The Village Oak Tree

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The Village Oak Tree

October 23rd, 2024

Terrance Ó Domhnaill

Oct 24, 2024

Transcript

Fáilte

Welcome to The Village Oak Tree for October 23rd.

I am your host, Terrance Ó Domhnaill. Thank you for spending a little time with me again this week.

I have some more news stories to shake things up again and an essay on American politics that I found on Medium.com. It sums up the current upcoming election and candidates from the perspective of an outsider. Which is how I feel about all of this nonsense. I feel like an outsider in the country I live in these days.

To wrap things up, I have another chapter from The Priest to read to you. More of Michael Campi's dystopian future story about what the collapse of the United States would look like from a first person perspective.

Let's dive into some of the news stories I dug up since last week.

I picked this one up from RT News (you will be hearing me reference a lot of stories from RT from now on due to the U.S. censorship issues). This one is about how Ukraine wants the ability to create nuclear weapons.

Now, I don't know about all of you, but I seriously think this would be a bad idea to let Zelenskyy and company have access to nuclear weapons to attack Russia. The saner heads in the world don't want them to have any conventional long range weapons to hit Russia with, much less nuclear ones. No one wants a nuclear war with anyone. That much is agreed on by everyone, even the U.S.

Zelenskyy's Victory Plan was received in the west with mixed reviews. The U.S. didn't buy it and certain EU countries didn't either but others did and are pushing for more support for Ukraine. France being one of them. I have to wonder why though. They are the farthest away, outside of the UK, from the Russian front so why are they being so diehard about Ukraine winning? What are they afraid of?

In other military news, I found this story about a U.S. defense contractor that has been fined for bribing foreign officials and overcharging the American government for services and products. Raytheon, one of the U.S.'s largest defense contractors, has been found guilty of the things that any of us who have been part of the military industrial complex in the past or present, have known about for decades.

The majority of the U.S. defense contractors have been stealing and bribing governments for seventy years or more. It seems that Raytheon got caught being a little too blatant about it and had to be spanked. Now they will fall back in line with all of the other grifters who continue to steal from the taxpayers.

I could tell a lot of stories going back decades from my military service about how badly U.S. defense contractors overcharged the Pentagon for all kinds of things. From little things like toilet paper to big things like advanced weapons systems that don't work, cost overruns and so on. Does anyone remember the funny stories from the Reagan days about the forty dollar hammers and so much else? How about the lost billions spent on reconstruction projects in Afghanistan and Iraq when George W. Bush was president?

This business with Raytheon is just one that slipped out from under the blanket of clandestine defense budget spending and it will return to the shadowy places that defense spending operates in once again.

In other U.S. news, I found an obscure story about the oil corporation Phillips 66 shutting down oil refineries in Los Angeles. Now, ordinarily, this wouldn't be big news but, as this story talks about, it is part of an overall picture of the fossil fuel industry picking up and leaving California altogether lately. They cite that they aren't making enough money to keep the refineries and other facilities open anymore.

California has gone big in renewable energy sources and that is a good thing for the environment. But California doesn't create enough energy from those resources to replace fossil fuels yet. Meanwhile, with fossil fuel companies closing up shop, that means that consumers in California will have to pay even more for gasoline and oil because more will have to be shipped in. California already has some of the highest prices at the pumps for gasoline now.

And the U.S. wants to block all imports of EV cars to the U.S. in order to give the U.S. car manufacturers a better chance to invent their own EV's.

We have seen how Tesla has fared in the last few years with high prices and lots of recalls. I have been reading stories about the failures in Detroit so far and it doesn't look good for American consumers who want an affordable EV car anytime soon.

How many listeners know about this story about the top secret documents that were leaked last Friday detailing the Israeli Iran attack plans? I won't dwell on this too much other than to say that there will be more about this as the FBI is investigating the leak. Is it a disgruntled federal employee? Is it an intentional leak to make Israel pause the attack? More to come I'm sure.

Then there are the stories about the cleanup from the recent hurricanes in the U.S. Those stories have slowed down some but I found this one from RT News about a very controversial republican law maker from the state of Georgia, with part of her district hard hit by hurricane Helene, giving a speech about how the U.S. government sent all of that money overseas to help the Ukrainians and didn't have enough to take care of its own people after the storm.

Marjorie Taylor-Green, someone whom I have always thought of as a real life epitome of the dumb blonde jokes, actually said something for once that I agree with.

The United States is famous for throwing trillions (with a T) of dollars to fund wars and reconstruction projects overseas in countries they decimated and this is no different. The U.S. has wasted billions of dollars in Ukraine to push NATO military expansionism right up to the western Russian border.

Every president since slick Willy Clinton in the 1990's has lied to the Russians, and the world, and fomented coups and western expansion into Ukraine since 2014. All the while leading Ukraine along with the promise of entry into NATO and the EU. Mind you, I said promises because, as most people know, the U.S. doesn't keep its promises. They take what they want from whomever they want, whenever they can, and leave the victims with next to nothing in return.

Ukraine has something the U.S. wants, and if the EU and UK play nice, they may get a share of that. Senator Lindsay Graham said it right out in the open a few months ago on a news interview. Ukraine has vast mineral wealth that the U.S. and the west want very badly and Ukraine needs to win this war in order for the west to take advantage of all of that wealth underground. An American equity company is already primed and ready to invest (pillage) in Ukraine's mineral wealth as soon as the war is over and the Ukrainian government can finalize the contracts.

It goes without saying that if Russia wins the war, they will have access to some of that mineral wealth and a lot more, and the Americans can't afford that. Not only in the lost financial revenues for the U.S. government political donors, but in the loss of political prestige around the world if Ukraine folds under Russian pressure and has to capitulate in a peace agreement. Which may be coming very soon.

