“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” ― Douglas Adams
“It’s a good day for America, it’s a good day for Europe, and it’s a good day for world peace, for real. This is consequential,” Biden said.
The legislation breezed through the Senate on Tuesday, passing in a vote of 79-19. It was passed on Saturday as four separate bills in the House, where it also received strong bipartisan support.
Biden tanked Republican leaders for supporting the legislation. “I want to thank everyone in Congress who made it possible, especially the bipartisan leadership: Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson; Leader Jeffries; Leaders Schumer and McConnell. They don’t always agree, but when it matters most, they stepped up and did the right thing,” he said.
Packed into the $95 billion bill is $61 billion to spend on the Ukraine proxy war, $26 billion to support Israel, and $8 billion for military aid for Taiwan and other spending in the Indo-Pacific region to prepare for war with China. It also includes a mechanism that could ban TikTok if its China-based parent company ByteDance doesn’t divest within nine months and gives the federal government the power to steal frozen Russian assets.
Biden claimed that there were reports of Ukrainian soldiers cheering in the trenches of eastern Ukraine when the aid was approved by the House. “This weekend, there are reports — and this is — I find this amazing. There are reports of cheers breaking out of the trenches in eastern Ukraine,” he said.
After Biden signed the bill into law, the Pentagon announced a new $1 billion weapons package for Ukraine. Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield are facing a bleak situation as they suffer from manpower shortages, and Russian forces continue to make gains. The new US aid isn’t expected to make much of a difference but will ensure the war will continue.
Biden reaffirmed strong support for Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, which has killed over 34,000 Palestinians, including over 14,000 children, since October 7. “My commitment to Israel, I want to make clear again, is ironclad. The security of Israel is critical,” he said.
The bill also includes funding for humanitarian aid to Gaza, but aid groups say a ceasefire and full humanitarian relief effort are needed as millions are facing starvation. Biden has refused to call for a ceasefire and continues to back Israel as it threatens to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which is packed with over 1 million civilians.
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In This Dystopia, Opposing A Genocide Is Considered Worse Than Committing One – by Caitlin Johnstone – caitlinjohnstone.com.au
That’s how crazy they need us to be to keep us supporting a globe-spanning empire that literally cannot exist without nonstop violence and tyranny.
All the frenzied shrieking about pro-Palestine protests at universities these last few days makes it clear that our civilization is so twisted and insane that it sees protesting a genocide as far worse than committing one. Which is about as backwards as any society could possibly be.
Seriously, try to imagine a crazier, more upside-down civilization than one which gets more angry at people protesting genocidal atrocities than it does at people committing them. A civilization where people wear their pants on their head and walk backwards all day? That would be less crazy. A civilization where the dogs own the people and the children go to work while the parents go to school? That would be less crazy.
It’s as wrong as you can possibly get anything in this world. It’s actually hard to imagine how anyone could get anything more wrong. If you’ve accepted daily massacres of innocent civilians as the baseline normal and appropriate thing, and regard any opposition to this as a freakish and evil abomination, then you’re as screwed up and confused about reality as any other stark raving lunatic in town. Maybe worse.
To view nonstop mass military slaughter as moral and opposition thereto as immoral is to live in a mental moral universe that has been flipped on its head. It’s to inhabit a reality tunnel that has become completely divorced from reality. But that’s the kind of mainstream worldview that the political-media class in this society are working to indoctrinate us into day in and day out throughout our entire lives.
I had to scroll past *four* college campus stories, including two protest-critical opeds (John McWhorter & Bret Stephens) before I got to the much delayed coverage of hundreds of Palestinians found in mass graves. https://t.co/b57txq0M3o
I just saw a tweet from the commentator Briahna Joy Gray saying that in order to find any mention in The New York Times of the hundreds of Palestinians in mass graves that are being discovered in Gaza, she had to scroll past no fewer than four stories about pro-Palestine protests on college campuses — including two op-eds which criticized the protesters.
What kind of warped, fucked up dystopia is this where that’s the kind of mainstream news outlet people are getting their information and ideas from? Our entire civilization is saturated with reality-distorting propaganda like this, and it’s making people insane. It’s got our moral compasses flipped 180 degrees from our true north, and our inner sensemaker tuning in to frequencies of nothing but garbled static.
That’s how crazy they need us to be to keep us supporting a globe-spanning empire that literally cannot exist without nonstop violence and tyranny. They need us thinking up is down and black is white. They need us not just unable to tell the difference between right and wrong, but actually believing that wrong is right and right is wrong. So they pound our collective consciousness day in and day out with extremely aggressive psyops in the form of mass media propaganda to ensure that our insides are scrambled around enough to consent to the amount of depravity necessary for our rulers to continue dominating this planet.
This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal, as Aaron Bushnell said moments before lighting himself on fire in protest of the genocide in Gaza. A society where mass graves get less media attention than university protesters. A society where more political firepower is going into stopping pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses than ending Israel’s murderous assault on an enclosed enclave packed full of children. A society where trying to stop a genocide is considered evil, and committing one is considered good.
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Tonight’s musical offering:
Beethoven Sonata #29 Op. 106 “Hammerklavier” Valentina Lisitsa
Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 29 in B♭ major, Op. 106 (known as the Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier, or more simply as the Hammerklavier) is a piano sonata that is widely viewed as one of the most important works of the composer’s third period and among the greatest piano sonatas of all time. Completed in 1818, it is often considered to be Beethoven’s most technically challenging piano composition and one of the most demanding solo works in the classical piano repertoire. The first documented public performance was in 1836 by Franz Liszt in the Salle Erard in Paris to an enthusiastic review by Hector Berlioz. – wikipedia.org
Dispatches from the Asylum 