OMNI
MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL (CONGRESSIONAL) COMPLEX NEWSLETTER #2, August 19, 2013. Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of
Peace. (#1 Feb. 19, 2012).
My blog: It's the War
Department
Newsletters:
Index:
See: Imperialism, Militarism,
Pentagon, Pentagon: Suicides, Pentagon:
Whistleblowing, and more.
See:
Military-corporate….., National Security,
Pentagon, and the many other related newsletters.
“I wonder how the foreign
policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national
boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children
everywhere as our own.” Howard Zinn
“Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the
most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every
other. War is the parent of armies; from
these proceed debts and taxes. . . .”
James Madison, “Political Observations,”
April 20, 1795.
It would be
awesome if Rebekah could hammer Womack on his support for Citizens United &
Corporate Personhood. He openly endorsed
this democracy-eroding institution in line with Romney (despite 85% of
Americans opposing that ruling in a 2010 Washington
Post poll). In my mind, the issue
of democracy vs. corporate rule is the most fundamental. Until we eliminate the massive corporate
campaign financing and the army of corporate lobbyists, progress on all the
other issues is nearly insurmountable.
Cheers! Abel
For
earlier analysis see James R. Bennett, Control
of Information in the United States: An Annotated Bibliography (1987) and Control of the Media. . . (1992).
Contents #1
Ike’s MIC Speech
Ledbertter,
Eisenhower and the MIC
Hartung,
Lockheed Martin
De Rugy, “Today we are living
Ike's nightmare.”
Kaul, “We’re the
most war-prone people on earth.”
CodePink Protest
Contents #2
Corporations-Pentagon-Congress-White
House-Mainstream Media-Empire Complex
Meier and
Martin: Weapons Industry Promotes
Weapons Via Video Games
Neff and
Price: Blackwater’s Hand Slapped
Danielle
Ivory: BP Contracts Suspended
Weissman, Oil
Companies and Pentagon
Gainza:, Nationalize
the US
Swanson, MIC
(+C, MM, E) at 50
Turse, Why the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives
Giroux,
Military-Academic Complex
Google Search
Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and
ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for change.
Weapons Makers Using Video Games to Promote Products
Barry Meier, Andrew Martin, The New York Times , RSN, Dec. 26, 2012
Meier and Martin report: "Makers of firearms and related gear have come to see video games as a way to promote their brands to millions of potential customers."
READ MORE http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/43-43/15238-weapons-makers-using-video-games-to-promote-products
Barry Meier, Andrew Martin, The New York Times , RSN, Dec. 26, 2012
Meier and Martin report: "Makers of firearms and related gear have come to see video games as a way to promote their brands to millions of potential customers."
READ MORE http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/43-43/15238-weapons-makers-using-video-games-to-promote-products
Blackwater Fined $7.5
Million, Dodges Prosecution
Joseph Neff and
Jay Price, McClatchy Newspapers , August 9, 2012, RSN
Excerpt:
"The company agreed to pay a fine of up to $7.5 million and entered a
deferred prosecution agreement that will essentially expire after three years
of good corporate behavior. Only the corporation admitted wrongdoing; no
executives, including former owner Erik Prince, were held individually
responsible."
BP Has More Than $2 Billion in Defense Awards Set to
Expire By Danielle Ivory - Nov 30, 2012
BP Plc (BP/), suspended from winning new U.S.
government contracts for its role in the biggest oil
spill in the nation’s
history, has military deals with a potential value of more than $2 billion set
to expire in the next two years.
The
British oil
company has at least
11 awards that will be up for competition, said Mimi Schirmacher, a spokeswoman
for the Defense Logistics Agency, which buys most of the Pentagon’s fuel.
Nov. 28
(Bloomberg) -- BP Plc, which pleaded guilty to criminal charges after the worst
U.S.
The
defense agency has no plans to apply for a waiver so it can continue to award
contracts to BP, Schirmacher said in an e- mail. The office “anticipates
receiving offers from other suppliers to fill future requirements,” Schirmacher
said.
While
she didn’t say when the contracts would be opened for bidding, agencies
typically make big awards months to years before the expiration dates. The
existing agreements may be valued at as much as $2.43 billion, according to
data compiled by Bloomberg.
Eight of
the 11 contracts will expire before the end of the 2013 fiscal year,
Schirmacher said.
Robert
Wine, a spokesman for London-based BP, declined to comment. BP
shares rose 0.1 percent to 431.60 pence in London
The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency on Nov. 28 temporarily banned the company from
winning new federal awards due to a “lack of business integrity” in the 2010
Deepwater Horizon well blowout in the Gulf
of Mexico. BP on Nov. 15 agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges
after the worst oil spill in U.S.
BP
Awards
BP was
the Defense Department’s biggest fuel supplier in 2011, the year following the
Gulf explosion. That year, it won awards valued at about $1.35 billion, a surge
of 33 percent from $1.02 billion in the previous year, according to data
compiled by Bloomberg.
The EPA
didn’t say how long the ban would be in place, though suspensions generally
last for fewer than 18 months or until the end of legal proceedings. BP and the
government are still in a dispute over civil charges.
The
temporary ban doesn’t affect existing contracts. BP won 22 contracts from the Defense Logistics Agency in fiscal 2011, according to
Schirmacher.
Contract
Competition
Among
the companies that might benefit from BP’s suspension are San Antonio,
Texas-basedValero Energy (VLO) Corp.,
San Ramon, California-based Chevron (CVX) Corp.,
and the Hague, Netherlands-based Royal Dutch Shell Plc. (RDSA) The firms are top suppliers to the
U.S. military, the world’s single largest consumer of energy excluding
countries.
BP
received 49 percent more in defense contracts in that year than the No. 2 fuel
supplier, Valero Energy. The third- largest recipient of the contracts was
Kuwait National Petroleum Co., followed by Shell, Miami-based World Fuel Services Corp. (INT) and Chevron.
The
company on Nov. 15 reached a settlement with the Justice
Department, agreeing to pay $4.5 billion to end all criminal charges
and resolve securities claims relating to the Gulf explosion. At the time, the
company said it hadn’t been advised of any U.S.
BP
produces about 770,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day in the U.S. U.S.
Steve Weissman |
Rethinking the Military-Industrial Complex
Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News 15 August 13
Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News 15 August 13
Weissman writes: "Major oil companies are top Pentagon suppliers, I know, but selling fuel to the military is not why they try to control the lion's share of the world's oil and natural gas. Nor do most people have the oil companies in mind when they talk of the military-industrial complex."
READ MORE
NATIONALIZE
THE WEAPONS INDUSTRY
4
Space Alert! December 2012
By
Joseph Gainza
“At the end of
the day, it’s about
business,” Jeff
Johnson, a Boeing executive, says about continuing foreign
sales of its
F–15 jet fighter. Johnson
was quoted in
a Feb. 2011 Fortune
Magazine article titled “America
Hottest Export:
Weapons.” Weapons
design,
production and sales is about
business, and
that is a problem.
During the third
presidential debate
President Obama
said the US
more on its
military than the “next
ten nations
combined.” Actually, in
FY 2011 it was more like the next 14
nations combined, not counting the
wars in iraq
and afghanistan
weapons production is big business,
very big business, such big business
that even the Pentagon cannot get
Congress to cancel an outmoded or
underperforming weapon system
when doing so
would lose jobs in
the districts of
powerful congress
members or
result in loss of profit for
weapons makers.
President (and
General) Dwight
Eisenhower,
three days before leaving
office, warned
his “fellow citizens”
against the huge
and growing power
of the
“military/industrial complex.”
He edited out
his original inclusion
of Congress in
that phrase; too bad as
it is more
accurate. Today he would
need to include
the Executive branch,
as US diplomats
serve as sales representatives for weapons manufacturers
around the
globe, as was confirmed
in diplomatic
cables released by
Wikileaks. President Obama has made
such sales a
cornerstone of his economic recovery policy.
major channels
through which they
can sell major
weaponry to foreign
countries:
foreign military sales,
whereby the
Pentagon negotiates a
government-to-government
agreement, and direct commercial sales,
which
manufacturers negotiates directly with the purchasing country
and must receive
a licensure from the
State Department.
Either way, weapons corporations make a lot of money.
The government
also transfers arms
to other
countries by giving away
weapons from
overstocked US
prices. These
transfers are managed
by the Defense Department.
Loren Thompson,
described in the
Fortune article
as “a veteran defense
consultant,”
discussing the surge
in weapons
exports under Obama,
says, “It’s
about US alliances, it’s
about
maintaining jobs, and it’s about
and what you
have to do to maintain
that role.” That
about sums it up: the
demands of Empire combined with the
business of arms sales drive the system.
They make for a bloated military
budget, which sucks resources away
from programs to rebuild infrastructure,
serve human need, stop environmental destruction, build a carbon
and nuclear free energy economy,
and put this country on a sustainable
path. Empire and corporate profits
monopolize all discussion about “national
security” as if healthy, educated
people, a functioning democracy and
a livable planet were not essential to
the nation’s future.
let’s pretend
that everyone in the
US only cares
about the economy, the
federal deficit
and taxes—listening to
the debates it
certainly seemed that is
how Mr. Obama
and Mr. Romney saw
it. So, if our
only concern is money and
jobs then we
should be very concerned
about the fact
that profit for weapons
manufacturers
has such a large influence on US
according to the
Sustainable Defense Task Force, “The Department
of Defense (DoD)
is one of only a few
federal agencies
that cannot pass, nor
even stand for,
the test of an independent auditor. Among this handful of
errant agencies,
DoD is both the worst
offender and the
most consistent.”
the task force,
created by republican and Democratic members of Congress, quotes the DoD
inspector General
as finding that
the weaknesses in the
Department’s
financial system “affect
the safeguarding
of assets, proper use
of funds, and
impair the prevention
and
identification of fraud, waste and
abuse.” the
acting inspector General
of the US
11, 2010)
concurred, saying that these
weaknesses
“adversely affect the reliability of DoD’s financial data” as well
as “the economy,
efficiency, and effectiveness of its operations.” The Task
force went on to
say that until the Pentagon gets its financial management in
order, something
it has not done in over
20 years, it
cannot “know how well its
expenditures
track the national security
objectives laid
down by the President
and congress.”
it reports that the
General
Accounting Office found that
“major weapons
programs are suffering
$300 billion in
cost overruns,” and adds
that “the number
of weapons programs
exhibiting one
or more characteristic
problems—over
budget, late in delivery, less capability than expected—has
steadily risen.”
This level of
mismanagement
in the Pentagon
suggests
corruption is rampant.
The revolving
door between
t h e P e n t a g o n
and plush jobs
in the “defense”
industry
contributes to the
suspicion that
sweet deals are
part of doing
business. is it
just coincidence
t h a t B o e i n g ’ s
head of business
development for
military
aircraft,
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey
kohler, used to
run the Pentagon
agency that
oversees arms
exports?
in the
capitalist system, a
business must
increase its
sales
and profits
every
year or it loses
investors.
Weapons makers are no
different and so
US
sales are
skyrocketing. as the Fortune
article states,
“foreign arms sales, once
viewed as icing
on the cake, are now
the focus of the
industry’s growth
strategy.” this
reliance runs in both
directions. The
chairman of the President’s Export
council, the principal
national
advisory committee on international trade, is W. James McNerney,
President and
Chief Executive Officer
of Boeing.
While there are
complex strategies
behind US
the desire of
the Empire to have allies
take on greater
“peace keeping” burdens, the drive for weapons sales is as
much about profit as about geopolitical strategy.
they feed off each other.
take the profit
out of the equation
and the
justification for huge sales of
weapons becomes
stark: the needs of
Empire require it.
Imperial
domination predates the
modern
military/industrial complex,
but, as it is
today, the drive for markets
and profits in
the 19th and early 20th
centuries was
behind US
of this when he
declared: “I helped
in the raping of
half a dozen Central
American
republics for the benefit of
Wall Street.”
Nationalizing the “defense industry” would not get us where we need
to be as a
member of the global community. But it would reduce much
of the pressure
for ever-increasing
military budgets
and perhaps clear
the fog, which
surrounds military procurement and policy decisions.
If we take profit-making out of the
design and production of weapons,
fire the hundreds of corporate lobbyists
and eliminate their “campaign
contributions,” we remove much of the
incentive for the US
arms dealer, accounting for 30% of the
world’s weapons exports.
Public ownership
could establish a
disincentive for
the development of
weapons systems
to replace systems
already the most
lethal in the world.
Nationalizing
the weapons industry
might also
provide a more level playing field for disarmament advocates
to persuade our
elected officials that
the greatness
and security of the US
cannot be found
in the barrel of a gun.
—Joseph Gainza is a founding member
of Vermont
Action for Peace and lives in
The Military Industrial Complex at 50
By -
Posted on 20 December 2011
This
book is the most comprehensive collection available explaining what the
military industrial complex (MIC) is, where it comes from, what damage it does,
what further destruction it threatens, and what can be done and is being done
to chart a different course.
Authors from within and without the MIC include: Ellen Brown • Paul Chappell • Helena Cobban • Ben Davis • Jeff Fogel • Bunny Greenhouse • Bruce Gagnon • Clare Hanrahan • John Heuer • Steve Horn • Robert Jensen • Karen Kwiatkowski • Judith Le Blanc • Bruce Levine • Ray McGovern • Wally Myers • Robert Naiman • Gareth Porter • Chris Rodda • Allen Ruff • Mia Austin Scoggins • Tony Russell • Lisa Savage • Mary Beth Sullivan • Coleman Smith • Dave Shreve • David Swanson • Pat Elder • Jonathan Williams • Ann Wright (Read short bios of authors.)
Buy the paperback at Better World Books, 100Fires, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powells, other sellers, or your local independent bookstore, which can order it through Ingram. (The list price is $25.)
Or you can get 10 copies for $100, or 50 copies for $400, or more (all with free shipping) here.
Donate free books to nonprofit educational groups.
Buy the iPad/iPhone version at the iBookstore.
Authors from within and without the MIC include: Ellen Brown • Paul Chappell • Helena Cobban • Ben Davis • Jeff Fogel • Bunny Greenhouse • Bruce Gagnon • Clare Hanrahan • John Heuer • Steve Horn • Robert Jensen • Karen Kwiatkowski • Judith Le Blanc • Bruce Levine • Ray McGovern • Wally Myers • Robert Naiman • Gareth Porter • Chris Rodda • Allen Ruff • Mia Austin Scoggins • Tony Russell • Lisa Savage • Mary Beth Sullivan • Coleman Smith • Dave Shreve • David Swanson • Pat Elder • Jonathan Williams • Ann Wright (Read short bios of authors.)
Buy the paperback at Better World Books, 100Fires, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powells, other sellers, or your local independent bookstore, which can order it through Ingram. (The list price is $25.)
Or you can get 10 copies for $100, or 50 copies for $400, or more (all with free shipping) here.
Donate free books to nonprofit educational groups.
Buy the iPad/iPhone version at the iBookstore.
Get any
of these versions for $8 right here:
Kindle:
Kindle:
Epub:
PDF:
Audio
book (mp3):
The MIC kills large numbers of people, endangers us, hollows out
our economy, transfers our wealth to a tiny elite, devastates the natural
environment, and threatens civil liberties, the rule of law, and representative
government.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower found the nerve in his farewell speech in 1961 to articulate one of the most prescient, potentially valuable, and tragically as yet unheeded warnings of human history:
President Dwight D. Eisenhower found the nerve in his farewell speech in 1961 to articulate one of the most prescient, potentially valuable, and tragically as yet unheeded warnings of human history:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and
will persist.
“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
This
collection shows that the “total influence” of the MIC has increased, the
disastrous rise of misplaced power is no longer merely a potential event, our
liberties and democratic processes are in a state of collapse, and that Ike
himself disastrously misinformed the citizenry when he claimed that the very
monster he warned of had been “compelled” by the need for “defense.”
Front Cover: PDF
Front Cover: PDF
·
The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives
By
Nick Turse
An
eye-opening investigation of the all-pervasive, presence of the Pentagon in
daily life -- a real-world Matrix come alive.
Here is
the new, hip, high-tech military-industrial complex -- an omnipresent,
hidden-in-plain-sight system of systems that penetrates all our lives. Mapping
out what should more properly be called the Military-Industrial-Technological-Entertainment-Scientific-Media-Intelligence-Corporate
Complex, historian Nick Turse demonstrates just how extensively the
Pentagon, through its little-noticed contacts (and contracts) with America's
major corporations, has taken hold of the nation.
From iPods
to Starbucks coffee to Oakley sunglasses, Turse investigates the remarkable
range of military incursions into the civilian world: the Pentagon's
collaborations with Hollywood filmmakers, its
outlandish schemes to weaponize the wild kingdom, its joint ventures with the
World Wrestling Federation and NASCAR. He shows the inventive ways the
military, desperate for new recruits, now targets children and young adults,
tapping into the "culture of cool" by making 'friends' on MySpace.
A striking
vision of a brave new world of remote-controlled rats and super-soldiers who
need no sleep, The Complex will change our understanding of the militarization
of America
·
About DV
·
Archives
·
Donate
Breaking the Chains,
A Review of Henry Giroux’s The University in Chains: Confronting
the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex
“Of all the enemies of public liberty war is perhaps the most to
be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other . . . No
nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
– James Madison, “Political Observations,” 1795
“God is pro-war”
–Jerry Falwell, 2004
The ways in which a stark
and dreadful militarization permeates and impacts US and global culture is
evidenced by even a cursory examination of recent news reports and events. For
example, the film “300,” a xenophobic celebration of hyper-masculine
militarized mass killing and brutality, was the number one DVD rental last week1;
“The Bourne Ultimatum,” a film rooted in CIA torture, deceit, assassination and
espionage, was last week’s top grossing box-office film2; Congressional Research Reports for
the People estimates
Congress has approved roughly $610 billion for the military operations
instituted since 9/113;
the House approved a $459.6 billion Pentagon budget for 2008 (not including
supplemental spending on Iraq and Afghanistan or nuclear weapons programs
through the DOE that would push the figure well-beyond $600 billion)4; Just Foreign Policy reported one million Iraqis killed (as
of August 11, 2007) as a consequence of the US aggression initiated in March
20035;
The New Yorker’s most read online article last week was
“The Black Sites: a rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program6;
the Air Force announced that “hunter-killer” unmanned drones “loaded” with “a
ton and a half of guided missiles and bombs, known as ‘The Reaper,’” will soon
be headed to the grim killing fields in Iraq and Afghanistan7;
“Operation Straight Up,” a right-wing apocalyptic Christian evangelical troupe,
will embark on a Defense Department endorsed “Military Crusade in Iraq,” to
push “End Times theology” on US troops and deliver “an encouraging word from
God to press on to victory8;
the Bush Administration proposed to send $63 billion in military aid and
weapons to the most volatile region in the world, the Middle East9;
the Senate passed an enhanced surveillance bill that includes few safeguards to
protect US citizens from spying while oversight is placed into the hands of
Bush Administration henchmen Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell,
and sycophant Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, etc., etc., etc.
This creeping militarization across economics, religion, politics and culture functions as a form of public pedagogy that conditions and directs our values, attitudes, beliefs, desires, allegiances, identities and identifications and is thus a matter of serious interest for those concerned about public education, the direction of knowledge, and meaningful democratic politics in their wider applications. The penetration of matters military into all corners of our social and cultural lives C. Wright Mills referred to as “military metaphysics — the cast of mind that defines . . . reality as basically military.”
This creeping militarization across economics, religion, politics and culture functions as a form of public pedagogy that conditions and directs our values, attitudes, beliefs, desires, allegiances, identities and identifications and is thus a matter of serious interest for those concerned about public education, the direction of knowledge, and meaningful democratic politics in their wider applications. The penetration of matters military into all corners of our social and cultural lives C. Wright Mills referred to as “military metaphysics — the cast of mind that defines . . . reality as basically military.”
When our reality and “cast of mind” are essentially defined
militarily, how, we might ask, are we impacted as political, social,
intellectual and cultural beings? How can we engage this “military metaphysics”
in ways that aid us in developing tools for thinking critically about the
causes, agents and effects of militarism, and the concomitant forces of
capitalist corporatism, and, more importantly, how can we use that critical
understanding toward collective work that will transform the institutions
responsible for the militarization and corporatization of US politics and
culture? That militarization and corporatism will impact our political and
personal lives in multiple ways, perhaps critical, is a stark and inescapable
reality that must be confronted, sooner rather than later, with all of our
intellectual, moral and political energy. These issues and questions, and much
more, are at the core of Henry Giroux’s latest book The
University in Chains, a rigorous interrogation and relentless critique of the corporate,
military and right-wing forces assaulting the academy (and beyond) in the
United States, as well as an insightful and imaginative explication of how we might take-on the challenge of developing a
meaningful democratic political culture and substantive democratic public
spheres as part of a larger collective project dedicated to transforming the
conditions and institutions that currently dominate so much, and threaten so
many, of our lives. [Chap. 4, “Breaking
the Chains: A Strategy to Retake the Univeristy.” –Dick]
Many readers will find it surprising that what they consider a
bastion of free inquiry, objective thought and unbiased research, i.e. the
university system, is a key institution in US culture in which this “military
metaphysics” is increasingly present and influential; it is becoming, in John
Armitage’s apt phrase, a “hypermodern militarized knowledge factory.”10 The militarizing factory system of
university education not only includes “150 military education institutions in
the United States” but also hundreds of university sites in which richly
Pentagon-funded and directed research and development is pursued, military
personnel (and others) develop the values and tools of the “warfare state,” and
students undertake programs of study in preparation for service to “departments
and agencies” of the warrior state.
The Association of American Universities has argued, “The nation
must cultivate young talent and orient national economic, political, and
education systems” to achieve the mutually linked goals of expanding global
markets for US corporations and for victory in the war on terrorism.11 That
this pursuit of military superiority and corporate domination through the
university system of research and development goes largely unchallenged by
academics, as well as society in general, should be a source of profound
concern and pointed critique.
The militarization of
the university is present in many guises. For example, former CIA director and
president of Texas A&M, and current Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, is
just one small indicator of how the “US security state” (a nexus of political,
military and corporate power and interests) is penetrating the university
system. Giroux shares a telling anecdote from Cary Nelson who was asked by the
UCSD provost, a former CIA employee, during an evaluation of the English
Department, “if it were true the literature department would only hire
communist faculty?” The question was not a joke! Nor is it a joke, as noted by
the Wall Street Journal,
that the CIA has become a “growing force on campus,” or that FBI director
Robert Mueller has a desire “to foster exchanges between academia and the FBI,”
or, how “the secrecy imposed on scholars working for the CIA” sabotages
interrogation of prevailing notions, critiques of conventional wisdom, and
challenges to power and authority and thus is “antithetical to the notion of
the university as a democratic sphere” dedicated to critical debate, discussion
and dialogue.
But why is it a problem if professors and universities are in
league with US intelligence agencies and the militarized state? Should not the
university be disciplined in a post 9/11 world to produce a public discourse in
support of US domination of the globe through military might, the eradication
of a socialist leaning New Deal society, and encourage a blurring between
church and state,” all in the name of freedom of inquiry and the spread of
democracy? While some do believe the university should “be disciplined” in
these directions (witness ACTA — the right-wing “American Council of Trustees”
— and their denunciation of the academy as a “weak link” in the war on terror,
the recent firing of Ward Churchill, or, the Senate Committee bill passed in
Arizona that calls for a $500 fine if professors are caught “advocating one
side of a social, political, or cultural issue that is a matter of partisan
controversy,” etc.), Giroux describes how this marriage between the academy and
the militarized state surrenders “the idea of the university as a site of
critical dialogue and debate, public service and socially responsible research”
to the pursuit of military aggression, profit enhancement, right-wing
ideologies and global political and economic power.
In short, the university as an institution potentially dedicated
to a substantive democratic culture, critical inquiry and the public good is
transmogrified into a repressive sycophant “complicit with a larger set of
institutional…commitments to war, violence, fear, surveillance, and the erosion
of civic society . . .” Given this “clash of imperatives,” we should consider
“what the role of higher education might be [or should be]” when “the
government has a free hand to do whatever it wants in the name of national
security,” (Dave Price)12 and
reflect on how we might guard intellectual and moral integrity.
President Eisenhower’s oft-cited 1961 warning that “we must guard
against . . . the military-industrial complex . . . [because] the disastrous
rise of misplaced power . . . will . . . endanger our liberties [and]
democratic processes,” also included a call to protect the universities from
the stark evils of militarization. Eisenhower feared that war and violence
would become the organizing principle of society and thus threaten not only
democracy but the very idea of, and occasion for, politics. If politics, in
brief, is defined as the way we organize ourselves in society around matters of
human life, but we develop a society rooted in “military metaphysics” that is
dominated by and organized around militarization, i.e. a dreadful structural
machine that functions largely to produce profits, death and destruction, we
undermine our possibilities for enhancing and protecting human life and thus
destroy the possibility of real politics.
Before delivery, Eisenhower excised the phrase
“military-industrial-academic complex” from his speech, but still warned that
“the free university . . . free ideas and scientific discovery” as well as
“intellectual curiosity” were threatened by “the power of money” working in the
interest of the militarization of US society and profits for the arms industry.
Senator William Fulbright retrieved the excised phrase later in the 1960s, at
the height of the US attack
on Vietnam US
While it seems clear that values promoting substantive democratic
practices and structures along with a democratic public spirit should be at the
core of university and public education, “few in power,” in Andrew Bacevich’s
words, “have openly considered whether…cultivating permanent global military
superiority might be at odds with American principles.” One suspects those in
power have other interests to occupy their time. Those other interests include
producing an authoritarian politics, privatizing the economy, and employing and
expanding an aggressive military machine that develop ever greater control and
influence over who lives and who dies, and who wins and who loses, along with
increased powers to exclude or include, to eviscerate civil rights, and to
subvert democratic social values. Giroux argues persuasively that totalitarian
power is becoming the norm in the US
One consequence of this accelerated militarization is a dual
politics of disposability “shaped by the forces of empire,” witnessed on the
one hand in “legalized” abuse, torture, rendition and murder, and on the other
hand in the impunity from punishment enjoyed by those responsible for these
brutal policies. In short, power brings impunity, and impunity protects power.
Under conditions in which militarism and war serve as structuring forces in the society, violence, militarization and aggression, at least for the rulers, functions as “a source of pride rather than alarm.” We should consider the impact on the rest of us when, in Michael Geyer’s words, “civil society organizes itself for the production of violence.” AcrossUS
Under conditions in which militarism and war serve as structuring forces in the society, violence, militarization and aggression, at least for the rulers, functions as “a source of pride rather than alarm.” We should consider the impact on the rest of us when, in Michael Geyer’s words, “civil society organizes itself for the production of violence.” Across
A number of questions arise: How do we work through the tension
between public opinions and attitudes that are generally opposed to military
aggression, torture and mass violence, and the increasing militarization of
“values, practices, ideologies, social relations and cultural representations”
that works to not only merge politics and violence, but recode our memories and
direct our experiences? How do we reverse the transition from the “welfare
state,” that at least recognizes some notion of a social contract in which we
are responsible for one another, to the “warfare state,” that thwarts dissent,
debilitates public debate, enforces moral absolutes, celebrates aggression, and
thus undermines participatory democracy? How do we overcome the capacity of the
militarized state to both create “a disconnected hardening of individuals to
suffering,” and to erase from view the massive trauma, brutality and barbaric
destruction imposed by the US machine of death abroad? What is the proper
response among academics when dissent is seen as unpatriotic and critical
citizenship is considered treasonous under conditions in which militarism
conditions and directs not only our perceptions of reality but the ways in
which we relate with that reality?
These and other questions, offered or intimated by Giroux, must be
critically engaged during a historical period in which the United States spends
more on the military than the rest of the world combined, is the world’s
greatest purveyor of deadly arms, is dedicated to illegal military aggression
against anyone, anytime and anywhere, and is “enthralled with [a] military
power [that] has become central to our national identity,” while our massive
arsenal of highly destructive weapons signifies “who we are and what we stand
for.” (Bacevich)
Nick Turse reports that roughly “350 colleges and universities conduct Pentagon funded research.” The Pentagon’s economic and ideological power “can often dictate the sorts of research that get undertaken and the sorts that don’t.” Giroux refers to the enormous power and burgeoning budget of the Pentagon’s military apparatus as possessing a “powerful arm-twisting ability capable of bending higher education to its will,” that is an “ominous and largely ignored disaster in the making . . . ” In short, because of Pentagon power within the academy there is a dedication toward “delivering science and technology solutions to the warfighter.” For example, in 2003 Penn State received $149 million from “the military war machine,” for research and development, while the University of Texas received $87 million, and Carnegie Mellon $60 million often to support research in space-based weapons systems, including “microwave guns, space-based lasers, electromagnetic guns, and holographic decoys,” and Future Combat Systems such as “electric tanks, electro-thermal chemical cannons, [and] unmanned platforms.” (Jay Reed)
Nick Turse reports that roughly “350 colleges and universities conduct Pentagon funded research.” The Pentagon’s economic and ideological power “can often dictate the sorts of research that get undertaken and the sorts that don’t.” Giroux refers to the enormous power and burgeoning budget of the Pentagon’s military apparatus as possessing a “powerful arm-twisting ability capable of bending higher education to its will,” that is an “ominous and largely ignored disaster in the making . . . ” In short, because of Pentagon power within the academy there is a dedication toward “delivering science and technology solutions to the warfighter.” For example, in 2003 Penn State received $149 million from “the military war machine,” for research and development, while the University of Texas received $87 million, and Carnegie Mellon $60 million often to support research in space-based weapons systems, including “microwave guns, space-based lasers, electromagnetic guns, and holographic decoys,” and Future Combat Systems such as “electric tanks, electro-thermal chemical cannons, [and] unmanned platforms.” (Jay Reed)
Giroux suggests that those working in the “hypermodern militarized
knowledge factories” should ask a number of critical and ‘uncomfortable” questions:
“What role do intellectuals play in the conditions that allow theory and
knowledge to be appropriated [ . . . in ways that] produce lethal weapons, fuel
an arms race . . . and corrupt ethical standards…and what can they do
politically to prevent [ . . . their work] from being militarized . . .?” And
crucially, how do opposition and resistance to militarization in the academy
“connect to [public intellectual] work and extend [students’ and teachers’]
sense of social and political responsibility to the world outside of the
academy?” One vital task for intellectuals is to employ critical pedagogical
practices that promote ethical citizenship, encourage a willingness to take
risks and responsibilities for a more substantive democracy, and “connect knowledge
and power in the interests of social responsibility and justice.”
The University in Chains, is an intellectually rigorous and
politically challenging contribution to our understanding of US culture, US
politics and US education in our increasingly (and dangerously) militarized
society and world, and a careful examination
of the ways in which the capitalist market, the Pentagon-system, and right-wing
fundamentalism corrupt and condition the academy and culture. The University in Chains is a stunning tour-de-force that
meticulously examines how the multi-tiered and interpenetrating military,
corporate and right-wing assaults on the university undermine higher education
as a potentially and necessary democratic public sphere in which students and
teachers could, and should, develop a sense of individual and social agency in
the context of experiencing meaningful democratic social relations while
identifying, critiquing and working to overcome authoritarian forms of power
and authority.
Giroux writes with a clarity and urgency that is riveting and
engaging. He operates from a fundamental recognition, “the academy and democracy are in peril,” and from a decisive
question, “What is the task of educators at a time when the forces of democracy
appear to be in retreat and the emerging ideologies and practices of
militarization, corporatism, and political fundamentalism bear down on every
aspect of individual and collective experience?” In other words, what are the
responsibilities of public intellectuals during a period in which critical
thought, rational considerations, radical qualities of character, and a culture
of questioning, all necessary to authentic higher education and intellectual
creativity, are under assault by corporate, religious, ideological and economic
forces opposed to any form of substantive democratic politics and pedagogy?
What role can public intellectuals, whether professors or students, perform in
opening up the democratic potential of the university through “raising
important questions about the mutually informing relationship among higher
education, critical pedagogical practices, and the promise of a substantive
democracy”?
While “contestation and struggle” still exist (often in isolation)
in the academy, the university’s role as
a “counterinstitution,” willing to question assumptions, interrogate prevailing
notions, critique conventional wisdom, and, importantly, challenge and expose
power, has been considerably undermined by militarization, corporatism, and
right-wing “patriotically correct” fundamentalism. As such, teachers,
students and citizens must take on the individual and social responsibility
founded in the links between both critical thought and critical intervention,
and rigorous intellectual work and deliberate political engagement, to
invigorate the academy and “reclaim higher education as a democratic public
sphere and counterinstitution” in which civic responsibility, a culture of
critique, and a commitment to social engagement are rooted in a critical
democratic politics and pedagogy. A question attends these insights: in whose
interest, in what direction, with what goals, and with what likely consequences
should pedagogical work be carried out, inside and outside higher education?
Giroux argues that
higher education must move beyond the academy in ways that connect projects in
higher education to the “enabling and development of social movements, public
spheres, and groups of critical citizens” who recognize that in a globally
interconnected and interdependent world we can no longer refuse to confront
injustice, aggression, dogma and exploitation because no one is immune from the
harmful, and potentially catastrophic political, personal and social
consequences of militarization, corporatism and right-wing fundamentalism.
As part of a pressing process of “demilitarizing knowledge, social relations, and values,” intellectuals, students, cultural workers and citizens must move beyond the simple “consumption of knowledge” and embark on projects in oppositional and resistance pedagogy dedicated to knowledge “production for peaceful and socially just ends.” In brief, Giroux suggests, any form of peace-producing and substantive democratic education, inside and outside the academy, must work to link knowledge to commitment, learning to social change, understanding to political engagement, consciousness to empowerment and collective resistance, and the classroom to those larger social forces and public discourses that bear down on our lives in multiple contexts.
As part of a pressing process of “demilitarizing knowledge, social relations, and values,” intellectuals, students, cultural workers and citizens must move beyond the simple “consumption of knowledge” and embark on projects in oppositional and resistance pedagogy dedicated to knowledge “production for peaceful and socially just ends.” In brief, Giroux suggests, any form of peace-producing and substantive democratic education, inside and outside the academy, must work to link knowledge to commitment, learning to social change, understanding to political engagement, consciousness to empowerment and collective resistance, and the classroom to those larger social forces and public discourses that bear down on our lives in multiple contexts.
Such resistance, we can add, must be accomplished while working
through the tensions between patience and urgency. We must have the patience to
think rationally, reflect critically, deliberate meaningfully and free
ourselves from illusions during a period in which, as Gabriel Kolko points out,
“our choices are increasingly linked to their implications for human survival.”
Consequently, critically reflective patience, though important, cannot be
pursued at the expense of social engagement rooted in meaningful participation
and effective shaping of decisions directed toward the mobilization of
collective resistance to those forces intent on increasing social calamities
and human suffering. In other words, we must work to ensure that we do not lose
the future in the present, or the present in the future. Our safest path under
these conditions is to oppose and resist the “death dealing ideology [and
practices] of militarization,” capitalist corporatism, and dogmatism wherever
they exist and whenever we confront them by engaging and expanding pedagogical
practices that extend “notions of agency, empowerment, and responsibility that
operate in the service of life, democratic struggles, and the expansion of
human rights.”
There is no longer a question about whether we should resist and
oppose military aggression, ideological narrowness, and corporate
profit-seeking inside or outside the universities but how best to express our
resistance and opposition over the short and long-term, inside and outside the
academy. Corporatism, militarism, and fundamentalism operate in manifold ways
to shut-down hopes and possibilities, not least of which is their capacity to
debilitate dreams. The subversion of our capacity to imagine sabotages our
reality to live. A reality without dreams is barbarism, a barbarism witnessed
each day in the stark and dreadful consequences of US imperial pursuits.
Here is where Giroux’s
notion of “a pedagogy of hope,” as it links to critical thought and
imagination and critical intervention and citizenship, is vital and
informative. The growing culture of fear and paranoia, the constantly invoked
threats of terror, the intensifying cinema of hyper-violence and mutilation,
the creeping right-wing dogmatism, the silencing, marginalizing and firing of
dissidents in the academy, coupled with an absence of meaningful democratic
public options produce forms of demoralization, cynicism and despair that
undermine hopes and possibilities for engaged citizenship, social commitments
and fighting back. Addressing this “crisis of agency” is at the heart of
creating conditions for believing that a substantive democratic politics and
pedagogy toward critical citizenship is possible and recognizing they are
necessary. Giroux notes, “ . . . hope is a precondition not only for merging
matters of agency and social responsibility, but also for imagining a future
that does not repeat the present.” He notes elsewhere, in an interview with the
Media Education Foundation (www.mef.tv), “If we continue to reproduce the
present we may be reproducing a present that eliminates the future.” In
addition, we might add, if we permit the present to crush our dreams, we lose
the future. Hence, there is his call for an ethical and political vision,
commitment and practice that works to not only rigorously negotiate and understand
the complexities of history, and resolutely engage and change, so as not to
suffer, the present, but importantly “to take students beyond the world they
already know,” to one in which we not only “believe that democracy is desirable
and possible,” but necessary. At its best, Giroux reminds us, “Pedagogy does
not avoid commitment, it makes [commitment] possible!”
In the end, one is deeply inspired by Giroux’s impassioned concern
for human rights, meaningful democracy and the future, and empowered by his
critical insights into how we can break the chains and transform the university
into a substantive democratic public space committed to providing students and
global citizens with tools and skills to address our most urgent crises, to
critically understand how economic, ideological and military power works and
circulates through multiple sites of cultural production, distribution and
consumption, and, to intervene as empowered and self-critical agents in the
world in ways that expand and ensure the pursuit of greater and better
conditions of social justice and democracy.
The University in Chains should be essential reading for everyone inside and
outside the academy concerned with the increasing and foreboding militarization
of the world, the corporate takeover of every corner of human life, and the
narrowing ideological impositions of right-wing “super-patriot”
fundamentalists. The book moves crucially from critique to a call for
intervention and is therefore indispensable for those attentive to the need for
fighting back, as well as those interested in matters of public pedagogy,
public education, social justice, human rights, and producing a meaningful
democratic vision, culture and practice.
At a time in human history when the perils resulting from silence
and passivity in the face of destructive power and institutional malevolence
soon promise to outweigh the perils of confronting that power and evil,
Giroux’s call for a pedagogy of critical conviction, political engagement and
social intervention is imperative in the continuing struggle to overcome
practical political powerlessness, reclaim public space as a democratic sphere,
and break the chains of injustice and oppression.
The perpetuation of a highly destructive and potentially terminal
US militarism across so many spheres of our existence, in culture, politics,
ideology, economics and academia, part of the large-scale “process by which
civil society organizes itself for the production of violence,” (Geyer), all
captured so forcefully in Giroux’s The
University in Chains, calls to mind a “clash of imperatives” noted in the
1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto: “Here, then, is the problem which we present
to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human
race; or shall mankind renounce war?”13
* Related Article: The University in Chains: An Interview with Henry A.
Giroux, by Scott Jaschik
1.
See “Top United States DVD Rentals for the week ending 5 August
2007,” online at:www.imdb.com/boxoffice/rentals. [↩]
2.
See “Movie Box Office: August 3-5, 2007.” [↩]
3.
“The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on
Terror Operations Since 9/11,” Congressional Research Reports for
the People, June 28, 2007. [↩]
4.
Andrew Taylor, “House approves $460B Pentagon budget,”
Associated Press, August 5, 2007. Also see, Frida Berrigan, “Peace is not Presidential: The Candidates on the Pentagon,” Foreign Policy in Focus,
August 11, 2007. The “real Pentagon budget” is closer to $1 trillion dollars
per year when one includes all Military Related Expenditures such as nuclear
weapons, State Department international affairs, science and space research and
development, Veterans Administration, interest payments on debt accumulated
from past wars, Homeland Security, military retirements expenditures, and
intelligence agencies. See James M. Cypher, “From
Military Keynesianism to Global-Neoliberal Militarism,” Monthly Review, June 2007. [↩]
5.
See “Iraqi Deaths Due to US Invasion,” Just Foreign Policy. [↩]
6.
Jane Mayer, “The Black Sites,” The New Yorker, August 13,
2007. [↩]
7.
See “Pilotless Robot Bomber Squadron Heads for Afghanistan,
Iraq,” Associated Press, July 16, 2007. [↩]
8.
Max Blumenthal, “‘Kill or Convert,’ Brought to You by the Pentagon,” The Nation, August 8, 2007.
Also see, “Military
Crusade in Iraq.” [↩]
9.
William Hartung, “Myths of Mideast Arms Sales,” CommonDreams.org, August 7,
2007. [↩]
10.
Henry Giroux, The
University in Chains (Boulder
11.
Ibid. p.19. [↩]
12.
Ibid, p.24. [↩]
13.
“The Russell-Einstein Manifesto,” July 9, 1955.
[↩]
Scott Morris, Ph.D, is an Assistant Professor in the College of
Education and Technology at Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, NM, and an
outreach coordinator for the Radical
Philosophers Association. He can be reached at: dmorrisscott@yahoo.com. Read
other articles by Scott, orvisit Scott's website.
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comments on this article so far ...
Henry Giroux is one
of the most important cultural activists alive today. He helps me to better
understand a figure in my hown igher education circuit, Peter McPherson.
McPherson, the former President of Michigan State University (when he
simultaneously served as economic czar in Iraq for President Bush), has just
helped sell the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch in his new position as
Chairman of the Hoard of Dow Jones.That’s 2 failures he’s been a part of.
The Banker and former USAID chief (and close friend of Dick Cheney) is a very
active “revolving door” hegemonic intellectual. He helps influence the
privatization and militarization of higher education through his other current role
as President of the National Association of State Universities andLand Grant
Colleges
He has no Ph.D.
There’s a cultural war in our midst on campus but too many faculty are asleep at the wheel.
Chairman of the Hoard of Dow Jones.That’s 2 failures he’s been a part of.
The Banker and former USAID chief (and close friend of Dick Cheney) is a very
active “revolving door” hegemonic intellectual. He helps influence the
privatization and militarization of higher education through his other current role
as President of the National Association of State Universities and
He has no Ph.D.
There’s a cultural war in our midst on campus but too many faculty are asleep at the wheel.
For more information
about the U.S. military-industrial-university complex, including current
university ties to the Pentagon’s Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) weapons
research think-tank, you might be interested in checking out the following
link.–bob
http://bfeldman68.blogspot.com/2007/01/idas-university-connections-in-2005.html
http://bfeldman68.blogspot.com/2007/01/idas-university-connections-in-2005.html
GOOGLE
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Military–industrial complex, or military–industrial–congressional
complex, is a concept commonly used to refer to policy and monetary
relationships between ...
Etymology - Theory - History - Current
applications
2.
Eisenhower's
Neglected Warning - Consortiumnews
Jan 16, 2011 - Milton Eisenhower
explained that one of the drafts of the speech referred to the "military-industrial-Congressional
complex" and said that the ...
3.
Military Industrial Congress Complex
Eisenhower originally called it the Military-Industrial-Congress Complex (MICC), but abbreviated
the term. Canny weapons manufacturers have assembled ...
4.
Military-Industrial
Complex Speech,
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D.
Eisenhower, 1961 ... Our people expect their
President and the Congress to find essential
agreement on issues of ...
5.
Ending the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex | Common ...
Sep 11, 2007 - Until we rein in what
Eisenhower originally called the "military-industrial-congressional
complex," we will never have a peace-based economy.
6.
Military-industrial-congressional complex - The Free Dictionary
mil·i·tar·y-in·dus·tri·al complex (m l -t r - n-d s tr -
l). n. The aggregate of a nation's armed forces and the industries that supply their
equipment, materials, and ...
7.
Robert
Reich - Military Industrial Congressional Complex - YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ_1VtFQZJs
May 26, 2011 - Uploaded by karinmoveon
Robert Reich - Military Industrial
Congressional Complex - YouTube. Subscribe 31,894. Top
Comments ...
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Military/Industrial/Congressional Complex - - YouTube
Eisenhower - Military/Industrial Complex - Part 1 of 2.
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The Permanent Militarization of America - NYTimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2012/.../the-permanent-militarization-of-america.html?...
Nov 4, 2012 - The military-industrial complex has not emerged in quite
the way Eisenhower ... In fact, Congress's favorite argument
against reducing defense ...
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