AND YOU WONDERED WHY THE WARS TO PROTECT THE BORDERS OF MUSLIM DICTATORS NEVER END???
DEATH BY SUCICIDE AND STAGGERING CORRUPTION:
What caused the destruction of the Democrat Party in
America?
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/07/peter-beinart-how-democrats-lost-their.html
BLUM'S WHORE FEINSTEIN HAS SPENT
HER ENTIRE POLITICAL LIFE SNIFFING OUT DEALS
IN CONGRESS THAT HAVE PUT HUNDREDS
OF MILLIONS INTO HER PIMP'S BOTTOMLESS
POCKETS!
The Center for Public Integrity has reported that US Senator Dianne Feinstein, who voted in favor of the Iraq Resolution, and her husband, Richard Blum, are making millions of dollars from Iraq and Afghanistan contracts through his company, Tutor Perini Corporation.[26][27]
New York Times voices moral outrage over profiteering military contractors ... in Russia
By Bill Van Auken
11 July 2017
In an editorial published Monday, “The Spoils, and Profits, of Conflict,” the editors of the New York Times worked themselves into a moral lather over war profiteering by military contractors.
The subject is unquestionably one worth pursuing in a country that is engaged in at least seven different military conflicts, has troops stationed in nearly 150 countries and spends more on arms than the next nine largest military powers combined.
That these wars translate into massive profits for the arms industry and obscene fortunes for their stockholders, even as the American troops who do the killing and dying are drawn overwhelmingly from the working class and poor, is one of Washington’s dirty little secrets.
But the target of the Times’ umbrage is not the sprawling US military-industrial complex, but rather a little known Russian firm, Evro Polis, which, according to sources quoted by the newspaper, has made a deal with the Syrian government to provide private military contractors in return for Damascus guaranteeing it a share of the oil revenues from the areas that it retakes from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The newspaper describes the deal as “shadowy and secret” and reports that at the head of the company is a figure “close to President Vladimir Putin.” It goes on to provide what it presents as a shocking quote from an unnamed private security consultant that “War is business.”
The Times’ editors, seemingly conscious that they are treading on thin ice, acknowledge that “mercenaries have always been around” and even “played a major role with US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.” It goes on to cite the infamous 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad, in which mercenary gunmen employed by the major US military contractor Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians and wounded another 20.
Nonetheless, the newspaper insists, there is something uniquely nefarious about the deal between Evro Polis and the Syrian government, declaring that “turning the fight into a private scramble for profit is a dangerous and ignoble gambit.”
At this stage, after some 16 years of the US “war on terror,” the decimation of entire societies in the Middle East and the destruction of more than a million lives as a result of US acts of aggression, who does the Times editorial board think it is kidding?
Whatever the role of Evro Polis, its connection to the Russian government and the semi-criminal oligarchy that it represents, the fact of the matter is that it represents less than small potatoes in relation to the vast army of mercenary military contractors deployed by Washington, and the multi-billion-dollar corporations that profit from their exploits.
In Afghanistan today, there are nearly three military contractors for every US soldier deployed on the ground. In Iraq, contractors are 42 percent of the force fielded by the Pentagon.
As for “shadowy and secret” deals and close relations between military contractors and top government officials, this is hardly a Russian innovation. Has it escaped the memory of the Times editors that the largest military contractor in the Iraq war, scooping up seemingly unlimited billions of dollars worth of no-bid contracts, was Halliburton (now KBR), whose former CEO was none other than Vice President Dick Cheney?
This incestuous relationship underscoring the “war is business” model has been reprised under the current administration, with the elevation of the former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to the post of secretary of state.
And while citing Blackwater (which has since chosen the innocuous name Academi in an attempt to escape its legacy of blood and filth) as a fleeting historical reference, the Times doesn’t bother recalling for its readers that the company’s former CEO Erik Prince is the brother of current Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and that he serves as an unofficial adviser to Trump, while continuing to reap huge profits off of the “private security” racket.
As for the feigned outrage over anyone who would dare turn war into a “scramble for profit,” the truth is that this is precisely what it has been since the advent of imperialism, and never more nakedly than in the past quarter century of uninterrupted US military interventions. As the Times foreign affairs commentator Thomas Friedman infamously commented—after first trying to sell the illegal invasion of Iraq as a legitimate response to non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” and a crusade for democracy and human rights in the Middle East—“I have no problem with a war for oil.”
The feigned shock of Times editorial page editor James Bennet over Russian military contractors embracing the profit motive beggars belief. After all, didn’t the newspaper support capitalist restoration and the dissolution of the Soviet Union? The editorial is merely one more piece of war propaganda on behalf of those sections of the military and intelligence apparatus and the ruling establishment as a whole that see Russia as the foremost obstacle to US imperialism’s drive to assert global hegemony.
