New World Order Geography Quiz!

Source: https://li-mac.org/projects/social-fragments/yankee-go-home

With even the policy wonks of the U.S. empire admitting that their collective reputation and influence on "the rest of the world" are in tatters, it's time for a new world order geography quiz. Multipolarity, here we come!

Can you name the outlined countries on these maps? Answers are at the end with embedded links to recent news of their moves toward independence from U.S. control (or, in one case, flouting public opinion to make a "defense" agreement with the empire).

Map A - recently withdrew from US-led ‘Combined Maritime Forces’ in the Persian Gulf

Map B - U.S. officials claim it is about to be brought under the hegemon's "nuclear umbrella"

Map C - NATO is on the ground stoking sectarian violence here and appears to be preparing to bomb this nation -- again

Map D - university students nationwide staged protests demanding their prime minister not sign a "Defense Cooperation Agreement" with the U.S. before public review occurred (he signed it anyway)

Map E - African National Congress General Secretary Fikile Mbalula hails from this nation; he recently scolded a BBC reporter about British war crimes when criticized for not sanctioning Russia as demanded by the U.S.

Map F - nation with a long coastline on the eponymous Persian Gulf, it recently achieved rapprochement with rival Saudi Arabia in an agreement brokered by China

Map G - this nation's president sent a letter to President Biden this month complaining that, "the U.S. government, specifically through USAID, has for some time been financing organisations openly against the legal and legitimate government I represent"

Map H - a war-torn nation that recently rejoined the Arab League after a long absence

Map I - agreed with visiting Iranian President to no longer use the U.S. dollar for trade between the two nations

In case you missed my first two geography quizzes, you can find them here and here.

Answers:

Map A - United Arab Emirates

Map B - Taiwan (not a nation, rather a province of China)

Map C - Serbia

Map D - Papua New Guinea

Map E - South Africa

Map F - Iran

Map G -  Mexico

Map H - Syria

Map I - Indonesia

Can You Identify U.S. Regime Change Targets On A Map?

Now that we can all find Ukraine on a map, today's post is an activity: on a blank map, can you identify the country being targeted by the U.S. government for regime change?

Let's start with some easy ones as a warm up. These are countries where the U.S. is already engaged in proxy war, and if you're following the news you already knew that.

Map A (answers below)

Map B (answers below)

Map C (answers below)

Under cover of USAID or NGOs, the U.S. is also currently stirring up trouble in these countries:

Map D (answers below)

Map E (answers below)

Map F (answers below)

Map G (answers below)

Map H (answers below)

Map I (answers below)

Map J (answers below)

Map K (answers below)

Finally, identify a few of the many countries on the watch list i.e. meddling either underway covertly or has been signaled but is not yet underway.

Map L (answers below)

Map M (answers below)

Map N (answers below)

I could go on -- and on -- but you get the idea.

----

Answer key 

A.  Syria

B. Yemen

C. Somalia

D. Belarus

E. Georgia

F. Hungary

G. Pakistan

H. Vietnam

I. Thailand (especially good video overview on U.S. meddling in the region)

J. Iran

K. Taiwan (an island that is part of China)

L. Honduras

M. Mexico

N. Turkiye

If you click the country name it links to an article or video on U.S. meddling in that country. Note that some of the corporate media sources or government-aligned NGOs deny U.S. meddling because of course they do.

Bottom line: why does the U.S. think its vital interests lie all over the planet, and how much does all this meddling cost? It's nearly impossible to quantify because so much of the cost is hidden in support for foundations, NGOs, or just plain CIA "dark" i.e. invisible activities.

In terms of human suffering, violence, and bad will generated, that, too, is difficult to quantify.

As anecdotal evidence, I'll leave you with a quote from Caitlin Johnstone's recent post on the AUKUS submarine deal:

In reality, Australia is not arming itself against China to protect itself from China. 

Australia is arming itself against China to protect itself from the United States.

Derailed: Trains, Stores, Schools & Inadequate Covid Tests Evidence Of U.S. Empire's Rapid Decline

A member of the media picks up a shredded box at a section of the Union Pacific train tracks in downtown Los Angeles, Jan. 14, 2022 CBSLA reported Thursday. 

AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu

On the same day that I could not get pictures of littered tracks and derailed trains in downtown Los Angeles out of my head, the federal government finally announced free covid test kits for each household can be ordered from a U.S. Postal Service website. 

How many of the tests, which we're told won't ship until the end of January, will end up on the tracks?  Journalists reported seeing covid tests discarded amid the debris presumably deemed "not worth stealing." Corporate journalism focused, predictably, on property crimes rather than the underlying conditions of mass deaths in the U.S. amid a public health crisis managed on behalf of commercial interests under late stage capitalism.

Both the trains and the tests are evidence of accelerating imperial decline. Despite loyal Democrats tweeting that we must "thank @POTUS" for finally doing something other countries have been doing better for months, nay, years into this pandemic, the test distribution scheme is already an epic fail.

• Four tests per household is inadequate. Does the Biden administration realize that front line so-called "essential" workers often have households with more than four people living in them? Or, more to the point, does the Biden administration care?

• Unhoused people don't have an address to use, typically.

• People without internet access are shit out of luck.

• Entering an apartment address is tricky because the form rejects attempts with this explanation:

Here's a whole thread on Twitter explaining how to get around that problem.

My favorite emblematic message so far is corporate mouthpiece Portland Press Herald tweeting from its editors' white and professional class privileged point of view:

"Super easy" -- until the package ends up on the tracks, I suppose.

What's up with the trains anyway? Rampant omicron infections in a nation lacking universal healthcare, paid sick leave, and adequate child care have signficantly reduced the available labor force. 

Container ships off of the coast of the Port of Long Beach | Getty

  

Shipping and trucking are similarly backed up and have been for months.

Union Pacific train derailment in downtown Los Angeles

Trains are slowed down or backed up and as such are soft targets for theft (hey, maybe some of these packages contain food!). It's unclear whether the 17 car derailment of a Union Pacific train was caused by massive litter on the tracks fouling the switch as some have speculated.

For reference, here's what trains in China look like:

Source: International Business Times "High speed trains in China"

Also Japan (I rode many trains there in the early 1980's and they were fantastic even back then):

Source: allaboutJapantrains.com

Also Germany (I'll stop now):

Source: Train of Thought blog "Frequent service makes Germany's train travel incredibly convenient, and competitive with other modes of transportation. Here, trains prepare to leave Cologne." 
Photo by David Lassesn

All over the U.S. people are sharing photos of empty grocery store shelves 

Source: "Heads Up Moms, Grocery Stores Have Empty Shelves Again" 

amid widespread and prolonged shortage of items as various as cat food and dental floss.

Teachers at United for Success Academy Middle School walk out in support of Oakland, California students. (WSWS Media, January 18, 2021)

Staffing shortages are affecting schools nationwide. Some have responded by herding students into large holding areas during in-person school during the worst surge of the pandemic. Students in Oakland, NYC, Boston and elsewhere have walked out demanding remote learning be reinstated, and the Chicago Teachers Union refused to return in person after the holidays.

The decline of empires is often rapid once they get rolling, often ugly, and nearly always dangerous.

Think of the Ottoman Empire whose dissolution sparked WWI, or the Japanese imperialism that ended with starvation and suicide bombers in kamikaze planes built with no landing gear to save on costs.

Boasting and claims of superiority typically go hand in hand with imperial decline. So we are told the economy is doing great while low income people are being devastasted by inflation and loss of income with minimal support from the government. Meanwhile, U.S.-led NATO announces its overarching policy plan for militarizing outer space to protect...banking.

Voting will not fix this. Both corporate parties have failed to respond effectively to widespread infection and its consequences.

Workers withholding their labor is already widespread and likely the only power the people still have to get us on track to a minimal quality of life for all.

The silver lining in this cloud: maybe I will live to see that general strike I've been dreaming of after all.

Domestic Insecurity

One in five children in the U.S. officially live in poverty now. In cities, the figure climbs to as high as two out of five. How shameful this seems to me, in light of the money pouring out of our pockets and into the highly profitable business of war. In Charlottesville, VA, for example, taxpayers will be asked to contribute $63.3 million to the Pentagon budget, which would provide 27,933 low-income kids with health care next year.

