WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
Where’s the Beef Stroganoff? Eight Sacrilegious Reflections on Russiagate
Neo-McCarthyite liberals and other dismal Democrats are clucking about how Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 untouchable Russians for “defrauding” the U.S. by buying some Facebook ads and employing some Internet trolls to “say horrible things” (imagine!) about Hillary Clinton (a horrifically bad politician who was accurately described as a “lying neoliberal warmonger” by a leading U.S. left intellectual trying to get leftists to hold their noses and vote “for” her as the lesser evil) “proves” that Russia engaged in relevant meddling to undermine U.S. “democracy” on Donald Trump’s behalf during the 2016 U.S. presidential election… Some political scientists have argued that regular elections that generate competitive contests for citizens’ votes are all that is required for a nation to be a democracy. But “elections alone,” Page and Gilens note, “do not guarantee democracy” in a nation where the electoral and policy processes run in grooves made and greased to serve an unelected dictatorship of concentrated wealth. Russia didn’t “undermine American democracy” in 2016. There was no real system of popular self-rule in place to subvert. This is, and has long been, a corporate and financial oligarchy. More
Trump's FY2019 Budget Request Has Massive Cuts for Nearly Everything But the Military
President Trump released his second presidential budget request, and it looks much like the first. His priorities are clear: ever-increasing funds for the Pentagon, nuclear weapons and Homeland Security, and massive cuts to almost everything else. The budget deal Congress passed last week puts 54 percent of the discretionary budget into the Pentagon and nuclear weapons. The budget proposal President Trump released today would increase that to 61 percent in 2019… Compared to the budget deal Congress just passed, the president's vision for military spending is right in line, with a less than one percent, or $3 billion, difference. But the president would cut more than $120 billion from nonmilitary programs compared to what Congress negotiated. More
What is “Discretionary Spending”? Discretionary spending is government spending implemented through anappropriations bill. This spending is an optional part of fiscal policy, in contrast to entitlement programs for which funding is mandatory and determined by the number of eligible recipients. Most of non-discretuionary funding comes out of separate taxes for Social Security and Medicare, which do not contribute in any way to budget deficits. Until the Vietnam War, non-discretionary spending was accounted separately from the regular annual budget, but were combined to disguise the ballooning expenditures for the war.
The Democrats Keep Capitulating on Defense Spending
Since earlier this month, when Congress passed a budget deal that massively boosts both defense and non-defense spending, liberalcommentators—and even some Republican politicians—have accused the GOP of hypocrisy. Republicans, they noted, are supposed to loathe debt. They’re supposed to loathe government spending. Yet, in large numbers, they voted for much more of both. Fair enough. But what about the Democrats? If Republicans are supposed to worry about the United States bankrupting itself with social-welfare spending, aren’t Democrats supposed to worry about the United States bankrupting itself with military spending? Not anymore. In the run-up to the deal, Nancy Pelosi’s office fired off an email to House Democrats proclaiming that, “In our negotiations, Congressional Democrats have been fighting for increases in funding for defense.” Chuck Schumer’s office announced that, “We fully support President Trump’s Defense Department’s request.” More
How Trump Plans to Evict Poor Families From Public Housing
When President Donald Trump released his first budget proposal last year, it called for the deepest cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development since the early 1980s. This time around, the White House budget calls for a $6.8 billion cut to HUD in fiscal year 2019, or a 14 percent reduction, which is even deeper than what Trump demanded last year and. According to experts, it would be the most radical attack on federal housing aid since the US Housing Act became law in 1937. If enacted, the Trump budget would be a vicious eviction notice to millions of low-income families… With drastic budget cuts of 9 percent in a single year, when a person stopped using a voucher, the state and local housing agencies would be forced to simply not reissue a new one in order to stay on budget… Moreover, some people would have their vouchers canceled outright—CBPP estimates this would happen to 200,000 people nationwide. These families would immediately face extreme financial hardship and, quite likely, eviction. More
The Military’s ‘Readiness’ Scam Worked Again
The Donald Trump administration’s defense budget request for fiscal year 2019 is out, less than a week after Congress cut an overall deal on spending levels for 2018 and 2019. Unlike the domestic spending part of the administration’s budget request, the defense numbers aren’t dead on arrival — in fact, the military can count on getting every cent. The congressional deal set new levels for defense, agreeing to $700 billion for national defense in 2018 and $716 billion in 2019. That’s nearly $165 billion more than the military had anticipated prior to this year. The United States is back to defense spending, in constant dollars, that is higher than the peak spending levels under Ronald Reagan. Only in 2010, at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was defense spending higher… The reason the Pentagon’s budget is now on a long-term upswing is because the military has spent years loudly lobbying for such an increase while complaining about an alleged “readiness crisis.” More
BUTTERING UP THE PENTAGON
Think of it as the chicken-or-the-egg question for the ages: Do very real threats to the United States inadvertently benefit the military-industrial complex or does the national security state, by its very nature, conjure up inflated threats to feed that defense machine?
