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The Hidden Cost of the U.S. Military: the Real Budget Is Far Larger Than Reported
U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft fly in formation, June 3, 2026 -- public domain image By Gisela Cernadas, John Bellamy Foster and David Vine U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed a $1.5 trillion military budget for the fiscal year 2027, which would increase by 44 percent the acknowledged budget for 2026. While a roughly $500 billion increase would be unprecedented in modern U.S. history, the idea that the military budget only recently hit $1 trillion is incorr

The Left Chapter
Jun 194 min read


Lithium Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo: A new mineral rush spearheaded by the United States, Europe, and other major powers
Tesla charging stations at Pacific Fair, Queensland -- Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Layne Hartsell, Max Wilbert and Ntafakabirhi-Aganze Clovis Like oil in the twentieth century, lithium is the ‘white gold’ of the twenty-first. Demand for this key element is driving economic growth based on the ‘renewable’ energy provided by lithium-ion batteries. Such batteries are necessary for storing energy from solar photovoltaics in order to make that electricity readily

The Left Chapter
Jun 178 min read


Canada Is Quietly Putting War Into Your Portfolio
By hosting the proposed Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank, Canada risks transforming war from a political decision subject to public scrutiny into a financial product. U.S. Army Soldier fires a FGM-148 Javelin -- public domain image By Umer Azad, Common Dreams Canada is set to host the headquarters of the proposed Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank, or DSRB, a new multinational institution designed to mobilize tens of billions in financing for military and security p

The Left Chapter
May 95 min read


NATO: The No-Exit Trap of Hotel California?
By Biljana Vankovska My analysis of the beginnings of cracks in NATO had been published with a short delay, just enough to become...

The Left Chapter
Jul 26, 20254 min read


The First Crack in NATO’s Fortress? Slovenia Opens the Referendum Conundrum
Public domain image By Biljana Vankovska At NATO’s recent summit in The Hague (24–25 June), alliance leaders triumphantly announced a...

The Left Chapter
Jul 21, 20254 min read


$916 billion: US military spending is as wasteful as it is dangerous
Representational public domain image From 1984 at the height of the Cold War -- when the Reagan Administration was pursuing an...
Michael Laxer
Apr 22, 20242 min read
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