Tag: Pentagon

The Office Of Perception Management

The War Department’s clever name for a propaganda machine.

But they do not need it for we have clarity and transparency in our democracy. (that is sarcasm in case you missed it)

Would our government use propaganda?

You bet your ass they would especially when public approval is needed they will lie and misinform to keep the public dazed and confused makes acceptance of crappy policies palatable.

But let’s go back to the 1980s and the Reagan admin……

Not long after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration launched what it called the Office of Strategic Influence, which would seek to “counter the enemy’s perception management” in the so-called war on terror. But it quickly became clear that the office, operating under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, would be managing those perceptions with its own disinformation.

As the New York Times reported at the time, its work was to “provide news items, possibly including false ones, to foreign journalists in an effort to influence overseas opinion.” In the nascent Internet age, observers worried the propaganda could boomerang back on Americans.

“The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad,” the Times reported in 2004. “But in a modern world wired by satellite television and the Internet, any misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets.”

Now, two decades later, “perception management” is once again becoming a central focus for the national security state. On March 1, 2022, the Pentagon established a new office with similar goals to the one once deemed too controversial to remain open. Very little has been made public about the effort, which The Intercept learned about through a review of budget documents and an internal memo we obtained. This iteration is called the Influence and Perception Management Office, or IPMO, according to the memo, which was produced by the office for an academic institution, and its responsibilities include overseeing and coordinating the various counter-disinformation efforts being conducted by the military, which can include the U.S.’s own propaganda abroad.

Inside the Pentagon’s New “Perception Management” Office to Counter Disinformation

I have been saying this for decades….[lus with social media I am sure that some of us have been a target for the trash spread by the Pentagon and its contractors.

Americans bad mouth Joseph Goebbels and his Ministry of Truth…..looks like we have some that are following the textbook to a tee.

Pay attention or be stupid your choice.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Ever Wonder Where The Money Goes?

I know most people walk around in a haze and believe the hype that is spread by the War Department on the need for more and more cash…..

So keeping with my attempts to be an FYI blog I offer this info on the Pentagon budget…..if you care where your tax dollars go then you might want to read this carefully and decide if it is money well spent.

This will give my reader an idea of just how much money is being spent under the guise of defense and where these dollars will go.

Now that I have your attention let us look at how the media plays into to censorship of information around our War Department and our lust for war…..

If I have peaked your interest then by all means read on…..

On January 17, 1961, outgoing President and former Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower gave one of the most consequential speeches in American history. Eisenhower for eight years had been a popular president, whose appeal drew upon a reputation as a person of great personal fortitude, who’d guided the United States to victory in an existential fight for survival in World War II. Nonetheless, as he prepared to vacate the Oval Office for handsome young John F. Kennedy, he warned the country it was now at the mercy of a power even he could not overcome. 

Until World War II, America had no permanent arms manufacturing industry. Now it did, and this new sector, Eisenhower said, was building up around itself a cultural, financial, and political support system accruing enormous power. This “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience,” he said, adding:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. 

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes… Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. 

This was the direst of warnings, but the address has tended in the popular press to be ignored. After sixty-plus years, most of America – including most of the American left, which traditionally focused the most on this issue – has lost its fear that our arms industry might conquer democracy from within. 

https://www.racket.news/p/report-on-the-censorship-industrial-74b

Keep an eye on the news….there may be a request for even more cash for Ukraine by mid-Summer….

The last massive aid package Congress authorized for Ukraine has about $6 billion left, which is expected to be used up by mid-summer, POLITICO reported Monday.

So far, the US has authorized about $113 billion in spending on the war in Ukraine, which includes military aid, direct budgetary aid, training, funding for US troop deployments in Eastern Europe, and other types of assistance.

Once the final $6 billion dries up, the Pentagon won’t be able to ship more weapons to Ukraine. That means the White House is expected to ask Congress to authorize more spending on the war soon.

A senior Biden administration official told POLITICO that the White House is discussing a new package and is going to time it so the weapons can keep flowing to Ukraine. The official said the administration is “fully committed” to supporting Kyiv in the war “for the long haul.”

