Why are we in Vietnam Iraq/Syria?

Bloomberg : Syria-to-Ukraine Wars Send U.S. Defense Stocks to Records :

"Led by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world. 

President Barack Obama approved open-ended airstrikes this month while ruling out ground combat. 

 “To the extent we can shift away from relying on troops and rely more heavily on equipment -- that could present an opportunity.” [enthused a chief investment officer who oversees $66 billion including Northrop Grumman Corp. and Boeing Co.] 

Investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. also is the biggest foreign military supplier to Israel, which waged a 50-day offensive against the Hamas Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip.

Lockheed, the world’s biggest defense company, reached an all-time high of $180.74 on Sept. 19, when Northrop, Raytheon Co.and General Dynamics Corp. also set records. That quartet and Chicago-based Boeing accounted for about $105 billion in federal contract orders last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

In its first night of airstrikes into Syria, the U.S. dropped about 200 munitions and launched 47 Raytheon-made Tomahawk cruise missiles, according to U.S. Central Command. The military also deployed Boeing’s GBU-32 Joint Direct Attack Munitions and Hellfire missiles from Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed, creating an opening for restocking U.S. arsenals."

Meanwhile, stop me if you've also heard this one before ... From the LA Times, yesterday :

"Iraqi news outlets reported Monday that at least 18 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in an airstrike on a town under siege by fighters from the extremist group Islamic State.  Hit’s general hospital received 18 bodies, including three women and eight children, all killed in an airstrike.  

Maj. Curtis J.  Kellogg, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said there was “no evidence” of civilian casualties in Hit."

And so it goes ...

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Lockheed Martin : "We never forget who we're working for"

That famous LM motto ... which in the main of course refers to their $47.2 billion client, the US government. 

Not just an arms manufacturer anymore, LM builds spy satellites for the NSA, plus surveillance and information processing for the CIA, the FBI, the IRS, the NSA, the Pentagon, the Postal Service, and the US Census Bureau.

Lockheed Martin - counting some people, blowing other people up.

Rather infamously up here in Canada, Lockheed Martin developed and supplied the data-analyzing software to Statistics Canada that scanned the 2006 census forms using “optic recognition” software and helped rework the program for the 2011 count - sparking fears that famous motto meant census info about Canadians would be funnelled to their biggest client via the Patriot Act.

Today, 89-year-old WW2 war veteran and peace activist Audrey Tobias is in court for refusing to fill in her 2006 and 2011 census. If convicted, Tobias will refuse to accept a fine or community service on the grounds that either would be an admission of guilt. It's jail for her or nothing. 
Her refusal is based on her dislike of LM and their cluster bombs :

“Giving it to a foreign military company sends a message to the Canadian people from our prime minister and cabinet that he supports military solutions. I didn’t like that,” she said.

She doesn't care about the possible invasion of her privacy by the NSA via Lockheed Martin but her lawyer will. 


Lockheed Martin press release, April 2013 :

"Lockheed Martin is a leading provider of cyber security technology and services to the NSA and a number of defense and intelligence agencies."

From 2008 : 

"American officials are pressuring the federal government to supply them with more information on Canadians, says an influential analyst on Canada-U.S. relations."Not only about routine individuals, but also about people that you may be looking at for reasons, but there's no indictment and there's no charge," Christopher Sands of the Hudson Institute told a security intelligence conference."

Back in 2006, President of Lockheed Martin’s Americas Region and former Pentagon advisor to Dick Cheney, Ron Covais, was succinct on the subject of integrating corporations like his into the US and Canadian governments :

"We've decided not to recommend any things that would require legislative changes," says Covais. "Because we won't get anywhere."

A LM presser on its relationship to Canada refers to "the development of a North American defense industrial base" :

"Beyond our defence partnerships, Lockheed Martin Corporation stands ready to continue and grow our support to Canada's Census, health care management, information technology, as well as infrastructure and border security to ensure the safe, secure and efficient transit of people, goods and services between Canada and the US."

Health care management? Yeah, they do that too. 

And didn't you guys just get hacked by China a couple of years ago?

In 2010, Tony Clement announced he would "introduce legislation this fall to remove threats of jail time for persons refusing to fill out the census and all mandatory surveys administered by the federal government." But then he didn't.

Fun juxtaposition  : The witness for the Crown against Tobias -Yves Beland, operations director at Statistics Canada - says he has never heard of Edward Snowden and testified that all Canadian census data is completely safe from Lockheed Martin.

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Wed. Oct 9 Update : Tobias acquitted!

"The judge also described the Justice Department's decision to prosecute Tobias, a Second World War veteran, as a "PR disaster."

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Outsource This! Boeing and Lockheed Martin war bling 'full of fake Chinese parts'

Telegraph : Thousands of U.S. warplanes, ships and missiles contain fake electronic components from China, leaving them open to malfunction, according to a US Senate committee.

