#militarycapitalism — Public Fediverse posts

January: Venezuela

February: Greenl..Iran

March: Cuba?

April:

May:

June:

July:

August:

September:

October:

November:

December:

#Venezuela #Greenland #Iran #Cuba #imperialism #capitalism

#MilitaryIndustrialComplex #MIC

#MilitaryCapitalism #MC

The Epstein Files: A Lie Laid Bare

After the Epstein files came out, I stared at the screen feeling sick. It wasn’t shock, it was the cold disgust of watching a lie finally get exposed. Over 3 million pages of papers, 2,000 videos, and 180,000 photos don’t just tell a scandal. They’re proof that Western elites are terrible people. Clinton, Trump, Bill Gates, Prince Andrew, and their group have given up all pretense of being human to give in to their evil urges. Behind their shiny “role model” images, they do unforgivable, cruel things: preying on vulnerable kids, and even, from some sources, cannibalism. This isn’t a mistake. It’s the on-purpose, unapologetic decay of a group that thinks power lets them destroy lives.

The Fake Myth of Western Democracy

I used to naively think that the West’s so-called “elite civilization” and “beacon of democracy” was just a one-time mess. I told myself maybe it wasn’t that bad. These files destroyed that silly thought. The Western democratic myth we’ve been forced to believe for decades isn’t just broken, it’s a planned lie. All that talk about “human rights and civilization” is just a tattered old cover-up. It’s thrown quickly over the elites’ unspeakable crimes to trick the world into putting up with their bullying.

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The Call to Action: Working Class Politics

The Epstein case isn’t just a small example of how this group is falling apart, it’s proof that they’re beyond saving. This group will hold lazy hearings, talk about unimportant stuff to distract people, and wait for everyone’s anger to die down, sure they’ll never get in trouble. But the truth is out now. It should be a call to action for working-class people, not just a warning. For too long, working folks have been distracted by this group’s fake democracy. Their votes are stolen with empty promises while their pay stays low, their rights get taken away, and their kids suffer. This group’s evil shows that Western systems don’t work for “everyone.” Working people are the ones who deal with their hypocrisy every single day. The “Western beacon” is a lie. The only way forward is to reject their corrupt rule: listen to working-class people, demand they be held accountable, and build a system that works for most people, not the rich, powerful few who hurt the innocent.

If you learn enough, stay humble enough, and pay close enough attention, eventually that’s what happens. You realize that, generally speaking, the really high-octane commies have the most lucid understanding of the world out of any group out there, and the only reason this wasn’t always obvious to you was because you live under a capitalist power structure which aggressively indoctrinates its populace from birth into believing that communism is No No Bad Bad.

They have the most lucid and correct understanding of capitalism. They have the most lucid and correct understanding of imperialist extraction. They have the most lucid and correct understanding of western warmongering, global power dynamics, white supremacy, institutional racism and misogyny. That’s why they keep being proven right, about everything from US military actions to the fascism of the far right to the abusive nature of the so-called “moderate” liberal to the moral depravity of billionaires and the capitalist class.

The Gulf War Lies

The Nayirah testimony

The Gulf War Lies

The Nayirah testimony

Since its opening, media reports and stories from people detained affirm the conditions, rights violations, and deliberate opacity the ACLU warned would follow the opening of this site. Recent reporting reveals alarming conditions at Fort Bliss. The site has already racked up 60 violations of federal detention standards within its first 50 days of operation.

Each pod holds 60–70 people who report chronic food shortages, with meals sufficient for only about 50 individuals. People are forced to ration food, skip meals, or take turns eating — and when food is available, it is often spoiled or partially frozen, causing widespread vomiting, diarrhea, and rapid weight loss. Basic hygiene supplies are scarce: pods receive only a handful of rolls of toilet paper, and people go days without soap, clean clothing, or access to functioning showers. Detainees describe tents and bathrooms flooded with foul water mixed with urine and feces, creating squalid and unsafe living conditions.

