Whose Lie Was Worse -- Phantom Pets For Dinner Or Phantom Rapes On Oct 7?

I had planned to watch the debate last night with my 97 year old friend but she changed her mind after brief exposure to the pre-debate show, so we went back to watching midwives doing soft propaganda for war in space (more on that next time).

I'll watch the recording eventually I suppose, though the chance I'd vote for either of the lying warmongers that our corporate donors have selected for us is zero.

Prominent in this morning's coverage of the debate are two horrible lies told by the horrible candidates.

Which is more egregious -- Trump lying about crimes that Haitian immigrants in Ohio haven't committed, or Harris lying about crimes that Hamas resistance fighters didn't commit on October 7?

Lying about Black crime is dangerous to not only Haitian immigrants (many of whom were driven out of their home country by Kenyan death squads sent by the good old USA) but dangerous to all immigrants and all Black people. Telling such a ridiculous lie -- that household pets are being stolen and eaten -- is on brand for Trump. Stoking fear and laying the groundwork for racialized violence, also on brand.

Lying about rapes by repeating a thoroughly debunked claim about mass rapes on October 7 is on brand for Harris. In June, Harris hosted a screening at the White House of the documentary "Screams Before Silence" which promotes this particular lie. 

Helping Israel spread lies about October 7 has a purpose, because those events -- which were immediately termed "Israel's 9/11" -- are being used as the pretext for the rapidly escalating genocide since. Other components of this web of lies includes the number of casualties ascribed to Hamas -- as we now know that Israel under the Hannibal Directive killed scores of its own soldiers and citizens that day. Also the beheaded babies that senile POTUS claimed to have seen pictures of and which his own staff chose to refute the next day.

But lies are effective and that's why talking heads for our imperial overlords employ them. As Mark Twain explained, "A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots."

Today is the anniversary of the U.S.'s 9/11/01, an event that never passed the smell test but was used almost immediately to curtail civil liberties and to unleash wars on Afghanistan and then Iraq. There are indeed many similarities between Sep 11 and Oct 7: both appear to have been colossal, unbelievable failures of intelligence in that authorities knew what was being planned yet did not intervene. Both resulted in a surge of actual rape and other forms of torture in gulags for Muslims like Guantanamo and Sde Teiman. Both were the pretext for military responses that had been long planned.

One thing both candidates did tell the truth about: they are determined to display their Zionist allegiance in the hopes of emerging as the most pro-Israel candidate. Harris has taken $5+ million from Israel's chief lobbying arm AIPAC, while Trump has a modest $1+ million. But we know from his first term that Zionists in his family have a big influence and can be expected to reap the benefits of nepotism should he be elected again.

Harris is married to a Zionist who is actively campaigning for her, but her track record on installing family members in key positions is unknown. Certainly her endorsement by forever wars architect and torture czar Dick Cheney does not bode well for her to rein in Israel's death dealing.

But in the end let's keep in mind that it's been a long time since a POTUS was the decider of anything. This debate was really an audition to see who will be selected as the celebrity spokesperson for the donor class. 

Biden flunked out because he could no longer lie coherently or convincingly. Both Trump and Harris bent over backwards last night to assure their sponsors that yes, they can.

Genocide In Gaza Supposedly Justified By Israeli Claims Al-Aqsa Flood Was A 9/11 Event

When the first announcements came that Israel had experienced its own 9/11 on October 7 with Hamas breaking out of the Gaza concentration camp to attack its jailers, I was skeptical of the analogy. 

First, bulldozing a fence and launching a ground attack from an open air prison seemed to me quite different from flying passenger jets into buildings mysteriously causing total demolition of modern skyscrapers. 

Second, around 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001 while about one-third that many were killed in the Al-Aqsa Flood event. Many Israelis were killed by their own military, and the subsequent death of hostages not yet released by Hamas has been ignored as Israeli bombs rained down on Gaza.

But when we examine the uses that were made of both events, similarities do emerge.

9/11 was used as the pretext for the U.S. invading Afghanistan where roughly a quarter of a million Afghans perished over the course of 20 years, invading Iraq where a million people died, invading Syria to occupy their oil fields (ongoing), invading Libya to topple the Gaddafi regime, and drone bombing all over the Middle East and Africa.

Also to push through the Patriot Act which destroyed many of the constitutional protections previously enjoyed by white people in the U.S. who were not too poor to afford some justice.

