Organizing Notes

Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....

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The collapsing US military & economic empire is making Washington & NATO even more dangerous. US could not beat the Taliban but thinks it can take on China-Russia-Iran...a sign of psychopathology for sure. We must all do more to help stop this western corporate arrogance that puts the future generations lives in despair. @BruceKGagnon

Friday, July 19, 2013

OUR CHOICE: EXPAND WAR MACHINE OR DEAL WITH CLIMATE CHANGE


Denis Doherty (Australia) and I were on a commercial station TV show last night for a 45 minute interview about the Obama "pivot" into Asia-Pacific.  The award-winning show reaches a regional audience in the Luzon area.

We had to drive about an hour to reach the studio through city traffic and then the major highway connecting Manila and the Subic Bay region.  Along the way we passed miles of rice fields.  There is great poverty in many parts of Manila as people live in make shift cardboard shacks with rusty tin roofs.  Just across the street from one such place was a golf course surrounded by a tall fence.  So the rich and poor exist along side each other here.

The Philippines is under great pressure to increase their military spending to buy US weapons systems which would then make their military "interoperable" with Pentagon forces.  In the age of high-tech satellite driven war that would mean the US would essentially control the Filipino military.  So one way you can think of it is that the US is getting other countries like Philippines and South Korea to help pay for the expansion of the US war machine.

Two days ago I read an article in a local newspaper that reported a new "coalition" was forming to advocate for the Filipino government to expand its military spending.   One of the groups listed in the new coalition was a global warming group which made me sick to see.

I can promise you that any hopes of successfully dealing with climate change will be smashed by global increases in military spending.  It's going to come down to this - either we convert the military industrial complex now to sustainable production (solar, wind, mass transit, etc) or we bake together sitting inside our tanks, warships, Humvees and the like.

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