Tag: military industrial complex

All Things Bugs: Bill Gates, U.S. Military Among Investors in GMO Insect Protein for Humans

While regulators in non-U.S. countries, including Singapore, have issued approvals for specific insect-based foods, in the U.S., the regulatory landscape is murkier — there is no legal approval process or clear-cut prohibition of insects for human consumption.

As a result, insect-containing foods have reached U.S. consumers, even though one of the few existing U.S. laws that address insects in the food supply refers to them as “filth” and a form of “adulteration.”

Crickets and grasshoppers reach U.S. consumers in a variety of forms, from protein bars to protein shakes. They’re also found on restaurant menus and are promoted as pet food and animal feed ingredients.

With few U.S. regulatory barriers to contend with, investors like Bill Gates and Big Food giants such as Tyson Foods have also begun investing in “alternative protein” startups — despite mainstream media “fact-checks” claiming Gates doesn’t support the consumption of insects.

Internist Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, told The Defender lax U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations — under which many insect-containing foods can be classified as “Generally Regarded as Safe” (GRAS) — “means they don’t require testing” and enable the FDA to “look the other way.”

“How long will it take before we learn whether these foods are safe? It could take generations,” Nass said.

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U.S. Poured Billions of Military Aid Into Lebanon. Now Israel Threatens to Invade.

Attacks between Israel and Hezbollah, the militia and political party based just across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, are fueling fears that a wider regional conflict may erupt any day.

Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Shia group loosely allied with Hamas, has been in a low-level war with Israel since the conflict in Gaza began last October. Hezbollah, which is believed to have an arsenal of more than 150,000 rockets and missiles, has repeatedly emphasized that attacks will continue as long as the war persists.

Over the weekend, a rocket attack that the U.S. and Israel said originated in Lebanon killed at least 12 civilians in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights. The Israeli foreign minister said that the attack “crossed all red lines,” and said “the moment of all-out war against Hezbollah and Lebanon” is approaching. Hezbollah denied responsibility for the strike.

On Monday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken cautioned Israeli President Isaac Herzog about ramping up its war with Hezbollah in response on a call, according to State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.

But the conflict has been escalating for weeks. Israel has increased airstrikes aimed at the group. Current and former Israeli officials have also spoken publicly about shifting their attention from Hamas to the more powerful Hezbollah.

After Israeli officials warned of the possibility of launching a war that would send Lebanon “back to the Stone Age,” the Biden administration intensified diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions and forestall a conflict that U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said could have “terrible consequences for the Middle East.”

The low-level war has created a tinderbox that could explode into a regional conflict involving Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Yemen and, to an even greater extent than now, the United States.

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Birth Defects in US Military is Congressionally Directed Medical Research

I became aware of the US Military concern over Uranium from exploded so-called “Depleted Uranium” shells and tank armour decades ago.

My friend was exposed in Kosovo and Gaza while working for the UN investigating War Crimes and Human Trafficking.

I told people that we can expect Cancer Clusters and Birth Defects as a result of Jets with Uranium Stabilizers hitting the Twin Towers of New York and anywhere else where the radioactive dust is spread.

I was interested in a recent post by Mathew Crawford where he recounted a conversation with a recently married young soldier concerned about having children in a world like the one that we live in.1

Mathew said:

For any readers who are still unaware, the DMED does NOT contain data representing any form of injury or illness among babies born to military personnel. Why not? Because babies aren’t soldiers (true). The DMED is intended to track the health of soldiers. And while we might be interested in the health of the children born to soldiers, we would have to locate that data elsewhere.

I am surprised that Mathew did not refer the young soldier to the extensive Birth Defects Registry set up for descendants of US Military personnel as Congressionally Directed Medical Medical Research.2

For descendants, baseline data may be collected at birth or after enrollment in the HMRP. For parents who are not active-duty service members or veterans, baseline data may be collected when they enter the program or when they (if women) become pregnant.

Looking back in time.

Study designs that have particular relevance for the HMRP include perinatal and birth cohorts such as the National Collaborative Perinatal Project conducted by NIH between 1959–1974, which obtained information on pre- and postnatal child health for 58,000 pregnancies in the United States

They have looked at Uranium, Burn Pits, Hexavalent Chromium and Sarin.

