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German Parliament Approves Purchase of 60 Chinook Helicopters From US’ Boeing

Sputnik – 05.07.2023

BERLIN – The defense committee of the German parliament approved the purchase of 60 CH-47F Chinook heavy military transport helicopters from US company Boeing, a German daily reported on Wednesday.

The purchase is estimated at 7.2 billion euros ($7.8 billion) and adapting infrastructure for helicopter operation is expected to require about 750 million euros on top of that.

The first helicopters will reportedly be delivered in 2027.

In January, media reported, citing a document obtained, that the price of helicopters will almost double from 6 billion to 12 billion euros as some components have not even been designed yet and become more expensive due to inflation.

July 5, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

The Fake China Threat, Then and Now

By Joseph Solis-Mullen | The Libertarian Institute | July 5, 2023

Republicans are terrible on China. Examples abound, but perhaps the most instructive illustration of this long-term handicap comes from the following quotation:

“We must be prepared to go it alone in China if our allies desert us. We must not fool ourselves into thinking we can avoid taking up arms with the Chinese Reds. If we don’t fight them in China and Formosa [Taiwan] we’ll be fighting them in San Francisco, in Seattle, in Kansas City.”1

This wasn’t excerpted from a recent speech by Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK). Rather, it was by then-Senate Majority Leader William Knowland (R-CA), in the January 1954 edition of Collier’s Magazine. While perhaps particularly rabid in his Sinophobia, President Dwight D. Eisenhower privately opined that “Knowland has no foreign policy, except to develop high blood pressure whenever he mentions ‘Red China’…In his case, there seems to be no final answer to the question, ‘How stupid can you get?’”2 The parallels between Knowland’s time and our own are significant. Representing the respective nadirs of Sino-American relations, they are worth considering in depth.

First, a necessary bit of high-level background.

In 1949 Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party defeated the nominally republican forces of Chiang Kai-shek. Despite internal warnings that this was likely to happen, Chiang and his nationalist cronies being “thieves, every last one of them…corrupt as they come” according to President Harry Truman, this kicked off a firestorm in Washington3. “Who lost China?” subsequently became a driving force of the Second Red Scare that consumed American politics, distorting perceptions and constraining the ability of even the most powerful figures, such as Eisenhower or Secretary of State Dean Acheson, to act towards China in the more rational manner they would have liked.

Dean Acheson had presciently forecast as early as 1950 that Mao could be an “Asian Tito,” a disruptor of communist unity akin to the Yugoslav leader, Josip Broz Tito, Stalin’s bête noire. As things happened, however, the powerful China Lobby, led by men such as the editor of Time Henry Luce, was predictably able to push policy in the opposite direction.

For his part, Chiang refused to acknowledge defeat and demanded help retaking the mainland. While Eisenhower had bowed to domestic pressure to “unleash Chiang” in 1953, removing American impediments to cross-Strait engagement, further American support was not (yet) forthcoming. While Chiang’s friends worked on Washington, succeeding in securing for him more American planes and bombs, Chiang sought to do what he could to make life difficult for the new communist regime in Beijing. His policy of “Guanbi,” or “closed port policy,” involved the interdicting of foreign vessels bound for the mainland, eventually some one hundred in total.

The provocative policy prevented necessary trade and led to a series of skirmishes and several deaths, playing a larger role in precipitating what would come to be known as the First Taiwan Straits Crisis. In 1954 Chiang decided to fortify Quemoy and Matsu, islands so close to mainland China they’re visible from the shore on a clear day.

Predictably, the islands quickly came under bombardment by PRC forces. Resisting calls by the Joint Chiefs to either place U.S. troops in Taiwan or unleash nuclear weapons on mainland China, Eisenhower felt forced into the next worst thing. Concluding, in the words of Patterson, that “it would be politically risky to do nothing,” Eisenhower formalized the American commitment to defend Taiwan in the event of an attack. In making this commitment Eisenhower was careful to exclude islands such as Quemoy and Matsu, while also securing from Chiang a promise to cease unilateral military actions against the mainland.

That was in December 1954. When in January 1955 the PRC moved to occupy Inchaing, another of the contested islands (but some 200 miles to the north of Taiwan), Eisenhower asked Congress for authorization to defend “Formosa, the Pescadores and related positions,” the latter an archipelago of nearby islands. The so-called Formosa Resolution, which virtually ceded to the president the decision for war, passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 410-3 and the U.S. Senate by a vote of 85-3. President Lyndon Johnson later used the resolution, passed when he was Senate majority leader, to expand his predecessors’ war in Vietnam.

These actions did not defuse the situation, and several further confrontations eventually saw Eisenhower’s administration threaten the use of nuclear weapons against China.

