http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdrGKwkmxAU
http://www.sourcewatch.org/=Military industrial_complex
Top Ten Companies 2002
1 - Lockheed Martin Corporation $17 billion
2 - Boeing Company $16.6 billion
3 - Northrop Grumman Corporation $8.7 billion
4 - Raytheon Company $7 billion
5 - General Dynamics Corporation $7 billion
6 - United Technologies Corporation $3.6 billion
7 - Science Applications International Corporation $2.1 billion
8 - TRW Incorporated $2 billion
9 - Health Net, Inc. $1.7 billion
10 - L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc. $1.7 billion
Bechtel Group, Inc. defense contractor money from oil, gas & chemicals and from government contracts
Carlyle Group military-industrial complex the billionaire George Soros
http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/
"War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men. Though you follow the trade of the warrior, you do so in the spirit of Washington--not of Genghis Khan.
For Americans, only threat to our way of life justifies resort to conflict."
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Graduation Exercises at the United States Military Academy, 6/3/47
"The hope of the world is that wisdom can arrest conflict between brothers.
I believe that war is the deadly harvest of arrogant and unreasoning minds.
And I find grounds for this belief in the wisdom literature of Proverbs.
It says in effect this: Panic strikes like a storm and calamity comes like a whirlwind
to those who hate knowledge and ignore their God."
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Address at the Centennial Celebration Banquet of the National Education Association, 4/4/57
Now this brings me to my main topic--our military strength--more specifically,
how to stay strong against threat from outside, without undermining the economic health that supports our security.
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the International Press Institute, 4/17/58
Now all of us deplore this vast military spending. Yet, in the face of the Soviet attitude, we realize its necessity.
Whatever the cost, America will keep itself secure. But in the process we must not, by our own hand, destroy or distort the American system. This we could do by useless overspending. I know one sure way to overspend. That is by overindulging sentimental attachments to outmoded military machines and concepts.
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the International Press Institute, 4/17/58
I know something about that war, and I never want to see that history repeated.
But, my fellow Americans, it certainly can be repeated if the peace-loving democratic nations again fearfully practice a policy of standing idly by while big aggressors use armed force to conquer the small and weak."
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Radio and Television Report to the American People Regarding the Situation in the Formosa Straits, 9/11/58
"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.
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People, 1/17/61
Since the advent of nuclear weapons, it seems clear that there is no longer any alternative to peace, if there is to be a happy and well world."
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Remarks at the Department of State 1954 Honor Awards Ceremony, 10/19/54
"There can be no true disarmament without peace, and there can be no real peace without very material disarmament."
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Remarks at the Republican Women's National Conference, 5/10/55
"The peace we seek and need means much more than mere absence of war. It means the acceptance of law, and the fostering of justice, in all the world."
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Radio and Television Report to the American People on the Developments in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, 10/31/56
In vast stretches of the earth, men awoke today in hunger. They will spend the day in unceasing toil. And as the sun goes down they will still know hunger. They will see suffering in the eyes of their children. Many despair that their labor will ever decently shelter their families or protect them against disease.
So long as this is so, peace and freedom will be in danger throughout our world. for wherever free men lose hope of progress, liberty will be weakened and the seeds of conflict will be sown.
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Remarks of Welcome to the Delegates to the Tenth Colombo Plan Meeting, Seattle, Washington, 11/10/58
I like to believe that people, in the long run, are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed,
I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."
Dwight D. Eisenhower - Radio and Television Broadcast With Prime Minister Macmillan in London, 8/31/59
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/21/senate-beats-back-militar_n_242135.html
Senate Beats Back Military-Industrial Complex In Historic Vote
Ryan Grim ryan@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting
President Obama won a major victory in the Senate Tuesday in a dogfight that has major, long-term implications for his agenda.
The Senate, by a vote of 58-40, approved
an amendment proposed by Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.)
to strip $1.75$
billion in funding for the $F-22$
fighter. Levin worked hand in hand to kill the $F-22$ money with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
"There was an extensive effort by the White House," said Levin. "The president really needed to win this vote, not just in terms of the merits of the F-22 issue itself, but in terms of the reform agenda."