The Al-Aqsa Flood is being used right now as the pretext for carpet bombing and invading Gaza, an Egyptian territory once illegally occupied by Israel and then illegally blockaded after Israel withdrew its military and settlers in 2005. 

https://twitter.com/Soureh_design2/status/1718024724356182243

How many millions will die as a result? Check your sources because the best the doddering President of the U.S. has got is to send more weapons quickly while casting doubt on the accuracy of casualties reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health. It's clear my government would like to minimize the evidence of its complicity in genocide.

The Al-Aqsa Flood is also being used to ram through laws criminalizing dissent, both in Israel itself and across Europe where U.S. vassal states have lit up their public monuments with the colors of Israel's flag while arresting protesters for the crime of holding Palestine's flag.

Police in Manchester, UK monitor thousands marching for Palestine October 28. Source: Manchester Evening News

Also, it's quite likely that both the Al-Aqsa Flood and 9/11 were on national security radar but were allowed to proceed anyway. Put another way, both Israel and the U.S. appear to accept mass murder of their own people in a spectacular way in order to make what was already planned to follow look like a reasonable response to "terror." 

For Gaza what was planned already was genocide, now well underway. Last night (October 27) Gaza was plunged into darkness without electricity, internet, water, food, fuel, or a functioning media to report on events. The worst bombing thus far aimed at the southern part of Gaza where internally displaced people from northern Gaza had been deliberately herded by Israel to be massacred.

But here's the thing: with every bombing sortie, Israel creates the next generation of resistance fighters. Much like the U.S. did in Afghanistan and Iraq, where it was never able to prevail against insurgents fighting to rid hated occupiers from their homeland.

But the biggest contrast between the two events as I see it is that 9/11 worked to gin up pubic support for the so-called War on Terror. The genocide of Gaza is doing no such thing.

Jewish Americans marching to the federal building in Boston, Massachusetts October 27  Source: IfNotNow

Protesters gather at Grand Central Terminal during a rally calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on Friday, Oct. 27, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Jeenah Moon)

Former UK Ambassador Craig Murray in Consortium News on October 25 "The Chances of a Regional War":

The gap between the western political and media elites and their people on this issue is simply enormous.

While Western governments and their compliant media rush to defend Israel's brutality, people all over the world are rising up in the millions to demand a ceasefire in the short term and a free Palestine in the long term.

Protesters shout slogans as they unfurl Palestinian flags during a rally supporting the Palestinian people, outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, Saturday, October 28, 2023. (AP)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pqC3ufGEtYI

Analyst Pepe Escobar in The Cradle October 27, "Iran-Russia set a western trap in Palestine":

The White House’s wishful thinking that the Forever Wars in Ukraine and Israel are inscribed in the same lofty “democracy” drive and essential to US national interests, has already backfired – even among American public opinion..  

Both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) went to Lebanon to visit Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in person this week. That spells out unity of purpose – or what the region's Axis of Resistance calls the “Unity of Fronts.”    

Even more eye-opening was Hamas' visit to Moscow this week, which was met with impotent Israeli fury. The Hamas delegation was headed by a member of its Politburo, Abu Marzouk. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri came especially from Tehran and met two of Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s key deputies, Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin.   

That spells out Hamas, Iran, and Russia negotiating at the same table.  

Hamas has called on the millions of Palestinians in the diaspora, as well as the whole Arab world and all lands of Islam, to unite. Slowly but surely, a pattern may be discerned: could the Arab world – and great swathes of Islam - be on the verge of significantly uniting to avenge their own “century of humiliation” – much as the Chinese did after WWII with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping? 

 

UN roll call showing overwhelming support for Gaza

To round out my analogy, I believe 9/11 will be viewed by historians (if humankind survives nuclear war, that is) as the actual kick-off of WW3. In contrast, the genocide of Gazans will be viewed as the event that solidified effective mass resistance to colonial rule by Western nations and Israel as they use their dwindling military might in a futile attempt to hold onto power.

However, don't expect the U.S. and its lackeys to understand that. At least, not the old people.

What Do You Tell Your Children About 9/11?

Detail from the graphic novel I Survived the attacks of September 11, 2001

The empire never stops churning out soft propaganda to make sure that the next generations in the U.S. are as confused about their government's wrongdoings as their forebears were. When do you tell your own children the truth? And how do you present it in terms they are able to understand?

