Justice Rising

Vol 2, #3 Fall 2006 Justice Rising Grassroots Solutions to Corporate Domination Corporate Origins of War and The war machine will get your Grassroot Struggles for Peace children, if not by Jim Tarbell now, then your ur world is at war. Battles over resources and and 2006 and so far this year Lockheed Martin and grandchildren Omarket access on a planet with escalating Northrop Gruman have each contributed over $1 Cindy Sheehan, page 2 demand and fixed supply will be endless until a new million. The Center on Responsive politics points paradigm is in place. Four hundred years ago the first out that "most defense sector contributions are con- corporations formed armies and led the charge in the centrated on members of the House and Senate Overall, the battles for global resources. Four centuries later we are Appropriations Defense subcommittees, which allo- given a choice of unilateral pre-emptive war by an cate federal defense money, and the Armed Service concentrated administration steeped in corporate influence or a committees, which influence military policy." political power of seemingly more benign global corporate government Corporate benefits and control of the American the military- ruled by free trade agreements where money is power. war machine go beyond arms sales and campaign industrial This latter option, however, raised protests in the contributions. Antonia Juhasz in The Bush Agenda: complex has streets of Seattle at the turn of the millennium and Invading the World One Economy at a Time points out weakened promises to engender such inequality and environ- that corporate personnel from Bechtel, Chevron, American society mental destruction that the human struggle for sur- Halliburton and Lockheed Martin, now in key to its core. vival will ensure perennial war at the gates of com- administrative posts, have influenced Bush’s military Ted Nace, page 3 mercial empire. Envision a global Baghdad with the policy and these same corporations have benefitted wealthy benefactors ensconced in the Green Zone with juicy military contracts or access to lucrative and the rest of the world a conflagration of destruc- resources. tion and sorrow. This last point—corporate access to resources and According to the Stockholm International Peace markets—has driven the American war machine for a People have to Research Institute, global military spending increased hundred years. But the costs of war are overwhelming learn how to 34% in the past ten years. American military expen- and people are rebelling. The millions coming together get rid of ditures made up 80% of the increases in 2005. The to protest war on February 15, 2003 was only a signal violence by US now accounts for 48% of world military outlays of what is to come. The task is daunting. Humans need nonviolent with the next four countries—Britain, France Japan to create a world of economic justice within the limited means and do it and China—each accounting for only 4-5% of glob- scale of our planet. These are the stories told and the realistically and al military expenses. daunting goals taken on in this issue of Justice Rising. effectively. The 100 largest arms producing companies increased sales 15% in 2004. US Gene Sharp, page 6 companies claimed 63.3% of the $268 bil- lion in global arms revenue that year. The top five weapon companies—Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Gruman, I was a racket- Raytheon and BAE Systems—made 44% eer, a gangster of the sales, doubling their share between for capitalism. 1990 and 2003. Investors like the private Marine Corps General equity Carlyle Group have broken new Smedley Butler, page 12 ground by giving politicians and bureau- crats, who worked to establish this trend, the profits of war, once they are back in A Publication of the private sector. the Alliance for The military industry doubled their US campaign contributions between 1990 Democracy graphic: kjersten Jeppesen Movements From Anti-war to Democracy by Mike Ferner n his provocative bestseller, War Is a Force That IGives Us Meaning, Christopher Hedges explored how individual and national psyches are emotional- ly invested in war. Even the peace movement would do well to mark his point about the emotional hold of war. Put another way, could it be that because war’s suffering is so horrible, opposing it gives activists’ lives a heightened sense of purpose? If so, what does that mean for the anti-war movement when our troops finally come home and at least US casualties stop? Beyond that, how do we do more than just react the next time Empire demands war? More fundamentally, will the peace movement and its sister organizations get better at not just opposing war and other social ills, but learn into butchery and empire, we need to learn the how to strip corporations of their ability to turn histories and ask the questions that will point to what’s supposed to be our own government into something more successful. our greatest obstacle? If we are content to be an anti-war movement Without looking at those kinds of questions we – meaning the Empire defines our existence and will be no more successful than previous efforts like purpose—then when war drums roll next we will the safe energy movement of the 1970’s which reassemble from a hundred different fronts, throw greatly curtailed nuclear plant construction but was ourselves into the fray, and work against the govern- unable to usher in sustainable policies, let alone ment's well-oiled killing machine until we are establish citizen authority over energy industries; or exhausted. When do we ask if we want to be more the US labor movement which urges its members to than a brief parade of colorful banners and heartfelt oppose the war by writing Congress instead of lay- slogans passing an empty White House? ing down their tools or shutting down munitions Cindy Sheehan poignantly writes, "I knew that transport as in some other countries. our leaders were bought and paid for employees of We have to learn Why such limited horizons? Consider that the war machine, and yet, when Casey came of age, how to transform while activists were trying to keep Armour Co. he put on the uniform and marched off to another the anti-war from selling rotten meat (Pure Food and Drug Act); senseless war to bring his employers that rich or Standard Oil Co. from spewing quite so much reward of money and power. The warning for movement into a poison (National Environmental Policy Act); or American mothers and fathers is this: the war democracy members of the National Association of machine will get your children, if not now, then movement. Manufacturers from killing and maiming workers your grandchildren. It is a hard and steep price to on the job (Occupational Safety and Health Act), pay for the certain knowledge that the people in attorneys for corporations and business associations power think of us, not as their employers and elec- were finding ways to use the Constitution for their torate whom they swear to serve, but as their tools clients and against us. to be used as cannon fodder whenever the impulse They convinced their fellow elites on the strikes them." Supreme Court to grant the Fourteenth If we want Cindy's words to mean something Amendment’s equal protection to corporate "per- we have to learn how to transform the anti-war sons;" then Fourth Amendment protection against movement into a democracy movement. Our unreasonable searches; then First Amendment pro- reward will be that we can finally move beyond tections so their clients could tell us what kind of opposing one war after another to build the kind of energy policy we need, what kind of warnings to put peaceful, just world we deserve…and the planet is on dairy products; and how to vote on ballot issues. waiting for us to create. If we’re serious about not just stopping this war, but stripping corporations of their usurped Mike Ferner works with the Program on Corporations, privileges, dismantling their power to govern, and Law & Democracy. His book, Inside the Red Zone: ending their ability to direct our hard-earned wealth A Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq is just out. Page 2 JUSTICE RISING Corporations, Targeted Lobbies, and US War Policy by Ted Nace ntil its discrediting during the Vietnam deba- ment (from contractors like Lockheed- Ucle, a relatively small and tightly knit core of Martin), with an overall price tag in the specialists managed the contours of foreign policy. hundreds of billions. This elite group, whose ranks included such names Other notable successes among the as Henry Stimson, George Kennan, and McGeorge targeted lobbies have been Frank Bundy, viewed its role as trustees and advocates of Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, the U.S. liberal capitalism generally, pursuing the broad lead group in pushing for a missile policy of projecting US power onto the world stage defense program worth as much as half a and "containing" the Soviet Union. trillion in defense contracts; the Project The old foreign policy establishment can hard- for a New American Century, which until ly be accused of being either pacifist or anti-capital- its disbanding in 2005 was the lead group ist. Its legacies include Hiroshima, the genocidal advocating the aggressive unilateralism bombing of Korea, and support for dictatorship, instituted by the Bush administration; photo: US Moldova Foundation massacre, and torture across the breadth of the and the Committee for the Liberation of Bruce Jackson outside Washington’s Third World. But in allowing a certain degree of Iraq, also organized by Bruce Jackson, Metropolitan Club, the heart of the capital’s deal making.

Load more