46
For A Future Without War!
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47
General Election 2010 / 'Democratic Deficits' - and no chances of 'real changes'?
« on: March 02, 2010, 02:41:53 PM »
63% IN BRITAIN SAY TROOPS HOME BY CHRISTMAS
Despite the best efforts of the government and media, the war in Afghanistan is deeply unpopular. Last week's BBC poll showed that 63% of the British public want the troops home by Christmas (SEE http://bit.ly/9meRQf ).
Yet all 3 leading parties - 'New' Labour, 'New' Tory and Liberal-Democrat - support the Afghanistan military 'adventure' - and so give the British people no choice of a real change in military policies.
This begs the question: 'Who should people who want British troops withdrawn from the unwinnable war in Afghanistan vote for in the coming general election?'
Despite the best efforts of the government and media, the war in Afghanistan is deeply unpopular. Last week's BBC poll showed that 63% of the British public want the troops home by Christmas (SEE http://bit.ly/9meRQf ).
Yet all 3 leading parties - 'New' Labour, 'New' Tory and Liberal-Democrat - support the Afghanistan military 'adventure' - and so give the British people no choice of a real change in military policies.
This begs the question: 'Who should people who want British troops withdrawn from the unwinnable war in Afghanistan vote for in the coming general election?'
48
General Election 2010 / CND online anti-Trident lobby
« on: February 28, 2010, 02:20:02 PM »
CND has set up an on-line anti-Trident lobbying system for the election - details below. Do we went to get our preferred anti-war candidates listed on it? (It might be a way of directing potential supporters our ways)
http://www.cnduk.org/election/
http://www.iparl.com/election-cnd/index.php?postcode=ne34+7ln&submit=Find+your+candidates&submitted=TRUE&actionkey=1&username=cnd
The following candidates plan to stand in South Shields:
No response has yet been received from Karen Allen of the Conservative Party
No response has yet been received from David Miliband of the Labour Party
Send us missing info
Even if they have already responded to the survey please now lobby your candidates. Messages will be sent to those that are ticked:
Karen Allen of the Conservative Party
David Miliband of the Labour Party
Your name:
Address:
Address 2:
Town:
Postcode:
Your email:
Subject:
With many parties going into the election talking about public spending cuts, we believe there is one very positive cutback any new government could make - scrapping the £76bn replacement of Trident.
Feel free to modify the letter to give it any local context you feel appropriate, but please leave the questions as presented - this will allow us to better collate all responses received.
I am writing to you, in your capacity as a prospective parliamentary candidate, to ascertain your views on nuclear weapons.
I am particularly concerned about the cost of Trident and its replacement at a time of national and global financial crisis. Many cutbacks are being proposed across the public sector, yet the replacement of Trident is expected to cost in excess of £76bn. In a situation where Britain's security needs are very different from those of past decades, with no state threatening the UK, the onus is on those who prioritise money for nuclear weapons above other commitments to make the case for such huge levels of spending. Spending money on nuclear weapons means we cannot use it for other more socially useful spending, or on helping to solve the problems of poverty and climate change.
I am also concerned about Britain's security. I believe that retaining nuclear weapons will make us less safe. Many of the threats we face as a country, from terrorism to climate change cannot be tackled by nuclear weapons, but their retention has the potential to make us less safe. The more that countries such as Britain justify their possession of nuclear weapons on the grounds of an uncertain future, the more likely it is that non-nuclear states will seek to use the same rationale to justify developing their own weapons systems. For this reason, there is increasing international demand for the global abolition of nuclear weapons as the best way to secure our safety. In fact, a majority of UN member states, including China, India and Pakistan, already back a Nuclear Weapons Convention, which would ban these weapons in the way that chemical and biological weapons are outlawed.
I have included two specific questions below to which I would appreciate yes/no answers. Your answers are likely to affect how I vote in the forthcoming election.
My questions are:
If elected, would you vote for or against the replacement of Trident?
If elected, would you back UK support for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, banning all nuclear weapons internationally?
I look forward to your response.
By submitting this form, I agree to allow you to forward the above message to my candidates after reviewing the content for abuse. I understand my data may be retained for monitoring purposes.
I agree to you contacting me in the future using the information I have submitted. Privacy Policy
© Campaign
http://www.cnduk.org/election/
http://www.iparl.com/election-cnd/index.php?postcode=ne34+7ln&submit=Find+your+candidates&submitted=TRUE&actionkey=1&username=cnd
The following candidates plan to stand in South Shields:
No response has yet been received from Karen Allen of the Conservative Party
No response has yet been received from David Miliband of the Labour Party
Send us missing info
Even if they have already responded to the survey please now lobby your candidates. Messages will be sent to those that are ticked:
Karen Allen of the Conservative Party
David Miliband of the Labour Party
Your name:
Address:
Address 2:
Town:
Postcode:
Your email:
Subject:
With many parties going into the election talking about public spending cuts, we believe there is one very positive cutback any new government could make - scrapping the £76bn replacement of Trident.
Feel free to modify the letter to give it any local context you feel appropriate, but please leave the questions as presented - this will allow us to better collate all responses received.
I am writing to you, in your capacity as a prospective parliamentary candidate, to ascertain your views on nuclear weapons.
I am particularly concerned about the cost of Trident and its replacement at a time of national and global financial crisis. Many cutbacks are being proposed across the public sector, yet the replacement of Trident is expected to cost in excess of £76bn. In a situation where Britain's security needs are very different from those of past decades, with no state threatening the UK, the onus is on those who prioritise money for nuclear weapons above other commitments to make the case for such huge levels of spending. Spending money on nuclear weapons means we cannot use it for other more socially useful spending, or on helping to solve the problems of poverty and climate change.
I am also concerned about Britain's security. I believe that retaining nuclear weapons will make us less safe. Many of the threats we face as a country, from terrorism to climate change cannot be tackled by nuclear weapons, but their retention has the potential to make us less safe. The more that countries such as Britain justify their possession of nuclear weapons on the grounds of an uncertain future, the more likely it is that non-nuclear states will seek to use the same rationale to justify developing their own weapons systems. For this reason, there is increasing international demand for the global abolition of nuclear weapons as the best way to secure our safety. In fact, a majority of UN member states, including China, India and Pakistan, already back a Nuclear Weapons Convention, which would ban these weapons in the way that chemical and biological weapons are outlawed.
I have included two specific questions below to which I would appreciate yes/no answers. Your answers are likely to affect how I vote in the forthcoming election.
My questions are:
If elected, would you vote for or against the replacement of Trident?
If elected, would you back UK support for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, banning all nuclear weapons internationally?
I look forward to your response.
By submitting this form, I agree to allow you to forward the above message to my candidates after reviewing the content for abuse. I understand my data may be retained for monitoring purposes.
I agree to you contacting me in the future using the information I have submitted. Privacy Policy
© Campaign
49
South Tyneside Stop the War / Beyond Imagination? or In Denial?
« on: January 19, 2010, 04:57:01 PM »
I was struck by something PM Gordon Brown said the other day as regards the Haiti Earthquake: he said it was a 'tragedy beyond imagination'.
Did this comment indicate limitations in Mr Brown's 'imagination'? and/or ... that he had not read, for example, reports of the effects of bombs and other weapons on human beings ... in illegal invasions such as that on Iraq, which he fully supported - and helped to 'bank-roll' - in which hundreds of thousands or people were also killed, injuried, made homeless, and otherwise traumatized? ...
Did this comment indicate limitations in Mr Brown's 'imagination'? and/or ... that he had not read, for example, reports of the effects of bombs and other weapons on human beings ... in illegal invasions such as that on Iraq, which he fully supported - and helped to 'bank-roll' - in which hundreds of thousands or people were also killed, injuried, made homeless, and otherwise traumatized? ...
50
For Your Information / Yemen: the received British Establishment 'intelligence'
« on: January 03, 2010, 02:24:38 PM »
It occurs to me that there's probably better 'understanding' of the present situation in (the mainstream media's favourite 'new enemy'/'bogey state') Yemen to be found within the South Shields 'minority' Yemen-origined community than in the British Establishment ... but, for the record, and for what it's worth, this is a summary of recent Chatham House / 'MI6' (take your pick!) 'intelligence' that is 'informing' present British foreign policy there ...
'Yemen: Fear of Failure'
Chatham House, Briefing Paper by Ginny Hill (Ms Hill, who the BBC, etc, have decided is a leading British 'expert' on Yemen, affects to be an 'independent' analyst, but, since she British state establishment sponsored, some might doubt that), first published November 2008 - and so suggesting long-term planning of present 'developments' : ...
'Yemen presents a potent combination of problems for policy-makers confronting the prospect of state failure in this strategically important Red Sea country. It is the poorest state in the Arab world, with high levels of unemployment, rapid population growth and dwindling water resources.
President Saleh faces an intermittent civil war in the north, a southern separatist movement and resurgent terrorist groups. Yemen's jihadi networks appear to be growing as operating conditions in Iraq and Saudi Arabia become more difficult.
The underlying drivers for future instability are economic. The state budget is heavily dependent on revenue from dwindling oil supplies. Yemen's window of opportunity to shape its own future and create a post-oil economy is narrowing.
Western governments need to work towards an effective regional approach with the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, in particular Saudi Arabia.
Future instability in Yemen could expand a lawless zone stretching from northern Kenya, through Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, to Saudi Arabia. Piracy, organized crime and violent jihad would escalate, with implications for the security of shipping routes, the transit of oil through the Suez Canal and the internal security of Yemen's neighbours.'
+
... oddly, perhaps, Ms Hill's 'indeprednet' analysis omits all mention of Saudi military 'adventures' in Yemen ... and ... etc ...
'Yemen: Fear of Failure'
Chatham House, Briefing Paper by Ginny Hill (Ms Hill, who the BBC, etc, have decided is a leading British 'expert' on Yemen, affects to be an 'independent' analyst, but, since she British state establishment sponsored, some might doubt that), first published November 2008 - and so suggesting long-term planning of present 'developments' : ...
'Yemen presents a potent combination of problems for policy-makers confronting the prospect of state failure in this strategically important Red Sea country. It is the poorest state in the Arab world, with high levels of unemployment, rapid population growth and dwindling water resources.
President Saleh faces an intermittent civil war in the north, a southern separatist movement and resurgent terrorist groups. Yemen's jihadi networks appear to be growing as operating conditions in Iraq and Saudi Arabia become more difficult.
The underlying drivers for future instability are economic. The state budget is heavily dependent on revenue from dwindling oil supplies. Yemen's window of opportunity to shape its own future and create a post-oil economy is narrowing.
Western governments need to work towards an effective regional approach with the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, in particular Saudi Arabia.
Future instability in Yemen could expand a lawless zone stretching from northern Kenya, through Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, to Saudi Arabia. Piracy, organized crime and violent jihad would escalate, with implications for the security of shipping routes, the transit of oil through the Suez Canal and the internal security of Yemen's neighbours.'
+
... oddly, perhaps, Ms Hill's 'indeprednet' analysis omits all mention of Saudi military 'adventures' in Yemen ... and ... etc ...
51
South Tyneside Stop the War / FACTS: what Mr Blair actually said BEFORE the illegal attack on Iraq
« on: December 13, 2009, 06:20:39 PM »
In Glasgow on 15 February 2003 (when the anti-war march was taking place in London)
Tony Blair was distorting reality with characteristic
kinds of word-twisting. This is what he actually said:
‘The moral case against war has a moral answer: it is the moral case
for removing Saddam. It is not the reason we act. That must be
according to the UN mandate on weapons of mass destruction. But
it is the reason, frankly, why if we do have to act we should do so with
a clear conscience.’
This was a deliberately unclear and issue obscuring statement by
Blair. With hindsight it can be understood more clearly.
As we now know, he did not have that United Nations mandate, and
he did not have real evidence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’, but
he was determined to back the American President George Bush in
the attack on Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
It is important for the anti-war movement to repeat as often as possible
that by any standard convention of international law it was illegal
for the American-British led forces to invade Iraq without a UN mandate
and to topple Saddam by force - however obnoxious he might
have been. This act broke standard conventions of international law
that exist to protect the integrity of nation states. It set a very danger
ous precedent. In future other powers are likely to attempt to justify
invasions of other nations and topplings of foreign governments of
which they do not approve by back-reference to the U.S.-U.K.-led
attack on Iraq in 2003.
