Grubstakers - Episode 12: Merchants of Death

Episode Date: April 23, 2018

On this special episode we veer into the multi-billion dollar weapons industry and how US foreign policy often functions as an advertising opportunity for companies like Raytheon and Lockheed. The revolving door between the big 5 arms makers and all branches of government along with the prevalence of lobbying should make any person concerned as to whether our euphemistically titled "defense budget" actually serves national interest or is simply a expensive subsidy for these firms and the Wall Street banks that control them. Plus Andy makes the genocide in Yemen funny!

Hey everyone, this is Yogi. Thanks for checking out Grubstakers. This week we're going to be talking about the weapons industry. We'll talk about the Big Five, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northup Grumman, and Boeing, and civilians being bombed in Yemen. Unfortunately, this week's episode only has one drop, because Andy Palmer dropped the bomb. Other than that, it's a great episode. Check it out. Enjoy. Enjoy. other than that it's a great episode check it out enjoy because of my success in the private sector i had the chance to run america's largest city for 12 years

i taught those kids lessons on product development and marketing and they taught me what it was like growing up feeling targeted for your race. And that's just not true. You know, I love having the support of real billionaires. Hey everybody, welcome to Grubstakers. We're back, we're doing it again. Sean P. McCarthy here, joined as always by my friends...

Andy Palmer. Yogi Poliwal. Steve Jeffries. And this week we'll be doing a special episode on weapons manufacturing and the profit of the death industry, basically. But before we get there, I did just want a little bit of housekeeping up top. Last week on the Bill Ackman episode, you might have noticed I made a mistake where I said Senator Carl Levin was the guy who urged Ackman to only increase prescription drug prices by 30%. It was actually a Democratic senator of Indiana, Joe Donnelly, who said that. Carl Levin was retired

at the time. And you might notice if you listen to the podcast regularly that about, I make about one mistake every episode and you might attribute that to like laziness or lack of research, but it's actually intentional and it's for you to catch. It's like a Snapple fact. I make one mistake in my research at least every week. And, you know,

but the point is, uh, we were torturing Sean with basically needles under his skin each time he made a mistake. And we started to realize he kind of liked it. So we're kind of out of options for that. Raytheon get the contract to give me a burning sensation under my skin

with like a complex microwave thing that they sold to california prisons every time i make a mistake but the point is if at any time you're listening every time every now and then we do make mistakes so if you hear a mistake especially if it is made by andy steve or yogi let us know and we'll update it on the tumblr um but you can check out our tumblr uh which the link is on our uh on the soundcloud page it has uh uh all the most of the articles we use for research as well as any corrections if we make mistakes we do our best we're not always perfect also follow us on snapchat

instagram we're on linkedin photo bucket friendster friendster all right well that's stormfront yes myspace they just keep getting worse. Follow us on the dark web. If you're looking for, like, Estonian small arms, we have an account there. That's how we make the podcast profitable. All the money's gone by Patreon, but you can actually sell weapons to the Ukraine conflict for healthy profits through the dark web. Which is what we're going to be talking about on this episode.

Well, yes. So on April 13 of this year, 2018, Trump launched more than 100 cruise missiles at government targets in Syria. Hooray! Many of those were Tomahawk cruise missiles, which were... Ooh, cultural appropriation. It's representation, okay? I do love that, like, the woke take would be like,

well, they gotta change the name of the missile. I mean, listen, bombing people, it's a little iffy, but naming it the N-word, I mean, come on. Like, I mean, what are we really talking about here? I do love the idea take the indians logo off the missiles they have a chief wahoo uh i do love the idea of like a woke protester confronting obama like how dare you blow up children with tomahawk missiles

they should be called uh a37s or something non-offensive sounding. But yeah, so it's been noted other places. Sure, you've heard it. Tomahawk missiles, the U.S. government buys them for about $1.5 million each. Indigenous people missiles. Let's be fair here. Yes. Indigenous hatchet missiles.

And they're manufactured by Raytheon. So now the Pentagon shot off those missiles. They'll have to buy replacements. It's payday raytheon stock goes up a lot of people have noticed this and um so we'll we'll cover you know uh the the weapons industry it's a big industry unsurprisingly but uh according to bloomberg well bloomberg there there's the big five essentially as far as the u.s weapons industry goes that's lockheed martin boeing general dynamics raytheon and northup grumman and we'll cover a bit of them particularly raytheon lockheed um but we won't get to everything because it would take forever

um but essentially these people are the people who get these major billion some dollar contracts from the pentagon um and are what eisenhower described as the military industrial con complex incidentally the pentagon also has five sides from the Pentagon, and are what Eisenhower described as the military-industrial complex. Incidentally, the Pentagon also has five sides. How did you guys not see that coming? All right. All right. Well, anyways, the point is the weapons industry, there's a lot of different aspects,

but one aspect is small arms, guns, bullets, these kinds of things. So as much as gun sales are a huge proponent of a lot of different aspects, but one aspect is small arms. Guns, bullets, these kinds of things. As much as gun sales are a huge proponent of the profits of these industries, gun sales are not nearly as profitable as the amount of money they make off of bullets. The thing is that when you look up who makes bullets

for the U.S. military, according to Shane Christian, U.S. Army Special Forces and Combat Diver, there's only been one major supplier of small arms ammunition to the military sinceS. military. According to Shane Christian, U.S. Army Special Forces and Combat Diver, there's only been one major supplier of small arms ammunition to the military since World War II,

Lake City Army Ammunition. It has a government-owned facility and has been managed by three companies only, Remington, Olin, and ATK. In 2005, due to a shortage, they added a limited second supplier

of general dynamics ordnance. Due to a shortage caused by the murder of Iraqi children. We're running out of bullets. You know? supplier of general dynamics ordinance due to a shortage caused by um the murder of iraqi children but we're running out of bullets you know you need some more bullets they take all the marines aside and they're like look uh after you rape their mothers you can only put 10 bullets in them instead of instead of 15 i love how i've been scolded several times. No, this really happened. I know it's a horrible thing, but there have been multiple incidents.

Well, maybe don't smile while you say it, Sean. Look, humor is how we deal with the horrible things in life. I wouldn't just make this up. I wouldn't just... You wouldn't make this up. I know you, Sean. Anyway, so... You guys, the Iraq occupation was one of the most humane in history.

And at no point did commanders on the ground lie about material events, such as house-to-house murders and sexual assaults. Cue up Albright. Go on, Yogi. Get the Albright clip out. That was sanctions. It was a completely different more justified kind of genocide are we done with that guys are we uh lake city army ammunition is a plant in independence missouri i love the name of the sound it lets you know that uh the only thing

they're exporting is bullets and the only thing they're importing is pain. Basically, every year they make 1.4 billion rounds of ammunition. And it is crazy how much money they make off of small arms. Because, you know, you might charge... It's the same thing with cars and gas. Like, it's a real bait and switch. Same thing with restaurants with food and drinks like Steve and I were talking about earlier today. I mean, the fact is that the small arms is how they make the most of the money.

