BILLY BOB—China’s planned socialist economy did not allow massive slums to sprawl as they always do as an unwanted consequence of capitalist development and economic growth. Instead, China built hundreds of cities from scratch, including twenty cities that house over a million citizens. China developed the world’s greatest high-speed rail network, they became the world’s leading manufacturer of green energy as well as the world’s greatest user of green energy. China developed a world-class education system that leads the world in the number of patents and published research papers. Perhaps most importantly, China is working with the developing world and offering them a hand up, instead of a knee on their necks (as is offered by the Western imperialists).
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FRED REED—Americans are not an historically aware people and so have little idea of how or why they are regarded as they are abroad. Consider Mexico, where I live. People here know of the Mexican-American War (of which, preposterously many Americans have never heard) as well as the bombardment of Veracruz and Pershing’s incursion. Peoples remember their defeats and humiliations as the victors do not. Mexicans know they are powerless against America, resent it intensely. Latin Americans in general know of the almost endless list of invasions, coups, dictators installed, economic exploitation that Americans have never heard of. Today they see the persecution of Cuba, the attempt to starve Venezuela into giving Washington control of its oil, the coups and murder attempts against Maduro, the coup in Bolivia, other attempts in Ukraine and Byelorussia, on and on.
Many countries have endured American manipulation exploitation, invasion. Americans seldom know of these things, but the countries involved do.
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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.
