BartBlog

I’m currently reading Benjamin Madley’s lengthy and obviously well-documented tome, An American Genocide. This book is truly a hard slog. I can only stand to read four or five pages a day. Its appendices and footnotes alone take up 326 pages. Good grief.  https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300181364/american-genocide

     However, the simple gist of the book is only this:  “When the California gold rush began, immigrant American miners streamed into our Golden State by the thousands and then systematically slaughtered, exterminated and/or murdered almost every California Native in the state.  In cold blood.”  It was a true bloodbath. 

     “What goes around comes around.”  We Americans can do better than this coronavirus infection of murderous hatred.  Much better.

In 1963, Hannah Arendt wrote a 368-page book called On Revolution. It is a hard slog to get through but basically boils down to one sentence. “It takes a village to raise a democracy.”

And yet here we are, in America, almost 70 years later — and only allowed to have our say once every four years, for perhaps 30 seconds spent in electronic voting booths that are rigged — if we are even allowed to vote at all.

Professor Arendt, you were living in dreamland. In America today, our much-touted yeoman citizen-voice of freedom simply doesn’t exist.  Republicans tell us to vote for Ken dolls.  Democrats tell us to vote for anyone who isn’t Bernie, Elizabeth or Tulsi.

Instead, we gots numerous public relations firms, endless commercials and whole bunches of media-savvy billionaire pundits telling us how to vote and even what to think. “Vote for me,” the guys at the top always tell us. “We will stop abortion, stop gay marriage, stop affirmative action.” Seriously? Those three agenda items were Jesus’s major concerns? Give me a break.

Meanwhile the guys at the top of the American pyramid scheme are stealing our money, our jobs and our values — while laughing all the way to the bank as millions die in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, the slums of Mumbai and Brazil, and the homeless camps on the fringes of San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas and Washington DC. https://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2019/11/homelessness-in-dallas-dangerous.html

You don’t have to read Hannah Arendt to know which way the wind blows in America right now — but her major premise is still spot-on even today. Democracy can only truly exist at the village level. We’ve been conned. Democracy in America hasn’t existed in over a century.

However.

Professor Arendt’s ideal of the citizen-democrat might still be a possibility, even in this modern age of billionaire politicians, mega-corporate lobbyists and electoral pyramid schemes. We might still be able to demand “government by the people, of the people and for the people” — governent by individual town-hall meetings like she advocated for, where everyone has his or her say and we aren’t kicked around by power-mad leaders in a top-down Ponzi scheme where we at the bottom lose all.

But if that is ever going to happen, we gotta start organizing locally. Join a union. Join a town-hall meeting. Speak up. Participate. Join the freaking PTA!

And perhaps our town hall meetings could also be electronic. Don’t laugh. Perhaps this new utopia could be called “FaceBook”. Or “Twitter”. If only. If only FaceBook and Twitter weren’t part of the current top-down pyramid scheme too.

What do you think?

PS:  Professor Arendt also went on to say that freedom is a really big deal — even more important than food or shelter.  And yet RepublDems tamper with our freedom even more than they tamper with our food and our shelter.  Forget that.  Why can’t we have all three?

     Some of us are sick and tired of being at the bottom of America’s pyramid Ponzi schemes.

 

According to Gayle Greene in her excellent book Insomniac, sleep is very important. According to me, I do my very best thinking in my sleep. So when I went over to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco recently to hear a lecture by Peter Dale Scott, I couldn’t really understand what he was talking about — until I slept on it. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520259966/insomniac

Scott said that American history has been composed largely of various social movements. Even the American Revolution was more of a social movement than a war. “For instance, when the majority of Americans finally got fed up with all that wealth disparity during the Gilded Age, they initiated the graduated income tax back in 1909.”

This tax was originally designed to cut wealthy Robber Barons down to size — except that now it has become graduated in the opposite direction. You and I pay more. Billionaires pay less.

And after a good night’s sleep last night, another idea just dawned on me with regard to current social movements here in America. Let’s take a look at our current voting system for instance. What do you think about that? America’s wealthy elite have hacked our voting machines, smothered us with commercials paid for by Citizens United, gerrymandered us like pretzels, bought off Congress, stacked the Supreme Court, put a yes-man in the White House and even physically crossed a whole bunch of us off the voters’ rolls.

And yet.

Even despite all these vote-suppression tactics, Americans still arise from the ground up to vote with our feet. We march. We sign petitions. We boycott. We picket. We strike. We turn to alternative news sources. We even sometimes begin to think for ourselves. Yikes!  https://environmentaljusticetv.wordpress.com/2017/12/04/derrick-jensen-keynote-speech-earth-at-risk-conference-2014/

And another social movement that is developing here in America is a new anti-war surge. “You know you want it,” our leaders tell us. “That war on Iran is gonna be even better than Christmas morning!” No, it’s not. We Americans are finally becoming sick and tired of having our money spent on oil-baron piracy in the Middle East and our kids coming home in a box. And so an anti-war social movement is gradually building up again too. https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/feel-like-im-fixin-to-die-rag-1969/

According to Scott, however, the biggest American social movement of all is about to happen and is now in the works. Consensus is about to be reached here — no matter what the pundits tell us or Washington decides.

