The Economic Consequences of theTrans-Atlantic Slave Trade
By Priyantha Hettige
Eric Williams, who became Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, wrote his book “Capitalism and Slavery,” in which he has proposed that the “super-profits” from the slave trade fired up the Industrial Revolution in Protestant Northern European countries.
The victors write the history books, so the saying goes. It can be assumed that much of the discussion and analysis given below is not “approved official history”: it is not in the sanitized “History” books; real history has gone astray, one must assume, for Biblical-prejudicial reasons. Here then, is a reasoned discussion using common knowledge, relevant events and associated dates to show the reader that the Industrial Revolution in Northern Europe was indeed, fuelled by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Protestantism and the Safe Havens for Capital
Starting after 1502CE., the date of the first trans-shipment of slaves to the Americas, the building of specialized ships for the Atlantic slave trade would have slowly increased both in carrying capacity and in numbers of ships built; mostly small Spanish or Portuguese ships. This would be no more than the continuation of an existing Catholic slave trade in Pagans, Heathens, Heretics and Apostates.
Certain favourable conditions were needed for the start of the MASSIVE Trans-Atlantic Slave trade to occur. The first and foremost condition was that those few individuals capable of financing, directing and controlling this trade, most of whom were Jews, required to be at liberty to function effectively; safety from persecution was essential, and confidence that their wealth was safe from confiscation, too.
When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, they dispersed to Portugal, Italy and Morocco: they migrated, smuggling their gold with them, to wherever they could feel safe and prosper, too. Because Catholicism was hostile to the Jewish heresy (‘error has no rights’) almost no-where in Europe was safe for Jews.
But Protestantism was also on the move: the Protestant movement was gaining strength and after some decades, whole countries were able to break away from Rome. The Protestant movement against this vile Catholicism was soon to provide such a safe haven for Jews in Northern Europe in Protestant Holland, Switzerland, England and Germany. They fulfilled those safety and confidence requirements and even today they remain noted centres of banking.
The historical build-up to the massive Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
By the time the great Spanish Armada was repulsed in 1588 around the seas of Britain, the native populations of the Americas, tens of millions, would have been decimated. None remained! The news of this catastrophe would have reverberated around the world. All this notwithstanding, the call for more labour, and more robust labour at that, by the Portuguese and Spanish Conquistadors would have been made, loud and clear.
It was then, after 1588, that rich Jews would have had the confidence to settle in Britain and other Protestant countries and start financing the slave trade. Poorer Jews would see opportunities working in the Slave Trade as Ship’s crew, or onshore as agents, suppliers, auctioneers, etc., in the various Slave trading posts around the Caribbean and Atlantic coasts, i.e. they were mobile, reliable, spoke the languages, and willing to work hard due to their unhappy personal history.
(Already, in the twelfth century, Jewish holy prophet Moses Maimonides in his book: “A Guide to the Perplexed,” had confirmed the unholy story of the curse on Ham extending to all the Negros of Africa. Jews could despise them and enslave them with a free conscience!)
But around 1623 things really changed with the Chartering of the Dutch West India Company. Already other companies were active and competing for business; but now, ship building and Slaving activity accelerated. Huge, immense amounts of money were needed to be raised for the building and equipping of slave ships; and these ships needed certain specialized equipment not easily found or manufactured. Only very rich people, their organizations, or Central Banks could raise these vast amounts of wealth.
Supplying Ships, Buildings and Ironwork for the Trade
The slave trade in total needed much specialized equipment, ships and buildings. Must of the materials needed, had to be found from these same favourable Protestant countries. General ship’s fittings in metalwork such as brass, bronze, iron nails, etc., and hardwoods was well known and available. But each of the three stages of the trans-shipment: Africa; the slave ships; and the final destination needed tons and tons of specialist ironware in the shape of chains and restraints. It was a tight market and supplies of chain and restrains were in great demand, prices soared. People invested in mining iron ore and coal.
Looking at a diagram of how slaves were anchored down on the decks, the numbers can be counted as around 800 to 1000 people on board each ship. At its peak activity the number of ships may have been around 3,000 ships of varying sizes. For example, the Dutch East India Company, alone, had 3,400 ships plying the Spice routes. It is suggested that Slave ships could only survive six Atlantic crossings on average.
Estimates of how many slaves were captured or bought by the traders vary widely, but a considered guess might put the numbers as about 75 million people uprooted and procured for slavery, about 53,000,000 actually boarded ship, about 17 million perished at sea, and 20,000,000 survived into the longer term. These are considered rough approximations only.
The Industrial Revolution in Manufacturing:
The actual firing up and impetus to industrial manufacturing came mostly from the need for restraining slaves. This was done in the early stages by the use of iron – both cast iron and wrought iron in its various shapes and guises. The organizers and managers needed great quantities of specialist equipment: neck collars, arm restraints, leg restraints, iron balls and chains, whole body restraints, even tongue clamps, and leg clamps and locks, deck anchors and posts, and miles and miles of wrought iron chain. These were needed for both on board ship use and on land use.
The manufacture of this vast amount of ironware required considerable specialist expertise, too.
These Northern European countries had a millennium of years of experience in the field of manufacturing personal restraints from iron. For example, there was experience in the manufacture of ceiling hooks, iron Gibbet cages and support brackets, neck collars with spikes pointing inwards or outwards, arm and wrist restraints and even the infamous “Our Lady, the Iron Mary” figure with its grotesque face and hinged doors with spikes of sharp iron to spike her victim.
These had been manufactured to the requirements of the Catholic Inquisition, but after the Protestant movement this institution was not functioning resulting in loss of employment for iron-smithers in those countries. The demand for restraints for the slave trade filled that much-felt need for work by a thousand-fold.
In fact, the demand for this ironware was so huge that the legacy can be seen in the British telephone directory where hundreds of pages, the list of the name ‘smith’ is by far, the largest, longest of all the lists of names.
Iron-smithing or black-smithing became a major industry located around wherever iron ore and coal were to be found in close proximity. A part of the English West Midlands is known as the “Black country” because of this iron implements and chain making. And then canals had to be built for transporting these heavy goods. (But money for digging out and building canals was there, in slavery - not in pottery!)
The demand from the South American countries for better quality, reliable restraints, etc., implements for working the land and so on, required better metals. Simple iron had to be made more reliable, stronger. This was done by removing more of the carbon content by pumping air through the melt. In this way the first steps were taken on the road to modern metallurgy. This also made it imperative to have better cutting tools and machinery to cut and shape this stronger material.
Demand for other manufactured goods, such as cloth, would grow with time, inspiring cloth weaving machinery, so starting a self feeding spiral of demand for ironware, heavy engineering goods and manufactured goods – inspiring inventors and the building of factories (with slave-like working conditions!). Some people got very rich! (Turning sail cloth to jeans became a fashion industry.)
