PENTAGON NEWSLETTER #10

OMNI PENTAGON WATCH NEWSLETTER #10, June 3, 2013.    Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace.   (#1 June 21, 2011; #2 October 29, 2011; #3 March 15, 2012; #4 May 17, 2012; #5 June 23, 2012; #6 August 1, 2012; #7 Oct. 5, 2012; #8 Feb. 13, 2013; #9 March 17, 2013).  

My Blog:   War Department/Peace Department

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/ 

My Newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/

Index:

http://www.omnicenter.org/omni-newsletter-general-index/ 

See OMNI newsletters and related materials:   Bases,  Climate Change,  Conversion from Militarized Economy, Imperialism,  Military Industrial Complex, Pacific East Asia, Torture, individual U.S. Interventions, Invasions, and Occupations, War Crimes, Waste, Whistleblowers, more (Blum, Killing Hope and Rogue State, HAW, Peace Action, VFP, WAND and the hundreds of peace and justice and ecology groups).

PERMANENT WAR

“When the plans for a new office building for the military, which came to be known as The Pentagon, were brought before the Senate on august 14, 1941, Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan was puzzled.  ‘Unless the war is to be permanent, why must we have permanent accommodations for war facilities of such size?’ he asked.  ‘Or is the war to be permanent?”  Blum, America’s Deadliest Export (2013, 3).

With an annual budget of over $600 billion supporting one illegal, unnecessary war after another amounting to permanent war (the War Department), the expansion of empire of over a thousand bases throughout the world, secrecy, surveillance, and repression increasing at  home (Homeland Security a domestic Pentagon), our representatives, the Congress, not only giving the military all they request but more (the military-industrial complex in every congressional district), and all of this massive terrorism motivating violent opposition throughout the world, a peanuts resistance which our double-speaking warrior leaders designate as “terrorism,” we the people can be thankful for the many independent, sustained organizations resisting these violent powers.  In my Peace Movement Directory (2001), I described over a thousand peace and justice organizations in North America.  This newsletter specifying “Pentagon” and our several closely related newsletters are meant to sustain this movement.    Consider these newsletters and  Blog a collecting station to encourage the building of an even more concerted scrutiny of the Pentagon.   I have also started a Hagel Watch; send items for that too.   (Always include complete source, and I will cite you with thanks.)   Let’s see what ordinary citizens can put together.   --Dick

CONTENTS OF NO. 6,  NO. 7 AT END  

Contents #8

Wand Supports Hagel to Head Pentagon 2013

Hightower Supports Hagel

Dick : Chappelle,  Critical Thinking and Geneva Conventions at West Point?

Military Sexual Trauma the Real Sex Scandal

MILITARY SPENDING

Lepore, How Much Enough?

Sacred Cow

Dick: The Clueless, Why US Needs are Neglected

Military Spending Creates Fewer Jobs

from HAW

Priorities Network: Cut Military Spending

POGO: Investigating Pentagon Spending

BP Pentagon Contracts

Pentagon Rx Spending Soars

Defense-cuts

Contents #9
This newsletter has always functioned as a heuristic, but in this number that approach is made explicit for a steadier and deeper focus on the Pentagon..

POGO:  Project on Government Oversight

Whistleblowers

Google “Pentagon Watch”

Bolger, VFP:  Appeal to Sec’t. Hagel
Peace Action:   Move the Money

Contents #10  June 3, 2013
Bruce Gagnon:  Militarism USA

Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars (via VFP)

Dick:  New US Cyber Command

Pentagon Cyber Planning (google)

Center for Defense Information Watching the Pentagon (google)

Street:  Military Keynesianism,  Sequestration Doesn’t Affect Military-Corporate    Complex   (with note by Dick)

Posts Via Veterans for Peace

   Daniel Shea on Wray Harris and Forthcoming Film

   David Culver on the Costs of Wars, Bilmes and Stiglitz

The Militarization of North American Life

Global Network [globalnet@mindspring.com]

Monday, June 03, 2013 1:33 AM

My talk on June 1 at the Moana Nui 2013 Teach-In held in Berkeley, California.   Bruce

  

The Militarization of North American Life

I live in Bath, Maine where Navy Aegis destroyers are built.  These ships are outfitted with so-called “missile defense” systems that the Pentagon is today using to help surround Russia and China.  Few people in my community, including some activists, are interested in where these ships go (places like Jeju Island in South Korea.)  It’s not popular to raise these questions – especially when Bath Iron Works is the largest industrial employer in our state.

