Kim Jung Il comes along just in time to possibly save a rapidly failing Chump Presidency.
About the only way to save the Chumph at this point is to start a war.
It would seem that the US Military has been ordered to rapidly shift assets to the Pacific. Don’t be real surprised if our Atlantic fleets suddenly are found in the Pacific.
Two insane jackass dictators will have their war.
On the other front the Chumph may be planning to hit Iran. Starting a war where there isn’t one.
Not sure if this is Chumph directed saber-rattling, or the Military Brass has decided to let Mr Kim know what we can do. But the US has launched two Minuteman III missile in the last week or so, the last to hit a target 5000 miles away in the middle of the Pacific. How far these missiles can go is classified – but assuming there were some of these based in Alaska – 5,000 miles is more than enough to reach North Korea. They are capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads, and are renowned for their accuracy – claimed to be able to his within 20 ft of a target at 5,000 miles.
With China doing a fast walk backwards on North Korea’s agit-prop, this could go two ways. Something stupid, like a missile failure hitting Japan or South Korea, precipitating war…Or Mr Kim follows China’s advice and sits down and STFU.
The Chumph is just stupid, and desperate enough to want a war to prop up his opinion polls. With the only National Leader with more loose marbles than Putin’s Bitch has.
The LGM-30G Minuteman III –
Apparently, things just went nuclear between Putin’s Bitch and the Intelligence community.
Bad news on the Chumph’s part…Because they are holding a lot more extensive evidence of his treason.
A lone Vet’s Protest
US national security officials are reportedly ready to “go nuclear” after President Donald Trump’s latest attack on the intelligence community.
In a series of tweets on Tuesday and Wednesday, Trump insisted that the “real scandal” was not that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn lied about his contact with Russia. Instead, the president blasted what he said were “un-American” leaks that led to Flynn’s ousting.
The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal on N.Korea etc?
Information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?).Just like Russia
The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by “intelligence” like candy. Very un-American!
On Wednesday, former NSA intelligence analyst John Schindler provided some insight into the reaction of national security officials.
“Now we go nuclear,” he wrote on Twitter. “[Intelligence community] war going to new levels. Just got an [email from] senior [intelligence community] friend, it began: ‘He will die in jail.’”
“US intelligence is not the problem here,” Schindler added in another tweet. “The President’s collusion with Russian intelligence is. Many details, but the essence is simple.”
US intelligence is not the problem here.
The President’s collusion with Russian intelligence is.
Many details, but the essence is simple.
Now we go nuclear. IC war going to new levels. Just got an EM fm senior IC friend, it began: “He will die in jail.”https://twitter.com/JWal077/status/831871381570781184 …
Republicans in Congress…
The Internet war against the Chumph racist trolls is heating up. Antifa, the name Anti-Fascists on the Internet have chosen, are attacking and taking down neo-Nazis where they live.
The article describes these heroes as “far-left”. I am not terribly sure that is an accurate description. You don’t have to be “far-left” to hate neo-Nazis and white supremacists. I suspect the movement is a lot deeper than the authors suspect – and it is just getting started.
There are a lot of ways to take down alt-right trolls which don’t involve any computer hacking skills. Making your voice known and going after the enablers of these scum requires nothing more than complaints to Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter. Boycotting the advertisers of Brietbart has been effective. Black Folks should be boycotting the conservative site Townhall for it’s promotion of Lawn Jockeys like Uncle Tommy Sewage. Recent ads included Amazon, Sprint, and Medix Select. email, send a snailmail, or call and tell them you find the content offensive and won’t be buying their products. Go after these clown means of making money, and they will go away.
FOR EVERY NEO-NAZI meme, there is an equal but opposite Nazi punch. Think of it as the Third Law of the internet, if Newton was a subreddit.
OK, that’s a little absurdist, but increasingly, it does seem like every upwelling of far-right agitation—in real life or online—gets met with a reciprocal surge from an equally extreme niche on the far left. Somebody punches the white nationalist Richard Spencer in the face in a video that goes viral. Breitbart provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos tries to give a talk at UC Berkeley. Over 150 protestors break windows and throw fireworks at the police until administrators call off the event. And President Trump tweets about it.
The progression isn’t strict call-and-response, to be sure. But it does show that the white nationalist internet has a kind of counterpart. Some of these far-left activists are militant antifascists—“antifa” for short. And not to get all falsely equivalent on you, but many are young, angry, and know their way around a meme.
They may well indeed express more egalitarian ideals than neo-Nazis (who doesn’t, really?), but they’re also anarchists prone to property destruction and online abuse. Worse, by giving as good as they get, they double down on political polarization, driving the national narrative even further from center.
The traditional antifascist playbook pre-dates World War II. Most famously, they employ so-called black bloc tactics, dressing in head-to-toe black and causing chaos. (The antifacist who punched Richard Spencer was a black bloc participant.)
But it’s not all yelling “anarchy” and lighting stuff on fire. They’re also tech savvy. “Since the first white supremacist sites went online, people have been trying to take them down, figure out people’s passwords, and dox them,” says Stanislav Vysotsky, a sociologist and criminologist at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. “Later on, it became DDos attacks.” Anonymous and spinoff groups like LulzFinancial certainly seem to be on Team Antifa, doxxing scores of far-right agitators.
