GREED, THE REASON WHY WE HAVE MERCENARY FORCES

Some of the links in this story are not "hot" however if you were to copy them and paste them into your web browser, they will bring you to the webpage.

Looking back on my lifetime, I guess that I became a Progressive at the age of 13 in 1968 during the illegal, immoral, and corrupt American War against Vietnam. Without question, my first political hero was Muhammed Ali and it was his stance against our government that so impressed me. I consider him to be the only war hero in the last 70 years or so. I do not support mercenaries of any type and I believe there are no militaries, only mercenary forces.

It is quite obvious to the Progressives that the USA has become the biggest threat to World Peace since the end of WW II. The fact of this matter is that America has been at war 93% of its time in existence! For 222 out of the 239 years since 1776, the United States of America has been at war!

https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/5565946

Since 1945 the USA/CIA has interfered in elections in at least 85 nations across the globe!

https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-interfered-in-elections-of-at-least-85-countries-worldwide-since-1945/5601481

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/the-us-has-a-long-history-of-election-meddling/565538/

It's been a long time since the USA has represented democracy, hasn't it?

By 1970 Abbie Hoffman became my second political hero. Part of the Chicago Seven, Abbie was one of the strong voices against the war and the corruptness of our government. I still treasure his classic book, "Steal This Book" and I stole three copies back in the day. Abbie wrote much of this book while he was in prison for merely being a revolutionary.

https://www.history.com/news/chicago-8-trial-importance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steal_This_Book

At this same time Ali had been stripped of his World's Heavyweight title and was fighting the government for all The People, not just for himself as so many try to claim. Ali was not a draft dodger, that much is for sure. He dodged nothing! He stood and fought his fight all the way to the Supreme Court and against all odds, he won his case. That case still sets precedence today.

Ali is an important piece of American History that should be taught in school. His battle against our government helped to pave the way to the end of an extremely unjust war against what was then a Third War nation. The film documentary "The Trials Of Muhammed Ali" should be required watching for all Americans!

"I ain't draft dodging, I ain't burning no flag. I ain't running to Canada. I'm staying right here. You want to send me to jail? Fine, you go right ahead. I've been in jail for 400 years. I could be there for 4 or 5 more, but I ain't going no 10,000 miles to help murder and kill other poor people. If I want to die, I'll die right here, right now, fightin' you!"

I think this is the most powerful quote from any American since the Founding Fathers stopped writing.

Since I was the oldest of the kids, I didn't have an older brother. So the next best thing was my neighbor across the street, Chucky. During 1967 and 1968 my family moved to Maryland for a year on a farm and when we moved back to Florida, I learned that Chucky had been drafted and killed! That is when my hatred towards anything military kicked in. I knew then I would never be a mercenary. It was obvious as a kid that war was wrong and it was an evil force that controls almost everything, everywhere. That was in the late 60s.

Why weren't scores of the American mercenaries executed for their war crimes just as the Nazis were? The World's People think this is a terrible injustice! No American that went to war in Vietnam is innocent, they are all war criminals and should have always been treated as such.

https://vietnamembassy-pyongyang.org/how-many-vietnamese-died-in-the-vietnam-war/

These deaths were caused by the American military. How many Vietnamese people died in the Vietnam war:

RJ Rummel estimated that American forces committed around 5,500 intentional democidal mass-killings between 1960 and 1972, from a range of between 4,000 and 10,000 killed in democide.

Benjamin Valentino attributes possibly 110,000–310,000 "counter-guerrilla mass killings" to U.S. and South Vietnamese forces during the war.

Estimates for the number of North Vietnamese civilian deaths resulting from US bombing range from 30,000–65,000.

Higher estimates place the number of civilian deaths caused by the American bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder at 182,000.

American bombing in Cambodia is estimated to have killed between 30,000 and 150,000 civilians and combatants.

2 million gallons of Agent Orange, some of which was contaminated with Dioxin, was sprayed by the U.S. military over more than 10% of Southern Vietnam, as part of the U.S. herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. Vietnam's government claimed that 400,000 people were killed or maimed as a result of after-effects and that 500,000 children were born with birth defects. However, the United States government has challenged these figures as being unreliable.

