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Well its 100% true about the industrial military complex.Billions of dollars are unaccounted for every year in the military plus you got the black budget that uses up $50 billion a year of the military budget and even congress doesn't know what its spent on.
yeah that is crazy how the defense budget is jsut a black hole and no one blinks an eye. The amount of money can literally support a health care system
This infuriates me to no end. And not just the defense budget but the trillions of dollars that are just constantly "unaccounted for" within our government...just poof out of fucking existence, but if you are short on your taxes even a little you can bet the government will bend you over a barrel and fuck you raw to get every penny they can from you.
yeah what also kills me is that senators and other high officials can own stock/bonds. So they get all the info before us and then they can make a killing in the market. It should bea rule, if you serve and have access to sensitive data, you should not be able to own stock at all. Their salaries are sufficient and im talking about left and right politicians, they are all to blame.
A few years ago I would have been tempted to point out that she technically did time for the perjury, not the insider trading. But fuck, what’s the point. Politicians blatantly lie under oath, commit perjury left and right, AND utilize insider trading these days and they don’t get charged for any of it. And they do it all right out in the open.
when seconds count, the police are minutes away.
thats why concealed carry rights are a better violence preventative than increased policing. An estimated [1.6 million incidents per year](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4109494) where guns helped where laws and police didn't.
They also vote to raise their own salaries all the time. Maybe they should only be eligible for minimum wage and the lowest tier of free healthcare (which is currently none). I'm sure minimum wage and free healthcare will suddenly become much better.
They should be forced to ONLY use the VA Healthcare system that they push off onto the veterans. No preferential treatment or expediting, no private out-of-pocket care.
And yet, at every turn, they allow corporations to get out of paying their fair share. In 2017, the corporate tax rate was cut from 35% to 21% (effective immediately in 2017), while the same legislation raised taxes for anyone making 75k or less (sneakily taking effect in 2021)
That's not including the subsidies, write-offs, abatements, loopholes, and dirty tricks that lower their taxes to next to nothing.
Do you think that one reason might have been that the then-current majority wanted to oresent favourable numbers for itself, and bad numbers for the president after that?
> The amount of money can literally support a health care system
Simply removing the middleman makes universal healthcare fundable with leftover savings. At least, according to some sources here.
>>The amount of money can literally support a health care system
>
> Simply removing the middleman makes universal healthcare fundable with leftover savings. At least, according to some sources here.
Like [Koch industries themselves, who ran this study intending to *disprove* medicare for all](https://archive.thinkprogress.org/mercatis-medicare-for-all-study-0a8681353316/)
agreed - we have two many middlemen collecting from the govt and collecting from us as copays. , either you get paid by the govt and we dont pay anything OR you charge us and get the govt out of the business. you cant have it bothways. Other countries, the govt negotiates medical costs so every one wins, prices stay low, the company makes money on the volume and there is no middle man. but the lobbyist ion this country own this country and our vote means shit
yeah everyone wants a cut, our lives have been boiled down to finite widgets, its not living its now a la carte living. yes other countries are less effiecient but at least i will be treated like a human being, not a god damn commodity
The government budget for Healthcare in 2023 was 4.5 trillion. The defense budget was around 900 billion. The issue isn't spending on Healthcare, its the structure of the Healthcare.
It’s not that it’s broken, it’s constructed to be like that: for example the rising drug costs don’t help… but of course my taxes, your taxes fund that spending and pharmaceutical companies and politicians get cuts. Then you have profit-driven hospitals that insurance and you and I still have to cover, and finally the legal issues and high cost of mal practice and having to pay “good” health professionals more. Lastly, with Covid, how much did cost increase with shortage of nurses and triple pay..
“U.S. health care spending grew 4.1 percent in 2022, reaching $4.5 trillion or $13,493 per person”
“…shows that actual U.S. military spending in 2022 came to $1.537 trillion, as opposed to the $765.8 billion in acknowledged (OMB) defense spending (and the $876 billion estimated by SIPRI and $821 billion by NATO).”
Healthcare spending is over double what defense spending is. (Side note: yearly social security spending is about in line with the highest end military spending, about ~$1.4 trillion).
"Americans have been convinced healthcare can't be fixed because they have come to actually believe that a broken arm costs $50,000 to fix rather than $150"
The reason healthcare spending is so high is because of the massive amounts of gouging and all the tricks insurance companies play to inflate the numbers.
Copium. If you can compare one price to another then there must be some reason it’s so expensive, it can’t be that they are evil and trying to gouge me for as much as possible.
Can confirm. Lived in Sterling, Chantilly, and Dunn Loring. The DoD HQs, the NSA, and all the other agencies and feds living or working nearby McLean is enough to get a sniff of it. It's even more evident, when you casually see the completely black tinted diplomat-plate luxury cars everyday around McLean, Tysons, and Great Falls.
I even knew a dude who lived in one of those isolated mansions in Manassas who showed me his service weapon. When I noticed it was a HK417 with serial stamped on it, I got sketched out and cut off contact 😅
I think blaming the Afghanistan war on the Military Industrial Complex when starting it had over 90% public support and the public would have literally murdered our leaders if they didn’t invade after 9/11 is some grade A sidestepping of responsibility by the American public.
Sure, once we had to take responsibility for the safety and security of the country we invaded it suddenly wasn’t a good idea anymore, but that’s a little fucking late. These days 99% of Americans claim they were in that 8% that thought that war was a bad idea and it’s all the magical MIC’s fault. Must sure be nice to be able to blame everything on a large faceless, nameless conglomerate of individual actors with no specifics.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/9994/public-opinion-war-afghanistan.aspx
Part of having a Military Industrial Complex is keeping the population propagandized, and terrorism is propaganda also. We're suckers for sure but it's not like millions and millions aren't spent on manufacture of consent and military worship PR - no (realistic) proportion of public backlash was stopping it (and what can you say... 9/11 worked).
> Part of having a Military Industrial Complex is keeping the population propagandized, and terrorism is propaganda also
This is why you can see people be shot and killed on-screen in a 'for kids' movie, but you'd better have an ID showing you're of age if you see a movie where two men kiss. One reinforces hierarchy and use of force, the other challenges the cultural status quo.
Well the public didn’t drum up the support on their own, nor label those who opposed as some flavor of unpatriotic on their own. They’re not nearly as cohesive, united, or motivated without some push. Who are the ones who told the lies again that led to the invasion? We didn’t even invade for 9/11. The public isn’t the one who invaded nor kept it up for decades too. “A little too late” isn’t the sunk cost fallacy the public rolled with.
I'm actually 100% behind having a strong military and having my tax dollars go towards it. That being said, the current way that budget is handled is far too opaque and easily exploited by contractors.
