There was an email sent to all students in the mathematics department, essentially advertising for Raytheon… My response.
Woah.
Well, if it’s legitimate to advertise for controversial weapons manufacturers on an email list for mathematics students, it’s certainly also legitimate to provide some critical information about them. Hey, they might be “virtually indistinguishable” from the CIA and NSA, according to the Washington Post, they might have their top lobbyist at #2 in the Pentagon, but still, I don’t think they’ve completely taken over the mathematics department yet…
They may produce cruise missiles, bunker buster missiles, anti-missile missiles, and other missiles used to kill lots of people, but hey, that’s legal, right? They may even produce missiles used by military forces in serious and massive violation of international law — but that’s not their responsibility, right? They might produce missiles which deliver cluster bombs — declared illegal by 95 countries — but hey, the US isn’t one of them, right? They produce crazy experimental microwave-ray weapons to disperse peaceful protests, but that keeps the rabble in line… right? They might supply surveillance equipment for the wall in occupied Palestine, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice, but that surely gets lost among the yearly $3 billion in US aid to Israel… right? Their subsidiary might have purchased the airline used by the CIA for covert activity in southeast Asia, and then used it in Mexico in a program which Congress called a “shambles”, but that doesn’t mean anything… right? And they might have supplied explosives devices to a repressive Argentinian government in its US-supported dirty war, but that should be well down the memory hole by now… right? And then there is all that overstating of costs, falsifying records, terrible labor practices, and other legal liabilities, but hey, what good corporation doesn’t… right?
Nonetheless, I’m sure none of this matters, because there may be interesting mathematics in designing their products.
Anyway, below are some interesting links for further critical information. BTW, I’m happy to provide sources or discuss any of the claims in the above: most of them are in the articles below. They are all serious claims.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Raytheon
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=141
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11096
http://www.corpwatch.org/section.php?id=13
http://www.ruckus.org/warprofiteers/cards/clubs/eight.html
http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/raytheon