Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing.
Op zijn beurt constateerde de Amerikaanse geleerde Noam Chomsky in zijn boek Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda (1991):
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon (knuppel. svh) is to a totalitarian state.
Het was de Amerikaanse president Franklin D. Roosevelt die het Congres op 29 april 1938 waarschuwde dat:
The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.
The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe, if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home.
Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing. This concentration is seriously impairing the economic effectiveness of private enterprise as a way of providing employment for labor and capital and as a way of assuring a more equitable distribution of income and earnings among the people of the nation as a whole.
Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing. This concentration is seriously impairing the economic effectiveness of private enterprise as a way of providing employment for labor and capital and as a way of assuring a more equitable distribution of income and earnings among the people of the nation as a whole.
Over deze ‘Growing Concentration of Economic Power’ verklaarde de president:
Statistics of the Bureau of Internal Revenue reveal the following amazing figures for 1935:
Ownership of corporate assets: Of all corporations reporting from every part of the nation, one-tenth of 1 percent of them owned 52 percent of the assets of all of them.
And to clinch the point: Of all corporations reporting, less than 5 percent of them owned 87 percent of all assets of all of them.
Anno 2021 is de situatie niet wezenlijk anders. De ‘global media company Forbes’ berichtte op 8 oktober 2020:
New data available from the U.S. Federal Reserve shows that the wealth gap in America has widened and economic inequality increased in 2020 amidst a coronavirus pandemic that has disproportionately impacted low-wage service workers and people of color, which coincides with a report published earlier this week showing that global billionaire wealth has concurrently skyrocketed at an unprecedented rate.
KEY FACTS
According to the latest Fed data, the top 1% of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion (or 30.4% of all household wealth in the U.S.), while the bottom 50% of the population holds just $2.1 trillion combined (or 1.9% of all wealth).
A study published earlier this week by Swiss bank UBS and accounting firm PwC found that the total wealth of the world’s 2,189 billionaires soared to a record-setting high of $10.2 trillion in late July, obliterating the previous record of $8.9 trillion recorded at the end of 2017.
American billionaires have grown significantly richer during the pandemic, led by Elon Musk, who crossed the $100 billion benchmark in August to become the world’s fifth centibillionaire (een individu die meer dan 100 miljard dollar bezit. svh), and saw his wealth increase by 242% over the first eight months of 2020 (Jeff Bezos has added $65 billion to his net worth this year)…
The Fed estimates that the wealthiest 10% of Americans hold more than 88% of all available equity in corporations and mutual fund shares (with just the top 1% controlling more than twice as much equity as the bottom 50% of all Americans combined).
Het is ook niet overdreven te stellen dat president Obama’s en vice-president Biden’s ‘Change we can believe in’ een loze kreet is geweest, en dat president Franklin Roosevelt’s twee ‘waarheden’ nog steeds van kracht zijn. Het zou voor iedereen duidelijk moeten zijn dat de NAVO-leider geen democratie is aangezien de ‘liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself,’ terwijl bovendien ‘the liberty of a democracy is not safe, if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living.’ Het is veelzeggend dat ook de polderpers over deze feiten zwijgt, en de aandacht probeert af te leiden met een nieuwe Koude Oorlog, getuige haar anti-Rusland hetze en haar onvoorwaardelijke steun aan de NAVO. De georchestreerde campagne tegen de Russische Federatie heeft inmiddels absurde vormen aangenomen, evenals de pro-Biden propaganda. Een voorbeeld van dit laatste was de volgende kop in NRC Handelsblad van 30 april 2021: ‘Biden verrast Amerikanen met trefzekerheid.’ De auteur van het opiniërend stuk, de correspondent van NRC Handelsblad in de VS, Bas Blokker, heeft zelf geen gedegen onderzoek hiernaar laten verrichten, maar herhaalt datgene wat hij in de Amerikaanse liberal media heeft gelezen, met voorop de toonaangevende New York Times. Tendentieus is tevens het feit dat Blokker spreekt van een 'recordopkomst,' terwijl eenderde van de Amerikaanse kiesgerechtigden tijdens de laatste presidentsverkiezing niet opkwam om te stemmen. In zekere zin heeft hij gelijk, want in de ‘machtigste democratie’ van de wereld stemt al meer dan een halve eeuw lang rond de 45 procent van de kiesgerechtigden niet meer tijdens de presidentsverkiezingen, ervan doordrongen dat ‘if voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it,’ om nu eens een oude volkswijsheid te citeren. Het vertrouwen is laag in het neoliberaal systeem, dat sinds eind jaren zeventig hartstochtelijk gesanctioneerd wordt door Congresleden, van wie meer dan de helft miljonair is, en de Democratische voorzitter van het Huis van Afgevaardigden, Nancy Pelosi, meer dan dan 114 miljoen dollar bezit. Maar deze context verzwijgt Bas Blokker, omdat dan te duidelijk wordt hoe lachwekkend zijn bewering is over een ‘recordopkomst,’ die de indruk moet wekken dat er in de VS sprake is van een dynamische democratie.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/04/30/biden-verrast-amerikanen-met-trefzekerheid-a4042039
Iemand die wel serieus onderzoek verrichtte is de gezaghebbende Amerikaanse onderzoeksjournalist van The Intercept, Jeremy Scahill, die schreef:
The Intercept conducted an exhaustive analysis of Biden’s political career, with a focus on his positions on dozens of U.S. wars and military campaigns, CIA covert actions, and abuses of power; his views on whistleblowers and leakers; and his shifting stance on the often contentious relationship between the executive and legislative branches over war powers. While many of Biden’s positions could be assessed by reviewing his sprawling voting record and public statements, evaluating some of his actions, particularly from the first few decades of his career, required poring over copies of the congressional record, speech transcripts, archival media reports, and declassified government documents, including from the CIA.
While many of Biden’s positions could be assessed by reviewing his sprawling voting record and public statements, evaluating some of his actions, particularly from the first few decades of his career, required poring over copies of the congressional record, speech transcripts, archival media reports, and declassified government documents, including from the CIA.
The picture that emerges is of a man who is dedicated to the U.S. as an empire, who believes that preserving U.S. national interests and ‘prestige’ on the global stage outweighs considerations of morality or even at times the deaths of innocent people. It also reveals a politician who consistently claims to hold bedrock principles but who often strays from those positions in support of a partisan agenda or because he wants a policy adopted regardless of the hypocrisy or contradictions. Nowhere is this dynamic more pronounced than on U.S. wars.
https://theintercept.com/empire-politician/joe-biden-long-war/
Gesteld kan worden dat president Biden een supporter is van het militair-industrieel complex, hetgeen niet vreemd is, want anders had de Democratische Partij hem niet gesteund. Het was ook een Republikein, voormalig opperbevelhebber van de Geallieerde Strijdkrachten in Europa, Dwight Eisenhower, die begin 1961 tijdens zijn afscheidsrede als president de bevolking vergeefs waarschuwde voor het grote gevaar van het Amerikaans militair-industrieel complex in een parlementaire democratie. De collaborerende rol van de ‘corporate press’ vergroot alleen maar dat gevaar, aangezien die uit commerciële overwegingen allereerst en vooral de sentimenten bespeelt en niet de ratio. Vandaar dat opiniemaker Ian Buruma al op 14 april 2014 de twee nucleaire grootmachten Rusland en China begon te criminaliseren. De (neo)liberale Vlaamse krant De Standaard, in handen van Mediahuis, die ondermeer ook NRC Handelsblad en De Telegraaf bezitten, berichtte:
Als de toestand in Oekraïne de start van een nieuwe Koude Oorlog betekent, dan is dat maar zo, vindt Ian Buruma. Als gevolg van hun rancuneuze nationalisme is de omgang van het Westen met de machtige autocratieën Rusland en China moeilijker dan met hun brutalere maar wel voorspelbaardere communistische voorgangers.
Ons kent Ons. De kleinburger deelt prijzen uit. Gerdi Verbeet, oud-parlementsvoorzitter en sinds enkele jaren voorzitter van Academie De Gouden Ganzenveer, maakte donderdagavond 17 januari 2019 in de talkshow van Eva Jinek bekend dat Ian Buruma de veer krijgt.
