The US Globalized Military Dictatorship Strangling the Planet with Nukes and Military Bases

Most Americans believe that the US Military exists to defend America. That assumption is no longer true, hasn't been true in decades and in fact may never have been true. The modern US Military exists for one purpose only:  to become the UN's Global Governance Military. The taxpayers of the broke and bankrupt nation of America fund the endless wars for resource control, ruthless militarized people control and a globalized tyranny, all on behalf of the New World Order, defense contractors, the banksters, the corporatists and the statist elites.  Simply put, America murders for corporate profits and empire.

CBS reported that there are 700 US and/or NATO military bases in Afghanistan alone. 

The 700 Military Bases of Afghanistan

Nearly a decade after the Bush administration launched its invasion of Afghanistan, TomDispatch offers the first actual count of American, NATO, and other coalition bases there, as well as facilities used by the Afghan security forces.? Such bases range from relatively small sites like Shinwar to mega-bases that resemble small American towns.? Today, according to official sources, approximately 700 bases of every size dot the Afghan countryside, and more, like the one in Shinwar, are under construction or soon will be as part of a?base-building boom that began last year.

Existing in the shadows, rarely reported on and little talked about, this base-building program is nonetheless staggering in size and scope, and heavily dependent on supplies imported from abroad, which means that it is also extraordinarily expensive.? It has added significantly to the already long secret list of Pentagon property overseas and raises questions about just how long, after the planned beginning of a drawdown of American forces in 2011, the U.S. will still be garrisoning Afghanistan.

How many US military bases dot the planet?  Nobody really knows as some bases are quite large and many are small.  There are also numerous NATO military bases. Estimates of the number of military bases do not include the US Navy that literally operates floating military bases on the seas or the highly secretive CIA bases that are mostly used for torture, drone operations and many other clandestine operations.  The CIA bases generally operate out of the US State Department and many US consulates and US Aid offices are nothing more than CIA fronts that funnel money and arms to terrorists and radical Islamists for the purpose of regime change.  The Benghazi cover-up was a classic CIA mission and it was providing arms and money for Syrian terrorists.

The National Post (Canadian) provided a stellar infographic of US military bases around the world.

Graphic: Mapping a superpower-sized military - United Bases of America

America just isn't strangling the planet with military bases, soldiers, drone operations and CIA bases, it's also strangling the planet with nuclear weapons. Armscontrol.org discloses that America has a staggering 5,113 nuclear warheads.

Nuclear Weapons: Who Has What at a Glance

China: About 240 total warheads.

France: Fewer than 300 operational warheads.

Russia: Approximately 1,499 deployed strategic warheads [1]. The Federation of American Scientists estimates Russia has another 1,022 nondeployed strategic warheads and approximately 2,000 tactical nuclear warheads. Additional thousands are awaiting dismantlement.

United Kingdom: Fewer than 160 deployed strategic warheads, total stockpile of up to 225.

United States: Approximately 5,113 nuclear warheads [2], including tactical, strategic, and nondeployed weapons. According to the latest official New START declaration, the United States deploys 1,722 strategic nuclear warheads on 806 deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers [1]. The Federation of American Scientists estimates that the United States' nondeployed strategic arsenal is approximately 2,800 warheads and the U.S. tactical nuclear arsenal numbers 500 warheads. Additional warheads are retired and await dismantlement.

How many trillions of dollars have been spent/squandered over the decades to manufacture nuclear weapons and constantly update the inventories? We don't know. However, going forward the US is planning on spending hundreds of billions on nuclear warheads according to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post.

How many nukes does it take to be safe?

The country is engaged in a costly, ambitious modernization of its nuclear weapons complex and development of a new generation of delivery systems — new strategic submarines, bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles that will be operating more than 50 years from now.

Start with the Navy’s plan for 12 new SSBN-X strategic submarines to replace the 14 Ohio-class subs now in service. A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on the program, released Dec. 10, asks whether the Navy can stay within the cost targets for their procurement ($4.9 billion each) and whether each sub should carry 16 or 20 missiles.

But shouldn’t the questions be more basic, such as who is the enemy and how many subs would be needed to deter that enemy?

There will be at least four or five warheads on each of the 16 ICBMs carried on each of the new subs. Their destructive power will be eight to more than 20 times that of the atomic bomb that all but destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

That bomb killed 45,000 men, women and children instantly. Another 19,000 died during the next four months, according to a 1946 study by the Manhattan Engineer District, which built the bomb. The majority of those killed were civilians, though Hiroshima was picked because planners saw it as a military target with army barracks and defense factories. But the bomb — its 12.5 kiloton explosive power [equal to 12,500 tons of TNT], its heat effects and radiation — went well beyond those military targets. Today’s nuclear weapons are 100 kilotons and above.

It’s agreed that nuclear weapons don’t deter terrorist groups. And if history is any guide, the more the United States and other nuclear-armed countries modernize their weapons, the more tempting it is for other countries to want nuclear arsenals.

So how many warheads does the United States need over the next 40 years to deter others?

That’s a multibillion-dollar question, and among those President Obama and his new national security team will have to wrestle with as they try to tighten Defense spending.

I have written before that it’s time to get a rational, long-range nuclear strategy because the cost of replacing the nation’s three nuclear delivery systems will top $100 billion and require another $300 billion over the next 10 years to keep them operational.

Empire and military worship are latest deities that the American people embrace and worship as evidenced by how they vote.  Republican or Democrat, American voters reliably and consistently vote for war and empire.  Even more horrifying is the fact that Americans have also sacrificed their humanity and morality which begs the question: are the American people evil?  Americans have willfully and consciously sacrificed their prosperity and liberty on the alter the the most evil and murderous gods ever to exist in human history.

But by far the worst manifestations of power transgress beyond the horrifying spectacle of the physical carnage of war because those same folks who deceptively internalized that war is noble also become its ultimate victims. Sooner or later the flag waving stops when folks realize that they have been systematically shorn of their own liberty and prosperity. The film clips of euphorically happy flag waving Germans idolizing Hitler and his evil is a stark contrast to the starving, homeless and terrified Germans in bombed out and burned out cities after Nazism was defeated. Worshiping the flag is most dangerous when folks fail to even realize what precisely the flag stands for.

