US foreign policies are a vast
sales-promotion scheme, for America’s billionaires, who crave to control
Russia, above all... How much more can
the world take? How much death and
destruction is enough? What level of
evil and destruction, is enough? Do we
need more? How much more money do the
top 1% need? How many billions will it
take? ~ Veterans Today
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil
interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National
City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen
Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. ~ Major General
Smedley Butler USMC in his speech delivered in 1933
It’s all about the Benjamins baby. The 911 attacks, the endless regime change
wars, the impeachment of Donald Trump, the assassination of Soleimani, it’s all
about the Benjamins baby. The United
States government and all its cabinets serve only the interests of Wall
Street’s war industry who then fill the coffers of the politicians and think
tanks. Through insider trading, campaign
contributions, under the table payoffs and quid pro quo weapons deals, the
interests of the American people are of no concern to politicians of either
party. What is good for America is
never a consideration.
While America plunges deeper and deeper into despair due to
crushing debt, hopelessness, homelessness, addiction, joblessness, and polluted
disrepair, the politicians ignore America’s plight shoveling trillions more
into endless regime change wars on behalf of their billionaire Zionist
overlords. America has been continuously
lied to by the congressional and media servants of the Defense Industry.
From Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to almost 20 years
of “winning the war in Afghanistan”, from regime change in Libya to the
assassination of General Soleimani none of it was to make America safer, to the
contrary. It was all to endanger America
providing an excuse to plow trillions annually into the coffers of the weapons
industry. It’s all about the Benjamins
baby. From Strategic Culture:
Excerpt:
New York Times Reveals America’s Weapons-Makers Drive Trump-Impeachment
A remarkably non-propagandistic
news-report, in the New York Times, by Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and Mark
Mazzetti, included powerful evidence
that the impeachment-effort against US President Donald Trump is motivated, in
part if not totally, by a desire by US Senators and Representatives — as
well as by career employees of the US Departments of Defense, State Department,
and other agencies regarding national defense — to increase the sales-volumes of US-made weapons to foreign countries.
Whereas almost all of the contents
of that article merely repeat what has already been reported, this article in
the Times states repeatedly that boosting
corporations such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, and
Northrop-Grumman, has been a major — if not the very top — motivation driving
US international relations, and that at least regarding Ukraine, Trump has
not been supporting, but has instead been trying to block, those weapons-sales
— and creating massive enemies in the US Government as a direct consequence.
The article, issued online on
Sunday, December 29th, is titled “Behind the Ukraine Aid Freeze: 84 Days of
Conflict and Confusion”, and it quotes many such individuals as saying that President Trump strongly opposed the sale
of US weapons to Ukraine, and that,
In an Oval Office meeting on May 23, with Mr. Sondland, Mr. Mulvaney
and Mr. Blair in attendance, Mr. Trump
batted away assurances that [Ukraine’s current President] Mr. Zelensky was
committed to confronting corruption. “They are all corrupt, they are all
terrible people,” Mr. Trump said, ACCORDING
TO TESTIMONY IN THE IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY.
In other words, Trump,
allegedly, said that he didn’t want “terrible people” to be buying, and to
receive, US-made weapons (especially not as US aid — FREE OF CHARGE, A GIFT
FROM AMERICA’S TAXPAYERS)…
Clearly, the standard line in the US-and-allied media, that the February 2014 overthrow and replacement of Ukraine’s
democratically elected Government was a ‘democratic revolution’,
instead of a US coup, is based on blatant lies, and THE US-IMPOSED COUP-REGIME THERE IS STILL IN FORCE, AND HAS BEEN
PERPETRATING AN ETHNIC CLEANSING in order to be able to remain in power.
In
fact, the current Ukrainian President, Volodmyr Zelensky, is the self-described
“business partner” of, and was brought to power by, the brutal Ukrainian
oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, who helped the ‘former’ “Social Nationalist’
(National Socialist or Nazi) Arsen Avakov, plan and execute on 2 May 2014 the
burning-alive inside the Odessa Trade Unions Building, of dozens or perhaps
over a hundred people who had been printing and distributing leaflets against
the coup.
