tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9747730766905976832024-03-28T23:29:34.431-04:00Sardonicky politics, media, cultureKaren Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.comBlogger1942125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-8497108718883285722024-03-21T14:31:00.011-04:002024-03-21T16:58:52.922-04:00Saving Democracy By Killing It<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/us/politics/democrats-third-party-candidates.html">New York Times</a> reports that the Biden administration is dispatching a whole "army of lawyers" on a special mission to aggressively seek and destroy any and all challengers to the unpopular incumbent's continued reign in the White House.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What - you still thought that democracy included giving voters an actual choice on Election Day? To the contrary. Anybody still operating under the delusion that our form of government is anything but a fascist oligarchy should be getting a cruel wake-up call with this latest news. Not only are they acting like the dictators that they accuse Donald Trump of wanting to be, they are flaunting their own authoritarianism right out in the open. No matter to them that they are also flaunting their abject fear of the voting public right out there in the open.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Not for nothing does the Times headline characterize such anti-genocide candidates as Cornel West and Jill Stein as "threats" - literal enemy combatants of the World Order.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">These and other upstarts are, according to the article, "peeling away" votes that Joe Biden presumes that he, and he alone, rightfully owns. If this tired old flaying-alive nonsense doesn't plant</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> an image in your head of a puckered rind being pulled off an old lemon whose pulp is revealed to be covered in toxic mold, then I guess you're not as much into horror as I am.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">According to one of Biden's lawyers, the aim of the anti-peeling op is to police the usurpers and pretenders to ensure that they are playing by such rules as jumping through all the artificially narrowed ballot access hoops in the proper, normative order. If they should accidentally graze the top of the pole vault bar with a pinky finger,</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> or trip over one of the many tripwires that the corporate Democrats have placed on the obstacle course,</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> "we will hold them accountable."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Or as the Times more primly puts it, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: medium;"><i></i></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-size: medium;"><i>Gaining access to the presidential ballot is a complicated and expensive process for candidates, particularly for those not affiliated with a party, even a minor one. Laws vary from state to state, with some requiring merely a fee or a few thousand signatures, and others requiring tens of thousands of signatures gathered under tight deadline pressure, along with other administrative hurdles.</i></span></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The lead legal warrior trying to purge the ballots of all challengers is former White House Counsel <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/17/biden-names-former-alito-clerk-to-top-white-house-job-437005">Dana Remus,</a> currently a partner in the Covington and Burling white-shoe law firm. She is married to a State Department undersecretary for security who previously ran financial security for the Capitol One bank. Remus once clerked for right-wing Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion that overturned Roe v Wade last year.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">When, several years prior to that notorious ruling Alito was accused of misogyny by columnist Dana Milbank for allegedly making mean faces at the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg behind her back, Remus defended him against the charges of sexism, gushing in a letter to The Washington Post that her former boss "is a good man, who serves every day with humility, dedication, and incredible intelligence and insight."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It's really incredible how misused and overused the word "incredible" has become in polite, fawning discourse. Whenever I hear it uttered by a famous or powerful person, my bullshit detector goes into full gear. An alternate interpretation of Remus's </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">statement is that Alito's alleged respect for women and his integrity and brains are beyond belief. Her glib statement is simultaneously meaningless and non-credible. Ditto for the projectile belching of all the U.S. politicians and media stenographers who regularly proclaim themselves "unbelievably heartbroken" about the genocide in Gaza.</span></span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-87195393871944319652024-03-08T13:09:00.006-05:002024-03-08T13:39:31.938-05:00The State of the Union Is Deranged<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> Joe Biden wasted no time setting the belligerent, paranoid tone in his<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/state-of-the-union-2024/"> State of the Union</a> address to Congress on Thursday night.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"Overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond. If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop in Ukraine, I assure you he will not," he thundered.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Whereupon his fellow belligerents erupted in cheers and thundering applause. You might have gotten the impression that they were cheering for Putin. They were definitely cheering for World War III, as Biden hearkened back to the good old days when Adolf Hitler brought the whole country together and the war economy boomed, putting the final nail in the coffin of the Great Depression.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Biden's theme of the night is that fascism is coming to America in the form of Donald Trump. So it was all the more grotesque when he strayed from his script in an </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">attempt to out-Trump Trump on the border crackdown. If he can't beat the Republicans at their own bigoted game, then he will join them. In fact, he will outdo them in his fear and hatred of the Other.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">He certainly proved his tough-guy right-wing mettle Thursday when he engaged with Marjorie Taylor Greene. He certainly shocked a few liberals when he called the alleged Venezuelan killer of a young U.S. woman an "illegal." It was especially jarring when he promptly returned to his script and pronounced himself disgusted that Trump had accused migrants of "poisoning the blood of America." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">He, Joe Biden, respects the humanity of those dastardly illegals!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">So that "gaffe" didn't prevent the media from praising his performance. He was totally on fire. He was feisty and he was folksy. He was Joe Being Joe! These are just the kind of qualities required when telling a litany of lies about how great America is, and how "heartbreaking" it is that Israel is using Biden's love-bombs to actually kill people.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Like the fairytale ogre who fattens up his victims before slaughtering them, Biden announced at his stand-up routine he is sending a military flotilla to the coast of Gaza in order to build piers for the offloading of food. Since he is simultaneously sending hundreds of bundles of ammunition and other deadly hardware to Israel - arriving at lightning speed compared to his food delivery stunt - it will be such a tragedy when the starving Palestinians who are still alive at that point will even have the strength to crawl through the rubble to get at the supplies. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">One even wonders if the Israeli armed thugs posing as an army will shoot at the ships and US troops to prevent the aid from being delivered. One also wonders whether Joe Biden will nevertheless still defend Israel's right to "defend" itself.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"History is watching" was the refrain Biden kept bellowing out during the speech. History was watching then, it's watching now, and it will watch in the future. This is not surprising when you consider that Historian-For-Hire Jon Meacham reportedly composed much of the speech.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Because of the Standardized History Bible, Biden was also able to preposterously declare that the Capitol riot of January 6th was the darkest American day ever. It has apparently supplanted Nine Eleven as the greatest holy day of paranoid apocalyptic obligation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But miracle of miracles! History has further decreed that even though Donald Trump (whom he did not name) is the greatest threat to America, America has enjoyed such a recovery that people don't even realize it, until Joe Biden, or Meacham, dubs his presidency " the Greatest Story Never Told." Historical Revisionist-in-Chief Joe Biden declared that despite the fascist threats both abroad and at home and existing in his own administration, America has never been better.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I won't bore you with his whole litany of lies, such as his boast that he cut child poverty in half. He did not mention that child poverty has actually increased since the expiration of Covid-era social spending legislation. To that end, he modestly vowed that every child in America will learn to read by the third grade.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The third grade? What a modest, all-American goal. Is History watching or even paying minimal attention to the gibberish flowing from Biden's lips?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What Biden could have meant was that he hopes every American will continue to read at a third grade level for the rest of their lives. That way, neither they nor History will notice all of the political gaslighting going on. They will also lack the skills to read any of Meacham's hagiographic history books. </span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-90377469034350215702024-03-05T13:57:00.006-05:002024-03-06T11:45:07.284-05:00You Can't Reform Capitalism<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Instead, if you're an unpopular neoliberal president running for re-election, you will at least want to be <i>seen </i>as trying . Therefore, in lieu of winning hearts and minds by changing his own mind about Medicare For All, Joe Biden cynically aims to make you forget all about his old campaign promise to at least include a public insurance option in his health care agenda, Who needs that sort of namby-pamby consolation prize when you can join him in privatizing Medicare and Medicaid by calling it an all-out war against greedy corporations?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Since Joe Biden prides himself on being an absolute killer of a genocidal wartime president, the least he can do for the folks back home is to get the eugenics craze up and running at full speed. The fact that his Centers for the Prevention of Disease Control just officially made the Covid isolation protocols go away, Biden will make it opaquely plain at this Thursday's State of the Union speech that he aims to transform your health care into a full scale cutthroat competition You see, the problem with the American health care industry is not that it's even called an industry instead of a universal program for the public good. It's not that even insured citizens are going bankrupt at record numbers when they get sick. It's not the unaffordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles..</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's that the government-subsidized insurance behemoths should be fighting more among themselves for every last denial of benefits and every last nickel that they steal from your pockets. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">As reported by <i><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/04/biden-health-care-task-force-inflation-00144713">Politico,</a></i> Joe Biden will use part of his State of the Union speech this Thursday to announce the creation of a (drum-roll, please) brand new Task Force to study and root out the roots of the corporate greed they apparently have only recently discovered exists in this country. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This task force is the next best thing and the only alternative to single payer, government-run medical insurance. The idea is that once Biden's task force studies the problem, it will then have the chops to gently chide the insurance predators into playing in a new Free Market Olympics for the fostering of capitalistic good will and understanding on the killing fields. Which team will have the best results in narrowing provider choice and cutting costs (and services) in the end? Citizens will root and cheer and vote for Team United Health Team, Blue Cross and all the others. Which team can valiantly raise the bar on the pole vault and make it harder to give fans the care they need? If life can't be a constant battle, then what good is it? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">From<i> Politico's</i> breathless preview:</span></p><p class="story-text__paragraph" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>The move comes as President Joe Biden seeks new ways to show voters he’s cracking down on the so-called corporate greed that he has increasingly blamed for high prices — a message he is expected to highlight during his State of the Union address on Thursday.</i></span></p><p class="story-text__paragraph" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="font-family: verdana;">Biden’s approval ratings on the economy have been dragged down by voters’ concerns about the rising cost of living despite the otherwise robust post-pandemic recovery. And a <a aria-label="
recent KFF poll (opens in a new window)" class="js-tealium-tracking" data-tracking="mpos=&mid=&lindex=&lcol=" href="https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/poll-finding/kff-health-tracking-poll-february-2024-voters-on-two-key-health-care-issues-affordability-and-aca/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #008ae0; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s;" target="_blank">recent KFF poll</a> shows that 80 percent of voters say it is “very important” for candidates to talk about health care</i><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span><i style="font-family: verdana;">affordability.</i></span></p><p class="story-text__paragraph" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Since the person whom Biden is tasking to lead the force also heads the HHS division orchestrating the <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/medicare-is-quietly-being-privatized-does-anyone-care-6afb22b4">stealth privatization</a> of Medicare by insurers under the "advantage" rubric, one wonders if this allegedly novel ask Force is simply another way of putting lipstick on a pig. When Biden calls them greedy, he means it as a Gordon Gekko-like compliment.</span></p><p class="story-text__paragraph" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And don't look for Biden to issue a price control or freeze order, either. The problem is not high prices at the grocery store, or rising rents, you see. The problem is a lack of transparency from grocery chains and landlords. If they were only more honest about the many ways that they cheat and bilk you, you would be satisfied, according to the Biden White House.</span></p><p class="story-text__paragraph" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">These are not only supremely stupid people, they think you are as supremely stupid as they are. But look over there: Biden is dropping a few surplus meals-ready-eat packages for bthe starving Palestinians to compete for. He is only trying to bring free market competition into an open-air prisonm after all.Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-76106024803870994032024-02-27T13:42:00.010-05:002024-02-27T14:32:11.341-05:00R.I.P. Aaron Bushnell<p><span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Maybe if U.S. Airman Aaron Bushnell had set fire to the Israeli embassy instead of setting fire to himself, his act of protest against the genocide in Gaza</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> would have gotten more attention from the establishment media machine. As it was, the first instinct of a cop arriviing on the scene was to draw his gun instead of grabbing a fire extinguisher or a blanket with which to smother the flames. I guess the cop feared that without gunfire, the fire might spread to some pretty valuable real estate in the vicinity.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The police reaction and the ensuing media silence on this tragedyare simply reflective of the fact that the the powers-that-be consider the destruction of property to be far worse than the destruction of human beings. This also applies to the destruction of oneself in an act of political protest.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> And when it's a military service member who self-destructs so spectacularly to protest against a genocide in which he potentially would be ordered to participate ,it renders thr masters of war and their media lackeys completely speechless. Their own cowardly acts of self-censorship speak for ithemselves; to the extent that outlets like the New York Times have covered the tragedy, they have done so in as perfunctory and repressed a style as they can indecently manage.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> "Man sets self on fire in front of embassy " is pretty much the gist of it. It's rendered as pathetically humdrum a stunt as the latest disturbed White House fence-jumping or at least no more remarkable than a particularly gruesome traffic pile-up.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">"Move along, folks," the media cops on the beat seem to chide those rubbernecker readers. "Nothing to see here."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">It's especially awkward for them as Election '24 is in full gear. Genocide Joe would find it especially difficult to shamble up to eh podium and slur out his thanks to Airman Bushnell for his service and his sacrifice. And his standard closing line of "God protect our troops" would neither fit the occasion nor contribute to the kind of for-profit patriotic fervor that he's always aiming for. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">And it also wouldn't do for Biden to bring up suicide of any kind during this election year, when deaths of despair in America are at their highest level in years - despite his boasts of an economy so booming that only MAGA Republicans are mired in the slough of American life,. They are so cynical when a Democratic future obviously beckons to one and all.</span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">To hear the politicians tell it, our military heroes and martyrs have all willingly and valiantly killed or died for us. Never do the masters of war tell us the real truth: that the vast majority of people</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> join the military to escape poverty, either actual or threatened. That is because wages have been stagnating for decades. A military job means guaranteed food, lodging, job training and guaranteed, cost-free health care. Recruiting efforts, largely done in high schools in poor districts, take great care sell the benefits and to downplay the physical and mental risks.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The first place I learned about Aaron Bushnell's death was in the right-wing, sensationalistic<i><a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13131243/Aaron-Bushnell-martyr-burn-Israel-flags-DC-embassy.html"> Daily Mail. </a></i>The headline in its follow-up story today was. predictably enough, aimed at arousing outrage against lefties burning Israeli flags in a vigil outside the embassy, and glorifying the airman as a martyr. It is the same kind of stereotypical language the media uses when they cover Muslim jihadists fomenting mayhem in the Middle East just for the crazed fun of it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">But surprisingly enough, the body of the <i>Daily Mail </i>article contains interviews with Bushnell's neighbors and plenty of background and photographs. Even though it's buried deep within the body of the story, it even quotes a psychologist warning that to the extent that the establishment media will cover the self-immolation in any depth, it will be a smear job, calling into question Bushnell's mental health. Absent any radical tidbits, The Times and its cohort probably will continue to ignore the story.