Tag: Pentagon

America

Spending Unlimited – ScheerPost

Before our government moves full speed ahead expanding the weapons industry and further militarizing geopolitical challenges posed by China and Russia, we should reflect on America’s disastrous performance in the costly, prolonged wars already waged in this century. After all, they did enormous damage, made the world a far more dangerous place, and only increased the significance of those weapons makers. Throwing another trillion dollars-plus at the Pentagon won’t change that.

Source: Spending Unlimited – ScheerPost

Bernie Sanders

The War Grifters’ Legal Larceny League | The Smirking Chimp

As mentioned in yesterday’s blog, Bernie Sanders has put forth a bill (doomed to fail, alas) that would impose a 10% budgeting penalty on the Pentagon for each year it fails to pass an annual audit, something that big throbbing heart of capitalist exploitation and thievery so frequently fails to do.

Source: The War Grifters’ Legal Larceny League | The Smirking Chimp

Defense

What Price Is ‘Defense?’: America’s Costly, Dysfunctional Approach to Security Is Making Us Ever Less Safe – scheerpost.com

The assumption is that when it comes to spending on the military and related activities, more is always better.

Source: What Price Is ‘Defense?’: America’s Costly, Dysfunctional Approach to Security Is Making Us Ever Less Safe – scheerpost.com

Industrial Military complex

”The Spoils of War”: How Profits Define Success for Pentagon

An aerial of the the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on May 12, 2021.

Pentagon = Profit = The Industrial Military Complex = Economy

Cockburn aptly quotes one Pentagon weapons designer in the 1960s telling new hires that they would be making “weapons that don’t work to meet threats that don’t exist.”

If you’re still not convinced, the proof of this unpalatable pudding is in the eating. Consider America’s just-concluded 20-year war in Afghanistan. As the Taliban took over the country in days, it might have seemed that the whole thing was a colossal failure. But if you check your portfolio of defense contractor stocks, and visit the enormous mansions in the northern Virginia suburbs surrounding the Pentagon, you’ll see that, in fact, it was an incredible success.

Source: ”The Spoils of War”: How Profits Define Success for Pentagon

Saudi Arabia

Twenty Years Ago, the Saudis Got Away With the Crime of the Century

Despite copious evidence of Saudi complicity in the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration and its successors have spent twenty years shielding the country’s elite from accountability while making war on an ever-growing list of other Middle East countries.

Source: Twenty Years Ago, the Saudis Got Away With the Crime of the Century

Revolution

Communists were jailed for Less: Trumpies call for overthrow of US Constitution
Trump and his son wants Don jnr to head the NRA and that stockpiled armoury

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Caitlin Dickson at Yahoo News reports that Trump supporters and Tea Partiers have begun calling for a suspension of the US constitution to prevent Joe Biden from taking office. The only way to parse “suspension” of the constitution is its temporary overthrow. Moreover, they are calling for the use of force (“martial law”) toward that aim. They are also using diction such as the threat of civil war. Since nobody but them is talking about civil war, I take it they are envisioning firing off the AR-15s they have stockpiled.

Communists were jailed for Less: Trumpies call for overthrow of US Constitution