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	<title>Thrive &#187; reThink Politics</title>
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		<title>The Yes Men</title>
		<link>http://www.solarila.com/2009/08/the-yes-men/</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 29 Aug 2009 22:33:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>E</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[reThink Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Documentaries]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.solarila.com/?p=1079</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This has to be one of funnier documentaries I&#8217;ve seen.  These guys basically impersonate various companies (DOW, Exxon, Halliburton) and agencies (WTO, HUD) as a means to draw attention to the abusive manner in which ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1081" title="the-yes-men-800-75" src="http://www.solarila.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/the-yes-men-800-75-150x150.jpg" alt="the-yes-men-800-75" width="150" height="150" />This has to be one of funnier documentaries I&#8217;ve seen.  These guys basically impersonate various companies (DOW, Exxon, Halliburton) and agencies (WTO, HUD) as a means to draw attention to the abusive manner in which these groups behave.</p>
<p>Here is how they describe what they do: Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.</p>
<p>They have a number of clips on Youtube.  Check out <a href="http://www.theyesmen.org/" target="_blank">http://www.theyesmen.org</a>.</p>
<p>You can watch this for free at Veoh.com or you can get it from Netflix.  <a href="http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/educational/watch/v3601038pRGDRGs" target="_blank">Click here to watch</a> (need to register).</p>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Watch <a href="http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/educational/watch/v3601038pRGDRGs">TheYesMen.mp4</a> in <a href="http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/educational">Educational</a> |  View More <a href="http://www.veoh.com">Free Videos Online at Veoh.com</a></span></p>
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		<title>War Is a Racket</title>
		<link>http://www.solarila.com/2009/08/war-is-a-racket/</link>
		<comments>http://www.solarila.com/2009/08/war-is-a-racket/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:40:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>E</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Military Industrial Complex]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Financial Warfare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reThink Politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.solarila.com/?p=1053</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
Major General Smedley Butler
During his 34 years of Marine Corps service, Butler was awarded numerous medals for heroism including the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (the highest Marine medal at its time for officers), and subsequently ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1055" title="030928_butler" src="http://www.solarila.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/030928_butler-150x150.jpg" alt="030928_butler" width="150" height="150" /><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>Major General Smedley Butler</strong></p>
<p>During his 34 years of Marine Corps service, Butler was awarded numerous medals for heroism including the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (the highest Marine medal at its time for officers), and subsequently the Medal of Honor twice.</p>
<p>Check out Butler&#8217;s assessment of the military industrial complex below.  War is extremely profitable and as long as this is the case, we will have lots of it.  War is a racket!  Assuming this is true, what kind of person would take advantage of war or even create war for personal profit?  What else would this kind of person be capable of?  Withholding food and water from the poor?  Sponsoring acts of terror?</p>
<p>Who bankrolled Stalin?  Who bankrolled Hitler?  Who bankrolled Napoleon?  From what I read, the same bankers are behind it all.</p>
<p>The answers can be found in this documentary: <a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/05/history-of-the-financial-warfare-model/" target="_blank">Money Masters</a></p>
<p><strong>Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933 by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler" target="_blank">General Smedley Butler</a>, USMC</strong></p>
<p>War is just a racket. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.</p>
<p>It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country&#8217;s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers.</p>
<p>I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.</p>
<p>I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.</p>
<p>During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.</p>
<p><span id="more-1053"></span></p>
<p><strong>CHAPTER ONE: War Is A Racket </strong></p>
<p>War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.</p>
<p>A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small &#8220;inside&#8221; 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.</p>
<p>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. [Please note these are 1935 U.S. dollars. To adjust for inflation, multiply all figures X 10 or more]</p>
<p>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 were wounded or killed in battle?</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.</p>
<p>Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep&#8217;s eyes at each other. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.</p>
<p>There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making. Hell&#8217;s bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?</p>
<p>Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. The publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:  &#8220;And above all, Fascism… believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace…War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it.&#8221;</p>
<p>Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter&#8217;s dispute with Yugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later. Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace.</p>
<p>Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. The trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the &#8220;open door&#8221; policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.</p>
<p>Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war – a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.</p>
<p>Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well. Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn&#8217;t they? It pays high dividends.</p>
<p>But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children? What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits? Yes, and what does it profit the nation?</p>