In fact today weapons are the number one industrial export product of the US.  And when weapons are your number one industrial export product, what is your global marketing strategy for that product line? What does it say about the soul of our nation when we have to keep selling weapons and killing people in order to provide jobs?

The manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects offered the public a window into the stunning militarization of our nation. During that incident the entire domestic surveillance/military response system was field-tested and culminated in the dramatic closing down of an entire urban center.

We have become an occupied nation.  For the past 30 years, police departments throughout the US have benefited from the government’s largesse in the form of military weaponry and training.

Obama has announced that 30,000 drones will be flying around the US in the coming years.  Thirty-seven states have applied to host one of six military drone test sites planned across the country.  Much debate has begun in local communities about whether police should be required to have warrants before they can snoop on us with drones.  Should domestic drones be allowed to carry weapons? 

More than 500 aerospace companies are eager to develop this new drone market across the US.  The drone industry lawyers say we have nothing to fear – that all we have to do is ask local police and they will be transparent about their drone use. 

Infrared and radio-band sensors used by the military can peer through clouds and foliage and can even detect and hear people inside their homes. During the last few years of the US military occupation of Iraq, drones monitored Baghdad 24/7, turning the entire city into the equivalent of a convenience store crammed full of security cameras. This technology is being brought home to control us.

There is a $2 billion, 1-million-square-foot facility being built by the National Security Agency outside Salt Lake City. It’s a phone, fax, email, data storage and analysis warehouse called Utah Data Station - everything about the facility is secret. It is scheduled to open this summer. 

Today drones buzzing over Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Mali are “flown” by pilots back in the US at places like Creech AFB, Nevada or Hancock Air Field, New York.  This is possible because the military satellites in orbit link the pilot to the drone in “real time” - split-second time.  Space Command downlink ground stations spread around the globe help relay those signals.  The Pentagon brags that this high-tech warfare increases “the kill chain”.

In a way, you could call the military satellites the “triggers” that make the drones work.  These satellites allow the military to see everything, hear everything, and to target virtually every place on the planet.

In June 2012 the second flight of the new military space plane (X-37) touched down at Vandenberg AFB after 469 days in orbit.  This unmanned super drone is a first-strike attack system, part of the Global Strike doctrine now underway at the Strategic Command.  In annual computer war games at the Space Command, set in the year 2016, the Pentagon launches a first-strike attack on China’s nuclear forces and this new military space plane is the first weapon used.  It’s called the “successor” to the recently retired space shuttle, which was paraded through streets of Los Angeles in late 2012…. 400 trees were cut down to prepare its red carpeted path to a waiting museum.  It is the perfect symbol of our worship of the gods of metal.  Technology trumps nature.

A friend in Maine has a son who recently spent a year in Afghanistan; my friend worried every day.  His son was then sent to Germany and he could breathe a sigh of relief.  The son thought about getting out of the military but there are no jobs.  The Army offered him a sizeable reenlistment bonus and he took it.

In the US today 57% of every federal discretionary tax dollar goes (to the Pentagon) to fund the cancerous war machine.  Our communities have become addicted to military spending.  There is virtually no money for anything else these days as we witness austerity cuts in social programs like so many other nations around the globe.  

Colorado Springs, Colorado headquarters of the Air Force Space Command) has 357,000 people living there, and 47% of the population work for the military industrial complex. 

The aerospace and military production industry in Alabama is a major job provider as well. Huntsville, Alabama now calls itself the “Pentagon of the South”.

In 1950, the U.S. Army moved former Nazi Wernher von Braun, and his team of 100 German rocket scientists, to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville to create the US space program. Von Braun and his team also took over NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and helped ensure that the “civilian” space program came under military control. The Nazi rocket team brought “culture” to Huntsville by creating the local symphony and ballet and lived on a hill overlooking the town. 