For Americans, they will eventually come to the frightening realization that they put their faith and trust in a government that betrayed them as they are forced to accept that they have been nothing more than pawns on the financial chessboard of empire wherein the wealth and power of the nation has been viciously concentrated into the hands of the ruling few – defense contractors, banksters and their power brokers who delivered unto the people unemployment, economic misery, fiat currency, wars and grim futures. At this point, what does the flag stand for? Nothing but the tens of trillions poured down the scary black hole of dark nothingness and militarism gone mad as they ponder the failures of an evil debt ridden empire that bankrupted a once great, glorious, free and prosperous nation.

This is what U.S. foreign policy has delivered to America, yet we drink the poison because we lack the courage to think the unthinkable and to speak the unspeakable as we sellout out our liberty with each election and march off into totalitarian statist hell.

Trillions for Endless Wars in a Busted Economy and Bankrupt Nation

Decades ago, economic professors used the analogy of 'guns and butter' to differentiate the economic systems of the Soviet Union and America. America allowed its citizens to work, keep their money and spend it however they wanted - lots of butter aka consumer choices and middle class prosperity. By contrast, the Soviet Union forced its proletariat workers 'paradise' to work in state run factories that fueled its global covert and overt military operations - the Russian people existed for the sole purpose of sustaining the 'guns' of militarism.

Fast forward to today. Has America become the Soviet Union, an evil empire and a nation that squandered the wealth and prosperity of its people for militarism gone mad? Have we sown the seeds of our own destruction? With $16 trillion in national debt and chronic trillion dollar plus deficits every year, the one thing in America that isn't out of the closet is military spending, the military empire and its gargantuan cost.

Even in warmongering America, folks of all ideological stripes are beginning to raise the issue. Over at Fox News, aka Neocon Central, the despicable Bill O'Reilly raised the issue of the War on Terror.

Bill O'Reilly:  On this 11th anniversary of the 911 attacks

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/2012/09/12/bill-oreilly-11th-anniversary-911-attack

According to the Congressional Research Service, the War on Terror has cost America $1.4 trillion. That includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and money for veterans, also a bunch of other military expenditures. It does not include... it does not include security within the USA....

Mr. Obama has added about $5.4 trillion to the debt during his time in office...

I believe most historians will look back on the Iraq war as being a mistake. We could have brought Saddam to his knees by blockading his country. We didn't have to invade it.

O'Reilly, like every other Republican socialist lover of military empire, can't resist disclosing the debt attributable to Obama and the Dems while totally ignoring the fact that Bush and Gang added $5 trillion to the debt pile.

Between the Republicans and the Democrats, the national debt increased over $10 trillion since the War on Terror began. McClatchy attempted to analyze its cost in 2011.

True cost of Afghan, Iraq wars is anyone's guess

Yes, Congress has allotted $1.3 trillion for war spending through fiscal year 2011 just to the Defense Department....

But all those numbers are incomplete. Besides what Congress appropriated, the Pentagon spent an additional unknown amount from its $5.2 trillion base budget over that same period. According to a recent Brown University study, the wars and their ripple effects have cost the United States $3.7 trillion, or more than $12,000 per American.

Defense and military analyst Chris Hellman employed a different but more accurate approach in ascertaining the true cost of military and national security spending.  As America morphs into a full fledged Nazified Police State and militarized global empire, the national security apparatus costs include far more than what is deceptively disclosed as mere defense spending.

Tomgram: Chris Hellman, $1.2 Trillion for National Security

For 2012, the White House has requested $558 billion for the Pentagon’s annual “base” budget, plus an additional $118 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. At $676 billion, that’s already nothing to sneeze at, but it’s just the barest of beginnings when it comes to what American taxpayers will actually spend on national security. Think of it as the gigantic tip of a humongous iceberg....

Missing from the Pentagon’s budget request, for example, is an additional $19.3 billion for nuclear-weapons-related activities...

And then, don’t forget an additional $7.8 billion that the Pentagon lumps into a “miscellaneous” category -- a kind of department of chump change...

$703.1 billion dollars.

For starters, that $117.8 billion war-funding request for the Department of Defense doesn’t include certain actual “war-related fighting” costs....

$711.8 billion.

The White House has also requested $71.6 billion for a post-2001 category called “homeland security” -- of which $18.1 billion is funded through the Department of Defense. The remaining $53.5 billion goes through various other federal accounts, including the Department of Homeland Security ($37 billion), the Department of Health and Human Services ($4.6 billion), and the Department of Justice ($4.6 billion). All of it is, however, national security funding which brings our total to:

$765.3 billion....

The U.S. intelligence budget was technically classified prior to 2007, although at roughly $40 billion annually, it was considered one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington....This work done by federal agencies like the CIA and the National Security Agency consists of keeping an eye on and trying to understand what other nations are doing and thinking, as well as a broad range of “covert operations” such as those being conducted in Pakistan...

$818.4 billion....

Veterans programs are an important part of the national security budget with the projected funding figure for 2012 being $129.3 billion. Of this, $59 billion is for veterans’ hospital and medical care, $70.3 billion for disability pensions and education programs...

$947.7 billion.

If you include the part of the foreign affairs budget not directly related to U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other counterterrorism operations, you have an additional $18 billion in direct security spending....

$965.7 billion.

As with all federal retirees, U.S. military retirees and former civilian Department of Defense employees receive pension benefits from the government. The 2012 figure is $48.5 billion for military personnel, $20 billion for those civilian employees, which means we’ve now hit:

$1,034.2 billion. (Yes, that’s $1.03 trillion!)

When the federal government lacks sufficient funds to pay all of its obligations, it borrows. Each year, it must pay the interest on this debt which, for FY 2012, is projected at $474.1 billion. The National Priorities Project calculates that 39% of that, or $185 billion, comes from borrowing related to past Pentagon spending.

Add it all together and the grand total for the known national security budget of the United States is:

$1,219.2 billion. (That’s more than $1.2 trillion.)

