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Recently, the Pentagon’s top Asia official, Randall Schriver, told senators that the Afghan war would cost this country’s taxpayers $45 billion in 2018, including $5 billion for the Afghan security forces, $13 billion for U.S. forces in that country, and $780 million in economic aid. How the other $26 billion would be spent is unclear and, given the Pentagon’s record in these years, Schriver’s estimate could prove a low-ball figure. All in all, it’s just another year in this country’s endless war there. Still, if Schriver is on the mark, in Afghanistan alone the American taxpayer will spend more than a fifth of the $200 billion the Trump administration is urging Congress to put up for the rebuilding of America’s crumblinginfrastructure. (The estimated cost of the full war on terror in President Trump’s proposed 2018 budget, according to the Costs of War Project, is approximately… yep, you guessed it: $200 billion.) And, of course, all of that is next to nothing when compared to the $5.6 trillionthe Costs of War Project estimates the war on terror has already cost us (with certain future expenses added in).

Under the circumstances, isn’t it remarkable that the government has sent so many taxpayer dollars tumbling down the rabbit hole of its failed wars and the “reconstruction” scams in Afghanistan and Iraq that once passed for “nation-building”? (By 2014, the U.S. had already sunk more money into “reconstructing” Afghanistan than it had once put into the Marshall Plan to rebuild all of Western Europe — and compare the results of each of those investments!) More remarkable still, for all the bitter political disputes in these years about how government money should be spent, there has never been real disagreement here, no less significant protest, over the decision to put such staggering sums into America’s wars.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

False Flag Potential in the Middle East: Iran, Syria, and Israel

February 16, 2018

False Flag Potential in the Middle East: Iran, Syria, and Israel

Their End Goal for We the People: “I am the State…the State is all!”

(“Quarlo” from “The Outer Limits,” episode “Soldier”)

History does repeat itself; if not identically, then in identical circumstances and events in different nations. History also does not just “happen,” as there are powerful forces at work in every nation. False flags have been used throughout human history: politicians and oligarchs initiate them to follow a hidden agenda. Too often the masses become the “True Believer” of Eric Hoffer. Worked up into a patriotic frenzy, they charge into the fray…little understanding that the great war or the great crusade is orchestrated by smiling bankers and nabobs, securely “in the rear with the gear,” sending men out to die to attain their secret objectives.

In this vein, consider that the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is not limited to American White Anglo-Saxon Protestants of the United States, but a “conglomerate” of independent nations with the ability to wage war, sustain it, and sell arms. Each independent nation has their own “MIC” but they freely exchange goods and services (what we call arms and “negotiated” conflicts). They march to their own beat but allow themselves to be “guided” by the politicians, the oligarchs (who may or may not actively own industries in the MIC), and the bankers.

The lessons learned by history with the Rothschilds banking family as an example shows how one group of bankers can leverage both sides in a war between two different nations and profit no matter what the outcome. Make no mistake: this has not changed, and if anything, it has become even more “specialized” with private contractors waging wars on behalf of governments…the business of war, sanctioned with the (un)holy “blessing” of a nation-state (or an “actor” or “partner” as they’re now ludicrously termed).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trump Ups Defense Budget By 13% – “Can’t Have World’s Best Military On An Obama Budget”

January 26, 2018

Trump Ups Defense Budget By 13% – “Can’t Have World’s Best Military On An Obama Budget”

With Washington having seemingly turned its turret away from ‘terror’ and back to “revisionist, authoritarian” regimes like ‘Russia and China’, the Military-Industrial Complex is ‘gonna need a bigger budget’ – a 13% bigger $716 billion one by 2019.

US military spending already dwarfed the rest of the world…

But, while presenting the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS2018) of the United States on Friday at the Johns Hopkins University, Secretary of Defense James Mattis painted a picture of a dangerous world in which U.S. power – and all of the supposed “good” that it does around the world – is on the decline.

“Our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare – air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace,” he said. “And it is continually eroding.”

And now, as The Washington Post reports, President Trump is expected to ask for $716 billion in defense spending when he unveils his 2019 budget next month, a major increase that signals a shift away from concerns about rising deficits, U.S. officials said.

The proposed budget is a victory for Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who recently unveiled a strategy that proposes retooling the military to deter and, if necessary, fight a potential conflict with major powers such as China and Russia.

And it represents a setback for deficit hawks such as Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, who last year pressed for an increase in defense spending that could be offset by cuts to domestic programs.

