War Pigs and War Rackets

A blackened Birmingham blooze bludgeoning.

Bill Ward is unhinged on this slab of Sab.  Ozzy is in peak form.  Watch this clip if only to remember why Ozzy is a legend.  It damn sure aint his solo records.  The perfect song to remind us that not everyone suffers during war, in fact some folks make a tidy profit from it:



Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley D. Butler published a pamphlet version of his "War is a Racket" speech in 1935. 

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."



From Chapter Four:  How to Smash this Racket!

"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."





To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.

We must take the profit out of war.

We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.