Tag: defense contractors

U.S. ‘Defense’ Firms Control the U.S. Government.

The United States is safer from a foreign invasion than any other country, not because it spends half of all of the world’s military expenditures, but because it is separated by over 3,000 miles of ocean away from Europe and from Asia, and because its only two bordering countries are entirely friendly nations, Mexico and Canada — so, there’s no way, short of an invasion from thousands of miles away, that America can be militarily attacked. 

The thing that nations are especially concerned about in national-defense matters is avoiding a blitz attack, which is an attack from a location so near to the nation’s central command — near to its Government — so as to be able to behead the Government too fast for the Government to be able to identify that attack and release its retaliatory forces against its enemy. 

This is what the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was all about: JFK needed to prevent placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba only 1,131 miles away from DC, which would have enabled the Soviet Union to blitz-attack America within less than 30 minutes. That’s why JFK threatened to Khrushchev that if they tried that, then America would invade and take over Cuba.

Nowadays the situation is in the reverse direction: Russia’s central command (The Kremlin in Moscow) is only 317 miles away from Ukraine, and on 17 December 2021 Russia formally demanded both America and its NATO to promise that Ukraine won’t be added to NATO and will never host U.S. military; and — entirely unlike what Khrushchev did in 1962 — the U.S. and its NATO responded on 7 January 2022 with a resounding and contemptuous no. Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

What is this actually all about? Empirical studies have shown unequivocally that the U.S. Government is controlled by and represents not its public but only its thousand billionaires plus the politically most active of its centi-millionaires. Each of these individuals is catastrophically wealthy and so can buy enough politicians so that even just the billionaires alone actually do donate more than half of all of the money that funds U.S. political campaigns — the ads, the ‘news’-stories in their ‘news’-media, their think tanks and universities, etc. — in order to drown-out whatever few politicians who simply refuse to be controlled by them.

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Largest European Companies Arming Israel and Their Financiers – Report 

From 2019 to 2023, six of the world’s largest arms producers – Boeing, General Dynamics, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Rolls-Royce – have sold weapons or weapon systems to Israel.

A new report published by a group of 19 civil society organizations and trade unions has exposed the largest European financial institutions investing billions of euros in international arms producers that sell weapons to Israel.

Titled The Companies Arming Israel and Their Financiers, the report “reveals European financial institutions have provided 36.1 billion EUR in loans and underwritings, and hold 26 billion EUR in shares and bonds in companies selling weapons to Israel,” the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said in a statement on Thursday. The FIDH is one of the organizations involved in the exposé.

From 2019 to 2023, six of the world’s largest arms producers – Boeing, General Dynamics, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Rolls-Royce – have sold weapons or weapon systems to Israel, the statement said.

It mentioned that French bank BNP Paribas is by far the largest finance provider to companies that have sold weapons to Israel, having provided 5.7 billion EUR in loans and underwritings since 2021.

Other large investors identified by the report include the banks Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Barclays and UBS, as well as the Norwegian government pension fund GFPG and the insurance company Allianz. It also mentioned banks such as the UK’s HSBC and Standard Chartered.

“According to international standards on business and human rights, financial institutions have a clear responsibility to ensure that they do not invest in companies that contribute to human rights violations”, said Gaëlle Dusepulchre, Deputy Director of FIDH’s Business, Human Rights & Environment Desk.

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Ukrainians dying in their hundreds of thousands so US weapon manufacturers can profit

Washington has spent $1.8 trillion over the 20-year failed military campaign in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban, whilst aid to Ukraine in just a little more than two years has already reached $175 billion dollars, according to a Council on Foreign Relations report published on May 9. The American military-industrial complex is rejoicing at the rate of weapons being given to Ukraine as contracts for military orders to replace outdated weapons with new ones are being secured for many years to come. However, the profiteering of American weapon manufacturers is coming at an immense human cost in Ukraine.

The huge expenses in Afghanistan were attributed to the fact that tens of thousands of American troops were stationed in the landlocked country and fought there directly. However, in the current conflict, Ukrainian soldiers continue to die in a futile war with Russian forces and are merely being used as cannon fodder in Washington’s indirect war with Russia so American troops do not have to die like they did in Afghanistan.

