“The Bank of America has been caught SECRETLY Handing Over Customer Data to the FBI as more and more Conservatives are Building Parallel Businesses and Structures! In this video, we’re going to look at the bombshell report that one of America’s largest banks is practically functioning as an intelligence agency, how the expelling of conservatives from more and more businesses is actually helping to create a parallel society, and how that society is already being built all around the world, providing a blueprint of a truly conservative post-globalist world, you are NOT going to want to miss this!”
Tag Archives: Fascism
The Monetary Cost of War
15 Years After the Iraq Invasion, What Are the Costs?
March 21, 2018
This March marked the 15th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
In 2003, President George W. Bush and his advisers based their case for war on the idea that Saddam Hussein, then dictator of Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction — weapons that have never been found. Nevertheless, all these years later, Bush’s “Global War on Terror” continues — in Iraq and in many other countries.
It’s a good time to reflect on what this war — the longest in U.S. history — has cost Americans and others around the world.
First, the economic costs: According to estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the war on terror has cost Americans a staggering $5.6 trillion since 2001, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.
$5.6 trillion. This figure includes not just the Pentagon’s war fund, but also future obligations such as social services for an ever-growing number of post-9/11 veterans.
It’s hard for most of us to even begin to grasp such an enormous number.
It means Americans spend $32 million per hour, according to a counter by the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Put another way: Since 2001, every American taxpayer has spent almost $24,000 on the wars — equal to the average down payment on a house, a new Honda Accord, or a year at a public university.
Khalil Bendib / OtherWords.org
As stupefying as those numbers are, the budgetary costs pale in comparison with the human toll.
As of 2015, when the Costs of War project made its latest tallies, up to 165,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a direct consequence of U.S. war, plus around 8,000 U.S. soldiers and military contractors in Iraq.
Those numbers have only continued to rise. Up to 6,000 civilians were killed by U.S.-led strikes in Iraq and Syria in 2017 –– more civilians than in any previous year, according to the watchdog group AirWars.
In addition to those direct deaths, at least four times as many people in Iraq have died from the side effects of war, such as malnutrition, environmental degradation, and deteriorated infrastructure.
Since the 2003 invasion, for instance, Iraqi health care has plummeted — with hospitals and clinics bombed, supplies of medicine and electricity jeopardized, and thousands of physicians and healthcare workers fleeing the country.
Meanwhile, the war continues to spread, no longer limited to Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria, as many Americans think. Indeed, the U.S. military is escalating a shadowy network of anti-terror operations all across the world — in at least 76 nations, or 40 percent of countries on the planet.
Last October, news about four Green Berets killed by an Islamic State affiliate in the West African nation of Niger gave Americans a glimpse of just how broad this network is. And along with it comes all the devastating consequences of militarism for the people of these countries.
We must ask: Are these astounding costs worth it? Is the U.S. accomplishing anything close to its goal of diminishing the global terrorist threat?
The answer is, resoundingly, no.
U.S. activity in Iraq and the Middle East has only spurred greater political upheaval and unrest. The U.S.-led coalition is seen not as a liberating force, but as an aggressor. This has fomented insurgent recruitment, and there are now more terrorist groups in the Middle East than ever before.
Until a broad swath of the American public gets engaged to call for an end to the war on terror, these mushrooming costs — economic, human, social, and political — will just continue to grow.
Source: https://otherwords.org/15-years-after-the-iraq-invasion-what-are-the-costs/
‘Corporations Are People’ Is Built on a 19th-Century Lie – The Atlantic
Quotes:
‘Corporations Are People’ Is Built on a 19th-Century Lie – The Atlantic
- A confidant of Leland Stanford, Field had advised the company on which lawyers to hire for this very series of cases and thus should have recused himself from them.
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Why Big Business Hates Free Markets…And Loves Big Government
The video gives a good explanation.
