War Is A Racket

                   

WAR.  It seems to be as old as time itself.  And so many people seem to think it is inevitable.  However, it turns out that is not really true.  War is neither timeless nor inevitable.   It has a beginning, and it has an end.  The beginning was about 7000 years ago (with the advent of patriarchy), while the end will be coming very soon (with the inevitable decline and fall of patriarchy, and rise of women in the not-too-distant future).  And the end can't come soon enough!

Patriarchy inherently rewards aggression and violence, no doubt about that.  And it messes with our heads so as to condition us to accept such violence as normal.  And of course there is men's tendency to think that war and scarcity are inevitable, which become self-fulfilling prophecies.  Women, on the other hand, would tend to reject such backwards thinking if they were in charge.  The late, great Buckminster Fuller said as much.

But there is also another reason why war is likely to occur under patriarchy, and that reason is discussed in depth by Major General Smedley Butler in his 1935 book, War Is A Racket.  Put simply, war is indeed a racket that is designed to further enrich the already ultra-rich oligarchs.  In other words, its genesis is none other than evil and powerful men who are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and kill for filthy lucre, and those sycophantic lackeys and ignorant masses who are brainwashed and duped to go along with it.   And of course, we know that patriarchy itself inevitably leads to oligarchy in the first place due to its "might makes right" and "winner take all" paradigm (that is nowadays most often cleverly disguised by the persistent and utterly hollow myth of "meritocracy").

Indeed, patriarchy itself be thought of as a gender war writ large, and the only way to end it once and for all--and all other wars that come from it--is for men to surrender to Women.  It's a war men have lost before the war even began, despite winning nearly every battle--men just don't realize it yet.

That said, General Butler's book is more about how the perennial racket of war actually works in practice, and how to smash it for good (as opposed to the why the oligarchy exists in the first place).  But it goes a very long way towards explaining it, and he would be spinning in his grave if he were to see today's massive, imperialistic war machine.

From the Wikipedia article:

In War Is a Racket, Butler points to a variety of examples, mostly from World War I, where industrialists, whose operations were subsidized by public funding, were able to generate substantial profits, making money from mass human suffering.

The work is divided into five chapters:

1. War is a racket
2. Who makes the profits?
3. Who pays the bills?
4. How to smash this racket!
5. To hell with war!

It contains this summary:

"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."

Then he goes on to discuss who exactly profits from it and how.  It turns out it is not just weapons manufacturers, but also the big banks and other businesses that directly or indirectly deal with it as well.  In fact, the banksters are probably the biggest beneficiaries of war, since they lend money to finance it and then claw back so much in interest.  And manufacturers of non-weapons goods also have a market to sell their wares to in the military.  And of course, let's not forget all the resources plundered from the other countries as "spoils of war".

(And now we can add "defense contractors", aka mercenary corporations, such as DynCorp, Blackwater, Halliburton, KBR, Raytheon, et al. to the list of war profiteers as well.)

War is, of course, a negative-sum game overall.  It does not really create wealth on balance, it actually destroys more than it creates.  But it certainly brings in a ludicrous amount of ill-gotten wealth in the form of profit, plunder, and usury for the oligarchy.  As for the idea that it "stimulates the economy" in the short run, that is technically true, but as neo-Keynesian economist Dr. Paul Krugman has famously noted years ago, a faked alien invasion would be every bit as stimulating, but without all of the serious side effects such as countless deaths, injuries, PTSD, family breakdown, resource depletion, pollution, ecological damage, and property damage.

And guess who foots the bill for it all?  You guessed it--the taxpayers.  The oligarchs pull the wool over our eyes, while laughing all the way to the bank.  But truly the biggest part of the bill is paid for in blood by the soldiers themselves.  And even for those who survive the horrors of war, it still takes its toll on them regardless, both physically and psychologically.  And these soldiers generally hail not from the ranks of the wealthy, but rather from the poor and broader working class.  Not much has changed in that regard today, it seems.

(Note that since the gold standard was abolished in 1971, our Monetarily Sovereign federal government does not actually need taxes to fund anything, since they can just "print" (create) the money now if they wanted.  But since wars inherently chew through ludicrous amounts of non-monetary resources, all wars are thus inflationary regardless, so We the People still pay for it in the form of higher prices.)

And that's to say nothing of the human toll of civilians in the other countries as well, who bear the brunt of it.

Then, General Butler discusses how to smash this evil racket once and for all.  To summarize, the three steps are as follows:  1) Take the profit out of war, 2) Put it up to a vote (limited to those who would be eligible for the draft) as to whether or not a war should be declared, and 3) Limit our military forces to home defense purposes.  Otherwise, nothing will stop the racket.

