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Section 2

[1] Parenti, M. (1988). The sword and the dollar: Imperialism, revolution, and the arms race. New York: St. Martin’s Press. “One obvious impetus to military escalation is corporate America itself, especially the defense industry. Military spending is a titanic pork barrel, a WPA project for the giant corporations, their single most important source of investment and profit. Along with the corporations, there exists a whole subsidiary network of subcontractors and politicians, strategists and military bureaucrats, researchers and technicians who are part of the permanent war economy, getting their fix from the multibillion-dollar Pentagon connection. Beset by recession, overcapitalization, declining investment opportunities, and the ever present threat of a falling rate of profit, postwar American capitalism turned to military Keynesianism to bolster its earnings. SDI is only the latest and potentially biggest program in this process.” (p. 203)

[2] Parenti, M. (1988). The sword and the dollar: Imperialism, revolution, and the arms race. New York: St. Martin’s Press. “As the Wall Street Journal itself observed: ‘For defense contractors across America, President Reagan’s Star Wars Program is more than a new strategy for national defense. It is the business opportunity of a generation, a chance to cash in on billions of dollars of federal contracts. … And the industry is starting to mobilize its fabled lobbying apparatus to build political support for what critics charge could become the greatest federal pork-barrel project in history.” (p. 204)

[3] Blum, W. (2013). America’s deadliest export: Democracy – The truth about US foreign policy and everything else. London: Zed Books. “And here is Michael Ledeen, former official of the Reagan administration, later a fellow at one of the leading conservative think tanks, American Enterprise Institute, speaking shortly before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003: ‘If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now.’” (p. 6)

[4] Blum, W. (2013). America’s deadliest export: Democracy – The truth about US foreign policy and everything else. London: Zed Books. “The United States is not concerned with this thing called ‘democracy’, no matter how many times every American president uses the word each time he opens his mouth. As noted in the Introduction, since 1945 the US has attempted to overthrow more than fifty governments, most of which were democratically elected, and grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least thirty countries. The question is: what do American leaders mean by ‘democracy’? The last thing they have in mind is any kind of economic democracy – the closing of the gap between the desperate poor and those for whom too much is not enough. The first thing they have in mind is making sure the target country has the political, financial, and legal mechanisms in place to make it hospitable to corporate globalization.” (p. 16)

[5] Parenti, M. (1988). The sword and the dollar: Imperialism, revolution, and the arms race. New York: St. Martin’s Press. “The defense industry’s financial rewards are breathtaking. American taxpayers cover the industry’s costs and assume most of its financial risks. Almost all defense contracts are awarded without competitive bidding and with little or no subsequent supervision, allowing for outrageous profiteering. Weapons systems have a built-in obsolescence and a high replacement rate. Military spending is readily expandable, there being no public criteria for what might be ‘enough.’” (p. 204)

[6] Parenti, M. (1988). The sword and the dollar: Imperialism, revolution, and the arms race. New York: St. Martin’s Press. “Along with the corporations, there exists a whole subsidiary network of subcontractors and politicians, strategists and military bureaucrats, researchers and technicians who are part of the permanent war economy, getting their fix from the multibillion-dollar Pentagon connection.” (p. 203)

[7] Parenti, M. (1988). The sword and the dollar: Imperialism, revolution, and the arms race. New York: St. Martin’s Press. “Beset by recession, overcapitalization, declining investment opportunities, and the ever-present threat of a falling rate of profit, postwar American capitalism turned to military Keynesianism to bolster its earnings. SDI is only the latest and potentially biggest program in this process.” (p. 203)

[8] Parenti, M. (1988). The sword and the dollar: Imperialism, revolution, and the arms race. New York: St. Martin’s Press. “Military spending is readily expandable, there being no public criteria for what might be ‘enough.’ Defense appropriations do not compete with private demand but create an investment area that brings in the very highest profits.” (p. 204)

[9] Parenti, M. (1988). The sword and the dollar: Imperialism, revolution, and the arms race. New York: St. Martin’s Press. “Whether we are fighting a major war or not, whether the international climate is one of detente or cold war, the US military budget climbs ever upward, increasing by over 200 percent between 1977 and 1987.” (p. 204)

[10] Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books. “Propaganda campaigns in general have been closely attuned to elite interests. The Red scare of 1919–20 served well to abort the union-organizing drive that followed World War I in the steel and other industries. The Truman-McCarthy Red scare helped inaugurate the Cold War and the permanent war economy, and it also served to weaken the progressive coalition of the New Deal years.” (p. 93)

[11] Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books. “In sum, a propaganda approach to media coverage suggests a systematic and highly political dichotomization in news coverage based on serviceability to important domestic power interests. This should be observable in dichotomized choices of story and in the volume and quality of coverage. In the chapters that follow we will see that such dichotomization in the mass media is massive and systematic: not only are choices for publicity and suppression comprehensible in terms of system advantage, but the modes of handling favored and inconvenient materials (placement, tone, context, fullness of treatment) differ in ways that serve political ends.” (p. 96)

