“The link between defense contractors’ interests and an aggressive US foreign policy is undeniable."...Defense contractors talk openly about how tensions with Russia are good for business. “Adam Schiff personifies the link between foreign policy hawks and deep-pocketed defense contractors.”...The target isn’t Russia or for that matter Syria, it’s US taxpayers who must be convinced of alleged “threats.” Without US taxpayers there would be no endless coup d’etat in Syria....Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, Harris Corporation, Parsons Corporation of Pasadena, Orbital ATK, Aerospace Industries Assn. are among Rep. Adam Schiff donors.
2/15/2018, “Who Is Adam Schiff?“ Jacobin, Branko Marcetic
“Resistance leader? Not really. Democratic congressman Adam Schiff personifies the link between foreign policy hawks and deep-pocketed defense contractors.”
“Since Donald Trump’s election, a number of Democrats have tried to cast themselves as leaders of the “resistance.” Few have done it with more gusto than Adam Schiff.The California representative has become something like the point man for all things Trump-Russia, using his position as the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Select Intelligence Committee to act as the “guardian against the [administration’s] worst abuses” and making television appearances and public statements to warn about the administration’s alleged ties to Russia.
At the same time, Schiff has solidified his status as one of Congress’s leading anti-Russia hawks. He has ardently supported harsher sanctions on Russia, warned of future election interference by the Kremlin, and cautioned that its operatives are trying “to tear us apart” through their online activities. Last year, in response to the GOP’s decision not to endorse sending lethal arms to Ukraine in its platform--a policy he spent years working with Republicans like John McCain to push — he aggressively questioned those involved as part of the Trump-Russia investigation.Schiff’s alarmism has paid off for him personally, catapulting him to national prominence and supplying him a potent theme for fundraising. But it also has the potential to be profitable for another group: the arms manufacturers and military contractors that are among his biggest donors.
Schiff’s hawkishness isn’t limited to Russia. He voted for the original AUMF that has served as the legal basis for the war in Afghanistan and all other aspects of the “war on terror” since. He was an early supporter of the Iraq War, joining twenty-eight other Democrats in handing Bush the keys to invade Iraq, and he insisted on staying the course for much of the 2000s. He also backed Obama’s war in Libya, pushed for the military destruction of ISIS, and called for “greater involvement” in Syria, including setting up a “no-fly zone.” [When a “no fly zone” was declared over Libya in 2011, US began bombing it into oblivion].
Perhaps not surprisingly, Schiff’s list of campaign contributors in recent years is littered with the names of prominent defense contractors. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK, Harris Corporation, and Raytheon all make an appearance. The latter has given the California representative a total of $64,015 over the course of his career, and in 2013, its PAC held a fundraiser for him at the Verizon Center headlined by Beyoncé. That same year, Schiff was treated to a fundraiser by Igor Pasternak, a blimp manufacturer who returned to Ukraine and, inspired by the 2014 [US orchestrated regime change, “Yats is the guy"] revolution, began working with the country’s defense ministry.
But surpassing all these is Parsons Corp, a multinational engineering services firm whose headquarters in Pasadena have sat in or adjacent to the different congressional districts Schiff has represented over the years. Parsons has been Schiff’s second-most generous funder, donating a total of $101,500 (just narrowly behind Disney). While it gives prodigiously to both parties, Parsons has maxed out for Schiff ($5,000 each for the primary and election) every election cycle he’s been an incumbent — an honor it hasn’t bestowed on any other congressperson.
Parsons’s various subsidiaries receive huge amounts of [US taxpayer] government largesse. Its “Government Services” subsidiary landed more than $740 million in government contracts in 2017, most of which came from the defense department, while its “Global Services” subsidiary has raked in tens of millions of dollars worth over the last few years, almost all from the Pentagon.Parsons benefited directly from Schiff’s vote for the Iraq War, becoming the second largest reconstruction contractor in the country. It won a $900 million contract for security and justice, a $500 million contract for renovating public buildings, medical facilities and housing, a $1.5 billion contract for construction and engineering work, and was part of a $1.8 billion infrastructure deal.
And as if war-profiteering wasn’t enough, Parsons’s work in Iraq tended to be rife with problems, including delays and shoddy workmanship. It managed to construct only fifteen of the 150 medical facilities it was supposed to build, and the $75 million police academy it put up in Baghdad was plagued by plumbing issues — light fixtures damaged by human waste seeping through the ceiling, and a room so leaky it was nicknamed the “rain forest.” The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction later found that nearly every project it worked on was beset with construction failures.While other lawmakers criticized the company for its failures, Schiff was muted, blaming a lack of oversight and competitive bidding for the problems. At that point, he was California’s top recipient of Parsons money.
Iraq isn’t the only Schiff-backed war Parsons has benefited from. After Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi was killed as a direct result of US intervention, the Pentagon hired Parsons to help the Libyans dispose of his chemical weapons. And Parsons equipment has already been sent to the Ukrainian government for defense purposes.Schiff’s public inflation of the Russian cyber-threat may also be serendipitous for the company [Parsons], which over the past six years has been slowly pivoting away from construction toward cybersecurity and missile defense. It has hosted a Cyber Defense Exercise run by the NSA four years in a row, and recently acquired Williams Electric Co., which is set to boost its work in cybersecurity.…………
Schiff, of course, has been a big backer of US intelligence agencies. Shortly after Trump’s election, he penned an open letter to the intelligence community in which he stressed that its “contribution remains more important to our national security than ever,” and paid tribute to its “commitment to the rule of law,” “unwavering patriotism,” and “sacrifice.” Elsewhere, he has said that criticizing the intelligence community “impairs our national security,” and rebuked Trump for impugning “the tens of thousands of Americans who are at work every day of the year, many in great physical danger, to protect us.”
