In other words: money is more important than peace. In yet other words: war is okay if it makes enough money. Money trumps peace. This is the ugly truth and we all know it.
Image by Keith Rowley - source: Flickr
We hold such blind faith in capitalism's blessings that we're completely willing to kill, on large scales, in it's name. Yes, I said "willing" because we let it happen when we're supposed to live in a democratic society, which means we cannot completely blame our governments; we elect them time after time; we get the government we deserve. And yes, this is even true when we calculate the fact that the democracy is effectively ruled by big money. I mean, if after decades of choosing presidents we still collectively are unable to realize that it literally doesn't matter who or what we choose, if we keep showing up at these facades called elections, we truly deserve what we get, no matter which side wins.
This is why I don't vote anymore. The first thing you do when you cast your vote, is to legitimize the system you know to be corrupt. When you vote, you provide a platform on which the winning party bases their mandate to rule as they please. Stop voting, stop legitimizing the best democracy money can buy. As ironic as it sounds, to win back our western democracies, we have to stop participating in them; provide a platform to no one until changes are made so that money doesn't have a vote anymore. One person, one vote and not one dollar, one vote.
I'm always amazed that so much believers in capitalism blame Muslim terrorists for their blind fanaticism. They blame a religion, Islam, for providing it's followers with hate for The West, an idea promoted by western governments with phrases like "they hate us for our freedoms", while remaining blind to their own faith in capitalism. I guess that's why they so eagerly swallow the hate-mongering against the inhabitants of the planet's richest depository of natural minerals and sources of fossil fuels; "we will bring democracy to the Middle East", or "we will free those people from their dictatorial rulers", sounds so much better than "we will kill large amounts of innocent people to get their oil, natural gas and rare metals". Make no mistake: war is a money making paradise, any type of large scale destruction does wonders for certain parties in the economy. Haliburton, KBR, Boeing, General Motors, General Electric, Exxon, Shell are but a few of the true winners of the Iraq war. The rest are losers, including the Iraqi AND American peoples.
The literal words "money trumps peace" were spoken by George W. Bush. during a 2007 Q&A session:
Journalist: "A lot of our allies in Europe do a lot of business with Iran, so I wonder what your thoughts are about how you further tighten the financial pressure on Iran, in particular if it also means economic pain for a lot of our allies."
Bush: "That's an interesting question. One of the problems, not specifically on this issue but just in general that... that... eehmm... Let me put it this way: money trumps ... ehm ... peace sometimes. Now as commercial interests are very powerful interests, throughout the world, and part of the issue in convincing people to put sanctions on a specific country, is to convince them that it's in the world's interest that they forego their own financial interests."
Robert Newman - History of Oil
Yes, that Bush was a goldmine for comedians, but at least you can see he made an effort to somewhat hide the true, purely profit and power based motivations for economic or other warfare. War is a racket in which banks and large multinationals make money on both sides. The book War is a Racket by Major General Smedley Butler should be mandatory reading, but here's some of chapter one:
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.
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.
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 parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
source: War is a Racket
Bush was Republican, and was followed by "yes we can" Obama, from the other side. That one managed to collect a Nobel Peace prize while waging war in 7 countries, and increasing drone-bombings to an all-time high. Surely we've learned our lesson? Nope, we've made it worse; now the president of the worlds largest military force openly admits that the Oil in Iraq belongs to America, as should all "spoils of war". A president that says we should not only bomb the terrorists, but their family; openly advocating for the murder of innocent people now.
It's easy to lose sight of some simple facts when entertained by these political fairy-tales, the most important of which is that the war for the oil in the Middle east is going on for more than a century now. For more than 100 years, without pause, foreign western forces have waged war on the ground in the Middle East. The first shots in the Great War were fired near Basra by British troops, because the greatest western navy was transitioning from coal-powered steamboats to oil powered dieselmotor ships. That was more than a century ago and we haven't stopped since. Maybe that's why they hate the west, if that's true at all.
The Time George Bush Accidentally Told The Truth
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