Next couple of months are going to be painful for a lot of American residents.

Gee I wonder why.

This is what I call a failed state. And the worst part is, it's by design.

And none of it will aid in stopping climate change, let alone save the planet.

So much to do.

One of the great things that has happened this year (which is saying a lot considering what an overall shitty year it's been), is that I've finally found a way to engineer tracks which I can use for recording songs.

Which is good, since I'm fairly clueless to most modern technology in that I prefer things that are simple to use which provide a good audio fidelity.

Now I'm realizing that while I can now move forward with my musical desires and dreams, the only thing holding me back is me and my time.

As my Dad always used to say -> Make the most of what you have.

Establishment wants Assange disappeared.

I always believed that the entire extradition proceedings going on in the UK is nothing more than a rouse to get Assange into US custody, where the establishment will then kill him.

Turns out, it's more than a suspicion.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/28/pers-s28.html

According to an investigation by Yahoo News published Sunday, President Donald Trump’s CIA director Mike Pompeo christened WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service” in 2017 to make its employees and associates a legitimate target for CIA “offensive counterintelligence” activities.

Pompeo then asked for plans to be drawn up for Assange’s kidnap or assassination. The report is based on information from more than 30 US sources. Both Pompeo and the CIA have refused to comment.

These sources, former top US officials, explain that the US manhunt of Assange escalated dramatically after the publication of the “Vault 7” leaks in March 2017, exposing intimate details of CIA spying operations. Three sources stated that plans were discussed to kill the WikiLeaks founder, with Trump reportedly asking for “options” from the agency on how this could be done. CIA heads apparently requested and were provided “sketches” of assassination plans and discussions were had on “whether killing Assange was possible and whether it was legal,” according to one source.

 

Sigh - last vacation of the fiscal year over.

But the next fiscal year starts soon.

Why those of us who can survive the current pandemic must realize - the establishment/1% doesn't give a fuck about you.

They only ever want two things - either your acquiescence, or for you to go away.

And in capitalism - where it's all about plundering public resources for private profit under the illusion of democracy - the less people around, the better.

Case in point -> https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/23/pers-s23.html

This month, COVID-19 officially became the deadliest outbreak of infectious disease in American history, eclipsing the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed 675,000 Americans over two years.

This grim milestone comes as the daily death toll surges throughout the United States. A staggering 2,228 Americans lost their lives on Wednesday to COVID-19, after 2,152 died on Tuesday. By the time this article is published, the US death toll will have reached 700,000, according to Worldometers.info.

 

Oh about that 'Spanish flu':

The Spanish flu pandemic originated in the state of Kansas, but it spread throughout the globe, infecting a third of the world’s population. It spread in the trenches of World War I, notorious for their lack of hygiene and adequate medical care.

The very name of the disease, the “Spanish flu,” reflected the efforts of the US and European political establishment to suppress popular knowledge of the disease’s existence. Wartime censorship prohibited serious and honest reporting on the disease, but the press in Spain reported its spread, leading to the misnomer.

US President Woodrow Wilson, who was keenly aware of the deadly nature of the flu, never uttered a single public statement on the epidemic. Historian John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza, noted, “In terms of managing a federal response to the pandemic, there was no leadership or guidance of any kind from the White House. Wilson wanted the focus to remain on the war effort. Anything negative was viewed as hurting morale and hurting the war effort.”

 

 

Quote of the day - 09-22-2021.

 

Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist

https://blackagendareport.com/covid-funds-spent-police-and-prisons

 

The health and financial impacts of the covid pandemic have been enormous. More than 42 million people have been infected and 679,000 have died in this country. Individuals, businesses and every level of government have suffered as they lost income and revenue. Many workers are unemployed and certain sectors of the economy still suffer disproportionately. There is an easy case to make in favor of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP) which was passed in order to relieve these many crises.

The argument is harder to make when those funds are being used for police and prisons, and which is happening across the country. The state of Alabama is poised to use ARP funds to build three new prisons . Philadelphia is paying for police and for jails. The state of Idaho is  increasing correction officer salaries. Mesa, Arizona will buy surveillance equipment for its police department. A lawsuit is pending in Kansas City, Missour i which will determine whether relief funds can be allocated to that city’s police department.

The important part:

 The rallying cry for community control of police must be extended to the entire governmental apparatus. We have a plethora of governments at the city, county, state and the federal level yet they rarely act on the public’s behalf. That is why elected officials from Idaho to Pennsylvania to Alabama are certain they can get away with using the people's money for dubious reasons. New prisons and better paid police are all we have to show for sickness, unemployment, and death.

 

 

Her'e's  

Finally conclusive evidence that Russiagate was nothing more than another establishment scam.