Not only is $1.2 trillion dollars a whole lot of guns and an obscene amount of military spending on an annual basis, the American military empire has stripped the people of their prosperity and liberty.  America is spending about $3.8 trillion a year on tax revenues of about $2.3 trillion.

Will the American people ever wake-up to the stone cold reality that the military empire has destroyed us and bankrupted us?

We need to kill the empire before the empire kills us.

The Vanishing American Middle Class

It's no secret that the Occupy movement was largely spawned by the left. Hence, it was viewed with disdain by most Republicans who perceived the Occupy activists as socialists clamoring for more socialism but that's only part of the story. The American middle class is indeed nosediving toward permanent extinction and any society that consists of the ruling rich and the eternally poor is doomed. But heck, it's America where we obsess over chicken sandwiches and pay scant attention to what is really happening in America.

The left isn't always wrong and in fact it gets a lot of things right. Actually, the left is quite good a diagnosing a problem but where it falls way short is in their proposed solutions to a problem which invariably calls for more government intervention and control.

Forgetting for the moment that liberals have radically different solutions than conservatives when it comes to solving big problems, we need to focus on a stone cold reality.  Contained in the jargon of the 99% vs. the 1%, there is ample documented evidence that the middle class is rapidly losing ground.

Real Wages Much Lower Than They Were Four Decades Ago

These charts do not paint a pretty picture. In fact they disclose that male wages are declining while the purchasing power of the dollar is simultaneously decreasing. That translates into direct hit on the middle class.

While the gap between the rich and the poor in America has been widening for decades, CEO compensation also continues to soar.

Average CEO Pay 2011 Nearly $10 Million At Public Companies: AP Study

The issue isn't so much about how much CEO's earn but what they earn in relation to worker wages.  The disparity between CEO compensation and worker compensation is incredibly wide and growing.

In 1982, the ratio of CEO pay to the wages of an average worker stood at 42 to 1. Today, it is beyond 300 to 1. If the minimum wage had increased as quickly as CEO pay since 1990, it would be $15.71 an hour today, here.

So when the left talks about economic injustice, it's not as if they don't make a very valid point.  So long as America continues to be a society where the rich get richer, the banksters get bailouts and the poor and middle class get poorer, that's a recipe for disaster and an eventual Marxist revolution.

Thus far, neither the Republicans or Democrats are motivated to confront America's dire economic situation.  Instead, they think the solution to everything is to just put everybody on welfare.

Over 100 Million Now Receiving Federal Welfare

Food stamps and Medicaid make up a large--and growing--chunk of the more than 100 million recipients. "Among the major means tested welfare programs, since 2000 Medicaid has increased from 34 million people to 54 million in 2011 and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) from 17 million to 45 million in 2011," says the Senate Budget Committee. "Spending on food stamps alone is projected to reach $800 billion over the next decade."

To further complicate matters, it's recently been reported that long term immigrants  in America are heavily entitlement dependent.

Slow path to progress for U.S. immigrants - 43% on welfare after 20 years

The study, based on 2010 and 2011 census data, found that 43 percent of immigrants who have been in the U.S. at least 20 years were using welfare benefits, a rate that is nearly twice as high as native-born Americans and nearly 50 percent higher than recent immigrants.

America is deliberately and massively importing entitlement dependent 3rd world labor and we've been doing it for a very long time.  Meanwhile, jobless and entitlement dependent Americans are stuck in an untenable economic situation from which there is no escape and no hope for the future..

For a nation that once proudly exhibited the strongest and most prosperous middle class in all of human history, it's clearly evident that political and policy decisions have been made at the legislative, fiscal, monetary and economic level that combined into a middle class conflagration.

While Americans are definitely not happy with Obama and the Democrats, they are even less trustful of the war obsessed Republicans who can't seem to campaign on anything except spending trillions more the murderous wars and foreign follies.   

Progressive/Liberals/Dems are the Original Neocons

I've literally spent years and years pondering "How in the heck did the Republican Party morph into the warmongering, big spending and anti-liberty nightmare that it is today?"

Who got us into WW I, WW II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Balkan Wars? All progressive liberal Democrats - Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson and Clinton.

How much blood is on the hands of the Democrat warmongers?  A lot and they left a bloody trail of carnage that consumed over 100 million lives.

Let’s Do War by the Numbers Because We Love to Kill

WW I resulted in the deaths of 35,000,000...

Of course, WW I only set the stage for WW II that killed at least another 50,000,000 folks (many historians put the WW II death toll at 60-70 million)....

Wikipedia estimates the deaths from the Korean War at 2,500,000 – 3,500,000 and the deaths from the Vietnam War at 2,500,000-6,000,000...

Since the end of WW II, another 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 folks have died as a direct result of U.S. foreign interventionism.

It was Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats who gave us the Federal Reserve and the 16th Amendment (income tax) in 1913. It was no accident that WW I broke out in 1914 and the details of that sordid 'bailout the rich' scheme are well documented.  Without the Federal Reserve, there would have been no WW I.  Moreover,  the Federal Reserve Act was indeed the enabling legislation that actually birthed the military industrial complex and not by accident.  It was all about war profits for America's wealthiest families and the 1% (the only beneficiaries of any war).

World War I, the Banksters, the Lusitania and Bailing Out America’s Wealthiest Families

Interestingly, I witnessed my own Democratic Irish Catholic family abandon the Democratic Party and become Reagan Republicans, largely because blue collar working class families such as mine were sick and tired of having their kids who were drafted into the US military come home from Vietnam in body bags or badly mangled from combat and war injuries.  They not only feared Democrat foreign policy, they were also extremely fearful of the growth in government power and spending.

When the Republican Party was pro-peace and anti-foreign intervention, it experienced the support of the people. How much support? Reagan's 489 electoral votes to Carter's 49 in 1980 and a 51% to 41% victory speaks volumes!

Source: US Election Atlas

Reagan was viewed as the great hope to restore America to fiscal and foreign policy sanity. Unfortunately, he was a big fail. Few Americans are even aware of the extent to which taxes and the Federal Reserve fund the wars and foreign policy.