The misaligned domestic political incentive structures, lack of strategic imagination, and abrogation of congressional duty that defined American policy toward China in the 1950s is eerily similar to contemporary efforts of Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to effectively gut the longstanding “One China policy.” Or of Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) to give whoever is president unilateral authority to intervene in the event of an attack on Taiwan.

The Taiwan Lobby is trying to sway decision-makers and American public opinion, and U.S. military leaders are advocating aggressive preparations on the basis of the most speculative reasoning.

Public Choice Theory easily explains this behavior: appearing tough is politically advantageous, while passing the buck for making the actually tough decisions is why Congress hasn’t officially declared war since the attack on Pearl Harbor. Meanwhile, a few million dollars spent by Taiwan sponsoring so-called “think tanks” or buying members of Congress is far cheaper than floating multi-billion dollar naval vessels of their own, while the concerned U.S. admirals and generals want to ensure their budgets climb and their commands expand.

In the words of Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton, it is understandable but unacceptable.

The ability of client states to drag their patrons into conflicts is as old as Thucydides, as is their use of powerful interest groups within that patron state to influence policy decisions.

Such prior conflicts, however, did not threaten the destruction of human civilization.

This is no longer the case. Our policies must change.

July 5, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Asian NATO: another failed plan by Washington

By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 05.07.2023

There are increasing reports in the world media that the US-led NATO military alliance is planning to expand into the Asia-Pacific region. The idea was originally introduced by US President Joe Biden at the East Asia Summit on October 27, 2021, where he said: “We envision an Indo-Pacific region that is open, interconnected, prosperous, resilient and secure – and we are ready to work together with each of you to achieve this.” The White House later issued a report titled “Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States” on February 11, 2022, outlining President Joe Biden’s strategy to reestablish “American leadership in the Indo-Pacific region.”

Among the remarks in the so-called “newsletter” that stood out was the declared necessity for the US to strengthen ties with Asian countries in order to tackle the “urgent” task of “competing with China.” But, according to its authors, NATO, which was formed to defend Europe against a fabricated Soviet threat, is allegedly a peace-loving alliance. In reality, it has evolved into a militarily aggressive bloc with a dominant presence in the North Atlantic region. This “peace-loving” coalition has militarized the continent to the point where war has broken out in Europe for the first time since World War II.

The question arises, do the countries of the Asia-Pacific region want to see their region also heavily militarized under the strict “guardianship” not only of the United States, but also of European “peace-loving” NATO? Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of this “peace-loving” bloc, insists on increasing the military alliance’s activities in Asia, as he stated publicly earlier this year during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The “peacemaker” from Europe said: “What happens in Asia matters for Europe and what happens in Europe matters for Asia, and therefore it is even more important that NATO Allies are strengthening our partnership with our Indo Pacific partners.”

According to Japan’s Nikkei newspaper, NATO will establish a liaison office in Tokyo in 2024 and use it as a center for cooperation with Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. Geographically, these four countries are close to China and other states in the region. It should be emphasized that they are all strategically placed in the Asia-Pacific region and have common interests with the US and NATO, or serve them faithfully.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that their target in this situation is China. Speaking at a May 26 press briefing, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson rightly noted that NATO’s attempt to intervene in the Asia-Pacific region eastward would inevitably undermine regional peace and stability. For example, Japan intends to attend the upcoming NATO summit in Lithuania in July, where discussions on the development of the military bloc’s liaison office are expected to continue. Apparently, the Japanese leadership has already forgotten the tragic consequences of their country’s participation in World War II and the terrible consequences it had for the Japanese people.

The United States’ plan to establish a military alliance in the Asia-Pacific area, similar to NATO, will have disastrous effects. That is why this insidious scheme does not have the support of many Asian countries, which see all these maneuvers of the United States and NATO as aimed at limiting their freedom and security. In the past, the US tried to create a replica of NATO in the Persian Gulf, but failed in that endeavor. The countries of the region soon realized the instability that results from such a move and are now instead working together to bring security back to their own region. The desire of many Gulf countries to join the BRICS and build a new world without conflicts and wars at least testifies to this.

This is why the replica of NATO in Asia is also likely to fail, because no matter how much the Joe Biden administration insists on pursuing it, the idea lacks the support of many countries in the region. Asian states strongly oppose actions aimed at creating military blocs in the region and fomenting discord and conflict. “The majority of Asia-Pacific countries don’t welcome NATO’s outreach in Asia and certainly will not allow any Cold War or hot war to happen,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated earlier in May.

The position of most countries in the region is very clear. They oppose the emergence of military blocs in the region, do not welcome NATO expansion in Asia, do not want a repeat of bloc confrontation in Asia, and certainly will not allow a repeat of cold or hot war in Asia. If a NATO-like, US-led alliance were formed in Asia, it would put the region at risk of insecurity and possible conflict, as countries would be divided into alliances and military blocs.

