Archive for the Military Category

Smedley And Ernest On Our Friend “War”; The “Racket” Continues (September 7, 2015)

Posted in Banks and Banking System, Book Reference, Magazine Reference, Military, Oil, Wall Street, War on September 7, 2015 by e-commentary.org

. . .

_          “Four score years ago this month, the world of arts and letters and the world awoke to a pair of trenchant commentaries on our friend ‘War’ written by two scholars who had spent time in the trenches and developed the ‘street cred’ to command attention and respect.  Smedley D. Butler was a United States Marine Corps major general, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history who also should have won a Nobel Peace Prize.  Ernest Hemingway wrote stuff.  We should listen.”

. . .

[See the e-commentary presented on a prior Memorial Day on this Labor Day at In Memoriam (May 26, 2014).]

Bumper stickers of the week:

“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 in a poem in the September 1935 issue of the magazine “Common Sense” that later become an overlooked classic. 

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.  But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying.  You will die like a dog for no good reason. . . .  The only way to combat the murder that is war is to show the dirty combinations that make it and the criminals and swine that hope for it and the idiotic way they run it when they get it so that an honest man will distrust it as he would a racket and refuse to be enslaved into it.”  Ernest Hemingway in “Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter,” in a September 1935 issue of the magazine “Esquire”.

Barry And Joe, G. I. (March 16, 2015)

Posted in Gender, Military, O'Bama, Race, Society on March 16, 2015 by e-commentary.org

. . .

B          “Not Biden.”

. . .

A          “Courtesy of President and Commander-In-Chief Truman’s sagacious executive order in 1948 desegregating the military, more Blacks give orders to Whites per capita in the U.S. military than in any other industry, endeavor or activity.  At the same time, the majority of the U.S. military hold their current Commander-In-Chief in contempt and derision because he is Black.”

B          “The military may tolerate a female Commander-In-Chief less reluctantly than a Black Commander-In-Chief.”

A          “A Black female Commander-In-Chief?”

B          “The entire military, including the Coast Guard and the National Guards, might refuse to fight.”

A          “And America could begin the transition from a bankrupt Empire to a sustainable Republic.”

. . .

B          “However, the chain of command still functions.”

. . .

Bumper sticker of the week:

You will like the Commander-In-Chief.  And that is an indirect order.  If you want to follow it.

Ebola: The Halcyon Days Of The Panic-demic In A “Peak” Health Care-less System (October 13, 2014)

Posted in Book Reference, Bureaucracy, Civil Rights/Civil Liberties, Ebola, Health Care, Military, Pogo Plight, Population, Privacy, Public Health on October 13, 2014 by e-commentary.org

. . .

1          “Who can you trust?  Events are moving so quickly.  Fraud and deception work effectively in finance and politics, but Mother Nature is indifferent to and immune from the shenanigans and machinations of mortals.”

2          “The government and the public are still mired at Stage 1.  The government is denying the threat because it has no plan.  The public is denying the threat because it has no idea.”

1          “I am collecting the quotations of the major players to document the response in real time.  Dr. Frieden with the CDCE and Dr. Fauci with NIAID/NIH are not prepared and have not been candid.  A test patient, Dr. Nancy Snyderman with NBC, agrees to a voluntary quarantine and then brazenly violates the quarantine, refuses to accept responsibility and escapes accountability.”

2          “We as a society need to move through the stages from denial to anger to bargaining to depression to acceptance of a plan more quickly than the virus is moving.”

1          “The health care-less system will peak after it fills the nineteen available beds.”

. . .

2          “Easy to say that everything reasonable must be done to contain and eliminate the menace in West Africa.”

. . .

2          “Viewers of Fox tv are yelling at the tube for the government to do something.  The Republicans who advertise on the network cut funding to the CDCE and other programs.”

1          “If the Democrats had provided an additional five billion dollars in funding to the CDCE, what would have happened?”

2          “The CDCE would have lobbied for another five billion dollars.”

1          “Or ten.  And yet the Democrats cut funding, as if any amount of funding matters.  Some researcher who sent repeated e-mails to those in power warning of the dangers of Ebola is not happy.”

2          “I can forward some of the e-mails.”

. . .

