Nobody is threatening us except “us”: USA v. USA

Space Fantasies “Keeping America Safe” while Killing Americans

Brazen Lies and Waste 

 

Failure to “provide for common defense”, “promote general welfare” at home

Failure to help bring peace to the world

Marketing Death 

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.S. officials, allies and partners in and around one after another administration  engage in a pattern of marketing (even celebrating!) death all over the world. Boastfully, they stockpile, sell and discard lethal weaponry in far-flung countries and regions; provoke, exacerbate and prolong conflict and potential conflicts—all the while blaming others, revolving in and out of government, pandering to this and that, taking kickbacks, and ratcheting up sales of weapons of death.

Other countries are not threatening the United States but rather they are increasing military spending to protect themselves from obliteration, or at least provide for themselves a chance of surviving the lethal tyranny of the United States of America.

S

tockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Report 2018

• Global military expenditure Year 2017: (increased over 2016): $1739 billion

• USA military expenditure (“more than a third of the global total” and “more than the next seven highest spenders combined): Year 2017:  $610 billion (and budgeted for 2018: “$700 billion”

August 29, 2019 U.S. President Donald Trump Brags

“…Since January 20th, of 2017, we have done things with the military that few people would have thought possible: Budgets of $700 billion, $716 billion, and now $738 billion.”

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.S. Reality beyond Government Officials’ Fantasies

United States Poverty

• International Monetary Fund (IMF) June 2016 warns U.S. officials that the high poverty rate in the United States “needs to be tackled urgently by raising the minimum wage and offering paid maternity leave to women to encourage them to enter the labor force.”

• The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States 2015 suggests that “new and extreme forms of poverty” in the United States “have emerged … as a result of neoliberal structural adjustment policies and globalization, which have rendered economically marginalized communities as destitute ‘surplus populations’ in need of control and punishment.”

• United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston issued a report in May 2018 showing that in the United States “40 million people live in poverty” and more than “five million live ‘in THIRD WORLD conditions,’” the U.S. state of Alabama having “the ‘worst poverty in the developed world.’” In the report of their on-site investigation of “the effects of systemic poverty in the United States” was a strong condemnation of “‘private wealth and public squalor.’”

From the 1930s (the era of the Great Depression) forward, “relative poverty rates” in the United States “have consistently exceeded those of other wealthy nations.”

United States children in poverty

Beyond 49 million Americans living in food insecure homes, 15.9 million were children

 Nearly 14 million children (est.) served by Feeding America; more than 3 million ages 5 and under

• 2012: 16.1 million American children were living in poverty (31 million low-income children received free or reduced-price meals daily through the National School lunch program during the 2012 federal fiscal year)

• 2013:  child poverty reached record highs (16.7 million children living in food insecure households)

• 2014 (National Center on Family Homelessness report): number of homeless children in the U.S.:  2.5 million (one child in every 30 experienced homelessness in 2013) (primary causes: lack of affordable housing, domestic violence)

• 2017 Health Affairs peer-reviewed study finding: United States has the highest levels of child mortality among 20 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries

United States Poverty: Various report findings, estimates

• 2009: the number of people in poverty “was approaching 1960s levels that led to the national ‘War on Poverty’”

• 2010 (census data): “half the U.S. population qualifies as poor or low income”; one in five Millennials living in poverty”

• 2011: extreme poverty in the United States (i.e., households living on less than $2 per day before government benefits) was double 1996 levels (i.e., 1.5 million households, including 2.8 million children. Child poverty reached record high levels (16.7 million children living in food insecure households; est. 35 percent more than 2007 levels)

• 2012: “percentage of seniors living in poverty was 14 percent; percentage among children 18 percent” (the addition of Social Security benefits contributing more to reduce poverty than any other factor)

• 2013 UNICEF reports United States having “the second highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world

• 2015: 13.5 percent of Americans (43.1 million) lived in poverty; other estimates: “living in ‘near-poverty: around 100 million (nearly a third of the U.S. population)

• 2016 Urban Institute report: U.S. teenagers in low income communities are often forced to join gangs, save school lunches, sell drugs, or (sexually prostitute themselves) because they cannot afford food

United States Homelessness  

• October 1, 2008- September 30, 2009: 1.56 million people (about 0.5 percent of the U.S. population) used an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program; est. employed homeless: 44 percent

• January 2009: 643,000 (estimated) sheltered and unsheltered homeless (two-thirds in emergency shelter or transitional housing; the rest living on streets, in abandoned buildings, or other places not meant for human habitation)

• 2018: rising number of U.S. citizens living in their vehicles because they cannot find affordable housing (particularly in cities, steep rises in cost of living in e.g., Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon and San Francisco)

• 2019: Homeless tent city, Skid Row, Los Angeles, count of homeless people living in Los Angeles County: 60,000

G

overnment Officials’ Fantasies and Lies

U.S. President Donald Trump August 29, 2019

“SPACECOM will defend America’s vital interests in space — the next warfighting domain.  And I think that’s pretty obvious to everybody.  It’s all about space.”

