Guns and Money!

W.J. Astore

Remember in the 1930s how Americans referred to arms dealers, especially those who profited from war, as “merchants of death”? Yes, that was indeed a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Nowadays, it’s weapons ‘r’ us, and America’s leading sounds of freedom are blam-blam-blam and ka-ching ka-ching ka-ching. Cash registers for weapons makers are truly ka-chinging wildly as America continues to dominate the global trade in war weapons, notes William Hartung at TomDispatch.com. Hartung’s title, “Selling Death,” puts it succinctly. Here’s an excerpt:

When it comes to trade in the tools of death and destruction, no one tops the United States of America.

In April of this year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual analysis of trends in global arms sales and the winner — as always — was the U.S. of A. Between 2016 and 2020, this country accounted for 37% of total international weapons deliveries, nearly twice the level of its closest rival, Russia, and more than six times that of Washington’s threat du jour, China. 

Sadly, this was no surprise to arms-trade analysts.  The U.S. has held that top spot for 28 of the past 30 years, posting massive sales numbers regardless of which party held power in the White House or Congress.  This is, of course, the definition of good news for weapons contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, even if it’s bad news for so many of the rest of us, especially those who suffer from the use of those arms by militaries in places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates.  The recent bombing and leveling of Gaza by the U.S.-financed and supplied Israeli military is just the latest example of the devastating toll exacted by American weapons transfers in these years.

When it comes to weapons sales, America truly is Number One! Which, in that faraway galaxy ,was once nothing to celebrate. In fact, it was something to deplore and denounce.

Why is this? Christian Sorensen at Consortium News has some answers. In a five-part series, he’s tackling the military-industrial-congressional complex and detailing its reach and power across American society. In “A People’s Guide to the War Industry,” Sorensen has this to say about America’s “solutions”-based war industry:

War corporations market their goods and services as “solutions.” A Raytheon executive, John Harris, explained to the Defense & Aerospace Report in 2018 that engaging “with senior members of government” is just “providing solutions to our customers,” providing “integrated solutions to meet our customers’ needs,” and even “figuring out how we can solve our customers’ problems using a dispassionate system approach.”

The solutions trick works well when selling to the U.S. military. For example, Booz Allen Hamilton offers digital solutions, CACI offers information solutions, and Leidos offers innovative solutions. Through its inherently harmful, anti-democratic activities, the war industry helps create the miserable conditions for which it then offers “solutions,” of course without ever taking responsibility for the dismal state of affairs (i.e. nonstop war) that it helped create.

“Providing solutions” sounds prettier and more generous than “making money off death and destruction.” MIC officials also regularly couch Washington’s imperialism, weapon sales, and war-first foreign policy as giving the troops the “tools they need.” A similar phrase (“We’ve listened to the warfighter”) is utilized when selling goods and services, particularly upgrades and technological insertions.

I’d add that, not only do war corporations market “solutions” to the warfighter, but the Pentagon sells these to the American people as “investments” in peace.

And who can be against “solutions” and “investments”?

I had the pleasure to be at a Warren Zevon concert in the early 1980s when he sang one of his signature songs, “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” How right he was! Between a rock and a hard place, America knows how to send lawyers, guns, and money.

I urge you to read Hartung and Sorensen and then reflect on the words of MLK about a nation that spends so much on weaponry and exports so much violence as one that is as a result approaching spiritual death.

Atlanta, Georgia, USA — Martin Luther King Jr. listens at a meeting of the SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, at a restaurant in Atlanta. The SCLC is a civil rights organization formed by Martin Luther King after the success of the Montgomery bus boycott. — Image by © Flip Schulke/CORBIS

40 thoughts on “Guns and Money!”

  2. In light of your comprehensive explication, Professor, I guess all we can do is hope to amass the political will to make the next line in the song prophetic for the MICC: “…the sh*t has hit the fan.” Only when we as a society demand a halt to destruction for dollars will Raytheon, Lockheed, et. al. go out of the “solutions” business.

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  3. Just one of many points that could be made about the misrepresentations and outright lies used to justify weapons sales

    ““Providing solutions” sounds prettier and more generous than “making money off death and destruction.” MIC officials also regularly couch Washington’s imperialism, weapon sales, and war-first foreign policy as giving the troops the “tools they need.” A similar phrase (“We’ve listened to the warfighter”) is utilized when selling goods and services, particularly upgrades and technological insertions.”

