PRESS ROOM

Recent press reports suggest that the Biden administration’s first Pentagon budget, due for release on May 3rd, will come in at roughly last year’s levels – well over $700 billion per year. When nuclear weapons spending at the Department of Energy is added to the mix, the figure could reach nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars. At a time when over 500,000 Americans have died from the Covid-19 pandemic and storms, floods and fires tied to climate change have caused widespread devastation, it’s time to rethink what constitutes security, and budget accordingly.

“'The reported 43 percent spike in violent terrorist extremism on the continent points toward a lack of progress by the Special Operations Command Africa in degrading and disrupting terrorist groups,' Temi Ibirogba...told VICE World News. The fact that militant Islamist group violence increased during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when economic hardship and border closures should have constrained terrorist groups, she said, 'shows that SOCAFRICA did not effectively adapt their counterterrorism capability plan to reflect the changing dynamics of the world in 2020.'"

"Be Slavery Free (Australia and the Netherlands), Green America, INKOTA, Mighty Earth, and National Wildlife Federation published their 2021 joint Easter Scorecard, analyzing how the world’s biggest cocoa traders, chocolate manufacturers, and retailers are addressing social and environmental benchmarks. These six NGOs bring expertise and experience across the sections in the Scorecard and combined together bring deep understandings to the social and environmental areas in the cocoa production of the chocolate industry and what the emerging bench-marks look like."

"On March 12, 2020, President Rodrigo Duterte imposed a 30-day community quarantine over the National Capital Region to help contain the transmission of the virus which causes COVID-19.

William Hartung, the director of the arms and security program at the Washington D.C.-based Center for International Policy, described the current administration’s approach as similar to the bloody drug war. 'The regime has more tools now to crack down on people than when it started. Now, they’ve got a crisis that allows them to tighten its grip on power,' Hartung was quoted as saying."

"Meanwhile, the debate over the sanctions is not completely over yet, as pressure continues to build in Washington for taking some action against the Saudi crown prince. Various US lawmakers have initiated legal proceedings for holding the Saudi royal accountable. According to William Hartung, director of the arms and security program at the Center for International Policy, if such legislation is put in front of Biden, 'it would put him in a very difficult position as to whether to veto.'”

“There is one costly system that is not generally thought of in these terms but should be: the new ICBM — formally known as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, but more accurately characterized as a money pit that adds nothing to our defense,” Hartung wrote. “ICBMs make the world a more dangerous place because a president would have a matter of minutes to decide whether to launch them in a crisis, thereby increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war due to a false alarm.”

Ben Freeman, Director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative (FITI), said the language in the bill is "precisely what was recommended in its report entitled "Foreign Funding of Think Tanks in America."

FITI's 2020 "Foreign Funding of Think Tanks in America" report was cited in this article about a new bill introduced by House Republicans that "subjects think tanks and research institutions to stricter disclosure requirements."

Last March, the Trump administration implemented regulations to make it easier for U.S. companies to export firearms. Since the new rules took effect, overseas sales of U.S. semiautomatic pistols more than doubled, with potentially devastating consequences. The Biden administration should restore the previous restrictions and take additional measures to prevent U.S.-supplied guns from ending up in the hands of criminal gangs, human rights abusers and terrorists

"Temi Ibirogba, Program and Research Associate at the Center for International Policy’s Africa Program and sub-editor for the Republic Journal, talks with reporter Chris Bangert-Drowns about the recent spate of kidnappings in Nigeria and why a typical government response could incentivize future attacks."

"This is the first episode in an ongoing series where we break down early life and military experiences of ourselves and other anti war veterans, to catalog and understand the human history of dissent and moral injury.. As usual, Danny is the first subject for dissection."

"William Hartung, the director of the arms and security program at the Washington D.C.-based Center for International Policy, says the approach is eerily similar to Duterte’s much criticized war on drugs, with its emphasis on armed enforcement and punitive measures. 'The regime has more tools now to crack down on people than when it started,' he tells TIME. 'Now, they’ve got a crisis that allows them to tighten its grip on power.'"