Yesterday, North Korea declared all its political and military agreements with the South "dead" -- the latest in a string of confrontational moves taken by Pyongyang against Seoul and the U.S. In the past few weeks, the North confirmed it possessed enough plutonium for four to five nuclear warheads; threatened to retain its nuclear weapons until America withdraws its nuclear protection from the South; denounced the appointment of Seoul's new unification minister as "an open provocation"; and proclaimed that a routine South Korean military exercise had so inflamed tensions that "a war may break out any time."
The Associated Press concluded from all this that North Korea "sounded open to new ideas to defuse nuclear-tinged tensions." Some State Department quarters will warmly receive that analysis; a senior careerist at State once called earlier North Korean provocations "a desperate cry for help." Others will say Kim Jong Il just wants attention, that these moves are simply a "coming out" exercise after his recent illness.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/01/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
NORK is imploding. Try to catch of the fray with Japan to be lead, and china to be big brother watch. Prepare for it as it unfolds under your eyes.
This is a failed state no one wants to catch. It is the fairness doctrine.
NORK is your first challenge Obama, though others are there you know not of.
#2
Kimmie crawling out of his whole because he thinks he can shake a couple hundred million or more out of this clueless admin. Or maybe China's had it with B.O.s comments of late on their currency manipulation/subsidies and decided to sick their dog on 'em.
paging Joe M!Socio-economic lecturing from a guy that eats his own ear wax. I'll pass
-Frank G
KEVIN RUDD has denounced the unfettered capitalism of the past three decades and called for a new era of "social capitalism" in which government intervention and regulation feature heavily.
In an essay to be published next week, the Prime Minister is scathing of the neo-liberals who began refashioning the market system in the 1970s, and ultimately brought about the global financial crisis.
"The time has come, off the back of the current crisis, to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed, that the emperor has no clothes," he writes of those who placed their faith in the corrective powers of the market.
"Neo-liberalism and the free-market fundamentalism it has produced has been revealed as little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy. And, ironically, it now falls to social democracy to prevent liberal capitalism from cannibalising itself."
Mr Rudd writes in The Monthly that just as Franklin Roosevelt rebuilt US capitalism after the Great Depression, modern-day "social democrats" such as himself and the US President, Barack Obama, must do the same again. But he argues that "minor tweakings of long-established orthodoxies will not do" and advocates a new system that reaches beyond the 70-year-old interventionist principles of John Maynard Keynes.
"A system of open markets, unambiguously regulated by an activist state, and one in which the state intervenes to reduce the greater inequalities that competitive markets will inevitably generate," he writes.
He urges "a new contract for the future that eschews the extremism of both the left and right".
He mocks neo-liberals "who now find themselves tied in ideological knots in being forced to rely on the state they fundamentally despise to save financial markets from collapse".
He advocates tighter regulation and policing of global finances, and identifies the immediate challenge as restoring global growth by 3 per cent of gross domestic product, the amount it is expected to fall in 2009. Next week, as Parliament resumes, his Government will chip in with a second economic stimulus package.
Mr Rudd commits to keeping budgets in surplus "over the cycle", meaning deficits should be temporary. In a further sign the Government is not contemplating additional tax cuts, which would deliver a permanent hit to revenue, he stresses that stimulus measures have to be paid for when the economy recovers.
Mr Rudd singles out Thatcherism as a culprit, as well as the former Howard government. His essay implicitly attacks the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who this week urged the free market be allowed to dictate commercial property values as he slammed a Government measure to prop them up.
Mr Rudd's essay follows the blast Mr Obama gave Wall Street bankers yesterday for awarding themselves $28 billion in bonuses last year at the same time as they were being bailed out by taxpayers.
In a message to Mr Obama and the US Congress, Mr Rudd counselled against erecting trade barriers. "Soft or hard, protectionism is a sure-fire way of turning recession into depression as it exacerbates the collapse in global demand."
The message was reinforced in Davos yesterday when the Trade Minister, Simon Crean, described the "buy American" provisions of the new Obama stimulus package as "very worrying". "On the face of it, it looks like it contravenes commitments made to the World Trade Organisation," he said.
Posted by: Besoeker & Frank G ||
02/01/2009 11:43 ||
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#1
a joint venture with B!
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/01/2009 13:34 Comments ||
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#2
Mr Rudd's essay follows the blast Mr Obama gave Wall Street bankers yesterday for awarding themselves $28 billion in bonuses last year at the same time as they were being bailed out by taxpayers.