The POLITICO report said that massive aid packages for Ukraine might not be as easy to ram through Congress as they were before, citing the debate over the debt ceiling and dissent from a small but significant group of Republicans. But the majority of Republicans support arming Ukraine, including GOP leadership, who have been critical of President Biden for not sending longer-range weapons and fighter jets.

“Although there are dissenting voices, the large majority of certainly Republicans — for sure in the Senate and arguably in the House as well — believe strongly that we need Ukraine to win and that the outcome there is something that matters not only to that region, but to the United States and our national security interests,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

On the Democrat side, there is virtually no opposition to arming Ukraine. While there’s still strong support in Congress for arming Ukraine, hawks in Washington are concerned it could decline if Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive fails.

(antiwar.com)

For god sake please pull your head out of the proverbial sand pile….or better yet out of your ass.

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

GOP–I Knew It Was BS

I recently wrote about a proposal from a GOP faithful to drop some of the spending for the Pentagon….I said at the time that it was so much manure……

Should The Pentagon Be Worried?

The 4 most beautiful words in the English language….”I Told you So”….

Republicans who have pledged to use their narrow majority in the House to pursue steep federal spending cuts have sent a clear message in recent days: The bloated Pentagon budget is safe, but Social Security, Medicare, and other key government programs are not.

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) expressed that sentiment during a Monday interview on Fox Business, saying, “I’m all for a balanced budget, but we’re not going to do it on the backs of our troops and our military.”

“If we really want to talk about the debt and spending, it’s the entitlement programs,” said Waltz, referring to Medicare and Social Security, among other programs. (By law, Social Security cannot add to the federal deficit.)

The office of Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas)—one of the far-right Republicans that initially opposed Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) bid for House speaker—was particularly adamant in a Twitter post on Sunday, declaring that “cuts to defense were NEVER DISCUSSED” in talks with McCarthy.

“In fact, there was broad agreement spending cuts should focus on NON-DEFENSE discretionary spending,” Roy’s office wrote, singling out a broad category that includes federal budgets for healthcare, education, environmental programs, and more.

The Texas Republican’s staff was attempting to dispel reports last week that McCarthy opponents were seeking to cap federal spending across the board at Fiscal Year 2022 levels, a demand that—if fulfilled—would lop tens of billions of dollars off the historically high Pentagon budget in addition to slashing non-military domestic programs.

The reports of potential Pentagon cuts on the horizon contributed to a recent decline in the stock prices of major military contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/gop-pentagon-social-security-medicare

A great idea but as usual the lobbyists showed up with buckets of cash and the spineless collapsed into a quivering mess.

Following a week of acrimonious fights in Congress, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) managed to hammer out a deal with the small group of GOP lawmakers who opposed his bid to become speaker of the House. The agreement, which reportedly included a promise to reverse the $75 billion boost in this year’s defense budget, has been variously hailed and scorned as proof that Republicans are entering a new era on a range of issues.

At least when it comes to foreign policy, however, the establishment appears to have held on to its traditional role. On Tuesday, House leadership announced the chamber’s new committee chairs, and the results gave no indication that McCarthy intends to run afoul of GOP mandarins, especially when it comes to defense spending.

“For all the bluster about a new GOP, the people running the show are from the same mold as the ones who have been running it for more than a decade,” tweeted Justin Amash, a libertarian former member of Congress.

Take Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), who will now take over as chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee. The Texas Republican has slowly climbed GOP ranks since entering Congress in 1997, and her efforts culminated in her 2019 appointment as the ranking member of appropriations. 

Granger is a strong proponent of increased defense spending and has praised the controversial F-35 fighter jet as “integral to our national security.” As RS noted last year, the establishment stalwart also hails from Tarrant County, which received over $12 billion in defense spending in 2021.

GOP won’t bird-dog defense budget with these hawks at the helm

As usual it is more important to feed the Pentagon instead of the American people.

Business as usual.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Should The Pentagon Be Worried?

I know I have bitched a bunch about the budget that the Pentagon gets every year…..while most programs and departments are seeing their cash flow lessen the Pentagon see an increase and without much trying on their part.

Now that we have a new Speaker he has promised to take some of their money back to help balance the budget.

