Bonum Certa Men Certa

War Machines

Chairman of the newly-created investment firm KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) Global Institute, formerly CIA Director

David Petraeus



Summary: War as an industry in search of investment, not a risk to be avoided

Wars are a sector; they are an industry. Every once in a few years there is a growth in demand and if there is no immediate demand, then the marketing pitch needs to change a bit, or new market segments discovered (new targets). Not too long ago, David Petraeus (CIA Director) feared the 'threat' of peace, so he identified a new market [1] and fueled yet another proxy war [2] which up until very recently [3] involved the CIA's manufacturing of 'rebels' [4,5], funneling weapons to some terrorists [6] (labeling only the victims terrorists [7]), and as usual covering that up with some more televised propaganda [8]. War criminals, especially those from the last major invasion, already have traveling limitations [9] as they can't rely on overzealous policing [10] even from violent police forces like Canada's.



A lot of people still overlook the CIA's war on Yemen, which simply radicalises the population there [11,12,13] because killing a person is not the same as killing hate [14]. Moderate news sites [15] -- not just US-hostile sites [16] have become very sceptical of this war on Yemen, which hardly solves the real problem [17]; instead it creates the problem. It appears as though rescuers are being killed by drones [18] (knowingly) and even innocent grandmothers lose their lives [19], leading to Amnesty International's involvement [20] (rare in this context). The CIA-friendly press acknowledges allegations that the numbers we are given about deaths by drones are bogus [21] and other corporate media acknowledges the failure of one recently-released pro-CIA (and anti-Wikileaks) propaganda film [22]. There are films that speak to real people, not actors [23], and these are the films which people ought to treat as accurate documentaries, as opposed to dramatised propaganda.

The CIA would like us to be fearful of the 'Red' armies (see [24]), but most of today's wars and deaths are in fact caused by covert wars or outright invasions designed to increase profits for the Western war industry. Always remember that war is a business; it's an orgasm-inducing explosion of money to some.

Related/contextual items from the news:



  1. Behind-the-Scenes Report Details How Obama Dragged His Feet on Syria


    A year later, Assad was still in power. At the first high-level talks on potentially getting involved in Syria's civil war, then-CIA Director David Petraeus laid out a plan to secretly arm and train groups of Syrian rebels in Jordan. Obama's advisers were split on the issue, and remained so throughout many subsequent discussions. The president appeared hesitant to intervene in Syria, or make a call one way of the other, even as new intelligence in early 2013 suggested Assad was using chemical weapons, and the rebels were losing. Per the Times:
  2. US Imperialism and the Proxy War in Syria
    Up until early September, it appeared that the Obama administration was about to order the bombing of Syria. However, on Monday, September 9, Secretary of State John Kerry made his now famous statement indicating that war could be avoided if Syria agreed to destroy its stockpiles of chemical weapons. Whether this statement was an off-the-cuff remark or a carefully planned diplomatic masterstroke—a maneuver so ingenious and subtle that even a Talleyrand would have been impressed—is not known. Given the confusion that found expression in the initial responses of State Department and White House spokesmen, the argument could be plausibly made that Kerry, who is not an especially intelligent man, had not thought through the implications of his response to a reporter’s question. On the other hand, an argument could be made that Kerry’s seemingly ad-libbed statement arose from secret discussions that had been held with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.


  3. US halts aid to Syrian rebels
    The United States has cut off northern Syrian moderate rebel groups from non-lethal aid, with an al-Qaeda advance in northern Syria physically blocking the aid’s dispersal, as the Obama administration continues to ‘disengage’ itself from Syria.


  4. CIA ramping up covert training program for moderate Syrian rebels
    The CIA is expanding a clandestine effort to train opposition fighters in Syria amid concern that moderate, U.S.-backed militias are rapidly losing ground in the country’s civil war, U.S. officials said.
  5. Report: CIA Ramping Up Covert Training Program for Syrian Rebels
  6. CIA Supplying Weapons To Syrian Rebel Groups Legally Classified As Terrorists By The U.S.
    The U.S. military’s involvement (or lack thereof) in the Syrian civil war that has been taking place over the past few years has been a point of contention both within the U.S. and around the world. After a chemical attack killed and injured thousands, the debate as to whether or not the Obama administration would respond with a military strike dominated discussion within the U.S. and the U.N. governing bodies.
  7. U.S. arming Syrian rebels, but refugees aiding them considered terrorists
    Authorized by Congress, the CIA has started sending weapons to Syrian rebels. But under a legal definition of terrorism adopted by the U.S. government after the Sept. 11 attacks, those same rebel groups are considered terrorist organizations.

