SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
Is it possible that one of the Pentagon's contractors has a tripartite
business model for our tough economic times: one division that
specializes in crock-pots, another in adult diapers, and a third in
medium caliber tactical ammunition? Can the maker of the SaladShooter,
a hand-held electric shredder/dicer that hacks up and fires out sliced
veggies, really be a tops arms manufacturer? Could a company that
produces the Pizzazz Pizza Oven also be a merchant of death? And could
this company be a model for success in an economy heading for the
bottom?
Once upon a time, the military-industrial complex was loaded with household-name companies like General Motors,
Ford, and Dow Chemical, that produced weapons systems and what arms
expert Eric Prokosch has called, "the technology of killing." Over the
years, for economic as well as public relations reasons, many of these
firms got out of the business of creating lethal technologies, even
while remaining Department of Defense (DoD) contractors.
The military-corporate complex of today is still filled with familiar names from our consumer culture, including defense contractors
like iPod-maker Apple, cocoa giant Nestle, ketchup producer Heinz, and
chocolate bar maker Hershey, not to speak of Tyson Foods, Procter &
Gamble, and the Walt Disney Company. But while they may provide the
everyday products that allow the military to function, make war, and
carry out foreign occupations, most such civilian firms no longer
dabble in actual arms manufacture.
Whirlpool: Then and Now
Take the Whirlpool Corporation, which bills itself as "the world's
leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances" and boasts
annual sales of more than $19 billion to consumers in more than 170
countries. Whirlpool was recently recognized as "one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute." The company also professes
a "strong" belief in "ethical values" that dates back almost 100 years
to founders who believed "there is no right way to do a wrong thing."
In the middle of the last century, however -- as Prokosch has documented -- Whirlpool was engaged in what many might deem a wrong thing. In 1957, Whirlpool took over work on flechettes
-- razor-sharp darts with fins at the blunt end -- for the U.S.
military. While International Harvester, the prior Pentagon contractor
producing them, had managed to pack only 6,265 of these deadly
darts into a 90mm canister round, Whirlpool set to work figuring out a
way to cram almost 10,000 flechettes into the same delivery vehicle.
Its goal: to "improve the lethality of the canisters." (In addition,
Whirlpool also reportedly worked on "Sting Ray" -- an Army project
involving a projectile filled with flechettes coated in a
still-undisclosed chemical agent.)
In 1967, an Associated Press report noted that U.S. troops were
using new flechette artillery rounds to "spray thousands of dart-shaped
steel shafts over broad areas of the jungle or open territory" in
Vietnam. "I've seen reports of enemy soldiers actually being nailed to
trees by these things," commented one Army officer.
On a recent trip to Vietnam, I spoke to a Vietnamese witness who had
seen such "pin bullets" employed by U.S. forces many times in those
years. In one case, Bui Van Bac recalled that a woman from his village,
spotted by U.S. aircraft while she was walking in a rice paddy, was
gravely wounded by them. Local guerillas came to the woman's aid and
brought her to a hospital where a surgeon found a number of extremely
sharp, three centimeter long "pins" inside her body. Medically, it was
all but hopeless and the woman died.
A top player in lethal technologies back then, Whirlpool is now
among the tiniest defense contractors. While, in recent years, the
company has ignored requests for information from TomDispatch.com on
their dealings with the Pentagon, records indicate that last year, for
example, it received just over $105,000 from the Department of Defense,
most of which apparently went towards the purchase of kitchen
appliances and household furnishings.
Similarly, Whirlpool's predecessor in the flechette game, International
Harvester, is now Navistar International Corporation. Navistar Defense,
a division of the company,
remains one of the Pentagon's stealth "billion dollar babies."
But while it did more than $1 billion in business with the DoD last
year, Navistar appears to have been building vehicles for the Pentagon,
not creating anti-personnel weaponry. There are, however, companies
that can't seem to say goodbye to lethal technologies.
National Presto Industries
National Presto Industries traces its history to the 1905 founding
of the Northwestern Iron and Steel Works in Eau Claire, Wisconsin,
according to the Business & Company Resource Center. By 1908, the
company was making industrial steam pressure cookers and, in 1915,
began making models for home use. On the eve of the U.S. entry into
World War II, the company entered the arms game when it scored a
multi-million dollar contract to produce artillery fuses. Even with
that deal in hand, it was reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy when
its new president, Lewis Phillips, landed a series of other lucrative
military contracts.
In the early years of the Cold War, about the time Whirlpool was
getting into the flechette business, National Presto Industries had
just introduced "a revolutionary new concept in electric cooking... a
complete line of fully immersible electric cooking appliances employing
a removable heat control" -- and was about to launch "the world's first
automatic, submersible stainless steel coffee maker." The company was
also still churning out war materiel.
In
1953, National Presto announced plans to build a multi-million dollar
plant to produce 105mm artillery shells. In 1955, it was awarded
millions to make howitzer shells for the Army, and the next year,
millions from the Air Force for fighter-bomber parts. By 1958, company
President Lewis Phillips would declare, "The future of this company in
Eau Claire and hence the security of our jobs here is now almost wholly
dependent upon defense contracts awarded by the U.S. Government." When
the Army cancelled its contracts with Presto in 1959, Phillips
lamented, "With little or no notice, this Government decision has
forced us completely out of the manufacturing business here in Eau
Claire."
The tough times didn't last. Soon enough, National Presto returned
to the fray, benefiting from the disastrous American war in Vietnam.
