Listen to a reading of this article:

Iraq war architect Donald Rumsfeld has died. Not in a prison cell in The Hague, not murdered by bombs or bullets, but peacefully in his home, surrounded by loved ones, a week and a half shy of his 89th birthday.

The imperial media are giving their fallen master a king’s tribute, with headlines describing the psychopathic war criminal as “a cunning leader“, “a man of honor and conviction“, or simply as “Former defense secretary at helm of Iraq, Afghanistan wars“.

The cancerous Washington Post, who just the other day mocked the life of the late antiwar hero Mike Gravel with an obituary branding him the “gadfly senator from Alaska with flair for the theatrical,” describes the child killer Rumsfeld as the “influential but controversial Bush defense secretary” in its headline about his death. 

The New York Times wasn’t much better. Take the headline “Mike Gravel, Unconventional Two-Term Alaska Senator, Dies at 91 — He made headlines by fighting for an oil pipeline and reading the Pentagon Papers aloud. After 25 years of obscurity, he re-emerged with a quixotic presidential campaign.” Compare this to the headline “Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary During Iraq War, Is Dead at 88 — Mr. Rumsfeld, who served four presidents, oversaw a war that many said should never have been fought. But he said the removal of Saddam Hussein had ‘created a more stable and secure world.’”

There’s been criticism as well, of course; online sentiments about Rumsfeld’s death have not been nearly as worshipful and hagiographic as they’ve been toward other disgusting war whores like John McCain. But in the end all that matters is that he lived a long, full life, without ever having faced even the slightest single consequence for the horrors he unleashed upon our world; without even so much as sustaining any meaningful damage to his reputation.

This despite the fact that it’s been public knowledge for years that Rumsfeld began orchestrating the unforgivable invasion of Iraq within hours of the 9/11 attacks and told numerous lies in order to set that invasion in motion. He also oversaw the intervention in Afghanistan which he and his Bush administration cohorts had been planning before 9/11, beginning a decades-long occupation about which the public has been pervasively lied to from the very beginning by US officials in general and by Rumsfeld in particular. (But remember kids, only crazy conspiracy theorists question the official narrative about 9/11.)

When we are little, we are taught that we live in a nation of laws, where bad guys are thrown in prison by the good guys who are in charge of things. Because our mental programming continues for the rest of our lives in the form of mass-scale propaganda designed to manufacture consent for the status quo, most of us tend to hold onto this childish model of the world to some extent throughout adulthood.

In reality, exactly zero percent of the world’s worst people are in prison, but some of the best people are. The fact that Donald Rumsfeld lived a long life of freedom while Julian Assange wastes away in Belmarsh Prison proves the world doesn’t work the way we were taught in school. The very worst bad guys are not put in prison by the good guys who run things, because the very worst bad guys are the ones who run things.

The system isn’t designed to protect us from society’s worst, it’s designed to protect society’s worst from us. It’s designed to keep us turning the gears of industry without looking around and noticing that we’re all getting fucked in the ass by an alliance of plutocrats and security state insiders who only care about power and money. It’s designed to keep us too busy and propagandized to use the power of our numbers to take back what the bastards have stolen from us, and to make sure there’s enough guns on their side to kill us all dead if we try.

Donald Rumsfeld was all the worst things about our world. He perfectly embodied the corrupt, bloodthirsty, ecocidal, omnicidal, oppressive, exploitative, deceitful status quo that is driving humanity toward extinction. The US-centralized empire is Donald Rumsfeld. It might as well have his face and his name.

Don’t let his passing fool you: Donald Rumsfeld is dead, but he is also as alive as ever. He lives on in the continued violence he helped initiate in the Middle East. In the death and destruction rained down by the US and its allies in the name of preserving a unipolar world order that none of us ever asked for. In the dying gasps of starving children under imperial blockades in Yemen and Venezuela. In the thousands of US military bases encircling our planet like a noose. In the war ships and missiles pivoting toward China in preparation for a long-anticipated confrontation which should terrify us all.

Unless we can purge from our cells everything within us that resembles Donald Rumsfeld, there is no future for Homo sapiens on this planet. We must evolve beyond everything he stood for, as individuals, as a society, and as a species, and move into a peaceful and collaborative relationship with each other and with our ecosystem.