<p>Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn&#8217;t own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became &#8220;internationally minded.&#8221; We forgot, or shunted aside, George Washington&#8217;s warning about &#8220;entangling alliances.&#8221; We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000.</p>
<p>It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit.</p>
<p><strong>CHAPTER TWO: Who Makes The Profits? </strong></p>
<p>The World War cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 [over $4,000 in today's dollars] to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven&#8217;t paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children&#8217;s children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.</p>
<p>The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are 6, 8, 10, and sometimes 12%. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – 20, 60, 100, 300, and even 1,800% – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let&#8217;s get it. Of course, it isn&#8217;t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and &#8220;we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,&#8221; but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed. Let&#8217;s just take a few examples.</p>
<p>Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people – didn&#8217;t one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? How did they do in the war? Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn&#8217;t much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let&#8217;s look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.</p>
<p>Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910 &#8211; 1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump – or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914 &#8211; 1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!</p>
<p>Or, let&#8217;s take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914 &#8211; 1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad. There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let&#8217;s look at something else.</p>
<p>A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times. Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910 &#8211; 1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914 &#8211; 1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year. Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910 &#8211; 1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910 &#8211; 1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000. A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent. Does war pay? It paid them.</p>
<p>But they aren&#8217;t the only ones. There are still others. Let&#8217;s take leather. For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That&#8217;s all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000 – a leap of 1,400 per cent.</p>
<p>International Nickel Company – and you can&#8217;t have a war without nickel – showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent. American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.</p>
<p>Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.</p>
<p>And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s how other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.</p>
<p>Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought – and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.</p>
<p>There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn&#8217;t any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it – so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.</p>
<p>Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches – one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!</p>
<p>Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam. There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.</p>
<p>Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 – count them if you live long enough – was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.</p>
<p>Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them – a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers – all got theirs. When the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment – knapsacks and the things that go to fill them – crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them – and they will do it all over again the next time.</p>
<p>There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.</p>
<p>One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.</p>
<p>The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn&#8217;t float! The seams opened up – and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.</p>
<p>It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.</p>
<p>The Senate committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface. Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying &#8220;for some time&#8221; methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee – with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator – to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn&#8217;t suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.</p>
<p>Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses – that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.</p>
<p>There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed. Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.</p>
<p><strong>CHAPTER THREE: Who Pays The Bills? </strong></p>
<p>Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us – the people – got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par – and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.</p>
<p>But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.</p>
<p>If you don&#8217;t believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran&#8217;s hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.</p>
<p>Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to &#8220;about face&#8221;; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.</p>
<p>Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another &#8220;about face&#8221;! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers&#8217; aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn&#8217;t need them any more. So we scattered them about without any &#8220;three-minute&#8221; or &#8220;Liberty Loan&#8221; speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final &#8220;about face&#8221; alone.</p>
<p>In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don&#8217;t even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.</p>
<p>There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement – the young boys couldn&#8217;t stand it.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s a part of the bill. So much for the dead – they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded – they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too – they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam – on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain – with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.</p>
<p>But don&#8217;t forget – the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too. Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share – at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn&#8217;t bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn&#8217;t.</p>