Taxes are US. The Biggest Tax Increases in US History

The largest tax increases were imposed by Truman (Revenue Act of 1950, Revenue Act 1951 and Excess Profits Tax of 1950) to fund the Korean War. Johnson's two taxes, the Temporary Surcharge of 1968 and the Tax Increase of 1966, were imposed on the American people to fund the Vietnam War.

Reagan, revered by Republicans for his extensive taxation and spending, piled on 5 new and substantial tax increases and is probably the biggest taxing president in US history.

Reagan taxes:

Tax Increase of 1983

Deficit Reduction Act of 1984

Tax Reform Act of 1986

Budget Reconciliation of 1987

The largest Social Security Tax Hike in US history - the Reagan Social Security Tax of 1983.

While taxes are a direct hit to the American people that comes right out of their paychecks, by far the biggest tax is the hideous, invisible and unnoticed inflation tax that gave us this:

If America is ever going to be restored to peace, liberty and prosperity for the people, we need drastic changes, starting with severely cutting spending, ending the damn wars that are bankrupt us and reducing government power at all levels. Meanwhile, I'll be pondering why the warmongering foreign policy hawk Mitt Romney, who has vowed to spend trillions more on foreign policy, isn't sending his own sons off to die in neocon wars or come home limbless and minus their junk.

The Empire Really Does Strike Back: Americans are Idiots and Will Go Down With the Empire

Yes, the empire really does strike back but ultimately the joke will be on Americans who are slowly being delivered into a totalitarian Nazified hell.

Elections in America are never about foreign policy which, of course, keeps defense contractors and the military industrial complex fat, happy and murderous. In fact, foreign policy is so irrelevant to Americans that politicians can safely ignore the issue.

A recent poll indicated that only 4% of American registered voters even consider foreign policy an election issue, as disclosed in a recent CBS/New York Times poll, here.

Most Important Issue in the Presidential Election (Among registered voters)

Economy and jobs 62%
Federal budget deficit 11
Health care 9
Same-sex marriage 7
Foreign policy 4
Immigration 2

Americans proudly wave the flag and scream from the highest rooftops about American exceptionalism. But what are we exceptional at? Murdering folks all over the planet?

Is America a Nation of Bloodthirsty Warmongering Savages? For Americans, the Wars are Just Another TV Reality Show

For the vast majority of Americans, the damn wars really are nothing more than a murderous TV reality show.  It's entertainment.

That speaks volumes about us as a people in a nation that was founded on the principle of steering clear of foreign wars and interventions.

When one makes the decision to worship the state and all the evil that accompanies it, one tends to acquire the diseases that are spread by the state, notably poverty and oppression.

Americans seem to think that our reality show wars are simple cost free entertainment that is included in our cable TV packages and endorsed by CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC. After all, the media is the government's most powerful and effective propaganda vehicle.  The media and the entertainment industry propel our culture of violence.

Americans and taxable entities are currently paying about $2.2 trillion a year in federal taxes. It's been recently reported that 56 cents out of every tax dollar collected goes to the military and the wars, here.

Last year we taxpayers were charged 56 cents of every dollar we sent to Uncle Sam for military spending.

CNN recently reported that the cost to maintain one US soldier is between $850,000 and $1,400,000 a year (and rising), here.

Keeping one American service member in Afghanistan costs between $850,000 and $1.4 million a year, depending on who you ask. But one matter is clear, that cost is going up.

When Americans can no longer afford the popcorn to go with the cable TV's and visits to the movie theaters to gorge on louder and bigger violence, perhaps they might pause and notice that the military industrial complex has eaten them alive and left them with nothing but acute impoverishment and militarized police state tyranny.

It's practically a law of physics that every empire in human history is destined to bite the dust.  The evil US empire is no different.  When Americans have no jobs, no food on the table to feed their families and no shelter, they can ponder where their prosperity went.

United Bases of America

For America and Americans to be restored to liberty and prosperity, the military industrial complex must die.  

Is America a Nation of Bloodthirsty Warmongering Savages? For Americans, the Wars are Just Another TV Reality Show

Ever since I can remember America has been at war with somebody and Americans have literally worshiped the military industrial complex and celebrated its murders. It's as if a vile cult of death lords over America. While the disease of military worship is most overtly conspicuous among establishment Republicans and the Warvangelicals who kill in the name of a deity, the Democrats who opposed Bush/Cheney wars were suddenly quiet when Obama was doing the killing and escalating the wars.

For most Americans, the wars are just a reality show and entertainment!  Americans in general appear to be stuck here:

America is on a downward spiral, our economy is in shambles, the American middle class is evaporating and we have a $15 trillion mountain of unsustainable debt. The debt is nothing more than a future tax.

There are two aspects of the American Empire - the financial and the human and moral cost of our death machine.

Americans and taxable entities are currently paying about $2.2 trillion a year in federal taxes. It's been recently reported that 56 cents out of every tax dollar collected goes to the military and the wars, here.

Last year we taxpayers were charged 56 cents of every dollar we sent to Uncle Sam for military spending.

CNN recently reported that the cost to maintain one US soldier is between $850,000 and $1,400,000 a year (and rising), here.

Keeping one American service member in Afghanistan costs between $850,000 and $1.4 million a year, depending on who you ask. But one matter is clear, that cost is going up.

Yes my fellow Americans, the wars hungrily consumed our prosperity and left us with:

There is no way that our standard of living can possibly be maintained let alone survive so long as the wars and a trillion dollar plus foreign policy continues. There is no way that our economy can ever recover so long as the wars are eating up our national wealth.

Chris Hellman, $1.2 Trillion for National Security

Heck, last I checked America had not been invaded by a foreign nation since the War of 1812 and we instigated that invasion of the British Army by attempting to invade and occupy Canada.

Ron Paul said “We’re in 130 countries. We have 900 bases around the world. We’re going broke.".

Ron Paul's statement is overly optimistic. We aren't going broke, we ARE broke. Yet, Americans refuse to believe that America is badly broken and horribly bankrupt. The 900 military bases flung around the planet are also part of the American TV reality show.

