Currently reading 'The Failure of Representative Government and the Solution' by Mike Gravel. Back in 1971, he published the Pentagon Papers (detailing US government lies about the Vietnam War) as a book.
Here are some excerpts:
"China is not a military threat to the United States! Proof of Chinaβs intentions is the fact that it has about 250 nuclear weapons as opposed to the sixty-five hundred US nuclear weapons. If China has any thought of going to war with America, it is not reflected in its military expenditures, which amount to about 15 percent of the US military budget. Though China is not a military threat to the United States, it is an economic threat, scheduled to surpass the United States economically in the next two decades. This gives rise to what is referred to as the Thucydides trap. The ancient historian Thucydides wrote: βIt was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made the Peloponnesian Wars inevitable.βOver the course of history, we have seen twelve instances where an ascendant power threatened an established power and where that competition resulted in war. Four other ascendance challenges ended peacefully. We now refer to these sixteen competitive contests as Thucydides traps. We are now in the full-blown throws of a Thucydides trap. China threatens the US global economic hegemony. Will it end in war? The fact that China is not expanding its military power to match its global economic reach gives us some indication of what to expect. China has one aircraft carrier and is building a second. The United States has eleven aircraft carriers. China has dredged up islands bordering the South China Sea to defend a waterway vital to Chinaβs survival. It carries one-third of the global maritime trade of more than $5 trillion. Of that total, $1.2 trillion is with the United States. These new islands are essentially stationary, unsinkable aircraft carriers focused on the defense of free trade in the South China Sea. China has no overseas presence other than a military base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa to protect its commercial shipping from pirates on East Africaβs coast. The United States has considerably more than a hundred military bases around the world. The Defense Department has carved up the entire world into military commandsβrationalizing a need for generals and admirals in numbers that exceed the number of flag officers in the Second World War when we had twelve million men and women under arms. Unifo
... keep reading on reddit β‘
He read the Pentagon Papers on the record, fought to end the draft for Vietnam, and pioneered the concept of a guaranteed income on the national stage.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-mike-gravel-alaska-government-and-politics-49428bf81c2081f064d1fa8fd05a26a1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Gravel?wprov=sfti1
Edit:
This is probably my most favorite clip of him.
There is a new FUD hit piece going on around BTC, spread by an account posing as "Gravel Institute". The hit piece is just old regurgitated talking points that have been debunked a thousand times over and have been doing the rounds since 2011 alteast - No government backing, only used by drug dealers, too volatile, no one uses it etc.
The funny thing is that the account spreading these attacks is the account of Sen. Gravel, now named as "Gravel Institute". This Institute was apparently founded by Sen. Mike Gravel in his last days in 2019, when Sen. Gravel was 89 years old, by those same teenagers who ran his 2020 Presidential Campaign. Safe to say that at 89 years old, Sen. Gravel didnt have much to do with this so called Gravel Institute. Even wikipedia says that "The Gravel Institute is mainly run by Henry Williams, David Oks, and Henry Magowan, the teenagers who ran Gravel's 2020 presidential campaign. Gravel himself, who was 90 years old when the institute launched, was not involved in day-to-day operations but served as a consultant and provided advice."
However, there is more.. even before Sen. Gravel's passing away, his twitter accounts has been spreading propaganda and lies, and someone managed to directly ask Sen. Gravel about the content posted by his own account.
Sen. Gravel's account tweeted that "Americans should hang their head in shame" regarding abandonment of Kurds. When asked about it, Sen. Gravel said that no, he does not think Americans should hang their head in shame. Finally when put to him that his own account tweeted this, he then categorically disowned this account. He said "This quote appears to come from me, but doesnt come from me in this regard. And the fact that these teenage kids have views that are not vetted by years of experience is self evident"
While Gravel was more forgiving towards these kids attitude (even though, right at that time, the actions of these kids using Senator's account to spread their narrative amounted to nothing but elder abuse), the fact that these kids still continue to use Sen. Gravel's account post his death, to spread lies and propaganda on issues that Sen. Gravel really had no opinion on, is nothing but stealing his identity for their own selfish interest. These bunch of nothing kids have no right to use Senator's name to spread their own propaganda. Its actually shameful and a damn disgrace that they spread such lies by using the name of a well regarded Senator.
[Video of Mike Gravel dis
... keep reading on reddit β‘
He read the Pentagon Papers on the record, fought to end the draft for Vietnam, and pioneered the concept of a guaranteed income on the national stage.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-mike-gravel-alaska-government-and-politics-49428bf81c2081f064d1fa8fd05a26a1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Gravel?wprov=sfti1
Edit:
This is probably my most favorite clip of him.