Een Tweede Koude Oorlog? So what? En aldus helpt Buruma mee de geesten rijp te maken voor een Derde Wereldoorlog, zonder dat deze vader van twee kinderen zich zorgen maakt over de gevolgen van zijn hetze, want ook bij deze generatiegenoot van mij geldt ‘après moi le déluge!,' ‘na mij de zondvloed,’ het autistische leidmotief van de identiteitsloze narcist. In hetzelfde 2014 verklaarde de prominente geopolitieke insider Henry Kissinger dat ‘For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one,’ terwijl deze oud minister van Buitenlandse Zaken een jaar later ervoor waarschuwde dat onder Obama ‘Breaking Russia has become an objective,’ terwijl toch ‘the long-range purpose should be to integrate it.’ Desondanks blijven de oorlogszuchtige Nederlandse opiniemakers, die zelf nooit een oorlog van dichtbij hebben meegemaakt op een crisis aansturen. Kennelijk begrijpen zij ook niet de uiterst dramatische ontwikkelingen ten tijde van de Cuba Crisis toen in oktober 1962 dertien dagen lang de VS en de Sovjet Unie in een nucleaire oorlog dreigden te worden gezogen, omdat — in de woorden van de toenmalige minister van Justitie, Robert Kennedy — ‘an irreversible chain of events could occur against our will. The President does not know how long he can hold out against our generals.’ Geen enkel zinnig mens wil in de situatie terecht komen dat hij moet beslissen of het moment is aangebroken om de hele mensheid uit te roeien. Desondanks was, nadat beide partijen water in de wijn hadden gedaan, het Amerikaans militair industrieel complex woedend.
‘We’ve been had!’ yelled then Navy Chief George Anderson upon hearing on October 28, 1962, how JFK ‘solved’ the missile crisis. Admiral Anderson was the man in charge of the very ‘blockade’ against Cuba.
‘The biggest defeat in our nation’s history!’ bellowed Air Force Chief Curtis Lemay, while whacking his fist on his desk.
‘We missed the big boat,’ said Gen. Maxwell Taylor after learning the details of the deal with Khrushchev.
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/humberto-fontova/the-cuban-missile-crisis-myth-49-years-later/
Onder andere Curtis Lemay, hoofd van de Amerikaanse Luchtmacht, was destijds een voorstander van onmiddellijk bombarderen, op het gevaar af daarmee een nucleair armageddon te veroorzaken:
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in September 1962, LeMay wanted to bomb nuclear sites in Cuba. When John F. Kennedy asked LeMay how the Soviet Union would respond if the United States bombed their missiles in Cuba. He replied that they would ‘do nothing.’ Kennedy argued for a blockade of Cuba. LeMay responded by accusing the president of acting like Neville Chamberlain during the Munich Crisis and that the blockade scheme as ‘almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.’
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlemay.htm
Dobbs (Amerikaanse journalist/auteur svh) quotes Dino Brugioni, ‘a key member of the CIA team monitoring the Soviet missile buildup,’ who saw no way out except ‘war and complete destruction’ as the clock moved to ‘one minute to midnight,’ the title of his book. Kennedy’s close associate, historian Arthur Schlesinger, described the events as ‘the most dangerous moment in human history.’ Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wondered aloud whether he ‘would live to see another Saturday night,’ and later recognized that ‘we lucked out’ — barely.
Vrijdag 26 oktober 1962 werd door B-52-piloot, majoor Don Clawson, als ‘the most dangerous moment’ genoemd. De B-52 was een NAVO-bommenwerper, ‘on airborne alert’ met nucleaire wapens ‘on board and ready to use.’ 26 oktober was de dag toen ‘the nation was closest to nuclear war,’ schreef Clawson in zijn ‘anecdotes of an Air Force pilot.’ Als direct betrokkene was hij die op die dag ‘in a good position to set off a likely terminal cataclysm.’ Hij concludeerde dat:
We were damned lucky we didn't blow up the world — and no thanks to the political or military leadership of this country.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/15/cuban-missile-crisis-russian-roulette
Op hetzelfde moment ontsnapte de mensheid ook nog op een andere manier aan een nucleaire holocaust, ditmaal dankzij de houding van één (!) Russische officier:
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (30 January 1926 — 19 August 1998) was a Soviet Navy officer credited with casting the single vote that prevented a Soviet nuclear strike (and, presumably, all-out nuclear war) during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Such an attack likely would have caused a major global thermonuclear response which could have destroyed much of the world. As flotilla commander and second-in-command of the diesel powered submarine B-59, only Arkhipov refused to authorize the captain's use of nuclear torpedoes against the United States Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard. In 2002 Thomas Blanton, who was then director of the US National Security Archive, said that Arkhipov ‘saved the world.’ […] When discussing the Cuban Missile Crisis in 2002, Robert McNamara, the U.S. Secretary of Defense at the time, stated, ‘We came very close’ to nuclear war, ‘closer than we knew at the time.’
