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Military Industrial Complex

UFO Hype Is Probably Just The US Military Lying Again

July 26, 2020 Caitlin Johnstone. , , ,
“No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public” reads a New York Times headline that is understandably attracting a great deal of attention today. True to form, the Times had to hastily issue an embarrassing correction to the article after initially reporting that former Senate majority leader Harry Reid “believed that crashes of vehicles from other worlds had occurred and that retrieved materials had been studied secretly for decades”, when in fact Reid merely believes “crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred”.

Scheer Intelligence: The Unbearable Violence Of Being American

July 24, 2020 Robert Scheer, Scheer Intelligence. , , ,
America’s military industrial complex and multiple presidential administrations have funnelled several generations of soldiers through unwinnable wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq seemingly without qualms. What has emerged from these tragedies are thousands of traumatized young Americans bringing home wars and leaving behind millions of innocent civilians killed, wounded and forced to become refugees. But some of these former soldiers also came home with an urgent new perspective to share with their compatriots.

The War Industry Threatens Humanity

May 30, 2020 David Swanson, World Beyond War. , , ,
I’m adding Christian Sorensen’s new book, Understanding the War Industry, to the list of books I think will convince you to help abolish war and militaries. See the list below. Wars are driven by many factors. They do not include protection, defense, benevolence, or public service. They do include inertia, political calculation, lust for power, and sadism — facilitated by xenophobia and racism. But the top driving force behind wars is the war industry, the all-consuming greed for the all-mighty dollar. It drives government budgets, war rehearsals, arms races, weapons shows, and fly-overs by military jets supposedly honoring people who are working to preserve life. If it could maximize profits without any actual wars, the war industry wouldn’t care.

Trump’s Own Military Mafia

April 9, 2020 Danny Sjursen, Tom Dispatch. , , ,
Every West Point class votes on an official motto. Most are then inscribed on their class rings. Hence, the pejorative West Point label "ring knocker." (As legend has it, at military meetings a West Pointer “need only knock his large ring on the table and all Pointers present are obliged to rally to his point of view.”) Last August, the class of 2023 announced theirs: “Freedom Is Not Free.” Mine from the class of 2005 was “Keeping Freedom Alive.” Each class takes pride in its motto and, at least theoretically, aspires to live according to its sentiments, while championing the accomplishments of fellow graduates. But some cohorts do stand out. Take the class of 1986 ("Courage Never Quits"). As it happens, both Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are members of that very class, as are a surprisingly wide range of influential leaders in...

Rage Against The War Machine Marches To Call Out War Profiteers

October 12, 2019 Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Washington, DC - On Friday, October 11, 100 anti-war activists took the streets of Washington, DC to visit offices of the War Machine as part of Cindy Sheehan's "Rage Against the War Machine" weekend of actions. This is the second annual event by Women March on the Pentagon. This year, the march was planned for a weekday so workers would be present to hear the messages at the stops along the march. The Rage Against the War Machine march started at the site of a principal war instigator of wars, the White House, where the Commander in Chief resides. Over the past decades, successive administrations have enhanced the power of the President's office, including the power to wage war without approval from Congress or the United Nations.

As Charles Koch Cultivates Anti-War Image, Koch Industries Profits From Defense Contracts

July 30, 2019 Alex Kotch, Readsludge.com   , , ,
The right-wing billionaire has teamed up with unlikely ally George Soros on “military restraint,” but Koch Industries subsidiaries make millions by supplying the Navy with circuitry. Libertarian billionaire industrialist Charles Koch has gone to great lengths to paint himself as an anti-interventionist. He has funded foreign policy-focused think tanks and university centers such as the conflict-averse Center for the Study of Statesmanship at Catholic University and the Notre Dame International Security Center, which is directed by anti-NATO professor Michael Desch.

Merger Mania: The Military-Industrial Complex On Steroids

July 17, 2019 By William D. Hartung, Tomdispatch.com , ,
When, in his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the “unwarranted influence” wielded by the “military-industrial complex,” he could never have dreamed of an arms-making corporation of the size and political clout of Lockheed Martin. In a good year, it now receives up to $50 billion in government contracts, a sum larger than the operating budget of the State Department. And now it’s about to have company. Raytheon, already one of the top five U.S. defense contractors, is planning to merge with United Technologies.

We Must Stop Our Nation’s Push For Relentless War

July 7, 2019 Oliver Stone and Dan Kovalik, Information Clearinghouse. , , ,
Former president Jimmy Carter recently made a profound and damning statement — the United States is the “most warlike nation in the history of the world.” Carter contrasted the United States with China, saying that China is building high-speed trains for its people while the United States is putting all of its resources into mass destruction. Where are high-speed trains in the United States, Carter appropriately wondered. As if to prove Carter’s assertion, Vice President Mike Pence told the most recent graduating class at West Point that it “is a virtual certainty that you will fight on a battlefield for America at some point in your life. . . . You will lead soldiers in combat.

