California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

The Hype Over AI

by John Lawrence

There is much hand wringing over whether or not AI will be used for good purposes or bad. The proprietors of AI are mostly concerned about making money, not about how to use their products for good. That's the capitalistic system. And one can rest assured that one of the most interested parties in AI is the defense establishment. They are always interested in using the most advanced technology in order to create even more sophisticated and destructive weapons in accordance with the theory that, if they don't create them, their enemies will create them first, and then they will be in a less advantageous position. Of course this is always premised on the consideration that we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. Our supposed enemies use the same rationale with the result that the world becomes ever more dangerous as both sides develop more and more destructive weapons. AI is just the latest chapter of this merry-go-round.The problem is that the tech companies creating AI are just in it for the money, and the military-industrial complex, in addition to just being in it for the money, is in it for the rationale that we better use AI to create advance weapons first so that our "enemies" don't get them first.

Has anybody considered that some entity, whether it be government or private enterprise, should adopt the position that AI or any other technology should be used not only for good but for the purpose of creating peace in the world? No, no entity is concerned about that. If government was concerned, they would be using some of the trillion dollar military-industrial complex budget to develop peaceful enterprises in the world. Instead while a trillion dollars yearly is spent on defense/offense, a paltry $400 million is spent on the Peace Corps. So that's where our values are. We value a strong defense, not strong efforts to make the world a more peaceful place, and we value financial competition to make as much money as we can off of any new technology. Those are the imperatives. Peace is thought to be the absence of war rather than building enterprises that would prevent war in the first place. The interstices between wars should be used to prevent the next war, but instead the only prevention is thought to be to have such a strong military apparatus that no one would think about stepping out of line with the line being defined by us or whoever is the most powerful empire at any point in time. Empires come and go over the long term, but the mental imperative of using all resources to create the most powerful military establishment never changes.

The result is that war is inevitable as it has been for millennia. In fact for thousands of years war has been a way of life. Empires have been created because someone came along who was in a position to create them whether that was Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Great, Catherine the Great or Napoleon. No one ever called Jesus "the Great" because he didn't create an empire. He just preached peace as the foremost value. Too bad no one in a position of power ever took him seriously. That was not realpolitik. Instead, religion was used to placate and sublimate the masses while the war machines of the various empires ground on until thy eventually were subdued or wore themselves out or went bankrupt. AI does not presage a new millennium. It's just more of the same. It will be used beneficially in medicine and a few other enterprises. But its main development will be in the art of war wherein battlefields are populated not by humans but by robots. The destruction however will remain the same or worse. Not the military but innocent civilians will bear the cost of death and destruction as already has been taking place in modern warfare. Not military assets but civilian real estate will be destroyed. Such a shame that technological advances have been deployed more in the service of war than in the service of peace.

Off the Top of My Head

An Academy of Peace: What a Novel Idea

by John Lawrence

We have several academies of war - the US Naval Academy, West Point, the US Coast Guard Academy, the US Air Force Academy. Is there a US academy of peace? We spend a trillion dollars a year on the military. How much do we spend on the peace industry? Congress has completed its work on a budget for fiscal year 2022, passing a $1.5 trillion spending package. ... Unfortunately, for a seventh consecutive year, instead of providing new resources to better meet the needs of a changed world, it keeps Peace Corps' baseline funding flat at $410.5 million. We spend a pittance on peace, a fortune on war. As the world's leading super power, we spend our money on what we value most - war. Do the big wigs in the American government even have an idea of what it would take to create a peaceful world? What would be the steps that should be taken to prevent war before it starts. One thing is to work toward eliminating poverty and disease in the world. We should have a world in which everyone has at least the basics for a decent life. That means adequate sanitation, adequate clean water supply, adequate shelter, adequate nutrition, adequate health care.

Fact: Over 1.5 billion people still do not have basic sanitation services, such as private toilets or latrines. Of these, 419 million still defecate in the open, for example in street gutters, behind bushes or into open bodies of water. There is much work to be done here. Does the US have anything in its budget to upgrade the sanitation level for the rest of the world? No, they are too much concerned with fighting the next war, spending billions on the most advanced military systems. Such a simple thing as improving sanitation in the world is something the US as a country is not really concerned about. Yet there is a connection between personal well being and peace. People that are at least basically well off are not inclined to go to war. War seems like a good alternative if the alternative is poverty. Throughout history the war making class has always been more prosperous than the peasantry. It's stlll true today.

So do our leaders have the faintest ideas about how to create peace ... or only how to win wars. There is never enough money to do the things that might result in a more peaceful world, but there is plenty of money for fighting wars. What would be some good ideas for creating a more peaceful world? Maybe citizen to citizen interchanges with countries who are deemed to be out "enemies." Maybe spending more money on creating diplomats and diplomacy. Maybe not characterizing any country as an "enemy"? Maybe creating the conditions for peace. Maybe two years of required national service in the Peace Corps as an alternative to the military with the same benefits? There's a song, "I'm not going to study war no more." Maybe creating more peace workers than soldiers, sailors and airmen. I think more results could be realized by spending less money on war. Peace should not really cost that much. What is costly is war. More money has been spent on it over the years than any other thing. It's the main thing that tax money has been spent on for millennia. It's what bankrupted France in the reign of Louis XIV. And after all the wars, France's boundaries remained the same as they were at the beginning of Louis' reign.

Off the Top of My Head

War is Institutionalized; Peace is Not

by John Lawrence

If all you have is a hammer every problem looks like it can be solved by pounding a nail. If all you have is a military-industrial complex, every problem looks as if it can be solved by the threat or application of military power. This has been true for thousands of years, most of which time war was just accepted as a given. Now more elaborate justifications seem to be necessary, but the results are the same. Resources are devoted to war while a pittance is devoted to peace. The US currently spends about a trillion dollars annually on its military-industrial complex while the Peace Corps is allocated next to nothing. Congress has completed its work on a budget for fiscal year 2022, passing a $1.5 trillion spending package. Unfortunately, for a seventh consecutive year, instead of providing new resources to better meet the needs of a changed world, it keeps Peace Corps' baseline funding flat at $410.5 million.  Diplomacy and even common sense take a back seat to war. Take Ukraine, for example. The longer the war goes on, the predictable result is only more destruction of real estate and more lives ruined both physically and emotionally.

President Biden wants to continue the war until there is a "winner", and he is sure that with the provision of US military assets, that winner will be Ukraine. More level headed experts think that the war will only be settled with a partition of Ukraine. To settle the Russo-Ukraine war diplomatically, a number of analysts have suggested that the apparent military stalemate be accepted in a ceasefire agreement in which Ukraine would be partitioned along the current battle lines. If we look at the history of eastern Europe, we see that partitions are not a novelty. The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 123 years. The partitions were conducted by the Habsburg monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, which divided up the Commonwealth lands among themselves progressively in the process of territorial seizures and annexations. Hmmm. Partitions are nothing new and the redrawing of national boundaries is nothing new? So in 2024 the powers that be insist that there will be no redrawing of national boundaries even if it means that a war of attrition will go on indefinitely. I think President Biden has been a great President when it comes to domestic policy, but less so when it comes to perpetuating the wars both in Ukraine and Israel. Without going into detail about Israel, he has not been forceful enough in restraining Israel from destroying Gaza.

America does not need to defund the Department of Defense (War). It just needs to refund a Department of Peace. The United States accounts for nearly 40% of global military spending, and devotes a larger share of its GDP to defense than most other countries. U.S. military spending was greater than the next ten biggest spenders in 2023. Fruitless wars will only continue if revenge is the operative factor. Peace building needs to continue in other parts of the world in spite of wars currently being waged. However, there is always money to fight wars, hardly ever is there money to wage peace. The military and/or the national guard could be used in a more productive way to provide security in those areas where peace builders need protection and even along the border. This would be a productive use of the military. Instead, most military personnel sit idle in 800 military bases around the world only to be deployed in hot wars. Why not use them to provide security in areas where militias are running amok? So I feel that, while military resources are not intelligently utilized, peace building resources hardly exist. The two could be complementary if used wisely.

Off the Top of My Head

Peace is Not Just the Absence of War

by John Lawrence

As an advocate for a Department of Peace, I do not advocate eliminating the Department of War (Defense Department) altogether. I think both are necessary but in a more balanced way. Most efforts toward peace in the world should take place outside the arena of war, that is as a preventative to war. This includes economic development in parts of the world that are liable to gang control. In fact I would advocate the use of the US military to go after the gangs that are controlling certain parts of the world, for example in Mexico where gangs are trafficking humans to the US border and controlling the inflow of drugs into the US. Haiti is another candidate for the use of the US military to eliminate the gangs while the Peace Corps is helping with economic development. In areas of the world that don't have mature institutions that can provide security for the populace, the US military could provide that while the Peace Corps is building infrastructure. The two should operate hand in hand. What China is doing with its Belt and Road Initiative is instructive. China is winning friends and influencing people by building infrastructure in many parts of the world. But much more needs to be done that China is not doing. Low level infrastructure such as clean water and sanitation needs to be built out. Approximately half the world does not have clean water or adequate sanitation facilities.  3.6 billion people are still living with poor-quality toilets that damage their health and pollute their environment. Inadequate sanitation systems spread human waste into rivers, lakes and soil, contaminating water resources.China is building high level infrastructure such as ports, railroads and trains. The US should complement their efforts.

There are around 750 U.S. military bases in at least 80 countries. Most of these bases are unnecessary and represent a waste of money. They are also sitting ducks for attacks by the likes of ISIS. They should be eliminated and the resources redirected elsewhere. With US sea borne and satellite military resources there is no need for land based resources. The efforts should instead be put into developing  infrastructure both in terms of economics and in terms of political institutions. What is important is helping to create stable institutions in parts of the world where instability results in chaos ^e.g. Haiti. Also if life was good in countries where there is a lack of stability and economic development, people would not be flocking to the US and European borders and asking for asylum. So military assets as well as Peace Corps assets could work hand in hand. Once war breaks out these efforts at creating peace in the first place are useless. A Department of Peace needs to have a diplomatic aspect as well as the Peace Corps division. Also person to person exchanges help to build understanding. In fact the largest efforts need to be made with those who are considered our worst enemies.

As an anti-war protester in the 1960s, I am still one today. Peace efforts or efforts at creating peace in the world today do have both an economic and a military component. In some countries peace workers would be slaughtered by gangs if they weren't adequately protected by the US military while they go about doing their jobs. So while I am anti war, I am not anti military. I just think that the balance of human and financial resources is completely out of whack. Less money and manpower (womanpower?) needs to be devoted to the military and more money and womanpower needs to be devoted to the Department of Peace which should include the Peace Corps (economic development), the diplomatic corps (institutional development)  and exchange corps ( person to person friendship). Less effort needs to be spent on proving to the rest of the world that the US way is the best way and more effort needs to be spent on creating stable societies with the economic and institutional resources so that people in all parts of the world can have comfortable and secure lives.

Bringing the rest of the world up to economic and institutional speed is of utmost importance today because, unless the whole world is operating cooperatively, it will be impossible to do much about our common enemy - global warming. In fact we have met the enemy and it is us. Economic development in the developed world has proceeded in such a way as to have created the global warming crisis. Now it must proceed in such a way as to eliminate it. Sustainable development and environmental responsibility should be the order of the day. Countries that have vast fossil fuel resources have no incentive to curtail the economic development of those resources if they are considered to be pariah nations by the rest of the world. Nations that are considered pariah nations have no incentive to convert from war time expenditures to peace time expenditures if they are not brought into the community of nations in a respectful way. Nations that are at war right now have no incentive to negotiate a peaceful resolution if their interests and concerns are not taken into account.

Off the Top of My Head

A Superpower in Decline

by John Lawrence

1) Rights taken away from women. The Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to outlaw nearly all abortions in Arizona will likely lead to an influx of patients fleeing the state to find care in California, abortion rights activists said.

2) The world's policeman can't police its own borders. The asylum law lets anyone setting foot on American soil ask for asylum. Court dates for asylum cases are, on average, more than four years out in the future, and even longer for final decisions. Over 3 million cases were pending before immigration courts near the end of 2023, with the backlog growing by 1 million since 2022.

3) The archaic electoral college has never been replaced by a direct popular vote for President. The result is that the winner of the popular vote has not been elected President. Gore won the popular vote in 2000, but Bush was elected President. The Florida Supreme Court sided with Gore, but Bush appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately voted 5 to 4 to reverse the Florida court’s decision and halt the recount. With Florida in hand, Bush won the Electoral College 271 to 266, while Gore ended up getting 500,000 more votes in the popular vote. As a result Gore's push for limits on global warming was lost as Bush promoted fossil fuels. Also Bush lied the US into a disastrous war in Iraq that resulted in Iraq becoming an ally of Iran.

4) 750 military bases in 80 countries are sitting ducks for an attack by Iran or its proxies. The largest U.S. base in the Middle East is located in Qatar, known as Al Udeid Air Base and built in 1996. Other countries where the U.S. has a presence include Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. Three American service members were killed and dozens more were injured in an unmanned aerial drone attack on a base known as Tower 22 in Jordan on January 28, 2024. Now that the US is expecting an attack by Iran, which sitting duck will be next?

5) An insurrectionist with several dozen indictments is allowed to run for President. Last year, Donald Trump became the first former president of the United States to be criminally indicted. Over the span of five months, he was indicted in four separate criminal cases and charged on a total of 91 felony counts.

6) Futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush lied us into war in Iraq. Osama bin Laden eventually killed in Obama administration by small Seal team, proving futility of invading Afghanistan

7) Wealth inequality. The United States exhibits wider disparities of wealth between rich and poor than any other major developed nation. There are now more billionaires than ever: 2,781 in all, 141 more than last year and 26 more than the record set in 2021. They’re richer than ever, worth $14.2 trillion in aggregate, up by $2 trillion from 2023 and $1.1 trillion above the previous record, also set in 2021. 

8) Housing unaffordability. San Diego families need an income of nearly $275,000 a year to afford a mortgage on a home, which is nearly double what it was before the pandemic, according to a new report from the real estate website Zillow.

9) Homelessness is an intractable problem. On any given night in the United States, more than half a million people experience homelessness.

10) The filibuster rule and the bicameral legislature. Nothing much can get done unless one party controls both Houses of Congress and the Presidency. President Biden looks stupid since he can't even keep his commitments to NATO because the Republican controlled House won't vote the funds Biden has promised. This means Ukraine will lose the war with Russia, and other countries cannot trust the US to keep its commitments.

11) The Second Amendment. No other country allows the uncontrolled proliferation of guns. More Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2021 than in any other year on record, according to the latest available statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That included record numbers of both gun murders and gun suicides.

Off the Top of My Head

The World's Policeman Cannot Even Police Its Own Borders

by John Lawrence

The U.S. has about 750 military bases across 80 countries in the world and had deployed 173,000 troops in 159 different countries as of July 2021. Yet it can't patrol or defend its own borders. This is the height of ridiculousness. While Congress persons debate some Rube Goldberg solution to border security, the Biden administration should do this if it wants to neutralize Trump's stand on border security: the Democrat policy should be "not one illegal border crossing should be tolerated. We stand for increasing legal immigration while decreasing illegal immigration to ZERO." The US spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined, and yet is willing to tolerate people entering the country illegally. What a joke! If Biden wants to defeat Trump, he should take this issue away from him by declaring that his goal is: NOT ONE ILLEGAL ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES.

This means that, instead of spending money on 750 military bases in 80 countries all over the world, the US needs to spend money instead on policing its own border including, but not limited to, physical barriers. In addition there must be electronic barriers, satellite surveillance, and other sophisticated means of surveillance. Why not use AI, the supposed cure all for everything that ails us. Why not put 10 or 100 of those military bases circling the world right on the US border? To be clear I am not advocating withdrawing from being involved in world affairs, but that involvement which is manifested in being the world's policeman has got to change. It has been of very little value if you add it all up. The US can effectively patrol the whole world anyway from the sky, from space and from the sea. It doesn't need land based military bases. The US should be involved in the world by expanding its Peace Corp, building infrastructure like China is with its Belt and Road Initiative and mitigating climate change in vulnerable countries. In other words the US should be a force for good in the world not just a force for preserving US interests or the status quo.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed on January 28, 2024 in Jordan, while more than 40 other service members were injured following an uncrewed aerial system attack at a military base near the Syrian border. Then of course the US has to retaliate to avenge the deaths of those soldiers. Soldiers on many of these bases are sitting ducks and are provocative to those seeking to damage US interests.Yet the role of the US as the world's policeman is not even debated by politicians and probably won't be as the election season heats up. Instead the border debate is a big deal as it should be. Biden needs to assert that his goal is that not one person should enter the US illegally, but that legal immigration should be expanded. He should outTrump Trump on border security if he wants to be elected, and, while he is at it, he should demand that at least 25% of the bloated military budget which amounts to about a trillion dollars a year be redirected to border security. There is no reason why the US should not have the most sophisticated border security system in the world.

Off the Top of My Head

What I Didn't Hear in Biden's State of the Union Speech

by John Lawrence

President Biden went on and on about taxing the rich, but he didn't make the concomitant declaration of "middle class tax cuts." Those are the words I didn't hear - TAX CUTS. These are the code words that Joe Six Pack wants to hear. Joe Six Pack could care less about "child tax credits." While those are probably the most responsible words and the most responsible way to handle tax benefits for the middle class and the poor, those are not the words that the majority of uncommitted voters want to hear. Those are the code words. Republicans always promise tax cuts period. Of course most of those tax cuts always go to the rich as the Trump tax cuts did, but the Joe Six Packs of the world do not make that distinction. All they care about is that they will get their tax cut no matter how paltry. That's why Biden should promise not only taxing the rich but tax cuts for the middle class. Trump will promise tax cuts for everyone. Biden should make the easily understood distinction of tax increases for the rich - as Biden has repeatedly said, those making more than $400,000 a year - and tax cuts for everyone else. Whether or not this makes economic sense or the best use of the saved money, this is politically the best way to neutralize the only economic policy Republicans have.

While taxing the rich makes good red meat rhetoric, it doesn't register on or resound with the naive, unsophisticated average voter's mind the way tax cuts does, and we must assume that the majority of voters are naive and unsophisticated based upon the fact that polls indicate that the majority of voters favor voting for Trump at this point. Any American citizen who has any understanding of what President Biden has accomplished would almost certainly think that he deserves a second term. Even if he doesn't finish it, his administration will give a push for the continuation of his policies which are far more in the interests of the average American than are Trump's. If it's up to Kamala Harris to finish Biden's second term, Biden's policies will almost certainly prevail through out that term.

The policy of tax cuts for the middle class will go a long way towards guaranteeing that Biden will be elected for a second term. Certainly some of the money gained from taxing the rich could be used for tax cuts for the not so rich in addition to child tax credits. The other policy that President Biden should espouse has to do with the border. It's not enough to blame Republicans for the fact that recent bipartisan legislation that would supposedly "fix" the border has not been passed. Biden should just come out and say he wants the border to be fixed in such a way that no one will be able to come across the border illegally. Certainly this is possible for a country that has 800 military bases around the world and a trillion dollar a year military budget. It's almost ridiculous that the world's most powerful nation that purports to be the policeman of the world cannot even police its own border. Taking a much stronger position on the border - in particular the illegal crossing of the border - will take that issue away from Trump who will promise that under his administration not one illegal entry will be permitted. Let's get beyond the trivial issue of whether those crossing the border are "illegals" or "undocumenteds." It's not about descriptive words; it's about policies. Use the words that most Americans use, not those that are politically correct. Take a page out of Trump's book. Biden's words should be much stronger on this issue. This is what the American people want, and Biden should take this issue away from Trump.

In summary, Biden needs to be much stronger on these two issues - tax cuts and illegal border crossings - taking these issues which are the only issues Trump has, away from him. Whether or not Biden or Trump can get anything passed in Congress on these two issues depends on whether or not either President ends up with a Congress, both Houses of which are composed of their own respective parties. No President has complete control of what gets passed by Congress. The average voter, however, thinks these issues are entirely in the President's hands. No one know this better than Joe Biden. However, when running for President, a person can promise anything and can fight for it if elected. Biden needs a second term if for no other reason than to deny Trump a second term which might presage the end of democracy in America.

Off the Top of My Head

A Spokesman from the Department of Peace Was Interviewed by CNN

by John Lawrence

Hostilities in the world have died down significantly after the US established a Department of Peace. Now in addition to interviewing a military expert every time a war or a potential war threatens to break out, a spokesman from the Department of Peace, a so called peace expert is also interviewed. Recently peace expert Roshina Macerdinot responded to questions from CNN anchor Emily Sohodinat. Question: "How do you interact with the parties involved in a potential conflagration that threatens peace in the world?" Answer: "Well, first we don't take sides. We try to understand the issues from the points of view of both sides. We never denigrate either side or refer to one side as "the enemy." We try to work out a compromise that is acceptable to both sides, and we work hard with both parties to implement it given our substantial resources to do so. Fortunately, the Department of Peace now has a budget commensurate with the Defense Department which signifies our commitment to peace and not just to defending ourselves. We are proactive knowing that, if we can prevent war, we can save the destruction of life and real estate. In that sense we are pro life. One of our principles is to get the parties to understand that it is not productive to seek revenge no matter how outlandish was the behavior of one of the parties that instigated the conflict. Revenge just leads to a cycle of violence, sometimes never ending."

