MICHAEL WALSH SPECIAL REPORT. With its staggering $692 billion defence budget the U.S arms industry constitutes 43% of the world’s military expenditure. This is not far behind the value of Britain and Russia’s combined export trade. The financial resources and political clout exercised by this military behemoth’s lobbying apparatus dwarf many national interests and economies. These conglomerates, like the pharmaceuticals industries, are far more powerful and influential than are many governments.
The French surrendered to the Germans on June 22, 1940. The terms of the capitulation were unusual. The Germans permitted the new French administration, under Marshall Petain, to establish itself in the city of Vichy in the south and central France. From there, unoccupied independent Vichy France governed over half of the French landmass in the south of France whilst retaining their overseas colonies and their navy.
During World War II, between 1941 and 1945, 78 Allied Arctic convoys brought more than 4 million tons of provisions and munitions to the U.S.S.R. These deliveries played a crucial role in the Soviet war effort. More than 1,400 merchant ships and naval vessels participated in the convoys to the ports of Arkhangelsk and Murmansk in Arctic Russia, which Winston Churchill once described as “the worst journey in the world.”
Hungary’s popular Prime Minister has labelled the European Union’s plan to make access to funding conditional on the maintenance of the rule of law as blackmail. He then repeated what retiring Soviet President Mikhael Gorbachev said by likening Brussels to the Soviet Union.
GENOCIDE claimed the lives of 170 million martyrs during the 20th Century. The Soviet Union, Peoples Republic of China, the United States, and the United Kingdom are confirmed responsible for 164 million victims of genocide.’ ~ Source: R. J. Rummel, Power, Genocide and Mass Murder, Journal of Peace Research 31 (No. 1 1994).
Much has been said and written about Japanese brutality during the war in the Far East. However, little is said about Allied atrocities, which in brutality and magnitude invariably exceeded those of the Japanese.
I make no apologies for spurning the pomp and pageantry that bull-horns its way through Remembrance Sunday held at thousands of cenotaphs. There is much about war that knows no political or national boundaries. War is a monument to human frailty and duplicity, profiteering, individual acts of heroism and stupidity, but not strength.
The 1943 Bengal famine, which resulted in the death of over three million Indians, was a direct result of then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s policies and not drought.
Today the emphasis is on the riches in parliamentarians bank accounts. Not so long ago the ruling class were notorious for the richness of their language. Newspapers owners who really did challenge could also hold their own in any bout of verbal jousting.
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