But another stumbling block to the American move to create an Asian NATO is France. President Emmanuel Macron opposed the creation of the first NATO office in Asia, calling the move a “big mistake.” Macron recently made an official trip to China to strengthen bilateral ties and afterwards began to make the same argument as Beijing. Incidentally, US-led NATO activities have a clause in their charter that clearly limits the scope of the bloc to the North Atlantic. Expanding NATO beyond the North Atlantic would require the consent of all members of the alliance, and France could technically veto such a move.

Many, even members of NATO, understand why such a plan could lead to a serious escalation, with devastating economic and security consequences that would be felt negatively around the world, including Europe, a continent that has long been in deep crisis because of the United States.

Asia is famously one of the most economically developing regions in the world. This, in fact, is what the US is deathly afraid of – a new economically developed giant that poses a threat to limit US military and economic expansion. “Thinking” heads in Washington are unable to realize that China, becoming the world’s number one economy and a leading expert in technology and other major sectors, has no intention of competing with or challenging the US on a global scale.

This is where the paranoia of today’s American politicians and their unstable psyche, little adapted to the realities of the modern world, come into play. Washington and its masters are struggling to hold on to what few fragments remain of their once global hegemony, now going like the Titanic to the bottom of world politics. The US ruling elites no longer pursue their own country’s interests, bearing in mind that China is one of America’s largest trading partners, bringing them enormous benefits in various trade and industry. China’s rise as a superpower and its peaceful view of the world have had a dramatically negative impact on Washington, which has watched with apprehension as more and more countries have sought to strengthen ties with Beijing and join the BRICS.

On the security front, the world has witnessed US military adventurism and its disastrous consequences. And this at a time when China has one military mission outside its borders, and it is part of the UN peacekeeping mission in Africa. In essence, China maintains peace in an unstable part of the world, while the US provokes conflicts in crises it itself created, trying, as the proverb says, to fish in troubled waters of misfortunes and troubles of the peoples of the world.

On the technology front, more and more countries are buying from China as it quickly becomes a technological superpower. This has reduced US profits and caused Washington to bully the world against China over issues such as Huawei, Tiktok and semiconductors. In fact, this is all part of a broader US attempt to limit Chinese exports. But the world is different now than it was after World War II. The influence of the US has weakened dramatically, and many states prefer to build a new world on terms that are agreeable to them, put forward by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

There is also some danger here as US hegemony wanes and in a desperate attempt to maintain its influence it plays dangerous games around the world. It unleashed the crisis in Ukraine and pitted Ukrainians against Russians, and now it seeks to create similar crises in other countries, such as China and North Korea, instead of following the diplomatic path and coming to realize a multipolar world. But this would be asking too much of the current American leadership, too difficult for their heads and limited thinking, accustomed to think and act only in terms of war.

July 5, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kiev regime forces under increased pressure to step up counteroffensive days ahead of NATO summit

By Drago Bosnic | July 5, 2023

As if the situation for the Kiev regime forces wasn’t bad already, the political West has now increased its already massive pressure on Kiev to “perform better” during the much-touted counteroffensive against the Russian military. Considering the disastrous losses and no actual gains, this will be a virtually impossible task for the already battered Neo-Nazi junta troops. The political “leadership” (aka NATO puppets) in Kiev, including its frontman Volodymyr Zelensky, are now publicly showing signs of desperation and pleading with the Kiev regime forces to “show results” mere days ahead of the major NATO summit that is due to start in Lithuania on July 11.

The pressure comes amid stepped-up blackmail by Washington DC which is now threatening that it will slow down or even cut so-called “military aid” to the Neo-Nazi junta in case its forces don’t demonstrate they’re capable of advancing, taking and holding Russian positions. Zelensky held talks with several journalists and mainstream propaganda machine outlets over the weekend in an attempt to “quell rumors about the failure of the counteroffensive”. Indeed, even Western propaganda couldn’t ignore the disastrous way these counteroffensive operations have been conducted, as ample evidence of horrendous losses on alternative platforms (particularly Telegram) simply cannot be ignored.

Still, Zelensky effectively accused the mainstream propaganda machine (the same one that has been lionizing him for about a year and a half now) of spreading “Russian disinformation” about the results of the counteroffensive. Yet, it’s not really clear where the supposed “disinformation” comes from, considering the actual state of the Kiev regime forces, particularly in the past several days. Indeed, numerous headlines in nearly all countries of the political West have relayed the increasingly gloomy prospects of the counteroffensive, with many now “suggesting it might be failing”. This is a major hurdle for the Neo-Nazi junta’s attempts to hide its massive losses.

As the political West’s favorite puppets are trying to keep their unsustainable narrative alive, Zelensky is doing anything he can to help with this increasingly futile effort. He now even claims that “torrential rains had slowed down some processes quite a bit”, but admits that “the reality still is that every kilometer of liberated territory and gains costs lives”. Despite close to $170 billion in so-called “aid”, Zelensky also urged NATO and the political West as a whole to send ever more weapons. He also blamed the losses specifically on the lack of or the late arrival of artillery systems and munitions, claiming that “the lost battles would have been won had there been more of both”.