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US delivers over 20,000 ‘dumb bombs’ to Israel since 7 Oct

The US has sent tens of thousands of bombs to Israel since the start of its genocide in Gaza, the New York Times (NYT) reported on 25 July, citing data compiled this week by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. 

The data shows that Washington has sent over 20,000 unguided bombs, around 2,600 guided bombs, and 3,000 precision missiles. 

Unguided bombs, also known as “dumb bombs,” are typically less precise and kill larger numbers of civilians, especially in densely populated areas like Gaza. 

Aircraft, air defense systems, and ammunition have also been shipped to Israel since the start of the war in Gaza. 

Many of these shipments have been classified or kept under the table. What had been delivered by March this year already constitutes “an enormous number and variety of weapons,” according to an analysis by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 

The report came as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on a visit to Washington, where he met with Joe Biden and his vice president on 25 July and gave a speech in front of the US Congress a day earlier. 

It also coincided with a report by Politico, which said, “Israel is privately ramping up pressure on the Biden administration and lawmakers on Capitol Hill to greenlight weapons it says it needs to protect itself from an increasingly aggressive Iran and its proxies.” 

Netanyahu’s delegation is circulating a list of weapons systems to US lawmakers that it wants to be delivered faster, according to an informed source. The source added that Israeli representatives gave the list to members of Congress after Netanyahu’s speech on 24 July. 

Israel “needs the weapons to bolster its stockpiles,” the source said. “The fact that Israel is pushing for the weapons now indicates that it is attempting to solidify the transfers and bolster its stockpiles before the US election in November,” the Politico report adds. 

According to the source, the weapons on the Israeli list being sent around differ from those held up by Biden’s government in May over “concerns” about the situation in Rafah, which Israel invaded that month in defiance of months of international warnings. 

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Boeing, Money Printing, & The Military-Industrial Complex

Boeing’s commercial jets struggle, but its military machines thrive, all fueled by endless fiat money…

Not-so-mysteriously, none of the problems now associated with Boeing passenger planes seem to be affecting the weapons of annihilation they produce for the Military-Industrial Complex’s borderless global war machine, which is fueled by infinite fiat money.

Myriad problems with Boeing passenger jets have put the company into the news just about every day for months, but the company makes much more than just planes for commercial passenger airlines. Boeing is also a major aerospace contractor that produces fighter jets, attack helicopters, predator drones, missiles, and even the president’s airplane, Air Force One. 

To be fair, Boeing’s record as of late beyond commercial jets is far from perfect — its Starliner, a crewed craft designed to bring astronauts to the ISS, was plagued with issues on the way to the space station that are now being investigated by its astronauts. And Boeing’s main rival in the space industry, SpaceX, has had its own problems with similar craft.

But when was the last time you heard about an Apache helicopter breaking down on its way to deliver a payload of highly-combustible “democracy” to a country unfortunate enough to be on the ever-expanding list of nation-states roped into unnecessary wars waged by the US or one of its global proxies?

Somehow, the systemic quality control issues at Boeing appear much more likely to get a handful of hapless air travelers injured than to cause problems with a military operation that has the “righteous” cause of protecting the petrodollar hegemon. The printing of fiat money fuels both phenomena in different ways.

Boeing’s corner-cutting and quality control issues are just one symptom of living in a fiat money system. As the dollar is debased, the incentive and ability to create solid, long-lasting products is degraded in kind. Manufacturing costs rocket upward as supplies, materials, logistics, storage, maintenance, insurance, wage demands, and every other production factor all increase, leading to a degradation in quality across the process as the irresistible temptation intensifies to prioritize minimizing costs over producing reliable, well-made, quality goods such as safe airplanes. 

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US approves potential military sale worth almost $2.8bn to Saudi Arabia

The United States has approved a potential major sale of $2.8 billion worth of military equipment to Saudi Arabia, as Washington continues to serve as one of the key arms suppliers to the kingdom.