    But arms sales to other countries are not giving OUR troops the tools they need. And who knows how likely those weapons are to be used against our troops at some point.

    Another issue, just as Eisenhower stated that money spent on arms is a theft from those who are hungry, sick etc is true in America, it is 10 times more true for third world countries.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Yeah, the last time I looked at the numbers, the US DOD employed over 16,000 attorneys full-time, most working in DC of course.

    That’s an entire division of attorneys working at Fort Fumble and its environs. From the looks of things, there’s no danger of us falling into any attorney-gap with Russia or China or the rest of the world’s militaries combined.

    Be worth someone’s time to look at the attorney manpower levels for both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam too, and see what they were then. Everyone complains about how the US military is grossly overstaffed with field-grade and general officers, but that isn’t the real problem. Lets face it–most of them are underemployed and marking time. Attorneys go out and make problems bigger to stay busy. That’s bad.

    Dan

    ________________________________

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Hi Dan: It seems like the DOD employs “more than 12,000” lawyers, Dan. So let’s call it a small division.

      https://www.justsecurity.org/67079/top-dod-lawyer-stresses-u-s-compliance-with-the-rule-of-law-in-military-operations/

      “The second part of Ney’s remarks focused on showing how the United States, and DoD in particular, implements the rule of law in practice. He began by noting that ‘DoD has more than 12,000 civilian and military lawyers,’ with operational lawyers ’embedded at the brigade, air wing, and naval strike group level in every theater of operations.'”

      But never fear! Our division of lawyers is dedicated to applying the rule of law to our unlawful wars. No wonder we need so many of them!

      Liked by 1 person

  6. Forgive my ignorance, gentlemen, but what in the world do these “embedded” attorneys do in theaters of operations? Research precedents for bombing people? I ask in all seriousness: this is an utter mystery to me.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. oh well, the US govt will just keep borrowing denaro to pay these featherbedded attorneys and their entourage of minions, till it’s as bankrupt as its moral compass. yin and yang, death and destruction, shiva and vishnu… endless cycles of species, ours included, who will go the way of the dodo bird, trading their cognitive dissonance and bankrupt ideas for fiscal bankruptcy.

    these corporate welfare bums, DOD law-less lawyers, and other govt hacks need JOBS for goodness sake! the equipollent spirits feel their pain; having borrowed truckloads of lucre for their elite degrees, they NEED these featherbedded govt hack-jobs, in order to perpetuate the cycle of debt to those same bank-barons who have funded their hapless ‘governing’ bodies into trillions of $’s of debt… which they will never be able to slither out of, unless their govt declares bankruptcy itself and is re-categorized as a ‘failed state’… bye-bye to the US empire; off she goes into the piled-up trash tip of all the other over-reaching empires of historical hubris.

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  8. At a cost of $50,000 for each missile, Israel’s Iron Dome System used some $200,000,000 in American made missiles during the 11 Days of War bringing down some 4000 rockets fired from Gaza.

    Add to that, the additional cost of the precision guided US Missiles that destroyed 16 story apartment blocks, tanks and other artillery, and that brief War could have cost upwards of $300 Million to devastate the Israeli controlled Gaza Ghetto-Open Air Prison for 2,000,000 Palestinians living in worse conditions than the US alleged Genocide of Muslim Uyghers in China.

    “Wars are not always begun by shots. They are often begun by action and the action which really created the state of war in an acute sense was the imposition of the blockade. To try to murder somebody by strangulation is just as much attempted murder as if you tried to murder him by a shot, and therefore the act of strangulation was the first violent, physical act which had its part in the sequence.”
    Abba Eban, Israeli Foreign Minister on June 14, 1967.
    He is referring to the Egyptian Blockade of the Tiran Straits to Israeli shipping, in response to Israel’s Test Run for the 1967 War when it shot down 6 Syrian Fighter Jets on April 7, 1967.