I've previously mentioned the publishing company Scholastic which does a lot of the heavy lifting around selling pro-war, pro-imperialism narratives to young children. One of their mechanisms for infiltrating public schools is through book fairs, thoroughly commercial enterprises that reach right into publicly funded school time to sell kids on militarism with books that come with their own set of dog tags. Never too young to start thinking about being cannon fodder for the empire!

A Scholastic series that is very popular with a first grader I love is the I Survived series. Among historical fiction about a character who survives the great molasses flood in Boston or the shark attacks of 1916 we find the title: I SURVIVED THE ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001.

Consuming stories about peril like fairy tales or historical fiction is a way to process our fears as fragile human beings. Preying on this tendency in order to sell imperial narratives is a way to make money while serving the power structures that can make our lives prosperous or miserable.

But what to tell the children?

Australian mom Caitlin Johnstone wrote today: 

Humans have two adulthoods: the first is physical maturity, the second is intellectual maturity. The second adulthood is the process of learning that everything you were taught about the world in childhood is false, and discovering the truth of what’s really going on. The first adulthood is thrust upon us by nature and time, while the second is a conscious and deliberate process we choose for ourselves. All humans reach the first adulthood if they live long enough. Very few reach the second.

I prefer the discovery method of education but what is a reasonable response to the barrage of misinformation visited upon a typical American 1st grader?

Well friends, I came right out and said in response to many questions about the details of the 9/11 attack in New York City: Your own government caused 9/11. This news was received with skepticism (hooray!) and then I faced the fundamental pedagogical question, how best to support my claim for this audience?

I went with the amazing coincidence between what the event would come to be called and the three digit emergency services number that all in the U.S. had known for years: dial 911.

Still skeptical (hooray!).

Then I felt it only fair to protect my loved one who is still quite an innocent child by adding: If you say this at school, some people might get mad at you.

You may disagree with my choices. I had the benefit of a father who told me the hard truth about political realities long before most children were thought old enough to handle it. I think this accelerated what Johnstone calls the second adulthood. It's been a benefit in my life, not a curse.

What do you tell the children about 9/11?

9/11 And Covid-19 Have A Lot In Common

Protesters in Kabul December, 2021 demanding "Let us eat" and "Give us our frozen money" Source: Al Jazeera Photo: Mohd Rasfan/AFP

The demise of the U.S. empire is foretold by mass suffering in Afghanistan 20+ years after the unfortunate events of 9/11.

More than half of Afghanistan’s 39 million people need humanitarian help and six million are at risk of famine. More than a million children are “estimated to be suffering from the most severe, life-threatening form of malnutrition” and could die without proper treatment.. 

-- Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coodinator, to the United Nations Security Council August, 2022 as reported in Al Jazeera.

$7,000,000,000 in Afghan government assets were frozen by the U.S. when the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan amid a messy, embarrassing withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2021. Now, in 2022, many nations have responded by going off the dollar, a process hastened by economic sanctions that have ramped up in the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

Sold as a humanitarian intervention, what was two decades of war in Afghanistan really about? 

Some things are best understood in retrospect.

That nearly 3,000 "Americans" (27 were actually foreign nationals) died in the World Trade Center was a fact repeated as often as the videos of both towers collapsing. Oh, and WTC Building 7 which collapsed 8 hours later. This magnitude of death was the pretext for going to war on Afghanistan which allegedly harbored the Saudi masterminds of the terrorist attack. Except it was Pakistan doing the harboring. But they have nuclear weapons, don't they?

The main things that 9/11 provided were an enormous spectacle to justify the endlessly profitable wars of imperial expansion for the U.S., sometimes doing business as NATO.

The other signficant thing that 9/11 provided cover for was the 300 page so-called Patriot Act which gutted constitutional rights of citizens and terrorists alike. Swiftly gutted them, and created the Department of Homeland Security and created ICE -- both of which we had gotten along without prior to 9/11.

A lot of torture happened after 9/11. No, not the torture of being an Afghan or Pakistani child trying to sleep while surveillance robots droned overhead 24/7 waiting to unleash their Hellfire missiles on your home. Torture in secret prisons and in the gulag known as Guantánamo which is on Cuba's territory without their consent.

Torture then led to persecution of torture whistleblowers. 

Persecution amounting torture of Chelsea Manning for refusing to reveal how she shared evidence of U.S. war crimes. 

