konane's Blog

Came in email.  You decide for yourself.

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http://www.infowars.com/alex-jones-bilderberg-is-running-scared/

I was going to link to this but it contain sane sound reasoning in plain terms, so here it is in full.

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Posted by Karl Denninger in Oil The World at 23:08

Source The Market Ticker

"BP, The Gulf, And Fools

"Just so nobody gets the wrong idea about my position on gulf oil drilling(or drilling anywhere), or anything else, here it is in a nice succinctposting.

I don't believe this is materially different than anything I've posted upuntil now, and I am intentionally not going back and readingeverything to "drill baby drill" - so if you "catch" me in some hypocriticalact, feel free to call me on it.

Ok, here we go:

• There are lots of questions and few answers surrounding theDeepwater Horizon explosion and sinking.  We're owed answers. Specifically:
  
  
  • Was, as alleged on 60 Minutes, the blowout preventerdamaged a month earlier?  If so, who knew it was damaged and decided torun pipe anyway?
    
    
  • Were the hydraulic and control box problems with the blowoutpreventer known and if so, who knew about them and when?  Why was piperun if these were known inoperative or otherwise not at 100%, and who made thosecalls?
    
    
  • Who made the decision to displace the well despite apparentanomalous pressure readings?  And by the way, who thought you couldtake an accurate pressure reading without being able to close the blowoutpreventer fully (if the above allegation is correct)?
    
    
  • Why did the generator(s) explode?  This was the proximate cause ofthe fire and sinking.  Specifically, diesel gensets used where theatmosphere could entrain combustible materials(including the gensets own lube oil, such as through a turbocharger seal)absolutely need to have air doors on their intakes and systems to close thosedoors if the unit goes out of spec on RPM and the normal cut-off of fuel throughthe injection system fails to immediately establish control.  Thereclearly were either no air doors on those gensets or they wereinoperative.  This is wildly dangerous in an environment thatmight contain an explosive atmosphere and is the proximate cause of ignition andthe sinking of the Deepwater Horizon.  Who either knew there were no airdoors orthat they were inoperative on those generator engines and yet was operatingthose generators anyway?
    
    
• The people who made the decisions above are responsible for thedeaths of 11 men and the catastrophe in the gulf.  They need tobe held personally to account as a matter of criminal liabilityfor manslaughter (e.g. negligent homicide.)  Each and every person withknowledge of any of the above who failed to "stop work", and is still alive, isculpable.  If any of the first three above points hadnot occurred, the rig would not have caught fire.  The 4th, had it not been thecase, likely would have prevented the ignition of the methane and thus theexplosion and sinking as well.
  
  
• The persons in emergency response who are <snip>ing aroundinstead of physically closing bays and estuaries where possible until the threatof oil ingress has passed must be identified and strung up by their<snip>.  We cannot stop the oil from coming.  We also can'trealistically keep it off the beaches.  We can keep itout of some, but not all, bays and estuaries.  Where we can, we must - period. Those who claim "process" or other impediments must be run out of town on arail.
  
  
• Those who are running a "doomsday" line on this mess, includingclaims that there is a hole (or second hole) sans casing that is spewing oil,thus leading to a situation that is impossible to control even with reliefwells, need to put up their evidence or STFU.  Wild conjecture isunacceptable.  This is a time for serious men and women and seriousresponse actions.  Nothing is accomplished by fear-mongering and makingunsupported and wild claims, any more than there is anything accomplished bysticking one's fingers in their ears and claiming that nothing is in factwrong.  There is nothing wrong with going short the companies you thinkmight have culpability but if you are running crap in the media and elsewhereyou need to be held to account for it, and if you're shorting things and thenrunning crap in the media related to them that's illegal and the peopleresponsible need to be prosecuted.
  
