Spending on weapons robs world of resources
for pandemics
Sudan’s
nonviolent revolution, which overthrew Omar Hassan al Bashir has recently
proved that nonviolent action can be effective. In a reflection, Catholic
Nonviolence Initiative says spending on weapons has robbed the world resources
needed for coronavirus preparedness.
English Africa Service – Vatican City
Marie
Dennis, a member of the Catholic Nonviolence Initiative executive committee and
senior advisor to Pax Christi International’s secretary-general hopes that the
COVI-19 pandemic will help the world recognise the critical need for a
transformative shift away from violence.
According
to Catholic Nonviolence Initiative, the impact of the pandemic is universally
felt as it crosses political, geographic, economic, social, religious and
cultural boundaries, powerfully illustrating the reality of global
interdependence and calling into question basic assumptions about security and
the politics of fear and division.
Spending on
weapons robs the world of resources
“Spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually on weapons and
preparations for war has not given us the tools to address a global pandemic.
In fact, military spending steals resources from providing for healthy,
resilient communities across the country and around the world that can slow the
spread of disease and more quickly recover from serious threats like the
COVID-19 pandemic,” said Marie Dennis in a reflection.
Dennis
underlines that “the coronavirus does not respect political borders, physical
barriers or cultural differences. Responding effectively to transnational
threats requires respectful global cooperation to promote the well-being of the
whole earth community rather than xenophobia and nationalism.”
COVID-19
affecting vulnerable communities the most
Dennis has also called for the recognition that those who live on
the margins, exposed by war and forced displacement, poverty and environmental
disruption, are the most vulnerable to the pandemic’s ravages. The violences of
economic injustice and ecological devastation are intensified by this global
crisis. Catholic Nonviolence Initiative holds the view that national and
international priorities must, therefore, be shaped by and meet the needs of
the most vulnerable communities.
A new
understanding of security
“This time of crisis is urgently calling for a new understanding
of security that is based on diplomacy, dialogue, reciprocity and a
multilateral, collaborative approach to solving very real and critical global
problems. Nationalism and unilateralism undercut the cooperation necessary for
addressing disease, including COVID-19 and Ebola, as well as climate change,
hunger and poverty, resource depletion, war, the forced displacement of
millions of people, terrorism, weapons proliferation and other threats that
transcend national boundaries,” emphasises Dennis.
Catholic
Nonviolence Initiative calls for authentic security in which the whole earth
community can thrive and emerge in a spirit of global solidarity rooted in
nonviolence.
01 April 2020, 10:03
Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
The Winners: Wars,
Walls and the Wealthy; The Losers: Diplomacy, Public Health, and Environment
H
Patricia Hynes
March
30, 2020
Portside
Budgets are moral
documents (or immoral, depending on priorities). So also is tax policy.
Consider Trump’s
proposed $1.3 trillion discretionary budget for 2021. In snapshot, the
Pentagon gets 55% and every other need of 331 million people–from health,
education, agriculture, transportation, environmental protection to housing–is
left with 45%. As one retired colonel observed, “the military gravy train
is running at full speed.”
Military weapons
makers are the biggest winners raking in nearly ½ of every Pentagon dollar, an
estimated $350 billion, annually. Moreover in the midst of the
coronavirus (Covid-19) epidemic, the Pentagon is increasing periodic
progress payments made to military manufacturers to keep them on schedule, a
move described as a “taxpayer rip-off” by one retired Pentagon official.
Military
corporations, though, trump military personnel. Tens of thousands of
soldiers and their families rely on food stamps. For at least two weeks
after our country was advised to implement social distancing, Army and Marine
soldiers, against their own fears, were compelled to continue
training in close mass formation. Paralyzed by indecision, mid-level
leaders were waiting for higher command decisions. US Army Aviation
aircrews were ordered to airlift coronavirus patients to local hospital without
masks, disinfectant and medical guidelines. With no plan to quarantine
the crew, they talked of taking off doors in flight.
Two other
winners are Immigration and Customs Control (ICE) and its sister
agency Customs and Border Patrol (CBP).
