Honor our veterans with peace.
By Thom Hartmann A...
Veterans Day is about honoring our service men and women, for the patriotic duty of putting their lives on the line to protect and serve our nation. But, one of the most important historical points about this day has been forgotten. Originally, Veterans Day was known as Armistice Day, and it commemorated the end of the First World War. This day was established to recognize the peace agreement that our soldiers fought for, not the celebration of endless war. At 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, a ceasefire brought an end to a war that killed 20 million people, and wounded many more.
In the years that followed, our entire nation came to a stop at 11 a.m. on this day every year, for two minutes of silence to honor the lives that were lost in World War I, and to recognize the high price that so many paid to bring peace. Today, many Americans celebrate this day with bar-b-ques, or picnics, without ever considering the soldiers who made it possible, or the ones still fighting senseless wars around the globe. Even our media fails to recognize the men and women who are fighting right now in wars that were started over lies, and continue on with no real victory in sight.
Perhaps this Veterans Day we can honor those who served our nation, and those who continue to fight, by bringing them home, and putting an end to perpetual war.
Comments
#2
Wasn't it also the end of the "War to end all wars"? Of course, who could say that seriously even in 1914?
#3
Unfortunately all wars are usually somehow about money. Modern wars are fought for oil, because oil equals powerful money. The Book of Revelations describes oil as the powerful evil that ascends out of the bottomless pit. This is no metaphor, this is a literal interpretation. Remember, money is the root of all evil. Therefore, since oil equates with powerful money--and since powerful money becomes the root of powerful evil--oil has become the root of powerful evil. Powerful evil is what leads to perpetual war.
We will continue to have wars, cease fires, withdrawal, false flags, and more wars until we resolve the root cause of this powerful problem. We need to permanently plug the bottomless pit. On this Veteran's day let us reflect on what our true priorities really are and what the true value of human life really is; and, let us make the decision in our own hearts to work together to bring about the change that would most honor the memories of our brave fallen soldiers. Let us honor our Veterans by working together to permanently plug the bottomless pit that has claimed--and will continue to claim--the lives, limbs, and shattered families of so many people in the past, present, and in the years to come.
Give peace a chance--plug the pit now!
#4
Your screaming-head conservative regulars are more than irritating. Let's have liberal shout-outs more often about what to do!
#5
I was surprised to find out there is some kind of media ban on deceased soldiers coming home in the US. Here we honor them with a "highway of heros" people line up for miles to pay tribute for there sacrifice. It is all over every news station showing there families crying. Military personal carrying the coffin with a bright red Canadian flag draped over it. it is the least we can do. Doesn't this help the political pressure to get us the hell out of these wars. Google "highway of hero". it is the way it should be done I think.
#6
Quote Kend:I was surprised to find out there is some kind of media ban on deceased soldiers coming home in the US. Here we honor them with a "highway of heros" people line up for miles to pay tribute for there sacrifice.
Kend ~ You are absolutely right about that. In this country it seems we do our best to make war and death seem clean and painless. The media claims that they black out the sacrifice of deceased soldiers in order to preserve their dignity. However, like almost everything else that comes out of Washington via the media that is a big lie. The real reason is to use the media to pacify the masses and--like you suggested--sidestep the blow back of the masses to get us out of these wars while rallying support for the wars instead. They sell this notion on bumper stickers all over town that will read, "Support Our Troops!" What they really mean is "Support Our War!" How can anyone make the claim to support our troops when you don't even acknowledge their bodies when they come home in bags? I'm sure that if the wars we were involved in were righteous, legal, and necessary the dead would have been honored the same way it is done in Canada; and, the same way it used to be done here. The way slain soldiers are treated in this country doesn't do justice to their memory or their sacrifices.
#7
One thing I learned from my father, a WW2 vet, is that it is EVERY AMERICANS choice to decide who they are going to listen to and who they believe in. Since WW2, we have been lied into EVERY war that we have been involved in.
