Invest In People, Not War

The American people and their economy have been devastated by the corrupt, criminal military expenditures of the Bush/Obama fascist regimes

COUNTERPUNCH
By Ralph Nader
12/19/2013

Earlier this month, a delegation of activists took to Capitol Hill to demand a decrease in the massive, out-of-control military budget. As millions of Americans struggle with inadequate health care, low wages, deteriorating public services and uncertainty about their futures as the wage gap between the wealthy elite and the working poor widens, billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars are pouring into the coffers of the Department of Defense every year. The Pentagon budget currently makes up half of the U.S. government’s entire operating budget. Estimated to be around $716 billion in 2013, the U.S. defense budget is greater than the defense budgets of the next ten highest spending nations combined. The gathering was, appropriately, scheduled on International Human Rights Day. 

 

 

Some of the groups present were: Roots Action, the Hunger Action Network of New York State, Code Pink, Green Shadow Cabinet, Coalition Against Nukes, Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, U.S. Labor Against the War and many more. See their open letter to members of Congress and President Obama here.

 

The consortium of activists’ are asking Congress to slash the bloated military budget and use the significant savings to enhance critical social programs that actually help people, things like food stamps, Social Security and improved full Medicare-for-all healthcare. 

 

 

U.S. bridge collapse

They also suggested a massive public works agenda that creates good paying un-exportable jobs in every community around the country — jobs that include clean, renewable energy for the future. And what of America’s crumbling infrastructure? Our clinics, roads, schools, bridges, libraries, public transit, public water and sewage systems and national parks are in dire need of repair and modernization. The savings from defense spending could be used to repair infrastructure — much of which was a product of FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s — and ensure a cleaner, safer, more prosperous America.

These are proposals that would benefit our citizenry rather then ravage and destroy countries abroad whose citizens far too regularly become victims in the U.S.’s perpetual military adventures.

 

 

The American people have long been subject to fear mongering and propaganda-spreading about alleged foreign threats to their safety. The blowbacks are costly. This campaign for perpetual war has significantly benefited corporate contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Halliburton who reap the massive rewards of a defense budget many times greater than that of any other country on Earth. Consider this — the Navy’s latest aircraft carrier currently under construction, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is expected to cost $12.8 billion. That’s a billion dollars more than the current annual budget of the entire Internal Revenue Service. The United States already has eleven aircraft carriers, all of which outmatch every other foreign naval vessel on the sea. The IRS budget, on the other hand, is too inadequate to properly police tax evaders who reportedly cost the government $300 billion in losses every year. According to a 2011 report from The Motley Fool: “Tax evasion in the last decade cost an amount roughly equivalent to the Bush tax cuts, the Obama stimulus, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan … combined.”

 

 

Mark Dunlea, Executive Director of the Hunger Action Network of NYS, who is a key figure in organizing the campaign said: “Cutting the military budget in half would reduce it to where it was before 9/11 — when it was way too high. The amount of money spent on theUS military is a crime against humanity. It steals our children’s future and it oppresses people across our planet. We shouldn’t be cutting SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] funds to feed our children and seniors while wasting tens of billions of dollars to build planes and tanks that are often mothballed in desert parking lots soon after they roll off the assembly line.” 

 

 

Homeless encampment, California, USA

President Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the “military industrial complex” in his farewell address in 1961. Now, over fifty years later, we see the result of unchecked, reckless spending on costly, unnecessary high-tech weapons of mass destruction — and the disturbing need to find uses for them. On December 12, a drone strike in Yemenreportedly killed at least 13 people traveling in a wedding procession. A Yemeni government official has claimed that the wedding convoy contained members of Al Qaeda — although earlier reports claimed the convoy was targeted mistakenly. 

 

 

Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin recently posed the question: “Do we want to feed hungry people or feed the weapons industry?”

The defense budget, which the Accountability Office of Congress claims is “un-auditable” is loaded with waste, redundancy, corruption, cost overruns, complex billing fraud and poor quality control. Let us heed Eisenhower’s warning at long last and use our nation’s wealth to make significant investments in a future that benefits people. (Read Eisenhower’s famous 1953 “Cross of Iron” speech on this matter.)

At the least, each person can do his or her part by reaching your Senators and Representatives with your outcries. Call the Congressional Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition.

