War as wealth-generator. More, please.

Blatham, my friend... your underlying point has some merit.

bill said

Quote:

Blatham, my friend... your underlying point has some merit.

Then, address it.

The parallel universe of BAE: covert, dangerous and beyond the rule of law

How long can Britain's biggest arms company run a secret service and trump the armed forces in political influence?

George Monbiot
Tuesday February 13, 2007
The Guardian

There is a state within a state in the United Kingdom, a small but untouchable domain that appears to be subject to a different set of laws. We have heard quite a bit about it over the past two months, but hardly anyone knows just how far its writ runs. The state is BAE Systems, Britain's biggest arms company. It seems, among other advantages, to be able to run its own secret service.

This week, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) hopes to obtain a court order against BAE. The order would allow it to discover how the arms company obtained one of its confidential documents. CAAT instructed its lawyers, Leigh Day & Co, to seek a judicial review of the government's decision to drop the corruption case against BAE, which is alleged to have paid massive bribes to members of the Saudi royal family. Leigh Day sent CAAT an email containing advice on costs and tactics. The email ended up in the hands of the arms company.

How? Correspondence between a plaintiff and his lawyers couldn't be more private. The last people you would show it to are the defendants in the case. But somehow the letter found its way to BAE's offices.

The arms company argues that it was the unwitting and unwilling recipient of the email. So why does it refuse to tell CAAT who sent it? Why, far from assisting CAAT's attempt to explain this mystery, has it threatened the group with costs for seeking to reveal BAE's source?

CAAT has good reason to be suspicious. In 2003, the Sunday Times revealed that BAE had carried out a "widespread spying operation" on its critics. "Bank accounts were accessed, computer files downloaded and private correspondence with members of parliament and ministers secretly copied and passed on." The paper said the arms company made use of a network run by a former consultant for the Ministry of Defence called Evelyn Le Chene. "Le Chene recruited at least half a dozen agents to infiltrate CAAT's headquarters at Finsbury Park, north London, and a number of regional offices." They provided BAE with advanced intelligence on CAAT's campaign against the sale of its Hawk aircraft to the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. The arms company also obtained CAAT's membership list, its bank account details, the identity of its donors, its letters to ministers, even the contents of private diaries belonging to its staff.

Nearly 125,000 contractors are now at work in Iraq supporting roughly 135,000 troops, according to the most recent military figures. The ratio is far higher than for any previous U.S. conflict, military analysts say.

The argument that war generates wealth can only sustained in a global context, if the net wealth exceeds the net destruction over a meaningful time period to the point where considerations like environmental destruction, loss of life / property and all other attendant costs are factored in against the gains, something blatham, despite your copious quotes you have yet to demonstrate in a long term meaningful manner, not to say that it cannot be shown.

Chumly (the devil's advocate exponentially long sentence generator)

Another point of (overlooked) merit can perhaps best be demonstrated as a thought experiment:

World one is our world.

Wold two is the same as our world up to 100 years ago at which point the US did not build up its military industrial complex such that the US did not sell arms.

The questions are:

1) Would the US have even been able to survive WWI and WWII?

2) Would the former Soviet (or other countries / military entities) have taken bolder and more successful steps against the US's interests, the US's allies and the US itself?

3) Would the lack of arms sales from the US have decreased international arms holdings, or would the former Soviet and China and the UK (among others) have simply have picked up the slack in the supply demand equation?

In essence you can certainly argue the moral case as per the US selling arms, but blatham, you have yet to argue the net positive results should the US alone have not sold arms for the last 100 years.

If you have cannons, you'll be protected." Country A orders cannons. The salesmen visit country B with the pitch, "Your neighbor is buying cannons and obviously that leaves you at risk." Country B orders cannons. The salesmen and the company, if you asked them, would say, "Well, if we don't sell them cannons, someone else will."

And rape has been around for a long time too, therefore the present situation in Darfur is a ho hum.

You make it sound as if we had the only game in town.

Chumly wrote:

The argument that war generates wealth can only sustained in a global context, if the net wealth exceeds the net destruction over a meaningful time period to the point where considerations like environmental destruction, loss of life / property and all other attendant costs are factored in against the gains, something blatham, despite your copious quotes you have yet to demonstrate in a long term meaningful manner, not to say that it cannot be shown.

Chumly (the devil's advocate exponentially long sentence generator)

Perhaps so. Of course, I'll need a base figure to make such a calculation and I'm certain you can assist me on this.

We'll keep it simple and omit consideration here of environmental costs and property damage costs.

What figure would you advance as accurately representing the cost of your mother, father, brothers, sisters and your children being burned to death?