    Israel has maintained a suffocating Economic War on Gaza since 2006, slowly strangling it’s inhabitants.
    If Israel spent the $300 MILLION to uplift the Prisoners of Gaza, rather than continually tightening the screws destroying them, the War will stop.

    President Biden was quick to offer Israel immediate replacement of $200 MILLION in Iron Dome Missiles, complements of the US Taxpayer.

    268 Palestinians killed vs 11 Israelis killed in 11 Days. Palestinian Life is so cheap to the Chosen People.

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    2. thank you for your supernal comments, RJC; i’ve taken the liberty of divulgating chomsky’s and your heroic remarks to the pro-israel, pro-evangelical, pro-US vulgate in my nugatory crwth of israeli-apartheid enablers.

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    3. OK. I am going to raise an issue here just to make a point. “bringing down some 4000 rockets fired from Gaza”. WTF!!!

      So in spite of the blockade Hamas managed to smuggle in 4000+ rockets? That must have taken a lot of time, energy, and ingenuity. What if Hamas had spent all that time, energy and ingenuity in bringing in solar panels and hydroponics to increase electricity and food production. Sure it would not have made much of a difference, but it would have been a positive difference. No number of rockets are going to change the strategic situation. Hamas knows that. So smuggling in rockets and launching them is done with the sole purpose of killing for the sake of killing. That is murder too.

      There is a constant delusion in our species that if I can show that you are wrong then I am right, no matter how useless, stupid, or egregious my actions. Both sides are to blame here. And each side justifies its use of violence because of the actions of the other side. That is insane and until that stops nothing is going to change.

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      1. That is an interesting point and I have noticed a similar situation in war torn areas in the past. We hear stories from troubled areas that medical and humanitarian supplies can’t get through, shortages of water, medicine, food, etc. But never a shortage of weapons and ammunition. Pictures of half naked fighters running around with AK-47’s and endless bands of rounds. RPG’s everywhere, plenty of supplies for bomb making. Same story in conflict after conflict. Bizarre

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        2. The same is true for the USA on a much larger scale. Plenty of money for missiles, including nuclear ones, but no money for roads, bridges, education, the homeless, and so on. We have Americans lining up for free medical and dental care in rural communities because they can’t afford to see a “regular” doctor or dentist.

          But there’s always enough money for missiles, guns, and bullets.

          Liked by 2 people

      2. Most of them are homemade without any guidance systems.
        They are aimed in the general direction of Israel on the other side of the fence.
        Most of them fall in empty fields and must be a direct hit by chance, to do any real destruction compared to Israel’s precision guided missiles that bring down 13 story apartment blocks in the middle of densely populated Gaza City.
        More Women and Children are killed by Israel’s smart bombs than by rockets from Gaza.

        It’s like the IEDs in Afghanistan. Those improvised explosive devices probably cost the Taliban $100 to make, but cost the US $1,000,000 fight back.

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      3. I’m gonna take up occupancy in “the mind of BB” and sit on the throne of Israel! As supreme potentate…. You definitely do not let in power sources or food sources; so those must be extremely policed. The interlopers must be on strict caloric food intake and we must keep them in the dark. But, we must allow the black market to “do it’s thing” and allow a select supply of munitions through our security checkpoints. How else will we be able to destroy their crumbling rubble of an infrastructure further, unless we are provoked. We kill 2 birds with one stone. We also get to deplete our supply of US arms and then create a need for rearmament. Which keeps the Washington Wizards happy and the arms contractors well funded.
        As Yasha Levine reminds us; Israelis are expendable when it comes to the cause of the motherland.
        In my humble opinion. BB is an unenlightening spec of creation that will never become more than his pathetic temporal experience as long as he holds these thoughts of us vs. them. He’s going to be long hauling on the wheel of human experience because of his attitude; never getting an infinitesimal spec closer to his eternal expression.
        Wake up Mr.B while you still have breath because you are so far from eternal truth and so fast asleep.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. epic, utgejack! your supernality of mythic imagination and perlucidity of expression are worthy of publication… certainly by the equipollent spirits of political intrigue, literacy, and intellectual integrity. clearly, you are not a rectilinear mentator… nor a muddled mentor to us others who have neither your imagination nor your facetious wit. you arrowed into the bullseye. old BB would target you and have you smart-bombed if his joy-stick minions could locate you.