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/09/20/with-clinton-lawyer-charged-the-russiagate-scam-is-now-indicted/

More to still follow:

With the Steele dossier now widely discredited and Sussmann’s indictment adding new details of a related deception, the Clinton campaign is now connected to yet one more documented scam in a sprawling effort to plant Trump-Russia conspiracy theories in the media and trigger federal investigative activity.

As we will turn to in the second part of this report, coming later this week, Sussmann’s role in the Alfa Bank fabrication raises new questions about the allegation at the heart of the Trump-Russia scandal: the claim that Russia stole emails from the Democratic Party and gave them to Wikileaks in a covert operation to help Trump’s campaign.

This allegation was generated by a different private firm, Crowdstrike, which, like Fusion GPS, was also hired by Perkins Coie — specifically, by Michael Sussmann.

 

Once again - say it with me (and Richard Wolff): The Sickness Is The System.

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/09/20/climate-change-is-the-symptom/

Or to have an anthropologist say it ->

The Anthropocene line of thought suffers from a capitalist ideology that reduces relations of power and production to simplistic human activities. The construction of humanity as distinct from nature allows such an idea as the Anthropocene to proliferate. In this understanding of the world, people are not animals nor are they part of ecological systems. Instead, a small part of humanity represented by European colonizers transmogrifies into the quintessential representation of humanity (as the culmination of evolutionary processes), dominating over nature as God on earth while those who have been colonized are ejected from historical consideration along with their decidedly not Anthropocene knowledge and management of nature.

Or in other words ...

We need to cultivate in society an appreciation for dynamics of power in the relationship between capitalism and the rest of us, people and nature. There are insights to be gained from an understanding of how power factors in relations of humanity-in-nature throughout capitalist history. Social inequalities are environmental inequalities, those inequalities are an accumulation of wealth and privilege for a small number of people who benefit from a history of oppression. The wealthy need to better understand how sexism and racism operate as social structures in the same way they intuitively understand the economy. It takes more effort, but by learning about and addressing our personal role in inequalities we can realize a more just and equitable society which in turn will address climate change.

 As if we don't have enough reasons to resolve this ->

 

In many countries on the road to fascism, the way is paved with exploitation, and violence.

And in this case - blood.

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/09/17/the-politics-of-blood/

Something to watch out for here in the US in the not-so-far-away future.

It isn't just celebrities and pop stars ...

... it's pretty much anyone who's both enamored and loves pursuing attention. So virtual-signaling and identify politics fit right in.

Oh and look, one of the funders is a social media company - look at that!

What do I mean? What the fuck am I talking about, you may be asking?

I mean this ->

Many of the pop stars, actresses, and other celebrities in attendance are too stupid and self-centered to know that attending a $300,000-a-table gala funded by two massive media corporations—Facebook and Conde Nast—during a pandemic and mass economic dislocation is, to say the least, inappropriate.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/15/metg-s15.html

Do I think this has any hope?

One certainly has to look into it, while there's still time.

 

RIP Turd Ferguson.

Mr. Anti-Comedy.

https://www.yahoo.com/now/norm-macdonalds-funniest-snl-moments-000411102.html

My last vacation of the fiscal year is coming up.

I feel somewhat tired, but relieved.

Come October, I know things will become crazy and busy again.

09-11-2001 and 09-11-2021.

I worked on September 11, 2001. I talked about my experiences that day somewhat here. Mind you, this was back in the day before I understood that the 'duopoly' that the establishment here in the United States Empire permeates was and still is a fallacy.

Much has changed about me since then. Sadly while many aspects of the world have changed, many have not (see my last post for more details).

One thing about me that hasn't change much, is that I'll be working again on 09-11. This year is a sad one for many reasons - aside from working - but my hope is just to be able to get through the day.

Tipping Points.

Empire Capitalism will be the extinction of us all if these tipping points are activated:

Quote of the day - 09-08-2021.

Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist

https://blackagendareport.com/us-waging-domestic-war-and-preparing-more (the part in bold)

But, while the cost of war in terms of lives and materials is important, it is even more important to be cognizant of the logic that is in play. Is it ironic or just reflective of a deeper logic being guided by the rulers that even as the public reacts with revulsion from the information that, after more than 2 trillion dollars transferred from the people’s resources to the pockets of the military/industrial complex in support of the illegal war on Afghanistan, representatives from both parties overwhelmingly pass legislation giving yet another increase to military spending, this time to the tune of $24 billion. Is this a gesture of contempt for the public or an understanding that force and violence will be required if the U.S.-based rulers are to maintain hegemony?

As the economic, political, and moral crisis of capitalism deepens, it is clear that the rulers have made their decision. And that decision is intensified class warfare in the U.S and abroad.

