by JASON HOLLAND

M

ay 14th was quite a day for the empire, the shit show on full display exhibiting lots of swagger in its death throes. The people on the inside are the last to know. They don’t see it but everyone else does. The rest of the world can see the toxic death culture, they see the rationalizations for idiocy and how silly they seem. The US empire has no clothes but wears only a paper thin emotional veneer resembling a child who attempts to lie for the first time after murdering the family dog. This is the modern American mind of empire. Delusional and full of contrived pablum to excuse their wretched actions. Trump is truly the perfect man to represent this country, its true face. A huckster, a gangster, and a liar that says one thing and does the opposite. The actions and the results before us are the real values of empire and not their diseased words, which are devoid of truth.

On May 14th the empire’s best friend Israel continued to show its reverence for death while inhumanely shooting protestors on the Gaza strip. 58 lives lost and 2,700 injured are the current stats, horrors playing out that we’ll never be able to wrap our minds around, but tomorrow Palestinians will wake up and know a life that has more suffering than the day before. Many of the injured will look forward to death knowing the Israeli government lacks all basic compassion for fellow humans and the wounded know the path ahead will contain even more hardship. The implications of Israeli actions won’t make headlines for long in the US, and the externalities we’ll never see directly tied to this story will cause sadness and turmoil they will struggle to fight past for years – if Israel lets them live that long. We humans are more fragile than what is put onto our TV screens. Characters undergo one torturous event after another with little repercussions, but in reality our emotions break, especially when all community has been stripped out from under us, especially when people we love are killed or maimed for no good reason.

The obscene juxtaposition of the US embassy celebration in Jerusalem, with Ivanka Trump and hubby Jared Kuschner on tap to represent the US, the occasion punctuated by the expected narcissistically mendacious speechifying as the IDF was systematically killing and wounding hundreds of unarmed protesters in the Palestinian "open-air prisons", may have been—at least momentarily—a bit too much even for members of the US imperial establishment. Soon, there was a storm of criticism on social media, with some of the most scathing commentary coming from quarters usually regarded as "safe" to US/Israel actions, such as prominent members of the political class and even the servile media. TIME-Warner's gossip sheet People magazine provided a good summary of the reaction with a page aptly titled, Ivanka Trump Under Fire for Celebrating at Jerusalem Embassy While Dozens Killed in Gaza. (https://people.com/politics/ivanka-trump-jerusalem-embassy-killed-gaza/). The page is worth looking at because it is so eerily surreal in its truth for a US mainstream publication. This simply doesn't happen very often or ever. The page kicks off with this para: President Donald Trump‘s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump was all smiles as she and husband Jared Kushner attended the opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem on Monday. But as the members of the first family celebrated the controversial relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, protests against the decision turned deadly in Gaza. The Huffington Post reported that Israeli troops shot and killed at least 58 protesters while around 2,700 others were injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Now Trump, 36, and Kushner, 37, are being criticized on social media for celebrating the opening amid the bloodshed. Comedian Chelsea Handler and others tweeted about the chilling juxtaposition while also raising concerns over Trump and Kushner, two of the president’s most senior advisers, representing the U.S. abroad. I’m glad Ivanka and Jared could take time away from their busy schedules of not being qualified to represent the US to go represent the US, and celebrate moving the capital in exchange for the adelson’s donations, while 50+ Palestinians have been killed. — Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) May 14, 2018 Smiling during a slaughter: Ivanka makes @NYDailyNews front page on Tuesday #Jerusalem #Gaza pic.twitter.com/pXBtUwpgb8 — David Beard (@dabeard) May 15, 2018 The publication also added this delightful tidbit: Former John McCain strategist Steve Schmidt voiced similar criticism, tweeting, “Kushner and Ivanka’s presence and public roles at this Jerusalem embassy opening are outlandish. They are Assistants to the President. They have no business and no rank to be speaking for the country at a geopolitical flash point. We don’t have Princes and princesses in America.” And The New York Daily News also took aim at Trump and Kushner on its latest cover, referring to Trump as “Daddy’s little ghoul” and writing in the subhead: “55 slaughtered in Gaza, but Ivanka all smiles at Jerusalem embassy unveil.” And this: “@IvankaTrump smiles, as blood spills on the streets underneath her! Heartbreaking to read 52 Palestinians, including several teenagers, were dead and at least 1,700 were injured in Gaza,” tweeted Minnesota State Rep. Ilhan Omar. “Jared and Ivanka partying it up in Jerusalem while Israeli forces massacre Palestinians in Gaza is a level of depravity you can only find in the Trump and Netanyahu administrations,” said another commenter. Enjoy it while it lasts. It probably won't. —PG

Six who died were under the age of 18. Does the US care? Nope, they’d sooner blame Palestinians for putting kids in the line of fire of Israeli soldiers than take responsibility for supporting a regime who sadistically fires openly into crowds of unarmed people. The corporate media have short memories, convenient memories. We forget how upset we were at the Syrian gas attack that may have claimed 40 lives and later the incident was filled with controversy over if Assad was actually responsible, I do not know the truth about this but I smell bullshit from somewhere, regardless of my bullshit sniffing abilities that number is less than the 58 killed at the protests on May the 14th. And there will be not a chirp, a squawk, a snort, or whinny of angst directed towards Israel for these actions by our overlords. In fact, quite the opposite.

