Sven Kockelmann: Terug naar de werkelijkheid: u had het net over Poetin. De meeste Europese landen besteden véél te weinig aan hun defensie-uitgaven. Dat is een belangrijk politiek onderwerp op dit moment. We dragen véél te weinig bij aan de NAVO, in ieder geval in verhouding tot de afspraken die zijn gemaakt. Als wij straks te maken krijgen met agressie uit het Oosten, wat we nog maar moeten afwachten, maar sommigen vrezen daarvoor, en het ziet er in ieder geval tamelijk eng uit, dan kunnen wij niet zonder de hulp van de Amerikanen, en de Amerikanen vinden Europa minder belangrijk tegenwoordig dan de Pacific.
Geert Mak: Het dwingt Europa om meer aan defensie uit te geven… Kijk, er is iets heel geks gebeurt. In Europa waren we zo bezig met die soft power en op een andere manier een internationale orde te scheppen, en Europa is daar heel succesvol in geweest. Alleen Poetin doet dat weer op een negentiende eeuwse manier. Het is een andere manier van denken die hij ineens weer de Europeanen door de strot douwt. Wij moeten er wel op voorbereid zijn dat her en der de negentiende eeuw ook nog heerst.
Eén op één. 5 mei 2014
Volgens de officiële cijfers spenderen alleen al Frankrijk, het Verenigd Koninkrijk, Duitsland en Italië tezamen ruim twee keer zoveel aan defensie als Rusland, terwijl Moskou een territorium moet verdedigen dat vier maal zo groot is als dat van alle EU-landen bijeen. In 2013 was het wereldaandeel in bewapeningsuitgaven van Rusland 2.7 keer lager dan de eerstgenoemde vier Europese landen tezamen. Desondanks deed opiniemaker Geert Mak het op televisie voorkomen dat de EU-landen bezig waren met het 'helemáál afbreken' van hun 'defensie.' In 2011 werd bekend dat ondanks de ineenstorting van de Sovjet Unie de VS, als machtigste NAVO-land zijn militaire uitgaven gigantisch had verhoogd:
A new report released today by SIPRI, a Swedish-based think tank, reveals that U.S. military spending has almost doubled since 2001. The U.S. spent an astounding $698 billion on the military last year, an 81% increase over the last decade.
U.S. spending on the military last year far exceeded any other country. We spent six times more than China — the second largest spender. Overall, the world expended $1.6 trillion on the military, with the United States accounting for the lion’s share:
Van vitaal belang is de informatie die de Amerikaanse denktank Foreign Policy in Focus al in 1999 publiceerde:
The military-industrial complex did not fade away with the end of the cold war. It simply reorganized itself…
As a result a rash of military-industry mergers encouraged and subsidized by the Clinton Administration, the Big Three weapons makers — Lockheed Martin Corporation, Boeing Corporation, and Raytheon Corporation — now receive among themselves over $30 billion per year in Pentagon contracts. This represents more than one out of every four dollars that the Defense Department doles out for everything from rifles to rockets.
In 1999, the Clinton Administration's five-year budget plan for the Pentagon called for a 50% increase in weapons procurement, which would be an increase from $44 billion per year to over $63 billion per year by 2003. Additionally, the arms industry launched a concerted lobbying campaign aimed at increasing military spending and arms exports. These initiatives are driven by profit and pork barrel politics, not by an objective assessment of how best to defend the United States in the post-cold war period.
Bovendien wijst het onafhankelijke Amerikaanse Center for Media & Democracy in een overzicht, getiteld The New Military-Industrial Complex, op het volgende:
Writing for the March 2003 issue of Business2.0, Ian Mount, David H. Freedman, and Matthew Maier address what is now called the New military-industrial complex. As anyone who has been following the current war in Iraq is well aware, 'the nature of the battle' is 'unlike anything the world has ever known.' Afghanistan, the writers say, 'provided a glimpse of the latest generation of high-tech weaponry, but it was only a glimpse. A major assault by combined American forces will provide a full demonstration of the military's new doctrine of faster, lighter, smarter warfare -- combat in which cutting-edge technology becomes U.S. troops' deadliest weapon. The Pentagon calls this new doctrine RMA, for revolution in military affairs, and it's made possible not just by fresh thinking in the Pentagon but also by a subtle shift in the ranks of U.S. defense contractors. In building its new high-tech arsenal, the United States has also created a new military-industrial complex.'
