Come Home, America: Stop Policing the Globe and Put an End to Wars-Without-End

Posted on January 27, 2020 by Reid Mukai

By Jon W. Whitehead

“Let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad. This is also the time to turn away from excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation. America must be restored to a proper role in the world. But we can do that only through the recovery of confidence in ourselves…. together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning. From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America.”—George S. McGovern, former Senator and presidential candidate

I agree wholeheartedly with George S. McGovern, a former Senator and presidential candidate who opposed the Vietnam War, about one thing: I’m sick of old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

It’s time to bring our troops home.

Bring them home from Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Bring them home from Germany, South Korea and Japan. Bring them home from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. Bring them home from Niger, Chad and Mali. Bring them home from Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.

That’s not what’s going to happen, of course.

The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world. Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of “operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”

Don’t fall for the propaganda, though: America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.

The reach of America’s military empire includes close to 800 bases in as many as 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than $156 billion annually. As Vine reports, “Even US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.”

This is how a military empire occupies the globe.

Already, American military servicepeople are being deployed to far-flung places in the Middle East and elsewhere in anticipation of the war drums being sounded over Iran.

This Iran crisis, salivated over by the neocons since prior to the Iraq War and manufactured by war hawks who want to jumpstart the next world war, has been a long time coming.

Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton: they all have done their part to ensure that the military industrial complex can continue to get rich at taxpayer expense.

Take President Trump, for instance.

Despite numerous campaign promises to stop America’s “endless wars,” once elected, Trump has done a complete about-face, deploying greater numbers of troops to the Middle East, ramping up the war rhetoric, and padding the pockets of defense contractors. Indeed, Trump is even refusing to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in the face of a request from the Iraqi government for us to leave.

Obama was no different: he also pledged—if elected—to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and reduce America’s oversized, and overly costly, military footprint in the world. Of course, that didn’t happen.

Yet while the rationale may keep changing for why American military forces are policing the globe, these wars abroad (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and now Iran) aren’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, are certainly not making America great again, and are undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.

War spending is bankrupting America.

Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.

In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.

The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.

Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $4.7 trillion waging its endless wars.

Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.

In fact, the U.S. government has spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earns in a year.

Future wars and military exercises waged around the globe are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.

Talk about fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on a military empire it can’t afford.

As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor in government incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors. Indeed, a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies “can’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending.”

Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.

A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:

$71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.

That price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the people” have over our runaway government.

Mind you, this isn’t just corrupt behavior. It’s deadly, downright immoral behavior.

Americans have thus far allowed themselves to be spoon-fed a steady diet of pro-war propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less inclined to look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged countries, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in foreign lands, or the transformation of our own homeland into a warzone.

That needs to change.

The U.S. government is not making the world any safer. It’s making the world more dangerous. It is estimated that the U.S. military drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Since 9/11, the United States government has directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000 human beings. Every one of those deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds.

The U.S. government is not making America any safer. It’s exposing American citizens to alarming levels of blowback, a CIA term referring to the unintended consequences of the U.S. government’s international activities. Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant, repeatedly warned that America’s use of its military to gain power over the global economy would result in devastating blowback.

The 9/11 attacks were blowback. The Boston Marathon Bombing was blowback. The attempted Times Square bomber was blowback. The Fort Hood shooter, a major in the U.S. Army, was blowback.

The assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by a U.S. military drone strike will, I fear, spur yet more blowback against the American people.

The war hawks’ militarization of America—bringing home the spoils of war (the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.) and handing them over to local police, thereby turning America into a battlefield—is also blowback.

James Madison was right: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” As Madison explained, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

We are seeing this play out before our eyes.

The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.

Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhauling.

At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:

The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.

This is the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us more than 50 years ago not to let endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that emerged following the war—one that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.

We failed to heed his warning.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, there’s not much time left before we reach the zero hour.

It’s time to stop policing the globe, end these wars-without-end, and bring the troops home before it’s too late.

Nullify Government Tyranny: In 2020, Harness the Power of Your Discontent

Posted on January 5, 2020 by Reid Mukai

By John W. Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people. The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”—John Lennon

Twenty years into the 21^st century, and what do we have to show for it?

Government corruption, tyranny and abuse have propelled us at warp speed towards a full-blown police state in which egregious surveillance, roadside strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, censorship, retaliatory arrests, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, indefinite detentions, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, and pay-to-play politicians have become the new normal.

Here’s just a small sampling of the laundry list of abuses—cruel, brutal, immoral, unconstitutional and unacceptable—that have been heaped upon us by the government over the past two decades.

The government failed to protect our lives, liberty and happiness. The predators of the police state wreaked havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government didn’t listen to the citizenry, refused to abide by the Constitution, and treated the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers shot unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—were armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies were allowed to fleece taxpayers. Government technicians spied on our emails and phone calls. And government contractors made a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

The American President became more imperial. Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents (Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc.) claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill. The powers that have been amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The presidency itself has become an imperial one with permanent powers.

Militarized police became a power unto themselves, 911 calls turned deadly, and traffic stops took a turn for the worse. Lacking in transparency and accountability, protected by the courts and legislators, and rife with misconduct, America’s police forces became a growing menace to the citizenry and the rule of law. Despite concerns about the government’s steady transformation of local police into a standing military army, local police agencies acquired even more weaponry, training and equipment suited for the battlefield. Police officers were also given free range to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons and subject them to forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases.

The courts failed to uphold justice. With every ruling handed down, it becomes more apparent that we live in an age of hollow justice, with government courts more concerned with protecting government agents than upholding the rights of “we the people.” This is true at all levels of the judiciary, but especially so in the highest court of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, which is seemingly more concerned with establishing order and protecting government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution. A review of critical court rulings over the past two decades, including some ominous ones by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order and protecting the ruling class and government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

The Surveillance State rendered Americans vulnerable to threats from government spies, police, hackers and power failures. Thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA and biometrics technologies, Americans have become sitting ducks for hackers and government spies alike. Billions of people have been affected by data breaches and cyberattacks. On a daily basis, Americans have been made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.

Mass shootings claimed more lives. Mass shootings have taken place in virtually every venue, including at churches, in nightclubs, on college campuses, on military bases, in elementary schools, in government offices, and at concerts. However, studies make clear that the government’s gun violence—inflicted on unarmed individuals by battlefield-trained SWAT teams, militarized police, and bureaucratic government agents trained to shoot first and ask questions later—poses a greater threat to the safety and security of the nation than any mass shooter.

Debtors’ prisons made a comeback. Not content to expand the police state’s power to search, strip, seize, raid, steal from, arrest and jail Americans for any infraction, no matter how insignificant, state courts were given the green light to resume their practice of jailing individuals who are unable to pay the hefty fines imposed by the American police state. These debtors’ prisons play right into the hands of the corporations that make a profit by jailing Americans. This is no longer a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” It has become a government “of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations,” and its rise to power has been predicated on shackling the American taxpayer to a debtors’ prison guarded by a phalanx of politicians, bureaucrats and militarized police with no hope of parole and no chance for escape.

The cost of endless wars drove the nation deeper into debt. America’s war spending has already bankrupted the nation to the tune of more than $20 trillion dollars. Policing the globe and waging endless wars abroad hasn’t made America—or the rest of the world—any safer, but it has made the military industrial complex rich at taxpayer expense. Approximately 200,000 US troops are stationed in 177 countries throughout the world, including Africa, where troops reportedly carry out an average of 10 military exercises and engagements daily. Meanwhile, America’s infrastructure is falling apart. The interest on the money America has borrowed to wage its wars will cost an estimated $8 trillion.

“Show your papers” incidents skyrocketed. We are not supposed to be living in a “show me your papers” society. Despite this, the U.S. government has introduced measures allowing police and other law enforcement officials to stop individuals (citizens and noncitizens alike), demand they identify themselves, and subject them to patdowns, warrantless searches, and interrogations. These actions fly in the face of longstanding constitutional safeguards forbidding such police state tactics.

