February 2005

February 27, 2005

Put Your Money Where Your Conscience Is

Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that

The Iraq war helped bring record earnings to St. Louis-based defense contractor Engineered Support Systems (ESSI) , and new financial data show the company's war-related profits have trickled down to a familiar family name: Bush.

The company's stock has soared to record heights since just before the Iraq invasion, benefiting in part from contracts to rapidly refit military vehicles with extra armor.

Now, it's easy enough -- and certainly appropriate -- to feel outraged at the sight of companys and persons closely connected to the White House (very closely in the case of Dick Cheney and Halliburton) making out like bandits from an illegal war opposed by 90% of the World's population; in which it has been conservatively estimated that 100,000 civilians have been killed so far, in which any number of banned weapons were utilised, in which one entire city has been completely destroyed and its entire population made refugees, in which the civilian infrastructure has been largely wrecked, in which the country's cultural and archeological legacy has been more less destroyed, in which a previously secular society has been overrun by fundamentalism, and so on, and so on, and so on.

But the shenanigans perhaps obscure a more important question: should a private company be profiting from war at all -- that is to say, even in the absence of corruption, lies, war crimes, occupation, and cetera?

In other words, let's suspend our disbelief, and take the Bush Administration at its word. Let's pretend that the "War On Terror" (under whose umbrella, we'll recall, the "Battle For Iraq" falls) is this generation's ultimate battle between good and evil. Let's pretend that 90% of the World's population was in favor of the invasion of Iraq, that the Security Council had given its consent, that population centres were not bombed, that the Pentagon's "precision" strikes unfailingly distinguished between civilian and military targets, that nobody has been (or is being) tortured, that no permanent U.S. military bases are being built, and so on, and so on, and so on.

In the case, then, of a "good war", should private companies profit? Or, if we accept that the State has the authority to conscript its citizens to fight and die (if not explicitly through the draft in this case, then through back-door methods: the poverty draft, stop-loss orders, extended tours, Individual Ready Reserve call-ups), to restrict its citizens' Civil Liberties, to unilaterally allocate its citizens' tax dollars to the "war effort"; then should we not also expect the State to order manufacturers of munitions and military hardware to produce these items at cost in accord with the general sacrifice required of all citizens (interestingly enough, Multinationals are constantly requesting -- and receiving -- the same rights accorded citizens) in order to save the civilised world from the depredations of onrushing savages?

Note that we'll pay them for materials, for labor costs (and even a living wage for the big-wigs!), for R&D, for depreciation of facilities, etc.. And we'll not even ask their CEOs and board members to put themselves into "harm's way"; or to be taken from their lives and families for an indefinite time period; or to expose themselves to conditions which are known to result in greatly increased rates of permanent psychological scarring, suicide, and homelessness. So we're not so much asking for any sort of sacrifice -- just that military contractors at least contribute to the great effort to pull humankind's bacon out of the fire. (Not to mention, et voila!, instant deficit-reduction.)

Assuming we find the proposition sensible, what can we do to make it happen? A couple of things.

We can draft a letter to the President's uncle (who's going to use his newfound largesse to bid on a house in Florida, but who claims that he would "prefer" that his company had "no business in Iraq"); suggesting that he donate his $450,000 windfall to Doctors Without Borders, or the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, or Oxfam, or any other organisation dedicated to mitigating the horrors of war:

Uncle Bucky
c/o Engineered Support Systems, Inc.
201 Evans Lane
St. Louis, MO 63121

We can write letters to editors and/or submit Op-Eds to our hometown dailies pointing up the dichotomy. We can contact our representatives.

And, alas, we simply must take our financial matters into our own hands. So long as we continue to lend our monetary support of injust policies, so long will these policies continue -- whether we agree with them or not.

That means refusing to pay federal income taxes, refusing to purchase gasoline, refusing to purchase products made in China and other maquiladora-ist export zones, purchasing as much as is possible only locally grown organic foods, and investing our money with Community Investment funds rather than with funds and institutions that will support military contractors and other ne'er-do-wells.

