Tag Military-industrial complex

Entries 3 Total

U.S. militarism, oil and global warming

Dec 3, ’09 1:05 PM

A friend just for­war­ded this art­icle from 2007 on mil­it­ar­ism and global warm­ing. Con­sider this:

US mil­it­ar­ism has to be con­sidered under three head­ings: First, the US mil­it­ary is the largest single con­sumer of fossil fuel in the world. Second, the US eco­nomy, the largest national con­sumer of fossil fuel in the world, has shown that its primary mode of main­tain­ing a sup­ply of fossil fuel for itself is through mil­it­ary action (assault, inter­ven­tion, occu­pa­tion of other oil pro­du­cing nations). Third, the US mil­it­ary oper­ates in the interest of a cor­por­ate eco­nomy of which it (the mil­it­ary) is the fore­most sec­tor in the US.

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Congressman Ron Paul on America’s problem in a nutshell

Mar 10, ’09 10:25 PM

Repub­lican Con­gress­man from Texas, Ron Paul, describe’s America’s prob­lem in a nut­shell:

ron_paulIma­gine for a moment that some­where in the middle of Texas there was a large for­eign mil­it­ary base, say Chinese or Rus­sian. Ima­gine that thou­sands of armed for­eign troops were con­stantly patrolling Amer­ican streets in mil­it­ary vehicles. Ima­gine they were here under the aus­pices of “keep­ing us safe” or “pro­mot­ing demo­cracy” or “pro­tect­ing their stra­tegic interests.”

Ima­gine that they oper­ated out­side of US law, and that the Con­sti­tu­tion did not apply to them. Ima­gine that every now and then they made mis­takes or acted on bad inform­a­tion and acci­dent­ally killed or ter­ror­ized inno­cent Amer­ic­ans, includ­ing women and chil­dren, most of the time with little to no reper­cus­sions or con­sequences. Ima­gine that they set up check points on our soil and routinely searched and ran­sacked entire neigh­bor­hoods of homes. Ima­gine if Amer­ic­ans were fear­ful of these for­eign troops, and over­whelm­ingly thought Amer­ica would be bet­ter off without their presence.

Ima­gine if some Amer­ic­ans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actu­ally joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sov­er­eignty, because lead­er­ship in gov­ern­ment refused or were unable to do so. Ima­gine that those Amer­ic­ans were labeled ter­ror­ists or insur­gents for their defens­ive actions, and routinely killed, or cap­tured and tor­tured by the for­eign troops on our land. Ima­gine that the occu­pi­ers’ atti­tude was that if they just killed enough Amer­ic­ans, the res­ist­ance would stop, but instead, for every Amer­ican killed, ten more would take up arms against them, res­ult­ing in per­petual bloodshed.

Accord­ing to our own CIA, our med­dling in the Middle East was the prime motiv­a­tion for the hor­rific attacks on 9/11. But instead of re-evaluating our for­eign policy, we have simply escal­ated it. We had a right to go after those respons­ible for 9/11, to be sure, but why do so many Amer­ic­ans feel as if we have a right to a mil­it­ary pres­ence in some 160 coun­tries when we wouldn’t stand for even one for­eign base on our soil, for any reason?

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Good news: UK turns to Keynesian economics

Oct 19, ’08 9:08 PM

With New Labour’s neo-liberal agenda and long record of social­ising costs and privat­ising profits it comes as a sur­prise to me that Alistair Darling has turned to Keynes in the face of reces­sion. I had assumed until now that they’d use this reces­sion and the recent handout to bankers as an oppor­tun­ity to cut back on social spend­ing. Maybe we have the absence of Tony Blair to thank?

While I’ve increas­ingly been hear­ing news of archi­tects being laid off over the past few weeks, the firm I’m employed by works nearly exclus­ively in the social hous­ing sec­tor, so it’s cer­tainly good eco­nomic news for me:

The chan­cel­lor said hous­ing, energy and small busi­nesses would bene­fit in his new spend­ing plans.

And I couldn’t agree more with Darling on this statement:

This is a time when you have to sup­port the eco­nomy. You will see us switch­ing our spend­ing pri­or­it­ies to areas which make a difference.

It’s just a shame he includes in this the entrench­ment of the military-industrial com­plex and the myopic decision to upgrade Britain’s nuc­lear weapons.

… plans for two air­craft car­ri­ers and a new nuc­lear deterrent would go ahead.

I might add that a decision to upgrade Britain’s nuc­lear weapons is a dir­ect viol­a­tion of the Nuc­lear Non-Proliferation Treaty, some­thing the UK and U.S. gov­ern­ments have been falsely accus­ing Iran of over the past year or so.

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