<p>Napoleon once said, &#8220;All men are enamored of decorations&#8230;They positively hunger for them.&#8221; So by developing the Napoleonic system – the medal business – the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.</p>
<p>In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn&#8217;t join the army. So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side&#8230;It is His will that the Germans be killed. And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies&#8230;to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.</p>
<p>Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the &#8220;war to end all wars.&#8221; This was the &#8220;war to make the world safe for democracy.&#8221; No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a &#8220;glorious adventure.&#8221;</p>
<p>Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month. All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill&#8230;and be killed.</p>
<p>But wait! Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance – something the employer pays for in an enlightened state – and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.</p>
<p>Then, the most crowning insolence of all – he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days. We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back – when they came back from the war and couldn&#8217;t find work – at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!</p>
<p>Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly – his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.</p>
<p>When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too – as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.</p>
<p>And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.</p>
<p><strong>CHAPTER FOUR: How To Smash This Racket!</strong></p>
<p>Well, it&#8217;s a racket, all right. A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can&#8217;t end it by disarmament conferences. You can&#8217;t eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can&#8217;t wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.</p>
<p>The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation – it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted – to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.</p>
<p>Let the workers in these plants get the same wages – all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers – yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders – everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!</p>
<p>Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds. Why shouldn&#8217;t they? They aren&#8217;t running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren&#8217;t sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren&#8217;t hungry. The soldiers are! Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket – that and nothing else.</p>
<p>Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won&#8217;t permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people – those who do the suffering and still pay the price – make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers.</p>
<p>Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn&#8217;t be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant – all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war – voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms – to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.</p>
<p>It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide – and not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote.</p>
<p>A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.</p>
<p>At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don&#8217;t shout that &#8220;We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation.&#8221; Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only.</p>
<p>Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh. The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast. The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon&#8217;s shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.</p>
<p>The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can&#8217;t go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.</p>
<p>To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket: 1.) We must take the profit out of war; 2.) We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war; 3.) We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.</p>
<p><strong>CHAPTER FIVE : To Hell With War!</strong></p>
<p>I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war. Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had &#8220;kept us out of war&#8221; and on the implied promise that he would &#8220;keep us out of war.&#8221; Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.</p>
<p>In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die. Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?</p>
<p>Money.</p>
<p>An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group:</p>
<p>&#8220;There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars. If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money&#8230;and Germany won&#8217;t. So&#8230;..&#8221;</p>
<p>Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a &#8220;war to make the world safe for democracy&#8221; and a &#8220;war to end all wars.&#8221;</p>
<p>Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy. And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.</p>
<p>Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don&#8217;t mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens?</p>
<p>The professional soldiers and sailors don&#8217;t want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments. The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe.</p>
<p>There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane.</p>
<p>So&#8230;I say, TO HELL WITH WAR!</p>
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		<title>Unintended Consequences &#8211; Abortion</title>
		<link>http://www.solarila.com/2009/07/unintended-consequences-abortion/</link>
		<comments>http://www.solarila.com/2009/07/unintended-consequences-abortion/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2009 01:24:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>E</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Population Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Documentaries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Financial Crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rethink Living]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reThink Politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.solarila.com/?p=1008</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here we go.  This is a controversial issue but I thought I&#8217;d take a closer look at abortion. How does the money work in the abortion industry?  Who benefits?  What are the consequences?  I was ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1010" title="Pba45" src="http://www.solarila.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Pba45-150x150.jpg" alt="Pba45" width="150" height="150" />Here we go.  This is a controversial issue but I thought I&#8217;d take a closer look at abortion. How does the money work in the abortion industry?  Who benefits?  What are the consequences?  I was rather surprised to find that in addition to abortion being highly lucrative, a whole baby parts after market has developed and appears to be driving policy in regards to partial birth abortion.  So here are some alarming facts.</p>
