I'm not a great admirer of FBI Director Comey. I think he acted wrongly on the Clinton e-mail matter. But I don't think those actions had anything to do with his firing.
I also don't think Sally Yates' decision about Trump's first immigration order had anything to do with her firing.
This is about Russia.
Let's get this straight! Our democracy is under attack.
It is under attack by the Republican Party, whose leaders demonstrate contempt for democracy.
It is under attack by Russia, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, despises democracy..
I have seen some such attacks before.
My wife and I were in Washington DC during Watergate.
I knew some of the players in the White House, in the Congress, in the Department of State and in the Pentagon.
But it was a different time.
I have learned some things recently about ties between the Brexit campaign, Russian hacking, Steve Bannon, Bannon's billionaire sponsors in the Mercer family and extraordinary computer technology to target specific voters with particular false news reports.
These same techniques were used to get the UK out of the European Union, satisfying a major goal of Vladimir Putin. The same techniques were used in our 2016 presidential election, and succeeded in electing Donald Trump. I suspect the same techniques have been used in US elections to state and congressional offices over the past eight years.
The same techniques were used last Sunday in France, but it didn't work. They will probably be used in this summer's elections in Germany.
Now the deputy White House spokeswoman urges that the Russia investigation be ended.
A hundred years ago last month, President Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany "To make the world safe for democracy."
Our democracy in 1917 was flawed. Women could not yet vote. Blacks could not yet vote in most of the country. Unions had few rights. We still had child labor. And on and on. But over the next 80 years we worked hard to make our democracy better. And we spread democracy across the industrial world.
This plainly did not impress our billionaire class. Like the bandits in "Treasure Of The Sierra Madre," they don't need no stinkin' investigations.
Since the presidential campaign of 2000 and the case of Bush v. Gore, our democracy has been subjected to one attack after another.
It is time to fight back.
Follow the bodies.
Only we ourselves can defend democracy from its enemies.
I certainly breathed a sigh of relief at the outcome of the French election for president.
I only regret that I don't have a tricolor to fly from our front porch in recognition of France's dedication to Democracy and to Europe. The UK has abandoned the cause of Europe and has largely abandoned politics to the Tories.
France still stands as a champion of democracy in Europe.
Some years ago I posted other celebrations of the actions of French citizens in the face of tragedy. For example, after Charlie Hebdo: http://mile181.blogspot.com/2015/01/vive-la-france.html and http://mile181.blogspot.com/2015/11/well-always-have-paris.html.
Now we have a subsequent election in the aftermath of several episodes of terrorism in France - a clear choice between a candidate dedicated to improving Europe against a candidate committed to erecting barriers and withdrawing from the EU and from NATO.
But French voters stood up for freedom and for Europe.
In case any reader doubts that there was white privilege in the slaveholding states and that this privilege applied to poor whites, here is an essay by Jefferson Davis (later to be Confederate President) explaining it all:
Jefferson Davis on Slavery
and White Equality, 1851
[Reviewing the debates in Congress on the Compromise of 1850,
Jefferson Davis expressed regret that the border states,] after we of
the planting states had labored to give them the law by which they
might perchance recover their slaves, had refused to co-operate with
us, to enable our people to obtain an outlet for the black population
of the country; joining in the cry of the "glorious Union,"
sustaining the odious so-called adjustment measures, and thus aiding
in the attempt of the free-soilers to encircle us about with a cordon
of free States, the direct tendency of which is to crowd upon our
soil an overgrown black population, until there will not be room in
the country for the whites and the blacks to subsist in; and in this
way destroy the institution and reduce the whites to the degraded
position of the African race. He, therefore, was in favor of
excluding the slaves of the border states from the planting
states, and he hoped that this policy would he adopted.
Col.