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Besides, they're too busy covering Joe Biden's campaign appearance on a late-night NBC talk show while studiously ignoring the scores of anti-genocide protesters gathering outside 30 Rock. They're too</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> busy analyzing whether Joe's genocide will hurt his chances in today's Michigan primary - where, we're told, only his victory </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">will prevent the Second Coming of Trump.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">They figure if they just ignore Bushnell's death, it will go away. So let's make it impossible to ignore. Otherwise, his death will indeed have been in vain. </span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-56838798960557998652024-02-19T14:41:00.015-05:002024-02-19T17:37:00.971-05:00Biden's Holy Wars<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Christian fundamentalism is the unbroken thread winding its slinky way throughout the history of the United States. It writhes on to this very day, above the surface among right-wing factions, and more or less below the surface among liberals who purport to be more rational. This more enlightened, more occult liberal version is either approved or ignored by the mainstream media.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Joe Biden is a conservative Catholic, whose hardcore religious fundamentalism often escapes the traditional bounds of liberal discretion. He is certainly not immune to the hardcore religious dogma which has kept the colonialist, repressive, inquisitorial mindset alive in North America for upwards of 400 years. He, like most leaders, has used his religion as a moral excuse for inhumane policies ranging from his</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> longtime opposition to abortion, via the Hyde Amendment, to his full- throated support of the antisocial austerity policies espoused by the Reagan inspired Democratic Leadership Council he helped to found in the 1980s.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">But nowhere is Biden'</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">s religious fundamentalism more apparent than in the thick coats of pious gloss he applies to his proxy war on Russia and his fanatical support of the State of Israel's genocide of the Palestinians trapped in occupied Gaza.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Biden went </span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> full fire and brimstone last week when that godless heretic Donald Trump committed his shocking sacrilege against NATO, even going so far as to invite the great satan Putin to invade the member-states who don't plunk their fair share into the collection basket. It was one of many times recently that Biden has referred to his NATO not as the European arm of the military-industrial complex, but as a "sacred" fraternity united against undemocratic (read: godless) Russia.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Biden's entire re-election campaign revolves around the enemies without and the Public Enemy Number One and "existential threat" to the soul of our nation within: Donald Trump.The liturgy known as Russiagate is the required catechism. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Although the dictionary defines the word "sacred" as "dedicated or set apart for the worship of a deity," or "something or someone "worthy of religious veneration," Biden certainly has a facile way of hurling it about.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"We have a "sacred obligation to our military families," he sermonized last spring, "because there is nothing more sacred or more American."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But on <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/13/remarks-by-president-biden-on-protecting-the-sacred-constitutional-right-to-vote/">another occasion</a> he argued that "there is nothing more sacred than the right to vote," a right which is enshrined in "the sacred Constitution."</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Biden, as a Catholic school pupil during the Cold War, was always taught to say his rosary for the conversion of Russia. He learned all about the miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, who appeared to three Portuguese peasant children in 1917, around the time of the Russian revolution, to expressly warn them about a communist i menace so catastrophic that the children were instructed by the mother of Jesus to only divulge the details to the Vatican, which was to keep the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Secrets_of_F%C3%A1tima">documents </a>under lock and key almost a century. And Biden also learned that the anti-Muslim crusades were not a series of land-grabbing atrocities carried out over a period of over 200 years, but rather virtuous pilgrimages for the saving of non-believing souls. How do I know this? Because I attended a Catholic elementary school, too, and this was the relentless propaganda that was drummed into me. It was a curriculum and catechism devised and decreed by the Vatican. Some pupils outgrew or disowned this dogmatism. Others, obviously, have not.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">So it comes as no surprise, to me anyway, that the two enemies that Biden has chosen to fight are Russia and the Muslims that centuries ago reconquered the Middle East</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> from all manner of European usurpers. It explains why Biden is a self-described Christian Zionist with an unwavering loyalty to the state of Israel, the formation of which officially expelled Palestinians fom the "holy land" in 1948. As a devout, fundamentalist Catholic, he believes that when the end of the world comes, he will be bodily resurrected into heaven directly from Zionist-controlled Jerusalem.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">When it comes to war, Biden gets downright medieval in his rhetocic. His crusade to expand and strengthen NATO to all of Europe and even beyond, his exhortation to the whole world to join forces against Russia is not only a throwback to the Cold War. It's a throwback to Pope Urban II's exhortation in 1095 to nobles, knights, clergy and peasants alike to join in a militant pilgrimage to Byzantium, ostensibly to defend a Greek monarch against the Turks - but really while they were at it, to reconquer Jerusalem and the Holy Land in Palestine from Islamic rule.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Pope Urban got around the Church's official aversion to war and murder by redefining what was to become more than two hundred years' worth of "crusades" against Muslims - multigenerational long pilgrimage in which participating European volunteer-combatants would be absolved of all their sins and guaranteed a place in heaven.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">George W. Bush made liberals cringe when he cast his invasion of Iraq as a "crusade." Biden thus far has not verbally succumbed out that retrograde mindset by using the "C" word himself regarding his ideological wars. But he and his fellow hawks are always striving to overcome the Vietnam Syndrome described by neocons, in which our "sickly inhibitions" against war damage whatver war effort is currently underway.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">For example, just as Tucker Carlson allowed Putin to tell his side of the story, the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny conveniently died in a Siberian prison - right before his wife was taking the stage at a NATO confab in Munich. Right as the House of Reps was balking at sending more money and weaponry to Ukraine. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Right as the fate of political prisoner Julian Assange, exposer of Crusader Bush's war crimes, is being decided in a British court.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Just as "Genocide Joe" insisted that he witnessed the beheadings of Israeli babies by Hamas, Pope Urban II before him had urged genocide by atrocity propaganda. He told his troops of pilgrims that Muslim "savages" were eviscerating their (non-existent) Christian slaves just to see how far their intestines could be spread upon the ground. The pope also inspired his target audience with the specter of mass sexual assaults by Musliims upon on Christian women. Urban prissily did not go into specifics explaining that talking about the horror would actually be worse than the actual horror. . Of course, Pope Urban didn't have a New York Times to spread the graphic unproven details for him.. Plus, most people were not that literate back then.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Enlightened liberal fanatics like Biden just can't seem to help embracing the same kind of mythical, mystical past they accuse the "deplorables" of clinging to.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The sacralizing of war and all kinds of ,cruelty is how they justify their crimes to themselves.. It's what lets </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">all of them sleep at night.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> It also what makes Biden risk his own re-election for the sake of a religious fundamentalist idea, even it it means the second coming of Trump. Biden seems to be holding on for the second coming of Christ. Until then, his faith turns America iinto a pariah state in the eyes of the world.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">We must face the likelihood thathe truly does believe that Israel's murder of 30,000 Palestinians and counting is simply a matter of righteous self-defense.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">As Jeff Sharlet observes in his excellent history of American fundamentalism, "The Family."</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">"</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"Our attempts to shunt fundamentalists into the outer circle of kooks and haters and losers and left-behinds, undemocratic dimwits who do not understand the story the rest of us have agreed to live by. Our refusal to recognize the theocratic strand running throughout American history is as self-deceiving as fundamentalism's insistence that the United States was created a Christian nation."`</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Sharlet writes in his book that the National Prayer Breakfast, begun as a yearly event during the Eisenhower administration, and at which every president siince has delivered a religion-</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">-themed speech actually got its start as an anti-labor, anti-New Deal movement in the 1930s, as a nifty means to promote capitalistic greed and wealth inequality in the name of Jesus. The annual event also serves as a back-channel for foreign leaders - including foreign despots who are officially personae non grata with the State Department -and influential business people to wheel and deal in safety and comfort, to be a part of the religious experience. The only requirement is a personal acceptance of Jesus.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">For his own part, Biden did not disappoint the war profiteers in the audience. At oone point<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/02/01/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-national-prayer-breakfast-3/"> in his speech</a>, he actually seemed to conflate the United States with the body of Jesus Christ:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span face="MercurySSm-Book-Pro_Web, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0a2458;">"But we’re the beacon to the world. The entire world looks to us. That’s not hyperbole. </span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a2458;" />"<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a2458;" /><span face="MercurySSm-Book-Pro_Web, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0a2458;">This is an idea. This idea was made real befor<b>e the soul</b> <b>became flesh,</b> before this dream became a fact. It was prayed for, it was hoped for, it was believed in. That’s the story of America."</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0a2458;" /></span></p><p><span style="color: #0a2458; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;">Biden alluded to the famous passage from the New Testament's Gospel of St. John: "The word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory as it were the only begotten son of the Father, full of grace and truth."</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #0a2458; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;">I rest my case.</span></span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-38536016972744761502024-02-09T13:00:00.006-05:002024-02-10T10:26:01.953-05:00Unforgettable<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/09/democrat-opinion-special-counsel-report-biden">Who cares</a> if Joe Biden thinks that he took tea with Marie Antoinette at the Kremlin just the other day? Who cares if he forgets bombing countries with whom we are not actually at war? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The president is, after all, nothing but a simulacrum or figurehead of power. The real power is invested in his representatives, who represent the corporations and billionaires who own the place.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">To show that Biden as a personage doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of these malevolent schemers, loyal pundits like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/06/opinion/thepoint#krugman-biden-age">Paul Krugman</a> are falling all over themselves bragging that despite their high intelligence, they forget the year that their own mother died. So how dare the special prosecutor take the name of Biden's dead son in vain as an example of how senile the president is? I mean, who in their righteous mind hasn't forgotten when they were the vice president of a whole country, o even whether they still might even might still be the vice president of the United States?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Here's my take on ForgetGate. Biden, drawing upon his past feat of graduating near the bottom of his law school class but at a press conference decades later advancing himself to summa cum laude status, was simply perpetrating another con on a different panel of inquisitors. Only this time, he thought he could score points by dminishing himself. Granted that he is diminished, he chose to exaggerate his brain fog as a criminal defense strategy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> The trouble was, his testimony was a bit over the top, even for him, even a bit sarcastic. He was acting very passive-aggressively toward his interrogators.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It sure saved hhim the trouble of invoking the fifth amendment against self-incrimination. He probably figured the special prosecutor would simply do a wink-and-nod and release a brief report stating that the theft of classified material did not rise to the level pf a prosecutable crime.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This is the Old Boys Club, of which Biden has been a proud member iin good standing for nearly half a century!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It backfired on him, of course. When you're running for re-election, it's much more preferable to be charged with a crime than to be labeled senile. Just ask Donald Trump, who is so busy with myriad court cases that he barely has time to hold a campaign rally. And if he is off the campaign trail, he has less opportunity to exhibit his own senility. Dementia and crime are canceling each other right out, in Trump's case. It also helps him when the Supreme Court seems poised to to demolish the Democrats' "lawfare" shenanigans to keep him off the ballot.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I still think Biden will drop out right before or even during the Democratic convention this summer. That way, the corporations and billionaires, either in person or via their paid superdelegates, can nominate his successor by undemocratic acclaim. If they have an ounce of sense, this is what they will do. And that is a big "if." The task will be to keep their rusting windup toy well-oiled with medication and well-scripted to stay on message for several more months. First lady Jill will never be far away in a futile effort to swat away any elder abuse allegations along with those pesky "Genocide Joe" epithets hurled against her hubby.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Putting Joe into the retirement home for Aging War Criminals will be delicate undertaking not least because they will also have to find a way of retiring Kamala Harris from the ticket. So I assume they will nominate a woman for either their number one or number two. I am currently betting on Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. She could well salvage the state for the Dems if only she can convince the anti-Biden Palestinian bloc that she is not also in Israel's pocket. That is another big If.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> And Joe Biden will get an unforgettable sendoff for putting the country before his incredible career of</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> championing genocide, writing racist crime bills, putting more immigrants into </span></span></span><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">solitary</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> confinement and deporting them than even his</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> xenophobic predecessor did.</span></span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-24063862308647848152024-01-31T14:49:00.009-05:002024-01-31T16:46:46.195-05:00Reading "1984" in 2024: A Rambling Rumination<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's long been a commmnplace to attach the Orwellian label to everything from mass surveillance to censorship to the endless war machine. Centered in a post-capitalist post apocalyptic future, George Orwell's dystopian novel has something for everybody. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I just finished rereading the book for the fourth or fifith time since I first picked it up as a teenager in the 60s. Back then, I viewed it as the perfect description of the regimented public education system. I saw in the novel a mirror image of my high school, an ugly, dimly lit concrete example of Brutalist architecture. Not for nothing did those of us who fancied ourselves rebels dub it The Brain Factory.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">At the time, I didn't pay much attention to ihe name of my school - Indian Hills High, nestled in a white middle class enclave where virtually every street bore the name of an indigenous nation. There was (still is) an Osage Road, a Cherokee Court, a Lenape LLane and Ramapo Avenue. It makes me cringe every time I think about it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Fast toward 50 years to old age, and now the novel is a whole lot scarier, morphing from what Might Be to what ot Actually Is. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I'</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">m a lot more class conscious than I was in my youth. I had not really noticed in in my prior reading how closely Orwell's fictional class system hewed to our own. In just that one respect, "1984" was entirely, eerily prescient. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The top One Percent was rendered by Orwell as the "Inner Party." Granted, his version of the ruling oligarchy lived much more materially modest lives than our own Billionaire Class. Even Orwell could not have envisioned Jeff Bezos and his ilk.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">His "Outer Party," however, bears an uncanny resemblance to what the late Barbara Ehrenreich called the Professional-Managerial Class: the upper 10 or 15 percent of the population serving the top One Percent </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The novel's antihero, Winston Smith, is very much an integral part of the PCM. Toiling away in the Ministry of Truth, He's the very model of our own modern day corporate media, </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">whose dual function is to destroy the inconvenient past and to mold an alternate reality for the mass consumption of even the lowest rung in the hierarchy known as the "proles." In so doing, these Outer Party members must carefully suppress their own dissenting viewpoints, if any, if they want to survive. Winston Smith, as a careerist member of the PCM media division, was very careful in the beginning to toe the Party line himself, hoping that the Proles would be the ones rise up and revolt. I can envision dozens of Winston Smiths sitting in their New York Times cubbyholes,, stealthily editing articles that are, say, not entirely friendly to the establishment. Down the Memory Hole go all narratives referring to Occupied Gaza and Israel's 75 year old history of ethnic cleansing of the native population. The Israeli army obliterating that hospital? Never ven happened. There is now "confidence" from anonymous sources in the Inner Party that Hamas destroyed it with a stray missile.