On Tuesday, April 12, people in more than 35 countries, as well as Columbus, Dallas, Kansas City and dozens of other cities throughout the United States will participate in the first Global Day of Action on Military Spending.
He’s an activist who has used the Internet to fight for what he believes in. He is a member of civil society committed to living in truth. He doesn’t live in Cairo or Tunis or Damascus. He doesn’t live in an oppressive society at all, unless you consider Gainesville, Florida an oppressive place. Instead of setting himself on fire, like Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, the preacher Terry Jones has set fire to a book, the Qur’an. It wasn’t a very original idea – the first emperor of China burned books and so did the Nazis – but then, neither is self-immolation.
The Obama administration is scrambling to get on the right side of history. It has a lot of ground to make up. History is mostly judging the United States these days for launching, and now perpetuating, the longest wars in our history.
The budget Obama will present to Congress next week will likely begin what the Pentagon is billing as $78 billion in cuts to its budget over five years. In fact these are cuts to their plans for expansion, i.e., slowing a proposed increase is being defined as a cut.
As deserts expand and droughts persist, desperate people begin fighting over the water that remains. Elsewhere, rising sea levels create mass migrations. These portraits of human tragedy caused by climate change have become environmental security threats that the U.S. military now worries about.
With pressure to slash the 1.3 trillion-dollar federal deficit rising sharply, the public debate over whether to exempt the Pentagon from such cuts is moving rapidly toward centre-stage.
The two chairs of the Deficit Reduction Commission have floated their trial balloon. Here’s my good news/ bad news quick take on their proposals for military spending:
Good news:
Bad news:
It’s a cold morning in January 2011. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Rand Paul (R-KY) wake up early to put on their Revolutionary War costumes. They’re joined by a miscellaneous group of anti-government protestors, libertarian activists, and all-around hotheads. With their supporters in tow, the tea party movement’s Adam and Eve drive to the Pentagon and use their congressional passes to get into the building. They proceed to the office of Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, where the Pentagon plans the future of the huge weapons systems that dominate military spending.
After the drums of war had begun to beat, after the first headlines had screamed their World-War-II-style messages (“the Pearl Harbor of the 21st century”), I had another thought. And for a reasonably politically sophisticated guy, my second response was not only as off-base as the first, but also remarkably dumb. I thought that this horrific event taking place in my hometown might open Americans up to the pain of the world. No such luck, of course.
The song Take This Job and Shove It hit No. 1 on the country music charts in 1978. The blue-collar worker in the song that Johnny Paycheck made famous was working up the nerve to leave the factory after 15 years on the production line. It wasn’t necessarily the best time to mouth off at the line boss. The U.S. economy wasn’t so hot. Unemployment was 6.1 percent, which politicians considered unacceptable. Real wages, which peaked in 1973, were in a long tailspin. Unions continued to hemorrhage members. Workers were angry, and the song captured some of that feeling.