Davis said that he had heard it said that the poor men, who own no
negroes themselves, would all be against the institution, and would,
consequently, array themselves on the side of the so called Union
men- that the submissionists claimed them. But that he could not
believe, that the poor men of the country, were so blind to their own
interests, as to be thus cheated out of their privileges, which they
now enjoy. That now they stand upon the broad level of equality
with the rich man. Equal to him in every thing, save that they
did not own so much property; and that, even in this particular, the
road to wealth was open to them, and the poor man might attain it;
and, even if he did not succeed, the failure did not degrade him.
That no white man, in a slaveholding community, was the menial
servant of any one. That whenever the poor white man labored for the
rich, he did so upon terms of distinction between him and the negro.
It was to the interest of the master to keep up a distinction between
the white man in his employment, and his negroes. And that this very
distinction elevated, and kept the white laborer on a level with the
employer; because the distinction between the classes throughout the
slaveholding states, is a distinction of color. Between the classes
there is no such thing, here, as a distinction of property; and he
who thinks there is, and prides himself upon it, is grossly mistaken.
Free the negroes, however, and it would soon be here, as it is in the
countries of Europe, and in the North, and everywhere else, where
negro slavery does not exist. The poor white man would become a
menial for the rich, and be, by him, reduced to an equality with the
free blacks, into a degraded position; and the distinction, at once,
would be made that of-Property-of Wealth-between the classes,
between the Rich and the Poor. The rich man, with his
lands, and his other property, and his money, would be a rich man
still. The poor would be poor still, and with much less
chance than he now has of acquiring property, because of the numbers
of mean and worthless free negroes, in competition with whose labor
his own would have to come. And yet the tendency of the doctrines of
submissionists, is directly to invite further aggression from the
North, and by this invitation, to bring about this very state of
things. The non-slaveholder can see this, as well as the
slaveholder. And seeing, and knowing his rights, he will defend and
maintain them, as soon, if not sooner, than the rich man will. Then,
he did not believe that the submission party had the exclusive right,
which they claimed, or expect that the middle and poorer classes
would co-operate with them upon this important question, affecting,
as it does, their interests-their standing in the community- more
than all others.
Col.
Davis said that he had always thought, and sincerely believed, that
the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists among us, is
necessary to the equality of the white race.
Distinctions between classes have always existed, everywhere, and in
every country, where civilization has been established among men.
Destroy them today, and they will spring up tomorrow; and we have no
right to expect, or even to hope, that this Southern climate of ours,
would be exempt from the operation of this Universal law.
Menial services have to be performed, by some one; and every where
the world over, within the range of civilization, those persons, by
whom the menial services have been performed, as a class, have been
looked upon, as occupying, and are reduced to a state of inferiority.
Wherever a distinction in color has not existed to draw the line, and
mark the boundary, the line has been drawn, by property, between
the rich and poor. Wealth and poverty have marked the
boundary. The poor man stands in need of all his rights, and all his
privileges, and therefore, this question is of the greatest, and the
gravest importance to him; much more so than it is to the rich. The
rich by siding with the party in power-the authorities that be, may
always be safe. Not so with the poor. Their all is suspended upon
their superiority to the blacks-their all of equality, in a
political and social point of view-the social equality of their
wives, daughters, and sons, are all suspended upon, and involved in
this question. It will not do to say that this is a fancy sketch, or
that these things are too far in the distance, to be seriously
contemplated. The tendencies are all in that direction, and if they
are not met, and met promptly, and rolled back, or stayed forever in
their progress, the wheel of revolution will roll on until the
institution is crushed, the great object of the freesoilers
accomplished, and the negroes freed.
But
they have, if possible, still higher grounds than these. The
constitution, the palladium of the liberties of the people, in more
respects than one, has been violated, and that violation is to be
continued, under the implied invitation of the submissionists, if
they succeed in the present contest. And when once it becomes an
established principle, that repeated violations of that instrument
will be tolerated by the people-that they will submit-the poor man's
liberties are all gone, and gone forever.
There is nothing, Mr.
