Doom Scrolling b/c there's just so much Doom
Oh I do take time off from daily consideration of the mounting pile of corpses, the remnants of purposeful and useful lives that were loved till they were blown to smithereens. It’s called self care. But I know behind the desktop monitor background and the TV off button, there are still people dying who are guilty of nothing except making a life for themselves and their families. And when those darkened screens light up, sure enough, there’s still more dead people, most of them dying for nothing.
In Lebanon, the other Israeli government target, there’s more than 1,000,000 displaced people already, so quickly. That’s one million-plus Lebanese people who - like Christmas Carol Jesus - have no place to lay down their sweet heads.
Tuesday and Wednesday, the scrolling was like this:
Excerpt from Associated Press:
»» WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation on Tuesday, citing his concerns about the justification for military strikes in Iran and saying he “cannot in good conscience” back the Trump administration’s war.
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent said in a statement posted on social media, making claims President Donald Trump has denied. ««
Predictably that triggered the president’s standard kneejerk response. He called Kent ‘weak’. And now the FBI is investigating him.
He’s also been slamming NATO countries for their reluctance to go to war to defend his stupidity. The leaders know that helping our president gains them nothing beyond another stab in the back.
»» Trump, speaking in the Oval Office, argues that “we spent trillions of dollars on NATO,” and that “when they don’t help out, it is something we should think about it.” He did not say whether he would withdraw or take action against the military alliance, but he added “I’m not happy about it.” ««
He added a threat with little veiling:
»» President Trump suggested that the United States could go it alone on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, while still criticizing NATO allies.
“We don’t need too much help — we don’t need any help actually,” he told reporters while meeting with the Irish prime minister. The request was a “great test” for NATO, he said, warning that the United States would remember its inaction. ««
Yesterday, on St Patrick’s Day, he also met with Ireland’s prime minister to lie outright about Irish citizens.
»» President Trump, speaking during a White House meeting with Micheál Martin, the Irish taoiseach, said that he believed the people of Ireland were “very happy” with the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.
His remarks have no basis in reality — the war is deeply unpopular in Ireland, and many people in the country, including lawmakers (and Martin himself) have expressed concern over it. ««
Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official, was killed in a strike Monday night, along with Brigadier General Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of a powerful plainclothes militia. Yesterday, the Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib was killed. And while the White House and Israel’s leaders tout these as fresh victories, that’s basic dime store propaganda.
They want us to think, in that country of 92 million, that Iran lacks a chain of command perfectly capable of stepping in when a general or other top leaders are killed. But most Americans and Europeans can see far more than Bibi and the Fraudfather think.
Soleimani headed the Basij militia, a large, plainclothes paramilitary force with its chief responsibility being the crushing of domestic dissent. (sounds awfully familiar to the paramilitary force that’s been deployed against US cities for the past 15 months).
Headlines of note (without working links):
Meanwhile…
»» Donald Trump’s claim that a former U.S. president privately told him they backed his war in Iran has been denied by all four living past presidents.
Trump, 79, made the claim about a mysterious former president confiding in him no less than three times on Monday.
“For 47 years, no president was willing to do what I’m doing,“ Trump said in the White House, speaking about launching his war on Iran that has so far seen 13 American service members killed and over 200 injured or wounded. ««
and
»» “I’ve spoken to a certain president, who I like, actually,” Trump claimed. “A past president, former president. He said, ‘I wish I did it. I wish I did’. But they didn’t do it. I’m doing it, yeah.”
When pressed on which former president, Trump said, “I can’t tell you that. I don’t want to embarrass him. It would be very bad for his career, even though he’s got no career.”
Later, in the Oval Office, the aging president, whose cognitive skills and memory have been questioned, then circled back to the same topic.
“Other presidents should have done...” Trump said, not finishing his sentence about starting the brutal war with Iran.
“I spoke to one of the former presidents who I actually like,” he continued. “I actually speak to some, I do like some people, it’d be shocking. And he said, ‘I wish I did what you did.’ Could’ve done it. Other presidents, somebody should’ve done it. Forty-seven years this went on.”
Fox News reporter Peter Doocy then asked Trump directly who exactly it was.
“Was it George W. Bush?”
Trump replied, “No.”
