The Institute for Public Accountability & CODEPINK – 2018-06-27 23:55:04
http://www.accuracy.org/
Recent Pentagon Increases Exceed
Russia’s Entire Military Budget
The Institute for Public Accountability
(June 26, 2018) — William Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at Center for International Policy. He is author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex. He recently wrote the paper “Ready to Profit: Corporate Beneficiaries of Congressional Add-Ons to the FY 2018 Pentagon Budget.”
He said today: “The House of Representatives’ $716 billion Fiscal Year 2019 Pentagon spending bill is one of the largest since World War II. Spending at this level is both dangerous and unnecessary. It’s good news for Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and other weapons contractors, but bad news for the rest of us.
“The increase in Pentagon spending in the last two years alone is greater than Russia’s entire military budget.
“The bill continues to waste billions of dollars on a new generation of nuclear weapons, part of the Pentagon’s planned $1 trillion-plus nuclear weapons buildup over the next three decades.”
Even many advocates of nuclear deterrence acknowledge that other countries could be prevented from attacking the United States with a fraction of its current arsenal of over 6,000 warheads. And the only true way to protect us from nuclear weapons is to get rid of them altogether by supporting the global ban that passed the United Nations General Assembly last year.
“The new Pentagon spending bill will also continue to underwrite America’s seven current wars, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Niger, and Yemen.
“America’s post-9/11 wars have done more harm than good, resulting in over 370,000 deaths on all sides at a cost of $5.6 trillion and counting according to the Costs of War project at Brown University. Congress should be acting to end these devastating conflicts, not continuing to fund them.”
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 421-6858; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Institute for Public Accuracy
980 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
ACTION ALERT: Join the Movement
To Take on the War Machine
CODEPINK
(June 27, 2018) — Weapons manufacturers steal from all of us. They take billions of our tax dollars to make products of death and destruction, reaping huge profits while our communities at home suffer. We are faced with rampant funding shortages for housing, education, food assistance, and clean water.
Meanwhile, the CEOs of the top five weapons makers pulled in a combined salary of $96 million. We need to lead and pledge to divest from war ourselves and the next step is to join forces locally to call out those Making a Killing on Killing — our cities, state pension funds, universities, churches, and the BlackRock offices near you.
We need to invest in housing and healthcare, not tanks and bombs. Our cities, state pension funds, universities, and faith communities need to stop investing in war and guns. Be a part of the solution and stand with your community to take on the war machine!
You can also email divest@codepink.org to get started.
Cutting Ties to War
CODEPINK
(June 27, 2018) — This note is for anyone who is committed to divesting from war and weapons. We are sending this special alert to let you know that today we are releasing a weapon-free fund database, in collaboration with our friends at As You Sow.
You can check out the Weapon Free Fund database to search 3,000 commonly held mutual funds and ETFs to find out if you or your community are invested in war.
Will you join us in taking on the war machine?
This is an exciting new tool that empowers you to search investments — yours, your city, town, state, faith community, college, and university. This is how we can take on the war machine together. So join us to build a movement to divest from the war machine.
This week Congress voted to allocate $716 billion for war, an increase of $82 billion. That is lining the pockets of the rich while creating paths of death and destruction. At our borders, refugees and asylum seekers are fleeing war and violence that is the result of our failed foreign policies. These same asylum seekers are placed in detention facilities that are built and run by military contractors.
As if profiting from war around the world isn’t terrible enough, the military industrial complex has paved the way for these merchants of death and destruction to increase profits and destroy human lives at home.
Our personal investments, and the investments of our cities and towns and our colleges and universities are subsidizing war profiteering, making us all complicit in these atrocities. The good news is, we have the power to cut our ties to war.
And you are not alone: foundations, funds, and colleges are speaking up about their investments. The Weapon Free Fund database features more than $40 billion in funds that are not investing in weapons and war.
The Weapon Free Fund database covers thousands of the most commonly-owned mutual funds from major asset managers like Vanguard, Fidelity, and BlackRock. The tool allows you to find out if your personal investments or your communities’ investments are being used to finance makers of military weapons and civilian firearms.
It also enables you to find alternative, socially-responsible options that avoid the war economy. We can use this tool to hold our communities, fund managers, and investment firms like BlackRock accountable and to take personal action.
Divesting from the war machine is one of the most effective ways for individuals, activists, communities, and institutions to align our values with our actions. Our tax dollars, personal investments, and pension funds are demonstrations of our national priorities.
Let’s move our communities toward supporting education and infrastructure, not guns and bombs. Checkout the Weapon Free Fund database now and take on a weapons funder near you!
We’re excited to give you this tool to take action. It’s here to empower you to make change in your community, moving away from profits that kill, oppress, and violate the rights of others.
So join us, and let’s build a movement to divest from the war machine! You can take action to divest your city, town, college, university, faith community, or join our campaign to stop the world’s largest shadow bank, BlackRock!
We look forward to working with you to create a peaceful weapon-free world.
Toward a world without weapons,
Ann, Ariel, Brienne, Jodie, Kelly, Kirsten, Mark,Medea, Nancy, Natasha, Paki, Rita, Sarah, and Tighe
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