Guenter Lewy estimates that around 220,000 civilians in South Vietnam were killed in the US, Army of the Republic of Vietnam, and other allied land operations.

Seven massacres were officially confirmed by the American side and in five other places altogether about 100 civilians were executed.

Two further massacres were reported by soldiers who had taken part in them, one north of Đức Pho in Quảng Ngãi Province in the summer of 1968 (14 victims), another in Bình Định Province on 20 July 1969 (25 victims).

Tiger Force, a special operations force, murdered hundreds, possibly over a thousand, civilians.

In the course of large-scale operations, an unknown number of non-combatants were killed either accidentally or deliberately – with the Army Inspector General estimating that more than 5,000 died in the course of Operation Speedy Express.

According to the Information Bureau of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRG), between April 1968 and the end of 1970 American ground troops killed about 6,500 civilians in the course of twenty-one operations either on their own or alongside their allies. Three of the massacres reported on the American side were not mentioned on the PRG list.

Now let's jump to the summer of 2001 when I spent five weeks in Vietnam, mostly in Hue and a week in Saigon. For 2000 some years Vietnam was one country and Hue was its capital. Hue and the area around it became essential during America's attack on Vietnam as it was just 30 some miles south of the DMZ, has a major river running through it, and was just seven miles west of the Pacific Ocean.

Hue was also extremely essential for the covert, illegal operations of the CIA. Not that far due West of Hue is what is known as "The Golden Triangle" and this was the source of the CIA's heroin that it would smuggle back to the USA in mercenary planes. This has not only been well documented but when I talk to the locals there, like my in-laws, they confirm that the Americans were going across the border drug running. (Much like the CIA later did with cocaine.)

https://citizentruth.org/gary-webb-cia-crack-epidemic-los-angeles/ = Gary Webb on the CIA's Role in the 1980s LA Crack Epidemic

https://theintercept.com/2018/05/12/oliver-north-nra-iran-contra/ = Oliver North Worked With Cocaine Traffickers to Arm Terrorists. Now He'll Be President of the NRA.

Sadly now, we all understand that there were only two legitimate reasons why the USA went to war against a Third World nation. The first of course is the fact that this war started at the beginning of the great build-up of the military-industrial complex and it was this illegal and immoral war that built the might to make the USA the most dangerous nation on the planet. We not only had the nukes but the conventional and chemical weaponry too. Second, of course, was the fueling of covert actions of the CIA by smuggling heroin to the detriment of the World's People. By the end of the American War Against Vietnam, the USA had established itself as the most corrupt nation on the planet, bar none.

For three of the four weeks I was in Hue I did not see another American, which was quite refreshing. I was fortunate enough to have Suong and her family there that could help speak for me and show me things that most foreign visitors would not get to experience, especially back then. While I was there I lost count of how many times I apologized for being an American and for all the hell my country caused them.

This is a 2017 video tour of Hue. In the video, they mention the Perfume River. This river separates Hue in half literally and the two halves are connected by three bridges. The largest of the three bridges was built by American forces during the war. One day Suong and I were riding on my rented Honda 110 "motorcycle" going across that bridge when she said something to me that I will never forget.

She said to me, "The Americans, they blew up our city, but they gave us this bridge!" She said it with excitement in her voice as if it was a good thing. It sort of devastated me when I heard this. Hue was part of South Vietnam and on that side of the war but more of the people that lived there were killed by Americans than they were by the Viet Cong.

I grew up in what I thought was a paradise back then before the Mouse took over Florida when there were jungles, woods, springs, citrus groves, horses, and isolated beaches to be enjoyed. After traveling through some of Vietnam, I now know what paradise truly is. It is greener than all the green that I ever saw in Florida!

However, it was quite disturbing to see large areas that were once paradise still ruined by the tons of Agent Orange that were inflicted upon the land by the mercenaries from the USA. More than 13 million gallons of the chemical weapon was poured onto the people of Vietnam!

https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/agent-orange-1 = The U.S. program, codenamed Operation Ranch Hand, sprayed more than 20 million gallons of various herbicides over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos from 1961 to 1971.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-091204-agentorange-map-htmlstory.html = View spraying missions in Vietnam by date and location

https://www.history.com/news/agent-orange-wasnt-the-only-deadly-chemical-used-in-vietnam = Agent Orange Wasn't the Only Deadly Chemical Used In Vietnam The "Rainbow Herbicides" left a lethal legacy.