Persecution amounting to torture of Julian Assange for sharing evidence of U.S. and allied forces' war crimes and dirty financial dealings. 

Persecution of John Kiriakou, the CIA officer who blew the whistle on that agency's role in torture programs in 2007.

9/11 was used to justify war on Iraq via lies that Saddam Hussein had something to do with it. Also bombing people in Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. And justification to support Israel's brutalization of Palestinian people in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.  

Source: Brown University, Watson Institute, Costs of War Project

9/11 was used to drive fossil fuel consumption and thus climate crisis.

Source: The Daily Times "Eagleton fifth-graders study 9/11" Sep. 10, 2016 

9/11 was used to produce a lot of canned curriculum that teachers are told they must use to inform kids that are not upset about 9/11. 

Becuase they were not even born when it happened.

And really, how much should they care about 9/11? Their young lives have been upended by a public health disaster, still rampaging out of control in the U.S. 

A disaster -- like 9/11 -- that many argue was at worst planned and at best allowed to happen. How has the Covid-19 disaster been used?

• To ramp up censorship and narrative management dramatically.
• To set groups in the U.S. against each other.
• To enrich the already wealthy.

Sound familiar?

9/11 Is But One Piece Of The Puzzle

A visual comparison of deaths at the World Trade Center and deaths from the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus and its variants.

Unlike today's students being preyed upon by military recruiters counting on manufactured patriotism -- patriotism on steroids since the unfortunate events of 9/11 -- I was there. No, not in NYC, or Washington DC, or even in Maine where one of the alleged masterminds of the alleged takedown of the twin towers in lower Manhattan boarded his first plane.

I was in California, on my way to work, with a preteen child in the car -- one whose sense of security was demolished on Sep. 11, 2001.

A few years later I was back in Maine trying to count the flags that had sprung up everywhere (too many to count in a car traveling 45 mph).

Some things are best understood in retrospect.

That nearly 3,000 "Americans" (27 were actually foreign nationals) died in the World Trade Center was a fact repeated as often as the videos of both towers collapsing. Oh, and WTC Building 7 which collapsed 8 hours later. This magnitude of death was the pretext for going to war on Afghanistan which allegedly harbored the Saudi masterminds of the terrorist attack. Except it was Pakistan doing the harboring. But they have nuclear weapons, don't they?

The main things that 9/11 provided were an enormous spectacle to justify the endlessly profitable wars of imperial expansion for the U.S., sometimes doing business as NATO.  (If you wonder what NATO is doing in Australia since that's about as far from North Atlantic as you can get, maybe read blogger Caitlin Johnstone.)

The other signficant thing that 9/11 provided cover for was the 300 page so-called Patriot Act which gutted constitutional rights of citizens and terrorists alike. Swiftly gutted them, and created the Department of Homeland Security and created ICE -- both of which we had gotten along without prior to 9/11.

A lot of torture happened after 9/11. No, not the torture of being an Afghan or Pakistani child trying to sleep while surveillance robots droned overhead 24/7 waiting to unleash their Hellfire missiles on your home. Torture in secret prisons and in the gulag known as Guantánamo which is on Cuba's territory without their consent.

Torture that resulted in persecution of torture whistleblowers. 

Torture of Chelsea Manning for refusing to reveal how she shared evidence of U.S. war crimes. 

Torture of Julian Assange for sharing evidence of U.S. and allied forces' war crimes and dirty financial dealings. 

Almost torture of Edward Snowden for revealing the spying that digital technology and security state overreach have made ubiquitous. He lives in exile in Moscow now, with his young family, still trying to warn us about how to protect ourselves from the "security" state.

9/11 was used to justify war on Iraq via lies that Saddam Hussein had something to do with it. 

Source: Brown University, Watson Institute, Costs of War Project

9/11 was used to drive fossil fuel consumption and thus climate crisis.

9/11 was used to justify war on people in Syria. And Yemen. And Somalia. 

9/11 was used to consolidate U.S. government support of Israel's human rights violations and war crimes against Palestinians.

Source: The Daily Times "Eagleton fifth-graders study 9/11" Sep. 10, 2016 

9/11 was used to produce a lot of canned curriculum that teachers are told they must use to inform kids that are not upset about 9/11. 

Becuase they were not even born when it happened.

And really, how much should they care about 9/11? Their young lives have been upended by a public health disaster of far greater proportions, still rampaging out of control. This time the heroes they're encouraged to worship aren't in firefighter or military uniforms, they're in scrubs and PPE.

