[Steve]

War profiteers and the demise of the US Military-Industrial Complex ...


https://www.nexusnewsfeed.com/article/ge...al-complex

[Steve]

'Unprecedented, Wasteful, and Obscene': House Approves $1.48 Trillion Pentagon Budget -

"Wanna know how broken and captured Washington is by the Pentagon and the corruption of our nation's 'defense' budget? Well, look no further than the soon to be enacted budget 'deal.'"


https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/0...e=facebook

[Steve]

The Privatisation of US Led Wars. The Pentagon’s Private Contractors

The economic logic has driven the increasing dependency on mercenaries and private contractors ever since the beginning of the “war on terror” in 2001.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/privatizat...us/5691670

[Firestarter]

What frustrates me in all of these politically correct, environment catastrophe stories, the war machine is somewhat ignored. There are few activities on Earth as environmentally catastrophic as war.
Reductions to the Pentagon’s budget would bring a huge drop in pollution and carbon dioxide emission. The CO2 emissions are enormous, especially when mercenaries, bombs and planes are transported half way over the globe in container ships, trucks and cargo planes.
The Pentagon also spends fuel on lighting, heating and cooling more than 560,000 buildings around the world.
Mass migration is fueled by wars, which in turn causes an increase in CO2 emission, especially with the migrants returning “home” for the holidays every year.

In 2017, the US Air Force purchased $4.9 billion worth of fuel, the navy $2.8 billion, the army $947 million and the Marines $36 million. In 2017, the US military consumed about 269,230 barrels of oil a day, which emitted more than 25,000 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide.
If the US military were a country, its fuel usage alone would make it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, greater than entire nations like Sweden, Norway, Finland or Peru and just below Portugal.

The USA was exempted from military emissions in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. This loophole was closed by the Paris Accord, but to no avail, as the Trump administration will withdraw in 2020.

That´s besides bombs are regulary enriched with toxics, see for example Vietnam that was bombed with Agent Orange, or more recently the depleted Uranium filled dirty bombs on Iraq.
In Iraq, children living near US bases have an increased risk of heart disease, spinal deformities, cancer, cleft lip and missing or malformed and paralyzed limbs.

US military bases despoil the landscape, pollute the soil, and contaminate the drinking water.
At the Kadena Base in Okinawa, the US Air Force polluted land and water with toxic chemicals, including arsenic, lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), asbestos and dioxin.

If the Pentagon’s budget is cut in half, the US would still have a bigger military budget than China, Russia, Iran and North Korea combined!
The $350 billion savings could then be used to save the environment: https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/09/27/...tertwined/
(http://archive.is/6S7DX)


We can rest assured that the tax dollars are well spent by the Pentagon and their mercenaries!

[awakened53]

Elon Musk Building “War Rocket” for US Military that Delivers Weapons Anywhere in Only an Hour

Multibillionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is quickly moving toward becoming a real-life Tony Stark after his aerospace corporation SpaceX signed a deal with the Pentagon to build a rocket capable of delivering up to 80 tons of war cargo anywhere in the world, in only one hour.
The new deal could revolutionize war logistics and would be capable to transporting weapons anywhere around the world 15 times faster than the current gold standard in large military transport aircraft, the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, reports Business Insider.
For example, the 7,652-mile journey from Florida to Afghanistan would only take an hour using the proposed high-speed rocket, which travels at 7,500 mph.

The C-17 Globemaster, however, would take 15 hours to complete the journey, in addition to being an expensive aircraft that costs $218 million and has a maximum speed of 590 mph.
“Think about moving the equivalent of a C-17 payload anywhere on the globe in less than an hour,” said Gen. Stephen Lyons of U.S. Transportation Command at a Wednesday conference.
“I can tell you SpaceX is moving very, very rapidly in this area. I’m really excited about the team that’s working with SpaceX,” he added.
While SpaceX was originally devised as a means to pursue the colonization of Mars and revolutionize space transportation while drastically cutting the costs of space travel, SpaceX has also been eager to team up with the Pentagon to augment and secure U.S. empire and military hegemony across the globe.
Just this week, SpaceX won a $149 million contract with the U.S. military’s Space Development Agency to manufacture four new missile-tracking satellites that will be fitted with wide-angle infrared missile-tracking sensors.


read more

https://www.activistpost.com/2020/10/elo...-hour.html

[awakened53]

Biden proposes largest-ever US military budget while Americans are going under financially. Evil simply doesn’t suffice

Record Pentagon budget for 2023 to focus on Ukraine aid, build-up against China and Russia.
US President Joe Biden has proposed the largest-ever military budget, asking Congress for $813.3 billion in the coming year – $31 billion more than the budget approved for 2022. Lawmakers are likely to add even more funding, as representatives from both parties have complained it doesn’t go far enough because of inflation.
“I’m calling for one of the largest investments in our national security in history, with the funds needed to ensure that our military remains the best-prepared, best-trained, best-equipped military in the world,” Biden said in a statement on Monday.
While the proposed budget is the highest-ever dollar amount in US history, inflation means that in real terms it would be a 1.5% increase rather than the nominal 4%. Democrats and Republicans alike on Capitol Hill have pushed for a 5-7% increase instead, according to Politico. Congress had approved $782 billion for the current fiscal year.
The White House draft seeks $773 billion for the Pentagon alone, with the rest going to the Department of Energy, which maintains the US nuclear arsenal.
Biden is asking for an additional $682 million for Ukraine, “to counter Russian malign influence and to meet emerging needs related to security, energy, cybersecurity issues, disinformation, macroeconomic stabilization, and civil society resilience,” a budget document says.

