Military Budgets - This You Won’t Believe
Posted: Tuesday, March 09, 2010
by e
Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation
France: $61 Billion
China: $59 Billion
UK: $53 Billion
Russia $43 Billion
Canada $19 Billion
Mexico $6 Billion
U.S. $1,003 Billion (One Trillion, Three Million Dollars)*
Why?
Why would we be so paranoid that our military budget would have to be -not twice - but twenty times higher than the next closest country? Is this what's keeping us safe? The UK and France haven't been invaded lately, or Mexico. What's going on here?
Most of this money is not spent on defense of America, it is spent on interventions overseas. If American citizens could vote on this, I don't think that many would support these overseas interventions. Let's face it, if the military has money, they'll use it or they'll lose it. They have no incentive to cut back, only incentives to find ways to activate our military.
4% of the world's GDP is dependent on violence. Arms sales and the military industrial complex could not survive without wars, and believe me, war is surreptitiously encouraged by many factions. Yet the people of America have been bamboozled by the "guns" contingent of the endless "Guns and Butter" argument. Americans just don't get it, they fall for the security scare all the time. "China and Russia is going to get us," even though we spend forty times over what they spend for military expenditures.
"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. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff expected an additional supplemental spending bill, possibly in the range of $405 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." (Wikipedia)
*This is a total of One Trillion Dollars! This is twice the amount of what all other countries in the world combined spend on their military . And yet, we can't even provide health care to people with pre-existing conditions.
Why?
What has skewed our priorities to the point that arms dealers and weapons manufacturers - dealers in death who see nothing but dollar signs with increased demands for their guns - have through their lobbyists and influence persuaded states to allow people to carry weapons into retail establishments. This is absurd! Insane! For protection?
Look at the statistics, you're more likely to be killed by your own weapon than anyone else's. Is this what America really wants, a return to vigilante justice. No wonder the rest of the world laughs at us stupid cowboys behind our backs. Do you really want your wife to have to confront a gang of thugs with weapons strapped to their sides in the WalMart parking lot ? Oh, maybe she'll have a little automatic in her purse, too. That would be good, make the arms dealers richer. All she has to do is pull that peashooter and she's DOA.
Is it time to take America back from this fringe lunatic contingent? Where will it stop? When will people of good faith and conduct screw up some courage and say no to this extremist, fanatic, fundamentalist movement that is destroying our country.
Kind, gentle people have gentle voices, lunatics scream, and lunatics get their way just like spoiled children. Look at Talk Radio, one sided diatribes inciting people to riot against their own government. Is this what America is going to become, a bunch of thugs with no regulation?
Can we be far off from enraged lunatics planting bombs in our shopping centers just to get even with something or someone in their confused, insane minds? This is what it is coming to. Will we have to carry bigger guns than the next guy, maybe AK47s, sawed off shotguns - RPGs?
Why? Why would we stand back and let this happen? Is Middle East mentality (if it doesn't go my way I will kill you) infecting the good people of America?
Why is everyone pissed off to the point of violence? Where have we failed as a society? As a religious nation? Is this how an inequity of wealth distribution plays out, with the beleaguered lower and middle working classes preying on their very own, instead of on the ones who have made their lives a living hell - Wall Street, bankers, lobbyists, big business, pharma, Health Care dispensers?
No jobs, no health insurance, no homes, no hope. Is this what Wall street and the rest of the wealth mongers is all about - stealing money, and the very life blood of the poor and middle class working people? Nobody can retire anymore, old people working part time at McDonalds for whatever the minimum wage is, without benefits. Lots of cheap labor now, and Wall Street and corporations are again making a killing.
Why?
There are rules that keep a country safe and sane for the long run:
No killing
No dealing in weapons, poisons, slavery, usury.
No stealing
No illicit sex
No lying
No drugs or alcohol.
These are the basic guidelines for a harmonious society, uttered 2600 years ago by a very wise man who's advice is as relevant today as it was back then; the Buddha.
But time will tell if the ones who view these precepts as being stupid and naive will prevail. If they do, America is going down - in a violent way.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Take America back, well many Americans agree, however, that is all past. Sadly truth, past. they have scuttled America, technology given to our enemies, think not, then look at China and her modern plants and space technology. Industry, well you'll be hard pressed to find this not true. We even have given them the bulk of "green technology." One could go on and on but we have allowed the NWO to blossom. These so called America leaders, well the fruit of their hands, their works speaks to it all. Yes and we spend ourselves into oblivion because it has to happen. The whole thing has to collapse so that the new deal, the NWO, already ready to come off the shelf and put into operation will be swallowed hook line and singer by the world. Now your article great, but reality is what I write to. Asking why is useless and if you don't already see it what can one say? Take it back, well the biggest delusion of all. Great job though, no offense intended, I'm as mad as you.Thanks Robert, great comment and I'm with you. Too many people living off the backs of poor people. That's real bad karma, and karma will get you!
Best.........eI agree...The New World Order is at hand. Spend, spend, spend and kill for sport!Kind of sounds like Rome, just before the fall of the empire.
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