The mainstream press is increasingly taking notice of the high costs of endless war, as if it had taken a decade to wake up and smell the red ink. Many who don't believe in social progress are joining the antiwar chorus. They don't want to save money in order to, for instance, give 6,414 university students scholarships for a year -- they just want to save money, period.

But how will young people ever pull themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps if they can't read and write competently? For the two decades I've been a public school teacher, every national assessment of future needs concludes that, to compete successfully for the dwindling number of jobs available, students will need at least a high school diploma plus some kind of post-secondary training. Yet public education, chronically underfunded for decades, is again on the chopping block -- with schools closing, teachers laid off, and class sizes climbing. University tuition is skyrocketing from New York to California. Summer job training programs for youth were also cut in lots of the most economically disadvantaged places. (As had been done also in London, Liverpool and Manchester, with riotous results.)

Food insecurity is already at the doorstep of many who thought they were educated enough, or secure enough -- homeowners with careers that brought the elusive health care benefits, suddenly laid off after decades, unable to find a job in their field. Students with enormous debt from their college degrees, working for minimum wage at jobs with no benefits, barely able to make the rent and their education loan payments. Families who had a member with a disease or injury they could ill afford, in foreclosure. Soup kitchens and food cupboards are swamped like never before. And the federal food stamp program, morphed into something called SNAP, now takes weeks or months to apply for.

The federal government's response? Start practicing for urban warfare, apparently. The Jamaica Plain Gazette reported that the U.S. Special Operations Command landed a military helicopter on the roof of a closed elementary school after dark last week in a poor residential area of Boston. No notice was given to the alarmed neighbors, watching men in combat gear descend onto the roof of the building where their children used to go to school.

“We’re from Special Operations,” (spokeswoman) Tiscione acknowledged, referring to the umbrella organization of all four military branches’ special forces. “I’m kind of being vague on purpose. It’s more of a challenge for us when people know who we are.”

(Hey, aren't they the same Special Ops reported to  be carrying out assassinations and renditions in 70 countries worldwide -- without any Congressional oversight?)

Domestic insecurity*, indeed. What are people to do? Burning down buildings doesn't solve much and leaves a poor neighborhood even poorer. Some young people are getting organized, mobbing sites of police brutality like BART subway stations in San Francisco-- and having their cell phones shut down by authorities (but that's another story).

Then there are vibrant cultural responses to rage. CODEPINK's campaign to Create, Note Hate supports artful expressions of what ten years of "war on terror" has brought, and what alternatives might look, sound and feel like, part of a national effort called 10 Years and Counting. Maybe you could get a few hundred friends together and create a dance expressing your yearning for the opportunities offered by higher education like these college students in Chile:

You could write a book, like Buggy, the young adult novel I co-authored about about the poverty draft, and what really turns kids on. You can read a sample on Amazon.


You could help occupy Freedom Plaza in DC this October 6 and beyond. You could organize a Bring Our War $$ Home Care-a-Van to tour your state, finding out what budget cuts have done to your neighborhoods, and how small those are in comparison to the funds lavished on building weapons.

You could study and teach about nonviolent methods of effecting change. Because children living in poverty need ALL of us to pull together and create a better future for the world.

* Domestic Insecurity is a name I lifted from my creative friends the Three Monkeys Art Collective, from their 2004 installation at Fitchburg Art Museum. Grateful for the artists!

The Mob

source: Two Thumbs Fresh on Flickr

No, not organized crime. Disorganized crime. The real mob, the one that can rise up and sweep tyrants from their thrones.

Live coverage of the London (and Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol Liverpool, and Leeds) riots on Al Jazeera last night had anchors, reporters, and eyewitnesses alike stunned and insisting that the riots were senseless. Last fall British officials pooh-poohed the idea that cutting police might leave London vulnerable in the face of the risks of riots by disaffected, unemployed youth. "They just want to get as much as they can for free," I heard from several commentators. "There is absolutely no justification for this level of violence and this level of theft. They aren't particularly interested in justice for one man," a reference to the shooting death of 29 year old Mark Duggan as the spark that ignited the flames.