Back in 2008, some of us placed our faith, naively enough, in the hands of mainstream Democrats -- specifically, those of a young senator named Barack Obama. He would reverse the war policies of George W. Bush, deescalate the unbridled Global War on Terror, and right the ship of state. How’d that turn out? In retrospect, though couched in a far more sophisticated and peaceable rhetoric than Bush’s, his moves would prove largely cosmetic when it came to this country’s forever wars: a significant reduction in the use of conventional ground troops, but more drones, more commandos, and yet more acts of ill-advisedregime change… As Americans experience acute income inequality, the rising cost of a college education, and ongoingdeindustrialization in the heartland, the country’s runaway spending continues to rise precipitously. The planned 2019 Pentagon budget is now expected to hit a staggering $716 billion -- more than much of the rest of the world’s defense spending combined. The battle between “guns and butter” is still raging in the United States and, if the new NDS is any indicator, the guns are winning. More
Lockheed Martin got $35.2 billion from taxpayers last year, more than many federal agencies
Of Lockheed Martin’s $51 billion in sales last year, nearly 70 percent, or $35.2 billion, came from sales to the U.S. government. It’s a colossal figure, hard to comprehend. So think of it this way: Lockheed’s government sales are nearly what the Trump administration proposed for the State Department next year in its recently released spending plan. Or $15 billion more than all of NASA. Or about the gross domestic product of Bolivia. With a White House proposal to spend a massive amount on defense next year in what one consultant called an “eye-watering” budget for the defense industry, Lockheed, the world’s largest defense contractor, could get even more. Over the past decade, Bethesda-based Lockheed, which employs 100,000 people across the globe, has averaged about $38 billion a year in federal sales, a reign during which, year after year, Lockheed has received more federal money than any other corporation. More
The NRA Donated $10,000 to Help Train the Parkland Shooting Suspect to Use a Rifle
Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old who charged with murdering 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, honed his marksmanship skills in a school program supported by the NRA. Cruz was, according to the Associated Press, a member of the school’s four-person varsity marksmanship team, which received a $10,000 grant from the NRA in 2016. The marksmanship team was part of the schools’ JROTC program. On the team, Cruz trained with “air rifles special-made for target shooting, typically on indoor ranges at targets the size of a coin.” Cruz discussed his AR-15 with other team members and was given the nickname “Wolf.” Another member of the team described him as “a very good shot.” The NRA declined to comment on the donation. In 2015, the NRA Foundation gave $2.2 million in similar grants promoting gun use to schools around the country. This includes grants “to elementary and middle schools.” More
The "Alt-Right" Has Killed Far More People Than You Likely Are Aware of
A new study from the Southern Poverty Law Center finds there have been more than "100 people killed or injured by alleged perpetrators influenced by the so-called 'alt-right' -- a movement that continues to access the mainstream and reach young recruits." The SPLC report tracks the rise in alt-right related violence beginning in 2014, when 22-year-old Elliot Rodger murdered six people and injured 14 others in Isla Vista, California. Like many alt-right adherents, Rodger's radicalization began in men's rights forums, which helped stoke his racism, misogyny and self-loathing. The study identifies 13 killers who have collectively killed 43 people and injured 67 others. "While some certainly displayed signs of mental illness," the media tendency to depict these violent right-wing extremists as troubled loners is conveniently misguided. More
SYRIA PROPAGANDA WAR
The brutal war in Syria continues, with civilians suffering from violence at every side. But, as in the government campaign to retake rebel-occupied Eastern Aleppo, a massive propaganda campaign focuses exclusively on and exaggerates atrocities only allegedly committed by the Syrian government. With a possibly impending government attempt to retake the opposition held eastern suburbs of Damascus, the shrill mainstream news is again ramping up about civilians “massacres.” Completely invisible are the armed jihadist groups occupying the area or the fact that the Syrian government has repeatedly offered to allow civilian to evacuate. As in East Aleppo, they are prevented from leaving by the extremists. (In Aleppo, the majority of civilians chose to stay after the government re-occupied the opposition-held neighborhoods.) Meanwhile, the daily victims of rebel rocket and mortar fire against Damascus neighborhoods from the rebel-held zone are absent from reporting. Since November, at least 116 civilians in Damascus have been killed in these attacks. Also missing is any consistent reporting about the much greater toll from US, Israel and NATO memberTurkey’s interventions in Syria – absolutely illegal according to both international and US law.
