profiteering at Brave New Films

Cooking You With Gas

2008-07-02T06:43:43Z

Pops tells us to be strong.

Who's winning the "war on terrorism"? Arms makers.

2008-01-12T20:32:54Z

And they say there are no winners and losers in this kind of "war". ::ripping envelope open:: And the winner IS...:

ARMS manufacturers are making record profits from the war on terrorism and unprecedented spending on weapons programs.
The massive earnings have drawn condemnation from Australian defence experts, who say expensive weapons such as jet fighters, warships and satellites are not the way to combat terrorism.

Australian defense experts are correct-- unless you want 1) perpetual fighting 2) to delude yourself into thinking you can be all-powerful, and 3) record profits for arms makers.

So let's see who some of the winners are! Oo, ooo! I hope it's Blackwater! Oh. They don't manufacture their own arms yet? They just sneak the accessories in? That's probably why they got passed over last year. Typical. It's alllll about politics.

The world's biggest arms maker, Lockheed Martin in the US, maker of fighter jets including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which Australia is buying, announced last week it had increased third-quarter profits by 22 per cent to $US11.1 billion ($12.1 billion). Wow!
Northrop Grumman, maker of aircraft carriers, submarines and bombers, increased profits 62 per cent to $US489 million. Hot dog!
At General Dynamics, maker of the Abrams tank, which Australia has just bought, profits climbed 24 per cent to $US544 million. Zowee!
Britain's BAE said its profits were up 27 per cent to £657 million ($1.23 billion). Ramalamadingdong!
In Australia profits for the Government-owned naval ship and submarine builder ASC rose 60 per cent last year to $30 million. Woohoooo!

Now think...what were some of those weapons really intended for?

Hugh White, professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, said the big-ticket weapons were designed to contain China, not combat terrorism. "They don't admit to it. They sell it to the people as a response to terrorism, but that is not what they are doing."

And what would be the motivation? A good "actor" in any given arena must always have the proper motivation.

Professor Kevin Clements, director of the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland, said the war on terrorism was a front to keep up arms spending to maintain the US's ability to fight a wars on three fronts - Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

They could have just asked for the money. It would have been so much more polite...and bloodless.

And Congress always goes along. Maybe they should get "best supporting role in a war on terrorism".

Government To The Highest Bidder

2008-06-15T09:30:21Z

Yeah, I know, it's Ralph Nader. And after what he did in 2000, and has done since, I feel quite comfortable using his hame and the word jackass in the same sentence.

But much of what he says here about corporate power in the U.S. absolutely needs to be said (except for his false equivalence as always between the two parties - and that is not to exempt the Blue Dogs and DLCers of much of the blame here).

The video, overall, is well done. Check it out.

(h/t bluegal)

Watch the video

STOP RUDY GUILIANI FROM DANCING ON 911 VICTIMS' GRAVES

2008-06-12T00:16:59Z

See why those of us who actually lost friends and family in the attack, have had it with the mayor whose neglect of the FDNY led to the deaths of hundreds of firemen.

Watch the video

To The GOP's Credit, They Find Other Ways To Profiteer Besides War

2008-01-12T20:21:59Z

You gotta give kudos on creativity, no? If the war angle is already providing billions in ill-begotten gains, they use Mother Nature and God to rip off the American people and become 21st Century Robber Barons.

First example? Check out this great piece by Timothy J. Burger of Bloomberg on greasy, sebum-stained, uber-lobbyist, Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi, who never met a corrupt family member under criminal investigation to whom he couldn't bestow a no-bid contract post-Katrina (hell, he even hooked himself up!):

Among the beneficiaries are Barbour's own family and friends, who have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from hurricane-related business. A nephew, one of two who are lobbyists, saw his fees more than double in the year after his uncle appointed him to a special reconstruction panel. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in June raided a company owned by the wife of a third nephew, which maintained federal emergency-management trailers.
Meanwhile, the governor's own former lobbying firm, which he says is still making payments to him, has represented at least four clients with business linked to the recovery.

No natural disaster present, no problem. Just throw money at faith-based groups and say God told you to do it. It seems former Governor of Oho, Bob Taft, found guilty of illegally accepting gifts from golf pals, also found a way to help out his buddies at taxpayer expense:

You've heard the stories: The $500 office chair for a university that could have been bought elsewhere for $50; the Statehouse renovation that included closets outfitted with $400 door knobs emblazoned with the Great Seal of the State of Ohio; and, of course, state investments in rare coins and Beanie Babies.
But hey, Ohio taxpayers. This one trumps them all: You paid over $111,000 for two big-screen TVs that were never even hooked up.
Little noted in the news these past few weeks was an Ohio Inspector General investigation that examined misspending by Bob Taft's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. Our famously scarlet-red fiscal conservative bloggers and pundits were strangely silent (c'mon guys - this one's a real porker on a silver platter.)

Of course right-wingers said nothing. Because they're all cultists who pray to the Golden Calf now, when not dreaming of sharing some beers with George W. Bush in full flight suit regalia.

Our response to Rudy Giuliani's attacks

2008-06-12T15:35:39Z

Yesterday the Giuliani camp attacked and slandered us at Brave New Films for our release of the investigative video, The Real Rudy: Command Center. Name calling on the order of "conspiracy theorists" and "cashing in" were the levels to which they sunk. But in the age of independent media, we don't have to take it or wait for the MSM to give us a chance to respond...

Watch the video

Rudy accuses us of cashing in on 9/11! Is he nuts?!

2008-06-12T15:35:25Z

Rudy's made $60 million on 9/11, and he accuses a filmmaker who releases a free video on YouTube of cashing in??!!

Watch the video

The Pentagon paid $999,798 to ship 19-cent washers to Texas

2008-01-12T20:15:23Z

Ahh, I fondly remember the days when it only cost a buck and a quarter. Ok, the who, what and where of this pathetic "incident."

A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to a Texas base, U.S. officials said.
The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.
The owners of C&D Distributors in Lexington, South Carolina -- twin sisters -- exploited a flaw in an automated Defense Department purchasing system: bills for shipping to combat areas or U.S. bases that were labeled ``priority'' were usually paid automatically, said Cynthia Stroot, a Pentagon investigator.

So when do they get their Medal Of Freedom?

Shocking! Foreign "Entrepreneurs" Engage In Profiteering In Iraq--With Our Tacit Approval.

2008-01-12T20:14:50Z

Yup. Right under our noses people are getting rich by placing caches of weapons in the hands of those only seeking to murder their fellow man. It's like Christmas at the NRA:

Iraqi and Italian partners haggled over shipping more than 100,000 Russian-made automatic weapons into the bloodbath of Iraq. As the secretive, $40 million deal neared completion, Italian authorities moved in, making arrests and breaking it up. But key questions remain unanswered.

You want more? You got it:

The purchase would merely have been the most spectacular example of how Iraq has become a magnet for arms traffickers and a place of vanishing weapons stockpiles and uncontrolled gun markets since the 2003 U.S. invasion and the onset of civil war.

And here, as they say, is the kicker:

Iraqi middlemen in the Italian deal, in intercepted e-mails, claimed the arrangement had official American approval. A U.S. spokesman in Baghdad denied that.

Very nice. Good to know someone in our government approved adding weapons of mass murder to a genocidal civil war.

Donald Rumsfeld, war profiteer

2008-01-12T20:01:21Z

According to a report in the NY Sun, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been touring major New York publishing houses seeking a "large cash advance" for a memoir he is writing "justifying the military stradegy for war in Iraq." Rumsfield has previously stated that implications there was anything wrong with the war plan "is amusing." Read more at ThinkProgress.