Organizing Notes

Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....

My Photo
Name:
Location: Brunswick, ME, United States

The collapsing US military & economic empire is making Washington & NATO even more dangerous. US could not beat the Taliban but thinks it can take on China-Russia-Iran...a sign of psychopathology for sure. We must all do more to help stop this western corporate arrogance that puts the future generations lives in despair. @BruceKGagnon

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Exploding Navy Budget Threatens Food Stamps


I leave early Monday for St. Mary's, Georgia where I will join the annual King's Bay nuclear submarine base protest vigil on New Year's Eve.  This alternative New Year event has been going on for something like 35 years.  While I lived in Florida I must have attended more than 20 of these.  Folks hold a retreat, share food, and review their activism at the Crooked River State Park which is located next door to the nuclear sub base.  I've missed these events since we moved to Maine in 2003 and was excited to be invited to come and speak during the retreat this year.

(President Jimmy Carter built the nuclear submarine base in his home state of Georgia. During his campaign for the presidency he often declared, "The arms race is a disgrace to the human race.")

Once I get home on January 3 I will just have a chance to catch my breath before repacking and heading to Seattle for the Nipponzan Myohoji annual peace walk to the nuclear submarine base at Bangor in Washington state.  So I will go from the east coast nuke sub base - back home in Maine to Bath where the Navy builds destroyers - then to the west coast nuke sub base.  So my ears are tuned these days to Navy shipbuilding issues.

Along those lines came an article today called Navy Tries to Cover Up New Carrier’s Exploding Cost.

The story begins with:

Recently, the Project On Government Oversight reported on the unaffordability of the Navy’s long-term shipbuilding budget and on the fact that its acquisition plans will actually cost much more than the service expects. According to the Congressional Budget Office, which uses a more realistic way of evaluating long-term acquisition plans, the Navy will need $76 billion more than it has budgeted for over the next three decades. This is on top of a preexisting $60 billion budget shortfall resulting from the forthcoming Ohio-class replacement submarine program.

The cost overruns in Navy shipbuilding are massive.  The profits for the weapons corporations are huge.  But even with the Pentagon's damn near total control of the federal budget there is still even more $$$ needed for the expensive Navy warships, new fighter jets, satellites, and launch vehicles the military industrial complex wants to build. Bottom line is that there is not enough $$$ to go around.  They are cutting troop levels and benefits for military personnel.  But that is chump change compared to the cost of these big-ticket items.

Construction of a dozen Ohio-class submarines – a major component of the Navy’s nuclear strategy – is projected to cost between $79 billion and $92 billion alone.  One new aircraft carrier will cost $13 billion.  The standard destroyers built here in Bath were costing $1.5 billion per copy but the new Zumwalt 'stealth' destroyers are going to cost more than $4 billion each.

How will Congress pay for all these high-tech weapons programs?  One solution is to cut food stamps.  I read the other day that all incoming Republican senators have pledged to eliminate the food stamp program.  One out of every six Americans now receive food stamps. The average monthly food stamp benefit is $135. White people across the US are the largest recipients of food stamps.

What else will the 'warriors' try to cut so they can keep building the empire's war machines?  It's no wonder that the country is falling apart as so much money is wasted on these very expensive weapons systems that do nothing to preserve life nor help us prepare for climate change or growing global poverty.

The freight train called 'endless war' is heading for a collision with the train called 'social progress'. 

I will be honored to stand with local peaceniks on both coasts in protest of these obscene Navy programs.

4 Comments:

Blogger Patsy said...

Happy Trails Bruce. Enjoy yourselves and stay safe.

12/29/14, 4:33 PM  
Anonymous denk said...

ot but important...

malaysia i pain for you...

a timeline of zwo assaults on the state of malaysia all coz the malaysians dont play ball with uncle sham !

*1997
dr mahathir savaged soros for his attack on asian currencies. [0]
an arsonist to boot...
http://www.radioislam.org/islam/english/jewishp/finance/sorosasia.htm

*2004
more inpardonable sin,
malaysia defied the imf .....[a]

*2004,
and again....
when uncle sham wanted to sneak into malacca strait under the cover of wop[irates] [1]
najib, the then deputy pm told the murcunts to *fuck off* [2]


*2005
dr mahathir slammed uk's state terrorism [3]


*2011
a malaysian tribunal indicted bush, blair etc as war criminals. [4]

*2012
dr mahathir lambasted soros/ned skuldruggeries in orchestrating regime change via washington's poster boy in malaysia, ibrahim anwar ! [b]

* 5/2013
inspite of its best effort, us sponsored opposition failed to depose dr mahathir's chosen successor, pm najib. [c]

*2013
defying intense pressure from washington to join its anti chinese bandwagon, sino malaysian friendly progressed apace... [d]
grrrr....
by this time, u could almost hear uncle sham straining at its leash !

then it came, fast and furious...

asia's very own *bermuda triangle.*

*2014 mar
malaysian airline's mh370, with almost 300 chinese nationals onboard, *disappeared* in south china sea amidst a major nato air sea war game !
hmm, the victims included dozens of china's top defence scientists !

