Tag: taxes

World War Grift – Who’s Driving the Global ‘Defense’ Racket

War is a bad thing. Most people will agree. Often a war is perpetrated for an ostensibly good cause. It is seen as an unfortunate side effect that regular people are killed, maimed, scarred and diminished – whilst the ‘baddies’ somehow remain at large. Well then, if war is bad, and often ineffective, why does it continue?

In this article we will delve into the private corporations who insidiously overlap with their governmental and media counterparts to promote, fund and facilitate endless conflicts. We will also assess the case for acts of war and explore the theory that war is often perpetrated for financial profit rather than any moral cause.

Cui Bono?

‘Cui Bono’ is a fancy Latin phrase, that you might hear from Sherlock Holmes during an investigation. It means, ‘Who benefits?’. It is often used in political discourse as a knife to cut through the tangled webs of intrigue and speculation around events and get to the heart of the matter. Here we are discussing a global business, arms manufacturing and sales. It is a worldwide industry and has myriad influences. When it is presented in sound-bites by the corporate-owned media, we are seeing a glimpse, only a small portion of the picture. It is usually designed to make the reader or viewer think a certain thing – as we will discuss later. Yet when we take a wide-lens view the picture becomes cloudy with many different angles. We ask cui bono? – who benefits from violent conflict, in particular those hot conflicts of today: Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Palestine, Saudi Arabia/Yemen and so on?

It is an easy implication to lay at the door of the arms industry. More violence is more profit. Even mere instability in a country can lead to a ramping up of arms purchases by the military of a state. The massive price tags for weapons, the long lead-time of research and development coupled with the bottomless pockets of government budgets make for a fertile landscape for exploitation. It is not only the private military corporations who benefit, but the politicians and nation states too. The politicians get huge kickbacks from lobbyists, too much money to maintain that moral compass they may have once had. They also have a useful ‘casus belli’ – a ‘case for war’ which is a sure fire vote winner. Remember that Margaret Thatcher was set to lose her seat as leader of the UK until a miraculous military victory over Argentina in 1982 galvanised massive public support and a massive electoral victory. War for votes is nothing new. Yet these days, selling war is an uphill battle. I believe, perhaps naively, that most people don’t like suffering and violence. The Anglophonic destruction of Iraq through two wars ended up an unpopular decision, similarly the US’ failed conquest in Vietnam is viewed regretfully in hindsight. So we are left pondering, why must suffering the curse of armed warfare continue?

Before we delve too deep into the long grass, let us set our sights on our targets. We know the names of countries, sometimes politicians, but who are the arms dealers, the manufacturers of death who lurk in the shadows and create shiny new weapons of mass destruction?

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Government-Funded Entities Build Network to Flag “Misinformation” In Private Messages

More reports are emerging about the various forms in which the Big Tech/government collusion is taking place in the US.

It’s not just directly pressuring, or “communicating with” – as current White House officials like to put it, social sites; reports are now emerging about companies getting hired to make massive databases of supposedly unlawful speech that are compiled thanks to users effectively spying and reporting on each other on messaging platforms like WhatsApp.

Former State Department official, now executive director of Foundation For Freedom Online, Mike Benz, calls this “a snitch network of citizen informants.” Information thus obtained is then analyzed using some form of AI, resulting in identification of “misinformation trends.”

One of these companies is Algorithmic Transparency Institute. The money comes from firms that receive government funds and congressionally chartered organizations.

The need to resort to “old school” citizen-informant methods arises from the nature of the platforms the government would like to spy on, and get content flagged and eventually censored. It’s the likes of WhatsApp and Telegram, where, due to the nature of (particularly encrypted) private messaging, the now established forms of “monitoring” places like Facebook or YouTube cannot be used.

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Scandalous Senate ‘Deal’ Allows 1.5 Million Illegals Per Year, Slides Up To $2.3B To NGOs Trafficking Them, And Gives $60B To Ukraine

While the House has gone full ‘Israel or Bust’, the Senate has come up with a $118 billion bipartisan agreement which would allow 1.5 million illegals to enter the US every year, allocates $2.3 billion towards NGOs and other organizations which traffic them, gives $14.1 billion in security assistance to Israel, and a whopping $60 billion in support to Ukraine.

