Reflect Refract, War in Iraq
I now disagree with some of what I've written in the past--or at least feel like I have a better understanding of some of the big picture and have stopped focusing so much on specific conspiracies. Though I still do think it's important always to recognize that the conspiratorial view of history is factually accurate.
People in power do indeed conspire to keep that power, they always have and they always will. Their first tactic is to become invisible via their ownership of mass media. Banks and monied incorporations own the world's governments, religions, and also ALL of the public's supposedly independent mass media news sources. Governments are subsidiaries of international corporate conglomerates. Follow the money, you'll see that this is 100% true. Their product is complicity in the consumer culture and their consumer is the world population. Wars are nothing but hostile business transactions. Different companies (vis a vis their ownership rights to governments) sacrifice "consumers" (people) to each other for larger market share. Typically in wars, those sacrificed in greater numbers are those who are less active consumers.
Example: In the early 90s, an estimated 100,000 Iraqis were killed in Desert Storm. About 200 American troops were sacrificed in that same conflict.In 2001, 3,000 Americans die in a brutal and tragic attack on the twin towers (regardless of you think who or what was responsible, we will not argue that it was indeed brutal and tragic). Between 2003 and 2009, an additional 5,000+ US soldiers are sacrificed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Between 2003 and 2009, as few as 100,000 and as many as 600,000 Iraqi civilians are sacrificed in war.
After some simple math, we now know that since 1990, in the two major Middle East wars, we've got at least 200,000 dead Iraqis (probably closer to 500,000, so let's go with 300K dead Iraqis and Afghans for the sake of argument), and less than 10,000 American casualties, and probably another 5,000 Western European casualties (data sources available in previously linked articles). In my view, the loss of one life is no less tragic if the human who owned that life was born in Baghdad or Brooklyn... The sheer loss of life in these wars is simply mind-boggling. It feels kind of morbid to break it down with objective analysis... but... The percent loss breaks down like this:
Casualties since 2003, sources above
Now let's consider the global GDP distribution by country, considering the % share for the involved parties.
(source)
The analysis, while morbid, does paint a pretty clear picture. The companies that own the US military (and use the financial system to funnel money to themselves via the their co-ownership of governments with the other international mega-conglomerate companies) are winning in their offensive against the people of the world in their endeavor to control more of our money by sacrificing vastly larger amounts of life of those people who are accustomed to consuming less.
Seems fairly clear to me... Loss of life is HUGELY skewed towards nations with lower GDP. Weapons manufacturers and military contracting companies being mostly international entities, which nation loses life is not their concern. Their concern is which nations' government and bank can they extract money from easily and in high volume. Makes sense that those nations which can keep funneling hundreds of billions of dollars per year to these companies always win the wars, and that those in power of multinational mega-conglomerate corporations profit in either case.
War is a cut-and-dry example of corporations asserting their power over nations and using human life as a bargaining chip. People/entities in power use that power to remain in power. Corporations continue to live by eating and breathing money. Many trillions of dollars in the world today exists solely due to banks and governments having created that money out of debt. Money, power, war.
Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson's nightmare: "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
(source)
People in power do indeed conspire to keep that power, they always have and they always will. Their first tactic is to become invisible via their ownership of mass media. Banks and monied incorporations own the world's governments, religions, and also ALL of the public's supposedly independent mass media news sources. Governments are subsidiaries of international corporate conglomerates. Follow the money, you'll see that this is 100% true. Their product is complicity in the consumer culture and their consumer is the world population. Wars are nothing but hostile business transactions. Different companies (vis a vis their ownership rights to governments) sacrifice "consumers" (people) to each other for larger market share. Typically in wars, those sacrificed in greater numbers are those who are less active consumers.
Example: In the early 90s, an estimated 100,000 Iraqis were killed in Desert Storm. About 200 American troops were sacrificed in that same conflict.In 2001, 3,000 Americans die in a brutal and tragic attack on the twin towers (regardless of you think who or what was responsible, we will not argue that it was indeed brutal and tragic). Between 2003 and 2009, an additional 5,000+ US soldiers are sacrificed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Between 2003 and 2009, as few as 100,000 and as many as 600,000 Iraqi civilians are sacrificed in war.
After some simple math, we now know that since 1990, in the two major Middle East wars, we've got at least 200,000 dead Iraqis (probably closer to 500,000, so let's go with 300K dead Iraqis and Afghans for the sake of argument), and less than 10,000 American casualties, and probably another 5,000 Western European casualties (data sources available in previously linked articles). In my view, the loss of one life is no less tragic if the human who owned that life was born in Baghdad or Brooklyn... The sheer loss of life in these wars is simply mind-boggling. It feels kind of morbid to break it down with objective analysis... but... The percent loss breaks down like this:
Casualties since 2003, sources above
Now let's consider the global GDP distribution by country, considering the % share for the involved parties.
(source)
The analysis, while morbid, does paint a pretty clear picture. The companies that own the US military (and use the financial system to funnel money to themselves via the their co-ownership of governments with the other international mega-conglomerate companies) are winning in their offensive against the people of the world in their endeavor to control more of our money by sacrificing vastly larger amounts of life of those people who are accustomed to consuming less.
Seems fairly clear to me... Loss of life is HUGELY skewed towards nations with lower GDP. Weapons manufacturers and military contracting companies being mostly international entities, which nation loses life is not their concern. Their concern is which nations' government and bank can they extract money from easily and in high volume. Makes sense that those nations which can keep funneling hundreds of billions of dollars per year to these companies always win the wars, and that those in power of multinational mega-conglomerate corporations profit in either case.
War is a cut-and-dry example of corporations asserting their power over nations and using human life as a bargaining chip. People/entities in power use that power to remain in power. Corporations continue to live by eating and breathing money. Many trillions of dollars in the world today exists solely due to banks and governments having created that money out of debt. Money, power, war.
Welcome to the Thomas Jefferson's nightmare: "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
(source)
posted by and i at 1:45 PM
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