Meditations On US Forces Firing A Howitzer Into The Empty Desert "Just To Say We're Here"
"U.S. forces firing a 155-millimetre howitzer twice a week into the surrounding desert, at no specific target, 'just to say we’re here,' one officer told me." caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/meditations-…
I saw a line in a recent New Yorker article about America's endless wars, and it's been been rattling around in my head ever since:
Tell me that's not the sexiest line you have ever read in your entire life. The poetical beauty! The ennui! The oh-so-relatable existential ache! Oh God, I need a cigarette.
And isn't it such a wonderfully concrete, in-your-face iteration of the meaningless struggle so many of us are going through in this decaying fustercluck of end-stage metastatic global capitalism?
If you think about it, aren't we all in our own way firing a 155-millimetre howitzer twice a week into the surrounding desert at no specific target “just to say we’re here”?
We are such silly, confused little ape mutants.
We could have paradise on earth; there's not one single valid reason why we cannot.
This world is so silly. So beautifully, insanely, bittersweet cup of extinction noodles silly.
We hurdle on a spinning rock we do not understand, through a universe we do not understand, made of particles we do not understand, and we behold one another in a field of consciousness we do not understand, and we shrug.
God I love us. I love us so much.
I really hope we make it.
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I don't write much about the individuals driving the oligarchic empire because individuals are not the problem, the system is. Right-wing conspiracy analysts prefer to focus on specific corrupt elites because they like to think if you just got rid of them, capitalism would work.
And it just wouldn't. If you rounded up and executed all the sociopathic ruling elites today but left our current systems intact they'd just be replaced tomorrow. A competition-based model where war, corruption, oppression and exploitation remain profitable guarantees this.
A lot of right-wing conspiracy analysis today ultimately boils down to "These bastards are ruining the capitalism!" But capitalism is already ruined, and ruinous. As long as it's profitable to destroy each other and our ecosystem, the ruin will continue. That is the real problem.
Intelligence Sources Say Biggest Threat To U.S. Is Actually U.S. Policy
"A new 'threat assessment' by the US intelligence cartel has named China the number one threat facing the United States today, followed by Russia, Iran, and North Korea." caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/intelligence…
This has of course led to blaring news headlines like this one from The New York Times, instead of something a little less propagandistic like "Here's who the CIA wants you to be afraid of in order to advance its geostrategic power agendas."
The report makes a bunch of evidence-free assertions which serve no purpose other than to help manufacture consent for the movement of expensive weaponry around the globe at the facilitation of unscrupulous war propaganda firms like The New York Times. fair.org/home/nyt-lamen…
Remember the time the Daily Mail ran an Assange smear featuring a photo of a clean bathroom and a dish he was actively using titled "ASSANGE INSIDE HIS FETID LAIR: REVEALED, THE FULL SQUALID HORROR THAT DROVE THE EMBASSY STAFF TO FINALLY KICK HIM OUT"? dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6…
It just shows so much about the power of narrative. They took a picture of a COMPLETELY CLEAN BATHROOM and a plate he was LITERALLY PRESENTLY EATING OFF OF, and because they captioned it with "SQUALID HORROR" and "FETID LAIR" people actually believed it showed evidence of that.
Just click this link and scroll through all the people sharing the Daily Mail article on Twitter as though it shows evidence of Assange being a bad houseguest at the embassy: twitter.com/search?q=https…
"Concerns are mounting from bipartisan US lawmakers and Afghan women's rights activists that the hard-won gains for women and civil society in Afghanistan could be lost if the United States makes a precipitous withdrawal from the country," CNN tells us.
What follows is yet another concern-trolling empire blog about why US troops need to stay in Afghanistan, joining recent others geared toward the same end like this CNN report saying the US can't withdraw or it will be sued by defense contractors:
Aspire to greatness,
but not the kind they teach you about in school.
Not the kind where you can all be astronauts and presidents when you grow up
so long as you "apply yourself" (whatever that means)
and other such nonsense.
Aspire to greatness,
but not the kind they teach you about in church.
Reducing US Military Spending Always Meets With Resistance; Increasing It Never Does
"A political establishment which thinks it's sane and moderate to increase a morbidly obese military budget is a crazy and extremist political establishment. " caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/reducing-us-…
Last year Senator Bernie Sanders led a public push to reduce the insanely bloated US military budget by a paltry ten percent. His push splatted headfirst against a bipartisan solid steel wall which shut him down definitively. theguardian.com/world/commenti…
Sanders' bill was killed in the Senate by a vote of 23 - 77, with half of Senate Dems stepping up to help Republicans stomp it dead. It's companion bill in the House was killed by a margin of 93 - 324, with a majority of House Dems (92 - 139) voting nay. defensenews.com/congress/2020/…