What’s A Few Billion More?
How come there’s scant money to help these kids in a U.S. cancer
ward but there’s always trillions of dollars to come up
with new ways to blow other peoples’ kids to bits?
Friends, Obomber has just asked for another 33 billion dollars to supplement the 663 billion dollars already approved for military expenditure during 2010. The following information was gleaned from Wiki:
For the 2010 fiscal year, the president’s base budget of the Department of Defense rose to $533.8 billion. Adding spending on “overseas contingency operations” brings the sum to $663.8 billion.
When the budget was signed into law on October 28, 2009 the final size of the Department of Defense’s budget was $680 billion, $16 billion more than Obama had requested. Admiral Mike McMullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff expected an additional supplemental spending bill, possibly in the range of $40-50 billion, by the Spring of 2010 in order to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Defense-related expenditures outside of the Department of Defense constitute between $216 billion and $361 billion in additional spending, bringing the total for defense spending to between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion in fiscal year 2010.
Now of course a billion dollars is the same as a thousand million dollars. So 1.03 trillion dollars is a lot of rent money and it would certainly pay for a lot of cancer research and it would probably feed most of the world’s starving people for the foreseeable future.
Instead of cancer research or food for the starving it will be spent on building more fighter planes, more warships, more Apache helicopters, more cruise missiles, more drones, more depleted uranium explosives, more troops, more tanks, more submarines, more spy satellites, more nukes, more biological weapons.
Yes, friends, there is no end to what the U.S. military can spend on its military (almost more than the rest of the world combined) and there is no end to the horrific weapons they can dream up: weapons that explode, burn, cause cancer, empty the lungs of air, maim, blind, deafen, crush, etc.
Yes, there is always unlimited money for killing other people and taking their land and resources but not much for helping people, not even their own!
I think the U.S. has things arse-backwards, don’t you?
Friends, I thought I’d let you know that, when I arrived home yesterday, I had 55 comments on the site. Obviously I can’t answer each one otherwise I’d have no time to create a post or catch up on the world news or do anything around the property so please accept my apology for not being able to keep up with things at the moment.
As well, half the roof blew off the machine shed during what must’ve been a severe storm so now I have a big job waiting for me but no energy to do it. Ah well, Rome wasn’t built in a day!
The enthusiasm of you all is inspiring as is your efforts to bring about a better world. On some sites I visit, people spend most of their time attacking each other rather than discussing how to solve the world’s problems. On one site, people don’t think there are any problems and ridicule anyone who suggests there are!
Take care!
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Glad to see you still kicking, David G.
As to the kids with cancer, you also have to ask why they have cancer?
Are their parents in the military and exposed to depleted uranium? Could it be electrical towers, poisons in the food and water, or something we don’t even know about?
I wish them the best in their treatment. And, of course, best wishes to you.
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It’s an interesting question, Wagelaborer. I guess if we were to take out of our environment all the things that are cancer-producing, then at least half of the corporations would go bankrupt.
Plastics are bad news for starters!
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I am sorry David, with your blown off, roof – also that I’m not able to help you, from here.
Nature is ruthless, indeed, and do not ask where and when to strike when it’s up to, as we’ve seen, also in Haiti lately.
This kind of incident emphasize the importance for a people / communities to have a system all for one & one for all society where all the people share (in this case) the BAD with good / help each other when catastrophes occur.
With regard to this subject I came to think of how depressing it was to watch when the American troops arrived to Haiti, wearing their heavy battle equipment with guns and rifles and all such completely useless equipments to ‘fight’ these kind of ‘battle’s (to save people )
To me it shows again by all means how deep the US army has buried it self in blind frenziness in it’s search for (the) enemy and without any reasonable idea where to expect to find / face this enemy.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day” [that's my proverb too when things seems to be a bit too hectic]………… take a look on my site http://jilj.adr.dk
with regards to:
“some sites I visit, people spend most of their time attacking each other”
I have really tried to make my point of view on (Danish sites) the kind of blog sites, (blogbt.dk) visited, mainly by Islam / muslim haters / pro zionists. Unfortunately after some times (few month) I have realized that it was a futile task to convince those people with reasonable arguments.
I have had a friend for many years where we have followed through thick and thin, but now, sorry to say, in the lastest years, became clear to me that we would never come to any agrement in our views on the subject on Israel / Palestine, the illegal wars of USA [ 2003 and GWB] on Iraq Iran, Islam / Muslims / and the subject of refugees / foreigner / immigration into Denmark etc..
The funny thing is, I think, it was the 9/11 and 2003 Iraq invasion “you are either with OR against” which started a hopeless discussion / disagreements.
He, like my brothers, ended up with being the quintessence of the stereotypes of views of a xenophobe with their typical generalization and their condescension toward the whole Islamic/muslim people, much like Hitler did to the jews in the early 1930′th – 1945, with all the horrible consequences from a ‘clever’ directed killingmachinery.