“We stopped because we couldn’t advance. Advancing meant losing people and we had no artillery. We are very cautious in this aspect. Fast things are not always safe,” Zelensky complained in one of the press briefings. He then emphasized that “[he has] a duty to his troops” and to “not take risks that are unnecessary” (although that’s exactly what they’ve been doing for over a year now). “If they tell me that two months will pass and thousands of people will die, or three months and fewer people will die, of course, I will choose the latter. Between time and people, the most important thing is people,” Zelensky said with a straight face.

In regards to the growing urgency of constant (and, if possible, increased) flow of military supplies from NATO members, particularly the US, Zelensky specifically took aim at the Republican-dominated Congress, which lately had many calls for audits on the massive amount of funds earmarked for the Kiev regime. Worse yet, this comes amid “rumors and concerns over the waning enthusiasm for the war effort in Washington DC” and the political West as a whole that might be demonstrated more openly at the “sensitive moment” of NATO’s annual summit. In other words, the deeply corrupt Neo-Nazi junta henchmen are extremely concerned that the constant flow of billions of dollars will suddenly be cut.

While Kiev regime’s top generals parroted their usual complaints about the sore lack of air support for their counteroffensive operations, specifically mentioning the much-touted F-16 fighter jets that are now being delayed to late 2023 or even the next year, Zelensky didn’t miss the opportunity to criticize the “dangerous messages coming from some Republicans” (probably referring to the aforementioned audits). Still, he praised the sudden June 29th visit by former Trump administration Vice President Mike Pence, stressing that “maintaining bipartisan support is the most important thing for Ukraine, regardless of who wins the 2024 US presidential election”.

“Mike Pence has visited us, and he supports Ukraine. First of all, as an American, and then as a Republican. We have bipartisan support. However, there are different messages in their circles regarding support for Ukraine. There are messages coming from some Republicans, sometimes dangerous messages, that there may be less support,” Zelensky insisted.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

July 5, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

INTERVIEW: John Mearsheimer — On US Power & the Darkness Ahead for Ukraine

SYSTEM UPDATE #109 | June 30, 2023

July 4, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

There are plenty of reasons to boo Lindsey Graham off a stage

Let us count the ways

By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos | Responsible Statecraft | July 3, 2023

There are plenty of reasons to boo Senator Lindsey Graham.

The longtime South Carolina Republican was booed so spectacularly by a Donald Trump rally audience in his own home state on Saturday that he had to leave six minutes into his speech. He just couldn’t get a word out in a display that one CNN commentator called “far worse than I ever personally witnessed. In a word, it was a bloodbath.”

It would seem that Graham is a pariah with Trump supporters for his on-again-off-again support of the former president. He was against him before he supported his 2016 campaign (Graham was a short-lived 2016 contender himself), and has been critical of Trump’s taking of classified documents, while defending him on other charges and accusations, including the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol.

It would be encouraging to hear that Graham, who has represented his state as senator since 2003 and previously as a member of the House from 1995, was excoriated, too, for his unreconstructed voracious appetite for war. That’s doubtful, but maybe, just maybe, it’s part of the browbeating he got on Saturday. But it is worth revisiting his litany of abuses in this realm anyway.

RS contributor Jack Hunter has done a lot to bring it all together over the years, but here is a taste:

In March 2022, he called for a Julius Caesar killing of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country — and the world — a great service,” Graham tweeted.

More recently during the debt ceiling crisis, he said that holding the defense spending budget to its current $850 billion would be a “gift to China” and suggested any future supplemental Ukraine aid bill could go towards filling in spending gaps.

In March, Graham suggested the U.S. should follow the foreign policy of “Reagan” and shoot down any Russian plane that got near American aircraft in international airspace. “(President Reagan) would start shooting Russian planes down if they were threatening our assets.” Hunter noted why this is not only a stupid idea but a gross historical misnomer. 

But as many have been quick to point out, Graham has never seen a war that he wasn’t in favor of waging.

Also in March, Graham told an interviewer that an Israeli air strike might be the only way to knock out Iran’s nuclear program, which would all but commit the U.S. to a war with Iran, too.

In 2013 he bucked members of his own party by supporting a military strike on Syria. “I believe that if we get Syria wrong, within six months — and you can quote me on this— there will be a war between Iran and Israel over their nuclear program,” Graham told an audience at the time.

“It won’t come to America on top of a missile, it’ll come in the belly of a ship in the Charleston or New York harbor,” he added. Two years later  in 2015 he and comrade Sen. John McCain were pushing to send 10,000 troops back into Iraq and another 10,000 into Syria to battle ISIS.

