Hating Bad Orange Man More Than Gaza Genocide You're Funding?

It's hard for me to understand how people could be more upset about the potential return of the bad orange man than about currently funding the pulverizing of children sheltering in a school. 

When I say pulverizing I mean the people who died at the Tabi'een School on August 10 were unrecognizable in death.

https://x.com/DrMadsGilbert/status/1822771505903882496

These days I often think of Orwell's, 1984, where he has the protagonist grappling with this conundrum: 

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. 

It's hard to make this happen without torturing someone, so our corporate overlords' long term strategy has been to control the evidence that reaches your eyes and ears. 

It's why shouting "Free Palestine!" at a campaign event for VP Harris will get you dragged away by security and dissed from the podium. Also threatened with the return of the bad orange man you love to hate.

If you've managed to get off the corporate news feed approved by the oligarchy, your eyes and ears have seen and heard evidence of horrifying things. Many of your neighbors and your old friends do not know these things because they rely on the New York Times or CNN or Fox to get "news."  

Trigger warning: sexual assault, violence targeting children

https://x.com/martyrabuh/status/1821305985509814650

For instance, the systematic torture of imprisoned -- including being sodomized, in some cases raped to death, by Israeli soldiers -- that is official Israeli policy.

https://x.com/OmarBaddar/status/1815428315915973042

For instance, the routine killing of children by snipers who know exactly who they're aiming at.

https://x.com/Glia_Intl/status/1819711401469894769

For instance, the epidemic diseases like polio ravaging Gaza as health infrastructure has been deliberately destroyed throughout the strip.

Displaced Palestinian children queue to for food distributed by aid organizations in Beit Lahia, Gaza. Israel's allies have condemned Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for calling the starvation of Palestinians "just and moral." Abood Abusalama/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images - Source: Newsweek

For instance, starvation and deprivation of potable water as a deliberate policy in Gaza.

For instance, the fact that U.S. factories make the bombs and the warplanes used to destroy Gaza, and U.S. taxpayers pay for them.

Hate is a thrilling emotion, and fear is a powerful motivator. Glenn Greenwald reminded us that Orwell described the "orange man bad" strategy aptly in Animal Farm where the ascendent pigs threaten the other animals with the prospect of the farmer coming back.

Corporate news constantly hypes the orange man as a threat -- but isn't his name being constantly in the "liberal" media a hint that he'll be elected again (and isn't that what all those trials were really about?). That's how he won in 2016 and how I knew he'd get the Republican nomination in 2024.

I hate fascist government and I'm scared of what it does to the most vulnerable (and, eventually, all of us). But none of the celebrities who are elevated to a position to be official spox scare me as much as the genocide they run interference for.

Empires Eat Children -- Change My Mind

This is a really depressing post, so let's get to it before the longest, darkest day of the year is upon us a week from now.

What got me started down this dark path is the news that presumed CIA spook Anne Sacoolas failed to appear for trial in the UK after she killed teenager Harry Dunn. The victim was doing nothing wrong, simply riding his motorcycle along on the road near RAF Croughton, used by the Pentagon as a spying outpost. 

Sacoolas, with typical imperial hubris, was driving on the wrong side of the road. 

Probably a simple tragic accident but Sacoolas turned it to a real crime by fleeing the country. It has taken Dunn's family three years to have their day in court but they were denied the opportunity to see justice: Sacoolas was acquitted of driving dangerously, convicted of driving carelessly, and received a paltry 8 month sentence which she will not have to serve if she kills no other kids in the coming year. Even if she did, the UK appears unable and/or unwilling to have her extradited to face charges.

Left to right: Anne Sacoolas & Harry Dunn

Her attorney's explanation for Sacoolas' failure to appear in court and hasty departure from the country following the accident: "diplomatic immunity." According to Sky News:

The court heard that she had been advised by American officials not to fly to the UK, as her return "could place significant US interests at risk".

If one of Sacoolas' own three children is murdered someday, I'm sure she will understand that U.S. interests will receive higher priority than bringing the family some justice.

Okay, so one evil lady and her enabling government. What's the other evidence for my claim?

JROTC students on parade

How about the news -- being treated as a blockbuster exposé  -- that teenagers in places like Detroit, Michigan (i.e. low income with a high proportion of students who are Black or otherwise of color) are enrolled in JROTC programs without their consent. Told if they ask that this Pentagon program requiring them to wear military uniforms and be shouted at by military personnel posing as "teachers" is mandatory. Which is a lie, but if your guidance counselor in 9th grade won't change your schedule after you request it, becomes a de facto truth.

I know you will be shocked to learn that the textbooks used in middle school and high school JROTC programs paint a rosy picture of the U.S. worldwide empire of military bases. And the intentions behind them.