Again, as noted on Wikipedia:

In the booklet's penultimate chapter, Butler recommended three steps to disrupt the war racket:

1. Making war unprofitable. Butler suggests that the means for war should be "conscripted" before those who would fight the war:

It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war. The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labour before the nation's manhood can be conscripted. […] Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our steel companies and our munitions makers and our ship-builders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted — to get $30 a month [NOTE: that's $511/month in 2019 dollars], the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.

2. Acts of war to be decided by those who fight it. He also suggests a limited referendum to determine if the war is to be fought. Eligible to vote would be those who risk death on the front lines.
3. Limitation of militaries to self-defense. For the United States, Butler recommends that the Navy be limited, by law, to operating within 200 miles of the coastline, and the Army restricted to the territorial limits of the country, ensuring that war, if fought, can never be one of aggression. 

Indeed, the time to end all of this insanity and evil is yesterday.  So what do we do in the meantime while patriarchy still exists?  Thus, inspired by Butler, I propose that a new law be passed that we call the War Pigs Act, named after both the ineffectual and toothless War Powers Resolution of 1973 and the 1970 Black Sabbath song "War Pigs".  The first part of the new law would put some teeth in the War Powers Act by closing the loopholes and holding the President liable for any consequences of a war that is not authorized by Congress and is not during a state of emergency caused by an attack on the USA.  And absent a formal declaration of war by Congress, absolutely NO war may last beyond 90 days (60 days followed by a 30 day withdrawal), save for a temporary authorization of force that expires 90 days after the authorization passes or 180 days after the war began (if it began before the new law went into effect), whichever occurs first.  After that, there must be a formal declaration of war, or the war must end.  Period.

The second part of the law would implement some of General Butler's recommendations from his book, taking into account that we currently have an all-volunteer military.  Take the profit out of war, first of all.  Use the tax code to do so.  And for any war lasting beyond six months (which by definition would now require a formal declaration of war), require an annual limited plebiscite of all citizens that would be eligible for military service.  Make it a non-secret ballot such that those who vote "yes" would be drafted if we run out of volunteers, followed by those who abstain from the vote if necessary.  Those who vote "no" would be exempt from any such draft.  A kind of "consensual conscription", if you will.  We would all have skin in the game.  Women would be included as well, but before they draft the very first Woman, we should draft men in their 40s and 50s first.  That's the demographic group who starts the wars but rarely fights them.  It's only fair, right fellas?  Watch as war becomes a thing of the past, at least for the stupid ones and decade(s) long quagmires like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

(It would also be a good idea to do like the Iroquois once did:  give Women elders the power to VETO any decision to go to war.  That alone would prevent essentially all wars that are not waged in strict and absolute defense of the homeland.)

For the record, I am personally 100% against the draft on principle.  Unless absolutely necessary, I view it as a form of slavery and involuntary servitude, and if there were ever such a thing as a truly just war (as per St. Augustine's Just War Theory criteria), which is about as rare as a unicorn, conscription would be unnecessary, since volunteers would be plentiful.  And today's technology further makes it largely obsolete to raise such large numbers of boots on the ground.  But since nuance, gray areas, and exceptions that prove every rule do in fact exist in the real world (see WWII and the American Civil War, for example), I will note that if we ever must have a draft, only those who voted yes (or chose not to vote) for such a war should be drafted.

General Butler was a true American hero and patriot.  After his distinguished career in the United States Marine Corps including during WWI (during and after which he eventually found out just how much of a racket it really was), he later quashed an attempted Wall Street fascist coup against FDR's government in 1933-1934.  Yes, there really was a plot by the Rockefellers, Mellon Bank, Standard Oil, General Motors, Goodyear, US Steel, and many others (including pro-Nazi forces!) to overthrow the federal government and install their own fascist dictatorship do their bidding, complete with concentration camps for, in their own words, "Jews and other undesirables".  And the money for the plot bankrolled by the big banks/corporations was funneled through Prescott Bush's companies (yes, THAT Bush, who also did business with the Nazis as well).  They all thought they could use Butler for the plot and he pretended to play along at first, only to foil their plot by telling Congress about it just before it went ahead.  He literally saved America from falling to full-blown fascism, in other words.  He was indeed history's original whistleblower, and then in 1935, he wrote his magnum opus, which unfortunately fell on deaf ears the world over.

As General Butler famously said, 

"TO HELL WITH WAR!"

"Either war is obsolete, or man is."

