derby378
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Sat Aug-12-06 09:26 AM
Original message |
Gen. Smedley Butler saw this coming 70 years ago... |
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Intrusive searches and ridiculous security measures at airports. Secret monitoring of the phone calls and e-mails of average Americans. A war fought solely for corporate and business interests. Torture, rape, and murder performed under the aegis of the Stars and Stripes.
General Smedley Darlington Butler saw it coming. Maybe not in the form it exists in today, but he saw it coming. He saw it when he realized that various corporations, in partnership with the American Legion, wanted to lauch a coup against FDR and institute a fascist dictatorship along the lines of Mussolini. He's the one who blew the whistle on the "Business Plot," as some people began to call it, and thus he's the one responsible for saving America from fascism.
We needed a modern-day Gen. Butler to head off this madness that America is being subjected to. All it took was one voice to stop the Florida debacle in 2000, 9/11, Gitmo, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib.
Gen. Butler is a real American hero. But now it's gonna take all of us to be able to accomplish the miracle that he performed 70 years ago.
Who's with me on this?
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bullimiami
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Sat Aug-12-06 09:28 AM
Response to Original message |
1. gen butler saw it happening. new century - same game. |
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another generation of bastards running it.
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Sinti
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Sat Aug-12-06 09:30 AM
Response to Original message |
2. With you, but I think the coup already happened |
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Edited on Sat Aug-12-06 09:37 AM by Sinti
Same people as before, only this time it happened (and continues to happen) in a kind of sick slow motion - we've got to get it back. War is A Racket http://www.veteransforpeace.org/war_is_a_racket_033103.htm
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derby378
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Sat Aug-12-06 09:32 AM
Response to Reply #2 |
3. Thanks for posting a link to the on-line version of WIAR |
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I've got the print version, courtesy of Feral House.
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deutsey
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Sat Aug-12-06 09:33 AM
Response to Original message |
4. The industrial fascists tried to recruit Butler to be their figurehead |
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He was a popular war hero and they thought the offer of autocratic power would appeal to him. They were wrong.
Unfortunately, the same fascist interests that tried to tempt Butler have found their man in "W". Lucky them.
I don't see anyone on the "inside" like Butler was who would blow the whistle on the current plot. They're making out like bandits...why would they give up such a lucrative gig just to save the Republic?
:evilfrown:
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pretzel4gore
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Sat Aug-12-06 10:17 AM
Response to Original message |
5. sinclair lewis warned about this... |
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in the version of 'babbitt' i read recently, an afterward by a professor mark shorer said it bluntly... shorer says that the american upper classes knew the score: they maintained their power in part by pandering to the neofascist elements in society, but if they ever lost control, a calamity must result! well it's happened... 90 perrcent of those who suffer will be the innocent, but eventually, like the italian/japanese/german fascists after ww2, the bastards will be forced to run and hide, and lie and squirm and try to claim they're liberals/leftists/democrats
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oscar111
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Sat Aug-12-06 10:28 AM
Response to Original message |
6. RECOMMEND... and, anyone got a pix of butler? helps make it |
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Edited on Sat Aug-12-06 10:32 AM by oscar111
all more real when one sees what folks in history looked like.
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Johnyawl
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Sat Aug-12-06 11:17 AM
Response to Reply #6 |
8. I don't know how to post pics, but here's a link |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedly_butlerFrom his bio: Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye," was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. Butler was awarded the Medal of Honor twice during his career, one of only 19 people to be awarded the medal twice. And a little about his non-military life: When Major General Wendell C. Neville died in July 1930, many expected Butler to succeed him as Commandant of the Marine Corps. Butler, however, had criticized too many things too often, and the recent death of his father, the congressman, had removed some of his protection from the hostility of his civilian superiors. Butler failed to receive the appointment, although he was then the senior major general on the active list. ...Butler retired from active duty on October 1, 1931.
Butler took up a lucrative career on the lecture circuit.
Butler came forward to the U.S. Congress in 1934 to report that a proposed coup had been plotted by wealthy industrialists to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Though the investigating congressional committee corroborated most of the specifics of his testimony, no further action was taken.
Butler was known for his outspoken lectures against war profiteering and what he viewed as nascent fascism in the United States. His book War is a Racket (1935) presents a highly critical view of the profit motive behind warfare. Between 1935 and 1937, Butler served as a spokesman for the American League Against War and Fascism, which was considered by many to be communist-dominated, and gave numerous speeches to the Communist Party USA in the 1930s, as well as to pacifist groups. The following, from "the non-Marxist, socialist Common Sense magazine" in 1935, is one of his most widely quoted statements:
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. 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. Smedley Butler died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940. He was buried at West Chester. His doctor had described his illness as an incurable condition of the upper abdominal tract, presumably cancer.
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annabanana
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Sun Aug-13-06 02:55 PM
Response to Reply #8 |
14. What a hero looks like: |
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What will today's hero look like?
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oscar111
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Sat Aug-12-06 10:40 AM
Response to Original message |
7. derby, good OP, but your sig is impotent to all who dont know german |
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so, translate the sig for each Op you do, and have an effect.
thanks.
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derby378
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Sat Aug-12-06 03:03 PM
Response to Reply #7 |
10. Aww, but making them run it through Babelfish is half the fun! |
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OK, I'll be nice for once. Here's the translation:
Those, who start with burning books, will end with burning men.
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oscar111
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Sun Aug-13-06 11:51 AM
Response to Reply #10 |
12. thanx. Glad you are polite, too. Now, about a world language.... |
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i am all for it.
Hiroshima was the result of multilanguages.
Japanese mistranslated Truman's ultimatum in an insulting tone, not a neutral one.
So, they indignantly replied with a negative to his a-bomb ultimatum.
result, the bomb dropped.
So, i say end language problems with a world language.
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derby378
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Sun Aug-13-06 02:49 PM
Response to Reply #12 |
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I know, I know, off to the Lounge with me...
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Johnyawl
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Sat Aug-12-06 11:33 AM
Response to Original message |
9. A few of Smedly Butlers memorable quotes |
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"Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service." "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." "There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making. Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?" "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."
His Reply to Gerald MacGuire, after being asked to organize WWI veterans (for military support) in a fascist-coup of FDR, as related by Butler in testimony before Congress, 1934. A reporter (a Butler confidant) testified MacGuire said, "We might go along with Roosevelt and then do with him what Mussolini did with the King of Italy." Which was, made him a figure-head:
"My interest is...maintaining a democracy. If you get these 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home."
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EstimatedProphet
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Sat Aug-12-06 03:05 PM
Response to Original message |
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Butler is a real hero. shame he's left out of the history books - most people have no idea who he was or what he did.
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Disturbed
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Sun Aug-13-06 03:06 PM
Response to Reply #11 |
15. Congress did nothing about it. |
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