And Blair must have known that what he and Bush were planning to
do was illegal - which was why he put out the smokescreen over
‘weapons of mass destruction’, and which is why, with that
smokescreen now blown away, he attempts to justify the war in terms
of the removal of the tyrant Saddam.
Saddam was a tyrant, yes, but it was illegal for the USA and UK
governments to topple him as they did. You do not fight tyranny
effectively by debasing the rule of law and acting like violent tyrants
yourself.
Tony Blair was distorting reality with characteristic
kinds of word-twisting. This is what he actually said:
‘The moral case against war has a moral answer: it is the moral case
for removing Saddam. It is not the reason we act. That must be
according to the UN mandate on weapons of mass destruction. But
it is the reason, frankly, why if we do have to act we should do so with
a clear conscience.’
This was a deliberately unclear and issue obscuring statement by
Blair. With hindsight it can be understood more clearly.
As we now know, he did not have that United Nations mandate, and
he did not have real evidence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’, but
he was determined to back the American President George Bush in
the attack on Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
It is important for the anti-war movement to repeat as often as possible
that by any standard convention of international law it was illegal
for the American-British led forces to invade Iraq without a UN mandate
and to topple Saddam by force - however obnoxious he might
have been. This act broke standard conventions of international law
that exist to protect the integrity of nation states. It set a very danger
ous precedent. In future other powers are likely to attempt to justify
invasions of other nations and topplings of foreign governments of
which they do not approve by back-reference to the U.S.-U.K.-led
attack on Iraq in 2003.
And Blair must have known that what he and Bush were planning to
do was illegal - which was why he put out the smokescreen over
‘weapons of mass destruction’, and which is why, with that
smokescreen now blown away, he attempts to justify the war in terms
of the removal of the tyrant Saddam.
Saddam was a tyrant, yes, but it was illegal for the USA and UK
governments to topple him as they did. You do not fight tyranny
effectively by debasing the rule of law and acting like violent tyrants
yourself.
52
South Tyneside Stop the War / Footage of Saturday 24_10_2009 March And Rally
« on: November 06, 2009, 03:04:16 PM »
Footage of Saturday 24_10_2009 March And Rally in London - filmed by Alan Trotter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwWNrksIPes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES4vbS9h4M4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OxdPnqi8XM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuHmrXvYc8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwWNrksIPes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES4vbS9h4M4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OxdPnqi8XM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuHmrXvYc8
53
South Tyneside Stop the War / Reasons The People Of South Shields Don't Need a 'Lecture' From Mr Mandelson
« on: October 18, 2009, 04:31:22 PM »
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and MP for South Shields David Miliband has invited his New Labour mentor 'Lord' Peter Mandelson, 'Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills' to deliver the annual 'South Shields Lecture' at Harton Technology College, Lisle Road, South Shields on Friday 23rd October 2009 at 7pm.
South Tyneside Stop the War Coalition is supporting a protest (between 6pm and 7.30pm) at the event on the theme 'Jobs Not Bombs' and to demand particularly an end to occupation of Afghanistan by NATO forces, including about 10,000 British troops.
South Tyneside Stop the War Coalition is supporting a protest (between 6pm and 7.30pm) at the event on the theme 'Jobs Not Bombs' and to demand particularly an end to occupation of Afghanistan by NATO forces, including about 10,000 British troops.
54
South Tyneside Stop the War / Forum: Questions We Could Consider
« on: October 01, 2009, 04:43:47 PM »
The American General in charge of NATO troops in Afghanistan - Stanley McChrystal - gave a speech in London today.
During the speech General McChrystal posed seven questions which he then attempted to answer:-
1) 'What is the right approach to use in Afghanistan?'
2) 'What is the environment we're operating in?'
3) 'What is the current situation?'
4) 'Who's winning?'
5) 'It's been 8 years, why isn't it better?'
6) 'Can we succeed?'
7) 'Why bother?'
+
Afghan war won't remain winnable forever: US commander
(AFP) – 2 hours ago
LONDON — The conflict in Afghanistan is deteriorating in some ways and will "not remain winnable indefinitely," the top US military commander in the country warned Thursday.
General Stanley McChrystal added that forces would be in a much stronger position once US President Barack Obama decides on troop levels in Afghanistan, while saying that it would be wrong to rush to make a decision.
"The situation is serious and I choose that word very, very carefully ... neither success nor failure can be taken for granted," said McChrystal, who has asked for up to 40,000 more troops to fight the Taliban.
"The situation is in some ways deteriorating but not in all ways," he told the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think-tank in London.
"Waiting does not prolong a favourable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely."
McChrystal, who is also the International Security Assistance Force commander in Afghanistan, warned in a report leaked last month that the conflict could be lost within a year without more troops.
He reportedly wants up to 40,000 more US troops in Afghanistan.
The US general said Obama led talks in the White House this week "very effectively" but declined to give any further details on the decision-making process.
"I think that is a necessary process we go through so we come to a clear decision... Once he makes that decision I think we'll be in a much stronger position," he said.
Asked if he was worried that the political debate was holding up military action, he said: "I think the more debate we have the healthier this is going to be."
"I don't think we have the luxury of going so fast we make the wrong decision," he added.
The White House says Obama will only decide on whether to accept McChrystal's request for more troops -- as part of a rigorous counter-insurgency push -- after first arriving at a new US strategy.
The process could take weeks, officials say, warning that past conflicts like the Vietnam war have shown the folly of throwing thousands of men into a fight that is not properly defined.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.
During the speech General McChrystal posed seven questions which he then attempted to answer:-
1) 'What is the right approach to use in Afghanistan?'
2) 'What is the environment we're operating in?'
3) 'What is the current situation?'
4) 'Who's winning?'
5) 'It's been 8 years, why isn't it better?'
6) 'Can we succeed?'
7) 'Why bother?'
+
Afghan war won't remain winnable forever: US commander
(AFP) – 2 hours ago
LONDON — The conflict in Afghanistan is deteriorating in some ways and will "not remain winnable indefinitely," the top US military commander in the country warned Thursday.
General Stanley McChrystal added that forces would be in a much stronger position once US President Barack Obama decides on troop levels in Afghanistan, while saying that it would be wrong to rush to make a decision.
"The situation is serious and I choose that word very, very carefully ... neither success nor failure can be taken for granted," said McChrystal, who has asked for up to 40,000 more troops to fight the Taliban.
"The situation is in some ways deteriorating but not in all ways," he told the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think-tank in London.
"Waiting does not prolong a favourable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely."
McChrystal, who is also the International Security Assistance Force commander in Afghanistan, warned in a report leaked last month that the conflict could be lost within a year without more troops.
He reportedly wants up to 40,000 more US troops in Afghanistan.
The US general said Obama led talks in the White House this week "very effectively" but declined to give any further details on the decision-making process.
"I think that is a necessary process we go through so we come to a clear decision... Once he makes that decision I think we'll be in a much stronger position," he said.
Asked if he was worried that the political debate was holding up military action, he said: "I think the more debate we have the healthier this is going to be."
"I don't think we have the luxury of going so fast we make the wrong decision," he added.
The White House says Obama will only decide on whether to accept McChrystal's request for more troops -- as part of a rigorous counter-insurgency push -- after first arriving at a new US strategy.
The process could take weeks, officials say, warning that past conflicts like the Vietnam war have shown the folly of throwing thousands of men into a fight that is not properly defined.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.
55
South Tyneside Stop the War / 'War Is A Racket'
« on: July 14, 2009, 03:19:40 PM »
Below is full text of the little booklet 'War Is A Racket' that has featured regularly in our weekly discussions.
I thought it might be useful to add a copy to our online archives.
+
(P.S. I presume I am not the only one to be deeply disturbed by the way BBC, etc, are using the bodies of the recently killed British soliders to stir up 'militaristic'/'nationalistic' sentiments - and other war-mongering propaganda purposes.
Particularly insidious is the way they are suggesting that 'respect' for the war dead is identical to 'support for the war mission'.
And there is also all the stuff about the alleged 'equipment deficiencies' being the main reasons for the soldiers' deaths - not the warmongering policies - which surely mostly serves the vested interests of the arms corporations, etc, which will make more profits from any 'equipment upgrades'.)
+
War Is A Racket
By Major General Smedley Butler
Contents
Chapter 1: War Is A Racket
Chapter 2: Who Makes The Profits?
Chapter 3: Who Pays The Bills?
Chapter 4: How To Smash This Racket!
Chapter 5: To Hell With War!
Smedley Darlington Butler
Born: West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881
Educated: Haverford School
Married: Ethel C. Peters, of Philadelphia, June 30, 1905
Awarded two congressional medals of honor:
capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914
capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917
Distinguished service medal, 1919
Major General - United States Marine Corps
Retired Oct. 1, 1931
On leave of absence to act as
director of Dept. of Safety, Philadelphia, 1932
Lecturer -- 1930's
Republican Candidate for Senate, 1932
Died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940
For more information about Major General Butler,
contact the United States Marine Corps.
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.
In the World War 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.
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?
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.
And what is this bill?
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.
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.
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.
The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] 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.
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.
Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?
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:
"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."
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.
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?
What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?
Yes, and what does it profit the nation?
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 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 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.
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.
CHAPTER TWO
Who Makes The Profits?
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.
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.
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:
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.
Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.
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 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 matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought -- and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 $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.
The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.
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.
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.
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.
Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.
CHAPTER THREE
Who Pays The Bills?
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 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.
But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But don't forget -- the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.
Up 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 [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.
Napoleon once said,
"All men are enamored of decorations . . . they positively hunger for them."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
But wait!
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.
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.
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!
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 daughters.
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.
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.
CHAPTER FOUR
How To Smash This Racket!
WELL, it's a racket, all right.
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.
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 lads in the trenches get.
Let the workers in these plants get the same wages -- all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers -- 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!
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.
Why shouldn't they?
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!
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.
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.
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.
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.
To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.
We must take the profit out of war.
We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.
We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.
CHAPTER FIVE
To Hell With War!
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.
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.
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.
Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?
Money.
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:
"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.
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.
So . . . "
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."
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.
And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.
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.
So...I say,
TO HELL WITH WAR!
I thought it might be useful to add a copy to our online archives.
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(P.S. I presume I am not the only one to be deeply disturbed by the way BBC, etc, are using the bodies of the recently killed British soliders to stir up 'militaristic'/'nationalistic' sentiments - and other war-mongering propaganda purposes.
Particularly insidious is the way they are suggesting that 'respect' for the war dead is identical to 'support for the war mission'.
And there is also all the stuff about the alleged 'equipment deficiencies' being the main reasons for the soldiers' deaths - not the warmongering policies - which surely mostly serves the vested interests of the arms corporations, etc, which will make more profits from any 'equipment upgrades'.)
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War Is A Racket
By Major General Smedley Butler
Contents
Chapter 1: War Is A Racket
Chapter 2: Who Makes The Profits?
Chapter 3: Who Pays The Bills?
Chapter 4: How To Smash This Racket!
Chapter 5: To Hell With War!
Smedley Darlington Butler
Born: West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881
Educated: Haverford School
Married: Ethel C. Peters, of Philadelphia, June 30, 1905
Awarded two congressional medals of honor:
capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914
capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917
Distinguished service medal, 1919
Major General - United States Marine Corps
Retired Oct. 1, 1931
On leave of absence to act as
director of Dept. of Safety, Philadelphia, 1932
Lecturer -- 1930's
Republican Candidate for Senate, 1932
Died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940
For more information about Major General Butler,
contact the United States Marine Corps.
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.
In the World War 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.
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?
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.
And what is this bill?
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.
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.
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.
The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] 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.
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.
Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?
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:
"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."
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.
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?
What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?
Yes, and what does it profit the nation?
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 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 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.
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.
CHAPTER TWO
Who Makes The Profits?
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.
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.
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:
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.
Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.
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 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 matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought -- and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 $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.
The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.
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.
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.
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.
Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.
CHAPTER THREE
Who Pays The Bills?
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 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.
But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But don't forget -- the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.
Up 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 [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.
Napoleon once said,
"All men are enamored of decorations . . . they positively hunger for them."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
But wait!
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.
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.
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!
