Aug 16, 2014
A look at the funding for foreign militaries that might become law as part of the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that passed the House of Representatives in May. Included is a look at the US funding for Israel's military, the funding for the "drug war" in Columbia, the "new normal" in Africa, the continuation of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the brewing war with Russia.
Executive Producer: Anonymous
Congress has passed a National Defense Authorization Act for
53 straight years. Money
for Israel Congressional Research Service report from April 2014 on
U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel. After the holocaust, Jewish
survivors who had just been put through Hell on Earth needed a
place to go. In 1948, the United Nations decided to give them a
country. That’s what Israel is- a country created after World War
II for the Jewish people. Now, the fair thing to do would have been
to give them some of Germany’s land. After all, Germany was
responsible for the Holocaust. But instead, because of their
religion, the men in charge gave the Jewish people their Holy land
around Jerusalem. There was one huge problem with this course of
action: The land they wanted for Israel already had people living
there, the Palestinians. In 1948, the land around Jerusalem that
had been a British colony was split and Isreal was officially
created. In the process, Palestinians were kicked out of their
homes. The people who were kicked out - most of them Arab - were
pissed about it. They’re still pissed, not only about that original
injustice but also because of the continued land grabs that have
happened ever since.
Over the years, the map of
Israel has been redrawn, each time more land going to the Jewish
people and less land remaining for the Palestinians. The
Palestinians have been pushed into two bubbles - One is a large
chuck in the Eastern part of Israel, which borders the Dead Sea and
Jordan called the West Bank. The other chunk is a teeny tiny strip
of land in the south part of Israel called Gaza. Gaza is surrounded
by Israel on two sides, the sea on one side, and Egypt on the
other. Inside that little strip are 1.8 million people, 70% of them
refugees from the land that now makes up Israel.
In 2005, the Palestinians
scored a victory in the smaller bubble known as Gaza. Israeli condo builders had to
abandon the home’s they built on Palestinian land - described
on the TV as “settlements” - and the Israeli military withdrew
their troops from the tiny Gaza strip. However, Israel would still
control the airspace over Gaza and the sea off Gaza’s shore,
meaning Gaza is still surrounded and controlled by Israel on three
of it’s borders; Egypt controls the other. In 2007, the
Palestinians elected a political group called Hamas to run their
government. Hamas is openly anti-Israel - they say so right in
their charter - and the Palestinians would be punished by Israel
for their electoral decision. Since 2007, Israel has enacted a
blockade, allowing very few products into or out of Gaza. Because
of the Israeli blockade, Gaza residents
can’t export their products, which means they have few
opportunities to make money. Israel has also limited what products
can come in: They’ve limited food, medicine, access to doctors,
drinking water, energy, etc. In addition to blocking products, the
people themselves are not allowed to leave. Gaza is
often compared to an open air prison; the residents stuck there and
their every move monitored by the Israeli government. The Ralph Nader Hour: The situation
in Gaza During this latest Israeli-Gaza war, as of this
recording, 1,915 Palestinians have been
killed with the UN estimating that over 85% of them are
civilians. With their intricate knowledge of the layout and
personal details of all the Gazan residents, there’s no way that is
an accident. The proof that stands out in my head is the UN school
- the United Nations was housing Gaza refugees in a school and told
Israel the location 17 times. Israel
bombed it anyway. Hamas - the political party currently running
Gaza- is also behaving immorally. Hamas has been firing rockets
into Israel and has said they won’t stop until the economic
blockade is lifted.. They've put up their best fight, launching
thousands of rockets but have only managed to kill three Israeli
civilians along with 64 Israeli soldiers. The law of the United
States is that it is our responsibility to make sure that Israel
has a “Qualitative Military Edge” over other
countries, which means we need to make sure Israel can defeat any
military "through the use of superior military means…” As of April
2014, the United States has given Israel $121 billion dollars, almost all of that going
towards the military. Money from the United States makes up a
quarter of Israel’s military funding. This is sold to the American
public by saying that this spending protects Israel - which it
certainly does- and on our end, it creates American jobs. But due
to a deal made by the Bush administration, Israel is allowed to
spend 26.3% of the money we give them on
weapons Israel manufactures itself, meaning that none of that money
is coming back into the United States. Israel is the only country
in the world allowed to do this with our cash. Iron Dome is a
missile defense system manufactured by an Israeli weapons
manufacturer - Rafael Advanced Defense Systems - paid for with that
26.3% of the money that we give Israel which they’re allowed to use
to pay Israeli weapons companies. We’ve paid over $704 million for Iron Dome; not one penny of that
came back into the United States. Raytheon will soon get half the Iron
Dome money. Even worse, after we give Israel our money, they
can - and do - park that cash in interest bearing accounts with the
US Federal Reserve, so not only are we giving them cash, we are paying them interest on our own money.
