Who benefits?

[Geggy]

Published on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 by the Boston Globe

Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper

by Derrick Z. Jackson

The top profiteers after 9/11 were the CEOs of United Technologies ($200 million), General Dynamics ($65 million), Lockheed Martin ($50 million), and Halliburton ($49 million). Other firms where CEO pay the last four years added up to $25 million to $45 million were Textron, Engineered Support Systems, Computer Sciences, Alliant Techsystems, Armor Holding, Boeing, Health Net, ITT Industries, Northrop Grumman, Oshkosh Truck, URS, and Raytheon.

Complete article here: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/08/30/soldiers_die_ceos_prosper/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+Editorial%2FOp-ed+pages

[Big Papa Goat]

My brother works for General Dynamics :O
EDIT: And he thinks that the government blew up the towers on 9/11 too :O

[conus]

Excerpted from Dwight D. Eisenhower's Military-Industrial Complex Speech, 1961

Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040

"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present

and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society. "

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Sweet Jesus.

So, do you guys think that every other war we've ever been involved in has resulted in zero gain for manufacturers of war? Where do you think Uncle Sam comes from?

If your objection is to the quality of resources provided to our troops, then I'm right there with ya. But all of this surprise surprise over military contractors profiting during war is sort of dumb. We're at war...yeah, they're going to profit.

So my question to you is what is the alternative?*




* btw, if your counter is that the war was started for the sake of these companies, well you're either an idiot and/or Geggy.

[conus]

So my question to you is what is the alternative?*

Stop jumping into and starting unecesary wars? But I guess there's no money in that.

______________________________________________

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Ok, so your daffy ass falls into the former, thanks.

[Geggy]

It's funny cuz the congress is conjoined with the DoD and the military industrial complex, in which explains why they've been allowing Bush to do whatever he wants, because it benefits them enormously. Because the iraq war is a "failure", they must "stay on course" to further their corporate interests, to allow their profits to grow and to further PNAC's/Wolfowitz's banking agenda. The "Mission accomplished" speech by Bush back in 2003 is actually a doublespeak, not intended for the us or the world, but for their corporate interest. Imagine if a full scale war in the middle east ever breaks out...

[El Blanco]

So, where's that outline I wanted?

[conus]

Ok, so your daffy ass falls into the former, thanks.


Some of you guys remind me of those $6.50 an hour laborers who vote Republican and will actually kill over the right of their employers to exploit them until they die of some work related illness.

_________________________________________________

[KevinTheOmnivore]

You remind me of the dude at the county fair who runs the tea cup ride for the little kids.

Yeah, you remind me of him.

[conus]

Say, wait just a minute. I do run the tea cup ride for the little kids.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Ok, so let's try this again.

What exactly is your point of contention here? War profiteers profited during WW II as well, so should we never have entered that war?

If it's corporations you don't like, or war, or both, well that's perfectly alright. But please be honest and say that. You can mak perfectly reasonable arguments for both.

But what you guys (especially you, Geggy) are doing is this vague bullshit that somehow means something is wrong, but you can't tell us what's wrong.

Are you concerned that these profits are too high, or maybe that our troops aren't getting the best resources available/$???

Hello?

[Courage the Cowardly Dog]

France profited greatly selling things to the colonies in the revolutionary war. GUn manufactures did GREAT trade during the civil war. So was that war started to keep the union and free the slaves, or was it for the ammo manufacturers?

WARS HAVE REASONS OUTSIDE OF MONEY! Tell me, did Halliburton convince the 9/11 hijackers to do what they did? Did Halliburton tell the Taliban to Hide Osama? Did they tell Osama that all other religions are his for the conquering? Or Saddam's father to fail at an attempted Coup of Iraq in the 50s with a former nazi general?

Something happen as a result of others, that doesn't mean that the boat manufacturers caused Katrina.

Seriously we'd have a lot less of these threads if they just developed a form of weed that didn't make you paranoid when you smoked it.