But President Trump’s election has rejiggered the antifa-versus-white-supremacist struggle. “Most of the trolling had been coming from the right,” says Phyllis Gerstenfeld, a criminal justice professor at CSU Stanislaus who has studied extremist groups on the internet. “Suddenly, we see a lot more nasty trolling coming from the left. It’s a reaction to power shifts.” With the right in power, the left is alienated and ready to raise hell.
“Bash the Fash”
And that makes for a huge influx of social media-focused, younger antifascists—a mirror universe of the self-described alt-righters you’d see on Gab. “People see the iconography on social media, download a flier and just call themselves an antifascist,” says Vysotsky. “The internet makes it all very accessible.”
This new guard—taking up the internet-y rallying cry “bash the fash”— are responsible for things like the popular Nazi punching memes that followed the attack on Spencer. They’ve spread beyond antifascist subreddits to the general public.
While it’s easy to see why non-Nazis might find that satisfying—we’ve spoken to Richard Spencer at length—having a laugh at violence is hardly a feel-good moment. “I don’t know that I want punching anyone to be the model of what political action looks like,” says a longtime antifascist activist and participant in the CrimethInc anarchist network who goes by the nickname “A.”
SK—a “university age” antifascist and moderator of the /r/militant subreddit—feels differently. “We just fight fire with fire,” he says. “If they send us Pepes with swastikas, we’ll send them some weird shitty photoshop. The alt-right likes to call it The Meme War.”
That sounds relatively harmless, but the memes on both sides tend toward threats of violence.
And it doesn’t end with memes. “Members of Neo-Nazi groups occasionally pose as reporters to get information on antifascists so they can target them later,” says another /r/militant mod, whose username is IamSeth (and who required mulitiple encrypted chat apps to be convinced I wasn’t a white supremacist in disguise).
Meanwhile, the Meme War has metastasized to Reddit at large: “/r/antifa was never an antifascist subreddit,” IamSeth says. “It is a honeypot run by members of the Ku Klux Klan.” (I wasn’t able to confirm the Klan connection, but when I reached out to the /r/antifa mods, an individual who goes by diversity_is_racism denied the honeypot claim, but said he or she thinks Richard Spencer is “a good guy.”)
That’s the cost of anonymity—on a subreddit, nobody really knows if you’re antifa or antiantifa. The only way to get an existing subreddit taken down is to show it has become a platform for doxxing—which is allegedly what happened on the /r/altright and /r/alternativeright subreddits earlier this week when they posted links to WeSearchr, for a crowdfunded bounty calling for the doxxing of the antifa activist who punched Spencer. Here’s a screenshot from Gab:
“I’ve seen antifascists doxxing, but I’ve never participated,” says SK. To antifa activists though, doxxing is justified by their opponent’s behavior, which in their view, is worse. “The alt-right is just online making death treats to people,” SK says. “It does disturb your peace of mind, but I think death threats are kind of gross.”
So the Meme War rolls ever on. According to Vysotsky, it’s already happening: “In Wisconsin, a person put up a Nazi flag, and an antifascist published an address online. But because it was a duplex, the address was incorrect,” he says. “The Latino family living there started receiving threats.”
Some antifascists aren’t bothered by this kind of collateral damage. “People are going to do stupid shit and make the movement look bad,” SK says. “But if you’re fighting against oppression, even if you don’t recognize yourself as antifascist, you’re still a comrade of mine.”
The risk, as always, is escalation. “The equivalent of black bloc street battles will happen online,” say Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. “Both sides will use every tool at their disposal to go after the other. Lord knows what they could pull off.” Online, actions earn not equal and opposite reactions but stronger ones— and the dial seems only to turn one way.
If you don’t think Putin’s b*tch has been committing Treason and that the Russians aren’t still our enemies – you might want to take a look at this,
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been drawing down its military presence in Europe. But at the main docks in Bremerhaven, in northern Germany, that’s no longer the case. In fact, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports, quite the reverse is the order of the day.
All the massive hardware of a U.S. combat brigade arrived in Germany over the weekend, and started rolling east toward Poland, where 4,000 American soldiers will be waiting for it.
It is the first build-up of American troops and weapons in Europe in almost 30 years, and as Palmer reports, the impressive display of military might is meant, in large part, to reassure America’s nervous allies in Europe that the U.S. military will be there, standing with them, against any Russian aggression.
Aggression, and land grabs, like the 2014 invasion of Crimea, when Russian troops landed in what had been Ukraine and seized the ground for the Kremlin.
America’s response, manifested with the new deployment, has been to increase both its own force in Europe, and its support of NATO.
However, incoming U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested NATO is obsolete, and said he wants to restore good relations with Russia.
Palmer asked Major General Timothy McGuire how quickly the new president could, as a gesture of good will towards Russia, turn the whole deployment to eastern Europe around and pull them out.
“I’m not going to speculate on what the incoming president may or may not do, but I will tell you this is in the interests of the United States Army, to build readiness,” McGuire replied.
The new commander-in-chief could reverse it all, of course, but Palmer says that would take months, or even years.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has already indicated that he views the American build-up as pointless.
