George Bernard Shaw, once happened to be of belief that the consequences of private arms manufacture could be matched only by the apocalypse. Well, we have avoided the sudden apocalypse caused by those red phallic floating objects in space, which only succeeding in bombing the mind of everyone with a television in America, or was it Reagan’s Star Wars bonanza program, that stopped the flying sickle and hammer from replacing the American landscape with Cossacks.
To estimate very conservatively, of an eight-hour workday, 3 hours to Uncle Sam or Uncle Trishul, of which 50% to attack, also known as ‘defense.’ If just half the people on this planet fulfill this prerequisite to respiration, at average wage, we contribute 30 billion (the figure is closer to 100 Billion) dollars a day to three and a half corporations between Colorado and California. 80 billion to bludgeon Iraq seems a steal. Well it is stolen: we awake, and work, to essentially, build military empires to consume entire humanity. We can no longer speak of states that have an army, but of armies that have a state.
Capitalism and Arms, must endure a market. Prozac for depression, black hawks for war or conflict or mass murder from the sky, depending on which side of the napalm you lie. A world with a semblance of peace is depriving trillions to those whom we elect with pride and pom poms.
The state to a youth is like the womb to a fetus. A protection, a nourishment, a world, before the world. Like the womb needs oxygen and glucose to provide the fetus, the state requires resources to provide education, health care, sanitation, employment, and housing. Estimated costs by research groups to provide all of the above to entire mother earth at a basic level, is 32 billion dollars. Just the cost of one F-16 is 2.2 Billion dollars, factor in training, bases, staff, checks to the TV network to launch the war cries and essentially the cost of providing Maslow’s lower echelon of fundamental survival to all, is about at par with one gray phallic flying killing machine. Israel alone placed an order with Lockheed Martin for a number of these Israeli lifestyle accessories in the past two years alone.
Arms is not just slightly bigger than other industries, it is its farther mother and Holy Ghost. How many arms manufacturers can we name, not many, how many cities in Iran, not many, how many adolescent pop singers, quite a few.
To appeal to the intelligence of a youth, or for that matter a conglomeration of Twinkies. In socialism, arms are state produced; they are a burden, not a boon. Yet they form the backbone to any self-respecting capitalism, because as eloquently and justly pointed out by America’s ultra far super right, a.k.a liberal journalist Thomas Friedman that you could not have McDonalds without McDonald Douglas. (They 'Mc.Doug. concern themselves with the cluster and smart and other well prefixed bombs that pave the parking lot.)
Kamil Hamied ©left *
Yugantaar Sahapthahik, Indymedia Rednet Riofndazione.it
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