How much control of our society does the military-industrial-complex have?

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I happened to run across this headline today, so I did a Google search to get more information about the protest.
Nothing.
Same with Yahoo.
Washington Post? Silence.
Only Sputnik, the Russian news agency that we've accused of "sowing the seeds of radical discontent", was covering a peace march at the Pentagon.

Don't expect to read about it on your Facebook feed either. They've been doing the bidding of the NATO think tank Atlantic Council and the CIA to censor alternative media.

Most of you probably noticed how Trump weighed the life of a Saudi journalist against a $110 Billion arms deal, and found the arms deal to be more important.
But you probably missed what happened with India this week.

With India signing a pact with Russia to purchase the S-400 missile defence system, Washington has informally conveyed to Delhi that it could avoid sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) if India were to give an assurance that it would buy the F-16 fighter aircraft from the United States. Not keen on buying an aircraft already in service with Pakistan, India has refused to give any such assurance till date.

So buying arms from Russia is bad because Putin!
However, if you buy our weapons too, suddenly Russian badness can be overlooked because money.
I haven't found any American sources for this news, but there are plenty of Indian sources.

One last bit of today's news that is worth noting concerns the Syrian peace talks.

Chancellor Angela Merkel will attend the Istanbul summit on Syria that was earlier announced by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, a German government spokeswoman said on Friday.
...The spokeswoman said the focus of the discussions between her and the presidents of France, Russia and Turkey would be the situation in the enclave of Idlib and supporting the implementation of the Sochi agreement between Russia and Turkey.

Notice how the U.S. isn't mentioned in these peace talks. You probably never heard of the Sochi agreement.
That's because Sochi is in Russia. The U.S. was invited to attend these peace talks and refused in January and refused again in July.

"The United States will not be attending the Sochi Congress as Observer. We note that the Syrian Negotiations Committee has announced that it will not attend and respect that decision," spokeswoman Maria Olson told RIA Novosti.

It's almost like the U.S. is controlled by the military-industrial-complex and simply doesn't want peace.

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We don't do diplomacy anymore

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@gjohnsit @gjohnsit
I cross posted this story to Facebook. One of our followers left us this comment and the article linked below.

John Mason: You didn't hear about how this was a Russian plot? Well Bangladesh but the point is that the military industrial complex controls the narrative the media presents to the American public and any voice that opposes them will be silenced.

Did you happen to notice the absence of any of the so called progressive Democratic women running for office at this rally? Action speaks louder than vague campaign talking points and I have little faith anyone running will actually oppose the conservatives when they expand the military and defense spending.

https://www.cnn.com/.../womens-march-facebook.../index.html

Exclusive: Women's March target of elaborate Facebook scam run from Bangladesh
By Donie O'Sullivan, CNN Business
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/17/tech/womens-march-facebook-scam-banglades...

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

@dkmich

Cindy Sheehan
5 hrs
No, the fake news didn't cover WMOP yesterday, but guess who else didn't?
Democracy Now.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

dervish's picture

@dkmich I'm not sure why. She seems to buy into a lot of BS.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

Azazello's picture

Arizona Daily Star - Steller column: Don't use Tucson workers to justify Saudi slaughter

The stubborn defense of these commercial interests, of jobs in places like Tucson, leads eventually to the killing of civilians in Yemen, said William Hartung, director of the arms and security project at the Center for International Policy, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C.

Of those interests, Hartung said, “I think they are standing in the way of ending the war. President Trump is so intent on going ahead with the war for jobs and business reasons.”

Yet, as President Trump frequently points out, we have a strong economy now — an unemployment rate of 3.7 percent in September. Of all the periods in our country, now would be the best time to ignore worries about sustaining whatever jobs, probably very few, that are tied to killing the innocent.

