Remember, Remember The 5th Of November

  The Fifth of November

Remember, remember, The fifth of November
The Gunpowder treason and plot
I know of no reason, Why the Gunpowder treason, Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes and his companions, Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament, All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below. To prove old England's overthrow.
But, by God's providence, him they catch, With a dark lantern, lighting a match.
A stick and a stake, For King James's sake!
If you won't give me one, I'll take two, The better for me, And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope, A penn'orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,  And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring,
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King.
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!

In 1605, thirteen young men planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Among them was Guy Fawkes, Britain's most notorious traitor.

After Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, English Catholics who had been persecuted under her rule had hoped that her successor, James I, would be more tolerant of their religion. James I had, after all, had a Catholic mother. Unfortunately, James did not turn out to be more tolerant than Elizabeth and a number of young men, 13 to be exact, decided that violent action was the answer.

A small group took shape, under the leadership of Robert Catesby. Catesby felt that violent action was warranted. Indeed, the thing to do was to blow up the Houses of Parliament. In doing so, they would kill the King, maybe even the Prince of Wales, and the Members of Parliament who were making life difficult for the Catholics. Today these conspirators would be known as extremists, or terrorists.

Robert Catesby was the charismatic leader of the group of conspirators. He had a way with people, and convinced a number of his impressionable friends to go along with the murderous plan which would later be known as the Gunpowder Plot. Even as problems with his plot later arose and some members expressed doubt, Catesby remained convinced that violent action was the only way forward.

Catesby first recruited his close friends and relatives: Thomas Wintour, Jack Wright and Thomas Percy, but the group quickly grew to include Guy Fawkes. The small core of conspirators felt Guy would be a strong addition. Guy was not part of the close knit circle of Catesby's small group, but he had spent time in the Netherlands and in Spain where he had fought, many said very well, as a mercenary. While in Spain he also earned the nickname Guido. Indeed, he even signed his name Guido Fawkes in a number of places.

He was as passionate about the plight of the Catholics in England as his colleagues. As a member of the group, he quickly became a trusted member, and was later charged with the dangerous task of acquiring 36 barrels of gunpowder and storing them in a rented space beneath the House of Lords.
Soon after Fawkes' addition, others who joined the group were Robert Wintour, Christopher (Kit) Wright, Robert Keyes, Thomas Bates. Latecomers to the group were John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Francis Tresham, and Everard Digby. In all, there were 13 conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot.

To carry out their plan, the conspirators got hold of 36 barrels of gunpowder - and stored them in a cellar, just under the House of Lords.
But as the group worked on the plot, it became clear that innocent people would be hurt or killed in the attack, including some people who even fought for more rights for Catholics. Some of the plotters started having second thoughts. One of the group members even sent an anonymous letter warning his friend, Lord Monteagle, to stay away from the Parliament on November 5th.
The warning letter reached the King, and the King's forces made plans to stop the conspirators.

Another tradition still observed by Britons is the annual visit of the Queen to Parliament every year. Ever since the Gunpowder Plot, the reigning monarch enters the Parliament only once a year, on what is called "the State Opening of Parliament". Prior to the Opening, and according to custom, the Yeomen of the Guard search the cellars of the Palace of Westminster. Today, the Queen and Parliament still observe this tradition.

 On November 5th, 2013 Anonymous, WikiLeaks, the Pirate Party, Occupy and Oath Keepers combined forces, world-wide,taking a stand against governmental corruption and oppression.The turn out was incredibly impressive on a global scale..

The issues were diverse.. In Parliament Square, protesters burned energy bills to oppose the rising cost of fuel and there were minor clashes with police in riot gear as protesters also gathered near Buckingham Palace, where a fire was started yards away from its gates. No arrests took place, according to the Metropolitan police.

The numbers of those protesting in central London were swelled by a gathering on Westminster Bridge organised by the People's Assembly, an anti-cuts umbrella group whose "Bonfire of Austerity" was addressed by the Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Jon McDonnell.

In the US, protesters in Washington DC gathered at the Washington Monument before walking to the White House to raise awareness of causes including opposition to mass surveillance and genetically modified foods. Other protests, of varying size, took place in cities including Vancouver, Tel Aviv, Dublin, Paris, Chicago and Sydney.

 From The Million Mask March web site:

If you are tired of empty promises, new unconstitutional laws being passed every day, ever-increasing taxes that are only funneled into more wasteful spending and debt we cannot afford or laws that eliminate jobs and increase living expenses, then you are welcome to join. This is a public event. In the short time since it was created, the event is already gaining overwhelming popularity, and many attendees have committed to carpooling. This is an opportunity for you to express your right to free speech while you still have it. This is not a time for violence or causing trouble. This is a time to peacefully show our country’s leaders that we are all tired of the corruption and would like to see them make some positive changes that benefit the struggling people of this weary nation. There is already too much violence and hate in the world as it is, so it is time we stand together as citizens and assemble peacefully. Forget religious affiliations, forget sexual orientation, forget political party affiliation, forget race, forget gender – we are all American citizens and we all want our freedom back. Until we stop dividing ourselves, we can never stand together for the common good of everyone.

http://millionmaskmarch.wordpress.com/

The Million Mask March site below is incredibly good, it gives video's, directories, news articles and dates.

http://millionmaskmarch.org/

From around the world:

Philippines

 

 Washington DC, USA 

Los Angeles, USA

 

London, England

Manchester, England

 

 Australia

 Italy

Amsterdam

New York, USA

South Africa

Thailand

Turkey

Hungary

 Czech Republic

 France

Norway

Sweden

Brazil

We live in a complex and changing world, but the one thing that never changes is the desire for freedom,governmental transparency, justice.. and it will be at their peril if governments ignore what is happening across the globe today.

