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African neighbors finalize Niger war plans

RT | August 4, 2023

The militaries of several ECOWAS members have agreed on a plan for military intervention in Niger and are waiting for a final political decision, a senior official of the bloc said on Friday.

The Economic Community of West African States has already sanctioned the junta in Niamey over last week’s military coup and demanded the restoration of ousted president Mohamed Bazoum before Sunday.

Even as Nigeria sent diplomats to its northern neighbor, its capital Abuja was hosting a planning meeting of ECOWAS chiefs of staff. Notably absent were Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Guinea.

“All the elements that will go into any eventual intervention have been worked out here, including the resources needed, the how and when we are going [to] deploy the force,” said Abdel-Fatau Musah, ECOWAS commissioner for political affairs, peace and security.

Musah added that the final decision will be made at the political level, but that ECOWAS will not telegraph when and where it will strike.

“ECOWAS will not be used for coups. Democracy is what we stand for and democracy is what we will sustain,” General Christopher Gwabin Musa, chief of Nigeria’s defense staff, told AP.

On Thursday, Bazoum appealed directly to the US to intervene. Washington has some 1,000 troops in Niger, engaged in counter-terrorism operations against Islamist groups that arose after NATO’s 2011 regime change intervention in Libya. Niger’s former colonial master France has another 1,500 troops on the same mission.

The Nigerien junta repudiated all military treaties with France on Thursday, and sacked the country’s ambassadors to the US, France, Togo and Nigeria. Paris and Washington have said they do not intend to remove their troops from the country, and only recognized Bazoum as the legitimate leader.

Niamey has warned both the West and ECOWAS that any military intervention will be met with deadly force. “All aggression or attempt at aggression against the state of Niger will see an immediate response,” junta spokesman Colonel Amadou Abdramane, said on Friday.

In a joint statement earlier this week, Burkina Faso and Mali said that an ECOWAS incursion into Niger will be taken as a declaration of war against them as well.

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

Disinformation War

Tales of the American Empire | August 3, 2023

Americans hear about a new “information war” strategy, formally known as wartime propaganda. Most don’t realize that it is a disinformation war, and they are the target. Most Americans don’t understand that the corporate media does not exist to inform them, but to mislead them. The US military has formed huge propaganda units, with each service training thousands of military personnel and paying contractors to influence social media. They post information on-line and make comments as regular anonymous folks to support the official government narrative. They demean truth tellers, target them with complaints that they violate comment guidelines, and pressure websites to censor comments.

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“The War You Don’t See; Why Propaganda Hides the True Face of War”; John Pilger; 2010;    • The War You Don’t See: Why Propaganda…  

Related Tales: Vietnam War playlist;    • The Vietnam War  

“This is Devastating for western war propagandists”; Redacted; June 8, 2023;    • This is DEVASTATING for the western w…  

“Glenn Greenwald’s Ukraine War Warning: Propaganda Repeats Itself”; Katie Halper; July 15, 2023;    • Glenn Greenwald’s Ukraine Warning: Pr…  

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August 5, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

New Short-Range Missiles for Su-57 Outpace US Developments

Sputnik – 04.08.2023

MOSCOW — Russia’s fifth-generation Su-57 fighter has been equipped with new short-range missiles, the RVV-MD2, which outperform similar American munitions, representatives of the developer company, JSC GosMKB Vympel, said in an article for the Arsenal Otechestva (lit. Arsenal of the Fatherland) magazine.

“It is a fact that Russia’s development of the fifth generation of ‘air-to-air’ missiles, now in industrial production, is five to ten years ahead of similar developments in the United States,” the report stated.

The authors emphasized that, unlike the United States, Russia has managed to develop and test these missiles quickly, and the stage of their introduction into service has already begun.

The RVV-MD2 can be installed in the internal fuselage compartments of the fifth-generation Su-57 fighter, the specialists explained.

The RVV-MD2 is the first short-range missile to use an inertial guidance system to control and stabilize the missile during autonomous flight, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Viktor Murakhovskiy, pointed out.

The inertial system allows the munition to autonomously determine its coordinates in space without relying on external references or signals.

In addition, Murakhovskiy noted that the RVV-MD2 is equipped with a radio correction line, which allows the aircraft to refine target coordinates from onboard, increasing the likelihood of hitting enemy aircraft.

According to the editor-in-chief of “Arsenal Otechestva,” another advantage of the new missile is its multi-element dual-band infrared homing head with improved anti-jamming capabilities.

The new missile is capable of attacking targets from all angles, including from the rear. In other words, the RVV-MD2 is launched forward, maneuvers in the air and engages the enemy aircraft located behind the Su-57, Murakhovsky explained.

August 4, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Military bloat and empire as a way of life

Recalling William Appleman Williams final work

By Patrick Mazza | The Raven | June 3, 2023

Bar chart showing the military getting an increase and non-military getting cut in FY 2024 budget deal

Source: CBO’s Estimate of the Budgetary Effects of H.R. 3746, the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023

Starve the poor – Feed the Pentagon

Once again, while other needs are squeezed, a federal budget deal will literally starve the poor to feed the military. While new work requirements are placed on SNAP recipients that will drive some from the food support program, the military budget (never call it defense) remains untouched. The recent debt ceiling deal leaves Joe Biden’s $886 billion 2024 Pentagon budget request intact while domestic programs are slashed. The above graph from the National Priorities Project tells the story.