Although the situation is desperate on the battlefront for Ukraine, the US military industrial complex will continue profiting after the Biden administration on June 20 allowed for air defences to be swiftly delivered to Ukraine by delaying certain weapons shipments to other countries, which White House spokesman John F. Kirby admitted was a “difficult but necessary decision” given Russian rapid advances.

Kirby explained that Ukraine had a critical need for Patriot interceptor missiles as Russia has accelerated attacks, adding that the “decision demonstrates our commitment to supporting our partners when they’re in existential danger.”

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Retired Navy Admiral Charged in Bribery Scandal

Federal prosecutors have announced the arrest of former Naval Officer Robert P. Burke, 62, on serious bribery charges.

Burke, a retired four-star Navy Admiral, was arrested on Friday.  According to the Justice Department, he accepted bribes in exchange for steering government contracts to a company that promised him a lucrative job after his retirement from the Navy.

The indictment reveals that from 2020 to 2022, Burke, who oversaw Naval operations in Europe, Russia, and most of Africa and commanded thousands of civilian and military personnel, conspired with CEOs Yongchul “Charlie” Kim and Meghan Messenger of “Company A”) that provided a workforce training pilot program to a small component of the Navy from August 2018 through July 2019.

The Navy terminated a contract with Company A in late 2019 and directed Company A not to contact Burke.

Despite the Navy’s instructions, Kim and Messenger allegedly still met with Burke in Washington, D.C., in July 2021, in an effort to reestablish Company A’s business relationship with the Navy.

It is alleged that at the July 2021 meeting, the charged defendants agreed that Burke would use his position as a Navy Admiral to steer a sole-source contract to Company A in exchange for future employment at the company.

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Pro-Palestinian Group Claims To Cut Fiber Cables At UK Defense Factory Making F-35 Targeting Systems

“It’s only a matter of when – not the if – when you are going to see a nation-state, group, or actor engage in destructive behavior against critical infrastructure in the United States,” Michael Rogers, the former second commander of the US Cyber Command (2014-18), warned during a 2016 speech.

Back then, Rogers should’ve expanded his geographical threat horizon across the West, not just the US. This is because there are mounting risks that some terrorist organizations, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), under the guise of pro-Palestinian demonstrations – are attempting to dismantle the Western world. Sounds outrageous, right? 

Well, not really. According to the Director of National Intelligence, PFLP is a terrorist group based in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It unites Arab nationalism with Marxist-Leninist ideology. It promotes the destruction of “Israel as integral to the struggle to remove Western capitalism from the Middle East and ultimately establish a Communist Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.” 

It should come as no surprise that the relationship between some Palestinian activist groups and global Marxist networks, like Black Lives Matter, are cut from the same radical cloth, with the end goal of destroying the West.

The quiet part is said out loud. 

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Chemical drums filled with toxic waste are dug up in New York ‘cancer hotspot’ – where families have been warning for years they are being poisoned

Chemical drums filled with toxic liquid have been dug up in a New York neighborhood where residents say there has been a mysterious rise in cancer over the years. 

Construction workers unearthed six barrels of chlorinated solvents and waste oil petroleum, which had been dumped within the Town of Oyster Bay in Long Island.

The drums were buried by North Grumman when it operated an aerospace facility in the town from the 1950s to 1990s.

Officials fear the waste may have leaked into the soil and is on the way to public drinking supply.

The town is home to more than 17,200 people who have long raised concerns about the Grumman Aerospace waste, specifically a four-mile-long carcinogenic plume flowing underground that they claim contributed to a rise in cancer diagnoses. 

Residents have also found toxic compounds in their attacks and the soil – and a family of three living close to the park were all stricken with cancer.

So concerned were locals about health issues that the state health department conducted a study into cancer diagnoses in the town in 2013.

The three-year researcher found no higher overall cancer rates in a 20-blocka area surrounding the former Grumman property.

But officials noted that there were scientific limitations that made it nearly impossible to link residential cancer clusters and pollution.

What officials did find is that within a one-block area, all those diagnosed with cancer were younger than expected.

Oyster Bay Town Supervisor Joseph Saladino told local ABC 7: ‘The discovery of the drums in these coffin-like vaults is further proof that Grumman created an environmental graveyard of contaminants right here in this park.’