Because to make it, it's just a little bit of lead, a little bit of... Munitions. Yeah. It's sad, really, because they make a killing off bullet sales. Hey. That's a New York Post headline right there. Yes, it is. And about 25% of their workforce

is former military. So basically, if you're the ammunition's lead... You'll see that's a common theme throughout this podcast. Former government, former military are usually able to get private sector defense jobs for some reason. I mean, it makes sense because a regular civilian would eventually be like, I don't want

to keep making these weapons of mass destruction for the government. But people in the military have been brainwashed to believe killing them makes us stronger. And so of course, they do their job diligently. I'd like to see like open competition for small arms. Like just open bidding for small arms. Like they have to start like, this one's got a blue stripe on it. The free market at work. We were

joking earlier though, what if Westlake Arms Manufactures was based in Seattle? Lake City. Yeah, Lake City. Arms Manufactures was based in Seattle and there was like a bunch of hipsters like, yeah, I don't really shop at Starbucks. It's too corporate. Anyways, I'm gonna make my new sheet of M4A1 ammunition.

This is artisanal ammunition. We're like a real small arms distributor. Not like those corporate. You buy the tokens here. On Small business day, you go and buy ammunition from a mom-and-pop shop. Well, if you look up pictures of this company,

it's all late 50s, early 60s, white guys in cut-off jean shorts, loading in weapons. Right, and way too large safety goggles. Like that atypical factory employee, Heartland Mill America, if we don't do the job they will type of thing. And a lot of patches

that are kind of blurred out red rectangles with kind of a blue X on them. You're hardworking Americans. Are you disrespecting me? So the waste treatment of these facilities is usually on site

and they use like landfills and burn pits and unlined lagoons and a lot of these facilities have hazardous waste and hazardous substances including solvents, oils, greases, explosives,

radionuclides, percolates, and heavy metals. As a result of the extensive contamination the site was added to the United States Environmental Protection Agency

National Priorities List in 1987, and it remains a super fun site to this day. So basically... Did you say super fun? Yeah. Nice. It remains a super fun place to hang out. Great place to take your kids.

It's got water slides. Yeah. They put a playground on it. No water, though, just bullet casings. Yeah. You gotta slide into them. It's kind of like the duck,

the McScrooge with the gold pits. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But with bullets, yes. There was a tragedy because somebody shot the no smoking sign. Several children were blown apart. I mean, so like, you know, a lot of these companies are making

money out of the ass because of these bullets and you know, a lot of these companies are making money off the ass because of these bullets. And, you know, we rarely talk about bullet control, but Chris Rock was right. We don't need gun control. We need bullet control. Bullets should cost $5,000 a piece. What was that other bit he did? There's two kinds of black people? Yeah, Andy, how'd that go?

Yeah, Andy, what was that bit about? So, uh... Andy can that go. Yeah, Andy, what was that bit about? Andy can't remember. So then, Stephen, you kind of looked into the NRA. On the other hand, there's two sides of small arms, obviously. There's the bullets, and then there's the things they come out of. Well, and there's also the very effective marketing campaign, which is make people terrified of the government,

which is why they need to buy guns and bullets to protect themselves from the government yeah and chomsky made the interesting observation that of course this terror from the government against the government is kind of ironic considering it's the only branch of power that is at least somewhat accountable to the public whereas corporate america has almost unlimited power and has no accountability to the public so you know it's like these are the people polluting your fucking neighborhood and you know dropping bombs on kids in foreign countries uh well the government's doing that but they're the ones selling them the fucking bombs right and to defend yourself buy our guns as well right

we'll give it to you actually so that you can tell people to buy these guns that we're giving you. You know, after the Parkland massacre, the flip side of that fear campaign is, like, actually there was a backlash this time with the high school students. Yes. The Remington company actually had to file for bankruptcy in part due to companies pulling out of marketing their wares. Oh, really? Yeah, Delta Airlines canceled their bring your rifle to bring your rifle to Orlando program. They actually ban rifles on airlines now because of this.

Before you could. Before you could. I think it's almost the oldest arms manufacturer in the U.S. But yeah, the other thing is a lot of these companies have seen their sales go down under Trump, like small arms manufacturers, because

during the Obama years, a lot of right ring groups were able to fearmonger off the idea that Obama was coming to take your guns away. And of course he didn't, but they were able to sell weapons off that, and then with Trump, there's not really much of a worry. So now they have to go like Black Lives Matter is going to fucking kill you in your home.

Right, right. Which is why you need a tactical AR-15. And it's crazy how there's like both the conspiracy and the genuine truth that one way to stop. That the government is going to kill you. Yes, of course. Well, that's already happening. But to stop this amount of hatred that comes with gun ownership is to get more black gun owners. That's one of the conspiracies. Oh, that's right.

Just that idea of a strategy is like, yeah, that's going to shut down the NRA. Right. Or shut down, get us gun as if a bunch of black people buy guns it's like that's you're kind of making it like that was like one of the most ingenious nra marketing executives yeah it's like black americans you need to buy guns to stop this from my cold dead hands what if that were like an NRA membership bonus? Like if you donate enough money? No, you get to buy a gun and then pull it from Charlton Heston's cold dead hands.

That's so easy, is it? Interesting point. Anyway, congratulations. Most of our listeners, well, some of our listeners might be familiar with this. This kind of went around as a meme. But essentially when Reagan was governor of California in 1967, the Black Panthers were open carrying weapons near the California Statehouse. And then both Reagan signed and the NRA supported a bill to ban open carrying in public. So there is some merit to the argument that black people with guns are.

But that's the thing, though. It like it kind of, like what you mentioned, but then also it's a conspiracy because it makes racist white gun owners be like, oh, I need to own more guns. Black people are owning guns, too. Does that make sense? The conspiracy is black civilians will own guns to take out white gun owners, and white gun owners believe the hatred so much that they think

i need to own more guns right well that was the other nra propaganda campaign telling black americans to hold their guns sideways so they couldn't aim as well and that's how we'll win the what were the race war well that kind of goes into the history of the nra which is that it started out as like a rifle safety or gun safety organization. And then over the years, it sort of transformed, especially under Wayne LaPierre, into a gun manufacturer's lobbying organization. Hell yeah. Yeah, it's like Click It or Ticket advocating drunk driving. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that is what it is uh so i guess um uh well i could talk a bit about raytheon but do we want to talk about yemen in general or well i was thinking that okay so we've got we've got weapons manufacturers in america they're basically pumping money into uh the nra to get the nra and the nra kind of then pumps money into politicians so that politicians don't necessarily have to take money directly from gun manufacturers. But they probably do that, too, through their PACs. And that, in turn, you basically buy off politicians to get them to fiercely oppose any kind of gun restrictions. And ultimately what it comes back to is the money for the gun manufacturers. And so there's there's that

element of it in terms of weapon manufacturers and then i was thinking we could take a step up now and talk about weapons manufacturers on the military side of one more thing on the small arms terror thing it is like one of the most short-sighted strategies in history is uh the small government people encouraging uh all of their constituents to be heavily armed and then attempting to end all of the entitlement programs that are keeping them alive. It's like, Jesus Christ, I wonder what will happen when you try to take health care away from your heavily armed constituency.