President [ Senator
Benjamin Fitzgerald], which
has led men to greater confusion of ideas than this term of "free
States" and "slave States;" and I trusted that the
Senator, with his discriminating and logical mind, was going to give
us something tangible, instead of dealing in a phrase never
applicable. He applied another; but what was his phrase? "Capital
States" and "labor States." And where is the State in
which nobody labors? The fallacy upon which the Senator hung
adjective after adjective was, that all the labor of the southern
States was performed by negroes. Did he not know that the negroes
formed but a small part of the people of the southern States? Did he
suppose nobody labored but a negro, there? If so, he was less
informed than I had previously believe him to be Negro slavery exists
in the South, and by the existence of negro slavery, the white man is
raised to the dignity of a freeman and an equal. Nowhere else will
you find every white man superior to menial service. Nowhere else
will you find every white man recognized so far as an equal as never
to be excluded from any man's haouse or any man's table. Your own
menial who blacks your boots, drives your carriage, who wears your
livery, and is your own in every sense of the word, is not your
equal; and such is society wherever negro slavery is not the
substratum on which the white race is elevated to its true dignity.
We, however, have no theory to press upon you; we leave you to such
institutions as you may prefer; but when you assail ours, we come to
the vindication of our institutions by showing you that all your
phrases are false; that we are the freemen. With us, and with us
alone, as I believe, the white man attains to his true dignity in the
Government. So much for the great fallacy on which the Senator's
argument hangs, that the labor of the South is all negro labor, and
that the white man must there be degraded if he labors; or that we
have no laboring white men. I do not know which is his opinion; one
of the two. The Senator has himself resided in a southern State, and
therefore I say I believed him to be better informed before he spoke.
I must suppose him to be as ignorant as him speech would indicate. No
man, however, who has seen any portion of southern society, can
entertain any such opinion as that which he presents; and it is in
order that the statement he has made may not go out to deceive those
less informed than himself, that I offer at this time the
correction….
…We have heard time and
again this session the same point made against the Democratic party,
that they were hedging themselves behind the decision of the Supreme
Court [the 1857 Dred
Scott decision]. If this had
been presented in the beginning, it might have had some fairness;
but, after years of conflict, and after we had found it utterly
impossible ever to reach a conclusion satisfactory to both sides--in
other words, to enact a law which would answer the purpose--we then
agreed to postpone a question judicial in its character, and thus
agreed to be bound, legislatively and politically, by the decision
which that judicial question should receive. Now, the Senator pleads
to the jurisdiction, as though we had ever asserted that the Supreme
Court could decide a political question; but he was bound in honor,
and so were all who acted with him, to abide by the decision of an
umpire to which they had themselves referred the case. We are willing
to abide by it. We but claim from them that to which we pledged
ourselves, and that to which they were mutually pledged when his
position was taken by the two Houses of Congress.
But the Senator in his zeal
depicts the negro slave of the South as a human being reduced to the
condition of a mere chattel. Is it possible that the Senator did not
know that the negro slave in every southern State was still a person,
protected by all the laws which punish crime in other persons? Could
the Senator have failed to know that no master could take the life of
or maim his slave without being held responsible under the criminal
laws of any southern State, and held to a responsibility as rigid as
though that negro had been a white man? How, then, is it asserted
that these are not persons in the eye of the law, not protected by
the law as persons. The venerable Senator from Kentucky [John J.
Crittenden] knows very well that this is not law in any State of the
Union where slaves are held, but that everywhere they are protected;
that the criminal law covers them as perfectly as it covers the white
men….
…Several southern
Senators around have spoken to me to the effect that in each of their
States the protection is secured, and a suit may be instituted at
common law for assault and battery, to protect a negro as well as a
white man. The condition of slavery with us is, in a word, Mr.
