Military Dictatorship in the US?

[Terry Mauro]

How does this thread relate to the JFK assassination? That's easily answered.

Who was behind the JFK assassination in general? The military industrial complex, to whom Lyndon Johnson, with his lifelong lust for power, legal problems, and need to get rid of JFK, was one of the best things that ever happened. They were partners in crime.

Who runs the U.S. today? The military industrial complex, to whom the neocon PNAC with its 2000 coup and imperialistic foreign policy is one of the best things that ever happened. They are partners in crime.

The same powers that be who got rid of JFK in 1963 are presently bankrupting America, to fill their own pockets, and with the PNAC have taken us to the point that dictatorship looks inevitable. The American people have seemed to be all but asking for it, and it is only more one terrorist attack away.

So in terms of the big picture, this thread is entirely relevant to Dallas. It relates to the decline and fall of the American republic, who brought it down, and who let them do it.

**************************************************************

"Who runs the U.S. today? The military industrial complex, to whom the neocon PNAC with its 2000 coup and imperialistic foreign policy is one of the best things that ever happened. They are partners in crime."

And, lest we not forget how far back, nor how deep the roots of the American war machine really reach. Look to the bankers of the Eastern Establishment and their Wall Street financial houses, created in the 18th and 19th centuries. The economic philosophy of capitalism, along with Manifest Destiny imperialism, has made vast fortunes for their aristocratic baronial class, such as the Astors, Vanderbilts, Du Ponts, Mellons, Morgans, and Rockefellers. The American economy has always been based upon the business of war. Therefore, the MICIC, and the neo-colonial-conservative PNAC are mere off-shoots, or by-products of the original architects of the American "nightmare", which was established and created based upon their anglo-baronial role models. What has this to do with the JFK assassination? JFK was supposed to be a product of his status-seeking, Ambassador-to-the-Court-of-St. James-seeking, rum-running, Irish Boston back-water father, Joe. People such as these are considered to be interlopers by the Bostonian Brahman, and New York Blue-Blooded classes, to be used for their own agendas. The elites thought they had another "player" of the same ruthless caliber and ethic as his old man. But, JFK attempted to switch certain key-policy ploys which catered to the financiers regarding his NSAM executive orders on Vietnam, and the Federal Reserve, as well as prior his public firing of Allen Dulles, and his promise to smash the CIA to pieces following the BOP. Allen Dulles, also of the Wall Street law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, with connections to United Fruit and its Cuban plantations, friend of Prescott Bush, and his German banking connection prior to WWII. These people were established for over a century and controlled the economic and political policy of the U.S. along with its Anglo-American Atlantic umbilical cord, and continue to do so into perpetuity. They were never going to allow some upstart like JFK [which is what he was always considered as, BTW], be allowed to turn the tables on everything they've ever been allowed to build, or get away with, nor continue to dismantle the lifelines to their precious holdings. You'll never find this written in your school history books, either. And, the regime you see today, in place and in power, is a direct culmination of what happened on 11/22/63. It's a reminder to the American psyche that any person having views or ambitions differing, or divergent to those of the established ruling class will be dealt with in a swift and expedient manner, be it either physically, or characteristically.

[Jim Hackett II]

What does the query of a military dictatorship in the US have to do with the John Kennedy Assassination?

For much the same reasons Terry Mauro stated above it is clear that the Power Elite would like to reduce this plutocracy to a Fascist State. Furthermore that they have attempted to subvert the expressed will of the people BEFORE 1963's Coup d'Etat.

No secret all one has to to do verify this point is research the Attempted Coup of 1934 that Smedley Butler EXPOSED. It was spawned of the House of Morgan and the Rockerfeller family with the elite Wall Street jackasses of the New England Elitists.

All established as fact in the so called McCormick/Dickstein Report in the Congressional Record from a day when oversight meant something other than covering the empire's butt.

In too short a summary I'll recap the event this way, The House of Morgan and Rockefeller approached retired Gyrene Gen. Smedley Butler to "enlist" the veterans of this nation to march on Washington D.C. to force FDR to give up the authority of the office of President to quasi fascist assemblage of jerks. In effect to force a choice on FDR to reduce himself to a figurehead and render the US Government to a open public lackey of Wall Street and those families that rule the empires of wealth.

Smedley Butler refused and recorded these approaches then took what he could prove to congress as Rep. John McCormick was his representative he could get the ear of a congress person.

The Committee found all Butler reported both verifiable and worthy of consideration as truth. The Press controlled by such elitist of William Randolph Hearst and others buried the story.

In an aside as a rumor I heard that Oliver Stone wanted to make a movie about the affair but Hollywood and the houses that control the propaganda efforts decided that he had been allowed enough of that sort of thing when he made "JFK". Reportedly Oliver Stone could never get the film funded.

The story of the 1934 Coup is I think too close to home to allow it to ever be known or taught in History classes in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Lets go a little deeper and a little later in time than 1934 to see if we can find any other indications of military Dictatorships being desired by those same families shall we?

John Simkins has provided a great thread about the OSS/CIA network that sprang from the "China Hands" Chennault and Pawley and etc. It is that same conspiracy that expanded and eventually produced the November Coup. What regime did that network promote? The Chinese Nationalists another Elite promoted military dictatorship in democratic robes.

A dictatorship that ran the opium trade and even saw itself as able to addict American troops in SE Asia.

A clear demonstration of ethics of the network of empire we are examining.

Dick Helms and the Iran Coup say, can anyone really interpret the reign of the Shah of Iran as anything more than a military dictatorship? Hardly, except for the supporters of Fascist so called NEOCONS.