In total, the committee said it had found more than a million fake parts had made their way into warplanes such as the Boeing C-17 transport jet and the Lockheed Martin C-130J "Super Hercules".

... each of which Canada has recently signed on to buy more of : a $1.4-billion contract for 17 Lockheed Martin C-130J-30s, and a $869-million for four Boeing C-17s.

No worries though - the Senate Armed Services Committee 'discovered' exactly this same Chinese fake parts racket back in 2005, and again in 2008, and everyone on the committee had a cow both of those times as well but nothing came of it. 

"As electronics manufacturing migrated to China, the US has been less and less able to control the quality of its military hardware. Some of the fake chips are bought by the Pentagon on the open market .... These chips are often salvaged by Chinese scrap merchants from the dumps of electronic waste that have accumulated in the south of the country "

... where they are burned off old computer circuit boards, sanded down, repainted, and voilà - the new F-35 chop shop war bling!

" 'Ello, I wish register a complaint about this plane which I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique."

" Ah yes, the F-35. Remarkable plane, the F-35, beautiful fuselage. What's wrong with it?"

"Well if you scrape away the loose paint just here, you'll see that underneath it says "Hello Kitty".

It's your own fault, said 'a former Peoples' Liberation Army officer who has become a commentator in the Chinese media' : 

"The US has been dismantling its factories since the 1960s," he said. 

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Canada Census - The dilemma

Do we fill it in nicely to show our solidarity with StatsCan and their important data-gathering, currently under siege by the Cons, or do we fill it in using really big crayons and attached pictures of cluster bomb victims to protest its having been farmed out once again to war profiteer and surveillance/espionage experts Lockheed Martin?


Back during the 2006 census, some of us worried that Homeland Security would wind up with access to our census data via the US Patriot Act. StatsCan was at great pains to alleviate those fears : LM would not get the actual data because LM were only supplying the software; the actual data would remain with StatsCan.

Lockheed Martin : "We never forget who we're working for".

Well of course not. $35.7B in US government contracts alone out of $42.7B worldwide in 2008 is a whole lot of not forgetting.

ML accounts for one of every 14 dollars doled out by the Pentagon, amounting to a "Lockheed Martin tax" of $260 per taxpaying household in the United States.

Besides there's the US government network to maintain : $12 million on congressional lobbying and campaign contributions in 2009.
NYTimes, secondary source :

"Men who have worked, lobbied and lawyered for Lockheed hold the posts of secretary of the Navy, secretary of transportation, director of the national nuclear weapons complex, and director of the national spy satellite agency.

Lockheed Martin is now positioned to profit from every level of the war on terror from targeting to intervention, and from occupation to interrogation."

Including spying on Quakers and anti-war activists and recruiting interrogators for Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan for the Department of Defense.

Of Lockheed Martin's 57 Federal Contractor Misconduct violations listed at the Project on Government Oversight, nearly a third involve court dispositions and fines for "Government Contract Fraud".
Say, how are our F-35s coming along?

Four months after the 2006 census, Lockheed Martin President of the Americas and Co-Chair of the SPP's North American Competitiveness Council Ron Covais explained to Luiza Ch. Savage how the Security and Prosperity Partnership would be implemented - in incremental changes by each country's executive, bureaucrats and other regulators outside government.

"We've decided not to recommend any things that would require legislative changes because we won't get anywhere."

It may not be entirely rational to fuck with the census form on the grounds that LM profits by it, but sometimes protests are not particularly rational - they are just one of the only means available to us to register our disgust with the creeping militarization inherent in our incremental deep integration with the US.
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My apology to commenters - all comments were lost in Blogger's big fubar today.
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"Lethal, survivable, supportable, affordable"

That's what it says on the Joint Strike Fighter logo which I'd normally post up here but for this advisory on the JSF website : "Note, individuals utilizing the JSF logo for purposes other than that which is determined to be in the best of interests of the program may be prosecuted."***

Via Paul Graham, who isn't happy about it :
"The big news in the Peg this afternoon is the federal government’s $43.4 million loan to Bristol Aerospace of Winnipeg, part of a $120 million upgrade that will allow Bristol to help develop the F-35 Lightning II fighter jet. According to the Winnipeg Free Press, this investment could yield $3 billion in revenue over the next 25-30 years."

Bloomberg : "The U.S. and eight countries are collaborating on the development of the aircraft in the largest international weapons program ever."

The largest evah! Vroom, vroom!

Dept of National Defence in 2006 : "The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program is a United States-led multinational effort to build an affordable, multi-role next generation, stealth fighter aircraft.... There are defined needs for more than 3000 aircraft over the course of the program with an estimated value of over US$276 billion. An additional 3000 aircraft could be sold to other allied buyers."

"In 2001, the U.S. Department of Defense selected Lockheed Martin as the Prime Contractor for the JSF Program. Pratt and Whitney US and General Electric have been selected to design and develop engines for the JSF.
Canada's $US160 million contribution to JSF includes funding from both the Department of National Defence and Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC). TPC promotes the participation of Canadian firms, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.
As a result of Canada’s participation in the JSF program, 54 Canadian companies, universities and research institutions have won 154 contracts to date valued at approximately CDN$157 million."

