Phase III - Stealth Is.

Black Sun Gazette is kind enough to breakdown the recent State of the Union address:

Barack Obama received his wildest applause when lauding America’s businesses, and said nothing new about the bankers who have swindled America blind. The bankers were not called out by name, the name of their company, and in fact Barack Obama went out of his way to say that he’s “not interested in punishing banks.” This belies, for those who remain unsure, that Barack Obama’s “base” is, was, and necessarily must be the financial elite of this country. A large part of his so-called “jobs” program is $30 billion (a pittance compared to the amount given away to Wall Street in their bail out, to say nothing of the bloated Pentagon and State Department budgets) not for job creation, but for “community banks” (whatever that might mean). A massive public works program to repair and improve America’s crumbling infrastructure, while at the same time creating jobs is, of course, totally out of the question.

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Those aren’t the only reductions that the Obama Administration has in store, however. Obama also formally announced his much rumored push for a freeze on “discretionary spending.” This spending freeze will not effect the budgets of the military-intelligence community one cent, as their budgets have been enshrined sacred cows since the Reagan Administration, just one of many of Reagan’s broader policy agendas that Barack Obama represents a continuation of.

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Again, it is beyond question that Pentagon and the intelligence community need every last cent of their budget which is used to terrorize and enslave the developing world. Spending cuts will effect the people who need them most. On the chopping block are the budgets of the Department of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, and Transportation. Obama’s cuts also target programs like the National Park Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, and NASA. Another means of dealing with a budget shortfall entirely beyond the pale is raising taxes on businesses or the super wealthy. In fact, Obama proposed to “eliminate all capital gains taxes on small business investment”

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“Can ethics be quantified? Or, better yet, can a lack of ethics be quantified?

This week, the Swiss research firm Covalence released its annual ranking of the overall ethical performance of multinational corporations. The idea behind the Covalence research is that there’s value — both for companies and consumers — in measuring corporations against an ethical standard. (We’re hoping this idea also applies to Wall Street firms.)

To complete its ethics index, Covalence compiled both quantitative and qualitative data, spanning seven years, for 581 companies. The data encompass 45 criteria that include labor standards, waste management and human rights records. And because it is a reputation index, the Covalence survey also incorporates media, industry and NGO documents into its evaluation.

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Monsanto, the Missouri-based agriculture giant, ranked dead last in the Covalence ethical index. The company, which leads the world in the production of genetically-engineered seed, has been subject to myriad criticisms. Among them: the company is accused of frequently and unfairly suing small farmers for patent infringement.”

See who else scored poorly at the Huffing Post.

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Did you know that President-elect Obama:

• voted for every one of President Bush’s Iraq-War funding increases?
• believes Bush’s “surge” in Iraq has “succeeded beyond our wildest dreams” and has proclaimed his “absolute” belief in the “War on Terror”?
• criticized the Iraq War because it is “unwinnable,” not because it is illegal, immoral and has killed one million Iraqis?
• will probably leave 140,000 private contractors (mercenaries) and as many as 60,000 to 80,000 regular US troops in Iraq?
• praised President Bush, Sr., and the 1991 Gulf War saying: “I think that when you look back at his foreign policy, it was a wise foreign policy. In how we executed the Gulf War…. I think George H.W. Bush doesn’t get enough credit for…his foreign policy team and the way that he…prosecuted the Gulf War. That cost us $20 billion dollars. That’s all it cost. It was extremely successful.”
• is willing to bomb Iran and that he won’t rule out a first strike nuclear attack?
• wants to send an additional 10,000 US troops to fight the war in Afghanistan?
• wants to expand the Afghan war with unilateral air strikes to bomb Pakistan?
• supported Israel’s war against Lebanon?
• supports Ballistic Missile Defense?
• favours military expenditures on warplanes that he says “provide the backbone of our ability to extend global power.”
• voted for the Patriot Act II, the Wall Street bailout, building a border wall with Mexico and immunity for corporations that conducted electronic eavesdropping on Americans?
• wants continued sanctions against Cuba?
• called President Chavez an “enemy of the US” and wants sanctions against Venezuela?

The idea that Obama is anti-war is a powerful myth that will impede the peace movement’s ability to mobilize opposition to the inevitable continuation of US militarism and imperialism. President Obama may then prove to be more of an obstacle to peace than a true agent of change moving the US economy away from a world in which corporations seek profit through predatory wars. Obama’s deceitful image as peacemonger will allow him to get away with policies and actions that would not be countenanced for an instant if they had come from the likes of McCain or Bush.  This blindspot for Obama’s pro-war agenda will not only hamper the ability of US peace activists to speak out, organize and protest, it will also help to dampen the efforts of many others around the world.

Under President Obama, the US military budget may well be spending about $2.3 billion a day. The 2008 US military budget is $696 billion. Obama says he will increase military spending and will add 65,000 troops to the Army and 27,000 Marines. Every increase of 1,000 army troops adds about $2 billion per year, while every addition of 1,000 Marines adds $1 billion/year. That means Obama’s proposal could add $157 billion, bringing the total to $857 billion per year, which means about $2.3 billion per day.