The United States Empire as a Configuration of Dots

As Jimmy Dore points out, each dot is a United States Military base, part of our Department of DEFENSE.

This is called Empire. This is imperialism. These are all the military bases the United States has around the world. You know, no other country has this just the United States as this. Nobody else does this. China, Russia. They don't have bases all over the world. Who does? We do, because that's how capitalism ends up.

You have to use a gun to keep it going. And you have to become fascists, which is what Joe Biden did to the railroad workers when he crushed her railroad strike. That's called fascism. The stuff that they that you hear all the time and on TV as fascism isn't. That was actual fascism. And this is why our country is going down the shitter and we're ending like all great empires. And we're overextending militarily while we won't take care of our own people at home.

We just said $15 billion, which could take care of everybody here in the United States. We just send it to Ukraine with no debate, no talking about it. And we're we just built another military base in Syria. We built three more in the Philippines just in the last couple of months. That's where your money's going. Because your government is 100% corrupt. Not regular corrupt. It's 100%. corrupt. This is called corruption. You see this? Do you know what this is called? This is called a trillion dollars a year in corruption because that's all this is. These military bases are there to make sure American corporations can extract natural resources from these places. Look at all the bases we have outside of China. Look at this. Here comes South America, Central America. Look at that! Imagine if China had these many bases in South and Central America or anywhere? Imagine if China had all these bases in the Middle East Imagine.

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Someone Please Explain These Developments on FISA and the Non-Stop Funding of Wars

Matt Taibbi is flummoxed. So am I. Any curious person would be. Matt tries to explain what happened in he recent article: "A Saturday Massacre in CongressOn a Saturday to mark and remember, congress funds two wars and hands the intelligence agencies sweeping new surveillance power, getting nothing in return."

Please. Someone tell me who is moving the levers of power in DC and how?  Matt Taibbi offers this:

Mike Johnson is now Winston Churchill. All he had to do was give the NSA unlimited spying power, overrule constituents about funding two wars, and support allowing government to block a platform used by 60 million Americans.

In return he got: nothing. No immigration reform, no articulation of benchmarks or a plan for success in Ukraine, no accounting for past spending, no insistence on warrants to spy on Americans, no concession that FISA can only be reauthorized by Congress, no claw-back of a major new “Everybody is a Spy” surveillance ask. Johnson traded his starting lineup for the proverbial bag of balls.

History will look back at a moment below from April 12th, just before the House passed FISA, and wonder about a last comment from Johnson. The Speaker talks about being originally horrified by the “terrible abuses, hundreds of thousands of abuses” of FISA by the FBI.

But “then when I became Speaker, I went to the [secure briefing room] and got a confidential briefing” from intelligence officials, and heard “sort of the other perspective on that.” It “gave him a different perspective.”

Regarding FISA, Reason explains what was at stake in an article titled "Revised Section 702 Surveillance Authority Poses More Danger Than EverNew language could make almost anybody with access to a WiFi router help the government snoop."
If this became law, millions of American small business owners would have a legal obligation to hand over data that runs through their equipment," caution former Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R–Va.) and former Sen. Mark Udall (D–Colo.), both now with the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability. "And when they're done with doing their part in mass surveillance, these small businesses would then be placed under a gag order to hide their activities from their customers."

It seems like Glenn Greenwald is thinking more bad things are happening than he is willing to articulate at this time. Consider this part of Glenn's monologue: [More . . . ]

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United States Sends Troops to Israel

This horrifies me. This (and Ukraine) is what happens when anyone (in this case Democrats) fill their cabinets with the types of neocons (such as Anthony Blinken) who dragged us into the Iraq war. This is why Biden will not have my vote even if the world avoids nuclear annihilation prior to the next election. Nor will Trump have my vote.

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With the Democrat Party Fully Captured by the Foreign Policy “Blob,” Populist Republicans Lose a Key Battle on FISA

I have increasingly turned to Mike Benz to help make sense of America's obsessive and unnecessary warmongering. Joe Biden, his neocon cabinet and the DNC have already capitulated to the war state. Among the Democrats, there's no need any more to discuss whether a war is truly necessary. No need to weight the pro's and con's. No need to concern ourselves with the possibility of nuclear war. No need to ask whether the American treasury should be allocated to (massive) domestic needs. We always need more war. Full stop. But why? What is the end game? How does this pro-war ideology benefit ordinary Americans? It doesn't. As George Carlin stated so succinctly,

In this video, Mike Benz explains the big picture. I have created a transcript of Mike's comments at Real America's Voice. On a daily basis, I fear that his assessment is accurate.

Note 1:  When Mike is using the term "the Blob," (as set forth in the third paragraph) he is referring to the internationalist side of the U.S. government associated with big international businesses associated with the energy market associated with the military. .

Note 2: "The Atlantic Council has seven CIA directors on its board. A lot of people don't even know that seven CIA directors are still alive, let alone all concentrated on the board of a single organization. That's kind of the heavyweight in the censorship industry." - Mike Benz

Natalie Winters:

On this as of course, Mike Benz who I'm so honored that last minute he was able to come on, Mike, I honestly just want to toss it to you your kind of thoughts on this whole FISA debacle. If you want to start with the press conference that we just saw, or even just the forthcoming Monday vote, what you think's gonna happen?

Mike Benz:

I share an identical rage that I feel that emanating from you here for him to take to the press conference like that and and pivot to the border reciting all of the principles, "If we don't have a border, we don't have a country." Well, you know, what if we don't have a secret police in this country, a political police in this country, we don't have a country? You know, this idea that "Oh, don't worry about it. There's checks and balances on it now."

No, there's not. It's an empty check. It's a blank check for the FBI to do whatever it wants and it's bluster instead of balances. FISA is as a Senator Mike Lee said it best federal investigators stalking Americans, and there's something very sick and twisted about what's happening right now with the FISA fight. visa vie, the Republican Party. The Republican Party is in the middle of a civil war between the internationalist sect of the GOP, the Blob side of it, versus the nationalist wing of the GOP, the populist faction, and Pfizer will not be used on the blob side, the internationalist side of the GOP, that side of the GOP associated with big international businesses associated with the energy market associated with the military. In that empire managerial class of the GOP, FISA is not an issue to them. It won't be used on them, but it will be used on their opposition in the GOP Civil War. Every single right-wing populist nationalist Republican is a target of FISA. FISA is this idea that you can get around the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, and use the Department of dirty tricks powers that our foreign policy establishment has to spy on foreigners, to spy on Americans if you simply use the word counter intelligence instead of intelligence. "We're not doing intelligence spying on our own people. We're doing counter intelligence spying on our people, because they might be being spied on by Russia."

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Ukrainian Children Shoved Into the Meat-Grinder

Here's something you will never see on the U.S. corporate media outlets that cheer-leaded the U.S. into supporting this miserable carnage.

All of this could have been avoided, but Joe Biden and his crew of neocons who supported the Iraq debacle (Victoria Nuland and Anthony Blinken) crave endless war (and see here).

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