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70 years is enough, academia, armaments industry, arms industry, Cold War, computers, corruption, defense, democracy, Federal Government, France, Fukushima, General Eisenhower, government, industrial complex, influence, innovation, intellectual curiosity, invention, liberty, military industrial complex, nuclear energy, nuclear industrial complex, nuclear industry, nuclear power, nuclear shut-down, nuclear utilities, permanent war economy, plundering the future, President Eisenhower, Research, research funding, Russia, scholarship, state capitalism, UK, unwarranted influence, US, utility industry
For those who wonder why employed US academics won’t speak out about Fukushima and the other nuclear atrocities, and why the US is permanently at war – this is the explanation. For those who wonder why scientific inquiry, intellectual curiosity, and innovation are little welcomed in US universities. This is the explanation. For those who wonder why the nuclear arms race didn’t end, and why the nuclear industry wasn’t shut down over 20 years ago, at the end of the Cold War. This is the explanation.
The nuclear industry is the child of the military industrial complex, wedded to the long notorious and powerful utility industry. The UK and France suffer from the same malady; malediction, as does Russia. Eisenhower warned us. What will it now take to break the nuclear chain which binds, strangles, and painfully kills?
(US National Archives Discussion of the Speech)
From “Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation“, January 17, 1961
“… Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/farewell_address/Reading_Copy.pdf. http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm
We must call attention to the mining industry, which also buys academics in the US and Canada. The nuclear industry-military industrial complex and mining sector are co-dependents.
July 16, 1945 – Blasphemy
Mining Awareness + 
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