The ignoble Jared Kushner said at the embassy opening that “Those provoking violence are part of the problem and not part of the solution,” referring to protestors who don’t have guns, didn’t wound one Israeli soldier, they don’t have an air force, tanks, humvees, an organized military, or any of the implements of destruction Israel does, yet Palestinians are somehow provoking violence to such an extent the bully state had to slaughter them? Ok Jared, fuck you. There is no respect for life, zero empathy, and not the smallest hint of a lingering humanity remaining in the logic of the state.

The US operates in a good ole boy league where the fellow goombahs get an automatic pass, they are made men, with made nations, they do as they please. So it would also please them on the day of May 14th to move the US embassy to Jerusalem as nothing more than a provocation to invite targets out for the racist Israeli state to gun down. The ostensible provocateurs are a battered people who are being violently edged off this planet for reasons of insanity from a bully regime and their bully death culture. The provoked are a people crying out for someone in the world to stand up to this machine. Provoked to the point they want the world to witness what those in power will do to people who are of no legitimate threat; To show how vicious and small in character those who wield power are, to show how profound their lack of wisdom. Palestinians are no more of a threat to Israel than an ant is to an elephant, yet this particular raging elephant’s sense of entitled justice is to seek out the ant population and stamp it out of existence, then boast as if they were doing a great service.

In other news occurring on the day of May 14th 2018, the supreme court of American shysterism decided to give states the power to legalize gambling. With the current predicament of the world and the myriad of issues I quite frankly get tired of speaking to…the warring, the species extinction this, the climate change that, the wealth inequal…..well you get the point, any logical mind might say that we shouldn’t take time to further line the pockets of the wealthy by allowing them to own these new con games. Also, it might seem a tad exploitative to further entice the poor to desperately gamble away their rapidly diminishing savings before addressing those much larger issues, but all dissent will go unheard because there’s money to be made boys, so instead we’ll hear people say some ridiculous drivel about how this is good for economic growth, and we’ll continue to live by the obvious lies of supply side economics.

And of all the issues in the world to address, of all the ideas in dire need of review, the US government’s highest court chooses to address sports gambling and rules in favor of empowering an industry that has been synonymous with organized crime even in areas it’s legalized. From gangster Bugsy Segal who famously had a role in creating the Las Vegas strip, to Sheldon Adelson who was said to have ties to Chinese mafia, and of course like flies attracted to shit Donald Trump comes buzzing around the casino business with plenty of allegations mafia associations, of course his most verifiable organized crime association being the US government itself.

Legalizing sports betting is an apropos move for an empire doing all it can to emulate the Biff Tannen universe that was widely referenced at the start of the Trump presidency. Sports are already a severely overemphasized part of American culture. The athletes are receiving salaries that rival that of some of the most abusive CEOs, but the US populace worships them, they make excuses for the rampant greed out of addictive impulse. Many of these dollars athletes and billionaire owners earn are subsidized from lower class taxpayers where they are forced to pay for stadiums and surrounding infrastructure owned by the billionaires, just so we can watch athletes whose top salaries are quickly approaching 40 million a year play for meaningless things that will quickly be forgotten in time.

The narrative from states and business interests looking to profiteer off gambling will put on their best act to pretend like the abusive capitalist activity of gambling is some form of freedom, and the narrative of Israeli slaughter of Palestinians is that peaceful protestors are a threat to a heavily armed military, and the narrative from corporate media will be that these are just things happening and not signs of empire collapsing amid the ever growing misery of a global population. And the narrative of the people in the empire who are lonely, sad, and separated from connection will tell themselves that democracy and capitalism will somehow purify to the point that they’ll really deliver on the goods this time around. That surely this twisted form of democracy installed by genocidal slavers will avert disaster in the coming elections. The idea is we wait in futility for events that have no chance of curbing the murderous gangsterism inset in this disposable dung heap of a society; I don’t mean to insult dung, lots of good things grow out of dung, nothing good grows out of this disease. It must be transformed at a deep level to be fertile space again, and if we are to heal the disease we cannot continue to sow the lies of false narratives.