This long article is written by Chris Hedges who is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, best-selling author & activist. All especially politicians should read it.
The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.
The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion, $ 6 trillion more than the US GDP of $ 24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $ 813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.
We are paying a heavy social, political, and economic cost for our militarism. Washington watches passively as the U.S. rots, morally, politically, economically, and physically, while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries extract themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network banks and other financial institutions use to send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse. It will force the immediate contraction of the U.S. empire shuttering most of its nearly 800 overseas military installations. It will signal the death of Pax Americana.
Democrat or Republican. It does not matter. War is the raison d’état of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of “national security.” The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide.
There were three restraints to the avarice and bloodlust of the permanent war economy that no longer exist. The first was the old liberal wing of the Democratic Party, led by politicians such as Senator George McGovern, Senator Eugene McCarthy, and Senator J. William Fulbright, who wrote The Pentagon Propaganda Machine. The self-identified progressives, a pitiful minority, in Congress today, from Barbara Lee, who was the single vote in the House and the Senate opposing a broad, open-ended authorization allowing the president to wage war in Afghanistan or anywhere else, to Ilhan Omar now dutifully line up to fund the latest proxy war. The second restraint was an independent media and academia, including journalists such as I.F Stone and Neil Sheehan along with scholars such as Seymour Melman, author of The Permanent War Economy and Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War. Third, and perhaps most important, was an organized anti-war movement, led by religious leaders such as Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr. and Phil and Dan Berrigan as well as groups such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They understood that unchecked militarism was a fatal disease.
None of these opposition forces, which did not reverse the permanent war economy but curbed its excesses, now exist. The two ruling parties have been bought by corporations, especially military contractors. The press is anaemic and obsequious to the war industry. Propagandists for permanent war, largely from right-wing think tanks lavishly funded by the war industry, along with former military and intelligence officials, are exclusively quoted or interviewed as military experts. NBC’s “Meet the Press” aired a segment May 13 where officials from Center for a New American Security (CNAS) simulated what a war with China over Taiwan might look like. The co-founder of CNAS, Michèle Flournoy, who appeared in the “Meet the Press” war games segment and was considered by Biden to run the Pentagon, wrote in 2020 in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. needs to develop “the capability to credibly threaten to sink all of China’s military vessels, submarines and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours.”
The handful of anti-militarists and critics of empire from the left, such as Noam Chomsky, and the right, such as Ron Paul, have been declared persona non grata by a compliant media. The liberal class has retreated into boutique activism where issues of class, capitalism and militarism are jettisoned for “cancel culture,” multiculturalism and identity politics. Liberals are cheerleading the war in Ukraine. At least the inception of the war with Iraq saw them join significant street protests. Ukraine is embraced as the latest crusade for freedom and democracy against the new Hitler. There is little hope, I fear, of rolling back or restraining the disasters being orchestrated on a national and global level. The neoconservatives and liberal interventionists chant in unison for war. Biden has appointed these war mongers, whose attitude to nuclear war is terrifyingly cavalier, to run the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and the State Department.
Since all we do is war, all proposed solutions are military. This military adventurism accelerates the decline, as the defeat in Vietnam and the squandering of $8 trillion in the futile wars in the Middle East illustrate. War and sanctions, it is believed, will cripple Russia, rich in gas and natural resources. War, or the threat of war, will curb the growing economic and military clout of China.
These are demented and dangerous fantasies, perpetrated by a ruling class that has severed itself from reality. No longer able to salvage their own society and economy, they seek to destroy those of their global competitors, especially Russia and China. Once the militarists cripple Russia, the plan goes, they will focus military aggression on the Indo-Pacific, dominating what Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, referring to the Pacific, called “the American Sea.”
Washington is desperately trying to build military and economic alliances to ward off a rising China, whose economy is expected by 2028 to overtake that of the United States, according to the UK’s Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). The White House has said Biden’s current visit to Asia is about sending a “powerful message” to Beijing and others about what the world could look like if democracies “stand together to shape the rules of the road.” The Biden administration has invited South Korea and Japan to attend the NATO summit in Madrid.
But fewer and fewer nations, even among European allies, are willing to be dominated by the United States. Washington’s veneer of democracy and supposed respect for human rights and civil liberties is so badly tarnished as to be irrecoverable. Its economic decline, with China’s manufacturing 70 percent higher than that of the U.S., is irreversible. War is a desperate Hail Mary, one employed by dying empires throughout history with catastrophic consequences. “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable,” Thucydides noted in the History of the Peloponnesian War.
