When Blood Money Isn’t Enough: Raytheon Admits to Defrauding Pentagon
RTX
Corporation, the weapons giant formerly (and better) known as Raytheon,
agreed on Wednesday to pay almost $1 billion to resolve allegations
that it defrauded the U.S. government and paid bribes to secure business
with Qatar.
“Raytheon engaged in criminal schemes to defraud the U.S. government,” said Deputy
Assistant Attorney General Kevin Driscoll of the Justice Department’s
Criminal Division on Wednesday. “Such corrupt and fraudulent conduct,
especially by a publicly traded U.S. defense contractor, erodes public
trust and harms the DOD, businesses that play by the rules, and American
taxpayers.”
RTX,
as part of this agreement that spanned multiple investigations into its
business, admitted to engaging in two separate schemes to defraud the
Defense Department, which included deals for a radar system and Patriot
missile systems. It also agreed to enter a separate deferred prosecution
agreement, which requires increased government oversight and
transparency for the next three years, in connection with the Qatari
kickbacks.
“Over
the course of several years, Raytheon employees bribed a high-level
Qatari military official to obtain lucrative defense contracts and
concealed the bribe payments by falsifying documents to the government,
in violation of laws including those designed to protect our national
security,” said Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of
New York. “We will continue to pursue justice against corruption, and as
this agreement establishes, enforce meaningful consequences, reforms
and monitorship to ensure this misconduct is not repeated.”
Trump, as a US president, is considered the world’s most powerful person
(all US presidents since 1945 have been considered as such …
because they instill fear, create terror, indulge in violence, and start wars)
on April 7, 2025, Trump arrogantly announced:
“Virtually every country wants to negotiate [with us over tariffs].” “[They are] offering things to us that we wouldn’t have even thought of asking them for.”
Trump, besides other things, has also been endowed with a good sized ass
then next day, at NRCC’s fundraiser in Washington, D.C., Trump said:
“I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are. They are dying to make a deal.”
to a great extent Trump is right – small and weak do cave in
even wealthy Saudi Arabia & UAE or economically strong India succumbed
Saudi, UAE, and other Sheikhs want to save their ass-glued gold thrones
India’s Modi has created many billionaires and much more disparity
besides, Modi has got many extremist Hindu supporters in the US
plus Modi doesn’t mind kissing Trump’s ass
many other nations are in the ass-kissing-queue
such as Japan, S Korea, Pakistan, S Africa, Taiwan, Vietnam
people love or pretend to love powerful people and so kiss their asses
those wanting favor or looking for protection wouldn’t mind ass-kissing
but all those leaders should remember one thing:
Trump <1> doesn’t use bidet, bum shower, Muslim shower, or whatever
(it’s an anal cleanser which sprays water shower — many just use water
Trump has halted extra tariffs, imposed recently, for three months
although the initial 10% tariff is active
Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) and US President Donald Trump ILLUSTRATION/The Atlantic IMAGE/Carlos Barria/Pool/AFP/Getty; Ira L. Black/Corbis/Getty/The Atlantic
but he didn’t pause the tariffs applied to China; instead he raised it to 145%
China, keeping pace with Trump, raised it to 125% for the final time
SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk at SpaceX Headquarters in Hawthorne, California. IMAGE/NurPhoto SRL / Alamy Stock Photo
A movement that wanted to merge North America into one nation and extend its borders as far as the Panama Canal might sound incredibly familiar. But this group, called the “technocracy movement”,
was a group of 1930s nonconformists with big ideas about how to
rearrange US society. They proposed a vision that would get rid of waste
and make North America highly productive by using technology and
science.
The Technocrats, sometimes also called Technocracy Inc, proposed merging Canada, Greenland, Mexico, the US and parts of central America into a single continental unit.
This they called a “Technate”. It was to be governed by technocratic
principles, rather than by national borders and traditional political divisions.
These ideas seem to resonate with some recent statements from the Trump administration about merging the US with Canada. Meanwhile, the US Department of Government Efficiency
(Doge) set up by Trump and led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, has also
outlined a vision of efficiency cuts by slashing bureaucracy, jobs and
getting rid of leaders of organisations and civil servants he thinks are
advancing “woke” values (such as diversity initiatives). This slash-and-burn approach also fits with some of the ideas of the Technocrats.
