1 — Homeless Veterans Are Being Helped
"The Department of Veterans Affairs and our federal and local partners should be proud of the gains made reducing Veterans’ homelessness, but so long as there remains a Veteran living on our streets, we have more work to do." – VA Secretary Robert McDonald
Here are some helpful links:
National Alliance to End Homelessness
The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Between 2007 and January of 2015, overall homelessness fell by 11%, and chronic homelessness declined by 31%.
The most striking long-term plunge, though, has occurred among one specific segment of the homeless population: veterans. Homelessness among veterans declined by 35%, and over a shorter span of time — between 2009 and 2015. The number of unsheltered homeless veterans across the nation has plummeted by 50% in the past four years.
This progress is the result of unprecedented attention from policymakers. Bipartisan support for smart policy in Congress and extraordinary coordination between the federal government and state and local governments has produced some shocking news in the past year. Earlier in November, Virginia became the first state in the nation to functionally end veteran homelessness altogether.
- source
2 — The Amount Of Money Unaccounted For Is Huge
On September 10th, 2001, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said:
“Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.” The importance of the issue, he said in a speech at the Pentagon, was not “about business practices, nor is the goal to improve figures on the bottom line. It's really about the security of the United States of America. And let there be no mistake, it is a matter of life and death.”
Then, on September 11th, 2001, the US was attacked and there was no time to talk about accounting issues. It’s now 15 years later, and the Pentagon has cleaned up it’s act and every cent of the American taxpayer’s money is accurately and robustly accounted for… Just kidding!
It’s soooooooooo much worse, 8.5 trillion dollars!! Read more here:
The Biggest Scandal in US History That We're Still Not Talking About
Audits of all federal agencies were mandated by law beginning in 1996, but the Pentagon is unique in never having complied. In almost 20 years, the Pentagon has never accounted for trillions it spent, in part because “plugging”—fudging the numbers—is standard operating procedure.
In one example, the DLA had stockpiled 15,000 Humvee front suspensions as of 2008, which is the equivalent of a 14 year supply. Yet somehow between 2010-2012, defying both logic and prudence entirely, the agency purchased 7,437 more of those same parts—at significantly higher cost than those already gathering dust on warehouse shelves—at a time when demand had been cut in half.
As of September 2012, the DLA and military had already ordered $733 million in duplicates of existing supernumerary supplies, which was a 21% increase from the $609 million it spent on the same asinine duplication the previous year. All this stuff makes a comprehensive inventory impossible, and a worker in the DLA’s largest warehouse explained there is no system for verifying that items are stored correctly or even to track or estimate how much is lost to employee theft.
- source
And then there’s this.
When it was announced that the military’s budget would be cut by $52 billion in 2014, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel had a fit, telling a defense conference: “[The cuts are] too deep, too steep, and too abrupt. This is an irresponsible way to govern and it forces the department into a very bad set of choices.”
Oh, you mean budgeting money. Yeah, that does sound bad. I have a lot of experience though and would be willing to help you say, for $8.5 trillion?
3 — We Are Fighting ISIS And Have A Global Presence
Defense Secretary Ash Carter spoke of the Pentagon’s plan to defeat ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, whatever.
"The specialized expeditionary targeting force I announced in December is now in place and is preparing to work with the Iraqis to begin going after ISIL's fighters and commanders, killing or capturing them wherever we find them, along with other key targets," Carter said, using an acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a different name for ISIS.
His speech offered an upbeat assessment of the anti-ISIS campaign, saying that coalition-backed forces, supported by the airstrikes, are taking back territory and going after the group's finances. This week airstrikes hit an ISIS cash center in Mosul.
- source
According to the US Department of Defense:
As of 3:59 p.m. EST Jan. 19, the U.S. and coalition have conducted a total of 9,782 strikes (6,516 Iraq / 3,266 Syria).
- U.S. has conducted 7,551 strikes in Iraq and Syria (4,482 Iraq / 3,069 Syria)
- Rest of Coalition has conducted 2,231 strikes in Iraq and Syria (2,034 Iraq /197 Syria)
The countries that have participated in the strikes include:
- In Iraq: (1) Australia, (2) Belgium, (3) Canada, (4) Denmark, (5) France, (6) Jordan, (7) The Netherlands, and (8) UK
- In Syria: (1) Australia, (2) Bahrain, (3) Canada, (4) France, (5) Jordan, (6) Saudi Arabia, (7) Turkey (8) UAE and (9)UK
As of Jan. 17, U.S. and partner nation aircraft have flown an estimated 65,492 sorties in support of operations in Iraq and Syria.
As of Dec. 15, 2015, the total cost of operations related to ISIL since kinetic operations started on Aug. 8, 2014, is $5.53 billion and the average daily cost is $11 million for 495 days of operations. A further breakdown of cost associated with the operations is here.
Here are some of the nations in the US-led coalition:
Albania
Arab League
Australia
Austria
Kingdom of Bahrain
Kingdom of Belgium
Bosnia and
Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Canada
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Arab Republic of
Egypt
Estonia
European Union |
Finland
France
Georgia
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
Republic of Iraq
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Jordan
Republic of Korea
Kosovo
Kuwait
Latvia |
Lebanon
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Malaysia
Moldova
Montenegro
Morocco
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Panama
Poland
Portugal
|
Qatar
Romania
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Somalia
Spain
Sweden
Taiwan
Tunisia
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
|
- source
As is appropriate for the world’s only remaining superpower and greatest country ever on the face of the Earth (omg, love yourself much?), we literally can not go anywhere without already being there. Now, I’m not saying this is all bad. I mean, if you’re going to spend over half of your discretionary budget on something you better have something to show for it am I right? But in all seriousness, there is a strategy to all this and if we can just muster the courage to stay on the good side of things we have a real opportunity to help steer humanity through any challenge we may face.
