Bulletin! Fauci's Fascist Plot Enslaving Us All

"Show me your papers." These ominous words are now being docilely accepted throughout the once Free World by hopelessly obedient "sheeple" eager to make themselves slaves of Anthony Fauci.

In a desperate effort to fight back, and thanks to the steady stream of butt-coin provided by Legalienate's faithful readers, our intrepid reporters have uncovered a raft of horrifying human rights abuses stemming from the Chief Medical Adviser's increasingly Hitlerian philosophy. (Those easily triggered should read no further.)

Hard as it may be to believe, library patrons are now prohibited from checking out books unless they can show they are authorized to do so. Erratic drivers face demands that they show papers authorizing them to be on the roadway and insured against accident. Job applicants encounter near universal mandates requiring papers verifying their employment and credit histories. Senior citizens cannot access pension income or medical care unless they first reveal their assigned national ID number! Professionals are humiliated by requirements to show "licenses" authorizing them to work in their chosen fields. Even simple visitors to daycare centers or schools have to check in at the front office and justify their presence on the premises.

May those seeking relief from this galloping totalitarian madness be forewarned. They will be required to hand over green papers (the only authorized color!) if they wish to buy aspirin or alka-seltzer at the local pharmacy.   

This can only end in a universal dungeon state under the direct personal control of Anthony Fauci.                                            

Gullible Fools Swallowing Obvious B.S. Pose Danger To Democracy

TIPS ON FAKE NEWS FOR TWITTER’S NEW CEO

• Column

December 1, 2021 by Ann Coulter

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Twitter announced this week that Parag Agrawal will be the social media giant’s new CEO. (This is an incredible achievement for the Indian-born Agrawal, given that the selection process heavily favored people born in India.) He has a difficult job ahead of him, trying to maintain the site’s reputation for fast-paced, free-ranging commentary, while also keeping the platform free of dangerous misinformation.

Agrawal is probably aware of the mounds — and I mean mounds — of irrefutable SCIENTIFIC PROOF that conservatives are gullible paranoids, constantly falling for misinformation and hoaxes. For example, consider these 100% objective academic studies:

Conservatives More Likely To Believe False News, New Study Finds — Maggie Fox, CNN, June 2, 2021
Return of the Paranoid Style: Fake News Is Fooling More Conservatives Than Liberals. Why? — The Economist, June 3, 2020

Conservatives’ Susceptibility to Political Misperceptions — R. Kelly Garrett and Robert M. Bond, Science Advances, June 2, 2021

On the other hand, now that I think about it, even powerful Democrats, establishment news organizations and influential celebrities have been known to err when evaluating the news.

Hey! That reminds me — the Jussie Smollett trial kicks off this week! (It’s a good thing I remembered that while writing this column.)

Smollett, you will recall, is the half-black, half-Jewish gay actor formerly of the Fox TV show “Empire” who claimed, back in January 2019, that he left his Chicago apartment at 2 a.m. in the middle of a polar vortex to get a sandwich, whereupon he was viciously set upon by two white guys shouting racist and homophobic slurs. (Despite being racist, homophobic white guys, they were huge fans of “Empire,” recognizing Smollett immediately.)

They beat him about the face, put a noose around his neck and doused him with a “chemical substance.” (Yes, as luck would have it, the white guys happened to be carrying a noose and chemical agents. Duh. It was a polar vortex.)

For extra bonus authenticity, Smollett said his assailants yelled, “This is MAGA country!” Did I mention this was in Chicago? (Trump: 12.4% of the 2016 vote.)

Even a skeptic would have to admit, Smollett’s account had the ring of truth. When you add (to an already highly believable story) the fact that there have been dozens of “noose incidents” over the past few decades, and every single one of them, without exception, turned out to be a hoax, his narrative only becomes more convincing!

To leap ahead to the conclusion, the Chicago Police Department spent 3,000 man-hours carefully examining surveillance tapes of the neighborhood where the incident had occurred and determined that — please sit down for this — the “attackers” turned out to be two Nigerian extras on “Empire.” (That does explain how they were able to recognize him.) After their arrests, they admitted that Smollett had paid them $3,500 to stage the attack.

Liberals, those calm, dispassionate seekers after truth — not conservative dolts, with their “paranoid style” and “susceptibility” to “false news” — reacted to Smollett’s alleged attack with the cool detachment we have come to expect from them.

“What happened today to @JussieSmollett must never be tolerated in this country. We must stand up and demand that we no longer give this hate safe harbor; that homophobia and racism have no place on our streets or in our hearts. We are with you, Jussie.” — Joe Biden

“@JussieSmollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know … This was an attempted modern-day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate.” — then-Sen. Kamala Harris

“The racist, homophobic attack … is an affront to our humanity. No one should be attacked for who they are or whom they love. I pray that Jussie has a speedy recovery & that justice is served. May we all commit to ending this hate once & for all.” — Rep. Nancy Pelosi

“This is a sickening and outrageous attack, and horribly, it’s the latest of too many hate crimes against LGBTQ people and people of color. We are all responsible for condemning this behavior and every person who enables or normalizes it. Praying for Jussie and his family.” — Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand

“There is no such thing as ‘racially charged.’ This attack was not ‘possibly’ homophobic. It was a racist and homophobic attack. If you don’t like what is happening to our country, then work to change it. It is no one’s job to water down or sugar-coat the rise of hate crimes.” — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

“Regarding the heinous attack on @JussieSmollett, yet another reminder that Trump’s ascendance and the resulting climate of hate has meant that lives have been increasingly at stake since 2015. Smollett could have been killed by those thugs screaming MAGA. Let that sink in.” — Karen Attiah, Washington Post editor

“The horrific attack on Jussie Smollett has no place in a decent human loving society. Homophobia existed before Trump, but there is no question that since he has injected his hatred into the American bloodstream, we are less decent, less human, & less loving. No intolerance! No DT!” — Director Rob Reiner

“Jussie Smollett was violently attacked by two white men who poured bleach on him and put a noose around his neck. He was targeted for being black and for being gay. THIS is why we have to have zero tolerance against homophobia and racism. Jussie’s life matters.” — Actress Olivia Munn

“Heartbroken and furious reading about the attack on @JussieSmollett. I want Trump and all MAGA lunatics to burn in Hell.” — Actor Billy Eichner

All this blithering idiocy, about something that was an obvious hoax from day one, was posted on the very social media site that Agrawal is about to oversee. Nearly identical tweets from nearly identical liberals could be produced for similarly deranged takes on Nick Sandmann, Kyle Rittenhouse, Althea Bernstein, the NASCAR “noose,” the “Klansman” at Oberlin College, the “racist” bus attack in Albany, Trump supporters ripping hijabs off Muslim girls, racist graffiti at the Air Force Academy, the noose at Columbia’s Teachers College, the Duke lacrosse rape hoax, the University of Virginia gang-rape hoax, the synagogue bomb threats and on and on and on.