In February, Musk said:
“We really have here rule of the bureaucracy as opposed to rule of the
people — democracy”. The Technocrats viewed elected politicians as
incompetent. They advocated replacing them with experts in science and
engineering, who would “objectively” manage resources for the benefit of
society.
“The people voted for major government reform, and that’s what the people are going to get,” Musk told reporters after visiting the White House last month.
What did the Technocrats want to get rid of?
The 1930s’ movement
was an educational and research organisation that advocated for a
fundamental reorganisation of political, social and economic structures
in the US and Canada. It drew on a book called Technocracy published in 1921 by an engineer called Walter Henry Smyth, which captured new ideas about management and science.
(Columbia PhD student Ranjani Srinivasan self-deported after her F-1 visa was revoked. In this letter, she explains how she feels.)
My name is Ranjani Srinivasan. I was a 5th year PhD student at the
Department of Urban Planning, GSAPP. I was also a TA in the Urban
Studies Department at Barnard College.
Some of you might have heard about my case. For those who haven’t, I would like to share the details.
On Wednesday night (March 5), my visa was revoked by the Department of State.
While I was examining the email on Thursday morning (March 6), I
received a phone survey from a private number claiming to be a third
party hired by CU to administer a student opinion survey on campus
conditions. At some point during the survey the person revealed they
knew my exact address. I didn’t think much of it, then.
Instead, to figure out my visa status, I immediately began attempting
to contact ISSO. Some of you might know that their emergency hotline
only connects to public safety. After several hours of emailing both my
department and ISSO, I was put in touch with the Director of Compliance,
who assured me in writing that I am in legal status and could continue
my work as a TA.
On Friday, (March 7), while on a Zoom call with an
ISSO advisor who continues to reassure me that I was in legal status,
ICE came knocking at my door without a warrant. If I had been alone I
would have opened the door. My roommate, an American citizen, recognized
the knock as that of law enforcement. Given the lack of warrant she
refused to let them in and repeatedly asked them to identify themselves;
something they refused to do.
Scared and anxious, I told the advisor, who was still on Zoom, that
ICE was at my door. Initially she seemed frantic, calling upper
administrators but in the end she seemed amused. ISSO handed me a list
of lawyers I should contact and asked me to call public safety–who said
they would merely file a report and I should continue to not open the
door.
Once I realized CU would not help me, I left my house for a safer location the same day.
On Saturday evening at 6:20 pm (March 8) ICE came to
my house again. They threatened to appear everyday until they were able
to put me in removal proceedings. At this point I still had legal
status and they still did not have a warrant. This was the same day
Mahmoud was disappeared by ICE.
Until this point I had imagined that I just had to wait it out and
the University would intervene to protect me. I was still worrying about
grading my students’ assignments. I was wrong. On Sunday (March 9),
ICE illegally terminated my SEVIS and Columbia arbitrarily de-enrolled
me causing me to lose my legal status, worker status, and housing. This
immediately made me vulnerable to detention. The Dean of Student Affairs
at GSAPP, rather than helping me, entered my building hoping to confirm
I was still at home and had received the letter. Until this point she
has been sympathetic, although claiming that it ‘seemed like ISSO and
Columbia were not in control.’ After my de-enrollment she cut all
contact with me.
My lawyers told me I had roughly two choices at this point. I could
leave or I could fight my illegal termination of status but at risk
spending a substantial time in detention. Therefore, on Tuesday, (March 11),
I made the difficult decision to leave the US for Canada. At this point
I was quite sure the University was working closely with law
enforcement. And I suspected the private survey I had been administered
had been ICE trying to confirm my address.
Yet, ICE still had not realized I had vacated my home and left the country. On Thursday (March 13) my home was raided by DHS. The agents were surprised to find my empty room.
Just the next day (March 14), I was shockingly put
on blast by a DHS tweet that falsely reported that I had self deported
and leveled baseless allegations at me.