<p>Since 1973, more than 50 million babies have been killed in the womb.  That&#8217;s a lot of life.  As a point of comparison, that&#8217;s a couple million more than all deaths of WWII.  Hitler killed a bit over 10 million.  Stalin may have killed up to 20 million.  We kill a lot of babies&#8230;roughly 4,000 (1 out of 5, I believe) a day in this country.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s a lot of baby parts made possible by partial birth abortion.  Apparently, you can buy ears for $75 a pair; arms and legs, $150; a brain for $999, tax not included.  Notice the brains fetch higher dollar amounts as these items can only be salvaged by abortions that are performed after birth (babies are left on a table to die after birth or drowned).</p>
<p>On another financial note, American Life League posted a full-page ad in the Washington Times. The ad explains that since 1973, more than 50 million babies have been killed in the womb. &#8220;Those are the very babies that, today, would be living, working — and paying into Social Security,&#8221; said ALL president Judie Brown. She pointed out that &#8220;The government is largely responsible for the Social Security crisis. They have continued to fund abortion giants such as Planned Parenthood, which aid in the destruction of human life.&#8221;  We will reap what we sow and this worries me.  When does God say enough is enough?</p>
<p>We live in a world that has no regard for life on any level.  We are treated as a commodity from birth to death.  We are far from the heart of God.  And we are going to pay for it.</p>
<p>I encourage you to watch this documentary on partial birth abortion.  This is an issue that effects all of us, even those that only care about their pocket books/social security benefits.</p>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/07/unintended-consequences-abortion/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>
<p>Join Marlin Maddoux, host of the nationally syndicated radio news talk program Point of View, for an investigation into the multi-million dollar a year baby parts trafficking industry, which is one of the most lucrative businesses in operation today. Yet most Americans are unaware of its existence. Many have heard about the controversy surrounding fetal tissue research but have no idea how the tissue is obtained.</p>
<p>Who are some of the players in the baby parts industry? What are live birth abortions? Are they occurring? Are women being pressured into abortions with promises that their baby’s parts will be used to help cure diseases? Why did elected officials in the past fight so hard to keep partial birth abortion legal? Why did the Congressional “baby parts” hearings turn into a fiasco? Has the media fairly presented all sides of the fetal tissue controversy?</p>
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		<title>Why All the Guns?</title>
		<link>http://www.solarila.com/2009/05/why-all-the-guns/</link>
		<comments>http://www.solarila.com/2009/05/why-all-the-guns/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2009 06:50:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>E</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[reThink Politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.solarila.com/?p=774</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Apparently, US citizens bought enough guns in 3 months to outfit the entire Chinese and Indian army’s combined.  Law abiding US citizens bought on average 3,177,256 guns every 3 months in 2008.   That&#8217;s ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-782" title="monkey-gun-thumb-400x272-12159" src="http://www.solarila.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/monkey-gun-thumb-400x272-12159-150x150.jpg" alt="monkey-gun-thumb-400x272-12159" width="150" height="150" />Apparently, US citizens bought enough guns in 3 months to outfit the entire Chinese and Indian army’s combined.  Law abiding US citizens bought on average 3,177,256 guns every 3 months in 2008.   That&#8217;s over 12 million guns in one year.   We also bought 1,529,635,000 rounds of ammunition in just the month of December 2008. Yeah that is right, that is Billion with a “B”. This number does not account for reloading or reloaded ammunition.</p>
<p>I think a few things are going on here:</p>
<ol>
<li>People are afraid of future regulation on gun ownership.</li>
<li>Many people do not like the trends they see in the Federal government and are taking action to arm themselves.</li>
<li>People see tough times ahead and are taking action to protect themselves from other citizens.</li>
</ol>
<p>This video paints a bit of a picture of the mindset of a pro-gun person who sees this trend as a positive response to overbearing government.  This tension is very real and it will be interesting to see how this all works out.</p>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/05/why-all-the-guns/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>
<p>For more information:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/1102" target="_blank">Montana Defies Feds on Guns</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.ammoland.com/2009/04/22/usa-buys-enough-guns-in-3-months-to-outfit-the-entire-chinese-and-indian-army/" target="_blank">Ammoland.com</a></li>
</ul>
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		<title>Shane Claiborne &#8211; Jesus for President</title>
		<link>http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/shane-claiborne-jesus-for-president/</link>
		<comments>http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/shane-claiborne-jesus-for-president/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:13:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>E</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Community]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reThink Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian Community]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rethink Living]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.solarila.com/?p=709</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A different kind of campaign.  A different kind of party.  A different kind of Commander in Chief.  Sound compelling?
At the heart of Jesus for President is the answer to the question, &#8220;Why ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-713" title="adv_1280x800" src="http://www.solarila.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/adv_1280x800-150x150.jpg" alt="adv_1280x800" width="150" height="150" />A different kind of campaign.  A different kind of party.  A different kind of Commander in Chief.  Sound compelling?</p>
<p>At the heart of Jesus for President is the answer to the question, &#8220;Why does the Bible seem so dynamic, yet my church seems so bland, spineless, and ineffectual?&#8221; Or, to put it another way, &#8220;Why does America &#8212; one of the most heavily-churched countries in the world &#8212; seem to continue going down the drain&#8230;economically, politically, morally, and spiritually?&#8221;</p>
