Tag: military industrial complex

Wars, Propaganda Wars and Funding Them

By now it’s clear even to the thick-skulled nabobs running our government, that the U.S. can’t win actual wars. It puts up a more respectable performance with propaganda campaigns, probably because those are things the mighty intellects in the CIA truly enjoy, but even those, with their ferocious philippics against malevolent Moscow in The New York Times and Washington Post, even those go down eventually to ignominious defeat. Truth will out.

Like it did in Afghanistan where, for 20 years our military men assured us victory was just around the corner and the established press harrumphed at any peacenik outraged by the slaughter. Then, practically overnight, the whole house of cards collapsed. Even those of us who had predicted a Taliban victory were stunned at the speed with which the U.S. puppet regime folded. It was a disgrace for the Empire. Not unlike the imperial misadventure in Iraq, but somehow worse. It brought all too forcibly to mind those U.S. military helicopters fleeing from Saigon rooftops so many decades ago…

For the past two and a half years, we Americans have been deafened by the clang of a stupendous propaganda war waged against Moscow and on behalf of Kiev and supposedly the west in our mainstream news outlets. We read early on that Russia would soon run out of missiles. It didn’t. Embarrassed silence greeted this uncomfortable fact. Even worse for our press and elite political fabricators, it turned out Russia BRISTLES with missiles. Little said about that in our corporate media. We also read that the desperate Russian military cannibalized washing machines and dishwashers to produce weapons, a lie that I’ve never seen retracted.

Also, those fiendish northern Slavs were accused of every conceivable atrocity against the Ukrainian population, and when later it emerged that the Russian military actually avoids targeting civilians with a care utterly absent in, say, the U.S. assault on Iraq or the Israeli one on Gaza, there were no apologies, no retractions, no expressions of contrition. Nope. The press just moved on to the next tall tale. My guess is that when this whole sorry proxy war ends with Ukraine’s defeat, the propaganda chickens will NOT come home to roost, no, they’ll flap their wings to the next nest of lies. Located where? Farther over the horizon. In China, of course.

For those who dread these frenzies of press prevarication, the news that Washington may allocate $1.6 billion for anti-Chinese propaganda cannot be good. According to a Responsible Statecraft article September 11 by Marcus Stanley, the House passed the “Countering the PRC Malign Influence Fund” on September 9. This money is “about twice, for example, the annual expenditure of CNN,” and it goes to the state department and the infamously, covertly CIA-associated USAID over the next five years. The Global Engagement Center and USAID will lead on spending these monies, making “grants to foreign media and civil society organizations.” The bill, “HR 1157 would supercharge these programs.”

Because the bill doesn’t require transparency to foreign citizens for this U.S. financing, “it’s possible that the program could in some cases be used to subsidize covert anti-Chinese messaging…Such anti-Chinese messaging could cover a wide range of bread-and-butter political issues in foreign countries.” In other words, the U.S. government is poised to launch a MASSIVE black propaganda campaign. Foreigners exposed to its efforts can expect epics of Chinese depravity that make J.D. “One Whopper After Another” Vance’s phony cat-eating Haitian fantasy in Ohio look like child’s play. Who knows what the state department and CIA chefs of hogwash will serve up, but you can be sure it will explode your tastebuds. And for the constipated American legacy purveyors of CIA poppycock, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, it’ll doubtless barrel through them like magnesium citrate.

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Militarism Abuse Disorder: A Very American Malaise

My name is Frida and my community is military dependent. (I feel, by the way, like I’m introducing myself at a very strange AA-like meeting with lousy coffee.) As with people who have substance abuse disorders, I’m part of a very large club. After all, there are weapons manufacturers and subcontractors in just about every congressional district in the country, so that members of Congress will never forget whom they are really working for: the military-industrial complex.

Using the vernacular of the day, perhaps it’s particularly on target to say that our whole country suffers from Militarism Abuse Disorder or (all too appropriately) MAD.

I must confess that I don’t like to admit to my military dependency. Who does? In my case, it’s a tough one for a few reasons, the biggest being that I’m an avowed pacifist who believes that war is a crime against humanity, a failure of the imagination, and never (no, not ever) necessary. Along with the rest of my family of five, I live below the taxable income level. That way, we don’t pay into a system that funds war preparations and war-making. We have to be a little creative to make our money stretch further and we don’t eat out or go to the movies every week. But we don’t ever feel deprived as a result. In essence, I’ve traded career success and workplace achievement for a slightly clearer conscience and time — time to work to end militarism and break our collective addiction!

