Who profits from war? - - The Link Between War and Big Finance

[woo me with science]

More relevant than ever:

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/393:the-link-between-war-and-big-finance

The Link Between War and Big Finance
Sunday, 10 April 2011 08:43 By Kevin Zeese, War Is A Crime.org | Op-Ed

Veterans For Peace has joined in endorsing “Sounds of Resistance,” a concert and protest against Wall Street banks that draws the connections between militarism, Wall Street, the wealth divide and the downward spiral of the wealth of most Americans. The event, on April 15 at 11:00 a.m. in New York City’s Union Square Park, is part of a democratic awakening that more and more Americans are joining.

Americans are recognizing the link between the military-industrial complex and the Wall Street oligarchs—a connection that goes back to the beginning of the modern U.S. empire. Banks have always profited from war because the debt created by banks results in ongoing war profit for big finance; and because wars have been used to open countries to U.S. corporate and banking interests. Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan wrote: “the large banking interests were deeply interested in the world war because of the wide opportunities for large profits.”

Many historians now recognize that a hidden history for U.S. entry into World War I was to protect U.S. investors. U.S. commercial interests had invested heavily in European allies before the war: “By 1915, American neutrality was being criticized as bankers and merchants began to loan money and offer credits to the warring parties, although the Central Powers received far less. Between 1915 and April 1917, the Allies received 85 times the amount loaned to Germany.” The total dollars loaned to all Allied borrowers during this period was $2,581,300,000. The bankers saw that if Germany won, their loans to European allies would not be repaid. The leading U.S. banker of the era, J.P. Morgan and his associates did everything they could to push the United States into the war on the side of England and France. Morgan said: "We agreed that we should do all that was lawfully in our power to help the Allies win the war as soon as possible." President Woodrow Wilson, who campaigned saying he would keep the United States out of war, seems to have entered the war to protect U.S. banks’ investments in Europe.

The most decorated Marine in history, Smedley Butler, described fighting for U.S. banks in many of the wars he fought in. He said: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

In Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins describes how World Bank and IMF loans are used to generate profits for U.S. business and saddle countries with huge debts that allow the United States to control them. It is not surprising that former civilian military leaders like Robert McNamara and Paul Wolfowitz went on to head the World Bank. These nations’ debt to international banks ensures they are controlled by the United States, which pressures them into joining the “coalition of the willing” that helped invade Iraq or allowing U.S. military bases on their land. If countries refuse to "honor" their debts, the CIA or Department of Defense enforces U.S. political will through coups or military action.

Tarak Kauff, Veteran For Peace activist and organizer, stated, "There are trillions for wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Libya, billions yearly to support Israel's occupation and oppression of Palestine, again trillions in bailouts to make those at the top of the economic food chain even more powerful, but relative pennies for our children's education, adequate health care, infrastructure, housing and other necessities of Americans. Yet big corporate banks are thriving and, like Bank of America, pay no taxes. But you do, and I do, and working people all across this country pay taxes. I ask, what are we paying for and into whose pockets is it going? The wealth of this country is disappearing down the tubes into the stuffed pockets of the financial/military/industrial oligarchs. Americans are being bled dry while people of the world are literally bleeding and dying from U.S.-made weapons and warfare. Do we not see the connection?"

More and more people are indeed seeing the connection between corporate banksterism and militarism; they are seeing how uncontrolled spending on war is resulting in austerity at home. In a recent interview, Cornel West brought the issues of the wealth divide, Wall Street and militarism together. Prof. West also spoke about Obama, calling him “a cagey neoliberal at home and a liberal neoconservative abroad" who expanded the wars and military while re-enforcing the existing Wall Street-dominated power structure at home, a president who has abandoned the poor and working class and is becoming” a pawn of big finance and a puppet of big business."

[font color=red]“The corporations that profit from permanent war need us to be afraid. Fear stops us from objecting to government spending on a bloated military. Fear means we will not ask unpleasant questions of those in power. Fear permits the government to operate in secret. Fear means we are willing to give up our rights and liberties for promises of security. The imposition of fear ensures that the corporations that wrecked the country cannot be challenged. Fear keeps us penned in like livestock.”
[/font color]
― Chris Hedges, The Death of the Liberal Class

[Skidmore]

1. And yet the same people

re-up time and again to this voluntary military we have. What if people just kept showing up?

