War is a Racket

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:

1. Capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914
2. 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

USMC Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler, War is a Racket (1933):

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

For the whole speech click here.

Your Hard Earned War Dollars Support Racist NATO Forces

Very rarely do I repost a story, but this story merits some attention. While people are justifying military force upon Libya, I know these supporters are not aware of the insidious racism and degrading treatment that is going on against black civilians.

Much like Blackwater military and UN Pakistani's raping women in Haiti and Iraq, black folk are treated like shit around the glob.

Nato units left 61 African migrants to die of hunger and thirst

Exclusive: Boat trying to reach Lampedusa was left to drift in Mediterranean for 16 days, despite alarm being raised

• Jack Shenker in Lampedusa
• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 8 May 2011 21.30 BST
• Article history

Refugees from Libya reach Lampedusa. A Nato ship failed to rescue a boat in trouble – leaving 63 people on board to die. Photograph: Francesco Malavolta/EPA

Dozens of African migrants were left to die in the Mediterranean after a number of European and Nato military units apparently ignored their cries for help, the Guardian has learned.

A boat carrying 72 passengers, including several women, young children and political refugees, ran into trouble in late March after leaving Tripoli for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Despite alarms being raised with the Italian coastguard and the boat making contact with a military helicopter and a Nato warship, no rescue effort was attempted.

All but 11 of those on board died from thirst and hunger after their vessel was left to drift in open waters for 16 days. "Every morning we would wake up and find more bodies, which we would leave for 24 hours and then throw overboard," said Abu Kurke, one of only nine survivors. "By the final days, we didn't know ourselves … everyone was either praying, or dying."

Click here to read the whole story.

May the Best Puppet Win: Cocoa, Diamonds & the Ivory Coast Conflict

A very intelligent international lawyer told me last year that most of Africa's leaders needed to be hung, shot and burned at the stake for their political moves in the name of ill-gotten gain.

She said this in disgust and frustration after just visiting a West Africa country where grandmothers of poor areas took on the role of being human sewage systems by picking up the waste and trash of a community that lacked simple infrastructure that drained shit from the streets.

The underdevelopment of Africa and its subsequent conflicts have been detrimental to those who don't have guns, the civilians; women and girls who are sexually brutalized as they are left to fend for themselves when their husbands, uncles, fathers and sons leave to fight. And those youth who have been snatched from childhood and pulled into a life of drugs, alcohol, killing, and raping the same women and girls from even their own areas.

At the end of the day, those who profit from the war have not a single drop of blood on their well-tailored European suits.

Laurent Gbagbo

The reasons for African underdevelopment is complicated and long, but let me focus on the current malaise, corrupt leadership. African leadership caters to the highest bidder.

As in the case of Ivory Coast, a country that is the top supplier of cocoa to the Western World, it would beneficial to be the HNIC.

In many countries, free enterprise is dictated by how much the head of state pockets. If the head gets belly full than the business owner receives carte-blanche in all its trade and labor dealings.

When (former) President Laurent Gbagbo refuses to acknowledge his "defeat" in the recent Ivorian "democratic" election, it is not for the purpose of forwarding a country into progression; but simply carrying on with the fattening of his pockets and those of his family members and croonies.

As with internationally recognized new president, Alasanne Outtara, the ballot and the cocoa goes to the one who will share the profits. Currently being protected by

Alasanne Outtara

UN "peacekeeping" troops there are rumors that Gbagbo is planning to storm Outtara's hotel with youth rebel forces. Oh boy, I hope this is not a Liberia redux.

What happened to good old fashioned youth activities such as soccer and school? Shooting in the name of a Godiva and Belgian chocolate is not what they came to this world to do, is it?

And when much of the West steps in, it is not for the security of Africa and to ensure peaceful negotiations, but to further its control in the re-colonialization of the continent; hence AFRICOM, an American military-controlled operation that has set up headquarters throughout Africa to "assist" in conflict and others matters

Diamond Miner from the Ivory Coast

with diplomacy.


This is all to ensure that the diamonds from Liberia and other conflict areas are ushered through Ivory Coast, then taken to Burkino Faso, Mali or other places that are maintaining peace, so that these bloodied gems can receive their nice stamp of approval from DeBeers and them.