[12] Blum, W. (2013). America’s deadliest export: Democracy – The truth about US foreign policy and everything else. London: Zed Books. “So it was a pleasant surprise when someone at the station invited me to come in for an interview. It lasted more than half an hour and went very well. I expressed many of my misgivings about US foreign policy and NPR’s coverage of it in no uncertain terms, even pointing out that anti-war activists referred to NPR as National Pentagon Radio.” (p. 270)

[13] Blum, W. (2013). America’s deadliest export: Democracy – The truth about US foreign policy and everything else. London: Zed Books. “The preparation of minds was just as fervent before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. And when it turned out that Iraq did not have any kind of arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)… well, our power elite found other justifications for the invasion, and didn’t look back.” (p. 61)

[14] Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books. “The growth of inequality has itself helped the MSM meet these challenges by pushing the political system to the right and by business and the wealthy pumping greater resources into public relations, advertising, and more direct control of the media.” (p. 385)

[15] Parenti, M. (1988). The sword and the dollar: Imperialism, revolution, and the arms race. New York: St. Martin’s Press. “Whether we are fighting a major war or not, whether the international climate is one of detente or cold war, the US military budget climbs ever upward, increasing by over 200 percent between 1977 and 1987.” (p. 204)

[16] Blum, W. (2013). America’s deadliest export: Democracy – The truth about US foreign policy and everything else. London: Zed Books. “One reason for confusion among the electorate is that the two main parties, the Democrats and Republicans, while forever throwing charges and counter-charges at each other, actually hold indistinguishable views concerning foreign policy, a similarity that is one of the subjects of this book. What is the poor voter to make of all this?” (p. 13

[17] Parenti, M. (1988). The sword and the dollar: Imperialism, revolution, and the arms race. New York: St. Martin’s Press. “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under … the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented.” (p. 204)

[18] Blum, W. (2013). America’s deadliest export: Democracy – The truth about US foreign policy and everything else. London: Zed Books. “On October 8, 2001, the second day of the US bombing of Afghanistan, the transmitters for the Taliban government’s Radio Shari were bombed, and shortly after this the US bombed some twenty regional radio sites. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld defended the targeting of these facilities, saying: ‘Naturally, they cannot be considered to be free media outlets. They are mouthpieces of the Taliban and those harboring terrorists.’ In 1999, during the US/NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, state-owned Radio Television Serbia (RTS) was targeted because it was broadcasting reports which the United States and NATO did not like (like how much horror the bombing was causing). The bombs took the lives of many of the station’s staff, and both legs of one of the survivors, which had to be amputated to free him from the wreckage.” (p. 275–276)

[19] Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books. “The ability to produce flak, and especially flak that is costly and threatening, is related to power. Serious flak has increased in close parallel with business’s growing resentment of media criticism and the corporate offensive of the 1970s and 1980s. Flak from the powerful can be either direct or indirect. The direct would include letters or phone calls from the White House to Dan Rather or William Paley, or from the FCC to the television networks asking for documents used in putting together a program, or from irate officials of ad agencies or corporate sponsors to media officials asking for reply time or threatening retaliation. The powerful can also work on the media indirectly by complaining to their own constituencies (stockholders, employees) about the media, by generating institutional advertising that does the same, and by funding right-wing monitoring or think-tank operations designed to attack the media.” (p. 87)

[20] Blum, W. (2013). America’s deadliest export: Democracy – The truth about US foreign policy and everything else. London: Zed Books. “Regarding reactionaries and polemicists, it is worth noting that Mr. Schlesinger, as a top adviser to President John F. Kennedy, played a key role in the overthrow of Cheddi Jagan, the democratically elected progressive prime minister of British Guiana (now Guyana). In 1990, at a conference in New York City, Schlesinger publicly apologized to Jagan, saying: ‘I felt badly about my role thirty years ago. I think a great injustice was done to Cheddi Jagan.’ This is to Schlesinger’s credit, although the fact that Jagan was present at the conference may have awakened his conscience after thirty years. Like virtually all the American historians of the period who were granted attention and respect by the mainstream media, Schlesinger was a cold warrior. Those like Zinn, who questioned the basic suppositions of the Cold War abroad and capitalism at home, were regarded as polemicists.” (p. 273)

[21] Blum, W. (2013). America’s deadliest export: Democracy – The truth about US foreign policy and everything else. London: Zed Books. “At various times, Iraqi newspapers were closed down by the American occupation for what they printed; reporters were shot by American troops; the US killed, wounded, or jailed reporters from Al Jazeera television, closed the station’s office, and banned it from certain areas because occupation officials didn’t like the news the station was reporting; the Pentagon planted paid-for news articles in the Iraqi press to serve propaganda purposes.” (p. 276)

