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🇺🇸 🚨
UNITED STATES CONGRESS PASSES SERIES OF ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AND PRO-WAR BILLS DESPITE PUBLIC OPPOSITION
The United States Congress and Senate passed a series of bills, including three controversial anti-democratic and pro-war bills, two of which were tied together, on Saturday, bypassing public opinion and popular opposition to the profligate, pro-war, globalist, Neolib/Neocon agenda currently driving United States domestic and foreign policy.
Included in the bills passed was a bill to force TikTok to divest from its connections with China at risk of being banned immediately, which naturally was tied to a Foreign aid bill.
However, as even Republican Senator Rand Paul mentioned in an opinion piece in Reason Magazine, the Bill is almost certain to lead to more power for American political elites and their administrations to pressure companies like Apple and Google to further ban apps and sites that offer contradictory opinions to that of the invented narratives of the American Political class.
Before long, Americans, many of whom are already poorly informed, and heavily misinformed by their mainstream media, could lose access to critical information that contradicts the narratives of the United States government and corporate elites.
Horrifically, this only the start. The US Congress also extended the newly revised FISA spy laws, which gives the United States government the power to spy on the electronic communications of foreigners, while also conveniently sweeping up the conversations of millions of Americans, as we learned years ago thanks to the sacrifices of whistle blowers and journalists like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.
The new FISA Law goes further than this, however, granting US Intelligence agencies the power to spy on the wireless communications of Americans in completely new ways.
A recent Jacobin article describes these new powers as a, "radical expansion of government surveillance that would be ripe for abuse by a future authoritarian leader", or it could just be used by the authoritarian leadership we have right now, and have had for decades.
In fact, when one commentator described the new powers as "Stasi-like," Edward Snowden himself replied with a long post in which he remarked, "invocation of "Stasi-like" is not only a fair characterization of Himes' amendment, it's probably generous. The Stasi dared not even dream of what the Himes amendment provides."
The amendment in question just "tweaks" the current law's definition of an "electronic communication provider," which is being changed to "any service provider," something extremely likely to be abused by the government to force anyone with a business, a modem and people using their broadband to collect the electronic communications of those people, while also forcing their victims into silence.
The government could essentially force Americans to spy on other people and remain silent about it. Cafe's, restaurants, hotels, business landlords, shared workspaces all could get swept up into the investigations of the Intelligence agencies.
Worse still, because picking out the communications of a single user would be next to impossible, all of their victim's data would end up being surrendered to the authorities.
Sadly, the assault on Americans by their own political elites didn't end there, to top this historic day in Congress, at time when the United States public debt is growing at an astounding rate of $1 trillion every 100 days, US lawmakers also passed a series of pro-war aid packages to American allies (vassals) totalling some $95 billion.
Included in the foreign aid bill are aid packages totalling $61 billion for the Ukraine scam, $26 billion for Israel's special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, and $8 billion to the Indo-Pacific to provoke WWIII with China, at the same time we're also provoking a nuclear holocaust with the Russian Federation.
Also buried in these aid packages is the authorization for the United States government to outright steal the oversees investments of the Russian Federation, and thereby the Russian taxpayers.
Astonishingly, and in direct opposition to the wishes of their own voters, Republican support was won without the possibility of conditioning the aid to any kind of border security, this despite the issue being among the top biggest concerns of Republican voters.
Although much of the money is to be used replenishing the heavily depleted stocks of America's weapons and munitions, it remains unclear where the munitions are expected to come from, as US defense production has remained sluggish and slow to expand despite heavy investments and demand in recent years, despite the rapid urgency with which the policy elite describe the situation.
It bodes poorly for working Americans that only a relatively small handful of lawmakers opposed the bills, producing unlikely bedfellows like Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Mike Lee in the Senate, opposing the FISA bill.
While in the House, the loudest opposition to the foreign aid bill mostly came from populist Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie and Paul Goser. Only 58 Congresmembers voted against the Foreign Aid Bill in which the TikTok ban was tucked.
Not one word from American politicians about the need to raise the minimum wage, which hasn't been increased since 2009 despite considerable inflation, nor a word about America's endlessly growing homelessness crises, property crime increases, or the 40-year stagnation of American wages, the deterioration of infrastructure, and precious little was said besides complaints about border security over the immigration crises sparked by American Imperialist adventures and US sanctions.
What we've learned today is that we are highly unlikely to see any changes to the insane behavior of the US and its allies any time soon, neither with regards to the absolutely bonkers Neocon foreign policy leading us to the edge of abyss, nor the spending-for-the-rich/austerity-for-the-poor Neoliberal domestic policy of the last 45 years.
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@WorkerSolidarityNews
Blue: titles are opinion pieces or analysis, and may or may not contain sources.
So we’ve been learning about foreign aid programs in class like USAID, and this stood out to me, so figured I should compile this here: The USA is going to spend $42.8 Billion on foreign aid next year. That sounds like a lot of money right? Well a lot of people would agree, opinion polls show that US citizens generally think foreign aid spending is around 25% of the annual national budget. In reality, the spending is less than 1%. For reference, with those numbers, that means people think the annual budget would be $171.2 Billion, which is a LOT of money, but the department of defense’s annual budget in the US is $2.02 TRILLION. WITH A T. Let that sink in. That means that the DEFENSE spending of the government every year is 472 times what the average person thought that the TOTAL annual budget for the government was. This is insane, we are spending a ludicrous amount of money on the military, which is mostly used for unnecessary expenses, like the $177 million jets. We don’t even use the military either. We refuse to use this 2 trillion dollar per year organization to help aid countries suffering from genocides and wars. This money that could go to helping the poor, or paying off the national debt at the very least.