In real terms it is the largest military budget in U.S. history, the only exceptions being World War II and the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that came after 9-11. Larger by far than during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, or the Reagan military buildup. Again, from the National Priorities Project:

Line graph showing US military spending at a historical high level

The real military budget is even higher. Adding in nuclear weapons, foreign military aid and “intelligence,” the project puts the current 2023 budget at $920 billion. That is still an undercount. William Hartung, an expert on military spending, calculates that even in fiscal year 2020 the total military expenditure was $1.25 trillion, adding in other costs such as support for veterans and debt service. It’s easily pushing $1.5 trillion by now.

The U.S. by far is the biggest military spender on Earth, with 39% of the total, exceeding the next 10 nations combined, as this chart shows:

Most warlike nation

So why is the military budget so unassailable? Why, no matter how often bloated military spending is denounced, does the budget climb toward ever greater heights? Even after Dwight Eisenhower made the famous warning in his farewell address:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Ike would have known, being one of the progenitors of that complex as the general leading U.S. forces that invaded Europe during D-Day and as the president during the nuclear buildup of much of the early Cold War. One clue as to why his warning went unheeded is in the fact he originally wanted to call it the military-industrial-congressional complex, the “iron triangle” that keeps pumping up military expenditures. As Hartung writes, Congress is bought by the weapons industry. It is a kind of money laundering scheme where increased military spending comes back as campaign donations, a perfect example of the legalized bribery that is the real governing system of the U.S.

But there are deeper reasons, explaining why that “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” for which Ike called has never appeared, at least to the level able to tie back the power of the complex. War and militarism are rooted deep in the U.S. of American experience. As former President Jimmy Carter said, “If you go around the world and ask people which is the most warlike country on Earth, which one do you think they would respond? The United States. Since we left the Second World War, and even before, the United States has constantly been at war in some part of the world. We’ve been in about 30 combats with other countries since the Second World War . . .  So I would say that the military-industrial complex, the manufacturers of all kinds of weapons, are very influential in the country and the Congress as well.”

Carter noted that the U.S. hasn’t been at war with someone only 16 years of its 242-year history. (Even that is doubtful since even during Carter’s so-called peaceful years the U.S. was stirring up trouble in Afghanistan in a successful effort to give the Soviets “their own Vietnam,” as his National Security Adviser, Zbignew Brzezinski, has confessed.) The list is extensive. If the U.S. was not fighting with some European or Asian power, it was warring on some native nation or another on the frontier.  War has worked for the United States, historian Geoffrey Perrett noted in his 1989 history of major U.S. conflicts, Country Made by War.

“Since 1775 no nation on Earth has had as much experience of war as the United States: nine major wars in nine generations. And in between the wars have come other armed conflicts such as the Philippine insurgency and clashes in the Persian Gulf. America’s wars have been like the rungs on a ladder by which it rose to greatness. No other nation has triumphed so long, so consistently, or on such as vast scale, through force of arms.”

Although conflicts since World War II have not been so successful, nonetheless they failed to dislodge the fundamental U.S triumph in that war, which left it overwhelmingly dominant over all other powers, each of which had been ravaged in the war. As historian Alfred McCoy noted in his recent work, To Govern the Globe, it left the U.S. in the unprecedented position of holding sway on both European and Asian ends of Eurasia. If this hegemony is eroding with the rise of China and other powers, the U.S. still remains in a powerful position.

“Born and bred of empire”

To all this one must ask the more fundamental question. Why has the U.S. been the most warlike, most continually at war? For the answer we can look to historian William Appleman Williams and the title of his final book which summarized his substantial life work, published in 1980, Empire as a Way of Life. Williams was the dean of what came to be known as the revisionist school of U.S. history that penetrated the myth of American exceptionalism with the facts of history, that the U.S. was an empire from its colonial roots, and behaved much as any other empire.

First let Williams define his terms. “. . . a way of life is the combination of patterns of thought and action that, as it becomes habitual and institutionalized, defines the thrust and character of a culture and society.” Then, empire, a system in which, “The will, and power, of one element asserts its superiority.” In some cases empire “concerns the forcible subjugation of formerly independent people by a wholly external power.” Such as native peoples or those who lived in the former northern half of Mexico.

Williams does not let the mass of U.S. of Americans off. We are enmeshed in the ways of empire.

“Empire became so intrinsically our American way of life that we rationalized and suppressed the nature of our means in the euphoria of the enjoyment of the ends . . . It is perhaps a bit too extreme, but only by a whisker, to say that imperialism has been the opiate of the American people.”

The U.S. was “born and bred” of another empire, the British. “The 19th– and 20th-century empire known as the United States of America began as a gleam in the eyes of various 16th century critics of, and advisers to, Elizabeth I,” Williams explains. At that time, “England was then a backward and underdeveloped small island” outclassed by other powers emerging in the Atlantic fringe, Portugal, Spain, France and The Netherlands, who were already commencing the age of European world conquest.

England concluded that “domestic welfare and social peace required vigorous imperial expansion,” and began first by consolidating the internal empire on the British Isles in Scotland and Ireland, and then in the 1600s expanding to the North American coast.  “. . . the most significant aspect of the empire was the success in transforming the American colonies from tiny, insecure outposts into dynamic societies generating their own progress . . . It produced another culture based on the proposition that expansion was the key to freedom, prosperity, and social peace.”

