Showing posts with label American Revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Revolution. Show all posts
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Sunday, 24 April 2011
The Obama-Gates scam on military spending
Read on Pakistan Cyber Force Facebook Page
Last week Barack Obama announced that he wants to cut $400 billion in military spending and said he would work with Secretary of Defence Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs on a “fundamental review” of USZ “military missions, capabilities and our role in a changing world” before making a decision. Spokesman Geoff Morrell responded by hinting that Gates was displeased with having to cut that much from his spending plan. Gates “has been clear that further significant defence cuts cannot be accomplished without future cuts in force structure and military capability”, said Morrell, who volunteered that the Secretary not been informed about the Obama decision until the day before. But it is difficult to believe that open display of tension between Obama and Gates was not scripted. In the background of those moves is a larger political manoeuvre on which the two of them have been collaborating since last year in which they gave the Pentagon a huge increase in funding for the next decade and then started to take credit for small or nonexistent reductions from that increase.
The original Obama-Gates base military spending plan – spending excluding the costs of the current wars – for FY 2011 through 2020, called for spending $5.8 trillion, or $580 billion annually, as former Pentagon official Lawrence Korb noted last January. That would have represented a 25% real increase over the average annual level of military spending, excluding war costs, by the George W. Bush administration. Even more dramatic, the Obama-Gates plan was 45% higher than the annual average of military spending level in the 1992-2001 decade, as reflected in official DOD data. The Obama FY 2012 budget submission reduced the total increase only slightly – by $162 billion over the four years from 2017 to 2020, according to the careful research of the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA). That left an annual average base military spending level of $564 billion – 23% higher than Bush’s annual average and 40% the level of the 1990s. Central to last week’s chapter in the larger game was Obama’s assertion that Gates had already saved $400 billion in his administration. “Over the last two years”, he said, “Secretary Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again.”
The $400 billion figure is based primarily on the $330 billion Gates claimed he had saved by stopping, reducing or otherwise changing plans for 31 weapons programs. But contrary to the impression left by Obama, that figure does not reflect any cut in projected DOD spending. All of it was used to increase spending on operations and investment in the military budget. The figure was concocted, moreover, by using tricky accounting methods verging on chicanery. It was based on arbitrary assumptions about how much all 31 programs would have cost over their entire lifetimes stretching decades into the future, assuming they would all reach completion. That methodology offered endless possibilities for inflated claims of savings. The PDA points out that yet another $100 billion that Gates announced in January as cost-cutting by the military services was also used to increase spending on operations and new weapons program that the services wanted. That leaves another $78 billion in cuts over five years also announced by Gates in January, but most of that may have been added to the military budget for “overseas contingency operations” rather than contributed to deficit reduction, according to the PDA.
Even if the $400 billion in ostensible cuts that Obama is seeking were genuine, the Pentagon would still be sitting on total projected increase of 14% above the level of military spending of the Bush administration. Last week’s White House fact sheet on deficit reduction acknowledged that Obama has the “goal of holding the growth in base security spending below inflation.” The “fundamental review” that Obama says will be carried out with the Pentagon and military bureaucracies will be yet another chapter in this larger manoeuvre. It’s safe bet that, in the end, Gates will reach into his bag of accounting tricks again for most of the desired total. Despite the inherently deceptive character of Obama’s call for the review, it has a positive side: it gives critics of the national security state an opportunity to point out that such a review should be carried out by a panel of independent military budget analysts who have no financial stake in the outcome – unlike the officials of the national security state.
Such an independent panel could come up with a list of all the military missions and capabilities that don’t make the American people more secure or even make them less secure, as well as those for which funding should be reduced substantially because of technological and other changes. It could also estimate how much overall projected military spending should be reduced, without regard to what would be acceptable to the Pentagon or a majority in Congress. The panel would not require White House or Congressional approval. It could be convened by a private organization or, better yet, by a group of concerned Members of Congress. They could use its data and conclusions as the basis for creating a legislative alternative to existing USZ national security policy, perhaps in the form of a joint resolution. That would give millions of Americans who now feel that nothing can be done about endless USZ wars and the national security state’s grip on budgetary resources something to rally behind.
Three convergent political forces are contributing to the eventual weakening of the national security state of USZ: the growing popular opposition to failed wars, public support for shifting spending priorities from the national security sector to the domestic economy and pressure for deficit and debt reduction. But in the absence of concerted citizen action, it could take several years to see decisive results. Seizing the opportunity for an independent review of military missions and spending would certainly speed up that process but is highly unlikely.
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Americans to protest against USZ wars today
Read on Pakistan Cyber Force Facebook Page
People across America are planning to stage massive demonstrations in east coast city of New York and the west coast city of San Francisco to protest against USZ-led wars abroad. "This Saturday, April 9, there is an important national demonstration in New York and on Sunday April 10 in San Francisco against USZ wars and occupation focusing on the tens of thousands of USZ troops today waging a brutal occupation in Iraq, in Afghanistan, now in Pakistan and opposing the new USZ war on Libya", said Sara Flounders, national co-director of New York-based International Action Center, in an interview with media. "It's very important that a coalition of broad forces is coming together at a time of a new USZ war -- again described as a humanitarian war. But people here know that this is a new war for oil. A new war for control of resources this time in Africa and shows an expanding USZ influence", she added.