Four years later, Graham said Trump’s failure to hit Iran hard after it downed a U.S. surveillance drone could be interpreted as a “sign of weakness.”

And who could forget all of the senator’s salivating comments about war with North Korea during the Trump administration?

Graham said we would be “hurtling toward war” with Pyongyang if we didn’t “stop” their nuclear program. “If we have to go to war to stop this, we will,” he said in November 2017. “And if there’s a war with North Korea, it’ll be because North Korea brought it on itself.”

This wasn’t the first time he said that war in Korea was inevitable. Two months earlier, reportedly recounting a conversation with the president, he said in an interview: “There is a military option: to destroy North Korea’s nuclear program and North Korea itself. He’s not going to allow — President Trump — the ability of this madman (Kim Jong Un) to have a missile that could hit America.”

“If there’s going to be a war to stop him, it will be over there,” Graham added. “If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die over here — and he’s told me that to my face.”

When asked for confirmation, White House officials said “all options remain on the table” — but efforts were to continue “maximum diplomatic and economic pressure to convince North Korea to change course.”

Analysts at the time suggested Graham was projecting, and who would be surprised. It is after all, Lindsey Graham, who said this March during the 20th anniversary of the war in Iraq that the decade of bloodshed and continuing costs to Americans and the world was “worth it.”

“Here’s what I would ask people to focus on,” Graham said at the time. “Is the world better off without Saddam Hussein, and are we better off with a democracy replacing him? I’d say yes.”

Graham was booed off a stage this weekend. We’d like to think it was for his warmongering. Likely not. But it is a pleasant thought.

July 3, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

The character assassination of Robert F Kennedy Jr

By Niall McCrae | TCW Defending Freedom | July 3, 2023

Will there be another dead Kennedy? I hope not to tempt fate, but as a Democrat nomination candidate for the US presidential election next year, Robert F Kennedy Jr is making himself a target. He rejects the official narrative on Covid-19 and Ukraine, and he rails against Big Pharma, corrupt federal authorities and militaristic foreign policy. The Democratic Party wants to keep the octogenarian and cognitively suspect incumbent Joe Biden, whom many people see as a puppet of the Deep State, struggling to read from an autocue.

Already being RFK is being attacked, albeit by the pen rather than the sword. Liberal-progressive media are troubled by his rise in the polls. First they ignored him; then they ridiculed him; now they are desperately denouncing him as a harmful interference in ‘democracy’ (a term that means something different to the elite than to you and me). Among the latest hit jobs, the Washington Post argued that RFK should be running as a Republican, as that’s where the anti-vaccine constituency lies. A Daily Mail column described him as a serial misogynist (journalists are less concerned with the sitting president’s proclivity for fondling little girls and sniffing their hair).

A recent diatribe in the Los Angeles Times by Michael Hiltzik is so bad that it’s good. RFK had appeared on a 90-minute ‘town hall’ programme on the cable channel News Nation on June 27. Hiltzik wondered why. A similar format featuring Donald Trump on CNN was supposed to be taken by broadcasters as a clear message that nothing can be gained from giving a platform to bombasts and conspiracy theorists. Trump had played to the gallery and taken control of the debate, interrupting and haranguing the weak presenter. Fact-checking ‘quackery’ on a live show is futile.

Although RFK is up to around 20 per cent in polling as a challenger to Biden, Hiltzik belittled him as ‘a fringe candidate for the Democratic Party nomination’. He suggested ulterior motives: ‘perhaps News Nation is trying to assume the mantle of Fox News as a dispenser of right-wing twaddle, or (to be more charitable) of CNN as a sober neutral voice’.  To regard (actually, to disregard) CNN as a fair, unbiased medium shows how once-trusted organs such as the Los Angeles Times have become polarised.

RFK performed in a controlled setting, before a small audience in Chicago, but Hiltzik complained that moderator Elizabeth Vargas was ‘ill-equipped to counter Kennedy’s elaborate web of misinformation about vaccines’. Actually, Vargas did not raise the topic of vaccines until near the end of the debate. This should have come first, Hiltzik averred, ‘because Kennedy’s anti-vaccination stance is a major element of his presidential campaign . . . that’s what makes him a public health hazard’.

As a business editor, Hiltzik is unlikely to have a fraction of the knowledge gained by RFK on vaccines over decades of research. But he felt qualified to rebut the claims of the Democrat pretender. After denying that he is ‘anti-vaccine’, Kennedy asserted that vaccines should be tested like other medicines, but ‘of 72 vaccine doses mandated for American children, not one has ever been subjected to a prelicensing placebo-controlled trial’. ‘Yes, they have,’ Vargas responded. But Hiltzik was exasperated by the host’s failure to ‘catch Kennedy’s deceptive sleight of hand’.  RFK is wrong, according to Hiltzik, as a placebo such as an inert saline injection would be unethical; instead, a new product needs only to perform better than an existing vaccine, not by depriving study participants of potentially life-saving immunisation. Naïve to this Big Pharma stitch-up, Hiltzik believes the propaganda that vaccines have ‘all gone through phased trials mandated by the Food and Drug Administration to determine their safety and gauge their efficacy.’