The Truth-Teller: From The Pentagon Papers To The Doomsday Machine

April 25, 2019 Daniel Ellsberg, Countercurrents.org , , ,
After graduating from Harvard with an economics degree and completing service in the US Marines, I worked as a military analyst at the RAND Corporation. In 1961, in that role, I went to Vietnam as part of a Department of Defense task force and saw that our prospects there were extremely dim. It was clear to me that military intervention was a losing proposition. Three years later, I moved from RAND to the Department of Defense. On my first day, I was assigned to a team tasked with devising a response to the alleged attack on the US naval warship USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin by the North Vietnamese.

The F-35 Fighter Jet Will Cost $1.5 Trillion. It’s Time For New Priorities.

April 12, 2019 By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout.org ,
U.S. taxpayers are no strangers to getting saddled with monstrously expensive weapons programs at the expense of basic needs like food, shelter and education. The Pentagon paid $44 billion for 21 very fragile B-2 stealth bombers, few of which still fly in combat roles. The F-22 fighter, coming in at more than $350 million per plane, was built to combat Cold War adversaries who ceased to exist six years before the first jet rolled off the production line. The sticker price for Ronald Reagan’s harebrained “Star Wars” missile defense program stands at around $60 billion.

The Arms Industry Gains Even More Power In Washington, DC

February 1, 2019 By Mandy Smithberger and William D. Hartung, Tomdispatch.com , ,
The way personnel spin through Washington’s infamous revolving door between the Pentagon and the arms industry is nothing new. That door, however, is moving ever faster with the appointment of Patrick Shanahan, who spent 30 years at Boeing, the Pentagon’s second largest contractor, as the Trump administration’s acting secretary of defense. Shanahan had previously been deputy secretary of defense, a typical position in recent years for someone with a significant arms industry background. William Lynn, President Obama’s first deputy secretary of defense, had been a Raytheon lobbyist. Ashton Carter, his successor, was a consultant for the same company.

Elizabeth Warren And The Military Industrial Complex

January 7, 2019 By Alexander Rubinstein, Mintpressnews.com , ,
WASHINGTON —  Senator Elizabeth Warren is making strides to characterize her foreign policy vision as a progressive one after she announced she’d be forming an exploratory committee for a presidential run. But her record on the issues and her associations with war hawks contrasts sharply with her liberal rhetoric. One executive of a defense firm said the perception in the industry is that Warren is not “adversarial” to them. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the first Democrat to materially signal a presidential run in 2020, is a “big P” Progressive flank to Bernie Sanders’ “democratic socialism” from the establishment center.

In Yemen And Beyond, U.S. Arms Manufacturers Are Abetting Crimes Against Humanity

October 1, 2018 By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Fpif.org , , , ,
Our leading weapons dealers have developed a business model that feeds on war, terrorism, chaos, political instability, and human rights violations. The Saudi bombing of a school bus in Yemen on August 9, 2018 killed 44 children and wounded many more. The attack struck a nerve in the U.S., confronting the American public with the wanton brutality of the Saudi-led war on Yemen. When CNN revealed that the bomb used in the airstrike was made by U.S. weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin, the horror of the atrocity hit even closer to home for many Americans. But the killing and maiming of civilians with U.S.-made weapons in war zones around the world is an all too regular occurrence. U.S. forces are directly responsible for largely uncounted civilian casualties in all America’s wars, and the United States is also the world’s leading arms exporter.

War Is Big Business. We Need A Strengthened Movement To Challenge The Arms Industry

August 29, 2018 Brent Patterson, Rabble.ca , ,
Case in point, on April 7, 2017, Fortune reported, "Raytheon stock surged Friday morning, after 59 of the company's Tomahawk missiles were used to strike Syria in Donald Trump's first major military operation as President." Fortune also highlighted, "The shares of other missile and weapons manufacturers" including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics  "each rose as much as 1 per cent, collectively gaining nearly $5 billion in market value as soon as they began trading, even as the broader market fell." Arms corporations based in Canada are also making a killing. In June 2016, The Globe and Mail reported, "Canada has soared in global rankings to become the second biggest arms dealer to the Middle East on the strength of its massive sale of combat vehicles to Saudi Arabia, new figures show."

Weapons Made In America

July 28, 2018 Vijay Prashad, Newsclick.in   , , , ,
US President Donald Trump has made economic nationalism the centrepiece of his political agenda. ‘Made in America’ is one his touchstones. Trade wars are part of his arsenal. Last month, in the shadows of the White House, Trump met with his advisers to cement a renewed approach – sell more weapons around the world. Other sectors of the US economy might be stagnant, but the arms industry is booming. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), US arms exports increased by 25% from 2013 to 2017. The United States now accounts for over a third of total arms exports. The arms deals, since 1975, have escalated as was dramatically shown by a video made by Will Geary based on SIPRI data.
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