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          1. BB swims in the same ocean as all of creation. He’s just another drop of expression within a sea of infinite droplets. Water in it’s highest aspect takes on the expression, which today is named “the 4th phase” . It’s not gas, liquid, or ice; but a gel phased liquid crystalline state, that is akin to the quartz crystal. Ideologies like BB haven’t recognized that they are the same as every other aspect of water within the sea of existence. The poor man is hung up in the web of illusion, believing his idea of how “it all should be”, is superior to or better than the rest of the ocean where he lives and moves and senses being. He has yet to die to his false sense of an individual self. If he developed a purer structure and entered into that liquid quartz phase of water, he would see, through that reflective quality, each drop of water as the same and receive the blessings from unity consciousness.
            That’s my desire for the one who is trapped in his understanding as the leader of Israel. Perhaps if he listened to a woman as wise as Jane, her wisdom would have an impact on his unenlightening perspective….she is a rare gem!
            I know you have as much difficulty watching videos as I do. But I was sent this today and it is very uplifting so I’ll post it hoping Mr. B is looking in.

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            1. thank you for the jane-video, utejack. we are all connected to jane, BB, holothurians, cockroaches, dark energy, star systems, and the infinitude of time. many have not yet wrapped themselves around our ineffable integrations, but they will become janes one day during their journeys through the stars.

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              1. Within the mess of our industrialized mistakes; her simple truth always burns like a torch in the night of our long dark journey.
                I’ve been reading Ananda K. Coomaraswamy this week and he taught me something profound that I had missed all these years. There’s a piece he wrote about literacy and it’s position in relation to the oral traditions of indigenous populations. It brought to light the power of oral traditions inside cultures that did not keep their knowledge of traditions, history, agriculture and handicrafts in written forms. But, rather taught them through stories, art, song, and poetry; from young to old the memories of their ways was strong and written upon the tablets of everyone’s hearts. They had no need to record it because of the strength of memory; where every word and emotion was lived through the telling and sharing. Learned from youth, so that their ways were perfected and repeated throughout a lifetime.
                Then the colonizers came with their written language and forced these “ higher ways” upon what was perceived to be an uneducated, illiterate population. A perceived weaponized way of understanding and ideas was passed into these people’s and forced to be the dominant narrative; all in the name of progress. The oral traditions were snuffed out by the dominant literature that native populations found practically useless. It robbed them of their valid truths and turned them into useful machines for further production; instead of combining what we knew with their already powerful understandings and from the union a blending of assistance and brotherhood.
                I never thought about how “literacy” was used as a weapon that robbed culture of it’s ability to flourish.
                But, watching the silent presence of Jane’s interactions and her ability to rely on hear intuitive instincts to understand communication with her natural surroundings; well it just helped drive home that lesson I finally got so late in my human experience. I do believe,….There’s hope for me yet! I loved seeing this truth, and that is what is so fascinating about this journey we all walk.

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                1. I got chills reading your post, sir. What a truly profound observation! Literacy as a sea change….that had never occurred to me, but it makes perfect—and appalling—sense. I’m reminded of Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear series, wherein each disparate group of people had its own oral history, which each individual knew by heart. There were songs to explain nature and natural occurrences, dozens of verses long, all memorized to a word by everyone. Writing all the material down would indeed distance people from their histories. This is something to think on.

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                2. Exactly Denise. Amanda C. gathered many critics comments from history that decried the loss of memory utilization to express truth within their cultures. When I read his piece it reminded me of the work of Laura Trace Hentz; who has documented the atrocities levied upon the children of the indigenous populations.

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        2. Reading the machinations for Power taking place in Israel, the alternative to Netanyahu is even further to the Right, declaring a Bennett Government will not give up any territory, and will ensure Jews have always primacy in Israel.

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          1. I’m not familiar with the Bennett’s Ray. But more of the same, tweaked to increasing fury is certainly frightening for all who are connected to the ancient pain and suffering of Palestine. I hear the words of a friend who is into soil regeneration rattling around in my head right now…. less is best!

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      4. JPA, Israel is out to humiliate and oppress the Palestinians so that they will leave the area. Anything built in Gaza is only temporary and subject to being disabled or destroyed as was the airport there and the sewage treatment system and the power plant.

