Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can’t Kick Militarism Updated to include the war in Iraq 3d ed. 2003 ISBN 1904859011 ISBN13 9781904859017 Joel Andreas addicteAddicted to War: Why the U.S. Can’t Kick Militarism Updated to include the war in Iraq 3d ed. 2003 ISBN 1904859011 ISBN13 9781904859017 Joel Andreas addictedtowar.com akpress.org (publisher) also available in Spanish
An engaging exposition of crucial truths. Thanks to Steve, Felix, Lars, and the rest of the Madison Veterans for Peace gang for putting up the Memorial Mile, selling books like this, and all they do to spread the word.
“As a veteran of three wars, WWII through Vietnam, with 33 years of Army service, I find this book to be the most truthful recitation of our government’s policies available anywhere.”—Colonel James Burkholder
Ch. 1 Manifest Destiny All U.S. history has been of military imperialism in the service of greed.
“I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream . . . the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered.”—Black Elk, spiritual leader of the Lakota people and survivor of the Wounded Knee massacre in South Dakota.
“I spent 33 years and 4 months in active military service . . . And during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
“Thus, I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.
“I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.
“Our boys were sent off to die with beautiful ideals painted in front of them. No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason they were marching off to kill and die.”—General Smedley Butler, 1934
The U.S. entered WWI for its [moneyed interests’] fair share of the spoils.
The goal of U.S. involvement in WWII was to achieve military and economic supremacy for the United States[’ moneyed interests].
Ch. 2 Cold War, World Policemen U.S. intervened militarily 200 times in foreign countries during the cold war. The U.S. slaughtered millions of civilians, installed and propped up corrupt dictators loyal to U.S. moneyed interests.
Ch. 3 New World Order After the 1989 breakup of the USSR, the U.S. continued to rain death and destruction in other countries in the service of oil and war-profiteering interests.
Ch. 4 War on Terrorism “What America is tasting now is something insignificant compared to what we have tasted for scores of years. Our nation (the Islamic world) has been tasting this humiliation and degradation for more than 80 years. Its sons are killed, its blood is shed, its sanctuaries are attacked and no one hears and no one heeds. Millions of innocent children are being killed as I speak. They are being killed in Iraq without committing any sins. . . . To America, I say only a few words to it and its people. I swear to God, who has elevated the skies without pillars, neither America nor the people who live in it will dream of security before we live it here in Palestine and not before all the infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him.”—Osama bin Laden, Oct. 7,. 2001
Ch. 5 The War Profiteers Decisions to go to war and spend on the military are made by and in the interests of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, United Technologies, GE, and other war profiteers.
Ch. 6 The High Price of Militarism Since 1948 the U.S. has spent on the military more than the cumulative value of all human-made wealth in the U.S. The average American household pays over $4400 in taxes yearly toward the military.
Social programs are short-changed. Infrastructure crumbles. Schools suffer. People don’t get medical care. Homelessness balloons. No money for drug and alcohol treatment.
Nuclear and other weapons manufacture and testing spews radioactive plutonium and other toxins into air, water, land, and the food supply.
Our militarism breed retaliation and arms races, putting us in greater danger.
Civil rights are taken away in the name of security. Surveillance is used to suppress political opponents.
Soldiers die and are maimed and their psyches damaged, in battle and in training. The poor bear the losses.
Ch. 7 Militarism and the Media All TV and other large media companies are owned by multinationals whose directors are also directors of war profiteering companies. Reporting is propaganda for war profiteering.
Ch. 8 Resisting Militarism There’s a large anti-war movement, quick to resist plans to go to war.
“War is constantly on the agenda in Washington.
But next time they ask you to put your life on the line . . . as a soldier . . . or as a potential victim of attack at home—ask yourself . . .
What is this addiction to war doing to the people of the U.S. and the world? How much does it cost? Who’s going to profit? Who’s going to pay? And who’s going to die? Think about it. Do something about it. Kick out the war junkies! How can we do that? It’s up to us to figure it out.”
