I live in Bath, Maine where Navy destroyers are built. These ships are outfitted with so-called "missile defense" systems that the Pentagon is today using to help surround Russia and China. Few people in my community, including activists, are interested in where these ships go or what their military mission is. It's not popular to raise these questions -- especially when Bath Iron Works is the largest industrial employer in our state.
In the US today 59% of every federal discretionary tax dollar goes to the Pentagon to fund the cancerous war machine. Our communities have become addicted to military spending as our physical and social infrastructure continues to deteriorate. There is virtually no money for anything else these days as we witness austerity cuts in social programs all around the globe.
In fact, today weapons are the number one industrial export of the US. And when weapons are your number one industrial export product, what is your global marketing strategy for that product line? What does it say about the soul of our nation that we have to keep selling weapons and killing people in order to provide jobs so workers can feed their families?
In addition to coordinating the Global Network I am a member of Veterans For Peace, and just days ago we completed a low-tech 125-mile walk across parts of our state that we called Walk for Peace & a Sustainable Future. Increasingly, the only real job investment money coming into Maine (and across the nation) from the federal government is for military weapons production. Now, nearly 10% of Maine's economy is reliant on weapons contracts.
We began the walk up in the beautiful mountain and lakes region called Rangeley where the Pentagon's 'Missile Defense Agency' is considering putting up to 60 so-called 'missile defense interceptors,' which, in fact, are key elements in US first-strike attack planning and are aimed at Russia and China. Narrow, winding roads would have to be bulldozed and widened and huge holes would have to be blasted into the mountains in order to insert the missile silos. Toxic rocket fuel would be trucked in and stored -- the same rocket fuel that is now contaminating water sources in 22 states across the nation. The whole plan would be an environmental disaster and would cost taxpayers more than $4 billion.
This program is an important illustration of how the nation increasingly puts blind faith in space technology to fight modern wars.
Come to find out the Pentagon didn't want this expensive program, but pressure on Congress from the Boeing Corporation forced it to go forward with an environmental impact statement process and public hearings in four states (including Maine) to select an 'east coast deployment' site for the missile defense base.
Another major weapons program being built that the Pentagon did not actually want is also in Bath, Maine. General Dynamics Corporation owns Bath Iron Works where destroyers for the Navy are built. The standard destroyers cost $1.5 billion each and are outfitted with another version of these 'missile defense' interceptor missiles -- which have had much success in their testing program. But after Obama became president he forced the Pentagon to build the new high-tech 'stealth' destroyer called the Zumwalt the job of which is to sneak up on China and blast it with electro-magnetic rail guns and other weapons systems. This is part of Obama's 'pivot' of 60% of US military forces into the Asia-Pacific to provocatively confront and control China.
As it turns out the majority stockholders in General Dynamics are the Crown family in Chicago who helped Obama get elected to the presidency. So he owed them, and the new Zumwalt stealth destroyer, at a cost to taxpayers of between 4 and 6 billion dollars per copy, is their reward.
As part of the US pivot to China the Pentagon needs more airfields for warplanes, barracks for troops, and ports of call for the warships being re-deployed into the Asia-Pacific. So in places like Jeju Island, South Korea we see a 500-year-old farming and fishing culture being torn apart and UNESCO-recognized world- heritage soft coral reefs just offshore being destroyed as a naval base is being built for US nuclear subs, aircraft carriers and the destroyers made in my hometown of Bath.
Endangered coral reefs in the Philippines, Australia, Hawaii, Okinawa, and other places are similarly being severely impacted by US military expansion across the region. The Global Network is working hard to build international support for the local struggles against US military devastation of the environment and way of life of these communities.
The Pentagon has the largest carbon boot print on the planet" but sadly, there is little acknowledgement of that fact by most climate change groups, which well illustrates the "off limits" nature of the growing military domination of our society.
Some environmental leaders have told me over the years that they don't want to negatively impact their 'positive working relationship' with Democrats in Congress by taking on the more controversial military issues, which most Democrats fully support because they bring jobs to their districts.
We have become an occupied nation. The corporate oligarchy that runs the show in Washington uses space-based technologies to spy on us and to direct all warfare on the planet. In a way, you could call today's expensive military satellites the "triggers" that make the high-tech weapons like drones and missiles work. These satellites allow the military to see everything, hear everything, and to target virtually every place on the planet.
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