In an extremely weird article titled “Russia is backing a viral video company aimed at American millennials“, CNN reports that Facebook has suspended popular dissident media outlet In The Now and its allied pages for failing to publicly “disclose” its financial ties to a subsidiary of RT. According to CNN, such disclosures are not and have never been an actual part of Facebook’s official policy, but Facebook has made the exceptional precondition of public disclosure of financial ties in order for In The Now to return to its platform.
I say the article is extremely weird for a number of reasons. Firstly, according to In The Now CEO Anissa Naouai, CNN knew that Facebook was going to be suspending the pages of her company Maffick Media before she did, suggesting a creepy degree of coordination between the two massive outlets to silence an alternative media platform. Secondly, the article reports that CNN found out about Maffick’s financial ties thanks to a tip-off from the German Marshall Fund, a narrative control firm which receives funding from the US government. In The Now‘s Rania Khalek has described this tactic as “a case where the US government has found a legal loophole to suppress speech, in this case speech that is critical of destructive US government policies around the world.”
Thirdly, and in my opinion weirdest of all, the article goes to great lengths to make the fact that a dissident media outlet supports the same foreign policy positions as Russia look like something strange and nefarious, instead of the normal and obvious thing that it is.
https://twitter.com/AnissaNow/status/1096681459887296517
The article repeatedly mentions the fact that all the people working for In The Now “claim” to be editorially independent as opposed to being told what to report by Kremlin officials, a notion which Khalek says was met with extreme skepticism when she was interviewed for the piece by CNN. As though the possibility of an American opposing US warmongering and the political establishment which drives it without being ordered to by a rubles-dispensing FSB officer was a completely alien idea to them.
Check out the following excerpt, for example of this bizarre attitude:
“Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow for information defense at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told CNN that while Russian state-backed outlets claim to be editorially independent, ‘they routinely boost Kremlin narratives, especially those which portray the West negatively.’
“Nimmo said the tone of Maffick’s pages is ‘broadly anti-US and anti-corporate. That’s strikingly similar to RT’s output. Maffick may technically be independent, but their tone certainly matches the broader Kremlin family.’”
This is a truly obnoxious mind virus we’re seeing the imperial narrative controllers pushing more and more aggressively into mainstream consciousness today: that anyone who opposes the beltway consensus on western interventionism is not simply an individual with a conscience who is thinking critically for themselves, but is actually “boosting the Kremlin narrative”. If you say it in an assertive and authoritative tone like Mr Nimmo does, it can sound like a perfectly reasonable position if you don’t think about it too hard. If you really look at it directly, though, what these manipulators are actually saying is “Russia opposes western interventionism, therefore anyone who opposes western interventionism is basically Russian.”
Which is of course a total non-argument. You don’t get to just say “Russia bad” for two years to get everyone riled up into a state of xenophobic hysteria and then say “That’s Russian!” at anything you don’t like. That’s not a thing. More to the point, though, there is no causal relationship between the fact that Russia opposes western interventionism and the fact that many westerners do.
As we discussed recently, there will necessarily be inadvertent agreement between Russia and westerners who oppose western interventionism, because Russia, like so many other sovereign nations, opposes western interventionism. If you discover that an American who opposes US warmongering and establishment politics is saying the same things as RT, that doesn’t mean you’ve discovered a shocking conspiracy between western dissidents and the Russian government, it means people who oppose the same things oppose the same things.
Something appears fishy with conservative columnist running smears on behalf of a "Russian troll hunter" about an open pro-Bernie subreddit before the man even announces he's running.
Someone REALLY wants Trump to get a second term! (Thread) https://t.co/MFo6N7zuWe
— HootHootBerns (@HootHootBerns) February 15, 2019
We’re seeing this absurd gibberish spouted over and over again by the mainstream media now. The other day the delightful pro-Sanders subreddit WayOfTheBern was smeared as a Russian operation by the Washington Times, not because the Washington Times had any evidence anywhere supporting that claim, but because the subreddit’s members are hostile to Democratic presidential hopefuls other than Sanders, and because its posts “consistently support positions that would be amenable to the Kremlin.” All this means is that the subreddit is full of people who support Bernie Sanders and oppose US government malfeasance, yet an entire article was published in a mainstream outlet treating this as something dangerous and suspicious.
