Barely a week after promising at least another $40 billion in subsidies to US weapons manufacturers for the war in Ukraine, and mere days after grotesquely demanding that surplus Covid aid money be used by cities to hire more armed cops, Joe Biden shuffled off to Buffalo to decry hate and violence in his boilerplate response to the latest domestic mass shooting.
The corporate media dutifully are not calling this out as rank hypocrisy, but instead are once again portraying the Commander in Chief as the Consoler in Chief. What they're really trying to accomplish in the coverage and narrative of the weekend's upstate New York grocery store massacre is that the strict line of demarcation between the acceptable, state-sanctioned violence waged only out of love, safety and democracy, and the unacceptable freelance variety perpetrated out of racism, hate and evil must be maintained at all costs. War, of course, is not deemed to be a hate crime. That its global victims are disproportionately black and brown is not deemed to be racist.
Joe Biden and the Democrats once again are mouthing their feeble, meaningless entreaties for "modest" and "common-sense" gun law reform. They ignore the obvious culprits: the gun manufacturers and arms dealers themselves, and especially the private equity firms and "holding companies" which own them and finance them and profit from both the state-sanctioned and freelance violence which they enable.
In his stale litany of platitudes, Biden certainly does not include the armed forces and the weapons industry as part of the white supremacist establishment which has ruled this nation since its inception. It's only when the movement goes rogue and freelance that the real supremacists with the real power get all upset, or at least pretend to.
He also won't pay much if any lip service to the enforced control and impoverishment of most US citizens by the American oligarchy and its enablers in the professional-managerial class comprising the top 10 percent of income earners. Not for nothing did impoverished Buffalo elect its first socialist mayor in a Democratic primary last year, only for her victory to then be thwarted by an influx of Republican money and a write-in campaign to fix the runoff for her centrist Democratic challenger.
Biden certainly will not call for a punitive tax on the obscene profits of the weapons manufacturers that are promoting and enabling both state-sanctioned violence and the renegade variety. To the contrary: under the fig leaf of "humanitarian aid" to places like Ukraine, the weapons industry is one of the biggest recipients of government welfare. Wall Street would have a hissy fit if war and local police states were taxable, as would the investors that finance and control both our establishment political parties.
Both the Buffalo shooter and the young man who committed the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre used Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifles. This past February, the Sandy Hook parents finally reached a $73 million settlement with Remington, which under the laws of corporate bankruptcy was a heavily insured holding company in the process of selling itself and changing its name, so that shadow owners and investors in assault weapons can continue raking in the profits and whitewashing their reputations under the musical chairs business model. This reality makes the Sandy Hook victory both pyrrhic and premature, despite what plaintiffs' lawyers crowed at the time. From CNN's report:
The families have also “obtained and can make public thousands of pages of internal company documents that prove Remington’s wrongdoing and carry important lessons for helping to prevent future mass shootings,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys said in a news release.
“We established what was clearly true … the immunity protecting the gun industry is not bulletproof,” plaintiffs’ attorney Josh Koskoff said in a news conference in Trumbull, Connecticut. “We hope they realize they have skin in the game, instead of blaming literally everybody else.”
The Buffalo gunman's manifesto, pointing to the racist "great replacement theory" as the impetus for his crime spree, rightly puts the onus on various elected GOP nut-jobs and Fox News for spreading the paranoid propaganda.
However, this concentration on white supremacist hate speech again lets Wall Street off the hook.
The very name of "Freedom Group" - under which the Bushmaster assault rifle and other models were owned and manufactured until the Sandy Hook atrocity - points to the essential right-wing extremism of its corporate owners and investors.
Freedom Group was simply the name of a subsidiary of the Cerberus Capital Management private equity group. Cerberus, you might remember, is the vicious three-headed dog of Greek mythology that guards the gates of hell. So you probably can at least give these corporate psychopaths a few extra points for being so self-aware.
As tbe New York Times reported in a 2011 investigative article, rumor among paranoid right-wing circles at the time had it that Democratic megadonor George Soros was buying up big, but financially struggling, assault rifle makers for the express purpose of putting them out of business permanently. No such luck:
Mr. Soros isn’t behind the Freedom Group, but, ultimately, another financier is: Stephen A. Feinberg, the chief executive of Cerberus.
