listening to vids while packing
Writing this while not packing
i dun wanna pack but i will
this is on the 14th for the 15th

The estimable gentlemen of The Duran did finally get around to addressing the Africa thing; enough said.

But what brought me here was Dore’s breakdown on the Iran/Saudi/China peace deal. I learned something.

I imagine that when Donald Trump “recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital and Ordered the U.S. Embassy to Move” there, rabid supporters of the plucky little apartheid state must have had a long moment of cognitive dissonance. Hating on Trump was mandatory, right?

But here, he was going way far out of his way to throw Israel a big fat diplomatic bone, and to say in the video linked above and in so many words: Fuck those Palestinians, the two-state solution is dead, and there can be no negotiating with these animals. Exterminate all the brutes.

Trump didn’t really give much of a shit about Israel, but look at Mike Pence smirking in the background. The Donald wasn’t so much doing a solid for Israel as he was shoring up his evangelical base–who of course care very much about Jerusalem and all of the holy land. Especially little Nazareth, hometown of their God, see?

We now know it didn’t stop there, not by a long shot. People who were watching really carefully knew it all along, but now, thanks in part to Dore’s video on the peace deal, it’s coming out into the open.

You remember when Trump assassinated Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani?

I remember thinking at the time: WTF? Why would he do that? It makes no sense. I should have been paying more attention to Max Blumenthal for the answer.

Iraqi PM reveals Soleimani was on peace mission when assassinated, exploding Trump’s lie of ‘imminent attacks’
By Max Blumenthal (Posted Jan 09, 2020)

In this article, the evil and ugly Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is quoted as saying that Washington had made an “intelligence-based assessment” that Soleimani was “actively planning in the region” to attack American interests before he was killed.

Utter bullshit, unless you want to claim that by “American interests” he meant “Israel’s interests” in blocking any hint of a peace deal between Iran and the Saudis.

Soleimani was on a diplomatic mission to do just that three years ago when Trump killed him on Israel’s behalf, to end any chance that the General’s country and Saudi Arabia would even have a chance to talk about peace.

So America killed a Iranian man with an attack drone because he wanted to end a conflict.

And three years later, China brought leaders from the two countries to safe haven in Beijing to finally sit down and sign the same deal that man wanted.

Tell me again, about how the evil Chinese need to be brought to heel over their own province of Taiwan.

Tell me again, how “America’s interests” are all that matters, and how no matter what The Good Guys do in our name, it’s justified because We did it.

Oh and by the way.

If you think that this is somehow an aberration, that Bad Donald’s actions were the exception and not the way American has done business for decades, Max B. has news for you.

The catastrophic results of Soleimani’s killing recall the Obama administration’s 2016 assassination of Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, a Taliban leader who was eager to negotiate a peaceful end to the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. Mansur’s death wound up empowering hardline figures in the Taliban who favored a total military victory over the U.S. and triggered an uptick in violence across the country, dooming hopes for a negotiated exit.

And later in the piece, just for all you CNN-lovers out there, he notes:

On January 3, CNN assigned three reporters to disseminate the Trump administration’s disinformation about Soleimani, claiming without a hint of critical detachment that he was “planning specific attacks on U.S. interests, including U.S. personnel.”

Dems, Repubs, politicians, media shills … it doesn’t matter whose mug is being put out there as the pretty face of the Empire’s War Machine and the subconscious self-absolving knee-jerk bloodlust of every one of us, its Free, Justice-Loving citizens.

You vote for one, or the other. You watch this channel, or that one to ‘be informed’. To the real project of American imperialism …

It makes no fucking difference at all.

I am not the good guy. You are not the good guy. And neither is the next diabolical freak you’ll be wanting me to vote for in 2024.

We are not The Good Guys and you wave that simple fact away at the peril of your mortal soul.