Homeland Insecurity
Philip Farruggio
Well, once again we have Veterans Day upon us. With it comes the preponderance of overt militarism and military propaganda.
Tune into any sporting event on the boob tube and you get the camouflaged soldiers and ROTC students (if a college game) staring into the camera. After all, aren’t we at war, and have been for so long that the late great Gore Vidal named it ‘Perpetual War’?
What in the hell reason can the Pentagon and our War Economy have for making them dress in camouflage!?
Isn’t that for when they are in the battle zones? Or perhaps they are getting us all ready, we the suckers… sorry, we the voters, for when the **** becomes too toxic and they declare martial law? Am I just a cynic or conspiracy nut, or is that not too far on the horizon?
They already want to clamp down, legislatively, on street protest, which, in case you Neo-Cons out there forgot, was what Ben Franklin labeled dissent as “The lifeblood of democracy”.
It is bad enough that the Neo-Cons and what should be labeled the real Deep State did when they came up with the term Homeland after 9/11.
They most likely wanted to use the term Fatherland but Joey boy Goebbels already patented it to give Hitler’s suckers.. sorry, voters, something to rally behind. It worked… in spades!
So, the Bush/Cheney Cabal and their handlers needed to get us in line, replete with a sea of flags hanging from our garages and lapels, as they did their Shock and Awe destruction of Iraq. Don’t forget John Yoo and Jay Bybee’s authorship, with Fredo Gonzales’s sign off, on the legitimatizing of torture, with their ‘End Run’ of the Geneva Accords.
Just as with the carpet bombing of Iraq and the illegal occupations of both Iraq and Afghanistan, the ‘Colors of camouflage’ spontaneously generate throughout the world. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Bush, an Obama or now a Trump in the White House… Perpetual War continues at taxpayer and innocent civilians’ expense!
Is that the only purpose of this column? No, it just helps to explain why the precious ‘Safety Net’ that was stronger for so many generations is now shredded each and every day.
Take the news stories about the homeless tent cities that ‘color in gray’ the landscapes of major metropolitan cities, and even smaller towns nationwide.
Recently the city of Las Vegas, with a Democratic mayor and city council, passed an ordinance banning those tent cities of the homeless.
Now, only a moron would disagree that many of those folks are in need of mental health aid. The remainder are either too broke to afford the higher costs of housing, and or are substance abusers in need of rehabilitation and counselling. Can’t happen folks! No funding!
Yet, many of us suckers…sorry, voters…keep supporting the increases in those camouflaged uniforms.
Perhaps Uncle Sam could sign up the homeless and put them in camouflage. At least then they would have great medical care and psychological counselling, three squares a day and a clean bed to sleep in… all on your dime!
Isn’t Perpetual War great?
Jay Bybee became a US Circuit court judge; John Yoo teaches at the U. of California at Berkeley; Fredo Gonzales is the Dean of Belmont University College of Law and teaches Constitutional law. Where is the outrage!?
Or is Amerika some Woody Allen film?
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/13/democrats-handled-the-impeachment-hearing-like-pros-republicans-less-so
‘It seemed quite clear to the congresspeople themselves that the Republican party was having a very bad day. When the Republican members spoke, they tended to yell and conspiracize, accusing their Democratic colleagues of unfair treatment and condemning the process. They were not so much trying to exonerate the president as trying to perform for him as he watched on TV. The Democrats, meanwhile, were calm, speaking in smooth tones, refusing to take the bait offered to them by Republicans, and on the whole, using their time with great efficiency. They were in uncommonly good form, and seemed in quite good spirits. Things were going exactly as they planned.’
———-
I watched it – that is the opposite of what I saw.
Kent came across as a tetchy smart arse. The Ambassador as some old school homely version of one who couldn’t be left alone to look after a pet, conducting an imaginary orchestra with his hand while trying to stick to the story.
The Dems case is
1. American exceptionalism above all else and perpetual war.
They can interfere in Europe, they can poke the bear in its own cave, they can encourage a deadly civil war with serious munitions. They can try and get Russia to intervene with their Red Army. They can buy the Poles and Hungarians to get involved and so rip apart the Ukrainians for the purpose of THEIR INTERESTS – The interests if US corporations and MIC – ONLY.
Who the fuck did they get permission to do that from?
Not me in Europe. Not my interests. Not EU interests.
Not only that they FAILED. Russia didn’t invade. There is NO war against RUSSIA.
There IS however a CIVIL war which they created between their eastern and western territories
There is no packaging up of Ukraine territory into Polish and Hungarian parcels as planned.
The Ukrainian people have been led up the garden path, their natural resources handed to US corporations. They have been loaded up with onerous loans and they are divided like Cyprus or Ireland.
It is going to be a while before they realise peace and reconciliation within themselves just because they bought into the great lie they would be some great emergent power …idiots.
2. The second strand they know it is obvious they have been caught red handed with the DNC/ Clinton DS conspiracy against ‘candidate’ Trump and thence to President Trump.
