Cheerleading For WW3: Biden’s Speech

“Geneva October 14, 2023. [Fabrice Coffrini/AFP]”
Source: Aljazeera “Tens of thousands rally around the world in solidarity with Palestine”

It’s taken me a minute to respond to Biden’s recent speech cheerleading for WW3 because I was busy presenting a webinar on U.S. pipe dreams of Full Spectrum Dominance and out in the streets several times this week demonstrating support for Gaza. 

Back on the original bridge I went to in Skowhegan, my husband and I were amazed at the outpouring of support expressed by passing motorists. At times, the honking was continuous. We haven’t stood in that particular spot since 2020 and the public’s mood has clearly changed. 

Or maybe, as some suggested, the response was due to it being the day after Biden’s warmongering speech?

At first I thought I’d go through his speech and highlight the lies. But if Biden’s lips are moving he is probably lying, so it would be more efficient to highlight any discernible truths in what the teleprompter told him to say.

Remarks by President Biden on the United States’ Response to Hamas’s Terrorist Attacks Against Israel and Russia’s Ongoing Brutal War Against Ukraine (Adjectives are working overtime in this title but the biggest lie is the inversion: Israel has been attacking civilians in Gaza non-stop, and NATO’s war on Russia via Ukraine has indeed been brutal for the half a million Ukrainians used as cannon fodder.)

October 20, 2023
 
THE PRESIDENT:
  Good evening, my fellow Americans.  We’re facing an inflection point in history — one of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come.  That’s what I’d like to talk with you about tonight. 
 
You know, earlier this morning, I returned from Israel.  They tell me I’m the first American president to travel there during a war. (While in office Nixon, Carter, Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, and Trump all visited Israel, a country perpetually at war with its neighbors.)
 
I met with the Prime Minister and members of his cabinet.  And most movingly, I met with Israelis who had personally lived through horrific horror of the attack by Hamas on the 7th of October. 
 
More than 1,300 people slaughtered in Israel, (Passive voice, but the preceding sentence pins this on Hamas. In fact, survivor testimony indicates witnessing Israel’s military mowing down Israelis.) 


“Yasmin Porat, a survivor of the bloodshed at Kibbutz Be’eri, near the boundary with Gaza, says many Israeli civilians were killed by Israeli forces.” Source: Electronic Intifada

On October 7th, terror attacks have triggered deep scars and terrible memories in the Jewish community. (Many Jewish people, survivors like Dr. Gabor Mate, have expressed disgust with using the Holocaust as an excuse to steal land from the Palestinians.)

Today, Jewish families worried about being targeted in school, wearing symbols of their faith walking down the street, or going out about their daily lives. (Israel’s role as an apartheid state claiming to represent Judaism endangers Jewish people everywhere.)

Source: Unusual Whales

I’ll leave you with a voice of reason, Economics Professor Michael Hudson (his full interview on the Rumble channel New Rules can be seen here):

BARBIE & OPPENHEIMER Are Both Sophisticated Propaganda Vehicles


I can hear you saying, “I get that OPPENHEIMER could be soft propaganda for nuclear weapons use but BARBIE??” And I’m right there with you — because not everything that comes out of Hollywood is propaganda for the U.S. empire’s war machine.

Unless it is.

Bear with me while I notice that a) BARBIE is stirring up controversy over a map that is glimpsed showing a nine-dash line delineating areas in the South China Sea right off the coast of China and 

b) U.S. client countries like the Philippines are lining up to ban BARBIE because they object to where the line is.

Here’s the non-fanciful map that NPR (National Pentagon Radio) served up in early July to accompany their article linked above:


Here’s another map I saw this morning that may have some relevance here:

Pew Research map shows unfavorable views of China are rather uneven worldwide and furthermore suggests that propaganda works. The highest percent of those viewing China unfavorably are in U.S. client states Australia and Japan, followed by U.S. client state Sweden, followed by the U.S. itself.
Heck, evenfalse stories about the Barbie movie are helping to fan the flames of the map controversy.

It’s evil, but I have to admire the empire’s narrative management strategies.

As for OPPENHEIMER? Don’t get me started. While sheepdogs for the Democratic Party insist the movie is required viewing and sure to turn anyone anti-nuclear, sharper analysts reach different conclusions. From indigenous activists Klee Benally and Leona Morgan:

To glorify such deadly science and technology as a dramatic character study, is to spit in the face of hundreds of thousands of corpses and survivors scattered throughout the history of the so-called Atomic age.

Think of it this way, for every minute that passes during the film’s 3-hour run time, more than 1,100 citizens in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki died due to Oppenheimer’s weapon of mass destruction. This doesn’t account for those downwind of nuclear tests who were exposed to radioactive fallout (some are protesting screenings), it doesn’t account for those poisoned by uranium mines, it doesn’t account for those killed during nuclear power plant melt-downs, it doesn’t account for those in the Marshall Islands who are forever poisoned.

Of course the real power of propaganda is directing our attention, both away from inconvenient truths and toward a version of reality that benefits the powerful.

I’ll leave you with this example from popular culture aimed at young kids: 

This is  from a picture book for children, Diary of a Spider, published in 2011 by Scholastic. I could do an entire blog post on that corporate entity’s penetration of U.S. public schools with turn key book fairs that sell a myriad of pro-military and pro-empire books. 

Soft propaganda starts early and it never sleeps.