<p>The answer is found in the first few pages of Jesus for President:</p>
<p>&#8220;Too often the patriotic values of pride and strength triumph over the spiritual values of humility, gentleness, and sacrificial love.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;We in the church are schizophrenic: we want to be good Christians, but deep down we trust that only the power of the state and its militaries and markets can really make a difference in the world.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Rather than placing our hope in a transitional church that embodies God&#8217;s kingdom, we assume America is God&#8217;s hope for the world, even when it doesn&#8217;t look like Christ.&#8221;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.jesusforpresident.org/" target="_blank">For more info on the book</a> &gt;&gt;</p>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/shane-claiborne-jesus-for-president/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a><br />
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/shane-claiborne-jesus-for-president/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a><br />
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/shane-claiborne-jesus-for-president/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>
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		<title>The Aristocracy of Purpose</title>
		<link>http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/the-aristocracy-of-purpose/</link>
		<comments>http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/the-aristocracy-of-purpose/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:44:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>E</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Financial Warfare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Population Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Financial Crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peak Oil]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reThink Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World Government]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.solarila.com/?p=674</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here are a handful of interviews with Daniel Estulin.  Daniel Estulin (born in Russia) is an author who specializes in investigating the Bilderberg Group, an annual invitation-only conference of the elites in the fields ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-678" title="danielestulinedplaneta" src="http://www.solarila.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/danielestulinedplaneta-150x150.png" alt="danielestulinedplaneta" width="150" height="150" />Here are a handful of interviews with Daniel Estulin.  Daniel Estulin (born in Russia) is an author who specializes in investigating the Bilderberg Group, an annual invitation-only conference of the elites in the fields of business, media and politics. He is known for his extensive works about this group and for his books on communication techniques.  <span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">His book, The True Story of the Bilderberg Group has sold nearly 2 million copies in 51 countries, and translated into 31 languages.</span></p>
<p>Is there a global conspiracy?  I don&#8217;t know.  However, the concepts here are important to hear and touch a lot of important themes that will impact the lives of all people on the planet.</p>
<p>He states that the elites have formed an Aristocracy of Purpose.  That purpose is to maintain control over money and resources around the globe.  Their focus is on energy because without energy, money loses its value. With peak oil on the immediate horizon, elites are hard at work moving to consolidate control.  They are driving to destroy national sovereignty via globalization so that no nation can be self-sufficient and strike out on its own.  They feel the world is over-populated and must be reduced back to pre-industrialized numbers.  He introduces the concept of post-industrialization put in motion by destroying the world economy.</p>
<p>He says get out of debt.  Now is not a good time to own a home if it comes with debt.  Buy gold but better to get silver.  It will go toward $40/oz.  Buy land because you can always eat off land.  The nation state of the US has already failed.  Americans are on their own.</p>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/the-aristocracy-of-purpose/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>
<p><span id="more-674"></span></p>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/the-aristocracy-of-purpose/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a> <a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/the-aristocracy-of-purpose/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a> <a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/the-aristocracy-of-purpose/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a> <a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/the-aristocracy-of-purpose/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a> <a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/the-aristocracy-of-purpose/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a> <a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/the-aristocracy-of-purpose/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>
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		<title>War and the Globalization of Poverty</title>
		<link>http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/war-and-globalization/</link>
		<comments>http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/war-and-globalization/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2009 07:46:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>E</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Financial Warfare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Global Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military Industrial Complex]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Energy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Financial Crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Financial Fraud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reThink Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World Government]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.solarila.com/?p=664</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I recommend sitting through these lectures by Michel Chossudovsky.  He peels away the layers of war, financial warfare, oil and resource wars, terrorism, 9/11, privatization and deregulation, financial crises, a slide to fascism and military ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-668" title="al-qaeda-osama-bin-laden-ayman-al-zawahiri" src="http://www.solarila.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/al-qaeda-osama-bin-laden-ayman-al-zawahiri-150x150.jpg" alt="al-qaeda-osama-bin-laden-ayman-al-zawahiri" width="150" height="150" />I recommend sitting through these lectures by <span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">Michel Chossudovsky.  He peels away the layers of war, financial warfare, oil and resource wars, terrorism, 9/11, privatization and deregulation, financial crises, a slide to fascism and military conquest.  He also states that truth can bring down the entire system and is the ultimate enemy of those pulling the strings behind this system.  If you can understand what he is saying then you will have a pretty good picture of how the world works.<br />