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> Dissenters to Party orthodoxy in Orwell's novel are relegated to the Ministry of Love for deprogramming. In real life, they are similarly disappeared, either by censorship or being fired from a media job. The thought police ensure that free-thinkers are simply never invited to the panel discussions of Inner Party elites which pose as reporting and journalism.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Orwell's novel describes regular Two-Minute Hate sessions as well as more elaborate Hate Weeks for the masses of proles. For our part, we have Cancel Culture and endless political campaign seasons. And don't forget Shark Week.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> We have tightly orchestrated and controlled elections to put even a faint gloss of democracy on our own de facto oligarchy We in the USA still have a uniparty system divided into two factions, Republicans and Democrats. These factions disagree only around the edges, and mainly in matters of popular culture. For example, if Taylor Swift endorses Joe Biden, Republicans say it spells the end of democracy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> Proles are urged to blame one bickering party faction or the other, and then to pull the lever accordingly every two and four years to vote against something or someone - before everything stays the same. The main function of the Uniparty both in Orwell's fiction and in our own reality, is to divide and conquer the proles, imposing on them an austerity so rigid that it forces them to fight each other for the crumbs.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">. The ruler of Orwell's Party is an entity called Big Brother. Nobody has ever actually seen this personage in the flesh, probably because he doesn't actually exist iin the flesh. He is mainly an Idea. a personification of the permanent ruling Structure. In our "reality-based" version, we're treated to a revolving cast of paternalistic leaders - ReaganBushClintonBushObamaTrumpBiden to name just the most recent actors - who all meld into one blob if you stop to think about it. And the Inner Party is perfectly fine with it. They want you to think of presidents as personifications of the ideal of the United States of America. Why else would Joe Biden kick off his re-election campaign by evoking George Washington? Continuity of propaganda narrative is all they have to offer.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Just speaking for myself, every time my mind tries to conjure up an image of Joe Biden, I I keep getting the face of Bush the Younger. Maybe it's</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> their similar beady little eyes. Maybe it's the similar contrived folksy demeanors trying to cover up their brutal neoconservative thirst for permanent global hegemony. Maybe it's their low I.Q. fanaticism.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Trump was labeled senile when he confused Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi. But aren't they too similar for comfort, each acid-tongued lady adopting a phony feminist persona with which to scold the Patriarchy in service to the Patriarchy? .</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">So they want us to think that Election12024 is a consequential death match for democracy or dictatorship, or whatever turns you on. But all it really is, is an intra-oligarchic brawl between Trump and Biden as persons and party leaders. It is really about the Inner Party making one of its periodic efforts to win the consent of the governed to give themselves a facade of legitimacy. They don't even much care that those of us in the prole category are increasingly onto their con, particularly those proles born after the brutal final stage of Neoliberal Capitalism. Young people never bought into the quaint and very cruel promise of the American Dream - a concept which had kept their elders more or less asleep these past 40 or 50 years. Now even more elders are beginning to wake up.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's refreshing that every time Joe Biden gives a campaign speech trying to gin up hate for his opponent, people are showing up to call him out for the genocide in Gaza. His feeble efforts at Orwellian "doublethink" - as, for example, he claims to champion the reproductive rights of American women at the same time he destroys the reproductive rights of Palestinian women by killing them. This gross display of gross contradictory messaging is not being lost on those dismissed as proles by the Inner Party and their Outer Party sycophants. They are finding it increasingly hard, as Orwell wrote, to be "competent, industrious and even intelligent within narrow limits" but at the same time to be "credulous and ignorant fanatic(s) whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.... It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest... No Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It reminds me of how often Biden and Antony Blinken and Nancy Pelosi and their mutual Partiers get so emotional whenever they boast about their "unwavering" and "unshakeable" support for a genocide they pretend is a war between two equal combatants. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's a wonder their heads don't explode with all that double-thinking effort. Maybe it's because their brains have already collapsed in upon themselves without anybody even noticing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> Whenever I try to imagine what they could possibly be thinking all I can come up with is is a vast, yawning morass devoid ,of all life and all intellect. </span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-3174196219787264022024-01-18T13:50:00.003-05:002024-01-18T14:16:04.996-05:00Blinken: Toward a More Humane Genocide<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Secretary of State Antony Blinken doesn't so much want the genocide to end as he wants to put a more humanitarian gloss on the ongoing slaughter and starvation of Palestinians by the State of Israel. Why call for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation of Gaza or the freeze in US military aid - when all that the world really needs is love, sweet love. Not to mention great big globs of self-serving propaganda from American Empire.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Blinken, despite what he called his "relentless" cajoling of Israel to cut back on the genocide, somehow found enough "me-time" time to j<a href="https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-a-conversation-with-thomas-friedman/">et off to Davos and schmooze </a>with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman at the World Economic Forum. Friedman, appropriately enough, donned a literal puffy vest to signal what a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/11/opinion/briefing#blinken-friedman-davos-gaza">puff-piece of a column </a>would be ensuing from the conversation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">If you could even call it a conversation as opposed to what might be termed a word salad had not Blinken served up such a gloppy soundbite stew. Here's just one example of what passes for deep thought in the Biden State Department:</span></p><div class="wp-block-paragraph" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px; line-height: 28px; margin: 20px auto; max-width: 750px; padding: 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>So this is – this is actually clear when you look at it and see it. The problem is getting from here to there. And of course, it requires very difficult and challenging decisions. It requires a mindset that’s open to that perspective. But the choice is there, and ultimately this is about choices. What kind of</i><span style="font-style: inherit;"> society </span><span><i>do we want to live in?</i></span><span style="font-style: inherit;"> </span><i>What kind of world do we want to live in? What kind of region do we want to live in?</i></span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What kind of plagiarism from a typically turgid Tom Friedman column is this? If we only take the time to look, we can clearly see all the myriad choices that are there for the savoring on the elite tasting menu.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And of course all the elites and war profiteers in the audience tittered appreciatively when Friedman asked Blinken: "Has there ever been a worse time to be secretary of state?"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Not until the end of the fawning interview did Friedman finally Go There snd confront Blinken about the genocide of Palestinians. Or as he put it, what about the naysayers who suspect that the Biden administration believes "Jewish lives matter more than Palestinian lives, Muslim lives," etc.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>SECRETARY BLINKEN: No, period. For me, I think for so many of us, what we’re seeing every single day in Gaza is gut-wrenching. And the suffering we’re seeing among innocent men, women, and children breaks my heart. The question is: What is to be</i> <i>done? We’ve made judgments about how we thought we could be most effective in trying to shape this in ways to get more humanitarian assistance to people, to get better protections, and minimize civilian casualties. </i></span></blockquote><span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"><blockquote><i>And at every step along the way, not only have we impressed upon Israel its responsibilities to do that, we’ve seen some progress in areas where absent our engagement I don’t believe it would have happened. So there are a lot of – there are dogs that didn’t bark. But that in no way, shape – way, shape, or form takes away from the tragedy that we’ve seen and continue to see. It’s why we’re at it relentlessly every single day. And all I can tell you, Tom, is just on a purely human level it’s devastating, but it reinforces the conviction and the commitment to do two things: to do everything we can in this moment using our best judgment – and of course, we could be wrong about the judgments we’re making – but to try to make a difference in the day-in/day-out.</i></blockquote></span><p></p><div class="wp-block-paragraph" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px; line-height: 28px; margin: 20px auto; max-width: 750px; padding: 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">But it also reinforces my conviction that there has to be – and</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"> there is – another way that answers Israel’s most profound concerns and questions. Israelis have to live with security. They can’t have a repeat of October 7th. </span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"> No</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"> country would accept a repeat of October 7th.</span></i></span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px; line-height: 28px; margin: 20px auto; max-width: 750px; padding: 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px;">Blinken then erects the straw man known as October 7th Denialism. People whom he does not name are out there spreading the word that October 7th is a hoax, It's Holocaust denialism all over again. There are "huge swaths" of it all over the world, he insisted. Apparently if you only take the time to look, you shall see... what you want to see. He stumbled on:</span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px; line-height: 28px; margin: 20px auto; max-width: 750px; padding: 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"><span style="font-style: italic; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"><span style="font-style: italic; letter-spacing: -0.2px;">So one of our challenges is to fight that dehumanization, to find ways to defuse it, to take that poison out. And that’s also a function of leadership. We need leaders around the world who see that, understand that, and are prepared to act on that.</span></span></blockquote><p></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px; line-height: 28px; margin: 20px auto; max-width: 750px; padding: 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px;">Technological disinformation is, another go-to straw man argument used by elites to explain all manner of their own antisocial policies, is what is responsible for people "dehumanizing" one other. He skirts mighty close to blaming the Internet and not 75 years of ethnic cleansing by Israel, to be the crux of the problem.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px; line-height: 28px; margin: 20px auto; max-width: 750px; padding: 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">If you're a sociopath like Blinken and do not possess a conscience, you must be very adept at pretending you have a conscience. You actually try to convince your audience that you have a moral compass - claim that as long as you think lovely thoughts while supplying bombs and money for genocide, you're all good. And it certainly helps when a fawning Times columnist calls your propaganda "heartfelt and impassioned" as if you even had a heart in the first place.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px; line-height: 28px; margin: 20px auto; max-width: 750px; padding: 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">With Valentines Day less than a month away, maybe Blinken can attach candy hearts to those thousand-pound bombs used to kill people. If Israeli officials can only tone down the genocidal rhetoric a tad, maybe the case against them in</span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"> The Hague wouldn't seem so airtight.</span></span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px; line-height: 28px; margin: 20px auto; max-width: 750px; padding: 0px 20px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhuADsHYX7YBgT3Kg4xk3MPPok8-jOgG6qyA7gX9voY7vykVLNJ1YnE9IvELTViHUoN11eVrl77eoxwyYfA4XjMXaH_DQ07_wOhr2Lz35oKW0obMXKJM-M9mZ9CnOAfuXxoI7PHkcDT_lyogegGir2QWaPzss3wQY44tGhVAYA12-PE-71OVld7mfNBqo8" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img alt="" data-original-height="544" data-original-width="735" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhuADsHYX7YBgT3Kg4xk3MPPok8-jOgG6qyA7gX9voY7vykVLNJ1YnE9IvELTViHUoN11eVrl77eoxwyYfA4XjMXaH_DQ07_wOhr2Lz35oKW0obMXKJM-M9mZ9CnOAfuXxoI7PHkcDT_lyogegGir2QWaPzss3wQY44tGhVAYA12-PE-71OVld7mfNBqo8=w400-h296" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.2px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><br /></span><p></p></div></div>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-88980486851660659022024-01-06T13:28:00.010-05:002024-01-08T12:28:13.559-05:00Joe Biden's Funhouse Mirror<p style="text-align: center;"></p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span><span><span> The most telling moment i</span><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/01/05/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-third-anniversary-of-the-january-6th-attack-and-defending-the-sacred-cause-of-american-democracy-blue-bell-pa/">n Joe Biden's official rollout </a><span>of his re-election campaign was when he blurted out: "</span></span></span><span face="MercurySSm-Book-Pro_Web, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0a2458;">As America was attacked from within, Donald Trump watched on TV in the private small dining room off my Oval — off the Oval Office."</span></span><div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span><br /></span><span>It was a particularly awkward gaffe, since the whole theme of his speech was protecting our alleged democracy - and the whole world - from authoritarians and despots who think they own the place. "My Oval Office" is a Freudian slip for the ages in the context of a speech purporting to criticize the toxic narcissism of his predecessor.</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span> And then there was the inconvenient truth, unmentioned by Biden., that his administration is financing and green- lighting a genocide against the Palestinian people.</span><span><br /><span><br /></span></span><span>The sole theme of the event- and what looks to be the main if not the only theme of the entire re-election bid was the January Sixth Capitol riot.</span></span><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span><span><br /></span></span><span>Although lauded by the mainstream media with the usual stock raves as "impassioned" and "searing," the fact that Biden raised his decibel level did not disguise the insipidity and hollow boastfulness of his ode to American aggression and imperialism. Perhaps it was the wall-to-wall American flag drapery that so bedazzled the media into their state of manufactured awe.</span><span><br /><span><br /></span></span><span>And what about that live enthusiastic auudience in the closed</span><span> setting? The CNN feed I watched showed only the backs of a multitude of balding or grizzled heads. And since the exact location (a town near Valley Forge., PA) was a closely guarded secret until right before the performance, it is fairly obvious that these were not regular townsfolk. The Biden team was not about to risk any anti-genocide types disrupting the show. So my guess would be they were comprised of campaign operatives, Democratic Party officials and assorted hirelings.</span><span><br /><span><br /></span></span><span>In lieu of making shallow promises to make voters' lives better, Biden invoked the solemn and very scary occasion of the third anniversary of the January Sixth capitol riot as the rationale for picking him and not Donald Trump. He modestly cast his own re-election n as a "moral choice and a sacred cause" to, it would seem, differentiate himself from Trump's ungodly behavior. As a self-proclaimed Zionist, Biden is certainly taking the whole "shining city on a hill" Puritan settler ethic to a whole new level.</span><span><br /><span><br /></span></span><span>But it was slave-owner and white supremacist George Washington whom Biden evoked in his speech. In doing so, he revised US history by completely erasing Washington's campaign of ethnic cleansing of native populations, claiming that the first president's aim was "liberty, not conquest.""</span><span><br /></span><span>"Freedom not conquest!" Biden croaked on, to the cheers and applause of he carefully vetted audience, before going on to boast at length about American conquests in more modern times. </span><span><br /><span><br /></span></span><span>"But just hink of it, folks.We almost lost America" Biden searingly saId, when the MAGA crowd staged an insurrection at the behest of Donald Trump - Mad King George III to Biden's George Washington.</span><span><br /><span><br /></span></span><span>Fulminating at length about how Trump stayed silent during the riot, Biden failed to mention that he, too, had stayed silent during the wild rumpus - even though he was President-Elect at the time. He had, after several hours, only meekly imlored Tump to send his minions home. He saved all the searing bits for his re-election campaign.</span><span><br /><span><br /></span></span><span>Three long years have gone by, and despite his fretting about the "sacred cause" Biden offered no explanation for why such a delay in criminally charging Trump for sedition. He offered no explanation for why law enforcement was complicit in the "insurrection," or why elected Republican officials at the highest levels of power colluded with Trump and yet remain unindicted themselves.</span><span><br /><span><br /></span></span><span>If the wheels of justice had sped on, of course, Biden would be lacking both a campaign platform and the ability to collude with his "mainstream" Republicans in creating and enforcing right-wing policies that punish the poor and reward the rich under the "sacred" mantle of democracy and bipartisanship.</span><span><br /><span><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0a2458;">"Trump’s not concerned about your future, I promise you," was Biden's fear-mongering substitute for a promise of his own.</span><span><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0a2458;">" Trump is now promising a full-scale campaign of'revenge” and “retribution' — his words — for some years to come. They were his words, not mine. He went on to say he would be a dictator on day one."</span></span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="color: #0a2458; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #0a2458; font-family: verdana;">So apparently, Biden's unshakeable devotion to Bibi Netanyahu's crusade of revenge and retribution against Palestinians does not translate into supporting Trump getting even with his fellow oligarchs and their paid political and media lackeys. That would definitely include revenge on the Biden clan itself.</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #0a2458; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span face="MercurySSm-Book-Pro_Web, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #0a2458;">"So, hear me clearly. I’ll say what Donald Trump won’t. Political violence is never, ever acceptable in the United States political system — never, never, never. It has no place in a democracy. None. (Applause.)