War Is a Racket (1935) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html <comment><USER2> I read this and I think of the courage that it must have taken to write, however, I quickly realize that my thoughts are based on today's mindset where questioning the government gets you labeled a conspiracy nut or traitor.

We have been warned by many about the military industrial complex, yet, it doesn't sink in.

Our current president was elected on promises of ending these wars and somehow he will go down in history as the champion of military occupation and perpetuating conflicts in places we don't belong.

Truth is that peace doesn't make money, it doesn't grease the wheels of industry, the difference is that where is the industry? It used to be that the US would at least benefit from the industry through employment and tax revenue, but what if the production is no longer in the US? Who benefits then? I can tell you with accuracy who doesn't ..

<comment><USER3> _Truth is that peace doesn 't make money, it doesn't grease the wheels of industry, the difference is that where is the industry?_

I will start by saying that I hate war. And war is VERY anti-capitalist. The only time war makes countries money is when they pick on non-industrialized enemies. People have realized that war is very costly to trade and industrial elites outside the military-industrial complex. [0]

But... Can we really say that we can turn a blind eye to the world's most evil people? Perhaps we can say "Let Europe handle itself" in 1915, but can we really say that in 1941? Even if 1941 was caused by 1915, can't we admit that there are some things worth fighting over?

This isn't to defend the current war-mongers running for President. It's just to say that a 0 wars policy doesn't seem to stand up to reality.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree)

<comment><USER4> > The only time war makes countries money is when they pick on non- > industrialized enemies.

Maybe you're making a different point to this but the United States and its corporations came out of WWI and WWII (wars against an industrialized enemy) far richer and more powerful than before WWI and WWII, largely at the expense of Britain/the British Empire.

The USA essentially replacing Britain as the world's economic superpower after WWI and military/imperialist superpower after WWII.

> But... Can we really say that we can turn a blind eye to the world's most > evil people? Perhaps we can say "Let Europe handle itself" in 1915, but can > we really say that in 1941? Even if 1941 was caused by 1915, can't we admit > that there are some things worth fighting over?

WWI started in __1914 __, not 1915 and WWII started in __1939 __(or 1937, if you want to take it from the Japanese invasion of China), not 1941.

1941 (Pearl Harbor) was not caused by 1915 (WWI), it was caused by _1893_ and the invasion, overthrow and annexation of Hawaii that led the military of the US empire to be there in the first place.

"Let Europe handle itself" is a simplification of what the United States was thinking and doing before being forced kicking and screaming into finally _doing the right thing_ by Japan and Germany - even after Pearl Harbor, the USA _still_ did not declare war on Hitler.

I doubt it's taught in American schools, but it's no secret that American companies (ie, capitalists) were supporting, supplying and working with the Nazis _even after the start of WWII_.

People in US do seem to be taught that lots of charity was doled out to Britain. In fact Britain (and its Empire countries), standing alone against the biggest threat to democracy in history, was forced to hand over its gold reserves, its advanced high technology, and even territory to the US, in return for American help.

Not loans at this point in time, of course, because the US believed Britain would fall to Hitler (just as the US had sat back and watched other democracies fall) and therefore would not be in any position to pay the US back.

You're right that some things are worth fighting over, and you're right that WWII is an example of a justified war. It's just a pity that the United States, for all the effort it put in when it finally joined (when Germany's defeat was already a foregone conclusion due to Barbarossa), acted before, during and after WWII with complete self-interest.

<comment><USER5> > 1941 (Pearl Harbor) was not caused by 1915 (WWI), it was caused by 1893 and > the invasion, overthrow and annexation of Hawaii that led the military of > the US empire to be there in the first place.

Caused? No.

It wouldn't have happened if the US didn't own Hawaii in 1941, but the US takeover of Hawaii was _not_ the _causus belli_ for Pearl Harbor.

<comment><USER4> > It wouldn't have happened if the US didn't own Hawaii in 1941

Which is what I said, except I put it more honestly: it would not have happened had the US not _invaded, overthrown and annexed_ Hawaii. The US 'owned' Hawaii the same way Hitler 'owned' the Sudetenland.

The point being the roots (ie, cause) of Pearl Harbor stretch back to 19th century US imperialism, throwing its weight around, and generally being in places it shouldn't have been.

> but the US takeover of Hawaii was _not_ the _causus belli_ for Pearl Harbor.

I didn't say it was a _casus belli_ (no U), did I?

<comment><USER5> You said "caused". Not "it would not have happened" (that is, it was one essential factor), but "caused" (that is, _this is what made that happen_ ).

To see the difference, do a thought experiment. The US takes Hawaii in 1893, but does not end the sale of oil, rubber, metal, and everything else militarily useful to Japan in 1937. Does Pearl Harbor still happen? Probably not, because the US is not signaling opposition to Japan's invasion of China.

On the other hand, say the US doesn't "invade, overthrow, and annex" Hawaii. It merely negotiates for a naval base. Does Pearl Harbor still happen? Yes.

<comment><USER4> > You said "caused". Not "it would not have happened" (that is, it was one > essential factor), but "caused" (that is, this is what made that happen).

I said "caused" because I was _copying the statement and style of the previous poster_. His point (I believe) alluded to the commonly held belief that the roots of WWII lay in WWI; my point, since he used 1941, was that the roots of Pearl Harbor lay closer to home.

> To see the difference, do a thought experiment. The US takes Hawaii in 1893, > but does not end the sale of oil, rubber, metal, and everything else > militarily useful to Japan in 1937. Does Pearl Harbor still happen? Probably > not, because the US is not signaling opposition to Japan's invasion of > China.