So what is Canada's current rank in the echelons of world arms dealing? Still sixth, are we? Or has this latest investment rocketed us into the Top 5?

And are our pension plan contributions still being invested in these arms dealers? Yup, there they are at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board website, who report a good return last quarter.

War is a racket.

***JSF do however permit the logo to be used as a nice screensaver, if you're interested.

More magic pudding

Yesterday I linked to George Monbiot's article "The US missile defence system is the magic pudding that will never run out".

In it he reviews the utter military ineffectiveness of missile defence : it only works under perfect conditions against one missile at a time, and only as long as that incoming missile is not painted white and there are no balloons or bits of tin foil in the area to fool it.

The system persists, he notes, precisely because it doesn't work.

"Federal government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries that give millions of dollars in political donations with contracts worth billions. Missile defence is the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding that won't run out, however much you eat. The funds channelled to defence, aerospace and other manufacturing and service companies will never run dry because the system will never work.

To keep the pudding flowing, the administration must exaggerate the threats from nations that have no means of nuking it - and ignore the likely responses of those that do."

Now that the Czech Republic and Poland are about to become pudding franchises should their parliaments approve the deals, the pudding wholesalers weigh in :

"The new system in Europe, which includes 10 interceptor rockets in Poland and a sophisticated radar complex in the Czech Republic, should cost another $4 billion over the next few years, according to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

Boeing Co, prime contractor for the U.S. ground-based missile defense system, will supply the rockets to be placed in Poland.

Lockheed Martin Corp said its system to integrate separate missile defense elements and provide a common view of the "battlespace", known as Command, Control, Battle Management and Communications (C2BMC), would play a key role in the European missile defense site.

Raytheon Co. built the powerful X-band radar now based in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, which will be moved to the Czech Republic.
Raytheon, also prime contractor for the Patriot air and missile defense system, declined comment on any project sales resulting from the Polish agreement"

Back to Monbiot : "If we seek to understand American foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement with international problems, or even as an effective means of projecting power, we are looking in the wrong place. The government's interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at crucial stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration. The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks will be."

It's worth remembering that before he became PM, Harper expressed a wish to revisit Canada's position on rejecting Star Wars, while the Council of Chief Executives have always promoted membership in missile defence as merely the cost of doing business with the US.

SPP and the EPA

Remember that whole business about Canada lowering standards on pesticide use on fruits and vegetables to match U.S. regs because the U.S. found Canada's 40% more stringent pesticide regs to be "a trade irritant"?
Sure you do.

Richard Aucoin, chief registrar of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which sets Canada's pesticide rules said : "it's just common sense for Canada to work most closely with its largest and nearest trading partner".
Besides, in practice, the question of official residue limits is moot in most cases because farmers are using fewer and fewer pesticides, he said.

LA Times :

"Despite the protests of more than 50 scientists, including five Nobel laureates in chemistry, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday approved use of a new, highly toxic fumigant, mainly for strawberry fields.
Methyl iodide is a neurotoxin and carcinogen that has caused thyroid tumors, neurological damage and miscarriages in lab animals.
Methyl iodide will be manufactured by Tokyo-based Arysta LifeScience Corp. and marketed under the name Midas. Its use will be allowed on fields growing strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, ornamentals, turf, trees and vines."

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson is a Bush appointee.
Arysta's former chief executive, Elin Miller, is now a top official at the EPA.

I repeat : Why is it still called the Environmental Protection Agency?

And about that research on "lab animals".
Several years ago progressive US blogs were up in arms about a jointly-funded project by the EPA and a pesticide lobby group which offered poor families in Florida $970 and a camcorder to spray the inside of their homes, including childrens' bedrooms, with a pesticide once a day for two years and monitor the results with the free camcorder.
In 2000, Lockheed Martin paid volunteers in California $1000 to ingest toxic chemicals and pesticides under observation.
Shagya now has a vid up of Senator Barbara Boxer detailing these experiments. She points out they do not meet the Nuremburg Code forbidding the testing of "non-therapeutics" or poisons on human beings.

EPA : "Experiments on People just like at Auschwitz!"

One of the objectives of Montebello was to enhance the so-called 'smart regulation' : "undertaking trilateral cooperation to accelerate and strengthen our national and regional risk-based chemical assessment and management efforts."

From the U.S. government's SPP website : "Regulatory Cooperation in the Area of Chemicals."
Objective :"enhanced coordination of chemical assessment and management programs across North America."

Stephen Harper, responding to critics of regulatory harmonization following Montebello :
"Is the sovereignty of Canada going to fall apart if we standardize the jellybean. I don’t think so."

Related : From the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives :
More Than Jellybeans:
The SPP Regulatory Framework Agreement and Its Impact on Chemicals Regulation
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