The War Prayer by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fulttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory with stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.
It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender!
Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation:

God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest,
Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!

Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory --
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord and God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- excpet he pause and think. "God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, and the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon your neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain on your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse on some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard the words 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory -- must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it --
For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits."

…

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party need to come together

This little graphic seems too simple to be ignored. How could it be that the neither the readers of Newsmax, nor the readers of Mother Jones see the obvious area of convergence where the goals of regular people, both from the left and the right come together.

It is instructive that the mainstream media does its best to keep the two groups separate and at each others throats. Who benefits when the Tea Partiers and the Occupiers blame each other and sling invectives across the divide? "Stupid teabaggers", "Dirty hippy, communists", etc....

And all the while, Jamie Dimon and John McCain and Barack Obama are laughing their asses off. It is time that Americans realize that in the higher reaches of the power elites, the distinctions between left and right are meaningless. Among the elites, what matters is that corporations can use the government to make money and government can use corporations to maintain power.

Ron Paul should come out ferociously in favor of investigations and prosecutions of the 1000s of cases of fraud committed during the banking fiasco.

The Occupy movement is an organically assembled group of Americans that are truly pissed off. And they have every reason to be angry. The United States has become the dominion of the 1% and the rest of us are taking it on the chin. The government pays no attention to the electorate. For instance, the great majority of Americans were against each of the various the bailouts of the banks both nationally and even more, internationally. But the government and the Fed simply don't care. They do what they please. And what the government pleases, is whatever the big international banks want. What the big banks have wanted is lots of cheap money, so the Fed doubled the money supply after 2003 and it keeps pumping more new money into the economy today.

That easy money did what unlimited easy money always does. It led to malinvestment and fraud. The frauds led to the collapse of the financial system and to a serious recession in the real economy. Thanks to that criminal behavior and irresponsibility, the unemployment rate is way over 10%, the real value of wages is going down and the cost of living is going up. At the same time, the income of people that work in "Financial Industry" has multiplied. This is all the result of the meltdown caused by easy money from the bankers over the last 15 years.

The good people on the streets demonstrating as part of the OWS movement, see the effects of the criminal rackets, ie: the Primary Dealer banks, but they don't seem to see that it only happens because the banks are protected by the very government that is supposed to regulate them. The OWS are confused as to what needs to be done, they think that empowering the government that protects the banks and giving that government new regulatory powers will rein in the criminal activity. That's crazy. Ron Paul should show the OWS people that regulation and bureacracy are not the answer, what is missing is the rule of law. This is an opportunity to use populism as it should be used, to promote real and positive change. Let's put the criminals in jail! If Ron shares this message his support will grow.

He should show that the Too-Big-To-Fail banks' entire business plan is based on fraud. For instance, JC Morgan has a big stack of silver ingots that it has bought as the manager of the SLV etf. You buy shares in SLV and Morgan buys more silver. But Morgan uses that same stack of silver to short silver in the futures market, driving the price down and ripping off their own customers in SLV. That is a crime. Millions of crimes have gone unpunished. They haven't even been investigated! Another for instance: Goldman and others built CDOs and other mortgage backed securities with what they called "dog vomit", sold them as AAA bonds and then bought Credit Default Swaps betting against their own products and made billions. That is fraud. Fraud is crime. The bankers are criminals. 

If Paul would go to the Wall Street and speak to the OWS crowd and tell them that regulation is NOT the answer, but hiring Bill Black and 1000 assistants to investigate corporate crime IS the answer, he would get a huge boost in support and publicity. And once elected it is what he should do! What's to lose? I don't see that the Wall Street bankers are going to be voting for Dr. Paul anyway.

Please write the Paul campaign and suggest that he makes this an issue. Post this (http://bit.ly/sJTUgf) on twitter. Send the link to Jack Hunter on twitter. This is a great opportunity for the good doctor.

Bill Black, interviewed at Occupy Wall Street

Bill Black, interviewed by Bill Moyers in 2009

Executive Order to Steal Americans' Property Under Threat and Promise of Violence

Ron Paul: The Only One We Can Trust

Mutually Assured Destruction vs Mutually Assured Respect

This old man is shaping his ideas into a whole new paradigm for America and the world. We have tried war and debt. Every President since Coolidge has been a war President. Every one has added debt.