“And what movement is that?” you might ask. The climate crisis movement. Apparently when all our forests burn down, we can no longer breathe safely and our toes curl up from the heat, Americans are finally going to reach a consensus and join together in a movement that will cross political, regional, religious, class and even racial lines. And then Americans are going to truly vote with their feet.

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Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world. And while you’re at it, please buy my books. https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Stillwater/e/B00IW6O1RM

 

  

Boy howdy, Trump has truly pissed off the Arab world this time. “It’s as if, back in 1776, that crazy King George III of England had somehow managed to pop a cap on General George Washington,” said a friend of mine yesterday. “People are furious in the Middle East right now. There’s no do-overs here. The colonists are truly up in arms now!” https://resistancenews.org/2020/01/08/iran-strikes-us-bases-in-iraq-to-avenge-martyr-soleimani-threatens-to-target-israel-and-us-bases-in-the-region-al-manar/

That bad? “Yeah.”

It seems that Iranians are sick and tired of “Taxation without Representation” when it comes to their freedom (and their oil too, of course). Who can blame them? John Hancock would have also hated sanctions. If some crazy monarch on the other side of the ocean had murdered Hancock’s top general and sanctioned all his tea, he too would have left Valley Forge and crossed the Strait of Hormuz.

But enough about analogies. You get the point. It has been absolute insanity for Trump to piss off the entire Middle East (and Russia, China and the rest of the world as well) by murdering General Soleimani in cold blood — especially considering America’s own history of demanding self-rule.

And now Trump has got almost everyone in West Asia shouting “Give me liberty or give me death!”

And this new colonial Revolution east of Suez is also bad news for you and me too. Why? Because Trump hasn’t even considered the fact that his monarchy has now driven America twenty-two (22) trillion dollars into debt — and Trump simply doesn’t have the budget to go around murdering everyone in the Middle East without sanctioning us Americans right down to our teabags as well. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/01/06/the-economic-risks-of-trumps-reckless-assassination/

“You gotta pass the smog test!” the department of motor vehicles screams at me. So I obediently drive my sweet little red 1990 Toyota Tercel down to the local gas station — and it passes the emissions test with flying colors.

Good job, little car!

But then the “check engine” light won’t turn off. Defective part. “Sorry but they don’t make that part any more,” sez my mechanic. So my car fails the smog test after all. But am I really ready to let my little red car die? Just like that? After 30 long loyal years of faithful service? What would Greta Thunberg do?

Of course the right thing to do is to give up my little red car — and help save the human race. But then I look around me. No one else is giving up any of their cars.

And no one else is giving up their “wars” either. War is the number-one polluter and cause of climate crisis on the planet today — but I don’t see anyone in Washington DC volunteering to give up their F-35s. https://www.globalresearch.ca/battle-liberate-idlib-province-us-supported-terrorists/5699039

Perhaps we should make it a mandatory requirement that all those thousands and thousands of gas-guzzling toxin-emitting made-in-America tanks, bomber jets, air-craft carriers, drones, space-force launchers, nuclear missiles, etc. be forced to take a smog test too!

    And speaking of whether or not to die peacefully, we Americans are not being given that choice — but Medicare-for-all would go a long way toward solving that problem, right?

     And speaking of all those toxic, smog-emitting tanks, bomber jets, nuclear missiles and other gross weapons of death?  They have all been out there on the front lines both here and abroad, faithfully winning all sorts of “wars”.  They have won various “wars” on Afghans, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Central Americans, Syrians, Americans, Palestinians and Yemenis — just to name a few.  The only catch to all these victories is that the winners have only been the greedy and shameless war-profiteers who started them for fun and profit in the first place. https://resistancenews.org/2020/01/04/nasrallahs-statement-about-qasem-soleimanis-murder/

     It’s only average Americans like you and me who have lost all these wars.

    

Don’t you just hate being lied to? Apparently not. We Americans all get systematically lied to every single time we turn on the TV — and yet nobody seems to mind. “Pharmaceutical side effects are worth it, the climate crisis is a myth, Zionists have every right to murder Palestinians, banksters are our BFFs, the chemical attacks on Syria weren’t staged, there are new well-paying jobs springing up like mushrooms….” Whatever. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/12/wikileaks-chemical-weapons-watchdog-ordered-deletion-of-all-traces-of-findings-that-syrian-chemical-attack-was-staged/

“But I’m not lying!” Madam Jane told me this morning. “I’d never lie to you!” Yeah, right. “There really will be world peace in ten years!”

Sorry but I just gotta call bull-dookie here. “You really have the nerve to tell me that after Americans just spent seven trillion dollars on all kinds of deadly weapons, nuclear bombs, chemical warfare, drones, aircraft carriers and even hand guns, I’m supposed to believe the human race is actually going to get its shite together and suddenly become peaceful in the next 3650 days?”

