Comments on: Boeing or EADS? Don’t Give a Damn!

By: Marklar

Marklar — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 09:54:28 +0000

Thanks for a great article. I’m an electronics tech who lives near Boeing and am currently unemployed partially because I wil not work in defense and that’s about 60% of all the jobs in my field in this area. Increased use of sub-contractors who pay less seems to be driving down the average wage in the rest of the industry as well at a time when inflation has topped 16%, unless your using the governments criminally insane and rigged numbers of 2.5%. To tell the truth even the idea of going back to work for any corporation at all is enough to make me ill.

It’s time for workers to start asking loud and clear why they are taking big PAY CUTS year after year. Explain that their money is now worth less so not getting an adequate raise is really a pay cut, and if you get a pay cut you walk. They take on a military contract you walk. I can do this easier than some since I don’t have a wife or kid’s I’ll admit, but they simply can’t do all this shit if enough of us refuse to put up with it and are willing to put our money where our mouth is.

By: HR

HR — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:45:40 +0000

Excellent article. I hope that the author does not hold out hope for much of a meaningful, positive response from USans, though, especially not from the so-called left. The “left”, as usual, has already abandoned any truly progressive candidates, like Kucinich, Nader, and McKinney, once again attaching itself to the babble of “hope” and “change” being sold them by the two liars who serve as a front for the slightly-left-of-far-right wing of the corporate party. The left will continue to rationalize its irrational behavior by blabbering about how progressives just, “Can’t win,” in this country and throw its votes away on corporate candidates, at all levels, who are dedicated to nothing more than the same agenda of their “opposition”. A sad state of affairs.

By: Robert Oates

Robert Oates — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:32:54 +0000

EADS—A BETTER SUPPLIER THAN BOEING FOR US AIRFORCE TANKERS?
HAVE WE FORGOT ABOUT RECENT BUSINESS ACTIVITY?

1. Middle Eastern buyers of A380 could exert pressure or call their orders.
2. Middle Eastern buyers of 350-XWB could exert pressure or call their orders

AIRBUS’S PARENT, EADS put together a plan called POWER 8 to make up for the deficits incurred with re-designing the 350XWB five times, and the delays to the A380 (spruce goose equivalent), and delays in the Military version (A300). 10,000 jobs in Germany and France are on the chopping block. In the mean-time sales are booming. The Unions in France and Germany are up in arms about the prospect of having 10,000 jobs cut when business is booming. Since the Power 8 was announced 1.) Management insider trading stock scandal has implicated the Management 2.) The A300M military equivqlent of the C-130 turboprop is at least a year behind–causing a 3rd quarter write-off of 1 billion$. 3.) The dollar decline is hurting because costs are in Euros and sales price is in Dollars$. Power 8 was envisioned to cover losses when the dollar was 1.35–it is now above 1.5 (another Billion in losses).

By: D. R. Munro

D. R. Munro — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:01:44 +0000

It may not be spent killing Palestinian children, but it will be spent antagonizing the Russians, and I’m sure the Polish and Czech civilians would rather not have foreign missile shields within their frontiers.

That makes you a target by proxy.

By: Michael Kenny

Michael Kenny — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:32:21 +0000

The point about the Airbus contract is, I think, the Israel Lobby’s need to prop up NATO at any price so as to have a legal pretext to maintain US forces and military supplies near to Israel.

The big complaint in NATO has always been that the US imposed American equipment, particularly aircraft, thereby undermining the once mighty European aircraft industry and giving a hidden subsidy to US civil aircraft manufacturers. There has been an ongoing row between the EU and the US about this for years. This contract is a sop to Europe and, in fact, although Airbus will make some profit on the deal, much of the work will actually be done in Mobile, Alabama!

The whole thing has got very little press coverage here in Europe, essentially because nobody really takes it very seriously. I would put it in the same category as the missiles/radar in Poland and the Czech Republic, where huge amounts of US taxpayers’ money will be spent re-building roads, railways, telecommunications networks etc. for a system which will not be switched on.

The upside is, of course, that money spent bribing Europe is money that’s not available for killing Palestinian children, particularly with the US economy collapsing. Let’s be thankful for small mercies!