the death factory

Weapons Industry

Introduction

At this stage of history, the weapons industry has emerged to become the worst source of terrorism that ever existed over the past six thousand years of recorded history. The lethal weapons it has developed over the past fifty years alone, have killed more people than were ever massacred over the past 2,500 years, going back to the time of the Persian, Greek and Roman empires. What is amazing is not the fact that such an industry has become the greatest terrorist organization in the world, but that it succeeded to hypnotize intelligent people from every walk of life and profession into believing that its product contributes to the protection and security of our respective nations.

– Weapons Industry: Source of Terrorism by Charles Mercieca, 03 July 2002.

Although arms sales to unscrupulous and undemocratic regimes have been going on since the beginning of arms manufactures, the information contained in this report truly ought to shock and offend anyone who is concerned with human life. Time and time again, history has proved that the unchecked arms trade, rather than making the world more secure, has led to millions of unnecessary deaths. In today's armed conflicts, 90 percent of casualties are civilians. When will we say that it is enough, and that producing more weapons only produces more death?

The loss of life is the most obvious of the pernicious effects of the arms trade. There are many others which also demand our attention. The manufacture and sale of ever more sophisticated weaponry promotes regional arms races that are costly, destabilizing, and entirely unnecessary. Arms which are sold to today's allies often boomerang back on the country who supplied them when that alliance no longer holds. American weapons have killed American soldiers in Panama, Somalia, and Iraq. Additionally, the sale of arms without regard to the record of human rights abuses by the buyers conveys a message of tacit endorsement of illegitimate regimes, as well as helping them to consolidate their power and extend their illegal rule. Such has been the case with dictator after dictator, supported with arms to defend against the "communist threat," when in reality what they were defending was only their own power to repress their people and murder with impunity.

The final consequence of arms trade out of control is perhaps the most invisible, and the most insidious. Spending on arms is the best way to perpetuate poverty. It is estimated that $780 billion was spent on military technology and training worldwide in 1999. Just 5 percent of that amount would be sufficient to guarantee basic education, health care and nutrition, potable water, and sanitation to all of the world's people. If the countries who endorse arms sales, either by their governments or by private merchants, were truly interested in defending and promoting democracy, they would make the much more sensible investment in eradicating the poverty which keeps half of the world's people in a de facto state of disenfranchisement. For it is grinding, absolute poverty that is the true enemy of both peace and democracy. Ask any child on the streets of India, Burundi, or Myanmar whether she would rather have bread to eat and a school to go to or a fighter jet to protect her, and you will have the obvious answer that national security means nothing in the absence of human security.

– Arms Trade: US Outsells All Others Combined from the Center for International Policy (CIP).

US arms sales

In 1999 the United States outsold all other countries combined, selling $11.4 billion in military hardware to Third World countries, according to a recent government report. No continent was spared. During 1996-99 (the last period for which the report differentiates by region), the United States sold $13 billion to Asia, $27 billion to the Middle East, $1.5 billion to Latin America, and even found the time to do $114 million to the threadbare countries of Africa. Again looking at the new figures for 1999, we see the other exporters trying hard: Russia with $2 billion; France, $2.2 billion; Great Britain, $3.9 billion; China, $300 million; Germany, $600 million, the rest of Europe $1.8 billion; and all others, $500 million. But all of them together could not match the United States' $11.4 billion. […]

• While the top destinations were the Middle East and Taiwan, in 1998 the United States also sold or trained in eight of the ten poorest countries in the world.
• The United States sold to or trained in seventeen of the twenty-four countries involved in major conflicts, including Israel, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Angola, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Colombia, and Peru.
• The United States provided weapons or training to both sides of four different armed conflicts in 1998 involving ten countries.
• Sixty-three percent of all U.S. arms sales in 1998 were directed at the Third World. Of these Third World recipients, 54 percent were undemocratic based on criteria in the State Department human-rights reports.

– Arms Trade: US Outsells All Others Combined from the Center for International Policy (CIP).

Far from promoting democracy in eastern Europe, Washington is promoting a system of political and military control not unlike that once practised by the Soviet Union. Unlike that empire, which collapsed because the centre was weaker than the periphery, the new NATO is both a mechanism for extracting Danegeld from new member states for the benefit of the US arms industry, and also – ever since the promulgation of NATO's New Strategic Concept in April 1999 – an instrument for getting others to protect US interests around the world, including the supply of primary resources such as oil. It is, in short, a racket.