People supporting women’s rights, U.S., May 3, 2022. IMAGE/Twitter/ @MotherJones
The occupation and exploitation of land is inherently tied to the
occupation and exploitation of women’s bodies. The U.S. empire, built
off the back of colonization–an invasion and assault on the resources,
wealth, and sovereignty of other nations–is nothing less than a
macrocosm of the same gross entitlement that guides men to rape and
assault women. Land, the natural symbol of the feminine spirit, faces
the same eco-destruction and debasing at the hands of the U.S. empire.
We see these forces come together, reflecting and reinforcing each
other, in the name of violence and power-seeking.
The U.S. military is an appendage of the imperial core, siphoning
resources and abusing nations and people with less power–those who have
been “othered” and deemed less worthy under the doctrine of white
American exceptionalism. Even those the U.S. now calls “allies” are
still expected to maintain the same genuflecting spirit, adhering to the
wishes of the U.S. government while subserviently opening their
borders, turning over their land, and offering women up to the
destructive desires of foreign soldiers.
There is no separation between the colonization of land and women’s
bodies. History shows us where they merge, where cigarette burns and
bruises litter the skin of women and the pure waterways and life-giving
land. It is more than physical. It is a ravaging of the soul of the
people, a slow dismembering of wholeness, and a forced capitulation to
the blood-soaked mechanisms of a world system built on dehumanization
and the maximization of profit.
In 1882, Navy officer Robert Wilson Shufeldt referred to the Pacific
region as the “ocean bride of America.” In line with the overarching
ideology of manifest destiny, he wrote that the “wealth of the Orient”
will be brought back to the U.S.–not through fair trade, but through
coercion and colonization. That ideology never changed, though it was
morphed into different shapes and disguised by justifying arguments of
pan-securtism and moral superiority. In the post WW2 period, U.S.
conquest of the Pacific was part of a large power rivalry with the
Soviet Union and fears over the spread of communism. Now, as we head
into a new cold war era with China, the U.S. continues its
hyper-militarization of the region, with nearly 400 military bases and
half a million deployed U.S. soldiers. The only difference is who we are
calling the enemy. Threat inflation and the demonization of an “other”
is rarely rooted in truth, but operates as a story created to reinforce
political and economic domination. In order to continue propagating the
system of exploitation and extraction, if an enemy is not found, one
will be made.
Local communities in the Asia Pacific always face the brunt of the
violence–South Korea, Japan, the Philippines–as they have over the last
two centuries. And it is the women, who live under the forceful hand of
the colonizers with the intersectional inequalities of being considered
both racially and sexually inferior, who are often the most
disproportionately affected.
Sexual Conquest in the Asia Pacific
In 1871, the United States first attacked the Kingdom of Korea as
part of its wider expansionist goals. The U.S.’s brutal military
demonstrations were meant to accomplish what U.S. Navy Officer Charles
Rockwell called the “moral effect of making our citizens more secure”
while simultaneously restoring impressions of Western superiority and
countering anti-foreignism in Japan and China. This initial encounter
set the tone for future relations between the U.S. and Korea.
The Kingdom of Korea fell to Japanese invasion in 1910, becoming a de
facto colony until the end of World War II in 1945. Leading up to the
war, the Imperial Japanese Armed forces had established a system of sex
slavery in Korea, where hundreds of thousands of women were forced into
institutionalized gang rape by Japanese soldiers. They were commonly
referred to as “comfort women” and faced conditions so brutal that a
higher percentage of women in these roles died than men at the front
lines of the war. It was a conscription of death—less than 1 in 4 women
survived.
After the war ended, the United States set up a military occupation
of Korea. Imperial powers divided the peninsula in two, creating the
38th parallel and separating friends and family. This split would then
lead to the 1950 attempt to reunify the country, a conflict that would
last three years and lead to massive death and destruction. During these
years, the U.S. continued its military occupation of South Korea, which
included taking over the same systems of sex slavery that Japan had put
into place.
The U.S. would not go on to dismantle the horrific system of
institutionalized sexual violence. Instead, they would revamp it,
working with the South Korean government to create secret “camp towns”
of women to pleasure U.S. servicemen in the name of strengthening
U.S.-SK relations and boosting troop morale. Widows, orphans, and
impoverished women and girls were recruited into the system, deemed
“class five military supplies”, and made to adhere to the brutal sexual
entitlement of the U.S. military.