CERBERUS is part of one of the signature Wall Street businesses of the past decade: private equity. Buyout kings like Mr. Feinberg, 51, try to acquire undervalued companies, often with borrowed money, fix them up and either take them public or sell at a profit to someone else....
Why Cerberus went after gun companies isn’t clear. Many private investment firms shy away from such industries to avoid scaring off big investors like pension funds.
Yet, in many ways, the move is classic Cerberus. Mr. Feinberg has a history of investing in companies that other people may not want, but that Cerberus believes it can turn around. When Cerberus embarked on its acquisition spree in guns, it essentially had the field to itself.
If Democrats and pundits really wanted to put the onus on the Republican party side of the Duopoly for the rise in white supremacist gun violence, they might point out that former Vice President Dan Quayle sat on the board of Cerberus in Freedom Group era, and is still in charge of "global investments." The Board has also included a couple of retired generals, who during its ownership of Bushmaster facilitated the sale of assault rifles to the US military as well as to the burgeoning demographic including all the many varieties of disturbed or propagandized civilians of the United States.
Cerberus changed the name of Freedom Group to the more innocuous "Remington Outdoor Company" after a great public outcry, post- Sandy Hook shootings. Ironically, the father of the Cerberus CEO himself had lived in a gated community in Sandy Hook.
The younger Feinberg, with a net worth of $1.5 billion, was named by Donald Trump to chair the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. Cerberus then owned DynCorp, a major contractor with the American security state, which then got folded into another private security contractor, called Amentum. Under Trump Freiberg was tasked with "vetting" people employed by the CIA, despite having no "intelligence" experience himself.
Meanwhile, the latest listed owner of the Bushmaster assault rifle company is Crotalus Holdings in Sun City, Nevada, whose rather murky official trademark is "Proud To Stand With America's Finest."
It still has the same old friendly cartoon logo, an over-fanged blood-red snake with a gun.
From the company website:
Bushmaster Firearms™ is excited to announce our return. We are not an affiliate with any other firearms manufacturing companies. In times to come, our array of products will provide Proven™ perfection to all.
And just in case, despite the outlandish trademarking of the word "Proven," you still thought that the Bushmaster and all its assorted ammo and gear are violent things being recklessly marketed to one and all, they are deadly serious about putting the missionary back in the Mission. The quote on the bottom of the web page selling assault rifles should prove™ it to everyone's satisfaction:
Bushmaster Firearms™
Blessed are the peacemakers,for they will be called children of God.
Matthew 5:9
13 comments:
Yes, gun production is up three times what it was a few years ago, and all guns sales are up even more, with a red-hot used market.
But, the demand is even bigger.
A potential buyer just can't find for sale many gun models. Gun shows are picked over, with prices very high by old standards.
Ammo is almost unavailable. On the big ammo selling web sites, almost every entry is listed as unavailable and back orders not accepted.
Stores are rationing ammo sales, especially during hunting seasons.
There are guys earning spare cash by part time ammo reloading in their basements, and even that is limited by unavailable components.
The American buying public wants more guns and a lot more ammo. So this huge increase in supply is NOT ENOUGH to satisfy.
That is a much bigger problem, the real problem driving this surge in supply. We need to look at that directly, not just blame manufacturers who can't even keep up with demand.
The whole thing is horrifying and uncivilized and because it happens so often, is quickly yesterday's news. The gun pushers - aided by Hollywood glorifying cops and the morally righteous who are quick to shoot their weapons with great accuracy - are appealing to the lowest common denominator in the human race. I remember having a conversation with a German friend who said she no longer wanted to visit the U.S. She was too afraid because of all the gun violence.
Interesting information, Mark. I had no idea that gun and ammo prices had gone up so dramatically. Who can afford to buy these monstrous creations at inflated prices? This dystopia is getting stranger and darker.
Iraq, Ukraine, to oligarchs it's all the same --
George W. Bush called Iraq war ‘unjustified and brutal.’ He meant Ukraine. —
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/19/george-bush-iraq-ukraine-war-speech/
May 19, 2022 ~ by Bryan Pietsch
It was the “decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq,” former president George W. Bush said Wednesday before quickly correcting himself, saying he meant to describe Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.