  
• The moratorium in drilling needs to be lifted NOW.  Weaccomplish exactly nothing by having it in place.  If MMS and agents in MMS werecomplicit in allowing BP to continue to run pipe in the above state of the rigas noted they need to be named, held to account and fired - now.  We alsoneed to immediately change the law so that willful malfeasance of this sort byso-called "regulators" is a life-imprisonment PERSONAL felony offense.  Thesame thing happened with the banks a couple of years ago where a federalexaminer with OTS was fingered for conspiring with bank management to backdatedeposits - a clear act of fraud - and an act he allegedly committed duringthe S&L crisis as well!  A short "ground stop" is appropriate toexamine procedures and see if anyone else has beencutting corners.  Six months is not short or appropriate.  Yes, I said "drillbaby drill" and I mean it - we accomplish exactly nothing by refusing toexploit our energy resources and we have no right to demand that those in othernations accept risk we will not.
  
• BP is responsible for the spill and cleanup.  They are NOTresponsible for a single lost job as a consequence of the moratorium - end ofdiscussion.  Government idiocy and outrightcorruption, which appears to have been involved here, is notBP's responsibility.  It is Washington's - specifically, it is both PresidentBush's (who is no longer in office) and President Obama's (who is.)  This sortof claptrap needs to be met forcefully by every industry in this nation,including if necessary immediate refusals to deal with the feral government andstrikes.  Individuals and companies are responsible for what they do,but never for what government does, especially when corruption ingovernment necessitates theresponse.
  
  
• Those who ran the BS story the other day about a secondspill now have a problem on their hands.  It'sfalse (and again I get to say "I told you so".)  This sort ofmalicious attack on various companies must stop andthose who promulgated this garbage must have the SEC crawl up every one of theirorifices to see if they were shorting the firms involved and then spreadingmalicious lies.

  • As reported by Taylor Energy, the wells were covered by more than 100feet of mud and sediment and only four wells were capable of production withoutpressure assistance. The associated surface sheen was minimal and nevermade landfall. As a result of deploying three subsurface containment domes andperforming six successful well interventions, the initial averageobserved sheen volume of nine gallons per day has been substantiallyreduced.

    Unidentified aircraft took photos this weekend that incorrectlyreported an oil leak coming from the drilling rig Ocean Saratoga. At thetime of these photos, Taylor Energy was actually conducting marine operations onsite with a 180 foot dynamically positioned workboat for regularly scheduledsubsea containment system drainage. The tanks mistakenly characterized ascontaining dispersants on the boat's deck, were actually tanks to store andtransport the collected oil as it was pumped from the underwater storagesystem.

    "The effort is continuing as directed by the Unified Command," said WillPecue, President of Taylor Energy. "We have been working consistently andsuccessfully with MMS and the U.S. Coast Guard to address the resultingenvironmental impacts of one of the ten most intense hurricanes ever recorded bythe National Weather Service."

That should about wrap it up for today, but I'm sure there will be moretomorrow."

http://market-ticker.org/archives/2390-BP,-The-Gulf,-And-Fools.html

June 10, 2010 8:25 PM PDT

"Senators propose granting president emergency Internet power

by Declan McCullagh

Source CNet.com

 "A new U.S. Senate bill would grant the president far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of or even shut down portions of the Internet.

The legislation announced Thursday says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines, or software firms that the government selects "shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.

That emergency authority would allow the federal government to "preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people," Joe Lieberman, the primary sponsor of the measure and the chairman of the Homeland Security committee, told reporters on Thursday. Lieberman is an independent senator from Connecticut who caucuses with the Democrats.

Because there are few limits on the president's emergency power, which can be renewed indefinitely, the densely worded 197-page bill (PDF) is likely to encounter stiff opposition.

TechAmerica, probably the largest U.S. technology lobby group, said it was concerned about "unintended consequences that would result from the legislation's regulatory approach" and "the potential for absolute power." And the Center for Democracy and Technology publicly worried that the Lieberman bill's emergency powers "include authority to shut down or limit Internet traffic on private systems."

