How big is the U.S. military budget?

This article by the U.K. Guardian puts it in perspective:

[T]he United States spent a staggering $607bn (£402 bn) on defence in 2008. Currently engaged in what will likely be the longest ground war in US history in Afghanistan. Harbourer of thousands of nuclear weapons. 1.5m soldiers. Fleets of aircrafts, bombs and seemingly endless amounts of military technology.
I know that many Americans would read the above paragraph with pride and contentment. I consider it succinct evidence that we are a paranoid war-mongering nation. I consider these enormous military expenditures tragic, considering all of the other things that we could and should be doing with most of that money.

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Seventh anniversary of the Iraq invasion

Truthout has published a recap of what the invasion of Iraq has brought to the United States:

We are still shocked. We were never awed. We have not adjusted. The senseless waste of our blood and treasure, our honor and our reputation continue. Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom - the latter unleashed seven years ago today - have morphed into a single Operation Enduring Occupation, set to bankrupt this country financially as well as morally, to destroy our own security as it has that of the over 31 million people who populate Iraq and 32 million people of Afghanistan. . . . Of course, the loss of our troops (over 4,200 dead and 30,000 wounded) and treasure (three trillion dollars according to economics Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz), the perversion of our language, the mangling of our laws, the broken bodies and tortured brains of our veterans really bear no comparison with the suffering we have inflicted on the citizens of Iraq.

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Payday loan opponents struggle to get a fair hearing

Payday loans are high-interest short-term unsecured small loans that borrowers promise to repay out of their next paycheck, typically two weeks later. Interest rates are typically 300% to 500% per annum, many multiples higher than the exorbitant rates charged by banks on their credit cards. A typical payday borrower takes out payday loans to pay utility bills, to buy a child’s birthday present or to pay for a car repair. Even though payday loans are dangerous financial products, they are nonetheless tempting to people who are financially stressed. The growth of payday lenders in the last decade has been mind-boggling. In many states there are more payday lenders than there are McDonald’s restaurants. In Missouri Payday lenders are even allowed to set up shops in nursing homes. Missouri’s payday lenders are ferociously fighting a proposed new law that would put some sanity into a system that is often financially ruinous for the poor and working poor. Payday lenders claim that the caps of the proposed new law would put them out of business. Their argument is laughable and their legislative strategy is reprehensible. Exhibit A is the strategy I witnessed Thursday night, February 18, 2010. On that night, Missouri State Senator Joe Keaveny and State Representative Mary Still jointly held a public hearing at the Carpenter Branch Library in the City of St. Louis City to discuss two identical bills (SB 811 and HB 1508) that would temper the excesses of the payday loan industry in Missouri. Instead of respecting free and open debate and discussion regarding these bills, payday lenders worked hard to shut down meaningful debate by intentionally packing the legislative hearing room with their employees, thereby guaranteeing that A) the presenters and media saw an audience that seemed to favor payday lenders and B) many concerned citizens were excluded from the meeting. As discussed further down in this post, payday lenders are also responsible for flooding the State Capitol with lobbyists and corrupting amounts of money.carpenter-branch-library When I arrived at 7:00 pm, the scheduled starting time, I was refused entry to the meeting room. Instead, I was directed to join about 15 other concerned citizens who had been barred from the meeting room. There simply wasn’t room for us. But then who were those 100 people who had been allowed to attend the meeting? I eventually learned that almost all of them were employees of payday lenders; their employers had arranged for them to pack the room by arriving en masse at 6 pm. Many of the people excluded from the meeting were eventually allowed to trickle into the meeting, but only aspayday-employees other people trickled out. I was finally allowed into the meeting at 8 pm, which allowed me to catch the final 30 minutes. In the photo below, almost all of the people plopped into the chairs were payday lender employees (the people standing in the back were concerned citizens). This shameful tactic of filling up the meeting room with biased employees has certainly been used before.