After days of negotiations, Rep. Kevin McCarthy is considering cutting the Pentagon budget by $75 billion in order to gain the support of roughly two dozen Republicans who have opposed his bid to become speaker of the House, according to Bloomberg. 

The cut is reportedly part of an “emerging deal” that would cap government spending at 2022 levels, meaning that it would return defense spending to $782 billion — a sharp drop from this year’s allotment of $857 billion.

According to Andrew Lautz, Director of Federal Policy at National Taxpayers Union and regular RS contributor, this could end up being a bigger cut than people think.

“I would argue the cut would be larger than $75 billion. That’s a $75 billion cut relative to FY 2023 levels. CBO is not out with their new baseline yet but I imagine they’re now projecting a larger than $857 billion national defense topline for FY 2024,” Lautz wrote in an email after this story broke. “Relative to that new expectation, a $782 billion flat FY 2024 topline might be closer to an $100 billion cut.”

If any deal does go through, it would still represent one of the largest single-year reductions in the Pentagon’s budget in history. But that is, of course, a big “if.” It remains unclear whether the agreement will be enough to end days of battles in the House over who will serve as speaker, and it’s far from certain that McCarthy will have the power to ensure that such dramatic cuts are actually enacted. 

The proposal could earn support from some progressives in Congress, including Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), who pitched a $100 billion haircut for the Department of Defense earlier this year. But it will no doubt face serious headwinds from more hawkish members of Congress, especially given that this year’s Pentagon budget boost easily passed both the House and Senate, and progressives are unlikely to go along with the idea of across-the-board budget cuts.

McCarthy weighing $75B defense budget cut in quest for speakership (update)

Personally I do not seeing this attempt going anywhere….while I would agree with this cut in funding I think that Congress is in the pockets of the defense industry too far for it to be successful.

I want to see how the Dems handle this proposal….my bet is they will help shoot it down.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Christmas Comes Early For Pentagon

The Department of Defense has gotten their gift early for Christmas…..their budget reaches damn near a $1 trillion (that is trillion with a “T”)….

The House on Thursday passed the massive $858 billion 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in a vote of 350-80, sending the bill to the Senate, where a vote is expected to be held next week.

The $858 billion NDAA is $45 billion more than President Biden asked for, marking the second year in a row that Congress made the military budget higher than what the White House requested. The amount represents an 8% increase from the 2022 NDAA, which was finalized at $782 billion.

According to Defense News, the 2023 NDAA dropped amendments added to the House version that would have restricted weapons sales to countries accused of human rights abuses. Such provisions were included in the House version of the NDAA but didn’t make it past into the final version that was negotiated with the Senate.

Notable amendments packed into the NDAA include a measure that will give the Pentagon wartime purchasing powers by allowing non-competitive, multi-year contracts for certain arms. The authority could be used to refill US stockpiles, arm Ukraine, and assist foreign governments that have provided support for Ukraine.

The list of munitions the Pentagon is allowed to procure using the purchasing powers is extensive and includes HIMARS rocket launch systems, 155mm ammunition, Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and much more.

US weapons manufacturers will benefit greatly from the new authority, especially Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, as many of their systems are on the list. The multi-year contracts will incentivize the arms makers to significantly ramp up production.

The NDAA includes unprecedented military aid for Taiwan, including $10 billion that will be disbursed over five years and $1 billion in annual presidential drawdown authority, which will allow the US to send Taipei weapons directly from Pentagon stockpiles.

Ukraine will receive $800 million in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative from the NDAA, a program that allows the US government to purchase weapons for Ukraine. But the vast majority of spending on the Ukraine war will come through emergency funding, and the White House is hoping Congress approves a new $37.7 billion tranche of Ukraine aid during the lame-duck period.

The NDAA includes $11.5 billion in new investments for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, a program to build up in the Asia Pacific to confront China. The Pentagon has identified China as its main focus, and the NDAA includes investment in new technology research and development that US military leaders say is meant to counter Beijing.

(antiwar.com)

If you are interested in more information then this article may help….

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/12/08/war-industry-celebrating-christmas-early-house-passes-858-billion-ndaa

Pentagon gets a trillion and the rest of our nation gets crumbs from the Defense table.