Apologies if it all sounds too preachy. But it's either that or un-ending resource wars and their concomitant blowback, increased nuclear proliferation and instability, and ecological catastrophe.

February 24, 2005

We Support Our "Troops"

The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat. Robots are a crucial part of the Army's effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force... [...]

Military planners say robot soldiers will think, see, and react increasingly like humans. In the beginning, they will be remote-controlled, looking and acting like lethal toy trucks. As the technology develops, they may take many shapes. And as their intelligence grows, so will their autonomy.

How well will the robokillers work? Probably about as well as "National Missile Defense", which has failed test after test after test -- but still manages to get billions and billions and billions of taxpayer dollars thrown its way.

Or about as well as the two-billion-taxpayer-dollars-a-pop Stealth bomber, which "cannot go out in the rain".

What happens when the robots get taken out of carpeted, climate-controlled rooms and dropped into the desert sands of Iraq -- which have extracted "an amazing toll on combat vehicles, generators, just about everything"?

What happens when some ten-year-old kid sneaks up on the robots with a can of spray paint and covers over their robo-eyes? What happens when somebody turns on a transistor radio within a few hundred yards of the robots? Or when some fourteen-year-old kid downloads a bunch of spyware into the robots' gizzards?

Well, it's all good:

The military plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in automated armed forces. The costs of that transformation will help drive the Defense Department's budget up almost 20 percent, from a requested $419.3 billion for next year to $502.3 billion in 2010, excluding the costs of war. The annual costs of buying new weapons is scheduled to rise 52 percent, from $78 billion to $118.6 billion. [Emphasis added.]

See? The high-tech shit doesn't need to "work", it just needs taxpayers to line military contractors' pockets. If it doesn't "work", that only proves that taxpayers need to spend some more money.

But, what if the robots do work like they're supposed to? This is where it gets kinda interesting:

Colin Angle, 37, is the chief executive and another co-founder of iRobot, a private company he helped start in his living room 14 years ago. ... He believes the calculus of money, morals, and military logic will result in battalions of robots in combat.

"The cost of the soldier in the field is so high, both in cash and in a political sense," Angle said, that "robots will be doing wildly dangerous tasks" in battle in the very near future.

In other words, those flesh-and-blood soldiers that Limbaugh and O'Reilly are maniacally exhorting us to "support" would soon enough be looking for work. And, assuming the robots will also be authorised to conduct "homeland security" operations, Limbaugh and O'Reilly will be maniacally exhorting us to support the robocops in their project of blowing away in droves the unemployed veterans. After all, prisons can only hold so many niggers -- better to just shoot them down and be done with it.

But hey, it's never too early to begin fashioning your Luddite Hammer.

February 16, 2005

Nobody But Nobody Could Make Up Unintentional Irony This Delicious

U.S. officials said they had no evidence of Syrian complicity in Hariri's assassination.

"The very tragic bombing yesterday shows that that's just plain not true," he said. "And therefore we believe that there is no reason for them to remain there."

February 10, 2005

Purple Fingered Freedom Fighters

I missed the State of the Union last week, which extended my streak of missing the State of the Union to about 22 years in a row. I did see something about a group of Republicans dipping their index fingers in purple ink, to show their solidarity with Iraqi voters.

I'm glad to see these GOP folk are down with elections, and I'm sure they will maintain their principled stand in the aftermath of the election, if Iraq turns into an Islamic republic, ruled by Sharia law, where women may not shake hands with men, and music is permitted but only if it is not for enjoyment. I trust they will continue to accept the Will of the Iraqi People if they ask U.S. troops to leave, don't allow U.S. multinationals to exploit their natural resources, and don't align themselves with the U.S. in the IP conflict.

And I'm confident that, the next time Condoleezza Rice rails against Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, these purple-fingered freedom-fighters with tell Condi to STFU and remind her that Chavez has won three elections by margins far wider than her boss ever has.

I have no doubts.