the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Feb 20, 2012
The attorney generals of 49 states signed off on a deal with the big banks. The banks will pay 26 billion dollars–a very small pittance of the several trillion dollars in damages that their 6-year mortgage scam caused. In exchange, the 49 states will drop most of their long investigation into mortgage fraud.
Bank profits will get a boost, executives will walk away with big bonuses and congratulations from Wall Street for another job well-done–and none of those criminals goes to jail! The charges pending against Countrywide–one of the major criminals in the whole monstrous scam–were “rolled into” this settlement. That is, the charges were dropped!
The attorney general of Oklahoma didn’t sign on–because he thought the banks should not have to pay back one thin dime!
So, here’s the deal–here’s the thin dime the banks are going to cough up.
Some people who lost their homes to fraudulent practices will get a payment from the banks–between $1,500 and $2,000. Not even enough to pay for the deposit, plus first and last month’s rent that they had to put on another house when they were evicted–not to mention all the money they had already sunk into their mortgage payments.
About a million families who are “underwater” on their loan–owing more on their mortgage than the house is worth–may get some reduction in the balance they owe. Ten million more families, also underwater, won’t qualify for the terms of this deal.
And the question is, anyway: why are millions of families “underwater” today?
They had the misfortune to take out a mortgage or refinance right during the worst of the real-estate speculation that the banks’ mortgage practices fueled between 2001 and 2007.
When the speculative bubble collapsed, when prices began to come back down, people were left owing two or three times what the house came to be worth.
The banks, that pocketed enormous profit from driving up housing prices, aren’t giving back the trillions of dollars they stole in this speculation. They are reducing the principal by a few thousand dollars for only a smallpercentage of the people they defrauded.
And here’s the final nail in the defrauded homeowners’ coffin: guess who gets to “monitor” this deal, to make sure the banks fulfill the measly little commitments they made. That’s right, the banks themselves.
This mortgage settlement is another brutal demonstration of who owns power today in this country–the bankers and the rest of the capitalist class.
They made this outrageous settlement simply because they could. They own the power–and they use their power to increase their wealth at every turn, at the expense of the population.
Until the working class begins to mobilize its formidable forces, there is no way to contest that power today. Every problem we face–housing, the mortgage scam, unemployment, cuts to wages, cuts to the schools so the banks get more money from the states, cuts to public services, cuts to social services–every one of those problems is a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the bankers’ and the industrialists’ drive to accumulate more profit, more wealth in their tiny little corner of the universe, just for themselves.
The power the capitalists have over our lives can be taken away from them–but only when the laboring population comes to realize that it has no other choice but to fight, no other choice but to depend on its own forces and strive to put its own hands on power.
Feb 20, 2012
Los Angeles school district officials removed, overnight, the whole staff of Miramonte elementary school in South Los Angeles. This is the higher-ups’ response to the arrests of two Miramonte teachers on charges of sexually abusing students.
The accusations are certainly horrible. But the removal of the school’s entire staff is an insult on top of injury. The same authorities, who have short-changed schools like Miramonte for decades, are now casting blame on all teachers–and further disrupting the education of students–to cover up for their own neglect.
With more than 1,200 students, Miramonte is severely overcrowded. Like other working-class schools, it has been hit especially hard by budget cuts, which have resulted in elimination of staff, as well as extracurricular programs.
Teachers at working-class schools like Miramonte don’t even have the time to teach their students properly–let alone to get to know them a little better through extracurricular activities, or to know what’s going on in other classrooms.
Child abusers infesting an elementary school–that’s a horrible thought. But what’s even worse is that fertile ground for such crimes has been laid down by authorities–government officials who keep cutting the money from public education, and school board officials who pass the budget cuts straight on to schools.
Feb 20, 2012
Public library users in Washington, D.C. are finding a problem: fewer books. The number of volumes went down each year since 2007. The libraries have eliminated almost half their books.
Blame the internet? No, electronic books to download from the library website are only 2% of total circulation.
Rather, library operating funds were slashed. The budget for new books was cut 35% last year alone All neighborhood libraries have been closed on Sundays since 2009. Other hours have been reduced. Staff have been cut accordingly.
Meanwhile city politicians gave their friends in the construction industry 180 million dollars to rebuild or restore libraries. But that spending went to spruce up “gentrified” neighborhoods where expensive new condominiums continue to be built.