The route seems to be to extend that all the way to their ex president Obama. So that a equivalency can be put as defence. In short the game plan is :
‘If the anti-Trump conspiracy and actors are to be legally dealt with, then Trump will be impeached for doing the same thing!’
Candidate Trump was targeted using US/UK/Ukrainian (et al) intelligence covert operations at the highest level. This was done for the benefit of Secretary Clinton – using the all powerful state agencies – in an attempt to fix the general election in her favour – From Sanders kiboshing, it’s cover up,to full blown treason.
So the Democrat line runs :-
‘If you let Trump have his executive privilege to demand that the conspiracy be revealed and not impeach for working against a rival in the next election. Then that means Obama also was right to order the conspiracy against candidate Trump.’
The lie is that there is no equivalence between the actions of the Obama Administration – actually Clinton – against a possible nominee and then candidate, in the election and the actions of the Trump Administration against a possible Democratic nominee next year!
Exposing the graft of Biden and the ‘exceptional US interests’ in the pillage of Ukrainian resources and Hillary’s cover up using Ukrainians is not equivalent.
———-
So Hillary escapes to London and hides behind Obama, from all these hard questions, for having ordered the conspiracy for HER benefit not Obamas.
The whistleblower who is not anonymous is not produced.
No wonder the wide eyed Schiff looks terrified that the whole cart will topple any second at all times as they choreograph the ‘Democrats look relaxed’ narrative.
Spot on summing up. Dungroanin
If by some chance President Trump gets a second chance at the White house. and he gets elected. [going by the people in the UK, we are fed up to the back teeth with professional self-serving politicians] Then he should go for the funding details of Obama and Clinton [Mrs] making it his main policy.
The Democrats will be too busy covering their collective arses to giv him any more bother.
As for the EU, anyone’s guess? My view is an alliance with Germany and Russia [German money and brains not forgetting Russian brains and brawn [nukes and gas]
China is well on the way to controlling its section of the planet, by bribery, coercion and f that fails carrot and stick.
US with Trump can fall back to isolationist views and gain full control of its neighbours [enhanced Munro Doctrine]
The world settles back to it three tier power system. The only cloud on the horizon is Arabia and Persia. Political/Radical Islam. Maybe they can cancel each other out [using weapons of choice supplied by Russia/China/US] With the right incentives then all the radical Muslims can go help out, whilst the non-radical Muslims can decide that religion serves very little good and become a hard working part of the three tier power system.
Not to forget the UK, will become the US lap dog or integrate fully within the EUSSR.
Don’t let them use you – don’t enlist.
Check your favourite company, who supplies the military, in a search engine with ‘XXX+BlackRock’. They’ve got their fingers in every pie i checked.
But the emissions that the military production causes are not even here https://www.blackrocksbigproblem.com/
Philip, some good points, but despite the large numbers of Americans living in grinding poverty, or in one of the tent cities, or even struggling to pay their power bills, I don’t see mass outbreaks of protests all over the U.S, like, say in France or Chile.
If people are in so much economic pain, why arn’t they out in the streets banging pots and pans today. Or last week. Why?
Goebbels…. Or more specifically, the relentless propaganda, 24/7 in every form of media (including Hollywood obviously) and a highly jingoistic nationalism, and where its drummed into Americans that: Our brave boys and girls are defending freedom and democracy and… ‘Our way of life’. Why else would the military appear at sports events?
In Australia too, increasingly loud voices calling for a crackdown on street protests. The loudest voices are coming from the presstitutes at Murdochs rags along with the right wing shock jocks.
The world becomes ever more dystopian and surreal.
‘If people are in so much economic pain, why aren’t they out in the streets banging pots and pans today. Or last week. Why?’ – the short answer is that anyone who questions America’s violent culture is quickly marginalised or labelled as suspect.
Its embedded in US history, dating back to the extermination of native Americans, enslavement of blacks, building alliances with Nazis after WWII, dropping nukes on a defeated nation and having their way with numerous countries across the globe from Korea, via Latin America and Viet Nam to the Middle East and Africa.
The violence is manifest domestically as well, so that things like school massacres, high rates of imprisonment and endless economic pressure on those at the bottom of pile have become little more than grist to the mill.
All the while the MSM cheer on the status quo.
Take health care: any American who doesn’t support a system that costs twice that of the NHS, excludes millions of citizens, fosters financial misery, including high rates of bankruptcy because of unpaid health care bills is a ‘commie’
And as we all know one thing that puts an immediate end to logic or reason in the land of the free are accusations of being a commie.
Its a short clip but one that encasulates the mind set of the right and the problems that stem from hard core apologists who prefer to see swathes of the population harmed (both at home and abroad) rather than accept the externalities of a corrupt system with deep roots built on injustice.
It has reached a stage were the MSM imply it is almost unpatriotic to protest about the derranged behaviour of America’s elite so that the likes of Ellen Degeneres is quite happy to hi-five with George Bush even though Chelsea Manning is being tortured.
Who can argue that the party’s infamous maxim (in 1984) is in any way out of place in the USA?