You're going to need a few more bodyguards at your baseball game. Or cutting back on teacher funding and also trying to arm teachers at the same time oh yeah yeah god you know at least they're always looking for new markets all right well so i guess we'll go from small arms manufacturers to the more macro which is as we mentioned the big five lockheed boeing general dynamics raytheon northup grumman these are the people who supply both the pentagon our nato allies but also you know countries like saudi arabia um singapore uh all sorts of different uh nations of varying degrees of um let's say human rights respecting uh but all but so like human wrongs

boeing is interesting because boeing is of those different in that they make the majority of their money from commercial airplane sales you know know, selling their Boeing aircraft. But whereas the others, like in the case of Raytheon, 90% of their money comes from defense contracts from governments, I believe 67% of which is from the U.S. federal government. And it's similar with Lockheed Martin, where the vast majority of their funding is to government entities. You know my favorite porn star, Cockheed Martin? He's really good. He's got a lot of gun bandolier tattoos. He fucks with the passion of the American military.

Lockheed Martin makes 85% of its money from U.S. contracts and 13% from foreign governments. And then other contracts is 2%. And as we'll talk about a bit, this creates very perverse incentives, but also makes these corporations spend a lot on lobbying. Like Lockheed, for example, Corpina Open Secrets has spent between 5 and 8 million approximately every year on lobbying since 2006. And they also very much have a revolving door where they hire former government and Pentagon officials.

And then, you know, in the case of Trump, they appoint the Lockheed executives or Raytheon lobbyists to government positions when they come in, you know, who will actually have, you know, control over the government procurement and budgeting process, and then go hire their former companies to get these contracts.

So it's all fucked up. Lockheed's particularly interesting. Lockheed Martin. It was originally a Lockheed company, which made a lot of Cold War planes like the SR-17 Blackbird, which had that hit in 2000 right now. The C-130 Hercules, Polaris submarine, launched ballistic missiles. They hired Martin Lawrence.

They hired Martin Lawrence. And then they merged with Martin Marionetta, which was known for Titan ballistic missile ICBMs. which was known for uh titan ballistic missile icbms uh notably there was one that blew up in its silo in 1980 because yeah because a maintenance person dropped a fucking wrench that just fell down and knocked like a cord out or a hole and then it started leaking rocket fuel and nine hours later the whole silo blew up and fortunately the warhead uh didn't go off but i think unfortunately yeah it it was near like a major um i forget where but it was near a major metropolitan area literally a wrench was thrown into the works yeah that's fucking crazy yeah it was like they had

like you know these 20 something air forcesomething Air Force guys doing their routine maintenance, and one of them just dropped a wrench. And yeah, the thing blew up. And there's an interesting documentary of it where there's a senator who finds out about it, and he's like, so do I tell my family? Because he's just near it. Yeah, he's like, so should I get out of here? Yeah, he's like, uh... Yeah. Wow, what a piece of shit. So those two companies merged and formed Lockheed Martin,

which is run very heavily on government contracts. And if I could just interrupt, Lockheed's number one. Of the big five, Lockheed does the most in business, I believe. Yes. At least with the U.S. government, of the big five, Lockheed does the most in business, I believe. In the world. At least with the U.S. government, but probably globally, too, yeah. Cockheed Martin also is globally recognized as one of the best porn stars. Just wanted to get that out there. Oh, and incidentally, between 1950 and 1970, it was later found, I think from the Church Commission,

that Lockheed had been paying foreign officials $22 million in bribes for them to buy their products. Oh yeah. Raytheon has bribery scandals too. Like this is, it happens all the time. Yeah. And it, it led to the foreign corrupt practices act banning that practice.

They're literally selling weapons, but they're like, well, we're not doing this good enough. Can we start bribing people to buy our shit? Yeah. Interestingly enough, like the foreign corrupt practices act is one of the good things to come out of Watergate.

But in the United Kingdom, at least a few years ago, there was no comparable law. So what would happen was there was a frontline documentary on this where I think it was BAE lobbyists. I might be wrong, but essentially a british manufacturer would uh they would fly you know saudi princess and other influential people in the government into the united kingdom and then just give them like a platinum all expenses paid credit card and just let them run up whatever the fuck tab they want and then of course these people would go back to saudi arabia and then their government would buy the weapons from this british uh defense contractor because there was no equivalent law.

And of course, U.S. companies do this kind of bribery too, but they have to be much more sneaky about it. Sure, sure. Give them gift cards instead of credit cards. That's nuts. Yeah. Yeah. But you want to go on with Lockheed or I can talk about Raytheon a bit?

Yeah. So what Lockheed's most known for now is the F-35. Hell yes. Which is the next generation of American fighter jets. And the term fighter jet is kind of, you get the idea that you get a sort of top gun. You spin around in the sky and then shoot a little homing missile at uh mig uh the reality of most fighter jets is uh has been kind of like revealed recently and what i'm going to talk about later the yemen conflict where f-16s also a lockheed property are used basically to uh bomb people in yemen who are coming home from the store basically just to bomb people in Yemen who are coming home from the store.

Basically just to bomb civilians in Yemen for the purposes of bombing them into... But there aren't really dogfights. So anyway... For the purposes of teaching them to buy halal products only. So apparently Lockheed martin and the united states government decided they needed a next generation of bombing uh peasants on the

ground and so the f-35 the next generation is they remove the ability to land yeah it uh it notoriously it's a stealth aircraft. It notoriously has trouble flying in thunderstorms. It costs $100 million per plane and has a $1.5 trillion lifetime cost. And also apparently it has a bunch of software issues. For the program, yeah. They've spent more than like $1.5 trillion without even like delivering an airplane, right? Like a functional. Right.

They claim it's $1.5 trillion lifetime cost. So I don't know Like a functional... Right. They claim it's 1.5 trillion lifetime cost. So I don't know if it's... It might have been like a trillion. But they're wasting money on a plane we don't even fucking need. They're spending more than a trillion on a plane that is constantly fucking up in the development cycle and has had huge cost overruns. Right. But like you mentioned, they don't even dogfight anymore.

