I

have encountered this so many times so that I’ll give today’s example in order to display how blatant it is:

I prefer generally not to read at X and other sites where posts tend to be user-hostile for skeptical readers (like I) who are constantly checking to find the original source for an allegation, but I just happened upon an X from Arnaud Bertrand, on August 18th, headlined from the World Bank “Military expenditure (% of GDP) - China,” and it showed China at a remarkably stable and low percentage of around 1.7% since 2010, during which time the U.S. empire have enormously increased their joint efforts to get Taiwan to declare independence from China so that the U.S. will have an excuse (though a false one) to invade and take control over China (like it has over EU/NATO countries, Japan, banana republics, etc. — the entire existing U.S. empire). The objective is to encourage and then get Taiwan to declare independence, at which point China will invade its province of Taiwan, at which point America will ‘defend Taiwan’s democracy’ by invading China — as-if the U.S. has any RIGHT to involve itself in China’s internal affairs. As Bertrand’s post at X said, “So there's a LOT of dishonesty in this discourse and even more so when these folks tell you how certain they are about China's intent behind that ‘buildup’: it's essentially guessing why there’s a ‘buildup’ that’s their own constructed narrative, that’s what passes for serious analysis these days.” And it showed that World Bank picture, but I needed to authenticate what that picture showed, to look at its source, and so I Googled its headline “Military expenditure (% of GDP) - China” hoping and expecting there’d be a find from the World Bank, but instead got: “Your search did not match any documents.”

https://yandex.ru/search/?text=%22military+expenditure+(%25+of+GDP)+China%22&lr=10777&search_source=yacom_desktop_common&rdrnd=213987&redircnt=1724090536.1

The World Bank’s article is HERE.  It is very informative, and basically gives the lie to the U.S. empire’s allegations against China as being an aggressor-nation (such as the U.S. itself is: the unchallengeable #1 on that).

I have been told by some sites that post articles from me, that Google had threatened them with de-monitization of advertising income unless they’d cease accepting (publishing) my submissions, and most of the sites that used to publish me don’t do so now, or else do it only very rarely, and, for whatever reason, my articles are far less easy to find via Google searches than was formerly the case. For example, the site where I have been directly posting each one of my articles for many years, theduran.com, is among the many sites that Google blacklists from showing up in Google’s searches. (They do that to The Greanville Post, too).

But, anyway: Bertrand is correct that propagandists for the U.S. Government (including its colonies) are basically lying to allege that China’s military spending (in response to the increasing danger of America invading China) is soaring ‘and so we need likewise to increase greatly OUR military spending so as to defend ourselves against the increasing threat from China’. All of this propaganda is just free advertising on behalf of U.S. firms such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and Generals Dynamics, to increase their sales. But it could end up producing WW3. So, it’s very dangerous.

Interestingly, the World Bank’s article “Military expenditure (% of GDP) - United States”, shows that America’s percentage bottomed-out at 3.1% in 2000 when Putin came into power in Russia, then reached 4.9% in 2010, and has been between 3.3% and 3.7% since 2018. The world average is around 2.1% to 2.3% since 2000. So: China’s is actually below the world’s average. America’s is above.

that Yandex search-find is this: “China has already won Asia's arms race with defence budget larger than the rest of Asia combined”. It’s an article originally from NIKKEI Asia, in the world’s largest financial newspaper, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, in Tokyo, which, of course, is the capital city in America’s largest colony. The article opens by saying: “There has been much chatter over recent years about an Asian arms race triggered by China's surging military expenditure. This, it is argued, is reflected in increased defense budgets and new equipment programs announced by a number of Asian countries.” It then says: “The country's surging defense budget has allowed every aspect of the PLA [China’s army] to be transformed and modernized. … In contrast to the PLA's advances, numerous militaries across Asia have been starved of funds and are facing relative obsolescence. … If China's neighbors view its military advances as a long-term problem, then they need to take action now. They have to spend far more on defense.” Maybe the article will help to fool the Japanese people to fear an invasion by China, and so not to, for example, kick out the 79 U.S. military bases in Japan. 

