British Nuclear Arsenal’s many safety problems

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged Nuclear weapons

For the British Parliament and much of the media, the problem is mainly the vast amounts of money spent to keep it going. According to the U.K. Ministry of Defense, the program’s total cost is £15-20 billion. Anti-nuclear campaigners give a figure of around £100 billion, give or take. At least, that’s how much it should rack up in costs over its 40 year lifespan.

However, what is less talked about is how both the submarines and the bases that maintain them have suffered from a series of glaring safety mishaps. …
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William Perry: a new nuclear arms race

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged Nuclear weapons

Two decades later, Perry has written a new book, “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink,” in which he offers a dire warning: “Far from continuing the nuclear disarmament that has been underway for the last two decades, we are starting a new nuclear arms race.” …
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A good analysis of the rise of ISIS

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged ISIS

War and imperialism, on one side, and the growing reach of jihadist terrorism, on the other, are said to be locked together in a mutually reinforcing embrace of violence and destruction. “Imperialist cruelty and Islamist cruelty feed each other,” the French Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) argued shortly after the Paris attacks. In order to break this nihilistic death grip, we need to oppose foreign intervention, put an end to imperialist violence, and halt the ongoing plunder of wealth from countries in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere.

The basic logic of this argument is undoubtedly sound. But in terms of explanatory value, this kind of analysis does not go far enough. It suffers from too much generality and abstractness — telling us little about the specificity of this particular moment, or the nature of ISIS as a movement. By attributing a kind of automaticity or natural mirror between ISIS and imperialism, we can miss the all-important context and history that has shaped the remarkably rapid rise of the organization.

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A conversation between David Graeber and Thomas Piketty

Posted on November 29, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, What interests us • Tagged Capitalism, Debt, Economy, Neoliberalism, Tax

On capital, debt and the future of capitalism.

Soak the Rich

Security-led approach to climate change and complex emergencies

Posted on November 28, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged Climate change, Complexity, Militarization, Military spending, Military-Industrial Complex, USA, World

Dystopian preparations by the state are reflected in the corporate arena. Where we see a future climate crisis, many companies see only opportunity: oil firms looking forward to melting ice caps delivering new accessible fossil fuels; security firms touting the latest technologies to secure borders from ‘climate refugees’; or investment fund managers speculating on weather-related food prices – to name but a few. In 2012, Raytheon, one of the world’s largest defence contractors, announced “expanded business opportunities” arising from “security concerns and their possible consequences,” due to the “effects of climate change” in the form of “storms, droughts, and floods”. The rest of the defence sector has been quick to follow. Continue reading →

The MOD’s £178 billion equipment plan

Posted on November 27, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged Military spending, Military-Industrial Complex, MoD, UK

The review promises nine new maritime patrol aircraft for surveillance, two new Army strike brigades, an additional F-35 Lightning II squadron, and extending the service of Typhoon jets by 10 years through to 2040. …

The MOD will spend £178 billion on equipment over the next decade, an increase of £12 billion on previous plans. The Defence budget will increase by 0.5% above inflation for the rest of this Parliament allowing investment in people, equipment and the MOD estate.

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5% and New Economy

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign • Tagged Corbyn, Economy, Green economy, UK

IMF: ‘Trickle-Down’ economics does not work

Posted on June 21, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, What interests us • Tagged Austerity, Economy

If there’s one person most often associated with the origins of of trickle-down economics, it’s President Ronald Reagan. Few people know, however, that the phrase was actually coined by American humorist Will Rogers, whomocked President Herbert Hoover’s Depression-era recovery efforts, saying that “money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes it would trickle down to the needy.” …

Now, nearly 80 years later, Rogers’ quip is getting the punchline it deserves: A devastating new report from the International Monetary Fund has declared the idea of “trickle-down” economics to be as much a joke as he’d imagined.

Increasing the income share to the bottom 20 percent of citizens by a mere one percent results in a 0.38 percentage point jump in GDP growth.

The IMF report, authored by five economists, presents a scathing rejection of the trickle-down approach, arguing that the monetary philosophy has been used as a justification for growing income inequality over the past several decades. “Income distribution matters for growth,” they write. “Specifically, if the income share of the top 20 percent increases, then GDP growth actually declined over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down.”