Good luck to you, Mr. Agrawal.

COPYRIGHT 2021 ANN COULTER

 

The Supreme Court's Overpowering Stench Reaches The Nostrils of A Sitting Justice, Albeit Weakly

"Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception, that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?"

-----Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, anticipating the consequences of overturning Roe v. Wade

 

We at Legalienate were deeply shocked to learn that our gloriously independent Supreme Court is being construed as a partisan institution by a Supreme Court justice herself. What is this world coming to?

 

Just because the Court has previously found justification for slavery, segregation, eugenic sterilization, child labor, sixteen-hour workdays, internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, invading foreign nations, shooting workers, breaking strikes, deporting radical immigrants without trial, jailing dissidents, upholding sedition laws, giving away the country to private speculators, and extending carte blanche authority for private corporations to destroy the earth in their pursuit of limitless profit (i.e., happiness), does not mean it is a political actor. Perish the thought! We are a nation of neutral laws, not private interests.

In short - bulletin! - what political scientist Michael Parenti calls  "The Supremely Political Court" has always been highly partisan on behalf of the wealthy and against the general public. Who knew?

Not that Supreme Court judges are necessarily bad people. Many of the early justices, for example, including John Marshall, were slaveholders, and properly abstained from cases involving chattel, so as not to rule directly on matters involving their self-interest. 

Just kidding. They never did that. Instead, they repeatedly protected their "private property" by indulging the legal fiction that black people were farm animals, mercilessly flogged to fulfill superhuman production quotas. No pangs of conscience were called for, however, as the fault rested with black people themselves. Right up until the Civil War the Court reasoned that, whether slave or free, Blacks were a "subordinate and inferior class of beings" without constitutional rights, and that Congress had no power to exclude slave masters and their chattel from the imperial nation's ever-expanding territories. So there was no reason that the Court would ever challenge the Constitution for defining slaves as three-fifths human in order to enhance their masters' voting power, and of course it never did. 

 

Justice Sotomayor, please take note: for political "stench," it's hard to improve on that, though six Catholic judges presiding over the fate of abortion does indeed reek with contempt for impartiality.

Sources:

Sonia Sotomayor quoted by Ian Milhiser, "It sure sounds like Roe v. Wade is doomed," Vox, December 1, 2021

Supreme Court history, see Michael Parenti, Democracy For The Few, (7th Edition) (Wadsworth, 2002) pps. 286-8

  

 

Unlearning To Not Think*  

 

Recent American elections involving a relatively small segment of those already small numbers who actually vote has revealed, according to major consciousness controllers, a tremendous turn around from what is called progressive left to reactionary right. This is actually the all to ordinary voters move from what the Rolling Stones once called an electoral ” choice of cancer or polio. ‘ Meanwhile, good health still awaits the total transformation of the American and global political economy and a political party to help bring it about in a truly democratic form before it is forced on us by something approaching a massive global collapse with particular disasters here in America.

 

An already miniscule economic program proposed by President Biden which would have still offered the biggest social democratic change since the pre world war two days of the FDR “new” deal has been sliced, diced and reduced to what so-called moderates call reasonable. This means it does absolutely nothing to alter, let alone transform a system that spends trillions on warfare and billions on pet care while reducing growing numbers of humans to homelessness and denying millions of citizens healthcare. It’s more positive form, before being mercilessly hacked by supposed moderates, has been dubbed a “green” new deal in view of the near cataclysmic results of a systemic attack on humanity’s life support system – nature – created by the market forces of private profit which reshaped the world and brought incredible wealth to some, a relatively good life for much of the former peasant classes, and dreadful pain and misery for the greatest number of human beings on earth.

 

The present explosion of munitions, toys, pet comfort, disease, video games, fast food, slow thinking and wondering if, when and where it will all subside is the modern state of a system first warned against most vividly and authoritatively by Karl Marx back at its beginning in the 19^th century. A brief quote from him from the system’s earliest days:

 

“The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black skins, are all the things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production. The treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslavement and murder, flowed back to the mother country and were turned into capital there.”

 

Capital, 1:915, 918

 

If he was witness to the present material state of the world and it’s nearly 8 billion people, he might be reduced to a state of shock.

 

Almost all solutions proposed by governments and citizens labeled progressives, moderates or conservatives involve perpetuation of the very system responsible for creation of the growing problems for humanity. As long as we leave capitalism out as the substance of our problem, the chances of solving it are like those of an ice cube in an oven. The pursuit of private profit at a market involving the purchase of everything needed to keep humanity alive is proving, with every second, to be the worst possible economic form for everyone but an ever shrinking minority which reduces life support for billions of human beings. A profit on one side of a transaction must involve a loss at the other and those profits are more enormous than ever for a tiny minority while the absorption of the loss is suffered by an expanding majority.

 

Real as opposed to the fictional democracy some of us think exists, as though being able to vote defined the term even if the greatest majority have absolutely nothing to do with selecting the representatives of capital offered to voters, doesn’t simply involve rubber stamping the governing servant class of capital. And it should be remembered, or possibly understood for the first time by those of us denied the capacity if not ability to think critically, that, true or fictional, the supposed evil of all evils Nazi state came to power via the vote. The Nazis didn’t march to power in a blaze of gunfire; German people chose them at the polls. Voting in itself does not define democracy, peace, equality or any social good. We need to create real democracy, the voice of a majority of the people and not simply the representatives of tiny minorities of great wealth, and do it on a global scale rather than simply in small communities, job sites or towns where it may exist now. While that may seem a titanic task it is actually far more possible than ever before, given the possibilities for communication among billions and not just elites/leaders that goes beyond twittering and creeping brain death. Here is a simple thought easily understood by people without degrees in economics, who are frequently those most responsible for the creeping brain death. They can explain how rape is a cost effective form of dating but only if they have graduate degrees from the London school of economics…try this:

 

If petroleum, weapons, pet food, garbage and supposed education which teaches us not to think are costing us far more than what is being paid to the workers responsible for doing that dirty work in order to pay their rent, mortgages and health care expenses, they make collective millions but it costs us collective billions to clean up the physical and mental waste they create just to make a living. It is to our economic advantage to have them all stay home and not go to work while we pay them the millions in order to survive, thereby saving ourselves the billions previously spent on cleaning up the mess they create only to survive. Anyone with a doctorate in marketing or economics will have little or no capacity to understand that but most humans will have little if any problem seeing the logic.

