Bombs Or Butter?

       Everybody knows that America is a very wealthy nation, a super imperialist power that dominates the world. According to the IMF, (International Mankind Fuckers), 2015 figures, by GDP America is the second richest country in the world, slightly behind China, UK is ninth.

      However that leader of the capitalist world, USA, up to its armpits in wealth, and like all capitalist countries doesn't spread that wealth around its people. In the citadel of capitalist wealth, 46.2 million of its citizens live in poverty, slightly more than 14%. The figures for 2013 state that 1.5 million children lived in shelter or emergency accommodation. The number of households, in 2014, living with "food insecurity" was a staggering 1 in 7. The numbers living in poverty are multiplied when you add those just managing to keep themselves above that magic line of poverty. Where does all that wealth go? Well according to recent figures, approximately 50% of the federal budget goes on killing and the necessary equipment for that activity.

     This recent article from Freedom Socialist, Voice of Revolutionary Feminism, throws up some interesting facts.

One F-35A fighter jet — $157 million*
Ten new elementary schools — $148 million.
*This does not include research and development; the total cost of the F-35 program so far is $1.5 trillion.
Sources: Defense Industry Daily; Reed Construction Data

        Though hardly front-page news, the proposed federal budget for 2016 boosts funding for the Department of Defense. Obama earmarked $534 billion to these U.S. warlords. Their base budget in 2000 was around $300 billion. His proposal keeps baseline “defense” spending at its typical 20 to 30 percent of the total budget.

       This $534 billion does not include the Department of Energy allocation to build nuclear bombs. Nor does it cover an additional $51 billion for operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, etc. This money comes under the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) — authorized, unaccountable hush money which exempts the Pentagon from the spending restrictions of the 2011 Budget Control Act. Social services programs are barred from such exemptions.

         When the war-related share of the federal debt is added in, nearly 50 percent of the total federal budget goes to militarism!

            With social programs legally defenseless and the Pentagon now well-protected, the GOP announced its proposal to cut food stamps by 34 percent over the next decade. Obama’s budget would cut Medicare by $400 billion over the same period.

         This Republicrat frenzy for more guns and less butter is an assault on working people everywhere. An effective fightback requires that we understand where it’s coming from.

Read the full article HERE:

       The insanity of this system is there for all to see, a system where unbelievable wealth is created and vast amounts of it are spent on destruction, with the bulk of the rest of that wealth ending up in the off-shore accounts of a small greedy bunch of parasites. Do you have any ideas how better to distribute that wealth we create?

 Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The Developed West's Child Labour.

 

        America, the pinnacle of capitalist development, the land of the free, the land of opportunity, we have heard all that shit for years. Seldom does the truth behind the myth get spoken, the media wouldn't want to spoil the illusion.

         Poverty is no stranger in that land of plenty, as these figures from Feeding America show:

In 2012, 46.5 million people (15.0 percent) were in poverty.

In 2012, 26.5 million (13.7 percent) of people ages 18-64 were in poverty.

In 2012, 16.1 million (21.8 percent) children under the age of 18 were in poverty.

In 2012, 3.9 million (9.1 percent) seniors 65 and older were in poverty.

The overall poverty rate according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure is 16.1%, as compared with the official poverty rate of 15.1%.

Under the Supplemental Poverty Measure, there are 49.7 million people living in poverty, 3.1 million more than are represented by the official poverty measure (46.5 million).

Food Insecurity and Very Low Food Security

In 2012, 49.0 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 33.1 million adults and 15.9 million children.

In 2012, 14.5 percent of households (17.6 million households) were food insecure.

In 2012, 5.7 percent of households (7.0 million households) experienced very low food security.

In 2012, households with children reported food insecurity at a significantly higher rate than those without children, 20.0 percent compared to 11.9 percent.

In 2012, households that had higher rates of food insecurity than the national average included households with children (20.0 percent), especially households with children headed by single women (35.4 percent) or single men (23.6 percent), Black non-Hispanic households (24.6 percent) and Hispanic households (23.3 percent).

And according to the November 2012 US Census Bureau, more than 16% of the population lived in poverty, including almost 20% of American children

       It would appear that the plenty is not spread around. Ah, that's capitalism at its best.
       Another myth that our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, push, is that working conditions in the developed West protects children, not like those nasty people in the Eastern sweatshops, where children are used as cheap labour. We would never do that in the civilised West, would we?

Published on May 13, 2014

http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/14/us...

          Child labor is common on tobacco farms in the United States, where children are exposed to nicotine, toxic pesticides, and other dangers. Child tobacco workers often get sick with vomiting, nausea, headaches, and dizziness while working, all symptoms consistent with acute nicotine poisoning. Many work 50 to 60 hours a week without overtime pay, often in extreme heat. They may be exposed to pesticides that are known neurotoxins. Many also use dangerous tools and machinery, lift heavy loads, and climb to perilous heights to hang tobacco for drying. The largest tobacco companies in the world purchase tobacco grown in the US to make popular cigarette brands like Marlboro, Newport, Camel, Pall Mall and others. These companies can't legally sell cigarettes to children, but they are profiting from child labor. US law also fails these children, by allowing them to work at much younger ages, for longer hours, and under more hazardous conditions than children working in all other sectors. Children as young as 12 can work legally on tobacco farms and at even younger ages on small farms.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

THE AMERICAN RECOVERY, POVERTY AND TENT CITIES.

         As the populations of countries across the developed world face a brutal attack on their living standards from the financial Mafia, we keep getting told it is the “economy” and all this suffering is necessary to get the economy going again. We are also told that the American “economy” is recovering, so everything should be OK. Well we can accept that most of the “good news” is bullshit propaganda approaching the Presidential elections, Obama needs some help.

      Let's take the poverty in America, it is estimated that there are more than 47 million Americans living below the poverty level, on top of that there are approximately 5,000 people living in tent cities, with an estimated 55 such tent cities dotted around America. The largest of these ironically, is not that far from Disneyworld in Florida, where approximately 300 people live in tents on a 13 acre site. Most of these sites don't have electricity and the sanitation leaves much to be desired. On top of that most can't even feed themselves, they rely on charity. The BBC covers some aspects of this situation in its Panorama program.

       The following extract is another take on the American “recovery” and it is well worth reading the full article.

The other day I was struck by this wierd feeling of deja vu. Where had I seen this kind of listlessness before? Where had I observed this sort of laggard, slumping despair? Then I remembered. It was back in Russia during the Yeltsin years. It was the exact same atmosphere: Things were shitty and getting worse. Life was shabby and dilapidated. Their rulers were corrupt and didn’t give a damn. Cosmically rich oligarchs were cannibalizing the country, and the system was so badly broken there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about it. Drink up. Continue reading;

  This austerity is necessary for the recovery.

         Like I keep on spouting, we have to stop looking to our “own” bunch of political crooks and liars to sort it out for us, and realise that this is an international war. This is the world wide corporate fascists plundering the ordinary people of the world, your “own” little bunch of crooks and liars are not on your side. If they even hint at improving the social fabric of society, the big financial boys will have you down graded, grab their capital and leave, or they might just do as they have done in Greece and Italy, suspend your so called “democratically elected” government and put one of their henchmen in to take charge, to get you back on the right track of austerity and handing them the public purse.

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