So-Called Defense Spending Is All About The Benjamins

As the Pentagon continues driving climate catastrophe by belching out carbon, some in the U.S. pause to question why we fund the destruction of our own life support system.

Follow the money.

An article that caught my eye this morning was about one of the Pentagon's many contractors, mercenaries for hire that operate in a murky zone between accountability for federal agencies and lack of accountability for the corporations they hire.

Bagram military base in Afghanistan, where the U.S. has been waging an enormously expensive operation for 18 years.

From Patricia Kime reporting in Military.com, "Families of Killed, Injured Troops Sue Contractor Over Bagram 'Fun Run' Bombing": the Fluor Corporation is being held accountable for permitting a suicide bomber to work unsupervised for months building a weaponized vest that killed three soldiers and injured eight. 

The company just concluded a $12 billion security contract for the Defense Department.

Not much security for our $12 billion, eh?

I had already been cogitating on the news that Zumwalt war ships built in my home state are not only dysfunctional as weapons (that's the good news) but represent a colossal waste of tax dollars. Three of them were built by General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works shipyard; most recently, the USS Lyndon B. Johnson was christened[sic] while 25 of us were arrested in the street protesting the environmental crime that military contracting represents. 

The theme of the LBJ protest was a call for conversion of Bath Iron Works to building sustainable energy solutions rather than carbon belching weapons systems. Such a change would generate far more jobs than does building for the U.S. Navy.
Photo credit: Peter Robbins

Now comes word from Beth Brogan reporting in the Bangor Daily News that the LBJ, which reportedly cost $7 billion to build, will never function as a war ship anyway. 

A new report by the Government Accountability Office criticizes the U.S. Navy and Bath Iron Works for more than 320 "serious deficiencies" found upon inspection when the shipyard delivered the first-in class USS Zumwalt's hull, mechanical and electrical systems in May 2016. 

Another 246 "serious deficiencies" were found after acceptance trials in January and February 2018 for the USS Michael Monsoor, the second of three "stealth" destroyers built in Maine 

... 

Also a concern is the lack of a suitable projectile for the destroyers. The Navy initially planned to use the Long-Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP), but determined that the high cost -- $800,000 to $1 million per round [emphasis mine] -- was prohibitive. 

After evaluating five other munition options, the Navy found no viable replacement, according to the report. "As a result, the guns will remain inoperable on the ships for the forseeable future," the report states

Remember that junker your uncle kept out back as a parts car? The LBJ will be like that, used primarily to supply parts for the first two Zumwalt lemons.

Did General Dynamics get super rich building them anyway? Yup.

Source: Providence Journal "Defense firms spend big on lucrative stock buybacks" by Alex Nunes

Did they give a lot of campaign contributions and other, stealth goodies to Maine politicians like Senator Susan Collins? Yes again.

No more Zumwalt class destroyers will be built, nor does it appear they will destroy anything more than Earth's climate. And as thinking people are aware, the unfolding climate catastrophe is our true security issue in the 21st century.

Time to switch over to building for life, not death.

design by Russell Wray

The Entertainment Division

Image source: A Thousand Words Graphic Arts

When Frank Zappa commented that "politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex" we laughed through our tears about the Vietnam War. Now that the horrors of our complicity in killing so many innocent Vietnamese people have been sanitized by a Ken Burns documentary that is being used in high school history classes as a sort of war porn that blames no one, we go on ignoring our complicity in killing so many innocent Yemeni, Afghan, Syrian, Somali, and Iraqi people. It's easier now that contemporary imperial wars are not shown on tv.

Source: The Atlantic "A man walks through the rubble of an air strike on a college in Saada, Yemen. NAIF RAHMA / REUTERS"

And where do we find ourselves today? On the one hand is the shit show that Supreme Court nominations have become, where one corporate party refuses to hold hearings for the other corporate party's nominee -- only to bring forward its own wretchedly unqualified candidate and try to ram him down the people's throats. But talk about great ratings for televised coverage of this show!

On the other hand is the vastly unequal dark, dark sources of campaign funding for elections where the people are presented with a choice of two corporate-controlled candidates or else. This is why I won't waste my time on elections anymore. Sure, I'll vote because I'd be ashamed not to. But the system of representation is broken beyond repair and pretending that "resistance" is meaningful when it consists only of electing the other warmongering corporate party's candidates is beyond my capacity for denial.

This entertaining show may come to an end even for the empire's citizens if massive Pentagon budgets and borrowing to fund them tank the economy sooner rather than later.

Image source: Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space 

Even more ominous is the specter of star wars for real, along with vast increases in spending for nuclear weapons. The Union of Concerned Scientists is worried about this, and we should be too. You can sign their petition here. Petitioning the government is probably about as effective as voting at this point but old habits die hard.