What will this much larger disaster be used for?

Divided We Fall May Be COVID's Underlying Purpose

I've been thinking a lot about how the SARS-CoV2 pandemic and vaccination drama has played out in the U.S., and why that might be. 

It's pretty clear by now that the coronavirus with cutting edge gain of function capabilities was made in a lab in Wuhan, China and that this particular project was a collaboration between that country's government and my own. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of our federal government's response to the pandemic, was deeply involved.

Whether or not the virus leaked accidentally or was deliberately released will probably remain as murky as the truth about the unfortunate events of 9/11. 

No real inquiry will ever be conducted, and the misinformation swirling in "news" outlets, blogs, and social media platforms will continue to muddy the waters.

Certain bioweapons experts like Dr. Francis Boyle maintain that the accidental leak theory is likely. His reasoning: all bioweapons he's studied have accidentally leaked, including Lyme Disease and West Nile virus.

But the history of U.S. development and deployment of bioweapons since the nation's founding is both sordid and largely undisputed. So, there's precedent for an intentional introduction of the virus. Also for the assertion that the vaccines themselves could be bioweapons.

I used to sort through 9/11 theories with an eye to the uses that were made of that event: perpetual occupation and theft of resources in the Middle East; severe restrictions on civil liberties formerly guaranteed by the Constitution; the creation of the odious Department of Homeland Security and its evil subsidiary ICE. So quickly were these changes instituted that it is barely plausible that the events of 9/11 were unexpected.

Now I'm sorting through COVID theories with a similar lens. Aside from the death of 4 million, accelerated wealth inequality, and the privatization of profits from vaccines developed largely at the public's expense, what has been the most noticeable effect of the pandemic to date?

The division of formerly coherent communities, groups, coworkers, and families has been a very significant effect of COVID.

This would put the virus in a category with plenty of other features of 21st century life: 

• robust, well-funded disinformation campaigns disseminated widely and constantly
• promotion of the belief in false dichotomies (e.g. Democratic Party vs. Republican Party) 
• deliberate fueling of conflicts between generations, genders, sexual orientations, education levels, and geographical groups.

To what purpose?

A recent observation by Australian blogger Caitlin Johnstone caught my eye.

Caitlin Johnstone on substack

As people lose faith in electoral politics to change anything, so the corporate media gin up the show of differences between the two flavors of oligarchy. But young people aren't buying it. Most of them are too damn poor to believe that it makes a significant difference in their circumstances which color is sitting in the White House or Congress. The American Dream for these generations is to be able to move to a country with universal health care. On this basis, they envy Russia and China rather than fearing them.

Keen interest in socialism, communism, Marxist-Leninist theory, radical socialist feminism, and non-hiearchical cooperatives is evident from Gen Z through millenials. Capitalism is a dirty word. This undoubtedly worries those "winning" at capitalism (though how profits generated by destroying the planet as a viable biome for human beings can be seen as a "win" defies logic).

Some of the formerly coherent groups I'm aware of that are rendered asunder by the COVID vaccination controversy: nuclear families, extended families, organizations working for social change, dance troupes, schools and universities. Cousins gathered this summer based on who had, and had not, gotten the shot, and teens whose parents would not consent to their vaccination were excluded. Mask wearers inside stores were jeered at and hassled by mask refusers. Hospital workers went back to wearing N95 masks and goggles all day every day, seething with resentment at people who won't pitch in for public health after an exhausting 16 months of pandemic life. 

It's almost like the virus was designed to feed into the individualism on steroids that characterizes U.S. culture. 

And was deployed only after the immense disinformation mechanisms of mass media and social media were in place to cast serious doubt on the veracity of any and every fact.

Divided, we are most vulnerable to the depradations of our corporate overlords. 

EDITED July 29, 2021

A few things I wish I'd seen -- or remembered -- before writing about this yesterday. I'm likely to write about this topic again but I don't have time right now, so I'll include these as a postscrip here.

Anti-vaxxers may just obey Trump or believe lies or not understand statistics, but I wonder what impact it had that Reagan helped supply Iraq with bioweapons and then Bush #1 forced 1/2 million U.S. soldiers to take experimental vaccines in a war that made a lot of them sick.

