"Raytheon go home!" chanted a group of protesters.
While Raytheon quietly held a career fair at Northeastern University to recruit students to work for them, they were also met with some pushback.
In an attempt to reach out to students who might be tempted to work at Raytheon, individuals from the Coalition to Stop Genocide in Yemen and Massachusetts Peace Action, lined up in front of the school building where the job fair was being held, calling attention to the US Saudi War in Yemen, particularly Raytheon’s involvement – with their bombs repeatedly being used to target civilians.
"Did you go to school to starve and bomb babies?" read Susan McLucas’s sign.
"Raytheon right here, they have an agenda to make money and to kill people and they know what they do," said Lauren, one of the protesters.
"I’m a proud Northeastern student but this is really making me question a lot of things," said Shaun, a law student at Northeastern University.
"If Raytheon has the nerve to show their face anywhere, students should rise up and say we’re not gonna take it," yelled another protester. "When these universities open up their arms, accept Raytheon, name amphitheatre’s after them, invest their endowment and their stock, it shows that they don’t care about education, they care about one thing, and that’s cold hard cash, but what kind of cash is this? This is cash that’s paid for with the blood of the people of the world."
Every ten minutes a child dies in Yemen. Since the war started in 2015, 85,000 Yemeni children have died from malnutrition. According to Oxfam International, a civilian is killed every three hours.
"The US had to certify in order to continue to sells arms to Saudi Arabia that the Saudis weren’t intentionally targeting civilians; that seems kinda strange because school busses full of children are being bombed, because hospitals and water treatment plants are being bombed, because after people get killed and their family members are dead and they go to a funeral, the funerals are getting bombed," yelled Ryan, one of the lead organizers from the Coalition to Stop Genocide in Yemen.
At least 40 Yemeni children were killed after a Saudi Arabian expeditionary aircraft bombed a civilian school bus in Dahyan. The missiles used were 227kg laser-guided bombs manufactured by both Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. As a way of honoring the life and memory of the children of these attacks, Dan McLaughlin, one of the protesters, wore a blue UNICEF backpack with one of the deceased children’s name and age – "Yousef Hussein Hussein Tayeb, 15 years old," read his backpack.
"Many of the kids were wearing Unicef provided backpacks and they were found all over the site," said Dan. "I think it’s important that the kids who were killed are remembered for who they were – they had real names, what age they were."
"Little children in Yemen they pick up pieces of bombs that have the serial number of the bombs, they are reminded daily of how the United States literally hates them, said Lauren. "There’s a reason why these people get radicalized, it is because the United States enlist and contracts these defends contractors, I’m sorry not defense contractors, war profiteers! They contract these people to do their dirty work world wide…there are people out here that have a shred of conscious, a shred of morality, and say fuck Raytheon!"
The protesters also highlighted the United Arab Emirates involvement in the war, and the United States tight relationship with both the Saudis and the UAE.
"We live in the country that’s directly responsible for this," said Alice, a member of the Coalition to Stop Genocide in Yemen. "It wouldn’t happen without US support, US intelligence, US direction, US bombs, US mechanics fixing planes, US pilots training the UAE and the Saudi pilots, the US Green Berets that are on the Saudi Yemen border, I mean this thing is a US war, but if we look around in the US right now, we don’t see a whole lot of pushback to it, we gotta change that."
It’s a genocidal war where journalist, where people even just posting things about the war on Twitter are being routinely executed and killed," said Ryan.
Students also recognized Raytheon’s lobbying efforts in helping sustain collaboration with the US and the Saudi’s.
"The US often provides targeted information for these strikes; Assistant Secretary of State Charles Faulkner who approved it, he was the one who signed off on it…you know what he did before he worked in the government, he was a lobbyist for Raytheon," said Ryan. "The level of direct and open corruption and collaboration between war profiteers and US military and government, it’s sad to see."
The Protesters were calling for Northeastern University to break their ties with Raytheon and for the US to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia.