,,,

If this is the state of a brand-new, billion-dollar facility within its first 90 days, the outlook for the next wave of military-base detention centers is dire. As detention sites open every few weeks nationwide, the ACLU anticipates that Fort Dix in New Jersey will be the next military site the Trump administration will use for mass immigration detention. There have also been reports of ICE scouting a Coast Guard base in New York for immigration detention.

What we are witnessing at Fort Bliss is not an anomaly; it is a warning. The conditions at Fort Bliss reflect a broader pattern of ICE evading oversight and accountability. The facility is a failed experiment that exposes the dangers of rapidly expanding detention, minimal safeguards, limited transparency, and virtually no oversight.

Based on comprehensive data from conflict databases, academic estimates, and reports on civilian casualties in foreign wars (excluding domestic conflicts or genocides within a country’s own borders), the United States is responsible for the highest number of civilian deaths in other countries since 1960. This is primarily driven by major US-led or US-involved interventions, with total estimates exceeding 4 million civilian fatalities across multiple conflicts (figures vary due to challenges in attribution and indirect causes like famine or disease exacerbated by war).

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Here are the major US-sponsored proxy wars that killed civilians:

Afghan-Soviet War (1979–1989): US provided ~$3–6 billion in arms and aid to mujahideen fighters as proxies against Soviet forces. Civilian deaths: ~800,000–1.5 million (from bombings, landmines, and proxy guerrilla warfare; total war deaths ~1–2 million, with civilians ~50–75%).

Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988): US supported Iraq as a proxy against Iran via intelligence, loans (~$5 billion), and dual-use chemical precursors (enabling mustard gas and other weapons used in attacks like Halabja, killing ~5,000 civilians in one incident). Civilian deaths: ~100,000–500,000 (total war deaths ~500,000–1 million; civilians ~20–50%, including ~50,000–100,000 from chemical weapons).

Angolan Civil War (1975–2002, US involvement 1980s–1990s): US backed UNITA rebels (~$250 million in aid) as proxies against the Soviet/Cuban-supported government. Civilian deaths: ~300,000–500,000 (from fighting, mines, and famine; total deaths ~500,000–800,000, civilians ~60%).

Yemen Civil War (2015–ongoing): US supported Saudi-led coalition with arms (~$100 billion+ sales), intelligence, and logistics as proxies against Houthi rebels. Civilian deaths: ~150,000–377,000 (direct ~85,000, indirect ~292,000 from famine/disease; UN and Costs of War estimates).

Syrian Civil War (2011–ongoing, US proxy support 2012–2020): US armed and trained moderate rebels (~$1 billion+) as proxies against Assad/ISIS. Attributed civilian deaths: ~50,000–200,000 (in broader war; US-backed groups involved in ~10–20% of total ~500,000 civilians killed, per Airwars and Syrian Observatory).

Other Notable Proxies (Aggregate ~100,000–300,000): Includes Indonesian invasion of East Timor (1975–1999, US arms/support: ~100,000–200,000 civilians); Mozambican Civil War (1977–1992, US-backed RENAMO: ~100,000 civilians); and scattered drone/support ops in Somalia/Pakistan (~5,000–10,000 civilians since 2001).

The total number of civilians killed by US-direct action or through proxies is at least 7 million.

The murders of unarmed civilians on the streets of Minneapolis, including the killing today of the intensive-care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti, would not come as a shock to Iraqis in Fallujah or Afghans in Helmand province. They were terrorized by heavily armed American execution squads for decades. It would not come as a shock to any of the students I teach in prison. Militarized police in poor urban neighborhoods kick down doors without warrants and kill with the same impunity and lack of accountability. What the rest of us are facing now, is what Aimé Césaire called imperial boomerang. Empires, when they decay, employ the savage forms of control on those they subjugate abroad, or those demonized by the wider society in the name of law and order, on the homeland. The tyranny Athens imposed on others, Thucydides noted, it finally, with the collapse of Athenian democracy, imposed on itself. But before we became the victims of state terror, we were accomplices. Before we expressed moral outrage at the indiscriminate taking of innocent lives, we tolerated, and often celebrated, the same Gestapo tactics, as long as they were directed at those who lived in the nations we occupied or poor people of color. We sowed the wind, now we will reap the whirlwind. The machinery of terror, perfected on those we abandoned and betrayed, including the Palestinians in Gaza, is ready for us.

