Ronald McDonald and McDonnell-Douglas two sides of the
same coin (Part I)
http://www.khilafah.com/1421/category.php?DocumentID=2401&TagID=1
The export of American products, services and common culture has been spear headed by
the fast food industry. The export of US political and military imperialism has been spear
headed by the armaments industry. The restaurant chain McDonald’s and the military
aircraft manufacturer McDonnell-Douglas have come to represent, respectively, two devices
that are used for ensuring American global reach.
The McDonald’s Corporation is the most important symbol of America’s service
economy. It is responsible for 90 percent of the US’s new jobs. It is estimated that
one in eight of workers in the US have at some point been employed by McDonald’s. The
corporation is America’s largest purchaser of beef, pork and potatoes. It spends more
on marketing than any other brand name. It is America’s biggest distributor of toys.
Today the Golden Arches (the M-for McDonald’s sign) are now more widely recognised
than the Christian cross. McDonald’s has replaced Coca-Cola as the world’s most
famous brand.
That is the case not merely in the US. Internationally, American fast food chains have
taken on a wholly different significance. For starters, the McDonald’s Corp is the
largest owner of retail property in the world. Internationally, the Golden Arches have
taken on symbolic value that has far surpassed those of the swastika and the hammer and
sickle.
American fast food represents Americana and the promise of modernisation. After the fall
of the Berlin Wall within months McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in Eastern
Germany. In 1992 thousands of people waited patiently in Beijing outside the city’s
first McDonald store at its grand opening. When McDonald’s opened in Kuwait the line
of cars waiting at the drive-through window extended for seven miles. Around the same time
Kentucky Fried Chicken hit its all time record earnings for one week $200,000, during
Ramadan, in the Holy city of Makkah-tul-Mukarmah. Simply eating at Pizza Hut or
McDonald’s and drinking coke or Pepsi, as if by magic, can lift one social standing.
This is the image that goes hand in hand with the sparkling clean tables and counters of
the fast food take away stores.
The fast food chains have become imperial fiefdoms, sending emissaries far and wide. Den
Fujita, the man who brought McDonald’s to Japan 30 years ago once promised his
Japanese countrymen, “If we eat McDonald’s Hamburgers and potatoes for a
thousand years we will become taller, our skin will become white, and our hair will be
blonde.” Statements like this may lead one to believe that the job of the fast food
chains in brain washing is a fait accompli. Sixteen years ago, when McDonald’s opened
its first restaurant in Turkey, no other foreign franchiser did business there. Turkey now
has hundreds of outlets for US companies. Support for growth of franchising has become
part of US foreign policy. The State Department now publishes detailed studies of overseas
franchise opportunities and runs a Gold Key Program at many of its embassies to help
American franchisers find overseas partners.
Due to incredibly fierce competition in the US between the chains, many have turned their
attentions to markers outside America. The McDonald’s Corp refer to their strategy as
“global realization.” To date McDonald’s has over 15,000 restaurants
outside the US in more than 117 countries.
The fact the fast food has come to represent US imperialism is not something that has gone
unnoticed by some who have paused to take stock of the status quo. In response to the US
bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, there was a trashing of over a dozen
Macdonald’s and four KFC’s in China. In 1996 Indian farmers ransacked a KFC in
Bangalore, in protest against the US erosion of the traditional Indian agricultural
practices. In 1997, a McDonald’s in Cali in Colombia was bombed. In 1995 a group of
four hundred Danish anarchists looted a McDonald’s in Copenhagen and burned it to the
ground. Fast food restaurants (McDonald’s being the most popular of for attack) have
been bombed, burned and abused in; St Petersburg in Russia, Athens in Greece, Cape Town in
South Africa, Antwerp in Belgium and the famous anti capitalist riots in Trafalgar Square
in London. Although many are recognising the ills of culinary colonialism we should
remember that McDonald’s is merely one tool in amongst many for enforcing US junk
culture on the world. The other tools are often more apparent and often more damaging.
Each tools supplements the other. The spread of Junk culture augments the spread of
political influence.
So what of McDonnell-Douglas. The Military might of the US as spread through the globe in
an equally insidious and pernicious manner. Conflict and trouble spots have been used
specifically as a pretence for established military bases or for building sea borne
parking lots for aircraft carriers and destroyers. These so-called trouble spots have in
the past been conjured up from peaceful and stable regions. Flare-ups have been induced by
the US through it’s various agencies and puppets that operate covertly and overtly.
This has been exemplified by the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq war that
followed. This conflict provided a reason for the US to have a heightened presence in the
Gulf. A more dramatic example was that of the Gulf war of the early 1990s. Military bases
were set up all over the Persian Gulf region with no opposition from the heads of state in
the region.
A comprehensive study of this issue is beyond the scope of this discussion. However even
the briefest of glances at modern history reveals ample examples of the use of the arms
trade and base building in American hegemony. As for the current tension in the World. The
US may not have immediate plans to cite a Starbucks in Kandahar, but one thing is for
sure. The US does intend to increase and strengthen existing bases and footholds that she
has in the Islamic regions of the world. Bases and ports are some of the plum prize booty
sought after in today’s situations. Both McDonnell-Douglas and McDonald’s are
key tools used for the pursuit of this goal.
[this is the first part of a discussion of how the cause of US imperialism is furthered by
common popular culture and military mean. In part II we will focus on the role of the
military and armaments manufactures in this cause.]
"If you wish to comment on this article please email article@khilafah.com"
11 October, 2001
Source: Kcom Journal
Ronald McDonald and McDonnell-Douglas two sides of the
same coin (part II)
http://www.khilafah.com/1421/category.php?DocumentID=2412&TagID=1
Perfect planning prevents poor performance
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.
Policing the world
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.
Arms trade
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 Ba’athists
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
Argentinian fighters using British built ammunition
War per say as tool
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.
Conclusion
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.
"If you wish to comment on this article please email article@khilafah.com"
12 October, 2001
Source: Kcom Journal