The idea of an Internet "kill switch" that the president could flip is not new. A draft Senate proposal that CNET obtained in August allowed the White House to "declare a cybersecurity emergency," and another from Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would have explicitly given the government the power to "order the disconnection" of certain networks or Web sites.

On Thursday, both senators lauded Lieberman's bill, which is formally titled the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA. Rockefeller said "I commend" the drafters of the PCNAA. Collins went further, signing up at a co-sponsor and saying at a press conference that "we cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government realizes the importance of protecting our cyber resources."

Under PCNAA, the federal government's power to force private companies to comply with emergency decrees would become unusually broad. Any company on a list created by Homeland Security that also "relies on" the Internet, the telephone system, or any other component of the U.S. "information infrastructure" would be subject to command by a new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) that would be created inside Homeland Security.

The only obvious limitation on the NCCC's emergency power is one paragraph in the Lieberman bill that appears to have grown out of the Bush-era flap over warrantless wiretapping. That limitation says that the NCCC cannot order broadband providers or other companies to "conduct surveillance" of Americans unless it's otherwise legally authorized.

Lieberman said Thursday that enactment of his bill needed to be a top congressional priority. "For all of its 'user-friendly' allure, the Internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets," he said. "Our economic security, national security and public safety are now all at risk from new kinds of enemies--cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals."

A new cybersecurity bureaucracy

Lieberman's proposal would form a powerful and extensive new Homeland Security bureaucracy around the NCCC, including "no less" than two deputy directors, and liaison officers to the Defense Department, Justice Department, Commerce Department, and the Director of National Intelligence. (How much the NCCC director's duties would overlap with those of the existing assistant secretary for infrastructure protection is not clear.)

The NCCC also would be granted the power to monitor the "security status" of private sector Web sites, broadband providers, and other Internet components. Lieberman's legislation requires the NCCC to provide "situational awareness of the security status" of the portions of the Internet that are inside the United States -- and also those portions in other countries that, if disrupted, could cause significant harm.

Selected private companies would be required to participate in "information sharing" with the Feds. They must "certify in writing to the director" of the NCCC whether they have "developed and implemented" federally approved security measures, which could be anything from encryption to physical security mechanisms, or programming techniques that have been "approved by the director." The NCCC director can "issue an order" in cases of noncompliance.

The prospect of a vast new cybersecurity bureaucracy with power to command the private sector worries some privacy advocates. "This is a plan for an auto-immune reaction," says Jim Harper, director of information studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. "When something goes wrong, the government will attack our infrastructure and make society weaker."

To sweeten the deal for industry groups, Lieberman has included a tantalizing offer absent from earlier drafts: immunity from civil lawsuits. If a software company's programming error costs customers billions, or a broadband provider intentionally cuts off its customers in response to a federal command, neither would be liable.

If there's an "incident related to a cyber vulnerability" after the president has declared an emergency and the affected company has followed federal standards, plaintiffs' lawyers cannot collect damages for economic harm. And if the harm is caused by an emergency order from the Feds, not only does the possibility of damages virtually disappear, but the U.S. Treasury will even pick up the private company's tab.

Another sweetener: A new White House office would be charged with forcing federal agencies to take cybersecurity more seriously, with the power to jeopardize their budgets if they fail to comply. The likely effect would be to increase government agencies' demand for security products.

Tom Gann, McAfee's vice president for government relations, stopped short of criticizing the Lieberman bill, calling it a "very important piece of legislation."

McAfee is paying attention to "a number of provisions of the bill that could use work," Gann said, and "we've certainly put some focus on the emergency provisions."

Last updated at 9:14 p.m. PT.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20007418-38.html

Long but good read.