– The Prague Racket by John Laughland, 22 November 2002.

Small arms

With the end of the cold war, increased attention is being paid today to the devastation wrought by armed conflict around the world. Previously referred to by official Washington as "low intensity conflicts," these wars have resulted in the death of well over one million people this decade. The vast majority of these casualties – as many as 90 percent – are civilian victims of indiscriminate warfare.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has determined that small arms are the principal cause of death in conflicts. In fact, these arms are thought to be responsible for 90 percent of recent war casualties. Small/light arms are cheap and portable, and are used by all combatants – state militaries, militias, and insurgents. It is the prevalence – that is, the widespread proliferation – of these arms, combined with their indiscriminate use, that renders them responsible for so much of the killing.

In addition, small and light arms are used in crime and terrorist acts around the world.

– The Global Threat of Small Arms and Light Weapons from ASMP (Arms Sales Monitoring Project), 2000.

In a report released last year, the Eminent Persons Group, said the majority of small arms producers are located in the First World while the majority of victims of small arms are in the Third World. […] The Group pointed out that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, namely the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, account for around 85 percent of the global arms trade.

– Global Campaign Launched To Battle Illicit Small Arms Trade by Thalif Deen, 09 January 2001.

The arms lobby

With so many former defense executives and government officials swapping roles, campaign contributions seem almost unnecessary. But ever since the Republicans took control of Congress in January 1995, major weapons contractors have favored them over Democratic candidates by a 2 to 1 margin, and this year is no exception. The Center for Responsive Politics lists the nation's top three weapons contractors among the top 50 overall donors in this election cycle. Lockheed Martin is at #35 with $1.35 million, Northrop Grumman is at #38, donating $1.26 million, and Boeing comes in at #42 with $1.2 million in campaign contributions.

– The Ties that Bind: Arms Industry Influence in the Bush Administration and Beyond by William D. Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca, October 2004.

Main Players

Lockheed Martin: The company has a greater stake in nuclear weapons and missile defense work than any other U.S. arms maker. It is also one of the "big four" missile defense contractors, along with Raytheon, Boeing, and TRW. In all, eight current policymakers had direct or indirect ties to the firm before joining the administration. Officials with indirect connections to the company include Vice President Dick Cheney, whose wife Lynne Cheney served on the Lockheed Martin board from 1994 through January 2001, accumulating more than $500,000 in deferred director's fees in the process; and Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, who worked at Shea and Gardner, the powerhouse DC law firm that represents Lockheed Martin. [See Corporate State/Revolving Door/Lockheed Martin.]

Northrop Grumman: the nation's third largest defense contractor as the result of its acquisitions of Newport News Shipbuilding and Litton defense, follows closely behind Lockheed Martin with seven former officials, consultants, or shareholders in the Bush administration. The company's influence within the Air Force is reinforced by the presence of [now ex-] Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Environment, and Logistics Nelson F. Gibbs, who served as Corporate Comptroller at Northrop Grumman from 1991 to 1999. Other key company connections include [now ex-] Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, [now ex-] Pentagon Comptroller Dov Zakheim, and [now ex-] Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, all of whom had consulting contracts or served on paid advisory boards for Northrop Grumman prior to joining the administration. Last but not least, I. Lewis Libby, [now ex-] Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, and Sean O'Keefe, the [now ex-] director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, served as a paid consultant and a paid advisory board member, respectively, to Northrop Grumman.

General Dynamics: is a defense conglomerate formed by mergers and divestitures, and as of 2005 it is the sixth largest defense contractor in the world. Gordon England, the Bush administration's Secretary of the Navy, was a General Dynamics Vice President prior to taking his current post. Other administration officials with ties to the company include [now ex-] Secretary of State Colin Powell, who owned more than $1 million in General Dynamics stock before joining the administration, and Undersecretary of Defense [now Air Force Secretary] Michael Wynne, who was a Senior Vice President for International Planning and Development at General Dynamics before joining the administration.

Source: The Role of the Arms Lobby In the Bush Administration's Radical Reversal of Two Decades of U.S. Nuclear Policy by William D. Hartung, with Jonathan Reingold, May 2002. With some additional material from Wikipedia.

Further Reading

Promoting peace is for wimps - real governments sell weapons by George Monbiot, 24 August 2006. “Labour seems to see the escalating dangers in the Middle East as little more than an opportunity for business.”
Arms, Africa, and America's Inmate Industry by Ezrah Aharone, 13 January 2007.