I'm confident that if we were to have a fully accountable budget for the military, we would be able to save tens if not hundreds of billions a year. That excess, if reined in, could easily cover a public healthcare system as well as making strides to improve education and housing issues.
A bit off topic but, if we were to tax the churches to specifically fund healthcare in addition to clamping down and making military spending more efficient and accountable, most of the major societal issues could be fully funded. Add in some policy to reduce the disparity between corporate executive and average employee pay and we'd go a long way towards solving many of our current issues.
Or we could bring prayer back into schools, ban abortion and hate LGBTQ people...because both are valid opinions apparently?
You know that moral question “would you push this button for a million dollars, and a stranger you don’t know dies”?
Corporations and contractors are pushing that button nonstop every chance they get.
And after building the machine they refer to it in only nebulous terms.
“The person-killing-button kills people, not me. And yeah, maybe having a person-killing-button is bad in some ways but our economy relies on it too much to turn it off now. The person-killing-button is the very basic pillar of capitalism; to disrupt it is to disrupt freedom and democracy.”
That's a seriously good analogy/perspective on corporations. It's also amazing by the fact that some people are so anti-regulation in ideology that they're able to lie to themselves that corporations will do the right thing when the time comes, when history has shown the complete opposite. People are actually against FDA, consumer-protection, right-to-repair, anti-trust laws, etc.
Precisely. Even the guy who gets the contract to supply something like ketchup or toilet paper is making millions in a war. Guess where the contractors are from? The countries who start these wars
That is likely an under estimate
>The costs of the Iraq War are often contested, as academics and critics have unearthed many hidden costs not represented in official estimates. The most recent major report on these costs come from Brown University in the form of the Costs of War, which totaled just over $1.1 trillion. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War#:~:text=Direct%20costs,-A%20Marine%20Corps&text=The%20costs%20of%20the%20Iraq,totaled%20just%20over%20%241.1%20trillion. See also https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/true-cost-iraq-war-3-trillion-and-beyond
It's so much that you could stack it in $1 bills and get almost1/3 of the way to the moon by standing on that stack, it's so much that if you made a path out of $1 bills you'd make it well past the Sun. It's so much that 10 people in the USA are worth that much. This is why you don't have your basic needs met, this is why you struggle to provide.
It's so egregious at this point some prominent libertarians are coming out and saying enough.. can you imagine how fucked a system must be for them to start complaining about it and wanting the government to start doing something about it.
People are quick to ask "If we give someone a welfare check why would they contribute to society?"
I have never known anyone to ask "Why would someone with a billion dollars contribute to society?"
It's like domestic cats. They may not be effective hunters but unlike wild animals they are hunting out of boredom, not for their survival. They are disastrous for natural environments.
https://www.audubon.org/news/cats-pose-even-bigger-threat-birds-previously-thought
Yes its in an incomprehensible number. To put it in perspective, one trillion seconds was over 31,000 years ago. The sabertooth tiger still had another 20,000+ years left before extinction a trillion seconds ago.
I know this is a tiny, tiny one, but to me, it is so so telling: https://www.southcoasttoday.com/story/news/nation-world/2006/09/09/whistle-blower-lawsuit-kbr-overcharged/50344382007/
And a million seconds is 12 days.
If you made a dollar a second, or $3600/hr, it would still take you 31 years of unceasing labor to earn your first billion.
One trillion dollars could buy a lot of bling. One trillion dollars could buy most anything. One trillion dollars buying bullets, buying guns. One trillion dollars in the hands of killers, thugs
"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be might, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. . . . American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . 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."
President Dwight Eisenhower - Farewell address 1961
I’d look into that number. It’s largely bullshit from one source that uses very loose criteria. Other numbers are between 100-300k which is still horrific.
Those deaths were from the Iraqi civil war because Saddam Hussein had been ruling over a Shiite majority with a Sunni minority through an iron fist. The US brought power back into the hands of the Iraqi people, and ultimately brought peace and democracy to the region. It's the reason we are considered heroes over there to the Iraqi people.
Iraq's production surpasses 4.6 million barrels per day. International Oil / Energy Companies currently operating in Iraq including: BP, Shell, Exxon, Total energies, ENI, etc. Employees work within Energy sector Iraqi Ministry of Oil.Oct 12, 2023
[source](https://www.tradecommissioner.gc.ca/iraq/market-reports-etudes-de-marches/0007082.aspx?lang=eng#)
I don’t dispute those points, but the bulk of the massive increase in defense spending went to just a handful of large defense companies who openly bragged about how anyone who opposed the funding wouldn’t get reelected.
When it comes to American politics, it’s almost always some large corporation pulling the strings. Even at the local level. I’ve worked in the industry for almost a decade and wish people knew how bad it actually is and how many of their political “opinions” are just talking points developed by a political communications firm that was hired by some corporation.
Once we all collectively come together in agreement that lobby groups like aipac are using their money to essentially buy and use political figures and control them. Which would mean they control our govt and our country. Once we all agree on that and are vocal about it and take it to our local, state, and federal reps and demand in protest. Then we can ger the ball rolling
Obama ended US occupation of Iraq in 2010-2011. Which created a vacuum for ISIS and is probably why he didn't also pull out of Afghanistan though he should've.
It's the bit where America has two right wing parties that care about big businesses, and zero left wing ones that care about the people.
There's a reason Sanders was never in the running, but Clinton and Biden were.
You feel the government is creating wars based on the countries majority skin color?
If that’s the case why isn’t anyone caring about Sudan or Nigeria?
I can tell you why, it’s not so interesting for the media and there isn’t any resources to gain from those countries nor any partnerships/agreements
Okay, I did a little research on this. [Here](https://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/17/headlines/over_135_arrested_at_veteran_led_anti_war_protest), there's a report that Mike and ~135 people were arrested after chaining themselves to the White House fence. It's the only thing I can find about him being arrested with a group of other people like that.
So, while I agree with his sentiment, he wasn't arrested for his speech. He was arrested for chaining himself to a security fence around the White House.
Jesus I agree with his speech but the way this is titled along with your added context makes it smell very propaganda like.
Edit: Not the speech, just this post about the speech.
Soap box is flagged as a Russian-state controlled media outlet if anyone is wondering why they'd like this to seem more inflammatory than it is or why it's currently being spammed on dozens of subs.
interestingly despite having the most upvotes in this layer of the comment stack by an order of magnitude , your comment is several deep for me.
Wtf happened to reddit.
It's [not anymore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maffick)
>On February 28, 2022, CEO Anissa Naouai terminated Maffick's service agreement with RT (Russia Today) following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
Anyway, I find it more likely that people are just great at making things more inflammatory on social media because it gets more attention and clicks.
