World Map - Nation Sizes Proportional to Military Spending

While this image and the numbers below may be a little dated - the principle of disproportionate military spending by the US still totals nearly half of the global total.



"Military Spending
As the world's biggest military spender in 2002, the U.S. appears hugely bloated in this map, taking up 45 per cent of the world's land mass. It spent $353 billion on arms, out of a world total of $789 billion."

Thanks to Mail Online for posting this image! Click on the link for additional compelling maps!

Democracy Now Clip: “Cashing in the War Dividend”: As Healthcare Reform Limited by Deficit Concerns, Military Spending Continues to Grow

As lawmakers hash out the final details of legislation to reform the nation’s healthcare system, one of the key questions is: How much will it all cost, and how will it affect the federal deficit? While $900 billion over ten years may sound like a hefty price tag, it is a mere fraction of this country’s spending on the military, which is expected to grow by at least $133.1 billion over the next decade.

Read "Cashing In the War Dividend; The Joys of Perpetual War," by the National Priorities Project's Jo Comerford here

PEP on GritTV with Laura Flanders

What do clocks, socks, and glocks all have in common?

The following is an adaptation of the presentation PEP Coordinator, Andy Heaslet, shared with the audience of our fun and successful 30th Anniversary Charlie King concert on March 7th, 2009:

Socks, underwear, oil in a car, batteries in your smoke detector, Mr. Rogers’s cardigan sweater, and the time on your clocks on the evening of March 7th – what do these all have in common? These are all things that need changing.

In terms of word association, we should add to that list: the military procurement process, the military budget, our policies towards foreign military assistance, our ramping up of the war in Afghanistan, and the clout that military contractors wield via K street lobbying in our nation’s capital. They, too, desperately need changing.

And pushing for such change is precisely what the Peace Economy Project strives to achieve. More...

What if the "F" in F-18 stood for Fun?

This song, performed at the 2009 Riddles Dinner, is shamelessly silly, but it simply and goofily asks, “What if we completely changed the way we look at our Federal spending?” The tune also confronts the idea that not only are our pockets getting picked by military contractors, but, sadly, their products are still unreliable and deadly – even for those operating them.

The crux of the song, though, is that safety and security mean more than being able to smother any opposing military force.

“Now I once heard of guns AND butter
“But we’ve had nothin’ but guns for too long
“So I wrote a taste of butter for all us here
“To imagine what life’d be like if we all sang this song”

The artist and author of the song is PEP's own Andy Heaslet. He apologizes for all those notes he didn't quite hit but hopes you can see past that and enjoy it!