The end result: large, expensive libraries sit empty for hours.
Feb 20, 2012
An 18-year-old black teen, Ramarley Graham, was murdered by New York City police. Two plainclothes cops ran to Graham’s house, tried to kick the front door down, then got in through the back door and broke down the door to Graham’s second floor apartment, and one of them shot him.
After killing Graham, the cops took Graham’s grandmother, who witnessed the shooting, into custody and held her against her will at the police precinct. She was released only after a local state assemblyman intervened on her behalf.
As usual, the cops claimed Graham had a gun and ran from them because he was selling marijuana. But a check of video surveillance footage from the building shows Graham calmly walking into his own apartment, and the cops found no gun on him.
Hundreds of people from Graham’s neighborhood came out to protest the shooting. “When they kill young people, the cops claim drugs or guns. The cops frame them,” said Molly Gordon, a friend of Graham’s family. “The cops had no warrant to enter the apartment. We are not animals. This happens mostly to Black people. They need to take the cops off the force.”
When the cops shoot somebody and get no more than a slap on the wrist, they know they have a license to kill. And kill they do. This is the fourth shooting by the New York police in less than a month. Stop murderous cops!
Feb 20, 2012
Politicians from both parties are trumpeting the deal to extend the “payroll tax holiday” as a tremendous boon to working people. It’s a complete smokescreen!
The deal, which is said to “extend” unemployment benefits, actually cuts the maximum number of weeks unemployed workers can receive benefits from 99 weeks to 73 weeks in a few states, and to only 63 in most states.
This is how the politicians extend unemployment benefits–by cutting them!
Bad enough–but then they pretend they have to “pay” for the unemployment extension by cutting the pay of federal government workers. New federal hires will be forced to contribute 2.3% of their paychecks to their pension fund, up from 0.8%.
They also claim to be saving federal payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients, and then use that as a pretext to cut preventive medicine and public health programs.
Hidden in the bill, they made a great big gift to the phone companies by giving them government owned broadcast frequencies. They say the companies will have to pay for them, but they’re giving them away for practically free.
And of course workers who today get a little bit more in their paychecks will also see their Social Security benefits cut, in all likelihood, when the politicians come back–after the election–and point to the shortfall in the Social Security fund caused by these so-called “tax cuts”!
It’s nothing but more election year sleight-of-hand, designed to convince us to give these clowns our votes–and keep quiet!
Feb 20, 2012
The Michigan Dept. of Human Services shamefully threw 30,000 people off cash assistance. Now comes a public relations campaign to give the appearance that six months of housing assistance is available for former welfare recipients.
What’s available is Landlord Assistance. Only clients who rent from a “registered vendor” can get this help.
Who has the money to become a “registered vendor” with the state? Big real estate companies, that’s who.
Feb 20, 2012
If things are “getting better” in Michigan, why are 30,000 unemployed workers getting cut off from unemployment benefits as of February 18th?
Once Michigan’s “official” [inaccurate] unemployment rate fell below 9.9%, extended unemployment benefits ended. But, according to the Detroit News, Michigan’s 2011 unemployment rate was 19.2%–IF discouraged workers and everyone who WANTS A JOB–but can’t find one–are included.
Unemployment statistics that are out of touch with reality are being used to throw very real unemployed people under the bus.
Feb 20, 2012
Today many workers are working all kinds of overtime because of all the debt they have. They bought a new car. And they bought a house to live more comfortably. They deserve these things.
Instead they had to borrow a lot to do it, and the problem is working 40 hours a week doesn’t pay it off.
At the end of World War II the factory work week was 40 hours. Today the average factory worker is producing five times as much per hour of work. The work week could be much shorter than 40 hours, not a lot longer.
Feb 20, 2012
In a TV interview with Andrea Mitchell, billionaire Foster Friess was asked if Rick Santorum’s views on contraception would hurt him in the general election.
Friess, who is a big Santorum backer, remarked: “... Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”
Andrea Mitchell responded: “Excuse me, I’m just trying to catch my breath from that, Mr. Friess, frankly.”
Santorum was sure wishing for an aspirin to put between Freiss’ lips–in order to keep his mouth shut.