There is something seriously wrong with this situation.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Pentagon Gets More

Recently SecDef demanded that Congress vote on giving the Pentagon their blood money….

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday urged lawmakers to pass a full-year budget for his department as soon as possible, warning that another short-term spending extension could imperil military readiness and family support efforts.

“If the [current budget extension] extends beyond December, we may be forced to reduce accessions or permanent change of station moves, impairing our ability to meet our missions and causing unnecessary disruption to our families and our ability to recruit personnel,” Austin wrote in a letter to House and Senate leaders.

“It is impairing our ability to hire the people we need to accelerate our efforts to eradicate sexual assault and prevent suicide. [It] is delaying needed investments in military infrastructure, including barracks and child care centers.”

Congress approved a short-term budget extension in September after lawmakers failed to agree upon a full-year spending plan by the start of the new fiscal year, Oct. 1. That temporary extension is set to run out on Dec. 16.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/11/28/secdef-tells-congress-to-get-a-military-budget-done-already/

But not to worry the Pentagon gets what it wants and even more…..

The House and Senate have agreed to increase the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by $45 billion more than President Biden requested, POLITICO reported on Wednesday.

The $45 billion increase was agreed on by the House and Senate Armed Service committees, but other details of the NDAA are still being finalized. The increase the two panels agreed on brings the bill to $847 billion.

Including programs outside of the jurisdiction of House and Senate Armed Service committees, the NDAA will reach $858 billion.

Once finalized, it will be the second year in a row that Congress significantly increases President Biden’s requested budget. Last year, the president asked for $753 billion but was granted an NDAA worth about $778 billion.

The POLITICO report said that the chairs of the Senate and House Armed Services committees have largely agreed on the bill and have handed it off to congressional leadership.

Congress is looking to get the NDAA on the House floor for a vote as early as next week. Once approved by the House it will go to the Senate and then would head to President Biden’s desk for his signature.

Over the past few months, lawmakers have been trying to tack on amendments to the spending bill that would give Taiwan unprecedented military aid, but the contents and amendments included in the NDAA aren’t yet clear.

One plan reported by The Washington Post would give Taiwan $3 billion annually for at least five years. If the Taiwan aid isn’t included in the NDAA, the White House could ask Congress to authorize the Taiwan aid as emergency funds, which is what has been done for Ukraine.

(antiwar.com)

See how good it is to bribe Congress?

Think about it…..almost a trillion dollars for war…..and pennies for the infrastructure and such.

People are idiots!….they allow this to continue.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Yet Another Failure

I have been very vocal on my opposition to the waste of American taxpayer cash…..there is waste at every level of our government but the most wasteful is the Pentagon who seems to get more cash than they ask for in their budget requests.

And yet they cannot keep up with their waste…..and yet they failed yet another audit of their books.

Department of Defense revealed that it had failed its fifth consecutive audit. 

“I would not say that we flunked,” said DoD Comptroller Mike McCord, although his office did note that the Pentagon only managed to account for 39 percent of its $3.5 trillion in assets. “The process is important for us to do, and it is making us get better. It is not making us get better as fast as we want.”

The news came as no surprise to Pentagon watchers. After all, the U.S. military has the distinction of being the only U.S. government agency to have never passed a comprehensive audit.

But what did raise some eyebrows was the fact that DoD made almost no progress in this year’s bookkeeping: Of the 27 areas investigated, only seven earned a clean bill of financial health, which McCord described as “basically the same picture as last year.”

Given this accounting disaster, it should come as no surprise that the Pentagon has a habit of bad financial math. This is especially true when it comes to estimating the cost of weapons programs.

The Pentagon’s most famous recent boondoggle is the F-35 program, which has gone over its original budget by $165 billion to date. But examples of overruns abound: As Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Jack Reed (D-RI) wrote in 2020, the lead vessel for every one of the Navy’s last eight combatant ships came in at least 10 percent over budget, leading to more than $8 billion in additional costs.

And another major overrun is poised to happen soon, according to a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office. 

The Navy plans to expand its ship production in an effort to maintain an edge over China, with a particular focus on a new attack submarine and destroyer ship. The Pentagon has proposed three versions of this plan at an average cost of $27 billion per year between 2023 and 2052, a 10 percent jump from current annual shipbuilding costs. 