That there’s no climate crisis hovering over us, that America’s brutal attacks on Iraqi, Syrian and Iranian oilfields will suddenly come to an end, that Americans will actually give up their fossil fuel cars? That Big Pharma’s pricey little white pills are going to miraculously cure us? Dream on.

“Are you really trying to convince me that we now live in a perfectly peaceful world? That assault rifles are an absolute fashion-accessory must-have? That there are oodles and oodles of affordable housing units available here, that homelessness doesn’t exist, that America is a democracy, that mega-corporations pay their fair share and that our current President, various Congressional legislators and members of our Supreme Court all love women (but in a good way)?”

The list of lies they tell us goes on and on. “Coke Zero is good for you. Our infrastructure is safe. We can’t allow big banks to fail. Corporations don’t need to pay taxes like the rest of us. Al Qaeda’s White Helmets are good guys.” And that America’s so-called wars and proxy wars on Vietnam, Korea, Chile, Afghanistan, Russia, Honduras, Cuba, Bolivia, Libya, Guatemala, Iraq, Venezuela, Syria, Palestine, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and Yemen are necessary to keep America strong?

And now Madam Jane is telling me that I’m spozed to believe that America, the greatest war-mongering liar in history, will suddenly want to start acting like Mother Theresa in just ten short years? That male White Nationalists will suddenly come to Jesus and no longer want to shoot you and me? That the climate crisis will suddenly be averted and that even our two-year-olds will all get along and never ever fight over toys ever again?

“No No No!” said Madam Jane. “I stick with my prediction. In ten years there really will be world peace…because…in ten years…the entire human race will have killed itself all off.” Oh.
https://www.amazon.com/Visions-Lost-Future-World-Stillwater/dp/1532803850

Happy New Year, everyone! It’s now 2020. We only have ten more years left. What can we do to prove Madam Jane wrong?

Christmas Day was a truly grim eye-opener for me this year. “How many starving, homeless and desperate people existed in Jerusalem back when Jesus was alive?” I asked myself. “And were there as many lonely desperate outcasts to be found in Bethlehem 2019 years ago such as the ones I had just seen standing in line and patiently waiting for food in front of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco on this current December 25th?”

It’s two millennia later. Here in America. The land of the free and the home of the brave. 2019 years after Herod. After 2000 years of so-called hope and progress? And yet there they all were on Christmas Day 2019, hundreds of them, stretching far down the block and around the corner, cold and hungry and homeless and desperate. And most of them were old and Black, having been systematically ground down to the nub by America’s racism — from the day they were born in their mangers.

I was so very shocked to my core to see so many hungry desperate people all in one place. On Christmas Day. In a land claiming to be “Christian”.

All I could do was go home to my cozy little apartment and try to block out these dreadful images with eggnog. Eggnog didn’t work. I had just seen the ghost of America’s Christmas future and it had terrified me — a future where, if Americans don’t finally start acting more Christ-like, we too, sooner or later, will all end up like the desperate people I saw yesterday — and there will be no “Joy to the World” for any of us ever again. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Civilized-to-Death/Christopher-Ryan/9781451659108

Let us hope that this horror never happens — and then let’s all go out and make sure that it doesn’t. It’s time that we take Christmas back from the corporate billionaires, the war-mongers and the haters!

Front and center at a recent Michael Bloomberg event in San Francisco? Seated within mere feet from an actual billionaire? Hey, that’s me! Somehow I managed to score the absolutely best seat in a room that held 3,000 people. Is karma my bitch or what! Maybe I should play the lottery too, I’m feeling that lucky. We were all waiting to hear Jerry Brown and Michael Bloomberg talk about the current climate crisis.

Then a science guy from the Midwest in the seat next to me started man-splaining about how climate-crisis-denying politicians in the pay of huge corporations are constantly battling to prevent any sort of effort to stave off extinction of the human race. “At first they denied it was even happening at all but now they just tell us that solar power will give us cancer.” Uh, no. It won’t. “All you need is to use one-tenth of one percent of Michigan’s farmland to solar-power the entire state.” Our fossil-fuel warlords don’t want us to know that. https://www.forbes.com/sites/walvanlierop/2019/12/06/yes-fossil-fuel-subsidies-are-real-destructive-and-protected-by-lobbying/#724279be417e

Then Brown and Bloomberg walked onstage. Damn it, I forgot my camera. They were only 12 feet away. But there’s still the old-school option of pen and ink, right? So I’m sitting here in the front row, totally ready to write a hit-piece on Bloomberg, the billionaire who has suddenly switched from being a neo-con Repub to being a climate-protecting Man of the People. Humph.

“No one in the Midwest has even heard of Michael Bloomberg,” said the man seated to my right. And does Bloomberg have a facelift? I wish I look that good at his age.