Sohodinat: "So you advocate just eliminating the Department of Defense? In other words you don't see the need to defend ourselves in a hostile world?

Macerdinot: "On the contrary. If all of our efforts at creating peace and resolving hostilities break down, our Defense Department stands ready to defend ourselves. It's just that we put an enormous amount of effort into creating peace and resolving hostility in the first place so that the resources of our Defense Department never have to be brought to bear hopefully. One of the ways we do that is to show respect to both parties. But if all else fails, we stand ready, with the largest military in the world to defend ourselves. However, our military budget is commensurate with out peace budget. We put as much effort into implementing peace as we do in creating and sustaining the weapons of war. A lot of our efforts are put into alleviating poverty in the world and mitigating the effects of climate change which affects the poorer countries more than it does the advanced countries although the advanced countries such as the US have been more responsible for putting most of the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."

Sohodinat: "Well that's all well and good, but it seems a little bit pollyanish. Wars have taken place since the dawn of recorded history and probably long before that. So now we have a Department of Peace, a Division of which is the Peacebuilders such as the Peace Corps and another Division is the Peacemakers which is an augmented and upgraded diplomatic corps. Still even with all these initiatives, do you think you can change what has been a universal and ubiquitous human behavior such as war?"

Macerdinot: "Certainly it's worth a humongous effort. We know we are succeeding when the Peace Corps, which is one of our Divisions, is being given the same ritualistic recognition and honors as is the military. In fact we have created a Peace Industrial Complex which rivals the Military Industrial Complex. We are partnering with China to build infrastructure all around the world. We know we are succeeding when CNN interviews representatives who are both Military Generals and Peace Generals. We know we are succeeding when the perks and incentives for entering the Peace Corps are substantially equal to the perks and incentives for entering the military. We know we are succeeding when the Peace Academies rival West Point and Annapolis. We are turning out graduates committed to the arts of peace as fast or faster than we are turning out graduates proficient in the arts of war."

Sohodinat: "So what is peace? Is it just cessation of hostility or is it more than that?"

Macerdinot: "It's actually much more than that. It's when every person in the world has a shot at what used to be called "the American Dream." It's when no child goes hungry anywhere in the world. It's when there is clean water, nutritious food, adequate health care, a good sewage system and all the elements of a civilized life are available to everyone wherever they might live. It goes without saying that a stable and clean environment with climate change under control must be brought to fruition. Everyone, no matter where they might live, should have the tools available to live a healthy life and live up to their potential."

Sohodinat: Well, we are running out of time for this interview, but as I understand it, the Department of Peace is now on a par with the Department of Defense in terms of its funding level and the proficiency of its personnel. You all are committed to understanding and interoperating with other countries offering them friendship and respect regardless of their internal problems and political systems different from our own rather than criticising or bullying them."

Macerdinot: "That's correct. Finally, the world has learned from the Ukraine and Israeli-Hamas wars that the human suffering and destruction of real estate that war entails is not worth it, and that maximum efforts need to be made to create and maintain peace and understanding before hostilities reach the breaking point. It's important that at least as much funding and effort goes into the creation of peace as goes into the preparation for war. Jesus said "Turn the other cheek" if someone strikes you. We advocate that as well, but not in a purely defenseless manner. It's never too late to resolve the situation peacefully even if you're struck, but if worse comes to worse we still have the ability to defend ourselves. Revenge never works because it leads to a cycle of violence"

Sohodinat: Thank you, Roshina.

Macerdinot: Thank you. Nice to be with you.

Off the Top of My Head

While China Builds Infrastructure in the Americas, the US is Disconcerted

by John Lawrence

How dare they, the Chinese that is, build infrastructure in South America! Why, that's our back yard, our sphere of influence. China is building an elaborate $3 billion port in Chancay, Peru. It wasn't that long ago that the US was complicit in a plot to overthrow the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende who was a socialist. Be that as it may, many countries are turning to China preferring the building of infrastructure to the building of military bases of which the US has constructed about 750 in some 80 countries throughout the world. China is even bailing out Argentina financially. According to Reuters, Argentina's central bank said on [October 18, 2023] that China has cleared a currency swap line totaling a freely accessible $6.5 billion, part of a broader deal the South American country has been using to help it defend the embattled local peso. Many countries throughout the world are effectively saying to the US, "What have you done for us lately?" So the question is how can the US compete with a country who is building economic assets in other countries while all the US has to offer is the construction of military bases? Is it the world's policeman versus the world's builder, and which role will be more appealing?

"In the district of Chancay, Huaral province, approximately 80 kilometers from the Peruvian capital, Lima, a major private investment project is being developed that promises to change the logistics landscape in Latin America. It is the New Multipurpose Port Terminal of Chancay, a joint project by the Chinese company COSCO Shipping Ports Limited (CSPL), which owns a 60 percent share, and the Peruvian company Volcan Compañía Minera, with the remaining 40 percent.

"With an investment budget of over $3 billion, this ambitious project is in the development stage, over 40 percent complete. Construction began in 2011, and the terminal is expected to start operations in the last quarter of 2024."

Back to Argentina: "China has increased the amount and instead of $5 billion we are getting $6.5 billion," Argentine President Alberto Fernandez told Radio 10 from the Asian country, where he is for an official trip.

"Every time we went through difficult times, Xi Jinping's government gave us its support," Fernandez added. "This is an important step so that production (in Argentina) does not stop."

This is the second swap line with China activated during Fernandez's presidency. According to an official bank source, the total amount of the swap line stood at 47 billion yuans .

The move comes as Argentines head to the ballots on Sunday for a presidential election. Libertarian Javier Milei, who has vowed to dollarize the economy and shut down the central bank, is seen as the front-runner.

Well, Javier Milei won the election. It's unclear whether Milei's tough talk regarding China will mean that he will not let China bail them out! " According to Reuters, "Argentinian president-elect Javier Milei has criticised China and Brazil, which are among his country's most important trading partners. A few months ago, Milei even likened the Chinese government to an "assassin" and said the people of China were "not free". Milei's tough talk on China stands in sharp contrast with a vow of cooperation by the outgoing president, Alberto Fernandez, who visited Beijing last month and hailed China as a "true friend" of Argentina."

China is South America’s top trading partner and a major source of both foreign direct investment and lending in energy and infrastructure, including through its massive Belt and Road Initiative. Can the US compete? China has surpassed the United States as South America’s largest trading partner. Beijing has also expanded its diplomatic, cultural, and military presence throughout the region. Most recently, it leveraged its support amid the COVID-19 pandemic, supplying the region with medical equipment, loans, and hundreds of millions of vaccine doses. U.S. President Joe Biden, who sees China as a “strategic competitor” in the region, has pledged greater economic cooperation with Latin America, but some analysts argue the United States should be doing more.

But will the US do more? It can't even get modest amounts of aid for Israel and Ukraine passed by the Republican controlled House of Representatives. The Trumpist American Firsters don't want to spend money on other countries. However, they don't mind the trillion dollar military-industrial complex budgets. They are baked in the cake especially because all the financial and economic incentives align for the various interests. Lobbyists will make sure there is no reduction in that budget.

But China’s push comes as American wars overseas, unstable foreign policy election-to-election, and deep political polarization have intensified questions about US global leadership. Meanwhile, pressing issues like climate change, Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s assault on Gaza have sharpened discussion over whether the West is taking the right approach to respond.

All this coincides with longstanding calls from countries across the developing world for an international system where they have more say.

Many of those countries have substantially enhanced their economic ties with Beijing during Xi’s rule, including under a decade of his up to $1 trillion global infrastructure building drive, which leaders gathered to celebrate last month in the Chinese capital.

Economics tends to transcend politics in international relations. Up to now the economic success of the west and in particular the United States has exerted a pull on countries around the world. However, it can't be ignored that currently China is outpacing the US with its investments in other countries particularly with its Belt and Road initiative. Its alternative vision for economic development is very appealing. Its live and let live policy regarding lecturing other nations on their internal political systems also is seen by many as a refreshing alternative to the US' insistence that other countries should structure their political systems similarly to the US'.

Off the Top of My Head

Toxic Masculinity

by John Lawrence

Traditional masculine traits are dominance, aggression, emotional repression, violence. These traits have been historically mostly expressed in terms of the military. In the First World War, many of the participants were more than eager to cover themselves in glory by proving their manhood in combat. Instead many of them ended up dying miserable deaths in muddy trenches or hung from barbed wire. The persistence of war in the human experience can be laid squarely at the feet of men and their interpretation of what is manly in my opinion. In fact peace or even world peace is seen as a feminine idea. Most traditional men would not consider peace in the form of world wide understanding and compassion even possible because it would be based on feminine values. The only peace even possible in the traditional male mind is "peace through strength." Traditional male values prevent even an acknowledgment of what peace would really consist of because it would consist of emotional values that are traditionally feminine. The predominant attitude is that joining the military will "make a man out of you." A real man is only supposed to express a limited and actually stunted set of emotions and certainly is not supposed to express any vulnerabilities. Physical force or the threat of force is acceptable in a man's world. Understanding, cooperation and diplomacy are not.

Traditional male activities are beer drinking (a man can hold his liquor), fast car racing or pickup driving (showing dominance by means of a powerful machine), participation in or spectating at competitive sports, participation in or admiration of the military. Dominance, competitiveness, the use or threat of violence, pugnaciousness, toughness, looking down on men who don't conform to this stereotype - these are all traditional male traits. None of these traits are physically or mentally healthy. For instance, holding your liquor can lead to cirrhosis of the liver. Emotional repressiveness can lead to an inability to relate to women even though some women are attracted to the traditional male type. In fact it can be argued that Trump's popularity is a result of his expression of traditional male values. In an article in FiveThirtyEight entitled With His Version of Masculinity, we find this:

But the quest to seem masculine is particularly complicated in this year’s GOP primary because Trump has been so successful at projecting a macho image that Republican voters have responded to. This masculine identity isn’t about demonstrations of physical prowess — nobody talks about how far Trump can run or whether he can bench-press a certain weight. His version of manliness is fueled by other kinds of behavior — including his belittling of other candidates, aggression toward women, “tell it like it is and don’t apologize” affect — that are associated with traditional ideas about how a man should behave. The other GOP candidates largely aren’t trying to imitate those aspects of Trump’s macho identity — but experts told us that without Trump’s signature belligerence, his version of masculinity might not resonate as much. And that means his rivals may have an especially difficult time convincing the GOP primary electorate that they’re as strong a leader as Trump.

“In this view of masculinity, men are supposed to be dominant, powerful, aggressive,” said Theresa Vescio, a professor of psychology at Penn State University who studies masculinity. “And the more that people — both men and women — think that good men should be high in power, status, dominance and toughness, the more they say that’s what a man is, the more they support Trump.”

It might seem strange to some that a man who is not particularly physically fit or athletic, never served in the military and eats junk food is an exemplary manifestation of manhood. It seems ridiculous that Trump's penchant for belittling his opponents is seen by some as "manly." That his getting away with stiffing contractors, creditors and not paying taxes are manly traits. But somehow Trump's unwillingness to apologize about anything or ever admit he did anything wrong is seen by some Republicans as the counter to "liberal values" like having compassion and respect for people who disagree with you. Instead Trump calls his detractors and competitors names, assails them as weaklings and asserts his macho masculinity while he hides behind a bevy of lawyers and uses his money to shield himself from any negative consequences. His seeming ability to get away with stuff is seen as quintessentially masculine. The article continues:

These are the voters who are especially likely to find Trump’s version of masculinity appealing. Trump is particularly effective at drawing on his supporters’ fears about threats to traditional masculinity, while simultaneously building himself up as a paragon of that version of manliness, according to the experts we spoke with. His image as president was aggressively militant, threatening other world leaders and avoiding compromise. And his refusal to apologize for a well-documented track record of sexual harassment and assault makes him seem authentically masculine and powerful to some voters, according to Dan Cassino, a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University who studies male gender identity. “It’s as much about tearing others down as it is about building others up,” Cassino says. “The insults, the misogynistic behavior — these are very negative masculine traits but he’s willing to assert them in a way others aren’t, and that means nobody thinks he’s lying about who he is.”

By projecting an image of himself as a powerful, strong, dominant man who’s willing to shrug away modern conventions around how men and women should behave, Trump has reached people who support traditional gender hierarchies. “There are a lot of conservatives — men but some women too — in this country who increasingly feel like they’re on the outside looking in, while liberals run things,” said Paul Elliott Johnson, a professor of communication at the University of Pittsburgh who studies gender and politics. “Trump invites those people to feel victimized and then says, ‘I will fix the problem.’”

As detrimental to society in general as these toxic traditional masculine values are, they will even probably contribute to the annihilation of the human race altogether either through war or the ignoring of climate change. There is not even any talk of world peace any more. It's not even on anyone's radar. The militarization of the American psyche is complete. The Peace Corps is never even mentioned in the media. Most people would not even know that it exists. The Peace Corps represents the feminine values of help and caring for those less fortunate. The traditional male simply looks upon them as losers in the game of life, probably because of their inferiority to white males. As traditional white males, they believe that they have simply outcompeted those who come from as Trump has termed them, "shithole countries."  Let people with feminine values agonize over them and their claims that rich white men should help them out with their situations due to climate change. Macho men would scoff at their suggestions that the rich nations should bear the cost of ameliorating the effects of global warming or as U.N. chief António Guterres declared, "global boiling." As Trump and other macho men might say, "suck it up." There will probably never be world peace until women run the world. And where would that leave the traditional man and his toxic values? Healthy manhood, in my humble opinion, should be nothing more nor less than loving, supporting and cherishing the girls and women in our lives whether they be girlfriends, lovers, wives, daughters, mothers or grandmothers. All the rest of the positive values a man can manifest are simply personhood values which can be exemplified by both sexes.

Sanders Says He Opposes $886 Billion in Military Spending Amid Healthcare and Climate Crises

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) appears at a hearing on March 29, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

by Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, July 24, 2023

"As a nation, the time is long overdue for fundamental changes to our national priorities. Cutting military spending is a good first step."

Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Monday that he intends to vote against legislation authorizing $886 billion in military spending for the coming fiscal year, arguing the Pentagon budget should be cut in favor of investments in healthcare, education, housing, climate action, and other priorities.

Sanders, the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, has introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would cut the U.S. military budget by 10%. Earlier this month, House Republicans refused to allow a vote on a similar amendment put forth by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.).

In his op-ed Monday, Sanders pointed to the "enormous crises" facing the U.S., including "unprecedented and rising temperatures" caused by fossil fuel use, a "broken" healthcare system in which insurance and pharmaceutical giants profit while tens of millions go uninsured, a "teetering" education system, and a dire shortage of affordable housing.

"And then there is defense spending. Well, that's a whole other story," Sanders wrote. "The proposed military budget that the Senate is now debating would increase defense spending by $28 billion to over $886 billion, an all-time record. The total is over $900 billion if you include nuclear weapons spending through the Department of Energy."

Sanders argued that in addition to being unnecessary, an even larger military budget would be actively harmful given that the Pentagon "cannot keep track of the dollars it already has, leading to massive waste, fraud, and abuse in the sprawling military-industrial complex."

"Much of this additional military spending will go to line the pockets of hugely profitable defense contractors—it is corporate welfare by a different name," the senator noted. "Almost half of the Pentagon budget goes to private contractors, some of whom are exploiting their monopoly positions and the trust granted them by the United States to line their pockets."

Sanders' opposition to the NDAA comes after House Republicans passed their version of the legislation after packing it with right-wing amendments and rejecting proposed changes aimed at reining in out-of-control Pentagon spending and cracking down on fraud.

The Senate is expected to continue working on its own NDAA this week.

As Congress prepares to authorize around $900 billion for the U.S. military, House Republicans are pushing for steep cuts across the federal government, targeting everything from education programs to climate spending to clean water funds. The House GOP proposals have heightened concerns that the government will shutdown on September 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Meanwhile, Sanders said in a statement Monday that he has had "very productive conversations" with members of the Senate HELP Committee on bipartisan legislation to address the nation's worsening primary care crisis. Sanders said he hopes to have a bill ready by the first week of September.

Last week, Sanders introduced legislation that would invest $20 billion over a five-year period into expanding community health centers. The senator said the measure would "provide the resources necessary to recruit, train, and retain tens of thousands of primary care doctors, mental health providers, nurses, dentists, and home healthcare workers."

The nation is currently hurtling toward a primary care cliff. If Congress doesn't act by September 30, community health centers across the U.S. will face a devastating 70% funding cut.

The National Association of Community Health Centers estimates that nearly 7 million people will lose access to healthcare if Congress doesn't extend the critical funding.

"As every American knows, our country faces a major crisis in primary care and a massive shortage of doctors, nurses, mental health professionals, and dentists," Sanders said last week. "Tens of millions of Americans live in communities where they cannot find a doctor while others have to wait months to be seen."

"At the end of the day," he added, "this crisis not only increases human suffering and unnecessary deaths, but wastes tens of billions a year as Americans flock to expensive ER rooms or hospitals because they could not access the primary care they need."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

 

 

Jake Johnson

Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

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Off the Top of My Head

Donald Trump: The Dominator

by John Lawrence

Just as George W Bush characterized himself as 'the Decider', Donald Bush might well characterize himself as The Dominator. He dominates the other candidates or would be candidates in the Republican party. They are all afraid to criticize him. In the 2016 debates Jeb Bush, a decent guy, was destroyed by him.

“Jeb is having some kind of a breakdown,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. ​”He’s an embarrassment to his family. He has to bring his mother out and walk his mother around at 90 years old. I think it’s a very sad situation that’s taking place.”

“Frankly, he’s a stiff,” Trump said. “He’s not a guy who can be president. He doesn’t have what it takes to be president.”

Ron DeSantis is walking on egg shells and is hesitant even to declare his candidacy. The Republican base, many of whom have a military background, want a Dominator as their candidate. That is indeed the military tradition. Recruits are dominated by their drill sergeant who gets in their face and barks orders. Ironic then that, although Trump never served in the military, he exemplifies the military mind set. Most active duty military as well as most people in the military industrial complex vote Republican because Republicans. especially Donald Trump, exemplify their values. These are the same values that are part and parcel of the animal world where the dominant male gets to mate with all the females. So Trump characterizes himself as so dominant that he can act like a dominant male and grab 'em by the pussy or shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Just as other species do, a certain percentage of the Republican base respects and admires a Dominator like Trump. When Trump says this kind of domination has been going on for "millions of years, unfortunately or fortunately," he is referring to the fact that this kind of behavior is the norm in the animal world, and we humans are, after all, not really all that different.

The Denominators of history are of course Fascists. In 1922 Benito Mussolini led a coalition of fascist leaders to Rome and forced the king to yield the government. Mussolini was appointed prime minister. By 1925 he had dismantled Italy's democratic government and, acting as a dictator, declared himself Il Duce ("The Leader"). Hitler dominated the tired old men of the Weimar Republic who were cajoled into appointing him Chancellor. Fascism is a top down political structure similar to the military's top down rank structure. No wonder then that Republican voters, many of whom have a military background, are quite comfortable with a top down structure of political dominance with Trump at the apex. No wonder that Trump is leading all the polls even though he is under several criminal indictments. Friedrich Nietsche was the philosopher of fascism, one who argued for a repudiation of Christian values to be replaced with the values of domination. "A good war hallowith every cause". Just as the dominant male in the animal kingdom passes on his superior DNA to his harem of females, Fascist values insist that dominant men are the ones to eugenically pass on superioor genes to their offspring, and they should be valued and looked up to. All other men should be submissive to them. There is no separation form the animal world. Homo Sapiens represents a continuation of the values that assert that the best and strongest genes of the Dominators should take priority.

Trump's followers in fact give him a pass on Christian values for the very reason that, as Nietzsche asserts, Christian values are the values of the weak. The values of the strong and vital are the values of top down authoritarianism for which the strong man or the dominator should rule the day. As Trump said, this has been going on for millions of years, fortunately or unfortunately. This gives a pass to misogyny as Nietzsche also stated, "The family is the smallest unit of domination." The father is dominant; the wife and children should be submissive. The ethos of dominance and submission should prevail. Christian morals, the morals of tolerance and equality, according to Nietsche, are the exact opposite of the morals that lead to the betterment of the species. Let the cream rise to the top, and, unfortunately or fortunately, the weak must inevitably fall by the wayside. "Devil take the hindermost" is an imprecation that everyone should look after their own interests, leaving those who cannot cope to whatever fate befalls them. The leader of the most dominant nation on the face of the earth should be the most dominant male, ^i.e. Donald Trump, the Dominator. Utter selfishness should prevail. Cooperation is a feminine value. Love is a feminine value. Getting along is a feminine value. Diplomacy is a feminine value. Male dominance is what the US populace wants in a leader.

Off the Top of My Head

The Glory of War

by John Lawrence

Throughout history men have gone to war to cover themselves in glory and prove their masculinity. In World War I, many young British men were gung ho for going to war. They intended to cover themselves in glory and be home before Christmas. Instead many of them died face down in muddy trenches or were impaled on barbed wire. According to historycrunch.com: "...one of the main reasons for the excitement of the war was that many viewed it as an adventure. They read stories about soldiers bravely marching into battle and dying heroically on the battlefields for their countries. For many of these young soldiers, they viewed the Great War as their opportunity to play a role in the ‘glory of war’ and follow in the path of earlier soldiers in earlier European conflicts. To them, war seemed adventurous and a show of bravery that many claimed they ‘did not want to miss’." It was forever so but in general only the victors were able to cover themselves in glory.