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 daughters.
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.
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.
CHAPTER FOUR
How To Smash This Racket!
WELL, it's a racket, all right.
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.
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 lads in the trenches get.
Let the workers in these plants get the same wages -- all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers -- 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!
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.
Why shouldn't they?
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!
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.
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.
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.
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.
To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.
We must take the profit out of war.
We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.
We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.
CHAPTER FIVE
To Hell With War!
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.
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.
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.
Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?
Money.
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:
"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.
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.
So . . . "
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."
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.
And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.
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.
So...I say,
TO HELL WITH WAR!
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South Tyneside Stop the War / Those MPs Expenses Details In Full (Blankety Blank) 18 June 2009
« on: June 18, 2009, 02:21:42 PM »57
South Tyneside Stop the War / BBC (etc) Might Forget Gaza ... We Won't ...
« on: May 24, 2009, 04:45:53 PM »
You Tube footage of Saturday 16 May 'Remember Gaza' march (selections of speeches to follow later) - filmed by Alan Trotter ... boisterous and colourful ... filling gaps left by BBC (and just about every other mainstream media outlet) ...
http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjf2lRvcpGg
http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjf2lRvcpGg
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South Tyneside Stop the War / ... we counted 'em all in ... and we will count 'em all out ...
« on: May 14, 2009, 04:59:09 PM »
From the STSTWC Web Archive 'shit-list' of the 'Dirty 400' (or so) '(right)honourable' (sic) British MPs who voted for the illegal attack on Iraq in March 2003...
...
Elliot Morley (Scunthorpe)
...
Andrew Mackay (Bracknell)
Miss Julie Kirkbride (Bromsgrove) (aka Mrs Julie Mackay)
...
(to be continued ...)
...
Elliot Morley (Scunthorpe)
...
Andrew Mackay (Bracknell)
Miss Julie Kirkbride (Bromsgrove) (aka Mrs Julie Mackay)
...
(to be continued ...)
59
South Tyneside Stop the War / Against 'Demonization'
« on: April 05, 2009, 06:17:20 PM »
Transcript below - from STSTWC archives - provides
some contexts / alternative perspectives [of a sort
not much to be found in mainstream media] relating to
recent events re 'North Korea' / DPRK.
It records, as factually as possible, what was actually said by
DPRK envoys talking openly in North-East England.
Phil (a 'friend' of - but not an 'apologist' for - 'North Korea'/DPRK, which, the (unfriendly-seeming) BBC informs me today, 'has few friends')
On Thursday, 26 May 2005 Nader A-Naderi, Roger
Nettleship, Alan Newham and Philip Talbot, of South
Tyneside Stop The War Coalition, attended a meeting at
Newcastle University with Mr Ha Sin Guk, Second
Secretary of the Embassy of the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea [DPRK] in London, and Mr Ri Kwang
Nam, another member of the DPRK embassy staff.
Mr Ha [speaking in English] gave a talk in which he
started by speaking about the development of
diplomatic relations between Britain and the DPRK
since 2001, when the London embassy was established.
He said that no one from the DPRK embassy had been to
Newcastle before, or indeed to the North East – a very
important area of England. He spoke about the visit in
the afternoon to the Redhills Miners' Hall in Durham
and its great importance in the history of the working
class movement, and the rooms and banners that reflect
how the workers have lived and campaigned to defend
their rights.
He then said that because of articles published in the
newspapers many people misunderstand and mistrust the
DPRK on nuclear issues and on human rights abuse, and
are disinformed on the internal situation on the
Korean peninsula. Therefore, he said, he would like to
mention specific issues and then to give some answers
to people’s questions.
Mr Ha said that 15 June 2000, was a very important
occasion for Korea. This was the date of the historic
meeting between Chairman Kim Jong Il, from the north,
and the former President Kim Dae-jung, from the south,
in Pyongyang. This, he said, declared the
determination of the Korean people to unify their
country by themselves peacefully and democratically,
without interference from other forces, principally
the US. Mr Ha said that all the Korean people were
very excited by the fact that unification could come
finally in our generation. After the 15 June
declaration, very positive events had happenined. He
said there were all kinds of bi-lateral cabinet,
ministerial, economic, cultural and other meetings.
He said Korean families have been divided since the
Korean war [early 1950s], and millions of people have
not been able to meet their parents, sister or
brothers and, even though they live in the north and
south of Korea, they cannot exchange letters or
telephone each other. It is a big national tragedy
that because of the intervention in the Korean War,
the people cannot meet each other. Therefore, he said,
it is the entire Korean people’s natural desire to
unify their country
peacefully and democratically as soon as possible.
Mr Ha then said that following 11 September 2001, and
the Bush administration's declaration of a 'war on
terrorism', George W Bush pinpointed the DPRK as part
of an "axis of evil" and targeted it for pre-emptive
nuclear strike.
The first term of the Bush administration discouraged
the South Korean authorities from engagement with the
north, so this did not bode well for the historic
declaration due to this American intervention. In its
second term, the Bush administration resumed the
argument that the DPRK is once again an "outpost of
tyranny". He said they do this even though they
sometimes acknowledge the DPRK as a sovereign state
demanding that they come to the table on the nuclear
issue.
Speaking about the nuclear issue, Mr Ha said the DPRK
was determined to solve this issue and had already
declared that it wants to make the Korean peninsula
nuclear free. He said the DPRK had suspended uranium
enrichment and the development of its nuclear
programme for the talks. But the Bush administration
had destroyed the Framework Agreement which was signed
between the US and the DPRK under the Clinton
administration in 1994. In this agreement, the
Americans had guaranteed to build Light Water Reactors
to produce electricity in the DPRK, which in return
would suspend and would finally destroy all its
nuclear activities.
He said that in spite of their best efforts the DPRK
had been unable to solve the nuclear issue, mainly
because of the hostile policy of the US towards a
sovereign country the DPRK. So, he said, it was a very
difficult prospect to solve this issue unless the Bush
administration dropped their hostile policy towards
the DPRK.
He said that because of the rumours in the western
world, in Britain because of the disinformation put
out by the BBC and the newspapers, as well as in the
US, North Korea is blamed for pushing to protect its
nuclear weapons programme and other nuclear
activities.
Mr Ha suggested that a sovereign country has the right
to develop any kind of weapons, or forces, for its
defence. When such a superpower as the US threatens to
destroy their country, a people cannot accept such a
threat of nuclear war and they must have their own
forces for deterrence and to defend their sovereignty
and the system that they have chosen.
For centuries, Mr Ha said, Korea had been oppressed by
other countries like Japan. In three years during the
Korean war, the American side destroyed all of the
country. So, he said, people’s feelings are very
strong that they will never be occupied again and
oppressed by foreign forces.
Mr Ha said that the US still has 43,000 occupying
troops in south Korea and more than 1,000 nuclear
weapons stationed there. Therefore, the DPRK cannot
live peacefully without any preparations or
development of deterrent forces to confront the
American threat. So, he said, the people of the DPRK
are determined to defend their sovereign rights to
fight against possible American intervention.
Mr Ha then stressed that whilst he wanted to clarify
the background to the "nuclear issue", it is also the
case that the DPRK would like to make the Korean
peninsula a nuclear free zone. He said, therefore,
that if the circumstances are met and America drops
its hostile policy and has genuine intentions to show
us, to negotiate the fundamental issues on the Korean
peninsula, the DPRK is ready to go to the table at any
time, whatever the format of the negotiations.
He said that the DPRK wants to solve the outstanding
issues such as the nuclear issue and other related
issues. He said that if the American side listens to
our concerns we are also ready to listen to their
concerns. If both sides trust each other and drop
their suspicions and hostile policy then we think
there are possibilities.
He said that the DPRK has already shown in February
2005 that the country will defend itself against
American nuclear threat and that it will not go to the
six-party negotiations unless America has shown
genuine intention to solve this issue.
Concluding his remarks, Mr Ha said that on the 5th
anniversary of the joint North-South Declaration there
will be meetings held in Pyongyang and Seoul, with
celebrations in Pyongyang attended by representatives
from authorities and organisations from north and
south Korea and organisations from all over the world.
He then pointed out that Kim Jong Il is the National
Defence Commission Chairman of the DPRK, the leader
guiding the party and country, and that 19 June would
be the 41st anniversary of the commencement of his
work in the Central Committee of the Workers Party of
Korea.
Mr Ha and Mr Ri then answered questions.
The following are some of the remarks made by them in
the question and answer session:
Speaking about the allegations of famine in the DPRK,
Mr Ha said that there were many rumours in the western
mass media that 3 million people died during the
famine. He said that while this was quite false, they
are not hiding that there have been some problems and
difficulties and shortages of food. He said that from
1994-5 there were consecutive natural disasters of
flood and drought in all of the north of Korea.
Therefore, he said, our agricultural production
dropped rapidly. He mentioned the added factors of the
economic sanctions and blockade by the Americans and
that the socialist countries had collapsed. Before
this calamity, the system in the DPRK had been that
the government distributed food – mainly rice and corn
– but with this situation they were not able to
distribute the same proportion of food, and therefore
some families suffered to get proper food and there
were some difficulties. He said they had called this
period "the arduous march" because the society lacked
food and the economy lacked raw materials, especially
lack of electricity. DPRK had suffered this period for
five or six years he said, the hardest period in our
nation’s history to date, but now we have overcome
these difficulties, and food production has improved
radically and there is no famine at this moment
although there were still some food shortages. So they
had appealed to the world to donate food to their
country he said, and many bodies as the United Nations
World Food Programme have donated large amounts of
food and medicines, and many international
organisations are operating in Pyongyang and helping
us to provide the food. He said that the lack of food
and protein affected some elderly people and some
babies, possibly causing some deaths, but that 3
million people died, as the western media say, with
starvation in the whole of the country, is simply not
true.
He said that they don’t hide that this was a very
difficult period for 10 years which they have now
gradually overcome. From 2002 they have changed and
improved their economic management introducing some
farmer markets to the commodity market. They have
given the initiative to the cooperative farms to farm
more themselves so that the largest sector of the
economy, the agricultural sector, is gradually
improving. But, at the same time, they are still
cooperating with other countries for assistance and
sustainable development he concluded.
Asked about the geo-political situation and the aims
of the US in the region Mr Ha said that the DPRK had
lived with economic sanctions for over half a century.
He said the US regards the Korean peninsula as of
strategic importance to achieve American influence in
this very important area because the Korean peninsula
is surrounded with large countries. China has the
largest population in the world, Japan is the second
biggest economic power in the world and Russia is the
biggest country in the world with regard to territory.
With that, the Korean peninsula is in the middle of
the three countries. He said that the US wants the
Korean peninsula as their pro-American state to deter
and to influence China, Russia and this area. He said
they want the Korean peninsula as their own back yard.
Therefore, he said, the US wants to create every day
some nuclear issues, or on another day some
allegations of human rights abuse as a way of
provocation to keep their military presence in south
Korea. So, he said, if there is no confrontation, if
there is a peaceful situation there, then there is no
justification or argument for the US to keep their
military presence in south Korea. Of course, he said,
the US is cooperating now with China and Russia but
still China and Russia are their strategic enemy in
the long term. So, the US wants to maintain its
influence in this area but they want the Korean
peninsula as their forward base.
Speaking further about the nuclear issue, Mr Ha said
that because the US has declared the DPRK as a nuclear
pre-targeted country, the question arises as to how
the country can be defended from these huge military
arsenals? He said they only accused Iraq of having
weapons of mass destruction as an excuse to invade and
occupy Iraq. Therefore the DPRK has already proclaimed
that they have a nuclear deterrent.
Mr Ri then added that the nuclear issue is not the
main issue for the US. The only issue for the US was
to overthrow the socialist system in the DPRK in what
they call regime change. He then went on to detail
evidence the US provided themselves for this
conclusion.
Asked a question about China, Mr Ha said they are
their friendly neighbours and historically they have
had good relations with China and Russia. He said that
since Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule
in 1945, China has supported Korea and we have
supported China, and he went on to speak about their
support in the 6-party talks.