What is obvious to everybody is another dimension for billionaires to increase their billions.  

The President continues

“Our adversaries are weaponizing Earth’s orbits [we are our greatest “adversary” weaponizing everything ]  with new technology targeting American satellites [no one is “targeting U.S. anything] that are critical to both battlefield [there is no “battlefield”] operations and our way of life at home [our way of life if poverty and homelessness]. 

“Our freedom [outer space is not a place of individual “freedom”] to operate in space is also essential to detecting and destroying any missile launched against the United States.”

The President’s proposed and perpetuation of lawlessness and provocation of other nations, leaders and peoples

“…We will now treat space as an independent region overseen by a new unified geographic combatant command.…

U.S. Contempt 

for International Bodies, International Treaties, and International Law  

Knows no Bounds

T

here is an Outer Space Treaty based on the “Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space” which had been adopted by the General Assembly in its resolution 1962 (XVIII) in 1963, with added provisions”

The Treaty was opened for signature by the three depository Governments:

• The Russian Federation, 
• the United Kingdom and 
• the United States of America in January 1967, and it entered into force in October 1967.

The Outer Space Treaty provides the basic framework on international space law including the following principles:

• the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind;

• outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States;

• outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means;

• States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner;

• the Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes;

• astronauts shall be regarded as the envoys of mankind;

• States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities;

• States shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects; and

• States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies. [emphasis added]

H

igher and higher “world military expenditure [continuous threat to the world]… undermines the search for peaceful solutions to conflicts around the world.” — Ambassador Jan Eliasson, Chair of the SIPRI Governing Board.

Such expenditures also neglect and cause to fail essential the health and welfare of domestic societies. Thus creating and perpetuating the real threat from within.

Sources

White House Rose Garden  “Remarks by President Trump at Event Establishing the U.S. Space Command Infrastructure & Technology” Issued on: August 29, 2019  https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-event-establishing-u-s-space-command/

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) “Fact Sheet May 2018 TRENDS IN WORLD MILITARY EXPENDITURE, 2017” https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2018-05/sipri_fs_1805_milex_2017.pdf

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Press Release “Global military spending remains high at $1.7 trillion” May 2, 2018 https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2018/global-military-spending-remains-high-17-trillion

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development OFFICE OF COMMUNITY PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 2018 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress PART 1:  POINT-IN-TIME ESTIMATES OF HOMELESSNESS December 2018 https://files.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/2018-AHAR-Part-1.pdf

Wikipedia “List of Countries by Homeless Population” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_population

Poverty in the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States

Vital Source The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States 2015 by Stephen Haymes https://www.vitalsource.com/products/the-routledge-handbook-of-poverty-in-the-united-stephen-haymes-

United Nations office for Outer Space Affairs “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies” http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/introouterspacetreaty.html

Pacifica News “Oakland volunteers build tiny houses on wheels for homeless youth: 150 volunteers from 30 congregations converged on a vacant lot in West Oakland last weekend to build 12 small houses-on-trailers that will provide transitional shelter for homeless youth.” Thursday, August 29, 2019 http://pacificaeveningnews.blogspot.com/2019/08/oakland-builds-tiny-houses-on-wheels

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U.S. v Puerto Rico: 100+ years betrayal, plunder, injury, insults

As Hurricane Dorian bears down on Puerto Rico, the U.S. President fires attacks on the island

History of U.S. Betrayal

Puerto Ricans have begged for independence, dignity, and equality dating back to the Spanish-American War when Puerto Rico sided with the Americans and received from the Americans 121 years of betrayal, plunder, insult, aggression, occupation, suppression, oppression.  

  

1

800s plea for independence rebuffed, ignored

With the 1898Treaty of Paris ceding Puerto Rico to the United States, vocal Puerto Rican leaders “expected the United States to grant the island its independence”; some Puerto Ricans at the time “proclaimed Puerto Rico to be a republic.”

What they received from the United States was betrayal, oppression, occupation.

Not unlike the current insults by Washington (spoken out loud or under cover), U.S. Senator George Frisbie Hoar in 1899 “described Puerto Ricans as

‘uneducated, simple-minded and harmless people who were only interested in wine, women, music and dancing’.” And pushing “Americanization” of the islanders, the senator promoted the English-language-only in the schools and abolition of the Spanish language, thus causing, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy, large numbers of students to drop out of school.

In addition to forced English on a Spanish country, the U.S. assumed possession of rich lands that influenced Puerto Rico’s economy (sugar cane was king and considered one of the few strategic commodities in which the United States was not fully self-sufficient). So American sugar companies pushed local sugar plantation owners out of business with low interest loans American companies obtained from commercial banks in Wall Street while locals had to depend on local banks’ high interest rates; tariffs also forced many local sugar plantation owners to go bankrupt or to sell their holdings to the more powerful sugar companies. 