Since we are talking about the U.S. wars overseas now, let's talk about the middle east. I found a couple of standout stories regarding the war in Palestine.

My first one is about the real reason why Israel wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank. This story from The Cradle follows in the wake of other stories that have been published since last October, that Israel has an ulterior motive for clearing out all of the Palestinians and Arabs from Palestine.

Many of us wrote last fall about how Israel wants access to all of the oil in Gaza. There are a lot of oil reserves underneath north Gaza and off the coast and how they don't want to share it with anyone.

Israel also wants Gaza so they can turn part of it into a large canal to facilitate the movement of trade goods from Saudi Arabia and other middle eastern countries to Europe. The Ben Gurion canal would shave off transportation costs and bring a lot of revenue to Israel, much like the Suez does for Egypt.

Before the war started last October, there were a lot of Jewish Americans buying up illegal land in the West Bank and building American style, suburban houses out there on these illegally acquired plots and subdivisions. Now, they are all leaving as fast as they can because of the war. Thousands of dual citizenship Jews have fled the country, leaving huge gaps in the Israeli economy.

Then there is all of that waterfront property that the developers and settlers want for themselves. They want to turn the beach areas of Gaza into tourist areas and offer up more land for Israeli settlers. The same thing for the West Bank. Expand the settler areas as far as they can and eliminate all of the Palestinians and Arabs.

According to this story, the Israeli developers are already lining up to move into north Gaza. All they are waiting for is the IDF to finish clearing out all of the Palestinians.

Which leads into my other story from Israel. Another story from The Cradle. This one is about how Israel is getting ready to set up concentration camps in North Gaza using ex-CIA and ex-military special forces people to manage and run the camps. The camps are the latest idea from Israel to force what's left of the Palestinians out and into camps, where the only way in or out will be by using biometrics to track their whereabouts.

How is this not another war crime to add to Israel's tally? Didn't the world outlaw concentration camps after world war 2? This is just another flagrant up yours world attempt to complete the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Israel is betting hard that no one will dare do anything to stop them. Especially since the United States stands behind them with a threatening demeanor, telling the world that Israel can do as it pleases to defend itself, no matter the crimes against humanity.

To bring things back to the U.S., as promised, I have an essay on the state of the U.S. elections and the candidates from a Medium writer. This essay stood out from all of the rest I am inundated with all the time now.

I firmly believe that Kamala Harris needs to do something dramatic with regard to funding the wars overseas in order to win this election with any kind of margin. She needs to stand up and be counted to show the American people she cares more about them than the Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, and the Ukrainians.

So far, most of her rhetoric is going on a lot of deaf ears. She will always have her core of diehard democratic party voters but she is losing hundreds of thousands of Muslim and other independent voters over the funding of the wars. Donald Trump could very well pull this one out of a hat if the pollsters are anywhere near close in their predictions.

Because the U.S. uses this out of date electoral college system to tally the final votes, it could go to Trump, despite his ramblings and buffoonery, just because a lot of people are fed up with the current administration who isn't paying attention to them and their needs. Not that Donald Trump will be any better but he says he will and that is what is swaying a lot of people.

Which brings me to my last point of the day. Societal corruption. The United States is by and large a very corrupt society from the top down to the bottom. Corruption infects every aspect of their society from the white house to the local city administrators and police forces country wide.

What brought on my wish to say all of this was my wife actually. We were watching a couple of episodes from one of her favorite Netflix shows, The Lincoln Lawyer, season three last night. In this season, the main character is fighting against some corrupt police, both federal and city from Los Angeles.

My wife started asking me about this and I explained to her that although this is a fictional show, it is based on real life in the U.S. There are corrupt politicians and police all over the country.

There have been some very high profile police corruption cases in the news in the last couple of years such as the Tyre Nichols killing in September 2023. The reporting of the New Orleans police in Louisiana torturing people, and other human rights issues and so many others through the years.

I realize that this is not unique to the U.S. A lot of other countries are full of rampant corruption and police brutality as well. I pick on the U.S. today because my wife is an immigrant from a repressive corrupt country and she was granted asylum in the U.S. because of those repressive policies. For her to pick up on the corruption and bad police in the show and ask me about it, and my explanation that this is reflective of American society, says a lot. After I explained everything to her, she commented that the U.S. doesn't appear to be much better that the country she immigrated from anymore.

That from an immigrant woman who came to America to get away from all of that only to realize that she only traded one version of corruption and police brutality for another.

The U.S. elections are less than two weeks away and neither of the two main party candidates are offering up any plans to address this corruption. If anything, they will be perpetuating it, with business as usual kind of policies.

The only difference between the two, is the democrats are using glitter and distraction to convince people to vote for them, whereas Trump and the MAGA party are not hiding anything. They are right up front with their corruption and plans for more authoritarian brutality.

To paraphrase my immigrant wife, and so many other immigrants who came from countries with brutal regimes, how is the United States any different than Russia, China, Israel, and so many other authoritarian countries?

The so called democratic ideals that the U.S. throws up to everyone around the world to aspire to is a lie. That is very obvious now with their unlimited support for the genocidal Israelis and the fascist Ukrainian government and their economic sanctions against governments, companies and people around the world who won't do their bidding.

In the second half of the show I read the essay I mentioned and another chapter of The Priest to close out the show. The writer makes a lot of valid points but, due to language, I have to warn everyone. Both pieces I read here are for adults only.

That’s all I have for you this week. I will be back next week with something else. What exactly, I am not sure yet. Until then, Sláinte

References:

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The Village Oak Tree

A commentary and discussion with the occasional guests about current news from around the world, veterans affairs and other topics. Some controversial.

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