From 1966 to 1975, the company manufactured more than two million
eight-inch howitzer shells and more than 92 million 105mm artillery
shells. In Vietnam, 105mm shells would kill or maim untold numbers of civilians,
but it was a boom time for National Presto, which took in at least $163
million in Pentagon contracts in 1970-1971 alone for artillery shell
parts. Finally shuttered in 1980, the company defense plant was kept on
government "stand-by" into the 1990s, a sweetheart deal that earned
Presto $2.5 million annually for producing nothing at all.
As the Vietnam War wound down, National Presto turned back to the
civilian market with a series of new kitchen gadgets: in 1974, the
PrestoBurger, an electric, single-serving fast broiler for hamburgers;
in 1975, the Hot Dogger; and in 1976, the Fry Baby deep fat fryer. In
1988, the company introduced its wildly popular SaladShooter, followed
in 1991 by its Tater Twister potato peeler. When sales of its
SaladShooters, corn poppers, pressure cookers, deep fryers, and
griddles became sluggish, however, weaponry again proved a savior.
In 2001, National Presto decided to get back into the arms game. Months
before 9/11, the company's chairman Melvin Cohen expressed fears that a
future war might mean ruin for the company's kitchen appliance
business. As a result, Presto purchased munitions manufacturer Amtec.
In the years since, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Presto has also "made other complementary acquisitions in the defense industry." These have included Amron, a manufacturer of medium caliber ammunition (20-40mm) cartridge cases and Spectra Technologies,
which is "engaged in the manufacture, distribution, and delivery of
munitions and ordnance-related products for the DOD and DOD prime
contractors." Such types of ammunition are extremely versatile and are
fired from ground vehicles, naval ships, and various types of aircraft
-- both helicopters and fixed-wing models.
Additionally, in the months after 9/11, National Presto entered the
diapers trade, setting up that business in its old munitions plant. In
2004, with Melvin Cohen's daughter MaryJo now at the helm, the company
further expanded into the business of adult-incontinence products. "I
spent a couple of days wearing them," the younger Cohen told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the time. "They're very comfortable."
In 2005, Presto's Amtec was awarded a five-year deal by the Pentagon for its 40mm family
of ammunition rounds. By the end of last year, it had already received
$454 million and was expecting the sum to top out, at contract's end,
above $550 million.
Just as 105mm shells of the sort produced by Presto were a nightmare
for the people of Vietnam, so too has 40mm ammunition spelled doom for
civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier this year, the BBC reported
on a typical joint U.S./U.K. attack on a home in Iraq in which
insurgents had taken shelter. After exchanging ground fire, coalition
forces called in an airstrike. According to the BBC,
"The aircraft fired 40mm cannon rounds at the two houses, finally
dropping a bomb on one of them. It collapsed. The other house was set
on fire. The two insurgents in the house were buried but so were a
number of women and children." Similarly, in August, news reports tell
us, U.S. troops called in an airstrike by an AC-130 -- which packs 40mm
cannons -- that helped kill approximately 90 civilians in the village
of Azizabad in Afghanistan, according to investigations by the Afghan government and the United Nations.
As in the past, war time has been a boom-time for Presto. In 2000,
before the start of the Global War on Terror, National Presto's annual
sales clocked in at $116.6 million. In 2007, they totaled $420.7
million, with more than 50% of that coming from arms manufacturing.
Earlier this year, Presto nabbed another 40mm ammunition contract
(a $97.5 million supplemental award) set to be delivered in 2009 and
2010. According to official DoD figures, from 2001 through 2008
National Presto received more than $531 million, while Amtec has taken
home another $171 million-plus. Their combined grand total, while
hardly putting Presto in the top tier of Pentagon weapons contractors,
is still a relatively staggering $702.8 million -- not bad for a
company known for slicing and dicing vegetables.
Death is Our Business and Business is Good
These days, most civilian defense contractors aren't like Presto. General Tire and Rubber Company,
for example, once lorded it over a business empire that produced not
only car tires, but antipersonnel mines and deadly cluster bombs.
Today, the company seems to have left its days of supplying the U.S.
military with lethal technologies behind.
Dow Chemical classically drew ire from protestors during the Vietnam
War for making the incendiary agent napalm that clung to and burned off
the flesh of Vietnamese
victims. Dow got out of the napalm business long before the war ended, but, due to widespread protests at the time, the company is still living down the legacy today.
At a 2006 Ethics and Compliance Conference, Dow's President, CEO,
and Chairman Andrew Liveris recalled, "Believe me, we have had our
share of ethical challenges, most of them very public... starting with
the manufacture of Napalm during the Vietnam War... when suddenly we went
from being a company that made Saran Wrap to keep food fresh to a kind
of war machine... at least, according the characterizations of the time."
While Dow is still a defense contractor, its DoD contracts appear not
to include the manufacture of weapons of any type. Instead, such
companies have largely ceded the field to dedicated "merchants of
death" -- weapons-industry giants like Alliant Techsystems (ATK), Lockheed Martin, and Boeing.
Right now, National Presto Industries may look like a throw-back to an
earlier era when companies regularly made both innocuous household
items and heavy weapons. In a new hard-times economy, however, in which
taxpayer dollars are likely to continue to pour into the Pentagon,
could it instead be a harbinger of the future? Having proved that
outfitting real shooters is even more lucrative than making
SaladShooters, Presto has gotten rich in the Bush war years. It has, in
fact, greatly outperformed the big guns of the weapons business. While
the stocks of top defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and
Northrop Grumman have all lost significant value in the last year --
down 29.3%, 55.3%, and 50.1%, respectively -- National Presto's stock
price was up 28.1% as of mid-December.