It’s “stupid and unrealistic,” he said, to think that Russia would attack anyone. But the American military and its NATO allies believe a little extra deterrence won’t hurt.
Once all the troops and equipment of the combat brigade reach their final destinations, at various places in eastern Europe, they will start a series of big multinational exercises with other NATO armies.
The Kremlin said Monday that discussions would begin with Mr. Trump’s administration after his inauguration to determine a time for his first meeting with Putin.
The seat of Russian power also said it was looking forward to putting the current period of tension behind it, suggesting Mr. Trump would usher in “more sober experts.”
Or…What America will look like if Trump wins.
The Philippines elected a Trump lookalike. So far, all it has gotten them is mass murder in the streets.
President Duterte perhaps emboldened by no foreign power (the US) putting their foot down on the murders of thousands of people accused of drug using or trafficking, seems to believe in his own “tough guy” talk. It is a sad thing to say, but the big powers really don’t give a damn what you do to your own people in your own country. Mass incarceration and murder are just fine. The problem with most of the tinpot dictators, is they get to smelling their own odor, and believing its like Honeysuckle. And wandering into international politics and the carefully choreographed balance of power between the big boys. That almost always results in said dictator eating a bullet, or hanging by a rope by either a “internal” coup, or a few thousand Marines. The one notable exception being Castro…But his survival wasn’t due to lack of trying by the US over several decades to kill him.
So the question is, as things continue to spiral out of control…Is the next US President going to involve us in an “Intervention”…Which is nothing more than politics-speak for war.
Hope Duterte doesn’t think his new “friends” in China are going to save him from a 9mm to the head.
And no…It isn’t about the drugs. If he stuck solely to that…He could conceivably wind up a National Hero.
Philippine President Duterte
Philippine police killed a town mayor in his jail cell in a purported gun battle, the second killing in a week of a politician linked to illegal drugs under President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal crackdown.
Rolando Espinosa Sr., the mayor of the town of Albuera in the central province of Leyte, and a fellow inmate were shot dead before dawn Saturday after they fired at officers who staged a raid in search of firearms and illegal drugs in the provincial jail in Leyte’s Baybay city, police said.
Some officials and an anti-crime watchdog have called for an investigation of the circumstances of the killings, wondering how the mayor and the other inmate got hold of guns and what prompted them to clash with several policemen while in detention.
“Offhand, I can smell extrajudicial killing,” said Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former national police chief, adding that the suspicious deaths were the “biggest challenge” to the credibility of the national police force, which is undertaking the anti-drug crackdown.
Last week, police killed another town mayor, Samsudin Dimaukom, and nine of his men allegedly in a gunbattle in the southern Philippines.
Espinosa and Dimaukom were among more than 160 officials named publicly by Duterte in August as part of a shame campaign. Espinosa’s son, an alleged drug lord, was arrested in the United Arab Emirates’ capital city of Abu Dhabi last month.
After being linked by Duterte to illegal drugs, Espinosa surrendered to the national police chief in August in a nationally televised event. He was later released, but was arrested last month after being indicted on drug and illegal possession of firearm charges.
One of over 3,600 Murders ordered by Duterte
Police estimate that more than 3,600 suspected drug dealers and users have been killed since Duterte took office on June 30. Many of those killed in the initial months of the crackdown were poor drug suspects, and police said “high-value targets,” including mayors and drug lords, would be their next target in a new phase of the crackdown that was launched late last month.
The unprecedented crackdown and killings have helped ease crime, but the U.S. and other Western governments, along with human rights watchdogs, have been alarmed and called for an end to the killings. One human rights advocate has called the killings under Duterte a “human rights calamity.”
Duterte has lashed out at President Barack Obama and other critics, saying he was dealing with a pandemic that has afflicted politics, corrupted even generals and threatened to turn the country into what he describes as a “narco state” similar to some Latin American countries.
My late Father in Law was on the beach on D-Day in Normandy. One of my late Uncles was hit driving landing craft onto the beach at Anzio, and would later be part of the infantry which freed several of the Nazi death camps. Another Uncle served in the Philippines…So Trump’s line about McCain “Being a hero only because he was captured” is particularly insulting.
In the ongoing destruction of America and devolution to a Third World Tinpot Dictatorship, a Trump Presidency would be the first step of into a deep abyss.
Warning: Vote Trump and get terror threats, trade wars and currency crashes.
A Donald Trump presidency poses a top-10 risk event that could disrupt the world economy, lead to political chaos in the U.S. and heighten security risks for the United States, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Electing Trump could also start a trade war, hurt trade with Mexico and be a godsend to terrorist recruiters in the Middle East, according to the latest EIU forecasts.
The well-respected global economic and geopolitical analysis firm put a possible Trump presidency in its top 10 global risks this month, released Wednesday. Other risks include a sharp slowdown in the Chinese economy, a fracture of the Eurozone, and Britain’s possible departure from the European Union.
Trump’s controversial remarks on Muslims would be a gift to “potential recruiters who have long been trying to paint the U.S. as an anti-Muslim country. His rhetoric will certainly help that recruiting effort,” said Robert Powell, global risk briefing manager at EIU.
