U.S. Empire Rapidly Losing Consent Of The Governed

Let's start by admitting that the U.S. empire never had the consent of the governed in places like Okinawa, Ramstein, Managua, or Vicenza. 

What it did have: imperial servants who made possible the soft and hard coups that enabled 800+ military bases in other nations. Also, a rapidly metastisizing NATO.

Such is the nature of empires. Or, as the State Department weasel word experts would have it, "The U.S. government works to advance U.S. interests in Nicaragua by helping the country increase its prosperity, security, and democratic governance." Uh huh.

The U.S. used to have the consent of most of the white people it governed in North America. This was back when home ownership and health care were not out of reach for full time workers.

But, while WW3 looms as the military-industrial complex "solution" to eroding U.S. hegemony, the Biden administration is rapidly losing that consent on several fronts.

Losing the consent of the governed, health care dept.

For-profit health care is an oxymoron and millions have died too young as a result of the greedy medical profiteers who own and operate the U.S. government. 

The architect of U.S. failure to contain a pandemic still killing 400 people a day just announced he is retiring at 81 -- with a net worth of about $10 million. From a career in public service? Give me a break. 

A subscriber-only piece on Patreon by Jack Mirkinson, "Good Riddance to Anthony Fauci," argues convincingly that, "The worship of Fauci feels like the ultimate triumph of vibes over reality." Because all the blather about how we had to vote blue no matter who to get a bad, science-denying president out of office had Democrats rejoicing that now the U.S. would "follow the science" and, with Fauci able to lead, get our deadly pandemic mismanagement under control.

We see how well that has worked out.

Number of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths worldwide 

as of August 15, 2022, by country

Find more statistics at Statista

Or maybe you prefer to compare per capita rates, which take into account total population? The U.S. has 10.37 deaths per million residents. By contrast, Japan, another capitalist state that miraculously also maintains a robust public health system, has 0.94 covid deaths per million. Canada, with demographics and culture more comparable to the U.S., has a rate of 4.03.

But statistics can lie, so what about the anecdotal evidence my Twitter feed is chock full of? So many posts noting that, where public health and commerce are in conflict, commerce prevails. And when it comes to commerce, Weapons R U.S.!

Meanwhile, people in the US can't pay their rent, afford food, or get healthcare. Wake up. No one cares about some corrupt European version of a 3rd world country. The US doesn't stand with your MIC dumping ground. We want our money here.

— SJones 🌻 (@SJonesWasTaken) August 21, 2022

As the next pandemic looms, we hear that tiny and heavily sanctioned Cuba -- which has one of the most successful public health programs on the planet -- already has measures in place to protect its people from simian smallpox (aka monkey pox). The U.S. has a few vaccines and not much else.

Back to Fauci-land:

Is it true that the CDC is still working remotely because of the health risks while telling everyone else to get back in the office?

— Starbucks Unions Form Like Voltron (@TweetyMctwat) August 20, 2022

Following the $cience.

— Starbucks Unions Form Like Voltron (@TweetyMctwat) August 20, 2022

 

Most CDC staff work remotely.

White House aides are strictly tested and wear N95 masks to meet with POTUS.

Pres. Biden isolated until he tested negative.

But everyone else? Go to work without COVID safety standards; no need to isolate if exposed; take 5 days if you get sick.

— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) August 19, 2022

 

Losing the consent of the governed, economic dept.

Medical debt in the U.S. is a huge factor detrimental to personal wealth. It's part of what makes us so exceptional. You think Japanese and Canadian people lose their homes to mortgage default when they can't pay for cancer treatments?

That's been the sad case for decades now, but recently the Biden administration's sanctions on any country not helping with the proxy war on Russia have taken an ax to global economic structures. 

This has Europe reeling from double digit inflation, only kept below 10% in the U.S. by a gas tax holiday contributing mightily to the hottest northern hemisphere summer ever.

It has also led to to a stampede away from the dollar as a medium of global exchange. Maybe the warhawks who love to wield economic sanctions didn't really think this one through?

Meanwhile the Biden administration is roundly scorned for failing to pass universal health care or even Build Back Better, failing to forgive student loans as promised, and passing a climate bill that benefits fossil fuel and electric car corporations. Oh, and a rider extended the Unaffordable Care Act and will allow Medicare to negotiate prices of a paltry ten medicines several years from now. Too little, too late.