It isn't hard to imagine more civilian firms, especially ones which are
already Pentagon contractors, getting into (or back into) the weapons
game. After all, when the Big Three Detroit automakers were scrounging
around for a bailout just a few weeks ago, they used America's
persistent involvement in armed conflict as one argument in their
favor. For example, Robert Nardelli, Chrysler's chief executive, told the Senate
that the failure of the auto industry "would undermine our nation's
ability to respond to military challenges and would threaten our
national security." While that argument was roundly dismissed by
retired Army Lt. Gen. John Caldwell, chairman of the National Defense
Industrial Association's combat vehicles division, it probably wouldn't
have been if the automakers made more weapons systems.
Will Presto be the back-to-the-future model for Pentagon contractors in
the lean times ahead? Only time will tell. At the very least, it seems
that, as long as Americans allow the country to wage wars abroad,
require their salads to be shot, and have bladder issues, National
Presto Industries has a future.
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
Is it possible that one of the Pentagon's contractors has a tripartite
business model for our tough economic times: one division that
specializes in crock-pots, another in adult diapers, and a third in
medium caliber tactical ammunition? Can the maker of the SaladShooter,
a hand-held electric shredder/dicer that hacks up and fires out sliced
veggies, really be a tops arms manufacturer? Could a company that
produces the Pizzazz Pizza Oven also be a merchant of death? And could
this company be a model for success in an economy heading for the
bottom?
Once upon a time, the military-industrial complex was loaded with household-name companies like General Motors,
Ford, and Dow Chemical, that produced weapons systems and what arms
expert Eric Prokosch has called, "the technology of killing." Over the
years, for economic as well as public relations reasons, many of these
firms got out of the business of creating lethal technologies, even
while remaining Department of Defense (DoD) contractors.
The military-corporate complex of today is still filled with familiar names from our consumer culture, including defense contractors
like iPod-maker Apple, cocoa giant Nestle, ketchup producer Heinz, and
chocolate bar maker Hershey, not to speak of Tyson Foods, Procter &
Gamble, and the Walt Disney Company. But while they may provide the
everyday products that allow the military to function, make war, and
carry out foreign occupations, most such civilian firms no longer
dabble in actual arms manufacture.
Whirlpool: Then and Now
Take the Whirlpool Corporation, which bills itself as "the world's
leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances" and boasts
annual sales of more than $19 billion to consumers in more than 170
countries. Whirlpool was recently recognized as "one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute." The company also professes
a "strong" belief in "ethical values" that dates back almost 100 years
to founders who believed "there is no right way to do a wrong thing."
In the middle of the last century, however -- as Prokosch has documented -- Whirlpool was engaged in what many might deem a wrong thing. In 1957, Whirlpool took over work on flechettes
-- razor-sharp darts with fins at the blunt end -- for the U.S.
military. While International Harvester, the prior Pentagon contractor
producing them, had managed to pack only 6,265 of these deadly
darts into a 90mm canister round, Whirlpool set to work figuring out a
way to cram almost 10,000 flechettes into the same delivery vehicle.
Its goal: to "improve the lethality of the canisters." (In addition,
Whirlpool also reportedly worked on "Sting Ray" -- an Army project
involving a projectile filled with flechettes coated in a
still-undisclosed chemical agent.)
In 1967, an Associated Press report noted that U.S. troops were
using new flechette artillery rounds to "spray thousands of dart-shaped
steel shafts over broad areas of the jungle or open territory" in
Vietnam. "I've seen reports of enemy soldiers actually being nailed to
trees by these things," commented one Army officer.
On a recent trip to Vietnam, I spoke to a Vietnamese witness who had
seen such "pin bullets" employed by U.S. forces many times in those
years. In one case, Bui Van Bac recalled that a woman from his village,
spotted by U.S. aircraft while she was walking in a rice paddy, was
gravely wounded by them. Local guerillas came to the woman's aid and
brought her to a hospital where a surgeon found a number of extremely
sharp, three centimeter long "pins" inside her body. Medically, it was
all but hopeless and the woman died.
A top player in lethal technologies back then, Whirlpool is now
among the tiniest defense contractors. While, in recent years, the
company has ignored requests for information from TomDispatch.com on
their dealings with the Pentagon, records indicate that last year, for
example, it received just over $105,000 from the Department of Defense,
most of which apparently went towards the purchase of kitchen
appliances and household furnishings.
Similarly, Whirlpool's predecessor in the flechette game, International
Harvester, is now Navistar International Corporation. Navistar Defense,
a division of the company,
remains one of the Pentagon's stealth "billion dollar babies."
But while it did more than $1 billion in business with the DoD last
year, Navistar appears to have been building vehicles for the Pentagon,
not creating anti-personnel weaponry. There are, however, companies
that can't seem to say goodbye to lethal technologies.
National Presto Industries
National Presto Industries traces its history to the 1905 founding
of the Northwestern Iron and Steel Works in Eau Claire, Wisconsin,
according to the Business & Company Resource Center. By 1908, the
company was making industrial steam pressure cookers and, in 1915,
began making models for home use. On the eve of the U.S. entry into
World War II, the company entered the arms game when it scored a
multi-million dollar contract to produce artillery fuses. Even with
that deal in hand, it was reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy when
its new president, Lewis Phillips, landed a series of other lucrative
military contracts.