</span><span><span style="color: #0a2458;"><br />But it certainly does have a place in state-sanctioned agression, both domestically and internationally. It simply doesn't look good to the rest of the world when American politicians talk violently about one another and inspire their followers to act out violently... against such important political figures as Nancy Pelosi's husband in particular. That, and not millions of people killed in America's never-ending wars, is the a slap in the face of all that Biden considers sacred.</span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #0a2458; font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #0a2458; font-family: verdana;">"Great nations," Biden tendentiously garbled "never pretend they're something they're not. That's just what great nations do.. They look in the mirror. And we're a great nation. And we're a great nation. We' really are. We're the greatest nation on the face of the earth."</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #0a2458; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #0a2458; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And before the mirror ever had a chance to "crack from side to side", Jill Biden rushed to Joe's side to escort him off the stage.</span></div></div></div></div>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-63360433834206193712024-01-05T11:30:00.002-05:002024-01-05T12:01:59.406-05:00Out With the Old Year, In With the Flu<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I've never been much for New Years resolutions, let alone even celebrating the New Year. I did watch the ball drop on CNN in the faint hope it would shatter into a million harmless pieces before ever reaching the ground.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But I did plan on blogging this week, until whatever bug is going around hit me. Before taking sick, I'd actually broken my longstanding resolution to boycott the New York Times comment section. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Paul Krugman has essentially been writing the same column for months. . Over and over and over again he wonders why people are so damned pessimistic about the economy when everything is so great. You can't even call it gaslighting at this point. It's more like he's belching out massive overdoses of recycled laughing gas to his audience, since the bulk of the responses include such stock phrases as "Thank you, President Biden" or "You nailed it, Professor! " along with blaming the Republicans and only the Republicans for so nastily spreading false bad tidings and convincing happy people to be miserable.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Adding to the unintentional humor was the graphic photo appended to his "Is America on the Mend?" <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/01/opinion/economy-crime-presidential-election.html">column:</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgz-nqCQCYdHCU3BOxYkwpu2ENN7RLxTwJtGFXGfjx2aVX1KsXQ88asV16L56YE3Qqffq5nHz6q-Q69LYXpAzFT_d6-fXq2pGJyOKB8atXQHsMJyWqyyIhsFshXZDpH660mtIuj5BMyDUzjwMotIgVyvCnWLq9xq3t1ou6492y458uKsu1TPQXOSD8gdrM" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1639" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgz-nqCQCYdHCU3BOxYkwpu2ENN7RLxTwJtGFXGfjx2aVX1KsXQ88asV16L56YE3Qqffq5nHz6q-Q69LYXpAzFT_d6-fXq2pGJyOKB8atXQHsMJyWqyyIhsFshXZDpH660mtIuj5BMyDUzjwMotIgVyvCnWLq9xq3t1ou6492y458uKsu1TPQXOSD8gdrM=w320-h400" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Now, I think this is supposed to represent scaffolding. But to me it looks like Lady Liberty is trapped behind a maze of barbed wire, yearning to be free but not wanting to be impaled on material every bit as razor-sharp as the shattered Times Square disco ball of my imagination.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">So I started out my published response with throwing one of Krugman's own lines right back at him. </span></p><p class="css-1ep7e7p" id="comment-content-10" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; overflow-x: hidden; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></p><blockquote><p class="css-1ep7e7p" id="comment-content-10" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.25rem; margin: 0px; overflow-x: hidden; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"For if America’s resilience in the face of the pandemic shock has been remarkable, so has the pessimism of the public."
Substitute "ruling class" for American resilience, and tens of millions of struggling, stressed-otd US residents for his "pessimistic public" and you've got yourself the class war in a nutshell.
It's the entrenched, structural economic inequality wrought by a half-century of neoliberal capitalism. It's survival of the richest, or at least of the top 10 percent of what the late, great Barbara Ehrenreich dubbed the professional-managerial class. The well-off have never been better off. They're also living longer even as US life expectancy has plummeted to the lowest level in decades.
The richest Americans added trillions to their composite wealth during the pandemic. Meanwhile, all the Covid-generated public assistance programs, which had actually cut the child poverty rate in half, have all ended. Tens of millions of people have been kicked off Medicaid, leading to record new rates of the uninsured. Emergency SNAP benefits, often to the tune of hundreds of extra dollars a month were suddenly yanked away from families even before Joe Biden prematurely declared an end to the public health emergency. Homelessness (surprise!) is way up.
It is truly baffling to me why pundits are so baffled that people are not out there cheering in the streets for this wonderful economic recovery that's benefiting the precious few at the expense of the exploited many.</span></p><div class="css-tr0r3x" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 15px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><div style="border: 0px; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="css-1jqmrip" style="border: 0px; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><button class="css-7g66sj" style="appearance: button; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-color: initial; border-style: none; border-width: initial; color: #326891; cursor: pointer; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.125rem; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;" tabindex="0" type="button">8 Replies</button><button class="css-1ledvhd" style="appearance: button; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-color: initial; border-style: none; border-width: initial; color: #326891; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.125rem; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;" tabindex="0" type="button">165 Recommend</button><div class="css-6n7j50" style="border: 0px; display: inline; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;"><button aria-expanded="false" aria-haspopup="true" aria-label="Share permalink" class="css-18lcqds" data-testid="" style="appearance: button; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-color: initial; border-style: none; border-width: initial; color: #326891; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.125rem; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top;" type="button">Share</button></div></span></div></div></div></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Surprisingly enough, the replies were highly positive, except for one guy lecutring me that Krugman's column was not about the class war. I was really expecting the reactions to be of the "Are you a Russian plant?" ripostes I was accustomed to, back when I was a more regular commenter./ So that's ecnouraging.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, my next resolution is to both watch and analyze Genocide Joe's campaign speech later today, in which he will unfavorably compare Donald Trump with George Washington. It was supposed to be given on January Sixth, the anniversary of the Capitol riot, which has supplanted September 11th as our most holy day of obligation. But since a snowstorm is forecast to interfere with the planned snowjob, he moved it up by one day/ This solemn anniversary is meant, I suppose, to take our minds off a genocide being perfromed right before our eyes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I have a feeling I'm not the only one who believes that our so-called leaders and their apologists are completely, malevolently insane. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Keep all your excellent comments coming!</span></p><p><br /></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-8209788793442977932023-12-25T13:26:00.001-05:002023-12-25T13:26:23.823-05:00Christmas In the Trenches<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sJi41RWaTCs" width="320" youtube-src-id="sJi41RWaTCs"></iframe></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This in my opinion is one of the best antiwar Christmas songs ever written. It's performed by the composer, John McCutcheon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Best wishes for the holiday season to all of my readers.</span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-66472626648373465672023-12-21T12:59:00.005-05:002023-12-21T14:40:59.544-05:00Are There No Prisons?<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> The modern-day Scrooges of the American oligarchy need not worry, because the United States prison industry is booming like never before, or least since the Covid public health emergency was prematurely declared over and done with by Joe Biden. In fact, there is more prison housing available than there are people to fill it all. So what's all this talk about a homeless crisis in the greatest country in the history of history? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I myself have sometimes half-joked that if I ever become so destitute that I end up on the streets, I'll just go out and rob a bank. It would be a deliberately unsuccessful robbery, because my goal would not be to get rich, but to get thrown in prison It's a surefire way for the destitute and desperate to score three hots and a cot. Even with policies that effectively charge inmates for room and board by making them virtual slaves it sure beats working two or three jobs on the outside and still not being able to afford rent and food.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> Yes, Virginia, there are indeed Dickensian workhouses operating at full throttle in a neighborhood near you. Pay no attention to the doom and gloom crowd moaning about all the jobless people subsisting in all the depressing abandoned industrial towns dotting the landscape. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's never been a better time for private equity vultures to invest in the gleaming new United States prisons the same way they've invested in residential real estate, gobbling up all those distressed homes for cash and then renting them out at unaffordable rates to the previous, foreclosed owners.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> And what with the construction of boring single family homes grinding to a halt, and public housing stock going private at the speed of blight and rents that keep going up, the rate of homelessness in America is now the highest it's</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> been in decades. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">At the same time that Congress and state legislatures have failed to increase housing assistance for the needy, politicians are pouring billions of dollars into the construction of new prisons. I't must be their way of efficiently putting a roof over people's heads. It's the least they can do, given that only one out of every five needy families that qualify for housing vouchers actually get one. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But much to the chagrin of the latter-day Scrooges who own and run this country, there are all these annoying do-gooders around who persist calling their nifty prison-housing solution "wrong headed."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">From <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/28/states-spending-money-build-prison-republican"><i>The Guardian</i>:</a></span></p><p class="dcr-1kas69x" style="--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #121212; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><p class="dcr-1kas69x" style="--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #121212; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>Any money spent on caging human beings is not money well spent, period,” said Carmen Gutierrez, an assistant professor in the department of public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, whose research specializes in the connection between punishment and health.</i></span></p><div class="ad-slot-container" style="-webkit-box-pack: center; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clear: left; color: #121212; display: flex; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; justify-content: center; line-height: inherit; margin: 12px auto; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><p class="dcr-1kas69x" style="--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #121212; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>“We have decades of research showing that incarceration does not improve public safety, and that it in fact harms individuals who themselves are incarcerated. It also harms their families and it harms the communities that they come from. So the damage outweighs any potential benefit.”</i></span></p><p class="dcr-1kas69x" style="--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #121212; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>The US has an incarceration rate of 664 people in every 100,000, according to <a data-link-name="in body link" href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/AL.html" style="border-bottom: 1px solid var(--article-link-border); border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">the Prison Policy Initiative</a>, far higher than other founding Nato countries. (The next highest is the UK, where 129 out of every 100,000 people are behind bars.)</i></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></i></p><p class="dcr-1kas69x" style="--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #121212; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>That amounts to 1.8 million people incarcerated across the country, but the numbers are not spread evenly. In Alabama, <a data-link-name="in body link" href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/GA.html" style="border-bottom: 1px solid var(--article-link-border); border-image: initial; border-left: 0px; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Georgia</a> and other southern states about one in every 100 people is incarcerated in prisons, jails, immigration detention and juvenile justice facilities.</i></span></p></blockquote><p class="dcr-1kas69x" style="--source-text-decoration-thickness: 2px; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #121212; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: common-ligatures; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 14px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">When Charles Dickens published <i>A Christmas Carol</i> in 1843, the British Empire was in its own genocidal orgy of colonizing both India and Africa and charging the destitute and the working class back home for the enrichment of the monarchy and its assorted businesses. Ebenezer Scrooge, who made a career and a fortune out of exploiting and demonizing the poor, underwent a series of nightmares to scare the greed right out of him.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> Not so for the American breed of hyper-capitalists, who have learned how to use self-serving minimal philanthropy as a public relations gimmick. These godzillionaires are not only pathological predators - they are pathological polluters. A recent Oxfam report revealed that richest one percent, with their outsized multiple homes, their private jets and their super-yachts, burn more dangerous fossil fuels than the whole bottom half of the global population.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Novelist Margaret Atwood coined the word "consilience" as both the name of her own imaginary dystopian prison/ housing development and the mindset of a citizenry terrorized into a state of numb acceptance after decades of indoctrination by the ideologues of neoliberal capitalism. People<i> consent</i> to their maltreatment because they're flattered about how virtuously<i> resilient</i> they are. They live in a Sharing Economy brought to a whole new grotesque level, as they voluntarily cycle from nice suburban home to prison to home to prison. They don't even question the ultimate step in the process. I won't give away the ending of Atwood's satiric novel, in case you want to read it. But "The Heart Goes Last" should give you a hint.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, back in reality, White House, Congress , and the oligarchs and their corporate media publicists certainly want you to get with their own not-dissimilar program. They want you to know that not only is your resistance ifutile, they truly do not care about you. They say so right out loud, in the pages of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/20/us/politics/biden-strategy-polling.html"> <i>The New York Times,</i></a> one of their very favorite stenographers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"Amid Dismal Polling and Some Voter Anger, Don't Expect Biden To Shift His Strategy" chides the headline. Right off the bat, it implies that if you are mad as hell about the State of Israel's genocide of Palestinians as well as about your own economic lot in life, then you are in the distinct minority. Your resistance is also annoyiingly "cacophonous" according to the<i> Times.</i></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></i></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Several officials in the Biden campaign and the White House are adamant that unflattering polls and vocal criticism from key constituents over Gaza, immigration and other issues simply have not been enough to shift a strategy that is centered on comparing the Biden agenda with policies favored by Republicans...</span></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;">“They’re not freaking out,” Ted Kaufman, a longtime confidant to Mr. Biden, said in an interview about the president and his team. “When you signed up for this thing, you didn’t sign up to be at 80 percent in the polls. These are genuine veterans, and they’re picked because of their ability to be calm in difficult times.”</span></i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: verdana;">.</span></span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Any day now, I half expect Biden to start croaking out "Lock Him Up" in the vain expectation that thronging hordes will show up like magic at hs rallies to join right in the refrain. But for now, he admits that he and his claque are relying solely on the "lawfare" approach to vanquishing Trump. Biden is reduced to simply schmoozing with Democratic donors and carefully selected business types whom he urges to "invest" in stuff. If Trump does end up getting convicted, but wins anyway, maybe they can invest in converting Mar-a-Lago into a luxury prison at billions of dollars in taxpayer expense. That would be so quintessentially American, and not much of a surprise.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What gives me hope in this cruel new rules-based Dickensian Order is that people are not nearly so "consilient" as I feared they were even a year ago. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This recovering consilient class are being presented, as Cornel West explains it, with an impossble choice between a guy who wants to start World War III and a guy who wants to start a second civil war. If both Biden and Trump physically survive until Election Day, it may well turn out to be the lowest voter turnout debacle in modern history. And without the votes of even a slim majority of the people, whoever is chosen will govern without even a pretense of a popular mandate. He or she will not enjoy the consent of the governed. Not by a long shot.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">How long will they nevertheless persist? How long will we let them?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SvpIDEeS6cs" width="320" youtube-src-id="SvpIDEeS6cs"></iframe></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><br /></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-1598653719526764052023-12-11T13:24:00.003-05:002023-12-11T15:11:19.138-05:00Our Own Little Gazas<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Gaza has been aptly described as a high tech laboratory experiment for how to most efficiently oppress, surveil, starve, torture, and ultimately dispose of a population deemed to be nothing but excessive, superfluous human flesh tak</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ing up too much valuable land and resources.