Even more disturbing than seeing the destruction of the land, it was angrily heartbreaking to see the effects that it had on the people there. If you're there for a while and not just hanging in the rich tourist areas, you will see the Agent Orange mutants.

Please explain to me how this wasn't chemical warfare? And then please explain to me why the USA didn't pay dearly for these war crimes?

Above: A victim of made in the USA Agent Orange

Speaking of chemical warfare, how isn't dropping napalm on Third World villages, and burning innocent people alive isn't chemical warfare?

Just how in the hell did and does the USA get away unpunished for the major war crimes that it commits? The important thing that was learned from the American War on Vietnam was to make sure that the next time the USA invades a sovereign nation the mainstream media is blocked from witnessing and reporting what is actually happening and also to end the draft.

After the end of WW II, the USA helped to rebuild Germany and Japan but when the American War Against Vietnam was over nothing was done to help the people of Vietnam! Back in 2001, this was very obvious.

To this very day, there are an estimated one million active, USA-made landmines and UXOs littered throughout Vietnam! People are still being killed by them! At least one child is killed or maimed every week in Vietnam!

Note that the agencies helping is not the US government but charity groups!

Can you imagine if there were one million landmines and unexploded bombs randomly scattered around the USA just waiting to kill innocent people?

The war crimes committed by the US mercenary forces haven't stopped. A point in case, the amazingly evil, so-called former President tRump pardoned a Navy Seal mercenary committing war crimes!

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/trump-war-crimes/602731/ = Donald Trump is a war-crimes enthusiast.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/war-crimes-military-trump/ = Trump has made the military safe for war criminals

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/trump-pardon-eddie-gallagher/ = Trump Doesn't Care About War Crimes. And judging by its history, the US military doesn't much either.

As Progressives, we need to realize where many of the causes of our problems lay. Let's look at the situation with the environment and some of the major players that are constantly disrupting any positive change. As a Progressive, I think that we can all agree that it all boils down to greed. You might say that it comes to wanting to have power, more and more of it, however, that is merely greed at its worse.

When this greed becomes too great, it needs to obtain the means necessary to keep its wealth secure and this is usually accomplished with the likes of the military and/or police forces. What are the military and police forces of the USA primarily protecting these days, is what you need to ask? In the era that we find ourselves today, the police are here to serve and protect the corporations and the elite, with the largest of these corporations being protected and supplemented by the military. (Which is socialism in its purest form, the exact opposite of democratic socialism.)

While the Founding Fathers were alive corporations and banks were well regulated and the longest a corporation was allowed to exist was forty years! One of the first things in the charter of all those corporations was that it had to be of the benefit of the public. The Revolutionary War began because of a military being sent to North America to protect a corporation! At that time the East India Company was one of the largest, if not the largest corporation on the globe. It was their ships that were involved in the Boston Tea Party. I content the Revolutionary War had three battles happening at once. A war against corporatism, a war against a king, and a war for freedom of religion.

Once the Founding Fathers had all passed away, some major changes happened and their fight against corporations faded as new major corporations took over the nation in the forms of the railroad, steel and chemical corporations, bankers, and the natural resources thieves started gaining more and more power. At about the same time we see that the USA Mercenary Forces start raiding sovereign nations to kill their people and plunder their natural resources all in the name of imperialism and the poor and very evil excuse of "American Exceptionalism".

This was the beginning of the USA becoming a fascist statehood. I am speaking of fascism in its true meaning as coined by Mussolini, fascism is merely an economic state. Fascism in another word is corporatism, which in other words is capitalism. This is also the point in time in which the US government started to work more for the corporations than for The People and they would conspire together to make things fatter for themselves for the sake of the citizens. Governments can easily be infiltrated by greedy people as we all know. There is a constant rotation of those in power shifting from corporations to governmental and military positions and back to the corporations. It is a cabal to put it simply.