Chris Hedges
04 June 2022
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Based on 2021 data USA is list 7 and China is 77 interms of per capita income. In terms of population, China is 4.2 times the size of the US.. so even if their GDP even up,the US will still be far ahead in terms of prosperity of its people... If we look around us, literally everything we consume, treat ourselves, enjoy, transact with etc comes from the USA.. Infact we now live in a civilization created by them..And their biggest invention is the USD which increases in value as troubles in the world increases. The reason is simple people trust the Americans more that anyone else
2022-06-09 22:50
Someone should tell China, they keep buying US debts. The CCP looooves the US dollar.
2022-06-09 23:51
They say if you don't learn from history, you bound to repeat it! We learn how the Rome empire crumbled! Same with the Dutch empire! The Great Britain empire! And now USA empire!
The pattern are the same! Mind you, once upon a time, China too was a great empire! Do you see any more China emperor around!
Empire come and go! Today USA, tomorrow China, maybe the next one will be Indonesia!
2022-06-10 01:09
And least we forget, there was malay empire too! And yes, there was Tionghua empire in Kalimantan as well!
So don't be so proud of coming rise of China empire! It has happened before! ONly the fall of empire that most of us ignore for some reason!
2022-06-10 01:11
@qqq3333
US dollar hegemony? If China wants to end USD hegemony, they can always just stop buying US dollar debt. But no, the CCP loooooves buying USD , even when so many CCP shrills keep saying that US will fall.
2022-06-10 01:27
@Tobby
As long as humans continue to exists, China will always exists. But whether it will be in the form of the People Republic of China (PRC) with the CCP at the helm, I highly doubt it. The PRC's system of government is not sustainable. In time, it will change too, probably in the footsteps of the USSR.
THe "USA empire" will likely fall too. Maybe China will take its place, but definitely not as the PRC. The CCP will fall way before US dominance ends.
Or maybe India or Indonesia will be number 1. China's caused irreparable damange to its demographic through the one-child policy. It's population is getting old before it even gets rich. You can't dominate the world with a population of elderly.
2022-06-10 01:39
Cupcake! Yeah, China one child policy will takes it's toll in a decade from now! But then again, China has 1.5 billion! If half a billion dies off, China still have plenty! Population of Shanghai alone equal to whole Malaysia!
2022-06-10 01:43
@Tobby
The population number is not the problem. It's their age. 2 adults make 1 child, end result: only 1 child available to take care of 2 elderly parents; only 1 young adult to replace 2 retirees in the workplace; only 1 young adult to replace 2 retired army personnel; only 1 young adult to pay off the pension of 2 retirees. It's a time-bomb.
19% of China's population is already above 60, and every year that gets worst.
Japan has elderly population too, but it's GDP per capita is 5 times that of the PRC. They are rich old people. China elderly are not rich.
The US has immigration, just one benefit of being an english speaking democracy.
2022-06-10 02:00
@qqq3333
China's corruption index is worst that Malaysia's lmao... Kill lots of people yet still dirty. No hope lah if rely on the CCP too much.
2022-06-10 02:00
qqq3333
Tell that to the CCP. They do no want the US to collapse because they would lose trillions of their investment in USD. China loooooves the dollar.
2022-06-10 02:02
qqq3333
America will collapse eventually, but not before the PRC collapse first.
2022-06-10 02:21
All of you did give your good points for sharing. Thanks.
My turn.
China is nation (one civilization). USA is an Enterprise.
Elsewhere, The Babylonians came to concur their land and disappeared, the Greek, the Roman Empire (the Italians are not Romans), the Ottoman and left. This nation taken out by God, led by Moses is still around.
The Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch...are being defeated also. Today, Portuguese and Spanish are becoming poorer.
2022-06-10 10:23
Good morning, still certain people are dreaming of china's greatness. Face reality, China market is still dependent on USA consumption. Even people in collapsing economies like Sri Lanka, Nepal, Turkey & Venezuela are desperately looking for Uncle Sam's $$$$$.
Posted by Cupcakes69 > 8 hours ago | Report Abuse
qqq3333
America will collapse eventually, but not before the PRC collapse first.
2022-06-10 10:33
qqq3333
You failed economics already. Being a large consumer market is an advantage because you have a domestic market to sell your own goods.