The vote had become a proxy fight against the power of the military-industrial complex, a term coined by President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address.
"It's What Eisenhower Warned us About," tweeted McCain before the vote. The $F-22$s have not been used in Iraq or Afghanistan and military experts agree they're
not suited for American campaigns, yet lobbying and regional concerns have kept
the program funded year after year. The victory over the military-industrial
complex is arguably its most significant setback since World War II. For McCain,
it was "probably the most impactful amendment that I have seen in this body on almost any issue."
"Up until the last couple hours, this vote was in doubt," McCain said. "And so I'd like to give credit to the president for being very firm on this issue and to the Secretary of Defense, who gave as strong a speech as I've ever heard in my life."
Obama had threatened to veto any bill that authorized the F-22 funding.
Forty-two Democrats and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, joined 15 Republicans to defeat the $F-22$.
Levin and McCain did a victory lap up to the third floor of the Senate after the vote, sitting down in the press gallery to celebrate.
As Eisenhower first defined it, the military-industrial complex is an alliance of military officers who demand ever greater funding, industry that wants the same and home-state senators and representatives who are more concerned about jobs at home than the ultimate value of the program.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' defection from the alliance broke its back.
Yet 14 Democrats and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, still voted with the military-industrial complex. A review of the roll call shows that regional interests played a larger part than ideology.
Democrats who voted to support the $F-22$ spending: Sens. Chris Dodd (Conn.), Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray (Wash.), Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall (N.M.) (Udall's Colorado cousin, Mark, voted to kill it), Daniel Akaka and Daniel Inouye
(Hawaii), Max Baucus and Jon Tester (Mont.), Bob Byrd (W.V.), Mark Begich (Alaska)
and Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.).
The same geographic pattern holds
on the GOP side. Republicans who voted to kill the funding: Sens. Lamar Alexander
and Bob Corker (Tenn.), John Barrasso and Mike Enzi (Wyo.), Jim DeMint and Lindsey
Graham (S.C.), McCain and Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), who is the Senate's
most outspoken foe of wasteful spending, but not joined by his GOP colleague
Sen. Jim Inhofe.
Sen. John Ensign of Nevada joined
Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) joined Sen.
Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in opposing the F-22. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) voted
against the military industrial complex even while his Democratic colleague
from the state, Shaheen, voted with it. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joined the Democrat, Begich, in supporting spending for the planes. The same bipartisan dynamic was at work in Indiana with Republican Sen. Richard Lugar and Democrat Sen. Evan Bayh voting on the side of reform. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) stood against the program; Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) was for it.
Obama's predilection for compromise and common ground couldn't come into play in the $F-22$ issue, because it wasn't a question of how much funding, but whether it should be funded at all.
"It would be hard to find any kind of middle ground on this issue," McCain noted afterward.
UPDATE: The White House renewed its veto threat Tuesday, in case the House was giving any thought to reinserting the funding in conference committee. "If that money is there, that bill will be vetoed," Robert Gibbs said in response to a question from The Advocate during the White House press briefing.
Ryan Grim is the author of
This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America
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| The erosion of our first
amendment freedoms and the failure of the press to meet the challenges reflected in JFK's warnings delivered at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel forty-seven years ago is the real "shock and awe" that too many of us are ignoring. I hope in some small way this video may sensitize people and bring awareness to the critical nature of journalism in America today. |
MELANIE SLOAN: http://www.citizensforethics.org/ Bush administration. Theres obviously the issue of the pictures from Guantanamo Bay. So theres been several different issues where the White House has not been nearly as transparent as they promised, and I think they really need to do
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/23/watchdog_group_sues_for_disclosure_of |
http://www.obamaimpeachment.org-
NO Eisenhower - bad obama war
http://www.obamaimpeachment.org-
NO JFK - bad obama secretive
survival-and-future-lives-of-our.grandchildren !!!!!
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