But then Bloomberg speaks. Oh, crap. He’s really actually into this climate crisis stuff, has been since the 1990s, puts his money where his mouth is. There goes my dream of an actual hit piece.

“This is the most important time to be working in science,” he tells the 3,000 science nerds who are avidly listening. “And we desperately need politicians who are not purveyors of ‘alternative facts’ at this crucial time.”

Yeah, we do need them. Desperately. Sometimes we Americans get so thoroughly involved in our own current soap operas that we forget the very real dangers of the Big Picture when we pull the levers of our (highly tampered with) voting machines.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIBEcIFyFSk&feature=youtu.be&t=2505

“Ending the climate crisis is not a scientific problem. We can do this. It is a political problem.” Oh. That’s probably why he is running for prez — not for fame and glory? Hmmm. “Climate-change deniers have gone from saying ‘It doesn’t exist’ to ‘It’s a commie plot’ to ‘It may exist — but it wasn’t caused by me!’ Climate capture is our only viable solution. And we need educated people to save the world.”

Tell that to the current administration. America is currently # 22 in science education. There are currently twenty-one other countries who are both smarter than us and have more science nerds in the pipeline. That’s just scary.

“But this is a world-wide problem and it needs a world-wide solution. We need China and India onboard with this too.” This is no time to go picking a trade-war with China. “We need China to join us in this fight. The trade war isn’t helping here.”

Altogether Bloomberg gave a very impressive speech. However, like the guy next to me just commented, “If he really wanted to get his message across, he should just spend all this money on simply buying Fox News.”

But still and all, I was impressed with the new “Mike” Bloomberg. Why? Because the climate crisis is really a big deal for me. I gots grandchildren. I would like to see them survive the next twenty years. And Bloomberg is still far better than what we are stuck with in Washington now.

PS: Neither Bloomberg nor Brown mentioned the greatest polluter of all — war-mongering. Imperialism. “Humanitarian intervention”. Afghanistan. Libya. Iraq. Yemen. Korea. Palestine. Bolivia. Chile. Bosnia. Vietnam. Honduras. Guatemala. Ukraine. Syria. Bombs that go bump in the night — and calculated slaughter of women and children by the millions. Imperial “wars” that are murdering our climate too. And us as well. https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/new-attack-on-syrian-oil-fields-was-too-sophisticated-for-terrorist-groups-source/

Let’s face it, guys. We Americans aren’t never gonna give up our cars. We’re like those lung-cancer patients who smoke til it kills us. But…. I think that Americans may finally be willing to give up on “war”.

Bloody imperialism since 9-11 has been a really bad seven-trillion-dollar consumer decision. We coulda bought solar-powered cars instead. And perhaps in the future we Americans may finally wake up and chose American values and Jesus’ teachings (and sustainable energy) here at home — instead of the wholesale murder of babies abroad.

Hey, it could happen.

How far am I actually willing to go in order to score free chocolate chip cookies? Good question. Exactly how much torture am I willing to endure? Math has always been torture for me. STEM is my worst nightmare. And yet here I am, in San Francisco, actually surrounded by whole regiments of science freaks! And yet, here’s me — actually having a good time.

Even though the event is mostly sponsored by Google, Lockheed-Martin, Amazon and Chevron.

But still and all, I’m learning some really interesting stuff. And they feed us here for free too. Clam chowder, Vietnamese salad and beer. “Gots any wine?” I asked. Uh, no. Most of these 27,000 nerds are basically grad students and twenty-something STEMers, apparently hoping to land their first (or next) job. Tired of working for Uber. Definitely not a wine-drinking crowd. But they are so cute — with their pocket protectors, electronic gadgets and nerdware. Gotta love them.

However, a lot of these 27,000 nerds are going to invent things someday — really important things, things that will hopefully save our lives and our planet within the next ten years.

The first seminar I went to here talked about how Jules Verne had influenced the space race. Who knew.

The next seminar was given by panel members who talked about the various ways that the federal government has tried to discourage and intimidate any discussion by them regarding our current climate crisis — but how, heroes that they all are, they risked their jobs and their future to try to make Congress aware that corporate America is playing with fire. “The fire next time”. Literally.

Did you know that 97% of our climate crisis is caused by human activity? That climate change in our national parks has doubled the temperatures there as compared to the rest of the country? That wildfires have also doubled? That carbon dioxide is now at the highest level it has ever been since the dinosaurs went extinct? That American Natives are ten times more likely than the rest of us to have an oil pipeline forced onto their land? Hell, even I can do that kind of math.

Afterward I talked with one American Native presenter who had a PhD. “How did that happen?” I asked him.

“For over a hundred and fifty years, our tribe has valued education above all,” he replied, “as a way to get out of our rut of defenselessness and poverty.” Ah. Like how Palestinians also value education — and why their universities are constantly under attack, sometimes literally. And, as another presenter mentioned, why America has now become a diseased combination of First and Third worlds.