Quite reasonably, RFK told the New Nation audience that vaccines should be properly tested for long-term risks. Hiltzik scoffed: ‘Does he mean one year? Five years? Thirty years? Some diseases take that long after exposure to manifest themselves. Is 30 years an appropriate period to wait?’

Kennedy focused on two specific vaccines. There is considerable evidence of the chickenpox vaccine, mandated for children in every state of the US, causing outbreaks of shingles in adulthood. Googling it, Hiltzik found the predictable array of pro-vaccine medical authorities denying any link between the vaccine and this painful rash.

The second vaccine of concern was for hepatitis B, a disease transmitted through sexual contact or bodily fluids. RFK asked why this is mandated for young children, but Hiltzik glibly explained that a mother of unknown infection could pass the virus to her newborn.  There will always be a reason to jab kids against every known pathogen.

As Hiltzik explained, ‘while speaking deceptively, he [Kennedy] comes off as earnest — a skill that Donald Trump hasn’t mastered’. The lesson that the media must learn is that ‘there’s no way that even a determined interviewer can fight back against deception and deceit when it’s dispensed by the torrent’. Doing their duty for the establishment, influential broadcasters and newspapers are demanding censorship of presidential candidates: in a functioning democracy this would be so intolerable as to justify removal of their licences. When the establishment threw everything but the kitchen sink at Trump, this proved to his supporters that the system is rigged.

Although best known for his views on vaccines, RFK is causing most trouble through his opposition to the military-industrial complex, a term coined by Dwight Eisenhower in a warning to the American people three days before leaving the White House in 1961. His successor John F Kennedy (RFK’s uncle) delivered his ‘Peace Speech’ in June 1963, conveying his intent to end the arms race and build peaceful stability with Russia. Such outspoken resistance to the generals and CIA may have been the final straw that led to his assassination five months later in Dallas. The US and Nato empire have been waging wars ever since.

Hiltzik had little to say about Kennedy’s contrary views on Ukraine. It is hard to discredit pacifism as ‘disinformation’, never mind ‘dangerous’. But as shown by the ferocity of establishment attacks on Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump, the one topic that is definitely out of bounds is military interventionism. RFK is an imperfect but compassionate and conscientious man. It is grossly insensitive for journalists to describe the son of a murdered father and nephew of a murdered uncle as a mortal hazard.

July 2, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Tulsi Gabbard warns Biden pushing world toward nuclear war

Press TV – July 2, 2023

Former US presidential contender and ex-lawmaker Tulsi Gabbard has slammed US President Joe Biden over his war-mongering, accusing the octogenarian leader of pushing the world towards a nuclear war over Ukraine.

Speaking on Saturday at a meeting in a university in Centennial in the US state of Colorado, Gabbard said the Biden administration’s war-mongering policy was shoving the world on the brink of nuclear disaster.

“We are faced with the reality. Now, President Biden’s actions and policies have pushed us to the brink of nuclear war,” she said.

The former Democratic lawmaker from Hawaii warned that the US-led proxy war against Russia posed an “existential crisis”, threatening the very existence of humanity.

“This is an existential crisis, not only for us here but the world. This proxy war against Russia using the Ukrainian people’s lives continues to escalate,” Gabbard said in her speech which was broadcast on her social media.

She insisted that it was time for a reality check to see if Biden and his lackeys had any awareness of the risk and dangers of delivering more and deadlier weapons to Ukraine, saying it would “only increase the likelihood” of a possible direct confrontation between the US-led NATO forces and Russia.

“Now if you hear President Biden and his administration … talk about this, they talk about World War III and nuclear war as though it is just another war, just another conflict … it is so far removed from the reality … they are not being honest with the American people what the cost and consequences of these wars would look like,” Gabbard added.

July 2, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Video game propaganda: ‘Six Days in Fallujah’ whitewashes US war crimes

By Shabbir Rizvi | Press TV | July 1, 2023

After over a decade of controversy, the US-made video game “Six Days in Fallujah”, based on the real-life combat between US Marines and Iraqis, was released on the streaming website Steam last week.

The video game puts players in the shoes of US Marines fighting in Fallujah, an Iraqi city located around 69 kilometers west of Baghdad, during the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

For years, the video game was subject to intense criticism from peace and human rights activists for glorifying the illegal and ignominious war and whitewashing US war crimes and imperialism.

Some even called it an “Arab Murder Simulator” for openly glorifying the war after it barely ended.

To this day, Fallujah is still dealing with the cataclysmic effects of the war. The US military used depleted uranium shells in Fallujah (both in 1991 and 2003-2004), which caused severe pollution in the environment. They also admitted to using white phosphorus, which is considered a war crime.

