War is STILL a Racket

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War is STILL a Racket

Postby StarmanSkye » Wed Jun 28, 2006 6:19 pm

True American Hero (re: old school World Citizen) Smedly Butler's inspiring original, complete 5-part thesis 'War is a Racket' included as 2nd post, in which after he denounces the corrupt fatcat plutocrats and war-profiteers who are ALWAYS the ones to instigate wars from their high offices or quietly provoking them behind the scenes, using the press as their mouthpieces and framing their justification in terms of 'duty' and justice and honor and freedom, identifies the driving force behind modern wars, and then provides a foolproof prescription to make wars obsolete -- Brilliant, courageous thinking that is as relevant and fresh today as it was 90 years ago; Should be required reading in every grade school, high school, college and military institution.<br><br>Damn, but WHERE are the leaders today who reflect the strength of character, integrity, honor, compassion, citizenship and loyalty to this nation's ideals that shone in Butler when he saw thru the travesty of war and took a stand for truth, peace and justice? Too many American's have acquiesced to corrupt interests and squandered the great promise that America could have realized -- they've betrayed America and themselves by selling-out to frauds and criminals. As a result, America today is one of the world's most dangerous, rogue regimes threatening world peace and the well-being of people around the planet.<br><br>The prescription is simple, really (but may be one of the hardest jobs ever) -- Take the profit out of war. Make the PTB ruiling-class elite and plutocrats, bankers and execs and generals and industrialists and financiers pay the same sacrifice, work for the same wages as the soldiers on the battlefields of the wars they conspire to create.<br><br>Starman<br>******<br><br>1) "War is Still a Racket" - by Charles Sullivan <br>2) "War Is A Racket" - the original, by Smedley Butler <br><br><br>Information Clearing House 06/26/06 <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13762.htm">www.informationclearingho...e13762.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <br><br><br>War Is Still a Racket <br>By Charles Sullivan <br><br>"Our whole history shows we have never fought a defensive war." -USMC General Smedley Butler, 1933 <br><br><br>It is well documented that all governments lie. It is also well known that they lie more when it comes to war. A government that proposes to carry out war that will not end in our lifetimes lies incessantly and we must stop giving it our allegiance. We must refuse to give it our children. Let us <br>evict the military recruiters from our schools and the nation's shopping malls. Without fodder the cannons of militarism and empire cannot function. <br><br>Our soldiers have nothing to gain by going to war and everything to lose. War is a rich man's device that, if the truth were known, ignores the will of the people who have no say in it. Modern wars have no heroes but they inevitably produce atrocities and countless innocent victims. There can be no moral justification for civilized people of any nationality taking up arms against one another, unless one nation is directly assaulted by another. War is the tool of barbarians and tyrants and they are provoked by cowards hiding in safe places. <br><br>The underlying reasons for war are always cloaked in darkness and secrecy; otherwise, no sane person would fight them and we would be forced to live in relative accord. Our Plutocratic rulers, however, believe that war is more profitable than peace. Defense contractors cannot make billions by waging peace. Besides, what U.S. president would boast of being the "peace time" president? There is no bravado in peace. Armed to the teeth, the American hero, as exemplified by and glorified in Hollywood, are invariably men of extreme violence. <br><br>While those who initiate war invariably cloak their intentions in the language of patriotism, wars always have economic and ideological causes. In America the causes of war have their origins in corporate Plutocracy. Here, war is initiated at the behest of a corporation or a group of corporations doing business in a foreign country. The usual cause is that a foreign government has imposed some kind of restriction upon one these corporations. In the most virulent cases these countries will not allow their natural capital to be plundered by corporate marauders or privatized and exported. Some countries even insist upon public ownership of their raw materials which makes them the greatest menace to peace. <br><br>Nations that have not adopted capitalism as their religion traditionally refuse to allow their resources or their people to be exploited for profit. These nations nationalize their assets and rather than invading and occupying other nations, they provide free health care, unlimited education and other programs of social and spiritual uplift to their citizens. These are the dangers of socialism and communism that we were indoctrinated against since birth; the greatest scourge of evil the world has ever known. This is what they teach us in school and it is ingrained in our psyche to the grave. <br><br>Using the tax base for the public good, to create a prosperous peace time economy for all, of course, is positively un-American and anti-capitalist. It is a dangerous ideology that must not be allowed to spread, lest it result in eruptions of democracy, prolonged outbursts of peace and the equitable distribution of goods and wealth. If allowed to flourish, socialism would mean the abolition of Plutocracy and the end of socioeconomic class divisions. It would mean the emancipation of the working class from their Plutocratic rulers. <br><br>The Plutocrats know in their hearts of stone that the people lack the intelligence and wisdom to self govern. They know that we require leaders who are our moral and intellectual superiors who can teach us the value of free markets, fair trade, conquest, private ownership and insatiable greed. Thank God, we have them to look after us and to grind us into hamburger for consumption by the global elite. <br><br>In a nutshell, that is what war is about as it pertains to the American experiment. There are no noble causes to fight and die for. War is about private ownership of everything and everyone; the commodification of nature and people, subjugated to rule by a corrupt global economic elite. War is <br>the result of humankind's oldest and worst nemesis -greed and lust for power over the lives of others. <br><br>War is comprised of roughly equal parts racism, fervent nationalism, propaganda and lies, herd mentality, religion, and the private ownership of materials and labor. War is the sum of humankind's worst attributes, bought and paid for in blood. <br><br>As terrible as war is, perhaps it exacts its greatest toll on the combatants themselves-the soldiers. Acting in the belief that they are spreading light into the darkness of the world they are, in fact, doing exactly the opposite. They are stamping out the light of understanding, rationality, and hope. The soldier thus becomes the horrible thing they are vainly trying to destroy. All of this is possible because they have blindly followed men without hearts and conscience, men devoid of souls, who have misled them into the burning depths of hell from which there is no way out. <br><br>This is the sad reality we are witnessing in Iraq and the 135 nations where our armed forces are stationed, carrying out the sociopathic agenda of global domination and empire. Those whose minds are not truly their own are susceptible to control by the psychopaths who would use them for evil, just <br>as soldiers have traditionally been the pawns of kings and emperors through the ages. <br><br>The lies espoused by our so called leaders do not matter on the battlefield. They do not matter when the bodies come home in oversized cardboard boxes, hauled by fork lifts to airport curbs and deposited at the feet of grief-stricken families like a commodity. In a sense, that is what they are. This is war's assembly line, where the bodies are packaged and sent home like a parcel, with the flag as a corporate logo printed on a box with the stamp "Made in America"; where lives are converted into cash for the global elite, a gift from the Plutocracy. <br><br>General Smedley Butler was right when he said in 1933 that war is a racket. It still is and always will be. War is the ultimate contempt for life; the ultimate betrayal of human potential. <br><br>[Charles Sullivan is a photographer, free lance writer and social activist residing somewhere in the hinterland of West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at earthdog@ highstream.net ] <br><br> *** <br><br>Information Clearing House <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4377.htm">www.informationclearingho...le4377.