Skip to main content

A Militarized Economy Cannot Balance the Budget   :      Information Clearing House: ICH

A Militarized Economy Cannot Balance the Budget   :      Information Clearing House: ICH

April 08, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- While we send our love and support to those so horribly impacted by the earthquake and tsunami, we must not allow this shock to divert us from the tsunami headed our way. Our business and political leaders will try to use this terrible catastrophe as a diversion to hoodwink us into budgetary reductions that will fatten their wallets and leave us and our children devastated.

It does not matter on what side of the political fence you sit during the current budget debates. The fact is that if our leaders are not willing to take into account our over-dependence on a militarized economy and change it, we will never balance the budget. Our progeny will face an endless struggle to clean up the debris.

Each year the Department of Defense’s tidal wave grows more menacing. We witness countless billions allocated for weapons research and development; nuclear warheads; and the secret and often illegal activities of the CIA, NSA, FBI, Homeland Security, and other “intelligence” agencies. We watch countries that are caught up in natural disasters and political upheavals and see how this “crisis elixir” attracts and profits predatory capitalists. Turmoil in foreign lands encourages U.S. hawks to party on at their military orgies. They stagger out to launch campaigns into new areas of conflict.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Broken Spring?       : Information Clearing House

Broken Spring?       : Information Clearing House This is a sequel to my June 2011 article, ‘After the spring’, on the upheavals in the Arab world. It is an article that has been painful to write, because it brings bad tidings and offers a pessimistic analysis of the upheavals, at least in the short term, in a number of Arab countries. The outcomes and potential outcomes of these uprisings have also acquired new, very significant dimensions. These include a complex entanglement with the accelerated preparations for a possible attack on Iran, and a poisonous, sectarian aspect that could have the consequence of ripping Syria and the Middle East apart.

Scoop: Ethiopia: Gov't Prepares Assault On Civil Society

Scoop: Ethiopia: Gov't Prepares Assault On Civil Society (New York, July 1, 2008) - Ethiopia's government should immediately abandon plans to impose strict government controls and draconian criminal penalties on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said today. The two groups called on donor governments, whose behind-the-scenes efforts to see the bill reformed appear to have failed, to speak out publicly against the de facto criminalization of most of the human rights, rule of law and peace-building work currently being carried out in Ethiopia.