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Paul Merrell

The Pentagon gave local cops nearly 12,000 bayonets over the past 8 years - Vox - 0 views

www.vox.com/...3-program-obama-administration

police-militarization 1033-program bayonets

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Through the 1033 program, the federal government has geared America's local police departments with military-grade equipment — ranging from airplanes to bayonets — worth hundreds of millions of dollars. NPR combed through the transaction data for the program to find out where the equipment went and what kind of gear was involved. Since 2006, the Pentagon distributed more than 79,000 assault rifles, 205 grenade launchers, nearly 12,000 bayonets, nearly 4,000 combat knives, 50 airplanes, 479 bomb detonator robots, and much more to America's local cops. One chart from NPR shows the counties that got the most guns per 1,000 people through the program
  • It's not immediately clear why some of these places would need so much military-grade equipment. With the notable exception of Starr County, Texas, the counties and states on the list have modest crime rates, and they aren't hotbeds for drug or terrorist activity — the two main targets of the federal government's police militarization schemes.* The proliferation of such weapons could soon come to an end. Following outcry against police militarization during the August protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the Obama administration ordered a review that will consider whether local police should have the equipment, whether they need to receive more training if they obtain the gear, and how the federal government can better oversee the equipment's use. The Pentagon said it could even take back some of the equipment if it's deemed necessary.
  • The federal government has been arming local police departments with military-grade equipment for decades through multiple federal schemes, particularly the 1033 program. The 1033 program transfers surplus military-grade equipment from the Pentagon to local police. It does not, however, provide training or oversight for the equipment's use. The program is also loaded with what many experts view as a perverse incentive: to keep the equipment, local police must use it within a year. This incentive, some experts argue, might encourage police to use the weapons even when they're not necessary.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Sep 14
     
    Bayonets for police? Good grief! We couldn't even get them in the Army  in Viet Nam.
Gary Edwards

"War is a Racket" by General Smedly Butler - 1 views

www.lexrex.com/...warisaracket.htm

Smedly-Butler

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Sep 13 - Cached
  • by MAJOR GENERAL SMEDLEY D. BUTLER, USMC - Retired TWO-TIME Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient FULL TEXT ON LINE FREE
  • GET THE NEW PAPERBACK EDITION including two bonus titles.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Sep 13
     
    An accidental find, the full text online of USMC Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler's 1935 book, War Is a Racket. Butler served in the Marine Corps from 1899 to 1931 and at the time of his retirement was the most-decorated Marine in history, for both valor and accomplishments. Following his retirement, he became a vehement anti-war activist and public speaker.  This book is easily his most-cited and most-quoted published work. You can capture the flavor from an article he published in a magazine that included the following lines: "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. Looking back on it, I might 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." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler#Lectures  I look forward to reading this book. The book was reprinted in 2003 and is available from the linked web site, together with two bonus titles. 
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Sep 13
     
    "WAR IS A RACKET" - free online book CHAPTER ONE WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows. How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle? Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations. For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds g
Paul Merrell

Obama "on verge of" launching another bombing campaign in Libya, after dropping 23,144 ... - 0 views

www.salon.com/...bombs_on_six_countries_in_2015

war & peace Libya U.S.-foreign-policy bombing

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • The U.S. dropped at least 23,144 bombs on six Muslim-majority countries in 2015 — Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.The government has not officially declared war in Syria, Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, but this hasn’t stopped it from bombing them, or from waging a secretive drone war in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia for more than a decade.Yet it appears these wars are not enough. The Obama administration is “on the verge of taking action” against ISIS in Libya, Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Politico.The U.S. insists it does not plan to deploy ground troops to the oil-rich North African country, but Obama said the same thing about Iraq and Syria, and there are now 3,700 American soldiers in the former and scores of special operations forces in the latter.
  • The notion that the U.S. is considering another bombing campaign in Libya in order to fight ISIS is almost laughably ludicrous, because it was in fact the first U.S.-backed bombing campaign in Libya that brought ISIS into the North African nation in the first place.
  • Hawkish Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton played a pivotal role in this war, essentially leading it as secretary of state. The Washington Post reports that she has since “repeatedly defended the Libya military intervention as U.S. ‘smart power at its best.'”When Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was sodomized with a bayonet by rebels, Clinton gloated live on TV, declaring “We came, we saw, he died.”The real Benghazi scandal is that the once bustling city is in ruins today, in the wake of the NATO war, with large chunks of it under the control of extremist group Ansar al-Sharia.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • American military intervention in Afghanistan has been much the same. “The Taliban now control more of Afghanistan than at any time since October 2001,” journalist Antony Loewenstein, an author of numerous books and Guardian columnist who has spent time in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan reporting on the U.S. war and occupation, told Salon in a forthcoming interview about his book “Disaster Capitalism.” advertisement You Might Also Like Fifteen years of U.S. war and occupation in Afghanistan have only brought us back where we started — with an estimated quarter of a million Afghans dead in the process.
  • The U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria is clearly not working; the idea that it somehow will in Libya is absurd.In his report on the 23,144 bombs the U.S. dropped in 2015, which he notes is a conservative estimate, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Micah Zenko notes that “The primary focus — meaning the commitment of personnel, resources, and senior leaders’ attention — of U.S. counterterrorism policies is the capture or killing (though, overwhelmingly killing) of existing terrorists.”“Far less money and programmatic attention is dedicated to preventing the emergence of new terrorists,” Zenko points out.
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