Want To Save The Environment? De-Fund The Pentagon. by Caitlin Johnstone!
(2019-09-28 at 01:45:14 )

Want To Save The Environment? De-Fund The Pentagon. by Caitlin Johnstone

Millions of people are uniting in demonstrations worldwide against our civilizations ecocidal march toward extinction, which makes me so happy to see. It is really encouraging to see so many young people burning with love for their planet and a hunger to reverse the damage that has been done to our ecosystem by the refusal of previous generations to turn away from our path of devastation.

This must continue if we are to survive as a species.

The challenge now is the same perennial challenge which comes up every single time there is a massive and enthusiastic push from the public in a direction that is healthy: such movements always, without exception, become targeted for manipulation by establishment interests.

I write all the time about how this has happened with the intrinsically healthy impulse of feminism; I just finished watching an MSNBC pundit proclaim that anyone who still supports Bernie Sanders over Elizabeth Warren is a sexist. This corralling of healthy energy into the advancement of corrupt establishment interests happens with feminism, it happens with the healthy fight against racism and antisemitism, and of course it happens with environmentalism.

Of course it does. People get very emotional when you say this, even if you fully support environmentalism and do not have any objections to the overall scientific consensus about what is happening to our environment, but environmentalism is not destined to be the one and only popular movement which establishment interests do not move mountains to co-opt.

We know that our oligarchic empire will do literally anything, up to and including murdering a million Iraqis, to secure control over energy resources.

We know this with absolute certainty.

Therefore we can also know with certainty that they are working to ensure that when new energy systems are put in place, they are put in place in a way which allows the oligarchs to retain their power, and ideally to expand it, without losing their thrones to rival plutocrats, to governments, or (worst case scenario) to the rank-and-file public gaining control over their own energy. This agenda is on the table. It is happening.

The ruling elites have many advantages over us, but one of the greatest is the fact that they know exactly what they want and exactly where they are trying to push things, whereas we the general public, on average, do not.

If we only had one positive anti-establishment direction to push in there would be no stopping us, and as soon as we find one the oligarchs will be done.

But in general and on average what we have is a few clear ideas about what we do not want and a great many vague, frequently contradictory ideas about what we do want.

This lack of clarity in direction always leaves us highly susceptible to the influence of any well-funded narrative manager who steps forward to say "Oh yeah I know exactly where we are going! It is this way, follow me!"

Luckily for us, there is a very clear demand we can add into the mix in this new push for environmentalist reforms which runs directly counter to the interests of the empire that is trying to manipulate our healthy impulses: de-fund the Pentagon.

There is no single, unified entity that is a larger polluter than the United States of Americas dishonestly labeled "Department of Defense".

Its yearly carbon output alone dwarfs that of entire first-world nations like Sweden and Portugal; if the United States military were its own country it would rank 47th among emitters of greenhouse gasses, meaning it is a worse polluter than over 140 entire nations.

That is completely separate from the pollution already produced by the United States itself.

None of the sociopathic corporations whose environmental impact is being rightly criticized today come anywhere remotely close to that of the Pentagon. They are going under the radar.

And that is just greenhouse gas emissions, which the Pentagons poisonous effects on our environment are in no way limited to.

As journalist Whitney Webb highlighted in an excellent article for Mintpress News about the wildly neglected subject of the United States militarys ecological toxicity: "Producing more hazardous waste than the five largest United States chemical companies combined, the United States Department of Defense has left its toxic legacy throughout the world in the form of depleted uranium, oil, jet fuel, pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange and lead, among others."

Webb documents how the United States "has conducted more nuclear weapons tests than all other nations combined", how United States military interventionism in Iraq "has resulted in the desertification of 90 percent of Iraqi territory, crippling the countrys agricultural industry and forcing it to import more than 80 percent of its food," and how "United States military bases, both domestic and foreign, consistently rank among some of the most polluted places in the world."

"While the United States militarys past environmental record suggests that its current policies are not sustainable, this has by no means dissuaded the United States military from openly planning future contamination of the environment through misguided waste disposal efforts," Webb writes. "Last November, the United States Navy announced its plan to release 20,000 tons of environmental "stressors," including heavy metals and explosives, into the coastal waters of the United States Pacific Northwest over the course of this year."

This is all a massive environmental burden to take on for a branch of the government which provides no other service to anyone beyond bullying the rest of the world into obedience, would you not agree?

So get rid of it.

Surely with all this talk about the huge, sweeping changes that are required to avert climate catastrophe we are not going to overlook the worlds single worst polluter just because a few think tankers and their plutocratic sponsors believe it is important for the United States-centralized power alliance to retain total global hegemony?

If we are making huge, sweeping changes, the completely needless globe-spanning United States war machine would be the obvious place to start.

That is something we can inject into the mainstream dialogue as this environmental movement grows, and the cool thing about it is that the establishment manipulators can not reject it or they will expose themselves.

It is something we can demand that they can not legitimately say no to.

We can surf this clear, concrete, exciting and utterly indisputable idea on the surging momentum of these climate demonstrations, and the same healthy impulse to save our planet that these budding activists are now embodying will lift it right up and carry it to the top of mainstream awareness.

No sane person will reject this, so if anyone pushes back against it to say "No, not that," they will immediately spotlight the insane agendas they serve.

The United States does not need any more military power than what other normal nations have: enough to defend its own easily defended shores from unprovoked attack.

Anything beyond that, and certainly the hundreds of environmentally toxic military bases circling our planet, exists solely for the benefit of murderous dominating imperialists and sociopathic war profiteers.

Demanding a reversal of United States military expansionism as a part of the environmental movement is sane on its face and will benefit everyone, and it will also help highlight all unwholesome elements of empire loyalism.

Thanks for reading!!
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