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"I plead alignment to the flakes of the untitled snakes of a merry cow and to the republicrats for which they scam: one nacho, underpants with licorice and jugs of wine for owls."

-- Matt Groening

News and Opinion

US Foreign Policy Is a Scam Built on Corruption

On the surface, US foreign policy seems to be utterly irrational. The US gets into one disastrous war after another -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and Gaza. In recent days, the US stands globally isolated in its support of Israel’s genocidal actions against the Palestinians, voting against a UN General Assembly resolution for a Gaza ceasefire backed by 153 countries with 89% of the world population, and opposed by just the US and 9 small countries with less than 1% of the world population.

In the past 20 years, every major US foreign policy objective has failed. The Taliban returned to power after 20 years of US occupation of Afghanistan. Post-Saddam Iraq became dependent on Iran. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad stayed in power despite a CIA effort to overthrow him. Libya fell into a protracted civil war after a US-led NATO mission overthrew Muammar Gaddafi. Ukraine was bludgeoned on the battlefield by Russia in 2023 after the US secretly scuttled a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in 2022.

Despite these remarkable and costly debacles, one following the other, the same cast of characters has remained at the helm of US foreign policy for decades, including Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, and Hillary Clinton.

What gives?

The puzzle is solved by recognizing that American foreign policy is not at all about the interests of the American people. It is about the interests of the Washington insiders, as they chase campaign contributions and lucrative jobs for themselves, staff, and family members. In short, US foreign policy has been hacked by big money.

As a result, the American people are losing big. The failed wars since 2000 have cost them around $5 trillion in direct outlays, or around $40,000 per household. Another $2 trillion or so will be spent in the coming decades on veterans’ care. Beyond the costs directly incurred by Americans, we should also recognize the horrendously high costs suffered abroad, in millions of lives lost and trillions of dollars of destruction to property and nature in the war zones.

The costs continue to mount. US Military-linked outlays in 2024 will come to around $1.5 trillion, or roughly $12,000 per household, if we add the direct Pentagon spending, the budgets of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, the budget of the Veteran’s Administration, the Department of Energy nuclear weapons program, the State Department’s military-linked “foreign aid” (such as to Israel), and other security-related budget lines. Hundreds of billions of dollars are money down the drain, squandered in useless wars, overseas military bases, and a wholly unnecessary arms build-up that brings the world closer to WWIII.

Yet to describe these gargantuan costs is also to explain the twisted “rationality” of US foreign policy. The $1.5 trillion in military outlays is the scam that keeps on giving—to the military-industrial complex and the Washington insiders—even as it impoverishes and endangers America and the world.

To understand the foreign-policy scam, think of today’s federal government as a multi-division racket controlled by the highest bidders. The Wall Street division is run out of the Treasury. The Health Industry division is run out of the Department of Health and Human Services. The Big Oil and Coal division is run out of the Departments of Energy and Interior. And the Foreign Policy division is run out of the White House, Pentagon and CIA.

Each division uses public power for private gain through insider dealing, greased by corporate campaign contributions and lobbying outlays. Interestingly, the Health Industry division rivals the Foreign Policy division as a remarkable financial scam. America’s health outlays totaled an astounding $4.5 trillion in 2022, or roughly $36,000 per household, by far the highest health costs in the world, while America ranked roughly 40th in the world among nations in life expectancy. A failed health policy translates into very big bucks for the health industry, just as a failed foreign policy translates into mega-revenues of the military-industrial complex.

The Foreign Policy division is run by a small, secretive and tight-knit coterie, including the top brass of the White House, the CIA, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Armed Services Committees of the House and Senate, and the major military firms including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon. There are perhaps a thousand key individuals involved in setting policy. The public interest plays little role.

The key foreign policy makers run the operations of 800 US overseas military bases, hundreds of billions of dollars of military contracts, and the war operations where the equipment is deployed. The more wars, of course, the more business. The privatization of foreign policy has been greatly amplified by the privatization of the war business itself, as more and more “core” military functions are handed out to the arms manufacturers and to contractors such as Haliburton, Booz Allen Hamilton, and CACI.

