USA
The US Keeps Bombing People While Saying It Doesn’t Want To Fight
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/c884c974e22255af4465a1c43d77cd97/href
One of the weirdest things happening in the world today is the way US officials keep insisting that they are not at war with the groups they’re dropping bombs on in the middle east, and that they do not seek conflict with the people they are attacking.
Shortly after another massive round of attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen, Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder told reporters on Monday that the US is not at war with the group.
“We don’t seek an escalation with the Houthis. We’re not at war with the Houthis. We’re not seeking to go to war with the Houthis,” Ryder said.
The day before, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN’s State of the Union that “the United States also is not looking for a wider war in the middle east,” even as he refused to rule out direct attacks within Iran, and even as the US-backed war on Gaza has expanded to US bombing campaigns in Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
This is just days after President Biden released a statement saying “The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world” while the United States was in the process of dropping bombs on multiple middle eastern countries.
Ken Klippenstein on Twitter: "Pentagon Press Secretary today: "Our focus when it comes to striking Houthis targets is to disrupt and degrade their capabilities. We don't seek an escalation with the Houthis. We're not at war with the Houthis." pic.twitter.com/A2y3OXKHFX / Twitter"
Pentagon Press Secretary today: "Our focus when it comes to striking Houthis targets is to disrupt and degrade their capabilities. We don't seek an escalation with the Houthis. We're not at war with the Houthis." pic.twitter.com/A2y3OXKHFX
It’s just so surreal. It’s like someone running up to you and slinging punches at your face while screaming “I DO NOT WISH TO FIGHT! THIS IS NOT AN ASSAULT!” They wear a plastic smiling mask and pay lip service to peace while operating the single most aggressive and murderous power structure on this planet.
The empire has been doing this same freakish Nice Guy Axe Murderer schtick with Gaza. The Biden administration could force an end to Israel’s genocidal atrocities in the Gaza Strip at any time but are instead choosing to provide those atrocities with full unconditional support, and as they do this they’re simultaneously putting on a performance to suggest that they disapprove of Israel’s actions. The White House has expressed “concern” over the death and suffering of civilians in Gaza no fewer than twenty times as of this writing, yet has continued to back the Israeli onslaught without taking any concrete actions to make the death and suffering stop.
That’s what we’re seeing when Biden administration officials tell the press that Biden referred to Netanyahu as a “bad fucking guy”, or when Secretary of State Antony Blinken solemnly finger-wags at Israel saying the dehumanization of the October 7 attack “cannot be a license to dehumanize others.” They’re putting on a big show about opposing Israel’s crimes against humanity as though they are not enthusiastically facilitating those crimes. They’re acting like they’re a passive witness to the atrocities in Gaza when in reality they’re an active participant. They’re posing as the peacemaker while acting as the warmaker.
Antiwar.com on Twitter: "Report: US Military Advisors Deployed to Taiwan-Controlled Islands on China's CoastWhen asked to confirm deployment to #Kinmen, Pentagon told https://t.co/gQTCCELFzi it won't comment on military operations in #Taiwanby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #China https://t.co/7kN1pgQWcs pic.twitter.com/ZlDPPdjW7F / Twitter"
Report: US Military Advisors Deployed to Taiwan-Controlled Islands on China's CoastWhen asked to confirm deployment to #Kinmen, Pentagon told https://t.co/gQTCCELFzi it won't comment on military operations in #Taiwanby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #China https://t.co/7kN1pgQWcs pic.twitter.com/ZlDPPdjW7F
And now we learn that US military advisors have been deployed to Kinmen, a group of Taiwan-controlled islands so close to the Chinese mainland that in the late sixties giant loudspeakers were built there to blast anti-communist propaganda over the water into the PRC.
Contrast this move with a recent headline from The Times saying “China opens Antarctic base on America’s doorstep,” which will show up as self-evidently nonsensical to anyone who has ever looked at a globe. It’s taken as a given that the US is entitled to amass a military presence right on China’s coastline, but the idea of China establishing a presence literally anywhere on planet Earth is interpreted as extreme aggressions on “America’s doorstep”.
It’s almost a cliché at this point to say imagine if China did this to the US, but seriously. Imagine if China did this to the US. As one Twitter follower put it, at just three kilometers away the Kinmen islands are closer to mainland China than Martha’s Vineyard is to the coast of Massachusetts. If China came anywhere near amassing any kind of military presence that close to the United States, it would be considered an act of war and the US would attack immediately.
So the US is clearly the aggressor here. It has been rapidly surrounding China with war machinery in ways it would never permit itself to be surrounded by any rival nation, and doing so more and more aggressively by the day. But if at any point China decides that too many of its red lines have been crossed and it needs to act before it’s too late, the US will with absolute certainty have a melodramatic fit about China’s unprovoked attack on the poor innocent US military presence on its border.
Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "The Single Dumbest Thing The Empire Asks Us To BelieveThe dumbest thing the US-centralized empire asks us to believe is that the military encirclement of its top two geopolitical rivals is a defensive action, rather than an act of extreme aggression.https://t.co/LhZW6sQv9I / Twitter"
The Single Dumbest Thing The Empire Asks Us To BelieveThe dumbest thing the US-centralized empire asks us to believe is that the military encirclement of its top two geopolitical rivals is a defensive action, rather than an act of extreme aggression.https://t.co/LhZW6sQv9I
That’s exactly what happened with Ukraine. The US was fully aware that it was acting in an extremely aggressive and provocative way on Russia’s western border and that it was playing very dangerous games sending weapons to Kyiv while expanding NATO and ramping up cold war aggressions, and so were many experts and analysts who spent years warning that the west’s actions would lead to war. Yet when Russia finally attacked, the entire western political-media class began bleating the word “unprovoked” in unison.
This is the kind of bizarre two-step you have to do if you want to be the global hegemon with all the violence and tyranny that necessarily comes with the job while also needing to present yourself as the nice guy. The US empire exists at an oddly contradictory point in history when our society no longer considers it acceptable to be a might-makes-right strongman dominator, and yet that’s precisely the sort of disposition you need to have when you’re an empire held together by endless military violence and the threat thereof.
So you get weird nonsense like US officials bombing the shit out of the middle east while proclaiming they have no interest in war, and engaging in extremely reckless aggressions against nuclear-armed rivals while pretending they’re just innocent witnesses to unprovoked aggressions if those nations respond.
Their information interests require them to be the good guy, but their strategic interests require them to be the bad guy. You can already tell without looking that straddling these contradictory positions will result in absurdity, and looking at today’s headlines confirms it.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via U.S. Secretary of Defense (CC BY 2.0)
The Empire Depends On Our Unwillingness To Look At Its Crimes
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/ab44e7551a02d979a0aa099f4c717aaa/href
This entire sick dystopia is held together by psychological compartmentalization. By the fact that it’s more comfortable to avoid looking directly at the horrors of the status quo we live under, even though on some level we all know those horrors are there.
All the shitlibs you see cheering for Biden right now are on some level aware that he’s backing a genocide of unbelievable savagery that is inflicting unfathomable amounts of suffering upon our fellow human beings, but they avoid looking at this reality directly. All the information is right there right out in the open, but they cognitively squirm and twist away from it so that they see only Biden’s acts like slightly reducing America’s student loan debt and not being Donald Trump.
They do this because to really wrap their minds around the depravity of what Biden is doing would shatter their world. It would mean letting in some very scary truths about their nation, their government and their political system that they’d rather avoid noticing. It would mean a crushing deluge of cognitive dissonance until they dramatically revised their worldview into something that could allow for a Democratic president behaving like a complete monster. It would mean having to completely restructure their understanding of the world they live in.
That takes effort. It takes emotional labor. It takes a willingness to experience a high degree of psychological discomfort as you wade into the muck of reality to face the inconvenient facts you’ve been avoiding looking at your entire adult life. It takes a willingness to experience this unpleasantness not just intellectually, but emotionally and viscerally as well. You’ve got to look at it with your eyes and your mind and your heart and your guts. And you have to somehow find the time and psychological spaciousness to do all this in a society that is designed to keep ordinary people busy, tired, dysfunctional, and stressed out.
A vast globe-spanning empire is built on the foundation of how difficult it is to look directly at something that is extremely unpleasant to look at, about which you have been propagandized and indoctrinated your entire life into accepting as normal. In school we’re taught that we live in a democracy and that our government is basically good while other governments are bad and their countries are places you would not want to live in, and then in adulthood this false indoctrination is reinforced and built upon by propaganda from the mass media. Before we have time to learn how to think critically, we are spoon-fed a worldview designed by the powerful for the benefit of the powerful, and we will experience cognitive dissonance if at any time we are presented with information that contradicts it.
That’s the primary job of mass media propaganda: not so much to convince us to believe new stories about weapons of mass destruction or whatever, but to build and reinforce a worldview within us which is fiercely loyal to establishment power structures. That’s why the propaganda is served up in two different ideological flavors: one for the shitlibs and one for the rightists. You’re funneled into whichever mainstream, power-serving echo chamber best suits your conditioning and disposition, and then you are fed a power-serving worldview therein which you will zealously defend as the gospel truth.
It’s a highly effective trap, but it’s not inescapable. Anyone who’s ever escaped from an abusive relationship, a dysfunctional family or a cult knows that it is possible to find your way out of a psychological cage that has been built for you by a skillful manipulator, even if there were times in the past when you hadn’t even known the cage bars were there. The light of truth has a way of finding cracks through which to enter, and all it takes to start things off is a faint little glimmer.