        If there is a bully standing over you, there is no point in setting things up as you would want them because punishment will surely come. Israeli soldiers and police are told that their job in the occupied territory is to “constantly let them know we are here,” in other words that there is no hope for throwing off the unrelenting oppressor, so give up.

        To assert my existence as more than a punching bag, I can kick the bully. It will not harm him and will not change his behavior, but not kicking him will not change his behavior either.

        This latest flare up duplicates those in the past in that Israel does something outrageously offensive to the Palestinians (remember Arial Sharon going to the Temple Mount to show authority there?) that they must respond to if they have even an ounce of pride. Israel knows this but initiates the cycle again and again. Israel wants the land.

        The Palestinians know the world is watching and they are shouting to it that their subjugation is wrong. As with the Great March of Return in which fully equipped IDF soldiers using rifles with telescopic sights behind earthen berms have sniped unarmed Palestinians who posed no threat at the Gaza border, Palestinians are saying to the world, to the US in particular:

        We are in an impossible situation of great injustice.
        You allow it to continue.
        We can do nothing but to get your attention to watch us die
        in the hope that you will be shamed into finding it unacceptable

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    4. It appears my estimate of the cost to Israel conducting the 11 Day bombardment of Gaza was underestimated, according to Elijah J Magnier, someone very familiar with the intricacies of the Middle East.

      “Gaza missiles struck the Israeli military bases of Hatzor, Hatzerim, Palmachim, Rehovot, Nevatim, Tel Nof, and the southern army base of Ramon.
      Israeli cities and Ben Gurion Airport were closed, international flights were suspended, and the war caused DAILY losses of no less than 100 MILLION DOLLARS to the Israeli economy and military equipment used, with a total expense of more than a BILLION US dollars.

      Israel clearly did not have any strategy for the war but instead went from reaction to destruction. Israeli cities, settlements, and military bases were bombed with Iranian missiles. The Resistance with Iran sent missiles with the words “Sakht Iran” (Made in Iran). With this “message”, Iran and Gaza told Prime Minister Netanyahu that his thousand raids on Syria in the last ten years had been abundantly replied to with 4,300 strikes……….”

      https://ejmagnier.com/2021/05/27/the-results-of-the-gaza-war-palestinians-to-confront-the-greater-jihad/

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      1. Imagine if that $1,000,000,000 the US Taxpayer ultimately underwrites, was spent improving the lives of Palestinians, instead of the slomo Israeli effort to Ethnically cleanse them off their own Palestinian Land, the PALESTINE in 1917 Balfour Declaration Israel violates DAILY in the Spirit and the Letter.

        The British lost Empire during WWII. The US became the new Empire/Boss, ignoring the British conclusions, complicit with Israel in the effort to remove PALESTINE from the consciousness of the World.

        Following is an excerpt from the British White Paper of 1939, when they began to limit European Jewish emigration to Palestine begetting the Jewish Terrorist Organizations to attack the British.

        “It has been urged that the expression “a national home for the Jewish people” offered a prospect that PALESTINE might in due course become a Jewish State or Commonwealth.

        His Majesty’s Government do not wish to contest the view, which was expressed by the Royal Commission, that the Zionist leaders at the time of the issue of the Balfour Declaration recognized that an ultimate Jewish State was not precluded by the terms of the Declaration.

        But, with the Royal Commission, His Majesty’s Government believe that the framers of the Mandate in which the Balfour Declaration was embodied could not have intended that PALESTINE should be converted into a Jewish State against the will of the Arab population of the country. That PALESTINE was not to be converted into a Jewish State might be held to be implied in the passage from the Command Paper of 1922 which reads as follows,
        “Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish PALESTINE. Phrases have been used such as that `PALESTINE is to become as Jewish as England is English.’ His Majesty’s Government regard any such expectation as impracticable and have no such aim in view. Nor have they at any time contemplated …. the disappearance or the subordination of the Arabic population, language or culture in PALESTINE.

