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Fuck these guys. Seriously. Don't You Dare Criticize Officers For Shooting Dogs, Whines SLC Top Cop - Hit & Run : Reason.com
The Frogman - Comedy, photoshop, kittens, & corgis: "biomorphosis: When you flip bats upside down they become exceptionally sassy dancers."
War's Still a Racket - Reason.com: "From 1898 to 1931, Smedley Darlington Butler was a member of the U.S. Marine Corps. By the time he retired he had achieved what was then the corps's highest rank, major general, and by the time he died in 1940, at 58, he had more decorations, including two medals of honor, than any other Marine. During his years in the corps he was sent to the Philippines (at the time of the uprising against the American occupation), China, France (during World War I), Mexico, Central America, and Haiti.
In light of this record Butler presumably shocked a good many people when in 1935 — as a second world war was looming — he wrote in the magazine Common Sense: I spent 33 years and four 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 [corporatism]. 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...
That same year he published a short book with the now-famous title War Is a Racket, for which he is best known today. Butler opened the book with these words: 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...
Writing in the mid-1930s, Butler foresaw a U.S. war with Japan to protect trade with China and investments in the Philippines, and declared that it would make no sense to the average American...
Noting that "until 1898 [and the Spanish-American War] we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America," he observed that after becoming an expansionist world power, the U.S. government's debt swelled 25 times and "we forgot George Washington's warning about 'entangling alliances.' We went to war. We acquired outside territory."
...His description of conditions at veterans' hospitals reminded me of what we're hearing today about the dilapidated veterans' health care system. Butler expressed his outrage at how members of the armed forces are essentially tricked into going to war — at a pitiful wage...
Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure." Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too...
It's a cliche of course to say, "The more things change, the more they stay the same," but on reading Butler today, who can resist thinking it? As we watch Barack Obama unilaterally and illegally reinsert the U.S. military into the Iraqi disaster it helped cause and sink deeper into the violence in Syria, we might all join in the declaration with which Butler closes his book: TO HELL WITH WAR!"
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