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By Jeff J. Brown

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Our first and excellent interview. Well worth reading/watching or listening to,

https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2020/10/22/joan-roelofs-interview-searching-for-what-is-the-good-life-how-can-it-be-attained-for-all-and-who-has-the-power-to-prevent-it-or-make-it-happen-china-rising-radio-sinoland-201022/

Introduction,

Joan Roelofs has been an anti-war activist ever since she protested the Korean War. She is the author of The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There Is So Little Anti-war Protest in the United States (Clarity Press, 2022), Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (SUNY Press, 2003), and Greening Cities: Building Just and Sustainable Communities (Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), the translator of Victor Considerant’s Principles of Socialism (Maisonneuve Press, 2006), and co-translator, with Shawn P. Wilbur, of Charles Fourier’s anti-war fantasy, The World War of Small Pastries (Autonomedia, 2015). She is Professor Emerita of Political Science, Keene State College.

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www.joanroelofs.wordpress.com

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Transcript

Jeff J. Brown (Host): Good evening, everybody. This is Jeff J. Brown China Rising Radio Sinoland on the D-Day beaches of Normandy. And I’ve got a wonderful old friend on the show tonight, Dr. Joan Roelofs. How are you doing, Joan?

Joan Roelofs (Guest): I’m doing all right.

Jeff: Joan is in New Hampshire, and she just told me it’s really cold there. So, we’ve been exchanging weather stories before getting started. Let me tell you about Joan. She is a very, very impressive woman who has had quite an amazing career. She has been an anti-war activist ever since she protested the Korean War. She is the author of “The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There is so Little Antiwar Protest in the United States.” That’s Clarity Press. “Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism”, and the third book, “Greening Cities Building Just and Sustainable Communities”.

She’s the translator of Victor Considerant’s “Principles of Socialism” and Co-translator with Shawn P. Wilbur of Charles Fourier’s antiwar fantasy, “The World War of Small Pastries”. She is professor emerita of political science at Keene State College in New Hampshire. And I can tell you, this is not the first time Joan has been on this show. It’s been a little over three years, in October of 2020, she was on and we had an incredible show. We talked about her books and translations and several of the articles that she has written on popular internet platforms.

It was wonderful. I will include that link. I will also include her website. I will include her books because today we’re going to talk about her latest book, “The Trillion Dollar Silencer” and I will also include her other information on Academia, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Researchgate.net. And if you want to contact Joan, I’ll have the link for you. Send her a message on Facebook because she does consult it. So, thank you so much for being back on the show today, Joan.

Joan: Thank you for having me.

Jeff: Well, listen, this book, “The Trillion-Dollar Silencer” we talked through, in much lesser terms in our interview in 2020 about the military-industrial complex. But this book, “The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There is So Little Antiwar Protest in the United States” really, really, really gets into the nitty gritty. I’ve read it. It’s a wonderful book, and I think everybody who’s concerned about the United States and the trajectory it is heading and where it is today in the world should definitely take a look at it.

So, here’s your first question, Joan. Drum roll! Your new book, “The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There is So Little Antiwar Protest in the United States” is a damning exposé of the US military complex. We talked about it in our first interview, but your book really gets into the nitty gritty of how deep and wide it controls almost all aspects of America’s economy, politics, and culture. How far back has this domination been going on?

Joan: Well, I would say that militarism has always been the dominant culture in the United States. But there was a counterculture of pacifism at one time, and it was very respectable. Enlightenment thought and radical Christianity, for example, in the early 19th century, led to many communitarian societies that were strongly pacifist. Also, there were antiwar theologians and artists, writers, and even politicians and business people who could be pacifists, and they were held in high esteem.

But after 1914, pacifism was no longer respectable. And always the dominant culture, even in religious universities has been Militarism, celebrating the extermination of indigenous peoples, the War of Independence, the Civil War, and the colonial expansion that resulted from the Spanish-American War. And that has been the dominant culture and as far as the government was concerned, the Army Corps of Engineers was from the very beginning involved in both civilian and military projects, ports, and forts.

And it’s still true today that they’re building bases in the Middle East and they’re doing flood control in Mississippi. Also, our economy has become much more militarized since the Second World War. First, because of the heavy build-up of military industry during the war. So, they were already there and they didn’t want to have to go away. The other reason is because of the changes in the civilian economy, because of overseas production, automation, large-scale retailing, and other causes.

So, at one time, in small towns, and rural areas, there were people who were grocers and butchers and bakers and they were middle-class people with their families and their workers who might move on or stay. But with the advent of big box stores and eventually, of course, Amazon all those jobs have disappeared. All that community has hardly existed anymore. The young people moved to the cities. They don’t spend their young youth as stock clerks in a grocery store and all of that.

The Cold War policies of the United States have also led to the decline of civilian-based industries, because the US government policy was to build up bastions of capitalism throughout the world, especially in the Far East, in order to counter the attraction of communism. The military contracts and grants are not just for weapons. They support every kind of enterprise, as well as non-governmental organizations, including charities and environmental groups, and very much penetrate the educational system at all levels, even daycare centers near military bases. They’re not on the bases.

They may be off the bases, but they get grants from the military. And people are going to be silent about wars. I can talk a little bit about New Hampshire, where I live. BAE Systems, which is British-owned, is the largest military contractor, and there are quite a few other weapons producers, including Elbit Systems, which is Israeli-owned. But also, among the businesses that get contracts are parts suppliers including a firm called Warwick Mills, which produces technical textiles such as those used in body armor.

It was a cotton mill in 1888. And then there are medium and small businesses like blinds and shades, food places, Velcro is in New Hampshire. They get military contracts. There’s a nonprofit called Green Feet Enterprises, which specializes in mountain rescue training for naval special operations warfare. Childcare centers, heating oil companies, landscapers, carpenters, appliance dealers, and others get some of the pie. And even if they get only a little bit of the pie, it’s silent. It helps to silence them about what the military is doing.

Keene, a manufacturer of wooden children’s furniture, got a grant from the military for cribs, because the latest safety regulations had to be observed at all daycare centers that were on the military reservation. So, they got a large contract for cribs, and it gave that company a new lease on life because, in most places, children’s furniture would get used furniture or imported but the US government requires its contractors to use US-made ingredients and products wherever they’re available.

So, it has extended the life of many small manufacturers for that reason. And in Cheshire County, there’s a contractor called Environmental Alternatives, which specializes in nuclear decontamination. Most people don’t even know that it exists or what that name means. CNS Wholesale Grocers gets contracts for food and transport. There’s a company that makes handcuffs, optics companies, and water filter companies. And all of these get, are either major or minor, part suppliers for the military.

I’ve made a map of the military-industrial complex in New Hampshire, and I hope that other people will make similar maps for their states. They could even make a map of any part of the world. And on my website, I have instructions on how to make a map, and how I made it, and a link to my map is on my website. Under it says make a map is the heading of the post. And it’s not very difficult. I’m not an expert like Google Maps.

Jeff: Okay, great. By the way, for the listeners out there, Joan’s book, The Trillion Dollar Silencer has a lot of graphics, has a lot of maps, has photographs. It’s not just text. There are graphs. In fact, I was going to ask her my next question. I said you have a pie chart. She has pie charts, tables, and lists. It’s really impressive. She’s done a huge amount of research. You have a pie chart that shows the US discretionary spending is 52% military and 48% non-defense. I mean, so there’s more military discretionary spending than there is nonmilitary. Can this be sustained for the long term without falling into fascism?

Joan: I have to explain that. Discretionary spending is what has to be voted on every year by Congress. But the spending that is not discretionary is much, much higher than this. And the largest amount of government spending in this country is for health care, and that’s federal, state, and local government. But that’s not considered discretionary because that’s committed in advance. Social security, education, public works, pensions, all state and local government spending. That creates the majority of government outlays in this country.

And it’s much, much more than the military. The military is just so influential because of all the networking it does and all the connections to every other part of the system. But one pie chart, I have from fiscal year 2019 shows defense spending as 12% of all government spending in this country. Certainly, the largest item is health care 22% of all government spending in the United States is for health care. And despite all of these enormous expenditures, we’re not doing very well in social security, education, and health care. It’s not being spent very well or wisely, but it’s enormous amounts.

Jeff: It’s almost $1 trillion a year. And of course, that’s as much now as the interest on the federal debt is now $1 trillion a year is what I heard.

Joan: Yeah, I do have the latest figures, but I don’t have them right here so I can’t remember them. But there is a place on the web where you can find out all of these things. I thought I had maybe printed it out, but I just looked at it. And you can find out what government spending is state, local, and federal for all of these categories, plus interest and everything else. I’ll try to send a link to that,

https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2022USbn_25bs2n#usgs302

Jeff: All right. Thank you. The trillion-dollar silencer portrays the US military like termites embedded in every aspect of daily life. I mean, it’s just unbelievable. And most of it is like we don’t even notice it. Of course, you just mentioned they buy acquiescence reminds me of Upton Sinclair’s great quote. “It’s hard to get a man to understand the truth when his paycheck depends on him not understanding it.” So, yeah, it’s very, very similar. You don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you. But three of them that really stuck out for me were education, charities, and NGOs. Can you just tell us a little briefly about each one of those, how the military just has got its hooks deep in these facets of American life?

Joan: Yes. First, I just want to add something. In my book, there are a lot of citations and links. So, if someone wants to follow up and get more information, it would be easy to do so. I hope that people will use it for further research so they’ll see where I’ve found information. They get information for their state or contracts or other things. Some of the ways that the military is embedded in daily life, first of all, in education, universities are rife with military contracts. They have national security programs.

They have reserve officer training programs. And those are even now available in small colleges like Hampshire College or Smith Keene State College. The students can actually enroll in ROTC. They have to travel to larger institutions in the state for some of the training. But it’s available in all of these places. The other thing is that academic people now need outside funding for their research, and the Defense Department has lots of money for that. And so, people take it. In elementary and high schools, there are junior ROTC programs, and they are widespread.

Many parents send their children and enroll their children in those programs because first of all, they have much more discipline. Secondly, they have a lot more funding because they’re partially funded by the Department of Defense. And I can hardly blame the parents. I understand what they’re looking at because some of the classrooms are like the blackboard Jungle of the old days, and that doesn’t happen in the military class. Several states also have military academies, their government military academies for at-risk children.

It used to be called something else, apparently, but now there are military academies. I describe that in my book. And there’s also now a funded program that is aimed especially at colleges serving low-income and minority people, called the Intelligence Community Centers for Academic Excellence to train people for the intelligence community. And this program is even found at City College in New York, which used to be a hotbed of socialist disputation. Trained people now can major in intelligence.

Another thing that I was surprised about, and most people are when I explain it to them, is the amount of money that the Nature Conservancy gets from military contracts. This is partly from the Department of Defense has something called the Readiness and Environmental Protection and Integration Program. And that’s to deal with what the military regards as threats to their ability to test weapons, train, and operate. They find incompatible land uses and environmental laws protecting endangered species to be threats to their bombing ranges, which occupy huge areas of this country.

Jeff: You showed one map.

Joan: Invisible to a lot of people because the country is so huge. So, what this program does is it creates buffer zones around bases to protect from things like lights from residential and commercial developments. To avoid restrictions because of the noise, dust, and smoke of military activities. Civilian use of the frequency spectrum. All kinds of things are threats to live ammunition and bombing ranges. So, in the buffer zones that are not owned by the military, there are cooperative partnership places, and the Nature Conservancy is a major participant in this, along with the Audubon societies of different States (Ducks Unlimited, Trout Unlimited, Evergreen State College, San Diego Zoo).

Jeff: This goes on and on.

Joan: Every kind of organization is getting a piece of the pie. Some are grants and some are contracts. Other federal departments are also involved in this program. Homeland Security. Energy, Interior, Agriculture. Because certain kinds of agriculture are considered okay if they are located near military bases. Other kinds are not like they probably don’t want aerial spraying. Local Economic Development Corporations are involved in this. The National Council of State Governments is involved, and all of this networking creates a lot of silence regarding war.

The other kind of organization, Goodwill Industries and others like Lighthouse for the Blind, get contracts from the military for janitorial services, clothing, furniture, and landscaping. And all of this I find in the contract database called Usaspending.gov. And you can search by many, many different filters, including searching for contracts with universities in France, for example. You can filter that or universities outside of the United States or non-governmental organizations.

Jeff: It’s called usaspending.gov. Well, in your book at the end of each chapter, you’ve just got a ton of references. So, you’re absolutely right. It’s just a wellspring of places to go to get more information get smarter, and be brought up to speed. Well, why do you think the Military-Industrial Complex makes such a special effort to co-opt minorities?

Joan: The several reasons. One is that during the 1960s, there were civil rights groups and minority rights organizations that were in solidarity with national liberation movements all over the world. Not the major ones that were sponsored by foundations. They also tried to steer them away from that. But this was considered a threat. There were even groups that were going to the UN and arguing under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United States made a major effort to put it into practice.

And they were complaining. Well, to avoid this problem, it’s best to keep minorities and also women. Women’s rights groups keep them employed and focused on patriotism and militarism. In fact, to my surprise, the largest military weapons corporation in the world Lockheed had a CEO who was a woman for seven years, and many of the others now have women CEOs and these are regarded as role models by certain feminist organizations.

Also, when there are Puerto Rican women who are CEOs of major defense installations companies or generals in admirals in the military, they’re always they’re supposed to be role models for those minorities. So, this is one reason. But there’s also another reason, which is that the military needs more recruits. Their traditional rural enlistee base has shrunk. White rural enlistees had. And so, they need some more people in the military despite all the use of robotics for war.

They do need some people in the military and also, it provides military industries and the Department of Defense with a broader selection of scientists and engineers. So, both the private contractors and the Department of Defense are very happy to offer scholarships and internships to minority people who are in science and engineering and at universities and technical institutes. They wooed them.

Jeff: Interesting.

Joan: They need more. They need as many as they can get. And in fact, a lot of these people are immigrants who have advanced degrees. And they’re really important to our economy. And now, also high up in the management of weapons firms are many people with immigrant backgrounds especially from Asia, China, India, and Southeast Asia. But other places too. If they could get Russians, they would Russian scientists. So, there are several reasons for it, but it is quite amazing. There was an American Indian movement at one time. There was La Raza of the Mexican Americans. And that was very threatening. So, they have to be integrated. So, I don’t know about fascism, but if we have it, it’s a multicultural fascism.

Jeff: That’s interesting.

Joan: And so, they learned a lesson because fascism got a very bad reputation because of the persecution of minorities, gypsies, homosexuals, and Jews. Now everybody is going to be integrated and so they can’t use that tack. As we know, some of the most militaristic people in this country are some of the generals who have been promoted to high positions, who are minority people. Condoleezza Rice.

Jeff: Including the current Department of Defense.

Joan: Department of Defense. So, it’s a tactical move among other things.

Jeff: Well, let’s move on to something that touches all of us on an everyday basis. Americans would be surprised how deeply the Military-Industrial Complex is enmeshed in popular culture like Hollywood television, mainstream media, and sports. After our interview in 2020, because you mentioned something in that interview, I went to watch a Yankees baseball game, and I looked up and there was the missing in-action P.O.W. flag at the baseball stadium and also the United States Marine Corps and I thought, boy, Joan is right. I would never have noticed that unless she brought that up. So, tell us a little bit about Hollywood TV, mainstream media and sports.

Joan: Well, there are some really good books about how Hollywood films have been supported by the military and censored. They provide the equipment and land and all sorts of things, the military. But there’s a certain amount of censorship, too, and a tremendous amount of influence. I don’t have the titles right now of some of these books, but a lot of other people have written about it, so I tend not to concentrate on that. But I will mention one thing, which is that if you’re having an event in your town, like a parade or something, you can contact the military to get a flyover for your event, provided they approve of your purposes.

And some towns do that and of course, football games have entertainment and bands from the military. It’s an enormous amount in popular culture. I don’t watch a lot of television, but there’s a lot of violence on television, too, and a lot of commercials put in by the military because one of aspects of warfare that are being emphasized now by the military, especially the Special Operations Command, is propaganda as warfare changing, not going in there so much, they’re still doing it, but not going in and killing people, but changing people’s minds so they don’t even think about going against US interests all over the world.

Jeff: Unbelievable. Well, later in your book, you covered a topic that’s very, very large in my mind since I’m a co-founder of the Bioweapon Truth Commission and the curator of the Bioweapon Truth Commission. So, tell us a little bit about DARPA. It’s almost like a science fiction organization. Please tell us about DARPA.

Joan: Well, it’s the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. There’s also an intelligence program similar to that. And in fact, there are many agencies in the Department of Defense that do research. And one of the things that DARPA is interested in researching is all kinds of high-tech warfare. And one of its projects is to enable humans to control weapons with their thoughts. And now humans remotely control drones via computers. DARPA wants to eliminate that external step.

And this is a quote from DARPA. “Brain activity will be monitored non-invasively through electrodes placed upon the scalp or skull, or more invasively through the direct implantation of electrodes to the brain surface or deeper structures and networks.” Everything is seen as a threat to defense strategy. So, every academic discipline has a place in the Military-Industrial Complex. What DARPA found is that religious people all over the world objected to warfare using robots and cyborgs, which are creatures with electronic implementation, not necessarily humans.

It could be humans or insects or something else. So, DARPA said, “Contracted with professors of religious studies to see how this prejudice could be eliminated.” And so, sociologists with a specialization in religious studies get contracts. And DARPA isn’t the only research agency. There are lots of agencies in the government that do research, and contract with academics, but also create consortia of different universities on projects, including foreign universities. Universities in France, Britain, and everywhere in the world. And I have that information in my book. Some specific examples.

Jeff: Yeah, that was a good chapter about DARPA and all the crazy stuff.

Joan: I don’t have any expertise in bioweapons, however. The Department of Defense, along with other agencies like the National Institutes of Health or USAID, funds biotechnology research all over the world including Israel, Ireland, Scotland, Peru, Laos, the Republic of Georgia, Ukraine, Kenya, and Thailand. Those are just some of the places. I have one map that comes from the government, from the Department of Defense showing where they’re doing biotechnology research, and they claim it’s to prevent animal diseases or things like that. It’s a controversial issue, and I can’t say anything about it, but I will suggest there are some good articles on the subject in the Covert Action magazine.

Jeff: I know Jeremy Kuzmarov, the editor.

Joan: Find some really good things there on this topic.

Jeff: Yeah, and also the Bioweapon Truth Commission. www.bioweapontruth.com. It’s the largest repository, largest library, and online library. It’s free, with` books, videos, documents, articles, photographs, films, everything, images going back to World War I. Yeah, they call it biotechnology. When you really scratch below the surface, there is bioweapon manufacturing.

Joan: It could be used for that also.

Jeff: Oh absolutely.

Joan: I can’t say they’re also chemical weapons and nuclear weapons. There’s also research on those. And I think the government often denies that it’s ever used. Anything I’ve seen on one website that supposedly corrects disinformation. And it said the US has never used chemical weapons.

Jeff: What about napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam?

Joan: Yes, but forget where that website was. But I was amazed to read that people are encouraged to look at these disinformation websites, and a lot of them are propaganda, too.

Jeff: Oh, yeah. Yeah, they’re run by the CIA and the DoD.

Joan: Yeah. So, it’s important, but every agency of the government has a website and you can find out a lot about what’s going on from their own websites. And often the mainstream media doesn’t report a lot of things that are going on that one would find important.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah for sure.