'When it comes to military spending, the tradition of the iron triangle—Congress, the Pentagon, and defense industries—joining to push costly weaponry is nothing new.' In his speech, Eisenhower said that 'The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.'
The Military-Industrial-Think Tank Complex
According to the January/February 2003 Multinational Monitor:
Each major element of the George Walker Bush administration's national security strategy -- from the doctrines of preemptive strikes and 'regime change' in Iraq, to its aggressive nuclear posture and commitment to deploying a Star Wars-style missile defense system -- was developed and refined before the Bush administration took office, at corporate-backed conservative think tanks like the Center for Security Policy, the National Institute for Public Policy and the Project for a New American Century.
Unilateralist ideologues formerly affiliated with these think tanks, along with the 32 major administration appointees who are former executives with, consultants for, or significant shareholders of top Defense contractors, are driving U.S. foreign and military policy.
The arms lobby is exerting more influence over policymaking than at any time since President Dwight D. Eisenhower first warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex over 40 years ago.
It is not just industry-backed think tanks that have infiltrated the administration. Former executives, consultants or shareholders of top U.S. defense companies pervade the Bush national security team.
Exploiting the fears following 9/11, and impervious to budgetary constraints imposed on virtually every other form of federal spending, the ideologue-industry nexus is driving the United States to war in Iraq and a permanently aggressive war-fighting posture that will simultaneously starve other government programs and make the world a much more dangerous place.
The overarching concern of the ideologues and the arms industry is to increase military spending. On this score, they have been tremendously successful. In its two years in office, the Bush administration has sought more than $150 billion in new military spending, the vast majority of which has been approved by Congress with few questions asked. Spending on national defense is nearing $400 billion for fiscal year (FY) 2003, up from $329 billion when Bush took office.
In zijn afscheidstoespraak aan het Amerikaanse volk waarschuwde president Eisenhower op 17 januari 1961:
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together…
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Eerder al had de oud-opperbevelhebber van de Geallieerde Strijdkrachten in Europa tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog, de vijf-sterren generaal Dwight Eisenhower, met klem erop gewezen dat
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Het moment dat Eisenhower deze woorden sprak, is veelzeggend. Op 30 september 2011 schreef daarover Robert Schlesinger, 'managing editor for opinion at U.S. News & World Report,' en auteur van White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters (2008):
As I recount in White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters, the circumstance was the March, 1953 death of Joseph Stalin. Eisenhower felt that the Soviet dictator’s demise provided an opportunity to nip the Cold War in the bud. It prompted him to give a speech that would be titled 'The Chance for Peace.' Here’s the key section from Ghosts:
More than a week after Stalin’s death, Eisenhower was talking with speechwriter Emmet Hughes about the address. 'Look, I am tired—and I think everyone is tired—of just plain indictments of the Soviet regime,” Ike said. 'I think it would be wrong—in fact, asinine—for me to get up before the world now to make another one of those indictments. Instead, just one thing matters. What have we got to offer the world?'
As Eisenhower spoke, it seemed to Hughes that his contemplation was drawing to a close. Ike’s thoughts were now coalescing. The president stopped and, jaw set, stared out the window onto the South Lawn. The tiny speck of an F-86 Sabre buzzed across the sky.
In an instant his reverie broke, and he wheeled around. 'Here is what I would like to say. The jet plane that roars over your head costs three quarter of a million dollars. That is more money than a man earning ten thousand dollars every year is going to make in his lifetime. What world can afford this sort of thing for long? We are in an armaments race. Where will it lead us? At worst to atomic warfare. At best, to robbing every people and nation on earth of the fruits of their own toil.
Now, there could be another road before us—the road of disarmament. What does this mean? It means for everybody in the world: bread, butter, clothes, homes, hospitals, schools—all the good and necessary things for decent living…'
Eisenhower and Hughes would go over a dozen drafts of the speech, each of which the president carefully edited. It survived criticism from quarters as disparate Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who thought an overt peace overture a mistake.
When he gave the speech, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in April of 1953, Ike was ill and was barely able to deliver it.