Empire worship is not only deadly and dangerous, it comes with a huge cost. The Empire is costing us our liberty and our prosperity. We may kill for defense contractor profits but at the end of the day, the joke is on us. Meanwhile, Americans pay scant attention to the folks we kill to facilitate the bread and circuses for the psychotic sheeple people.

Let’s Do War by the Numbers Because We Love to Kill

US foreign policy is directly responsible for killing 105-120,000,000 folks since WW I.  During the Vietnam era, Americans were aware of the civilian death tolls but they just shrugged their shoulders and said 'so what, they are only gooks'.  Indeed.  John McCain said the same thing.

At some point, Americans need to acquire a conscious.  How much human blood  must be dripping from American hands to satiate their love and lust for war, murder and death?

The bloody horrors that Americans cheered for so long will ultimately visit them as America itself morphs into a militarized Nazified police state.

America’s foreign policy never delves into the greater moral issue of “what if somebody did this to us” or even the vast human suffering caused by crippling sanctions, bombings, invasions, occupations etc. Has the face of America been reduced to “I love the smell of napalm in the morning?” Yes, but only if you vote Republican or Democrat.

When we think about our foreign policy, we naively embrace the notion that our wars are necessary for the preservation of our liberty. In fact, the opposite is true and our wars have always hacked away at our economic and political liberties because it concentrates power and disenfranchises “We the People” of our peace, liberty and prosperity.

Republican or Democrat, defense spending continues to accelerate and until the political will exists to just end obscene defense spending, the drooling beast of endless wars will continue unabated. Only the voters have the power to quell the insatiable appétit of the war monster.

There is no rationale whatsoever to justify the US military enveloping the planet like a deadly scourge. None of these nations pose any military or economic threat to the US. Many of our founders argued against even having a standing military and for good reasons.

But the deeper and more sinister aspects of human evil are always manifested in the concentration of unaccountable political power that delivers humanity to despair and misery. Tragically, the defining characteristic of human evil tends to gravitate toward the monetary – we kill simply because powerful people make a ton of money off of death, suffering and economic exploitation.

The challenge of the “bought and paid for” political class has always been to seek populist approval by marketing their evil schemes in the context of some perceived wrong that must be avenged. Accordingly, the government propaganda machine goes into high gear with lies, deceptions, false flag attacks and a whole menu of psychological manipulations to con “we the people” into believing that war and murder are good, just and patriotic.

But by far the worst manifestations of power transgress beyond the horrifying spectacle of the physical carnage of war because those same folks who deceptively internalized that war is noble also become its ultimate victims. Sooner or later the flag waving stops when folks realize that they have been systematically shorn of their own liberty and prosperity. The film clips of euphorically happy flag waving Germans idolizing Hitler and his evil is a stark contrast to the starving, homeless and terrified Germans in bombed out and burned out cities after Nazism was defeated.

Worshiping the flag is most dangerous when folks fail to even realize what precisely the flag stands for.

For Americans, they will eventually come to the frightening realization that they put their faith and trust in a government that betrayed them as they are forced to accept that they have been nothing more than pawns on the financial chessboard of empire wherein the wealth and power of the nation has been viciously concentrated into the hands of the ruling few – Banksters, the military industrial complex and their power brokers who delivered unto the people unemployment, economic misery, fiat currency, wars and grim futures.

At this point, what does the flag stand for? Nothing but the tens of trillions poured down the scary black hole of dark nothingness and militarism gone mad as the people finally wake up and ponder the failures of an evil debt ridden empire that bankrupted a once great, glorious, free and prosperous nation.

How Evangelicals politicized the Bible to Serve the State and its Wars

America has become a nation that worships war and murder. The only reason the damn wars continue is because there really isn't much of a public outcry against the wars, at least not one that affects general election outcomes. While warmonger Bush was justifiably castigated by the left and blamed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama turned out to be Bush on steroids and actually expanded Bush wars. The so-called anti-war peace loving left shut up when their party was doing the killing. The silence was deafening. 

But by far, the biggest block of psychopathic murderous warmongers in America are the Republican Evangelicals who literally thrive on war, murder, carnage and overt military worship. Of course, there are wonderful Evangelicals are aren't afflicted with the war disease but they don't vote Republican. One of the greatest shocks of the Republican primary season was at a debate in SC. Ron Paul suggested that we invoke the Golden Rule on foreign policy and got booed by the largely Republican Evangelical crowd. Gingrich lets loose with "kill em' and gets a standing ovation.

Evangelicals were not always theocratic Nazis who embraced despotism and war, even if they currently resemble the Nazi Party. Kelly B. Vlahos wrote a fascinating piece titled A Biblical Threat To National Security that doesn't necessarily explain why and how America's Evangelicals embraced Satanic evil but it certainly sheds considerable light on how the Evangelical movement has used the Bible to endorse military violence and serve the interests of the state. Vlahos starts off talking about the Holman Bible (which I never heard of) and how the US military embraced it.

To be more exact, a version of the Bible that, for reasons still undetermined, was authorized with the trademarked official insignia of the U.S. Armed Forces emblazoned on the front cover. There is The Soldier’s Bible with the Army’s seal, The Marine’s Bible with the Marine Corps seal, The Sailor’s Bible and The Airman’s Bible, both with their respective insignia. The books have been sold for nearly six years throughout Christian bookstores, commissaries and PXs on U.S. military installations — and are still available on Christianbook.com, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

It’s not the King James Version that the Gideons leave behind in hotel rooms drawers. The Holman Bible was commissioned and published by LifeWay Christian Resources, a subsidiary of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Baptist denomination in the world, in 2003.

Vlahos also references the work of Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein who, according to Wikipedia is "an attorney, businessman, and former Air Force officer. He is the founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) and author of With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military in which he describes his fight against alleged coercive Christian Fundamentalist practices by some members of the military."

The fact that folks are waking up to the horrifying implications of Evangelical influence within the US military is indeed refreshing. In fact, it definitely raises critically important issue involving Evangelical influence in foreign policy.

Anyway, what precisely is the Holman Bible? Vlahos writes:

The Holman Bible, or HCSB, has been popular with evangelicals for its references and study tools. Someone convinced each branch of the service they’d be perfect for the military, too. So the HCSB became the “official” Bible of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines in 2004, complete with reader-friendly text and custom “designed to meet the specific needs of those who serve in the most difficult of situations,” according to the publishers.

