#3
Stuffing the ballot box to maintain power has no correlation to economic or vital infrastructure needs of the society after you pit one tribe against another as a political strategy.
As an Israeli, I find this, hauntingly, familiar
Looking over my scraps, I find I wrote the following during 1864, or the latter part of '63: The happening to our America, abroad as well as at home, these years, is indeed most strange. The Democratic Republic has paid her to-day the terrible and resplendent compliment of the united wish of all the nations of the world that her Union should be broken, her future cut off,
...There is certainly not one government in Europe but is now watching the war in this country, with the ardent prayer that the united States may be effectually split, crippled, and dismember'd by it. There is not one but would help toward that dismemberment, if it dared.
...We are all too prone to wander from ourselves, to affect Europe, and watch her frowns and smiles. We need this hot lesson of general hatred, and henceforth must never forget it. Never again will we trust the moral sense nor abstract friendliness of a single government of the world. Unfortunately, the lesson was forgotten
#1
The bitterness occupation and reconstruction did not subside so quickly. People were getting killed over this bitterness for a decade or so later. A good source on the Civil War in and around Knoxville is: Divided Loyalties: Fort Sanders and the Civil War in East Tennessee by Digby Gordon Seymour.
Lincoln's generals differed on the strategic value of Knoxville. Lincoln and Sherman favored a campaign against Knoxville as they viewed Knoxville as the linchpin of the South. Other generals favored launching a campaign farther west that would control the Mississippi Valley.
One historical account about reconstruction stated: "Thousands of Southern whites were meanwhile being denied the vote, either by act of Congress or by the new state constitutions. At one dinner in South Carolina, the company cosisted of a distinguished group of ex-governors, ex-congressmen, and ex-judges. The only voter in the room was the black waiter who served the meal. In some localities, about half the eligible white voters were temporarily disfranchised, and at one time the black voters in five Southern states outnumbered the white voters, many of whom were also illiterate.
Many Southerners were reduced to abject poverty--times were very hard for them; they lost everything. In East Tennessee slavery was not rampant. A few people had slaves but most people around Knoxville did not. The phrase "Divided Loyalties" described the Knoxville area very well. Some people were staunch abolitionists while others were not. Often, this division existed within individual families.
#2
Things were very divided in Texas, too - during the War itself and afterwards. There were half a dozen counties which voted against secession, and there were many men - like Sam Houston who were both slave-owners and Unionists. Some of the most notorious Texas feuds came about post-war between factions and families who were on opposite sides; the Sutton-Taylor feud for one, and the Mason County Hoo-Doo War for another. (Both of these ended with just about every original party to the feud dead.
The most ironic part to me is that Texas really didn't have that many slaves at all. Most families who owned slaves owned three or four, or perhaps as many as a dozen - and many of the slaves worked for hire at skilled or semi-skilled work. Reconstruction didn't wreck Texas nearly to the degree that it wrecked other Southern states. Former slaves went on working pretty much as they had before, and there were enough well-respected Unionists in the Reconstruction-era establishments to carry out the work of governing. Of course, many Texans were about dead broke and temporarily disenfranchised by the end of the war, but hey ... been there, done that.
#4
JohnQC, The South lost the war. Historically things are bad when you lose. The South got off kind of light compared to the Trojans.
It doesn't matter if some states had slaves or had black slaveowners or not. I believe a couple of states that had slavery sided with the North. They stood up against the Federal Government, whatever their reasons, and they lost.
[DAWN] Every passing day seems to bring out a new, desperate side of Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems... and the PTI leadership.
Twenty-four hours after vowing to lead a so-called civil disobedience movement against the federal government, the PTI chief announced yesterday that his party was quitting all assemblies, other than the provincial assembly in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... , while today he is to lead the PTI protesters into the high-security red zone of Islamabad which houses parliament, Prime Minister House and other important buildings, including diplomatic missions.
The latest move seems designed to allow Mr Khan to exit his so-called independence rally, not turn it into an on-off sit-in, while allowing his party to retain its prized asset, the only government it has ie the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial government.
To be sure, Mr Khan's attempt to turn up outside, or perhaps even inside, Prime Minister House or parliament will — and should — be rebuffed.
Perhaps what Mr Khan is seeking is to be temporarily detained in front of cameras by the capital's law-enforcement agencies and for the PTI activists to engage in some televised skirmishes as a way of ending the PTI rally on Mr Khan's version of a high note.
Deplorable as Mr Khan's tactics are, there is an immediate challenge for the law-enforcement apparatus of Islamabad to calmly and firmly but without the excessive use of force prevent the marchers from laying siege to state institutions.