Or Guatamala? United Fruit.

Chile and tracktwo?

Iraq and Saddam Hessein.

When a nation backs, promotes and establishes so many military dictatorships and is so connected to the November Coup how can it be surprising or unworthy of asking the question about a military dictatorship being sought for the nation I once loved a whole lot more than I find I can now. Their (the elitists) homebase of operations by the contrived consent of the governed is in danger but the danger is not from terrorists outside the USA but terrorists inside the USA.

Doubt that? Explain how the Congress was stampeded into passing the Patriot Act before ANYONE but the authors had a chance to read it. Empowering the forces of fascism is this country, that is undeniable after the last 5 years. Who dun the Anthrax attacks that gave us that PAT ACT as well as a "P"Resident arrogant enough to think the Constitution is his personal toilet paper. He swore to uphold his roll of crap paper, not MY CONSTITUTION. He swore that TWICE.

Hell we are well on the road to that military dictatorship, ask the "detainees" or toture victims, they know.

We are no longer a nation of laws but of wealthy families and we had a revolution once to rid ourselves of other Elitists of a foreign variety. I fear the second revolution if it comes will be far bloodier and a lot more violent.

However a glimmer of hope is appearing, the People are slowly awakening to what the Bu$h Crime Family is about as well as the Families that Terry wrote of the NY Blue Bloods and New England punks. That goal is Fascism and Military-Corporate Dictatorship. More of We The People are shedding blinders and starting to get pi**ed off.

Every single US Representative is up for election in 2006. The House can impeach the criminals. They know the thin ice they tread. We all hear the politicians of both parties trying to say "I'm not like him" today don't we!

Jim

Edited March 16, 2006 by Jim Hackett II

[Ron Ecker]

Jim,

I did some reading about a year ago on the attempted coup against FDR. The two main financial empires behind it according to the sources I read were Morgan and Du Pont. The Rockefellers weren't mentioned, though of course as part of the power elite I can certainly understand them having a hand in it. Also, I understood the year to be 1933, but I could be mistaken.

Here's what I wrote on the subject in a thread under Political Debates entitled "Is America a Democracy?":

In considering whether America is a democracy or not, I think it is instructive to look at the corporate/military coup attempt against President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. This conspiracy was the work of wealthy businessmen, what today is often called the power elite, or what would become (with the permanent armaments industry borne of WWII) what President Eisenhower warningly called the military-industrial complex (MIC). (The MIC is also called, in its more fascistic light, the national security state.) How much has really changed in the American political system since the power elite power play of the 1930s?

The biggest players in the plot against FDR were the du Pont and J.P. Morgan financial empires. Obviously this power elite did not really believe in democracy. It didn’t believe in it then, so why should the power elite believe in it now? In the 1930s they were open admirers of fascism, as were some elected officials in Washington. In May 1932, David Reed, the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, stood on the Senate floor and said, “I do not often envy other countries and their governments, but I say that if this country ever needed a Mussolini, it needs one now.” Such honesty changed, of course, during and after WWII, as the power elite could no longer openly admire fascism after fighting a highly profitable world war against somebody else’s brand of it.

The plot against FDR was simple. FDR would be given an ultimatum, to resign for health reasons, turning his duties over to a new position to be created, which would of course look out for the interests of the power elite. If he did not resign, he would be removed. And the coup probably would have succeeded, given the power of this fascist elite, had they not chosen the wrong man to lead it. They chose a retired Army general, Smedley Butler, because of his popularity with the troops, who might be needed if FDR did not resign. But the conspirators probably should have gone with their second choice, General Douglas McArthur, because while Butler, a two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor, may have been popular with the troops, he did not share the undemocratic views of the plotters. Butler for a time pretended to go along with the plot, but foiled it by betraying it to the Congress.

But though the plot was foiled, two significant things happened that tell us how much things haven’t changed. First, the Congress did not have the guts or independence to stand up to the power elite. Not a single one of the wealthy plotters was called to testify before Congressional investigators, except for the go-between Gerald Maguire of Wall Street, who had represented the plotters to Butler. The Congress protected the power elite after its attempted high treason. And second, the mainstream corporate media even in the 1930s was so controlled that it didn’t really cover the story. It was all supposedly nothing but rumors and gossip; the power elite, as far as America’s “watchdog” media was concerned, hadn’t really done anything wrong.

There was a successful MIC coup in 1963 in Dallas, against an independently wealthy president who was too far off the reservation, the MIC taking abrupt corrective action to redirect the course of national and world events (with the government and media saying a lone nut did it).

There was another coup in 2000, when the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which hardly anyone had even heard of, but whose members included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, and whose published agenda of world domination through “the transformation of warfare” represents the MIC run amok, took over the federal government and promptly brought us 9/11, the PNAC’s wished-for “new Pearl Harbor” (with the government and media saying that a nut in an Afghan cave did it).

And do you know what? Five years after the PNAC coup, most Americans still haven’t heard of PNAC! Viewers of Fox News, for example, listen to regular news commentator William Kristol “of the Weekly Standard,” without even being made aware of the fact that Kristol is Chairman of PNAC. In other words Kristol is among the leaders of the current administration, he just doesn’t hold an official administration position. And Americans sit and listen to him as an “objective” commentator on what the administration is doing!