And as one Nigerian diplomat told me with unflinching conviction, only white men can resolve the issues in Africa, not Africans, and not blacks. Well, I guess my black ass and my comments don't count for shit these days, AFRICOM will solve the issues, under a gun and good old fashioned divide and conquer.

Ahhh, now I feel better, de white man done saved de day again, jus lik the movies. Yet these days, the white man is layered in pigmented skin, like Colin Powell, or packing of vagina, as in Hillary Clinton.



Conflict Diamonds

What are conflict diamonds? Conflict diamonds are diamonds that have been used to fund wars, rebellions and conflicts. These diamonds are usually from African nations that have been totally disrupted since colonialization and the removal of Africans as a result of enslavement in the Western Hemisphere.

The challenge and question by black folk around the world is that the diamond industry is controlled and operated by groups of people who funded the development of European countries and markets - - - so how in the hell do they determine as to whom and what is conflict. The diamond industry today was founded and funded on European forced domination!  But now these people become the moral compass for an industry that they created in African blood, sweat, labor and tears.


Anywho, the list below is from the fact sheet of the World Diamond Council. As you can see, most countries have conflict diamonds. So where do all these ample diamond supplies come from? Mars I hypothesize.

Diamond Producing Countries & Conflict Diamonds
Angola Conflict Diamonds
Botswana
Central African Republic Conflict Diamonds
Democratic Republic of Congo Conflict Diamonds
Ivory Coast Conflict Diamonds
Liberia Conflict Diamonds
Namibia
Republic of Congo Conflict Diamonds
Sierra Leone Conflict Diamonds
South Africa
Tanzania

Study War No More

I'm battled fatigued and I haven't even shot one bullet. It seems that I've been in battle-prone alert since Sept. 11, just like the rest of the country.

But since the US has been fighting I don't know who overseas, it has made me more aware of how much conflict is going on in the world. Israel/Palestine, Thailand, Myanmar, Sudan, Yemen, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Mexico, Papau, Ethiopia, and this list goes on and on. It is as if the world is one some serious steroids and wants to shoot shit, and rape shit, and conquer shit, and kill shit.

I am so tired of fighiting. I am done with every other fucking movie being some American military blows up the world. Or a cop flick fighting the bad guys. John Wayne is dead and the Terminator is packing his shit to leave Cali quickly. WAR NO MORE.

If anything, in my opinion, one of the things 2010 will capture is settling of the dust of many turmoils.

I applaud Obama for meeting a very important goal. Removing the masses of troops out of Iraq. Now there are only about, hmmmm, let's see, the size of a Jersey town still there.

But I got to give it to him, the Wild Wild West mentality is not fashionable in the White House. A cool head right now is better than a fucking fool like Bush.

However, if we left it up to Bush, our great-grandbabies would be fighting a war that has a reason that is so ambiguous these days. It's like when you have a fight with your best friend and hate each other for 10 years, then can't remember exactly what the fighting was about.

So I hope those who were ready to Nuke millions of civilians are feeling a little stupid these days.
Of course not, there are other things to fight, like Obama, the BIG government, and progressive movements linked to people of color or homosexuals.

But fot the sake of it, let's do a quick check with our gains from the Operation Iraqi Liberation O.I.L., oops I mean Operation Iraqi Freedom O.I.F.

1. Deficit War Spending $3 Trillion (though some analyst say its $709 billion. Who the fuck has the right calculater. And the creditors are on me about student loans.

2. Papsmears and Nutchecks before you go on to the plane

3. Vehement profiling against Muslims, Arabs, and any Latino or Olive-toned black person that looks like them.

4. Over 100,000 documented Iraqi deaths that are mostly civilians and include a significant number of women and children.

5. Not a dent in civil liberties for Iraqi women, but in fact much has gotten worse. Do you remember the whole media thing around the oppressed women in Iraq to use as a ploy to pull us in. These women were used like a wet food-stamp.

6. As of August 22, the American military deaths were 5,623.

7. A possible draft that has been something your beloved Congressman Rangel has been trying to get enacted since 2005/2006.

8. And oh yeah, another war(s), Pakistan we're here, and Iran, here we come.

You what we need, a fucking song. Sing it brothers....Study war no more! It's time to love and feel good.