War, I would contend, is primarily a masculine pursuit. It represents an attempt by men to prove their manhood. Even some American Indian tribes cultivated a warrior tradition. Their women would have nothing to do with men until they had proved themselves in war. According to Wikipedia: "What evolved among the Plains Native Americans from the 17th to the late 19th century was warfare as both a means of livelihood and a sport. Young men gained both prestige and plunder by fighting as warriors, and this individualistic style of warfare ensured that success in individual combat and capturing trophies of war were highly esteemed." Not for nothing were they called Braves. Martina Sprague in her book The Glory of War: The Way to Historical Immortality writes:  "What motivates men to go to war? The answer is the desire for recognition and the opportunity to gain eternal fame. War is perhaps the most common way in which a man can become a hero. We tend to romanticize war. War is portrayed as a daring adventure for a sacred cause, where the soldier will ultimately reach the highest level of self-actualization. As demonstrated by the great military figures in history, the promise of honor and heroism can help a man conquer the world."

Covering oneself in glory, proving one's masculinity, becoming a hero, these are ultimately traps which cause the perpetuation of war. Some men become addicted to war, the excitement of war. If one war ends, they will seek out the next one. Life is never so dull as life without war. It is the ultimate football game because the stakes - life or death - are so high. Witness the volunteers from other countries who are putting their lives on the line in Ukraine. The problem is that the pursuit of peace is never as exciting as the pursuit of war. Until peacemaking becomes as noble and glorious a pursuit as war, there is no hope for the human race to live peaceably and cooperatively side by side with each other. Until they give out as many medals and honors for peace heroes as they do for war heroes, the human race will go down fighting and ultimately extinguish each other.

I'm afraid that the war in Ukraine is only the latest example of people preoccupied with the excitement of war. Sure it was a clumsy and ignoble thing for Russia to do to so overtly invade Ukraine. They should have taken a page out of the CIA's book and been more subtle and covert about it. For example, the CIA undermined the democratically elected regime of Salvador Allende in Chile because he was a socialist and a Marxist ushering in the regime of Augusto Pinochet and his reign of terror. "According to the Chilean government, the number of executions and forced disappearances was at least 3,095 [under Pinochet]. Operation Condor, a U.S.-supported terror operation focusing on South America, was founded at the behest of the Pinochet regime in late November 1975, his 60th birthday." I'm afraid that Zelensky is following the same playbook of promoting the war based on 'glory for Ukraine' and his David and Goliath symbolism. His insatiable lust for American artillery shells and other advanced weaponry is duly granted by President Biden and the European allies with the goal of "winning the war." No one except the Chinese seem the least interested in creating a peaceful solution to the war. Instead the war will only be escalated when Ukraine gets F-15 fighter jets. Then they will be able to hit Russian targets in Russia escalating the war even further. Until now tragically it's only Ukrainian civilian lives and property that are being destroyed.

It seems like revenge, hatred for Russia and glory for Ukraine are the ultimate factors at work here not a search for compromise which both sides can live with. Does Russia have any legitimate national security interests in Ukraine's not becoming a member of NATO? Did the US have any legitimate national security interests in Chile nor becoming a socialist and Marxist state? There are always many reasons for war, but few for peace. Meanwhile, a lack of cooperation among the world's nations is hastening the day in which global warming will put an end to human civilization unless we can wake up and see that peace and cooperation are more glorious than war.

Off the Top of My Head

What Mass Shootings and Global Warming Have in Common

by John Lawrence

Even if sales of AK-15s were banned today, there would still be enough AK-15s on the streets for mass shootings to continue for decades. Even if no more carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere starting today, there is enough already there to provide weather disasters for decades. Meanwhile, gun sales and carbon dioxide generation are continuing apace. There will be no diminution of gun violence nor will there be any diminution of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. If there were zero gun sales tomorrow and zero carbon dioxide generation tomorrow, there might be a chance for recovery from both travesties, but, no, those travesties will continue along predictable lines. There will be even more mass shootings and assorted other gun violence while gas powered vehicles and power generating plants will continue to pump out carbon dioxide using the atmosphere as a waste dump. Plastic will continue to pollute the oceans. Chemical fertilizer and pest control chemicals will continue to pollute waterways. People pursuing the American Dream will continue consuming products to the point of commercial gluttony and beyond.

The production of steel and cement produces large amounts of carbon dioxide that goes directly into the atmosphere. It's a matter of sheer chemistry. Steelmaking is one of the most carbon emission intensive industries in the world. As of 2020, steelmaking is estimated to be responsible for 7 to 9 per cent of all direct fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions. In order to mitigate global warming, the industry will need to find reductions in emissions. In 2020, McKinsey identified a number of technologies for decarbonization including hydrogen usage, carbon capture and reuse, and maximizing use of electric arc furnaces powered by clean energy. A Swedish company has developed a way of making carbon dioxide emission free steel. The Guardian reported:

The world’s first customer delivery of “green steel” produced without using coal is taking place in Sweden, according to its manufacturer.

The Swedish venture Hybrit said it was delivering the steel to truck-maker Volvo AB as a trial run before full commercial production in 2026. Volvo has said it will start production in 2021 of prototype vehicles and components from the green steel.

Steel production using coal accounts for around 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Hybrit started test operations at its pilot plant for green steel in Lulea, northern Sweden, a year ago. It aims to replace coking coal, traditionally needed for ore-based steel making, with renewable electricity and hydrogen. Hydrogen is a key part of the EU’s plan to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

So the chemistry is being changed so that water H₂O is produced as a by product instead of carbon dioxide, CO².

CNBC reported:

Cars and electricity get a lot of attention in conversations about decarbonization, and they should. But building materials like cement and steel also need to be scrutinized.

The production of cement is responsible for about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions and 5.5% of total global greenhouse gas emissions.

On [April 28, 2022], Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Bill Gates’ climate finance firm, and DCVC, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, announced they led a $55 million funding round in Brimstone Energy, a start-up aiming to commercialize carbon-negative cement.

“We need to recognize that cement is a massive problem for climate and that nobody has figured out how to address it at scale without dramatically increasing costs or moving away from the regulated materials that the construction industry knows and loves,” Breakthrough partner Carmichael Roberts told CNBC.

So it is not enough to get gas guzzlers off the roads. Gas prices going up is a good thing. It will guarantee that more new car purchases will be hybrid or all electric vehicles. But the world is not changing over to non-polluting forms of energy quick enough. Major climate related disasters are already occurring and will continue to occur. Since we are still adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, these disasters will only get worse as time goes by. Meanwhile, all kinds of other ecological disasters are taking place including the insane and greedy pursuit of insatiable profits in the gun production industry and the buildup of military hardware. In 2019, a report released by Durham and Lancaster University found the US military to be “one of the largest climate polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more CO2e (carbon-dioxide equivalent) than most countries”. In addition to climate pollution the military is responsible for the development of assault rifles like the AR-15 which was first developed for combat operations. Very conveniently, it is now a profit center for US gun corporations, and in addition to killing combatants on the field of battle, it has brought war time slaughter into children's schools, people's super markets and night clubs. We've come full circle. And in addition the production of steel weapons results in increased carbon emissions.

Off the Top of My Head

The Pope Suggests NATO Partially to Blame for Russian Invasion

by John Lawrence

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, Pope Francis said that “NATO barking at Russia” caused the Kremlin “to react badly and unleash the conflict” with Ukraine. The Pope has requested a meeting with Russian President Putin but so far to no avail. What is clear is that the West did not take Russia's objections to NATO expansion seriously and acted unilaterally to march NATO up to Russia's door. Besides that the US abrogated or just dismissed arms control treaties with Russia without further consultation. President George W Bush and Putin both came to power in the year 2000. Bush announced America’s intent to withdraw from the 1974 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that had been central to the U.S.-USSR strategic relationship. Abrogating the treaty did not go down well in Moscow, especially given the the huge military technological lead the Kremlin believed Washington had after the 1991 Gulf War. Then in 2019 during the Trump administration the US abruptly abrogated the INF treaty which was the centerpiece of the post Cold War negotiations between Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. There was no attempt by the US or NATO to renegotiate these treaties which was a slap in the face to Russia.

The Hill reported:

When America intervened in Afghanistan in late 2001, Putin was irritated because the Bush team rejected Russian advice based on its decade-long failure in that country. In 2003, Putin strongly counseled Bush against invading Iraq, as the Russian leader feared the region would be thrown into turmoil. And the continuing expansion of NATO was neuralgic for Russia. A series of U.S. administrations downplayed or ignored how serious this issue was for Russia.

At the Munich Security Conference, Putin unleashed an angry broadside against the U.S. as a “uni-power” and against NATO expansion. Participants were shocked by the intensity of Putin’s attacks but otherwise largely dismissed them. That was a mistake. It was clear that Putin believed he was being disrespected and marginalized by the U.S. and NATO, adding to his growing resentment about the patronizing treatment he believed Russia was receiving.

NATO expanded during the 1990s largely due to the imprecations of President Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright even though President Gorbachev had been promised that NATO would not expand "one inch eastward" as part of a deal to reunify Germany after the Cold War.

Politifact reported:

After explaining why the U.S. wanted the reunited Germany to stay within the framework of NATO, Baker told Gorbachev that "if we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO 1 inch to the east."

"I put the following question to (Gorbachev)," Baker recounted in a letter to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. "‘Would you prefer to see a united Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces, or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift 1 inch eastward from its present position?’"

Those comments, along with similar remarks from Baker’s European allies, like Genscher and Kohl, were part of what researchers at George Washington University’s National Security Archive called a "cascade of assurances" offered to the Soviets.

But Baker and other officials involved in the events have denied that the conversation ever turned on expanding NATO to other countries. 

So basically Gorbachev was sold a bill of goods that, if he consented to the reunification of Germany and with Germany as a NATO member, that NATO would not expand eastwards. However, "given assurances" is not the same as "legal and binding". Therefore, in July 1997, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (where Albright was born) were formally invited to join NATO.

The Conversation reported

"In hindsight, Albright’s curt dismissal of Russia’s security concerns might seem to have been ill-judged. This is especially true in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which some analysts blame in part upon the speed and perceived recklessness of NATO expansion during the 1990s."

One of Albright’s most consequential acts – both as Ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997 and as Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton – was to support NATO expansion.

NATO had been a cornerstone of the Cold War security order in Europe, binding the United States to the defense of Western Europe. Albright’s approach was to cast NATO not just as a military alliance but as a pillar of international stability and an engine of democratic progress. She saw the alliance as a conduit through which the United States could impart peace, order and good governance upon a fragile European continent.

At the time, critics cautioned that NATO enlargement would antagonize a post-Soviet Russia and could end up worsening the European security order.

Albright’s answer was uncompromising.

“We do not need Russia to agree to enlargement,” she assured senators in 1997, stressing the word “need.”

The strategic and moral case for enlargement was overwhelming, explained Albright. If the newly democratized states of Central and Eastern Europe craved the protection of the United States, she concluded, then no other nation should be allowed to stand in the way.

In short there might have been no NATO expansion or at least Russia's security concerns might have bee addressed if it were not for Madeleine Albright and later for Bush era neocons who pressed for NATO admittance for Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia much to Russia's chagrin. All along the road of NATO expansion Russia's security concerns were ignored or belittled or disrespected. Russia was dismissed as a weak and powerless nation with no skin in the game, powerless to do anything or have any say as NATO was quick to identify Russia as a potential enemy which justified the arms buildup by the US. Notably the European nations did not commit anywhere as much of their financial resources to an arms buildup, a fact lamented by President Donald Trump who suggested that the European nations were letting the US carry the load.

During the Cold War, US forces had been deployed around the world for the explicit purpose of deterring Soviet aggression. When the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, so did the primary justification for America’s enormous troop presence abroad and globe-spanning web of military alliances. However, defense spending was given a new justification by Madeleina Albright in order to increase the US militarized global role in the post-Cold War era. She supplied a new rationale for spending on the military industrial complex and the development of ever more destructive weapons systems. NATO expansion and the abrogation of important nuclear arms treaties with Russia were a thumb in the eye of the Russian bear.

Off the Top of My Head

Almost as Many Have Died During the Covid Pandemic as in All American Wars

by John Lawrence

Maybe we should have invested more in public health than we have in the military. Compared to the trillions spent on the military, only a pittance has been spent on public health, let alone on promoting peace in the world. 1.1 million have died in all American wars since the founding of the republic. About 927,000 and counting have died from the current pandemic even though a revolutionary mRNA vaccine is available. 675,000 died during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 sans vaccine. So many more people have died from pandemics in the US than have been killed in wars. Yet war and the preparations for war are pursued relentlessly while efforts for peace languish. This is not only dumb; it's sick. It goes to show that homo sapiens is one of the stupidest and least empathetic species that has ever evolved. Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but the human race is right on course fiddling while the earth burns due to climate change. We will continue to fiddle and equivocate playing one upsmanship with each other as the earth deteriorates into an uninhabitable planet. No wonder the billionaires are making plans to get off.

Of course the power structure doesn't really care what happens on planet earth after they die. They will miss by virtue of their own natural deaths the worst of it. They will have lived the American Dream while bequeathing to their grandchildren the American Nightmare. As we continue to pour billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we are more concerned about the economy that we are about human survival and what sacrifices that will mean. In November, researchers at the Global Carbon Project estimated that global carbon-dioxide emissions from energy and industry rose 4.9 percent in 2021, after a 5.4 percent decline in 2020. China, India and the European Union all had major increases, suggesting that any climate effect from the pandemic was fleeting. So not even a worldwide pandemic can significantly alter the relentless pursuit of economic growth which produces mega tons of carbon dioxide. Residents of planet earth refuse to change their lifestyles and their aspirations for what they conceive to be a "better life."

In the US consumerism is force fed through advertising just like in France ducks are forced fed to produce foie gras. Facebook makes billions of dollars not selling a product but selling advertising. Amazon at least provides products and the service of delivering those products. The advertising industry is the equivalent of the forced feeding of ducks only the ducks are American consumers who would rather not change their lifestyles of accumulation even if it means that their grandchildren will die a miserable death on a burned out planet. Meanwhile, nations exacerbate tensions among each other and foment wars, the preparations for which cost trillions of dollars which, therefore, are not spent on climate mitigation.

Lifestyles not only of the rich but of the middle class would have to change if the earth is to survive climate change. The production of steel and concrete by current methods produce tons of carbon dioxide. The generation of electricity by coal and gas produces tons of carbon dioxide. Agriculture, mainly cow farts, produces tons of methane. As the earth warms sea levels rise, the Arctic thaws and even more methane is released. It's so anthropogenic! We would be better off going back to the horse and buggy days. The American fetish for progress has produced an ecological disaster. The American lifestyle is an environmental disaster. Meanwhile, the power structure in the US and elsewhere seems bound and determined to accelerate the process of environmental destruction while extreme weather events are passed off as "seen nothing like it but vowing to rebuild." That's the American can-do spirit!

Off the Top of My Head

NATO Should Have Been Dissolved When the Warsaw Pact Was Dissolved After the End of the Cold War in 1991

by John Lawrence

NATO was formed in 1949 after the end of World War II as a counter to the ideological rivalry between communism as espoused by the Soviet Union  and capitalism as espoused by the US and Europe. That ideological rivalry ended in 1991 when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact were dismantled. The Warsaw Pact was a security pact between the Soviet Union and eastern European nations in direct response to NATO. Russia became essentially a capitalist nation in 1991. Ergo: no further ideological rivalry. At the same time China was also becoming a capitalist nation despite the name of its ruling party. The Berlin Wall had fallen in 1989. Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, was given assurances that NATO would not advance one inch eastward, an assurance that was abrogated by US administrations shortly thereafter. The security structure of Europe should have been reworked after the fall of the Soviet Union, and NATO should have been eliminated at the same time the Warsaw Pact was eliminated. If that had happened Europe, not the US, would have been responsible for its own security.

So today Vladimir Putin is putting pressure on the western world to do something about the neglected assurances given to Gorbachev that NATO wouldn't move one inch eastward. Ukraine became a part of the Soviet Union after the Second World War and achieved its independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. Crimea had also been part of the Soviet Union and Russia prior to that. In 1954 Nikita Khrushchev, along with the other leadership of the Soviet Union, transferred the Crimean Oblast from the Russian Soviet Federative Social Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Western leaders say that Putin wants to reestablish the Soviet Union or at least maintain control of nations that were previously part of the Soviet Union. Putin has said he wants to establish a new security structure for Europe. That is quite a different prospect from reestablishing the Soviet Union especially in light of the assurances given to Gorbachev about NATO's not moving an inch eastward.

The question must be asked: what is the purpose of NATO, which was established to counteract communist expansionism, when communism no longer exists at least as manifested by Russia. Gorbachev's advisor, Arbitov, had said, "We are going to deprive you of an enemy":

"In another sense, however, the passing of the cold war could not have been more disorienting. In 1987, Georgi Arbatov, a senior adviser to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, had warned: “We are going to do a terrible thing to you – we are going to deprive you of an enemy.”

"As the Soviet Union passed out of existence, Americans were left not just without that enemy, but without even a framework for understanding the world and their place in it. However imperfectly, the cold war had, for several decades, offered a semblance of order and coherence. The collapse of communism shattered that framework. Where there had been purposefulness and predictability, now there was neither."

Guess again, Mr. Gorbachev. The US military-industrial complex was not to be deprived of an enemy under any circumstances. The subsequent neocons saw to that. What Putin is asking for now is a new framework, a framework that should have been established by the west in diplomatic consultation with Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and the termination of the Warsaw Pact, NATO's mirror. However, the US and perhaps the other actors as well cannot conceive of a world without war or the threat of war. They cannot conceive of a diplomatic treaty or framework which would leave the world at peace. Peace is an unknown entity and is for all intents and purposes inconceivable. Therefore, Russia is poised to take by force that which might not have been necessary in Putin's eyes if a framework had been established in which NATO hadn't started moving eastward or even conceivably in which European security arrangements could have been established which would have protected  all European nations including Russia sans NATO.

Off the Top of My Head

How to Solve the Homeless and Climate Change Crises in One Fell Swoop

by John Lawrence

It has been estimated that there were 6 trillion trees on earth before the industrial revolution. Today there are only half that number. Trees are the most natural and proficient way to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So part of the solution for global warming is to plant 3 trillion more trees. At the same time there are approximately half a million homeless Americans. It is estimated that 150 million people are homeless worldwide. Habitat for Humanity estimated in 2015 that 1.6 billion people around the world live in "inadequate shelter". These figures probably include the 80 million refugees worldwide. So why not pay this under utilized labor force to plant trees like the U.S. did in the 1930s when it created the Civilian Conservation Corps? What is needed is a worldwide Civilian Conservation Force. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a work relief program that gave millions of young men employment on environmental projects during the Great Depression.The CCC helped to shape the modern national and state park systems we enjoy today. People in the CCC were given adequate food and shelter in addition to a stipend to plant trees among other things to benefit the environment. Today addressing climate change is critical. At the same time most homeless people are contributing nothing of value to society although some of them do have jobs. But most are not only homeless but hopeless. Giving them a critical role in solving the global warming crisis would not only help to save planet earth, but would give the homeless an important mission.

Considered by many to be one of the most successful of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, the CCC planted more than three billion trees and constructed trails and shelters in more than 800 parks nationwide during its nine years of existence. This is exactly what is needed today - PLANTING BILLIONS OF TREES! So why not do it, but on a world wide basis? Instead the US offers young non college bound people an incentive to join the military. Recruits with less than two years experience earn an annual salary of $19,660 plus a generous benefit package. Isn't saving the earth as a habitable place for future generations more important? So why not make the benefits for a renewed CCC at least equally generous?

This is something that has a precedent in US history, but saving earth as a habitable environment for future generations is evidently not as important as spending a trillion dollars a year to preserve the US military establishment so it can threaten to destroy other nations and peoples. In addition the role of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency and the fact that major world institutions are based on the US dollar allows the US to threaten other countries and individuals with sanctions. It's a one two punch that makes it less likely that anything of significance will be done to make the earth habitable for future generations. Instead the US military is a major source of carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere. The Cost of Wars Project found that US military pollution had accounted for 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, which amount to 257 million passenger cars annually. They compared this astonishing output as higher than the emissions from whole countries like Sweden, Morocco, and Switzerland. Research shows the US military is one of the largest climate polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more CO2e (carbon-dioxide equivalent) than most countries.

At a time when cooperation among nations is paramount to the solution of the climate change crisis, the US is hell bent on military confrontation with other countries particularly Russia and China. Instead of creating peace in the world, the traditional preoccupation with solving problems by means of the military is still the order of the day. Therefore, it isn't likely that there will be a solution to the climate change crisis. Instead a bunch of wishful thinking and misplaced hopes will lead to a gradual diminution of habitability on planet earth.

Off the Top of My Head

3 Generals: US Military Could Aid and Abet Next Insurrection

by John Lawrence

A large number of the January 6 insurrectionists were active or former members of the military. Fox News is ubiquitous on military bases and VA hospitals. Now even Generals are worried about the next insurrection fueled by right wing extremist media. The chickens are coming home to roost. The US' bloated military and military-industrial complex budgets have turned the lemmings into potential insurrectionists. Fox News is not only ubiquitous on military bases. It is playing on almost every public TV. Places like airports, car dealerships, bars - you name it. Everywhere a public TV is on, it's usually tuned to Fox News. What - is CNN too intellectual for public display? You'd lose too many customers? Are real Americans consumers of Fox News? What kind of person is a patriot? What's the definition of patriotism? Were the January 6 insurrectionists true American patriots? They thought so. Maybe a jail sentence will disabuse them of that notion.

