Military Industrial Complex

We Must Stop Our Nation’s Push For Relentless War

July 7, 2019 Oliver Stone and Dan Kovalik, Information Clearinghouse. Organize! Empire Economy, Military Industrial Complex, Trump, Wars and Militarism

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 Educate! Military Industrial Complex, Pentagon, US Imperialism, US military

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 Educate! Military Industrial Complex, weapons

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 Educate! Military Industrial Complex, Pentagon, Weapons Sales

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 Educate! Electoral Politics, Military Industrial Complex, US Imperialism

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 Educate! Capitalism, Military Industrial Complex, US Imperialism, Weapons Sales, Yemen

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 Strategize! Military Industrial Complex, Wars and Militarism, weapons

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 Educate! Children, Middle East, Military Industrial Complex, US Imperialism, Yemen

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.

Military Industrial Complex Strikes Again: War Spending Will Bankrupt America

February 19, 2018 John W. Whitehead, Informationclearinghouse.info Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Military Industrial Complex, military spending

“Why throw money at defense when everything is falling down around us? Do we need to spend more money on our military (about $600 billion this year) than the next seven countries combined? Do we need 1.4 million active military personnel and 850,000 reserves when the enemy at the moment — ISIS — numbers in the low tens of thousands? If so, it seems there's something radically wrong with our strategy. Should 55% of the federal government's discretionary spending go to the military and only 3% to transportation when the toll in American lives is far greater from failing infrastructure than from terrorism? Does California need nearly as many active military bases (31, according to militarybases.com) as it has UC and state university campuses (33)?

Washington Post: US Military-Industrial Complex’s Chief Propagandist

January 12, 2018 Eric Zuesse, Strategic-culture.org Educate! Military Industrial Complex, Propaganda, US Imperialism

It used to be that the New York Times and the Washington Post competed against each other to be the chief propagandist for the hundred or so top firms who sell to the US federal government — the 100 top “federal contractors,” almost all of which are Pentagon contractors — mainly these are weapons-manufacturing firms, such as the biggest, Lockheed Martin. The federal government is a large part of these firms’ essential market; so, invasions by the US against other countries require lots of their goods and services; and, also, America’s foreign allies additionally buy these weapons; and, right now, US President Trump is demanding that they increase their ‘defense’ budgets to buy more of them. Wars produce corporate profits if (like in the United States) the military suppliers are private corporations instead of government-owned (socialized).

3 Big Ways The Military Industrial Complex Is Ruining Our Country

September 27, 2017 Ria Modak, www.alternet.org Educate! Military Industrial Complex, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

By Ria Modak for AlterNet - Financially, taxpayers are getting screwed by every angle of the military industiral complex. The U.S. defense budget constitutes hundreds of billions of dollars. More than half of federal discretionary funding goes to the military industrial complex, which encompasses more than 1,200 government organizations and almost 2,000 private corporations working on counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence. The roles of government bureaucrat and military personnel have become nearly indistinguishable; 70 percent of retired three- and four-star generals were employed by defense contractors after their time at the Pentagon. In 2015, nearly 80 percent of Lockheed Martin’s $46.1 billion profit came from the federal government, which has cumulatively given $400 billion to defense corporations that have been sanctioned for fraud. The U.S. government’s decision to subsidize the mergers of major defense corporations in the 1990s put thousands of dollars into the pockets of defense firm executives while millions of workers lost their jobs. Senator Bernie Sanders aptly named the process “payoffs for layoffs.” These extreme examples of corporate greed and opportunism have had ramifications at home and abroad.

Newsletter: The Immense Power We Must Confront

January 14, 2017 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Newsletter Barack Obama, CIA, Donald Trump, FBI, Military Industrial Complex, NSA, Wars and Militarism

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. Fifty-six years ago on January 17, 1961 President Eisenhower warned "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist." JFK with Jackie Kennedy and Governor Connolly just before he was assassinatedThis was followed by the assassination of JFK, which now has been exposed as involving members of the military and intelligence agencies; the massive Vietnam War, constant regime change operations, the growth of the US military and intelligence budgets and never-ending wars since 9/11. The military and intelligence agencies have grown tremendously.

Trump Dossier Should Be Treated Skeptically But Taken Seriously

January 14, 2017 Jim Naureckas, www.fair.org Educate! CIA, Donald Trump, Eisenhower, FBI, Military Industrial Complex, NSA

By Jim Naureckas for FAIR. But as the document circulated behind the scenes, a funny thing happened: People in governmental positions seemed to be taking it seriously. Senators Harry Reid (D.–Nevada) and John McCain (R.–Ariz.) both pushed the FBI to investigate the report’s charges of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence—Reid before Trump’s election, McCain afterwards. In October 2016, the FBI obtained a warrant from the secret FISA court authorizing an investigation into charges contained in the report. And in January 2017, Trump, President Obama and congressional leaders were given a summary of the report’s charges, which Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said was done in order to “ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.”

Protests, Arrests Outside Christening Of Destroyer

June 19, 2016 Beth Brogan, www.bangordailynews.com Resist! Military Industrial Complex, Wars and Militarism, weapons

By Beth Brogan for Bangor Daily News. BATH, Maine — A group of 12 protesters, several of them members of the organization Veterans for Peace, were arrested Saturday morning outside Bath Iron Works as thousands gathered in the shipyard for the christening of the future USS Michael Monsoor. The protesters blocked traffic on Washington Street, outside the shipyard’s south gate near the intersection of Spring Street, shortly before 9:30 a.m., while people stood in line to enter the event and the future crew of the destroyer marched into the yard, according to protester Bruce Gagnon of Bath. “We just shut the whole street down,” Gagnon, 63, told the Bangor Daily News. “Our goal was to interrupt the celebration of endless war and corporate profit.

Permanent War State: Money Raining Down On US Military Complex

December 22, 2015 Binoy Kampmark, www.globalresearch.ca Educate! Military Industrial Complex, US military

By Binoy Kampmark for Global Research - The funding to continue the war against ISIL is an authorization of force against ISIL, albeit a quiet one, designed not to attract public attention. Jack Goldsmith, Lawfare, Dec 17, 2015. Money is raining down on the US military complex in the $1.15 trillion spending bill that was unveiled on Wednesday by various leaders of Congress.[1] Of that portion, a good $572.7 billion is set aside for Pentagon expenditure. (These figures tend to be deceptive in themselves, given the notoriously unreliable accuracy of defence accounting.)

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