They're not fighting other planes. No. They just bomb the grocery store. Yeah, yeah. The concept is just like, you know, well, what if we go to war with China? Yeah, China. And they have, and obviously we already spend more money than the next six countries combined in military reserves. And also, if we went to war with China, it would be the end of

civilization because we would all launch our ballistic missiles. Right. But, then on the other hand uh lockheed can get you a nice hotel and uh they're oh and also they're based on literally an air force base they they're headquartered yeah it's an air force base outside of fort worth texas that's the thing that's crazy is they're not even subtle about like, like Independence, Missouri being where they make the bullets. Like, it's like, fuck you.

At least try and be like, no, we're Harrodsville. Like, try and not be so straight up, you know, in the dick of the military. Yeah. It's just straight up like, yep, this is our lunch. What you said about them being kind

of superfluous in an actual con like global conflict that they were sort of designed for yeah like uh i think it was gorbachev who was um in a discussion on like he said he would go into meetings where they would plan out war like possible war potentialities and they would tell him about like well we have this many tanks ready to go in case of and he was just he would say he was basically just weeping for all of them they'd just be incinerated because the conflict would escalate to nuclear yes immediately what if we do one of those wars where everybody follows the rules you know all those wars we've had throughout history where people

enter into agreements to not use nuclear weapons and then don't yeah i'm guessing probably and this is just pure speculation part of it is just like they want something that's a little more stealth in case an insurgency gets slightly more sophisticated cold war level like like anti-aircraft technology. I don't know. I mean, that seems true, but it's also just the military budget is always ever increasing

so that there can be a larger military budget. Oh, yeah. This plane is a perfect example of overspending on something that is not needed today and potentially tomorrow. And I mean, it's literally like, you know, hey, how many chairs do we need for the event? Probably 40.

Well, let's get 80 just in case. It's like, well, we don't need any chairs, but I guess I'll do what you say, boss. Well, yeah, like, if you actually want to learn something, you should listen to Chomsky talk about this. If you want to hear four guys dicking around, you should keep listening to this podcast. But Chomsky, the way he put it...

Solid sell, Chomsky. Chomsky the way it's all it's all it's all it's all it's all it's all it's all it's all it's all it's all it's all it's all it's chomsky the way he put it was essentially the defense budget is a subsidy to the defense industry it's a government subsidy to the defense industry and you can see why that is because uh the sequester that obama put in place that they thought would never happen did actually happen only in 2013 sean means sequester sequester Sequester. You meant Ryan Seacrest. Right. But essentially they put this thing in place to stop the growth of military spending and cut it back very modestly.

And it only happened in 2013. And then every other year they're like, no, no, no, we're not going to do this. We need to keep giving all the Big Five money. And again, the Big Five, as we mentioned, we mentioned actually before we started the big five according to bloomberg have outperformed the s&p 500 uh for the last between 2013 and 2017 and that's a been a good year for the stock market so the defense contractors have been doing great and again most of their business comes from government contracts particularly

the pentagon and part of the idea is that basically the free market, when left to its own devices, is incredibly unstable. And the United States government learned this during the Great Depression, when it all kind of fell apart, when it was largely unregulated. So part of what they do is they just want to pump money into the economy. And the Chomsky argument, at least in Understanding Power, is that they have two options to do that um and technically it's called like keynesian spending uh one option would be to pump money into social services and create a better social state and that money would kind of stabilize capitalism and lame and the

reason that the u.s doesn't do that is because social services affect people very directly and so then people would have a more democratic say in things because that's something that, you know, is present in many facets of their lives. So then the government more directly decided to pump money into the military, which will have the same kind of stimulus, Keynesian stimulus effect. But because the populace of the United States doesn't interact with the military in their day-to-day lives, they would exercise less influence on how that money is spent, where that money is spent. There's less public oversight. And on top of that, you can then build up your military to have sort of a stronger control on international trade. You get a little leg up in negotiations when you got these you know f-35s and that's uh let's get chomsky on sometime before

he dies in the next year yeah i'll send him a letter yeah the argument i've heard about is how like you know when you want to cut down military spending the biggest argument is like that would uh take away jobs from jobs oh yeah there's a can't forget the job there's a beautiful uh clip from cnn i think it was from 2016 well yes uh rand paul uh yes just you know plitzer doing adversarial journalism yeah yeah rand paul talking about the only thing that he's right about, which is weapons distribution, he was like, we need to cut down on weapons sales, like to Saudi Arabia. And Wolf Blitzer goes, well, if we cut down on weapons sales, won't that hurt American jobs? Wow.

What a snake, Wolf. What a snake. Look, how are people going to feed their families if they're taking away, if they're not taking away the breadwinners in other families? But yeah, so we've mentioned a bit about lobbying, just kind of like a headline here.

There was a Bloomberg article that I think was pretty interesting. Before we get to that, you guys ever shoot a gun before? Y'all shoot guns? I never have. I really want to. Sean you guys ever shoot a gun before? Y'all shoot guns? I never have. I really want to. Sean hasn't. Andy, about you? Yeah, I shot 22s in Boy Scouts and then shotguns.

You shot 22 boys? Yeah. He shot 22 boys. That was just his genius. That's a merit badge. That's how you become a life scout. I shot guns a handful of times. Shotgun, M16, and...

Oh, yeah? Yeah, I got... You're the one I least expected to have shot guns, actually. You know what? I've shot more guns than most people would expect, mostly because I don't trust anyone, and I have enough money to potentially buy a gun. It goes hand in hand.

When you have money to buy a gun, you think about buying one more often than other people would. Next time you go to a gun range, you should grow out your full beard and just be like, hey, wait a minute. Before you just whip out a prayer rug. Sorry, which way faces

Mecca? I got to make sure I get this right. The first time I went to a gun range, I was with two of my friends and we were shooting together. One person would shoot and then another person would stand next to him and the third person would stand behind him. When two of my friends and we were shooting together so uh one person would shoot and then like another person would stand next to him and the third person would stand behind him and when two of my friends were shooting i saw a guy uh yogi's from from uh bellevue which for those who don't know is microsoft headquarters surrounded by gun ranges yes they gotta train

themselves for the uprising of the proletariat surprisingly spot on by that description uh i lived there for half a year. One of my closest friends growing up is what I will lovingly call a redneck Jew. He is both Jewish, but his parents also grew up in the South. So I did a lot of things. Like the first time I ever went to a concert, it was a Primus concert with him. But before that, we went to the Van Gogh exhibit at Sam. So it's a very beautiful relationship I have with this guy.