According to official information provided by the Department of Defense (DoD) and its Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) there are still about 40,000 US troops, and 179 US bases in Germany, over 50,000 troops in Japan (and 109 bases), and tens of thousands of troops, with hundreds of bases, all over Europe. Over 28,000 US troops are present in 85 bases in South Korea, and have been since 1957.
Altogether, based on information contained in the DoD’s latest Base Structure Report (BSR), the US has bases in at least 74 countries and troops practically all over the world, ranging from thousands to just one in some countries (it could be a military attaché, for instance).
By comparison, France has bases in 10 countries, and the UK has bases in seven.
Calculating the extent of the US military presence abroad is not an easy task. The data released by the Department of Defense is incomplete, and inconsistencies are found within documents.
- source
Our military is changing to be more adaptable in the future:
In the past, most of the Army prepositioned stocks were intended for high-end combat operations, with a sense that the warehouses had invisible signs saying, “Break Glass in Case of the Big One,” Mr. Bechtel said. The new stores would be designed for smaller-scale conflict, as well as for training and advising missions, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and civilian evacuation operations.
Army officials acknowledge that, in decades past, they have allowed weapons prepositioned for combat to become badly outdated. For example, when the Third Infantry Division arrived in Kuwait as the vanguard for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the tanks and fighting vehicles it drew from warehouses were inferior to those it had trained on in the United States.
The division’s soldiers, in the words of one officer, were required to “train downward” to be effective on the older weapons. Mr. Bechtel and other Army officials said plans called for the Army’s warehouses to be refilled with newer weapons.
- source
4 — The Military Has Warned About The Effects Of Climate Change Repeatedly
Here’s a list of resources concerning climate change and security from The Center For Climate and Security. Hey, that’s what we’re talking about!
Here are a few examples:
2003 Pentagon Report: "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security" This report is where it started, describing heightened tensions over resources:
As global and local carrying capacities are reduced, tensions could mount around the world, leading to two fundamental strategies: defensive and offensive. Nations with the resources to do so may build virtual fortresses around their countries, preserving resources for themselves. Less fortunate nations especially those with ancient enmities with their neighbors, may initiate in struggles for access to food, clean water, or energy. Unlikely alliances could be formed as defense priorities shift and the goal is resources for survival rather than religion, ideology, or national honor.
There were few glimmers of hope as far as legislative attempts to address climate change at the time. The Climate Stewardship Acts of 2003, 2005, and 2007 which proposed carbon emissions caps among other things all failed.
In 2007, the CNA Military Advisory Board released this report. The excerpt below is from the Letter of Transmittal:
Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the United States. Accordingly, it is appropriate to start now to help mitigate the severity of some of these emergent challenges. The decision to act should be made soon in order to plan prudently for the nation’s security. The increasing risks from climate change should be addressed now because they will almost certainly get worse if we delay.
2012 Study: National Research Council, commissioned by the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies states:
“It is prudent to expect that over the course of a decade some climate events—including single events, conjunctions of events occurring simultaneously or in sequence in particular locations, and events affecting globally integrated systems that provide for human well-being—will produce consequences that exceed the capacity of the affected societies or global systems to manage and that have global security implications serious enough to compel international response.”
- source
Here are some quotes from some well known public figures:
"You travel around Europe and you talk to leaders of governments and the opposition, and they are arguing about a whole bunch of things. One thing they're not arguing about is whether the science of climate change is real and whether or not we have to do something about it,” — Barrack Obama
“I’m not telling you that the crisis in Syria was caused by climate change, but the devastating drought clearly made a bad situation a lot worse.” — Secretary of State John Kerry
“Well, what happens, say, in Syria, for example — and there’s some thought about this — is that, when you have drought, when people can’t grow their crops, they’re going to migrate into cities. And when people migrate into cities, and they don’t have jobs, there’s going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment. And people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al Qaeda and ISIS are using right now. So, where you have discontent, where you have instability, that’s where problems arise. And, certainly, without a doubt, climate change will lead to that.” — Senator Bernie Sanders
“With regards to climate change, the — actually, what we developed at the CIA was an intelligence branch of the CIA that focused on that issue actually for intelligence purposes, because of the implications that these changes might have with regards to national security.
For example, when we incur greater droughts, when we incur areas that in fact have less rain and are incurring unusual climate impacts, it creates obviously an impact in terms of the population. It’s something we have to be aware of because that can create chaos. We’ve seen that happen in Africa. We’ve seen that happen in other parts of the world. So we need to have that kind of intelligence” — Leon Panetta, U.S. Secretary of Defense
“I won’t let anyone take us backward, deny our economy the benefits of harnessing a clean energy future, or force our children to endure the catastrophe that would result from unchecked climate change.”
HILLARY, NOVEMBER 29, 2015
And then these:
“I don't think climate change ranks in the top ten list when you consider that we have these asymmetric threats of Islamic terrorism, organized to destroy western civilization. You have nation states like Russia on the run, where we're pulling back, creating big problems for ourselves and our allies. You see the threats on Israel, the threats to Europe across the board. We have serious national security challenges in this world today because of the weakness of the Obama/Clinton foreign policy. And that would be the answer I think that most people would want to hear.” — Jeb! Bush
- source
"No matter how you feel about the issue of the environment, and the climate, and the changes to climate, there's no way any reasonable person could conclude that the most immediate threat we face to our security is what the climate's going to look like in 25 or 30 years,” Sen. Marco Rubio
- source
5 — The Largest Socialist Organization On Earth
More 5 Things:
Money
Carbon
Renewables