Pope Francis addressed a joint session of congress at the invitation of Speaker of the House John Boehner on Thursday, September 24th. While the media coverage of his message has been emphasizing emotionally charged issues like abortion, gay marriage, death penalty, immigration and global warming, his message of the evil of weapons proliferation and America’s proxy wars with Russia have been largely ignored. From Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone:
Excerpt:
Why Do We Care Whose Side the Pope Is On? Why Are So Many Pundits Trashing the Pope?
So the pope is here. His arrival
has spawned a Drake/Meek Mill-style diss battle within the pundit class, pitting
conservatives bemoaning the pope's false prophecy against liberals swooning
over his platitudinous anti-capitalism….
Overt religiosity is the norm on
the GOP side, with God-stalking nutballs like Michele Bachmann or Ben Carson
perennially front and center. Meanwhile, the closest thing to a famed religious
liberal that America has seen over the span of many decades was probably Susan
Sarandon's nun character in Dead Man Walking….
Pope Francis won over urban
liberals through writings like his 184-page encyclical on climate change, which
described the earth as an "immense pile of filth…."
Conservatives loved the pre-Francis
Catholic strategy for dealing with the poor. First, you create lots of cheap
third-world factory labor by discouraging contraception. Then you give lip
service to alleviating poverty by pushing a program of strictly voluntary
charitable donations.
Those were the sentiments of media both right and left on
Pope Francis address but the Pope’s warning about congress funding war
profiteers was largely ignored Maybe
that is because just a week prior to his address before congress, the US and UK
held the world’s largest weapons fair in London. From Mint Press:
US And UK Arm Child Soldiers At World’s Largest Arms Fair In London
LONDON — Against the objections of the United Nations, this week the United States and the United Kingdom
together helped arm the world’s child soldiers.
Tuesday through Friday this week,
the British capital played host to the world’s largest arms fair, Defence and
Security Equipment International, where global arms vendors — many from the
U.S. — sell their wares to world
governments seeking to upgrade their arsenals. The event was expected to
draw 32,000 visitors from 60 countries, including
multiple nations that make use of child soldiers in violation of international
law.
According to a report from The
Guardian, of the 23 nations known by the United Nations to use child soldiers,
the U.K. sold arms to 19 of them during the past five years…
Sad, that living babies dying on the battlefield do not
foster the same tears and outrage from congress that the unborn do. So here is what Pope Francis had to say
before the war mongering congress. FromDan Froomkin at The Intercept:
Excerpt:
Pope Decries “Shameful and Culpable Silence” on Arms Sales “Drenched in
Innocent Blood”
Pope Francis on Thursday gently
scolded Congress on a variety of issues, from immigration to foreign policy, but on one unexpected topic — the weapons
sales that fuel armed conflicts around the world — he couldn’t have been much
more blunt.
He was speaking about his
determination “to minimize and, in the long term, to end the many armed
conflicts throughout our world,” when he said this:
Here we have to ask ourselves: Why are deadly weapons being sold to
those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?
Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is
simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In
the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.
Those were fighting words,
especially given where he spoke them. The
U.S. is by far the largest arms supplier in the world, with domestic
manufacturers selling more than $23.7 billion in weapons in 2014 to nearly 100
different countries. During the Obama
administration, weapons sales have surged to record levels, in large part
due to huge shipments to Gulf States, particularly Saudi Arabia.
In the American media, the deafening sound of crickets, didn’t
merit any coverage at all. And the type
of weapons that are being sold are particularly vile designed for maximum
killing of civilians. While congress is
willing to shut down the government in order to defund Planned Parenthood, they
allocate money for the arms industry without the blink of an eye, paid for by
the American taxpayers.
The weapons sales to Saudi Arabia include cluster bombs and other munitions being used to hit densely populated areas, schools, and even a camp for
displaced people in Yemen.
And a healthy chunk of those arms
sales — especially to Israel and Egypt —
are heavily subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer.
Congress, which could
have blocked any of this, went along happily — in no small part because of the approximately $150 million
a year the defense industry spends on lobbying and direct campaign
contributions….
U.S. firms make up seven of the top
10 arms-exporting companies, with Lockheed Martin and Boeing coming in at
numbers one and two. Also in the top 10: Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General
Dynamics, United Technologies and L-3 Communications.
Thursday’s speech was not the first
time the Pope has spoken out about the arms trade. He referred to it as “the industry of death” in a talk with Italian
schoolchildren in May. “Why do so many
powerful people not want peace? Because they live off war,” he said.
Yes, in America war is big bucks baby, and those big bucks
have been funding the American governments’ proxy war with Russia through the
overthrow of the government of Ukraine and the war that America refuses to allow
to end in Syria unless their elected leader Assad goes.
The American congress’ latest big bucks gift to the arms industry
was the funds to train “moderate rebels” to help to overthrow the Assad
regime. And what did the cash strapped
American People get for their “hard earned tax dollars” that congress
spent? From Mint Press:
Excerpt:
New US-Trained Rebels In Syria Gave Their Weapons To al-Qaeda
Reports out of Syria suggest that
the group immediately took its weapons and vehicles to al-Qaeda territory and
turned them all over to them.
It’s already been heavily reported
how badly the first class of New
Syrian Forces (NSF), also known as Division 30, did after being trained by the
US and sent into Syria. There were 54 of them to start, and last week
Centcom conceded there were only “four
or five left.” This may still look like a runaway success compared to the
second class.
The second class entered Syria by way of Turkey on Friday, and
according to reports there were between
70 and 75 of them in total. Today, reports out of Syria suggest that the group immediately took its weapons and
vehicles to al-Qaeda territory and turned them all over to them.