-- Buckminster Fuller

"War, what is it good for?  Absolutely NOTHING!"

-- Edwin Starr

"Come the war, come the avarice, come the war, come hell...Come attrition, come the reek of bones, come attrition, come hell...This is why, why we fight, why we lie awake...And this is why, this is why we fight..."

-- The Decemberists

"Now the labor leader's screaming when they close the missile plant, United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore. Call it peace or call it treason, call it love or call it reason, but I ain't marching anymore."

-- Phil Ochs

"I declare the war is over, it's over, it's over..."

-- Phil Ochs

"But the hardest thing I'll ask you, if you would only try, is take your children by their hands and look into their eyes.  And there you'll see the answer you should have seen before.  If we win the wars at home, there'll be no fighting anymore"

-- Phil Ochs 

NO WAR WITH IRAN!

Those Epstein files must be REALLY BAD for Trump to literally start a war with Iran to distract from them!  Regardless of the reason why, this is a stupid, reckless and immoral war of choice, and we at the TSAP hereby condemn it in the strongest terms.

State Of The Planet Address 2026

It is now 2026, and this year the TSAP will not waste any time giving our annual State of the Planet Address as we do every year.  Yes, we know it is a bit of a downer to say the least.  So sit down, take off your rose-colored glasses, and read on:

Our planet is in grave danger, and has been for quite some time now.  We face several serious long term problems:  climate change, deforestation, desertification, loss of biodiversity, overharvesting, energy crises, and of course pollution of many kinds.  Polar ice caps are melting.  Rainforests have been shrinking by 50 acres per minute.  Numerous species are going extinct every year.  Soil is eroding rapidly.  Food shortages have occurred in several countries in recent years.  Weather has been getting crazier each year thanks to climate change.  We have had numerous and often record-breaking wildfires, floods followed by long periods of drought, and a "storm of the century" at least once a year for the past several years.  And it is only getting worse every year.  In fact, 2024 is now officially the hottest year on record.  Look no further than the three record-breaking storms in the past 20 years:  Katrina (2005, highest storm surge), Sandy (2012, largest diameter), and then Harvey (2017, a 1000-year flood, and overall worst hurricane on record), followed by Irma and Maria which devastated Puerto Rico, for a taste of the not-too-distant future.  And that was before Hurricane Michael devastated a rather large chunk of Florida.  And the wild weather continues to this very day, with Hurricane Helene having recently ravaged Appalachia (which is typically spared hurricanes), and with the truly horrible and unprecedented Los Angeles wildfires still raging now being essentially a microcosm of what is to come to the world as a whole if we continue on this path of wanton planetary destruction.

In fact, per the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Doomsday Clock is now officially set to 85 seconds to midnight in 2026, the closest it has ever been in its history.

None of this is an accident of course.  These problems are man-made, and their solutions must also begin and end with humans.  We cannot afford to sit idly by any longer, lest we face hell and high water in the not-too-distant future.  Our unsustainable scorched-earth policy towards the planet has to end.  Yesterday.

While we do not invoke the precautionary principle for all issues, we unequivocally do for the issue of climate change and any other environmental issues of comparable magnitude.  In fact, for something as dire as climate change, since at least the past decade we now support a strong "no regrets" approach.  With no apologies to hardcore libertarians or paleoconservatives, in fact. We are not fazed one bit by the naysayers' pseudoscience as it does not really "debunk" the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming. The only serious debate is about how fast it will happen, and when the tipping point (or points) will occur. It is not a matter of if, but when. And the less precarious position is to assume it is a real and urgent problem. We need to reduce CO2 emissions to the point where the CO2 concentration is at or below 350 ppm, ASAP.  And it is currently at an unsustainably high level of 400+ ppm, and growing rapidly every year.

Given the ominous IPCC report, which is truly nothing short of horrifying, the general consensus among climate scientists was that we had only at most 12 years left (now more like five) to act radically before truly catastrophic climate change is a foregone conclusion.  And 2030 will be here before we know it.  

Now THAT is a national emergency!  And a global one, in fact.  Thus, a full-steam-ahead, Green New Deal 2.0 is LONG overdue.  We have already squandered over a whole decade since Copenhagen, and we cannot afford to squander even one more day, let alone another decade.

Solving the problem of climate change will also help to solve the other ecological crises we are facing, for they all ultimately have the same root causes, not least of which is our insatiable addiction to dirty energy.  However, there is a right way to solve it, and several wrong ways.  Technology is important, but it won't be decisive on its own (economics geeks may recall Jevons Paradox).  The real problem is the paradigm that our society has been following, and that system is based on wetiko, the parasite of the mind and cancer of the soul.  It often seems that the only difference between capitalism and cannibalism is the spelling.