________________________

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75 responses to “The System Isn’t There To Protect Us From Criminals, It’s To Protect Criminals From Us”

  1. darlings, the last 3 paragraphs says it all….
    answers in our hands already and waiting…
    good on cat for all your scribbles, truth, art or otherwise.
    life is wonderful.
    xxxx

  2. Robert Greenshields Avatar
    Robert Greenshields

    ….and prior to Rumsfeld were the Dulles brothers, and prior to the yank hegemonic assault/insult was the British Empire. From being ceremoniously blown by gun, to the insidious inception of mass chemical warfare through opium misuse against the Chinese population during the exploitation and extortion of the fabled Queen Victoria, onto the drone assassinations so readily accepted as justice today.
    Fundamentally the culture of accepting the status quo, along with pitiable attempts to legitimise attempts at in house promoted stratification as a community credible factor is a folly and farcical. Two examples active in Oz and dynamic within the media at present confirm the continuity of psychological leverage, the first being a decorated soldier and cultural behaviourial patterns we are conditioned to believe are wonderfully extraordinary, and the other is the plight of a lady languishing in a prison in Tasmania, who I believe has been denied justice in a mirror image of the deceitful and disgraced practices of the states judiciary and probable venal policing forces that can only be compared to that of the Guildford Four in the UK.
    Australia and Australians are victims of our own inability to confront the political reality of being obsequious toadies to the rapacious US political cultures, particularly the no neutralists policy, and the ramifications of that cowardly practice. A Subservient global stratification and our blind acceptance in itself ensures the ongoing misuse of our nations volunteers, and ongoing denigration of our nation,in support of the bludgeoning imperialist behaviour of the now obviously steadily imploding USA and its greed based warmongers. .

  3. I think the decision to invade Iraq was made before 9/11, and I wonder if there even needed to be either consent or desire for it from the executive branch and its appointees or if their job is to make the appearance of executive decision making and take the heat for whoever actually decides to set the gears in motion. I strongly suspect the machine that makes those decisions exists outside of democratic control. When I protested with millions of others before the extremely malicious and obviously absurd war in iraq was launched the point was proven that this had nothing to do with popular opinions and reasoned arguments. The msm cashed its credibility in for access and began the latest phase of intellectual capture leading us up to the journalistic blackout mentioned in the other articles. There is a repetitive pattern of politicians, major journalism figures, and other formerly serious public roles in society becoming farcical pantomimes of what they used to be. Like the actors have no control over their script and have no real ability to improvise their role beyond cutesy-folksy bs that slowly and consistently panders away whatever credibility they might have left. And that’s why they exist as the outer god heads of the order and are rewarded so mightily for the ever deepening betrayal of humanity. Why does this sort of black magick even work at this point? Meditate on that everyone.

  4. Vincent Tayelrand Avatar
    Vincent Tayelrand

    A kakistocracy (/kækɪˈstɒkrəsi/, /kækɪsˈtɒkrəsi/) is a system of government that is run by the worst, least qualified, and/or most unscrupulous citizens.[1][2] The word was coined as early as the seventeenth century.

    Remember that word kakistocracy – you will have the opportunity to use it quite a lot in the years to come…..

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy

  5. The problem is that the source of evil still remains. Like the Hydra, you cut off one head and another one grows back.

  6. Sincere apogies Caitlin but I refuse to read one artical about this piece of shit.
    I would like to say to D Rumsfeld – I am glad you are dead. I don’t want your name to sully history. Just fuck off – cunt.
    And I will say the same to the other pieces of shit that await their turn.

  7. They level up, removed, destroyed entire communities from the 50s till the 90s to open room to built several highways overall USA. For those familiar with the USA, the history of the I-95 to become what is today is paved with assassinations, bribery, mafia, political influence. They had decades to master the necessary skills to make something like the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center on 9/11. These people don’t have remorse, sleep deprivation, concerns about right and wrong. Their predecessors are the same ones who built the pillars of this civilization based in oil and gas. Just make a note, the world is moving towards to replace all traditional forms of money to cryptocurrency. Imagine who is there behind the scenes? Just a few were able to understand how a group of hackers took control over the Texas oil-gas pipeline responsible to keep half America moving on. They just asked 4 million dollars to give the instructions about how to undo all hack. It does not make any sense since a nrillionaire mechanism was under their control. The catching about the ransom was how they wished to be paid: cryptocurrency. For those familiar with this business, the hardcore of this trade market is secrecy, security, reliability, trustworthy service. You can lose money but not reputation according Murdoch. And he is right because he knows how this business work. So, the insignificant money requested in cryptocurrency was just a bait. 2 weeks later, the US government proudly announced they seized back that money paid to the hackers. That’s what the hackers were looking for to discover and working for.someone interested to know how trustworthy this business really is. If it was reliable, the USA should never be able to find where this money was being held after a sequence of a anonymous transactions. If they could find the whole path, it can only mean one thing, they are the keepers of the vault. For 4 millions dollars they showed to world that your national reserves can be seized just in case you are not aligned with the US empire. Your personal savings can have the same fate if you become a persona non grata in your country. They can do whatever they want as usual. But most people and countries investing money on this were not aware. Now they are.