But if Japanese people are so afraid of an invasion by China, then why isn’t their Government requesting from China a mutual-defense treaty, to defend against the country that constantly does threaten war in every region of the world? How much is sheer corruption behind all of this? Do the Japanese people even care? And are they really that easy to fool? I wonder. Maybe for the individuals who are so rich that (via their profit and ‘non-profit’ corporations) they can spend enough to fool the public of anything, the answer is inevitably yes.

from 22 June 1941 till 8 May 1945 when the Soviet Union defeated Hitler with the assistance of Lend-Lease funding from FDR’s America.) By contrast: a mutual-defense treaty lasts as long as both of its participants want it to last. In the case of Japan and China, that could be a very long time — especially because the larger country, China, would actually be protecting the smaller one. Furthermore, Japan’s U.S.-designed Constitution is already irrelevant because Japan has the world’s 27th-largest military, with 261,000 personnel (0.4% of Japan’s labor force) employed in it.

The excerpts presented and discussed here are just an introduction to the subject of imperialism and its consequences in today’s world (a topic that’s addressed in broader conceptual depth in my 2022 book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change). For a quicker read of the following article, please read only what I have boldfaced in it (then read the whole thing if that initial scan of the article has interested you):

THE TOP-SECRET TRUMAN-ADMIN. PLAN FOR THE U.S. GOV’T. TO COME TO CONTROL, EFFECTIVELY, THE ENTIRE WORLD:

The debate within the Truman Administration over how to deal with communism reached a point in 1950 when the viewpoint of diplomat George Kennan favoring its “containment” became pitted against that of investment banker Paul Nitze, favoring the attainment of an all-inclusive American empire. Nitze’s view won out, because Truman himself had already, by no later than 25 July 1945, been privately persuaded by his personal hero General Dwight Eisenhower, that if the U.S. wouldn’t take over the entire world, then the Soviet Union would. The result of this debate was the top-secret (till 1975) National Security Council directive NSC-68, which stated on its page 61, in its Conclusions, “17. Soviet domination of the potential power of Eurasia, whether achieved by armed aggression or by political and subversive means, would be strategically and politically unacceptable to the United States,” which meant that America must attain “domination of the potential power of Eurasia, whether achieved by armed aggression or by political and subversive means.” (Notice that it ignores the fact that both Russia and China are in, and even constitute the majority of, “Eurasia,” and, so, the U.S. regime there was the aggressor, by definition, because that isn’t U.S. land, it is EurAsian land.) Already by the time of 1947, Truman had established the structures to do that (to take over the world in the ways that NSC-68 warned the Soviet Union might do), by changing the Founding Fathers’s War Department to Truman’s forever-war ‘Defense’ Deparment, and by changing FDR’s OSS to his CIA. 

Here is from  from Wikipedia’s description of NSC-68:

http://web.archive.org/web/20210726214812/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSC_68

https://archive.is/2fWms

NSC 68

United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, better known as NSC 68, was a 66-page top secret National Security Council (NSC) policy paper drafted by the Department of State and Department of Defense and presented to President Harry S. Truman on 7 April 1950. It was kept secret from the American people until 1975, when the U.S. Government chose to make it public, but even today its contents are very little known to the general American public, because the document made clear the aggressive intentions of the U.S. Government against the Soviet Union, and the U.S. Government's determination to control, effectively, the entire world. It was one of the most important American policy statements of the Cold War. In the words of scholar Ernest R. May, NSC 68 "provided the blueprint for the militarization of the Cold War from 1950 to the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s." NSC 68 and its subsequent amplifications advocated a large expansion in the military budget of the United States, the development of a hydrogen bomb, and increased military aid to allies of the United States. It made the rollback of global Communist expansion a high priority. NSC 68 rejected the alternative policies of friendly détente and containment of the Soviet Union.^[1]

That is the neoconservative, or actually Rhodesist, overtly imperialist, side of America’s elite institutions, but at the opposite end of America’s billionaire class, have been the moderate ones and their agents, who argue for co-existence with ‘the enemy’ — this being, though more subtly, a “Peace Through Strength” formulation to increase ‘Defense’ spending, and thus likewise acceptable to the billionaire-class.  

