Thou Shalt Kill: A Lucrative Profession

[Bluegreen]

Here are some killer facts about weapons of mass destruction and the global arms trade, based on data collected by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), The Small Arms Survey, and The Uppsala Conflict Data Program. SIPRI estimates that the total value of the global arms trade in 2017 was at least $95 billion. Ironically, nobody wants to use these products.

• The top 100 arms companies made an estimated $398.2 billion worth of sales in 2017.
• The US accounted for 36 per cent of world military spending in 2018
• The US is by far the world’s biggest exporter of arms. Between 2014-2018 Saudi Arabia was the main recipient, accounting for 22 per cent of US exports

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...al-arms-trade/

. . . . . .

[Bluegreen]

Rogues Gallery - Merchants of Death

. . .

Rolls-Royce Holdings
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: -$1.52 billion
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $4.68 billion


Killer & CEO D. Warren East (Net worth: $5 million)


Booz Allen Hamilton
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $418.6 million
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $4.68 billion


Killer & CEO Horacio Rozanski (Net worth: $60.2 million)


Leidos
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $582 million
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $5 billion


Killer & CEO Roger Krone (Net worth: $22.1 million)


Northrop Grumman Corp.
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $3.23 billion
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $26.19 billion


Killer & CEO Kathy Warden (Net worth: $61.5 million)


Honeywell International
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $6.83 billion
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $5.43 billion


Killer & CEO Darius Adamczyk (Net worth: $45.6 million)

[Bluegreen]

Huntington Ingalls Industries
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $836 million
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $7.2 billion


Killer & CEO Mike Petters (Net worth: $113 million)


Raytheon Technologies
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $2.88 billion ($8.53 billion)
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $23.44 billion ($32.75 billion)


Killer & CEO Greg Hayes (annually: $23.5 million)


Thales UK/USA
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $4.2 billion
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $9.47 billion


Killer & CEO Patrice Caine (Net worth: N/A)


Killer & CEO Alan Pellegrini (Net worth: N/A)


Lockheed Martin Corp.
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $7.27 billion
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $47.26 billion


Killer & CEO James Taiclet Jr (Net worth: $30.2 million)


L-3 Technologies
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: N/A
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $13.23 billion


Killer & CEO Bill Brown (Net worth: $91.1 million)

[Wind]

Peace isn't good for business. Everyone's got to make a living somehow?

[Bluegreen]

General Dynamics Corp.
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $3.35 billion
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $22 billion


Killer & CEO Phebe Novakovic (Net worth: $23.1 million)


Leonardo
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $664.8 million
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $9.82 billion


Killer & CEO William J. Lynn III (Net worth: N/A)
Former Defense Dept official (Clinton, Obama), former Raytheon lobbyist, Atlantic Council member


Airbus Group
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $3.9 billion
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $11.65 billion


Killer & CEO Guillaume Faury (Net worth: $5 million)


BAE Systems
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $2.1 billion
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $21.21 billion


Killer & CEO Tom Arseneault (Net worth: N/A)


Boeing
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $19.64 billion
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $29.15 billion


Killer & CEO David Calhoun (Net worth: $24.5 million)

[Bluegreen]

These companies were established under the auspices of Russian President Vladimir Putin (Net worth: $70 billion).


United Shipbuilding Corp.
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $101 million
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $4.7 billion


Killer & CEO Alexei Rakhmanov (Net worth: N/A)


Almaz-Antei
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $1.79 million
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $9.64 billion


Killer & COB Viktor Ivanov (Net worth: N/A)


United Aircraft Corp.
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $348.1 million
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $5.42 billion


Killer & CEO Yury Borisovich Slyuvar (Net worth: N/A)



Sources
https://celebstrendnow.com/
https://wallmine.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/
https://journalnow.com/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money...-war/40902917/

[Kryztian]

Posted by Wind (here)
Peace isn't good for business. Everyone's got to make a living somehow?

They are not just "making a living". They are making a killing - and I'm not just talking about the s**tload of money they are raking in.

[atman]

A very lucrative profession indeed, that involves or is dependant upon the participation of many institutions, many revolving doors, many profiteers, many lobbyists, many workers (whose livelihood depend on it), as well as vast numbers of the population (as non-participants who are simply ignorant or who prefer to look the other way).

For example, in the United States:

The war-for-profit machine (that one could say is indicative of a spiritual disease) has been decried by many throughout the years, but the growth of the military-industrial complex has not only continued unabated, but has now reached even more obscene levels of profit, as brought to our attention by Bluegreen, above.