The government waged war on military veterans. The government has done a pitiful job of respecting the freedoms of military veterans and caring for their needs once out of uniform. Despite the fact that the U.S. boasts more than 20 million veterans who have served in World War II through the present day, the plight of veterans today is America’s badge of shame, with large numbers of veterans impoverished, unemployed, traumatized mentally and physically, struggling with depression, suicide, and marital stress, homeless, subjected to sub-par treatment at clinics and hospitals, left to molder while their paperwork piles up within Veterans Administration offices, and increasingly treated like criminals—targeted for surveillance, censorship, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, labeled as extremists and/or mentally ill, and stripped of their Second Amendment rights—for daring to speak out against government misconduct.

Free speech was dealt one knock-out punch after another. Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, shadow banning on the Internet, and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors (and championed by those who want to suppress speech with which they might disagree) conspired to corrode our core freedoms, purportedly for our own good. On paper—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—we are technically free to speak. In reality, however, we are only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow. The reasons for such censorship varied widely from political correctness, so-called safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remained the same: the complete eradication of free speech.

The government waged a renewed war on private property. The battle to protect our private property has become the final constitutional frontier, the last holdout against our freedoms being usurped. We no longer have any real property rights. That house you live in, the car you drive, the small (or not so small) acreage of land that has been passed down through your family or that you scrimped and saved to acquire, whatever money you manage to keep in your bank account after the government and its cronies have taken their first and second and third cut…none of it is safe from the government’s greedy grasp. At no point do you ever have any real ownership in anything other than the clothes on your back. Everything else can be seized by the government under one pretext or another (civil asset forfeiture, unpaid taxes, eminent domain, public interest, etc.).

Schools became even more like prisons. So-called school “safety” policies—which run the gamut from zero tolerance policies that punish all infractions harshly to surveillance cameras, metal detectors, random searches, drug-sniffing dogs, school-wide lockdowns, active-shooter drills and militarized police officers—have turned schools into prisons and young people into prisoners. From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment she graduates, she will be exposed to a steady diet of draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech, school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students, standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking, politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them, and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

The Deep State took over. The American system of representative government was overthrown by the Deep State—a.k.a. the police state a.k.a. the military/corporate industrial complex—a profit-driven, militaristic corporate state bent on total control and global domination through the imposition of martial law here at home and by fomenting wars abroad. The “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has perished. In its place is a shadow government, a corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House. Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law. This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry. This shadow government, which “operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power,” makes a mockery of elections and the entire concept of a representative government.

The takeaway: Everything the founders of this country feared has come to dominate in modern America. “We the people” have been saddled with a government that is no longer friendly to freedom and is working overtime to trample the Constitution underfoot and render the citizenry powerless in the face of the government’s power grabs, corruption and abusive tactics.

So how do you balance the scales of justice at a time when Americans are being tasered, tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, hit with batons, shot with rubber bullets and real bullets, blasted with sound cannons, detained in cages and kennels, sicced by police dogs, arrested and jailed for challenging the government’s excesses, abuses and power-grabs?

No matter who sits in the White House, politics won’t fix a system that is broken beyond repair.

For that matter, protests and populist movements also haven’t done much to push back against an authoritarian regime that is deaf to our cries, dumb to our troubles, blind to our needs, and accountable to no one.

So how do you not only push back against the police state’s bureaucracy, corruption and cruelty but also launch a counterrevolution aimed at reclaiming control over the government using nonviolent means?

You start by changing the rules and engaging in some (nonviolent) guerilla tactics.

Take part in grassroots activism, which takes a trickle-up approach to governmental reform by implementing change at the local level (in other words, think nationally, but act locally).

And then, nullify everything the government does that flies in the face of the principles on which this nation was founded.

If there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it may rest with the power of juries and local governments to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.

In an age in which government officials accused of wrongdoing—police officers, elected officials, etc.—are treated with general leniency, while the average citizen is prosecuted to the full extent of the law, nullification is a powerful reminder that, as the Constitution tells us, “we the people” are the government.

For too long we’ve allowed our so-called “representatives” to call the shots. Now it’s time to restore the citizenry to their rightful place in the republic: as the masters, not the servants.

Nullification is one way of doing so.

Various cities and states have been using this historic doctrine with mixed results on issues as wide ranging as gun control and healthcare to “claim freedom from federal laws they find onerous or wrongheaded.” Most recently, a growing number of communities—including more than a 100 counties, cities and towns in Virginia—have declared themselves to be Second Amendment sanctuaries and adopted resolutions opposing any “unconstitutional restrictions” on the right to keep and bear arms. It is mass movements such as these that the government fears most.

Indeed, any hope of freeing ourselves rests—as it always has—at the local level, with “we the people.” One of the most important contributions an individual citizen can make is to become actively involved in local community affairs, politics and legal battles. As the adage goes, “Think globally, act locally.”

America was meant to be primarily a system of local governments, which is a far cry from the colossal federal bureaucracy we have today. Yet if our freedoms are to be restored, understanding what is transpiring practically in your own backyard—in one’s home, neighborhood, school district, town council—and taking action at that local level must be the starting point.

Responding to unmet local needs and reacting to injustices is what grassroots activism is all about. Attend local city council meetings, speak up at town hall meetings, organize protests and letter-writing campaigns, employ “militant nonviolent resistance” and civil disobedience, which Martin Luther King Jr. used to great effect through the use of sit-ins, boycotts and marches.

Let’s not take the mistakes, carnage, toxicity and abuse of this past decade into 2020.

As long as we continue to allow callousness, cruelty, meanness, immorality, ignorance, hatred, intolerance, racism, militarism, materialism, meanness and injustice—magnified by an echo chamber of nasty tweets and government-sanctioned brutality—to trump justice, fairness and equality, there can be no hope of prevailing against the police state.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we could transform this nation if only Americans would work together to harness the power of their discontent and push back against the government’s overreach, excesses and abuse.

The American Empire Will Fall, Not America Itself

Posted on December 26, 2019 by Reid Mukai

Credit: JOEL PETT

By Gunnar Olson

Source: Land Destroyer

The collapse of an entire nation is as spectacular as it is rare. For a nation to simply cease to exist it must suffer such absolute defeat across the entire spectrum of what constitutes a nation; economically, militarily, culturally, socially and politically.

What is much more common is a transition from existing, prevailing socioeconomic, political and military orders to new ones driven by new, emerging special interests. It can happen quickly and violently, or take place as a long-term process with ups and downs and both constructive and destructive processes intertwining.

For the United States, a massive nation with the third largest population on the planet, the largest military and still currently the largest economy, for it to suffer such full-spectrum defeat is impossible.

What is not impossible is for the small handful of special interests currently directing US policy foreign and domestic, to find itself displaced by a new order consisting of entirely different kinds of special interests and, hopefully, special interests that better reflect the best interests of the United States as a whole and function more sustainably among the nations of the world rather than hovering above them.

It is a process that is already ongoing.

America’s Prevailing Order is Fading

The current special interests driving US foreign and domestic policy are centered around Wall Street and Washington and represent an increasingly unrealistic, unsustainable, archaic network based on traditional banking, energy and manufacturing monopolies.

Many of the tools used by these special interests to maintain and expand their power and influence including mass media, extensive lobbying, networks dedicated to political subversion abroad and political distractions at home find themselves increasingly ineffective as both the American people and nations around the globe become increasingly familiar with them and as they begin developing effective countermeasures.

While US special interests dedicate a seemingly immense amount of time countering “Russian” or “Chinese” “propaganda,” it is primarily alternative media from the United States and its partner nations that have done the most to expose and diminish the unwarranted influence wielded from Wall Street and Washington. Wikileaks is a prime example of this.

As America’s elite and their networks weaken, alternatives continue to grow stronger.

An unsustainable socioeconomic and political model, coupled with equally unsustainable military campaigns abroad along with a political and media strategy that is no longer even remotely convincing even to casual observers demarks what is an irreversible decline of America’s current, prevailing order.

America’s Elite Face Challenges from Within as Well as From Abroad

The topic of Chinese corporations out-competing long-established US monopolies has become an increasingly common topic across global media. It is indeed this process that has precipitated the seemingly pointless and futile US-led trade war against China, a futile exercise that seems to only highlight the decline of America’s established elite rather than address it.