Inevitably, tensions rose between the ruling class of the home isles and the rising elites of the colonies. Benjamin Franklin believed the weight of development would eventually move the center of the British Empire to North America (which it finally did in 1945, but that comes later in the story), and until nearly the time of the split recommended that course. “But the British feared that such a policy would lead to the loss of control and profits, and Americans increasingly asserted their own claims to their own empire,” Williams writes.

That culminated in the Revolutionary War and the successful creation of the United States. But a weak central government seemed unable to fully press forward what George Washington would call “a rising empire” – the founders were not shy about using that kind of language. It appeared the union would fray into two or more nations, while uprisings such as Shay’s Rebellion threatened to shatter social peace. So the new national elites came together to create a framework to ensure continued expansion under a strong central government, the Constitution. Writes Williams, “. . . the Constitution was an instrument of imperial government at home and abroad.”

“Extend the sphere”

The Constitution was founded on a clever turnaround of a fundamental political understanding architected by one of its key authors, James Madison. The general belief to that point had been exposited by French political philosopher Montesquieu “that liberty could only exist in a small state. Madison boldly argued the opposite: that empire was essential for freedom.” Madison needed to make that argument because many citizens of the new nation, burned by their experience with Britain, wanted nothing to do with a strong central government.

Madison made his case in a letter to Thomas Jefferson. “This form of government, in order to effect its purpose, must operate not within a small but extensive sphere . . . Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all to feel it . . . to act in unison with each other.”

Williams writes, “He was arguing that surplus social space and surplus resources were necessary to maintain economic welfare, social stability, freedom and representative government.” A strong central government would be needed to expand land for agriculture, to expand and protect exports, and to promote manufacturing.

With the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis & Clark Expedition to the Pacific, Jefferson fully embraced Madison’s understanding. “I am persuaded that no constitution was ever before as well calculated as ours for extensive empire and self-government,” he said as he left the presidency. “Jeffersonian Democracy, as it came to be called, was a creature of imperial expansion,” Williams writes. “He, perhaps even more than Madison, established it as a way of life, and most Americans embraced it because it gave them personal and social rewards.”

So much for the “alert and knowledgeable citizenry.”

“. . . once people begin to acquire and enjoy and take for granted and waste surplus resources and space as a routine part of their lives,” Williams writes, “and to view them as a sign of God’s favor, then it requires a genius to make a career – let alone a culture – on the basis of agreeing upon limits. Especially when several continents lie largely naked off your shores.”

The myth of empty continents and the racism it embodies has always been part of the story. “Racism . . . began and survived as a psychologically justifying and economically profitable fairy tale. It provided the gloss for the harsh truth that empire . . . is the child of an inability or unwillingness to live within one’s own means. Empire as a way of life is predicated upon having more than one needs.”

Next: Coming installments will review how imperial expansionism is rooted in a misguided sense of mission and compulsive drive for security, and how empire as a way of life continued to unfold after the era of the founders.

August 3, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

US Long Violating Letter, Spirit of New START – Russian Ambassador Antonov

Sputnik – 03.08.2023

WASHINGTON – Russia in February suspended participation in New START, the only bilateral nuclear arms control treaty in place at the time, and conditioned its resumption of participation on an understanding of how NATO’s combined strike capability would be accounted for.

The United States has long been violating the New START Treaty, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said.

“Washington has long been violating the letter and the spirit of the agreement. It has not only abandoned the principles embedded in the Preamble to New START, but also breached the central limits of the Treaty that restrict the number of strategic weapons. It illegitimately removed from accountability under the Treaty about a hundred strategic offensive arms: SLBM launchers and heavy bombers. Russia’s repeated demands to resolve the problem have been ignored,” Antonov told reporters.

He said there was another factor that has led to the current crisis.

“Even more important factor that has led to the current crisis over the agreement is the [US] Administration’s hybrid war against our country aimed at imposing on us a strategic defeat. Washington’s calls for addressing the New START issues separately from the overall geopolitical situation do not stand up to criticism,” Antonov said.

“The real goal of the United States is to gain access to Russia’s nuclear weapons bases in order to obtain information about the development of our strategic arsenal,” he said.

In February, Moscow announced the suspension of its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which was signed by Russia and the US in 2010 and envisaged mutual inspections of the strategic nuclear facilities of the two countries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his annual address to the Russian parliament then that the US had demanded that Russia unconditionally fulfill its obligations under the treaty while itself being arbitrary about its own obligations.

August 3, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

British Arms Industry Giant Reaps Huge Windfall, Amid West’s Tensions with Russia and China

By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | August 2, 2023

Amid the surge in NATO members’ military spending as a result of the war in Ukraine, BAE Systems announced that – during the first half of this year – its net profits soared with a 57 percent increase. The British arms industry giant reported its huge windfall on Wednesday.

BAE Systems stated its revenue swelled to 11 billion pounds, an increase of 13 percent, while profits after taxes increased to 965 million pounds ($1.2 billion) during the first six months of 2023. This is compared with 615 million pounds in the same period last year.

Chief Executive Charles Woodburn declared “Our global footprint… and leading technologies enable us to effectively support the national security requirements and multi-domain ambitions of our government customers in an increasingly uncertain world.”