And at the moment, China's production still mostly low value. Why do you think the American's GDP per capita is more than 5 times that of China. The key to getting rich is to make cheap (through outsourcing) and sell very very very high, that's what the West/Japan/South Korea are doing. China is still relying on manufacturing cheap, and selling cheap - low margin.
2022-06-10 13:05
Wah, you really no shame lying is it?
Inequality? Based on the gini coefficient for income inequality, China's inequality is worst compared to the US. Taiwan far ahead of the PRC in terms equality. Ironic because the PRC constitution says that it is a socialist state XD lmao..
China is both not rich and and unequal, so it will collapse first lab. So obvious.
2022-06-10 14:07
Whatever they try will succeed? Sure, the great leap forward and cultural revolution was very successful killing millions of Chinese.
2022-06-10 16:20
When they arrived at the New World, these settlers/criminal/blacklisted personnel, all adopted this system called "republic", which can do away with their kings/queens/religious leaders , from the Europe. There were red Indians and many other people yet. So, you know what they did? Later, call it USA...
They were willing to fight among themselves in the New World, bloody. And these Europeans/some are from the barbarians, mostly from the tribe of Esau, Haman, then Hitler...and entangling others.
2022-06-10 16:48
USA can not be found in the Bible. Very clear. It has no role in the End. Unlike Iran/Persian, Jacob/Israelites, Rosh/Russia, Gog/Magog Central Asia, East/China. Today, Iran is preparing the nuclear bomb, Israel aiming to defeat Iran..
2022-06-10 17:04
You challenge all the shareholders kah. Tan Sri maybe will do so leh. Correct?
prettygal
I dare those who say bottom already to all in on Monday. See what happen lol
1 hour ago
2022-06-10 21:27
qqq3333
Wah, killing millions of chinese is "laying the foundation"? Says who? The chinese media who you yourself said only talks good about the CCP? Stop bringing shame to other ethnic Chinese lah.
2022-06-11 21:05
Mao Zedong was evil. Thank god he died. He brought nothing but suffering to the chinese people.
2022-06-11 21:08
qqq3333
"Quailo trying to dictate to Chinese what the Chinese should think, feel , like and don't like?"
Lol, the only people trying to dictate the chinese is the CCP. They cencor this, censor that; read your text messages; ban books; even wrote in the constitution that chinese news media cannot talk against the CCP.
2022-06-12 01:37
qqq3333
So many chinese dead during the great leap forward and cultural revolution. The fact you praised that means you don't care about chinese, but only care about the CCP.
2022-06-12 01:38
My hard earn moni is also trapped in a red mkt spin. Next wk. the spin is likely to be faster n the mkt fire bigger. How to get out n preserve whatever balance of my hard earn moni ?
2022-06-12 12:30
Now, I like Uncle to churn out this type of article making educated people syok syok. Kikiki!
2022-06-12 20:11
@qqq3333
US GDP per capita 5x that of China, Taiwan GDP per capita 2x that of China. Both countries considered high income and developed. China on the other hand still only upper-middle income, and still developing, and its population is getting old before it gets rich because of stup*d one-child policy;
So which a better model, definitely not China's lol.
2022-06-12 20:33
Here's the investment platform lor not an educative platform to change other people. Let it be! Anyway, we need more this kind of people in the stock market.
2022-06-12 20:43
china pop is 4x usa and 50x taiwan so using gdp per capital is very inaccurate
2022-06-12 20:44
No worries guys, there will be a Great War in less than 10 years. Either cupcake or qqq will be proven right. At that time, hopefully they finish of one side convincingly so we don’t need to waste time debating here
2022-06-13 00:25
USA Indo Pacific strategy is about war
USA had so many internal problems now USA need a great war of china to stay alive another 50 years
Asia is the next mideast
Without WAR USA is DOOMED
2022-06-13 10:30
@ CnTime
Actually, its because of population difference why GDP per capita is more accurate.
If you rely on GDP alone, that would mean the average Indonesian are more economically prosperous that the Singaporeans because Indonesia's GDP is more than 3x that of Singapore.
But we all know Singaporeans are richer. Malaysians want to move and work there, not Indonesia.
2022-06-13 21:55
@qqq3333
What western lies did I repeat? US and Taiwan's GDP per capita is far higher than China's. Lmao. That also you don't know meh?
