Apocalypse Joe says USA "still beacon to the world"

Biden claims US is still a beacon to the world... sure thing, Joe! 10,000 migrants wading across the Rio Grande every day can't be wrong! Biden’s speech from the Oval Office last night was an unofficial declaration of WWIII. We must not waver in our support for Ukraine. And we can never ever waver in our support for the Chosen People. Ergo, we must gird our loins for the coming battle against evil-doers. Airy-fairy shit like the Climate Crisis is obviously gonna have to wait. We are embarking on the ultimate struggle between good and evil, and if you think we’re not the good guys, you’ve obviously been poisoned by Putin’s propaganda. Meanwhile, reports were already coming in about missile attacks on illegal US outposts in Iraq and Syria, and that was before Apocalypse Joe even finished his speech! Meanwhile, the IDF has the green light to roll into Gaza… Meanwhile, Hezbollah has promised it’ll send missiles to Tel Aviv and Dimona if IDF enters Gaza… Meanwhile, USA has carrier strike force in East Med, with a second carrier strike force on its way… Meanwhile, Russia has hypersonic missiles that are eager to meet that US fleet… The times are getting way too interesting for my liking.

The future is sand, my friends

I had no idea. Been so consumed by the impending WWIII and the global famine that’s just around the corner, not to mention that lingering pandemic, the climate emergency, or, God forbid, a Trump comeback, it was inconceivable that we could be made even more depressed. But I was watching Al Jazeera for a spell, and by golly, apparently we are on the brink of a global sand shortage. Don’t laugh. Apparently sand is the most-utilized commodity on earth after water. You can’t build a road or an apartment block without it. Anywhere. Now that I think of it, I remember being on holiday in Myrtle Beach, thirty years ago, and reading something in the local paper about sand being barged in from Florida or somewhere. So I guess the problem has metastasised. Seems to me this isn’t so much a matter of an absolute sand shortage, but rather, there’s lots of sand, but no easy way to get it where it’s needed. I’m guessing Goldman Sachs has field teams staking out the vast expanses of desert in Saharan Africa and the Gobi desert. Sand merchants will corner the market and become the new billionaire class. The future is sand, my friends.

For the American Empire, it's now or never

May you live in interesting times, an ancient Chinese curse supposedly says.

Must be true, because we sure do!

Kinda unnerving to see all those headlines day after day, for months on end, about how Putin will, for sure, probably invade Ukraine any day now, maybe.

In the meantime, we’ll ship them hundreds of millions in missiles and small arms… don’t worry, we’re lending them the money to buy this stuff.

Not that we’re planning to actually defend the schmucks from Russia in the event our dreams of invasion come true. Are you kidding?

That’s been the US-NATO game for the past few months, and it’s no wonder the NATO allies are getting nervous. The Big Dog is in grave danger of losing a significant number of the pack. The collapse of NATO is the end of the US Empire in and of itself.

Then there’s the Iran file. We had a reasonable agreement in place to curtail Iran’s nuke ambitions, but thanks to the goading of our Israeli allies, Trump nixed that deal. The Israeli’s still love to talk about Iran being weeks from a bomb, but after saying that for thirty-plus years, they don’t even believe it themselves. Nor are they planning to do anything about it, blood-curdling rhetoric aside. Israel wouldn’t last a week if real (ie not homemade by Gaza rocketeers) missiles were incoming at the rate of hundreds per day.

Don’t forget we gotta take on China at the same time as we’re putting Russia and Iran in their place. The military-industrial sector of the economy, the folks who fund all those brilliant think tanks forever advocating more war and more weapon sales, are all in for ramping up confrontation with China. At the same time, uber-hedgies managing trillions of dollars, guys like Larry Fink, are hunky dory doing business with the commies, so don’t count on the universal support of the billionaire class.

In summary, the American Empire as we have known it is over.

Numero uno no more.

Only America's war-profiteers don’t know it yet.

They truly believe their upcoming triumph over Putin will cement their place as the "Exceptional Nation" for generations to come.

US sends more troops and missiles while Putin gives NATO the finger

I'm not optimistic about how this will turn out.

The Americans still talk as if they're the Big Dog who gets to boss everybody around. Look at their track record since WWII.

• fought the Koreans to a draw in a war that remains officially hot
• destroyed and lost Vietnam
• sabotaged multiple developing countries by assassinating democratically elected leaders
• destroyed multiple countries in the Middle East since 9/11
• spent twenty years occupying Afghanistan, only to leave the place worse than they found it, and hand it back to the previous owners.

With a resume like that, where do these morons get the idea they can tell the rest of the planet what to do?

But there's no stopping them. America's ruling class is so blinded by hubris they have no clue what they're doing. These are the people who spent $300 million every day, including weekends, for twenty years, trying to bend a nation of semi-literate subsistence farmers to their will.

And failed!

All of this while their own country is going down the shitter, big time, while the whole world is watching.

But now they're gonna take on Russia, China, and Iran? All at the same time?

We live in truly interesting times...

Ironies of the unipolar world (no. 271)

One of the obligations that falls to the leader of the free world is to maintain stability. What that tends to mean in real life is maintaining the status quo, at least when and where the US bloc has the upper hand.

Stability. What a concept!

Instability, defined as the absence of stability, was once considered a characteristic of the "shit-hole" countries. 

But look around you.

Nobody who looks at the USA today can possibly come away thinking this is a stable country. Yet it's the country that has hundreds of billions to invest in surrounding China and Russia with military bases. To ensure stability, of course. 

Hopefully not the same level of stability that obtains in the iconic urban centres of America; Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, San Francisco and all the rest of them. The people responsible for that ongoing nightmare are the people who want to impose their model of society on the rest of the world.

In the name of shoring up stability.

Meanwhile, China invests in building ports and railways in countries happy to have the help. They're the bad guys.

It's not just America that's crumbling from the inside. How's the stability thing been working out in France or Germany lately?

And check out how stable UK is now that they've Brexited. Boris has fully embraced Uncle Sam, to the point where he happily risks WW III by recklessly flouting international law with idiotic provocations in the Black Sea. 

All for the sake of stability!

Only war can save us now

Just like the WWII saved capitalism seventy-five years ago.

This is not then, of course. Capitalism has become bolder. Every major institution has been suborned to the dictates of the oligarchs. Corporations are people too; they're the people who have risen to the top of the heap.

Anybody who is not a corporation knows that corporations are not people, regardless of what the Supreme Court says. They are owned and operated by actual real human beings. These are the people to whom we ascribe the "one-percenter" label.

These are the folks who have wrangled the so-called pandemic into an excuse to loot the public purse as never before in history.

The public purse has never been this deep underwater in history. Ever.

The bulk of hundreds of billions, nay, trillions, flowing out of the various "covid assistance" scams are going to the one percenters. The oligarchs are adding billions to their net worth while millions are threatened with eviction from their homes.

If you were to let this thread run its course, it could only end one way; revolution.


Unless, of course, the nation had to go to war. War changes everything.

Pompeo is hard at work on that file as I type these words.