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">At its essence, the US-financed genocide by the state of Israel of some two million Palestinians confined in their open-air prison is the ultimate expression of the global class war being waged by multinational oligarchs and militarized corporations against the rest of us.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">So it's not just empathy and outrage that's spurring hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of us to take to the streets in protest. It is the shock of realizing that we could very well be next. Too many of us are there already, trapped in the gulags of crushing medical and education debt, low-paid work and unemployment, evictions leading to homelessness, and - especially if we have a darker skin color - </span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> police brutality and mass incarceration.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Gaza is the paradigmatic example of what Achille Mbambe, in his 2019 book <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/necropolitics"><i>Necropolitcs</i>,</a> terms the "matrix of rule" by the ruling oligarchy. Gaza is both a supercharged reiteration of the settler-colonialist atrocities of the fairly recent past, and a warning of what they have in store for us the not-too-distant future.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span>While they're so busily killing Palestinians, a surplus population sitting on top of what is believed to be a wealth of oil deposits,</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> they're also in a near-frantic crusade of trying to quash dissent in the parts of the world that are still relatively free. For, as Mbembe writes,</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></i></span></p><blockquote><i><span style="font-size: medium;">"Unmistakably, an ever increasing multitude of voices are making themselves heard... human chains of solidarity are forming. In the darkenss of fear and denunciation, and faced with unrelenting waves of repression, compassionate men and women seek to awaken the sleeping fireflies of hospitaliity and solidarity. In the midst of an otherwise troubling anesthesia, an active minority is taking a stance. With renewed vigor they seek to denounce acts carried out in their name against the Other - who, it is claimed, is not one of us."</span></i></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">In a rank display of their own panic at being caught out in their crimes and lies by the masses of people, our ruling oligarchs and their political lackeys have resorted to plastering the anti-Semite</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> label on the dissenters in a vain attempt to shut us up. This gaslighting has largely failed. So fully two months after October 7th, they are regaling us with graphic propaganda about Hamas incels sexually assaulting Israeli women. When they had to walk back their wild claims of having personally witnessed the beheadings of Jewish babies, they are now whipping up visions of Israeli women being shot in their private parts and abused even in death. Needless to say, the usual suspects have produced no evidence to back up their lurid claims.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But let us, just for the sake of argument, concede that rapes and worse were committed by Hamas. This still does not justify obliterating tens of thousands of Palestinians with bombs and tanks. And let us, also just for the sake of argument, acknowledge that this "war" has emboldened closet anti-Semites to act out their fantasies in public, even on elite college campuses. This does not justify smearing antiwar and anti-genocide protesters with the anti-Semite label, or conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.. Such tactics are a classic case of Freudian projection.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It brings back nauseating memories of late Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who once publicly admitted that the deaths, by US sanctions, of half a million Iraqi children had been "worth it" in that war for oil, and whom Joe Biden so fondly evokes when he talks about the wars in Ukraine and against Gaza. Albright also had infamously remarked during the 2016 presidential campaign that "there is a special place in hell for women who don't support other women." She was talking, of course, about Hillary Clinton and the female supporters of Bernie Sanders. What she meant was that if you moved beyond the corporate version of feminism and supported policies for the greater public good, you were damned. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It is indicative of their own consciousness of guilt that the Biden administration waited until 11 p.m. Friday to notify Congress that it was bypassing them and unilaterally giving Israel hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of tank ammunition in order to continue killing Palestinian civilians at the speed of light. Whenever the extermination of powerless trapped people is deemed to be an "emergency," then the niceties of democratic procedure do not apply. Plus, the end-run by the State Department conveniently absolves Congress of actually having to take a principled stand against sending money and bombs to Israel. It's such a clever way avoiding accountability to their dissenting constituents.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's both ironic and even somewhat entertaining to watch the billionaires and their corrupt political lackeys so publicly accosting the same elite Ivy League presidents they put into office for the express purpose of <strike>laundering</strike> administering billions of dollars in tax-exempt oligarchic slush funds. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Claudine Gay, Harvard's current president and one of the trio of female administrators hauled before Congress last week and damned for defending the free speech of students, was handpicked for her job by billionaire heiress Penny Pritzker, the former Obama administration commerce secretary who now heads what is aptly called the "Harvard Corporation." Pritzger was also recently named by Joe Biden to lead the postwar multinational corporate plunder of Ukraine. The corruption is all right out there in the open: elite universities are primarily for-profit corporations, where the education of young people is only the fig leaf. Students are there not to learn, but to be credentialed for elite careers. They are definitely not to be heard. Too many of them, apparently, did not get</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> the message that as the lucky golden ticket-holders in an overpriced Willy Wonka diploma mill, they're doomed to the hell of the careerist garbage chute when they become too loud and demanding and free-thinking.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Speaking of the mask being ripped right off the Ivy League, it turns out that at least some students have given the aforementioned Hillary Clinton a failing grade in the "Rate My Professor" online survey. Not only did Hillary castigate the pro-Palestinian student protesters on the Columbia University campus - she accused them of being complicit i in alleged</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Hamas sex crimes against Israeli women by marching in support of Palestinian women.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">she didn't have the guts to confront the young people in person. In fact, she avoided her students like the plague. She refused to take most questions and left class early when she bothered to show up at all. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;">This is according to one disgruntled former student writing in the<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-columbia-course-disappointing_n_6571fe8ee4b05e622ea3092f"> Huff</a></span><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-columbia-course-disappointing_n_6571fe8ee4b05e622ea3092f" style="font-family: verdana;"> Post</a>, perhaps</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Clinton's worst offense was her refusal to even glance at the written work submitted by her students, instead handing it over to low-paid adjuncts to read and grade. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And these students were the lucky ones, because future attendees of Hillary's class will have to make do with the video version of what she recently performed. The entire semester was filmed so that Clinton will never again have to return to academia in the actual flesh.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> However, hefty tuition will still be charged for the class, and her handsome residuals as a college performance celebrity </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">will continue to be paid by the Columbia corporation.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Let the masks continue to fall, preferably all the way to hell where they can keep Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger company for all eternity.</span></span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-12778297032799054362023-12-03T17:17:00.005-05:002023-12-04T09:52:34.744-05:00A Fascist Pep Talk<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">In order to maintain its status as "the most lethal fighting force the world has ever known," America must keep waging its endless wars all around the world.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">So pronounced <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/3604755/a-time-for-american-leadership-remarks-by-secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-i/">"Defense" Secretary Lloyd C. Austiin III</a> to a roomful of weapons manufacturers and venture capitalists and congressional hawks and Silicon Valley moguls and corporate media stars at the Reagan Library's <a href="https://www.reaganfoundation.org/media/361808/2023_rndf_agenda_final.pdf">annual security confab</a> in Simi Valley, California over the weekend. He was the keynote speaker at the event, which also featured a cozy "fireside chat" by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and a panel disc</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ussion on defending the Monroe Doctrine led for some unknown reason by tech billionaire <a href="https://joelonsdale.com/biography/">Joe Lonsdale</a>. Karl Turdblossom "we create our own reality" Rove was also at the confab, as were the CEO of Boeing and executives from G.E. (pays no taxes) and Microsoft. It was a veritable Who's Who of Who Runs the World.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Since he was among friends, Austin made sure to lighten up the politics of death with a few folksy Ronald Reagan anecdotes, to much appreciative laughter. But he also made Senator Lindsay Graham very mad by suggestiing how civilian deaths in Gaza be slightly minimized. Anything less than calling for the total annihilation of two million Palestinians makes you a complete dove, groused Graham later on CNN.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Austin also toned down his bellicose rhetoric just long enough to brag that any Iraqis whose lives he saved balanced out all the Iraqi lives he helped to end in that illegal war. As a veteran expert in the type of urban warfare the Israelis are waging in Gaza, Austin is directly advising them how to paint a humanitarian face on atrocity by such gimmicks as drawing detailed evacuation maps for Palestinians trying to escape the carnage. Not that this will prevent all deaths of innocent children, of course, but at least they will be <i>seen</i> as trying. Austin also told the assembled overlords that he has even courageously warned the Israel government on how far is too far.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">Meanwhile, the US will continue providing billions of dollars in bombs and other hardware to Israel, with absolutely no strings attached.</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> He just politely asked that they not kill any</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">l more civilians than are absolutely necessary, Because even if you win the war you can still lose strategically. You can erode all that legendary global good will.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">There is apparently no downside in emphasizing the windfall war profits accruing from the mass death of populations that simply are not deemed to be grief-worthy Austin sounded every inch the fascist demagogue in the bulk of his speech. Not only is he the first non-civilian US defense secretary ever to be appointed, but he came to the post directly from the Board of Directors of Raytheon - which is among the weapons manufacturers supplying both Ukraine and Israel.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Here are just a few chilling snippets from Austin's long, and long-winded, pep talk to the masters of war: </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></i></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">You know, our competitors don’t have to operate under continuing resolutions. And so, doing so erodes both our security and our ability to compete.</span></i></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Austin is actually whining about the requirement that Congress has to bother itself rubberstamping a trillion dollars in war appropriations every single year. As the biggest "most lethal fighting force the world has ever known," with<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-military-presence-around-the-world-interactive"> US combat troops </a>in 169 countries and some 750 military bases around the world, even to go through the motions of a democratic process before being able to killi people is too much. It gives such an unfair advantage to authoritarian leaders who hate us for our democracy. Waaahhhhhh!</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i></i></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i>You know, only one country on Earth can provide the kind of leadership that this moment demands. And only one country can consistently provide the powerful combination of innovation, ingenuity, and idealism—and of free minds, free enterprise, and free people.</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i>And that’s the United States of America.</i></span></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i></i></span></span><p></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px auto 30px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">[Applause]</span></i></p><p><span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;">Of course they applaud. For General Austin has just admitted the war is essentially a business enterprise. The moguls in the audience stay free by staying obscenely rich. Freedom's just another word for exploiting poor and working people, wherever on this small planet they happen to live.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></i></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">We’re living through challenging times. That includes the major catonflicts facing our fellow democracies, Israel and Ukraine; bullying and coercion from an increasingly assertive China; and a worldwide battle between democracy and autocracy.</span></i></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;">Ukraine's "democracy" is questionable, given that President Zelensky has outlawed independent reporting in his country. Nor can an apartheid state like Israel be considered a democracy; even before October 7th, Bibi Netanyahu was trying to abolish his country's judiciary. That Austin would then harp on China, with its grand total of one military base outside its borders,, being a "bully" is a pretty pathetic case of Freudian projection. He thinks it's a bully because its economy is booming. And thus, besides drawing his cartoon maps for Gaza evacuation, Austin and the rest of the military-industrial complex are hankering for war with China. Think of all the profits for the few, right before everybody gets nuked.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></i></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">American leadership rallies our allies and partners to uphold our shared security. And it inspires ordinary people around the world to work together toward a brighter future.</span></i></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;">Unfortunately for Austin and his cohort, the "brighter future" that ordinary people all over the world are working for is aimed squarely at stopping war. He has apparently drawn a map inside his head where the streets are not filled with anti-genocide protesters. Either that, or he simply wants to make his entitled audience feel confident that everyday people are so stupid as to be awed by such constant overdoses of weaponized palaver.</span></span></p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">But the troubles of our times will only grow worse without strong and steady American leadership to defend the rules-based international order that keeps us all safe.</span></span></i></li></ol><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;">Have you noticed that nobody ever defines this "rules-based international order" so frequently bandied about these days by the ruling class? By my count, Austin himself uttered this ubiquitous knee-jerk mantra a total of four times in just this one speech.</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"> What precisely are these rules, and who made them? Nobody, certainly has asked the inspired people looking for a brighter future in the future. But by nattering it often enough, perhaps they hope to cow us into just shutting up, lest we inadvertently break one of their mysterious rules. I'll hazard a wild guess, though, that censorship is a big fat part of it.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></i></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">You know, in every generation, some Americans prefer isolation to engagement—and they try to pull up the drawbridge. They try to kick loose the cornerstone of American leadership. And they try to undermine the security architecture that has produced decades of prosperity without great-power war.</span></i></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: verdana;"><span style="background-color: white;">This was where Austin obliquely criticizes the antiwar, anti-genocide movement explod</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana;">ing all over the world. In so doing, he sugar-coats the near constant regime change wars and unilateral attacks by the US on less powerful countries as tantamount to </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana;">"great prosperity for his audience. He barely avoided the Orwellian</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana;"> "war is peace" canard.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">While bemoaning Vladimir Putin's cruelty and championing the Ukrainian troops- including the fascistic Azov battalion - as freedom fighters, Austin portrays the Hamas militants as terrorists and the Zionist slaughter of some 15,000 Palestinians as "self-defense."</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Read the rest of the speech (linked in second paragraph above) or watch it on Youtube if you have the time and the stomach. There are so many glowing references to Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden sprinkled throughout that you're liable to get these goofy old dementos mixed up if you aren't careful. Actually all the presidents in recent memory have sounded exactly like Lloyd Austin in their unrelenting grotesque mixture of good cheer and fear-fomenting.</span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-86088617078035461472023-11-29T14:15:00.003-05:002023-11-29T15:20:21.466-05:00Gaza Isn't Genocide Joe's First Rodeo<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Although President Joe Biden is credited with ending the US war on Afghanistan, he didn't end the war at all. In fact, he escalated it by imposing such cruel economic sanctions on the Afghan people that tens of millions of them faced death by starvation in the winter of 2021-22.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">His freeze of billions of dollars in Afghanistan Central Bank assets when the Afghan government collapsed, the US-installed puppet president absconded with bags full of loot, and the Taliban took over was , according to one anonymous White House polcy aide quoted by <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/02/11/afghanistan-frozen-assets-economy/">The Intercept</a>, "tantamount to mass murder."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Poor Biden just never gets the credit he deserves. People are way late figuring out he's been Genocide Joe for longer than many of them have even been alive. His 90s crime bills alone, incarcerating more Black men than were enslaved before the Civil War, were tantamount to a slow genocide.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The famine in Afghanistan began within months of Biden ordering the funds frozen. The number of civilians at risk of death that winter far exceeded the total all those who were killed in the entire 20 years of U.S. occupation, according to the <i><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/04/world/asia/afghanistan-starvation-crisis.html">New York Times.