Okay, I say in this fictional version of history that it still does happen, because the US is still in places it should not be, due to its late 19th century imperialism, and still poses a military threat to Japanese ambitions in the region.

> On the other hand, say the US doesn't "invade, overthrow, and annex" Hawaii. > It merely negotiates for a naval base. Does Pearl Harbor still happen? Yes.

Why does it still happen? If the US is acting peacefully in this imaginary situation, why can't Japan?

<comment><USER5> Based on US Navy interviews with Japanese officials after the end of WWII, it seems immensely improbable that Japan cared about the US takeover of Hawaii per se. They cared about the US fleet that was based there, and about US actions to oppose Japan's attempts to conquer China and the Dutch East Indies. So if Hawaii were independent but the US had a fleet base there, no, Japan wasn't going to act peacefully in that imaginary situation - not unless you're postulating an actually peaceful Japan, one that isn't attacking China and the Dutch East Indies.

<comment><USER4> > it seems immensely improbable that Japan cared about the US takeover of > Hawaii per se. They cared about the US fleet that was based there

Nobody is saying otherwise. Perhaps you have forgotten again how and why the US fleet got there in the first place: violent American imperialism and expansionism in the late 19th century. It's fairly pointless to imagine situations where that didn't happen, when it did.

> So if Hawaii were independent but the US had a fleet base there, no, Japan > wasn't going to act peacefully in that imaginary situation - not unless > you're postulating an actually peaceful Japan, one that isn't attacking > China and the Dutch East Indies.

Why not? You're postulating a mythological United States capable of negotiating peacefully with Hawaii (and presumably the Philippines, and Guam, and Cuba, and Puerto Rico?). If such a US ever existed, why would it be impossible for it to also come to a peaceful understanding with Japan?

I mean, what are we supposed to be doing here, simply coming up with _just_ the right amount of convenient historical changes to prove your point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _" But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill"_

I'm not sure how it was in Butler's time, but I've read that the overwhelming majority of casualties in modern warfare are civilians. It would seem to me that they are the ones who pay "the biggest part of the bill".

Not that I would deny that the people doing the mass murder can themselves become the victims of war. But I'd personally have more sympathy for civilians who are not trying to murder others but are themselves murdered.

<comment><USER6> >> born July 30, 1881

So yes, he didn't witness a truly modern war. 19th century conflicts were brutal, but weren't exactly the city-destroying conflict WWII was, nor the guerrilla wars of modern times.

<comment><USER7> He participated in WW1, which by any reasonable standard was a truly modern war.

<comment><USER6> It is and it isn't. The explosive capacities of WWI were generally directed at the front, at the soldiers. While cities were involved, the civilian v. soldier death toll is not comparable to say, modern day Iraq. And nothing in WWI involved the literal desruction of large cities as was seen in WWII.

Now go back a couple hundred years, back to when cities were occasionally put to the sword, but that is beyond even this guy's memory.

<comment><USER8> Didn't "the Rape of Belgium" depict German conquest and occupation during WWI?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting" \- Washington Post, March 28, 2013

<comment><USER10> > At the outset of the Iraq war, the Bush administration predicted that it > would cost $50 billion to $60 billion to oust Saddam Hussein, restore order > and install a new government.

> Only one economist, William D. Nordhaus of Yale, seems to have come close. > In a paper in December 2002, he offered a worst-case estimate of $1.9 > trillion, "if the war drags on, occupation is lengthy, nation-building is > costly."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/washington/19cost.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/washington/19cost.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER11> Do we have better accounting and estimation methods now, to advise current commanders-in-chief?

The next time a president wants to take the USA to war, or enter any armed conflict, I'd like to see that announcement be accompanied by (or followed shortly thereafter by) a GAO or similar accounting report estimating probable outcomes and costs. The same report should include an appendix that summarizes recent similar reports delivered in past armed conflicts, analyzing their accuracy with known actual costs. (E.g., that appendix should report this fact about the Iraq war and the updated estimate for the new war should take into account the sources of inaccuracy that led to the underestimation).

In software engineering, at least part of the job is doing something new every time. If it wasn't new it wouldn't need a human - it would just be a machine doing something repeatedly. I imagine that war is to some extent the same way, in that no opposition force is exactly the same; yet a lot of war must be loosely similar in cost, barring major technological changes. (E.g., cost per square mile of territory held by infantry or cost per civilian population or cost per enemy combatant; cost per square mile of enforced no-fly-zone, etc.)

Say, where are all of the data scientists? You'd think that you could draw some interesting conclusions analyzing data about the costs of war, assuming it's publicly available. For example, a histogram of dollars spent month by month per province of occupied territory - is such data public? I don't think I've ever seen much in the way of interesting visualizations, outside of the occasional flashy news article.

<comment><USER12> It's super easy to defeat this kind of constraint. Just claim that if we don't act immediately, the bad guys will kill freedom. There's no time for a GAO! You want to jeopardize the eternal fate of freedom and the triumph of evil because you want a budget proposal!?

Put that on CNN and Fox News. Now the old people want war. Smart people are caught wasting their time in an engineered debate about whether there is or isn't time to first plan a budget. While everyone is riled up, Congress side steps the whole thing and we just begin with whatever military operations they wanted.

<comment><USER11> It takes a while to go to war or enter armed conflict at scale (on smaller scale, certain force units like Marine Expeditionary Units and certain commando teams can move pretty quickly). The President should have the authority the Constitution gives him to do that.