But I digress (though not really, as the ignorance of the American people, whatever the cause, is a major factor in the demise of their democracy). I see only one big difference between the power elite that wanted to set up a fascist government in America in the 1930s and the power elite today, which could set up such a government at virtually any time (all it would take is another 9/11 and martial law). The difference is, the power elite today, with the Pentagon (stealing taxpayer money a “lost” trillion dollars at a time) fully behind it, is far more powerful than the du Ponts and Morgans of the 1930s. And it will never be foiled again. . . .

General Butler, by the way, published a book in 1935 entitled “War Is a Racket.” Here are the first three paragraphs of General Butler’s book:

“War is a racket. It always has been.

“It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

“A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the 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 very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”

Did General Butler have it right or what? The same thought was behind Ike’s farewell warning years later about the military-industrial complex. And it’s what the American government is running right now, a racket, thanks to the PNAC in power and its dream, a new Pearl Harbor, come true.

Ron

[Jim Hackett II]

Mr. Ecker,

I was sure we agreed on much more than we diagreed about.

I would endorse much of what you say.

The book "The Plot To Sieze The White House" by Jules Archer is for me a primary source for the 34 Coup as well as Joseph Spivak's columns published in that day in a magazine named "The Masses" if memory serves and naturally the McCormick Dickstein Report.

As for War is a Racket by Gen Butler, it too is a great short book expsing the uses of the US Military to enforce the desires of the Morgan-DuPont-Rockefeller Conspiracies. Nothing new in that then or today IMHO.

Morgan-DuPont do little without consulting the Rockefeller assets inside and outside the Intelligence Agencies.

Off the top of my head I think the tie is in Jules Archer's book.

My bad for lunping them together? I doubt it. I'll see if I can find the source for this position that the American Oil Company xxxxheads were involved too. Too me the empires of Morgan and DuPont and Rockefeller are to interelated to be autonomous in their deeds.

For me there can be little doubt that the Morgan-DuPont-Rockefeller Conspiracy is a part of the issue that Dwight Eisenhower was aware of when he put the warning in his farewell speech. Ike was the last honest GOP President I figure. Maybe the next to last honest President to date.

And yes I agree the perception of American poeple's awareness would present as reality that few know of PNAC. This is both I think deceptive and untrue. Granted that I may not have a true random sample of the population because of a positively not random selection of friends and associates, but the actions of the current adminstration since August are blowing the lid off the cover ops and lies dating before Katrina too.

Katrina FEMA fiascos and Iraq's denied descent into civil war and all the rest have AT LONG LAST begun to awaken the population to the dangers and abuses.

Maybe I am too optimistic and that is possible as I have been accused of that before, but I recall the arrogance of the Nixon White House after the STOLEN 1972 election.

The common thread is induced fear in the American Electorate for Nixon and Bu$h. Finally many Americans are shedding that induced fear and starting to think critically again.

Both Nixon and Bu$h think or thought their power was secure until they over reached the limit of power and the American People's limit of tolerance for that abuse of power.

Exposure of wiretaps without warrants and the public espousing of that position may be the tipping point for Bu$h Impeachment as Watergate covert ops did for the first incarnation of Fascism in the White House.

I can hope so and await the 2006 elections. As many active duty American Troops are I know.

I'll try when I get time to find the reference that shows Rockefeller Empire support for the Liberty Lobby and American Legion as goons to to support the proposed Vet. March on FDR, i.e to depose him as was done by the Vet Fascists alliance against the King in Italy successfully.

Best Regards and thanks for observations.

Jim

Edited March 16, 2006 by Jim Hackett II

[Robert Howard]

As I speak C-SPAN is airing the debate over the 'military budget: War in Iraq' to say the discussions are heated would be accurate, it reminds me of the events taking place shortly after the Black Congressional Leadership realized Mr. Bush had become the de facto President. 'Permanent bases pro or con' is what is being debated.

On other related matters, Senator Feingold's (D-WI) Motion for Censure of the President, seems to be a hot potato, with just a smattering of Democrats (or Republicans) for that matter courageous enough to voice their opposition to the current 'walking scandal' that is the Bush administration.

And last but not least:

How a worm wiggles off the hook.

The latest shennanigans regarding the 'Plame affair and the Libby Indictment' are the epitome of sleaze politics. Libby's attorney's have successfully found a 'loophole' in the fight against perjury charges, by 'persuasively convincing' the presiding Judge that 'CIA classified documents are needed' by attorneys for Libby to successfully refute allegations that Mr Libby did, in fact commit perjury.

And here's the rub, Libby's attorney's know that the CIA WILL NOT turn over said documents under any circumstances. If the aforementioned scenario unfolds, charges will be dropped against Libby, barring a minor miracle.

Edited March 16, 2006 by Robert Howard

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

It amazes me that there is not more discussion of the Democrats role as Bush's prophelactic.

If not for the utter sielence on the Big SIX issues ( 1. Iraq and 9/11,2. 9/11,3. Katrina 4. Patriot Act 5. NSA,

6. Lobbying scandals) the Democrats would be landslide winners in the next election.

To speak to these issues is measurably against the will of their corporate sponsors.

How anyone thinks anything will change by only talking about Bush right now should take a looke at some more recent incarnations of the Tommy the Cork.

You could start with a look into Tony Coelho , and his reorienting of the Dems congressionally in line with what the DLC'snew agenda for the party.

Then check out his successor, Terry McAuliffe.

Do people really expect the democrats to be in on DLC kind of cash and act like an oposition to clear fascism?

If you want to understand where "Bush has taken us", don't look at Bush.

Look at the environment that has made it so unprofitable to challenge him in any substantive way.

