The Military-Industrial Complex
July 27, 2008
‘It’s Much Later Than You Think,’ Chalmers Johnson reminds us. (from the excellent TomDispatch)
Most Americans have a rough idea what the term “military-industrial complex” means when they come across it in a newspaper or hear a politician mention it. President Dwight D. Eisenhower introduced the idea to the public in his farewell address of January 17, 1961. “Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime,” he said, “or indeed by the fighting men of World War II and Korea… We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions… We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications… We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”
Although Eisenhower’s reference to the military-industrial complex is, by now, well-known, his warning against its “unwarranted influence” has, I believe, largely been ignored. Since 1961, there has been too little serious study of, or discussion of, the origins of the military-industrial complex, how it has changed over time, how governmental secrecy has hidden it from oversight by members of Congress or attentive citizens, and how it degrades our Constitutional structure of checks and balances.
From its origins in the early 1940s, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was building up his “arsenal of democracy,” down to the present moment, public opinion has usually assumed that it involved more or less equitable relations — often termed a “partnership” — between the high command and civilian overlords of the United States military and privately-owned, for-profit manufacturing and service enterprises. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that, from the time they first emerged, these relations were never equitable.
Bad Days for Newsrooms—and Democracy
July 21, 2008
‘The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet’, writes Chris Hedges.
The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet. It does not signal an inevitable and salutary change. It is not a form of progress. The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print.
All these forces have combined to strangle newspapers. And the blood on the floor, this year alone, is disheartening. Some 6,000 journalists nationwide have lost their jobs, news pages are being radically cut back and newspaper stocks have tumbled. Advertising revenues are dramatically falling off with many papers seeing double-digit drops. McClatchy Co., publisher of the Miami Herald, has seen its shares fall by 77 percent this year. Lee Enterprises Inc., which owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is down 84 percent. Gannett Co., which publishes USA Today, is trading at nearly a 17-year low. The San Francisco Chronicle is now losing $1 million a week.
The Internet will not save newspapers. Although all major newspapers, and most smaller ones, have Web sites, and have had for a while, newspaper Web sites make up less than 10 percent of newspaper ad revenue. Analysts say that although Net advertising amounts to $21 billion a year, that amount is actually relatively small. So far, the really big advertisers have stayed away, either unsure of how to use the Internet or suspicious that it can’t match the viewer attention of older media.
Rendition Airlines
April 26, 2008
The Independent has a frontpage story on the world of casual racism on British Airways services. ‘BA should be broken up and left with a core institution,’ writes Robert Fisk. ‘Deportation or Rendition Airlines’.
Oh, those wretched “disruptive” passengers! Poor British Airways. They can’t even ship off a crying man to Nigeria with the boys in blue to keep him quiet without passengers objecting and disrupting and disturbing their lovely aeroplanes. No wonder all the economy-class passengers were chucked off flight BA075 to Lagos on 27 March rather than have them object to the deportation of a crying man. Quite right, too.
Indeed, having long ago abandoned British Airways – arrogant check-in staff and Roxy usherette stewards and stewardesses – I’ve always thought the airline should be broken up and left with a core institution. Deportation Airlines, for example, or – if that sounds a trifle downmarket – Guantanamo Airlines, or even Rendition Airlines.
Lay off Ralph Nader
March 14, 2008
‘Nader deserves a pulpit to speak the truth’, writes Chris Hedges.
He is the only candidate who has not lined his pockets with tens of millions of dollars of corporate campaign money, talked out of both sides of his mouth about the war in Iraq, NAFTA and health care, and has dedicated his life to battling the corporations who make war on working men and women.
For all of Barack Obama’s flash and charm, his campaign is as slick and empty as a television commercial. For all of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s mastery of detail, she and Bill have been a scourge to the working class, from NAFTA to welfare reform to her service on the board of Wal-Mart. So if you want to feel good about yourself and chant slogans such as “Yes we can,” go ahead. But leave Nader alone. If honesty, vision and integrity were qualities that mattered in a national election, Nader would be president.
Want a McDegree with that McJob?
February 15, 2008
London (UK), February 2008 - The British Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) has awarded McDonald’s, Network Rail, and Flybe awarding-body status. For the first time, commercial companies are now able to award nationally accredited qualifications to employees. The move was announced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown at an event attended by McDonald’s CEO and President, Steve Easterbrook, and Chief People Officer and Senior Vice President, David Fairhurst.
After School Arms Club
February 10, 2008
For a country as obsessed with ’security’ as Britain, surely there must be stringent rules regulating the sale of arms. Not quiet, as Mark Thomas finds out by getting a small band of Schoolchildren to exploit loopholes in Britain’s arms controls by importing torture equipment from China and selling tanks to Africa.
Commanding Heights
February 4, 2008
The Battle for the World Economy
Here is an excellent three part series from PBS that presents a rather celebratory but interesting account of globalization.
1. The Battle of Ideas
A global economy, energized by technological change and unprecedented flows of people and money, collapses in the wake of a terrorist attack …. The year is 1914.
Worldwide war results, exhausting the resources of the great powers and convincing many that the economic system itself is to blame. From the ashes of the catastrophe, an intellectual and political struggle ignites between the powers of government and the forces of the marketplace, each determined to reinvent the world’s economic order.
“Sicko” Gets the Oscar High-Five
January 26, 2008
…a note from Michael Moore
January 25, 2008
Friends,
I just wanted to drop you a note to let you know (if you didn’t already) the good news that “Sicko” has been nominated for this year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary. It was a pleasant surprise when we got the news on Tuesday.
Of course, every reporter who’s called me in the past few days wanted to know if I plan on giving an “anti-war” or “anti-Bush” speech, should “Sicko” win, as I did when we won the Oscar for “Bowling for Columbine” in 2003. (As you may recall, it was the 5th day of the war when those Oscars were held, and I said from the stage that, while I enjoy making nonfiction films, we live in fictitious times with a man of fiction in the White House. A ruckus ensued with a loud roar of cheers and boos, then someone cued the band to get me off the stage. As host Steve Martin said a few moments later, Teamsters were out back loading me into the trunk of a car.)
Not All Is Debated in Love and War
January 19, 2008
So NBC uses its muscle to stifle democratic debate. Funny I didn’t hear a bleat from the champions of ‘free speech’ like Article 19.
One pundit called the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas “a lovefest.” It may well have been, but only because the corporate sponsor of the debate, General Electric-owned NBC News and its cable news channel MSNBC, rescinded its invitation to candidate Dennis Kucinich. NBC decided earlier that it would invite the top four Democratic candidates to the debate. Then New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson dropped out of the race, which elevated Kucinich to the fourth position. Read the rest of this entry »
