Frank Slijper, “Austerity in Europe? Tighten the military belt“, Open Democracy, 6 May 2013
Five years into the economic crisis in Europe and the elephant in the room is the role of military spending in causing and perpetuating the economic crisis. As social infrastructure is slashed, spending on weapon systems has hardly been reduced. Part one of two essays on military spending and the EU crisis.
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(Source: Transnational Institute, http://www.tni.org/article/military-spending-and-eu-crisis-infographic)
“Poverty Is Not About Scroungers Versus Strivers, Church Of England Bishops Say“, The Huffington Post UK, 08/07/2013
Presenting poverty and unemployment as a question of “scroungers versus strivers” is both inaccurate and an insult, Church of England bishops have said.
The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, called for the Church to resist “rhetoric” that accuses people of choosing a life of idle dependence on the welfare state.
“It is an insult to claim that poverty in this country is caused by people choosing unemployment,” he told members of the General Synod.
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Joshua Holland, “An ‘ungodly stupid’ get-rich scheme: The real border security story“, Salon, Jul 6 2013
Last week, John McCain gleefully announced that the Senate immigration bill would result in the “most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall.” Indeed, an amendment authored by Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and John Hoeven, R-N.D., authorizes a massive increase in border security dollars — including $30 billion for hiring and training 19,000 new border patrol officers over the next 10 years, and over $13 billion for a “comprehensive Southern border strategy” (including 700 miles of high-tech fencing).
Spencer Ackerman, “US drone strikes more deadly to Afghan civilians than manned aircraft“, The Guardian, 2 July 2013
A study conducted by a US military adviser has found that drone strikes in Afghanistan during a year of the protracted conflict caused 10 times more civilian casualties than strikes by manned fighter aircraft.
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Eli Clifton, “The Secret Foreign Donor Behind the American Enterprise Institute“, The Nation, June 25, 2013
The right-wing think tank received big money from Taiwan’s government at the same time that it was churning out policy papers and articles urging US military aid to Taipei.
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has emerged as one of the Beltway’s most consistent advocates for the sale of advanced fighter jets to Taiwan. Previously undisclosed tax filings reveal that while issuing research reports and publishing articles on US-Taiwan relations, AEI received a $550,000 contribution from the government of Taiwan, a source of funding the think tank has never acknowledged.
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Marcus Weisgerber, “Pentagon, Regional Staffs Growing Despite Orders to Trim Personnel,” Defense News, June 2, 2013.
Overall, staff sizes of major US military commands grew by 15 percent from 2010 to 2012, despite then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ call to reducestaff sizes as a way of cutting redundancy and saving money.
Organization; Size 2010; Size 2012; (Change; % Change)
OSD — 2010: 2,433; 2012: 2,665 (+232, 9.5%)
Joint Staff — 2010: 1,286; 2012: 4,244 (+2,958, 230%)
AFRICOM — 2010: 1,661; 2012: 1,919 (+285, 15.5%)
CENTCOM — 2010: 2,686; 2012: 3,207 (+521, 19.4%)
EUCOM — 2010: 2,494; 2012: 2,286 (-208, -8.3%)
NORTHCOM — 2010: 1,585; 2012: 1,687 (+102, 6.4%)
PACOM — 2010: 3,825; 2012: 4,147 (+322, 8.4%)
SOUTHCOM — 2010: 1,795; 2012 — 1,797 (+2, 0.1%)
Jeremy Schwartz, “Soaring cost of military drugs could hurt budget“, American-Statesman,Dec. 29, 2012
Last year, the Pentagon spent more on pills, injections and vaccines than it did on Black Hawk helicopters, Abrams tanks, Hercules C-130 cargo planes and Patriot missiles — combined.
(Originally published on 13 June 2013 by The Collegium Ramazzini, http://www.collegiumramazzini.org/news1.asp?id=105)
The Collegium Ramazzini has sent a letter to President Barroso and Commissioners Tajani, Potočnik, and Borg urging stringent hazard-based evaluation criteria for EDCs and a precautionary approach that will protect the general population and workers against these serious hazards.