“Americans are either wealthy conspicuous consumers who think nothing of dropping half-a-million dollars in order to fly out into space with Elon Musk, Jeff Besos or Richard Branson — or else they are just America’s existential field hands.”

Up next at the convention? After lunch, Michael Bloomberg is gonna try to explain to us how and why he suddenly became a Democrat and Man of the People. Good luck with that one, Mike.

PS: Getting a press pass to the AGU convention was extremely hard. The press liaison kept asking me, “But do you work for a major publication?” Who me? Definitely not. If you are a reporter for the New York Times, say, then you gotta tow the corporate line, right? Sorry, guys, but they don’t want me — and I don’t want them either. However. Will still work for chocolate chip cookies! https://sana.sy/en/?p=180156

What the freak is a neo-con, actually? We’re about to find out. “Any person or persons who try to conquer the world at the expense of everyone else in it.” If you plan to turn the world into your own little fiefdom and put everyone else to work as your field hands and maids then you are probably a neo-con. Neo-cons just wanna have fun — at our expense. “What’s mine is mine — and what’s yours is mine too.” https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2019/11/24/ukraine-trump-biden-the-real-story-behind-ukrainegate-part-2/

And this year neo-cons are really having Big Fun — especially in places like Chile, Palestine, Yemen, Bolivia, Iran, Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Flint, Michigan. “But mostly we are happy, thankful and grateful that we have taken control of and completely colonized Washington DC.” https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/06/bolivias-coup-government-a-far-right-horror-show/

But enough about them. America gets what it deserves. Let’s talk about me.

For many of America’s jobless and/or homeless and/or overworked and/or underpaid and/or bankrupt and/or educationally deprived and/or food insecure and/or medically uninsured citizens, there hasn’t been much to be thankful for this past November. Sorry about that. But as for me? Best Thanksgiving ev-ah!

On November 26, the Golden State Warriors, the Oakland Athletics and City of Oakland sponsored a spectacular Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings for 1,500 low-income residents and seniors. Seated at my table were two blue-collar workers, four kindly Chinese grandmothers, a homeless man, a handicapped man, a young woman down on her luck — and me. Instant family! We didn’t fight about one single thing! Lovely.

On November 27, my doctor’s office sponsored a buffet table for all of us patients. Guacamole, potato salad and Korean barbecue. Not exactly traditional but it worked. More instant family. More gratitude.

And even more special was a very very special family un-Thanksgiving dinner celebrated by the American Indian Movement over in San Francisco that night. An elder from a tribe of American Natives spoke — telling us all about how Trump’s border wall had forced the separation of half his tribe into Sonora, Mexico and the other half into Arizona, a tribal family split apart by politics after having been together for thousands of years.

“What we all need to know are two things,” he told us over green beans, dark meat, white meat and corn-bread stuffing. “We need to know where do we want to go, and also what do we want to do.” Where to go and how to get there.

He also said that our government is currently building Zionist-designed 100-foot-high spy towers on his tribal land in order to keep his family separated forever — not just at each yearly un-Thanksgiving. Neo-cons are gonna be grateful as hell for that! https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/how-dreams-change-under-authoritarianism

The next morning, everyone who had been at the un-Thanksgiving dinner sailed over to Alcatraz Island to celebrate the 50th year of the A.I.M. take-over there back in 1969. Colin Kaepernick spoke. Damn, I wish I hadn’t overslept. Colin K. is my hero. https://www.thefader.com/2017/11/24/colin-kaepernick-unthanksgiving-alcatraz

On November 28, an employee of our neighborhood CDB store stopped me on the street and gave me a to-go plate of gourmet turkey, cranberry sauce, candied yams, stuffing, green beans and asparagus. Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about!

Then my friend down the street had me over for a huge family gathering for her friends and their children. Cute little toddlers running around in party dresses! I felt like I was in the very bosom of the wonderful happy family that I had always wished that I had.

But, wait! Thanksgiving wasn’t over quite yet! My friends Hayley and David took me down to the Long Haul community center and we celebrated even more as they served us yet another Thanksgiving dinner, this time consisting of tofu turkey with brown rice stuffing and umeboshi dressing. Hey, I was totally grateful even though tofu turkey might not have been my first choice — grateful as hell that there were still some Berkeley types still left in Berkeley.

Then Hayley, David and I wandered home in the moonlight, drinking eggnog as we went and eating pumpkin pie when we got home. Neo-cons may yet conquer the world and enslave us all if we aren’t constantly watchful — but in the meantime there is moonlight and friendship and pumpkin pie and eggnog that they haven’t snatched away from us quite yet.

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Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world. And while you’re at it, please buy my books. https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Stillwater/e/B00IW6O1RM

 

“I absolutely must go see GWB’s new presidential library while I’m here in Dallas,” I told the friend that I was staying with.

“Why in the world would you want to do that?” she replied. I just shrugged. Is it going to make me feel any better knowing that the traitorous scoundrel who stole two (2) presidential elections, unleashed a whole new level of corruption on America, failed to stop the 9-11 madness and murdered a million Iraqis, is not rotting away in jail?