If I'm not shocked it's because as a high school teacher for many years I organized against the presence of military recruiters in the lunch room, their access to students during the school day, and the allegedly mandatory ASFAB test harvesting demographic and knowledge base info on teenagers without parental consent. My state does have JROTC programs also though I never taught at a school that had one.

When you look up groomers in the dictionary what you should see is a military recruiter handing a teenager the gift of a cell phone. But, this word has been hijacked by right-wingers claiming teachers are trying to turn students gay or trans.

Left to right: Prince Andrew, American teen Virginia Giufrre at age 17, & Ghislaine Maxwell

Speaking of groomers, let's talk about Jeffrey Epstein's little black book of contacts none of whom have been outed or charged for actual pedophile crimes. Grooming is a key component of convincing teen girls to have sex with old, powerful men and the currently incarcerated Ghislaine Maxwell was in charge of that operation.

It's generally understood that Epstein (who supposedly committed suicide in prison when the guards fell asleep and the security cameras malfunctioned) and Maxwell worked for Mossad. Israel's international spy agency functions as an integral if secretive part of the U.S. imperial system of coercion. (Though NATO's war against Russia may be weakening this alliance.)

The black book names we do know about, most prominently Prince Andrew of the UK royal family, were only revealed because individual victims like the immensely brave Virginia Giuffre pursued legal action against her rapist. Before Queen Elizabeth II died the monarch had stripped Andrew of his honors and titles, and had UK taxpayers shell out a settlement presumed to be enormous.

Of course teenage girls in nations invaded by imperial troops do not even need to be groomed.

 They can be raped at will, then murdered along with their families to cover up the crimes.

My final piece of evidence: 

the U.S. Congress just voted $858 BILLION for next year's military budget.

Actual figures for 2021. The $858 billion is budgeted for 2023.

Meanwhile, 1 in 6 children in the U.S. are growing up in poverty. 

This makes them the poorest age group of any here in the heart of an empire hungry for cannon fodder.

Kleptocracy Loves Mercenaries, Who Love $$$$$

One of the billionaire families currently infesting what was once billed (but never fulfilled the promise of being) a government of, by and for the people has produced two dangerous individuals: Betsy DeVos, an uneducated education secretary, and her brother Erik Prince. He feeds at the public trough by supplying the Pentagon with an endless supply of mercenaries to kill people in other countries.

Both have been in the news this week.

Protesters at George Mason University in Virginia greeting U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos this week. Photo: Mike Theiler, Reuters

DeVos, a traitor to her gender, proposed new guidelines for handling rape on U.S. college and university campuses. Her new rules protect the accused and the college at the expense of young women who are sexually assaulted while trying to pursue the education that DeVos never got. The fact that she has not matriculated may explain why she is curiously devoid of empathy toward victims of this all too common trauma. (Actually, its probably her inherited billions that have rendered her devoid of empathy.)

Anyone who has been to college knows someone who was raped there. As a 30-something friend of mine observed, "I can't believe _____ has that job now! In college, I wouldn't have trusted that guy to hold my drink."

Even more menacing than the defender of rapists is the mercenary Prince.

Blackwater catapulted to fame following the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad in 2007.

His firm changes its name regularly to evade responsibility for atrocities conducted amid the fog of debt-financed war. Blackwater created atrocities in Iraq, then morphed to Xe Services, now Academi. No matter what his corporation is named, taxpayers for generations to come will be helping to pay to satisfy Prince's greed.

In Afghanistan, the demagogue with bad hair is threatening to privatize the military forces the U.S. keeps there because what we're currently doing 17 years in "isn't working." Note: it's working fine for those who profit from war. But, no, the U.S. hasn't won the hearts and minds of many Afghan people, and the Taliban continues to expand its control of territory. Suicide bombings in Kabul recently killed scores of civilians -- including young people taking an exam.

Maybe Kabul will be Prince's Waterloo. No foreign invaders have ever succeeded in subduing the indigenous population of Afghanistan, earning that mountainous country a reputation as "the graveyard of empires."

But a for-profit corporation isn't an empire, is it? The longer the endless war on "terror" continues, the better for Prince and his cronies.

Zara Ibrahim, head of the Association of Women Against War, in her office, Agadez, Niger, January 2018. Photo: Joe Penney. Source: The Intercept

The U.S. empire though, that's another story. It's building a $100 million drone base in Niger as I write these words, and in fact drone attacks on civilians are at an unprecedented high. Also the other corporations that profit from war are doing a booming business selling, for instance, the bombs that Saudi Arabia rains down on starved and cholera infected children in Yemen.

Federal employees won't get a raise this fiscal year, but executives for war profiteers will get hefty bonuses and new yachts.

