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Like the F-35, US Latest and Most Expensive Aircraft Carrier Doesn't Work

Why does the US spend more on its military than the next largest several countries combined? One reason is that the military budget has far less to do with protecting the United States than it does to further enriching well-connected military contractors. Politicians are under pressure to push weapons systems, that in turn produce "jobs" for their districts. Remember, the disastrous F-35 fighter is built in 45 states and several foreign countries. This doesn't happen by accident. 

As former Pentagon analyst and keen observer Chuck Spinney points out, when it comes to the military budget, it's all about enormously expensive high-tech weapons systems that don't usually work. Little things like readiness and force strength take a back-seat. High-tech pays off well, with shiny things and bells and whistles impressing those who sign off on big contracts. Actually giving troops useful tools to win wars is much less exciting (and profitable).
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Intervention Fail: ISIS Makes Bloody Gains in Post 'Liberation' Afghanistan

Shortly after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 1996 (their rise to power itself a result of the 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan), we began to hear endless stories of the horrors of this student movement turned governing power. They ruled by Sharia law, they treated women badly, they even blew up ancient statues!

The US rhetoric against the Taliban began long before the attacks of 9/11 (which were carried out largely by Saudis who trained in Afghanistan with the knowledge of the Taliban). But it was the 9/11 attacks that opened the door to a direct US intervention in Afghanistan.
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Milestone: We've Just Dropped Our 50,000th Bomb on ISIS

In August, 2014, the US-led "coalition" began bombing Iraq and Syria to, in the words of President Obama, "degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIS.” For nearly two years -- despite President Obama announcing last November that ISIS was "contained" -- the bombing has continued unabated.

A milestone was reached this month, however, as the US coalition dropped its 50,000th bomb against Iraq and Syria. With each bomb costing on average somewhere around $50,000, those bombs have cost US (for the most part) taxpayers at least two and a half billion dollars. Factor in the cost of keeping the bombers in the air, the cost of training the pilots, maintenance, etc. and the cost skyrockets upward from there.
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Retaliation for Nice? France Bombs 120 Civilians in Syria

Just days after Tunisian-born French resident Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a truck into a crowded Bastille Day celebration in Nice, France, killing at least 84, a French-led bombing attack on the Syrian villages of Tokhar and Hoshariyeh today has reportedly killed more than 120 civilians. 

Mainstream media and even the rebel-friendly Syrian Observatory for Human Rights have confirmed the killings and the civilian victims today.
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Ron Paul: Currency Destruction Funds Wars


Ron Paul, who regularly challenged Federal Reserve Board chairmen as a member of the US House of Representatives' Financial Services Committee, continues to describe the problems the Federal Reserve causes. In his Monday column “Don’t Reform the Fed, Fed-Exit!” Paul writes that Federal Reserve-promoted inflation is a tax on average Americans, with “crony capitalists and big-spending politicians” the beneficiaries. But that is only part of the story. Paul contended, in an interview last week on the Turning Hard Times into Good Times radio show, that the central bank encourages war. In answer to a question from host Jay Taylor, Paul declares, “All wars, I believe, are financed, one way or the other, by inflation, the destruction of currency.”
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'Why They Didn't Fire Is A Mystery' - Coup Pilots Had Erdogan's Plane In Their Sights And Did Nothing

Looking back at the failed Turkish coup, one question that nobody has been able to answer is why, if the coup was indeed a serious attempt at government overthrow, did the organizers not do the first thing that military coups have done since time immemorial: either capture, or simply eliminate the existing ruler, the vacationing president Erdogan?

The following brief story will only add to the confusion (or maybe not).

As Reuters reports, at the height of the attempt to overthrow Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, the rebel pilots of two F-16 fighter jets had Erdogan's plane in their sights. And yet he was able to fly on.
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Judge Andrew Napolitano: ‘Reprehensible’ to Label Black Lives Matter as Terrorist Group

Speaking this week with host Jamie Allman on 97.1 FM radio in St. Louis, Missouri, former New Jersey state Judge Andrew Napolitano said it would be “reprehensible” to label Black Lives Matter a terrorist group. Some people have suggested such action in the wake of the killing of five cops in Dallas, Texas that overlapped with a Thursday nonviolent protest related to police brutality.
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Ron Paul: No Matter the Presidential Race Outcome, the US Is Going the Way of the USSR


Three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul, interviewed Tuesday on Fox Business, suggested that in the 2016 presidential race, in which Paul is not supporting any candidate, neither Democrat Hillary Clinton nor Republican Donald Trump is proposing a course of action that will fix the fundamental problems of the US government. These problems are severe, says Paul, who opines that “we’re witnessing” in American now “something similar to the breakup of the Soviet system” decades earlier. Paul says the Soviet Union system didn’t work then, just like the United States system doesn’t work now.
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