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation estimates that, in 2023, the United States of America spent $142 billion buying weapons systems and another $122 billion on the research and development of future weaponry and other militarized equipment. And keep in mind that those big numbers represent only a small fraction of any Pentagon budget, the latest of which the Pentagon’s proposing to be $849.8 billion for 2025 — and that’s just one year (and not all of what passes for “national defense” spending either). A recent analysis by the Costs of War Project at Brown University calculated that, since September 11, 2001, the United States has used an estimated $8 trillion-plus just for its post-9/11 wars. Talk about addiction! It makes me pretty MAD, if I’m being honest with you!

It would be nice to ignore such monstrous numbers and the even bigger implications they suggest, to unfocus my eyes slightly as I regularly drive by the fenced facilities, manicured office parks, and noisy, bustling shipyards that make up the mega-billion-dollar-a-year industry right in my own neighborhood that’s preparing for… well, yes… the end of the world. Instead, I’m trying to be clear-eyed and aware. I’m checking my personal life all the time for compromise or conciliation with militarism: Am I being brainwashed when I find myself cheering for the fighters in that blockbuster movie we splurged on? Am I doing enough to push for a ceasefire in Gaza? Am I showing up with young people in my community who are backing higher salaries for teachers and no more police in schools? And of course, I keep asking myself: How are my daily consumer decisions lining up with my lofty politics?

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Man Spots Secret US Military Spacecraft With Amateur Telescope

Just six weeks after spotting a secret Chinese spaceplane, an amateur astronomer in Austria is back at it again.

In an interview with Space.com, sky watcher Felix Schöfbänker described how he came to capture imagery of Pentagon craft that nobody knows much about.

Using a 14-inch Dobsonian telescope that’s optimized to track satellites, the Austrian astrophotographer cross-referenced the images he captured with specs from various spy satellites launched by the Pentagon.

While most of what he’s spotted recently have been known crafts deployed by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), including the Boeing-built Future Image Architecture (FIA)-Radar satellites and some Keyhole (KH)-11 orbiters, one stood out to Schöfbänker as nothing he’s seen before.

“In July, I managed to get a look at a satellite called ‘USA 290,’ which is suspected of possibly being another KH-11,” he told Space.com. “But my image shows a different kind of design, which doesn’t look like a typical KH-11.”

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Witnesses backed by military, foreign $$ hype war with Iran

At a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on Thursday, witnesses proposed confronting Iran directly by deploying more military capabilities to the Middle East and the authorization of the use of force.

Yet, they conveniently neglected to mention that their employers — which included one Pentagon contractor and several think tanks funded by weapons manufacturers — stand to rake in profits from selling Congress on a military-first approach to Iran.

One of the witnesses of the hearing — billed as “Israel and the Middle East at a Crossroads: How Tehran’s Terror Campaigns Threatens the U.S. and our Allies” — was Kirsten Fontenrose. Fontenrose, a former Trump administration official, testified that the U.S. should pass an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), an open-ended congressional resolution that would authorize the president to engage in military action against Iran.

“The U.S. should make it clear to the leadership of Iran’s proxy, drone and missile programs that new capabilities now permit the U.S. and partners to dismantle their facilities and chains of command with low to no risk of negative secondary effects,” she said. “Though ‘AUMF’ is a four letter word in Congress, an Authorized Use of Military Force could convey this quickly and clearly.”

Fontenrose is the President of Red Six Solutions, a red team defense consulting company and Pentagon contractor that prepares clients for threats against unmanned aerial systems. Its website boasts that its “pilot services include UAS operations, training, airspace coordination, event planning, and data generation with all types of UAS to include swarm, large-scale and turbine aircraft.”

According to one of Red Six’s partners, the company has explicitly prepared clients to combat threats from Iran.

Fontenrose is also a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council. In a financial conflict of interest document submitted to the subcommittee, Fontenrose disclosed a grant from Norway to the Atlantic Council. Yet, she did not mention the think tank’s funding from Gulf countries, despite being required to list all foreign government contributions related to the hearing’s content. Through embassies and state-owned companies, the UAE and Saudi Arabia (both have had an adversarial relations with Iran) contributed over $3 million and $300,000 respectively to the Atlantic Council over the past two years based on a review of annual reports.

Elliott Abrams, who was convicted of lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra affair, is back on Capitol Hill testifying on — of all things — Iran. During the hearing, Abrams testified that “we have too often been guided by fear of Iran, and have restrained the ability of both our own CENTCOM forces and of our ally Israel in responding to Iranian attacks. It’s past time to put those fears behind us.”

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How EA-18G Growler’s Next Generation Jammer Actually Works And The Future Of Offensive Electronic Warfare

Electronic warfare (EW) has taken on new prominence as the threat from near-peer adversaries has ballooned in recent. Who can best dominate the radio frequency spectrum and take the electronic fight directly to the enemy will have a massive advantage in tomorrow battles.