We can fight the machine by creating as many of those cracks as possible, which in practice looks like doing everything we can to wake our fellow humans up to the abusive relationship we are in with the western empire. Finding as many ways as possible to show as many eyes as we can the murder, the injustice, the exploitation and the ecocide, not just intellectually but emotionally as well. Many of the indoctrinated are too far gone to be reached right now, or are too personally invested in the status quo they defend, but many others are right on the cusp of leaving the cult of the empire, ready to take the leap if they are just given a good enough reason to.
And to be clear, this is already happening. If this wasn’t already clear to you, Gen Z’s ferocious opposition to Biden’s butchery in Gaza should have driven this point home now. It is not a coincidence that the first generation to turn their backs on mass media indoctrination and start creating their own media and their own ideas is by far the best on Israel-Palestine right now. The humans have already begun shaking each other awake, and its happening most among the humans who are furthest from death.
Right now it feels like the empire is leaning very hard on our tendency to dissociate and look away. Their actions in Gaza look like they’re torturing someone to death in the town square and looking us all dead in the eyes while they do it, trusting that we’ll turn our gaze away and submit. But it isn’t working. People are looking more, not less. The western empire has never had more critical attention on it than it has right at this very moment.
Getting people to look at the empire’s real ugly face behind the mask of perception management is difficult to do, but it’s also the only thing we have to do. Once enough people start looking, the game is already over; it has already lost all its power. So please know that everything you do to help push this forward is making a very real difference. And please know that you are not alone.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Shutterstock.
However Bad You Think Israel Is, It’s Worse
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/93b896568a5fd9adb332188674fbbe45/href
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So it turns out the IDF has been running a Telegram channel featuring homemade snuff films in which Gazans are brutally murdered by Israeli forces, captioned with celebrations of the gore and pain therein like “Burning their mother… You won’t believe the video we got! You can hear their bones crunch.” The IDF had previously denied any association with the channel, but Haaretz now reports that it was directly run by an IDF psychological warfare unit.
This is one of those many, many times where Israel is so awful that at first you’re not sure what you’re looking at. You think you must be misreading the report. Then you read it again and go “Oh wow, that’s SO much worse than I would have guessed.”
However bad you think Israel is, you can always be sure that information will come out later that proves it’s even worse.
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Tucker Carlson has been spotted in Moscow, generating speculation that he’s there to interview President Vladimir Putin, and the liberal commentariat are losing their minds about it.
There’s no valid basis for westerners to object to Putin being interviewed by a western pundit. There’s no moral basis because Israeli officials have had unfettered access to a wildly sympathetic western press throughout four months of administering an active genocide. There’s no basis on the grounds that it hurts US information interests, because that would be admitting that US information interests depend on hiding information from the public about matters as basic as what a foreign leader thinks about his own actions, and essentially acknowledging that the western media are supposed to function as propaganda services for US military and intelligence agencies.
Every possible objection is also a confession about what the US empire and its media actually are.
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Americans: healthcare please
US government: Sorry did you say bomb Syria, Iraq and Yemen in facilitation of an active genocide?
Americans: no, healthcare
US government: Alright you drive a hard bargain but let’s go bomb Syria, Iraq and Yemen in facilitation of an active genocide.
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Biden isn’t technically lying when he says the US does not seek conflict in the middle east. The US seeks DOMINATION in the middle east, and would prefer to receive that domination willingly from submissive subjects. Only when middle easterners refuse to submit is there conflict.
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The US has never done anything good for the middle east. All it’s brought to the region is a bunch of murderous military operations and the nonstop murderous military operation that is the state of Israel.
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Setting up a bunch of military bases in countries on the other side of the planet and then going to war with anyone who tries to kick them out is pretty much the exact opposite of how a sane and ethical military would be used.
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US foreign policy is essentially one big long war against disobedience. Bombing, regime changing, starving and destabilizing any population anywhere on earth who dares to insist on its own self-sovereignty instead of letting itself be absorbed into the folds of the global empire.
They call different parts of it the Israel-Hamas War, the Iraq War, the War on Terror, but really it’s all the same war: the war on disobedience. One long operation to brutalize the global population into obedience and submission, year after year, decade after decade.
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When it comes to Israel the main difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives support Israel because they like it when Muslims get murdered while liberals support Israel because mumble mumble something something antisemitism Israel has a right to defend itself but we have serious concerns about the humanitarian HEY LOOK OVER THERE IT’S TRUMP!
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If the Gaza genocide had happened pre-internet it would’ve been a fringe issue hardly anyone knew about. The western press would have been able to get away with exponentially more cover-ups of Israeli crimes, western politicians would’ve been able to get away with way more lies about what’s really happening, Israeli officials would have been far less careful about their statements of genocidal intent in their own media, and the IDF would’ve been vastly more blatant and obvious about its extermination campaign.