In other words, aside from the text, the books are filled with “devotionals” and “inspirational essays” tailored to each branch of service. I was unable to get my hands on a copy by press time, but Amazon’s “peek” inside the book and several positive reader reviews confirm some of the contents, revealing what could only be described as a guileless conflation of both Christian and American military iconography. War and service as religious devotion.

In addition to the Pledge of Allegiance and the first and fourth verses of the Star Spangled Banner, there are excerpts from one of George W. Bush inaugural addresses and the Republican president’s remarks at a National Prayer Breakfast. Gen. George S. Patton’s famous Christmas prayer card from the field of battle 1944 is also included, as is “George Washington’s Prayer,” which has been widely circulated (and debunked) as proof of America’s Christian paternity.

These Bibles also feature “testimonials and encouragement from the Officers’ Christian Fellowship,” which has approximately 15,000 members across the military and whose primary purpose is “to glorify God by uniting Christian officers for biblical fellowship and outreach, equipping and encouraging them to minister effectively in the military society.” In other words they proselytize within the officer corps as part of an evangelical “parachurch” within the military.

WOW. That's  very dangerous religious and political propaganda and it clearly implies that the the US military exists to do God's work and that God's work definitely includes waging murderous wars in the name of God.

Vlahos quotes U.S. Brigadier Gen. Bob Caslan who said “We are the aroma of Jesus Christ.”.

Michael Weinstein's warning is no understatement. “We’re fighting a Fundamentalist-Christian-Parachurch-Military-Corporate-Proselytizing-Complex”.  

For more on this issue, see:  U.S. Military being used as Government-Paid Missionaries

One thing is disturbingly certain.  America's Warvangelicals are spread throughout government, the Republican Party and the entire US military.  So long as these dangerous folks have power and influence, America and the rest of the world are doomed.  

Yes, America really does spend over 50% of all tax receipts on wars

The above photo is from a very disturbing Rolling Stone magazine photo collection of US soldiers celebrating their kills, here.

WAR. WAR. WAR.  It's all America ever does.  America has been at war with somebody ever since I can remember and I can remember as far back as the early 1960's.  What is wrong with America?  Should we change our name to Murder, Inc.?  America is the only nation on the planet that murders folks all over the world for defense contractor profits.

How many folks has America been involved in killing?

Let’s Do War by the Numbers Because We Love to Kill

Liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, Americans are addicted to the fantasy that war is noble, that murder is moral and that righteous people kill in the name of their flag.

WW I, 35,000,000 dead

WW II, At least 50,000,000 dead

Since the end of WW II, another 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 folks have died as a direct result of U.S. foreign interventionism.

American politicians love to talk about American Exceptionalism and the flag waving voters eat it up. We are exceptional all right – exceptional in the art of war and murder.

What has our lust for blood cost us? It’s cost us ‘Shock and Awe’ economic destruction. We are now barely a shadow of our once free and prosperous republic and we’ve morphed into Nazi Germany. America is now the Evil Empire that threatens life, peace and prosperity everywhere.

What is the annual cost of our perpetual non-stop wars? Let’s start with the federal budget. From the website of the White House, here’s the budget.

                            2011               2012
 Spending             3,603              3,796 Trillion
Tax Receipts         2,303              2,469
 Deficit                 1,300              1,327 

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/tables.pdf

More astounding, entitlement payouts exceed tax revenues. In April, 2011 Fox News reported in an article titled Government Cash Handouts Now Top Tax Revenues  that tax receipts no longer even cover entitlement costs. The figures quoted in the Fox News article are now a few years old and if anything, the entitlements have increased while revenues have remained flat as a result of the miserable economy.

U.S. households are now getting more in cash handouts from the government than they are paying in taxes for the first time since the Great Depression.

Households received $2.3 trillion in some kind of government support in 2010. That includes expanded unemployment benefits, as well as payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and stimulus spending, among other things.

But that’s more than the $2.2 trillion households paid in taxes, an amount that has slumped largely due to the recession, according to an analysis by the Fiscal Times. Also, an estimated 59% of the 308.7 million Americans in this country get at least one federal benefit, according to the Census Bureau, based on 2009 data. An estimated 46.5 million get Social Security; 42.6 million get Medicare; 42.4 million get Medicaid; 36.1 million get food stamps; 12.4 million get housing subsidies; and 3.2 million get Veterans' benefits.

How much are we spending on the never ending wars, the foreign policy machine and the Empire? 

In a piece titled Tomgram: Chris Hellman, $1.2 Trillion for National Security and  posted at Tomsdispatch.com, Chris Helman, one of the few foreign policy analysts to put the true cost of the Empire into focus, writes:

Normally, in media accounts, you hear about the Pentagon budget and the war-fighting supplementary funds passed by Congress for our conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. That already gets you into a startling price range -- close to $700 billion for 2012 -- but that’s barely more than half of it. If Americans were ever presented with the real bill for the total U.S. national security budget, it would actually add up to more than $1.2 trillion a year….

For 2012, the White House has requested $558 billion for the Pentagon’s annual “base” budget, plus an additional $118 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. At $676 billion, that’s already nothing to sneeze at, but it’s just the barest of beginnings when it comes to what American taxpayers will actually spend on national security. Think of it as the gigantic tip of a humongous iceberg.

To get closer to a real figure, it’s necessary to start peeking at other parts of the federal budget where so many other pots of security spending are squirreled away….

Missing from the Pentagon’s budget request, for example, is an additional $19.3 billion for nuclear-weapons-related activities…

So, even though we’re barely started, we’ve already hit a total official FY 2012 Pentagon budget request of: $703.1 billion dollars For starters, that $117.8 billion war-funding request for the Department of Defense doesn’t include certain actual “war-related fighting” costs. Take, for instance, the counterterrorism activities of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development….

$711.8 billion.

The White House has also requested $71.6 billion for a post-2001 category called “homeland security”… 

$765.3 billion.