[Ron Ecker]

Don't forget the power of blackmail, or the threat thereof, in keeping opposition politicians silent. Getting dirt on everybody is part of gaining and maintaining power. Filegate was not just a "bureaucratic snafu," it was a blatant fishing expedition. The Clinton White House didn't send all those files right back to the FBI with a note saying "You made a mistake." And don't think that all the warrantless government eavesdropping that has been going on under Bush is to just to try to catch terrorists. It's to catch anybody (read any politician) in a heavy-breathing phone conversation for potential future reference.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Ron, I too had thought of the "executive branch's" ability to silence the legislative corpse I mean branch in a kind of electronic Hoovering or the both Houses. (Scary words for scary times)

I have seen no mention of this real possibility in any corporate press.

It shows just how closely the fake oposition in the Dem. leadership is working with the

Corporate media to continue to call this corporate sham "democracy"

[John Dolva]

Ron, I too had thought of the "executive branch's" ability to silence the legislative corpse I mean branch in a kind of electronic Hoovering or the both Houses. (Scary words for scary times)

I have seen no mention of this real possibility in any corporate press.

It shows just how closely the fake oposition in the Dem. leadership is working with the

Corporate media to continue to call this corporate sham "democracy"

Here in OZ ther democrats are sometimes portrayed as not bush, and not much more.

_____________

Within this structure which US members are so excellently desribing (lots of sense there, the rest of the world, if it could get to read and understand these posts and recognise they are generated by american citizens should feel a sense of hope, all is not 'dumb'.)

The problem for this alliance is that their power is not absolute (yet?)

___________________

With regards to a history of past attempts:

Texas as an independent country (quote from 'Civil War' series) 'dreamed of a southern empire' including the latin/south american nations.

There was a french heritage, to counter the british boston, cotton as a product, slavery as an production tool.

What I'm getting at is that even this economic alliance mentioned here had divisions, and that these divisions were/are significant. The accommodation of the catholic for example, was an important issue.

__________

I've always regarded the assassination as having basically three layers of command. Those who ultimately benefit, which very well could be the establishmant described. A intermediary, such as Walker perhaps. And those who actually were maneuvered into a kill zone. Who then is the assassin?

The one who pulled the trigger, the team that arranged the dirty details, the one who organised it, or the group that set it in motion?

[John Dolva]

Ron, I too had thought of the "executive branch's" ability to silence the legislative corpse I mean branch in a kind of electronic Hoovering or the both Houses. (Scary words for scary times)

I have seen no mention of this real possibility in any corporate press.

It shows just how closely the fake oposition in the Dem. leadership is working with the

Corporate media to continue to call this corporate sham "democracy"

Here in OZ ther democrats are sometimes portrayed as not bush, and not much more.

_____________

Within this structure which US members are so excellently desribing (lots of sense there, the rest of the world, if it could get to read and understand these posts and recognise they are generated by american citizens should feel a sense of hope, all is not 'dumb'.)

The problem for this alliance is that their power is not absolute (yet?)

___________________

With regards to a history of past attempts:

Texas as an independent country (quote from 'Civil War' series) 'dreamed of a southern empire' including the latin/south american nations.

There was a french heritage, to counter the british boston, cotton as a product, slavery as an production tool.

What I'm getting at is that even this economic alliance mentioned here had divisions, and that these divisions were/are significant. The accommodation of the catholic for example, was an important issue.

__________

I've always regarded the assassination as having basically three layers of command. Those who ultimately benefit, which very well could be the establishmant described. A intermediary, such as Walker perhaps. And those who actually were maneuvered into a kill zone. Who then is the assassin?

The one who pulled the trigger, the team that arranged the dirty details, the one who organised it, or the group that set it in motion?

addaendum: http://dxm.org/dreams/dreams.cgi?number=80

"The period of the industrial "revolution" in England stretched over some fifty years, well into the 19th century. For an enormous length of time for a revolution, the new industrial economy was based, eventually, upon agriculture. This meant not just food, the pre-agricultural commodity that all societies must eventually depend upon. No: the huge factories and mills that were the emblem of progress and the new age, before, during, and after the introduction of mechanisation, were all dependent on the cotton crop. Without cotton, flax, wool, silk and other such raw, agricultural, materials, all the automated looms in the world would do no good.

Arguments for the continuation of industrial socio-economic organisation in a knowledge economy invariably rest upon the supposition that knowledge is useful only when applied - to industry. So an oil company networks its offices, organises its expertise, and becomes a "knowledge company". A software firm is wealthy, according to this line of reasoning, only because its products support drilling rigs. In fact, knowledge will be traded for knowledge and grow as apart from industry as the latter has grown, today, from the cotton crop.

By the time industry had become anything like what it is at present, built several layers over agriculture and apparently quite separate the social infrastructure of capitalism was already in place. Labour and capital swarmed to the cities; informal liberties were replaced by formalised rights and new forms of punishment; the distributed power of local councils or parishes was subverted by the strengthened central authority of the nation-state. It was only then that the railway, not the mill, became was the emblem of the times. It took even longer for the arrival of the car, symbol of purely industrial production where the train was one of transport."

http://www.eh.net/encyclopedia/article/tut...r.child.britain

"Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution

Carolyn Tuttle, Lake Forest College

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Great Britain became the first country to industrialize. Because of this, it was also the first country where the nature of children's work changed so dramatically that child labor became seen as a social problem and a political issue"

"The Historical Debate about Child Labor in Britain

Child Labor before Industrialization

Children of poor and working-class families had worked for centuries before industrialization - helping around the house or assisting in the family's enterprise when they were able. The practice of putting children to work was first documented in the Medieval era when fathers had their children spin thread for them to weave on the loom. Children performed a variety of tasks that were auxiliary to their parents but critical to the family economy. The family's household needs determined the family's supply of labor and "the interdependence of work and residence, of household labor needs, subsidence requirements, and family relationships constituted the 'family economy'" [Tilly and Scott (1978, 12)].