In a separate video that accompanies the company’s earnings statement, he acknowledges the profits are directly related to global destabilization and Western foreign policies, particularly those of London and Washington, aimed at Russia and China. Woodburn says “I’m particularly proud of our support to Ukraine… We’ve delivered an excellent set of results.”

In November, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said that Ukrainian forces had already suffered over 100,000 casualties, killed or wounded, so far in the proxy war with Russia, along with thousands more civilians killed.

Woodburn’s euphoria regarding the “excellent results” notwithstanding, Ukraine has lost approximately 20 percent of its territory since the Russian invasion began last February. Moreover, Kiev’s long awaited counteroffensive has seen massive losses in military equipment and armor, as well as personnel no doubt, while no significant gains have been made.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported “When Ukraine launched its big counteroffensive this spring, Western military officials knew [Kiev] didn’t have all the training or weapons — from shells to warplanes — that it needed to dislodge Russian forces. But they hoped Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day. They haven’t. Deep and deadly minefields, extensive fortifications and Russian air power have combined to largely block significant advances by Ukrainian troops. Instead, the campaign risks descending into a stalemate with the potential to burn through lives and equipment.”

The video continues with Woodburn boasting of further profits which will be reaped as a result of BAE’s role in the major military buildup in the Asia-Pacific targeting Beijing. “We’ve secured significant orders for combat vehicles… and the selection of the UK’s design for AUKUS.”

AUKUS is a trilateral military pact formed in 2021 between Washington, London, and Canberra which will see Canberra acquiring nuclear-powered attack submarines which will be used to patrol waters near China’s shores. The three countries are currently carrying out the largest iteration of the US-Australia Talisman Sabre war games, again eyeing Beijing. AUKUS will seriously undermine the Non-Proliferation Treaty as these submarines run on 90 percent or more enriched uranium, weapons-grade levels.

The most profitable policies for the arms industry are often the most destructive for civilians, such was the case in Saudia Arabia’s genocidal war against the Yemeni people, strongly supported by Washington and London. According to the UN, at least 377,000 people have been killed in this war, including mostly children and infants, as a result of the full blockade imposed by Riyadh on northern Yemen and its devastating bombing campaign against civilian infrastructure.

In 2020, The Guardian reported “Britain’s leading arms manufacturer BAE Systems sold £15bn worth of arms and services to the Saudi military during the last five years, the period covered by Riyadh’s involvement in the deadly bombing campaign in the war in Yemen.” By the following year, BAE’s sales to Riyadh, since the Gulf kingdom launched its invasion, had increased by 2.5 billion pounds.

According to The Defense Post, subsequent to the company’s announcement on Wednesday, shares in BAE rallied 4.5 percent in early London trading. Andy Chambers, a director at the research group Edison, affirmed “Leading [defense] contractor BAE Systems posted a very strong set of results… benefiting from a general rearmament among NATO countries as the war in Ukraine grinds on.”

In January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists admonished that the risk of nuclear annihilation has never been higher.

Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest.

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

Hiroshima, Nagasaki Bombings Were Needless, Said World War II’s Top US Military Leaders

Mythology about these mass civilian slaughters warps thinking about US militarism

Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | July 31, 2023

The anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki present an opportunity to demolish a cornerstone myth of American history — that those twin acts of mass civilian slaughter were necessary to bring about Japan’s surrender, and spare a half-million US soldiers who’d have otherwise died in a military conquest of the empire’s home islands.

Those who attack this mythology are often reflexively dismissed as unpatriotic, ill-informed or both. However, the most compelling witnesses against the conventional wisdom were patriots with a unique grasp on the state of affairs in August 1945 — America’s senior military leaders of World War II.

Let’s first hear what they had to say, and then examine key facts that led them to their little-publicized convictions:

  • General Dwight Eisenhower on learning of the planned bombings: “I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and voiced to [Secretary of War Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’.”
  • Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s Chief of Staff: “The use of this barbarous weapon…was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.”
  • Major General Curtis LeMay, 21st Bomber Command: “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb… The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
  • General Hap Arnold, US Army Air Forces: “The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.” “It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”
  • Ralph Bird, Under Secretary of the Navy: “The Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and the Swiss… In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb.”
  • Brigadier General Carter Clarke, military intelligence officer who prepared summaries of intercepted cables for Truman: “When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it…we used [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] as an experiment for two atomic bombs. Many other high-level military officers concurred.”
  • Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Pacific Fleet commander: “The use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”

Putting out feelers through third-party diplomatic channels, the Japanese were seeking to end the war weeks before the atomic bombings on August 6 and 9, 1945. Japan’s navy and air forces were decimated, and its homeland subjected to a sea blockade and allied bombing carried out against little resistance.

Full of midget submarines, a drydock in the port city of Kure, Japan lies in ruins

The Americans knew of Japan’s intent to surrender, having intercepted a July 12 cable from Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, informing Japanese ambassador to Russia Naotake Sato that “we are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad.”

Togo told Sato to “sound [Russian diplomat Vyacheslav Molotov] out on the extent to which it is possible to make use of Russia in ending the war.” Togo initially told Sato to obscure Japan’s interest in using Russia to end the war, but just hours later, he withdrew that instruction, saying it would be “suitable to make clear to the Russians our general attitude on ending the war”— to include Japan’s having “absolutely no idea of annexing or holding the territories which she occupied during the war.”