 

Until the capitalist pandemic of the corona virus a gallon of milk cost more than a gallon of gas. Only a person with a multi-degree education can explain why something that comes from a cow which can be milked by a child costs more than something that has to be dug from the earth, refined and carried over sometimes thousands of miles and yet is cheaper.

 

The overwhelming majority of high school graduates, if that, can see that hungry people need food, sick people need health care and neither need market forces of private profits governing their ability to get them.

 

Unlearning to not think makes it clear that our primitive communist ancestors had it morally right. When the men’s hunt was successful they all ate meat, when not they ate what the women had gathered. That had nothing to do with patriarchy but an eminently sensible division of labor that found pregnant and/or nursing women ill equipped to chase and kill animals but able to put together a meal of vegetation when the hunt, as most often, failed. That was cooperative and brilliant by comparison with the savagery of economics that reward a few while crippling almost everyone else.

 

The time has come for a moral, political and economic reawakening of humanity to save ourselves and by necessity the planet. We need to get in touch with our original sensibilities and create global democratic communism.

 

 

*Thanks to Marge Piercy

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fake Heroes and the Onward March to Greater Bloodbaths - Notes on the Rittenhouse Circus

 If Kyle Rittenhouse is a "white supremacist" why did he shoot three white men?

If his targets were "heroes" (the prosecutor did everything in his power to make it look like they were in Kenosha to raise money for widows and orphans) why do they have serious criminal records?

Joseph Rosenbaum was released from a mental institution the very day of his fatal altercation with Kyle Rittenhouse. He was a convicted felon - for orally and anally raping five young boys. Two witnesses swore that he lunged at Rittenhouse and shouted "Fuck you!"*

Anthony Huber, the man who swung his skateboard at Rittenhouse, was also a convicted felon: for two separate counts of domestic violence, including holding a knife to his brother's stomach and threatening to "gut him like a pig." His motivation on the night of his death, said prosecutor Thomas Binger, was just "trying to be a hero and protect others."

A third man, Gaige Grosskreutz, admitted under oath that Rittenhouse didn't shoot until he (Grosskreutz) pointed a Glock at his head. Grosskreutz has police records for domestic abuse, prowling, trespass, two DUIs, felony burglary, and two charges of carrying a firearm while intoxicated.

There was also a fourth man, never identified, who did a drop kick at Rittenhouse's head.

In the current phase of mental corruption, we're supposed to believe that these were all pious disciples of Dr. King, who only wanted to follow in his moral footsteps. Sure.

As for Rittenhouse, what is there really to say? How is it even possible for a teenage kid to stroll around in public for hours with an AR-15 slung around his neck? Far from being accosted by police, he's friends with them and fully able to deputize himself one of them, then shoot three people and get off scot-free. 

Another "hero." But there's just one small problem. Unless you're a police officer, if you go armed to a place where you know there's going to be violence, you're not a peacekeeper, you're an insurgent. Check with 1990s Yugoslavia.

We don't even need to pose the question as to what would happen to a black teenager marauding around in public with an AR-15 in order to "protect the security of the neighborhood." Grimly put, we wouldn't be able to even count the number of bullet holes in his body. 

The predictable next step in this series of bloody disasters is for armed "leftists" to show up at MAGA rallies to defend human rights and loving community. What could go wrong?

 

 *The Washington Post says Rosenbaum spent most of his adult life in jail due to "sexual conduct with five preteen boys"; Ann Coulter claims it was anal and oral rape.

Sources:

A mentally ill man, a heavily armed teenager and the night Kenosha burned, Washington Post, October 3, 2020 https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/03/kenosha-shooting-victims/?arc404=true

Graham Elwood: Kyle Rittenhouse Verdict Shows Insanity of America, Status Coup News, November 21, 2021 (You Tube)

Ann Coulter: Get Rittenhouse! November 17, 2021, www.anncoulter.com

Suicide By Capitalism: The Glasgow Climate Summit Farce

"The biggest challenge for the impresarios of these climate summits is to appear to take some action to avert the crisis that envelopes us, while doing almost nothing at all. Less than nothing really, since over the course of the summit the catastrophe will have deepened by more than the meager measures adopted to ameliorate it. When the first COP (aka, Conference of the Polluters) was held in Berlin in 1995, the atmospheric carbon level hit 395.92 parts per million. This year the monthly average topped 419 ppm. Net less than zero reduction.

"Mostly the art of summitry comes down to stagecraft and after three decades of these kinds of performances the mechanics of the event are pretty well scripted. Indigenous leaders are brought in from the Arctic and Amazonia to bless the event. Global leaders memorize their lines and pitch coins into fountains for good luck, by far the most assertive act for of the entire affair. News is carefully leaked about fake fights behind the scenes in the anterooms of the conference, which threaten to imperil any agreement. The leaders of island nations are given a few moments before the cameras to declaim how many acres of their land mass have been lost to rising seas since the last summit and the members of the press try earnestly to recall how to spell the names of their countries before they disappear altogether. Outside protesters from around the world swarm the streets, lending the whole affair a gravitas that these hollow exercises wouldn’t have without them.

"The lobbies of nearby hotels are turned into showroom floors for the latest quick-fix technologies marketed by corporations, most of them also Pentagon contractors, seeking to capitalize on a global green new deal. The rituals of the COP are followed as diligently as the secret salutations and backroom handshakes at Davos and Bohemian Grove. The most important thing, of course, is that whatever agreement is reached–even if it’s an agreement in name only (often the most preferable outcome)–must be good for the bottom line. It must make the crypto-carbon-futures markets jump.

"Still there must be drama and tension to emphasize how seriously these ambassadors of the atmosphere are taking the crisis. One way or another, the people’s interest must be simultaneously maintained and distracted. The protesters need to be kept on the streets, shaking their puppets and signs, voicing their agitation over the carefully cultivated prospect that it all might fall apart and nothing, alas, will be done.

"The blah blah blah outside the COP confab has become as predictable and tedious as the blah blah blah inside. But every summit needs its sonic score, the sound of marching, charging feet, boy. As Norman Mailer once said in a different context, it’s like muzak for the cancer ward.

"Big fights ensue over tiny measures. Nations threaten to walk out, until, at the last possible moment, the summit is saved by some fancy deus ex machina wordplay by veteran climate diplomats like John Kerry and Angela Merkel, deftly changing “phase out” to “phase down” and eliding the tripwire phrase “fossil fuels” altogether.

"Hurray! Progress has been made, if not toward reducing emissions, at least, and this is, naturally, the most important thing, toward planning the next summit, sure to be the most important one yet, when the planet’s atmosphere will have breached the once unthinkable level of 420 ppm. Book your flights now."