President, nothing but the form of civil government instituted for a
class of people not fit to govern themselves. It is exactly what in
every State exists in some form or other. It is just that kind of
control which is extended in every northern State over its convicts,
its lunatics, its minors, its apprentices. It is but a form of civil
government for those who by their nature are not fit to govern
themselves. We recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon
that race of men by the Creator, and from the cradle to the grave,
our Government, as a civil institution, marks that inferiority. In
their subject and dependent state, they are not the objects of
cruelty as they would be if left to the commission of crime, for
which they should be incarcerated in penitentiaries and work-houses,
and put under hired overseers, having no interest in them and no
relation to them, no affiliation, growing out of the associations of
childhood and the tender care of age. Is there nothing of the balm
needed in the Senator's own State, that he must needs go abroad to
seek objects for his charity and philanthropy? What will be say of
those masses in New York now memorializing for something very like an
agrarian law? What will he say to the throngs of beggars who crowd
the streets of his great commercial emporium? What will he say to the
multitudes collected in the penitentiaries and prisons of his own
State? I seek not, sir, to inquire into the policy and propriety of
the institutions of other States; I assume not to judge of their
fitness; it belongs to the community to judge, and I know not under
what difficulties they may have been driven to what I cannot approve;
but never, sir, in all my life, have I seen anything that so appealed
to every feeling of humanity and manliness, as the suffering of the
poor children imprisoned in your juvenile penitentiaries--imprisoned
before they were old enough to know the nature of crime--there held
to such punishment as we never inflict save upon those of mature
years. I arraign you not for this: I know not what your crowded
population and increasing wants may demand; I know not how far it may
be the necessary result of crime which follows in the footsteps of
misery; I know not how far the parents have become degraded, and how
far the children have become outcast, and how far it may have
devolved on the State to take charge of them; but, I thank my God,
that in the state of society where I reside, we have no scenes so
revolting as these.
Why then not address
yourselves to the evils which you have at home? Why not confine your
inquiries to the remedial measures which will relieve the suffering
of and stop the progress of crime among your own people? Very intent
in looking into the distance for the mote in your brother's eye, is
it to be wondered that we turn back and point to the beam in your
own?
I know a thing or two because I've seen a thing or two.
I mention this not only because I know what I saw happen during last year's election, but also because of something Haley Barbour of Mississippi said several years ago.
And because I fear for the future of the American Republic. I fear for our future because one of our two political parties exhibits contempt for the practices and objectives of democracy. A few years ago, Mississippi's governor, Haley Barbour, aroused controversy by his claim that "things weren't that bad" in his home town of Yazoo City, MS during the civil rights movement, and that the White Citizen's Council played a helpful role in peaceful integration.
Haley Barbour was wrong. Not only that, he did a disservice to his home town, his county, and his state by failing to recognize that despite very real danger, courageous citizens of Yazoo County and neighboring Holmes County did play a helpful role in integration. There was, for example, Hazel Brannon Smith, the courageous owner and editor of the the Lexington Advertiser, in Holmes County, just north of Yazoo County. Her account here of the formation of the White Citizen's Council and its purposes and methods gives the lie to Barbour's more rose colored recollections.
In 1955 in Holmes County, the White Citizen's Council, together with the County Sheriff, ran the leaders of an interracial cooperative farm near Cruger out of the county. Here is a brief account of that event. For a more detailed account, see Providence by Will D. Campbell.
I know Yazoo City (pronounced "yeh-zoo", not "yah-zoo"). My father and younger brother were born there. My parents, grandparents, great grandparents and great aunts and great uncles are buried in Glenwood Cemetery there. Other relatives are buried at the cemetery at Fletcher's Chapel about five miles southeast of Yazoo City. My grandmother took me there once to see the yankee cannon ball embedded in the chapel's wall.
I'm about ten years older than Governor Barbour. Even so, he would have to have been totally oblivious as a young man not to know what the White Citizen's Council was up to.
It is true, so far as I know, that Citizen's Councils did not directly organize any murders. Those episodes (Emmett Till, Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, and others) seem to have been done by the Klan. But as a result of Citizen's Councils efforts, many Black Citizens lost their livelihoods. The Citizens Councils published names of Black citizens who actively sought their civil rights, including the right to vote. Members of the Klan and others of a violent inclination knew what to do with that information.