— David Swanson (@davidcnswanson) July 29, 2021

Delusional Thinking On The Rise As COVID Deniers Block Access To Vaccination Site In Los Angeles

The news that protesters against masking, social distancing, and the COVID-19 vaccine shut down a vaccination site at Dodger Stadium over the weekend is troubling me.* (One of them can be seen in video holding a sign that says, "I only like muzzles in the ♥ bedroom ♥." Way to build credibility for your anti-science stance, I guess.)

Los Angeles has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic's winter wave, and people have been willing to line up for hours to be on standby to receive a dose of the vaccine. 

Got my mom #vaccine shot today at Dodger Stadium. Almost didn’t get in. Anti vax protesters blocked gates. Someone impersonating a cop directed cars out of line, others harassed people. Lots of MAGA hats & gear too. These people are cancers on our civilization. #dodgerstadium pic.twitter.com/cHWUnTlrlB

— Adam Michaelson (@Adam_Michaelson) January 31, 2021

(Note: the reason I don't like name calling was instantly demonstrated when a bot on Twitter responded to this language by claiming falsely that Jewish people are cancers on our civilization. When they go low, let's not follow them to the bottom.)

The level of delusional thinking that would lead someone to interfere with other people seeking health care is hard to fathom. 

The fact that the protesters were themselves unmasked and undistanced indicates that they either think COVID-19 is a hoax or they think it's a type of flu that most people recover from. The fact that they're all white indicates they are from a demographic that has suffered least with COVID mortality. Latinx workers in Los Angeles have a terribly high rate of infection and many families are grieving the loss of a loved one while also scrambling to cope with the loss of a breadwinner. Ditto Black workers and their families.

The first person I know personally who was hospitalized with COVID, an older white man, was intubated in the ICU for 11 days before sort of recovering. Now he's suffered congestive heart failure and is back in the hospital. I can't figure out why the protesters don't know anybody with similar experiences by now.

The level of delusional thinking that would lead someone to mock and harrass the survivor of a school mass shooting event is also hard to fathom.

And these two delusions seem to be more than coincidentally connected.

An extremely numb congressperson from Georgia who I do not care to name harrassed Cori Bush, a Black congresswoman from Missouri, berating her and her staff in the hallway outside their office. While not wearing a mask as required to be in the Capitol buildings. The same congressperson from Georgia is on video harassing David Hogg, a survivor of a mass shooting at his high school in Florida who went on to become a gun control organizer. (Side note: a Republican politician in central Maine lost his job as vice president of a local bank after doing the same, but on Twitter.) 

I know that the parents of first graders who died in the Sandy Hook school massacre have also reported being gaslighted by gun nuts. The pain of burying your 6 year old is almost unimaginable, but the pain of being mocked and harrassed for saying truthfully that your 6 year old was gunned down at school is beyond belief. I've always assumed that the NRA was responsible for pushing that cruel craziness, because they protect those who profit from gun sales.

Regardless of who's pushing the cruel craziness around preventing folks from voluntarily being vaccinated to avoid dying gasping for breath, it's a sign of the times. Harrassing women seeking reproductive health care has been going on for years and I suppose was the harbinger of things to come.

Unprecedented access to information, both useful and false, has led many down the path to sheer delusion. What happened?

The colonial settler state that became the U.S. has always had cults that held worldviews far from the mainstream: e.g. that the world would end on (fill in the date), or that all computers would crash on January 1, 2000. In 1978, Jim Jones led followers south to Guyana before convincing hundreds to poison themselves and their children, a mass murder-suicide that coined the phrase "drinking the Kool-aid."

We know about climate change denial, flat earth believers (one of whom is a pharmacist being prosecuted for deliberately spoiling 500 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine), those who believe the moon landing in 1969 was faked -- and then we come to the unfortunate events of September 11, 2001.

It seems to me that since 9/11was used as the pretext to invade and occupy Afghanistan in perpetuity, while taking an ax to civil liberties at home with the so-called Patriot Act, people in the U.S. have become more and more confused about what is or isn't true. 

In 2003 they were told by news outlets they had relied on for actual facts that Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction. Also that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. Both claims were patently false, but it didn't matter. Cue another invasion and unending occupation at great cost to taxpayers and great profits for actual makers of WMDs. Bush lied, people died. You get the idea.

Our corporate overlords would prefer that the impending revolution over lack of housing, health care, and even food, be a civil war instead. Getting us fighting over race or political ideologies is preferable to our finding ourselves with grievances in common and organizing mass action to do something about it. 

