Tag: Panama

Character Flaw: US Government Has Lied Us into War of 1812 All the Way to the War on Covid-19

While Canadian children learn all about this fairly well in their government schools, the version that is taught in the US government licensed public and private schools is that the British were to blame for this war and we (US) beat them good. Nothing can be further from the truth.

From what I can recall from my own schooling in the 1960s/1970s, there was mention of the British navy “impressing” US sailors into service on British warships. Well, the truth is that this had been happening since the end of the US War for Independence in 1783 by BOTH the British and the US navies as well as navies all around the globe. In fact, the main mission of the US Marines was to go into port and get able bodied sailors for US ships, kidnapping was encouraged for the greater good. There is no way this issue alone triggered this war.

Since war is the health of the state, power and money are usually the top two reasons states go down this path. The lies told to the public citizens so that they will go along and give up their teen and 20-something men to fight in this just cause is justified because the ends justify the means.

To set the stage and context for this war initiated by the US, one has to find the trigger to resort to this decision. Most of what is covered here is readily available in Wikipedia or its equivalent or conversely, one could listen to this podcast by Bad Quaker (Ben Stone) starting at 17:00 until 49:00.

Regarding the money angle for the US to decide to annex/invade Canada by crossing at Fort Detroit in July 1812, one has to know that since the mid-1780s the US enlisted and licensed privateers to confiscate British merchants goods from the high seas. These were not the Johnny Depp or Errol Flynn versions seen in movies of independent pirates going about their plundering but incorporated business more like present day Iraqi War – US Invasion companies like Halliburton, General Dynamics and Blackwater that thrive in times of conflict.

So up until 1805 with the Battle of Trafalgar, where the British navy whipped both the Spanish and French fleets, the US privateers (considered pirated in other countries) had free reign in the Caribbean and Atlantic due to the 600 ship British fleet focusing on other areas of the world. The Americas was a “backwater” area that did not really rate high on the priority of British global interests.

Complicit in this plundering was the fact that when the privateers brought the booty into US ports (mainly NYC and Boston) the US government got their cut from US constitution decreed taxes before the privateers sold these goods to Americans or even sometimes to the British themselves.

After 1805 the US government’s revenue stream from this activity started to dry up and there was much angst around the economic health of the US and its government by 1812.

 

Power was another angle that has to be considered as there had always been talk of expanding the US both north and south as well as west. During the US Revolutionary War an attempt to get Canada onboard was thwarted, but it seemed to some people who desired empire-building that Canada must be annexed.

It wasn’t enough that the US was able to obtain the Indian Confederacy land in the old Northwest Territory (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan) as this had been the intent since George Washington commanded ownership of large land swaths in the Ohio Territory.

So on 12JUL1812 US troops invaded Canada and was met with still resistance by the Canadians mainly (50% of the forces as militia) as the small number of British military leaders had no real skin in the game. Most of the elite thought that the US could just walk in .. even Thomas Jefferson!

The acquisition of Canada, this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching. – Thomas Jefferson AUG1812

At the same time the US was an ally to France’s Napoleon who decided to invade Russia in 1812 and empire building elites in the US eyed Russian holdings from San Francisco bay up to Sitka, Alaska. When Napoleon failed in this endeavor, the US had to back off from their expansion dreams to the west.

The moneyed elites also looked with greed at all the land Spain still had from Mexico all the way to Panama! It is apparent that the immature US government bit off more than they could chew.

Looking just at a comparison of naval vessels, the British Empire had 600 ships at their disposal including some “Ship of the Line” types that had three decks of large cannon numbering from 100-120.

However, they decided to place only the following near this “backwater” region at Halifax, Nova Scotia:

  • 1 old Ship of the Line
  • 7 frigates
  • 9 sloops

The US had the following:

  • 8 frigates (including the USS Constitution which is still commissioned and still afloat)
  • 14 sloops

Know that the USS Constitution had ONE gun deck and 44 guns, no match for the larger British ships and its fame was won by capturing a 16 gun schooner and a 20 gun sloop!