[23] Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books. “The gigantic military establishment must be protected from a public that would like more resources used for the civil society; threats to the increasingly regressive tax system must be kept at bay; attacks on ‘free trade’ (i.e., extended investor rights) must be fended off; universal and affordable health care at the expense of vested insurance and pharmaceutical company interests cannot be supported; and the ability of money to dominate elections must be glossed over. The growth of inequality has itself helped the MSM meet these challenges by pushing the political system to the right and by business and the wealthy pumping greater resources into public relations, advertising, and more direct control of the media.” (p. 385)

Section 3

[24] Myatt, S. (2024). Top 10 U.S. defense contractors 2024. ExecutiveBiz. “Lockheed Martin led the pack with $67.6 billion in defense revenue, followed by Raytheon Technologies at $40 billion, General Dynamics at $38.9 billion, Northrop Grumman at $35 billion, and Boeing at $23 billion. Together, the top five defense contractors generated over $200 billion in defense revenue in 2023.”

[25] Lockheed Martin Corporation. (2001–2023). Annual Reports. Bethesda, MD: Lockheed Martin Corporation. “Year, Revenue (in billions USD), Profit (in billions USD). Total, 1,082.284, 93.692. The cumulative data from Lockheed Martin’s annual reports between 2001 and 2023 reveals total revenues of $1.082 trillion and profits of $93.692 billion.”

[26] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “As to be expected, these colossal allocations are encouraged by corporate America. First, because such expenditures create a military might that boosts corporate global hegemony; and second, because military contracts are risk-free, set without competitive bidding or adequate oversight. They come with guaranteed cost overruns and bring in superlative profits. Defense spending does not have to struggle with sluggish consumer demand; there are always more advanced weapons to develop, obsolete weaponry to replace, soldiers to feed and shelter, and new wars to be fought.” (p. 22-23).

[27] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “First, keeping the world safe for global capital accumulation requires a massive military establishment. Second, the massive military itself constitutes a source of immense capital accumulation.” (p. 22-23).

[28] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “The gains of empire flow into the hands of the privileged business class—the large overseas investors—while the costs are extracted from the general treasury, that is, from ‘the industry of the rest of the people.’ The same has been true in regard to Iraq: U.S. taxpayers have carried the costs and are paying the debt that the war brought, while Halliburton, Blackwater, and a hundred other corporations reap the benefits of fat no-bid contracts and corrupt dealings, most of which are not even audited.” (p. 25).

[29] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “Military contracts are risk-free, set without competitive bidding or adequate oversight. They come with guaranteed cost overruns and bring in superlative profits. Defense spending does not have to struggle with sluggish consumer demand; there are always more advanced weapons to develop, obsolete weaponry to replace, soldiers to feed and shelter, and new wars to be fought.” (p. 22-23).

[30] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “The gains of empire flow into the hands of the privileged business class—the large overseas investors—while the costs are extracted from the general treasury, that is, from ‘the industry of the rest of the people.’ The same has been true in regard to Iraq: U.S. taxpayers have carried the costs and are paying the debt that the war brought, while Halliburton, Blackwater, and a hundred other corporations reap the benefits of fat no-bid contracts and corrupt dealings, most of which are not even audited.” (p. 25).

[31] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “With only 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States now accounts for almost 50 percent of the world’s military spending. In second place is China, with 6.6 percent of the world’s expenditure on arms. Over the past decade, the U.S. has allocated more than $6 trillion on war and preparation for war. Forty percent of the U.S. military budget goes toward overhead. One critic notes that the Pentagon cannot account for much of its funds, property, and supplies. ‘[It] cooks its own books to make them appear in balance, and it makes new spending decisions based on the phony data.’ Many years of reports by the Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon’s own inspector general testify to this.” (p. 24-25).

[32] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “Since World War II, Washington has given hundreds of billions of dollars in military aid to train and equip the troops and internal security forces of more than eighty countries. The purpose of this aid has not been to defend these nations from outside invasion, but rather to protect ruling oligarchs and multinational corporate investors from the dangers of domestic insurgency. How do we know this? With few exceptions, there is no evidence suggesting that these regimes have ever been threatened by neighboring countries. However, there is a great deal of evidence showing that U.S.-supported military and security forces, as well as death squads in many of these countries, have been repeatedly used to suppress popular reformist movements and insurgencies within their own borders—movements advocating egalitarian and redistributive (‘leftist’) politics.” (p. 27-28).