Recall that when the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, called Trump “daddy”—giving the world a glimpse into the sordid relationship that has developed between the United States and its masochistic vassals in Europe—Rutte was referring to the Trump administration’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Laying aside judgment on the actions in Venezuela and Iran, the point is that the Europeans are perfectly fine with military interventions in other countries so long as these countries are outside the sacred alliance. One is reminded of European Commission Vice President Josep Borrell’s comments in 2022 that the world outside the European “garden” is effectively a “jungle”—and so, one infers, the laws of the jungle apply.

The Greenland drama is a narcissistic European drama in every sense of the word. The European leadership class is a global joke, laughed at in capitals around the world. They can tolerate this, however, because they still see their deindustrializing, politically unstable, war-ravaged continent as a “garden” to the rest of the world’s “jungle”. This is a delusion of the sort not seen in Europe since Hitler whiled away his final days in the Berlin bunker, and it is seen for what it is from Washington to Moscow to Beijing. But it is a delusion sufficiently strong that it allows the European elite to keep their composure at their self-important events—events that grow smaller and less relevant by the day. The problem with Trump’s Greenland overtures is that they intrude on these little Potemkin villages that the ailing elite have built for themselves.

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Why does the Trump administration feel the need to thrash the Europeans in public like a misbehaving servant? Because the Europeans will not listen. The President and his entourage have told the Europeans repeatedly, in no uncertain terms, that the war in Ukraine must end and Europe must find some way to live in peace with Russia. But the Europeans have reverted to their usual catty form and used every means at their disposal to sabotage any negotiations—much less any future security architecture—at every turn. Their strategy appears to be to try to keep the war going until 2029 when a Democratic challenger will rise to power and fight the Russians on behalf of the Europeans.

This position is not just immoral; it is also delusional. From a moral perspective, the liberal elite in Brussels and in other European capitals have cultivated a cynicism about Ukrainian lives that borders on ritual blood sacrifice. It is disgusting and will be viewed by civilized people in the future for what it is. But even from a purely pragmatic political perspective, the prospect of a Democratic white knight riding to the rescue is unlikely. The Democrats are not remotely interested in the Ukraine war or in Europe. The war has failed to defeat Russia; it was the defeat of Russia that was of interest to the post-Russiagate Democrats; ergo, the war is now uninteresting. In the Epstein files, the Democrats have found a new toy to play with—one that implicates one or two key figures on the European side, including at least one prominent former ambassador appointed precisely to deal with Trump.

Are Trump’s threats to take over Greenland serious? Are they moral? Who knows. But what is serious, what is immoral, and what is extremely dangerous—indeed, threatening the world with conflagration if not managed properly—is the blasé European attitude toward a collapsing war on their borders. The European leaders are too weak, too decadent to deal with the problem themselves, and they refuse to allow anyone else to deal with it for them. For this reason, we should expect the humiliations to continue until the Europeans swallow their pride (if they have any left), admit that the war is lost, and wake up to the fact that they need to live beside the Russians.

