Our USA has been here before.  President “Where’s Waldo” is itching to sign treaties, and look busy.  However, Woodrow Wilson in his single most focused issue was to keep USA out of WWI.  Of course he failed on his single most focused issue.  We should study history, not propaganda anecdotes as currently taught.

Our focus on the military leadership is more a  showcase for liberal pet causes, then on preparing to defend our country by the best means available.  Our military front line are ready to do their duty, but most of the leadership needs another General Grant to show up.

Our military alliances are seen as a nuisance and annoyance to our mission of shrinking from the world leadership position. It seems that Woodrow Wilson’s unfullfilled dream is the UN.  Now that it is a reality, nothing has improved in peace, or opression.

We are bowing, and consdescending to any and all our President arrives to visit with hat in hand.  (Of course hats, like courtesy and common sense are relics of a world long gone.)  At least Woodrow Wilson wore a hat when he got us into a world war by his college smarts and world ignorance.  President “Where’s Waldo” should at least wear Wilson’s hat.

The following is an interesting article and I wonder how long Dr. Hunt can remain at NIH once the powers that be get wind of this article.

Dr. Hunt is a social and cultural anthropologist.  He has had nearly 30 years experience in planning, conducting, and managing research in the field of youth studies, and drug and alcohol research. Currently Dr. Hunt is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Scientific Analysis and the Principal Investigator on three National Institutes on Health projects. He is also a writer for American Thinker.

Another Failed Presidency
An article from American Thinker by Geoffrey P. Hunt

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.  In the modern era, we’ve seen several failed presidencies–led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ.  Failed presidents have one strong common trait– they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party.  Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.

But, Barack Obama is failing.  Failing big.  Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed.  Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.

But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months?  His poll ratings are in free fall.  In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage.  This truly is unbelievable.  What’s going on?

No narrative. Obama doesn’t have a narrative.  No, not a narrative about himself.  He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else.  But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn’t connect with us.  He doesn’t have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us.  All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are.  Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don’t align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, and Reagan.

But not this president. It’s not so much that he’s a phony, knows nothing about economics, and is historically illiterate and woefully small minded for the size of the task–all contributory of course.  It’s that he’s not one of us.  And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper.  Moreover, he doesn’t command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don’t add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don’t make sense and don’t correspond with our experience.

In the meantime, while we’ve been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he’s dissed just about every one of us–financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job.  Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: “For those of you I offended, I apologize.  For those of you who were not offended, you just didn’t give me enough time; if only I’d had a second term, I could have offended you too.”

Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state–staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive.  An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year.  With a new Congress, there’s always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.

Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them.  The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.

Margaret Thatcher: “The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.”

“When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.” – James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union

“The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates.” – Tacitus

“A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn’t own.” – Unknown

After the end of WWI, and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire, a new state called Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918, consisting of the regions of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Slovakia, and Carpathian Ruthenia. Many different ethnicities resided within this newly formed country, including Germans, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Ruthenians, living alongside the majority Czech population.

In the western-most region of the country, in the provinces of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, there lived a majority German-speaking population, many of whom had been former subjects of the Kaiser before the fall of the Second Reich. This region was known in German and English speaking countries as Sudetenland, named for the Sudeten mountain range that ran thru Silesia along the Polish border.

At the end of WWI, these Sudeten Germans, known as Sudetendeutsche, pushed hard for unification with Austria, in the ultimate hopes of being incorporated into Weimar Germany. The Czechs, however, pushed US President Woodrow Wilson equally hard for the annexation of Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia. Wilson responded by sending an ambassador to the region to access the situation. At this time in European history, oppression of ethnic and religious minorities was common, and the situation was no different in a figurative melting pot like Czechoslovakia. After witnessing a violent crackdown on Sudeten German protesters by the Czech authorities, Wilson’s ambassador suggested that most of Sudetenland would be better off under German or Austrian rule, but his suggestion was ignored. Those observing the situation knew that Sudetenland would one day become a problem in the future, either for the Czechs at the hands of Germany, or for the Sudeten Germans at the hands of Czechoslovakia, but given the region’s ample resources, and massive industry, which the Czechoslovak State would come to depend on, the Prague government insisted that Czechoslovakia could not survive without it.

During the years after the end of WWI, the Czechoslovak government undertook a massive program of fortifying the Sudetenland along their border with Germany, in fear of invasion. Many of these fortifications were nestled into the Sudeten mountains, and were thought by most military analysts at the time to be even more formidable than the infamous Maginot Line in France. Naturally assuming that any German invasion would have to come thru Sudetenland, the Czechoslovak government didn’t spend nearly as much time, money, or resources fortifying the rest of the country, although there were a similar, though less formidable set of defenses along the Hungarian border as well.

When the Great Depression devastated the worldwide economy in the 1930’s, Sudetenland was hit particularly hard by the downturn, as most all of Czechoslovakia’s industry was located there; armaments, textiles, glassworks, etc… Many ethnic Germans lost there jobs when the factories were forced to lay off workers, and a majority of them blamed the Czech government for their problems. Given their newfound hardships, they became all the more susceptible to communist and socialist messages. Marxist and Fascist parties gained popularity amongst the Sudeten Germans and many Pan-German organizations were formed. One party in particular, called the Sudetendeutsche Party (SdP), an ultra-nationalist/separatist group led by Konrad Henlein (ironically an anti-Nazi until the pro-Nazi element within Czechoslovakia attained power), gained a rather large following amongst Sudeten Germans, after aggressively agitating for union with Nazi Germany and making impossible demands that the Czechoslovak government couldn’t possibly accept. His philosophy was summed up by the following statement; “We must make demands that cannot be satisfied”. Adopting the Nazi phrase “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (one people, one empire, one leader) as his own, Henlein’s SdP attained a majority vote in Sudetenland by the late ’30s, and was behind a number of terrorist attacks and coup attempts against the Czechoslovak government. These attacks failed and Henlein was forced to flee to Nazi Germany in 1938, where he then became a guerilla leader and launched covert attacks on Czechoslovakia from the north. He was instrumental in influencing Hitler’s enthusiasm in regards to the Sudeten Crisis and also played a major role in shaping the Munich Agreement. 

On Sept. 30th, 1938, Hitler signed the Munich Agreement, or Munich Pact, with a number of other signatories, including British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and Fascist Italian leader, Benito Mussolini. After making numerous threats against Czechoslovakia, demanding the handover of the Sudetenland, the major European powers, England, France, and Italy, moved quickly to appease Hitler, as they had done only months earlier when Austria was annexed to the Third Reich in “Anschluss” (meaning link-up). A conference was held in Munich, as the title Munich Agreement would imply, in which the fate of Czechoslovakia was to be determined, yet Czechoslovakia had no say in the matter. Their ambassadors were barred from the conference altogether, at the behest of Hitler, and were forced to sit by quietly as their country was mutilated by Nazi daggers wielded by the very countries (i.e. Britain and France) who had guaranteed to protect Czechoslovakia from the very actions their own statesmen were undertaking. With a stroke of the pen, and a friendly handshake with der Führer, Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier signed over virtually all of the Czechoslovak defenses and industry to Nazi Germany. In addition to the formidable mountain fortifications, which Hitler personally inspected after the pact was made, the famous Škoda Works armaments plant, which was responsible for the production of most all of Czechoslovakia’s armaments, was ceded to the Nazis as well. In fact, the Škoda Works was responsible for the production of the LT-35 and LT-38 tanks, more commonly known by the German name Panzer 35(t) and the Panzer 38(t), which were originally Czech creations. Both models would ultimately serve as the foundation in the invasions of both Poland and France. 

After the Munich Agreement had been signed, Czechoslovakia lost all faith in the West, and would not forgive the governments of Britain and France for their backstabbing until many years later. Oddly enough, Hitler was just as angry. He reportedly loathed the diplomatic dealings of Chamberlain and felt he had been made to act like a democratic bourgeois, threatening that “If that silly old man (Chamberlain) comes interfering here again with his umbrella, I’ll kick him downstairs and jump on his stomach in front of the photographers”. Fearing war might result if nothing could be agreed upon, the British population received the pact favorably and felt they had dodged the bullet, literally and figuratively. In what has become one of the most infamous moments in history, Chamberlain returned to London waving around Hitler’s signature in his hand, exclaiming that he had delivered “peace for our time”… which, in retrospect he most obviously did not. The French ambassador to the conference, Édouard Daladier, however, sensed that the worst of it was yet to come, stating that he believed Hitler’s aim was, “domination of the Continent in comparison with which the likes of Napoleon were feeble”. Unfortunately, as fate would have it, Daladier was right and Chamberlain was wrong. 