Neither has the Islamabad law enforcement exactly covered itself in glory over the last year — as in the case of lone gunman Mohammad Sikander, who held Islamabad and much of the country hostage for many hours last August — nor have PML-N-led administrations inspired much confidence in their dealings with protesters of late — for example, deaths outside the Model Town headquarters of Tahirul Qadri ...Pak politician, and would-be dictator, founder and head of Tehreek-e-Minhajul Quran and Pakistain Awami Tehrik. He usually resides in Canada, but returns to Pakistain periodically to foam at the mouth and lead demonstrations. Depending on which way the wind's blowing, Qadri claims to be the author of Pak's blasphemy law. Other times he says it wasn't him... two months ago.
Agree or disagree with their demands, consider them illegal or not, there is a responsibility on the state to protect the lives of all citizens — even those who are protesting against the government and seeking to do something illegal. Barring some violent escalation by the PTI itself, there ought to be enough well-trained and responsible law-enforcement personnel on the scene today to allow for a peaceful end to the PTI's latest ploy.
The PML-N government should also be aware of the implications of Mr Khan's other announcement: mass PTI resignations outside Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa's provincial assembly (the PTI has several MNAs from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) mean a raft of by-elections will be held across the country in the next couple of months.
That means the political class will be in a semi-campaign mode and the intensity of focus on the PML-N government's performance in office so far will only increase. It is uncharted electoral territory that the PTI has plunged the country into, so a steady hand on the wheel will be needed.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/20/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] Just before the 'azadi march', the prime minister announced the government's intention to establish a commission, consisting of Supreme Court judges, to inquire into allegations by Pakistain Tehrik-e-Insaf ...a political party in Pakistan. PTI was founded by former Pakistani cricket captain and philanthropist Imran Khan. The party's slogan is Justice, Humanity and Self Esteem, each of which is open to widely divergent interpretations.... (PTI) that the 2013 elections were rigged. The hope was that this would defuse the political crisis engulfing the country. Yet, the proposed 'solution' comes with its own set of problems.
First, an issue that could have led to strengthening of the political process will end up weakening it. When the allegations were first levelled, PML-N decided not to engage politically at all, stating that only election tribunals were an appropriate forum for these allegations. Yet, 14 months later — facing calls for resignation — suddenly an alternate forum has been conceived.
Instead, if at the very beginning the PML-N had engaged with PTI, they could have secured a guarantee that the overall election would not be questioned, that the findings from the four constituencies would be used to guide electoral reform and thus the political process would have produced meaningful outcomes. Yet now, once again, the Supreme Court has been asked to wade into a complete political thicket.
Second, the question that the court is being asked to answer is crucial. The court is not being asked whether there was rigging in the elections of 2013. It is being asked whether the 'allegations' levelled by the PTI that the elections were 'manipulated or influenced by anyone for the benefit of a political party or individuals' are true.
In other words, please tell us if it is correct that your former chief justice, former judge Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday, and former caretaker chief minister Najam Sethi etc were in cahoots with the PML-N. The Supreme Court will either have to implicate a former chief justice — who led the court for eight years and aggressively heard cases against a PPP government — as being a partisan person willing to rig elections; or it will have to exonerate them.
Given this background, even if they exonerate them, the PTI and its supporters will be able to claim that the court had its own interests to protect. It is a political thicket that will only tarnish the court.
Third, even if the terms of reference are changed so that the court is asked to inquire whether rigging took place and not the alleged role of people who may have influenced the elections, there are constitutional issues.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/20/2014 00:00 ||
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Much has been said and written about the terror tunnels that Hamas built in Gaza. But too little has been said about who it was that put the cement into HamasÂ’ hands, thus making the construction of the tunnels possible in the first place.
Until now.
In a bombshell revelation, Dennis Ross, the senior Mideast policy adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2011, has admitted that it was he who was assigned the task of pressuring Israel to ease up on its military blockade of Gaza, in the events after Israel's withdrawal from that region in 2005.
"I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built," Ross revealed in the Washington Post on August 10. "They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right."
Not that Hillary's State Department had been acting independently of the White House on the issue of cement. For example, Vice President Joe Biden told interviewer Charlie Rose, on Bloomberg TV in 2010: "We have put as much pressure and as much cajoling on Israel as we can to allow them to get building materials" and other forbidden items into Gaza.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/20/2014 7:26 Comments ||
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#2
LOL at pic above--describes things well. "I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built,"
Dennis, they found schools, housing, mosques, hospitals and basic infrastructure to be good places to hide rockets. Israel had Hamas' number. You been had. What was Plan B? Does this fall at Hildabeast's doorstep or does she have her Teflon pantsuit on?
[Ynet] Netanyahu's bureau says the president and the prime minister have ideological differences, but that's not the root of it. Nor is it truly personal.