[saidsimplesimon]

16. Voluntary military? Where are the jobs?

There is no "free" choice for our youth. They must make hard choices to live at home, take jobs that do not reflect their sacrifices made to education. Some end up working at a loathsome, military contractor spying on Americans and others. Then they are faced with outsourcing by these same despicable places of employment?

With record profits, and Wall Street climbing into the ether on smoke and mirrors, surely it's time for US corporations to share the wealth? Not a chance you say, perhaps we Americans are being to timid, in survival mode,

[Skidmore]

19. Still a choice.

It's still a choice.

[raouldukelives]

26. Just like investors and traders in Wall St.

There is a choice. Doing the right thing for the future of our planet and our country or making money. Most people choose money every time.
As always, money is usually the divider between speaking like a liberal and actually living like one.
Many can talk the talk, very few have the intestinal fortitude to walk the walk.

[Octafish]

2. ''Money trumps peace.'' -- appointed pretzeldent George Walker Bush, Feb. 14, 2007

And then he laughs.

The very words of George W Bush on Feb. 14, 2007, uttered at a press conference in which not a single of the callow, cowed press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up.

I remember Cindy Sheehan tried to bring it to our nation's attention.

Where this "philosophy" came from: Poppy: Bush Sr told the FBI he was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

[woo me with science]

3. Follow the money.

[Octafish]

5. The neoliberals and neoconservatives really have a lot in common.

The Pitfalls of Peace

The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth

Tyler Coswen
The New York Times, JUNE 13, 2014

The continuing slowness of economic growth in high-income economies has prompted soul-searching among economists. They have looked to weak demand, rising inequality, Chinese competition, over-regulation, inadequate infrastructure and an exhaustion of new technological ideas as possible culprits.

An additional explanation of slow growth is now receiving attention, however. It is the persistence and expectation of peace.

The world just hasn’t had that much warfare lately, at least not by historical standards. Some of the recent headlines about Iraq or South Sudan make our world sound like a very bloody place, but today’s casualties pale in light of the tens of millions of people killed in the two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Even the Vietnam War had many more deaths than any recent war involving an affluent country.

Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work. Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a nation’s longer-run prospects.

It may seem repugnant to find a positive side to war in this regard, but a look at American history suggests we cannot dismiss the idea so easily. Fundamental innovations such as nuclear power, the computer and the modern aircraft were all pushed along by an American government eager to defeat the Axis powers or, later, to win the Cold War. The Internet was initially designed to help this country withstand a nuclear exchange, and Silicon Valley had its origins with military contracting, not today’s entrepreneurial social media start-ups. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite spurred American interest in science and technology, to the benefit of later economic growth.

War brings an urgency that governments otherwise fail to summon. For instance, the Manhattan Project took six years to produce a working atomic bomb, starting from virtually nothing, and at its peak consumed 0.4 percent of American economic output. It is hard to imagine a comparably speedy and decisive achievement these days.

SNIP...

Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/upshot/the-lack-of-major-wars-may-be-hurting-economic-growth.html?_r=0

[woo me with science]

21. They sure do have a lot in common.

They almost seem like the same people:

When the DLC connections to the Koch Bros. became well known, they just rebranded the infiltration
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4165556

When you hear "Third Way", think INVESTMENT BANKERS
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024127432

GOP Donors and K Street Fuel Third Way’s Advice for the Democratic Party
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101680116

The Rightwing Koch Brothers fund the DLC
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x498414

Same companies behind the GOP are behind the DLC
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1481121

Thanks, Octafish. God, that's a creepy article.

[Octafish]

24. You are most welcome, woo me with science. War means Money!

Thank you for an outstanding Post #21, which should be an OP.

Tyler Cowan Explains the Grim Neoliberal Future

By: masaccio
FireDogLake, Sunday November 17, 2013 10:30 am

Tyler Cowan has an interesting think piece in Politico Magazine. Cowan is an economist at George Mason, with a side gig as general director of the Mercatus Center. That puts him at the heart of the neoliberal thought collective described by Philip Mirowski in his book, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste. Cowan begins with a discussion of a dystopian science fiction story by Isaac Asimov, in which computers and robots have taken over, reducing humans to nothing but consumers and happy idiots. Cowan extrapolates from the current crop of robots to a society in which robots and computers do most everything, from manufacturing to health care, leaving no real jobs for most people.

The rise of the robots creates new economic winners and losers. If you can write code or otherwise make yourself useful to the machine class, you win. Otherwise, you become a consumer, with easy access to cheap entertainment and cheap education. He figures we need about 15% of the available humans and the other 85% have no purpose or goals other than consumption and perhaps to provide the Elect a purpose, to keep them pacified. Of course this will be a neoliberal world:

We will move from a society based on the pretense that everyone is given a decent standard of living to one in which people are expected to fend for themselves.

Then Cowan explains that no one will be upset about this transformation of society. They will all think it’s natural and proper. If you are self-motivated, you will be able to join the Elite. Otherwise, the Market has passed judgment, and you are a Prole.

This new digital meritocracy will prove self-reinforcing. Worthy individuals will rise from poverty on a regular basis, but that will only make it easier to ignore those left behind. The wealthy class will grow larger over time, and more influential. And the increasingly libertarian values of the wealthy will shape the public debate, strengthening the upper class’s grip on the commanding heights of the economy and society, and pulling policy in their favor.

There won’t be any serious discontent, and certainly no violent revolution. That’s partly because everyone will be older and therefore more conservative. One reason people will be older is that there won’t be much reason to have kids in this society. What can kids provide that the robots and the other cheap entertainment won’t provide? (NSFW link) Second, the Proles won’t be envious of the Elites. Their envy will be directed towards other Proles. Proles are romantic people, harkening back to the Golden Age, when we had better politicians and bipartisanship. No revolutionary sentiment there.

In fact the Proles are radically conservative in Cowan’s view:

Just look at what is already happening in parts of the United States where incomes are relatively stagnant. Political conservatism is strongest in the worst-off, least-educated and most blue-collar states: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming—key outposts of Tea Party support. As the urbanist Richard Florida puts it, “Conservatism, more and more, is the ideology of the economically left behind.”

The Proles will have no purpose, so they can just go on with their pointless lives as long as they leave the Elites alone. Whatever happens to them is meaningless in the larger picture. It’s not unlike the views of the aristocracies of the early 1900s, who were immersed in their own versions of Game of Thrones, and saw the Proles largely as fodder for their wars.

CONTINUED...

http://firedoglake.com/2013/11/17/tyler-cowan-explains-the-grim-neoliberal-future/

Sorry about the articles. I think the guy may be trying out for the new Strangelove, a Kissinger for the Millennials.

[woo me with science]

30. "We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when..."

I always remember that song from "Dr. Strangelove," but now it strikes me that, even in imagining the developing war-based dystopia, we still expected some respite between the wars and bloodshed.

I'm *glad* you posted the articles. I am constantly wishing the posts you make throughout threads could be OP's of their own.

I remember as a very little kid drawing pictures of futuristic cities and looking forward to the day when machines would be smart and people wouldn't have to work so hard. We didn't envision a predator class subjugating everyone else.

[sabrina 1]

4. One thing you have to say for Bush, he often inadvertently told the truth as he was

'catapulting the propaganda'.

[Octafish]

7. True. Inadvertently includes ''never on purpose.''

What bothers me is how few have the guts or decency to oppose him. Harold Pinter explained it with every word of a taped speech on accepting the Nobel prize in Literature:

[sabrina 1]

13. Well, you have to admit, it does take guts to try to expose the whole mess. See, eg, how even here

those who were lauded for telling the truth back when Bush was in the WH are now being attacked for continuing to tell the truth.

Thanks for the video. There were/are far too few willing to tell the truth. But when you look at happens to them, see Snowden, Manning et al, it's hard to blame them.

And when the system is so rigged to get the support of at least half the country each time they are planning a new war, it's hard to get the entire population together which actually might have some impact on our forever warmongering.

[yurbud]

6. wow--such honesty talking about OTHER countries' motives

But of course the US exists on a different moral plane.

[Octafish]

8. Profound for Smirko McCokespoon: ''Commercial interests are very powerful interests.''

Crisco Ashcan figured a way out of the war crime angle:

Obama DOJ Asks Court to Grant Immunity to George W. Bush For Iraq War

By Inder Comar
WarIsACrime.org

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., (Aug. 20, 2013) — In court papers filed today (PDF), the United States Department of Justice requested that George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz be granted procedural immunity in a case alleging that they planned and waged the Iraq War in violation of international law.

Plaintiff Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother and refugee now living in Jordan, filed a complaint in March 2013 in San Francisco federal court alleging that the planning and waging of the war constituted a “crime of aggression” against Iraq, a legal theory that was used by the Nuremberg Tribunal to convict Nazi war criminals after World War II.

"The DOJ claims that in planning and waging the Iraq War, ex-President Bush and key members of his Administration were acting within the legitimate scope of their employment and are thus immune from suit,” chief counsel Inder Comar of Comar Law said.

The “Westfall Act certification,” submitted pursuant to the Westfall Act of 1988, permits the Attorney General, at his or her discretion, to substitute the United States as the defendant and essentially grant absolute immunity to government employees for actions taken within the scope of their employment.

CONTINUED...

http://warisacrime.org/content/obama-doj-asks-court-grant-immunity-george-w-bush-iraq-war

"The sinews of war are endless profits." -- - Cicero, Orationes Philippicæ, v (c. 60 B.C.)

[sabrina 1]

15. So War Crimes are 'within the scope of their employment'. I wonder when voters go to the polls

to hire them, are they aware that they are giving them permission to commit war crimes? I had no idea that was part of the job.

So few remember just how many Iraqis were forced to flee the violence we imposed on their country. That woman was one of them. I believe that on last count it was FOUR MILLION.

Half of them ended up in Syrian Refugee Camps, and have now been subjected to more violence as we took our war into that nation.

I hear that we need to go after ISIS because hundreds of thousands of people are being forced into Refugee camps.

Have people forgotten about the millions WE drove into refugee camps?

Well, one thing we've learned, the wars will go on no matter who we elect. And war crimes are part of the job description.

Thanks for the link. I will keep that in mind.

[woo me with science]

34. That headline just makes me sick. nt

[WinkyDink]

9. The descendants of Prescott Bush, for some.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

[Zorra]

10. [phone] nt

[leftstreet]

11. DURec Endless Wars to Protect Market Shares n/t

[Puzzledtraveller]

12. We are all playing Ullamaliztli now.

[littlemissmartypants]

14. I' m not. I don't know wtf it is. nt

[Ichingcarpenter]

23. Aztec Ball Game n/t

[dilby]

17. We all know who doesn't profit, the guys fighting it.

But yeah but pretty much everyone who supplies the war machine with goods makes a killing on it.

[GoneFishin]

18. Great post.

[marmar]

20. K/R

[99th_Monkey]

22. K&R ~nt~

[FairWinds]

25. the post above about few people not being willing to speak out . .

is very true.
I cannot tell you how many Political Scientists (my old profession)
fully understand the dynamics of war, but are too afraid and/or
too greedy (they get DOD grants) to speak out.
I decided I could not do that, spoke out and continue to do so.
I joined Veterans For Peace (one does not have to be a vet to belong).
To me, it is out DUTY as citizens to oppose war - for the sake of our
country, and well as our kids and grandkids.

[woo me with science]

31. I could not agree more.

And the corollary to that is that I consider those who shill for the warmongers, who sell out human decency and morality for a paycheck or political expedience, to be among the lowest of the low.

[raouldukelives]

27. K&R nt

[locks]

28. We need to print in large red letters that light up

on all bills and bank statements: WAR IS A CRIME; MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL; BE CAREFUL HOW YOU USE IT.

[Autumn]

29. Wasn't it the Freedom Fighters who bankrupted the Soviet Union in Afghanistan?

It comes to mind that I remember how happy our country was that the little war there took out the teeth of the USSR. I can see that happening to us.

[woo me with science]

36. Good point.

[woo me with science]

32. kick

[grahamhgreen]

33. Kick

[Enthusiast]

35. Kicked and recommended!

Thank you, woo me with science.

I don't see how anyone could deny this. But deny it they will.