Fighter jet opposition

Black Friday is near and have I got a deal for you taxpayers: 88 screaming new war jets.

Yes, they’re still a bit pricy at $77 billion and may already be obsolete and not even work, but they can’t be beat in the bang-for-your-buck category.

They can fly around, each using 5,600 litres of highly refined jet fuel per hour, fire off missiles, destroy lotsa stuff and kill people.

They are a brilliant way of taking the carbon rich deposits that should be left in the ground and spreading them up at 30,000 feet, where the pollution will be most effective.

They can even be made to carry nuclear weapons.

Best of all, we’ll be increasing our “interoperability” with the ever-expanding USA/NATO military/surveillance programs, and helping transform our tax dollars into profits for the world’s biggest and richest corporate polluters.

Though political parties, like that of our (Conservative) MP Tracy Gray often complain about “bloated” government and “tax and spend” policies, all the parties in parliament are fine with increasing the military budget and NATO membership. And don’t get me started on the new war ships (the federal government is ) planning to spend billions on.

Remember that scene in (the movie) Apocalypse Now when Martin Sheen as Capt. Williard goes in search of the commanding officer near the Do Lung Bridge? Amid the explosions and screams of the dying, he asks a soldier in a trench, “Do you know who’s in command here? The soldier stares at him a moment and replies “Yeah.”

Do we know who’s in command of our government spending priorities? Yeah.

Mark Haley, Kelowna, Kelowna Peace Group member