In his short book War Is A Racket, originally published in 1935, retired Major General Smedley D. Butler writes:

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

(Can be read and downloaded here)

[happyuk]

Posted by Bluegreen (here)
Huntington Ingalls Industries
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $836 million
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $7.2 billion


Killer & CEO Mike Petters (Net worth: $113 million)


Raytheon Technologies
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $2.88 billion ($8.53 billion)
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $23.44 billion ($32.75 billion)


Killer & CEO Greg Hayes (annually: $23.5 million)


Thales UK/USA
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $4.2 billion
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $9.47 billion


Killer & CEO Patrice Caine (Net worth: N/A)


Killer & CEO Alan Pellegrini (Net worth: N/A)


Lockheed Martin Corp.
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: $7.27 billion
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $47.26 billion


Killer & CEO Phebe Novakovic (Net worth: $23.1 million)


L-3 Technologies
• Profits for most recent fiscal year: N/A
• Arms and military services sales in 2018: $13.23 billion


Killer & CEO Bill Brown (Net worth: $91.1 million)

Isn't Phebe Novakovic the Chairwoman and Chief Executive Officer of General Dynamics, not Lockheed Martin?

It is James Taiclet Jr who is the CEO of Lockheed Martin.

I would disagree in calling these people murderers, that is far too simplistic.

The reality is that countries including many democracies need to be well-defended. The fundamental role of the UK defence industry is to supply our own armed forces, exports are vital for its survival. The UK defence industry could not be sustained by relying on the Ministry of Defence money alone.

The UK's defence industry includes anything from aircraft, warships, armoured vehicles, communications, radar, propulsion, munitions and support services, to basic equipment such as clothing and financial support.

Increasingly, companies take this defence industry expertise into equipment for humanitarian relief, counter terrorism and peace keeping activities.

[Kryztian]

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

–George Orwell

**********

[Bluegreen]

Oops, fixed. My bad, got the notes mixed up. I know from your posts you follow the business world closer than I – thx happyuk.

Yes, it is a philosophical question and I don't pretend to know the answer. Perhaps the politest adjective one could use may be "amoral". Nevertheless, it is my strong opinion that these individuals are, in fact, killers. They don't spend eight hours a day working to make the world a more peaceful place. In reality, quite the opposite. "Peace through Strength" is a meme I've been hearing my entire life, and you are not alone in holding that contention. It is my strong opinion that this another of the many lies the PTB have been feeding us for hundreds of years, and it is my strong opinion this is another of the many (false) paradigms pounded into our heads since birth that has to change.

"Everything comes from the top." "The buck stops here."

Evidently the board at Boeing felt that way when they fired CEO Dennis Muilenberg in the wake of the Max 737 tragedies:

Ousted Boeing CEO may walk away with $39M. The families of crash victims? $144K.



"Boeing’s recently ousted CEO may walk away with a multi-million dollar golden parachute that is about 270 times what the company is paying out to family members who lost a loved one in the Max 737 crashes.
CEO Dennis Muilenburg was fired but may still walk away with $39 million in cash and stock options as part of his severance package, a source told ABC News. Some reports put that figure even higher."

Published Dec 26, 2019
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/oust...ry?id=67932323

As it turned out, it was higher. Considerably.

Boeing's ousted CEO departs with $62 million, even without severance pay

Boeing’s fired chief executive officer, Dennis Muilenburg, is leaving the company with $62 million in compensation and pension benefits but will receive no severance pay in the wake of the 737 MAX crisis that killed 346 people in the span of five months.

In addition to the $62 million in compensation and pension benefits, Muilenburg holds stock options worth $18.5 million that vested in 2013, Boeing said.

'346 people died. And yet, Dennis Muilenburg pressured regulators and put profits ahead of the safety of passengers, pilots, and flight attendants. He’ll walk away with an additional $62.2 million. This is corruption, plain and simple,' U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Twitter."

Published Jan 10, 2020
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-b...-idUSKBN1Z92DQ

Corruption? 62 million? In the name of your favorite deity how much money does a person need?

[william r sanford72]

CD&W

Power drives men mad, turns 'em into killers
Power is a golden throne atop a bloody pillar
And it really gets 'em going they get dirt on their hands
Do it right out in the open man they love that jam

Money, oh how it sweats 'em, like a junky runaway
There's nothing they can do about it, they all just born that way
They get whipped into a frenzy when they smell the blood
Ain't no two ways about it, that's what they love

You know what their main jam is?
Chaos, destruction, and war!
You know what their true name is?
Chaos, destruction, and war!

You know what their main jam is?
Chaos, destruction, and war!
You know what their true name is?
Chaos, destruction, and war!

The Company Band-

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ot0HnXZTKmM

Rock On..