Corporations like Huawei, despite facing serious setbacks owed to US sanctions and efforts to undermine them, still move forward, while their US competitors continue to struggle. This is because despite setbacks, Huawei is built upon a solid foundation of business and economic fundamentals, while its American counterparts, despite their initial advantages owed to a lack of competition, have neglected and continue to neglect such fundamentals.

But Chinese corporations aren’t the only challengers America’s established elite face.

Within the US itself some of the most innovative and disruptive companies in the world are cropping up, challenging not only foreign competition but also long-established monopolies based in the US.

Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla is a perfect example of this. Its breakneck pace of innovation, high-profile successes and the disruptive impact it is having on traditional car manufacturing is setting back the American car industry first and foremost. It also poses a serious threat to the petroleum-centric energy model the US has adopted and propagated globally for over a century.

American car manufacturing monopolies have spent decades developing a model of planned obsolescence and marketing gimmicks as a stand-in for genuine consumer value and innovation. The industry has become a means of simply making as much money as possible and to increase profits each year, with “making cars” merely the means through which this money and the influence it buys is being accumulated.

Tesla has for years now been growing both in terms of business and in terms of sociopolitical influence. US car manufacturing monopolies have attempted to ape the most superficial aspects of Tesla’s appeal, but have entirely failed to examine or replicate the substance that drives the new company’s success.

Just as the US elite have attempted to use what could be described as “dirty tricks” rather than direct competition to deal with competitors like Huawei abroad, similar “dirty tricks” have been employed against disruptive companies within the US itself like Tesla. Attempts by faux-unions to complicate Tesla’s US-based factories are one example of this.

US-based aerospace manufacturer SpaceX is another example of an American-bred competitor directly challenging (and threatening) long-established US monopolies, in this case aerospace monopolies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.

SpaceX is not only driving aerospace innovation forward at breakneck speeds, it is driving down the overall cost of access to space at the same time. It is doing this at such impressive rates that established aerospace monopolies like Lockheed, Boeing and Northrop, even with their immense lobbying networks, are unable to dissuade SpaceX customers (including the US government itself) from purchasing rides on its rockets.

Bloated monopolies who have become overly reliant on maintaining profits through lobbying and political games have little means to overhaul their massive organizations in the face of real competition as it emerges. Because of this, the prevailing order driving US policy faces an insurmountable obstacle that already appears to have resulted in terminal decline and displacement.

Those doing the displacing stand to assume the position at the levers of American power and influence, with an opportunity to set an entirely new course into the future that will have a fundamental impact on both the American nation and its people, and the nations of the world it will interact with.

America’s New Order May Seek Genuine Competition and Collaboration

Tesla and SpaceX are prominent examples, but by no means the only examples of the ongoing transition that is increasingly evident within America. There are emerging innovations and companies threatening virtually every area America’s current elite dominate. From the alternative media targeting the deeply rooted corporate media of America, to a growing movement of local organic farmers chipping away at America’s massive agricultural monopolies, there are already many tangible examples of a transition taking place; a positive transition that those interested in truly addressing the negative aspects of America’s current role globally can invest in or contribute toward.

In what is perhaps a hopeful sign of the new America that might emerge as this process continues forward is the fact that emerging disruptors like Tesla are not afraid of collaborating with other nations, seeking to simply do business rather than construct a global spanning network aimed at dominating others. Tesla’s massive Gigafactory going into operation in Shanghai, China takes place as the US attempts to sever China’s access to the economic benefits of doing business with the US for purely political and hegemonic purposes.

Despite the apparent hostilities between the US and nations like Russia and China, the consensus in nations targeted by America’s current prevailing order is one of simply wanting to do business on equal terms. Whatever hostility may exist is reserved not for America as a nation or as a people, but toward the handful of special interests obstructing constructive competition and collaboration between these nations and the US.

In the near to intermediate future, this process will continue to resemble a bitter struggle as US special interests attempt to maintain their grip on power, fighting against inevitable decline and displacement, and against competitors both abroad and within the US itself.

Beyond that, there is a hopeful future where the US finds itself a constructive member of a multipolar world, constructively competing against and collaborating with nations rather than attempting to assert itself over them.

Because of this, it is important for nations and peoples to refrain from unnecessary, broad hostilities and to instead patiently weather current efforts emanating from Wall Street and Washington. It is important to establish ties and relations with US interests genuinely interested in true competition and collaboration and who represent America’s future, and to distinguish them from deeply rooted US interests that represent America’s abusive past and and are responsible for America’s current decline.

The foreign policies of Moscow, Beijing and even of many emerging and developing nations may seem overly passive or appeasing, but around the capitals of the world many are aware of the transition taking place in America and are attempting to position themselves advantageously for the fall of the American Empire so they can do business with those who assume the levers of power in America once it does.

Nuclear War: Just Another Day

Posted on October 11, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Colin Todhunter

Source: OffGuardian

Catastrophic events that send the world into turmoil happen on ‘just another day’. The atom bomb that exploded over Hiroshima took place while thousands of ordinary folk were just going about their everyday business on ‘just another day’.

A missile attack on a neighbourhood in Gaza or a drone attack on unsuspecting civilians in Afghanistan: death and destruction come like a bolt from the blue as people shop at the local market or take their kids to school on ‘just another day’.

Will it be ‘just another day’ when the next nuclear bomb is exploded in anger, an ordinary day when people are just going about their daily business? By then it might be too late to do anything, too late to act to try to prevent an unfolding global catastrophe on a scale never before witnessed by humans.

Yet so many appear too apathetic and wrapped up in a world of gadgets, technology, shopping malls, millionaire sports players and big-time sports events to think that such a thing could be imminent.

Are they so preoccupied with the machinations of their own lives in cotton-wool cocooned societies to think that what is happening in Syria or Iraq is just too boring to follow or that it doesn’t really concern them or it is ‘not my problem’?

Do they think they are untouchable, that only death, war and violence happens in faraway places?

Could any of us even contemplate that on some not-too-distant day a series of European cities could be laid waste within a matter of minutes? It isn’t worth thinking about. Or is it.

The US (and the West’s) foreign policy is being driven on the basis of fake morality and duplicity. Millions lie dead in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya as a result of US-led imperialism, and nuclear-armed Russia is constantly demonised simply because it will not acquiesce to Washington and serve as a vassal state.

And now, as the US continues to stir up tensions with Iran and as China warns neighbouring countries about allowing US nuclear missiles aimed at it on their territories, much of the Western public and media remain oblivious to the dangers of conflict escalation and the biggest immediate threat to all life on Earth: nuclear war.

The threat of mass murder

Some fell to the ground and their stomachs already expanded full, burst and organs fell out. Others had skin falling off them and others still were carrying limbs. And one in particular was carrying their eyeballs in their hand.”

The above extract comes from an account by a Hiroshima survivor talking about the fate of her schoolmates. In 2016, it was read out in the British parliament by Scottish National Party MP Chris Law during a debate about Britain’s nuclear arsenal.

In response to a question from MP George Kereven, the then British PM Theresa May said without hesitation that, if necessary, she would authorise the use of a nuclear weapon that would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children. May also implied that those wishing to scrap Britain’s nuclear weapons are siding with the nation’s enemies.

Politicians like May read from a script devised by elite interests. This transnational capitalist class dictates global economic policies and decides on who lives and who dies and which wars are fought and inflicted on which people.

The mainstream narrative tends to depict individuals who belong to this class as ‘wealth creators’. In reality, however, these ‘high flyers’ have stolen ordinary people’s wealth, stashed it away in tax havens, bankrupted economies and have imposed a form of globalisation that results in devastating destruction and war for those who attempt to remain independent or structurally adjusted violence via privatisation and economic neo-liberalism for millions in countries that have acquiesced.

While ordinary folk across the world have been subjected to policies that have resulted in oppression, poverty and conflict, this is all passed off by politicians and the mainstream media as the way things must be.

The agritech sector poisons our food and agriculture. Madelaine Albright says it was worth it to have killed half a million kids in Iraq to secure energy resources for rich corporations and extend the wider geopolitical goals of ‘corporate America’. The welfare state is dismantled and austerity is imposed on millions. The rich increase their already enormous wealth.