        They would draw attention to the fact that the terms of the (Balfour) Declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded IN PALESTINE.”
        But this statement has not removed doubts, and His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that PALESTINE should become a Jewish State. They would indeed regard it as contrary to their obligations to the Arabs under the Mandate, as well as to the assurances which have been given to the Arab people in the past, that the Arab population of PALESTINE should be made the subjects of a Jewish State against their will.”

        United Nations Resolution 181, re-creating Israel from THE BIBLE after some 2700 years, legally called for Jerusalem to be a separate “International City” not under the control of Jews, Christians or Muslims.
        This was also confirmed in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 in 1948, which maintained the position that Jerusalem be made an international city, under United Nations supervision.

        Western Governments know that’s what International Law calls for, as they turn a Blind Eye to the Rules based International Order, while accusing other Nations of undermining it.

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        1. how odd, rjc, but your comment landed in my junk box, which is unprecedented. it has never happened before. i don’t mean to be an alarmist, but it is curious, if not suspicious, no? so relieved i opened it, which is also a rarity for me. thank you for your informative background history and illuminating discourse regarding the palestine and the zionist jews who managed to expropriate it from its indigenous arabs and persist in their genocidal evictions, expulsions, extrajudicial murders, and economic sanctions. those 4000 ‘hamas’ rockets could only have been ‘smuggled in’ via the duplicitous machinations of the zionists and a few of their arab myrmidons. think about. [it is not unreasonable to presage that this comment will also be defenestrated to your junk box.]

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  9. As a matter of fact, Jeanie, for the last 2 months, some normal email was in my junkbox, and too much junkmail was in the inbox.
    That was mostly corrected last week when the junk was in the junkbox and I could delete them all in bulk, instead of junk interspersed throughout the 100+ email I get daily to read one thing or another, and have to delete them one at a time.

    And more than they, my son, beware; making many books has no end, and studying much is a weariness of the flesh.
    The end of the matter, everything having been heard, fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the entire man.
    For every deed God will bring to judgment-for every hidden thing, whether good or bad.
    Ecclesiastes 12

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  10. Incredible to me is the blindness of the US in putting its engineering and design talent into the dead end (pun intended) of weaponry. China, meanwhile is building high speed rail, making over entire cities, and putting robotics into space. Who will come out ahead by making the better investment is not hard to guess.

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  11. US Guns and Money are intimately entwined in the Jew-Palestinian War. The Biblical term Armageddon is about that ongoing War, the Occupation of Palestine, from 2000 years ago to Today!

    We are Witness to an Epic David and Goliath struggle between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The continuous Israeli Bombardment of Gaza, Day and Night, demolishing so much Civilian Infrastructure, finally opened the Eyes of the World to see for the 1st Time, the great dis-proportionality in the conflict.

    Already seeing the conflict within that framework, I was somewhat stunned to see the Marching Orders for Israel’s Hasbara Units to counter the increasing Global negative perception of Israel the Aggressor and not the Victim, as they claim always claim to be.

    I hope this generates a passionate discussion?

    ‘How to defend Israel: Do not claim victimhood or deny power – opinion
    Israel is fighting Islamic jihadism just like the West.’

    https://www.jpost.com/opinion/how-to-defend-israel-do-not-claim-victimhood-or-deny-power-opinion-669410

    The writer absolves Israel of any wrong doing at all, with all the trouble being 100% the fault of Palestinians.

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    1. thank you, rjc, for the web-post, but to my self-abhorrence, this craven poltroon must decline to open it, lest i be swept more virtiginously into the maelstrom of despair, more demented in that vortex than i already am, after 3 and a half decades of feeling hopeless during my pro-palestinian advocacy and profound attachment to palestinians in the refugee camps across the hashemite kingdom of jordan… especially the physically damaged and mentally deranged children.

      beginning w/ the 1st intifadah in 1987, my intimate involvement has left a personal legacy of psychological epitasis, emotional benumbment, and proactivist desuetude… b/c nothing has changed in all those yrars of commitment to palestinians’ human rights, to their manumission from random seizures and torture, and to unimpeded access to their own lands, orchards, pastures, schools, homes, and hospitals.

      i’m already feeling bilious, nay emetic, just remembering the broken bones of pre-pubescent palestinian children by israeli soldiers, and the beatings around their ears by the IDF that were so severe these helpless children were rendered deaf.

      b/c the zionists own the banks and the MSM, they can corrupt, then own even previously honourable politicians across europe and the US… even my country canada… virtually no one dares vituperate against the zionists in either congress or parliament.

