The most likely way to die in a U.S. war, by far, is to live in the country that the United States is attacking. But the most likely way in which a U.S. participant in a war will die is by suicide.

There are a couple of widely observed top causes of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops returning from recent wars deeply disturbed in their minds. One is having been near an explosion. Another, which has been around longer than explosions have, is having killed, having nearly died, having seen blood and gore and suffering, having imposed death and suffering on innocents, having seen comrades die in agony, exacerbated in many cases by having lost faith in the sales pitch that launched the war -- in other words, the horror of war making.

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The Strip & Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows & Electronic Election Theft

By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman

"The 'strip and flip' technique of controlling electronic elections can easily apply to citizens of all faiths and color. But in the US, race has been the critical tool for dividing the populace. It’s the bottom-line basic instrument that makes electronic election theft possible." ~ Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis 

"What had happened between 2000 and 2004 was the Help America Vote Act. Meant to correct problems with Florida paper punch-card ballots, it was fraud capacity disguised as reform. It encouraged the buying of electronic voting systems as the solution to federal mandates. The hope that true reformists had was that computers would prove colorblind. Instead, computer counting made us blind. We no longer see our votes being counted. As in any darkness, nefarious schemes are much easier to accomplish." ~ Mimi Kennedy, in the Introduction

Come on, they aren’t tanks, they’re armored rescue vehicles. And the, uh, grenade launchers would only be used to launch teargas canisters. When necessary. And the M-16s? Standard police issue.

What a journey these Los Angeles teenagers, and the civil rights group Fight for the Soul of the Cities, had, to get from there — the ho-hum justification by (good Lord) the city’s school district police force, for the accumulation of surplus Defense Department weaponry — to here:

“Our recent meeting and dialogue has led me to review my actions as Board President during this difficult period. Upon reflection, I failed to understand the amount of pain and frustration our participation in the 1033 program could cause in the community and especially with our partners from the Dignity in Schools Campaign and the Fight for the Soul of the Cities. . . .”

Hillary Clinton and her DNC status-quo flunkies ignore the reality that both the Donald Trump and the Bernie Sanders candidacies make clear. The United States is entering a thus-far nonviolent populist rebellion against a corrupt-to-the-core oligarchy. In this paradigmatic battle between the common good and the greedy corporate elite, it would be a catastrophic failure for Americans to allow the populist mantle of a Political Revolution to be carried and defined by the hateful demagogue Donald Trump. Currently, Sanders is the only figure in a position to carry that positive populist banner to victory.

Regardless of how much lipstick is slapped on an establishment pig, come November (and beyond) millions of people are going to choose change. Depending upon their options, they will either vote for a challenger to the status quo who best reflects there complaints and aspirations, or they will choose not to vote at all. So, despite Clinton’s recent shift in tone and her gradual, disingenuous and unbelievable makeover on the issues, her candidacy could never stand in for Sanders.