Definitions of Child Labor

The term "child labor" generally refers to children who work to produce a good or a service which can be sold for money in the marketplace regardless of whether or not they are paid for their work. A "child" is usually defined as a person who is dependent upon other individuals (parents, relatives, or government officials) for his or her livelihood. The exact ages of "childhood" differ by country and time period.

Preindustrial Jobs

Children who lived on farms worked with the animals or in the fields planting seeds, pulling weeds and picking the ripe crop..."

[John Dolva]

Shermans march through the south, razing and leaving an impoverished country behind them could be the 'ghost that came home to roost' in Kennedys assassination. In Dallas, Kennedy was caught between a rock and a hard place.

(Sherman had been recalled after retirement on insanity issues. Walker?)

_____

The breath of emancipation which caused the slaves to rally to Sherman finds a parallel in the peasants rallying to Cromwell in the 1600's. Only to be led to the folly of Ireland where their hopes were destroyed. The winners were the rising capitalist. The losers(landlords) were absorbed. The monarchy restored. The soldiers appropriated.

Lincoln rallied the 'bondsmen' when he referred to the 250 year old struggle (which brings us to the early 1600's) in his second inauguration speech

"Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

March 4, 1865"

He here recognises the efforts of the average working person, both in amassing wealth and in sacrificing life in the struggles between dominant economic forces.

Kennedy (referrring to Stephens topic on unions etc) also did so.

It seems the sacrifice is ultimately made by the ordinary citizen, therefore an ultimate solution lies in the hands of an educated, organised and united common folk, where they stop being a pawn in greater power plays, and ultimately take the control implicit in the constitution.

____________

General Lees surrender was not the end of the war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.G.T._Beauregard

"Beauregard was born at the "Contreras" plantation in St. Bernard Parish, outside of New Orleans, Louisiana, to a white Creole family. His nickname to many of his army friends was The Little Creole (and also Bory, The Little Frenchman, Felix, and The Little Napoleon).

Beauregard's first assignment from the Confederate Government was command of the forces in Charleston, South Carolina, where on April 12, 1861, he opened fire on the Union-held Fort Sumter, regarded as the start of the American Civil War."

http://www.answers.com/topic/american-civil-war

"The “wedges of separation” caused by slavery split large Protestant sects into Northern and Southern branches and dissolved the Whig party. Most Southern Whigs joined the Democratic party, one of the few remaining, if shaky, nationwide institutions. The new Republican party, heir to the Free-Soil party and to the Liberty party, was a strictly Northern phenomenon. The crucial point was reached in the presidential election of 1860, in which the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, defeated three opponents—Stephen A. Douglas (Northern Democrat), John C. Breckinridge (Southern Democrat), and John Bell of the Constitutional Union party.

Lincoln's victory was the signal for the secession of South Carolina (Dec. 20, 1860), and that state was followed out of the Union by six other states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Immediately the question of federal property in these states became important, especially the forts in the harbor of Charleston, S.C. (see Fort Sumter). The outgoing President, James Buchanan, a Northern Democrat who was either truckling to the Southern, proslavery wing of his party or sincerely attempting to avert war, pursued a vacillating course. At any rate the question of the forts was still unsettled when Lincoln was inaugurated, and meanwhile there had been several futile efforts to reunite the sections, notably the Crittenden Compromise offered by Sen. J. J. Crittenden. Lincoln resolved to hold Sumter. The new Confederate government under President Jefferson Davis and South Carolina were equally determined to oust the Federals.

Sumter to Gettysburg

When, on Apr. 12, 1861, the Confederate commander P. G. T. Beauregard, acting on instructions, ordered the firing on Fort Sumter, hostilities officially began. Lincoln immediately called for troops to be used against the seven seceding states, which were soon joined by Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee, completing the 11-state Confederacy. In the first important military campaign of the war untrained Union troops under Irvin McDowell, advancing on Richmond, now the Confederate capital, were routed by equally inexperienced Confederate soldiers led by Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston in the first battle of Bull Run (July 21, 1861). This fiasco led Lincoln to bring up George B. McClellan (1826–85), fresh from his successes in W Virginia (admitted as the new state of West Virginia in 1863)."

"Apr-May 1865

Confederate troops surrender; 500,000 American soldiers lost their lives in the Civil War

May 13 1865

Last battle of the Civil War at Palmito Ranch, near Brownsville", Texas. (victory to the confedearates.)

OOOOOOOOOOOOO

some interesting curios:

http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/governors/war/clark-reagan.html

Rail and Post

"In addition to the misery caused by battle, the Civil War disrupted many everyday aspects of life. The Confederacy struggled to take over ordinary government services such as postal delivery. John Henniger Reagan, a former U.S. Congressman from East Texas, was appointed postmaster general of the Confederacy. In this letter, Reagan instructs the governors of the Confederate states to continue to pay their accounts to the U.S. postal service as before until a Confederate postal service could be organized.

U.S. postal service to the Confederacy was cut off on May 31, 1861. Although Reagan was an able administrator, Confederate postal service throughout the war was exceedingly poor**. Very few stamps were issued, and delivery was handicapped by Federal control of the Mississippi River, destruction of railroads, blockade by sea, and invading army by land. Most people came to rely on travelers and soldiers on furlough as an informal alternative to the postal service.

