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To see how corrupt the MSM is, watch this Russell Brand video showing how the MSM is praising and selling the B-21 bomber. Selling weapons as entertainment -- what great news for America!

What's good for Northrop Grumman (and Boeing and Raytheon etc.) is good for America!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3mj5_TNfrc

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From my perspective ~ as a student of war, history, and particularly propaganda ~ the primary reason that You, Dennis and Ray, are “confused” about what Bill has been saying from the very beginning of this War is that You read everything he says thru the perspective provided by the lens furnished by Your various and sundry “Experts” that You both like to keep calling on to validate YOUR position on the matter.

Is anybody keeping track of how many of these “Experts” are saying that Ukraine is “winning,” and is going to ultimately “win” ~ whatever they mean by those terms? And is anybody keeping track of how many of these “Experts” are saying that Russia is “winning,” and is going to ultimately “win” ~ whatever they mean by those terms? And finally: Is anybody keeping track of how many of those “Experts” have changed their position and prediction over these past ten months?

And Wars are not merely “rarely” caused by one cause or man, Bill. Wars are NEVER caused by one of anything.

But one thing that every War does have in common are those who benefit and prosper by them, in terms of gains in either Power and/or Wealth; aka the “CUI BONOS.”

And the other thing all Wars have in common are those who suffer and are impoverished by them, in terms of losses in both Blood and Treasure; aka the “CUI MALOS.”

And over the course of Human history, neither the CUI BONOS or the CUI MALOS have changed very much at all.

Which leads to the ultimate conclusion that the only way War is ever going to end is when a critical mass of CUI MALOS refuse to pay for the CUI BONOS's fucking Wars anymore, in terms of either Blood or Treasure.

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Dec 19, 2022Liked by Bill Astore

The military basically says either agree with us or we will provide you with no more stories. Going along with that is a lot less work for the news media.

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Speaking of the MSM and its cozy relationship to the Pentagon, consider this article by Caitlin Johnstone:

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/12/21/us-military-thanks-and-praises-retiring-cnn-journalist-for-her-service/

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NDAA, Actually NOAA, and Quite a WHOPPER by Walt Zlotow 121622

Congress viewed Biden’s $813 billion too skimpy so they tacked on $45 billion in goodies to ravenous US defense contractors, an 8% increase over the 2022 giveaway. $813 billion goes to the Pentagon, with the rest to other departments, including $30 billion for upgraded nukes to blow up the world.

But it would be more appropriate to rename it the NATIONAL OFFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT (NOAA). WITHOUT A SINGLE EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO THE HOMELAND, AND NOT A SINGLE SWORN ENEMY LURKING OFFSHORE, THE BILL IS ALL ABOUT OFFENSE. IT PROVIDES A VIRTUAL BLANK CHECK TO FUEL THE ENDLESS RUSSO UKRAINE WAR NOW APPROACHING 300 DAYS WITH A HUNDRED BILLION IN US WEAPONS. IT RAMPS UP BILLIONS IN WEAPONS FOR TAIWAN TO FEND OFF AN IMAGINARY CHINESE INVASION.

What could be worse than possibly instigating nuclear confrontation with the 2 other largest nuclear powers?

As long as calling the bill by its truthful name, how bout renaming those folks building all those explosives and delivery systems who they really are…the offensive industry?

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2022/12/16/ndaa-actually-noaa-and-quite-a-whopper/ [EMPHASIS added.]

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Dec 20, 2022·edited Dec 20, 2022

US has put itself and Russia ‘on brink of direct clash’ – Moscow

The Biden administration is lying about maintaining contacts between the two countries, the Foreign Ministry says

Washington’s “dangerous and short-sighted policy” has put it “on the brink of a direct clash” with Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday, responding to US State Department spokesman Ned Price, who blamed Russia last week for making relations between the two countries “unstable and unpredictable.”

Moscow has “genuinely strived” to make relations with the US stable and predictable, even as Washington stokes tensions, Zakharova added.

“It is the US’ desire to maintain American hegemony at all costs… as well as its arrogant unwillingness to engage in a serious dialogue on security guarantees” that led to the current crisis, the spokeswoman said.

Russia is calling on the administration of US President Joe Biden to avoid further escalation, Zakharova said, adding that Moscow still wants to defuse tensions and is open to talking to the US at various levels.

