WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #85,

 

85. WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #85, AUGUST 3, 2022
William D. Hartung.  “Fueling the Warfare State:       

     America's $1.4 Trillion "National Security" Budget.”

Caitlin Johnstone.  Imperial Propaganda System.

Chris Hedges.  Add Incarceration for Controlling the Narrative

 

 

William D. Hartung.  “Fueling the Warfare State: America's $1.4 Trillion "National Security" Budget Makes Us Ever Less Safe.”    TomDispatch (July 7, 2022). This March, when the Biden administration presented a staggering $813 billion proposal for “national defense,” it was hard to imagine a budget that could go significantly higher or be more generous to the denizens of the military-industrial complex. After all, that request represented far more than peak spending in the Korean or Vietnam War years, and well over $100 billion more than at the height of the Cold War.  It was, in fact, an astonishing figure by any measure -- more than two-and-a-half times what China spends; more, in fact, than (and hold your hats for this one!) the national security budgets of the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined. And yet the weapons industry and hawks in Congress are now demanding that even more be spent.  Click here to read more of this dispatch.

 

 “Imperial narrative control has five distinct elements.”

Caitlin A. Johnstone.  Mronline.org (7-3-22).

All of our world’s worst problems are created by the powerful. The powerful will keep creating those problems until ordinary people use their superior numbers to make them stop. Ordinary people don’t use their superior numbers to stop the powerful because the powerful are continuously manipulating people’s understanding of what’s going on.

AND PRISON

When whistleblowers go to prison, we're on the road to tyranny 

Daniel Hale is in a supermax prison for telling the truth about America's drone war. That prison awaits us all 

By CHRIS HEDGES, AUGUST 2, 2022, WWW.SALON.COM 

This article originally appeared at ScheerPost. Used by permission. 

MARION, Illinois . . .he describes his journey from working for the National Security Agency and the Joint Special Operations Task Force at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to becoming federal prisoner 26069-07.  

Hale, a 34-year-old former Air Force signals intelligence analyst, is serving a 45-month prison sentence, following his conviction under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified documents about the U.S. military's drone assassination program and its high civilian death toll. The documents are believed to be the source material for "The Drone Papers" published by The Intercept, on Oct. 15, 2015.  MORE