ERIC ZUESSE—The “Supplemental” this year (Ukraine+Gaza+Taiwan) totals to $95.3B, which causes the original $886B ‘Defense’ (or Aggression) budget for this fiscal year to be: $886B+752.5B+95.3B=$1,733,800 billion, or $1.734T. However, even that is incomplete, because the entire U.S. intelligence community, CIA, DIA, and the many others, is classified, its budgets are secret, hidden from the public, and, of course, these are also important parts of the U.S. military; so, perhaps annual U.S. military spending is now around $2T. On 12 March 2024, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence headlined “DNI RELEASES FY 2025 BUDGET REQUEST FIGURE FOR THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE PROGRAM” and publicly revealed (in accord with a 2007 law) “the aggregate amount of $73.4 billion in requested appropriations for the Fiscal Year 2025 National Intelligence Program (NIP),” and on 20 April 2024 I shall request from the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community the IC’s latest Audit Report in order to determine how complete that $73.4B figure is. I start with the assumption that it is the bare minimum of what the complete number is, and that what the maximum might be, and what the reality is, have remained top secret in this dictatorship.
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ERIC ARNOW—Seems like Blinken has a selective or defective memory. Blinken told his stepfather’s story as a tale of one-sided U.S. beneficence, but Samuel Pisar remembers it differently: “I was saved by the Battle of Stalingrad, which was the turning point of the war, and the Red Army offensive,” he said in a 2010 interview with Russian media outlet RIA Novosti. “For me, during the Second World War, Russia was a savior. I consider my saviors to be the Russian and American armies. You can criticize Stalin, the Gulag, and other things that happened in Russia from 1920 to 1930, but the heroism, sacrifice, and victory of Russia in the war against Fascism cannot be questioned. It’s sacred.”
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GODFREE ROBERTS—Mao, a passionate developmentalist, had offered to travel to Washington in 1944 to talk with President Roosevelt, “China must develop. This can only be done by free enterprise. Chinese and American interests fit together, economically and politically. America need not fear that we will not be co-operative. We cannot risk any conflict”. Mao’s message never reached the President so, in 1949, he wrote Truman, then Eisenhower. Both ignored him.
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G. ROBERTS—Deng’s withdrawal of Mao’s tuition subsidies crushed the dreams of millions, while his decision to maintain them for African students touched off race riots in Nanjing, where students rampaged through the Africans’ quarters. Beijing students carried banners (“No Offend Chinese Women,” “Kill the foreigners!”), screamed insults at Deng, and marched on Party leaders’ living quarters at Zhongnanhai. Workers echoed students’complaints. One explained that everyone in her industry had much less opportunity to participate within the system than in the 1970s, when meetings were called for every problem and people could raise opinions that today would result in their dismissal. By the Fall, State-owned companies had dumped millions of workers into an unprepared labor market, where inflation consumed their six months severance pay in six weeks.
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INDRAJIT—Another part of the Empire’s cowardly strategy is sanctions, which is just the white word for sieges. Sanctions have been used to cut Cuba for decades, including cutting them off from ventilators during COVID. They were also used against Iraq for decades, killing tens of thousands of children. They have been used across the world, collectively punishing civilians to try and overthrow governments.
Neither the bombing nor the sanctions work (America loses every war), but they keep doing it anyway. At this point, cruelty is the strategy. The Empire has really been on autopilot since World War II, bombing endlessly.