In a message to Mr Obama and the US Congress, Mr Rudd counselled against erecting trade barriers. "Soft or hard, protectionism is a sure-fire way of turning recession into depression as it exacerbates the collapse in global demand."
OH, so you're all for government intervention in the economy as long as you're eating off of someone _else's_ gored ox.
Isn't that how the economic crisis _really_ happened?
#4
Now let's see. The system where private capital is allowed but has to do what the government says is called Fascism.
Bet the Australian voters didn't know they were voting for a Mussolini. Unfortunately ours can't even make the trains run on time(ask the people of Sydney and Melbourne - both states they are in have incompetent ALP(Labor party aka Looter Party) state governments although there's some redundancy in that statement.
Posted by: Aussie Mike ||
02/01/2009 15:58 Comments ||
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#5
It was regulation that created the credit bubble.
They really are sh1t5.
Cause a problem. Shift Blame. Seize more power to claim to fix it.
#1
The people who have been the most absolutely vicious towards me because of my support for the GWOT and for the few instances of harsh interrogation of captured terror suspects have been secular American Jews.
They take particular umbrage at labeling anyone 'evil'. I've gotten long angry lectures about how 'torture' never works and in any case no one except a very small (dozens in the world) handful of psychopaths are really bad, unless we make them so by labeling them 'other' and failing to acknowledge our nation's responsibility for their hatred.
The are DETERMINED to maintain that belief and lash out venomously at anyone who attempts to suggest otherwise. I have figurative, if not literal, scars from several such encounters. In one recent case the other person threatened to have me fired from my job for promoting hatred and is in a position to (at a minimum) create problems for me at work.
I have a very sick feeling in my stomach about this year. I suspect it may get very bad very quickly.
#3
They take particular umbrage at labeling anyone 'evil'. I've gotten long angry lectures about how 'torture' never works and in any case no one except a very small (dozens in the world) handful of psychopaths are really bad, unless we make them so by labeling them 'other' and failing to acknowledge our nation's responsibility for their hatred.
Ya know, I don't really wanna do torture as a tactic, it's too much trouble, but the question to ask is, North Vietnam tortured not only our soldiers but lots and lots of South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.
They used torture and other terror, and it worked like a son-of-a-bitch. They have a country and their kids get to be factory owners while their conquered enemy's kids get to be 5 dollars a day factory workers in the caste system they've set up there.
They're living in a fantasy world where nothing evil ever _works_. Unfortunately it works all too well, otherwise people wouldn't be doing it.
#4
Thing, I don't want to do torture either. What I asked them to do was to grant the possibility that those who authorized waterboarding did so because they believed that thousands of lives were at stake.
These people would not even admit that. The only 'evil' they could imagine were embodied in Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.
And, although it did not come up, possibly also in religious Jews. I suspect they hate, fear and are guilty about Israel and that that is at the root of their blindness to and even support for Muslim terror.
Or maybe that's just pop psychologizing on my part. Who knows?
What I do know is that they would gladly have destroyed me when I didn't agree with them. And I know that they and many like them are quite ready to support pretty damned near anything the Obama administration does.
NS trusts there will be a voter backlash in the Nov 2010 elections. Possibly so, and I would welcome it. But a lot can happen between now and then and some of it may be irreversible.
#5
Here is my evil story about Vietnam. A group of medics went to a village to give aid and to inoculate the children for small pox. The next day upon returning to finish their aid work they discovered a pile of little arms from the children that they had incoculated the day before. Did it happen? Who knows, but it damn sure could have. The atrocities commeted by the v.c. commies and nva are unimaginable to those that did not experience.
#7
the helicopter assault on the village made the hair on my neck stand up, but the rest of the movie didn't do much for me. I wondered where I had heard that story, amazing how fact and fiction blend together over the years.
#9
Saigon... shit; I'm still only in Saigon... Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer; every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.
Oh, did I show you my Lucky Hattm?
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/01/2009 12:15 Comments ||
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#10
2010 is too son for a backlash. The press will stiffle most any pro-trunk or anti-donk/anti-Barry news for at least a year.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/01/2009 12:19 Comments ||
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#11
2010 is doable. The Messiah has made some gigantic mistakes.
He has been rolled by Queen Nan and Prince Harry into supporting an overreaching spending bill that does too little for stimulus and too much for special interest payoffs they've been waiting for years to implement. Too greedy too fast.