In a statement, the US State Department’s Defence Security Cooperation Agency announced yesterday the major potential sale that “will improve the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s capability to deter current and future threats by providing sustainment and training support of the Royal Saudi Air Force’s existing platforms and aircraft fleets.”

Stating that the sale would also support the US’s national security objectives and foreign policy goals in the region, the agency highlighted that the military equipment in question covers system logistics and sustainment support. It added that it has already delivered the required certification notifying US Congress of the potential sale, worth $2.8 billion.

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Ukraine’s Acoustic Drone Detection Network Eyed By U.S. As Low-Cost Air Defense Option

The U.S. should integrate a low-cost acoustic network to detect aerial threats developed by Ukraine into its own air defense systems, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command said Wednesday morning. Consisting of thousands of acoustic sensors across Ukraine, this system helps detect and track incoming Russian kamikaze drones, alert traditional air defenses in advance, and also dispatch ad hoc drone hunting teams to shoot them down.

“Their use of acoustic sensors has proliferated across the country to the point now where they’re almost positively identifying drones in the distance because of this acoustic and the fireteams attached to that acoustic, low-cost capability that they’ve developed and proliferated,” Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Gainey said during a discussion at the Hudson Institute. As a result, Ukraine has a “low-cost defeat” system. The U.S., he added, should “find a way” of integrating “that type of low-cost capability into our system. We should be able to find ways to work together and augment some of our capability with some of that lower-cost capability.”

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DOD Funds Research on Fake Meat Rations to Improve Soldiers’ ‘Military Readiness’

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has partnered with the BioIndustrial Manufacturing and Design Ecosystem (BioMADE) to produce lab-grown foods intended to feed the nation’s military. The public-private partnership, which is largely DOD funded, released a project call in May 2024 looking for proposals in a number of focus areas, including “sustainable food production.”1

Under this category, the Sustainable Logistics for Advanced Manufacturing (SLAM) project includes a call for innovations in food production that “could include, but are not limited to, production of nutrient-dense military rations via fermentation processes, utilizing one carbon molecule (C1) feedstocks for food production, and novel cell culture methods suitable for the production of cultivated meat/protein.”2

Ultimately, the partnership sets up military members as lab rats who will be fed synthetically grown, ultraprocessed junk foods in lieu of a healthy, whole-food-based diet.

DOD Plans to Feed Soldiers Fake Meat

The biotech industry is rolling out a “tsunami of fake foods”3 that are being positioned as environmentally friendly and health-promoting alternatives to real foods like meat and dairy. Lab-grown meat may one day represent 80% or more of the “meat” consumed worldwide,4 a dramatic departure from the way humans have eaten for centuries.

The DOD describes BioMADE as “a nonprofit created by the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC).” In 2020, it awarded the outfit $87 million in funding for a new Manufacturing Innovation Institute (MII):5

“Through a close relationship with DOD and the Military Services, BioMADE will work to establish long-term and dependable bioindustrial manufacturing capabilities for a wide array of products.

Anticipated bioindustrial manufacturing applications include the following products: chemicals, solvents, detergents, reagents, plastics, electronic films, fabrics, polymers, agricultural products (e.g., feedstock), crop protection solutions, food additives, fragrances, and flavors.”

However, the DOD also funds innovation grants, each of which has a $2-million limit up to a total budget of $500 million — funding that earmarked at least in part for BioMADE’s development of lab-grown fake meat products.6 In fact, in March 2023, BioMADE announced that its federal funds budget ceiling had increased from an initial $87.5 million to over $500 million.7

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) condemned the idea. Ethan Lane, NCBA vice president of government affairs, said in a press release:8

“It is outrageous that the Department of Defense is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to feed our heroes like lab rats … American troops deserve to be served that same wholesome, natural meat and not ultraprocessed, lab-grown protein that is cooked up in a chemical-filled bioreactor.

This misguided research project is a giant slap in the face to everyone that has served our country. Our veterans and active-duty troops deserve so much better than this.”

Former U.S. Special Forces member Martin Bailey further told the Daily Mail:9

“I think the government should focus on letting the military protect our nation from enemies, foreign and domestic, sometimes, but you know, that’s what the military is there for. They’re not there to be experimental lab rats … why doesn’t the government feed experimental meat product that, you don’t even know what it is, why don’t they feed that to, let’s say, homeless people?

