militants that America funding and support helped Osama Bin Laden to create.
The blowback to the United States from supporting Osama Bin Laden came on September 11th, 2001, when the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed in flames. The multi-trillion dollar war in Afghanistan was also blowback.
It's dangerous for any nation to support radical and hate-filled groups to try to damage a geopolitical opponent. America is now discovering that a second time in Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine has been coming for a long time. Mike Whitney outlines the long road to war here.
Oliver Stone's movie Ukraine on Fire details how the United States has spent the last decade funding Uko-NAZIs and destabilizing Ukrainian politics. I think every North American should watch this movie before deciding to jump on the Putin-is-a-mad-bad-dictator bandwagon.
I will offer two pieces of feedback before you watch the movie. The first is that the opening credits - which show a naked woman dancing while covered in flames - is a little spooky. It's a metaphor which I think will make more sense once you see the rest of the movie. The second piece of feedback is that the archival footage of the massacres of the Jewish population of Ukraine in the Second World War are horrific. Some of the footage of the Maidin 'revolution' is only slightly less gruesome.
America's support for the Ukrainian NAZIs has now come back to bite America. Americans were already facing a future of high inflation and economic slowdown before the war in Ukraine started. Almost two-thirds of Americans have been living paycheck to paycheck for some time, trying to absorb rapidly rising prices. Now, in a direct blowback from the war in Ukraine, the average American family can expect to pay $2,000 more for gasoline this year, and $1,000 more for food. That's stage one of the blowback from the war in Ukraine.
Stage two of blowback could well be that the US dollar ceases to be the world's reserve currency. By seizing the foreign reserves of Russia, the United States has told the rest of the world that it's not safe to keep either your national reserves or your personal savings in US dollars. Expect a lot of countries, and a lot of rich individuals, to quietly unload whatever US bonds they own in the next few months.
Part of what has enabled the United States to maintain the appearance of prosperity over the past decade has been that the United States Government has been able to borrow trillions of dollars from the rest of the world at extremely low interest rates. If the US loses its status as the world's reserve currency, it will have to pay market rates of interest on 30 trillion dollars of US Government debt. If that happens, the results will not be pretty for the US economy.
Stage three of blowback, if we go there, would be World War Three.
If we're very lucky, World War Three will not go nuclear and casualties will only be measured in millions of deaths. If the war does go nuclear, the casualties will probably be measured in the billions. Perhaps we should all think of that before encouraging our governments to continue escalating towards war.
Canada's state-run media is universally stoking outrage against Russia to build support for a larger war. Perversely enough, one of the few people in North America speaking against the war is Tucker Carlson at Fox News. Almost everyone else on Foxnews is cheerleading for war. It speaks well of Fox News that they allow Tucker to present a contrary opinion. Tucker speaks plainly about the blowback for the US of the war in Ukraine. And Jesse Watters is at least willing to talk about the corruption of US politicians. The 'liberal' North American press shows no such liberal tendencies.
Be suspicious of government propaganda and false-flag events. They will be used to stoke your outrage, so that you too will clamour for war. Caitlin Johnstone's eloquent warning about Western propaganda is also something everyone in North America should read.
The mainstream press will continue to try to present Volodymyr Zelensky as a hero instead of the media-created servant of a corrupt oligarchy - and a direct beneficiary of that corruption. At least, try to remember he is an actor playing a role, and that this is not the first time he has shown questionable judgment in his choice of roles:
But Caitlin Johnstone's article is well documented and credible....
The material by MIke Whitney is not convincing, and also not really coherent. It appears to be an unsupported rant, not much different from that of the Putin-haters.... It would be better (for me at least) to see a historical article with supporting documents....