Other Schiff donors would also stand to profit from the military escalations he has supported. In fact, they’ve acknowledged that rising tensions with Russia are good for business,and in some cases have even called for the policy(allowing arms exports to Ukraine) for which Schiff has spent years advocating. [Ukraine ambassador was at 2016 GOP Platform meetings in Cleveland to ensure that he’d be getting US taxpayer funded weapons to kill Russians
Added: "Guess what these companies want? War with Russia in Ukraine....A Ukrainian arms dealer named Igor Pasternak held a $2,500 per head fundraiser for Schiff in 2013.”
[Image: “Aeroscraft CEO Igor Pasternak speaks to Capitol Intelligence/CI Ukraine using CI Glass at Ukraine Crisis Media Center ahead of UkroboronProm news conference. August 26, 2016,” screen shot from video] 1/24/2020, “Adam Schiff Is a Dangerous Warmonger,” Jacobin, Liz Featherstone
“Adam Schiff, the liberal hero of impeachment, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the military-industrial complex and a fervent exponent of permanent war.”
“To some Democrats and journalists, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) is a hero. All over the internet, people are thanking him for defending the Constitution, hoping he’ll run for president someday. After his performance during this week’s impeachment hearing, the worship was especially intense; a letter writer to the New York Times called it “brilliant” and a “tour de force,” while the conservative Washington Times made fun of all the blue-checked Twitter accounts losing their objectivity in ecstatic praise. As the face of the impeachment effort, especially for liberals disengaged from the election process, Schiff represents a glimmer of hope for domestic regime change.
We’d like to be on his side. After all, he’s working hard to take down Donald Trump, one of the worst presidents in American history. But let’s not get carried away in fandom. Schiff is a dangerous warmonger, and his efforts to fuel paranoia about Russia only serve to feed that agenda. It would be admirable if Schiff’s impeachment crusade was limited to Trump’s corruption. But something else drives him: he wants a [US taxpayer funded] proxy war in Ukraine with Russia, and he has for some time.
Adam Schiff physically resembles a prosperity preacher. That is to say, he looks like a classic all-American salesman type, but with a beatific glow of righteousness. This creepily wholesome look lends a corny Cold War ambiance to his constant fulmination about “the Russians.” It’s hard not to listen to him without thinking of Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 poem “America”:
America, it’s them bad Russians
Them Russians, them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
Assuring us that he is aware, actually, of what century this is, Schiff said in 2015, “Now, we’re not seeing the same bipolar world we had between communism and capitalism.” (Phew!) He then added, “But we are seeing a new bipolar world, I think, where you have democracy versus authoritarianism.” Schiff has not viewed this as a mere contest of ideas: he constantly advocated for Obama to impose tougher sanctions on Russia and give more weapons to Ukraine.
Although delicately opposed to violence in some contexts — he’s a vegan! — this isn’t the only war Schiff has championed. He supported the
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya wars, greater US intervention in Syria, as well as the Saudi war with Yemen
(although he has, in the past year, turned against the latter adventure, seeming to draw the line at sawing up journalists with bonesaws — he is a moderate after all, plus very popular with the media), and he has voted for nearly every possible increase in the defense budget.
As Jacobin’s own Branko Marcetic observed two years ago, Schiff’s bellicosity is extensively funded by arms manufacturers and military contractors. A Ukrainian arms dealer named Igor Pasternak held a $2,500 per head fundraiser for Schiff in 2013, as the late Justin Raimondo reported in a terrific analysis on Antiwar.com in 2017, at a time when Ukraine was desperately trying to counter the Obama administration’s disinterest in funding its war with Russia. Despite that disinterest, the State Department approved some very profitable dealings for Pasternak in Ukraine after that [Adam Schiff] fundraiser.
And that’s only one example. In the current cycle, donations from the war industry have continued to flood his coffers.
Many come from employees of firms with extensive Department of Defense contracts, including Radiance Technologies and Raytheon. [Raytheon Cruise Missiles are $3 million US tax dollars each]. PACs representing the defense industry also make a robust showing among Schiff’s contributors, according to data on Open Secrets.org; companies funneling money to Schiff — sorry, contributing to those PACs — include Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Radiance, and others, including L3Harris Technologies (which got in big trouble with the State Department in September and had to pay $13 million in penalties for illegal arms dealing).
Guess what these companies want? War with Russia in Ukraine. Why wouldn’t they? Last October [2019], the United States approved a $39 million sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, a joint contract between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. The previous year, Ukraine bought $37 million worth of missiles from the same two companies. As a missile-maker, Zacks Equity Research has noted, Northrop Grumman also benefits richly from conflict in Ukraine, as missiles are heavily used in cross-border wars.
Despite his enthusiastic support for state violence and cozy ties to the makers of deadly weaponry, Schiff, an Alexander Hamilton–quoting windbag, doesn’t have much crossover appeal to the sort of people who put “These Colors Don’t Run” stickers on their trucks. His impeachment crusade only seems to reinforce Trump’s support among the faithful; at this writing, 93 percent of Republicans oppose the president’s removal from office. Welcome to the #Resistance.”
……………
No comments:
Post a Comment