Smedley Butler Explains The Latest Excuse For American Intervention In Ukraine

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

Senior Fellow Alex Pollock drew my attention to an important quotation by Smedley Butler:

1935 speech and later a book by Major General Smedley D. Butler (USMC), includes  “… A racket is best described, I believe, something that is not what it seems to the majority of 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 large fortunes…

If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destructions, they will have no time for the constructive job of building a 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 munition makers.

So … I say, TO HELL WITH WAR.”

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RICH MAN’S WAR, POOR MAN’S BLOOD

“War is a racket. It always has been. 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.”General Smedley Butler

I don’t need your civil warIt feeds the rich while it buries the poorYour power hungry sellin’ soldiersIn a human grocery store

Guns N’ Roses – Civil War

Whether it is a distinguished general who came to his senses in 1935, after doing the bidding of the monied interests by initiating conflict throughout the world to fill their coffers with blood money, or a rock & roll star fifty years later writing a hit song about the exact same theme, the song remains the same. The wealthy always benefit from war, the poor always die in their wars, and politicians are bribed to continually foment conflict, hate, and railing against whoever their puppet masters choose as the enemy of the moment. This is not a recent development, it has spanned centuries, just the sums of money feeding the military industrial complex are now astronomical.

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Where Have You Gone, Smedley Butler? The Last General To Criticize US Imperialism

Authored by Danny Sjursen via TomDispatch.com,

There once lived an odd little man – five feet nine inches tall and barely 140 pounds sopping wet – who rocked the lecture circuit and the nation itself. For all but a few activist insiders and scholars, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler is now lost to history. Yet more than a century ago, this strange contradiction of a man would become a national war hero, celebrated in pulp adventure novels, and then, 30 years later, as one of this country’s most prominent antiwar and anti-imperialist dissidents.

Raised in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and educated in Quaker (pacifist) schools, the son of an influential congressman, he would end up serving in nearly all of America’s “Banana Wars” from 1898 to 1931. Wounded in combat and a rare recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor, he would retire as the youngest, most decorated major general in the Marines.

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DANCING ON THE CRUMBLING PRECIPICE

Dancing on the crumbling precipice
The rocks are coming loose just at the edge
Are we laughing? Are we crying?
Are we drowning? Are we dead?
Or is it all a dream?

The bombs are getting closer everyday
“That can never happen here” we used to say
Have these wars come to our doorstep?
Has this moment finally come?
Or is it all a dream?

Rise Against – The Violence

This recent song by Rise Against, inspired by the turmoil since the 2016 election of Donald Trump, captures the feeling of angst and uncertainty engulfing the world today. This Fourth Turning is entering its most violent stage, where blood will be spilled in vast quantities as an epic conflict between good and evil plays out across the globe. Eighty years ago, the bloodiest conflict in human history began, as the social mood turned dark and compromise was no longer a viable option.

It wasn’t a coincidence World War II began exactly eighty years after the onset of the American Civil War, which began as compromisers died off and hearts hardened on both sides. We are now eighty years gone since the outset of World War II and a global mood of impending doom overshadows our daily lives. The inevitability of conflict, domestically and internationally, eclipses all efforts to bridge the ideological differences of competing interests around the world. The cycles of history will not be denied and this Fourth Turning will play out as those before, with clear victors and clear losers.

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History Repeats: The Continuing Threat to Freedom and Democracy

Guest Post by Jesse

Lately it has been popular in some circles to talk about the US being a ‘late stage democracy’ that has ‘never been more ripe for tyranny.’

Sometimes they like to drag in Plato to give their thought pieces a gleam of higher learning and a supposed grounding in history.

But their pieces fall into that trap, that very sort of temporal vanity and self-centered preoccupation to despair that Newman notes so well in saying that “every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it.”

Would you be surprised to hear that less than one hundred years ago there was an actual plot, bankrolled by some of the most powerful and famous figures of the American one percent, to use military force to depose a sitting American President and instead install a fascist in the White House who would be more compliant with their greed and lust for power?

The model for this takeover would have been similar to Benito Mussolini’s infamous ‘march on Rome.’

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THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

I’m constantly amazed by the ability of those in power to create a narrative trusted by a gullible non-critical thinking populace. Appealing to emotions, when you have millions of functionally illiterate, normalcy bias ensnared, iGadget distracted, disciples of the status quo, has been the game plan of the Deep State for the last century. Americans don’t want to think, because thinking is hard. They would rather feel. For decades the government controlled public education system has performed a mass lobotomy on their hapless matriculates, removing their ability to think and replacing it with feelings, fabricated dogma, and social indoctrination. Their minds of mush have been molded to acquiesce to the narrative propagandized by their government keepers.