It’s only because normal people are getting eyes into what’s really happening that this issue is subject to worldwide outcry and condemnation that has placed the empire on the back foot. The political/media class never does the right thing because it wants to, it does the right thing when it is forced to by normal human beings with healthy consciences. The fate of humanity rests on the ability of ordinary people to freely circulate truth.
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We’ve got a podcast coming out soon. Stay tuned.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.
Never Before Has The Empire Been So Exposed
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/e126e188b3b2ef376926a303565de8d6/href
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The Iraqi government says 16 people were killed in the latest round of US airstrikes in Iraq, including civilians. You might think 16 deaths as payback for three Americans killed by Iraqi militants would be more than enough, but you would be wrong. There will be many more.
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I’ve been railing against the US war machine for around seven years now, and never during that time have I had more westerners on my side than right now. Never has the depravity of the western empire been more starkly exposed in the cold light of day.
Usually perceiving the monstrousness of US foreign policy requires some knowledge and understanding, some background and context, and I’ve had to spend my time providing that so readers could see what I’m seeing. Now it’s just a deluge of massacred children appearing right on people’s social media feeds, with the US president proudly acknowledging that he’s backing it and bombing countries throughout the middle east to help it continue.
There’s not really any way for the imperial propagandists to spin that as anything other than what it is. They try (my god do they try), but not enough people are buying it. Too many people are looking right at the emperor’s shriveled nutsack in the cold morning air and saying “Hey wait a second, this bitch is ass dick naked!”
Everyone who opposes the US war machine has that one moment that snapped their eyes open, where they realized the media are lying to them and they’ve been cheering for the imperial stormtroopers this entire time. Syria. Libya. Iraq. Vietnam. There’s always something. And in terms of freshly opened eyes, this moment in history may wind up leaving the rest far behind.
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Top ten reasons people support Israel:
1. Their favorite political party supports Israel
2. They were taught to support Israel and revising your worldview is hard
3. They believe the media would never lie to them
4. They hate Muslims
5. They want Jesus to come back and send nonbelievers to hell
6. Their employment depends on it
7. They have a personality that always sides with power
8. They want to fit in socially with other people who support Israel
9. They hope to retire in an Israeli settlement someday
10. They want a career in politics or media
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https://medium.com/media/966a53a937d018148338f46d84b749dc/href
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Step 1: See the most horrific thing you can possibly imagine on your social media feed.
Step 2: Israel supporters show up to explain why the thing you just saw is actually fine and normal and should probably happen more.
Step 3: Repeat Steps 1 through 3, every day, for months.
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If Israel was the moral and responsible force it purports to be it wouldn’t need a huge army of paid and unpaid apologists running around all day every day explaining why its latest documented atrocity is fine/is being misunderstood/didn’t happen/is someone else’s fault.
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Israel has been the sole perpetrator of atrocities since October 7, so they keep “discovering” new atrocities Hamas perpetrated on October 7 to make it look less one-sided. Oh look they beheaded babies on October 7! Oh look there were mass rapes on October 7! Oh look UNRWA was involved in October 7! Etc.
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“Am Yisrael Chai” is a popular Hebrew political slogan which loosely translates to “Palestinians should not have hospitals”.
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Only liars and manipulators try to reframe criticisms of Israel as criticism of Jews instead of criticisms of the specific actions of a specific state power. Revealingly, both Zionists and neo-Nazis do this constantly.
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Get out of the middle east. Just get the fuck out. Stop backing a genocide in Gaza, stop murdering people to shore up domination of world resources, and leave. Leave before you unleash something far worse than the nightmare you’ve already inflicted upon our species.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.
Biden Says The US “Does Not Seek Conflict In The Middle East” While Actively Dropping Bombs There
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/35963cee17667815fb6c97d437a8adf6/href
The Biden administration has begun its latest bombing campaign in the middle east, reportedly dropping over 125 munitions on more than 85 Iranian and Shia militia targets in Iraq and Syria on Friday.
The mainstream press have been falling all over themselves to describe the strikes as “retaliatory” in nature, framing it as a provoked response to a drone attack which killed three US troops at a base on the border of Jordan and Syria. Which is a bit odd, given that this supposed “retaliation” is being directed at a nation which the US government itself admits is not known to have been involved in said drone attack at all.
While US Central Command says the strikes targeted “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and affiliated militia groups,” the US has already openly admitted that it has no evidence Iran was behind the drone attack. On Monday Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh admitted that there was no information showing that Iran had actually ordered or orchestrated the attack, saying only that Iran “bears responsibility” for the strike because it has been supporting such groups in the region. This position was later confirmed by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and by President Biden himself.