Until Trump, the firm had never rated a pending election of a candidate to be a geopolitical risk to the U.S. and the world. The firm has no plans to include Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz or John Kasich on future risk lists.
“It’s highly unusual, and I don’t think we ever have done it where we’ve had a single politician be the center of our risk items,” Powell said in an interview, but noted that the firm has once included the transition at the top of the Chinese Communist Party as a top-ten risk as well.
“Innate hostility within the Republican hierarchy towards Mr. Trump, combined with the inevitable virulent Democratic opposition, will see many of his more radical policies blocked in Congress,” wrote EIU. But “such internal bickering will also undermine the coherence of domestic and foreign policymaking.”…More Here…
Global risk
- April 2016
China experiences a hard landing
Russia’s interventions in Ukraine and Syria precede a new “cold war”
Beset by external and internal pressures, the EU begins to fracture
Donald Trump wins the US presidential election
The UK votes to leave the EU
A collapse in investment in the oil sector prompts a future oil price shock
This could get interesting if it is real… Attacking Trump’s Chicago Hotel though is rather pointless. Would think they would do far better going after making the licensing of the Trump name/brand a negative proposition, going after his state operations and mailing lists, and gathering documentation on his shady, and possibly illegal business dealings.
Can the hacker group take him down?
Hacker group Anonymous is pledging once again to take on Donald Trump.
“Dear Donald Trump, we have been watching you for a long time, and what we see is deeply disturbing,” an Anonymous representative said in a video posted to YouTube earlier this month.
The statement is followed by a series of well-known clips showing the Republican frontrunner acting like a buffoon: insulting Fox host Megyn Kelly, mocking a reporter with a disability, alluding to how sexy his own daughter is, et cetera.
Anonymous follows that with a “call to arms” inviting anyone with a computer to spread the word and participate in “Operation Trump,” now labeled “#OpTrump.” The video ends with a message inviting “everyone to target” trumpchicago.com, a website for the candidate’s luxury hotel, on April 1.
The video is hosted on a different YouTube channel than some previous releases from Anonymous — so it’s difficult to say how “official” the clip is. That said, a well-known Anonymous account on Twitter — @YourAnonNews — has regularly tweetedanti-Trump messages since the clip was posted.
“Your inconsistent and hateful campaign has not only shocked the United States of America — you have shocked the entire planet with your appalling actions and ideals,” the new video says. “You say what your current audience wants to hear, but in reality you don’t stand for anything except for your personal greed and power. This is a call to arms.”
Anonymous previously declared war on Trump in December. It seems not to have slowed his momentum, but maybe second time’s the charm?
That there is a “War on Police” is a claim fostered and sold to the public by Faux News and other conservative and racist outlets and rags. It is a popular defense when some bad cop accosts and beats some 80 year old black guy who can’t walk without a cane half to death in a fit of racist rage. It is a sign of just how far some folks will go to support criminal police actions as long as it is against minorities. And yeah…It is the cry of an embattled Police Chief in a smaller municipality that realizes that some bozo racist underling has just erased 10 years of hard work building trust and support in his community and given his department a black eye.
But other than the whackjob gun crazies on the right, it isn’t the citizen protester who is walking around with automatic and machine guns, throwing gas grenades and explosives at other Americans…
Or riding around in Tanks last seen on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Perhaps the reason so many people are confused about there being a war …Is the fact that many Police departments now look like the Army.
With officers murdered in Texas and Illinois in just the last few days, most voters now believe the police are under attack in America and blame politicians critical of the cops for fanning the flames.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 58% of Likely U.S. Voters think there is a war on police in America today. Just 27% disagree, while 15% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Sixty percent (60%) believe comments critical of the police by some politicians make it more dangerous for police officers to do their jobs. Only 18% think those comments improve the quality of the police’s performance. Thirteen percent (13%) say the politicians’ comments have no impact.
While there is usually a wide racial difference of opinion on questions related to the police, most black voters (54%) agree with the majority of white (60%) and other minority voters (56%) that there is a war on police underway.
An Amphibious Assault Vehicle, converted to Police use by removing the cannon on top
Blacks (36%) are far less likely than whites (66%) and other minorities (55%), however, to say the comments of some politicians are making it more dangerous for the police. There’s very little belief in any of the groups, though, that the comments are improving police performance.
Protests against the police have been growing since the killing in August 2014 of a black teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, although a grand jury did not indict the officer for any wrongdoing. That incident followed by several similar ones around the country led to the establishment of the “Black Lives Matter” movement to protest perceived racist behavior by many police officers.
Eighty-two percent (82%) of black voters think most black Americans receive unfair treatment from the police. White voters by a 56% to 30% margin disagree. Other minority voters are evenly divided.
(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on August 31-September 1, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Seventy-two percent (72%) of Americans have a favorable view of the police in the area where they live. Most (66%) also approve of the tactics used by their local police officers.
Those under 40 believe even more strongly than their elders that there is a war on police going on, but these younger voters are less likely to think politicians critical of the police are making it worse.
Seventy-eight percent (78%) of Republicans think there is a war on police now, compared to 48% of Democrats and 52% of voters not affiliated with either major party.