  8. The Civil Code exists to allow the rich to extract wealth from the poor. The Penal Code exists to prevent the poor from retaliating.

  9. Maybe we should erect monuments to people we hate. So we can remember them and piss on their graves.

    1. I support that idea conditionally.
      ~
      I’ll provide the conditions later. Today is not the day Maxim Gorki for grave pissing. After some others move on to the afterworld perhaps it will be worth discussion.
      ~
      Seriously though, I seriously think some serious thinking and serious contemplation followed by serious direct action is seriously in the serious cards of reckoning.
      ~
      I’ll be playing my hand cause I want it the serious game. Seriously.
      ~
      Goodnight one and all.
      :
      May the best runner win the race and may the best thinker speak peace….how could it be otherwise…….it ain’t about winning anyhow is it?

  10. Could someone please point the Grim Reaper now to Dick Cheney’s address. He lives only because some young man who died prematurely had his heart commandeered for the criminal old geezer. Mother Earth needs to be exorcised of all such demons who have possessed her. Loco Joe, Hillary, Albright, Powers, Rice I and Rice II (what Woke choices available!), all these killers need to go to their eternal punishment (if only).

    1. Rumsfeld was one thing – Cheney another.
      The chain on one run around the other.
      So when one goes down the other is
      not far behind….but hells-bells it is
      a mystery.
      ~
      My best memory of Cheney, since his name has come up while we are remembering Rumsfeld is at the inauguration of Obama and when he was wheel chair bound.
      That is a memory I cherish cause it foretold the future in my imagination.
      Plus, I’d been somewhat displeased with the administrations out
      of that fake made up city of DC – been full of bad imagination
      lately. My whole life come to think of it. Really.
      My whole life.
      ~
      Seems that way to me.
      ~
      Rest in peace Rumsfeld and lets get on with what must be done.
      ~
      BK

  11. Roundball Shaman Avatar
    Roundball Shaman

    There are good people in the World who believe they are doing good.
    .
    There are evil people in the World who believe they are doing evil.
    .
    And then there are evil people in the World who believe they are doing good.
    .
    And most people in the World just want to be left the hell alone.

    1. There are bad folks on planet earth and there are good ones
      ~
      The good ones call the bad ones bad and the bad ones call the good ones bad
      ~
      A die is rolled and then a number comes up
      ~
      What is the number rolled?
      ~
      Before you answer, consider this question –
      ~
      How many faces were on the die?
      ~
      I think Rumsfeld would enjoy this talk and that is the only reason I’m doing. It is being done out of respect for his family.
      ~
      I know what side I am on. Do you?
      ~
      Peace is easy,
      BK

  12. United States of American war criminals are never prosecuted unless they are low level soldiers facing charges to excuse all of the higher-ups that give the orders! Donald ( completely UNTOUCHABLE ) Rumsfeld is indeed the poster child for our Evil Empire!

  13. Some of the comments here seem to see Rumsfeld as almost uniquely evil. And perhaps he was, in some abstract moral sense Saint Peter might consider when deciding how to dispose of his soul. But did he have anything to do with, say, the wars on Libya, Syria, or Yemen? Isn’t US imperialism the problem, rather than the agents who further its agenda?

    1. Would evil even exist if there weren’t people to do it?
      This former US Marine Corps Intelligence officer doesn’t answer these interesting questions but thinks Rumsfeld deserves a special place in hell.
      https://www.rt.com/op-ed/528141-donald-rumsfeld-dead-hell/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email
      Let’s hope he gets it…

  14. I didn’t know Rumsfeld personally – I never the met the guy.
    ~
    Sometimes he was a tad funny in a menacing way.
    ~
    Still, the guy just died, so out of respect for his family, I’m not going to say anything bad about the guy today.
    ~
    I suspect, like most things these days, he was on a “spectrum” just like the rest of us.
    ~
    I suspect on occasion he displayed acts of love with close ones, but hell if I know – I just suspect it and I think it is likely.
    ~
    So, I suspect some might love the man, especially in the man’s family, and out of respect for them I put out this:
    ~
    May he pass in peace.
    ~
    Best,
    BK

    1. Please say ” Good Night” again and mean it.

      1. Would you retroactively abort my ass Oz?
        ~
        Out of respect for the ambit of artistry in the next article, I’ll leave it at that.