[33] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “As we moved deeper into the ‘Great Recession,’ almost every state and municipality in the United States faced budget crises with serious shortfalls in revenues, record debts, and harsh cutbacks in human services. However, one component of government, the Defense Department, suffered no shortage of funding. In 2010, the Pentagon and related agencies expended somewhere between $850 billion to $1 trillion, if we count the indirect costs of war and empire, such as veterans’ benefits and medical costs, annual debt payments due to military spending, covert military and intelligence operations, the 70 percent of federal research and development funds that go to the military, ‘supplementary appropriations’ for specific wars like Iraq and Afghanistan, and defense expenses picked up by nonmilitary agencies, including ‘defense-related activities’ of the General Services Administration and the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons programs, which consume more than half of that department’s budget. This was a vastly larger sum than what all fifty states of the union combined spent on education, housing, police, firefighting, roads, hospitals, human services, occupational safety, and similar public services.” (p. 24).

[34] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “The Pentagon cannot account for much of its funds, property, and supplies. ‘[It] cooks its own books to make them appear in balance, and it makes new spending decisions based on the phony data.’ Many years of reports by the Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon’s own inspector general testify to this.” (p. 24-25).

[35] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “Military contracts are risk-free, set without competitive bidding or adequate oversight. They come with guaranteed cost overruns and bring in superlative profits. Defense spending does not have to struggle with sluggish consumer demand; there are always more advanced weapons to develop, obsolete weaponry to replace, soldiers to feed and shelter, and new wars to be fought.” (p. 22-23).

[36] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “As we moved deeper into the ‘Great Recession,’ almost every state and municipality in the United States faced budget crises with serious shortfalls in revenues, record debts, and harsh cutbacks in human services. However, one component of government, the Defense Department, suffered no shortage of funding.” (p. 24).

[37] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “With only 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States now accounts for almost 50 percent of the world’s military spending. In second place is China, with 6.6 percent of the world’s expenditure on arms.” (p. 24).

[38] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “The gains of empire flow into the hands of the privileged business class—the large overseas investors—while the costs are extracted from the general treasury, that is, from ‘the industry of the rest of the people.’ The same has been true in regard to Iraq: U.S. taxpayers have carried the costs and are paying the debt that the war brought, while Halliburton, Blackwater, and a hundred other corporations reap the benefits of fat no-bid contracts and corrupt dealings, most of which are not even audited.” (p. 25).

[39] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “Since World War II, Washington has given hundreds of billions of dollars in military aid to train and equip the troops and internal security forces of more than eighty countries. The purpose of this aid has not been to defend these nations from outside invasion, but rather to protect ruling oligarchs and multinational corporate investors from the dangers of domestic insurgency.” (p. 27-28).

[40] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “In the realm of conventional arms, the United States has exercised unmatched global reach, accounting for almost 70 percent of the world’s conventional arms sales. Since World War II, Washington has given hundreds of billions of dollars in military aid to train and equip the troops and internal security forces of more than eighty countries. The purpose of this aid has not been to defend these nations from outside invasion, but rather to protect ruling oligarchs and multinational corporate investors from the dangers of domestic insurgency.” (p. 27-28).

[46] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “The revolving door between the Pentagon and defense contractors ensures officials secure high-paying corporate roles, where they lobby for increased military budgets. These roles are often guaranteed due to previous connections or obligations developed during their tenure in government positions.” (p. 23).

[47] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “Politicians routinely receive campaign contributions from defense firms in exchange for securing contracts in their districts. This relationship guarantees favorable treatment for contractors, ensuring lucrative military spending regardless of public opinion or necessity.” (p. 23).

[48] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “The efforts of these highly placed government bodies are supplemented by ostensibly nongovernmental groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Conference, and other formal and informal elite groups populated by political leaders, policy specialists, bankers, CEOs, big investors, leading publicists, and a sprinkling of academic acolytes.” (p. 35).

[49] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “The broader national security state—including the Pentagon, CIA, and National Security Council—operates to protect corporate interests. These agencies justify interventions abroad as promoting democracy or combating terrorism, yet their actions often target nations pursuing independent or socialist economic paths.” (p. 33).

[50] Blum, W. (2013). America’s deadliest export: Democracy – The truth about US foreign policy and everything else. Zed Books. “The U.S. foreign policy apparatus is geared toward maintaining and protecting capitalist markets globally. Any nation or movement that seeks to deviate from this model or proposes an alternative, whether socialist or otherwise, becomes a target for subversion, intervention, or economic sabotage.” (p. 5-6).

[51] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “Nearly all the countries designated as friendly to the United States are regimes that maintain economic systems integrated into the U.S. sphere of corporate global domination. Conversely, nearly all the countries designated as unfriendly have, at one time or another, resisted being drawn into this sphere of corporate domination.” (p. 35).

[56] Blum, W. (2013). America’s deadliest export: Democracy – The truth about US foreign policy and everything else. Zed Books. “The National Security Strategy, a paper issued by the White House in September 2002, states: ‘…It is time to reaffirm the essential role of American military strength. We must build and maintain our defenses beyond challenge. … Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States. … To forestall or prevent … hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.’” (p. 7-8).