I wrote on November 5, 2021:

"It seems that about half the American people want rational, competent government which advances the interests of the American people and plays a constructive role on the world stage. The other half wants a government based on their pet peeves. They are amenable to being swayed by conspiracy theories and misinformation. The former are mainly Democrats; the latter, Republicans. This is nowhere better exemplified than the 2016 election in which competence and experience in the form of Hillary Clinton was defeated by resentment and lies in the form of Donald Trump. In contrast to China which promotes the best and brightest to high positions in its government, the US form of democracy allows for politicians to appeal to the lowest common denominator which has no knowledge or information about anything beyond the worship of symbols like the American flag. This is clear from the visuals of the January 6 insurrection in which the American flag was displayed ad infinitum as if that is what made these people true patriots who could demand that their hero, Donald Trump, should be President in defiance of every provision of American constitutional democracy."

About half the American people have a military related consciousness about patriotism. A patriot is someone who doesn't let other people mess with him. A patriot is a dominant person and demands that the US dominates the rest of the world because we know better, we are stronger and we are better. Some others might think that a patriot is someone who tries to make the US and the world a better place, someone who seeks to alleviate sickness and poverty, someone who has compassion for others, not someone who thinks we're number 1. A true patriot might be someone like Dr. Fauci who has spent his life trying to heal the sick and end the pandemic. There are true patriots and false patriots just like there are true gods and false gods. It all depends on your values.

The 3 Generals wrote in the Washington Post:

"As we approach the first anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, we — all of us former senior military officials — are increasingly concerned about the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election and the potential for lethal chaos inside our military, which would put all Americans at severe risk.

"In short: We are chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time."

The Biden administration and the January 6 committee has been moving in the right direction. A further move might be to require a rotation of TV channels on military bases so that military personnel weren't fed a steady diet of Fox News. Right wing propaganda in news and social media is fueling chauvinistic and jjngoistic values. The values of healing, supporting, teaching, charity and compassion for others should be emphasized instead. If these are feminine as opposed to masculine values, so be it. Maybe the world won't ever be at peace until women run it. These are the values of peace and love and true patriotism. If we want a world at peace and not at war, we need to inculcate these values in the American people, not the values of Fox News.

Off the Top of My Head

Use the National Guard to Free Up the Supply Chain

by John Lawrence

We are 80,000 truck drivers short. We should use the National Guard on an emergency basis to drive trucks to get the contents of those containers out of port and on their way to consumers. Then there will be room for the waiting container ships to offload their contents. Why not? The National Guard has been used in other emergency situations. Why not this one? Marx theorized that the "industrial reserve army" was a necessary part of capitalism, and was composed of out of work people looking for work. This kept the cost of labor down. Only now the reverse situation is in effect. There are more jobs than people looking for them. Therefore, labor is in the driver's seat. Capital needs to pay labor more in order to get them to work. However, at the present time, although wages have come up somewhat, they have not come up enough to attract the needed truck drivers back into the work force. This will all eventually be ironed out as self-driving trucks which are already on the roads will increase substantially.

While the US has been sitting on its duff investing in the world's biggest military, China has been investing in infrastructure - ports and container ships in particular. According to Wikipedia:

"In 1961 China established a state-run maritime shipping company and subsequently signed shipping agreements with many countries, laying the foundation for developing the country's ocean transport. That organization developed into the present-day China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (COSCO). The Chinese government also invested heavily in water transport infrastructure, constructing new ports and rebuilding and enlarging older facilities. The number of container units handled by Chinese ports in 2011 reached more than 150 million. The country also manufactures 90% of the world's containers. The throughput of cargo and containers at China's ports has been the largest in the world for the past five years, with an annual growth rate of 35%."

China also manufactures more than 80 percent of the world’s ship-to-shore cranes, and own seven of the ten busiest ports in the world (including Hong Kong). The message is clear. While the US invested in battleships, China invested in container ships. The goods in those container ships are mainly manufactured in China. The US is addicted to them. Foreign demand for Chinese-made products has remained strong — both by companies’ accounts and official data. The customs agency said in the first half of this year, exports to the European Union rose 35.9% from a year ago to $233 billion, while those to the U.S. climbed 42.6% to $252.86 billion. The handwriting (and handwringing) is on the wall. The US can't continue to base its economy on a military-industrial complex while not producing the goods the American consumer economy wants to buy. By default China has sold many of the consumer goods into the ravenous American consumer economy which is 70% of the American economy while the US has invested in nothing but war. Now as the US has withdrawn from forever wars, the military is trying to gin up a Cold War with China. It won't work. Americans depend on China for consumer goods and get very mad when they're not readily available forcing prices up as we've seen from the container ship debacle.

The US has ceded leadership in many areas including ports, shipping and infrastructure while it has conducted its losing wars. Spending $300 million a day in Afghanistan only enriched defense contractors and corrupt politicians. With all that money being spent, today most Afghanis are simply begging for food. If that money had been spent on the Afghani people instead, today Afghani citizens would be enjoying a robust economy and a decent way of life. All that money was poured down a rat hole. Wasted money and time has only let China become the leader in the manufacture and transport of consumer goods. Climate change demands that the US and China cooperate - not compete - with each other. We need adults in the US government, and the only adults in the room are Democrats. Republicans have gone down the rabbit hole of Trumpism.

Off the Top of My Head

While General Milley Seeks to Bolster Pentagon Budget, Citing Threats from China, Cooperation Between the US and China on Climate Change Might Negate His Playbook

by John Lawrence

General Milley is out to justify his $200,000 a year paycheck by encouraging Congress and the American people not to cut the Pentagon budget. When the fate of the earth is at stake from global warming, Milley is more concerned about stoking tensions with China. Fortunately, despite the new Cold War some are trying to create, the US and China are actually cooperating on climate change. In an article, "US-China deal on emissions welcomed by global figures and climate experts," the Guardian points out that at the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, progress was made in resolving these tensions:

"An unexpected agreement between the US and China to work together on cutting emissions has been broadly welcomed by leaders and climate experts.

"The world’s two biggest emitters appeared to put aside their differences at the Cop26 climate summit and on Wednesday unveiled a joint declaration that would see close cooperation on emissions cuts that scientists say are needed in the next 10 years to stay within 1.5C.

"The agreement calls for “concrete and pragmatic” regulations in decarbonisation, reducing methane emissions and fighting deforestation, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said in Glasgow.

"The two countries will revive a working group that will “meet regularly to address the climate crisis and advance the multilateral process, focusing on enhancing concrete actions in this decade,” the joint declaration said."

"Advancing the Multilateral process"? General Milley doesn't want to hear that. It means cuts in the Pentagon's budget. His job is to stoke fears of China's prowess. The article continues:

"A US-China bilateral agreement in 2014 gave a huge push to the creation of the historic Paris accord the following year, but that cooperation stopped with the Trump administration, which pulled America out of the pact.

“While this is not a gamechanger in the way the 2014 US-China climate deal was, in many ways it’s just as much of a step forward given the geopolitical state of the relationship,” said Thom Woodroofe, an expert in US-China climate talks. “It means the intense level of US-China dialogue on climate can now begin to translate into cooperation.”

"EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans agreed the pact gave room for hope. “It shows … that the US and China know this subject transcends other issues. And it certainly helps us here at Cop26 to come to an agreement,” Timmermans told Reuters."

Yes, China and the US must transcend "other issues" like fighting each other in order to cooperate and save the earth from being devoured by climate change thus bringing the human experiment involving future generations to a disastrous end.

General Milley is right about the "fundamental change to the character of war" since the period preceding World War II, citing new widely available technologies like drones and artificial intelligence and the rise of China as a superpower. US News reports, ""Milley is trying to sustain the case for what he considers adequate levels of defense spending," says Michael O'Hanlon, director of research at The Brookings Institution. "But he is also trying to keep pressure on the Pentagon and services to innovate and to avoid fixation on previous types of weapons, forces and operational concepts.""

Countering these new technologies of war will not require new billion dollar airplanes and battle ships. The Pentagon budget, therefore, should be reduced as these new technologies are developed in order to remain vigilant against modern era threats to the US and our allies. It's hard to make the case against China as a major threat to the US when the Chinese defense budget in 2020t was about $196 billion. America's, on the other hand, was a hearty $778 billion, about 4 times as great. Cooperation with China on climate change and other issues might actually have the salubrious effect of bringing both country's defense budgets down. Could cooperation on a common enemy, climate change, actually bring about peace on earth?

 

Off the Top of My Head

Were the January 6 Insurrectionists True Patriots?

by John Lawrence

So what is patriotism? Waving the flag and saluting the military? The insurrectionists had a militarized consciousness. They were acting under orders from their leader like they were used to doing in the military. That's the danger in a country that bases its value on militarily controlling the rest of the world, being the world's policeman, and processing its high school graduates through the military. They were used to following orders, and Trump gave them the order, "Stop the Steal." Their mindset was waving flags and following orders. They assumed the role of true believers, true patriots. Were they? If these guys were patriots, what does this make the rest of us?

The whole idea of patriotism, unquestioned allegiance to one country is outdated in an era where the very existence of a habitable earth for humans in any country is in question. Our patriotism has to be redirected to Mother Earth itself. The question is is the human race capable of redirecting its allegiance, its patriotism to Mother Earth, or must we continue to elevate our own nationality as the supreme ideal? I wrote on January 20:

So it comes to light that a great many of the insurrectionists were military or ex-military. Why should that be surprising? People that are processed through the military are proto-fascists because the military is not a democratic institution. It's a top-down, command and control organization where people are trained to kill. This is the mindset to which they are trained and instructed. On the other hand I venture to guess that not too many of the insurrectionists were previously Peace Corps members. It's a totally different mindset when the group you belong too is structured so as to help people rather than to hurt, maim, kill or dominate them. The insurrectionists are jingoes, and this is the definition from dictionary.com which suits them to a T: "a person who professes his or her patriotism loudly and excessively, favoring vigilant preparedness for war and an aggressive foreign policy; bellicose chauvinist." Bellicose chauvinists are people trained in the military because the military trains them to be unquestionably subservient to those above them in command and unquestionably threatening towards anyone perceived to be the enemy. Social media and conservative media has made no bones about who they consider to be the enemy. That would be any prominent Democrat past or present.

Our allegiance at this point in history needs to be to humanity in general and to the preservation of Mother Earth as a habitable environment for humans and other animals. Is that even possible for a species that has thrived on war and violence since the beginning of time? We'll see.

I wrote previously:

Patriotism as now defined is based on militarism. Patriotic displays are expressions of militarism. Love of country is expressed in jingoistic terms: "We're number one!" Instead, war and militarism should be thought of as necessary evils instead of exalting them. The goal should be to eliminate them while at the same time building the foundations for peace and prosperity in the world. There should be opportunities for those who want to serve their country by eliminating poverty, building infrastructure, saving the environment, curing the sick and extending helping hands to the underserved and downtrodden.

God bless America and Mother Earth.

Off the Top of My Head

So What's Wrong With Means Testing Biden's Human Infrastructure Plan?

by John Lawrence

Progressive Democrats want universal free Pre-K. Joe Manchin wants to means test it. That means that rich Americans would still pay and poor Americas would not. Not a big problem, I say. In fact I think social security should be means tested. Why should billionaires or people with retirement pensions of over $100,000 a year get social security? Spend the money on the poor and middle class. I'm with progressives on most things, and I certainly want Joe's Build Back Better program implemented. But if you can bring the cost down by means testing and this would lead to its passage, let's get on with it. Furthermore, the military budget can be cut because we are no longer spending $300 million a day in Afghanistan. Manchin is actually for most of Biden's Build Back Better plan. He just wants it in a different form so that it's not universal meaning a giveaway to all concerned, rich and poor alike. Progressives want rich families and poor families to enjoy free pre-K and free community college.

Manchin is not against taxing the rich or a modest effort towards climate change either. His objections seem to be more about fiscal prudence than any of the elements of Biden's plan. Sinema, on the other hand, is the more sinister of the two when it comes to tanking Biden's plan. She doesn't want taxes raised on the rich, for example, and she doesn't want Medicare to be able to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies in order to bring the cost of drugs down. Manchin wants the Hyde amendment included in the bill which prohibits Federal funding for abortions. Big deal. That's the way it is now. Progressives should be able to live with the Hyde amendment. Nothing is changed. Manchin is an old line fiscal hawk when it comes to deficit spending, but as Modern Monetary Theory has made clear Deficits Don't Matter. Inflation, however does, but taxing the rich removes money from the economy and reduces inflation while paying for everything in Biden's reconciliation bill is inflation neutral.

When all is said and done, the proposed money to be spent on social infrastructure pales in comparison with the money spent on the military budget over the next 10 years. A conservative estimate is that the US spends $725 billion a year on defense. It's actually closer to a trillion when you factor in other costs not usually counted like the cost of nuclear weapons and intelligence services. For instance, future medical and disability costs for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans will total between $2.2 trillion and $2.5 trillion. So over a ten year period, military related costs will approach $10 trillion. Progressives want $3.5 trillion for social infrastructure over a ten year period, a pittance compared to military related costs. However, progressives and moderates will haggle over the cost until, eventually some compromise will be come up with, probably around $2 trillion or $200 billion per year. Reducing the defense budget will also calm fears over inflation as will the Fed's backing off from quantitative easing. Manchin is a reasonable person, but Sinema is the wild card who singlehandedly could tank both bills.They need to get the reconciliation bill fully fleshed out and negotiated on and ready to go so that both the bi-partisan and reconciliation bills can be voted on simultaneously in both Houses of Congress.

Off the Top of My Head

American Troops Have Left Afghanistan. So Has American Money - $300 Million Per Day

by John Lawrence

Afghanistan's economy must be in freefall. The US was spending $300 million a day each and every day there for 20 years! Now the US is spending nothing. American troops have left and, more importantly, American money has left. So can we now cut the defense budget? It would have been better if, instead of sending in American troops 20 years ago, we had sent in the Peace Corps for a fraction of the money the American military presence has cost. By now much could have been accomplished like roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, water and sewage systems and other critical infrastructure. Instead we spent $300 million a day for 20 years blowing things up and getting blown up ourselves. It's a testament to the folly of warfare. Now, hopefully, diplomacy and resettlement of refugees and building infrastructure will take place both there and here at home where efforts in the domain of Peace are badly in need as well. The US has infrastructure needs, resettlement of refugee needs (think the growing homeless population), both hard and human infrastructure needs, building things up instead of blowing things up.

All the generals who were shuffled in and out of Afghanistan couldn't think of what we could have done better there because all they could think was in military terms. They couldn't conceive of the possibility that the reason they were all so unsuccessful was precisely because any and all military solutions were not the right ones. They could not conceive of building peace there, only fighting an enemy. Well, it got them substantial pay raises, and it made money for the military-industrial complex. Now we need a peace-industrial complex. If we want to save the planet and not just indulge the present American inhabitants of planet earth to the max, we need to build green infrastructure all over the world. But even before we do that, we need to solve the worldwide pandemic which we can not seem to solve even here at home because there are so many people who won't believe in the obvious solution until one of their family members dies.

Forever wars have stunted the mindsets of the American people leading them to embracing far right jingoistic and chauvinistic militarism. The mindset would be considerably different if the US had put as much energy as it has put into militarism into peace activities, if peace had even been given due consideration as an alternative to war. In fact it's not too much of a stretch to say War is Us. This mindset came to fruition on January 6 with the insurrection. Biden is trying to turn the corner but he can only do so much per unit time. He has done considerable so far ending the war in Afghanistan and doing everything humanly possible to end the pandemic. His human and hard infrastructure agenda is still pending, but I believe it will eventually pass because it has been set up in such a way that either everybody wins if it passes or everybody loses if it doesn't. The way the twin bills were constructed, one that will pass by budget reconciliation and one bipartisan, represents political ingenuity. It's making the most of the slim Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress. Even after those twin bills pass and get made into law, there is much to be done, voting rights reform in particular. I think Biden will get the major part of his agenda accomplished - probably in 2 years. After that who knows what will happen if Republicans win one or both Houses in the midterm elections.

Off the Top of My Head

How Not to Win a War

by John Lawrence

1) Invade a country. 2) Set up a puppet government. 3) Pay officials handsomely or acquiesce in their corruption. 4) Spend $300 million a day none of which alters the life of the average citizen who exists on $2 a day. 5) Hire local interpreters. 6) Hire local contractors. 7) Cycle multiple generals in and out of the war each one of which thinks they're God's gift to military science.       8) Get the local people in the cities involved on your side by paying them lots of money. 9) Ignore the majority of the people living in the countryside. 10) Leave country after puppet government collapses. 11) Get half the population that sided with you out of that country and into yours.

Can't the vast military-industrial complex teach their own interpreters all the major languages of the world so they don't have to hire local interpreters who then expect the US to get them out of the country when the US loses the war? Can't the vast military -industrial complex provide their own services so they don't have to hire "private contractors"? The US never had a clear goal in invading Afghanistan except to make it a forever war. Some Afghans were OK with that because the $300 million a day the US provided made them rich. In a country which has a GDP of $20 billion, $300 million a day ($109.5 billion a year), over 5 times the GDP, totally distorts the country economically making some people fabulously rich while leaving the average Afghan tremendously poor. In 2020, GDP per capita for Afghanistan was 581 US dollars. Such a formula for success was guaranteed to lead the average Afghan to favor the Taliban who at least were on the side of the average person.

All the generals who have been interviewed have their own ideas about what could have been done better in Afghanistan, but none of them have any perspective outside of a military one. For instance, none of them ventured an opinion that maybe sending in the Peace Corps to improve the lives of the average Afhan living on $2 a day might have done more good than sending in the world's mightiest military with all the bells and whistles at its command. The first step for the Peace Corps is of course to learn the language of the people. How else to convince them that you are actually interested in them and want to help them. Improving the lives of the average person is the last thing the military thinks of. Maybe that's the lesson that needs to be learned here. An American effort devoted to peace rather than war could be done for a lot less than $300 million a day over 20 years which is the cost to Americans for this fruitless war. The Peace Corps needs to be beefed up. Actually improving the lives of poor people around the world will do more to end terrorism than the services the world's mightiest military can provide. In addition processing Americans through the Peace Corps rather than the military will do more to diminish domestic terrorism since those who have been processed through the military have a militarized mindset which predisposes them to being attracted to right wing proto military groups.

Off the Top of My Head

Now That We're Not Spending $300 Million a Day in Afghanistan Can We Spend $300 Million a Day in US Mitigating Climate Change?

by John Lawrence

Finally, officials are acknowledging that recent extreme weather is a function of climate change. Now they want to harden their infrastructure. Can we defund the military and fund green infrastructure? We pissed over $300 million a day for 20 years in Afghanistan gaining nothing in the process. Now we have even more bills to pay for wounded veterans and the resettling of refugees. The Pentagon must have known that the invasion of Afghanistan would do nothing to protect us from terrorism. In fact an argument could be made that it only increased terrorism of the domestic variety as former military joined right wing extremist groups. Now Biden has changed the mindset that every problem can be solved by the US military. Now it is time to reduce the military budget. After all we're saving $300 million a day. Biden has made it clear that we don't have to remain in a fruitless situation. We can actually change our priorities.

What is really threatening America at this point is the extreme weather brought about by climate change. When a hurricane hitting land in Louisiana can do the most damage in New York and New Jersey, you have a much different kind of hurricane. Hurricanes are supposed to lose steam once they've hit land. This one obviously didn't. In fact it gained power. Why didn't it devastate states in its path before it got to the east coast? That's a mystery. It seems to have gone dormant for awhile and then picked up steam later.

21st century infrastructure needs to be built now. Biden is doing his best to change the mindset of America that actually helping people is more important than seeking glory in war. There is no glory in war. First we lost in Viet Nam; then we repeated the same scenario in Afghanistan. Enough is enough. We need to build up the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps and a new Civilian Conservation Corps. Peaceful buildups not military adventurism and continual development of new weapons. The real threat is domestic terrorism and climate change. We need to put our money and human resources where the real needs are, and they're not in Afghanistan or anywhere else in the Middle East. China is eating our lunch precisely because they're putting most of their foreign policy energy into building infrastructure in other countries with the Belt and Road Initiative.

Climate change and global warming knows no national boundaries. Mother Nature is totally neutral when it comes to the devastation she is wreaking in this anthropocene era. Human beings and technological development have resulted in a climate crisis. Was the unibomber right about technological development even though he made his point in an unfortunate way? Cities were relieved when the gas powered automobile was developed. It relieved cities of having to shovel away massive amounts of horseshit. However, horseshit has a high nutritive value as fertilizer. Automobile exhaust has only a deleterious value since the result of releasing it into the atmosphere causes an increasing greenhouse effect. Eventually, if nothing or not enough is done, it will make the earth uninhabitable. That's why it's more important than ever that nations cooperate in a common purpose. Instead of fighting each other, we need to fight global warming. Peace is not just a nice concept. It's an imperative.

