“The Riz Khan Show” asks: “Is the U.S. weapons industry fueling global instability and sparking another arms race?” (22:29):

The primary evil of the State is its nature as an antisocial fictional entity empowered by its own monopoly of force. No more is this evil displayed than through an empire like the U.S. where its power becomes a magnet for the elite to consume a large piece of the exploited pie. A corporation, also being an antisocial fictional entity, has no subjective interest in the mutual cooperation and coexistence of people—only the ‘rational’ self-interest to preserve and enhance itself by any means necessary. The well-being of Palestinians, Colombians, Venezuelans, Indonesians, Somalis, Yemenis, Nigerians, Liberians, South Ossetians, Iraqis, Egyptians, Afghans, Pakistanis, Lebanese, Jordanians, Congolese, Mexicans, etc. are of no concern because the military industrial complex absolutely needs armed conflict, aggressive war and excessive intimidation by governments to survive. To its ends, people are abundant and naturally reproductive—therefore, expendable and accessible to exploit with lesser error than the potential insecurity of cash flow.

The military industrial complex has an interest—not in producing defensive precautions or even aggressive dominators, but—only in the perpetuity of armed conflict; only by means of perpetual destruction. The corporation’s disconnect from being a moral agent with: the State-enforced privilege of minute liability, State-encouraged privilege of access to the exploitative monopoly of force and the tolerance for the State to maintain its monopoly of force makes nihilistic ‘reform’ and ‘regulation’ self-defeating. Only the dismantling of these structures—the State and the institutions granted with the privilege to survive only through death, destruction, enslavement via odious debt—and the confiscation, redistribution of these criminal organizations’ possessions positive steps toward liberty or justice for all.

The disconnection of the corporation from moral agents—via corporate personhood—makes you have to heavily scrutinize statements from executives and spokespeople from the war machine sector who say that none of their arms are used for human rights abuses and such. They’re not going to arm warlords from their parent corporation in Virginia. The arms to the more overt criminals against humanity come from shell corporations of subsidiaries of subsidiaries of front NGO’s of shell corporations of shell corporations of the parent corporation. Plausible deniability under the law does not clean the hands of the individuals in control of these corporate structures. And under the law, the ‘left hand doesn’t have to know what the right hand is doing’ for a criminal conspiracy to be held liable.

The fact is that the strength of the U.S. government—or any government for the matter—will always strengthen the financiers of those in control of said government. Therefore, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, K Street and the military industrial complex will continue to conspire to plunder the most defenseless in their global plantation until the governed withdraw their consent through solidarity, direct action and resistance

23 Mar 2010 | AJE

The US has not only the world’s most powerful armed forces, but also the biggest global weapons industry.

As its exports in traditional areas such as consumer goods, hi-tech items and automobiles dwindle, its sale of sophisticated weaponry to the rest of the world is growing.

Congressional Research Service, a non-partisan American group, says the US’s share of all weapons sold during the height of the global recession in 2008 rose to more than two-thirds even though the world’s ordnance market contracted.

The US also signed 70 per cent of all weapons sales agreements with developing nations.

Between 2001 and 2008, the US sold India weaponry worth nearly $31bn, while Pakistan shelled out nearly $12bn to upgrade its military hardware.

Both countries are nuclear-armed rivals who have fought three wars and came close to a fourth in 2008.

On Tuesday’s Riz Khan we ask: Is the US weapons industry fuelling global instability and sparking another arms race?

Joining the conversation will be William D. Hartung of the US-based New America Foundation which monitors weapons proliferation and the politics and economics of military spending.

We will also have with us Joel Johnson of the Teal Group Corporation, an American aerospace and defense consulting company which forecasts the production of, and the markets for, a variety of aerospace and defense equipment.