I think the message in this essay is that it's better to go ask your neighbor to keep their dog from leaving piles in your yard rather than getting out the 12 gauge and shooting the owner. But since I just got that nice new shotgun and buckshot, it's a lot more fun to shoot the dog and see how it works. And maybe I'll even get to shoot the owner if he gets out his shotgun because I shot his dog. Then I'll get to buy more shells! AND my kids will get to go hungry cause I bought another pallet of ammo!
As they say "Talk is cheap." Can't have that, can we? Cheap that is.
It's just this post made a bit too much sense for me to handle this morning. It's not in the realm of mainstream thought. With luck I may find an article on Taylor Swift's thong panties giving her hemorrhoids to clear my mind.
Another Outstander here and for TomDispatch. Bill.
Upon reflection, the truly amazing thing about McGovern getting wiped out like he did against Nixon in 1972 is that this happened AFTER it was already evident and obvious ~ at least to any American with her or his head not stuck up her or his ass ~ that the War in Vietnam had been lost.
And the irony is that the Paris Peace Accords that ultimately ended that War were signed two months later, seven days after Nixon was inaugurated for his second term.
Upon further reflection, it’s probably amazing that McGovern wasn’t assassinated back in 1963 just like President Kennedy.
Where are the George McGoverns, the Philip and Daniel Berrigans, the Dave Dellingers, the MLKs, the JFKs, the Daniel Ellsbergs, the Eugene McCarthys, etc. of this generation? Hell, even the Walter Cronkites? Challenging the political class and the power structure in this country is now more marginalized than ever. Anyone who dares to stand up to the permanent war-making machine that is the National Security State is denounced and denigrated, even accused of treason and espionage. We are living through extremely dark times. What will it take to break the grip of the war mongers and the merchants of death?
David Stockman likes to make a point in starting with the last Eisenhower military budget in 1961 of about $50b and adjusting it for inflation. The military budgets can be found here: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget, and the government inflation calculator is here: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=50&year1=196101&year2=202402. If you run the numbers the $50b that as good a military mind as Eisenhower thought was capable of defending the US, with the USSR at its height, would be about $520b today. That is about half what the US actually spends as we speak. This has become my default starting point for budget arguments with warmongers.
Amen. It is very timely that Sy Hersh just published a piece reminiscing about when he worked for McGovern. Your article explains why McGovern was worth working for.
One of your best, Bill! With all the references to Eisenhower's retirement warning after 8 years as President seeing how powerful the MIC Lobby had become, he recognized the dangers in "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society." What it means is Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! in every State Politicians can't do without. The US MIC is holding Politicians and People HOSTAGE with that reality.
At the start of his Presidency, Eisenhower's CROSS OF IRON speech in April 1953 is even more relevant to the thrust of this article.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.
Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a CROSS OF IRON.
These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953 and even more so in 2024.
All that could have been financed when the US Defence budget was $60 BILLION in 1953.
The four horsemen of the Apocalypse described in the Bible’s Book of Revelation — Conquest, War, Famine and Death — are now galloping from one end of Gaza to the other.
"The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline"
Seymour Melman. Published by Simon Schuster (1976)
Melman was an economist, writer, and gadfly of the military-industrial-complex. He wrote extensively on "economic conversion" ~ the ordered transition from military to civilian production by military industries and facilities.
At the time not enough people listened to the American professor emeritus of industrial engineering at New York Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science and many were critical of his ideas.
For example:
"Melman makes a courageous but losing attempt to convince us that the war-economy capitalists can be whipped politically on the basis of such initiatives as George McGovern's pathetic 1963-4 program for redeploying the war economy. Melman moralizes about the insanity of nuclear war and the fraud of nuclear deterrence but his notions of political reform of the early 60's have been superseded by the political and economic avalanche of the 70's."
This 384-page paperback is still available on Amazon.
Today’s activists interested in a transition from military to civilian production by military industries could do no better than studying Professor Melman’s ideas ~ surely still applicable in 2024 nearly 50-years later.
The Washington Post hasn't deleted my comments lately, but The New York Times did not approve this comment citing from their report on the Russian Election 5 hours ago,
Thank you for your submission.
We'll notify you via email when your comment has been approved.
Ray Joseph Cormier
Hull, Quebec Pending Approval
@jpduffy3
This is illogical US propaganda, "an extended period that made it easier for the Kremlin to drive up turnout, and harder for anyone to spot fraud."
With 3 days of voting, for those watching, there would be more time to spot fraud.
As for a 'FREE and FAIR" elections, all the external Election monitors including President Carter, certified the 2006 Palestinian election Hamas won as being Democratic, free and fair.
The US and Israel instructed Fatah President Abbas to dissolve the Palestinian Legislature denying Hamas their LEGITIMATE win at the Ballot Box and rule by Executive Decree aka Dictatorship. At 88, Abbas is still there as Israel's proxy Chief of Police to keep Palestinians in the illegally OCCUPIED West Bank quiet.