All these orders for restraints, chains, tools and materials, etc., were placed in Protestant countries; those that tolerated and gave security to Jews, and who participated in this business themselves and facilitated the necessary financial transactions. Protestant Northern Europe prospered; the Catholic South never recovered as a direct result of its own creeds and prejudices, but it did build its own slave ships and was active in its own trading of slaves to its new colonies – the Catholic Church!
Time line of the Age
1480 – 1495CE. Torquemada (Catholic Inquisitor – Judge)
Active Inquisitor : 1480 – 1495CE. *He had 10,220 people, Witches burned alive. (mostly old and toothless, poverty stricken and demented, women, hags) *He had 97,371 heretics hanged. *He disposed of a total of 114,000 real people.
1492CE : The expelling of Jews from Spain.
1492CE : Columbus
Columbus sets sail and discovers America for Europe 1492CE. The first African slaves shipped in 1502 to the Caribbean area due to the extermination of the harmless local tribes people, e.g. Taino, living around the islands of the Caribbean.
1509 to 1547CE : King Henry VIII
He becomes head of the English (Protestant) Church in 1531 He was Excommunicated around 1533 by Pope Clement. He executed those Catholics in opposition to his rule. (about 10,000 it is said.)
He died 1547CE
1517CE : Martin Luther
Martin Luther nails his 95 “Questions” to the door of Wittenberg Church in 1517. (Luther justified serfdom and slavery – logically)
1536- 1539CE : “Reform of the Monasteries”
In the Reforms, Inquisitional torture was to be reduced but it was never eliminated altogether. (The death-sentence by imprisoning, alive, people in Gibbet-Cages was kept going until people demanded criminals be hanged before caging in the 18th. century.)
1539CE: THE JESUITS
The Jesuit Organization was founded in 1539 by Ignacio Loyola to counter-balance the Protestant Heresy. (- by cunning subterfuges)
1553 to 1558CE : Catholic ‘Bloody’ Queen Mary
Mary was the eldest daughter of Henry VIII. She reigned from 1553 to 1558. Her first act was to execute the Protestant sixteen year old and well educated, Lady Jane Grey, who had also contested for the throne, and executed her husband, too. Her father was executed two days later in 1554CE. But Mary earned her ‘bloody’ nickname by burning alive 300 prominent supporters of her father and ordering a further c.10,000 other Tudor Protestants to be be-headed. The details of the burnings are well documented by John Foxe. The point has to be made that Henry executed many Catholics as they were against his policies and threatened rebellion. It is clear that, in contrast, Mary burned prominent Tudor Protestant heretics to the approval of the Pope, and she executed thousands of simple Protestants as a measure to even the record. Mary! The Red Queen of Hearts!
She married Protestant Britain’s greatest enemy, Prince Phillip II of Spain. Now, these days, Catholics say she is misunderstood – the first step in an effort to whitewash her – the first step on the road to Sainthood!
1558 to 1603CE : Queen Elizabeth I
Elizabeth followed her elder sister, Mary, on the Throne and was queen from 1558 to her death in 1603. She followed very modest, Protestant policies.
She was excommunicated and dethroned by the Papal Bull of 1570.
The Great Armada sent to capture Elizabeth was repulsed in 1588.
She ushered in a most welcome period of stability and prosperity and happiness.
1602CE : Dutch East India Company
The Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602 primarily for trade and spices from the East.
1618CE : 30 YEARS WAR Starts
The 30 years War starts in Northern Europe – 18m dead in the battle to free themselves from Catholicism.
1621CE : Dutch West India Company
Dutch West India Company was Chartered in 1621. This Charter gave it the powers of a sovereign state almost. It is said that up to 50% of the capital was owned by Jews. It started operating in 1623 in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
At first privateering (buccaneering) was the most profitable activity. This became the biggest and most powerful shipping company and dominated the Slave trade. The Company’s greatest success was the seizure of the Spanish Silver fleet. The Company finally reverted to the Dutch Republic in 1st. Jan. 1792.
1808 : French General La Salle
After Napoleon’s invasion of Catholic Spain, La Salle torched (burned) the Spanish village of Torquemada.
Monday, 6 June 2011
Friday, 27 May 2011
Prominent Paedophile Lord Janner of Moleicester organises taxpayers to refurb concentration camps
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13565629
26 May 2011 Last updated at 16:27
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp to get UK funding
The government is set to contribute £2.1m towards the preservation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland, it has been announced.
The joint contribution will mainly be provided by the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Foreign Office.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation will be funded over the next three years.
More than a million people were murdered by the Nazis at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.
The concentration camp was the largest site for the mass murder of Jews.
In recent years a number of countries have contributed to the fund to maintain the main concentration camp, Auschwitz, and its nearby satellite camp of Birkenau.
Auschwitz and Birkenau were operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II, and opened as a museum in 1947.
'Destructive force'
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said the camp, which stands as an enduring symbol of the Holocaust, was an importance place of remembrance which served to educate people about the horrors of the Holocaust.
Speaking at the Jewish Museum in London, he said: "It is our collective responsibility to ensure that Auschwitz-Birkenau stands as a perpetual reminder of the pain and destructive force of hate.
"We must ensure that the lessons from the Holocaust are taught today and to future generations."
And Foreign Secretary William Hague said Auschwitz-Birkenau underlined "the horrific consequences of intolerance".
'Racism and prejudice'
Mr Hague said he was "proud that the UK is able to play a part in commemorating the millions of victims who died there" and was helping to ensure the camp's preservation to educate future generations on "the evils of that period in history".
And Lord Greville Janner of Moleicester, who chairs the Holocaust Educational Trust, said the financial support sends a clear message that the camp should be maintained for future generations.
He said: "Through our Lessons from Auschwitz Project, the Holocaust Educational Trust gives over 3,000 British students each year the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau.
"This announcement will ensure that when young people visit Auschwitz, they will see for themselves what can happen when racism and prejudice is allowed to go unchecked."
26 May 2011 Last updated at 16:27
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp to get UK funding
The government is set to contribute £2.1m towards the preservation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland, it has been announced.
The joint contribution will mainly be provided by the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Foreign Office.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation will be funded over the next three years.
More than a million people were murdered by the Nazis at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.
The concentration camp was the largest site for the mass murder of Jews.
In recent years a number of countries have contributed to the fund to maintain the main concentration camp, Auschwitz, and its nearby satellite camp of Birkenau.
Auschwitz and Birkenau were operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II, and opened as a museum in 1947.
'Destructive force'
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said the camp, which stands as an enduring symbol of the Holocaust, was an importance place of remembrance which served to educate people about the horrors of the Holocaust.
