At Home: Serve and Protect -
Wilmington, NC Police Chief Donny Williams has requested a Pave Hawk HH-60G helicopter, a modified version of the Army Black Hawk helicopter, from the U.S. Air Force. The U.S. Department of Defense permits the transfer of excess supplies and equipment to state, county and local law enforcement agencies across the country. Any property obtained must be used for law enforcement purposes and by trained officers only. The helicopters are typically used for crimes in progress, supporting ground units, searching for lost people, tactical support, vehicle pursuit, surveillance, and photographic missions. From Wilmington’s Port City Daily
Black Hawk helicopters? Tactical support? Army surplus to be used for “law enforcement purposes”? Is there still any pretext that the police are not an occupying army?
Abroad: The Warfare State
“The war in Vietnam is but a
symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore
this sobering reality… we will find ourselves organizing “clergy and laymen
concerned” committees [like the one against the war in Vietnam] for the next
generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala — Guatemala and Peru. They
will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique
and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and
attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound
change in American life and policy.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
President Biden’s budget: $1.6 trillion discretionary spending request includes $886 billion for the Pentagon and military. This means that more than half of the discretionary spending will be for war, with half of that going directly to Pentagon contractors. Spending on nuclear weapons (not included in the Pentagon’s budget) and Congressional add-ons could push total spending for national “defense” to as much as $950 billion or more for FY 2024. This would be the highest US military budget since World War II, far higher than at the peaks of the Korean or Vietnam Wars.
If we add in the money earmarked for heavily militarized homeland security programs, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) the total comes to nearly 2/3rds of the discretionary spending. After all that, only one in three federal discretionary dollars under the Biden budget would be available for human needs and community programs like affordable housing programs, public education, and public health.
Dr. King’s admonition was right on target, except for one not so minor detail that he could not foresee. The Masters of War and their political henchmen have found a way to minimize the marches and rallies at home against our wars. They have organized their efforts so that there are few, if any, body bags containing young Americans being unloaded at military bases this time.
Proxy wars are so much easier to "justify" to those of us on the "homefront".Our wars are fought by others, mostly from the Global South. Even when American forces are directly involved, they are either paid mercenaries from corporate outfits like BlackRock or poor “volunteers”, who join the military with the hope of moving up from the bottom of the economic ladder.
50 years ago, as the war in Vietnam was ending with a US military defeat, those of us (and there were a lot of us) who had helped build an antiwar movement understood that the basis of US foreign policy was the maintenance and extension of its economic control in much of the world, its Empire. Nothing has changed in the interim to convince me that US imperialism is not the main danger to the people of the world, and that it is incumbent on those of us who reside in the belly of the beast to rebuild and strengthen the movement to end US imperialism.
The crises we face from the danger of escalation in the Ukraine, or perhaps in the Pacific with the Chinese over Taiwan, into a nuclear confrontation, to climate change, to another pandemic (or the revival of the current one - in either case we are totally unprepared), to runaway inequality, along with a whole lot of others, are all interrelated and reinforcing.
These are the times that try our souls; the sunshine
Who blew up Nord Stream?
Well, it appears that a few mainstream media folks and their friends are taking notice of Seymour Hersh’s postings, if only to try of refute them. The latest comes from Politico. To save you from reading their “analysis” (aka BS), I can give you their conclusion: “There are lots of theories. They’re all full of holes.” Well some perhaps more than others.
When you are trying to solve a mystery, there are a few main threads to follow. They are the motive, the means and the opportunity. And one needs to look for clues in what the suspects say and do. Of the four “theories” that Politico analyzes, none provide much in terms of means or opportunity and at least one doesn’t provide any motive.
That is except one, Hersh’s analysis. It provides us with motive, with means and with opportunity. On top of that he reminds us that the US has carried out similar actions in the past. And, here is the crowning point, President Biden as much as stated that we would take action to prevent Nord Stream II from coming on line.
Short of an outright confession, how much more proof do
we need?
No comments:
Post a Comment