These three American presidents preemptively invaded nine countries over a span of twenty-three years, killed 11 million civilians...but that other guy is a 'war criminal'.
This is what the US did to Fallujah, Iraq without any provocation, using phosphorus and depleted uranium, causing the highest rate of birth defects in the world.
In April 1941, four years before he was to become president and eight months before the United States entered World War II, Sen. Harry Truman of Missouri reacted to the news that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union:
“If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.”
"Kill as many as possible" is the unofficial motto of the United States of America whether it be a virus or another proxy war...
Ode to Empire
[for John Hobson]
Wars without
pause
pride without
cause
Occupations
free of laws
mass murder
just because
no contrition
no remorse
all a prosaic
matter of course
Where self-critique
is heresy,
where, the scope
for apostasy?
not democracy,
nor autocracy:
but ersatz Realm
of Hypocracy
It's the Rule of the Hypocrite:
where the human
soul is split:
by bad faith
and suborned wit
possessed of every human sense
save the hallowed grace-
of conscience
forged their gaudy
Taj Mahals:
palisades, and
gilded halls
swathed in dun blood and
sweat of an entire
World's Precariat
So It Is:
and so It Was:
Endless Scourge
without a Pause
debauchery will stalk
the land
where guilt is writ
on every hand
yet still think it
blessed to live :
in dank bosom of
western civ -
O what immutable
parody
can frame its
sordid asymmetry?
© R.Kanth 2021
(my remarks reference the ruling elites,
not those who carry them on their backs)
To the Slanderers of Russia (1831)
Why rave ye, babblers, so — ye lords of popular wonder?
Why such anathemas ‘gainst Russia do you thunder?
What moves your idle rage? Is’t Poland’s fallen pride?
‘T is but Slavonic kin among themselves contending,
An ancient household strife, oft judged but still unending,
A question which, be sure, you never can decide.
For ages past still have contended,
These races, though so near allied:
And oft ‘neath Victory’s storm has bended
Now their, and now our side.
Which shall stand fast in such commotion
The haughty Liakh, or faithful Russ?
And shall Slavonic streams meet in a Russian ocean? –
Or il’t dry up? This is point for us.
Leave us!: Your eyes are all unable
To read our history’s bloody table;
Strange in your sight and dark must be
Our springs of household enmity!
To you the Kreml and Prága’s tower
Are voiceless all, you mark the fate
And daring of the battle-hour
And understand us not, but hate.
What stirs ye?
Is it that this nation,
On Moscow’s flaming walls, blood-slaked and ruin-quench’d,
Spurn’d back the insolent dictation
Of Him before whose nod ye blenched?
Is it that into dust we shatter’d,
The Dagon that weigh’d down all earth so wearily,
And our best blood so freely scatter’d,
To buy for Europe peace and liberty?
Ye’re bold of tongue — but hark, would ye in deed but try it
Or is the hero, now reclined in laurelled quiet,
Too weak to fix once more, Izmail’s red bayonet?
Or hath the Russian Tsar ever, in vain commanded?
Or must we meet all Europe banded?
Have we forgot to conquer yet?
Or rather, shall they not, from Perm to Tauris’ fountains,’
From the hot Colchian steppes, to Finland’s icy mountains,
From the grey, half-shatter’d wall,
To fair Kathay, in dotage buried
A steely rampart, close and serried,
Rise, Russia’s warriors, one and all?
Then send your numbers without number,
Your madden’d sons, your goaded slaves,
In Russia’s plains there’s room to slumber,
And well they’ll know their brethren’s graves!
Alexander Pushkin translator unknown
How have we come to accept thousands of deaths every single day as just an additional cost of doing business in a pandemic?
I'll guess it's years of practice ignoring the death and destruction the US perpetrates worldwide to keep our gas tanks full of cheap gas, the military industrial complex humming, the stock market soaring, the stadiums full?
It's just a few more voices
in the churning ambient chorus of suffering we already tune out, much like with gun violence or unnecessary deaths due to the
cost of healthcare or the thousands our military kills around the world.
Many of us, even the “good ones” like you and me, already
do that in a way or else how would we manage to function on a
daily basis? How do you get up and measure out the coffee and heat up
the water and poke your stupid face into the fridge for a nice piece of
fruit every morning without pretending if at least for a while that no
one is dying just beyond your doorstep?
“[E]very passing day suggests that the administration is failing to keep up with COVID’s mutations. Though it is spending a lot of money, when it assumed power, it failed to prioritize cheap, accessible tests open to anyone who needs them, left too much basic data gathering to scholars or the media, and made at best half-hearted pushes in favor of improved ventilation, air filters, and other obvious steps that would minimize indoor COVID problems, especially in schools. It also did essentially nothing to put reliable face masks in the hands of the population and failed even to set standards for advertising and sales of facemasks, leaving a vast market to charlatans. It still has no program in place for large scale random testing that can swiftly identify new variants and it has failed to create an effective national set of statistics with public dashboards anyone can access. Essentially it has staked everything on vaccines that will need regular, costly updates in a country with no national healthcare system. It is obvious that the administration’s hopes for an end to the COVID nightmare are premature.”
Contrasting performance — “Despite vaccines, the U.S. has lost more lives to Covid this year than last” — and promises. Biden, in debate: “And so folks, I will take care of this, I will end this, I will make sure we have a plan.”
They ALL lie.
...living in an asylum run by inmates.
So many people are out and about without masks, oblivious to the fact that vaccinated people can still transmit infection and keep Covid circulating.
NO ONE IS SAFE UNTIL EVERYONE IS SAFE
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always being
so very much fun
if you don't mind a touch of hell
now and then
just when everything is fine
because even in heaven
they don't sing
all the time
The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind some people dying
all the time
or maybe only starving
some of the time
which isn't half bad
if it isn't you
Oh the world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't much mind
a few dead minds
in the higher places
or a bomb or two
now and then
in your upturned faces
or such other improprieties
as our Name Brand society
is prey to
with its men of distinction
and its men of extinction
and its priests
and other patrolmen
and its various segregations
and congressional investigations
and other constipations
that our fool flesh
I was first eligible to vote in a US presidential election forty-eight years ago. At that time the world faced one widely acknowledged existential threat, nuclear war, and the US was engaged in one undeclared war of aggression.
Forty-eight years later humans now face at least five existential threats by my count, one a largely unacknowledged crisis: nuclear war, climate destabilization, species extinctions, pandemics and the artificial intelligence humans increasingly rely on to keep their affairs in order. In recent years the US has been engaged in at least seven undeclared wars of aggression, several proxy wars and more if one considers economic sanctions acts of war.
We now face the most insurmountable problems in human history and in its dotage the moldering US political system offers two potential leaders, two addlepated septuagenarians, one of whom has spent his life reaping the rewards of the bloodsucking rapacious system the other one did everything he could to expand over the past forty-eight years!
This year the planet has been 1.3ºC warmer since 1890 and there is no way humans can keep it from continuing to warm far more than 1.5ºC.
This is probably my last presidential election and I think I have finally come to terms with the futility of voting. I leave it to others to do what they will. They'll be the ones to live with it.
Good luck y'all.