[haroldsails]

Thank you Bluegreen for starting this thread. To me this subject is our bottom line - we kill, we destroy, and we live in denial. In order to survive must compromise our built in moral compass. Our conditioning helps us to live this way.
I’m not interested in attacking these fat cats on a personal level, they are smarter than me, I know that. They themselves must also know exactly what they are when they close their eyes to sleep at night. That much material wealth would be a mighty drug, but just imagine the consequences of addiction. The last line from Bob Dylans Masters of War come to mind “even Jesus won’t forgive what you’ve done”

[Bluegreen]

And thank you, harold, for some wise and measured words

[Kryztian]

At Least 37 Million People Have Been Displaced by America’s War on Terror

A new report calculates the number of people who fled because of wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

By John Ismay
Sept. 8, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/m...on-terror.html

A Somali woman carrying wood to make a shelter in a
camp for internally displaced people in December 2018.

At least 37 million people have been displaced as a direct result of the wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, according to a new report from Brown University’s Costs of War project. That figure exceeds those displaced by conflict since 1900, the authors say, with the exception of World War II.

The findings were published on Tuesday, weeks before the United States enters its 20th year of fighting the war on terror, which began with the invasion of Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001; yet, the report says it is the first time the number of people displaced by U.S. military involvement during this period has been calculated. The findings come at a time when the United States and other Western countries have become increasingly opposed to welcoming refugees, as anti-migrant fears bolster favor for closed-border policies.

The report accounts for the number of people, mostly civilians, displaced in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria, where fighting has been the most significant, and says the figure is a conservative estimate — the real number may range from 48 million to 59 million. The calculation does not include the millions of other people who have been displaced in countries with smaller U.S. counterterrorism operations, according to the report, including those in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Niger.

“This has been one of the major forms of damage, of course along with the deaths and injuries, that have been caused by these wars,” said David Vine, a professor of anthropology at American University and the lead author of the report. “It tells us that U.S. involvement in these countries has been horrifically catastrophic, horrifically damaging in ways that I don’t think that most people in the United States, in many ways myself included, have grappled with or reckoned with in even the slightest terms.”

While the United States is not the sole cause for the migration from these countries, the authors say it has played either a dominant or contributing role in these conflicts.

People fled their homes for all of the reasons common in armed conflict, such as aerial bombing and drone strikes, artillery fire and gun battles that destroy housing and neighborhoods, as well as death threats and large-scale ethnic cleansing, according to the report. Fighting, which in some countries has gone on for nearly two decades, has eliminated many jobs, businesses and entire industries, threatening people’s ability to provide for themselves. In many instances, the wars have removed access to food and water sources, hospitals, schools and other local infrastructure, making daily life unsustainable.

In Somalia, 46 percent of the population has been displaced since American forces once again entered combat there in 2002. Hundreds of thousands have sought refuge in neighboring countries in the last 18 years, and for the last decade, U.S. warplanes have routinely dropped bombs and fired missiles on the terror group Shabab. While the Pentagon has been slow to acknowledge killing civilians in those strikes, it recently admitted to having done so for the third time after reporting by Amnesty International.

The report from the Costs of War project also estimated the number of people who have returned to their home countries or regions, 25.3 million, though that number includes children born elsewhere to refugee parents. Some of those returning are victims of involuntary deportation from their host countries, and others return only to encounter more of the same violence that they once fled.

After previous wars, the United States at times accepted large numbers of refugees from the countries in which it fought. Following the Vietnam War, the United States admitted approximately one million Southeast Asian people as war refugees, some of whom lived temporarily in camps on Guam and on the Marine Corps base Camp Pendleton in Southern California.

More recently, refugee admissions have dropped considerably. Data from the State Department show a sharp downturn in the number of refugees admitted to the United States immediately after Donald Trump took office. Since January 2017, the United States has admitted just 2,955 Iraqis, a 95 percent drop, and 2,705 Somalis, a 91 percent decrease, over the same time period at the end of the Obama administration.

To tally the displaced, scholars from American University collected data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, among other groups that track displacement figures.

Reached for comment, the Pentagon referred queries to the State Department. A representative from the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration said that the bureau publishes an annual report on refugees and displaced peoples, but that document “does not distinguish based on cause of displacement.”

Vine says that while having these numbers is helpful, it does not offer any insight into what kinds of lives displaced people are living. “Every day you live in a refugee camp is a day it’s been degraded compared to what it once was,” he said. “It’s another day you’re separated from your home and your home land.”

[Kryztian]

Posted by haroldsails (here)
The last line from Bob Dylans Masters of War come to mind “even Jesus won’t forgive what you’ve done”

Thanks for mentioning that song. I nominate it to be the official song for this thread.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=JEmI_FT4YHU

Come you masters of war
You that build the big guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you sit back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
While the young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins
How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good?
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could?
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die
And your death will come soon
I'll follow your casket
By the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

[haroldsails]

Well I see I got the lyrics wrong, but it it certainly is appropriate to this subject. Such a righteous song, as so many of the great anti-war songs are.