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Guantanamo homicides; government cover-up

I am feeling as though I'm in shock after reading "The Guantánamo 'Suicides,'" an article by Scott Horton that appears in the March 2010 edition of Harper's Magazine (available online only to subscribers). The official story offered by the United States government is that these three prisoners, who occupied non-adjacent cells, simultaneously committed suicide on June 9, 2006. According to the NCI as documents, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell's 8-foot high steel mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat area we are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his wash basin, slipped his head through the news, tightened it, and left from the wash basin to hang until he asphyxiated. Horton's incredible article names names and provides details with regard to all of the following: * The United States appears to have murdered at least three of the prisoners at Guantánamo. None of these three men had been charged with any crime. Two of these men were set to be released. There is no credible evidence that any of them were terrorists. Evidence strongly suggests that they were beaten and then further tortured through waterboarding on the night they were killed. * The United States has worked furiously to cover up these murders, spewing countless lies in the process. * The United States maintained a special torture building ("a black site") far from the main prison camp at Guantánamo, and those who worked at Guantánamo were told to not ask any questions about it. It was called "Camp No," and those who have come forward at considerable risk have reported hearing screaming from that building. * After the three prisoners were apparently murdered, those in charge of Guantánamo viciously attacked the dead men, arguing to the press that "They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own." * In the process of "investigating the suicides," the U.S. government seized all written communications possessed by the other Guantánamo prisoners, including communications clearly constituting attorney-client privilege. * When presented with the facts presented in Horton's article, the Bush administration and the Obama administration's both refused to conduct any meaningful investigation. Both administrations actively suppressed the truth. * The Obama administration would simply rather not have to deal with the criminal actions of the Bush administration. I'm sure that many Americans are disgusted, as I am, that the United States has engaged in this sort of behavior. I'm also sure that millions of Americans would be outraged that Horton would dare to accuse the United States of anything improper; these sorts of people (I've met some of them and I've heard many on television) don't care whether the Guantanamo prisoners were really terrorists and don't care whether they were tortured. It's disturbing on many levels. It all makes you wonder what has become of us. The following is from a related article from yesterday's NYT, where it is reported that the Obama Administration is upset that a British Court released U.S. information indicating that U.S. treatment of prisoners "violated legal prohibitions against torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners." You'd think that Mr. Obama would abide by his campaign promise to be an open book, but he's doing the opposite: A spokesman for President Obama expressed “deep disappointment” in the court’s decision, which might have been shocking except that Mr. Obama has refused to support any real investigation of Mr. Bush’s lawless detention policies. His lawyers have tried to shut down court cases filed by victims of those policies, with the same extravagant claims of state secrets and executive power that Mr. Bush made. In another a related matter, Dick Cheney reminded the world yesterday that he has long been a big fan of A) waterboarding and B) telling his lawyers what to tell him.

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The dangerous prisoners of Guantanamo

How dangerous are the most dangerous prisoners of Guantanamo? If you listened to the Bush Administration, you'd think that they were all hardened killers. But guess what happens when a real-life judge looks only at the government's evidence regarding those the government hasn't released willingly? Glenn Greenwald reviews recent information from the Washington Post:

Federal judges, acting under a landmark 2008 Supreme Court ruling that grants Guantanamo Bay detainees the right to challenge their confinements, have ordered the government to free 32 prisoners and backed the detention of nine others. In their opinions, the judges have gutted allegations and questioned the reliability of statements by the prisoners during interrogations and by the informants. Even when ruling for the government, the judges have not always endorsed the Justice Department's case. . . .
This, of course, is a national travesty. Considering only the government's evidence, judges have ordered the release of 32 out of 41 of the detainees. This is not an indication that the judges have been lenient; they are the same career federal judges who run the United States District Courts. Rather, these shocking statistics show that there is no meaningful evidence that most of the longest imprisoned detainees are guilty of anything at all. Consider also that the U.S. released most of the detainees a long time ago because even the U.S. admitted that it had no evidence of wrongdoing in most of these cases:
Since October 7, 2001, when the current war in Afghanistan began, 775 detainees have been brought to Guantánamo. Of these, approximately 420 have been released without charge. In January 2009, approximately 245 detainees remained. . . Of those still incarcerated, U.S. officials said they intend to eventually put 60 to 80 on trial and free the rest.
It's a beautiful system, isn't it? Imprison and vilify hundreds of innocent people, distributing their images to garner public support for a needless series of military occupations. More and more, I think of the U.S. as primarily a warmonger society. The evidence just keeps pouring in from every direction.

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