The U.S. intelligence budget was technically classified prior to 2007, although at roughly $40 billion annually, it was considered one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington. …

$818.4 billion.

Veterans programs are an important part of the national security budget with the projected funding figure for 2012 being $129.3 billion…

$947.7 billion.

If you include the part of the foreign affairs budget not directly related to U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other counterterrorism operations, you have an additional $18 billion in direct security spending. Of this, $6.6 billion is for military aid to foreign countries, while almost $2 billion goes for “international peacekeeping” operations. A further $709 million has been designated for countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction… This leaves us at:

$965.7 billion.

As with all federal retirees, U.S. military retirees and former civilian Department of Defense employees receive pension benefits from the government. The 2012 figure is $48.5 billion for military personnel, $20 billion for those civilian employees, which means we’ve now hit:

$1,034.2 billion. (Yes, that’s $1.03 trillion!)

When the federal government lacks sufficient funds to pay all of its obligations, it borrows. Each year, it must pay the interest on this debt which, for FY 2012, is projected at $474.1 billion. The National Priorities Project calculates that 39% of that, or $185 billion, comes from borrowing related to past Pentagon spending. Add it all together and the grand total for the known national security budget of the United States is:

$1,219.2 billion. (That’s more than $1.2 trillion.)

Chris Helman isn’t the only person to expose the true cost of the wars that are bankrupting us. Ron Paul said in one of the Republican  debates "I'm not sure I can get anybody to agree with me on this panel, but we spend $1.5 trillion overseas in wars that we don't need to be in and we need to cut there.".

Ron Paul: Time to stop spending trillions on war

The Washington Post, a pro-war and pro-interventionist mouthpiece of the elites, even whined that the current Iraq War alone would cost us more $3 trillion and that was back in 2008. 

The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More

If $3 trillion bucks sounds like an insane amount of money, apparently the Washington Post vastly underestimated our war costs. Steve Chapman in a Real Clear Politics piece titled “The Unaffordability of Endless War” said “Scholars Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia and Linda Bilmes of Harvard published a book in 2008 called "The Three Trillion Dollar War," which gives a more realistic estimate. But that, too, is an understatement. They figure that when all long-run costs are factored in, the tab will be at least $5 trillion and could reach $7 trillion, or nearly twice as much as this year's entire federal budget.” And that was two years ago. I asked Bilmes for an update, and she said some obligations, like veterans' medical and disability compensation costs, "have exceeded our earlier projections." Do I hear $8 trillion?”

$8,000,000,000,000 and counting? That was back in 2010 and since then Obama and Gang have escalated the war in Afghanistan, extended it into Pakistan, waged war on Libya, now wants to go to war with Syria and is sending troops to Africa. 

Yet, Americans continue to wave the flag and vote for more warmongers. Romney has vowed to increase military spending by $3 trillion. Will American bloodlust ever be satiated?

But by far the worst manifestations of military powers and maintaining a bankrupting empire transgress beyond the horrifying spectacle of the physical and human carnage of war because those same folks who deceptively internalized that war is noble also become its ultimate victims. Sooner or later the flag waving stops when folks realize that they have been systematically shorn of their own liberty and prosperity. The film clips of euphorically happy flag waving Germans idolizing Hitler and his evil is a stark contrast to the starving, homeless and terrified Germans in bombed out and burned out cities after WW II.

Worshiping the flag is most dangerous when folks fail to even realize what precisely the flag stands for. For Americans, they will eventually come to the frightening realization that they put their faith and trust in a government that betrayed them as they are forced to accept that they have been nothing more than pawns on the financial chessboard of empire wherein the wealth and power of the nation has been viciously concentrated into the hands of the ruling few – Banksters and their power brokers who delivered unto the people unemployment, economic misery, fiat currency, wars and grim futures.

Yet, the people cannot be absolved of responsibility.  They voted for everything they got and will get.  They delivered themselves into a totalitarian impoverishing hell.

At this point, what does the flag stand for? Nothing but the tens of trillions poured down the scary black hole of dark nothingness and militarism gone mad as the people ponder the failures of an evil debt ridden empire that bankrupted a once great, glorious, free and prosperous nation.

By the way, America really is spending over half of its $2.3-2.4 trillion in tax receipts on the wars, the foreign policy machine and the Evil Empire that is stretched around the entire planet.

We may as well rename our federal taxes the Military Tax or the War Tax or the Empire Tax because it's very appropriate.

The American people simply made the decision to relinquish their liberty and squander their prosperity on senseless wars and empire.  That's not something that sane folks do.  In many ways, our elected leaders mirror the souls of the people and it's clearly evident that the people and their leaders are in sync - both are psychotically bat shit crazy.

The price of empire is quite steep.  It crushes nations and brings them to their knees.  Every empire in history ultimately bites the dust.  The American Empire will be no different.  

The US Military is a Giant Octopus that is Strangling the Planet

Most folks believe the US Military exists to defend America.  That assumption is no longer true.  The US Military is morphing into the UN's Global Governance Military.  We wage wars for resource control on behalf of the New World Order, the banksters, the corporatists and the statist elites.

Read the entire article here

National Post

Judy Morris

Reflections on Vietnam and its Iconic Napalm Girl 40 Years Later

Americans: We love the smell of napalm in the morning. We love defense contractor profits. We love killing for profit. We pledge allegiance to the military industrial complex and all the evil it represents.

The above photo is suddenly a red hot story this week because Napalm Girl, Kim Phuc, was interviewed 40 years after the famous photo was taken, a photo that managed to go viral at the time the event occurred.  Then, as now, the US media continues to be the propaganda arm of the government.

Thirty percent of Phuc’s tiny body was scorched raw by third-degree burns, though her face somehow remained untouched.

After multiple skin grafts and surgeries, Phuc was finally allowed to leave. For a while, life did go somewhat back to normal. She was accepted into medical school.

But all that ended once the new communist leaders realized the propaganda value of the “napalm girl” in the photo.

Read the rest here

New York Post 

Why is it 'enemy' propaganda for the America people to see the true face of the human agony caused by U.S. foreign policy?

