It is not surprising. Every US administration has its share of banal bureaucrats who, in exchange for an important job with an impressive title, are willing to forfeit their integrity and jettison the truth in the “service” of country.And so, since early October, the world has seen and heard a lot from Rumsfeld’s hideous heir, National Security Council spokesperson, John Kirby.
Like Rumsfeld, the former career naval officer speaks in a high-pitched monotone befitting his dour, monochromatic character.
Like Rumsfeld, Kirby is obliged to spout state-sanctioned bromides in defence of the wholesale destruction of innocent civilians – casualties all of America’s familiar kill-first, think-later foreign policy.
Like Rumsfeld, Kirby is the darling of Beltway pundits who, as a rule, defer to authority and genuflect before power.
On cue, the Washington Post described Kirby earlier this week as a “star” whose skill and experience have translated into “a commanding presence” during press briefings where he keeps the White House’s “messaging” on Gaza “clear”.
Kirby, the Post wrote, is “direct, plain-spoken and unmistakably supportive of the administration’s pro-Israeli policies”.
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I thought it impossible that Kirby could outdo his doddering boss, US President Joe Biden who, memorably, trafficked in fabrications about beheaded babies, and questioned the number of killed Palestinian children, women and men.
Silly me.
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“Look, we certainly share the concerns that so many others have … about the humanitarian situation in Gaza,” Kirby said last week from a rostrum at the White House flanked by the Stars and Stripes. “Tell me, name me, one more nation, any other nation, that is doing as much as the United States to alleviate the pain and suffering of the people of Gaza. You can’t. You just can’t.”
I should let that astonishing paragraph stand as Kirby’s sorry epitaph since it demonstrates how prepared the Biden administration and its smug surrogates are to disfigure reality to promote a revolting lie.
But Kirby’s deplorable admonition requires a reply. Decency demands it.
Much of Gaza and 18,600 Palestinians – the bulk of them children and women – have been erased and buried in mass graves with the help of America’s lethal largesse.
Thousands more have been maimed, traumatised or remain entombed beneath the pancake-like rubble – the shattered remnants of once-vibrant homes, businesses, schools, mosques and hospitals.
Biden, Kirby and dead, ungrateful Palestinians
Biden and his smug surrogates remain determined to disfigure reality to obscure their complicity in Israel’s crimes.Andrew Mitrovica (Al Jazeera)
Nanook
in reply to Nanook • •The battle between capitalism and communism is one that can't be won because pure forms of either do not work. And this is going to become more true as AI, robotics, and automation in general become a larger part of our lives.
The problem can be reduced to this. Those that own the means of production keep the wealth to themselves. But if we distribute the means of production equally productivity dies and we all starve. The Bolsheviks are a case in point. A relative minority of farmers owned all the land, produced all the food, and they were wealthier than others because everybody has to eat so they will trade whatever they have to get enough to eat.
Enter the Bolshevik revolution, land is taken away from the farmers and given to all the populace on a more or less equal basis. Most of whom either don't know how to farm, don't want to farm, or are just plain lazy, no food is produced, 60 MILLION people die of starvation.
In the west we find ways to compromise but in some areas we have compromised too much, labor unions are a case in point. They help by forcing the owners of the means of production to share some of that production with their workers. It is an imperfect system as it exists because it doesn't incentivize production, it just incentivizes showing up and collecting a paycheck, and in practice many employees these days have problems even with the showing up part. It generally forbids or makes difficult for a corporation to reward a more productive worker for their productivity verses the employee that just shows up and collects a pay check but does little to contribute to the generation of wealth that is distributed to them.
The west does have a market system that allows people to buy-in to the means of production, called Stock Markets. But this usually requires a more long term view than most people have.
The other solution is welfare which provides people who do not contribute to the production of wealth in any manner what-so-ever access to a portion of that wealth. This has gotten so out of hand that we've got a large unemployed work force out there that will not hold a job even though millions are available. Why work when you can sit at home and get high?
Part of the reason that people sit on welfare and don't take jobs is because the type of jobs that are becoming available requires knowledge they don't have. If a robot takes over flipping burgers at your local burger palace, SOMEONE still has to fix that robot when it breaks, and it will, someone still has to provide the energy it requires, someone has to build it, program it, etc. So it took a few peoples jobs but many jobs are created to maintain it, but not enough people are trained in those technologies.
So laziness is part of the issue, but the lack of availability of training is another part. My view, we should not support laziness. If someone wants to collect welfare and they are able bodied but lack training then they should have to be in training to receive it and we should find some means of providing that training.
Fighting over which economic system should rule by throwing Molotov cocktails at each other in the streets and destroying existing goods, services, and the means of producing them is NOT the way we should be going about this.
I think we should find some ways to make it easier for someone interested in entering the market to do so, reduce regulations that make it too complex, people who own a stake in the means of production, even if other people are doing the production, are more likely to contribute to it in positive ways than people who do not.
J. Løvstuhagen
in reply to Nanook • •@Nanook
This is truly the biggest problem right now - it justifies endless illegal immigration because "the locals won't do it!" when, in reality, some amount of pressure must be exerted on the chronically unemployed to get the desired results.
Likewise, illegal immigration dilutes wages way too much. You could even say that illegal immigration is a stressor on the free market.