By signing the Munich Agreement, Britain and France neutered Czechoslovakia by handing their most formidable defenses to Hitler. This laid the groundwork for the total annexation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi forces, which would take place the following year when the Wehrmacht entered Prague. In addition to this, virtually all of Czechoslovakia’s industries, including the Škoda Works, were made part of Hitler’s war machine, and many of the Panzers that came off of the Škoda production lines were responsible for the deaths of Allied soldiers, in addition to the capture of Paris and Warsaw. Without a doubt, the Munich Agreement set the Allies back for years in terms of their struggle with Hitler. The pact strengthened Hitler’s hand, and weakened the Allies all in one fell swoop. While the goal of “peace in our time” was a noble one, Chamberlain’s dreams of a pacifist Europe were not met by reality. Hitler was very clearly on the warpath and had Britain and France recognized that before it was too late, and had they actually lived up to the obligations they made with countries like Czechoslovakia, Hitler’s war machine may have been stopped years sooner than it was, and millions of lives would’ve been spared. The Škoda Works alone were responsible for untold carnage within the Allied ranks… the same Škoda Works that had belonged to the Allies prior to 1938.

“It is much easier to make war than peace” — Georges Clemenceau (French ambassador at the Paris Peace Conference) 

When the Great War, WWI, had ended, and the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28th, 1919 by the victorious Allied Powers and the defeated Germans, it set in motion a chain of events that ultimately led to the greatest catastrophe in world history, WWII. 

The Kaiser’s army had been quite different from that of the Nazi’s. Yes they had been ruthless, yes they had committed atrocities, but so did many other armies at the time. What made the Kaiser’s forces so much different from Hitler’s was ideology. The Kaiser viewed all Germans, including Jews, as his subjects. In fact, many German-Jews took up arms in the name of the Kaiser and had even served as officers in the war. This is not to say restrictions were not in place; Jews could not join the ranks of the nobility, which in German meant receiving the noble particle “von” before the surname, unless they renounced Judaism and converted to Christianity. This meant they could only rise so high within the ranks of the military, which was not uncommon throughout Europe, as many countries slighted minority groups during the age, be they religious or ethnic, but many Jews served in the Kaiser’s court, and had long established themselves as a well-assimilated, and appreciated community within German society. German-Jews, under the Kaiser, were, for the most part, very proud of their country, culture, and nationality, and thought of themselves as nothing but German. Ashkenazi Jews were actually very closely linked to Germany at the time, and adopted many aspects of German culture into Judaism. Yiddish, for example, was a dialect of German that was widely spoken by many Jews worldwide before the rise of Hitler. 

When Germany surrendered at the end of WWI, one must realize that the Allies didn’t even possess a single square-inch of German soil. For the most part, the British naval blockade, and the protracted nature of trench warfare, was what defeated the German army and the German people’s morale. At the time the armistice was signed, German troops actually occupied French and Belgian territory. Many of the German troops who were told they had to surrender, Pvt. Adolf Hitler included, could not understand why, since it was they, and not the Allies, who occupied their enemy’s countries. They had already technically won the war on the Eastern Front, after signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Russians in 1918, and had come close to winning the war in the West as well, on a number of occasions, even coming to within 30 miles of Paris at one point in the war. What these soldiers could not see, due to the fact it was intentionally being hidden from them by their government, was the fact that the German empire was running out of food, resources, and money, and morale had dwindled so low at home, and in some divisions, that the Kaiser had been deposed and many of his beloved divisions had begun to surrender their positions to the Allies wholesale. The German war machine had essentially been choked out, rather than smashed altogether, and German defeat was more of a matter of circumstance rather than fact. Most parties, such as the British, were simply happy to end the war, given the fact it had been the most costliest in human history up to that point. The French, however, having suffered German invasions for centuries, advocated a march on Berlin that would disable German war capabilities once and for all. The Allies undoubtedly had the upper hand at the time, but the Germans wouldn’t have stood by quietly had the Allies pursued such a strategy. It would’ve cost far more lives and could’ve extended the war for years on end… and, as is always the case in war, there was no guarantee of success either. 

Without being directly exposed to conditions on the home-front, bitter WWI vets, like Adolf Hitler, could not fathom how they had lost the war. From their bunkers and foxholes, all they could see were German boots on French and Belgian soil, yet they were being told that they had lost the war. Various conspiracy theories quickly started to spread amongst the soldier’s ranks, one of which was the Dolchstoßlegende, which translates in English as the “Stab-in-the-Back Legend”. The Dolchstoßlegende was a belief that gained widespread popularity in post-war Germany that claimed communist Jews, who were not believed to be “true Germans at heart”, had sabotaged the war effort both at home and in the field, causing the German war effort to fail. Only reinforcing the people’s belief in this conspiracy, two prominent German-Jewish bankers, Max Warburg and Carl Melchior, were sent to Paris as part of the delegation to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles and procure the “best possible financial terms” for Germany. When the Versailles Treaty turned out to be as harsh as it was, the two bankers were pointed to as evidence of a Jewish conspiracy that was trying to destroy Germany (Max Warburg’s role in financing the Bolshevik movement in Russia didn’t help things either). Jewish bankers and businessmen were accused of profiteering off of Germany’s defeat and the German-Jews as a people were viewed as an alien-element within Germany by much of the population from that point forward; making the people all the more susceptible to Hitler’s anti-Semitic message. The Weimar Republic was also thought to be responsible for the terms of the treaty, due to their ineptitude and corruption. This created a very hostile climate within the country against the government, which led to various coup attempts throughout the Weimar regime’s short reign. 

An astute statesmen, whose name I cannot recall (thought it was Woodrow Wilson but it doesn’t appear to be) said, “If you treat the Germans like enemies, they will not disappoint”. The exceedingly harsh conditions laid out in the Versailles Treaty, designed to break Germany for several generations, were obviously not very well received in the Fatherland. What really bothered many Germans, more so than the loss of territory/colonies, military reduction, or the reparations, was the forced admission of war guilt on the part of country. In the eyes of many, Germans and neutral parties alike, the Allies were at least partly to blame for backing Serbia after Serbian agents assassinated the crown prince of the Austrian Empire, the archduke Franz Ferdinand. The Allies believed that Kaiser Wilhelm simply used the archduke’s assassination as a pretext for war, and that he had been craving new territory for some time. There was no denying that Kaiser Wilhelm was a militarist-expansionist, and that he had a particular distaste for both France and Russia, but claiming that Germany would’ve declared war on the Allies even if Franz Ferdinand had not been shot is pure speculation. The German people begrudged this condition of the treaty so much because they felt it was the source of all the other terms, such as the territorial loss and reparations. Had Germany’s cause for war been declared legitimate, the Allies would’ve had no justification in sticking it to Germany in the fashion that they did. 

These perceived injustices, combined with the ineffectiveness of the democratically elected Weimar Republic, caused widespread resentment in Germany towards the West (i.e. France, Britain, USA, etc..). Democracy, capitalism, materialism, civil rights, etc… were disdained by many, and a rash of anti-Semitism spread like wildfire. Post-WWI, the German people essentially split into two camps, neither of which were democratic; Marxists and National Socialists. Various communist coup attempts took place throughout the reign of the Weimar Republic, which partly led to a rise in ultra-nationalism. In response to these Marxist agents, many of which were Jewish, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party began to make headway on the political scene. It wasn’t long after that that Marxists and Nazis were openly killing each other in the streets. Promising to save the wealthy businessmen in Germany from communism, Hitler gained the support of many capitalists, even though he had no more love for capitalism than the communists did. 

The chaotic political conditions mixed with the miserable economic conditions in Germany set the stage for a demagogic, savior-like figure to rise to the forefront of the political scene. The Germans believed they had been unfairly treated by the Allied powers and believed communist Russia was covertly attacking them, in an effort to dismantle their sovereignty and subjugate them to Soviet rule. When Adolf Hitler promised to put the people back to work, rearm the nation, recover lost territory, and rid the country of foreign/communist/Jewish influence, it resonated with many of the people. Although the Nazi Party never gained a majority in the Reichstag by the vote of the people, they did become the most powerful political party in the country by the late ’20s, and their popularity only grew when Hitler started delivering on his promises (i.e. economic revival, rearmament, territorial reclamation, etc..). 

Had the Allied Powers not alienated, punished, and isolated Germany at the end of the war like they did, they would not have fanned the flames of ultra-nationalism within the country and soured the German people’s taste for democracy. On the other hand, had the Allies not totally destroyed the Kaiser’s system and replaced it with a corrupt faux-democracy, there would’ve been no need for a demagogue to create a new system of his own. On the other side of the spectrum, had the Allies, at the very least, driven the Germans out of France and Belgium, there would’ve been no need on the part of the German soldier to reach for conspiracy theories as to why their government had told them to surrender. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but one can make a pretty good case that the Versailles Treaty was to Hitler as Dr. Frankenstein was to the Frankenstein monster.

