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....
Saturday, November 04, 2006
ENDLE$$ WAR$ BENEFIT WEAPON$ INDU$TRY
They call this place the bone yard. It is located in Tucson, Arizona and at this airplane graveyard over 4,500 military planes are stored. I've seen it myself on one of my speaking trips to that community. You drive for miles, along the perimeter of the fenced off base, and see rows and rows of planes. Your mind roll$ like a slot machine and you can just imagine the enormous cost to the taxpayer. You begin to realize why endless war is America’s main job these days.
This year the military budget is over $550 billion. That is more than all the rest of the military budgets around the entire world combined. Russia and China each spend just over $50 billion a year.
Once you understand this you also begin to see how the corruption of both political parties works. Democrats and Republicans like to bring home the military production bacon. They like to take the donations from the weapons corporation executives and from the unions representing military production workers. Everybody makes out in this closed loop system. Everybody is happy.
Everybody that is except the taxpayer who is not in the gravy train line. The average taxpayer gets no health care coverage, sees their kid’s college tuition rising so fast they can't help them with the cost of college and their kids are falling into $40,000 debt or more after graduation. We are told there is no money for fixing roads and bridges. There is no money to fund a real mass transit system in the country so we can get out of our global warming producing cars. On and on the story goes.
But for those on the military production gravy train life is good. They make good money and they know that work will continue because the Pentagon has found a new enemy called "the global war on terrorism." That should keep the production lines humming for at least another 50 years they figure. So what if 650,000 innocent Iraqi civilians have to die. No matter. We killed 4 million civilians in Vietnam. A small price to pay for progress. The system works just fine for those making the $$$$$.
So this Election Day be sure to vote for those politicians who promise to keep this whole thing going. Be sure to vote for those Democrats and Republicans who say they are creating jobs back home in the “defense” industry.
Don't worry about those we are killing overseas. They don't vote here anyway.
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