**Located on the geostrategic Malacca Strait, Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim oil-producing nation with a "Look East" policy allying itself with Japan and China. Last year the Malaysian and Chinese governments established an economic alliance, which includes Asian access to world oil reserves. In the eyes of Washington and its allies, these are sufficient grounds to treat Kuala Lumpur as an adversary.* [e]

then, apr/14
*muslim insurgents* [rings a bell ?] in murcunt controlled philippines sneaked into sabah and kidnapped several chinese tourists.

pm najib had enough, declaring,
*somebody is out to sow discord bet malaysia and china !*

in an interview with rense.com, dr mahathir's legal adviser mathias chang pleaded, *no more false flags* ! [f]

12/30/14, 6:21 AM  
Anonymous denk said...

here came the in your face reply, typical m.o. of one and only one cuntry in this world.

less than six mths later in 8/14
another malaysian airliner mh17 was allegedly shot down over ukraine.
....amidst yet another nato air sea war game !
fukus lost no time blaming russia, producing nothing but fake videos from you tube !
when evidence wasnt forthcoming, the charge became untenable, fukus backtracked to accusing pro russia militants.

every rookie sleuth knows that in case of unatural deaths, ask cui bono ?
when the disappearence of mh370 was followed by kidnapping of chinese tourists , malaysian pm najib already said *someone out there is trying to poison sino malaysian relation*
thats what i thought when i knew almost three hundred chinese nationals perished, including many chinese experts on defence tech.

besides, there's malaysia's defiance to the washington consensus..
*Washington has often seen Malaysia’s leaders as stubborn, and as the unpopularity of the ruling coalition increases, organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have significantly greased the wheels to improve the US-friendly opposition’s chances of coming to power through multi-faceted media campaigns and support for anti-government street demonstrations.*
http://rt.com/op-edge/us-malaysia-opposition-politics-771/

then i certainly dont let pass the possibility that soros was there to *exact his pound of flesh* ! [g]

one stone killing how many birds ?
signatory m.o. of a fukus blackop, always aiming for biggest bang for the buck !
and...in your face !
mh370 followed by sabah kidnapping followed by mh17 !

there are also the inconvenient question, the abject failure of the vast array of fukus survellience apparatus, the spy satellites, the spy ships, the awacs, the radars at diego garcia, the submarines , all failed to provide answer to what happend to mh370, mh17, especially when there were major air sea war games going on in both cases !
besides , oz refused to divulge recordings at the ultra sensitive pine gap radar stations to malaysia.
what are they trying to hide ?

the whole thing stinks to high heaven,
if it quacks like a duck......
i'd say this has fukus finger print all over it !

is airasia QZ8501another one ?

well i dunno but there's this fundamental law in probability theory,
the fleming's law
*once could be accidence, twice could be coincidence, thrice...
enemy action* !



[0]
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/22/news/22iht-soros.t.html


[a]
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/book_reviews/3132malaysia_v_imf.html


[1]
remember what the murcunts say about malacca straits ?
* a huge fraction of China's oil goes there. If we ever had to get them by the balls, this is where the US Navy would do it* 1
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1323707/posts

ever wonder about the *surge* of pirates attacks during that period ;-)

[2]
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/05/1081017106683.html?from=storyrhs

12/30/14, 6:27 AM  
Anonymous denk said...



in a cif thread on [malaysian] airasia disaster , a poster exclaimed
*someone out there is stalking muslim countries !*, citing mh370, mh17, QZ8501.
its hard to blame him, he could've added iraq, afpak, libya, syria, iran....[1]

in which case i have even more reasons to believe someone has declared open season on chinese !

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/05/open-thread-2014-13.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef01a73dd44959970d

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/09/open-thread-2012-23.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef017d3c1c26ea970c


when i heard the plane was flying from indonesia to malaysia i had an inkling of whats to come, before long my suspicion was confirmed.
most of the victims are ethnic chinese.

in this yr alone almost 1000 chinese perished in air disasters under mysterious condition, viz, mh370, tw airline, airasia.

*Deddy, one of the church pastors, said the crash was a tragedy for all of Indonesia. But, he said, “We can guess from the names that many are Christian and Chinese.*
http://www.osundefender.org/?p=202858

*The crash was a particular loss to Surabaya’s ethnic Chinese minority.*
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/world/asia/airasia-8501-jet-missing-indonesia.html

http://tinyurl.com/kdcq8up

something strange here..
apparently somebody had warned people to stay away from this flight...
http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/2qneik/someone_in_china_warned_of_a_airaisa_disaster_13/

[1]
heavy censoring over there.,
i posted this link
http://space4peace.blogspot.sg/2014/12/exploding-navy-budget-threatens-food.html
in the same thread and was deleted immediately !

12/31/14, 10:19 PM  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home