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This story shouldn't horrify, or even be news to anyone who has read this blog in the past several years. The American economy blossoms under war-time conditions and there are many companies that work very hard to ensure such conditions exist in many places around the globe.
‘Peace would be TERRIBLE for your company’: Code Pink confronts CEO of arms producer General Dynamics over billions in war profits
8 May, 2021 04:51
FILE PHOTO: An American soldier loads 2000-pound MK-84 bombs produced by General Dynamics onto an
aircraft elevator while on board a Navy warship. © Reuters / Jim Hampshire / US Navy handout
Code Pink founder and peace activist Medea Benjamin launched a blistering critique of US arms dealer General Dynamics, confronting the company’s CEO at a shareholder meeting while saying it makes billions off “global conflict.”
During an annual shareholder conference held earlier this week in Reston, Virginia, Benjamin tore into the firm for its prolific and highly profitable weapons sales to countries around the world, arguing that its bottom line depends on war and bloodshed.
Appealing to the conscience of an arms manufacturer seems like a perfect waste of time.
The worst thing for your company would be if peace broke out in the Middle East… That would be terrible for your company.
Benjamin also spoke of the “revolving door” between the weapons industry and the Pentagon, calling it an “incredible scam” on the American taxpayer while pointing to the company’s $11 billion lobbying campaign in 2020. She directly addressed former Defense Secretary General James Mattis, who sits on the company’s board, saying he embodies the military-industrial relationship, having hopped between General Dynamics and public service several times throughout his career.
It's not every day you get to directly confront the CEO of a major weapons company and ask how they feel about a business model that thrives on conflict, destruction, war and suffering.
— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) May 6, 2021
Citing the war in Yemen – where Saudi Arabia has carried out a six-year bombing campaign that’s killed more than 200,000 people from direct and indirect causes – Benjamin noted that munitions produced by none other than General Dynamics had been implicated in the death of civilians in the country, one of the region’s poorest.
“I remember, having been in Yemen in 2016, the 2,000-pound General Dynamics bomb that was dropped on a marketplace and killed 97 people, including over 20 children,” she said, referring to a March 2016 Saudi strike on the village of Mastaba – one among several marketplace strikes reported throughout the war.
I wonder if you think about [the children] as well, because while they are dying, people in this company are making profits off of it.
The scathing critique was soon answered by CEO Phebe Novakovic, who accused Benjamin of passing along “potentially libelous and incorrect information,” though said she would presume her a “person of good faith” who simply spoke from a “lack of knowledge.”
It's curious that many Military Industrial CEOs are women.
“I think that’s one of the things we should talk about, because the internet is full of misinformation, including the incident you cited at the marketplace,” Novakovic said, adding “I am going to presume that you don’t know the facts, and we are perfectly willing to share them with you.”
The CEO offered no additional ‘facts’ on the marketplace bombing in question, however. The strike was investigated by Human Rights Watch and British journalists in 2016, finding fragments of MK-84 munitions produced by General Dynamics in the rubble. Twenty-five children are believed to have perished in the attack, with the United Nations later revising the total death toll from 97 to 119.
While Novakovic insisted her company makes its “best money” by preparing the US for “deterrence” and that it “works for peace,” Benjamin again raised its sales to Saudi Arabia, asking how that contributed to the national defense. The CEO simply reiterated that the firm’s role is to “support the US military and US national security policy and the preservation of peace and liberty.”
We do support the policy of the US and I happen to believe… the policy of the US is just and fair.
Possibly just and fair for American businesses and politics, but not for the rest of the world. It's amazing how a woman can get to the top of such a huge company and know nothing about American history overseas.
The head-to-head with Novakovic comes as General Dynamics sees a dramatic spike in its stock value, gaining by more than 45% over the last year and hitting a new yearly high this week after rallying for several days. The company’s stock reached its all-time peak in 2018, upon news that former President Donald Trump would withdraw from a major arms control agreement struck with Iran, drastically escalating tensions between the two countries.
As mentioned, the threat, or hope, of war breaking out is very good news to Wall Street and the Military Industrial Establishment.
So far, the letter from over a hundred generals in the French military has resulted in little or no effect on Élysée Palace but for threats and scorn. Nevertheless, American generals decided to copy its effort to attempt to wake up Washington. Unfortunately, there are too many flaws for it to have an effect.
‘Dire situation’: Over 120 retired US generals sign letter slamming Biden govt, say nation in fight against ‘socialism & Marxism’
12 May, 2021 17:29
FILE PHOTO. © Getty Images / PeopleImages
Warning that the US is in “deep peril” from a “full-blown assault on our constitutional rights,” over 120 former top military brass have signed a letter outlining threats to its “survival,” including Biden administration policies.
There must be literally thousands of retired generals and admirals in America. 124 is not an impressive number.
The open letter, published on Monday by a group called ‘Flag Officers 4 America’, questions the result of the 2020 election, President Biden’s “mental and physical condition,” and sounds off on a number of hot-button topics, including China, the Iran nuclear deal, critical race theory, and the border wall.