At war's end, Reagan went on the run with other officials of the former Confederacy. Eventually, he was arrested along with Jefferson Davis and former Texas governor Francis R. Lubbock. During his imprisonment, he recognized the reality of the Confederacy's defeat and wrote an open letter to his fellow Texans urging them to recognize the authority of the United States and to renounce secession and slavery. Pardoned and released, he returned to Texas in December 1865, only to find himself the object of scorn for his conciliatory stance.

Events proved Reagan right, and he eventually won the nickname the "Old Roman" as a compliment to his willingness to sacrifice personal popularity for the greater good. He was reelected to Congress in 1874, and became a United States Senator in 1887. In 1891, he became the chairman of the newly formed Railroad Commission, which became a uniquely powerful body in regulating not only railroads, but many other aspects of the Texas economy. He retired in 1903 and died in 1905."

http://members.tripod.com/~ProlificPains/wpns.htm

"The Le Mat Revolver was the most famous foreign pistol in service during the Civil War. It was invented by a French-born New Orleans doctor in 1856. The 'cap and ball' weapon is unique in that it has two barrels. A cylinder which held nine .40 calibre rounds fired through the upper barrel and revolved around the lower .63 calibre barrel which held a charge of buck-shot. By merely flicking his thumb, the shooter could re-align the hammer to fall on the lower barrel which acted as a small shotgun -- deadly at close range. Dr (or sometimes colonel) Jean Alexander Francois Le Mat produced about 300 of his weapon in New Orleans prior to the outbreak of the war. The weapons were noted as reliable and became well liked, so when the war began, Le Mat moved to France to set up mass production for the Confederacy."

EDIT::

**While this may be so, Reagan was an able administrator and the Confederate Postal service was one of the Confederate successes. It worked and lasted. It is described by some as the most successful department of the Confederate government.

the treasury and the PO department had an interesting relationsip:

http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/jo.../article_2.html

“Attorney-General Watts, to whom President Davis referred the papers, in returning them to the President, said in his report that the brief paragraphs at the end of the letter of the Postmaster-General so aptly stated the law that he copied them in his opinion.” 95 The attorney-general plainly said that the postmaster-general had as full power over the funds belonging to the post office department as the secretary of the treasury had over other public moneys; and that his power to make and enforce all necessary regulations for the collection, safe-keeping, and disbursement of the funds of the post office department, embracing within the scope of such regulations the treasurer and auditor for the post office department, was as full and complete as that of the secretary of the treasury in relation to other public moneys."

http://cgi.ebay.com/Scott-CS-14-Unused-186...3QQcmdZViewItem

"From its beginning, the Confederate Post Office was very different from the Confederate Treasury Department. For one thing, the Post Office was a financial success, although it never faced the demands or pressures that were placed on Confederate currency. However, like their federal counterparts, CS stamps were frequently used as fractional currency. John H. Reagan of Texas, the Confederate Postmaster-General, was so competent that after the war, he was offered the same position with the US Post Office!"

Edited March 17, 2006 by John Dolva

[Robert Howard]

The truth is the most important value we have because if the truth does not endure, if the Government murders truth, then this is no longer the country we were born in and this is not the country I want to die in.

Edited March 17, 2006 by Robert Howard

[John Dolva]

The truth is the most important value we have because if the truth does not endure, if the Government murders truth, then this is no longer the country we were born in and this is not the country I want to die in.

I've often thought of this and tried to find some 'essence' at the core of 'perpetuating truth'.

What I've come up with at this point of time seems perhaps rather 'bland'. But it's this: try to love, protect, and understand, your children.

As new beings they learn their relationship to the world, which includes 'truth', from us.

A seeker of truth where it seems elusive is most successful and goes furthest when that person has an open mind. A child HAS an open mind. Value that fact and we will see truth triumph. A child surrounded by adults trying to nurture openmindedness (not always succeeding of course but trying to do so) will value self. Self thought, opinion and ultimately 'truth'.

[Terry Mauro]

Ron, I too had thought of the "executive branch's" ability to silence the legislative corpse I mean branch in a kind of electronic Hoovering or the both Houses. (Scary words for scary times)

I have seen no mention of this real possibility in any corporate press.

It shows just how closely the fake oposition in the Dem. leadership is working with the

Corporate media to continue to call this corporate sham "democracy"

************************************************************

Ah, but there's hope in Harper's editor, Lewis Lapham's essay:

http://www.harpers.org/TheCaseForImpeachment.html

[Essay]

The Case for Impeachment

Why we can no longer afford George W. Bush

Posted on Monday, February 27, 2006. An excerpt from an essay in the March 2006 Harper's Magazine. By Lewis H. Lapham.

A country is not only what it does—it is also what it puts up with, what it tolerates. —Kurt Tucholsky

On December 18 of last year, Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D., Mich.) introduced into the House of Representatives a resolution inviting it to form “a select committee to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.” Although buttressed two days previously by the news of the National Security Agency's illegal surveillance of the American citizenry, the request attracted little or no attention in the press—nothing on television or in the major papers, some scattered applause from the left-wing blogs, heavy sarcasm on the websites flying the flags of the militant right. The nearly complete silence raised the question as to what it was the congressman had in mind, and to whom did he think he was speaking? In time of war few propositions would seem as futile as the attempt to impeach a president whose political party controls the Congress; as the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee stationed on Capitol Hill for the last forty years, Representative Conyers presumably knew that to expect the Republican caucus in the House to take note of his invitation, much less arm it with the power of subpoena, was to expect a miracle of democratic transformation and rebirth not unlike the one looked for by President Bush under the prayer rugs in Baghdad. Unless the congressman intended some sort of symbolic gesture, self-serving and harmless, what did he hope to prove or to gain? He answered the question in early January, on the phone from Detroit during the congressional winter recess.