In addition to the hundreds of billions of dollars of military contracts, there are important business spillovers from the military and CIA operations. With military bases in 80 countries around the world, and CIA operations in many more, the US plays a large, though mostly covert role, in determining who rules in those countries, and thereby on policies that shape lucrative deals involving minerals, hydrocarbons, pipelines, and farm and forest land. The US has aimed to overthrow at least 80 governments since 1947, typically led by the CIA through the instigation of coups, assassinations, insurrections, civil unrest, election tampering, economic sanctions, and overt wars. (For a superb study of US regime-change operations from 1947 to 1989, see Lindsey O’Rourke’s Covert Regime Change, 2018).

In addition to business interests, there are of course ideologues who truly believe in America’s right to rule the world. The ever-warmongering Kagan family is the most famous case, though their financial interests are also deeply intertwined with the war industry. The point about ideology is this. The ideologists have been wrong on nearly every occasion and long ago would have lost their bully pulpits in Washington but for their usefulness as warmongers. Wittingly or not, they serve as paid performers for the military-industrial complex.

There is one persistent inconvenience for this ongoing business scam. In theory, foreign policy is carried out in the interest of the American people, though the opposite is the truth. (A similar contradiction of course applies to overpriced healthcare, government bailouts of Wall Street, oil-industry perks, and other scams). The American people rarely support the machinations of US foreign policy when they occasionally hear the truth. America’s wars are not waged by popular demand but by decisions from on high. Special measures are needed to keep the people away from decision making.

The first such measure is unrelenting propaganda. George Orwell nailed it in 1984 when “the Party” suddenly switched the foreign enemy from Eurasia to Eastasia without a word of explanation. The US essentially does the same. Who is the US gravest enemy? Take your pick, according to the season. Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, Hugo Chavez, Bashar al-Assad, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Gaddafi, Vladimir Putin, Hamas, have all played the role of “Hitler” in US propaganda. White House spokesman John Kirby delivers the propaganda with a smirk on his face, signaling that he too knows that what he is saying is ludicrous, albeit mildly entertaining.

The propaganda is amplified by the Washington think tanks that live off of donations by military contractors and occasionally foreign governments that are part of the US scam operations. Think of the Atlantic Council, CSIS, and of course the ever-popular Institute for the Study of War, brought to you by the major military contractors.

The second is to hide the costs of the foreign policy operations. In the 1960s, the US Government made the mistake of forcing the American people to bear the costs of the military-industrial complex by drafting young people to fight in Vietnam and by raising taxes to pay for the war. The public erupted in opposition.

From the 1970s onward the government has been far more clever. The government ended the draft, and made military service a job for hire rather than a public service, backed by Pentagon outlays to recruit soldiers from lower economic strata. It also abandoned the quaint idea that government outlays should be funded by taxes, and instead shifted the military budget to deficit spending which protects it from popular opposition that would be triggered if it were tax-funded.

It has also suckered client states such as Ukraine to fight America’s wars on the ground, so that no American body bags would spoil the US propaganda machine. Needless to say, US masters of war such as Sullivan, Blinken, Nuland, Schumer, and McConnell remain thousands of miles away from the frontlines. The dying is reserved for Ukrainians. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) defended American military aid to Ukraine as money well spent because it is “without a single American service woman or man injured or lost,” somehow not dawning on the good Senator to spare the lives of Ukrainians, who have died by the hundreds of thousands in a US-provoked war over NATO enlargement.

Congress to the war business, to avoid any questioning of the over-the-top Pentagon budgets and the wars instigated by the Executive Branch. The subordination of Congress works as follows. First, the Congressional oversight of war and peace is largely assigned to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, which largely frame the overall Congressional policy (and the Pentagon budget). Second, the military industry (Boeing, Raytheon, and the rest) funds the campaigns of the Armed Services Committee members of both parties. The military industries also spend vast sums on lobbying in order to provide lucrative salaries to retiring members of Congress, their staffs, and families, either directly in military businesses or in Washington lobbying firms.