Japan’s central concern was the retention of its emperor, Hirohito, who was considered a demigod. Even knowing this — and with many US officials feeling the retention of the emperor could help Japanese society through its postwar transition —the Truman administration continued issuing demands for unconditional surrender, offering no assurance that the emperor would be spared humiliation or worse.

In a July 2 memorandum, Secretary of War Henry Stimson drafted a terms-of-surrender proclamation to be issued at the conclusion of that month’s Potsdam Conference. He advised Truman that, “if… we should add that we do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present dynasty, it would substantially add to the chances of acceptance.”

Truman and Secretary of State James Byrne, however, continued rejecting recommendations to give assurances about the emperor. The final Potsdam Declaration, issued July 26, omitted Stimson’s recommended language, sternly declaring, “Following are our terms. We will not deviate from them.”

One of those terms could reasonably be interpreted as jeopardizing the emperor: “There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest.”

At the same time the United States was preparing to deploy its formidable new weapons, the Soviet Union was moving armies from the European front to northeast Asia.

In May, Stalin told the US ambassador that Soviet forces should be positioned to attack the Japanese in Manchuria by August 8. In July, Truman predicted the impact of the Soviets opening a new front. In a diary entry made during the Potsdam Conference, he wrote that Stalin assured him “he’ll be in the Jap War on August 15th. Fini Japs when that comes about.”

Right on Stalin’s original schedule, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan two days after the August 6 bombing of Hiroshima. That same day — August 8 — Emperor Hirohito told the country’s civilian leaders that he still wanted to pursue a negotiated surrender that would preserve his reign.

On August 9, Soviet attacks commenced on three fronts. News of Stalin’s invasion of Manchuria prompted Hirohito to call a new meeting to discuss surrender — at 10 am, one hour before the strike on Nagasaki. The final surrender decision came on August 10.

Three-year old Shinichi Tetsutani, burned as he was riding this tricycle when the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima, died a painful death that night (Hiroki Kobayashi/National Geographic)

The Soviet timeline makes the atomic bombings all the more troubling: One would think a US government that’s appropriately hesitant to incinerate and irradiate hundreds of thousands of civilians would want to first see how a Soviet declaration of war affected Japan’s calculus.

As it turns out, the Japanese surrender indeed appears to have been prompted by the Soviet entry into the war on Japan — not by the atomic bombs. “The Japanese leadership never had photo or video evidence of the atomic blast and considered the destruction of Hiroshima to be similar to the dozens of conventional strikes Japan had already suffered,” wrote Josiah Lippincott at The American Conservative.

Sadly, the evidence points to a US government determined to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities as an end in itself, to such an extent that it not only ignored Japan’s interest in surrender, but worked to ensure that surrender was delayed until after upwards of 210,000 people — disproportionately women, children and elderly — were killed in the two cities.

Make no mistake: This was a deliberate targeting of civilian populations. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen because they were pristine, and could thus fully showcase the bombs’ power. Hiroshima was home to a small military headquarters, but the fact that both cities had gone untouched by a strategic bombing campaign that began 14 months earlier certifies their military and industrial insignificance.

“The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing,” Eisenhower would later say. “I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”

According to his pilot, General Douglas MacArthur, commander of US Army Forces Pacific, was “appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster.”

“When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb,” wrote journalist Norman Cousins, “I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted…He saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”

What then, was the purpose of devastating Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs?

A key insight comes from Manhattan Project physicist Leo Szilard. In 1945, Szilard organized a petition, signed by 70 Manhattan Project scientists, urging Truman not to use atomic bombs against Japan without first giving the country a chance to surrender, on terms that were made public.

In May 1945, Szilard met with Secretary of State Byrnes to urge atomic restraint. Byrnes wasn’t receptive to the plea. Szilard — the scientist who’d drafted the pivotal 1939 letter from Albert Einstein urging FDR to develop an atomic bomb — recounted:

“[Byrnes] was concerned about Russia’s postwar behavior. Russian troops had moved into Hungary and Rumania, and Byrnes thought it would be very difficult to persuade Russia to withdraw her troops from these countries, that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia.“

Burned to impress Stalin: A victim of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima (AP /The Association of the Photographers of the Atomic Bomb Destruction of Hiroshima, Yotsugi Kawahara)

Whether the atomic bomb’s audience was in Tokyo or Moscow, some in the military establishment championed alternative ways to demonstrate its power.

Lewis Strauss, Special Assistant to the Navy Secretary, said he proposed “that the weapon should be demonstrated over… a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood… [It] would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will.”

Strauss said Navy Secretary Forrestal “agreed wholeheartedly,” but Truman ultimately decided an optimal demonstration required burning hundreds of thousands of noncombatants and laying waste to their cities. The buck stops there.

The particular means of inflicting these mass murders — a solitary object dropped from a plane at 31,000 feet — helps warp Americans’ evaluation of its morality. Using an analogy, historian Robert Raico cultivates ethical clarity:

“Suppose that, when we invaded Germany in early 1945, our leaders had believed that executing all the inhabitants of Aachen, or Trier, or some other Rhineland city would finally break the will of the Germans and lead them to surrender. In this way, the war might have ended quickly, saving the lives of many Allied soldiers. Would that then have justified shooting tens of thousands of German civilians, including women and children?”