This news bureau contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Read more »

Pacifying The Pacific With Dire Results

Obama criminals attempting to start WWIII to divert fallout, indictments from ongoing Snowden revelations and are willing to destroy the world in order to save themselves

GLOBAL RESEARCH
By Dallas Darling
12/22/2013

The U.S.'s role in trying to pacify and transform the Pacific Ocean into an "American Lake"(1) is being challenged by China's re-ascendancy. This was evident when Beijing proclaimed ownership of the Senkaku Islands, announcing that all aircraft entering the area-which has territorial boundaries disputed by Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan-must first notify Chinese authorities beforehand. To buttress its announcement, China launched two fighter jets to investigate flights by a dozen U.S. and Japanese reconnaissance and military planes that had entered the island's zone in the East China Sea. In the SouthChina Sea, China has just warned a U.S. cruiser not to enter what it considered to be a restricted zone, causing a tense stand-off and near collision.

 

 

Chinese Navy more than well equipped to stand up to Obama

The U.S.'s pacification of the Pacific culminated at the end of World War II when it dropped the atomic bombs on Japan killing hundreds of thousands of people. It served as a warning and spectacle, in that, American political and economic power, including its technological superiority and warrior culture, would be maintained in the region at all costs. But as a late comer to the Asian-Pacific region, the U.S. has had difficulty in adjusting to Pacific determinism. 

 

 

Layers of Chinese and Japanese histories and cultures, along with traditional political, economical, social and ideological systems, have for centuries already determined much of the Pacific's cartography. For the 21st century, the Asian-Pacific will not be pacified, nor will it be similar to a post-WWII map.

 

 

While the inter-continental and racial frontiers in the U.S. were disappearing, the Second and ThirdIndustrialRevolutions were modernizing warfare. Alfred Thayer Mahan's book, "The Influence of Sea Power," was redefining space. Warning of the "Yellow Peril"(1) and how that naval flotillas would win wars, he proposed the Pacific would cease to be a barrier and become a "wide common" which men may pass in all directions.(2) Future presidents believed America's "evangelist of sea power"(3) and fulfilled his wishes by projecting U.S. power into the Asian-Pacific, establishing new regional networks of political, economical and religious domination. This attempt to pacify the Pacific clashed with a more ancient and traditional Asian-Pacific determinism.

 

 

In the 21st century the U.S. discovered-and will continue to do so-that along with the world being an ocean and all its continents islands, those continents and islands contained people with complex and differing historical, political, economical, social and ideological undercurrents. China's recent mixed economy and industrial expansionism, intermingled with ripples of Communism, Confucianism and Buddhism, has always been guided by its symbolic nature of centrality, the Middle Kingdom. It will never again be psychologically or militarily unprepared for the experiences of the 19th century, when U.S.-European and Japanese superiority, first in war, then in wealth, became apparent. Its memories of the Sack of Beijing and Rape of Nanking will never again allow re-pacification.

 

 

Despite its allied status, the U.S. should remember too that just as Japan never completely submitted to being "scattered grains at the edge of the field" in its geographical relation to China, it still considers itself to be genuinely divine and favored by heaven. Neither did the U.S.'s post-WWII military occupation and reconstruction of Japan completely purge Japanese society of more traditional and indigenous waves of Shintoism, Samurai values, and the Sacred Throne. Japan's historical traditions and technological superiority, with its continued economic growth and scarcity of resources, will someday make it a formidable military force and sea power. This can already be observed as it once again gradually flexes its power in the Asian-Pacific region while undermining a pacifist constitution.

 

 

The most important aspect in pacifying the Pacific is how nations will respond to dwindling resources and climate change while attempting to expand unsustainable economic and military bases. The potential for chaos in this "Pacific Century" will increase as political, military and corporate rulers try and maintain the status quo, preserving their own power and privilege at the expense of others. Internally, new draconian crime-fighting measures will be introduced while attacking the poor, minorities and immigrants-accused of weakening the state and singled out for the harshest treatment. A climate of fear and suppression will continue to be created and used as an excuse for the police, the military, and the bureaucrats to crush any dissent or opposition.(4)

 

 

Weakening nations and empires will look for imaginary enemies to deflect growing criticism. But such searches will backfire, as was the case with the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the U.S. had to increase military ties with Pakistan and Mongolia, both bordering China, China was pressured to ascend in the direction of the Pacific. Since the Pacific still remains dominated by the shadow of many U.S. wars (WWII, Cold War, Korean War, Vietnam, etc...), it is still a volatile region. China is also concerned over U.S. influence in Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan. A shortage of resources has also caused a "scramble for the ocean floor" for its valuable minerals. Many scenarios in the future for Asian-Pacific conflicts and repelling "ocean barbarians" exist.