Stop and analyse the last election campaign you followed. Now answer [this question]: how many concrete proposals with figures, deadlines and implementation methods did you actually see? How many debates did you attend where the candidates presented technical analyses of complex issues? How many times did you hear a serious discussion about tax structure, monetary policy or financial system reform? Almost none. And do you know why? Because political campaigns are not about reasoning, they are about emotion, about making you feel, not think. Look at the slogans: hope, change, the name of the country above all else, the people in power. These are empty words that mean absolutely nothing in practical terms, but which activate powerful emotional triggers. Hope for what? Change into what? The people in power in what way? No one explains because there is no need to explain. The goal is not to inform, it is to excite. It is to make you identify with a narrative, with a character, with a story that makes you feel part of something bigger. Election adverts are designed like soft drink commercials, with exciting music, images of happy families, smiling children, waving flags. No one is selling you a government plan, they are selling you a feeling, a feeling of belonging, of hope, that this time will be different, and you buy it, not because you have analysed the data, but because the narrative has touched something emotional inside you.

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Politics has ceased to be a space for rational debate and has become a stage for manipulated emotion. Modern democracy has a clever trick: it gives you freedom of expression, but carefully controls the scope of that expression. You can say whatever you want; in theory, you can create your own blog, your own channel, your own social media profile and express your most radical opinions. The State will not knock on your door and arrest you for disagreeing with the government. And that is exactly what makes you believe you live in a free society. But look at what happens when someone actually threatens the system. First, they try to discredit them. If you question the fundamental structures of power, they do not censor you directly, they call you crazy, a conspirator, an extremist, a disinformer. They create categories that make any structural criticism seem like the product of an unbalanced mind. “Conspiracy theory” has become the expression that automatically disqualifies any analysis that connects dots that should not be connected. Most people are afraid of being associated with these categories, so they censor themselves before anyone else has to censor them.

Second, they control visibility. The digital platforms where you express your opinions are not neutral; they have algorithms that decide who sees what, and these algorithms can show you to millions or bury you in oblivion. All this without having to explicitly ban or silence you. You keep posting, you keep writing, you keep talking, but your words go nowhere. It’s like shouting in a soundproof room and believing you are exercising your freedom of expression.

Third, they destroy you economically. If you have too much reach and insist on questioning what should not be questioned, they don’t need to arrest you. They demonetise your channels, cancel your bank accounts, cut your contracts, put pressure on your advertisers. In a society where money is survival, cutting someone off economically is more effective than any classic state censorship, and the best they can do is maintain the facade that we live in a free country.

Stop and analyse the last election campaign you followed. Now answer [this question]: how many concrete proposals with figures, deadlines and implementation methods did you actually see? How many debates did you attend where the candidates presented technical analyses of complex issues? How many times did you hear a serious discussion about tax structure, monetary policy or financial system reform? Almost none. And do you know why? Because political campaigns are not about reasoning, they are about emotion, about making you feel, not think. Look at the slogans: hope, change, the name of the country above all else, the people in power. These are empty words that mean absolutely nothing in practical terms, but which activate powerful emotional triggers. Hope for what? Change into what? The people in power in what way? No one explains because there is no need to explain. The goal is not to inform, it is to excite. It is to make you identify with a narrative, with a character, with a story that makes you feel part of something bigger. Election adverts are designed like soft drink commercials, with exciting music, images of happy families, smiling children, waving flags. No one is selling you a government plan, they are selling you a feeling, a feeling of belonging, of hope, that this time will be different, and you buy it, not because you have analysed the data, but because the narrative has touched something emotional inside you.

...

Politics has ceased to be a space for rational debate and has become a stage for manipulated emotion. Modern democracy has a clever trick: it gives you freedom of expression, but carefully controls the scope of that expression. You can say whatever you want; in theory, you can create your own blog, your own channel, your own social media profile and express your most radical opinions. The State will not knock on your door and arrest you for disagreeing with the government. And that is exactly what makes you believe you live in a free society. But look at what happens when someone actually threatens the system. First, they try to discredit them. If you question the fundamental structures of power, they do not censor you directly, they call you crazy, a conspirator, an extremist, a disinformer. They create categories that make any structural criticism seem like the product of an unbalanced mind. “Conspiracy theory” has become the expression that automatically disqualifies any analysis that connects dots that should not be connected. Most people are afraid of being associated with these categories, so they censor themselves before anyone else has to censor them.