Selective Outrage Undermines Human Rights in Syria
Few things threaten the legitimacy of human rights advocacy more than partisans invoking it selectively to promote one side in a violent conflict. That’s why people with genuine concern over the plight of war victims should be disturbed by the latest pumped-up campaign of selective outrage over the Syrian government’s bombing of Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus... But the recent situation in Eastern Ghouta is unfortunately not as unique as recent media accounts suggest. Just last month, the respected, independent monitoring group Airwars reminded us that U.S.-led Coalition air strikes on the Syrian city of Raqqa created many more victims with the same destructive tactics of “siege, bomb and evacuate.” In just one incident in March 2017, Coalition bombers killed as many as 400 civilians at a school near Raqqa, where hundreds of women and children were taking shelter from the war. “By the time Raqqa was liberated on October 20th,” Airwars estimated, “more than 1,450 civilians had likely been killed by the Coalition since the start of June. More
Trump Sets Deadly Precedent by Hiding Rationale for Bombing Syria
In response to an April 2017 inquiry by Kaine and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California), the administration said the 2017 missile strike in Syria was not based on the 2001 or 2002 authorizations for use of military force (AUMF), which related to Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively. Rather, the administration has cited the president's authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive under Article II of the Constitution "to defend important U.S. national interests." But Article II does not give the president the power to mount a military attack in this instance. Article II states, "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." Article I, however, says only Congress has the power to declare war. Taken together, Articles I and II mean that the president commands the armed forces once Congress has authorized war. In fact, Trump's attack on Syria violated both US and international law. More
Trump's Aimless War in Afghanistan Expands, Again
President Trump’s Surge 5.0—which amounts to no more than a few thousand extra troops and loosened bombing restrictions—is really nothing new. These are old tactics masquerading as “new” strategy. U.S. commanders tout the “new authorities” bestowed upon them by President Trump last August, as though more bombs and more delegation of authority can substitute for an utter dearth of strategy in Afghanistan. Maj. Gen. James Hecker, commander of coalition air elements in country, eagerly told the Post, “With the current uplift in resources, we can decimate Taliban command-and-control nodes.” Leaving aside the overly sanguine, bellicose rhetoric, the general offers little in the way of evidence as to why this bombing—as compared to, say, the last 16 years’ worth—will have a positive strategic outcome… As it stands, the United States military is fighting just about everyone in Afghanistan: the Taliban, ISIS, Chinese separatists, and…reality. More
“INVISIBLE” MASSACRES IN CONGO
Ahead of his first state visit to Africa in March, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson should rethink Washington’s longstanding support for some of Africa’s more tyrannical regimes, particularly those of Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Paul Kagame of Rwanda, whose security forces continue to prey on their vast, mineral-rich neighbor Congo. Beneath Congo’s soil lies an estimated (at 2011 prices)$24 trillion in natural resources, including rich supplies of oil, gold, diamonds, the coltan used in computer chips, the cobalt and nickel used in jet engines and car batteries, the copper for bathroom pipes, the uranium for bombs and power plants, the iron for nearly everything. This wealth is the source of untold suffering. Today, more Congolese are displaced from their homes than Iraqis, Yemenis, or Rohingyas. Yet their miseries are all but invisible, in part because the identities and aims of Congo’s myriad combatants are mystified by layers of rumor and misinformation, which serve the interests of those profiting from the mayhem… The only way out of this mess is to deliver Congo back to the Congolese. A century and a half of malign interference—first imperialist plunder, then CIA puppet dictatorship, and now Western-backed regional power-play—is enough. More
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