Proving George Orwell’s dictum that “Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks the whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns somersaults when there is no whip,” significant sections of our free press and many so-called independent experts faithfully echoed the government’s official line.
“The missile uses a low-powered but highly focused explosive warhead to reduce shrapnel hitting civilians,” noted the Telegraph. “The Brimstone is capable of hitting moving targets travelling at speeds of up to 70mph” and “can be launched from an aircraft up to seven miles away from as high as 20,000 feet.” The Daily Mail transformed from a newspaper into a sales brochure: “The missile that never misses: watch the incredible moment a drone launched Brimstone hits a car moving at 70mph from seven MILES away’. The Sun was equally enthusiastic just a week before the parliamentary vote: “Raining hell on IS: RAF missile will pinpoint jihadists SEVEN miles away.” The online media watchdog Media Lens accurately dubs this kind of overexcited narrow focus on the technical aspects of weaponry as “war porn”, with the BBC a big culprit.
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Tag Archives: Military spending
The $2 trillion redline
During the 1980s, the Cold War and the global nuclear arms race propelled total military spending in the world higher than ever before. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the idea of the “peace dividend” got hold and for a short while, it did indeed look like that was where the world was going and that global military spending would gradually normalise to a much lower level, appropriate for a reduced-conflict, non-confrontational, uni-polar world. The two biggest spenders saw the biggest drop in their spending. Russia simply could not afford the Soviet level of spending after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and its economy went from crisis to crisis, further diminishing their ability to spend. In the United States, without any notable enemy and significant military threats to their national security, military spending gradually came down while the economy boomed. It came down to the lowest point in recent history in the middle of the Clinton years. Since the USA is the largest military spending nation by far (accounting more than one thirds), it coincided with the lowest point in global military spending too.
Corbyn is right on Trident
Simon Jenkins is spot on on this:
Corbyn was right on Iraq. He was right on Syria. He is right on Islamic State. On the idiocy, waste and vacuous drivel that constitutes “the case for Trident”, he has been right. Fighting him on it just to make Labour seem macho makes no sense.
Obama SOTU 2016
The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. It’s not even close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined. Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world. No nation dares to attack us or our allies because they know that’s the path to ruin. Surveys show our standing around the world is higher than when I was elected to this office, and when it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead – they call us.
How the US blew $17 billion in Afghanistan
ProPublica pored over more than 200 audits, special projects and inspections done by SIGAR since 2009 and built a database to add up the total cost of failed reconstruction projects. Looking at the botched projects collectively — rather than as one-off headlines — reveals a grim picture of the overall reconstruction effort and a repeated cycle of mistakes.
- In just six years, the IG has tallied at least $17 billion in questionable spending. This includes $3.6 billion in outright waste, projects teetering on the brink of waste, or projects that can’t — or won’t — be sustained by the Afghans, as well as an additional $13.5 billion that the average taxpayer might easily judge to be waste. Exhibit A for “You be the judge”: $8.4 billion was spent on counter-narcotics programs that were so ineffective that Afghanistan has produced record levels of heroin — more than it did before the war started.
Security-led approach to climate change and complex emergencies
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
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.
Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict – Northeast Asia Statement on the Occasion of the Global Day of Action on Military Spending
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, and the division of the Korean Peninsula. Yet full peace and reconciliation is far from being achieved in Northeast Asia.
Tensions between Japan, China, and the Koreas over territorial disputes, historical issues and nuclear weapons programs, exacerbated by overall regional trends of nationalism and militarism, are triggering an arms race and creating a climate of increasing mistrust among key Northeast Asian countries. The security environment in the region has been additionally complicated by the US “rebalancing” to Asia, including its strengthening of alliance in Northeast Asia. Ongoing efforts by the current Japanese administration to revise the country’s war-renouncing constitution play a further detrimental role in this regard.
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22 German MPs call for “Stop the new arms race – disarmament for a sustainable future!”
Appeal to Members of the German Bundestag:
Stop the new arms race – disarmament for a sustainable future!
Already in 2010 Ban Ki-Moon warned us: “the world is over-armed and peace is under-funded”. For 2013 the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) calculated global military expenditures of over $1.7 trillion. Hundreds of billions will be spent for the modernization of nuclear arsenals and the NATO summit in Wales decided to raise the level of its demand on member states’ military spending to 2% of their GDP. For Germany that would amount to €53 billion per year – nearly two thirds more than today. China, Russia, Brazil, India and many other states are upgrading their defence capacity as well. The global arms race enters a new round.