“Perhaps I could just flip him the bird?” That probably won’t happen either. Still and all, I was determined to go see just how bad that Bush Junior’s presidential library actually was. But it was even far worse than even I had expected. I was totally shocked.

First there was the 9-11 exhibit, making GWB appear to be the hero of 9-11 instead of the cause of it. If only George had read his NSA briefings instead of going out for a beer with the boys. But he did not.

Next our George shamelessly took credit for being the hero of Hurricane Katrina, even strongly hinting that it was those uppity Blacks who caused that disaster. “It was them not me, honest!” Say what?

Moving on to the exhibits praising George Jr’s glorious triumphs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Might he be referring to those so-called wars that Americans are still fighting almost twenty years later? That cost American taxpayers over seven trillion dollars? Those glorious triumphs? Gag me with a spoon.

But wait, there’s even more. Dubya was also the hero of the environment. And then he actually had the gall to take credit for saving our nation from financial ruin in 2008. Shameless.

But I got my revenge — well, sort of. I approached almost every employee in the museum and sweetly asked, “But where is the famous ‘Mission Accomplished’ photo?” Some of the employees actually had the good grace to blush.

My advice to any of you wannabe tourists in Dallas? Don’t never plan to go to the Bush Presidential Library unless you bring your own barf bag. All those lies could make you actually physically sick.

PS: What also makes me sick at heart is that Leonard Peltier, a true American Native hero and leader, has been languishing away in various maximum-security prisons, lock-downs and solitary confinements for the last 50-odd years for a crime that he didn’t commit — while that lying bastard GWB is having a good old time living the good life in Dallas’s ultra-rich Highland Park part of town.

If there was any fear of the wrath of God in America at all or any Christians left in this god-forsaken land, their situations would be totally reversed. https://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/

PPS: When I was an embedded reporter in Iraq and also blogging everywhere from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, I never even imagined that America could ever manage to have a worse person in the White House than GWB….

When you were a little kid, did the schoolyard bully try to steal your lunch money?

When Hitler invaded Poland, did the Poles have a right to fight back?

When terrorists bombed the Twin Towers on 9-11, Americans felt violated, naked, afraid — and pissed off.

When I was attacked by a wannabe rapist with a knife to my throat and he told me, “Don’t scream,” guess what I did?

This week, impeachment proceedings in Congress have taken up much of our news cycle. But somewhere in the deep recesses of FaceBook there are sad photos of babies in Gaza being blown up by Zionists wielding huge missiles and bombs. https://www.facebook.com/alsheikh.fawaz/videos/168358650893188/UzpfSTEwMDAwMDU1NTczNzY0NDoyOTc5NTg3NTE1NDAzMDc3/?fref=hovercard&hc_location=none

Doesn’t Gaza have a right to defend itself too?

Don’t the West Bank, Palestine and even Syria and Yemen also have a right to defend themselves? https://mondoweiss.net/2019/11/joe-biden-declares-that-israel-has-a-right-to-defend-itself-after-its-military-kills-multiple-palestinians-with-missile-attacks/

Let’s stop paying these vicious Zionist schoolyard bullies the blood money that they use to attack and metaphorically rape the defenseless people of Gaza again and again.

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Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world.  And while you’re at it, please buy my books: https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Stillwater/e/B00IW6O1RM

I arrived in downtown Dallas on a furiously cold windy wet rain-soaked night, so cold that teardrops almost froze to my face as I desperately searched for the bus stop that would take me to my friend’s warm cozy nest in Oak Cliff. I asked everyone that I met on the street, “Where can I catch the #21 bus?”

And every single person I met that night was homeless. Soon the #21 bus arrived and I gratefully climbed aboard, into the light and the warmth. But for the homeless people I left behind me? They were faced with the sole option of spending an entire night in this frozen gunk.

I had just flown in from Berkeley, CA, where homelessness is a real problem. We have numerous tent cities, homeless encampments and homeless shelters there. But now I’m here in Dallas and things here are even worse.

It then became instantly clear to me that homelessness isn’t just some low-level outbreak in just a few cities. It’s a freaking national epidemic. It’s everywhere in America. And it’s highly contagious. Far worse than the so-called measles epidemic, where perhaps four (4) people died last year. Even worse than the horrific AIDS epidemic, where 15,807 people died. 1,047 homeless people died last year — in Los Angeles County alone. Even despite all that California sunshine. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/30/homeless-deaths-los-angeles-county

A lot of the homeless people I met here in Dallas were older Black men, intentional products of America’s endless conveyor belt of racism and discrimination. But a lot of them looked just like you and me — only with a shopping cart and shabby clothes instead of haute couture from Macy’s or Target. Homelessness is highly contagious here in America today. You and I could catch it too.

We could catch it from our bosses, from our government, from the billionaires who exploit us, from banksters, from student-loan sharks, from our children’s lack of education and even from our freaking healthcare medical plans.

