Hear, Hear, Canada!

 

Last Night’s “Blue Wave” Means Nothing if We Don’t Stop the National Defense Authorization Act

 

Last night’s election results proved that a majority of people in this country do not want war and genocide. Polling overwhelmingly showed that the war on Iran was one of the biggest motivating factors in voting. 

So why are we about to give the very people voters rejected an unprecedented $1.5 trillion budget to continue their reign of death and destruction? Why are we going to allow Congress to hand over the largest war budget in human history to weapons manufacturers and AI tech billionaires who work at the behest of known war criminals?

In the next few weeks, Congress is set to pass what should be viewed as the deadliest piece of legislation of our time – the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – or the country’s defense budget, as it is more commonly known. 

Its potential passage is setting U.S. taxpayers up to be the funders of their own demise by giving carte blanche to a department of war criminals and their humanity-destroying tech-fascist friends with an obscene 1.5 trillion-dollar treasure chest to control, murder, oppress, and destroy the planet as we know it. Sounds a bit hyperbolic? Not if you look at their past and what they are openly saying now, as a prologue.

To understand why this war budget is a catastrophic time bomb, you first have to understand what it actually funds. Under the guise of providing national “security” and protecting “democracy,” the annual Pentagon budget does little of both. Instead, the budget, which consistently fails its financial audits, is a mechanism to funnel billions of dollars into the pockets of weapons manufacturers, who make the very weapons that murder men, women, and children and destroy the planet. Well over half of the discretionary budget each year goes directly to private contractors.

Between 2020 and 2024, the Pentagon designated roughly $2.4 trillion out of $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending to private industry. But hey, at least those private companies are providing much-needed jobs for America’s workforce, right? Well, not so fast.

According to the Climate and Community Institute, employment at military contractors has plummeted over the past three decades: from an estimated 3.2 million workers during the Reagan military-spending peak in the mid-1980s to 1.1 million workers in 2020. The drop occurred even as Pentagon budgets rose 22 percent over the same period. 

Meanwhile, the industry’s top recipients of military contracts, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Boeing, pay their CEOs a combined salary of almost $100 million a year. They are literally making a killing off the killing of others.

And now, not only are we draining our pocketbooks for weapon company CEOs, but we are also subsidizing tech-overlords whose recent main objective is to move jobs and agency away from the working class to robots, as well as use that very technology to mass-surveil those who oppose it. 

The Pentagon is requesting an unprecedented $58.5 billion this year for an artificial intelligence program. This program is already responsible for the February 28 Minab School massacre that murdered at least 156 schoolchildren and staff.

Even more frightening, the money for that deadly program is set to go to the most insane lineup of anti-worker villains, including Sam “bad things should happen to benefit AI” Altman; Peter “if you’re evil, you’re not bad” Thiel; and Elon “AI will make jobs irrelevant” Musk. They’re openly telling us they don’t need humans anymore. Meanwhile, they are building their bunkers so that when the United States military finally plunders away all the resources around the world, they can survive.

Why are we handing the military $1.5 trillion to do all this? As it stands, U.S. taxpayers are already paying $116.43 million every hour for war and terror. 

That’s more than $4,000 in weapons and war costs for the average taxpayer last year alone. Both figures will likely double, since the Trump administration’s request is Biden’s already bloated $1 trillion. Meanwhile, nearly 30% of people have to finance groceries, and 45,000 people will likely die because they lack health insurance or access to affordable healthcare.

If you were watching a summer Blockbuster and the main characters were handing over their hard-earned money and essentially their trust to the person you know is going to assassinate them in the final act, you would be screaming at the screen, “Don’t do it!” But that is exactly what is happening right now, and in fact, many are screaming.

Polls consistently show that Americans are moving away from a war-centric approach to foreign affairs. Almost two-thirds of people in the United States disapprove of Trump’s war on Iran, and 60% disapprove of the U.S. supported genocide in Gaza. 