Michael Tracey on Twitter: "Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says "we don't know" how operationally involved Iran was in the January 28 attack that killed three US troops, "but it really doesn't matter" pic.twitter.com/j57JLFuirG / Twitter"
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says "we don't know" how operationally involved Iran was in the January 28 attack that killed three US troops, "but it really doesn't matter" pic.twitter.com/j57JLFuirG
Asked by the press on Thursday how much Iran knew in advance about the drone attack by Iraqi militants, Austin said “we don’t know, but it really doesn’t matter because Iran sponsors these groups.”
Austin was almost telling the truth. Yes it’s true the US has no knowledge of any Iranian involvement in the deaths of those three US troops, and yes it is true that it doesn’t matter to the US whether it did or didn’t. But the real reason it “doesn’t matter” has nothing to do with Iran sponsoring militia groups which align with its interests. In reality, “it really doesn’t matter” whether Iran was behind the attack because Iran is the most powerful non-US-aligned state in the middle east, and for that reason the US has spent generations seizing every opportunity to harm and subvert it and its interests in the region. This is just one more opportunity for the US empire to do what it always does in the middle east.
It is a bit odd, then, that the US president announced the beginning of this new series of airstrikes with a statement which claims “The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world.” Conflict in the middle east is what the US empire does. The entire US empire is held together by endless conflict, especially in resource-rich regions where strategic control is necessary to retain planetary hegemony. The US empire is conflict.
President Biden on Twitter: "Today, at my direction, U.S. military forces struck targets in Iraq and Syria that the IRGC and affiliated militia use to attack U.S. forces.We do not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world.But to all those who seek to do us harm: We will respond. / Twitter"
Today, at my direction, U.S. military forces struck targets in Iraq and Syria that the IRGC and affiliated militia use to attack U.S. forces.We do not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world.But to all those who seek to do us harm: We will respond.
Saying the US does not seek conflict in the middle east is like saying the Kardashians do not seek attention. It’s like saying Jeff Bezos doesn’t seek money. It’s like saying the Hamburglar doesn’t seek hamburgers. It’s kind of their thing. To make such a ridiculous claim while actively raining military explosives upon the middle east, in “retaliation” for an attack which the people you’re bombing didn’t even commit, is just extra icing on the cake of ridiculousness.
From Gaza to Iraq to Syria to Iran to Yemen, conflict in the middle east is the US empire’s bread and butter. The most murderous power structure on the planet continually paints itself as a poor little victim of any backlash against its abuses and as an innocent passive witness to the suffering it orchestrates, but nobody who’s involved in that many acts of violence has ever been interested in peace.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock.
Everything Israel Wants To Destroy Is Hamas
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/c2ca445ffa04fca9a630741b062a8eab/href
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UNRWA is Hamas. The hospitals are Hamas. The ambulances are Hamas. The journalists are Hamas. The schools are Hamas. South Africa is Hamas. People tweeting unfavorable things about Israel are Hamas. Basically everyone Israel and its supporters want killed is Hamas.
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Defunding UNRWA over a handful of alleged Hamas members who don’t even work there anymore makes no sense from a humanitarian perspective or a military perspective, but it makes a ton of sense from a genocidal perspective.
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Cutting off aid to the most aid-dependent population on earth would be a psychopathically monstrous act all by itself, even without having caused their extreme needfulness in the first place by backing a genocidal bombing campaign on a giant concentration camp full of children.
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The Pentagon has admitted that it has no evidence that Iran was behind the attack on a US base on the Jordan-Syria border which killed three American troops. The one and only reason the US government and its stenographers in the western press mentioned the word “Iran” a zillion times after that attack was to administer propaganda to manufacture public hostility toward a government long targeted for regime change by the US empire.
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Don’t talk to me about October 7. Don’t talk to me about hostages. I don’t care. I haven’t cared for months. Many, many times more Gazans are dying and suffering than the number of Israelis who died and are suffering. That means the death and suffering of Palestinians is much more urgent and matters much more than the death and suffering of Israelis. The only way to disagree with this is to believe Israeli lives are worth much, much more than Palestinian lives.
The longer the mass atrocity in Gaza goes on for the less tragic and worthy of sympathy October 7 becomes. It’s already been diminished to a fraction of the significance it once had, and it’s getting smaller and smaller as this nightmare stretches on. This is not the fault of people like me, it is the fault of the people conducting this genocide. You don’t get to murder tens of thousands of people and then demand everyone weep over you losing a thousand. That’s not a thing.
It’s so fucking obnoxious how Israel supporters keep acting like actions a tiny fraction as impactful as what’s been happening in Gaza are where all our sympathy and attention should still be going, nearly four months after the fact. Fuck all the way off with that idiotic bullshit.