The TSAP endorses the ideas embodied in Steve Stoft's new book Carbonomics, most notably a tax-and-dividend system that would tax carbon (i.e. fossil fuels) at the source, and give all Americans an equal share of the revenue generated from this tax.  (Note that our proposal to tax natural resources and pay out an Alaska-like citizen's dividend already includes this.)  Yes, prices for various things would undoubtedly rise due to this tax, all else being equal, but the dividend will allow Americans to pay for this increase. The average American would in fact break even, but those who (directly or indirectly) use less energy than average will effectively pay less tax, while the energy hogs will effectively be taxed more, as they should be. Thus it is certainly not a regressive tax, and may even be mildly progressive. This is both the simplest and most equitable way to reduce carbon emissions as well as other forms of pollution, not to mention waste of dwindling non-renewable resources. The real challenge is getting the feds to accept something that won't directly benefit them (in the short term).  Carbonomics also includes other good ideas, such as improving how fuel economy standards are done, and crafting a better version of the Kyoto treaty.   It is worth noting that Canada has implemented a carbon tax similar to what Stoft advocated since 2019.

In addition to the ideas in Carbonomics, we also support several other measures to help us end our addiction to fossil fuels once and for all.  While our Great American Phase-Out plan would have phased out all fossil fuels by 2030 at the latest, via alternative energy, efficiency, and conservation, we unfortunately now see that as too ambitious in light of the disastrous "Net Zero" rollouts in the UK and Germany recently.  Another good idea to further the development of alternative energy would be the use of feed-in tariffs for renewable power sources. 

(We are now very behind schedule, so perhaps the best we could hope for is a phaseout by 2050, which may be too late.)

Of course, it is not enough to stop emitting carbon dioxide, we also need to remove the current excess levels of it from the atmosphere as well, as that stuff can otherwise linger for centuries and continue wreaking havoc on the climate.  We support ending net deforestation completely, planting a LOT more trees, and putting carbon back in the ground through carbon sequestration. One method is known as biochar, a type of charcoal made from plants that remove carbon dioxide from the air, that is subsequently buried. This is also an ancient method of soil fertilization and conservation, originally called terra preta.  It also helps preserve biodiversity.  Another crucial method would be regenerative organic farming, which also turns the soil into an effective carbon sink as well.  And we will most likely also need to employ higher-tech methods of sucking carbon out of the air as well.

We've said this before, and we'll say it again.  Our ultimate goal is 100% renewable energy by 2050, and as close as possible to that by 2030-2040, but we need to hedge our bets.  We can phase out fossil fuels, or we can phase out nuclear power, but we can't do both at the same time--and fossil fuels need to be phased out first, and quickly.  Nuclear is doing a pretty good job of phasing itself out as it is.  So let's not get rid of it prematurely.  

LENR (low energy nuclear reactors) and fusion power are also worth considering.

But the biggest elephant in the room (make that the elephant in the Volkswagen) is overpopulation.  It does not make for pleasant dinner conversation, but it must be addressed or else all other causes become lost causes in the long run. We, globally, need to have fewer kids, or nature will reduce our population for us, and the latter will NOT be pleasant to say the least. The TSAP believes in voluntarily reducing the total fertility rate (TFR) to 1.5-1.9 children per woman to do so, but let us be clear that we do NOT support draconian and/or coercive measures of population control (like China has used).  We believe that more liberty is the answer, not less.  In fact, the two most effective means of reducing the birthrate are poverty reduction and female empowerment.

Fortunately, America's TFR has recently dropped to a record low of about 1.6-1.7 with no indication of rising back above replacement rate in the near term.  And with the massive social and economic fallout from the pandemic and especially the lockdowns, the TFR may even drop further.  But clearly we cannot keep growing and growing, that's for sure (in fact, we need to shrink). And our insatiable addiction to economic growth (despite being decoupled from well-being) is also every bit as harmful as overpopulation as well, if not more so.  Growth for the sake of growth, the ideology of the cancer cell,  is clearly one of the most asinine obsessions our nation (and world) has ever had.  We clearly need to transition to a steady-state economy, most likely following a period of what Naomi Klein calls "selective degrowth" as well.  And to do that, we need a radical paradigm shift to happen yesterday.  Put another way, we need to leave room for Nature, lest Nature not leave room for us.  We have been warned, decades ago in fact.  Unfortunately, such warnings have largely fallen of deaf ears until very recently.