The Arms Trade. A special report from the Guardian.
Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) ”is a broad coalition of groups and individuals in the UK working to end the international arms trade. This Trade has a negative effect on human rights and security as well as on global, regional and local economic development.”

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"Brain Food: The Natural Cure for Depression"

By Karin Evans

"...For those accustomed to the notion that therapy means talking through problems and getting a prescription for antidepressants, this may seem an unusual approach. But Cass, an expert in nutritional medicine and an assistant clinical professor at UCLA, long ago became convinced that no form of psychotherapy can be fully effective if the brain isn’t functioning properly. And to do that the brain needs optimal nourishment, something she says is increasingly hard to come by in the typical American diet. “Depressed, tired, overweight women are often told they need Prozac,” Cass says, “when in fact all they really need to get their brains and bodies on track is a steady supply of real food.”

She recommends that her patients drink lots of water and eat organic vegetables and fruits, whole grains, and lean protein. “Diets high in refined foods, sugars, and unhealthy fats can actually interfere with our natural brain chemistry,” says Cass.

Modern eating habits are part of what makes many people depressed, says Michael Lesser, a psychiatrist in Berkeley, California, who also bases his treatment on an evaluation of a patient’s diet and lifestyle. “Ironically, though we live in a wealthy society, our diets are deficient in crucial nutrients,” says Lesser, author of The Brain Chemistry Plan.

Nutritional deficiencies can contribute to chemical imbalances, like anemia and hypothyroidism, which in turn can lead to anxiety, insomnia—and depression. Cass has observed that people with depression are commonly diagnosed with low levels of zinc, magnesium, B vitamins, essential fatty acids, and amino acids. In fact, Lesser firmly believes that most cases of depression in this country are either caused or exacerbated by poor nutrition.

[ ... ]

Alternatives to Prozac
Many experts now believe that diet and supplements can make a big difference in treating depression, though not every type. People who can tie their sadness to a particular event, like the breakup of a relationship or a job loss, are much more likely to find success with mood-boosting supplements. “But if your depression is unexplained, you should be seeing a professional and asking serious questions—not just popping 5-HTP,” says Timothy Birdsall, director of naturopathic medicine for Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Depression might be the result of heart trouble that doesn’t allow enough oxygen to get to the brain, for instance, or an intestinal problem that prevents efficient absorption of vitamin B-12..."

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Deepak Chopra on Mike Myers and comedy

"..TVGuide.com: In the Iconoclasts episode, you and Mike Myers talk about the connection between comedy and consciousness. Where did that concept come from?
Deepak Chopra: Mike is an old friend of mine; I've known him for over 10 years, and we've always talked about how one measure of your [level of] enlightenment is your comfort with paradox or contradiction or ambiguity. A sign of expanding consciousness is a loss of self-importance, which means that you can laugh at yourself. One thing that Mike said that is very beautiful is, "Pain plus time is humor." When you can look back at your suffering and pain with experience, you can transcend it.

TVGuide.com: During the episode, you two gave a performance at the Magnet Theater in New York, and when you discussed death, the audience all laughed. Why does confronting our own mortality crack people up?
Chopra: I made Mike look behind his shoulder. I said, "Look! Death is stalking you." And he looked. And I said, "Look again! It's closer." You're on death row; the only uncertainty is the method of execution and the length of reprieve. That's when they started to laugh. I said, "We're talking about death, and you guys are laughing!" How else do you go beyond? The only way to transcend tragedy is to laugh. I'm writing a book, a parable. The main character is a comedian; his name is Mickey Fellows, and he is covering up his existential distress through humor till he finds out that that doesn't really do it; it [only] masks it for a while. You have to go on a spiritual journey and really face the fact of impermanence. At the same time, Mike is producing a movie called The Love Guru [due next June] where he's wanting to be Deepak or whatever.

TVGuide.com: You're appearing in The Love Guru, aren't you?
Chopra: It's a five-minute sort of thing. I'm doing it as a favor to him.

TVGuide.com: Do you find that TV and movies are an effective way of spreading your message?
Chopra: It reaches a different audience — not everybody reads books; a lot of people who come to my talks and seminars now are a different demographic. It used to be women who were 35-plus; now it's a lot of men, a lot of young people, who are very media-driven. I think we can reach a new audience. [Last December] I did the Colbert Report, and that got more responses than anything I'd ever done. They didn't expect me to be funny. [Laughs] I was going one-to-one with him, so it was a lot of fun. We got thousands of e-mails and it kept replaying on YouTube.