But the CBO says this is a big underestimate. The independent agency’s math says the average annual cost of this shipbuilding initiative will be over $31 billion, meaning that the Navy is underestimating costs by $120 billion over the program’s life.

The Pentagon fails its fifth audit in a row

The DoD keeps flushing cash down the toilet and no one cares or even knows where this cash goes.

When will the American people start caring where their money goes….maybe they should focus on the Pentagon and less time worrying about meals for seniors or hungry kids.

Just a thought.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Pentagon Does The Right Thing

In my opinion for the wrong reasons…..

The Pentagon has come out on the side of ‘reproductive rights’….(for now)

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Friday that the Pentagon is working to ensure that members of the military, their families and its civilian employees will still have access to “reproductive health care” after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Why it matters: The Defense Department currently does not have a policy to accommodate service members or employees who are seeking an abortion but are stationed in a state that has outlawed abortion, Politico reports.

  • Federal law currently allows military medical facilities to provide abortions only in cases of rape, incest or if a woman’s life is in danger, while the military’s health program is allowed to cover abortions at private facilities for those same reasons only.

What they’re saying: “Nothing is more important to me or to this Department than the health and well-being of our Service members, the civilian workforce and DOD families,” Austin said in a statement on Friday.

  • “I am committed to taking care of our people and ensuring the readiness and resilience of our Force. The Department is examining this decision closely and evaluating our policies to ensure we continue to provide seamless access to reproductive health care as permitted by federal law,” he added.

The big picture: The court’s decision may further strain the military’s recruitment efforts — already hampered by low employment and other factors — as potential recruits may fear being stationed in states that have banned abortions, according to Bloomberg.

  • Women make up around 20% of the military’s 1.3 million-member active-duty force, and 95% of them are of reproductive age, according to Stars and Stripes citing department statistics.

(axios.com)

Ain’t that some kind of special?

My thoughts is that this will be a recruiting tool…..I mean the Pentagon has a hard time doing anything about sexual assaults, rape and such, in the military why else would they be so concerned about reproductive rights?

Next this ought o make conservs lose their under productive little minds.  (Something that would give me hours of enjoyment)

But here is a thought for them….punish the Pentagon by slashing their budget by $250 billion and use the cash for infrastructure and social programs.

That is just my wishful thinking for that will never happen….the M-IC and its oligarchs will slip lots of cash to our Congress to soothe their troubled minds.

This is nothing more than a news trap….in other words bullsh*t.

Any thoughts of this little piece of theater?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Was I Wrong To Question?

I have been criticized for not being more supportive of the efforts by the world to help Ukraine through this time of hardship.

For the media I have stated that most of the ‘reports’ have not been verified by the different outlets….but it is reported as fact….I have a problem with that……

But some of these reports are propaganda plain and simple…..and I am not alone in my skepticism….

NBC News has a new report out citing multiple anonymous US officials, humorously titled “In a break with the past, U.S. is using intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the intel isn’t rock solid“.

The officials say the Biden administration has been rapidly pushing out “intelligence” about Russia’s plans in Ukraine that is “low-confidence” or “based more on analysis than hard evidence”, or even just plain false, in order to fight an information war against Putin.

The report says that toward this end the US government has deliberately circulated false or poorly evidenced claims about impending chemical weapons attacks, about Russian plans to orchestrate a false flag attack in the Donbass to justify an invasion, about Putin’s advisors misinforming him, and about Russia seeking arms supplies from China.

So they lied. They may hold that they lied for a noble reason, but they lied. They knowingly circulated information they had no reason to believe was true, and that lie was amplified by all the most influential media outlets in the western world.

Another example of the Biden administration releasing a false narrative as part of its “information war”:

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/04/07/us-officials-admit-theyre-literally-just-lying-to-the-public-about-russia/

The media uses pundits that are working for the arms industry….just how impartial will those slugs be?

U.S. corporate media outlets are saturated with pundits – many of them ex-military or national security officials – who take to the airwaves to promote hawkish policies and actions in Ukraine and elsewhere without disclosing their own ties to the arms industry, according to a report published Tuesday.