In America, no place is safe from the homelessness germ.

But the truly sad part of this story is that the our Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is doing nothing to prevent this terrible contagion from spreading! In a country gone mad with its addiction to vaccinations, how come there is absolutely no vaccine against being homeless? No vaccine against a disease far more deadly than measles and HIV combined? Don’t tell me that there are no homeless people in Atlanta. We all know better than that. https://prepareforchange.net/2019/02/03/vaxxed-ii-the-peoples-truth-coming-in-2019/

Victims of this deadly plague in Berkeley, Dallas and even Atlanta are not just lone samples in a petri dish somewhere in a medical lab. They are the canaries in the coal mine. You and me could easily be next.

C’mon, CDC, show us some grit. Build houses. Provide shelters. Give out weighted blankets and front door keys and central heating and bathtubs. Bring all those trillions of American dollars back from Israel and Iraq. Let Afghanistan and Syria sort out their own problems. Give that money to Berkeley and Dallas.

PS: Have you ever heard of Dallas’s Silicon Prairie? It’s a totally weird place. I was taking public transit in from the airport and suddenly right out in the middle of nowhere there were about 10,000 new high-end townhouses and condos, sprung up like mushrooms. Get my point? Housing can be easily provided. In a hurry. Even for the homeless. In a prefect world. “I want a Perfect World so bad!” cried Jesus.

PPS: From the top of Dallas’s high-rise Reunion Tower, I looked out over all of Dallas’s sprawling urban metroplex, floating far down beneath my feet. And what did I see? Freeways. Lots and lots of freeways. It looked as if at least one third of Dallas’s former housing stock had been horribly disfigured and decimated in order to put in this bloodless and useless freeway octopus. Let’s tear it all down and build housing instead. Let’s stop this deadly epidemic in its tracks.

Let’s get our priorities straight.

PPS: How can Americans keep swallowing that bare-faced lie that President Assad of Syria is an evil dictator? At least in Syria, people aren’t systematically made homeless like they are here in the U.S.A. under our current government-by-oligarchs as our jobs melt away to Haiti and Bangladesh. In fact, the only way that a person in Syria can end up homeless is after we Americans and our partners in crime ISIS, the Zionists and the Saudis have bombed the shite out of his or her home. https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881

Dallas TX is actually a far more complex, diverse, interesting and rewarding city than just merely the location where President Kennedy got shot. But. Here in Dallas I seem to be constantly running into reminders of that tragic and fateful day back in November of 1963. Even my first introduction to Dallas involved driving past Parkland Hospital while taking public transit in from the airport.

“Have you gone to the top of the Reunion Tower yet,” suggested one long-time Dallas native. Okay. I’ll do that. But, sure enough, 40 stories above the Dallas skyline there was an exhibit about the brutal murder of JFK including photos of his motorcade right before he was shot — showing the empty back bumper where his Secret Service agents were spozed to have stood but didn’t. Shame on them.

“Did you go see the Old Red Museum?” It was nice. But right next to it was the Kennedy Memorial. I stood inside it and cried while a group of millennials next to me happily snapped photos for their Instagram pages, never really understanding the dark truth of the place — that Camelot had been stolen from them as well as from me. Never realizing that since that time, our White House, the very symbol of America itself, has been mostly occupied by a sorry bunch of bottom-feeders such as a depressed egomaniac, a lying crook, a B-list actor with Alzheimers, two war-mongering Bush-league types, a couple of hypocrites and a reality-show host.

I cried for the millennials. I cried for America. I cried for my grandchildren. I cried for me.

Moving on. I’m currently staying in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, famous for its Jefferson District, home to all sorts of delicious-looking Mexican restaurants. I’ve been eating lots of tamales and street tacos and menudo and elotes. Heavenly. And four blocks away from me is the Texas Theater — where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. And I have the souvenir T-shirt to prove it too.

“Have you been to the Bishop Arts District?” It turns out to be within walking distance of Oswald’s former rooming house, now a museum. But the owner wanted $40 a pop for a tour so I only took photos from outside. And last night a Dallas TV channel showed “Jackie”. Who wouldn’t cry after watching Natalie Portman desperately trying to push JFK’s brains back into his head.

“Have you visited the Bush Presidential Library?” Don’t even remind me of how far we have fallen since Jack and Jackie made the White House stand for America’s best self. America has never been that great again since — and it’s certainly far from great now.