For an example to show the dangerously reckless and unrealistic miscomprehending of the world on the part of America’s well-funded elite, the liberal “Ecomodernist Manifesto”, by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, and endorsed and funded by many pro-megacorporate intellectuals, exemplifies such ‘moderate’ views, and says:

"Violence in all forms has declined significantly and is probably at the lowest per capita level ever experienced by the human species, the horrors of the 20th century and present-day terrorism notwithstanding. Globally, human beings have moved from autocratic government toward liberal democracy characterized by the rule of law and increased freedom.”

Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History, and whose statistics are also online — the biggest war ever was WW II in the 20th Century, at 66 million corpses — but there were other big ones also during the 20th Century, such as rank #2 called there “Mao Zedong" because that capitalist author blames only the communists and not their capitalist (including fascist) opponents, and the total in that war was 40 million; then #6 is called “Joseph Stalin” and was supposedly NOT due to WW I, and it counted 20 million corpses; then #11, WW I, counted 15 million; and #16, the Russian Civil War, counted 9 million; and the Chinese Civil Wars, counted 7 million. So: all told, those 20th Century wars slaughtered 157 million, and that’s not only around half of all war-casualties in all of known history, all during the 20th Century, but it is overwhelmingly more war-casualties than in any prior century. Consequently, “the horrors of the 20th century and present-day terrorism notwithstanding” is actually ignoring all of that, and they do this because only by doing so can such fantasies be entertained by them as that “Globally, human beings have moved from autocratic government toward liberal democracy characterized by the rule of law and increased freedom.” 

So, despite the lies by liberal elite fantasists, violence in all its forms has actually increased stunningly during the past century. Global population during the 20th Century increased 4.5 fold, but war-casualties increased even more. But in any case, what the “Ecomodernist Manifesto” said there is a mere fantasy that’s funded by billionaires, and is certainly not reality, not history, but just more mega-corporate propaganda.

Here is from the most comprehensive study that has yet been done of the countable net costs to the world that have resulted from imperialism:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X

https://archive.is/aFRZX

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL EXCHANGE, March 2022

“Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015”

Jason Hickel a, b, c, Christian Dorninger d, e, Hanspeter Wieland f, Intan Suwandi g

Highlights

• Rich countries rely on a large net appropriation of resources from the global South.

• Drain from the South is worth over $10 trillion per year, in Northern prices.

• The South’s losses outstrip their aid receipts by a factor of 30.

• Unequal exchange is a major driver of underdevelopment and global inequality.

• The impact of excess resource consumption in the North is offshored to the South.

Abstract

Unequal exchange theory posits that economic growth in the “advanced economies” of the global North relies on a large net appropriation of resources and labour from the global South, extracted through price differentials in international trade. Past attempts to estimate the scale and value of this drain have faced a number of conceptual and empirical limitations, and have been unable to capture the upstream resources and labour embodied in traded goods. Here we use environmental input-output data and footprint analysis to quantify the physical scale of net appropriation from the South in terms of embodied resources and labour over the period 1990 to 2015. We then represent the value of appropriated resources in terms of prevailing market prices. Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30. Our analysis confirms that unequal exchange is a significant driver of global inequality, uneven development, and ecological breakdown.