The hacking of Congressional foreign policy is not only by the US military-industrial complex. The Israel lobby long ago mastered the art of buying the Congress. America’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid state and war crimes in Gaza makes no sense for US national security and diplomacy, not to speak of human decency. They are the fruits of Israel lobby investments that reached $30 million in campaign contributions in 2022, and that will vastly top that in 2024.

When Congress reassembles in January, Biden, Kirby, Sullivan, Blinken, Nuland, Schumer, McConnell, Blumenthal and their ilk will tell us that we absolutely must fund the losing, cruel, and deceitful war in Ukraine and the ongoing massacre and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, lest we and Europe and the free world, and perhaps the solar system itself, succumb to the Russian bear, the Iranian mullahs, and the Chinese Communist Party. The purveyors of foreign policy disasters are not being irrational in this fear-mongering. They are being deceitful and extraordinarily greedy, pursuing narrow interests over those of the American people.

It is the urgent task of the American people to overhaul a foreign policy that is so broken, corrupted, and deceitful that it is burying the government in debt while pushing the world closer to nuclear Armageddon. This overhaul should start in 2024 by rejecting any more funding for the disastrous Ukraine War and Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Peacemaking, and diplomacy, not military spending, is the path to a US foreign policy in the public interest.

Israel Declares “7 Front War,” Assassinates Top Iranian General

Fears of regional escalation as Israel warns of ‘multi-front’ war

Israel is engaged in a “multi-front war”, its defence minister has said, hinting at military operations across the Middle East as the war in Gaza showed new signs of a dangerous regional escalation. Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Yoav Gallant said Israel was “coming under attack from seven theatres: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria [an Israeli term for the West Bank], Iraq, Yemen and Iran”.

“We have already responded and taken action in six of these theatres,” he told the Knesset, without specifying.

Iran-allied militias around the Middle East have attacked Israel and US military installations across the region since Hamas launched its devastating attack on southern Israel on 7 October, killing 1,140 people and taking up to 250 hostage. ...

Gallant’s comments on Tuesday came as the war in Gaza threatened to spill outside the borders of Israel and the Palestinian territories. Earlier in the day, Egypt said a drone was shot down near the Red Sea resort city of Dahab, the second such occurrence in a month. The drone’s origin was not immediately clear, but Yemen’s Houthi rebels have disrupted global trade in the Red Sea with attacks on international vessels, and have launched drones and missiles towards Israel.

On Saturday, the US defence department explicitly blamed Iran for the first time since the Gaza conflict broke out for a drone attack targeting a chemical tanker in the Indian Ocean.

France, Spain & Italy EMBARRASS U.S By Abandoning Coalition!

Iraq Slams US Airstrikes as 'Unacceptable Violation' of Sovereignty

The Iraqi government on Tuesday accused the U.S. of an "unacceptable violation" of national sovereignty after the Biden administration launched a series of airstrikes purportedly targeting a militia group that's seen as an Iranian proxy, a move that critics warned would further inflame tensions in the region and raise the risk of all-out war.

The latest round of bombing in Iraq, approved by U.S. President Joe Biden, was "a clear hostile act" that "works against the declared desire of the American side to strengthen relations," the Iraqi government said in a statement.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the strikes targeted three facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah and unspecified "affiliated groups" in Iraq. Austin said U.S. forces carried out the strikes in response to recent attacks on American servicemembers in Iraq and Syria.

Hours before the U.S. airstrikes, a drone attack injured three American servicemembers at Erbil air base in Iraq, according to the Pentagon, which blamed Kataib Hezbollah.

The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said its strikes against the militia group "destroyed the targeted facilities and likely killed a number of Kataib Hezbollah militants."

CENTCOM claimed that "there are no indications that any civilian lives were affected," but Middle East Eye reported that civilians were among the estimated 20 people wounded by the U.S. strikes.

Attacks on the roughly 2,500 American troops still stationed in Iraq two decades after the U.S. invasion have intensified since the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, which prompted a catastrophic Israeli assault on Gaza that has killed more than 20,000 people and counting.