[57] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “Washington policymakers are the last to admit that they engage in such a process. They claim that their interventions abroad are propelled by an intent to defend national security or other unspecified ‘U.S. interests.’ Alternatively, they assert their actions are aimed at fighting terrorism, protecting human rights, opposing tyranny, preventing genocide, bringing democracy to other peoples, maintaining peace and stability in various regions, or protecting weaker nations from aggressors.” (p. 33).

[61] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “The United States presides over an armed planetary force of a magnitude never before seen in human history. As listed by the Department of Defense, this force includes over half a million troops stationed at more than 700 military bases around the planet and many more within the fifty states, including numerous secret bases that go uncounted.” (p. 26).

[62] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “These also include unusually large bases recently constructed in Central Asia, Iraq, Colombia, and Kosovo. … Both Ecuador and Bolivia now have bans on foreign bases written into their constitutions.” (p. 26).

Section 4

[66] Crawford, N. C., & Lutz, C. (2021, September 1). Direct war deaths: Post-9/11 wars. The Costs of War Project, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University. “U.S. Military: Afghanistan: 2,324; Pakistan: -; Iraq: 4,598; Syria/ISIS: -; Yemen: -; Other: 130; Total: 7,052.”

[67] Crawford, N. C., & Lutz, C. (2021, September 1). Direct war deaths: Post-9/11 wars. The Costs of War Project, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University. “U.S. Contractors: Afghanistan: 3,917; Pakistan: 90; Iraq: 3,650; Syria/ISIS: 19; Yemen: 215; Other: 511; Total: 8,189.”

[68] Crawford, N. C., & Lutz, C. (2021, September 1). Direct war deaths: Post-9/11 wars. The Costs of War Project, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University. “Overall Total (Direct War Deaths): Total Rounded to Nearest 1,000: 897,000-929,000.”

[69] Crawford, N. C., & Lutz, C. (2021, September 1). Direct war deaths: Post-9/11 wars. The Costs of War Project, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University. “Civilians: Afghanistan: 46,319; Pakistan: 24,099; Iraq: 185,831–208,964; Syria/ISIS: 95,000; Yemen: 12,690; Other: N/A; Total: 363,939–387,072.”

[70] Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. (n.d.). Civilian casualties. The Costs of War Project, Brown University. “An estimated 3.6–3.8 million people have died indirectly due to war-related consequences (e.g., destruction of healthcare systems, malnutrition, displacement).”

[71] Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. (n.d.). Civilian casualties. The Costs of War Project, Brown University. “Over 7.6 million children under the age of five in post-9/11 war zones suffer from acute malnutrition.”

[72] Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. (n.d.). Civilian casualties. The Costs of War Project, Brown University. “In Gaza, 62,413 people reportedly died of starvation within a year due to war-induced food insecurity (as of October 2024).”

[77] Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books. “A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own government or clients will be unworthy. The evidence of worth may be read from the extent and character of attention and indignation. We will show in this chapter that the U.S. mass media’s practical definitions of worth are political in the extreme and fit well the expectations of a propaganda model. While this differential treatment occurs on a large scale, the media, intellectuals, and public are able to remain unconscious of the fact and maintain a high moral and self-righteous tone. This is evidence of an extremely effective propaganda system.” (p. 97)

[78] Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books. “Table 2-1: Mass-Media Coverage of Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Jerzy Popieluszko (Polish Priest, murdered Oct. 19, 1984): The New York Times: Articles: 78; Column Inches: 1183.0; Front-Page Articles: 10. 72 Religious Victims in Latin America (1964–1978): The New York Times: Articles: 8; Column Inches: 117.5; Front-Page Articles: 1; Editorials: None.” (p. 101-102)

[80] Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books. “As shown on Table 2–1, the unworthy seventy-two on Penny Lernoux’s list of martyrs were subject to a grand total of eight articles in The New York Times, one in Newsweek, and none in Time. They were never mentioned on CBS News in the years of index coverage (1975–78). A total of seven names on the Lernoux list were mentioned in the eight Times articles, and two different ones were discussed in Newsweek, meaning sixty-three of the murders were blacked out entirely in these important media vehicles. None of the eight articles in The New York Times had any details or dramatic quality that might evoke sympathetic emotion. They described the murders as remote events in a distant world.” (p. 104)

[81] Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books. “The bodies were found in a dynamited well on an eastern Honduran estate… Note: No arrest or trial. Jaime Alcina (Spanish priest of Catholic Action Workers, arrested in Chile): ‘Several days later, a body with 10 bullet holes in the back was found in the Mapocho River.’” (p. 105-106)

[82] Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. (n.d.). Macroeconomic costs of war. The Costs of War Project, Brown University. “Total Costs of Post-9/11 Wars: $8 trillion (estimated through Fiscal Year 2022): $5.8 trillion appropriations (current dollars); $2.2 trillion obligations for veteran care (projected over decades).”