        1. To your question : Yes !

          1. Then you have sealed your fate. Let it be.

  15. Think what you want of Richard Nixon but he knew a bastard when he saw one and he’s been recorded in March 1971 saying to Bob Haldeman: “Ask Rumsfeld, he’s a ruthless little bastard”. Pity this praise from a respectable POTUS didn’t make it into the obituaries… History is a bitch and we’re left with “things we know, things we don’t know, things we know we don’t know and things we don’t know we don’t know”. It’s this talent for bullshitting around the fan which explains it’s never this kind of dudes that top dogs go and find in the agora to tell them: “Let us buy you a drink. Do you like hemlock?”
    Rumsfeld was a good American who defended America. And you don’t defend America with honesty. It simply cannot work in a country that proudly holds the world’s all-time record for hypocrisy. Get hypocrisy and double standards out of the American way of life and the whole system collapses miserably, starting with English philosopher John Locke’s landmark statement that “all men are born equally free and independent and have certain inherent natural rights of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety” being copied quasi-verbatim into the Declaration of Independence by rich American merchants thriving on slave labor and trafficking. Can’t make that stuff up! It’s the Foundation! Upon this rock was built the whole shebang, all the way to Donald Rumsfeld claiming the world was a better place without Saddam Hussein, a bold statement that the millions killed, maimed, widowed, orphaned, imprisoned, tortured, displaced and impoverished following the illegal Iraq invasion and its illegal avatars might not necessarily agree with. We have to brace ourselves in view of the horrible possibility that a couple of Iraqis (maybe more…) won’t mourn the death of Saddamicide Donald Rumsfeld. Cruel world…
    Fortunately, this double standard trend didn’t stop with him and we’ve got Anthony Blinken these days ranting about how Alexei Navalny – who’s the embodiment of the very white supremacism he and his peers accused The Donald of, as if he wasn’t nuts enough to weave his own rope – is unjustly held in a Russian prison (without telling us exactly what’s unjust about that) and pontificating about freedom of the press while everybody knows his government is making sure journalist Julian Assange stays in prison in a mockery of justice for exposing US war crimes – which makes him the laughing stock of the whole world minus of course the American media and their minions. Apparently you have to act that way to deserve the label “leader of the free world” – even though spending hundreds of billions of dollars on lethal weapons on top of it doesnt hurt.

    1. I think Nixon’s “ruthless little bastard” was a compliment.
      “According to legend, Henry Kissinger even described him as the most ruthless man he had ever met; higher praise, given its source, is difficult to imagine.”
      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/nov/10/midterms2006.iraq1

      1. According to most dictionaries, praise and compliment mean pretty much the same thing.

        1. My mistake – I took your ‘praise’ as ironic.

  16. In other news, London’s “Freedom Weekend” had a huge turnout of freedom fighters opposing these Orwellian, autocratic lock downs.
    `
    https://off-guardian.org/2021/06/30/londons-freedom-weekend/
    `
    Great article at Wrench in The Gears, on how the Covid “pandemic” “is being exploited to usher in a new global system of technocratic population control and compliance.”
    `
    Here’s a few paragraphs:
    `
    “I invite everyone to consider how in one fell swoop, this pandemic has served as a catalyst for the following:
    `
    “Accelerating a multilateral drive towards a global surveillance apparatus and control grid where digital health certificates tied to blockchain technology will be used as a cover for the biometric ID of every vaccinated person on the planet
    `
    “Scaling the adoption of blockchain technology to lay the global infrastructure for Social Impact Investing, enabling global financiers to use the aggregated data harvested through blockchain’s interoperable ledger to efficiently track the impact of their investments and interventions for returns on investment
    `
    “Encouraging nations to enlist in the UN’s E-Government Development Index (EGDI) through the rollout of digital IDs, which will not only enable citizens to access public e-services but more importantly determine their value as human capital by global financiers
    `
    “Promoting biometric passports (Digital IDs) to manufacture consent for a social credit system-akin to the Chinese technocratic model-which will presage a new era of thought control, by managing, monitoring, punitively profiling and predicting the trustworthiness of citizens through an overarching system of punishments and rewards in a future which will resemble a behaviourist panopticon”
    . . .

    1. “Controlling a person’s access to strings attached Universal Basic Income (UBI) and social welfare which will be distributed via blockchain ledgers and conditioned on the compliance with behaviour management systems overseen by social impact investors, thus undermining the ability of cryptocurrency recipients to make autonomous economic choices
      `
      “Enabling a form of collectivist planning of the world’s economy which will undergo a top-down reorganization by an unelected minority, who will seize control of the global means of production, distribution and ownership
      `
      “Centralizing power in the hands of ‘stakeholder capitalists’ under the guise of reinventing capitalism to make it fairer and greener, using deceptive slogans like ‘Build” Back Better’

  17. Sherman Owens Avatar
    Sherman Owens

    Once again you have exposed the truth of the true nature, practices, and policies of the corporate oligarchs acting under the guise of democracy. Thank you.

