How To Smash This Racket! (Part 4 of 5)

We know that war is a racket, we know who profits from the racket and we know the victims and how they are suffering.  This section looks at how to break this cycle, and to safeguard against war profiteering in the future.

"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 risk insurance and by 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 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 the 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.

To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.

1. We must take the profit out of war.
2. We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.
3. We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes."

How many conflicts would have been avoided if we had followed those three steps?  Step one alone would have been enough to prevent the worst excesses of Westminster.  The final chapter, to hell with war!, offers General Butler's final plea to all of us to smash to war racket.

Part 1 - War is a racket
Part 2 - Who makes the profits?
Part 3 - Who pays the bills?
Part 4 - How to smash this racket!
Part 5 - To hell with war!

Drew
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Who Makes The Profits? (Part 2 of 5)

In Part 1 we saw that war is a racket.  Here, we learn who makes money from war and how.

"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.

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 limitations 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."

In part 1 we learned that war is a racket.  In this part, we learned who profits from war.  Part 3, who pays the bills?, looks at the victims of the racket in more detail.

Part 1 - War is a racket
Part 2 - Who makes the profits?
Part 3 - Who pays the bills?
Part 4 - How to smash this racket!
Part 5 - To hell with war!

Drew
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War is a Racket (Part 1 of 5)

"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 [I] 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 is exploited by the few - the self same 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."

Although General Butler was referencing early 20th century America, the same truths that he wrote about apply to the world today.  In part 2 we will see who makes the profit from war.

Part 1 - War is a racket
Part 2 - Who makes the profits?
Part 3 - Who pays the bills?
Part 4 - How to smash this racket!
Part 5 - To hell with war!

Drew
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There are only two things we should fight for

In 1935, a 51 page book entitled ‘War is a Racket’ was published by Round Table Press.  Written by Major General Smedley D Butler, who was one of the most decorated soldiers in American history and twice recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, it instantly became one of the most significant anti-war works of the 20^th century.  It described the mechanisms of war, identified those who profit from conflicts, and possible means to bring the racket to an end.

"Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents," Smedley D Butler

In the lead up to Remembrance Day, we intend to upload extracts from each of the five chapters from ‘War is a Racket’.

 

We at Sign for Scotland believe that this book should be in every school and library in Scotland and we hope that this series of blogs will, in some small way, increase awareness of the issues General Butler raised and the possible solutions he proposed.

“I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers.  There are only two things we should fight for.  One is the defence of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.  War for any other reason is simply a racket.”  Smedley D Butler

Part 1 - War is a racket
Part 2 - Who makes the profits?
Part 3 - Who pays the bills?
Part 4 - How to smash this racket!
Part 5 - To hell with war!

Drew
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A Tale of Two Scotlands

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…’

When Charles Dickens penned those famous words he probably wasn’t thinking much about Scotland in the 21^st century, yet their timeless wisdom matches the situation we find ourselves in.  Perhaps I’m being overly dramatic but we are living in a unique time in Scotland’s history.

Here's a kind message from our Croatian friends at our recent World Cup Qualifier (although I suspect it might have been taken down after Snodgrass scored!)

Today there are two Scotlands; one characterised by a confident persona that is hopeful about the future, and one mired in self doubt and despair.  The referendum on Scottish Independence will go a long way towards deciding which one will become our true identity.

A ‘Yes’ vote is a vote of self confidence.  It is the belief that we can do better, that we have something to offer and that we can take responsibility for our actions.  ‘Yes’ means that we reap our own harvest and ring our own till.  The successes we achieve will be the result of our own efforts and the choices we make will be our own.

"Yes we Canavan!" is a lot better than "No we shouldn't Darling..."

A ‘No’ vote is a vote of self doubt.  It is the belief that we can’t care for ourselves, that we have nothing to offer and that we want others to take responsibility and tell us what to do.  ‘No’ means we receive pocket money for our labour and strife.  Any success we achieve will be credited to others and every real choice will be made from afar.

Sign for Scotland believes that we can enter the best of times.  A renewed focus upon the challenges facing Scotland will help to us to resolve our problems.  A renewed sense of purpose will lead to a boom in the arts and literature, and a renewed belief that things can change if the people want them to will lead to a more ethical and principled politics.

We are the authors of ‘A Tale of Two Scotlands’ and the ending will be up to us.

Drew

 

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Independence

We would like to start this blog with the words ‘Dinnae Panic’.  This, we feel, will not only make you more relaxed about independence, but also about the ragtag characters who make up the ‘no’ campaign, thus turning any lingering frustration, anger, bemusement and/or desire to end it all at how hopelessly incompetent that shower at Westminster are, into the more positive act of actually doing something about it and helping Yes Scotland.  Just remember, Dinnae Panic.

The 'Hitchhiker's Guide to Independence' is available on all good planets.