So I shot a lot of guns with this friend of mine. And so when I was there, when I was at the gun range, they were shooting at the range, and then I saw a guy walk up, and he had a full trench coat on, and he had the target all the way as close as you could have it,

and he would yell, murder, and then shoot a round. Murder, and then shoot another round. And I'm the only one witnessing this because everyone else has the ear protection and they're focusing on their own target. And I'm like, how is this guy allowed to be here right now? How are you allowed to just yell murder

at the top of your lungs with the target as close as you can get it to? Not death, not surprise, murder. That's the thing. Buddy, we get what you're doing you're literally shooting a gun that sounds like someone who was touched by an uncle and uh that popular abc program or the holder of racy on call option so like uh i mentioned the lobbying thing but like all the big five and other arms manufacturers do this where like not only do they spend the money directly lobbying, but they hire former Pentagon, former government officials.

And the Trump administration has really taken this to another level. Just from a Bloomberg article, Mark Esper, the current Army secretary, is a Raytheon lobbyist for more than a decade. I think 20 years, but more than a decade spent as a Raytheon lobbyist. He's now the Army Secretary. John Rood has had a, R-O-O-D, has had an interesting career. He was, interestingly enough, he was George W. Bush's Undersecretary of State

for Arms Control, and then after he left, he went to work for Raytheon, and then with Trump coming back he was also a Lockheed executive and now with Trump coming back he is the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and then they quote Elizabeth Warren here on the Senate floor. She says, quote,

The Deputy Secretary of Defense was previously a Senior Vice President at Boeing. This is the current deputy secretary of defense. The deep state is bad, Tim. Really bad. They're really trying to take down the Trump administration, this deep state. You're really an enemy of them. So his name is Pat Shanahan, and Elizabeth Warren continues.

Ooh, Pat Shanahan. He now runs the Pentagon's budget process, including making the final call on which defense programs get funding and which do not. Ooh, I think old Pat Shanahan here thinks we should renew our contract for the F-45 and give them an extra trillion dollars to really get their missiles going.

Aye. Aye. It's a good crack, isn't it? But so, like, just... And we could go on forever. Richard Armitage is a former U.S. deputy secretary. Oh, Richard Armitage. Deputy secretary of state.

He was hired by Raytheon for consultancy work. Raytheon's hired former CIA directors, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Looks like the kingpin. And the new head of the DEA, El Chapo Guzman, has negotiated a contract. But you can see why Raytheon takes in, I think in 2017, they took in $25.3 billion in revenues. Again, when 67% of that is coming from the U.S. federal government,

they have an incentive to hire former government employees and spend money lobbying them. So you can see why this could pervert the war-making system that we have set up in this country. And that's what's crazy is that we're literally going to war so people can make money more than we're going to war so that we can fight injustices. More injustices like too many brown people.

Also, incidentally, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and I think Boeing, too, spend a lot of money on Twitter ads. Hell yes. And Twitter has an interesting policy that is you cannot advocate violence unless it's state violence. What?

Yeah, the caveat is you can't advocate. I can't tweet, hey, everyone punch Andy Palmer, but I can tweet, let's bomb Assad? Yeah. Oh, wow. What a... Jack, you fucked up. Well, if Andy visited Syria, you could

advocate to bomb him. You can only advocate for violence against me if it's government violence. That's crazy. Yeah. Why is that the loophole? Just because of this nonsense? Because they want these companies to buy ads? I mean, I don't think it's inconsequential.

There's a fuck ton of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin ads on Twitter. Especially every time it's International Women's Day and Raytheon's on Twitter highlighting female engineers. Women in STEM? Yes. Yeah, yeah. And there's also like a Northrop Grumman commercial we watched a while ago,

but man, I'll link it on the Tumblr. It's called Dreamers. And so it displays a perfect multi-ethnic group of children, all genders, all races. Of course. And they were throwing a football around like multi-ethnic groups of children do. Of course. And then one of them. In their sandlot.

Yes. One of them throws it over a fence where it lands next to a barking dog. Oh, scary. It seems very angry and scary. And he represents the Muslims. And so... Just like in the Sandlot. And so one of the girls

in this group puts on a cloaking device and then sneaks in to take the football back from the dog Muslims. Like a green beret. And then brings it back to the group and they're all happy and then it cuts to this little girl as an older woman working to design the north up grumman b21 stealth bomber i can i can imagine that the catcher from sandlot as well as smalls get enlisted but

the catcher is like a ground force and smalls ends up working at one of those drone farms, and there's just a mix-up in the targeting, and so the drone starts doing some friendly fire, and the last thing you hear the Catcher say is like, you're killing me, Smalls! Sorry, the B-2 bomber. My bad. Who made that commercial again?

Northrop Grumman. At one point, we'll release a segment where we release YouTube videos of us critiquing those commercials That'd be fun There's a lot of great like I mean it is funny how Woke politics woke culture Performative whatever you want to call it Has infiltrated everything where you have like

Literally merchants of death Being like yeah we promote women in STEM Right right Well if you go to the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., one of the things there is just they have a drone hanging in their newest area. On the camera is a very prominent Raytheon logo.

And it's also the plaque in the Air and Space Museum that mentions 9-11 the most. Oh, my gosh. Which, you know, you'd think they'd also put that next to the 757s. I mean, that's not the only drone above DC, but we're not going to talk about that right now. I guess, do we want to talk about Yemen? Because we can mention the Saudi Arabia contract.

Yeah, so basically, this is one thing that's been kind of just on my mind a lot. Because it's very rarely in in the news and especially with a lot of what's going on in syria now where there's always a news alert when assad drops a barrel bomb on people or uh you know a gas attack in syria which obviously those are horrible i don't think so sean doesn't think so they're all Al-Qaeda, Andy. I read Phil Greaves' Twitter. So that's a big deal. But at the same time, Assad is adversarial to the United States, as is Russia, who is allied with Assad. And I think Iran is somewhere in the mix there, too.

Now, contrasted with this is in yemen where in i believe it was 2014 or 2015 uh houthi rebels came from northern yemen they're kind of shia associated rebels they came down to sanaa took, took Sana'a, and... The capital of Yemen. The capital of Yemen. And they, in that process, Saudi Arabia sort of started to, and the United States, identify the Houthi rebels as associated with Iran, mostly because the Houthi rebels were Shia and Iran's a Shia theocracy. And so Saudi Arabia then decided to stage an intervention including uh i believe a ground invasion and a very fierce air campaign uh against the houthi rebels and what what that ultimately turned into was a campaign against the people in houthi controlled territory

uh part of this was just a serial bombing campaign where they would bomb funerals. They would bomb funerals for people killed in funerals. They also bombed a lot of sanitation areas. They also instituted in the UN a blockade to, quote unquote, keep weapons away from the rebels. This blockade was also agreed on by the United States. But one of the results of this blockade is that they also kept food out of Yemen, which is a country that relies on 90% of its food to be imported. And so what happened as a result was mass starvation. The conflict is still going on. There have been millions of people who have been starving. The UN reported that there were 10,000 deaths in 2015, and they haven't been able to update

that number because Saudi Arabia has been bombing hospitals and all these institutional buildings that would be used to count deaths. So they can't get an accurate death toll, but it's closer to like 100,000 by now. On top of that, over a million people have cholera because Saudi Arabia destroyed sanitation in Houthi-controlled areas. And on top of that, it's known that Saudi Arabia will also target food production within Yemen. Like there are reports of Saudi Arabian attack helicopters just going after fishermen and just like flying in and like just shooting up fishermen, very militant vegetarians in Saudi Arabia. Right.

