Stephan: I went to Saudi Arabia in the early 1970s, and have never forgotten the short trip. It is the only country I have ever visited in which I wanted to leave as soon as I arrived. As I was driven into the city and saw some women walking, the man who came to pick me up referred to them as "black bags." By the time I departed, I realized I had been in a medieval religious autocracy funded by the world's addiction to petroleum, and found it loathsome.
President George W. Bush meets with Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal on Sept. 20, 2001, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C. Credit: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty
None of the issues still lingering 20 years after the 9/11 attacks have been as persistent — or as emotionally wrenching for the families of the victims — as the question of whether Saudi Arabia provided funding and other assistance for the worst terrorist attack in American history.
Of the 19 Al Qaeda terrorists who hijacked four U.S. commercial airliners on the morning of September 11, 2001, 15 were citizens of Saudi Arabia — and of course, Osama bin Laden was a member of one of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest families.
Immediately after the attacks, the Bush administration downplayed the Saudi connection and suppressed evidence that might link powerful Saudis to the funding of Islamic extremism and terrorism. The Bush White House didn’t want to upset its relationship with one of the world’s largest oil-producing nations, which was also an American ally with enormous political influence in Washington, and much of what the […]
Stephan: Because we are being torn asunder, and have so many priorities other than national wellbeing, we are being outplayed by the Chinese on several fronts, and a new one is vaccines and vaccinating the world.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
The global COVID-19 vaccination campaign began nine months ago, and 58% of the world’s population has yet to receive at least one dose.
The big picture: Raw material shortages, complex and costly manufacturing, and vaccine makers’ choices have made it clear the U.S. and its drug companies likely won’t get the poor, unvaccinated parts of the world out of the pandemic — but China might.
The state of play: Wealthier nations have more vaccines than citizens who want them, while poorer countries are facing bleaker timelines for when they can administer first doses.
The U.S. and other Western countries could vaccinate teenagers and provide booster shots to everyone, and still have 1.2 billion excess doses available to send elsewhere this year, according to a report from analytics firm Airfinity.
Meanwhile, the global COVAX consortium now anticipates receiving 25% fewer doses than expected due to production problems with the vaccines made by Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Novavax, as well as export restrictions from a major supplier in India.
The vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech have proven […]
Stephan: The American spending on the military-industrial complex, as Eisenhower called it, dwarfs every other military budget in the world. Actually, in size, the next seven national budgets combined. Historically, military spending has been the single largest portion of the Federal budget since World War II. It has resulted in the endless failed wars which have killed millions and drained obscene sums from the American treasury that should have gone elsewhere to foster wellbeing not death. But war is so profitable the corporations that profit from it bought the Congress.
An F-35 test aircraft undergoes a flight test over Fort Worth, Texas. Credit: Lockheed Martin/Flickr
Up to half of the estimated $14 trillion that the Pentagon has spent in the two decades since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan has gone to private military contractors, with corporate behemoths such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and General Dynamics hoovering up much of the money.
“Reducing the profits of war ultimately depends on reducing the resort to war in the first place.” —William Hartung, Center for International Policy
That’s according to a new paper (pdf) authored by William Hartung—director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy—and released Monday by Brown University’s Costs of War Project.
Published just days after the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and two weeks after the last U.S. military plane departed Afghanistan, the paper documents the extent to which the massive post-9/11 surge in Pentagon spending benefited weapon makers, logistics firms, private security contractors, and other corporate interests.
“The magnitude of Pentagon spending in the wake of the 9/11 attacks was remarkable,” Hartung observes. “The increase in U.S. military spending between Fiscal Year 2002 and Fiscal Year 2003 was more than the […]
Stephan: This is what I meant in my comments on the earlier story. If America is to prosper in the future we must change our priorities and clean up our government corruption.
Money lost at sea: The US spent about $22.5 billion in R&D costs for just three Zumwalt-class ships, according to the US Naval Institute. Credit: US Navy/Sipa/USA
Innumerable wars originate, wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 6, “entirely in private passions; in the attachments, enmities, interests, hopes, and fears of leading individuals in the communities of which they are members.” As an illustration of this truth, he cited the case of Pericles, lauded as one of the greatest statesmen of classical Athens, who “in compliance with the resentment of a prostitute, at the expense of much of the blood and treasure of his countrymen, attacked, vanquished, and destroyed the city of the Samnians” before igniting the disastrous Peloponnesian War in order to extricate himself from political problems back home.
It should come as no surprise that this version of Athenian history is not echoed by orthodox historians, despite credible sources buttressing Hamilton’s pithy account. Instead, Pericles’s attack on Samos is generally ascribed to his concern for protecting a democratic regime in the neighboring city of Miletus or the need to preserve Athenian “credibility” as […]
Stephan: For all of my life and yours, car dealerships have been a part of the American culture. Now like the carriage maker, and the whale oil industry, it looks like the traditional car dealer may be headed into history. It is an emerging trend occurring with very little notice.
Dealerships like this one from the 1950s spread across the U.S., featuring row and after row of new and used cars. They sponsored local baseball games and fundraisers while also pushing for laws that protected their profits. Credit: Found Image Holdings/Corbis/Getty
For nearly a century, the American car dealership has retained its iconic appearance even as technology transformed every corner of the business landscape. In towns across the country, local business titans lured customers to glass-walled showrooms and large asphalt lots, where buyers bargained for the best price. That model is showing its age.
The way people buy and sell cars is changing. More of it is happening online as buyers get comfortable with completing transactions remotely. It is a shift that started before the pandemic but accelerated over the last 18 months as Covid-19 spurred people to do more of their shopping from home and demand for cars unexpectedly surged.
The auto dealership, as a result, could soon look like other parts of the business world upended by e-commerce. National chains, instead of local small businesses, will set prices and give salespeople […]
