Balloons

Balloons 

 

A balloon ‘missing in action’ by a hobbyist club has emerged as a candidate explaining one of three UFOs downed a week ago by Sidewinder missiles launched by U.S. fighter jets. 

 

Small pico balloons can typically be purchased for $12 to $180 each, according to Aviation Week. 

 

Meanwhile, the estimated cost of the Sidewinder short-range air-to-air missile is about $400,000.  U.S. Air Force F-16s and F-22s used such missiles – made by Raytheon – during the past weekend to down the objects that were spotted over Canada’s Yukon, over northern Alaska and over Lake Huron. 

 

-       Did the U.S. use a $400,000 missile to shoot down a balloon cost as little as $12?  - Market Watch

 

 

By Gregg Wall (2-18-2023)

 

Ooh Baby, America is back and jonzing for war. 

 

America has so much war material that we spend $400,000 to shoot down $12.00 hobby and weather balloons.  Last counted, four were shot down. 

 

Conveniently, America has given up looking for the downed UFOs… yes, the U.S. MSM was lit up with ominous stories about alien aircraft and UFOs.  All the better to keep Americans fearful and in support of a trillion plus dollar, per annum, DOD/Security State budget (more than the next ten nations combined or is it eleven?).  Did America give up looking or was there no money to be made in spending our corpulent military budget on finding the equivalent to plastic trash bags?  And can you imagine, what a look, America’s preeminent & vaunted military power got the bad guys: balloons. 

 

The story, of course, was entirely predictable.  The Dems, forever fearful of looking ‘socialist’ or weak - by the GOP, were baited into doing the inane, and grossly overreacted to the phantom balloon menace.  Gee, if some terrorist wanted to start a nuclear war… all it would take is a foreign power to bribe a GOP senator into calling the Dems cowards for failure to launch a first strike against China or Russia, and the whole planet would go up in flames.   

 

Makes one wonder where the $100 - plus - billion the American taxpayer coughed up on the Ukraine, so far, or the Federal Reserve printed up, went to?   Trust me, don’t ask.  Our own Pentagon fails audit after audit… so how the hell should America be expected to track tens of billions pouring into corruption defined, the Ukraine.  The powers that be are so profligate, wasteful, and eager to get their hands on the fraud that is characteristic of all wars, they are already salivating at using U.S. aid to rebuild the Ukraine in the middle of a war?

 

Isn’t it wonderful, America may get to rebuild the Ukraine at least twice.  Now, and once again, after the Russians get done hammering the new buildings a second time.  This, of course, assumes that the Ukraine -- the most corrupt country in Europe, where democracy and press freedoms have been conveniently suspended, by Dictator Zelensky -- prevails.  

 

All this goes down, as American, EU, and NATO leaders meet in Munich, at their pep rally for war.  With U.S. public support for the Ukraine war winding down, leadership was beating the war drums, forever slaves to their MIC master’s diktats.  VP Harris gave serious warnings that Putin had committed ‘war crimes’ … which sounds laughable compared to America’s long, long history of misleading the public into war after war, and the country’s own nasty history of overthrowing democracies, endless for-profit wars, and war crimes.  All in the furtherance of big oil’s market manipulation aims, colonial commercial exploitation, U.S. dollar hegemony, and military contractor profits.  European leaders did their part: nodding their heads vigorously, forever catching a free ride on America’s defense spending, and applauding our willingness to blow trillions on a seemingly endless military orgy & war (while the American people suffer). 

 

Interestingly, this all comes at a time when the GOP has held up raising the debt ceiling and America is, allegedly, fresh out of runway for more national debt and money printing for war.  See, the debt ceiling never applies to wars, welfare for the rich, or Wall St bailouts; the debt ceiling only applies to programs that help Americans. 