Barry is bad mouthing the economy way too much; too much fear, fear, fear to get the package passed before anybody figures out what's in it and too little "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" confidence building. This will also delay recovery.
As a result, the crowning jewel of socialized medicine will prove once again elusive and the blush will come off The One's halo for the true believers. They will see The Messiah has feet of clay and can't deliver the goods.
So the economy is still in the tank 3 years on, the donks own it, and they've gone a bridge too far.
The donk's House majority rests on lots of conservative democrats who ran against George Bush in pretty conservative districts. Now they are going to have to distance themselves from the Holy Family in their voting record, or defend themselves to constituents who are pretty loyal Rush listeners.
By then, the trunks may figure out that if they ever get in again, they better not screw up like they did last time. A Contract for America message delivered nationwide by a real positive, inspirational, mediagenic figure like, say Michael Steel supported by Palin, Jindal and (pick your fav for 2012) of lower taxes and growth can put the trunks on top in 2010.
And I didn't even assume any foreign disasters from the donk's friends. And there will be some. Because this economy will hurt everyone else a lot more than it will hurt us. And somebody will be pushed over the brink. That's The One's only hope, that he is the indispensable wartime leader. Watch for less Lincoln now and more FDR.
#13
bman - Yeah, I heard the same story, from Marlon Brando (as Col. Kurtz) in "Apocalypse Now". Good movie.
A movie the liberals have been shoving down our throats for the past twenty years.
AND... a movie which pretty much postulated the view that the N. Vietnamese deserved to _win_ because they were willing to do evil things like cut off the arms of kids being vaccinated and we weren't. Or that we couldn't win because we wouldn't do those things.
But now... they want to talk about the morality of waterboarding and/or other forms of torture.
#14
When it comes to atrocities, the Muslim barbarians are rank amateurs compared to their communist predecessors, their obvious enthusiasm notwithstanding. I don't know about lopping off inoculated arms, but the VC and their fellow lefty heroes, the NVA, were fond of lopping off heads, skinning bodies (living bodies if they could get them), gouging out eyes, and various other disgusting practices.
It is a measure of their depravity that media- culture conformists and peace hypocrites will invariably leap to the defense of these savages and blame it all on napalm, "American imperialism," and the myth of "indiscriminate bombing."
Personally, I was appalled at our use of napalm at first, but after a few weeks of seeing Charlie in action, I was frustrated that we didn't have something even more scary.
#15
As I told another Vietnam vet just Friday, the thing I cherish most about my year in Vietnam is being one of the people that drew ARCLIGHT boxes and did the follow-up bomb damage assessment. He told me something I hadn't heard before - that these strikes killed EVERYTHING, even the ants in the ground. I had known that they killed anyone within thee or four miles of the strike from overpressure, and they totally leveled the landscape, but that they killed ants in the ground? Of all the weapons in our arsenal, the NVA hated and feared ARCLIGHT the most. That's one reason I've been so adamant about using them against the muslims - they need to understand that we can sow much greater fear than they can, and we can do it as a total surprise. One ARCLIGHT strike down through the Gaza Strip would eliminate it as a problem for CENTURIES. There would be no Hamass, there would be no "palestinians", there would be no rockets, mortar shells, or anything else. You'd have to be in a completely self-contained bunker at least 750 feet below the surface to even POSSIBLY survive. I hope we never have to do that to such a densely-populated area, but we're going to HAVE to do something that teaches the arabs that messing with the US is a sure-fire way to die a horrible death. Not using ARCLIGHT strikes against the Republican Guards left the door open to the guerilla struggle that followed. Using such a strike against a target in the NWFP would send such a clear message even the Pakistanis would have to acknowledge it.
There's a good probability, especially with Barry in the White House, that the next place we'll have to use such weapons will be in Western Europe, principally against Brussels. I doubt we'll have the intestinal fortitude to do so, however.
War is not a computer video game. War is hell. Not using the most imposing weapons in your arsenal only prolongs your enemy's will to fight.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/01/2009 15:43 Comments ||
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#16
4 drinks in one post, OP. And I have to get up and go to work in a few hours.
Good lord, Glomotch, please do some frigging formatting! AoS.
According to a poll by the University of Bielefeld, 62 per cent of Germans are "sick of all the harping on about German crimes against the Jews" - which is an unusually robust formulation for a multiple-choice questionnaire, but at least has the advantage of leaving us in no confusion as to how things stand in this week of panEuropean Holocaust "harping on". The old joke - that the Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz - gets truer every week.