“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”Thomas Sowell

With a majority confused, distracted, malleable, willfully ignorant, and easily manipulated by false narratives, heart wrenching images, and fake news, the Deep State henchmen have been able to control the masses with relative ease. The unanticipated rise of Donald Trump to the most powerful role in the world gave many critical thinking, anti-big government, skeptical curmudgeons hope he could drain the swamp and begin to deconstruct the massive out of control Federal bureaucracy.

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QUOTES OF THE DAY

“WAR is a racket. It always has been. 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.”

Smedley D. Butler, War Is a Racket

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket


GREY CHAMPION ASSUMES COMMAND (PART ONE)

At each of these great gates of history, eighty to a hundred years apart, a similar generational drama unfolded. Four archetypes, aligned in the same order – elder Prophet, midlife Nomad, young adult Hero, child Artist – together produced the most enduring legends in our history. Each time the Grey Champion appeared marked the arrival of a moment of “darkness, and adversity, and peril,” the climax of the Fourth Turning of the saeculum.The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

In September 2015 I wrote a five part article called Fourth Turning: Crisis of Trust. In Part 2 of that article I pondered who might emerge as the Grey Champion, leading the country during the second half of this Fourth Turning Crisis. I had the above pictures of Franklin, Lincoln, and FDR, along with a flaming question mark. The question has been answered. Donald J. Trump is the Grey Champion.

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MEMORIAL DAY FOR RACKETEERS

War is a racket. The men who sacrificed their lives are nothing more than cannon fodder to the men running this country and the financial beneficiaries of these arms dealers. War is extremely profitable. The poor do the dying, while the rich get richer. When we don’t have any real enemies, we create them. War is peace.

The U.S. government is replacing a whole host of military equipment worn out after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as Cold War era hardware that is becoming obsolete. In 2015, the Pentagon’s top-100 contractors had obligated contracts worth $175 billion, according to government figures. Lockheed Martin, who are currently developing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, were the largest government contractor by far with $36.2 billion contracted. Of that, $29.4 billion was contracted for defense projects. The F-35 is the most expensive U.S. weapons system ever, costing some $400 billion and due to cost $1 trillion more over the course of its life cycle.

Infographic: America's Biggest Defense Contractors | Statista
You will find more statistics at Statista

“WAR is a racket. It always has been. 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.”Smedley D. Butler, War Is a Racket


FOURTH TURNING: CRISIS OF TRUST – PART 2

In Part 1 of this article I discussed the catalyst spark which ignited this Fourth Turning and the seemingly delayed regeneracy. In Part 2 I will ponder possible Grey Champion prophet generation leaders who could arise during the regeneracy.

The nearly seven year reign of Barack Obama has resulted in furthering wealth inequality, in spite of his socialistic rhetoric. Notwithstanding his Nobel Peace Prize, military spending is at all-time highs and we are engaged in actual and proxy wars across the Middle East and in the Ukraine. Race relations have never been worse. Poverty levels have never been worse. Real median household income is lower than it was in 1989. Real hourly wages are at 50 year lows. Home ownership has plunged to 50 year lows, as middle class workers have been kicked out of their homes and young people are saddled with so much student loan debt and bleak job opportunities they will never have an opportunity to own. The ownership society pushed by Clinton and Bush, with the proliferation of Wall Street created “exotic” subprime mortgages, peddled to people incapable of paying their mortgages, blew up the world in 2008, and the fall out will last for decades.

Meanwhile, Wall Street banks have reaped $700 billion of ill-gotten profits since 2010 as the Federal Reserve has handed them trillions of interest free funds to gamble with, while rigging the financial markets, and paying their executives obscene bonuses. The hubris and arrogance of the Wall Street titans is appalling, as they buy politicians, write toothless financial regulations (Dodd Frank) for their bought off politicians to pass, report fraudulent financial results with the stamp of approval from the FASB, blatantly rig interest rate, currency, stock and commodities markets, and use deception and propaganda to distract and mislead the public through their corporate media mouthpieces – dependent upon Wall Street advertising revenue to thrive.

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Wilkerson: Who Makes US Foreign Policy

 Guest Post by Jesse

 

Part of what I teach is how since World War II and the acquisition of this enormous power by what in essence is the new Rome in the world, the United States, part of the shift that takes place in manipulating and managing that new power is a centralization of foreign policy away from the old cabinet places where it used to take place, most prominently through the Foreign Service and through the secretary of state, to the White House and to the creation of the 1947 National Security Act, the National Security Council.

So if you ask me pro forma where does it exist today, it exists more in the National Security Council and its staff than it does anywhere else, certainly anywhere else in the cabinet. So what I’m saying is it’s centralized in the White House.