However, the US is openly lying about maintaining contacts with Russia, Zakharova claimed. Last week, Price said that Secretary of State Antony Blinken still keeps in touch with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Zakharova called the statement a “banal lie,” adding that the last time the two diplomats spoke was July 29.

Amid the Russian military operation in Ukraine, Washington has provided massive amounts of financial and military aid to Kiev and has led the drive for sanctions on Moscow, which was also joined by US allies in the EU and elsewhere.

The conflict in Ukraine broke out after the US rejected Russia’s proposals for security guarantees in Europe, including a limit on NATO expansion to the east. Moscow repeatedly warned that Ukraine’s potential membership in the US-led military bloc would cross a red line and that arming Kiev would only prolong the conflict.

RT

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I would like to ask if you think the language used by the MICC and it's offshoots to obfuscate and manipulate the collective consciousness of 'Mericans, 'Mericants and 'fureners' has warped our national psyche until the very way that we define issues limits us from perceiving any truth, not only in government and it's whore [politics] but in our daily lives and our communities.

If that is the case, any sort of hierarchical expression, any 'command-and-control' framing must be avoided until it can be eliminated, preferably by attrition. Anyone who has theTruth is probably lying or poorly informed, anyone who has theDemocracy, theScience, theEducation, et cetera, is almost certainly using tactics developed within or alongside the MICC after looking at it's successes over decades, solely to dissuade, discourage or dismiss the first American tradition, dissent, what TheBillOfRights was supposed to protect.

In short, the wars and it's methods have not only "come home", but taken up residence in our heads, hearts & souls until submission and derision are the primary tools of "leadership". With little if any accountability and a fragile collective bargaining for any sort of influence, backing away from the 'words-as-weapons' crew in all it's variations could prevent a bad end for those who value life.

Arguments with accessible context that personalizes the issue-whatever that issue might be-is the way to win. When a person who has been conditioned to egotism can understand what her or his adovcacy could easily cost her or him, doubt will supplant arrogance, and alternatives will be considered.

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‘A moral and political disgrace’: Just 11 Senators vote no on $858 billion military budget’

“At a time when we spend more than the next 11 nations combined on defence, we should invest in healthcare, jobs, housing, and education—not more weapons of destruction,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

In an overwhelming bipartisan vote late Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed legislation authorising $858 billion in military spending for Fiscal Year 2023, a sum that drew dissent from just a handful of lawmakers and outrage from watchdogs who said the money should be spent on fighting the climate emergency, poverty, and other pressing crises.

The $858 billion budget amounts to a roughly 10% increase from the previous year and $45 billion more than the historic sum President Joe Biden requested, and it was approved even after the Pentagon failed yet another audit, unable to account for more than 60% of its assets…………………………………

https://johnmenadue.com/a-moral-and-political-disgrace-just-11-senators-vote-no-on-858-billion-military-budget/

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Right on the money as usual, Bill. I shared this to FB.

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Thank You Colonel and Professor Astore. and BV's Bill for the simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand explanation of exactly WHAT the Problem ~ the Existential Crisis, if You will ~ is that is actually confronting America, and its Ultimate Root Cause and Agent.

i look forward to the MSM's reaction and response. If there even is one. And the MICC's.

And so the next Question becomes: "Roger all that. So exactly what needs to be Done about all that? And who needs to be doing it?"

Thank You again: That was a GREAT way to kick off this week.

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Zelensky is enroute to D.C. to do another in person personal appeal for lots more cash.

A reliable Guesstimate is that he has lifted personally somewhere between $100 - $??? BILLION for

his personal account. All need to remember that under the Biden / Obama regime their warmonger neocon attack dog, Victoria Nuland in 2014 did the regime change in Ukraine to install their puppet president.

Hunter Biden was on the board of a natural gas company there, getting big pay, and Joe Biden is ON CAMERA stating that if they did not fire the prosecutor investigating Hunter's crimes he would not send the next BILLION dollars over. Naturally they did and he sent the cash over.

IMHO a realistic commission back to the Biden's via Hunter with 10% for "The Big Guy" is on the order of 10-20%. $100 - #200 Million.

When Obama and Valerie Jarrett loaded $150 billion of paper currency on pallets in Germany and flew it to Iran, what are the chances a few pallets were left on the plane???

