Making a Killing: Corporate Arms Makers and Ukraine with William Hartung

March 22, 2022Posted inForeign Policy, Materialism and Economics, politics

In December, the Pentagon got a $768 billion budget approved, despite the withdrawal from Afghanistan, with the aim to counter China and build Ukraine’s military strength. This has been a bonanza for arms makers like Raytheon, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Northrup Gruman.

Listen in: apple.co/3qn4ELx

Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes popped the champagne open when saying “…[W]e are seeing, I would say, opportunities for international sales. We just have to look to last week where we saw the drone attack in the UAE, which have attacked some of their other facilities. And of course, the tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.”

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we saw a spike in these companies’ stock prices.

In our latest episode, we talk about arms manufacturers with William Hartung of the Quincy Institute. We discuss how the war in Ukraine, potential conflict in the South China Sea and wars in Yemen and other parts of the world are critical to their business model. We also talk about how the bureaucracy of the Pentagon and Washington D.C. gives these companies so much influence.

The Limits of Power: Donald J. Trump

February 2, 2021Posted inUncategorized

cross-posted from Afflict the Comfortable

by Bob Buzzanco

Mitch McConnell and Democratic Weakness produced Trump’s successes…….

Donald Trump, it seems, still reigns over the GOP and a good portion of the country.  Senators and representatives visit him to kiss his ring, the RNC is inviting him to speak at its upcoming conference, he and his supporters are unrepentant and still claiming victimhood.  He won’t go away.  The Monster, it seems, lives….

But Trump’s continued status is a continuation of his four years as president, built more on rhetoric, bluster, anger, and spectacle than the way he acted….because, in reality, Trump was far more limited in power than his supporters and, more importantly, his opponents ever recognized. If you want to compare him with evil historical figures, Charlie Manson and Jim Jones are much more appropriate than Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler.

Choosing Democracy with Direct Action Organizer Eileen Flanagan

January 24, 2021Posted inUncategorized

In our latest episode, we have a lively discussion with Eileen Flanagan (@eileenflanagan) of Choose Democracy about mass organizing efforts to defend democracy from Trump.

Listen here: https://bit.ly/DemocracyGandR

We discuss their efforts to recruit and prepare thousands to hit the streets, taking advantage of “cracks” in ruling class institutions, like Wall Street and the military, and turning anxiety about Trump remaining in power into action.  We also discussed longer term organizing efforts around climate justice and challenging white supremacy.

Hysteria about Fascism and Coups Hurt the Left

November 18, 2020Posted inUncategorized

cross-posted from Afflict the Comfortable

by Prof. Robert Buzzanco

Since 1/20/2017 huge numbers of people, liberals and on the Left alike, have been adamant, and often apoplectic, that Trump was guiding the U.S. toward fascism, that he was the new American Hitler, and that his followers were Nazis.  More recently, we’ve been inundated with increasingly-panicked warnings that a coup was imminent because he was unlikely to win the election fairly or he’d refuse to leave office if he lost.

And we’re not just being told that Trump is a fascist. Some people on the Left have gone further and insisted that nobody should even question that perspective, that fact–as they see it. The most extreme, unhinged example of attacking coup skeptics was probably Counterpoint’s feature write Paul Street, who shrieked that “any asshole ‘radical left’ douchebag who goes around posting and publishing denialist bullshit based on the absence of full on parallels with the Third Reich disgraces themselves and pollutes the discourse with ahistorical drivel.” I guess then I’ll cop to being a disgraceful polluter.