Speaking at the Jewish Museum in London, he said: "It is our collective responsibility to ensure that Auschwitz-Birkenau stands as a perpetual reminder of the pain and destructive force of hate.
"We must ensure that the lessons from the Holocaust are taught today and to future generations."
And Foreign Secretary William Hague said Auschwitz-Birkenau underlined "the horrific consequences of intolerance".
'Racism and prejudice'
Mr Hague said he was "proud that the UK is able to play a part in commemorating the millions of victims who died there" and was helping to ensure the camp's preservation to educate future generations on "the evils of that period in history".
And Lord Greville Janner of Moleicester, who chairs the Holocaust Educational Trust, said the financial support sends a clear message that the camp should be maintained for future generations.
He said: "Through our Lessons from Auschwitz Project, the Holocaust Educational Trust gives over 3,000 British students each year the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau.
"This announcement will ensure that when young people visit Auschwitz, they will see for themselves what can happen when racism and prejudice is allowed to go unchecked."
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Moscow museum puts Lenin's Jewish roots on display
Moscow museum puts Lenin's Jewish roots on display
By MANSUR MIROVALEV
Associated Press
In this Wednesday, May 18, 2011 photo a visitor looks at a drawing showing Vladimir Lenin flanked by Felix Dzerzhinsky, right, and Yakov Sverdlov in Red Square, on display at the exhibition in the State History Musum in Moscow, Russia. For the first time ever, ordinary Russians can now see documents that appear to confirm long-standing rumors that Vladimir Lenin had Jewish heritage.
- Sergey Ponomarev /AP Photo
For the first time ever, ordinary Russians can now see documents that appear to confirm long-standing rumors that Vladimir Lenin had Jewish heritage.
In a country long plagued by anti-Semitism, such heritage can be a significant taint, especially for the founder of the Soviet Union who is still revered by many elderly Russians.
Among dozens of newly released documents on display at the State History Museum is a letter written by Lenin's eldest sister, Anna Ulyanova, saying that their maternal grandfather was a Ukrainian Jew who converted to Christianity to escape the Pale of Settlement and gain access to higher education.
"He came from a poor Jewish family and was, according to his baptismal certificate, the son of Moses Blank, a native of (the western Ukrainian city of) Zhitomir," Ulyanova wrote in a 1932 letter to Josef Stalin, who succeeded Lenin after his death in 1924.
"Vladimir Ilych had always thought of Jews highly," she wrote. "I am very sorry that the fact of our origin - which I had suspected before - was not known during his lifetime."
Under czarist rule, most Jews were allowed permanent residence only in a restricted area that became known as the Pale of Settlement which included much of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine and parts of western Russia.
Many Jews joined the Bolsheviks to fight rampant anti-Semitism in czarist Russia and some were among the leaders of the Communist Party when it took power after the 1917 Revolution. Most prominent among them was Leon Trotsky, whose real name was Bronstein.
But Lenin, who was born Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov in 1870, identified himself only as Russian. He took Lenin as his nom de guerre in 1901 while in Siberian exile near the Lena River.
A brief period of promotion of Jewish culture that began under Lenin ended in the early 1930s when Stalin orchestrated anti-Semitic purges among Communists and hatched a plan to relocate all Soviet Jews to a region on the Chinese border.
Ulyanova asked Stalin to make Lenin's Jewish heritage known to counter the rise of anti-Semitism. "I hear that in recent years anti-Semitism has been growing stronger again, even among Communists," she wrote. "It would be wrong to hide the fact from the masses."
Stalin ignored the plea and ordered her to "keep absolute silence" about her letter, according to the exhibition's curator, Tatyana Koloskova.
Lenin's official biography, written by his niece Olga Ulyanova, said his family had only Russian, German and Swedish roots.
The letter from Lenin's sister became available to Russian historians in the early 1990s, but its authenticity was fiercely disputed. It was chosen for inclusion in the exhibit by Koloskova, who as director of the State History Museum's branch dedicated to Lenin is one of the most authoritative scholars on his life.
The exhibition in the museum on Red Square, near the mausoleum where Lenin's body still lies, also discloses that he was in such misery after suffering a stroke in 1922 that he asked Stalin to bring him poison.
"He did not incidentally pick Stalin to fulfill this request," Lenin's youngest sister, Maria Ulyanova, wrote in a 1922 diary entry. "He knew Comrade Stalin as a steadfast Bolshevik, straight and devoid of any sentimentality. Who else would dare to end Lenin's life?"
Initially, Stalin promised to help Lenin, but other Politburo members decided to turn down his request, the letter says. Trotsky, whom Stalin forced out of the Soviet Union, claimed in his memoirs that Stalin had poisoned Lenin.
The 111 documents on display, many of them only recently declassified and all of them open to the public for the first time, give surprising insights into top figures of the Soviet Union. Men usually portrayed as stern and fearless are seen as sometimes whimsical, frightened and even despairing.
One of the documents contains a desperate plea that Stalin received in 1934 from an arrested Communist leader, Lev Kamenev, whose real name was Rosenfeld.
"At a time when my soul is filled with nothing but love for the party and its leadership, when, having lived through hesitations and doubts, I can boldly say that I learned to highly trust the Central Committee's every step and every decision you, Comrade Stalin, make," Kamenev wrote. "I have been arrested for my ties to people that are strange and disgusting to me."
Stalin ignored this letter, too, and Kamenev was executed in 1936.
A slightly more humorous - but no less macabre - aspect of the exhibition is caricatures drawn by Politburo members.
Nikolai Bukharin, a leading Communist ideologue, depicts Stalin with a giant, exaggerated nose and his trademark pipe. His portrayal of other Communists is also unflattering - one is shown as a White Army officer. The anti-Communist White Army, which was backed by Western powers, unsuccessfully fought Lenin's Red Army in a civil war from 1917-23.
Prominent economist Valery Mezhlauk ridicules Trotsky as a Wandering Jew and depicts a finance minister hanging in an awkward position. In a handwritten note under the latter caricature, Stalin recommends that the minister be hanged by his testicles.
The minister and both cartoonists were arrested and executed in 1938.
The exhibition, which opened last week, runs through July 3.
© 2011 TheState.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.thestate.com
By MANSUR MIROVALEV
Associated Press
In this Wednesday, May 18, 2011 photo a visitor looks at a drawing showing Vladimir Lenin flanked by Felix Dzerzhinsky, right, and Yakov Sverdlov in Red Square, on display at the exhibition in the State History Musum in Moscow, Russia. For the first time ever, ordinary Russians can now see documents that appear to confirm long-standing rumors that Vladimir Lenin had Jewish heritage.
- Sergey Ponomarev /AP Photo
For the first time ever, ordinary Russians can now see documents that appear to confirm long-standing rumors that Vladimir Lenin had Jewish heritage.
