The costs and consequences of America’s twenty-first-century wars have by now been well-documented — a staggering $8 trillion in expenditures and more than 380,000 civilian deaths, as calculated by Brown University’s Costs of War project. The question of who has benefited most from such an orgy of military spending has, unfortunately, received far less attention. Corporations large and small have left the[Read More...]
Imagine this scenario from the year 2045: The U.S. and China, after years of belligerence, go to war over control […]
Mythology of humans’ natural impulse for empathy Warfare has been a plague haunting the human species ever since our evolution to become Homo Sapiens, finally, around 300,000 years ago in Africa. Etymologically, homo means human and sapiens means wise or knowledgeable. One can see that in this 18th century anthropocentric characterization of our species, the […]
Fire-fighting foams used on bases worldwide are contaminating the environment and endangering public health. Günther Schneider, a farmer from Binsfeld, Germany, has photos that show what the stream that flows through the village of Binsfeld looks like when aqueous film-forming foam is released from a fire suppression system in hangars on the Spangdahlem Air Base—like […]
Washington’s reflexive prioritizing of the interests of defense contractors has meant paying remarkably little attention to, and significantly underfunding, public health.
The Pentagon has awarded the defense giant Raytheon Technologies over $2.36 billion in government contracts since Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III’s confirmation on January 22nd. Austin was on Raytheon’s board of directors prior to his confirmation. Austin at the time had made a commitment to resign from Raytheon’s board and recuse himself from all […]
Sanders’ bill was killed in the Senate by a vote of 23 to 77, with half of Senate Democrats stepping up to help Republicans stomp it dead. It’s companion bill in the House of Representatives was killed by a margin of 93 to 324, with a majority of House Democrats (92 to 139) voting nay.
Massive popular pressure—like that organized by the 1980s nuclear freeze movement—is needed to stop more waste, fraud and abuse. One of the more important tasks that the Biden administration will undertake this year will be to review the Pentagon’s nuclear weapons budget and modernization strategy. According to a 2019 Congressional Budget Office report, the U.S. […]
Let’s take a closer look at several major weapons systems that are begging to be canceled — and a rare case of one that finally was.
PROLOGUE FOR SURVIVAL We are succumbing to an array of physical illnesses and mental declines on a planet that will soon be uninhabitable. This reign of destruction has been brought about by individuals and corporations that seek gain at the expense of our health. This must be stopped. Doing so, however, will be challenging because […]