Links to antiwar groups. List at addictedtowar.com
Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. I, The Present Time (Feb. 1, 1850)
Writing in 1850, at a time when monarchs throughout Europe had recently beThomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets, No. I, The Present Time (Feb. 1, 1850)
Writing in 1850, at a time when monarchs throughout Europe had recently been deposed as worthless parasites; the Irish potato famine left millions starving while Irish food was shipped to England; London was full of poor people, dying from starvation and overwork; wages were below subsistence level; the air and water were being fouled. Carlyle’s solution in Pamphlet I is to enslave the unfortunates who had been incarcerated in “workhouses:” he would force them to hard labor, and flog or kill them if they didn’t work. In Carlyle’s opinion, the “captains of industry” were the people who should be in charge of society. Carlyle blames the poor for their poverty, and would deny the vote to all but the well-off. Carlyle would enshrine the very “consecration of cupidity” he purports to decry.
Unfortunately, “captains of industry” are now indeed in charge of society, these 164 years later. They are increasingly the worthless parasites their monarchial predecessors were. They still live for greed, eagerly enslaving workers, destroying the environment, corrupting the political process....more
Of the people of the east London slums, 1902: "And day by day I became convinced that not only is it unwise, but it is criminal for the people of the Of the people of the east London slums, 1902: "And day by day I became convinced that not only is it unwise, but it is criminal for the people of the Abyss to marry. They are the stones by the builder rejected. There is no place for them, in the social fabric while all the forces of society drive them downward till they perish. At the bottom of the Abyss they are feeble, besotted, and imbecile. If they reproduce, the life is so cheap that perforce it perishes of itself. The work of the world goes on above them, and they do not care to take part in it, nor are they able. Moreover, the work of the world does not need them."
The People of the Abyss, kindle location 302 of 2439, page 17 of 131. Jack London was a socialist, even a revolutionary who believed that only by violence could the working class capture its fair share of the abundant wealth created by industrial society. He writes of the reality of millions of urban poor, slowly dying of starvation, as to eat they have only garbage and occasional very thin charity. For men he meets, in their wretched condition, to assume the obligations of fatherhood is a fantasy they do not entertain. Even their own sustenance is beyond their power to get....more
Not only presents monumental proof President John F. Kennedy was murdered in a plot orchestrated by the CIA--with the support of the Secret Service, tNot only presents monumental proof President John F. Kennedy was murdered in a plot orchestrated by the CIA--with the support of the Secret Service, the FBI, the Dallas police and sheriff's departments, the Army, Navy, Air Force, congressmen, senators, the Chief Justice of the Supreme court, and Vice President Lyndon Johnson--but why he was killed. He was killed because if he had lived, he would have not only stopped the Vietnam War, but stopped the Cold War: he was secretly negotiating with Kruschev toward disarmament and normalization of relations with the USSR and Cuba. He also supported true independence for countries in the "third world" such as Indonesia and the countries of Africa. If Kennedy had lived, several very wealthy and politically powerful owners of mining companies and weapons manufacturers would have lost an opportunity to gain lots of easy extra wealth. If Kennedy had lived, the Vietnam War would have ended before the worst of it began: 3 million people would not have died in the war. 4 million more people would not have died in the Khmer Rouge purges. Indonesia would not have been forced by the CIA and U.S. military into a military dictatorship friendly to corporate mining plunderers. So he had to die. To perpetuate the perpetual war and domination that feed the greed of the rulers of the national security state. The anti-communist orthodoxy of the time was the excuse of the time for the war machine. Since then, there have been other excuses. It would have been a very much different, and very much better, world if JFK had lived. RFK was killed by the same people for the same reasons: He would likely have been elected in 1968, and would've been the same kind of president his brother was. Sirhan Sirhan was an expendable CIA asset as were Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald. If Teddy Kennedy had ever seemed likely to be president, he would've been murdered as well....more
Fothergill is the author, and the producer of the videos; Attenborough is a brilliant and engaging presenter of nature specials on video. Both of them are filmmakers. The information Fothergill presents comes from the many scientists who've made careers of studying the animals and ecosystem of Antarctica. Fothergill is sometimes less than precise with his facts. His focus is on telling the animals' stories with stunning visuals and absorbing narrative. He does this brilliantly, ably aided by the many scientists who helped him, and by Attenborough, by teams of fearless, persistent cameramen, two ships' crews, and months of effort.
