Barbwire by Barbano: 60 Revenging Rakkasans

   Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
   Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
   Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
   That's how it goes. Everybody knows...
Everybody knows the scene is dead
   But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
   What everybody knows...
   Everybody talking to their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
   and a long red rose.
   Everybody knows. Everybody knows.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.

— Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016

I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island.
— Leon Russell, 1942-2016

60 Revenging Rakkasans
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 4-11-2017 Sparks Tribune / Expansions in blue

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Tsar Donaldov's little excursion in symbolic mass killing on the sands of Araby just cost us a minimum of $168,000,000.00, including the tab for replacing 60 Cruise Missiles which failed to disable the Shayrat airbase. Attacks were launched from there the very next day.

The message seems to be that it's OK for Putin puppet King Assad the Second to randomly kill with modern bullets, bombs and missiles, just don't use nerve gas.

WAGES OF WAR. At very little cost save for lives and money, the Russian and American rulers are now seen as feuding royals rather than best buddies.

It could not have worked out better had they planned it that way, eh wot?

TRUMP FAMILY VALUES. The lives lost were quite valuable if you use the accounting system of the Mercer family. In case you don't know them, they successfully assigned their minions, Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Fitzpatrick Conway, to save the Trump presidential campaign from meltdown last August.

Reclusive hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer "believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make. A cat has value, he’s said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable,” according to longtime Mercer hedge fund executive David Magerman.

He added that Mercer " 'thinks society is upside down — that government helps the weak people get strong, and makes the strong people weak by taking their money away, through taxes.'

"This mind-set was typical of 'instant billionaires' in finance, who 'have no stake in society,' unlike the industrialists of the past, who 'built real things,' " Magerman told journalist Jane Mayer in the 27 March 2017 edition of The New Yorker magazine.

Vladmir Putin fits that profile. According to some estimates, the modern-day Russian tsar has accumulated upwards of $400 billion. He thus makes Microsoft's Bill Gates, Tesla's Elon Musk, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and NVEnergy's Warren Buffet all look poor.

News reports on the number killed in Trump's cruise missile attack vary, so let's go with twenty men, women and children. This means their lives were worth roughly $8,400,000.00 each. That does not include indirect expenses such as research and development, Pentagon overhead, sailor salaries, interest on the national debt and reparations to Syrian families years from now.

So by Mr. Mercer's way of thinking, those people died both rich and respectable.

As author Mayer points out in her bestseller Dark Money, the hyper-rich often live in bubbles, insulated from the tapestry of humanity.

Anyway, Mr. Mercer has stated he prefers the company of his cats.

WAGES OF WAR WARNING. Military spending creates inflation. The Federal Reserve is now raising interest rates as inflation increases. Recession results.

RE-DEFINING DEATH. "Rakkasans" was adopted as the nickname of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division during WW2. "Rakkasan" is Japanese for parachute (literally "umbrella for falling"). According to a Korean War vet of my acquaintance, Koreans transmuted "rakkasans" to mean "killers from the air," a useful description of cruise missiles.

WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN? "When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." — Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 4 April, 1967.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
______________
Andrew Barbano is a 48-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and first vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his comments are his own. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

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THE GOOD DON. Nominations are afoot for the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame. Time to ramp up for world-famous Tribune photographer Don Dondero. Here's the compelling case for his induction.

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TOMORROW'S NEWS TODAY: FEEL UP YOUR FIRE METER. The Reno Gazette-Journal did big spreads on three consecutive Sundays (Sept. 14, Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, 2014) on NV Energy smart meter fires. Welcome aboard. Barbwire readers were two years ahead on the fire meter issue. (Touch a Smart Meter, Go to Jail — 11 October 2012)

ANTE INTO THE GAME: Support the new season of Barbwire.TV by putting your money where my mouth is. A thousand thanks to those who keep sending show suggestions.

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