In section 1 we mentioned that Northern firms leverage monopsony and monopoly power to depress Southern suppliers’ prices while setting final prices artificially high. Patents play a key role here: 97% of all patents are held by corporations in high-income countries (Chang, 2008:141). We can see how this plays out in the case of major products like iPhones. The iPhone is produced almost entirely in the global South, by arms-length suppliers. Apple, headquartered in the North, forces its suppliers to compete to drive prices down to cost, with wages depressed to the level of subsistence. This allows Apple to obtain the iPhone for cheap, and then, leveraging its patent monopoly (a privilege granted and enforced not by the market but by the state), mark up the final price by over 100% (see Smith, 2016). In some cases, patents involve forcing people in the South to pay for access to resources they might otherwise have obtained much more affordably, or even for free (Shiva, 2001, Shiva, 2016).

Unequal exchange is also enabled by geopolitical power imbalances in the world economy. For instance, high-income nations exercise monopoly power in the institutions of international economic governance (Chang, 2008). In the World Bank and the IMF, Northern states hold a majority of votes (and the US holds a veto), thus giving them control over key economic policy decisions. In the World Trade Organization (which controls tariffs, subsidies, and patents), bargaining power is determined by market size, enabling high-income nations to set trade rules in their own interests. Subsidized agricultural exports from the North undermine subsistence economies in the South and contribute to dispossession and unemployment, placing downward pressure on wages. Militarized borders preclude easy migration from South to North, thus preventing wage convergence. Moreover, structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by the World Bank and IMF since the 1980s have cut public sector salaries and employment, rolled back labour rights, curtailed unions, and gutted environmental regulations (Khor, 1995, Petras and Veltmeyer, 2002).

On top of this, there are several forces that work to prevent the South from developing sovereign industrial capacity (i.e., outside of subordinate positions in global commodity chains). SAPs, bilateral free trade agreements, and the World Trade Organization have forced global South governments to remove tariffs, subsidies and other protections for infant industries. This prevents governments from attempting import substitution, which would improve their export prices and drive Northern prices down. Tax evasion and illicit financial flows out of the South (which total more than $1 trillion per year) drain resources that might otherwise be reinvested domestically, or which governments might otherwise use to build national industries. This problem is compounded by external debt service obligations, which drain government revenue and require obeisance to economic policies dictated by creditors (Hickel, 2017). In addition, structural dependence on foreign investors and access to Northern markets forces Southern governments and firms to compete with one another by cutting wages and resource prices in a race to the bottom.

In other words, structural power imbalances in the world economy ensure that labour and resources in the South remain cheap and accessible to international capital, while Northern exports enjoy comparatively higher prices. These price differentials enable a significant drain of labour and resources from the South.

6. Conclusion

This research confirms that the “advanced economies” of the global North rely on a large net appropriation of resources and labour from the global South, extracted through induced price differentials in international trade. By combining insights from the classical literature on unequal exchange with contemporary insights about global commodity chains and new methods for quantifying the physical scale of embodied resource transfers, we are able to develop a novel approach to estimating the scale and value of resource drain from the global South. Our results show that, when measured in Northern prices, the drain amounted to $10.8 trillion in 2015, and $242 trillion over the period from 1990 to 2015 – a significant windfall for the North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. Meanwhile, the South’s losses through unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30.

Our findings on net resource appropriation support contemporary demands for reparations for ecological debt, as articulated by environmental justice movements and by the G77 (Roberts and Parks, 2009, Warlenius et al., 2015, Hornborg and Martinez-Alier, 2016). At minimum, the social, economic and ecological damages associated with resource appropriation from the South – including damages from emissions – should be paid for by the appropriators, according to the polluter pays principle that operates in the European Union, United Kingdom, United States and other OECD countries. Reparations could also be paid according to the monetary value of appropriated resources, which could be used by the South to claim back resources from the North equivalent to what was drained, thus meeting Southern needs while reducing excess Northern consumption. Ultimately, however, the scale of ecological debt, like the value of resources themselves, cannot be quantified in monetary terms alone. Ecology is the basis of life itself and money cannot compensate for its loss. True repair requires permanently ending the unequal distribution of environmental goods and burdens between the global North and global South, restoring damaged ecosystems, and shifting to a regenerative economic system.