After decades of lies, the truth: Armstrong won by having the most sophisticated illegal blood doping and performance-enhancing drug racket for himselAfter decades of lies, the truth: Armstrong won by having the most sophisticated illegal blood doping and performance-enhancing drug racket for himself and his team. Testosterone, human growth hormone, drugs to boost oxygen-carrying content of blood, and best of all, transfusions of his own blood, harvested months earlier and kept on ice, smuggled in at the key moments. He and his crew knew how to time and dose the drugs to keep from raising flags in drug tests. And, when he did test positive for something, the cycling officials looked the other way, keen to tell people their star was clean. Other athletes also used performance-enhancing drugs. Armstrong and his team did it on an industrial scale. They ran their illegal drug operation like a cross between a hospital and a narcotics cartel. Armstrong's arrogance persuaded him that he was entitled to do whatever it took to win--and keep at it, refusing to retire after 7 tour de france wins, rubbing officials' faces in his behavior, until they were forced to act against him. He's now being sued by his former sponsors, and has lost his dream house. Poor thing....more
Kees Boeke’s 1957 Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps is a lovely little book that shows the scale of everything in 40 pictures: from the large scalKees Boeke’s 1957 Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps is a lovely little book that shows the scale of everything in 40 pictures: from the large scale structure of the universe, down to atomic nuclei. Each picture is a factor of 10 scale difference from the last. It’s meticulously done, to show the scale and relative positions of everything precisely. With an introduction by Arthur H. Compton, Nobel prizewinner in physics. Boeke sums up with, “Learning to live together in mutual respect and with the definite aim to further the happiness of all, without privilege for any, is a clear duty for mankind.”
Much clearer picture of Jesus of Nazareth than in the Bible. Paints the political landscape of the time: Rome brutally repressive, temple hierarchy a Much clearer picture of Jesus of Nazareth than in the Bible. Paints the political landscape of the time: Rome brutally repressive, temple hierarchy a kleptocracy. Many would-be revolutionary leaders preaching downfall to the rich, lift up the poor. All of them, and their followers, slaughtered for sedition. Jesus was one. The weird thing is that anyone's heard of him 2000 years later. His followers were sure they saw him come back from the dead. They preached their Jesus-the-messiah message to Romanized Jews who came from all over to Jerusalem for festivals. Paul converted, and converted Jesus' Judaism into a completely different religion: one that, in 380 C.E., became the official religion of the Roman empire.
Aslan is a terrific writer. This is a quick and eye-opening read.
In the 1880s, would-be robber barons were trapped in a nightmare world of many buyers, many sellers, no one of which had control over price.
IndustriaIn the 1880s, would-be robber barons were trapped in a nightmare world of many buyers, many sellers, no one of which had control over price.
Industrial titans' ability to reap an outsize share of national income was dwindling. In some cases, workers did control the means of production. Courts had declared trusts illegal.
In the aftermath of the panic of 1893, the ruling class regained control by (1) locking out workers, hiring private armies of heavily-armed Pinkerton agents, busting unions; (2) banding together in clubs, associations, interlocking directorates; (3) reorganizing into large corporations, each able to assert control over prices, conditions, and wages in its industry; (4) a concerted propaganda campaign leading up to the election of 1896, beating the drum of the gold standard that would enable the elite to control banking.
Ever since, political decisions in the U.S. have been made by and for the wealthy elite.
James Livingston's Origins of the Federal Reserve System: Money, Class, and Corporate Capitalism, 1890-1913 is a shockingly readable account of how and for whom the modern world was created. The success of the elite in organizing, messaging, and shaping public opinion should be studied by those of us who must organize, message, and shape public opinion to remake the world for the long-term benefit of the many, rather than the short-term benefit of the few. The book is packed with citations of primary sources.