Much was made of the fact that riots were happening in "very nice" areas where you wouldn't "expect" such things to happen. Anchor Felicity Barr said again and again that the neighbors must be furious that the police are absent while youth gangs destroy things without interference. The head of Scotland Yard calmly told parents to call their children's cell phones, find out where they were, and tell them to come home. Barr noted it was young women looting as well, and several observers commented on how young the crowds appeared to be. Security expert: "Crime is all about greed -- it's not about need whatsoever."

London is a riotous old town. Remember back in December when Prince Charles and Camilla had a run in with a youthful mob during a serendipitous enounter on the way to the theater? They do, I'll wager.

The heir to the throne and his consort, the Duchess of Cornwall, react as their car is attacked by student tuition hike protesters in London. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

Mike Hardy, from the Institutue of Community of Cohesion, was one of the few who did not find the riots senseless. "Disassociation between the haves and the have nots...have led them to disassociate from the very values that you and I might share...disassociated and disconnected." Pressed by the  anchor to join the "senseless" consensus he admitted some of the looting and arson represented "opportunism" and added he could not condone the violence. He also spoke of "influences, I won't call them leaders" working through social media like Twitter via Blackberries.

It left me wondering if a mob is just a mob unless they are carrying signs and shouting slogans. In other words, do rampaging teens need to know their own politics in order to be politically motivated?

With the Olympics scheduled to come to town, commenters bemoaned "the PR cost to London." Like race rioters in US cities' riots in the 1960's, mobs were even attacking fire fighters when they try to put out buildings that went ablaze.

source: Nodeju.com

 One thing is fairly certain: as understaffed police let the looting continue, they planned to use London's ubiquitous video surveillance and "pick up a huge number of these young people later on at home" according to Al J's security expert.

Other views worth noting. From Twitter: grgrsmth Gregor Smith RT @broganhume: So basically the #londonriots can be boiled down to this: when you destroy peoples lives and then cut the police bad stuff happens.

"They seem to blame corporations and the old people for everything: taxes, and no opportunities "

Here's the viral video from the London neighborhood of Hackney, where a woman with a cane dares to give rioters her eloquent analysis of the stupidity of rioting without a cause. I wondered if she was aware of Fuck Cameron Suck My Dick  crudely spray painted on the wall behind her, a reference to Prime Minister David Cameron, who was rushing back from his holiday at a $10,000 a week villa in Italy.

Someone else pointed out on Twitter that the U.K.'s Muslims are pretty much off the hook for getting blamed, because after dark during the fasting month of Ramadan "we are home stuffing our faces."

By my count we now have young people with diminished economic prospects in the streets doing mass demonstrations in England, Chile, Israel, Palestine, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia...etc. But it's not political. As a 20 year old her in the U.S. commented a few months ago when we were discussing the idea of Peak Oil, "So my generation is basically screwed." Maybe somebody needs to paint that on a wall in London.

See no evil, hear nothing but NPR, say Merry Xmas!

'Tis the season of holiday parties, a chance to see people and relax a bit. Mark and I don't get invited to old friends' dinner parties much anymore; no one would ever say why, but I imagine it's because people are afraid we will talk about politics and bum them out. We did get invited to a neighborhood Christmas party last week, and went and had a good time. Tonight we will drive about an hour to attend the annual holiday gathering of a peace and justice group in the western Maine mountains. I'm sure it will be a very different crowd.

At last week's party I wore what my husband affectionately described as "your Bradley Manning schoolgirl look." I put a festive red cardigan over my Free Bradley t-shirt, and then asked myself what a high school kid would wear with such an ensemble (short skirt over leggings plus boots). I love my Bradley Manning t-shirt but don't get to wear it much. It's too cold outside, and I don't dare bring political messaging to my place of work.

Only one person remarked on my shirt, asking me about its cool graphics. When I said it was Bradley Manning he replied, "Who's that?" I said it was the person who supplied WikiLeaks with the info in the first place. Still no recognition. This person has advanced degrees and teaches at a local college. "I am sorry I asked, please stop. I have been depressed lately," he told me. Wow.