The air in the city on the banks of the Euphrates is still considered toxic, and results in miscarriages, cancer, or babies born with severe abnormalities that are more than often life-threatening.

The video game developers claimed they did not want to make the game “political” but rather immerse the player in a real-life war environment.

Interestingly enough, some of the developers from the studio themselves participated in the war, and the studio itself is responsible for creating simulation technologies for the US Marines.

Peter Tamte, one of the developers, has been involved in military simulators for two decades. He was even CEO of Atomic Games, which published simulators used by the US Marine Corps and “training tools” for the world’s leading military and intelligence organizations.

But does Tamte really want to make an apolitical military simulation? Or is he complicit, knowingly or unknowingly, in the United States’ nearly century-long collaboration with war propaganda in the media?

And most importantly, would the US military indeed tolerate a video game that if it were not whitewashed, would display the horrific actions and brutality of the illegal invasion and occupation?

Certainly not – especially during a period where the military is struggling to meet its recruiting metrics.

The US military cannot afford a bad image of itself. It also understands video games are immensely popular, and would drive certain perceptions of the war if painted in a negative (or realistic) manner.

An apolitical video game would likely have a fictional story, fictional characters, and perhaps even fictional weapons all within a fictional conflict. But the illegal Iraq invasion and occupation was very real, especially to the nearly million dead Iraqis.

Not only was it painfully real, it was painfully horrific, unpopular (in hindsight to Americans), and above all illegal. Making a video game about one of its battles, particularly where unlawful chemical weapons like white phosphorus were used against Iraqi civilians, is a blatant attempt to whitewash and normalize the crimes and illegal invasion by the United States.

The Iraq War claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. The illegal US invasion ushered in a destabilization that created a serious power vacuum that Daesh and Al-Qaeda gladly took advantage of, causing further unexplainable horrors.

But, even if Tamte wanted to make an “apolitical” military simulator – would it really be “apolitical” even if it used a fictional conflict and fictional antagonists? Due to Pentagon and other weapons contracts, the answer is no.

Take for example the critically acclaimed series “Call of Duty.” In the US, one does not even need to play the game to know what Call of Duty is.

The ads for the military shooter appear on TV, on energy drinks, and T-shirts. Some of the series are based on real conflicts like World War II or the Cold War. However, the later installments are based on fictional “modern” conflicts that immerse players in urban settings with advanced weapon technology.

The US Department of Defense and other military agencies know the popularity of these games, so it is no surprise they resort to recruiting soldiers directly from these games.

Young gamers are presented with a positive view of the US military, its missions, and its conduct, and the military then sends its recruiters to close the sales process and bring them in as real-life soldiers.

The video game industry also takes it a step further in its partnership with military enterprises. In order to use actual military hardware in the video game, the developers must obtain a license from the manufacturers themselves.

Thus, by using a Remington Shotgun in a SWAT video game (for example), the young video game player has directly played a role in supporting the military-industrial complex in the United States.

Each real weapon requires a real license, so profits made by video game companies benefit the same arms manufacturers that drop bombs on children across the globe.

Lastly, if a video game series is particularly successful (like Call of Duty), developers can then also be invited to American think tanks like The Atlantic Council.

Here they can participate in mapping out real-life invasion scenarios, protocols, and logistics – and then bring it back to the video game world should it not remain classified.

In this sense, the military genre of the video game industry is in direct collaboration with the military, its illegal adventures, and its track record of crimes.

Tamte and other video game developers can say that they wanted to create an “apolitical” experience. But there is no such thing as “apolitical”, especially not in the US military shooter genre, where the moment you pick up the controller is when you have contributed to a legacy of invasion and terror.

Shabbir Rizvi is a Chicago-based political analyst with a focus on US internal security and foreign policy.

July 1, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | | Leave a comment

US Lawmaker Files Amendments to Ban Kiev-Bound Shipments of F16s, Long-Range Missiles

Sputnik – 30.06.2023

WASHINGTON – US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said she filed amendments to the defense budget that would forbid the US from providing Ukraine with F-16 jets and long-range missiles and cut off all funding to Kiev until a diplomatic resolution to the conflict is found.

“We should be pushing for peace, not funding war. I filed amendments to the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] that strip out all funding for Ukraine and prohibit providing them with F-16 fighter jets and long-range missiles,” Greene said in a tweet on Friday.

“The death and destruction must stop, so in order to achieve peace, I also filed an amendment to prohibit any and all funding to Ukraine until a diplomatic solution to the war is reached.”

Earlier in the day, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley said he is not aware of any decisions with respect to sending the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) to Ukraine, but noted that it is a “continuous, ongoing process.”

