Comment by Riaz Haq on May 18, 2022 at 9:20pm

George W. Bush's Freudian Slip on #Ukraine: "Brutal Invasion of #Iraq". Ex #US president condemned #Putin's "brutal, unjustified invasion of Iraq" and then blamed the slip on age. #Russia https://youtu.be/bZKWn3RcPZU

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 1, 2022 at 4:38pm

Forbes Says the Quiet Part Out Loud About NATO | by Mitchell Peterson | May, 2022 | Medium


https://mitchellglennfrommichigan.medium.com/forbes-says-the-quiet-...

A few months ago, I heard a very astute political analyst say that when it comes to the ‘Western’ media, the financial press is typically more accurate. The Guardians, Fox News, and MSNBCs are always sycophantically in line with the geopolitical consensus, no matter how propagandistic or inaccurate.

We’ve been seeing a lot of that ridiculously out-of-touch coverage on Ukraine and NATO — if you see the Ghost of Kyiv anywhere, let me know ’cause I want to interview that cat.

But seemingly out of nowhere, CNN did have a decent and surprisingly revealing piece back in mid-April regarding weapons sent to Ukraine. The synopsis: we don’t know what happens to them. In their words, it’s a ‘black hole.’ They also admitted the information we’re getting isn’t always accurate and will always be curated to improve the case for more military aid.

The ‘newspaper of record’ NY Times has been embarrassingly bad, but they’re admittedly starting to shift their rhetoric.

But because investors need accurate assessments, outlets like the Financial Times can’t be quite as propagandistic and have to cover things a bit closer to reality — although the Economist is a pathetic cheerleader of all things ‘West is Best.’

Forbes — bless their hearts — recently went full mask-off.

The title of this piece says it all, ‘Expanded NATO Will Shoot Billions To US Defense Contractors.’

That’s it, that’s the game, and that’s why the US is so militaristic — of course, naked neocolonialism and resource extraction play a role. But never-ending conflict is big business in itself, and so America has never met a war it didn’t like. It especially hasn’t met a proxy war it didn’t like.

Selling billions in weapons while no caskets of US service members are being flown home draped in flags is their favorite kind of business.

For that reason, Forbes says now is a great time to invest in the American corporate war machine.

The financial press like the Financial Times can’t be quite as propagandistic and has to cover things a bit closer to reality because investors need accurate assessments…

Is NATO an overall good? It’s debatable, and I’m open to hearing arguments, but I lean towards no. I understand why countries like the Czech Republic wanted to join a military alliance after centuries of oppression, especially the 1968 incursion by Soviet troops. And it makes sense for smaller nations like Lithuania to want some backup from the mafia don that is the US military.

But NATO was created to counter the Soviet Union. That union no longer exists and yet NATO is larger than ever. In the early nineties, there was talk of cooling tensions and cutting military budgets. The Red Menace had collapsed, couldn’t we all calm down? Of course not.

As Forbes rightly admits, expanding NATO shoots billions to US military contractors. Easing tensions, resolving conflicts, and reducing military budgets would have meant billions in unrealized profits. And so, NATO marched east.

Of course, if any sovereign nation wants to join, they have the right to do so, but ask the Libyans, Afghans, or Serbs if it is purely a ‘defensive’ alliance. Like America, NATO goes against the UN Security Council whenever it wants to bomb non-compliant states into oblivion and there are never any consequences.

It’s not purely defensive. That’s a fact. It is mostly about weapons sales. And as the AUKUS Submarine episode showed, America is NOT a reliable partner. Europeans always surprise me with how much they trust Uncle Sam and how little they know about his criminal record.

The US will throw any ally under the bus to make a buck at the drop of a hat. Would NATO really exert itself to back up member state Montenegro if it didn’t align with America’s self-interest? Hell no.

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 1, 2022 at 4:39pm

Forbes Says the Quiet Part Out Loud About NATO | by Mitchell Peterson | May, 2022 | Medium


https://mitchellglennfrommichigan.medium.com/forbes-says-the-quiet-...


