Eric Zuesse – America is Too Profoundly Corrupt to Be Called a Democracy + The American Dictatorship
America is Too Profoundly Corrupt to Be Called A Democracy
US national security isn’t threatened by anything. So, why does the US Government spend $ 1.5 Trillion Year half of the world’s total, on ‘defense’?
On December 18th, Stephen Semler at Responsible Statecraft documented the corruption. He headlined “ Pols Loaded With Industry Cash Vote Up Military Budget”, and reported
Lawmakers and Senators who voted for NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act, the funding for next year’s ‘Defense’ Department, the Pentagon] got four and five times more money from contractors, respectively.
Following the Senate’s lead, the House approved the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Friday, thereby authorizing $ 886 Billion in military spending for fiscal year (FY) 2024.
By comparison, the FY 2021 iteration of the bill, the last NDAA under Trump, authorized $ 740 Billion. While Trump had managed to spike annual military spending by an incredible 20 percent in four years, Biden just accomplished the same feat in three. Another $ 62 Billion in Pentagon funding is included in Biden’s Foreign Aid Bill, which is still being debated in Congress.
This is undoubtedly good news for the arms industry. Over the last decade, 55 percent of US military spending went to military contractors, and there’s no reason to expect contractors’ share of the $ 886 billion budget for FY 2024 to be much (if any) different.
The annual military budget is the lifeblood for the arms industry, their golden goose. This is especially the case for the largest military contractors. For example, Lockheed Martin, the largest federal contractor, military or otherwise, derived 72 percent of its revenue from government contracts last year.
To ensure a continuation of Pentagon largesse, weapons companies reinvest a portion of their state subsidized profits back into the political system. The arms industry bankrolls influential think tanks, retains more lobbyists than Congress has elected officials, and spends tens of millions of dollars on political campaign contributions every year.
Campaign cash in particular is associated with “buying influence,” a practice top recipients in Congress typically deny exists, insisting the corporate checks stuffed in their suit pocket have no impact on how they vote. The data suggest otherwise. I compared the recent House and Senate NDAA votes with the political donations each representative and senator received from the arms industry so far this election cycle.
On average, House members who voted to authorize $ 886 billion in military spending took four times more money from military contractors than members who voted against the bill. Senators who supported the NDAA took five times more arms industry cash than the senators who opposed it. (…)
Senators who supported $886 Billion Pentagon bill got 5 X more cash from Pentagon contractors. (…)
Military contractor cash certainly helps to smooth out partisan differences on the NDAA. However, the average disparity in takings between “yea” and “nay” votes was slightly more pronounced among Democrats. House Republicans who supported the $ 886 Billion bill took five times more money from military contractors than Republicans who opposed the measure, and House Democrats who voted for it took seven times more than their Democratic colleagues. In the Senate, Republicans who voted for the NDAA took five times more than their caucus peers, and Democrats who supported it took six times more than other Democrats.
Almost every elected official in Congress takes money from military contractors, but these firms don’t take a spray-and-pray approach to political giving. Rather, they target the people with the most influence over the size and scope of Pentagon contracts. The House and Senate Armed Services Committees have the most control over what military policies make it into the NDAA and how much funding is authorized for each one. Little wonder, then, that seven of the top ten House recipients of arms industry money so far this election cycle sit on that committee. In the Senate, six out of the top ten recipients do. (…)
The stark correlation between money and votes on the FY 2024 NDAA isn’t an anomaly. A similar relationship exists on every NDAA vote since Biden entered office, during which time the amount authorized by the annual bill has grown by $ 146 billion. Congress overwhelmingly approved yearly hikes in military spending despite there never being more than 1 in 5 Americans interested in doing so, according to Eurasia Group surveys from 2021, 2022, and 2023. More than twice as many people want the Pentagon budget to shrink than want it to expand.
America’s armament manufacturers, the top US ‘Defense’ Contractors, virtually own the US Government, because they have to in order to control their markets, which are mainly the US Government but also the US ‘allied’ Governments, America’s colonies, such as in NATO, which likewise buy those mega corporations’ products.
Countries such as Russia and China never privatized their weapons making firms, which therefore make weapons according to the needs of the Government, not like in The West, according to the desires of the private stockholders who control The West’s weapons makers. US propaganda says that pure capitalism is democracy, but it’s actually fascism and that’s extremely corrupt. A mixture of socialism and capitalism is far better, and no weapons making firms should be capitalistic, all of them need to be at least 51% owned by the Government, like in Russia and China, so that they will serve the Government’s needs for national security, an authentic need of any public, and not serve investors’ cravings for profit at the expense of the public’s need for national security and everything else.
The US and allied world is just a con game, and it has couped, invaded, and destroyed, almost half of the world, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Libya, Venezuela, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Palestine, and on and on. For the profits to US and allied billionaires.