Powerful corporations corrupt government machinery and colonise every aspect of life for profit. Environmental destruction and ecological devastation continue apace.

And nuclear weapons hang over humanity like the sword of Damocles.

The public is supposed to back this status quo in support of what? Austerity, powerlessness, imperialism, propping up the US dollar and a moribund system. For whom? Occidental Petroleum, Soros, Murdoch, Rothschild, BP, JP Morgan, Boeing and the rest of the elite and their corporations whose policies are devised in think tanks and handed to politicians to sell to a largely ignorant public: those who swallow the lie about some ‘war on terror’ or Washington as the world’s policeman, protecting life and liberty.

Rejecting hegemonic thought

Many believe nuclear weapons are a necessary evil and fall into line with hegemonic thinking about humanity being inherently conflictual, competitive and war-like.

Such tendencies do of course exist, but they do not exist in a vacuum. They are fuelled by capitalism and imperialism and played upon by politicians, the media and elite interests who seek to scare the population into accepting a ‘necessary’ status quo.

Co-operation and equality are as much a part of any arbitrary aspect of ‘human nature’ as any other defined characteristic. These values are, however, sidelined by a system of capitalism that is inherently conflict-ridden and expansionist.

Much of humanity has been convinced to accept the potential for instant nuclear Armageddon hanging over its collective head as a given, as a ‘deterrent’. However, the reality is that these weapons exist to protect elite, imperialist interests or to pressure others to cave into their demands.

If the 20th century has shown us anything, it is these interests are adept at gathering the masses under notions of flag, god and country to justify their slaughter.

To prevent us all shuddering with the fear of the threat of instant nuclear destruction on a daily basis, it’s a case of don’t worry, be happy, forget about it and watch TV.

It was the late academic Rick Roderick who highlighted that modern society trivialises issues that are of ultimate importance: they eventually become banal or ‘matter of fact’ to the population.

People are spun the notion that nuclear-backed militarism and neoliberalism and its structural violence are necessary for securing peace, defeating terror, creating prosperity or promoting ‘growth’. The ultimate banality is to accept this pack of lies and to believe there is no alternative, to acquiesce or just switch off to it all.

Instead of acquiescing and accepting it as ‘normal’, we should listen to writer and campaigner Robert J Burrowes:

Many people evade responsibility, of course, simply by believing and acting as if someone else, perhaps even ‘the government’, is ‘properly’ responsible. Undoubtedly, however, the most widespread ways of evading responsibility are to deny any responsibility for military violence while paying the taxes to finance it, denying any responsibility for adverse environmental and climate impacts while making no effort to reduce consumption, denying any responsibility for the exploitation of other people while buying the cheap products produced by their exploited (and sometimes slave) labour, denying any responsibility for the exploitation of animals despite eating and/or otherwise consuming a range of animal products, and denying any part in inflicting violence, especially on children, without understanding the many forms this violence can take.”

Burrowes concludes by saying that ultimately, we evade responsibility by ignoring the existence of a problem. The evasion of responsibility, acquiescence and acceptance are, of course, part of the conditioning process.

The ‘problem’ encompasses not only ongoing militarism, but the structural violence of neoliberal capitalism, aided and abetted by the World Bank, IMF and the WTO. It’s a type of violence that is steady, lingering and a daily fact of life under globalised capitalism.

Of course, oppression and conflict have been a feature throughout history and have taken place under various economic and political systems. Indeed, in his various articles, Burrowes goes deep into the psychology and causes of violence.

But there is potentially a different path for humanity.

In 1990, the late British MP Tony Benn gave a speech in parliament (above) that indicated the kind of values that such a route might look like.

Benn spoke about having been on a crowded train, where people had been tapping away on calculators and not interacting or making eye contact with one another. It represented what Britain had apparently become under Thatcherism: excessively individualistic, materialistic, narcissistic and atomised.

The train broke down. As time went by, people began to talk with one another, offer snacks and share stories. Benn said it wasn’t too long before that train had been turned into a socialist train of self-help, communality and comradeship.

Despite the damaging policies and ideology of Thatcherism, these features had survived her tenure, were deeply embedded and never too far from the surface.

For Tony Benn, what had been witnessed aboard that train was an aspect of ‘human nature’ that is too often suppressed, devalued and, when used as a basis for political change, regarded as a threat to ruling interests.

It is an aspect that draws on notions of unity, solidarity, common purpose, self-help and finds its ultimate expression in the vibrancy of community, the collective ownership of productive resources and co-operation.

The type of values far removed from the destructive, divisive ones of imperialism and capitalism which key politicians and the corporate media protect and promote.

Rage Against the War Machine: An Interview with Peace Activist Cindy Sheehan

Posted on October 10, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Mnar Muhawesh

Source: Mint Press News

Some 2.7 billion dollars per day. That’s how much the U.S. government will spend next year to prop up the military and the more than 800 bases it maintains in over 70 countries. All in the name of national security. And despite that staggering figure, a majority of Americans feel that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not even worth fighting, and they certainly have not made America safer.

That money is more than enough to pay for four years of college for every college student in this country, to fund food stamps and other social safety nets that help our most vulnerable, and to fund programs that would cut fossil-fuel emissions by 40 percent by 2035.

Despite this, there has been an utter failure by both the media and grassroots activists to address the growing waste and greed of the military-industrial complex.

An estimated 4 million people just took part in worldwide climate strikes that put the issue of climate breakdown at the forefront of the media conversation. Missing from this conversation, however, is an analysis of the role militarism and empire plays in driving the chaos. The U.S. military is the world’s largest polluter and emits more carbon dioxide than a hundred countries combined.

You see, America does not have a budget problem, it has a priorities problem; until we demand that our leaders prioritize our needs over those of corporations and those who profit off of war, our politicians will continue to pilfer taxpayer dollars by the trillions to fund forever wars that support building the largest empire history has seen.

Today, Donald Trump is the ugly face of the American Empire, and recently declared the country to be “locked and loaded” and ready to confront the Islamic Republic of Iran. And with conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria (to mention only a few) ongoing, it feels like the cycle of war may never end.

The anti-war movement in the U.S., so strong under George W. Bush’s presidency, was effectively disarmed by his successor. Barack Obama put a friendly face on U.S. imperialism and, with the help of Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state, even managed to convince many so-called liberals and progressives to support devastating regime-change operations in Libya, Syria and Ukraine on humanitarian grounds. These interventions unleashed al-Qaeda and ISIS onto the Middle East and neo-Nazi rule on Russia’s borders. Obama expanded America’s wars, dropping over 25,000 bombs targeting seven different countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. He expanded drone wars, earning the nickname “Drone King,” and expanded U.S. bases across Africa under the guise of fighting the War on Terror.

While the Democratic Party and establishment-left mourned Obama’s exit from the White House, warning of a new era of fascism under President Trump, hundreds of thousands of outraged Americans took to the streets in protests against the new Republican president’s racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. This outrage gave birth to the Women’s March. But as these protests swelled, one couldn’t help wondering why there wasn’t any mobilization remotely on this scale in the previous eight years during Obama’s presidency?

This question crossed the mind of Cindy Sheehan, a longtime anti-war activist nicknamed “Peace Mom,” who contacted the organizers of the Women’s March — since one of the movement’s stated goals was to end violence against women — and asked them to make peace a central focus of the march.

But the response of a key organizer of the march showed just how little war and peace was a priority to establishment liberals: “I appreciate that war is your issue Cindy, but the Women’s March will never address the war issue as long as women aren’t free.”

Sheehan rejected the notion that women could be “free” without addressing war and empire. She countered the dismissive comment of the march organizer by stating that divorcing peace activism from women’s issues “ignored the voices of the [millions] of women of the world who are being bombed and oppressed by U.S. military occupation.”

It was clear that the anti-war movement needed to be reborn again, and who better than Sheehan herself could fit the bill?

Cindy grew up in California, where her father worked for the Lockheed corporation. A turning point in her life came in April 2004 after her son Casey was killed while on active service with the U.S. military in Iraq. She gained national attention after she staged an extended protest outside George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, demanding to meet him.