[conus]

Dow Chemical made a few dollars manufacturing the napalm that was used to end the lives of countless Vietnamese human beings. Bank of America was heavily invested in Dow. I wasn't able to do much about it, but I am lucky enough to have had the opportunity to take part in burning BOA's Isla Vista branch bank to the ground during the Isla Vista riots in the spring of 1970. We didn't hurt anyone, but if we had killed any of Dow's corporate officers it woud not have been murder. They would have died as a result of their crimes against humanity.


__________________________________________________ __

[El Blanco]

Ahhh, another fantasy revolutionary.

[conus]

Ahhh, another fantasy revolutionary.


I lived in Santa Barbara for fifteen years, you fucking little idiot. Everybody in town took part-- everyone with any balls, anyway. I have this feeling that my girlfriend did more that day than you ever would.

_________________________________________________

[El Blanco]

OK, your zipcode makes less full of shit.....how?

Ya, it takes balls to get with a big crowd of people to light a local bussiness on fire and try to kill people who really have nothing to do with your gripe.

Just out of curiosity, how many people lost their savings and how many small bussinesses were fucked over royally because of that?

[conus]

I apologize. I guess I misunderstood and expected more from you than was possible. I say this having just spent about three minutes on your blog site. Here is what you had to say regarding Vatican leaders and the Hitler Youth:

"I understand about the circumstances in Germany at the time and I don't blame a drafted soldier for working a defense weapon. I'm just saying that there are image issues to consider. It just doesn't look good."

So anyway dude, take care and have a good time. My advice is to stay involved in the dodgeball and go to some more movies. Yeah, too bad about those Devil Rays! Bummer about your asshole brother. Nice pinups, though! Maybe some day you'll be with a real girl!!!!!

__________________________________________________ ___

[Chojin]

Just out of curiosity, how many people lost their savings and how many small bussinesses were fucked over royally because of that?
My guess is zero, because it's a fucking bank.

[El Blanco]

I apologize. I guess I misunderstood and expected more from you than was possible. I say this having just spent about three minutes on your blog site. Here is what you had to say regarding Vatican leaders and the Hitler Youth:

"I understand about the circumstances in Germany at the time and I don't blame a drafted soldier for working a defense weapon. I'm just saying that there are image issues to consider. It just doesn't look good."

So anyway dude, take care and have a good time. My advice is to stay involved in the dodgeball and go to some more movies. Yeah, too bad about those Devil Rays! Bummer about your asshole brother. Nice pinups, though! Maybe some day you'll be with a real girl!!!!!

__________________________________________________ ___

Nice. You have nothing to really say so you go something I haven't even thought about in over a year that was pretty much just me poking fun at myself.

And you even made an assumption about my personal life that I don't even mention over the internet.

but, thanks for reminding me to get a new sig.

Just out of curiosity, did you need a group of people to give you the balls to type that?

[El Blanco]

Just out of curiosity, how many people lost their savings and how many small bussinesses were fucked over royally because of that?
My guess is zero, because it's a fucking bank.

Ya, so no records or anything were destroyed. Right?


And I'll bet they were real careful with the fire too. I'm sure it only burned what they told it too and there was danger of it spreading.

[conus]

Okay, first a little background. I did take part in the riots in Isla Vista in 1970. Actually it was before I ever lived there. That was later. I was sixteen at the time of the riots and living in the San Gabriel Valley in L.A. Several of us drove up to Santa Barbara that day and several other days during the previous three weeks.

I had been radicalized for about a year, at least in part as a result of two police beatings in L.A. Did you see the Rodney King tape? One of the incidents was similar-- not as many cops, but similar. There was nothing unusual about that at the time. I doubt that I even knew anyone who hadn't been physically attacked by the police. In my case both beatings occured, not because my behavior warranted it, but because of the length of my hair, which in those days was an indication to the police that someone's political opinion regarding the war in Vietnam differed from theirs. That was all it took. That was political freedom in America. What they don't tell you on the History Chanel is that people opposed to the government were routinely beaten, murdered or sent to prison for the rest of their lives on false charges. I even remember two incidents in which good Americans scalped anti-war protestors. Attacks like that were not rare, isolated incidents. It happened from one end of America to the other.