But what does that mean in terms of, I think, your real question, who’s behind the White House, and who’s therefore behind U.S. foreign policy, more or less? I think the answer today is the oligarchs, which would be the same answer, incidentally, ironically, if you will, for Putin in Russia, the people who own the wealth, the people who therefore have the power and who more or less (and I’m not being too facetious here, I don’t think) buy the president and thus buy American foreign policy. So that’s as succinct an answer as I can give you and touch on a few historical points…

And you could say in some respects this shadow behind the power that makes money off war, period, no matter who’s the belligerent, makes money off that volatility now, especially with computers that are able to assist them in doing so, like currency manipulation, for example, or just general speculation. With computers you can do it at lightning speed and you can do it in a nanosecond, and you can make billions in that nanosecond, and you don’t care about what you’re doing to the real economy, because you’re raking in the dough.

Lawrence Wilkerson

You may watch the entire three video interview here.

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Praetorian Guard: US Role In The New World Order

Via Jesse

“The major function of secrecy in Washington is to keep the U.S. people and U.S. Congress from knowing what the nation’s leaders are doing. Secrecy is power. Secrecy is license. Secrecy covers up mistakes. Secrecy covers up corruption.

The United States [is] cast in the role of Praetorian Guard, protecting the interests of the global financial order against fractious elements in the Third World. As the Praetorian Guard, fighting wars for multinational interests while also paying for such adventures, our relative economic stability, domestic social and material infrastructure, and the freedom and liberties of the American people may all be forfeited.

James Stockwell, Praetorian Guard: US Role In the New World Order

“There are only two reasons why you should ever be asked to give your youngsters. One is defense of our homes. The other is the defense of our Bill of Rights and particularly the right to worship God as we see fit. Every other reason advanced for the murder of young men is a racket, pure and simple.

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket


You’ve Been Warned – Calls for Mandatory “National Service” for Americans Aged 18-28 Has Begun

Guest Post by Michael Krieger 

Screen Shot 2015-06-17 at 12.07.27 PM

CHAPTER ONE

War is a Racket

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

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.

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.

– From Major General Smedley Butler’s War is a Racket

This is one of the most important articles I will write all year. The statists are coming for your kids, and the conditioning has already begun.

Last night, I came across one of the most horrifying articles I have ever read, which is saying a lot. Before I get into it, take a look at the title and the tagline:

Screen Shot 2015-06-17 at 11.10.35 AM

If you think the title is bad, wait until you read the article. What becomes evident is that this grotesque concept of forced “national service” is being actively discussed at the highest levels of government. What Ron Fournier is doing in his National Journal article is conditioning the public to accept something that is completely unacceptable.

Before we get to that, who is Ron Fournier? National Journal provides a bio:

Ron Fournier is the Senior Political Columnist and Editorial Director of National Journal. Prior to joining NJ, he worked at the Associated Press for 20 years, most recently as Washington Bureau Chief. A Detroit native, Fournier began his career in Arkansas, first with the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record and then with the Arkansas Democrat and the AP, where he covered the state legislature and Gov. Bill Clinton. In January 1993, Fournier moved to Washington, where he covered the White House and presidential campaigns for the AP. 

So basically, this guy covered Bill Clinton in Arkansas, moved to the District of Criminals after he was elected President, and now wants to convince you to subject your innocent children into mandatory service to a nation provably run by corrupt criminals and oligarchs.

Continue reading “You’ve Been Warned – Calls for Mandatory “National Service” for Americans Aged 18-28 Has Begun”

The One Percent’s Plot to Overthrow Democracy In America In 1933

Guest Post by Jesse

The Great Depression, the conflicts that tested the Republic to its foundations, and the struggle to maintain the commitment to freedom and democracy against powerful interests.

The highly decorated Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified in 1934 that he had been recruited by the representatives of powerful industrialists who asked him to bring the Bonus Army back to Washington and take the government over by force from then President Franklin Roosevelt. This was a scheme that was known as The Business Plot.

These wealthy business people were not prosecuted and the incident was quietly swept aside in the interest of domestic confidence and peace.

If Not At Home, Then the Establishment of Oligarchy Abroad

After the failure to overturn democracy in the US, some in the American ‘One Percent’ became powerful supporters and business associates of Mussolini, and even of the German Third Reich. This business relationship continued long after the criminal brutality of these regimes had become quite obvious to all civilized people.

Their involvement in the rise and promotion of fascist ideology seems to have been largely forgotten.

WHERE DO ISRAEL’S BOMBS COME FROM?

I’ll give you one guess. Always ask – Who Benefits? – whenever a new war is launched. Smedley Butler and Ron Paul know the answer.

“War is a racket. It always has been. 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. 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.” – Smedley Butler

“It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.” Ron Paul