The latest U.S. strikes in Iraq heightened fears of a full-scale regional conflict, particularly after an Israeli airstrike in Syria on Monday reportedly killed a senior adviser to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

"Hard to predict when these tensions will get out of control and the region is plunged into an abyss," Randa Slim, director of the Conflict Resolution and Track II Dialogues Program at the Middle East Institute, wrote on social media. "At some point, one of the many parties that are involved in this conflict will miscalculate."

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, lamented that "instead of pressuring Israel to agree to a cease-fire in Gaza—which would stop the attacks on U.S. troops by these militias—Biden chooses to engage in tit-for-tat strikes that easily can escalate into a war America absolutely does not need."

"Axis of Resistance": Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis Challenge U.S. & Israeli Power in Middle East

Biden threatened to veto the UNSC resolution unless the call for an end to hostilities was deleted.

The other states struck that demand to appease Biden, and... voila: Israel intensifies its bombing of Gaza with more children killed.

This is on Biden. https://t.co/EE5daADeV7

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) December 26, 2023

Larry Johnson: Israeli Military Superiority is a Myth

Palestinians Say Netanyahu 'Confessions' Reveal Truth of 'Genocidal War' in Gaza

Amid a ramping up of bombardments and military ground operations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he was working toward what he referred to as a "voluntary migration" of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli newspaper Hayom Daily reported.

"Our problem is the countries that are willing to absorb (them), and we are working on it," he said, according to a translation from the Anadolu Agency.

Netanyahu admits he's pushing for the expulsion of Gaza's population under the label "voluntary migration"

"Voluntary" as in leave Gaza or die by starvation, airstrikes, diseases, bullets or under an IDF bulldozer!

Israel destroyed 2/3 of all buildings in Gaza's northern half pic.twitter.com/pPEL3odpI2

— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) December 25, 2023

The remarks earned a swift condemnation from Palestinian leadership.

In a statement posted on social media, the Foreign Ministry said that "frank and clear confessions reveal the truth about the goals of the genocidal war led by Netanyahu against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip," according to The Siasat Daily.

The ministry called for "a courageous international stance to immediately stop the war on the Gaza Strip and stop the crime of ethnic cleansing and displacement before it is too late."

It further said that "Netanyahu's confessions regarding the displacement of our people is a new blow to the countries supporting him in the genocidal war on Gaza Strip."

Hamas, meanwhile, said that Netanyahu's plan "would prolong the aggression," the Anadolu Agency reported.

"The Palestinian people will not allow to pass any plan that aims to obliterate their cause or to get them out of their lands and sanctities," the group said.

Ohio grand jury to decide whether to charge woman who miscarried for ‘abuse of a corpse’

A grand jury is set to decide whether an Ohio woman who miscarried a nonviable fetus should face criminal consequences. Brittany Watts, who was reportedly turned into the police after her September miscarriage, has been charged with the fifth-degree felony of “abuse of a corpse” in Trumbull county, Ohio. Her case has been held up as evidence of how easily pregnant people can find themselves in law enforcement’s crosshairs – especially since the overturning of Roe v Wade and amid tightening abortion restrictions in the US. If convicted, Watts could spend up to a year behind bars.

In September, Watts showed up at an Ohio hospital with signs that her water had broken prematurely, according to CNN. That condition can make it impossible for a pregnancy to continue and, if left untreated, pregnant people in that condition can slip into deadly sepsis – which has happened in other states post-Roe.

Watts was 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy, CNN reported. At the time, Ohio law banned abortion past 22 weeks of pregnancy. That law has since changed: thanks to a November referendum, Ohio now permits the procedure until viability, a benchmark that generally occurs at about 24 weeks of pregnancy. Still, the Washington Post reported that staffers at the hospital spent hours debating how to proceed with Watts’s case. ...

Watts ended up miscarrying the fetus at home, into the toilet, which became clogged with blood, tissue and stool, according to the Washington Post. Watts thought that she removed the mass clogging the toilet and “placed it outdoors”, in the words of the outlet. Afterward, she went to the hospital – where a nurse reported her to the police, Watts told the Washington Post.

Biden poised to loosen restrictions on marijuana

The US government appears poised to announce next year the most sweeping changes in decades to how it handles marijuana, the psychoactive drug dozens of states allow to be sold from storefronts, but which federal law considers among the most dangerous substances.