To find out more about the state of play in offensive EW, we sat down with Chuck Angus, director of business development in Naval Power at Raytheon. He oversees the company’s cutting-edge offensive electronic warfare (EW) portfolio. Angus talked with The War Zone about the latest in offensive EW, his company’s new AN/ALQ-249(V)1 Next Generation Jammer-Mid Band (NGJ-MB) electronic warfare pods (currently installed on EA-18G Growlers aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln) and the applicability of such systems on sixth-generation fighters and loyal wingman drones. This conversation, which took place on the sidelines of the Air & Space Forces Air, Space & Cyber conference in National Harbor, Maryland, has been slightly edited for clarity.

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Company Behind Walkie-Talkie Devices Transformed into Bombs Also Supplies the U.S. Military

One day after pagers detonated across Lebanon, reportedly killing twelve people, including at least two children and four healthcare workers, a second wave of explosions has been reported across the country. Today’s detonations were reportedly through the manipulation of walkie-talkies made by ICOM, a Japanese firm whose American branch also serves as a significant supplier to the U.S. military. The combined confirmed death toll has already reached 26, and roughly 3,000 people have been reported injured.

The Wednesday explosions are primarily linked to the ICOM IC-V82, an electronic receiver with both military and civilian uses.

ICOM, based in Osaka, Japan, has a global footprint. U.S. government disclosures show that the company’s American affiliate has received at least $8.2 million in contracts with the U.S. federal government since 2008.

This includes an “urgent order” contract with the U.S. General Services Administration which was updated twelve days ago, a spot alongside Motorola Solutions in a potentially $495 million contract selling “land mobile radio supplies” to the U.S. Army in June 2018, and subcontracts through both the weapons giant Lockheed Martin and the controversial defense contractor Atlantic Diving Supply (ADS).

The series of explosions in Lebanon have raised concerns about the future of war that includes infiltration of supply chains and limitless exploits through electronically connected devices.

The attacks will likely fuel increased scrutiny over military and civilian supply chain security, which has long been a potential vulnerability.

The Pentagon and ICOM were contacted for comment but were not immediately available to respond. If a statement is provided, this post will be updated.

In addition to its sales to the U.S. military, ICOM America is also a significant contractor with the U.S. Coast Guard, including through a $2.2 million sub-award under General Dynamics in 2015. ICOM also sold its radios to the civilian Federal Aviation Administration as recently as October.

Other governments worldwide purchase ICOM equipment. United Kingdom records show that the British government purchased radio communication devices from the firm last year.

The exploding walkie-talkies were first reported by several Lebanese outlets, NBC News, and the Associated Press. The AP reported that its journalists heard the exploding walkie-talkies at a funeral today for four people killed by pagers yesterday. Other outlets noted that devices detonated in the hands of individuals who were not yet named.

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Selling War: How Raytheon and Boeing Fund the Push for NATO’s Nuclear Expansion

To “counter Russia’s nuclear blackmail,” the Atlantic Council confidently asserted, “NATO must adapt its nuclear sharing program.” This includes moving B-61 atomic bombs to Eastern Europe and building a network of medium-range missile bases across the continent. The think tank praised Washington’s recent decision to send Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles to Germany as a “good start” but insisted that it “does not impose a high enough price” on Russia.

What the Atlantic Council does not divulge at any time is that not only would this drastically increase the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear war, but that the weapons they specifically recommend come directly from manufacturers that fund them in the first place.

The B-61 bombs are assembled by Boeing, who, according to its most recent financial reports, gave tens of thousands of dollars to the organization. And the Tomahawk and SM-6 are produced by Raytheon, who recently supplied the Atlantic Council with a six-figure sum.

Thus, their recommendations not only put the world at risk but also directly benefit their funders.

Unfortunately, this gigantic conflict of interest that affects us all is par for the course among foreign policy think tanks. A MintPress News investigation into the funding sources of U.S. foreign policy think tanks has found that they are sponsored to the tune of millions of dollars every year by weapons contractors. Arms manufacturing companies donated at least $7.8 million last year to the top fifty U.S. think tanks, who, in turn, pump out reports demanding more war and higher military spending, which significantly increase their sponsors’ profits. The only losers in this closed, circular system are the American public, saddled with higher taxes, and the tens of millions of people around the world who are victims of the U.S. war machine.

The think tanks receiving the most tainted cash were, in order, the Atlantic Council, CSIS, CNAS, the Hudson Institute, and the Council on Foreign Relations, while the weapons manufacturers most active on K-Street were Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics.

These think tanks directly affect conflicts around the world. CSIS, for example, are among the loudest advocates for arming Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel, even as the latter carries out a genocide in Palestine. A recent report lays out a shopping list of U.S. weapons that would help the Israeli military, including Excalibur artillery projectiles, JDAM bomb guidance systems, and Javelin missiles. Those weapons are manufactured by Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin, respectively, all of whom are among CSIS’ top funders.

