Wednesday Open Thread: It's World Radio Day

It's Day 44 of the Year 2019 CE, meaning that it's February 13, 2019

I always check the history for the day before drafting one of these things, because sometimes inspiration lurks therein, or some event or holiday worthy of amplification or criticism, as the case may be. Then again, too often what you get is stuff like the stuff below. Unless I feel in the mood for a snark fest or serious rant, there is nothing there and worse. Sometimes you wanna throw yourself on the gears and levers (thank you Mario) and sometimes on the third rail instead. So, a wee sample of what is definitely not inspiring or thought provoking about February 13. Sure, Scalia died, but not soon enough to do any good by so doing. To add insult to injury, my forking spell checker rejected Galileo Galilei's last name and suggested that I go with Galilee instead which is so bassackwards and inverted that it made me squint.

1322 – The central tower of Ely Cathedral fell on the night of the 12th–13th. Surely this was an act of god. 1633 – Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition for wrong thinking and using science. 1991 – US forces intentionally bombed the shit out of the Amiriyah shelter, a known civilian shelter packed with civilians. This is a small part of the odious legacy of war criminal George H. W. Bush, our first CIA President, who was recently fulsomely eulogized by a bipartisan mob of the political classes. 2011 – For the first time in more than 100 years the US honored some of the provisions of a treaty with the Umatilla. I can only assume that this was due to a clerical error of some sort. 2016 – Antonin Scalia died. So what is there to do on such a day? It occurred to me to break down and go on a rant about many things; the obscene amount of bipartisan hate-mongering, fear-mongering, war-mongering, red-baiting, McCarthyism and yellow press, not to mention the fact that I could prepend or append "liberal" to bipartisan, arguably without even using the scare quotes. The runaway over consumption that drives climate chaos and supports and funds the 1%? But that's just a gripe and a whine, not a rant, and a good rant takes a lot of work, energy and creativity which I'm just not really feeling just yet. But, It doesn't have to be mine, now, does it?  

Yeah, pick a country, any country, it is only a question of whether it is already history, or probable future. Santo Domingo, Manila, Havana or Caracas, Nicaragua, Haiti, Tripoli and Tripoli again and it's all the same and, we bipartisanly either don't give a shit whatsoever or else proudly support our militarism, imperialism and, of course "our interests".  

But it's ok. because we have moral authority derived, I guess, from the ethnic cleansing and genocide that won us the vast territory that we dwell in and plunder. That's why we get to decide who should be in charge elsewhere in the world and how their economies should run, what crops they should grow and who should extract their resources and who they should be sold to, who should be permitted to be elected and who, ultimately should live or die, and whether it should be a sudden brutal death or a slow lingering one. All over the world. Every damn day and night. Forever, because that's what we do and we must love the hell out of it because we always find a bullshit excuse to justify it and support it.  

We are fair, however, we're equal opportunity murderers, having started at home and still rising to the occasion if anybody should make too big of a stink about our behavior. Of course, we wage war more actively, often and oppressively upon people of color than lefties. And we jail more of our own than anybody else, which clearly proves our moral superiority. Gotta keep those people down, you know, lock 'em up.  

But still, it's bipartisan, pragmatic and centrist as hell, isn't? Oh yeah, fer sure. I always envied the widespread mass support Europeans got, folks like Danny The Red, and now today's yellow vests. Of course, if we tried those tactics here, especially wearing yellow vests, we'd very likely be gunned down, or, at a minimum, heavily gassed, so I guess it's better to just go along to get along, after all, a lot of those countries are as corrupt as we are, maybe even worse, and blah, blah, blah, so we do have an obligation to clean up their act, don't we? Sure we do, it's ok, hell, its our mission because we are exceptional.  

All I ask is that there be a lot less cheer leading for and active promotion of all of our assassinations, coups, economic warfare and military interventions. All of our oppression and suppression, our militarism, imperialism, and economic warfare, aka sanctions. It isn't like I really expect folks to do anything about it, or even protest. That wouldn't be centrist or pragmatic. OTOH,while not exactly cheer leading, silence is consent, and cooperation and participation cannot really be anything less than support. So, what if you should wake up some morning possessed of empathy, compassion, a conscience, a sense of justice, any combination thereof, or maybe simply a profound disgust at the lies and hypocrisy that dominate our domestic and foreign policies and behavior? Should that happen, should you run out of soma and/or see the fnords, ask yourself if it is time for a real change and if you should maybe try to speed change up by slowing things down. We can stop this if we simply refuse to participate. No soldiers, no war. No using big banks, no big banks. No consuming MSM yellow journalism in any format, no yellow journalism. No hyper consumption, no overproduction. Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, et. al. couldn't make war machines if their employees refused to work on them. We provide the cannon fodder, the labor, the journalism, yellow or not, the advertisers and advertising, the con men, the telemarketers, the markets and the demand. Yet, somehow, others, the warmongers and hatemongers hold all of the power? Maybe. But what if we shut down just one thing? Or two?  

Just sayin' ... Image is: W.D. Haywood leading a Lowell strike parade from the LIbrary of Congress: Public Domain Its an open thread so have at it. The floor is yours . Cross posted from caucus99percent.com