The piece by Forbes contributor John Markman that inspired this started by talking about Finland and Sweden joining NATO, and how it’ll be a big win for Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. He laments how Europe has benefitted from a “peace dividend” and their governments “spent lavishly on social safety nets while forgetting the world is a dangerous place”— you know, all those big waste items like tax-payer-funded higher education, functioning healthcare systems, and civilized maternity leave.

Forbes seems to think European nations forgot about America’s appetite for global domination and conflict. Then, as Markman wrote, “images of the destruction of Ukraine changed everything.”

If allowed to join NATO, Finland and Sweden would have to spend at least 2% of their GDP on their militaries and those increases in weapons systems will need to be NATO compatible, which “directly benefits the big U.S. contractors.”

Forbes is pumped and remarked how Finland was already suckered into buying sixty-four F-35s — the worst fighter ever made and one the US military is reluctant to use — for $110 million a pop. They say that’s a nice boost to the failed fighter’s designers and manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and BAE Systems.

‘The market for their goods is expanding and they will face no competition for the forseeable future…In addition to the cost of the units, corresponding ground support, spare parts and maintenance, there is lock-in factor. Europe is now committed to America-made gear for decades to come. — J.M.

Read that again, “Europe is now committed to America-made gear for decades to come.”That’s the game. Finland might as well light a few billion on fire. Or immediately take the F-35s apart and sell them for parts.

In the short term, the revenue increase is going to be minimal. Defense contractors recognize sales when systems are delivered, and that can take several years. In the interim, the sector will benefit from supplementary bills passed to aid the war effort in Ukraine. President Biden signed last week a $40 billion Ukrainian war package. The United States is sending existing equipment to the war-torn country. Those systems will later be replenished at an additional cost to U.S. taxpayers. — J.M.

Is anybody else shocked Forbes is saying this all so openly?

NATO is further expanding, meaning these educated and socialized-medicine abusing Europeans will be spending more on weapons, they’re even buying billions in useless fighters from America, and, while we wait for those profits, Washington is dumping tens of billions into a black hole of a proxy war and sending all spare weapons systems which will need to be replenished at the expense of the taxpayer! Invest dudes! Let’s make bank and then get some of the devil’s dandruff and throw a coked-fueled rager!

American defense contractors are reliable technology partners. The companies are also backed-up by the largess of the U.S defense budget, a record $810 billion in 2021. There is no appetite politically to decrease military spending. And that sentiment is spreading globally, thanks to the carnage in Ukraine. — J.M.

It’s a win-win, boys! The defense budget is basically seventy cents of every dollar the federal government spends and there’s ‘no appetite politcally’ to reduce it. The Pentagon asks for a number and the freaking Congress usually increases it by 15% themselves.

And now, “that sentiment is spreading globally, thanks to the carnage in Ukraine.”

The piece then talks about the stock price of each corporate contractor and how they’re ‘inexpensive’ given the outlook of new markets in Europe.

It’s all so freaking cynical.

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 1, 2022 at 4:40pm

Forbes Says the Quiet Part Out Loud About NATO | by Mitchell Peterson | May, 2022 | Medium


https://mitchellglennfrommichigan.medium.com/forbes-says-the-quiet-...


Everybody these days is familiar with Eisenhower’s warnings regarding the military-industrial complex, and I often wonder what he’d say if he saw the state of America and the federal budget. The top marginal tax rate was freaking 91% when he was in office and the military budget was actually reduced for a few years in the 1950s. These days, the highest marginal tax rate on the richest of the rich is 37%, most billionaires and corporations pay next to nothing, and military spending will very soon surpass $1,000,000,000,000 a year.

Ike would shit himself, give a speech on the barbarity of the nation, and then get called a pansy-ass socialist and never be invited back onto mainstream television — seriously.

How the hell did Forbes write this piece? And how does America justify this level of military spending with almost third-world-level poverty and social problems domestically?

This Chris Hedges quote says it all:

The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 millionchildren who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.

It’s a death spiral. Everyone can see it. And as I said, the financial press is usually more accurate when portraying it; they just do it in their own way. It’s still propagandistic, but just a little closer to reality.