Evidence suggests that Joe Biden’s administration, responding to a policy the president announced last year, is working on moving marijuana to schedule III of the Controlled Substance Act (CSA), a change from its current listing on the maximally restrictive schedule I. That would lessen the tax burden on businesses selling the drug in states where it is legal, and potentially change how police agencies view enforcement of marijuana laws.

“If it’s going to be finalized at schedule III, it’s going to be the moment that the industry really is able to turn the corner and we begin to see the growth in the cannabis space amongst the legal operators that we’ve been waiting on for so long,” said David Culver, senior vice-president of public affairs for the US Cannabis Council, a trade group.

But other marijuana legalization advocates regard changing its classification as a half-measure that would do nothing to resolve conflicts between state and federal laws that emerged after weed legalization picked up speed a decade ago.

Marijuana faces the same federal restrictions as drugs like heroin and ecstasy under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), but 38 states have approved its use for medical conditions, and 24 states and the District of Columbia allow adults to also consume it recreationally. That conflict has complicated the marijuana industry in states where it is legal, particularly when it comes to access to banking services, and Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Norml), said rescheduling the drug would not resolve that.

Michigan Supreme Court REJECTS Efforts to BAN TRUMP from Ballot. Biden OBLITERATED in Key States

RFK Jr KEPT OFF Ballot TOO?! Anti-American Colorado Ruling THREATENS Democracy

New breed of climate protesters vows to take fight to ‘cowards’ of US politics

A climate protest group backed by a cadre of Hollywood film-makers is preparing to take action against “cowards” and “criminals” of all political stripes as the 2024 election approaches.

Climate Defiance, which disrupted events featuring a string of Biden administration officials this year, and targeted Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, in December, will consider protesting at events staged by both Democrats and Republicans on the campaign trail after concluding that its “very disruptive” action was bearing fruit.

In an interview, Michael Greenberg, the group’s co-founder, told the Guardian it will also focus “more and more” on state-level demonstrations designed to deter policymakers from approving fossil fuel projects.

Since demonstrating outside the White House correspondents’ dinner in the spring, its activists have staged protests at events featuring a string of senior federal officials, including the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, and the energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm. Climate Defiance has also interrupted two separate public appearances by the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. It is now recruiting for an organizing director to help coordinate “disruptive, nonviolent direct action to resist fossil fuel extraction”, according to a job advertisement.

“If we were a new group asking nicely, we’d be a random no-name group and the White House could just have conversations with groups a hundred times our size who did the same thing,” said Greenberg, 30. “Why would they talk to us?” Instead, the group claims its demonstrations at high-profile events have got it a seat at the table. Ali Zaidi, the national climate adviser, has been on the phone. It also targeted David Turk, the deputy energy secretary, who invited Greenberg to a meeting days later.

“The reason they’re willing to meet with us is they know we are really intense and really strident,” said Greenberg. He said the fundamental goal of his group was to build the climate crisis into a top US political issue, “along with racial justice and kitchen table economic issues”.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

This Can’t Be Another Instance Of Genocide — Israel Believes It’s Right!

Craig Murray: What We’ve Learned in 2023

Gaza refugee camp reduced to rubble after one of deadliest nights of Israel-Gaza war – video

Stunning Atrocities in Gaza Funded by US Taxpayers

Who Funds Canary Mission? James Bamford on Group That Doxes Students & Profs for Palestine Activism

Briahna Joy DEBATES Journalist In Fiery Israel-Palestine Discussion

Netanyahu’s HORRIFYING Christmas Wish!

A Little Night Music

Charles McCoy & Walter Vincent - It's Hot Like That

Walter Vinson - Mississippi Low Down

Bo Carter & Walter Vinson - Times Is Tight Like That

Walter Vinson - You Know You Promised Me

Walter Vincson feat Robert Lee McCoy - She's Leaving Me

Walter Vinson - Every Dog Must Have His Day

Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon - The Sheik Waltz

Walter Vinson ( The Mississippi Sheiks) - That's It

Walter Vinson - Can't Get A Word In Edgeways