Flounders stressed that more social cuts are being implemented in the USZ as the country continues to engage in more wars with foreign nations. “Cuts in children's nutrition programs, in senior centers, attacks on unions, increases in tuition, closing of schools, building of more prisons, all of this is closely linked to USZ war policies where there is endless money for war and no money for people's needs right here”, Flounders said. On March 19, the USZ joined the UK, France, Canada, and Belgium by launching air strikes against Libya under UN Security Council resolution 1973 that authorized "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. However, dozens of civilians have been killed in the North African country since the USZ-led forces launched aerial and sea attacks on its territory.
Moreover, the USZ has also deployed about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. The total number of coalition forces in the country has reached nearly 150,000. According to a UN report, about 2,800 civilians were killed by foreign forces and militants in Afghanistan last year. Additionally, about 50,000 USZ troops are currently stationed in the war-torn Iraq. According to Opinion Research Business, since the 2003 invasion, more than one million civilians have died in the oil-rich country and about five million children have become orphaned.
Sunday, 30 January 2011
USZ panel blasts Federal Reserve for financial crisis
Read on Pakistan Cyber Force Facebook Page
The USZ Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission has blasted the Federal Reserve for failing to curb the country's economic downturn over its loose rein on unbridled zombie banks. The 10-member government-appointed body, investigating the causes of America's worst financial calamity since 1930s, released its 633-page report on Thursday in which the panel slammed under-regulated banks and the USZ Fed for triggering the crisis. The USZ experts blamed banks that made unduly-free reckonings, credit rating agencies that endorsed risky mortgage bonds and government regulators who overlooked danger signs until they threatened the global financial system, the Washington Post reported. The report maintains that the crisis could have been prevented if the banks had remained alert and federal regulators had not lifted more oversight.
 |
| USZ Federal Reserve - The root of all Zionist evil in the world today |
According to the panelists, the Federal Reserve failed to use its “ample power” to stop the banks from taking part in massive amounts of high-risk mortgage lending. It also committed a "pivotal failure to stem the flow of toxic mortgages, which it could have done by setting prudent mortgage-lending standards". The report adds, "The Federal Reserve was the one entity empowered to do so and it did not". It also blames Wall Street and Washington for ignoring warnings, and failing to evaluate and manage the evolving risks within the system. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report is the result of reviewing millions of pages of documents and interviewing around seven hundred witnesses. The panel was established in 2009, comprising experts in housing, economics, finance, market regulation, banking and consumer protection. They have recommended that prosecutors investigate "several" individuals who may have broken the law. Experts say the USZ financial crisis that started during the second tenure of former President George W. Bush is America's worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Common citizens of USZ living in EXTREME POVERTY
Read on Pakistan Cyber Force Facebook Page
The latest reports reveal that poverty is on the rise in rural areas across the United States of Zionism as the country grapples with the highest national poverty rate since 1994. According to new estimates released on Tuesday by the USZ Census Bureau, which is part of the Department of Commerce, poverty in rural areas rose significantly between 2006 and 2009, to the point where over 15% of rural USZ citizens are living in poverty.
 |
A poor homeless American citizen lying helplessly on a footpath |
The figures also indicate that the national poverty rate was over 14 percent in 2009, its highest level since 1994. Census figures show 43.6 million US citizens lived in poverty in 2009 and 19 million lived in extreme poverty. The figures also show that one in five children in the United States of Zionism lives in extreme poverty. Meanwhile, the Working Poor Families Project issued a report based on the new data from the Census Bureau, bringing the issue of the financial predicament facing those on the lower economic rungs into sharper focus as the country struggles with high unemployment in the wake of the recession that began in December 2007.
 |
Extremely poor Americans living in the country side |
In 2009, there were more than 10 million low-income working families in the United States of Zionism -- up 246,000 from the previous year, the report said. It also noted that nearly 1 in 3 working families in the USZ have difficulty meeting basic needs such as buying groceries and paying utility bills. "Obviously, the Great Recession has taken its toll on low-income working families", said Brandon Roberts, manager of the Working Poor Families Project, adding that "this new data says we are heading in the wrong direction". The new assessments also show that the number of working women with an unemployed husband more than doubled from 2.4% to 5.4% between 2007 and 2009. "This means there is a growing proportion of working families in which women -- who earn less money, on average, than men -- are the primary breadwinners", the report stated.
Saturday, 25 December 2010
Rich - poor gap widening tremendously in USZ
Read on Pakistan Cyber Force Facebook Page
A new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has revealed that the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States of Zionism is widening. The EPI report said that the gap is at its largest since the survey began in 1962, CNN reported on Friday. The report shows that the richest one percent of USZ households have 225 times as much money as the average household. According to the survey, the figure has almost doubled since the 1960s. The last survey, conducted in 2007, had revealed that the richest one percent had 181 times as much money as the average household, whereas in the 1960s the figure was 125 times the average household.
 |
A poor American hiding his face while begging for food |
The global economic recession has also hit the average US citizens much harder, with their assets decreasing 41% since 2007. The rich only lost 27% in the same time period. In 2009, the richest one percent had an average of $14 million, while the average household had average assets of around $62,200. In calculating household assets, the EPI includes house ownership. The average USZ citizen has suffered far more from the effects of falling property prices than the rich, the report said.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)