In the early years of the Cold War, about the time Whirlpool was
getting into the flechette business, National Presto Industries had
just introduced "a revolutionary new concept in electric cooking... a
complete line of fully immersible electric cooking appliances employing
a removable heat control" -- and was about to launch "the world's first
automatic, submersible stainless steel coffee maker." The company was
also still churning out war materiel.
In
1953, National Presto announced plans to build a multi-million dollar
plant to produce 105mm artillery shells. In 1955, it was awarded
millions to make howitzer shells for the Army, and the next year,
millions from the Air Force for fighter-bomber parts. By 1958, company
President Lewis Phillips would declare, "The future of this company in
Eau Claire and hence the security of our jobs here is now almost wholly
dependent upon defense contracts awarded by the U.S. Government." When
the Army cancelled its contracts with Presto in 1959, Phillips
lamented, "With little or no notice, this Government decision has
forced us completely out of the manufacturing business here in Eau
Claire."
The tough times didn't last. Soon enough, National Presto returned
to the fray, benefiting from the disastrous American war in Vietnam.
From 1966 to 1975, the company manufactured more than two million
eight-inch howitzer shells and more than 92 million 105mm artillery
shells. In Vietnam, 105mm shells would kill or maim untold numbers of civilians,
but it was a boom time for National Presto, which took in at least $163
million in Pentagon contracts in 1970-1971 alone for artillery shell
parts. Finally shuttered in 1980, the company defense plant was kept on
government "stand-by" into the 1990s, a sweetheart deal that earned
Presto $2.5 million annually for producing nothing at all.
As the Vietnam War wound down, National Presto turned back to the
civilian market with a series of new kitchen gadgets: in 1974, the
PrestoBurger, an electric, single-serving fast broiler for hamburgers;
in 1975, the Hot Dogger; and in 1976, the Fry Baby deep fat fryer. In
1988, the company introduced its wildly popular SaladShooter, followed
in 1991 by its Tater Twister potato peeler. When sales of its
SaladShooters, corn poppers, pressure cookers, deep fryers, and
griddles became sluggish, however, weaponry again proved a savior.
In 2001, National Presto decided to get back into the arms game. Months
before 9/11, the company's chairman Melvin Cohen expressed fears that a
future war might mean ruin for the company's kitchen appliance
business. As a result, Presto purchased munitions manufacturer Amtec.
In the years since, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Presto has also "made other complementary acquisitions in the defense industry." These have included Amron, a manufacturer of medium caliber ammunition (20-40mm) cartridge cases and Spectra Technologies,
which is "engaged in the manufacture, distribution, and delivery of
munitions and ordnance-related products for the DOD and DOD prime
contractors." Such types of ammunition are extremely versatile and are
fired from ground vehicles, naval ships, and various types of aircraft
-- both helicopters and fixed-wing models.
Additionally, in the months after 9/11, National Presto entered the
diapers trade, setting up that business in its old munitions plant. In
2004, with Melvin Cohen's daughter MaryJo now at the helm, the company
further expanded into the business of adult-incontinence products. "I
spent a couple of days wearing them," the younger Cohen told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the time. "They're very comfortable."
In 2005, Presto's Amtec was awarded a five-year deal by the Pentagon for its 40mm family
of ammunition rounds. By the end of last year, it had already received
$454 million and was expecting the sum to top out, at contract's end,
above $550 million.
Just as 105mm shells of the sort produced by Presto were a nightmare
for the people of Vietnam, so too has 40mm ammunition spelled doom for
civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier this year, the BBC reported
on a typical joint U.S./U.K. attack on a home in Iraq in which
insurgents had taken shelter. After exchanging ground fire, coalition
forces called in an airstrike. According to the BBC,
"The aircraft fired 40mm cannon rounds at the two houses, finally
dropping a bomb on one of them. It collapsed. The other house was set
on fire. The two insurgents in the house were buried but so were a
number of women and children." Similarly, in August, news reports tell
us, U.S. troops called in an airstrike by an AC-130 -- which packs 40mm
cannons -- that helped kill approximately 90 civilians in the village
of Azizabad in Afghanistan, according to investigations by the Afghan government and the United Nations.
As in the past, war time has been a boom-time for Presto. In 2000,
before the start of the Global War on Terror, National Presto's annual
sales clocked in at $116.6 million. In 2007, they totaled $420.7
million, with more than 50% of that coming from arms manufacturing.
Earlier this year, Presto nabbed another 40mm ammunition contract
(a $97.5 million supplemental award) set to be delivered in 2009 and
2010. According to official DoD figures, from 2001 through 2008
National Presto received more than $531 million, while Amtec has taken
home another $171 million-plus. Their combined grand total, while
hardly putting Presto in the top tier of Pentagon weapons contractors,
is still a relatively staggering $702.8 million -- not bad for a
company known for slicing and dicing vegetables.
Death is Our Business and Business is Good
These days, most civilian defense contractors aren't like Presto. General Tire and Rubber Company,
for example, once lorded it over a business empire that produced not
only car tires, but antipersonnel mines and deadly cluster bombs.
Today, the company seems to have left its days of supplying the U.S.
military with lethal technologies behind.
Dow Chemical classically drew ire from protestors during the Vietnam
War for making the incendiary agent napalm that clung to and burned off
the flesh of Vietnamese
victims. Dow got out of the napalm business long before the war ended, but, due to widespread protests at the time, the company is still living down the legacy today.
At a 2006 Ethics and Compliance Conference, Dow's President, CEO,
and Chairman Andrew Liveris recalled, "Believe me, we have had our
share of ethical challenges, most of them very public... starting with
the manufacture of Napalm during the Vietnam War... when suddenly we went
from being a company that made Saran Wrap to keep food fresh to a kind
of war machine... at least, according the characterizations of the time."