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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/111965?RS_show_page=0

June 10, 2010 Posted by John at 8:32 PM

"Honestly, I know very little about Sharron Angle, generally referred to as the "Tea Party" candidate for the Senate in Nevada. She won the Republican primary on Tuesday, and today Scott Rasmussen found that she has a healthy lead over Harry Reid:

Reid is, and deserves to be, deeply unpopular. It would be great to knock him off, as we did Tom Daschle a few years ago. The problem is that the Democrats have vastly greater financial resources than the Republicans, mostly due to the public employees' unions' ability to extort contributions from their members without their consent, and many millions of corrupt union dollars will flow to Reid. Republicans labor under the disadvantage of only getting contributions from people who actually want to make them, but we wouldn't have it any other way. ..............."

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026511.php

After finding this article with video I pulled two other articles I'd posted which leaned toward sensationalism without investigation. 

Thank you Mr. Denninger for setting the record straight.

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Posted by Karl Denninger in Oil The World at 11:02

"CAUTION: Envirowhackjobs On The Loose?

Reported by Bloomberg, CNBS, and everyone else - without first checking the facts:

Earlier we published speculation from satellite analytics group SkyTruth that there may be a second leak in the Gulf. A freelance pilot and photographer confirmed these rumors and a possible coverup.

They then present the following video:

Yes, there's a leak there.

But there is neither a cover-up or anything new related to this.

From the MMS via NOLA:

The other, the Diamond Ocean Saratoga, is operated by Taylor Energy, which has been in the process of plugging and abandoning a Mississippi Canyon well where the platform was toppled during Hurricane Ivan. The Diamond Ocean Saratoga is the only one on the MMS list that is operating at a depth of less then 500 feet.

Hurricane Ivan was in 2004 and hit my house!

Diamond Offshore (NYSE: DO) along with Transocean (NYSE: RIG) are both getting trashed this morning in no small part, I presume, based on this "disclosure", even though it is not a disclosure at all but rather is a hit piece - the company in question is working to plug and abandon a damaged well that happened six years ago.

There is every reason to be skeptical and ask questions but the "mainstream tout TV hype-based media" ought to pay attention to their facts before reporting what clearly appears to be utter and complete crap.

We have enough to deal with in regards to the Deepwater Horizon rig that really did sink during a real drilling operation and really is spewing oil into the water due to what appears to be human hubris - and needs to be plugged.

Casting aspersions on the companies that are fixing existing damage from a storm that happened some time ago and, it appears, painting their operations in a false light, along with alleging a "coverup" where a quick check of the facts appears to show precisely the opposite, is not "journalism" - it is sensational garbage that has no basis in reality.

I might have the wrong rig, but given that this is a specific exemption to the "tools up" call from MMS, I sorta doubt it.

Go after the real bad guys, not God and definitely not those men and women who are trying to mitigate damage done by God, not man."

http://market-ticker.org/archives/2384-CAUTION-Envirowhackjobs-On-The-Loose.html

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/101883-axe-may-fall-on-tax-break-for-mortgages

-

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/PhotoPopup.aspx?id=536818

A friend sent this in email.

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Coincidental timing or conspiracy theory?  You decide.

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Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Source Prisonplanet.com
Tuesday, Jun 8th, 2010

"- Sales of shares and stocks in days and weeks beforehand

- Halliburton link, acquisition of cleanup company days before explosion

- BP report cites undocumented tampering with well sealing equipment

- Government uses disaster to push for Carbon Tax, Nationalization talk

Troubling evidence surrounding the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20th suggests that the incident could have been manufactured.

On April 12th, just over one week before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, Halliburton, the world’s second largest oilfield services corporation, surprised some by acquiring Boots & Coots, a relatively small but vastly experienced oil well control companies.

The company deals with fires and blowouts on oil rigs and oil wells. It was responsible for putting out roughly one third of the more than 700 oil well fires set in Kuwait by retreating Iraqi soldiers during the Gulf War.

The deal itself is still under scrutiny with Boots and Coots facing an ongoing investigation into “possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of state law”

Where this information gets really interesting is with the fact that Halliburton is named in the majority of some two dozen lawsuits filed since the explosion by Gulf Coast people and businesses who claim that the company is to blame for the disaster.