In a country long plagued by anti-Semitism, such heritage can be a significant taint, especially for the founder of the Soviet Union who is still revered by many elderly Russians.
Among dozens of newly released documents on display at the State History Museum is a letter written by Lenin's eldest sister, Anna Ulyanova, saying that their maternal grandfather was a Ukrainian Jew who converted to Christianity to escape the Pale of Settlement and gain access to higher education.
"He came from a poor Jewish family and was, according to his baptismal certificate, the son of Moses Blank, a native of (the western Ukrainian city of) Zhitomir," Ulyanova wrote in a 1932 letter to Josef Stalin, who succeeded Lenin after his death in 1924.
"Vladimir Ilych had always thought of Jews highly," she wrote. "I am very sorry that the fact of our origin - which I had suspected before - was not known during his lifetime."
Under czarist rule, most Jews were allowed permanent residence only in a restricted area that became known as the Pale of Settlement which included much of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine and parts of western Russia.
Many Jews joined the Bolsheviks to fight rampant anti-Semitism in czarist Russia and some were among the leaders of the Communist Party when it took power after the 1917 Revolution. Most prominent among them was Leon Trotsky, whose real name was Bronstein.
But Lenin, who was born Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov in 1870, identified himself only as Russian. He took Lenin as his nom de guerre in 1901 while in Siberian exile near the Lena River.
A brief period of promotion of Jewish culture that began under Lenin ended in the early 1930s when Stalin orchestrated anti-Semitic purges among Communists and hatched a plan to relocate all Soviet Jews to a region on the Chinese border.
Ulyanova asked Stalin to make Lenin's Jewish heritage known to counter the rise of anti-Semitism. "I hear that in recent years anti-Semitism has been growing stronger again, even among Communists," she wrote. "It would be wrong to hide the fact from the masses."
Stalin ignored the plea and ordered her to "keep absolute silence" about her letter, according to the exhibition's curator, Tatyana Koloskova.
Lenin's official biography, written by his niece Olga Ulyanova, said his family had only Russian, German and Swedish roots.
The letter from Lenin's sister became available to Russian historians in the early 1990s, but its authenticity was fiercely disputed. It was chosen for inclusion in the exhibit by Koloskova, who as director of the State History Museum's branch dedicated to Lenin is one of the most authoritative scholars on his life.
The exhibition in the museum on Red Square, near the mausoleum where Lenin's body still lies, also discloses that he was in such misery after suffering a stroke in 1922 that he asked Stalin to bring him poison.
"He did not incidentally pick Stalin to fulfill this request," Lenin's youngest sister, Maria Ulyanova, wrote in a 1922 diary entry. "He knew Comrade Stalin as a steadfast Bolshevik, straight and devoid of any sentimentality. Who else would dare to end Lenin's life?"
Initially, Stalin promised to help Lenin, but other Politburo members decided to turn down his request, the letter says. Trotsky, whom Stalin forced out of the Soviet Union, claimed in his memoirs that Stalin had poisoned Lenin.
The 111 documents on display, many of them only recently declassified and all of them open to the public for the first time, give surprising insights into top figures of the Soviet Union. Men usually portrayed as stern and fearless are seen as sometimes whimsical, frightened and even despairing.
One of the documents contains a desperate plea that Stalin received in 1934 from an arrested Communist leader, Lev Kamenev, whose real name was Rosenfeld.
"At a time when my soul is filled with nothing but love for the party and its leadership, when, having lived through hesitations and doubts, I can boldly say that I learned to highly trust the Central Committee's every step and every decision you, Comrade Stalin, make," Kamenev wrote. "I have been arrested for my ties to people that are strange and disgusting to me."
Stalin ignored this letter, too, and Kamenev was executed in 1936.
A slightly more humorous - but no less macabre - aspect of the exhibition is caricatures drawn by Politburo members.
Nikolai Bukharin, a leading Communist ideologue, depicts Stalin with a giant, exaggerated nose and his trademark pipe. His portrayal of other Communists is also unflattering - one is shown as a White Army officer. The anti-Communist White Army, which was backed by Western powers, unsuccessfully fought Lenin's Red Army in a civil war from 1917-23.
Prominent economist Valery Mezhlauk ridicules Trotsky as a Wandering Jew and depicts a finance minister hanging in an awkward position. In a handwritten note under the latter caricature, Stalin recommends that the minister be hanged by his testicles.
The minister and both cartoonists were arrested and executed in 1938.
The exhibition, which opened last week, runs through July 3.
© 2011 TheState.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.thestate.com
Moscow museum puts Lenin's Jewish roots on display
Moscow museum puts Lenin's Jewish roots on display
By MANSUR MIROVALEV
Associated Press
In this Wednesday, May 18, 2011 photo a visitor looks at a drawing showing Vladimir Lenin flanked by Felix Dzerzhinsky, right, and Yakov Sverdlov in Red Square, on display at the exhibition in the State History Musum in Moscow, Russia. For the first time ever, ordinary Russians can now see documents that appear to confirm long-standing rumors that Vladimir Lenin had Jewish heritage.
- Sergey Ponomarev /AP Photo
For the first time ever, ordinary Russians can now see documents that appear to confirm long-standing rumors that Vladimir Lenin had Jewish heritage.
In a country long plagued by anti-Semitism, such heritage can be a significant taint, especially for the founder of the Soviet Union who is still revered by many elderly Russians.
Among dozens of newly released documents on display at the State History Museum is a letter written by Lenin's eldest sister, Anna Ulyanova, saying that their maternal grandfather was a Ukrainian Jew who converted to Christianity to escape the Pale of Settlement and gain access to higher education.
"He came from a poor Jewish family and was, according to his baptismal certificate, the son of Moses Blank, a native of (the western Ukrainian city of) Zhitomir," Ulyanova wrote in a 1932 letter to Josef Stalin, who succeeded Lenin after his death in 1924.
"Vladimir Ilych had always thought of Jews highly," she wrote. "I am very sorry that the fact of our origin - which I had suspected before - was not known during his lifetime."
Under czarist rule, most Jews were allowed permanent residence only in a restricted area that became known as the Pale of Settlement which included much of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine and parts of western Russia.
Many Jews joined the Bolsheviks to fight rampant anti-Semitism in czarist Russia and some were among the leaders of the Communist Party when it took power after the 1917 Revolution. Most prominent among them was Leon Trotsky, whose real name was Bronstein.
But Lenin, who was born Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov in 1870, identified himself only as Russian. He took Lenin as his nom de guerre in 1901 while in Siberian exile near the Lena River.
A brief period of promotion of Jewish culture that began under Lenin ended in the early 1930s when Stalin orchestrated anti-Semitic purges among Communists and hatched a plan to relocate all Soviet Jews to a region on the Chinese border.