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European Groups Support Global Campaign On Military Spending
“The world is over-armed and peace is under-funded.” — Ban Ki-moon
Statement on the Global Day Against Military Spending (GDAMS), 13 April 2015, part of the Global Campaign on Military Spending (GCOMS). The aim of the campaign is to raise awareness of military spending and alternatives.
Across the EU, governments spend a total of 255 Billion euro on the military. This is grossly excessive and contributes to insecurity for many people around the world.
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Military investment is still a significant global problem
On this Global Day of Action on Military Spending, 13 April 2015, Pax Christi International expresses deep concern about the scandal of excessive military spending in a world where human and ecological well-being are in dire need of investment. Figures recently published by SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, estimate world military expenditures in real terms for 2014 at roughly $ 1.8 trillion, a significant increase from the already shocking $ 1.75 trillion spent in 2013.
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5% Digest (Week 23/03/15)
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.
5% Digest (week 09/03/15)
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.
5% Digest (week 02/03/15)
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.
January Reading List
- Sir Peter to take on new role in the defence sector
- Breaking Taboos, BDS Gains Ground Among Academics
- No, Chancellor, 0.5% inflation is not “welcome news”
- It is ‘impossible’ for today’s big oil companies to adapt to climate change
- Leave fossil fuels buried to prevent climate change, study urges
- The wealth that failed to trickle down: The rich do get richer while poor stay poor, report suggests
- Rate of environmental degradation puts life on Earth at risk, say scientists
- Why we must reject the dangerous delusions of Davos
- Is USAID Helping Haiti to Recover, or US Contractors to Make Millions?
- New Oxfam report says half of global wealth held by the 1%
- Revealed: how the wealth gap holds back economic growth
- Old ice in Arctic vanishingly rare
- Pentagon says air force’s ‘expanding drone fleet’ is unjustified and wasteful
- Tory and Labour seats face fracking and groundwater concerns
- Fossil fuel firms accused of renewable lobby takeover to push gas
- As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes
- They Pretend to Think, We Pretend to Listen
- George Osborne urges ministers to fast-track fracking measures in leaked letter
- Social conscience is key to cutting household energy
- In depth: Infrastructure bill amendments on fracking, fossil fuels, and zero carbon homes
- MPs have given the thumbs up to fracking – but this one’s far from over
- Winning an Election Does Not Mean Winning Power
- How the CIA made Google
- Why is terror Islamist?
- The Myth of the Terrorist Safe Haven
- Their mantra was ‘Hope begins today’: the inside story of Syriza’s rise to power
- A State Licence to Rob the Public
- Can Cool Pope Francis Change the Catholic Church?
- Any Government Must Fund The NHS Properly
- Claims that climate models overestimate warming are “unfounded”, study shows
- 33 Latin American and Caribbean states endorse Austrian Pledge and call for negotiations on a ban treaty
- Islamic State: the unknown war
- Why Is an Israeli Defense Contractor Building a ‘Virtual Wall’ in the Arizona Desert?
- Five Years After: Long Live Howard Zinn
- Pentagon Seeks 13% Weapons Increase as Obama Urges End to Cuts
- How America Could Collapse
- Fracking set to be banned from 40% of England’s shale areas
- Put the Pentagon On a Real Budget
- Don’t Blame Islam
- Cameron’s five-year legacy: has he finished what Thatcher started?
November Reading List
- Fracking could carry unforeseen risks as thalidomide and asbestos did, says report
- This headline will subtly mislead you and science says that probably matters
- 5 Key Takeaways From the Latest Climate Change Report
- Why Ebola hit West Africa hard
- Nuclear Arms Control in China Today
- Texas oil town makes history as residents say no to fracking
- The secular stagnation hoax
- The Pentagon’s Arguments for Runaway Arms Trading Are Indefensible
- World’s first solar cycle lane opening in the Netherlands
- Raytheon acquires cyber firm for $420 million
- America’s New Mercenaries
- What’s the environmental impact of modern war?
- Petraeus joins pro-fracking choir at Harvard’s Belfer Center
- Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia
- Foundation of US nuclear system showing cracks
- Midterms 2014: The Red Wedding for Democrats
- Can (green) energy policy create jobs?
- Death Wears Bunny Slippers
- It is the 0.01% who are really getting ahead in America
- The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and UK healthcare
- Is neoliberalism at last unravelling in Britain?
- For Whom the Wall Fell? A balance-sheet of transition to capitalism
- Ministers’ shale gas ‘hype’ attacked
- Some Very Initial Thoughts on the US-China Deal
- The social, political and ecological pathologies of the Ebola Crisis cannot be ignored
- F’d: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane
- Spied on by BP
- How did the first world war actually end?
