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writing for godot

Parsing Out Our Military Industrial Financial Media Academic Congressional Judicial Executive Complex

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Written by Brendan Maloney   
Wednesday, 03 August 2016 04:57
I was only five years old when Dwight Eisenhower gave his famous last speech as president in 1960, pointedly putting down his notes and looking directly at the TV camera as he warned us in no uncertain terms about the burgeoning MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX in America. As Commander-in-Chief of the world's only superpower (many intelligence assessments of the Soviet Union were inflated to beef up our weapons industries) and former World War Two Allied Supreme Commander, no one on the planet was more qualified to deliver that warning to us.

Here is a link to the relevant part of that speech. Please note that he tells us that until WW II we had NO armaments industry to speak of. It is nearly impossible to imagine today that in 1939 our military was only ranked 18th in the world, when only 6 years later we were the only superpower. So while many think this speech is merely a quaint historical footnote about a monster we know all too well today, in 1960 this was Earth-shaking news, indeed. Two-minute video:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY

Most folks don't know, however, that Ike was dissuaded by his advisers at the very last minute from calling it the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL CONGRESSIONAL COMPLEX, pointing out that by then Congress was largely owned by corporations. Ike was compromised like many in power, but above all he was a soldier / patriot. He was also very aware of another soldier / patriot who preceded him, two-time Medal of Honor recipient and Commandant of Marines, Major General Smedley Butler. From Butler's fascinating Wikipedia biography:

“In addition to his speeches to pacifist groups, he [Gen. Butler] served from 1935 to 1937 as a spokesman for the American League Against War and Fascism. In 1935, he wrote the exposé War Is a Racket, a trenchant condemnation of the profit motive behind warfare. His views on the subject are summarized in the following passage from the November 1935 issue of the socialist magazine Common Sense:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

General Butler implicates Wall Street and banks, so even back then, calling The Beast the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL FINANCIAL CONGRESSIONAL COMPLEX would have been accurate.

Ah, but Ike wasn't being completely honest, because since 1947 every presidential administration, Republican or Democrat, has had approximately 400 members of the National Security Council in it, ostensibly for 'Continuity of Government' purposes. Thus we had a MILITARY INDUSTRIAL FINANCIAL CONGRESSIONAL EXECUTIVE COMPLEX in 1960. Our 'lesser of two evils' choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump certainly makes my point here.

But even that long moniker was not quite accurate in 1960. From 1920 (birth of trade Unions) until 1941 (Pearl Harbor), many of America's thousands of media sources routinely used the terms 'corporatism' and 'fascism' interchangeably. This was because our corps behaved like Euro fascists by employing thugs to beat and murder Union men and women. Many of our corps and banks funded and supplied Hitler and Mussolini very early on. Some, like the Ford Motor Company and General Motors, continued doing so until the end of the war, even having their bombed-out German factories rebuilt with American Marshall Plan funds after the war! While Charles Higham's book, “Trading With the Enemy” is a real eye-opener for us today, all this was common knowledge in America for two decades before WW II. But when Pearl Harbor was attacked, in the newly Star-Spangled eyes of our media trying to focus our rage on an external enemy, those traitorous corps and bankers suddenly became heroes when they made even more money producing arms to destroy the enemies they helped create. Corporatism was never referred to again as fascism in our mass media that is now dominated by only 6 corporations and 227 executives.

I think I have established here that when Dwight Eisenhower gave his speech in 1960, we already had a MILITARY INDUSTRIAL FINANCIAL MEDIA CONGRESSIONAL EXECUTIVE COMPLEX.

When the Supreme Court granted the protections of legal personhood to corporations in 2010, via Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, it certainly became part of The Beast.

If the Money Trail is followed into American academia, many of our most notable think tanks, and even educational Public Television programs, we find that the lion's share of grants are furnished by self-interested corporations and businesses. They often push Defense Department and State Department agendas upon scholars with research money and tempting job offers. Sure, a few small colleges here have liberal and even radical profs, but they would get booted out of major universities so fast their heads would spin, I assure you. Also consider the Pearson Company textbook monopoly that supplies Neo-Con propaganda to our schools from grade school through college:

http://thestatetimes.com/2013/11/20/the-pearson-monopoly/

So, my RSN friends, it is with a very heavy heart that I present to you our modern MILITARY INDUSTRIAL FINANCIAL MEDIA ACADEMIC CONGRESSIONAL JUDICIAL EXECUTIVE COMPLEX.

If you will pardon me, I think I'll sink a drink or three now, in a rather more fulfilling 'race to the bottom' than the one our so-called democracy/republic is winning!
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