While Dow is still a defense contractor, its DoD contracts appear not
to include the manufacture of weapons of any type. Instead, such
companies have largely ceded the field to dedicated "merchants of
death" -- weapons-industry giants like Alliant Techsystems (ATK), Lockheed Martin, and Boeing.
Right now, National Presto Industries may look like a throw-back to an
earlier era when companies regularly made both innocuous household
items and heavy weapons. In a new hard-times economy, however, in which
taxpayer dollars are likely to continue to pour into the Pentagon,
could it instead be a harbinger of the future? Having proved that
outfitting real shooters is even more lucrative than making
SaladShooters, Presto has gotten rich in the Bush war years. It has, in
fact, greatly outperformed the big guns of the weapons business. While
the stocks of top defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and
Northrop Grumman have all lost significant value in the last year --
down 29.3%, 55.3%, and 50.1%, respectively -- National Presto's stock
price was up 28.1% as of mid-December.
It isn't hard to imagine more civilian firms, especially ones which are
already Pentagon contractors, getting into (or back into) the weapons
game. After all, when the Big Three Detroit automakers were scrounging
around for a bailout just a few weeks ago, they used America's
persistent involvement in armed conflict as one argument in their
favor. For example, Robert Nardelli, Chrysler's chief executive, told the Senate
that the failure of the auto industry "would undermine our nation's
ability to respond to military challenges and would threaten our
national security." While that argument was roundly dismissed by
retired Army Lt. Gen. John Caldwell, chairman of the National Defense
Industrial Association's combat vehicles division, it probably wouldn't
have been if the automakers made more weapons systems.
Will Presto be the back-to-the-future model for Pentagon contractors in
the lean times ahead? Only time will tell. At the very least, it seems
that, as long as Americans allow the country to wage wars abroad,
require their salads to be shot, and have bladder issues, National
Presto Industries has a future.
Is it possible that one of the Pentagon's contractors has a tripartite
business model for our tough economic times: one division that
specializes in crock-pots, another in adult diapers, and a third in
medium caliber tactical ammunition? Can the maker of the SaladShooter,
a hand-held electric shredder/dicer that hacks up and fires out sliced
veggies, really be a tops arms manufacturer? Could a company that
produces the Pizzazz Pizza Oven also be a merchant of death? And could
this company be a model for success in an economy heading for the
bottom?
Once upon a time, the military-industrial complex was loaded with household-name companies like General Motors,
Ford, and Dow Chemical, that produced weapons systems and what arms
expert Eric Prokosch has called, "the technology of killing." Over the
years, for economic as well as public relations reasons, many of these
firms got out of the business of creating lethal technologies, even
while remaining Department of Defense (DoD) contractors.
The military-corporate complex of today is still filled with familiar names from our consumer culture, including defense contractors
like iPod-maker Apple, cocoa giant Nestle, ketchup producer Heinz, and
chocolate bar maker Hershey, not to speak of Tyson Foods, Procter &
Gamble, and the Walt Disney Company. But while they may provide the
everyday products that allow the military to function, make war, and
carry out foreign occupations, most such civilian firms no longer
dabble in actual arms manufacture.
Whirlpool: Then and Now
Take the Whirlpool Corporation, which bills itself as "the world's
leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances" and boasts
annual sales of more than $19 billion to consumers in more than 170
countries. Whirlpool was recently recognized as "one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute." The company also professes
a "strong" belief in "ethical values" that dates back almost 100 years
to founders who believed "there is no right way to do a wrong thing."
In the middle of the last century, however -- as Prokosch has documented -- Whirlpool was engaged in what many might deem a wrong thing. In 1957, Whirlpool took over work on flechettes
-- razor-sharp darts with fins at the blunt end -- for the U.S.
military. While International Harvester, the prior Pentagon contractor
producing them, had managed to pack only 6,265 of these deadly
darts into a 90mm canister round, Whirlpool set to work figuring out a
way to cram almost 10,000 flechettes into the same delivery vehicle.
Its goal: to "improve the lethality of the canisters." (In addition,
Whirlpool also reportedly worked on "Sting Ray" -- an Army project
involving a projectile filled with flechettes coated in a
still-undisclosed chemical agent.)
In 1967, an Associated Press report noted that U.S. troops were
using new flechette artillery rounds to "spray thousands of dart-shaped
steel shafts over broad areas of the jungle or open territory" in
Vietnam. "I've seen reports of enemy soldiers actually being nailed to
trees by these things," commented one Army officer.
On a recent trip to Vietnam, I spoke to a Vietnamese witness who had
seen such "pin bullets" employed by U.S. forces many times in those
years. In one case, Bui Van Bac recalled that a woman from his village,
spotted by U.S. aircraft while she was walking in a rice paddy, was
gravely wounded by them. Local guerillas came to the woman's aid and
brought her to a hospital where a surgeon found a number of extremely
sharp, three centimeter long "pins" inside her body. Medically, it was
all but hopeless and the woman died.
A top player in lethal technologies back then, Whirlpool is now
among the tiniest defense contractors. While, in recent years, the
company has ignored requests for information from TomDispatch.com on
their dealings with the Pentagon, records indicate that last year, for
example, it received just over $105,000 from the Department of Defense,
most of which apparently went towards the purchase of kitchen
appliances and household furnishings.
Similarly, Whirlpool's predecessor in the flechette game, International
Harvester, is now Navistar International Corporation. Navistar Defense,
a division of the company,
remains one of the Pentagon's stealth "billion dollar babies."
