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A Look at Global Militarization
In 2009, the U.S. government spent some $650 billion on its military. This is more than the next 46 highest-spending countries combined. Much of this treasure ended up in the hands of profit-driven weapons manufacturers. In the following short film, directed by filmmaker Iara Lee, Cultures of Resistance takes a brief look at the current state of what President Eisenhower famously called the "military industrial complex." With the United States waging two wars overseas at the same time that millions of people are out of work at home, those pushing to reel in government spending and balance the budget would be wise to look carefully at bloated and unchecked military spending.
Cultures of Resistance: A Look at Global Militarization from Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo.
17 Comments so far
Show Allimagine what could have been achieved had that money been used for peaceful applications..............
Exactly. Like halving the number of students in K-12 classrooms; hiring unemployed construction workers to retrofit homes and commercial buildings with energy-saving appliances and technologies; rebuilding our infrastructure; mass transit systems; subsidizing university expenses for students; early childhood support; maternity and paternity leave for working parents; drug rehab for addicts; a faster Internet infrastructure; and (my pet project) and Amendment 1 assembly and national referendum to fix our broken constitutional system to eliminate its vulnerabilities to plutocratic takeovers.
What was it thar Michael Moore said-The money that the U.S. spent on the Iraq War for last October alone could have drilled fresh water wells for the majority of the Billions of people on this planet that are without and dying of water born illnesses by the thousands daily...
Can anyone come up with A more useless investment than bullets and bombs. They are spent and rendered useless instantly and do nothing but cause death, destruction hatred and misery. This BULLSHIT needs to come to an end, and the sooner, the better...Might is not Right and bullys always get their come uppance in the end.......
It`s no wonder the rest of the world see`s the USA as the real terrorist they are...Shame on US
Excellent video.
CD readers, please email this link to all of your friends.
Ditto !! We could be doing wonderful things here at home, and around the world, but money crazed, power hungry, lunatics are in charge of our MONEY, and are using it the wrong way. How can we stop them ?
We can't as things are now. Too many people are literally bought into war as a mainstay of humanity.
The truth is there if you really want to look for it.
Start here, then follow the money. 3 main city states that reside in countries run the vast majority of the world.
The Corporation of London (Financial branch)
The Vatican (Religious and Political branch)
Washington D.C. (the Military branch)
All three have obelisk declaring the origins of this ancient system. Just research it and you will find out. Then spread the information you find to others. When enough people "wake up", maybe then - maybe, can we put an end to the tyranny.
As long as people support the system with their skills, labor and taxes, nothing will really change. The only change that will be had is the change that goes into the bank accounts of very wealthy people.
"As long as people support the system with their skills, labor and taxes, nothing will really change. The only change that will be had is the change that goes into the bank accounts of very wealthy people."
This is what I have come to see and have written about here many times. The current meme is so deeply ingrained in the psyche of most people, that even in places like Common Dreams many people still look to our current institutions to change. They won't change. The military/industrial/political/media complex WILL NOT CHANGE!
If we do not change ourselves and band together to withhold our energy and money from the system, the system will roll over us all. And it will do it with our help, even as we look to the system to help us. How Orwellian is that?
"How Orwellian is that?"
Very! Even eerie.
All that money spent and for what value? Our massive military spending has given US a false sense of security. What value are nuclear weapons that we will never use? What value are fleets of vulnerable naval vessels? What value are jets with no target rich environment? What value is a dollars worth of defense spending actually buying when profit and overinflated costs are subtracted? What is the value of a dollar itself?
Eisenhower talked about the real price "We" pay for defense. Dollars spent that could have been more wisely invested in our people, our infrastructure and our future. Those dollars not invested in our tomorrow can only bring US a hard future - life on a 'Cross of Iron'.
Sun Tzu said that numbers meant nothing in war. He said that it takes ten men to defend against one. The key word being 'defend'. When the enemy is a civilian population, the numbers are magnitudes higher than ten to one.