This understanding is important because it recognizes that, because of the commitment to neoliberal market fundamentalism and the irreconcilable contradictions that emerged from capitalisms structural crisis that began in 2008 and sharpened with the covid pandemic, the system has only three interrelated paths, separately or in combination, that the state and ruling class is preparing for: system collapse, a fascist response, or a radical left turn toward a non-capitalist politics.

 

As the USA transitions from the late-state of late stage capitalism (craptialism) to fascism, I think it's worth keeping an eye on a few other countries who are more or less already there.

One of them is Brazil: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/09/08/bols-s08.html

 

Suburban entitlement at its finest.

A white SUV parked partially on a sidewalk for pedestrians along side a 'spa', when several open parking spots are free within 50 feet.

A term that I think will come back in establishment circles.

It's a neoliberal favorite: austerity.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/labor-day-2021-creeping-austerity-arrived/5755028

The more I read about his guy, the more he reminds me a lot about someone else from the not-too-distant past.

The fellow Ashraf Ghani, seems to have a lot in common (much of the commonality being the right-wing crapitalistic United States establishment) with one Ahmed Chalabi.

A diatribe - one I couldn't either agree with more, nor write better.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/03/hating-kamala-harris/

The harsh reality that the Democrats need to face is that Kamala Harris is simply just pathologically unlikable. She is a genuinely shitty human being with the emotional intelligence of a sea cucumber and she lacks the Obamaite skills to cover it up with charm and feel-good catchphrases.

A big part of why the DNC fell for Kamala is that she is a political shapeshifter. She spent the first half of her career as California’s top cop, using her position first as DA of San Francisco and then as the state’s attorney general to throw tens of thousands of minorities into the jaws of the prison industrial complex for largely non-violent drug offenses. She locked up parents whose kids failed to show up to California’s notoriously heinous public schools and threw transwomen into men’s prisons before denying their basic medical rights. Kamala got rich off the fact that Black lives don’t matter and then turned an about-face when she joined Congress by selling herself as the countries wokest sitting senator. A lot of people forget that Tulsi Gabbard nearly single-handedly decapitated Kamala’s presidential campaign in five minutes by bringing up these inconvenient truths, and the power brokers of the DNC and the mainstream media honestly believed they could sell this flip-flopping psychopath to us a second time.

 

Once more w/feeling -> the goal of the establishment media is to shut down questioning of their narratives - be it words or actions.

https://fair.org/home/chilling-the-press-has-consistently-outraged-me/

Tirado’s case may be just one of many, but her suit going forward is a major step toward actually achieving some kind of accountability. The case won’t go to trial until late 2022 (the pandemic has backed up an already notoriously slow justice system), but her lawyers are confident that the evidence they have compiled is compelling.

Unless a settlement is reached, a win for Tirado in federal court would not simply just be for her. A verdict in her favor would be a part of federal case law, and a precedent that journalists who face police violence could reference. That’s a legal weapon press freedom advocates would utilize to inspire real change in how American police treat protesters and the press.

 

So Theranos co-founder Elizabeth Holmes is going on trial for fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

And to no surprise - her defense appears to be both a racist one, and filled with the usual misandry.

You can find the usual CIA-funded establishment media articles that already are touting her defense strategy which rather un-subtley treats it as fact. Here are a few titles ->

"

The Dark Lesson of Elizabeth Holmes’s Theranos Is That Corporate Bullying Works

"

"

Will Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes' unusual defense strategy work?

"

In short, her defense is -> blame the brown guy.

$8,055,000,000,000.00

That's a US Dollars symbol ($), an 8, and the remaining digits numbering 12 in the dollars side.

Here's the breakdown ->

Foreign nation states attacked	Amount spent (USD)
Afghanistan/ Pakistan	$2,300,000,000,000.00
Iraq/Syria	$2,100,000,000,000.00
Libya, Somalia and Yemen	$355,000,000,000.00
Additional	Amount spent (USD)
Homeland Security programs	$1,100,000,000,000.00
Estimated future care of U.S. veterans	$2,200,000,000,000.00
Total:	$8,055,000,000,000.00

None of which even considers the number of people killed across the world. And you wonder why I think these US Leaders should be considered War Criminals.

War is a crime - it's mass murder.

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/09/02/estimated-cost-of-post-9-11-us-wars-hits-8-trillion-with-nearly-a-million-people-dead/

Stories like this I always find interesting.

https://www.soundtransit.org/blog/platform/northgate-link-light-rail-testing-moves-final-stages?utm_campaign=PlatformAugust20&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

Perhaps it goes back to my days when I lived in a very large city and used to travel a lot using public transportation.