NOVANEWS
Editor’s note: Significant is that the stocks of four leading Armament Companies including Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, Lockheed Martin have all gone up by 18%. Pierre Sprey the designer of F -15 and F -16 was on Russia Today, stating that these stocks have gone up in anticipation of further Air Strikes.
Russia Today: Defense contractors are reportedly eyeing lucrative contracts now that the military campaign in Iraq and Syria has been launched. Do you expect them to lobby for greater involvement?
Pierre Sprey is an aircraft designer, defense analyst, who spent 20 years working at the Pentagon.
Pierre Sprey: They have stunning lobbying power. That has been true for decades and it is increasing. Year by year their lobbies are thriving, they are getting more and more of their own way.
There has been essentially little change since the Bush administration into the Obama administration.
If anything, they are more powerful under the Obama administration than they were before.
And this present attack on ISIL has them ecstatic, they’re euphoric.
RT: What sort of thing could you expect to see next, after seeing the campaign is being launched against IS? Do you expect that increase in anyway?
PS: Inevitably, at least the air portion will increase. The ground portion is still kind of up in the air and will depend a lot on the politics, but beyond a shadow of a doubt this really very puny air campaign that we are running now – surprisingly small, particularly small in terms of actual bomb dropping strikes – will certainly increase. And that is very much in the interest of the military industrial complex and, of course, their congressional advocates.
RT: In your opinion, does this have a big bearing on the American economy? There is a war, so is there a spike on American economy because of the money that is generated from military contracts?
PS: There is a spike for the defense industry. It is pretty hard on the rest of the economy to say the least. The whole idea of the economic spin-off from defense spending has been a phony for decades.
RT: There have been reports of multiple flaws in one of Europe’s most advanced warplanes – the Typhoon jet fighter. As one of the designers of some advanced fighter planes – the F-15 and F-16, for example – what can you tell us about that?
US ISIS airstrikes
PS: [The Eurofighter Typhoon] has never been a very good airplane. It is rather large, very expensive. Of course we build more expensive airplanes to say the least. But it is relatively unmaneuverable, far too complex for its missions, hard to maintain, and very hard to get very many sorties per week out of it because of the complexity. But that is no different than most of the airplanes being built today, and we are doing worse with the F-35.
RT: With regards to the F-22, is it for the situation which it faces now?
PS: The F-22 was a kind of Potemkin village, if you want to call it. They had to send it into combat. It has been so conspicuously absent from combat for the many years that it has been in service that people have noticed. There has been a lot of commentary, and so they finally set up a nice little mission for it, so they could try it out and do a little strike, on what proved to be an empty concrete building. I doubt you will see very much of it in combat. Partly because, of course, it is a $400 million airplane and you hardly want to risk even the accidents that might happen in combat, and partly because the airplane is so complex. It nominally flies about two times a week. So you can’t get very many sorties, you can’t try it out very often.
Bill Hicks on Presidential Agendas
Bill Hicks, was brilliant, prophetic and way ahead of his time. His only drawback in my opinion was his relentless use of the F Word, which made him look like a very angry, ranting, man. It is a pity his life was cut short by cancer.
I have this feeling man, ’cause you know, it’s just a handful of people who run everything, you know … that’s true, it’s provable. It’s not … I’m not a f’in conspiracy nut, it’s provable. A handful, a very small elite, run and own these corporations, which include the mainstream media. I have this feeling that whoever is elected president, like Clinton was, no matter what you promise on the campaign trail — blah, blah, blah — when you win, you go into this smoke-filled room with the twelve industrialist capitalist scum-f’s who got you in there. And you’re in this smoky room, and this little film screen comes down … and a big guy with a cigar goes, “Roll the film.” And it’s a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you’ve never seen before … that looks suspiciously like it’s from the grassy knoll. And then the screen goes up and the lights come up, and they go to the new president, “Any questions?” “Er, just what my agenda is.” “First we bomb Baghdad.” “You got it …”
The Money and the Power: Israel’s Gambling on US Presidential Elections
The Council for the National Interest
Some things don’t change in American politics, and rich people sitting in Las Vegas with pots of cash is one of them. Joel McCleary, a friend, remembers fund-raising in Las Vegas when he was working for the Jimmy Carter campaign in 1976. The crucial Pennsylvania primary was coming up and the Carter people (their chief fundraiser was Morris Dees) needed a big wad of cash for the final push against Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington, known as “the senator from Boeing,” also running for the Democratic nomination and favored by powerful labor chieftains in Pennsylvania.
tough guy Joel
….as he pushed the bag full of money over, “Remember, this comes from the state of Israel. Don’t you ever forget it.”
Joel was told the go-to guy for untraceable campaign cash was Hank Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun. Greenspun was a notoriously tough egg, former gun-runner for the Haganah, the man who, in the midst of the Cold War witch hunts, outed Senator Joe McCarthy in the Sun as a homosexual. Joel was told to act manly. Greenspun duly received him in his office. “Why the hell should I get money for Jimmy Carter?” he asked.
“Because Jimmy Carter is going to be president,” Joel answered boldly, “and if you don’t support his campaign he’ll fuck you.”
Greenspun told Joel to come back in two hours. He returned to find Greenspun sitting at a table surrounded by other toughs. In the middle of the table was a paper bag. “So the Baptist fuck wants money,” Greenspun growled, as he pushed the bag over to Joel. “Remember, this comes from the state of Israel. Don’t you ever forget it.”
Greenspun was no doubt also sluicing money to Jackson, a particularly slavish errand boy for Israel. With Carter he was hedging his bets. Wisely, as it turned out. They called the odds right in Las Vegas. Carter won the Pennslyvania primary, beating Jackson 36 per cent to 27 per cent. Jackson pretty much gave up after that, saying frankly, “We’re out of money.”
At least Greenspun, who died in 1989, didn’t live to know that he invested $100,000 in a man later to denounce Israel as an apartheid state.
The Source of America’s Wars:
That’s how it works folks, and that is how all of the players play the game. The Lobby and the Media.
Rather simple, and rather sick, isn’t it?
And, you will notice that the tough guy is always smiling when he twists your arm. He can afford to, he has just bought it, and he now has an “unbreakable grip” on it. And, he can break it any time he wants to!
“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.” — President Dwight Eisenhower(1961)