"These war profiteers are invited here with open arms by Northeastern University to come and recruit students to make bombs that kill people all around the world, and so we’re saying Northeastern should sever their ties with these weapons manufacturers – should not invite them on campus for recruitment fairs, should close down this Raytheon Amphitheatre, rename it something else, and end all financial relationships with them," said Ryan.
Ryan also thought Raytheon should pay reparations – "everywhere their bombs have fallen," he said.
Academia’s role in the military-industrial-complex was consistently highlighted throughout the protest. Many are still unaware that Eisenhower originally included "academic" in the draft of his farewell speech.
Eisenhower saw the corrupt influence that the military and arms manufacturers would have on universities by dominating much of the science and engineering department through employment and project allocations. Raytheon’s job fair at Northeastern University exemplifies the integral role of academia in the military industrial complex.
"We’re not gonna let universities try to whitewash the image of war profiteers like Raytheon and General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin," said Ryan. "It’s not just the universities ties with the war profiteers, it’s also countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE who donate hundreds of millions of dollars to these universities to publish papers white washing their role in the world."
As the event wrapped up, protesters turned around to face the Raytheon Amphitheatre to directly give Raytheon and students inside the job fair a goodbye message. Ryan held the megaphone, passionately yelling, "Hey everyone in the building, this is to all you war profiteers and students who are hoping to make a quick buck making weapons of death and destruction, they’ll tell you that they’re helping make precision guided missiles, that those are more accurate, the problem is when these precision guided missiles are intentionally aimed at civilians like they are very single day, the guided system make them more effective weapons for genocide, so are you gonna go and work at a company that’s committing genocide in Yemen? Or are you gonna stand with the people of the world against this bull shit!"
As I approached the building, Billy Calphas, a Raytheon employee and the person running the event, came outside.
When I asked him what he thought about the protesters "calling attention to Raytheon’s bombs being used to kill civilians and children in Yemen?" he replied, "Hmmm, well I should mention I’m a bit bias, I am a Raytheon employee myself…I should let you know that if you’re asking me a question honestly. But my honest personal opinion about it is freedom of speech is something that makes this country great, so you know what? If they’re perfectly free to, you know, express their opinion as much as they want, as long as nobody’s getting hurt, nobody is stopping them from getting done what they gotta get done, then they can shout all they want."
"So do you think there’s like a moral dilemma working at Raytheon with all these war crimes in Yemen committed by Saudi Arabia using Raytheon’s bombs?" I asked.
He immediately got nervous, "I don’t think I know enough about the situation to answer that honestly," he responded.
"Well there’s hundreds of children that have died using Raytheon bombs, how do you feel about that?" I said.
"I understand, I have to get back to the event," he said.
Marcelo Guadiana writes for the Borgen Project and RouserNews, focusing on war and poverty. He is a senior at UMass Boston a B.A. in economics.
The problem isn’t Raytheon on campus. The problem is Raytheon in DC.
The problem is an economic model that has absolutely no tie to morality and has only only one mission, maximize profit at ANY cost.
Their propaganda campaign on campus is exactly the same as the one in DC. Both are used to help normalize mass murder for profit to help the few exploit the many.
Is there any economic model which has a tie to morality? If so, which model and which morality?
No, not yet. Can you guess why that might be Thomas ? Perhaps it’s due to people clinging to the past due to the indoctrination of elite’s who just don’t want to change the hustle of capitalism that keeps them winning at everyone else’s expense ?
That’s certainly one of the reasons.
Another reason is that as soon as power is concentrated in one convenient pile, those who value power (including the ability to profit at everyone else’s expense) will gravitate to that pile and climb to the top of it.
The people who just want to live their lives presumably don’t give much of a damn whether that ruling class calls its central committee “the Congress of the United States” or “the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”
Which is enabled by an economic system that could care less how you acquire your capital.