For the New York Times, in its
’news’-report — even this article that’s less prejudiced than most of
mainstream US ’news’-reporting is — to
simply presume that Trump had no valid reason for asserting what he did against
Ukraine’s present (the Obama-installed) Government of Ukraine, constitutes
merely anti-Trump (and pro-Obama) propaganda, on their part, and it
would be more appropriate in an editorial or op-ed from them than in an alleged
news-article, such as here…
Kurt Volker, the US special representative for Ukraine,
told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a Tuesday hearing. “I
think it’s also important that Ukraine reciprocate with foreign military
purchases from us as well,
and I know that they intend to do so.”
The assistance comes at a pivotal moment for Ukraine’s newly minted
president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a popular comedian who won a landslide
victory in April. Zelensky has made ending the Russian-backed insurrection in
Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region his top political priority…
In other words: Volker was saying that Ukraine’s Government would
follow through with America’s war against Russia, next door to Ukraine, and
that therefore,
US taxpayers should pay for Ukraine’s purchases of US-made weapons, such as from Lockheed Martin and
Raytheon.
HE WAS SAYING THAT MILKING US TAXPAYERS TO BOOST THOSE US CORPORATIONS’
PROFITS IS GOOD, NOT BAD.
He
was saying that Ukraine is on US taxpayers’ dole, as if the Obama-installed,
rabidly anti-Russian, Ukrainian Government is a charity-case which is
the US Government’s business (and not merely those private stockholders’
business), and that therefore, Trump
should continue Obama’s policy toward Ukraine, of using Ukraine in order
ultimately to place on Ukraine’s border with Russia, missiles against Moscow,
right across that border.
“THIS IS IN AMERICA’S
INTEREST,” MR. BOLTON ARGUED, according to one official briefed on the
gathering.
“THIS DEFENSE RELATIONSHIP, WE
HAVE GOTTEN SOME REALLY GOOD BENEFITS FROM IT,” MR. ESPER ADDED,
noting that most of the money was being spent on military equipment made in the
United States.
AMERICA’S WAR AGAINST RUSSIA
IS DESIGNED TO ENRICH INVESTORS IN US ‘DEFENSE’-CONTRACTORS.
Isn’t it clear, then, what was
actually behind 9/11, and behind America’s invasion of (instead of
merely Special-Forces operation regarding) Afghanistan in 2001, and invasions
of Iraq in 2003, and of Libya in 2011, and of Syria in 2012-now, etc., and coup
against Ukraine in 2014?..
US foreign policies are a vast sales-promotion scheme, for America’s
billionaires, who crave to control Russia, above all. Trump won’t buck
them. Instead, he’s continuing Obama’s policy on Ukraine.
When is enough, enough? How
much more can the world take? How much
death and destruction is enough? What
level of evil and destruction, is enough? Do we need more? How much more money do the top 1% need? How many billions will it take?
When is enough, enough indeed? Soleimani was assassinated to stop Iraq, Iran
and Saudi Arabia peace talks which would put a dent into the extremely
grotesque profits of the weapons manufacturers, thus putting a dent in the cash
flow to think tanks and members of congress.
Congress and the Defense Industry are not willing to cede
control of Iraq back to the Iraqi people, there’s too much money to be
made. The US has done nothing to repair
the war damage in Iraq and has no interest in doing so. For the weapons manufacturers, Iraq is a
springboard to war in Iran and to continue forever wars of regime change. From The Grayzone:
Excerpt:
Iraqi PM reveals Soleimani was on peace mission when assassinated,
exploding Trump’s lie of ‘imminent attacks’
The Trump administration claimed
Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was planning “imminent attacks” on US interests
when it assassinated him. That lie was just destroyed, but not before
countless corporate media outlets transmitted it to the public.
Desperate to justify the US drone
assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
insisted that Washington had made an “intelligence-based assessment” that
Soleimani was “actively planning in the region” to attack American
interests before he was killed.