But while it did more than $1 billion in business with the DoD last
year, Navistar appears to have been building vehicles for the Pentagon,
not creating anti-personnel weaponry. There are, however, companies
that can't seem to say goodbye to lethal technologies.
National Presto Industries
National Presto Industries traces its history to the 1905 founding
of the Northwestern Iron and Steel Works in Eau Claire, Wisconsin,
according to the Business & Company Resource Center. By 1908, the
company was making industrial steam pressure cookers and, in 1915,
began making models for home use. On the eve of the U.S. entry into
World War II, the company entered the arms game when it scored a
multi-million dollar contract to produce artillery fuses. Even with
that deal in hand, it was reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy when
its new president, Lewis Phillips, landed a series of other lucrative
military contracts.
In the early years of the Cold War, about the time Whirlpool was
getting into the flechette business, National Presto Industries had
just introduced "a revolutionary new concept in electric cooking... a
complete line of fully immersible electric cooking appliances employing
a removable heat control" -- and was about to launch "the world's first
automatic, submersible stainless steel coffee maker." The company was
also still churning out war materiel.
In
1953, National Presto announced plans to build a multi-million dollar
plant to produce 105mm artillery shells. In 1955, it was awarded
millions to make howitzer shells for the Army, and the next year,
millions from the Air Force for fighter-bomber parts. By 1958, company
President Lewis Phillips would declare, "The future of this company in
Eau Claire and hence the security of our jobs here is now almost wholly
dependent upon defense contracts awarded by the U.S. Government." When
the Army cancelled its contracts with Presto in 1959, Phillips
lamented, "With little or no notice, this Government decision has
forced us completely out of the manufacturing business here in Eau
Claire."
The tough times didn't last. Soon enough, National Presto returned
to the fray, benefiting from the disastrous American war in Vietnam.
From 1966 to 1975, the company manufactured more than two million
eight-inch howitzer shells and more than 92 million 105mm artillery
shells. In Vietnam, 105mm shells would kill or maim untold numbers of civilians,
but it was a boom time for National Presto, which took in at least $163
million in Pentagon contracts in 1970-1971 alone for artillery shell
parts. Finally shuttered in 1980, the company defense plant was kept on
government "stand-by" into the 1990s, a sweetheart deal that earned
Presto $2.5 million annually for producing nothing at all.
As the Vietnam War wound down, National Presto turned back to the
civilian market with a series of new kitchen gadgets: in 1974, the
PrestoBurger, an electric, single-serving fast broiler for hamburgers;
in 1975, the Hot Dogger; and in 1976, the Fry Baby deep fat fryer. In
1988, the company introduced its wildly popular SaladShooter, followed
in 1991 by its Tater Twister potato peeler. When sales of its
SaladShooters, corn poppers, pressure cookers, deep fryers, and
griddles became sluggish, however, weaponry again proved a savior.
In 2001, National Presto decided to get back into the arms game. Months
before 9/11, the company's chairman Melvin Cohen expressed fears that a
future war might mean ruin for the company's kitchen appliance
business. As a result, Presto purchased munitions manufacturer Amtec.
In the years since, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Presto has also "made other complementary acquisitions in the defense industry." These have included Amron, a manufacturer of medium caliber ammunition (20-40mm) cartridge cases and Spectra Technologies,
which is "engaged in the manufacture, distribution, and delivery of
munitions and ordnance-related products for the DOD and DOD prime
contractors." Such types of ammunition are extremely versatile and are
fired from ground vehicles, naval ships, and various types of aircraft
-- both helicopters and fixed-wing models.
Additionally, in the months after 9/11, National Presto entered the
diapers trade, setting up that business in its old munitions plant. In
2004, with Melvin Cohen's daughter MaryJo now at the helm, the company
further expanded into the business of adult-incontinence products. "I
spent a couple of days wearing them," the younger Cohen told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the time. "They're very comfortable."
In 2005, Presto's Amtec was awarded a five-year deal by the Pentagon for its 40mm family
of ammunition rounds. By the end of last year, it had already received
$454 million and was expecting the sum to top out, at contract's end,
above $550 million.
Just as 105mm shells of the sort produced by Presto were a nightmare
for the people of Vietnam, so too has 40mm ammunition spelled doom for
civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Earlier this year, the BBC reported
on a typical joint U.S./U.K. attack on a home in Iraq in which
insurgents had taken shelter. After exchanging ground fire, coalition
forces called in an airstrike. According to the BBC,
"The aircraft fired 40mm cannon rounds at the two houses, finally
dropping a bomb on one of them. It collapsed. The other house was set
on fire. The two insurgents in the house were buried but so were a
number of women and children." Similarly, in August, news reports tell
us, U.S. troops called in an airstrike by an AC-130 -- which packs 40mm
cannons -- that helped kill approximately 90 civilians in the village
of Azizabad in Afghanistan, according to investigations by the Afghan government and the United Nations.
As in the past, war time has been a boom-time for Presto. In 2000,
before the start of the Global War on Terror, National Presto's annual
sales clocked in at $116.6 million. In 2007, they totaled $420.7
million, with more than 50% of that coming from arms manufacturing.
Earlier this year, Presto nabbed another 40mm ammunition contract
(a $97.5 million supplemental award) set to be delivered in 2009 and
2010. According to official DoD figures, from 2001 through 2008
National Presto received more than $531 million, while Amtec has taken
home another $171 million-plus. Their combined grand total, while
hardly putting Presto in the top tier of Pentagon weapons contractors,
is still a relatively staggering $702.8 million -- not bad for a
company known for slicing and dicing vegetables.
