Awhile back some dude stated that in 5 years or so that there would be a war in Europe…..I know many people have been predicting such a situation for many years now but so far they have been just fanciful predictions….
I read today that the nation of Switzerland is modernizing….
Switzerland, long known for its neutrality in global conflicts, is making a major investment in its famous network of bunkers. The country is set to spend more than $1 billion over 15 years to overhaul and modernize public and private shelters, a move driven by security concerns and the war in Ukraine. Starting next year, 200 large bunkers will be upgraded, and fees paid by property developers to fund shelters will rise, the Washington Post reports. Regional governments are also updating aging ventilation and filtration systems, with $1.2 billion earmarked for the work.
Switzerland’s commitment to civil defense is rooted in its history, with a network of roughly 370,000 shelters—enough to secretly assign a spot to nearly every resident. In fact, Switzerland has more bunkers per capita than any other nation, per the Guardian. The shelters, often tucked away in apartment buildings, are designed to withstand nuclear, biological, or chemical attacks. They include reinforced concrete, blast doors, and basic amenities, with requirements like one dry toilet for every 30 people. The country has begun planning for so-called “poly-crisis” scenarios, in which multiple threats hit at once.
Officials also are studying how to keep important services, like schools and businesses, running during emergencies, per the Post. “The economy still has to work during war. That’s what you see in all conflicts nowadays,” said Daniel Jordi, a Swiss civil defense official. He acknowledged the size of the government’s investment. “It’s a huge infrastructure,” he said, “but in the end it’s cheaper than any other measures you could take to protect your population.”
So what do they know that Donny and his band of idiots do not?
The way the US has been stirring the pot of war that has been simmering for decades you would think that civil defense might come up…..so has it?
We cannot depend on FEMA so where do we look for help when the unthinkable happens?
I say no for they are too busy selling their weapons around the world to care about us peons.
The Party has proven that it is a pro-war party vote after vote in the Congress….and the legacy that it is leaving behind as it vacates the White House and Congress is strikingly horrible….
When a political party loses its legitimacy, its traditional priorities and moral compass, its candidates lose elections. Opting not to hold an open convention, which would have tested political viability, the DNC (acting on the President’s recommendation) invited Kamala Harris to replace Biden on the ticket. For many Democrats, the lack of a competitive primary undermined the legitimacy of process.
In a misguided effort to attract anti-Trump Republicans, Harris enlisted conservative Republican Liz Cheney to join her on the campaign trail. This strategy failed. The Republicans stuck with Trump or voted third party. In the effort, Harris alienated many core supporters who saw her cave on such issues as fracking, immigration and health care. Her policy backtracking was another blow to party legitimacy.
An even more delegitimizing strategy was to take for granted the support of working-class voters and labor unions. Both UAW President Shawn Fain and Senator Bernie Sanders were noticeably absent from Harris’ campaign events, which included instead entertainment celebrities and Cheney. Commenting on the election outcome, Bernie said it “should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”
The possibly heaviest, blow to party legitimacy was the large defection of progressives and other Democrats who were horrified by the ongoing genocide in Gaza and by the continued transfer of U.S. weaponry to Israel for its wars in both Gaza and Lebanon. Harris lost the popular count by five million votes. At the same time, she finished 12 million votes below the 81.2 million votes Biden received in 2020. Where did those missing Democratic voters go?
I have watched the party slide into the clutches of the defense industry (the war cartel) for the last decades, pretty much since 1992, and now it is the paid agent of the industry of war.
Sadly I do not foresee any changes on the horizon.
I know I am a hard Leftists and yet I still read and write about thoughts coming from the Right….most times it is the American Conservative…..why?
They seem to be one of the few that sees the fruitlessness of war and try to point out the way out of the vicious cycle that the M-IC and its paid agents has kept this country in conflict since the end of WW2.
Biden has made his statement on Taiwan and the media is having a field day analyzing what he really meant…..I believe it was not a gaff…it was Biden reassuring his handlers that the money will continue to flow…..
The AC has made its thoughts known…..
So much for strategic ambiguity. Speaking at a news conference in Tokyo on Monday, President Joe Biden committed the United States to militarily defend Taiwan in response to a potential Chinese invasion. A reporter asked Biden, “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?” To which the president replied, flatly, “Yes.” The reporter followed up: “You are?” The president was adamant: “That’s the commitment we made.”
Pardon me if I sound unduly alarmed, but can we please not go down this road? For the love of God, can America avoid opening up a direct confrontation with the nuclear-armed People’s Republic while we are already engaged in an openly acknowledged proxy war with Russia, another nuclear power?