(NOTE:  Though the mainstream "fact-checkers" strongly deny it, of course, the novel experimental gene therapy jabs may very well be at least partly behind the drop in birthrates from 2021 to 2022, and if that is not reversible, is NOT really good news.  Time will tell.)

Yesterday is the time to jettison the Twin Big Lies that "everybody must work for a living" and "everybody must procreate".  Because doing so is the sine qua non of any realist plan to avert ecological catastrophe.

Last but not least, the TSAP now believes that as long as men remain in charge, we are all merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.  Let's face it, it ain't gonna be us fellas who will save the world, as the past 7000 years or so have shown.  We paved paradise and put up a parking lot, we created a desert and called it peace.  We devoured and suffocated our own empire, and our proverbial 15 minutes of fame is almost up.  Only when women finally take over and reclaim their rightful position as the new leaders of the free world--and they will--will there be any real permanent solution.

Bottom line: we need to take the environment much more seriously than we do now.  We ignore it at our own peril.  And while the current administration in DC clearly doesn't care, We the People must act nonetheless.  With no apologies to the deniosaurs or Big Oil, Big Gas, or Dirty Coal.

Oh, by the way, wanna hear a joke?  Peak Oil.  Not saying it won't happen, of course--it will eventually peak and decline at some point--but climate change kinda supersedes it.  While conventional oil most likely has already peaked, there is more than enough total oil (including unconventional) to deep-fry the Earth--and most of which needs to stay in the ground if we wish to avoid catastrophic climate change.  Fossil fuels are, after all, what Buckminster Fuller referred to as our planet's "energy savings account", which we need to wean ourselves off of and save just in case of a planetary emergency--and he first said this in 1941!

So quibble all you want, but the truth must be faced head-on.  Hindsight is 2020, and we have a planet to save.  So let's roll!

P.S.:  We never thought we would ever have to say this, but the TSAP does NOT support a "climate lockdown" or any other type of lockdown for that matter.  It is at best a category error, and would do far more harm than good in the long run.  And of course it flies in the face of the basic principles of anything remotely resembling a free society.  So take that off the table now!  Same goes for forced economic degrowth, which will most likely get us permanently stuck in a bad place and still end up destroying the Earth regardless (albeit somewhat more slowly and in somewhat better taste, aka "flattening the Seneca curve").

It should also go without saying, but we at the TSAP DO NOT support the WEF "Great Reset", social credit scoring, or a cashless society (aka CBDC) either.  Those are a totalitarian's dream come true, and our worst nightmare come true for the rest of us.  We believe that the answer is MORE liberty and democracy, not less.

Let the planetary healing begin!

UPDATE:  See this article here that debunks the birth dearthers' moral panic to smithereens!

The Epstein Files Are Released (In Part), And They Are Horrifying!

(WARNING:  VERY NSFW!)

Well, more of the infamous Epstein Files have finally been released, and they are horrifying!  And that is just a fraction of it!

Since there is a LOT of misinformation going around out there online, it is best to check the actual files directly at the source, the U.S. Justice Department's own website, and see for yourself:

https://www.justice.gov/epstein

(Content warning:  graphic description of rape and sexual abuse of minors, very disturbing subject matter, on that website as well as mentions on this page as well.  Viewer discretion advised.)

That site contains a searchable database of the files that have been released thus far.  Even with all of the redactions, what we know so far is still pretty incriminating of SO many people in high places.  For example, just type "Trump" into the search bar, and see for yourself.  (Yes, he is in the files.  BIGLY.  Believe me.)

Now you see why he would go to such great lengths to cover this up and sweep it under the rug, and even risk starting World War III and Civil War 2.0 to "wag the dog" and distract from it all.

Notice also how Trumplethinskin, who would frivolously sue practically anyone who so much as hurts his feelings, did NOT sue Katie Johnson (remember her from 2016, when she dropped her case against him due to death threats, just before the election?) for defamation?  Or anyone else who directly accused him of allegedly raping or sexually abusing them?  Because then he would have had to take the stand, and he wouldn't want that!

As the saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

(Mic drop)

Two Minutes To Midnight (Iron Maiden)

Now that the Doomsday Clock is now officially at 85 seconds to midnight (!) as of January 27, 2026, I felt that this famous 1984 classic rock song by Iron Maiden is rather appropriate at this moment in history:

ENOUGH!

ENOUGH!

Rest in Power, Alex Pretti, Renee Good, Keith Porter, and all of the many others whose lives were cut short by the modern-day Gestapo known as ICE.  Your deaths shall NOT be in vain!

And let's not forget Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez either!