- Don’t Throw Billions at an Obsolete Nuclear Arsenal
- Hard Evidence: are we facing another financial crisis?
- Growth: the destructive god that can never be appeased
- Cameron is right to warn of another recession, but wrong to blame the world
- The Top 5 Foreign Policy Lessons of the Past 20 Years
- The .01 Percent Blow Their Fortunes on Yachts, Personal Jets and America’s Politicians
- How much is owed to Gaza? Does anyone know? This is not a rhetorical question. I’m really asking!
- International arms firm Lockheed Martin in the frame for £1bn NHS contract
- We Love the Pentagon’s ‘Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure’
- Massive Rail Deal Gives China’s Push Into Africa a Major Win
- Exaggeration Nation
- Barclays boycotted over Israel arms trade shares
- Firms invested £17bn in companies making cluster bombs, report says
- There is Nothing Natural about Gentrification
- 41 men targeted but 1,147 people killed: US drone strikes – the facts on the ground
- The ‘crass insensitivity’ of Tower’s luxury dinner for arms dealers, days after poppy display
- Fracking firm’s plans to look for gas in North Yorkshire criticised by environmental groups
- House Republicans just passed a bill forbidding scientists from advising the EPA on their own research
- Justifying War: “Just” Wars
October Reading List
- A Trillion Ways To Build a New Military Industrial Complex
- The Military Takes on Climate Change Deniers
- Amazon Must Be Stopped
- Japan’s Decision on Collective Self-Defense in Context
- Far-Right Birther’s Secret Funders
- Pinkwashing: Fracking Company Teams Up With Susan G. Komen to ‘End Breast Cancer Forever’
- Cut benefits? Yes, let’s start with our £85bn corporate welfare handout
- US firms could make billions from UK via secret tribunals
- Germany Can’t Manage Its Weapons
- Warmongering Hebrew University tries to muzzle Palestinian students
- Richest 1% of people own nearly half of global wealth, says report
- UK to allow fracking companies to use ‘any substance’ under homes
- This One $486 Million Blunder In Afghanistan Sums Up The Disaster Of Military Spending
- The US and a Crumbling Levant
- Only 12% of drone victims in Pakistan identified as militants: report
- Does Rising Inequality Make a Democracy More Warlike?
- European banks and the global banking glut
- With US-led air strikes on Isis intensifying, it’s a good time to be an arms giant like Lockheed Martin
- Organised Hypocrisy on a Monumental Scale
- NASA Confirms A 2,500-Square-Mile Cloud Of Methane Floating Over US Southwest
- Netanyahu’s Not Chickenshit, the White House Is
5% Digest (September 2014)
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.“
September Reading List
- How the west created the Islamic State
- Who’s Paying the Pro-War Pundits?
- The Pentagon’s $800-Billion Real Estate Problem
- Lefties and liberals still don’t do enough to stop wars
- How the super rich got richer: 10 shocking facts about inequality
- ISIS’s Enemy List: 10 Reasons the Islamic State Is Doomed
- Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault
- Democracy in the Twenty-First Century
- Israeli drone conference features weapons used to kill Gaza’s children
- New Report on Water Impacts of Shale Gas Development
- Behind the headlines: Fracking and water contamination
- Story of a War Foretold: Why we’re fighting ISIS
- Richard Brooks and Andrew Bousfield, 19th September 2014. Shady Arabia and the Desert Fix. Private Eye.
- “My childhood was not an episode from Downton Abbey”
- Russell Tribunal finds evidence of incitement to genocide, crimes against humanity in Gaza
- ‘Blood on their hands’: Glasgow activists shut down drone manufacturer
- Inequality is a choice: U.S. inequality in two shocking graphics
- Europe Tries to Stop Flow of Citizens Joining Jihad
- On the streets with the People’s Climate March
- The Great Frack Forward
- The Unaffordable Arsenal
USA’s 2015 budget for ‘defence’ is $1 trillion not $496 billion
Winslow T. Wheeler, “America’s $1 Trillion National Security Budget,” 16 March 2014, Truthout
Scarcity of money is not their problem. Pentagon costs, taken together with other known national security expenses for 2015, will exceed $1 trillion. How can that be? The trade press is full of statements about the Pentagon’s $495.6 billion budget and how low that is.
There is much more than $495.6 billion in the budget for the Pentagon, and there are piles of national security spending outside the Pentagon-all of it as elemental for national security as any new aircraft and ships and the morale and well-being of our troops.
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