2          “A communicable disease is communicated by public transportation.  Even if the disease is not transmitted at this time via air, the public is transmitted via air.  Ebola is small enough to fit in a ‘carry on’ bag.  Ebola will hitchhike and stow away.  Air travel must be purposefully restricted.  Restrictions are costly, but the costs of limiting air travel must be weighed against the costs of not limiting air travel.”

1          “All costs should be calculated.  We need to address the resulting deprivations of privacy and limitations on constitutional rights before the public is too terrified to think.”

. . .

2          “One of the bench marks will be bleach sales.”

1          “Or overflow patients camping in tents in parking lots.”

. . .

1          “The female RNs are underpaid to do the work while the male MBAs who make the decisions take almost all the profits.  The RNs are underpaid to care for the sick and the dying and are not paid anything to get sick and to die in the process.  When a nurse is called in to care for someone sick with Ebola at an institution unprepared for the challenge, she or he should in good conscience call in sick.”

2          “She or he will get there and then be blamed for the negligence of the hospital.”

1          “The American military personnel being deployed to Africa are not being provided combat pay.  The ‘charge of the blight brigade’ should occasion charges against those giving the orders.”

2          “No one gets it.”

1          “Everyone will get it unless all of us get it.”

. . .

[See http://prosperouswaydown.com/category/subtopics/healthcare-subsystems/ebola-healthcare-subsystems/  Five stages of grief and five stages of collapse in a dire scenario.  http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2014/10/ebola-and-five-stages-of-collapse.html#more.  Consider Earth Abides by George R. Stewart.]

Bumper stickers of the week:

Be clean

Get a flu shot

Wash your hands

Take your kids to the park

Prepare to hunker down

Be calm and panic (but do so with poise and dignity)

Go East, Young Person (August 25, 2014)

Posted in Bureaucracy, Collapse, Education, Military on August 25, 2014 by e-commentary.org

. . .

A          “Horace Greeley advised the young man to go West seeking land and opportunity.  Today the sage advice is to leave the sagebrush and go East.  All the power and all the money is absorbed and consumed by the contemporary Rome, the black hole known as Washington.  Most of the remaining high paying jobs with pensions and health care are at the epicenter of the Empire.”

B          “Town after town after town after town after town after town are now vacant shells with breathing zombies struggling to survive the day.  Those with limited schooling have no recourse except to enroll in the military and fight resource wars for the bankers.  Those with the chance to get some schooling flee and enlist in some institution of higher learning to get certified and credentialed.  They might get a gig with a corporation, yet they will not get a pension or many other benefits.”

A          “I advise kids who have the connections, the moxie and some good luck to get a plum job with the federal government and ride it out.”

. . .

Bumper sticker of the week:

The violin is more sonorous and the fires distant

Fallujah or Ferguson? (August 18, 2014)

Posted in Ferguson, Iraq, Military, Police, Race on August 18, 2014 by e-commentary.org

. . .

P          “In today’s experiment, we are going to show you some pictures.  Based on your deployments to Iraq and your awareness of recent developments in Ferguson, Missouri, we want you to identify the pictures as either Fallujah or Ferguson.  Ready?”

S          “Ready as ever.  Hit it.  Ferguson.  Fallujah.  Ferguson.  Ferguson.  Fallujah.  Fallujah. . . . Fallujah.  Ferguson.  Fallujah.  Fallujah.  Fallujah, no Ferguson. Ferguson, no Fallujah.  Fallujah.  Ferguson.  Fallujah.  Fallujah.  Fallujah.  Ferguson.  Ferguson.  Fallujah.  That’s enough for now.”

P          “Fifty-five percent correct.”

S          “No kidding.  I had two tours in Iraq and once visited St. Louis.  Is that good?”

P          “We don’t know.”

S          “It isn’t good, is it?”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!

De-militarize the police; police the military

Watertown? Ferguson? Your Town? Your Son? Will They Allow It In Laramie? (August 11, 2014)

Posted in Civil Rights/Civil Liberties, Ferguson, Guns, Military, Oath Keepers, Police, Race on August 11, 2014 by e-commentary.org

. . .

K          “The official response to the Boston Marathon bombing provided a convenient beta test for the imposition of martial law in America.  Systematic house-to-house raids in locked-down Watertown, Massachusetts gave us a glimpse of the future.”