2022-06-13 21:55
Whatever, China is showing the way now. The best part, I think, China has more to show looking ahead.
2022-06-13 22:18
A land where people with wealth & connection got special treatment. Make sure you don't go against them. Pray a lot so that this special privilege people don't come to disturb or bully you. Once you are targeted .... bye bye
2022-06-14 13:30
唐山事件“保護傘”太多!“九流氓”中有政法委書記的兒子,大陸媒體點名唐山官場;思考題:中共喜歡好人多、還是壞人多?公檢法的上位邏輯;上千港人倫敦紀念612事件|新聞拍
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j9CckIQjUQ
本集節目美東 2/25 製作
0:00 時政自媒體在YT上要避免很多禁忌 還涉及“立場”問題
2:32 唐山打人案中的流氓 有政法委書記的“兒子”
3:27 公檢法如何上位 思考:中共喜歡好人多、順民多、壞人多?
8:27 三個原因讓公檢法成為黑道保護傘 陸媒點名唐山官場
10:20 保護你吃燒烤!中共警察開始下派各地燒烤攤盯防
11:50 唐山事件或致官員落馬 各種暴力事件頻發 防不勝防
13:32 上千港人齊集倫敦 紀念“612立法會事件”三週年
2022-06-14 13:42
@bpsiah
More to show ah? Aya, how to show anything when CCP loves to censor soo many things. Lol
2022-06-14 20:39
@qqq333
Nope, they censor stuff that do damage to the CCP's fragile image. They don't care about facts, as long as they can get the Chinese to give up their civil liberties, privacies, , human rights, and keep the CCP in power.
2022-06-16 01:44
@qqq3333
No you don't because that would result in youtube and i3investor being banned too. And you love accessing these websites despite your praise of CCP censorship because you are openly double standard. No shame at all.
2022-06-16 21:22
@qqq3333
Chinese news media are accessible outside of China, even in the US. They not very popular because Chinese news media will only talk good about China, which you yourself admit to.
2022-06-17 00:11
@qqq3333
Expecting truthful reporting from the press is ridiculous? Seems like China is beyond help already lah if being constantly lied to by your government is considered a good thing.
2022-06-17 00:23
@qqq3333
Being lied to is helping you? Wah, you for sure useful idi*t to the CCP lah.
2022-06-17 00:24
@qqq3333
"China is democracy in China language because it is people first.........the government take care of the people and the country."
Says who, the chinese news media who you just admit is lying? lmao, you really are useful idi*t to the CCP lah. So gullible. You know they lie yet you still choose to believe them. Logic down the drain already.
2022-06-18 03:07
一帶一路榨乾窮國,中共掉自己挖的陷阱;中國中小銀行危機爆發,會大量覆滅?前業者曝中國房地產黑幕;數百名碩博士的錢去哪了?「把高學歷羊騙進來宰」;邯鄲要求復工
00:00 本期内容摘要
01:21 窮國被一帶一路榨乾沒錢還貸款,美學者:中共掉入自己挖的債務陷阱
04:06 「這些銀行會大量覆滅」?中小銀行的危機正式爆發
05:20 中國22城首輪土地拍賣成交額下降52.7%
06:32 知名投資人:美聯儲玩真的,明年利率將升破5%
07:40 前房地產業者談推高大陸房價黑手
10:56 河北邯鄲要求復工前購買3000元防疫機,並說網民理解
12:04 數百名碩博士的錢去哪了? 「屬實是把高學歷的羊騙進來殺」
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnvmjLRSh4g
2022-06-25 21:42
You know, Elon Musk kid recently change his name to her! Yeah, brainwashed by LBGT, the leftists of USA!
What is happening in US culture is beyond perverted! I doubt the rest of the world still have admiration for USA now! I mean, tell me, what has US done good lately! Nothing!
Then again, what has China side done of late! While innovations have thrive, i mean, gosh, can Chairman Xi stop been war monger! Non stp making threats against Taiwan! As if going to war anytime soon!
Chairman Xi is acting exactly like those incompetent US and EU leaders! Lately, the world has been in state of gloom! seems nothing to be happy about!
2022-06-25 23:19
US is no longer the same US as we know long time ago, now it is evil empire
2022-06-27 16:11
TraderAlways
This article makes subur investor comfortable knowing their losses is nothing compared to US debt.
2022-06-09 17:56