To show their displeasure with the Palestinians for exercising their Democratic will, Israel cut off the transfer of funds to the Palestinians, and President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.
Denying Hamas a Democratic win at the Ballot Box what alternative did the US-Israel give them besides Bullets?
The UN Secretary-General said the simple Truth and Reality "October 7 didn't happen in a vacuum" but the US West doesn't want to know that.
But I would argue that we could enhance our national security by cutting the military by at least 50%.
I would add that a major problem with a our large military is that it is always designed and built to fight the last war. But no wars are ever the same. Our military monster has so much inertia, it is slow to adapt to new situations. The strategies, tactics, weapons and environments are always different. It's like have a large investment in factory that produces obsolete products.
We have the advantage that our borders are protected by huge oceans and friendly nations. We have, a strong economy and an abundance of natural resources. No nation could successfully conquer our country. Why do we have to rely on such a large military machine for our national security when we have such great natural defenses. It is pointless, fruitless and ultimately self destructive.
Sadly, McGovern did have one accomplishment I wished he'd not had. He headed up the committee to establish the USDA dietary guidelines that ushered in our chronic health outcomes. I wish he'd succeeded on the war front and failed on the food front.
'SCOTT RITTER: The CIA’s Secret War Using Russian Fascists to Fight Russia'
Watching CNN & MSNBC anti-Russian Propaganda misrepresent what Putin says, saying he is threatening a Nuclear War, that's not what Putin is saying. What he is saying is IF NATO troops are deployed in Ukraine, it will be the beginning of WWIII and most likely will end with Nuclear War.
Scott Ritter's article shows Putin's patience is being sorely tested as US WAR Hawks have the delusional belief they can push it to the brink and win a Nuclear War with Russia.
When both Russia and NATO believe the Ukraine WAR is an EXISTENTIAL THREAT, the unthinkable could happen by accident or miscalculation.
President Kennedy saw how close the World came to ARMAGEDDON/WWIII after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis saying this in 1963 that cost him his life., “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
Listening to Biden's SOTU speech and current US anti-Putin Propaganda, the simple Truth Kennedy articulated is dismissed in the current Realities.
As a Man of Faith in the Word of God who IS Christ, I hope and pray this Prophecy of the major Jewish Prophet Isaiah in the last Chapter of his Book in the Bible does not happen in OUR Generations I see clearly as describing Nuclear WAR. That is the description of what Nuclear WAR does and IS;
For behold, the Lord shall come with FIRE, and like a tempest,
His chariots, to render His anger with FURY, and His rebuke with flames of FIRE.
For with FIRE, will the Lord contend, and with His sword with all flesh, and those slain by the Lord shall be many.
Disrupting the Russian presidential election and creating an atmosphere of weakness around Putin is precisely what the U.S. intelligence agency would seek to engender.
In the days leading to the Russian presidential election that concluded on Sunday, a network of three Russian paramilitary organizations working under the auspices of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, or GUR, launched a series of attacks on the territory of the Russian Federation.
The purpose of the attacks was clear — to disrupt the three-day Russian presidential election by creating an atmosphere of weakness and impotence around President Vladimir Putin designed to undermine his authority, legitimacy and appeal at the voting booth.
The operation was months in the planning, and involved the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), the Freedom of Russian Legion (LSR), and the Siberia Battalion. All three of these organizations are controlled by the GUR, whose spokesman announced the attacks.
Left unsaid is the degree to which the C.I.A. was involved in what amounts to an invasion of the territory of the Russian Federation by forces operating under the umbrella of what is openly acknowledged to be a proxy war between the United States and its NATO allies against Russia.
While Ukraine maintains the attacks by the RDK, LSR, and Siberia Battalion are the actions of “patriotic Russians” opposed to Putin, the involvement of the GUR in organizing, training, equipping, and directing these forces makes their attack on Russian soil a direct extension of the proxy war between Russia and the West.....................................................................
Given what Senator McGovern said in his 1963 Senate speech, did he or anybody else ever explain ~ and justify ~ why he voted in 1964 for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which gave LBJ complete, total power and authority to do whatever he wanted to do in Vietnam?
Remember the series of base closings decades back? That is the only time I recall any scaling back for the military. Here in the Chicago area, the army's Fort Sheridan, built in the 19th century to protect the wealthy of the "North Shore" from worker unrest in Chicago, and the navy's Glenview Naval Air Station both closed. The air station control tower still stands in the middle of what is now a shopping and residential area.
I think the message in this essay is that it's better to go ask your neighbor to keep their dog from leaving piles in your yard rather than getting out the 12 gauge and shooting the owner. But since I just got that nice new shotgun and buckshot, it's a lot more fun to shoot the dog and see how it works. And maybe I'll even get to shoot the owner if he gets out his shotgun because I shot his dog. Then I'll get to buy more shells! AND my kids will get to go hungry cause I bought another pallet of ammo!