 

--------Jeffrey St. Clair, "Roaming Charges: Muzak For The Cancer Ward," Counterpunch, November 19, 2021

Doctors Call Out Monopoly Capitalism In Health Care

 To the Editor:

Re “For Democrats, Tough Options on Health Care” (New York Times front page, Sept. 21):

Drug and health insurance companies have manufactured the congressional “clash” over whether to improve Medicare or expand Medicaid.

Pharma lobbying will apparently keep price controls out of the budget bill, eliminating Medicare savings that the bill would have deployed to simultaneously help seniors (by adding vision, hearing and dental coverage to Medicare) and the poor (by implementing the Medicaid expansion nationwide).

Meanwhile, according to Congress’ own Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, private insurers’ Medicare Advantage plans continue to drain the Treasury, inflating taxpayers’ costs by more than $500 annually for each enrollee.

Our country could afford universal coverage if we constrained drug companies’ price gouging and trimmed the $600 billion in useless administrative overhead inflicted by private insurers.

The real health policy clash in America is that between corporate profits and patients’ needs.

David U. Himmelstein
Steffie Woolhandler
East Chatham, N.Y.
The writers, both physicians, are distinguished professors at Hunter College and lecturers at Harvard Medical School.

The Inalienable Right To Be Completely Useless

 1899: Chicago

"The Theory of the Leisure Class"

Economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen publishes his sociological treatise revealing the most admired traits of propertied elites: "ferocity, self-seeking, clannishness and disingenuousness - a free resort to force and fraud."

Such desirable attributes permit the wealthy to live solely to provoke envy in others. Rich "ladies" eagerly embrace a decorative standard of helpless femininity. Slinking human trophies of money to burn, these useless appendages of male egotism proudly lounge about in fur-draped passivity - perfumed, painted, powdered, and pampered. Who doesn't want one?

"Their" men dedicate themselves to pointless passions like fox-hunting and coin-collecting, diversions likewise bespeaking riches vast enough to be openly wasted. A battalion of doting servants advertises the "master's" unique freedom to limitlessly consume without doing anything useful. 

The sacred duty of the Leisure Class, instructs Veblen, is to retard social evolution and preserve the obsolete social forms that confer invidious distinction. For those of a practical turn of mind, he offers this insight into getting ahead under capitalism: "Freedom from scruple, from sympathy, honesty and regard for life, may within fairly wide limits be said to further the success of the individual in pecuniary culture."

 

Source:

 

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, (Viking, 1967), Chapters 3 and 4

Legalienate Shocker! Wisdom Appears in a High Place . . .

"The best way to dominate and gain control over people is to spread despair and discouragement, even under the guise of defending certain values. Today, in many countries, hyperbole, extremism and polarization have become political tools. Employing a strategy of ridicule, suspicion and relentless criticism, in a variety of ways one denies the right of others to exist or to have an opinion. Their share of the truth and their values are rejected and, as a result, the life of society is impoverished and subjected to the hubris of the powerful. Political life no longer has to do with healthy debates about long-term plans to improve people’s lives and to advance the common good, but only with slick marketing techniques primarily aimed at discrediting others. In this craven exchange of charges and counter-charges, debate degenerates into a permanent state of disagreement and confrontation."

                                  

                         ----------Pope Francis

We Are More Than Our Ethnicity, Race, Religion, Gender, and Nationality, Much More

" . . . to accept nativism is to accept the consequences of imperialism, the racial, religious, and political divisions imposed by imperialism itself. To leave the historical world for the metaphyiscs of essences like negritude, Irishness, Islam, or Catholicism is to abandon history for essentializations that have the power to turn human beings against one another; often this abandonment of the secular world has led to a sort of millenarianism if the movement has had a mass base, or it has degenerated into small-scale private craziness, or into an unthinking acceptance of stereotypes, myths, animosities, and traditions encouraged by imperialism. Such programs are hardly what great resistance movements had imagined as their goals.

 " . . . it is impossible to avoid the combative, assertive early stages in the nativist identity - they always occur: Yeats's early poetry is not only about Ireland but about Irishness - there is a good deal of promise in getting beyond them, not remaining trapped in the emotional self-indulgence of celebrating one's own identity (emphasis added). There is first of all the possibility of discovering a world not constructed out of warring essences. Second, there is the possibility of a universalism that is not limited or coercive, which believing that all people have one single identity is - that all the Irish are only Irish, Indians Indians, Africans Africans, and so on ad nauseam. Third, and most important, moving beyond nativism does not mean abandoning nationality, but it does mean thinking of local identity as not exhaustive, and therefore not being anxious to confine oneself to one's own sphere, with its ceremonies of belonging, its built-in chauvinism, and its limiting sense of security."

"In any case nativism is not the only alternative. There is the possibility of a more generous and pluralistic vision of the world, in which imperialism courses on, as it were, belatedly in different forms (the North-South polarity of our own time is one), and the relationship of domination continues, but the opportunities for liberation are open.  . . . In this phase liberation . . . is the new alternative, liberation which by its very nature involves, in Fanon's words, a transformation of social consciousness . . .. " 

 

--------Edward Said, Culture And Imperialism, pps. 228-230 

The Joy of Living In a "Free Market"

"How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, piss, brush teeth, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?"

Charles Bukowski, Factotum, 1975

Kareem Abdul Jabbar Calls For Player Vaccine Mandate In NBA

 “The NBA should insist that all players and staff are vaccinated or remove them from the team. There is no room for players who are willing to risk the health and lives of their teammates, the staff and the fans simply because they are unable to grasp the seriousness of the situation or do the necessary research. What I find especially disingenuous about the vaccine deniers is their arrogance at disbelieving immunology and other medical experts. Yet, if their child was sick or they themselves needed emergency medical treatment, how quickly would they do exactly what those same experts told them to do?”

 

--------Kareem Abdul Jabbar, September 26, 2021

The Hopeless Stupidity of 9/11 Conspiracies - by Matt Taibbi

 

Matt Taibi in  Rolling Stone : THE LOW POST: The Hopeless Stupidity of 9/11 Conspiracies.

9/11 Truth is the lowest form of conspiracy theory, because it doesn't offer an affirmative theory of the crime.

Forget for a minute all those Internet tales about inexplicable skyscraper fires, strange holes in the ground at Shanksville and mysterious flight manifestoes. What is the theory of the crime, according to the 9/11 Truth movement?