In the opinion of most all historians, the first turning point of WWII came decades before Hitler came to power; decades before the second worldwide conflagration was ignited. Had the Allies either dealt with Germany more leniently, or pressed their advantage all the way to Berlin, the course of world history would’ve unquestionably played out much, much differently. 

“I don’t know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war” — Georges Clemenceau 

The signing of the Treaty of Versailles may have been WWII’s first turning point, but it was by no means its last. I will further elaborate on WWII turning points in upcoming posts.

1 de julio de 1916. Bahía de New Jersey. Charles Vansant nadaba cerca de la costa cuando fue atacado por un tiburón, cerca de la orilla, con 1,5 metros de produndidad. Charles fue sacado del agua, pero murió desangrado horas después.

Playa donde murió Vansant

6 de julio de 1916. Spring Lake, New Jersey. Charles Bruder fue atacado por un tiburón a poca distancia de la orilla. Pudo ser sacado del agua, pero murió antes de recibir atención médica.

8 de julio de 1916. Asbury Park.  New Jersey. Un salvavidas remando en una lancha se topa con un tiburón, al que logra ahuyentar con un remo. En la playa cunde el pánico. Esa misma tarde, en la Bahía de Nueva York, desde un plataforma flotante un policía dispara contra un tiburón que se acerca a los niños que nadan en la playa, ahuyentándolo.  

Pero no fue hasta el día 11 de julio, que sucedieron los tristes acontecimientos que dieron inicio a la mala fama de los tiburones; fama que ha marcado muy negativamente la relación entre los seres humanos y los tiburones desde entonces.

En 1916, el verano estaba siendo muy caluroso. Los habitantes de las proximidades del río Matawan, se refrescaban a menudo en las pozas del río. El día 11 de julio, un niño de 14 años, Rennie Cartan, de 14 años, sufrió arañazos en la piel que, supuestamente, habrían sido provocados por el rozamiento de la piel abrasiva de un tiburón. 

El día siguiente, el capitán de barco jubilado Thomas Cottrell, cruzando sobre el río Matawan por un puente, observó un tiburón nadar por el río en dirección al pueblo. El señor Cottrell trató de advertir a los lugareños, pero no le creyeron. Pusieron en duda lo que habían visto sus ojos, incluso sabiendo que por su experiencia como capitán de barco, el señor Cottrell debería haber visto tiburones con anterioridad y sabría recoconocerlos fácilmente.  El señor Cottrell decidió navegar por el río para evitar que los bañistas entraran en el agua. 

Ese mismo día, a las 2 de la tarde, varios niños aliviaban el calor en una poza del río, cuando uno de ellos, Lester Stilwell de 12 años, fue arrastrado bajo el agua por un tiburón. Con más fortuna que Lester, los demás niños lograron salir del agua y pedir ayuda.  Los habitantes del lugar y los familiares de los niños, concluyeron en que Lester habría tenido un ataque de epilepsia (enfermedad que sufría con anterioridad) y se habría ahogado. Los lugareños decidieron crear un grupo de rescate para localizar el cuerpo y sacarlo del agua.  Uno de los miembros del grupo de rescate, Stanley Fisher, robusto sastre de 24 años, logró localizar el cuerpo y sacarlo del agua, momento en el que fue atacado varias veces por un tiburón que lo arrastró hacia aguas profundas del río.  Milagrosamente, Stanley Fisher logró escapar del tiburón y salir del agua. Desafortunadamente, murió horas después en el hospital. Ya nadie puso en duda que un tiburón había atacado a Lester Stilwell y que el capitán  Cottrell estaba en lo cierto cuando había tratado de advertir del peligro a los vecinos.

Como dijimos, aquel día Cottrell estaba recorriendo el río con su lancha tratando de evitar algún ataque y eso salvó la vida de Joseph Dunn, un joven que también nadaba en otra parte del río Matawan, junto a su hermano y un amigo.  Dunn logró sobrevivir gracias a la ayuda de Cottrell.

Cuando la población de Matawan Creek estuvo convencida por las evidencias de que un tiburón rondaba en el río, el alcalde decidió ofrecer una recompensa  de 100 dólares a quien lograra matar al tiburón.

Los vecinos patrullaron el río, dinamitaron sus aguas para cazarlo y pusieron barreras de malla para  acorrarlarlo en la desembocadura del río y evitar así que regresara al mar.

14 de julio. El cuerpo de Lester Stilwell es rescatado del río medio devorado. Ese mismo día, se descubre un agujero en la malla, por el que se presume que el tiburón habría vuelto al mar. Ante la noticia, cunde el pánico en las playas y los hoteles y negocios de la zona ven cómo sus negocios caen en picado en pleno julio.  Era el primer “Verano del Tiburón” de la historia.

Portada del Philadelphia Inquirer del 14 de julio de 1916

Si ya la situación era difícil, los medios de comunicación se dedicaron a causar más confusión y pánico entre los bañistas, y aquellos que, aún encontrándose lejos de la costa, temían bañarse en los ríos cercanos. Hablaban de tiburones come-hombres, dando un tono demasiado sensacionalista a la noticia. Publicaron, incluso, la foto Lester y Stanley, lo que contribuyó aún más a demonizar al “monstruo” que estaban intentando cazar. La recompensa no hizo sino dar rienda suelta a los hombres del lugar que salieron en masa al mar para darle muerte al “devorador de hombres”.  Durante días, cientos de tiburones fueron capturados sin compasión y abiertos en canal en los muelles, ante la mirada de las gentes del lugar, a la espera de encontrar restos humanos en alguno de ellos, que confirmaran cuál había sido el asesino. Esta técnica tan “radical” no dio, sin embargo, ningún resultado.

Trampas nocturnas para capturar al "monstruo"

Ante semejante situación, el propio Presidente de los Estados Unidos, Woodrow Wilson, ordenó la exterminación de los tiburones de la costa de New Jersey.  Afortunadamente, no consiguió su objetivo.

14 de julio. Costa de South Amboy. Michael Schleisser y Johh Murphy dan muerte con un remo a una hembra de tiburón blanco de 2,30 m de longitud y 160 kg de peso. Lo llevaron a tierra y se abrió, encontrando en su interior 7 kilos de restos de carne y huesos, supuestamente humanos. Se llegó así a la conclusión de que el tiburón apresado era el causante de todas las muertes. El ejemplar fue disecado y los huesos se enviaron al Museo de Historia Natural de Nueva York para su estudio. 

Frederic Lucas, director del Museo encargó al ictiólogo John Nichols  que investigara el asunto. Nichols había dado por seguro desde los primeros ataques, que el causante era un tiburón, pero tuvo que lidiar con quienes aseguraron que había sido una orca o incluso una caballa. 

Nichols examinó el cadáver de la hembra capturada y los huesos y Frederic Lucas anunció que aquel tiburón no era el responsable de los ataques de Matawan, puesto que los huesos hallados en su interior, eran efectivamente huesos humanos pero no correspondían con los de Lester y Stanley, sino con los huesos de un hombre ahogado antes de ser devorado. 

La prensa y la sociedad no estaban, sin embargo, dispuestos a exculpar a su “devora-hombres”  y varias teorías sugirieron que entre los restos sí que se había encontrado una tibia compatible con la de un muchacho como Lester Stilwell y un fragmento de costilla que supuestamente podría corresponder quizás de Charles Bruder.  Décadas después aún sigue sin haber una conclusión suficientemente creíble de todo el asunto.

Buena parte de la controversia vino dada por la popularidad del asunto en los medios de comunicación. Era la primera vez que el ser humano se sentía aterrado por los tiburones (no olvidemos que la película Tiburón de un efecto aún más exagerado en el imaginario popular, no se estrenaría hasta 1975).  La gente había acudido en masa a la exhibición del cadáver del animal para comprobar con qué clase de mostruo se habían enfrentado los bañistas de los lujosos hoteles de New Jersey.

Philadelphia Inquirer del 15 de julio de 1916

En 1916 los bañistas comenzaban a disfrutar de las delicias de las vacaciones en la costa.  El comienzo de las interacciones entre ambos seres, uno dominante en la tierra y otro dominante en el mar, no podían haber empezado peor. 

En el año 2001, Michael Capuzzo publicó un libro titulado “Close to the shore: A true story of terror in an age of innocence” (Cerca de la orilla: una verdadera historia de terror en una edad de inocencia). Es cierto que el ser humano, por entonces, comenzaba a aproximarse a mar en sus ratos de ocio, con cierta inocencia.   Comenzaba a sugir el fenómeno de la playa y el mar como un lugar lúdico. Y allí estaban los tiburones desde tiempos inmemorables, haciendo lo que tienen que hacer por naturaleza.  El ser humano había comenzado su invasión que poco después, ya dejó de ser tan inocente.