I'd just like to see the GAO rushing alongside that process to prepare expected financial outcomes, to be shared with American citizens and press who will be evaluating the pending action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they?

A couple notes on the war drum:

The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force [0] targeting the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks has been invoked to deploy US armed forces to Afghanistan, the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iraq, Somalia and Syria. [1][2]

A new proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force [3] targeting ISIS, "its associated forces," and "any successor organizations" is arguably more open-ended.

The author of the proposal, Lindsey Graham (Senior Senator from South Carolina), seeks to grant the next president "the ability to go after ISIS _without limitation to geography, time and means._ " [4]

[0]: [https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-107sjres23enr/html/BILLS...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-107sjres23enr/html/BILLS-107sjres23enr.htm)

[1]: [https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/aumf-071013.pdf](https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/aumf-071013.pdf)

[2]: [https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R43760.pdf](https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R43760.pdf)

[3]: [https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/sjres26/text](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/sjres26/text)

[4]: [http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy- budget/congr...](http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy- budget/congress/2016/01/22/mcconnell-nudges-grahams-aumf-forward-us- senate/79171192/)

</comment><comment><USER12> My understanding of many of the most recent military engagements by the US is that they are basically sandbox experiments for prototyping new warfare tech and tactics, especially to study things like asymmetric urban warfare in which the distinction between combatant and civilian is difficult.

We enter the conflicts under whatever pretext is popularized in the media, but the real reason is to fuel warfare R&D efforts, grow surveillance infrastructure, and collect data that reflects situations our military leaders forecast to be important.

Large contracting firms profit. Soldiers lose time, often also money, often their mental health and family relationships, and sometimes their lives. Taxpayers lose money. Foreign civilians lose their lives. Few benefits are ever given to soldiers or foreigners, if they are even paid lip service with promises of benefits at all.

It's basically a string of smaller scale proxy wars to fuel tech, surveillance, and population control between larger, "actual" wars.

I fear we are already past a point where democratic process could stop it. I think by now it would require almost an actual revolt from U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, and that it would be bloody, and that part of the military engineering being studied is exactly how much civilians will tolerate before being pushed to the point of revolt.

As long as you can watch Netflix on your iPad and put it out of your mind, then while it might ruffle your feathers, you won't actually take action that could jeopardize your creature comforts. Even things like Occupy Wall Street seem like they are more data collection opportunities than anything else. "OK, so they will protest via X, Y, and Z, but too few of them can be pushed to do A, B, or C for us to care."

It's a very depressing feeling. In the meantime, just like everyone else, I have to worry about money, family, life goals, comforts, health, and all my biases push me to ignore the military industrial conflict, because already giving it maybe 1/100th of my overall bandwidth is exceedingly depressing. Something close to 40% of the country believes in young earth creationism. Open up to a highly-visited YouTube video and scroll down to the comments and behold the inanity of how we use our time and what our priorities are.

How could enough people possibly coordinate beliefs and actions around humanity-affirming rebukes of the military industrial complex? Of course they won't, so then I guess I'd better put my brain towards how to live in a world where they won't, which is too depressing to think about... and the cycle continues.

I'm sure it has been articulated even earlier than the early 1900s. It's just goes on and on.

<comment><USER13> This. We are all played for suckers.

This is partly why I wish for Trump to get the top job. The amount of window dressing in society will come down drastically as the clown makes misjudgements at every turn and contradicts himself by the hour.

<comment><USER14> Just like what happened when Bush got the job? Obama won the Nobel peace prize before he was president because people believed so strongly that the problem was Bush. "If we just get a sensible president in, he will fix everything!"

American politics goes from yin to yang every 8 years because that's was people expect. The media polarizes every thing. Your average person laps it up. "Those damn conservatives/liberals are ruining everything. How can they be so stupid/naive?". We must make America great. We must make America whole. :-P

People believe that it is their duty to vote: we must keep the democrats/republicans out of office! Or you could waste your vote on someone who can't win. As a measure of protest, perhaps. Or maybe if they _did_ win once... then you would have 3 parties. Then 2 would gang up on 1. Or the third will split the vote.

If you wish to stop war, don't get sidetracked on people. That's how you will be defeated, because it's easy to swap people around like a game of 3 card monty. Concentrate on the issue, not on people, parties or politics. Don't simply cast a vote and say, "Well, I tried". That's how you lose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > "[It's] peace, not war, that makes wealth for a country. War just transfers > possession of the residue from the weaker to the stronger. Worse, what is > bought with blood is sold for coin, and then stolen back again. [...] It's a > wondrous transmutation, where the blood of one man is turned into the money > of another. Lead into gold is nothing to it."

\-- "The Curse of Chalion", by Lois McMaster Bujold

</comment><comment><USER16> Butler is famous, but not for his US military service. For his military service with the United Fruit Company and duPont.[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler)

<comment><USER17> > _Butler is famous, but not for his US military service._

I can hear the collective shouts of every Marine begging to differ. Two of the most recognized names in Marine Corps history are MajGen Smedley Butler and SgtMaj "Dan" Daly. Among other things, they are 2 of 19 men in US military history and the only two Marines to receive two Medals of Honor.

<comment><USER16> He was a great Marine. His complaint was that the the USMC wasn't fighting for the United States, but was being misused on behalf of the United Fruit Company. That's where "banana republics" (not the Gap subsidiary, the Central American countries) came from.