The claim that dropping the atomic bombs saved a half-million American lives is more than just empty: Truman’s stubborn refusal to provide advance assurances about the retention of Japan’s emperor arguably cost American lives.

That’s true not only of a war against Japan that lasted longer than it needed to, but also of a Korean War precipitated by the US-invited Soviet invasion of Japanese-held territory in northeast Asia. More than 36,000 US service members died in the Korean War — among a staggering 2.5 million total military and civilian dead on both sides of the 38th Parallel.

We like to think of our system as one in which the supremacy of civilian leaders acts as a rational, moderating force on military decisions. The needless atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — against the wishes of World War II’s most revered military leaders — tells us otherwise.

Sadly, the destructive effects of the Hiroshima myth aren’t confined to Americans’ understanding of events in August 1945. “There are hints and notes of the Hiroshima myth that persist all through modern times,” State Department whistleblower and author Peter Van Buren said on The Scott Horton Show.

The Hiroshima myth fosters a depraved indifference to civilian casualties associated with US actions abroad, whether it’s women and children slaughtered in a drone strike in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands dead in an unwarranted invasion of Iraq, or a baby who dies for lack of imported medicine in US-sanctioned Iran.

Ultimately, to embrace the Hiroshima myth is to embrace a truly sinister principle: That, in the correct circumstances, it’s right for governments to intentionally harm innocent civilians. Whether the harm is inflicted by bombs or sanctions, it’s a philosophy that mirrors the morality of al Qaeda.

That’s not the only thread connecting 1945 to 2023, as Truman’s insistence on unconditional surrender is echoed by the Biden administration’s utter disinterest in pursuing a negotiated peace in Ukraine.

Today, confronting an adversary with 6,000 nuclear warheads — each a thousand times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan — Biden’s own stubborn perpetuation of war puts us all at risk of sharing the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s innocents.

August 2, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

US Arms Firms Reportedly Given $9.7 Billion to Replace Weapons Sent to Ukraine

Sputnik – 01.08.2023

The US defense contractors have received nearly $10 billion in new Department of Defense weapons orders to replace systems sent as aid to Ukraine, US media reports said.

Citing official Defense Department figures released Tuesday, US media reported the Pentagon has currently used $9.7 billion to replenish its depleted weapons and ammunition stockpiles, out of a total $26 billion already approved for that purpose by the US Congress.

Lockheed Martin is already getting almost $2.3 billion of a potential $6 billion committed to it as well as $1.4 billion out of an eventual total $1.9 billion more for its joint venture with RTX, previously known as Raytheon Technologies to refill its arsenal of Javelin anti-armor weapons, media said.

Lockheed is also expected to receive $1.4 billion of a potential $5.2 billion to replace guided missiles for the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS). RTX will reportedly get another $844 million to replace the Patriot PAC-3 MSE anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems that have been sent to Ukraine.

RTX will get $581 million of a potential $624 million to replace US armed forces supplies of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Congress also has appropriated $18.6 billion to provide for Ukraine’s long-term defense needs. So far, $7 billion of that money has been obligated to US companies, the report added.

RTX reportedly has Pentagon commitments for $1.2 billion of a potential $1.4 billion to supply Ukraine with its long-range NASSAM air defense systems. General Dynamics and other contractors companies will receive $901 million out of a likely $1.4 billion to supply Kiev with more 155mm howitzer ammunition.

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

Vilnius Memo: Who’s Going to Bankroll This War?

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 1, 2023

Apparently it wasn’t Abert Einstein who said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”. But we like to think it was, so it became a quotation attributed to him. How else to describe the West’s stalwart determination to impale itself further with the agony of the Ukraine war as we are led to believe that NATO and the U.S. are determined now to dig in for a long war. The belief is still upbeat, despite the huge anti-climax of Ukraine’s so-called “offensive” which didn’t even break through the Maginot Line which Russia has built along a 900-km fortified line.

The blinded dogma of NATO members at last month’s Vilnius Summit stems from being drunk on their own fake news which media dutifully pumps out each day from the propaganda factory in Kiev. There’s just so much of it, that it’s hardly surprising that Biden and his European lap dogs overconsume on it without looking at the hard facts. It isn’t simply that Ukraine “has run out of ammo” as Biden put it. It’s more than that. It’s that it has been proven over and over again that they don’t have the will, resources or rank ability to take on the Russian army and that sending more and more military hardware will only delay the inevitable loss. Or at least armistice which is bound to happen on an unofficial level at some point, if an official one can’t be signed.

Zelensky looked worried at the Vilnius conference. And it’s hardly surprising. Even when you look at the pledges made by western countries for military hardware, there’s no question that the speed of these deliveries and the actual quantity has radically dropped. So how can Ukraine or NATO believe that it can win the war, even in years to come? Fighting a war without ammunition is like baking bread without flour, after all.

The truth is that most western leaders already know that the time is up. They know that three key elections are going to play a huge role in putting the brakes on the campaign to continuously supply the Kiev cabal, who by some accounts, are buying 7 million euro villas in Cannes with the money which is being syphoned off. War is a racket after all and Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Should we be surprised that a government minister there has this kind of cash to blow on a wedding present for his offspring?