Death is Our Business and Business is Good
These days, most civilian defense contractors aren't like Presto. General Tire and Rubber Company,
for example, once lorded it over a business empire that produced not
only car tires, but antipersonnel mines and deadly cluster bombs.
Today, the company seems to have left its days of supplying the U.S.
military with lethal technologies behind.
Dow Chemical classically drew ire from protestors during the Vietnam
War for making the incendiary agent napalm that clung to and burned off
the flesh of Vietnamese
victims. Dow got out of the napalm business long before the war ended, but, due to widespread protests at the time, the company is still living down the legacy today.
At a 2006 Ethics and Compliance Conference, Dow's President, CEO,
and Chairman Andrew Liveris recalled, "Believe me, we have had our
share of ethical challenges, most of them very public... starting with
the manufacture of Napalm during the Vietnam War... when suddenly we went
from being a company that made Saran Wrap to keep food fresh to a kind
of war machine... at least, according the characterizations of the time."
While Dow is still a defense contractor, its DoD contracts appear not
to include the manufacture of weapons of any type. Instead, such
companies have largely ceded the field to dedicated "merchants of
death" -- weapons-industry giants like Alliant Techsystems (ATK), Lockheed Martin, and Boeing.
Right now, National Presto Industries may look like a throw-back to an
earlier era when companies regularly made both innocuous household
items and heavy weapons. In a new hard-times economy, however, in which
taxpayer dollars are likely to continue to pour into the Pentagon,
could it instead be a harbinger of the future? Having proved that
outfitting real shooters is even more lucrative than making
SaladShooters, Presto has gotten rich in the Bush war years. It has, in
fact, greatly outperformed the big guns of the weapons business. While
the stocks of top defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and
Northrop Grumman have all lost significant value in the last year --
down 29.3%, 55.3%, and 50.1%, respectively -- National Presto's stock
price was up 28.1% as of mid-December.
It isn't hard to imagine more civilian firms, especially ones which are
already Pentagon contractors, getting into (or back into) the weapons
game. After all, when the Big Three Detroit automakers were scrounging
around for a bailout just a few weeks ago, they used America's
persistent involvement in armed conflict as one argument in their
favor. For example, Robert Nardelli, Chrysler's chief executive, told the Senate
that the failure of the auto industry "would undermine our nation's
ability to respond to military challenges and would threaten our
national security." While that argument was roundly dismissed by
retired Army Lt. Gen. John Caldwell, chairman of the National Defense
Industrial Association's combat vehicles division, it probably wouldn't
have been if the automakers made more weapons systems.
Will Presto be the back-to-the-future model for Pentagon contractors in
the lean times ahead? Only time will tell. At the very least, it seems
that, as long as Americans allow the country to wage wars abroad,
require their salads to be shot, and have bladder issues, National
Presto Industries has a future.
"Thank you to the hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country who are standing up and speaking out for our voting rights, fundamental freedoms, and essential services like Social Security and Medicare."
In communities large and small across the United States on Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people collectively took to the streets to make their opposition to President Donald Trump heard.
The people who took part in the organized protests ranged from very young children to the elderly and their message was scrawled on signs of all sizes and colors—many of them angry, some of them funny, but all in line with the "Hands Off" message that brought them together.
"Thank you to the hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country who are standing up and speaking out for our voting rights, fundamental freedoms, and essential services like Social Security and Medicare," said the group Stand Up America as word of the turnout poured in from across the country.
A relatively small, but representative sample of photographs from various demonstrations that took place follows.
Demonstrators gather on Boston Common, cheering and chanting slogans, during the nationwide "Hands Off!" protest against US President Donald Trump and his advisor, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in Boston, Massachusetts on April 5, 2025. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP)
"Everyone involved in this crime against humanity, and everyone who covered it up, would face prosecution in a world that had any shred of dignity left."
A video presented to officials at the United Nations on Friday and first made public Saturday by the New York Times provides more evidence that the recent massacre of Palestinian medics in Gaza did not happen the way Israeli government claimed—the latest in a long line of deception when it comes to violence against civilians that have led to repeated accusations of war crimes.
The video, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), was found on the phone of a paramedic found in a mass grave with a bullet in his head after being killed, along with seven other medics, by Israeli forces on March 23. The eight medics, buried in the shallow grave with the bodies riddled with bullets, were: Mustafa Khafaja, Ezz El-Din Shaat, Saleh Muammar, Refaat Radwan, Muhammad Bahloul, Ashraf Abu Libda, Muhammad Al-Hila, and Raed Al-Sharif. The video reportedly belonged to Radwan. A ninth medic, identified as Asaad Al-Nasasra, who was at the scene of the massacre, which took place near the southern city of Rafah, is still missing.
The PRCS said it presented the video—which refutes the explanation of the killings offered by Israeli officials—to members of the UN Security Council on Friday.
"They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives," Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN's humanitarian affairs office in Palestine, said last week after the bodies were discovered. Some of the victims, according to Gaza officials, were found with handcuffs still on them and appeared to have been shot in the head, execution-style.
The Israeli military initially said its soldiers "did not randomly attack" any ambulances, but rather claimed they fired on "terrorists" who approached them in "suspicious vehicles." Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an IDF spokesperson, said the vehicles that the soldiers opened fire on were driving with their lights off and did not have clearance to be in the area. The video evidence directly contradicts the IDF's version of events.