As they say "Talk is cheap." Can't have that, can we? Cheap that is.
It's just this post made a bit too much sense for me to handle this morning. It's not in the realm of mainstream thought. With luck I may find an article on Taylor Swift's thong panties giving her hemorrhoids to clear my mind.
Another Outstander here and for TomDispatch. Bill.
Upon reflection, the truly amazing thing about McGovern getting wiped out like he did against Nixon in 1972 is that this happened AFTER it was already evident and obvious ~ at least to any American with her or his head not stuck up her or his ass ~ that the War in Vietnam had been lost.
And the irony is that the Paris Peace Accords that ultimately ended that War were signed two months later, seven days after Nixon was inaugurated for his second term.
Upon further reflection, it’s probably amazing that McGovern wasn’t assassinated back in 1963 just like President Kennedy.
Where are the George McGoverns, the Philip and Daniel Berrigans, the Dave Dellingers, the MLKs, the JFKs, the Daniel Ellsbergs, the Eugene McCarthys, etc. of this generation? Hell, even the Walter Cronkites? Challenging the political class and the power structure in this country is now more marginalized than ever. Anyone who dares to stand up to the permanent war-making machine that is the National Security State is denounced and denigrated, even accused of treason and espionage. We are living through extremely dark times. What will it take to break the grip of the war mongers and the merchants of death?
David Stockman likes to make a point in starting with the last Eisenhower military budget in 1961 of about $50b and adjusting it for inflation. The military budgets can be found here: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget, and the government inflation calculator is here: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=50&year1=196101&year2=202402. If you run the numbers the $50b that as good a military mind as Eisenhower thought was capable of defending the US, with the USSR at its height, would be about $520b today. That is about half what the US actually spends as we speak. This has become my default starting point for budget arguments with warmongers.
Amen. It is very timely that Sy Hersh just published a piece reminiscing about when he worked for McGovern. Your article explains why McGovern was worth working for.
Terrific piece. Thank you.
One of your best, Bill! With all the references to Eisenhower's retirement warning after 8 years as President seeing how powerful the MIC Lobby had become, he recognized the dangers in "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society." What it means is Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! in every State Politicians can't do without. The US MIC is holding Politicians and People HOSTAGE with that reality.
At the start of his Presidency, Eisenhower's CROSS OF IRON speech in April 1953 is even more relevant to the thrust of this article.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.
Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a CROSS OF IRON.
These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953 and even more so in 2024.
All that could have been financed when the US Defence budget was $60 BILLION in 1953.
The four horsemen of the Apocalypse described in the Bible’s Book of Revelation — Conquest, War, Famine and Death — are now galloping from one end of Gaza to the other.
"The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline"
Seymour Melman. Published by Simon Schuster (1976)
Melman was an economist, writer, and gadfly of the military-industrial-complex. He wrote extensively on "economic conversion" ~ the ordered transition from military to civilian production by military industries and facilities.
At the time not enough people listened to the American professor emeritus of industrial engineering at New York Columbia University's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science and many were critical of his ideas.
For example:
"Melman makes a courageous but losing attempt to convince us that the war-economy capitalists can be whipped politically on the basis of such initiatives as George McGovern's pathetic 1963-4 program for redeploying the war economy. Melman moralizes about the insanity of nuclear war and the fraud of nuclear deterrence but his notions of political reform of the early 60's have been superseded by the political and economic avalanche of the 70's."
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/seymour-melman/the-permanent-war-economy-american-capitalism-i/
This 384-page paperback is still available on Amazon.
Today’s activists interested in a transition from military to civilian production by military industries could do no better than studying Professor Melman’s ideas ~ surely still applicable in 2024 nearly 50-years later.
The Washington Post hasn't deleted my comments lately, but The New York Times did not approve this comment citing from their report on the Russian Election 5 hours ago,
Thank you for your submission.
We'll notify you via email when your comment has been approved.
Ray Joseph Cormier
Hull, Quebec Pending Approval
@jpduffy3
This is illogical US propaganda, "an extended period that made it easier for the Kremlin to drive up turnout, and harder for anyone to spot fraud."
With 3 days of voting, for those watching, there would be more time to spot fraud.
As for a 'FREE and FAIR" elections, all the external Election monitors including President Carter, certified the 2006 Palestinian election Hamas won as being Democratic, free and fair.
The US and Israel instructed Fatah President Abbas to dissolve the Palestinian Legislature denying Hamas their LEGITIMATE win at the Ballot Box and rule by Executive Decree aka Dictatorship. At 88, Abbas is still there as Israel's proxy Chief of Police to keep Palestinians in the illegally OCCUPIED West Bank quiet.