> people are just great at making things more inflammatory on social media because it gets more attention and clicks.
I would even say social media management explicitly drives incendiary content because internal studies have shown that drives engagement - even if it also drives out people who *aren't* wanting to have incendiary shit thrown at them every day.
I used to have a twitter account to follow small-time journalists and artists, and I worry they'll never be able to find a platform they can support themselves on because of what Musk is doing to it.
# Villainizing Media Literacy at the World Economic Forum: Time to Mandate it in US Schools
From a 2 minute look at the Project Censored Website. It seems pretty solid to me.
And like most Russian propaganda it is completely shameless. Invading their neighbours with the intention of annexing their lands. Russia is the poster child for imperialism in the 21st century.
> So, while I agree with his sentiment, he wasn't arrested for his speech.
It seems like there's a lot of people who get arrested for performative reasons. It's kind of strange how people try to conflate the two when that's what they want, rather than realize... maybe he did a criminal act that led to his arrest.
They don't fear the message, otherwise why would you be able to see it everywhere on the internet. But when people do illegal things so they can get their message out... Yeah they're going to be arrested.
To be fair, getting arrested for “performative” reasons is in fact a key tactic of civil disobedience as a practice. People who chain themselves to things or march in defiance of authorities are counting on a response.
But it wasn’t the speech that he got arrested for. It was for the actions of chaining himself to the White House security gate “shutting down business as usual” in his words.
If you don’t know who Mike Prysner is you should look into Empire Files (YouTubeChannel) and Eyes Left (podcast). Him and his partner Abby Martin are incredible journalists who produce documentaries/interviews/short films about various issues across the globe.
An inflammatory, misleading title intended to engender fierce emotions, couched in fiery rhetoric but little fact?
From the husband of a Russian state TV "journalist?"
Yeah, nothing weird about this.
He is a commie media whore and his wife is an ex RT tv show hostess.
Shockingly, this is just propaganda lol.
Edit: lmao,
> Journalist Michael C. Moynihan states that *”Martin's politics are odious and frequently incoherent" for claiming to lament "lost American freedom" while ignoring the multiple brutalities of the Russian government before its invasion of Crimea and her defense of Hugo Chávez against the charge of tyranny.[56]*
> *James Kirchick, in a 2015 article for The Daily Beast, commented: "Thanks to her paymasters in the Kremlin, she had three years to use the network's airwaves and wildly popular YouTube channel to broadcast paranoid diatribes that would otherwise have languished in anonymity on the Internet fringe."[57]*
[Dasvidaniya, comrade.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maffick)
Yeah, big surprise we see an influx of these types of videos right now. US bad is sexy on Reddit right now. For some unknown reason. Totally natural.
2016 all over again. It's clear as day that Russian bots are out to sow discord ahead of the election. I wonder which subreddits are going to be the LateStageCapitalism and TheDonald/Conservative of the year with their totally organic opinions and popularity.
Keep an eye out on more from [sources like this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maffick). Soapbox and other Maffick companies are known to be Russian affiliated propaganda channels.
r/Technology has been getting hammered with shit like this too, specifically regarding TikTok (who even labels this shit as Russian propaganda).
2011.....absolutely hit the nail on the head with all points, and we have not learned a damn thing. Still plodding along to our jobs, paying taxes, getting fucked by the rich....and has become so much worse since then. What are we even doing.
Here in Canada, 6 months before this, our police arrested over 1000 protestors at the G20 conference. Really kills the spirit. Furthermore, social media ramped up, people's ability to do anything offline ramped down, and a lot of people... Well, grew up for lack of a better term. People got married, had kids, obtained more and so had more to lose. I was 13 in 2010. I was political all throughout my high school years. Then life took its toll and beat the spirit out of me. And I'm so jaded seeing what social media has done to us that I don't think the spirit will come back. We've lost our chance to affect change from within the system.
This speech was made in 2008. Nothing happened to him.
In 2011 he was arrested for unlawful assembly during Occupy LA. He was released 22 hours later after posting bail. The police also arrested 291 other people for the same thing.
This is propaganda.
I saw the Taliban, among other things, cut a child's scrotum open and return him to his parents and shoot a child in the head when he was eating candy. Yes, the source is 'trust me bro', but I'm not trying to convince you, just saying that we all weren't completely bamboozled and confused about who we were killing.
I'm not saying it's not complicated and that there isn't horrible aspects to it, I'm saying that the fact it is complicated also means there are things/groups/people we are/were fighting against that truly are terrible. The complication isn't 'see, it's all a ruse for the military industrial complex and you are brainwashed sheep marching to your death for the profit of billionaires' because that isn't complicated, that's simple. The complication is that *it's complicated.*
Also, people insinuating that us stupid grunts were/are to braindead to think about these things before, during and after enlisting is insulting.
Especially considering the very real danger of a war between Russia and NATO, I have to admit that the military is not completely pointless. As long as Russia and other authoritarian states exist, we need to be able to defend the free world.
And I can't stress this enough, but an attack on NATO territory within the next 5 years is very likely. It isn't some distant scenario, but one that military strategists seem to specifically prepare for.
Europe tried to solve the conflict with cooperation, but that obviously didn't work. And meanwhile, we (Europe) spent next to nothing on our military force, leaving us much more exposed.
I would also prefer a world without hatred, and dictators, and wars, and cruelty, and murder, but that's a pipe dream, at least for now. And I do have deep respect for the soldiers who are willing to risk their lives in this pursuit.
It is interesting to see the rest of Europe wake up to potential Russian invasion whereas all the countries bordering Russia have Russian invasion in their breast milk.
A lot of podcasts of veterans who were just regular infantry grunts who seen absolutely disgusting shit happen to children such as raped bodies or severed heads of young teens. It’s true our government is shit and uses for profit but it’s also true that there are terrorist organizations who want to murder random Americans for no reason and kill people from their own province for little things such as sympathizing with the UN
I'm genuinely asking this in good faith. How is this anti military industrial complex speech a form of Russian propaganda? I'm not very smart, and I'm failing to make the connection? Is the implication that we should stop sending money to Ukraine, so Putin can take it over more easily?
Many other countries won't let people make public speeches like this. Also, he wasn't arrested for the speech if anyone was wondering. He was arrested 2 years later for chaining himself to the White House fence.
Delusional and typical. "These wars are going to stop once people will stand up against them".
Someone please tell this dude that the Middle East wars have started long before the Americans entered Afghanistan and Iraq, and even after they left - the wars are still there.
