In America the majority (70%) of fast food purchases are impulse buys. Few people go out specifically to buy hamburger and the like. This fact points to the importance of restaurant site location. Just as magazines and sweets are strategically placed at the checkout counter in the supermarket, fast food joints are located at a particular place by design and not by accident. In the past McDonald’s used helicopters to assess the growth of residential areas. They would look for cheap land along side highways and roads that would lie at the heart of future suburbs. However they have progressed from that. In the 1980s McDonald’s became one of the world’s biggest purchases of satellite photography, using it to predict urban sprawl. McDonald’s developed a software package called Quintillion that integrated and ranked information from satellite images, detailed maps, demographic information, CAD drawings and sales data from existing stores. Thus, the science that lays behind the strategic placing of restaurants in prime locations in order to maximise profits is a science that is analogous to those used by the military intelligence agencies.
Strategic locations are paramount to fast food outlets. By analogy US government places the same importance on location. However, the location is not a parking lot in a housing project but it could be; an island, a peninsula, an isthmus, a mountain range, a waterway or a landlocked landmass. In the case of South America, through the Monroe doctrine, this could be a whole continent. The criteria that define a good location are not based on where lay the wealthy middle class with expendable incomes. In this case they are based on mineral resources, human resources, agricultural capacity and strategic positions for trade routes and transportation of goods and commodities, to name a few. Thus the Golan Heights, Panama, the straits of Malacca and the Suez Canal, etc are all examples of sought after prize positions. Just as strategically position McDonald’s restaurants have become ubiquitous in North America US military bases are starting to become peppered throughout the Islamic lands.
Why are we comparing such a trivial issue like fast food with the McDonnell-Douglas Corporation who were the manufacture of the F-4 Phantom, the A-4 Skyhawk, the F-15 Eagle, and the F-18 Hornet. The point being made here is that the means of thrusting these two All-American products on to the world are dangerous and devious. We should be aware of the stealthy manner that US imperialism has spread over the globe.
The by products of taking on the role of the worlds police force the US has been allowed to set up its military bases in all the most strategic positions. These bases could just be a military base surrounded by a barbed wire fence, or an aircraft carrier patrolling other nation’s sovereign waters, or a base could be an entire country as is the case with Pakistan. The Caspian oil rich states now have a most loyal servant to America to the south in Pakistan. On the soils of Uzbekistan there is Military presence is of awesome proportions.
In recent years the US has treated the whole country of Iraq merely one great big riffle range. The Baghdad has been treated as if it was a gigantic disposable paper-shooting target.
America's military is the country's biggest business. According to the House Budget Committee, in 2000, defence expenditures represented 16 percent of discretionary federal spending. Excluding entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, all non-defence spending combined was only 19 percent of the federal budget. In the Department of Defence's most recently published report, the 2001 defence budget will be more than $300 billion, of which $60 billion would be spent on procurement and almost $40 billion on research and development. The budget for national defence is expected to exceed $360 billion by 2006.
In 2000, world-wide arms sales rose to 36.9 billion dollars (up from 34 billion in 1999). Poor countries bought 68 percent of last year's [2000] U.S. weapons output. U.S. arms makers signed contracts for some 18.6 billion dollars in 2000, up from around 12.9 billion dollars the previous year. U.S. contracts accounted for 49.7 percent of global sales last year.
During the 1997-2000 period, the United Arab Emirates ranked first among developing nations in the value of arms transfer agreements, concluding $14 billion in such agreements. India ranked second at $7.6 billion. Egypt ranked third with $6.9 billion. The US agreed to sell to the UAE advanced 80 F16s. The deal is estimated to be around 15 billion dollars. However, in return, the US will be able to build military bases there with improved access to the only deep-water port capable of housing aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf.
The US also sells many weapons to Turkey. These are used against Turkey’s own population. The US turns a blind eye to these atrocities. This is because they are able to set up bases in such a key geopolitical location. This position allows them to spy on places in the Middle East, such as Iraq and because Turkey will be the main receiver of oil headed to Western countries, from the Caspian Sea.