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      1. As per usual, I got no reply from the Government of CanaDa to this Message sent to the new Foreign Minister last February 18, 2020, with the Subject – Banning BDS

        Honourable Minister Champagne,

        I was happy learning you will now carry the Light guiding you, to the World. I thought your predecessor was not bringing Sunny Ways to the World, but Darker Days with her entangled Alliances. I hoped for better with you, but I was disappointed to see not much has changed vis a vis Israel-Palestine.

        Let me remind you, outside of Israeli-Palestinian-Middle East-Armageddon, CanaDa is the only other place on Earth, The Creator placed among the Nations, whose founding struggle is rooted on The Plains of Abraham over here, the Jews and Palestinians at War over The Plains of Abraham over there.
        This is the Spiritual-Material Reality of this World you can have confidence in recognizing the Material Facts on the ground

        It has long been said ‘Power Corrupts’ and with all the information those in power have access to, in my personal island of Peace in this increasing turbulent and perplexed World, analysing what the MSM propagates, and other news sources online, my comment in The Washington Post Today, is totally at odds with current Canadian Government Policy,

        Abba Eban, Israel’s Foreign Minister during the 1967 war said this when the 6 Day War was over.

        “Wars are not always begun by shots. They are often begun by action and the action which really created the state of war in an acute sense, was the imposition of the blockade. To try to murder somebody by strangulation is just as much attempted murder as if you tried to murder him by a shot, and therefore the act of strangulation was the first violent, physical act which had its part in the sequence.”

        It refers to Egypt closing the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping after Israel did a practice run for the 6 Day War provoking the casus belli with Syria April 7, shooting down 7 Syrian jet fighters. The Israel high Command was confident the combined Arab armies were no match for the IDF. It was just a matter of provoking the War they could blame on the Arabs.

        Israel and the US , along with CanaDa, discount Eban’s justification for War these Days, with Israeli BDS on steroids slowly strangling Gaza, and US BDS with extreme prejudice strangling Iran.

        But no BDS against Israel to compel them to modify their Apartheid/Neo-Nazi behaviour against Palestinians?

        In my view, Western governments are appeasing Israel like the Munich appeasement of years gone by.

        Peace

        RayJC

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    2. My comment in The Jerusalem Post on this Israeli hasbara. It was posted but did not appear. It stayed with the 2nd attempt.

      Israel ignores the words of the Prophets, and violates Daily, the Spirit and the Letter of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the start of the re-creation of temporal Israel from The Bible.

      Say to them: As I live, says the Lord God, I do not wish for the death of the wicked, but for the wicked to repent of his way so that he may live. Repent, repent of your evil ways, for why should you die, O house of Israel! […]

      “Son of man, the dwellers of these ruins on the soil of Israel speak, saying: Abraham was one, and he inherited the land, and we are many-the land has [surely] been given to us for an inheritance.[…]

      Therefore, say to them: So said the Lord God,
      You eat on the blood and you raise your eyes to your pagan deities, and you shed blood-and you should inherit the land? You stood on your sword, you committed abominations, and you contaminated each man his neighbour’s wife, and you should inherit the land? […]

      ‘Not by military force and not by physical strength, but by My spirit,’ says the Lord of Hosts. […]

      And he shall judge between the nations and reprove many peoples, and they shall beat their swords into plow shares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

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      1. I’m surprised there is no push back at all to my comment above posted in The Jerusalem Post. That is exceptional and significant for Israeli Jews.

        If you want to see real seething hatred for a subjugated People, just read the Jewish comments in The Jerusalem Post on any article dealing with Palestinians.

        Israel and the US are the only 2 Nations on Earth having the delusional belief in their own indispensable exceptionalism.

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        1. your penultimate and final paragraphs, rjc, constitute argute observations poignantly rendered. thank you.

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  12. I think the basic narrative here is “scary Muslims bad.” Palestinians are terrorists who launch rockets and kill innocents. Brave Israel is defending itself. This is what the MSM puts out and probably what most Americans believe, assuming they’re paying any attention at all.

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