Al deze informatie toont aan hoe onnozel Ian Buruma’s opmerking is dat als de huidige situatie ‘het begin’ is ‘van een nieuwe Koude Oorlog is, dan is het maar zo. Heel de Koude Oorlog was bedoeld om een warme oorlog te voorkomen.’ De combinatie van onwetendheid en dwaasheid van de westerse mainstream-opiniemakers grenst aan misdadigheid. Zo wist Buruma van de recensie over het boek My Journey at the Nuclear Brink (2015), geschreven door de Amerikaanse voormalige minister van Defensie William Perry. In The New York Review of Books van 14 juli 2016 stelde de toen nog gouverneur van Californië, Jerry Brown:
In clear, detailed but powerful prose, Perry’s new book, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, tells the story of his seventy-year experience of the nuclear age. Beginning with his firsthand encounter with survivors living amid ‘vast wastes of fused rubble’ in the aftermath of World War II, his account takes us up to today when Perry is on an urgent mission to alert us to the dangerous nuclear road we are traveling.
Reflecting upon the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Perry says it was then that he first understood that the end of all of civilization was now possible, not merely the ruin of cities. He took to heart Einstein’s words that ‘the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything, save our modes of thinking.’ He asserts that it is only ‘old thinking’ that persuades our leaders that nuclear weapons provide security, instead of understanding the hard truth that ‘they now endanger it.’
Perry does not use his memoir to score points or settle grudges. He does not sensationalize. But, as a defense insider and keeper of nuclear secrets, he is clearly calling American leaders to account for what he believes are very bad decisions, such as the precipitous expansion of NATO, right up to the Russian border, and President George W. Bush’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, originally signed by President Nixon.
In his foreword to the book, George P. Shultz describes Perry as a man of ‘absolute integrity.’ His record is remarkable: Ph.D. in mathematics, vast technical training and experience in high-tech business, management of research and weapons acquisition as an undersecretary of defense under President Carter, and deputy secretary and then secretary of defense under Bill Clinton.
Brown kwalificeerde Perry’s boek over ‘the business of mass destruction’ kortweg als ‘Een Doordringende Nucleaire Waarschuwing,’ maar kennelijk nog steeds niet doordringend genoeg, tenminste wanneer ‘we’ uitgaan van het feit dat de commerciële pers onweersproken doorgaat met haar levensgevaarlijk manicheïsme. Toch wees een insider als William Perry erop dat er geen ‘acceptable defense' bestaat 'against a mass nuclear attack.’ Een nucleaire oorlog betekent genocide. In zijn boekbespreking stelde gouverneur Brown dat:
[a]s much as anyone, Perry is aware of the ways, secret and public, that technical innovation, private profit and tax dollars, civilian gadgetry and weapons of mass destruction, satellite technology, computers, and ever-expanding surveillance are interconnected. But he now uses this dark knowledge in an effort to reverse the deadly arms race in which he had such a pivotal role.
De outsider Buruma mag dan wel ‘een nieuwe Koude Oorlog’ voor lief nemen, vanuit de veronderstelling dat ‘[h]eel de Koude Oorlog bedoeld was om een warme oorlog te voorkomen,’ maar een feit is dat de insider Perry beklemtoont dat:
it was by luck that we avoided a nuclear holocaust in the Cuban crisis. Years later, we found out that there were some additional and dangerous circumstances that might have pushed us into nuclear war.