[83] Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. (n.d.). Macroeconomic costs of war. The Costs of War Project, Brown University. “Homeland Security Spending (2002–2021): $1.1 trillion.”

[84] Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. (n.d.). Macroeconomic costs of war. The Costs of War Project, Brown University. “Post-9/11 war spending was almost entirely funded through debt. Effects: Rising deficits and higher debt-to-GDP ratio.”

[85] Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. (n.d.). Macroeconomic costs of war. The Costs of War Project, Brown University. “Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Projections: Interest payments as a percentage of GDP: 2021: 1.4%; 2031: 2.4%; 2051: 8.6%.”

[89] Toft, M. D., & Kushi, S. (2023, April 18). Why force fails. Foreign Affairs. “American soldiers have been deployed abroad almost continuously since the end of World War II. The best-known foreign interventions—in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq—were large, long, and costly. But there have been dozens of other such deployments, many smaller or shorter, for purposes ranging from deterrence to training. Taken as a whole, these operations have had a decidedly mixed record. Some… largely succeeded. But others… were disappointments or outright failures.”

[90] Toft, M. D., & Kushi, S. (2023, April 18). Why force fails. Foreign Affairs. “Irrespective of whether the United States intervened, the outcomes were largely the same. Across each of the dimensions we considered there was no statistically significant difference between the cases that prompted an intervention and those that did not.”

[91] Toft, M. D., & Kushi, S. (2023, April 18). Why force fails. Foreign Affairs. “A closer look suggests that there is a subset of operations that is more likely to advance U.S. interests and achieve U.S. objectives: those that had clear, achievable goals and were informed by accurate assessments of local conditions.”

[92] Toft, M. D., & Kushi, S. (2023, April 18). Why force fails. Foreign Affairs. “The U.S. military is poorly equipped to handle political tasks. Military force can bring down a dictatorship, but it cannot establish an effective and democratic replacement. Nor can it stabilize long-running civil wars or overcome age-old ethnic divides.”

[93] Toft, M. D., & Kushi, S. (2023, April 18). Why force fails. Foreign Affairs. “During the Vietnam War, U.S. policymakers vastly underestimated the effectiveness of the Viet Cong and, therefore, misjudged the odds of success. The United States has often made a similar mistake when evaluating its partners.”

[94] Toft, M. D., & Kushi, S. (2023, April 18). Why force fails. Foreign Affairs. “Overestimating a partner’s capabilities or underestimating an adversary’s strengths can lead policymakers to start risky or costly interventions that they would have avoided with better information.”

[95] Center for Democracy & Technology. (2021, October 22). Reflecting on 20 years of the Patriot Act. “The two reflected on the speed with which the bill moved through Congress, despite containing ‘an old wishlist of the FBI… because they knew it was going to pass.’ Feingold remarked that many other members of the Senate admitted that they never read or even gained a basic understanding of what was in the Patriot Act.”

[96] Center for Democracy & Technology. (2021, October 22). Reflecting on 20 years of the Patriot Act. “At the time, polling across the country revealed that people were—presciently—worried about the government snooping, including on what they were reading.”

[97] Center for Democracy & Technology. (2021, October 22). Reflecting on 20 years of the Patriot Act. “The Patriot Act expanded the ability of government to obtain a broad range of business records without a warrant, and to issue National Security Letters or administrative subpoenas—and for both of these authorities, it removed the requirement that the government show that the information related to a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.”

[98] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “Enemies are forever conjured to stir fear in the hearts of the American people so that they might continue to support a U.S. imperium that bleeds the republic in order to rule the planet.” (p. 119)

[99] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “As early as 1984, the Reagan administration issued U.S. National Security Decision Directive 133: United States Policy Towards Yugoslavia, stamped ‘secret sensitive.’ It followed an earlier directive that called for a ‘quiet revolution’ to overthrow communist governments while ‘reintegrating the countries of Eastern Europe into the orbit of the World market.’” (p. 120)

[100] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “The bombs fell only on state-owned or worker-controlled factories, enterprises, auto plants, construction firms, municipal power stations and other public utilities, government radio and television stations, depots, ports, railroads, bridges, water supply systems, hotels, housing projects, hospitals, schools, and hundreds of other nonmilitary state-owned targets—in what amounted to privatization by bombing.” (p. 121)

[101] Parenti, M. (2011). The face of imperialism. Routledge. “Wars of aggression are a crime against international law and a crime against humanity. And such crimes were committed when U.S. leaders launched invasions against Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Somalia, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, and various other countries; and when they sponsored wars of attrition against civilian targets in Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Yugoslavia, and scores of other places, leaving hundreds of thousands dead.” (p. 140)

SOURCES FOR ADDED MATERIAL

[102] Heinz, B. (2023, July 6). Weapons firms, donors tied to industry-friendly Atlantic Council report. Responsible Statecraft. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/07/06/weapons-firms-have-ties-to-industry-friendly-think-tank-report/. “Weapons companies have recently come under significant scrutiny following a major 60 Minutes story, several reports from the Pentagon, and new proposals for reform from Congress highlighting the ways in which they profit from overcharging the U.S. military for their products. Yet a recent report from the Atlantic Council — one of Washington’s most influential think tanks — is pushing back on that momentum.”