The imperialistic greed of the USA goes back well over one hundred years and it hasn't stopped. However, around one hundred years ago is when "they" all conspired to keep the American citizens dependent on the government and those favored corporations working in conjunction with the USA mercenary forces.

At that time some very key scientific discoveries were made that would change this world forever. These discoveries could have made the world much better for all its citizens, or the same science could be used to entrap all the world's people in the most severe forms of greed. When Germany lost in WW I, it had to make certain concessions and give up certain types of property, like patents. Anything that had been conceded by Germany should have become property to all the world's citizens in all fairness, but what is fair about war?

Germany had discovered and patented how to make synthetic fibers like rayon and nylon and other materials. The other part of this discovery was that these synthetic materials could be made from either petroleum or plant-based matter. For the previous many centuries, any oil that was made was primarily made from hemp. When our Founding Fathers would burn the midnight oil in their lamps, it was usually either hemp or whale oil. The big con of the conceded German patents is that they did not go towards any citizens instead, they went to Dupont!

Also during this same era, the combustion engine was making huge headways in changing how industry, transportation, governments, and mercenary forces would transform the world. The decisions of how to fuel these engines decided the fate of the planet.

Again, the Germans and other scientists at the time proved that anything that could be made from petroleum can also be made from plant matter. Rudolph Diesel never ran any of his diesel engines on petroleum! The diesel engine was designed to run plant fuels and he primarily used peanut oil to make his diesel fuel. There were already scientific facts showing the toxic dangers of using petroleum-based fuels. This was also the era when petroleum corporations began to be a powerful force across the globe. The most powerful of these was known as the "Seven Sisters". To this day there is much debate and controversy about Mr. Diesel's death, but it as long been said that he was murdered by the Seven Sisters. It was soon after his death that most of the world's liquid fuels would be made from petroleum, rather than from plant matter.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38302874 = Rudolf Diesel died in mysterious circumstances before he was able to capitalize on his ingenious invention.

Now the governments across the globe that are supposed to regulate and enforce the safety of the public and the environment could have done something about all of this from the very beginning by insisting on using plant matter for fuels, plastics, chemicals, and the like, but by this time, at least in the USA, the mega-corporations had infiltrated the government on many levels.

What one word perhaps best describes a government? My answer would be "control". What is one of the best ways for a government to control its citizens? My answer would be "to control the citizens' energy sources". To that answer, I would then ask, "What is the easier means to control the citizens, by using energy sources that are difficult to extract and require special and expensive equipment, or to have the nation's farmers grow the major source of fuels?" If a government were to allow the citizens to grow and control their own energy sources, just how much control over the citizens can a government wield without the use of force? In my opinion, I think this figured into the grand scheme of things.

So far I have listed three powerful entities that want to ensure that petroleum is favored over plant-based fuels. For many centuries hemp was used not only as a fuel source but also for fiber to make canvas (the word canvas comes from the word cannabis), as a food source, and for paper and it had many other uses as well.

During that time trees had only been used for a few decades as the preferred choice for making paper. Previous to then cannabis was the most used source for making paper, but it used to be a lot of work to make in large quantities back then. With the advent of nationwide newspapers, a faster, less expensive means of making print paper was needed and this, unfortunately, ended up being made from trees. However, there were already problems being foreseen should the use of trees for paper production were to continue. The destruction of ancient forests and the beaching agents being dumped on the environment were becoming a problem.

Hemp was one of the most important crops grown in the USA and it was once required to be grown by all farmers back during the early years of this nation. So while the trees were being used for paper for the first time on any large scale, the hemp industry was inventing better equipment and methods to make the "hemp hurds" necessary for the production of hemp paper. In 1916 the Department of Agriculture wrote a paper saying that the paper industry needed to stop the use of trees for paper and go back to hemp. That was more than one hundred years ago but yet we are still using trees! Why? The answer to this would be the fourth fatal stake driven into the heart of Mother Earth.

https://ministryofhemp.com/blog/hemp-paper/ = The history of hemp paper in the US goes all the way back to our founding fathers. Although the final versions were written on parchment, the first and second drafts of the Declaration of Independence were written on Dutch hemp paper in the summer of 1776.

