Happy World War!

Linh Dinh

[Stung Treng, 3/20/23]

In Hanoi’s Old Quarter, there are streets named Hat, Fan, Pen, Cotton, Comb and Coffin, etc. As their names indicate, each sells a particular merchandise, though much less so now, to make room for hotels, restaurants, bars and cafes.

On Comb Street, combs went from wood and ivory to primarily plastic. Elephants are mostly gone, and much of the world is denuded of forests. Soon enough, modern man won’t even have a fig leaf to cover his arrogant prick. Derived from oil, plastic is still plentiful, though. When that runs out, we just won’t comb our hair, the few strands we’ll have left after nuclear radiation. Business on Coffin Street will be jumping, if there’s still a Coffin Street.

All over Vietnam, the habit of bunching similar stores is still common, and I’ve seen that, too, in Cambodia. Last night in Stung Treng, I strolled past a row of barber shops, their lit up interiors exposed to the street. Inside one, a beautiful woman removed an unconscionable amount of earwax from a shameless man, lying there contently with one knee raised. Her fingers on his helix, pina and concha triggered such flashes of fugitive memories, it’s a miracle he didn’t cry out, “Please stop, mommy!”

Inside another, a boy of three sat perfectly still and regally erect, as his smiling mother watched. At the bottom of his cape were red scissors and black combs. At the top, curiously, was a racing flag pattern. Launched into this world at the darkest hour, he’s speeding towards our frightful future.

Much less brave, most boys his age would have cried, for it’s scary to have a cutting instrument constantly waving above your head. With a metallic sound, it permanently severs clumps from your person. Parts of you are now scattered on the unclean floor. What are they doing to me? Buzzing, another sinister device presses against your flesh. There’s nothing sane or natural about any of this.

During America’s Shock and Awe attack against Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, there was a boy who lost all four limbs. In the hospital, he asked when would they grow back?

How many millions of children has Uncle Sam so cavalierly dismembered or murdered? What does it matter? Americans are incapable of remembering anything, so it’s easy to move on to the next carnage, all in the name of defending freedom and democracy, of course.

In 2017, I interviewed an Iraqi refugee I met in Scranton, PA. Melissa, not her real name, was having a tough time adapting to a new culture while working in a Dunkin’ Donuts bakery. Becoming Americanized, one of her teen daughters was starting to get in trouble. The poor lady was overwhelmed.

Melissa on America’s invasion, “One day, I stand with my father outside, and American trucks, four! come. We see my brothers come home from fishing. Two, three American soldiers jump from trucks, shoot, tat, tat, tat, tat! They kill my brothers, so we get their bodies, you know. We have a good life, but they break it.”

When this was published at Unz, “Clyde” commented, “If it was just her deranged self mooching off us I could almost let it go. But the USA allowing her to bring in five children to mooch is insane. What happened to her husband? Her story about her brothers that were killed by American soldiers may be true, maybe not, maybe they were combatants.”

“Whoever” remarked that even if the story about the brothers was true, the family would have been compensated, so that’s that. “Chris Mallory” sneered “They should all go back to Iraq where they belong.” Jewish “Bragadocious” was simply gleeful, “Time to make the donuts Melissa.”

If Melissa’s brothers were combatants, they were patriots defending their homeland against righteous psychos from very far away. So cheerfully bloodthirsty, are they even human?

For a century, no country has been involved in more wars than the USA. Often, it’s engaged in several simultaneously, not that its mostly lobotomized citizens care very much. If they’re at the lower end, they’re born to “support the troops,” even if their sons come home in shredded or carbonized chunks from countries they can’t find on maps. If they’re of the investment class, war means opportunities, so it doesn’t matter if America loses, for cash will be aflowin’.

Say war profiteers and people will think of weapon manufacturers, but as long as your acreage isn’t bombed, you can rake it in supplying sugar, bricks, shoes, whores or screws, etc., to support the troops, of course, and the folks left behind, too, for everything will be scarce. On top of what war destroys, production and distribution are also crippled, so here’s your chance to cheddar up!

Since it’s never a bad time to quote Norman Lewis, consider this passage about Havana in 1938:

A comfortable white minority, although less in evidence, were hyper-active with financial manoeuvrings, for everyone now believed that a world war was certain, and the international news, after a previous slump in the sugar market, induced a happy frame of mind. It was accepted that neutral countries everywhere did well out of wars, and the first battles of the conflict to come were being fought on the stock market. The Havana sugar brokers sat up half the night at the Hotel Nacionál drinking to Chamberlain’s failed appeasement at Munich. Already the city was awash with money and with the news of the foreigners buying sugar for stockpiling at record prices. The Diario de la Marina published the first photograph of a happy speculator lighting a cigar with a fifty-dollar bill.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine 13 months ago, neither the US nor Zelensky has shown any interest in negotiating for peace. Having cornered Russia into war, Uncle Sam is determined to spread it.

Since the economic integration of Eurasia makes the US irrelevant, it must sabotage this by waging war against Russia and, soon enough, China, but inside the West itself, there are acts of sabotage that can’t be blamed on Russia. Jewjabs, destruction of small businesses, culling of livestock and kneecapping of farming are all examples of this. The West has been attacked from the inside. If this is news to you, just pop another tranq and send one more check to Democracy Now!

There ought to be an Earnest Hall of Fame, with Amy Goodman and Rochelle Wallensky as the first inductees. Look into their eyes! How can you not trust them?

I’m still in Stung Treng, a remote, backward town in one of the poorest countries on earth, and yet, there are no riots, as in much of France, nor unpayable utility bills, as in much of Europe. It does help that each day is as hot as the last. Khmer women used to be bare-breasted, but don’t dangle that thought in front of yours truly. I hear laughter all the time here. It’s not meaningless.

Yesterday, I wrote to a UK friend to ask if the situation there was as crappy as the news indicated. He responded:

Yeah, it’s pretty awful here. It feels a bit like the tightening of a noose. We’re just ignoring our energy bills, for example, and they’re huge. Unlike in America, they can’t turn off our electric here, no matter what […] I just got an email at work, saying that in the past 12 years, the library budget has been cut by £100 million! Inflation is going through the roof. They’ve got big plans for us, as you know.

My friend works in a library. Of course, they don’t want you to be literate. Slaves with even bits of brains may talk back. When I visited him in Brighton in 2015, we had such a wonderful time listening to a jam session at a local Irish pub, and yes, it was the real article, as in a bar frequented by Irishmen and women.

As with everything that existed before the Great Reset, it feels a bit unreal, if not some goofy fantasy. From the end of the world, I write to you, but it’s not over yet. Soulful singing may erupt again, but first, we must call out the Satanic, for they’re not just soulless, but thoroughly evil.

[Stung Treng, 3/19/23]

[Stung Treng, 3/19/23]

[Stung Treng, 3/17/23]

[Stung Treng, 3/19/23]

Source: Postcards From The End