Lockheed Martin - "Our hiring patterns nationwide ... are totally unaffected by the state of the economy"

the glorious benefits - to some - of endless war...

The big defense company Lockheed Martin of Bethesda [MD] has nary a concern about the national economic downturn. It is hiring -- not laying off -- employees.

"Our hiring patterns nationwide and in the Washington area are totally unaffected by the state of the economy," said Ken Disken, senior vice president for human resources.

meanwhile, for the REST of us...

Renee Warren, 49, a Gaithersburg waitress who has been staying home to take care of her disabled husband, saw her lights go dark recently because she couldn't pay her electricity bills, which have reached $400 a month.

"It's just ridiculous," Warren said. "You can't live. I can't even get shoes for my husband, clothes, the things we need because of the bills."

The sagging national economy is widening the gap locally between people who work for the giant base of consulting and technology firms that rely on the government for revenue and lower- and middle-income people in jobs exposed to the downturn, such as retail and construction.

what's the message in this...? aw, c'mon... repeat after me...

I. LOVE. WAR.

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Warriors... Warfighters... The terminology of permanent war... [UPDATE]

i've posted previously (here and here) on the increasing and deeply disturbing prevalence of the term "warrior" to describe those we send off to fight and die protecting the "interests" of our nation monied elites... here's another, equally disturbing one that just caught my attention...

from a lockheed martin press release...

“Lockheed Martin continues to focus on providing our Warfighters with new and innovative technologies that will make their jobs easier,” said Lionel Liebman, manager of Program Development – Applied Research at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control.

also interesting that "warfighter" is capitalized...

what the increasing visibility of these terms suggests to me is that we are continuing to be slowly inculcated to seeing war as an integral part of our society... yes, it's true, that serving our country via military service has, at least in the past, been seen as an honorable calling, whether it's just for one hitch or for a career... these people have always been known variously as "members of the military," "career military," "soldiers," "sailors," "airmen," "marines," or, simply, "our troops"... all of those sobriquets implied government service, love of country, defense of freedom, etc., etc...

but what is implied by "warrior" and "warfighter"...? to me, for one thing, they do NOT imply any of those other things... "warrior," for instance, for me, calls to mind warrior nations like sparta, where the entire society was devoted to conquest, or to descriptions of the marauding huns, usually characterized as a "warlike" people... the only "service" implied is service to death and destruction... "warfighter" is even more chilling... to me, that word implies a weapon of advanced technology, an implement, if you will, of accomplishing that death and destruction...

words are powerful and the words we choose to use convey a great deal about our beliefs and views of the world... "warrior" and "warfighter" make my skin crawl...

(thanks to kevin at cryptogon...)

[UPDATE]

actually, it's not really an update, more of a p.s... in reflecting on this some more, there's yet another connotation of "warfighter" that suddenly hit me... i won't tell you what it is... instead, let's see if somebody can pick it up and note it in the comments...

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Our troops: stealing to survive

i just got back from the va hospital where i had an appointment this morning to have blood drawn in preparation for a regular check-up next week... the lab there manages to do a pretty damn good job processing what i imagine must be at least a hundred or more folks a day... i had brought along a book and, even though i wasn't anticipating a long wait, i figured i could move ahead a bit in my latest cyber-punk novel... i couldn't concentrate on the reading, however, because these two guys across from me were having a conversation that could easily be heard well into the next room... it's when the conversation took this turn that i started to unobtrusively pay attention...

both guys, as it so happened, had served in different parts of alaska, and both had assignments that required them to visit remote areas to inspect and service radar and other electronic surveillance stations... the interesting part, for me, was that both of them were taking turns topping each other's stories about how much government stuff, mostly gas and oil, they were able to steal without getting caught... one guy talked about driving his official car by his house near elemendorf afb and stopping to siphon gas into his private vehicle... the other bragged about stopping by a storage depot late at night and filling 50-gallon drums with motor oil and then selling it to friends and acquaintances... "everybody did it, nobody gave a shit," one of them said... "how else are you gonna make it on what they pay you..."

i drove home and it just now hit me... those guys have the very same mindset that those running kbr, halliburton, blackwater, and lockheed martin have... yeah, and probably cheney and gates too... the big difference...? they saw themselves as stealing to survive... but if they were suddenly plopped down in senior exec positions in one of those companies, would they behave any differently...?

This is my country! Land of my birth!
This is my country! Grandest on earth!
I pledge thee my allegiance,
America, the bold,
For this is my country to have and to hold.

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total surveillance

When "critical" black projects are killed, they have this nasty habit of not going away, but rather first being renamed. (According to Wikipedia, the Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program was renamed to the Terrorism Information Awareness Program in May, 2003.) If renaming doesn't work, programs seem to get shuffled around and relocated elsewhere. If that doesn't work, they appear to be broken into smaller pieces.

In the case of the TIA in relation to the Infosphere, that is really not a big problem as the information is literally part of the "Global Information Grid". So tools that find and stitch together the disparate information can be physically half-a-world apart. Much of intelligence work is already farmed out to private corporations anyway.

In fact, Wikipedia names SAIC executive Brian Hicks together with former United States National Security Advisor John Poindexter, as approaching the DoD with the Total Information Awareness idea.

[W]e will direct every resource at our command—every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every tool of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every weapon of war—to the disruption of and to the defeat of the global terror network." -- President Bush Address to a Joint Session of Congress Sept. 20, 2001

As stated stated by Glenn Greenwald...

UPDATE: Here is a snapshot of the United States from 2000-present. The Bush administration whispers something to "journalists." They repeat it uncritically on their front page. Other "journalists" read it. They believe it uncritically and then repeat it. With nothing else required, it becomes "fact"...

OK, let's start with 2000 then, with: "Protecting the Homeland -- Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on DEFENSIVE INFORMATION OPERATIONS", 2000 Summer Study, Volume II.

And then onto: GIG - Information Assurance Architecture.

"GIG" is "Global Information Grid" (the Infosphere)
"IA" is "Information Awareness" --> "Information Assurance"
"Information Awareness Office" --> "Information Assurance Directorate"

It seems that the aerospace industry has a keen interest in surveillance. Boeing bagged a virtual border fence contract and Lockheed Martin has undertaken the the FBI's new Sentinel main contract, after the Virtual Case File and Trilogy fizzled.

Here and here and here are several additional links that go to showing the extent of the programs early on.

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Turkey (as long as we're talking about oil and secretive maneuvering)

besides doing an on-going bang-up job on the sibel edmonds story, luke at wot is it good 4 has been doing yeoman's work digging out and posting all the little-known garbage that is going on between the u.s. and turkey... here's from a post he put up today quoting mizgin's analysis of the turkey-kurdistan conflict...

It's not in the interests of the US to see a stable Turkey in the region, just as it may not be in the interests of the US to see a stable Iraq. As long as the Washington and Ankara regimes collaborate in the maintenance of a low-intensity conflict in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan, their Deep Staters will continue to maintain control of the region and its highly coveted energy resources, as well as to turn a few billion bucks through Deep State corporations . . . like Lockheed Martin.

this fits right in with my belief that the bush administration has worked diligently to foster global and regional conflict, violence, chaos, endless war, and death as a means to accomplish their agenda of accruing unfettered power and maintain access to unlimited rivers of cash... both of those are ever so much easier when fear and chaos reign...

note: googling lockheed martin produces this, their corporate slogan: Lockheed Martin - We never forget who we're working for... if THAT isn't a hoot, i don't know what is...

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