Mercenaries

Some might think it strange for a country founded on a proposition of equality to send so much aid to regimes that are doing everything they can to disfigure it. Of course, slipping on one’s Orwellian eye wear, it makes perfect sense. Freedom is Slavery, not just in Oceania. And that is the proper perspective in which to digest the perversity of market incentives in three specific areas: foreign aid, defense contractor stocks, and—that bête noire of peace—the stock price of oil companies.

President Obama’s post-election promise of a “new dawn of American leadership” began in earnest five months into his first term with an important speech in Cairo June 4, 2009, appropriately titled, “A New Beginning.” He started his oration by remarking “We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world…. I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.”

Just before leaving office as president over fifty years ago, Dwight D. Eisenhower cautioned against the potential power of the military-industrial complex, a formidable union of defense contractors and the armed forces.  In the 1950s, Eisenhower saw retired generals, heroes of WWII, moving into industry board of director slots: for example, Douglas MacArthur went to Remington Rand, Lucius Clay, Continental Can, and Jimmy Doolittle, Shell Oil.

Introduction
Frontline is an influential television program which examines important foreign and domestic issues. The shows tend to be technically well done – combining concise writing with compelling video. Many North Americans watch and have their beliefs shaped by Frontline documentaries.
Last week Public Broadcasting System channels across North America broadcast the Frontline special titled “Obama at War”. The 52 minute video portrays the following:
* Origins of the Syrian conflict
* Response of the Obama administration

In 1990 Amnesty International made a horrendous mistake in the midst of the media campaign leading up to Gulf War 1.  While U.S. military action was being debated and the public was significantly opposed, it was reported that Iraqi troops were stealing incubators from a Kuwaiti hospital and leaving babies to die on the floor. In dramatic testimony before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, a Kuwaiti teenage girl claimed she was a hospital volunteer and eye-witness.

The basic conservative movement has never altered its views. It has always been based on the domination of society by an aristocracy, but its approach has varied to suit the times.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
— Robert Frost. Fire and Ice

You might think that after seeing the consequences of their campaign for “freedom and democracy” in Libya, journalists like Nicholas Kristof and “humanitarian campaigners” like Avaaz would have some qualms.

Having exhausted all diplomatic avenues, a Texas boy last week contracted Blackwater to carry out pre-emptive security services on his 89 year old grandmother, who had recently arrived from the old country to live with the family. The security services provider, formerly known as Xe Services and Academi is again known as Blackwater, as with the passage of time it is now viewed fondly for its services to our homeland.

ISIS certainly is not what a great many people think that it is, if you judge what they think by what our corporate press proclaims incessantly.