Manning and equipping garrisons is a costly fool's errand. Our capital is exposed all over the world and is not defensible. Small groups of determined men can destroy capital assets and lives many times their number. They can foster a costly cycle of fear consuming even more resources. It is easier to tear down than to build.
Sun Tzu said that numbers meant nothing in war and that could just as easily apply to dollars spent as it does to manpower and weaponry. The Chinese take a longer view of defense, a more pragmatic approach. Whose 'Way' is better, only time will tell.
I am not a religious person but I wonder when David will show up with his slingshot and stone.
The US military is grossly negligent in its expenditure and loss of US taxpayers funds. Right now it can't account for literally billions upon billions of dollars. How disgusting is that? Every American works his fingers to the bone to make ends meet and pays his taxes but those taxes are then lost by the military. What's wrong with this picture?
The Pentagram can't account for $trillions.
A country that glorifies death and all its instruments will (like NAZI Germany & the supremacist apartheid entity in occupied Palestine) have to be confronted and taken down. That day will come, have no doubt, if the all too few "good" Americans (sic) do not defang this abomination that the rest of humanity can no longer ignore. 53 cents of every USan tax dollar are being squandered on this filth produced by these subhumans while the country is in hock to China and its infrastructure collapsing around us, the health of our ever expanding lower classes no better than any Third World banana republic. And the rich don't give a damn, like the rich of any other Third World sewer! Wake up slackers and do something other than bitch!
If our dear leader Jolson Obama and his ilk think that a war with China will stave off the inevitable then obviously they have learned little from our catalog of defeat in our latest our troopian misadventures so loved by the corpocratic militocracy we so naively call our government.
After the next "elections" when this society will be irrevocably split right down the middle get ready for the long prophesied very un Civil War as our natural aggression spills over the levee of our crumbling illusions. All the slaughter that WE have been inflicting since the first genocide upon which this "civilization" is grounded, all our ongoing terrorist crimes against countries too numerous to mention, all that hate and destruction still has not been purged from the sick twisted soul of what we are; a greedy psychotic pampered collection of USers, full of conceit and ignorance.
To date our own Civil War was by far our most successful war so the merchants of death and corpo ghouls must be delighted at the ever mounting tensions as the Mad Hatters from Fox and rest of the pig swill media along with the instant Tea Baggers churn the addled masses into raging mush for the day of reckoning. We are damn good at carnage and as the hordes of demobbed our troopians come marching home from our lost criminal enterprise in foreign lands, legless, armless soul less expect the worst, expect blood and senseless slaughter in retribution for all the crimes they committed in our name and for the profit of the Raytheons, the Haliburtons, the Blackwaters and other MAFIA gangs of America (sic)that we allowed to spawn like the plague in our states and towns.
Onward then fellow Americans (sic) to our well earned Hoover-ville in the mire where the waning light of our much ballyhooed exceptionalism grows ever dimmer.
There is always money for weapons and wars. Peace just has to wait...even if it kills us. This is the picture the US conjures: death and destruction
I am no longer much of A religious type believer. I have seen too many inequities in this life and am so very sick and tired of the twisted and perverted way in which EVIL religious "cults" have interpreted the Bible for their own self serving Agenda..
My greatest fear is that these Pentagon Type Idiots and their masters will "Self Realize" Armeggadon and create A "self fulfilled prophesy" for Nuclear Holocaust of unimaginable proportion with the Israeli's and London egging them on with crucifixes wrapped in Old Glory..
These Military Madmen and their International Bankster Buddies and their Corporate bosses are A greater threat to this Planet than ever before..
I am more inclined to desperatly believe in salvation and deliverence from extra terrestrial intelligence to stop this madness than some ficticious characters drummed up by A pack of delusional and desperate Bedouins around some mid-east desert campfire 2,000 years ago...
The M.I.C.= Military Industrial Complex
The M.I.C.E.J.I.L{R}C.= Military, Industrial, Congressional, Executive, Judicial, Israeli, London{Rothchild}, Complex...
Truth Be Known....