I can’t speak for Raytheon or its employees, but I find it ridiculous to use them as an excuse to collaborate in potential war crimes, starvation, cholera and the Saudi state terrorism of repeatedly bombing Yemeni civilians, not to mention journalists. Tucson will do OK without that on our record, or our conscience.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

wendy davis's picture

i'd been sorta ready to put up a diary on the march, but given there are very few demonstrative tweets on either of the related hashtags...i wasn't sure i'd bother. hope it's okay to feature the main two, and i'd add this video monologue from kurt vonnegut's 'slaughterhouse five's protagonist billy pilgrim. vonnegut was a POW held underground during the allied fire-bombing of dresden in feb. 1945. the wiki has it that 3900 tons of explosives and incendiaries were dropped on 'the florence of the elbe' too "demoralize" the germans. anywhere from 200-600 thousand people were painfully murdered

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUhMzmeW3Qw]

sadly, a lot of the tweets are promoting parties and candidates...

maybe folks will check the hashtags later, see if anything more is there, add as they will.

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divineorder's picture

@wendy davis

.,...

...

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

divineorder's picture

@divineorder @divineorder

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News2Share was live — attending Women's March on the Pentagon at The Pentagon.
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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

snoopydawg's picture

@divineorder

America has been at war 222 out of 229 years since 1776.

Read a comment on Kassoggi's murder that asked why the US needs to be the world's policeman? We are not defending countries, we're the ones doing the robbing. How do people not know that? Then there's Obama getting that peace prize and then spending his entire tenure at war.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@divineorder I watched it during the inaugration. Lots of great energy that was going going to be co-opted. The speakers list contained leaders of unions and organizations that stabbed Bernie in the back. Kamala Harris was featured with Debbie Wasserman Schultz standing right next to her side. The follow on marches were even more openly-democrat oriented. The Tax Day event demanded Trump's tax returns and absolutely nothing from speakers, etc. about tax policy. (It is not surprising the gopers were able to get tax cuts for the rich.) Many of these rallies had bunches of anti-Russian banners of all sorts. I don't think these people realized they were protesting another people, culture, and nation in the same way right wingers have protested Isalm and Muslims.

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wendy davis's picture

@divineorder

organized it as such, and can't control what people tweet on the hashtags, but...there it is. i'm pretty sure though that it was first imagined as a response to boss bellicosity's plans for a massive military parade...but the generals said 'nope', cuz: readiness.

but this sure wasn't massive by any stretch of the imagination, at least as per the twit machine. but knowing that you might want to hear it, i grabbed you the tweet of her speech.

there was one new image of a dozen folks in connecticut, and this from nick brana and friends' 'peoples party'.

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@wendy davis Dresden, but they revised the number downwards. The German RW was trying to use up to a million casualties to score political points. The German gov. did a 4 year study and came up with a different number. Maybe it's all political now, everyone using their own numbers. I don't know....been reading up on WW2 and came across this a while ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26977893/ns/world_news-europe/t/report-dresden...

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lotlizard's picture

@Snode  
There’s really no basis for doing so except political expediency.

I’ve talked to Dresden residents about what their older “holocaust survivor” relatives have told them from first-hand experience.

A lot of people in former East Germany seriously question whether the current system — the Merkel government but also German mainstream media, political institutions in general, and even academia — truly stands for, and with them. To many it’s a system that is structurally unable to represent their interests because it is unwilling to give what they know and have lived through its proper due.

This kind of politically motivated historical revisionism illustrates one reason why. It is the behavior of an elite that still seems to feel their highest duty is to serve — not We the People, ordinary Germans, stained for all time by 1933–1945 — but rather the narratives of the victorious and virtuous Allies.

(Updated to add link to earlier lengthy comment on this subject:)
https://caucus99percent.com/comment/374905#comment-374905

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@lotlizard @lotlizard I had started reading about ww2, mainly about the the Allie post war occupation in Germany, (not too much written, mostly self congratulatory fairy tales) and had read about Dresden. I read the article on the new numbers and thought "ah, history". I didn't think it could be just modern politics. At this point I would trust just about any other government more than my own.

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wendy davis's picture

@Snode

yes, we'd discussed it on another thread, and i should have noted in my count that all the of the estimates are likely...political.

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wendy davis's picture

@Snode

interest in down-sizing the 'killed' numbers as well, as it was the USAF and the RAF who'd dropped the bombs. political numbers; iirc lotlizard had said the wiki numbered them at 30,000. wot?

