Pentagon

The Ultra-Costly, Underwhelming F-35 Fighter: Lockheed Martin Remains Top Gun in the Pentagon’s Cockpit

(Tomdispatch.com) – How are you with numbers? I can deal with $1.5 million. I think I can even imagine $1.5 billion, a sum a thousand times greater. But how about a million times greater: $1.5 trillion? That happens to be the estimated cost of the Pentagon’s program to build, deploy, and maintain the no-longer-so-new F-35 […]

Donald Trump

Trump Pilfers Billions from cyber-security, Puerto Rico in Pentagon Budget for Great White Wall

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Zachary Cohen and Ryan Browne at CNN report that Trump is stealing $3.6 billion from 127 projects in the Defense Department budget that was constitutionally purposed by Congress, and using them unconstitutionally for 140 miles of his Great White Wall at the Mexico border. And remember, he promised Mexico would […]

Militarization

In Wars and Weapons We Trust: America’s Militarized Profession of Faith

William J. Astore

(Tomdispatch.com ) – When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I looked to the heavens: to God and Christianity (as arbitrated by the Catholic Church) and to the soaring warbirds of the U.S. military, which I believed kept us safe. To my mind then, they were classic manifestations of American technological superiority over the […]

Pentagon

More Money, Fewer Jobs: Why Lavishing Billions on the Pentagon won’t Help Employment

Tomdispatch

By Nia Harris, Cassandra Stimpson, and Ben Freeman | – (Tomdispatch.com ) – A Marilyn has once again seduced a president. This time, though, it’s not a movie star; it’s Marillyn Hewson, the head of Lockheed Martin, the nation’s top defense contractor and the largest weapons producer in the world. In the last month, Donald […]

Pentagon

How the Military-Industrial Complex Ate America

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – When, in his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the “unwarranted influence” wielded by the “military-industrial complex,” he could never have dreamed of an arms-making corporation of the size and political clout of Lockheed Martin. In a good year, it now receives up to […]

Pentagon

Wars R Us: Our Best and Brightest have Warned us of Pentagon Propaganda Machine

William J. Astore

(Tomsdispatch.com ) – Put up with me for just a moment while I wax literary. It turns out that, if French novelist Marcel Proust lived today, he might have had to retitle his Remembrance of Things Past as Remembrance of Things Present, or even more sadly, Things Future. As an ex-military man who lived through […]

Iran

Iranian Aggression? Or American? Even Great US News Outlets can’t Escape Jingoism

Tom Engelhardt

Tomdispatch.com) – Headlined “U.S. Seeks Other Ways to Stop Iran Shy of War,” the article was tucked away on page A9 of a recent New York Times. Still, it caught my attention. Here’s the first paragraph: “American intelligence and military officers are working on additional clandestine plans to counter Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, […]

Pentagon

No, Neocons, it Isn’t Always 1939, and WW II wasn’t such a ‘Good War’

Andrew J. Bacevich

(Tomdispatch.com) – How best to describe the recently completed allied commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of France? Two words come immediately to mind: heartfelt and poignant. The aged D-Day veterans gathering for what was probably the last time richly deserved every bit of praise bestowed on them. Yet one particular refrain […]

Climate Crisis

The Defense Dep’t is Open about Climate Crisis, but is a Major Emitter itself

The Conversation

By Neta C. Crawford | – Scientists and security analysts have warned for more than a decade that global warming is a potential national security concern. A U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet launching from the USS Theodore Roosevelt on full afterburner. U.S. Navy/Wikimedia They project that the consequences of global warming – rising seas, powerful storms, […]