Pentagon

Climate And War: Bill McKibben’s Deadly Miscalculation

January 19, 2020 Luke Orsborne, Wrong Kind of Green. Educate! climate crisis, Energy, Pentagon, Wars and Militarism

In late June 2019, author and founder of 350.org Bill McKibben produced an article for the New York Review of Books whose headline echoed a growing awareness of the significant role of US militarism in our current ecological crisis. The hook, unfortunately, appeared to be little more than a ruse to entice those who harbor legitimate concerns about the military’s role in the climate crisis in order to then minimize those concerns. What followed was a presentation of selective information, including a superficial critique of US military energy efficiency, that in the end only obfuscates the true cost and context of US militarism as it applies to the health of people and the planet. The result was that rather than highlighting the need for deep structural change which involves putting an end to aggressive US foreign policy, McKibben came across as a cautious cheerleader for the continued centrality of US militarism in global affairs as we enter into an increasingly chaotic, climate destabilized world.

The War In Afghanistan Is A Fraud

January 12, 2020 Lee Camp, Truthdig. Educate! Afghanistan, Media, Pentagon, Wars and Militarism

Bombs have numbers. Humans have names. Our American military boasts a skill and passion for using numbers to turn names into yet more numbers. But these numbers have grown so gargantuan and out of control that one struggles to comprehend them. In just 10 months in 2018—the latest numbers made available—our military dropped 5,982 munitions on Afghanistan, turning many thinking, living and loving names into cold, lifeless numbers. Over the span of the war, 43,000 Afghan civilians have been numberized. We, as Americans, essentially never even notice when it happens. Statistically speaking, it will happen again many times today, and no one in America will really care. (At least not while the game is on.) 64,000 Afghan security forces have been numberized since 2001.

Pentagon Chiefs Say US Troops To Stay In Syria For Years

December 19, 2019 Bill Van Auken, Wsws.org Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Pentagon, Syria, US military

Barely two months after US President Donald Trump’s demagogic announcement that he was pulling US troops out of northeastern Syria to fulfill his campaign promise to bring a halt to Washington’s “endless wars,” the senior civilian and uniformed Pentagon chiefs told a House panel Wednesday that there is no foreseeable end to the American presence there. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley maintained in their testimony to the House Armed Services Committee that the US military was staying in Syria to assure the “enduring defeat” of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and that the fulfillment of that goal is likely years away.

Lessons From Battling The Pentagon For Four Decades

December 16, 2019 William D. Hartung, Tom Dispatch. Strategize! Military Budget, Pentagon, Wars and Militarism, Weapons Sales

I’ve been writing critiques of the Pentagon, the national security state, and America’s never-ending military overreach since at least 1979 -- in other words, virtually my entire working life. In those decades, there were moments when positive changes did occur. They ranged from ending the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1994 and halting U.S. military support for the murderous regimes, death squads, and outlaws who ruled Central America in the 1970s and 1980s to sharp reductions in the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals as the Cold War wound down. Each of those victories, however complex, seemed like a signal that sustained resistance and global solidarity mattered and could make a difference when it came to peace and security.

Pentagon Alarmed Russia Is Gaining ‘Sympathy’ Among US Troops

December 9, 2019 By Tyler Durden, Zerohedge.com Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, NATO, Pentagon, Russia

Remember when NATO bombed Belgrade back to the middle ages, invaded and occupied Iraq, started an eighteen-year long quagmire in Afghanistan, created anarchy in Libya, funded and armed al-Qaeda in Syria, and expanded its bases right up to US borders? Neither do we. Perhaps American soldiers are simply sick and tired of the US military and intelligence machine's legacy of ashes across the globe and recognize the inconvenient fact that Russia most often has been on the complete opposite side of Washington's disastrous regime change wars.

‘Highly Disturbing’ Pentagon Document Shows US Military Surveilling Groups Protesting Family Separation

November 14, 2019 By Jake Johnson, Commondreams.org Resist! Immigration, Pentagon, Surveillance, US military

The U.S. military is reportedly surveilling rights groups and activists engaged in peaceful protests against both President Donald Trump's border wall and the separation of migrant children from their families at the southern border. According to an internal Pentagon document obtained by Ken Klippenstein of The Young Turks in partnership with The Intercept, military forces deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border assessed the "threat" posed by interfaith group Heartland for Human Justice and Rio Bravo Action Camp...

The First Step To Averting Climate Catastrophe

November 11, 2019 By Jodie Evans, Truthdig.com Educate! Climate Change, Green New Deal, Pentagon, Reform, Social Movements, US military

Here we are, a full three decades after NASA scientist James Hansen raised the specter of a looming climate crisis with Congress, looking at the first generation of severely impacted youth and telling them they’re right: We have completely squandered their future. For too long, our dominant culture has practiced unsustainable growth and consumption, ushering in the end of a habitable planet and with it civilization as we know it. Those most impacted are the communities who have contributed the least to climate change, a direct extension of the settler colonization project that has unfolded across the globe over hundreds of years.

