A People’s Guide to the War Industry -3: Bribery & Propaganda

When war is your business, peace is your enemy, writes Christian Sorensen.

Congress does not exercise effective oversight of the military-industrial-congressional complex. The average congressperson is clueless about the intricacies of war, espionage, and peace. The average congressperson on Armed Services or Intelligence committees is more aware, but their views are carefully circumscribed by a capitalist imperative for profit and the information that armed bureaucracies selectively divvy out. In other words. Our representation becomes void.

[consortiumnews.com]

{War corporations hire professional lobbying firms in order to influence federal policy. War corporations regularly spend millions on lobbying Capitol Hill. This is an effective, straightforward method for corporations to get their way. Jimmy Williams, a former lobbyist explained the system: “Years of legalized bribery had exposed me to the worst elements of our country’s political workings. Not even my half-million-a-year salary could outweigh my conscience… Today, most lobbyists are engaged in a system of bribery but it’s the legal kind, the kind that runs rampant in the corridors of Washington…”

“Unlimited expense accounts, nights out on the town, expensive bottles of wine, elaborate meals with sitting senators and Congress members — that was my life… It was an endless cycle of money trading hands for votes. It’s a wonder members of the House and Senate actually have time to legislate when they spend so much of their damn time raising money… Every fundraiser was yet another legal bribe. Every committee hearing I’d look up and think, ‘I just bought his vote.’ And every time I got a bill passed or, better yet, killed, I’d think to myself, ‘That wouldn’t have worked if I hadn’t bought the outcome.’”}

So now, can it be known, that every time we witness these types of hearings, they are a total shit show. The asshats spending all those hours spewing questions from their lips are all by script, written for them and on paper they're reading from. Same as the Trump impeachment hearings. The only thing that will change the programed outcome would be by some independent source coming out with new breaking evidence, by video and or audio, of the issue or person the hearing is about containing damning evidence as the hearing is ongoing. The hearings are merely theater designed to capture the audience within its conditioned tribal indoctrination.

{A handful of business interests owns media outlets in the United States. Profit drives corporate media. U.S. corporate media (CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, et al.) operate under the same business model: air what attracts the highest ratings in order to generate more advertising revenue. Corporate media air info-tainment, designed not to inform or foster critical thinking about the world. Informing the public is not a priority. Maintaining the existing economic order is.}

{Politically conditioning the U.S. public, corporate media do not blame the MIC or capitalism for any of the problems in the world.}

{Corporate media hire career militants (former CIA Director John Brennan, MSNBC; former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morrell, CBS News; retired General Jack Keane, FoxNews) who further confine the debate. Retired generals and admirals regularly contribute to all forms of corporate media, often without disclosing existing ties to war corporations and/or financial investments in war.}

{The Pentagon runs its own massive media empire, coordinated by the Assistant to the Secretary for Public Affairs, further polluting the minds of the working class.}

{The second role Hollywood performs is demonizing Arabs, Persians, Muslims, and other official enemies — priming the public to loathe the stereotypical enemies on the receiving end of U.S. ordnance. The final role Hollywood plays is to function as a recruiter: Blockbuster films put forth alluring portrayals of military and intelligence activities, seducing new generations into believing the thrill or benevolence of such undertakings.}

This indoctrination lead to nearly 5000 deaths, basically murder, of our men and women in Iraq for a war based on a series of lies in which after nearly 20 years still goes unquestioned. 10's of thousands physically and mentally harmed, many committing suicide daily still today in which many of those are due to this understanding. Homelessness also a correlated issue in which our government and MSCM turn their backs on.

{Think tanks guide the discourse inside the Beltway. Think tanks promote views advantageous to their funders. Think tanks issue information that endorses and advances the ideology and profits of their benefactors. And it is U.S. war corporations that fund major Washington think tanks. In turn, the think tanks invent, hype, and promote new threats and new rationalizations for why the United States must maintain a global military presence and fight wars.

Corporate media then amplify this disinformation. Think tanks also swarm presidential candidates when they are assembling their foreign policy teams, ensuring foreign policy options remain within confines benefitting the MIC.}

You see where this is leading? 80% of the information we get from MSCM is false manufactured narrative designed towards a delusional reality that erases critical thought. If you're new to the group see the Abby Martin video below to understand more about this.

{The world is filled with all kinds of threats, including advanced persistent threats, affiliates, biological agents, black identity extremists, dark networks, dirty bombs, great powers, guerrillas, hackers, insurgents, malicious actors, non-compliant governments, non-state actors, a non-state hostile intelligence service, people who don’t accept state violence or intimidation, regimes, rogue states, special interest aliens, terrorists, unaccompanied immigrant children, and unprivileged enemy belligerents.

All of these “threats,” real or not, are hyped. Reality — for example, you have a greater chance of getting struck by lightning in the United States than falling victim to a Muslim terrorist attack — is ignored. Glazing the public with layers of fear, threats can sell any good or service imaginable, thereby benefitting industry. Threats can justify sky-high budgets, invasive legal authorities, and bloated bureaucracies, all benefitting the Pentagon.}

Giants: Who Really Rules The World?

Abby Martin sits down with Peter Phillips, former director of Project Censored and professor of Political Sociology at Sonoma State University. His new book “Giants: The Global Power Elite” details the 17 transnational investment firms which control over $50 trillion in wealth—and how they are kept in power by their activists, facilitators and protectors.

I took the initiative to start the discussion at a time relevant to the above. But please go back and view the entire discussion to understand what we are facing today.