I have some sympathy for that 62 per cent. Killing six million people is a moral stain on one's nation that surely ought to endure more than a couple of generations. But, on the other hand, almost everything else about the Germany of 60 years ago is gone - its great power status, its military machine, its aggressive nationalism, its need for lebens-raum. The past is another country, but rarely as foreign as the Third Reich. Why should Holocaust guilt be the only enforced link with an otherwise discarded heritage?
"Enforced" is the operative word. If most Germans don't feel guilty about the Holocaust, there's no point pretending they do. And that's the problem with all this week's Shoah business: it's largely a charade. The European establishment that has scheduled such lavish anniversary observances for this Thursday presides over a citizenry that, even if one discounts the synagogue-arsonists and cemetery-desecrators multiplying across the Continent, is either antipathetic to Jews, or "sick of all the harping on", or regards solemn Holocaust remembrance as a useful card to have in the hand of the slyer, suppler forms of anti-Semitism to which Europe is now prone.
From time to time, the late Diana Mosley used to tell me how "clever" she thought the Jews were. If you pressed her to expand on the remark, it usually meant how clever they were in always keeping "the thing" - the Holocaust, as she could never quite bring herself to say - in the public eye, unlike the millions killed in the name of Communism. This is a fair point, though not one most people are willing to entertain from a pal of Hitler. But "the thing" seems most useful these days to non-Jews as a means of demonstrating that the Israelis are new Nazis and the Palestinians their Jews. Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, has told the Home Secretary that his crowd will be boycotting Thursday's commemorations because it is racist and excludes any commemoration of the "holocaust" and "ongoing genocide" in Palestine.
Ah, well. He's just some canny Muslim opportunist, can't blame the chap for trying it on. But look at how my colleagues at The Spectator chose to mark the anniversary. They ran a reminiscence by Anthony Lipmann, the Anglican son of an Auschwitz survivor, which contained the following sentence: "When on 27 January I take my mother's arm - tattoo number A-25466 - I will think not just of the crematoria and the cattle trucks but of Darfur, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Jenin, Fallujah."
Jenin? Would that be the notorious 2002 "Jenin massacre"? There was no such thing, as I pointed out in this space at the time, when Robert Fisk and the rest of Fleet Street's gullible sob-sisters were going around weepin' an' a-wailin' about Palestinian mass graves and Israeli war crimes. Twenty-three Israelis were killed in fighting at the Jenin camp. Fifty-two Palestinians died, according to the Israelis.
According to Arafat's official investigators, it was 56 Palestinians. Even if one accepts the higher figure, that means every single deceased Palestinian could have his own mass grave and there'd still be room to inter the collected works of Robert Fisk. Yet, despite the fact that the Jenin massacre is an obvious hallucination of Fleet Street's Palestine groupies, its rise to historical fact is unstoppable. To Lipmann, those 52-56 dead Palestinians weigh in the scales of history as heavy as six million Jews. And what's Fallujah doing bringing up the rear in his catalogue of horrors? In rounding up a few hundred head-hackers, the Yanks perpetrated another Auschwitz? These comparisons are so absurd as to barely qualify as "moral equivalence".
I'm not a Jew, though since September 11 I've been assumed to be one. Nor am I, philosophically, a Zionist. Had I been British foreign secretary, I doubt I would have issued the Balfour Declaration. Nor am I much interested in whose land was whose hundreds or thousands of years ago. The reality is that the nation states of the region all date back to the 1930s and 1940s: the only difference is that Israel, unlike Syria and Iraq, has made a go of it.
As for the notion that this or that people "deserve" a state, that's a dangerous post-modern concept of nationality and sovereignty. The United States doesn't exist because the colonists "deserved" a state, but because they went out and fought for one. Were the Palestinians to do that, they might succeed in pushing every last Jew into the sea, or they might win a less total victory, or they might be routed and have to flee to Damascus or Wolverhampton.
But, whatever the outcome, it's hard to see that they would be any less comprehensively a wrecked people than they are after spending three generations in "refugee" "camps" while their "cause" is managed by a malign if impeccably multilateral coalition of UN bureaucrats, cynical Arab dictators, celebrity terrorists and meddling Europeans whose Palestinian fetishisation seems most explicable as the perverse by-product of the suppression of their traditional anti-Semitism.