Strikingly, there is no obvious answer to that question, since for all the many articles about "Able Danger" and the witnesses who heard explosions at Ground Zero, there is not -- at least not that I could find -- a single document anywhere that lays out a single, concrete theory of what happened, who ordered what and when they ordered it, and why. There obviously is such a theory, but it has to be pieced together by implication, by paying attention to the various assertions of 9/11 lore (the towers were mined, the Pentagon was really hit by a cruise missile, etc.) and then assembling them later on into one single story.

The specifics vary, but the basic gist of what They Say Happened goes something like this:

A group of power-hungry neocons, led by Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Bush and others and organizationally represented by groups like the Project for the New American Century, seeks to bring about a "Pearl-Harbor-like event" that would accelerate a rightist revolution, laying the political foundation for invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Your basic Reichstag fire scenario, logical enough so far. Except in this story, the Reichstag fire is an immensely complicated media hoax; the conspirators plot to topple the World Trade Center and pin a series of hijackings on a group of Sunni extremists with alleged ties to Al Qaeda. How do they topple the Trade Center? Well, they make use of NORAD's expertise in flying remote-control aircraft and actually fly two such remote-control aircraft into the Towers (in another version of the story, they conspire with Al Qaeda terrorists to actually hijack the planes), then pass the planes off as commercial jetliners in the media. But it isn't the plane crashes that topple the buildings, but bombs planted in the Towers that do the trick.

For good measure -- apparently to lend credence to the hijacking story -- they then fake another hijacking/crash in the Pentagon, where there actually is no plane crash at all but instead a hole created by a cruise missile attack, fired by a mysterious "white jet" that after the attack circles the White House for some time, inspiring the attention of Secret Service agents who point at it curiously from the ground (apparently these White House Secret Service agents were not in on the plot, although FBI agents on scene at Ground Zero and in Shanksville and elsewhere were).

Lastly, again apparently to lend weight to the whole hijacking cover story, they burn a big hole in the ground in Pennsylvania and claim that a jet went down there, crashed by a bunch of brave fictional civilians who fictionally storm the fictional plane cabin. The real-life wife of one of the fictional heroes, Lisa Beamer, then writes a convincingly self-serving paean/memoir to her dead husband, again lending tremendous verisimilitude to the hijacking story. These guys are good!

Just imagine how this planning session between Bush, Rummy and Cheney must have gone:

BUSH: So, what's the plan again?

CHENEY: Well, we need to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. So what we've decided to do is crash a whole bunch of remote-controlled planes into Wall Street and the Pentagon, say they're real hijacked commercial planes, and blame it on the towelheads; then we'll just blow up the buildings ourselves to make sure they actually fall down.

RUMSFELD: Right! And we'll make sure that some of the hijackers are agents of Saddam Hussein! That way we'll have no problem getting the public to buy the invasion.

CHENEY: No, Don, we won't.

RUMSFELD: We won't?

CHENEY: No, that's too obvious. We'll make the hijackers Al Qaeda and then just imply a connection to Iraq.

RUMSFELD: But if we're just making up the whole thing, why not just put Saddam's fingerprints on the attack?

CHENEY: (sighing) It just has to be this way, Don. Ups the ante, as it were. This way, we're not insulated if things go wrong in Iraq. Gives us incentive to get the invasion right the first time around.

BUSH: I'm a total idiot who can barely read, so I'll buy that. But I've got a question. Why do we need to crash planes into the Towers at all? Since everyone knows terrorists already tried to blow up that building complex from the ground up once, why don't we just blow it up like we plan to anyway, and blame the bombs on the terrorists?

RUMSFELD: Mr. President, you don't understand. It's much better to sneak into the buildings ourselves in the days before the attacks, plant the bombs and then make it look like it was exploding planes that brought the buildings down. That way, we involve more people in the plot, stand a much greater chance of being exposed and needlessly complicate everything!

CHENEY: Of course, just toppling the Twin Towers will never be enough. No one would give us the war mandate we need if we just blow up the Towers. Clearly, we also need to shoot a missile at a small corner of the Pentagon to create a mightily underpublicized additional symbol of international terrorism -- and then, obviously, we need to fake a plane crash in the middle of fucking nowhere in rural Pennsylvania.

RUMSFELD: Yeah, it goes without saying that the level of public outrage will not be sufficient without that crash in the middle of fucking nowhere.

CHENEY: And the Pentagon crash -- we'll have to do it in broad daylight and say it was a plane, even though it'll really be a cruise missile.

BUSH: Wait, why do we have to use a missile?

CHENEY: Because it's much easier to shoot a missile and say it was a plane. It's not easy to steer a real passenger plane into the Pentagon. Planes are hard to come by.

BUSH: But aren't we using two planes for the Twin Towers?

CHENEY: Mr. President, you're missing the point. With the Pentagon, we use a missile, and say it was a plane.

BUSH: Right, but I'm saying, why don't we just use a plane and say it was a plane? We'll be doing that with the Twin Towers, right?

CHENEY: Right, but in this case, we use a missile. (Throws hands up in frustration) Don, can you help me out here?

RUMSFELD: Mr. President, in Washington, we use a missile because it's sneakier that way. Using an actual plane would be too obvious, even though we'll be doing just that in New York.

BUSH: Oh, OK.

RUMSFELD: The other good thing about saying that it was a passenger jet is that that way, we have to invent a few hundred fictional victims and account for a nonexistent missing crew and plane. It's always better when you leave more cover story to invent, more legwork to do and more possible holes to investigate. Doubt, legwork and possible exposure -- you can't pull off any good conspiracy without them.

BUSH: You guys are brilliant! Because if there's one thing about Americans -- they won't let a president go to war without a damn good reason. How could we ever get the media, the corporate world and our military to endorse an invasion of a secular Iraqi state unless we faked an attack against New York at the hands of a bunch of Saudi religious radicals? Why, they'd never buy it. Look at how hard it was to get us into Vietnam, Iraq the last time, Kosovo?

CHENEY: Like pulling teeth!

RUMSFELD: Well, I'm sold on the idea. Let's call the Joint Chiefs, the FAA, the New York and Washington, D.C., fire departments, Rudy Giuliani, all three networks, the families of a thousand fictional airline victims, MI5, the FBI, FEMA, the NYPD, Larry Eagleburger, Osama bin Laden, Noam Chomsky and the fifty thousand other people we'll need to pull this off. There isn't a moment to lose!

BUSH: Don't forget to call all of those Wall Street hotshots who donated $100 million to our last campaign. They'll be thrilled to know that we'll be targeting them for execution as part of our thousand-tentacled modern-day bonehead Reichstag scheme! After all, if we're going to make martyrs -- why not make them out of our campaign paymasters? Shit, didn't the Merrill Lynch guys say they needed a refurbishing in their New York offices?