And, uh, as well as bombing farms, apparently there's been, there's a, um, they, bombing farms apparently there's been there's a um they they don't allow reporters into yemen and so uh it's hard to also get an on the floor or on the ground uh kind of uh reporting on what's

going on but there is a journalist who's in y, and I'll have his name in a second, but he's basically said that for the last three years or so that he's lived in Sana'a, he cannot remember a day that it hasn't been bombed. And so essentially what you have is the Saudi Arabia is targeting the civilians of Yemen, largely because I believe they want to make it a client state because a Houthi-controlled state isn't going to be a puppet to a Sunni state like Saudi Arabia. And so they want to basically bomb them into submission, make them into a client state. And the way that they're carrying it out is a genocide because they're systemically starving the people they're uh destroying all

of their water cleaning um you know uh and not only that you know the the leader of the hooties uh darius rucker uh is a uh also american singer and songwriter uh he uh lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the grammy award-winning american rock band uh hootie and the Blowfish. They've got six top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. Rucker co-wrote the majority of the band's song, as well as bombed these fishermen's... Andy, you said you'd make the genocide summary funny. I tried. Yogi's bailing you out,

just like the U.S. is bailing saudi arabia and yemen yeah so it's it's well reported that in these bombings the u.s has and this started under obama refueled a lot of saudi jets now here the the the big kicker of this is if you look up the saudi uh military especially their air force or um any any their planes that are associated with their army it's all bought from english and american companies right like the i mentioned earlier there were bombings of people coming home from a shop by f-16s the uh attack helicopters were likely the that shot um people who were uh the fishermen were likely either apache or blackhawk uh apache is built by boeing blackhawk is built by lockheed martin uh they

also systems too yeah ba systems yeah and bell is another one that makes hueys you might have heard the the news story about trump signing this 110110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. So about $7 billion of that is from so-called precision munitions from Raytheon and Boeing. So again, this is like when they can't get enough money from the Pentagon, they sell to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia uses it for their genocidal campaigns in Yemen. And on top of that, basically the idea is that Saudi Arabia is trying to buy smart bombs from the United States, or

tools from Boeing that Boeing openly advertises on their website to convert quote, dumb bombs into smart bombs. And they're basically these fins that you just stick on bombs that have GPS targeting, and it's so that you don't have, quote, more civilian casualties. the effect of it

that the smart bombs watch Rachel Maddow before they blow up a hospital I know that's been done to death but come on people the ultimate effect is that for example when there were there was the bombing of the what was it the funeral in Saudi Arabia one of the things of the, what was it? The funeral in Saudi Arabia. One of the things that the people who were bombed described was hearing the whistling and then course correcting of a smart bomb as it came down to hit their funeral. And it was ultimately they like people investigated the bomb. There's a Alexa right before.

Yeah. They also heard this. Oh, is that Houdini and the Blowfish? Yeah. Oh, that's one of those songs you hear forever and you never know where it... Yeah. Alexa, find funerals near me. I only had 4% battery, so I really wanted to get it in there.

Okay, Google, how can we end the conflict in Yemen Without further bloodshed I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean We should also mention cluster bombs While we're on the subject So Raytheon I looked at this a bit Raytheon manufactures so-called joint standoff weapons

Which are delivery canisters That contain bomblets or explosive devices that can essentially be very easily turned into cluster bombs. And, you know, Human Rights Watch, among others, have found evidence in terms of, you know, expended casings with Raytheon insignia on them being dropped in areas in Yemen. But just like a random note is that... Well, according to a Mother Jones article from 2016, apparently there was a study done

and civilians are 97% of cluster bomb casualties, or at least in 2015, civilians were 97% of cluster bomb casualties and more than a third of them were children. Wow, 3% were actually hitting the targets? Which is actually, like, that's really close to the main justification for the continued taboo on chemical weapons, like in the UN. There's, like, the indiscriminate nature of who it targets. Right, right.

It's like any weapon can target indiscriminately. And, like, it's a weird thing where, thing where cluster bombs are officially outlawed by treaty, but this doesn't stop. There's a convention on cluster munitions from 2008, and there are 108 signatories to it. Interestingly, not including the United States and Saudi Arabia. Oh, well, I'm sure we'll get right on that. But so just a random note is the Norwegian Ministry of Finance issued a report recommending divesting all of their oil pension fund from, among others, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin, because these people all make cluster bombs.

They might call them joint standoff weapons or whatever. Sounds like stifling the entrepreneur whatever whatever euphemism you want to use these people are making cluster bombs which are being dropped on civilian areas and murdering lots of people and uh you know we mentioned yemen but it should be also noted in like syria uh saudi arabia is funding some of the the sunni militias there and so some of the weapons uh that raytheon or whoever sells to saudi arabia end up in syria they end up all over the place actually uh i was researching bae systems for this and the the prime minister's husband is the theresa may teresa may's husband philip philip may philip

is the british one of the directors of the capital investment group that is one of the directors of the Capital Investment Group that is one of the largest stakeholders in BAE Systems. And their decision to launch airstrikes was, they were carried out with $6 million worth of BAE Systems missile weapons. Well, you know what I say to that? Maybe Philip may not. It'd be easier if their last names was should. I only want to be with Jews.

That's the Hasidic theme song. I only want to be with Jews. That's right. Saudi Arabia also uses American-supplied white phosphorus, which is technically supposed to just create a thick white smoke for targeting purposes. But when it's used against people, it will maim and kill by burning to the bone.

What's your delivery of that? You want to know something interesting? Outside of Yemen. Because, you know, we're at genocide, but let's go bigger. Let's go to omnicide I only want to be with me you know what's more what's cooler than genocide

I think I've used that riff on every single episode but damn it it works here too I stole it from you for the last episode for the Starbucks one so America's nuclear missile stockpile is also made by private companies because in true American fashion, even the end of the world is privatized.