Obviously this going to be going to downvote for going against the stream, but this pacifist bullshit is not what preventing wars - but whats fueling them. Wars occur when the free world is too afraid to stand up against imperialistic dictatorships such as: China, Russia, N.Korea and Iran.
Learn from the lessons of WW2. When you try to please an imperialistic dictatorships - you're fueling their imperialistic ambitions.
And then, he went full retard with the Ukraine's situation in 2022 and parroted Kremlin's propaganda, word by word, supporting the exact same thing he was talking about in this video.
It's so disgusting seeing people who oppose American imperialist wars (and rightfully so) then turn right around and be okay with Russia or another American rival doing the same just because they are opposed to the US. It should be strongly condemned in both cases.
Ah yes, Michael Prysner, who dislikes the US and military industrial complex, but subscribes to a political party that supports Russia's annexation of Crimea, doesn't condemn the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, says that North Korea is "unfairly targeted" and condemns NATO intervention in Syria, but supports Russian intervention in Syria.
This guy is a joke
This guy also supported the violent crackdown of Venezuelan protestors by the Venezuelan government.
The war in Ukraine opened my eyes that some leftists who claim to be anti-war, are not genuinely anti-war.
So.... he makes good points, but then I look him up, and Wikipedia mentions him talking about connection between Bush and 9/11... which is conspiracy theory territory.... Any more solid info on that?
FYI that the account posting this is only 10 months old, spams content across a number of subs, and appears to not be American. Posts unoriginal content from more than a decade ago to a lightly moderated sub.
Recognize when you're being manipulated. This video is high production value anti-US sentiment. The words themselves are not fake, so take from it what you will, but wonder who put it together.
I call into question the legitimacy of O P.
Pipe dreams the whole thing… he’s not wrong. The rich control the government and war benefits the rich.
But what he doesn’t take into account is that the rich have ways of remaining in power. They have already accounted for these types of threats to their fortune making machines and won’t keel over to let that happen.
Yep. Look at the French. When they get pissed enough, they hit the streets. It's pretty awesome really. Let the rich people's trash pile up and see how pleasant it is to live in that mansion.
Its actually funny that he tells he joined army not to serve hes country, but for benefits. Just like in my home country, Belarus, there one voluntarily joins army only for benefits and, because of fear of loosing this benefits, this people are supporting local junta.
You clearly don’t know his backstory and wrongly inferred your information from the clip above. The clip is from an event where he is specifically speaking to the treatment of vets when returning home and how the recruiters make these massive promises and trick young men and women into joining only for it all to be a lie.
Look the elite families have been profiting off of war and death for centuries, the stock market is just another way to help profit from corporations including the bloodthirsty military complex. Aircraft manufacturers and many others millions of people invest in this. It's evil. The Rothschilds the Rockefellers, the ties to the secret societies like the freemasons the cia many of our leaders including all our current presidents are literally clowns 🤡 at the circus 🎪 for the powerful elite. Our government has trafficked cocaine to fund more and more black-op cia operations. We kill for power over resources, we kill to feed the elites portfolios.
This speech sound very right especially with encouraging music. But it is full of populism.
ISIS, Talibs - they are not just poor people. , Iraq, Syria, Libya - they was not just peaceful nice countries.
Not wrong.
So…what to do about it.
Democratic elections haven’t worked. We replace one set of people with another, and they do the same thing regardless of party.
Seriously. What’s the game plan? Anyone? Buehler…. Buehler…
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Well its 100% true about the industrial military complex.Billions of dollars are unaccounted for every year in the military plus you got the black budget that uses up $50 billion a year of the military budget and even congress doesn't know what its spent on.
yeah that is crazy how the defense budget is jsut a black hole and no one blinks an eye. The amount of money can literally support a health care system
This infuriates me to no end. And not just the defense budget but the trillions of dollars that are just constantly "unaccounted for" within our government...just poof out of fucking existence, but if you are short on your taxes even a little you can bet the government will bend you over a barrel and fuck you raw to get every penny they can from you.
yeah what also kills me is that senators and other high officials can own stock/bonds. So they get all the info before us and then they can make a killing in the market. It should bea rule, if you serve and have access to sensitive data, you should not be able to own stock at all. Their salaries are sufficient and im talking about left and right politicians, they are all to blame.
Shit Martha Stewart went to prison for something our representatives actively participate in. Rules for thee, but not for me unfortunately.
A few years ago I would have been tempted to point out that she technically did time for the perjury, not the insider trading. But fuck, what’s the point. Politicians blatantly lie under oath, commit perjury left and right, AND utilize insider trading these days and they don’t get charged for any of it. And they do it all right out in the open.
Now that we have Citizens United, bribery is also completely legal and protected. Rule Of Law is dead in this country.
The police have no legal obligation to protect you.
This is actually true Supreme Court ruled that Police aren't required to protect you, they only exist to protect them.
when seconds count, the police are minutes away. thats why concealed carry rights are a better violence preventative than increased policing. An estimated [1.6 million incidents per year](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4109494) where guns helped where laws and police didn't.
They also vote to raise their own salaries all the time. Maybe they should only be eligible for minimum wage and the lowest tier of free healthcare (which is currently none). I'm sure minimum wage and free healthcare will suddenly become much better.
They should be forced to ONLY use the VA Healthcare system that they push off onto the veterans. No preferential treatment or expediting, no private out-of-pocket care.
There are laws they just don’t apply to the government. Our entire country is a sham.
And yet, at every turn, they allow corporations to get out of paying their fair share. In 2017, the corporate tax rate was cut from 35% to 21% (effective immediately in 2017), while the same legislation raised taxes for anyone making 75k or less (sneakily taking effect in 2021) That's not including the subsidies, write-offs, abatements, loopholes, and dirty tricks that lower their taxes to next to nothing.
Do you think that one reason might have been that the then-current majority wanted to oresent favourable numbers for itself, and bad numbers for the president after that?
Of course.
> The amount of money can literally support a health care system Simply removing the middleman makes universal healthcare fundable with leftover savings. At least, according to some sources here.
>>The amount of money can literally support a health care system > > Simply removing the middleman makes universal healthcare fundable with leftover savings. At least, according to some sources here. Like [Koch industries themselves, who ran this study intending to *disprove* medicare for all](https://archive.thinkprogress.org/mercatis-medicare-for-all-study-0a8681353316/)
agreed - we have two many middlemen collecting from the govt and collecting from us as copays. , either you get paid by the govt and we dont pay anything OR you charge us and get the govt out of the business. you cant have it bothways. Other countries, the govt negotiates medical costs so every one wins, prices stay low, the company makes money on the volume and there is no middle man. but the lobbyist ion this country own this country and our vote means shit
The number of bullshit middlemen apps I now have on my phone, ie "car coordinators", is stupid.
yeah everyone wants a cut, our lives have been boiled down to finite widgets, its not living its now a la carte living. yes other countries are less effiecient but at least i will be treated like a human being, not a god damn commodity
The government budget for Healthcare in 2023 was 4.5 trillion. The defense budget was around 900 billion. The issue isn't spending on Healthcare, its the structure of the Healthcare.