First, Perry writes, the Soviet ships approaching the blockade imposed by the US had submarine escorts that were armed with nuclear torpedoes. Because of the difficulty with communications, Moscow had authorized the submarine commanders to fire without further authorization. When an American destroyer tried to force a submarine to surface, both its captain and the political officer decided to fire a nuclear torpedo at the destroyer. A nuclear confrontation was avoided only because Vasili Arkhipov, the overall commander of the fleet, was also present on the submarine. He countermanded the order to launch, thereby preventing what might have started a nuclear war.
Second, during the crisis, an American reconnaissance plane stationed in Europe wandered off course and flew into Soviet airspace. The Soviets immediately scrambled attack aircraft as did American fighters from an airbase in Alaska. The Americans were armed with nuclear-tipped missiles. Fortunately, the American reconnaissance pilot discovered he had blundered into Soviet airspace and flew away before any Soviet intercepts arrived.
At about the same time an American ICBM was launched from Vandenberg Air Base. Though this was a routine launch intended as a test, it could have easily been misinterpreted by the Soviets. Luckily, it wasn’t.
Tragically, despite coming so close to nuclear annihilation, the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States did not make any effort to slow nuclear competition; they did just the opposite. Perry sees here the operation of ‘surreal…thinking’ utterly at odds with the new reality of nuclear weapons. Yes, the hotline between Washington and Moscow was established, but otherwise strategic thinking in both the US and the Soviet Union went on as though nothing had happened.
Perry points out several particularly troubling aspects of the crisis. There were, he writes, advisers on both the Soviet and US sides who wanted to rush into war. The media, for their part, treated the crisis as ‘a drama of ‘winning’ and ‘losing.’ Finally he observes that political leaders seemed to gain approval with the public based on their willingness to initiate a war.
As a result, an even more sophisticated competition began, in nuclear warheads and in the vehicles to deliver them. Dean Rusk, the US secretary of state at the time, triumphantly declared that ‘we’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.’ If that was meant to imply that America had won, he was wrong. The Soviets just stepped up their nuclear efforts and so did the US, each building thousands of dangerous nuclear devices that if ever used could obliterate large swaths of humanity.
Perry candidly recognizes that the nuclear threat also meant very good business for defense laboratories such as his own employer, Sylvania.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/07/14/a-stark-nuclear-warning/
Met andere woorden: de nieuwe Koude Oorlog is geen enkele garantie dat een nucleaire armageddon onmogelijk is, zoals Ian Buruma suggereert. Bovendien begrijpt mijn oude vriend, in tegenstelling tot Perry, absoluut niet het belang van president Eisenhower’s waarschuwing voor de groeiende macht van het militair-industrieel complex. Nogmaals gouverneur Brown over Perry:
Then as now, Perry writes, he believed that America would possess all the deterrence it needs with just one leg of the so-called triad: the Trident submarine. It is very difficult for armies to track and destroy it, and it contains more than enough firepower to act as a deterrent. The bombers provide only an insurance policy for the unlikely contingency of a temporary problem with the Trident force, and also have a dual role in strengthening our conventional forces. Our ICBM force is in his mind redundant. Indeed the danger of starting an accidental nuclear war as a result of a false alarm outweighs its deterrent value.
Many experts agree, but presidents follow the political and highly dangerous path of sizing our nuclear force to achieve ‘parity’ with Russia. Such a competitive and mindless process always leads to escalation without end.
Perry tells us that parity is ‘old thinking’ because nuclear weapons can’t actually be used — the risk of uncontrollable and catastrophic escalation is too high. They are only good for threatening the enemy with nuclear retaliation. Our submarine force, equipped with nuclear weapons, is virtually invulnerable and can perform that deterrent function well. (It should be noted that the doctrine of deterrence is severely criticized by those who worry about the implications of threatening mass slaughter.)
Oud-minister van Defensie van ’s werelds zwaarst bewapende natie, William Perry, weet als insider hoe gevaarlijk het bedreigen van de Russische Federatie is. Gouverneur Brown wijst er in zijn recensie op dat de gematigde krachten in de VS verloren van de fanatieke neoconservatieven en liberals, die na de val van de Sovjet Unie niet uit zijn op vrede, maar, volgens eigen zeggen, op de ‘hegemonie van Amerika,’ daarbij gesteund en aangemoedigd door het militair-industrieel complex en de even commerciële mainstream-media. De opbouw naar een oorlog met Rusland is al geruime tijd bezig:
In 1996, Richard Holbrooke, then an assistant secretary in the State Department, proposed to expand NATO by bringing in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic nations. Perry thought this was a very unwise move and should be delayed at all costs. A prominent group of fifty leading Americans, both conservative and liberal, signed a letter to President Clinton opposing NATO expansion. Among the signers were Robert McNamara, Sam Nunn, Bill Bradley, Paul Nitze, Richard Pipes, and John Holdren. It was to no avail. Perry was the lone cabinet member to oppose President Clinton’s decision to give Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic immediate membership in NATO.