There are a number of steps that could be taken toward this end. One would be to democratize the institutions of global economic governance, such as the World Bank, IMF and WTO, so that global South countries have more control over trade and finance policy. Another would be to end the North’s use of unfair subsidies for agricultural exports, and remove structural adjustment conditions on international finance, which would help mitigate downward pressure on wages and resource prices in the South while at the same time enabling Southern countries to build sovereign industrial capacity. Alternatively, and perhaps more directly, implementing a global living wage system, and a global system of environmental regulations, would effectively put a floor on labour and resource prices. [Doing that would require the type of U.N. that U.S. President FDR was planning and that his successor Truman neutered.]

Such reforms are unlikely to be handed down from above, however, as they would run against the interests of geopolitical factions that benefit prodigiously from the present structure of the global economy. Structural transformation will only be achieved through political struggle from below [note this phrase “POLITICAL STRUGGLE FROM BELOW”], including by the anti-colonial and environmental justice movements that continue to fight against imperialism today (WPCCC, 2010, Scheidel et al., 2020, Nation, 2021). It will also require Southern states to use industrial and fiscal policy to pursue economic sovereignty, food and energy self-sufficiency, progressive import substitution, and regional solidarities (Amin, 1990, Kaboub, 2008, Ajl, 2021).

The following masterpiece of a speech — only 15 minutes long — from a debate at Oxford University, about imperialism, blew away the opposing side, and has probably never been topped:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shashi_Tharoor%27s_Oxford_Union_speech  28 May 2015

“Shashi Tharoor's Stirring Speech at Oxford Union Goes Viral” no, use (the much better — but far less known) version:

“Dr Shashi Tharoor MP - Britain Does Owe Reparations”

Transcript:

https://www.ibtimes.co.in/shashi-tharoor-garners-appreciation-his-spirited-argument-oxford-union-debate-full-text-640299 but (likewise less-known and) better is:

https://www.news18.com/news/india/read-shashi-tharoors-full-speech-asking-uk-to-pay-india-for-200-years-of-its-colonial-rule-1024821.html

https://www.amazon.com/How-West-Stole-Democracy-Arabs/dp/0802148204

How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs: The Syrian Congress of 1920 and the Destruction of its Historic Liberal-Islamic Alliance, Hardcover – Illustrated, April 21, 2020

[book] by Elizabeth F. Thompson (Author)

4.5 out of 5 stars

    90 ratings

Top reviews from the United States

5.0 out of 5 stars

 The Great Theft of Democracy from the Arabs

Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2021

Verified Purchase

Elizabeth Thompson has written a profoundly interesting, readable and valuable contribution to Middle Eastern scholarship. In this volume she has given all the leading figures a three dimensional reality, and full personalities. Her text narrates how the Western allies, victors of World War I, proceeded to discard Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, and reserve the Middle Eastern lands of Iraq, and, chiefly here, Syria and Lebanon, for a continuation of Great Power imperialism under the fig-leaf guise of Mandates. These mandates would, on paper, prepare these countries and peoples for independence and full sovereignty, but, in reality, would only be a shell for continued European colonial rule. …

TO SUMMARIZE: Imperialism is international theft that is organized and perpetrated by, and on behalf of, the aristocrats, the very wealthiest, in the thieving or “imperial” country, to rob from the poor of a foreign country, and to cut in on the proceeds from that theft the aristocrats of the country that’s to be robbed — stripped by exploiting and robbing from its poor. It does NOT ‘raise up the poor,’ but instead robs them and so makes them work harder and harder for less and less money. It’s fraud on a grand scale by the billionaires against everyone else, and enormously enriches billionaires. (The best video on that — and I think the greatest speech I’ve ever seen — is “Dr Shashi Tharoor MP - Britain Does Owe Reparations”.)