To show their displeasure with the Palestinians for exercising their Democratic will, Israel cut off the transfer of funds to the Palestinians, and President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.
Denying Hamas a Democratic win at the Ballot Box what alternative did the US-Israel give them besides Bullets?
The UN Secretary-General said the simple Truth and Reality "October 7 didn't happen in a vacuum" but the US West doesn't want to know that.
Outstanding!
But I would argue that we could enhance our national security by cutting the military by at least 50%.
I would add that a major problem with a our large military is that it is always designed and built to fight the last war. But no wars are ever the same. Our military monster has so much inertia, it is slow to adapt to new situations. The strategies, tactics, weapons and environments are always different. It's like have a large investment in factory that produces obsolete products.
We have the advantage that our borders are protected by huge oceans and friendly nations. We have, a strong economy and an abundance of natural resources. No nation could successfully conquer our country. Why do we have to rely on such a large military machine for our national security when we have such great natural defenses. It is pointless, fruitless and ultimately self destructive.
Sadly, McGovern did have one accomplishment I wished he'd not had. He headed up the committee to establish the USDA dietary guidelines that ushered in our chronic health outcomes. I wish he'd succeeded on the war front and failed on the food front.
'SCOTT RITTER: The CIA’s Secret War Using Russian Fascists to Fight Russia'
Watching CNN & MSNBC anti-Russian Propaganda misrepresent what Putin says, saying he is threatening a Nuclear War, that's not what Putin is saying. What he is saying is IF NATO troops are deployed in Ukraine, it will be the beginning of WWIII and most likely will end with Nuclear War.
Scott Ritter's article shows Putin's patience is being sorely tested as US WAR Hawks have the delusional belief they can push it to the brink and win a Nuclear War with Russia.
When both Russia and NATO believe the Ukraine WAR is an EXISTENTIAL THREAT, the unthinkable could happen by accident or miscalculation.
President Kennedy saw how close the World came to ARMAGEDDON/WWIII after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis saying this in 1963 that cost him his life., “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
Listening to Biden's SOTU speech and current US anti-Putin Propaganda, the simple Truth Kennedy articulated is dismissed in the current Realities.
As a Man of Faith in the Word of God who IS Christ, I hope and pray this Prophecy of the major Jewish Prophet Isaiah in the last Chapter of his Book in the Bible does not happen in OUR Generations I see clearly as describing Nuclear WAR. That is the description of what Nuclear WAR does and IS;
For behold, the Lord shall come with FIRE, and like a tempest,
His chariots, to render His anger with FURY, and His rebuke with flames of FIRE.
For with FIRE, will the Lord contend, and with His sword with all flesh, and those slain by the Lord shall be many.
Isaiah 66: 15-16
This is what that FIRE and FURY will look like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VG2aJyIFrA
As Scott Ritter sees it;
Disrupting the Russian presidential election and creating an atmosphere of weakness around Putin is precisely what the U.S. intelligence agency would seek to engender.
In the days leading to the Russian presidential election that concluded on Sunday, a network of three Russian paramilitary organizations working under the auspices of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, or GUR, launched a series of attacks on the territory of the Russian Federation.
The purpose of the attacks was clear — to disrupt the three-day Russian presidential election by creating an atmosphere of weakness and impotence around President Vladimir Putin designed to undermine his authority, legitimacy and appeal at the voting booth.
The operation was months in the planning, and involved the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), the Freedom of Russian Legion (LSR), and the Siberia Battalion. All three of these organizations are controlled by the GUR, whose spokesman announced the attacks.
Left unsaid is the degree to which the C.I.A. was involved in what amounts to an invasion of the territory of the Russian Federation by forces operating under the umbrella of what is openly acknowledged to be a proxy war between the United States and its NATO allies against Russia.
While Ukraine maintains the attacks by the RDK, LSR, and Siberia Battalion are the actions of “patriotic Russians” opposed to Putin, the involvement of the GUR in organizing, training, equipping, and directing these forces makes their attack on Russian soil a direct extension of the proxy war between Russia and the West.....................................................................
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/18/scott-ritter-the-cia-the-russian-fascists-who-fight-russia/
Maybe Trump would put Ramaswamy in as Secretary of Defense. That would be a change.
Given what Senator McGovern said in his 1963 Senate speech, did he or anybody else ever explain ~ and justify ~ why he voted in 1964 for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which gave LBJ complete, total power and authority to do whatever he wanted to do in Vietnam?
Remember the series of base closings decades back? That is the only time I recall any scaling back for the military. Here in the Chicago area, the army's Fort Sheridan, built in the 19th century to protect the wealthy of the "North Shore" from worker unrest in Chicago, and the navy's Glenview Naval Air Station both closed. The air station control tower still stands in the middle of what is now a shopping and residential area.
Thank you Bill