No one can deny.. the time has come!

Americans Petition To Repeal the 4th Amendment (Protection Against Unrea...

Mark Dice asks random beach goers in San Diego to sign a petition to repeal the Fourth Amendment to help keep everybody safe, insisting "we can trust the police" if they feel they need to search your home or your person.
Subscribe to http://www.YouTube.com/MarkDice
http://www.Facebook.com/MarkDice
http://www.Twitter.com/MarkDice

The Elephant In The Room

Why is it, when the average citizen thinks about the US deficit, they immediately turn their focus on domestic policies.. like healthcare and education, pork spending.

I'm wondering why so few see the elephant in the room.

Following the Vietnam War, which has been estimated to have cost $111 billion ($738 billion in today's money), the US economy was, to put it mildly, in a mess.

Yet that figure is a mere 12% of what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might actually have cost. In March 2013 the Guardian reported "the war in Iraq has cost $823.2bn between 2003 and 2011" and "that it may eventually cost as much as $3.7tn." (http://bit.ly/1as1ll8). Also that month The Telegraph reported, "Cost to US of Iraq and Afghan wars could hit $6 trillion". (http://bit.ly/YPsf1p).

The Whitehouse's infographic of the U.S National Debt at http://www.whitehouse.gov/infographics/us-national-debt



No one is making nearly enough hay of this, not least the US populace themselves, who stand to lose the most. (For the estimated costs of major U.S. wars since 1775 see http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22926.pdf).

Mike Baker did a wonderful article pertaining to the cost of looking after the veterans of wars, many of which should never have been started: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-costs-us-wars-linger-over-100-years

The problem with most US wars is that they are not conducive to law and order in the world. They do not make us safer. They make us less safe. They are not just wars, but unjust wars. They do not foster good will. But ill feelings and often justified retribution.

General Eisenhower once said:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Can we assume that General Eisenhower spoke from wisdom gained through experience, and if so, why do we keep ignoring this elephant in the room?

I once quoted General Smedley Butler  to a die hard conservative (remember.. I am a conservative) and he called General Butler a "traitor." I would call him a "patriot" because he loved his country yet stood firm with honesty and honor-ability while describing his job.. his career.. and our place in the world.

War Is A Racket

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people -- not those who fight and pay and die -- only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.
Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?
Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:

"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. . . . War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."

Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war -- anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.
Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.

Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.
Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war -- a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit -- fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.
Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?
What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?
Yes, and what does it profit the nation?

Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people -- who do not profit.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

Today the benefactors are hidden in plain sight. Let us focus on the top five of the 2008 list:

* The first name that comes to everyone’s mind here is Halliburton. Halliburton’s KBR, Inc. division bilked government agencies to the tune of $17.2 billion in Iraq war-related revenue from 2003-2006 alone. This is estimated to comprise a whopping one-fifth of KBR’s total revenue for the 2006 fiscal year. The massive payoff is said to have financed the construction and maintenance of military bases, oil field repairs, and various infrastructure rebuilding projects across the war-torn nation. This is just the latest in a long string of military/KBR wartime partnerships, thanks in no small part to Dick Cheney’s former role with the parent company.

* At first blush, a private equity fund (and not, say, Exxon-Mobil) being the number 2 profiteer in the Iraq war might sound strange. However, the cleverly run fund has raked in $1.44 billion through its DynCorp subsidiary. The primary service DynCorp has provided to the war efforts is the training of new Iraqi police forces. Often described as a ‘state within a state‘, the sizable company is headed by Dwight M. Williams, former Chief Security Officer of the upstart U.S. Department of Homeland Security. With this and other close ties to defense agencies, Veritas Capital Fund and DynCorp are well-positioned to capitalize on Iraq even more.

* The Washington Group International has parlayed its expertise the repair, restore, and maintenance of high-output oil fields into $931 million in Iraq-related revenue from 2003-2006. The publicly traded 25,000 employee company’s other specialties include the building and maintenance of schools, military bases, and municipal utilities, such as watering systems. Some have complained that Washington Group’s hefty government payoffs have served primarily to raise its trading price on the New York Stock Exchange. One thing is for sure – with oil prices continuing to rise, there will be no shortage of demand for the oil protection services Washington Group International brings to bear.

* All war zones eventually becomes cluttered with spent ammunition and broken/abandoned weapons, creating a lucrative niche for any company willing to clean it all up. In Iraq, this duty has fallen into the hands of Environmental Chemical. The privately held Burlingame, California company has stockpiled $878 million by the end of fiscal 2006 for munitions disposal, calling upon its “decade of experience planning and conducting UXO removal, investigation, and certification activities.” The company has close ties to several defense agencies and is staffed by graduates of the U.S. Navy’s Explosive Ordinance Schools, as well as the U.S. Army’s Chemical Schools at Anniston.

* Aegis has done the United Kingdom proud after reeling in a contract to coordinate all of Iraq’s private security operations. The Pentagon contract is good for $430 million (incredibly lucrative by any standard) but it has landed Aegis in some hot public relations water. The company’s decision to contribute to Iraq war efforts has lead to a rejected membership application from the International Peace Operations Association. According to The Independent, the influential trade organization does not consider Aegis worthy of inclusion in the “peace and stability industry.” It remains to be seen whether Aegis will continue to be ostracized for participating in the training of Iraqi security forces.

So when we discuss education and healthcare affordability why do we still ignore this elephant in the room?