As long as we're divided, they're conquering.

* For those who know me I may seem hypocritical criticizing protesters shutting down an event. I've often done so at the "christening" events for the type of warship used to bomb Bagdhad in 2003. People who just want to entertain themselves and their children flock to these events at General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard, and my friends and I block access to the shipyard gates with our bodies. The difference as I see it: no one is going inside BIW to get access to health care they hope will be life-saving. 

 

Why Was The MAGA Attack On The Capitol Allowed To Happen?

Source: ACLU blog "The Patriot Act 10 Years Later"

In the 90's I was a public school teacher in central Maine who was told that, to keep my job, I needed to give up my fingerprints to the FBI's database to prove that I wasn't a child molester. No one had accused me of being a child molester, and I knew that most suspected child molesters are encouraged to resign and move far away to spare superintendents the pain of an ugly public relations fiasco. Thus their fingerprints were not in any database of convicted child molesters.

I had been a busy working mom with little time for political action. Then my 9 year old was fingerprinted at school even after I expressly forbid the school to do that. These experiences radicalized me and I began working against the educator fingerprinting law in Maine. Twice we managed to have the law overturned, and twice the governor vetoed it. I resigned over the issue and moved to California to earn more money while I had two kids in college at the same time.

After hearing news from his chief of staff that the second tower of the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane, the president seemed pensive but went on reading to students in a Florida classroom. Screenshot via YouTube

Then 9/11 was allowed to happen.

Then Joe Biden's Patriot Act passed with breathtaking speed, curtailing our civil liberties and giving sweeping surveillance powers to the federal government because "terror" had frightened us. Then the never ending "war on terror" began for control of energy resources and shipping lanes, and we still go without universal health care to pay for it.

Then I moved back to Maine and got fingerprinted because I needed the health care for my family.

Now comes the January 6 MAGA attack on the Capitol. Why was it allowed to happen do you suppose?

It wasn't a surprise attack at all but was well-publicized in advance.

Whether Capitol and DC municipal police opened the fencing to allow the MAGA mob in to the Capitol grounds, or simply failed to defend the line when the mob pushed into them, seems like a moot point. (Remember when the National Guard teargassed peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters in Lafayette Park so the occupant of the White House could walk to a nearby church and pose with a Bible? Remember how the Guard were directing traffic Jan. 6 while legislators were under attack?) Via AP

Cue the new even more repressive laws the public has been led to believe are needed because "domestic terror" has frightened us. 

My prediction: we will continue to go without universal health care to pay for more policing and spying on ourselves.

Australian Caitlin Johnstone as usual is seeing things with a clearer eye from Oz:

The narrative managers' ability to move liberals and progressives from "Defund the police" to "MOAR POLICING" in just a few months was even more impressive than their ability to move them from "Believe Women" and #MeToo to "Tara Reid is a lying grifter".

 My family member points out the danger to Black, Indigenous, and other people of color:

We have a long history of institutional racism. So when you talk about expanding anti domestic terrorism powers it’s a pretty safe prediction that it’s going to carried out in a racist way and in service of capital.

Also, say a Biden admin handles it as well as possible, what does the next republican administration do with those expanded powers? It’s Pandora’s box. You don’t open it and then see what happens, once you’re there it’s too late. 

Also, I'm guessing another purpose of allowing violent intruders with handcuffs at the ready to break into the Capitol was to discourage Medicare for All candidates like me from running for Congress. 

And about that man dressed all in black with the bouquet of plastic zip-ties whose photograph is being circulated widely? Perfect set up for right wing propagandists to make the false claim that Antifa was behind the MAGA crowd.

It looks like another event is being planned for January 17.

Impeaching the current occupant of Camp David will not solve our problems, and many argue it's a waste of time at this point, but it should be done anyway to keep the grifter off the public dole and unable to issue any more pardons. 

For those wondering if it’s worth impeaching him this time, it means he:
1) loses his 200k+ pension for the rest of his life
2) loses his 1 million dollar/year travel allowance
3) loses lifetime full secret service detail
4) loses his ability to run in 2024

— Ben Costiloe (@BenCostiloe) January 8, 2021

People who think the Biden administration is going to save us from any of this are not paying attention. Or, possibly, they are too young to remember what Senator Obama did directly after receiving the nomination of the Democratic Party.

He voted to grant immunity to the big telecom corporations for spying on all of us after 9/11.