The bill also locks in green card giveaways until 2030.

The agreement was reached by Sens. James Lankford (R-OK), whose own state legislature censured him last week for striking such a crappy border deal, along with Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ).

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California School Drops $250,000 On ‘Woke Kindergarten’ Program to “Disrupt Whiteness”, Students’ Grades Dip Even Further

According to The Daily Caller, a California school district spent $250,000 on a ‘Woke Kindergarten’ curriculum while the majority of its students failed grade-level math, reading, and writing.

Woke Kindergarten has been giving teachers at Glassbrook Elementary School in Hayward training sessions for two years and is funded through a federal program for assisting low-performing schools, according to the Chronicle. Test scores for students at the school have fallen under the program, which pushes anti-police, anti-capitalism and anti-Israel messages.

Zeus Leonardo, a professor of education at the University of California Berkeley, says Woke Kindergarten promotes abolitionist education.

Their chief aim is to make “politics part of the framework of teaching,” Leonardo told the Chronicle.

Some teachers questioned using the program because it is linked to insane left-wing politics and activism, the Chronicle reported.

One teacher, Tiger Craven-Neeley, said he supports talking about racism in the classroom but was confused about one of the objectives set by the training to “disrupt whiteness” in the school, according to the Chronicle. He also questioned a trainer who used the phrase “so-called United States.”

Questioning the idea of “disrupting whiteness” got Craven-Neeley temporarily banned from training sessions, he told the Chronicle.

“What does that mean?” Craven-Neeley told the Chronicle. “I just want to know, what does that mean for a third-grade classroom?”

A teacher who wished to remain anonymous in the program said there could be no divergence from what the program advocates. “It slowly became very apparent if you were a dissenting voice that it’s not what they wanted to hear.”

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Washington State Democrats: Using Ammo A ‘Privilege’ That Needs To Be Taxed

The first month of the Washington Legislature’s 2024 session is ending with a slew of Democrat-backed gun control proposals, including a new measure to tax people who have the “privilege” of using ammunition.

House Bill 2238, sponsored by Democratic state Reps. My-Linh Thai and Liz Berry, would create an 11 percent tax on the retail sale of ammunition across the state in addition to all existing federal, state, and local sale and use taxes, with the exception of sales to governments for the purposes of supplying law enforcement agencies.

Instead of recognizing the purchase of ammunition as an integral part of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, the language of the bill classifies it as a “privilege.”

“A use tax is levied on every person in this state for the privilege of using ammunition as a consumer at the rate of 11 percent of the selling price,” the bill reads.

The stated reason behind the proposal is to help reduce “gun violence,” or deaths involving guns—most of which are suicides.

“Gun violence remains a persistent health and safety threat for people across our state,” the bill’s authors wrote, admitting that nearly seven out of every 10 gun deaths in Washington are suicides..

“Data from the Washington office of firearm safety and violence prevention show that, in 2021, 69 percent of all firearm-related deaths were suicides,” they wrote.

Revenue from the proposed tax would go to funding suicide prevention programs, as well as programs aimed to reduce “firearm-related domestic violence.”

Ms. Berry, a gun control advocate who previously worked for former Rep. Gabby Giffords as her legislative director when the Democrat congresswoman was shot in the head in Tucson in 2011, also co-sponsored at least five other measures targeting guns.

Those proposals include House Bill 1902, which would apply requirements similar to those for a licensed concealed handgun carrier to all potential gun buyers in Washington. In addition to live-fire training, it would make fingerprinting a mandatory prerequisite to all Washington residents who wish to obtain a gun permit.

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NYC launches $53M program to hand out pre-paid credit cards to migrant families

Mayor Eric Adams’ administration will soon start handing out pre-paid credit cards to migrant families being put up in Big Apple hotels, The Post has learned.

The $53 million pilot program, run by the New Jersey company Mobility Capital Finance, will provide asylum seekers arriving at the Roosevelt Hotel with the city cash to help them buy food, according to city records.

It’ll start with a group of 500 migrant families in short-term hotel stays and will replace the current food service offered there, according to City Hall.