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Bisbonian's picture

@wendy davis I really liked hearing that passage read to me.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

wendy davis's picture

@Bisbonian

when i'd read the wiki on the book recently, i realized just how much of it i'd forgotten. i've always remembered his oft'-repeated 'and so it goes', but not its genesis:

"The Tralfamadorians are described as seeing in four dimensions, simultaneously observing all points in the space-time continuum. They universally adopt a fatalistic worldview: Death means nothing but "so it goes".

the several times i'd observed the bombing of dresden at the readers diaries at firedoglake, i really got smacked around for it. "just answer the question! how many jews were killed by the nazi?!?" [but they weren't all jews! from wd...]in various guises. as though...that made it okay. and of course i'd bring kurt into it, as well as billy pilgrim, the video, and noted the epic war crime with photos. nope. i was a nazi sympathizer, apparently.

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Bisbonian's picture

@wendy davis
Two lefts make a right...no, wait, two rights make a U-turn...no, that's not it, either. Now I can't remember. So it goes.

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"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

Pricknick's picture

It is not about making a candidate look good, but making American democracy look bad.

Russia is spending way too much time doing such if they are.
Our democracy sucks. The whole world can see it.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

snoopydawg's picture

ISIS take 700 refugees hostage as US keeps ‘imitating’ fighting terrorists in Syria

Islamic State terrorists have attacked a refugee camp in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor province and took hundreds of people hostage, while the US and its allied armed groups looked away, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The brazen assault on the El Bahra refugee camp took place on Saturday and saw “130 families of about 700 people” abducted and taken away to Hajin, the head of the Russian Reconciliation Center, Major General Vladimir Savchenko, said in a statement.

“The kidnapped civilians… can be used by terrorists as a ‘human shield’” to protect them from the possible advance of the US-backed Syrian democratic forces, he said.

The town of Hajin, where the people were taken, is located in the 20-kilometer area along the eastern bank of the Euphrates River currently controlled by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists. IS has managed to maintain control of such large territory in Deir ez-Zor as a result of “inaction of the US-backed armed units,” Savchenko emphasized.

The US-led coalition and the Pentagon-controlled Kurdish forces continue to imitate the fight against Islamic State in the south of Deir ez-Zor province,” without making actual steps to eradicate the terrorists, he said.

ISIS is demanding food and other items and it says that it will kill 10 a day until its demands are met.
Sorry for no link for this. I can't find the article on it. I'll keep looking.

Putin isn't happy with the fake fighting against ISIS by the US.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

dervish's picture

@snoopydawg They are all different manifestations of the same entity. Where they seem to contest each other, they are in fact colluding, in a great drama unfolding for us all to watch.

Piss on 'em.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

divineorder's picture

I read this some hours after you posted it, went to search Google News but still nothing.

FWIW OT but there was another large march today.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

snoopydawg's picture

Good Dawg!

Watch the dawg save his 'mom'

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg

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snoopydawg's picture

@MrWebster

One dawg apparently knew what stairs were for and where they were.
Thanks for sharing this. Did you read the back story on the German shepherd and that he was afraid of water?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg Humans are so lucky to have them around.

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Yup, and here is the reason from an tweet:

The #WomensMarch on the Pentagon will NOT be a Get-Out-the-Vote rally for the Democrat half of the American duopoly's war party

One might think this event would get some national press as there has a been a gaggle of elected officials and pundits spouting off about the the Saudis did to the journalist, and the implications for the war industry.

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snoopydawg's picture

@MrWebster

I have felt this since I first heard about this.Are we being manipulated to accept whatever the consequences are for this murder? Why should one person's death be such a big deal when there are plenty of other people who died from heinous acts? I think it's fine to be cynical about this. We've been played way to many times.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

The enemy of my friend is also my enemy. So we bomb them.

The friend of my enemy is also my enemy. So we bomb them too.

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Facebook Is a CIA site.
The CIA use this site to try and turn people mentally ill the book called Future Crimes references this alas the corruption In the British government led them to giving the CIA/Facebook a discount on its taxation In thanks.
The British government Is Increasing Its war on the British public to create as much mental Illness and brain damage as possible they have recently created a new ministers position especially tailored for this war on us.
Anyway more from merry me later and hello from the UK as this is my first post.

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Research,Research and more Research

Mark from Queens's picture

@jinni73

Just began putting together a quick essay about Wikipedia being another CIA operation when I saw your comment.

Will publish later when I have a moment.

Until then here it is, to your point:

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut