Tag Archives: Pentagon
House Approves $778 Billion Military Budget
“What possible justification is there for throwing $768 billion at the Pentagon…”
Reining In the Pentagon, by Mandy Smithberger and William Hartung
“It’s estimated that, in the decades to come, more than 1,700 U.S. military installations worldwide may be impacted by sea-level rise. Future rounds of base closings, both domestic and global, should be planned now with the impact of climate change in mind.”
Norman Solomon: Stop Calling the Military Budget a ‘Defense’ Budget
As Orwell wrote in a 1946 essay, political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
US reliance on defence contractors led to mission failures: Study, Costs of War
“The stunning Taliban victory last month in Afghanistan is drawing attention now to even graver consequences: the extent to which the US reliance on contractors may have heightened the difficulties of the Afghan security forces.”
Where’s Humanity with an Exploding National “Defense” Budget? by Marie Braun
“The vast bulk of military expenditures today have nothing to do with keeping us safe. And the advocates for war are a small minority – politicians, militarists, weapons makers, oil companies, and relatively small fanatical groups like al Qaeda.”
A People’s Guide to the War Industry -5: Portfolio of Conflicts
“They ignored the real threat: The U.S. Armed Forces’ rampant carbon-based military activity contributes to anthropogenic climate change, which melts Arctic ice, which opens up northern sea lanes, into which the Pentagon projects its polluting arsenal, which puts more carbon in the atmosphere.”
Taxes Redux: More Money for War! and the Tax System is Racist!
“The Pentagon budget sucks up more than an outrageously outsized 50 percent of the total Fiscal Year 2021 discretionary budget.” and how the US tax system is racist.
A People’s Guide to the War Industry -4: The New BOSS
“Capitalists profit when they adeptly shift costs onto others (humans, other animals, the planet itself). This includes enforcing poor labor safety, crushing labor unions, and polluting the natural world. We, the people, see so much pollution and harm because that’s how the system is designed. Those are intentional byproducts of capitalism.”
A People’s Guide to the War Industry -3: Bribery and Propaganda
When war is your business, peace is your enemy, writes Christian Sorensen. Third in a five-part series on the military-industrial-congressional complex.
A People’s Guide to the War Industry–2: Profits and Deception
“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible… Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” George Orwell
A People’s Guide to the War Industry, by Christian Sorensen
“The main role of the federal government under capitalism is to maintain the capitalist economic system and set the general conditions by which large corporations and billionaires are able to accrue more and more profit.”
Survival at 100 Seconds to Midnight and Biden Cutting the Military Budget
Perhaps most important of all, [Biden’s] bringing the U.S. back into the Paris climate accords, signaling an understanding that a planetary crisis demands planetwide measures and that the largest carbon-emitting economies should be leading the way. “This isn’t [the] time for small measures,” Biden has said. “We need to be bold.”
STRATCOM: The Most Dangerous Organization in the World
The Peace Report: Fighting One Empire at a Time
Tomgram: Mandy Smithberger, Ending the Pentagon’s Pandemic of Spending
“A Post-Coronavirus Economy Can No Longer Afford to Put the Pentagon First.”
Killing Democracy in America, by William Astore
“Scenarios of perpetual war haunt my thoughts. For a healthy democracy, there should be few things more unthinkable than never-ending conflict, that steady drip-drip of death and destruction that drives militarism, reinforces authoritarianism, and facilitates disaster capitalism.”
Andrew J. Bacevich, The All-American Way: MLK’s Giant Triplets
“What I am suggesting is that those calling for fundamental change will go badly astray if they ignore Dr. King’s insistence that each of the giant triplets [racism, extreme materialism, militarism] is intimately tied to the other two.”
Ilhan Omar Has a Plan to Revolutionize U.S. Foreign Policy
“They would also have to reckon with the humanitarian impact of sanctions, which Congress largely ignores at this point, and it has led to some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises as we’re seeing in Venezuela, and North Korea, and Iran.”
After-Holiday Blues and an Action to Chase Them Away, By Polly Mann with Mary Beaudoin
Another action to take: Don’t Iraq Iran. Protests continue nationwide. Ironically, we have heard from the one of the greatest purveyors of propaganda, the Washington Post, that we are lied to about war. But with the release of the series “Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War” by Craig Whitlock, you would think that […]
The Pentagon Wants More Control Over the News. What Could Go Wrong? by Matt Taibbi
The most enormous issue posed by the modern media landscape is the industry’s incredible concentration, which allows a handful of private platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Google – to dominate media distribution.
The Riptide of American Militarism: Lessons from the Natural World on Washington’s Unnatural Wars, by Wm. Astor
“The best defense against militarism is peace; the next best thing is the vigorous practice of democracy,” (The Pentagon as a Parasitic Cowbird)
Rise Up Times 
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