EVENT: "Labor of the US Military-Industrial Complex: From Mid-Century Strengths to a Dead-End Future", a talk by Taylor Barnes @tkbarnes.bsky.social with Feyzi Ismail (Goldsmiths) as a discussant, April 22, 2pm EST / 20:00 CET. @tulenetwork.bsky.social Sign up: torontomu.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
Like high gas prices on Americans, the opportunity costs of spending money on the Pentagon versus everything else we need, the real cost of climate change and not mitigating that because our resources are tied up in the national mission that hasn't changed since the Cold War
Linda Bilmes makes a really important point, which is that wars rarely end for moral reasons but rather because one side runs out of blood or treasure. With credit card wars, treasure doesn't appear to run out (it goes to the deficit!). But treasure is indeed running out...
"But how will we pay for the war on Iran?" asks no one in the Trump administration.
Terrific podcast about how Americans used to pay for war (we budgeted for it and felt the tradeoffs and tax burden in real time) versus the credit card wars of the post-911 era.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...
Palantir’s latest weekend of technofascist posting is more of the same: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Articles about Jared Kushner's diplomatic role with Iran that mention Kushner has received billions from the Saudi government (2/28-4/19):
NYT: 5 of 58
WashPost: 1 of 43
WSJ: 0 of 40
AP: 0 of 26
CNN Wire: 0 of 18
NY Post: 0 of 17
Chicago Tribune: 0 of 4
LA Times: 0 of 4
Boston Globe: 0 of 2
If you paid taxes for 2025, you likely paid:
$124 — school lunch & nutrition programs
$49 — diplomacy to prevent wars
$19 — USPS
$19 — Federal Aviation Administration
$18 — national parks
and
$4,049 — weapons and war.
These priorities are hurting us all. We need change. #TaxDay
RUNNING TALLY OF WHO IS VOTING FOR THE JRDS
I'll be in Washington State at Whitman College to discuss my forthcoming paper with the @transitionsec.bsky.social and our reporting at @inkstickmedia.com on dwindling job creation and economic mobility in the military-industrial complex.
Anyone in and around Walla Walla welcome to join!
Hi Tyler, I listened to this over lunch today and it was terrific! Honestly I didn't know that these elaborate data-packed dashboards I've been seeing pop up online are part of a larger trend. Super helpful conversation for me place them in context and understand them as "supercharged doomscrolling"
Just came across this line from a German woman complaining about a death camp near her home. It feels brutally familiar in America today:
"One is an unwilling witness to such outrages. I request that it be arranged that such inhuman deeds be discontinued, or else be done where one does not see it."
My god. Essential, horrifying reporting here.
"Adjusted for inflation, Trump wants to spend $260 billion more on the military in 2027 than the US did in 1945.
It isn’t World War II-level spending; it’s parody-level."
www.stephensemler.com/p/trumps-bud...
Utahns -- I'll be on Salt Lake City's KRCL radio tonight to talk about this "culture change" (read: make weapons fast, whatever the costs) at Northrop Grumman, the state's largest military contractor.
Here's the highlights: www.youtube.com/shorts/6Dmve...
Strikes almost certainly involving U.S.-origin military hardware.
Even if U.S. military grant assistance to Israel is terminated in the future, there is the separate issue of whether legal restrictions on arms exports that apply to all states are enforced against Israel.
A Syrian man has buried his wife and four of his five children after Israeli strikes hit Beirut earlier this week.
Here's the big picture:
These advances in automation are yet another reason why more money for the Pentagon does not equal more jobs in the arms industry.
The sector has hemorrhaged jobs in recent decades - from 3.2 million in the 1980s to 1.1 million nowadays
www.youtube.com/shorts/7pu_O...
The company is also telling employees that it's cutting labor costs – ie salaries to real human workers – by deploying "AI inspection capabilities" and "collaborative robot" in Salt Lake City.
How much in lost wages? $1.5 million per year
inkstickmedia.com/northrops-cu...
Exclusive:
Internal messages from one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers reveal how it's telling its employees to respond to the era of gushing funds from the trillion-dollar Pentagon budget.
The directive? Make weapons fast, cost consciousness and performance are secondary.
Great work as always from @tkbarnes.bsky.social
@hightokolob.bsky.social I would be thrilled to meet a Cold War Mormon historian! A niche topic we care about at @inkstickmedia.com ha.
inkstickmedia.com/cracks-in-th...
inkstickmedia.com/gaza-genocid...
inkstickmedia.com/interview-my...
+ @ljtmedia.bsky.social
💢 Israeli strike kills Lebanese radio journalist in her home, Committee to Protect Journalists reports Ghada Dayekh, a presenter with privately owned Sawt Al-Farah radio, was killed when an Israeli airstrike hit her apartment building in the southern coastal city of Tyre, destroying it, according to the outlet’s director. Dayekh had worked at the station for decades and had been on air for 37 years. CPJ said her killing reflects a “continued pattern of harm against the press.” Her killing brings the number of journalists killed in Lebanon during the current conflict to six, including Mohammed Sherri, Hussain Hamood, Ali Shoaib, Fatima Ftouni, and Mohamad Ftouni. At least eight journalists have been killed since the Iran war began on February 28, according to CPJ.
💢 Israeli strike kills Lebanese radio journalist in her home, Committee to Protect Journalists reports
Ghada Dayekh, a presenter w/ privately owned Sawt Al-Farah radio, was killed when an Israeli airstrike hit her apartment building in the southern coastal city of Tyre, destroying it, according...
cc Utah and nuclear/ weapons folks! @tokensandsigns.org @transitionsec.bsky.social @krclradio.bsky.social @costsofwar.bsky.social @nuclearban.bsky.social
Here's the big picture:
These advances in automation are yet another reason why more money for the Pentagon does not equal more jobs in the arms industry.
The sector has hemorrhaged jobs in recent decades - from 3.2 million in the 1980s to 1.1 million nowadays
www.youtube.com/shorts/7pu_O...
The company is also telling employees that it's cutting labor costs – ie salaries to real human workers – by deploying "AI inspection capabilities" and "collaborative robot" in Salt Lake City.
How much in lost wages? $1.5 million per year
inkstickmedia.com/northrops-cu...
Exclusive:
Internal messages from one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers reveal how it's telling its employees to respond to the era of gushing funds from the trillion-dollar Pentagon budget.
The directive? Make weapons fast, cost consciousness and performance are secondary.
“China is the winner in this war from an economic standpoint, from an energy mix standpoint…
Japan, Korea and India are now all more likely to look for ways to diversify their energy mix, and the equipment needed to achieve that [clean tech] diversification will inevitably come from China”
So to recap, Trump:
- Started a war for no reason on the belief that Iran would surrender immediately
- Killed thousands including over 100 elementary schoolgirls
- Threatened genocide up to and including nuclear war
- Then backed down in exchange for a worse position than the US had before
?
This is an area where deterrence theory only gets you so far. The truth is the president is a mentally declining racist who is facing strategic defeat by people he considers “animals.” This should probably factor into our nuclear risk assessments.