 

Off the Top of My Head

The Lesson From Afghanistan: the Same Lesson as Viet Nam

by John Lawrence

The lesson is you can't invade a country, set up a puppet government, fund it with trillions of dollars and expect to Americanize that country. Unfortunately, we didn't learn that lesson in Viet Nam so we repeated the same mistake in Afghanistan. American military adventurism has cost many people their lives - reportedly 2400 in Afghanistan - created corrupt governments that siphon off all the American "aid," and end up not doing anything for the average Afghan. They do create elites, millionaires like the brother of Hamid Karzai, mirroring the exact same economic inequality that we experience here in America itself. In that sense these countries, until their collapse, are little Americas. Now that Biden has ended this folly of forever wars that benefit mainly American contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman and many others, his intention, I gather, is to continue what the military wasn't able to accomplish on the diplomatic and humanitarian level. This is to Biden's credit. This is what we should have been doing all along. If we had been actually helping average Afghans, they would be on our side and not represent a breeding ground for terrorists. As it turns out, only the Taliban were helping average Afghans.

Those who whine that terrorists will root themselves there now that the American military is gone, might better whine about the terrorists who almost took over the US Capitol on January 6, certainly the scariest threat to America since 9/11. And it almost worked. While 9/11 was a horrible tragedy in terms of American lives, it didn't have the capacity to actually threaten the very existence of American democracy. The January 6 insurrection did. It came a hair breadth from preventing the certification of Joe Biden as the next President and reinstalling Donald Trump as an unelected autocrat. In both cases the American intelligence bureaucracy was caught flatfooted and clueless. Unless ISIS-K and other foreign terrorist groups come up with a genius like bin Laden, we have not too much to fear. Bin Laden had a horrible grinchy, but brilliant idea, which was able to be executed with money for a few flight lessons and probably less than $30 worth of box cutters. It didn't matter that he was physically located in Afgahnistan at the time. His physical location wasn't the reason that he was able to come up with this idea that outsmarted US intelligence services. There were no Afghans among the hihackers. Most of them were Saudi citizens, a fact seemingly lost on George W Bush who spirited the bin Laden relatives out of the US to befriend his allies in Saudi Arabia. Invading that country would have made more sense since bin Laden himself was a Saudi.

Those who whine about the implementation of Sharia law by the Taliban never mention the fact that Saudi Arabia, our good friend, uses Sharia law to behead people, cut off their hands, stone adulterers and all the other ramifications of Sharia law. The Taliban are not the only ones to do it, and this should be pointed out by the pundits who try to scare us about the supposedly horrific consequences of Sharia law. Even our friends the Saudis and probably other Muslim countries do it.

What's the alternative to keeping boots on the ground in Afghanistan? Keeping troops there forever. In other words those who advocate for that course are advocating forever wars. War is there business and many of these Generals and military analysts are on the payroll of military-industrial complex contractors. They effectively are advocating for continual and perpetual war as a way of life. For them there is no such concept as peace. They only know war. They only think war. For them there are threats around every corner and in every corner of the entire world. They point out all the reasons why ending the Afghanistan war is a huge mistake that America will regret since ongoing perpetual war is the only solution that will protect American freedom and democracy. Well, Biden's vision is to pursue peaceful solutions while remaining vigilant about terrorist threats whether they come from domestic or foreign terrorists. This is constructive. Humanitarian aid to Afghanistan will do more to improve the lives of the average Afghan than all the money given to the Afghan puppet government which was siphoned off by the Karzai family among others.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Were There Tens of Thousands of American Citizens and Foreign Nationals in Afghanistan?

by John Lawrence

There were only 2500 American military and 50,000 American citizens? What's wrong with this picture? And now a ragtag group is taking over the whole country having defeated the world's mightiest military force? What's wrong with this picture? This is totally F-ed up. I assume that all these civilians were there to make money. Maybe there were a few who genuinely wanted to help the Afghan people, but sending in the US military to facilitate that is not the way to do it. The US should be providing aid to people in the world that have less than we do. When you have a hammer, it seems like every problem is a nail. When you have the world's mightiest military every problem seems to have a solution by sending in the military to solve it. Having 50,000 American citizens in a war zone is completely nuts. and then the only way to extract ourselves from the situation is to have a massive, chaotic airlift as we are experiencing now?

So now Biden has at least established the principal that the US military doesn't have to remain forever in every country it invades. But that seems to be the MO. There are almost 40,000 troops in Germany, 28,000 in Korea and 55,000 in Japan. The military of the United States is deployed in most countries around the world, with between 150,000 to 200,000 of its active-duty personnel stationed outside the United States and its territories. The US military maintains close to 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad. So is it even possible for the world to function without the presence of the US military in practically every country? What if they just all were withdrawn? Would the world's economic and political structure, such that it is, completely collapse?

Every empire in world history has collapsed due to its being overextended. The Roman Empire which lasted for about 1000 years (compared to the US' less than 100) collapsed because it extended itself into northern Europe instead of being content with just controlling lands around he Mediterranean. While the US vision of the world is that the US military will effectively occupy almost every country with the notable exceptions of China, Russia, Iran and now eventually Afghanistan, China's vision seems to be its Belt and Road initiative which ties many countries of the world to China economically. Can the US pivot from military occupation to peaceful economic and humanitarian development? Or even pivot to being a constructive force to ameliorate climate change in cooperation with China and Russia? Military assets could be converted to more peaceful purposes and be integrated into the Peace Corps. But that would take the incentives for glory and patriotism out of the equation. Could purple hearts ever be given to members of the Peace Corps? The principal that Biden has established that the US can leave a country is a game changer. It doesn't mean that the US will never have anything to do with Afghanistan again. It means that US involvement will be more along the lines of humanitarian assistance.

Off the Top of My Head

Was Biden Supposed to Micromanage the Logistics of the Withdrawal?

by John Lawrence

What were all those people in the Pentagon doing once Biden announced the end of the war? Biden announced on July 8, 2021 that the war would end as of August 31. Why wasn't the US Defense Department working overtime to do contingency and logistics planning. Why weren't Americans and Afghans who helped us being taken out of the country as of that date? Why did they wait for Kabul to fall? This is incompetency on the part of the Pentagon and the Defense Department. Biden shouldn't have had to micromanage the logistics. Why didn't they expect chaos? Why didn't our military hold Kabul until everyone was out safely? Instead they let the Taliban waltz into Kabul. It just goes to show the incompetency of the top echelon of US military planners.

Hopefully, the secure air corridor, similar to the Berlin airlift, will be sufficient to get most of the people, who need to get out, out. The troops Biden sent in will have to do crowd control and secure the airport for the next few weeks. The whole operation in Afghanistan was a disaster. Evidently, the Afghan military couldn't do anything without the support of American contractors? You mean that the bloated American military is incompetent to do anything without private contractors? Evidently, so. Now a bunch of war apologists are rueing the day that the American military is leaving Afghanistan. Oh, Al Qaeda will come back; ISIS will establish themselves there. Why don't they stop and ask the question why all these Islamists are so upset with the US? Is it because the US has been killing them for years. It's not too late for the US to become a constructive force in the world instead of just trying "to protect American interests." China is building infrastructure throughout Asia and beyond. The US could cooperate with China in becoming a builder rather than a destroyer. Besides, unless the two major polluting countries of the world get together, the earth is already doomed to a climate catastrophe.

It's not about forcing the rest of the world to bow down to us. It's about time that the world's wealthiest country becomes a constructive player on the world scene instead of threatening everyone with sanctions or our military might. It's time to guarantee the Palestinians their own homeland. This would do a lot to dispel the rancor against the US. Instead of "defund the police" we should be chanting "defund the military". The 800 military bases around the world need to be abandoned and the troops sent home from there just like they were abandoned in Afghanistan. By the way why wasn't all the military equipment and resources just left there to fall into the hands of the Taliban? Oh I see. There will be money to procure a lot more once the Defense Department submits its budgetary needs post Afghanistan. When the US becomes a force for peace in the world and uses its abundant resources to alleviate poverty and fight climate change, then the US will be playing a constructive role in the world and not just defending US interests.

Off the Top of My Head

Radicalized Veterans Supporting Trump in the Vanguard of January 6 Insurrection

by John Lawrence

Time magazine has an excellent article by Vera Bergengruen/Arab, Ala. and W.J. Hennigan/Washington, "From Combat to Conspiracy" detailing how radicalized veterans led the insurrection on January 6. I wrote about this previously in an article The Militarization of the American Mind. The fact of the matter is that the US military-industrial complex is composed not only of active military and corporations profiting from military hardware, but also a large number of civilians who are ex-military. The whole meme about honoring veterans - "Thank you for your service" - presupposes that these people are loyal Americans, not an out of control mob attempting to overthrow the government. Veterans are routinely honored at least in lip service and discounts, but the truth is far more disconcerting. These men and women have been processed through a system that has taught them not to think critically but to follow orders. They are more or less taught to espouse conservative politics.The Times article continues: "Of the more than 500 people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, at least 1 in 10 was a current or former member of the U.S. military, according to a George Washington University analysis. Many had served in the protracted post-9/11 conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, returning home to a country that paid them lip service but moved on without much notice to the wars they had fought."

The insurrectionists' attitude is a reflection of the fact that the US is a militarized nation with over 800 bases in almost every country of the world. Defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and others form the economic backbone of the nation. Is it any wonder then that at least a sizable minority of the nation's people favor an autocrat like Donald Trump to an experienced public servant like either Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden? When I worked in the military-industrial complex for General Dynamics and the Naval Electronics Laboratory, we were encouraged to vote Republican for fear our funding would decline under a Democratic administration and we would be RIFed (Reduction in Force-ed). This is how insidious the militarization of the American mind actually is. The Times article continues: "[One veteran] became involved with local chapters of the Oath Keepers in central Florida, whose recruiting materials reminded members that their oath was forever. “America’s veterans truly are like a sleeping giant. It is time to awaken them and fill them with a terrible resolve to defeat the domestic enemies of our Constitution,” says one chapter’s mission statement, according to documents reviewed by TIME. “If we can’t get the veterans to step up … to save our Republic, then how can we expect to get the rest of our people to do what must be done?”"

"As with other veterans whose involvement in right-wing groups like the Oath Keepers led them to the Capitol on Jan. 6, James’ descent into alleged extremism seemed less an expression of long-held political fervor than the desire to be part of a larger patriotic cause.

"Little data is kept on how often and why veterans get involved with extremist groups, but there are plenty of high-profile examples throughout American history. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate army general, was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. George Lincoln Rockwell, a Navy veteran, founded the American Nazi Party. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, both Army veterans, were convicted of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

"Founded by a former Army paratrooper in 2009, the Oath Keepers has quickly become one of America’s largest antigovernment extremist groups. It heavily recruits current and former military and law-enforcement members, encouraging them to see themselves as “the last line of defense against tyranny,” according to Oath Keepers websites. The group’s name refers to the oath sworn by members of the military and law enforcement “to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Some members falsely believe that the federal government has been taken over by “a cabal of elites actively trying to strip American citizens of their rights,” according to the FBI."

The military had become for many veterans a way of life that they missed after returning to civilian life. "“Militia groups have really familiar structures of command,” [author] Belew says. “They have structures of fraternal bonding, they have the organizational social elements that are very similar to the armed forces—and they’re built that way deliberately.

"Only now are federal authorities formally drawing up a strategy to handle the problem of military veterans’ joining extremist groups. The Biden Administration’s strategy to combat domestic terrorism includes plans to prevent veterans from being recruited by extremists. Currently, there are no efforts that focus on veterans once they have left service, despite evidence that they are increasingly the targets of online misinformation and extremist recruitment.

"Security analysts, veterans’ groups and experts say it will be vital to combat both the isolation and the fear-mongering that lead former service members to think of their fellow Americans as the enemy or, worse, take the law into their own hands. “It’s important not to fixate too much on the Oath Keepers as an organization but to think of them as a concrete example of a broader phenomenon in America,” says Sam Jackson, a homeland-security expert at the University of Albany who wrote a book on the group. The alleged radicalization of James, the growth of local chapters and the national organization should be “seen as a Russian nesting doll” that shows a much larger movement, he says, “of people who view America as being hijacked by internal and external enemies.” But little is likely to change unless more Americans come to agree on what it means to be an extremist and what it means to be a patriot."

Wake up, America, and smell the coffee. The militarization of the American mind reflects the militarization of America's purported purpose in the world which is to exert military force projected over the whole world. A person like exPresident George W Bush, who lied us into the war in Iraq, has the nerve to criticize Joe Biden for withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan after a 20 year futile war which accomplished nothing. We got Bin Laden in an operation which had nothing to do with boots on the ground in Afghanistan. He was in Pakistan. Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11. The attitude of both civilian and military leaders from the top down legitimizes the US' continued military presence throughout the world and thoroughly indoctrinates American veterans and civilians in the military mindset. Until the US becomes a nation which is more interested in promoting development throughout the world and contributing to the betterment of peoples' lives throughout the world, a large number of Americans will favor right wing causes and conservative politics.

Off the Top of My Head

The Militarization of the American Mind

by John Lawrence

From seemingly rational thought processes that would make it impossible to end the war in Afghanistan to the insurrection at the Capitol to the "American movie" chock full of violence to the "well regulated militia" justification of gun proliferation, there is no end of rationalizations for the American military-industrial complex and gun culture on every level. Why does it come as a surprise to some journalists that many participants in the January 6 insurrection were current or ex military or police officers? They are exactly the ones with the mind set that believes Trump won the election, and that it was OK to do what their leader commanded them to do - invade the Capitol. The Generals who say that Biden shouldn't end the Afghanistan war on the grounds that the Kabul government will collapse are exactly the ones that argued we shouldn't end the Vietnam war because the South Vietnam government would collapse. Sure when the US sets up a puppet government and then props it up with money and a military presence, it probably will collapse when the US leaves that country which it never should have invaded in the first place. Afghanistan is Vietnam all over again or as Yogi Berra would say deja vu all over again.

The division among Americans into two tribes can be understood in terms of the two paths Americans take after high school graduation. There are those who go to college and there are those who go into the military. Those are basically the two choices high school graduates have. Those who go to college are taught to think critically to some extent, while those who go into the military are taught to obey orders. Unfortunately, Trump, as their Commander-in-Chief gave them the order to invade the Capitol, and they felt justified in following it because that is what their training led them to do. The choice to go into the Peace Corps or AmeriCorp is not really viable for most high school graduates because the perks of going into the military greatly exceed the perks of going into more peaceful pursuits, and they are less glorious. This is also a characteristic of the militarization of the American civilian mind. The military-industrial complex including, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, profits greatly from ongoing militarization and military thought processes, employs most of the college graduates and provides debate ending rationalizations for American military preparedness despite the fact that their extremely expensive hardware doesn't work half the time, and the threats to America are primarily cyber in nature as well as domestic terrorism.

The divide and contrast between high school graduates who go into the military and are taught to follow orders and those who go to college is reflected in the political divide between those on the right and those on the left.The military is all about symbolism including snappy uniforms, medals for valor in combat, saluting the flag and honoring themselves for their patriotism. On the left results in the improvement of the lives of the American people - and not just the elite civilian Officer's Corps - are more important than symbols of glory. They are more likely to question authority rather than unquestionably following orders. The January 6 insurrectionists were following Trump's orders at least that's what they were thinking in their own minds and by their own admission. I would like to see the FBI release to the public the number of insurrectionists who were military or former military. I bet that would be most of them, especially the males. A lot of ex military go into police work because of the familiarity with weaponry which they gained in the military. Since guns are a familiar way of life for them, naturally they become arch supporters of the Second Amendment, "well regulated" or not. They are used to classifying groups of people as either friendly or the enemy, and this mind set lends itself to police work.

In the final analysis, America is so used to being the world's policeman and profiting in various ways therefrom, that it is unthinkable that we should cooperate with our supposed adversaries to forestall global warming or to thwart future pandemics let alone the current one. We must always have an enemy or at least an adversary to justify our existence. A peaceful world in which everyone gets along and cooperates to solve the problems we earthlings face and have to deal with is unthinkable. Even though the US has a glut of vaccines while the rest of the world is begging for them, Americans feel free not to have their arms jabbed because after all they are free - free to be stupid, free to ignore the safety of other Americans and free to get infected with the virus and die taking others with them.. They just want to get back to normal entertaining themselves to death and ignoring totally any responsibility to their fellow citizens not to mention fellow citizens of the world, many of which they would like to maintain in their necessary roles as the enemy.

Dr. Fauci wondered why we couldn't all unite to fight the common enemy  - COVID - instead of fighting among ourselves about taking the vaccine. Uniting to fight a common enemy like COVID or climate change just isn't the way Americans and maybe humanity in general do things. We need to disagree even about things that are crucial for our continued existence as a species. As a nation we need an enemy whether it be Russia or China seemingly to justify our existence.

Off the Top of My Head

We Need to Change Our Spending Priorities Away From Military Adventurism and Toward Domestic Concerns

by John Lawrence

The military-industrial complex needs to be defunded, and the budgets of Homeland Security, the FBI and cybersecurity need to be augmented. We need to reconsider what "national security" really means especially in an era of climate change and pandemics. If the world's nations can not get along, climate change will end human civilization. The western nations, especially the US, need the cooperation of Russia and China in particular if climate change can even be mitigated to a less disastrous level than is already baked in the cake. Russia is one of the largest exporters of fossil fuel products, and will profit most from the thawing of the Arctic. If they are treated as pariahs, they will not be too concerned if the rest of the world becomes uninhabitable. Scientific American reported in an article entitled It's Time to Rein in Inflated Military Budgets:

"Despite the trillions of dollars Congress and successive administrations have lavished on the Pentagon since the turn of the century, the massive U.S. arsenal and fighting force deployed worldwide are powerless against grave, nonmilitary threats to national security—from a raging pandemic to the fact that tens of millions of Americans breathe foul air, drink tainted water, and struggle to pay for food, housing and health care.

"Such a reassessment is long overdue. No other country’s military outlays come close. In FY 2019, the Pentagon’s budget was nearly three times bigger than China’s defense spending and more than 10 times larger than Russia’s. All told, the U.S. military budget in 2019 exceeded the next 10 countries’ defense budgets combined and singlehandedly accounted for a hefty 38 percent of military spending worldwide."

The truth is that lobbyists for the military-industrial complex will lose money if a sane foreign and domestic policy is adopted. It is a hotbed of self interest which will come up with infinite rationales for continued military spending even when it is obvious to a disinterested observer that the Defense Department is just an unabashed money pit. The article continues;

"There are plenty of reasons to cut the Pentagon’s budget, but its track record of profligate spending is among the most obvious. If the Pentagon were a private corporation, gross mismanagement would have forced it into bankruptcy years ago. Dysfunctional internal controls, aided and abetted by years of lax congressional and administration oversight, have enabled it to waste tens of billions of dollars annually, and the last 20 years are littered with a parade of overpriced, botched and bungled projects.

"In just the first decade of this century, the Pentagon was forced to cancel a dozen ill-conceived, ineffective weapons programs that cost taxpayers $46 billion. They included the Future Combat Systems program, a fleet of networked high-tech vehicles that did not work; the Comanche helicopter, which—after 22 years in development—was never built; and the 40-ton Crusader artillery gun, which never even made it to the prototype stage.

"To put this example of managerial malfeasance in context, these canceled programs collectively cost more than the federal government spent on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the last five years.

At least the Pentagon killed those projects before they wasted any more money. All too often, it does not know when to pull the plug. The Army’s attempt to replace its outmoded Bradley tank is a case in point. Over the last 17 years, it has blown an estimated $22.9 billion on three flawed prototypes, but in February—just three weeks after rejecting the third failed design—it issued yet another request for proposals from defense contractors."

To put it bluntly many peoples' livelihoods and many corporation's profits are tied up with the continued exorbitant spending by the Federal government in support of the Defense Department, but Defense is a misnomer if the spending priorities are so out of wack compared to the actual threats to the American people. In short we are wasting money on so-called defense and letting the real threats go unfunded and undefended.

 

Off the Top of My Head

America to End Forever War in Afghanistan Thanks to Joe Biden

by John Lawrence, April 15, 2021

So far Biden is making all the right moves, and I'm sure he has more up his sleeve. He's playing 3 dimensional chess while the Republicans haven't even learned to play checkers yet. The military-industrial complex is crying, "Oh, no," because they justify the huge expenditures on them by the need for continuance of forever wars. They are aghast at the prospect that their trillion dollar annual budget will be inevitably reduced. It has become obvious that the biggest threat to the US is not international terrorism but domestic terrorism. The FBI and the National Guard will deal with that very nicely; they don't need the Pentagon. The FBI is doing a remarkable job cleaning up the terrorists who took part in the January 6 bungled coup attempt. Over 400 arrests and counting so far. The idiots self videoed their own arrest warrants.

The US spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined. As an added service they also train the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and the Three Percenters. The military-industrial complex has done a lot to militarize the consciousnesses of young Americans, especially young non-college bound Americans. College graduates, especially in engineering, often end up, like I did, in the military-industrial complex working for companies like Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman and General Dynamics. As a country we have been spending our money in all the wrong places, but the military-industrial complex wants to hang on to its prerogatives. When I was an employee of General Dynamics many years ago, they encouraged you to vote Republican. Otherwise their budgets might be cut and there might be a RIF (Reduction in Force). When the military-industrial complex is cut down to size, right sized as they say, the Republican party will lose its raison d'être, its justification, because that's all in reality that it stands for - large defense budgets and tax cuts for the wealthy.