During this time, about 20% of South Korea’s foreign revenue was
brought in through prostitution–from over one million women that worked
in the camp towns. Data estimates that out of all the women between ages
16 and 29, about 1 in 5 women were involved.
Often referred to as “cheap yellow fuck machines,” the women were
treated as disposable objects and systematically dehumanized. They were
licensed and registered, regulated, routinely inspected, and punished
for refusing. They were indoctrinated and trained in sexual pleasure.
And they were repeatedly beaten, mistreated, and murdered in violent,
horrific manners–for one woman, it was a coke bottle forced into her
uterus and an umbrella through her rectum that killed her.
Along with the subjugative systems of military prostitution, the U.S.
continued its domination and exploitation of land and resources. The
South Korean government was nothing less than a puppet government
turning over backward to please the whims of U.S. leaders, which
included an expansion of U.S. military power on the peninsula. South
Korea now holds over 70 U.S. military bases, and thousands of U.S.
soldiers. Many of these bases, as well as annual U.S.-ROK war exercises,
have been widely criticized for their pollutive and harmful effects on
the natural environment.
It is not just South Korea who felt the barbs of U.S. militarism and
sexual conquest. Japan, which boasts 120 active U.S. military bases–more
than any other country–has had countless sexual assault and rape cases
committed by U.S. service members. In December 2024, the Okinawa Times
replaced its TV listing with a timeline of all the assaults since the
Battle of Okinawa, including the gang rape of a 9-month old child and a
58-year old woman.
One of the most publicized assault cases occurred in 1995, when a
three U.S. servicemen kidnapped and raped a 12-year old girl. They beat
her, bound her hands, duct-taped her eyes and mouth shut, and took turns
raping her. U.S. Navy Admiral Richard C. Macke, commander of the U.S.
Pacific Command at the time, commented on the attack:
I think it was absolutely stupid. I have said several
times: for the price they paid to rent the car, they could have had a
prostitute.
Last year, when a 16 year old girl was raped by a U.S. serviceman, Okinawa governor Denny Tamaki called this “a violation of the girl’s dignity”–small words for a barbaric life-altering event. The U.S. serviceman was sentenced to 5 years.
Martha Nussbaum’s philosophy is dynamic and challenging, but also elegant and lucidly written: she is the thinker of our time
I first encountered Martha C Nussbaum in 1987. She was a guest on Bryan Magee’sBBC television series The Great Philosophers. In
each programme, Magee would interview a leading contemporary
philosopher about the ideas of a great philosopher of the past; Nussbaum
was brought in to discuss Aristotle.
Still in her 30s when the programme was recorded, she was the youngest contributor to The Great Philosophers.
She was also the only woman guest over the whole series (there were 15
episodes), which in itself made her something of a trailblazer. There
were far fewer women philosophers then than there are now, and Nussbaum
was one of the first to achieve a prominent public profile. But her
contribution was notable not only because she was a young woman in a
field of middle-aged men. Her exposition was sharp, smart and witty; she
made ideas that were more than 2,000 years old spring to life. And she has continued in that vein over a long and productive career.
Nussbaum’s style is lucid and elegant, and she can be read for pure
pleasure (which is certainly not something you could say of all academic
philosophers). She has made important contributions in ethics,
political philosophy, international development, feminist philosophy,
animal rights, philosophy of emotion, and global justice. From her
remarkably impressive body of work (at least 28 books and more than 500
papers), I have chosen here to concentrate on three key areas: the
capabilities approach, her theory of emotions and, connected with that,
her work on anger. Her treatment of each of these topics offers
excellent evidence of how Nussbaum’s work challenges settled positions.
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (C) at the New Administrative Capital during the inauguration for a third presidential term, about 45 kilometres east of Cairo, on 2 April 2024 IMAGE/Egyptian presidency/AFP
The UAE is lobbying the Trump administration to torpedo a post-war plan for the Gaza Strip that Egypt drafted and which has been endorsed by the Arab League, US and Egyptian officials told Middle East Eye.
The split is becoming increasingly bitter, with US diplomats
concerned that it is harming US interests in the region. It reflects
growing Arab competition over who calls the shots in the Gaza Strip’s
future governance and reconstruction, as well as different opinions over
how much influence Hamas should retain there.