[103] The Free Thought Project. (2024, November 7). Selling war: How Raytheon and Boeing fund the push for NATO’s nuclear expansion. The Free Thought Project. https://thefreethoughtproject.com/military-industrial-complex/selling-war-how-raytheon-and-boeing-fund-the-push-for-natos-nuclear-expansion. ”The results were both worrying and unsurprising, as this study found that giant arms manufacturers quietly bankrolled many of the largest and most influential groups advising the U.S. government on its foreign policy. The Atlantic Council alone is funded by 22 weapons companies, totaling at least $2.69 million last year. Even a group like the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, established in 1910 as an organization dedicated to reducing global conflict, is sponsored by corporations making weapons of war, including Boeing and Leonardo, who donate tens of thousands of dollars annually. The five think tanks that received the most funding from the arms industry are: The Atlantic Council, $2.69 million; Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), $2.46 million; Center for a New American Security (CNAS), $950,000; Hudson Institute, $635,000; and the Council on Foreign Relations, $300,000. At least 36 weapons manufacturers provided funding to major American think tanks. The most “generous” among them were Northrop Grumman, $1.07 million; Lockheed Martin, $838,000; General Atomics, $510,000; Leonardo S.p.A., $485,000; and Mitsubishi, $443,000.”

[104] The Free Thought Project. (2024, November 7). Selling war: How Raytheon and Boeing fund the push for NATO’s nuclear expansion. The Free Thought Project. Retrieved from https://thefreethoughtproject.com/military-industrial-complex/selling-war-how-raytheon-and-boeing-fund-the-push-for-natos-nuclear-expansion. “Unfortunately, this massive conflict of interest, which affects everyone, is standard practice among foreign policy think tanks. A MintPress News investigation into the funding sources of U.S. foreign policy think tanks revealed that they receive millions of dollars annually from weapons contractors. Arms manufacturing companies donated at least $7.8 million last year to the top fifty U.S. think tanks. In turn, these think tanks produce reports advocating for increased military spending and more wars, actions that significantly boost their sponsors’ profits. The only losers in this closed and self-serving system are the American taxpayers—burdened with higher taxes—and the tens of millions worldwide who suffer as victims of the U.S. war machine. The think tanks receiving the most funding were, in order: the Atlantic Council, CSIS, CNAS, the Hudson Institute, and the Council on Foreign Relations. The weapons manufacturers most active on K Street were Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics. These think tanks directly influence conflicts across the globe. For example, CSIS is one of the most vocal advocates for arming Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel—even as Israel carries out genocide in Palestine. A recent report from CSIS outlined a shopping list of U.S. weapons for the Israeli military, including Excalibur artillery projectiles, JDAM bomb guidance systems, and Javelin missiles. These weapons are manufactured by Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin—all of whom are among CSIS’s top funders. U.S. arms are being used daily in illegal and deadly attacks on civilian populations in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, making arms manufacturers directly complicit in war crimes.”

[105] Heinz, B. (2023, July 6). Weapons firms, donors tied to industry-friendly Atlantic Council report. Responsible Statecraft. “The Defense Innovation Adoption Commission’s members describe themselves as having ‘decades of service between us in government, the private sector, and capital markets.’ Digging deeper into the commissioners’ records in the private sector quickly unveils potential conflicts of interest. The Commission includes a list of nine ‘industry commissioners,’ all of whom represent companies that contributed funding to the Atlantic Council last year; their collective contribution was somewhere between $810,000 and $1,625,000.”

[106] Heinz, B. (2023, July 6). Weapons firms, donors tied to industry-friendly Atlantic Council report. Responsible Statecraft. “The Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank with a long history of informing foreign policymakers in the nation’s capital, recently formed a ‘Commission on Defense Innovation Adoption’ to ‘help spur a new approach to defense innovation.’ In April, the Commission released an interim report with 10 recommendations for changes to the policies surrounding the Defense Department’s contracting procedures to ‘accelerate the adoption of cutting-edge technology from the leading edge of the commercial and defense sectors.’ Late last month, the Commission’s report was endorsed by a coalition of 13 Pentagon contractor executives in a letter led by the CEO of Applied Intuition, a technology-focused firm founded in 2017 that profits from several contracts with the U.S. military. The letter specifically endorsed recommendations from the Atlantic Council report that would most benefit the signatory companies, claiming that such changes ‘will enable America’s most innovative organizations to step up support for DoD.’”