Since then she has tirelessly campaigned against war and violence abroad, being described as the “Rosa Parks of the peace movement.” Throughout her activism, she has taken a nonpartisan stance in speaking truth to power, calling out George W. Bush as the biggest terrorist in the world, but also traveling to Norway to protest Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize. In 2012 she was the vice-presidential nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party.

Today, Cindy is the chief organizer of the upcoming Rage Against the War Machine protests in Washington, scheduled to take place on October 11.

Mnar Muhawesh is founder, CEO and editor in chief of MintPress News, and is also a regular speaker on responsible journalism, sexism, neoconservativism within the media and journalism start-ups.

Reflections on 2018, Forecasting 2019

Posted on January 3, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Robert J. Burrowes

In many ways it is painful to reflect on the year 2018; a year of vital opportunities lost when so much is at stake.

Whether politically, militarily, socially, economically, financially or ecologically, humanity took some giant strides backwards while passing up endless opportunities to make a positive difference in our world.

Let me, very briefly, identify some of the more crucial backward steps, starting with the recognition by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in January that the year had already started badly when they moved the Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight, the closest it has ever been to ‘doomsday’ (and equal to 1953 when the Soviet Union first exploded a thermonuclear weapon matching the US capacity). See ‘It is now two minutes to midnight’.

This change reflected the perilous state of our world, particularly given the renewed threat of nuclear war and the ongoing climate catastrophe. It didn’t even mention the massive and unrelenting assault on the biosphere (apart from the climate) nor, of course, the ongoing monumental atrocities against fellow human beings.

Some Lowlights of 2018

The global elite, using key elite fora such as the Group of 30, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group and the World Economic Forum, continued to plan, generate and exacerbate the many ongoing wars, deepening exploitation within the global economy, climate and environmental destruction, and the refugee crisis, among many other violent impacts, in pursuit of greater elite power, profit and privilege.

International organizations (such as the United Nations, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) and national governments used military forces, legal systems, police forces and prison systems around the world to serve the global elite by defending its interests against the bulk of the human population, including those individuals and organizations audacious enough to challenge elite power, profit and privilege.

$US1.7 trillion was officially spent worldwide on military weapons to kill fellow human beings and other lifeforms, and to destroy the biosphere. See ‘Global military spending remains high at $1.7 trillion’.

However, so out-of-control is this spending that the United States has now spent $US21trillion on its military in the past 20 years for which it cannot even account! That’s right, $US1trillion each year, including 2018, above the official US national budget for killing is ‘lost’. See Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported, ‘Has Our Government Spent $21 Trillion Of Our Money Without Telling Us?’ and ‘The Pentagon Can’t Account for $21 Trillion (That’s Not a Typo)’.

War and other military violence continued to rage across the planet wreaking devastation on many countries and regions, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. If you missed this, read what is happening to Yemen, described as ‘ the world’s worst [humanitarian] crisis in decades’ with ‘three quarters of the entire Yemeni population – 22 million women, children and men – dependent on some form of humanitarian assistance to survive.’ See ‘Yemen: UN chief hails “signs of hope” in world’s worst man-made humanitarian disaster’.

Not content with the nature and extent of the military violence they are inflicting already, during 2018 elites continued to plan how to do it more effectively in future with research and development of artificial intelligence just one manifestation of this: ‘an “arms race in AI” is now underway, with the U.S., China, Russia, and other nations (including Britain, Israel, and South Korea) seeking to gain a critical advantage in the weaponization of artificial intelligence and robotics’ so that ‘artificial intelligence will be applied to every aspect of warfare, from logistics and surveillance to target identification and battle management’. See ‘“Alexa, Launch Our Nukes!” Artificial Intelligence and the Future of War’.

The United States government unilaterally withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (which limits the deployment of intermediate range nuclear weapons).

Another significant proportion of global private financial wealth – conservatively estimated by the Tax Justice Network in 2010 to already total between $US21 and $US32 trillion – has been invested virtually tax-free through the world’s still-expanding black hole of more than 80 ‘offshore’ tax havens (such as the City of London Corporation, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Nauru, St. Kitts, Antigua, Tortola, Switzerland, the Channel Islands, Monaco, Cyprus, Gibraltar and Liechtenstein). This is just financial wealth. ‘A big share of the real estate, yachts, racehorses, gold bricks – and many other things that count as non-financial wealth – are also owned via offshore structures where it is impossible to identify the owners.’ See Tax Justice Network.

Controlled by the global elite, Wall Street and other major banks manage this monstrous diversion of wealth under Government protection. ‘Their business is fraud and grand theft.’ Tax haven locations offer more than tax avoidance. ‘Almost anything goes on.’ It includes ‘bribery, illegal gambling, money laundering, human and sex trafficking, arms dealing, toxic waste dumping, conflict diamonds and endangered species trafficking, bootlegged software, and endless other lawless practices.’ See ‘Trillions Stashed in Offshore Tax Havens’.

The world’s major corporations continued to inflict enormous ongoing violence (in a myriad of ways) in their pursuit of endless profit at the expense of living beings (human and otherwise) and Earth’s biosphere by producing and marketing a wide range of life-destroying products ranging from nuclear weapons and nuclear power to junk food, pharmaceutical drugs, synthetic poisons and genetically mutilated organisms (GMOs). These corporations include those involved in the following industries: weapons manufacturers, major banks and their ‘industry groups’ like the International Monetary Conference, asset management firms, investment companies, financial services companies, fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas) corporations, technology corporations, media corporations, major marketing and public relations corporations, agrochemical (pesticides, seeds, fertilizers) giants, pharmaceutical corporations, biotechnology (genetic mutilation) corporations, mining corporations, nuclear power corporations, food multinationals and water corporations. You can see a list of the major corporations in this article: ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

More than a billion people continued to live under occupation, dictatorship or threat of genocidal assault. See, for example, ‘500 Years is Long Enough! Human Depravity in the Congo’.

36,500,000 human beings (mainly in Africa, Asia and Central/South America) were starved to death.

18,250,000 children were killed by adults in wars, by starving them to death, and in a large variety of other ways.

8,000,000 children were trafficked into sexual slavery; executed in sacrificial killings after being kidnapped; bred to be sold as a ‘cash crop’ for sexual violation, to produce child pornography (‘kiddie porn’) and ‘snuff’ movies (in which children are killed during the filming); ritually tortured and murdered as well as raped by dogs trained for the purpose. See ‘Humanity’s “Dirty Little Secret”: Starving, Enslaving, Raping, Torturing and Killing our Children’.

Hundreds of thousands of individuals were kidnapped or tricked into slavery, which now denies 46,000,000 human beings the right to live the life of their choice, condemning many individuals – especially women and children – to lives of sexual slavery, forced labor or as child soldiers. See ‘The Global Slavery Index’ and ‘46 million people living as slaves, latest global index reveals’.

Well over 100,000 people (particularly Falun Gong practitioners) in China, where an extensive state-controlled program is conducted, were subjected to forced organ removal for the trade in human organs. See Bloody Harvest and The Slaughter.

15,750,000 people were displaced by war, persecution or famine. There are now 68,500,000 people, more that half of whom are children and 10,000,000 of whom are stateless, who have been forcibly displaced worldwide and remain precariously unsettled, usually in adverse circumstances. One person in the world is forcibly displaced every two seconds. See ‘Figures at a Glance’.

Millions of people were made homeless in their own country as a result of war, persecution, ‘natural’ disasters, internal conflict, poverty or as a result of elite-driven national economic policy. The last time a global survey was attempted – by the United Nations back in 2005 – an estimated 100 million people were homeless worldwide. As many as 1.6 billion people lack adequate housing (living in slums, for example). See ‘Global Homelessness Statistics’.

73,000 species of life (plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects and reptiles) on Earth were driven to extinction with the worldwide loss of insects, including vital pollinators such as bees, now between 75% and 90%, depending on the species. See ‘Insect Decimation Upstages Global Warming’. Have you seen a butterfly recently?