The Collegium Ramazzini, an international academy of 180 scientists from 35 countries, experts in environmental and occupational health, has released a statement calling for new ways to test chemicals and to revise current approaches to risk management.
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Mike Baker, “Costs of U.S. Wars Linger for Over 100 Years,” Associated Press, March 19, 2013.
If history is any judge, the U.S. government will be paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the next century as service members and their families grapple with the sacrifices of combat.
An Associated Press analysis of federal payment records found that the government is still making monthly payments to relatives of Civil War veterans — 148 years after the conflict ended.
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Ryan P. Allen, “The 600-pound Gorilla: Why We Need a Smaller Defense Department,” NDU Press, Jauary 2013.
The Defense Department is kept from being proportional to its actual role by organizational inertia and its size. Use of force, and the abundance of manpower and materiel that enable it, are traditional strengths, but the military is unsustainable at its present cost. Without a reduction, the Nation is weakened economically, and overreliance on the military has a corresponding effect on both U.S. status and on domestic regard for the military even as fewer Americans than ever have served or understand what the military does. Relying on the inherent goodness of man is insufficient; the U.S. Armed Forces must remain the most capable, but leaders must assess what is needed and the long-term effects of military responses and adjust accordingly.
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Donna Cassata, “Report: US Footing Greater Bill for Overseas Bases,” Associated Press, April 17, 2013.
The United States is footing more of the bill for overseas bases in Germany, Japan and South Korea even as the military reduces the number of American troops in Europe and strategically repositions forces in Asia, a congressional report says.
The exhaustive, yearlong investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee focused on costs and burden-sharing as the United States spends more than $10 billion a year to back up the U.S. military presence overseas, with 70 percent of the amount expended in the three nations. The figure does not include military personnel costs.
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Micah Zenko, “The Scope of U.S. Global Military Presence,” Council on Foreign Relations, April 30, 2013
That report—with twelve authors—was published yesterday by RAND: “Overseas Basing of U.S. Military Forces: An Assessment of the Relative Costs and Strategic Benefits.” It is, by far, the most impressive and comprehensive study of the scope, benefits, risks, costs, and consequences of America’s global military presence. Many citizens and policymakers are unaware of the number of troops stationed overseas to execute U.S. defense strategy: recent Pentagon data lists over 172,000 U.S. servicemembers on permanent or rotational deployments around the world (not including the 66,000 troops in Afghanistan).
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“UN Human Rights Expert Calls for a Moratorium on Lethal Autonomous Robots,” United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, May 30, 2013.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, today called for a global pause in the development and deployment of lethal autonomous robots (LARs), to allow “serious and meaningful international engagement on this issue before we proceed to a world where machines are given the power to kill humans.”
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Richard Norton-Taylor, “Afghanistan war has cost Britain more than £37bn, new book claims,” The Guardian, 30 May 2013
Frank Ledwidge, author of damning study Investment in Blood, says failing, bloody campaign has cost £2,000 per UK household.
The war in Afghanistan has cost Britain at least £37bn and the figure will rise to a sum equivalent to more than £2,000 for every taxpaying household, according to a devastating critique of the UK’s role in the conflict.
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Dave Johnson, Another Bridge Falls — Fixing Infrastructure Fixes Jobs And Deficits, Campaign for America’s Future, May 24, 2013.
In Seattle another aging bridge has fallen. The American Society of Civil Engineers report America’s 2013 Infrastructure Report Card gives us a D+ and says we are $3.6 trillion behind in infrastructure maintenance. And this is just to catch up, not get ahead.
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Rising levels of cancer along with increasing brain, thyroid and reproductive problems have led an international group of scientists to call for tougher EU regulation on some chemicals used in everyday life.
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Tipping Point North South 