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I always thought Walter Duranty was somewhat misunderstood. He became famous for (falsely) reporting (1922-1936) about how Stalin was a great leader and the Soviet Union was a worker's paradise. He was chief Moscow reporter for the NY Times and his reporting was printed as fact by the Times. I can just imagine Stalin (or a henchman) coming up to him and saying, Comrade, you have a choice. Either report as we want you to in which case you will have a comfortable place to live, vodka, women, etc. Or report the truth in which case you may find yourself accidentally dead. He took the easy way out. And won the Pulitzer Prize.

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Dennis: About 16 hours ago, You posted: “But certainly, [I] do not hold Russia 100% accountable for the tragedy Zelenskyy and his henchmen have hoisted upon on all Ukrainian people.”

As i have stated here on BV and elsewhere several times before: Zelensky and his henchmen are not running The Show. All he and they are doing is reading their scripts and showing up where and doing what their handlers have recommended [ie, instructed] them to do and say.

That being the case: So how accountable DO You hold Putin/Russia for that tragedy? And Their script writers and handlers? Got a number for that?

And how accountable do You hold Biden, Trump, and Obama and their Teams for what has happened in and to Ukraine since 2014? Or Their scripters and directors? Got another number?

And then, of course: What about Xi? Do You think he and his model of ultimate auto-plutocratic/ oligarchic rule by a crony capitalist/communist/ fascist surveillance State have any play in this next Phase of The Game?

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AWAKENING by Caitlin Johnstone

Awakening from the lies of the news man,

the lies of the politician,

the lies of the teacher, the preacher, the pundit, the parent.

Awakening from the authorized worldviews,

the authorized narratives,

the authorized information,

the authorized ideas.

Awakening from dead thoughts written by dead men

on sheets made from dead trees.

Awakening from culture,

awakening from civilization,

from how-it-is stories,

from how-to-be stories,

from should and shouldn't stories,

from us and them stories.

Awakening from conditioning,

awakening from trauma,

awakening from subconscious dysfunction,

awakening from the heritage of pain and confusion

handed down through history from generation to generation.

Awakening from manipulation,

awakening from control,

awakening from grasping,

from pushing,

from pulling,

from hiding,

from holding life at bay,

from the inability to let life be as it is,

from the inability to let beingness play unmolested.

Awakening from identification with the body,

from identification with the mind,

from identification with any localized perspective,

from identification with the disembodied witness,

from identification with the field of consciousness,

from identification altogether.

Awakening from the illusion of separation,

from the illusion of the self,

from the illusion of the other,

from the illusion of time,

from the illusion of space,

from the illusions of the mind.

Awakening to truth,

whatever it may be.

Awakening to reality,

whatever its implications might entail.

Awakening to what is,

without caveat or precondition.

Awakening to peace.

Awakening to love.

Awakening to unconditionality.

Awakening to boundlessness.

Awakening to freedom.

Awakening for everyone.

Awakening for the whole world.

Awakening for humanity,

now and into the distant future.

Awakening together.

Awakening as one.

Opening each pair of eyelids,

one by one,

as we walk arm in arm

into the great unknown.

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/awakening

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WHY DOES THE US SPEND SO MUCH MONEY ON THE MILITARY?

In the newest episode of AMERICA: FROM REPUBLIC TO EMPIRE, we look at the warnings of Dwight Eisenhower and how World War II gave birth to the military-industrial complex. In one of the most important addresses ever given by an American president, Eisenhower warns about the dangerous economic incentives war creates by enriching big business and growing the state at the expense of the rest of the nation.

What Eisenhower was really warning about was the threat posed by military Keynesianism. In the wake of the Great Depression, FDR and most political leaders in the West adopted the economic fallacies promoted by John Maynard Keynes. These policies lingered on through World War II and its aftermath to create a new class of intellectuals who defended the virtues of government spending at the expense of the productive, private sector. The growing American empire had truly gained an important ally.

Over half a century later, the American people remain victims of the military-industrial complex, with Washington spending more on the military than the next nine [or eleven, depending on the source] countries combined. The empire and military contracts get bigger, and Americans are left footing the bill.

Click here to watch AMERICA: FROM REPUBLIC TO EMPIRE, a eight-part animated series on HOW US FOREIGN POLICY FUELS THE GROWTH OF THE STATE: https://mises.org/america-republic-empire. The MIC[C] piece is at Part 7..

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Thank you and respects from another life-long student of war and military affairs.

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