the American government is functionally Lockheed Martin

* Mizgin in the comments:

"I call the American government functionally Lockheed Martin. The Ralston conflict of interest made this so obvious, and the rejection of the PKK ceasefire and proposal for a democratic solution to Turkey's brutality of Kurds confirmed that America's claims of making the world safe for democracy, peace, and human rights are nothing more than cynical marketing gimmicks.

The Arms Trade Resource Center of the World Policy Institute compared the dollar value of contracts for the war industry in 2001 and 2003. Halliburton went from $400 million in 2001 to $3.9 billion in 2003; Northrup Grumman went from $5.2 billion to $11.1 billion; Lockheed Martin went from $14.7 billion to $21.9 billion. Lockheed Martin has continued to soar, although I have not seen any figures yet for fiscal year 2006, but net sales for 3rd quarter, 2006, were $9.6 billion, up from $9.2 billion in 3rd quarter, 2005.

There should be a law, that anyone who has ever worked for any war corporation or any corporation even slightly associated with the war industry, is forever barred from running for any political office or for any appointment to any political job. Same thing for the war industry employees and the media. Since none of this information ever makes it into the mainstream media, there is war industry control over the media, too, described as media filters by Noam Chomsky.

In fact, it might be a good idea to consider everyone remotely connected with the war industry as modern day's lepers and every last one of them, along with their families, should be shipped off to island factories where they can make their money and their weapons, in total isolation from civilized society. If they live long enough, 20 years or so after they retire, they can become eligible for re-education to introduce them to civilized society."

hmmm - I wouldn't necessarily include their families. We might lose some of our commenters...