U.S. arms are being used daily to carry out illegal and deadly attacks against civilian populations in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, making arms manufacturers directly complicit in war crimes.

One example of this is the recent Israeli bombing of the Al Mawasi humanitarian zone in Gaza. Israel dropped three one-ton MK-84 bombs on the camp, killing at least 19 people. Dozens more are still missing.

According to the UN, MK-84 bomb blasts rupture lungs, tear limbs and heads from bodies, and burst sinus cavities up to hundreds of meters away.

The MK-84 bombs were produced in the U.S. by General Dynamics and sent to Israel with Washington’s blessing. General Dynamics has made huge profits from the slaughter; the D.C.-based arms manufacturer’s stock price has jumped by 42% since October 7.

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“Overthrowing the Constitution”: All Sides Are Waging War on Our Freedoms

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”Abraham Lincoln

It is both apt and ironic that the anniversary of 9/11, which paved the way for the government to overthrow the Constitution, occurs the week before the anniversary of the day the U.S. Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787.

All sides are still waging war on our constitutional freedoms, and “we the people” remain the biggest losers.

This year’s presidential election is no exception.

As Bruce Fein, the former associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, warns in a recent article in the Baltimore Sun, “In November, the American people will have a choice between Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance. But they will not have a choice between an Empire and a Republic.”

In other words, the candidates on this year’s ballot do not represent a substantive choice between freedom and tyranny so much as they constitute a cosmetic choice: the packaging may vary widely, but the contents remain the same.

No matter who wins, the bureaucratic minions of the Security/Military Industrial Complex and its Police State/Deep State partners will retain their stranglehold on power.

Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris have the greatest of track records when it comes to actually respecting the rights enshrined in the Constitution, despite the rhetoric being trotted out by both sides lately regarding their so-called devotion to the rule of law.

Indeed, Trump has repeatedly called for parts of the Constitution to be terminated, while both Harris and Trump seem to view the First Amendment’s assurance of the right to free speech, political expression and protest as dangerous when used to challenge the government’s power.

This flies in the face of everything America’s founders fought to safeguard.

Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.

In the 23 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.

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World War III Watch: Russia Threatens to Wipe Kiev Off the Map If Biden and NATO Send Ukraine Long Range Missiles to Fire Deep Inside Russia

Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Joe Biden’s handlers are working diligently to escalate the War in Ukraine and initiate World War III before the November presidential election.

The globalist elites want to approve Western made high precision long range missiles in attacks inside Russia.

Vladimir Putin pointed out that it will take Western intelligence to operate these weapons. The US will not only be providing these long range missiles to fire deep inside Russia but Western intelligence will operate the weapons for Ukraine using Western satellite systems.

Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday that the NATO approval will change the essence of the conflict. Putin also warned that Kiev would be destroyed.

Vladimir Putin: The key is that only NATO servicemen can enter flight assignments into these missile systems. Ukrainian servicemen cannot do this. And so this is not about allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not. It’s about deciding whether NATO countries are directly involved in the military conflict or not. If this decision is made it will mean nothing other than the direct participation of NATO countries, the United States, European countries, in the war in Ukraine. This is their direct participation and this already significantly changes the very essence and the very nature of the conflict… This would mean that NATO countires, the United States are at war with Russia.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. urged Joe Biden and his handlers to “Stop It!”

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DEADLY mRNA clot shots revealed to be a MILITARY PROJECT developed by NIH, not Moderna and Pfizer, as we were all led to believe

Did you know that military contractors created the experimental gene therapy injections that trick human cells into producing billions of toxic spike prions in the blood? Did you know that NIH owns 50 percent of the patents for the mRNA vaccines that Moderna and Pfizer pushed out on the populace? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is blowing the whistle on the whole operation, and should Trump win the presidency this fall, look for the crooks and criminals responsible for this plandemic tragedy to serve hard time in federal prison for it. In fact, Pfizer and Moderna were “paid to put their stamps on those vaccines as if they came from the pharmaceutical industry,” according to RFK Jr., because it was a military project from the very beginning.

Why would the military be involved in developing heart-crippling biological weapons of mass destruction that were distributed and injected into 270 million Americans?

There is a long history of the Communist Chinese Party (CCP) employing their People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to create biowarfare weapons, and now it appears that they partnered with National Institutes of Health (NIH) to use gain-of-function research to create Covid-19, create deadly vaccines to “prevent” it and its spread. Then, the CCP colluded with NIH and pretended that the pharmaceutical industry created the jabs to “save” everyone, even though the spike protein injections are military-grade biological weapons of mass destruction, designed to kill humans and were created for that reason by the military.

Never forget the United States used small pox virus as a biological weapon to wipe out the indigenous Native Americans, so if you’re thinking this coverage of mRNA jabs as biological weapons used by the U.S. military and Big Pharma against Americans is too far-fetched, think again.

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