This May, we want to salute Harris Teeter and the Asheville location for its continuing efforts to help support the military during Military Appreciation Month and honor the men and women of the armed services. This cause recognizes all that North Carolina’s military families give to our state and our country. The proceeds that are generously given to the Asheville’s Harris Teeter “Support our Troops” campaign will help the families and service members of the Army National Guard detachment 2211th Military Police Company located in Hendersonville.
Through the help of Asheville’s Harris Teeter “Support Our Troops” campaign, their patrons help both the USO and Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) — two organizations committed to supporting our troops and their families and, in many cases, saving lives. Funds raised in North Carolina will stay in North Carolina.
The USO of North Carolina salutes the Harris Teeter associates for asking, and their customers for generously donating $1, $3 or $5 to “Support our Troops” at their local store’s checkout register. Last year alone, this community-based donation campaign hosted by Harris Teeter raised more than $1 million in a given month; with over $376,000 raised for USO of North Carolina and over $587,000 over three years. This enabled us to expand critical resiliency programs around post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury, as well as essential transition assistance programs vitally needed for our troops and their families.
The USO of North Carolina offers a wide variety of impactful support programs across the state to help North Carolina active duty troops, National Guard and Reserves, including our wounded warriors. For nearly 75 years, the USO has supported America’s military and families not only during times of conflict, but also as they heal from both visible and invisible wounds of war and reintegrate into their communities and civilian workforce. The USO of North Carolina provided over 575,000 innovative, effective programs and services to troops and their families in North Carolina. We could not do this without the support of partners like Harris Teeter and their patrons. …
Thank you to Harris Teeter for its partnership on this critical campaign, and thank you to all the North Carolinians who help improve the lives of our military.
— John W. Falkenbury
President, USO of North Carolina
Concord
http://www.globalresearch.ca/war-is-just-a-racket-memorial-day-is-a-hoax/5451069
War is just a Racket”: Memorial Day Is A Hoax. “Our Soldiers Died for the Profits of the Bankers”
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Memorial Day commemorates soldiers killed in war. We are told that the war dead died for us and our freedom. US Marine General Smedley Butler challenged this view. He said that our soldiers died for the profits of the bankers, Wall Street, Standard Oil, and the United Fruit Company. Here is an excerpt from a speech that he gave in 1933:
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of 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 masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, its “muscle men” to destroy enemies, its “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “Big Boss” Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
Most American soldiers died fighting foes who posed no threat to the United States. Our soldiers died for secret agendas of which they knew nothing. Capitalists hid their self-interests behind the flag, and our boys died for the One Percent’s bottom line.
Jade Helm, an exercise that pits the US military against the US public, is scheduled to run July 15 through September 15. What is the secret agenda behind Jade Helm?
The Soviet Union was a partial check on capitalist looting in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. However, with the Soviet collapse capitalist looting intensified during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes.
Neoliberal Globalization is now looting its own constituent parts and the planet itself. Americans, Greeks, Irish, British, Italians, Ukrainians, Iraqis, Libyans, Argentinians, the Spanish and Portuguese are being looted of their savings, pensions, social services, and job opportunities, and the planet is being turned into a wasteland by capitalists sucking the last penny out of the environment.
As Claudia von Werlhof writes, predatory capitalism is consuming the globe.
We need a memorial day to commemorate the victims of neoliberal globalization. All of us are its victims, and in the end the capitalists also.
Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, has held numerous university appointments. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Dr. Roberts can be reached at http://paulcraigroberts.org
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