But if Santorum disagrees with Friess’s “bad joke,” let him “distance himself” completely from the rotten anti-women attitudes that lay behind it. For example–banning all contraceptives. Santorum thinks it’s a good idea for states to do that–or to deny women who use contraceptives the right to privacy.
Santorum may be less crass than Friess. But he’s just as misogynous!
Feb 20, 2012
Seventeen property owners in Baltimore were found to be getting special tax credits on three or more houses, a tax credit meant only for the homeowner’s own residence. Hundreds of owners had gotten two of these special property tax credits. These were the findings of two reporters for the Baltimore Sun papers who did a search of city property tax records.
The city says these are “mistakes.” Perhaps the mistakes have been simple errors. But often not.
One Baltimore city resident put together three row houses four years ago to create a giant home. His assessment was the same as nearby neighbors with half or a third of the square footage compared to his giant house. This homeowner just happens to be the son of the second largest property developer in Baltimore.
Why is it that “mistakes” favor those who are already wealthy?
Feb 20, 2012
Excelon has promised to locate a divisional headquarters building in Baltimore if it is allowed to gobble up Constellation Energy and BGE. However, the property taxes that will be paid on the new building will not make up for the taxes Constellation has been paying on its old headquarters building–currently about three quarters of a million dollars a year.
Why? Because the new building will get a tax break for the next 10 years–80% for the first five years, with decreasing breaks for five years after that.
What a deal for Excelon and wealthy real estate developer John Paterakis! And what a rip-off of ordinary city taxpayers!
Feb 20, 2012
On February 1st, there were clashes at a soccer stadium in the city of Port Said, in the north of Egypt. This led to the death of 74 spectators and hundreds of wounded among the supporters of the Cairo team, Al-Ahly.
Since then there have been many demonstrations in downtown Cairo to protest against the government and the generals, who are held responsible for the deaths in Port Said. Witnesses, both spectators and soccer players, described how the police force present at the match stood back as hoodlums armed with iron rods attacked supporters of the Cairo team.
The Port Said police at a minimum were passive, proving their complicity in this provocation. Those in power do this a lot. This time it was against Cairo youth from working class neighborhoods, who are the main supporters of the Al-Ahly team. Before and after the fall of Mubarak, there have been provocative interventions. It’s not hard to see the hand of the police and army stirring up these confrontations, which are immediately followed by violent repression. This was the case last October at the time of a demonstration of Coptic Christians in front of the radio and television building.
For the moment, the forces of repression aim at the Cairo youth called “ultras.” They are youth from the working class who took part in the demonstrations demanding Mubarak’s ouster, who are opposed to the attacks of armed partisans, and who ceaselessly continue to demand that the Supreme Military Council and its head Tantawi give up power.
The demonstrators in downtown Cairo protest that the army continues to run the country. For several days, they have been confronting anti-riot police who fired at them killing 12 people and wounding an estimated 2,500 more. The generals, who claim to be a fortress against “disorder,” want to justify reimposing the recently-abolished state of emergency. The chain of events in the week following the Port Said soccer game shows the generals intend to stay in power until the presidential election scheduled in June.
But nothing says the population will be duped. Even if most people were only spectators at the Cairo and Suez demonstrations, everyone is suffering heavily from the increase in prices, for example, on heating gas. The Egyptian government is asking for a loan from the International Monetary Fund, so the people will have to face more economic violence that keeps them in poverty, for the profit of the Western powers and the Egyptian privileged classes.
Feb 20, 2012
On February 14th, Syrian government forces fiercely assaulted the city of Homs. According to the Syrian Institute of Human Rights, two rockets were launched per minute on densely populated neighborhoods in this working class city of 500,000.
The past 12 days had left 300 dead, and thousands of people packed into shelters are scarcely able to survive.
For almost a year since the first demonstrations against the regime, the opposition against Bashar al-Assad has continued to grow. Repression has become more and more violent. At least 6,000 people are estimated to have been killed. The army has taken control of the entire country. Arbitrary arrests, violence and torture have increased.
The West’s embargo on Syrian oil is supposed to deprive the Assad regime of money, but, of course, the main victims are the population.
In cities where 70% of the population lives, bread is getting scarce and the price of goods soars, as does the price of gas and heating oil.
The U.N. and the Arab League dispatched some “observers,” who recommended that Assad accept the Arab League’s plan. The plan requires all military action to cease, with power transferred to some of the opposition groups against the regime.