All of Israel’s actions since October 7 have revealed why Hamas did what it did on October 7. This is the kind of murderousness and depravity Palestinians have been living under from the Nakba on. Israel is so murderous and depraved that one of the most common talking points of its apologists when responding to opposition to the atrocities in Gaza has been “Yeah, what did Hamas expect would happen? Fuck around and find out!” That’s not a sane or acceptable way for human beings to talk about acts of genocide and the butchery of thousands of children, but Israel apologists think it’s normal. Because that’s what Israel is.
In the eyes of the world, Israel has retroactively legitimized the acts of violence the Palestinian resistance has been inflicting upon it. It has legitimized those acts by showing the world its true face.
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You should never feel any sympathy for Israel, because Israel uses sympathy as a weapon. It uses weaponized sympathy to justify mass atrocities and endless abuses. When somebody’s using a weapon to hurt people, you take their weapon away. Stop giving Israel weapons. ANY weapons.
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Biden supporters literally believe the January 6 riot was worse than what their guy is doing in Gaza. They actually, truly, sincerely believe that. That’s how stupid and crazy party politics makes you.
Biden is doing all the very worst things Democrats claimed Trump would do if re-elected. If it had come out in 2020 that Trump was plotting a genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign in which his victims would be cut off from humanitarian aid, the shrieking from Democrats would have broken glass.
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It’s good to block virulent Israel supporters on social media, not so much because they’re bad people (though they are) but because they’re literally trolling for engagement with an acute awareness that time you spend arguing with them is time you’re not spending harming Israel’s image.
Like the astroturf NAFO op, Israel apologists are not merely reacting to posts they disagree with, they’re engaging in a conscious effort to protect the information interests of their prefered power structure and have a fleshed-out system and a working theory for doing so. They know that draining your time by dragging you into pointless debates and draining your emotional energy by saying things that upset you keeps you from spending your time and energy harming the information interests of their favorite ethnostate.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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More US-Driven Escalations Toward War In The Middle East
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/17b01bf81f8f701f3f648e2a2f0c1405/href
Well, it finally happened. The scores of attacks on US troops in the middle east in response to Israel’s US-backed atrocities in Gaza have resulted in American deaths, just as critics of US foreign policy have been saying would happen for months. At least now we can stop bracing for it, I guess.
Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp, among those who have long warned of this eventuality, writes the following:
“Three US troops were killed by an overnight drone attack in northeastern Jordan, the first Americans to die by enemy fire in the region since President Biden threw the US’s weight behind the Israeli onslaught in Gaza.
“According to CNN, one-way attack drones hit Tower 22, a small US outpost in Jordan near the Syrian border. Over 30 troops were also wounded in the attack.
“Since mid-October, US bases in Iraq and Syria have come under attack over 150 times in response to US support for the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. The overnight drone attack in Jordan appears to be the first time Tower 22 was targeted.”
Antiwar.com on Twitter: "Three American Troops Killed in Drone Attack in JordanBiden is blaming 'Iran-backed militants,' referring to Iraqi Shia militias, and might directly attack Iran in responseby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Jordan #Iraq #Syria #Iran #Gaza #drones https://t.co/iJxvgxFa5E pic.twitter.com/3YZgBbPxV7 / Twitter"
Three American Troops Killed in Drone Attack in JordanBiden is blaming 'Iran-backed militants,' referring to Iraqi Shia militias, and might directly attack Iran in responseby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Jordan #Iraq #Syria #Iran #Gaza #drones https://t.co/iJxvgxFa5E pic.twitter.com/3YZgBbPxV7
The Biden administration immediately claimed the attack was backed by Iran, with profoundly influential news agencies like AP and Reuters regurgitating this claim as established fact in their headlines immediately thereafter. As DeCamp notes in the aforementioned article, back in October a US official acknowledged to CNN that that there’s actually a “persistent intelligence gap” as to how much these Shia militias are in fact beholden to the orders of Tehran, but apparently this attack being linked to Iran is now being treated as established gospel truth anyway.
This attribution has allowed perpetually war-horny Republican senators Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton and John Cornyn to call on Biden to attack Iran directly. US officials actually told the press last week that Biden would consider direct strikes on Iran if and when the attacks on US troops led to American deaths, with The New York Times reporting the Biden administration knew it was “only a matter of time” before this occurred.
In a statement on the attacks Biden said the US “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner our choosing,” meaning yet another military escalation in the middle east is on its way under this murderous administration. A full-scale war with Iran would be the absolute worst-case scenario resulting from the violence which erupted in the middle east this past October, potentially with mass deaths on a scale that would make what’s been happening in Gaza look like child’s play.