Halliburton was forced to admit in testimony at a congressional hearing last month that it carried out a cementing operation 20 hours before the Gulf of Mexico rig went up in flames. The lawsuits claim that four Halliburton workers stationed on the rig improperly capped the well.

As the New York Times noted on May 26th, “BP officials chose, partly for financial reasons, to use a type of casing for the well that the company knew was the riskier of two options,”

Workers from the rig and company officials have said that hours before the explosion, gases were leaking through the cement, which had been set in place by the oil services contractor, Halliburton. Investigators have said these leaks were the likely cause of the explosion.”

According to a 2007 study by Minerals Management Service, cementing was a factor in 18 of 39 rig blowouts in the gulf between 1992 and 2006.

Another intriguing connection Boots and Coots has to the Deepwater Horizon explosion comes via Pat Campbell, the man BP has employed to cap the well beneath the ruined rig. Campbell worked for Boots and Coots as general manager for many years.

BP has admitted to buying Yahoo and Google keywords in an attempt to control publicly available information in the wake of the catastrophe. It seems that the company is taking all the flack for the spill while the Halliburton link is being roundly ignored.

BP’s prepared testimony briefing, which has since leaked online, also intriguingly notes that the Hydraulic Control System on equipment designed to automatically seal the well in an emergency was modified without their knowledge sometime before the explosion.

“the extent of these modifications is unknown at this time” states the report on page 37.

Possible prior knowledge of the explosion is also evident via huge dumping of stocks and shares in the weeks and days prior to the incident.

Goldman Sachs dumped 44% of its shares in BP Oil during the first quarter – shares that subsequently lost 36 percent of their value, equating to $96 million.

Other asset management firms also sold huge blocks of BP stock in the first quarter. Though the amounts pale in comparison to Goldman’s holdings, Wachovia, owned by Wells Fargo, sold 98% of its shares in BP and Swiss bank UBS sold 97% of its BP shares.

Furthermore, as reported by the London Telegraph on June 5th, Tony Hayward, the chief executive of BP, sold £1.4 million of his shares in the fuel giant weeks before the spill.

In the days before the Deepwater explosion, Obama had announced a new effort to explore for and lease new drilling locations in the deep Gulf and in Alaska. In the wake of the disaster, these plans have been cancelled and BP is taking a PR bashing.

All of which has been capitalized on by the Obama administration to reinvigorate talk of a carbon tax and has created the opportunity to reintroducethe idea of nationalizing oil, which the Democratic leadership has long sought.

The full story of what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico is yet to emerge, there are rumours of more spills and an ongoing coverup. The site represents a $2.2 trillion source of wealth and power, a motive along with a plethora of suspicious activity that needs to be investigated further.

http://www.infowars.com/evidence-points-to-bp-oil-spill-false-flag/

"GOP picks NV tea party candidate in Reid

Source My Way News

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100609/D9G7K3VO0.html

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/06/07/obama_seeking_ass_to_kick_over_oil_spill.html

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"Obama brings Nixonian twist to oil spill

Examiner Editorial
June 7, 2010

"Nothing more fully reveals the essential character of a person or group than a crisis. Thus, the ecological and political catastrophe of the Gulf oil spill has exposed a breathtaking level of incompetence, political opportunism and mendacity at the heart of the Obama administration. Documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity make clear that the White House was told by the Coast Guard within 24 hours of the April 20 explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon platform that the equivalent of 8,000 barrels a day could escape into the ocean. Within three days, Obama and his senior aides were warned that the spill could exceed the in environmental damage caused by the Exxon Valdez wreck in 1989.