J          “They did not even look like cops.  They did not look like a para-military.  They looked like the military on a mission to search and destroy.  They dress in riot gear and expect to chaperon a cotillion?”

K          “They are now roaming Ferguson as if it is Fallujah.  The foreign policy doctrine that ‘It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it’ may now be a doctrine of American domestic policy.”

J          “A few ordinary citizens in Watertown obtained a few seconds of furtive images on cell phones that were avoided by the major television networks and archived on YouTube.  You too can view and decide.”

K          “In a crisis, the Internet and cell phones in an area could be disabled by the authorities.  Someone may need to capture an event with a Polaroid and celluloid and communicate with cans and a string.”

. . .

K          “Too many citizens think they will make their last stand with their gun in hand.  The authorities will simply vaporize someone who is inconvenient.”

J          “Some folks are fooling themselves.  Any citizen who resists will be secreted away at night or exterminated without seeing the light of day.”

K          “One of the recent challenges is a failure.  The public response by some at the Cliven Bundy Ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada was misplaced and misdirected.  Bundy is a racist deadbeat who owes money to all of us for exploiting our land for years.  The public must fight the right fight.”

J          “When you loot a local business, you lose a local business.”

. . .

J          “Nixon asked if it would play in Peoria to gauge whether Middle America would allow it.”

K          “Some say they may have tolerated it in Massachusetts because the state has strict gun control laws.”

J          “Will they allow it in Laramie?”

. . .

[See the e-commentary titled “Men In Pink: Today’s Sensitive New SWAT Togs (August 20, 2012).”]

Bumper stickers of the week:

The folks in Ferguson, Missouri appear not to yearn to allow it

De-militarize the police; police the military

Joint Base Fort America (July 28, 2014)

Posted in Bush, Civil Rights/Civil Liberties, Freedom / Liberty, Military, Military Commissions Act, National Defense Authorization Act / FY 2012, O'Bama, Security State, USA PATRIOT Act, War on July 28, 2014 by e-commentary.org

. . .

5          “America is now one gigantic fortified military base.”

7          “Joint Base Bush O’Bama.  JBBO.”

5          “Or Joint Base O’Bama Bush.  JBOB.  What’s the difference.”

7          “We are in the fourth term of the Bush Administration.  Or during the first term of the O’Bama Administration, President Cheney and Vice President Bush invaded Iraq without provocation or plan based on lies and deception.”

. . .

5          “A locked compound on lock down.  And too many Americans are not locked on to this development.  The government is locked and loaded and ready to lock up dissidents or the downtrodden.”

7          “The authorities have us locked with stock and barrel.  The new USSA – the United Security State of America – is not much different than the old USSR.”

5          “The area along a nation’s border has always been a region where liberty is more constricted and civil liberties are constrained.  The band of land, however, was narrow and circumscribed the border.  The heart of the country was free. Today, the southern border of America is moving north while the northern border is moving south while the western border is moving east while the eastern border is moving east west.”

7          “The only free area may be the geographic center of the contiguous United States.  The town of Lebanon, Kansas or thereabouts, but that may only be the last place to be enveloped.  The plate tectonics of the security state are shifting ominously.  A big collision is in the works.”

. . .

Bumper sticker of the week:

I wasn’t using my civil liberties anyway

 

Distrust But Verify (July 21, 2014)

Posted in Afghanistan, Foreign Policy, Iran, Journalism, Middle East, Military, Newspapers, Press/Media, Russia on July 21, 2014 by e-commentary.org

. . .

1          “Somewhat ironic that it is a rhyme from a Russian proverb made famous by Reagan.”

2          “Is it irenic?  I phrase it ‘distrust and verify’ because we have a civic duty to do our own research.”

1          “America is demonizing Putin, ostracizing Russia, antagonizing unknown forces, and militarizing the world.  Triggering World War III on the hundredth anniversary of World War I is not a righteous aspiration.”

2          “The phrase does not apply just to the misrepresentations of Putin and Russia foisted on the public today by those in power in the West.  When it comes to the Middle East and most matters of international affairs, it is also ‘reader beware’ in a world of pap, pablum and propaganda.”