It is more patriotic to refuse to serve in these so - called wars based on lies than it is to serve.
Just the fact that these @ssholes refuse to allow the media to attend arrivals of the dead indicates that these wars were nothing more than a farce and these deaths caused by lies are nothing more than murders that the "government" are nothing more than accomplices.
You can thank the bush crime family personally for EVERY war we have been in since Korea.
#8
Quote ptg0:You can thank the bush crime family personally for EVERY war we have been in since Korea.
ptg0 ~ So true! However, I believe the credit you wish to extend goes far beyond just Korea.
Article in Community Currency Website by Dr. Eric KarlstromQuote The Article called: The Bush Crime Family: Four Generations of Wall Street War-Making and War Profiteering: Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, once stated there are two classes of financiers: 1) Those who profit from war and use their influence to bring about war for profit, and 2) “constructive” financiers. Ford Motor Co., along with about 100 other major U.S. banks and corporations, belongs to the first group (see C. Higham’s Trading with the Enemy). Indeed, Ford himself was actually decorated by the Nazis for his service to Nazism.Other prominent international banking families that simultaneously bankrolled Hitler, Stalin, and Roosevelt during the first half of the 20th century include the Rockefellers (Standard Oil Company, Chase Bank), the Rothschilds, the Schiffs, the Warburgs, and the Bushes, among others.
Why would the world’s richest individuals simultaneously fund communism in Russia, fascism in Germany, and socialist democracy in the United States? Georgetown historian Carrol Quigley put it this way: “The powers of financial capitalism had a far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.” These financial powers had learned that war is the most profitable of all businesses and also the most effective means of changing the global political landscape. Thus, over the past 2 centuries at least, they have covertly manipulated politicians and nations into wars. Their ultimate goal was and is to establish a “New World Order”, a totalitarian one-world government ruled by the very few and very rich, i.e., them. Des Griffin has termed this a “Fourth Reich of the Rich” (Griffin, 1976). George Orwell and Aldous Huxley described what such a world might look like in their classic novels, 1984 and Brave New World.
President George Herbert Walker Bush was not the first or only prominent man to proclaim this “New World Order”. Hitler, President Woodrow Wilson, author H.G. Wells and innumerable other politicians, writers and businessmen have also heralded its immanent arrival. David Rockefeller, Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank and arguably the most powerful American of the last half-century, proclaimed: “We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”
Samuel Prescott Bush
Quote The Article called: The Bush Crime Family: Four Generations of Wall Street War-Making and War Profiteering: II. Samuel Prescott Bush (1863-1948: George W. Bush’s great grandfather). Founder of the Buckeye Steel Castings Company in 1894, Remington Arms Company, and Chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section of the War Industries Board for World War I.In 1918, just after the US entered World War I, Bush became chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section of the War Industries Board. In this capacity, he sold weapons made by manufacturers such as his own Remington Arms Company to 75% of the WWI combatants on both sides. Congressional committee hearings in 1934 by U.S. Senator Gerald Nye attacked Bush and other weapons salesmen as war profiteers and “Merchants of Death.” Salesmen from these companies had helped to manipulate the nations into World War I and then made astronomical profits from the sales of the weapons, at the taxpayer’s expense of course. In 1914, the German army under the Kaiser, armed mainly by Samuel Bush, was the largest and best armed in the world. After WWI, the German army was forced to disarm, but Bush was allowed to keep his many millions, and his arms business thrived. In 1944, Bush was awarded a huge government contract to make armor casings for WWII. Most of the records and correspondence of Samuel Bush’s arms deals have been burned “to save space” in the National Archives. This pattern of the systematic deletion of large portions of the public records is typical of all the Bushes.