  18. Give him a second flush to clear the bowl. But have a plunger for backup just in case.

  19. Rummy gone and that is good, but Jello pudding Bill Cosby is free to drug and rape women again.

    So I figured it out. All we have to do is give money to Julian until he has $400 million dollars like Cosby has.

    Then the money will scream he is one of us. Julian is a child of empire! Part the sea.

    $10 from everyone who supports Julian being freed should be enough.

    1. Jeffrey Epstein

      Net worth US$559 million (July 2019)
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein

  20. In this world of Media Productions, Donald Rumsfeld is rewritten as a hero (as all related WMDs are scrubbed from history). In this world of Media Productions, Mike Gravel is rewritten as a clown (as all his virtuous stances and successes are scrubbed from history). In this world of Media Productions, The Grayzone must be taken down – at all costs. In this world of Media Productions, Bellingcat and all related allies must be promoted to the forefront – as boldly as it is for anyone searching to see. In this world of Media Productions, you can choose to call out the acts of Actors (in staged theaters) – and be targeted. Or, you can join the Screen Actors Guild. (Remember: “You are either with us, or against us.”). https://seaclearly.com/2019/03/30/actors-stages-and-scripts

    1. Mikes history was scrubbed before the body was cold. It started before Mike died. Mass media kept him unknown. I’ll assert most Americans don’t know who Mike was, and the number of Americans who know about the Pentagon Papers matches the number of Chinese who know about Tienanmen Square.

      1. Carolyn L Zaremba Avatar
        Carolyn L Zaremba

        Those of us here in the U.S. who were alive when Gravel read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record will NEVER forget it. It was a heroic act. The fact that war criminals like Rumsfeld and John McCain are lauded while the likes of Gravel are ignored or, as with Julian Assange jailed, represents the true face of the ruling class in the United States and around the world.

        1. I’d heard of someone reading the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record, but until a few days ago the name Mike Gravel would have rung no bells with me. It seems he did a lot for native Americans in Alaska too.

          1. He was an enlightened moral individual who had the rare privilege of achieving political power. Like J. William Fulbright, Frank Church, George McGovern and a few other rare honest public servants, the inside power structure made certain to slander them and make sure they were “voted” out of office for bucking the lucrative wars, profiteering war mongers, embezzlers from the public trough, thieves of the public commons and despoilers of the environment essential to all life, not just rich and powerful vampires. There are plenty of worthy altruists pointedly missing from the history books because the power elite do not want you to know they ever existed. If you did, you might choose to emulate them. Only those useful to the official narrative of American history are allowed to stand. Right now that history looks to be subject to a massive revision by the gang that has presently seized power. Much that you remember from today will soon go down the memory hole, just like Senator Gravel, a voice back in the 60’s and 70’s, was made to do by the United American War Party, otherwise known as the Democrats and Republicans.

  21. He should have been retroactively aborted.

  22. I swear, if you have been a faithful agent of the US Sociopaths In Charge, you could die with babies heads mounted on your fence posts and the corporate media would tell us how absolutely wonderful you were. Just as McCain went so goes Rumsfeld.

    1. The horror, the horror…..

  23. Regular people do not want to control things. They just want to live in peace and have a decent life. Only sociopaths, narcissists, control freaks and psychopaths are driven to rule over others. This is why governments and the military are mostly composed of criminals who know that the best way to get away with crimes is to be in charge of things (just like the best way to rob a bank is to own one). Unfortunately, too many people still watch the TV “news” and read the corporate owned newspapers. The end result is that the status quo remains, and criminally minded people keep getting elected to high office. Until that changes, expect the criminals to keep putting honest people like Julian Assange in prison.

    1. In an ideal world committed to equity, a state education system would teach students to be both leaders and followers. Real skills would be taught. It would be recognized that in a society committed to equity the baton of leadership would pass back and forth depending on situation.

      1. Paul Douglas Rackemann Avatar
        Paul Douglas Rackemann

        But that is pretty much what we are supposed to have now. The education system teaches us to be leaders if we are the sort of scum that the REAL leaders want as middle management. Real skills ARE taught, or we would not be any use as cogs in the machine. The baton of leaderships IS ostensibly passed back and forth between political parties.
        I don’t buy this bit about the people in charge being psychopaths. I think they are a coalition of soldiers and priests. The soldiers are the people who use force, and the priests are the people who live by deception. The priests of the present day are the teachers at all levels, the media people, and the judiciary. The state religion of every country in the West is education.