The cards can only be used at bodegas, grocery stores, supermarkets and convenience stores — and migrants must sign an affidavit swearing they will only spend the funds on food and baby supplies or they will be kicked out of the program.

The Immediate Response Card initiative appears akin to the state’s food stamp program, dubbed SNAP, which provides lower-income New Yorkers with a credit card to cover the cost of meals, and will provide funds based on the same scale.

The amount on each card will vary depending on the size of the family and whether any income is coming in, according to the details of the contract.  A family of four, for instance, could be provided nearly $1,000 each month, which comes out to $35 per day for food. Cards will get refilled every 28 days.

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Military May Get Its Own SpaceX Starship Rockets For Dangerous Missions

The Pentagon has approached SpaceX regarding the purchase of Starship space launch vehicles for sensitive, high-risk missions, the company has said. At present, the U.S. government relies on non-military contractors to launch payloads for various operations, including satellite launches, and does not have its own space launch vehicles — at least any that are disclosed — which it could deploy in a potential contingency scenario. SpaceX is already working with the Air Force and Space Force on the ‘Rocket Cargo’ program, which seeks to rapidly deliver cargo, and possible personnel, anywhere on Earth that can support a landing.

Aviation Week was the first to report on the DoD’s interest in Starship, following comments made by a SpaceX official at the Space Mobility Conference in Orlando, Florida on January 30.

SpaceX’s complete ‘Starship’ system, as The War Zone has highlighted in the past, comprises a super-heavy rocket booster and spacecraft. Starship — which will be capable of landing vertically — constitutes the largest, and most powerful, rocket ever flown, according to the company, and is reportedly capable of carrying up to 150 metric tons while being fully reusable. Eventually, SpaceX intends for its Starship system to carry crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars, but it is still in relatively early flight test development.

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He Was Arrested for Making a Joke on Facebook. A Jury Just Awarded Him $205,000 in Damages.

On a Friday in March 2020, a dozen or so sheriff’s deputies wearing bulletproof vests descended upon Waylon Bailey’s garage at his home in Forest Hill, Louisiana, with their guns drawn, ordered him onto his knees with his hands “on your fucking head,” and arrested him for a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The SWAT-style raid was provoked by a Facebook post in which Bailey had made a zombie-themed joke about COVID-19. Recognizing the harm inflicted by that flagrantly unconstitutional arrest, a federal jury last week awarded Bailey $205,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.

“I feel vindicated that the jury agreed that my post was satire and that no reasonable police officer should have arrested me for my speech,” Bailey said in a press release from the Institute for Justice, which helped represent him in his lawsuit against the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office and Detective Randell Iles, who led the investigation that tarred Bailey as a terrorist based on constitutionally protected speech. “This verdict is a clear signal that the government can’t just arrest someone because the officers didn’t like what they said.”

On March 20, 2020, four days after several California counties issued the nation’s first “stay-at-home” orders in response to an emerging pandemic, Bailey let off some steam with a Facebook post that alluded to the Brad Pitt movie World War Z. “RAPIDES PARISH SHERIFFS OFFICE HAVE ISSUED THE ORDER,” he wrote, that “IF DEPUTIES COME INTO CONTACT WITH ‘THE INFECTED,'” they should “SHOOT ON SIGHT.” He added: “Lord have mercy on us all. #Covid9teen #weneedyoubradpitt.”

The Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office snapped into action, assigning Iles to investigate what he perceived as “an attempt to get someone hurt.” According to a local press report, the authorities were alarmed by “a social media post that promoted false information related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.” In response, “detectives immediately initiated an investigation,” and as a result, Bailey, then 27, was “arrested for terrorism.”

Another news story reported that Bailey “was booked into the Rapides Parish Detention Center on one count of terrorizing.” William Earl Hilton, the sheriff at the time, explained why, saying he wanted to “impress upon everyone that we are all in this together, as well as remind everyone that communicating false information to alarm or cause other serious disruptions to the general public will not be tolerated.”