The Syrian population is caught in the pincers between a desperate dictatorship, which continues to benefit from the support of the majority of the regular army, Saudi Arabia and Qatar–whose intentions are anything but humanitarian–and the Western powers, which have never ceased to pillage the Middle East for their profit. Today the big powers pretend they are concerned about Assad’s policy. But he is in power with their blessing, like his father was before him–doing their dirty work in this part of the world.
Feb 20, 2012
The European Bank, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund gave a new ultimatum to Greece: if it wants money to make its payment of 19 billion dollars due on March 20th, it had until last week to agree to a 20% cut in the minimum wage, to eliminate bonus pay in the private sector, to cut Social Security pensions and to lay off 15,000 government workers. And all these cuts were for a country where the official unemployment rate is 21%, if not really 28%, as the unions state. The bankers simply demand the population be strangled a little more.
The government first took aim against the public sector, demanding an end to a bonus worth 16% of workers’ pay, an increase in worker contributions for health and retirement insurance, a new “solidarity” tax, and lowering the income level at which income taxes are collected. A grade school teacher getting $19,000 a year in 2001 now earns only $14,000 and will soon earn only $11,000.
In the private sector, labor laws are still respected in large businesses, but elsewhere it’s the law of the jungle. There are a lot of medium and small businesses in Greece. On the big boulevards of Athens there are signs saying “for rent” or “for sale,” but with no takers. The Greek Chamber of Commerce forecasts another 160,000 jobs will be lost this year.
Some bosses don’t pay wages, or cut hours of work, especially in trade and restaurants where hours and pay had already been reduced. Many workers are no longer paid regularly. The bosses give them $250 to “hold” them while they wait for their pay. A big daily newspaper, Eleftherotypia, hasn’t come out since 2011 when the workers went on strike after not being paid for months.
Retirees have lost at least 20% of their income. Greek workers save regularly to be able to draw on their savings when they retire. The newly retired always need a few months to get their money. But now, not only are their savings not turned over to them, but many have to wait a year or more before they can get their hands on their own money.
A large part of the population can barely survive. Many can only do some small jobs for cash, and even these are rare. And how can someone survive with prices soaring? A government investigation at the beginning of February showed that Greek prices are higher than those in Germany. So people are skimping on heating oil, gas for their car and food. They appeal to the generosity of family and friends. Those who are more isolated go to soup kitchens organized by church parishes and to food pantries organized by charities. The weakest wind up in the streets. Homelessness has increased by 25% in the past two years. There are 15,000 homeless on the streets of Athens.
So now the IMF, the European Bank and the European Union, the great European powers like France and Germany, their banks and their financial companies demand Greece “make an effort.” During this time, the Greek big bourgeoisie has increased its transfer of funds to London real estate, and like all the capitalists of Europe and elsewhere, wait for the moment when the Greek state privatizes assets at a low price, so they can get a good deal on them.
A Greek salesman told a reporter, “We should put [the bankers] in a small, unheated apartment with a $400 a month pension and see can they live like that. Can they live how they’re asking us to live?”
Feb 20, 2012
The streets of Athens were transformed into a battlefield on February 13, as Greek lawmakers, protected by thousands of police, voted on the drastic new austerity plan demanded by the banks and international financial institutions.
Over the past two years, the standard of living of the population has plunged in half. Now additional measures will lower wages in the private sector, as was already done in the public sector; the minimum wage will be cut by 22%, reduced to $9,100 a year with still less for youth; pensions are being scrapped. Several thousand government workers are being laid off. Legal protection against layoffs is almost eliminated.
Three hundred parliamentary deputies–sad puppets serving finance capital–gave their approval to the austerity plan while the population was in revolt. This is what Greek democracy means! Of course, the rest of the “democracies” are just the same! The governments act as the Board of Directors for the capitalist class, and the lawmakers sit there only to approve the decisions of big capital.
Some months ago, they told us that what’s going on in Greece is the fault of the Greeks, including workers, retirees and ordinary people, who “live beyond their means,” so their state wound up overwhelmed with debt up to the neck! After what has happened in Portugal, Spain and Italy, it’s obvious that Greece is not a special case. Greece shows what the future will be in other countries.