It is not just US that have used arms trade for profit and for strategic advantage. The UK is the world’s second biggest supplier of arms. When General Zia ceased power in Pakistan he vowed to ⌠┘match India sword with sword, tank with tank and destroyer with destroyer. Britain, just prior, to this had sold to India, Sea King helicopters, Hawk and Harrier aircraft and Sea Eagle anti-ship missiles. Salesmen from the UK offered Pakistan a very similar package deal. The UK has had a good track record of selling what ever they want for a quick buck. The arms sales to Iraq throughout the 1980’s stands as testament to that. In 1981 Douglas Hurd, then Foreign Minster, flew specially to Baghdad to celebrate with Saddam the coming to power of the Baathists in 1968.
He was not the only arms salesmen and politician to live it up with Saddam over that period. In 1988 David Mellor, then a foreign office minister, partook of the Takriti hospitality. While David Mellor was posing of photographs with Saddam, his host ordered the gassing of 5,000 inhabitants of Halabja. The opportunistic, used car salesmen approach, to international arms dealing was typified by Thatcher and son. When Mrs Thatcher ordered the nation to Rejoice! during the Malvinas Islands War in 1982, she omitted to mention that the first Harrier aircraft lost was shot down by Argentinean fighters using British built ammunition.
War in itself has been a means of furthering imperialist ambitions. The recent event in N.Y. and DC has been described as a second Pearl Harbour. This is an important analogy as Pearl Harbour changed US public opinion overnight about many things, so did the bombing of the WTC. This first event warrants review.
It is now well documented that President Roosevelt (FDR) provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor. He knew about it in advance and covered up his failure to warn the Hawaiian commanders. The US was warned by, at least, the governments of Britain, Netherlands, Australia, Peru, Korea and the Soviet Union that a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was coming. Important Japanese codes were broken before the event. The chief of OP-20-G Safford and Friedman of Army SIS, the two people in the world that knew what was decoded, said that FDR knew Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked. FDR needed the attack to happen so he could enter the war, since the public and Congress were overwhelmingly against entering the war in Europe. It was his backdoor to war.
Abraham Lincoln said "Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it nothing can succeed. He who moulds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws." This maxim of Lincoln was something that President Roosevelt (FDR) new the reality of. In November FDR ordered the Red Cross Disaster Relief director to secretly prepare for massive casualties at Pearl Harbor because he was going to let it be attacked.
When he protested to the President, President Roosevelt told him that "the American people would never agree to enter the war in Europe unless they were attack [sic] within their own borders." [U.S. Naval Institute - Naval History - Advance Warning? The Red Cross Connection by Daryl S. Borgquist]
Well before the events of December, 7 1941 back in the summer (14 August) at the Atlantic Conference, Churchill noted the "astonishing depth of Roosevelt's intense desire for war." Churchill cabled his cabinet "(FDR) obviously was very determined that they should come in."
The consequence of the US entering W.W.II was it allowed the US to create its global empire from the spoils of the war. The whole war and the organisations set up after the war by the US, UNO, World Bank and IMF all served to consolidate the new empire that US acquired.
The devastation of the war is well known. The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are testament to that. However the cruelty of FDR’s conniving plan is clear in the US now domestic history. FDR sacrificed approximately 3,000 lives at Pearl Harbor as well as scores of planes and 5 battle ships. To FDR this was a small price to pay for the greater spoils of the neo-colonialists post war world. In addition after Pearl Harbor the Supreme Court ordered that 100,000 American people of Japanese origin be rounded up and imprisoned for the rest of the war. This was the contempt FDR had for his own people.
Borrowing FDR’s most famous quote; the people had more to fear than fear itself. They had the brutality of an uncaring government with a despotic dictator at the helm.
It may be argued that there can be no McDonald’s without McDonnell-Douglas. However from our standpoint we would agree. We neither need nor want McDonald’s or McDonnell-Douglas.
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