Ulyanova asked Stalin to make Lenin's Jewish heritage known to counter the rise of anti-Semitism. "I hear that in recent years anti-Semitism has been growing stronger again, even among Communists," she wrote. "It would be wrong to hide the fact from the masses."
Stalin ignored the plea and ordered her to "keep absolute silence" about her letter, according to the exhibition's curator, Tatyana Koloskova.
Lenin's official biography, written by his niece Olga Ulyanova, said his family had only Russian, German and Swedish roots.
The letter from Lenin's sister became available to Russian historians in the early 1990s, but its authenticity was fiercely disputed. It was chosen for inclusion in the exhibit by Koloskova, who as director of the State History Museum's branch dedicated to Lenin is one of the most authoritative scholars on his life.
The exhibition in the museum on Red Square, near the mausoleum where Lenin's body still lies, also discloses that he was in such misery after suffering a stroke in 1922 that he asked Stalin to bring him poison.
"He did not incidentally pick Stalin to fulfill this request," Lenin's youngest sister, Maria Ulyanova, wrote in a 1922 diary entry. "He knew Comrade Stalin as a steadfast Bolshevik, straight and devoid of any sentimentality. Who else would dare to end Lenin's life?"
Initially, Stalin promised to help Lenin, but other Politburo members decided to turn down his request, the letter says. Trotsky, whom Stalin forced out of the Soviet Union, claimed in his memoirs that Stalin had poisoned Lenin.
The 111 documents on display, many of them only recently declassified and all of them open to the public for the first time, give surprising insights into top figures of the Soviet Union. Men usually portrayed as stern and fearless are seen as sometimes whimsical, frightened and even despairing.
One of the documents contains a desperate plea that Stalin received in 1934 from an arrested Communist leader, Lev Kamenev, whose real name was Rosenfeld.
"At a time when my soul is filled with nothing but love for the party and its leadership, when, having lived through hesitations and doubts, I can boldly say that I learned to highly trust the Central Committee's every step and every decision you, Comrade Stalin, make," Kamenev wrote. "I have been arrested for my ties to people that are strange and disgusting to me."
Stalin ignored this letter, too, and Kamenev was executed in 1936.
A slightly more humorous - but no less macabre - aspect of the exhibition is caricatures drawn by Politburo members.
Nikolai Bukharin, a leading Communist ideologue, depicts Stalin with a giant, exaggerated nose and his trademark pipe. His portrayal of other Communists is also unflattering - one is shown as a White Army officer. The anti-Communist White Army, which was backed by Western powers, unsuccessfully fought Lenin's Red Army in a civil war from 1917-23.
Prominent economist Valery Mezhlauk ridicules Trotsky as a Wandering Jew and depicts a finance minister hanging in an awkward position. In a handwritten note under the latter caricature, Stalin recommends that the minister be hanged by his testicles.
The minister and both cartoonists were arrested and executed in 1938.
The exhibition, which opened last week, runs through July 3.
© 2011 TheState.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.thestate.com
By MANSUR MIROVALEV
Associated Press
In this Wednesday, May 18, 2011 photo a visitor looks at a drawing showing Vladimir Lenin flanked by Felix Dzerzhinsky, right, and Yakov Sverdlov in Red Square, on display at the exhibition in the State History Musum in Moscow, Russia. For the first time ever, ordinary Russians can now see documents that appear to confirm long-standing rumors that Vladimir Lenin had Jewish heritage.
- Sergey Ponomarev /AP Photo
For the first time ever, ordinary Russians can now see documents that appear to confirm long-standing rumors that Vladimir Lenin had Jewish heritage.
In a country long plagued by anti-Semitism, such heritage can be a significant taint, especially for the founder of the Soviet Union who is still revered by many elderly Russians.
Among dozens of newly released documents on display at the State History Museum is a letter written by Lenin's eldest sister, Anna Ulyanova, saying that their maternal grandfather was a Ukrainian Jew who converted to Christianity to escape the Pale of Settlement and gain access to higher education.
"He came from a poor Jewish family and was, according to his baptismal certificate, the son of Moses Blank, a native of (the western Ukrainian city of) Zhitomir," Ulyanova wrote in a 1932 letter to Josef Stalin, who succeeded Lenin after his death in 1924.
"Vladimir Ilych had always thought of Jews highly," she wrote. "I am very sorry that the fact of our origin - which I had suspected before - was not known during his lifetime."
Under czarist rule, most Jews were allowed permanent residence only in a restricted area that became known as the Pale of Settlement which included much of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine and parts of western Russia.
Many Jews joined the Bolsheviks to fight rampant anti-Semitism in czarist Russia and some were among the leaders of the Communist Party when it took power after the 1917 Revolution. Most prominent among them was Leon Trotsky, whose real name was Bronstein.
But Lenin, who was born Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov in 1870, identified himself only as Russian. He took Lenin as his nom de guerre in 1901 while in Siberian exile near the Lena River.
A brief period of promotion of Jewish culture that began under Lenin ended in the early 1930s when Stalin orchestrated anti-Semitic purges among Communists and hatched a plan to relocate all Soviet Jews to a region on the Chinese border.
Ulyanova asked Stalin to make Lenin's Jewish heritage known to counter the rise of anti-Semitism. "I hear that in recent years anti-Semitism has been growing stronger again, even among Communists," she wrote. "It would be wrong to hide the fact from the masses."
Stalin ignored the plea and ordered her to "keep absolute silence" about her letter, according to the exhibition's curator, Tatyana Koloskova.
Lenin's official biography, written by his niece Olga Ulyanova, said his family had only Russian, German and Swedish roots.
The letter from Lenin's sister became available to Russian historians in the early 1990s, but its authenticity was fiercely disputed. It was chosen for inclusion in the exhibit by Koloskova, who as director of the State History Museum's branch dedicated to Lenin is one of the most authoritative scholars on his life.
The exhibition in the museum on Red Square, near the mausoleum where Lenin's body still lies, also discloses that he was in such misery after suffering a stroke in 1922 that he asked Stalin to bring him poison.
"He did not incidentally pick Stalin to fulfill this request," Lenin's youngest sister, Maria Ulyanova, wrote in a 1922 diary entry. "He knew Comrade Stalin as a steadfast Bolshevik, straight and devoid of any sentimentality. Who else would dare to end Lenin's life?"
Initially, Stalin promised to help Lenin, but other Politburo members decided to turn down his request, the letter says. Trotsky, whom Stalin forced out of the Soviet Union, claimed in his memoirs that Stalin had poisoned Lenin.
The 111 documents on display, many of them only recently declassified and all of them open to the public for the first time, give surprising insights into top figures of the Soviet Union. Men usually portrayed as stern and fearless are seen as sometimes whimsical, frightened and even despairing.
