US Secretary of State Antony Blinken just referred to the US-sponsored assassination of yet another journalist in Gaza as a terrible tragedy, as though the reporter was struck by lightning or died in a car crash or something.

Speaking ata press conference in Qatar on Sunday, Blinken was asked to comment on the murder of Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh, who was killed in Gaza by an Israeli airstrike on a car has was travelling in with two other journalists, one of whom also died. Hamza Dahdouh was the eldest son of Al Jazeeras Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, whose wife, son, daughter and baby grandson weremurdered in another Israeli airstrikein late October.

In response to an Al Jazeera reporters question about whether the United States condemns the murder of innocent journalists, Blinken replied as follows:

I am deeply, deeply sorry for the almost unimaginable loss suffered by your colleague Wael al-Dahdouh. I am a parent myself. I cant begin to imagine the horror that hes experienced, not once, but now twice. This is an unimaginable tragedy, and thats also been the case for, as I said, far too many innocent Palestinian men, women, and childrencivilians, also journalists, Palestinian and other.

Blinken went on to acknowledge the scores of journalists who have been killed in Gaza, saying that this shows the need to get humanitarian aid into the enclave and achieve a lasting peace. What Blinken did not do is issue anything resembling a condemnation of Israel and the clear and demonstrable fact that it has beenhighly focusedon the task of murdering journalists in Gaza. He just offered his deepest condolences for Dahdouhs death, framed it as a passive tragedy instead of an active assassination using highly sophisticated military technology under the sponsorship and support of the United States, and moved on.

Its hard to say whos worse, the far-right Israelis who openly revel in the butchery they are inflicting in Gaza, or the liberal Americans who directly sponsor that butchery and then look you dead in the eye and tell you how deeply, sincerely sorry they are to hear that another person in Gaza has died in a tragic accident.

Blinken is always doing sociopathic stuff like this. Late last month hetweeted, This has been an extraordinarily dangerous year for press around the world. Many killed, many more wounded, hundreds detained, attacked, threatened, injuredsimply for doing their jobs. I am profoundly grateful to the press for getting accurate, timely information to people.

I mean, can you believe the gall of this freak? As though his own administration wasnt responsible formost of those killings. As though Israel has not spent the last three months directingwildly disproportionate firepowerat the placesit knows journalists are hiding.

Hes standing there on top of a pile of corpses while mournfully shaking his head about their tragic unfortunate deaths.

Theres something about the job of US secretary of state that appears to require a significant level of sociopathy. Fromwar criminalHenry Kissinger to Madeleine We think the price was worth it Albright to Mike We lied, we cheated, we stole Pompeo, the absolute worst person in any given presidential administration is very often the head of the State Department. A severe personality disorder is practically in the job description.

This is because while the secretary of state is officially the head of US diplomacy, diplomacy for the US empire looks a whole lot different from what it looks like for normal countries. US diplomacy, in practice, typically looks like going from country to country negotiating for international alignment behind wars, starvation sanctions, proxy conflicts and western-backed uprisings. In theory the State Department should be the department of peace, but in practice its just a subtler, sneakier military department.

Nothing epitomizes the depraved manipulations of the US empire better than Antony Blinken. There is no better representation of that empire than Tony standing there on his mountain of corpses, covered in blood, telling you how sorry he is to learn of the unfortunate accidental deaths of the people he just murdered, staring at you with his cold dead eyes, playing remarkably soulless blues guitar under the light of a bright red moon.

Original article published by Caitlin Johnstone on Substack on 8 January,2024.