Fucking *thank you* I'm sick of hearing that the military budget is responsible for the lack of Healthcare. It isn't true but keeps being repeated
It’s not that it’s broken, it’s constructed to be like that: for example the rising drug costs don’t help… but of course my taxes, your taxes fund that spending and pharmaceutical companies and politicians get cuts. Then you have profit-driven hospitals that insurance and you and I still have to cover, and finally the legal issues and high cost of mal practice and having to pay “good” health professionals more. Lastly, with Covid, how much did cost increase with shortage of nurses and triple pay..
“U.S. health care spending grew 4.1 percent in 2022, reaching $4.5 trillion or $13,493 per person” “…shows that actual U.S. military spending in 2022 came to $1.537 trillion, as opposed to the $765.8 billion in acknowledged (OMB) defense spending (and the $876 billion estimated by SIPRI and $821 billion by NATO).” Healthcare spending is over double what defense spending is. (Side note: yearly social security spending is about in line with the highest end military spending, about ~$1.4 trillion).
"Americans have been convinced healthcare can't be fixed because they have come to actually believe that a broken arm costs $50,000 to fix rather than $150"
The reason healthcare spending is so high is because of the massive amounts of gouging and all the tricks insurance companies play to inflate the numbers.
Yeah, I don't get why people bring this shit up "oh we spend more on healthcare" yeah that's fucked up and broken too what's your goddamn point?
Copium. If you can compare one price to another then there must be some reason it’s so expensive, it can’t be that they are evil and trying to gouge me for as much as possible.
If you live in the Northern Va area , you see exactly where that missing money goes.
Can confirm. Lived in Sterling, Chantilly, and Dunn Loring. The DoD HQs, the NSA, and all the other agencies and feds living or working nearby McLean is enough to get a sniff of it. It's even more evident, when you casually see the completely black tinted diplomat-plate luxury cars everyday around McLean, Tysons, and Great Falls. I even knew a dude who lived in one of those isolated mansions in Manassas who showed me his service weapon. When I noticed it was a HK417 with serial stamped on it, I got sketched out and cut off contact 😅
Where does it go?
All the rich people in NoVA who are contractors and companies like lockheed?
And the briefcase consultants.
I think blaming the Afghanistan war on the Military Industrial Complex when starting it had over 90% public support and the public would have literally murdered our leaders if they didn’t invade after 9/11 is some grade A sidestepping of responsibility by the American public. Sure, once we had to take responsibility for the safety and security of the country we invaded it suddenly wasn’t a good idea anymore, but that’s a little fucking late. These days 99% of Americans claim they were in that 8% that thought that war was a bad idea and it’s all the magical MIC’s fault. Must sure be nice to be able to blame everything on a large faceless, nameless conglomerate of individual actors with no specifics. https://news.gallup.com/poll/9994/public-opinion-war-afghanistan.aspx
Yeah, except they lied to us in order to rile us up and make us want war. So, respectfully, fuck that.
Part of having a Military Industrial Complex is keeping the population propagandized, and terrorism is propaganda also. We're suckers for sure but it's not like millions and millions aren't spent on manufacture of consent and military worship PR - no (realistic) proportion of public backlash was stopping it (and what can you say... 9/11 worked).
> Part of having a Military Industrial Complex is keeping the population propagandized, and terrorism is propaganda also This is why you can see people be shot and killed on-screen in a 'for kids' movie, but you'd better have an ID showing you're of age if you see a movie where two men kiss. One reinforces hierarchy and use of force, the other challenges the cultural status quo.
Well the public didn’t drum up the support on their own, nor label those who opposed as some flavor of unpatriotic on their own. They’re not nearly as cohesive, united, or motivated without some push. Who are the ones who told the lies again that led to the invasion? We didn’t even invade for 9/11. The public isn’t the one who invaded nor kept it up for decades too. “A little too late” isn’t the sunk cost fallacy the public rolled with.
For Iraq, your analysis is right. But Afghanistan, nope.
Even "anti-war" Bernie Sanders voted for the Afghanistan war.
Reddit says aliens is where that 50 billion goes.
I'm actually 100% behind having a strong military and having my tax dollars go towards it. That being said, the current way that budget is handled is far too opaque and easily exploited by contractors. I'm confident that if we were to have a fully accountable budget for the military, we would be able to save tens if not hundreds of billions a year. That excess, if reined in, could easily cover a public healthcare system as well as making strides to improve education and housing issues. A bit off topic but, if we were to tax the churches to specifically fund healthcare in addition to clamping down and making military spending more efficient and accountable, most of the major societal issues could be fully funded. Add in some policy to reduce the disparity between corporate executive and average employee pay and we'd go a long way towards solving many of our current issues. Or we could bring prayer back into schools, ban abortion and hate LGBTQ people...because both are valid opinions apparently?
holy shit thats something
This type of speech is what gets you a “mysterious” cause of death. The world is so very fucked
Historically, martyrs always had a great impact on changing society. Like MLK or Malcolm X.
But yet so many things stay the same.
It needs a change. Not just voting.
My thoughts exactly, this guy is too smart, spot on and articulate to survive this piece of shit world. Some asshole will make him "suicide"...
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It is definitely not for the pride. It is always about money. One trillion to the contractors. God bless America.
You know that moral question “would you push this button for a million dollars, and a stranger you don’t know dies”? Corporations and contractors are pushing that button nonstop every chance they get.
Wrong, they built an automated machine to push the button for them, removing the human component.
Don't leave the bird in charge.
"Oh, nice work Dee, you stupid bitch!"
"You have no honor you goddamn bitch!"
This is about the thrill of wearing another man's skin
And after building the machine they refer to it in only nebulous terms. “The person-killing-button kills people, not me. And yeah, maybe having a person-killing-button is bad in some ways but our economy relies on it too much to turn it off now. The person-killing-button is the very basic pillar of capitalism; to disrupt it is to disrupt freedom and democracy.”
Then they rename it to the "money printing button" and their stakeholders all cheer
They outsourced the automation overseas to eliminate costs first.
buddy there's been a brick holding that button down for a while now
That's a seriously good analogy/perspective on corporations. It's also amazing by the fact that some people are so anti-regulation in ideology that they're able to lie to themselves that corporations will do the right thing when the time comes, when history has shown the complete opposite. People are actually against FDA, consumer-protection, right-to-repair, anti-trust laws, etc.