As if that shouldn’t be enough UNFORTUNATELY ending up being a problem imposed on another, with regard to that, completely innocent people (the Palestinians)
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John, I agree that the sight of marines arriving in full battle armor to help survivors of an earthquake was amusing. It was also chilling.
But they have an image to maintain even if each one looks like a mindless clone of Darth Vader!
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That is so true about kids having cancer. If you do any research you find that there are so many things that we come into contact with daily that can cause cancer yet nothing is done to remove them from our enviroment. Too much money to be made “curing” cancer probably.
Here in the US there is never any doubt that all the money for war will be there whenever it is wanted, but for real helthcare reform there is nothing. All congress is doing now is finding new ways to get even more money out of the little people and into the pockets of the insurance and medical industry, and, of course, a little extra for the government so it can wage more wars.
The US is pretty much backward on just about everything!
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dg
** I agree that the sight of marines arriving in full battle armor to help survivors of an earthquake was amusing. It was also chilling.
But they have an image to maintain even if each one looks like a mindless clone of Darth Vader!**
hello dg
the last time yanks did their “peacekeeping” duty in haiti……
“FRAPH members interviewed by Wall Street Journal correspondents Helene Cooper and Jose de Cordoba said they had no problems with the Americans troops. While the attacks on the demonstrators are underway, one said, “U.S. soldiers riding by on their `Humvee’ armored vehicles wave cheerfully to FRAPH members, who wave back.” At the September 30 anniversary march, the WSJ report continues, “those Humvees, along with tanks and other armored vehicles, staged a massive show of `presence’ with the intention of containing the pro-Aristide demonstration to downtown, and addressing what appears to be the U.S.’s principal fear: that mobs of President Aristide’s supporters will go on a rampage against wealthy Haitians and supporters of the military regime.”
http://tinyurl.com/3lh3dw
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The answer is is not complicated: no one’s children have any value alongside the greed of those who so love war.
Do those persons who produce DU munitions for war love their own children?
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I truly felt sorry for the Haitians – when I saw the U.S. military arrive. : (.
I heard on KPFA, that: even with all the money puring in from around the world, the poorest people in the outlying regions have received no help at all yet.
I would think the best we can hope is that Aristide will be allowed back in to live and serve his people.
Good question Spike. I too have wondered that very thing. I don’t understand any of the toxin purveyors and polluters. That is the kind of brain-dead American I think David refers to.
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Jeannie, it never ceases to amaze me how all those immigrants from Europe managed to evolve into a greedy, war-loving people. They were supposed to create a New World not encapsulate the worst that Europe had to offer!
Denk, we sure don’t want to put radical ideas into the peasant’s minds, ideas like them questioning the inequality between their lives and the lives of the rich and perhaps wanting to change things. No, we want to hold up the dream that everyone can be rich, even if most people never will.
Spike, people who make armaments and munitions, or make money out of shares in such enterprises, love money most. Their children are further back in the queue.
Grace, American army boots are on the ground. The question is: will they ever leave?
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Obama is the third term of Bush. Arististe was planning to raise the minimum wage from $2.00 a day from $1, and USA financed a coup, and then kidnapped him. The election, which will/would bring his return is to be next month. The president they now have is said to be a stooge of the CIA.
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“..American army boots are on the ground. The question is: will they ever leave?”
Well, they can’t seem to leave the airport in Haiti! According to Democracy Now!, there are supplies and doctors sitting at the airport, military air traffic blocking aid planes and ships. People are still wiothout food and water, still in the rubble!
All while the official word is that they have to be careful how they distribute the supplies, because you know how desperate people can behave!!!!!
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I heard a story form Haiti, in the Danish TeleVision, that the camera/journalist crew had been left over, a 22 days old child (wonder how they could know that? 22 days!) pulled out from the rubbles AFTER 6 days there in.
But had later handed over this child over to a man who presented himself as a doctor(sans frontiere)
Later on when the crew wanted to check out if everything was ok with the child, it turned out they couldn’t find the baby – and the ‘doctor’ – either.
Perhaps the corporate hospitals sees this ‘incident’ more as a ‘great’ opportunity than a disaster in it’s insatiable need of spare parts.
I bring this story to you, because it seems to be a sheer Danish (TV crew) story. The question is – How many cases/casualties will ‘disappear’ in the same way ?
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Friends, I guess a national calamity like Haiti is like roadkill: soon as it happens the blowflies come!
I’m sure there are many compassionate people who are working in Haiti and there surely are many opportunists looking to make a dollar or to gain a strategic advantage or to grab some poor orphan to traffic.
But with America running the show there’s no worry. After all, the Greatest Nation in the History of the World wouldn’t do anything untoward, would they?
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