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POPSChalmers Johnson on the "Pentagon Bailout" "There has been much moaning, air-sucking, and outrage about the $700 billion that the U.S. government is thinking of throwing away on rich New York bankers who have been ripping us off for the past few years and then letting greed drive their businesses into a variety of ditches. In fact, we dole out similar amounts of money every year in the form of payoffs to the armed services, the military-industrial complex, and powerful senators and representatives allied with the Pentagon. "
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POPSAnyone Remember the Cost of The Wars? Estimates of the true long-term costs of the President's war of choice, including payments of health care and veterans benefits into the distant future, soar into the budgetary stratosphere. They range from the Congressional Budget Office's $1-2 trillion to an estimate by economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes of up to $4-5 trillion. So we're talking somewhere between one-and-a-half and seven bailouts-worth of taxpayer dollars flowing into the morass of disaster, corruption, and carnage in Iraq. As Chalmers Johnson, author most recently of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, the final volume of his Blowback Trilogy, has pointed out for years, the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex, and America's wars are in the process of bankrupting us.
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POPSWill there really be any change?
Would Obama be as bad or worse? Likely not. Just the lesser of two evils or what Ralph Nader calls the "evil of two lessers." No choice to settle for in his judgment. Especially when both candidates support global militarism, backing Israel and the Christian Right against Iran, unilaterally attacking Pakistan, staying in Iraq for the duration, upping the ante in Afghanistan, and risking a dangerous Eurasian confrontation with Russia. Both conventions are over. It's Obama v. McCain, and expect the winner to disappoint like always and on what voters say matter most - ending aggressive wars and addressing long-neglected social needs, made all the worse given capitalism's global crisis and both parties' commitment to privilege. After the Democrat convention ended, author, media activist, critic, and independent filmmaker Danny Schechter wrote: "You won't hear a call for a national crackdown on the corporate crime, fraud, and abuse that, in just the last few years, have robbed trilli
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POPSThe Lies Behind 'Free Trade' This book on disastrous trade policies makes clear that it's time to dismantle the barriers that keep so much of the world so poor. Neoliberalism is a rerun of what economists suffering from "historical amnesia" believe were the key characteristics of the international economy in the golden age of liberalism (1870-1913). The Third World was not always poor and economically stagnant. Throughout the golden age of capitalism, from the Marshall Plan (1947) to the first oil shock (1973), the United States was a Good Samaritan and helped developing countries by allowing them to protect and subsidize their nascent industries. forced to adopt neoliberal policies and to open their economies to much more powerful foreign competitors on unequal terms, their growth rate fell to less than half of that recorded in the 1960s . Apologists for neoliberalism have also revived an old 19th century and neo-Nazi explanation for developmental failure - namely, culture.
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POPSEmpire versus democracy “A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both." UC San Diego Professor Emeritus Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic .
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POPSBlowback "If we should go to war with Iran over nuclear weapons, we will have Pakistan—and ourselves—to thank for that as well."
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POPSBush's Response to 9/11 Was Deadlier Than the Attacks Themselves * Did Islamic religious extremism cause 9/11? * Why did American military preeminence breed delusions of omnipotence ? * How was the war lost ? * How did a tiny group of individuals, with eccentric theories and reflexes, recklessly compound the country's post-9/11 security nightmare? * What roles did Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld play in the Bush administration ? * Why did the U.S. decide to search for a new enemy after the Cold War, as argued by an old cold warrior, Samuel Huntington, in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon and Schuster, 1996)? * What role did left-wing ideology play in legitimating the war on terror ? * How did pro-war liberals help stifle national debate on the wisdom of the Iraq war ? * Why is the contemporary American antiwar movement so anemic ?
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POPSDoD: "one of the world's largest 'landlords'." Even without Jordan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the more than 20 other nations that, Arkin noted in early 2004, were "secretly or quietly providing bases and facilities", the available statistics do offer a window into a bloated organization bent on setting up franchises across the globe. According to 2005 documents, the Pentagon acknowledges 39 nations with at least one US base, stations personnel in over 140 countries around the world, and boasts a physical plant of at least 571,900 facilities, though some Pentagon figures show 587,000 "buildings and structures". Of these, 466,599 are located in the United States or its territories. In fact, the Department of Defense owns or leases more than 75% of all federal buildings in the US.
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POPSChalmers Johnson and his “Nemesis” Thomas P. M. Barnett, a very different analyst of American power and possibility in The Pentagon’s New Map and Blueprint for Action, will join the conversation.
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