One of the documents contains a desperate plea that Stalin received in 1934 from an arrested Communist leader, Lev Kamenev, whose real name was Rosenfeld.
"At a time when my soul is filled with nothing but love for the party and its leadership, when, having lived through hesitations and doubts, I can boldly say that I learned to highly trust the Central Committee's every step and every decision you, Comrade Stalin, make," Kamenev wrote. "I have been arrested for my ties to people that are strange and disgusting to me."
Stalin ignored this letter, too, and Kamenev was executed in 1936.
A slightly more humorous - but no less macabre - aspect of the exhibition is caricatures drawn by Politburo members.
Nikolai Bukharin, a leading Communist ideologue, depicts Stalin with a giant, exaggerated nose and his trademark pipe. His portrayal of other Communists is also unflattering - one is shown as a White Army officer. The anti-Communist White Army, which was backed by Western powers, unsuccessfully fought Lenin's Red Army in a civil war from 1917-23.
Prominent economist Valery Mezhlauk ridicules Trotsky as a Wandering Jew and depicts a finance minister hanging in an awkward position. In a handwritten note under the latter caricature, Stalin recommends that the minister be hanged by his testicles.
The minister and both cartoonists were arrested and executed in 1938.
The exhibition, which opened last week, runs through July 3.
© 2011 TheState.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.thestate.com
Monday, 23 May 2011
Early Gassing Story
Subject: Gassing Jews--in the year 38 AD!
For the whole account, see:
http://cornerstonepublications.org/Philo/Philo_Flaccus.html
Here is certainly the earliest recorded incident of the gassing to death of Jews. In the year 38, the Roman viceroy of Alexandria was A. A. Flaccus. The city had a considerable population of Jews, many of whom resented Roman rule. To quell periodic uprisings, Flaccus rescinded their rights and initiated a pogrom. He then confined them to one quarter of the city, effectively creating the first Jewish ghetto in history. Once concentrated, they were sitting ducks for the local mob. Flaccus (according to the Jewish historian Philo) "allowed anyone who was inclined to proceed to exterminate the Jews as prisoners of war."
In a lengthy passage of his work Flaccus, Philo describes, in the best Holocaust style, the atrocities inflicted on the Jews. In the middle of his account we find this:
"Some persons even, going still great and greater lengths in the iniquity and license of their barbarity, disdained all blunter weapons, and took up the most efficacious arms of all, fire and iron, and slew many with the sword, and destroyed not a few with flames. And the most merciless of all their persecutors in some instances burnt whole families, husbands with their wives, and infant children with their parents, in the middle of the city, sparing neither age nor youth, nor the innocent helplessness of infants. And when they had a scarcity of fuel, they collected faggots of green wood, and slew them by the smoke rather than by fire…" (IX, 68)
One wonders how exactly this happened—in "smoke chambers"? Open air? Enclosed chariots? In any case, the Nazis evidently had a good role model in the Romans.
For the whole account, see:
http://cornerstonepublications.org/Philo/Philo_Flaccus.html
For the whole account, see:
http://cornerstonepublications.org/Philo/Philo_Flaccus.html
Here is certainly the earliest recorded incident of the gassing to death of Jews. In the year 38, the Roman viceroy of Alexandria was A. A. Flaccus. The city had a considerable population of Jews, many of whom resented Roman rule. To quell periodic uprisings, Flaccus rescinded their rights and initiated a pogrom. He then confined them to one quarter of the city, effectively creating the first Jewish ghetto in history. Once concentrated, they were sitting ducks for the local mob. Flaccus (according to the Jewish historian Philo) "allowed anyone who was inclined to proceed to exterminate the Jews as prisoners of war."
In a lengthy passage of his work Flaccus, Philo describes, in the best Holocaust style, the atrocities inflicted on the Jews. In the middle of his account we find this:
"Some persons even, going still great and greater lengths in the iniquity and license of their barbarity, disdained all blunter weapons, and took up the most efficacious arms of all, fire and iron, and slew many with the sword, and destroyed not a few with flames. And the most merciless of all their persecutors in some instances burnt whole families, husbands with their wives, and infant children with their parents, in the middle of the city, sparing neither age nor youth, nor the innocent helplessness of infants. And when they had a scarcity of fuel, they collected faggots of green wood, and slew them by the smoke rather than by fire…" (IX, 68)
One wonders how exactly this happened—in "smoke chambers"? Open air? Enclosed chariots? In any case, the Nazis evidently had a good role model in the Romans.
For the whole account, see:
http://cornerstonepublications.org/Philo/Philo_Flaccus.html
Monday, 16 May 2011
Freedom of Information Act Reveals Files Suggesting FDR’s Role in Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor was a an exact prequel to 9-11: The reason why FDR provoked Japan into attacking the USA was to get us into the European War. Japan and Germany were allies. The Germans were kicking the hell out of the Russians and the only way FDR could save Stalin and his bolshevik friends was to get the USA into war with Japan. That would the USA into the war by the back door, and that is exactly what happened.
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/04/freedom-of-information-act-reveals.html
Friday, April 22, 2011
Freedom of Information Act Reveals Files Suggesting FDR’s Role in Pearl Harbor
Alexis Bonari
September 11th is hardly the first “day of infamy” to undergo public scrutiny and accusations of government conspiracy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt coined the phrase on December 7th after the Japanese “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The attack, according to author and WWII Navy veteran, Robert B. Stinnett, however, had been no surprise at all for Roosevelt.
It was only at the author’s insistent calls on the Freedom of Information Act that the U.S. Navy at last released formerly hidden evidence that led Stinnett to conclude: FDR knew and had the power to avert disaster on December 7th.
Interview with Stinnett
The government’s claims that Japan’s codes had yet to be broken in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor have been met with questions and skepticism since 1945’s September issue of Life magazine. Stinnett himself, in an interview featured on The Independent Institute’s website, says that he believed the article to be an anti-Roosevelt tract at the time. After reading At Dawn We Slept by Professor Prange in 1982, however, and learning about the US Navy monitoring station at Pearl Harbor, he changed his mind. This was the beginning of Day of Deceit.
Day of Deceit
The likes of Gore Vidal and John Toland, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of Infamy, have praised Stinnett’s heavily researched book, Day of Deceit. In it, he writes at length about the Roosevelt administration’s plan to provoke Japan in an “overt act of war,” a plan that he adopted in October 7, 1940.
Because the American public still ached from the appalling death toll of the First World War (and because FDR had already promised his people, “Your boys are not going to be sent into ay foreign wars”), FDR focused most of his energy on coming up with a reason for the nation to change its mind. In November 1941, all US military commanders received the order: “The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.” That would explain why, according to Lynne Olson’s research published in Citizens of London, Churchill and Governor John G. Winant practically danced at the news in December that America would be joining the European campaign, forgetting that over 2,000 Americans were already dead.
