A Fascist Pep Talk

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.

So pronounced "Defense" Secretary Lloyd C. Austiin III 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 annual security confab 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 discussion on defending the Monroe Doctrine led for some unknown reason by tech billionaire Joe Lonsdale. 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.

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.

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 seen as trying. Austin also told the assembled overlords that he has even courageously warned the Israel government on how far is too far.

  Meanwhile, the US will continue providing billions of dollars in bombs and other hardware to Israel, with absolutely no strings attached. He just politely asked that they not kill anyl 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.

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.

Here are just a few chilling snippets from Austin's long, and long-winded, pep talk to the masters of war:  

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.

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 US combat troops 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!

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.And that’s the United States of America.

[Applause]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

1.   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.

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. 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.

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.

This was where Austin obliquely criticizes the antiwar, anti-genocide movement exploding 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 "great prosperity for his audience. He barely avoided the Orwellian "war is peace" canard.

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."

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.

Gaza Isn't Genocide Joe's First Rodeo

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.

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 The Intercept, "tantamount to mass murder."

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.

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 New York Times.

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 an analysis 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....

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.

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."

In the wake of the usual feeble criticism and the rescinding of strongly worded letters from Democrats professing to be upset that Biden was "flirting with genocide," in his enforced starvation of Afghan war victims, Biden decided in 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.

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.

 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.

 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.

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.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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!

On that note, I will once again post this classic video clip:

Mass Empathy Rears Its Lovely Head

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 Washington Post took the rare step of lifting its paywall so that as many non-rich people as possible could view President Biden's advertisement for the garbage product known as War Is Peace.

Once he gets all the jingoism and tired cut-and-pasted platitudes out of the way, 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:

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 the innovative economic corridor 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 markets and draws greater investment. Better regional connection — including physical and economic infrastructure — supports higher employment and more opportunities 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.

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.

Biden thus casts the attack by Hamas on Israeli people as caused not by the desperation of imprisoned Palestinians 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.)

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 as he sails his super-polluting mega-yacht around the world - a world whose borders only apply to poor people?

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?

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.

As The Guardian 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.

Even if their current presidential rep loses his next election, it won't matter in the least to them.

 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 neoliberal ( cut-throat, every-individual-for-himself) order.

 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 of their garbage.

Cops and Politicians Terrorized By Candle-Wielding Peaceniks

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.

It seems that people of all backgrounds and no particular party loyalty 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.

The New York Post, 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.

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 tactical training from the IDF for nothing, after all.

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 Post, 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.

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.

The Capitol Police “came in force” and directed lawmakers into a secure room in the basement, he said.

About seven lawmakers were huddled in the basement and loaded into police SUVs.

“Was just evacuated from the #DNC after pro-terrorist, anti-#Israel 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,” Sherman wrote on X.

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.

The rest of the mainstream media predictably framed the law enforcement aggression at DNC HQ 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.

This bipartisan, corporate, fascistic characterization of antiwar activists as enemies of the state was also captured by The Grayzone journalist Aaron Mate 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.

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. 

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.  

A Humble Appeal To My Readers

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 herecomestrouble665@gmail.com so I can give you my mailing address. 

Thanks, everyone, for you continuing interest in Sardonicky as we approach our Lucky 13th anniversary!

Little Bombs For Little People

In an apparent attempt to display how much they care about children, US officials have urged Israel to use "smaller bombs" to kill the Palestinians trapped in Gaza 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? 

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, put a kinder, gentler face on the genocide that has so far killed an estimated 10,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

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 New York Times:

"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.

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."

"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 craters from the prying eyes of that pesky antiwar crowd.  

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.

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:

"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,” 

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.

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.

Since Biden officially declared the Covid public health emergency to be over last spring, more than two million American children have been kicked off 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.

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.

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