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <br><br>A Real American Hero - Major General Smedley Butler, USMC <br><br>War Is a Racket <br>Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by <br>Major General Smedley Butler, USMC. <br><br>WAR is a racket. It always has been. <br><br>It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. <br><br>A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. <br><br>In the World War <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em> a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. <br><br>How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? <br><br>Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. <br><br>And what is this bill? <br><br>This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations. <br><br>For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out. <br><br>Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor. <br><br>The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people - not those who fight and pay and die - only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit. <br><br>There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making. <br><br>Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers? <br><br>Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: <br><br>"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace... War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it." <br><br>Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war - anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later. <br><br>Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months. <br><br>Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing <br>Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000. <br><br>Then, to save that China trade of about 90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than 200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war- a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men. <br><br>Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit - fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well. <br><br>Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends. <br><br>But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children? <br><br>What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits? <br><br>Yes, and what does it profit the nation? <br><br>Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George <br>Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the <br>twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars. <br><br>It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people - who do not profit. <br><br>CHAPTER TWO <br><br>WHO MAKES THE PROFITS? <br><br>The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war. <br><br>The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits - ah! that is another matter - twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent - the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it. <br><br>Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket - and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples: <br><br>Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people- didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent. <br><br>Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump- or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year! <br><br>Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad. <br><br>There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let's look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times. <br><br>Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year. <br><br>Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period. <br><br>Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000. <br><br>A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent. <br><br>Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather. <br><br>For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company <br>averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per cent. <br><br>International Nickel Company - and you can't have a war without nickel - showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent. <br><br>American Sugar Refining Company averaged 2,000,000 a year for the three $years before the war. In 1916 a profit of 6,000,000 was recorded. <br><br>Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings. <br><br>And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public - even before a Senate investigatory body. <br><br>But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits. <br><br>Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle <br>Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a <br>matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought - and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed. <br><br>There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it - so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet. <br><br>Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches - one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France! <br><br>Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam. <br><br>There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order. <br><br>Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 - count them if you live long enough - was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or <br>motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent. <br><br>Undershirts for soldiers cost 14" [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30" to 40" each for them - a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers - all got theirs. <br><br>Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment - knapsacks and the things that go to fill them - crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them - and they will do it all over again the next time. <br><br>There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war. <br><br>One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the <br>wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam. <br><br>Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn't ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war profit. <br><br>The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams opened up - and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits. <br><br>It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded <br>$16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few. <br><br>The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface. <br><br>Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying "for some time" methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee - with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator - to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure. <br><br>Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses - that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life. <br><br>There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed. <br><br>Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters. <br><br>CHAPTER THREE <br><br>WHO PAYS THE BILLS? <br><br>Who provides the profits - these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them - in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple <br>manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us - the people - got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par - and