Joan: But you can look at it. Yeah.

Jeff: Well, Joan, you close out your book at the end, and I will just ask the same question that you kind of asked yourself in the book at the end, how to stop all this madness? Is it possible?

Joan: Well, I don’t know. I really don’t know how to do that, but I feel that my own contribution is to make it visible because a lot of people are just unaware and they’re unaware of what we’re up against. So, we’re not just up against profit-seeking weapons, corporate greedy weapons corporations. They’ve got it covered. They’ve got us covered. There are so many ways in which the military has insinuated itself into our lives and our economy. So, many ways in which the Rust Belt has been transformed by military and rural areas to by military contracts.

And I think it’s important to know and you have to know what’s going on before you can change it. You have to know what has to be fixed. And I find amazingly, people who are very highly educated, people who are activists in the peace organizations and Democratic Party Committee People are unaware of the fact that about 20 miles from here where I live, there’s a Space Force base. It’s New Boston, New Hampshire. It used to be an Air Force base and a bombing range.

They’ve cleaned it up, they say. And most of it is now available for hunting. No, not hunting, but camping, Kayaking, whatever because they only need a small amount of satellite imagery equipment. It’s now a Space Force base and people don’t know it exists. They’re surprised to hear, and they’re people who are working inside the peace movement and also people coming to my door from the Democratic Party. They have no idea what BAE means really. I was surprised. It’s just complete. It’s so invisible to even educated people.

And then, of course, if people find out they don’t want to know, they don’t want to deal with it. And I can’t blame them because there’s a lot of pressure to not disturb your fellow church members or neighbors or family members. There’s a lot of that and sometimes I’m silent about some things because I know that this person works for a weapons manufacturer and claims to be a civil rights activist. I could say, well, what about the civil rights of the people who are bombed by your equipment? But I don’t.

Jeff: Well before I read this book, I always remembered a factoid that the Department of Defense makes sure that there is at least one military contractor or one military installation of some kind in every one of the 538 congressional districts in the United States. So, when it comes time to talk about the military budget, cutting the military budget the lobbyist who is tied to that military installation or that military contractor in that congressional district in Northwestern Oklahoma goes to Washington and goes to district six. District Six Congress person and says, “Hey, remember you’ve got this company or these companies that are doing business with the DoD.” And they depend on the DoD for jobs and the people of Oklahoma.

Joan: Well, I did want to say one more thing. I mean, that there are military bases in this country that are the size of small cities, and they’re the economic hubs of their regions. For example, the largest military base in the world is Fort Bragg in North Carolina. The anthropologist Catherine Lutz has written a fine book about how this shapes the entire community and region. Her book is called Homefront. And there are many other bases, Fort Hood, there are many others that are absolutely huge.

Jeff: Well, Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City where I grew up, in the military.

Joan: There are 4,000 military installations inside the United States, but some of them are small places, some of them are listening posts, or maybe they’re armories or recruiting stations and many are huge bombing ranges in the West especially. But certainly, there are hundreds of military bases that are really substantial influences on the community outside. Retailers’ rentals.

There are motel chains that specialize in housekeeping apartments for military people who are stationed temporarily, who don’t want to live on base, and a lot of people don’t want to live on base. They live off the base or even the people who live on the base, the housing is managed by private contractors, usually, and all sorts of other things on the base are managed by private contractors. Spouses get jobs in the communities. This is a very large part of the geography of the military, and I can’t put that on a map because the map would be too crowded.

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely.

Joan: And so that’s certainly one way that everyday life is and I can assure you, the military is very attentive to the communities outside their bases. They give grants to museums and the arts and everything. So, if you’re an artist, you can benefit too not just a gun maker.

Jeff: Well, Joe, before we head out, what projects do you have in the pipeline? I mean, I know you’re retired and probably want to enjoy your time after a career of teaching and research and writing and publishing. But do you still have a project in the pipeline?

Joan: Well, I do. Actually, I’ve retired twice from teaching, 20 years ago.

Jeff: Okay.