The best antidote to all this unwholesome entertainment is finding some real information while we still can. I recommend this recent essay by the insightful Caitlin Johnstone, an Australian who is particularly able to see the U.S. empire from afar, "Any effective antiwar movement must readjust its understanding of what war is."

Johnstone is routinely blocked by Google's search engine, has subscribers removed in the tens of thousands by YouTube, and her Twitter and Spybook accounts are often suspended for telling a little bit too much truth. The thing about Johnstone is: she's not only truthful, she's entertaining. Kind of like Frank Zappa.

'Tis The Season To Bomb Civilians

Image: Anthony Freda

It's the dark time of year when we of the North get up before sunrise and eat supper after sundown. As we approach the turning point of the winter solstice, we are encouraged to be kind to one another, to keep the light of love burning in our hearts in order to help us endure the darkness.

So that's why the Pentagon and the White House have decided to send more special operations troops to Iraq and Syria. Veterans have told me that these troops are mostly scouts for where to bomb. Because the Pentagon and the White House are also planning to continue bombing civilians right through the Christmas season.

The doublespeak employed by the blood-spattered officials who try to explain and justify all this mechanized killing for profit is absurd.

Top brass could hardly be expected to talk about how they are counting on cushy post-retirement jobs in the military contracting corporations that are predicting a "significant uptick" in business as a result of more combat. 

So they make up other, implausible reasons e.g. more attacks on areas that sometimes produce terrorists will, in the magical thinking the U.S. government continues selling to a somnolent public, reduce terrorism emanating from those areas. Even though many of these very officials have observed that bombing innocent civilian populations and occupying their countries tends to breed still more terrorists. As Democracy Now! reported:

Speaking to Congress Tuesday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the U.S. special forces are authorized to conduct raids, gather intelligence, free hostages and capture members of ISIS. He also said the troops would conduct unilateral operations inside Syria. Facing questions from Virginia Republican Rep. Randy Forbes, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford acknowledged the U.S. is not technically at war in Iraq or Syria, even as the military ramps up combat operations. 

Randy Forbes: "You heard the Secretary of Defense say both in writing and verbally that we are at war. Who declared that war?"
Joseph Dunford: "I think what the secretary is saying, because we discussed this, is that we view the fight against ISIL as a threat to the United States and we are mobilizing all of the military capabilities that are necessary—"
Randy Forbes: "Who would have actually made a declaration? Is that something that you would make?"
Joseph Dunford: "Congress."
Randy Forbes: "Has a declaration been made?"
Joseph Dunford: "No, it has not."
Randy Forbes: "So how does the secretary say we’re at war? I only have five minutes."
Ashton Carter "I’m just going to tell you—"
Randy Forbes: "I would ask if he wants to elaborate, he can submit written statements, but he is taking my five minutes. General, can you tell me as the joint Chiefs, if you know?"
Joseph Dunford: "We are technically not at war."

When our system of government was founded, the intention to avoid the standing armies and endless wars of European monarchies was expressed by a plan to have the people's representatives oversee the military. 

Now that our government represents mostly corporations and other moneyed interest groups, that oversight has been rendered null and void.

"Defense" Aerospace Top Contributors, 2015-2016

Source: OpenSecrets.org

As a result, I think the dark days will extend far beyond December 21 this year.

As hate media pundits spew invective about Islam as an inherently violent religion, so-called Christians will ignore the ten commandments and the Golden Rule to bomb oil rich countries. 

Meanwhile, I am left worrying and wondering: is it World War III yet?

Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Forgetting Fukushima

-->I had a dream in early summer, one I suspect I'll always remember. I was the passenger in a car with an old high school friend at the wheel, which might explain why he was humping my leg and I was pushing him away in the opening scene. Next the car began to roll forward carelessly, and I perceived that we were at the edge of a grand canyon vista of reddish layers of earth, eroded, beautiful and vast. I called out in alarm and my classmate applied the brake; he wasn't much concerned, he had it under control. Moments later we were rolling again and I repeated the alarm, now scrambling my foot over to the brake pedal, my hand upon the wheel as the car teetered on the edge, dipping forward in its dance with gravity, flooding my view with menacing, beckoning beauty. 

We surpassed the tipping point, and the car began to fall. At the same instant I gave up the struggle and heard my inner voice say, without regret, I had a good life. The car fell gently, and I checked out before impact. A final scene consisted of meeting with bewildered elders in a place nearby; they weren't there to assign blame, but they genuinely wanted to know how I could have let it happen.