Analyzing punditry across a range of outlets including CNN, MSNBC, and NBC News, Aditi Ramaswami and Andrew Perez at The Lever found that the networks failed to inform viewers that many of their expert guests who called for supplying Ukraine with more weapons to defend against Russia’s invasion were currently employed by the weapons industry or its advocates.

“I think it’s awesome you can be a consultant for a company that manufactures certain missiles and go on NBC or CNN and say how important it is that we get more of those missiles shipped out, with no one saying [by the way], this guy works for the missile company,” Perez sardonically quipped in a tweet promoting the report. 

New Reporting Details Corporate Media’s War Industry Pundits

You are being fed propaganda that will insure that the arms industry gets its way in this world…..public opinion echoes the propaganda.

Look at the nuke thing….then the chem thing and now back to the nuke thing……all there is is words nothing to point to the actual use.

“War is good business” and the media helps it be uber profitable.

The MSM is creating the stories…..watch whatever network you like and the news stories are all the same….very little variation

Please look behind the BS and get to the real story….not the fake crap being passed off as expert impartial analysis.

Be Smart….Learn Stuff

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The War Budget

Every year we hear abut the defense budget and every year it gets larger and larger…..sucking up more and more of much needed revenue for the country.

I have been saying for decades that the Pentagon is destroying the capabilities of this country all the while making defense contractors richer and richer…..war is big business…..

Imagine. It cost America more to fight a ragged band of insurgents and terrorists than the Red Army, Red Guards, Viet Cong, Khmer Rouge, Korean People’s Army, and the rest of communism’s many axes of evil. And real military outlays today remain well above even Reagan’s enhanced levels.

Corporate America quickly seized its opportunity for gain. Hartung quoted Boeing Vice President Harry Stonecipher warning politicians not to get between the companies and the cash: “the purse is now open . . . any member of Congress who doesn’t vote for the funds we need to defend this country will be looking for a new job after next November.” Boeing’s PAC was experienced at winning votes for the Export-Import Bank, a fount of corporate welfare nicknamed Boeing’s Bank for munificently underwriting the company’s airline sales. Boeing also added to the horde of lobbyists, an estimated 700-plus for the infamous merchants of death alone. Many of these agents of influence served in either the Pentagon or Congress, putting their career contacts to profitable use.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/war-is-big-business/

Let’s be honest…..the Pentagon budget should be called what it truly is…..a War Budget.

The misleading first name of the Defense Department doesn’t justify using “defense” as an adjective for its budget. On the contrary, the ubiquitous use of phrases like “defense budget” and “defense spending” – virtually always written with a lower-case “d” – reinforces the false notion that equates the USA’s humongous military operations with defense.

In the real world, the United States spends more money on its military than the next 10 countries all together. And most of those countries are military allies.

What about military bases in foreign countries? The U.S. currently has 750, while Russia has about two dozen and China has one. The author of the landmark book “Base Nation,” American University professor David Vine, just co-wrote a report that points out “the United States has at least three times as many overseas bases as all other countries combined.” Those US bases abroad “cost taxpayers an estimated $55 billion annually.”

Stop Calling the Military Budget a ‘Defense’ Budget

The problem is that even Progressives for all their big talk cannot step back from the M-IC and its cash……

Military contractor campaign donations, propaganda, and patriotism account for much of the support for our endless wars and preparation for them, costly in economic, environmental, and human ways. In addition, a multitude of interests sustains the military and its budget, and encourages silence about its wars of aggression and other activities.

The antiwar movement must contend with the many ordinary citizens who may have no desire to kill people, destroy the environment, or overthrow governments. They are trying to earn a living, fund their charitable organizations and schools, or save their communities from economic devastation. At present, without a national budget devoted to human needs, they see no other choice but to slip under the wings of the lush military budget.

The military contracts for almost everything. Along with other government enterprises, such as prisons and highways, this further ensures their survival while contributing to booming regional economies where unemployment levels are low.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/10/04/addicted-to-military-keynesianism-why-cant-even-our-most-progressive-politicians-break-with-the-military-industrial-complex/

Our country needs to repair itself….both socially and internationally and spending billions on war will do neither.

But as usual the people sleep through all the destruction…..and yet pretend they care.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”