According to the group’s website, the flag officers – comprising some 124 generals and admirals, many of whom have been out of uniform for decades – caution that this was a conflict “like no other time since our founding in 1776” between supporters of “socialism and Marxism” and supporters of “constitutional freedom and liberty.”
"The US has “taken a hard left turn toward socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government,” the letter claims, calling on Americans to “get involved” and elect political representatives who will “defend our constitutional republic” and obey the “will of the people.”
Among the notable signatories are retired Army Brig. General Donald Bolduc, currently running for a Senate seat in New Hampshire; former Army Lt. General William Boykin, one-time deputy undersecretary of defense under President George W. Bush; and retired Vice Admiral John Poindexter, who was President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser during the Iran-Contra scandal.
Acknowledging to Politico that “retired generals and admirals normally do not engage in political actions,” the letter’s organizer, retired Major General Joe Arbuckle, said that to “remain silent would be a dereliction of duty” since the “situation facing our nation today is dire.”
“It is critical that the threats to our national security be brought to the attention of the American people and that is the main purpose of the letter,” Arbuckle told the outlet.
Among the litany of domestic threats listed in the letter are “election integrity,” using executive orders to “bypass Congress,” “open border” policies, Big Tech “censorship of free speech and expression,” loss of “jobs and energy independence” via the abandoned Keystone Pipeline and “anarchy” in certain cities.
The letter also rails against using the military as “political pawns” against “non-existent threats” – a reference to the deployment of troops around the US Capitol after the January 6 riot. It also slams the “corrosive infusion” of “political correctness” into the military through policies like the “divisive critical race theory.”
But the signatories reserved some of the harshest criticism for Biden’s capacity to lead. At 77 years, he is the oldest serving US president in history – a fact that has prompted questions about his mental and physical condition that they say “cannot be ignored.”
This is very curious since many of the generals are 77 or older themselves. They, thereby, nullify their own argument.
“He must be able to quickly make accurate national security decisions involving life and limb anywhere, day or night,” the letter notes.
While the Pentagon has refused to comment on the letter, several prominent retired military personnel have weighed in on its political tone and timing.
Among them was retired Admiral Mike Mullen, one-time chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said the letter was full of “right-wing Republican talking points” and that it “hurts the military and by extension it hurts the country.”
While I agree with many of the points made by the generals, Mullen is correct as the tone is quite obviously Republican. Democrats will simply dismiss this as a bunch of sore losers.
“It’s out of cycle. Normally those kinds of things occur in an election,” said Mullen, who also told Politico that the missive featured only a handful of three-star generals and no four-star ones. “It’s not very senior... In our world it’s not very significant in terms of people.”
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French pilot sues after he was shot at on firing range
in extreme hazing ritual
8 May, 2021 14:30
FILE PHOTO: A Mirage 2000 fighter jet takes off during a military drill at Solenzara Air Base, Corsica,
March 17, 2016 © AFP / Pascal Pochard-Casabianca
A French military pilot has filed a legal complaint after he was subjected to a brutal hazing ritual on a Corsican airbase. The recruit says he was tied up and left on a training range as planes poured fire down around him.
The recruit, a man in his 30s, was posted to Solenzara Air Base on the island of Corsica in 2019. Arriving on the island that March, he was given no time to enjoy the balmy Corsican spring. Instead, he claims he was treated with suspicion and hostility by his new comrades, and hours after arrival was subjected to the most hair-raising hazing ritual imaginable.
Hmmm. Suspicion and hostility - could be he is a Muslim?
The man allegedly had his ankles, knees, and wrists taped together, and a hood slipped over his head, before he was loaded into the back of a pickup truck “like a potato sack,” according to La Provence. His captors then allegedly drove him onto a live-fire range and tied him to a post, where he remained trapped as fighter jets hammered targets around him with bullets and bombs.
After 20 minutes under the barrage, he was bundled back into the truck and brought back to base.
The details of the case were revealed by the man’s lawyers earlier this week, in a legal complaint brought in Marseille. “He was faced with a risk of death or serious injury due to his transport conditions and the intimidation he suffered on the firing range,” the complaint, first reported on by La Provence, reads. “The shots exerted by the fighter planes... could have injured him very seriously or killed him. Moreover, the simulated shots in his direction could have, because of an error, a safety oversight, become real.”
Photos shared with La Provence show the man bound and hooded in the truck bed,
and tied to a vertical steel beam below a pockmarked target.
The French Ministry of Defense told La Provence that an internal investigation was launched and the airmen responsible were disciplined.
Hazing rituals are commonplace in military and law enforcement organizations worldwide, as well as US college fraternities, and the term spans everything from mild pranks to outright assault. While the pilot in Corsica underwent a horrifying ordeal, he emerged with his life, unlike a young trainee at the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy in 2012. The recruit, Jallal Hami, drowned as he attempted to cross a swamp carrying a full load of equipment in the middle of the night, as his tormentors played Richard Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ over speakers.
Three of the soldiers involved were convicted of manslaughter and given suspended sentences earlier this year.
