No Surprise

In what should come as no surprise, the independent investigative organization Pro Publica has revealed that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken lied to Congress and the president about how Israel deliberately blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza - food and medicine - including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.

This is nothing new. We, the uninstructed around the world, could see with our own eyes what has been going on in Gaza since last October 8. Genocide. Blinken has been lying about the genocide from the beginning, as has been his boss Genocide Joe. And, it should be noted, almost all of both houses of Congress.  Lying among political actors is as easy as breathing, in many cases easier, and is only different by matter of degree. Our news media have been stenographers, supporting the lies with active and passive propaganda. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which authored the report, likely knew that their findings would be ignored, but submitted it anyway, choosing integrity over conformity and career.

Even our leading candidate for president, Kamala Harris, is genocide compliant, parroting the party line that "Israel has the right to self-defense" and trotting out the phony slogan about a two-state solution. Genocide, in the calculus of our nation's leadership, is a legitimate tool of self-defense. Her opponent, Donald Trump, is a totally evil human being, and would jump at the chance of engaging in genocide. If he is "elected" he would have impunity, thanks to our corrupt supreme court.

Given our mindless and unhesitating ease with genocide, we might pause and wonder how we pick victims. Who gets to be the target of genocide? It has to be someone. In order to kill an entire population there has to be a killor and a kilee. It could have been the reverse. We could have picked the Palestinians as the killors, and the Israelis as the kilees. Israel is a created state, granted by the Western powers through the U.N. in 1948. There is no rhyme or reason why we chose one over the other, except imperial prerogative. It was largely the British ruling elite that made this choice, and after World War II we went along, fresh from victory and needing to cement "the Allies" in the newly formed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in which I "served" from 1969 to 1971, the greatest ugh! of my life.

So here we are, stuck between a proverbial rock and a hard place. We have a thoroughly corrupt political system, an election in little over a month, and a non-choice of continuing genocide in Gaza or something worse in every respect. Meanwhile, Israel has embarked on a new genocide: Lebanon. With our help. For now. It won't last. Nothing lasts.
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Here's some traveling music for the journey ahead. An interview with Roger Waters.

Update, September 30: Here's some news.

R.I.P. Kris Kristofferson. His best-known song. He gave the song to Janis Joplin for her last hit, posthumous. Others have done it, such as the Grateful Dead.