TVGuide.com: Do you believe that comedy has the ability to heal people?
Chopra: In 1995, the one and only time I was on Oprah, one thing I said — which is based on some research that had come out at that time — was that tears of laughter have a completely different chemical composition than tears of sorrow. Since then, there's a lot of research that says that when you experience peace or harmony or love, the body secretes antidepressants like serotonin, dopamine and opiates. The simultaneous secretion of these chemicals results in immunomodulation; it actually modulates the activity of your immune system. So laughter is definitely a healing experience, and we're not talking metaphorically, we're speaking absolutely literally. Laughter is one of the best medicines you can have.

TVGuide.com: In the Virgin Comics you work on with your son, you depict superheroes from diverse cultures as a way to bring the world together. What do you think of shows like Heroes?
Chopra: It's so funny you should mention that; I just spoke with Tim [Kring] this morning, the creator of Heroes. We're going to have lunch next week and we're meeting about just this very idea. [Laughs] We could create the Heroes club, where we have young people become members and we create new mythologies with transcultural heroes. We are the stories we tell ourselves — the world we see is our collective narrative.

TVGuide.com: Tell me more about your old friend Mike Myers.
Chopra: He has an insatiable curiosity. If you see only his public persona, you don't realize that he's one of the most articulate, most well-read, most well-informed people. He has found a medium where, through bringing the humor out in some very mundane, trivial [moment], he can give you sudden insight — which is brilliant..."

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Pakistan: JI forms committees to assist arrested protestors

Staff Report

KARACHI: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Pakistan has announced the formation of legal aid and relief committees for legal assistance to those arrested by the police. These committees have been constituted in all four provinces and at district levels.

“The newly constituted committees would provide all imprisoned in Karachi, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Larkana, Sukkur and other areas with food, bedding, clothing and other necessities. Meetings with family members would also be arranged,” JI Sindh Ameer and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) Sindh President Maulana Asadullah Bhutto told Daily Times. He said these committees would function under the lawyers of JI’s legal wing Islamic Lawyers Circle (ILC). He appealed to the families to forward the details of arrested people to regional leaders of JI.

JI Deputy Secretary Information Sarfaraz Ahmed told Daily Times that in the last six days, more than 1,200 activists of JI, Shabab-e-Milli, National Labour Federation (NLF), Islami Jamiat Talba (IJT) and former and present nazims and councilors of Al-Khidmat Panel were arrested from Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Multan, Layya, Sialkot, Faisalabad, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad, Peshawar, Charsudda, Kohat, Quetta, Gawadar and other cities. More than 450 JI activists were arrested from Karachi alone. “The police is still raiding the residences of JI activists and arrests are being made,” Sarfaraz added.

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the death grin in our shampoo and deodorant

I'll Have My Cosmetics With a Side of Infertility, Please
By Heather Gehlert, AlterNet.

25 Oct 2005

Author Stacy Malkan reveals the dangerous truth about everyday products we put in our hair and on our skin.

Carcinogens in cosmetics? Petrochemicals in perfume? If only this were an urban legend. Unfortunately, it's a toxic reality, and it's showing up in our bodies.

In 2004, scientists found pesticides in the blood of newborn babies. A year later, researchers discovered perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel, in human breast milk. Today, people are testing positive for a litany of hazardous substances from flame retardants to phthalates to lead.

In her new book, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, Stacy Malkan exposes the toxic chemicals that lurk, often unlabeled, in the personal care products that millions of American women, men and children use every day.

AlterNet spoke with Malkan about these toxins and her five-year effort with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics to get the beauty industry to remove them from its products.

Heather Gehlert: There are so many environmental issues you could've written a book about. Why cosmetics?
Stacy Malkan: I think cosmetics is something that we're all intimately connected to. They're products that we use every day, and so I think it's a good first place to start asking questions. What kinds of products are we bringing into our homes? What kinds of companies are we giving our money to?

It has something pretty interesting in common with global warming too.

It does. I think of it as global poisoning. I think that the ubiquitous contamination of the human species with toxic chemicals is a symptom of the same problem (as global warming), which is an economy that's based on outdated technologies of petrochemicals -- petroleum. So many of the products we're applying to our faces and putting in our hair come from oil. They're byproducts of oil.