I don’t know how to tag this well, so I’ll do my best and tag this if you know relevant tags. Sources below, 2 .gov and 1 .edu that is politically fairly neutral and commonly accepted as credible.
The President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Budget Request for the Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development
George Ingram provides explanations for popular myths surrounding U.S. foreign aid policy and its impacts.
USAspending.gov
Al Jazeera English: US legislators question $735m arms sale to Israel: Report
Al Jazeera English: US legislators question $735m arms sale to Israel: Report.
Some legislators say most recent US deal could be used as leverage on Israel to end violence.
It amazes that the USA keeps believing others think their protestations for peace are honest and sincere.
🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏢💥 🚨
ISRAELI OCCUPATION FORCES CONTINUE TO BOMB DENSELY POPULATED CIVILIAN AREAS
📹 Terrifying scenes from the moment an American-made 2'000lb bunker-busting dumb bomb is dropped by the Israeli occupation army on the center of a civilian neighborhood in the Gaza Strip.
The United States House of Representatives passed on Saturday a military aid package for the Israeli occupation worth some $26.38 billion.
According to a report published by Al-Jazeera, the aid package breaks down into the following categories:
♦️ $5.2bn for replenishing "Israel's" stocks of interceptor missiles and rockets for air defenses.
♦️ $3.5bn for purchasing advanced weapons systems, including $1bn to expand weapons production in the occupied territories.
♦️ $4.4bn in other supplies and services to the Zionist occupation.
♦️ $9.2bn for "Humanitarian purposes," including in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
However, aid to UNRWA is strictly prohibited in the funding.
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@WorkerSolidarityNews
🇺🇸 🚨 THE US FOREIGN AID AND DEFENSE SPENDING RACKET EXPLAINED IN THREE GRAPHS
In three graphs, why the United States is clearly in extreme, rapid decline, and the evidence for why ordinary Americans will pay the price for the decades of perpetual-war policies in their own standard of living.
There's a reason why the minimum wage hasn't been raised since 2009. Why there's no money for schools, why our hospitals and doctors are a mess, why theres homeless people on every city's streets, including the mentally ill, the drug addicted, and veterans, no money to deal with out of control crime in American cities, the waves of constant immigration meant to destroy your wages... There's only ever money for more federal law enforcement, more war, more "foreign aid" aka corruption rackets for US vassal states.
During the very years we watched this decline take place, spending on foreign aid and defense spending have gone constantly upwards while wages declined and income Inequality skyrocketed.
The evidence for the betrayal of the American people by their corrupt elite is everywhere, and the debt we will be saddled with for generations is unimaginably large: $34.209 trillion at the time of writing this.
Every American will suffer the consequences for the imperialism of their elites, and in fact already are as displayed clearly by the flattening of US wage growth simultaneously alongside the increase in foreign aid and defense spending.
It's elites taking money out of your pocket, out of your retirement, your children's college education, your family's healthcare, your wages, your life, and putting it into the same super wealthy, billionaire elites who've wanted to kill social security and Medicare and use the US Military to enforce a system of control, impoverishment and censorship on all of us across the world. Or fund genocides, you know, whatever's profitable. 🇵🇸
It is nothing more than an old fashioned racket, an upward transfer of wealth, and it always has been.
@WorkerSolidartyNews
🇺🇲 🚨 NATIVE AMERICAN NAVAJO TRIBE ALARMED BY U.S. SPENDING ON FOREIGN AID
The Native American Navajo Tribe, the largest tribe to survive the genocide of native Americans, are deeply alarmed by U.S. plans to spend billions on Foreign Aid, while local tribes only receive a small fraction of that amount, according Justin Ahastin, Executive Director of the Washington office of the Navajo Nation Reservation, speaking to Russia's Ria Novosti.
“It is deeply troubling to see the federal government promising billions of dollars to foreign countries in the name of national security while the 574 tribes within its own borders receive a fraction of that support,” the Navajo Executive Director said, commenting on U.S. President Joe Biden's request for National Security assistance to Ukraine.
Ahastin focused on the enduring legacy of injustices targeting the native population of the U.S., including forced relocations and generations of exploitation.
“Today, the legacy of these injustices is evident in significant health disparities among our people, with cancer being the second leading cause of death on the Navajo Nation,” he told reporters.
Ahastin also emphasized the tribes disappointment that compensation amendments, which he called a necessary step in addressing long-standing health problems and societal disparities for the Navajo Nation and other tribes in the United States, and were later removed from the Defense Budget.
"Plus, the inadequate provision of basic services such as health care, education and infrastructure on tribal lands is a critical concern. Federal funding and resources are often insufficient or unavailable due to bureaucratic red tape, leaving many people without access to natural services," added the reservation representative, criticizing the “marginalized” position of the Navajos in policy decisions made by the US authorities.
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@WorkerSolidarityNews
The Washington Post: Power Up: Biden administration approves $735 million weapons sale to Israel, raising red flags for some House Democrats
The Washington Post: Power Up: Biden administration approves $735 million weapons sale to Israel, raising red flags for some House Democrats.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/17/power-up-biden-administration-approves-735-million-weapons-sale-israel-raising-red-flags-some-house-democrats/
Biden sends weapons to Israel and calls for a ceasefire?
