Krupption in high places

A thousand years ago when Guambat was just a lad, he did time in VISTA, a sort of domestic, stateside Peace Corps outfit. He also fell prey to commie propaganda (and has been trying to exorcise that demon ever since). He literally got run out of the State of Ohio (well, it was a bit mutual) for spreading insurrectionist material: he lent his copy of the comical Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" to a few too many people, it seems.

One of the subversive books he read at that time in Ohio was The Arms of Krupp. Krupp is still with us, making kettles, coffee makers, lifts and other steel products and what have you. Guambat was naive enough to believe that since this was about those nasty nazis that there was nothing sinister in the subject, but it seems you do not speak ill of any wealthy dynastic empire, no matter what their stripe, if they are within a bull's roar of the military-industrial complex.

The thing that absolutely absorbed Guambat was the way, as told in that book, the political machinery of the likes of Hitler, but also including all the kings, monarchs and lords before him, linked so closely, so fist-in-glove as it were, to manufacturers and merchants of ordinary, every day products like washing machines, light bulbs and water kettles and aeroplanes. It was a rather powerful incandescent bulb that went off in Guambat's young and impressionable head, which has gotten rather old and impressionable in the fullness of time.



This is one review of that fateful book:

The Arms of Krupp
by William Manchester

n this narrative of extraordinary richness, depth, and authority, America's preeminent biographer/historian explores the German national character as no other writer has done. The Arms of Krupp brings to life Europe's wealthiest, most powerful family, a four-hundred-year German dynasty that developed the world's most technologically advanced weapons, from cannons to submarines to anti-aircraft guns; provided arms to generations of German leaders, including the Kaiser and Hitler; operated private concentration camps during the Nazi era; survived conviction at Nuremberg; and wielded enormous influence on the course of world events. William Manchester's galvanizing account of the rise and fall of the Krupp dynasty is history as it should be written-alive with all its terrifying power.

It has since been fascinating to Guambat to observe the connections, real or perceived, between commercial reality and real politik. For instance, Guambat has a rellie, dearly loved and admired, who very responsibly and professionally works for Dow Chemical company. Guambat was impressed with the attention and money this company devotes to safety, including the safety and wellbeing of the communities in which it operates. Guambat was very impressed that the company will only start up a manufacturing facility when the residue of the products of the plant can be immediately used as inputs to another product that can be manufactured next to the same facility, and then another and so on so that the "industrial waste" is constantly being used as inputs to other products that seem to benefit our lives, to the end that, when the process is complete, there is precious little "waste" to matter.

And yet, this is the same Dow Chemical that spurred the mighty college campus revolts of Guambat's 1960's youth.

Poor old Guambat. He is lost in a sea of right and rights, wrong and wrongs. Adding to the confusion, but kindling remembrances of "The Arms of Krupp", is the recent report by The Center for Public Integrity, identifying "The Top 100 Private Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan". The results of this analysis was presaged in an online article, "Who's profiting from the Iraq war?"

The thing that is most disturbing to Guambat is that the contractor with the most to profit from the Iraq war, and the sideshow-that-should-have-been-the-main-show, the Afghanistan affair, is the subsidiary (until just this year) of Dick Cheney's Halliburton. As the CPI report put it,

"In fact, the total dollar value of contracts that went to KBR—which used to be known as Kellogg, Brown, and Root and until April 2007 was a subsidiary of Halliburton—was nearly nine times greater than those awarded to DynCorp International, a private security firm that is No. 2 on the Center's list of the top 100 recipients of Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction funds."

Could it possibly be that America has its very own Krupp? Could it possibly be that the Vice President of the United States of America is involved in Krupption?

These are questions that haunt Guambat as he continues to try to exorcise the demons of his youth.

More of this, for what it's worth:

The Iraq War Profiteers

etc.