Similarly, 59% of voters believe the proposed $1.5 trillion Department of Defense budget is too high, and 3 in 5 voters (58%) prefer directing government funds toward domestic priorities like healthcare rather than military or war spending.

The voices are there, but most of those with the power to stop it aren’t listening or are too invested in the war-industrial complex to care. Which begs the question: How can we even call ourselves a democracy, much less its defender, when we, the people, seem to have no agency outside of voting and the majority’s demands are ignored?

This administration, as did previous ones, proudly ignores what the majority is begging for: an end to the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine; an end to the war on Iran that was started for no reason and is currently sustained through the administration’s pompous arrogance; an end to ICE’s reign of terror across the United States; an end to the AI/data center boom that is chipping away at our humanity and livelihoods; and reinvestment into the things that will actually keep us safe, such as healthcare, housing, and climate justice.

Make no mistake, the 1.5 trillion dollars set to go to Pete Hegseth’s war department is not funding our security; it is funding our endgame and stealing from our lifelines. If passed, it will be nearly impossible to undo the damage that will come. We all must unite around this – healthcare workers, environmentalists, teachers, journalists, students, veterans- and make democracy actually work for the people before it’s too late. We have to let those we elected to work for us know that this is a red line that humanity cannot afford to cross.

History shows that public pressure can influence policies. Our collective voice can change this country’s trajectory – if we mobilize now. We don’t have to fund our endgame; we can say no. Join us in DC Nov. 10- 13 as we demand our country stop funding war and start funding life.

Melissa Garriga is the communications and media analysis manager for CODEPINK. She writes about the intersection of militarism and the human cost of war.

 

It's about Time!

 

"...This was a personal repudiation of Donald Trump and his reign of corruption, but also of fascist, brutal, reactionary, and xenophobic MAGA rule and policies. An entire generation of dynamic, diverse Democrats rose to power in one dramatic night…"

Scotus Tells Trump NO

Late [yesterday] afternoon, the Supreme Court told Trump no. There is no opinion, so we don’t know what the Court’s reasoning was. We don’t know whether the decision was unanimous or split, and if it was split, who voted which way. 

But we do know that the Supreme Court declined to let Trump interfere in the election in California at this late date. It rejected DOJ’s request, which would have forced the state to deal with the junk list of voters the administration thinks might not be citizens.

In its emergency request to the Court, DOJ told the people on the list “appear to be registered to vote in California based on publicly available information at the time the information was received,” but that they “in the United States’ view, are likely not U.S. Citizens.”

Adam Klasfeld tweeted: “Count the number of weasel words packed into a single sentence in the Trump DOJ’s emergency request for SCOTUS to bless attempted election interference.” It was hardly the kind of definitive statement you would expect the Justice Department to make before trying to interfere with votes while an election is already underway. “Likely not.” “In the United States’ view.” “Appear to be registered.”

The Yiddish word “shanda” comes to mind. It means a shame, a disgrace, a scandal, and an embarrassment—all rolled into one. Scandalously bad behavior. Shanda aptly captures Donald Trump’s efforts to interfere with the election, and I’m relieved that the Supreme Court didn’t let Trump get away with the stunt he tried to pull in California.

District Judge David Carter’s decision last week, which we discussed in detail here, explains why this was the right result. I’ll sleep better knowing the Supreme Court let his decision stand.

And one more thing before we call it a night. If you’ve been reading Civil Discourse without subscribing, this is a good time to join us. We have an election tomorrow. Courts are making consequential decisions, sometimes in the dead of night. We have a Justice Department whose arguments deserve close scrutiny. There is a lot of work ahead of us, whatever happens at the polls.

Democracy isn’t a spectator sport. Neither is Civil Discourse. I’m grateful for the company of people who refuse to give up on democracy. We’re the cavalry—the ones we’ve been waiting for. Tomorrow will come soon enough. For tonight, get some rest

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

We Need a Real Congress to Stop the Illegal War

 

Should Democrats win control of even one house of Congress (and both is increasingly likely), the most urgent issue will be to head off resumption of the illegal, reckless, and fruitless Iran war. Donald Trump has been itching to resume his unilateral war, insistent that with just one more round (just a short one!) of random destruction, he can “win.”