The answer would be who could spin the propaganda the furthest and the loudest and thus yellow journalism began. The first chain of nationwide newspapers was owned by William R. Hearst and by 1916 had quite a grip on what was printed as news or facts. He had figured that his empire would go on forever and therefore invested much of his fortune in the purchase of forest land to be used for paper production. If hemp were to be enforced as the source for paper production anytime soon, it would have severely affected his fortunes.

https://vt.co/lifestyle/health/the-surprising-reason-why-marijuana-was-made-illegal/ = The surprising reason why marijuana was made illegal

The word cannabis comes from ancient Latin and has been used by just about all civilizations and cultures at one time or another. The earliest forms of yellow journalism brought about a new word to the American public, a word not known before then for almost all the world, marijuana. The crazy thing about this was for the first decade or so, the hemp farmers and the hemp industry had no idea that this marijuana stuff was hemp!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_cannabis = Herodotus (c. 440 BCE) recorded the use of cannabis in The Histories.

And the hemp industry continued to grow. Hemp was the first billion-dollar crop in the USA in 1938! The following year it was illegal to grow without having special governmental approval! https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a19876318/popular-mechanics-billion-dollar-hemp/

During WW II the USA was cut off from its hemp supply for rope and other supplies needed by the Navy. So the US government was asking American farmers to start growing help again and they actually made a video entitled "Hemp For Victory"!

Now everything was set in place for the mega-corporations and the government to work in concert to keep the order. Hearst's yellow journalism also helped to push for World War One to happen. The mercenary forces would work in concert with those entities to topple sovereign nations' governments and steal their natural resources.

Every sane person knows that fossil fuel industries are killing the planet. Their toxicity to Mother Earth has been known since the beginning of their use. But yet the norm is allowed to continue, although this norm is not supported by the citizens, it is all about those few entities that control us all. And what one entity of them all uses the most fossil fuels? It is the mercenary forces of the USA.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/us-military-and-oil = The US military is the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world. Every year, our armed forces consume more than 100 million barrels of oil to power ships, vehicles, aircraft, and ground operations—enough for over 4 million trips around the Earth, assuming 25 mpg.

Never when considering the price of gasoline in the USA is the extra cost of funding the mercenary forces to protect the oil, to go to war for oil and to maintain so many bases. What does a gallon of petroleum-based gasoline actually cost? What does it cost the environment? What does it cost to the people of who's land we invade?

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/9/21/17885832/oil-subsidies-military-protection-supplies-safe = Markets are powerful tools for directing private capital and innovation, useful in the right circumstances. But the idea that there ever has been, or ever can be, an open, unbiased, "free" market for energy sources is a fantasy that should stay in the college library with the Ayn Rand novels.

What if nations like the USA, Canada, and Mexico would have been growing most of their "petrol" sources decades ago? Brazil has been doing this for years now with sugar cane.

This all boils down to greed and if you look at the facts of history, then you're pretty bummed that this all wasn't stopped a century ago. Not to mention all of the wars that we've been involved in since WW II, for what? Certainly not for "democracy"!

I was honestly trying to leave Iraq and Afghanistan out of this story and not even mention the pure evilness of the USA destroying those two nations. But yet just as I was about to publish this story we get yet another reminder of what we will do in the name of petroleum. We will torture for it!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-drawings.html

In the last dozen or so decades mankind's greed has been both the Earth's and humanity's demise, showing all the universe that we humans are the one species that is 100% dispensible on this planet. All the world's other species would be far better off if humans did not exist. This is all due to greed and the enforcement of the greed caused by the various world's mercenary forces. For any and all in the mercenary forces, they are not there for The People or the Constitution, they are merely cheap pawns to ensure this greed is forever protected. This is why I think the mercenary forces should never be honored or glorified in this day and age. Muhammed Ali was correct and quite righteous in his thoughts on war and the immoral forces that make it happen. Muhammed Ali is exactly what a "war hero" should be like! Anyone that fought in any war for the USA in the last 60 some years is involved with being a war criminal.

In closing, I would like to quote what I think are the four most powerful "political" lines of lyrics in a song ever:

Well, I don't believe there are any Russians!

And there ain't no Yanks!

Just Corporate Criminals

Playing with tanks!

The Call: The Walls Came Down