[107] Giorno, T. (2023, May 4). Revolving door lobbyists help defense contractors get off to strong start in 2023. OpenSecrets. “President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget proposal requested a record $886 billion for defense spending. In 2021, over one-third of the defense budget was allocated to the top 100 Department of Defense contractors, based on the most recent contracting data published by the U.S. government.”

[108] Giorno, T. (2023, May 4). Revolving door lobbyists help defense contractors get off to strong start in 2023. OpenSecrets. “This practice is widespread in the defense industry, giving, at minimum, the appearance of corruption and favoritism, and potentially increasing the chance that DoD spending results in ineffective weapons and programs, bad deals, and waste of taxpayer dollars.”

[109] Dress, B. (2024, August 7). Defense contractors tied to Sentinel nuclear missile program increase spending on Congress: Report. The Hill. “According to the Quincy report, since 2018, the top five lobbying spenders on the Sentinel program include Honeywell, which has spent approximately $20 million on lobbying; Lockheed Martin at nearly $19 million; Northrop Grumman at $18.2 million; and General Dynamics at $13 million.”

[110] Giorno, T. (2023, May 4). Revolving door lobbyists help defense contractors get off to strong start in 2023. OpenSecrets. “In 2022, at least 672 former government officials, military officers, and members of Congress worked as lobbyists, board members, or executives for the top 20 defense companies.”

[111] Giorno, T. (2023, May 4). Revolving door lobbyists help defense contractors get off to strong start in 2023. OpenSecrets. “Paul Arcangeli, a former Democratic House Armed Services Committee staff director for 12 years, began lobbying during the third quarter of 2022 and works for several defense clients including Raytheon.”

[112] Dress, B. (2024, August 7). Defense contractors tied to Sentinel nuclear missile program increase spending on Congress: Report. The Hill. “Sentinel is part of a more than $1 trillion nuclear modernization upgrade the U.S. is pushing to complete. ICBMs are one part of the nuclear triad, along with bomber planes and submarines, all three of which the Pentagon is also working to acquire new versions of.”

[113] Bernstein, D. J. (2012, January 18). Silencing Donahue and anti-war voices. Truthout. “MSNBC claimed Donahue’s ratings were too low to justify keeping the show on the air, even though it was the highest-rated program on MSNBC at the time of its cancellation… An internal NBC memo stated that Donahue should be fired because he would be a ‘difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.’”

[114] Marcetic, B. (2020, January). In the lead-up to Iraq, antiwar dissent was silenced. Not this time. Jacobin. “CNN chairman Walter Isaacson sent a memo to staff ordering them to ‘redouble our efforts to make sure we do not seem to be simply reporting from [the Taliban’s] vantage or perspective,’ and to ‘talk about how the Taliban are using civilian shields’ or harbored al-Qaeda, and dial down the ‘perverse’ focus on the ‘casualties and hardship in Afghanistan.’”

[115] Marcetic, B. (2020, January). In the lead-up to Iraq, antiwar dissent was silenced. Not this time. Jacobin. “An analysis of ABC, NBC, and CBS evening news stories during the eight months leading up to war found that administration officials were most often quoted, that the coverage was largely pro-war, and that anti-war voices were all but absent.”

[116] Hartung, W. D., & Fisher, D. (2023). March of the Four-Stars: The role of retired generals and admirals in the arms industry. Quincy Brief No. 47. Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

                  •                “The Institute for Responsible Statecraft highlights the pervasive issue of the revolving door between the U.S. government and the arms industry, involving hundreds of senior Pentagon officials and military officers annually. This practice raises significant concerns about both the appearance and, in some cases, the reality of conflicts of interest in shaping defense policy and the Pentagon budget.

                  •                26 out of 32 four-star officers (over 80%) who retired after June 2018 transitioned to roles in the arms industry, taking positions as board members, advisors, executives, consultants, lobbyists, or working for financial institutions that invest in the defense sector.

                  •                The largest category of post-retirement employment was as board members or advisors for small and medium-sized arms contractors, with 15 officers choosing this path. In comparison, five officers joined the boards or became executives of one of the top 10 arms contractors.

                  •                Five retired four-stars became consultants for weapons companies, another five became lobbyists, and four joined financial firms that make significant investments in the defense sector.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/tom-dispatch-lobbying-firms-yemen, https://publicintegrity.org/politics/howard-buck-mckeon-armed-services-committee/, https://www.influenceexplorer.com/politician/howard-p-buck-mckeon-r/5120bd9522ca40ec97bed6f545e5a31c