The IMF Confirms That ‘Trickle-Down’ Economics Is, Indeed, a Joke
http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/trickle-down-economics-is-indeed-a-joke

Violent Gaming

Posted on May 16, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign • Tagged UK, USA, Violent Gaming

5% Digest (week 06/04/15)

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged 5% Digest, Defence contractors, Military-Industrial Complex, Nuclear weapons, Russia, the Pentagon, Trident, UK

Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan stated,

“It’s a long war, unfortunately. But it’s been a war that has been in existence for millennia, at the same time—the use of violence for political purposes against noncombatants by either a state actor or a subnational group.

Terrorism has taken many forms over the years. What is more challenging now is, again, the technology that is available to terrorists, the great devastation that can be created by even a handful of folks, and also mass communication that just proliferates all of this activity and incitement and encouragement. So you have an environment now that’s very conducive to that type of propaganda and recruitment efforts, as well as the ability to get materials that are going to kill people. And so this is going to be something, I think, that we’re always going to have to be vigilant about. There is evil in the world and some people just want to kill for the sake of killing…This is something that, whether it’s from this group right now or another group, I think the ability to cause damage and violence and kill will be with us for many years to come.”

Micah Zenko summarised Brennan’s whole speech:

To summarize, the war on terrorism is working, compared to inaction or other policies. But, the American people should expect it to continue for millennia, or as long as lethal technologies and mass communication remain available to evil people.

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5% Digest (week 30/03/15)

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged 5% Digest, Afghanistan, Defence contractors, EU, Iraq, Military-Industrial Complex, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sou, the Pentagon, UAE, Ukraine, USA

Physicians for Social Responsibility’s (PRS) study concluds that the death toll from 10 years of the “War on Terror” since the 9/11 attacks is at least 1.3 million, and could be as high as 2 million.

It is heavily critical of the figure most widely cited by mainstream media as authoritative, namely, the Iraq Body Count (IBC) estimate of 110,000 dead. According to the PSR study, the much-disputed Lancet study that estimated 655,000 Iraq deaths up to 2006 (and over a million until today by extrapolation) was likely to be far more accurate than IBC’s figures.

Nafeez Ahmed argued that

total deaths from Western interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan since the 1990s – from direct killings and the longer-term impact of war-imposed deprivation – likely constitute around 4 million (2 million in Iraq from 1991-2003, plus 2 million from the “war on terror”), and could be as high as 6-8 million people when accounting for higher avoidable death estimates in Afghanistan.

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5% Digest (Week 23/03/15)

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged 5% Digest, Afghanistan, Budget, Climate change, F-35, Iraq, Military spending, Pakistan, the Pentagon, UN, USA, Yemen

Gregory D. Johnsen wrote a detailed account of the rise of Huthis in Yemen. Adam Baron argued that the power struggle is primarily local and foreign intervention will be a very bad idea.

But what is abundantly clear at the moment is that this remains, by and large, an internal Yemeni political conflict—one that, despite frequent sectarian mischaracterizations and potential regional implications, remains deeply rooted in local Yemeni issues.

And if history is a guide, foreign intervention will only stand to exacerbate the situation. Ironically, talk now centers on a potential Saudi Arabian and Egyptian military intervention in Yemen, a scenario that immediately brought to mind the memory of North Yemen’s 1960s Civil War which saw both sides intervene—albeit on different sides—in a matter which only appeared to draw the conflict out further. This is not to say that there isn’t a place for foreign powers to aid Yemeni factions in negotiating some new political settlement. But any nation that aims to make Yemen’s fight their own is more than likely to come out on the losing side.

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5% Digest (week 16/03/15)

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged 5% Digest, Arms trade, China, Defence contractors, F-35, Israel, Japan, Nuclear weapons, SIPRI, USA

According to SIPRI’s latest report, there is a 16% increase in the volume of arms transferred around the world. The world’s biggest arms exporters in the past five years were the US, Russia, China, Germany and France. China’s exports of major arms rose by 143% in the five years to 2014 from the previous five years. Germany’s arms exports fell by 43% and France’s dropped 27% in the same time frame.