All the puff piece journalism lauding this "win" for Democrats -- who won't even protect the most basic medical rights of those of childbearing age elected them for -- exemplifies why the U.S. public is also rapidly losing the last shreds of trust in corporate media.

Losing the consent of the governed, police state dept.

Forget the FBI at Mar-a-Lago. The loss of faith in police nationwide is accelerating steadily. Evidence? Search on Twitter for the term "suspended" and see what pops up. The recent worst in a sea of brutality:

Arkansas police officers Zack King, Levi White and Thell Riddle have been suspended following the release of this video showing them brutally beating a homeless man. In the video a bystander can be heard yelling "Don't beat him! He needs his medicine!" pic.twitter.com/vBgR5AYqKd

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) August 22, 2022

People of color knew all along that this shit happened to their loved ones with little accountability. Now, because phone videos are everywhere, white people know it too.

Cue the Biden administration's budget requests for FY23: $37 billion for 100,000 additional police officers, and even more transfers of used military equipment from the Pentagon to municipal police departments.

"New York police officers beating protesters with batons on May 30 [2020]. 

Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images" Source: Vox.com

Because when you're rapidly losing the consent of the governed, who you gonna call?

Calling For A Radical Break With The Status Quo Of Incrementalism -- Cheri Honkala

While Democrats march around in Washington DC pretending they care about quality of life for poor people, it's important to remember who actually walks the walk as opposed to just talking the talk.

A joint press conference held by the Philadelphia-based Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign with the Black Alliance for Peace, shared these words of wisdom via zoom on June 16, 2022. Note that the PPEHRC operates as the Poor People's Army, a well-established organization that has struggled and won housing for single mothers and their children. Details about attending their August boot camp to learn how it's done are at the end of this post.

Poor People's Army, Philadelphia (Source: PPEHRC Facebook)

PPEHRC and BAP Joint Press Conference June 16, 2022 

Statement from Cheri Honkala 

Today is our day to break silence regardless of the fear of the consequences. We are honored to take this step along with the Black Alliance for Peace & dear Pastor Keith Collins from Church of the Overcomer. We have no choice but to be here today – not because we want to be here, but because we have a responsibility to our ancestors & brothers & sisters struggling for survival at home and abroad. We come here today on the days before the weekend where many children, like my son, will grieve their father on Father's Day because this system and the reform path took his life and never gave him a chance. It is because of this ongoing war at home, literally not symbolically, that we can no longer afford incrementalism. We must make a radical break with a system that is killing our family members. 

The drug war has taken more lives than have been lost during Vietnam. My son doesn't weep alone this Father's Day. He weeps with children in Palestine, Yemen, Africa, Venezuela, and all over the world because we continue to stand silent as our violent government continues to deny the basic necessities of life and fails to prevent human rights violations at home and abroad. There is no reason for gun deaths in our country. There is no reason for hunger or homelessness – this is the land of plenty. If we wanted to, we could address all of these issues but we live in a country that continues to kill the dreams of children all over the world. 

From the poor in Kensington, Philadelphia to the poor all over the world, we stand with you today. We see you. We hear you. These wars of sanctions and allocating billions for war need to stop, and they need to stop now.

How dare we stand by as billions are spent on war when children all over the world, and here in Kensington, go without water, health care, food or a place to lay their heads tonight. 

We understand we are on the precipice of an economic revolution. Robots and computers are replacing human labor faster and faster. The potential exists for a society where everyone has the basic necessities of life and where war and famine are prevented and where problems are collectively solved. We are calling for a radical break with the status quo of incrementalism and doing business as usual. We are moving forward in the tradition of other forward thinking pioneers and ancestors. We are building a Poor People’s Army. Today we reconfirm our commitment to building this Poor People’s Army and ask you for your support in doing that. Join with us and the Black Alliance for Peace. We will be holding a Boot Camp in Philadelphia August 12-14 and we encourage you to join us in this endeavor. We intend to map out our plans to take back the basic necessities of life by taking land, taking housing, taking food and ensuring that everyone gets educated around a People’s Centered Human Rights model. The ruling class has betrayed us thousands of times – what makes us think this will be any different. We want to move away from the US exceptionalism that keeps us from uniting from the rest of the world. Now is the time in our lives for all walks of life – artist, faith people, and musicians to get off the treadmill that is taking us nowhere. Everyone has lost someone to preventable causes. It’s time we put an end to a system that is killing us and create the kind of cooperative society that we can all flourish in.