The three elections are of course the UK general election, The U.S. presidential elections and the European parliamentary elections. All three will take place at the end of 2024 and it will be the first time people will have a real opportunity to make a statement about the war and the abysmal hardship it is imposing on people in western countries. It’s as though Joe Biden knows also that it will be very hard for him to stand again as president when he has to explain why he has sent over 130 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money to a country that few Americans can even find on a map of the world.

Money matters. Finally, it matters. The argument on the American side that it doesn’t matter as it is being printed and given over to the industrial military complex has some validity, as this secures jobs and keeps these companies buoyant. But it’s public money. And so, rightfully, people will want to know why couldn’t the same money be spent on the very poor.

For the Europeans it’s very different. They pay a very high price for the Ukraine war and the folly of their governments who indulge themselves with the military aid like children gouging themselves on chocolate cake while the parents are away. Germany’s economy is flat broke. For the UK, homeowners are facing losing their house due to colossal mortgage rate hikes with an entire generation now unable to get on the housing ladder. How will these politicians explain this at the polls?

It really is about the money. NATO knows that it needs much more than just the miniscule offering of 2 % of GDP, which in reality only 11 NATO members adhere to. All western countries’ military stockpiles are depleted and so, not only do NATO and its members need to find trillions of dollars of new cash just to bring their stocks back up to what they were, but also trillions more for Ukraine. The numbers just don’t add up. Even on an EU level, Ursula von der Leyen, who is almost certainly going to be NATO secretary general, when her term as EU Commission president runs out in about a year, has her begging bowl out. She is hoping to raise 20 billion euros to be given to Ukraine over 4 years as military aid. For the Ukraine war, it is pretty meagre.

For the EU itself, there is no clear sign how she will get it when she is already asking member states to contribute 30 billion euros more to the budget to pay for another egregious scam of COVID vaccinations, which at one point she was being accused of having corrupt connections to, until colleagues managed to cover the scandal up. Europe not only has no cash or military kit left to offer Ukraine, it has serious financial problems to tackle of its own for its own elites to retain the power they wield. The only respite would have to be much more cash from the U.S. only which is probably not what Biden is planning on. The Europeans have paid too much. We are an empty Amazon warehouse with all the workers at the foodbank.

August 1, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

US will spend on Ukraine more than it did on Marshall Plan after WWII

By Ahmed Adel | August 1, 2023

John Sopko, Inspector General of the United States Reconstruction Service in Afghanistan, said that the amount of money the US will spend by the end of 2023 will surpass the money spent on the entire Marshall Plan. He also highlighted how Ukraine is a country that is almost just as corrupt as Afghanistan.

“We are spending more money in Ukraine now in one year than we spent in about 12 years in Afghanistan, and by the end of this year, we will spend more money in Ukraine than we did to do the entire Marshall Plan after World War Two,” he warned, emphasising that he supported financial aid, but felt the need to make sure it was done “correctly and under supervision.”

Among the problems identified by Sopko when overseeing the cost of rebuilding Afghanistan was the lack of coordination of these efforts and a lack of understanding of the ultimate goal. He highlights that in the case of Ukraine, the situation is even more complicated as more parties are involved, such as US agencies and international donors and organisations. In addition, the expert also noted that both Afghanistan and Ukraine are deeply corrupt.

Most alarming, though, for US taxpayers is that Sopko revealed that Washington spends about $2.5 billion monthly on security assistance to Ukraine. In comparison, Washington only spent about $375 million monthly on security assistance to Afghanistan. Since February 2022, the Biden administration has committed more than $75 billion in various types of assistance to Ukraine, with nearly $50 billion spent on weapons and related military equipment.

Biden’s astronomical total spending in Ukraine will only significantly increase when considering that in July alone, the Ukrainian military lost 20,824 troops and 2,227 units of various weapons, including 10 Leopard tanks, 11 Bradley armoured vehicles and dozens of artillery pieces from the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, France, and Poland.

“It is obvious that the Western-manufactured arms supplies do not lead to successes on the battlefield, but only prolong the military conflict,” the Russian Ministry of Defence said in an announcement on July 31, adding that “against the backdrop of the failed so-called ‘counteroffensive,’ the Kiev regime, with the support of Western sponsors, has focused on carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure in cities and towns in the Russian Federation.”

Seeing as the counteroffensive has been an utter and humiliating failure for Ukraine and its Western patrons, the Kiev regime has resorted to terrorist tactics against Russia, knowing well that such attacks only hurt citizens and do nothing to strengthen Ukraine’s war effort or deter the Russian military operation.

On the morning of August 1, Mayor of Moscow Sergey Sobyanin announced that Russian air defences shot down “several” drones targeting the Moscow region. This attack marks at least the fifth time drones have reached the Russian capital since May. Thankfully for the citizens of Moscow, two drones were destroyed by air defence systems and a third was jammed and crashed, resulting in no deaths or injuries.

In an attempt to show strength, but instead ended up revealing the truth about the desperate situation Kiev finds itself in despite having more money pumped in a year than 12 years in Afghanistan, Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky said on July 30 in his nightly address that the war was coming to Russia, i.e., terrorist attacks.

“Gradually, the war is returning to the territory of Russia – to its symbolic centres and military bases. This is an inevitable, natural, and absolutely fair process,” Zelensky said.