India was the world’s largest single arms importer. Four other Asian countries, China, Pakistan, South Korea and Singapore, are also among the top 10 largest arms importers.
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5% Digest (week 09/03/15)

Posted on March 17, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged 5% Digest, Arms trade, Budget, China, F-35, Japan, Militarization, Military spending, Nuclear weapons, the Pentagon, UK, USA

British MPs voted in favour of keeping defence spending at 2% of GDP. Just 40 MPs voted and the result carries no legal force.

Rory Stewart, Conservative MP for Penrith and the Border and chairman of the defence select committee, warned MPs that Britain could not continue to rely on the military might of America and be a “freeloader”. “This 2% is needed because the threats are real. The world is genuinely getting more dangerous,” he said.

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5% Digest (week 02/03/15)

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged 5% Digest, China, EU, Germany, Japan, Military spending, NATO, Nuclear weapons, the Pentagon, Trident, UK, USA

In Seumas Milnes’s piece ‘The demonisation of Russia risks paving the way for war‘, he argues that “Ukraine – along with Isis – is being used to revive the doctrines of liberal interventionism and even neoconservatism, discredited on the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan.” Hundreds of US troops are arriving in Ukraine and Britain is sending 75 military advisers of its own. This is a direct violation of last month’s Minsk agreement, negotiated with France and Germany – Article 10 requires the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Ukraine.

But when the latest Minsk ceasefire breaks down, as it surely will, there is a real risk that Ukraine’s proxy conflict could turn into full-scale international war.

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5% Digest (January 2015)

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged 5% Digest, Border Control, Drones, Israel, Military-Industrial Complex, Nuclear weapons, Palestine, the Pentagon, UK, USA

It is reported by Guardian that the Pentagon’s internal watchdog has questioned the air force’s increased spending on drones, suggesting its $8.8 billions spending on 46 armed Reaper drones is a waste of money.

As purchases of General Atomics’s MQ-9 Reaper ballooned from 60 aircraft in 2007 to the current 401, air force officials did not justify the need for an expanding drone fleet, the Pentagon said.

During that time, costs for purchasing one of the signature counter-terrorism weapons of Barack Obama’s presidency increased by 934%, from $1.1bn to more than $11.4bn, according to a declassified September report by the Pentagon inspector general. Purchasing costs are a fraction of what the drones cost to operate and maintain over their time in service: in 2012, the Pentagon estimated the total costs for them at $76.8bn.

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5% Digest (October 2014)

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged 5% Digest, Defence contractors, Germany, Japan, Military-Industrial Complex, the Pentagon, UK, USA

After the Cold War, the Pentagon needs to find a new way to justify its wasteful spending and the defense and security contractors need to find a new cause to make profits. Bob Hennelly tells the story:

In 1998, President Bill Clinton tasked former Senators Gary Hart, a Colorado Democrat, and the late Warren Rudman, a New Hampshire Republican, to chair the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. The Commission panel was a cross-section of the military-industrial-media complex. Its members included Leslie Gelb, longtime New York Times correspondent and editor; Norman Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed-Martin; and Army General John Galvin.

The panel gave its report and recommendations in January 2001. Both Senators Rudman and Hart concluded that it was not a matter of “if” the U.S. would suffer a mass-casualty terrorist strike but “when.” Among the panel’s recommendations was the massive integration of all of the nation’s domestic security, disaster planning and recovery functions into one behemoth called the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
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5% Digest (September 2014)

Posted on October 4, 2014 by Lin • Posted in Blog, The 5% Campaign, What interests us • Tagged 5% Digest, Israel, Military spending, Military-Industrial Complex, Nuclear weapons, Russia, the Pentagon, UK, Ukraine, USA

Journalist Ahmed provided a brief history of the rise of Islamic State, arguing the complicity of US and British in its creation and rise through deliberate tactical actions, ill-conceived policies and indirect/direct financial support.

“Since 2003, Anglo-American power has secretly and openly coordinated direct and indirect support for Islamist terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda across the Middle East and North Africa. This ill-conceived patchwork geostrategy is a legacy of the persistent influence of neoconservative ideology, motivated by longstanding but often contradictory ambitions to dominate regional oil resources, defend an expansionist Israel, and in pursuit of these, re-draw the map of the Middle East.“

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