Friday, August 27, 2021

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 

Sunday, August 22, 2021

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.

 

 

Friday, August 20, 2021

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 

Monday, August 16, 2021

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 

Sunday, August 15, 2021

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

Wednesday, August 11, 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)

Sunday, August 8, 2021

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

Friday, August 6, 2021

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

Tuesday, August 3, 2021

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