Americans and Europeans will never agree on this, and the demographic reality - the Islamisation of Europe - will only widen the chasm in the years ahead. But, if I were a European Jew, I would feel this week's observances bordered on cultural appropriation. The old defence against charges of anti-Semitism was: "But some of my best friends are Jewish." As the ancient hatreds rise again across the Continent, the political establishment's defence is: "But some of our best photo opportunities are Jewish."
I guess that's only fair - they perpetrated it, after all.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/01/2009 0:53 Comments ||
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#2
That was one of the foreseeable consequences of the transformation from the EEC (in theory a purely economic organisation) to the UE (a political one). As the uofficial motto of thde UE was "Europa uber alles in der welt" (Europe above everyone else in world"), the Holocaust was something to be pushed aside as it put in question the moral right of Europeans to strive for world leadership. One of the corollaries was the demonization of Israel: if Israelis were montser then the Holocaust was a less horrible thing. Sooner or later the top-down induced Euopean patriotism wil lead to a rehabilitation of Hitler as a defender of Europe against "aliens" ie Russians and Anglo-Saxons. Remember Vlad Tepes, aka Vlad the Impaler aka Count Dracula is a hero in Romania despite the tens of thousands Romanins he had impaled.
#5
In truth, I saw this "reaction" coming decades ago, with the "overuse" of the Holocaust for leftist agenda points. The exact moment was when the "meme" stopped being "3 million Jews and 3 million others", and was changed to "6 million Jews".
When even children pointed this out this change, they were cursed for pointing it out, as if they were somehow defending the Holocaust or being antisemitic.
In other words, the same kind of people who today demand political power because of Man Made Global Warming, co-opted the Holocaust for leftist political purposes.
In the US, they wanted Americans to feel guilty for the Holocaust, because only in that way could they get political compliance out of Americans.
This was asking for trouble. And in Germany, the left used the Holocaust as an excuse to stifle the teaching of history or politics. To a great extent this directly lead to a lot of the Neo-Nazism they experience today.
The bottom line is that the Holocaust really isn't that special in the horrors of the 20th Century. It should be seen in context with the Armenian genocide, the Stalinist horror, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Red Khmer killing fields, even bloody Africa, etc.
The Nazis weren't special, either. Snazzy uniforms don't change the essentially nasty tyrannical character of their regime, or distinguish it from the equally verminous other murderous regimes.
Germans have been made to remember the Holocaust, and had they not been, they would be like the Turks are today about the Armenians--in denial. But otherwise, the last blood of the Holocaust has been drained by the political left. It now belongs to history.
I see no reason to distinguish or condemn Zionism, either. The Jews wanted their country and they fought to get it and keep it. And now they are willing to protect it. And that is all the legitimacy they need. America itself has no greater legitimacy.
If anything, Zionists should be criticized for not finishing the job, and being done with Arabs and Muslims for good.
It was never 3 million Jews and 3 million otrhetrs. But 6 million Jews and four million others.
Alos tehre was something very special in the Nazis. Even witg Stalin you could escape by toeing the Party line. The Nazis killed new born childre,n and they didn''t do it in the anger of a pogrom but camly, in cold blmood and following a plan. That is very specific.
#9
Don't forget the Gypsies. Smaller overall population but also a specific target of cleansing. And tossing in the Japanese activities from 1905 (starting in Korea) on to 1945 to the list of man's inhumanity to man.
According to a poll by the University of Bielefeld, 62 per cent of Germans are "sick of all the harping on about German crimes against the Jews"
Any different than the guilt game about slavery in America which always ignores that slavery was common in the world when the United States paid the blood price of 250,000 white Northerner to get the 13th Amendment put into its Constitution? That was in a population one tenth the size of today. Can anyone imaging a war in which the casualty count today would be 2.5 million? And yet that kind of sacrifice is never honored today, just buried for one group's political power and influence by harping on something that was rectified over a hundred and forty years ago.
#11
That particular conflict did not begin with "slavery" as it's central theme. History has undergone a bit of a rewrite there as well I'm afraid.
That particular conflict began with slavery: this and no other was the reason te Southv seceded., And for the Northern side, most people were not ready to be killed for abolishing it, but when you read the letters from Union soldiers what they defended was notn teh Union but "our magnificent form of government", one of whose essntial postulates is that when you lose an election you smile, congratulate your opponent, obey the law and wait for the next election. BTW, without the Rebellion, Linclon would have never been able to get the required majority of state legislatures agreeing to abolish the Constitution.