RUMSFELD: Oh, they'll get a refurbishing, all right. Just in time for the "Big Wedding"!

ALL THREE: (cackling) Mwah-hah-hah!

You get the idea. None of this stuff makes any sense at all. If you just need an excuse to assume authoritarian powers, why fake a plane crash in Shanksville? What the hell does that accomplish? If you're using bombs, why fake a hijacking, why use remote-control planes? If the entire government apparatus is in on the scam, then why bother going to all this murderous trouble at all -- only to go to war a year later with a country no one even bothered to falsely blame for the attacks? You won't see any of this explored in 9/11 Truth lore, because the "conspiracy" they're describing is impossible everywhere outside a Zucker brothers movie -- unbelievably stupid in its conception, pointlessly baroque and excessive in its particulars, but flawless in its execution, with no concrete evidence left behind and tens of thousands keeping their roles a secret forever.

We are to imagine that not one of Bush's zillions of murderous confederates would slip and leave real incriminating evidence anywhere along the way, forcing us to deduce this massive crime via things like the shaking of a documentary filmmaker's tripod before the Towers' collapse (aha, see that shaking -- it must have been a bomb planted by the president and his ten thousand allies!). Richard Nixon was a hundred times smarter than Bush, and he couldn't prevent leaks and cries of anguished pseudo-conscience from sprouting among a dozen intimately involved conspirators -- but under the 9/11 conspiracy theory, even the lowest FBI agent used to seal off the crime scene never squeaks. It's absurd.

I challenge a 9/11 Truth leader like Loose Change writer Dylan Avery to come up with a detailed, complete summary of the alleged plot -- not the bits and pieces, but the whole story, put together -- that would not make any fifth grader anywhere burst out in convulsive laughter. And without that, all the rest of it is bosh and bunkum, on the order of the "sonar evidence" proving the existence of the Loch Ness monster. If you can't put all of these alleged scientific impossibilities together into a story that makes sense, then all you're doing is jerking off -- and it's not like no one's ever done that on the Internet before.

Whenever anyone chooses to dismiss 9/11 conspiracy theorists, accusations fly; the Internet screams that you've aided and abetted George Bush. I disagree. To me, the 9/11 Truth movement is, itself, a classic example of the pathology of George Bush's America. Bush has presided over a country that has become hopelessly divided into insoluble, paranoid tribes, one of which happens to be Bush's own government. All of these tribes have things in common; they're insular movements that construct their own reality by cherry-picking the evidence they like from the vast information marketplace, violently disbelieve in the humanity of those outside their ranks, and lavishly praise their own movement mediocrities as great thinkers and achievers. There are as many Thomas Paines in the 9/11 Truth movement as there are Isaac Newtons among the Intelligent Design crowd.

There's not a whole lot of difference, psychologically, between Sean Hannity's followers believing liberals to be the same as terrorists, and 9/11 Truthers believing even the lowest soldier or rank-and-file FAA or NORAD official to be a cold-blooded mass murderer. In both cases you have to be far gone enough into your private world of silly tribal bullshit that the concept of "your fellow citizen" has ceased to have any meaning whatsoever. It may be that America has become too big and complicated for most people to deal with being part of. People are longing for a smaller, stupider reality. Some, like Bush, sell a prepackaged version. Others just make theirs up out of thin air. God help us.

 

 
 


Seeing the Forest for the Trees
 
On this Labor Day 2021, we need to think long and hard about our unprecedented planetary climate crisis and how it affects working people.  While many of us are organizing on important discrete issues and movements, it's important also to look at the big picture, and "see the forest for the trees." Working people have most too lose and most to gain by coming together in these times.


On August 9, 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has stated that a recent UN report is "a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable.” See his full statement HERE.


Scientists are taking an urgent tone because serious action has not yet materialized.


The reality is that we are heading full-speed into a brick wall if we don’t act swiftly and boldly to prevent a climate catastrophe. Already, we see the consequences. There are hurricanes, tornadoes and massive flooding in the U.S and around the world, as we speak. In California, we are all too familiar with the unprecedented wildfires and of course ongoing droughts. People have lost their loved ones, their homes and their livelihoods. This at a time where we are still feeling the health and economic impacts of a global pandemic. And in many ways, the pandemic has deepened our understanding of a system that no longer serves us – a system that puts profit before human life. We must transfer this knowledge of an inept system that brought us COVID (which continues to haunt us) to the climate crisis which threatens our very survival on this planet.


How did this climate crisis happen? Who is most responsible?


I agree with Jeremy Corbyn (Britain’s Labour Party member of parliament) who stated:  “The political and economic system we live in does not produce climate change by accident but by design, rewarding big polluters and resource extractors with superprofits.”


That is why I believe that this climate crisis is indeed a class issue. It is the richest among us who have created it, and it is poorest among us who are suffering the most and will continue to suffer deeply if we don’t stop those most responsible.


What are our choices?


While many talk about the need for stopping this run-away climate crisis, and various policy changes and models of organizing have been suggested and some actions taken, the fact of the matter is that we are not doing enough.
I think the future requires us all to play a role and that means class struggle. Class struggle in the climate crisis means forcing corporations to stop harming our planet.


The choice is up to us. Do we recoil in fear and hope that somehow things will work out?  Do we think those profiting most from our society (big corporations, including the fossil fuel industry) will somehow make the right decisions and bring us out of the climate crisis before it’s too late? Or do we chart out a new path, one that is inclusive of all working class people fighting together for a livable planet and a future that puts life and dignity first?


The fact is that we live in a system that has allowed the top 1% of Americans to have about 16 times more wealth than the bottom 50% of us. See this recent article HERE.


But this should not cause us to feel overwhelmed or recoil in fear. There is much we can do. We can make transformative change!


While we are faced with enormous challenges, it is essential that we operate not from fear but from courage. We must not run from the truth. And the truth is that the profit-system will not save us. We can be our own saviors if we act from a place courage, love and solidarity rather than fear. We can push oil companies to start de-commissioning their refining capacity and to make whole cities in which these oil profiteers have made their billions over the past century with exploitation of communities and the environment.


Richmond – a city with a history of working class struggle


In Richmond, we have struggled for decades for health, justice, sustainability, opportunities, peace, and prosperity. We have made some great strides in past years, including in 2021 thus far (see HERE), but the gravity of the crises we face require much more from us all. These strides must continue and must be ramped up.


Soon we will have a consultant on board the City of Richmond that will be reaching out to the community to discuss a local Green-Blue New Deal and a Just Transition from a fossil fuel based economy.