There is zero evidence that additional military action (let alone one advertised in advance as brief) will force Iran to release its grip on the Strait of Hormuz and/or topple the regime. It therefore remains a mystery what plan could produce a result that anyone other than a deluded, addled president would consider victory. (Besides, he keeps saying we already won, so why is further action required?!)

According to news reports, Trump, ominously, received an in-person briefing last week on the resumption of active military operations from Adm. Brad Cooper, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine. Meanwhile, the potential that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who egged Trump on to fight a preposterous regime-change war and sees his own legacy as tied to the (impossible) attainment of that goal — will remain in power after the inconclusive Israeli elections increases the likelihood for another joint operation.

The prospect of further war — never authorized by Congress (and opposed in multiple War Powers Act votes), overwhelmingly unpopular with voters, and likely to deepen the energy crisis and inflationary spiral — should alarm all Americans. And how Trump intends to wage this fiasco should be even more alarming.

Speaking at the Middle East Institute last week, Sen. Murphy, fresh from a visit to the region, told the audience, “I think we are seeing the president ready another devastating military campaign after the election, just as illegal as the first iteration was at a time where Americans are fed up with this war.” Denied access to damaged bases, he reported on “a cover-up that is underway — a dizzying and coordinated attempt to try to hide from the American people and from Congress the costs and the consequences of this war.” 

Most frightfully, he warned: "In one of these briefings, we did get the chance to have a fairly detailed conversation about what the war plan would be if we restarted military operations. You’ve heard a preview that it would be a short-duration plan. I will just say this: their plan is insane. It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law. …

"There’s been open reporting as to what we may be planning and the civilian infrastructure that we may be targeting. They’ve been asked by the President to develop a plan. Whether they believe it will work or not, I do not know. But the plan that they have developed will lead, in my view, to a prolongation and an escalation of this war that will be devastating for our security interests.

"We do not know if that is the plan about which Trump was briefed last week, but we do know that any military action absent congressional authorization would be unconstitutional, further deplete our munitions (already critically low), endanger our troops at bases we are apparently unable to defend, kill and injure more people (including civilians, about whom the Trump regime has shown shockingly little regard), cause further physical destruction in the region, imperil our regional allies (whose oil facilities we are also unable to protect), and ultimately reinforce the image of the United States as a hapless, weakened oaf toddling around the region, unable to defeat a second-tier power."

Should Trump order our military to engage in massive war crimes, he would imperil them personally and further erode the standing of the U.S. military (which has already alienated allies because of its extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean).

As Murphy made clear, “this is the textbook illegal war.” He explained, “They are fighting a war without congressional authorization. They haven’t sought congressional authorization. There hasn’t been a hearing in the Foreign Relations Committee.” He added that “it is also clearly in contravention of international law and commitments that we have made to the rule of law to deliberately target civilians and to use the harm or potential harm of civilians as leverage in war. And it is also violative of commitments we have made to target political leadership at scale.”

The first order of business for lawmakers after the election therefore should be a vote to bar further offensive action against Iran, deprive the Trump administration of any funding for this outrageous gambit, and make crystal clear that anyone engaged in this illegal escapade — up to and including the president — will be held fully accountable to the greatest extent of the law (be that impeachment, prosecution for war crimes, court martial for senior brass, etc.).

Will Congress act, either before or after the new Congress is sworn in? Well, we will find out. Even if Democrats are outvoted on a party-line vote before January, their unity on these items is essential to make clear what will transpire as soon as new legislators are sworn in on January 3. Going on record unanimously may slow down military action, encourage Gulf allies to push back against Trump, and give military leaders additional arguments to dissuade Trump from acting.