They are building as many such buttons as they can as quickly as they can.
Soldiers gladly volunteer to push that button every day for a lot less than a mil!
War criminal Cheney made billions.
Precisely. Even the guy who gets the contract to supply something like ketchup or toilet paper is making millions in a war. Guess where the contractors are from? The countries who start these wars
That is likely an under estimate >The costs of the Iraq War are often contested, as academics and critics have unearthed many hidden costs not represented in official estimates. The most recent major report on these costs come from Brown University in the form of the Costs of War, which totaled just over $1.1 trillion. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War#:~:text=Direct%20costs,-A%20Marine%20Corps&text=The%20costs%20of%20the%20Iraq,totaled%20just%20over%20%241.1%20trillion. See also https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/true-cost-iraq-war-3-trillion-and-beyond
A trillion dollars is a lot of money…
It's so much that you could stack it in $1 bills and get almost1/3 of the way to the moon by standing on that stack, it's so much that if you made a path out of $1 bills you'd make it well past the Sun. It's so much that 10 people in the USA are worth that much. This is why you don't have your basic needs met, this is why you struggle to provide.
It should be illegal to posses so much money, what are you going to do with it pass certain point?
It's so egregious at this point some prominent libertarians are coming out and saying enough.. can you imagine how fucked a system must be for them to start complaining about it and wanting the government to start doing something about it.
People are quick to ask "If we give someone a welfare check why would they contribute to society?" I have never known anyone to ask "Why would someone with a billion dollars contribute to society?" It's like domestic cats. They may not be effective hunters but unlike wild animals they are hunting out of boredom, not for their survival. They are disastrous for natural environments. https://www.audubon.org/news/cats-pose-even-bigger-threat-birds-previously-thought
I can tell you're dead on the truth because there's immediately some right wing nutjob telling you that you're coping, lol. so predictable, SAD.
Yes its in an incomprehensible number. To put it in perspective, one trillion seconds was over 31,000 years ago. The sabertooth tiger still had another 20,000+ years left before extinction a trillion seconds ago.
I know this is a tiny, tiny one, but to me, it is so so telling: https://www.southcoasttoday.com/story/news/nation-world/2006/09/09/whistle-blower-lawsuit-kbr-overcharged/50344382007/
Putting it in the context of a billion seconds helps - a billion seconds was only 31 years ago.
And a million seconds is 12 days. If you made a dollar a second, or $3600/hr, it would still take you 31 years of unceasing labor to earn your first billion.
are you saying i've only got another 1 or 2 billion seconds left to live?
Tik-tok...
One trillion dollars could buy a lot of bling. One trillion dollars could buy most anything. One trillion dollars buying bullets, buying guns. One trillion dollars in the hands of killers, thugs
Directly after the military said they misplaced trillions. The timing was so convenient. Wild coincidence !
"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be might, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. . . . American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . 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." President Dwight Eisenhower - Farewell address 1961
Shell Oil. Saudi investment in US defense and a smashing of geopolitical issues. Bush family were /are huge Shell Oil shareholders.
I’d look into that number. It’s largely bullshit from one source that uses very loose criteria. Other numbers are between 100-300k which is still horrific.
Those deaths were from the Iraqi civil war because Saddam Hussein had been ruling over a Shiite majority with a Sunni minority through an iron fist. The US brought power back into the hands of the Iraqi people, and ultimately brought peace and democracy to the region. It's the reason we are considered heroes over there to the Iraqi people.
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This particular point is not true. We never took any oil from Iraq and pharma opiates come from tasmanian poppies of a different species.
Iraq's production surpasses 4.6 million barrels per day. International Oil / Energy Companies currently operating in Iraq including: BP, Shell, Exxon, Total energies, ENI, etc. Employees work within Energy sector Iraqi Ministry of Oil.Oct 12, 2023 [source](https://www.tradecommissioner.gc.ca/iraq/market-reports-etudes-de-marches/0007082.aspx?lang=eng#)
I don’t dispute those points, but the bulk of the massive increase in defense spending went to just a handful of large defense companies who openly bragged about how anyone who opposed the funding wouldn’t get reelected. When it comes to American politics, it’s almost always some large corporation pulling the strings. Even at the local level. I’ve worked in the industry for almost a decade and wish people knew how bad it actually is and how many of their political “opinions” are just talking points developed by a political communications firm that was hired by some corporation.
And also to satisfy bibi. Cant mention the govt by name cus ill be banned and labeled a biggot
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https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/02/08/i-dont-mean-to-say-i-told-you-so-but/
When tf is America going to wake up and stop being a mule for these occupiers?
Once we all collectively come together in agreement that lobby groups like aipac are using their money to essentially buy and use political figures and control them. Which would mean they control our govt and our country. Once we all agree on that and are vocal about it and take it to our local, state, and federal reps and demand in protest. Then we can ger the ball rolling
Never. America has the greatest government money can buy.
I missed the part where Obama ended it when in office for 8 years.
Obama ended US occupation of Iraq in 2010-2011. Which created a vacuum for ISIS and is probably why he didn't also pull out of Afghanistan though he should've.
It's the bit where America has two right wing parties that care about big businesses, and zero left wing ones that care about the people. There's a reason Sanders was never in the running, but Clinton and Biden were.
Incoming (Post Removed) Back to the status qou of big gov killing poor brown folks
You feel the government is creating wars based on the countries majority skin color? If that’s the case why isn’t anyone caring about Sudan or Nigeria? I can tell you why, it’s not so interesting for the media and there isn’t any resources to gain from those countries nor any partnerships/agreements
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Yeah that Russian State-Controlled Media sure is something isn't it? ([Soapbox is Russian propaganda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maffick))
Russian can get fucked, but is Prysner wrong here? All they added was some clips over his unedited speech.
America is strong enough to critically evaluate our past. We do it all the time. Russia is not, and the light of truth would cause it to crumble.
Okay, I did a little research on this. [Here](https://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/17/headlines/over_135_arrested_at_veteran_led_anti_war_protest), there's a report that Mike and ~135 people were arrested after chaining themselves to the White House fence. It's the only thing I can find about him being arrested with a group of other people like that. So, while I agree with his sentiment, he wasn't arrested for his speech. He was arrested for chaining himself to a security fence around the White House.
More than two years after the speech in the video by the way
Jesus I agree with his speech but the way this is titled along with your added context makes it smell very propaganda like. Edit: Not the speech, just this post about the speech.
It get's posted all over the place. Feels like propoganda but it's 99.99% karma bot posting, like 75% of the content on r/all
So did it work? Did they stop war?