Was there an ideological contamination that came with these Nazi scientists?  One can easily note the similarity between the Nazi slogan “Deutschland uber alles” and the Space Command logo that reads “Master of Space”. 

By the way, California is currently the #2 recipient of Pentagon spending in the nation.  The Republicans and Democrats now work together to ensure an endless flow of war money into their states.  They understand that it’s the only game in town anymore for creating jobs.  Both parties get nicely rewarded with campaign donations from the weapons industry.

An activist friend in Halifax, Nova Scotia is now organizing weekly protests outside a shipyard in her community that has begun building expensive new warships for the Canadian Navy.  The funding for warship building has necessitated cuts in human needs programs.  “Progressive” political parties are going along with this largest military appropriation in Canada’s history because of the jobs issue. (The ships will be used by NATO to control the melting Arctic Region on behalf of big oil.)

The Pentagon says that our role in the US under corporate globalization of the world economy will be “Security export” – thus we won’t have conventional jobs making products useful to our communities. Instead we will build weapons for endless war and send our kids overseas to die for the oil corporations.

A couple years ago I heard that the Sears department store had a new kids clothing line so I went to see it in a nearby town. Military uniforms for young boys were on the racks – the message “this is all you can ever be” – it’s youth mind colonization.

The military industrial complex has become the primary resource extraction service for corporate globalization and is preparing the future generations for their dead end street.

In the US, approximately 40% of all scientists, engineers and technical professionals currently work in the military sector. This is a colossal waste of talent and intellectual resources as we face the coming reality of climate change.

Due to the fiscal crisis across the nation engineering, computer science, mathematics, astronomy, and chemistry departments in colleges and universities have become increasingly dependent on Pentagon funding.  At the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque there are “top secret” areas on campus these days.

The Defense Alliance in St. Paul, Minnesota seeks to expand the weapons industry’s presence in higher education, and among its members are military contractors like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics.

The Navy granted the University of Minnesota’s Center for Transportation Studies $150,000 to look into improving tracking, surveillance and intelligence communications systems.

In 2011 the University of Minnesota reported the Pentagon was trying to “restrict” the open publishing of research resulting from a military-funded project.  This indicates quite clearly that the Pentagon is not really trying to further the state of education but instead views the students and faculty as nothing more than military production workers doing classified work.

The militarization of everything around us is a spiritual sickness.  Lakota holy man Lame Deer talked about the green frog skin – the dollar bill – and how the white man was blinded by his love for the paper money.  His spiritual connection to the Mother Earth was broken. 

Abolitionist Frederick Douglas reminded us that power concedes nothing without a demand, it never did and it never will.  When it comes to our current dark evil economic system, called militarism, we should be talking about its conversion and the jobs that would result from that transformation.

Good jobs can be created by home weatherization, building rail systems, creating a solar society, and hiring unemployed workers to plant town and city organic gardens.  As we transform our industrial base we lessen the impact of the military machine on our lives and help deal with our major environmental crisis. 

There is no other way to pay for such a redirection without massive cuts in the war machine budget now.

Join me in saying …… US out of North America!

Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
globalnet@mindspring.com
www.space4peace.org 
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/  (blog)

VFP Recommends the Film:  Dirty Wars

Starting in June, a remarkable anti-war film will be showing in big mainstream movie theaters.  Dirty Wars may be one of the best educational outreach opportunities the peace movement has had in a long time. 

If the movie is playing in your city  email David Swanson @ davidcnswanson@gmail.com if you are interested in any of the following:

• promoting the film with posters, flyers, and other materials
• discounts on bulk tickets
• promoting and being part of talk-back sessions after screenings with Jeremy Scahill, Rick Rowley, Anthony Arnove, and other speakers
• organizing events at separate venues with the above or other speakers, and announcing those events at the film screenings
• being in a big theater full of people who cheer for the same things you cheer for

People who see this film are going to be outraged by our wars, are going to understand that the wars make us less safe, and just might be ready to do something about it.

PENTAGON/NSS CYBER THREAT, FEAR, EMPIRE…..WAR?

