A.B. ABRAMS—Atrocity fabrication – the invention and reporting of atrocities committed by an adversary without knowledge that they ever occurred – has a centuries-long history at the heart of propaganda and power politics as an effective means of moving public and international opinion. Its use can provide pretext for a range of hostile measures against its targets, transforming in the public eye wars of unprovoked aggression into wars of liberation of the oppressed, or turning blockades to starve enemy civilians into humane efforts to pressure abusive governments under the moralistic label of sanctions.
CAPITALIST SICKNESS
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The Western Military Isn’t Looking So Mighty Now. How many Ls Before It’s Ludicrous?
20 minutes readINDRAJIT SAMARAJIVA—While the United States has the biggest military in the world, this is really a measure of how corrupt it is, not how good. The Pentagon is unauditable. They spend way too much for everything, and spend even more when it goes wrong. The current Defense (War) Secretary walked straight out of an arms dealership (Raytheon) and he’ll be back there when his tour of corruption is done. The United States Military is effectively privatized, as most dollars go to private contractors, certainly not grunts, and certainly not state production. The contracts are also effectively, monopolized. As imperial Senator Elizabeth Warren said, “In the 1990s, America had 51 major contractors bidding for defense work. Today, there are only five massive companies remaining.”
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How Does Technology Factor in for US Militarism toward China?
35 minutes readKIM PETERSEN—The US is so fixated on the economic rise of China that it even scuppered a multibillion-dollar deal its ally France had to sell submarines to Australia and replace it with nuclear submarines to be supplied by itself and the United Kingdom — AUKUS. The obvious target of the nuclear subs: China. China’s foreign minister Qin Gang has called on the US to put the brakes on to avoid confrontation and conflict. What does all the militaristic hoopla directed at China portend?
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SERGEI KARAGANOV—”This weakening infuriates not only the imperial-cosmopolitan elites (Biden and Co.), but also the imperial-national ones (Trump). Their countries are losing their five-century-long ability to syphon wealth around the world, imposing, primarily by brute force, political and economic orders, and cultural dominance. So there will be no quick end to the unfolding Western defensive but aggressive confrontation…”
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ERIC ARNOW—The Cuban Revolution had kicked the US and its gangster brothels, casinos and US corporate interests out of Cuba. The CIA had tried and failed to overthrow the Cuban government in the Bay of Pigs attack, without getting authorization from President John F. Kennedy. Allen Dulles, CIA founder and Director, had thought he could drag the US into invading Cuba. The result was that Cuba felt directly threatened by the United States. And the Soviet Union felt –indeed was—directly threatened by the United States. For that reason, Cuba and the USSR agreed that Russia would reciprocate the ‘favor’ of having nuclear weapons in striking distance of the United States, by placing missiles and Soviet troops in Cuba.