Separately from global species extinctions, Earth continued to experience ‘a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.’ Moreover, local population extinctions ‘are orders of magnitude more frequent than species extinctions. Population extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earth’s sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume.’ See ‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines’ and ‘Biological Annihilation on Earth Accelerating’.

Wildlife trafficking, worth up to $20 billion in 2018, is pushing many endangered species to the brink of extinction. Illegal wildlife products include jewelry, traditional medicine, clothing, furniture, and souvenirs, as well as some exotic pets, most of which are sold to unaware/unconcerned consumers in the West. See, for example, Stop Wildlife Trafficking.

16,000,000 acres of pristine rainforest were destroyed (with more than 40,000 tropical tree species now threatened with extinction). See ‘Measuring the Daily Destruction of the World’s Rainforests’, ‘Estimating the global conservation status of more than 15,000 Amazonian tree species’ and ‘Half of Amazon Tree Species Face Extinction’.

Vast quantities of soil were washed away as we destroyed the rainforests, and enormous quantities of both inorganic constituents (such as heavy metals like cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and zinc) and organic pollutants (particularly synthetic chemicals in the form of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides) were dumped into the soil as well, thus reducing its nutrients and killing the microbes within it. We also contaminated enormous quantities of soil with radioactive waste. See Soil-net, ‘Glyphosate effects on soil rhizosphere-associated bacterial communities’ and ‘Disposing of Nuclear Waste is a Challenge for Humanity’.

The TEPCO nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan discharged 109,000 tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean killing an incalculable number of fish and other marine organisms and indefinitely contaminating expanding areas of that ocean. See ‘Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation’.

Human use of fossil fuels to power aircraft, shipping and vehicles (among other purposes) released 10 billion metric tons (gigatons) of carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere, a 2.7% increase over 2017. See ‘Global Carbon Budget 2018’ and ‘Carbon dioxide emissions will hit a record high globally in 2018’. As a measure of their concern elite-controlled governments and corporations around the world are currently planning or have under construction 1,380 new coal plants? That’s right. 1,380 new coal plants. In 59 countries. See ‘NGOs Release List of World’s Top Coal Plant Developers’ and ‘2018 Coal Plant Developers List’.

90 billion land animals and 60 billion marine animals were killed for human consumption, more than 100 million animals were killed for laboratory purposes in the United States alone and there were other animal deaths in shelters, zoos and in blood sports. See ‘How Many Animals Are Killed Each Year?’

In addition, 40 million animals were killed for their fur. Approximately 30 million of these animals were raised on fur farms and killed, about 10 million wild animals were trapped and killed, and hundreds of thousands of seals were killed for their fur. See ‘How Many Animals are Killed Each Year?’

Farming of animals for human consumption released 7,100,000,000 tonnes of CO2-equivalent into Earth’s atmosphere. About 44% of livestock emissions were in the form of methane (which was 44% of anthropogenic CH4 emissions), 29% as Nitrous Oxide (which was 53% of anthropogenic N2O emissions) and 27% as Carbon Dioxide (which was 5% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions). See ‘GHG Emissions by Livestock’.

Human use of fossil fuels and farming of animals released 3.2 million metric tons of (CO2 equivalent) nitrous oxide (N2O) into Earth’s atmosphere. See ‘Nitrous oxide emissions’.

As a result of previous greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the consequent rise of about one degree celsius in the global temperature, causing the melting of Arctic permafrost and undersea methane ice clathrates, an incalculable quantity of methane was uncontrollably released into the atmosphere during 2018 (with the quantity being released getting ever closer to ‘exploding’). See ‘7,000 underground gas bubbles poised to “explode” in Arctic’ and ‘Release of Arctic Methane “May Be Apocalyptic,” Study Warns’.

Ice in the Antarctic is melting at a record-breaking rate, losing 219 billion tonnes of ice in 2018 at a rate that has accelerated threefold in the last five years. See ‘Antarctic ice melting faster than ever, studies show’.

An incalculable amount of agricultural poisons, fossil fuels and other wastes was discharged into the ocean, adversely impacting life at all ocean depths – see ‘Staggering level of toxic chemicals found in creatures at the bottom of the sea, scientists say’ – and generating ocean ‘dead zones’: regions that have too little oxygen to support marine organisms. See ‘Our Planet Is Exploding With Marine “Dead Zones”’.

At least 8 million metric tons of plastic, of which 236,000 tons were microplastics, was discharged into the ocean. See ‘Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean’ and ‘Plastics in the Ocean’.

Earth’s fresh water and ground water was further depleted and contaminated. These contaminants included bacteria, viruses and household chemicals from faulty septic systems; hazardous wastes from abandoned and uncontrolled hazardous waste sites (of which there are over 20,000 in the USA alone); leaks from landfill items such as car battery acid, paint and household cleaners; the pesticides, herbicides and other poisons used on farms and home gardens; radioactive waste from nuclear tests; and the chemical contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in search of shale gas, for which about 750 chemicals and components, some extremely toxic and carcinogenic like lead and benzene, have been used. See ‘Groundwater contamination’, ‘Groundwater drunk by BILLIONS of people may be contaminated by radioactive material spread across the world by nuclear testing in the 1950s’ and ‘Fracking chemicals’.

The longstanding covert military use of geoengineering – spraying tens of millions of tons of highly toxic metals (including aluminium, barium and strontium) and toxic coal fly ash nanoparticulates (containing arsenic, chromium, thallium, chlorine, bromine, fluorine, iodine, mercury and radioactive elements) into the atmosphere from jet aircraft to weaponize the atmosphere and weather – in order to enhance elite control of human populations, continued unchecked. Geoengneering is systematically destroying Earth’s ozone layer – which blocks the deadly portion of solar radiation, UV-C and most UV-B, from reaching Earth’s surface – as well as adversely altering Earth’s weather patterns and polluting its air, water and soil at incredible cost to the health and well-being of living organisms and the biosphere. See ‘Geoengineering Watch’.

As one outcome of our dysfunctional parenting model and political systems, fascism continued to rise around the world. See ‘The Psychology of Fascism’.

Despite the belief that we have ‘the right to privacy’, privacy (in any sense of the word) was ongoingly eroded in 2018 and is now effectively non-existent, particularly thanks to Alphabet (owner of Google). Taken together, ‘Uber, Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Tinder, Apple, Lyft, Foursquare, Airbnb, Spotify, Instagram, Twitter, Angry Birds… have turned our computers and phones into bugs that are plugged in to a vast corporate-owned surveillance network. Where we go, what we do, what we talk about, who we talk to, and who we see – everything is recorded and, at some point, leveraged for value.’ Moreover, given Google’s integrated relationship with the US government, the US military, the CIA, and major US weapons manufacturers, there isn’t really anything you can do that isn’t known by those who want to know it. In essence, Google is ‘a powerful global corporation with its own political agenda and a mission to maximise profits for shareholders’ and it partly achieves this by expanding the surveillance programs of the national security state at the direction of the global elite. See ‘Google’s Earth: How the Tech Giant Is Helping the State Spy on Us’ and the documentary ‘The Modern Surveillance State’.

The right to free speech was ongoingly eroded in 2018. For just a couple of examples in the United States alone, see ‘Marc Lamont Hill On Getting Fired From CNN, His Remarks On Palestine + More’ and ‘A Texas Elementary School Speech Pathologist Refused to Sign a Pro-Israel Oath, Now Mandatory in Many States – so She Lost Her Job’.

Believing that we know better than evolution, humans created the first gene-edited baby in 2018. See ‘Why we are not ready for genetically designed babies’ and ‘China’s Golem Babies: There is Another Agenda’.

An incalculable amount of junk was added to the 100 trillion items of junk already in Space. See ‘Space Junk: Tracking & Removing Orbital Debris’.

Incalculable amounts of antibiotic waste, nuclear waste, nanowaste and genetically engineered organisms were released into Earth’s biosphere. See ‘Junk Planet: Is Earth the Largest Garbage Dump in the Universe?’

Ongoing violence against children – see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice ’ – ensured that more people will grow up accepting (and quite powerless to challenge) our dysfunctional and violent world, as described above.