Answering a question about unification, Mr Ha said
that before 2000 there were bad feelings among the
people of south Korea about the north because of the
strong propaganda in south Korean media and newspapers
and under the American influence for more than fifty
years. However, since the historic meeting in
Pyongyang and the North South Declaration there have
been long talks with journalists of the south Korean
newspapers and the realisation that the north Koreans
are normal human beings! There have been dramatic
changes in the opinions of the south Korean people. Mr
Ha said that the Korean people have the same language
and a common history and the realisation has been
growing that we can now live peacefully together. He
said that the south Koreans don’t want to give up
their own political system and their own ideas. He
said this was the same for the north Koreans. He
explained that unification will only come about by
creating a confederation of the two Koreas that
respected the two political and economic systems. He
said that the economic cooperation between North and
South was going well and there had been some close
contact. He said that now tens of thousands of
tourists were being sent to the DPRK. However, he
warned that the
Americans don’t want this to go well and have no
intention to facilitate peaceful unification on the
Korean peninsula.
Answering a question about the apparent policy of the
British government to use its diplomatic relations to
demonise the DPRK as an "outpost of tyranny", Mr Ha
said that it is true 'they' [the British authorities]
want to have 'critical engagement' with 'us' [DPRK].
They have diplomatic relations with us, so why should
this mean 'critical engagement'? he asked. He said
that DPRK had sent many high-ranking delegations from
their side to visit Britain to promote diplomatic
relations – the Speaker had visited Britain, the
Deputy Foreign Minister had visited three times, as
well as the Prime Minister. From the UK side, only a
Minister of State in the last year had for the first
time visited the DPRK to discuss a number of issues,
but he had made a great show of concern about alleged
human rights abuse. Mr Ha said that it is completely
unfair that Britain, or other visiting countries, wish
to force them to follow the agenda and example of the
western world. He said each country is a sovereign
state, and has its own system and its own traditions.
How can they follow a British standard and or allow
Britain to regulate such things? He said that each
country has its own sovereign right to make people
more free and give people more democracy and realise
more harmony in society in its own way. He said all
systems and rules and regulations emerge from the
people’s desire and intentions and their traditions.
Mr Ha said that these visitors don’t care what our
people think, what their country’s situation is but
only they see the human rights situation in Korea with
their own views and their own standards. Mr Ha said
this is a blind policy. He said they must see it in
the context of historical background and cultural
traditions. He said that Korea is divided between
North and South and always threatened and pressured
from the American side, creating a dangerous
situation. The DPRK cannot only give the individual
rights and freedom but must think first of the
society, first of the state and then individual
interests. They are facing the threat of nuclear war
from the US, so how can they say that there should be
only individual freedom? He said the individual
interest should be combined with the state survival
because without the state how can individual people
make themselves exist freely if their country becomes
a colony again? Mr Ha said that under Japanese
colonial rule we cannot say anything of human rights
at that time because the people were oppressed by the
Japanese. He said they don’t look at the rights and
freedoms that exist now in the DPRK, but say that
there are no political rights and freedoms. They do
not look at the historical background and our
political situation, he said. He said we must put the
national interest first, but must make all the
society, all of the people, more happy he concluded.
some contexts / alternative perspectives [of a sort
not much to be found in mainstream media] relating to
recent events re 'North Korea' / DPRK.
It records, as factually as possible, what was actually said by
DPRK envoys talking openly in North-East England.
Phil (a 'friend' of - but not an 'apologist' for - 'North Korea'/DPRK, which, the (unfriendly-seeming) BBC informs me today, 'has few friends')
On Thursday, 26 May 2005 Nader A-Naderi, Roger
Nettleship, Alan Newham and Philip Talbot, of South
Tyneside Stop The War Coalition, attended a meeting at
Newcastle University with Mr Ha Sin Guk, Second
Secretary of the Embassy of the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea [DPRK] in London, and Mr Ri Kwang
Nam, another member of the DPRK embassy staff.
Mr Ha [speaking in English] gave a talk in which he
started by speaking about the development of
diplomatic relations between Britain and the DPRK
since 2001, when the London embassy was established.
He said that no one from the DPRK embassy had been to
Newcastle before, or indeed to the North East – a very
important area of England. He spoke about the visit in
the afternoon to the Redhills Miners' Hall in Durham
and its great importance in the history of the working
class movement, and the rooms and banners that reflect
how the workers have lived and campaigned to defend
their rights.
He then said that because of articles published in the
newspapers many people misunderstand and mistrust the
DPRK on nuclear issues and on human rights abuse, and
are disinformed on the internal situation on the
Korean peninsula. Therefore, he said, he would like to
mention specific issues and then to give some answers
to people’s questions.
Mr Ha said that 15 June 2000, was a very important
occasion for Korea. This was the date of the historic
meeting between Chairman Kim Jong Il, from the north,
and the former President Kim Dae-jung, from the south,
in Pyongyang. This, he said, declared the
determination of the Korean people to unify their
country by themselves peacefully and democratically,
without interference from other forces, principally
the US. Mr Ha said that all the Korean people were
very excited by the fact that unification could come
finally in our generation. After the 15 June
declaration, very positive events had happenined. He
said there were all kinds of bi-lateral cabinet,
ministerial, economic, cultural and other meetings.
He said Korean families have been divided since the
Korean war [early 1950s], and millions of people have
not been able to meet their parents, sister or
brothers and, even though they live in the north and
south of Korea, they cannot exchange letters or
telephone each other. It is a big national tragedy
that because of the intervention in the Korean War,
the people cannot meet each other. Therefore, he said,
it is the entire Korean people’s natural desire to
unify their country
peacefully and democratically as soon as possible.
Mr Ha then said that following 11 September 2001, and
the Bush administration's declaration of a 'war on
terrorism', George W Bush pinpointed the DPRK as part
of an "axis of evil" and targeted it for pre-emptive
nuclear strike.
The first term of the Bush administration discouraged
the South Korean authorities from engagement with the
north, so this did not bode well for the historic
declaration due to this American intervention. In its
second term, the Bush administration resumed the
argument that the DPRK is once again an "outpost of
tyranny". He said they do this even though they
sometimes acknowledge the DPRK as a sovereign state
demanding that they come to the table on the nuclear
issue.
Speaking about the nuclear issue, Mr Ha said the DPRK
was determined to solve this issue and had already
declared that it wants to make the Korean peninsula
nuclear free. He said the DPRK had suspended uranium
enrichment and the development of its nuclear
programme for the talks. But the Bush administration
had destroyed the Framework Agreement which was signed
between the US and the DPRK under the Clinton
administration in 1994. In this agreement, the
Americans had guaranteed to build Light Water Reactors
to produce electricity in the DPRK, which in return
would suspend and would finally destroy all its
nuclear activities.
He said that in spite of their best efforts the DPRK
had been unable to solve the nuclear issue, mainly
because of the hostile policy of the US towards a
sovereign country the DPRK. So, he said, it was a very
difficult prospect to solve this issue unless the Bush
administration dropped their hostile policy towards
the DPRK.
He said that because of the rumours in the western
world, in Britain because of the disinformation put
out by the BBC and the newspapers, as well as in the
US, North Korea is blamed for pushing to protect its
nuclear weapons programme and other nuclear
activities.
Mr Ha suggested that a sovereign country has the right
to develop any kind of weapons, or forces, for its
defence. When such a superpower as the US threatens to
destroy their country, a people cannot accept such a
threat of nuclear war and they must have their own
forces for deterrence and to defend their sovereignty
and the system that they have chosen.
For centuries, Mr Ha said, Korea had been oppressed by
other countries like Japan. In three years during the
Korean war, the American side destroyed all of the
country. So, he said, people’s feelings are very
strong that they will never be occupied again and
oppressed by foreign forces.
Mr Ha said that the US still has 43,000 occupying
troops in south Korea and more than 1,000 nuclear
weapons stationed there. Therefore, the DPRK cannot
live peacefully without any preparations or
development of deterrent forces to confront the
American threat. So, he said, the people of the DPRK
are determined to defend their sovereign rights to
fight against possible American intervention.
Mr Ha then stressed that whilst he wanted to clarify
the background to the "nuclear issue", it is also the
case that the DPRK would like to make the Korean
peninsula a nuclear free zone. He said, therefore,
that if the circumstances are met and America drops
its hostile policy and has genuine intentions to show
us, to negotiate the fundamental issues on the Korean
peninsula, the DPRK is ready to go to the table at any
time, whatever the format of the negotiations.
He said that the DPRK wants to solve the outstanding
issues such as the nuclear issue and other related
issues. He said that if the American side listens to
our concerns we are also ready to listen to their
concerns. If both sides trust each other and drop
their suspicions and hostile policy then we think
there are possibilities.
He said that the DPRK has already shown in February
2005 that the country will defend itself against
American nuclear threat and that it will not go to the
six-party negotiations unless America has shown
genuine intention to solve this issue.
Concluding his remarks, Mr Ha said that on the 5th
anniversary of the joint North-South Declaration there
will be meetings held in Pyongyang and Seoul, with
celebrations in Pyongyang attended by representatives
from authorities and organisations from north and
south Korea and organisations from all over the world.
He then pointed out that Kim Jong Il is the National
Defence Commission Chairman of the DPRK, the leader
guiding the party and country, and that 19 June would
be the 41st anniversary of the commencement of his
work in the Central Committee of the Workers Party of
Korea.
Mr Ha and Mr Ri then answered questions.
The following are some of the remarks made by them in
the question and answer session:
Speaking about the allegations of famine in the DPRK,
Mr Ha said that there were many rumours in the western
mass media that 3 million people died during the
famine. He said that while this was quite false, they
are not hiding that there have been some problems and
difficulties and shortages of food. He said that from
1994-5 there were consecutive natural disasters of
flood and drought in all of the north of Korea.
Therefore, he said, our agricultural production
dropped rapidly. He mentioned the added factors of the
economic sanctions and blockade by the Americans and
that the socialist countries had collapsed. Before
this calamity, the system in the DPRK had been that
the government distributed food – mainly rice and corn
– but with this situation they were not able to
distribute the same proportion of food, and therefore
some families suffered to get proper food and there
were some difficulties. He said they had called this
period "the arduous march" because the society lacked
food and the economy lacked raw materials, especially
lack of electricity. DPRK had suffered this period for
five or six years he said, the hardest period in our
nation’s history to date, but now we have overcome
these difficulties, and food production has improved
radically and there is no famine at this moment
although there were still some food shortages. So they
had appealed to the world to donate food to their
country he said, and many bodies as the United Nations
World Food Programme have donated large amounts of
food and medicines, and many international
organisations are operating in Pyongyang and helping
us to provide the food. He said that the lack of food
and protein affected some elderly people and some
babies, possibly causing some deaths, but that 3
million people died, as the western media say, with
starvation in the whole of the country, is simply not
true.
He said that they don’t hide that this was a very
difficult period for 10 years which they have now
gradually overcome. From 2002 they have changed and
improved their economic management introducing some
farmer markets to the commodity market. They have
given the initiative to the cooperative farms to farm
more themselves so that the largest sector of the
economy, the agricultural sector, is gradually
improving. But, at the same time, they are still
cooperating with other countries for assistance and
sustainable development he concluded.
Asked about the geo-political situation and the aims
of the US in the region Mr Ha said that the DPRK had
lived with economic sanctions for over half a century.
He said the US regards the Korean peninsula as of
strategic importance to achieve American influence in
this very important area because the Korean peninsula
is surrounded with large countries. China has the
largest population in the world, Japan is the second
biggest economic power in the world and Russia is the
biggest country in the world with regard to territory.
With that, the Korean peninsula is in the middle of
the three countries. He said that the US wants the
Korean peninsula as their pro-American state to deter
and to influence China, Russia and this area. He said
they want the Korean peninsula as their own back yard.
Therefore, he said, the US wants to create every day
some nuclear issues, or on another day some
allegations of human rights abuse as a way of
provocation to keep their military presence in south
Korea. So, he said, if there is no confrontation, if
there is a peaceful situation there, then there is no
justification or argument for the US to keep their
military presence in south Korea. Of course, he said,
the US is cooperating now with China and Russia but
still China and Russia are their strategic enemy in
the long term. So, the US wants to maintain its
influence in this area but they want the Korean
peninsula as their forward base.
