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Pentagon Claims 1,100 High Schools Bar Recruiters; Peace Activists Offer $1,000 Award If Any Such School Can Be Found

April 23, 2019 David Swanson and Pat Elder, Davidswanson.org , ,
According to statements in February by the Secretary of the Army, various U.S. high schools are barring military recruiters from access to students. The Secretary of the Navy this past December said that public school boards are keeping military recruiters out of 1,100 high schools. The two of us are offering a $1,000 prize (details below) to any public U.S. high school that can identify itself as fitting this description. Peace activists who struggle to gain admittance to high schools to present the case against military enlistment have not in recent years encountered a school that barred admittance to the military.

U.S. Just Declared War On Iran And Nobody Blinked

April 14, 2019 Scott Ritter, Information Clearinghouse. , , ,
The United States has long been engaged in a secret shadow war with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), dating back to the American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. This conflict took the lives of hundreds of American troops and hundreds more IRGC members. The Iranian opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and the inability of the U.S. to militarily defeat Iranian forces inside Iraq, was just one reason that the Obama administration decided to withdraw American troops in 2011. Since that time, a tenuous truce has existed between the U.S. military in the region and the IRGC.

NATO Propaganda Promotes War, Military Spending

April 8, 2019 Staff, Yvesengler.com , ,
The first two installments of the series showed how NATO was set up to blunt the European left and to justify European/North American dominance across the globe. Recently, the alliance has intensified pressure on Canada to increase spending on the military and participate in more wars. As its Cold War pretext fades further from view, NATO has become more belligerent. In 1999 Canadian fighter jets dropped 530 bombs in NATO’s illegal 78-day bombing of Serbia. During the 2000s tens of thousands of Canadian troops fought in a NATO war in Afghanistan.

‘Venezuela Won’t Become 2nd Syria’: Lavrov Sure S. America Won’t Back Military Invasion v. Maduro

April 5, 2019 Staff, Rt.com , , , ,
Tensions over Venezuela won’t escalate into a new Caribbean Crisis or turn the country into “a second Syria,” Russia’s FM Sergey Lavrov has assured, bashing the US for treating the Western Hemisphere as its backyard. “We don’t accept the methods, with which the US is trying to improve the life of the Venezuelan people,” Lavrov said in an interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. Washington has outright backed opposition leader, Juan Guaido, who declared himself interim president of Venezuela in January.

French Army Receives Authorization To Shoot “Yellow Vest” Protesters

March 27, 2019 Alex Lantier, Wsws.org , , , ,
Yesterday, the governor of the Paris military district told France Info that soldiers of the Operation Sentinel counter-terror mission had been authorized to fire today on the “yellow vests.” Asked about whether soldiers were capable of carrying out law enforcement duties, General Bruno Le Ray replied: “Our orders are sufficiently clear that we do not need to be worried at all. The soldiers’ rules of engagement will be fixed very rigorously.” “They will have different means for action faced with all types of threats,” he continued. “That can go as far as opening fire.”

Colombian Military Attacks Popular Movements TWICE In Cauca

March 16, 2019 Staff, Afgj.org , ,
There is a crisis happening right now in Cauca, Colombia. The Colombian Armed Forces have attacked a “minga” in the village of Cairo, municipality of Cajibío – twice in two days – and are still present and threatening more assaults. The minga is a collective consultation called by indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and farming communities and organizations, including FENSUAGRO, the agricultural workers union and with whom the Alliance for Global Justice works. Participants are demanding to meet with Colombia’s President Ivan Duque, who has so far not responded.

Use-It Or Lose-It: DoD Dropped $4.6 Million On Crab And Lobster, And $9,000 On A Chair In Last-Minute Spending Spree

March 15, 2019 Kyle Rempfer, Openthebooks.com , ,
The federal government found a way to spend $97 billion in a single month last year, of which more than $61 billion can be attributed to the Pentagon. It’s not a new phenomenon. In the last month of every fiscal year, federal agencies work to spend all that’s left in their annual budgets. If they don’t, the agencies worry they’ll be appropriated a smaller share by Congress next year, hence the "use-it or lose-it" spending sprees. Rather than spend money on frivolous items, federal agencies like the Defense Department should admit their offices can be run on less, according to Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO of OpenTheBooks.

Has NATO Met Its Match?