Biden’s words in Tokyo were so direct and unambiguous they left his aides in the room visibly surprised, according to the New York Times. And understandably so: The commander-in-chief erased what little remained of America’s longstanding policy of leaving it up to Beijing to decide whether it thinks Washington will come to Taiwan’s defense, the idea being that ambiguity and unpredictability can serve as deterrents. If the Chinese know that an attack will be met by a U.S. military response, the only question from their point of view becomes when best to mount it, given the political climate and balance of forces.
Biden’s “commitment,” moreover, would upend decades of American policy: Taiwan isn’t a treaty ally like, say, Japan or Poland, and hasn’t been seen as such by successive administrations. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, which has structured America’s ties to Taiwan since 1979, the U.S. government is obliged to help arm the Taiwanese, but not to directly defend the island.
Then there is Henry Kissinger….someone that I have seldom agreed with has made a comment on the Ukraine situation…..
n Monday the CIA announced it had added two stars to its Memorial Wall for fallen officers. The memo is, appropriately for the shady world of intelligence, vague. Perhaps these quiet dead Americans were not killed in Ukraine; perhaps they did not even die recently. But one does wonder.
In a surreal recent exchange, a colleague wondered how many American lives must be spent on top of the $54 billion in taxpayer money to scrape out a stalemate in East Ukraine. What is our interest there? As if summoned from my least charitable imaginings, an aging swamp creature appeared, indignant in response, to declare the American dead worth it, all the money worth it, to give Russia a defeat. It was, he said, like when we gave weapons to the mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, never mind Osama Bin Laden’s second career. It was, he said, like WWII all over again; if you give a dictator a bit of land, like the mouse and the cookie, he’ll want more of it.
Perhaps when the war party is sending its people they are not sending their best. I shouldn’t take stale arguments from a man clinging to Cold War glory days as the best case for further American involvement in Ukraine. But I might counter one Cold Warrior with another and suggest that Henry Kissinger’s recent comments at Davos be given due consideration. The former secretary of State said that Ukraine should be willing to concede territory in the east to Russia in pursuit of peace. “Negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome,” Kissinger said, as reported in the Daily Telegraph. “Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante. Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself.”
Kissinger warned against the West being caught up in the “mood of the moment.” The mood of the moment is an acknowledged proxy war with Russia, one to which, as the Wall Street Journal reported, the Pentagon is eager to deploy U.S. special forces (let’s pretend they are not already on the ground “advising”). Is this a flex? A threat? Do they think the Kremlin doesn’t read the Journal?
You cannot depend on the MSM for accurate information….one must look beyond the PR agenda of corporate America…..
The U.S. news media’s treatment of the Ukraine issue has long been characterized by flagrant favoritism. Reports from organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Transparency International, and Freedom House showing that Ukraine’s actual conduct differed markedly from its carefully crafted image as a dedicated young democracy received little coverage in the mainstream press. That willingness to conceal Ukraine’s corruption and authoritarianism has grown even worse since the outbreak of war with Russia. Media coverage moved quickly from ignoring or minimizing inconvenient information about Kyiv’s political and economic system to channeling outright Ukrainian propaganda.
For example, multiple unfiltered stories from Ukrayinska Pravda and other Ukrainian news outlets have become a nearly daily feature on Yahoo’s news feed. Official statements and press releases from Ukraine’s government also appear on Yahoo and other outlets, frequently without an acknowledgment that the accuracy of those accounts could not be confirmed. Contents in the Washington Post and the New York Times, which set the agenda and tone throughout much of the US news media on any issue, similarly have conveyed a solidly pro-Ukraine perspective. Moreover, there are very few competing accounts in those outlets from Russian news sources or even from American analyses that challenge the dominant narrative.
The willingness of the US press to foster a favorable image of Ukraine knows few bounds. During the early weeks of the war, American news outlets even circulated the story about the “Ghost of Kyiv” – the fighter pilot who supposedly became an ace in a matter of days by shooting down numerous Russian warplanes. That account had all the earmarks of transparent propaganda, and the Ukrainian military ultimately conceded that the story was fictional. In the meantime, however, it had served its purpose well as propaganda for credulous Western audiences, and the US press aided that effort. Indeed, the coverage of Kyiv’s retraction of the story was noticeably limited.
The voting has started and I would like to give a few thoughts about the so-called “front runners”….
I will start with Warren.
Most readers know I am antiwar and that I pick my candidates by their stands on foreign policy……
I also try to give my reader a broad look at the candidates no matter the party…….this time it is the Dems.
One of the so-called top tier candidates is Sen. Elizabeth Warren….we know what the MSM wants us to know so since they have been silent on the candidates and their war connections I did some research…..