Bennet, the brother of right-wing Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and son of Douglas Bennet, a former top State Department official who headed the Agency for International Development (AID), a frequent conduit for CIA operations, is closely attuned to these circles.
The problem for these factions for which the Times speaks is not that Russia is using mercenaries, but that its activities are cutting across crucial geo-strategic interests of American imperialism in Syria and the broader Middle East.
The newspaper’s hypocritical and hollow attempts to generate outrage over a military contract that is dwarfed by any number of similar deals struck by US war firms is part of an attempt to shift the Trump administration toward a more aggressive policy toward Moscow and, more decisively, counter the immense popular hostility in the US toward escalating a military confrontation with the world’s second-largest nuclear power.
SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN, HUBBY LOOTER RICHARD BLUM AND LAP B ITCH, BARBARA “BRIBES” BOXER…. Along with Nancy Pelosi, four of the most corrupt and self-serving plunderers of America… These Cretans redefine the term CRONY CAPITALIST PIGS!
FOR YEARS THEY HAVE SUCKED THE BLOOD OUT OF A DYING NATION!
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN, HUBBY LOOTER RICHARD BLUM AND LAP B ITCH, BARBARA “BRIBES” BOXER…. Along with Nancy Pelosi, four of the most corrupt and self-serving plunderers of America… These Cretans redefine the term CRONY CAPITALIST PIGS!
FOR YEARS THEY HAVE SUCKED THE BLOOD OUT OF A DYING NATION!
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering - by Joshua Frank - Antiwar.com
www.antiwar.com/frank/?articleid=8609
Feb 28, 2006 - Dianne Feinstein and her husband are also making tons of money off the ... It's a disgusting display of war profiteering, and just like Cheney, the ...
www.antiwar.com/frank/?articleid=8609
Feb 28, 2006 - Dianne Feinstein and her husband are also making tons of money off the ... It's a disgusting display of war profiteering, and just like Cheney, the ...Army contract for Feinstein's husband / Blum is a director of firm that ...
www.sfgate.com/.../Army-contract-for-Feinstein-s-husband-Blum-is-a-2621196.php
Apr 22, 2003 - URS Corp., a San Francisco planning and engineering firm partially owned by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, landed an Army ...
www.sfgate.com/.../Army-contract-for-Feinstein-s-husband-Blum-is-a-2621196.php
Apr 22, 2003 - URS Corp., a San Francisco planning and engineering firm partially owned by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, landed an Army ...War brings business to Feinstein spouse / Blum's firms win multimillion ...
www.sfgate.com/.../War-brings-business-to-Feinstein-spouse-Blum-s-2652085.php
Apr 27, 2003 - When it comes to scoring mega-military-related contracts, Sen. Dianne Feinstein' s multimillionaire husband, Richard Blum, is right in the thick ...
www.sfgate.com/.../War-brings-business-to-Feinstein-spouse-Blum-s-2652085.php
Apr 27, 2003 - When it comes to scoring mega-military-related contracts, Sen. Dianne Feinstein'War profiteering - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering
A war profiteer is any person or organization that profits from warfare or by selling weapons and .... The Center for Public Integrity has reported that US Senator Dianne Feinstein, who voted in favor of the Iraq Resolution, and her husband, ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_profiteering
A war profiteer is any person or organization that profits from warfare or by selling weapons and .... The Center for Public Integrity has reported that US Senator Dianne Feinstein, who voted in favor of the Iraq Resolution, and her husband, ...# 23 Feinstein's Conflict of Interest in Iraq – Top 25 of 2008
projectcensored.org/23-feinsteins-conflict-of-interest-in-iraq/
Apr 28, 2010 - Dianne Feinstein—the ninth wealthiest member of congress—has been ... With Blum's financial backing, Klein, a war contractor, operates a ...
projectcensored.org/23-feinsteins-conflict-of-interest-in-iraq/
Apr 28, 2010 - Dianne Feinstein—the ninth wealthiest member of congress—has been ... With Blum's financial backing, Klein, a war contractor, operates a ...Unacceptable! Senator Profits from War and Post Office - Roots Action
act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7309
Senator Dianne Feinstein's numerous apparent conflicts of interest are clear grounds for an Ethics Committee investigation.
act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7309
Senator Dianne Feinstein's numerous apparent conflicts of interest are clear grounds for an Ethics Committee investigation.Dianne Feinstein: War profiteer and war criminal | Freepress.org
freepress.org/article/dianne-feinstein-war-profiteer-and-war-criminal
Dianne Feinstein: War profiteer and war criminal. by Gerry Bello. July 5, 2013. Somewhere in northwest Pakistan Tuesday a sound was heard. Hellfire missiles ...
freepress.org/article/dianne-feinstein-war-profiteer-and-war-criminal
Dianne Feinstein: War profiteer and war criminal. by Gerry Bello. July 5, 2013. Somewhere in northwest Pakistan Tuesday a sound was heard. Hellfire missilesThe Greatest Threat to Campus Free Speech is Coming From Dianne ...
https://theintercept.com/.../dianne-feinstein-husband-threaten-univ-calif-demanding-b...