Read More: Biden proposes largest-ever US military budget

[awakened53]

Biden Wanted $33B More For Ukraine. Congress Quickly Raised it to $40B. Who Benefits?

Tens of billions, soon to be much more, are flying out of U.S. coffers to Ukraine as Americans suffer, showing who runs the U.S. Government, and for whose benefit.
From the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Biden White House has repeatedly announced large and seemingly random amounts of money that it intends to send to fuel the war in Ukraine. The latest such dispatch, pursuant to an initial $3.5 billion fund authorized by Congress early on, was announced on Friday; “Biden says U.S. will send $1.3 billion in additional military and economic support to Ukraine,” read the CNBC headline. This was preceded by a series of new lavish spending packages for the war, unveiled every two to three weeks, starting on the third day of the war:
[ul]
[li]Feb. 26: “Biden approves $350 million in military aid for Ukraine”: Reuters;[/li]
[li]Mar. 16: “Biden announces $800 million in military aid for Ukraine”: The New York Times;[/li]
[li]Mar. 30: “Ukraine to receive additional $500 million in aid from U.S., Biden announces”: NBC News;[/li]
[li]Apr. 12: “U.S. to announce $750 million more in weapons for Ukraine, officials say”: Reuters;[/li]
[li]May 6: “Biden announces new $150 million weapons package for Ukraine”: Reuters.[/li]
[/ul]
Those amounts by themselves are in excess of $3 billion; by the end of April, the total U.S. expenditure on the war in Ukraine was close to $14 billion, drawn from the additional $13.5 billion Congress authorized in mid-March. While some of that is earmarked for economic and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, most of it will go into the coffers of the weapons industry — including Raytheon, on whose Board of Directors the current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, sat immediately before being chosen by Biden to run the Pentagon. As CNN put it: “about $6.5 billion, roughly half of the aid package, will go to the US Department of Defense so it can deploy troops to the region and send defense equipment to Ukraine.”
Read More: Biden Wanted $33B More For Ukraine. Congress Quickly Raised it to $40B. Who Benefits?

[awakened53]

UK Government to give another 500 million of taxpayer money to Ukraine

[awakened53]

The NATO Bombing of Helmand Province Was Not “Defensive”

On August 4th, I wrote an article criticising a NATO video that purported to debunk two “myths” about the organisation. The video claimed that “NATO is a defensive alliance” and “NATO does not seek confrontation”. I described these claims as “false” on the grounds that NATO has carried out severaloffensive operations.
Logically, if an organisation has carried out offensive operations, it cannot be “defensive” – at least not wholly defensive, which is what “not seeking confrontation” implies.
Ian Rons has criticised my article. He begins by disputing that the invasion of Afghanistan was an offensive operation, noting that 9/11 was “the only time in NATO’s history when the mutual defense clause, Article 5, was invoked”.
What he fails to note is that NATO’s operation in Afghanistan was not based on the invocation of Article 5. The only two NATO operations based on the invocation of Article 5 were Operation Eagle Assist and Operation Active Endeavor – as explained on the organisation’s website. Having said that, it is true the US invasion of Afghanistan (and the subsequent NATO operation there) were launched in response to the 9/11 attacks.
Does this make them defensive? Arguably not. The 9/11 attacks were carried out by a transnational terrorist organisation, Al-Qaeda, not by the state of Afghanistan. (Neither Osama bin Laden nor any of the 9/11 hijackers were Afghans.) Invading and then occupying a foreign country where a terrorist organisation happens to be based is not “defensive”. The NATO airstrikes of June 2007 that killed at least 45 Afghan civilians plainly weren’t.
Note that prior to the invasion, the U.S. refused to negotiate with the Taliban. As the New York Timesnoted last year, “some former diplomats say that by repeatedly shutting the door to talks, the United States may have closed off its best chance of avoiding a prolonged and extremely costly war”.
However, even if the NATO operation in Afghanistan was defensive, the other two examples I cited clearly weren’t. Ian suggests they were “legitimate and morally just” but that is irrelevant. As I stated in my article, “you can argue those operations were justified, but you can’t argue they were defensive”. Neither Serbia nor Libya had attacked a NATO member.


Read more: The NATO Bombing of Helmand Province Was Not “Defensive”

[awakened53]

BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Tens of Billions of US Dollars Were Transferred to Ukraine and then Using FTX Crypto Currency the Funds Were Laundered Back to Democrats in US

Did you ever wonder where all those billions of dollars were going in Ukraine?  Did you ever wonder why anyone was trusting the elites in US politics like the Bidens with billions in funds going to Ukraine? 
Today it turns out that these were excellent questions.  
We have information that the tens of billions of dollars going to Ukraine were actually laundered back to the US to corrupt Democrats and elites using FTX cryptocurrency.  Now the money is gone and FTX is bankrupt. 
Earlier today we reported that the FTX cryptocurrency appeared to be used in a ponzi scheme involving the Democrats and Ukraine.
As reported earlier, the FTX crypto company gave at least $40 million to Democrat candidates and causes in the midterms.
Sam Bankman-Fried is Biden’s second biggest donor.

Read more: BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Tens of Billions of US Dollars Were Transferred to Ukraine and then Using FTX Crypto Currency the Funds Were Laundered Back to Democrats in US