<comment><USER17> This fact isn't so much drilled into heads during bootcamp, but anyone who reads from the Commandant's reading list (or any light research into MajGen Butler for that matter) will have known this. I was specifically addressing your first statement though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For those who are interested, a good book on the history of opposition to war is:

[http://www.amazon.com/We-Who-Dared-Say- War/dp/1568583850](http://www.amazon.com/We-Who-Dared-Say-War/dp/1568583850)

It was written by a leftist and libertarian/paleoconservative working together, so you will likely find something you love and something you hate in it, as with all good books.

I very much regret my early support for the Iraq war.

</comment><comment><USER19> While Butler was quite spot on with his early 1930s post-mortem assessment of WWI, a less isolationist approach might have possibly lessened the scale of WWII.

Some aspects of it's stance, like home territory limited military presence and exclusive zones of interest are simply obsolete in an era of ICBMs and satellites.

For some context and general description of sentiment in the 30s:

[https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/power-of-isolationists- be...](https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/power-of-isolationists-before-world- war-ii/)

[https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/american- isol...](https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/american-isolationism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nye_Committee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nye_Committee)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Acts_of_1930s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Acts_of_1930s)

</comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me very much of Eisenhower's farewell address from 1961:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower's_farewell_address

</comment><comment><USER21> Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. — Eric Hoffer (paraphrase)

</comment><comment><USER22> I love Smedley Butler! Good link. Always wiki - the business plot to see how corporate america tried to get Smedley Butler to lead a military coup of mercenaries against the US government during FDR's presidency.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you liked Butler's perspective, then you will probably also like Garet Garrett's [0] oeuvre. He was an outspoken critic of WWI, and of America's entry into WWII until after Pearl Harbor. His position against an imperial America delivers a wider context to Butler's field experience as handmaiden to American power elites' ambitions accomplishing just that outcome.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garet_Garrett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garet_Garrett)

</comment><comment><USER24> While it is hard to argue with the points in the article, there is this concept of 'global influence' or influence on global politics, which is hard to put a $ value on.

Hasn't this global influence played a huge part in maintaining USA as a global superpower ?

<comment><USER25> You think blunders in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere contribute to U.S. status as global superpower? I'm pretty sure a stronger case could be made that they've detracted from the status and influence the U.S. could have had.

<comment><USER11> It's hard to know what exact effect our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has had on the world. I'm sure there are people at military academies and universities getting PhDs on it.

Whatever the answer is, I don't think we should let the analysis fall prey to populism. As much as I'd agree that Iraq seems to have been a disaster, and that we haven't managed to accomplish much in Afghanistan, consider the wider implications. The USA has managed to navigate itself to the point where it put significant pressure on Iran through sanctions, has agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, and is beginning to re-enter the global economy amidst a lessening of tensions. Presumably at least partially as a result, the price of oil is down to $40, which is lower than it was in 1985. (Consider where Iran is on the world map relative to Iraq and Afghanistan.) For all we know in the general public, that was the strategic goal the entire time. (Yes, I know, that's probably giving the government too much credit. Then again, consider the skill of sabotage like the Stuxnet virus, and imagine the same skill applied to long-term global strategic thinking.)

Perhaps the empire would be much stronger if not for those blunders, or perhaps Iraq would still be a dictatorship and Iran a nuclear threat. As much as ISIS is annoying, it doesn't seem to be an actual strategic threat in the way that nuclear powers with long-range ballistic missiles are.

Just to be clear, I don't know what to believe. I'm playing devil's advocate and primarily arguing not to prematurely conclude that things are simpler than they seem. Consider, for example, the layers of subtlety involved in executing Nixon's Madman theory: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory) \- given the crazy things that actually have happened in our world and politics, I would not be especially surprised if the government knowingly went to war with Iraq on a pretext, specifically to put pressure on Iran and take geo-political control of the region (perhaps even to destabilize the region), with a "fall guy" planned out ahead of time in the way of "no one really believed there were WMDs". The story that, "We thought they had WMDs and were wrong" is a lot easier for the public and world to accept than, "We are strategically invading Iraq and Afghanistan to put pressure on Iran."

Granted, I agree with you that these situations are total clusterfucks. I'm just saying let's look beneath the surface.

<comment><USER26> The US was at its most powerful at the end of WWII. Its GDP was more than rest of the world combined. Military and industrial capacity - unmatched. And the only power with nuclear weapons. At the end of the war they were barely scratched compared to the total devastation in Europe and Asia.

USA could have literally taken over the world with no one to oppose them.

So ... especially after the first oil shock - you could view US in a state of relative decline. With a short blip during the 90s when they were reaping the spoils of winning the cold war.

<comment><USER27> > USA could have literally taken over the world with no one to oppose them.

This is so far from true. One nation occupying the world in any meaningful way is completely unrealistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I read an _NYT_ article a while ago that made the argument that the effect of people who did not support the Vietnam War evading the draft was a military that was, twenty or so years later, when the people who did join became senior, very conservative or willing to wage war. Along the lines of the critical theory idea that some of the Left have become ineffective by not involving themselves in actual politics, I think it's important to not be deterred by this idea of war, as the only way the military-industrial complex will change is if people with better values come to make up more of the military. Maybe this will come to be the case as younger people see decreasing future job prospects and turn to the military as a career.

<comment><USER29> Interesting that you imply that Left would like less war.

It seems to me that the progressives main thing is to tell and enforce how others should live and behave, that is the core of the left, the other ideas are just branches. Evidence is the congress votes in USA by Left to start wars and votes by Taxed Enough Already (TEA) to defund the wars.