Sep 25, 2015 - But none of that seems to matter to Dianne Feinstein and her war-profiteering husband, Richard Blum. Not only is Blum demanding adoption of ...
https://theintercept.com/.../dianne-feinstein-husband-threaten-univ-calif-demanding-b...
Sep 25, 2015 - But none of that seems to matter to Dianne Feinstein and her war-profiteering husband, Richard Blum. Not only is Blum demanding adoption of ...Feinstein quits committee under war-profiteer cloud - WND.com
www.wnd.com/2007/03/40845/
Mar 28, 2007 - Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has abruptly walked away from her responsibilities with the Senate Military Construction Appropriations ...
www.wnd.com/2007/03/40845/
Mar 28, 2007 - Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has abruptly walked away from her responsibilities with the Senate Military Construction Appropriations ...Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering- Democratic Blood Money By ...
www.countercurrents.org/frank050407.htm
Apr 5, 2007 - Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California silently resigned from her post on the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee ...
www.countercurrents.org/frank050407.htm
Apr 5, 2007 - Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California silently resigned from her post on the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee ...Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering
Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering
|
by Joshua Frank
|
It happens all the time. If the antiwar movement takes on the Democrats for their bitter shortcomings, a few liberals are bound to criticize us for not hounding Bush instead. It doesn't even have to be an election year to get the progressives fired up. They just don't seem to get it. "How can you attack the Democrats when we have such a bulletproof administration ruling the roost in Washington?" somebody recently e-mailed me. "Don't you have something better to do than write this trash?!"
Well, not really. It's too cold in upstate New York right now to do anything other than fume over the liberal villains in Washington. "Why do I write about the putrid Democratic Party?" I responded, "I'll tell you, there's a reason this Republican administration is so damn bulletproof – nobody from the opposition party is taking aim and pulling the trigger."
And that's why the Dems are just as culpable in all that has transpired since Bush took office in 2000. They aren't just a part of the problem – the Democrats are the problem.
I mean, who is really all that surprised Bush and his boys wanted to conquer the Middle East? Not me. That's just what unreasonable neocons do: they stomp out the little guy, kill off the weak, and suffocate the voiceless. They only care about the girth of their wallets and the number of scalps they can tack above their mantles.
The Democrats aren't just letting the Republicans get away with murder, however: some of them are also reaping the benefits of the Bush wars. We constantly hear about Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton and how his ex-company is making bundles off U.S. contracts in Iraq. But what we don't hear about is how Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband are also making tons of money off the "war on terror."
The wishy-washy senator now claims Bush misled her prior to the invasion of Iraq. I don't think she's being honest with us, though. There may have been other reasons she helped sell Bush's lies. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Feinstein's husband Richard Blum has racked in millions of dollars from Perini, a civil infrastructure construction company, of which the billionaire investor wields a 75 percent voting share.
In April 2003, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave $500 million to Perini to provide services for Iraq's Central Command. A month earlier in March 2003, Perini was awarded $25 million to design and construct a facility to support the Afghan National Army near Kabul. And in March 2004, Perini was awarded a hefty contract worth up to $500 million for "electrical power distribution and transmission" in southern Iraq.
Feinstein, who sits on the Senate
Appropriations Committee as well as the
Select Committee on Intelligence, is reaping
the benefits of her husband's investments.
The Democratic royal family recently
purchased a $16.5 million mansion in the
flush Pacific Heights neighborhood of San
Francisco. It's a disgusting display of war
profiteering, and just like Cheney, the leading
Democrat should be called out for her
offense.
And that's exactly why the Bush
administration is so darn bulletproof.
The Democratic leadership in
Washington is just as crooked and just
as callous.