As the Times reports:
The Times obtained the video from a senior diplomat at the United Nations who asked not to be identified to be able to share sensitive information.
The Times verified the location and timing of the video, which was taken in the southern city of Rafah early on March 23. Filmed from what appears to be the front interior of a moving vehicle, it shows a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck, clearly marked, with headlights and flashing lights turned on, driving south on a road to the north of Rafah in the early morning. The first rays of sun can be seen, and birds are chirping.
In an interview with Drop Site News published Friday, the only known paramedic to survive the attack, Munther Abed, explained that he and his colleagues "were directly and deliberately shot at" by the IDF. "The car is clearly marked with 'Palestinian Red Crescent Society 101.' The car's number was clear and the crews' uniform was clear, so why were we directly shot at? That is the question."
The video's release sparked fresh outrage and demands for accountability on Saturday.
"The IDF denied access to the site for days; they sent in diggers to cover up the massacre and intentionally lied about it," said podcast producer Hamza M. Syed in reaction to the new revelations. "The entire leadership of the Israeli army is implicated in this unconscionable war crime. And they must be prosecuted."
"Everyone involved in this crime against humanity, and everyone who covered it up, would face prosecution in a world that had any shred of dignity left," said journalist Ryan Grim of DropSite News.
"They're dismantling our country. They're looting our government. And they think we'll just watch."
In communities across the United States and also overseas, coordinated "Hands Off" protests are taking place far and wide Saturday in the largest public rebuke yet to President Donald Trump and top henchman Elon Musk's assault on the workings of the federal government and their program of economic sabotage that is sacrificing the needs of working families to authoritarianism and the greed of right-wing oligarchs.
Indivisible, one of the key organizing groups behind the day's protests, said millions participated in more than 1,300 individual rallies as they demanded "an end to Trump's authoritarian power grab" and condemning all those aiding and abetting it.
"We expected hundreds of thousands. But at virtually every single event, the crowds eclipsed our estimates," the group said in a statement Saturday evening.
"Hands off our healthcare, hands off our civil rights, hands off our schools, our freedoms, and our democracy."
"This is the largest day of protest since Trump retook office," the group added. "And in many small towns and cities, activists are reporting the biggest protests their communities have ever seen as everyday people send a clear, unmistakable message to Trump and Musk: Hands off our healthcare, hands off our civil rights, hands off our schools, our freedoms, and our democracy."
According to the organizers' call to action:
They're dismantling our country. They’re looting our government. And they think we'll just watch.
On Saturday, April 5th, we rise up with one demand: Hands Off!
This is a nationwide mobilization to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history. Trump, Musk, and their billionaire cronies are orchestrating an all-out assault on our government, our economy, and our basic rights—enabled by Congress every step of the way. They want to strip America for parts—shuttering Social Security offices, firing essential workers, eliminating consumer protections, and gutting Medicaid—all to bankroll their billionaire tax scam.
They're handing over our tax dollars, our public services, and our democracy to the ultra-rich. If we don't fight now, there won’t be anything left to save.
The more than 1,300 "Hands Off!" demonstrations—organized by a large coalition of unions, progressive advocacy groups, and pro-democracy watchdogs—first kicked off Saturday in Europe, followed by East Coast communities in the U.S., and continued throughout the day at various times, depending on location. See here for a list of scheduled "Hands Off" events.
"The United States has a president, not a king," said the progressive advocacy group People's Action, one of the group's involved in the actions, in an email to supporters Saturday morning just as protest events kicked off in hundreds of cities and communities. "Donald Trump has, by every measure, been working to make himself a king. He has become unanswerable to the courts, Congress, and the American people."
In its Saturday evening statement, Indivisible said the actions far exceeded their expectations and should be seen as a turning point in the battle to stop Trump and his minions:
The Trump administration has spent its first 75 days in office trying to overwhelm us, to make us feel powerless, so that we will fall in line, accept the ransacking of our government, the raiding of our social safety net, and the dismantling of our democracy.
And too often, the response from our leaders and those in positions to resist has been abject cowardice. Compliance. Obeying in advance.
But not today. Today we've demonstrated a different path forward. We've modeled the courage and action that we want to see from our leaders, and showed all those who've been standing on the sidelines who share our values that they are not alone.
Citing the Republican president's thirst for "power and greed," People's Action earlier explained why organized pressure must be built and sustained against the administration, especially at the conclusion of a week in which the global economy was spun into disarray by Trump's tariff announcement, his attack on the rule of law continued, and the twice-elected president admitted he was "not joking" about the possibility of seeking a third term, which is barred by the constitution.
"He is destroying the economy with tariffs in order to pay for the tax cuts he wants to push through to enrich himself and his billionaire buddies," warned People's Action. "He has ordered the government to round up innocent people off of the streets and put them in detention centers without due process because they dared to speak out using their First Amendment rights. And he is not close to being done—by his own admission, he is planning to run for a third term, which the Constitution does not allow."
Live stream of Hands Off rally in Washington, D.C.:
Below are photo or video dispatches from demonstrations around the world on Saturday. Check back for updates...
United Kingdom
France
Germany
Belgium:
Massachusetts:
Maine:
Washington, D.C.:
New York:
Minnesota:
Michigan:
Ohio:
Colorado:
Pennsylvania:
North Carolina:
The protest organizers warn that what Trump and Musk are up to "is not just corruption" and "not just mismanagement," but something far more sinister.
"This is a hostile takeover," they said, but vowed to fight back. "This is the moment where we say NO. No more looting, no more stealing, no more billionaires raiding our government while working people struggle to survive."