America Is Updating Its Nuclear Weapons. The Price: $1.7 Trillion.

To understand how America is preparing for its nuclear future, follow Melissa Durkee’s fifth-grade students as they shuffle into Room 38 at Preston Veterans’ Memorial School in Preston, Conn. One by one, the children settle in for a six-week course taught by an atypical educator, the defense contractor General Dynamics.

“Does anyone know why we’re here?” a company representative asks. Adalie, 10, shoots her hand into the air. “Um, because you’re building submarines and you, like, need people, and you’re teaching us about it in case we’re interested in working there when we get older,” she ventures.

Adalie is correct. The U.S. Navy has put in an order for General Dynamics to produce 12 nuclear ballistic missile submarines by 2042 — a job that’s projected to cost $130 billion. The industry is struggling to find the tens of thousands of new workers it needs. For the past 18 months, the company has traveled to elementary schools across New England to educate children in the basics of submarine manufacturing and perhaps inspire a student or two to consider one day joining its shipyards.

Though the new Columbia-class subs are primarily being built in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Virginia, the Navy is going to tremendous lengths to recruit talent across the country. Over the past year, a blitz of ads has appeared at various sports events — including major league baseball games, WNBA games and even atop a NASCAR hood — steering fans to buildsubmarines.com. The website connects job seekers with hiring defense contractors as part of a nearly $1 billion campaign. Some of that money will go toward helping restore the network of companies that can supply the more than three million parts that go into a Columbia sub. Like so much of the nation’s nuclear infrastructure, those supplier numbers have plummeted since the 1990s.

America Is Updating Its Nuclear Weapons. The Price: $1.7 Trillion.

Now this is grooming!

Recommended Reading:

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

Banning Chinese Cars Is Dangerous And Self-Defeating

Banning Chinese Cars Is Dangerous And Self-Defeating

Significantly, the administration is justifying the rule on national security grounds. As Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, “Cars today have cameras, microphones, GPS tracking, and other technologies connected to the internet. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how a foreign adversary with access to this information could pose a serious risk to both our national security and the privacy of U.S. citizens.”

Meanwhile:

Mozilla: Modern Cars Are A Privacy Shitshow

All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label — making cars the official worst category of products for privacy that we have ever reviewed.

UAW Stellantis workers protest in the streets from coast to coast

WASHINGTON—Back in the days when Stellantis was Chrysler, there was a sense of camaraderie on the shop floor, veteran Auto Workers say. Not anymore. Not under Stellantis. All they perceive now is corporate greed, satisfying investors, and filling honchos’ pockets with workers’ dollars.

UAW Stellantis workers protest in the streets from coast to coast

02-2024: The UAW Strike Saved Their Shuttered Plant, But the Fight Is Just Beginning

Eight months ago, the idling of the Belvidere Assembly Plant had local United Auto Workers questioning their next steps.

2023: Stellantis commits nearly $5B to Belvidere with new UAW contract

The revival of the Stellantis plant is a stunning reversal of fortunes for Belvidere, Ill. But workers say they won’t rest until they see the concrete being poured.

2022: All Biden’s Green Job Losers

Climate industrial policy is costing 1,350 workers their jobs at a Stellantis plant in Illinois.

Western Media Urges Public: Believe Our Lies, Not Your Own Eyes

YouTube / Rumble
  • The West has spent years accusing China of “genocide” in its western region of Xinjiang despite producing no evidence to substantiate such claims;
  • China has since opened up Xinjiang to international tourism where people from around the globe including the West can see for themselves there is no “genocide;”
  • The collective West now seeks to reassert control over the narrative by questioning travel vloggers reporting back from China regarding their experiences;

Western Media Urges Public: Believe Our Lies, Not Your Own Eyes (archived)

Sources:

Read More »

The ‘scared majority’ could deliver a landslide victory for Trump (rant)

If you believe that Donald Trump & Co represent the working class, congratulations! They’ve successfully pulled the wool over your eyes! Trump’s tax cuts benefitted the rich and his tariffs (and Biden’s) hurt American consumers, not China!

The author is right about one thing—“fear”. The xenophobic fearmongering about illegal immigrants is outlandish, considering Biden has been deporting them on par with Trump (not to mention the ones being detained at GTMO)!

Another thing, for as long as I’ve been able to vote, neither party has represented the working class! Read about the Powell Memorandum!

The ‘scared majority’ could deliver a landslide victory for Trump

Read More »

Che Guevara: Socialism and man in Cuba

Dear compañero,

Though belatedly, I am completing these notes in the course of my trip through Africa, hoping in this way to keep my promise. I would like to do so by dealing with the theme set forth in the title above. I think it may be of interest to Uruguayan readers.

A common argument from the mouths of capitalist spokespeople, in the ideological struggle against socialism, is that socialism, or the period of building socialism into which we have entered, is characterized by the abolition of the individual for the sake of the state. I will not try to refute this argument solely on theoretical grounds but rather to establish the facts as they exist in Cuba and then add comments of a general nature. Let me begin by broadly sketching the history of our revolutionary struggle before and after the taking of power.

Che Guevara: Socialism and man in Cuba

Intel shares fall 20% on plans to cut 15,000 jobs

Intel on Thursday revealed drastic plans to slash its employee headcount and capital spending in an attempt to put its business back on a stable financial footing, as it suffered the latest setback in its slow-moving turnaround plans.

Intel shares fall 20% on plans to cut 15,000 jobs

Related:

US CHIPS Act Funding for Intel

On March 20, 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce and Intel Corporation announced a preliminary memorandum of terms under which Intel will receive approximately $8.5 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS and Science Act. Funding will help advance Intel’s critical semiconductor manufacturing and research and development projects at sites in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Oregon – U.S. locations where the company produces some of the world’s most advanced chips and semiconductor packaging technologies.

Meanwhile, in China:

China’s ‘basic self-sufficiency’ in chip-making tools could come this summer, veteran says

LGBTQ community sounds alarm bells over Vance

LGBTQ community sounds alarm bells over Vance

In addition to a history of anti-LGBTQ statements, the Ohio Republican is the primary sponsor of at least two pieces of federal legislation threatening to sharply roll back transgender rights, including one proposal that aims to ban gender-affirming medical care for minors nationwide. 

That bill, the Senate version of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) Protect Children’s Innocence Act, would charge health care providers who violate it with a Class C felony, punishable by more than a decade in prison. It would also prevent institutions of higher education from providing instruction about gender-affirming care and cut funding for health plans that cover treatment.

Related:

Cis boys get gender-affirming surgeries more often than trans minors

Transgender kids rarely get gender-affirming surgeries — in fact, cisgender children are much more likely to get them, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Neoreactionaries