March 7, 2019 Staff, Davidswanson.org , ,
Despite claims by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to have defeated its own troops using Facebook (and, really, what plot to take over a high school hasn’t done that?), the biggest challenge NATO will face this year will probably not be nefarious Russian social media posts. Nor will it be the dreaded Russian military, now sucking down 6 percent as many dollars each year as the war machines of the NATO nations. Nor is NATO terribly threatened by a U.S. president who demands that its members spend more, that more nations join, that the North Atlantic nation of Colombia partner up, and that the war games and weapons deals and expansion eastward press ahead...

Non-Military Federal Agencies Under Trump Expand Already Enormous Arsenals

March 2, 2019 By Whitney Webb, Mintpressnews.com , , ,
WASHINGTON — The massive purchases of ammo and weapons by non-military federal agencies, like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Social Security Administration (SSA), that first began under the Obama administration has continued unabated under the Trump administration, while receiving less media coverage. According to a report released last December by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and recently highlighted by Forbes, the mass purchase of ammunition, weapons and other military-grade items by ostensibly civilian government agencies has continued up through Fiscal Year (FY) 2017, the latest year for which data is available.

What Does NATO Cost The US? What Is Its Purpose?

January 25, 2019 Will Griffin, Thepeacereport.com ,
NATO was created in 1949 as an intergovernmental military alliance for “mutual defense”. At least that’s what you might have been taught by a university or a high school teacher. Several countries signed onto the treaty to “protect” themselves from enemies states, but who and why? NATO originally began with 12 states and has since expanded to 29 members in 2019. Its original purpose was to sweep up nations under the U.S. imperialist umbrella to keep them from Soviet influence or, to be more clear, socialist and communist influence.

The Silver Bullet To Stop The Corporate State Pillage

January 10, 2019 Lee Camp, Truthdig.com , , ,
Every year a certain number of our soldiers decide they’d rather not be involved in shooting people they don’t know so that ExxonMobil can have more oil or Lockheed Martin can make more cash or MSNBC / Fox News can give their hosts topics for their upcoming poetry books. Basically, these soldiers do something horrifying, something terrible, something often called “treasonous” … They — wait for it — think for themselves!

How Israel’s Conscription Law Assaults Its Own Ultra-Orthodox Community

January 2, 2019 By Miko Peled, Mintpressnews.com , ,
Mea Sha’arim, Jerusalem – “Nazis, Nazis,” that’s what I thought I heard. I was driving down the main road near Jerusalem’s Ultra-orthodox Me’a Sha’arim neighborhood where hundreds of young Haredi Jews were blocking the road. Dumpsters were burning and the traffic came to a halt. I jumped out of the car and ran to see what was happening. I asked a young Yeshiva student what was going on and if they were really shouting “Nazis.” He confirmed to me that they were calling the Israeli riot police Nazis and that this protest was because the police had just arrested several Haredi girls for refusal to serve in the Israeli army.

Colombian Soldiers Implicated In Social Leader’s Murder

November 15, 2018 Staff, Telesurenglish.net , ,
Alvaro Gomez Garzon became the 183rd social leader killed in Colombia in 2018. Communal leader and human rights defender Alvaro Gomez Garzon was reportedly murdered by members of the Colombian Army Monday night in the Cauca department. Cristian Delgado, a member of the left-wing political movement Patriotic March, denounced the fact via Twitter. Gomez was a member of the Patriotic March, the National Association of Campesino Reserve Zones (ANZORC-ZRC), and the National Federation of Agricultural Unions (Fensuagro).

Courage To Resist: Troops Ordered Deployed To Border

November 13, 2018 Staff, Couragetoresist.org , , ,
Military brass suggested that these camps would not violate the constitutional prohibition against using the military to police and enforce domestic immigration law, based on the fact that the military has occasionally provided shelter to people during humanitarian crises, for short periods of time. Apparently, because the military helped out a bit following a hurricane then long term immigrant concentration camps are just fine. According to the Military Times (October 2, 2018), HHS has completed site surveys at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas; Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas; Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas; and Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas.

Here’s What We Could Have If We Slashed The Military Budget

September 29, 2018 Lindsay Koshgarian, Jacobinmag.com , ,
The Pentagon is set to receive $717 billion in 2019 — more than half of the roughly trillion-dollar annual budget. That level of Pentagon funding is immense by any standard. Next year’s budget will be roughly twice the size of military appropriations in the mid-1990s, before George W. Bush and his twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it will be higher than the peak of Pentagon spending during the Vietnam War. None of this is necessary. The Pentagon is the least accountable part of the federal government, wasting billions of dollars on needless bureaucracy, pouring billions more into dangerous (and redundant) nuclear weapons, and cozying up to contractors who siphon off roughly half of the Pentagon’s budget each year.
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