“Iraq, too, anyway,” he added under his breath to laughter from the audience during a speech at his presidential center in Dallas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJQS3eLSXgA
During DemocracyNow interview with paralyzed Iraq War veteran Tomas Young, who recently announced he has decided to end his life by discontinuing his medicine and nourishment, we get his reaction to jokes by George W. Bush and Laura Bush made at a White House Correspondents Dinner about missing weapons of mass destruction.
I am going off script here but I thought there might be readers on this blog who would appreciate this link. I stumbled on it whilst looking for the DemocracyNow interview with Tomas Young on youtube. I've been very disturbed, ever since Jeremy Corbin - an ethical and caring politician - was smeared as racist by his political enemies. This clip is George Galloway's response to being asked if he is a racist. I thought it was quite profound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jfTaIW8mqg
VLT -- Thanks. That is a view of George Galloway I'd never been exposed to in our press.
VLT, thanks for the link to George Galloway's impassioned remarks about Israel and their obscene Palestinian apartheid.
I would like to see a tally of votes in the United Nations General Assembly since its establishment.
The number of times that those votes met opposition by only the USA and Israel, with occasionally one or two tiny pawns falling in line, against the entire rest of the world, would be staggering, and starkly revealing.
Here's a comment I once posted on some NYTimes article that criticized my House Representative Ilhan Omar for saying that the USA's support of Israel is "all about the Benjamins baby" which The Gray Lady deemed unfit to print:
Calling out the crimes of the state of Israel, and the corrupt complicity of the USA, is NOT anti-Semitic.
Criticizing the foreign policies and condemning the crimes of the USA is NOT anti-American, or un-American, as the Empire would like us to believe.
To conflate the two is contemptible, and clearly a canard to continue control of the status quo.
With pathetic and bloody irony, the state of Israel worships a golden calf and has to the USA become a sacred cash cow.
I, too, would like to thank you Valerie for the Galloway link. He is a remarkable person and I certainly wish we had more like him. His was another voice silenced when RT was shut down. This country is in a downward spiral that can't end well . . . .
And so we come full circle: "Once militarized, a society may never un-militarize.” —
The “New Israel”: The Irreversible Peril of Ukraine’s Militarization.—
https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/ukraine/the-new-israel-the-irreversible-peril-of-ukraines-militarization/
04/28/2022 ~ by Stefan Weichert
I see a problem bigger than just guns or militarization. It is bigger than any one weapon, or use of weapons, or thinking about weapons.
It is violence itself. It is the ready resort to violence. "Resort to" begs a question, what is the problem that is (not really) solved by resort to violence? What is making our people feel so crazed they get so violent?
We need to drill down to the violence itself. One weapons, one means, and thinking about it, those are just symptoms not causes.
The real problem that must be addressed is what drives us toward such violence.
We've been "capitalist" for 250 years, but we were not such crazed violent maniacs for all that time. It came and went, in some parts of the country more than in others.
Right now it is at a peak. Yet we are not peak capitalist or market-organized, so those complaints avoid the real issue. We are peak some things, but they are more specific.
What has peaked? The wealth and privilege of a few, obtained by the abuse of everyone else's potentials. Money alone does not define it. We are not hurt because they have private jets and multiple homes. I think it is distortions of personal potential. People lash out because they feel helpless otherwise. It is not jealousy, it is helplessness.
It is kids living in the basements without real prospects who are coming out with Bushmasters to do murder. They murder whoever they blame, in their limited world views, but their own twisted explanations are as limited as their own understanding of everything else. They are ignorant symptoms, not able to explain for themselves what they symbolize.
Yet they exist, and we do need to understand what they symbolize. It is not just their guns. That is a red herring, leading us away from what so many don't want us to see or talk about. Don't let them distract us.
Part One:
I agree that the problem in this country is larger than guns or militarization – and that this type of violence is only a symptom of a much greater issue. Violence is one aspect, but despair is also manifested in an ever-increasing number of suicides – even among our youngest children - along with the huge number of drug overdoses; teenagers (children) killing other teenagers; mass shootings; daily police killing citizens that they are charged to protect; and a lack of hope of so many of all ages, but especially of our young.