|
War profiteering
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article needs additional citations for verification. (November 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) |
A war profiteer is any person or organization that profits from warfare or by selling weapons and other goods to parties at war. The term can have strong, negative connotations. General profiteering may also occur in peace time. An example of war profiteers were the "shoddy" millionaires who allegedly sold recycled wool and cardboard shoes to soldiers during the American Civil War. The ten highest war profiteers are Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company EADS, Finmeccanica, L-3 Communications, and United Technologies.[1] These corporations are all directly connected with production of weapons, machinery, vehicles, aircraft, electronics and artillery(including missiles) and as such have significant political influence given their lobbying efforts and campaign contributions to members of the United States Congress in the promotion of war efforts. In 2010, the defense industry spent $144 million on lobbying and donated over $22.6 million to congressional candidates.[2]
In the United States[edit]
Companies such as Halliburton have been criticized in the context of the Iraq War for their perceived war profiteering.[24]
Steven Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation think tank, has accused former CIA Director James Woolseyof both profiting from and promoting the Iraq War.[25]
The Center for Public Integrity has reported that US Senator Dianne Feinstein, who voted in favor of the Iraq Resolution, and her husband, Richard Blum, are making millions of dollars from Iraq and Afghanistan contracts through his company, Tutor Perini Corporation.[26][27]
Indicted defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes was reported to be ecstatic when hearing that the United States was going to go to war with Iraq. "He and some of his top executives were really gung-ho about the war," said a former employee. "Brent said this would create new opportunities for the company. He was really excited about doing business in the Middle East."[28]
The War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007 intended to create criminal penalties for war profiteers and others who exploit taxpayer-funded efforts in Iraq and elsewhere around the world.[29] This act was introduced first on April 25, 2007, but was never enacted into law.[30] War profiteering cases are often brought under the Civil False Claims Act, which was enacted in 1863 to combat war profiteering during the Civil War.[31]
Major General Smedley Butler, USMC, criticized war profiteering of US companies during World War I in War Is a Racket. He wrote about how some companies and corporations increase their earnings and profits by up to 1,700 percent and how many companies willingly sold equipment and supplies to the US that had no relevant use in the war effort. In the book, Butler stated that "It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war period. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits."[32]
In the American Civil War, concerns about war profiteering were not limited to the activities of a few "shoddy" millionaires in the North. In the Confederacy, where supplies were severely limited, and hardships common, the mere suggestion of profiteering was considered a scurrilous charge. Georgia Quartermaster General Ira Roe Foster attempted to increase the supply of material to the troops by urging the women of his state to knit 50,000 pairs of socks. Foster's sock campaign stimulated the supply of the much needed item, but it also met with a certain amount of suspicion and backlash. Either the result of a Union disinformation campaign, or the work of suspicious minds, rumors, which Foster denied as a "malicious falsehood!",[33] began to spread that Foster and others were profiteering from the socks.[33] It was alleged that contributed socks were being sold, rather than given freely to the troops. The charge was not without precedent. The historian Jeanie Attie notes that in 1861, an "especially damaging rumor" (later found to be true) had circulated in the North, alleging that the Union Army had purchased 5,000 pairs of socks which had been donated, and intended for the troops, from a private relief agency, the United States Sanitary Commission.[34] As the Sanitary Commission had done in the North, Foster undertook a propaganda campaign in Georgia newspapers to combat the damaging rumors and to encourage the continued contribution of socks.[35] He offered $1,000.00 to any "citizen or soldier who will come forward and prove that he ever bought a sock from this Department that was either knit by the ladies or purchased for issue to said troops."[33]
Unacceptable! Senator Profits from War and Post Office
Shortly after San Francisco's then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein married private equity financier Richard C. Blum in 1980, those who knew them called theirs "a marriage of the public and private sectors."
Although Feinstein lost a gubernatorial bid to Republican Pete Wilson, she soon took his seat in the U.S. Senate. Working across the aisle, her power rapidly grew along with her husband's diversified investments and their mutual wealth.1
• As Chair and ranking member of the Military Construction and Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Feinstein appears to have steered contracts to companies controlled by her husband.2 Blum has profited handsomely from military contracts.3
• In 2009, Senator Feinstein introduced legislation to provide $25 billion in taxpayer money to the FDIC after it gave Blum's CBRE real estate company a contract to sell foreclosed properties at unusually high rates.4
• As a Regent of the University of California, Blum appears to have profited from contracts with the UC-run nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos.5
• In the summer of 2012, the U.S. Postal Service awarded Blum's CBRE company the exclusive contract to sell its portfolio of public properties. Feinstein's office denies any influence in the awarding of the contract.6
Although Feinstein lost a gubernatorial bid to Republican Pete Wilson, she soon took his seat in the U.S. Senate. Working across the aisle, her power rapidly grew along with her husband's diversified investments and their mutual wealth.1
• As Chair and ranking member of the Military Construction and Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Feinstein appears to have steered contracts to companies controlled by her husband.2 Blum has profited handsomely from military contracts.3
• In 2009, Senator Feinstein introduced legislation to provide $25 billion in taxpayer money to the FDIC after it gave Blum's CBRE real estate company a contract to sell foreclosed properties at unusually high rates.4
• As a Regent of the University of California, Blum appears to have profited from contracts with the UC-run nuclear weapons laboratory at Los Alamos.5
• In the summer of 2012, the U.S. Postal Service awarded Blum's CBRE company the exclusive contract to sell its portfolio of public properties. Feinstein's office denies any influence in the awarding of the contract.6
Ask your Senators to request an Ethics Committee investigation of Senator Dianne Feinstein now.
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