Capuzzo, nominado en varias ocasiones para el premio Pulitzer y colaborador del Philadelphia Inquirer y residente en New Jersey, recrea en su libro el verano de 1916, cuando Estados Unidos aún no había entrado en la Primera Guerra Mundial y el imaginario popular encontró en esta historia un buen lugar para dar rienda suelta a sus terrores colectivos, y sostiene asi mismo, la teoría del gran tiburón blanco como causante de los ataques.

En 2002, National Geographic, realizó un documental a cargo de Fabien Cousteau, sobre “Los ataques del tiburón misterioso”. Fabien, nieto del gran Jacques Custeau, analiza lamisma historia. Visita diferentes lugares del planeta donde se dan ataques de tiburones en ríos y concluye en que los ataques de Matawan debieron ser causados por un Carcharinus Leucas (Tiburón sarda o toro), capaz de adentrarse en aguas dulces, no así el gran tiburón blanco. El documental recoge los ataques del tiburón del río Ganges, del río Zambeze, y concluye que en el rio Matawan, se adentró un tiburón capaz de abandonar el agua salada.

Fabien incluso drenó la parte del río donde murieron Lester Stilwell y Stanley Fisher, en busca de dientes que pudieran corroborar su teoría, pero no lo consigue. Por mi parte, estoy con Fabien. El gran blanco pudo atacar a los bañistas de la costa y un tiburón toro adentrarse en el rio Matawan. Sólo es que sucedieron ambos hechos en un intervalo de tiempo excaso y en la misma zona, quizas condicionados por la afluencia de público a las playas, el intenso calor de aquel mes de julio, etc.

Recordemos que en 2001, vivimos otro verano del tiburón. Antes de ese año, los estadounidenses estaban sensibilizados en la conservación de los tiburones. Aquel verano, la mentalidad colectiva volvió a cambiar y retrocedió casi a niveles de 1975, cuando Spielberg estrenó JAWS.

Los tiburones son más que nunca víctimas de su mala prensa, de su mala fama. Miles de personas a lo largo y ancho del mundo estamos empeñados en borrar esa mala fama y luchar porque no sean exterminados, pero a menudo, la lucha se hace titánica.

En nuestros días, la batalla entre el mayor depredador sobre la faz de la tierra y el mayor depredador de los mares está ya totalmente desequilibrada y el ser humano está logrando exterminar seres que pueblan los océanos desde mucho antes de que los seres humanos y sus parientes más lejanos, hubieran surgido en el planeta.

El ser humano destruye todo lo que toca, sin más. Millones de años para que un ser vivo se constituya en un animal evolutivamente perfecto y el ser humano lo destruye en menos de un siglo y no sólo por necesidades económicas y supervivencia de la especie, sino también por razones de ocio y deportivas. En 1916, el ser humano se acercó al mar y quiso dominarlo. Como el océano no se dejó dominar, el ser humano decidió poseerlo, destruirlo a base de residuos, hidrocarburos, venenos, pesca indiscriminada,…cuánta soberbia. ¿Quiénes nos creemos que somos? Sólo unos proyectos imperfectos de seres vivos con una presencia en el planeta ínfima comparados con las características evolutivas y tiempo de supervivencia en el planeta por parte de los tiburones.

* Las imágenes corresponden la web del libro Close to the shore de Michael Capuzzo.

Authors, bloggers, news show hosts, that irritating guy in the bar—whether being factual or misleading or just plain warped—they, and we, all take daily (or nightly) protection from the First Amendment, and in particular this staunch excerpt: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

And yet, as illuminated by Laurence W. Levy’s Emergence of a Free Press, the First Amendment was overtly disregarded by Congress just seven years after the Bill of Rights was ratified, when it passed the Sedition Act of 1798. Amongst other things this made illegal:

“writing, printing, uttering, or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States.” (Section 2)

“Happily,” even then, pretty much no one expected it to be a constitutional law—it was given a three-year expiry date when it was brought in and was out in 1801, along with the Federalist party government who had pushed the bill through Congress. Rather less happily, even at that stage, those most opposed to the Act, such as Madison (yes, the Madison who drafted the Bill of Rights), only took issue with the Federal government prosecuting anti-government protest: state-based action against the same crime was considered just fine at the time. Fortunately times change, but not always as much as you’d think.

A small jump, and we come to the 1918 Sedition Act pushed through Congress under Woodrow Wilson, which was actually upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, and had to be specifically repealed in 1921 after a number of high and low profile abuses. It bears some similarities to the 1798 Act, prohibiting, “When the United States is at war, [to] …willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States” (Section 3). Oh, and it permitted the Postmaster General to prevent the delivery of mail to any known dissenter, which would be returned to sender (Section 4). One is reminded of a modern day email firewall that monitors one’s activity, one that can’t be disabled…

Of course, you might say that each of these acts only lasted a few years, and was at the time justified by the need to deal with apparent international and domestic threats. In 1798 these were the Undeclared Naval War with France, as well as the vicious political sparring between the Federalist party in power (ancestors of the Republicans) and the Republican party in opposition (ancestors of the Democrats) that makes some modern partisanship look almost civilized. I particularly enjoy the exchange in Congress on June 21, 1798 where John Allen of Connecticut (a Federalist) accuses Edward Livingston of New York (a Democratic Republican) of having ‘“vomited” falsehood on “everything sacred, human and divine,”’[1] for having spoken out against apparent Federalist plans for reducing civil liberties.

In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson had to deal with a Great War he didn’t know was almost over as well as the Red Scare—it was only a year after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 after all and communism was still only partly tarnished and attracting serious consideration as a social philosophy. Then again, take another look at these threats: two centuries ago or so, an “Undeclared War,” fought at sea and strong political dissent at home in a country still not entirely comfortable with its constitution provided the threatening atmosphere; almost one century ago it was again a war fought offshore, and fear of revolutionary communism. Whilst these threats may be rationalized, they are hard, even today, to quantify, and one can perhaps understand the sense of general threat that must have fostered the two Sedition Acts and the other illiberal legislation that partnered them. After all, when you are feeling out of control, faced with something dangerous but amorphous, what more representative thing in the ether to try to pin down and punish, than words?

These days, ironically enough, it is often as not the federal government that one feels inclined to be sorry for when perusing the latest edition of sedition with one’s cornflakes. For example, one might read about Obama’s speech to schoolchildren in September being compared to indoctrination in the style of Chinese communism and the Hitler Youth. It’s not too far away from a similar story in a Federalist journal in 1800 about the threats those sympathetic to the French (i.e., American Catholics) posed to American children, spreading their evil in print:

“‘the diffusion of Jacobinical principles, thro’ the medium of children’s Books,’ [corrupts] young minds by making them ‘imbibe, with their very milk,’ the poisons of atheism and sedition.’”[2]

Yet, back in 1800, this story was propagated by a newspaper effectively allied with the government in power. In the end, maybe, the only answer seems to be to ensure that there are always at least two sides to the story to be heard, seen, or read.

RC

[2] Gazette of the United States (Philadelphia), June 4, 1800, (Cited by Levy, Ibid, pp298-299).

Progressives Don’t Understand Progressivism

Wednesday, November 11. “They’re making fun of you again, Beck,” says The Factor host Bill O’Reilly, on air, to conservatism’s hottest commodity these days, Glenn Beck. He is referring to another skit on Saturday Night Live, or The Daily Show, or whatever other bastion of liberal humor is trying to poke fun at the crew-cutted commentator this particular week. Beck’s eyes gloss over—surely he suffers temporary blindness for the gold visions that illuminate his mind. (Liberals entertain visions of dollars, lots of ‘em, preferably still wet off the printing press, but Beck eschews the plummeting U.S. currency in favor of precious metals!) Beck realizes each parody of his show brings more viewers to his already-a-hit show on Fox News, as well as listeners to his radio show, attendees to his road shows, and buyers to his books.

Beck’s battleship has arrived simultaneously in every port in the United States, ready to fire at Marxists, Czars, and anything else with even a fleck of Commie Red in it, all the while making a healthy free-marketed, capitalistic, fat, all-American profit.

Speaking of that ship, picture the liberals who hate Beck as jittery sailors at sea when they see enemy Beck’s dreadnought approaching. Their eyes, bulging with rage, are playing tricks on them, so that the red, white, and blue flag of patriotism that flies above Beck’s ship, is, in their view, dripping in very conservative colors—say, black, with bone-white skull and crossbones. Before Beck gets close enough for them to see his true colors, the liberal fleet puts great amounts of their treasure into a dinghy, and sets it afloat toward Beck’s ship.

That’s what SNL is doing for Beck every time they poke fun at him. That’s what the girls on The View do every time they back bite Beck. That’s what MSNBC does every time it decries Beck’s methods. Beck should give them all commissions. Someday we’ll discover that Keith “Obama-man” is actually Beck’s brilliant press agent!