above. Then the bankers collected their profits. <br><br>But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill. <br><br>If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men - men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home. <br><br>Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed. <br><br>Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone. <br><br>In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone. <br><br>There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement - the young boys couldn't stand it. <br><br>That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead- they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded- they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too - they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam - on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain - with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby. <br><br>But don't forget - the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too. <br><br>U to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share - at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting <br>[drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't. <br><br>Napoleon once said, <br>"All men are enamored of decorations...they positively hunger for them." <br><br>So by developing the Napoleonic system - the medal business - the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War. <br><br>In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army. <br><br>So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His will that the Germans be killed. <br><br>And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies...to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious. <br><br>Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure." <br><br>Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month. <br><br>All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill...and be killed. <br><br>But wait! <br><br>Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance - something the employer pays for in an enlightened state - and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left. <br><br>Then, the most crowning insolence of all - he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days. <br><br>We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back - when they came back from the war and couldn't find work - at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about 2,000,000,000 worth of these $bonds! <br><br>Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly - his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his <br>daughters. <br><br>When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too- as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices. <br><br>And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying. <br><br>CHAPTER FOUR <br><br>HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET! <br><br>WELL, it's a racket, all right. <br><br>A few profit - and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war. <br><br>The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation - it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted - to get $30 a month, the same wage as the <br>lads in the trenches get. <br><br>Let the workers in these plants get the same wages - all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers - <br><br>yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders - everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches! <br><br>Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds. <br><br>Why shouldn't they? <br><br>They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are! <br><br>Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket - that and nothing else. <br><br>Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people- those who do the suffering and still pay the price - make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers. <br><br>Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an <br>international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant - all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war- voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms - to sleep in a trench and to be <br>shot Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war. <br><br>There is ample precedent for restricting the voting to those affected. Many of our states have restrictions on those permitted to vote. In most, it is necessary to be able to read and write before you may vote. In some, you must own property. It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide - and not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote. <br><br>A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only. <br><br>At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only. <br><br>Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh. <br><br>The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast. <br><br>The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles. <br><br>The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation. <br><br>To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket. <br><br>We must take the profit out of war. <br><br>We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war. <br><br>We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes. <br><br>CHAPTER FIVE <br><br>TO HELL WITH WAR! <br><br>I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war. <br><br>Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war" and on the implied promise that he would "keep us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany. <br><br>In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die. <br><br>Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly? <br><br>Money. <br><br>An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group: <br><br>"There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars. <br><br>If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money...and Germany won't. <br><br>So..." <br><br>Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars." <br><br>Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy. <br><br>And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars. <br><br>Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens? <br><br>The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments. <br><br>The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe. <br><br>There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane. Even this, if it were possible, would not be enough. <br><br>The next war, according to experts, will be fought not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases. <br><br>Secretly each nation is studying and perfecting newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale. Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders must make their profits. And guns still will be manufactured and powder and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course, must wear uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war profits too. <br><br>But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists. <br><br>If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war - even the munitions makers. <br><br>So...I say, TO HELL WITH WAR. <br><br> *** <br>Smedley Darlington Butler <br>Major General - United States Marine Corps [Retired] <br><br>Born West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881 <br>Educated Haverford School <br>Married Ethel C. Peters, of Philadelphia, June 30, 1905 <br>Awarded two congressional medals of honor, for <br> capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914, <br> and for capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917 <br><br>Distinguished service medal, 1919 <br>Retired Oct. 1, 1931 <br><br>On leave of absence to act as director of Department <br>of Safety, Philadelphia, 1932 <br><br>Lecturer - 1930's <br>Republican Candidate for Senate, 1932 <br>Died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940 <br><br>For more information about Major General Smedley Butler, contact the United States Marine Corps. <br>(HeH!!!)</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: War is STILL a Racket