In fact the British Empire fought a defensive war that only sought to protect trade to the West Indies while the Canadians fought bravely and actually beat soundly the US’s invasion attempt.

The Treaty of Ghent on 23DEC1814 awarded the British and Canadians with all their territories returned that they possessed in JUL1812 while the British offered a condolence prize to the New England fishermen who threatened to secede during the war with prize fishing grounds in British waters off the Canadian coast.

The Treaty of Ghent was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain. Both sides signed it on December 24, 1814, in the city of Ghent, United Netherlands.

The victory won in early 1815 at New Orleans by Andrew Jackson was mainly fought by US privateers and British commanded Canadians and made no difference in the war’s outcome having come after the treaty was signed in late 1814.

The US gained more war debt and no more territories as a result of this conflict. The US had twice as many killed and wounded than the British/Canadian forces. Would this be a lesson learned or would this repeat itself in another generation?

Stay tuned.

Peace out.

-SF!

The Gift of Truth – The Truth Will Set You Free

I hate lies. I love truth. Friends don’t let friends believe in lies .. but they also allow someone that process .. towards truth .. it is a different timeline for everyone .. everyone is unique and ultimately have to own their own beliefs, values, mission, etc.

Along these lines, once I found out what “Honest Abe” did to the much more honorable Robert E. Lee, I had my suspicions that Lincoln was not everything the state says he was, Father Abraham to the freed Blacks, a saint that ended slavery, and the list goes on and on to this deified man. The very fact that the “state” does this should make everyone suspicious!

I detest the way the Lincoln administration chose to bury their dead on an honorable man’s private property .. a man who had 100x the character of Lincoln himself when it came to principles. Lincoln’s words in 1848 about a very Jefferson idea about the consent of the governed would have been something that Robert E. Lee would have agreed with .. and when Lee acted on this belief, Lincoln made sure Lee could never return to his home.

16,000 Union solders buried in Lee’s garden

Obviously, Lincoln was all words (typical politician) and Lee was principles and character, not moved by conditions or time.

The quote Lee and Lincoln would agree to:

“Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movements.” ~ Lincoln January 12 1848, expressing the near-universally held Jeffersonian principle

Anyway, Jacob Hornberger at FFF (The Future of Freedom Foundation) shared this article a few years ago about Memorial Day, but I thought that as 2019 wrapped up it was good to reflect on the nation we find ourselves a part of, and its real history, including a good dose of truth!

Today, Memorial Day, Americans across the land will hear the same message: that U.S. soldiers who have died in America’s foreign wars and foreign interventions have done so in the defense of our rights and freedoms. It is a message that will be heard in sporting events, memorial services, airports, churches, and everywhere else that Memorial Day is being commemorated.

There is one big thing wrong, however. It’s a lie. None of those soldiers died protecting our rights and freedoms. That’s because our rights and freedoms were never being threatened by the enemy forces that killed those soldiers.

Yes, lets look at how the US military defended our rights and freedoms … it should not take long and you will see that it has been a LONG time since they actually did that:

Syria. The Syrian government has never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Syria was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

Niger. The Niger government has never invaded the United States and tried to take away our freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Niger was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

Iraq. The Iraq government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Iraq was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

Afghanistan. The Afghan government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Afghanistan was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms. Even al-Qaeda never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Its terrorist attacks, including the one on 9/11, were retaliation for U.S. interventionism in the Middle East.

Panama. The Panama government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Panama was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

Grenada. The Grenada government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Grenada was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

Vietnam. The North Vietnam government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Vietnam was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

Korea. The North Korean government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Korea was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

World War II.

The Japanese government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in the Pacific theater in World War II was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms. The Japanese attack on U.S. Naval forces on Hawaii was intended solely to prevent the U.S. Navy from interfering with Japanese attempts to acquire oil in the Dutch East Indies in response to President Roosevelt’s oil embargo, whose aim was to provoke the Japanese into attacking the United States so that the U.S. could get into the European part of war.