In Devil's Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step Cecile Pineda has delivered a poetic, profound meditation on the slowly unfolding death of the natural world by man-made radiation. She's not the only one who sees it, but she's in a very small group of people currently alive on the planet who are able to face annihilation without blinking. Oprah will likely not be picking up her book, but I will be finding Pineda's novels (Face, The Love Queen of the Amazon, Frieze) to read as we coast downhill toward oblivion.

When I remember Hiroshima (the first place destroyed with nuclear weapons 67 years ago yesterday) and Nagasaki (the second place destroyed by a different type of nuclear weapon 67 years ago) I can't help but continue to remember Fukushima. Here I think in terms of a table or chart juxtaposing what my fellow citizens think they know about these far off places with names difficult to pronounce, and what I think I know about places I visit only in my mind.

 
-->

Place in Japan	What U.S. citizens “know”	What I “know”
Hiroshima 広島市	Bombing it saved untold numbers of U.S. lives by making a ground invasion of Japan unnecessary	Japan was already negotiating for surrender, and had long since lost the war; their economy was so crushed that they were building kamikaze planes without landing gear in order to save yen; President Truman said: we have spent so much money building these weapons, we have to use them.
Nagasaki 長崎市	The Japanese still didn't surrender after Hiroshima, so we had to show them we weren't kidding.

--> We were in too much of a rush to allow three days for Japan to react to Hiroshima with unconditional surrender; we were testing a completely different type of nuclear weapon; we were making an example of Japan so the Russians, the Chinese, and anybody else would think twice before challenging our power to destroy. Fukushima

福島市 The nuclear plant failure was caused by a tsunami, it contaminated a rural area right around the plant, and it's all under control now. --> Radiation alarms went off when the earthquake hit, hours before the tsunami; the Mark I Boiling Water Reactors at Fukushima have a design flaw that dooms them all to fail eventually due to containment vessels that grow brittle; General Electric made them and sold them to Japan following the Marshall Plan economic buildup of Japan as a de facto colony/aircraft carrier of the U.S.; TEPCO has successfully argued in court that it has no liability for the radiation released by Fukushima's venting; the radioactive plume continues to unfurl across the skies and in the oceans of the Northern Hemisphere; Reactor #4 is still in critical state and, if its fuel rods go, Earth could become uninhabitable by humans for 4.5 billion years or so; President Obama takes huge campaign contributions from the nuclear power industry, and continues to budget tax-funded expansion of both weapons and nuclear power production; the U.S. quietly stopped monitoring radiation levels on the West coast, and agreed not to ban any food from Japan, post-Fukishima; women and especially mothers and grandmothers in Japan hold daily protests against the use of nuclear power which are almost never reported in the mainstream press in the U.S.

The Guardian July 30, 2012 ran this photo with the caption Protesters hold placards and shout slogans as they march to form a 'human chain' around Japan's parliament in Tokyo, to demonstrate against nuclear power plants. Photograph: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images

Pineda uses Fukushima as a jumping off point to make a convincing case that production of nuclear fuel for whatever purpose is effectively conducting war on the living inhabitants of the world. She acknowledges that a culture built on attending to the shiny surface of things is designed to overlook: The hundreds of thousands of nameless Russians who died burying Chernobyl. The fact that your government makes weapons out of depleted uranium, weapons that have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan and many other places, creating soil and dust that produces human fetuses so deformed they are not recognizably human. The fact the U.S. is full of G.E.-built Mark I Boiling Water Reactors, many sitting on top of seismic faults, others sitting right on the shoreline of the Pacific or Atlantic region of Earth's one ocean. 

The fact that, if you're my age, you can probably no longer count the people you've known who survived, or did not survive, cancer. Cause and effect break down when cause is an invisible, tasteless, odorless substance that takes longer to break down than does the human body.

Pineda suggests reading Greg Palast's Vulture's Picnic for a more detailed examination of the central nuclear industry truth, "it turned out that fixing the regulators was cheaper than fixing the problem." In case you want to know why your government uses your own money to kill you for the profits of a few. Pineda herself is more interested in examining the details of who stops cooperating in the death-for-profit game. She quotes a farmer who helped bring a lawsuit to block yet another Japanese nuclear plant from starting up, Hatsumi Ishimaru: "Women are at the head of the anti-nuclear campaign because we value life more than economic gain."

Official pronouncements coached by top dollar public relations firms can steer public perception, but they cannot change facts on the ground. Pineda writes:

...it's conceivable that in the larger scheme, Mother Earth may be the "decider" notwithstanding her failure to be recognized by the government -- or any other government for that matter -- with the exception of the government of Bolivia.

If she has any hope left, it's riding on the rise of the global 99%. She quotes Takanobu Kobayashi, an activist who leads Japanese citizens in the relentless pursuit of life over death: "We do not trust the government anymore."