Postby dugoboy » Wed Jun 28, 2006 6:53 pm

war was always about exploitation. <p>___________________________________________<br>"BUSHCO aren't incompetent...they are COMPLICIT." -Me<br><br>"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act" -George Orwell</p><i></i>
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Re: Us and them .......

Postby slimmouse » Wed Jun 28, 2006 8:10 pm

<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Us and Them<br>And after all we're only ordinary men<br>Me, and you<br>God only knows it's not what we would choose to do<br>Forward he cried from the rear<br>and the front rank died<br>And the General sat, as the lines on the map<br>moved from side to side<br>Black and Blue<br>And who knows which is which and who is who<br>Up and Down<br>And in the end it's only round and round and round<br>Haven't you heard it's a battle of words<br>the poster bearer cried<br>Listen son, said the man with the gun<br>There's room for you inside<br>Down and Out<br>It can't be helped but there's a lot of it about<br>With, without<br>And who'll deny that's what the fightings all about<br>Get out of the way, it's a busy day<br>And I've got things on my mind<br>For want of the price of tea and a slice<br>The old man died<br></strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br> The Brilliant Pink floyd, from the Brilliant DSOTM. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: Us and them .......

Postby Byrne » Wed Jun 28, 2006 8:50 pm

Thanks Starman for your expert intro/post. I'd encountered Smedly Butler's composition before, but is is good/salutary to have the rminder. & you're correct - it still IS a racket & it should be mandatory reading for all students of everything.<br><br>& ta Slim for the Floyd quotes - I'll need to bang the DSOM album on soon....... <p></p><i></i>
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yes

Postby smithtalk » Wed Jun 28, 2006 10:34 pm

not only is war a racket but i read it put very eloquently somewhere that war is really the logical endpoint of capitalism,<br>scary isnt it <p></p><i></i>
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Re: yes

Postby Gouda » Thu Jun 29, 2006 7:09 am

Smedly! You won't find too many former military officers & vets or anyone <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>today</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> now speaking out against the war in Iraq (Murtha, say) who will also go right to the exoteric roots of modern and contemporary War: plutocracy, capitalism, profit. Today it's United for Peace and Justice, but only insofar as corporate capitalism is, perhaps, <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>reformed</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> (impossible), yet systemically affirmed. Might as well take those guns and shoot yourselves in the foot. Then give 'em back to Pentagon Inc. With interest. <br><br>Smeds also lightly touches on the esoteric: capitalist aims advanced via exclusionary modes of secrecy. Yes, even non-capitalists use secrecy to advance aims, though when you are a sardine facing a shark, your secrecy is more tactical - whereas the sharks have always institutionalized secrecy as part of a larger end-in-itself. I am not talking about Stalinist Russia, or Putin. The sharks, of course, are today's oligarchs: the transglobal corporatocracy, and they hold disproportionate economic and military power. The CIA never was part of a "government bureaucracy," and it is even less so today. They work for and belong to one class and one class alone. <br><br>From Smedly as Starman posted above: <br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>While those who initiate war invariably cloak their intentions in the language of patriotism, wars always have economic and ideological causes. In America the causes of war have their origins in corporate Plutocracy. Here, war is initiated at the behest of a corporation or a group of corporations doing business in a foreign country. The usual cause is that a foreign government has imposed some kind of restriction upon one these corporations. In the most virulent cases these countries will not allow their natural capital to be plundered by corporate marauders or privatized and exported. Some countries even insist upon public ownership of their raw materials which makes them the greatest menace to peace.<br><br>Nations that have not adopted capitalism as their religion traditionally refuse to allow their resources or their people to be exploited for profit. These nations nationalize their assets and rather than invading and occupying other nations, they provide free health care, unlimited education and other programs of social and spiritual uplift to their citizens. These are the dangers of socialism and communism that we were indoctrinated against since birth; the greatest scourge of evil the world has ever known. This is what they teach us in school and it is ingrained in our psyche to the grave.<br><br>Using the tax base for the public good, to create a prosperous peace time economy for all, of course, is positively un-American and anti-capitalist. It is a dangerous ideology that must not be allowed to spread, lest it result in eruptions of democracy, prolonged outbursts of peace and the equitable distribution of goods and wealth. If allowed to flourish, socialism would mean the abolition of Plutocracy and the end of socioeconomic class divisions. It would mean the emancipation of the working class from their Plutocratic rulers.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> More: <br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->...I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers...<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> Who the hell would dare talk like that today from a deeply american establishment position?! Not Feingold, not Gore, not Harkin, not Murtha, not... not Paul Craig Roberts, not antiwar Raimondo, not Lew Rockwell...<br><br>***<br><br>From recent Kurt Vonnegut:<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Get a load of this. Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was not yet four, ran five times as the Socialist party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, almost 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. <br><br>He had this to say while campaigning: <br><br>"As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. <br>"As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. <br>"As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free." <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> © 2005 Kurt Vonnegut Extracted from A Man Without a Country: A Memoir of Life in George W Bush's America, <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,1691370,00.html">books.guardian.co.uk/extr...70,00.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Yes, the State is also a problem, but not the root problem, and not the most powerful problem. "Socialism" may not be an answer to this, but the total wars of corporate-intelligence against any and all communisms or socialisms (all through history, in fact, in which earlier incarnations of corporate-intelligence regimes were aristocrats, plutocrats and other manifestations of oligarchy - all interchangeable with today's corporatocracy, with varying lies of justification) have been repeatedly neutered from the possibility of a form of left socialism, or labor anarchism, from evolving. In that, I am an "anti anti-communist", as Gore Vidal had it. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: yes

