Lockheed Martin generated $54 billion in U.S. government revenue in 2025.
Fifty-four billion dollars. From one company. In one year.
This is not a defense budget line item.
This is a structural relationship.
A company that size, dependent on government contracts that size, does not wait passively for the government to decide what weapons it needs.
It employs more lobbyists than most countries have diplomats.
It funds think tanks that produce the strategic frameworks that define what threats require what responses.
It employs retired generals whose job is to explain, on cable news, why the current geopolitical situation requires the capabilities Lockheed produces.
It has manufacturing facilities distributed across enough congressional districts that cutting its contracts would mean cutting jobs in enough members' home states to make the vote politically fatal.
The weapons do not exist because the threat was assessed and the weapon was deemed necessary.
In many cases, the threat is assessed, at least in part, by people whose income depends on the weapon being deemed necessary.
This is not conspiracy theory.
This is published lobbying data, publicly available employment records, and observable congressional behavior.
The question is not whether this happens.
The question is why it's not the first thing taught in every American civics class.
@MNiemann8@ZentraleV Dumpfe, westliche Arroganz in original!
Wenn bei uns alles weiter wie bisher läuft sind wir bald die dritte oder vierte Welt.
Also maule nicht dumm.
Empires do not apologize.
They reframe.
Vietnam was not a crime.
It was a "mistake."
Iraq was not an invasion.
It was a "miscalculation."
Tearing up the Iran nuclear deal was not a betrayal.
It was a "policy shift."
Language is their first weapon.
Sanctions are their second.
Bombs are their third.
Trust should never be on the list.
@JStanfield65@ConciousLabRat Oppressive is the power of the Western media, which literally brainwashes people.
You have to work hard to find the alternative sources to form your own opinion.
The unused truth about Wadephul–Lavrov is not that the meeting was short. It is that Germany did not come to bargain.
Berlin asked for the appointment, hid it from its EU partners until afterward, recited the press release, and called that statesmanship.
Lavrov’s verdict was the only adult sentence in the room: you could have phoned and told me to read the statement.
That is the point everyone is dancing around.
Germany no longer manufactures a peace. It manufactures an alibi.
A ceasefire “now,” grain for the Global South, no hybrid attacks, Ukraine still armed, Russia still the sole convict that is not a negotiation.
It is a demand that Moscow lose politely so Europe can keep the sermon.
“With opponents one must negotiate” is a fine proverb. It becomes farce when the only term on the table is unconditional moral surrender.
The deeper German hypocrisy is older than twenty minutes. This is the country that built its miracle on Russian molecules, then performed a conversion, then watched the molecules vanish, then discovered virtue does not heat a blast furnace.
It outsourced the dying to Ukrainian conscripts and the energy to LNG brokers, and kept for itself the cleanest product in the EU catalog: commentary.
Leipzig is waved like a relic.
Nord Stream is still the crime that must not be named.
The Global South is invoked as a prop while Europe prices its own poor out of industry.
And the foreign minister notifies his allies after the handshake not because diplomacy is delicate, but because the real audience is domestic: look, we are still in the room.
They are not afraid of being left out of the war. They are afraid of being left out of the story of the war.
A priesthood that cannot fight, cannot make, and cannot admit the map has moved will always request a brief meeting.
Brief is safer.
Brief leaves no treaty.
Brief lets you say you tried.
Empires used to send envoys with terms. Europe sends envoys with talking points.
Lavrov did not reject Germany. He recognized it.
@rinalu_ I lived 29 years in Soviet Block (Poland 1959-1988) Life economically at that time was not easy, but from today's perspective I can only confirm Melanie's statement.
It wasn't real communism either
The cruel times of the Bolsheviks are a special chapter in history of Russia.
@Wojtek50900433@PlohoSpal89@lightfinder1@OlgaBazova@Sportsworker37 Nigdzie, moje ,szwabskie’ pochodzenie uratowało mnie przed służbą wojskową w Polsce.
Niepewny element 😂😂😂
Dzisiaj jestem dla niemieckiego państwa też niepewny (mam coś przeciwko odradzającemu się ger. Militaryzmowi).
Liczą się ludzie, nie narodowość.