    The designation could prevent some of the more than 2 million refugees who have fled Syria from coming to the United States, even if they haven’t actually taken up arms against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.


  8. Homeland nothing like real intelligence work, say CIA employees
    Homeland is nothing like the mundane reality of intelligence work, say former CIA staff members.


  9. Dick Cheney cancels Toronto trip, says Canada is too dangerous
    Former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney has cancelled an April appearance in Toronto citing concerns Canada is too dangerous.


  10. 13-year-old shot to death by police for open-carrying a toy rifle


  11. Former US Official: For Every Yemen Terrorist US Drones Kill, 40-60 New Enemies Are Created
    The list of former U.S. officials who believe drone strikes create more enemies than they eliminate juts got a little bit longer.
  12. US official: Every Yemen drone strike creates 40-60 new enemies
  13. Each drone strike creates at least 40 new militants - ex-State Dept. official
  14. Simply put, US drones kill
    Earlier this week, I opened the Daily Cal to find a harmless-looking sketch of a U.S. military drone flying in a purple sky. Under it, I saw the title “Drones make America safer.” After reading the op-ed piece written by political science student Blair Rotert, I felt absolutely compelled to stop studying for my midterms and write a response from my background as a peace and conflict studies major.

    The ultimate claim in the article was, “Simply put, drones are a more effective and efficient way to combat our enemies. What’s the point in opposing that?” Well, in direct opposition to that, I find it necessary for someone to present the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of drones.


  15. Using drones to kill people for doing calisthenics


    One reason US assertions of limited civilian casualties in drone strikes don't hold water.


  16. ‘Drone strikes killed more civilians than publicly acknowledged’ – UN investigator
    A UN report accuses the United States of downplaying the number of civilians killed in anti-terrorist drone operations, while failing to assist in the investigation by releasing its own figures.


  17. US drones strategy relies ‘too much on killing people, too little on solving the problems’
    US policymakers don’t even claim that all the targets of their drone strikes are posing a threat to the US, Phyllis Bennis, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, told RT.


  18. Drones kill rescuers in 'double tap', say activists
    Drones are often lauded for their supposed precision and accuracy. Sometimes, though, the machines - and their human operators - make mistakes, as two new reports from human rights organisations show.


  19. U.S. drone strikes killed Pakistani grandmother, laborers: Amnesty


  20. USA must be held to account for drone killings in Pakistan


  21. Drone strikes killing more civilians than U.S. admits, human rights groups say
    In Yemen, Human Rights Watch investigated six selected airstrikes since 2009 and concluded that at least 57 of the 82 people killed were civilians, including a pregnant woman and three children who perished in a September 2012 attack.


  22. Is ‘The Fifth Estate’s’ Box Office Bomb a Victory for Julian Assange?
    Just a week before the wide release of “The Fifth Estate,” the DreamWorks-produced WikiLeaks picture, Julian Assange accurately predicted how the movie would perform.

    “‘The Fifth Estate’ is going to fail,” he told the Hollywood Foreign Press Association via Skype from the Ecuador Embassy in London, where he has been residing in diplomatic asylum for more than a year.

    [...]

    Some have called the film’s dismal numbers a victory for Assange.


  23. WikiLeaks promotes 'Mediastan' documentary in US as 'The Fifth Estate' launches
    With WikiLeaks biopic The Fifth Estate launching today in the US, the organization will show its own competing film for free on the opening weekend. Mediastan, a documentary, is described as a "road movie" that follows WikiLeaks during its 2011 distribution of classified government cables. It's positioned as an antidote to The Fifth Estate, which praises WikiLeaks' overall mission but suggests the cable leaks were irresponsible and poorly planned. WikiLeaks has been consistently outraged through the hype cycle of both it and earlier documentary We Steal Secrets, and it's now getting a chance to go firmly on the offensive.