Warren seems to have a pile of war mongers in her team……
Elizabeth Warren has promised “big, structural change” on a range of issues related to the economy. Warren has a plan for foreign policy, too, but it appears to be scarcely different from that of the last Democrat to occupy the White House.
A close examination of Warren’s newly assembled team of international advisors presents little hope of change from the military interventionism, regime change strong-arming and drone warfare that characterized the administration of President Barack Obama.
Earlier this month, Warren foreign policy aide Sasha Baker revealed a list of 34 “friends, colleagues, and advisors” that formed the foundation of the candidate’s foreign policy team. For the first time, observers were offered a clear window into what US foreign policy might look like under a Warren presidency.
This one topic will prevent from voting for a candidate that is that deep into the M-IC.
No I am not that naive but I do believe that there is a candidate that is opposed to war and I am supporting her until she gets eliminated and then I will do some re-evaluation to find another candidate for the presidency of the United States.
I do a lot more work at picking a candidate than most voters…I refuse to settle and most Americans are fine with a candidate that is not offensive.
Again you are pretty much caught up with the mash-up…..
Now the new “axis of evil”………Pompeo, Bolton and Abrams….the warmongering neocons that are handling the Venezuela situation…..
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on countries to “pick a side” on Venezuela, urging them to back opposition leader Juan Guaido in a Saturday speech at the UN Security Council in New York.
“Now, it is time for every other nation to pick a side. No more delays, no more games. Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you’re in league with Maduro and his mayhem,” Pompeo told the Security Council.
Russia accused Washington of plotting a coup attempt and had tried to stop the meeting requested by the United States. “Venezuela does not represent a threat to peace and security. If anything does represent a threat to peace, it is the shameless and aggressive action of the United States and their allies aimed at the ouster of the legitimately elected president of Venezuela,” Russia’s UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, told the UN Council.
Recently Pompeo tried to include all the neocon “hit list” into the conversation on Venezuela……..
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made several statements that raised eyebrows, such as claiming that Cuba had invaded Venezuela and “taken control” of the Venezuela’s “security apparatus” and that U.S. sanctions illegally imposed on Venezuela “aren’t aimed at the Venezuelan people.”
However, the most surprising claim Pompeo made in the interview was that Hezbollah and Iran were “active” in Venezuela, presenting a national security “risk for America.”
After accusing China, Cuba and Russia of interfering with U.S. efforts to install U.S.-funded opposition figure Juan Guaidó and oust current Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Pompeo made the following assertion:
If there is any proof that Trump picks people that compliment his stupidity it will be his adviser Bolton…..he has done what most neocons do…..thumps his chest like a sex crazed primate……this time it is Iran.
President Donald Trump’s national security adviser has issued a direct threat to Iran’s supreme leader on the 40th anniversary of his country’s Islamic Revolution.
John Bolton was featured Monday in an ominous video posted to the White House’s official Twitter account. The video was posted as a “message to the Ayatollah of Iran,” Ali Khamenei, who the United States has targeted with a new social media campaign entitled “#40YearsofFailure” in reference to the decades of hostility between Washington and Tehran since the 1979 uprising that ousted a West-backed monarchy and installed a Shiite Muslim clerical leadership.
“What a 40 years its been, tyrannizing its own people and terrorizing the world, Iran continues to seek nuclear weapons to intimidate peaceful people all around the globe and ballistic missiles to use as delivery systems,” Bolton said in the roughly one-minute clip. “Iran under the ayatollahs remains the central banker of international terrorism and its conventional military forces are all over the Middle East, in Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
To be honest this link is a neocon propaganda site take that for what it is worth.
Remember the non-existent WMDs in Iraq? Or 1954 an excuse for the regime change in Guatemala was the presence of Soviet guns……well that is tried and true the technique…..
While insisting that US military intervention against Venezuela remains on the table, Senate Armed Services Committee chief Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has also claimed on Tuesday that the US would be obliged to intervene if Russia were to move weapons to Venezuela.
“We’d have to, not go to war, but use force,” Inhofe told reporters. This claim appears not to be an actual obligation, but part of the idea of the Monroe Doctrine that the US generally does intervene against other countries getting involved in the entire Western Hemisphere.
And while Inhofe doesn’t appear to want to rule out attacking Venezuela just unilaterally, as the administration is hoping to impose regime change there, it is clear he views the war even more favorably if it can somehow be turned into a proxy war against Russia.
(antiwar.com)
Now let’s look at why.
After decades of rhetoric why does the US want to overthrow an elected government?
Since 1998, the United States of America has tried to overthrow the government of Venezuela. What threatened the government of the United States since then was the Bolivarian dynamic set in motion by the election of Hugo Chávez as president of Venezuela that year. Chávez won the elections with a mandate from Venezuela’s workers and poor to overhaul the country to tend to their long-neglected needs.