Speaking further about the nuclear issue, Mr Ha said
that because the US has declared the DPRK as a nuclear
pre-targeted country, the question arises as to how
the country can be defended from these huge military
arsenals? He said they only accused Iraq of having
weapons of mass destruction as an excuse to invade and
occupy Iraq. Therefore the DPRK has already proclaimed
that they have a nuclear deterrent.
Mr Ri then added that the nuclear issue is not the
main issue for the US. The only issue for the US was
to overthrow the socialist system in the DPRK in what
they call regime change. He then went on to detail
evidence the US provided themselves for this
conclusion.
Asked a question about China, Mr Ha said they are
their friendly neighbours and historically they have
had good relations with China and Russia. He said that
since Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule
in 1945, China has supported Korea and we have
supported China, and he went on to speak about their
support in the 6-party talks.
Answering a question about unification, Mr Ha said
that before 2000 there were bad feelings among the
people of south Korea about the north because of the
strong propaganda in south Korean media and newspapers
and under the American influence for more than fifty
years. However, since the historic meeting in
Pyongyang and the North South Declaration there have
been long talks with journalists of the south Korean
newspapers and the realisation that the north Koreans
are normal human beings! There have been dramatic
changes in the opinions of the south Korean people. Mr
Ha said that the Korean people have the same language
and a common history and the realisation has been
growing that we can now live peacefully together. He
said that the south Koreans don’t want to give up
their own political system and their own ideas. He
said this was the same for the north Koreans. He
explained that unification will only come about by
creating a confederation of the two Koreas that
respected the two political and economic systems. He
said that the economic cooperation between North and
South was going well and there had been some close
contact. He said that now tens of thousands of
tourists were being sent to the DPRK. However, he
warned that the
Americans don’t want this to go well and have no
intention to facilitate peaceful unification on the
Korean peninsula.
Answering a question about the apparent policy of the
British government to use its diplomatic relations to
demonise the DPRK as an "outpost of tyranny", Mr Ha
said that it is true 'they' [the British authorities]
want to have 'critical engagement' with 'us' [DPRK].
They have diplomatic relations with us, so why should
this mean 'critical engagement'? he asked. He said
that DPRK had sent many high-ranking delegations from
their side to visit Britain to promote diplomatic
relations – the Speaker had visited Britain, the
Deputy Foreign Minister had visited three times, as
well as the Prime Minister. From the UK side, only a
Minister of State in the last year had for the first
time visited the DPRK to discuss a number of issues,
but he had made a great show of concern about alleged
human rights abuse. Mr Ha said that it is completely
unfair that Britain, or other visiting countries, wish
to force them to follow the agenda and example of the
western world. He said each country is a sovereign
state, and has its own system and its own traditions.
How can they follow a British standard and or allow
Britain to regulate such things? He said that each
country has its own sovereign right to make people
more free and give people more democracy and realise
more harmony in society in its own way. He said all
systems and rules and regulations emerge from the
people’s desire and intentions and their traditions.
Mr Ha said that these visitors don’t care what our
people think, what their country’s situation is but
only they see the human rights situation in Korea with
their own views and their own standards. Mr Ha said
this is a blind policy. He said they must see it in
the context of historical background and cultural
traditions. He said that Korea is divided between
North and South and always threatened and pressured
from the American side, creating a dangerous
situation. The DPRK cannot only give the individual
rights and freedom but must think first of the
society, first of the state and then individual
interests. They are facing the threat of nuclear war
from the US, so how can they say that there should be
only individual freedom? He said the individual
interest should be combined with the state survival
because without the state how can individual people
make themselves exist freely if their country becomes
a colony again? Mr Ha said that under Japanese
colonial rule we cannot say anything of human rights
at that time because the people were oppressed by the
Japanese. He said they don’t look at the rights and
freedoms that exist now in the DPRK, but say that
there are no political rights and freedoms. They do
not look at the historical background and our
political situation, he said. He said we must put the
national interest first, but must make all the
society, all of the people, more happy he concluded.
60
South Tyneside Stop the War / SilenceIsShameVolume10_DraftArticle
« on: March 24, 2009, 04:19:45 PM »
'Modern (Re-)Arrangements' & 'Blocking Pro-War Governments' - Notes Towards A Sketchy Review
By Phil Talbot
+
Tuesday 23 March 2009
As I was sitting writing these notes, the background mainstream media chatter (as represented by the BBC) included yet another government-inspired 'al Qaeda' bogey-men scare story (with 'dirty bomb' nightmare fantasies added, as if as a bonus distraction from bankers' bonuses).
They were also plugging a ridiculous seeming (to me) scheme to recruit and train '60,000' (or make up your own number - all government numbers being dubious these days) amateur spooks to counter (the supposed) 'dangers of radicalization'.
How these '60,000' amateur spies were to be trained in 'radical spotting' was for some reason not reported by the BBC - though one can only imagine them using the standard Muslim bogey-men mug-shots (which we have all seen all too often).
People who questioned any of this stuff, it was suggested, were 'terrorists' or 'terrorist supporters' or 'dangerous radicals', or 'nutty conspiracy theorists' - or else 'well-meaning but naive trojan horses' (who would let in the 'bogey people').
Also on this day the British police announced they had done some early morning door knocks and arrested some 'violent extremists' in connection with events at protests in Britain earlier this year against the mass murder of Palestinian civilians by Israeli troops in Gaza.
The BBC, parroting police statements rather than actuallly reporting, mentioned reported injuries to police officers at these events, but not injuries sufferred by protestors - even though, in fact, evidence strongly suggests that more protesters were injured by police than police were injured by protestors at the Gaza protests.
Such 'dubious' - and perhaps even 'outright dishonest' - stuff reinforced my belief/fear that the 'establishment' (for want of a better expression) having nearly bankrupted the economy and being almost bankrupt of ideas, could think of nothing better to do than to spread distracting scare stories, narrow the range of debate - and stifle 'opposition' by all available means (while still prentending to be 'democratic').
In the Stop The War movement - which is not ashamed to call itself 'radical' - we work with this sort of 'mass distracting' babble going on in the mainstrem media backgound - while we are trying to do something different ... and more positive ...
In fact we have already championed the idea of 'democratic intelligence' - which is not a '60,000' force of volunteer spies snooping on 'radicals' on behalf of the state, but the pooling - by better informed debate - of the millions of human intelligences - of the majority of people who are anti-war and against 'terrorism' (including 'state terrorism').
+
One of the features of the modern day anti-war movement, and this is increasingly apparent in the South Tyneside Stop the War Coalition and many other anti-war groups in North-East England, is the growing awareness that the anti-war struggle cannot be continued in the old way and that a fresh approach is required.
This is not just some future prospect, but something actually in the making - a genuine 'work in progress', as it were.
Of course it is not easy - especially in a world in which the elected British government never stops attempting to narrow the range of public discourse ... and even attempting to make 'being radical' a forbidden concept (or 'thought crime').
One of the greatest achievements of the anti-war work so far is that up and down the country there are numerous genuinely radical and free-thinking groups of activists thinking in unorthodox and fresh ways.
In South Tyneside, and other districts in the region, there are now anti-war groups where nothing existed before.
We are 'radicals', but we are not 'terrorists', nor 'terrorist supporters' - we are opponents of 'terrorism', especially organized 'state terror'.
Numbers of activists locally are still small, relative to the numbers that become involved in the movement when the threat of war is greatest, but it is clear that a shift is taking place.
Things are shifting from a conception of the anti-war movement as a pressure group aimed at persuading those in power to cease their warmongering activities to a conception of the movement that engages in serious discussion and actions as to how the people can empower themselves and to unite around a programme to defeat the warmongers once and for all.
This first became evident in the small conference that the South Tyneside Stop the War Coalition organised at the beginning of the occupation of Iraq by US and Britain in 2003.
One speaker reflected the seriousness of the work that our movement is undertaking for the future of humanity when he said: 'Wars of the 21st century are in fact an all out assault on the rights of people around the world. “Rights” that must remain sacred if we are to subscribe to notions of civilised transaction, with a view to stability of our societies, ultimately leading to a life free from molestation, threat, and danger for all the human family."
Another suggested: 'People have to do their own thinking and organising and create new arrangements to give this movement for peace permanent life.'
Another pointed to developing alternative bodies such the Peoples Assembly along a truly democratic path that empowered people from below and also standing anti-war candidates in the public elections.
The important thing is that today people are seriously searching for ways to develop the movement in order to defeat the warmongers.
There is also a growing realisation that the key to achieve this is to unleash the people's initiative by organising in such a way that the people consciously participate in decision-making at every level.
+
Still Waiting For David to do the Decent Thing ...
Letter to Shields Gazette, 04 December 2003
In a letter to the Shields Gazette on Wednesday, 3rd December, Mr. G Smith of Kensington Court, South Shields, called for the resignation of David Miliband (MP for South Shields and Minister of State for School Standards) because of his support for tuition fees.
We consider that there are also other grounds for Mr. Miliband’s resignation. In March this year, shortly before the war with Iraq, the Gazette asked him a number of questions on the Iraqi crisis, one of which was “Is there any scenario in this crisis where you may resign on principle as Clare Short and Robin Cook have threatened to do?” Miliband stated that his “bottom lines are that the Government acts in accordance with international law, pursue international cooperation at every stage……” Shortly afterwards, Britain joined with the US in a war against Iraq, without a fresh UN resolution (which it had tried, and failed, because of international opposition, to obtain), and thus condemned by the great majority of international lawyers as illegal. Both Clare Short and Robin Cook resigned. We still await any action by David Miliband, or even a defence of his conduct. Perhaps voters will remember this at the next General Election.
Alan Newham and John Tinmouth
+
In February 2009 South Tyneside Stop the War Coalition continued its work with a discussion forum on the topic: 'Block the Plans For Another Pro-War Government'.
The forum focussed on making preparations to block new arrangements for another pro-war government in Britain and, more postitively, on our agenda of an anti-war government and standing anti-war candidates.
Despite President Obama being elected in America on the promise of ‘change’ there are many reasons for fearing new forms of pro-war government here and abroad.
The present pro-war British government has in recent months enabled the Israeli state to launch a murderous offensive against the civilians of Gaza.
Our local MP David Miliband, who is also the British foreign secretary, has played a key role in defending the Israeli zionists' war crimes against the Palestinians.
He also visited the Congo on behalf of the British government to support stepped up interference in Africa.
Mr Miliband and his friends have also plans for further militarisation in Afganistan and Pakistan.
And they have ongoing plans to suppress the population here - using the economic crisis (which they have responsibity for) to futher privatize public services, further impose economic bondage on people, while they continue to protect the wealth and interests of the very rich.
We have all seen how they are nationalizing debt and privatizing profit - allowing the rich to get richer (and escape all responsibility for the present economic crisis), while everyone else gets poorer.
All of these reasons increase the danger of more wars - and should encourage people bring forward their own anti-war candidates and build on their experience and make preparations to block the plan to elect another pro-war government.
+
In our work, South Tyneside Stop The War Coalition keeps in mind a simple (seeming) proposition: 'A World Without War Is Possible'.
To 'knowing' and 'worldly wise' people - who might also be described as 'cynics' (such as those in charge of the New Labour Party and 'New' Conservative Party, and too many others) - this is 'hopelessly naive unworldly idealism'.
In response to such 'cynicism', we might modify our 'simple' proposition to: 'A Genuinely Anti-War British Government Is Possible'
The carpers might sneer back words to the effect of: '... aren't we all anti-war? ... or rather wouldn't we all be against war ... if THEY - THE ENEMY - weren't such a THREAT to OUR WAY-OF-LIFE ... WE WANT PEACE! ... THEY DO NOT! ... so unfortunately ... WE have to go to war with THEM ...'
And so 'unfortunately' ... to such people as Mr David Miliband, a self-proclaimed 'progressive' (sic) New Labour Foreign Secretary, would have it ... 'We HAD to invade Iraq ... and we now HAVE to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan ... and we HAVE to ... etc etc etc ...'
Faced with such 'spinning gimmicks'... it is useful to back-track ... return to the facts ... (not mere speculations) ... of Mr Miliband's own record in his 'home' South Shields constituency.
When he was parachuted in by the New Labour machine, against the wishes of the local Labour Party, he was presented to the local people as 'the Bright Young Man' of 'modern' New Labour. His 'intelligence' was spun to the people at every possible opportunity. Some even believed such spin.