 

Statement from Ajamu Baraka

Black Alliance for Peace 

Thank you all for attending this morning. And thank you PPEHRC that has been at the forefront of the domestic struggle human rights in this country, and especially we want to acknowledge the visionary leadership of our dear sister and comrade Cheri Honkela. 

It is indeed an honor to for BAP to be a part of this gathering to lean our voice to call for a shift in priorities away from the cult of death and oppression represented by the policies of this administration from the streets of Philly to the completely avoided, and we say in BAP, the manufactured war in Ukraine. 

We say this morning as groups are gathering this weekend to supposedly to challenge this state’s continued avoidance of the issue of poverty, that poverty and its eradication can not occur without the acknowledgement that it will take fundamental structural change by popular forces that are independently organized and prepared to challenge the entrenched power of capital operating through the duopoly and currently through the Neoliberal Biden administration. 

Dr. King reminded us of the connection between racism, materialism (capitalism) and militarism – he referred to these as the giant triplets. In remind the movement of these fundamental relationships and declaring his opposition to the war in Vietnam he earned the wrath of the entire liberal establishment and had his life taken from him one year to the date of his declaration to break the silence on war. 

This ultimate sacrifice is the model that must be assumed if one if serious about human rights. One can not have one foot in the establishment, echoing its most backward positions on issues like the war in Ukraine, and the other foot with the people declaring solidarity with the people suffering from the rapacious greed and violence of a ruling class operating through the two capitalist parties.

One has to make a choice – you are either with the people all the way – or with the enemies of human rights, democracy, and global social justice. 

Today PPEHRC and BAP declare our firm commitment to the life-affirming values of equality, social justice, cooperation, participatory democracy, self-determination, and non-oppression represented by the PCHR framework. 

However, we recognize that we are not going to realize PCHRs by just criticizing the rulers or begging for them to recognize HRS. We understand that the realization of HRs must come about as the result of struggle. 

That is why BAP is joining hands with PPEHRC in their efforts to build a Poor Peoples Army, a non-violent army dedicated to ground working class and poor people in the PCHR framework and collectively through our own agency creating the conditions where we can experience the full range of HRs. 

People-Centered Human Rights (PCHR) are those non-oppressive rights that reflect the highest commitment to universal human dignity and social justice that individuals and collectives define and secure for themselves through social struggle. 

The people-centered framework proceeds from the assumption that the genesis of the assaults on human dignity that are at the core of human rights violations is located in the relationships of oppression. The PCHR framework does not pretend to be non-political. It is a political project in the service of the oppressed. It names the enemies of freedom: the Western white supremacist, colonial/capitalist patriarchy. 

The demands for clean water; safe and accessible food; free quality education; healthcare and healthiness for all; housing; public transportation; wages and a socially productive job that allow for a dignified life; ending of mass incarceration; universal free child care; opposition to war and the control and eventual elimination of the police; self-determination; and respect for democracy in all aspects of life are some of the people-centered human rights that can only be realized through a bottom-up mass movement for building popular power. 

That is the historical task we face, and the historic responsibility that we have assumed for ourselves and call on everyone to recognize this task and come off the fence. 

Neither party represents the needs and interests of the people and that understanding must be front and center in our analysis and our politics. 

That is and will be the message of the Poor Peoples Army that will guide us to victory!

 

Press conference recording (Direct link if embedded video does not work for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm0-sc3CvLg)

Statement from Pastor Keith Collins

Minister with the Inner City

Faith Congress & Lancaster Mennonite Conference

Excerpt:

And someone once said, Why is it that we reject the charity model? Shouldn't the Church support charity? 

Well. the reason we reject the charity model is very simple.

Charity is vertical charity is from the top down, and in charity the people that are on the top remain on the top and the people that are on the bottom usually remain on the bottom or very close to the bottom.

We believe in a faith-based model, that that celebrates solidarity.

Solidarity is always horizontal. It respects all those around you, and respects each other person as our equal. It is not a condescending agenda, but it's an agenda that empowers everyone.  

##  

The Biden administration and Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress are called the trifecta because presumably a party in control of those branches can get shit done. Although they ran on empty promises like Medicare for All, forgiving student loan debt, and extensive claims that they would serve actual people's actual needs far better than their Republican rivals, what Democrats have actually delivered is mostly a horrifically expensive proxy war with Russia. The $54 billion or so sent to Ukraine has enriched U.S. weapons manufacturers as working class and low-income people here struggle with soaring housing costs, soaring fuel costs, soaring food costs, and medical bankruptcy. 