It would be unfathomable for Democrats not to try to mount a furious effort to stop the resumption of the war. “We become an illegitimate body, especially with respect to our foreign policy powers, if we do not use our spending power to end the war,” Murphy reminded us. “The president has ignored the Constitution and ignored us. He has gone to war repeatedly in the Middle East, illegally, without congressional authorization.” He added, “The natural consequence of that should be for the Congress to deny funding for the war if you are not prepared to come to us and get authorization.”

Murphy is right that it is Congress’s “sacred responsibility as a co-equal branch to use the spending power to end the war.” And it is the sacred obligation of democratic citizens, whose obligations do not end with casting of ballots, to hold elected leaders to the promises they made and to abide by the unequivocal mandate of the American people to end the war.

Mass, peaceful protest may be required to bolster Democratic opposition. No Democratic lawmaker, whether just elected or considering future runs, should expect to hold power if he or she cannot wield the most consequential powers in Article I: the powers to declare war and to make appropriations. No Democrat serious about running for president in 2028 can remain on the sidelines. The election is tomorrow, but the most fateful decisions for the country, for the Middle East, and for the international world order will come after the votes are counted.

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This week brought devastating attacks on civilians and Ukraine’s power grid, but also emotional reunions as residents of occupied Oleshky finally reached safety.

Dnipro mourns victims of a railway station attack. On October 29, a Russian drone struck a crowded railway platform where passenger trains were standing. The death toll rose to 15 after another wounded man died in hospital. Fourteen people were injured, with an 11-year-old boy among those seriously hurt. People making ordinary journeys never made it home.

A journey out of occupied Oleshky. A temporary local ceasefire allowed humanitarian aid to reach the devastated city and residents to evacuate. On October 31, evacuees reached Ukrainian-controlled territory after a long journey through occupied Crimea, Russia, and Belarus. Families reunited after years apart, while exhausted arrivals received hot meals and medical care. Some described severe hunger and months of struggling to survive.

Fresh strikes leave families without electricity. Russia continued attacking energy infrastructure, including power facilities in Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and Shostka. On October 31, President Zelenskyy reported that around 200,000 households in Dnipro and the surrounding region, along with more than 80,000 in Kyiv Oblast, were without power. Repair crews worked to restore supplies as colder weather approached.

Ukraine strikes military production and supply hubs. On October 31, Ukraine’s General Staff reported striking the Kamensky rocket-fuel plant in Russia’s Rostov Oblast, causing a warehouse fire and damaging four production workshops. Earlier, on October 26, Ukraine reported hitting the Energia plant, which produces specialized batteries for Russian glide-bomb guidance systems. Ukrainian forces also reported strikes on four military supply depots in occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts. These operations aim to disrupt the production and supply of weapons used against Ukraine.

Fierce fighting and an unusual operation near Kupiansk. Heavy fighting continued, with the Pokrovsk and Huliaipole sectors among the most active. On October 27, President Zelenskyy highlighted Operation Veles, in which Ukrainian troops used underground infrastructure to reach Russian positions near Kupiansk. The operation had first been disclosed the previous week; the reported 15-kilometer distance referred to underground movement, not a 15-kilometer advance of the front line.

European funding remains essential—and tied to reforms. Following the €2.9 billion Ukraine Facility payment earlier in October, attention turned to securing further support. A separate €3.7 billion payment remained delayed amid outstanding reform requirements. This week, the EU also outlined plans to bring forward its planned 2027 support, helping Ukraine meet urgent military and budget needs.

A new step in Ukraine–NATO technology cooperation. On October 29, Ukraine and NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator, DIANA, signed an agreement to expand joint technology development and testing. The partnership gives Ukrainian innovators greater access to NATO expertise and testing infrastructure, while bringing Ukraine’s wartime experience into shared defense innovation.

Thank you for standing with Ukraine and for continuing to support our community. Every act of solidarity helps keep Ukraine's story visible and reminds Ukrainians that they are not alone.