If you really listen to what the CNNs and Ben Nimmos and Washington Timeses are actually trying to tell you, what they’re saying is that it’s not okay for anyone to oppose any part of the unipolar world order or the establishment which runs it. Never ever, under any circumstances. Don’t work for a media outlet that’s funded by the Russian government even though no mainstream outlets will ever platform you. Don’t even subscribe to an anti-establishment subreddit. Those things are all Russian. Listen to Big Brother instead. Big Brother will protect you from their filthy Russian lies.
“If CNN would like to hire me to present facts against destructive US wars and corporate ownership of our political system, I’ll gladly accept,” Khalek told me when asked for comment. “But the corporate media doesn’t allow antiwar voices a platform. In The Now does. I’ve worked for dozens of different outlets, from Vice to Al Jazeera to RT, and my message has always been the same: leftist, antiwar and pro justice and equality. People should be asking why US mainstream media outlets that claim to be free and independent refuse to air critical and adversarial voices like mine.”
Why indeed? Actually, if CNN is so worried about Russian media influence in America, all they’d have to do is put on a few shows featuring leftist, antiwar and pro-justice voices and that would be the end of it. They could easily out-spend RT by a massive margin, buy up all the talent like Khalek, Lee Camp and Chris Hedges, put on a sleek, high-budget show and steal RT America’s audience, killing it dead and drawing all anti-establishment energy to their material.
But they don’t. They don’t, and they never will. Because Russian media influence is not their actual target. Their actual target is leftist, antiwar and anti-establishment voices. That’s what they’re really trying to eliminate.
I did an interview with RT’s Going Underground yesterday on UK foreign policy since 1945, to broadcast Monday. Why? I’ve waited since 1989 when I was at Chatham House to be interviewed by BBC; the call has never come. So I gave my first interview to RT. (PS. I don’t love Putin).
— Mark Curtis (@markcurtis30) December 7, 2018
So yes, Moscow will of course elevate some western voices who oppose the power establishment that is trying to undermine and subvert Russia. Those voices will not require any instruction to speak out against that establishment, since that’s what they’d be doing anyway and they’re just grateful to finally have a platform upon which to speak. And it is good that they’re getting a platform to speak. If western power structures have a problem with it, they should stop universally refusing to platform anyone who opposes the status quo that is destroying nations abroad and squeezing the life out of citizens at home.
It doesn’t take any amount of sympathy for Russia to see that the unipolar empire is toxic for humanity, and most westerners who oppose that toxicity have no particular feelings about Russia any more than they have about Turkey or the Philippines. Sometimes Russia will come in and give them a platform in the void that has been left by the mainstream outlets which are doing everything they can to silence them. So what? The alternative is all dissident voices being silenced. The fact that Russia prevents a few of them from being silenced is not the problem. The problem is that they are being silenced at all.
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31 responses to “Yes, Moscow Boosts Western Anti-Imperialist Voices. So What?”
I hope Caitlin is thinking about a strategy for continuing her blog when the NSA are trying to suppress her too. This site appears to be hosted at a2hosting Inc. in the USA, which must cooperate with USG agencies, and will “kill” any site they are told to. Russian hosting is almost as good and will not obey NSA. Or the Deep Web could be the answer, but a trial would be necessary.
Not so simple. While Russian hosting is fine technically, using it would instantly turn Caitlin into a “Russian agent” or “bot”. Even if you go with a company that has a Russian investor somewhere in the mix, this makes you a Russian agent. As for the dark web, she would lose A LOT of readers because most people have no idea what that is or how to get there. It’s dark and obscure. Iceland is generally good, I believe, for this sort of thing. They have their free speech principals and don’t obey the dictates of Big Brother (i believe). Switzerland is also still viable.
Anyone that thinks Russian hosting makes you a Russian agent isn’t going to read Caitlin anyway. Using Tor is a bit of a pain, but if the alternative is to fall silent, then I’d use Tor. https://deepdarkwebhost.com offers a hosting plan which costs $10/month (paid in BitCoin) with a free 30-day trial. As to who obeys the dictates of Big Brother, there is a grouping of those that do, but I haven’t heard of a grouping that absolutely doesn’t – more info welcome. China requires a Citizen’s ID number.
There were also complaints directed toward the direction of the Conspiracy Network News regarding the arrest of Roger Stone, and CNN receiving a copy of the (sealed) indictment before Stone’s attorney did. Coincidence? I don’t know.
There are many politicians in the United States who spout anti-American and anti-corporate points of view. Should they be given the same scrutiny as RT?
As for the Atlantic Council: There’s absolutely nothing positive to say about them, so I’ll just say that they have as much credibility with me as the FBI. Which is, zero.