Cracking the Code
According to Stinnett’s research, the US Navy had in fact cracked Japanese naval codes and even intercepted eighty-three messages from Admiral Yamamoto to his warships. A message from November 25 read:
…the task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow.
Even Thomas Dewey, Roosevelt’s competitor in the 1944 presidential elections, had heard whispers of FDR’s role in arranging the massacre. Although Dewey planned speeches to charge FDR with foreknowledge of the attack, General George Marshall (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) convinced Dewey that he would risk American security in doing so, since Japan’s navy had yet to realize their codes had been cracked. Dewey kept his silence, and nearly everyone else has since, too—until Stinnett.
Day of Deceit has received much criticism (predictably) from conventional historians and readers as well as notable acclaim from revisionists. Still others disapprove of Stinnett’s ubiquitous tone that suggests throughout the book that FDR had no choice but to arrange for the deaths of over 2,000 Americans at Pearl Harbor. Stinnet most notably fails to mention FDR’s refusal to meet Prime Minister Konoye for peace talks in late 1941.
Stinnett seems to have broken ground, but it is still only the surface.
Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and researcher for College Scholarships, where recently she’s been researching nurse anesthetist scholarships as well as nursing midwives scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.
Freedom of Information Act Reveals Files Suggesting FDR’s Role in Pearl Harbor
5 comments:
Anonymous said...
The Japanese crypto machine was a modified version of the German Enigma machine. It used much more reliable rotary telephone switches instead of the German Enigma rotors. What most people do not realize, even today, is that the entire Enigma rotor concept is insecure. A Polish mathematician named Marian Rejewski, pronounced Ray EFF ski, used the branch of math called "group theory" to show how the rotor connections can be recovered, given enough data. To this day, most people believe, and report as fact, that the rotor connections were stolen. WRONG. The rotor connections were not stolen from the Germans and they did not need to be stolen from the Japanese, very difficult for any white faces to accomplish. The US Navy crypto people knew very well what Rejewski had discovered. We know the complete story of the German Enigma cipher and how it was broken but to this day the US Navy's breaking of the Japanese codes has not been made public in comparable detail. The book "Enigma" by Wladyslaw Kozaczuk (1984) has the critical German Enigma information in an appendix. The point: there is no reason to keep WWII code breaking a secret unless to cover up advanced knowledge of Pearl Harbor. See also Wikipedia Enigma article.
April 22, 2011 10:43 AM
Anonymous said...
so maybe 70years from now we will find out that bush knew and keep it to himself and the cia to go to work for oil and still never got any of it.
April 22, 2011 12:41 PM
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/04/freedom-of-information-act-reveals.html
Friday, April 22, 2011
Freedom of Information Act Reveals Files Suggesting FDR’s Role in Pearl Harbor
Alexis Bonari
September 11th is hardly the first “day of infamy” to undergo public scrutiny and accusations of government conspiracy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt coined the phrase on December 7th after the Japanese “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The attack, according to author and WWII Navy veteran, Robert B. Stinnett, however, had been no surprise at all for Roosevelt.
It was only at the author’s insistent calls on the Freedom of Information Act that the U.S. Navy at last released formerly hidden evidence that led Stinnett to conclude: FDR knew and had the power to avert disaster on December 7th.
Interview with Stinnett
The government’s claims that Japan’s codes had yet to be broken in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor have been met with questions and skepticism since 1945’s September issue of Life magazine. Stinnett himself, in an interview featured on The Independent Institute’s website, says that he believed the article to be an anti-Roosevelt tract at the time. After reading At Dawn We Slept by Professor Prange in 1982, however, and learning about the US Navy monitoring station at Pearl Harbor, he changed his mind. This was the beginning of Day of Deceit.
Day of Deceit
The likes of Gore Vidal and John Toland, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of Infamy, have praised Stinnett’s heavily researched book, Day of Deceit. In it, he writes at length about the Roosevelt administration’s plan to provoke Japan in an “overt act of war,” a plan that he adopted in October 7, 1940.
Because the American public still ached from the appalling death toll of the First World War (and because FDR had already promised his people, “Your boys are not going to be sent into ay foreign wars”), FDR focused most of his energy on coming up with a reason for the nation to change its mind. In November 1941, all US military commanders received the order: “The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.” That would explain why, according to Lynne Olson’s research published in Citizens of London, Churchill and Governor John G. Winant practically danced at the news in December that America would be joining the European campaign, forgetting that over 2,000 Americans were already dead.
Cracking the Code
According to Stinnett’s research, the US Navy had in fact cracked Japanese naval codes and even intercepted eighty-three messages from Admiral Yamamoto to his warships. A message from November 25 read:
…the task force, keeping its movements strictly secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow.
Even Thomas Dewey, Roosevelt’s competitor in the 1944 presidential elections, had heard whispers of FDR’s role in arranging the massacre. Although Dewey planned speeches to charge FDR with foreknowledge of the attack, General George Marshall (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) convinced Dewey that he would risk American security in doing so, since Japan’s navy had yet to realize their codes had been cracked. Dewey kept his silence, and nearly everyone else has since, too—until Stinnett.
Day of Deceit has received much criticism (predictably) from conventional historians and readers as well as notable acclaim from revisionists. Still others disapprove of Stinnett’s ubiquitous tone that suggests throughout the book that FDR had no choice but to arrange for the deaths of over 2,000 Americans at Pearl Harbor. Stinnet most notably fails to mention FDR’s refusal to meet Prime Minister Konoye for peace talks in late 1941.
Stinnett seems to have broken ground, but it is still only the surface.
Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and researcher for College Scholarships, where recently she’s been researching nurse anesthetist scholarships as well as nursing midwives scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.
Freedom of Information Act Reveals Files Suggesting FDR’s Role in Pearl Harbor
5 comments:
Anonymous said...
The Japanese crypto machine was a modified version of the German Enigma machine. It used much more reliable rotary telephone switches instead of the German Enigma rotors. What most people do not realize, even today, is that the entire Enigma rotor concept is insecure. A Polish mathematician named Marian Rejewski, pronounced Ray EFF ski, used the branch of math called "group theory" to show how the rotor connections can be recovered, given enough data. To this day, most people believe, and report as fact, that the rotor connections were stolen. WRONG. The rotor connections were not stolen from the Germans and they did not need to be stolen from the Japanese, very difficult for any white faces to accomplish. The US Navy crypto people knew very well what Rejewski had discovered. We know the complete story of the German Enigma cipher and how it was broken but to this day the US Navy's breaking of the Japanese codes has not been made public in comparable detail. The book "Enigma" by Wladyslaw Kozaczuk (1984) has the critical German Enigma information in an appendix. The point: there is no reason to keep WWII code breaking a secret unless to cover up advanced knowledge of Pearl Harbor. See also Wikipedia Enigma article.