So the American congress is training and arming al-Qaeda in
order to line their own pockets with campaign funds, at the same time the
American congress is cutting Social Security disability by 20% to fund the arms
industry. Now that’s how congress looks
out for the taxpayers. From Dispatch:
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — The 11 million Americans who
receive Social Security disability
benefits face steep cuts next year,
the government said on Wednesday.
The trustees who oversee Social
Security and Medicare said the disability trust fund will run out of money in
late 2016. That would trigger an
automatic 19 percent cut in benefits,
unless Congress acts.
The average monthly benefit for disabled workers and their families
is $1,017. The typical beneficiary
would receive $193 less per month.
In more bad news for beneficiaries, the trustees project that there will be
no cost-of-living increase in benefits at the end of the year. It would
mark only the third year without an
increase since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975.
Separately, about 7 million Medicare beneficiaries could face a monthly premium increase of at least $54 for
outpatient coverage. That works out to an
increase of more than 50 percent.
Hey America, baby needs a new pair of combat boots,
literally. And while congress is waging
this proxy war against Russia, do you really think Putin is just going to sit
there and take it? I guess not, From
Washington Times:
Excerpt:
Putin takes charge, orders Russian troops to Syria after Obama’s plan
flops
Vladimir Putin views the Syrian
army and its Iranian allies as incapable of defeating the Islamic State in
Syria, prompting the Russian president to directly intervene in recent weeks by
setting up an air base and sending in tanks, artillery and jet fighters, a
report to Congress says.
Mr. Putin’s bold yet risky move of putting troops on the ground directly confronting a terrorist
group contrasts sharply with the Obama administration’s strategy of an air
campaign over Syria but little other military action in that country….
Analysts at the Congressional
Research Service delivered an assessment to lawmakers Friday that says Mr. Putin is helping his ally, Syrian
President Bashar Assad, and protecting Russia’s southern flank in the Caucasus,
where Islamist fighters congregate and deploy…
The report added: “Putin’s recent call for an all-out effort
against the Islamic State also may stem from the sizable number of jihadist
fighters from the North Caucasus fighting in Syria, who may pose a serious
problem for Moscow should they return to Russia.”
If Mr. Putin does view the war against the Islamic State as stagnant,
he has an ally in Army Gen. Martin E.
Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gen. Dempsey told reporters
this month that the war is “tactically stalemated.”
This whole gang in the White House, the Pentagon and State
Department have really made a mess. The
Islamic State is their creation due to their zeal to overthrow the government
of Assad in Syria, demanding that Assad must go. But the whole world believes that Assad is
part of the solution not part of the problem.
And the mess they’ve made in Syria is just like the mess
they made in Ukraine, both are proxy wars with Russia. This is the new cold war with Russia that
began when W. Bush withdrew from the Non
Proliferation Treaty with Russia as soon as he came into office.
There is no good that can come from this. The Bush Cheney Doctrine of arrogance and
brute force with the President as judge, jury and executioner has been replaced
with the Obama Biden Doctrine of arrogance and brute force with the President
as judge, jury and executioner. The
predictable outcome has been the decline of America as a Super Power, losing
its grip on the Middle East. From MintPress:
Excerpt:
Twenty five years ago, on September
11, 1990 then US president George H.W. Bush declared the United States the
“sole superpower”; however, times have indeed changed for Washington since then…
…. the most irrefutable evidence of
Washington’s loss of influence in the Middle East is Barack Obama’s reaction to Russia’s recent activity in the region
aimed at halting the Syrian crisis.
America’s top policy makers have rushed to blame Russia for what they
have called exacerbating the situation in the Middle East. But why is
Washington sweating bullets over Moscow’s involvement in Syria?
“What has Washington freaked out is
not the possibility that Russia will make the situation worse in Syria. After more than one year of destructive
bombing by US and NATO planes, creating the present EU Syrian refugee
crisis, the situation could hardly get much worse if Russia’s actions manage to
isolate ISIS [ISIL].
What scares Washington war
hawks is the possibility that
Russia’s strategy could succeed in ending the ISIS [ISIL] reign of terror…”
On September 15, 2015 the CSTO members unanimously denounced
terrorism in Iraq and Syria and expressed
their readiness to team up to fight extremism in the Middle East and
Central Asia, particularly the Islamic State…
According to Wikipedia “the CSTO is the Collective Security
Treaty Organizations an intergovernmental
military alliance, acting as counterpart
to the NATO alliance, which was signed on 15 May 1992. In 1992, six
post-Soviet states belonging to the Commonwealth of Independent States—Russia,
Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.”
If the CSTO deploys their forces in
Syria under the UN auspices it would
be far more effective than the US-led coalition forces…
“Unlike the Coalition, the CSTO
maintains positive relations with the governments of Iraq and Syria, which
enables it to envisage far greater efficiency… Technically speaking, the CSTO has the capacity to deploy up to 50,000
men in less than two weeks…”
While Russia is gaining ground in the Middle East due to its diplomatic
peace strategy, Washington’s “strategy of wars everywhere” is facing a
decline.
“If Russia is able now to forge a
genuine, honest coalition of nations to
isolate and destroy the Washington-created Frankenstein monster called ISIS
[ISIL] or IS, and to allow Syrians to settle their problems with the
duly-elected President, Bashar al-Assad in free elections without the
US-financed NGOs of George Soros or the National Endowment for Democracy, the
world will take a giant step away from war…”
The media’s deadly silence on Pope Francis’ message to the
war mongering congress was an endorsement of the proliferation of arms
sales for maximum profits and America’s proxy wars with Russia. Hopefully congress will learn from the Pope’s
message that your flag decals won’t get you into heaven anymore.
By Patricia Baeten
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