Raytheon is also going to benefit from David’s Sling, another
missile defense system which is manufactured by the same Israeli
weapons company that makes Iron Dome. We also pay for the Arrow,
Arrow II, and Arrow III, which are missile defense systems that
we’ve paid over $2.3 billion and counting for. These systems are
manufactured in part by Boeing and another Israeli weapons
manufacture, Israel Aerospace Industries. On top of cash and
missile defense systems, Isreal is also in on the excess defense
article game. Israel is authorized to have $1.2 billion of United States’s weapons stockpiled
to use and call their own. For 2015, the President requested
another $3.1 billion plus an additional half billion for missile
defense. This is ~55% of the money we give away to foreign
militaries. In addition, Section 1258 says “(c) It is the sense of
Congress that air refueling tankers and advanced bunker buster
munitions should immediately be transferred to Israel…” Bunker
Buster Bomb We have a legitimate way to get out of
funding Israel’s military. The Arms Export Control Act says that the United
States may stop military aid to countries which use it for purposes
other than “legitimate self-defense”. Congress did not do that.
Before leaving for their August vacation, Congress quickly passed
an additional $250 million for Iron Dome. It
was so uncontroversial in the the Senate passed it without a
recorded vote and the House passed it 395-8. The extra money law was signed
by the President on August 4 and the money was on it’s way.
Columbia Another thing the 2015 NDAA is probably
going to do is extend the latest version of Plan Columbia for it’s 10th
year. Plan Columbia is a program for that allows the Department of
Defense to partner with Colombia’s government to fight three
groups: The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), the
National Liberation Army (ELN), and the United Self-Defense Forces
of Columbia (AUC). Plan Columbia started in 1999 and it effectively
involved the US providing Columbia’s government with a military in
return for new laws, although that’s not what the Columbians
thought the deal was at the time. The Columbian president in the
1990’s had asked for US money for a national reconstruction plan.
He got a military instead. Documentary: Plan Colombia- Cashing in on the Drug War
Failure Since Plan Columbia was originally launched in 1999, it
has taken $1.5 billion a year from our pockets and sent it to
Columbia for the Columbian military's weapons, training, and
infrastructure. 20% of the $1.5 billion we give to Columbia also
goes towards planes that kill plants by spraying Monsanto Round-Up Ready poison
on Columbian farms. The official story is that we’re killing coca
plants to stop the drug trade. Columbia’s cocaine production has
gone down but the poison is also working, on farms growing food and animals, who are
also being sprayed too with Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready plant killer.