 

It all serves as a reminder, that America’s failed two parties do not serve the American people.  No, they serve themselves and big oil, billionaires, cartels, the MIC, monopolies, and Wall St.  And clearly it shows.  For something is not quite right.  When you have the biggest war club on the global stage, why the need to wield it all the time?  Why the need to spend millions shooting down balloons?  Unless American leadership has an inferiority complex?  Why the need to state that America is back, over and over again?  Unless we did something really fatuous and nescient, like export the U.S. economy, jobs, and tax base offshore, under the failed globalization, neoliberal paradigm?  And ran up our national debt to $35 trillion?  And bailed out Wall St grifters continuously, from 2008 to the present day.  Or the Federal Reserve installed a free money regime, after the 2008 Wall Street crime wave exploded… you know, free money printing, which led to unprecedented welfare for billionaires and market consolidation in industry after industry.  The very Wall St billionaires & scumbags that are engaged in rampant consumer price gouging, particularly on essentials, like food, fuel, and rents. 

 

What’s there to be insecure about?  America is back. 

 

To hear the U.S. MSM tell it, we should ignore the real news: 

 

Ohio has been doused in cancer chemicals, by Norfolk Southern;

The national debt at $35 trillion;

Soaring child poverty; 

Food banks overwhelmed; 

Food price gouging is eating Americans alive; 

Social mobility is dead, in the land of opportunity; 

The Nazi police state is bludgeoning Americans to death, by the thousands; 

The U.S. is in yet another money pit war; 

63% of Americans, live check to check;

Corruption is endemic in Washington; and 

Big Oil & Gas are melting down and flooding out the planet. 

 

But look over here, Amerika… per the MSM: UFOs, little green men (who haven’t revealed themselves, because they are terrified of U.S. leadership’s brutality), and shiny balloons are what’s happening. 

 

Lord forbid the MSM report the real news. 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2023

Right Wing Death Squads

Right Wing Death Squads 

 

Then, a police force made up of a diverse group of people whose forebears were enslavers, slaves, and slave catchers took to the streets in riot gear and armored personnel carriers to keep Memphis “safe” from people who wanted to protest the brutality of those cops. 

All of that should be obvious, but apparently there are people out here who can’t understand how “Black” cops could commit this act born of “white” supremacy.

-       Cops Lynched Tyre Nichols Because They Knew They Could, The Nation

 

At least 1,176 people were killed by law enforcement officers in the US last year, the most of any year since at least 2013.

 

Of people killed by law enforcement last year, 287 were Black. That’s 24% of the total number of police killings, the group found. US Census data show 13.6% of the population is Black.

 

“The majority of these killings began with in response to a mental health call, routine traffic stop, a non-violent offense or disturbance or a situation where there was no crime alleged,” Samuel Sinyangwe, Mapping Police Violence’s founder, said. 

 

-       Last Year Was Deadliest Year on Record for Police Violence in the US – Bloomberg

 

US police have shot dead more than 1,000 Americans per year over the past eight years. 

 

-      Bloomberg News

 

By Gregg Wall 2-4-2023

 

The Tyre Nichols murder was a new low for the United States, in a long, long running history of lows.  If to whom much is given much is expected… why does America continually fail to fully appreciate and live up to the multitude of gifts the country has received?  Again and again, America’s leadership demonstrates they aren’t fit for anything, but corruption & gross mismanagement.  The more America is given, the more our leadership fails, exponentially, and demonstrates itself unworthy.  

 

In watching the police video, I had two immediate thoughts, one, this must have been what Christ went though, at the hands of Roman soldiers, before he was nailed to the cross.  The second thought was, this is a god damned Latin American death squad.  Right here, in Tennessee… as racist a hellhole as you’ll find in America.

 

Right wing death squads, of course, are covert & paramilitary organizations.  These organizations often consist of public officials, military, Nazis & fascists who get off on the action, and police officers, who carry out extrajudicial killings and eliminate & punish undesirable elements in society (such as, people who exercise their right to free speech, or protest, or have the audacity to tell a country’s oligarchs that the country is entirely on the wrong track).  It’s generally, the disenfranchised, the poor, ‘the other,’ who speak out & are subsequently silenced (often buried in unmarked graves).  The right wing death squad serves three purposes: plausible deniability, the state can disavow any knowledge or affiliation; those who dare speak out are often disappeared, eliminated expeditiously; and it sends a message of fear throughout society. 