If you are anti war, I invite you to check out the Right, Libertarian POV.

<comment><USER30> The left main thing is mostly about making sure there is a "floor", meaning that even if you are poor and on min wage you don't die on the street or bankrupt at the first opportunity.

Usually, countries where the right is in power (take the US for example) have a terrible living for their poorest population.

And this is not something you want because the guy having the shitty min wage job might tomorrow be you, one of your kids, your best friend, or someone in your family.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> War allows populations that don't share markets to still develop markets in relationship to each other for weapons, infrastructure repair, etc.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have read through the comments, and it strikes me that I dont see more combat vets on here. I knew some really smark hackers while I was in the Marine Corps, even though I was just a bullet sponge grunt in OIF/OEF.

It also gladens my heart just to see my favorite Marine, Smedley Butler, get some "air time". It does dissapoint me that so many in the comments are making escuses for war as a profit or r&d center, or for war crimes prosecutions of what are essentially pawns on a grander chessboard.

In the Marine Corps, a lot of people have a hardon for Chesty Puller, but the phrase I used to use is "If you like Chest more than Smedley you do the country and the Corps a disservice." Why? Because not only did Smedley Butler wake up and realize the true nature of the part he played, but he spoke out against it, and beyond that, something I havent seen mentioned yet but something I think is of the utmost importance is his thwarting of the business plot. His convressional hearing testimony is vital to understanding the modern racket of war, and now we have the unredacted version, (though still not his full testimony, because it was heavily edited before even entering the record). If you havent read the unredacted testimony, I highly suggest it.

All that being said, war indeed is a racket, and it continues to be. The WFA (waste fraud and abuse) I saw in Iraq by contractors is barely the icing on the racket cake. There is a reason that something like the richest three counties in the US are in Virginia. The true racket though, is much larger than the contractor world, and primarily involves banking and resource oriented interests.

I spent a long time voraciously reading anything I thought could help me understand the bigger geostrategic/political chessboard, and my primary conclusion about the wars were that resource wars are on the horizon, and the wars were destabilizing measures designed to contain China and Russia by prevention of resource pipelines being built to them. Take a look at the maps of resources and their pipelines...

The other factor is that the traditional nation state actor threat model is being upended by texhnology, to the point that the military industrial congressional complex isadjusting very quickly.

My primary problem with this is how much the people of the US have been lied to and misled. If the United States has some interest in destabilizing an area, I would prefer that this just be said and the case be made outright, instead of sending young dumb warriors like myself to die for causes they dont understand and are lied to about. You want to know where I feel like the primary failure lies at? Every O-5 and above officer who just went along with it and didnt pushback against the Cheney, Bremer, Wolfowitz, Rumsfield bunch of Chicago school Straussian neocons backed by Kissinger and Brezenski. When you cant tell me what my fucking objective is, how can I be expected to accomplish it?

In truth, where we are headed currently is a return to the tripolar world, but in this move, I think we will never fully understand the almost complete subversion of our government that has happened at the behest of the globalists. Smedley Butler caught a glimpse of the beast and had the courage to fight against it openly. He will continue to be my favorite Marine until I die.

Oh, and for any of you touting the economic benefits of war, I hope you never are on the ground on either side when that benefit is being extracted by blood and corruption...

</comment><comment><USER33> War is always connected to money... here is an example..

[http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwa...](http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwars.php#axzz42DJTMMFQ)

<comment><USER34> >it is important to remember that prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve, there was no such thing as a world war.

> Although pre-war Germany had a private central bank, it was heavily > restricted and inflation kept to reasonable levels... So, in the media of > the day, Germany was portrayed as the prime opponent of World War One

The invasion of Russia, Belgium and France might have had something to do with it as well.

> as early as 1933 they started to organize a global boycott against Germany > to strangle this upstart ruler who thought he could break free of private > central bankers [poster of "Judea Declares war on Germany" headline]

Come on HN, we're better than this sort of nutjobbery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> i am surprised butler got this far on hn. read this before the next elections. before the next assad. before your friends and relatives go on tours with the troops.</comment>


Show HN: Beamer, the best way to announce product updates - <AUTHOR> https://www.getbeamer.com/?ref=hackernews <comment><USER2> How does your offering compare to [https://headwayapp.co/](https://headwayapp.co/) ?</comment>


Being productive with Emacs – part 1 (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://web.psung.name/emacs/2009/part1.html

<comment><USER2> Being productive with Emacs: (slide 9) M-x tetris</comment>


The Cassowary: World's most dangerous bird (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/behind-scenes-national-zoo-worlds-most-dangerous-bird-180960704/ <comment><USER2> Seeing a cassowary up close really feels like being able to see a dinosaur. They've got those three-toed dinosaur feet with legs as thick as yours, giant yellow saucer eyes, iridescent skin and a weird head horn. It watches back at you. You really feel like you're looking at a dinosaur. Only thing it's missing is the teeth and maybe forelimbs. Otherwise it's like 80% of a dinosaur.

<comment><USER3> Having experienced being chased by a cassowary I cannot agree more, it felt like being in a Jurassic park movie being chased by a T-Rex.