George Herbert Walker
Quote The Article called: The Bush Crime Family: Four Generations of Wall Street War-Making and War Profiteering:III. George Herbert Walker (George W. Bush’s other great grandfather): Wall Street banker and director or president of G.H. Walker and Co., J.P. Morgan and Co., Guaranty Trust Co., W.A. Harriman and Co., and Union Banking Corporation.Walker made his fortune building up the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, financing their oil, coal, steel, and manganese industries, among others. As President of Union Banking Corp. (UBC), he laundered money for Hitler and supplied raw materials essential for Germany’s waging World War II. His most prominent partners in financing Hitler’s war machine were Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush. Together, they ran Harriman-Walker, the Hamburg-Amerika Line (a cover for I.G. Farben’s Nazi espionage unit in the U.S.), the American Ship and Commerce Co. (which smuggled German agents, propaganda, and money into America to bribe American politicians to support the Nazi cause), the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, and the Silesian Holding Company. In addition, their Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation owned 1/3 of a complex of steel-making, coal-mining, and zinc-mining activities in Germany. (Friederich Flick owned two-thirds and was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment by the Nuremburg Tribunal, but the American partners were never tried). The Nazi army was equipped by Flick, Harriman, Walker, and Bush with materials stolen from Poland. Meanwhile, Soviet army vehicles were fueled by oil pumped from Baku wells revived by the Harriman/Walker/Bush enterprise.
When the U.S. government seized the Silesian-American Corp. in 1942 under the “Trading with the Enemy Act,” George Herbert Walker was still the senior director of the company.
Prescott Sheldon Bush
Quote The Article called: The Bush Crime Family: Four Generations of Wall Street War-Making and War Profiteering:IV. Prescott Sheldon Bush (George W. Bush’s grandfather; 1885-1972, Yale, Skull & Bones, class of 1917): Wall Street banker, Vice President of W. A. Harriman and Co., and director or senior partner in Union Banking Corporation (UBC) and Brown Brothers, Harriman, and a manager of Silesian-American Corp., the Holland-American Trading Corp. and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation, which were Nazi front organizations run by the Bush-Harriman bank, UBC.Although Union Banking Corporation (UBC) was exposed as a de facto Nazi front organization by the U.S. government in Congressional hearings, Prescott Bush, Harriman, and George Herbert Walker continued doing business with the Nazis for 8 months after the U.S. entered World War II. When the US government seized control of UBC under the “Trading with the Enemy Act,” all the shares were owned by Prescott Bush, E. Roland Harriman, three Nazi executives, and two other Bush associates (Four of the eight directors were members of Skull and Bones, class of 1917). The US government also seized several subsidiaries run by the Bush-Harriman bank (UBC), including The Holland-American Trading Corp., the Seamless Steel Equipment Corp, the Silesian-American Corp., and the Harriman Fifteen Holding Company and determined that huge sections of Prescott Bush’s empire were operated on behalf of Nazi Germany and had greatly assisted the Nazi war effort.
Bush and his partners profited greatly from the slave labor at Auschwitz via a partnership with I.G. Farben, the third largest business in Germany under Hitler. U.S. government reports also indicate that UBC was an interlocking concern with the German Steel Trust and Congressional reports show that German Steel Trust furnished the Nazi government with 51% of its pig iron, 41.4% of its universal plat, 36% of heavy plate, 38.5% of galvanized plate, 42.5% of pipes and tubes, 22.1% of wire, and 35% of explosives. Bush and Harriman each received $1.5 million in compensation for their seized assets.
This story has been suppressed by the US media. And it has not appeared in any of the major Bush family biographies. However, not only were Prescott Bush and the other directors of UBC legally front men for the Nazis, they hired, armed and instructed Hitler’s Nazi army. (Adolf Hitler, once a destitute artist who lived in flop houses, came to power with a private army of 300,000 to 400,000 men, which included the Brown Shirts).
Prescott Bush later served as a director of Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc., Prudential Insurance, Dresser Industries, Inc., Hydrocarbon Research, Inc., Wanadium Corp. of America, and U.S. Guaranty Trust, among other companies, until 1952 when he was elected U.S. Senator from Connecticut.
