Greenwald Says Trump Caved into Second Impeachment Threats; Kept JFK Files Secret

[David Andrews]

9 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

There appears to be a concerted effort to instill fear in the population that an insurrection, or civil war, is possible in the US. 

I no longer live in the US so I don't know if this idea of a civil war/insurrection is a live possibility, or fear-mongering. 

Of course, to avoid a civil war with the loss of millions of lives...almost any amount of civil and political repression will be justified by some. Another radical expansion of the panopticon state. 

See Hong Kong. 

 

See, that's the thing today.  Governments are fully capable of putting down revolution, which wasn't true from the Civil War through the civil rights movement.  Meanwhile, to dissuade irruptions of rebellion from recurring, the velvet glove technique is the first line of retribution.  Which is why the Capitol rioters will get off no worse than the crew of Daniel Shays' rebellion in 1786, the majority of whom enjoyed amnesty, pardon or commutation of sentence. 

There will always be the monstrous anomaly, such as Tianenmen, or Waco.  The latter seems to have been motivated by a desire to nip Patriot-supported activities in the bud during the early threat of the movement, plus the amount of cost and embarrassment to federal agencies.

Fear of Patriot rebellion has been with us since before Waco.  Here's the late Nebraska state legislator John DeCamp quoting (or paraphrasing rather formally) what retired CIA director William Colby told him, singing mockingbird to mockingbird, just a few days before the Oklahoma City bombing:

[Colby] "I watched as the Anti-War Movement rendered it impossible for this country to conduct or win the Vietnam War. I tell you, dear friend, that this Militia and Patriot movement in which, as an attorney, you have become one of the centerpieces, is far more significant and far more dangerous for America than the Anti-War Movement ever was, if it is not intelligently dealt with. And I really mean this.”

[...]

"That is what your next book should be, and it must be written," Colby instructed [...] "And yes, John, I will do everything to help you do this book and tell this story. Your book must become the communications device where both sides of this controversy can go to learn about themselves but, more important, to learn about the other side." Colby concluded, "And you can and must do that because you are really in the perfect position, and have the capability to do it. In fact, right now maybe you are the only one in that position."

I was shocked by Bill Colby's near-command to write a new book.

John DeCamp, The Franklin Cover-Up (Lincoln, NE: AWT, Inc., 1996), p. 380, 383.

Edited January 8, 2022 by David Andrews

[Matt Allison]

The United States is ten times larger now than it was in the 1860s and people no longer put up with getting drafted for dumb wars.

[Benjamin Cole]

11 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

The United States is ten times larger now than it was in the 1860s and people no longer put up with getting drafted for dumb wars.

Agreed...but is a no-draft, or mercenary, military a good thing? 

Forgotten today is why Nixon-Kissinger went to a mercenary military---they said exactly what you said: The US could not conduct globalism with a draft military. 

There would be no global guard service for multinationals. 

So...a mercenary military was the result (which has created very powerful lobbying groups, including the veterans organizations. Nancy Pelosi says she defers to the veterans service organizations (VSOs) on VA policy).

The Founding Fathers loathed, detested and reviled the idea of a standing military. George Mason refused to sign the Constitution as it did not contain an explicit ban on a standing military. 

The strange language of the 2nd amendment is there not so you can brandish semi-automatics on the street.

It some regards the 2nd amendment goes even further than that.

You have a constitutional right to form well-regulated militias that "bear arms." Arms even then included cannon, wheeled vehicles, rockets, chemical and bioweapons. 

The Founding Fathers promoted all that not to support the nut-groups we have today, but so that the bulwark of the US military would be citizen-soldiers, not the King's troops. 

But today by going to a mercenary military...we have gone a step closer to the idea of "King's troops." 

But like keeping King Kong for a pet...who is keeping who? 

 

 

 

[Larry Hancock]

Having been through the entire process myself, both a military draftee and a volunteer, my opinion is that a totally no-draft military is not a good thing.  Certainly you do need a core of long term, experienced specialists across many fields but when you get to the point of long term, overseas operations it is insane to keep rotating the same people back and forth overseas to those assignments.  It destroys their families, their health - its even worse when you turn to using the National Guard for overseas assignments because your force cannot sustain your commitment.  If you want to go to war overseas you need to justify it, call for new volunteers and start a draft.  Otherwise, don't do it.

The draft proved to be pivotal in raising the level of pain required to get us out of SE Asia.  More recently we have left a great deal of that pain to be literally absorbed by a relatively small number of volunteers - and deployed them over and over again into an even more endless combat overseas.  If more people had share the pain and loss it might have come to a close earlier.

I know many won't relate to that SE Asia era personally so to add a bit of reality  take a listen to this - which Armed Force Radio would not play overseas so I never heard it at the time:

Personally I would vote for some sort of minimal national public service as a requirement, with lots of options including first responders, medical services, and many other assignment options including public works as options to the combat military. 

[Matt Allison]

I blame Bush the 2nd.

[Ron Bulman]

5 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

I blame Bush the 2nd.

Which in turn brings in Cheney, Daddy and others.

[Matt Allison]

Definitely. I blame the whole lot, although I've heard Poppy didn't approve of Jr.'s wars, but then again that could be BS.

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Larry Hancock said:

Having been through the entire process myself, both a military draftee and a volunteer, my opinion is that a totally no-draft military is not a good thing.  Certainly you do need a core of long term, experienced specialists across many fields but when you get to the point of long term, overseas operations it is insane to keep rotating the same people back and forth overseas to those assignments.  It destroys their families, their health - its even worse when you turn to using the National Guard for overseas assignments because your force cannot sustain your commitment.  If you want to go to war overseas you need to justify it, call for new volunteers and start a draft.  Otherwise, don't do it.

The draft proved to be pivotal in raising the level of pain required to get us out of SE Asia.  More recently we have left a great deal of that pain to be literally absorbed by a relatively small number of volunteers - and deployed them over and over again into an even more endless combat overseas.  If more people had share the pain and loss it might have come to a close earlier.

I know many won't relate to that SE Asia era personally so to add a bit of reality  take a listen to this - which Armed Force Radio would not play overseas so I never heard it at the time:

Personally I would vote for some sort of minimal national public service as a requirement, with lots of options including first responders, medical services, and many other assignment options including public works as options to the combat military. 

LH-

I happy to say we agree for once (actually, we agree on a lot). 

Thailand and Israel have universal drafts (for men only in Thailand). 

"Nigeria, Germany, and Denmark have mandatory national service. Countries like Russia, China, Brazil, Sweden, Israel, and South Korea have military conscription — though their military personnel systems vary greatly in policy, objectives, and structure."

It would be nice to have some sort of national service that might substitute for college. Kids are spending kaboodles on college, going into debt, and for what? 

Killing two birds for one stone might be some sort of two-year hitch, lots of real world work, that everyone more or less agrees "is the same as a BA." 

A mercenary military is an anathema to democracy. 

Sheesh, in WWII people like the Kennedys and James Stewart served. Ted Williams. Admirably, in my view.  And we won that war as quick as possible, and then demobilized thereafter.