</a></i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: verdana;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">While Afghanistan has suffered from malnutrition for decades, the country’s hunger crisis has drastically worsened in recent months. This winter, an estimated 22.8 million people — more than half the population — are expected to face potentially life-threatening levels of food insecurity, according to</span><a class="css-yywogo" href="https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Afghanistan_AcuteFoodInsec_2021Oct2022Mar_report.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-color: var(--color-signal-editorial,#326891); text-decoration-style: solid; text-decoration-thickness: 1px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title=""> an analysis </a><span face="nyt-imperial, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif" style="background-color: white; color: #363636;">by the United Nations World Food Program and Food and Agriculture Organization. Of those, 8.7 million people are nearing famine — the worst stage of a food crisis....</span></i></span></blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: verdana;"></span></i></span><p></p><p><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></i></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>Across the country, millions of Afghans — from day laborers to doctors and teachers — have gone months without steady or any incomes. The prices of food and other basic goods have soared beyond the reach of many families. Emaciated children and anemic mothers have flooded into the malnutrition wards of hospitals, many of those facilities bereft of medical supplies that donor aid once provided.</i></span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Although the Times allowed that Biden officials showed "some flexibility" in allowing the UN and other agencies to deliver a bit of humanitarian aid, other countries were hesitant to help the Afghan people. They feared that the US would impose sanctions on them, too, for aiding the Taliban "terrorists."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: verdana;">In the wake of the usual feeble criticism and the rescinding of strongly worded letters from <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/01/19/afghanistan-sanctions-conditions-congress/">Democrats professing to be upset</a> that Biden was "flirting with genocide," in his enforced starvation of Afghan war victims</span><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/11/theft-afghan-americans-decry-decision-to" style="font-family: verdana;">, Biden decided i</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: verdana;">n February 2022 to split the $7 billion assets between relief agencies and the families of 9/ll victims This cavalier order was greeted with outrage and derision from both the Afghan citizenry and even from some of the 9/11 families themselves.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's all part of a sick pattern. Biden and Bibi share the same mindset - that it's OK to kill innocents as long as the innocents committed the crime of living in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong leaders.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> A lot of Americans are now shocked, shocked that Biden -- good old kindly Uncle Joe who they voted for as a humane alternative to Donald Trump -- is now aiding and abetting the genocide of Palestinians.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> Nobody was out protesting in the streets for starving Afghan people two years ago. So maybe Biden thought he could get away with his war crimes again.</span></p><p><span style="color: #363636; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;">If the propagandizing mainstream press has its way, maybe he can get away with it and maybe even win another term. But maybe not. The people are finally out in the streets and they're showing no sign of relenting. Biden flirted with genocide before, but he may be breaking up with it this time. If justice prevails, the outrage on the streets will spread to all the other perma-wars, that are being fought both with bombs and with economic sanctions. Maybe we'll perk up permanently and take notice of all the other invisible victims of US hegemony, wherever on this boiling planet that they may live.</span></span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-88797548310218856012023-11-23T12:36:00.002-05:002023-11-23T12:38:56.863-05:00Happy Thanksgiving!<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Let me take the opportunity to thank all my readers for your continuing support and interest. I hope the US residents among you are having a good thanksgiving - or as "Annenigma" put it in her comment below the previous post: Happy White Colonial Settlers' Day!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">On that note, I will once again post this classic video clip:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v9UIDDlnSgA" width="320" youtube-src-id="v9UIDDlnSgA"></iframe></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p><br /></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-68577480378609886322023-11-20T12:25:00.005-05:002023-11-20T14:25:09.348-05:00Mass Empathy Rears Its Lovely Head<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">If we actually had to pay to see all the ads trying to sell us garbage, then no garbage could ever be sold. To that end, the Jeff Bezos-owned <i>Washington Post</i> took the rare step of lifting its paywall so that as many non-rich people as possible could view <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/18/joe-biden-gaza-hamas-putin/">President Biden's advertisement</a> for the garbage product known as <i>War Is Peace.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Once he gets all the jingoism and tired cut-and-pasted platitudes out of the way,</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Joe as much as admits that both the genocide in Palestine and the proxy war in Ukraine have the specific purpose of further enriching Jeff Bezos and the rest of the ruling class of billionaire oligarchs and predatory transnational corporations:</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Just weeks before Oct. 7, I met in New York with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The main subject of that conversation was a set of substantial commitments that would help both Israel and the Palestinian territories better integrate into the broader Middle East. That is also the idea behind<b> the innovative economic corridor</b> that will connect India to Europe through the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, which I announced together with partners at the Group of 20 summit in India in early September. Stronger integration between countries creates predictable <b>markets </b>and draws greater <b>investment</b>. Better regional connection — including physical and economic infrastructure — supports higher employment and more <b>opportunities</b> for young people. That’s what we have been working to realize in the Middle East. It is a future that has no place for Hamas’s violence and hate, and I believe that attempting to destroy the hope for that future is one reason that Hamas instigated this crisis.</span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Biden thus repeats George W. Bush's explanation for 9/11: "They hate us for our freedoms." Their definition of freedom is, of course, the ability of oligarchs and corporations ("us"), guarded and financed by a trillion-dollar military machine, to plunder, extract, enslave and oppress all those human beings whom capitalism considers so disposiable.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Biden thus casts the attack by Hamas on Israeli people as caused not by the desperation of imprisoned Palest</span><span style="font-family: verdana;">inians in occupied Gaza, but by Hamas simply wanting to damage capitalism out of spite. Or, as Biden mindlessly called it, "nihilism and pure unadulterated evil." He said not one word about the ongoing genocide that his administration is financing and cheerleading. To the contrary, he praised the Israel government for graciously allowing Palestinians tiny windows of opportunity to voluntarily displace and ethnically cleanse themselves. (No matter that Bibi Netanyahu later reacted to the op-ed by refusing even a brief "humanitarian pause" in the genocide.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">How indeed would capitalistic depredations and mass murder survive unless the predators had installed their own democratically-elected White House simulacrum to conduct their marketing campaign for them? I mean, can you imagine Jeff Bezos himself writing the following words</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> as he sails his super-polluting mega-yacht around the world - a world whose borders only apply to poor people?</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a;"></span></span></p><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Will we relentlessly pursue our positive vision for the future, or will we allow those who do not share our values to drag the world to a more dangerous and divided place?</span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">You'd think that the Masters of the Universe could come up with a better human shield than Joe Biden, wouldn't you? Then again, they can simply point out that he was democratically elected and it's on us, the lesser people. We're told we're to blame for the politicians who sold their souls to Bezos and his ilk so very long ago.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/twelve-billionaires-climate-emissions-jeff-bezos-bill-gates-elon-musk-carbon-divide">The Guardian</a> newspaper reports, a new Oxfam study reveals that these super-polluters don't need to spew lies and platitudes when a mere dirty dozen of them spew more carbon into the atmosphere than do two million homes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Even if their current presidential rep loses his next election, it won't matter in the least to them.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> The only thing that will save us is if the people who are protesting the Gaza genocide all over the world stay in the streets and continue to accost the centers of financial and political power, and expand their protests into fighting genocidal capitalism itself. What really scares the rich and powerful is that these millions of people are exhibiting solidarity and empathy for fellow human beings whom they don't even know personally. That is simply not the consumerist way of doing things in the</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> neoliberal ( cut-throat, every-individual-for-himself) order.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Cooperation among powerless people is threatening to overtake the relentless competition homework that we've we've been assigned. We're literally sick unto death</span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> of their garbage.</span></span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-86373044143449413352023-11-16T10:44:00.252-05:002023-11-16T13:15:43.837-05:00Cops and Politicians Terrorized By Candle-Wielding Peaceniks<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">If there is one salutary consequence of the Israel-Gaza catastrophe, it's that the US-based media political complex can no longer so easily divide and conquer people by branding them as Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, coastal elite or heartland everyman.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It seems that people of all backgrounds and no particular party loyalty</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> don't define democracy as dutifully voting every two and four years for pre-selected candidates of the corporate duopoly. They're taking to the streets in record numbers. And they're terrifying the ruling class as well as their armed guards.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="Members of U.S. Capitol Police pull protesters away from the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee during a demonstration against the war between Israel and Hamas on November 15, 2023 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC">The New York Post</a>, a right-wing tabloid whose main mission had been to castigate "radical socialist Democrats" in Congress as anti-police fanatics, now finds itself coming to the defense of these same liberal politicians as they were surrounded by "a swarm of hundreds of violent protesters" at a party at their Washington, D.C. headquarters on Wednesday night.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The anti-genocide protesters apparently hadn't gotten the message that police brutality is no longer anathema to Democratic leaders. When police attack American citizens, you see, they're simply exercising their right to defend themselves against terrorists. They didn't get their <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-us-police-training-end-knee-neck-protests">tactical training from the IDF</a> for nothing, after all.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">No matter that there were only about 150 people calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and that their "violence" amounted to lighting candles and locking arms in solidarity. According to the <i>Post</i>, six cops in riot gear were injured by pepper spray. That it was likely their own pepper spray wafting in the air is immaterial. Besides, police officers were also hurt as they tried to wrest unruly hands away from the metal barricades they were so aggressively clutching. And even more riot police were likely forced to wrench their backs as they were throwing people down the stairs.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><i style="background-color: white; color: var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g); font-family: verdana; letter-spacing: -0.01em;"></i></span></p><blockquote><p><i style="background-color: white; color: var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g); font-family: verdana; letter-spacing: -0.01em;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) said he was one of about 100 people — House leaders, lawmakers and Democratic candidates running for the House — attending a reception at party headquarters when they were ushered out of the building.</span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g); letter-spacing: -0.01em; line-height: 1.44; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>The Capitol Police “came in force” and directed lawmakers into a secure room in the basement, he said.</i></span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g); letter-spacing: -0.01em; line-height: 1.44; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>About seven lawmakers were huddled in the basement and loaded into police SUVs.</i></span></p></blockquote><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g); letter-spacing: -0.01em; line-height: 1.44; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i></i></span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g); letter-spacing: -0.01em; line-height: 1.44; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>“Was just evacuated from the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DNC?src=hashtag_click" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">#DNC</a> after pro-terrorist, anti-<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Israel?src=hashtag_click" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">#Israel</a> protestors grew violent, pepper spraying police officers and attempting to break into the building. Thankful to the police officers who stopped them and for helping me and my colleagues get out safely,”<a href="https://twitter.com/bradsherman/status/1724969356373737481?s=46&t=N_-SNzPiBOA9rA2SJIJjTw" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"> Sherman wrote on X.</a></i></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i><a href="https://twitter.com/bradsherman/status/1724969356373737481?s=46&t=N_-SNzPiBOA9rA2SJIJjTw" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"></a></i></span><p></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g); letter-spacing: -0.01em; line-height: 1.44; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Other media outlets were a bit more circumspect in their own coverage of this relatively small protest. It probably wouldn't have been covered at all had not the Democratic Party leaders overreacted and called the police in hopes, perhaps, of becoming stars in a theatrical reprise of the January 6th riot. What they ended up getting instead was a lot of Keystone Cops slapstick.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g); letter-spacing: -0.01em; line-height: 1.44; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The rest of the mainstream media predictably framed the law enforcement aggression at DNC HQ </span><span style="font-family: verdana; letter-spacing: -0.01em;">as a "clash" between heavily armed police and unweaponized civilians. CNN, at least, was honest enough to report that it was not the peaceful protest itself that had caused Democratic bigwigs to evacuate their building It was the provocative police action against peaceful protesters.</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g); letter-spacing: -0.01em; line-height: 1.44; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This bipartisan, corporate, fascistic characterization of antiwar activists as enemies of the state was also captured by The Grayzone journalist <a href="https://meaww.com/who-is-aaron-mate-delaware-senator-chris-coons-threatens-to-have-journalist-thrown-off-amtrak-train">Aaron Mate</a> earlier this week, as he politely tried to question Democratic Senator Chris Coons on a train, about whether he would support a ceasefire in Gaza.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g); letter-spacing: -0.01em; line-height: 1.44; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Coons, obviously miffed at being accosted by a stranger on a train, demanded that Mate give his journalistic credentials. He also kvetched that the reporter was breaching decorum in the designated "quiet car" of the Amtrak train. Coons had the cops called, and Aaron was duly ejected not only from the car but from the entire train, at the next stop. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g); letter-spacing: -0.01em; line-height: 1.44; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">At least they waited till it stopped. At least they forgot to confiscate Aaron's phone. Chris Coons's cold dead stare will live on and on - unlike the Palestinian kids who he refuses to protect. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wp--preset--color--gray-g); letter-spacing: -0.01em; line-height: 1.44; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-75582314763824261902023-11-10T10:24:00.000-05:002023-11-10T10:24:01.392-05:00 A Humble Appeal To My Readers<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's been quite a long time since I last asked you for donations to this blog. I know that times are tough for many of you, but if you can contribute a few bucks to help me keep the lights on, I would be very grateful. You can donate via the PayPal gizmo to your right. Or if you prefer to send a check, please email me at <b>herecomestrouble665@gmail.com</b> so I can give you my mailing address. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Thanks, everyone, for you continuing interest in Sardonicky as we approach our Lucky 13th anniversary!</span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-9746714575712193862023-11-09T13:50:00.009-05:002023-11-09T15:26:20.416-05:00Little Bombs For Little People<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">In an apparent attempt to display how much they care about children, US officials have urged Israel to use "smaller bombs" to kill<strike> the</strike> <strike>Palestinians trapped in Gaza </strike>Hamas bad guys. Why use 1,000 and 2,000-lb bombs on one Hamas leader when so many of the thousands of human bodies being destroyed are so little, so innocent and so defenseless? </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The use of tot-sized bombs is among the "concrete suggestions" in Secretary of State Antony Blinken's bag of "humanitarian" tricks. Itsy- bitsy bombs will, they seem to think, </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">put a kinder, gentler face on the genocide that has so far killed an estimated 10,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The use of two 2,000-lb bombs on a refugee camp near Gaza City was such a waste of weaponry, the usual anonymous US officials dished to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/us/politics/israel-gaza-deaths-bombs.html">New York Times</a>:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"American military officials say that the smaller bombs are much better suited to the dense urban environments of Gaza. But Israel has over the years built up stocks of larger bombs, intended mostly to target hardened Hezbollah military positions in Lebanon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The United States is now trying to send more of the smaller bombs to Israel, said the senior military official. If the United States can get those smaller munitions to Israel, American officials hope Israel will use them to mitigate the risk to civilians."