I was careful not to bring up politics because NOBODY WANTS TO TALK ABOUT IT! When they ask what I have been up to lately, they do not really want me to tell them. I talked about the weather, holiday plans, people's health, family news, and anything else but. Old friends we have kind of lost touch with avoid us because they are afraid we do not know how to act politely at parties anymore. I was determined to prove them wrong. But I suppose I blew it in advance by wearing my t-shirt.

Anyway, I was in a discussion about the weather for upcoming holiday travel with two people I have known for years. They were wondering if it was snowing in Washington DC that day and I said that it was because I had just seen a video of a snowy scene where "hundreds of people got arrested today for chaining themselves to the White House fence."

The two partygoers turned away from me in unison, as if we were in a dance that had been rehearsed.

Which I suppose we were.

Most of our these local friends started out standing on the bridge with us in '03, '04, maybe '05. Then a lot of people quit coming. I have never challenged anyone on this or asked them to defend their decision, but a ton of them have rushed up to me in the produce department or at the post office to apologize guiltily, mostly explaining either that they were too busy or stopped because "it didn't make any difference -- nothing changed." (The general public in the U.S. has the historical awareness and political sense of very young children.)

Over the years many, many people have thanked Mark and me for continuing to publicly vigil for peace, and to protest the wars. I think the message is: Keep it on the bridge where it belongs, but don't bring it to our parties.

Almost all of these people do charitable works, and a lot of them happen to be artists. Either they do not consider political organizing fun, inspiring, and exciting -- or it's too scary. Maybe some combination of the two.

Maybe there is a lot of guilt for continuing to live well while children in Afghanistan starve and freeze in between air strikes we are financing.

I can't be sure about any of that, but I am pretty sure about this: any literate person with Internet acces who cannot identify Bradley Manning is in a willful state of ignorance.

Bliss? I doubt it.

Spanner in the works

Sometimes you look back at those big, old, dumb empires lumbering around embarrassing themselves, kind of like the decrepit old Elvis -- Ottoman mobs smashing an observatory newly built, French royals fleeing as mobs tore apart the Bastille prison, Charles and Camilla sitting shocked in their Rolls Royce as university students in London holler about the 300% hike in tuition that the Liberals voted in after promising during elections not to do so -- and you wonder. How could the imperial heads of state not see the writing on the wall? (You can add your name to the wall here.)

Propaganda and public education are twin subjects of this great Truthout article exploring how we got into the mess we're in today.

Thomas Jefferson, slave owner, had this mission statement for free public education K-grad in Virginia:
1. To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business.
2. To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing.
3. To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties.
4. To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either.
5. To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgment.
6. And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness, all the social relations under which he shall be placed.

Status check, U.S. seat of empire, 2010CE. How are we doing?

Time running out for the rule of the kleptocracies?

In breaking news I see that the U.S. Army has banned the use of thumb drives (or nerd sticks as the kids sometimes call them), USB drives, and writeable CD's on computers. This is a strike against freedom of information, and the best kind of news a counter recruitment worker like me could wish for. Once potential enlistees get wind of the fact that they can't download music and lip synch to Lady Gaga while they toil in the imperial cyber-mines, maybe they will think again about not signing eight years of their life and possible all of their sanity away for the money to buy a new pickup truck or Harley.

Then again, since that news is buried in an obscure technology publication, and news that the House of Representatives just voted 212-206 to pass the FY11 Defense (sic) Appropriations Bill is not so much as mentioned in newspapers of record, much less on the front page...methinks we will continue in ignorance.

Maine's Rep. Chellie Pingree voted yes to spend many more billions for wars. She may not think people are watching. But some of us are. Let's hope an angry mob doesn't surround the private jet she and her boyfriend ride in. If I stumbled on to that kind of opportunity, I would not break any windows or throw any paint. I certainly would not chant "Off with their heads" like the English students did. 

I would urge everybody to link arms and just sit down and stay there. Nonviolent methods are the most effective way to throw a spanner in the works. 

Look for the kickoff to the new season on December 16 at the White House.

art credit: Brian Reeves, Slopart