The German government never invaded the United States and try to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in the European theater in World War II was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms. Germany wasn’t even able to cross the English Channel to invade England, much less the Atlantic Ocean to invade the United States. In fact, the last thing that Germany wanted was war with the United States, as reflected by Germany’s refusal to react to President Roosevelt’s repeated provocations to get Germany to attack the United States. Germany only declared war on the United States after FDR successfully provoked the Japanese into attacking the U.S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor, in the hope that this would provide a back door to entry into the war in Europe.

World War I. The German government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in World War I was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms, especially given the ridiculous aims of U.S. intervention into the war: to “end all wars” and to “make the world safe for democracy,” a word that isn’t even in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, it is perversely ironic that it was U.S. interventionism into the conflict that contributed to the rise of Nazi Germany and World War II.

The Spanish-American War. The Spanish government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any soldier who died in the Spanish-American War was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

I will add the following:

The War Against Southern Independence (of seven states originally, wrongly called a civil war, wrong because the southern states did not want any other territory, PERIOD).

The South Carolina militia in Dec 1860 to April 1861 never invaded the United States and try to take away the rights of those in other states. As a sovereign entity (reclaiming what it had before the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation) it said LEAVE US ALONE.

The Confederate States of America from Feb to April 1861 never invaded the United States and try to take away the rights of those in other states. While after the US Army detachment in Fort Moultrie violated the agreement in place since Dec 1860 when it agreed NOT to take any action in Charleston Harbor and remained at peace in what was now South Carolina territory (seceded from USA), Gen. Anderson, in the cover of night moved his troops to Fort Sumter. When Lincoln attempted to resupply the fort with provisions AND troops was when the forces around Charleston Harbor chose to fire on Fort Sumter .. KILLING NO ONE.

The Confederate States of America (now 11 states) from April – July 1861 never invaded the United States and try to take away the rights of those in other states.

So why celebrate Memorial Day when the reason for its existence is based on lies .. it is yet another government piece of propaganda that when repeated enough get into the heads of the sheep!

Bottom line is that while the defense of the United States in the War of 1812 was ‘honorable’, even that war was entered into under questionable circumstances and outright lies. Know that by 1814 the NORTH was ready to secede from the United States (peacefully) .. you might want to research the “Hartford Convention of 1814”

“… the Hartford Convention began a three-week debate about the relationship between the then 18 states and the federal government. The meeting was held in secret by New England members of the Federalist Party and there were nationwide fears that the Hartford Convention would call for New England’s secession from the Union …”

New Englanders were unhappy over political concerns that they were being badly treated by the Union. Since Thomas Jefferson’s election in 1800, the president had been a Southerner chosen by an electoral system that allowed the slave-holding Southern states to count each slave as 60 percent of a free person for their allocation of congressional seats and the number of presidential electors…”

Did the southern states invade the north to keep this from happening? No! As early as 1804, sensing that New England was not happy with things (this time it was the Louisiana Purchase, another time when secession was discussed in the North.):

“Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I believe not very important to the happiness of either part.  Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those of the eastern, and I feel myself as much identified with that country, in future time, as with this; and did I now foresee a separation at some future day, yet I should feel the duty & the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern, doing all the good for both portions of our future family which should fall within my power.”

–Letter from President Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Joseph Priestly, Jan. 29, 1804

So maybe the American Revolutionary War was really the last time the government’s troops fought for our freedom and for our rights. Think about that!

PS Also, if you think George Washington was really the tactical hero of Yorktown, just know that when the French general Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau told Washington to move his troops to Yorktown as the French fleet was coming to contain the British troops under Cornwallis there, Washington had a melt-down and at first refused the thought thinking as he had the last few years that the decisive battle HAD to take place against the British in New York harbor.

[Do your own research!]

-SF1