Connecting the dots – how we move forward


While we need to draw on the experts and consultants in terms of how best to shift our policies, our economy and our lifestyles into a sustainable future, nothing will make a difference unless we organize. It is possible and we have no time to waste to bring together a mass base, a working class coalition. Climate change affects all the material conditions in which we, as working class people, live. It affects housing, energy, food, and transport. Traditional working class demands for a job guarantee, decent wages, good benefits, working conditions, and leisure time intersect fully with the struggle for a sustainable climate.


By focusing working-class power (which is the power of the vast majority of us) on winning the climate struggle, we can and will move forward.
The labor movement needs to connect with the climate movement and visa versa. Our lives and our future are indeed at stake.


On this Labor Day, as we celebrate our successes and we recommit to the ongoing struggle for workers’ rights, let’s hold our heads high as the champions who will ultimately win the battle for a sustainable planet for each and every one of us and our descendants to live healthy and productive lives.


In solidarity,
Gayle McLaughlin
Richmond City Councilmember, District 5
www.gayleforrichmond.org

 

As A Last Resort U.S. Finally Does the Right Thing: Turns Tail and Runs From Afghanistan

"One of the reasons Biden is having such a hard time making the case for the U.S.'s exit from Afghanistan is that he is congenitally inarticulate and he has no one around him who can make the case for him. Nearly everyone in both parties has been corrupted by this war: voted for it, funded it, planned it, rationalized it, stood silent as it started, very early on, to go bad, closed their eyes to drone killings, torture, and an occupation with no end. Even Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul. They own this war and the war ended up owning them. Aside from Barbara Lee, there aren't any heroes in this 40-year-long fiasco. But if Biden can stand firm as he's ambushed from all sides, not retreat from his retreat, and finally bring the occupation to an end, he'll go down in the history books a lot more credibly than the jackals who are assailing him."

----Jeffrey St. Clair, "Hour of the Goat," Counterpunch, 8/27/21 

Lesser Evil Politics Assure Greater Evil Economics

 

 

 

 A new American president is presenting a program for renewal of human values in the marketplace unheard of since the 1930s but still projecting American military domination and environmental destruction far beyond the awareness of most Americans. Continued insistence that Russia and China are major global threats to everyone and not just American monopoly capitalists resonate not only in the cosmic void between the ears of our mentally disabled foreign policy experts but echo in the minds of innocent Americans since that’s all they get from major, and all too often minor media.

 

The charge that China is conducting genocide on its Islamic people coming from the butchers of hundreds of thousands of Islamic people in the middle east would be a dreadful sick joke if not so incredibly evil, but poor souls condemned to network media remain stuck in a misinformation chamber amplifying our ruling power’s message day in and day out. The fact that growing majorities have little or no faith in government or media is a hopeful sign but until we totally clean out the sewage system much of corporate news has become, the stench that wafts up remains a carrier of the information pandemic.

 

While alleged economic threats from China actually do offer market competition to the empire – and market competition is supposed to be good, according to the theology preached by the priest-rabbi-therapists of the church of capital - and China is under the control of communists who at least try, not always with success, to force it to work for the common good and not just the minority of Chinese capitalists, why and how and to whom is that a threat? Only to America where majorities exist in numbers of those in debt but never those who vote nationally. This is called  “our” democracy by many wishful thinkers still unaware that the political process is owned and operated by the wealthiest minority, which spends billions to maintain political control by purchase and rental of candidates and office holders. Citizens innocently proclaiming this hustle as “our” democracy are like past slaves referring to “our” plantation. If they were the minority house negroes of the time they could afford such fantasy but the overwhelming majority who toiled in the fields and suffered the most brutal treatment had no such luxury.

 

 

And as if the treatment of these two powerful nations didn’t show enough imperial idiocy, that of a nearly helpless tiny nation currently, as usual, under assault, is greater indication of lunacy bordering on stark raving insanity.

After 60 years of a murderous attempted strangulation of the Cuban political economy, that tiny nation survives with the support of the overwhelming majority of governments on earth. Recently at the United Nations 184 countries voted to end the filthy American embargo with only Murder Inc. headquartered in the USA and Israel still, as always out of step with the overwhelming majority while spouting humanitarian rhetoric and practicing murderous brutality. This still finds well meaning people waving flags and quoting bibles and constitutions as though these fabled symbols clean up the reality of degenerate social practice as hypocritical as a rapist claiming victims only to assure they do not suffer sexual frustration.

 

The anti-Cuban lobby, second only to that of Israel in its control of American foreign policy, was originally a creature of the Cuban upper classes who escaped to Miami from the revolution that was working to spread education, jobs, health care and other necessities of life to the greatest number of people who had long been denied by American partnership with Cuban ruling power. They loom large in the current scenario of an alleged uprising against the terror and horror of millions of people eating, going to school and getting health care despite the ugly embargo and other violent attempts to smother the island of 11 million so that capital might again profit from gambling and drugs, as it did before 1960.

 

Meanwhile, another bloody lie in Afghanistan has ended with the Taliban, the group we were allegedly protecting poor afghans from, has taken over the government of their own country. This after billions have been spent and hundreds of thousands murdered in pursuit of profits while good people here have been fed stories about emancipating women and educating afghans to the joys of democracy like ours, where hundreds of thousands of Americans live in the street while we spend trillions to kill people and billions to care for pets.

 

And far beyond wretched national policies looms the global curse of what private profit industrial and war marketing are doing to the environment shared by humanity and not just one or anther national identity group often claiming super status with a special connection to deities ranging from Santa Claus to the Easter bunny for all they are worth in the material world. Words about democracy are not balanced by deeds of mass murder, oppression and absolute support for rich minority rule that assures continued profit making from exploitation of workers whether they clean toilets, drive buses, pilot airplanes or walk dogs. Like the sex workers who use their private parts to create private profits for their entrepreneurial pimps, those who create, package and deliver the consumer goods that are the foundation of the economy are doing it for the benefit of owners and investors rather than their own which would be far better served if they owned and ran the businesses they form the foundation for while others get rich on their labor.

 

Facing horrible news at what the future of humanity looks like under the environmental stress called climate change, more people than ever are working to end foul methods of economics that assure disaster for humanity but trying to do so while maintaining market rules of private profit assures further destruction or worse, simply throwing people out of work they do only to survive and thus destroy hope of survival. The future must be to keep people alive by assuring the public good before any pursuit of private profit. We do not need professional economists to explain that capitalism is the only answer to social problems all the while collecting fat salaries and investment opportunities while society fails more quickly under their rule. In truth, if workers are doing dirty work that affords them salaries so they can pay their rent, mortgages and other life supports, but it costs society billions to have to clean up the mess they create, we would all best be served by paying them to not go to work. We’d be saving the billions we’d have to spend to clean up the mess they created in service to private profiteers and assure their survival by using those mammoth savings to help them learn and get better jobs for them and everyone else, that serve all of us and not simply minority investors. As the world grows more threatened and conditions become more dangerous with the USA holding several hundred military bases in foreign countries and surrounding Russia and China with troops and war ships, immediate action must be taken to both confront environmental conditions that threaten us all and war like preparations that are profitable to a criminal minority while threatening the planet and all its people.