If we really want to compete with China, then we should cut our defense budget down to the size of China's and spend our money in more constructive ways like China is doing like building infrastructure with its Belt and Road initiative. The only infrastructure the US has been doing in foreign countries has been the building of military bases of which there are approximately 800 in practically every country in the world. Meanwhile, China has one military base in a foreign country - in Djibouti! If the US wants to compete with China, it will take a page out of China's book and build infrastructure not military bases. China and the US need to cooperate on problems facing the whole earth like global warming. It's no consolation to win the competitive war while the home we all live in goes up in flames or drowns as the case may be.

Republicans want Biden to tell them how he's going to pay for all his ambitious social programs? Let's see. Let me count the ways. Taxes on the rich - that's a good one. Reduce the size of the military-industrial complex budget. Even better. Military contractors, among others, provide the campaign donations for the Republican party as long as the guys they are providing the financial jet fuel for are hardliners for a "strong" defense. Well now, maybe they should stand up for transferring the money to the FBI so they can deal with domestic terrorism instead of a useless military engaged in forever wars which are only killing civilians, destroying real estate and creating refugees. The world doesn't need an America which thinks it has the self-appointed job of being the world's policeman or moral arbiter. There is something in the Bible about taking the beam out of our own eye before telling our neighbor to take the mote out of theirs.

The US bloated military is wasting our money while militarizing the consciousness of our young men many of whom think their patriotism justifies invading and laying waste to our Capitol. Lawmakers were shocked, shocked to find out that the invaders of the People's House were present and former members of the military and police forces! Patriots! This is what happens when you define patriotism in military terms. The true patriots are the doctors and nurses, supermarket workers, delivery drivers, meat packers and others who put their lives at risk to help us get through this pandemic. True patriotism consists of reducing our military-industrial complex and defense budget to a reasonable size comparative with other countries and the real threats in the world while building up our infrastructure assets and social safety net programs as every other advanced country has already done. Joe Biden is on the road to doing this. May he prosper and prevail. And God bless our doctors and nurses.

Off the Top of My Head

The Only Successful War the US Has Fought in the Last 70 Years is the War We Lost

by John Lawrence, April 14, 2021

The US definitively lost the Vietnam war, and Vietnam is a success story. Korea is an absolute mess. Afghanistan is a mess and so is Iraq. Thank God, after 20 years of the US' accomplishing nothing, Biden is finally getting out September 11. The last "good" war was World War II which was fought to save the world from a brutal tyrant. The participants, both winners and losers, have recovered nicely.The Middle East in general was much better off before the US under George W Bush lied us into the war in Iraq. The Korean war began on June 25, 1950, and at least 2.5 million persons lost their lives. Today there is a rogue, pariah regime in North Korea which is developing nuclear weapons and is hostile to the US. It would have been a better outcome if the US had lost that war too, and at least Korea would be a unified country today probably much like Vietnam. Vietnam's economy is surging. According to the Wall Street Journal: "First-quarter gross domestic product was up 4.5% relative to last year’s figure, according to an initial estimate released [in March 2021]. The recovery is being driven by a surge in goods and services sold abroad, which rose almost 20% year-over-year in March. While the US response to the pandemic has been abysmal especially under the Trump administration, Vietnam's response has been remarkable. According to Our World in Data: "As of December 31, 2020, Vietnam had reported 1,465 laboratory confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 35 deaths. This success has been attributed to several key factors, including a well-developed public health system, a decisive central government, and a proactive containment strategy based on comprehensive testing, tracing, and quarantining." All of the things that were lacking in the Trump administration.

Trillions of dollars have been spent to build a military-industrial complex which has done nothing but lose wars and create geopolitical messes. Iraq was a stable society under Saddam Hussein. He would have never tolerated the ISIS so-called caliphate to find a haven in northern Iraq which is what happened after Bush's invasion in 2003 under the pretense that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction which he did not. Bush and the American government intelligentsia in general never understood that the fundamental cleavage in the Middle East was the Sunni Shiite Islamic divide. Iraq was a majority Shiite country under a Sunni leadership. After the US achieved a "democracy" in Iraq, it became a Shiite led country allied with that other bastion of Shiitism, Iran, America's arch enemy. Nice work, Bush. Of course we couldn't let that alliance really materialize with the result that the Iraq war destabilized the whole Middle East. Let's see how many trillions of dollars were spent on it, how many lives were lost and how much real estate was destroyed in the process? Perhaps as many as a million civilians were killed and as many as 40% of Iraq's middle class became refugees. Columbia University Economics Professor Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, have put the cost at well over $3 trillion. The LA Times reported: "In case you were wondering, the price tag for the war in Iraq could eventually top $6 trillion." And this is just the US' cost. What about the cost of destroyed houses and production facilities in Iraq?

Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan had to be invaded in order to get the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks. Osama bin Laden was taken out by US intelligence and special forces. This was accomplished without the necessity for a land invasion and destabilization of either country. By the way bin Laden was discovered in Pakistan not Iraq or Afghanistan so should we have invaded Pakistan instead? The New York Times wrote in December 2019: "What Did the U.S. Get for $2 Trillion in Afghanistan? All told, the cost of nearly 18 years of war in Afghanistan will amount to more than $2 trillion. Was the money well spent? There is little to show for it. The Taliban control much of the country. Afghanistan remains one of the world’s largest sources of refugees and migrants. More than 2,400 American soldiers and more than 38,000 Afghan civilians have died."

Moral of the story? After being a successful general in World War II followed by a successful Presidency, subsequent US Presidents should have taken Eisenhower's advice regarding the military-industrial complex: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." This is from Brittanica:

"The term military-industrial complex was first used by U.S. Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address on January 17, 1961. Eisenhower warned that the United States must “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complex,” which included members of Congress from districts dependent on military industries, the Department of Defense (along with the military services), and privately owned military contractors—e.g., Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. Eisenhower believed that the military-industrial complex tended to promote policies that might not be in the country’s best interest (such as participation in the nuclear arms race), and he feared that its growing influence, if left unchecked, could undermine American democracy."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Off the Top of My Head

The Stock Market is Too Big to Fail

by John Lawrence, April 2, 2021

Just as the big Wall Street banks are too big to fail, so now is the stock market. The stock market will never take another radical dive downward because the Federal Reserve won't let it. The way the economy is shaping up Treasury bonds, which hardly pay any interest, are just a safe place to store your money and also for foreign nations which need the world's reserve currency (the US dollar) to have a savings account because they need dollars to conduct business. There is no worry that the US will have to pay off the trillion dollars in Treasuries that China owns because they need those dollars to do business with the US and other nations. If they did want to dump all their Treasuries for some reason the Fed could just create the money to pay them and effectively take the Treasuries on its own balance sheet.

So the stock market is the only game in town for those who want to actually "invest" their money. There is so much 401(k) money in the stock market that that is reason enough to never let it fail. Instead it will continue on its merry way upward while the Fed keeps interest rates at approximately zero so that not much in the way of interest will have to be paid on US debt. There is no reason to fear that Joe Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure plan will bankrupt the US. Since the US dollar is a sovereign currency, the Fed can print as much money as it wants. If international investors don't want to buy this debt, it ends up on the Fed's balance sheet which is an effective black hole from which it never has to emerge.

Then why is there all this kibuki theater about "how to pay for it," the $2 trillion infrastructure plan I mean. It's just that most Americans including most Congressmen are under the illusion that a country with a sovereign currency like the US faces any constraints in paying for anything. Well, there is one constraint - inflation. This is probably of little concern as long as the money is targeted at the lower middle class an the poor which haven't seen wages rise in 40 years. The real inflation in the economy is the asset inflation that the rich are mostly responsible for. That includes the stock market and real estate. Inflation in the stock market will be carefully controlled by the Fed. We've seen that the stock market moved up even during the pandemic. The real problem is inflation in the real estate market which has made housing unaffordable for many. It continues to get worse as the extra dollars the wealthy have to invest are driving up prices. That's why it makes sense to tax the rich ostensibly to pay for the infrastructure bill. The real reason, however, is that inequality is getting out of hand in the American and the world economy. Taxing the rich is the only effective means to reduce inequality to a reasonable level. It will also help to bring inflation in the real estate market under control.

The real problem that Biden's infrastructure bill will have to deal with is changing the nature of the US economy. When the economy was in full employment under Trump, there were still 4% unemployed. 5% unemployment is considered "full employment," but that still leaves about 15 million people out of work. Biden's infrastructure plan will put those 5% back to work. It had been considered by conservative neoliberal economists that 5% unemployment was necessary to ward off inflation, but that theory has been debunked by Modern Monetary Theory. While inflation will still be a concern with all of Biden's stimulus spending, the main concern is restructuring the US economy from an entertainment economy to a constructive labor economy. Trump's economy was arguably a full employment economy (except for the 4% unemployed), but it was an economy the jobs of which were mainly in the entertainment and military industries. In other words, in my opinion, it was an economy based on false unbeneficial values. An economy based on labor participation rebuilding American infrastructure will be an economy based on necessary and fundamentally beneficial values. This might mean that some of those presently employed in frivolous industries might be incentivized to change jobs. Reducing the entertainment and military sectors while increasing those employed rebuilding infrastructure would be, in my opinion, be a good thing.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Former Energy Secretary Proposes Going to Capital Markets for Money to Upgrade Energy Grid Infrastructure: Is This Wise?

by John Lawrence, February 21, 2021

Clinton's Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, proposes going to the capital markets since the government has been spending so much money on COVID relief. He suggests a public-private partnership. Evidently, Mr. Richardson, like most politicians and dignitaries, is totally ignorant of Modern Monetary Theory. The Federal Reserve can create interest free money with a few computer keystrokes while the capital markets will charge interest, and not only that. Once you enter the Wall Street casino you're subject to all the vagaries of the financial markets like securitzation, credit default obligations, interest rate swaps, betting against the success of various programs and much more. These are the kind of financial activities that caused the 2008 Great Recession and the bankruptcy of Orange County, Birmingham, Milan Italy and the misery in Greece. What's more going to the capital markets causes the same inflation risks as having the Fed create the money because inflation is caused by the amount of money sloshing around in the economy not who supplies it.

Larry Summers is worried about Biden's big spending bills causing inflation. What he doesn't get is that these bills are targeted. It's not just money pumped into the economy. The money going to states and municipalities, for example, is going to pay off debts. That holds for all the money going to families who are behind on their rents and mortgages. Paying off debts is deflationary not inflationary. Money going to unemployment insurance is just money that allows people to consume as if they had a job. That is not inflationary. Money going to businesses to prevent them from failing and putting employees back to work is not inflationary because having these businesses fail and employees without jobs is deflationary. All those flights and cruises not taken, all the money not spent going to movie theaters, all the money not spent on consumption when consumption is 70% of the economy - is deflationary. In fact there is so much deflation during a recession that that is the main worry - not inflation.

But reorienting priorities should also play a part in controlling inflation. Decreasing the trillion dollar budget of the military and military-industrial complex would help to offset inflation and pay for infrastructure repair. It would also free up the human resources needed for a build out of green infrastructure because wage inflation is caused by not enough human resources being available thus bidding up wages. The integrity of the US dollar could also be increased by eliminating sanctions on other countries. The US is using the fact of sanctioning other countries because the US dollar is the world's reserve currency causing the diminution of the use of the US currency as sanctioned countries find workarounds using other currencies. In America's Other Forever War, Peter Beinart explains that these sanctions do not accomplish anything except to hurt the people that happen to be living in the countries that are sanctioned. The chickens will come home to roost as the US dollar looses value in the international currency markets as the euro, yen and reminbi are used more for international trade. As Beinart writes, "“It is past time,” Joe Biden pledged last year, “to end the forever wars.” He’s right. But his definition of war is too narrow."

A careful analysis of Biden's spending plans  as well as reorienting current spending priorities needs to be carried out so that runaway inflation does not occur. Certainly putting people back to work is not inflationary. Federal money targeted toward paying off debts by states, municipalities and families is not inflationary. Federal money spent on infrastructure is not inflationary providing that the human and material resources are available. Since the Federal Reserve can create US dollars without the need for taxes, Modern Monetary Theory has shown and economists widely agree that the only limit on Federal so-called "deficit" spending is inflation. Stephanie Kelton has explained that Deficits Don't Matter in her book, The Deficit Myth. People like Bill Richardson and most liberal and conservative politicians need to study up on economics. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are some of the few people that already have.

Off the Top of My Head

China Has Been Taking Over the World ... Peacefully

by John Lawrence, February 11, 2021

As Trump was retreating from multilateralism with his America First approach, China was winning friends and influencing people by building infrastruture in countries around the world with its Belt and Road initiative. This model put excess Chinese labor to work pulling their families out of poverty and set up the groundwork for increased trade and friendly relations with with other countries. Latest example: Latin America. Meanwhile, the US has not even been able to build infrastructure in its own country. Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) publishes The Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, which grades the current state of national infrastructure categories on a scale of A through F. In 2017, the U.S. infrastructure earned a D+ average. Stay tuned for a new report later this year. Infrastructure looms large because now it must be built out as green infrastructure replacing fossil fuel infrastructure.

In Latin America, America's so-called back yard, 19 countries have signed up for China's Belt and Road Initiative. The value of trade between China and Brazil, Latin America's largest country is $100 billion. China is South America's largest trading partner. Only Paraguay is not on board because they're the only South American country that recognizes Taiwan and not Beijing as the legitimate Chinese government. In 2019 Chinese companies invested $12.8 billion in Latin America concentrating on regional infrastructure such as ports, roads, dams and railways. Meanwhile, America was focused on its entertainment and consumerist economy, now partially defunct due to COVID. Chinese purchases of minerals and agricultural commodities helped South America get through the worst effects of the 2008 financial crisis. While the US had an orgy of financial speculation that created the 2008 financial crisis, China was powering on keeping its shoulder to the wheel, ear to the ground and nose to the grindstone building infrastructure and providing full employment for the Chinese people. As the US was relying on its military power to maintain its influence in the world, China was employing peaceful means to expand its influence. In 2020 the US spent $738 billion on defense, an additional $35 billion on nuclear weapons and and additional $80 billion on intelligence programs, none of which by the way provided intelligence on the assault on the Capitol although it had been discussed widely and openly on the web in prior weeks. Meanwhile, China's 2020 defense budget was $178 billion.

China's Cosco Shipping is building a new $3 billion port in Peru, and there are plans for a transcontinental railroad linking South America's Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Diplomatic opportunities for China have also been opened up due to COVID since China produces most of the world's PPE. The US was caught flat footed because it had to go hat in hand to China for PPE not much of which is manufactured domestically. Mask diplomacy has caused Washington to worry that China is gaining influence during the pandemic as China has provided PPE to 150 countries and 7 international organizations around the globe. While the US struggles to get vaccine into the arms of Americans, China has agreed to provide Pakistan with half a million doses of its Sinopharm vaccine free of charge. Time magazine reported:

"Yet China has won influence not by wielding sticks but by deftly distributing carrots. In Brazil, the region’s largest economy, bilateral trade with China rose from $2 billion in 2000 to $100 billion last year. Today, Brazil sends 30% of all exports to China, including 80% of its soybean crop and 60% of its iron ore. These entanglements are typically tightest with nations with goods to sell; China has supplied over $17 billion in financing to Argentina since 2007, according to Inter-American Dialogue, and is the world’s top importer of Argentine soybeans and beef.

"China is also now a preferred lender across the region. It hosts two international development banks–the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB) in Shanghai–that are both expanding their remit across the region. “Infrastructure development has shrunk the distance between Asia and Latin America,” AIIB president Jin Liqun tells TIME in his Beijing headquarters."

While China was deftly distributing carrots, the US was wielding sticks with Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo bullying the rest of the world to get them to fall in line behind the US. The US needs to cooperate with China to stave off the next big crisis - global warming - not start a new Cold War in an effort to overtake or compete with China. For the most part China has already won any competition to speak of by gaining cooperation and friendship with the rest of the world and achieving the world's largest economy while the US still struggles with COVID, its economy in shambles. "No country has put itself in a better position to become the world's renewable energy superpower than China,"says a recent report by the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation. In Brazil China's State Grid Corp. is the largest power generation and distribution company, while China's Three Gorges, the world's largest hydropower provider, controls 17 out of 48 hydro plants and 11 wind farms.

Joe Biden is doing his best to backtrack from Trump's disastrous America First policy, but American foreign policy is still on the track that it views China as a competitor rather than a nation that should be cooperated with in order to meet the challenge of global warming. Rather than gearing up for a military confrontation or quibbling and squabbling over human rights, the US must adopt a less belligerent foreign policy and learn to get along with the other nations of the world even those who have not been historic allies. The US should cut back on its bloated military and military-complex spending and devote the savings to virus research and green infrastructure implementation at home and around the world in cooperation with China and other nations.

Warren Blasts 'Unconscionable' $740 Billion Pentagon Budget While Millions Suffer From Poverty, Joblessness, and Covid-19

Published on Tuesday, February 02, 2021

by Common Dreams

"A budget is about priorities," said the Democratic senator.

by Kenny Stancil, staff writer

 

34 Comments

"Spending $740 billion dollars a year on this one piece of the federal budget is unconscionable," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said to Kathleen Hicks, one of President Joe Biden's Pentagon appointees, on Tuesday, February 2, 2021. (Photo: Screengrab from PBS NewsHour)

"We continue to overinvest in defense while underinvesting in public health and so much more."

"We can spend less on the military and obtain not only the same amount of security, but more."
—Stephen Wertheim, Historian

That's what Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said during Tuesday's Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing for Kathleen Hicks, President Joe Biden's nominee for deputy defense secretary.

"The size of the defense budget... has long been a concern of mine," said Warren, "but after the past year, watching more than 400,000 fellow Americans die, tens of millions unemployed due to Covid-19, millions more who are lined up at food banks, and even millions more who are on the threshold of losing their homes and being put out on the street, spending $740 billion dollars a year on this one piece of the federal budget is unconscionable."

"A budget is about priorities," said Warren. When the senator asked if the U.S. can reduce defense spending "without sacrificing our security," Hicks said no.

Even though "I certainly understand" how the coronavirus crisis "calls into question what the priorities are across our government," said Hicks, "I also... believe that we are a nation that can afford the defense that it needs to have."

"The focus on the top-line number can really obscure a more important conversation around what is it we want our military... to do," Hicks said, sidestepping Warren's point, which was that the national budget should reflect the issues that people in the U.S. want their representatives to focus on, like implementing policies to mitigate compounding public health, economic, and environmental emergencies.

 

"We can spend less on the military and obtain not only the same amount of security, but more," asserted Stephen Wertheim, deputy director of research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and research scholar at Columbia University.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CodePink, pointed out that Warren was the only lawmaker at the hearing to juxtapose the nation's bloated military budget with the surge in unmet social needs.

As Common Dreams reported Monday, all 10 senators behind the GOP's $618 billion coronavirus relief counterproposal voted in favor of spending $740 billion on endless wars in fiscal year 2021.

Those members of Congress were joined in supporting the National Defense Authorization Act by the majority of their fellow Republicans as well as the bulk of Democrats in the House and Senate, providing additional evidence of the extent to which most American lawmakers' priorities aren't aligned with those of the public.

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Off the Top of My Head

Mitch McConnell: "Loony Lies and Conspiracy Theories are Cancer for Republican Party"

by John Lawrence, February 3, 2021

Now even the leader of the Senate Republicans is admitting the Republican party is a joke. They've got nothing besides idol worship and rabbit holes. What do they stand for? White supremacy, bellicose machoism, xenophobia and solipsism masquerading as the American Dream. They stand for nothing except greasing their own palms and staying in power. McConnell at least and a few other principled Republicans like Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney and John Kasich actually are trying to reconstruct the Republican party based on conservative principles. Their problem is that their base is a bunch of wahoos that can't get enough of being entertained by Donald Trump or Marjorie Taylor Greene. Fantasy trumps reality for them.

The point is that in realistic terms the Republican party has nothing to offer. In a world that cries out for cooperation among great powers, they stand for bellicose machoism and bullying. In world where private enterprise is incapable of solving major outstanding problems like climate change and the pandemic, their emphasis on small government falls flat. In a world where it is becoming clear that taxes alone are not necessary for government spending, their pejorative negative hurled at Democrats - "tax and spend" - is meaningless. Their attempts at pulling the wool over Americans' eyes are becoming dispelled. Their fiscal policies have only served to increase economic inequality - to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. So what have they got? A base composed of looney tunes and no nothings and a head composed of the rich and powerful. It doesn't compute.

Republicans want to hearken back to a nostalgic past where black lives didn't matter, white people occupied all positions of prominence, Native Americans were extras in western movies and the concept of global warming had not even been formulated and was not on anybody's radar. They want things like they used to be. Well a lot has changed since then, whatever your definition of "then" is.  Forever wars are draining government finances that could be used in more productive ways. Global warming needs a MEOW solution - the Moral Equivalent of War. This calls for a large amount of government spending. It is becoming more evident, thanks to the exposition of Modern Monetary Theory, that the US government can never run out of money because the US dollar is a sovereign currency which can be created by a few keystrokes at the Fed. Even regular banks create money when they loan money for mortgages, auto loans etc. They don't need to have deposits before they make loans. It's called fractional reserve banking, and it's backed up by the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, which clears checks and is the loaner of last resort.