President Donald Trump justified
his fateful decision to kill the Iranian general in even more explicit
language, declaring that Soleimani was
planning “imminent attacks” on US diplomatic facilities and personnel across
the Middle East.
“We took action last night to stop a war,” Trump claimed. “We did not
take action to start a war.”
Trump’s dubious rationale for an indisputably criminal assassination
has been repeated widely across
corporate media networks, and often without any skepticism or debate. At a January 3 State Department briefing,
where reporters finally got the chance to demand evidence for the claim of an
“imminent” threat, one US official erupted in anger.
“Jesus, do we have to explain
why we do these things?” he barked at the press.
Two days later, when Iraqi Prime
Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi addressed his country’s parliament, Trump’s justification for killing
Soleimani was exposed as a cynical lie.
According to Abdul-Mahdi, he had
planned to meet Soleimani on the morning the general was killed to discuss a
DIPLOMATIC RAPPROACHMENT THAT IRAQ WAS BROKERING BETWEEN IRAN AND SAUDI ARABIA.
Abdul-Mahdi said that Trump personally thanked him for the
efforts, even as he was planning the hit on Soleimani – thus
creating the impression that the Iranian general was safe to travel to Baghdad…
Mustafa Salim
@Mustafa_salimb
“I was supposed to meet Soleimani
at the morning the day he was killed, he came to deliver me a message from Iran
responding to the message we delivered from Saudi to Iran” Iraqi PM said.
8:02 AM - Jan 5, 2020 · Iraq
SOLEIMANI HAD ARRIVED IN BAGHDAD
NOT TO PLAN ATTACKS ON AMERICAN TARGETS, BUT TO COORDINATE DE-ESCALATION WITH
SAUDI ARABIA. Indeed, he was killed while on an actual peace mission that could
have created political distance between the Gulf monarchy and members of the
US-led anti-Iran axis like Israel.
The catastrophic results of
Soleimani’s killing recall the Obama administration’s 2016 assassination
of Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, a Taliban leader who was eager to negotiate a
peaceful end to the US occupation of Afghanistan. Mansur’s death
wound up empowering hardline figures in the Taliban who favored a total
military victory over the US and triggered an uptick in violence across the
country, dooming hopes for a negotiated exit.
Since Soleimani’s assassination, Iraq’s parliament has voted to
expel all US troops from the country and Iran’s Grand Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei has sworn to exact a “severe revenge” on the “the criminals who
have stained their hands with [Soleimani’s] and the other martyrs’ blood…”
Trump, for his part, tweeted a litany of gangster-like threats,
promising to destroy Iranian cultural sites if it retaliated and pledging
to sanction Iraq “like they’ve never been before” if it ousted US troops…
Trump’s treacherous assassination
has brought the US closer to war than ever before against a country more
militarily potent than any adversary it has faced since the Korean War. And as
with the failed US invasion of Iraq, Washington’s casus belli for triggering
this conflict was based on falsified intelligence SOLD TO AMERICANS BY
ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS, AND ON A PLIANT BELTWAY MEDIA ACTING AS THEIR
MEGAPHONE.
With its claim of “imminent
attacks,” the Trump administration has
essentially re-mixed Condoleeza Rice’s 2003 warning that “we don’t want the
smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
Back then, the US attacked a
sovereign state to rid it of WMD that did not exist. This time, it killed the second-most
important Iranian official to prevent a killing spree that was not on the way. AND TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS KNEW
THEY WERE LYING.
In fact, Pompeo pitched assassinating
Soleimani to Trump several months ago, well before any attacks were “imminent.”
And in the wake of the general’s killing, a US official revealed to the
New York Times that the NSA had intercepted “communications the United States
had between Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and General
Suleimani showing that the ayatollah had not yet approved any plans by the
general for an attack.”
But the preponderance of evidence exposing Trump’s basis for killing
Soleimani as a titanic lie has not
generated the same level of media interest as the lie itself…
No president in recent history has
been despised more viscerally by the Beltway press corps than Trump. Nearly
everything he says is met with disdain and suspicion, even when he is telling
the truth. But when Trump and his administration attempt to lie the public into
war against a designated evildoer, a
swath of the corporate media responds with reflexive trust, then shrugs when
the lie is exposed in broad daylight.
