They bomb schools, hospitals, even wedding parties. What Saudi Arabia is doing in Yemen is disgusting – and they’re doing it with weapons they buy from Europe, the US, and Canada. But in just a few days we can do the unthinkable – win a landmark decision that could stem the flow of weapons to the Saudis.

The European Parliament is days away from voting on a proposed EU-wide arms embargo – but under heavy Saudi lobbying, some politicians are wavering.

saudi-arabia-becomes-worlds-biggest-arms-importer

Now more than ever, these leaders need to see that people from every corner of the Earth are looking to them to stand up and say “NO” to Saudi Arabia and their atrocities. Sign the urgent petition calling for an arms embargo – we need to show the EU champions overwhelming public support:

Spell Pentagon? M-O-R-E  M-O-N-E-Y

Whether it’s funny or not, – couldn’t be more accurate. And that urge for more is fed endlessly by an American military that has increasingly become the only “option” on that mythical “table” in Washington where all options are supposedly kept. Recently, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter previewed the proposed new Pentagon budget for 2017, and one thing is evident: war is in the money. The Obama administration wants to double the funding for the war against the Islamic Stateis $7 billion, money to be ponied up by a Congress that refuses to declare war on the Islamic State.

At the same time, the proposed budget calls for a quadrupling to $3.4 billion of what might be considered next-war funding. Think of it as financing for a prospective future European face-off against Vladimir Putin & Co. Yes, Russia, a rickety energy state facing plunging oil prices and rising discontent, turns out, according to Carter, to be America’s latest looming enemy du jour.

The defense secretary is planning to use that $3.4 billion to “stockpile heavy weapons, armored vehicles, and other military equipment” across Central and Eastern Europe, station “a full armored combat brigade” (4,000 or more troops) in the region, and “construct or refurbish maintenance facilities, airfields, and training ranges in seven European countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania.” (All of them, except half of Germany, were once part of the Soviet bloc.)

Leaving the money aside for a moment, consider how perfectly this latest announcement caps the varying strategies of the Obama administration and the Pentagon over the last half-decade. If you remember, way back in 2011 the Iraq War officially ended and U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan were winding down. At that moment, the Obama administration proclaimed a new global strategy. Washington, which had been bogged down in the Greater Middle East for the previous decade, was going to turn the page and shift its emphasis to the planet’s rising power, China. Who doubted, after all, that the U.S. had a military duty to confront, deal with, and contain that country?