Well, there’s a reason they don’t, because that would be completely unethical. So why is it ethical to stick it down the throat of our military service members?”

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The EU’s Planned Transformation Into A Military Union Is A Federalist Power Play

Newly reappointed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen just announced that “it is now time to build a veritable union of defense”, which Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said represents a marked change in priorities that’ll intersect with NATO’s interests. The EU’s planned transformation into a military union is being sold to the public as a response to the protracted Ukrainian Conflict, but it’s really a federalist power play that’s designed to forever entrench German hegemony over the bloc.

That country has sought to federalize the EU for years already, and despite some notable successes in getting member states to surrender significant parts of their sovereignty to Brussels, it’s thus far failed to yield the expected results. This plan might also become more difficult to implement as two new groups have emerged in the European Parliament since the latest elections: the AfD-led “Europe of Sovereign Nations” and the Hungarian-led “Patriots for Europe”, both of which are fiercely against federalization.

The only possible way to push through this agenda in the face of such growing opposition is to double down on anti-Russian fearmongering in the hopes that member states’ ruling liberal–globalist elites will agree to federalize under the pretext of defending against a supposedly impending invasion. It’s not directly stated, but the subtext is that NATO’s American leader couldn’t be relied upon to defend its allies in that event despite repeatedly reaffirming its commitment to Article 5’s mutual defense obligations.

The abovementioned fears can’t be voiced aloud since the prior expression of such concerns was earlier smeared by the Mainstream Media as so-called “Russian propaganda”, but they might become more strongly implied as the US’ upcoming presidential elections approach. Trump’s reported plan for NATO, which readers can learn more about in detail here, calls for coercing members into raising their defense spending and assuming more responsibility for their immediate security interests vis-à-vis Russia.

The preceding hyperlinked analysis argues that it’s already being partially implemented by the Biden Administration as proven by Germany’s “Fortress Europe” concept, which amounts to it becoming the continent’s military powerhouse with full US support so as to facilitate America’s “Pivot (back) to Asia”. Late January’s “military Schengen”, last month’s “EU defense line”, and this month’s agreement to assume partial responsibility for Poland’s border security are the most significant developments thus far.

The next step is to consolidate Germany’s military-strategic gains over the past half-year through von der Leyen’s call for a military union, which would see German-controlled Brussels organizing the bloc’s military-industrial needs across its 27 members, thus moving them closer to de facto federalization. Upon surrendering sovereignty over military policymaking, which some of them have proudly protected up until now, every other aspect of federalization would quickly fall into place shortly afterwards.

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“Vast DEI Bureaucracy” Hurting U.S. Armed Forces; ASU Study Finds

A new Arizona State University study suggests that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts in the United States military are ineffective.

The study done by the university’s Center for American Institutions argued that there is a emphasis on training new soldiers about social issues like “unconscious bias” and “intersectionality” in a way the center says runs contrary to typical American ideals. The study examined DEI plan’s in different sector of the military, including DEI office staffing and education at academies like West Point.

“The massive DEI bureaucracy, its training and its pseudo-scientific assessments are at best distractions that absorb valuable time and resources,” the executive summary states. “At worst they communicate the opposite of the military ethos: e.g. that individual demographic differences come before team and mission.”

Donald Critchlow, director of the center, wrote in the introduction it was focused on looking at the influence of Critical Race Theory in the United States Armed Forces training.

“The Commission on Civic Education in the Military began as a project to review civic education in the military. Our research team did not expect to find Critical Race Theory so embedded and pervasive. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are found throughout the U.S. Armed Forces and our service academies,” Critchlow wrote. “This year long study documents just how pervasive these training programs are in our Armed Forces and Service Academies and that DEI extends well beyond just formal training programs in the military and service academies.”

“The Founders of our nation understood and feared a politicized military. History had shown them that a politicized army easily became the tool of tyranny. The Armed Forces of the United States has proudly upheld this long tradition of separating mission from politics,” he continued.

In terms of recommendations, the study suggests that DEI offices be completely scrapped, but said it may be politically unlikely for the time being.

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