Tag: perpetual war

Cops in America Have So Much Militarized Gear, They are Sending It to Ukraine

There is no question that police in the land of the free have become the Standing Army that the founders warned us about. Armed to the teeth with tactical gear fit for the battlefield in Afghanistan, American cops are prepared for war domestically. In fact, they are over prepared, and they have so much military gear that they are now sending their surplus to be used in Ukraine to battle the Russians.

“Many of our Department of Defense (DOD) and State Department contacts have asked the law enforcement community for equipment to help the Ukrainian people push back against this violence and protect their citizens,” Sarasota County Sheriff Kurt Hoffman said on Twitter — noting that his department is sending hundreds of ballistics helmets to Ukraine.

Hoffman is one of many sheriffs and law enforcement personnel sending their equipment to Ukraine to be used in war against Russia.

As VICE News reports, the Colorado Department of Public Safety said it was donating more than 80 sets of body armor and 750 helmets, and that it was accepting donations from other law enforcement agencies in the state.

“This is equipment that we are no longer able to use because it is beyond life cycle, or in some cases it may have been replaced or upgraded by some equipment that maybe better fits our needs or is safer,” Colorado DPS spokesperson Patricia Billinger told local station KARE9.

In true American political fashion, however, this move is not free from corrupt practices.

Though much of this equipment is at the end of its life cycle Hoffman said that the Pentagon is attempting to “supply more than 50,000 helmets and law enforcement supplies in the coming weeks” from a weapons manufacturer in his town — a claim the Pentagon denies.

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In Praise of ‘Whataboutism’

When war propaganda prevails regarding Ukraine or any other place where the hegemon is doing its dirty work, it is reasonable to ask probing questions. Why are the deaths of 14,000 people killed by Ukraine’s civil war swept under the rug? Why is it forbidden to ask about the U.S. destruction of Libya? But once having asked a good question, one will be told that raising the topic is proof of the whataboutism sin.

The word whataboutism is in the dictionary and is defined as, “the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse.” That meaning is accurate and also completely defensible.

The charge is meant to censor the speaker, excuse U.S. actions, and defend its human rights violations. The denials and apologies are exactly why whataboutism should be defended. It is terrible when lies and crimes are not countered with verifiable information exposing them.

The term has gained popularity in part because there is so much hypocrisy to point out and there are so many adherents to American exceptionalism who defend what they should condemn. When the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it would begin investigating “the Situation in Ukraine” corporate media and their political partners gloated and pointed fingers at Russia.

They didn’t point out that the U.S., like Russia, is not a signatory of the Treaty of Rome which brought the ICC into existence. Not only is the U.S. not a member state, but in 2002 Congress passed the American Service Members Protection Act , popularly known as the Hague Invasion Act. It gives the U.S. the right to extract any American held at the court in the Hague. The removal part isn’t even necessary because the act prohibits the extradition of Americans to the ICC.

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5 Stories Ignored by Mainstream Media While They Focus Solely on Ukraine

As we have been reporting for the last three weeks, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is horrific. Russian president Vladimir Putin is a thug who is committing war crimes and who is killing innocent Ukrainians while endangering the people of Russia — all the while threatening nuclear war. While this war is not near American soil, because of the United States’ involvement in NATO and its relationship with Ukraine, it most certainly affects all Americans.

US sanctions on Russia have helped to drive oil prices up nearly 50 percent since this conflict began, which is undoubtedly going to drive up the cost of literally everything else.

These things most assuredly affect the lives of millions of Americans and this war deserves coverage in the media. That being said, given the track record of US media, and their tendency to deceive the American public to get them to accept wars for profit, we shouldn’t be so quick to let down our guard and unquestioningly absorb the constant barrage of information coming from them.

If the mainstream media was so concerned about wars and illegal invasions why don’t they ever report on the genocide in Yemen which is being aided by the United States or any of the other places the US has invaded over the years? The corporate press is actively avoiding these conflicts while conveniently using the Ukraine crisis as a means of ignoring other very important stories that also affect your life.

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This is what liberal war fever looks like

In a private letter written in 1918, the recently deposed German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg admitted that in the run-up to the Great War, “there were special circumstances that militated in favor of war, including those in which Germany in 1870-71 entered the circle of great powers” and became “the object of vengeful envy on the part of the other Great Powers, largely though not entirely by her own fault.”

Yet Bethmann saw another crucial factor at work: that of public opinion. “How else,” he asked, “[to] explain the senseless and impassioned zeal which allowed countries like Italy, Rumania, and even America, not originally involved in the war, no rest until they too had immersed themselves in the bloodbath? Surely this is the immediate, tangible expression of a general disposition toward war in the world.”

The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig got a taste of the war fever gripping France in the spring of 1914 while sitting in a movie theater in Tours. As Nicholson Baker recounts in Human Smoke, his monumental pacifist history of the Second World War,

an image of Wilhelm II, then Emperor of Germany, came on screen for a moment. At once the theater was in an uproar.

The good natured people of Tours, who knew no more about the world and politics than what they had read in the newspapers, had gone mad for an instant…it had only been a second, but one that showed me how easily people anywhere could be aroused in a time of crisis, despite all attempts at understanding.

America shared in the “general disposition toward war” of which Bethmann wrote. On April 6, 1917, the House of Representatives voted 374 to 50 in favor of America’s entry into the war. One of the holdouts, the first woman elected to Congress, Jeanette Rankin from Montana, was castigated not only by her fellow suffragettes but by her hometown paper, which accused her of being a “dupe of the Kaiser.”

The similarities between then and now are hard to miss.

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Censored Reports from Donbass Make Clear Ukraine and Not Russia Started the War—Eight Years Ago

The U.S. media and Washington political establishment has been unified in condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and in lauding the Ukrainian resistance.

Censored reports from the Donbass in Eastern Ukraine, however, make clear that the war was started eight years ago by Ukraine–after its legitimate government was overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup (known as the Maidan revolution), and the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces voted to secede.

Patrick Lancaster is an American video-journalist and U.S. Navy veteran fluent in Russian who has reported from the Donbass since 2014.

His latest video posted on March 10 shows how people living on the edge of Donetsk, one kilometer from the Ukrainian position in Peski, have been subjected to constant shelling by the Ukrainian military over the last eight years and have had to survive living underground in bomb shelters.

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Below Their Lines: American Corporations Cancel Russia But Remain Silent On Uyghur Genocide

While major corporations responded to the invasion of Ukraine by changing or suspending their business operations in Russia, the six American corporate sponsors of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics remain silent on the Uyghur genocide.

Although Airbnb, Intel, Snickers (Mars Inc.), Visa, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble — the only six American companies to sponsor the 2022 Winter Olympics — adjusted their business operations following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, none of the companies have acknowledged the Uyghur genocide nor altered their business plans in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Recognition of the Uyghur genocide at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has risen with mounting evidence of the situation, and over 200 human rights organizations and eight governmental bodies, including Canada, the U.S., Holland, the U.K., Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Belgium and France, have declared that the PRC is guilty of committing crimes against humanity, genocide or both against ethnic Uyghurs and other minority groups.

Yet major American corporations remain silent on the issue, with some business leaders, such as Golden State Warriors owner Chamath Palihapitiya, having even voiced what former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom characterized as an “I could care less” attitude toward the CCP’s human rights abuses.

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