Scientists say the appendix is useless to modern man–not Beck’s. His acted up and Jon Stewart used the occasion to add more wealth to Beck’s growing portfolio. Stewart did a hilarious impersonation of the conservative culprit, lecturing at great length about Beck’s appendicitis. Fans of Beck will laugh with Stewart because he cleverly lampoons Beck’s mannerisms, tears, and methods of persuasion. Liberals will laugh at Beck in a na na na naaah na mockery. No matter—to Beck, any sort of laughter just means more money.

In watching the Stewart segment on Beck, you’ll want to pay close attention from 1:00 to 1:26, because it reveals a flaw in the thinking of liberals who think they are “progressives,” which in their innocence, means “you know, we’re progressing, getting better—that sort of thing.”

Of course. Who doesn’t want progress?

Progress such as in the 1850s, in order to get from Pittsburg to San Francisco, you needed horses. By the 1880s, trains were faster. By the early 1900s, you might use an automobile, and by the 1930s, you could fly in a commercial airplane. That sort of progress. That’s Progressivism—right? Go forward. Westward Ho. Move on. (Moveon.org, Baby!) See how it all works?

Stewart, impersonating Beck, says, “I’ve been reading a lot of books lately, books on anatomy that aren’t now taught in your ‘so-called’ medical schools anymore. Apparently the medicine that was good enough for our founding fathers is now considered ‘politically or medically incorrect.’”

However funny on the surface, this statement reveals that most Americans, even self-proclaimed progressives, don’t understand what Progressivism is. If they did, many of them would flee from this menace of actual progress. Stewart asserts through humor that Beck’s adherence to principles established by the founding fathers is “anti-progress,” which is erroneous because it assumes that Progressivism is just plain progress, which is the same mistake misinformed liberals make in their beliefs about Progressivism.

Both a real progressive (that is, one of the few that really understand what it means to be one), and a pseudo progressive (one who claims the movement in ignorance of what it really is) would argue that since medical science has progressed markedly through the ages, and is thus better in almost every facet, then politics must progress as well, because, like medicine, it needs to move forward. Stewart is of course referring to this in his derision of Beck. Specifically for American politics, true progressives believe this also means improving or even doing away with an antiquated constitution.

However, the U.S. Constitution is arguably the best legal political document ever written. It has been the bedrock for the longest-surviving government in the world, and has been instrumental in catapulting the United States as its undisputed leader. Its system of checks and balances is unprecedented and unparalled. Without the constitution, American would never have enjoyed the freedom to create a strong nation that has prospered as no other nation in history.

Most changes to American government since the days of the founding fathers that have been detrimental to the country have either gone against the constitution, or have been unwise changes to the document. Many of these changes occurred during the “Progressive Age,” consisting of the first 40 or so years of the 1900s. One of those changes was the Seventeenth Amendment, ratified under President Woodrow Wilson, a progressive kingpin. Before its passage, U.S. senators were selected by their respective state legislatures. Progressives who wanted to update and improve the constitution felt that there was too much chicanery and politics involved in the selection process and wanted to put the decision in the hands of voters. While this might seem good on the surface, what has ensued is far worse.

One of the delicate factors in the checks and balances system is that of states’ rights vs. central government. The framers of the country knew states needed more power to create a lasting and equitable relationship with the federal government. In fact, this partial power assignment to states was what convinced many of the colonies to unite into a larger country. However, since the inception of the Seventeenth Amendment, senators pay less attention to their states’ needs because they now receive donations for their election campaigns from all over the country. A senator like Christopher Dodd (D), from the relatively small state of Connecticut, gets much of his donations from out-of-state interests, and is beholden to those nationally based companies. This is not good for Connecticut, but great for Dodd, and for big firms with deep pockets. Americans now routinely complain that elections are bought, not earned. Much of the voice of the people was silenced with that constitutional change in 1913.

Progressivism as a movement began in the late 1800s, and became the fork in the road that led large a segment of classical liberals away from the roots that were elemental in the formation of the country. Most of the patriots were liberals, but in the old definition, coming from the word “liberty”—they wanted small government, and it was built into the constitution.

Wilson was one of Progressivism’s most ardent advocates, as was President Theodore Roosevelt. They, along with a whole slew of progressives such as Charles Beard, Arthur Bullard, Nicholas Murray Butler, Herbert Croly (author of the landmark progressive work, The Promise of American Life, and founding editor of the New Republic), W.E.B. DuBois, Richard Ely, Walter Lippmann, Walter Weyl, and William Allen White, were strong voices in the early 1900s for evolving away from the constitution.

Are you a progressive yourself? Perhaps you’re saying, ‘Hmm—I haven’t heard of most of these guys.” Well, if you’re not familiar with these intellectuals, writers, opinion shapers, and with their views, then you don’t know Progressivism. If you’re going to espouse a movement, you need to know about it. Let’s take a closer look at just one of these influencers: Wilson.

According to historian Jonah Goldberg, in his book, Liberal Fascism (2009), “Wilson’s writings are chockablock with demands that the ‘artificial’ barriers established in our ‘antiquated’ eighteenth-century system of checks and balances be smashed. He mocked the ‘Fourth of July sentiments’ of those who still invoked the founding fathers as a source for constitutional guidance” (p. 88).

Goldberg goes on to explain that, “On the campaign trail in 1912, Wilson explained that ‘living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice’” (p. 88).

What Wilson and his ilk were saying was that the old constitution was dead, and what was needed was a living one. This is still at the heart of American Progressivism. Other progressives, such as Otto von Bismarck, Benito Mussolini, and Adolph Hitler, were not so much concerned with the American constitution, although they had similar core beliefs and methods to grow Progressivism. These European leaders were also quite influential to American progressives who viewed their ostensible early Twentieth Century success with envy—even admiration.

Under Wilson, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” began turning into an iron fist. Wilson quickly double-crossed the record number of blacks who turned away from their favored Republican Party to vote for him. In short order, he passed laws that allowed segregation in government, including requiring photos on government job applications in order to know the race of an applicant. He also saw to it that blacks could not sit with whites in Washington D.C. streetcars, and he made interracial marriage illegal in D.C.

That doesn’t sound very liberal, does it?

Wilson and his administration quelled Americans’ and the press’ ability to voice dissent against him. According to Goldberg, “Wilson’s Sedition Act banned ‘uttering, printing, writing, or publishing any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States government or the military.’ The postmaster general was given authority to deny mailing privileges to any publication he saw fit” (p. 112). Thousands of Americans were imprisoned under this act.

Liberals would not like that either—they could get imprisoned for saying something negative about President George W. Bush! Yet, we still see underpinnings of Progressivism when President Barack Obama attempts to silence the voices of the Tea Party, or of conservative talk radio, or of right wing websites.

Progressivism is not that far-removed from its ugly past.

The list of Wilson’s egregious acts, all under the name of Progressivism, goes on and on. Suffice it here to say that after Progressivism lost its savor with its failures in Italy under Mussolini, Germany under Hitler, and Russia under Stalin. It began to revive in the 1960s, and really gained its current steam under the Clintons. Most readers are aware that during the Democratic debates in 2008, Hillary Clinton referred to the early Twentieth Century progressives as her model.

So-called progressives should enjoy a hearty guffaw at talented funnyman Stewart’s take on Beck. However, they are wise to not take their serious political cues from Comedy Central.

–CB

See Jon Stewart’s Hilarious Take on Beck:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091123/dailyshow_video

A short postscript added 12-November-2009

Laura Carlsen, in today’s Americas: MexicoBlog writes on the Honduras “agreement”:

What will surely go down in the books as one of the worst diplomatic agreements ever, was hammered out by the State Department team—[Thomas] Shannon, joined by Obama advisor Dan Restrepo and the man who has now been sent in to try to clean up the mess, Craig Kelly. It was signed by the two parties on Oct. 29.

I thought from the beginning that by forcing the legitimate government of Honduras to “negotiate” with the gangsters who seized the presidency was dishonest from the start — but given that the United States was going to impose its will on Honduras (as it always has); that a Wilsonian-style Democratic Party administration is in power (interested in domestic reforms,  multi-laterialist in foreign policy, but with the assumption of imposing U.S. values and solutions on the rest of the planet); AND that the present Secretary of State (like Wilson’s William Jennings Bryan) was selected as a sop to a defeated inter-party rival, despite having little or no real foreign policy experience (and despised by Latin American policy-makers) — a “negotiation” of some kind was inevitable.

While the coup has had the benefit of uniting Hondurans who are in favor of change into a coherent movement, at worst, a successful negotiated settlement would create a “coalition government ” (of reformers and gangsters) which might delay change, but would avoid an abrupt, violent reaction.

