Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Put The US In The Time Out Chair

 


Put The US In The Time Out Chair

by C.A. Matthews 

When you work in a kindergarten, you see a lot of a particular kind of behavior. One kid—sometimes the biggest physically in the group but not always the most mature emotionally or mentally—will walk over to a fellow student and take a toy or object away from him without a moment’s thought. The big kid just yanks it out of the smaller kid’s hands and might even hit him over the head with it in the process. The teacher is then forced to step in to protect the injured child because obviously the big kid doesn’t understand that he’s acting like a douchebag and has broken all the rules of civilized society.

Placed into the “time out chair,” the big bully sits there and stews, spouting off all sorts of gripes about how the smaller kid didn’t “share” the toy with him when he asked nicely. Of course the teacher or a staff member never witnessed any manners whatsoever on the part of the bigger child. It’s all lies and the big kid knows it, but he sits in his time out chair and continues to whine and cry about how unfair everybody is to him simply because they won’t share their toys and don’t care to be beat up by him. Oh, boo-hoo-hoo!

Flash forward a few decades and you’ll see the “big kid” acting like a douchebag once again, taking things that don’t belong to him and screaming that it’s not fair that the “little kids” don’t like having their resources grabbed in a violent manner without permission. Here is an example of our current president doing just that on the behalf of the American people:

On Tuesday night US Central Command announced that it had "conducted precision airstrikes in Deir ez-Zor Syria" in order to "defend and protect U.S. forces from attacks like the ones on August 15 against U.S. personnel by Iran-backed groups."

"The President gave the direction for these strikes pursuant to his Article II authority to protect and defend U.S. personnel by disrupting or deterring attacks by Iran-backed groups," CENTCOM said.

Iran has denied any link to the troops targeted in the airstrikes, up to ten of whom were reportedly killed. (...)

"US claims to be in Syria to fight ISIS, but it rarely fights ISIS," journalist Aaron MatΓ© tweeted of the exchange. "It's actually there to deny Syria its own oil and wheat, and to occasionally attack Syrians and their allies who defeated US-backed sectarian death squads in the dirty war." -- US Invades Syria, Kills People,Claims Self-Defense

The US simply takes away resources from Syria like a bully grabbing a toy away from a smaller kid. Aren't you pleased that we have such a respectful and neighborly Commander-in-Chief? 


It's not like Americans haven't done it before. After bombing Afghanistan for twenty years and then withdrawing, the US decided to keep $7 billion worth of Afghans' money sitting in our banks. Yeah, the big bullies stole ordinary Afghans' money, and now millions of Afghan children are starving. But when did doing the right and moral thing ever stop a bully from grabbing a smaller kid's lunch box?

The biggest and most destructive sanction currently facing Afghanistan is the seizure of more than $7 billion of the country’s assets that are held at the US Federal Reserve. This is equivalent to about 40 percent of Afghanistan’s economy, and about 14 months of the country’s imports – which include food, medicine, and infrastructure needs that are vital to public health. --US Sanctions on Afghanistan Could Kill More Civilians than 20 Years of War

According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), nearly 23 million Afghans, or 55% of the population, are facing “extreme levels of hunger.” Of those, almost 9 million are at risk of famine.

UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch called it “a crisis of hunger and starvation.”

Yet there is little discussion inside Washington of the disastrous impact of US sanctions. --Millions in Afghanistan Are Starving Due to US Sanctions

Sometimes, bullies will gather together into a grouping of bullies to make it easier to gang up on a weaker kid or kids. Gangs of bullies are able to grab a ton of toys or "resources", as they’re known to most grown ups. A recent headline tells us that's exactly what a gang consisting of the US, NATO, and a few others are doing in Ukraine:

Representatives of Western governments and corporations met in Switzerland this July to plan a series of harsh neoliberal policies to impose on post-war Ukraine, calling to cut labor laws, “open markets,” drop tariffs, deregulate industries, and “sell state-owned enterprises to private investors.”

Ukraine has been destabilized by violence since 2014, when a US-sponsored coup d’etat overthrew its democratically elected government, setting off a civil war. That conflict dragged on until February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded the country, escalating into a new, even deadlier phase of the war.

The United States and European Union have sought to erase the history of foreign-sponsored civil war in Ukraine from 2014 to early 2022, acting as though the conflict began on February 24. But Washington had sent large sums of weapons to Ukraine and provided extensive military training and support over several years before Russia invaded.

Meanwhile, starting in 2017, representatives of Western governments and corporations quietly held annual conferences in which they discussed ways to profit from the civil war they were fueling in Ukraine.

In these meetings, Western political and business leaders outlined a series of aggressive right-wing reforms they hoped to impose on Ukraine, including widespread privatization of state-owned industries and deregulation of the economy.

On July 4 and 5, 2022, top officials from the US, EU, Britain, Japan, and South Korea met in Switzerland for a so-called “Ukraine Recovery Conference.” There, they planned Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction and performatively announced aid commitments – while salivating over a bonanza of potential contracts.