#12
Agree completely with JFM. I thought we had beat that horse to death here a couple of years ago. I think it takes 400 years, 5 life times, before a historical event can possibly be looked at objectively. When I was young the cry was, "Save your Confederate currency. It will be good someday." Not so much any more. A great tragedy for all involved. And we are still paying the bondsman's price.
The fianal destruction of the Constitution did not occur until the 16th-17th amendments.
#13
This debate may never end but Lincoln's purpose was to save the Union.
Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.
Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.
I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable [sic] in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.
#14
As a follow-on, it is my fervent belief that the practice of slavery was a blight upon the nation from it's very beginning. It represents a contradiction to the very precepts of Christendom and is every bit a sin today as it was then. It continues to be a blight that keeps on giving as it plagues the generations. In the final analysis, there is nothing "cheap" about "cheap labor."
I knew that letter and since the subject was what the Union soldiers wee ready to die for, it is irrelevant since Lincoln didn't do the dying. What matters is what soldiers wrote home and they wrote about preserving the form of government ie the thing about governmnt of the peeople, by the people, for the people not the Union for the sake of it.
Yes, Lincoln's direct purpose was to save the union. That was his top priority. That said, both he and the Confederates knew that if the union were saved, slavery would eventually wither and die -- and probably soon. That is why the states of the Confederacy seceded: They knew that secession was the only way to maintain slavery. If the union remained intact, slavery would have soon died in an increasingly "free-state" union.
The supposed dicotomy between saving the union and freeing the slaves is nonsense designed to salve the consciences of descendents of men who fought to enslave other men.
If there had been no slavery, there would have been no secession and no war.
If Lincoln had saved the union without freeing a single slave, they would have been freed soon.
The civil war was all about slavery.
Posted by: Some guy ||
02/01/2009 14:39 Comments ||
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#17
But, whatever the outcome, it's hard to see that they would be any less comprehensively a wrecked people than they are after spending three generations in "refugee" "camps" while their "cause" is managed by a malign if impeccably multilateral coalition of UN bureaucrats, cynical Arab dictators, celebrity terrorists and meddling Europeans whose Palestinian fetishisation seems most explicable as the perverse by-product of the suppression of their traditional anti-Semitism.
Excellent summary.
The distortions about the Holocaust and the Civil War for political purposes spring from the same sin: find some justification, however illogical, to support one's own prejudice and hate.
#18
When I was young the cry was, "Save your Confederate currency. Nimble Semble.
http://www.csanotes.com/1861_notes.htm
T-36
Cr278 $5 Center shows Commerce seated on a bale of cotton with a sailor on the left side--(3,694,890 total notes issued) Printed by J.T. Paterson & Co. in Columbia, SC. UNCUT CSA SHEET XF++ $3450
#19
It is my opinion after extensive reading of the accounts of the people involved that South Carolina secedded because of the promise by the Republican Party to impose a tarrif of 48% on all imported goods. This would have bankrupted all Southern buisnessmen as did the Tarrif of 1832. This ment that if I sent 1 million dollars of raw materials to England and then took delivery of 1 million dollars worth of finished goods I would pay the US Government $480,000. No buisiness person could stay in buisness. When one of his Cabinet members said, "Why don't we just let the South go?" Lincoln said, "Let the South go? My God, man, who would pay our Tarrifs?" The South accounted for 80% of the Federal Coffers.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/01/2009 18:54 Comments ||
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#20
Nonsense to all, the Civil War was all about establishment of a monstrous hegemony through the expropriation of civil liberties to that abomination of Federal powder, Lincoln.
#21
ION EUROZONE, PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > SARKOZY IS RIGHT TO FEAR US: FRANCE FEARS RISE OF THE [New] LEFT - REVOLUTION [France/National, Euro]!? COMMUNIST-LED FRENCH, PAN-EURO REVOLUTIONARIES, ANARCHISTS, TERRS, etal. = "EXTREME LEFT" REACTIONISM-VIOLENCE [but weirdly and mysteriously NOT the ULTRA-LEFT ]???
*SAME > BRITAIN-UK > MOSSAD HIT ON LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE?; + RENSE > INTERNET CALL FOR ALL WORKING MEN/LABOR WITH SKILLS TO JOIN PROTESTS [Strike] + RISING DEFICITS FOR A SHRINKING WORLD ECONOMY.
1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
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.
By John R. Bolton