        1. I respectfully disagree with that.
          ~
          I’m convinced there are psychopaths pulling strings.
          They might not consider themselves as such.
          They might think they are just doing what
          they learned to do the hard way.
          ~
          But in general, the ones at the top, know what they are doing and I don’t think they really care about the perceived puppets in their imagination.
          ~
          Now if not for a few billionaires out there with so much influence, you might could argue with persuasion gainst my sentiment, but you can’t deny there are billionaires out there and they have so much currency relatively speaking.
          ~
          Currency today might be worthless tomorrow is something I think should be a saying.
          ~
          You got a lotta currency then you ought dig a bit deeper regarding harm you might be causing cause there are needles and their are camels and you ain’t got a chance in hell if you perpetuate suffering of innocence.
          ~
          It ought be obvious suffering of innocence continues unabated, and so truly, who is responsible for this on a large-scale? That is something I ponder daily.
          ~
          OK, the 4th is coming up and so are the Olympics and hopefully the goofy NATO games are not poking any bears cause you poke bear again and you will be effed is what a little ginger cake with rum whispered in my left ear just now.
          ~
          There are “bad” people out there, but they are not bad all the time. There are folks out there with disproportionate influence on things, and if they are bad, then that has consequences for innocence. Ain’t it obvious?
          ~

          1. Paul Douglas Rackemann Avatar
            Paul Douglas Rackemann

            Friend,
            We seem to pick the parts we understand out of other people’s writings. You seem to have picked my sentence about the “psychopath” idea. I’ll write this on the assumption that you have your system set to be able to receive replies yourself. This will get pretty long on this site.
            I get the impression that you are thinking in terms of “good” and “bad.” To me, those, used without reference to any object (“good” and “bad” for WHAT?), are just fuzzy terms used by the sort of people who go to church. They don’t mean anything.
            We can certainly look at the people in charge of society as bad, because they are bad for US. They seem to be mainly concerned about the very short term, and they are destroying the human race for the long term. Also they are more concerned to maintain the stability of the system that puts them on top, than they are about the welfare of the majority, which is what they pretend to be concerned about.
            I get your remark about camels and needles, but that is, again, just church thinking. Billionaires are just people who have done very well in more-or-less honest trade, and they do get a bit more say in government than the rest of us. But this is only because the soldiers and the priests realise that they are smart people and value their advice. Honest men MAY have some influence in government where the country or city is small and depends on foreign trade, but in a big country, the influence of honest men is minimal. In your country – since you mention the 4th of July – the government is, I think, basically a military one: they have been successful in wars (starting with the War of Independence) and they THINK like soldiers. The priests matter – they always do – but in your country the soldiers matter more than they do in a country without that sort of military prominence.
            I won’t go into your stuff about “suffering of innocence” and “bad people not being bad all the time.” If you ever lived on a farm, you would know that innocence suffers all the time, and as I already said, free-floating “good” and “bad” are meaningless concepts.

        2. Hiring terrorists to terrorize civilians to effect geopolitical goals that are in themselves immoral may or may not be psychopathic in your book…but it’s pretty damn SICK nonetheless.
          Enforcing “sanctions” that severely restrict the ability of civilian populations to access basic necessities is also pretty damn sick.
          Bombing Mosul and Raqqa to smithereens, causing immeasurable civilian suffering, is pretty damn sick.
          We could go on, but I’d say ”psychopathic” hits the mark.

          1. Paul Douglas Rackemann Avatar
            Paul Douglas Rackemann

            Friend,
            Like the writer I replied to above, you have picked the word “psychopath” out of my essay and focussed on it. I accept that we should resent the fact that our filthy rulers do those sort of things IN OUR NAME. I certainly resent the fact that our media people (in Australia) blandly present the fact that your stupid George Bush II started a war against Iraq over a bombing in New York that Iraq had NOTHING to do with, as if it were perfectly reasonable. I looked on in horror as another apparent puppet, Tony Blair in England, backed him up, and apparently had a man whose bad conscience led him to expose part of the conspiracy (a Dr. Kelly as I recall) murdered.
            This reminds me: can anyone shed light on it for me? Is there a legal provision that if a person is murdered by the secret police, the coroner must bring down a verdict of suicide? It seems to happen an awful lot.
            I’m sorry if I’ve drifted off-topic, but this seems important to me.