I agree with Mark that we should address the problems that drive this hopelessness. Perhaps we should first look to our government, which always addresses “issues” confronting it with violence. Violence toward people of color commenced with those who came over on the Mayflower and continued until the indigenous people of our country were close to extinction. It continues today with our hegemonic wars around the globe. In its history, the U.S. government has overthrown more governments and killed more civilians than any other civilization in the history of the world. We have incarcerated more people, I believe, than any other government, as well. The U.S. solves its “problems” with violence. What else can be expected of its citizenry – especially the young?
I also agree that horrific wealth inequality contributes to this problem – but, it seems to me to also be a symptom, as well; and if, in fact, the kids living in their parents’ basements are themselves “ignorant symptoms,” they symbolize the lack of care our system provides them and/or their mothers and fathers, and the absolute propaganda fed to all on a daily basis. What hope – what future – appeals to any one, especially the young, who is considered simply a “consumer? Is that the way we, or any one, especially our young, wish to live our precious, brief time on this gift of the planet earth?
This country’s overall general education system also must be considered. It is devised to produce worker bees, rather than critical thinkers, i.e., to actually produce those “limited [in] their own understanding,” rather than provide an environment that encourages genuine thought – art, music, literature, history, philosophy – and most crucially – critical thinking.
Another major contributor that “drives us to toward such violence” is the Democratic Party’s emphasis on identity politics. Look at the most recent presidential election’s agenda. There’s a slot for every possible “identity” except those who go about shooting their peers. We are all in this together. You wouldn’t know that from the DNC’s agenda. Identity politics has alienated a large proportion of the population. Unions have been decimated. Wages, for the most part, have remained stagnant for decades. Benefits are minimal if available at all. College debt is scandalous and burdensome beyond endurance. The lack of universal health care is irrational. Young women now are faced with the possibility of ever more governmental control of their bodies. It’s not just the Democrats, however; both parties feed from the same trough. We have no real choice and we are constantly pitted against one another.
Part Two:
At the same time, we spend well over 50 billion dollars to maintain “democracy” in Ukraine, where we partook of a coup of that so-called democracy in 2014 – a country that is commonly believed to be one of the most corrupt. Our government and the media lie to us. Censorship is steadily increasing and, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, our tax dollars are spent on a country that is rampant with Banderites.
At some level, our young, faced with low wages, high rents, Covid, climate change, and a government that does not represent them, sense this. They cannot help but be depressed, angry, and confused. How can they have anything other than a “limited world view,” considering the propaganda and hypocrisy with which they are faced on a daily basis?
I agree that guns alone are not the problem. Banning guns can perhaps be compared to prohibition. It didn’t work. It is the system that is the problem. Nothing will change until the system itself is changed.
(I apologize for the length - I got carried away.)
Mark - In response to your last comment: I think it is a combination of hopelessness about the future - the economy, the justice system, and climate change - and anger that the opportunities offered to young people's parents are not available to them. Their bitterness stews in their souls and it erupts in anger and violence. They see movies and TV glorifying violence - and they have become inured to violence. As a teacher, I would also criticise education. The teachers I had in the 70's and 80's taught us to see the world through different lenses. That just isn't happening anymore. Kids aren't reading great books that help them to walk in someone else's shoes. These books taught us empathy and openness.
This is a loss for democracy and for society.
"The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose." James A. Baldwin. By stripping people of all hope for a simple but decent life - one with a modicum of economic and physical security - we are creating a society with men and women with nothing to lose.
While the Republican Party is full of lunatics and fascists, the Democratic Party is led by collaborators and self-interested liars. People feel there is no where to turn politically and the DNC has been sure to silence any alternative parties like the Greens which could get enough support to broker a deal for some power - if the Democrats got elected.
I actually think that the myth that voting for the Greens is a wasted vote is conjured up by the DNC. I choose the Greens as an example of a party - thanks to Ralph Nader getting them noticed back in his day - because they are the only ones with some cohesion. While voting for an alternative party won't win any - other than local - elections, it can't hurt. Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils just doesn't work.
I don't know the answer but I want to believe there is a little hope - no matter how slight - that there is still time for change.
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