That year, 1996, turned out to be the high point in Russian–American relations. The NATO expansion began during President Clinton’s second term. After President George W. Bush was elected, NATO was expanded further to include more nations, reaching all the way to the Russian border. Bush also withdrew the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, and started deploying an ABM system in Eastern Europe, thereby repudiating the important achievements of Richard Nixon and fostering the illusion that a defense could successfully defeat a determined attack of nuclear missiles.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/07/14/a-stark-nuclear-warning/
Daardoor werd een nieuwe nucleaire wapenwedloop op gang gebracht. Maar hierover zwijgt Ian Buruma wanneer hij de VS weer eens lof toezwaait terwijl hij tegelijkertijd Rusland demoniseert, en critici van Washington’s agressieve politiek verwijt dat zij daarmee de VS criminaliseren als één van ‘de kwaadaardigste en gevaarlijkste machten in de wereld,’ en dat ‘voor de tweede wereld oorlog vijandigheid ten opzichte van de VS… eerder te vinden was in extreem rechtse, en zelfs niet zo extreem rechtse kringen. Aan Joods en Amerikaanse materialisme zou de westerse beschaving ten onder gaan.’ En met deze oude demagogische truc tracht Buruma politieke kritiek af te schilderen als een vorm van antisemitisme, om critici daarmee monddood te maken. Hoe misdadig dit is, blijkt tevens uit het feit dat dinsdag 16 januari 2018 The New York Times het volgende berichtte:
WASHINGTON — A newly drafted United States nuclear strategy that has been sent to President Trump for approval would permit the use of nuclear weapons to respond to a wide range of devastating but non-nuclear attacks on American infrastructure, including what current and former government officials described as the most crippling kind of cyberattacks.
For decades, American presidents have threatened ‘first use’ of nuclear weapons against enemies in only very narrow and limited circumstances, such as in response to the use of biological weapons against the United States. But the new document is the first to expand that to include attempts to destroy wide-reaching infrastructure, like a country’s power grid or communications, that would be most vulnerable to cyberweapons. […]
Gary Samore, who was a top nuclear adviser to President Barack Obama, said much of the draft strategy ‘repeats the essential elements of Obama declaratory policy word for word’ — including its declaration that the United States would ‘only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.’
But the biggest difference lies in new wording about what constitutes ‘extreme circumstances.’ […]
‘Almost everything about this radical new policy will blur the line between nuclear and conventional,’ said Andrew C. Weber, an assistant defense secretary during the Obama administration who directed an interagency panel that oversaw the country’s nuclear arsenal.
If adopted, he added, the new policy ‘will make nuclear war a lot more likely.’
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/us/politics/pentagon-nuclear-review-cyberattack-trump.html
Laat ik duidelijk zijn: de hetze van opiniemakers als Ian Buruma, Geert Mak, Hubert Smeets, Bas Heijne tegen Rusland is gezien de dreiging van een oorlog niets anders dan misdadig. Hetzelfde gaat op voor de politici en militairen die passief en actief deelnemen aan een nucleaire holocaust. En met deze misdadigers gaan wij allen, de hele mensheid, de uiterst onzekere toekomst in. Inderdaad: 'Accountability is the essence of democracy.' Maar hoe noemt uzelf het systeem dat uw lot bepaalt? Een democratie?
Ondertussen wordt ook een oorlog tegen China voorbereid.
The new defence minister, Peter Dutton, and his former right-hand man at the home affairs department, Michael Pezzullo, have speculated about the risk of war over the past few days – prompting a sharp response from China late on Wednesday.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said 'some individual politicians in Australia' were making 'extremely irresponsible' statements 'that incite confrontation and hype up threat of war.'
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten