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The Super Bowl Promotes War
David Swanson
Super Bowl 50 will be the first National Football League championship to happen since it was reported that much of the pro-military hoopla at football games, the honoring of troops and glorifying of wars that most people had assumed was voluntary or part of a marketing scheme for the NFL, has actually been a money-making scheme for the NFL. The U.S. military has been dumping millions of our dollars, part of a recruitment and advertising budget that's in the billions, into paying the NFL to publicly display love for soldiers and weaponry.
Of course, the NFL may in fact really truly love the military, just as it may love the singers it permits to sing at the Super Bowl halftime show, but it makes them pay for the privilege too. And why shouldn't the military pay the football league to hype its heroism? It pays damn near everybody else. At $2.8 billion a year on recruiting some 240,000 "volunteers," that's roughly $11,600 per recruit. That's not, of course, the trillion with a T kind of spending it takes to run the military for a year; that's just the spending to gently persuade each "volunteer" to join up. The biggest military "service" ad buyer in the sports world is the National Guard. The ads often depict humanitarian rescue missions. Recruiters often tell tall tales of "non-deployment" positions followed by free college. But it seems to me that the $11,600 would have gone a long way toward paying for a year in college! And, in fact, people who have that money for college are far less likely to be recruited.
U.S. Now Overtly at War Against Russia
Eric Zuesse
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced on February 2nd that he approves of U.S. ‘Defense’ Secretary Ash Carter’s proposal to quadruple U.S. armaments and troops in Europe, against ‘Russian aggression.’
Secretary Carter said earlier that same day, in his announcement of America’s arming for war against Russia:
re reinforcing our posture in Europe to support our NATO allies in the face of Russia's aggression. In Pentagon parlance, this is called the European Reassurance Initiative and after requesting about $800 million for last year, this year we're more than quadrupling it for a total of $3.4 billion in 2017.Something Rotten in Iowa
Stephen Lendman
When establishment candidate A defeats upstart candidate B by six coin toss wins, a 1.6% likelihood or virtual impossibility, red lights flash fraud.
A February 5 Des Moines Register editorial highlighted it, saying “the world is laughing at Iowa. Late-night comedians and social media mavens are having a field day with jokes about (Clinton’s) coin flips” victory.
What happened reeks of election-rigging. “(R)efusal to undergo scrutiny or allow for an appeal” provides disturbing evidence.
Democrats “must act quickly to assure the accuracy of the caucus results, beyond a shadow of a doubt” - or cast serious doubt about Clinton’s victory, making the caucuses look like a preordained anointment, blatant electoral fraud, winning an election by stealing it. Razor-thin results demand a complete audit and release of raw vote totals. “Did we win the popular vote,” Sanders asked? He wants full disclosure, everything made public.
Last Monday’s results (a virtual dead heat) were the closest in Iowa Democrat caucus history. After initially congratulating Cruz on his victory, Trump lashed out at him, saying “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa. He stole it.”
NYT Proliferates the Big Lie About Russia Threatening America
Stephen Lendman
No nation shows greater commitment to world peace, stability and security than Russia - no leader more than Vladimir Putin.
He’s the most worthy Nobel Peace Prize candidate never to be honored, passed over for war criminals like Obama.
NYT editors mock credible journalism, proliferating the Big Lie about nonexistent “Russian aggression,” posing the greatest threat to US security.
“It is undeniable that Russia has become openly aggressive under President Vladimir Putin, who has violated sovereign borders by annexing Crimea and stoking civil war in Ukraine,” they ranted.
“A cease-fire in Ukraine was declared last year, but Russian forces still maintain a presence in eastern Ukraine, raising questions about whether Russia might try to extend its reach to the Baltic States.”
Fact: No responsible editors would touch this rubbish. They’d forthrightly denounce it.
Longstanding Israeli Brutality
Stephen Lendman
World leadership indifference and silence lets Palestinian hunger striker for justice Mohammad Elqeiq suffer close to death.
He’s an independent journalist, guilty of no crimes, targeted solely for doing his job. Israel accused him of “journalistic incitement” without issuing formal charges.
He’s administratively held illegally, tortured and abused in captivity, hunger striking for justice denied him, ingesting only water - now for 73 days since November 23.
