Everybody Knows Everything Except Us, Plus

Newly religious lunatic threatens wholesale war crimes, plus music

Waimanu Street and points west (Credit Weldon Berger/Bad Crow Review)

In local news, the skin cancer doc successfully disposed of the skin cancer on my nose. I heartily recommend avoiding surgery on your nose if at all possible. Elsewise, my homicidal pharmacy benefits manager restored coverage for my esketamine treatments, which has been quite helpful but I’m still way short of sufficient emotional reserves to both deal with the chaotic apartment situation and write. I apologize for that. It just hasn’t been on.

Everybody Knows Everything Except Us

I ran across an article about the rescue of military pilots after their aircraft were shot down by Iran’s utterly destroyed air defenses. It referenced in passing this NY Times story about regional US military bases now thought to be uninhabitable on account of Iran blew them up, sending their personnel to conduct operations from hotels. Iran’s defense minister says the U.S. is now using human shields by placing military targets in civilian structures.

The Times story gave some details about which bases had been hit and what assets had been damaged or destroyed, but nothing like a complete accounting. U.S. officials are not providing such an accounting solely because it would make them look bad and piss off Trump, who may well not know about the damage, and maybe even damage their prospects for continued funding of their illegal war. Although that’s unlikely.

They know what’s been hit; Iran knows what’s been hit because Russia—which is said to be providing military intelligence to Iran along with upgraded drone technology—and China know what’s been hit.

The U.S., and Iran and Russia and China, undoubtedly knew that Iran still had some functioning air defenses. Trump may not have known, and we didn’t know, but they all did, and we weren’t told because it would make the regime (ours, not the Iranian’s) look bad and piss off Trump, who still hasn’t commented about the aircraft getting shot down, and possibly even damage their prospects for continued funding of this illegal war. Although that’s unlikely.

(We know how he feels about Americans who get shot down.)

For decades I’ve been advocating the publication of the president’s daily brief, now said to be delivered in cartoon form, in newspapers in time for our morning coffee. When you look at military and intelligence secrets withheld from the public and later revealed—torture, “rendition,” unconstitutional spying, FBI-created terrorist plots, whatever—almost fucking none of it served any purpose other than protecting the motherfuckers in power from embarrassment or some sort of programmatic risk.

We want to kidnap and torture people, so the secret must be kept or somebody might force us to stop. We might still not know about the torture if one of St. Robert Mueller’s agents hadn’t forced his hand by threatening to go public with what the FBI already knew, or if John Kiriakou hadn’t blown the whistle and become the only person to go to prison in connection with the program—for blowing the whistle, not because he, like, tortured anybody.

And lest we think this is just a Republican regime issue, bear in mind that Obama violated the UN Convention Against Torture every single day of his tenure by, among other things, refusing to hold the architects and mechanics of the torture regimen accountable, and by blocking legal redress for torture victims thorough the mechanism of, naturally, state secrets. He did other evil shit too, but that was a really glaring thing. Not a secret, but you wouldn’t know that because the press were completely uninterested in it.

“We tortured some folks.” Jaysus.

Crimes Against Humanity ‘r’ Us, and everybody knows it but us. Everybody knows everything but us.

One other thing I’ve been saying for decades now is that on matters military or national security, the government should be assumed to be lying unless proved otherwise. Because they are all fucking liars.

Newly religious lunatic threatens wholesale war crimes

Speaking of fucking, the Times recreated Trump’s deranged Easter war crimes message with the word “fuckin’” intact. What they didn’t do was run a 120-point banner headline screaming “Deranged Religious Fanatic Threatens Massive War Crimes Against Iran.” They were too busy with feel-good stories about the daring rescue of military pilots engaged in an illegal war.

I don’t for a moment believe Trump has any religious sensibility other than himself having been anointed by god to bury this fucking country deeper than it has ever been buried before. Many people are saying.

Not like he knows anything about religion other than religious lunatics telling him he’s been anointed by god.

You’ve never seen such weasel words as the press are using to address the threat of war crimes under the aegis of god. Some people believe attacking civilian infrastructure might constitute war crimes, but regime officials say that’s not so. And nobody mentions invoking the Prince of Peace to justify the shit.

BOTH FUCKING SIDES!!! WAR CRIMES!!

Jesus fucking christ, whose hands make whistling noises when he tries to clap.

Music

Just a few musics today.

ModelActriz, “Cinderella”

Max Potential, “Nourished by Time”

Jessica Pratt, “Life Is”

Japanese Breakfast, “Kokomo, IN”
One among an astonishing number of songs with “Kokomo” in the title.

Bonus Kokomo tune: Bonnie Raitt, “Kokomo Blues”

Nilüfer Yanya, “Mutations”

Tune-Yards, “Limelight”

And that, Comrades in disbelief, is all I got. I hope it won’t be so long til next time. As always, please share this around if you like what I do, and consider a free or paid subscription if you’ve not already.

Be well; take care.