FOR ME:

• The Union Army of 2,100,000 soldiers was nearly twice the size of the Confederate Army of 1,064,000.
• It was the deadliest war in American history. There were around 210,000 soldiers killed in action and 625,000 total dead.
• Thirty percent of all Southern white males between the ages of 18 and 40 died in the war.
• Around 9 million people lived in the Southern states at the time of the Civil War.
  • Around 3.4m were slaves.
• Sixty six percent of the deaths in the war were due to disease

It’s never too late to learn something.

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• CONFLICTING STORIES

  Lake City Ammo Plant Cancels All Commercial Contracts – Update

  Staple Defense October 14, 2023 ***MAJOR UPDATE*** 10/31/23: Lake City Ammo Plant has confirmed that they are NOT canceling commercial contracts, and they are not changing their commercial distribution policies.  I’m unsure where things stand now.  At one time President Biden was quoted as saying he was going to close the commercial contract, but then there was a mighty roar from the Republicans.  I’m unsure where things stand now.  The site owned by the U.S. Army  has  manufactured hundreds of millions of rounds for the commercial market every year since at least 2011

A NY Times photo  of six dead children on a Hamas hospital morgue floor  this week made me think about the commercial Lake City Ammo Plant owned by the US Army whose ammunition for AK-15s has been used in a number of mass shootings  in the US.  The Defense Department’s arrangement with the commercial ammo producer is intended to save taxpayers money, at the same time keeping it ready for speedy military use in case of a conflict.  One mass murderer is reported to have said that “the rounds made at Lake City were the best barrier penetration ammo I can get.”  (The plant owned by the Army has manufactured hundreds of millions of rounds for the commercial market since at least 2011.  Apparently the ammo shells carry a marker of origin.

So, the way our world has constructed itself, due to our drives for competition and power and resultant need for defense,  children are and still will be among the necessary but regretful victims of mankind’s way of doing things.  And the picture of the U.S. aiding one country and also having to aid its victims is putrid and  plain crazy, but real.   I’m not clear what power Israel has to receive so much U.S. allegiance, but apparently that’s another thing that I don’t know or understand.  (I’m still baffled by Bush’s signing  the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act, commiting the government to keep a record of ant-Semitic acts throughout the world, and also a record  of responses to those acts.  This task had essentially already been covered for all nations, and was an add-on. I may have mentioned this before, but am still curious what debt Bush felt motivated by, if there was one. Why?)

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