So. Did Lee Harvey Oswald actually fire the actual bullet that murdered Camelot? Probably not. But he should have kept his mouth shut. He should never have shouted “Patsy” — thus causing the CIA, the FBI and various presidential wannabes to panic and stampede toward the exits, dragging Jacob Rubenstein along with them. http://www.supersummary.com/libra/summary/

PS: At the wonderful BoucherCon book conference I’m attending here in Dallas, I also met author Christopher Brown and he supplied me with the perfect Orwellian word for what is happening in America both at this time and in the near future. “Dystopia”. To quote the Lone Star Literary’s review of his latest book, Rule of Capture, “Brown has taken all the dissonant noise [that is America today] and distilled it, then extrapolated to a possible logical [but horrifying] endpoint.” https://christopherbrown.com/rule-of-capture/

And the roots of America’s dystopian tree started to grow even more robustly on the day that Kennedy was murdered. And these roots have been growing stronger and stronger ever since as more and more oligarchs in Washington clearly realize that they can do almost anything and get away with it — as long has they can generate “plausible deniability” like they did in Dallas.

Isn’t it time that we Americans cut that dystopian tree off at its roots?

I’m off to Texas tomorrow. Going to stay with a friend in Dallas for a few days, and also try to pitch my latest murder mystery at a book conference as well. And I’m also going to find myself in the heart of the American oil industry, in that great state that gave us Texaco, James Dean in Giant, fourteen major Houston oil refineries and two of the most corrupt and mendacious presidents we’ve ever had — George Bush and George Bush.

Ah, Texas.

And then there’s the northeastern state of Deir Ezzor, located in Syria. It’s got oil too. And President Trump has just announced that Deir Ezzor’s oil is actually America’s oil. Who knew? https://thegrayzone.com/2019/10/23/us-troops-staying-syria-oil/

But does this mean that all the oil in Texas now belongs to President Assad? Is there a quid pro quo at work here too? I’m about to go to Dallas and find out. https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/10/25/we-want-to-keep-the-oil/

PS: Syria also owns a whole bunch of UNESCO world heritage sites as well as a whole bunch of oil. Isn’t it time that the United Nations made a new rule about antiquities (as well as a new rule about oil too?) “If you invade a country that has an official UNESCO world heritage site, then you get thrown out of the UN.” That makes perfect sense.

The Saudis would get thrown out of the UN for trying to destroy Saana, right? And America would get thrown out of the UN for engineering, planning, financing and/or staging invasions of Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, etc.

Hell, America should have been kicked out of the UN way back when Kissinger invaded Cambodia! Remember Angkor Watt?

But America doesn’t ever have to worry about a quid pro quo with Syria with regard to antiquities. Why? Because America doesn’t even have any UNESCO world heritage sites built in the post-colonial era — unless you count Las Vegas of course. And the Statue of Liberty. But Americans mostly ignore the Statue of Liberty these days. Maybe the Syrians might be more entitled to it than us right now. At least they are willing to fight for their freedom.

Maybe “Remember the Alamo” should be Syria’s motto too. Or at least “Remember Deir Ezzor!”
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Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world. And while you’re at it, please buy my books. https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Stillwater/e/B00IW6O1RM

What’s on my bucket list right now? To die in Tibet. To visit the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria. To find out who really shot JFK. Murder mysteries? Tourism? I’ve got a lot to say about that! Give me a second here to organize my thoughts.

1. The same people who murdered President Kennedy are the same people who tried to murder President Assad of Syria — and who also murdered Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. And the same people who will eventually murder you and me too. No mystery there. http://www.radio4all.net/files/anonymous@radio4all.net/16-1-MeetingAssad.mp3

2. I’m currently reading one of Eliot Pattison’s excellent murder mysteries that take place in Tibet, and he makes that rugged land and those rugged people so appealing that all I want to do is move there for the rest of my life. https://eliotpattison.com/bone-mountain/

3. I just finished writing my own murder mystery — and it takes place in Tibet too. It’s not as good as Pattison’s books but writing it was totally fun. Traveling Well is the Best Revenge. Buy it and see! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1081152508/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

4. Ah, Syria! I miss it already. All those fabulous historical sites. Did you know that before Syria was ruthlessly invaded by America and its allies al Qaeda and ISIS, the tourist industry in Syria scored at least eight-point-four billion dollars in income per year. But.

Now that Syria is back to belonging to its own residents again and its torrid home-invasion tragedy is finally almost over, my true bucket-list dream is to go buy a suitcase, Hawaiian shirt and tacky sunglasses, fly off to Damascus and put the Syrian tourist route back on the map! Ancient Aleppo! Palmyra! The Roman amphitheater at Bosra! “The Krak de Chevaliers is a Crusader castle dating back to the 10th century.” There are currently six (6) UNESCO sites in Syria right now and six more being vetted. I wanna go there! Put me in charge of Syrian tourism! Please. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/syria-isis-palmyra-restoration-1338257

5. And as for Dallas, I’ll be going there next week — to attend BoucherCon, a famous gathering of murder-mystery readers and writers from all over the world. If anyone can name names and point fingers at who specifically murdered JFK in Dallas, it would be us. But there’s certainly no mystery regarding who caused that fierce tornado in North Dallas recently — the same people who murdered President Kennedy and tried to murder President Assad. The same people who are bringing us the climate catastrophe. Those war-mongering petroleum whores. To be blunt. https://www.bouchercon2019.com/

What’s on your bucket list?