Maybe Prince will get the contract for the Space Force that the demagogue has promised. This has alarmed people not paying attention to the fact that the U.S. has been dominated outer space with military hardware for years now, trying to project "full spectrum dominance" of the sky.

Onward, kleptocracy.

Join concerned citizens of the world during Keep Space for Peace week sponsored by the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

October 6-13, 2018

Keep Space for Peace Week

International Week of Protest to

Stop the Militarization of Space

No Space Force

No Missile Defense

Close U.S./NATO Bases Worldwide

Stop Drones Surveillance & Killing

End Privatization of Foreign/Military Policy

Convert the Military Industrial Complex

Deal with climate change and global poverty

Local Events List in formation

·       Asheville, North Carolina (Oct 6-13) Ken Jones (VFP) will make the poster image of Trump Vader with the No Space Force message into a sandwich board and walk through downtown Asheville for an hour each day during Keep Space for Peace Week. Will pass out informational flyers and talk with whomever is moved to engage.         kwjj1949@gmail.com

·       Bath Iron Works, Maine (Oct 6) Vigil across from administration building on Washington Street (Navy Aegis destroyers outfitted with “missile defense” systems built at BIW) 11:30-12:30 am   Smilin’ Trees Disarmament Farm (207) 763-4062

·       USAF Croughton, England (Oct 6) No Space Force march & rally at main gate of U.S. satellite communication and joint intelligence base. Space communications, drones, bomber guidance, missile defence and command & control functions.  12-4 pm. Oxfordshire Peace Campaign, oxonpeace@yahoo.co.uk

• RAF Fylingdales, England (Oct 6) Walk around the US and NATO missile 'defence' radar on the North Yorkshire moors. See www.yorkshirecnd.org.uk  and check with info@yorkshirecnd.org.uk  or phone 01274730795 for details.

Space Week Co-Sponsor: Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom, U.S. Section

Resources:

·       Find our full-size space week poster at http://www.space4peace.org/actions/Keep%20Space%20for%20Peace%20Poster%202018.pdf 

•  Space videos for viewing and sharing available at:  http://www.space4peace.org/videos.htm

Sample Letter to Editor:

Dear Editor,

We must stop Trump’s ‘Space Force’ proposal which is provocative and highly expensive.  How about instead we fund National Health Service for all, ensure Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are fully funded and begin to deal with our real problem – climate change?  We don’t need an arms race in space.

 

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org 
http://space4peace.blogspot.com  (blog)

"Men, Don't Skirt The Issue. Speak Up, Support Women"

Love these rape protesters in India. Their clothing and signs respond to nonsense about skirts causing rape. The tactic is both effective communication and fun. Who wouldn't want to photograph this and share?

Comments on a facebook posting were awesome also.

One observed that their mothers and sisters wear skirts, but that does not make guys want to rape them.

Good point, but here's an even better one:

Here is how my culture wants young men of this age to look:

But the young men in skirts look genuinely more heroic, do they not? Not to mention more aesthetically pleasing. They look like real men, not pumped up steroid mannequins.

Leadership from young men will be the most important factor in changing rape culture. Thank goodness there are brave hearts to carry the work forward.

Here is another great communication on the subject, in two parts:

Patriarchy Spiraling Down, In Its Death Throes

The bad effects of having so little representation of feminist values in the cabals that make decisions that all of us must live with are increasingly evident.

The rape of the Earth, as in this Hellish operation in North Dakota, or as depicted in this map of fracking accidents, are just two examples of an enormous global problem.

source: EarthJustice.org "Because the earth needs a good lawyer."

The superheating of the planet is evidence of patriarchy in action, as in this example where Australian children and their grandmother cling together in a body of water to escape temperatures so high they required a new color on the weather maps.

photo source: AP Photo/Holmes Family

Guarded over by their grandfather who is taking the photos, it is fitting that they have the appearance of white Europeans who took over land stewardship in the fragile ecological system of Australia that had endured since African descendants arrived on foot over 30,000 years ago.

White European culture is all about patriarchal control. That's why it must fund vicious misogyny in the Middle East, to make itself look benign by comparison (and create the chaos that enables resource grabbing, of course).

Top down management has resulted in governments that are the best corporate lobbyists can buy, corporations that destroy the very ground they live upon in order to generate short term profits.

Another of its results: rape culture.

I blogged earlier this week about the Oscar-nominated film The Invisible War, which is about decades of rape culture in all branches of the U.S. military. It's a pattern of abuse.

Arundhati Roy speaks eloquently of the class and gender politics in India that result in New Delhi being known as the rape capital of the world even prior to the gruesome rape and murder of a female medical student kidnapped along with her escort by a van posing as a bus.