Government spending should not, however, represent fiscal profligacy or imprudence. The government should spend money responsibly which it has not been doing with spending on forever wars and tax breaks for the rich. IMHO Republican supported government spending has not been responsible spending. Fiscal conservatism should mean that money should solve actual problems and make the lives of most Americans better. So if Republicans want to be the party of fiscal conservatism in the future, they should be concerned that deficit spending does not lead to inflation or deflation, rather than just minimizing government spending other than on defense and tax breaks. Let's see if Republicans want to reformulate themselves on responsible terms or do they just want to continue to be the party of the rich.

Off the Top of My Head

Republicans: The Party of No to Democratic Values

by John Lawrence, January 30, 2921

As Joe Biden goes through the Kibuki theater of trying to get Republicans to sign on to the COVID relief bill, realpolitik Democrats are preparing to pass it using budget reconciliation. Republicans will likely vote in a bloc against the bill, but they won't be able to use the filibuster to nix it. Good thing that the cliffhanger in Georgia produced two Democratic Senators which made Democrats the majority in the Senate. Now all Democrats have to do is vote in a bloc to pass it. But will they? There are a few conservative Democrats who don't always vote with the rest, the most notable of which is Joe Manchin of West Virginia. How is he going to vote? I suspect he will vote with the rest of the Democrats because West Virginia has a lot of poor, suffering people who need relief.

Republicans will lose this vote so why will they all vote against it? Aren't they concerned that some of their constituents will hold it against them - especially the ones who really need the relief? Evidently not. They believe they have a lock on power in their own states. Georgia should be a wake up call for them. Republicans at this point stand for nothing except loyalty to a would be dictator. They don't care about fiscal prudence or anything else except pure raw political and economic power and campaign donations from the rich. The rich want deregulation and tax cuts so that's what they stand for. They certainly don't stand for anything of value for most Americans. Supposedly, they are against deficit spending although they have no problem with deficit spending when it comes to tax cuts which benefit the rich.

So it comes to light that a great many of the insurrectionists were military or ex-military. Why should that be surprising? People that are processed through the military are proto-fascists because the military is not a democratic institution. It's a top-down command and control organization where people are trained to kill. This is the mindset to which they are trained and instructed. On the other hand I venture to guess that not too many of the insurrectionists were previously Peace Corps members. It's a totally different mindset when the group you belong too is structured so as to help people rather than to hurt, maim, kill or dominate them. The insurrectionists are jingoes, and this is the definition from dictionary.com which suits them to a T: "a person who professes his or her patriotism loudly and excessively, favoring vigilant preparedness for war and an aggressive foreign policy; bellicose chauvinist." Bellicose chauvinists are people trained in the military because the military trains them to be unquestionably subservient to those above them in command and unquestionably threatening towards anyone perceived to be the enemy. Social media and conservative media has made no bones about who they consider to be the enemy. That would be any prominent Democrat past or present.

For many ex-military their identity was forged in the military. Take retired Lieutenant Colonel Larry Rendall Brock, Jr., a Texas-based Air Force Academy graduate and combat veteran, for example. Brock was videoed in the Senate Chamber "wearing several patches on his combat helmet and body armor, including one bearing a yellow fleur de lis, the insignia of the 706th Fighter Squadron. He also wore several symbols suggesting that he lived in Texas, including a vinyl tag of the Texas flag overlaid on the skull logo of the Punisher, the Marvel comic-book character. The Punisher has been adopted by police and Army groups and, more recently, by white supremacists and followers of QAnon. ... Also found [was] a recently deleted Twitter account associated with Brock, with a Crusader as its avatar. “All those things together, it’s like looking at a person’s C.V. ..." And his C.V. was forged in the military.

The US needs to own up to the fact that it has trained generations of bellicose chauvinist jingoes because it has become, despite General Eisenhower's warnings, a militaristic state that seeks to control the whole world with bullying tactics whether they be sanctions or actual military force. Despite recently closing hundreds of bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States still maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad—from giant “Little Americas” to small radar facilities. The insurrectionists that attacked the Capitol were just trying to make US domestic policy mirror US foreign policy most exemplified by Mike Pompeo dictating orders to other countries. They liked the military; they loved the military, and they want US domestic policy to reflect the life they knew in the military. That's where their characters were formed, not in the Peace Corps. The Republican party has become a party of proto-militarists who yearn for a strong Commander-in-Chief who demonstrates military values. That would be a dictator or Supreme General as exemplified by Donald Trump or so they thought.

Off the Top of My Head

The Militarization of American Consciousness

by John Lawrence, January17, 2021

Is it any wonder that a culture that celebrates the military and identifies patriotism with the American flag has generated a movement to over throw American constitutional government? Most of these people had their mindsets processed through the military establishment or through the military-industrial complex where the processing is just as military oriented. This combined with a perception that the US is becoming a multicultural, instead of a white oriented, society is enough to set them off. Also the state of American mental health is at a low ebb not least caused by the pandemic and the anger generated by the necessity of closing down small businesses or even with the perceived loss of freedom from a mandate to wear masks! The people chanting "USA. USA" and carrying multitudinous flags are the type of people whose notion of patriotism has to do with America being the Number One nation of the world, is identified with American power backed by the world's largest military. These are not people who served in the Peace Corps.

For example the Oath Keepers is an American far-right anti-government militia organization. The group describes itself as a non-partisan association of current and former military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath that all military and police take in order to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic" Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes the group as "heavily armed extremists with a conspiratorial and anti-government mindset looking for potential showdowns with the government." The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lists the group's founder as a known extremist and describes his announced plans to create localized militia units as "frightening". According to the SPLC, the group espouses a number of conspiracy and legal theories associated with the sovereign citizen movement and the white supremacist posse comitatus movement.

The bloated US military establishment is funded at a level that is ten times greater than the world's next largest militaries combined. In 2019, the United States spent $732 billion on national defense, which was more than the next 10 countries combined. So it's likely that the mindsets of the Capitol rioters have been processed through an American establishment that encourages their particular notion of patriotism which deemphasizes the idea of democracy and emphasizes xenophobia. It aspires to return to those days when the US was a white dominated country and rues the day that the demographics have changed toward a multicultural one. The American military establishment itself is an anachronism. When you add in the money spent on the US intelligence agencies and the nuclear program which is located in the Department of Energy, not in the Defense Department, the US spends about a trillion dollars a year on its defense establishment and yet it was impotent to prevent a mob of hooligans from taking over the US citadel of democracy - the US Capitol. Clearly our priorities are out of whack. Any ordinary 5th grader could have seen that a Trump rally numbering tens of thousands on the same day that Pence was supposed to legitimate the election results, after lies had been perpetrated ad infinitum that the results were not legitimate, could have been a disaster which it turned out to be.

Democracy cannot prevail without an educated citizenry yet the question must be asked: what kind of education? “If we needed a reminder of the fragility of our democracy, we got one,” said Andrew Delbanco, president of the Teagle Foundation, which promotes liberal arts education. “In the long run, the only force that can save democracy is an educated citizenry -- citizens, that is, who know enough to resist the kind of lies and incitements spewed out by the current president and his enablers.” But the US educational system does not emphasize an education in the humanities. It emphasizes the learning of technical knowledge and skills with an eye on innovation, entrepreneurship and potential profit. You too can invent some product and make a billion dollars. High school graduates are confronted with basically two choices: they can gain a college education while going deeply into debt or they can go into the military where they can get a free college education and even a pension after 5 years of service plus numerous other benefits. Which makes more sense? Young people are funneled into the military which is a command and control structure based on the most powerful leader at the top. Their mindsets are then prepared to want the same thing in civilian society. Trump gave it to them.

Clearly the people who carried numerous flags and chanted "USA. USA." are also of the mindset to chant "We're Number One. We're Number One." They are not the kind of people that want to live in a world where they cooperate with other people, perhaps of a different background or ethnicity, or a world based on US cooperation with other nations. They want to be part of a world in which the US dominates other nations, and the most powerful among us dominate and lead civilian life, just as the most powerful leaders are elevated to the highest ranks in the military and exert unquestioned command over those lower on the totem pole. This is the American mindset that the rioters demonstrate. This is a military consciousness based on American exceptionalism and white supremacy. They can't stand the fact that black and brown people are ascending into positions of power in American government and the world, that there has been a demographic shift in American society that does not favor them and that they will have to live in a more progressive society.

Off the Top of My Head

Instead of Sanctioning Foreign Actors Sanction Domestic Terrorists

by John Lawrence, January 12, 2021

The best development so far post insurrection is taking away Trump's twitter account permanently. The FBI, CIA and other law enforcement are rounding up the insurrectionists and they should get lengthy jail sentences and sanctions. The biggest threat to American democracy is not out there; it's in here. Their gathering places on social media such as Parler have been taken down or will be taken down soon. If the terrorists can't meet to spout their vitriol as well as plan future insurrections, we'll be making progress. Rush Limbaugh and other domestic terrorists should be sanctioned. Anyone egging on, benefiting from, taking advantage of the poor mental health or encouraging hatred and violence of the American people needs to be sanctioned. The fact that these terrorists could overwhelm the Capitol Police was a huge security failure. The fact that it took the Pentagon three hours to supply troops shows the fact that we are wasting huge amounts of money on a worthless military establishment that does not confront the real threats to this country. Perhaps these domestic terrorists need to be reeducated. We don't have the moral authority to mock China any more for doing this with its domestic terrorists.

Right now security forces in the US are on high alert. The National Guard is out in force. There are more forces on the streets of Washington, DC now than there are in Afghanistan. They should stay on high alert for the time being. I think the situation will get under control. Massive arrests and the total deplatforming and isolation of Donald Trump and domestic terrorist social media sites needs to be carried out. If they don't have gathering places on social media, they won't be able to organize. That's important. There needs to be a recognition that the militarization of the mindsets of young Americans which happens in the military and the glorification and seeming ubiquity of war as the only way to deal with other nations is a cause of the recent problems. Instead of funneling all non-college bound youth into the military, there needs to be an upsurge in funding and encouragement for young people to go into the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. We need to demilitarize the mindsets of the American people.

Terrorist and threatening phone calls need to be traced and the perpetrators brought to justice. No public official should have to live in fear for their lives and their family's lives because of death threats on phone calls or on social media. Social media is a big problem. They have gotten rich off the fact that their algorithms have encouraged, aided and abetted the domestic terrorists. Their business model showed that there was a lot of profit in encouraging conspiracy theories and other activities detached from reality. It's good that it has become evident by reporting on legitimate news outlets that social media is not subject to the First Amendment because that only applies to government hindrance of free speech. Social media platforms are private entities and they do not have to honor so-called free speech. Private entities also don't have to honor the Second Amendment so that there is space to restrict guns on private property which is probably 99% of the property in the US.

The next administration has its work cut out for them. Good leaders and good people will prevail. Deplatforming all right wing media and groups that espouse conspiracy theories and outright lies will be an important step. Sober analysis and critical thinking must replace narcissistic fantasy and entertainment values. This starts with children in school. They need to taught how to distinguish truth from lies. They need to be taught the value of peace and harmony not only in their daily lives but in the pursuit of that status among and between nations. They should be taught that the US has not always been but should aspire to moral and ethical behavior with regard to other nations and within its own country.

Money must be drained from the military establishment which is oriented towards either non-existant or phony threats and reoriented towards the real threats and funded at appropriate levels rather than be treated to carte blanche amounts of superfluous cash. Budgets both military and domestic need to be appropriate to their realistic needs. Right now the greatest need is in overcoming the pandemic and responding to the economic needs of the lower half of the population. Also eliminating energy production from fossil fuels needs to proceed post haste. It's obvious that the private economy can not do this at the rate necessary to save the planet from the ravages of global warming. Only big government programs in conjunction with the programs of other countries can possibly achieve the reality of zero carbon emissions by 2030.

The last word is that Trump must be denied any post Presidential influence or following by any and all legal means. This is the greatest thing that can be done to heal and deradicalize the country. America also will pay a heavy price if it doesn't get its promotion of gun culture under control.

Off the Top of My Head

My Horse, My Horse, My Kingdom for a Horse

by John Lawrence, January 9, 2021

Only in Trump's case: My Twitter Account, My Twitter Account, My Kingdom for a Twitter Account. Trump has been emasculated. He's been banned from Twitter, Facebook, Shopify and God knows what else. As well he should be. This guy was not so much a President as he was a Tweeter-in-Chief and rabble rouser. He roused a lot of rabble a few days ago when he almost had Congress persons killed and taken hostage. Who thought it was a good idea to have a rally on the day the votes for the next President were to be certified? Well, Donald Trump of course. He knew what he was doing. It's just that his doofus supporters were inept at coup planning or the outcome might have been entirely different. Trump, Rudy Giuliani ("trial by combat"? he was wrong and, according to his own words, has been made a fool of and should go to jail) and Don Jr should be criminally implicated for inspiring to riot. Trump should be criminally implicated also for not calling out the National Guard till it might have been too late. It seems that only he had the authority to do so, and he was allowing sufficient time for his acolytes to do their dirty work.

Joe Biden definitely has his work cut out for him. He has to deal with a global pandemic which may be mutating. He has to deal with 40 years of neoliberal economic policies which have made the rich richer and the poor homeless. And he has to deal with a cult of domestic terrorists. To those who think that China, Russia and Iran are the problems, I've got news for you: the American people, a huge contingent of them, are the problem. Gun violence is the problem. Trillions of dollars wasted on a sitting military, on the grounds that we have enemies who justify this, is the problem. The policies of George W Bush who caused millions of deaths in the Middle East with the result of ongoing chaos is the problem. It's enough to make your head spin. While the US is in chaos as a society, the rest of the world is moving forward. While Joe Biden must play catch up, the rest of the world is moving ahead. While much of the US citizenry is composed of cultish dingbats, the rest of the world are very clear eyed by comparison. While the US culture and militarization of mindset is descending into a cesspool of self indulgence, people in the rest of the world are using their brains and feelings of compassion for their fellow inhabitants of earth to move ahead. While religious bigots use Jesus as an excuse to do dastardly deeds in the same way that the Ku Klux Klan has always done, the rest of the world is coming from a more enlightened attitude toward ethics and morality, religion or no religion.

The result is that the US has become the equivalent of a Third World country with an outsized and bloated military. Pride goeth before a fall, and the US, if it cannot get its act together, will go the way of the Roman Empire when it descended into chaos. The best the US can hope for coming out of the putrefaction of the Trump era is to be a good partner with the rest of the world as we solve enormous problems including climate change and poverty. No more yelling "We're Number One" when clearly a significant number of us are spoiled brats and worse. Let's turn the military culture into a peace culture. Let's take megaphones away from demagogues the way Twitter has denied Trump his Twitter account. Let's police social media.

Social media has not ennobled the American people; instead it has allowed a large number of Americans to be turned into a cult the way radio allowed Hitler in the 1930s to encultify, to coin a word, the German people. Cults demand that people pay obeisance to a leader. Kim Jong Un is sitting there thinking that the US is just as big a cult as North Korea. The remedy for this is that people have to be educated to think critically and not to follow some powerful figure with a huge megaphone whether it be Hitler, Mussolini or Donald Trump. Trump's megaphone has been taken away the way a parent takes away a child's favorite toy if he or she misbehaves. Trump's following have a militarized mindset. I would lay dollars to doughnuts that most of them have served in the military the way Ashli Babbit, the rioter who was shot, did. Perhaps if young Americans were required to do two years of national service or service in the Peace Corps instead of being incentivized to become Marines, sailors and airmen, attitudes would change. Instead of their minds being molded to taking commands from superior officers, they might develop an alternative mindset in which serving the poor and unfortunate of the world would be their highest priority.

The US has become a degenerate society, composed of unthinking followers of a strongman who had promised them that they're number one, Americans are number one and we're the greatest society and nation on earth. This is misguided thinking doomed to failure. This is the fall of the Roman Empire, the people of which had become a bunch of degenerate spoiled brats. There are good people here of course. The new administration represents a great many of them. There are many changes that need to be made in US society that they will try to change. It will be a sisyphean effort. Much of what has been seen as essential to American culture will have to be discarded and we will have to join the rest of the world's nations humbly in a cooperative effort to combat global warming and create a culture of love, peace and compassion.

Off the Top of My Head

What Can Joe Biden Do to "Restore the Soul of the Nation"?

by John Lawrence, November 24, 2020

The Biden Administration has its work cut out for them. Rejoining the Paris Accords on climate change, rejoining the World Health Organization, appointing a head to the Environmental Protection Agency who is actually not trying to destroy the Environment etc etc. All of these things while so necessary are kind of obvious. To restore the soul of the nation, the number one thing Biden needs to do is to demilitarize the nation. The US spends about a trillion dollars a year on its military more than the ten next highest spending countries combined. It's not just a question of the defense budget; it's all the spending in the military-industrial complex as well. This is at a time when the main threat to the US is domestic not foreign terrorism. Dwight Eisenhauer warned about the encroaching military-industrial complex. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

The violence, discord and division that we see within the United States is a direct reflection of the violence and discord the US has perpetrated in Vietnam and Iraq, two wars which Presidents of the US lied about. The 80 million refugees living in horrible refugee camps in the world are a direct result of US military policy which currently stations soldiers at nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad. The US military is the largest employer in the US. The next largest employer, Walmart, employs 1.5 million people. There were a total of 1.3 million active duty military and more than 800,000 reserve forces as of September 2017, according to Defense Department personnel data. But this doesn't count the number of civilians in the military-industrial complex employed by companies like Lockheed Martin (110,000 employees), Boeing (161,133 employees), Raytheon (195,000 employees), BAE Systems (85,800 employees), Northrop Grumman (90,000 employees), General Dynamics (107,000 employees) and many more.

The fact of the matter is that high school graduates who have neither the money nor prospects for college usually go into the military where many benefits await them like free advanced and specialty training, a guaranteed paycheck, free health and dental care, enlistment bonuses, free room and board, educational benefits, a pension and much more. Going into the military right out of high school does not deprive you of a college education. The military can help pay for college or pay off college loans. Most enlistees are eligible for up to 100 percent of college tuition through the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) while on active duty. Additionally, the Air Force has the nation’s largest community college, the Community College of the Air Force for which enrollment is automatic upon enlistment in the Air Force. Armed Forces education benefit programs include the Forever GI Bill, Army, Navy, Marine and Navy College Funds, College Loan Repayment (including Student Loan Forgiveness) and Student Loan Deferment and Forbearance. As an Uber driver I pick up a lot of military people. One Navy guy told me he joined the Navy so that after 5 years he could get free training to become a helicopter pilot at a civilian school. They even can get a pension after 5 years.

Now the high school graduates like me who have college prospects often like me,, end up in the military-industrial complex. I worked at General Dynamics Convair Division in San Diego for several years, later at the Naval Electronics Lab on Point Loma which has changed its name several times to protect the guilty as they say. So many college graduates especially in the engineering fields end up in the milkitary-industrial complex while high school graduates that don't go to college end up in the military, not because they love the military, but because they love the generous benefits. When you add up all the people in the military plus all the people in the military-industrial complex, it's clear that the US is a militarist state whose employment base is military related. This is nonsensical when a greater threat is from domestic terrorism than foreign terrorism, and there is no threat from foreign nation states only from scattered terrorists which could be dealt with with a fraction of the military and military-industrial complex budget that presently exists.

Now consider the benefits accruing to those who join the peace Corps and AmeriCorps. What there still is a Peace Corps. You never hear a word about it in the media. The Peace Corps provides each Volunteer with housing and a living stipend that enables them to live in a manner similar to people in their community of service. Unlike other international volunteer programs, there is no charge to participate in the Peace Corps. There is no application fee, although costs may only be partially covered for required medical examinations during the application process. Upon completion of two years of service, the Peace Corps provides each Volunteer with more than $10,000 (pre-tax) to help with the transition to life back home. This money is yours to use as you wish. AmeriCorps has some educational benefits after completion. The Segal AmeriCorps Education Award is a post-service benefit earned by individuals who complete approved terms of national service in AmeriCorps programs. Well, suffice it to say, the benefits of joining the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps don't compare with the benefits of joining the military and the funding available for these two programs is meager compared to the military budget.

So what Joe Biden can do is to increase the benefits for Peace Corps and AmeriCorps while increasing the funding for those programs and decreasing the funding for the military and the military-industrial complex. This will have the effect of demilitarizing the consciousness of American citizens and will actually do a lot of good in America and the world. When I was in the military-industrial complex, they encouraged you to vote Republican because Republican administrations would increase military funding while, Democratic administrations would reduce it. The message was clear: If you wanted there to be funding for your job, you'd better vote Republican. That's why there should be a pathway for transitioning to a Peace economy from the Militarist economy which guarantees jobs in the Peace-Industrial complex for those presently employed in the military-industrial complex. In the same way there should be a guarantee of employment in the renewable energy field for those losing their jobs in the fossil fuel field.

A transition to a Peace economy away from the military economy in parallel with a transition to a renewable energy economy away from the fossil fuel economy will do a lot to make the United States and the world a better place, and also, by the way, to restore the soul of the nation.