Many cosmetic products on the market right now claim they are pure, gentle, clean and healthy. But, as you reveal in this book, they're far from it. Toxic chemicals in these products are showing up in people. What were some of the most surprising toxins you discovered in cosmetics?

Lead in lipstick was pretty surprising. We (the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics) just released that report last week. Many personal care products have phthalates, which is a plasticizer and hormone disruptor. That's why we started the cosmetics campaign -- because we know that women have higher levels of phthalates in their bodies, and we thought that cosmetics might be a reason. But, I think overall, the most surprising thing was to know that there's so much that we don't know about these products. Many, many chemicals are hiding in fragrance. Companies aren't required to list the components of fragrance. Products also are contaminated with carcinogens like 1,4 dioxane and neurotoxins like lead that aren't listed on the label. So it's difficult for consumers to know what we're using.

As a consumer I just want to know what ingredients to avoid, but you say in the book, protecting myself is not as simple as that. Why not?

There are no standards or regulations like there are in, for example, the food industry, where if you buy organic food or food labeled "natural," there's a set of standards and legal definitions that go behind those words. We might like to see those be stronger, but nevertheless, there are meaningful legal definitions. That's not the case in the personal care product industry, where companies often use words like "organic" and "natural" to market products that are anything but. And some of the most toxic products we've found actually had the word "natural" in their name, like natural nail strengtheners that are made with formaldehyde.

Generally speaking, risk assessment involves two factors: a hazard and people's exposure to that hazard. Could you explain some of the unique challenges to assessing risks with cosmetics?

That's a good question. Risk assessment is an extremely oversimplified way of pretending we have enough information to know how much chemicals we can tolerate in our bodies. A risk assessment equation will say, "How hazardous is a chemical, how much are we exposed to it from this one product, and is that harmful?" There's a lot of information left out of that picture: studies that haven't been done to determine impacts on fetuses, the fact that we're exposed to so many of these chemicals in so many places every day, and the fact there have been no -- or very few -- studies about chemical mixtures.

In chapter 2, you say that toxic cosmetics should raise concern for men too, regardless of whether they use any themselves. How so?

Well, men do, first of all, use personal care products. When I ask a group of people what products they've used today, the men will be keeping their hands down and eventually, reluctantly, raising their hands because they're using shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, cologne, lotion...

 

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Death of the American Dream

By: Julio Martínez Molina
2 Nov 2007

The American dream is dead, said famed Nobel Prize laureate in Economics Joseph Stiglitz a few days ago. The passing of that dream is seen not only by him, but also by many Americans.
What some forward-thinking social scientists and certain visionaries once predicted —which is not as a prophecy to be fulfilled over the course of centuries, such as the prophecies of Nostradamus— but in the short-term, in the times in which we are now living. 
If the idea is still not palpable to millions of those Americans who still live atop the bubble of hedonism and consumerism, it will become more so to the degree that this illusion is inevitably punctured by the heat generated by domestic policies. This also points to the contradiction of a régime that flaunts the well-being of its population and to high consumption as its principal badge of honor. 
A system based on voracity and destruction will have no safe harbour, not even for its own people, to continually employ methods that harm people. Not only the war, with its blood-soaked dead and wounded soldiers; or the price of food, which has already become a concern for very low-income people—especially in this era of the ethanol— and other well-known actions are de-legitimizing and tossing the “American dream” overboard.
In a conference last week, Stiglitz said that Americans live worse than they did 30 years ago. There is no doubt about this, as revealed by publications such as the Chicago Tribune that draw on extensive reports showing there are 36.5 million poor people in the United States – and 47 million currently without medical insurance...

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Song: "I am the Decider"

by Randi Rhodes (courtesy  of the pieman)

 

http://www.pieman.org/iamthedecider.mp3

all we need is love

A change of heart changes everything

All you need is love, sang John Lennon.

True, according to most people.

The only challenge: how do you create love?

A quite startlingly simple answer was found to that question in the redwood forests of Boulder Creek, California, south of San Francisco. Since 1991, the Institute of HeartMath has generated a large body of convincing scientific evidence that it is indeed possible to create love. HeartMath’s research shows that emotions work much faster, and are more powerful, than thoughts. And that—when it comes to the human body—the heart is much more important than the brain to overall health and well-being—even cognitive function—than anyone but poets believed. Its dominance inside the body is now clearly demonstrated. Thinking clearly with your brain is useful. But feeling positively from your heart provides an amazing boost to health and creativity...

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