Why Trump Is Facing Impeachment

October 12, 2019 Roger Harris, Popular Resistance. Educate! Impeachment, Pentagon, Trump, US Imperialism

Granted Trump may arguably be more corrupt than Biden. But that’s splitting hairs over which crook is more crooked. Bullying vassal states and “doing well by doing good” are indicators of finesse in Washington. Inside the beltway, corruption is not a liability for holding high political office, but a requirement. The key to membership in the power elite club is carrying water for the imperial state, and most club members must go through an elaborate vetting process to prove that they are reliable. Some such as Trump slip through. The sine qua non for membership in this exclusive club is to prove you’ll take a hit for the empire. When the results of the 2000 US presidential election were inconclusive, Al Gore took a fall rather than risk instability at the top: “(for) the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.”

Major Media Bury Groundbreaking Studies Of Pentagon’s Massive Carbon Bootprint

October 12, 2019 Joshua Cho, Fair.org Educate! Carbon, Pentagon, pollution

Almost a decade later, Project Censored’s observations are still applicable, with two major studies published in June remaining buried by most major media outlets. The first study, “Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War,” by Neta Crawford for Brown University’s Costs of War Project, confirmed previous findings that the US military is “the single-largest producer of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world,” and that the Pentagon is responsible for between “77% and 80% of all US government energy consumption” since 2001, and that from the beginning of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to 2017...

October 11: March On The Pentagon To Rage Against The War Machine

September 29, 2019 March on the Pentagon. Resist! Military Budget, Peace, Pentagon, Wars and Militarism

March on the Pentagon invites all those outraged by the War Machine, U.S. imperialism, and endless wars to join us in Washington D.C. on October 11 and 12. From the mind boggling cost which strips money from basic human needs like healthcare, education, clean water and more, the stomach churning death toll, the irreversible environmental impact, the fueling of militarized police, the uptick in right-wing domestic terrorism, the too often ignored contribution to climate change as well as the resulting and potentially deadly PTSD, substance abuse, domestic abuse and rape suffered by those who have served in the armed forces to the toll war takes on women across the globe—from rape and loss of children to raising one’s family as a refugee in a foreign land—there is something for everyone to be outraged about.

The Pentagon Wants More Control Over The News. What Could Go Wrong?

September 7, 2019 Matt Taibbi, Readersupportednews.org Educate! Department of Defense, Media, Pentagon, Police State

One of the Pentagon’s most secretive agencies, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is developing “custom software that can unearth fakes hidden among more than 500,000 stories, photos, video and audio clips.” Once upon a time, when progressives still reflexively distrusted the military, DARPA was a liberal punchline, known for helping invent the Internet but also for developing lunatic privacy-invading projects like LifeLog, a program to “gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees, or does.”

We Can’t Confront Climate Change While Lavishly Funding The Pentagon

August 21, 2019 JP Sottile, Truthout.org Strategize! Climate Change, Pentagon, US military

The Pentagon is staring down the barrel of what could become the longest, hottest war in U.S. history. This titanic clash pits the largest military the world has ever seen against an omnipresent opponent that can marshal resources like no enemy it has ever encountered. That opponent is climate change, and according to a joint investigation by NBC News and InsideClimate News, the extreme heat it brings is already generating military casualties. But soldiers like Sgt. Sylvester Cline are not dying where you might expect, such as scorching, oil-rich targets like Iraq, where Cline served during a lie-tainted war.

The Navy’s War Vs. Bolton’s War

June 3, 2019 By Michael T. Klare, Tomdispatch.com Educate! Pentagon, US military, Wars and Militarism

The recent White House decision to speed the deployment of an aircraft carrier battle group and other military assets to the Persian Gulf has led many in Washington and elsewhere to assume that the U.S. is gearing up for war with Iran. As in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. officials have cited suspect intelligence data to justify elaborate war preparations. On May 13th, acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan even presented top White House officials with plans to send as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East for possible future combat with Iran and its proxies.

The Truth-Teller: From The Pentagon Papers To The Doomsday Machine

April 25, 2019 Daniel Ellsberg, Countercurrents.org Educate! Military Industrial Complex, Pentagon, US Imperialism, US military

After graduating from Harvard with an economics degree and completing service in the US Marines, I worked as a military analyst at the RAND Corporation. In 1961, in that role, I went to Vietnam as part of a Department of Defense task force and saw that our prospects there were extremely dim. It was clear to me that military intervention was a losing proposition. Three years later, I moved from RAND to the Department of Defense. On my first day, I was assigned to a team tasked with devising a response to the alleged attack on the US naval warship USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin by the North Vietnamese.

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 Resist! Military, Pentagon, Schools

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.

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