Conclusion: A major part of the Bush family fortune is due to the “Hitler Project”, which included the slave labor and Holocaust at Auschwitz.
#9
~cont~
George Herbert Walker BushQuote The Article called: The Bush Crime Family: Four Generations of Wall Street War-Making and War Profiteering:V. George Herbert Walker Bush (George W. Bush’s father; 1924- present, Yale, Skull & Bones, class of 1948).Our 41st president’s political life has been intertwined with four of the most powerful and profitable business enterprises on the planet: banking, oil, the arms/intelligence industries, and sales of illegal drugs. He began his career as an oil salesman for Dresser Industries and went on to co-found his own oil company, Zapata Petroleum Corp. of Houston. This would spin off to Zapata Offshore and Pennzoil/Zapata. Bush was president of Zapata Oil from 1954 to 1964 and Zapata Offshore from 1964 to 1966.
Persistent reports indicate Bush was also an undercover CIA agent in the early 60’s, playing a prominent role in the “Bay of Pigs” invasion of Cuba (code name: Operation Zapata) in 1961 and probably the Kennedy assassination in 1963. Newly released FBI documents place Bush in Miami in 1960 and 1961, recruiting Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. That’s how he met Felix Rodriguez who became part of a special CIA shooter team. George Bush, Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and Richard Nixon have all been traced to Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, the day of Kennedy’s assassination. Hunt and Sturgis were among the 6 to 8 “derelicts” or “hobos” found in boxcars near railroad tracks behind the grassy knoll near Dealy Plaza. But they were never finger-printed or photographed in association with Kennedy’s murder.
Bush was elected to Congress in 1966, but lost a bid for the Senate in 1970. Even so, Nixon appointed him ambassador to the UN in 1971. Here he took orders from Henry Kissinger (who worked for the Rockefeller interests) and became a Kissinger-clone. In 1973, Nixon appointed him Republican National Chairman, where he seems to have played an important, behind-the-scenes role in the Watergate Scandal. Then, as Ambassador to China, Bush helped Kissinger oust Cambodian leader Lon Nol and install Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. More than 2 of a total 7 million Cambodians perished under Pol Pot, an estimated 32% of the population.
In 1976, Bush became Director of the CIA. When elected Vice President in 1980, he put his family fortune into a blind trust under the control of his close friend, William Stamps Farish, III, who also had inherited much of the Auschwitz death camp fortune. (Farish’s grandfather was president of Standard Oil and controller of the global cartel between Standard Oil and the German I.G. Farben Corp., which operated the Auschwitz slave labor camps to produce artificial rubber and gasoline from coal. There, Jews and political opponents of Hitler were worked to death or murdered.)
Some of Bush’s other notable, but generally under-reported, contributions include:
1) Helping to orchestrate the “October Surprise,” in which the Iranian government was bribed or coerced into holding the American hostages until after the 1980 election, thereby helping to ensure Carter’s defeat and a Reagan/Bush victory.
2) The assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan two months after he took office. The Hinkley family, a Houston oil family, are long-time friends of the Bushes.
3) Presiding over the Savings and Loan/HUD scandal, in which taxpayers were made to pay over $500 billion for bailing out failed S&Ls. Son Neil Bush, director of Silverado Savings and Loan in Denver, is reported to have personally profited by about $1 billion.
4) As VP and therefore Head of the National Security Council’s Groups on Crisis Management, Drug Addiction, and Terrorism, Bush directed the Iran-Contra drug scandal, in which the secret government (comprised of ex-CIA and military intelligence operatives and businessmen) diverted profits from illegal arms sales to Iran to illegally fund the revolutionary Contras of Nicaragua and the Mujahadeen of Afghanistan. Under CIA protection, these covert operators flew vast quantities of cocaine and heroin into the poor neighborhoods of America, again using drug profits to fund the illegal covert war in Nicaragua, etc.