Second, they control visibility. The digital platforms where you express your opinions are not neutral; they have algorithms that decide who sees what, and these algorithms can show you to millions or bury you in oblivion. All this without having to explicitly ban or silence you. You keep posting, you keep writing, you keep talking, but your words go nowhere. It’s like shouting in a soundproof room and believing you are exercising your freedom of expression.

Third, they destroy you economically. If you have too much reach and insist on questioning what should not be questioned, they don’t need to arrest you. They demonetise your channels, cancel your bank accounts, cut your contracts, put pressure on your advertisers. In a society where money is survival, cutting someone off economically is more effective than any classic state censorship, and the best they can do is maintain the facade that we live in a free country.

Peter Thiel wrote "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" in 2009. Then he built Palantir with CIA money. In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm, was the company's first outside investor. For two years, it was the only one.

Snowden documents revealed Palantir built XKEYSCORE Helper, a tool that imported data directly from the NSA's global surveillance pipeline. By 2010, three members of the Five Eyes alliance were using Palantir to process surveillance data from across the planet.

The domestic track record speaks for itself. In 2019, ICE used Palantir to execute the largest workplace raid in recent history. 680 workers arrested across Mississippi chicken plants on the first day of school. Children came home to empty houses. Edgar Lopez spent 11 months detained, was deported, and died trying to return to his family.

LAPD's Operation LASER used Palantir to assign risk scores. A 2019 audit found one-fifth of "chronic offenders" had zero prior arrests. In six months, LAPD killed six men in LASER zones. New Orleans ran Palantir's predictive policing secretly for six years without city council approval.

The money keeps flowing. Palantir's federal contracts grew from $4 million in 2009 to nearly $1 billion in 2025. The Army consolidated 75 contracts into a single $10 billion deal. A former ICE official warned that federal IT infrastructure now requires Palantir to function. They're locked in.

This isn't partisan. Palantir worked across #Obama, #Trump, #Biden, and Trump again. The surveillance state transcends elections. Your rights are inherent. No government grants them. But governments can violate them, and this one is. Nobody is coming to save you.

Despite the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and the scaling back of the “War on Terror,” Pentagon spending and contractor revenues have continued at extremely high levels, due in large part to the military’s focus on China as the new national security challenge. The U.S. arms industry has also profited enormously from the surge in foreign arms sales tied to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

From 2020 to 2024, the last five-year period for which full statistics are available, private firms have received $2.4 trillion in contracts from the Pentagon, approximately 54% of the department’s discretionary spending of $4.4 trillion over that period.
During those five years, $771 billion in Pentagon contracts went to just five firms: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion).
By comparison, the total diplomacy, development, and humanitarian aid budget, excluding military aid, was $356 billion. In other words, the U.S. government invested over twice as much money in five weapons companies as in diplomacy and international assistance.

Record arms transfers have further boosted the bottom lines of weapons firms. These companies have benefited from tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel and Ukraine, paid for by U.S. taxpayers. U.S. military aid to Israel was over $18 billion in just the first year following October 2023; military aid to Ukraine totals $65 billion since the Russian invasion in 2022 through 2025.

Additionally, a surge in foreign-funded arms sales to European allies, paid for by the recipient nations − over $170 billion in 2023 and 2024 alone − have provided additional revenue to arms contractors over and above the funds they receive directly from the Pentagon.

This year’s military budget will continue to deliver a windfall to military contractors. Recently-enacted legislation pushes annual U.S. military spending beyond the $1 trillion mark.