As a matter of fact, this 'intelligent Bright Young Thing' of New Labour has proved himself spectacularly unintelligent in some significant respects.
As a matter of fact, early in 2003, before the invasion of Iraq, Mr Miliband was asked a straight question by his local newspaper, the Shields Gazette, to which he gave a straight answer (which he has ever since wanted forgotten).
He was asked whether there was 'overwhelming evidence' that Iraq had 'weapons of mass destruction'.
He said, without qualification: 'yes' (there was 'overwhelming evidence').
This was a false statement. Either he was lying, or he did not know what he was talking about.
To repeat, on 15 March 2003 the present British Foreign Secretary told the Shields Gazette that 'yes' there was ‘overwhelming evidence' that Iraq had 'weapons of mass destruction'.
He has never had the honesty or decency to concede that he was mistaken - nor to retract his gross over-statement.
He further told the Gazette as reported on 15 March 2003: ‘A week ago in New York the Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix published a 170-page dossier that detailed Iraqi stockpiles of weapons of banned material that could be used for weapons of mass destruction. This includes athrax and nerve gas which has been missing since the 1990 Gulf War.’
He has never conceded that this was a distortion of Mr Blix’s careful and thoughtful report to the United Nations - and nor has he acknowledged what Mr Blix maintained, then and since, that ‘unaccounted for’ ('weapons of mass destruction') material does not mean the same thing as ‘still existing’ material.
When a Foreign Secretary has behaved in such a reality-distorting way, he does not deserve trust or respect.
In our reply to Mr Miliband's statement of 15 March 2003, which was published in the Gazette a few days later, we said:
‘In June 2002 the Director of the International Atomic Energy Authority, Dr Mohamed El Baradei, wrote “There are no indications that Iraq has nuclear weapons-usable material of the practical capabilities to produce them.” Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter claims that most chemical-biological weapons were destroyed along with their production facilities during the 1990s. Ritter states that “liquid bulk anthrax, even under ideal storage conditions, germinates in three years, becoming useless.” So, if the hidden weapons exist, it may be their numbers would be small and most probably redundant. At present we see no “overwhelming evidence”.
Mr Miliband (now with all the resources of the British Foreign Office behind him) has never had the guts or decency to acknowledge that the statement of our small town anti-war group was a more honest and accurate appraisal of the then available evidence than his own at that time.
He hoped it would all be forgotten.
It has not been forgotten.
It is illustrative of the arrogant elitist contempt New Labourites like Mr Miliband actually have for the 'intelligence' of the people of their 'home' constituencies.
With the fog of the false 'weapons of mass destrustion' claims blown away by reality, Mr Miliband and his New Labour cronies attempted to justify the illegal attack on Iraq by reference to getting rid of the tyrant Saddam Hussein.
Unfortunately the 'intelligent' Mr Miliband did not seem to know much about Saddam - or the rest of modern Iraq - which is one of the reasons the whole enterprize has been a literally bloody disaster.
In a statement of principles first published in 1997 and signed by, among others, Dick Cheney, the Bushite U.S. Vice President, Donald Rumsfeld, the Bushite U.S. Defence Secretary and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz - this group calls on Americans to support an increase military spending and attempts to ‘rally support for American global leadership’.
Mr Miliband seemed happy to be a supporter of this NeoCon project - which was not in the best interests of Britain and the wider world.
The invasion of Iraq was an example of a new aggressive style of American imperialism - which, at best, Mr Miliband tamely supported, at worst he actively supported - and the world is a much more dangerous place as a result.
+
David Miliband: Ignorant Fool? and/Or Dangerous War-Monger? (Or The School Minister's School-boyish's Howler)
In the Shields Gazette, Saturday, 16 August, Mr Miliband, then minister for 'school standards' was reported as having responded to an open letter we had written to him.
His reported response included the following statement attributed directly to his mouth: ‘Saddam was in power for over 40 years, ...’
Question for general review: as a matter of fact, how long was Saddam in power in Iraq?
More matters of fact: In 2003 David Miliband M.P. was the British Government’s ‘schools standards’ minister. He has a first class honours degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University. He was a friend and ally of the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair - and formerly part of the PM’s team of personal advisers inside 10 Downing Street - and one would assume that he has fairly high level access to the very latest ‘intelligence’ reports.
Question: should not the British people be entitled to expect from their ‘school standards’ minister - who has a high standard of tax-funded education himself, and a privileged access to up-to-date ‘intelligence’ - a better informed understanding of basic matters of historical fact?
In other words, should they not be entitled to expect that their ‘school standards’ minister has a better awareness of how long Saddam was actually in power in Iraq?
As if as a reward for getting that sort of 'international intelligence' so wrong, Mr Miliband was promoted to Foreign Secretary - and seriously touted by his friends in the mainstream media as a future Prime Minister.
During his time as British Foreign Secretary Mr Miliband seems to have been keener to be seen 'acting tough' (or warmongering in an adolescent manner) rather than done responsible and respectable diplomacy.
He has been spotted on television screens ... picking fights with Russia and Pakistan among other countries, and also stirring imperialistic things up in Africa ...
During the Olympic Games last year, when he might have been expected to have worked to improve British-Chinese relations (given that the Olympic torch passed from China to Britain) Mr Miliband spent his time picking a fight with Russia - and directly/indirectly supporting the massacring of civilian children, women and men by Georgian paramilitary forces in Ossetia.
(And, incidentally, the children of his 'home constituency' have been wondering why their M.P. failed to get them a panda out of that Olympic hand-over - which amy half-decent 'international statesperson' could surely have managed.)
Four days before the end of the Bushite administraion, Mr Miliband finally started to distance himself for the Bushite 'war on terror' - publically renouncing the phrase, and even having he impertinence to suggest that he had for a long time not believed in it.
It seemed, to me, too little - and too late.
The Stop The War Coalition contains people of diverse views. Many were never supporters of Labour. Some, like myself, used to be Labour supporters but never will be again.
I did not vote in a Labour government to launch illegal attacks on other countries - and although they deny that, (in an almost pantomime 'oh ho we didn't' manner) that is in fact what they did.
I did not expect a Labour government to persecute Muslim people at home - and although they deny that, that is in fact what they are doing.
+
Returning to the proposition: 'A World Without War Is Possible.'
It can be supported with two further propositions:
1. A World without War becomes more possible when governments deal in truths rather than bad faith and reality distortion.
2. A World without war becomes more possible when governments do not invade, occupy and plunder other countries illegally - and on the basis of such false claims as Mr David Miliband the 'right honourable' Member of Parliament for South Shields made to his own constituents in March 2003.
+
We all have 'bogey-people' we dislike of course.
For a libertarian leftie like me they include:
right-wing war-mongers;
military corporations;
racists, especially 'white-supremacists';
... and my local New Labour MP David Miliband (who I believe has 'betrayed' Labour values).
+
Notes Towards A Clearer Understanding Of 'The New Face' Of '(The Project For) The American Century' ...
Aristotle, Politics:
'Our observations tell us that every state is an association of persons formed with a view to some good purpose. I say "good" because in their actions all people do in fact aim at what they THINK is "good" ...'
Contrasting with the mostly unimpressive leading characters of modern British politics, like Mr Miliband, is the rather more impressive and genuinely progressive-seeming Mr Obama in America.
Mr Obama, unlike Mr Miliband, consitently opposed the illegal NeoCon adventure in Iraq, and has spoken convincingly - unlike Mr Miliband - of his revulsion at the torture of 'terror suspects'.
The New Face Of The American Century?
In 2000, a year before the violent events of 11 September, a ‘think-tank’ called the ‘Project for the New American Century’ published the
latest of what had been a long-running series of policy statements. This one was called ‘Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategy, Forces
and Resources’. It was a grand sounding document by a grand sounding group, but was, in fact, essentially, a statement of the right-wing war-mongering prejudices of a small group of men, including: Richard Cheney, who went on to become U.S. vice president; Donald Rumsfeld, who went on to become U.S. defence secretary; Paul Wolfowitz, who was Rumsfeld’s deputy and then director of the World Bank; and Richard
Perle, ostensibly a private businessman with oil, arms and media interests, in fact a major U.S. foreign policy decision maker with a
direct ‘hot-line’ to the White House.
In their 2000 document, these men called for a massive increase in U.S. arms spending, so that American could ‘fight and win multiple, simultaneous, major theatre wars’.
They acknowledged, however, that the American People were not then willing to support such action, nor to pay the taxes required to buy the military equipment and fund the wars. What was needed to change minds, they said, was ‘some catastrophic and catalysing event – like a new Pearl Harbour’. It was actually rare to see such machiavellian calculations stated so openly. But it is a fact that these people put their aims - and one might even say hopes - quite openly on the public record – in advance of 11 September.
The events of 11 September 2001 were ‘opportunities’ for such people – something they had been waiting for … for quite some time.
It would be absurd, of course, to suggest that the new U.S. President Mr Obama was a right-wing neo-conservative reactionary like these people.
But he is does believe, and has regularly restated, that the world 'needs American leadership' - and he is the new face of the attempts to create an 'American Century'.
I do believe, and have regularly restated, that it is not anti-American not to want to live in an 'American-led Century'.
And it is a matter of fact that the same warmongering forces that used the previous American President Mr Bush as a willing front man would also use Mr Obama for similar purposes, even if he was unwilling front-man, given the chance.
With this in mind, it is instructive to look back at some details of the early days of Mr Obama's campaign to win the American presidency ...
On 20 May 2007 the British Sunday Times made what was almost like an official announcement on behalf of the NeoCons: 'Paul Wolfowitz's departure from the World Bank signals the end of an ideological era in Washington'.
In the same month, Robert Kagan, who was, with Mr Wolfowiz, one of the founders The Project For The New American Century, emerged as a surprizing seeming cheer-leader for Mr Obama (who had always opposed such Project-inspired schemes as the illegal attack on and plundering of Iraq).
Mr Kagan, it might be added, was not a man not to not hedge his bets ... because also at that time he was acting as an informal foreign policy adviser to the man who would emerge as the main Republican challenger to Mr Obama, John McCain.
In an article in the Washington Post, Mr Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by Mr Obama at the Chicago Council On Global Affairs was 'pure John (F.) Kennedy' (who, despite being a Democrat, and despite being regarded as a 'liberal hero', was also a neo-con hero 'for services to the Cold War'.
(It is also worth noting that at the same time Mr Obama was getting his first heavyweight Secret Service 'protection' - much earlier than was usual for presidental candidates 'after fears were raised of a white supermacist plot to kill him'.)
In that speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in the spring of 2007, Mr Obama, whether he intended to do so or not (and it cannot be denied that he is a skilled politician - who knows 'how to hit the marks') ticked many of the 'American Century' tick boxes:
* He called for an increase in 'defense' spending;
* He Called for an extra 65,000 U.S. soldiers and 27,000 U.S. Marines so that America could 'stay on the offense' against 'terrorism';
* He said said American had to 'ensure' that it had 'the strongest best equipped military in the world';
* He talked about 'building democracies', 'stopping weapons of mass destruction' and 'the right to take unilateral action to protect U.S. "vital interests" if necessary';
* He stressed the 'importance' of 'building alliances' against America's 'enemies'.
'Personally I like it,' wrote the Neo-Con Mr Kagan of this speech, not surprizingly perhaps.
+
Follow The Money ... Towards A Better Understanding Of Power Structures ... and (Their) Re-Arrangments ...
Much play was made in the later stages of Mr Obama's election campaign of the reportedly many 'small contributions' which, added together, had, apparently, funded it on a large scale.
Earlier on in the campaign he seems to have been more reliant on 'usual suspects' big donors.
One of these was Mr John Canning a Chicago investment banker.
Mr Canning had previously funded the 2004 Bush campaign.
He said in May 2007 that he was 'disenchanted' with the Bushites.
He added: 'I know lots of my friends in this business are disenchanted and are definitely looking for something different.'
In other words: the money-people can be spotted both following and directing the drift of power ...
In a word: a 're-arrangement' was going on ...
By the summer of 2007 the head of fund-raising for Mr Obama (whether officially or unofficially is not entirely clear) was a woman named Penny Pritzker.
On the evidence that she voted against Mr Bush and for the defeated Democrat candidate John Kerry in the 2004 Election, Ms Pritzker might be thought a 'faithful' Democrat.