Excellently written. Some of those are points that I was thinking of formulating a year or so ago somewhere else, but I never got around to it, and I’m very happy to see them enunciated here by Caitlin Johnstone far more succinctly and forcefully than I could have hoped to do it.
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It is remarkable that Western supremacists never realise how their own argument could be used against any criticism of the Russian and Chinese leaderships’ policies. No matter how justified such criticism is, it is almost always platformed, spread and maximally boosted by the media of their Western geostrategic adversaries for their own, very transparent reasons. Putin’s recent neoliberal raising of the retirement age over the average life expectancy did not suddenly become a good thing just because the BBC and some Western-sponsored NGOs used it to attack him.
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The benefits of pluralism, checks and balances and competition are things that the West supposedly appreciates – yet it is completely blind to their implications and applications in international relations. As Johnstone tweeted earlier, multipolarity is a benefit in the same way as the absence of monopolies is. In the media sphere, this means that when one state deplatforms an argument or a position, another one can give it a platform.
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At the same time, the pluralism of multiple ‘poles’ is not enough. People shouldn’t be limited to choosing which of several mega-bosses to work for; they should also be able to speak entirely freely on their own on all matters, without any fear of losing their platform as a consequence. The possibility of a viewpoint’s being given a platform should not depend on whether a powerful entity – be it a state or a corporation – finds it advantageous. The control of each state and each private owner, internally, over media content must be minimised.
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In the absence of an overarching consensus and framework ensuring internal pluralism within each zone of control, it is a matter of time before each of the multiple ‘poles’ moves to eliminate the voices platformed by the competing polls from its own zone of control. This ‘protectionist’ approach is what The Great Firewall of China is about, and there are some signs that influential segments of the Russian leadership are looking at the Chinese example and advocating the implementation of the same approach in Russia. Finally, this is what the West itself is rapidly moving towards at the moment with its own turn towards online corporate-enforced censorship, coupled with the hysteria about the contamination of its pristine market of ideas by impure thoughts emanating from non-US-aligned countries. If this tendency towards global segmentation is able to proceed, the end result will be the silencing of people like Khalek and Johnstone in the Western conglomerate, as well as of all criticism of the ruling establishments in the non-Western-aligned countries. In this way, people in each zone will be equally disinformed and unfree.
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It is not enough to have multiple power centres: there must be pluralism in each of them. For the same reason, it is not enough to have multiple plutocrats or corporations controlling the media, turning journalists into their mouthpieces and imposing their own voices over those of all other citizens. Just like the economy in general, the media must be wrested from the control of the rich and powerful and be made to serve the interests of the people – the actual people, which entails due respect to the variation between the individuals that it is composed of. In other words, true pluralism is only possible under (true) socialism.
FF, “…they should also be able to speak entirely freely on their own on all matters, without any fear of losing their platform as a consequence.”
That goes against everything the left believes in i.e. individuals doing their own thinking and expressing their own “unapproved” thoughts. Thus the left’s relentless attack on free speech.
Why are “zones” necessary? How about we just let each individual decide for themselves how to live their own lives? Why not a true “multipolarity” with power resting with each individual? You cannot get any more multi-polar than that. No multiple control zones required.
No, that isn’t what “the left” believes in. It’s what well-off liberoid establishment authoritarians draped in rainbow colors who benefit mightily from the status quo believe in. Please make the distinction. The real left is in disarray because of these imposters.
Pat, please see my response to Ish. Thank you.
Just for the record, I opposed “western interventions” before this modern Russian state even existed. Thus, there is no cause and effect link. I opposed these militaristic, imperialistic interventions when Russia as a part of the Soviet Union. I continued to oppose them when Moscow was ruled by Washington under Yeltsin, and I continue to oppose them to this day. Likewise, I opposed the Clintons from the first time they stuck their noses outside of Arkansas, so don’t blame Russia for that either.
For more than two decades now, I have been saying that we are inexorably marching backward to 1984. However, as an individual, I like the English language and refuse to learn Newspeak. I’m also a fan of virtually all of the lyrics of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine,’ am completely anti-war and violence, except in self-defense and am not taken in by any of the ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ nonsense.
I’ve never found RT to be anti-American, though I have found it to be anti imperialism and a few other ‘antis.’ Sadly, a maneuver by the FCC, has made it impossible for RT to be broadcast into my area any longer, so all I can get is bits and pieces.
I do not believe one iota of the Russiagate trash and know how fraudulent have been the Indictments brought by Mueller.