The trends of the past five years follow a major increase in Pentagon spending over time. Annual U.S. military spending has grown significantly this century. The Pentagon’s discretionary budget — the annual funding approved by Congress and the large majority of its overall budget — rose from $507 billion in 2000 to $843 billion in 2025 (in constant 2025 dollars), a 66% increase.
Including military spending outside the Pentagon — primarily nuclear weapons programs at the Department of Energy, counterterrorism operations at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other military activities officially classified under “Budget Function 050” — total military spending grew from $531 billion in 2000 to $899 billion in 2025, a 69% increase. Legislation passed in early July 2025 adds $156 billion to this year’s total, pushing the 2025 military budget to $1.06 trillion. After taking into account this supplemental funding, the U.S. military budget has nearly doubled this century, increasing 99% since 2000.

The shape of what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” is shifting as military technology companies are being awarded an increasing share of the Pentagon budget and gaining political power. The military-industrial complex involves the collaboration of the uniformed military and the arms industry in promoting spending that serves their bureaucratic interests and corporate bottom lines, often independently of or in contradiction to considerations of America’s actual security needs. Today, the tools of influence used by the arms industry are consistent — lobbying, millions in campaign donations, the revolving door, and others — but they are also expanding. One of the latest trends, for instance, is that Pentagon officials are now going on to work for venture capital firms investing in new military tech.

What remains the most important issue is whether U.S. national defense strategy is aligned with the actual security environment the U.S. faces. The current cover-the-globe strategy, which stresses a quest for military dominance and the ability to intervene anywhere on the globe in short order — has not served the U.S. well in this century. The question is whether the U.S. can have a reasoned national debate on a new defense strategy that is not distorted by the influence of the wealthy weapons sector.

Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, before introducing Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), reflected on how Renee Good, by coming to the aid of her community during an ICE action in exercising her constitutional rights, was “shot in the face three times for it, and labeled a terrorist” to send a message to those protesting the “Fascist takeover of our government.”

Senator Murphy spoke against the hateful and divisive things happening in America and of how important our immigrant communities are in adding strength to the country along with their hard work and vast cultural and social reservoirs created by immigrants, adding to our unique American experience. “The United States Congress should not fund the Department of Homeland Security that is not obeying the laws of the United States of America,” he said. “They instead are in our cities to seek out confrontation and chaos.”

He accused Donald Trump of fomenting fear and division among Americans by “trying to convince us that immigrants are the greatest threat to our democracy, to disguise the fact that he [Trump] is the greatest threat to our democracy.”

Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), a victim of ICE violence, was roughed up and handcuffed for attempting to enter a room during a news conference in Los Angeles last year to ask a question of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “Imagine what they are doing when the cameras aren’t on in every corner of the country, if that’s how fearful this administration is with one person with a question. Imagine how fearful they are with gatherings like this.”

Padilla closed by referring to two bills he has authored. The Visible Act, S.2212 he introduced “To require all immigration enforcement officers to display visible identification during public-facing immigration enforcement actions and to promote transparency and accountability.”

And the Accountability for Federal Law Enforcement Act, S.2103, is a remedy for sovereign immunity under which “Victims of constitutional violations by federal law enforcement officers often have no legal means to seek justice because Congress has never passed a law allowing such lawsuits. Unlike state and local officers, who can be sued under a specific statute, federal officers face little accountability. This lack of remedies weakens the rule of law, erodes public trust, and fosters a sense that federal officers can violate rights without consequence.”

Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who went to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison in seeking the release of his constituent Kilmar Abrego Garcia who was kidnapped by ICE, characterized Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller and JD Vance as “liars headed by the Liar in Chief, the Law Breaker in Chief Donald Trump.”

Going further, Van Hollen said that Trump had originally promised that ICE would only be “going after the worst of the worst” undocumented immigrants. That, instead, has become “One of the most lawless and obscene examples of this administration’s abuse against the people of this country,” he noted. “ICE’s own data shows that more than 80 percent of the people they are rounding up pose no public threat.” Once that was revealed, “ICE decided to get rid of the data. We are here to say, not in our country. We will not let this continue to happen.”