Once a mainstay of the US Army the M113
Yet another military APC, complete with roof gunner cupola
Twenty-six percent (26%) of Democrats believe political comments critical of the police are improving the officers’ performance, but just 12% of GOP voters and 15% of unaffiliateds agree. Seventy-nine percent (79%) of Republicans and 62% of unaffiliated voters think these comments make it more dangerous for the police to do their jobs, a view shared by only 44% of voters in President Obama’s party.
Seventy-seven percent (77%) of voters who say there is now a war on police believe the critical comments by some politicians make it more dangerous for the cops. Among those who don’t think there is a war on police going on, 35% say the comments improve police performance; 30% say it makes things more dangerous, while 28% think the comments have no impact.
Only 17% of all voters believe politicians raise racial issues to address real problems. Seventy percent (70%) think they talk race just to get elected.
Americans are skeptical of the protests that followed white-on-black police incidents in Fergusonand in Baltimore, Maryland.
Just 13% think most deaths that involve the police are the fault of the policeman. Seventy percent (70%) of voters believe the level of crime in low-income inner city communities is a bigger problem in America today than police discrimination against minorities
Only 19% of black voters think the justice system is fair to blacks and Hispanics, however, compared to 50% of whites and 44% of other minority voters.
Some have countered the “black lives matter” slogan by saying, “all lives matter.” Voters overwhelmingly agree.
Police
Army
One of the Historical Footnotes, I was reminded of by my Haitian co-workers and friends while working in Haiti after the earthquake -was that America had invaded Haiti, and occupied the country for nearly 20 years. Fortunately for me, I had, upon increasingly becoming involved in the work in Haiti, had read as much Haitian History as I could. Off course, not being to read Creole, I had little understanding of the Haitian side of things – although I would learn form personal experience the “caicos” (from Creole meaning “Birds of Prey”…or “bad niggers” as the Americans would call them) still existed, in the modern form of the “Machete Gang” employed by former President Preval (as well as Aristide), and the regional role of politics in the country- North versus South, and the implications of what it really meant when a HAitian described a politicians base as “coming from the North”.
A part of the Haitian cultural psyche is to be extraordinarily defensive at anything which might even tangentially be construed as a slight. Without a cultural and historical context, such paranoia seems to the unknowledged a bit overboard. In the case of Haiti, the sense the world is out to get them, is not entirely counterfactual.
The US invaded Haiti in 1915, set up a puppet dictator, and murdered over 3,000 Haitians, often slaughtering prisoners and lynching suspects believed to be supporting Haitian resistance before departing in 1934. In 1920, the NAACP issued this report. The US would, in line with the deeply racist beliefs held by Americans at that time, create a “paper bag test” elite, favoring the mixed race, lighter skinned Haitians with product distribution an import agreements, as well a using the puppet government to favor them with business contracts, jobs, and licenses. While Haiti has thrown that pig off the bus, the impact of that can be seen today when you meet a group of the major business leaders, and middle/upper class of the country. Met Miss Haiti 2010 while they were doing a photo shoot of her at the Hotel I was staying at. Got a bit of a kickback that evening from a lady friend , when I joined she and her friends at her restaurant for dinner and drinks. Fact is, Haitians come in all shades, just like African-Americans. There is no color barrier anymore – but the social dynamic of folks from a particular social class living in the same neighborhood, and intermarrying – receiving the generational benefits of middle-class, means that most of the folks who are of the middle or upper class are still of mixed blood. Those whose skills, education, and pluck which have moved them into the upper classes in the last 20 years or so, tend to be representative of the population in general. I didn’t particularly care, face it – Miss Bertin is gorgeous, as were the next several women who won the title (You Dawgs among my readership can just look it up). The scars of American racism are still there.
This is an excellent discussion of that, in an interview of Haitian descended Dr Patrick Bellegarde-Smith.
The capture of Ft Revere – The first American invasion and occupation of Haiti.
“Bandit” is a very interesting term. It implies that we aren’t actually fighting a war against a legitimate military foe, but are instead just hunting a group of outlaws. Thus the rules of war don’t apply.
Bandit was the term used by America when it occupied Nicaragua from 1925 to 1933 and failed to quash the Sandino Revolt. But where did the American propaganda machine create that term from?Short lived brutal Haitian Dictator Vilbrun Guillaume Sam m whose reign of terror lasted only 6 months in 1915
It turns out that we learned it from Haiti several years before.
I want to introduce you to yet another American military occupation that some would prefer you forgot.On February 25, 1915, Vilbrun Guillaume Sam seized power in Haiti in a military coup. This ruthless thug had no power base. Thus, when he began getting too friendly with American commercial and military interests a revolt broke out. Afraid that he would end up like his predecessors, dictator Sam had all 167 political prisoners being held in a Port-au-Prince jail executed on July 27, 1915. The people of Haiti rose in revolt and forced Sam to flee to the French embassy. The mob stormed the embassy and found him hiding in a toilet. They literally tore his body to pieces. Thus dictator Sam’s rule ended after just five months.
The chaos that followed threatened the interests of the Haitian American Sugar Company (HASCO), which got President Wilson’s attention. Also, the Haitian government was deeply behind on its debts to American banks.