Not only is there scientific proof that the US is a dictatorship by its richest 0.1% of its richest 1% instead of any democracy at all, but here is a detailed description of the legal process by which this country does this and fools its citizenry, and virtually the rest of the world, not to know this ugly reality about it. That’s how the empire functions. And it is spectacularly profitable for that richest hundred thousandth of the US population.
https://theduran.com/america-is-too-profoundly-corrupt-to-be-called-a-democracy/
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The American Dictatorship
All of the empirical studies have indisputably displayed that the US Government is a dictatorship over its own people, and is being hidden from the US and allied publics in order for the US regime to be able to be believed when it and its colonies, ‘allies’, claim to justify their coups and invasions of other countries, such as Ukraine 2014, Libya 2011, Syria 2011 – now, Iraq 2003, Guatemala 1954, Iran 1953, Chile 1973, et cetera, by saying that they are against ‘authoritarianism’ or ‘dictatorship’ and in favor of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’. It’s all lies not only against the targeted Governments but for the ones that are targeting them to become conquered (to become US colonies).
Therefore, what those political science studies prove is that the US and its ‘allies’, existing colonies. have been blatantly lying to their respective publics about the US Government, and about their being allied, instead of ‘allied’, with it, colonies of the US empire.
This reality is stunningly well documented by Carleton Meyer in his recent 15 minute fully documented history video, “The Anglo American War on Russia, Part Twelve, NATO Wants War)”.
At 00:16 to 00:59 in the video he shows the archival US Government document which proves that the statements by US Government officials to the effect that it had no document that confirmed allegations that the US Government had promised to Soviet President Gorbachev that NATO would never expand eastward toward Russia’s border if Gorbachev would end the USSR and its counterpart to America’s NATO the Warsaw Pact, and its communis, all of those allegations by US and allied officials denying that the US had given Gorbachev that assurance, were lies, and, so, here I present that crucial document, which proves that indeed the US Government DOES violate its promise to Gorbachev with each and every new NATO member nation it brings into its NATO anti Russian military alliance:
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“MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION”
Date Friday, February 9, 1990
Place Kremlin
Page 6
“Secretary Baker” told “President Gorbachev” that “We understand the need for assurances to the countries in the East. If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east [of Germany].” (…)
Description [by George Washington University]
Even with [huge, about 60%] (unjustified) redactions by US classification officers [actually by US President GHW Bush himself and each one of his successors as Presidernt till this day] [remaining “classified”, secret from the public, even now, in 2023, 33 years later] this American transcript of perhaps the most famous US assurance to the Soviets on NATO expansion confirms the Soviet transcript of the same conversation. Repeating what Bush said at the Malta Summit in December 1989, Baker tells Gorbachev “The President and I have made clear that we seek no unilateral advantage in this process” of inevitable German unification. Baker goes on to say, “We understand the need for assurances to the countries in the East. If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.” Later in the conversation, Baker poses the same position as a question, “would you prefer a united Germany outside of NATO that is independent and has no US forces or would you prefer a united Germany with ties to NATO and assurances that there would be no extension of NATO’s current jurisdiction eastward?” The declassifiers of this mem con actually redacted Gorbachev’s response that indeed such an expansion would be “unacceptable”, but Baker’s letter to Kohl the next day, published in 1998 by the Germans, gives the quote.
Source
US Department of State, FOIA 199504567, National Security Archive Flashpoints Collection, Box 38
nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16116-document-05-memorandum.conversation-between
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This is written documentary proof from the US regime’s own archives, which was declassified,but still 60% expurgated. only as recently as 2021, confirming what I wrote in my 10 September 2015 article, “How America Double Crossed Russia And Shamed The West”, so that now there can be no reasonable doubt whatsoever, that the US regime, in 1990, was lying to the Soviet Uinion and really DID intend, at that time and straight up till today, to conquer Russia, and that every one of the leaders of the US.imperial regime’s colonies or ‘allies’ was likewise keeping the US regime’s intention of global conquest secret from their respective publics.
Carleton Meyer’s video is entirely truthful. And what it documents is the international criminality of each and every one of America’s Presidents since AT LEAST 1990. Each and every one of them qualifies to be compared in criminality to Adolf Hitler, who had the same global imperialist aim for his nation.
Right now, this megamaniacally criminal regime is supplying the weapons and strategy and military intelligence to the Israeli regime’s soldiers to exterminate all Gazans unless some of the Gazans can finally be forced out into the desert to be starved to death there. A new UN and international criminal court needs to be created by the leaderships of both Russia and China, and inviting all decent nations to join this new UN and to abandon and replace the existing organization, so as to bring about the empowered UN that the entirety of humanity now increasingly desperately and urgently needs in order to prevent neo con psychopaths from conquering the entire world, such as the US regime unquestionably intends to do. What Hitler’s regime was during the 1930‘s, was the German version of what America’s regime is right now, his aimed for WWII, and America’s aims for WWIII. It must be stopped before it gets there.
Ever since 25 July 1945, this world has had more than enough of the hegemonic and hegemaniacal US regime. That regime, and its dominance over the world, must quickly be replaced. There might not be much time left in which to do it. America’s danger to the world is totally real, and it must be faced right now, and overcome soon, with a full recognition of the urgency of this matter, no more soft pedaling of it, such as has been done till now. The US regime seriously endangers the entire world.
In the 1770‘s, Paul Revere, who lived in the British Empire, tried to warn his countrymen against that Empire, today, I, who live in the American Empire, try to warn the world against this Empire that threatens the entire planet. No reasonable person can deny the gravity of the danger that this regime poses.
https://theduran.com/the-american-dictatorship/
¶
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse ’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to US and allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’, duping the public.
Eric Zuesse blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/
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