Anyway, these particular riots had gone on for about three weeks. In began when a popular teacher was fired by UC Santa Barbara. Nancy Reagan was on the board of regents at the time. By the time that we burned the bank it was simply revenge. The Santa Barbara sherrif's dept. had called in backup police agencies from Ventura County, Los Angeles and Orange Counties. For the last two weeks they had been charging through the residential streets eight or ten abreast, beating with billy clubs anyone they could catch. It got so bad that even the middle class citizens had gotten involved. if the police were chasing you, practically any home in Isla Vista would open its doors and give you refuge. Even the normaly conservative frat kids got involved. i remember one afternoon when a group of fraternity boys ran through the streets with a wheel barrow full of those decorative rocks you see in front of some apartment buildings. One of them had a bullhorn and was shouting, "Rocks for the people!" Students would run out into the street and fill tuperware containers with rocks to throw at the police. Sort of a carnival atmosphere at times, but a lot of people were hurt.

It ended on the day that a Santa Barbara sherrif brought a target rifle from home-- a .22 with an unusually heavy stock, the sort of weapon favored by snipers. I guess their purpose was to kill someone to get the attention of the rest of the riot participants. He shot a kid named Kevin Moran in the head, killing him instantly. Ironically, Moran wasn't even involved. He was on his was home from the library. But that really didn't matter to the police. It worked, and the riots died down within the next two days. But not before we burned the Isla Vista branch of the Bank of America to the ground.

In answer to your question, I didn't give a fuck if the fire spread or not, any more than I cared if one of their employees or any of the police died. At that point no one cared.


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[Chojin]

careful man el blanco has a scathing rebuttal prepared gleaned from his 3rd period great civilizations book that will put your real-life experiences to shame

[conus]

And I'll bet they were real careful with the fire too. I'm sure it only burned what they told it too and there was danger of it spreading.


"Okay gang, everybody listen up! As you all know, we're going to burn the bank today, but we're going to do this in a responsible manner. Did everyone read their manual on forest fire prevention? Good! Also, we don't want to harm any important documents, so Bill and Mike-- you guys bring those dollys in through the back door and make sure you load up all that paperwork!"

"And another thing. I don't want to hear later on that anyone was seen smoking cigarettes on bank property! There's still a such thing as second hand smoke, you know!"

__________________________________________________ __

[El Blanco]

Thanks for proving my point. You were being stupid and irratiuonal and still seem to be now.

What if one of you idiots were BBQd? What if some maintennce worker or the fire spread to another building.

But hell, a teacher was fired, arson is obviously the proper response. Especially, when its a buidling that has nothing to with the school.

[Abcdxxxx]

Isla Vista?! Bwahahahhaha

Okay, let's talk about the Isla Vista riots of 1970. Santa Barbara wasn't Berkeley. It wasn't Kent State either. It was just a bunch of fucking posers doing some Days of Rage imitation. The SDS self imploded once the movement turned to riots and other hissy fit stunts to get their message across. The kids who ended up at Isla Vista were like the casting central version of "hippie dissidents".

There were all sorts of riots around that time. I wouldn't brag about jumping in to fuck shit up when you were 16, hitting the infrastructure of somebody elses town, if I were you. What happened to Isla Vista as a result? I mean, how'd it effect the towns business to attack a Real Estate office and a Bank? You got a town filled with head shops that couldn't pay their rent. You got some burn-out town full of fake ass social consciousness, and you helped nail the coffin into the movement. Utopia, huh! It helped to create this activist lifestyle persona where ignorant kids like Geggy can mash Maoism, with Redneck White supremacy into one big hackey sack. Oh yeah and you got a food coop too! Radical!

To say it was all to challenge corporate corruption is a load of bullshit. Wasn't it really because a teacher got beat up? Some black kid used a cuss word? The Chicago 7 trial and Kuntsler's provocations? Was it because of the war? Was it because Reagan was a bastard, and Kent State really got you all riled up? I dunno, was it because Mick Jagger wore that really groovy cape to Altamont? If you got a real revolution you would have got yourself some fucking sidewalks. Maybe you'll even get that monument in Perfect Park to honor stupid teenagers getting rowdy under the guise of politics.