Officially the reasons why America got involved was because a) we were afraid that Germany might use the chaos as an excuse to invade Haiti, and b) the American government was horrified at the violence committed against the Haitian dictator. Both reasons don’t pass the smell test. As for Germany, invading Haiti while engaged in a two-front war in Europe was far-fetched by any measure. And as for the violence against the dictator, remember that this was 1915 and most Americans at the time had very little problem with a black man being lynched.The very next day a marine detachment of 2,000 was ordered to Haiti. One of these marines had already created a name for himself, Smedley Darlington Butler. It was in Haiti that he truly distinguished himself as a leader of men.
Port-au-Prince and most of southern Haiti allowed the huge neighbor to the north to occupy the country. But northern Haiti was home of the “cacos” (“or bad niggers as we would call them at home.” – Smedley Butler). In the local dialect cacos means “bird of prey”. They feared no army, despite being armed with just machetes, pikes, and 19th Century firearms. The didn’t grasp guerrilla warfare, despite that being their only viable option, and decided to attack the marines head-on. In other words, they were hopelessly out gunned and out trained.
It didn’t take long before the cacos had retreated to Fort Rivière, an old French fortress that was perfectly situated for 18th Century warfare.
Fort Rivière, renamed Fort Liberte is one of several major architectural ruins from the colonial period in Haiti
Butler, one private, and a sergeant named Ross L. lams together scrambled up the slope, bullets pecking into the ground around them, and reached the foot of the wall, to find that the only way in was a storm drain, through which the defenders kept up a steady fire. “I had never experienced a keener desire to be some place else,” Butler remembered. “My misery and an unconscious, helpless, pleading must have been written all over my face. lams took one look at me and then said, ‘Oh, hell, I’m going through.’ ”
Sergeant lams shouldered his way into the drain with Butler and the private right behind him. The startled defenders somehow missed all three, and before they could reload, the Marines were among them. Fifty-one were shot dead: twenty-nine inside the fortress, the rest as they jumped from the parapet and tried to flee into the jungle. Total Marine injuries: two teeth knocked out by a hurled rock. No prisoners were taken; no Haitian survived.
Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave
The first Cacos War was over and Smedley Butler received his 2nd Medal of Honor as well as being appointed commanding officer of the Haitian Gendarmerie.
Now that the first Cacos War was mercifully over, America decided to set up a representative government.
A few weeks later, the US State Department installs Senator Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave as the head of state. “When the National Assembly met, the Marines stood in the aisles with their bayonets until the man selected by the American Minister was made President,” Smedley Butler, a Marine who will administer Haiti’s local police force, later writes.The man selected was Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave and he would be president of Haiti for the next seven years. Soon after assuming office he was presented with a treaty written by the American government and told to sign it. The treaty legitimized the American occupation, as well as gave U.S. control of Customs (something that America had requested just a year earlier) and appointed an American financial adviser (who at one point withheld the pay of the Haitian legislators).
Jim Crow and Dollar Imperialism
For some silly reason the Haitian legislature held onto the quaint notion that they should work for the interests of the people of Haiti. So when America drafted a new constitution for Haiti in 1917 which excluded a “provision from the country’s previous constitution which had prohibited foreign ownership of land” the Haitian legislature rejected it and began crafting their own constitution which would reverse the terms of the 1915 treaty. They even began moving to impeach Haitian President Dartiguenave because he failed to oppose the U.S.-drafted constitution.
Dartiguenave asked Smedley Butler to use the marines to dissolve the Haitian legislature just before they prepared to vote on the new constitution.
Smedley claims that the measure is necessary in order “to end the spirit of anarchy which animates it [the Hatian legislature].” The U.S.-written constitution is submitted to a popular vote in June 1917 and it passes overwhelmingly. Of course only 5% of the population was eligible to vote.
“The Americans taught us how to build prisons. By the end of the 1915 occupation, the police in the city really knew how to hold human beings trapped in cages.”
– Edwidge DanticatOne consistent theme of the Haitian Occupation was the blatant racism of it all.
Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan infamously said of the Haitian elite “Dear me, think of it! Niggers speaking French.” State Department Counselor Robert Lansing believed that “[t]he experience of Liberia and Haiti show that the African race are devoid of any capacity for political organization and lack genius for government. Unquestionably there is in them an inherent tendency to revert to savagery and to cast aside the shackles of civilization which are irksome to their physical nature.”‘ And Assistant Secretary of State William Philipps bemoaned “‘the failure of an inferior people to maintain the degree of civilization left them by the French.”Of course the racism went beyond simply words. Jim Crow laws were imported from the American South to Haiti. Newly arrived U.S. personnel insisted on segregated hotels, restaurants and clubs. Curfews and press censorships followed.
The worst example of this was the re-institution of the corvee system.
Haiti in 1917 had only 3 miles of paved roads outside of main cities. In order to more effectively control the country, the American military needed roads. To build the roads they needed labor. Thus they went back to the days of French colonialism to force Haitians to perform unpaid labor building roads three days a month.