A few of Livingston's insights and my reactions:
"before the crisis of the mid-1890s, business leaders and their allies were developing an explanation for the great depression of the late nineteenth century . . . interfirm competition, . . . chronic overproduction . . . an 'excess of enterprise' might destroy profits . . . or, more accurately, . . . transfer income from capital to labor and so ultimately halt investment . . . . [Edward] Atkinson and Andrew Carnegie argued, an unequal distribution of wealth and income . . . was the condition of the majority's comfortable subsistence." (p. 53) To the contrary! As a hunting dog or falcon must have a taste for blood, but is given only enough of the kill to keep it hunting, so the corporation must have the hope of profit, but must be prevented from controlling the market and so transferring all society's wealth to itself. Since the Carnegie and Rockefeller days, the hunting dogs have been eating the bulk of the kill.
The Sherman Act, "which was intended to abolish the primary trust . . . has merely driven it into a new and utterly impregnable position" (the corporation). (p. 58) Gotta keep working on antitrust law, labor law, and progressive taxation: concentration of wealth and power is taking us back to a "one lord, many serfs" economy.
"the decisive movement toward corporate capitalism began in 1895-1896. Business leaders from throughout the nation and from every sphere of enterprise realized then that unless they entered and altered the mainstream of political discourse on economic questions, the entrepreneurial argument for monetary inflation, dispersal of concentrated assets, and free competition among small producers would become government policy." (p. 66) They were so successful that they remade the world in their image, where it has remained since. Lately, with billionaires controlling newspapers and TV networks, the rich have captured economic discourse and government policy. We on the left must ourselves enter and alter political discourse--before all wealth is in the hands of the few, the environment is fully destroyed, and our civil liberties are history.
"For [Conant], as for Bagehot, Wells, and White, periodic crises were desirable insofar as they purged 'weaker undertakings' from the market system. This process validated the leadership of larger . . . firms . . . . the function of crisis was to centralize decisions affecting production and distribution". (p. 77) The winner-take-all system we suffer under was deliberately created in the 1890s by those who would control and profit from it. The early-21st century collapses of overextended too-big-to-fail houses of speculation, with their attendant economic damage, are their legacy.
Loans during crises were to be available only for larger firms. "Thus the 'natural' process through which 'weaker undertakings' were sifted out in times of panic would be consciously furthered by making the prerogatives of the clearinghouses [forerunners of the Fed] lawful and permanent." (p. 79) The system of the rich, by the rich, for the rich, is the opposite of a healthy economy: money should be in the hands of the many, to spend and let their fellows earn, not in the hands of the few, to hoard and speculate and control messaging and government.
The bankers in 1894 who sought to change discourse from support of many small producers to a few big ones, sought to create a punditocracy of "expert opinion" to "educate the educators (small-town newspaper editors in the heartland)." (pp. 81, 83)
Advocates of the silver standard, which would make financing more readily available to small producers and deny New York bankers control of the financial system, fought back with a little book, Coin's School of Finance, by William "Coin" Harvey, 1894, which sold over 100,000 copies. (pp. 90-91) For Coin, as for most of his followers, money . . . was a means of exchange, not a means of . . . storing usable claims on the products of labor." (p. 92) And in the 21st century, we have two economies: the real economy, of the many, who spend their money on their needs; and the speculation economy, of the few for whom money is in so vast abundance they couldn't spend it if they had to, so hoard it, speculate to get more of it, buy political influence.