Michael Tracey on Twitter: "Lacking any defensible justification for why the three dead US troops were in Syria/Jordan to begin with, the White House resorts to saying they were generically "fighting terrorism." Insult to everyone's intelligence, but that's to be expected for US foreign policy statements pic.twitter.com/V6NMRZQCY8 / Twitter"
Lacking any defensible justification for why the three dead US troops were in Syria/Jordan to begin with, the White House resorts to saying they were generically "fighting terrorism." Insult to everyone's intelligence, but that's to be expected for US foreign policy statements pic.twitter.com/V6NMRZQCY8
In that same statement Biden said the US troops who were killed in the “despicable and wholly unjust attack” died working “to fight terrorism”, which is of course ridiculous. People who live in the middle east have far more legitimacy attacking US troops in resistance to a US-backed genocide than US troops have in being in the middle east to begin with, and the US military presence they attacked is there to shore up geostrategic control, not to fight terror.
As Aris Roussinos explains in a new article for Unherd, the US base by the Jordan-Syria border that was struck by Iraqi forces functions as a support base for America’s al-Tanf garrison, a sprawling “deconfliction zone” (read: illegal military occupation) in Syria which the US has for years been using to disrupt Iranian activities in the region and help Israel carry out its constant airstrikes in Syria. “Fighting terrorism” is just the pretense for the US military presence in the region; as always, the real reason is to facilitate the geostrategic domination of the US empire.
Those three US military personnel didn’t die fighting terrorism. They didn’t even die advancing the interests of ordinary Americans. The real reason they died was summed up nicely by Responsible Statecraft’s Trita Parsi:
“They didn’t die defending US interests, they died defending Biden’s refusal to press Israel for a ceasefire. Their lives were put at risk by Biden to defend Israel’s ability to continue its carnage in Gaza.”
Parsi has spent months arguing that the only thing that can de-escalate the rapidly expanding hostilities in the middle east is a ceasefire in Gaza, since that’s what they all ultimately arise from. The massive increase in attacks on US troops, the Yemeni blockade in the Red Sea, the brinkmanship with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the skyrocketing tensions with Iran are all the direct result of Israel’s massacre in Gaza and the opposition thereto.
Instead of pushing for a ceasefire, the US is preparing to send Israel 50 fighter jets and 12 Apache helicopters in preparation for the next war while stepping toward the horrifying prospect of a hot war with Iran. Meanwhile Nancy Pelosi is saying there needs to be an FBI investigation into people calling for a ceasefire, because they might be Russian secret agents.
Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "pic.twitter.com/WLWwFrVPHd / Twitter"
pic.twitter.com/WLWwFrVPHd
Every US military fatality in the middle east is the fault of the US government for putting them there. US troops shouldn’t be in the middle east at all, and the US has no legitimacy in retaliating against efforts to kick them out of the region by the people who live there. Iraqi militias have 100 percent legitimacy in attacking US troops in the middle east during a US-backed genocide, and the US has zero legitimacy in retaliating.
To the managers of the US empire:
Get out of the middle east. Just get the fuck out. Stop backing a genocide in Gaza, stop murdering people to shore up domination of world resources, and leave. Leave before you unleash something far worse than the nightmare you’ve already inflicted upon our species.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
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Welcome To The Empire
Listen to a reading by Tim Foley:
https://medium.com/media/8f8260307141b80626897c59af28d0c2/href
Welcome to the empire
Where genocide is self-defense and peace rallies are genocide
Where war criminals are the victims and the hospitals are Hamas
Where calls for freedom are hateful and ceasefires are anti-semitic
Where civilians get called terrorists and real terrorists get Nobel Peace Prizes
Where the propaganda is journalism and the journalism is propaganda
Where the democracy is real and the apartheid is imaginary
Where the corporations are people and the people are corporate resources
Welcome to the empire
Whose bombs are humanitarian and whose provocations are invisible
Whose veterans are heroes and whose victims are forgotten
Whose wars are always just and whose enemies are always Hitler
Whose cause is always righteous and whose critics are always Russian
Whose sufferings are unforgivable and whose crimes are erased from history
Whose atrocities are always an unfortunate accident and whose enemies kill civilians for fun
Whose disastrous interventions are always innocent mistakes no matter how often they happen
Welcome to the empire
Ever the victim of unprovoked attacks from the people it has been strangling
Ever the shining city on a hill of human corpses
Ever the defender of the poor helpless plutocrats of Wall Street
Ever the savior of the families incinerated by missiles made by Raytheon
Ever the protector of natural resources in the soil of foreign nations
Ever the upholder of the rules-based order of a world with a boot on its throat
The empire loves you with a heart made of dollars and oil
The empire watches over you through your smartphone and your computer
The empire is your only friend
The empire is the only one who will ever love you
You can’t leave
You can’t get rid of the empire
If you get rid of the empire, this world could be taken over by tyrants
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Adobe Stock (formatted for size).
