DISCUSS: Henry Kissinger Dead at 100
Former United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger died last night at the age of 100.
An insider to the core, Kissinger’s early career reads like a list of establishment clichés; educated at Harvard he pledged Phi Beta Kappa before working for the RAND Corporation, the Rockefellers and the Council on Foreign Relations.
In a surprisingly brief eight-year career as both National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Kissinger oversaw US involvement in Vietnam, pushed Nixon’s “madman theory” of foreign relations, backed Pinochet’s coup in Chile, supported the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, continued the air war in Laos and supported the carpet bombing and subsequent invasion of Cambodia.
He was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for ending the Vietnam war, an achievement hailed as “the death of political satire at the time”, and only tied in absurdity when Obama won his own in 2009 and then the inventors of mRNA vaccines got the Medicine prize earlier this year.
As with all our ruling monsters, in death Kissinger is given the epithets always afforded those who commit establishment-approved crimes. He’s called a “polarizing figure” with a “complicated legacy”.
In contrast, the late Anthony Bourdain pulled no punches, writing in one of his books:
Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking.
I think we all know how he felt – and it extends to all those in pristine suits with blood on their hands, exchanging happy anecdotes with TV puppets, be it Blair or Bush, Kissinger or Campbell.
For those somehow unfamiliar with Kissinger’s CV, we would suggest James Corbett’s documentary “Meet Henry Kissinger” as a good place to start:
Reactions to his death have been mixed, ranging from predictably po-faced praise like “a genuine love of the free world and the need to protect it” from such luminaries as Tony Blair to the ghoulishly gleeful in memes like this:
…or this:
Travelling back to OffG’s birth following the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, it was interesting to note that Kissinger was actually at odds with the mainstream narrative, suggesting that Ukraine should commit to neutrality – “Finlandisation”, as he called it in his Washington Post article – and that the US/EU/NATO should listen to Russia’s regional concerns.
It’s a sign of just how dangerously out of control that period was that Henry Kissinger – of all people – seemed to be the voice of reason.
At the time it came over as an old man out of his time, committed to Realpolitik and the Grand Chessboard that was neither understood nor applied by the neo-con US grown used to unopposed actions on the world stage.
With almost a decade of hindsight perhaps we were wrong, and Kissinger was actually thinking several moves ahead – pushing a “multipolar” world order before it was cool.
At Covid’s height there was a supposed Kissinger quote about vaccine mandates doing the rounds on the internet. Kissinger never said it, and its distribution was likely a psyop designed to discredit “anti-vaxxers”.
However, an article he definitely did write, in April 2020 (when the “Covid pandemic” was only four months old), while much less directly comic-book evil is far more revealing,
Headlining…
The Coronavirus Pandemic Will Forever Alter the World Order
He goes on to presciently state [emhasis added]…
The US must protect its citizens from disease while starting the urgent work of planning for a new epoch[…] When the Covid-19 pandemic is over, many countries’ institutions will be perceived as having failed […] The reality is the world will never be the same after the coronavirus.
Leaders are dealing with the crisis on a largely national basis, but the virus’s society-dissolving effects do not recognize borders. While the assault on human health will—hopefully—be temporary, the political and economic upheaval it has unleashed could last for generations […] Addressing the necessities of the moment must ultimately be coupled with a global collaborative vision and program.
It seems Kissinger – master strategist, veteran insider and monstrous servant of the establishment – was ahead of the game to the very end.
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