April 22, 2011 10:43 AM
Anonymous said...
so maybe 70years from now we will find out that bush knew and keep it to himself and the cia to go to work for oil and still never got any of it.
April 22, 2011 12:41 PM
Creeping Internet Control Article #1,346
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/protect-act/
Creeping Internet Control Article #1,346
It’s really weird; every day there is some article about how economic collapse, or in this case totalitarian government control of the internet, or something equally bad is creeping closer and closer, but it never seems actually to get here. The process is so slow that the American people, such as remains of them, don’t even notice or care. It’s like the old story of a frog being slowly boiled to death in water over a fire; the increase in heat is so gradual that no one notices.
Wired.com reports: “Senate antipiracy legislation introduced Thursday would dramatically increase the government’s legal power to disrupt and shutter websites dedicated to infringing activities.”
(However the regime defines “infringing activities.”)
“A major feature of the Protect IP Act, introduced by 11 senators of all stripes, would grant the government the authority to bring lawsuits against these websites, and obtain court orders requiring search engines like Google to stop displaying links to them. The proposal is an offshoot to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act introduced last year. It was scrapped by its authors in exchange for the Protect IP Act in a bid to win Senate passage.
“Under the old COICA draft, the government was authorized to obtain court orders to seize so-called generic top-level domains ending in .com, .org and .net. The new legislation, with the same sponsors, narrows that somewhat. Instead of allowing for the seizure of domains, it allows the Justice Department to obtain court orders demanding American ISPs stop rendering the DNS for a particular website — meaning the sites would still be accessible outside the United States. Either way, though, the legislation amounts to the holy grail of intellectual-property enforcement that the recording industry, movie studios and their union and guild workforces have been clamoring for since the George W. Bush administration.”
[Long blah blah bah statement from Hollywood glitterati redacted. Basically, file-sharing and movie piracy hits lefty liberals in their wallets, and that’s a no-no.]
Wired.com: “The new bill also gives content owners more rights than the old bill. It would allow rights holders to seek court orders instructing online ad services and credit card companies from partnering with the infringing sites — a power the government is granted in either legislative version.”
(Thus providing yet another endless fountain of revenue for lawyers.)
“Only the government gets the DNS blocking powers. And the Digital Millennium Copyright Act already grants rights holders the ability to demand search engines to stop displaying search results linking to infringing sites. Despite the new bill watering down the United States’ reach, the government has been invoking an asset-forfeiture law to seize generic top-level domains of infringing websites under a program called Operation in Our Sites. It began last year, and the Department of Homeland Security has targeted 120 sites.”
Okay, cutting to the chase: “infringement” can mean whatever the government wants it to mean, For example, technically speaking, I am “infringing” on Wired.com’s copyright simply by quoting from and analyzing this article.
This law gives the government the power to seize the domain name and permanently silence any web site that “infringes,” like for example quoting an Obama speech or, like one popular weekly racial podcast, by playing musical interludes. With a little effort almost anything can be legally considered to be “infringement” on someone else’s “intellectual property” and used as yet another fig leaf to achieve political censorship of thought, which is what the Democrats have been after for the past 50 years.
Republicans, to give them what little credit is due to them, honestly don’t seem to care too much about criticism; they simply ignore it and do whatever the hell they want. Liberal Democrats hate criticism and seek to silence it, but both parties want to control and silence the internet because it is a form of lateral communication, directly between people, not top-down communication, and the internet is not filtered by the liberal news media.
Creeping Internet Control Article #1,346
It’s really weird; every day there is some article about how economic collapse, or in this case totalitarian government control of the internet, or something equally bad is creeping closer and closer, but it never seems actually to get here. The process is so slow that the American people, such as remains of them, don’t even notice or care. It’s like the old story of a frog being slowly boiled to death in water over a fire; the increase in heat is so gradual that no one notices.
Wired.com reports: “Senate antipiracy legislation introduced Thursday would dramatically increase the government’s legal power to disrupt and shutter websites dedicated to infringing activities.”
(However the regime defines “infringing activities.”)
“A major feature of the Protect IP Act, introduced by 11 senators of all stripes, would grant the government the authority to bring lawsuits against these websites, and obtain court orders requiring search engines like Google to stop displaying links to them. The proposal is an offshoot to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act introduced last year. It was scrapped by its authors in exchange for the Protect IP Act in a bid to win Senate passage.
“Under the old COICA draft, the government was authorized to obtain court orders to seize so-called generic top-level domains ending in .com, .org and .net. The new legislation, with the same sponsors, narrows that somewhat. Instead of allowing for the seizure of domains, it allows the Justice Department to obtain court orders demanding American ISPs stop rendering the DNS for a particular website — meaning the sites would still be accessible outside the United States. Either way, though, the legislation amounts to the holy grail of intellectual-property enforcement that the recording industry, movie studios and their union and guild workforces have been clamoring for since the George W. Bush administration.”
[Long blah blah bah statement from Hollywood glitterati redacted. Basically, file-sharing and movie piracy hits lefty liberals in their wallets, and that’s a no-no.]
Wired.com: “The new bill also gives content owners more rights than the old bill. It would allow rights holders to seek court orders instructing online ad services and credit card companies from partnering with the infringing sites — a power the government is granted in either legislative version.”
(Thus providing yet another endless fountain of revenue for lawyers.)
“Only the government gets the DNS blocking powers. And the Digital Millennium Copyright Act already grants rights holders the ability to demand search engines to stop displaying search results linking to infringing sites. Despite the new bill watering down the United States’ reach, the government has been invoking an asset-forfeiture law to seize generic top-level domains of infringing websites under a program called Operation in Our Sites. It began last year, and the Department of Homeland Security has targeted 120 sites.”
Okay, cutting to the chase: “infringement” can mean whatever the government wants it to mean, For example, technically speaking, I am “infringing” on Wired.com’s copyright simply by quoting from and analyzing this article.
This law gives the government the power to seize the domain name and permanently silence any web site that “infringes,” like for example quoting an Obama speech or, like one popular weekly racial podcast, by playing musical interludes. With a little effort almost anything can be legally considered to be “infringement” on someone else’s “intellectual property” and used as yet another fig leaf to achieve political censorship of thought, which is what the Democrats have been after for the past 50 years.
Republicans, to give them what little credit is due to them, honestly don’t seem to care too much about criticism; they simply ignore it and do whatever the hell they want. Liberal Democrats hate criticism and seek to silence it, but both parties want to control and silence the internet because it is a form of lateral communication, directly between people, not top-down communication, and the internet is not filtered by the liberal news media.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)