[conus]

Another moron. In the first place, as I stated, by the end it was simply revenge-- a reaction to the typically heavy handed police repression of the time. I never claimed the majority of the participants, as revolutionaries, were anything to write home about. It sounds as if you believe the SDS and Days of Rage participants were the real thing, rather than some spoiled white children who didn't give a fuck one way or another that three million Vietnamese were being slaughtered by American pigs. All they knew was that they didn't want to get drafted. There were a few kids whose hearts were in the right place and had loose ideas behind their protest, but, again, by the end of that three-week period it was just revenge and genuine fear of the murderous American pigs.

At sixteen I had been in America for all of about one year. I am a white American citizen whose parents lived in the Philippines between 1954, when I was born, and 1969, when we moved back here. Growing up so close to the war and knowing I would soon be in America and 18, I had been keeping an eye on it pretty closely. With me it was more a concern about the what was happening in Vietnam than a fear of getting drafted. I didn't (and don't) feel any allegiance to these Americans, and I've never really feared them. If worse came to worse I could just jump on a plane and go back to the Philippines.

Not long after my introduction to the way things were in America, my hatred for their police was naturally substantial. I went up to IV simply to get a few lumps in, and I did. Whatever the original motives of most of the others in IV, by the end of that three-week period, hatred of the pigs drove people as much as anything else. To tell you the truth, I regret that we were unable to kill a few. It was what should have happened, and there were more than a few who richly deserved it.

But regarding whatever remarks I made about the overall context in which the riots occurred were just that-- a few sentences to give a little context to some moronic American kid who watches television and doesn't know what the fuck Indo-China even was. I was really amused, though, to see that you really believed that, by comparison, in places like Berkeley people were "serious."
Very few people in this country are serious about anything beyond themselves and americans are beginning, just beginning, to reap what they have for so many decades sewn.

[Abcdxxxx]

Uh.

Read my post again. I don't think anyone was all that credible by 1970. While there was some very sincere war protests going on, most of it was foollish to the point that radical leftist politics have yet to recover even today. You missed the bus (and I do mean the tourist bus that cruised through the Haight Ashbury, covering the Life Magazine bullet points). The Days of Rage weren't the real deal, but at least it wasn't some empty gesture by a bunch of pent up suburban kids posing as political. Your riots were the equivalent of moving to San Francisco with a yellow flower in your hair, only about 18 years too late. The fact that you brough this up at all, and tried to school some kid on the inernet with it, like you earned some badge is a fucking joke and a half.

The second joke is that you thought about jumping on a plane to the Phillipines to avoid Vietnam. Moron. The Phillipines gave our country many, many proud veterans. Filipino's were enamored with America.

I'm not even going to touch the part about how you wish some kids killed American civil servants. Thanks for the idiot biography though!!

[KevinTheOmnivore]

careful man el blanco has a scathing rebuttal prepared gleaned from his 3rd period great civilizations book that will put your real-life experiences to shame

This is bullshit Chojin, b/c this same guy has completely dismissed the REAL LIFE EXPERIENCES of our troops, who have gone through a hell of a lot more than this match lighting pussey.

Conus, you burned a fucking bank and think you did something. Your fucking commie professor got shit canned and you started a fire. Jesus Christ. I knew you were pathetic, but I honestly think you make Geggy look like a rhodes scholar at this point.

And i want my question answered by either you and/or Geggy--Is your primary argument here that all war is bad, so no companies should ever prosper from it, or is it that THIS particular war, and THESE particular corporations are especially rotten and nefarious....?

[Chojin]

I think more people should get really upset in this thread because it is the only joy in my life right now

[KevinTheOmnivore]

I'm sorry. :(

I just don't think experience was necessarily even relevant to the discussion, and then for conus to throw out some lame protest where they burned a bank and a real estate office, as if that meant anything, got my briefs all in a twister!