The corporate media, education and entertainment industries continued to distract us from reality ensuring that most people remain oblivious to our predicament and their own role in it, let alone what they can do to respond powerfully.

While the above list of the setbacks humanity and the Earth suffered in 2018 is very incomplete, it still provides clear evidence that humanity is rapidly entering a dystopian future far more horrific than the worst novel or film in the genre. The good news is that, at the current rate, this dystopian world will be shortlived as humans drive themselves over the edge of extinction. See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.

But so that the picture is clear and ‘balanced’: were there any gains made against this onslaught?

Of course, it goes without saying that the global elite, international organizations (such as the United Nations), governments, corporations and other elite agents continued to live in delusion/denial endlessly blocking any initiative requiring serious action that would cut into corporate profits, or arguing over tangential issues of insignificant consequence to humanity’s future.

In short, I could find no record of official efforts during the year to plan for the development and implementation of a comprehensive, just and sustainable peace, but perhaps I missed it.

Separately from this, there have been some minor activist gains: for example, some western banks and insurance companies are no longer financially supporting the expansion of the western weapons industry and the western coal industry, some rainforest groups have managed to save portions of Earth’s rainforest heritage, and activist groups continue to work on a variety of issues sometimes making modest gains.

In essence however, as you probably realize, many of the issues above are not even being tackled and, even when they are, activist efforts have been hampered by inadequate analysis of the forces driving conflicts and problems, limited vision (particularly unambitious aims such as those in relation to ending war and the climate catastrophe), unsophisticated strategy (necessary to have profound impact against a deeply entrenched, highly organized and well-resourced opponent, with the endless lobbying of elite institutions, such as governments and corporations, despite this effort simply absorbing and dissipating our dissent, as is intended – as Mark Twain once noted: ‘If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.’) and failure to make the difficult decisions to promote necessary solutions that are ‘unpopular’.

Fundamentally, these ‘difficult decisions’ include the vital need to campaign for the human population, particularly in the West, to substantially reduce their consumption – by 80% – involving both energy and resources of every kind as the central feature of any strategy to curtail destruction of the environment and climate, to undermine capitalism and to eliminate the primary driver of war: violent resource acquisition from Middle Eastern and developing nations for the production of consumer goods and services for western consumers.

While we live in the delusion that we can simply substitute renewable energy for fossil fuels and nuclear power (or believe such delusions that a 1.5 degrees celsius increase above the preindustrial temperature is acceptable or that we have an ‘end of century’ timeframe to solve the climate crisis), we ignore the fundamental reality that Earth’s biosphere is under siege on many fronts as a result of our endless extraction of its natural resources – such as fresh water, minerals, timber and, again, fossil fuels – for consumer production and the provision of services that go well beyond energy.

In short, for example, we will not save the world’s rainforests because we switch to renewable energy. We must reduce demand for the consumer products that require rainforest inputs. We must stop mining the Earth for minerals that end up in our mobile phones, computers, vehicles, ships and aircraft by not using the products and services these minerals make possible. We must stop eating meat and other animal products. And so the list goes on.

Forecasting 2019

In many ways it is painful to forecast what will happen in 2019 mainly because of the absurd simplicity of doing so: It will be another year when vital opportunities will be lost when so much is at stake.

Given the insanity of the global elite – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – which will continue to drive the dynamics producing the lowlights mentioned above with the active complicity of their agents in governments and corporations coupled with a human population that is largely terrified, self-hating and powerless to resist – see ‘In Defense of the Human Individual’ – it is a straightforward task to forecast what will happen in 2019.

So let me forecast 40 lowlights for 2019:

See list above.
See list above.
See list above.

.
.

See list above.

So unless you play your part, 2019 and the few years thereafter will simply be increasingly worse versions of 2018 and it will all be over by 2026. See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’ which cites a wide range of scientific and other evidence which you are welcome to consider for yourself if this date seems premature.

Responding Powerfully

If you already feel able to act powerfully in response to this multifaceted crisis, in a way that will have strategic impact, you are invited to consider joining those participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth ’, which outlines a simple plan for you to systematically reduce your consumption, by at least 80%, involving both energy and resources of every kind – water, household energy, transport fuels, metals, meat, paper and plastic – while dramatically expanding your individual and community self-reliance in 16 areas, so that all environmental and climate concerns are effectively addressed.

If you are also interested in conducting or participating in a campaign to systematically address one of the issues identified above, you are welcome to consider acting strategically in the way that Mohandas K. Gandhi did. Whether you are engaged in a peace, climate, environment or social justice campaign, the 12-point strategic framework and principles are the same. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy. And, for example, you can see a basic list of the strategic goals necessary to end war and halt the climate catastrophe. See ‘Strategic Aims’.

If you want to know how to nonviolently defend against a foreign invading power or a political/military coup, to liberate your country from a dictatorship or a foreign occupation, or to defeat a genocidal assault, you will learn how to do so in ‘Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strateg y ’.

If you are interested in nurturing children to live by their conscience and to gain the courage necessary to resist elite violence fearlessly, while living sustainably despite the entreaties of capitalism to over-consume, then you are welcome to make ‘My Promise to Children’.

To reiterate: capitalism, war and destruction of the environment and climate are outcomes of our dysfunctional parenting of children which distorts their intellectual and emotional capacities, destroys their conscience and courage, and actively teaches them to over-consume as compensation for having vital emotional needs denied. See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

If your own intellectual and/or emotional functionality is the issue and you have the self-awareness to perceive that, and wish to access the conscience and courage that would enable you to act powerfully, try ‘Putting Feelings First’.

And if you want to be part of the worldwide movement committed to ending all of the violence identified above, consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

In summary: if we do not rapidly, systematically and substantially reduce our consumption in several key areas and radically alter our parenting model, while resisting elite violence strategically on several fronts, homo sapiens will enter Earth’s fossil record within a few years. Given the fear, self-hatred and powerlessness that paralyses most humans, your choices in these regards are even more vital than you realize.

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68
Daylesford, Victoria 3460
Australia

Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
Nonviolence Charter
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth
‘Why Violence?’
Feelings First
Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy
Anita: Songs of Nonviolence
Robert Burrowes
Global Nonviolence Network

The Obsession with and Lies about Nicaragua

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Reid Mukai

Large statue of Augusto Sandino at the central park of his hometown, Niquinohomo.

By S. Brian Willson

Source: Dissident Voice

The intense focus on the “ills” of Nicaragua completely misses the deep issues of continued US intervention – imperial neocolonialism – into the sovereign lives of other countries, as here with Nicaragua. Whether you love or hate Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, their personalities and personal lives are not the issue, whatsoever.

For US Americans to be so closely scrutinizing clearly the most progressive government in Central America, ignoring the new US friendly but unpopular president of Costa Rica, Carlos Alvarado Quesada; the systematic violence in the streets of El Salvador which is directly related to the US funded death squad governments of the 1980s; the repressive and illegal President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez; and the repressive and corrupt government of Guatemala under President Jimmy Morales, is very interesting, and disturbing.

The elaborate, well-planned conspiracy behind the April-July 2018 US-orchestrated coup attempt against Nicaragua, included most of the church hierarchy, many wealthy ex-Somocistas, many NGOs including the European-funded CENIDH, the NED (National Endowment for Democracy) and USAID, and a couple thousand young Nicaraguans trained over 4 years in the use of social media to blitzkrieg an agenda-loaded propaganda campaign when the right opportunity arose. It had been in the works since at least 2011 when Nicaraguan Felix Maradiaga teamed up with Colombian narco-trafficker Julio Cesar Paz Varela to develop a drug distribution network in Nicaragua, many of the proceeds of which were to be devoted to overthrow the Sandinista government.

The facts are that the few NGOs (of over 4,000 NGOs in the country) who have recently been curtailed by the Nicaraguan government, is because of their support of various criminal activities designed to overthrow the government. Their accountability to the law was long overdue. The same goes for several TV stations (funded largely by NED), the internet news outlet Confidencial (funded by the NED), and La Prensa (funded by NED) which have openly supported opposition “terrorist” activities (yes, that is correct), something that would never be tolerated in the US or in virtually any country. Many of the hundreds participating in dozens of murders, arsons, destruction of buildings, tortures, and destruction of equipment (including over 50 ambulances), etc., committed by Opposition members, are fortunately now on trial or in jail. Over 200 fugitives remain in Costa Rica.

