Essential Reading
This is a collection of material that can be found online and relates to topics discussed at Honest Outrage. I have read all of these in their entirety, some of them multiple times.
War Is A Racket by Major General Smedley D. Butler
This booklet, published in 1935, is essential reading for anyone interested in issues of war and peace. Keep in mind that it was written before World War II, but the overall theme is still relevant today. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 4.
The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nation’s 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.
Let the workers in these plants get the same wages – all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers – yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders – everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!
Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.
Why shouldn’t they?
They aren’t running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren’t sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren’t hungry. The soldiers are!
Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket – that and nothing else.
Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won’t permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people – those who do the suffering and still pay the price – make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers.
The CIA And The Media by Carl Bernstein
Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporter of Watergate fame, wrote this extensive piece that served as the cover story for Rolling Stone magazine on Oct. 20, 1977. The subtitle, at least the one on Bernstein’s site, is “How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up”.
I haven’t seen the published magazine, but the version on Bernstein’s site is quite interesting, though there are annoying extra characters such as parentheses and numbers in weird spots. It’s worth overlooking those oddities because the story is extensive and detailed, without naming names.
Even though this story appeared more than three decades ago, it feels relevant today, when mainstream media figures often appear to be nothing more than stenographers for government officials and insiders. We may have a “free and independent press”, but it’s hard to know which media outlets and individuals are truly free and independent, and which could just as easily be part of a modern-day version of the arrangements described by Bernstein.
The Death Penalty In 2011: Year-End Report by Death Penalty Information Center
The Death Penalty Information Center publishes a yearly report that serves as an excellent high-end overview of the state of capital punishment in the United States. This 8-page report, which includes graphics and charts, is a quick read and well worth the time for anyone who cares about the death penalty in the U.S.
Abolition of the Death Penalty: China in World Perspective by Roger Hood
This 2009 report not only outlines how the death penalty debate has changed in China over the relatively short span of a decade, but also show how abolitionists have made great strides worldwide in framing capital punishment as a human rights issue.
Five myths about why the South seceded by The Washington Post
As Southerners who celebrate the confederacy try to rewrite history and cause confusion as to the cause of the civil war, this brief primer is an excellent reference point.