CONSEQUENTLY: The recommended “political struggle from below” will fail unless it targets not Governments but billionaires, especially the ones who, via their direct political-campaign contributions and their indirect ones paid through the profit and ‘non-profit’ corporations that they own and control, stand behind and grow their wealth from this mega-organized mega-theft. Collective (as opposed to individual) accountability and punishment is always wrong and profoundly unjust because ONLY the relatively few individuals who planned and created the crime (who can reasonably be presumed to include the individuals who benefited the most from it) should ever be punished for it, and full compensation plus penalties should be paid by them (we’re talking about trillions of dollars from the world’s wealthiest individuals) because these crimes were owned by them, and not by anyone else — not by any mass of people. So: the U.N. must first be reformed and its Charter Amended in order to establish a Court Against Imperialist Crimes, in order to identify, charge, prosecute, and convict, such mega-criminal individuals, who have been behind most of that bribery (of politicians) (including not only campaign contributions but also ‘news’-reporting so as to warp the public’s views of reality). Whenever necessary documentation by which to investigate such crimes is not made available to this Court, and the investigated individual can reasonably be presumed to have possessed that evidence, the law must treat that as being key evidence to convictthe charged individual. So, the changes that would be necessary are far more than anyone has thus far suggested. However, to not rectify this problem is to condemn the future to be even worse. So, these changes must be made.

Phil Donahue (Dec. 21, 1935-Aug. 18, 2024)

I got to know Phil in 2002, when he returned to the television talk show circuit on MSNBC as the host of Donahue.

America was, at that time, collectively beating the drums of war, with the Bush administration making the case that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to world peace sufficient enough to justify a military invasion.

Phil, however, thought it was important to ask questions before signing on to the government case for war. He asked his producer, Jeff Cohen, to find a voice in opposition to the war. Jeff called me, and asked if I would be the guest on Phil’s premier. I accepted.

Donahue premiered on July 12, 2002. More than a million people tuned in, making it the top-rated show in America in prime time. As Eric Boehlert wrote in Salon Magazine, “It was telling that Donahue's first guest on the inaugural show was Scott Ritter, the former United Nations weapons inspector turned dove, who argued the United States today has no basis to declare war on Iraq. An ex-Marine and a proud Republican who spent years inspecting Saddam Hussein's arsenal, Ritter has been surprisingly absent from the national debate about a new war with Iraq. Donahue fixed that oversight in one night.”

According to Jeff, the decision to bring me on created a storm of controversy within NBC/MSNBC. He wrote about the difficulties in booking voices opposed to the war.

“Not every weapons expert had been wrong,” Cohen noted. “Take ex-Marine and former UN inspector Scott Ritter. In the last months of 2002, he told any audience or journalist who would hear him that Iraqi WMD represented no threat to our country. ‘Send in the inspectors,’ urged Ritter, ‘don’t send in the Marines.’

“It’s telling that in the run-up to the war, no American TV network hired any on-air analysts from among the experts who questioned White House WMD claims. None would hire Ritter.

“Inside MSNBC in 2002, Ritter was the target of a smear that he was receiving covert funds from Saddam Hussein’s government. The baseless slur was obviously aimed at reducing his media appearances. It surfaced like clockwork at MSNBC when we sought to book Ritter as a guest on Donahue.”

The famous American journalist and political commentator, Bill Moyers, asked Donahue about this in 2007:

BILL MOYERS: You had Scott Ritter, former weapons inspector. Who was saying that if we invade, it will be a historic blunder.

PHIL DONOHUE: You didn't have him alone. He had to be there with someone else who supported the war. In other words, you couldn't have Scott Ritter alone. You could have Richard Perle alone.

BILL MOYERS: You could have the conservative.

PHIL DONOHUE: You could have the supporters of the President alone. And they would say why this war is important. You couldn't have a dissenter alone. Our producers were instructed to feature two conservatives for every liberal.

BILL MOYERS: You're kidding.

PHIL DONOHUE: No this is absolutely true.