1          “Who knows what is really going on in the Middle East or Gaza.  The ‘One Hundred Plus Years War’ is going strong and may go on until one people is wiped out.  And the apologists and propagandists pass themselves off as analysts and pundits.  Too many newspaper columnists and television personalities are just ideological blowhards.”

2          “So many graduates of the Edward L. Bernays School of Disinformation.  The truth is so elusive, because advancing the untruth is so often in the economic interests of the wealthy and the well connected.”

. . .

1          “Those who want America to go to war today are the ones who started the failed and failing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday.”

2          “The only thing you can say with a high degree of confidence is that those who want America to go to war are clearly not seeking to advance America’s best interests.”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

Distrust But Verify

Distrust And Verify

“All Governments Lie” I. F. Stone

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb [pick a place, any place], bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb [insert the place].

Unemployment Insurance = Welfare 2.0 (June 23, 2014)

Posted in Federal Reserve, Insurance, Journalism, Military, Newspapers, Pensions, Personal Story, Press/Media, Unemployment, War, Welfare, Work on June 23, 2014 by e-commentary.org

. . .

E          “They are not coming back.”

U          “And they keep coming.”

. . .

E          “After the War, he moved the family westward from the homestead bequeathed to his older brother to a community with no friends and no connections and moved upward from one manufacturing job to another and then retired as a floor manager.  He put food on the table and kids through college.  He said that all the companies he worked for have gone out of business or moved overseas.  Most of the pension funds were dissipated or disappeared.”

U          “Those returning from the current wars are not finding opportunities.  Those who stayed have not found opportunities.”

E          “Years ago, some guys worked at a service station checking the tires and washing the windows and graduated to a mechanics job for life.  Now there is no service and far fewer mechanics positions.”

U          “Yesterday’s grease monkey with a G.E.D. is today’s barista with a B.A.”

. . .

E          “Many of the jobs are undertaken by a robot that may never craft an inspiring poem or participate in a parent-teacher conference, yet it produces a consistently high quality product very efficiently.”

U          “A company can use the robots to fine-tune the built-in obsolescence.  The product can be designed and manufactured to fail ten minutes after the limited warranty expires.  And robots are not the most efficient consumers of their own products.”

. . .

E          “The Federal Reserve is untethered by the Constitution, Congress or common sense except for a mandate in the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act to address unemployment in its decision-making.  The Fed has knowingly pursued decisions that do nothing to promote employment and do much to transfer wealth to the wealthy.”

U          “The Republicans respond with the obscene lie that a reduction in the capital gains rate will reduce unemployment.  The Press almost always gives them a pass.”

. . .

E          “Unemployment insurance originally covered thirteen weeks and then twenty-six weeks and then up to seventy-three weeks in many jurisdictions.  Some are calling for further extensions of unemployment insurance.”

U          “The insurance is becoming a tenuous version of ‘Welfare 2.0.’”

. . .

E          “What happens when thoughtful people realize that the jobs are never coming back.”

U          “The unemployed are categorized under the ‘U6 Unemployment’ category and forgotten.”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

Get a job

Where?

In Memoriam (May 26, 2014)

Posted in Banks and Banking System, Book Reference, Bureaucracy, Hypocrisy, Kleptocracy, Military, War on May 26, 2014 by e-commentary.org

. . .

A          “Fly the flag, fight to allow others to burn theirs, and campaign to prevent unwilling and unwitting lads and lasses from fighting for the entertainment and economic advancement of those in power.”

B          “And read the most insightful work on the underlying reasons that those in power take the powerless to war in the poem War Is A Racket by someone who understood war.  General Smedley Darlington Butler was a United States Marine Corps major general which by the way was the highest rank authorized at that time.  At the time of his death, he was the most decorated Marine in United States history.”

A          “Decorated is a curious description.  He knew his stuff.  Take the book to the beach.  Take it to head.  Take it to heart.”

B          “Take it to the class room.  And put it on required reading list next fall in the schools.”

A          “What about All Quiet On The Western Front?”

B          “Put them both on the list.  Remarque remarked on the absurdity and futility of the killing enterprise, whereas Butler served up the explanation front and center.  Follow the money.”

. . .

B          “They would not need to neglect as many veterans if they did not create and break so many of them.”

. . .

Bumper stickers of the week:

Dissent is patriotic

Butler and Eisenhower said it all