In fact she was the head of her family firm, the Hyatt Hotel Chain, which had also donated in 2004 to the Bush campaign. (This might be known as 'hedge(-fund)ing)one'sbets'.)
Another prominent pitch-hitting-(playing it both ways) 'switcher' was Mr Tom Berstein. He was to Yale with Mr Bush. He formerly co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with Mr Bush. In 2004 he donated heavily to the Bush campaign. In the spring of 2007 he joined the ranks of the Bushite 'disenchanted' ... and prominently switched his support to Mr Obama.
As did One John Martin, founder of a militaristic seeming lobby group called 'Republicans For Obama'.
Mr Martin was a reservist in the American Military who had joined the forces AFTER the attack on Iraq - which Mr Obama always opposed.
He said in the spring of 2007: 'I disagree with Obama on the war, but I don't think it is a test of his patriotism. Obama has a message of hope for the country.'
This sort of endorsement from unlikely seeming supporters was crucial to Mr Obama's 'coalition building'.
As the film maker Spike Lee (a man with a keen eye for detail) noted, there was a striking contrast between the Obama rallies and the McCain rallies in the subsequent election campaign. Mr Obama's rallies were 'multi-coloured', varied, representing an obvious broad-coalition. Whereas Mr McCain's were 'all white'. It was like a modern 21st century vision of America contrasted with something from the 1950s. There could only be one winner if America wanted a future ...
For those of us in other parts of the world who welcomed Mr Obama's victory (as something genuinely 'progressive' seeming) ... welcoming his victory was not the same as giving him unqualified support ...
And to be sceptical about his statements of 'the world needing American leadership' is not to be anti-American ...
+
Reference Texts Include:
Sunday Times, 06_05_2007 'Republicans Defect to the Obama Camp'
Sunday Times, 06_05_2007 'Security Net For Democrat with Rally Appeal'
Sunday Times 20_05_2009 'Decline and Fall Of The Neo-Cons'
Silence Is Shame, Volume 1, 2003 'The Plot of the Project: A Review'
By Phil Talbot
+
Tuesday 23 March 2009
As I was sitting writing these notes, the background mainstream media chatter (as represented by the BBC) included yet another government-inspired 'al Qaeda' bogey-men scare story (with 'dirty bomb' nightmare fantasies added, as if as a bonus distraction from bankers' bonuses).
They were also plugging a ridiculous seeming (to me) scheme to recruit and train '60,000' (or make up your own number - all government numbers being dubious these days) amateur spooks to counter (the supposed) 'dangers of radicalization'.
How these '60,000' amateur spies were to be trained in 'radical spotting' was for some reason not reported by the BBC - though one can only imagine them using the standard Muslim bogey-men mug-shots (which we have all seen all too often).
People who questioned any of this stuff, it was suggested, were 'terrorists' or 'terrorist supporters' or 'dangerous radicals', or 'nutty conspiracy theorists' - or else 'well-meaning but naive trojan horses' (who would let in the 'bogey people').
Also on this day the British police announced they had done some early morning door knocks and arrested some 'violent extremists' in connection with events at protests in Britain earlier this year against the mass murder of Palestinian civilians by Israeli troops in Gaza.
The BBC, parroting police statements rather than actuallly reporting, mentioned reported injuries to police officers at these events, but not injuries sufferred by protestors - even though, in fact, evidence strongly suggests that more protesters were injured by police than police were injured by protestors at the Gaza protests.
Such 'dubious' - and perhaps even 'outright dishonest' - stuff reinforced my belief/fear that the 'establishment' (for want of a better expression) having nearly bankrupted the economy and being almost bankrupt of ideas, could think of nothing better to do than to spread distracting scare stories, narrow the range of debate - and stifle 'opposition' by all available means (while still prentending to be 'democratic').
In the Stop The War movement - which is not ashamed to call itself 'radical' - we work with this sort of 'mass distracting' babble going on in the mainstrem media backgound - while we are trying to do something different ... and more positive ...
In fact we have already championed the idea of 'democratic intelligence' - which is not a '60,000' force of volunteer spies snooping on 'radicals' on behalf of the state, but the pooling - by better informed debate - of the millions of human intelligences - of the majority of people who are anti-war and against 'terrorism' (including 'state terrorism').
+
One of the features of the modern day anti-war movement, and this is increasingly apparent in the South Tyneside Stop the War Coalition and many other anti-war groups in North-East England, is the growing awareness that the anti-war struggle cannot be continued in the old way and that a fresh approach is required.
This is not just some future prospect, but something actually in the making - a genuine 'work in progress', as it were.
Of course it is not easy - especially in a world in which the elected British government never stops attempting to narrow the range of public discourse ... and even attempting to make 'being radical' a forbidden concept (or 'thought crime').
One of the greatest achievements of the anti-war work so far is that up and down the country there are numerous genuinely radical and free-thinking groups of activists thinking in unorthodox and fresh ways.
In South Tyneside, and other districts in the region, there are now anti-war groups where nothing existed before.
We are 'radicals', but we are not 'terrorists', nor 'terrorist supporters' - we are opponents of 'terrorism', especially organized 'state terror'.
Numbers of activists locally are still small, relative to the numbers that become involved in the movement when the threat of war is greatest, but it is clear that a shift is taking place.
Things are shifting from a conception of the anti-war movement as a pressure group aimed at persuading those in power to cease their warmongering activities to a conception of the movement that engages in serious discussion and actions as to how the people can empower themselves and to unite around a programme to defeat the warmongers once and for all.
This first became evident in the small conference that the South Tyneside Stop the War Coalition organised at the beginning of the occupation of Iraq by US and Britain in 2003.
One speaker reflected the seriousness of the work that our movement is undertaking for the future of humanity when he said: 'Wars of the 21st century are in fact an all out assault on the rights of people around the world. “Rights” that must remain sacred if we are to subscribe to notions of civilised transaction, with a view to stability of our societies, ultimately leading to a life free from molestation, threat, and danger for all the human family."
Another suggested: 'People have to do their own thinking and organising and create new arrangements to give this movement for peace permanent life.'
Another pointed to developing alternative bodies such the Peoples Assembly along a truly democratic path that empowered people from below and also standing anti-war candidates in the public elections.
The important thing is that today people are seriously searching for ways to develop the movement in order to defeat the warmongers.
There is also a growing realisation that the key to achieve this is to unleash the people's initiative by organising in such a way that the people consciously participate in decision-making at every level.
+
Still Waiting For David to do the Decent Thing ...
Letter to Shields Gazette, 04 December 2003
In a letter to the Shields Gazette on Wednesday, 3rd December, Mr. G Smith of Kensington Court, South Shields, called for the resignation of David Miliband (MP for South Shields and Minister of State for School Standards) because of his support for tuition fees.
We consider that there are also other grounds for Mr. Miliband’s resignation. In March this year, shortly before the war with Iraq, the Gazette asked him a number of questions on the Iraqi crisis, one of which was “Is there any scenario in this crisis where you may resign on principle as Clare Short and Robin Cook have threatened to do?” Miliband stated that his “bottom lines are that the Government acts in accordance with international law, pursue international cooperation at every stage……” Shortly afterwards, Britain joined with the US in a war against Iraq, without a fresh UN resolution (which it had tried, and failed, because of international opposition, to obtain), and thus condemned by the great majority of international lawyers as illegal. Both Clare Short and Robin Cook resigned. We still await any action by David Miliband, or even a defence of his conduct. Perhaps voters will remember this at the next General Election.
Alan Newham and John Tinmouth
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In February 2009 South Tyneside Stop the War Coalition continued its work with a discussion forum on the topic: 'Block the Plans For Another Pro-War Government'.
The forum focussed on making preparations to block new arrangements for another pro-war government in Britain and, more postitively, on our agenda of an anti-war government and standing anti-war candidates.
Despite President Obama being elected in America on the promise of ‘change’ there are many reasons for fearing new forms of pro-war government here and abroad.
The present pro-war British government has in recent months enabled the Israeli state to launch a murderous offensive against the civilians of Gaza.
Our local MP David Miliband, who is also the British foreign secretary, has played a key role in defending the Israeli zionists' war crimes against the Palestinians.
He also visited the Congo on behalf of the British government to support stepped up interference in Africa.
Mr Miliband and his friends have also plans for further militarisation in Afganistan and Pakistan.
And they have ongoing plans to suppress the population here - using the economic crisis (which they have responsibity for) to futher privatize public services, further impose economic bondage on people, while they continue to protect the wealth and interests of the very rich.
We have all seen how they are nationalizing debt and privatizing profit - allowing the rich to get richer (and escape all responsibility for the present economic crisis), while everyone else gets poorer.
All of these reasons increase the danger of more wars - and should encourage people bring forward their own anti-war candidates and build on their experience and make preparations to block the plan to elect another pro-war government.
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In our work, South Tyneside Stop The War Coalition keeps in mind a simple (seeming) proposition: 'A World Without War Is Possible'.
To 'knowing' and 'worldly wise' people - who might also be described as 'cynics' (such as those in charge of the New Labour Party and 'New' Conservative Party, and too many others) - this is 'hopelessly naive unworldly idealism'.
In response to such 'cynicism', we might modify our 'simple' proposition to: 'A Genuinely Anti-War British Government Is Possible'
The carpers might sneer back words to the effect of: '... aren't we all anti-war? ... or rather wouldn't we all be against war ... if THEY - THE ENEMY - weren't such a THREAT to OUR WAY-OF-LIFE ... WE WANT PEACE! ... THEY DO NOT! ... so unfortunately ... WE have to go to war with THEM ...'
And so 'unfortunately' ... to such people as Mr David Miliband, a self-proclaimed 'progressive' (sic) New Labour Foreign Secretary, would have it ... 'We HAD to invade Iraq ... and we now HAVE to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan ... and we HAVE to ... etc etc etc ...'
Faced with such 'spinning gimmicks'... it is useful to back-track ... return to the facts ... (not mere speculations) ... of Mr Miliband's own record in his 'home' South Shields constituency.
When he was parachuted in by the New Labour machine, against the wishes of the local Labour Party, he was presented to the local people as 'the Bright Young Man' of 'modern' New Labour. His 'intelligence' was spun to the people at every possible opportunity. Some even believed such spin.
As a matter of fact, this 'intelligent Bright Young Thing' of New Labour has proved himself spectacularly unintelligent in some significant respects.
As a matter of fact, early in 2003, before the invasion of Iraq, Mr Miliband was asked a straight question by his local newspaper, the Shields Gazette, to which he gave a straight answer (which he has ever since wanted forgotten).
He was asked whether there was 'overwhelming evidence' that Iraq had 'weapons of mass destruction'.
He said, without qualification: 'yes' (there was 'overwhelming evidence').
This was a false statement. Either he was lying, or he did not know what he was talking about.
To repeat, on 15 March 2003 the present British Foreign Secretary told the Shields Gazette that 'yes' there was ‘overwhelming evidence' that Iraq had 'weapons of mass destruction'.
He has never had the honesty or decency to concede that he was mistaken - nor to retract his gross over-statement.
He further told the Gazette as reported on 15 March 2003: ‘A week ago in New York the Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix published a 170-page dossier that detailed Iraqi stockpiles of weapons of banned material that could be used for weapons of mass destruction. This includes athrax and nerve gas which has been missing since the 1990 Gulf War.’
He has never conceded that this was a distortion of Mr Blix’s careful and thoughtful report to the United Nations - and nor has he acknowledged what Mr Blix maintained, then and since, that ‘unaccounted for’ ('weapons of mass destruction') material does not mean the same thing as ‘still existing’ material.
When a Foreign Secretary has behaved in such a reality-distorting way, he does not deserve trust or respect.
In our reply to Mr Miliband's statement of 15 March 2003, which was published in the Gazette a few days later, we said:
‘In June 2002 the Director of the International Atomic Energy Authority, Dr Mohamed El Baradei, wrote “There are no indications that Iraq has nuclear weapons-usable material of the practical capabilities to produce them.” Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter claims that most chemical-biological weapons were destroyed along with their production facilities during the 1990s. Ritter states that “liquid bulk anthrax, even under ideal storage conditions, germinates in three years, becoming useless.” So, if the hidden weapons exist, it may be their numbers would be small and most probably redundant. At present we see no “overwhelming evidence”.