</span></p>
<p><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;"><a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/war-and-globalization/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a></span></p>
<p><span style="display: inline;">Some of my notes:</span></p>
<ul>
<li><span style="display: inline;">He discusses a war agenda and military doctrine which involves oil pipelines and oil reserve control but is about much more than these things.</span></li>
<li><span style="display: inline;">The New American Century is a blueprint for world domination and lays out a game plan for conquest using the War on Terror as an excuse to move into the middle East.</span></li>
<li><span style="display: inline;">Al Qaeda is a creation of and continues to be a US intelligence asset</span></li>
<li><span style="display: inline;">There are four opposing factions including the US/British, Euro zone, Russia and China.  A silent war is currently raging between these groups around the defense industry/arms, oil and currency.<br />
</span></li>
<li><span style="display: inline;">Nuclear war is now part of the strategy in US preemptive warfare.</span></li>
<li><span style="display: inline;">Globalization of poverty is the result, not due to scarcity but due to the destructive expansion of the empire via privatization and deregulation.</span></li>
<li><span style="display: inline;">Financial crises is a result of the shift of resources to the military complex away from the real productive economy.  The agenda is to privatize all public assets and activities into centrally controlled corporations.  Unlike WWII, the war economy will not create jobs and bring economic well being to US citizens.  The opposite is happening.<br />
</span></li>
<li><span style="display: inline;">We see a slide into Fascism.  Outside of the US it looks like military and economic conquest.  Inside the country it looks like a police state via the militarization of the police force.</span></li>
<li><span style="display: inline;">9/11 serves to justify the war on terror (war of conquest).  But this is a false cover and much like Pearl Harbor, could have been avoided and was used as an excuse to move forward with war plans.</span></li>
<li><span style="display: inline;">Dealing with the criminalization of the state.  Politicians on both sides are highly compromised and complicit in keeping the system running.  High level politicians are puppets.<br />
</span></li>
<li><span style="display: inline;">American citizens are uneducated and unaware of truth.  Media has failed to inform people for many reasons.  Government propaganda machine overwhelms truth that does make it out.</span></li>
<li><span style="display: inline;">Must question the legitimacy of what is behind all these plans.  Must identify the corporate interests involved including central banks, Wall St., defense industry, pharmaceutical industry, big oil, big agriculture, etc.  Must then get behind who runs these highly centralized businesses and sets their agendas.</span></li>
<li><span style="display: inline;">Watch out for dissent movements that serve to demobilize and distract the truth movement.  Manufacturing dissent is used to redirect dissent in ways that actually support the system as a whole.</span></li>
<li><span style="display: inline;">Truth is the enemy of this system.  Truth will destroy it.  Truth can be spread person to person in a grass roots movement.</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;"><a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/war-and-globalization/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a></span></p>
<p><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">Lecture: The Global Financial Crises — The Great Depression of the 21st Century with Michel Chossudovsky Causes and consequences of the financial meltdown. </span></p>
<ul>
<li><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">The speculative onslaught </span></li>
<li><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">Financial fraud and the &#8220;bank bailouts&#8221;</span></li>
<li><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">Bankruptcy of the real economy</span></li>
<li><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">Impacts on employment, wages and social services</span></li>
<li><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">Towards a spiralling public debt</span></li>
<li><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">The economic crisis and its relationship to the Middle East war</span></li>
<li><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">The centralization of corporate power</span></li>
<li><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">The concentration of wealth</span></li>
<li><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">The globalization of poverty<br />
</span></li>
</ul>
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		<title>David Simon Gets It</title>
		<link>http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/david-simon-gets-it/</link>
		<comments>http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/david-simon-gets-it/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:23:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>E</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[reThink Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reThink Faith]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reThink Living]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reThink Media & Entertainment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reThink Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Business as Mission]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Financial Crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Financial Fraud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media & Entertainment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.solarila.com/?p=578</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From crime beat reporter for the BALTIMORE SUN to award-winning screenwriter of HBO&#8217;s critically-acclaimed The Wire, David Simon talks with Bill Moyers about inner-city crime and politics, storytelling and the future of journalism today.
This guy ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-579" title="the_wire_-_season_5" src="http://www.solarila.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/the_wire_-_season_5-150x150.jpg" alt="the_wire_-_season_5" width="150" height="150" />From crime beat reporter for the BALTIMORE SUN to award-winning screenwriter of HBO&#8217;s critically-acclaimed The Wire, David Simon talks with Bill Moyers about inner-city crime and politics, storytelling and the future of journalism today.</p>
