Archive for the ‘war’ Category

The Pentagon’s Vast All-Wing Conspiracy: Plunder

Posted: November 26, 2019 by julietteochieng in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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Nicknamed “Pentagram” for a reason

by baldilocks

While reading the media frenzy on the firing of Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer, I ran across a report on something that I read last year and promptly put out of my mind because it was too big to fathom, both the fact of it and the implications of it.

In 2018, the Pentagon conducted an audit; it was the first time Department of Defense had ever done so since its 1947 creation, even though an annual audit for the Department has been legally required since 1990. The audit failed – an insufficient description.

The Pentagon cannot account for $21 trillion. TRILLION. Times 21.

Truthdig:

There are certain things the human mind is not meant to do. Our complex brains cannot view the world in infrared, cannot spell words backward during orgasm and cannot really grasp numbers over a few thousand. A few thousand, we can feel and conceptualize. We’ve all been in stadiums with several thousand people. We have an idea of what that looks like (and how sticky the floor gets).

But when we get into the millions, we lose it. It becomes a fog of nonsense. Visualizing it feels like trying to hug a memory. We may know what $1 million can buy (and we may want that thing), but you probably don’t know how tall a stack of a million $1 bills is. You probably don’t know how long it takes a minimum-wage employee to make $1 million.

That’s why trying to understand—truly understand—that the Pentagon spent 21 trillion unaccounted-for dollars between 1998 and 2015 washes over us like your mother telling you that your third cousin you met twice is getting divorced. It seems vaguely upsetting, but you forget about it 15 seconds later because … what else is there to do? (…)

Let’s stop and take a second to conceive how much $21 trillion is (which you can’t because our brains short-circuit, but we’ll try anyway).

  1. The amount of money supposedly in the stock market is $30 trillion.

  2. The GDP of the United States is $18.6 trillion.

Remember: the Pentagon is run by generals, admirals and GS-eleventies and it is they who approve of these monstrous expenditures. It’s impossible to even begin to comprehend the decades of graft that many of them have perpetrated for the benefit of themselves and their associates. But I do think that the antipathy and open insubordination to President Trump is directly related to his general trend of turning off the spigots of tax dollars which go into the pockets of all these public “servants.”

No other president has been willing to ask “hey, where did all this money go?”

That’s why everyone dipping into our pockets – Democrat and Republican, military and civilian — wanted Donald Trump gone even before he arrived. And why they keep trying to make it happen.

I don’t know if the country can recovery from this vast rape-and-pillage, but if it can, the first step has already been taken.

(Thanks to MintPress News)

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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The War South of Us

Posted: November 23, 2019 by julietteochieng in News/opinion, Uncomfortable Truths, war
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Winner takes them all

by baldilocks

What do marijuana, humans beings, fuel, and avocados have in common?

Answer: all are trafficked by Mexico’s cartels.

The cartel members showed up in this verdant stretch of western Mexico armed with automatic weapons and chainsaws.

Soon they were cutting timber day and night, the crash of falling trees echoing throughout the virgin forest. When locals protested, explaining that the area was protected from logging, they were held at gunpoint and ordered to keep quiet.

Stealing wood was just a prelude to a more ambitious plan.

The newcomers, members of a criminal group called the Viagras [yep], were almost certainly clearing the forest to set up a grow operation. They wouldn’t be planting marijuana or other crops long favored by Mexican cartels, but something potentially even more profitable: avocados. (…)

More than a dozen criminal groups are battling for control of the avocado trade in and around the city of Uruapan, preying on wealthy orchard owners, the laborers who pick the fruit and the drivers who truck it north to the United States.

“The threat is constant and from all sides,” said Jose Maria Ayala Montero, who works for a trade association that formed its own vigilante army to protect growers.

After seizing control of the forest in March, the Viagras announced a tax on residents who owned avocado trees, charging $250 a hectare in “protection fees.”

But they had competition. Rivals from the Jalisco New Generation cartel wanted to control the same stretch of land — and residents were about to get caught in the middle of a vicious fight.

Sounds ridiculous, yes? But, thinking it over, if the cartels want to seize of every inch of Mexico, it makes sense to diversify holdings and create a monopoly on popular good — like avocados.

By the way, there are tons of avocado trees here in California, so there should be no worries about a shortage of guacamole in the US – at least for now. We had a huge tree in the backyard of our house in the 1970s.

In fact, California is still ripe – no pun intended – with all manner of fruit trees. There are at least two lemon trees down the street from my present dwelling.

Considering, however, that California’s Organized Left is constantly looking for ways to gouge the state’s middle class, I wonder how long it will take them to come up with a plan to tax property owners for their trees.

Back to Mexico. Consider these thing: recently Mexico’s military surrendered in a war against one of the cartels and another cartel murdered members of an American family. President Trump even offered to send the US military to assist President Lopez Obrador against the cartels, to “wipe them from the face of the earth,” as President Trump so memorably put it. But the Mexican president refused.

So, what will happen to Mexico and Mexicans? The US continues to build a real wall in attempt to stem the flood of illegals. If, due to a strong wall, the flood recedes to a trickle, Mexicans will be forced to have a true confrontation with the cartels or submit and be ruled by them.

We’ll be neighbors with a gangster state and it will be fentanyl and avocados for all.

Not looking forward to that.

(Thanks to The Federalist)

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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Gang Warfare

Posted: November 19, 2019 by julietteochieng in Always look at the bright side of Trump, elections, politics, Uncomfortable Truths, war
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by baldilocks

I estimate that everything we’ve seen since the assassination of President Kennedy has been Government-by-The-People Theater. No doubt, this charade goes much further back than that point in time, however, let’s call that event a conflagration – a reminder to all observers of who really runs things. Yes, I’m aware of the implication that I’m making: that the JFK assassination was a conspiracy by unseen actors, but don’t get it twisted; I’ve seen all the other conspiracy theories about it and I don’t subscribe to any of them. And it’s not my point anyway.

This is: I contend that every president from Lyndon B. Johnson to Barack H. Obama has walked in step with and/or been controlled by the bureaucracy, the secret cabals, the military-industrial complex (thank you, President Eisenhower), and the various other gangs that undergird this country. Yes, even Ronald Reagan.

And yet, somehow, we managed to elect one that refuses to walk in that path.

The gangs that began conspiring against him even before he won the nomination knew that he was the most dangerous choice for president — dangerous to them. He had made his money outside of government, had been in the public eye for decades and had a checkered private life that he didn’t try to hide. And, most frightening of all, he had claimed to be one of them: a Democrat. He entertained them, partied with them, listened to them.  He had probably seen and heard all manner of foul things that his “friends” prefer to remain private. And he had done so while drinking no alcohol and doing no drugs.

They had given him awards and begged him for jobs and for money.

Then, “out of the blue” he runs for president. In reality, he signaled what he was going to do back in the 1980s and did so again in 2012.

So, the gangs had to have something prepared just for him. However, it appears that he was ready for this, and for the next attack, and the next one and the one after that.

One of his missions is to expose the various means which the gangs have of enriching themselves on monies gotten from the pockets of the tax-payers. Ukraine seems to be both a means of thievery and a huge storage space for the loot.

This is why the government gangs will do anything to get him out of office. But before that happens, his reputation must be blasted to smithereens.

He knows this, which is why he will not be silent about it. As they use to say about a totally unrelated topic, silence equals death.

But he also keeps talking because it distracts the gangs from his more meaningful action against the gangs. While they continue to attempt to ruin his legacy before driving him out — or worse — he is on offense as well.

Everything will come to a head in one year or less.

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

Follow Juliette on Facebook, Twitter, MeWe, Patreon and Social Quodverum.

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The Wall and its lessons

Posted: November 12, 2019 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable Truths, war
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By Christopher Harper

From the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Cold War shaped most baby boomers.

Like me, almost every boomer spent some time under classroom desks in a rather idiotic drill during and after the Cuban missile crisis. Somehow being under a desk would save us!

The Vietnam War also was a reaction to the Cold War—an attempt to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. Obviously, it didn’t work.

I had the opportunity to spend time behind the Iron Curtain both before and after the fall of Communism.

What struck me most about Soviet domination before 1989 was how difficult the lives of people in Eastern Europe were under Communism.

It was difficult to find food, proper medicine, and hope.

I recall twisting my ankle in Poland. I struggled into the hospital and noticed how the shelves were empty, and the equipment was aging. The doctor told me the ankle wasn’t broken, and he didn’t have much to help me with the pain. Fortunately, a nurse found an elastic bandage to help me hobble around for the next few days.

In Bulgaria, the hotel offered lobster on the menu. One of my colleagues decided to order some. The waitress didn’t speak much English, so she came out with a shellfish that was encrusted in ice because it was caught years ago. The message, however, was clear. Perhaps my friend should order something else.

For years, my wife and I had wanted to visit what was then called Czechoslovakia. Because I was a journalist, I was unable to get a visa even though I only wanted to be a tourist. The government did not allow American journalists to visit for any reason. Fortunately, we were able to visit the Czech Republic after the end of the Soviet empire.

Although Eastern Europe has had its share of difficulties after the end of communism, the streets are brighter, the hopes are higher, and the freedoms are greater.

The lesson that every American should take away from the fall of the wall is how much better life is in Eastern Europe. All you have to do is look at the economies of Poland, Hungary, and other countries that lived behind the wall and under the boot of Soviet oppression.

Moreover, it’s critical to realize that socialist doctrines, such as government control of essential industries, never worked in the Soviet Union and its empire and won’t help the United States in the years ahead.

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