YEMEN

Maya Schenwar

About 230,000 people will die as a result of the war in Yemen if conditions don’t change by the end of 2019... Congress has another chance to end the war this summer during the consideration of annual military spending bills.

(Read this by Hassan El-Tayyab!)

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TRUTHOUT.ORG

Congress Can End the Yemen War This 

Summer, Despite Trump

Defense appropriations bills offer the quickest, most straightforward way to defund the illegal Yemen war.

LINK

Hassan El-Tayyab

June 14 

Thanks for retweeting my OpEd Mark Ruffalo! You have been a tireless advocate in the movement to end US support for the Saudi-UAE led war in Yemen.

The House votes on the defense budget Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. In this vote, House members have a chance to block Trump's emergency $8.1 billion weapons sale to Saudi and the UAE. Call your Rep and tell them it's important they follow through on this!

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TWITTER.COM

Mark Ruffalo on Twitter

“This war has killed 85,000 children. It’s an immoral and 

useless war. America should wash its hands of being Saudi Arabia’s partner in these war crimes. https://t.co/bFaevmYPfi”

Mark Ruffalo‏Verified account @MarkRuffalo

This war has killed 85,000 children. It’s an immoral and useless war. America should wash its hands of being Saudi Arabia’s partner in these war crimes.

Hassan El-Tayyab

June 10 

I've been thinking a lot about budget stuff lately as Congress decides how it will allocate nearly $750 billion to the Pentagon in the coming weeks. There is some serious waste fraud and abuse behind much of that figure. So much of that amount actually funds things that are making us less safe. It has got me thinking about my own experiences living on the poverty line trying to figure out my own budget.... Saving and investing money was hard for me when I was a full time musician living gig to gig or lesson to lesson. I took odd jobs welding, doing construction, painting, and gardening... scraping it all together. I loved being a musician full time but it's nice not to be in poverty wondering how to pay bills anymore. Thanks Just Foreign Policy for paying me a living wage. I also have healthcare now. Yay!

There are too many stories to name, but this one kinda sums up a really bad (but not atypical) day being poor... I remember waiting in line in the middle of the winter in Chicago trying to get Medicaid before 6am one morning after several attempts going into the DHS office. If you went in at 7am when their office opened, you'd never get an appointment. They only saw the first 100 or so people. But they wouldn't let you in the building either despite them being open for other stuff. They made us wait out in the cold outside with wind chills of -20 degrees coming off the lake. There were pregnant women with me out there, shivering just trying to get insurance to see a doctor.

Now that I'm working in politics in DC, I see up close how some folks talk about how we were supposedly "mooching the system." They tell me this with a straight face when they have never lived a day in poverty their whole life... And they are working for congressional offices, think tanks, and NGOs that are pushing to keep our government on track to blow trillions on endless wars. We literally just spent almost $6 trillion dollars since 9/11 fighting senseless wars in the Middle East. Next time someone tells me we can't afford a Green New Deal or Medicare for All, I'm going to ask them how much endless war costs us.

It's baffling and extremely frustrating for me having been through what I've been through working in the gig economy and teaching music, not sure on a regular basis how I'd pay rent. It's even more frustrating to know that most of the folks I stood in line with probably had it way worse than I did and might still be uninsured or underinsured. We must invest in our people not war folks! I encourage everyone to call their Reps this week as Congress prepares to mark up and vote on the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act and ask that we make some changes in our priorities.

If you're up for saving America a few bucks, do this:

1) Call the Congressional Switchboard at 202-224-3121
2) Ask for your Representative, and when connected say:
3) My name is ___________ and I am a constituent living at (your address). I’m calling to urge Representative ________ to support amendments in consideration of our defense budget that would cut $200 billion from the pentagon, end our nation’s endless wars, Stop US support for the Saudi-UAE war in Yemen, and prevent war with Iran and Venezuela. I look forward to hearing why the representative does or does not support these steps I feel are important.

Thanks for making the call! Current and future generations will thank you too.

Let's cut the Pentagon budget by $200 billion a year

Urge Congress to cut the Pentagon by $200 billion.
Sign the petition

More than half of our federal income tax dollars go to military spending, one way or another. That’s helped produce the skewed national priorities that President Eisenhower warned about. It’s a key reason that it’s been so hard to end U.S. participation in the Saudi-UAE war in Yemen. President Trump told 60 Minutes that we have to keep arming Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates because of Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin. These Pentagon contractors and others lobby both Republicans and Democrats in Washington to throw more of our tax dollars at wars and military spending. The money they use to lobby both parties to get more of our tax dollars for more war came from our tax dollars in the first place. We have to stop this cycle of theft and destruction.
A big coalition of groups is joining together to push Congress to cut the Pentagon by $200 billion a year. If we can get more Members of Congress to say it, maybe we can even get Presidential candidates to say it - after all, a bunch of the Presidential candidates are Members of Congress.
You can sign the joint petition here.


Thanks for all you do to help make U.S. foreign policy more just, 

Sarah Burns, Hassan El-Tayyab, and Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy

If you think our work is important, please make a donation to support it.
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© 2019 Just Foreign Policy

Next time some tells you 'we need a strong military....'

We can thank:

The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex

Chicken Hawk Neo Cons

PNAC members

War Profiteers like Kagan

War Mongers like Victoria Nuland

Neo Cons

Obama FAIL!

