Tag: military industrial complex

US Funds Invest in Nuclear & Cluster Bombs

Amidst what the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists calls “an exceedingly dangerous nuclear situation” facing humanity today, the largest U.S. mutual funds — which manage the retirement and other savings of tens of millions of Americans — are profiting from investments in nuclear weapons, cluster munitions and other banned or controversial arms, an analysis by a leading shareholder advocacy group has revealed.

Measured by dollars invested, the top 25 U.S. asset managers “all earn a D grade or worse, with significant investments in arms manufacturers and major military contractors, including companies involved with nuclear weapons and controversial weapons like cluster munitions, anti-personnel landmines, incendiary weapons, and depleted uranium,” Berkeley, California-based As You Sow said in its new report.

[Related: In Ukraine, US Adds to Barbaric Cluster-Bomb Legacy]

Some of the largest corporate 401(k)s like American Funds, John Hancock Funds and Franklin Templeton Investments were among the most heavily invested in these armaments, while “fund managers that focus on sustainable investing have less exposure to military weapons, on average.”

Seven funds profiled in the analysis — Eventide Funds, Ecofin, New Alternatives, Vert Asset Management, Aspiration Funds, Thrivent, and Kayne Anderson — held no investments in the controversial weapons.

“Many investors, given a choice, would not want to profit from companies that manufacture weapons of mass destruction,” As You Sow CEO Andrew Behar said in a statement.

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US projected to spend $117B on nuke command and control in next decade

Operating, upgrading and maintaining the systems the U.S. Department of Defense relies upon to monitor, ready and launch devastating nuclear weapons is expected to cost $117 billion over the coming decade, according to independent analysis of federal spending plans.

The price tag for nuclear command, control and communications, or NC3, in 2023-2032 marks a $23 billion increase in costs compared to a 10-year estimate made in 2021, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report published July 14. The office updates projections every other year at the direction of lawmakers.

The CBO attributed the increase to a ramping up of nuclear modernization — including the replacement of the E-4B National Airborne Operations Center and E-6B Take Charge and Move Out aircraft — as well as certain items appearing in budgets for the first time.

Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works and RTX, until recently known as Raytheon Technologies, in April announced they would collaborate on the so-called TACAMO, which provides airborne coordination for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

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National Security Head Claims UFOs Having “Real Impact” On U.S. Air Force Pilots

Ahead of a major hearing scheduled to take place in the House next week, National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby told reporters Tuesday that UFOs are having a “real impact” on the ability of U.S. Air Force pilots to operate.

“We wouldn’t have stood up an organisation at the Pentagon to analyse and try to collect and coordinate the way these sightings are reported if we didn’t take it seriously,” Kirby said responding to a question on unidentified aerial phenomena.

“I mean, some of these phenomena we know have already had an impact on our training ranges for, you know, when pilots are out trying to do training in the air and they see these things, they’re not sure what they are and it can have an impact on their ability to perfect their skills. So it already had an impact here,” Kirby said, admitting that the military does not know “what they are.”

“Now we’re not saying what they are or what they’re not, we’re saying that there’s something our pilots are seeing, we’re saying it has had an effect on some of our training operations, and so we wanna get to the bottom of it. We wanna understand it better,” Kirby added.

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PENTAGON JOINS ELON MUSK’S WAR AGAINST PLANE TRACKING

A TECHNOLOGY WISH LIST circulated by the U.S. military’s elite Joint Special Operations Command suggests the country’s most secretive war-fighting component shares an anxiety with the world’s richest man: Too many people can see where they’re flying their planes.

The Joint Special Operations Air Component, responsible for ferrying commandos and their gear around the world, is seeking help keeping these flights out of the public eye through a “‘Big Data’ Analysis & Feedback Tool,” according to a procurement document obtained by The Intercept. The document is one of a series of periodic releases of lists of technologies that special operations units would like to see created by the private sector.

The listing specifically calls out the risk of social media “tail watchers” and other online observers who might identify a mystery plane as a military flight. According to the document, the Joint Special Operations Air Component needs software to “leverage historical and real-time data, such as the travel histories and details of specific aircraft with correlation to open-source information, social media, and flight reporting.”