Bethpage Community Park was closed around 20 years ago over soil contamination concerns, but the site is nestled among homes and community centers.

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Saber Rattling Toward Tragedy: The High Stakes of US-China Tensions

The confirmation of US Army Special Forces’ deployment to strategic locations in Taiwan is a harbinger of the United States inching closer to a precipice, one that overlooks a potential conflict with China—a scenario fraught with peril not just for the involved states but for global peace.

This development, while emblematic of the US’s commitment to Taiwan’s defense, inadvertently amplifies the saber rattling that has come to define US-China relations. The stakes of this brinkmanship are alarmingly high, risking a catastrophic conflict that serves no nation’s true interest, save for the military-industrial complex that stands to profit at the cost of countless innocent lives.

A Dangerous Game

The decision to station US Green Berets in Kinmen and Penghu, areas perilously close to mainland China, is not merely a strategic military maneuver but a bold political statement. It represents a significant escalation in the US’s show of support for Taiwan, a move that, while intended to deter Chinese aggression, equally serves to provoke it. This saber rattling—a display of military might under the guise of deterrence—edges us closer to a conflict that, once ignited, could spiral out of control, drawing in multiple global powers into a confrontation nobody wants.

The True Beneficiaries of Conflict

Amid these tensions, it’s crucial to ask: Who truly benefits from such brinkmanship? The sad answer lies in the military-industrial complex, a conglomerate of defense contractors and associated industries whose fortunes swell with the drums of war. For them, the escalation of tensions is not a harbinger of tragedy but an opportunity for profit, achieved at the expense of human lives and global stability. This stark reality underscores the need to scrutinize the motives behind our foreign policy decisions and question the narrative that military escalation equates to deterrence.

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DARPA picks Northrop Grumman to develop ‘lunar raiload’ concept

Railroads could open the moon to serious and sustained economic development, as they did in the American West in the late 19th century.

That’s apparently the hope of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is supporting the development of a “lunar railroad” concept proposed by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman.

“The envisioned lunar railroad network could transport humans, supplies and resources for commercial ventures across the lunar surface, contributing to a space economy for the United States and international partners,” Northrop Grumman representatives wrote in a press statement on Tuesday (March 19).

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Ukraine war is changing the global arms trade

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war has driven new arms purchasing in Europe in dramatic fashion, with US manufacturers being the main beneficiaries, according to a new study from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

From 2019 to 2023, the worldwide trade in weapons declined by 3.3% overall from the 2014-18 figures, but the amount of arms imported by European countries in that period doubled compared with the previous five years.

At 55%, the lion’s share of arms sales to European countries came from the United States. This was up 20 percentage points from the previous period.

US’s global dominance

Mainly thanks to sales to European countries, the United States increased its overall weapons exports by 17%. Stateside producers delivered arms to 107 countries, more than in any other period studied by SIPRI or any other exporting nation.

“The USA has increased its global role as an arms supplier — an important aspect of its foreign policy — exporting more arms to more countries than it has ever done in the past,” said Mathew George, director of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme. “This comes at a time when the USA’s economic and geopolitical dominance is being challenged by emerging powers.”

Unsurprisingly, Ukraine is the European country where weapons imports have most dramatically increased. From 2019 to 2023, Ukraine went from being a minimal importer and a site of domestic production to being the No. 4 weapons buyer in the world, after India, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Imports increased 6,600% compared with the previous period.

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Biden Admin Quietly Approves 100+ Arms Sales to Israel While Claiming Concern for Civilians in Gaza

While the Biden administration has been publicly voicing reservations over the mounting death toll in Gaza, a Washington Post investigation revealed the administration has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate weapons sales to Israel over the last five months, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters and other lethal aid. Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the launch of Israel’s assault on October 7, which the Biden administration approved using emergency authority to bypass Congress. “It is actually illegal to provide military assistance to a country that is restricting U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance, and we know that this is the case with Israel,” says Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza. Paul describes the “production line”-style sale of weapons to Israel and says increasing internal dissent is putting pressure on Biden to change his “dead-end” policy of unconditional support for Israel. “We have a president and a set of policies … that remain set on this course regardless of the harm it is doing to Israeli security, to American global interests and, of course, to so many Palestinians.”

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