When asked if it was Bill Clinton, Trump looked down and said, “I don’t want to say. I don’t want to say.” ««
(All four living presidents denied today talking to him about the war. Is he lying? Or hearing voices? There are no other options.)
War? What is it good for? Some people view it as an opportunity to kick off Armageddon. I’m not kidding.
The PayPal fatcat Peter Thiel keeps talking about the AntiChrist and end times. Those have been predicted based on ‘signs’ for 1900 years, but that doesn’t matter to Thiel whose financial backing got JD Vance into the Senate and VP offices. Meanwhile his new company Palantir is poised to cattleprod the US government till its jolts reach every nerve ending.
Greg Olear investigates the origins and history of the Book of Revelations from a point of agnosticism, as well as finding out what Thiel’s Palantir is up to. It’s a government parasite and by the time most of the public understands why it’s a threat, it might be too late. Olear provides a pretty thorough and revealing review. Once it spreads through government and intel systems, can it be stopped? Does Thiel have an ulterior motive? Take a look and tell me what you think.
Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo reviews the worsening economic data. Job losses continue, the unemployment rate is rising along with prices and inflation. The unaffordability issues are dragging down support for Republicans because the lower middle class and the working class are angry that the president failed to deliver on his promise to lower prices.
And of course, his war plans appear to be based on his ‘gut feelings’ and his end plan is based on his ‘bone feelings’, per his own words. There has yet been no clarity on the reasons he attacked Iraq. He claims it’s not about following Israel’s lead while repeating the claim that Iran was an ‘imminent threat’ to the US (within a month!) while numerous war planners and analysts keep saying Iran was months away from having a functional nuclear missile. He claims daily wins but nobody with planning expertise sees any way to get to their nuclear enriched stockpile without him first putting thousands of boots on the ground.
This has clearly become “deja vu all over again.” In the late 1990s, a group of conservatives calling themselves the Project For A New American Century (PNAC) was advising then President Clinton to use US military power and overthrow Iraq. When George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld took over, the war advocates called themselves neocons and they began the planning to do that within a month of taking office. Then they kept insisting Iraq was creating weapons of mass destruction, despite lots of evidence disputing that. Didn’t matter. They invaded Iraq anyway.
Sound familiar? The White House is following the same playbook, to the letter. No WMD threat. But this time with minimal American support, ignoring advice from military experts and an economy moving toward stagflation because of his miscalculations.
Welcome to the neoconomy, just like the old Republican neoconomy that resulted in the worst financial bubble collapse since the Great Depression. For the past 45 years every time there’s been a Republican White House, wars have been started, huge tax breaks have been given to the top 5%, social programs have been cut, environmental regulations have gotten sacked and the national debt has grown exponentially. And while prices are considerably higher than they were in 2009, congressional Republicans have successfully prevented a rise in the national minimum wage for 17 years. I have no idea what conservatives conserve anymore but it’s nothing that helps working families live.
I think neoconomy is a word that should get used a lot more.
And how’s his war going?
The key takeaway in this story (bolding mine) :
»» Now, more than two weeks into the campaign, some of those allies believe the president no longer controls how, or when, the war ends. They fear Iran’s attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, which have rattled global crude markets and threaten broader economic distress, are boxing Trump into a situation where escalating the conflict — potentially even putting American boots on the ground — becomes the only way to credibly claim victory.
“We clearly just kicked [Iran’s] ass in the field, but, to a large extent, they hold the cards now,” said one person close to the White House, who like others in this story was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the war. “They decide how long we’re involved — and they decide if we put boots on the ground. And it doesn’t seem to me that there’s a way around that, if we want to save face.” ««
Save face? Or save lives? Pride shouldn’t be involved at all. Saving lives should be the aim throughout and the central purpose of any US war. And take a look at that last photo of the president, his gaze a blank stare from a man who doesn’t look like the picture of health. And here’s another - by Annabelle Gordon/AFP via Getty - on his return from Florida Sunday night. He was rage tweeting that night, attacking the 2/3rds Republican Supreme Court and John Roberts, other judges, the Fed Chair and numerous media outlets. The old man also keeps shouting at the sky about the 2020 election he lost because he lost it. That’s reality beyond any reality show. Now, it’s all of us watching the guy self composting before our eyes.