5) Under Bush’s watch, the CIA spent over $3 billion dollars fomenting holy war (“Jihad”) and training and funding the Mujahadeen terorists (including Osama bin Laden), their networks, and training camps in Afghanistan. Thus, the Taliban, the Mujahadeen, and Osama bin Laden were established as CIA assets and remain so to this day. Not coincidentally, under CIA supervision during the 80’s, Afghanistan became the number one heroin producer and exporter in the world. In 2000, the Taliban government banned the production of poppies (heroin). However, after the recent invasion of Iraq and installation of an American puppet government, Afghanistan is again the number heroin producer in the world.
6) Under Bush’s supervision of the first “War on Terrorism,” hundreds of thousands of Innocent civilians were killed, tortured and disappeared in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Another million or so each, again mostly civilians, were killed in the U.S.-supported and funded wars in Afghanistan and Iraq/Iran.
7) Presiding over invasions into both Panama and Iraq in which some 8000 Panamanians and over 200,000 Iraqis were killed. The U.S had illegally sold tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons, including chemical and biological weapons, to Saddam Hussein during the 80’s to help him build the strongest regional power in the Middle East. Evidence indicates that Saddam was more or less set up for the Gulf War when U.S. Ambassador Glaspie told him the U.S. had no interest in his border dispute with Kuwait. I.e., it was a trap.
However, there were also perks for this hardworking politician/businessman. According to retired Brigadier General Bowen (in The Immaculate Deception: The Bush Crime Family Exposed), Bush and Saddam Hussein split about $250 billion in Persian Gulf oil kickbacks during the 1980’s, which were laundered through the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
In 1988, Project Censored awarded the honor of “Top Censored Story” to the story of George Bush, revealing “how the major mass media ignored, overlooked or under-covered at least ten critical stories reported in America’s alternative press that raised serious questions about the Republican candidate, George Bush, dating from his reported role as a CIA “asset” in 1963 to his Presidential campaign’s connection with a network of anti-Semites with Nazi and fascist affiliations in 1988.”
Today, Bush Sr. is a highly-paid consultant for the Carlyle Group, America’s 11th largest military contractor. In this capacity, he went to Saudi Arabia to meet with the Bin Laden family and the Saudi Royal family in 1998 and 2000. The Carlyle Group stands to make billions of dollars from Jr. Bush’s “War on Terror.” Thus, Bush Sr. is still profiteering handsomely from his insider connections.
George W. Bush
Quote The Article called: The Bush Crime Family: Four Generations of Wall Street War-Making and War Profiteering:VI. George W. Bush (1946-present, Yale, Skull & Bones, class of 1968).As governor of Texas, the 43rd president of the United States presided over the execution of 52 inmates, including mentally retarded prisoners- more than any other governor in US history. He did, however, pardon one death row prisoner, a serial killer. As governor, he changed pollution laws to benefit energy companies and made Texas the most polluted state in the nation. Some of his other notable contributions include:
1) Presiding over the government’s complicity and cover-up of the killing of about 3,000 people at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 (see many references below).
2) Presiding over the greatest rollback of Constitutional civil liberties in the history of the country. The Patriot I and Homeland Security Acts, passed in 2001 and 2002, respectively, along with the pending Patriot II Act eliminate or threaten Constitutional rights guaranteed in our 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments (see attachment).
3) The high-tech massacre of many thousands of innocent and defenseless Afghani and Iraqi civilians who posed no security threat to the U.S. whatsoever and had no part in the crimes of 9-11. The two primary resources thereby controlled are opium and an oil pipeline in Afghanistan and, of course, oil in Iraq. The Bush administration, obviously responding to demands from the major oil companies, is clearly pursuing a strategy to dominate the world’s last, greatest fossil fuel reserves in the Persian Gulf and Caspian Basin.
4) Leading a “pre-emptive” war against Iraq in violation of international law (including the UN charter, the Nuremburg Tribunal and the Geneva Accords) and on the basis of entirely false pretexts. Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) carefully documents 237 lies told by the Bush administration in their efforts to convince the American people, the Congress, and the UN to go to war in Iraq. Interestingly, this document is no longer on the web.
