A Potpourri Of Savagery And Greed
Who's a good boy?
Links are at the end, feeling ill used.
The New Republic has a short piece by Kate Aronoff anchored to the Bidennaires’ approval of a new natural gas pipeline meant to transport the fracked stuff to west coast export facilities. It’s a lovely example of both savagery and greed, what with the U.S. ascension to the natural gas-exporting throne; you can’t do better to do worse by the future than doubling down on the methane-spewing ways of natural gas production, pipelines and tankers, and you can hardly do worse on the motive than, in an echo of recent Bidennaire rationale (rationalization?) for selling the shit out of instruments of war, securing the U.S. economy for fun and profit and national security.
It’s a quick read which includes links to a New Yorker story by the heroic Bill McKibben (which I’ve not yet read), and a Foreign Policy bit by ubiquitous Democratic foreign policy/national security guy Jake Sullivan.1
And in the spirit of slitting that economy-national security vein, the UN says the Israelis have now attacked four separate UN schools/bomb shelters in the past 24 hours, killing a number of students, staff and refugees.
“Over the last few hours, I received reports that three of our schools sheltering about 20,000 people have been hit. This reportedly has led to the deaths of more than 20 people in Jabalya, and also one person at the beach camp,” [agency head Phillipe Lazzarini] said. An UNRWA statement later said a fourth school-turned-shelter had been hit. CNN has asked the Israel Defense Force (IDF) for comment.
Chaos of the aftermath could be seen in a five-minute video posted to Telegram, which showed bloodied bodies strewn across the floor and people screaming at the UNRWA-sponsored Jabalya Elementary school.2
That’s in addition to a UN school attack two weeks ago which also killed a number of students, refugees and staff.3
You may recall mention here of the Bidennaires emphasizing the economic benefits of providing weapons to Israel and Ukraine as part of their congressional sales pitch for the money they’re seeking to do that.4
You can’t write about savagery and greed without a nod to the pirate equity sector—which according to this (paywall-free) story in The Atlantic now owns about 20 percent of the U.S. economy, including segments of the war industry.5
A few days I ran across a CT Mirror story chronicling the destruction of several Connecticut hospitals owned by a company called Prospect Medical Holdings, a national medical services provider (sort of) which is trying to sell its Connecticut facilities to the Yale medical network. The story includes fraud and creative ways of running hospitals into the ground.6
That tale of woe seemed stink of pirate equity, and sure enough, Prospect Medical is a pirate equity firm with pirate equity habits. ProPublica ran a story back in 2020 about Prospect Medical pulling a classic pirate equity scam by borrowing more than a billion dollars, paying out a third of it to investors and executives, and then paying back the loan by selling multiple hospital properties and facilities to a real estate instrument which they own and which then leased the land back to the hospitals.7
Pirate equity is big in the medical economy, which allows them to loot providers of essential services and screw the employees along with the people requiring medical treatment. For a long time these degenerates were involved in the manufacture and sale of personal firearms, such as the Bushmaster version of the AR-15, a favorite of mass murderers throughout the country. Guns and hospitals: Symbiotic capital investments.
Boris Johnson killed a bunch of people with his omnishambles of a pandemic plan, and Politico has a story about it headlined “Cabinet of ‘fuckpigs’ and a team with ‘no plan.’ 8” Naturally just about everybody involved is doing swell.
Just a little sumpin’ sumpin’ for a Thursday. Did you know it snowed in Chicago on Hallowe’en? Sounds restful, I say from my perch 10,000 feet below the nearest snow.
Warne Marsh Quartet, “Music for Prancing;9” Curtis Counce, “You Get More Bounce with Curtis Counce.10”
That, Comrades, is all I got. Please share it if you like it, and consider subscribing if you’ve not—it’s free unless you want to pay, which I must say I could use more of if anybody’s in the mood.
Take care, be well, mind your wallet.