There was an interesting story reported on Sputnik News---wholly ignored by our own Corporate Media---about a stupid plan by some Tech Company to sell cemetery plots on the Moon. The story is really more telling because of NASA's response to objections about the project. NASA spokesxhe Joel Kearns said: "We recognize that some non-NASA commercial payloads can be a cause of concern to some communities. Those communities may not understand that these missions are commercial and they're not US Government missions like the ones we're talking about."
In other words, as the article summed up, "the US agency was powerless to intervene against the private companies." We've been seeing a lot of this lately. The US Secretary of Defense goes to the Intensive Care Unit for a week, and nobody thought that important enough to tell anyone about. Bill Gates launches a mass-marketing of 'alternative' dairy products---and doesn't even bother getting FDA approval. This same Gates NGO is engaging in a massive deforestation project---not a word of objection from the Department of the Interior. There are many examples of these: the Corporate Oligarchs are free to impose their wills on the environment, the economy, engage in social engineering and conduct both foreign and domestic policies and the so-called Elected Officials are unable or unwilling to do anything about it and hide behind the excuse that they have no authority over the free market and private enterprise. That, of course, is a complete lie: as we saw during the Scamdemic the State certainly isn't reticent to interfere with free trade when it involves us little people; but then too Wall Street got a free pass.
All of these things naturally have an impact on actual National Security---not 'National Security' as commonly meant by politicians and propagandists. The verminous Media and revolving-door Academics use the term whenever their Corporate Masters need to restrict Civil Liberties or start a war to protect their vested interests. Actual National Security is exactly the opposite: that is about protecting civil liberties and promoting free trade and world peace.
Another story that went under the MSM and Controlled Opposition news headlines this weekend was an announcement by China that it was imposing further sanctions on US defense contractors who are manufacturing critical materials in China. This follows April's sanctions against Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin. Let's see if we can guess what happened next:
"According to a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Pentagon relies on a handful of contractors for critical parts and materials, leaving the military vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. In recent years, supply chain disruptions caused by natural disasters, geopolitical tensions, and the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the Pentagon's vulnerability to such events. The GAO report also highlighted the Pentagon's inadequate monitoring of its suppliers, which has resulted in poor-quality parts and counterfeit products making their way into the military's inventory."
What a surprise! There were a few of us warning back when the GOP-Controlled Congress couldn't assist the Clinton and Bush Administrations' outsourcing of our manufacturing base and military services out the highest bidder that this could happen. Of course, those warnings were met with sneers about putting on our tin-foil hats and learning how to code; but now it seems as though countries like China can throttle our Military Machine simply by freezing assets and sanctioning exports of critical materials which happen to be on their own soil. This wasn't a concern back then: that bottom line and fat stock returns were all that mattered. That includes Republican politicians like Senator Steve Daines who became a multi-millionaire outsourcing American jobs to China, but is now a prominent anti-China 'hawk' now that his assets and those of his Corporate owners are threatened.
Let's take a look at the five companies that China has taken out of the picture:
BAE Platform Systems and Services: "a large provider of tracked and wheeled armored combat vehicles, naval guns, naval ship repair and modernization, artillery and missile launching systems, advanced precision strike munitions and ordnance, and other technologies for the US," according to Wikipedia.
Alliant Tech Systems: part of Northrup-Grumman's Corporate Empire. Designs and manufactures aerospace technology including "tactical missiles, defense electronics, and medium- and large-caliber ammunition. The division also produces fuzing and warheads for both tactical missiles and munitions; precision metal and composite structures for medium and large-caliber ammunition, military aircraft, ground vehicles, and missile systems; load, assembly, and pack (LAP) of medium caliber munitions; and propellants and powders for the canister and commercial markets."
AeroVironment: "The company is the US military's top supplier of small drones."
Viasat: "a provider of high-speed satellite broadband services and secure networking systems covering military and commercial markets."
Data Link Solutions: manufactures data-link software used by the US Navy and Air Force to coordinate communications between military bases.
"The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Sunday that China has decided to impose sanctions on five US defense companies, including freezing movable and immovable assets and other types of property held within China, as well as prohibiting organizations and individuals within China from engaging in transactions, cooperation, and other activities with these companies," the Global Times reported. Maybe arming Taiwan and illegally patrolling the South China Sea when we rely on China to supply so much of our military equipment wasn't such a good strategy after all.
The problem---like it always is with these unaccountable self-appointed Elites---is that they live in an isolated echo chamber out of touch with Reality. They have a tendency---because of their Superiority Complexes and Machiavellian cynicism---to believe that everyone thinks like they do and that Human Nature is predictable. They're probably not even worried about these sanctions because they imagine that China will cave in because they assume that their political leadership thinks exactly like ours and will sell out the National Interest for money when the price is right. This arrogance and hubris has led them into one blunder after another: Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Palestine are three recent examples, and Taiwan won't be any different.
The Oligarchy's wretched attempts to shift blame and divert public attention was exemplified this weekend when Bloomberg News published a ridiculous fake-news story about alleged corruption in the Chinese Military. As for the so-called 'Conservatives' their only solution is to hold your nose and vote for a Neocon who'll ban Tik-Tok, shoot down Chinese weather balloons, and ban China from buying US farmlands.
The problem with all of these 'Conservative' critiques is that they're based in fantasy and not reality. It's easy to talk about decoupling from China; it's not so easy to talk about how we're magically going to produce a skilled workforce, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and train managers and engineers who'll bring our manufacturing sector back to what it was pre-1990. The same is true of these war-hawks: where exactly are we going to get the tough, Iwo Jima-type fighting men or the competent, well-trained officer corps to win all of these glorious wars and impose the Pax Americana? When one reads stupid statements coming out of supposedly Conservative intellectuals like "How in less than five years did our elite universities destroy meritocracy, abolish SAT requirements, require DEI oaths and pledges, and mirror the worst commissariat institutions of the old Warsaw Pact nations and Soviet Union?" it is clear that these people are being dishonest or are at least hopelessly out-of-touch. Anyone who seriously believes that the rot in Academia only started five years ago is hardly qualified to give an opinion on anything.
We've said here all along that our problems as a Society are fixable, but they are at root a spiritual, not a political problem. From a political standpoint, the only way that Conservatives can regain trust is by repudiating Neoconservatism, admitting that the Neocons have failed, and pledging to uphold the spirit of our laws instead of dreaming up new legislation and trying to own the Libtards. From a popular standpoint, the American people need to put down the hookah pipes, stop looking for scapegoats, start worrying more about the nation than about stock-margins; in short, start taking some responsibility for self-government instead of shifting it onto to institutions who only offer virtue-signalling. It is unlikely that this will happen; and most likely learning to code will be a less valuable skill than learning to speak Chinese.
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