Seven years after we started providing war machines and poison to
Columbia, the United States and Columbia signed the Columbia Free Trade Agreement. It was negotiated and
signed by the Bush Administration in 2006 and it went into effect on May 15,
2012. It expands profits of the multi-national corporations by
eliminating taxes the companies have to pay in order to get their
products into Columbia. Columbia can no longer tax 80% of the
products that come from multi-nationals; ten years from now, they
won’t be able to tax any of them. One of the industries that wanted
this deal the most was the agriculture industry. Before the trade
deal, Columbia protected their agriculture industry. You could
bring in food products from other countries, but it was taxed
heavily, sometimes over 100% for products including corn, wheat,
rice, and soybeans. You know who profits from those exact crops? A
little corporation called Monsanto. So, here you have a Monsanto
produced poison being dropped on farms all over Columbia, literally
killing Columbia’s domestic agriculture industry. Then, a deal is
negotiated that allows Monsanto crops to be brought in tax-free to
be sold to Columbians who can no longer grow their own food. If the
Columbians still want to grow their own food, they’ll have to buy
the genetically modified kind from Monsanto that can withstand the
RoundUp Ready poison that rains down from the planes in the sky. If
your government were working for corporations and didn’t actually
give a crap about drugs, this would be brilliant and effective plan
to ensure profits in Columbia. And in Columbia, it’s working. In
January 2013, after the trade agreement went into effect, the Associated Press reported
“Agricultural products giant Monsanto reported Tuesday that its
profit nearly tripped in the first fiscal quarter as sales of its
biotech corn seeds expanded in Latin America.” The trade agreement
doesn’t just help Monsanto. Thanks to the trade agreement,
multi-nationals are now allowed to own 100% of a Columbian
subsidiary in the construction, telecommunications, and energy
sectors. The product we import the most of from Columbia - by far-
is oil and gas. Oil and gas account for 61% of the
stuff we get from Columbia followed by metals and coal. The
stuff we export the most to Columbia are oil and coal products,
accounting for 33% of our total exports to that country. Chemicals
and agriculture are #2 and #3. In July, the Financial Times reported that
Anadardo, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil, and Repsol are trying to get
licenses for offshore oil leases in Columibian waters.
International oil companies also want to get their hands on
Columibia’s significant deposits of shale oil and gas, tar sands,
and coal. 
There were three targets of the
Plan Columbia program specifically listed in the law, and they are
telling. FARC is the biggest paramilitary group in Columbia, a
large, violent pain in the government’s ass and big time dealers in
the drug trade. But the other two groups listed have been attacking
oil infrastructure, trying to make life difficult for the foreign
companies that are taking Columbia’s natural resources and leaving
Columbians out of the proceeds. There’s an entire town devoted to
the oil industry - Barrancacabermeja - and the
Columbian paramilitaries that fight there are the ELN
and AUC, the other two groups that are specifically named as
targets in the Plan Columbia program likely being extended by the
NDAA. The updated version of Plan Columbia, which is being extended, was created in
2005 by the Bush administration. It gives Columbia’s military 800
soldiers and 600 private contractors. Africa
Section 1261 orders a report on
the “New Normal” in Africa and expresses Sense of Congress that the
US should achieve the “basing” and access agreements needed to
support our forces. In addition, it requires an assessment from the
Department of Defense on how the US could “employ permanently
assigned military forces” to support the mission of the US Africa
Command. This report can be classified. Camp Lemonnier is in
Djibouti; it's the only US military base we’ve actuality admitted
to having. It’s the main operational hub on the African continent
and was described by the Washington Post in 2012 as “the
busiest Predator drone base outside the Afghan war zone." The US
Africa Command, known as AFRICOM, and The East Africa Response
Force (EARF) operate from Camp Lemonnier, in
Djibouti. The captain of the East Africa Response Force told
Stars and Stripes, a military
publication, “We’re basically the firemen for AFRICOM (U.S. Africa
Command). If something arises and they need troops somewhere, we
can be there just like that.” While the task force remains on call
to fight anywhere AFRICOM needs them, the rest of the troops guard
the bases and train militaries that have partnered with us. In
total, we now have at least 5,000 troops operating
as part of AFRICOM on the continent of Africa. In 2013, AFRICOM
conducted 546 missions, up from 172 during
it’s first year, 2008. Missions doing what? I don’t know. Just like
in Columbia, we are providing militaries for other countries,