Armed with this data, the tool would help the special operations gauge how much scrutiny a given plane has received in the past and how likely it is to be connected to them by prying eyes online.

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Shaving Ryan’s Privates: Female Military Recruits Forced To Shower With, Sleep Between, Transitioning Men

An 18-year-old female military recruit was forced to shower with, and sleep in between, transgender biological males under the Biden administration’s policies, placing her in an “extremely uncomfortable position,” Fox News reports.

The incident was highlighted on Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, after which Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) told the outlet that the woman is afraid to speak out out of concern for her career, and that her options were to basically keep quiet about it, or resign from her early-career position.

“She could have basically resigned or stepped away,” said Rounds, adding “She could have started over again. But nonetheless, it was an extremely uncomfortable position. And I think this is one of the reasons why we’re not meeting our recruitment goals now.”

According to Rounds, the military recruit, 18, is complaining about being forced to sleep in between “two individuals who were supposedly changing from male to female.” The girl also has to shower with the individuals and reported significant distress about the matter. The individuals housed with the 18-year-old had initiated chemical interventions to change genders, but without having reassignment surgery, their genitalia were fully intact. -Fox News

Rounds heard about the incident from the Attorney General for the South Dakota National Guard.

“He had contacted our office very concerned about the information he had received from the recruit,” said Rounds. “The respect that this young recruit should have received and the privacy that she should have had, she was being deprived of.”

“This seems to be a direct correlation between when the President of the United States issued the executive order making these changes and directing the Department of Defense to integrate… individuals who were transgender and how they should be perceived within the military,” Rounds continued, adding “Most of the focus [under the Biden administration] is on the transgender individuals, not on the individuals who are working with them.”

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US Will Boost Military Presence in the Middle East

Washington announced a plan to deploy additional fighter jets to the Middle East to prevent Iran from seizing ships in the Persian Gulf. The Pentagon is additionally evaluating proposals to send more military equipment into the region to address Russian aircraft operating in Syrian skies. 

According to the AP, a defense official told reporters that the US would deploy F-16s to the Middle East to stop Iran from hijacking ships. The official, who spoke to the reporters on the condition of anonymity, said the aircraft would provide cover to vessels traveling in the region. 

The US seized a ship carrying Iranian oil to China in April, kicking off a new tanker war. Iran retaliated, in the Persian Gulf,  by seizing two ships. In response, the US said it increased the number of patrols its personnel were conducting in the region but stopped short of sending additional military equipment to the Middle East. 

The lack of new military deployments angered Washington’s allies in the region, including the UAE. Abu Dhabi halted its involvement with a Washington-led coalition aimed at preventing Iranian ship seizures in May. 

Last week, Washington claimed it prevented Iranian forces from seizing two ships with the presence of a guided missile destroyer. The F-16s sent to the Middle East will support A-10s in conducting patrols over the sea. 

The official additionally told reporters that the Department of Defense is looking to confront the Russian air force in Syria. Over the past several months, the White House and the Kremlin have accused each other of conducting provocative sorties in the skies above Syria. The official claimed that Moscow, Tehran and Damascus were working to drive US forces from Syria. 

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Half of POLITICO Letter ‘Foreign Policy Experts’ Calling for More Arms to Ukraine Tied to Arms Industry

An open letter signed by “46 foreign policy experts” calling for more arms shipments to Ukraine published in POLITICO failed to mention ties of nearly half of the signatories to the defence industry, allegedly glossing over conflicts of interest, the Washington-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft claimed.

On June 5th, the neo-liberal POLITICO news website published an open letter entitled ‘Ukraine Needs a Roadmap to NATO Membership ASAP‘, calling for Western leaders at the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania this week to commit to supplying Ukraine with weapons, fighter jets, and tanks in “sufficient quantities to prevail on the battlefield”.

The letter argued that Western leaders should help facilitate a “comprehensive transition” of the weapons systems being used in the war against Russia up to “NATO standards”.

“The focus should be on the transition to Western weapons systems; creation of a modern, NATO-compatible air and missile defense system; creation of a medical rehabilitation system for wounded soldiers, as well as a system for soldier reintegration into civilian life and a comprehensive demining effort,” the letter stated.

Although POLITICO listed the names of the 46 ‘foreign policy experts’ and claimed to have outlined their “affiliations”, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft — which argues for a less interventionist U.S. foreign policy — claimed that at least 21 of the signatories currently have connections to the military-industrial complex that were left unmentioned by the news outlet.

Quincy Institute Senior Advisor Eli Clifton writing for Reasonable Statecraft noted that “support for increasing Western military aid to Ukraine is not a view exclusively held by those with direct or indirect links to the weapons industry, but signatories of the letter are noticeably embedded in the financial umbrella of institutions and businesses with direct financial ties to some of the world’s largest weapons firms.”

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UFO DISINFO: Four times the US military hoaxed alien contact through the decades

In June 2021, if you were to new to ‘UFO Twitter’ or other social media and websites discussing the UFO topic, you might quite reasonably conclude that this is the year of upper-case D ‘Disclosure’ – finally, the long-awaited revelation from the U.S. government about the existence of alien craft visiting the Earth. From the last four years of revelations in major newspaper and television features regarding military pilots sighting UFOs, through the regular release in recent months of new UFO videos ‘leaked’ from military sources, to this month’s upcoming official report from the Pentagon on what they know about UAPs/UFOs, there has been an accumulation of new information that has led to a growing anticipation of ‘something big’ around the corner.

Many older heads in the UFO scene, though, have been more circumspect. While they have been dismissed by the ‘noobs’ in the scene as being bitter, overly cynical, living in the past and/or not being able to keep up with the recent deluge of information, there is a reason for their skepticism: they know that, for many decades now, certain elements of the U.S. military have worked to seed fake UFO and alien contact information into the public consciousness for their own purposes.

Whatsmore, as Adam Gorightly points out in his book Saucers, Spooks and Kooks: UFO disinformation in the Age of Aquarius, a number of these cases involved supposedly rogue US military and intelligence employees revealing secret UFO/alien information to ambitious film-makers and researchers covering UFO and paranormal topics. Sound familiar?

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These Are The World’s Top 40 Largest Military Budgets

In the final year of World War II, the U.S. spent about 38% of its GDP on its military.

When adjusted for inflation, the military budget over those four years of war came to a staggering $4.1 trillion in 2020 dollars.

And as Visual Capitalist’s Pallave Rao and Joyce Ma detail below, almost 80 years later, modern day military spending isn’t much of a far cry from World War II budgets.

The top spenders have continued to increase their military capabilities, while war in Ukraine has caused countries in the region to re-evaluate their budgets as well.

In 2022, global military budgets hit an all-time high of $2.2 trillion, according to data released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the eighth consecutive year of increase. This post looks at the top 40 largest military budgets in the world.

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Israel Killed Civilians, Targeted Hospitals in Jenin With US Weapons and Support

From July 3-4, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) — using weapons funded by the United States — mounted the most violent military assault in the occupied West Bank in two decades.

In what Israel dubbed “Operation Home and Garden,” more than 1,000 ground troops invaded the Jenin refugee camp. Assisted by helicopter gunships and armed drones, the IOF killed 12 Palestinians — including six civilians (five of them children) — and wounded more than 120 others (including 14 children), according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. The IOF partially destroyed 109 houses, extensively damaged the infrastructure, leveled the streets and created a power outage. About 4,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes.

While the IOF has used armed drones against Gazans, they are now using them against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as well.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government, as usual, issued no criticism of the brutal IOF assault on Jenin. Instead, the White House declared that the United States “supports Israel’s security and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups.”

Under international law, the occupying power (Israel) is not entitled to self-defense against the people it occupies (the Palestinians). A UN-appointed Commission of Inquiry determined last year that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal and called on the General Assembly to seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice.

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