Although the Pacific Command is the oldest and geographically largest of America's nine unified military commands(5), it will never be able to pacify the Pacific. And though it has been the dominant force in determining U.S. policy in the Asian-Pacific, used for forward troop deployments and securing markets and resources, it cannot be a history in and of itself.(6) On December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt misspoke when he declared it was "a date which will live in infamy" and that "the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval an air forces of Japan." He should have announced: "There have been many similar incidences of trying to pacify the Pacific, including our nation's, and for centuries to come there will be many more."

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of StateJohn Kerry just visited Hanoi, Vietnam. China's Chang'e-3 and its lunar rover, Yutu, has just successfully landed on the moon. In Japan, protesters are trying to expel U.S. naval bases while are pushing to rearm and possibly militarize Japan. China now has NSA cyber secrets-when EdwardSnowden defected from the U.S.-that possibly reveals future U.S. military aims in the Asian-Pacific region. Some attempts to redraw the Pacific map, redefining ocean floor space, outer space, and more economic and political space, will probably carry with it dire results.

Dallas Darling (darling@wn.com)

(1) Paret, Peter. Makers of ModernStrategy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Paperbacks, 2005., p. 465.

(2) Bender, Thomas. A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History. New York, New York: Hill and Wang Publishers, 2006., p. 17.

(3) Paret, Peter. Makers of Modern Strategy., p. 446.

(4) Orlov, Dmity. The FiveStages of Collapse. British Columbia: Canada, 2013., p. 174.

(4) Honey, Martha and Tom Barry. GlobalFocus: U.S. Foreign Policy at the Turn of the Millennium., p. 291.

(5) Honey, Martha and Tom Barry. Global Focus: U.S. Foreign Policy at the Turn of the Millennium. New York, New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000., p. 291.

(6) Bender, Thomas. A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History., p. 17.

This news bureau contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

 

Read more »

NSA Spying Benefits Large U.S. Corporations: D. Schechter

Snowden revelations continue to sink Obama criminals

PRESS TV
By Danny Schechter
12/22/2013

Press TV has conducted an interview with Danny Schechter, Editor of Media Channel.org, New York about US and British spy agencies having the UN and the EU on their target list. 

 

 

The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Why would the NSA and its British counterpart the GCHQ want to spy on UN organizations, especially charity groups?

Schechter: I’m not here to speak for the NSA why they would do this; nobody really makes much sense of what they’re doing right now. They seem to have vast spy targets that they are monitoring and are collecting data on that range of governmental agencies to non-government agencies; from espionage centers to non-espionage centers; the Israelis to the EU.

And to the competition chief in the EU, which suggests that there is an economic target here not just a political target. And that’s what’s really important for us to realize.

 

 

NSA scumbag, American traitor Alexander headed for prison

Another significant thing in these findings is that the New York Times is now back in the game, so to speak, working with The Guardian and working with Der Spiegel in Germany looking at the findings of Edward Snowden – the Times for a while left this story to others. Now it’s come back into it, which is significant.

It seems as if the NSA under attack at home from various judges; under attack from various panels appointed by the White House challenging the range of what they’re looking at, calling for them to stop this massive spying, this overreach.

There has also been protests from the technology companies that met with President Obama and that pushed President Obama to restrain the spying - called for a stop to it.

 

 

Merkel, EU have had more than enough of Obama's spying, lies

In other words, the pressure here is increasing and as the pressure increases from various centers of power we have more powerful media institutions jumping on to the NSA story.

And this one here of course is not something that would play very big in the United State, you know, spying on Medicine Without Frontiers, spying on charities, spying on the EU because most Americans don’t know what the EU is or what it does for the most part... but the fact is that these stories are getting more and more play in the American media.

Once again it seems like Edward Snowden is the American media man of the year because he is generating more news than any one person. Time Magazine honored the Pope – I think you’ll see Edward Snowden being reluctantly perhaps acknowledged as a major source of news by many outlets.

SC/AB

This news bureau contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.  We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

 

Read more »