<p>This guy has some really deep things to say about how we do things in America.  I highly recommend reflecting on what he has to say.  It is mind blowing stuff and he really gets at a lot of root problems with our fundamental systems.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04172009/watch.html" target="_blank">Watch Part 1</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04172009/watch2.html" target="_blank">Watch Part 2</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Speaking at Loyola College, David shares his views on the end of the American Empire in three video segments. He says we&#8217;re headed for separate Americas of &#8220;haves and have-nots.&#8221; Simon faults &#8220;unencumbered Capitalism&#8221; for making our country care less about the most vulnerable of our citizens. Unless we change, he predicts &#8220;we are doomed.&#8221;</p>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/david-simon-gets-it/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a> <a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/david-simon-gets-it/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z42m_J8t18[/youtube]
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		<title>Beck Releases Song Titled &#8220;Chemtrails&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/beck-releases-song-titled-chemtrails/</link>
		<comments>http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/beck-releases-song-titled-chemtrails/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:41:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>E</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Population Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reThink Media & Entertainment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Air Quality]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.solarila.com/?p=529</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I started running into articles and videos on what is being called &#8220;chemtrails&#8221; which are different from traditional jet contrails.  Knowing what I now know about government, I did not dismiss this outright but it ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-531" title="chemtrails" src="http://www.solarila.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/chemtrails-300x227.jpg" alt="chemtrails" width="300" height="227" />I started running into articles and videos on what is being called &#8220;chemtrails&#8221; which are different from traditional jet contrails.  Knowing what I now know about government, I did not dismiss this outright but it seemed a little out there.  I didn&#8217;t have any personal experience with it so really coudn&#8217;t make any kind of judgement on the issue.  But it got me checking the skies.</p>
<p>Shortly after seeing this information, I noticed a jet flying high above leaving a short contrail that was very thin and disappeared quickly behind the plane.  I said to myself, that&#8217;s what I know a normal jet contrail looks like.</p>
<p>A couple weeks later I was walking back from the bank at 2:30 PM on Monday, April 13th 2009 and I was taking in the view here in Los Angeles.  I noticed patterns in the sky that looked a lot like what I had seen described as Chemtrails.  I looked a little closer and I could see multiple planes in the air flying in patterns not typical to my area.  I live south of downtown and planes always fly west in pattern to land at LAX.  These contrails were perpendicular to normal flight patters and were in parallel lines.</p>
<p>This morning as I was leaving from a church facility that happens to be situated on a high point in West LA, I was taking in the view and could count at least 5 planes leaving these chem trails behind them.  They had managed to turn a warm, cloudless day and created this strange, milky white cloud thing as these trails spread out and merged together.  It was really strange to watch this happening above me.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t know what they are doing or why but considering it is done without public knowledge or consent, I&#8217;m guessing it is probably not good for us.  Apparently this started around 1996 and is seen across the United States and many other countries.</p>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/beck-releases-song-titled-chemtrails/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>
<p><a href="http://carnicom.com" target="_blank">Carnicom Website</a> :: <a href="http://carnicom.com/natural1.htm" target="_blank">Health Recommendations</a></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve now seen it with my own two eyes and know this is very real.  In my research, I found a Discovery Channel special on this subject and a number of other videos online.  Apparantly Beck has released a song titled &#8220;Chemtrails.&#8221;  Lyrics and song below.</p>
<div><object width="420" height="339" data="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x1a4bt" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x1a4bt" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /></object><br />
<strong><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x1a4bt">CHEMTRAILS Exposed on Discovery Channel</a></strong><br />
<em>by <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/neverknwo">neverknwo</a></em></div>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/beck-releases-song-titled-chemtrails/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>
<p>I can&#8217;t believe what we&#8217;ve seen outside<br />
You and me watching the jets go by<br />
Oh, ooh, oh<br />
Oh, ooh, oh</p>
<p>Down by the sea<br />
So many people<br />
They&#8217;ve already drowned<br />
You and me watching a sea full of people<br />
Try not to drown</p>
<p>So many people<br />
So many people<br />
Where do they go?<br />
You and me watching a sky full of chemtrails<br />
That&#8217;s where we belong</p>
<p>All I can take from these scars is hope<br />
But all I can see in this night are boats sinking<br />
Oh, ooh, oh<br />
Oh, ooh, oh</p>
<p>Down by the sea swallowed by evil<br />
We&#8217;ve already drowned<br />
You and me watching a sea full of people<br />
They&#8217;ve already drowned</p>
<p>So many people<br />
So many people<br />
Where do they go?<br />
You and me hit by a touch of white evil<br />
Watching the jet planes go by</p>
<p>You and me watching<br />
You and me watching<br />
The chemtrails is where we belong<br />
That&#8217;s where we&#8217;ll be when we die in the slipstream<br />
We&#8217;ll climb in a hole in the sky</p>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/beck-releases-song-titled-chemtrails/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>
<p>This one shows the interior on some of these planes starting at about 1:30 into it:</p>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/beck-releases-song-titled-chemtrails/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a> <a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/beck-releases-song-titled-chemtrails/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>
<p>This final one is about an hour presentation on the health effects:</p>