The Emirati pressure poses a dilemma for Cairo because both the UAE
and Egypt broadly back the same Palestinian powerbroker for Gaza,
Mohammed Dahlan, an exiled former Fatah official.
“The UAE could not be the lone state opposing the Arab League plan
when it was agreed, but they are trashing it with the Trump
administration,” the US official told MEE.
The UAE is flexing its unparalleled access to the White House to
criticise the plan as unworkable and accuse Cairo of giving too much
influence to Hamas.
The UAE’s powerful ambassador to the US, Yousef al-Otaiba, has been
lobbying US President Donald Trump’s inner circle and US lawmakers to
put pressure on Egypt to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians, one US
official and one Egyptian briefed on the matter told MEE.
Otaiba was previously on record
saying that he did not see “an alternative” to Trump’s call earlier
this year for Palestinians to be forcibly displaced outside of the Gaza
Strip.
MEE contacted the UAE embassy in Washington, DC for comment but did not receive a reply.
Hamas is an offshoot of the Egypt-founded Muslim Brotherhood, which the UAE has tried to stamp out across the Middle East.
Egypt’s military-led government has also crushed the Muslim
Brotherhood, but it allows Hamas officials some freedom of movement.
Egyptian spymasters have long-standing relations with Hamas members,
including the Qassam brigades, which Egypt has used to mediate the
ceasefires in Gaza.
UAE angered by US-Hamas talks
Egypt’s Gaza plan has been criticised by the UAE for not spelling out
specifically how to disarm and remove Hamas from the Gaza Strip.
King Salman, Presidents Trump and el-Sisi inaugurate the Global Center for Combating Extremism by touching an illuminated globe of the Earth. IMAGE/Wikipedia.
“I’m going to Saudi Arabia. I made a deal with Saudi Arabia. I’d
usually go to the U.K. first. Last time I went to Saudi Arabia they put
up $450 billion. I said well, this time they’ve gotten richer, we’ve all
gotten older so I said I’ll go if you pay $1 trillion to American
companies, meaning the purchase over a four-year period of $ 1 trillion
and they’ve agreed to do that. So, I’m going to be going there. I have a
great relationship with them, and they’ve been very nice but they’re
going to be spending a lot of money to American companies for buying
military equipment and a lot of other things.” – President Donald Trump,
7th March 2025.
What is the true importance of the US-Saudi relationship in the
global economy? It’s based on the two things that make the economy go
round – money and oil.
The United States–Saudi “petrodollar” arrangement has underpinned
American economic and military power for nearly five decades. In
essence, oil exports from Saudi Arabia (and later OPEC broadly) have
been priced in U.S. dollars since the 1974, ensuring a constant global
demand for the dollar and U.S. Treasury assets. This monetary system
forms the hidden backbone of a web of consequences – from U.S.
imperialism and geopolitical maneuvering to environmental degradation
and extreme wealth accumulation. Today, roughly 80% of global oil
transactions are still conducted in USD, illustrating the petrodollar
system’s enduring influence. Below, we analyze the historical origins of
the petrodollar, explain how this monetary system became a root cause
linking finance to geopolitics and ecological crisis, and discuss
proposed alternatives like Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that could break
the cycle.
Background
In the aftermath of World War II, the Bretton Woods system (1944)
established the U.S. dollar as the world’s anchor currency, pegged to
gold, which cemented U.S. economic dominance. However, by 1971 the U.S.
faced mounting trade deficits and dwindling gold reserves, as countries
sought to trade USD for gold they didn’t have, US President Nixon ended
dollar convertibility to gold – a move that threatened the dollar’s
supremacy. The solution emerged via oil: in 1974, one year after the oil
crisis, Washington and Riyadh struck a pivotal deal (kept secret until
2016) that ensured Saudi oil would be priced exclusively in dollars. In
return, the U.S. provided military protection and lucrative arms sales
to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi leaders would recycle their oil revenues into
U.S. Treasuries and American investments. This U.S.–Saudi arrangement
laid the foundation of the petrodollar system, firmly tying the world’s
most traded commodity (oil) to the American currency.