Submarine-launched Trident missiles are developed by Lockheed Martin. And ICBM ground-launched missiles, the Minuteman III, is developed by Boeing. I love the idea of a trader's final action on the stock market before the mushroom cloud comes is issuing a buy order on Boeing's stock. Yeah, big money so as the hellfire engulfs you after you know uh a series of say 99 red balloons fucks up a radar just know that you're you're you're part of helping someone's bottom line. Yeah. And we can get back to ICBMs, but I did kind of want to talk about how U.S. military actions are also kind of showcases for these different companies. Oh, God, yeah.

So interestingly, Raytheon really became big. They did a bunch of other things, and I won't really go through the history. They did radar for the U.S. during World War II. But what really made their big break was the Gulf War because, you know, these cruise missiles and other things that they sold were endlessly paraded on CNN. And President George H.W. Bush famously went to a Raytheon facility in the middle of the war and said that they had shot down quote 41 of 42 scud missiles with their patriot interceptor systems later this was found to be bullshit is that where he got confused by the barcode scanner he was trying to check he just lied about that shit he was just like we got him

fuck them they suck buy this new shit right so basically the house government operations subcommittee on legislation and national security issued a report after this and said, quote, The Patriot missile system was not the spectacular success in the Persian Gulf War that the American public was led to believe. There's little evidence to prove that the Patriot hit more than a few Scud missiles launched by Iraq during the Gulf War. And there are some doubts about even these engagements. What? And so it's like George H.W. Bush, you know, praises the Patriot missiles, and then they in turn, Raytheon,

is able to sell these Patriot missiles to Saudi and Poland and all these other countries because, again, they were putting on a show. And it's the same with, like, this new launching in Yemen. They're, what is it, a new, I forget if it's a Lockheed missile or something that they were displaying. But a lot of these kinds of things are like an opportunity for U.S. defense contractors

to show off their technology and try to sell it to other governments. It's how Boeing can show off how their smart bomb attachment can really get some hard-to-reach weddings. You know who never shows off? Cockheed Martin. That guy's all substance. All 18 inches of him. That's the 2% of the other investment. Talk into the mic, Steven.

The 2% from their budget is just listed as others going to Cockheed Martin. Research. I want it to get a bit to ownership if we have time for that i want to talk about ownership we can talk about the icbms before we run out of time here and then raytheon did an interesting thing with california prisons maybe i'll just start there so the raytheon uh contracted with uh cal California, I think it's Pichess Detention Center, north of Los Angeles, for a prisoner zap system called Silent Guardian.

And there's an NPR article on this. I'll link in the Tumblr. But basically, it looks like a giant dental x-ray machine. And so with, I'm quoting from NPR here, with a remote control device, guards can focus on specific targets using a monitor and a joystick. And then quoting from the Raytheon spokesperson, it penetrates about a 64th of an inch under your skin.

That's about where your pain receptors are. So that's what it would feel like if you just open up the doors of a blast furnace. You feel this wave of heat immediately. And it's a giant a giant a burning sensation under your skin and they can use this for uh prisoner control it uses some sort of waves millimeter waves that's what it is uh the device sends out millimeter waves creating a quote harmless but intense sensation and so the this california prison is going to the ACL. Excruciating torture.

Millimeter waves fall under a class of waves that might also be known as microwaves. They're pretty literally just cooking your skin next to your paint. How quick can you do a hot pocket with this stuff? Because I'm tired of waiting 60 seconds. I want it done in five.

Interesting. In my course of researching Raytheon, one of their employees invented the microwave oven in 1945. Oh, congrats. And also they made a lot of money on their microwaves, but in the 90s sold that business and now focus entirely on blowing up people at weddings.

But for some reason in this article... Gotta keep it hot. Gotta keep it crispy. For some reason, there's a real party pooper ACLU attorney quoted in this article who says, quote, we're going to use people in jail as guinea pigs for some mega arms builder to test their device. He says some of these tests have badly burned people with repeated zaps

And he notes that Los Angeles deputies have a documented history of abusing inmates He suggests a better solution would be to find solutions that prevent prison overcrowding conditions That trigger jail riots instead of, you know, cooking them with microwaves Well, I mean, maybe they should have thought about that before they decided to light up some of that gange. It's just kind of a dystopian, horrifying thing. Another thing I read about Raytheon is they have their own little Palantir system,

which they sell to various governments, which uses your social media presence to find out your location and information about you. It's great that a missile targeting company has that. Makes you think twice about checking in. out your location and information about you. Oh, it's great that a missile targeting company has that. But yeah, so... Makes you think twice about checking in. Yeah, but it's just kind of like this

dystopian thing where they have like this fucking microwave crowd control system that they're testing on prisoners before rolling it out to the general populace writ large. So, you know, keep an eye on that one. Oh yeah, I'm looking forward to choosing to have that put in my arm as a consumer

in the free market. You know who always checks in? Cocky Martin. You already made that one. He's all about consent. I think I made that joke. I mean, I'm not proud of it. Let's move on. Try to keep this light, Sean, okay?

One of us has to be silly. Yeah. No, it's important when Andy's droning on about, literally droning on about the genocide in Yemen, that somebody's there to make the cocky Martin and the Houthi and the blowfish jokes. Look, that's what people tune in for. All 100 of them.

Don't insult the people that like us, Sean. Yes. It's just as bad or worse than what's going on in syria and we have the power to stop it so we've got to talk about i know it's important we talk about these issues don't get me wrong we don't have to we have to talk about the crimes of the we don't have to bomb assad we can if you want to save a lot of lives, you can get your country to stop supporting Saudi Arabia. Senators Sanders, Lee, and Murphy, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Mike Lee of Utah, Republican, they introduced a war powers resolution on Yemen to essentially say Congress has to sign off,

otherwise the U.S. has to withdraw their soldiers from there and stop assisting the Saudi military. They introduced this in the Senate. It was defeated, I believe, 55 to 45 with 10 Democrats voting to keep the war in Yemen going indefinitely. One of whom was, as we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, Joe Donnelly, Democrat of Indiana. So, you know, important we keep that secret. Hey, congrats to him. Good job, Joe. Yeah. Congrats to him Good job Joe But serious Serious thanks to Sanders

And Murphy Was that Warren you said? Murphy and Lee Actually Mike Lee, Republican of Utah So good for him Can't insert Warren into everything that's good Andy I believe Warren did vote To end the Warren Yemen

Where did Schumer vote? Insert Warren into everything that's good, Andy. I believe Warren did vote to end the Warren Yemen. Where did Schumer vote? We'll get back to this. I got my money on Schumer voting to continue. Schumer's whole deal is like... I doubt it. He's just smart. Yeah, he just kind of like he allows Wall Street repeal to go to the floor, but he doesn't vote for it. No, Schumer either abstained or voted against it.