The plutocrats launched an intense "educational" campaign, getting their message out with cartoons and editorials sent to newspapers all over the country. (pp. 94ff)
Divide and conquer was part of the strategy: money men sought "to convince the 'better class of farmers' that it should ally not with the 'jack-legs, renters, and n'er-do-wells' but with its true counterpart--the business leadership of the metropolis." (p. 99; cites include William A. Williams, The Roots of the Modern American Empire)
Geographic politics were deftly used to garner support for the gold standard that would support plutocracy. "The West will not take up this cause; the East should not do so, and the central West, by reason of its importance as a factor in the commerce of the country and its geographical relation to the other sections in which financial views are considered more or less extreme, should act. For such a movement to emanate from Indiana would probably be more acceptable to all parts of the country than for it to emanate from any other state." (Report of Indianapolis Monetary Commission, 1898, quoted pp. 105, 110) "this movement would be as broad-gauged as possible, yet remain oriented toward the requirements of large enterprise." (p. 105)
Bankers pioneered using the questionnaire as an organizing tool. (p. 109) Charles Conant wrote his first article in Sound Currency December 1, 1897. Academics of the 1890s lionized big business, and would do so "until the complete collapse of modern market economies [in the 1930s] had forced a complete reevaluation of market systems." (p. 115)
"When it became clear in August 1897 that Congress would not authorize the president to appoint a monetary commission, Hanna and his colleagues began choosing their own." (p. 106) Jules Guthridge and Charles Conant, by "careful manipulation," arranged to have the commission's Jan. 3, 1898 report printed in 7500 newspapers, and built a distribution system of nearly 100,000 correspondents. (p. 109) The report was "a 'standard around which to rally.' The first step in making public opinion effective, then was to organize the business community around the reform principles found in the preliminary report." (p. 113) This was the purpose of the Jan. 1898 Monetary Convention in Indianapolis: "My word to you is, pull all together." (p. 115, Charles S. Fairchild)
Getting a bill passed was next. Despite lobbying, a Senate majority was still pro-silver. Yet this "was no reason for apathy, Hanna argued, since a bill passed by the lower house could not be long ignored. If the practical businessmen of the country would assume their political responsibilities, he insisted, that majority could be reversed as early as March 1899." (p. 117)
The gold standard men also wanted to expand the American empire by lending money and opening bank branches overseas. (p. 120; cites Charles Conant, The U.S. in the Orient 1901) "a nation whose businessmen held a large volume of contracts that stipulated certain money payments by foreigners at a future date--would have to be ready to defend them by force of arms." Wow. Killing middle-easterners in the service of Exxon is not new. (The U.S. has been deposing and replacing foreign governments since the Jefferson administration's regime change in Tripoli.) The gold men then argued that loans to the government to finance the Spanish-American war would have to be guaranteed with a gold standard and gold reserve. (p. 121)
"Ultimately, the education the corporate business community received by making its own sound money propaganda effective enabled it to conceptualize and to erect a new, corporate-industrial society. (p. 125, cites E. Digby Baltzell, Philadelphia Gentlemen: The making of a National Upper Class, 1958.) "the banking and monetary reform movement of 1894-1900 must be understood as the context in which a corporate business elite began to fork out a world view and a program appropriate to its control over and leadership of an emergent modern-industrial civilization. . . . the movement might also be understood as the preparatory school in which a modern ruling class came of age."
cite p. 130: Charles Conant, History of Modern Banks, 1896 ed.
p. 134: Joseph French Johnson, Money and Currency, 1905. "that demand for money and demand for capital were not identical--acknowledged economic conditions that were specific to a modern or corporate economy. To suggest, as Johnson did, that demand for money and demand for capital were 'in fact entirely different' was to suggest that Say's Law and its corollary, the real bills doctrine, lacked explanatory adequacy."
cite p. 140: Alexander Noyes, Forty Years of American Finance, 1909
"'sustaining normal values' under conditions of chronic oversupply clearly was a problem of demand management; it was, in short, a banking problem." (p. 150, cites James Livingston, "The Social Analysis of Economic History and Theory: Conjectures on Late-19th Century American Development," American Historical Review Feb. 1987, online at http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/omalley/g...)
"By 1906 [Frank Vanderlip] had an international reputation as a leading architect and ideologue of America's corporate-industrial system, . . . based in part on his investigations into the potential reach of a modern U.S. empire which he had published in 1902 as America's Invasion of Europe. (p. 160, also cites Charles Conant, Principles of Money and Banking)
cite p. 166: A.B. Hepburn, History of Coinage and Currency in the U.S.