There is a huge misconception, where Americans are led to believe that Government and Big Business are antagonists. We see it in Hollywood movies, and in the media all the time. Americans need government “regulations” to protect them from business. In reality, Big Business could not be happier with this slight-of-hand. They love government “regulations,” and hate the free market.
Obama’s Dilemma on Troop Surge in Afghanistan Now Vexes Trump
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Obama’s Dilemma on Troop Surge in Afghanistan Now Vexes Trump – The New York Times
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WASHINGTON — A new president confronts an old war, one that bedeviled his predecessor. He is caught between seasoned military commanders, who tell him that the road to victory is to pour in more American troops, and skeptical political advisers, who argue that a major deployment is a futile exercise that will leave him politically vulnerable.
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“They are going to be faced with the same questions we were,” said David Axelrod, a former senior Obama adviser, who worried, during the 2009 debate, that the generals were boxing his boss in. “How and when does this end? Or is it an open-ended commitment of American lives and resources? What will the investment produce in the long run?”
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Historically, the United States has supplied about two-thirds of the soldiers in Afghanistan.
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But Mr. Trump is discovering, as Mr. Obama did, that extricating the United States is harder than it appears. General McMaster and other advisers warn that without reinforcements for the Afghan Army, the security situation in Afghanistan will get even more precarious than it is now, potentially creating more sanctuaries for Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
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Currently, the international security force assisting the Afghan Army has about 13,000 troops, of which about 8,400 are American soldiers. Under an initial plan, which General Nicholson recommended to Congress in February, the United States would send 3,000 to 5,000 additional troops, including hundreds of Special Operations forces.
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Such a deployment would allow American advisers to train and assist a more Afghan forces, and it would place American troops closer to the front lines at lower levels in the chain of command.
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General McMaster headed an anticorruption task force that worked mostly out of the capital, Kabul, after Mr. Obama’s troop surge. He quarreled with Afghan officials and warlords in an often-futile effort to make sure billions of dollars in American aid went to the right places.
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General McMaster’s exposure to rampant corruption would rob him of any illusions that a few thousand new troops could turn around Afghanistan.
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Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, remains a crucial voice, despite his troubles over reported links to Russia. Though he has not taken a position on troops, his aides say he views his role as making sure the president gets genuine options.
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Still, Mr. Trump’s heavy reliance on military commanders risks a repeat of what some critics viewed as a weakness of the Obama administration’s troop debate, even with Mrs. Clinton’s participation: its overemphasis on a military solution.
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“This whole decision is being seen too narrowly, through a military prism,” said Daniel F. Feldman, who served as special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan under Mr. Obama. “It has to be seen in a more integrated way. It requires a more aggressive diplomatic component.”
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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
What I think…
- How has our involvement helped?
- How can it be worse if we were not involved?
- Is it American policy to be the police of the world?
- What government has ever come close to being able to police the world?
- Is it the will of the people in America?
I am reminded of some words of Jesus and a principle that can be derived from it.
Mark 14:7 “For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them; but you do not always have Me.
That is, in the midst of trouble in the world you still have to set priorities.
If God designed governments to bring peace and stability to civilization and if God set the boundaries of these governments, what good is it for one nation to overstretch itself to its own demise? I mean if a free nation helps a less free nation but collapses in the process where neither nation is now free, what good is that?
I believe it is very important for Americans to understand why there is such a push and presence in the middle east. I am not convinced it has anything to do with freeing people or protecting them. Instead, I believe it has to do with using people and exploiting them to the benefit of a military industrial financial complex. The Deep State is using America to further its wellbeing. This reminds me of another saying of Jesus.
Matt 26:52 Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword.
And one further point I would like to add. If my neighbor is having a domestic dispute to the degree I can hear them yelling at one another, to what extent is that my problem to resolve? Am I responsible to police my entire block or city or state or nation or world? Inconceivable! I would create a domestic dispute in my own home if I did! Isn’t it much better if I see that no dispute erupts in my own home and simply encourage others to do the same by way of word and example?