 

In short, we need global democratic communism before anti-social capitalism destroys us all.

 

 

A Huckster Society Dedicated To Organized Looting Does Not Have a "Non-Profit" Sector

"I don't make a distinction between non-profit and for-profit businesses. It's all just kind of sucking up to people for money. At least the for-profit ones are actually giving you a service in return. The non-profit ones are just, really, just kind of tickling your privates. To make you feel good about yourself, and your charity. But it's all just a kind of a hustle." 

------Irami Osei-Frimpong, The Funky Academic 

 Source: "Comfortable Unfreedom," 8/19/21 www.thefunkyacademic.com 

We Can Kill Everything But The Virus

"The mandarins who are managing this (coronavirus) pandemic are fond of speaking of war. They don't even use war as a metaphor, they use it literally. But if it really were a war, then who would be better prepared than the United States? If it were not masks, swabs, and gloves that its frontline soldiers needed but guns, smart bombs, bunker busters, submarines, fighter jets, and nuclear bombs, would there be a shortage?"

-------Arundhati Roy, The Pandemic Is A Portal, 2020 

When Obama Blew Off Global Warming

 “We’re opening up more than 75% of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth. So we are drilling all over the place.”

---------Barack Obama, 2012 

Source: Jeffrey St. Clair, "Roaming Charges," Counterpunch Weekend Edition, August 13, 2021

Teddy Roosevelt On The Responsibility To Protect Civilized Blood

 "I agree with you . . . that society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind . . . Some day we will realize that the prime duty, the inescapable duty, of the good citizen of the right type, is to leave his or her blood behind him in the world; and that we have no business to permit the perpetuation of citizens of the wrong type."

----Theodore Roosevelt to eugenicist Charles B. Davenport, January 3, 1913

(Quoted in Edwin Black, "War Against The Weak - Eugenics And America's Campaign To Create A Master Race," p. 99)

The Democratic Party vs. New Deal Voters

 "It's really like a sado-masochist relationship. It's almost uncomfortable to watch at this point."

                        ------------Glenn Greenwald

The Anniversary of the Quest For Atomic Extinction

 

1945: Hiroshima and Nagasaki

                              A Sun Of Fire,

a violent light never before seen in the world, rises slowly, cracks the sky open, and collapses. Three days later a second sun of suns bursts over Japan. Beneath remain the cinders of two cities, a desert of rubble, tens of thousands dead and more thousands condemned to die little by little for years to come. 

The war was nearly over, Hitler and Mussolini gone, when President Harry Truman gave the order to drop atomic bombs on the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the United States it is the culmination of a national clamor for the prompt annihilation of the Yellow Peril. It is high time to finish off once and for all the imperial conceits of this arrogant Asian country, never colonized by anyone. The only good one is a dead one, says the press of these treacherous little monkeys. 

Now all doubt is dispelled. There is one great conqueror among the conquerors. The United States emerges from the war intact and more powerful than ever. It acts as if the whole world were its trophy.

      ------Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire - Century of the Wind, p. 126

Babbling Biden's Mental Meltdown Continues

On the pandemic:

"They're, they're . . You're OK. You're not going to, You're not going to get Covid if you have those vaccinations . . .. That's underway. Just like the other question that's logical. And I've heard you (Don Lemon) speak about it because you alway - I'm not being solicitous - you're always straight up about what you're doing. And the question is whether or not we should be in a position where you, uh, um, are, why can't the, the experts say we know that this virus is, in fact, uh, um, uh, is, is, is, going to be, uh, or excuse me, we, we know why all the drugs approved are not temporarily approved, but permanently approved. That's underway, too. I expect that to occur quickly . . ."

On the economy:

"Reduce inflation because we're going to be providing good opportunities and jobs for people who in fact are going to be reinvesting that money back in all the things we're talking about. Driving down prices, not raising prices. And so, it, it is, I, I, I, I, I sincerely mean this. Prices are up now, and they're up in . . . For example, you're in a position where you're trying to build a house, try to find two-by-fours, and lumber. Well, guess what? People stopped working. Cutting lumber. They stopped doing it, because they, they're, the unemployment was so down. Now all of a sudden there's this need because people are coming back, and guess what? Instead of paying ten cents, you're paying twenty. I . . . .You understand what I'm saying. It relates to what in fact is now needed because we're growing."

On U.S. standing in the post-Trump world . . .

"But folks, um, the rest of the world's wondering about us. Those of you who travel abroad, not a joke, not a joke. You ask, you know, when I went to this G-7, all the major democracies. I walked in, and I know a lot of them because of my role in the past. And I walk in and I said, 'America's back.' And they go, I'm serious, heads of state. I give you my word as a Biden. Said, 'Are you really back? I mean, How can I? We believe you Joe, but will the country ever get it together?' . . . . ."

To Don Lemon, about being vaccinated and trusting the experts. . . .

"Are, are you OK? I mean, you seem, no it works. Or, you, you know, or, or, or, or the Mom and Dad, or, or, or, or, or, or the neighbor. Or when you go to church, or when you're . . . . No, I really mean it. There are trusted interlocutors. Think of the people, if you're kid wanted to find out, whether or not there were . . . there's a man on the moon, or, or, you know, something, or, you know, something, you know, whether those aliens are here or not, you know, who are the people they talk to beyond the kids who love talking about it?"

 -----President Joe Biden, CNN Town Hall, July 21, 2021 

The Meaning of Elections Under Fake Democracy

"Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land; they own and control the corporations; they've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses and city halls; they've got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls! They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. 

"But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interest. That's right. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard thirty years ago. They don't want that. 

"You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. 

"And now, they're coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back. So they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all from you sooner or later. Cause they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. 

"And by the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head in their meetings telling you what to believe, what to think, and what to buy. 

"The table is tilted folks, the game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. 

"Good, honest, hardworking people - white collar, blue collar - it doesn't matter what color shirt you have on.  Good, honest, hardworking people - these are people of modest means - continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don't give a fuck about them. They don't give a fuck about you. They don't give a fuck about you. They don't care about you - at all. At all. At all."

 

--------George Carlin, Life Is Worth Losing