However, I will say this, since the U.S. meddles on the elections of countries all over the world, creating and standing behind Russiagate makes our country #1 in the world with respect to hypocrisy. So, even if Russiagate were for real, we would be saying, “Do as I say, not as I do.
Furthermore, even if Russia did meddle, I wouldn’t blame Putin one bit. After all, Hillary Clinton did threaten to go to war with Russia, if Putin did not accede to her demand regarding a no-fly zone over Syria (where we don’t actually belong). Given such a threat from a proven warmonger, why wouldn’t he want to meddle in our elections? And shouldn’t we be thankful.? The alternative might well have us currently in a nuclear holocaust with Russia.
Imagine there’s no countries. Its easy if you try.
No thank you. France for the French with FRENCH culture. Germany for Germans with GERMAN culture. And so on. Nations with the people in them fully in control of their own destiny, not ruled from outside by Trotskyite international Marxists. The best possible government is that closest to the people.
Patrick, great take!
It’s not just Russia. The rest of the world, even our allies, even our Anglo allies, are getting fed up with the U. S. and its war on the world. The following dialog comes from a new Netflix series called “Pine Gap” about the joint U. S.-Australian listening post located in the Australian outback. This show is produced and written in Australia. In this last episode of the season, the Australians have just shut down Pine Gap temporarily because they do not concur in the U. S. use of the site to coordinate an attack on the man-made islands in the South China Sea. The respective heads of the Australian and American contingents leave the room in an attempt to resolve the dispute:
American: We can take out their silly man-made islands in ten minutes.
Australian: And then they’re going to sink half a dozen ships. Then what?
American: They can’t match us militarily.
Australian: You can’t actually win, Nathan. If you couldn’t win in Afghanistan or Iraq. You couldn’t win in Korea or Vietnam. How in the [ ] are you going to beat China?
American:It’s not about winning. It’s about maintaining dominance, which, I might add, is as much in Australia’s interest as ours.
Australian: Trying to keep your foot on China’s throat is not in Australia’s best interest.
American: Look, the stability of all of Asia has been guaranteed by our leadership. That’s how it’s worked since 1945. We keep everybody in check. And for the long term stability of the whole region, that’s the dominance we have to maintain.
Australian: You just have to get out of the 20th century. I love America, but you are no longer the greatest country in the world. You’re just not. With the strength China has today, American can never have stability AND dominance in Asia again. It’s one or the other. It doesn’t mean you’ll lose anything, but things change. Age gracefully. Be adult. Just don’t start a [ ] war with China. Give them some room.
That was a very weird article from CNN but it confirms that Facebook is now censoring any news or opinions that disagee with the dominant US Gov’t mythology. Has Facebook been hiring from the New York Times?
It is interesting that Facebook seems to be lying about who own it. Probably just a failure to update the information but it does not reflect well on their “transparency”.
Presumably any country with the equivalent of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) is justified in restricting Facebook’s activities as it is now seems to be functioning as an agent of a foreign (USA) power.
To be fair, even us right of center anti-imperialist, anti-war, anti-establishment types are targeted by the MSM. You lefties are “Russians” and we on the nonconformist right are “Nazis” or “white supremacist” even when not white or supremacist.
While Caitlin is correct her article is just another example of leftist hypocrisy i.e. it is wrong when leftists are silenced for dissent but it is perfectly ok for leftists to silence – and often violently so – those who dissent from leftist dogma. It is wrong for leftists to be smeared as something they are not just because they happen to hold views that overlap some others’ less-than perfect views but it is perfectly ok for the left to smear anyone who disagrees with them just because of an overlap of views. A White guy who does not believe in Affirmative Action? Why, the KKK is against AA ergo any White who does not agree with AA is also a member of the KKK.
The left complaining about having their voices being silenced is like a thief complaining about someone stealing from him something he stole from someone else.
Two minutes, eighteen seconds in:
Ish, what does that vid have to do with my post about leftist hypocrisy?
This is a combo reply/new format test that, if successful, will I hope make the reason why I posted the video clear enough. If the text format is unsuccessful, my reply is going to look a bit strange, to say the least, and I will then just state my point.
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While Caitlin is correct her article is just another example of
leftisthypocrisy i.e. it is wrong whenleftistsfanatics are silenced for dissent but it is perfectly ok forleftistsfanatics to silence – and often violently so – those who dissent fromleftisttheir dogma. It is wrong forleftistspeople to be smeared as something they are not just because they happen to hold views that overlap some others’ less-than perfect views but it is perfectly ok for theleftfanatics to smear anyone who disagrees with them just because of an overlap of views. A White guy who does not believe in Affirmative Action? Why, the KKK is against AA ergo any White who does not agree with AA is also a member of the KKK...