Anyone who knows anything about Haitian history knows the brutality involved in theHaitian Revolutions. One third of the population of Haiti died fighting both British and French troops in the longest, bloodiest slave revolt in history. In order to win their freedom from slavery, Haitians endured hardships and atrocities that Americans could not even imagine (the French “civilization” that William Philipps spoke of involved burying people alive as well as boiling them alive in pots of molasses). To reimpose the corvee system in Haiti shows an incredible insensitivity that could only exist in a racist mind… The reaction was predictable and inevitable.
The Second Cacos War
Charlemagne Masséna Péralte was born October 10, 1885, in Haiti. He was a military officer when the Americans invaded in 1915.
He was fiercely nationalistic, so instead of surrendering to the Americans he simply resigned his position and went home to care for his family. In October 1917, Charlemagne led 60 others in an failed attack on the house of the U.S. commander in Hinche, his hometown. He was captured and sentenced to five years of hard labor. After a couple months he escaped into the mountains with the help of his guard and started a revolt that surprised almost everyone.During Charlemagne’s time in prison, the corvee system was so unpopular that even the American administration noticed and began to phase it out. Too late.
Initial fighting occurred in June 1918 when a gendarme force, sent out to enforce the edict, was severely beaten by a group of cacos. During the summer and fall of 1918, the cacos developed a military force of 3,000 men, with the active assistance of about one-fifth of the entire Haitian people. Led by the charismatic personality of Charlemagne Peralte, they organized a fairly sophisticated system of intelligence and security, forcing peasants to join up whether they wanted to or not.The cacos took the offensive to the gendarmerie, burning their barracks and, on occasion, administering severe defeats on the newly-formed outfit. The movement began to assume the proportions of a full-scale revolution, led by Charlemagne’s cry to “drive the invaders into the sea and free Haiti.” With the gendarmerie clearly on the defensive, the country tottered on the brink of disaster. In March, 1919, a belated call for another marine intervention was made by the government of Haiti.
Charlemagne’s cacos revolt was so successful against the native gendarmerie police forces that by spring 1919 Charlemagne and his “Chief Minister of Revolution”, Benoit Batraville, was in the process of setting up a new rebel government in northern Haiti where he had taken almost complete control. The new marines commander in Haiti, Col. John Russell, was given the task of defeating this new threat to American control. But they soon learned that this wasn’t the same cacos they had fought in 1915. This time the enemy had at least some grasp of the concept of guerrilla warfare even though they were using the same ancient weapons.
Using hit and run tactics, the Cacos managed to inflict at least minor damage and casualties on the marines while avoiding any major defeats. As the months drug on without a solution, Charlemagne grew more bold while the marines grew more frustrated.
Almost everyone stationed in Haiti during the early part of the year seemed to have some knowledge of the fact that both marines and gendarmeries were killing prisoners. It is very difficult to get any witnesses to testify directly, as in the opinion of the undersigned, they were all equally culpable.
– Major T. C. Turner. 1919 investigation report“There was unquestionably some things done by the gendarmeries and some of the marines which deserved punishment.”
– Secretary DanielsThere were at least 400 illegal execution of prisoners, but probably many more. Certain records related to the atrocities mysteriously vanished. An investigation by Secretary Daniels was actively undermined by the adjutant general of the Marine Corps with the approval of Major General George Barnett.
General Barnett had gone to the trouble of ordering the marine commander in Haiti to stop the “indiscriminate killing of natives.”“If one chances to ‘pop off’ a caco, there is not even the trouble of explaining, for one’s companions will do that in their laconic report to headquarters.”
– journalist Harry FranckDespite this wholesale killing of anyone suspected of being a caco sympathizer, the revolt failed to diminish. In fact, it flourished, as guerrilla campaigns are liable to do in the face of widespread atrocities. Peralte proclaimed a holy war against the “white infidels”. From April to October there was 131 separate attacks on the marines by the rebels.
On October 7, 1919, Charlemagne and Benoit launched their boldest attack of all – an assault with 300 men on Port-au-Prince itself. While the coordination with insurgents within the city was impressive, it failed on all accounts and the attack turned into a rout with at least 40 dead.
Nevertheless, the close-call forced the marines to face the idea that they were facing a full-scale revolution. Until this point information was covered up in the hopes of playing down the trouble. No longer. The order was put out to kill Peralte one way or another.“It was a pretty big order. It meant running down one Haitian out of several millions of Haitians in a country as big as the state of New York. And that one Haitian was surrounded by his friends, operating in a country which was almost entirely sympathedc to him, was protected by a fanatical body guard, never slept two nights in the same place, and must be run down in a tangled maze of mountains and valleys and jungles, of which there were no accurate maps.”
– Colonel F. M. WiseThe job of killing Charlemagne eventually fell on Sergeant H. H. Hanneken. Like Smedley Butler’s victory in the first Cacos War, this plan was bold to the point of reckless. Hanneken needed help, and so he turned to Jean-Baptiste Conze. Conze was a wealthy Haitian that hated Peralte even more than Americans. He was also promised $9,600 for his help.
Conze publicly denounced the Americans, and even led a fake attack on an American base with men in his employ. On October 30, Conze, having now infiltrated into the ranks of the rebels, gave the location of Peralte to Hanneken.