It’s all about the Benjamins baby. If there is any doubt that the illegal
assassination of Soleimani was based on starting World War III for Wall Street
and the weapons industry then look at Wall Street’s reaction. From Mint Press:
Excerpt:
Military Contractors Raytheon, Lockheed Martin See Stock Prices Soar
Amid Iran Crisis
War. Motown singer Edwin Starr
claimed it was nothing but a heartbreaker and good news only for the undertaker. But another group rubbing their hands at
increased tensions with Iran are military contractors, who saw their stock
prices soar at the increased chance of conflict.
Lockheed Martin, famous for
its fighter planes, helicopters and missiles, saw its stock price spike to over
$416, a jump of seven percent almost overnight. Other defense corporations like Raytheon and General Dynamics saw
similar increases in their companies’ value. Meanwhile, Northrop
Grumman saw a nine percent rise in its share price, as the stock market rushed
to buy a piece of a highly profitable company.
On January 3, the United States carried out a successful assassination attempt of Lt.
General Qassem Soleimani via drone, as the Iranian officer and statesman left
Baghdad airport to join a peace mission between Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Adil
Abdul-Mahdi revealed that President
Trump had personally thanked him for organizing peace efforts, even as he was
planning the assassination attempt, giving him the mistaken belief that the
U.S. gave its blessing to the event and would not attack the Iranian General.
Soleimani, respected and admired as
a capable and dynamic soldier, was widely considered to be one of the most
powerful and influential men in Iran behind Ayatollah Khamenei. The
move is almost universally expected to increase tensions in the Middle East,
prompting potential wars or other “chaos…”
However, economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic Policy
Research Dean Baker pointed out that Lockheed
Martin’s stock went up by over two percent and Northrop Grumman by nearly four
percent on Thursday, THE DAY BEFORE SOLEIMANI’S KILLING.
“Looks like a lot of people should go to jail,” he remarked, suggesting
THERE WAS SOME SERIOUS INSIDER TRADING AFOOT. (MintPress recently spoke to Baker about
how pharmaceutical corporations are withholding life saving drugs from the
public for profit...)
THE BIGGEST BENEFICIARIES OF
AN UNFAIR STOCK MARKET ARE OFTEN POLITICIANS, whose portfolios, for decades,
have done far better than is statistically plausible. Using the
financial disclosures of politicians, Professor Alan Ziobrowski of Georgia
State University found that members of the House earn “abnormal
returns” on their stocks, outperforming the market by six percentage points.
Senators, in higher office than House members, perform even better, “showing some of the highest excess
returns ever recorded over a long period of time, significantly outperforming
even hedge fund managers,”
in Ziobrowski’s study’s words. “IT’S NOT RATIONAL TO ASSUME THAT THEY
ARE JUST PLAIN DUMB-LUCKY,” he concluded. In
the five years to 1998, senators’ stock portfolios beat the market by an
average of 12 percent a year.
The global wave of right-wing populism has been very good for weapons
producers. Despite presenting himself as an antiwar candidate, Trump has
greatly increased the military budget and expanded the U.S. role in Yemen. More
than half of all discretionary spending goes to the military, with America
spending almost as much on arms as the rest of the world combined,
according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The president often likes to remind
the country that the stock market is at an all time high. Military contractors
are among the best performing of those; Yahoo! Finance notes that if you had bought Northrop Grumman stock
five years ago, you would have seen a 146 percent gain today. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, nine of the ten
largest weapons manufacturers saw their stock prices increase immediately after
Conservative Boris Johnson defeated socialist antiwar candidate Jeremy Corbyn
in December’s General Election.
The recent rocketing of military contractors’ stock values highlights
the growing contrast between the profit motive of capitalism and human survival. So often, what is bad news for the world is good news for the
military-industrial complex.