apparently all over Africa. Here’s a quote from Vice Adm. Alexander
Krongard, deputy commander of
the task force based out of Djibouti: “I think the heart of our
mission is trying to create militaries that are capable on their
own of bringing stability, so you can have peace and security in
this region,” One of the biggest propaganda tools being used to
justify this military buildup is Benghazi. The reason is that
“preventing another Benghazi” has
been cited repeatedly to justify
sending troops, money, and military equipment to countries all over
Africa. The 2008 outrage over Joseph Kony was the excuse to funnel
at least $550 million to the
Ugandan government - much of it going to their military. Joseph
Kony has been around for 30 years but we only got involved after oil was discovered in Uganda
in 2006. The outrage over the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram is
being used to justify the military buildup in Nigeria, a country we
get a lot of oil from. In return for access to their oil, we give
the corrupt Nigerian government - which has hundreds of thousands
of people locked up and dying in military detention camps -
we give them hundreds of thousands
of dollars every year. After the kidnapping, more US troops were sent to
Nigeria’s next door neighbor Chad to expand the use of spying with
Predator drones. The Nigerian government was also forced to accept
“international assistance” that it didn’t want. That assistance
included welcoming special forces from the US, Canada,
UK, France, and Israel. The “assistance” included surveillance
drones, intelligence operations, and military training. And it’s not just oil that
we’re getting in return for our cash and military- we’re getting
IMF reforms too. 75% of the citizens of Nigeria are poor and
poverty has increased since 2004 despite the nation’s new found oil
wealth. The only benefit the people used to get from oil extraction
came from a law that said that 50% of the national oil revenue must
go to the local governments of the oil-producting countries in the
Niger Delta. In 2011, Nigeria's new President declared a State of
Emergency in Nigeria and the next day eliminated all fuel
subsidies, an IMF plan which causes the citizens of Nigeria to have
to spend $8 billion more a year out of their own pockets for the
fossil fuels dug out of their own land. Boko Haram - the same group
that kidnapped the girls - then stepped up attacks on the
government. Since 2009, the group has killed over 900 people
fighting what they say is a corrupt regime. Thing is that the
people of Nigeria are angry with the government that keeps them
desperately poor and they have supported Boko Haram. Why do we want
our military in Nigeria? A big part of it is the 3,720 miles of oil and gas pipelines, 90
oil fields, and 73 flow stations that Shell has in the country,
which the Nigerian military is not strong enough to protect from
Boko Haram and other groups that want the Nigeria’s oil wealth to
benefit the people of Nigeria. And now the media is obsessing over
an Ebola in that same region of
Africa, and the media convincing us that if we don’t intervene
immediately we’re all going to die. Ebola has been around for forty
years and this latest outbreak has killed about 1,000 Africans.
That is sad but it pales in comparison to the death rate of
malaria, which killed an estimated 627,000 people in 2012
alone. The miracle cure discovered out of nowhere by the US
military comes from the tobacco plant and
prompted the spokesman for Reynold’s American, the giant tobacco
company that makes the miracle drug, to say that this could mark a
step forward in the company’s goal of transforming the tobacco
industry both in terms of remolding its image and meeting emerging
market demands. All of these stories are being used to build up our
military all over Africa, which is what is described officially in
legislation as the “new normal”. Along with the base we’ve actually
admitted to having in Djibouti, the US military also has drone bases in Ethiopia, Niger, and
the Republic of Seychelles. We have regular military bases in
Kenya and Uganda. We have a US spying network operating out of
Burkina Faso,Mauritania and Chad. We have confirmed troops on the
ground in Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, Djibouti, Kenya,
Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Uganda. Just last
week, President Obama announced that the US government, World Bank,
and corporations will be investing a combined $33 billion in
Africa. Corporate America is moving in - and we’re going to pay
their entrance fee with money and militaries to shut down any
citizen dissent. Afghanistan There are a bunch of
provisions in this year’s NDAA to continue the war in
Afghanistan.
- Section 1211: Extends a program that gives $400 million for the war in Afghanistan in 2015. It also says that the Defense Department can accept money from “any person” - and remember, corporations are people now, foreign governments, or international organization” and add it to that $400 million. The permission to use that money won’t ever expire.