</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;">"Trying to send" is an implicit warning to the small but increasing number of congress-critters who are demanding a ceasefire, while the more pro-Israel bipartisan majority are wasting time by bickering over whether to bundle military aid for Israel and Ukraine in one mega-war package. Unless these politicians can all come together, Israel will be forced to use its larger bombs. And then they won't be able to hide all those unsightly </span><span color="var(--color-content-secondary,#363636)" style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana;">craters from the prying eyes of that pesky antiwar crowd. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, the State Department, as required by law, notified Congress that Israel had purchased a huge arsenal of assault rifles directly from the US manufacturers of the weapons. The US is now pretending to demand that these assault weapons be reserved for the Israeli military and police, and that they not get into the hands of settlers to drive Palestinians away from their West Bank homes.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Given that Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvyr had already ordered 10,000 rifles to be distributed to Israeli civilians to aid in the government's genocide, the concern-trolling by the White House and State Department is a pathetic joke, given that the malign purpose of the Weapons sale was publicly broadcast a full month ago by Ben-Gvyr:</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"We will turn the world upside down so that towns are protected. I have given instructions for massively arming the civilian security teams to provide solutions for towns and cities, and so as not to leave towns unprotected,” </span></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Back on the home front, Joe Biden finally traveled to Maine to concern-troll the latest mass shooting by an assault rifle-armed and mentally disturbed member of the United States military. Biden's repeated pleas for domestic gun control legislation are falling exceedingly flat, given that the US is by far the biggest arms dealer the world has ever known. And that Biden had bragged in his Oval Office speech about the boon to Wall Street and the weapons industry that his two wars provide.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">As far as official concern for the children goes, let's just say it's as fake over here as it is over there. Here, we should consider ourselves lucky that for now anyway, most of us live under a de facto policy of eugenics, or Social Darwinism.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Since Biden officially declared the Covid public health emergency to be over last spring, more than two million American children have been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/health/medicaid-children-lost-coverage.html">kicked off</a> their Medicaid health care coverage. That's on top of the millions of American families with children getting their emergency SNAP (food aid) benefits slashed while grocery prices keep surging higher every week.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">In a few weeks, officials said, a minimum of three million American children will be uninsured. It's the highest rate of uninsured children in this country in many decades, and it's only expected to get worse.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's one more reason for us to keep filling our streets with protest and outrage. All of us, all over this world, are in this together. Cruelty is only a matter of degree. There is so much suffering, and so little time</span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-29286221203833822452023-11-07T14:14:00.010-05:002023-11-07T15:30:52.662-05:00Guilt-Tripping, the Obama Way<div class="separator"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Barack Obama doesn't call his annual buck-raking confab in Chicago a "democracy forum" for nothing. He believes that everybody should have a fair and equal share of the blood on his hands. </span></div><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">You can almost see the droplets flying like a fleet of Predator Drones in a line straight from his joystick of a scolding finger, right down to all those "complicit" people in his target audience. He doesn't call his media empire<i> Higher</i> <i>Ground Productions</i> for nothing, after all. His empire even owns and controls the<i> Pod Save America</i> show where he offered his remarks to his hosts, both of whom worked in his White House.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">From flattery of his forum's attendees as the "future heroes" whose explicit assignment from Obama was to put a more "humanitarian" face on capitalism, Obama was forced by events to also make a quick, self-serving pivot to gaslighting mode. From <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/04/obama-all-of-us-are-complicit-00125395">Politico:</a></span></p><p class="story-text__paragraph" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;"></p><blockquote><p class="story-text__paragraph" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">“If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth. And you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree,” he said in an excerpted interview with <a aria-label="Pod Save America (opens in a new window)" class="js-tealium-tracking" data-tracking="mpos=&mid=&lindex=&lcol=" href="https://x.com/PodSaveAmerica/status/1720803333546320324?s=20" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #007bc7; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s;" target="_blank">Pod Save America</a> released Saturday.</span></i></p><p class="story-text__paragraph" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Reflecting on his presidency, Obama posed the question, “Well, was there something else I could have done?”</span></i></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">He could have answered his own question by acknowledging what he had in fact done during his eight years as president. While paying lip service to the plight of the Palestinians, Obama did not admit his own direct role in the ethnic cleansing of Muslims. He didn't admit that he'd actually found inspiration and justification for his own drone assassination program from a group of Israeli lawyers who had preceded the full-scale genocide in Gaza by targeted assassinations of Hamas members - and whatever civilians were in the vicinity at the time.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This targeted killing program, which got underway in the 90s in Israel in response to a wave of suicide bombings by Hamas, was roundly criticized by US officials at the time.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Then, of course, came the 9/11 attacks. It wasn't long before the War on Terror was proclaimed by the Bush administration, and killing anyone, at any time for any reason, became the de facto US policy. This especially held true for Muslims in so-called "tribal areas" and US-occupied war zones.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">By the time Obama took office, targeted killings were the norm. Gone were the antiwar protests against the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. There was little to no backlash from the public, even when the New York Times (with full White House approval) revealed the gruesome extent of the "Disposition Matrix" - Obama's own project of piecemeal genocide by drone. All Muslim men in the prime of life were deemed to be "enemy combatants."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">At a 2012<a href="https://www.theborderchronicle.com/p/from-the-gazan-laboratory-to-the"> security conference</a> in El Paso, Texas, Roel Elkabetz, a brigadier-general for the Israel Defense Forces, bragged to his US counterparts that "We've learned lots from Gaza...it's a great laboratory!"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Eric Holder, Obama's attorney general, went on to actually plagiarize the Israeli lawyers who had first laid out the case for episocic drone and bomb attacks on Palestinians. One of these Israeli lawyers, as <i><a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/10/07/israel-palestine-us-drone-strikes/">The Intercept</a></i> reported in 2018, later became a professor of human rights and humanitarian law at Harvard University. Unlike Obama, this particular lawyer acknowledged her own direct role in having gotten the genocide ball rolling all those decades ago. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Amos Barshad wrote in that article that Eric Holder, lifted verbatim from Israel the extra-legal rationale for what is the most infamous of all Obama's drone killings:</span></p><p><span style="color: #444444; letter-spacing: 0.2px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The memo directly quotes the ILD’s argument in the PCATI (Palestine) case. “Although arrest, investigation and trial ‘might actually be particularly practical under the conditions of belligerent occupation, in which the army controls the area in which the operation takes place,’” the memo reads, “such alternatives ‘are not means which can always be used,’ either because they are impossible or because they involve a great risk to the lives of soldiers.” A U.S. drone killed al-Awlaki in September 2011 in Yemen.</span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">For Obama to now chide his audience to talk to people they don't agree with -because otherwise you are just sloganeering and ignoring nuance - is cynical and hypocritical. He certainly never conversed with Al-Awlaki, or even with Al-Awlaki's parents when they pleaded in vain for a meeting with him to try to dissuade him from his execution order. He certainly didn't talk to the teenage son of Al-Awlaki before one of his drones r killed the boy and some of his friends as they were innocently eating pizza.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">To the extent that Obama has acknowledged his role as lord high executioner of the United States, he glosses over it with the usual "higher ground" rhetoric to excuse all manner of crimes, both his own and those of others in his global social, political and economic cohort.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Just as he now lectures the world on their alleged "complicity" in war and violence, he's also lectured the thousands of his own<a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dp3mx/obamas-memoir-glosses-over-his-horrific-drone-war"> drone victims</a>, actually trying to make them responsible for their own deaths. This grotesque passage in his "Promised Land" memoir particularly stands out:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black; letter-spacing: normal;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>I wanted somehow to save them—send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of the hate that had been filling their heads. And yet the world they were a part of, and the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead."</i></span></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's a variation of the old Pontius Pilate excuse. Having disclaimed responsibility for murder, Obama doesn't even feel the need to wash his hands of murder on a much more epic scale. He merely flicks the guilt away at everybody else. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Maybe Caroline Kennedy can give him another Profile in Courage award. Maybe the Nobel committee can give him another peace prize. Better yet, maybe the Hollywood that he so adores can give him an Oscar for best performance by a political actor iin the horror-fantasy genre. He also probably deserves the Most Valuable Player award in the world series of conflagration. He does, after all, have a very mean curveball. He pitches so fast and so loose that whenever his foul balls hit</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> somebody in the head, they never even see it coming. And that is their own fault. They are complicit just for existing.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhTgX_xyMvObBnAQuTgKh77PyQUsSqF5OFcsjEOnROQ_zPPYTfVBMUo-dQ0YkupiGg7TF5ZW_moKhCzmU1owriksVOIuUKq_8CJt31-dSxOTyzFo0a8jHKg0Djlc-q52kv7NhUHFswuUtloEXfT60vHWP_WVbDCyIV8GQMenJv3me1XqR_qhJ2XOqT2uEs" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="474" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhTgX_xyMvObBnAQuTgKh77PyQUsSqF5OFcsjEOnROQ_zPPYTfVBMUo-dQ0YkupiGg7TF5ZW_moKhCzmU1owriksVOIuUKq_8CJt31-dSxOTyzFo0a8jHKg0Djlc-q52kv7NhUHFswuUtloEXfT60vHWP_WVbDCyIV8GQMenJv3me1XqR_qhJ2XOqT2uEs=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #444444; letter-spacing: 0.2px;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></span></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-69031100311084361622023-10-31T13:43:00.008-04:002023-10-31T14:53:41.408-04:00Looking At Horror Straight In Its Face<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> Joe Biden wasn't kidding when he bragged in that shambolic Oval Office speech that bankrolling the twin slaughters in Ukraine and Gaza in one mega-appropriation would be a great investment for America.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Dark Brandon knew whereof he spoke. Weapons manufacturers like General Dynamics and Raytheon are already<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/3"> posting huge profits</a> since Israel declared war on two million imprisoned Palestinians (duly demoted from human being status to terrorists or sub-human shields for Hamas for purposes of brainwashing the public).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">As if that gruesome windfall isn't bad enough, the likelihood that the wealthy investors in mass death will have to pay taxes on their ill-gotten gains will be practically nil, if newly-crowned House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) gets his way.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">That's because the House Rules Committee just introduced<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-republican-house-offset-irs-free-system_n_65402396e4b0a78a26a47016"> legislation</a> requiring that the US's $14 billion aid package to Israel, helping to finance the genocide of Gazans,</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> will be offset by $14 billion in cuts to the IRS.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Not only would investigations and prosecutions of wealthy tax evaders be brought to an effective screeching halt, the cuts would also do away with the free digital tax filing program for regular people. Internet filers would actually have to pay a fee for the privilege of underwriting both</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> the military-industrial complex and the wealthy tax cheats.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The Republicans' rationale seems to be that we have to fight the Palestinian families over there by punishing the powerless families over here. What more apt day is it than Halloween for us to remind ourselves that capitalism is a zombie that must keep replicating itself by varying its diet. Too much is never enough for the ruling class monsters. They were created without any sense of repletion. They are never full. The more that they eat, the hungrier they get. That especially goes for funding the forever-wars.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The GOP's bill would, of course, have to pass in the Senate, and then require Biden's signature. It's not the punishment of the working class factor that endangers this noxious piece of racist, genocidal, class war legislation, however. It's yhat the extra billions that Biden is demanding for Ukraine war funding is not included. So it's probably already dead on arrival in its current form. Or should I say undead on arrival. We all know that any legislative monster worth its salt (and blood-spatter) will undergo the good old sausage-making treatment in the secret congressional abattoir.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj8BlI6xsFzn9ykZECzyv0Uf-koycsZXkBw9TKwlp-t5pyWGNIHBKqxP3--m3QpWQkabSCjkxefAWLgT3G6itwTYb9w_ktGf61Q6bRiKdot_PBwy5IT0J_xWB2I90bt8BxyMfTs1gU_mwctF5BSpK_l25aEXGlZ7wb9LiHGxgP9Kz7X6mqhlQRR6dYe6AQ" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img alt="" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="474" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj8BlI6xsFzn9ykZECzyv0Uf-koycsZXkBw9TKwlp-t5pyWGNIHBKqxP3--m3QpWQkabSCjkxefAWLgT3G6itwTYb9w_ktGf61Q6bRiKdot_PBwy5IT0J_xWB2I90bt8BxyMfTs1gU_mwctF5BSpK_l25aEXGlZ7wb9LiHGxgP9Kz7X6mqhlQRR6dYe6AQ=w400-h225" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Congress</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br />As far as the reputedly more deliberative <a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/10/27/palestine-israel-free-speech-retaliation-senate/">Senate</a> is concerned, they not only joined their lesser congressional brethren in enshrining their support of the Israel government, they unanimously and magically transformed a nation full of antiwar and anti-genocide protesters into enemies of the state. The Senate has officially redefined supporters of the Palestinians as supporters of Hamas terrorists. and anti-Semites to boot.</span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The corporate media are also doing their village-of-the-damnedest best to squelch actual coverage of the protests in the streets, both in the US and throughout the world. If they ignore it they reason, the majority of people will not learn of the atrocities - or if they do learn about them, they will not much care. Why else would even the staid New York Times be inundating us with story after story about the death of an actor in the "Friends" TV series? We are invited to substitute mourning this one tragic celebrity death with a bunch of elite Hollywood types, so as to avoid mourning - let alone thinking about - the deaths of thousands of Palestinians, most of whom are women and children.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">One exception to this coordinated news blackout of protests came on Halloween morning, when <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/protesters-disrupt-senate-aid-hearing-secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-speaks/">Code Pink activists</a>, red paint on their hands, interrupted the censor-proof,, pro-war Senate testimony of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Both men sat like stiffs, wearing their terrifying emotionless masks as the protesters were ejected. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the age of the Internet, when anyone with a cell phone has the ability to document the various grotesque realties going on all around us, the ability of the masters of war and the lords and ladies of capital to variously frighten us and censor us is falling apart at the seams. of all their glittery zombie rags.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Instead of shambling around and consuming stuff in order to numb ourselves, regular people are waking up. We're not only taking another long-delayed stand against cruelty and war, we're also going out on strike. And we're winning.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">"And then, above all, there is the new arrival - the thinking that does not shy away from the horror of the world,</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> the darkness, but looks it straight in the face, and thus passes over into a different kingdom, which is not the kingdom of darkness." -- Henri Lefebvre.</span></span></p></span><p></p></div>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-48358529094377856662023-10-26T14:18:00.007-04:002023-10-26T14:56:15.105-04:00Comfort Food For Multiple Maniacs<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">If you're worried about the two million Palestinians starving to death in Gaza as bombs rain down on their heads, maybe you shouldn't be.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Because <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-house-state-dinner-australia-nod-israel-hamas-war/">to hear first lady Jill Biden tell it</a>, our most pressing concern should be that our ruling capitalist predators get enough comfort food to eat. Stuffing their faces with gourmet treats posing as plain country fare eases their stress and strain. Their need for sustenance should prove to us mere mortals</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> that these demi-gods are, in fact, as human as you and me. The poor beleaguered things not only are tasked with waging, marketing and profiting from ongoing multiple wars, they're also busily plotting the total global conflagrations of the future. And it takes a lot of caloric fat for the fat cats to survive and thrive for purposes of your security.