The wording of Zelensky’s announcement suggests that Ukraine is about to embark on a game-changing phase of the war. Instead, Ukraine will only conjure inconveniences for the Russian state and, sadly, some deaths and injuries to citizens. However, it will certainly not be anything that will swing the war in Ukraine’s favour.

Ukraine will likely lose significant drone capabilities as this will become a priority for Russia if terrorist attacks continue in such a manner. In fact, the Russian Ministry of Defence announced on July 31 that an assembly plant for drones in the Kharkov region intended for Ukrainian troops was destroyed.

At the same time, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine and the Baykar Makina Turkish company recently announced that they agreed to build a repair and maintenance service centre for drones. The agreement to create a service centre for Turkish drones was signed within the framework of the intergovernmental agreement between Ukraine and Turkey about cooperation in the hi-tech, aircraft and space industries sector, which came into force in January 2023.

With Russia already demonstrating its willingness to destroy drone plants, there is little reason why the new Bayraktar centre in Ukraine will not be targeted if the Turkish drones are the reason for Russian deaths.

Nonetheless, despite Zelensky’s promise of bringing the war to Russia, terror attacks on Moscow will not deter the special military operation but will significantly weaken Ukraine’s drone capabilities as its destruction becomes a priority. Ukraine is already a financial blackhole for the West, as seen by the vast resources poured into the country, and the destruction of Ukraine’s drone capability will only add to its misery.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

August 1, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Military intervention against Niger would be a declaration of war against Burkina Faso and Mali

RT | July 31, 2023

In the first-ever joint communique on Monday, the military governments in Mali and Burkina Faso warned the West and other African states against intervening in the neighboring Niger. Bamako and Ouagadougou would consider any such move as an attack on their own countries, they said.

“Any military intervention against Niger would amount to a declaration of war against Burkina Faso and Mali,” said point four of the joint communique, which a Burkinabe military spokesman deliberately repeated three times during a state television broadcast.

In case of such an intervention, the two countries would withdraw from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and “adopt self-defense measures in support of the armed forces and the people of Niger,” according to the statement.

A military intervention against Niger “could destabilize the entire region, as had the unilateral NATO intervention in Libya, which was at the root of the expansion of the terrorism in the Sahel and West Africa,” the two governments said.

France currently has 1,500 troops and a drone base in Niger, while the US has 1,100 troops and two drone bases, according to Financial Times.

Nigerien soldiers, led by General Abdourahamane Tchiani, ousted President Mohamed Bazoum last Wednesday. The African Union denounced the coup on Friday and gave the junta in Niamey 15 days to stand down or face “punitive measures.” ECOWAS issued its own ultimatum on Sunday, at the emergency meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, saying that it would “take all measures necessary to restore constitutional order in the Republic of Niger,” including the use of force, if Bazoum is not restored within a week.

Mali and Burkina Faso condemned the sanctions ECOWAS announced on Saturday as “illegal, illegitimate and inhumane.” They also expressed “fraternal solidarity” with the Nigerien people, “who have decided to take their destiny into their own hands and to assume before history the fullness of their sovereignty,” according to their joint communique.

The military governments of the two former French colonies have sought to sever their ties to Paris and rebuild their statehood with Russian assistance. Moscow has denounced the coup in Niger as an “anti-constitutional act,” however, and the Russian Foreign Ministry called on all parties to refrain from using force.

On Sunday, General Tchiani’s government announced it would suspend the export of uranium and gold to France, to the accolades of some of the local population.

“We have uranium, diamonds, gold, oil, and we live like slaves? We don’t need the French to keep us safe,” one pro-government demonstrator told the local news portal Wazobia Reporters.

Niger is the world’s seventh-largest producer of uranium, accounting for 4% of the global output. A French company controls about two thirds of the country’s output.

July 31, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine Receives $1.25Bln in US Grant Funds for Paying Wages, Social Assistance

Sputnik – 31.07.2023

Ukraine has received a new grant from the United States worth $1.25 billion to reimburse state budget expenses, including wages for state employees and social benefits, the Ukrainian Finance Ministry said on Monday.

“The State Budget of Ukraine received a grant from the United States of America in the amount of USD 1.25 billion through the Multi-donor Trust Fund of the World Bank,” the ministry said in a statement.

The grant was provided as part of the fifth additional financing under the World Bank’s Public Expenditures for Administrative Capacity Endurance in Ukraine (PEACE in Ukraine) project, which seeks to partially cover state budget expenditures, including for social and humanitarian purposes.

“The involved grant funding will be aimed at reimbursing state budget expenditures, in particular, to pay wages for government employees and payments under certain state social assistance programs (IDPs [internally displaced persons], people with disabilities, low-income families and housing, utility subsidies) and other social payments,” the ministry said.

Ukraine has received $8.45 billion in US grants to support the state budget in 2023 alone, while as much as $20.4 billion has been disbursed since February 2022.

Last week, the chairwoman of the Ukrainian parliament’s budget committee, Roksolana Pidlasa, said the state budget received $25.3 billion from international partners in 2023, accounting for 49.1% of all state budget revenues.

Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said in May that the country’s budget has been running a deficit of about $5 billion a month since the military conflict began, with two-thirds of the money coming from foreign loans and grants and three-quarters spent on military needs.

July 31, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

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