By Dick Bennett

     It’s a familiar headline:  “Cyber-teams to Attack Foes, Pentagon Says.  General: Good Offense Best Way to Guard U.S.” by Richard Lardner (AP).  ADG (March 18, 2013) 4B.  Remember “First-Strike”?  “Preemptive Attack”?   The mottoes of bullies; the signs of lawlessness.

      Here’s the first paragraph—but any passage, like so many from the Pentagon or White House on foreign policy, is difficult not to interrupt, so deceptive it is:  “The Defense Department is establishing a series of cyber-teams tasked with carrying out offensive operations to combat the threat of an electronic assault on the United States that could cause major damage and disruption to the country’s vital infrastructure, a senior military official said.”     

     The “Defense” Department?   The General Keith Alexander doubletalks himself into what we all should know by now:  It’s the old, and at least factually and linguistically honest War Department.  The entire report shows how utterly offensive is the “defense” of “offensive operations”!   Against what?   Against “major damage and disruption to the country’s vital infrastructure”  Specifically (par. 2)?   To “combat the threat of electronic assault.”  Threatening what?  The “electric grid and other essential systems.”   

    How “defend”?  The Pentagon is already on the case with its U.S Cyber Command (backed up by Commands covering the entire globe, each with its acronym—Cencom, Afcom).   What is Cybcom doing (this report recounts a hearing before the fearful, cheerleading Senate Armed Services Committee in a country drastically reducing early child-care education and other vital services but expanding Cybcom and the other coms)?   Cybcom is forming  13 cyber-teams “for the mission of guarding the nation in cyberspace.”  Guarding?   The General means attacking, “attack foes.”  “He described them as ‘defend-the-nation- teams but stressed their role would be offensive.  In comments to reporters after the hearing, Alexander likened the teams’ duties to knocking an incoming missile out of the sky before it hits a target”; i.e., like Star Wars, including missile defense for ‘first strike.”  He also said the teams would work outside the United States, but he did not say where.”   But that’s only the beginning.  “Alexander also said another 27 Cyber-teams are being established to support the military’s war-fighting commands while others will protect the ** computer systems and data.”   Let us see now.  That makes 40 cyber-teams plus Pentagon. 

     What will this cost?    The Senators apparently asked no question about the cost of super-cyber security.   What will each team cost?  That depends upon the number in the team, ranks, travel, equipment.   Can it be done for $100,000 minimum, times 40 or $4,000,000?  Or have I wildly underestimated?   What do you think?  And keep in mind that another article reported that the goal of Cybcom is 100 teams.

     And what’s omitted from the AP report?  He does not mention the Pentagon “teams” surely already and for decades protecting its computers and data, so Cybcom is another layer of security, like the Top Top Secret agencies established after 9/11.  And is then Cybcom like nuclear bomb overkill?   If Cybcom is needed in addition to all the already existing cyber security,  another strong doubt arises when we recall nuclear retaliatory doctrine.   To the consideration--“While foreign leaders are deterred from launching cyber attacks on the United States because they know such a strike could be traced to its source and would generate a robust response.”-- General Alexander revealed that Cybcom’s concern is not low-level harassment “by other states,” but “tools developed by other nations [winding] up in the hands of extremist groups or even individuals who could do significant harm,” similar to the danger of suitcase-size nuclear weapons.  That is, we’re back to another phase of the War on Terror, of permanent war, in which the enemy is potentially everybody, and no amount of US bases around the world—in every city over 10,000? 1000?—will be enough, and the only people happy is the Corporate-Military-Congressional Complex.

     What’s left to ask?        I have been discussing only the first 7 paragraphs, which inspire these and more as yet unstated questions, so legally questionable is this enterprise.  For example, the AP report did not confront the legality of the preemptive attacks on “foes.”    Because of the constant violation of international laws by the US (over 40 illegal interventions and invasions since 1945, now drones attacking in several countries without invitation) have the Pentagon and the mainstream news media become so sure of public acceptance of aggression that attacks on other countries that have not attacked you, which are expressly forbidden by the United Nations Charter and Nuremberg Principles, do not matter to them?

1.                             Pentagon forming cyber teams to prevent attacks

bigstory.ap.org › United States

Mar 12, 2013 – Keith Alexander, the top officer at U.S. Cyber Command, warned ...The financial industry typically is more secure than companies that ... risks posed bycyber thefts and intrusions and the economic costs to U.S. businesses.