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">So there was no possible way, genocide in Palestine notwithstanding, that the Biden administration would ever have cancelled the state gala for the prime minister of Australia, which is now the main US base of operations for their hoped-for war with China.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #101010;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">"Nurturing our partnerships and relationships with our allies is critically important, especially in these tumultuous times," Jill Biden euphemistically explained as her rationale for going ahead with the dinner. "Food is comforting, reassuring and healing, and we hope that this dinner provides a little of that as well."</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #101010;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Given that the 300 honored guests at the state dinner included the bloodthirsty likes of Antony Blinken, Lloyd Austin III and Victoria Nuland, one can only imagine the gusto with which they gnawed into such delicacies as spareribs slathered with gobs of sarsparilla sauce.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #101010;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Jill Biden came off sounding a lot like the clueless hostess in the classic Katherine Mansfield short story, "The Garden Party." The matriarch scoffs at her conscience-stricken daughter's plea to cancel the festivities </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #101010; font-family: verdana;">because a man had just suffered a fatal accident in the slum neighborhood located just outside the gates of their fancy estate. Putting the feelings of her poor, mourning neighbors ahead of her wealthy guests enjoying her food, her flower arrangements, and her hired musicians would have been just too "extravagant."</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #101010;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>"You are being very absurd, Laura," she said coldly. "People like that don't expect sacrifices from us. And it's not very sympathetic to spoil everyone's enjoyment as you're doing now."</i></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #101010;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But to show that for her own part, Jill Biden is not completely insensitive to what either the Palestinians or the growing number of critics of her husband's embrace of genocide might think, she did cancel the hired entertainment part - dance music by the B-52s. It might have looked unseemly for the gentry and proxy genocidaires to be seen rocking and rolling to a band sharing a name with an aircraft that's been used for decades to drop US bombs all over the world, including in the Middle East to this very day.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #101010;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Instead, Jill opted for the soothing jingoistic sounds of military bands from the Army, Air Force and Marines. The corporate media dutifully downplayed the party as "sedate" and "low-key" and even family-centered, given that the Bidens' grandchildren were there.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #101010;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">(Even as they were playing their appropriate tunes, an Army reservist in Maine - trained as a state-sanctioned weapons instructor - was shooting up a bowling alley full of kids with his own instrument of choice: the iconic AR-15. Any upcoming sympathy visit by Joe Biden to yet another grieving community might be a little more awkward than usual, given his recent glib remark that dead Palestinian children are inevitable - because war.</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #101010; font-family: verdana;"> Also, there's the inconvenience of his own son being under criminal indictment for an illegal gun purchase.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #101010;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But enough of all this angst and unpleasantness. Let's get back to Jill Biden's mission of comforting the comfortable. A few days before the state dinner, she was dining by candlelight with fashion industry</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #101010; font-family: verdana;"> donors at former Vogue editor Anna Wintour's multimillion-dollar townhouse in New York City's Greenwich Village. </span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #101010; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">She told the group that, given these "fraught times" she wouldn't trust anybody but Joe Biden to be sitting in the Situation Room for another four years. And why wouldn't she, given that the Situation Room is really a 5000-square foot a mansion within a mansion?</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #101010; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">With its recent <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/08/politics/situation-room-makeover-white-house/index.html">$50 million renovation</a>, the Biden sitting room is many rooms, including many nooks and crannies and multiple conference rooms and even so-called "breakout rooms." The padded walls are adorned with multiple high-def video screens especially designed for the comfort of aging eyes. Even the presidential seals for the podiums have been supersized and specified to be larger than a human head. The massive main conference table is crafted from the finest fine-grained mahogany. imported from an undisclosed location somewhere in the Far East with a military base. The chairs for the armchair warriors are crafted from the finest leather, flayed from the finest American cows.</span></p><p><span style="color: #101010; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;">But where would comfort food and furniture be without fashion? Jill Biden is also all about the couture to take wealthy minds off all that global "tumult" and other unpleasantness. She told her fashionista donors that couture is "not only the clothes we pull out of our closets each morning, they are statements of our identity. They're our <i>armor</i>."</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #101010; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;">There is no word yet about "who" Jill will wear as body armor when (in our imagination) she brings baskets full of state dinner leftovers to the UN trucks parked at the Egypt-Palestine border.. It would be a happy ending to ur story. It would be just like the young girl in "The Garden Party" bringing her basket of party food to the bereaved family of the accident victim. She thought she could just leave the offering at the cottage door. But then those sly underclass victims of capitalistic predation <i>actually make her view the dead body.</i></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #101010; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"> It's nurturing comfort food for the hoi polloi, on those rare gala occasions when the comfortable actually get afflicted for a change.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #101010; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;">Who would ever dream of canceling such a tumultuous event?</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #101010; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span style="color: #101010; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #101010; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhKd1sVFyIoxK6G5MhqKWNPRVRM-7Eacz4Lj0y-qzUqSo4RiqPuwBaP_yqCgWYfVYnOvPYqjqnyUDeSX_AZO6tMEthmxcG01dgeK8byQa7g7b83vpro5JpoZuoD6egcibG6w62uU22LvHiOApekEgImwmMd3pu1WifbYBxgZ0VMxEt9bUsvtVb4ZALmMEU" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="474" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhKd1sVFyIoxK6G5MhqKWNPRVRM-7Eacz4Lj0y-qzUqSo4RiqPuwBaP_yqCgWYfVYnOvPYqjqnyUDeSX_AZO6tMEthmxcG01dgeK8byQa7g7b83vpro5JpoZuoD6egcibG6w62uU22LvHiOApekEgImwmMd3pu1WifbYBxgZ0VMxEt9bUsvtVb4ZALmMEU=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></span></span></div><span style="color: #101010; font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /><br /></span></span><p></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-7236815870160879482023-10-18T13:14:00.005-04:002023-10-18T13:37:57.265-04:00It's All About the White Settler Colonialism<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> What took European invaders close to 400 years to accomplish in the Americas, the State of Israel hopes to accomplish in less than a quarter of that time. I am talking, of course, about the State of Israel's pivot from its protracted ethnic cleansing of Palestine to the outright genocide of the Palestinians trapped in Gaza.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Just as the Puritans self-righteously justified their own wars against native populations by pointing to their own persecution at the hands of the British, and later, by the often-violent reaction of Indians against the settler-colonists, so too do the Zionists of Israel justify their treatment of native populations by pointing to their own long history of persecution in Europe, which culminated with the Holocaust. As long as the perpetrators can gloss over their racist white supremacy with the shield of perpetual victimhood, they feel free to do plenty of victimizing of their own. If you criticize their actions, you are labeled an anti-Semite. You might even have a Wall Street job offer rescinded if you're an Ivy League student. (Which might not be a bad thing, in the long run. Maybe these elite college kids can now oot for a teaching job in an underserved public school!)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Joe Biden, on his quick campaign stop in Israel, wasted no time in embracing both Binyamin Netanyahu and Bibi's predictable denial of responsibility for the explosion at a Gaza hospital, which has claimed the lives of at least 500 people. The US president glibly explained his belief that Hamas ("the other team") was responsible by saying that "his" defense department had already told him so. This is the same dude who had enthusiastically embraced the debunked war propaganda of decapitated Israeli babies.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's all about the solidarity among the settler-colonialists of the world. Both the United States and Israel consider themselves to be exceptional nations, among God's chosen ones. They do pre-emptive war with impunity.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Why else would the US military, in which Biden puts so much demented faith and trust, name a whole series of its lethal weapons and hardware after the native populations it had finally conquered in the late 19th century? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Here's just a partial list of what the perpetual US war machine has used to maim and kill untold millions of people, the majority of whom have been non-white in the ludicrously-named post World War II "Pax Americana" --</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Apache attack helicopter, Tomahawk cruise missile, a whole series of helicopters bearing such tribal names as Cayuga, Huron, and Iroquois, not to mention the high-tech spy aircraft called Kiowa, Ute and Mohawk. And who can forget that the mission to murder Osama Bin Laden was named after the great Indian warrior against US occupation - Geronimo?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Such naming is a way to continue denigrating American Indians while justifying their own modern wars of aggression. It speaks to a kind of distorted genetic memory of all those innocent settler-folk being scalped by the "savages" who had the effrontery to resent their invaders. Not for nothing do supporters of the genocide in Palestine attempt to dehumanize the actual victims by calling thenm "savages" and "human animals." It's all too familiar. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And now, with most of the civilized world aghast and protesting in the streets at the blatant and even downright gleeful genocide of Palestinians, the US has effectively joined Israel in being viewed as a pariah state by the rest of the world. The US itself is still an apartheid state in all but name, discriminating against and punishing its own citizens based upon their race and class and gender - and lately, even their independent thought - despite all the sanctimonious laws that it has on the books. Jim Crow is still alive and well. Just witness the gross expansion of the US prison system, the largest in the world, with more Black people now incarcerated than there were slaves prior to the Civil War. This statistic is largely the result of then-Senator Biden's crime bills, passed with bipartisan support in the 90s.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">It should come as no surprise, therefore, that in 2023, the Biden administration is such an unabashed champion of Palestinian genocide, albeit with the usual ass-covering platitudes about </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">humanitarian concerns. It is somewhat gratifying - or worrisome, as far as the <i>New</i> <i>York Times</i> is concerned - that even timorous "progressive" politicians are just now beginning to mak</span><a href="https://jayapal.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Letter-Expressing-Concern-on-the-Humanitarian-Situation-in-Gaza.pdf" style="font-family: verdana;">e the tiniest possible demands of Biden to broker a</a><span style="font-family: verdana;"> ceasefire. It was only a week ago that the Democratic Party was so unified. They voted en masse against ex-House Speaker McCarthy. Most of them already endorsed Joe Biden for re-election, for cryin out loud! </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But even the reliably pro-Israel <i>Times</i> isn't quite as gung-ho about Zionist revenge as it was in the immediate aftermath of the atrocious slaughter of Israeli civilians by Hamas. Perhaps it has something to do both with the backlash from readers in the comments sections, and from the public at large. Not when "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" has been expanded so disproportionately. Like Biden, Netanyahu's political viability was also in question prior to the allegedly surprise attack by Hamas.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Biden's gruesome theatrical embrace on Wednesday of this brutal right-wing leader of Israel was intended to recast him as a courageous wartime statesman rather than as a bumbling old man with low domestic approval ratings. However, any additional support or kudos that he gets from his fellow Neocons in both war parties will be diluted by the two other hawkish xenophobic presidential candidates in the mix. - Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. There are already indications that his political stunt has backfired.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> This creates a much bigger opening for the lone antiwar candidate, Cornel West. He may not win - actually allowed to win - the election, or even get ballot access. But at least the corporate media are now being forced to give him a regular platform. No matter if it's just an attempt to co-opt him in their corporate fold or boost their ratings among the younger demographic.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Because despite its own ham-handed efforts, the Censorship-Industrial Complex cannot control the narrative. The grotesque reality speaks for itself.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjhP-CXA_ExGlxAwMhPKBG0Id9v_xruvNHRUNQ5sITur6hyDJZ4YI04lpR7BLyX5JgENNif4aM_UiLi6R9DIrDSkUMmI5DW1MGbN8kOskuMgUYwepOoxs315Gz2IkAF0N9VAOb_LcZSZ_f_7-ElTbMFK5VSGOUkSFYmiuZDkpwE7lletGoUVtesGh6X5ek" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1103" data-original-width="735" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjhP-CXA_ExGlxAwMhPKBG0Id9v_xruvNHRUNQ5sITur6hyDJZ4YI04lpR7BLyX5JgENNif4aM_UiLi6R9DIrDSkUMmI5DW1MGbN8kOskuMgUYwepOoxs315Gz2IkAF0N9VAOb_LcZSZ_f_7-ElTbMFK5VSGOUkSFYmiuZDkpwE7lletGoUVtesGh6X5ek=w267-h400" width="267" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span><p></p>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-1776546001152040212023-10-09T15:18:00.005-04:002023-10-10T11:59:29.527-04:00We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programs...<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7dhNJ0MK0BY" width="320" youtube-src-id="7dhNJ0MK0BY"></iframe></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br />... To bring you Professor Hillary Clinton's clarion call for an official mass deprogramming of MAGA cultists.</span><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">What she would actually RE-program these Trump voters into being or thinking is carefully left unsaid. But it's easy to imagine them as characters in "A Clockwork Orange" remake. Hillary</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> would open up their eyes with her magical steel retractors, forcing them to watch endless televised Trump rallies interspersed with even more disgusting images of blood and gore. The deplorable lumpens would then find themselves vomitng every time they accidentally caught a glimpse of Trump on TV. The only way to settle their stomachs would be to make a beeline for the voting booth to re-elect the kindly</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> grandpa similacrum known as Joe Biden.</span></span></div><div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> Third party candidates? Don't even ask. The alternatives to neoliberal capitalism, such as universal healthcare, debt-free education, an end to wars of aggression, stable housing and nutrition must also be surgically cleansed from the brains of every disaffected subject.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">If Hillary had chosen to be honest in this interview, she would have proclaimed that it takes a cult to fight a cult. Actually, it takes the parent cult of the Duopoly to expel the bastard child cult. Trump is essentially the spawn of a rampantly promiscuous capitalism; a spawn too tastelessly open about the fascist tendencies long an integral part of the U.S. hegemon.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> Simply think, on this Indigenous People's Day of all days, of the European settler-colonists who began exterminating native populations and enslaving African people whole centuries before sanctimoniously declaring that "all men are created equal."</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> Only when the unfortunate Trump byproduct is expelled, Clinton confides to CNN pundit Christiane Amanpour, can the desired make-up session between the bickering Democrats and Republicans finally go full steam ahead for the ultimate and perpetual orgiastic pleasure of the lords and ladies of Capital. Of course Hillary didn't put it that way. The oligarchic orgasm is now defined as "democracy."</span></div><div><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;"> Like many a romantic before her, Hillary still labors under the delusion that it was bipartisanship and not the New Deal and the Great Society social programs that made America, America.</span><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></span></div><div><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Listening closely to this interview, you find that Clinton initially only singles out the elected MAGA Republicans of Congress as the insane actors in dire need of her mental cleansing. But then she swiftly pivots to the mass of </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">powerless voters as also worthy of treatment in her asylum. These voters, according to Clinton, were attracted to Trump by virtue of such pre-existing maladies as xenophobia, misogyny and racism. The false hope he gave to many of them, even previous Obama voters, for relief of their pre-existing economic precarity - has no cure in her neoliberal playbook. Other than shock therapy, maybe.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The fact that she herself had countered Trump's fake populist appeal by lecturing to the voters in 2016, rather than meeting them where they lived, both geographically and existentially, seems not to have dawned upon her.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This glaring omission naturally segues to the next concerned query by Amampour : what about those awful third party challengers? Aren't you afraid? She thus hastily absolves Hillary from examining or reprogramming her own brain, to ignore that her own lack of personal charm and political skills were prime reasons for her defeat by Trump. It was, of course, also the fault of the Green Party's Jill Stein. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Hillary imagines, therefore, that votes will also be "stolen" from Joe Biden - by some of the very same deplorables who lack the intellectual heft to dive deep into all his alleged accomplishments.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">But just in case that kind of shaming won't work on the hordes of thick-headed lumpen, she ends the segment in hoping they still </span><span style="font-family: verdana;">have enough of a vestigial fear center left in their rotting brains to at least stagger to the polls in favor of her own her preferred master-cult.</span></span></p><p></p></div></div>Karen Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.com16