Bits and pieces - Dec. 7, 2022 - Militarism at home and abroad

 

Military spending, what’s it good for?

By the time the Republicans take control of the US House of Representatives, the US will have provided Ukraine with over $100 billion in military aid. Note that this is 1.5 times the entire military spending of Russia in 2021, which totaled $65.9 billion in US dollars.

Also worth noting is that the US share of global military spending is 38%; compare that to Russia’s share which is 3.1%. And the US is the world’s number one supplier of arms to countries around the world. Broken down by country, U.S. companies made up 51% of 2021 sales—a larger share than the next 10 countries combined.

The resort to massive military spending by a society (or should I say Empire), particularly one which has no fear of the military might of its neighbors (Canada, Mexico, and yes, Cuba and Nicaragua), is surely a sign that its real power and prestige is declining.

 

The costs of empire (from Code Pink)

-550,000+ unhoused people in the U.S.
-1 in 10 adults in “significant” medical debt
-$195 billion in medical debt held by individuals
-16.9 % child poverty rate
-63% of people in the US living paycheck to paycheck 
-65% of our discretionary dollars go to the militarized budget

-Pentagon budget Congress is voting on - $847 billion - over half of which will go to private corporations, aka, merchants of death.

 

Militarism at home; the police as an occupying army

Fewer fatal police shootings were recorded by the federal government every year since 2015 (according to statistics kept by the FBI), even though there has been renewed scrutiny of police use of force. 

But, while federal records indicate that fatal shootings by police have been declining nationwide since 2015, a Washington Post database shows the opposite is true: Officers have shot and killed more people every year, reaching a record high in 2021 with 1,047 deaths. 

Why the discrepancy? The FBI database contains only about one third of the 7,000 fatal police shootings during this time — down from half when The Post first started tracking. Apparently, the feds have a simple solution to the demands from Black Lives Matter for ending police violence – LIE. 

What’s that old saw, figures don’t lie, but liars figure?

 

Mass incarceration (from the Prison Policy Initiative)

US prisons and jails “hold almost 2 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,850 local jails, 1,510 juvenile correctional facilities, 186 immigration detention facilities, and 82 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories." (in the land of the free?)

“But this does not capture the enormous churn in and out of our correctional facilities, nor the far larger universe of people whose lives are affected by the criminal “justice” system. In a typical year, about 600,000 Americans enter prison gates, but people go to jail over 10 million times each year. Jail churn is particularly high because most people in jails have not been convicted.

“At least 1 in 4 people who go to jail — often those dealing with poverty, mental illness, and substance use disorders, whose problems only worsen with incarceration - will be arrested again within the same year.”

Prisons and jails in the US are the remedies for the failure of American society to meet peoples’ needs. They serve in place of mental health facilities, substance abuse treatment centers, and employment programs. They are designed to control those left behind by capitalism, in the same way that the military is designed to control those in the Global South left behind.