It is also ironical, that those people in the US who are so condemnatory of the Nicaraguan government, remain comfortably removed from the terror campaign, April-July, which was awful as I can attest as a resident, while I was forced to read and view, with rage and anger, the spew of scripted lies days after day on social media, and major media outlets, not based on any actual investigative reporting. Ironic, because the US is one of the most oligarchic, non-democratic countries on the planet, and its citizens possess no legal or moral authority to judge others. The US possesses the largest prison per capita population in the world, with 80,000 of prisoners in solitary confinement; it produces the most waste and pollution; it has military troops in 150 countries, and war planes and ships everywhere; it is the wholesale terrorist force on the Planet; it has on average 3 citizens a day murdered by US police; it has a president who has been accused by over 15 women of sexual misconduct/assault, a president who lies multiple times each day; it is a country where student debt keeps graduates in a kind of servitude for life to the banks; it has thousands of homeless living in tents and abandoned cars in virtually every city; it is a country without accessible health care for millions of its citizens; etc. It has a political election process unreliable due to systematic voter suppression, gerrymandered Congressional districts every ten years, privatization of the voter counting process, while the process itself is literally owned by the millions and billions of dollars of the rich and mighty, headed by the military industrial complex that makes obscene profits on intervening everywhere.

So, Nicaragua is an easy center of focus. If any one of us, or any other Central American government, was subjected to the intense efforts to destroy us, or any country, then one can predict the likely consequences. Neighboring Honduras has not yet recovered from the 2009 US sanctioned coup of President Zelaya. The fear and the repression there is horrendous, but it seems that with those in the US, including in the government, nobody gives a shit. The NICA Act should be the HICA Act for Honduras instead of Nicaragua. But Honduras is a safe Cry Uncle government, despite the fact that the people live in constant fear.

And the idea of name calling people as usual is not helpful in the discussion. Catherine Cusic, who has called Camilo Mejia a liar, has called me several times as an idiot – then, in the past, and now. Not too constructive for healthy debate.

When will the issue of US imperialism be taken seriously, and a recognition that the US political economy is so destructive it is on a path to destroy the planet? And, yet, the most progressive country in Central America (where there really is NOT repression) – Nicaragua – with no friends in the Senate or House of Representatives, very little support in the solidarity community, and only supported by the ALBA countries of Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, is targeted for destruction. Lies, lies, more lies. Disgusting beyond disgusting. The truth as I have documented is virtually the exact opposite of what most social media and major media organs spew as if reading from a script. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, is famous for saying that a lie told enough times becomes the truth. Goebbels principle has come once again to haunt Nicaragua. And the US government has spent millions of dollars through NED, US AID, NGOs, etc., at least since 2014, getting ready for the overthrow of a progressive government, primarily because it IS progressive compared to the other Central American governments. It is not a Cry Uncle government. And despite the lies, the Sandinista government remains popular with a majority of the people, similar to Assad in Syria despite intense western media propaganda against him.

So, Libya, The Ivory Coast, the Ukraine, Venezuela, Russia, and on and on, are touted as enemies, subject to the “exceptional” US to seek their overthrow to “correct” matters, if they haven’t already succeeded. It is interesting that Trump’s fanatical security adviser, John Bolton, has identified the Troika of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua (and soon Bolivia) to be targets as threats to the national security of the US. So preposterous yet it is official US policy.

Astonishing, absurd, and criminal. So continue, folks, focusing on the issues you have with Ortega-Murillo, while the US continues on an uncontrolled imperial savagery. Meanwhile, feel smug with your support of “humanitarian intervention” by the most dangerous country on Earth.

S. Brian Willson (http://www.brianwillson.com/) is a Vietnam War veteran who sacrificed his legs to fight the US war in Central America and who now lives in Nicaragua. Read other articles by S. Brian, or visit S. Brian’s website.

Send the Mad Dog to the Corporate Kennel

Posted on December 27, 2018 by Reid Mukai

By Ray McGovern

Source: Consortium News

Outgoing Defense Secretary Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis was famous for quipping, “It’s fun to shoot some people.” It remains a supreme irony that Mattis was widely considered the only “adult in the room” in the Trump administration. Compared to whom? John Bolton, the rabid neocon serving as national security adviser? That would be the epitome of “condemning with faint praise.”

With his ramrod-straight image, not to mention his warrior/scholar reputation extolled in the media, Mattis was able to disguise the reality that he was, as Col. Andrew Bacevich put it on Democracy Now! this morning, “totally unimaginative.” Meaning that Mattis was simply incapable of acknowledging the self-destructive, mindless nature of U.S. “endless war” in the Middle East, which candidate-Trump had correctly called “stupid.” In his resignation letter, Mattis also peddled the usual cant about the indispensable nation’s aggression being good for the world.

Mattis was an obstacle to Trump’s desire to pull troops out of Syria and Afghanistan (and remains in position to spike Trump’s orders). Granted, the abrupt way Trump announced his apparently one-man decision was equally stupid. But withdrawal of ground troops is supremely sane, and Mattis was and is a large problem. And, for good or ill, Trump — not Mattis — was elected president.

Marine Wisdom

Historically, Marines are the last place to turn for sound advice. Marine Gen. Smedley Butler (1881-1940), twice winner of the Medal of Honor, was brutally candid about this, after he paused long enough to realize, and write, “War is a Racket”:

“I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher- ups. …”

Shortly after another Marine general, former CENTCOM commander Anthony Zinni, retired, he stood by silently as he personally watched then-Vice President Dick Cheney give his most important speech ever (on August 26, 2002). Cheney blatantly lied about Iraq’s (non-existent) WMD, in order to grease the skids for the war of aggression against Iraq. Zinni had kept his clearances and was “back on contract.” He was well read-in on Iraq, and knew immediately that Cheney was lying.

A few years later, Zinni admitted that he decided that his lips would be sealed. Far be it for a Marine to play skunk at the picnic. And, after all, he was being honored that day at the same Veterans of Foreign Wars convention where Cheney spoke. As seems clear now, Zinni was also lusting after the lucrative spoils of war given to erstwhile generals who offer themselves for membership on the corporate Boards of the arms makers/merchants that profiteer on war.

(For an earlier critique of senior Marines, see: “Attacking Syria: Thumbing Noses at Constitution and Law.” )

Marine officer, now Sen. Pat Roberts, R, Kansas, merits “dishonorable mention” in this connection. He never rose to general, but did become Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee at an auspicious time for Cheney and Bush. Roberts kowtowed, like a “good Marine,” to their crass deceit, when a dollop of honesty on his part could have prevented the 2003 attack on Iraq and the killing, maiming, destruction, and chaos that continues to this day. Roberts knew all about the fraudulent intelligence, and covered it up — together with other lies — for as long as he remained Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman

Scott Ritter on Pat Roberts

Roberts’s unconscionable dereliction of duty enraged one honest Marine, Maj. Scott Ritter, who believes “Semper Fi” includes an obligation to tell the truth on matters of war and peace. Ritter, former UN chief weapons inspector for Iraq, who in April wrote in April 2005 “Semper Fraud, Senator Roberts,” based partly on his own experience with that complicit Marine.

Needless to say, higher ranking, more malleable Marines aped Zinni in impersonating Uncle Remus’s Tar Baby — not saying nuttin’.

It is conceivable that yet another sharply-saluting Marine, departing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford, may be tapped by Trump to take Mattis’s job. If that happens, it will add to President Trump’s bizarre penchant for picking advisers hell bent on frustrating the objectives he espoused when he was running for office, some of which — it is becoming quite clear — he genuinely wants to achieve.

Trump ought to unleash Mattis now, and make sure Mattis keeps his distance from the Pentagon and the Military-Industrial Complex, before he is asked to lead an insurrection against a highly vulnerable president — as Gen. Smedley Butler was asked to do back in the day. Butler said no.

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After the Crash

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Tag Archives: Militarism

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Send the Mad Dog to the Corporate Kennel