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial lists the names of the 58,261 members of the armed forces who died in that war. During JFK’s presidency, Vietnam combat deaths were 182 (16 in 1961, 53 in 1962 and 118 through 11/22/63). On 10/11/63, JFK issued National Security Action Memorandum 263 making it official that the US would withdraw from Vietnam. On November 21, 1963, JFK was given a list of the recent Vietnam casualties and he told his Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff “After I come back from Texas, that’s going to change. Vietnam is not worth another American life”. The next day, JFK was dead.

After JFK was murdered by the CIA and military industrial complex for the crime of promoting peace and opposing murderous genocide, the low level, low death Vietnam conflict massively escalated.  LBJ became the obliging Murderer in Chief and drafted young men to march off and die in senseless wars.  Peak Vietnam years for US combat deaths are:

1965   1,863
1966   6,144
1967 11,153
1968 16,589
1969 11,614
1970   6,083
1971   2,357

There were millions of US soldiers who returned home with lifelong debilitating combat injuries (not including Senator John Kerry who was scratched in the ass and demanded medals for his few short weeks of combat duty).

Millions of Asians from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were slaughtered. We bombed these nations into oblivion and doused them with poisonous Agent Orange. None of these poor third world nations posed any threat whatsoever to America.

Why did we do it? We march off to war for one reason and one reason only: defense contractor profits. The military industrial complex rules America, defense contractors own nearly 100% of Congress and the American Sheeple People are notorious for turning a blind eye to the crimes of the government they elect.  They'd rather be waving American flags on Memorial Day and July 4th while wallowing in the delusion that America is a great and free nation that spreads good cheer upon the planet.

Vietnam was a very expensive war.  The Congressional Research Service puts the cost at $686 billion, here.  Other estimates of the cost of the Vietnam War range from $700 to $900 billion.

If suffering Americans are wondering why the American economy lies in ruins, they only need to look at the gargantuan cost of our never ending wars.  In fact, most of our $15 trillion plus mountain of debt is war related.

Let’s Do War by the Numbers Because We Love to Kill

Liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, Americans are addicted to the fantasy that war is noble, that murder is moral and that righteous people kill in the name of their flag. Last I checked, America hadn’t been invaded since the War of 1812 when the British military invaded and occupied America and the War of 1812 was indeed our fault because we attempted to militarily invade and occupy Canada. Yet, America has been involved in non-stop murderous wars for well over a century.

WW I resulted in the deaths of 35,000,000 folks. Historian Martin Gilbert puts the military death toll (soldiers killed) at 8,626 million. “The destructiveness of the First World War, in terms of the number of soldiers killed, exceeded that of all other wars known to history.”. But as with most wars, it is the civilians who bear the brunt of the horrors of war.

What caused WW I? A Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip shoots and kills on June 28, 1914 Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, Bosnia (a component of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). Within weeks, Europe breaks out into total war. Two murdered members of a European royal house triggered the deaths of 35,000 folks.

 How did America get involved? No Americans were killed and all the insanity of Europe’s ruling families and its long history of wars and empires was not an American problem. But was it? America own brand of royalty, Wall Street banking houses, gambled heavily on the outcome of the WW I by funding the governments involved, notably Britain and France. The Banksters were losing their bets and were about to lose all their money so they hatched a plan to get America involved. The horror of that Bankster Bailout is documented here.

The bottom line is that the Wall Street banking houses not only succeeded in getting American into WW I, it also conned Congress into creating the Federal Reserve, a private banking monopoly that exists for no reason except to transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy by covering their gambling losses. More importantly, the Federal Reserve is directly responsible for the rise of the military industrial complex and the massive concentration of wealth and power.

World War I was deceptively marketed as ‘the war to end all wars’. Of course, WW I only set the stage for WW II that killed at least another 50,000,000 folks (many historians put the WW II death toll at 60-70 million). Wall Street Banksters funded the rise of Hitler and made another bloody fortune off the ashes of dead bodies.

 Why do we have wars? We have wars for one reason and one reason only – we murder for Bankster and defense contractor profits. There’s nothing noble or moral or righteous about killing for profit.

With WW I and WW II killing a minimum of 85,000,000 million folks, how many more folks have been killed since the end of WW II? It’s estimated that America and American foreign policy are directly responsible for another 20,000,000-30,000,000 kills since the end of WW II.

“US covert and overt criminal Wars of Aggression caused 20-30 million deaths of human beings since World War 2, according to the outstanding documentation of James Lucas of Countercurrents.org. The US use/support of armed attacks is documented in 37 countries, and in direct violation of treaties after both world wars..to forever end armed attacks unless first attacked by another nation’s government.”.  Read the rest here.

Major post WW II deaths include the death tolls from the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Wikipedia estimates the deaths from the Korean War at 2,500,000 – 3,500,000 and the deaths from the Vietnam War at 2,500,000-6,000,000, here.

Ironically, the Republican Party is now being dubbed the War Party and righteously so because the GOP’s Evangelical base screams for non-stop war, murder and plunder. But America’s conservative Republican Christians weren’t also a gang of murderous psychopaths and the GOP at one time opposed foreign interventions. In fact, WW I, WW II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Balkan Wars were all initiated by liberal, progressive Democrats (Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson and Bill Clinton). Harry Truman also dropped two big atomic bombs on Japan, despite knowing that Japan would surrender, was unable to continue the war and was finished.

Let’s recap the war dead attributable to America, American foreign policy and American Banksters, all of which vastly enabled war by funding it while contributing to the massive death tolls.

WW I, 35,000,000 dead

WW II, At least 50,000,000 dead

Since the end of WW II, another 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 folks have died as a direct result of U.S. foreign interventionism.

American politicians love to talk about American Exceptionalism and the flag waving voters eat it up. We are exceptional all right – exceptional in the art of war and murder.

What has our lust for blood cost us? It’s cost us ‘Shock and Awe’ economic destruction. We are now barely a shadow of our once free and prosperous republic and we’ve morphed into Nazi Germany. America is now the Evil Empire that threatens life, peace and prosperity everywhere.

When will the American blood lust be satiated?  When Americans vote to fire the warmongers and replace them with constitutionalists who believe in the peaceful foreign policy of our founders.

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. James Madison