A glitzy march on Washington with free sandwiches on the bus does nothing to address the fundamental problems facing poor people in the U.S., and may or may not have served as a get out the vote boost for the midterms. 

How much hungrier will poor people be come November? Will they organize on their own behalf rather than following Democrats down the road to perdition?

If you want to help organize on behalf of housing and other human needs in your area, consider attending the PPEHRC boot camp outside Philadelphia this summer. Learn from the best! And don't forget who your real friends are.

Are Military And Space Programs Victims Of Climate Crisis Or Perpetrators?

Pentagon Planet by Anthony Freda

I'm back from a blogging break during National Novel Writing Month aka nanowrimo in November. I met the challenge of writing a 50,000 word first draft in 30 days; the jury is still out on whether or not it was time well-spent. If you're interested in being a reader who will provide feedback on Comfy Underpants (working title) depicting the effects on children of grinding poverty in late stage capitalism, leave a comment.

During November I collaborated on a few COP 26 related projects, including a virtual presentation for the People's Summit on behalf of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. I teamed up with Koohan Paik-Mander (GN board member in Hawaii) and Veterans for Peace members in the US (president Adrienne Kinne) and UK (David Collins) plus sponsoring organization the Institute for Policy Studies (Ashik Siddique) to present on US Militarism, Space Tech & Climate Crisis: the role of militarism in climate justice.

My presentation in the 90 minute webinar focused on Information Control and Perception Management Around Climate Impact of Space Programs.

To prepare I learned more about the parallels between US military programs and space programs, and their interconnection. For the TL,DW crowd (too long, didn't watch) I'll summarize my key points:

• The role of military in driving climate crisis has been hidden successfully up to now, but COP 26 was a turning point for climate activists if not for national governments.

• The role of space programs in harming climate is similarly hidden.

• Space programs are portrayed as non-military in nature despite the fact that NASA develops technology which is then used by the military.

• Focus on space programs' climate harms is confined in the press to private space programs.

• Both the military and space programs are portrayed as victims of climate crisis in the corporate press and in their own communications to the public.

Koohan's presentation on the militarization of the ocean around Hawaii including space and with disastrous effects on marine life was powerful and new information for many.

In the runup to COP 26, Peace Action Maine invited David Swanson of World Beyond War and Janet Weil of VFP's Climate Crisis & Militarism Project to speak on How the Pentagon Fuels Climate Crisis. 

I did the intro giving the context of the upcoming climate summit in Glasgow and what it might mean for our work, and PAM board member Devon Grayson-Wallace facilitated.

(Link here if embedded video does not work for you.)

COP 26 was a dismal failure in terms of halting runaway climate crisis.

 The non-binding agreements reached would, even if observed in full (highly unlikely), not keep carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions at safe levels. 

Greta Thunberg mocked the empty promises of elected officials (I can't bring myself to call them leaders): "Net zero, blah blah blah. Climate neutral, blah blah blah."

Images source: World Peace Ever TV

Youth and indigenous climate activists staged numerous actions to draw attention to the urgency of the crisis while world leaders went through the motions of taking meaningful action. Wealthy countries will continue to pollute with others bearing the brunt of the dire effects. What else is new?

Here's a simple direct action you can take right now. Pledge to connect the dots between our real security needs around climate and the enormous military emissions elephant in the room.

Source: research by Prof. Neta Crawford for the Costs of War project

Fascism Is No Longer Creeping, It's Galloping Now 17 Years After 9/11

I'm supposed to be blogging about 9/11 today, justifying the endlessly profitable "war on terror." But I think I'll blog about the uses that have been made of those events instead.

Fascism is no longer creeping, it's galloping now was my husband's response to news that my posts of the Peace Hub video from Saturday's climate march had been removed by Facebook. Allegedly it "looked like spam" or perhaps "violated community standards" so my account was locked temporarily also.

Here are their messages and then the actual video so you can judge for yourself why spybook didn't like my posts:

Here is the offending video:



Link in case the video does not play here on Blogger or in your email feed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mktdshvHN5c&feature=youtu.be

In possibly unrelated news, we found recently that the soup kitchen in the town where we hold our weekly peace vigil had closed. Word on the street is that the place where Skowhegan's large homeless population could count on getting a hot meal was closed down because suddenly the volunteers were required to prove they had background checks, and they didn't.