When Yemen Does It It’s Terrorism, When The US Does It It’s “The Rules-Based Order”
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/12c47f8e16fb959a69a20d33d51b0307/href
The Biden administration has officially re-designated Ansarallah — the dominant force in Yemen also known as the Houthis — as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity.
The White House claims the designation is an appropriate response to the group’s attacks on US military vessels and commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, saying those attacks “fit the textbook definition of terrorism.” Ansarallah claims its actions “adhere to the provisions of Article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” since it is only enforcing a blockade geared toward ceasing the ongoing Israeli destruction of Gaza.
One of the most heinous acts committed by the Trump administration was its designation of Ansarallah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT), both of which imposed sanctions that critics warned would plunge Yemen’s aid-dependent population into even greater levels of starvation than they were already experiencing by restricting the aid that would be allowed in. One of the Biden administration’s only decent foreign policy decisions has been the reversal of that sadistic move, and now that reversal is being partially rolled back, though thankfully only with the SDGT listing and not the more deadly and consequential FTO designation.
Antiwar.com on Twitter: "US Re-Designates Houthis as 'Specially Designated Global Terrorists'The designation will hamper aid deliveries and could complicate a peace deal between the Saudis and Houthisby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Yemen #Houthis #SaudiArabia #RedSea #Gaza https://t.co/6bXDM0MdiU pic.twitter.com/K8mj2itz2f / Twitter"
US Re-Designates Houthis as 'Specially Designated Global Terrorists'The designation will hamper aid deliveries and could complicate a peace deal between the Saudis and Houthisby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Yemen #Houthis #SaudiArabia #RedSea #Gaza https://t.co/6bXDM0MdiU pic.twitter.com/K8mj2itz2f
In a new article for Antiwar about this latest development, Dave Decamp explains that as much as the Biden White House goes to great lengths insisting that it’s going to issue exemptions to ensure that its sanctions don’t harm the already struggling Yemeni people, “history has shown that sanctions scare away international companies and banks from doing business with the targeted nations or entities and cause shortages of medicine, food, and other basic goods.” DeCamp also notes that US and British airstrikes on Yemen have already forced some aid groups to suspend services to the country.
So the US empire is going to be imposing sanctions on a nation that’s still trying to recover from the devastation caused by the US-backed Saudi blockade that contributed to hundreds of thousands of deaths between 2015 and 2022. All in response to the de facto government of that very same country imposing its own blockade with the goal of preventing a genocide.
That’s right kids: when Yemen sets up a blockade to try and stop an active genocide, that’s terrorism, but when the US empire imposes a blockade to secure its geostrategic interests in the middle east, why that’s just the rules-based international order in action.
U.S. Central Command on Twitter: "Today, in response to these continuing threats and attacks, the United States announced the designation of Ansarallah, also known as the Houthis, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist - Jake Sullivan, U.S. National Security Advisorhttps://t.co/D5d8MylujK pic.twitter.com/pSFUzCR7qk / Twitter"
Today, in response to these continuing threats and attacks, the United States announced the designation of Ansarallah, also known as the Houthis, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist - Jake Sullivan, U.S. National Security Advisorhttps://t.co/D5d8MylujK pic.twitter.com/pSFUzCR7qk
It just says so much about how the US empire sees itself that it can impose blockades and starvation sanctions at will upon nations like Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria and North Korea for refusing to bow to its dictates, but when Yemen imposes a blockade for infinitely more worthy and noble reasons it gets branded an act of terrorism. The managers of the globe-spanning empire loosely centralized around Washington literally believe the world is theirs to rule as they will, and that anyone who opposes its rulings is an outlaw.
What this shows us is that the “rules-based international order” the US and its allies claim to uphold is not based on rules at all; it’s based on power, which is the ability to control and impose your will on other people. The “rules” apply only to the enemies of the empire because they are not rules at all: they are narratives used to justify efforts to bend the global population to its will.
We are ruled by murderous tyrants. By nuclear-armed thugs who would rather starve civilians to protect the continuation of an active genocide than allow peace to get a word in edgewise. Our world can never know health as long as these monsters remain in charge.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
The appeal of Trump
Heather Cox Richardson, in her Letter from an American this morning (subscribe here, for free) summarised Trump's appeal rather well:
White evangelicals heartily endorse a crook and a rapist apparently because they expect that he will put in place the world they envision, one controlled by white, patriarchal evangelical Christians.
Robert Reich suggests that it is the 30% left behind in the US Rustbelt and Midwest who support him simply because they have no one else who tries to appeal to them.
There is a lot of overlap in these groups, of course.
It does not mean that he isn't very dangerous.
The question is, can the Democrats persuade the rest to vote for an elderly, unpopular incumbent? On that the fate of US democracy hangs.