5) Proposing an endless “War on Terror” (i.e., military conquest abroad in service of resource looting for international corporations and a police state at home to suppress dissent), when, in fact, evidence shows that the “War on Terror” is a fraud and that the greatest purveyor of terror in the world, by far, is the U.S. government, with its CIA, School of the Americas, etc.
6) Presiding over the loss, mostly by outsourcing, of some 2.5 million American jobs in his first two years in office.
7) Granting trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts to the richest 2% of Americans. Thereby, spending the $7 trillion surplus he inherited from Clinton and allowing the federal deficit to exceed a record $7 trillion, mainly by granting gigantic tax cuts to the rich and making huge increases in military spending.
8) Presiding over one of the greatest Wall Street scandals (and stock market crashes) of all time (the Enron scandal, the creation of artificial gas shortages in California, etc.).
9) De-funding and thereby further crippling our education, social services, health care, etc.
10) The worst environmental record of any U.S. president in history, including the systematic weakening and rollback of all major environmental laws and regulations.
Conclusion: The Results of all Bush Crime Family Activities in Wars
Quote The Article called: The Bush Crime Family: Four Generations of Wall Street War-Making and War Profiteering: Four generations of Bushes have been instrumental, along with other Wall Street and international bankers, in creating and financing a series of great enemies (including the Soviets, the Nazis, Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden). They and their international business partners, which typically include enemy leaders, have reaped tremendous profits from the wars they have orchestrated. The Bushes have been intimately involved in all the most profitable businesses, including banking (usury), energy (oil), sales of illicit drugs, and weapons/intelligence. Three generations of Bushes have been involved in America’s most elite secret society, Yale’s Skull and Bones, which many believe to be Satanic. The “Great Plan” which they have been working so hard to usher in calls for the destruction of the United States of America as a sovereign nation and the establishment of a “New World Order”, effectively a “Fourth Reich of the Rich.” Thus, they are all guilty of the highest crimes against humanity and the American people.Rough tally of humans killed by the New World Order so far:
World War I
21 million
World War II
25 millionKorean War
1 millionSoutheast Asian Wars (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia)
6 millionIraq War (1991-2004)
nearly 2 millionAfghanistan Wars of 1980s and 2001
over 1 millionOther miscellaneous Third World Wars
over 5 millionRussians killed in one decade in WWI And under Lenin and Stalin
75 millionChinese killed by Mao Tse Tung
100 milllionRough total
over 236 millionIt seems obvious that unless and until the Bush dynasty and their associates (international bankers, corporate and military leaders, secret societies, etc.) are exposed and brought to justice, they will continue to orchestrate and profit from future wars to the detriment of all humanity.
#10
Fantastic stuff, DAnneMarc! Thanks. I'd bet old UBL is smoking a hooka and sipping tea somewhere in some penthouse right now. That, or he died of a kidney ailment many years before the US raided that Pakistani village ostensibly killing him. Maybe he's rubbing noses with GWB back at his Texas Ranch. I've read a few of those things you wrote about before but there was so much more to tell. Wow!
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Thom says "Even our media fails to recognize the men and women who are fighting right now in wars that were started over lies, and continue on with no real victory in sight." When the wars were lie-based to begin with, then what form does victory take? More fossil fuel stolen from another third world country across the globe? And when it comes to our corporate fascist noise machine, I'd replace the word "even" with "especially", because all those gum-flapping fools will ever recognize is money.
Thom says "Perhaps this Veterans' Day we can honor those who served our nation, and those who continue to fight, by bringing them home, and putting an end to perpetual war." I'd love it, Thom, but I'm not holding my breath. I doubt it'll happen with O-bomb-a in office. I doubt it would with Hillary Clinton in office either. But maybe Elizabeth Warren! (Dream on...SIGH) - Aliceinwonderland