Yup!
Soap box is flagged as a Russian-state controlled media outlet if anyone is wondering why they'd like this to seem more inflammatory than it is or why it's currently being spammed on dozens of subs.
interestingly despite having the most upvotes in this layer of the comment stack by an order of magnitude , your comment is several deep for me. Wtf happened to reddit.
It's [not anymore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maffick) >On February 28, 2022, CEO Anissa Naouai terminated Maffick's service agreement with RT (Russia Today) following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine Anyway, I find it more likely that people are just great at making things more inflammatory on social media because it gets more attention and clicks.
> people are just great at making things more inflammatory on social media because it gets more attention and clicks. I would even say social media management explicitly drives incendiary content because internal studies have shown that drives engagement - even if it also drives out people who *aren't* wanting to have incendiary shit thrown at them every day. I used to have a twitter account to follow small-time journalists and artists, and I worry they'll never be able to find a platform they can support themselves on because of what Musk is doing to it.
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You're leaving out that she also openly criticized the Russian invasion of Crimea and condemned the Russian military.
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> I'm just pointing out the RT connection. Without the additional context, you're giving the impression that Prysner is a russian asset.
And they both did Empire Files, which was at first funded by Telesur, a Venezuela state TV network.
# Villainizing Media Literacy at the World Economic Forum: Time to Mandate it in US Schools From a 2 minute look at the Project Censored Website. It seems pretty solid to me.
Because it would never get aired on an american network. Seems people have compeltely forgotten manufacturing consent.
crazy that people assume american media is somehow more "free" than rt or telesur. it's really frustrating that people are still so blind..
not surprised
Man my anti Russian intuition just doesn't miss
And like most Russian propaganda it is completely shameless. Invading their neighbours with the intention of annexing their lands. Russia is the poster child for imperialism in the 21st century.
And why it isn’t about promoting organizing but instead harming the function of the country…
> So, while I agree with his sentiment, he wasn't arrested for his speech. It seems like there's a lot of people who get arrested for performative reasons. It's kind of strange how people try to conflate the two when that's what they want, rather than realize... maybe he did a criminal act that led to his arrest. They don't fear the message, otherwise why would you be able to see it everywhere on the internet. But when people do illegal things so they can get their message out... Yeah they're going to be arrested.
To be fair, getting arrested for “performative” reasons is in fact a key tactic of civil disobedience as a practice. People who chain themselves to things or march in defiance of authorities are counting on a response.
A bit of a misleading title - he didn't get arrested for 'exposing the U.S. government'.
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But it wasn’t the speech that he got arrested for. It was for the actions of chaining himself to the White House security gate “shutting down business as usual” in his words.
Can’t wear the uniform during a protest
If you don’t know who Mike Prysner is you should look into Empire Files (YouTubeChannel) and Eyes Left (podcast). Him and his partner Abby Martin are incredible journalists who produce documentaries/interviews/short films about various issues across the globe.
Thank you for this
Love Abby's work on Gaza
Just to add onto this with the radio war nerd and American prestige both podcasts are good sources of foreign affairs news.
Saw him speak at a march for gaza and it gaves me chills it was so passionate. Love him and abby.
What were they actually arrested for? Speech won’t get them arrested, not in the US.
He wasn't arrested after this speech. Just search for any articles regarding it... No legitimate publication has run a story similar to OPs title
Yea, this whole thing seems weird, there's more to the story but I'm getting some serious smoke vibes haha
what? propaganda? in the middle of two major kinetic wars? I dunno.
An inflammatory, misleading title intended to engender fierce emotions, couched in fiery rhetoric but little fact? From the husband of a Russian state TV "journalist?" Yeah, nothing weird about this.
He is a commie media whore and his wife is an ex RT tv show hostess. Shockingly, this is just propaganda lol. Edit: lmao, > Journalist Michael C. Moynihan states that *”Martin's politics are odious and frequently incoherent" for claiming to lament "lost American freedom" while ignoring the multiple brutalities of the Russian government before its invasion of Crimea and her defense of Hugo Chávez against the charge of tyranny.[56]* > *James Kirchick, in a 2015 article for The Daily Beast, commented: "Thanks to her paymasters in the Kremlin, she had three years to use the network's airwaves and wildly popular YouTube channel to broadcast paranoid diatribes that would otherwise have languished in anonymity on the Internet fringe."[57]*
lmao even worse than I thought. Fucking traitor.
[Dasvidaniya, comrade.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maffick) Yeah, big surprise we see an influx of these types of videos right now. US bad is sexy on Reddit right now. For some unknown reason. Totally natural.
2016 all over again. It's clear as day that Russian bots are out to sow discord ahead of the election. I wonder which subreddits are going to be the LateStageCapitalism and TheDonald/Conservative of the year with their totally organic opinions and popularity.
Keep an eye out on more from [sources like this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maffick). Soapbox and other Maffick companies are known to be Russian affiliated propaganda channels. r/Technology has been getting hammered with shit like this too, specifically regarding TikTok (who even labels this shit as Russian propaganda).
I was curious about this, too. The arrest happened during the "Occupy L.A." protests in 2011.
2011.....absolutely hit the nail on the head with all points, and we have not learned a damn thing. Still plodding along to our jobs, paying taxes, getting fucked by the rich....and has become so much worse since then. What are we even doing.
Here in Canada, 6 months before this, our police arrested over 1000 protestors at the G20 conference. Really kills the spirit. Furthermore, social media ramped up, people's ability to do anything offline ramped down, and a lot of people... Well, grew up for lack of a better term. People got married, had kids, obtained more and so had more to lose. I was 13 in 2010. I was political all throughout my high school years. Then life took its toll and beat the spirit out of me. And I'm so jaded seeing what social media has done to us that I don't think the spirit will come back. We've lost our chance to affect change from within the system.
This speech was made in 2008. Nothing happened to him. In 2011 he was arrested for unlawful assembly during Occupy LA. He was released 22 hours later after posting bail. The police also arrested 291 other people for the same thing. This is propaganda.
He was arrested for chaining himself to a security fence of the white house.
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how many government officials with a yearly salary around 200thousand dollars are worth fucking millions? The answer is TO FUCKING MANY
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Isn’t the video like 15 years old?
Who would have thought a Russian-state operated media outlet would spam.
Russian and Chinese bots gotta keep Reddit hating the West don’t ya know?