- Section 1212: Extends authority to spend $1.5 billion in 2015 to pay off any country that helps us in Iraq or Afghanistan.
- Section 1215: If Afghanistan dares to tax the Defense Department or a US contractor, the US will withhold that much money plus 50%. This holds Afghanistan to a deal - “Status of Forces Agreement” - they made with the Bush administration in 2003. Funds withheld by the US taxpayers will go towards paying contractors back for their Afghanistan taxes. Doesn’t expire until Afghanistan signs a new security agreement.
- Section 1216-7: Confirms that we will be keeping military members in Afghanistan through 2018 and tells the Defense Department to make a plan for it, even though President Obama announced we would be out of Afghanistan by 2016.
Iraq Documentary: Why We Did It We're bombing Iraq again
to prevent the "bad guys" from getting to Erbil. Erbil is an oil town that houses
thousands of Americans who work in the oil industry.
Ukraine/Russia Ukraine is really like two
different countries. The west side wants to be part of Europe; the
east side is more culturally connected to Russia. Ukraine’s elected
government was thrown out earlier this year in a coup after the
government refused to sign a free trade deal with Europe. Europe
wants Ukraine on it’s side instead of Russia’s because Ukraine has
some very important gas pipelines that
supply gas to Europe and two ginormous natural gas formations have
been found under Ukrainians’ feet which the multinationals who
benefit from free-trade agreements would love to get their hands
on. The law under the old government was that Ukraine’s gas was
only allowed to be sold to Ukrainians. The government that was
installed quickly signed the trade deal
and now Ukraine’s gas is available to be exported. Russia, in
response to the coup, took over a part of Ukraine - a dingleberry
peninsula hanging off of Ukraine’s coast called Crimea. Russia had
a contract with the old democratically elected government for a
Russian military base on Crimea and when that government was thrown
out, Russia took the land that houses their military base and is
full of people who identify as Russian anyway. It really wasn’t
that unreasonable a thing to do. This area was literally a part of
Russia when my grandparents were born.
In response, however, the war
mongering psychos controlling our government are escalating this
tension with Russia over Crimea to ridiculous heights. And make no
mistake- we are central to the Ukraine story. The new government
was one hand picked and supported by the United States and Europe.
We've given the new government $1
billion, $15 billion in loan guarantees, 300 military advisers,
and over $20 million worth of military
equipment. The new Ukrainian government has been using our
money and weapons to bomb the Russian half of it’s own
country and we want Russia to stand down - not that we have any proof that
Russia is actually fighting. We appear to be restarting the Cold
War. The 2015 NDAA that passed the House, orders the Defense Department to make a plan to
defend Europe from Russian attacks on NATO countries and orders
a very detailed report on Russia’s
military capabilities to be created every year. To punish
Russia for taking Crimea, the bill prevents any NATO country from
giving Russia excess military articles and prohibits the
militaries of the United States and Russia from cooperating on anything as
long as Russia is in Ukraine. Furthering the trade war that began
with sanctions in the Ukraine Aid bill, the 2015 NDAA is poised to
prevent the Defense Department from
contracting with Russia’s state weapons company. This may be a
problem as the Pentagon has already spent over $1
billion on 88 Russian helicopters for the Afghan military, a
contract that may have to be cancelled and the funds shifted to an
“American” weapons dealer. The most disturbing clause - prevents implementation of the New
Start Treaty which limits the number of nuclear weapons of both
counties, until Russia leaves Ukraine. And now Russia is starting
to fight back with their own economic attacks. In response to the
sanctions which we’ve already placed on Russia, Russia has banned agricultural products from
the United States, Europe, Australia, Canada, and Norway for a
year, which will cost multinationals from those countries
billions of dollars in sales. Music Presented in This
Episode Intro and Exit Music: Tired of Being Lied To by
David Ippolito (found on Music
Alley by mevio) Bombs Make Terrorists by
Dave Gwyther (found on Music
Alley by mevio) Honest Gil for Senate in Kentucky