It’s all about the Benjamins baby. More than half of discretionary spending goes
to the military and by attrition directly into the pockets of the members of
congress. No wonder the members of
congress approve a trillion dollars a year for military spending. Members of congress make no money off of
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, infrastructure spending, education
spending, etc. What interest do they
have in funding programs to promote human dignity and general well-being?
Where is the fourth estate?
Why are the media not asking tough questions, demanding iron clad proof
before sending our troops to die in some god-forsaken country? Where are the Pentagon Papers? Where is Deep Throat? Oh yeah, todays’ Pentagon Papers are called
the Afghanistan Papers. From the Guardian:
Excerpt:
Afghanistan papers reveal US public were misled about unwinnable war
Interviews with key insiders reveal damning verdict on conflict that
cost 2,300 US lives
Hundreds of confidential interviews
with key figures involved in prosecuting
the 18-year US war in Afghanistan have revealed that the US public has been
consistently misled about an unwinnable conflict.
Transcripts of the interviews,
published by the Washington Post after a three-year legal battle, were
collected for a Lessons Learned project by the Office of the Special Inspector
General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar), a federal agency whose main task is eliminating corruption
and inefficiency in the US war effort.
The 2,000 pages of documents reveal
the bleak and unvarnished views of many insiders in a war THAT HAS COST $1TN (£760BN) AND KILLED MORE THAN 2,300 US
SERVICEMEN AND WOMEN, WITH MORE THAN 20,000 INJURED. Tens of thousands
of Afghan civilians have died in the conflict.
The documents have echoes of the Pentagon Papers – the US military’s secret history of the
Vietnam war that were leaked in 1971 and told a similarly troubling story of
the cover-up of military failure.
Negotiations are taking place between the Trump administration and the
Taliban as the US debates whether to withdraw 13,000 troops who remain in
Afghanistan. The interviews were
collected, beginning in 2014, in addition to Sigar’s regular audits to identify
what could be learned from successive policy failures in Afghanistan.
While many of the failures of the war in Afghanistan have been exposed by
Sigar’s work, often in highly technical reports, the cache of interviews
offers an easily accessible fly-on-the-wall account. In his own damning intervention John Sopko,
the head of Sigar, told the paper the assessments contained in the project
suggested that “the American people have
constantly been lied to”.
Two major claims in the documents
are that US officials manipulated
statistics to suggest to the American public that the war was being won and
that successive administrations turned
a blind eye to widespread corruption among Afghan officials, allowing the theft
of US aid with impunity…
In one scathing assessment Douglas
Lute, a lieutenant general who served as the White House Afghan war tsar during
the George W Bush and Barack Obama administrations, told interviewers in 2015: “We were devoid of a fundamental
understanding of Afghanistan – we didn’t know what we were doing.”
Speaking frankly, like other
interviewees, on the understanding that what he was saying at the time was
confidential, he added: “What are we
trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were
undertaking. “If the American people
knew THE MAGNITUDE OF THIS DYSFUNCTION …
2,400 LIVES LOST.”
In another interview Jeffrey
Eggers, a retired Navy Seal and White House staffer for Bush and Obama, said: “WHAT DID WE GET FOR THIS $1TN EFFORT?
WAS IT WORTH $1TN?” “After the
killing of Osama bin Laden, I said that Osama was probably laughing in his
watery grave considering how much we have spent on Afghanistan...”
“What did we get for
this $1tn effort and was it worth $1tn?” Indeed. Is America safer? Is Afghanistan better off than before? Why are the media nothing more than war
cheerleaders? The recent revelations
that the Pentagon knew the war in Afghanistan was unwinnable and lied about it
to prolong the wars was received a yawn from the corporate media. Why?
From The Intercept:
Excerpt:
TV PUNDITS PRAISING SULEIMANI ASSASSINATION NEGLECT TO DISCLOSE TIES TO
ARMS INDUSTRY
SINCE FRIDAY, a loud chorus of voices has appeared in the media to celebrate
President Donald Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim
Suleimani, a move that has sparked renewed tension in the Middle East, a
new deployment of U.S. forces, and predictions of increased military
spending.