“To take away the excuse,” he said, “that we didn't know.” So that two or four or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, “Where were you, Conyers, and where was the United States Congress?” when the Bush Administration declared the Constitution inoperative and revoked the license of parliamentary government, none of the company now present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity, can say that

“somehow it escaped our notice” that the President was setting himself up as a supreme leader exempt from the rule of law.

A reason with which it was hard to argue but one that didn't account for the congressman's impatience. Why not wait for a showing of supportive public opinion, delay the motion to impeach until after next November's elections? Assuming that further investigation of the President's addiction to the uses of domestic espionage finds him nullifying the Fourth Amendment rights of a large number of his fellow Americans, the Democrats possibly could come up with enough votes, their own and a quorum of disenchanted Republicans, to send the man home to Texas. Conyers said:

“I don't think enough people know how much damage this administration can do to their civil liberties in a very short time. What would you have me do? Grumble and complain? Make cynical jokes? Throw up my hands and say that under the circumstances nothing can be done? At least I can muster the facts, establish a record, tell the story that ought to be front-page news.”

Which turned out to be the purpose of his House Resolution 635—not a high-minded tilting at windmills but the production of a report, 182 pages, 1,022 footnotes, assembled by Conyers's staff during the six months prior to its presentation to Congress, that describes the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq as the perpetration of a crime against the American people. It is a fair description. Drawing on evidence furnished over the last four years by a sizable crowd of credible witnesses—government officials both extant and former, journalists, military officers, politicians, diplomats domestic and foreign—the authors of the report find a conspiracy to commit fraud, the administration talking out of all sides of its lying mouth, secretly planning a frivolous and unnecessary war while at the same time pretending in its public statements that nothing was further from the truth.[1] The result has proved tragic, but on reading through the report's corroborating testimony I sometimes could counter its inducements to mute rage with the thought that if the would-be lords of the flies weren't in the business of killing people, they would be seen as a troupe of off-Broadway comedians in a third-rate theater of the absurd. Entitled “The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War,” the Conyers report examines the administration's chronic abuse of power from more angles than can be explored within the compass of a single essay. The nature of the administration's criminal DNA and modus operandi, however, shows up in a usefully robust specimen of its characteristic dishonesty.

* * *

That President George W. Bush comes to power with the intention of invading Iraq is a fact not open to dispute. Pleased with the image of himself as a military hero, and having spoken, more than once, about seeking revenge on Saddam Hussein for the tyrant's alleged attempt to “kill my Dad,” he appoints to high office in his administration a cadre of warrior intellectuals, chief among them Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, known to be eager for the glories of imperial conquest.[2] At the first meeting of the new National Security Council on January 30, 2001, most of the people in the room discuss the possibility of preemptive blitzkrieg against Baghdad.[3] In March the Pentagon circulates a document entitled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oil Field Contracts”; the supporting maps indicate the properties of interest to various European governments and American corporations. Six months later, early in the afternoon of September 11, the smoke still rising from the Pentagon's western facade, Secretary Rumsfeld tells his staff to fetch intelligence briefings (the “best info fast...go massive; sweep it all up; things related and not”) that will justify an attack on Iraq. By chance the next day in the White House basement, Richard A. Clarke, national coordinator for security and counterterrorism, encounters President Bush, who tells him to “see if Saddam did this.” Nine days later, at a private dinner upstairs in the White House, the President informs his guest, the British prime minister, Tony Blair, that “when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.”

By November 13, 2001, the Taliban have been rousted out of Kabul in Afghanistan, but our intelligence agencies have yet to discover proofs of Saddam Hussein's acquaintance with Al Qaeda.[4] President Bush isn't convinced. On November 21, at the end of a National Security Council meeting, he says to Secretary Rumsfeld, “What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq?...I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.”

The Conyers report doesn't return to the President's focus on Iraq until March 2002, when it finds him peering into the office of Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, to say, “xxxx Saddam. We're taking him out.” At a Senate Republican Policy lunch that same month on Capitol Hill, Vice President Dick Cheney informs the assembled company that it is no longer a question of if the United States will attack Iraq, it's only a question of when. The vice president doesn't bring up the question of why, the answer to which is a work in progress. By now the administration knows, or at least has reason to know, that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, that Iraq doesn't possess weapons of mass destruction sufficiently ominous to warrant concern, that the regime destined to be changed poses no imminent threat, certainly not to the United States, probably not to any country defended by more than four batteries of light artillery. Such at least is the conclusion of the British intelligence agencies that can find no credible evidence to support the theory of Saddam's connection to Al Qaeda or international terrorism; “even the best survey of WMD programs will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile and CW/BW weapons fronts...” A series of notes and memoranda passing back and forth between the British Cabinet Office in London and its correspondents in Washington during the spring and summer of 2002 address the problem of inventing a pretext for a war so fondly desired by the Bush Administration that Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain's MI-6, finds the interested parties in Washington fixing “the intelligence and the facts...around the policy.” The American enthusiasm for regime change, “undimmed” in the mind of Condoleezza Rice, presents complications.