And it's important to note that this genocide was sanctioned by Obama. Yes. Like as bad as Trump is continuing it and he's expanding the weapons sales, this did start under Obama. It's one of the weirdest and more horrifying things Obama did is essentially allow U.S. forces to be deployed in service of a mass murder campaign. And he didn't even close Guantanamo. He made it 24 hours. And when the blockade was put in front of the U.N., it was supported by Samantha Powers, who is also known as writing a book called A Problem from Hell about U.S. inaction in the face of genocide.

So that's probably the first time I can think of where someone who wrote a book about how terrible genocide is was complicit in a genocide. Well, no, Hitler wrote a book about white genocide. Co-wrote. It's true. He did actually dictate both of that book in prison. I know a lot about Hitler. No one shocked Sean.

That's going to be a future drama. Before we run out of time, I do want to talk about who actually owns these weapons manufacturers because it is a fascinating thing to dig into because as we've mentioned there's so much money in war and like who profits from it well in the case of Raytheon it's mostly. Who are the innovators who are

being rewarded for their foresight outside of Darius Rucker. For taking the risk. In the case of Raytheon it's mostly institutional investors it's a publicly traded company so you have like Blackrock I believe this is So you have like BlackRock. I believe this is as of December. Yeah, well, BlackRock, actually.

I don't know how much. I will say as a side note, we've talked about playing our market game and Steven's still winning because we all started right after there was a drop in the market and then he came in right after that and so didn't lose as much money as the rest of us.

But I'm catching up and I'm only investing in boeing raytheon and northrop grumman well don't worry andy when trump walks out of the north korea peace talks he will win the game but so uh just in the case of raytheon and uh from what i've looked at most of the uh big five are in similar situations but uh the biggest institutional owner is the Vanguard Group. They do the famous Vanguard's ETFs and such. Virtual funds. Yeah, yeah. So you also have BlackRock Incorporated.

They own 7.36%. State Street owns 4.34%. Again, as of December 2017. This is Raytheon. Bank of America owns 2.11%. Fidelity, you might have seen their commercials. They are famously owned by the Johnson family billionaires, as Johnson & Johnson.

Fidelity owns, I believe, 2.53% of Raytheon. And BlackRock's CEO, Larry Fink, is another billionaire we'll talk about in the future. So essentially, it's an interesting kind of shell game where all of these banks and financial services and whatever own large stakes in the weapons companies. So, you know, it's kind of one of those things that occasionally you'll see the woke take on the Internet that, like, only white guys care about Wall Street when Wall Street entirely profits from and encourages this massive defense spending because in addition to being a subsidy to the defense industry, weapons spending by the U.S. government is a subsidy to Wall Street because they are the ones who fucking own all these companies.

So it's just kind of a horrifying onion once you peel back the layers. Man, straight white dude, bro. What a time to be white. Oh, God. Oh, God. But, yeah. What what else we got we're running over uh i think we hit most of the the basics uh we um raytheon among others has had multiple both uh scandals in uh environmental, both in Arizona and Florida, unsurprisingly making missiles and other such things. If you don't really give a shit about the environment,

can make groundwater pollute it. So they've had those. They've had scandals with cost overruns with the Pentagon. They've been given slap on the wrist fines on many occasions. They've had bribery scandals. They sold Brazil like some radar system that they bribed the president, among other people, to get them to approve of. You know, so it's just like that kind of stuff. Social media monitoring, cluster bombs.

Always a small loan from friends and family. Oh, that trust fund. I've heard about that. Yeah. I mean, it's just something where it's kind of horrifying. So wait, not only is the weapon manufacturers of this country making bank on killing people, but then companies that make money off of money are making money off people killing people? Of course, yeah.

Wow. Capitalism. Yeah. What a box of problems. In the long and short. But yeah, no, it was pretty interesting for me doing this research and just finding out how much, you know, Bank of New York Mellon, we've

mentioned them on a previous episode, they own 1.45%. I think I mentioned Bank of America owns 2.11% of Raytheon. Deutsche Bank owns 1.26%. So it's like... Lululemon owns 11%? I made that one up. It's not real. Deutsche Bank owns 1.26%. So it's like... Lululemon owns 11%. I made that one up. It's not real. But yeah. Yet.

Not real. Yet. Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines. I don't know. It's investment advice. If you're wondering why the stock market goes up when Trump bombs people, just check back on the public declarations of ownership and you'll be

pleasantly surprised by what you find. And with that this has been Grubstakers. Come out April 30th to Brooklyn Oats of Comedy. Hell yes. Quick Sid Comedy with Shay Torres, Mike Drucker, Marshall Belsky, Brian Yang, Kenice Mobley,

Amanda Hurley, hosted by yours truly, Yogi Pollywall. They're doing a Yemen genocide-themed show. All of them will be talking about the cholera epidemic among the children. Should be a fun night. $5 cover, two drinks. But with that, my name is Yogi Paliwal. I'm Andy Palmer. Sean McCarthy.

Steve Jeffries. Thanks for listening. Weapons for all occasions. And everyone got excited about the technology. And I guess it was pretty incredible watching a missile fly down an air vent. Pretty unbelievable. But couldn't we feasibly use that same technology to shoot food at hungry people? This one is dedicated to the suit-wearing

arms dealers. To the champagne-sipping depleted uranium droppers. Keep your hand on your gun. Don't you trust anyone. Keep your hand on your gun Don't you trust anyone First in my scope is BAE Systems Specialising killing people from a distance

Power is a drug and they feed the addiction Immediate deletion of people's existence Who says what is and what isn't legitimate resistance To push these buttons you don't need a brave heart state of the art darts leave more than your face scarred you might impress an A&R with your fake bars cos you probably think Rolls Royce only make cars this is for the colonisers, turn bomb providers take this beef all the way back to Oppenheimer they call it warfare but your wars aren't fair if they were they'd be suicide bombers in arms

fairs a scam for the funds they will mangle your son if you try to funds, they will mangle your son If you try to speak out, they will stamp on your tongue To your land they will come, till you stand up as one It's begun Keep your hand on your gun Don't you trust anyone Keep your hand on your gun Don't you trust anyone

Next in my scope is Lockheed Martin They will tell you when the bombs need blasting Don't think, just listen to the songs keep dancing Do they really want us to have our own brains? Who do you think is really running Guantanamo Bay? And it might be sensitive, but I'll mention it Who do you think's got us filling out the censuses? Who do you think is handing out the sentences? This ain't the BBC, so there's no censorship

Heard of many mercenaries getting with the clever pimp Not a gun seller, but none's better than Eric Prince Make money off many things, mainly his prime This one is dedicated to the Raytheon Nine On a scam for the funds, they will mangle your son If you try to speak out, it will stamp on your tongue To your land they will come, till you stand up as one It's been fun

Keep your hand on your gun Don't you trust anyone Keep your hand on your gun Don't you trust anyone