The leftFanatics complaining about having their voices being silenced is like a thief complaining about someone stealing from him something he stole from someone else.Ish, your post is another example of leftist hypocrisy. The left never separates the fanatics from the regular right wingers (or anyone else they disagree with) but now they want to try to separate the “fanatics” on the left so as to not make the left look so bad. But if there is a difference between the fanatics on the left and the regular leftists why has no one from the regular left demanded the fanatics on the left stop their nonsense? Anti-fa could be stopped if obuma or any other heavy weight from the left publicly shamed them and told them in no uncertain terms to stop their violence and hatred. But not a peep from any of them so until that happens the left must be held to the same standards they place on everyone else.
Left and right have no meaning. They’re like the words terrorist or terrorism. They’re practical definition is “something we don’t ever do” or “a way I’ll never/always be” or “a philosophy I’ll never/always have”.
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Consider the acronym SIDS. It’s shorthand for sudden infant death syndrome. A child dies in a crib. The coroner tells the grieving parents “you child died OF SIDS”. The parents say “what is SIDS?” The doctor says “sudden infant death syndrome”. The parents say “what’s that?” The doctor says “it’s when an infant suddenly dies for no apparent reason”. The parents say “so you don’t really know why my baby died”. The doctor says “that’s right”. The parents say “so why don’t you just say that you don’t know why my baby died?” The doctor doesn’t reply.
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When one uses these undefined words to put human beings into a category, one thinks that a convenient shortcut has been made which reduces the necessity of having to detail just exactly WHAT behavior one is referring to at any particular moment. What my buddy is telling me when he says so-and-so is a “leftist”, a “rightist”, a Nazi, or a Zionist, may very well NOT be what I, I, I or, for that matter, anyone else, would regard as correctly “labeled”.
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For example, I might actually already know the person that my buddy is referring to and I might reply “I don’t think that person is a leftist, etc. What makes you say that?” And then a discussion would ensue in which the both of us would debate our seemingly contradictory positions — a discussion which would detail what BEHAVIOR that person exhibited which reinforced our argument that that person was or was not a leftist, etc. The likely result of our debate would be that the person in question behaved in ways which ended up being either impossible to label or a MIXTURE of various behaviors that we might say “well, that’s left” and “that’s right” and “that’s what a bloody Nazi, communist, fascist, neo-con, etc. would do or say”.
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Again, my point is that attaching a label to a person not only accomplishes nothing; if I did not know that person to whom my buddy had attached that label – a “stranger”, I might have tended to avoid talking to that person; think badly of that person, etc. So attaching labels is COUNTERPRODUCTIVE because it puts human beings into “enemy camps” fighting each other, precisely what the Elite want in their bewildered herd.
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Tucker Carlson is a fairly famous human being. I do not categorize/label him in any way. “He” is his BEHAVIOR – what he says and what he does. He says many things I agree with and many things I disagree with. The same goes for Agent Orange and many talking heads and candidates for, and holders of, public office. What is most important is to find “common ground” among all people. If we cannot do that, humanity will cease to exist in nuclear war.
Yours is a voice of sanity. Thank you for commenting, Ishkabibble.
Ish, more leftist hypocrisy. Its ok for leftists to label everyone they disagree with as racists, White supremacists, nazis, sexists, homophobes etc but how dare anyone put labels on the lefties even when the lefties self identify as lefties. Doublespeak does not work on me.
I get labeled a “Trumptard” because I fail to criticize him constantly, even when he does things I as a lifelong leftist agree with. But both sides in this incipient civil war are guilty of lumping together everyone they consider an opponent and sticking the same label on them all. Right now, though, I agree, the left really stands out for the hysteria that’s infected them since “Never Trump” got trounced. Deep down I think they realize it’s their own effing fault, and that just makes it worse.
In other news, the blonde Nikki Haley quit today, citing that the last two months of having applied for one job have been “grueling” and that she had to resign for the sake of her family.
Odds are the blonde Nikki Haley won’t find out next how that grueling work that was compared to working in an Amazon warehouse as a day job with a waitress shift added to be able to pay the bills. I suspect that is a lot more grueling than a day where she had to get her resume ready and spent a whole two hours on it and thus couldn’t get her hair done.
Not only have they forgotten how they’ve made the rest of us live, but they’ve never come close to experiencing it.
ben nimmo = Integrity Initiative
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/12/the-strange-mind-of-christopher-nigel-donnelly.html
Exactly, well said!!