On February 25, 2003, MSNBC canceled Donahue, its top-rated show. An internal NBC report described host Phil Donahue as “a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war,” noting that senior management worried that Donahue’s show could become “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

The straw that broke the camel’s back was my last appearance on Donahue, on January 15, 2003. I appeared side-by-side with Richard Butler, my former boss at the United Nations. 

The transcript speaks for itself:

DONAHUE: Mr. Ritter, a comment on the final point that he made-briefly, please.

RITTER: What I’ll say is this, is, I take strong disagreement with the contention that you know that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.

BUTLER: Oh, come on, Scott. That’s on the public record.

RITTER: Of course it’s not. The public record actually says, with all due respect...

BUTLER: You signed the papers to me, when you worked for me, advising me-with all of your intellect and knowledge, you signed pieces of paper to me saying that Iraq has hidden weapons of mass destruction.

RITTER: Never. I signed pieces of paper to you that said we have credible intelligence information that says Iraq has it. And I asked you permission to carry out an inspection. But, understand, it’s an investigation. You just made a definitive statement that says you know Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. But, with all due respect, Richard, that is never reflected in any of the documents, even the one you just mentioned.

BUTLER: That’s not true.

RITTER: It is true. I have it here tonight. Do you want to go through the document page by page and show the people?

DONAHUE: Well, probably not.

(LAUGHTER)

BUTLER: It’s absolutely established that Iraq has not accounted for...

RITTER: Bingo. I agree with that, has not accounted for. But that’s an accounting issue.

BUTLER: So, where are the 500 shells with mustard in them? Where is the 400 tons of…

RITTER: These are good questions, but do you have evidence that they have it?

BUTLER: Where are the missiles?

RITTER: Do you know they have it for a fact, that they possess it as we speak? Or is the problem that Iraq has provided an accounting that we don’t have evidence to back it up, that we can’t confirm the Iraqi version of disposition? My point is...

BUTLER: Why are you assuming such a degree of innocence on the part of the Iraqis?

RITTER: Because 200,000 Americans are going to war based upon a perception of a threat. You testified before the U.S. Senate that Iraq has these weapons. And people listened to you and they gave that credibility, when the fact is, you do not know with absolute certainty that Iraq has these weapons.

BUTLER: Scott, the United States...

(APPLAUSE)

RITTER: And I'm not going to stand by and let Americans die in combat because people like you mislead the American Congress. I just won't allow that to happen.

BUTLER: Oh, for God's sake, for God’s sake, I mislead the American Congress?

RITTER: You said you know where the weapons are. Where are they?

BUTLER: Please allow me to finish. There is on the record at the United Nations pieces of paper signed by you...

RITTER: I have them here.

BUTLER: ... addressed to me, saying, these people have concealed weapons. Please authorize me to go find them.

RITTER: And you signed those documents.

BUTLER: Sometimes I did and sometimes I told you no.

RITTER: Give me an example when you said no.

BUTLER: I told you no because I thought what you were doing was excessive.

RITTER: Give me an example, Richard.

BUTLER: Come on.

RITTER: No, please, in front of the people here tonight. You’ve said this many times. You’ve brought my credibility into question. I can document every time we’ve met, every time I briefed you, and every time you signed it. Please, for the benefit of the public tonight, one example of when you turned me down.

Phil Donahue cut off the debate at that point.

It should be noted that the documents I referred to were part of the archive seized by the FBI when they raided my home on August 7.

I last saw Phil Donahue at the Fighting Bob Festival in Wisconsin in 2008. He was in good spirits, and we reminisced about the time we tried to stop the war in Iraq which was, at that time, still raging.

We had both been proven right in our opposition to this war.

Those who promoted the war continued to draw large salaries in their jobs at NBC and MSNBC, while Phil and I spoke to local crowds in Chautauqua.

Looking back, Phil and I got the better of the deal.

We retained our honor and integrity.

Phil Donahue died this past Sunday.

And with his passing went one of the last honest journalists in America.