Actually, every system so far has cared a great deal how you acquire your capital. Or at least who you are when you do so. If you’re part of the ruling class, you get to acquire it any way you like. If you’re not, the system makes it as hard as possible to do so.
Which is exactly why we shouldn’t keep the one we currently have.
Ah, finally something we agree on!
A geographic monopoly. Dominated by psychopaths and opportunists. Run by a political class for a ruling class. Extorting wealth by force and dividing the population against itself. Enabled by the central bank banking cartel.
It isn’t profit that is the problem. Countries where economics were not based on profit slaughtered millions of their own populations. Polluted their land, crushed human rights and still had much lower standards of living.
Countries without a profit motive, but with a powerful centralized government, still can and do have their own version of a Military Industrial Complex. And would recruit humans in their version of their educational establishments.
Profit is the problem. They’re not doing this for fun they’re doing this because they measure themselves by the yardstick of money, power, and prestige.
You can’t have power without money or money without power. Profit is a nice word for exploitation.
The false idea that people will not try to improve their lives unless they can profit, has never been logical or true.
“It isn’t profit that is the problem. Countries where economics were not
based on profit slaughtered millions of their own populations.
Polluted their land, crushed human rights and still had much lower
standards of living.”
So what you are actually saying is there isn’t any difference between countries despite the presence of a profit motive when it comes to mass murder, except that murder for profit can’t exist where profit isn’t a religious experience like it is here in the west.
You seem to forget just how it was we achieved and temporarily maintained that higher standard of living or you have fallen for the revisionist history of the elite.
You’re ignoring that the US had one of the most violent labor movements in modern history, and that the US military was and is used to inflict plantation style slavery upon smaller nations to feed the lifestyle of the western allied nations.
It’s precisely this sort of what-a-bout ism that enables our insane foreign policy and economic war fare upon the rest of the world. It’s the heart of the big lie being propagandized as American “exceptionalism” by the true parasites of the world.
The concept of the “elite” is the true enemy.
More nonsense Dave. While you cite violence against the labor movement, you ignore again the fact that countries that were not based on capitalism were far more destructive to their own populations. And far poorer.
As for profit? And exploitation? Free exchange between people is far more beneficial to people than being dictated by a socialist elite. I do not wish to be told what to do and how to live by another opportunist elite. Those have never been very good at bringing about prosperity for the populace and are always oppressive.
There is nothing wrong with profit. Wealth and prosperity are good things. EXCEPT when the political means to wealth are employed. You keep citing examples that are all based on State collusion with those that use the State to advance and protect their own wealth.
In a free market system, the greatest products produced are liberty and prosperity. Each individual decides what to exchange. Including labor.
You would have an different elite decide what we could have, how we would work and live. The result would be to crush the most productive of us and makes us all even more enslaved to the State.
Perhaps you should recount how many people the US is killing every day both inside this country and everywhere else ?
This is the same worn out trope you’ve been indoctrinated with your entire life.
How come we counting how many people capitalism is killing in the middle east then ?????
YOU ARE A SLAVE TO CAPITAL not the state.
This is why we have lost control of the state. You are more concerned with the symptom than the disease due to your Ronnie Ray Gun indoctrination.
You keep pretending greed is the policy of the state. Greed has been around much longer than the state and is absolutely 100% independent of the state.
The free market is a fairy tale. They cannot exist since a market is a political construct. Once again, no one want to be in market with no rules or laws other than pure revenge via vigilante law.
Please wake up before you turn the entire planet into another Iraqi power vacuum.
You have no clue what you are doing by following the Koch brothers funded agenda.
“You keep pretending greed is the policy of the state.”
The purpose of the state is to satiate the greed of its owners.
No, the purpose of the state has never been to do that. That’s what the Koch brothers want you to believe.
OK, so, if that’s not the purpose of the state, why has that always, in every case, been what the state does to the exclusion of any activity that interferes with doing it?
Nope. I never claimed greed was a policy of the State. You made that up. What I did say is people used the State to satisfy their avarice and those resources are extracted from the populace by force.