This was our response on the bridge. (If you're wondering, yes, I do have a background check because I was forced to get fingerprinted in order to keep my job as a public school teacher after 9/11.)

We'll be there again on Sundays, noon - 1pm. Spread the word.

Defeaning Silence On The Carbon Belching Elephant In The Climate Room

How lucky was I to be in action with family and friends at yesterday's Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice march in Portland, Maine. These powerful banners created by Ellen Davidson of Veterans for Peace in New York were trundled up to Maine by Ellen and Tarak Kauff, a VFP member who spoke at our Peace Hub preceding the funeral march for the cod.

Gigi, seen here helping grandpa and me hold the "Stop the Wars, Stop the Warming --People, Peace and the Planet" banner, held several signs throughout the course of the day. Gigi is a tireless social justice warrior whose mom, Selene Spivak, spoke at the end of the Peace Hub reminding us that the next generation is counting on us to leave a habitable world.

Videos of all the Peace Hub speakers will be available soon thanks to dedicated Peace Action Maine videographer Martha Spiess, and I will share them when I see them. For now here's a short video I made of Bruce Gagnon speaking about the need for conversion of the military-industrial factories to building sustainables: a win for jobs, a win for unions, a win for peace, and a win for the environment.

Maine Public Radio managed to cover the march without a whiff of the fumes constantly belching from the Pentagon's war machine. A glimpse of one banner did sneak in behind the dead cod puppet, but six hundred words was not enough to get "public" radio to mention the elephant in the global warming room. Their coverage was focused on the covert Democratic Party agenda for the entire climate march: register and get out voters. As if voting for Democrats would reduce Pentagon budgets and their CO2 exhaust, a bi-partisan problem that continues under any administration. ("Progressive" rep for Portland Chellie Pingree just voted along with Tea Party rep for the poorer half of Maine, Bruce Poliquin, to authorize the biggest Pentagon budget in history. Nuff said.)

The Maine Natural Guard was out in force yesterday reminding folks to connect the dots between militarism and climate change. Pictured here in our team shirt is Jason Rawn. Mary Beth Sullivan is wearing hers behind the banner, too, and Cynthia Howard rocked her shirt while holding this excellent banner which mimics the popular book series _____ for Dummies.

My remarks at the Peace Hub were excerpted from this excellent article by Stacy Bannerman, "Is Climate The Worst Casualty of War?" We handed out nearly 100 copies of Bannerman's article along the way of the New Orleans funeral-style march through Portland's downtown. And I continued to share these with high school students assembled at City Hall to hear many of their own, including water warrior Luke Sekera, who called out the Nestle Corporation for its theft of Maine's groundwater. Luke mentioned that he has been at this for seven years now. Yup, since he was 9 years old.

Colorful banners created by the Union of Maine Visual Artists' Artists Rapid Response Team (ARRT!) were everywhere, including this beauty created for and carried by the Maine Poor People's Campaign.

This national campaign -- founded to combat Martin Luther King Jr.'s evil triplets of racism, militarism and extreme materialism -- sees how all the pieces of our corporate oppression are connected.

It's time to stop pretending that the Democratic Party will do anything to save us.

Image: Anthony Freda

Racism Is What Makes U.S. Wars, Pollution Invisible To Those Who Fund Them

Houdieda, Yemen September 9, 2016. © Abduljabbar Zeyad / Reuters

Racism is what makes U.S. wars around the planet largely invisible to those who fund them. We've payed to starve and bomb the people of Yemen for years now courtesy of U.S. good buddy Saudi Arabia, but who among us could find Yemen on a map?

Racism is what makes many in the U.S. label anyone with the hint of Middle Eastern origin or culture a "terrorist" when it's obvious that our government and its military (and militarized police) are the worst terrorists ever.

It's what covers for NATO when it upsets regimes that are providing for people in ways that a few years later sound like the best of times: clean water, no power outages, and health care systems intact (think Iraq here).

A scene from Gaza last week shows how Israel uses U.S. taxpayer support in the form of millions annually in military aid.

Racism is what makes most U.S. taxpayers turn a blind eye to Israel's genocidal policies in Gaza and the West Bank. Last week Israel passed an apartheid law establishing itself as a Jewish state with its capital in Jerusalem, and it issues maps wiping Palestine off the Earth -- but most here in the U.S. side with white Zionists over Arab Muslim or even Christian Palestinians.