<p><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">If you believed that aircraft, with secret government approval, had been spraying us with noxious chemicals developed in U.S. military biological warfare laboratories, would you be paranoid? Or if you saw distinct plumes or &#8220;Chem Trails&#8221; left behind by the aircraft which did this spraying, yet were told by Transport Canada that no such spraying was taking place, would you be delusional? .or a conspiracy theory lunatic? You&#8217;d be quite rational according to William Thomas, who has studied the Chem Trails phenomenon. Thomas is an award-winning journalist and author of a book about &#8220;Gulf War Syndrome&#8221;, the strange cluster of illnesses linked to a deterioration in the auto-immune system suffered by troops who received anthrax immunization before being deployed in the first Gulf War in the early 1990s. Today he argues, the same illnesses are showing up in North America caused by Chem Trails.<br />
</span></p>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/beck-releases-song-titled-chemtrails/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>
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		<title>Scientific Poll: 84% Reject Official 9/11 Story</title>
		<link>http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/official-911-story-is-bogus/</link>
		<comments>http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/official-911-story-is-bogus/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 18 Apr 2009 06:17:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>E</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Financial Fraud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reThink Politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.solarila.com/?p=434</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[According to polls by CNN, New York Times,  most Americans (over 80%) do not buy into the official 9/11 story.  That really shocked me when I first came across this (view a compilation of polls).  ...]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-436" title="wtcnightsm" src="http://www.solarila.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/wtcnightsm-150x150.jpg" alt="wtcnightsm" width="150" height="150" />According to polls by CNN, New York Times,  most Americans (over 80%) do not buy into the official 9/11 story.  That really shocked me when I first came across this (<a href="http://freedomisforeverybody.blogspot.com/2008/05/scientific-poll-84-reject-official-911.html" target="_blank">view a compilation of polls</a>).  So, I started looking into this myself.  What was all the commotion about?  It seemed pretty obvious that terrorists did this.</p>
<p>This is a controversial topic and I realize without an understanding of some of the other major world themes, the concept of 9/11 being an inside job seems absolutely insane.  I would have discounted the idea outright just six months ago.</p>
<p>However, after seeing some of the documentaries and in the context of the global government movement, an obviously engineered financial collapse, government assassination teams, a never ending war against terrorism, peak oil, economic warfare, etc,  it has become very clear to me that the official story is bogus and that the US government was at least complicit in if not directly involved in the recent major terrorism events on US soil.</p>
<p><span id="more-434"></span></p>
<p>Considering the fact that we went to war over this event and we have given over a great deal of our freedoms via the patriot act and other pieces of legislation, I think we should probably get our facts straight regarding what happened on 9/11.  It needs to be fully investigated and the truth brought out, whatever that truth might be.  It seems a lot of people are in agreement with me.</p>
<p><span id="long-desc" style="display: inline;">&#8220;When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.&#8221; &#8211; Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr., creator of Sherlock Holmes</span></p>
<p>So, here we go.  Here are some of the resources I found.  Take a look and draw your own conclusions.  Here are some of my top questions to get you started:</p>
<ul>
<li>Who derived benefit from this event?  Who made money?</li>
<li>Who benefited from not having to invest over 1 billion dollars to clean asbestos from these buildings?</li>
<li>Who was losing money due to the age and limitations of these buildings year after year?</li>
<li>What agenda was forwarded by these events?  How was fear used to move us as a people toward that agenda?</li>
<li>Who showed foreknowledge of the event and how would they have known?</li>
<li>Why did the two towers fall in complete free fall when all logic would suggest that a pancake collapse would have taken at least a minute and a half?</li>
<li>Why did the top section of the buildings fall directly into the path of greatest resistance and not fall off to the side?</li>
<li>Why were there bomb blasts going off in the basement?</li>
<li>Why in the world did building 7 fall later that day in a demolition pattern for no reason at all?</li>
<li>What important agencies kept important documents in these buildings (start with the SEC and Enron records).  Who benefited from the loss of the records?</li>
<li>Why were these buildings closed down the weekend before so a large number of workman could work all weekend throughout these buildings?  What were they doing there?</li>
<li>What important statement did the military make regarding the loss of $2 Trillion dollars the day before.  What department was hit at the Pentagon?</li>
<li>Why is media in other parts of the world claiming that some of these hijackers are still alive?</li>
<li>How were these planes in the air for over an hour and they were not intercepted by fighter planes?</li>
<li>Why was the military running an emergency response exercise on 9/11 simulating an event where terrorists were trying to fly planes into targets?</li>
<li>Why did the CIA plan the first WTC bombing (they admitted to doing it)?</li>
<li>Why was Osama Bin Laden never officially charged for 9/11?</li>
<li>Why do all these same kinds of questions come up in the Oklahoma City bombing?</li>
</ul>
<p>I have other questions but that should get you started.</p>
<p><span id="details-title">911 Mysteries Part 1 &#8211; Demolitions by </span><a href="http://www.911mysteries.com" target="_blank">In the Wake Productions</a></p>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/official-911-story-is-bogus/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>
<p><a href="http://www.loosechange911.com " target="_blank"><span id="details-title">Loose Change Final Cut<br />
</span></a></p>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/official-911-story-is-bogus/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>
<p><span id="details-title">911 The Road To Tyranny &#8211; Alex Jones.  This one covers the first World Trade Center Bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing.  It really helped me see a pattern across these events.<br />
</span></p>
<a href="http://www.solarila.com/2009/04/official-911-story-is-bogus/"><p><em>Click here to view the embedded video.</em></p></a>
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