"Smedley Butler knew all this. A racket."

Comment above by Anonymous on Just A Common Soldier - A Soldier Died Today

 Re-post from NamSouth 2009 and FNC 2011/2012/2015X2

Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician’s corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintances sneered and slanged, I wept:
For I had longed to see him hanged.

 --Hilaire Belloc  

War is a Racket by Smedley Butler is a famous speech denouncing the military industrial complex. This speech by two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient exposes war profits that benefit few at the expense of many. Throughout his distinguished career in the Marines, Smedley Darlington Butler demonstrated that true patriotism does not mean blind allegiance to government policies with which one does not agree. To Hell with war.

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Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed " The Fighting Quaker " and " Old Gimlet Eye ", was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. 

During his 34 years of Marine Corps service, Butler was awarded numerous medals for heroism including the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (the highest Marine medal at its time for officers), and subsequently the Medal of Honor twice. Notably, he is one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor, and one of only three to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor for two different actions.
 
In addition to his military career, Smedley Butler was noted for his outspoken anti- interventionist views, and his book War is a Racket.

His book was one of the first works describing the workings of the military-industrial complex and after retiring from service, he became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s.
 

War Is A Racket Video USMC General Smedley Butler & Rage

? Guns

 

How is it possible that I loaded a 13 round Glock 21 magazine with 14 rounds?  Used a speed-loader as I always do. Tripled checked and only knew about this when the mag dropped out on occasion.

Bernie Sanders and the Big Swedish Lie

Via comment by JWMJR on "Bernie Sanders’ Sick Utopia: The Malicious Myth of..

 

Dated 

 Like so many other leftists, Bernie Sanders has embarked on the claim that America should become more European like and institute even more social welfare programs. As they always do, they hold up Sweden as some sort of shining example of how the modern socialist state should work.

The problems is, like with so many other leftist arguments, this one is superficial and shallow in its accounting of the historical realities behind modern Sweden. In short the argument is rife with the lies of omission.

In that period when the American colonists were just beginning their long struggle against King George III, Sweden was still under the domination of the usual types of self-entitled nobility and oppressive trade guilds that had been the social model since the middle ages. Most of the population lived in the poverty of a feudal economic system. They were quite simply serfs. 

By the beginning of the 19th century the same type of enlightened classical liberalism that had inspired the American Revolution began to take root in Sweden.

More @ Joe Martin's Ghost

Bernie Sanders’ Sick Utopia: The Malicious Myth of “Democratic” Socialism

Via Billy

In my forthcoming (July 18) book, The Problem with Socialism, I describe how socialism is always and everywhere an economic poison regardless of the form of government.  Socialism is socialism.

As Frederic Bastiat explained in his classic, The Law, the imposition of one social “plan” or set of “plans” on all of the society – a defining characteristic of all varieties of socialism — will have the same effects whether it is instituted by democracy or by a dictatorship.  Obamacare is Obamacare regardless of whether it was imposed by democracy or by a dictator.

More @ WND

From Germany: Open letter translated from PI News:

Via David  "Europe's going to blow.  Here is a woman, in her 50's, a Green Party member her whole life... now dedicated to the AfD (Alternative for Deutschland) Party.  All over Germany and other Western European countries the backlash is building against their leaders.

I see their leaders grim-faced, set on flooding Europe with Muslims who, according to one poll I just read about, are over 40% fundamentalists.  It's like they're robots, automatons set on a specific goal heedless of anything else.

The crime statistics are plain and stark, available for all to see.  Everyone KNOWS what's happening.  And European society is splitting between two very different peoples:

1. Those who have awoken to the fact that their leaders are betraying them.

2. Those who say their utter cultural dilution and destruction are a good thing.  As one German Parlimentarian said recently.

And here in the US, Barackus is accelerating the influx of Muslims.  In Rutland, Vermont the Mayor was in secret talks to bring in 100 of them, only revealing it to the people who elected him when it was a fait accompli.  From the international stage to the local,leaders are placing the interests of other nationals above those they were elected to represent.

And in the US the GOPe would rather see Hellary elected to preserve their power, even if only for another decade while they too loot the public treasury and plan their bolt-holes, while Hellary stacks the SCOTUS and opens the floodgates to even more illegals.

Hellary's 100 day plan includes executive orders to functionally eliminate the border to Mexico and to open the valve wide to moreMuslims.  And please note - I am married to a Muslim, a TRUE moderate (they do exist) who is SCARED when she sees women in burkhas - because she has personal experience with the mindset.  (But, in true liberal fashion, her personal and first-hand experience is dismissed by those who "know better".)

Something is loose in the world.  Something horrific.  And I fear for my country and my children."

Inner Immigration

(Résumé of a German woman)

I am almost 50 years old, I have a University degree, and was – out of love for nature – always a trusted voter for the Green Party. I never felt much interest for politics. In Germany everything seemed to always go its natural regular course. I had trusted our parliamentary democracy, I thought our administration would hardly make mistakes, because it is controlled by the opposition. Never, absolutely never did I think that I would lose all my trust in the State. It’s unbearable that I am afraid of the future. Preferably I’d just like to leave. But I feel to old to leave Europe.

What country would even take me anymore? I am not a shameless African that just seats himself in a refugee boat. I would properly apply to the respective immigration authority. But my chances are close to zero. I am – like most Europeans – damned to impotence as I see this invasion happen.

When, about ten years ago, a friend of mine emigrated to Australia, I felt sorry for her. How could one leave our beautiful Europe? A continent with such wonderful nature and culture. I would’ve never even thought of this. Today I know: She did the right thing.

More @ Vlad Tepes

'The Confederate flag is the N-word on a pole': Memorial Day activist presses multi-state banner burns

Via Billy

 

Sims is the idiot who had the exhibit "The Proper Way To Hang A Confederate Flag" at Gettysburg.

So much for graveyard visits to honor America’s war dead, or even summery barbecues in the backyard – an activist from Florida has what he thinks is a better way to recognize the solemn occasion known as Memorial Day: burn flags.

John Sims from southern Florida is leading up a nationwide effort to change Memorial Day into Confederate flag-burning day, Think Progress reported. Just a few weeks ago, he organized 13 separate flag-burning events in the 13 states formerly known as the Confederacy, telling the International Business Times in the process that “the Confederate flag is the N-word on a pole.”

More @ WND