Two weeks ago, Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as America's Blond Eminence and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Chateaubriand ... gave a comprehensive interview to Mideast expert and Bloomberg and Atlantic columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, in which she expressed 100 percent (or close to 100 percent) support for the IDF operation in Gazoo and the Israeli government's positions on the Paleostinian Authority.
Any skilled reader could understand from the interview that 1. Clinton will be facing presidential elections in two years; 2. She is currently in dire need of Jewish donors; 3. She wants to distance herself from Barack Obama I inhaled. That was the point... and his foreign policies.
Several days after the interview was published, I received a request from one of the more famous personalities of the American Jewish establishment, a supporter of the Republican Party. He wanted me to convince Israelis that Clinton is a liar and not really a supporter of Israel.
I had to smile. It is not every day that one encounters such a staunch Zionist, loyal to Israel to the very last drop of blood, so irate about the pro-Israel comments of an American public figure. Wondrous are the ways of the Jews.
The problem is the American Jewish activist is never alone. The Israeli prime minister's bureau is always at his side, shoulder to shoulder. Political considerations have always been a part of relations between Israel and the United States, and are certainly felt in Israeli elections. In general, however, the voters ignore any outside intervention and vote as they see fit, and in some circumstances, this has even backfired.
The first, rather crude intervention actually came from the Americans. In an old State Department document appears a telegram from James McDonald, the US envoy (and later ambassador) to the nascent Israel, who called for the newborn state to be granted an American loan on the grounds that David Ben-Gurion was on the eve of an election against his rival Menachem Begin, a suspected Soviet sympathizer. It was a demonstration of the American ambassador's ignorance of Israeli politics, but the loan was approved, and Israel saved from starvation.
Yitzhak Rabin tried to help Richard Nixon get reelected in 1972; Bill Clinton ...former Democratic president of the U.S. Bill was the second U.S. president to be impeached, the first to deny that oral sex was sex, the first to have difficulty with the definition of is... tried to help Peres in the 1996 elections; Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to help a host of Republican candidates, including Willard Mitt Romney ...former governor of Massachussetts, the Publican nominee for president in 2012. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney has a record as a successful businessman, heading Bain Capital, and he rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics from the midst of bribery and mismanagement scandals.... , Obama's rival in 2012. The warm reception Romney received during his visit to Israel on the eve of the presidential elections was a source of amusement in the United States.
In another two and a half months, US Congress will hold its midterm elections, and all seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of those in the Senate will be up for grabs. The Democrats could well lose their majority in the Senate, thereby handing complete control of Congress to the Republicans. If this should happen, Obama will be a lame duck president — the Republicans would dismiss his every bill, every budgetary decision. Within the space of one day he would become a has-been.
The Congressional elections are now the most important thing in the American political system. Each and every world event, from Gazoo to djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , Kiev to Cairo, is measured by its potential impact on the November ballot. From Obama's perspective, this is a life and death struggle. It is for his rivals as well.
The White House views Netanyahu as a foot soldier in the service of the extreme-right branch of the Republican Party. They long ago came to the conclusion that Sheldon Adelson - the casino magnate who blew $100 million on his efforts to oust Obama - does not work for Netanyahu, but rather Netanyahu works for Adelson.
It almost doesn't matter what Netanyahu says or does, for what he is responsible and for what others are, everything emanating from Jerusalem is seen as an attempt to sabotage the chances of Democratic electoral candidates.
Netanyahu's Republican friends have a packed agenda on domestic issues, from curtailing immigrant rights to issuing gambling licenses and banning gay marriage. Israel has no interest in any of these issues, nor is it welcome to do so.
The Prime Minister's Bureau in Jerusalem explains that Obama and Netanyahu have ideological differences. Even if there's a grain of truth in that, that is not the problem. Nor is it personal. The problem is that Netanyahu has become a domestic political enemy of the president and his party.
This is a misstep of historical proportions, as it places Israel outside of the American consensus for the first time since the 1950s. This is also a problem in practical terms. Supposing the Democrats hold on to Senate control - the White House will remember where the Israeli government had positioned itself in this battle. Supposing the Democrats cede control of the Senate — the president would lose his grip on domestic issues, and focus on foreign affairs, as many of his predecessors have done.
Thus Israel would meet Obama again, this time as maimed president. After all, it has happened to us in the past, with a certain Jimmy Carter ... the worst president ever. Maybe the second worst. The votes aren't all in yet....
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[DAWN] Just before the 'azadi march', the prime minister announced the government's intention to establish a commission, consisting of Supreme Court judges, to inquire into allegations by Pakistain 
Hillary Clinton
Jimmy Carter