And, one is tempted to give the Obama Administration the benefit of the doubt, given that Thomas Shannon was a Bush administration holdover.

Shannon, however, may have had no intention of acting as an honest broker (as if one honesty brokers with crooks):

Tom Shannon met with Republican Senator Jim DeMint on Oct. 20 and DeMint urged him to recognize the Honduran elections without the reinstatement of Zelaya. DeMint offered to release his holds on Shannon’s nomination to the ambassadorship of Brazil and the nomination of Arturo Valenzuela to fill Shannon’s shoes as Asst. Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

DeMint, who traveled to Honduras to meet with the coup regime last month, had blocked these two key State Department nominations ostensibly in protest of the administration’s policies to reinstate Zelaya.

White reports that there is every indication that Shannon had already formulated this critical change in policy to abandon the demand for reinstatement when he flew down to Tegucigalpa on Oct. 28, and that coup leader Roberto Micheletti knew this. That left only President Zelaya and the rest of the world in the dark as to the real goal of the negotiations.

No… that left people like Elisabeth Malkin – a good Latin American reporter unfortunately employed by the same newspaper that believed the Bush Administration’s claims that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” — in the dark:

Under fire from allies in Latin America and on Capitol Hill, the Obama administration moved Tuesday to try to salvage the American-brokered agreement that had been billed as paving the way for a peaceful end to the coup in Honduras. Instead, the accord seems to have provided the country’s de facto government with a way to stay in power until a presidential election scheduled for the end of this month.

Whether it was Shannon, Jim DeMint or Hillary Clinton, the effect is the same.  The United States has signaled to Latin America that United States policy remains as it always has been — to treat any reformist, no matter how mild or ineffectual (like Mel Zelaya) or change in the status quo, even when the impact on the Untied States is simply higher wages for Honduran workers (which might have raised the cost of underwear at your local Wal-mart by a penny or so) as something to be thwarted at all cost.  Including damaging the honor of the nation, and the reputation of its president.

POSTSCRIPT:

Magbana, on the situation, and the reputation of the Obama administration, writes (12-Nov-09) on Honduras Oye!:

I won’t repeat what I wrote in yesterday’s update, but a few more things are worth mentioning.  The biggest reason to believe that the US was behind the coup is that there is no way that the Honduran military, with the millions it receives from the US annually, is going to embark on a coup involving massive deployment of troops and the kidnapping of a head of state without explicit approval of the US.  Pure and simple, if the US did not want President Zelaya out, he would be at the presidential palace today and not a guest of the Brazilian embassy.

I guess there is an assumption that there is a difference between Democratic and Republican administrations and there may be in areas such as  social and economic programs.  But, when it comes to foreign affairs and Defense Department spending there is someone else in the driver’s seat and the car is definitely not parked at  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

…

But, even if I was unfamiliar with the situation in Honduras, I would know immediately that it was a US-backed coup  because of one thing:  the coup in Haiti.

Six weeks after the February 29, 2004 coup d’etat  in which the democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was kidnapped, I was in Port-au-Prince as part of a delegation to determine the US’ role in the coup and kidnapping of Aristide.  It is in Haiti that the US perfected the template for the  coup in Honduras with certain variations here and there.  I remember talking with people here in the States after I returned from Haiti  and it was only when I told them certain things did they begin to comprehend that the US was the force behind it all.  They were shocked at first because they could not believe that the US would be capable of such things.

And you wonder why I say Latin Americans have good reason to regard the Obama administration as more of the same old, same old as every other U.S. administration?

November 11,1918 marked the end of the war to end all wars or WWI. Alas, as we know all too well, that was not to be. Truth be told, it had no chance to achieve that goal. Wars have continued and continue; in all sizes and for a multitude of reasons. The day we call Veterans Day remembers those who served, those who returned,those who didn’t and honors those who serve now. We know all too well about those in Iraq and Afghanistan but also South Korea, on ships around the world, in numerous other countries and on bases here at home like Ft Benning and particularly Ft Hood.

The day originated as Armistice Day on November 11,1919,  the first anniversary of WWI’s conclusion, at the urging of Pres Woodrow Wilson. It did not become a national holiday, however,until 1938. The name changed to Veterans Day until 1954 when President Eisenhower signed legislation to honor those who had served in any  and all wars. Appropriately so, since he was the Supreme Allied Commander in WWII.

We have  around 24 million living veterans, about 10% of whom are women and  slightly over 10% are African-American. Some the more interesting  facts I discovered was that about  40% of of our living vets are over 65 but only 10% of  our living vets are from WWII. That is  a number that is rapidly declining. Numbers also indicate that about 1/3 of  veterans live in  just 5 states; California, Texas, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania. I know numbers can be mind numbing but just  a couple more. The number of living veterans   comprises roughly 1/2 of  the veterans that served in wartime since Revolutionary  War  days .

So, today, we salute them all (the approximately 1.5 million on active duty) those who have served and remain  and in particular those who are gone.

Veterans Day started as a day to remember the anniversary of the Armistice signing that ended World War I. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 the German signed the Armistice which helped to end the major hostility. Pres. Woodrow Wilson first proclaimed an Armistice Day for November 11, 1919 and on November 8, 1954 Congress amended this act on by replacing “Armistice” with Veterans and it has been known as Veterans Day ever since.

Source: Wikipedia

I will admit that I am liable to overstate things in these History posts: calling the Hyksos the inventors of war, hypothesizing that Sweden was a Charles XII compromise away from becoming the secondary European power of the 18^th century, and outright stating that November 9, 1989 was the best day of David Hasselhoff’s life.

Here’s another one for you: November 11, 1918—the date of ceasefire in World War I—was the best day of the 20^th century.*

*Germans excepted.

This requires a bit of anachronism. You see, on 11/11/18 (at 11:00 a.m.)* when the ceasefire (between the Allies and Germany; there were still some skirmishes over in the East) took effect, we didn’t know about the consequences down the line. We didn’t know that the vengeance demanded by David Lloyd George and Georges Clemanceau on Germany would leave their enemy ripe for an even greater stab at imperialist conquest. We didn’t know that the aims of by far our most idealistic president would be shot down in Congress because of his own unwillingness to compromise. We didn’t know that his intransigence would more or less kill him in office. We didn’t know that our internal unrest regarding this upheaval in Russia would survive another 73 years at least.

*The numerologists are all over Armistice Day.

Above all, we didn’t know that “The Great War” would be a misnomer in 25 short years. We didn’t know that World War I would seem more like a historical prologue decades later, overwhelmed by the imposing shadow cast by a spectacular sequel that had more heroes, more villains, and more explosions.

We didn’t know any of this on Armistice Day—the day we could imagine that the worst was behind us and the best yet to come, a day we could naively celebrate about a victory with no thought of the next battle.

So more hyperbole: November 11, 1918 is perhaps the last day of global innocence. And it’s not even a real holiday anymore.

Tomorrow, our fellow Americans will dutifully and patriotically pay their heartfelt respect to our nation’s veterans, from sea to shining sea.   Veterans Day usually memorialized on the 11th day in the month of November.  In other parts of the world it is widely known as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day.   This marks the anniversary of the official declaration signing which ended World War I.  All major conflicts of this world war ended on the 11th hour, of the 11th day, on the 11th month in 1918.   U.S. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Veterans Day on November 11, 1919.   On May 26, 1954 an idea came to Al King, Emporia, Kansas to suggest having the day honor veterans from all wars.   After legislature through the Congress, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed it into law making it official.   Proudly display your American flags either at your home or place of business and show your colors, not only Veterans Day, but everyday.  Our young men and women of the United States military are presently serving their country in deserts of Iraq and mountainous enclaves and remoteness of Afghanistan.   The least we can do back home is show our appreciation and gratitude for a service well done.

UNITED, WE CAN ALL CHANGE THE WORLD!!! WHETHER IT’S THRU ART, MUSIC, FASHION, OR ANY OTHER FORM OF HUMAN EXPRESSION, TOGETHER ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!!! UNITY WILL HELP US SEE THE BIGGER PICTURE!!! ENJOY AND LET THE INSPIRATION BEGIN!!!

LTC Joseph D'Angelo

Veteran’s Day is rapidly approaching and it’s a time to reflect and give thanks to the brave men and women that have served and are serving in our military.

The first commemoration of Veterans or Armistice Day came on November 11, 1919 when President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that date to remember those that died in our country’s service following World War I.

Today we use the holiday to reflect with solemn pride the heroism of those who died and who serviced our country as we show gratitude for their service.

There are many Veterans living in our community who served their country during periods of war.  Robert Karp served in the Korean War, DJ Blinn was a marine in Vietnam and Dr. Joseph D’Angelo who recently returned from his second combat deployment are just a few of the thousands of Veterans from the Big Island.