With sixteen hand picked gendarmes, Hanneken and his second in command, Corporal William R. Button (USMC) , went through six caco outposts undetected. They were inspected by flashlight at each point, but incredibly enough, they were able to disguise their skin by the use of black cork coloring. They made it through each outpost undetected, white men “dressed” in caco skin.
When they arrived at the main rebel base, Conze silently pointed out Charlemagne hovering near the light of a small campfire. The American pumped two .45 caliber slugs into the betrayed leader, killing him instantly. The bodyguard was instantly felled by automatic rifle fire.The following day Charlemagne’s body was photographed and copies were placed all over Haiti in order to convince the rebels of his death. But the Americans had made a mistake.
Perhaps the marines didn’t realize that photographing the body of their dead leader in a Christ-like crucification pose in a catholic country might have unintended consequences.
Afterwards
After a short period of time, the rebellion sprung to life anew. This time led by Benoit Batraville, a former police chief of Mirebalais. With the opening of 1920 the marines in Haiti took the counter-insurgency to the next level. For the first time since WWI ground forces worked in concert with seven seaplanes and six biplanes, all of whom were converted into bombers. The entire ground strategy was reconfigured into districts. Both methods were effective. The cacos were driven back time and time again. In nearly 200 engagements most of the cacos were either killed or captured. In early June Benoit was killed when his camp was overrun, thus effectively ending the war.
The official number of casualties from the second Cacos War was 13 marines and 27 gendarmeries killed in action, as well as over 3,000 rebels and suspected sympathizers.
The American Occupation of Haiti continued until 1934. It probably would have continued longer if not for a general strike in Novemeber 1929 that ended with the infamous Cayes Massacre of December 6.
An American Soldier stands amidst the bodies of Haitian “Rebels”.
The Cayes Massacre
Fifteen hundred angry peasants, armed with stones, machetes, and clubs, surrounded a detachment of twenty Marines armed with rifles and automatic weapons. The Marines had gone out to meet the peasants, who were advancing on the town intent on securing the release of prisoners arrested the day before and on airing various grievances against the Occupation, including complaints about alcohol, tobacco, and other taxes. Marine airplanes had dropped bombs in the Cayes harbor in an attempt to awe the local population into submissiveness, but this demonstration apparently had the undesired effect of creating terror and frenetic excitement. A district Marine officer unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the mob to retire, but then, according to an account given by two Marine participants, a Haitian leader instigated a scuffle:
The leader made a suspicious move and Gillaspey countered with a blow with the stock of his Browning gun, breaking the stock. The belligerent fell, tackling Gillaspey around the right leg and biting him. William T. Meyers, private, first class, bayoneted the man without seriously hurting him, but forcing him to release Gillaspey. The clash with the natives followed.
The State Department announced that the Haitians first threw stones and then rushed the Marines. In any case, the Marines opened fire at point-blank range and dispersed the mob.
Initial Marine reports and State Department press releases indicated that 5 Haitians were killed and 20 wounded, but Russell later informed the department that the final hospital list totaled 12 dead and 23 wounded, and that It is possible that other wounded were not brought in and other deaths occurred in the hills from contaminated wounds. Reports are current that this is the case, but verification cannot be secured. Casualty lists published in the Haitian press in Jan. 1930 totaled 24 dead and 51 wounded. In response to pointed questions from Under Secretary of State Joseph P. Cotton, who referred to the Marine detachment as a firing squad, Russell explained the curious fact that both the officer in charge of the detachment and his second-in-command had arrived in Haiti only two days before the massacre by saying that they were selected for this duty as they would operate on a military basis, having no bias or preconceived ideas of the Haitian situation. Russell reported that 600 rounds had been fired by rifles, automatic rifles, and one machine gun, but that most of the firing had been deliberately over the natives’ heads and that Had punitive effect been desired, it is reported that from 300 to 400, perhaps more, could easily have been killed. A State Department press release indicated that one Marine was hurt in hand-to-hand encounter with a mob leader. The Marines were later officially vindicated of any taint of brutality or indiscretion when the Navy Department awarded the Navy Cross to the Cayes detachment commander for commendable courage and forbearance. (…)
The internal battle for the Republican Party heats up. Republican House speaker , John Boehner hammers the Tea Party over their intransigence, and refusal to participate in a functional Government…
Beginning to look like the Adults are taking charge again…
It is really very simple. The essence of which is captured by the following three images…
The post-Raygun destruction of the American Middle Class not only means a loss in ages. Faced with ballooning medical costs driven by private insurers, companies have shifted payment of health coverage off the “benefits” list and onto the shoulders of the employee. Now, even your average college grad is only one illness away from poverty.
And then – there is Mom…
The biggest non-criminal racket in the world is care for the elderly in the US. Conservatives would have you believe it is “Death Taxes”, which is a crock designed to fool the stupid into believing that the $10,000 a month it will cost you to put Mom or Dad in a senior center is irrelevant. For most of the middle class anymore, there quite simply isn’t any intergenerational wealth being passed on because of this.
Let’s be very clear. There is going to be a war in America on this come next election cycle. It is going to get ugly, when folks wake up and see these images with their mother, their kids, or brother or sister…
Even Tea Bagger hog calls to racism against the black President doesn’t trump mom dying.
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