Bailey’s joke was deemed to pose such a grave and imminent threat that Iles did not bother to obtain an arrest warrant before nabbing him, just a few hours after Bailey’s facetious appeal to Brad Pitt. But in a probable cause affidavit that Iles completed after the arrest, the detective claimed that Bailey had violated a state law against “terrorizing,” defined as “the intentional communication of information that the commission of a crime of violence is imminent or in progress or that a circumstance dangerous to human life exists or is about to exist, with the intent of causing members of the general public to be in sustained fear for their safety; or causing evacuation of a building, a public structure, or a facility of transportation; or causing other serious disruption to the general public.”

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Fani Willis Axed Employee Who Blew Whistle on Misuse of Federal Funds

Fani Willis may have fired the employee who warned her about mishandling federal funds. But she didn’t deny her allegations.

Less than a year into her tenure as Fulton County district attorney, in 2021, Willis met with Amanda Timpson, an employee in the district attorney’s office responsible for giving nonviolent juvenile offenders “alternatives to the juvenile court system.” During their conversation, a recording of which was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, Timpson claimed to Willis that she had been demoted after attempting to stop a top Willis campaign aide from misusing federal grant money meant for a youth gang prevention initiative.

According to Timpson, the aide, Michael Cuffee, planned to use part of a $488,000 federal grant—earmarked for the creation of a Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention—to pay for “swag,” computers, and travel.

“He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, ‘We can’t do that,'” Timpson told Willis in a Nov. 19, 2021, meeting. “He told everybody … ‘We’re going to get MacBooks, we’re going to get swag, we’re going to use it for travel.’ I said, ‘You cannot do that, it’s a very, very specific grant.'”

“I respect that is your assessment,” Willis responded. “And I’m not saying that your assessment is wrong.”

Later in the conversation, Willis apologized to Timpson, and said Cuffee had “failed” her administration.

Less than two months later, Willis abruptly terminated Timpson and had her escorted out of her office by seven armed investigators, according to Timpson. When Timpson filed a whistleblower complaint the following year that alleged wrongful termination, Willis’s office issued a statement describing Timpson as a “holdover from the prior administration” who was terminated because of her “failure to meet the standards of the new administration.”

Timpson’s experience sheds further light on how Willis—who campaigned on the promise of restoring “integrity” to the district attorney’s office—does business. The Democrat has come under fire amid revelations that she tapped her lover, Nathan Wade, to handle the office’s racketeering case against former president Donald Trump. Willis is also alleged to have misappropriated taxpayer funds to facilitate her affair with Wade, a married man with scant prosecutorial experience.

To Timpson, these twin incidents demonstrate “a pattern” in Willis’s conduct.

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Pentagon To Pay For Soldiers To Manufacture Motherless And Fatherless Babies

The U.S. Department of Defense plans to revamp its assisted reproductive technologies (ART) policies to ensure service members’ taxpayer-funded benefits cover the creation of motherless and fatherless children via in vitro fertilization for single and same-sex soldiers.

The policy change stems from a lawsuit brought by an abortion and transgender activist group against both the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs over their requirements for ART like in vitro fertilization, egg and sperm retrieval, and egg and sperm cryopreservation.

DOD and VA rules previously limited morally and ethically prohibited the reproductive procedures funded by hardworking Americans’ dollars to service members and veterans who were married to someone of the opposite sex, could use their own gametes for any ART procedures, and had received an infertility diagnosis linked to injury, illness, or a service-connected disability.

When the National Organization for Women’s New York City Chapter (NOW-NYC), represented by Yale law students, filed a federal complaint over the “exclusionary coverage limitations” in August 2023, however, the Pentagon pivoted. NOW-NYC initially alleged the DOD and VA’s policies are “arbitrary,” unconstitutional, and violate the Affordable Care Act because they don’t force taxpayers to pay for overcoming natural biological limits for soldiers who are LGBT, unmarried, or want to buy sperm or eggs.

The DOD seemingly agreed with this characterization when it signaled to the court last week that, while it planned to keep the injury or illness infertility requirement, it would overhaul its TRICARE policies so soldiers no longer have to be married or of opposite sexes to get taxpayer-paid IVF and sperm and egg buying. The modifications are expected to be solidified in a memorandum by the end of February.

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