His life hangs by a thread, slipping in and out of a coma, partly paralyzed, unable to speak, see, hear, stand or do anything on his own, at great risk of organ failure causing death.
In late January, Israel’s High Court rejected his petition for release, saying only it’ll continue monitoring his situation, a possible death sentence without ordering it.
America Created Daesh (ISIS)
Stephen Lendman
America created global terrorist groups at least since the CIA’s involvement against Soviet Russia in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Virtually all headline-making groups are US creations, or offshoots from them, used as imperial foot soldiers - recruited from scores of countries, armed, funded, trained and directed to serve Washington’s pure evil agenda, its quest for unchallenged global dominance, its endless wars of aggressions, its ravaging and destroying one nation after another.
At a Rome news conference with his Italian counterpart Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni, John Kerry was interrupted by a woman, accusing America of “creat(ing) Daesh,” shouting a vital truth in public, reported on Italian state-owned RAI television.
Turkey Exploiting Syrian Refugee Adults and Children
Stephen Lendman
Erdogan’s rap sheet includes deplorable high crimes, including wars of aggression, support for ISIS and other terrorist groups, internal repression, and human exploitation, notably Syrian refugee adults and children, ruthlessly exploited for profit.
A new Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (B&HRRC) report discussed Turkish exploitation of Syrian children and adults - producing garments for large European retailers, H&M and Next specifically named.
Information discovered may be the tip of the iceberg, unknown numbers of European (and perhaps American) companies involved, wanting their illicit activities suppressed.
What do the Zapatistas and Bernie Sanders have in common? Hint: not a Revolution
Nina M. Lozano-Reich,
The day following the Iowa caucuses, a CNN headline reads, “Bernie Sanders Improbable Revolution.” Common Dreams writes, “Astounding the World in
Iowa, Sanders’ Revolution Marches on.” South Carolina Now’s headline reads, “For Sanders, Iowa is Chance to Turn Revolution into Reality.”
On January 01, 1994, the day of the signing of NAFTA, the Zapatistas
presented themselves to the world. The Zapatistas were, and continue today, to represent the embodiment of an anti-establishment, political revolution.
In Chiapas, Mexico, they trained in secret, for years, prior to the signage of NAFTA; they saw the writing of the wall. Today, forty-one years later, this revolutionary, anti-establishment, anti-globalization, anti-neoliberal economic policies movement has resulted in six autonomous “caracoles,” (independent land sites), wherein the indigenous peoples are a fully
functioning autonomous “Gobierno bueno” (good government) body, which practices direct democracy. “Caracoles,” in Spanish, means snails. Because revolution is slow, like a snail.
Assad’s Forces Rout American-Backed Jihadists at Golan Heights
Eric Zuesse
A major U.S.-backed assault to win Syria’s crucial Golan Heights, by jihadist rebels of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Jabhat Al-Nusra (Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda), and Harakat Ahrar Ash-Sham (the largest rebel group in Syria, though it’s ignored by Western news-media), was repelled on Saturday morning, January 30th, by the army of the non-sectarian Syrian government, the Syrian Arab Army, which are the forces of Syria’s non-sectarian Shiite President Bashar al-Assad and his ideologically non-sectarian Ba’ath Party, the only political force in Syria that insists upon separation of church and state. (The Ba’ath Party in Iraq was led by Saddam Hussein, which George W. Bush’s forces eliminated there. American regimes, both Republican and Democratic, are anti-Ba’athist, pro-jihadist.)
Pentagon Wants Fourfold Increase in US European Military Spending to Deter Nonexistent Russian Aggression
Stephen Lendman
America is unique among world powers, a hated and feared pariah, a neocon-infested gangster state, waging endless premeditated wars of aggression, threatening world peace.
US military spending already matches or exceeds budgets for all other nations combined, including foreign, homeland, numerous miscellaneous categories, unlimited black budgeting, frequent add-ons and unconstrained defense contractors’ cost overruns, amounting to trillions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse over time.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter wants billions more. His warrantless justification is nonexistent threats posed by Russia, China, North Korea and Iran - peaceful nations threatening no others, unlike America’s imperial aggression, raping and pillaging one country after another.
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