War and Empire Links: Remembrance Day Edition

The Best Way To Honor War Veterans Is To Stop Creating Them. Caitlin Johnstone. Nov. 10, 2018.

The US will be celebrating Veterans Day tomorrow, and many a striped flag shall be waved. The social currency of esteem will be used to elevate those who have served in the US military, thereby ensuring future generations of recruits to be thrown into the gears of the globe-spanning war machine. 

Veterans Day is not a holiday to honor the men and women who have dutifully protected their country. The youngest Americans who arguably defended their nation from a real threat to its shores are in their nineties, and soon there won’t be any of them left. Every single person who has served in the US military since the end of the second World War has protected nothing other than the agendas of global hegemony, resource control and war profiteering. They have not been fighting and dying for freedom and democracy, they have been fighting and dying for imperialism, Raytheon profit margins, and crude oil.

I just said something you’re not supposed to say. People have dedicated many years of their lives to the service of the US military; they’ve given their limbs to it, they’ve suffered horrific brain damage for it, they’ve given their very lives to it. Families have been ripped apart by the violence that has been inflicted upon members of the US Armed Forces; you’re not supposed to let them hear you say that their loved one was destroyed because some sociopathic nerds somewhere in Washington decided that it would give America an advantage over potential economic rivals to control a particular stretch of Middle Eastern dirt. But it is true, and if we don’t start acknowledging that truth lives are going to keep getting thrown into the gears of the machine for the power and profit of a few depraved oligarchs. So I’m going to keep saying it.

Last week I saw the hashtag #SaluteToService trending on Twitter. Apparently the NFL had a deal going where every time someone tweeted that hashtag they’d throw a few
bucks at some veteran’s charity. Which sounds sweet, until you consider three things:

1. The NFL’s ten wealthiest team owners are worth a combined $61 billion.
2. The NFL has taken millions of dollars from the Pentagon for displays of patriotism on the field, including for the policy of bringing all players out for the national anthem every game starting in 2009 (which led to Colin Kaepernick’s demonstrations and the obscene backlash against him). 
3. VETERANS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO RELY ON FUCKING CHARITY.

Seriously, how is “charity for veterans” a thing, and how are people not extremely weirded out by it? How is it that you can go out and get your limbs blown off for slave wages after watching your friends die and innocent civilians perish, come home, and have to rely on charity to get by? How is it that you can risk life and limb killing and suffering irreparable psychological trauma for some plutocrat’s agendas, plunge into poverty when you come home, and then see the same plutocrat labeled a “philanthropist” because he threw a few tax-deductible dollars at a charity that gave you a decent prosthetic leg? 

Taking care of veterans should be factored into the budget of every act of military aggression. If a government can’t make sure its veterans are housed, healthy and happy in a dignified way for the rest of their lives, it has no business marching human beings into harm’s way. The fact that you see veterans on the street of any large US city and people who fought in wars having to beg “charities” for a quality mechanical wheelchair shows you just how much of a pathetic joke this Veterans Day song and dance has always been. 

They’ll send you to mainline violence and trauma into your mind and body for the power and profit of the oligarchic rulers of the US-centralized empire, but it’s okay because everyone gets a long weekend where they’re told to thank you for your service. Bullshit.

Veterans Day, like so very, very much in American culture, is a propaganda construct designed to lubricate the funneling of human lives into the chamber of a gigantic gun. It glorifies evil, stupid, meaningless acts of mass murder to ensure that there will always be recruits who are willing to continue perpetrating it, and to ensure that the US public doesn’t wake up to the fact that its government’s insanely bloated military budget is being used to unleash unspeakable horrors upon the earth. 

The only way to honor veterans, really, truly honor them, is to help end war and make sure no more lives are put into a position where they are on the giving or receiving end of evil, stupid, meaningless violence. The way to do that is to publicly, loudly and repeatedly make it clear that you do not consent to the global terrorism being perpetrated in your name. These bastards work so hard conducting propaganda to manufacture your consent for endless warmongering because they need that consent. So don’t give it to them.

Better Late Than Never. John Andrews, Dissident Voice. Nov. 1, 2018,

Although white poppies have been around for almost as long as the red ones as a symbol of remembrance a surprisingly large number of people know nothing about what they stand for. To put it in a nutshell, white poppies promote peace, red poppies help promote Permanent War. 

Arguably the most cynical lie that was told to the horribly betrayed young men who were butchered in the killing fields of Europe just over a hundred years ago, in order to persuade them to become lambs for slaughter, was that they would be fighting the “war to end all war”. If it was true, it would indeed have been worth dying for, but it wasn’t. It was a lie. Britain and the US, the last global empire and the current one, never made any effort to stop wars. The so-called peace treaty that concluded WW1 guaranteed WW2 would happen. Further evidence is obvious: apart from being the two biggest arms-makers on the planet, Britain and the US never stopped sending their armed forces to distant countries to kill people who, certainly after WW2, have been mostly rag-tag freedom fighters, defeated conscripts and defenceless civilians. 

The best way anyone can commemorate those terribly wasted young lives from WW1 is to remember what they believed they were fighting for, and to demand that our great trusted leaders respect them by doing what they said they would do – stop fighting wars. 

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Added to the sheer inexcusable immorality of war, which has always been the case, we now have the fact that it’s also illegal – a relatively new concept. Therefore almost every military action that Britain and the US have engaged in over the last three or four decades, at least, have not only been immoral, they’ve also been illegal. 

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Whilst some sort of moral justification for war is always manufactured, to sell it to the 99%, morality is never the main reason for war. The main reason wars are fought is for loot, and to feed the parasites of war – the bankers, arms dealers, generals and “intelligence” agencies. This is as true today as it’s always been. When the phoney compassion of corrupt politicians and lying news providers is stripped away, we always discover that the real reason some war was fought was to make the super-rich and powerful even richer and more powerful.

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The real cynicism of Remembrance Day is the brainwashing that accompanies it. We’re conditioned to see dead and wounded soldiers as heroes, instead of tragic victims treacherously betrayed by their own trusted leaders. WW1 was supposed to be the war to end all war. It’s about time we started demanding the realisation of that cause. Better late than never.

On Veterans’ Day, Remember the Lies That Filled Military Cemeteries. James Bovard, Mises Institute. Nov. 11, 2018.

Politicians will be heartily applauded for saluting American’s soldiers today. But if citizens had better memories, elected officials would instead be fleeing tar and feathers. Politicians have a long record of betraying the veterans they valorize.

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The best way to honor veterans is to cancel politicians’ prerogative to send troops abroad to fight on any and every pretext. And one of the best steps towards that goal is to remember the lies for which soldiers died.

Lest We Forget. The Conciousness of Sheep.  Nov. 7, 2018.