The big banks used blackmail against the Greek Parliament, giving them a “choice” they couldn’t refuse: either they impose austerity measures on the population or the financial institutions will no longer lend the Greek state money, and it will go bankrupt.
All the states are pressured by the same blackmail. All are overwhelmed by debt. All shake down their populations to pay the banks greater and greater sums. In every country, interest due the banks becomes the main budget item. “Debt repayment” has become the credo of the entire capitalist class, the justification of a gigantic transfer from the pockets of the poorest to the bank vaults. However, the Greek example shows that the more they impose austerity, the more they lower the purchasing power of the majority of the population, the worse the economic crisis gets, and the less are states able to pay their debts.
In Greece as elsewhere, the overwhelming majority of the population has nothing to do with state debt. The debt should be paid by those for whom the states borrowed it: the banks themselves, the capitalist corporations. But the capitalist class makes sure that the workers, the retirees and the unemployed pay its debt.
Economic life is war, through which the most powerful impose their law on the weakest. Above all, the capitalist exploiters impose their law on the exploited.
By coming out on the streets to reject the austerity plan, the Greek exploited classes gave the response that the majority of their pretended representatives are too cowardly to give. But what’s happening in Athens also shows that it’s not enough to refuse the policy of the capitalists. It’s necessary for the workers to fight for their own policy.
The Greek workers are beginning to realize that, based on capitalist policies, they are condemned to misery and decline. We can hope that they come to realize in the course of the struggle that they must intrude on the management of the economy and impose their own demands.
The crisis imposes a choice on the workers: Who makes economic decisions, them or us? Will it be a handful of financiers, in the sole interest of big capital, or will it be the workers, in the interest of the great majority of society?
The choice posed today to the Greek workers is being posed today to workers of all countries.
It’s necessary for workers everywhere to find and impose their own answer.
Feb 20, 2012
On the 75th anniversary of the Flint Sit-Down Strike, UAW President Bob King made a speech invoking the memory of the Flint Sit-Down strikers, and said he is ready to lead a fight against certain profitable corporations, shouting “It’s immoral.”
Yes, what corporations are getting away with is immoral. But the policies that King and others carry out have helped corporations to take more and more from the labor of workers. The Flint Sit-Down strikers took on the corporations. They didn’t give in to the companies’ demands for concessions.
Feb 20, 2012
General Motors just reported 2011 annual profits that were the largest in its 103-year history–7.6 BILLION dollars.
Automobile sales are down at the same time GM’s profits are up. In 2011, U.S. sales of cars and trucks were about 12.8 million vehicles. This is nowhere near the 16.8 million in yearly sales that was the average from 2000 to 2007.
With sales down, how are record profits possible? From the theft of wages and benefits from workers, that’s how. GM stole retiree healthcare from union and salaried workers. GM pushed half pay for new hires and no pensions. GM froze seniority workers’ wages. The list goes on and on.
The estimated $7,000 in profit “sharing” that GM workers will receive doesn’t begin to make up for all the money that workers have lost through years of concessions. It doesn’t even match what GM workers lose in one year to all the accumulated concessions.
Money that used to be in workers’ pockets, allowing them to buy more cars, has been transferred to the vaults of bankers and investors.
On top of this, under the bailout deal, GM now pays hardly any U.S. taxes, also pumping profits.
Record profits? They come from record theft!
Feb 20, 2012
In a low key manner, General Motors just announced the elimination of guaranteed pensions for 19,000 salaried employees who were hired before 2001. Beginning in October 2012, GM will freeze salaried pension contributions and will switch employees to a 401(k)-type plan.
This attack on salaried workers’ pensions will be the new battering ram for bringing under attack the guaranteed pensions of union auto workers and all who still have traditional pensions.
As the saying goes, it’s deja vu all over again. GM salaried employees were among the first to lose retiree healthcare.
Back in 1996, GM made a similar move by tearing up its written promise to salaried workers of retiree healthcare for life. Lawsuits were filed and court cases went on for over a decade. Ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that as long as GM buried a sentence about the right to terminate the retiree medical plan in its thousands of pages of welfare plan documents, then written guarantees in the summary plan documents were meaningless.
Any auto worker and every worker who still has a guaranteed pension is viewing the opening shot in a war. As in any war, when you are attacked, you must resist.