Unlike the ‘Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy’, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Independence doesn’t begin with the construction of a hyperspace bypass; indeed vast capital projects, which conveniently fall outside the Barnett Formula and thus leads to no extra funding for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, tend to congregate within the M25 and rarely trouble anyone outside this bubble.  Everyone accepts this because they have no choice but to accept it, making everyone outside the bubble who isn't in Scotland angry at anyone who attempts to give themselves a choice through independence because they can’t go with them, and everyone inside the bubble angry because they don’t feel appreciated enough.  Dinnae Panic.  After independence all those people who feel angry at the people who want to fix the problem will become angry at the things that deserve their anger, making the world a better (and less angry) place.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Independence actually begins in the Vogon Parliament, which is broadcast every day at 6:30 by the Galactic State Broadcasting Corporation (northern regional office).  The Vogon’s are responsible for the despair of people in Scotland, primarily due to repeatedly subjecting them to ‘Vogon Speeches’, which are widely considered to be the third worst form of political speech in the known Universe.  For reference, the second worst speech makers are the Omni-Garblers of Alpha Centauri, with number 1 going to Johann Lamont.

 

Even Bablefish won't translate Vogon Speeches. 

Here are a few examples of Vogon Speeches:

http://wingsoverscotland.com/betting-on-air/#more-31591

http://wingsoverscotland.com/between-the-whines/#more-29578

http://wingsoverscotland.com/margaret-curran-i-didnt-inhale/

http://wingsoverscotland.com/labour-devolution-plans-explained/

The Vogons, realising that their speeches and state broadcaster were losing their effectiveness on the increasingly curious Scots, turned to their ultimate weapon, a device known as the ‘infinite improbability contrive’.  The timing for this switch was really improbable because until that very moment, the Vogons had been largely uninterested in Scotland and more concerned about whether other countries were worried about being beating up by them.

The infinite improbability contrive, which examines every conceivable contrived question in the universe simultaneously, is the single most important piece of technology available to the ‘no’ campaign, for it can calculate every fantastically improbable situation that could befall Scotland should the people who live here actually decide what they want to do.

The questions asked were so fantastical, that the ‘no’ campaign proved, beyond any doubt or argument, that no nation, including the Vogon nation, can ever possibly survive if their people get to decide what happens.  Realising the enormity of their mistake, the operators of the infinite improbability contrive switched the machine off at question 507, and promptly placed it in a small cupboard next to leaflets marked ‘you'll go bankrupt without a Triple A rating’.  Dinnae Panic.  The scientists who constructed the infinite improbability contrive were so careful and precise in their work that the chances of it ever being wrong are 2²⁷⁶⁷⁰⁹ to one, ironically making it certain that it is wrong.

Following the discovery that the infinite improbability contrive was wrong, those individuals amongst the heroes who couldn’t take any more headed for the Restaurant at the End of the Referendum and were served Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters (a specialty at all 7 bars and 19 alcohol selling restaurants within the Vogon Parliament) whilst muttering ‘I just want it all to end!’  Despite reports to the contrary, we can confirm that the passage of time will be consistent between now and the 18^th of September 2014, regardless of the number of Gargle Blasters consumed, although a ‘no’ vote will set Scotland back 20 years.

"Milky-way milk, Sunday Sun Sundaes and Betelgeuse Beetles are all available...no tea," menu listing

We hope that this brief introduction to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Independence has been helpful to you.  If, for reasons  securing civil liberties, guaranteeing workers rights, refocusing the Scottish economy to extract the best performance possible, reforming the tax laws so that they work, having more choice, not having the youth of Scotland sent into wars all around the world that we don’t want to be part of, more control for local authorities, the creation of a wealth fund that ensures that future generations benefit from our fantastic natural resources, getting rid of David Cameron who would no longer tell us what to do, getting rid of Alex Salmond who would almost certainly retire after independence since that’s been his life’s goal, or not suffering Ed Miliband’s undoubtedly doubt-worthy leadership, then you should spend the remaining days before the referendum actually doing something positive and campaign with Yes Scotland.  Dinnae Panic, if we work hard enough, then we’ll get a Yes vote.

But if, for the reasons of boredom, love of Westminster, happiness at having Weapons of Mass Destruction at your doorstep, or just a deep longing for Tuition Fees and Prescription Charges, you believe that this blog has wasted your precious time and that you really don’t care who is in charge, then please visit the Restaurant at the End of the Referendum, enjoy your drink and be thankful for the cuts, wars and tax rises that are coming your way…unfortunately, unlike the infinite improbability contrive, they aren’t improbable.

Drew

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P.S. Our apologies to the late, great Douglas Adams, whose work we so much admire.  Also, check out 'The Hitch Hiker's Guide to Scottish Independence' by Andrew Pickering, available on Kindle!