{"id":4933,"date":"2017-01-17T11:03:15","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T17:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=4933"},"modified":"2017-01-19T15:13:44","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T21:13:44","slug":"how-to-make-more-killings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/how-to-make-more-killings\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Make More Killings"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United States has become largely a service economy and not, any longer, a manufacturing economy.\u00a0 Non-manufacturing\u2019s share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is more than five times that of manufacturing.\u00a0 The manufacturing industries that produce weapons, however, are still thriving in the U.S.<\/p>\n

U.S. arms sales make up most of the global market for arms sales.\u00a0 In December 2016 alone, the U.S. State Department approved 12 Foreign Military Sales, including the sale to Saudi Arabia of CH-47F Chinook Cargo Helicopters and related equipment, training, and support. The estimated sale price will be $3.51 billion.\u00a0 (Reference:\u00a0 Department of Defense\u2014Defense Security Cooperation Agency http:\/\/www.dsca.mil\/major-arms-sales<\/a>)\u00a0\u00a0 This is the same Saudi Arabia to which the U.S. sold 84 advanced F-15SA Boeing combat planes, at a cost to the Saudis of $30 billion dollars, in 2010.\u00a0 Significantly also, the U.S. sold $1.29 billion worth of bombs to the Saudis at the end of 2015.<\/p>\n

As citizens of this country, we should be glad for these sales, right?\u00a0 Manufacturing jobs are good jobs–well paying jobs.\u00a0 But what are we manufacturing?\u00a0 These planes and bombs aren\u2019t sitting in hangars, collecting dust.\u00a0 They are being used by Saudi Arabia\u2019s military as it carries out air strikes in neighboring Yemen.\u00a0 On October 8th, 2016 the Saudi military launched an airstrike on a crowded funeral ceremony in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, killing 100 and injuring more than 500, according to the civilian advocacy group Human Rights Watch<\/a>.\u00a0 At least 2,800 civilians<\/a> have been killed in the conflict so far, according to the United Nations<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 mostly by these air strikes.<\/p>\n

The F-15s, made by Boeing, have been implicated in the bombing of three medical facilities staffed by Doctors Without Borders (M\u00e9dicins Sans Fronti\u00e8res). The U.N. Secretary General has decried<\/a> \u201cintense airstrikes in residential areas and on civilian buildings in Sanaa, including the chamber of commerce, a wedding hall, and a center\u00a0for the blind,\u201d and has warned that reports of cluster bombs being used in populated areas \u201cmay amount to a war crime due to their indiscriminate nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

________________________<\/p>\n

Yemen is on the other side of the world.\u00a0 The killing of civilians in a part of the world, that is so far away, is abstract; the politics\u2014foreign.<\/p>\n

The manufacture and sale of weapons, to foreign nations, is not the only part of our manufacturing that is producing casualties and a body count.\u00a0 The production and sale of firearms in the U.S. is also a huge business.\u00a0 The annual revenue from the manufacturing of guns and ammunition within the U.S. is $11 billion.\u00a0 This includes the production of rifles, shotguns, revolvers and pistols (sources: State fish & Game Departments, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives).<\/p>\n

And, yes, guns do kill.\u00a0 Whether it be the 26 victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school or the murder of the five people at the Fort Lauderdale airport this month, guns, in the hands of angry, sick people, do kill.\u00a0 They kill in our nation; they kill in our own back yards.<\/p>\n

According to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, there were 188 homicides per year in the St. Louis Metropolitan area in 2015 and 2016.\u00a0 In 2015, 179 of those murders were committed with firearms; 19 of the victims were under age 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United States has become largely a service economy and not, any longer, a manufacturing economy.\u00a0 Non-manufacturing\u2019s share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is more than five times that of manufacturing.\u00a0 The manufacturing industries that produce weapons, however, are still thriving in the U.S. U.S. arms sales make up most of the global market […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4933"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4936,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4933\/revisions\/4936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}