By Glenn Greenwald
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26098.htm
GERONNNNNIIIIIIIMO!
Cost of War in Iraq & Afghanistan
Total Cost of Wars Since 2001
$ 4 TRILLION BUCKS!
http://costofwar.com/
THE ACTUAL WAR PRICETAG was 4 TRILLION but ADD IN AMERICAN CITIES IN
COLLAPSE, ALONG WITH THE JOB MARKET, EDUCATION, THE HEALTH SYSTEM AND
THE NATIONAL PSYCHE. We are all bruised from reading about GENOCIDE OF MUSLIMS which we caused. It's our BLOWBACK.
Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq 1,455,590
Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged)
In America's War On Iraq: 4,801
Number Of International Occupation Force Troops Slaughtered In Afghanistan : 3,441
Back when war was cheap, it only cost us 320,000$ to kill ONE VIETNAMESE. We could have bought him a farm, tractor, barn, flock of cows and chickens, dug him a well and plumbed his entire property, and connected waterlines to those in the village nearby. We could have built an economy in a way the Northern Chinese Communists could not have done. And Done that for every single Vietnamese that we murdered, children included. Jeez, war Costs have SURE gone up. MORAL costs, too.
As we enter our 13th year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, we also feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, (Amy Goodman reports hundreds of American ANTI-WAR activists being arrested by the FBI across the country, their lives ruined by now having a 'record.') Reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay. And privatize the Post Office as well as your Social Security pensions, giving the money to Wall Street to invest.
Why do you think ALL that is? It's because there isn't enough money left after AMERICA GENOCIDES Vietnamese and Muslim innocent civilians to secure oil (biggest deposit ever is under Vietnam's beaches, And run those oil rich countrries the way AMERICA thinks they were designed to be run.
A recent New York Times article illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make. This is a sampling of what one finds: Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further -- it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation.
Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders. Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In Colorado Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a dark age: the city switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its police helicopters.
There are some lovely photos accompanying the article, including one showing what a darkened street in Colorado looks like as a result of not being able to afford street lights.
You can well imagine the details of this widespread misery. Meanwhile, the tiniest sliver of the wealthiest -- the ones who caused these problems in the first place -- continue to thrive, making bank profits in the last few years. (GO FIGURE!)
Let's recall what former IMF Chief Economist Simon Johnson said last year in The Atlantic about what happens in under-developed and developing countries when an elite-caused financial crisis ensues: "Squeezing the oligarchs is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or -- here's a classic Kremlin bailout technique -- the assumption of private debt obligations by the government."
"Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk -- at least until the riots grow too large. The real question is whether the American public is too apathetic and trained into submission for that to ever happen."
UPDATE: It's probably also worth noting this Wall St. Journal article from last month -- with a subheadline warning: "Back to Stone Age" -- which describes how "paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue." Utah is seriously considering eliminating the 12th grade, or making it optional. And it was announced this week that "Camden [New Jersey] is preparing to permanently shut its library system by the end of the year, potentially leaving residents of the impoverished city among the few in the United States unable to borrow a library book free."
Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights -- or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State -- that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability?
Do you want your grandchildren to grow up in an impoverished land? Or your children to remain jobless while the banks, (enriched by Obama,) refuse loans to small businesses?
What is your plan? Do you feel helpless? You aren't. ACTIVISM is the way out of this, little neighborhood pods of anti-war groupies. Fun parties, the habit of calling in to radio talk shows to give your view, writing Letters to the Editors, passing on Web Pages that are enthusiastic about prosperity and peace. The alternative? America as a Nazi figure enshrouding the world in death.
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THE ACTIVIST should utilize the internet and become a POSTER which is what ANITA SANDS HERNANDEZ, Los Angeles Writer, mother of 4 and career Astrologer does. She finds 'telling' articles, posts them and POSTS them at her website then sends the URL out to her TWITTER friends, her FACEBOOK readers and to her extensive EMAIL lists, --to people who she's noted are thinkers, do-ers and are likely to pass the information on. The themes? HOLISTIC HEALING without doctors, but also for CATS AND DOGS , TRUTHS the GOV WILL HIDE & NEVER TELL YOU, The FUTURE, WHAT'S COMIN' AT YA! FRUGAL LIFE STYLE TIPS, and ALL the things you'll need to do to SURVIVE the COMING GREAT DEPRESSION, Also cottage industries galore, like ARTISANRY FOR EXPORT, EARN EUROS... (and more.. see the dozen themes below) Anita is at astrology@earthlink.net ). Get a free, natal horoscope "my money/future life" reading now + copy horoscope as a Gif file graphic! No smarter, more accurate Destiny reading out there!
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