Anyone who thinks they can keep their guaranteed pension plan without fighting back might just as well be wearing pajamas–because frankly, you are dreaming!
Feb 20, 2012
Rabid right-wingers portray Iran as a crazy aggressor, ready to lash out with state-sponsored terrorism anywhere, making plans to do it even with nuclear weapons in the future.
Behind these increasingly hysterical scare stories hides this reality: the U.S. and Israel are threatening Iran. Every day, the Israeli government, the U.S. military’s junior partner in the Middle East, threatens Iran with bombing attacks. For three weeks, U.S. naval strike forces, including the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, plied the Persian Gulf, just off Iran’s coast, in a massive show of force.
The U.S. has also been carrying out a real economic war against Iran. Ever tighter U.S. trade sanctions over Iran have helped to cripple its economy, collapse its currency and cause worsening hardship for its 74 million people. Reuters now reports that on the streets of Iran, prices for food stuffs are soaring.
Remember how the U.S. government accused Iraq of having weapons of mass destruction–when it was the U.S. military that dropped millions of tons of weapons of mass destruction on the people of Iraq for nine straight years? Remember how the U.S. accused Afghanistan of harboring terrorists associated with the 9/11 attacks–when Osama bin Laden, a U.S. protégé, was involved, and when the U.S. took that pretext to invade Afghanistan?
Yes there is terrorism all right: In its quest for domination over the Middle East’s vast oil reserves and other strategic assets, the U.S. military not only sows death and destruction, but makes the entire region an ever more dangerous powder keg.
Feb 20, 2012
The German conglomerate Siemens announced it has hired retired General Stanley McChrystal to be the head of its newly created division: Siemens Government Technologies. His job will be to convince the U.S. government to use Siemens’ services in emergency medical technology, energy and infrastructure.
McChrystal was a highly placed member of the U.S. military apparatus, ending his career as commander-in-chief of the Western occupation troops in Afghanistan, and playing an important part in the wars led by the U.S. over the last 20 years.
He is hardly the first general to become an advisor for firms with the military as their clients. But he stood out by covering up the activities of soldiers who abused prisoners at Abu Graib, by being pardoned by the Senate for these acts and by successfully intervening with Obama to send more soldiers to Afghanistan.
In 2010, McChrystal went too far. He let himself be quoted criticizing Pentagon leaders and mocking the Secretary of Defense. He had to resign.
But still this old brass hat is well able to win orders from the U.S. military for his new employer Siemens.
Feb 20, 2012
On February 9th, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon was condemned and sentenced to an 11-year suspension from his job of investigating important crimes. He was charged with using illegal eavesdropping in a corruption case against leaders of the Popular Party, now in power.
At this very moment, another trial is taking place on the crimes of the Franco dictatorship in Spain–which Garzon began investigating in 2008. A Spanish law from 30 years ago imposed silence about Franco’s repression at the end of the Spanish civil war and during his 40-year dictatorship–in the name of “peace.” Two years ago, after the Franco investigation began, Garzon was dismissed from his position as investigating magistrate of the national court.
Judge Garzon isn’t some unknown small-town judge. He is a high official in the Spanish state, best known for his determination to extradite the Chilean dictator Pinochet and to prosecute the torturers of the Argentine dictatorship. It is his international prestige that makes all the reactionary political circles of Spain hate him. They feel directly threatened by the investigation of the terror during the Franco dictatorship. These reactionaries were emboldened to challenge him when the right wing won the recent elections. Of course, the right wants to challenge this judge. They are preparing to get rid of workers’ rights, the rights of women and all freedoms.
Many in Spain express solidarity with Garzon for carrying out investigations and digging up testimony that reveals the assassinations and tortures their families experienced.
The horror of the Franco years also explains what led to popular protests and demonstrations of sympathy for this judge.
Feb 20, 2012
The U.S. military has spent a trillion dollars on weapons since 9/11, according to a report by a security think tank, the Stimson Center. It has increased its annual spending on military hardware from 63 billion dollars in 2001 to 136 billion dollars in 2010. That’s more than double. And in 2008 it was even higher, more than 160 billion dollars.
The politicians tell us the federal government has a huge budget deficit. Yes, and one trillion dollars of it was caused by spending on military weapons, whose purpose has been to carry out wars on the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, to a smaller extent in Pakistan and Yemen–and who knows where else in the future.