2.                             Pentagon Plans to Deploy More Than 100 Cyber Teams by Late ...

www.nextgov.com/defense/2013/.../pentagon...cyber-teams.../61948/

Mar 19, 2013 – Cyber Command forces dedicated to protecting critical infrastructure ...Within three years, the Pentagon's Cyber Command will deploy more than 100 teams... And each service is working through the financial constraints of ...

3.                             Pentagon creating teams to launch cyberattacks as threat grows ...

www.washingtonpost.com/.../pentagon...teams...cyberattacks.../35aa9...

Mar 12, 2013 – Head of military's Cyber Command outlines major effort to build offensive and defensive capabilities. ... Being a teen parent will cost you ... ThePentagon's Cyber Command will create 13 offensive teams by the fall of 2015 ... were the work of Iran in retaliation for U.S. financial sanctions imposed to deter Iran ...

4.                             Pentagon Plans Elite Cyber Teams

www.itbusinessedge.com/...it.../pentagon-plans-elite-cyber-teams.htm...

Mar 13, 2013 – ... to build 13 teams at the Pentagon's Cyber Command to go on the offensive. ... threat of cyber attack against U.S. infrastructure and financial institutions, Gen. ... and pilots to retain top cyber talent and to recoup training costs.

5.                             Pentagon forming cyber teams to prevent attacks | TPM Idea Lab

idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/.../pentagon-will-go-on-the...

by David Kurtz - in 498 Google+ circles - More by David Kurtz Mar 12, 2013 – The Defense Department is establishing a series of cyber teams charged ... Keith Alexander, the top officer at U.S. Cyber Command, warned during ... The financial industry typically is more secure than companies that ... risks posed by cyber thefts and intrusions and the economiccosts to U.S. businesses.

6.                             Pentagon creates 13 offensive cyber teams for worldwide attacks ...

endthelie.com/.../pentagon-creates-13-offensive-cyber-teams-for-wor...

Mar 13, 2013 – The head of the United States Cyber Command says the US is developing 40 new teams of cyber-agents that will both protect America's critical ...

7.                             Pentagon forming cyber teams to prevent attacks - News, Weather 

AN ORGANIZATIONS WATCHING THE PENTAGON

1.                             Center for Defense Information - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia   [From first page of a google search—Dick]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Defense_Information

The Center for Defense Information was founded in 1972 by retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Gene La Rocque. The CDI is dedicated to: strengthening national ...

2.                             Center for Defense Information (CDI)

www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/.../Detail/?ots783...19cc...

The Center for Defense Information (CDI) is a non-governmental research organization focusing on defense alternatives and international defense cooperation.

3.                             Learn About the Center for Defense Information | LearnStuff

www.learnstuff.com/learn-about-the-center-for-defense-information/

Sep 12, 2012 – The Center for Defense Information (CDI) is a military think tank that promotes the discussion between military leaders and government ...

4.                             Center for Defense Information - Center for Public Integrity

www.publicintegrity.org/news/Center-for-Defense-Information

project merit.”Former Senate staffer Winslow Wheeler, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information, is more blunt: “Earmarks and contributions are both legal ...

5.                             Center for Defense Information (CDI) - Knology.net

www.knology.net/~bilrum/cdi.htm

The CDI was initiated by the Marxist Institute for Policy Studies and has radicalized for a disarmed America. It is truly a propagandist for Defense DIS-information.

6.                             Center for Defense Information - SourceWatch

www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?...Center_for_Defense_Information

Mar 29, 2010 – The Mission Statement for The Center for Defense Information states that the Center is a "non-partisan, non-profit organization committed to ...

7.                             Center for defense information /CDI/

studies.agentura.ru/english/centres/cdi/

Center for defense information. President - Bruce G. Blair, Ph.D. CDI was founded in 1972 by recently-retired, senior U.S. military officers. CDI became an ...

8.                             Center for Defense Information | Facebook

www.facebook.com/.../Center-for-Defense-Information/1230658443...

Center for Defense Information. 6 likes · 1 talking about this.