Venezuela, with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, had enriched the U.S.-based oil companies and its own oligarchy. Venezuela’s key oil minister in the early 1960s (and architect of OPEC—the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso rightly called oil the “devil’s excrement.” It promised so much and delivered so little. Chávez arrived as the embodiment of popular hope. He threatened the oil companies and the oligarchy, which is why the United States tried to overthrow him.
The first attempt at a coup came in 2002, when the United States egged on the military and the oligarchy to overthrow Chávez. They failed. He was supremely popular, the Chavista base eager for change that would improve their lives. They had no faith in the United States or the oligarchy, both of whom had suffocated them for the past century.
The American people need to ask why is this so damn important to the Neocons…….just why is it that the US cannot tolerate a leader that does not agree with them? And who elected the US to speak for the people of Venezuela?
The GOP use to be the bastion of the Neocons or the “war hawks” if you like that title better……but this election has seen a shift in their allegiances….these despicable toads are saddling up to the “progressive” Clinton (I hate using the “P” word in association with Hillary….she is NO progressive!)
I have written many times that if she is elected then our lot will be cast for more and more conflicts in an expanding policy……she is the worse possible candidate to have with all the wars we are fighting……but that aside the “hawks” are drooling all over themselves with the hint that she will win……
Though the hawkish stance of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has been too often ignored this election season, new reporting on Thursday highlights how her presumed win in November will likely usher in a more aggressive, bipartisan foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond.
“The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American foreign policy via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House,” the Washington Post‘s White House correspondent Greg Jaffe reports.
Finally! Someone has grown a set and stepped up to do the right thing……
After the 9/11 attacks the US Congress passed the 2001 war authorization…..and ever since it has been used for the constant wars that we are fighting for the last 15 years.
The House will debate an amendment on Wednesday whether to repeal a 2001 authorization for use of military force that the administration is using for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
The amendment, introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), would take effect 90 days after the defense bill is passed, and force the administration to seek new authority from Congress to wage its military campaign against ISIS.
Yes I know….many of you think that I am a peace-nik……if so then you are not mistaken. I have been one since 1975. Once I returned to the states after my two tours in Vietnam I was moved to do whatever I could to help end the war at any price….
Once the Vietnam War was effectively over I continued my anti-war work…….I was determined to help keep any American person from having to experience something that would change his/her life forever……I admit that I was not very successful since we have had a war a year since those days to contend with…..but that did not deter me from my continuing work….
With limited success will not keep me from voicing my opposition to war….it has never been fashionable to be anti-war and today more so than any point than I can recall…..when you voice opposition to war then prepare yourself for the name calling and the insults…it is not as bad as it was say 40 years ago…..today they are off-hand insults…like “apologist” or the ever popular “bleeding heart”…..OUCH!
Now we are in the midst of the 2016 election and our politicians have shown me that not one of them is against war….to the contrary……
Bernie Sanders wants to stay on message. So his presidential campaign has focused on economic issues. The American economy is rigged, Sanders says, in the interests of the wealthy and well connected. Banks and Wall Street brokerage houses get what they want at the expense of everyone else. The government should step in on the […]
Defense contractors have lots of cash to throw at politicians to make sure that the world remains a dangerous place…..the Pentagon does its part to keep the public afraid of their own shadow which in turn makes the propaganda more potable…..
Now ask…what are the chances that we could have a peaceful decade in the near future?
Robt. Parry does a good explanation to that question…….
After nearly 15 years of Mideast war – with those conflicts growing ever grimmer – you might expect that peace would be a major topic of the 2016 presidential race. Instead, there has been a mix of warmongering bluster from most candidates and some confused mutterings against endless war from a few.
No one, it seems, wants to risk offending Official Washington’s neocon-dominated foreign policy establishment that is ready to castigate any candidate who suggests that there are other strategies – besides more and more “regime changes” – that might extricate the United States from the Middle East quicksand.
The outlook for the future is grim…..that is if you are not a defense contractor…….the forecast is for a generation of war and the consequences if we continue down the path we have chosen……
You may appreciate it….but I do not…..and I will continue to speak out as an anti-war activist…….and as long as stupid is the rule of the day…..
I have voiced my objection to the new AUMF that the prez is seeking approval of by the Congress…..
I feel that it will open a door that can never be shut……another analogy…opening a can of worms……
Soon, very soon, the debate on the AUMF will be all over the media…..,and as usual there will be an inordinate amount of misinformation surrounding the issue and in the end we will get the authorization and a whole new world of conflict will appear.
The big problem is that the public if not military connected, does not care or even interested in the outcome of this debate.