Lt. Colonel Joseph D’Angelo, MD, has been in the US Army National Guard since July 2002.  He served in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2005 and most recently served in Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom, returning to family and practice in Hilo a few weeks ago.

“This is just something I have to do and it’s something I want to do,” D’Angelo said of his deployments.

While in Afghanistan D’Angelo was able to work out on a regular basis to stay in great shape. “The first two months I was at a Forward Operating Base with more amenities and a bigger gym, he said. “The last month was the best time as I was at a small Combat Outpost.  Both of these were in Eastern Afghanistan, a couple of hours north of Jalalabad.”
D’Angelo was located at the “front lines” and his outpost was mortared several times, with night time attacks on the COP several times a week.

“Despite the combat none of our guys were hurt on my watch, except usually by their own doing,” D’Angelo said.  “There were gym accidents, dehydration, as well as viruses, etc.”

On some evenings the attacks came while D’Angelo was in the gym during his workouts which required him to run to his station, and when the all clear was given he returned to the gym.

 “I was much more disciplined with my workout regimen which consisted of an hour ride on a stationary bike,” he said.  “Usually I’d find riding a stationary bike boring, but I read a good book, Last of the Mohicans, and it kept me interested and on the bike longer than my experience had in the past.”

In the larger camp D’Angelo ran the walkway around the helicopter landing zone and learned the hard way about the force of a Black Hawk landing, “I was thrust forward by the force of a Black Hawk into a barely controlled sprint,” he said.

At the smaller camp running was considered too dangerous, given the enemy activity in the area, and D’Angelo was limited to the stationary bike for his aerobic work outs.

For an anaerobic workout D’Angelo focused on his upper body by lifting weights and was very pleased with his progress as he lost some weight and added some muscle tone.

“One thing that helped was working with a very good Air Force Physician’s Assistant who was formerly a personal trainer and had the body of a small, young, Arnold,” D’Angelo said.

From the Physician’s Assistant, D’Angelo learned to do dumb bell curls, dumb bell press, rows, flies and proper sit ups.  “I found that with a single bar bench press it puts too much unnatural stress on the shoulder and rotator cuff and that this is one of the most common injuries,” D’Angelo said.

We all know Veterans Day as a day to give thanks for the many men and women who have served and sometimes died for our great country but where and how did this Holiday come about? First things first though, we need to get the spelling correct. Is it Veterans Day, Veteran’s Day, or Veterans’ Day? I was actually unsure of this and to be honest with you, I started the blog off as “Veterans’ Day”. Come to find out, all 3 ways are correct, yet the US government has formally declared that it is properly titled as Veterans Day. Whoo, I was worried I was going to get picked on for not knowing the answer, and before I do, let’s keep it moving…

Following the end of World War I in 1918, President Woodrow Wilson set aside November 11 as Armistice Day. November 11 was the symbolic end of the war which was marked by the Armistice at Rethondes, France between the Allies and Germany. There, on the 11^th day of the 11^th month at the 11^th hour, the Armistice was signed into effect and is now generally regarded as the moment when World War I ended. At that point in History, World War I was the deadliest war of all time with over 16.5 million casualties worldwide, including 116,708 American casualties. It was immediately declared a national holiday by many allied powers. Many nations around the world commemorated these fallen soldiers and the “cause of world peace” at 11:00am by observing two minutes of silence. This remained how it was generally observed until 1939, when during World War II, people began observing the moments of silence on the Sunday closest to November 11^th so that there would be no interference with wartime activities.

In 1953, following World War 2, a man by the name of Al King proposed the name to be changed “All Veterans Day”. Al King worked directly with the American War Dads during World War 2 and knew many of the fallen soldiers and their families of WW2. Then, with the help of US Rep. Ed Reese, who also was from King’s hometown of Emporia, Kansas, a bill was passed through congress and eventually signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on May 26, 1954 officially changing the name to “Veterans Day”.

Today there are many activities on November 11^th…from parades to memorial services to ceremonies. We honor the memories and lives of America’s bravest men and women. We give thanks for our freedoms and understand the prices that have been paid for them. Candles are lit, services are held, and flags are displayed. We ask that this November 11^th you lift up these brave soldiers in your heart and give thanks to the men and women currently overseas protecting this great nation!

Warren G. Harding, The Revolution And The Crash

by

R.E. Prindle

     The Geat Black Hope announced that this period would be one of  change ‘we’ can believe in so cast that spell for a very brief look at the US from 1917 to 1933 focusing on the presidency of that great President, Warren G. Harding.  Harding has been maliciously vilified because of his great success against the Revolution.

     The Jewish revolution which began in earnest in 1913 was reaching its apogee between 1917 and 1922 both in Europe and the US.  In 1919-20 the Jews were in full revolt in Europe while running a close second in the US.  During the Wilson administration Jews were nearly in control.  Massive bombings and criminal activities filled the year 1919 in the US which while not characterized as a revolution by US historians, which is to say Jewish historians, that is what it was.

     Millions of dollars of saving bonds had been stolen which were being cashed by Jews.  The lax Wilson administration allowed revolutionary criminals to run wild so that by 1921 when Harding took office the mails were being plundered at an alarming rate.  The country was in virtual anarchy.  When Harding assumed ofice in March of ‘21 he announced a return to ‘normalcy’ and aggressively acted to bring it about.  The return to ‘normalcy’ meant the suppression of the Judaeo-Communist revolution.  The Communist Party was outlawed while Federal agents aggressively pursued the Communist Parties.

     Will Hays was appointed Postmaster General actively attacking the postal criminals and restoring order there.  Wall Street then as now was out of control.  All those who stood up to the revolution had to be destroyed.  Some, such as the Dodge Brothers were murdered.  A failed murder attempt was made on Henry Ford also.  He was successfully defamed within a few years.

     The restorer of  ‘normalcy’, Warren G. Harding was both aggressively defamed and ultimately probably murdered.  The price of his success was to be condemned as the worst President of all time.  You don’t mess with Rohan.  Right?

     But with the suppression of the revolution the Republicans were firmly in power with little chance of being moved out unless another debacle such as TR and the Progressive Party. 

     Harding, Coolidge, Hoover and full prosperity.  As Alfred Rosenberg in his Myth Of The Twentieth Century stresses the real culprit was International Jewish Finance or the Global Money Trust of today.  Then as now new destructive financial instruments based on nothing but air were introduced.  It would take a major disaster to oust the Republicans.  Therefore a financial bubble was created not unlike our own recent housing bubble created by Greenspan and Wall Street.  The bubble burst in 1929 plunging the country into Depression.  This allowed FDR to be elected as a savior.  The Jews then rushed back into DC taking a major role in the administration.  Rather than solving the financial problem Roosevelt exacerbated  it from 1933 until 1942 when WWII began aborting the revolution while renewing prosperity until the housing debacle.

     It took a while but when the going gets tough the tough get schemeing.

President H.W. Bush, borrowing a phrase from an earlier era, popularized the term “New World Order” (NWO) in the early 1990s. But while the New World Order has legitimate roots, it has come to be associated with little more than paranoid conspiracy.

Given what we’ve witnessed in recent times, however, is it wise to continue to dismiss the notion out-of-hand?

The following metaphor, Friedmanesque but nevertheless useful in view of the controversial nature of this topic, paints a picture of what political and economic progress may look like as the 21st Century progresses — and why a NWO may not be as far-fetched as so many of us are inclined to believe.

Imagine a smattering of raindrops hitting the pavement. Each raindrop represents the relative isolation and sovereignty of each nation. As those raindrops increase in number — meaning more countries climb aboard the international trade bandwagon — they connect like dots.

With enough rain — overlapping treaties and trade agreements — pools of water form (commonwealths operating under a shared constitution and/or currency). This is a natural evolution of the free trade process.

The European Union is but one such trade and currency pool, and it is not at all out of the question that more are to come. In Asia, in fact, The Wall Street Journal reported October 12, 2009 that an “Asean Plus Six” proposal seeks to integrate the 10 member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian nations as well as Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.

Much like a succession of raindrops merging to form large swaths of water, boundaries between nations may become less distinct in the years to come. Such a progression inevitably begs the question: Is national sovereignty passé? And in even longer-range terms, will ethnic, language and cultural distinctions begin to dissolve too?

While far-sighted, these questions are just that: Legitimate questions.

When people say that the prospect for a North American Union is little more than a conspiracy, they are, in effect, saying that they know the future beyond a reasonable doubt. What this denies in the here-and-now is an appreciation for the reality that a World Federalist Movement (WFM) has been afoot for decades. The mainstream media may not give these long-ranging issues press time, but world federalist organizations do, in fact, exist in the United States, Canada and elsewhere in the developed world — and they run websites replete with historical timelines that anyone can verify for themselves.