The free market exists whenever people exchange goods and services without
being encumbered by the State. It does exist despite State parasites seeking to get a piece of every transaction and creating laws to do so.
The rules of a free market are simple: voluntary transactions between individuals and businesses. I have no problem with that so your claim of “no one would want to be in a market with no rules” is false on both counts you cite.
The idea that I can turn the entire planet into a “Iraqi power vacuum” is ludicrous . Note also the debacle of Iraq was the result a State assault on another State. One that I opposed, and one that would have been impossible without the strong centralized State that you believe is so necessary and you support If you want to see an enabler, you need to go no further than your nearest mirror.
I notice that, once again, you failed to address the points I made and just came back with silly remarks and baseless claims. Those included the fact that your political philosophy is based on violence and oppression. And yes, I have read Das Kapital and The Essential Works of Lenin, also Trotsky and various others. Very violent bunch indeed. True psychopaths.
BTW, I understand that if socialism were to prevail, those such as myself, would end up as slaves to the Socialist State or in some form of reeducation camp/gulag.
I am curious on what you think your role would be in this new order. And again, feel free to answer the points I made with a real argument(s).
“What I did say is people used the State to satisfy their avarice and
those resources are extracted from the populace by force.”
Thanks for confirming that the state is benign and that it’s people who use violence to exploit others.
Nope. The State draws opportunists and psychos by it’s nature. Power over others and the desire to use the political means to wealth instead of the productive means. Bastiat pointed this out long ago in “The Law”
There are no historical examples of a State not being or becoming run by various types of Psychos. Unless you are arguing that magically “real socialism” is immune. Which is pretty much your claim.
I notice once again you failed to address the multiple points I made.
Feds sue Lockheed Martin for kickbacks & fraud in Hanford nuclear site clean-up contracts
https://www.rt.com/usa/451098-hanford-nuclear-lockheed-lawsuit/
War is a racket, that’s for sure. If you have a talent for fraud you can milk these wars out for ever !
You just need to know how to exploit the legal system and have the capital it takes to make it happen.
All these wars are fought in order to protect the capital and social standing of the elites. Our common enemy is the concept of the elite.
It’s not Raytheon doing the killing and starving, they simply construct a tool which facilitates the mass murder. Saying that, I suppose their hands aren’t exactly clean, but it’s the politicians and advisors and special-assistants-to actually putting forth the policy which causes the mass murder. Raytheon is simply filling a demand, I thought the overall libertarian bent of this site would approve of that.
Who lobbies for that policy ? They are actually creating a demand for their own product which is market manipulation by libertarian standard.
It’s just hard for some of them to admit that the private sector can or would manipulate the market since they believe markets magically correct themselves and that people always act as if they are rational.
“Who lobbies for that policy ? They are actually creating a demand for their own product which is market manipulation by libertarian standard.”
EXACTLY.
“It’s just hard for some of them to admit that the private sector can or would manipulate the market”
How is a group of companies chartered by, privileged by, and mostly selling to (in exchange for taxpayer money) the governments of California, Delaware, Mexico, the Virgin Islands, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Bermuda, South Korea, Germany, Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, the Philippines, Ireland, France, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Massachusetts, Japan, Kuwait, the People’s Republic of China, Guam, Ukraine, Russia, and the United Kingdom part of the “private sector?”
“since they believe markets magically correct themselves and that people always act as if they are rational.”
No, people do not always act as if they are rational.
A market “correcting” itself presupposes some objective standard of what is “correct.” Care to take a stab at one?
It’s really easy to tell what’s private and public sector Thomas. You just look at where the profit ends up. Is it in the hands of the private sector or the public sector.
You’ll have to ask murderin’ Milt about the other parts.
There’s no such thing as the “public sector.”
There’s the productive sector and the political sector. The latter lives off the former. And when the former starts trying to live off the latter, it becomes part of the latter.