--West Prepares to Plunder Post-War Ukraine with Neoliberal Shock Therapy: Privatization, Deregulation, Slashing Worker Protections

There’s no aggressive behavior under the sun that would surprise a kindergarten teacher, and there’s nothing new about how stronger nations treat weaker ones. The US and its Western allies want cheap liquid natural gas, and they don’t want to go crying to Russia or even Saudi Arabia to get it. So, they take it from Syria. The indiscriminate bombing and killing of innocent civilians along the way is just the price you pay for being the smaller kid in the global classroom.    

Western corporate interests—especially those of the military industrial complex, such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, etc.—wanted to make some money off of the disintegrating Soviet Union thirty-something years ago. It seemed like a piece of cake to these capitalists to walk in and take their resources since the Cold War was now officially over. The largest part of the former Soviet Union (now simply “Russia”) helped many of the weaker kids (former Soviet nations) in their classroom get back on their feet economically. This cooperative activity didn’t sit well with the West. The US of Big Bullies and friends started working on angles to grab the natural and man-made resources of the weaker nations of the now defunct USSR. 

The unrest in Ukraine in 2014 gave the West the opportunity they’d been looking for to make a grab for these resources. The CIA helped to instigate a coup against the elected government of Ukraine because the Ukrainian voters (heaven forbid!) elected a pro-Russia president who wanted to increase trade with their much larger neighbor. With Ukraine’s ports and a liquid natural gas (LNG) pipeline (the Russian-German Nord Stream 2), Russia and Ukraine together could make some serious cash by selling LNG to European countries to heat their homes and businesses.

The US of Big Bullies and its gang of NATO wasn’t going to suffer this indignity. How dare a weaker kid keep his toys and share them with another kid—a kid we don’t like (and are possibly even jealous of)! Grabbing Ukraine’s resources and causing the big brotherly country that helped them (Russia) to collapse at the same time became US priority number one. Six months and a lot of death and destruction later, the entire world can see what happens when a big bully like the US tries to get its way by grabbing resources from and then hitting a smaller kid who simply wanted to get along with his fellow classmates, or neighboring countries in this instance. 


I realize that I’m simplifying things, but, like most teachers have discovered, sometimes it’s the best way to get down to the root of an aggressive behavior so we can end the aggression once and for all. We can’t continue hiding this behavior of resource grabbing or else it will never stop. We can't keep denying it, lying about it in our mainstream media, or attempting to rename it. 

The US military intervention in other countries has got nothing to do with giving Syria or Afghanistan or Ukraine "freedom and democracy." It's the US acting like a big bully by bombing weaker nations into submission in order to make a lot of profits for the military industrial complex and other Western corporations. All moral people must expose this evil for what it is so we can deal with it like adults, not children. 

It's time we put the US and NATO in the time out chair.

I sent a few grabber-hitters to the time out chair when I worked in a kindergarten class. Usually by the end of the school year these bullies matured a little emotionally. They began to understand why hitting and stealing toys/objects from their classmates wasn’t a good idea. Their first grade teachers praised our patience and stick-to-it-ness. It (almost) made the stress of dealing with these miniature Napoleons worth it.

Unfortunately, the world doesn’t have a school year to wait and see what will happen if we don’t stop the US and the West’s aggressive behaviors. We’ve got warmongers in Congress who want to provoke a war with China next. What’s sane about a bully taunting and grabbing at resources from other countries who own nuclear weapons? Nothing. Nothing at all. 

The next time you read how a far away country like Syria is a “threat” to the US look at what kind of natural resources they have. Look at where it’s positioned on the globe. Perhaps it’s located next door or within a short bomber’s flight distance of another country we’re jealous of and want to push out of our “classroom” so we can grab all their “toys”.

And stop making excuses for the United States of Bullies—even if you're a member of their "gang." Because how will Americans ever  grow up and stop their aggressive ways if they’re not taught a lesson by sitting in the time out chair?


Related Articles

US Invades Syria, Kills People, Claims Self-Defense https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/us-invades-syria-kills-people-claims

US Carries Out Airstries in Syria's Deir Ez Zor Province https://popularresistance.org/us-carries-out-airstrikes-in-syrias-deir-ez-zor-province/ 

US Sanctions on Afghanistan Could Kill More Civilians Than 20 Years of War  https://multipolarista.com/2022/02/05/us-sanctions-afghanistan-death-war/

Millions in Afghanistan Are Starving Due to US Sanctions https://multipolarista.com/2022/01/23/afghanistan-starving-us-sanctions/

'We Will Die by Poverty before Dying of Covid’: Young Adults and Multi-Layered Crises in Afghanistan  https://areu.org.af/publication/2205e/

US Judge Says Billions in Seized Central Bank Funds Belong to Afghan People https://scheerpost.com/2022/08/30/us-judge-says-billions-in-seized-central-bank-funds-belong-to-afghan-people/ 

West Prepares to Plunder Post-War Ukraine... https://multipolarista.com/2022/07/28/west-neoliberal-recovery-conference/

Revealed: US & EU Plans to Plunder Ukraine (video) https://youtu.be/1WsB-vvMLZk

This is Why the EU Doesn't Want Russian Gas (video) https://youtu.be/vC9yRNYWb84

The Uncomfortable Truth About Zelensky, featuring Scott Ritter (video) https://youtu.be/qmpnVbbqqOE 

Free Speech Doesn't Matter If Propagandists Determine What People Say  https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/free-speech-doesnt-matter-if-propagandists 


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