I visited Australia in January 2005, it was an organized road tour with a bunch of mainly young French people and a French guide. On the way to the outback near Cairns, we stopped and did a short hike in the forest to see a point of interest (I don't remember what). There was a warning sign in the parking lot about cassowaries. I had never seen a cassowary, even heard the name and didn't know what it was, like many of the people in the group. On the way back, we spotted a cassowary, it was static just a few meters from the track. We all took pictures but stayed on the track, at some point the cassowary probably felt threatened and started chasing us. We all ran, I remember looking back at it while being chased and it ran like a Jurassic park dinosaur. It was moving really fast, at an intersection, we all turned left downhill going away from the parking lot and it stopped chasing us. It never went on the track and it always staid in the forest, it could have easily outrun us.

After I learnt the kind of injuries it could inflict to humans. The guide should have been more careful. Anyway it was a fun story to tell when I got home.

<comment><USER4> You were in Australia.

Generally speaking, when we put a warning sign up about an animal it's worth assuming the worst.

<comment><USER5> You only get a relatively small sign on north Queensland beaches warning of the presence of salt-water crocs and bluebottle jellyfish.

<comment><USER6> Bluebottles are basically harmless - they hurt, and if you're particularly unlucky you might even scar. Nothing be scared of.

Box jellyfish (Irukandji) are a different story. These days there's a good chance you'll live (if you get to hospital), but you'll be in extreme pain for days or even weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A cassowary recently killed a man, apparently for the first time since 1926:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/14/florida- ca...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/04/14/florida-cassowary- attack-man-dies-after-encounter-with-worlds-deadliest-bird/)

This article from 2008 is also interesting:

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/invasion-of- th...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/invasion-of-the- cassowaries-10896851/)

<comment><USER7> In the WaPo article:

"In 2012, an Australian tourist named Dennis Ward was kicked off a cliff into a body of water by a cassowary when he and his family were visiting Babinda Boulders in Queensland. 'It just came straight up to me, decided to pick on me for some reason, I don't know what for,' Ward told the Cairns Post."

I shouldn't be laughing but that is an outrageous story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maciej /@idlewords has a wonderful post about the Daintree rain forest where the cassowary makes a star appearance:

[https://idlewords.com/2013/02/the_daintree_rain_forest.htm](https://idlewords.com/2013/02/the_daintree_rain_forest.htm)

<comment><USER9> The Daintree, like most of our ecosystems, is in rapid decline: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/30/climate-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/30/climate- change-damage-to-queenslands-world-heritage-rainforest-as-bad-as-great- barrier-reef)

</comment></comment><comment> mickael-kerjean Ive encountered a few one in the wild back in the daintree forest and I didn't got threatened at all as they were just walking through.

When it comes to accidents, never heard about anything whereas the same can't be say about the salt water crocodile that live in the very same region

Fun fact, the female casswory is much bigger than the male and it's considered down there as the gardener of the forest because it eats all sort seeds that when poo get all the nutriment it needs to grow, pretty amazing bird.

<comment><USER10> Yes, it really gets old the constant hyping of Australian fauna as 'dangerous', mostly it seems by US American media. Cassowaries in the wild are really not a danger to humans even though they have the _potential_ to do possibly lethal harm. The cassowary is only going to act to defend itself; it's not a predator (unlike salties).

<comment><USER11> Do you think it's unfair to classify it as the most dangerous bird? What other would qualify?

<comment><USER9> Sorry to be a bore, but it really depends on what someone means by 'dangerous'.

If you mean 'potentially dangerous if encountered', then I guess it would be. When it comes to birds that might slice your abdomen open, it's in a class of its own.

If you mean 'actually dangerous in terms of causing injuries or deaths', you could say _most_. But the baseline for death-by-bird is so low that the word 'dangerous' seems a bit daft (Cassowaries exist in decreasing numbers in areas of relatively low human populations, are infrequently encountered and not usually aggressive). On the numbers, if Cassowaries are 'dangerous', then dogs, horses and cattle are all catastrophically homicidal.

<comment><USER11> > When it comes to birds that might slice your abdomen open, it's in a class > of its own.

Right. I don't think the intent here is "look how deadly Australia is!" as much as "here's a crazy animal rarely talked about that recently was in the news."

As an American, I think the assumption is that, say, the outback is a sparsely populated area with some dangerous wildlife like swaths of Africa and South America.

When I think of Australia my head goes to the coasts.

<comment><USER9> > When I think of Australia my head goes to the coasts

Right. That's where we (nearly) all live. As it happens, cassowaries are also coastal creatures, but exclusively tropical. The tropics have been sparsely populated, though North Queensland has been 'growing' fast, so unfortunately the cassowary's days are numbered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How likely is it that dinosaurs like the Tyrannosaurus or the Velociraptor had some kind of fur like the cassowary (or feathers)? I always felt that their bodies looked weirdly out of proportion [0] in popular illustrations, almost like a plucked chicken [1].

[0] [https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/EaQOPDdeGgFBYevW9HZbBaraI8U=/...](https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/EaQOPDdeGgFBYevW9HZbBaraI8U=/3200x2400/filters:no_upscale\(\):max_bytes\(150000\):strip_icc\(\)/velociraptor-496064806-5ac65459875db90037326596.jpg)

[1] [https://thespearnews.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/image52.jpg...](https://thespearnews.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/image52.jpg?w=600)

E: Appearently not that unlikely [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur)

</comment><comment><USER13> Bulmer's essay, "Why the Cassowary is not a bird" was the first item on the reading list for my first year undergraduate Sociology course back in 1980 in which he argues "The cassowary is not a bird because it enjoys a unique relationship in Karam thought to man." The Karam are the people of the upper Kaironk Valley in the Schrader Mountains of New Guinea to whom the Cassowary has totemic significance.