-Ukrainian Apparel 

Roaming Charges: The Anal Stage of US Politic

 

Few men had been as cavalier and as debauched as the Président, but completely jaded, utterly torpid, all he was left with now was the depravity and turpitude of libertinage.

–Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

Donald Trump seems to have reached that transcendent state of personal satori, where he is liberated from all inhibitions, political and psychological. His true persona has been unleashed out on the road, at one pit-stop rally after another.

Trump seems not to care–perhaps he doesn’t even notice–that the once-packed auditoriums have dwindled to the point where giant curtains don’t cover the sections of empty seats. 

The rousing receptions have been groans and baffled silences, as he rambles on and on about his own peculiar obsessions. He riffs on Nicki Minaj’s ass and Arnold Palmer’s penis. He brags over and over again about being the only president to have taken and passed (without missing a question) “a very difficult” cognitive test, three times! Even though his recent performances would suggest otherwise.

He drops strange hints about his declining health. He showed up to one rally with a bruise on his left eye, leaving some to wonder whether Meiania belted him or Natalie smacked him with her portable printer.

He indulges in his lusty fantasies on the musculature of the male anatomy, using a sitting US senator as a case study. He spins sadistic stories of violence, murder and torture. He enjoys the theater of cruelty, though not Artuad’s kind. He often sounds like he’s narrating a slasher film. Here is Trump entertaining his followers with a debased description of the murder of Iryna Zarutska for no discernible reason other than his own titillation:  He was a big, strong guy and he stood up and violently slashed her neck. Almost cut her head right off. Slashed it violently and viciously. For those people who are able to handle that kind of stuff, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Very rarely do you see it run beyond the actual, almost-hit. If you did, you wouldn’t see anything like it, probably. 

In many cases, you wouldn’t be the same. Her head was barely attached. And she looked up in that final second of her life, and she said, to herself, ‘Oh god. What happened to me, oh God.’ And she knew she was dead. She knew it. She literally probably lived seconds. Or just a second. She knew what happened. The slash was inches deep. She knew she was in trouble. She walked onto the train because she didn’t wanna…I don’t know what. You could see how scared she was.

Trump boasts endlessly about his own wealth and openly expresses his envy of those wealthier than he is and his disdain for the poor. 

He ridicules his own supporters and thinks he can get away with it. He tells them their own financial problems are delusions. At one stop, Trump invited his MAGA followers to Mar-a-Lago, with this stipulation: “You could even come to Mar-a-Lago. You’ll be my guest. The problem is that for $5,000, the most you’ll be able to buy is a hamburger and maybe a small dessert. I’m not even sure you could buy that! No, don’t go there. It’s not a good place if you’re price conscious.”

At another stop, he doubled down on his statement that he couldn’t care less about higher gas prices, saying: “I can just see the fake headlines: ‘President Trump is talking about all the money they’re making while people are suffering at the pump.’ That’ll be the headline. I said I don’t give a damn. I’m gonna say it: We’re making a freaking fortune.’”

America’s truckers, who once convoyed for Trump, aren’t making a fortune. In fact, they’ve been smacked hard by his tariffs and the spike in diesel prices from his imbecilic decision to go to war with Iran. At least 221 trucking companies have filed for bankruptcy this year alone, the most in decades. Smaller companies are, of course, the most vulnerable to financial ruin and are being gobbled up by big conglomerates like JB Hunt.

Trump’s speeches–rants, really–have become more and more profane. 

It’s like listening to less f-word-fueled private recordings of LBJ or Nixon, except delivered in public before audiences of evangelicals and Christian Nationalists. This is Trump unbound, unconstrained by the grammatical demands of paragraphs or even sentences. Free association is now the name of his rhetorical game and the thoughts and anecdotes unroll in no particular order, skipping from one not necessarily parallel universe to another.

More and more of Trump’s speeches have devolved into mere glossolalia (aka, grunts, groans, belches, wheezes and episodes of gurgling aphasia), which will be interpreted by the most devoted members of his cult as him speaking in the Divine Tongue. But most, I suspect, will see it as evidence of a mind unraveling in real time.