Racism is also what makes the most dire effects of pollution and climate change invisible to those who cause them. 

Malecon, Cuba beach cleanup

The people who live in the Dominican Republic and Bua are brown and black and speak Spanish, so who cares if "their" ocean is covered with trash, right? I would say put the indigenous grandmothers back in charge but sadly Taino/Arawak people were wiped out by genocide after Columbus landed here first.

Will racism lead most polluters to continue ignoring this problem because (for now) it presents in places where the population is mostly not white?

Map from Parley for the Oceans

Most people in the U.S. cannot see racism because they are white, and they don't believe they suffer from it.



Liberals will react with horror when the annual Unite the Right rally occurs next month in Washington DC, the very heart of white supremacist government. Last year's rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (which is nearby) resulted in violence against people of color and a white counter demonstrator being killed when a white nationalist drove his car into the crowd. Afterwards, the demagogue with bad hair said from the White House that there were some "fine people" in Unite the Right.

Racism is what keeps most white people silent, and allows a vocal minority to claim their hate speech represents majority opinion.


Sadly, that's not far from true. Brown, black and Native children have been torn from their families for years, and they have inter-generational trauma to show for it. Brown, black and indigenous families continue to suffer under the militarized terror regimes our taxes support.




A lot of jokes have been made about the so-called Second Civil War coming. This video of police officers brutalizing brown children in El Paso, Texas brought that phrase to mind for me. 

I think this is what the Second Civil War will look like: heavily armed state agents battling young people who scare them by not acting scared enough.


Unfortunately, most people in the U.S. will side with the highly militarized police when the time comes. So did the Germans. And look where that got them.

#MilitaryParade Is A Turning Point In Glorifying War At The Expense Of The Little Guys

1942 cartoon by Otto Soglow, creator of "The Little King" series.

Militarism in our day has come largely without pomp and circumstance. It's had more of a folksy flavor where rugged individualism is sold as the oxymoronic sizzle on the soldier. Video games, children's clothing and cell phone cases sell endless by war sporting, not gold braid, but camo.

When the Commander in Chief needs a photo op, he's likely to be seen rubbing elbows with the enlisted men, and "his" troops are more likely to be dressed up than he is.

But those were the good old days, when the U.S. dollar reigned supreme and the standard of living for citizens in the heart of empire was unsurpassed (as long as you didn't count Native people and people of color, that is).

Now comes the pomp to compensate for a treasury drained by borrowing to enrich war profiteers, and a populace without the means to get their teeth fixed or buy Grandma's insulin.

What could go wrong?

What $22M on a #MilitaryParade CAN buy:
•Hot meals for 220M Americans
•College tuition for 2200 students
•Opioid Rehab for 1500 ppl
•Adoption of 630 orphans
•An apartment for 220 homeless
•Suicide prevention for 22 Vets/day

What a $22M Military parade CANNOT buy:
•Respect

— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@MuslimIQ) February 7, 2018

Below is the latest collection of press clippings on what's going wrong in my neighborhood. 

Today my husband and others of the recently acquitted Aegis 9 will attend a legislative work session for LD17381, a bill to give the 5th largest "defense" contractor in the world, General Dynamics, a $60 million tax giveaway from the people of Maine.

This is in a state where 43,000 children are currently in poverty. A state where the poverty draft blows hard and cold, where per capita deaths in Afghanistan are always at or near the top of the list. A state where we've protested outside the gates of the shipyard building nuclear-capable destroyers many, many times while top brass rubbed elbows with our "representatives" from Congress inside.

Campaign contribution recipients pledge allegiance to General Dynamics/Bath Iron Works
at the christening[sic] of a Zumwalt destroyer in 2015.

"Ship of Fools: Tax breaks for BIW, World War III for us" by Chris Busby in the bollard

"Activists cry foul over General Dynamics stock buybacks" by Nathan Strout in the Times Record

"Stop Corporate Welfare at Bath Iron Works" by Regis Tremblay on Youtube



"Aegis 9 acquitted of trespassing charges, judge rebukes Bath's handling of protests" by Chris Chase in Midcoast Journal

By the way, here's how the cartoon I started this blog post with ends:

After the pomp is gone, in his private bedchamber, the emperor reveals that he's been using a false arm all along to fool the people.

True fascism is the marriage of government and industry, a union that characterizes the 21st century under either Democratic or Republican government. It's a story that doesn't end well.