This much we know of modern times: Peacetime economies are evolving toward tighter integration for the sake of shared prosperity. Debates over whether this is incidental or intentional detract from the point: The logical extension of removing conflicting trade laws and legal barriers may well be a set of conditions wherein borders are intact on maps, but members function more like states in a global confederation (interregionalism).

Some say we may even see this convergence culminate within our lifetimes.

In a speech then-president-elect Barack Obama gave in Berlin, he had this to say:

No doubt there will be differences in opinon. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together.

A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden.

In this new century Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more, not less.

Partnership and cooperation between nations is not a choice. It is the only way. The one way to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

President Obama’s message? This isn’t personal. This isn’t partisan. This “burden” is the future. And no, we do not have a choice.

President Obama, to be clear, is but one of several American presidents in recent years to share a globalized vision — hence his statement that a “change in Washington” will not deviate world leaders from a transnational progressive path:

SERIOUS QUESTIONS FOR SERIOUS TIMES

• Does a shift toward increasingly large and impersonal centralized governance bode well for freedom to exclude oneself or one’s nation from a one-size-fits-all policy? Or will freedom to opt out be the one guarantee regional integration proponents — world federalists — can’t promise?
• Is it in keeping with human history and human psychology to share a collective vision without breaking rank? How does world federalism propose to respond to “agitators” and civil unrest within its Utopian framework?
• Does consolidation of legal and political powers represent a net gain or is it offset by the potential for corruption and abuse at the hands of a powerful few whose legislative reach has gone global?
• At an economic level, can or will world federalism deliver on its promise of peace and prosperity for all world citizens? Or does it violate the all-eggs-in-one-basket principle: posing, instead, a dangerous level of economic and international codependency that will hold individuals and markets alike captive to the weakest link within the whole?

How do you feel about the path we are apparently headed down?

The President has NO LEGAL power to enter into devious and secret agreements with foreign powers.  He has no legal power to cook up policies with the late Johnnie Buchan and sign the nation’s name on the document.

United States Treaties are valid when ratified by the Senate and not before.  The President has no legal power to enter into condominiums with foreign governments, for the misconduct of scandalous islands off the China coast or in proximity to distant oriental, or any other damn harbors.

The President has no more legal right to do these infamies than you have to sign my name on a cheque, or I yours.

There is no darkness save ignorance.

The labile, that is to say slidy and weak memory of past events is no asset to a nation or statesman.  Looking back to an unsavory part of our American past we find it more savory than the present.  Whether Roosevelt has mental stamina enough left to learn anything from his nasty forerunner and foreslider, Woodrow the codface: I know not.  But men of mental capacity above that of a wart hog ought to be able to look back as far as 1914 and 1919.  Woodrow resisted clamor to get us into that war.  When he came in, he was in accord with the will of the people, a will which he had not faked or concocted.  The Allies won that war, and then cheated Italy.  It was an error.  The cheating of Italy was an error, and Lloyd George ought to know it by now.  The cheating of Italy was an error.

When Wilson further signed or tried to sign the United States name to a rascally agreement, he was NOT expressing the will of the nation.  He had already wormed and wriggled out of the proper functions of his office.  He had already wormed and wriggled, KNOWING that he opposed the will of the people.

There is a limit or orbit to power.  There is a limit or orbit to the practical effects of illegality.  The error of old codface, sorefoot, was his own.  But he was abetted.  In fact he was buttered, caressed, inoculated, and led down the garden path, by his accomplices.  They were warned and even had they not been warned it was their duty to ascertain what Woodrow’s real powers were.  The position of the Warburgs and Lloyd George at Versailles was that of crooks who accept a forged cheque in the hope of passing it on to some one else.

The dirt and grease of the Versailles scoundrels, Jews, sub-Jews and Gentiles alike, was that having concocted Wilson, having passed him off on their brutalized and stupefied peoples as the United States of America, they proceeded to offer his forged cheque to their people.

The League stank from the beginning.  It stank of the Bank of Basel, the Warburgs, the Regents of the Banque de France and the ulcer of England.  Not all Roosevelt’s actions are infamous.  As there is no criticism of music till you can judge the relative merits of different works by the same com poser, so there is no political or ethical criticism till you can measure and judge the different political acts of the same political criminal, gangster, or statesman.

When the President acts within his powers, he has NO NEED to do violence to the laws.  His powers are executive, that is, he is legally there to PUT INTO effect the will of the nation and the laws made by the representatives of the People.  When he violates and passes beyond his legal powers, he acts TOWARD the destruction of ALL legal government of the United States of America, all government by law and by the laws.

I mean by ANY law, he moves toward a total illegality.  This is evil, this is extremely dangerous in the long run, it is myopic, it is short-sighted.  In fact, the man is an ass.  No good American objects to the U.S.A. assuring the tranquility of the Caribbean.

There is no need to violate the mandate of the people in making QUITE sure that there be no submarine bases, poison factories, etc. immediately off the coast of Florida or in easy reach of Georgia, Alabama, and the mouth of the Mississippi.  There are even ways [for] America [to] occupy foreign territory after at least attempting to do it legally.

One can offer to buy, even if one thinks one will have to take over, and make reparations later.  I do not think Congress would have objected to the taking over of ALL Guiana, not merely the gotterdamn Dutch part.  When a politician’s WHOLE policy has been indirect, when his whole political strategy has consisted in indirectness, in the carom shot (not the straight shot), it is unwise to accept any act of his at its face value.

If Roosevelt’s aim had been Dutch Guiana, he would probably have turned public attention elsewhere.  It is reasonable to assume, on the basis of Roosevelt’s public career since the end of his second year in the White House, that his aim in this case was NOT Dutch Guiana.

It is legitimate at least to suspect that his MAIN purpose was to grab yet more ILLEGAL power, to put a hot one over such fools as Senator Pepper and the other fools in the Senate and Congress.  Like balloon-faced bumbustuous Churchill, Roosevelt follows every error by a demand for more personal power.

We should be very careful in arriving at [a] judgment of his Caribbean policy.  It may be another mere grab.  His interest in international politics is considerable.  His hate and loathing of legitimate action, of reasoned action, is extreme.  His intolerance of all real collaboration either is, or ought to be known to men who share the responsibility for the governing of the United States of America.  I should desire an open mind in considering the Caribbean policy, which is O.K. insofar as it aims at peace and security.  The question of how far Brazil should agree [with] our IDEAS of peace and security is a hemisphere question.  All this is a matter of the American hemisphere.  And as I said in opening, we will have no criticism of our own politics, no criticism of it worth the name, till we can judge between one act of our blowy rhinoceros and another.  The policy for the western hemisphere is one thing, Asian affairs are another.

England’s conduct in China has been for the most part an infamy.  Let some bloody-minded betrayer of the British people get up in their grimy assembly and tell the world of their kind acts in the Orient.  From the sacking of the Imperial Palace in Peking to the Jewsoons’, Sassoons’ century of infamy and of opium with Robert Cecil their advocate.  That is their dirt, why make it ours ?  In any case secret agreements between an usurious nature faker whether in or out of the White House are ILLEGAL.  And a foreign government which presents these secret pledges to ITS people as acts of the United States of America participates (and naturally HAS participated) in the swindle.  We should leave this trash to its own people, human— —. If this people hasn’t the manhood and sense to spew out their Churchills, Baidwins, Buchans, and lesser vermin, that is their own affair, and they will presumably pay the penalty for their own flaccidity and mistaken toler ance.  They will slang us for THEIR errors all right.  But that any sub-Jew in the White House should send American lads to die for their Jewsoons and Sassoons and the private interest of the skum of the English earth, and the still lower dregs of the Parsee and Levantine importations is an outrage: and that ends it.  To send boys from Omaha to Singapore to die for British monopoly and brutality is not the act of an American patriot.

“Blessed are those who do not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but who delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on His law day and night.  They are like a tree planted by streams of water and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers”  Psalm 1:1-3

The last few weeks God has really been challenging me in the area of what this verse is saying; delighting in the Word.  I love God and my life has been forever changed by His goodness and grace but it has always been a challenge to get into the Word every day until a month ago…

Here is a quote that i read from the Generate blog and it really challenged me…

“I am sorry for men who do not read the Bible every day. I wonder why they deprive themselves of the strength and the pleasure.” - Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)

I love this quote…and its so true.  The past few weeks I have been praying for God to give me an unsatisfying hunger for His Word and Himself.  He has been answering that prayer and its changing my life, I have a hunger for it like i never have before. In the next few blog posts to write about ways the Word effects our lives and what happens when we are carriers of His presence.  Not only how the Word effects us, but how it effects our lives when its in us!

Hebrews 4:12 says,

For the Word of God is alive and active.  Sharper than any double-edged sword, it  penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, it judges the thoughts and attributes of the heart”

His Word is alive and active, His Word is life.