military budget

Black Alliance for Peace condemns NATO “leadership meeting” as cabal of white supremacist militarists

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) condemns NATO “leadership meeting” as cabal of white supremacist militarists The meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that is taking place in London should be seen as a threat to global humanity. However, the foreign policy community in the U.S., corporate media and both political parties continue to perpetuate the myth that NATO is a force for good. The Black Alliance for Peace, however, disagrees and has consistently called for the dismantling of NATO as a member of what the Alliance calls the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of domination. NATO, according to Black Alliance for Peace…

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Trump was right: NATO should be obsolete

Popular Resistance By Medea Benjamin December 5, 2019 The three smartest words that Donald Trump uttered during his presidential campaign are “NATO is obsolete.” His adversary, Hillary Clinton, retorted that NATO was “the strongest military alliance in the history of the world.” Now that Trump has been in power, the White House parrots the same worn line that NATO is “the most successful Alliance in history, guaranteeing the security, prosperity, and freedom of its members.” But Trump was right the first time around: Rather than being a strong alliance with a clear purpose, this 70-year-old organization that is meeting in London on December 4 is a…


The New Congress Needs to Create a Green Planet at Peace

Common Dreams By Medea Benjamin, Alice Slater January 8, 2019 The time has come for a New Peace Deal that repudiates endless war and the threat of nuclear war which, along with catastrophic climate change, poses an existential threat to our planet A deafening chorus of negative grumbling from the left, right, and center of the US political spectrum in response to Trump’s decision to remove US troops from Syria and halve their numbers in Afghanistan appears to have slowed down his attempt to bring our forces home. However, in this new year, demilitarizing US foreign policy should be among…


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The Fourth Estate in Flames: On the US Media’s Award-Winning War Propaganda

Common Dreams by Medea Benjamin A war-weary American public that a year ago resoundingly rejected US military intervention in Syria to overthrow the Assad regime now is rallying behind the use of force to destroy the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). In just three months, from June to September, support for US airstrikes in Iraq soared from 45% percent to 71%, and to 65% for airstrikes in Syria. How did such an astounding turnabout occur? Certainly it wasn’t due to the persuasive powers of President Obama, who seems to have been reluctantly dragged into a conflict that he once acknowledged has…


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Budget Realignment Reflects Pentagon’s Vision of Covert and Endless War

by Brian J. Trautman The Pentagon’s budget proposal for next year was announced last week by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. In an interview with The New York Times, Hagel argued that to meet today’s national security needs, the Department of Defense (DoD) must shift its focus and capabilities away from “fighting grinding ground conflicts” and towards “new arenas of combat.” To achieve these ends, the budget calls for a realignment of the military that would reduce the total number of ground troops to its lowest level since 1940 and discontinue some military equipment deemed obsolete or unnecessary. According to…