Postby havanagilla » Thu Jun 29, 2006 7:16 am

its probably a human trait, and struggle for survival/territory. later it was coated in other meme's, but basically, pack animals engage in wars over survival and individual animals war over dominance (and propagation). <br><br>---<br> <p></p><i></i>
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Hank

Postby Gouda » Thu Jun 29, 2006 8:10 am

<!--EZCODE IMAGE START--><img src="http://i.cnn.net/money/2006/06/28/news/newsmakers/paulson.reut/paulson_henry.ap.03.jpg" style="border:0;"/><!--EZCODE IMAGE END--><br><br>...and you thought the last few years were funny.<br><br>So, Mr Goldman Sachs is moving his paperweights and laptop into his temporary corporate office: the Treasury. One figures that by the time he is done punching a few keys, things ought to look even better for the top-tier of G-S and related conglomerates, just in time for him to revolve right back onto Wall Street. <br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/28/news/newsmakers/paulson.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes">money.cnn.com/2006/06/28/news/newsmakers/paulson.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Senate gives Paulson nod - Senate easily confirms the Goldman Sachs Chairman as Treasury secretary, succeeding John Snow.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>...<br><br>Paulson also said, in response to questions, that <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>tax increases would be "a big mistake."</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> Paulson said that, while he wished the budget deficit was lower, <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>the best way to shrink it was through continued economic growth to generate more revenues.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> [War, cheap labor, exploitation, social assistance cuts, environmental degredation and plunder - Gouda]<br><br>Paulson, 60, is a multimillionaire who has said that he will sell about $500 million of Goldman Sachs stock if he is confirmed as treasury secretary. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>His total wealth is estimated at around $700 million.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br>Clearly, he can relate to the rest of us. How can you not trust that smile? <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=gouda@rigorousintuition>Gouda</A> at: 6/29/06 6:14 am<br></i>
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Smedley, Neil and Chris

Postby Gouda » Thu Jun 29, 2006 8:36 am

Background track for this thread: <br><br>Pet Shop Boys, "OPPORTUNITIES (LET'S MAKE LOTS OF MONEY)"<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>You've got the brawn, I've got the brains<br>Let's make lots of money<br><br>...<br><br>Oh, there's a lot of opportunities<br>If you know when to take them, you know?<br>There's a lot of opportunities<br>If there aren't, you can make them..</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--><br><br>***<br><br>(not impossible to run concurrently with PF's "Us and Them" playing earlier in the thread...interesting mashup that could be) <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=gouda@rigorousintuition>Gouda</A> at: 6/29/06 6:48 am<br></i>
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war is still a racket

Postby existentialist » Thu Jun 29, 2006 9:28 am

What a fabulous, succinct statement from a man who has experienced war first-hand. Thanks for posting that, Starman. It makes me wonder if there really are two seperate and distinct types of homo sapien on this planet - those that have the (often by proxy) capacity to kill, and those that don't. I count myself very lucky to be the latter. <p></p><i></i>
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Re: war is still a racket

Postby dbeach » Thu Jun 29, 2006 2:51 pm

I personally know MANY Veterans and many VN Veterans<br>who are against the bush regime..<br><br>the active duty military has views much different than the Veterans ..bushco is slashing VA funds while grabbin any social progarm for the war<br><br>fewer Vets are supporting the war than ever and 10 VA hospitals are on the closing list<br><br>so thought yes many Vets are still sleeping many are waking<br>and 26 million Vets could raise a big fuss cuz the military ain't gonna save the Citizens..<br><br>It kinda makes me think Kay Griggs revalations are true<br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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