It is time to try peace and sound economics. It is time to give this old man a shot.

If We Are To Be An Empire, Then Let’s Do It Right

The US Empire embarked on another Imperial war for oil five months ago and the Empire botched the job again, just like it botched the job in Iraq. The Imperial legates and our client Principalities couldn't finish the job, even with unlimited resources and unchallenged air power. Mr. Gaddafi is still with us and seems to be reorganizing. He has made it clear that he will now target ports and oil facilities. So, Libya is going to go up in flames again as Gaddafi loyalists turn into the resistance, and the Empire's associate petroleum companies may not be able to abscond with the oil for months or even years.

Why do our wars cost so much and produce so little benefit? It is because the Empire insists on pretending that it is not after resources, that it is not an Empire. The Empire seems to believe its own lies, that it is motivated by humanitarian concerns. But if the ruling elites in the Empire believe their own lies, they are alone in that belief. No one else with any idea of what is going on believes the Empire’s lies. Outside of the USA, it is clear to everyone that the Empire is after resources and is intent on controlling the Muslim world through client kings and bases for the legions from Carthage to Memphis and from Tyre to Bactria.

But all this war and conniving drains the Imperial Treasury of great torrents of wealth that purchase weapons systems that serve no function in these wars, in maintaining garrisons that do not pacify the natives, but rather sharpen their resolve to fight back. This Empire is bleeding to death as the wealth of the productive part drains into the Bactrian sands. That is not the way to go about Empire. Empire is not supposed to produce debt and poverty for the victors. It is supposed to amass wealth for the conqueror. It is not supposed to leave the conqueror bankrupt. If you're going to be an Empire, be proud to be Empire, be proud to plunder under the Eagles!

So, I just wish that the powers-that-be would be honest about their intentions. If they were honest imperialists, at least they might not drive us to economic ruin. If the goal is to go steal the oil, just say so and go steal the damn oil! If Muammar and his people don’t like it, crucify a couple thousand of them along the Libyan coast road the way that Crassus did on the road to Rome. Do you think that Trajan successfully marched through the Parthian Empire to the Persian Gulf telling reporters that he was there to "protect civilians"? No, he was clear and direct. He was there to conquer! Did Caesar incorporate Gaul into the Empire by spending too much money and housing his legions in air-conditioned tents? No, his legions were expected to fight and kill and work and sweat and only get paid if they captured enough slaves and loot for Caesar to pay them! Did Gaius Verres make sure to spread Imperial Treasure among all the Sicilians so that they would accept the Roman presence? Heck no! He stole everything that wasn’t bolted to the floor. (Well, not exactly. He stole the stuff that was bolted down too.)

If we are to be an Empire we need to change a few things:

- 1. Go after the resources openly so that all Imperial citizens can benefit. Make sure that a substantial part of the loot gets paid into the Treasury.

- 2. Eliminate local resistance with proven methods such as putting entire cities to the sword or mass crucifixions. Caesar’s innovation of cutting the hands off of all the men in a Gallic city that defied Roman domination and then spreading these cripples to all parts of Gaul was quite effective in curbing resistance.

- 3. Immediately upon pacification, send in the tax collectors and squeeze the people till they bleed. We want loot. Pay up or die.

That Roman form of Empire is actually more honest than what the US Empire is doing, and it would benefit most Americans. The US Empire as it is today only benefits a tiny elite power group in the USA while it kills hundreds of thousands of innocent people and beggars everyone else. And this happens in a democracy! That just shows that a democracy made up of mostly ignorant, brainwashed voters is one of the worst forms of government imaginable. The current Empire is bankrupting the USA, destroying the economy and engendering global resentment, while making billions of dollars for a few, well-connected companies and individuals. That’s crazy.