Many of the pundits who appeared on national television or were
quoted in major publications to praise the president’s actions have undisclosed ties to the defense
industry — the only domestic industry that stands to gain from increased violence.
Jack Keane, a retired Army general, appeared on Fox News and
NPR over the last three days to praise Trump for the strike on Suleimani. “The
president acted responsibly,” Keane said during an appearance with Fox News
host Lou Dobbs. “It should have happened a long time ago.” Keane has worked for military companies, including General Dynamics and
Blackwater, and currently serves as a partner at SCP Partners, a venture
capital firm that invests in defense contractors.
Van Hipp, chair of the lobbying firm American Defense
International, which represents more than two dozen defense contractors —
including Raytheon, Palantir, and General Atomics, the manufacturer of the
MQ-9 Reaper drone used in the Suleimani slaying — published an opinion column
on Fox News’s website praising Trump and suggesting increased pressure on the
Iranian government.
David Petraeus, the retired general who once commanded U.S.
forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, was quoted by multiple outlets in support of
the slaying. “This is a very significant effort to reestablish deterrence,” he
told Foreign Policy. On Public Radio International, Petraeus declared that
“this particular episode has been fairly impressively handled,” and praised the
Trump administration for moving “to shore up our defenses and our offensive
capabilities.” He also appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Petraeus, notably, works for
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Co., the investment firm with holdings in several
major defense contractors that
is reportedly moving to “build up its defense portfolio at a time when military
budgets are skyrocketing.”
John Negroponte, a former State Department official who now serves as vice chair of the defense and
aerospace lobbying firm McLarty Associates, appeared on Fox News to dispute
the claim by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that the strike represented a threat
of war. “I think it’s an act of self-defense,” countered Negroponte.
Jeh Johnson, former Homeland Security secretary in the Obama
administration, appeared on NBC’s “Meet
the Press” to offer measured support, countering progressive critics who
have claimed that the strikes lacked legal and congressional authorization…
Johnson joined the board of directors of Lockheed Martin, one of the
largest defense contractors in the world, in 2017. The part-time position pays him $310,000 a year in cash and stock
awards, according to disclosures. NONE OF THE DEFENSE
CONTRACTING TIES WERE DISCLOSED ON AIR FOR KEANE, HIPP, NEGROPONTE, PETRAEUS,
OR JOHNSON…
In the immediate aftermath of
the assassination, stock prices for major defense contractors soared on the
expectation of further conflict. The Trump administration has won more than
$130 billion in additional Pentagon spending, but analysts expect a renewed push for even greater levels of weapons
spending.
One key area for military growth
in government defense spending could be the Overseas Contingency Operations
fund, a special account used to fund wartime operations. The OCO had been largely frozen in place
and expected to flatline in the 2021 budget.
The OCO account “was likely on a lower trajectory over the next several
years. We doubt that’s the case now,” the Cowen Group’s Roman Schweizer
wrote in a memo to investors on Friday. “The
U.S. will likely increase deployments of forces to the region in coming weeks
and could make additional strikes depending on Iran’s response.”
It’s not the first time defense
contractor pundits have failed to disclose their vested stake in the military
policies they advocate… Keane, for instance, was tapped by the
contractor AM General to pressure lawmakers to support a plan to purchase new
Humvee vehicles from the company rather than refurbish older models.
Former military leaders play a
decisive role in shaping public opinion around military escalation. In the buildup to the Iraq War, the
Pentagon maintained a secret effort to deploy former generals and other
high-ranking officials on television news programs to drum up support for the
invasion. The New York Times, which reported on the communications
campaign, noted that the military pundits maintained financial ties to
defense contractors, a financial stake in the war policies they sought to
promote.
Yes folks, it’s all about the Benjamins. Whether it was the 911 attacks, the
Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, the overthrow of the Libya government, the death
squads currently marauding across South America, the overthrow of the
government of Ukraine, the impeachment of President Trump or the illegal Assassination
of General Soleimani or the endless regime change wars, it’s all about the
Benjamins. When will the American people
ever learn? It’s all about the
Benjamins.
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