The $716 billion figure for 2019 would cover the Pentagon’s annual budget as well as spending on ongoing wars and the maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. It would increase Pentagon spending by more than 7 percent over the 2018 budget, which still has not passed through Congress.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post Became the US Military-Industrial Complex’s Chief Propagandist

January 7, 2018

How Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post Became the US Military-Industrial Complex’s Chief Propagandist

It used to be that the New York Times and the Washington Post competed against each other to be the chief propagandist for the hundred or so top firms who sell to the US federal government — the 100 top “federal contractors,” almost all of which are Pentagon contractors — mainly these are weapons-manufacturing firms, such as the biggest, Lockheed Martin. The federal government is a large part of these firms’ essential market; so, invasions by the US against other countries require lots of their goods and services; and, also, America’s foreign allies additionally buy these weapons; and, right now, US President Trump is demanding that they increase their ‘defense’ budgets to buy more of them. Wars produce corporate profits if (like in the United States) the military suppliers are private corporations instead of government-owned (socialized). Selling wars is crucial to such firms’ bottom lines. And, since there is no law against owning a ‘defense’ contractor and owning or donating to newsmedia (especially newsmedia such as the Times and Post, which publish lots of international news and so can encourage lots of invasions), a sensible business strategy for investors in ‘defense’ stocks is to also own or donate to some international-‘news’ media, in order to generate additional business for the arms-maker or other ‘defense’ firm. Not only does this business-plan relate to such newspapers as the NYT and WP, but they’ll be the focus here, because they are the most important of America’s international-news media.

Serious periodicals, such as The New Republic, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones, have also been steady propagandists for ‘defense’ companies, but magazines don’t reverberate through the rest of the mass-media to the extent that the serious national (NYC & DC) newspapers do.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Propaganda, Confrontation and Profit

December 7, 2017

Propaganda, Confrontation and Profit

The waves, the artificial tides of anti-Russian propaganda continue to beat upon the ears and eyes of Western citizens, spurred by Washington politicians and bureaucrats whose motives vary from deviously duplicitous to blatantly commercial. It is no coincidence that there has been vastly increased expenditure on US weaponry by Eastern European countries.

Complementing the weapons’ build-up, which is so sustaining and lucrative for the US industrial-military complex, the naval, air and ground forces of the US-NATO military alliance continue operations ever closer to Russia’s borders.

Shares and dividends in US arms manufacturing companies have rocketed, in a most satisfactory spinoff from Washington’s policy of global confrontation, and the Congressional Research Service (CRS) records that “arms sales are recognized widely as an important instrument of state power. States have many incentives to export arms. These include enhancing the security of allies or partners; constraining the behaviour of adversaries; using the prospect of arms transfers as leverage on governments’ internal or external behaviour; and creating the economics of scale necessary to support a domestic arms industry.”

The CRS notes that arms deals “are often a key component in Congress’s approach to advancing US foreign policy objectives,” which is especially notable around the Baltic and throughout the Middle East, where US wars have created a bonanza for US weapons makers — and for the politicians whom the manufacturers reward so generously for their support. (Additionally, in 2017 arms manufacturers spent $93,937,493 on lobbying Congress.)

Some countries, however, do not wish to purchase US weaponry, and they are automatically categorised as being influenced by Russia, which is blamed for all that has gone wrong in America over the past couple of years. This classification is especially notable in the Central Asian Republics.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If War Comes, Don’t Blame the ‘Military-Industrial Complex’ – Things Are Even Worse Than You Think

August 12, 2017

If War Comes, Don’t Blame the ‘Military-Industrial Complex’ – Things Are Even Worse Than You Think

As the drumbeat intensifies for what might turn out to be anything but a «splendid little war» against North Korea, it is appropriate to take stock of the ongoing, seemingly successful effort to strip President Donald Trump of his authority to make any foreign and national security policies that fly against the wishes of the so-called Military-Industrial Complex, or MIC. A Google search for «Military-Industrial Complex» (in quotation marks) with «Trump» yields almost 450,000 hits from all sources and almost 26,000 from just news sources.

During the 2016 campaign and into the initial weeks of his administration, Trump was sometimes described as a threat to the MIC. But over time, with the appointment to his administration of more generals and establishment figures (including some allegedly tied to George Soros) while purging Trump loyalists, it’s no surprise that his policies increasingly seem less a departure from those of previous administrations than a continuation of them (for example, welcoming Montenegro into NATO). Some now say that Trump is the MIC’s best friend and maybe always was.

There are those who deny that the MIC exists at all. One self-described conservative blogger writing in the pro-war, pro-intervention, and mostly neoconservative National Review refers to the very existence of the MIC as a «myth» peddled by the «conspiracy-minded». Sure, it is conceded, it was appropriate to refer to such a concept back when President Dwight Eisenhower warned against it in 1961 upon his impending departure from the White House, because back then the military consumed some 10 percent of the American GDP. But now, when the percentage is nominally just 3.2 percent, less than $600 billion per year, the term supposedly is inapplicable.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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