Joan: But I have since been teaching in a senior citizen academy of Lifelong Learning. And it has been extremely satisfying. And I’ve had just wonderful people of students who are professionals and who knew so much about the topics. It’s been delightful, but I’m getting it. And now, I do it on Zoom, and I’m getting a little tired of it and I’m getting a little old for it, I think. So, I may or may not continue teaching in that program, maybe retire from it. I also have hobbies that I like to spend time on. I’m an amateur bookbinder.

I do pop-ups and paper marbling and related things to make little books. I also have a family that needs attention. My grown children and relatives. I decided I didn’t want to write another book because it’s too much sitting at the computer, but I do still have research interests, and one of them is to explore the Military-Industrial Complex at the ground level in other parts of the world. Yeah, Western Europe, or especially in Western Europe, but Eastern Europe too. I’m aware of what happens at the highest levels, all the connections between the defense departments of different countries.

But I’m more I’m interested in seeing more about the universities and small businesses, nonprofit organizations, and think tanks. NATO itself has think tanks. Not just the Atlantic Council, but they have their own think tanks, which I’ve written about in my book. So, they have a little bit of this in the book, but it’s a major project that’s not going to be easy to get information but I don’t know all those languages, of course. But since nobody else seems to be doing this, I feel that I should be doing it and so I may be working on that if feels all right.

Jeff: Well, in our interview preparation, by email, you told me your age and I tell you, you inspire me. And I hope that I am as active and as productive and as a positive influence on society as you are at your age. And it’s quite impressive. And so, you’re a real inspiration to me. And I want to thank you for all the fine work that you do to educate people about the military. All the other stuff that you’ve written about is just fascinating. But you clearly have your finger on the zeitgeist of the Military-Industrial Complex.

And it’s very, very impressive. So, I will give you a Buddhist bow. I will give you a Buddhist bow here from Normandy. And let’s stay in touch. And I would like everybody I will give the book link and we talk today with Dr. Joan Roelofs in New Hampshire, United States, about her last book, “The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There is so little antiwar protest in the United States” And I’m actually going to make sure that this interview gets to a few of my friends who are in the antiwar movement. And I’m going to say, well, here’s why you’re not getting very far. Joan’s got Joan’s got all the answers.

Joan: Now I want to say that I have enjoyed so much your writings about China.

Jeff: Thank you.

Joan: Yeah, I follow them, too.

Jeff: Well, thank you very much. Well, listen, Joan, stay warm. Stay young and stay healthy. And we’ll be in touch. All right. Great. All right. Bye-bye.

Joan: Bye-bye.

###

Do yourself, your friends, family and colleagues a favor, to make sure all of you are Sino-smart: 

Google ebooks (Epub) and audiobooks:

44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=YBKHEAAAQBAJ

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAECCkQXRlM

China Rising: Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=YNmLEAAAQBAJ

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAECCfHo86M

BIG Red Book on China: Chinese History, Culture and Revolution

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=6Wl4EAAAQBAJ

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAECCfHo86M

Amazon print and ebooks (Kindle):

44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1484939999/

China Rising: Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations

https://www.amazon.com/China-Rising-Capitalist-Socialist-Destinations/dp/0996487042

BIG Red Book on China: Chinese History, Culture and Revolution

https://www.amazon.com/BIG-Red-Book-China/dp/1673322719/

Author page:

https://www.amazon.com/Mr.-Jeff-J.-Brown/e/B00TX0TDDI

Praise for The China Trilogy:

https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2018/06/30/praise-for-the-china-trilogy-the-votes-are-in-it-r-o-c-k-s-what-are-you-waiting-for/

Why and How China works: With a Mirror to Our Own History

44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass

China Rising: Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations

 

 

 

 

 

 

BIG Red Book on China: Chinese History, Culture and Revolution

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in deniner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读

Wechat group: search the phone number +8619806711824 or my ID, Mr_Professor_Brown, friend request and ask Jeff to join the China Rising Radio Sinoland Wechat group. He will add you as a member, so you can join in the ongoing discussion.

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