  24. Taiwanese soldiers wearing ballistic masks look like 'the cavalry from hell'




Recent Techrights' Posts

Disinformation and Marketing Spam From and For OIN (GAFAM's and IBM's Weapon Against Free Software Activists and Reformists Against Software Patents)
All in all, this anniversary is just a PR stunt with revisionism
Google Spreading Misinformation and Lies
Google is in the propaganda business
New Video Report About Microsoft Cancelling Multi-Billion Dollar Projects
direct link to the video
Microsoft is Already Laying Off Lots of Contractors
cost-cutting at Microsoft takes a new "edge"
 
Links 29/04/2025: Microsoft Infosys Layoffs, 'Popcorn Lung' With Vapers, Hong Kong Banning Possession of e-cigarettes in Public
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/04/2025: Hey-Hi (AI) Isn't Your Friend/Lover, Mastodon is a Mess, and Mandelbrot Programming
Links for the day
Just Sending More and More Threats Does Not Change the Fact We Got Abused for Many Years and Women Got Strangled
Wanting a "gag order" - or sometimes injunctions - by sending many threats
Links 29/04/2025: Water Scarcity, LLM Slop Backfiring Again in Legal Documents
Links for the day
statCounter: GNU/Linux Adoption Surging in Switzerland, Windows at All-time Low
What happened?
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: Free Speech and Perfectionism in Design
Links for the day
What Fake News Looks Like (IBM)
IBM told a lie. The media then just blindly repeated this lie.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 28, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, April 28, 2025
China is Already Culling GAFAM (Not Just Microsoft Windows)
OS monoculture or "OS hegemony" may be coming to an end
The "Telephone Operating System in the Vatican" is 95 Years Old, Vatican Moved to GNU/Linux
Maybe Microsoft is down to zero already
If Tesla Shares (and Alleged Value) Fell 55% (From $489 to $222) in a Few Months Maybe It's Not Worth Anything At All (It's Just Gambling)
Tesla swasticars have turned from a "status symbol" into a "public embarrassment" and cause for casual humiliation
Coming Soon: Microsoft Fake Results, Mass Layoffs, and Silence About All the People Microsoft Pressured to "Quit" (So That They Don't Get Counted as Layoffs)
there will be more mass layoffs
Chromebooks' Adoption in Sweden No Longer Depends on Schools
School breaks are when classrooms are shut
No, IBM is Not Investing $150 Billion in the US and It Doesn't Even Have That Kind of Money
Here we go again... media as a vehicle of lobbying and misinformation
Leak: The EPO's General Consultative Committee (GCC) Does Not Consult Staff on Crucial Matters and Bypasses the Administrative Council (AC) to Do Illegal Things
violations against the EPO's very staff
New Leaks Coming Soon, We Maintain 100% Record of Successful Resistance to Censorship
We won't be told what we can and cannot say (especially when it's true)
Central African Republic (CAR): Vista 11 is Only ~0.2% Market Share
99.8% to go!
BSD and GNU/Linux Replaced Microsoft in Secure Servers, All Microsoft Has Left is LLM Slop for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD)
the FUD machine never rests
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: A Simple Task Tracking and Auto-Prioritization Tool and Other Programs
Links for the day
Links 28/04/2025: Canada's Election, Pakistan-India Conflict
Links for the day
Speed of GNU/Linux
The media seldom speaks of the dangers of "proprietary software"
Glue Inside Your Pizza (or Why People Will Get Fed Up With Slop)
People are given "answers" from non-intelligence word dumpsters
Proprietary Windows Versus "Linux" News (Trying to Keep People on Windows, Never Exploring GNU/Linux)
Good editors know better how to recognise threats and not give them lip service
Ensuring That Every Computer User Anywhere in the World Can Take Control of All His or Her Computers
We must fight the people who attack general-purpose computing, in particular those who push this agenda very aggressively inside Linux
Links 28/04/2025: Cyberattacks Happening, Chatbots Disappointing, and "Free Speech Under Fire"
Links for the day
Phone Adoption Very Low in Vatican, Windows Usage Fell Nonetheless
Even in places where people still use desktops/laptops most of the time (and have access to these) Windows is gradually losing ground
GNU/Linux 9% in Cuba, Vista 11 Waning, Android Dominant
Microsoft has pretty much lost Cuba
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: Autism and Structural Navigation
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, April 27, 2025
What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: The Purge, the Cover-up, and the Witch-hunts
OSI has gone "full Microsoft"
In 24 Countries Observed by statCounter Vista 11 is Still Less Than a Quarter of Windows Users Despite All Other Versions Being 'Expired'
They ought to move to GNU/Linux
Links 27/04/2025: Pope Goodbyes, "Politics of Fear", Slop Redux and More Google Shutdowns (Google Debt Had Grown This Year)
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Serenity Dialectics, Hockey Jersey Ethics, and More
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Death of Nest Thermostats, Death of Metaverse
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Projects Workflow and Discovering Technology
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 26, 2025