</comment><comment><USER14> The only thing more dangerous than a Cassowary are the tourists that stop in the middle of the highway to photograph them. They're pretty elusive in the wild and spotting them on the edge of the bush as you drive by is the most likely scenario, so likely in fact there are signs in FNQ warning people not to stop on the road when they spot one!

</comment><comment><USER15> > Of course, Sara Hallager, the zoo's curator of birds, adds that the keepers > have a relationship with "every bird out here, except perhaps the > flamingoes."*

OT: What does that star(*) denote? I'm always irritated if i can't find the corresponding footnote.

<comment><USER16> Probably this in the end:

"Editor's note October 7, 2016: An earlier version of this article stated that Sara Hallager was the Zoo's keeper of birds; she is the curator."

Which still keeps me wondering why the flamingos?

<comment><USER17> Zoos with flamingos tend to have a lot of them. I would guess they are hard to tell apart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Now I know why they are so badass in Far Cry 3!

</comment><comment><USER19> Never let a bird see your back.

<comment><USER20> Rimworld makes a lot more sense now.

<comment><USER21> You guys are everywhere

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> While I appreciate the free content, it's annoying how there are more advertisements on that page than pictures of the bird.</comment>


Show HN: BunnyAPI - <AUTHOR> https://bunnyapi.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Very happy about this collaboration project with BunnyCDN. If you haven't used BunnyCDN, it's a damn good CDN with very affordable pricing and caching around the world that speeds up your website to just mere ms. If you have used it, you already know how great it is, especially the linked hostname feature with free SSL. You can store 1 TB for as little as $5 and completely unlimited scaling, up to the PB.

I became a big fan of BunnyCDN and use it for all my projects. With it, I built my own CDN service, BinCDN ([https://bincdn.com](https://bincdn.com)), and I use it for a lot of storage for my other websites to speed them up instead of storing it all on my server, as I host clients on my server and usually set them up with "unlimited storage space". There is a lot you can do with a CDN service though the main purpose is for storage and speed.

As a WordPress user, I figured BunnyCDN would have a plugin, and they did. Unfortunately, it did lack a feature I needed most: the ability to upload directly from your website. So I emailed BunnyCDN and asked them if they wouldn't mind if I built a few products to enhance the usage of their service and they agreed. I thank you BunnyCDN for allowing me to build a service to enhance your product.

If you use BunnyCDN, you can now upload your media files directly from your website to BunnyCDN and link them on your website.

Here is what I built.

BunnyAPI: [https://bunnyapi.com](https://bunnyapi.com)

WordPress plugin: [https://wordpress.org/plugins/bunnycdnbunnyapi/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/bunnycdnbunnyapi/)</comment>


ICE is using social media posts to track immigrants they've targeted for arrest - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/MaxRivlinNadler/status/1208783505854996487 <comment><USER2> Is this really surprising though ? If I was illegally living in a country I'd probably avoid posting on a social media altogether, especially not tagging my location. ("after he "checked in" to a Home Depot on Facebook.")

> "If anything you post online can be used against you forever, even if you > pose no immediate threat to anyone, then the dragnet that people feared > would happen under Trump is already happening,"

Trump or not it was already happening. It's the next logical step of social media / data collection. Especially in post 9/11 paranoid USA.

People have been warning us from the very beginning but no one took it seriously, now we're paying the price.</comment>


Facebook May Hire Robert Gibbs, Former Obama Aide - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/facebook-may-hire-robert-gibbs-former-obama-aide/

<comment><AUTHOR> Robert Gibbs is significantly more than just an aide, not only is he the former white house press secretary, he also served on Obama's campaign as the main spokesman, and is a close friend to the President. I would be very surprised if he accepted.

</comment><comment><USER2> Publicity stunt to get facebook IPO into the mind of millions of investors?

</comment><comment><USER3> Smart move by Facebook if they can make it work. So if the rumors pan out ...

\- Eric Schmidt from Google to the Obama Administration

\- Gibbs from the Administration to Facebook

<comment><USER4> The tight ties between the public/private sectors worked so well for finance. I can't wait to see what havoc will be wreaked by similar practices being spread to the tech sector.

<comment><USER5> To the tech sector's credit, when we blow up, the damage is at least generally limited to ourselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A good hire if they're expecting a big fight over privacy or regulation of large social networks in the coming years.</comment>


List of coronavirus treatments now being tested in clinical trials - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/list-coronavirus-treatments-tested-in-clinical-trials-2020-4 <comment><AUTHOR> You can view the article without the paywall at [https://outline.com/aN5cXU](https://outline.com/aN5cXU)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Since there is a paywall, here are the listed treatments:

* Remdesivir

* Hydroxychloroquine

* Azithromycin

* Kevzara

* Actemra

* Convalescent plasma

* Jakafi

* Avigan

* Galidesivir

* Remestemcel-L

* Tradipitant

* Selinexor

* Kineret

* Losartan</comment>


1366x768, the most popular resolution, is being ignored - <AUTHOR>

As of January 2013, 1366x768 resolution is, by far, the most common.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_resolution_higher.asp
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/11/move-over-1024x768-the-most-popular-screen-resolution-on-the-web-is-now-1366x768/
And it's being ignored.
Youtube, for instance, doesn't render their videos at 1366px horizontal. I think they should, even if it will cost Google additional resources.
What do you guys think? <comment><USER2> 1366x768 and every other pixel specific resolution can die in a fire and should be ignored by everyone. Design for aspect ratios and pixel densities and stop creating problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> >What do you guys think?