If we’re going to survive as an Empire, we’d better learn to make it pay. If we can’t stomach the violence and immorality of that, if we can’t rein in the security state parasites and steal resources for all Americans, then we have no business comporting ourselves as an Empire. In that case we need to deconstruct the Security State (empire), cut the Federal Budget by 60% and decentralize the US of A into small enough polities for the citizens to be able to overpower the special interests. 

Peter Schiff educates a House economic panel

From 37 Banks to 4 in 20 years

Click on the chart for a bigger image.

If we have banking regulators, why do they allow the banks to consolidate to the point where they are "too big to fail"?

Banking regulation no longer works because the Federal government has been completely captured by a small number of hyper-large corporations. This explains why these banks were all bailed out against the wishes of more than 55% of Americans. It explains why we continue to make incredibly expensive weapons systems that are designed for the Cold War, which has been over for twenty years. It explains why our government coerces other countries to legalize GMO seeds, leading to thousands of deaths by suicide.

The giant corporations in cahoots with the giant Federal government is a recipe for economic collapse and the loss of individual liberty. We have to change the American mentality. The answer is very small government and very little regulation. The Federal government is too large to respond to the American people. And there is no way that will change. The only hope for freedom and sanity is to dismember the Federal government, rescind the 17th amendment and give power back to the States. Then we need to start eliminating regulations on everything.

Forget what you have been trained to believe. Regulations do not "level the playing field", instead regulations always benefit the largest corporation and punish the small. In fact many regulations are written by the large corporations that were supposedly going to be regulated. That is the case of the Dodd Frank bill which was supposed to clean up banking and Wall street, but has been used to protect the big banks because it was written by them and they know how to operate all the loopholes. America's Safe Food legislation was written by Monsanto's chief attorney. FDA regulations are written by ex-drug company attorneys and scientists.

More regulations is NOT the answer. Less government IS the answer

The Big Gangster and the Little Gangster — Gaddafi and NATO

Written by Michael S. Rozeff

There is more and more explicit news showing that Gaddafi worked closely with the CIA from 2002 onwards. Gaddafi — the little gangster — blundered by letting the U.S. — the big gangster — get too close. The U.S. had been keeping the pressure on Gaddafi for decades. He wanted out from that pressure. Being a long-lived ruler, a socialist, a nationalist, an African, and reaching an older age, he actually wanted, in his own dominating way, to do some good for Libyans, and he had to get out from under U.S. pressure to do that. He renounced nuclear ambitions and got into bed with the CIA. This he calculated would help him control Libya and keep the lid on the jihad-minded groups that wanted to overthrow him.

Gaddafi blundered. Such benevolence toward Libyans and independence from the West, and ideas of raising Libya's share of oil revenues, and ideas of pan-African unity and currency (even golden), and ideas of closer ties with non-western nations, didn't sit well with the Big Gangster and its NATO clique of satellite gangsters who always had painted him as a dangerous clown and resented his presence. The West requires conformity. It gets very uncomfortable with independent visions, independent visionaries, neutrals, and political systems, persons, and groups that do not link into and fall under its control system and alliances. The Arab Spring provided the opportunity for the Western gangsters to disgrace themselves fully and publicly and dislodge Gaddafi.

All the little gangsters of this world are taking note. Chavez is bringing his gold back home. Others will be far more wary of letting assets pile up in Western banks where they can be frozen and stolen. The other bigger gangsters of this world like Russia, India, and China will not fail to draw the appropriate lessons from this episode either, inasmuch as it occurred under a Democrat and follows hard upon the heels of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan instigated by Republicans and supported by both parties.

Thanks to http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/ for this precise little article.

Edit: There is another article about Libya that I find very interesting. This article is very much longer and is written by an African from an African perspective. It reflects a Muammar Gaddafi that is very different from the Gaddafi that is portrayed in the Western press. Here is the article:

Why the West Want the Fall of Muammar Gaddafi…Analysis by Jean-Paul Pougala

As long as we are looking into Gaddafi, Libya, Al Qaeda and NATO please watch this interview of Pepe Escobar from the Asia Times as he talks about the reality in Libya. Pepe is interviewed by Alex Jones, who is not otherwise given space on this blog, but what Pepe has to say is important