Under Trump’s
proposed budget, ICE – the agency whose agents seize parents from their jobs
and homes for deportation – will double by 2024. The proposed CBP budget would
go from $14.8 billion to $15.6 billion, to bolster snatching babies and
children from their parents at the US-Mexican border and caging them in
crowded, unsanitary conditions. Budget priorities also include $2.3
billion investments in militarized border security technology,
infrastructure and equipment, new border fencing, and hiring an additional 750
Border Patrol agents.
Another winner:
Wealth
The 2017 tax cut –
hyped as a bonus for all – has left our government with a multi-billion dollar
debt that could have funded the missing coronavirus test kits, medical safety
equipment, vaccine research, and urgently needed basic health care.
Thanks to this tax
cut – the rich get richer: 72 percent of the tax cuts were directed
to the wealthiest 20 percent of households. Ninety-one of the flourishing
Fortune 500 companies paid no income taxes in 2018, and most of the rest paid
half the rate they ought to have paid by tax regulation.
Trump’s proposed
budget is one that prizes corporate life over human life; militarized security
and walls over tackling the challenge of a humanistic immigration policy; and
the wealthy over the rest of us. Another gift to corporate America is
granting Gilead Sciences the exclusive right to research the drug remdesivir
that shows potential for treating the coronavirus. If successful the
company is guaranteed a 7-year patent, can set prices controls on it, will
benefit from grants and tax credits, and could block manufacturers from
developing generic versions at lower costs and more affordable for patients.
Losers in Trump’s
budget:
State Department: If Trump has his
way, the State Department may be cut by 23 percent, thus undermining
potentially more effective and intelligent response to conflict, such as
diplomacy and humanitarian aid. Why not build our diplomacy capacity,
given we have failed wretchedly in war since World War II in Korea, Vietnam,
Afghanistan, the second Iraq War, and Syria, leaving millions dead, injured
physically and spiritually, homeless and hungry. Even
a majority of US veterans doubt that the trillion dollar wars they
fought in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were worth fighting.
The Environmental
Protection Agency:
The proposed cut of 27% is nothing less than insane, given increased coastline
flooding and erosion, more extreme wildfires, worsened hurricanes and prolonged
droughts from the climate crisis, all of which is estimated
to cripple economic growth in this decade. Further, researchers
recently calculated that 80,000 additional lives would be lost every decade if
this administration completes its rollback of clean air protections.
All to coddle some well-connected fossil fuel, auto and truck
corporations.
Health and Human
Services:
The proposed cut of 9% to Health and Human Services, including a 16% cut to the
Centers for Disease Control, is homicidal. Local and state health
departments across the country have lost nearly ¼ of their
workforce–frontline health workers critical to stemming the spread of the
virus–since 2008, when their positions were eliminated during the Great
Recession.
Epidemiologist
Larry Brilliant who helped eradicate smallpox underscored our underfunded and
underprepared public health system: “by the time South Korea had
done 200,000 Covid-19 tests, we had probably done less than
1,000.”
Among
20 peer countries, which are well-to-do, developed and
industrialized, the United States has the largest opioid users per capita, the
highest drug-death rate, the highest use of anti-depressants per capita, the
highest suicide and homicide rates. In additional comparisons of health
with these comparable countries, we have the highest infant mortality rate and
the shortest life expectancy.
Why do we fail in
protecting our own people’s health and well-being while we squander more than a
trillion dollars each year – with the assent of both Republicans and Democrats
– on maintaining a failed and futile military empire across the world?
Now what could be
done to chart a better future for the 99%?
- Repeal
the 2017 Tax cuts
- Invest
in diplomacy, lower the defense budget. Retrain workers for the Green New
Deal as described in Warheads to Windmills, and quarantine fossil
fuels where they are - in the ground.
- Restore
the capacity of our health and environmental agencies to at least pre-2008
recession. Enact universal health coverage.
- Heed
the call of the UN Secretary General Guterres:
“Put armed
conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives — the
pandemic.”
Pat Hynes, a
retired Professor of Environmental Health, directs the Traprock Center for
Peace and Justice.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore,
MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go
to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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