That resolution is tied with 1280x800 for us. Your mileage will vary. Responsive designs with media queries is the best method for general, public- facing website.</comment>


Translators Wanted at LinkedIn. The Pay? $0 an Hour. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/technology/start-ups/29linkedin.html?src=twr

<comment><USER2> Quality translation is not cheap. This is partially because there are numerous places where the market for it is not as efficient as it could be. However, it is mostly because it is _freaking hard_. (I do J->E technical translation for the day job on occasion. You need to have a superset of the knowledge base of an intermediate Java engineer to do it well. I got to rewrite a description of what a SQL injection attack was written by someone who had never used SQL, who faithfully translated a description they found in a well-known Japanese desk reference for engineers. They produced comprehensible English which was, well, wrong.)

Come to think of it, translation is a classic market for lemons, isn't it. The people who need it the most are the least capable of assessing the quality of the deliverables, which is why everyone here has heard of All Your Base Are Belong To Us. This results in both people paying absurd amounts of money for mediocre translation and, hmm, large companies thinking that their crowdsourced translation presents their company in the best possible light.

There's so many ways a crowdsourcing solution like this can go wrong. I wish I could show you a concrete example but I don't have any good examples of Japanese businesses that used the technique off the top of my head. If you guys want I can dredge up an example or two from Facebook or whatever, but I'm not quite as plugged into the Japanese Internet so I miss most of the inevitable snickering.

<comment><USER3> There's a huge gap between trying to do translation as a non-professional and the amount of effort required for a professional. I dated a German / English -> Hebrew translator for a while and despite me being better in both German and English, she could translate much more effortlessly from German to English than I could. It's a skill that's separate from raw language ability. She'd just read a line and then immediately start pounding out the translation.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I translate one and a quarter million words a year. After a while it truly becomes second nature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love clueless product managers who have no idea about communities that they reach out to. This shit is not hard, folks.

If you are going to try to crowdsource something, you don't wave it in the face of the paid professionals. It's like asking the AIGA board if they'd like to do spec work on a redesign of MySpace.

If I was the PM, and I wanted to to take advantage of the fact that LinkedIn knows it has thousands of translators, I would have queried the pool to recommend _someone else_ to translate. That's a process story that Facebook (or Twitter or whoever) can't match.

<comment><USER6> only 300 people were enraged enough to join the group. That's pretty much the equivalent of a movie premiere being boycotted by a few dozen religious nutjobs.

You can't please everyone, and for every "enraged" person, who did the equivalent of signing an online petition, you have others who are glad to help and make your product better.

So you as a product manager, would choose to add $200-300K in expenses(for those professional translation services), just to appease a tiny percentage of users?

Out of those 300 people, how many do you think LinkedIn will lose as users? I'm thinking none. So in the end, they lost nothing, and saved a ton of money.

I didn't hear anyone bitching when facebook pretty much did the same thing...at least LinkedIn is offering some compensation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Welcome to the free market. If there are people that want to do this for free for LinkedIn and LinkedIn is happy with the translation they do, then why should anyone else care?

If you want to revolt against people working for free when they should be paid, come see what some of the "interns" in NYC have to do in journalism and fashion (and even more industries now there are no jobs out there)

<comment><USER8> Welcome to the free market. If there are people who want to sell drugs, and people who want buy drugs are happy with it, Why should anyone care?

1\. Because its unethical. 2\. Because its bad for society. There is a reason minimum wages and employement laws exist.

<comment><USER9> I accept your first argument, and reject your second.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It sounds like this is really exaggerating. LinkedIn accounts ain't cheap, and they do give you ways to contact other professionals. If you could ping someone and say "I'm interested in doing some translation; for an example of my work, check out the official Romanian version of LinkedIn," that would be great. Simply being able to say that you contributed to a site used by the person you're talking to is a great way to start a conversation that ends with them writing a check.

<comment><USER4> Speaking as a professional translator, I have to agree. But I'm also speaking as an open-source developer, so I'm used to that model, and the translation industry isn't. It sounds to me as though LinkedIn could have approached the matter with some tact, but it should be said that translators as a whole are pretty prickly. We have to be. The better we are, the less visible we become.

And it's a common scam in the industry (less so now that we congregate online) to take a document, break it up into chunks, then send each chunk to a freelancer as a "translation test" to be done free of charge. I think this LinkedIn thing hit some people that way.

But yeah; mostly, this is one of those sound and fury things.

<comment><USER11> What would be a reasonable alternative to that kind of translation test? The first thing that came to my mind was critiquing somebody else's translation, but that has the same problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is a way to get free labor, make people passionate about your service and your product and make it super easy. Google translator already does this, if I translate something from Hebrew to English and it doesn't come out right, I correct it.

</comment><comment><USER13> If they want free work done, they should post to craigslist like all the other sleazy companies do. I'm glad there's a backlash against this.

</comment><comment><USER14> A few days ago, there was a post on LinkedIn's blog that discussed the results of the survey: [http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/06/19/nico-posner- translating-...](http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/06/19/nico-posner-translating- linkedin-into-many-languages/)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's possible all the translation would bring would be more offers of free work for more sites that are big.

</comment><comment><USER16> "I will not buy this record; it is scratched."</comment>


Even KanyeWest.com has awesome code - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=GqP4uzUZ

<comment><USER2> Crappy ASCII art is not worthy of praise.

</comment><comment><USER3> That ASCII art is not awesome code.</comment>