National Priorities Project (NPP) at the Institute for Policy Studies seeks to prioritize peace, shared prosperity, and economic security for all in our nation's decision making. We are the people's guide to the federal budget. In 2014, NPP was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of our pioneering work to track federal spending on the military and promote a U.S. federal budget that represents Americans' priorities, including funding for people's issues such as inequality, unemployment, education, health and the need to build a green economy. In 2017, we joined the non-profit Institute for Policy Studies as an independent project.
Article in the Intercept 15 Sept, 2019, features Rabindranath Tagore and Neta Craword's (Boston university) study "Pentagon Fuel Use, Climate Change, and the Costs of War"
Neta C. Crawford1 Boston University
Review of Yasha Levine's book Surveillance Valley. The secret military history of the Internet. " It tells a story about Silicon Valley that really isn’t told enough, and it points out some really unpleasant – but, alas, all too true – aspects of the technology that we have all come to depend on. Google, the “cool” and “progressive” do-good-company, in fact a military contractor that helps American drones kill children in Yemen and Afghanistan? As well as a partner in predictive policing and a collector of surveillance data that the NSA may yet try to use to control enemy populations in a Cybernetics War 2.0? The Tor Project as paid shills of the belligerent US foreign policy? And the Internet itself, that supposedly liberating tool, was originally conceived as a surveillance and control mechanism?"
By Subrata Ghoshroy, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. October 6, 2020
In July, both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed their own versions of a defense authorization bill for 2021. By a wide majority, both chambers authorized more than $740 billion for defense spending next year. Tucked away in the Senate bill was $20.3 billion for missile defense, and that funding could make it into the final version that lands on the president’s desk. While $20.3 billion may not seem significant in a $740 billion budget, it is nevertheless a startling figure. What’s more, US taxpayers have invested nearly $200 billion on missile defense in the past two decades and another $100 billion in the decade before, with little to show for it.
December 3 webinar hosted together with the Asia-Europe People's Forum a webinar on Military Spending & Global
(In)Security to discuss how current levels of military spending condition
our global emergencies. Speakers include: Michael T. Klare, Binalakshmi
Nepram, Tarja Cronberg and Walden Bello, and moderators will be Jordi Calvo
and Corazon Valdez Fabros.
The webinar coincides with the presentation of the book edited by GCOMS
coordinator Jordi Calvo "Military Spending and Global Security.
Humanitarian and Environmental Perspectives", published on
November 26 by Routledge. The book gives context to the discussion at
hand, reflecting on why people are not well served by nation-states when
they continuously seek to out-compete one another in the size and
destructive powers of their militaries. The webinar deals with the
scope of military spending around the world, while explaining how militarism
is linked with conflict and security threats, and how military spending
further prevent us from adequately dealing with global problems such as
climate change or the covid-19 pandemic.
With the help of governments and their intelligence agencies, the global arms trade continues to be a controlling and corrupting force throughout the world.
This report focuses specifically on the military-oil industry relationship to reveal its role in climate breakdown. It argues that we must start to quantify, expose and act upon the climate burden put upon people and planet by the world’s big military spenders.
By Karl Grossman, prof of journalism, Columbia Uni 28 April 2021
The U.S., the United Kingdom and the then Soviet Union joined decades ago in drafting the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 that designated space as a “global commons” for peaceful purposes. The treaty bans the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in space. It’s been signed by most nations on Earth.
Russia and China—along with U.S. neighbor Canada—have led in a move to expand the Outer Space Treaty by outlawing the deployment of any weapons in space.
PAROS has wide world support. But through a succession of U.S. administrations—Republican and Democrat—the U.S. government has voted against the PAROS treaty at the Conference on Disarmament of the United Nations. Because conference decisions must be supported by consensus, the U.S. has effectively vetoed enactment of the PAROS treaty.
Few people know that the European member states taken as a whole is one of the biggest arms exporters in the world. On the international stage Europe likes to present itself as a continent that stands for democracy and peace, but this façade does not correspond to reality.
Did you know that the EU wants to allocate more than 40 billion euros to the research, development and procurement of new arms? That the arms industry is trying to hijack the European Defence policy? Read all about it on this page.
U.S. Military has left its toxic legacy throughout the world in the form of depleted uranium, oil, jet fuel, pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange and lead
Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda Jeff Jarvis: Washington shows the morals of a clumsy spammer Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain The Guardian, Thursday 17 March 2011 "The multiple persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a programme called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first developed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against the online presence of al-Qaida supporters and others ranged against coalition forces. Since then, OEV is reported to have expanded into a $200m programme and is thought to have been used against jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East."
16 nov 2013 Ambassador Joseph R. DeTrani August 1st--4th, 2013 Rio Hotel & Casino * Las Vegas, Nevada. at ca 15 min. "... cyber is a potential wmd" "...we look to you to help produce more secure systems... and policies ... to disrupt those who seal intellectual property... need you, the good hackers of Def Con" ...".. you have the three branches of government overseeing it [the surveillance] ... it came after after 9/11... when we saw the terrorists coming..." ca 25 min. Q. from the public abt the lies abt wmd in Iraq
On May 16, General Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, announced that AFRICOM, the American military mission in AFRICOM, would expand its activities, sending soldiers throughout the continent in a new plan of training, and it would involve a new combat detachment. Now—combat division, I should say. Now joining us to talk about this is Maurice Carney. He's the executive director and cofounder of Friends of the Congo, based in Washington, D.C.