This practice is seen today in the U.S. officials’ failure to plan ahead and shore up changing industrial conditions, failure to self produce and compete fairly; so they threaten and strangle other countries and their economies with sanctions and tariffs.

“The U.S. occupation brought about a total change in Puerto Rico’s economy and polity and did not apply democratic principles to the colony. Puerto Rico was classified as an ‘unincorporated territory’,” meaning “that the protections of the United States Constitution did not automatically apply because the island—belonged to the United States.” But “was not part of the United States.”

1

900s plea for independence rebuffed, ignored

In 1901, an American politician and businessman, Charles Herbert Allen, seated as the first civilian U.S. governor of Puerto Rico, “installed himself as president of the largest sugar-refining company in the world, the American Sugar Refining Company,” thus “(leveraging) his governorship of Puerto Rico into a controlling interest over the entire Puerto Rican economy.”

U.S. President Donald Trump would be well acquainted with this kind of maneuver.

In the 1940s through the 1960s outspoken Puerto Rican political parties “favored independence from the United States.”

2

000s pleas independence, statehood rebuffed

Throughout the centuries various leaders, politicians and ordinary citizens among the Puerto Rican people have fought for equality, independence, and or statehood with the United States but, selfishly, none of these have been even seriously considered by U.S. politicians and their partners.

The movement for statehood with the United States has undergone repeated referenda and resolutions with no change in forward movement. 

• Resolutions introduced in both houses of the U.S. Congress in 2014 died in committee. 
• The Trump administration has interfered with referenda ballot content. 
• U.S. Rep. (Resident Commissioner in Washington) Jenniffer González in June 2018 sponsored “a bill that would pave the way for Puerto Rico to become a state in 2021” but the bill received no further action after her introduction.

In June 2016, a UN Special Committee report “called for the United States to expedite the process to allow self-determination in Puerto Rico.

More specifically, the group called on the United States to expedite a process that would allow the people of Puerto Rico to exercise fully their right to self-determination and independence….” And “allow the Puerto Rican people to take decisions in a sovereign manner, and to address their urgent economic and social needs.”

P

uerto Rico remains dependent, colonized, demonized and subject to the whims of U.S. officials.  

 Located in the northeastern Caribbean in a history extending from the 2000-3000 BC through Columbus and the Europeans imported infectious diseases through the Spanish imperialism through the American imperialism, Puerto Rico (officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico) is a non-state under U.S. sovereignty whose citizens may fight U.S. wars but not vote or be represented in the U.S. houses of Congress. Puerto Rico’s residents since 1917 have been considered “American citizens.” But they “are disenfranchised at the national level and do not vote for the U.S. president or vice president; nor do they “pay federal income tax on Puerto Rican income.”

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urricane Season News from the U.S. Commander in Tweet to Puerto Rico

As another giant storm bears down on Puerto Rico, the U.S. president, blinded by the entrenched corruption and incompetence among public officials in Washington, chooses to demonize  the U.S. Commonwealth as “one of the most corrupt places on Earth.”

 

Perhaps the president meant as part of, or second only to, the pandering, kick-back, bribe-taking business-as-usual rampant corruption in the United States of America.

A hundred years suffering U.S. injury and betrayal is not enough for a U.S. president who broadcasts daily his deliberate ignorance of history.

He wants Puerto Ricans, including (in his words) “the incompetent Mayor of San Juan!” to “give … a big Thank You” to the U.S.

The president’s usually erroneous eruption inflated Congressional appropriations received by the island colony and what he called “Crooked Pols” and deified himself as “the best thing that’s ever happened to Puerto Rico!”

Sources

Spanish-American War: April 21, 1898 – August 13, 1898; Location: Cuba and Puerto Rico (Caribbean Sea); Philippines and Guam (Asia-Pacific)

 Result: American victory• Treaty of Paris of 1898

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%E2%80%93American_War

The Puerto Rico Campaign (American military sea and land operation on the island of Puerto Rico during the Spanish–American War); May 8, 1898 – August 13, 1898; Location: Puerto Rico, Atlantic Ocean; Result: Militarily inconclusive; Spain cedes Puerto Rico in accordance with the accords of the Treaty of Paris of 1898; United States post-war occupation of Puerto Rico

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico_Campaign

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statehood_movement_in_Puerto_Rico

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico

Elnuevodia “Trump has come under criticism again: He slams Puerto Rico and its politicians as tropical storm Dorian skirts the island”: WASHINGTON – While Hurricane Dorian’s winds and rains were sideswiping the east coast of Puerto Rico, U.S. President Donald Trump was firing off attacks on the island and made it clear yesterday, among other things, that he doesn’t forget criticism over the slow and inefficient federal response to Hurricane Maria.”  August 29, 2019 https://www.elnuevodia.com/english/

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