Mr Miliband (now with all the resources of the British Foreign Office behind him) has never had the guts or decency to acknowledge that the statement of our small town anti-war group was a more honest and accurate appraisal of the then available evidence than his own at that time.
He hoped it would all be forgotten.
It has not been forgotten.
It is illustrative of the arrogant elitist contempt New Labourites like Mr Miliband actually have for the 'intelligence' of the people of their 'home' constituencies.
With the fog of the false 'weapons of mass destrustion' claims blown away by reality, Mr Miliband and his New Labour cronies attempted to justify the illegal attack on Iraq by reference to getting rid of the tyrant Saddam Hussein.
Unfortunately the 'intelligent' Mr Miliband did not seem to know much about Saddam - or the rest of modern Iraq - which is one of the reasons the whole enterprize has been a literally bloody disaster.
In a statement of principles first published in 1997 and signed by, among others, Dick Cheney, the Bushite U.S. Vice President, Donald Rumsfeld, the Bushite U.S. Defence Secretary and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz - this group calls on Americans to support an increase military spending and attempts to ‘rally support for American global leadership’.
Mr Miliband seemed happy to be a supporter of this NeoCon project - which was not in the best interests of Britain and the wider world.
The invasion of Iraq was an example of a new aggressive style of American imperialism - which, at best, Mr Miliband tamely supported, at worst he actively supported - and the world is a much more dangerous place as a result.
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David Miliband: Ignorant Fool? and/Or Dangerous War-Monger? (Or The School Minister's School-boyish's Howler)
In the Shields Gazette, Saturday, 16 August, Mr Miliband, then minister for 'school standards' was reported as having responded to an open letter we had written to him.
His reported response included the following statement attributed directly to his mouth: ‘Saddam was in power for over 40 years, ...’
Question for general review: as a matter of fact, how long was Saddam in power in Iraq?
More matters of fact: In 2003 David Miliband M.P. was the British Government’s ‘schools standards’ minister. He has a first class honours degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University. He was a friend and ally of the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair - and formerly part of the PM’s team of personal advisers inside 10 Downing Street - and one would assume that he has fairly high level access to the very latest ‘intelligence’ reports.
Question: should not the British people be entitled to expect from their ‘school standards’ minister - who has a high standard of tax-funded education himself, and a privileged access to up-to-date ‘intelligence’ - a better informed understanding of basic matters of historical fact?
In other words, should they not be entitled to expect that their ‘school standards’ minister has a better awareness of how long Saddam was actually in power in Iraq?
As if as a reward for getting that sort of 'international intelligence' so wrong, Mr Miliband was promoted to Foreign Secretary - and seriously touted by his friends in the mainstream media as a future Prime Minister.
During his time as British Foreign Secretary Mr Miliband seems to have been keener to be seen 'acting tough' (or warmongering in an adolescent manner) rather than done responsible and respectable diplomacy.
He has been spotted on television screens ... picking fights with Russia and Pakistan among other countries, and also stirring imperialistic things up in Africa ...
During the Olympic Games last year, when he might have been expected to have worked to improve British-Chinese relations (given that the Olympic torch passed from China to Britain) Mr Miliband spent his time picking a fight with Russia - and directly/indirectly supporting the massacring of civilian children, women and men by Georgian paramilitary forces in Ossetia.
(And, incidentally, the children of his 'home constituency' have been wondering why their M.P. failed to get them a panda out of that Olympic hand-over - which amy half-decent 'international statesperson' could surely have managed.)
Four days before the end of the Bushite administraion, Mr Miliband finally started to distance himself for the Bushite 'war on terror' - publically renouncing the phrase, and even having he impertinence to suggest that he had for a long time not believed in it.
It seemed, to me, too little - and too late.
The Stop The War Coalition contains people of diverse views. Many were never supporters of Labour. Some, like myself, used to be Labour supporters but never will be again.
I did not vote in a Labour government to launch illegal attacks on other countries - and although they deny that, (in an almost pantomime 'oh ho we didn't' manner) that is in fact what they did.
I did not expect a Labour government to persecute Muslim people at home - and although they deny that, that is in fact what they are doing.
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Returning to the proposition: 'A World Without War Is Possible.'
It can be supported with two further propositions:
1. A World without War becomes more possible when governments deal in truths rather than bad faith and reality distortion.
2. A World without war becomes more possible when governments do not invade, occupy and plunder other countries illegally - and on the basis of such false claims as Mr David Miliband the 'right honourable' Member of Parliament for South Shields made to his own constituents in March 2003.
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We all have 'bogey-people' we dislike of course.
For a libertarian leftie like me they include:
right-wing war-mongers;
military corporations;
racists, especially 'white-supremacists';
... and my local New Labour MP David Miliband (who I believe has 'betrayed' Labour values).
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Notes Towards A Clearer Understanding Of 'The New Face' Of '(The Project For) The American Century' ...
Aristotle, Politics:
'Our observations tell us that every state is an association of persons formed with a view to some good purpose. I say "good" because in their actions all people do in fact aim at what they THINK is "good" ...'
Contrasting with the mostly unimpressive leading characters of modern British politics, like Mr Miliband, is the rather more impressive and genuinely progressive-seeming Mr Obama in America.
Mr Obama, unlike Mr Miliband, consitently opposed the illegal NeoCon adventure in Iraq, and has spoken convincingly - unlike Mr Miliband - of his revulsion at the torture of 'terror suspects'.
The New Face Of The American Century?
In 2000, a year before the violent events of 11 September, a ‘think-tank’ called the ‘Project for the New American Century’ published the
latest of what had been a long-running series of policy statements. This one was called ‘Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategy, Forces
and Resources’. It was a grand sounding document by a grand sounding group, but was, in fact, essentially, a statement of the right-wing war-mongering prejudices of a small group of men, including: Richard Cheney, who went on to become U.S. vice president; Donald Rumsfeld, who went on to become U.S. defence secretary; Paul Wolfowitz, who was Rumsfeld’s deputy and then director of the World Bank; and Richard
Perle, ostensibly a private businessman with oil, arms and media interests, in fact a major U.S. foreign policy decision maker with a
direct ‘hot-line’ to the White House.
In their 2000 document, these men called for a massive increase in U.S. arms spending, so that American could ‘fight and win multiple, simultaneous, major theatre wars’.
They acknowledged, however, that the American People were not then willing to support such action, nor to pay the taxes required to buy the military equipment and fund the wars. What was needed to change minds, they said, was ‘some catastrophic and catalysing event – like a new Pearl Harbour’. It was actually rare to see such machiavellian calculations stated so openly. But it is a fact that these people put their aims - and one might even say hopes - quite openly on the public record – in advance of 11 September.
The events of 11 September 2001 were ‘opportunities’ for such people – something they had been waiting for … for quite some time.
It would be absurd, of course, to suggest that the new U.S. President Mr Obama was a right-wing neo-conservative reactionary like these people.
But he is does believe, and has regularly restated, that the world 'needs American leadership' - and he is the new face of the attempts to create an 'American Century'.
I do believe, and have regularly restated, that it is not anti-American not to want to live in an 'American-led Century'.
And it is a matter of fact that the same warmongering forces that used the previous American President Mr Bush as a willing front man would also use Mr Obama for similar purposes, even if he was unwilling front-man, given the chance.
With this in mind, it is instructive to look back at some details of the early days of Mr Obama's campaign to win the American presidency ...
On 20 May 2007 the British Sunday Times made what was almost like an official announcement on behalf of the NeoCons: 'Paul Wolfowitz's departure from the World Bank signals the end of an ideological era in Washington'.
In the same month, Robert Kagan, who was, with Mr Wolfowiz, one of the founders The Project For The New American Century, emerged as a surprizing seeming cheer-leader for Mr Obama (who had always opposed such Project-inspired schemes as the illegal attack on and plundering of Iraq).
Mr Kagan, it might be added, was not a man not to not hedge his bets ... because also at that time he was acting as an informal foreign policy adviser to the man who would emerge as the main Republican challenger to Mr Obama, John McCain.
In an article in the Washington Post, Mr Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by Mr Obama at the Chicago Council On Global Affairs was 'pure John (F.) Kennedy' (who, despite being a Democrat, and despite being regarded as a 'liberal hero', was also a neo-con hero 'for services to the Cold War'.
(It is also worth noting that at the same time Mr Obama was getting his first heavyweight Secret Service 'protection' - much earlier than was usual for presidental candidates 'after fears were raised of a white supermacist plot to kill him'.)
In that speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in the spring of 2007, Mr Obama, whether he intended to do so or not (and it cannot be denied that he is a skilled politician - who knows 'how to hit the marks') ticked many of the 'American Century' tick boxes:
* He called for an increase in 'defense' spending;
* He Called for an extra 65,000 U.S. soldiers and 27,000 U.S. Marines so that America could 'stay on the offense' against 'terrorism';
* He said said American had to 'ensure' that it had 'the strongest best equipped military in the world';
* He talked about 'building democracies', 'stopping weapons of mass destruction' and 'the right to take unilateral action to protect U.S. "vital interests" if necessary';
* He stressed the 'importance' of 'building alliances' against America's 'enemies'.
'Personally I like it,' wrote the Neo-Con Mr Kagan of this speech, not surprizingly perhaps.
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Follow The Money ... Towards A Better Understanding Of Power Structures ... and (Their) Re-Arrangments ...
Much play was made in the later stages of Mr Obama's election campaign of the reportedly many 'small contributions' which, added together, had, apparently, funded it on a large scale.
Earlier on in the campaign he seems to have been more reliant on 'usual suspects' big donors.
One of these was Mr John Canning a Chicago investment banker.
Mr Canning had previously funded the 2004 Bush campaign.
He said in May 2007 that he was 'disenchanted' with the Bushites.
He added: 'I know lots of my friends in this business are disenchanted and are definitely looking for something different.'
In other words: the money-people can be spotted both following and directing the drift of power ...
In a word: a 're-arrangement' was going on ...
By the summer of 2007 the head of fund-raising for Mr Obama (whether officially or unofficially is not entirely clear) was a woman named Penny Pritzker.
On the evidence that she voted against Mr Bush and for the defeated Democrat candidate John Kerry in the 2004 Election, Ms Pritzker might be thought a 'faithful' Democrat.
In fact she was the head of her family firm, the Hyatt Hotel Chain, which had also donated in 2004 to the Bush campaign. (This might be known as 'hedge(-fund)ing)one'sbets'.)
Another prominent pitch-hitting-(playing it both ways) 'switcher' was Mr Tom Berstein. He was to Yale with Mr Bush. He formerly co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with Mr Bush. In 2004 he donated heavily to the Bush campaign. In the spring of 2007 he joined the ranks of the Bushite 'disenchanted' ... and prominently switched his support to Mr Obama.
As did One John Martin, founder of a militaristic seeming lobby group called 'Republicans For Obama'.
Mr Martin was a reservist in the American Military who had joined the forces AFTER the attack on Iraq - which Mr Obama always opposed.
He said in the spring of 2007: 'I disagree with Obama on the war, but I don't think it is a test of his patriotism. Obama has a message of hope for the country.'
This sort of endorsement from unlikely seeming supporters was crucial to Mr Obama's 'coalition building'.
As the film maker Spike Lee (a man with a keen eye for detail) noted, there was a striking contrast between the Obama rallies and the McCain rallies in the subsequent election campaign. Mr Obama's rallies were 'multi-coloured', varied, representing an obvious broad-coalition. Whereas Mr McCain's were 'all white'. It was like a modern 21st century vision of America contrasted with something from the 1950s. There could only be one winner if America wanted a future ...
For those of us in other parts of the world who welcomed Mr Obama's victory (as something genuinely 'progressive' seeming) ... welcoming his victory was not the same as giving him unqualified support ...
And to be sceptical about his statements of 'the world needing American leadership' is not to be anti-American ...
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Reference Texts Include:
Sunday Times, 06_05_2007 'Republicans Defect to the Obama Camp'
Sunday Times, 06_05_2007 'Security Net For Democrat with Rally Appeal'
Sunday Times 20_05_2009 'Decline and Fall Of The Neo-Cons'
Silence Is Shame, Volume 1, 2003 'The Plot of the Project: A Review'