Although Blair has told Bush, probably in the autumn of 2001, that Britain will join the American military putsch in Iraq, he needs “legal justification” for the maneuver—something noble and inspiring to say to Parliament and the British public. No justification “currently exists.” Neither Britain nor the United States is being attacked by Iraq, which eliminates the excuse of self-defense; nor is the Iraqi government currently sponsoring a program of genocide. Which leaves as the only option the “wrong-footing” of Saddam. If under the auspices of the United Nations he can be presented with an ultimatum requiring him to show that Iraq possesses weapons that don't exist, his refusal to comply can be taken as proof that he does, in fact, possess such weapons.[5]

Over the next few months, while the British government continues to look for ways to “wrong-foot” Saddam and suborn the U.N., various operatives loyal to Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld bend to the task of fixing the facts, distributing alms to dubious Iraqi informants in return for map coordinates of Saddam's monstrous weapons, proofs of stored poisons, of mobile chemical laboratories, of unmanned vehicles capable of bringing missiles to Jerusalem.[6]

By early August the Bush Administration has sufficient confidence in its doomsday story to sell it to the American public. Instructed to come up with awesome text and shocking images, the White House Iraq Group hits upon the phrase “mushroom cloud” and prepares a White Paper describing the “grave and gathering danger” posed by Iraq's nuclear arsenal.[7] The objective is three-fold—to magnify the fear of Saddam Hussein, to present President Bush as the Christian savior of the American people, a man of conscience who never in life would lead the country into an unjust war, and to provide a platform of star-spangled patriotism for Republican candidates in the November congressional elections.[8]

* * *

The Conyers report doesn't lack for further instances of the administration's misconduct, all of them noted in the press over the last three years—misuse of government funds, violation of the Geneva Conventions, holding without trial and subjecting to torture individuals arbitrarily designated as “enemy combatants,” etc.—but conspiracy to commit fraud would seem reason enough to warrant the President's impeachment. Before reading the report, I wouldn't have expected to find myself thinking that such a course of action was either likely or possible; after reading the report, I don't know why we would run the risk of not impeaching the man. We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country's good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a xxxx who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world's evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation's wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal—known to be armed and shown to be dangerous. Under the three-strike rule available to the courts in California, judges sentence people to life in jail for having stolen from Wal-Mart a set of golf clubs or a child's tricycle. Who then calls strikes on President Bush, and how many more does he get before being sent down on waivers to one of the Texas Prison Leagues?

* * *

The above is a brief excerpt from the complete essay, available in the March 2006 issue of Harper's Magazine.

Notes

1. The report borrows from hundreds of open sources that have become a matter of public record—newspaper accounts, television broadcasts (Frontline, Meet the Press, Larry King Live, 60 Minutes, etc.), magazine articles (in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books), sworn testimony in both the Senate and House of Representatives, books written by, among others, Bob Woodward, George Packer, Richard A. Clarke, James Mann, Mark Danner, Seymour Hersh, David Corn, James Bamford, Hans Blix, James Risen, Ron Suskind, Joseph Wilson. As the congressman had said, “Everything in plain sight; it isn't as if we don't know.” [back]

2. In January of 1998 the neoconservative Washington think tank The Project for the New American Century (which counts among its founding members Dick Cheney) sent a letter to Bill Clinton demanding “the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power” with a strong-minded “willingness to undertake military action.” Together with Rumsfeld, six of the other seventeen signatories became members of the Bush's first administration—Elliott Abrams (now George W. Bush's deputy national security advisor), Richard Armitage (deputy secretary of state from 2001 to 2005), John Bolton (now U.S. ambassador to the U.N.), Richard Perle (chairman of the Defense Policy Board from 2001 to 2003), Paul Wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense from 2001 to 2005), Robert Zoellick (now deputy secretary of state). President Clinton responded to the request by signing the Iraq Liberation Act, for which Congress appropriated $97 million for various clandestine operations inside the borders of Iraq. Two years later, in September 2000, The Project for the New American Century issued a document noting that the “unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification” for the presence of the substantial American force in the Persian Gulf. [back]

3. In a subsequent interview on 60 Minutes, Paul O'Neill, present in the meeting as the newly appointed secretary of the treasury, remembered being surprised by the degree of certainty: “From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go.... It was all about finding a way to do it.” [back]

4. As early as September 20, Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, drafted a memo suggesting that in retaliation for the September 11 attacks the United States should consider hitting terrorists outside the Middle East in the initial offensive, or perhaps deliberately selecting a non-Al Qaeda target like Iraq. [back]

5. Abstracts of the notes and memoranda, known collectively as “The Downing Street Minutes,” were published in the Sunday Times (London) in May 2005; their authenticity was undisputed by the British government. [back]

6. The work didn't go unnoticed by people in the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department accustomed to making distinctions between a well-dressed rumor and a naked lie. In the spring of 2004, talking to a reporter from Vanity Fair, Greg Thielmann, the State Department officer responsible for assessing the threats of nuclear proliferation, said, “The American public was seriously misled. The Administration twisted, distorted and simplified intelligence in a way that led Americans to seriously misunderstand the nature of the Iraq threat. I'm not sure I can think of a worse act against the people in a democracy than a President distorting critical classified information.” [back]

7. The Group counted among its copywriters Karl Rove, senior political strategist, Andrew Card, White House chief of staff, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff. [back]

8. Card later told the New York Times that “from a marketing point of view...you don't introduce new products in August.” [back]

This is The Case for Impeachment by Lewis H. Lapham, published Monday, February 27, 2006. It is part of Features, which is part of Harpers.org.

Written By

Lapham, Lewis H.

Permanent URL

http://harpers.org/TheCaseForImpeachment.html

[John Dolva]

double post. for some reason not all posts seem to register?

Edited March 19, 2006 by John Dolva