  24. You have been too kind to him, Caitlin. And I am not being ironical. I know you’ve limited your anger at the man and the ugliness he spawned in our world. But – well – you did your best that man and Dick Cheney – ugh! Aided and abetted by Blair and Howard! Downer, too. They must share some of the opprobrium…

    1. I wish Rummy roasting on a spit for all eternity in hell were not one of his damn unknowns unknowns.

  25. Jose Pardinas Avatar
    Jose Pardinas

    And it’s not only war criminals like Donald Rumsfeld that are protected by our rotten-to-the-core system of government and the equally corrupt mainstream corporate media. Consider how the FBI pulled every muscle to shield pedophile Jeff Epstein when he was first investigated. One would have to be impossibly simple-minded not to realize that it was done at the behest of very powerful men in Washington in order to keep elites like Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Donald Trump and scores of others (here and abroad) from being exposed as sexual predators.

    1. Consider Cosby and Epstein together. You only have to be half a billionaire to get out of trouble for being a perv but you have to spend the money to get washed clean and get a slap on the wrist

      To openly engage in sexual perversion without fear of consequence now requires having over a billion dollars. Cosby and Epstein fortunes are only halfway there. And Epstein only had enough money to buy his freedom once.

      The price of being a pervert has gone up. Even if you are royal you have to at least give a confusing interview now.-
      I am going to stop saving my pennies. I will never have enough to be an libertine dirty dog. And masturbation is free.

  26. I’m sorry Rumsfeld died this week.

    1. Jose Pardinas Avatar
      Jose Pardinas

      As Bubba used to say, I feel your pain.
      And yes, he should have died 20+ years ago.

        1. Buster – I feel you pain.
          Jose – yours as well.
          &*%!
          ~
          Ken

    2. He should have been retroactively aborted.

      1. ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha…..
        I’m just laughing….
        ha, ha, ha

      2. OK, Robert the Bruce, what would a retroactive abortion be?
        ~
        Now, step 1 is to check out the definitions.
        ~
        I don’t think the term “retroactive” has too many but the term “abortion” has plenty.
        ~
        Combine those two words and a fair man has the sense to ask – what did you mean by the combination of terms expressed Robert the Bruce? Luckily, the question in quotes is rhetorical (lucky for me) because it doesn’t matter; the combined term made me laugh out loud and for that I appreciate Robert Bruce.
        ~
        Ha, ha.
        ~
        My guess is this is the kind of discourse Rumsfeld enjoyed, but I could be wrong. Do you want to make a bet?
        ~
        I just want good health for me and my family. Is that asking too much?
        ~
        Peace,
        Ken

        1. Hey – you ever heard the idiom – “abortion of justice”?
          ~
          Now it seems there are some delusional high-school acting young intellectuals on the east coast at some college trying to rein in people’s communication. That is what I read this morning.
          ~
          Let me ask you – one and all. Seriously, please let me ask this question. OK. Is that agreed…..?…..
          ~
          I’ll take the silence as agreement. So here is my question.
          ~
          Could there be anything stupider than that?
          ~
          When I read stuff like that, I literally feel my brain turning. I don’t think there could be anything stupider than that and what pisses me off most is it is pompous on a collective level. Can you imagine anything worse than that?
          ~
          BK

        2. The whole purpose of language is so we can talk better.
          ~
          Attempting to constrain language is damn near evil.
          ~
          It is an attempt to create group think for the perceived values of a few. It is nefarious. I want it it end. I want this way of thinking to die!
          ~
          Eff that up your stupid brains!
          BK

  27. No matter anyone’s notion of his own, and his cohorts’ exceptionalist superiority, the only one thing he can know for certain is that he doesn’t know when he personally is going to die – to remain as nothing more than one more evil footnote in history, for all of eternity!

  28. “When we are little, we are taught that we live in a nation of laws, where bad guys are thrown in prison by the good guys who are in charge of things.”
    Well, some of us are – some are taught we live under laws designed to throw us in jail and not the crims who lord it over us or the creeps who humbly submit. But that aside, why do so many fall for this when it’s so obviously untrue?

    1. It is the power of being a social animals. If we were dogs we would lie down on our backs and show our bellies whenever we met someone with more money. Woof woof.

      And with terrible fury our parents teach us to be obedient serfs. Living a meaningless life determined by others is considered to be preferable to the eternal black void of death.

      Some of us disagree, but not many.

  29. I hope Donald Rumsfeld will be weeping shit in hell for eternity.

    1. I would like to see a big budget movie with all the special effects show Rummies death in the opening scenes. Then we can show Rummy being reincarnated in every victim of his wars so he can experience their death.