By 1907, the business community was unanimous in support of a central bank, and felt that, "Reform had become a problem for 'experts' to solve. . . . 'The subject is technical. Opinions formed without a grasp of . . . principles and conditions are without value. The verdict of the uninformed majority gives no promise of being correct.' But the questions at issue were still part of normal political discourse, where they had been since Reconstruction and where, according to the Constitution, they belonged. An unprecedented mobilization of public opinion-making resources would thus be critical to the success of 'scientific' reform" (p. 174) What enabled the successful propaganda were (1) academic journals; (2) eagerly pro-business professors; (3) tycoons themselves "define[d] the puzzles fit for scholarly and journalistic investigation." (pp. 173-175)
Professor Seligman claimed the 1907 crisis was smaller than previous ones in part due to "the modern concentration and integration of industry into the vast combinations known as trusts;" the "consummately able management" of large industrial corporations give a "more correct adjustment of present investment to future needs". (pp. 176-177) Quite a cheerleader. Truth is, monopolies are great at ensuring that any income accrues only to the few owners, at the expense of customers, employees, and suppliers. And giant corporations make giant mistakes that knock giant holes in economy, society, and the environment.
cite p. 186: O.M.W. Sprague, Banking Reform in the U.S., 1911
Another paper on Livingston's subject is Elmus Wicker, "The Great Debate on Banking Reform: Nelson Aldrich and the Origins of the Fed," 2005, online at https://ohiostatepress.org/Books/Book...
cite p. 197: Henry Raymond Mussey, The Reform of the Currency, 1911, Academy of Political Science
cite p. 216: Robert Bierstedt, Power and Progress1974
"agricultural credit was a way to encourage modern business enterprise on the farms, a way to reshape the agricultural sector on the lines of the corporate model they had invented for the industrial sector. . . . The movement for agricultural credit may, then, be seen as the highest stage in the development of U.S. internal colonialism" (p. 218; see Theodore Saloutos and John D. Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West, 1900-1939, Madison, 1950
[SPOILER ALERT] I judge a book largely by the ending; this one ends badly--so it's not among my favorite MacLean stories. But it has one quote I quite[SPOILER ALERT] I judge a book largely by the ending; this one ends badly--so it's not among my favorite MacLean stories. But it has one quote I quite like:
"Foster always said that education was very important, but that it didn't really matter, because intelligence was more important than that, and that even intelligence didn't count for so much, that wisdom was far more important still. He said he had no idea in the world whether you had education or intelligence or wisdom and that it couldn't matter less, a blind man could see that you had a good heart, and the good heart was all that mattered in this world."
(Spoken by the widow Foster after the man dies a hero.)
It ends (view spoiler)[badly. In a great story, the hero shouldn't commit treachery. Nor say that God demanded it. (hide spoiler)]Merlin's backstory!
It ends (view spoiler)[badly. In a great story, the hero shouldn't commit treachery. Nor say that God demanded it. (hide spoiler)]
Set in late fifth century, "less than 100 years after the Roman legions left Britain and Brittany." Arthur was supposedly born around 470 CE. The Crystal Cave ends just after Arthur is (view spoiler)[conceived. (hide spoiler)]
Christianity is supplanting worship of both the Roman soldiers' Mithras and the druids' goddess.
Based on The History of the Kings of Britain, 1136 CE, in Latin, by British cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1095-1155) (Monmouth is near Cardiff, Wales). Part of the story is based on a still-earlier source: a ninth-century historian, Nennius, from whom Geoffrey took some of his material.
The story has Merlin direct the movement of big stones of the Stonehenge kind. See Stonehenge by Bernard Cornwell for more speculation on how this might've been done....more
I don't know if you happen to know what the word "excesses" means, but those are what Pongo's Uncle Fred, when in London, invariably commits.I don't know if you happen to know what the word "excesses" means, but those are what Pongo's Uncle Fred, when in London, invariably commits....more
Thomas Ray
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