That pathetic attempt you made at the job fair received nothing but blank stares. Shouting out a bunch of generalizations about war, Lockheed Martin and weapon profiteering doesn’t make you enlightened about the ‘evil’ corporations ruling our world, it makes you look like a naive University student hyped up on emotions, false idealism and general delusions about what’s right and wrong.
You don’t know how the world works, it’s a harsh place outside your student loan funded Canadian university. Lockheed fills a market, that market is weapons, if they didn’t produce them someone else would. The enemy is not the suppliers, the enemy is the aggravators of war itself, the people who cause the conflicts.
There will always be weapons in this world. Before you embarrass yourselves again, take a step back and actually think about what you’re saying and pick your opponents wisely.
—Viego
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2009.
Why not tell them to get a job?
What is the Canard Centre? In Halifax, there is the Cunard Centre, but I have no idea what the Canard Centre is.
I’m not here to support what the protesters were doing, but they have the freedom to protest. That is their right. Just like we enjoy the freedom of speech or freedom of the press.
Yes, there will always be weapons in this world, but your logic is flawed. This is not how the world works. That’s why we have laws and that is why Canada is highly regarded in the world. We are not seen as corrupt or as bad as our American neighbours. In case you didn’t know, here are some facts about Lockheed Martin:
– World’s #1 military contractor as well as the world’s largest arms exporter. Where do you think a lot of these global conflicts are getting their weapons from? Not all of them, but you’d be surprised at how many of these weapons originate from the USA.
– According to the Arms Trade Resource Center, Lockheed Martin gets $105 from each U.S. taxpayer and $228 from each U.S. household. In 2002 the company was effectively taxed at 7.7% compared to an average tax rate for individuals of 21-33%.
– Lockheed has also been able to exercise its influence in a larger way – in support of the invasion of Iraq. The company’s former vice-president Bruce Jackson chaired the Coalition for the Liberation of Iraq, a bipartisan group formed to promote Bush’s plan for war in Iraq.
So, what do you think now about Lockheed Martin and weapons profiteering? Quite an eye opener eh? Companies like this don’t just sell weapons. They have political influence too. It would appear that if they want more sales, they have enough political clout to have a conflict start, thus guaranteeing that their “products” will be sold. It’s almost like a government make work project!
Viego:
How would you like it if I was able to conceive of a scheme that profited at your death? Or maybe some way to pay my student loan by having your mother offed? Not such a pleasant idea? You don’t think it’s right for me to kill you or your family for money?
Maybe you should think about the impact a company involved with cluster munitions system production and nuclear bomb testing might have on the lives of others. Maybe you should think about what this company’s products and inventions are for.
Profiting through war and the murder of others is wrong. Politically orchestrating or otherwise supporting a conflict that facilitates murder is wrong. –Unless your some kind of soulless traveling land-mine salesman, in which case I’m sure that there are places in hell reserved for people just like you.
wow, information not ripped straight from wiki…
gotta say, it looks genuine.
so basically, war is bad and being a lord of war is wrong.
Get that everyone?
Hi onlythetruth, I love that info you just copy and pasted from corpwatch.org. Sounds like you really know your stuff. And no, it’s not quite an eye opener be cause either way there will always be a supplier of weapons whether you like it or not. That info your stole off the internet may or may not have reliable sources, but the idea of a government/corporate conspiracy is weak at best and the very fact you had to rip off another website to make your post look better doesn’t do much to your credibility.
Hi neverbot. I agree with you, war and murder is wrong yes. I think we’re on the same page there, as I think most the population of the world is. But like onlythetruth, you completely missed my point. Although war profiteering is wrong, as you are so apt to point out, it will always exist. War itself exists for a reason, and that is verbal negotiations may work in some instances but it can only go so far.
During WWII, do you think Hitler would stop the concentration camps if we wrote him a nice letter asking him to stop? Do you think the Hamas, Isreal, the Taliban, Canada, America will stop fighting if we’d just work it out in conversation? Fuck no, you’d have to be incredibly naive to think all conflicts can be solved by negotiation.
Well let’s stop making arms, demobilize our Armed Forces, and let the despots and terrorist (oops I mean freedom fighters, you know the ones who blow up their own people, who can seem to smuggle in weapons but not food and clothing for the people they’re supposedly fighting for) do their thing unhindered and sit back in our Lazy Boys watching TV and be oblivious to the world.
Damn where the hell did I put those rose coloured glasses.
I recant.
Oh, whoa, it’s great that you guys posted all this info that all of us uneducated, living-in-the-machine-folks don’t understand. Guess I’ll go back under my rock now. Fuck. You. Take your superior, holier than thou attitude and shove it up your ass. It’s douchebags like you who give actual protesting a bad name because you think other people don’t understand the way the world works. He’s absolutely correct: the people to blame are the people who start it, not the suppliers (although their hands are not entirely clean). You pull your facts from Wikipedia, then you go watch a Michael Moore “documentary” and then all of sudden you know more than anyone else. Fact is: by saying that they have political influence is like saying PETA has political influence and thus is tied to war. They both lobby the US government. Therefore, as you mentioned OTT, your logic is flawed. He’s a tip: unless you’re at a WTO conference or at a World Economic Forum, your tiny little protest does absolutely nothing to sway world opinion, or even local opinion for that matter (as much as you are entitled to it). In fact you just look like a bunch of whiny know-it-alls and it does nothing for your cause. You may need to look at Canada as well, because a certain snowmobile manufacturer makes engine components for Lockheed-Martin, under contract, for the F-22 fighter. So Canada is war-profiteering just like the United States. Perhaps you should shift your focus.
Good post Doc…and I absolutely agree, don’t need to add anything except: Dead on man, dead on.
Doc: Last time I checked the F-22 is not in commission and has not dropped a single bomb or fired a single shot at any “enemy”, so that Canadian firm is not profiting from war. Lockheed is profiting because its main purpose is to build weapons of war. Do a breakdown of its business and products that it produces. How much of that is for peaceful purposes and how much of it is strictly military? Snowmobiles/trains/planes/personal watercraft aren’t weapons used for war. Those engine components make up how much of this Canadian firm’s profits?
You do not need to attend a useless conference such as the WTO or WEF to get results. If those conferences were so useful, explain why the world is in such a bad economic state at the moment? Canada lead the charge on the landmine ban and many countries have signed on to that. So you see, you gotta start somewhere. If more information was available to people, then changes will take place. Start one person at a time.
Is PETA the largest arms contractor to the US gov? No, so how would they have any political influence tied to war? Btw, the Iraq situation is not a war. It is an invasion..there’s a difference. Do you think that all of the contractors such as Haliburton, KBR and Lockheed did not have any political influence in the Bush Administration??? I can’t believe you can’t see how they are tied in and how much political influence they have!
Veigo: So you actually did some research before spazzed out? Was there any part of my post that I claimed those little facts about Lockheed were mine? Since people like you are too lazy to do a bit of digging around, I thought I would help and present some tidbits. Yes, there will always be suppliers of weapons. However, a supplier of knives is vastly different than a supplier of ICBMs and jet fighters. One ICBM, with multiple warheads can kill over 250,000 people. That’s just one ICBM! When I last checked, an army supplied with just knives wouldn’t be killing that many people, especially indiscriminately killing people who were not in the war zone.
There have been no more concentration camps or killings of such type because we have laws against that. These laws have been effective because the perpetrators will be convicted and jailed/executed such as those in Bosnia and Croatia.
Like I said in my original post, I didn’t come on to agree with the protesters. I stated that they have the right to protest and because the OP didn’t present any useful information about the protest, I figured I’d add some tidbits about Lockheed Martin in case people didn’t know.
If you don’t state that you’re quoting another website, it’s assumed that you wrote it yourself. In this case, you didn’t so you plagiarized hoping nobody would call you out on it.
Tell me, onlythetruth, how many ICBMs have been used since the beginning of the US invasion of Afghanistan to today?
And it’s great how you’re saying laws are the reason why there are no concentration camps. How exactly do you suppose to enforce those laws if a militant group decides to break them? And what laws are you talking about – United Nations laws? Don’t tell me you think those laws are dutifully enforced.
Finally, I didn’t say they didn’t have a right to protest. They can protest all they want. They can protest for the right to mix eggnog in their goat milk, but it doesn’t stop them from looking like idiots.
Ah, so you make assumptions. Yes, the F-22 has yet to be fully commissioned, but you are painting everyone with the same brush, thus not lending anything to your argument. My point about PETA is that they lobby the US government like anyone else, and they only give money. They don’t direct where it goes, regardless of what they intend it for, nor do I argue the fact that Haliburton or LM have no political influence, in fact they did indeed have the most to gain from the current state of affairs. As far as the “Canadian Firm” goes, they manufacture flight control components and engine for multiple aircraft (I used the F-22 as a contemporary example) least of which, our CF-18s. Regardless of the amount of profit made from these components, profit is profit so they are just as liable because these flight components go into anything that has flight components associated with them; missiles, aircraft, helicopters, etc. My point of the example is that even something as inauspicious as a engineering firm can be considered as profiting from war. To your last point, about the WTO and WEF, they could not have prevented what has happened to the world economic situation. The people to blame are overzealous lenders (both Canadian and American) and the wildly fluctuating price of oil. Add a dash of media and you have a self-fulfilling prophesy, i.e.: recession.
The last time I checked, no militant group has ever run a concentration camp on the scale that was witnessed during WW2. Treaties and international laws were established and have been successful. We haven’t seen chemical warfare or biological warfare since then. There have been small, documented cases, but these have lead to international outrage and the perpetrators were swiftly brought to justice.
To you, they may look like idiots protesting, but at least they’re standing up for something they believe in and hoped to bring forth some light on a company which most people do not know about. I don’t see you counter protesting publicly, on the street.
The CF-18 falls under Boeing’s wings, so we can’t use it against Lockheed. While Boeing’s military arm brings in 56% of its income, it’s not on the same scale as Lockheed. Also, you have to note that Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems is a combination of its former “Military Aircraft and Missile Systems” and “Space and Communications” divisions. We don’t have a breakdown of how much of that 56% was MAMS and how much of it was SC. So roughly 1/2 of Boeing’s income comes from it’s Integrated Defense Systems and the other 44% come from its Commercial Aviation side. The same cannot be said for Lockheed. Lockheed’s sole existence is to create and sell weapons/weapons systems that kill people.
The economic problem that we’re experiencing today couldn’t and wouldn’t have been prevented by the WTO and WEF because they are useless entities! When has anything of use ever come from any of these meetings? These highly complex economic instruments were bought/sold internationally, so it wasn’t just lenders in Canada and US that were involved. Look at RBS, Iceland, and others that are feeling the effects. It wasn’t just oil and a dash of media. It was fraud on a world wide level which could have been prevented, but economic greed blinded those who were supposed to “regulate”.
While we’re speaking of war profiteering, you can find some interesting articles here:
http://www.warprofiteers.com/article.php?l…
I don’t know who is responsible for the site, but it’s a source of information. Take what you want from it, and with some research, form your own opinion.
Let’s blow up the protesters. Heck send them to Afghanistan to protest, and then blow them up.