Investors are moving money around and need real information so the Financial Times does its best to call balls and strikes while the other outlets are Kim-Jong-un-level home refs and say ‘we good guys are on the right side of history and winning’ no matter how detached that might be from the Newtonian reality.

It’s wise not to expect much from any of them, but they do offer a window into the mainstream ‘Western’ consensus.

And sometimes, like Forbes, they remove the mask entirely, accidentally reveal the truth, and cheerlead the orgy of profits brought on by mass death.

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 7, 2022 at 6:00pm

Excerpts of McNamara, Craig. Because Our Fathers Lied (pp. 195-196). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

We sat in the front row. My kids were on either side of me. As crazy as it seems, I was prepared to climb up on the stage and tackle anyone who came near him. I wasn’t in the same condition that I’d been in as the MVP of my high school football team, but I’d been farming for the past quarter century. I felt I was strong enough. When Dad came out onstage, the auditorium fell silent. The possibility of confrontation—the awkwardness and the silent threat—was in the air like electricity before a thunderstorm. The moderator showed selected clips from The Fog of War. The clips focused on my father’s “Eleven Lessons,” first enumerated in his memoir, In Retrospect, and later used by Errol Morris as a through line for the film. The lessons are: Empathize with your enemy. Rationality alone will not save us. There’s something beyond one’s self. Maximize efficiency. Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Get the data. Belief and seeing are both often wrong. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil. Never say never. You can’t change human nature. During the conversation that followed, Mark Danner pushed my father on these lessons, attempting to draw out a comparison with Iraq. At one point, Danner asked specifically whether the lessons from the Vietnam War should be applied to America’s impending adventure in 2003. My father steadfastly refused to comment. He gave various reasons—among them that it could pose a risk to American soldiers in the field. He also said that ex-cabinet members shouldn’t comment on the jobs current cabinet members are doing. He would repeat these nonanswers to the Iraq question in numerous other interviews. For those of us who despised Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and felt the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, it was frustrating that Robert McNamara wouldn’t comment directly. It brought back painful memories of his silence after 1968. There had been such hope and such disappointment. “We human beings killed a hundred and sixty million other human beings in the twentieth century,” he said. He was almost shouting, jabbing his finger at Mark Danner. “Is that what we want in this century?” In classic fashion, Dad answered his own question. “I don’t think so!” At one point, Danner asked Dad how he dealt with reporters during difficult press conferences as secretary of defense. Dad said, “Don’t answer the question they asked. Answer the question you wish they’d asked.” Does this mean tell a lie? Growing up in his house, with his rules, I considered him to be an honest person. I’m sure I can remember him saying “Don’t tell lies” when I was a little kid. I’m sure that I passed on to my own children the same lesson. How could someone as intelligent as Dad fail to see the contradiction? Maybe his hypocrisy has to do with Lesson Number Three. That’s the one that matters most to me. I think it’s the one he most failed to live up to.

-------------
I once asked Errol what it was like to spend so much time with my father. He responded that he felt my father was thoughtful and self-doubting: a decent and magnificent man, a person he deeply respected and learned a lot from. He liked him. However, he also told me that he felt conflicted about the decisions my father made as secretary of defense. He said that he considered Dad a war criminal. I wondered, How could you feel even the most remote affection for a war criminal? In maybe the same conversation, I expressed to Errol my dismay over the run-up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I told him that I considered men like Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz to be evil. I felt hatred for these men—the last of whom had a career very similar to my father’s, because it also included a tenure at the World Bank.

McNamara, Craig. Because Our Fathers Lied (pp. 197-198). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 13, 2022 at 4:34pm

Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton The US military launched at least 251 foreign interventions from 1991 to 2022. This is according to a report from the US government's own Congressional Research Service. I went through the data and created a map showing just how vast the meddling is: https://multipolarista.com/2022/09/13/us-251-military-interventions... https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1569800676678696960?s=20&...

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 24, 2022 at 10:56am

Pentagon Orders Review of Its Overseas Social Media Campaigns
The move comes after Twitter and Facebook shut down misleading accounts that they determined were sending messages to promote U.S. foreign policy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/us/politics/pentagon-social-medi...