“WAR IS PEACE / FREEDOM IS SLAVERY / IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”
Appreciate this Harry, including the Jimmy Dore clip, thanks. It’s pretty similar mindset here in Australia, especially after abt 35 years of full bore Neoliberalism. The haves…. and the have nots. And a very noticeable Murdoch presence.
Cheers, Gezzah, just wanted to respond to your post which sums up a lot of our frustrations
And I will respond to you Harry – you are a gem !
Another Jimmy Dore fan – I’m with you there – and purleeeeeze ! don’t start me on Rachel Maddow, Debbie Wascherman Shultz, Meghan McCain or Chris Hayes !
The war on petrodollars is coming and sadly, America is going to lose.
The real tragedy is that the 0.01%ers have already salted their fortunes all over the globe and are quietly upping sticks to leave behind the nation they betrayed to get even richer.
Wars against nations is antiquated. What is needed is wars against ueberbillionaires and their lackeys.
The fight is not between nations and their people. The fight is between rich and poor.
The rich need to be eaten.
Only after they have been locked away and educated – for the safety and security of all. . . .
The Man from Uncle left his calling card in Raqqa, as in the other places which he came to save:
“RAQQA VICTIMS OF UNCLE $CAM
Dug out of rubble, buried in mass graves: 4,000 mainly women, children & elderly
at farm near pediatric clinic and National Hospital; 2,500 in burial site near Al-Panorama; bombing raid victims.
“The letters to the UN stressed that to date just TWO PERCENT of the rubble had been cleared away in Raqqa, which had been literally razed to the ground,” Maria Zakharova emphasized.
This hideous chapter is not written yet. It may rival Mosul, where an estimated 40,000 Iraqis were bombed to death.
https://tass.com/politics/1029851
[It certainly dwarfs Mai Lai, the archetypal Vietnamese village which The Man from Uncle ‘had to destroy in order to save it’. Mai Lai to Raqqa mark a long and shameful road: they are what those few thousand post-Vietnam U$ soldiers buried under their neat rows of memorial crosses died doing.]
Conveniently, the MSM presstitutes report these mass graves to be from Saddam Hussein. As if it would make up for the missing WMD. “Even new born babies…” were tossed in.
What comes when disgust doesn’t cut it anymore?
The present US needs Homeland insecurity to keep their only substantial industries running: the military hard and software. US CEOs exported all other industry to more profitable locations like Japan, China or now Vietnam remember?
Security would threaten their huge partially secret budgets, so constant fear is vital.
Now a nation like Xi-China is copying that sable rattling behaviour. Let these two giants exhaust each other’s economies for the peace of the rest of us. Let them have a cold war, not a hot one.
Outrage is as counterproductive as rage is. Americans are classically conditioned to express rage over sports teams and sports figures. Most of the time outrage is directed at managers of sports teams and owners expectations. Today, all the outrage is directed at incompetent sports teams and their incompetent management but the politicians are invariably no go zones for establishment newspapers and their myriad on-call hacks that are known & trusted political adherents.
Everyone is vetted years in advance of being made a public persona or figure. The Military Industrial Complex now vets their own brand of adherents like Tulsi Gabbard.
Sports half time shows in the USA all promote adherence towards the MIC and their trained mass murderers that are dressed in typical camouflaged attire to promote an image of uniformity of purpose & directives. The directives are to subjugate taxpayers to the state oligopoly of overarching aggression towards all & any that would undermine that self-ordered authoritarianism which is always directed by the state at the behest of those holding wealth.
The bigger the bullshitters the harder they fall.
America ain’t doodly squat.
On the other hand, my gal is real hot.
MOU
For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky (it’s a Star Trek episode).
Not one of their best. I preferred “The Day Of The Dove” in which an invisible alien sneaks on board The Enterprise while it’s carrying Klingons. This alien feeds off feelings of rage and hate and constantly whips up strife between the Klingons and the humans. It even patches up those who are fatally wounded to restore them to full health so the fighting can go on forever. Sounds familiar?
They are here – based on deduction alone.
Camo BDUs became the uniform of the day, every day, everywhere, for the US military following the planned demolition of the towers in NYC and the missile attack on the Pentagon in WDC.
The US Navy went to wearing blue themed camo, what a joke. Hiding on a ship at sea.
Even the US Air Force has camouflage uniforms, as if they’re really needed while flying fighter jets against a blank background where visual features are usually temporary or constantly changing position and colour as the plane flies.
It’s about fleecing taxpayers by outfitting ‘the troops’ with cheap
new uniforms made in China/Vietnam/India and charging the
taxpayers shitloads for it. A business in itself.
They’re work clothes, we often see military personnel in them when they’re out getting lunch at a fast food restaurant. They’re practical, hard wearing and inexpensive. The people wearing them are typically Air Force, Air National Guard or Navy and while one or two are pilots, probably flying Hercules or similar transports, most are technicians.
Now, the reason why you’ll see service personnel wearing BDUs at sporting events on Veterans’ Day is actually quite practical. Its not an excess of patriotic zeal, its merely the fact they getting steep discounts for being in uniform.
The west is involved in these wars because we started them.
And the shitstream media perpetuate the lie. . . . .