Conservative op-ed writer Mona Charen has an interesting take on what motivates the Fraudfather.
»» Iran’s internal repression is nearly as brutal as its external support for terrorism, with women in particular bearing the brunt. The marriage age for girls was reduced to 9 shortly after the Islamic Republic was founded, and women have been subjugated by religious police ever since. But it isn’t only women who’ve felt the boot on their necks. A well-educated, advanced nation has been immiserated. Tehran is running out of clean drinking water. The population loathes the regime, as we’ve witnessed many times, but most recently in January when they thronged the streets in their tens of thousands—only to be gunned down en masse.
If we had a normal administration and a normal decision-making process, those factors would have been considered. There would have been a national conversation about how imminent a threat Iran posed to us and to their neighbors. We would have weighed the risks of war against the opportunity to strike a fatal blow to a terrible regime. We would have decided upon clear aims, and evaluated the chances of success or failure. The fact of Iran being a nasty piece of work and a threat is not dispositive on the matter of going to war. A poorly planned or executed war can make things worse.
NOW WE TURN TO THE JUVENILE, facts-optional world of Trump, where the president commits the United States to war without planning, without consultation with allies, without congressional authorization, and without a clue about how badly things could go.
After Iraq and Afghanistan, we learned that combatants can sometimes suffer from moral injury—if they are obliged to shoot at enemies who might be children, for example, or if they participated in or witnessed illegal acts like Abu Ghraib. Today, all of us are obliged to endure a kind of moral injury when we see our government’s response to the news that the United States accidentally bombed a girls’ school in Minab, killing 170 people, mostly children. Rather than the normal approach, which would have involved an apology from the secretary of defense and an offer of restitution to the families, we watched the president of the United States deny the facts and shift the blame (at the same time). It’s his nature to be callous to human suffering and contemptuous of truth. We’ve known that for years. But it disgraces us in the eyes of the world when he represents us on an international stage and about matters so tragic. ««
When she wrote “It’s his nature to be callous to human suffering and contemptuous of truth” it hit home.
And elsewhere in the world….
»» March 17 (Reuters) - An air strike by Pakistan on Monday that the Afghan government says killed hundreds of civilians has led to an escalation in the conflict between the South Asian neighbours.
The Afghan Taliban government says the Pakistani air strike targeted a drug rehabilitation hospital in the capital Kabul, killing at least 408 people and injuring 265 more.
Pakistan, however, rejected the claim, saying the strike targeted military installations and terrorist support infrastructure, and was carefully undertaken to ensure there was no collateral damage.
It has not verified the casualty numbers. ««
So Russia, the US, Israel and Pakistan - four nuclear powers, including the two with the largest nuclear arsenals - are currently at war. Yet the problem our president has is with a country that has none and is months away from having one. How many nuclear powers have to be at war before these turn into a global war?
And today, the headlines are no better.
The UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan and Canada issued a joint statement today, condemning Iran’s attacks, which included (bolding mine):
»» Consistent with UNSC Resolution 2817, we emphasise that such interference with international shipping and the disruption of global energy supply chains constitute a threat to international peace and security. In this regard, we call for an immediate comprehensive moratorium on attacks on civilian infrastructure, including oil and gas installations.
We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait. We welcome the commitment of nations who are engaging in preparatory planning. ««
Did you vote for this? I didn’t vote for this. Neither did most supporters of the president. So much doom and gloom…. (sigh).
But wait!
Are thousands of deaths, more than $200 billion in immediate costs and trillions in costs to countries all over the globe being done just to distract us from the Epstein files?
If so, take a good long look at this woman’s resume.
She says something big and positive is about to break in the Epstein files case.
And Heather Cox Richardson, reading yesterday’s social media post from Senator Wyden, provides additional detail. Epstein was apparently running drugs, was being investigated by the DEA, that probe was shutdown and Pam Bondi’s DOJ is covering it up.
So much doomscrolling in the past 3 days, but for the survivors of Epstein, perhaps the beginning of justice is emerging. And for the rest of us, with a coverup bigger than Watergate about to be exposed, perhaps we’ll get a giant dose of truth before World War III explodes.
Good times.
Neoconomy sounds too positive. "Noconomy" however...