Citing officials with knowledge of the developments, American media reported on Thursday that the United States is close to agreeing to send ATACMS to Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s top aide earlier this week said Kiev still hoped to receive the first supply of F-16 fighter jets in aid from Western countries by the end of 2023. Last week, US media reported, citing Western officials, that Ukraine could receive its first F-16 fighter jets from Western sponsors in early 2024.

A former Pentagon official told outlets that the Netherlands and Denmark could be among the first suppliers, but no final decision had been made yet.

Russia has slammed the possible delivery of F-16 fighters to Ukraine, warning that the jets will become a legitimate military target for Russian forces. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that the delivery of F-16s to Ukraine will be a further escalation because the jets have a modification that makes them nuclear-capable.

June 30, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

EU delivers ‘neither peace nor prosperity’ – Hungarian PM

RT | June 29, 2023

The Hungarian government has blasted the EU, declaring that in its current state it brings “neither peace nor prosperity” to member states. Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was attending a summit of bloc leaders in Brussels, offered a similar assessment of the bloc.

Orban’s position was relayed via his government’s official Facebook account on Tuesday, the first day of the high-profile two-day gathering in Brussels. The statement apparently came from an interview that the Hungarian leader had given to the German media earlier in the week.

Asked by the German tabloid Bild whether he could explain the rising popularity of Alternative for Germany (AfD), a right-wing political party, the prime minister cited disillusionment with the EU as a possible cause.

“The European Union was created for two reasons. The first is peace – and now there is war. The second is prosperity – the economy is in an increasingly worrying state, it is difficult to maintain competition and it is increasingly difficult to ensure prosperity for people,” Orban argued.

“That is why I see the so-called protest parties gaining strength everywhere in Europe. I’m not talking about Germany alone, I’m talking about Europe in general,” he added.

Hungary stands out among EU members for having consistently criticized the West’s approach to the Ukraine conflict. Arming and training Kiev’s troops and punishing Russia with economic sanctions have not brought a truce any closer and have caused serious damage to the bloc itself, according to Budapest.

Ukraine is one of the top items on the agenda of the EU summit. The bloc’s leaders are expected to offer some form of security guarantees to Kiev and provide assurances of continued military assistance.

Orban told Bild that Ukraine has no chance to win against Russia regardless of the amount of Western money that is poured in, because eventually Kiev will run out of manpower.

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Why More US Bradley Armored Vehicles Won’t Boost Ukraine’s Counteroffensive

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 28.06.2023

What Washington has delivered to Ukraine is a non-upgraded version of the Bradly armed vehicles with restricted combat capabilities, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told Sputnik.

The Biden administration has announced another $500 million military package to Kiev, which includes, among other weaponry, 30 US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles.

At least 17 such vehicles were earlier damaged or destroyed by Russian troops amid the Ukrainian army’s unsuccessful counteroffensive attempt. Will an additional batch of the Bradley vehicles be of use to the Ukrainian military? Former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski has her doubts.

“Well, if you have ever watched the 1998 movie “The Pentagon Wars” you might wonder how we ever developed them in the first place! And of course, they are from 1980s technology and design, because of the lag time in the US military acquisition system of that era, and today as well,” she told Sputnik.

THE PENTAGON WARS – 1998 HBO MILITARY COMEDY FILM BASED ON A TRUE STORY OF THE BRADLEY TANK

The ex-Pentagon analyst said that with the mothballed Bradleys delivered to Ukraine, the US is now in the process of upgrading these infantry fighting vehicles.

“Its replacement program was actually initiated in 2010, and the production by the winning company (or a combination) won’t begin until 2027. In a comprehensive land-sea-air battlespace, the Bradley adds mobility and protection to other parts of the combined arms array, but without the ‘rest of the system’ its capabilities are limited, as we see in Ukraine today,” Kwiatkowski noted.

She made it clear that the Bradley supplies to Ukraine are something that American Rheinmetall and General Dynamics will benefit from, as “they refine and propose their best design” of the Bradleys.

When asked whether the development of a new vehicle could entail a US military budget increase, Kwiatkowski said that “part of the strategy of NATO expansion and relevance, that has been the story of Ukraine for over a decade, is how to upgrade older weapons systems with European support and cash along with maintaining the massive US military industrial complex into the foreseeable future.”

“The US defense budget has grown every year in my lifetime, and not a single war has been ‘won’. The upcoming Pentagon budget is $842 billion, and this does not count the entire intelligence budget, so we are well over a trillion dollars annually in 2024. Because of the influence and pervasiveness of the defense industry in every state, this budget will continue to grow until the United States is bankrupted,” she concluded.

Both Kiev and Washington have acknowledged that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is progressing slower than expected, with one Pentagon official citing an American military representative who conceded that the counteroffensive is “not meeting expectations on any front.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, stressed that Kiev had failed to reach any strategic objectives at the beginning of its counteroffensive, losing more than 180 tanks and over 400 armored vehicles.

June 29, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

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