Trump seems to have embraced his own weirdness, a weirdness that has gone pathological. He is the Buffoon-in-Chief, and his presidency is our national opéra bouffe with a soundtrack by Lee Greenwood and the Village People. What is the point of his ravings? Often there is none, except his own gratification. 

His jokes have no punchlines. His stories fade off without endings. His anecdotes have no discernible political messages. He seems bored. Bored by the road. Bored by his crowds. Bored by his job. Several times he’s told his sparser and sparser audiences he doesn’t want to be there talking to them. They’re not really his kind of people. The kind of people that like ballrooms and are members of golf clubs. He repeatedly interrupts his rants to complain, “Why am I here? I don’t need this.” But of course, he needs this. Blind adulation is what he drinks instead of blood.

After all, this losing campaign isn’t really about him, even though it really is all about him. Sure, he’ll seize credit for any unlikely victories. But he won’t take any blame for the losses that seem sure to come.

Everything has gone to hell, and he seems to know it, despite Natalie only feeding him (highly edited) good news. 

His tariffs have backfired economically. His war on Iran is a debacle. He can’t stop the Ukraine war despite his vow to end it on day one. He has been diplomatically outplayed by Xi, Putin, Zelensky and the Prime Minister of Canada. Netanyahu calls and Trump comes and sits. His military has taken it on the chin from Iran and, embarrassingly, the Houthis. Internationally, few fear him anymore, and none respect him. He has alienated his base. His flacks in the White House are scheming behind his back. Women reporters just shrug off his verbal assaults and attempt to humiliate them. Much of the American public now views him not just with disdain but with disgust.

In the end, Trump replaced neoliberalism with neo-narcissism. 

His economic strategy is unabashed self-enrichment for him and his cronies. Though look out if you were a crony who made out better than he did. Trump has no friends, only collaborators and co-conspirators. He’s never really trusted anyone, not even his sons and accountants. He trusts NDAs, not the people whom he forces to sign them.

So, he celebrates his own malfeasance. Trump wallows in the aroma of his own mess. In the Anal Stage of US politics, it’s a thin line between self-love and self-loathing. 

One oozes seamlessly into the other. Trump’s personal wealth has swelled by $3.3 billion since retaking office. He may be America’s first self-dealing president. He’s turned the White House into his own gift shop. Contra Obama, it looks less like a Cheesecake Factory than Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. Interior design as an infantilism.

He’s suggested he will issue sweeping pardons (thank Biden for the precedent) for even the lowest-ranking members of his staff, effectively indemnifying them from prosecution for any crimes or trampling of the Constitution he tells them to commit. And then he will, of course, force them to sign NDAs to prevent them from ever disclosing what crimes and who ordered them.

Trump doesn’t think he’ll need to pardon himself, though he may do so anyway, just because no one else has had the nerve to, not even Nixon, who was trained by Roy Cohn. It would be another first. And Trump likes firsts, the more unscrupulous, the better.

Trump believes the Supreme Court has given him the green light to do whatever he wants without legal consequences. 

And he may be right. He can trade on inside information. He can manipulate the markets to his advantage. He can cheat on his taxes. He can shake down white-collar criminals for pardons.  He can accept jumbo jetliners from a foreign government with ties to terrorists. He can reward purchasers of his meme coins with private meetings, even foreign nationals with dealings before the federal government. He can build monuments to himself and deface those of his predecessors. He can target his enemies with revenge prosecutions. All without, he believes, legal consequences. The disruptor agenda of 2015 has shriveled away. All that’s left is the cashing in.

The last vestige of populism that Trump exudes–and he more than exudes it–is his free-wheeling bigotry and the license he gives his followers to hate the same people he does.  As Tolstoy said of Napoleon after his Russian debacle, “He lost the power to think a decent thought.” […].

-Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch