World Peace Isn’t Worth War Profits

Most of that money ended up in the coffers of privately held corporations. In 2012, 37% of American’s taxes went towards paying for new and past wars, while only 2% went towards “Diplomacy, Development and War Prevention”.

Thanks to Privatization (a euphemism for selling off, and profiting off the Commons) more and more of the military establishment is being handled by private, for-profit corporations. Food service, laundry, camp deployment, and of course, building the machines that get blown up, scrapped, left behind (here, and here) or accidentally given to the enemy have all been privatized.

 

This is public money (personal income) taken by Government (taxes), and handed over to private for-profit corporations who earn profit from death, pure and simple. These companies, their executives and their shareholders literally have no interest in Peace.

World Peace isn’t being held back by politicians defending a country’s sovereignty, or religions defending their god, or people scared of skin colours, not any more. World Peace is being held back by a handful of extremely powerful corporate and economic leaders who profit from the machines of war.

In 2011, Lockheed Martin had Arm sales of $36.3 billion, or 78% of the company’s total 2011 sales. Boeing had arms sales of $31.8 billion and earned $4 billion – and, as always, managed to not pay any corporate tax.

Imagine how else that money could be used.

 

Here’s USA Today’s list of the top 10 war profiteer corporations, and Business Insider’s top 25 American “Defence” corporations.

The executives of these corporations sit on government task forces, committees, and of course finance major lobby groups to ensure their continued corporate success – just like any other Capitalist. Protecting (and defending) your market is just good business practice.

According to OpenSecrets.org, a web site that tracks corporate purchasing of politicians, Lockheed Martin spent almost $15million on lobbying the US Government, and gave over $4million in campaign “contributions.”

Apparently 70 out of 109 Lockheed Martin lobbyists in 2013-2014 have previously held government jobs.

According to citizensforethics.org, at least nine of the top-level U.S. generals and admirals who retired between 2009 and 2011 took positions with the five largest defence companies contracting with the government: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman.

Privatized militarized defence contracts and globalized corporations build the weapons while their majority shareholders use their political and media influence to sell the people on the need for war. Many of these companies hold controlling interest in the very media corporations that sell us the news to begin with…

Did you know that until 2013, General Electric Company, ranked 16th in the “Top-100 U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Prime Contractors in Fiscal Year (FY) 2013” also owned a controlling interest in NBC, one of American’s biggest media conglomerates? So they profit off building wars, profit off selling wars, profit off reporting wars, and profit off all the advertising sold during shows “discussing” wars.

Vertical Integration at its finest.

Conspiracy? Nope, Capitalism. Profit-above-people. Profit-above-peace.

Peace will never exist while the shareholders and employees of these cancerous corporations allow these corporations to profit off the deaths of millions of innocent people. The fact that these corporations pay no taxes back to the people just adds insult to idiocy.

While profit rules above people, peace and planet, while our governments continue to outsource their military interventions to private for-profit corporations, we can never truly have peace.

How can you help?

• If you own shares in any of these corporations, sell them.
• Shop local from small business instead of these large corporations and those that invest in them
• Join the growing movement to encourage divestment from military corporations
• Hug a stranger
• Quit the military