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Eric Zuesse
ZUESSE SUBSTACK

On August 5th, Sergei Shoigu, who recently was promoted from being Russia’s Minister of Defense, to the post of Secretary of the Security Council, met in Tehran with Iran’s President and other top Iranian officials, and agreed to supply to Iran the world’s 2nd-best air-defense systems, the S-400 Triumph systems, from Russia (second-best only to the Russian S-500 system, which is in shorter supply). Right now, Iran is still awaiting the installation and setup of these systems, and that’s why Iran hasn’t yet attacked Israel after those assassinations. 

If the answer to that question is no, then the entire world, except for perhaps the farthest-rightwing Israelis, will suddenly become greatly relieved to find that there is a limit to how insane America’s leaders are.

In point of fact: the U.S. Government has NO treaty or other ‘legal’ obligation to escalate at that point to WW3. There isn’t even a ‘NATO Treaty’ type of such U.S. obligation regarding Israel. If the U.S. Government chooses at that point to do so (escalate to WW3), it would be entirely optional — not at all obligatory, in any sense.

Here is how that might happen:

The U.S. Government is racing the clock to get all its warships into optimal position to defeat Iran, as Israel’s Government prepares to defeat Hezbollah in Lebanon.

America’s aircraft carriers, including the USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Gerald R. Ford, USS Theodore Roosevelt, and USS Georgia, are racing from locations as far away as the Pacific, so as to be ready in time for an expected imminent sudden launch of missiles against Israel by Iran and Hezbollah responding to Israel’s July 30th and 31st assassinations of leaders of Hamas and of Hezbollah.

These U.S. warships carry hundreds of Tomahawk missiles, and numerous stealth F-35s and F-22s, which would presumably be unleashed against Iran immediately if Iran does retaliate against those two assassinations — one of which occurred on Iran’s territory. Iran has promised to retaliate.

On 21 May 2024, National Interest magazine, one of the most respected authorities on war-equipment, headlined “S-400: The Air Defense System That Could Track F-22 and F-35 Fighters: The S-400, a critical part of Russia's defense, is a sophisticated SAM system capable of detecting advanced aircraft, including America's stealth fighters, according to many experts.” It reported: “Summary: The S-400, a critical part of Russia's defense, is a sophisticated SAM system capable of detecting advanced aircraft, including America's stealth fighters, according to many experts.” It sub-headlined “S-400: It Can Likely See F-35 and F-22 Stealth Fighters.” It is likewise very effective against missiles.

this deal was done and was honored by both parties to it.

So: if it is actually the case that Biden is sending in these forces that leading experts think likely to fail against S-400s, and if Israel fails to defeat Hezbollah in Lebanon (which also is quite possible if not likely), then what would be the outcome of that?

There has been a battle of wills between Netanyahu, whose career is funded by conservative billionaires, versus Biden, whose career is funded by liberal billionaires, though all billionaires in both U.S. and Israel want Israel to defeat the Palestinians. In this possible scenario, the U.S. regime will be able to say they’ve done the utmost for Israel, even if they’ve failed — but military failure in the United States has been routine ever since the Vietnam War ended in failure in the 1970s, and voters never blamed their nation’s leaders for it, because these were actually wars of choice instead of (as is the case in Russia now) wars of necessity in order to protect the homeland. (The wars by an imperial power seeking to expand — such as America has ben since 1945 — are always wars of choice, because such wars benefit ONLY the nation’s aristocracy, who own the armaments-manufacturers etc., and harm everybody else.) Anyway, Kamala Harris certainly wouldn’t be blamed for losing this war, because the failure wouldn’t be during her own Administration. And as for Biden, this loss would enable him to destroy Netanyahu’s career, and would therefore be a huge win for Biden, even payback for insults that he has endured from him.

And it would, indeed, destroy Netanyahu’s career. It would also greatly harm Israel. But it might be a net benefit for America, no longer to be bearing the huge international PR burden of supporting that blatantly apartheid regime.