Dave Lindorff on Why US Military Spending Should Be Cut 50%; Prof. Anthony Hall on the Meaninglessness of (Canadian) Elections

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First half hour: Donald Trump says the purpose of the US military is to defend our borders—not police the world. If he really believes that, he should slash military spending at least 50%!  Guest Dave Lindorff writes in his new article “Military Spending’s Out of Control While Slashing It Could Easily Fund Medicare for All”:

“Something very unusual happened on Thursday, Oct. 17. The New York Times suddenly ran an article on its opinion page explaining how to cut $300 billion from the $1-trillion military budget. The article, written by Lindsay Koshgarian, director of the Institute for Policy Studies’ National Priorities Project, explained that by shifting the US diplomatic and military strategy from one of confrontation, endless wars, expansive overseas basing, and unilateralism to one of diplomacy, a pull-back from foreign bases and global deployments, with a concomitant reduction in the nation’s 2.4 million-person military could be accomplished with no threat to US national security.”

Lindorff adds that Koshgarian’s estimated $300 billion in safe and easy military cuts is actually very conservative; hundreds of billions more in Pentagon fat could easily be trimmed—and the US would be safer than it is now.

Second half hour: Why aren’t any presidential candidates talking about cutting the military budget in half? Maybe because elections are becoming an increasingly meaningless spectacle? Professor Emeritus Anthony Hall of the University of Lethbridge discusses Justin Trudeau’s lukewarm victory in the recent Canadian elections…and points out that the most important issues are almost completely blacked out from mainstream discussion. To frankly and forthrightly discuss the biggest issues of the day, he suggests, one almost has to leave the West and find a forum like the New Horizon conferences from which US Americans have been banned by their own Treasury Department.

Prof. Hall’s latest article is:

Iran…..The World’s Biggest Exporter of Terrorism?, Reflections on Global Geopolitics on an Iranian Conference in Beirut and on a Canadian Federal Election