Absolutely fantastic article, Caitlin and Tim. You really are trying to change things for the better and deserve much more remuneration for your effort that MadCow and all the others. Some day that may actually happen and it might be much sooner than you think possible.
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Dear Caitlin and Tim, I don’t normally say that an article is a “must read”, but the following one at “CounterPunch” is a must read, if there ever was one. (I don’t dare include a link because in the past sometimes including a link somehow prevents the comment from appearing, and I do not want that to happen today.)
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Time for Peace in Afghanistan and an End to the Lies
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It is a must-read because, among other great sentences and words, it contains the following words in an “order” that just might change the minds of people whose minds have up until this moment been unchangeable – people who make their living in the MIC either by direct employment or in a spin-off.
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“Even a losing war makes money
The total financial costs to the US in direct spending on the war in Afghanistan are approaching one trillion dollars. Peak spending of the war reached more than $100 billion a year and currently runs between $40 and $50 billion a year. Total costs of all the wars the US has been sending its young men and women to kill and be killed in since 2001 are said to be $6 trillion, and this is just for the wars, that $6 trillion figure does not include the regular or usual costs of running the military, which is now over $600 billion a year, or the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on veterans, the intelligence agencies, nuclear weapons, the State Department or Homeland Security. This staggering amount may perhaps best be understood by knowing that in interest and debt payments alone the US has spent more than $700 billion on the wars in 17 years (regarding overall national security spending this year the US will spend hundreds of billions of dollars, as it does each year, on debt payments due to past spending on wars, the military, intelligence, veterans, etc).
If you compare Washington, DC and its suburbs to how they psychically existed prior to 9/11, you will most assuredly note the physical impact the wars and the benefiting military industrial complex has had on the city and its suburbs. The Pentagon is not confined to that five sided building alongside Interstate 395, but rather stretches for miles along the Potomac River; from the Key Bridge in Rosslyn, south through Arlington, and extending past Ronald Reagan National Airport into Alexandria, in office building after office building, are tens and tens of thousands of men and women working for war. Likewise in the suburbs, particularly west along Interstate 66 or north along the Baltimore-Washington Highway, hundreds of buildings exist to serve the war machine. It’s not just the defense industry or the contracting firms, but also the banks, hotels, restaurants, apartment complexes, high rise condominiums and near-million dollar McMansions that have risen to serve and support the Pentagon and its wars.
Within these buildings are hundreds of thousands of men and women, the majority not wearing a uniform but working for a contracting firm or defense corporation, who often make salaries in the high five or six figures. When I did such work in 2008, as a single 35 year old who’s seemingly only qualification was that I had been a captain in the Marines, my salary and benefits came close to $120,000 (when I joined the State Department in 2009 I didn’t take a pay cut), while an entry level position with that same DOD contracting company, the requirements of which were to simply possess a secret level security clearance and to know Microsoft Office, was more than $80,000. As you can see it is very easy to slip into those golden handcuffs…
What this calculates to, and remember aside from national and homeland security the federal government has decreased non-defense discretionary spending in real terms since 2001, is that the Washington, DC metro area is the wealthiest part of the country, and has been for a number of years, beginning after these unending wars and their mass profits began. While you can argue correlation is not causation, the symbiotic nature cannot be denied between the unending nature of the wars and the massive increase in wealth for Washington, DC and its people and organs. Observe the loud protestation by the US Senate towards the idea of the US wars in Afghanistan and Syria ending to get a glimpse of the fear that exists in Washington and within the war machine towards just the idea or concept of peace. If you want to understand why these wars continue and why these lies persist, then you must understand the money that sustains and underlies both the war and its lies.”
Now that my first comment has apparently been successfully posted, I will provide a link to the article and its first paragraph which states the credentials of the article’s author, Matthew Hoh.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/15/time-for-peace-in-afghanistan-and-an-end-to-the-lies/
“It has been more than nine years since I resigned in protest over the escalation of the Afghan War from my position as a Political Officer with the US State Department in Afghanistan. It had been my third time to war, along with several years of working in positions effecting war policy in Washington, DC with the Department of Defense (DOD) and the State Department. My resignation in 2009 was not taken lightly by my superiors and my reasons for opposing President Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan found support amongst both military officers and civilian officials at senior levels in Kabul and Washington.”
We’ve always been at war with Eurasia. At what time is our daily Fifteen Minutes of Hate? Under His Eye!