Hillary Clinton

Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld et al

The Washington establishment that support building America Empire at the expense of your grandchildren

....that we can't afford to feed hungry Americans, can't afford Universal Health Care, can't afford to fix crumbling infrastructure, can't afford to care for the homeless, can't afford to care for our Veterans.....can't afford!

Taxpayers for Common Sense: Heartburn over Pentagon Spending

Heartburn over Pentagon Spending: Congress is giving Defense Secretary Ashton Carter a bad case of heartburn. Volume XXI  No.31: August 5, 2016 Congress is giving Defense Secretary Ashton Carter a bad case of heartburn. Indeed, each year the Secretary of Defense sends the chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees a so-called heartburn letter, which catalogues funding proposals that the Secretary would rather not see in the Pentagon’s annual policy bill. Some background: Official Washington is out of town for the next few weeks. But a small group of congressional staffers is trying to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate versions of that policy bill— the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA. To Carter’s way of thinking, there’s plenty to cause heartburn in some of the provisions that could be in the final version of the bill. He’s even thinking about recommending a veto to the President. These provisions are enumerated in his letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, as well as in the Statements of Administration Policy on the House and Senate bills. And while we don’t agree with some items in Carter’s letter, there are several issues on which the Secretary asks Congress to take the fiscally responsible path. Not surprisingly, we agree. The heartburn letter decries what Carter refers to as Congress “carrying on business as usual, pursuing provisions that reject important budgetary decisions” made by Pentagon leaders. Secretary Carter lists as his “first and most urgent concern” the gimmick within a gimmick in the House version of the bill. The Administration requested $523.9 billion for so-called “base” Pentagon funding (subject to budget caps) and $58.8 billion in war funding in the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account (not subject to the caps) for Fiscal Year 2017. The House version of the bill shifts $18 billion in OCO money to the base budget – busting the caps – and requires the Pentagon to spend the vast majority of the remaining OCO account prior to the end of April 2017. This tactic is budgetary sleight of hand and we joined with several other fiscal conservative groups to ask that it be stricken. Congress also refused the Pentagon’s request for another round of base closures that would, Carter says, “free up significant resources to fund high priority program requirements.” (In truth, we would rather those savings go to deficit reduction.) History has shown that only an independent commission can make the tough decisions about which bases to close. But the Congress continues to block funding for such a commission. And while lawmakers criticize the Defense Department for inefficiency and failing to make hard decisions, Carter says, “it is Congress that has continued to fail to remove the most readily evident excess in our enterprise: excess infrastructure and the support functions that go with it.” We also agree with Carter in opposing congressional action to increase the number of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) purchased in FY17 from two to three. In short, congressional advocates want to keep federal funds flowing to the shipyards for a ship that can only operate in “permissive environments.” In contrast, the Secretary says the Pentagon wants to spend that money “to help improve the U.S. Navy’s ability to fight and win a war at sea against a high-end opponent.” And what sense does it make for the Navy to purchase any ships incapable of going up against a “high-end” adversary? Who do they think we might have to battle in the future? Only low-end military powers? And speaking of the strength of the shipbuilding industry to push Congress into bad decisions, the House version of the NDAA once again disallows the use of any funds to implement the Navy’s plan to retire or “inactivate’’ two classes of ships. From the heartburn letter: “The Department can ill-afford these additional costs which would further limit the Department’s ability to make critical investments in other areas of lethality, modernization, and readiness.” We couldn’t agree more. Lest you think the Secretary is only concerned with big ticket items, he also wades into the issue of athletic footwear. Both versions of the NDAA include protectionist provisions that limit the choice new military recruits have in selecting athletic shoes at boot camp. Carter has it exactly right when he writes, “…because only one manufacturer is currently producing a shoe that arguably meets the standards established by these provisions, they appear to provide a preferential, sole-source arrangement for a particular company.” Don’t know if the pun was intended, but sole-source arrangement indeed. From the largest, overarching budget issue to the smallest, the Secretary’s “heartburn” letter has much to agree with. We’ll continue to take this fight to the members of the conference committee as they hammer out a compromise bill to send to the President. Quote of the Week: “I think it would be irresponsible to wait to decide the spending levels until six months into the fiscal year." - Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee, commenting on recent proposals to enact a six-month continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government in the first half of Fiscal Year 2017 Prepping the Ground for Farm Bill Reform A Budget Birthday BLM Proposed Royalty Rule on Wasted Natural Gas Would Benefit Taxpayers

Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, Media Blackout on Bernie Sanders

Why Is the NY Times Basically Doing a Blackout on Bernie Sanders?

The New York Times' Sanders coverage is intellectually dishonest.

ALTERNET.ORG

Another Packed House for Bernie, Still a Media No Show; It's Up To Social Media

Bernie Sanders continues to draw out ever-growing crowds as he campaigns for the Democratic nomination in 2016. Despite this, mainstream media remains...

RINGOFFIRERADIO.COM

Truthout

· 

Even though the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are now less intensive, for-profit contractors are still making a killing.

Private Defense Contractors Need War to Keep Profits High

Lockheed Martin represents a for-profit industry that depends upon conflict to enrich shareholders and their corporate executives.

TRUTH-OUT.ORG|BY MARK KARLIN