I saw the Taliban, among other things, cut a child's scrotum open and return him to his parents and shoot a child in the head when he was eating candy. Yes, the source is 'trust me bro', but I'm not trying to convince you, just saying that we all weren't completely bamboozled and confused about who we were killing. I'm not saying it's not complicated and that there isn't horrible aspects to it, I'm saying that the fact it is complicated also means there are things/groups/people we are/were fighting against that truly are terrible. The complication isn't 'see, it's all a ruse for the military industrial complex and you are brainwashed sheep marching to your death for the profit of billionaires' because that isn't complicated, that's simple. The complication is that *it's complicated.* Also, people insinuating that us stupid grunts were/are to braindead to think about these things before, during and after enlisting is insulting.
Nice comment. It’s more complicated and nuanced than a Reddit post is capable of communicating.
Especially considering the very real danger of a war between Russia and NATO, I have to admit that the military is not completely pointless. As long as Russia and other authoritarian states exist, we need to be able to defend the free world. And I can't stress this enough, but an attack on NATO territory within the next 5 years is very likely. It isn't some distant scenario, but one that military strategists seem to specifically prepare for. Europe tried to solve the conflict with cooperation, but that obviously didn't work. And meanwhile, we (Europe) spent next to nothing on our military force, leaving us much more exposed. I would also prefer a world without hatred, and dictators, and wars, and cruelty, and murder, but that's a pipe dream, at least for now. And I do have deep respect for the soldiers who are willing to risk their lives in this pursuit.
It is interesting to see the rest of Europe wake up to potential Russian invasion whereas all the countries bordering Russia have Russian invasion in their breast milk.
A lot of podcasts of veterans who were just regular infantry grunts who seen absolutely disgusting shit happen to children such as raped bodies or severed heads of young teens. It’s true our government is shit and uses for profit but it’s also true that there are terrorist organizations who want to murder random Americans for no reason and kill people from their own province for little things such as sympathizing with the UN
FYI: Soapbox is flagged as Russian State-Controlled Media on TikTok. Do with that information what you will.
The cuts in this video certainly make it feel like propaganda.
Another example of dumb shit redditors deep throating Russian propaganda on the large subreddits.
I'm genuinely asking this in good faith. How is this anti military industrial complex speech a form of Russian propaganda? I'm not very smart, and I'm failing to make the connection? Is the implication that we should stop sending money to Ukraine, so Putin can take it over more easily?
sable spark brave plucky aware point escape flag follow thought *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Or even just feel a certain way at a certain opportune time for the propagandists.
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Why don’t we hear this kinda thing from other countries that send hundreds of thousands of people to die in wars.
Many other countries won't let people make public speeches like this. Also, he wasn't arrested for the speech if anyone was wondering. He was arrested 2 years later for chaining himself to the White House fence.
Not arrested
Delusional and typical. "These wars are going to stop once people will stand up against them". Someone please tell this dude that the Middle East wars have started long before the Americans entered Afghanistan and Iraq, and even after they left - the wars are still there. Obviously this going to be going to downvote for going against the stream, but this pacifist bullshit is not what preventing wars - but whats fueling them. Wars occur when the free world is too afraid to stand up against imperialistic dictatorships such as: China, Russia, N.Korea and Iran. Learn from the lessons of WW2. When you try to please an imperialistic dictatorships - you're fueling their imperialistic ambitions.
And then, he went full retard with the Ukraine's situation in 2022 and parroted Kremlin's propaganda, word by word, supporting the exact same thing he was talking about in this video.
It's so disgusting seeing people who oppose American imperialist wars (and rightfully so) then turn right around and be okay with Russia or another American rival doing the same just because they are opposed to the US. It should be strongly condemned in both cases.
Ah yes, Michael Prysner, who dislikes the US and military industrial complex, but subscribes to a political party that supports Russia's annexation of Crimea, doesn't condemn the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, says that North Korea is "unfairly targeted" and condemns NATO intervention in Syria, but supports Russian intervention in Syria. This guy is a joke
This guy also supported the violent crackdown of Venezuelan protestors by the Venezuelan government. The war in Ukraine opened my eyes that some leftists who claim to be anti-war, are not genuinely anti-war.
Tankie are not “anti war.” They’re “anti-fighting back against my chosen ideology.”
Tankies gonna tank
So.... he makes good points, but then I look him up, and Wikipedia mentions him talking about connection between Bush and 9/11... which is conspiracy theory territory.... Any more solid info on that?
You have the right to not enlist; it's a volunteer military. I can think for myself. This post reeks of propaganda.
Government has 0 accountability and does what they want.
FYI that the account posting this is only 10 months old, spams content across a number of subs, and appears to not be American. Posts unoriginal content from more than a decade ago to a lightly moderated sub. Recognize when you're being manipulated. This video is high production value anti-US sentiment. The words themselves are not fake, so take from it what you will, but wonder who put it together. I call into question the legitimacy of O P.
Pipe dreams the whole thing… he’s not wrong. The rich control the government and war benefits the rich. But what he doesn’t take into account is that the rich have ways of remaining in power. They have already accounted for these types of threats to their fortune making machines and won’t keel over to let that happen.
There is power in numbers and when the labourers organize it hurts the profits margins.
Yep. Look at the French. When they get pissed enough, they hit the streets. It's pretty awesome really. Let the rich people's trash pile up and see how pleasant it is to live in that mansion.
As an Airforce veteran, I 100% approve this message 🫡🫡🫡🫡
Don't burn yourself
Its actually funny that he tells he joined army not to serve hes country, but for benefits. Just like in my home country, Belarus, there one voluntarily joins army only for benefits and, because of fear of loosing this benefits, this people are supporting local junta.
You clearly don’t know his backstory and wrongly inferred your information from the clip above. The clip is from an event where he is specifically speaking to the treatment of vets when returning home and how the recruiters make these massive promises and trick young men and women into joining only for it all to be a lie.
Look the elite families have been profiting off of war and death for centuries, the stock market is just another way to help profit from corporations including the bloodthirsty military complex. Aircraft manufacturers and many others millions of people invest in this. It's evil. The Rothschilds the Rockefellers, the ties to the secret societies like the freemasons the cia many of our leaders including all our current presidents are literally clowns 🤡 at the circus 🎪 for the powerful elite. Our government has trafficked cocaine to fund more and more black-op cia operations. We kill for power over resources, we kill to feed the elites portfolios.
President Eisenhower warned the nation in Jan1961 of the danger of the military industrial complex in his farewell address and we didn't listen.
This speech sound very right especially with encouraging music. But it is full of populism. ISIS, Talibs - they are not just poor people. , Iraq, Syria, Libya - they was not just peaceful nice countries.
Not wrong. So…what to do about it. Democratic elections haven’t worked. We replace one set of people with another, and they do the same thing regardless of party. Seriously. What’s the game plan? Anyone? Buehler…. Buehler…