Now comes the hacktivist collective Anonymous with a full release of the Steubenville rape video which constitutes part of the online evidence of gang rape of a drugged 16 year old girl by members of a high school football team. Others, most notably blogger Alexandria Goddard, have offered the rest of the evidence including a photo of the girl being carried as if she were a slain deer. Carried from party to party to be raped repeatedly.

And then the bragging began. You can read DemocracyNow! reporting on it, or view the full 12 minute video of braggart here.

Many who have viewed the video warned that is is revolting, best viewed in small doses. I found it disturbing but less than shocking. For one thing, there are protests off camera from more than one young man objecting to the de-humanizing statements being made, urging the braggart to develop his empathy.

I've been around adolescent males much of my life, so his attitude is not too surprising. What struck me is that it could be used as a textbook study of bullying and what fuels it: the show-off who thinks he is hilarious, enabled by the sycophant (in this case the boy behind the camera) who laughs at everything whether funny or not, and eggs the bully on when he starts to wind down, and fuels the whole performance with his adulation.

From working in schools I know that current thinking on bullying is that, while bullies must experience consequences, don't make the mistake of thinking that will stop bullying. Sadistic behavior is its own reward, and is often addictive (a point made tellingly in The Invisible War). It is the bystanders who hold the key to disrupting the dynamic; the victim often does not have the resources to stop it -- unless he goes home and gets his older brother's shotgun, as happened in the latest school shooting, at Taft High School in California.

So here's the connection to patriarchal culture: the prevalence of hyper-masculine violence as entertainment and glorification of our way of life is the very air the current crop of jocks and soldiers have breathed from infancy. All human beings have both violent and compassionate impulses. Which ones does a culture support and develop? Winner take all, eat or be eaten, dog eat dog, alpha males intimidating their so-called inferiors -- women, children, and "weaker" males by definition -- are the signature style of the sick culture of the U.S. Empire and its outposts.

Commandeering the airwaves to drown out other voices is just one aspect of the problem, albeit a very powerful one.

Seeing the women who sell out to become mouthpieces of such a system is just sad. Check out The Invisible War segments of Susan Collins or Chellie Pingree or DOD spokeswomen to see what I mean.

Seeing the men who are the refuseniks -- Bradley Manning, the husbands and fathers in The Invisible War, or the hacktivist "X" who leaked the Steubenville brag video confirms what we all know -- there is much goodness in men as individuals. It is the sick system allowing sadistic alpha males to control our common resources that is the underlying and very real, very urgent problem.

It is time for patriarchy to step down before this planet is no longer habitable. It is time for all who hold feminist values to withdraw our cooperation from this system.

If you are in Maine or nearby, consider joining a Feminist Values GA-style discussion in Augusta on Saturday, January 26 at the Pine Tree State Arboretum. Small groups of diverse people will discuss how to free ourselves collectively from the death grip of patriarchy. This is 19th in a series of Changing Maine Gatherings. More details are here.

Revised 5:10pm EST - Could not resist including this bit of evidence from the ongoing disaster of NATO/US occupation in Afghanistan where soldiers have murdered, raped, desecrated and pissed on corpses -- among other crimes:

Karzai confident he can get U.S. troops immunity

"Hidden under the blue scarf, her eyes are black with hot shouting"

Photo: Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty Images

Revisiting the Afghan Women's Writing Project as part of my research into the real state of affairs in that NATO infested country, I found this gem posted December 6, 2011 by an anonymous member of the Kabul Writing Collective:

Violence Against Women Feels Like…

Violence burns like a piece of wood in the wood stove
Hidden under the blue scarf, her eyes are black with hot shouting

Sounds like there has been a lot of "progress" for women doesn't it?

Here's another author, writing in January, 2010 I Am For Sale, Who Will Buy Me? about her struggle to escape a forced marriage: "Running away is not an option because girls who run away here are raped by men and spend years in jail, and I am not such a girl."

Overblown claim? Not according to MADRE's December, 2011 blog post "US No Help to Afghan Rape Survivors."

And a recent Al Jazeera article on photographers in Afghanistan included the shadowy portrait of just such an unfortunate woman -- raped, and then jailed for adultery. (All under NATO's "protection" of course.)

Farzana Wahidy published this photo which Al Jazeera ran with the caption "An Afghan woman in Parwan prison, convicted of adultery. Wishing to remain anonymous, she says she was raped by a man in her neighborhood, and gave birth to her child in prison."

In a related article, "Q&A: Al Jazeera meets photojournalist Reza", author D. Parvaz wrote:  

After witnessing inequality, veteran photojournalist Reza started Aina, a media training NGO to empower Afghan women...

Parvaz: What is the future for women in Afghanistan? 

Reza: It will be very tough. They were given false signals by the coalition forces that they would get freedom - same for Afghan men, but women suffered more.