The story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war.
Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed, and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.
Thanks to Billy Warhol for sending me the link to this Video!~
Rod said...
Saw this documentary a month ago on Starz Cinema, and it is scary stuff.
While Greenwald is not the most accomplished of documentarians, the case he made was absolutely astounding.
Scariest of all--and being devoted an entire chapter in Naomi Wolf's The End of America--is Blackwater, a private security firm that has grown since the beginning of the war to $500 Million worth of contracts with the Department of Defense.
They are not only immune from prosecution by "Order 17", but have done their dirty work both in Iraq and in New Orleans during Katrina cleanup.
They are Halliburton's equivalent of Herman Goebbels SA.
Very scary stuff indeed...
Jeff Herz - My View of the World said...
Scary, very scary stuff.
I know we live in a capitalist economy, but why do these profit mongers have to be taking all of our taxpayer money?
PoliShifter said...
War Is A Racket is a book written in 1935 by Major General Smedley Butler where after his military service he concludes that war is a racket, a collusion of governments and businessmen to make money
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps.
I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers.
In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. ...
I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914.
I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.
I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.
I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912.
I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916.
I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.
In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.
WAR is a racket.
It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.
It is the only one international in scope.
It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people.
Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about.
It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.
Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict.
At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War.
That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns.
How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle?
How many of them dug a trench?
How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out?
How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets?
How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy?
How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious.
They just take it.
This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war.
The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting.
Newly placed gravestones.
Mangled bodies.
Shattered minds.
Broken hearts and homes.
Economic instability.
Depression and all its attendant miseries.
Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
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