Despite these warnings, over the next two months Obama attended Democratic fundraisers, played golf, hosted basketball and football teams at the White House and delivered commencement speeches. Two weeks passed before he could be bothered to go to Louisiana. On April 29, Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindahl declared a state of emergency as the oil spill covered 600 square miles and was only 16 miles from the coast. Jindahl begged federal officials for permission to build a massive network of sand berms to contain damage to beaches. Washington responded a month later but permission was only granted to build 2 percent of the berms requested.

Meanwhile, as Obama dawdled and oil appeared off Florida's beaches, the president delivered a strident speech in Pittsburgh with a decidedly Nixonian twist. He should have been summoning political leaders across the spectrum to lay aside partisan concerns for the moment, but instead Obama asserted that Republicans believe that "If you're a Wall Street bank or an insurance company or an oil company, you pretty much get to play by your own rules, regardless of the consequences for everybody else." This libelous mischaracterization marks a new low even for a man so highly practiced in the ugly art of political demagoguery.

Finally, as the thick black crude and natural gas continued to erupt into the Gulf waters and public exasperation with BP's futile attempts to stop it piled up one after another, Obama dispatched Attorney General Eric Holder to Louisiana to proclaim that "we will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law anyone who has violated the law. We will not rest until justice is done." Shortly afterward, Obama blasted BP for "lawyering up" in response to the government's threats. As ill-timed as it was, Holder's announcement nevertheless clearly confirmed what was plainly suggested by Obama's Pittsburgh speech: His top priority is not to stop the spill, but to shift blame away from himself and to forever tar his opponents with responsibility for a catastrophe made far worse by his own spectacular mismanagement."

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Obama-brings-Nixonian-twist-to-oil-spill-95733059.html

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Do as I say don't do as I do.          

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37558748/ns/politics-white_house/

Link to this came in email, thought it timely.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

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"War Cover-up

Top U.S. General on Cover-up of Forces Behind War

"That war is a racket has been told us by many, but rarely by one of this stature. Though he wrote the landmark book War is a Racket in 1935, the highly decorated U.S. General Smedley Butler (two esteemed Medals of Honor) deserves to be heralded for this timeless message, which rings true today more than ever. Below is an engaging two-page summary.

"WAR IS A RACKET – by General Smedley Butler

"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 in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. In the World War [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 huge 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]

WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?

The World War cost the United States some $52 billion. That means $400 [over $4,000 in today's dollars] to every American man, woman, and child. The normal yearly profits of a business concern in the U.S. are 6 to  12%. But war-time profits, that is another matter – 60, 100, 300, and even 1,800% – the sky is the limit. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it. Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump, leap, and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed.

Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people. The average pre-war earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6 million a year. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. $58 million 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%.

Take one of our steel companies. Their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6 million. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49 million a year! Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105 million a year. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240 million. Not bad.

They sold your Uncle Sam 20 million mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France! There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. When the war was over some 4 million 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.

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. 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. It has been estimated that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52 billion [X 10 or more for inflation]. Of this sum, $39 billion was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16 billion in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16 billion in profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.

WHO PAYS THE BILLS?

Who provides these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them – in taxation. But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill. If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, I visited 18 government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation 18 years ago. Mortality among veterans is three times as great as those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the offices, factories, and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded. They were made to "about face," to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put through mass psychology and entirely changed. We trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed. Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face!" This time they had to do their own readjustment. We didn't need them any more. Many of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them 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 their ships might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."

HOW TO SMASH THIS RACKET!

Well, it's a racket, all right. A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. Steps must be taken to smash the war racket. We must take the profit out of war. And we must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

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. Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany. In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly? Money.

An allied commission 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: "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 US we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money. So..."

Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, America never would have entered the war. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off, they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars." Very little has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars. Disarmament conferences don't mean a thing. At all these conferences, lurking in the background are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not seriously limit armaments. So ... I say, TO HELL WITH WAR!"

http://www.wanttoknow.info/warcoverup

"World arms spending soars

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/06/07/senator-nelson-says-bp-well-integrity-may-be-blown/