Off the Top of My Head

Expand Habitat for Humanity in Honor of Jimmy Carter

by John Lawrence, November 11, 2020

The best way to build wealth among poor people is to expand a program that gets them into a house. The debt industry profits off of poor people whether it's Payday lenders, student loan debt, car loan debt, credit card debt or mortgage debt. The debt industry, aka the banking industry, profits off of poor people's debt. That's why the poor need to build wealth which will also close the economic inequality gap. Home ownership is the main way the middle class builds wealth which is then intergenerationally transferable. Habitat says "In fiscal year 2019, we helped more than 7 million people, and an additional 2.3 million gained the potential to improve their housing conditions through training and advocacy." It's not clear how many new houses that 7 million figure represents because they also help people by doing housing improvements. Looking at Habitat's Form 990 reveals some interesting data. They have annual revenues of approximately $300 million. Revenues less expenses for FY 2018 was about $13 million. Without doing an exhaustive analysis of this Form 990, it would seem that $13 million is a paltry amount of money to build new homes if in fact it all went to building new homes. It is to be noted that the CEO made about $400,000. They also seem to spend an enormous amount on advertising and fundraising.

A government program based on the Habitat model could magnify the number of new affordable homes built per year and could be combined with AmeriCorps which is already working with Habitat. Government service building affordable homes should be an alternative to military service with comparable benefits. One drawback of Habitat is that it does not serve homeless or low income families who can't afford a modest mortgage. So a government program based on the Habitat model should look at improving on the Habitat model. Another thing is that Habitat claims to be a "Christian organization." Does that mean that religiously nonChristian families are not eligible? A government program should not have connections to a particular religion but should be open to people of all or no religions. It should be nondenominational. The people who eventually own the homes have to put in a certain amount of "sweat equity." This is good because it makes the homes more affordable. A program based on FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps could employ youths in public service for 2 years building houses in return for free college education and other benefits. These homes need to be solarized and be built in such a way as to be non-emitting of greenhouse gasses.

The best way to co-opt Trump voters is to offer them economic opportunities. Promised economic opportunities (promised but not delivered) are the thing that pushed Trump over the top in 2016 in the rust belt states. A program of building houses ala Habitat not only would help poor people, who are disproportionately minorities, but would tend to placate poor whites who are mainly Trump voters. That's why programs helping the poor can't be labeled "Black Lives Matter" programs. They can't be just for black people although black people would disproportionately benefit. To design a program only for black people would further alienate Trump voters. Bringing this country together, as Joe Biden has professed he wants to do, means that all programs to help people must of necessity be color blind. Another benefit is that people who contribute to public service in AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps will tend to vote Democratic because they will have seen how Democratic programs have benefited not only themselves but other people as well.

Many people who join the military do so for the benefits and because they have no better prospects after high school. Military service for 5 years gains them a free college education plus many other generous benefits, even a pension. They also get brainwashed to vote Republican. Even those working in the military-industrial complex are brainwashed to vote Republican. As a college graduate the jobs available to me were mainly in the military-industrial complex. Once there I was pressured to vote Republican because it was believed that Republicans would expand funding for the military and hence the military-industrial complex. It was thought that a Democratic administration would cut funding for the military-industrial complex and we could be RIFd (Reduction in Force). Expanding programs in the peace industry should have the opposite effect. I left the military-industrial complex many years ago fortunately, and my economic future doesn't depend on future funding it. Many others are not in the same position.

As the nation transitions from fossil fuels to renewables, it's important that workers in the fossil fuel industry have a path to transition to new jobs. The same holds true in transitioning workers in the military-industrial complex to the peace-industrial complex. It's also important to give young people the possibility of serving their country in a way that contributes to peace and economic stability with comparable benefits instead of serving in the military. The peace industry (like building houses here and abroad) needs to become more important than the war industry. The issue of global warming in particular means that all nations of the world must cooperate and foster a spirit of cooperation while putting their antagonisms aside. Peace, renewable energy, economic development for poor and middle class people need to replace a power structure that fosters political antagonism among the nations of the world. Jimmy Carter not only wields a hammer for Habitat for Humanity in his nineties, but also put solar panels on the roof of the White House (which Ronald Reagan took down). If we had had Jimmy Carter for a second term and Al Gore instead of George W Bush (with his fossil fuel loving vice President, Dick Cheney), we would be further along the path toward replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and further along the path of dealing with global warming.

Off the Top of My Head

There is No Such Thing as a National Solution to a Global Crisis

by John Lawrence, October 9, 2020

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation announced its 2020 Goalkeepers report with the above words. COVID-19 has killed more than 850,000 people worldwide. Every year until this one the world has made progress towards reducing poverty and disease. Notice the Gates foundation emphasis on the world as one coherent unified organism rather than just on US national boundaries. The pandemic knows no national boundaries. Until it's stamped out worldwide, the US is vulnerable. The foolishness of spending a trillion dollars a year on the US military which was powerless to do anything about the pandemic has been demonstrated. International cooperation is crucial to ending this pandemic, as well as others which are likely to follow, and reducing the conditions of poverty and disease in the world which breed war and terrorism. When will the US get its priorities straight?

The Goalkeepers report tracked 18 indicators included in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In recent years, the world has improved on every single one. This year, on the vast majority, we’ve regressed.There is also a worldwide recession that the military and military-industrial complex is powerless to do anything about. The US is not an island. Pandemics, global warming - these are problems affecting the whole world not just the US. Nations that have the resources need to assist other nations that don't have the resources. That means that the developed world has to help the developing world to combat these problems: disease, poverty, weaponization, global warming.

In 2015, 193 world leaders agreed to a series of 17 ambitious goals to end poverty, fight inequality, and stop climate change by 2030. The Global Goals are within our reach, but we must remain committed—embracing what works and addressing what doesn’t, while holding ourselves and others accountable. In 2016 President Trump dropped out of global cooperation with his America First policy. That has gotten the US nowhere. Whichever countries handle the pandemic intelligently are going to come out of the recession as world leaders. That won't be the US unless Joe Biden gets elected and is able to turn the shambles of Trump's response to the pandemic around.

The first and most important goal is ending poverty. Eradicating poverty is not a task of charity, it's an act of justice and the key to unlocking an enormous human potential. Still, nearly half of the world’s population lives in poverty, and lack of food and clean water is killing thousands every single day of the year. Together, we can feed the hungry, wipe out disease and give everyone in the world a chance to prosper and live a productive and rich life. The second goal is zero hunger. Hunger is the leading cause of death in the world. Our planet has provided us with tremendous resources, but unequal access and inefficient handling leaves millions of people malnourished. If we promote sustainable agriculture with modern technologies and fair distribution systems, we can sustain the whole world’s population and make sure that nobody will ever suffer from hunger again.

The third goal is good health and well-being. Over the last 15 years, the number of childhood deaths has been cut in half. This proves that it is possible to win the fight against almost every disease. Still, we are spending an astonishing amount of money and resources on treating illnesses that are surprisingly easy to prevent. The new goal for worldwide Good Health promotes healthy lifestyles, preventive measures and modern, efficient healthcare for everyone. The fourth goal is quality education. Education liberates the intellect, unlocks the imagination and is fundamental for self-respect. It is the key to prosperity and opens a world of opportunities, making it possible for each of us to contribute to a progressive, healthy society. Learning benefits every human being and should be available to all.

The fifth goal is gender equality. Gender bias is undermining our social fabric and devalues all of us. It is not just a human rights issue; it is a tremendous waste of the world’s human potential. By denying women equal rights, we deny half the population a chance to live life at its fullest. Political, economic and social equality for women will benefit all the world’s citizens. Together we can eradicate prejudice and work for equal rights and respect for all. The sixth goal is clean water and sanitation. This will require major infrastructure development. It's not rocket science. The techniques involved are well known in the developed world. One in three people live without sanitation. This is causing unnecessary disease and death. Although huge strides have been made with access to clean drinking water, lack of sanitation is undermining these advances. If we provide affordable equipment and education in hygiene practices, we can stop this senseless suffering and loss of life.

Actually I would put clean water and sanitation right up there with ending poverty. It would put an end to many of the diseases that occur in the underdeveloped world. The emphasis on healthy living and basic creature comforts needs to spearhead the use of resources worldwide. That means that developed nations have to give back to the underdeveloped ones instead of putting their further enjoyment and well being first which is the gist of America First. Global cooperation to combat global problems needs to take precedence over preparations for war and bullying other nations by the most powerful ones. The negligence and incompetence with which Trump has treated the COVID pandemic, the withdrawal of the US from universal institutions, almost assures that the US will assume a secondary status in the world unless the next administration can make up for the damage Trump has done and set us on a new and more constructive course.

Why We Will Win the Fight to Cut the Pentagon Budget

Published on Friday, July 31, 2020

by Responsible Statecraft

Coupled with a possible shift to Democratic governance, major public support, and a fired up progressive movement, our moment to win is upon us.

by Erica Fein

 

3 Comments

The energy coming from the progressive foreign policy movement is also buoyed by broad public support. (Photo by NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images)

This week, Senate Republicans unveiled their long-awaited COVID-19 “relief” legislation, and it falls cruelly, laughably short on almost every metric. The bill provides inadequate funding for testing and contact tracing, includes no money for states and localities, cuts federal unemployment benefits (while providing immunity for corporations who put their workers at risk), provides no rental or mortgage assistance, nor does it extend the eviction moratorium. But it does ensure that one group is well taken care of: the defense industry. The legislation provides nearly $30 billion for the Pentagon, $24 billion of which would go directly to the arms industry.

This comes on the heels of two major votes in the House and the Senate to cut the Pentagon budget by 10 percent. Both amendments were soundly defeated.

Yet while the picture may look bleak, there is cause for optimism about reducing the Pentagon budget. In fact, conditions look more favorable today than they have at any time for at least a decade. That’s owed to organizing inside of Congress, an energized progressive foreign policy movement, and a new national reckoning over budget priorities propelled into the nation’s consciousness by the national uprisings over systemic white supremacy and the coronavirus crisis.

The progressive movement is much more intersectional, and bolder, than it used to be. It’s no accident that the Sunrise Movement, a group whose mission is to combat the climate crisis, is in the anti-militarism fight while organizations like Win Without War are crying out for action on climate: our struggles are not just intertwined, our strategies are linked too.

 

Comparing the recent votes to cut the Pentagon budget with a similar vote in 2017 illustrates the point. Three years ago, the House voted on an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill to cut the Pentagon budget by one percent, or just $7 billion. That year, 35 percent of House Democrats supported the cut. Contrast that with today’s House effort, led by Representatives Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan, which sought to chop 10 percent, or $74 billion, off the Pentagon’s topline. Today, 40 percent of House Democrats supported the amendment, despite the fact that members of their own party wrote the bill. And in a parallel Senate effort, led by Senators Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey, and Elizabeth Warren, nearly half of the Democratic Caucus voted for the amendment, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has not been known to be supportive of such measures.

These votes didn’t just happen. Since May, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has been pushing a strategy to call attention to the ostensible blank check for war that Congress is handing the Trump administration by passing massive Pentagon spending and policy legislation without any real constraints. Days before the vote, the CPC urged its members to oppose the National Defense Authorization Act without adoption of the Pocan-Lee amendment — something it has never done before. In the end, 43 Democrats voted against this year’s NDAA. The previous year, just eight did.

The inside efforts have been matched with enthusiastic organizing on the outside. The People over Pentagon coalition, which brings together a diverse set of organizations to dramatically reduce the size of the Pentagon budget in order to fund human needs, sent a letter to Congress signed by over 60 groups supporting the amendment; Win Without War activists alone have taken nearly 120,000 actions  — signing petitions, sending emails, and making calls to Congress — and activists have placed dozens of op-eds and LTEs around the country in support of this amendment.  

The energy coming from the progressive foreign policy movement is also buoyed by broad public support. A recent poll shows a majority want to transfer Pentagon spending to other priorities, such as combatting the coronavirus. And the issue is becoming a part of the national public discourse — from Seth Myers arguing that “decades of conservative governance that has raided the Treasury to dole out billions in defense spending,”to the Movement for Black Lives rolling out a legislative proposal that includes a (yet-to-be-written provision) to dramatically reduce the DOD budget.   

Despite these signs of progress, some might argue that the stranglehold of the arms industry over Congress will block any real chance of change. After all, the GOP’s latest proposal is really just business as usual on steroids. Indeed, every time a Pentagon spending bill passes, hundreds of press releases are sent out cheering on the federal dollars coming home for ships, planes, and bombs one day intended for war.

But this is where time and circumstances are changing things. The progressive movement is much more intersectional, and bolder, than it used to be. It’s no accident that the Sunrise Movement, a group whose mission is to combat the climate crisis, is in the anti-militarism fight while organizations like Win Without War are crying out for action on climate: our struggles are not just intertwined, our strategies are linked too. If we are going to be able to cut the Pentagon, we will need to replace the real investments and jobs Pentagon spending generates with something else. And that’s a perfect entree for the Green New Deal, which will not only lead to a better planet but also more employment and prosperity.

Perhaps the most important indicator that change is possible is the draft Democratic Party 2020 platform, which argues that national security can be provided for less defense spending, and that after two decades, it’s time to end our forever wars. Even as an aspirational document, the platform leaves much to be desired, and the devil is in the details; but that’s where the real work comes in.

Should Joe Biden be elected president, the progressive movement inside and outside of Congress is in its best position in years to cut the Pentagon budget. Not only are Pocan and Lee not giving up, they’re forming a new caucus on the issue. Senators Sanders and Warren continue to be forceful voices in the Senate and with the public. And the movement’s not slowing down: in response to the new GOP bill, 75 organizations just sent a letter to congressional leadership, amplifying a demand from April that no more COVID-relief money be spent on the Pentagon.

Finally, in 2021 for the first time in 10 years, lawmakers will have a major chance to reprioritize federal spending. That’s because the Budget Control Act of 2011, which locked in so-called “defense” and “non-defense” spending levels for a decade and prevented the transfer of money between those two categories, will expire. 

So let’s dream big and end the era of massive defense spending. Coupled with a possible shift to Democratic governance, major public support, and a fired up progressive movement, our moment to win is upon us.

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Erica Fein is the Advocacy Director at Win Without War, engaging policymakers, the NGO community, the media, and grassroots partners to advance a progressive foreign policy and national security agenda.

© 2020 Responsible Statecraft

 

 

 

 

"The Fight Isn't Over," Say Anti-War Groups as 139 House Democrats Vote With GOP to Reject 10% Pentagon Budget Cut

Published on Tuesday, July 21, 2020

by Common Dreams

"Though our amendment didn't pass, progressive power is stronger than ever. We will keep fighting for pro-peace, pro-people budgets until it becomes a reality," said Rep. Mark Pocan.

by Jake Johnson, staff writer

 

88 Comments

This picture taken on December 26, 2011 shows the Pentagon building in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Staff/AFP via Getty Images)

Anti-war groups vowed to keep fighting to slash the bloated Pentagon budget after the House of Representatives on Tuesday rejected a proposal to cut U.S. military spending by 10% and invest the savings in housing, healthcare, and education in poor communities.

The final vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) amendment sponsored by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) was 93-324, with 139 Democrats joining 185 Republicans in voting no. The failure of the Lee-Pocan amendment means the final version of the House NDAA will propose a $740.5 military budget for fiscal year 2021, a more than $2 billion increase from the previous year.

"Ninety-three members of Congress stood together to oppose a bloated $740 billion defense budget," Pocan, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tweeted following the vote. "Though our amendment didn't pass, progressive power is stronger than ever. We will keep fighting for pro-peace, pro-people budgets until it becomes a reality."

The Senate is expected to vote later Tuesday on a companion to the Lee-Pocan amendment sponsored by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

While voicing disappointment in the amendment's defeat, Win Without War tweeted that just a few years ago it "would have been unthinkable" for 93 members of Congress to vote in favor of a 10% cut to the Pentagon budget.

"If we keep up this momentum, there's no doubt: change is coming," the group said.

Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs at Peace Action, said in a statement that "more representatives voted today for the largest reduction in Pentagon spending than in recent history."

"Congress still needs to catch up with the will and needs of the electorate, where over half want to see reductions in the bloated Pentagon to pay for other priorities," said Martin. "The main threats to America's security, like the global health pandemic and economic crisis, have no military solution. Right now, Congress must prioritize our spending on helping Americans during this pandemic."

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Americans Overwhelmingly Support Cutting the Pentagon to Support Our Real Needs

Published on Monday, July 20, 2020

by Common Dreams

A 10 percent cut to the Pentagon could come from a multitude of places, including: ending our never-ending wars in the Middle East, reducing our reliance on nuclear weapons, and turning off the spigot to arms contractors.

by Lindsay Koshgarian

 

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The Pentagon budget is more than 100 times the budget of the Centers for Disease Control. (Photo by NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images)

The United States is a world leader in new coronavirus cases, unemployment remains sky-high, and COVID testing and protective gear for health workers are scarce once more.

But this week, instead of sending desperately needed help, Congress will debate sending $740 billion to the Pentagon.

In 2019, more than $370 billion—half of the Pentagon budget—went to commercial contractors.

These priorities are desperately out of touch, and Americans know it. A new Data for Progress poll shows that more than half of Americans support cutting 10 percent of the Pentagon budget to pay for things like the coronavirus response, health care, education, and housing.

It’s a bipartisan cause. While 69 percent of Democrats supported such a cut, so did 50 percent of Republicans.

A few lawmakers are taking action.

Soon, both the House and Senate will vote on a proposal by Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Barbara Lee, and Representative Mark Pocan calling for a 10 percent cut to the Pentagon budget — worth $74 billion — to fund more urgent needs. It couldn’t come at a better time.

Today’s Pentagon budget is higher than it was during the peak of the Cold War. If this spending were necessary to guarantee our security, that would be one thing. Instead, in 2019, more than $370 billion — half of the Pentagon budget—went to commercial contractors.

We’ve overinvested in the Pentagon and underinvested in everything else—and it shows in our country’s pandemic response. The Pentagon budget is more than 100 times the budget of the Centers for Disease Control. The contracts awarded to just one company, Lockheed Martin, were worth more than seven times the entire budget of the CDC.

A 10 percent cut to the Pentagon could come from a multitude of places, including: ending our never-ending wars in the Middle East, reducing our reliance on nuclear weapons, and turning off the spigot to arms contractors.

All this would be worth doing even if we didn’t need the money so badly elsewhere. But while it’s a drop in the bucket to the Pentagon, that $74 billion would be a giant windfall to many critical government programs.

For just 10 percent of the Pentagon budget, we could house every homeless person in the United States—or buy enough N95 protective face masks for every essential worker in the country to use one every day for a year. For a fraction of that $74 billion, we could multiply the CDC budget several times over.

Unfortunately, politicians on both sides of the aisle have unquestioningly sent hundreds of billions of dollars to the Pentagon for year after year. But now, at a time of such desperate need in our country, this cut should be an easy decision.

This shift in spending has support from Americans of every political persuasion. It’s time to reinvest in what really keeps us safe.

Lindsay Koshgarian directs the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

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Off the Top of My Head

Take Heart Americans: We May Have the World's Worst Response to the Coronavirus, But We Still Have the World's Strongest Military

by John Lawrence, July 15, 2020

Even though we have reduced spending on public health to near zero, we spend about a trillion dollars per year on our military. Trump's response to the pandemic has been, "Pandemic? What pandemic? Let's not let the pandemic ruin a beautiful economy. Open up the economy. It's mainly people of color, the elderly and meatpackers who are doing the dying. So let it rip. If everybody gets it, and there's a 2% death rate, that's only .02x330 million = 6 million Americans who will die. That still leaves 224 million healthy Americans and a fully open beautiful economy." That is the thinking that is the opposite of the thinking of the health professionals, scientists and people who care about the elderly, people of color and meatpackers. Some might say that it is the thinking of a sociopath, a sociopath that cares more about getting himself reelected than he does about the people of America.

Trump knows that it isn't rich people in his base that are doing the dying. Sure, there are the libertarians, non-mask wearers and COVID partyers in his base who are stupid enough to follow his suggestions, those deserving of Darwin awards. True conservatives don't believe in public health. They only are concerned about private health care for those who can pay for it.That's why Trump has defunded every public health agency in the government he could get his hands on. If there's no profit in it for private enterprise, conservatives are against it. That means the CDC, WHO and Dr. Fauci. In an article, Public Health’s Falling Share of US Health Spending, we find this:

There is no absolute measure of the optimal level of public health spending. However, an Institute of Medicine panel recently concluded that public health agencies are markedly underfunded, and that US health spending is out of balance, with spending for clinical care disproportionately high compared with spending for “population-based activities that more efficiently and effectively improve the nation’s health.

While spending on public health is declining, spending on private health care is increasing. That's because health care insurance and pharmaceutical costs are going through the roof. But you get what you pay for in private health care as opposed to public health which treats everyone more or less equally. That's why Trump and Republicans in general seek to defund governmental public health initiatives and to deregulate private health care corporations. The rich then will always get the best health care because they can afford to pay outrageous prices while the poor will get what they can pay for which is not very much. If they lose their job and their health insurance, they will get nothing.

So in Trump's mind it's not worth ruining his beautiful economy for the sake of  a few million people of color, immigrants, people of color, meatpackers and old people who were going to die anyway. He could Make America Great Again without these people who were not in his base without them.

But we can all rejoice in the fact that America's military budget is greater than the combined military budgets of most of the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined. The U.S. outpaces all other nations in military expenditures. World military spending totaled more than $1.6 trillion in 2015. The U.S. accounted for 37 percent of the total. All this spending hasn't been able to fight off the coronavirus though. While other countries spent their money on public health, the US spent on weapons of destruction. It seems the only thing we've destroyed is our own society. Trump's real slogan should be MAPA - Make America Pitiful Again. That's exactly what he has done.