 

And why would right wing death squads, in America, be anyone’s surprise?  America’s police state is now engaged in a thousand-plus extrajudicial killings, per annum, for the last eight years.  The right wing death squad is in keeping with a failed state, kleptocracy, massive inequality, and oligarchy… that is to say, unaccountable wealth & privilege and great evil.  It’s associated with economies that no longer function, where nearly all wealth rolls up to a privileged elite. 

 

Gee, sound familiar?

 

Given America’s history of slavery and prison slavery, right up to the present day, yes, this is the place.  Given the indentured servitude that is alive and well, which accompanies a non-living wage, yes, America is the place.  See America’s atrocious minimum wage at $7.25.  See the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States, Big Pharma & for-profit health care.  Kleptocracy?  Yes again, America certainly has that nailed, with an explosion in the national debt, from less than $10 trillion before ’08 to $35 trillion today.  Almost all that debt went to financing endless for-profit wars, banker & billionaire bailouts, tax cuts for the rich, jacking the stock market into the stratosphere, privatization schemes, and endless corporate welfare & fraud.

 

It's no accident that former colonial powers and America’s current empire… all exploit slave labor & indentured servitude presently, via the industrial policies of neoliberalism and globalization. Child labor? Slave labor?  American multinationals have that covered.  They just hire a subcontractor to do the dirty work or buy commodities on world markets, which provide at least one degree of separation.  No sense in Wall Street getting dirty with all that blood, poverty, slavery, and the tears of child labor.  And the Europeans are definitely in on the action. 

 

The free market?  What free market?  When the economy consists largely of monopolies and cartels, colluding Wall Street, McKinsey, & interlocking boards of directors…  there is no price discovery.  Only boardroom & C-suite despots dictating prices and wages (and commanding obscene profits). 

 

And far too many of my white brothers and sisters are missing the boat, entirely.  Far too many will defend the U.S. economy and American exceptionalism, despite all evidence to the contrary.  Despite the fact that billionaires, globalization -- and an economy based upon financial engineering, monopoly, and unmitigated greed -- have already rendered so many privileged white Americans: obsolete.  Finito.  And it’s only going to get worse.  In response to my observations that the American economy runs on labor oppression, wage slavery, indentured servitude, and a pool of slave labor, globally… the responses I received online were workers can quit or workers can start a business?  

 

Right.

 

Let’s be clear. 

 

·      Systemic racism thrives in America. 

·      Police State murder thrives in America.

·      The war machine thrives in America. 

·      The prison industrial complex flourishes in America. 

·      Wage slavery thrives in the United States.

·      Indentured servitude?  Every child in the US is born today with just under $100,000 in national debt hanging over their head, from the moment they take their first breathe.

 

·      Monopoly & oligarchy thrive in America. 

·      Corruption thrives in America.  

 

(What increasingly does not thrive: civil liberties, democracy, freedom, and an economy that works for all.)

 

Which explains why the nastiest police & surveillance state the world has ever seen thrives in the United States of America.  Because congress is on board, as is their ownership: banks, billionaires, multinationals, oligarchy, and Wall St.  To them, the police & surveillance state are profit centers.

 

The elites are deeply fearful and their response? 

 

A police & surveillance state, right wing death squads, and an unprecedented and growing number of extrajudicial killings.  (What's unique about American death squads are that they are overt, operating in plain sight, and openly sanctioned by the state.)

 

That, and platitudes about ‘fighting chance,’ equality of opportunity, but not equality of outcomes… while Washington shovels hundreds of billions (as fast as the FED & Treasury can print it up) into the laps of entirely corrupt and evil men & women. 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2023