9.                             Center for Defense Information ORGANIZATION - NNDB.com

www.nndb.com/org/901/000104589/

Center for Defense Information. ORGANIZATION. Independent nonprofit organization "dedicated to strengthening security through: international cooperation; ...

10.                         The Anti-Defense Lobby Part 1: Center for Defense Information

www.heritage.org/.../the-anti-defense-lobby-part-1-center-for-defens...

Apr 19, 1979 – Of these, one of the most prominent is the Center for Defense Information (CDI), self-described in its pro- motional literature as "a project of The ...

MILITARY KEYNESIANISM

PAUL STREET, “MILITARY KEYNESIANISM SURVIVES SEQUESTRATION.”  ZMAGAZINE (May 2013).  “Sequester is no disaster for the giant corporate component of the military industrial complex.”   [Street’s next book available fall 2013: They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy.  –Dick]

[Opening entries from first page of Google Search April 24, 2013.  Dick]

1.                             Coalmines And Military Keynesians - Paul Krugman - The New York ...

krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/.../coalmines-and-military-key...

by Paul Krugman - in 1,062 Google+ circles - More by Paul Krugman Oct 28, 2011 – Coalmines And Military Keynesians. Ah, so now we have a new principle of economics: government spending can't create jobs, but cuts in...

2.                             Where Are The Military Keynesians? | TPM Editors Blog

talkingpointsmemo.com/.../where_are_the_military_keynesians.php

Jan 30, 2013 – Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, ..... toward St. Paul's Cathedral for the former British prime minister's funeral. ....Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), who survived a gunshot wound to the head, ...

3.                             military keynesianism | azizonomics

azizonomics.com/tag/military-keynesianism/

Feb 10, 2013 – Posts about military keynesianism written by Aziz. ... all around us: dysfunctional corporations that survive despite their gross inability to serve ... Occupy Wall Street and the 2012 Ron Paul Presidential campaigns were the first ...

4.                             Military Keynesians, Austrian Economics and Paul Krugman

www.economicpolicyjournal.com/.../military-keynesians-austrian-eco...

Oct 29, 2011 – Military Keynesians, Austrian Economics and Paul Krugman ... wrote Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week.

5.                             Articles ‹ The Official Web Site of Paul L. Street

www.paulstreet.org/?page_id=21

Apr 5, 2013 – Paul Street's next book is They Rule: The 1% v. .... thanks to the drone program's secrecy (which will survive the transfer of its management from ... The U.S. currently possesses roughly 7,500 drones in its military inventory, ..... knocked off the lingering social Keynesian liberalism of the long New Deal era.

     ADMIRAL MULLEN:  THE INCESSANT DRUMBEAT FOR MILITARY “BLANKET” OF KEYNESIANISM AND WAR

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen declared:   “I become more convinced than ever that as a nation, we can ill afford to lose our edge … Cut [the military budget] too deeply and we will burn the very blanket of protection we’ve been charged to provide our fellow citizens”   Protection?    Guatemala, Panama, Grenada, Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, invasions and occupations, protected us?   Rather, they created countless enemies.  Let’s call the blanket what it is— lawlessness, oppression, and mass killing.  Who asked for that “blanket of protection” (or that euphemism for aggression)?   We, the People charged the Pentagon to attack some forty countries and ring the planet with military bases?   

     Adm. Mullen continued:   “Cut too deeply now and we will harm, perhaps irreparably, the industrial base from which we procure the materials of war.”   The militarized industrial base?   Rather, let us end the militarized keynesianism, cut and convert the extraordinarily unnecessary and wasteful empire to human needs, for the good of people both here and abroad, before our democracy degenerates entirely into tyranny as happened to the Roman empire.    Bring the troops home.   Close the factories of death.   Employ our citizens for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.   --Dick

Sources:

Citing MIC:  http://secondtonone.org/analysis-projects-one-million-jobs-at-risk-from-defense-cuts

Quoting Adm. Mullen: http://secondtonone.org/analysis-projects-one-million-jobs-at-risk-from-d

POSTS VIA VETERANS FOR PEACE

Daniel Shea, David Culver

1

A Veteran's Viscera

Forthcoming Film

 Fri Apr 26, 2013 11:35 am (PDT) . Posted by:

"Daniel Shea"

"Dead politicians, not dead soldiers."
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-veteran-s-viscera 

At a demonstration in 2011 young veteran Wray Harris implored us to 
stop war (in Iraq and Afghanistan). So shaken by his fury I caught up to
him and proposed an interview. Nine months later we sat down to talk, 
and talk we did into the dead of the night. We drank, we smoked, we 
bonded. The result: Authority and Expectations, an intimate portrait 
about the Fatal Effects Syndrome of sending our young to kill.
"Dead politicians," he quips, "not dead soldiers."
Authority and Expectations is about the wars the rage in the ones 
that make it back, mentally ill, tormented, unemployed, resentful, and 
failing to "reintegrate".
Some statistics:
100,000 - 1 million Iraqi civilians were killed between 2003-2013
22 veterans commit suicide every day.
Our financial goal is $5000 = submissions 
to film festivals and the cost of adding french subtitles to enable 
exposure to France and Quebec, cultures that crave penetrating and 
powerful pieces. In the end all support touches Wray, aiding his 
"reintegration" and nudging him toward notoriety that stimulates 
interest in his speeches that move audiences to stop war. You'll find 
Wray smart, well-read, driven, justified and deserving your attention.

Our broader goal is 100,000 viewers = informed people = energized to 
prevent war with Iran and (fill in the blank) = fewer murdered by war = 
fewer traumatized soldiers with guilt, depression, PTSD, suicidal 
thoughts and trouble reintegrating
Wray Harris is my friend, and a friend of Veterans For Peace, we have worked side by side waging peace and trying to raise awareness. I support this fundraising campaign and hope you will to. 
Daniel Shea
Veterans For Peace
Blog: http://dsheavfp72.wordpress.com
www.veteransforpeace.org 
www.vfp72.org 

Free Bradley Manning
www.bradleymanning.org 

https://www.facebook.com/dan.shea.VFP 

We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war
against children – Howard Zinn

Reply to sender . Reply to group . Reply via Web Post . All Messages (1) . Top ^

2

The terrible cost of Washington’s wars

Fri Apr 26, 2013 11:35 am (PDT) . Posted by:

"David Culver" mplsstreetrwy

> The vast resources wasted and the incalculable human suffering inflicted by the bloated US military and intelligence apparatus pose the urgency of building a genuine mass movement against militarism and war.
> Sequester Cuts
> Bill Van Auken, World Socialist Web Site 

> 3 April 2013 | Harvard University’s new report estimating that the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will end up costing as much as $6 trillion is another indication of the terrible price paid by working people the world over for the crimes of imperialism.
> This is the latest in a series of studies done by Harvard’s senior lecturer on public policy, Linda Bilmes, together with economist Joseph Stiglitz. Each successive study has raised the estimate of the wars’ long-term costs, due in large measure to the rising and sustained costs of caring for and compensating hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have returned home suffering grievous physical and psychological trauma.
> Full story…http://evergreenedigest.org/sequester-cuts
> 
> Related:
> > Sequester Cuts, US Uncut / Timeline Photos
> If budgets reflect a country's values, the US is based on mindless violence and cruel punishment of the poor, for the profit of a selfish few.
> http://evergreenedigest.org/sequester-cuts
> 
> 

Contents #6
TomDispatch, Kramer: Spending Waste and Corruption

Tomgram, Militarism
Cappaccio, Pentagon Budget

Update: Budget Passes House

VFP, Bloated Pentagon
Wheeler, F-35 Costs Still Rising

People’s Guide to Budget
Pentagon Dissent/ Crowd Control
Pentagon Reading Our Email

Contents #7
War Costs Campaign
Lofgren:  Militarized GOP
Ryan Budget  (2 reports)
Pentagon Budget and GOP Petition
Budget Debate

Ryan’s Budget and Pentagon Strategic Thinking

Dick, Defending the Pentagon Budget by Militarism and Fear-mongering
IG Report on General William Ward
Rape at Lackland AFB
U. S. Empire, Rome, Military Bases: Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis, Dismantling the Empire

END PENTAGON WATCH NEWSLETTER #10