Onthullend is tevens dat volgens Eisenhower, alsdus zijn biograaf, de Amerikaanse historicus Geoffrey Perret, de president in één van de concepten van zijn toespraak het begrip 'military–industrial–congressional complex' introduceerde,
indicating the essential role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry, but the word 'congressional' was dropped from the final version to appease the then-currently elected officials.
Toch had Eisenhower gelijk, want het is de combinatie van hoge militairen, grote concerns en corrupte politici, gesteund door de commerciële massamedia, die het proces hebben mogelijk gemaakt waarbij vandaag de dag, meer dan een halve eeuw na Eisenhower's toespraak, een militair-industriële-politieke kongsi de macht in handen heeft, miljarden verspild aan geweld, en daarmee de loop van de geschiedenis bepaalt. Binnen deze context moet de lezer Mak's misdadige voorstelling van zaken beoordelen. In de uitgebreid gedocumenteerde studie Full Spectrum Dominance. Totalitarian Democracy In The New World Order (2009) concludeert de Amerikaanse historicus Wiliam Engdahl dat
The Pentagon's Revolution in Military Affairs however, was anything but a clever new term for the same military strategy. It was a strategy to enable total control over every nation, every potential competitor on the face of the earth. It was the blueprint for America's Full Spectrum Dominance, the New American Century of the new millennium.
The strategy was guided by a reclusive long-range war policy planner at the Pentagon who had reached his mid-80s and was considered untouchable, having endured through every post World War II Administration. He had earned within the Pentagon the nickname of 'Yoda,' from the Hollywood Star Wars films. His 'Jedi Knights' numbered some of the most powerful people ever to have come to Washington, including Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
Engdahl doelde daarbij op één van de machtigste Amerikaanse strategen, Andrew W. Marshall, directeur van het United States Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment, een beleidsbepaler die ook het strategische denken van de Chinese militaire top beïnvloedt, zoals uit het volgende fragment uit het Britse tijdschrift The Economist blijkt:
A third phase began in the early 1990s. Shaken by the destructive impact of the West's high-tech weaponry on the Iraqi army, the PLA (Chinese People's Liberation Army. svh) realized that its huge ground forces were militarily obsolete. PLA scholars at the Academy of Military Science in Beijing began learning all they could from American think-tanks about the so-called 'revolution in military affairs' (RMA), a change in strategy and weaponry made possible by exponentially greater computer-processing power. In a meeting with The Economist at the Academy, General Chen Zhou, the main author of the four most recent defense white papers, said: 'We studied RMA exhaustively. Our great hero was Andy Marshall in the Pentagon [the powerful head of the Office of Net Assessment who was known as the Pentagon's futurist-in-chief]. We translated every word he wrote.'
The Economist. The dragon’s new teeth. 7 april 2012
'Yoda is the nom de guerre for Andrew W. Marshall, the 92-year-old futurist who directs the Pentagon’s obliquely named internal think tank, the Office of Net Assessment. A fixture in national-security circles since the dawn of the Cold War, Marshall contemplates military strategy and apocalyptic scenarios that could emerge in the decades to come.'
Het 'Office of Net Assessment' van Andrew Marshall bepaalt welke oorlogen in de toekomst noodzakelijk zijn om de belangen van de Amerikaanse elite te beschermen en hoe die oorlogen uitgevochten dienen te worden. Even wat achtergrond-informatie die niet door Nederlandse mainstream-journalisten en opiniemakers wordt verstrekt:
The United States Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment (ONA) was created in 1973 by Richard Nixon to serve as the Pentagon's 'internal think tank' that 'looks 20 to 30 years into the military's future, often with the assistance of outside contractors, and produces reports on the results of its research.' The Director of Net Assessment is the principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense on net assessment.
Over 'Andrew Marshall (foreign policy strategist)' is onder andere het volgende bekend:
Over 'Andrew Marshall (foreign policy strategist)' is onder andere het volgende bekend:
Andrew W. Marshall (born September 13, 1921) is the director of the United States Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment. Appointed to the position in 1973 by United States President Richard Nixon, Marshall has been re-appointed by every president that followed.
Raised in Detroit, Marshall earned a graduate degree in economics from the University of Chicago before he joined the RAND Corporation, the original 'think tank,' in 1949. During the 1950s and '60s Marshall was a member of 'a cadre of strategic thinkers' that coalesced at the RAND Corporation, a group that included Daniel Ellsberg, Herman Kahn, and James Schlesinger; Schlesinger later became the U.S. Secretary of Defense, and oversaw the creation of the Office of Net Assessment. The original main task of the office was to provide strategic evaluations on nuclear war issues. James Roche, Secretary of the Air Force in the administration of George W. Bush, worked for Marshall during the 1970s.