WASHINGTON — White House officials told the military that they were concerned about its efforts to spread pro-American messaging on social media, prompting the Pentagon to order a review of secretive operations to influence populations overseas, U.S. officials said.

The review follows a decision by Twitter and Facebook over the summer to shut down misleading accounts that they determined were sending messages about U.S. foreign policy interests abroad.

The Pentagon audit and White House concerns were first reported by The Washington Post.

Disinformation researchers said the campaigns largely fell into two camps. Most of the campaigns spread pro-American messages, including memes and slogans that praised the United States. Those programs were similar to how Beijing often spreads disinformation by seeding positive messages about life in China.

One campaign targeting Iran, however, spread divisive messages about life there. The accounts involved pushed out views that both supported and opposed the Iranian government. That disinformation effort resembled the methods used by Russia to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

For years U.S. military commands have promoted pro-American news and messages for audiences overseas, sometimes earning the scrutiny of Congress. But the decision by the social media companies to shut down some accounts associated with the military suggested that the activity had gone further.

Twitter and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, removed accounts that they said violated their terms of service by taking part in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

A report in August by Stanford University’s Internet Observatory and the social media analytics firm Graphika said those accounts were pushing pro-American messages in the Middle East and Central Asia. The two groups attributed some of the accounts taken down by Facebook and Twitter to the Trans-Regional Web Initiative, a more than 10-year-old Pentagon initiative that sends out information in support of the United States in areas where the U.S. military operates.

The postings varied widely in sophistication. Some of the more polished work was aimed at Twitter and Telegram users in Iran and pushed a wide variety of views. While most of the messages were critical of the Iranian government, researchers said others were supportive of it, the kind of activity that could potentially be designed to inflame debate and sow divisions in the country.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 1, 2022 at 6:29pm

No Cold War
@NoColdWar
Former US President Jimmy Carter turns 98 today. His thoughts on US-China relations may surprise you:

"Since we normalized relations with China in 1979, the US has been in constant war. China has not been in combat with anyone."

"[The US] is the most warlike country on earth."

https://twitter.com/NoColdWar/status/1576317498693414912?s=20&t...

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 24, 2022 at 9:13am

Steve Hanke
@steve_hanke
Prof Jeffrey Sachs said, "The most dangerous country in the world since 1950 has been the United States". The Athens Democracy Forum’s moderator immediately tried to silence Sachs. So much for FREE SPEECH at the Athens Democracy Forum.

https://twitter.com/steve_hanke/status/1584546679759327232?s=20&...

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 25, 2022 at 5:32pm

Jeffrey Sachs, a professor of sustainable development at Columbia University, said he’s “pretty convinced” the virus came out of a “U.S. lab biotechnology,” although he added that “we don’t know for sure.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/josep-borrell-jeffrey-sachs-adviser...

The latest effort by Sachs — a long-time advocate of dismantling American hegemony and embracing the rise of China — to put blame on U.S. labs has been circulated on Chinese social media, including by the Chinese embassy to France this week.


Sachs is engaged by the European Commission as a special adviser to foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to focus on “cooperation policy.”

Chinese diplomats have repeatedly accused the U.S. of developing biotechnology that transformed into the coronavirus, a claim rejected by the EU as disinformation. The World Health Organization chief last year complained that China was not transparent enough, saying there was a "premature push" to rule out the theory that the virus might have escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan.

A spokesman for the EU’s foreign policy arm sought to draw distance from Sachs.

“Jeffrey Sachs is an external unpaid adviser of the HRVP [Borrell] … The external advisers are external, independent personalities. They are not EU officials. They therefore do not speak for the HRVP, nor for the Commission. Their views are their own,” the spokesman said, stressing that Sachs’ commitment was only for 20 working hours per year.

Contradicting Sachs’ latest speculation about the coronavirus’ origin, the EU spokesman said that “a laboratory accident has been categorized as extremely unlikely” according to a WHO study.

Sachs told POLITICO the virus "quite likely emerged from a U.S.-backed laboratory research program ... A natural spillover is also possible, of course. Both hypotheses are viable at this stage."

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