Space wars is here. That should quickly rack up trillions for the "defense" industry aka the military-industrial complex (you remember, the one that Ike warned about).
Sputnik International
'No Matter What': US Poised to Deploy Space-Based Weapons by 2020 – Reports
See also
Russian Defense Industry Reveals Time Frame for Delivery of New Strategic Arms
Good middle class job, amiright?
ReplyDeleteWith an MMT understanding of funding, we need more ambitious government plans. The far left imagines MMT will allow government to pursue their objectives, but it seems to me progressives only garner single digit support for their priorities, so more likely is that MMT knowledge will be used to create a different vision that majority already supports, more similar to current priorities but with full employment, decent wages to bring along the majority to the two parties.
ReplyDeleteDon't attack me, lefties, I'm not advocating the merits, just saying it'll garner support.
“In mid-June, Trump ordered the country's Department of Defense to create the Space Force as the sixth branch of the US Armed Forces. The the space-based system's goal is to achieve ‘an operational capability at the earliest practicable date,’ something that the Pentagon hopes to implement by using solid-state lasers mounted on high-flying drones and a physical kinetic weapon.”
ReplyDeleteLasers? Kinetic weapons? Reagan began this exact same nonsense with his “Strategic Defense Initiative” on 23 March 1983, which included the creation of the Missile Defense Agency (later renamed the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization).
Thirty five years and twenty trillion dollars later, the USA still has no defense against ballistic missiles. Not one inch of progress has been made.
True, the USA has several anti-ballistic missile systems (e.g. THAAD and Aegis interceptors) but none of them work. Every single test of these systems has been faked. NO EXCEPTIONS.
Reagan’s “Strategic Defense Initiative” (aka “Star Wars”) was nothing more than a multi-trillion-dollar giveaway to Reagan’s cronies.
Trump’s “Space Force” is exactly the same thing.
Ironically the Pentagon opposes Trump’s “Space Force,” since it might mean changes in who gets the those 717 billion dollars that the U.S. House (including 139 Democrats) approved last Thursday (26 July 2018) for the Pentagon in FY 2019.
$717 billion for one year is over ten times what the U.S. government creates for Food Stamps each year.
Unlike Food Stamps, no one asks, “How will you pay for it?”
Trump’s “Space Force” is all about Trump’s personal insecurity.
Think about it. If you are a politician, then regardless of what you do, some people will love you, and some will hate you. Therefore you always want to keep the military happy by throwing vast amounts of money at them. This is why Trump keeps setting new records each year in how many billions he throws at the Pentagon, and at military contractors.
And again, no one ever asks, “How will you pay for it?”
“Good middle class job, amiright?” ~ Ryan Harris
ReplyDeleteYes in theory, but no in reality. One might think that the $717 billion the U.S. House authorized last Thursday is military Keynesianism. After all, it means that $717 billion will be pumped into the U.S. economy in FY 2019, which begins in Oct 2018.
Unfortunately most of that money will go to overpaid generals, admirals, and executives of military contractors. Despite the endless river of federal dollars that flows to military contractors, the workers in those industries feel they are being exploited by management. They frequently go on strike.
In other words, most of the money given to military contractors is pocketed by people at the top.
Meanwhile average Americans continue to suffer from ever-worsening poverty and debt bondage.
I think space force means providing not only space-earth weapons such as were imagined during the 1980s and currently in use, but also space security. Ensuring freedom of navigation, ensuring liberal democracies create the international institutions which regulate and enforce commercial regulation, travel and commerce. Having a credible security force in space means we can effectively enforce the British common law rights of capture, right to pass, supremacy of the crown, right to tax and all of the foundational assumptions that come with British/European democracy world view.
ReplyDelete" regulate and enforce commercial regulation, travel and commerce"
ReplyDeleteI meant travel and property ownership
Challenge: Get George Soros as Secretary of State (supports ending war on terror) US
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, back on Earth, China is trying to create a new set of rules...
https://thediplomat.com/2018/07/asean-and-china-set-to-agree-on-single-draft-south-china-sea-code-of-conduct/
Soros is up to his eyeballs in dirty deals in Eastern Europe including the Ukraine coup.
ReplyDelete“Unlike Food Stamps, no one asks, “How will you pay for it?”“
ReplyDeleteThe people in these disciplines (military and material systems development) have arranged to get their people paid well...
Over to the Art people to figure their end out...
The Pentagon explained what a "space force" meant years ago. It means control of the planet. Making every other country subservient to your demands. It is a first strike weapons system that is very difficult to counter, unlike land-based and sea-based weapons. As Ryan says, don't attack me, righties. That's Washington's vision, and I'm just repeating it. Don't say you weren't told what it was. It has nothing to do with freedoms and rights and whatnot. It's about power and empire.
ReplyDeleteRight. It is about enforcing the so-called liberal world order that is really the neoliberal world order as corporate totalitarianism "supervised" by the US elite. Global hegemony = global domination. This the ultimate political prize that was pursued thought history as an extension of the territorial trait that Russia through evolution.
ReplyDelete"World" in world domination has taken on a broader and broader meaning, culminating in global domination of the planet and surrounding space.
The stakes could not be higher, and this means that the game has a tendency to become irrational, based on risky bets.
It's a form of megalomania, and it won't end well.
It's also hubris in the extreme.
Who is Nemesis in this?
Putin has just declared the Christian underpinnings of Russia and by implication, the Russian World (Russkiy Mir) as the national identity.
This is a direct poke in the eye of Anglo-American liberalism and an identification with Western civilization on traditional grounds.
This is a new wave in the historical dialectic that is now rising. Watch it.
It will be interesting to see how Russia will now be targeted as a Christian state rather than an atheistic one.
It also complicates the Sino-Russian relationship on two counts.
First is over religion, which China being atheistic as a Marxist State.
The second is over civilizational identity, with Russia identifying with Western civilization and China identifying with Chinese civilization.
Also to be watched are Islamic civilization, and now in India Vedic civilization as Hindu fundamentalism rises.
Civilizational conflict portends, with the West split between the Anglo-American liberal view of civilization and the traditional Christian view of it.
So it's back to ideological-based conflict on top of economic.
“Right. It is about enforcing the so-called liberal world order”
ReplyDeleteNo it’s about getting our people paid...
Uh huh. Dream on.
ReplyDeleteMatt, try telling the Pentagon and the rest of Washington that. You may have to wait a few years for a reply while they laugh themselves silly. They've told you what it is, and you reply, "No it isn't! It's about getting our people paid!" You have to wonder who is in a better position to know what the system they're creating is for, you or the people creating it?
ReplyDeleteRight, anyone that thinks that anyone in DC thinks about people getting paid other than themselves is thinking they way they want you to think. The kool-aid is working.
ReplyDeleteAnd "paying people" not what Trump's America First MAGA is really about, although that may one of the ways he pitches it. He has a pitch for every constituency. Does he think that people getting paid will be a by-product? Probably. But the major focus from his side is as a campaign pitch. Unlike others, he does seem to care about meeting his campaign rhetoric, at least in part — which is kind of unusual in US politics.