Andrew Marshall was consulted for the 1992 draft of Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), created by then-Defense Department staffers I. Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and Zalmay Khalilzad.
Marshall has been noted for fostering talent in younger associates, who then proceed to influential positions in and out of the federal government: 'a slew of Marshall's former staffers have gone on to industry, academia and military think tanks.' Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, among others, have been cited as Marshall 'star protégés.'
In an interview in 2012 the main author of four of the Chinese defense white papers General Chen Zhou stated that Marshall was one of the most important and influential figures in changing Chinese defense thinking in the 1990s and 2000s.
Foreign Policy named Marshall one of its 2012 Top 100 Global Thinkers, 'for thinking way, way outside the Pentagon box.'
Wanneer Sven Kockelmann in strijd met de feiten beweert dat, met het oog op Rusland, de 'meeste Europese landen véél te weinig [besteden] aan hun defensie-uitgaven,' dan is dat zijn persoonlijke mening, geenszins gebaseerd op de werkelijkheid zoals die hierboven is geschetst. Wanneer Geert Mak beweert dat de bedreiging die 'meneer Poetin' zou vormen Europa 'dwingt om meer aan defensie uit te geven' dan is ook dit een persoonlijke mening die niet op bovenstaande feiten is gebaseerd. Ik vermoed zelfs dat beide mainstream-opiniemakers deze feiten niet eens kennen, laat staan dat ze er ooit serieus over hebben nagedacht. Ze weten niet waarover ze het hebben. Dat is geen domheid, maar een combinatie van luiheid, ijdelheid en doortraptheid. Het grote gevaar van de commerciële pers is dat zij, om permanent de aandacht van het grote publiek te trekken, de grootst mogelijke nonsens verkoopt. Milan Kundera had gelijk toen hij stelde:
Je kunt je de toekomst wel voorstellen zonder de klassenstrijd of zonder de psychoanalyse, maar niet zonder de onweerstaanbare opkomst van pasklare ideeën die, ingevoerd in computers, gepropageerd door de massamedia, het gevaar met zich meebrengen binnenkort een macht te worden die elk oorspronkelijk en individueel denken verplettert en zo de werkelijke essentie van de Europese cultuur van onze tijd verstikt.
Kundera waarschuwde ervoor dat men zo de wereld van de kitsch is binnen getreden.
Het woord kitsch verwijst naar de houding van degene die tot elke prijs zoveel mogelijk mensen wil behagen. Om te behagen dien je je te conformeren aan wat iedereen wenst te horen, in dienst te staan van de pasklare ideeën, in de taal van de schoonheid en de emotie. Hij beweegt ons tot tranen van zelfvertedering over de banaliteiten die wij denken en voelen… Op grond van de dwingende noodzaak te behagen en zo de aandacht van het grootst mogelijke publiek te trekken, is de esthetiek van de massamedia onvermijdelijk die van de kitsch en naarmate de massamedia ons gehele leven meer omsluiten en infiltreren, wordt de kitsch onze dagelijkse esthetiek en moraal.
Lees Geert Mak's boeken en u ziet het bewijs van Kundera's observatie. Kijk naar Kockelmann en u beseft hoe gelijk Kundera heeft. Zij zijn slechts twee voorbeelden van die oneindig lijkende reeks kletsmajoors die de massa dagelijks een rad voor ogen draait. Full Spectrum Dominance, geen enkel individu mag eraan ontkomen. Vandaar dat u altijd de Makken en Kockelmann's ziet en hoort, maar nooit een dissident ziet en hoort in de massamedia. We leven in de Totalitaire Democratie van de Nieuwe Wereldorde. Een orde die de wanorde legitimeert, tot ze onvermijdelijk van binnenuit ineenstort.
1 opmerking:
In deze context is het volgende artikel buitengewoon aardig:
http://philosophersforchange.org/2014/06/17/ww-iii-more-interclass-than-international/
Het laat weer eens zien dat voor iemand als mak het woord marionet nog te veel eer is.
Groeten, Ben
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