      A child runs down an alley. He looks like the brother of the two year old boy who washed up dead in the Mediterranean Sea a few years ago. The child stops and looks into a puddle of water. The reflection of Donald Rumsfeld looks up from the water.

      Suddenly a fifty caliber round from a helicopter rips off the boys right leg off. He is on the ground convulsing in pain as he bleeds out.

      Repeat this scene a few million times. Show Rummy’s reflection in water, in mirrors. Use every trick. The movie will be longer than two hours. To cover all the victims will take a thousand years.

      The closing scene shows a slug crawling next to a shard of broken glass. Rummy’s face is in the reflection. A Slug with his face. The final reincarnation.

  30. To paraphrase George Carlin:
    ‘Its a hubristic, bloodthirsty, Life sucking, psychopathic club.
    And we’re not in it’
    Thank FUCK.

    1. Most dance for their dinner hoping to be let in.

  31. The owners want more than mere protection from us. They would much prefer absolute and instantaneous and primordial-in-our-cribs CONTROL.
    https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/06/first-the.html
    The Wellcome (Great) Leap (Forward) is a newly constituted civilianized medical DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Agency), managed by a recent DARPA director with strong interests in genetic engineering and human neural network management, as well as MEMS, microelectrical-mechanical systems, cellular level micro machines, which might be injectable. Monitoring a lot of human babies with wearable neurological sensors, through their first 1000 days, developing means to affect that neurological development, learning and decision making, is one of the projects. Developing gene specific treatments for each person requires knowing each person’s genetic code, which is almost assumed as a baseline to do good, by this largest medical “charitable trust” (with eugenicist background). Discovering the intricacies of human motivation to perform tasks, supposedly to treat depression, wants complete genetic and neural mapping of each human involved in this beneficial research into motivation-to-perform-tasks. One wonders if it might be used some day to control humans from afar with neural implants wired to centers of pleasure, pain, and activity-motivation. (People are already controlled with drugs, fear and violence, but maybe they don’t do their best work with such gross techniques.) Another branch of work is to grow human organs, and organ systems, and humal/electromechanical hybrid organ systems, with an eye to transplants, and also to drug testing on human-systems, without humans, without ethical considerations/constraints. This is pretty long, but I read it for you. Whitney Webb did the research work.
    A “Leap” toward Humanity’s Destruction
    The world’s richest medical research foundation, the Wellcome Trust, has teamed up with a pair of former DARPA directors who built Silicon Valley’s skunkworks to usher in an age of nightmarish surveillance, including for babies as young as three months old.
    https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/06/investigative-reports/a-leap-toward-humanitys-destruction/

    1. https://www.sciencealert.com/a-mouse-embryo-complete-with-a-beating-heart-is-growing-entirely-in-petri-dish
      30 June 2021

      “The most complex life forms ever developed entirely in Petri dishes can pump blood through tiny beating hearts, gradually growing nerves and muscles in a laboratory.

      These little collections of mammalian cells form rudimentary mouse embryos, built from scratch out of stem cells – cells that have the potential to develop into any other cell type in the body.”

      1. Just a hop, skip and a jump to semi-humans that want to be eaten at the end of their work-day.

        1. Sometimes at the end of the work day being eaten in a nice thing, but most times I’d just assume not be eaten.
          ~
          It is a timing thing.
          ~
          Some grasp it…others just seem to chime it.
          ~
          What do you think about Tejas John Day? Do you think it ought be Texas. If so, do you think splitting into 5 might not be a good idea for you and me and everybody else in the confederacy of states which is truly what we really are per the current Constitution per my reading and comprehension….and such.
          ~
          So, how about some Article V action is what I ask.
          What do you think?
          What would have Rumsfeld thought?
          ~
          Just now, something wrambling round or I mean rambling wround in a vehicle and my consultation has been requested. So – got to go for now.
          ~
          Let’s talk later.
          Ken

    2. Ahh yeah, but

      A moment to wipe off the techno-narcissism please…..

      Ok, thats better.

      The thing about the panopticon is that the mere existence of it and not the technology changes behavior.

      Prison watchmen don’t even have to watch if you think they might be looking. A camera does not even have to exist. All that is needed is to make you think one is there watching over you.

      The perfect police state does not need perfection. Only the illusion of it.

  32. The grim reaper came for the grim reaper…and I thought he was like Dick Cheney, too evil to die. But Caitlin is right, his legacy continues apace.

    1. There are known grim reapers we know and there are grim reapers we don’t know. There are grim reapers we know we know. We also know there are reapers we do not know; that is to say we know there are some grim reapers we do not know. But there are also unknown reapers. – the grim reapers we don’t know we don’t know.

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