Nor was the Citizen's Council only interested in Black activists. They worked closely with the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission to harass and intimidate white citizens receptive to integration. I know this because I was one of their targets during my student years at Ole Miss.
The White Citizen's Councils never supported integration, peaceful or otherwise. As the White Citizen's Council newspaper explained in a front page article in 1956, "integration is a Communist - Jewish conspiracy to mongrelize the human race."
When Haley Barbour of Yazoo City, (where my father was born in 1915 and my brother in 1941) was appointed Chair of the Republican National Committee in 1993, astonished journalists in DC asked Barbour if it didn't seem surprising for someone from the deep and formerly solid South to be Chair of the RNC, Barbour's answer: "not at all! Where Mississippi has been is where the country is headed." I thought that, if he was right, this was an ominous foreboding. .
Oriental resident (or former resident gone cruising) Tony Tharp, called attention to an article in the Jackson Clarion Ledger blog site describing just where Mississippi's footsteps might lead. Tony, a native son of the Mississippi Delta (near Leland, MS along US Highway 82), often reflects on past and current developments in the state.
Donald Trump exploited all of the old racial fears of white people in last year's campaign, as did Ronald Reagan before him in 1980.
Russia is pushing the same agenda of white supremacy.
The head table of a gala celebrating the tenth anniversary of Russia Today in December of 2015 included Russian President Vladimir Putin and American retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Mikhail Klimentyev / Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, file
It was a (red) star-studded affair, the December 2015 dinner celebrating the 10th birthday of Russian TV network RT. At a luxe Moscow hotel, President Vladimir Putin and a host of Russian luminaries toasted a state-backed news channel that U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin mouthpiece.
And next to Putin at the head table, in the seat of honor, was an American. Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who would later become Donald Trump's national security adviser, was already advising Trump's presidential campaign when he was paid $45,000 to speak at the gala.
"It is not coincidence that Flynn was placed next to President Putin," said Michael McFaul, U.S. ambassador in Moscow from 2012 to 2014 and now an NBC News analyst. "Flynn was considered a close Trump adviser. Why else would they want him there?"
Flynn's Moscow jaunt, like his oddly timed phone chats with the Russian ambassador, has been well reported. But who else came to dinner on Dec. 10, 2015? An NBC News review of video and photos from the RT gala shows a healthy serving of ex-spies, cronies and oligarchs, with a side of friendly journalists and another American.
Flynn was one of 10 people at the head table, including the Kremlin's top leadership. Three of the Russians, including Putin, were under U.S. sanctions at the time for their role in Russia's annexation of Crimea.
Sergey Ivanov (right), then Putin's chief of staff, sat directly across the table from Flynn at the gala. To his left, is Putin's nominal spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, who U.S. officials say is really the Russian president's de facto national security adviser. RT
Sergey Ivanov, then Putin's chief of staff, sat directly across the table from Flynn. A former KGB general who at one point ran KGB operations in Africa, he has also served as Russian defense minister and deputy prime minister. Ivanov had been under U.S. and European sanctions for a year and a half by the date of the dinner.
Next to Ivanov was Dmitry Peskov, nominally Putin's spokesman, but more importantly his de facto national security adviser, say U.S. officials. Like almost everyone at the head table that night, he speaks perfect English.
Flanking Putin on his right, two seats from Flynn, sat Alexey Gromov, Putin's deputy chief of staff. U.S. intelligence considers Gromov to be Putin's head propagandist. According to the January 6 Intelligence Community report on Russian interference in the U.S. election, "Gromov oversees political coverage on TV, and he has periodic meetings with media managers where he shares classified information and discusses their coverage plans."
He's also been accused by U.S. intelligence of "ordering media attacks on opposition figures." He has worked directly for the Russian president, first in the Press Office, then as press attache and, since 2008, as deputy chief of staff. He too was on U.S. and European sanctions the day of the dinner.
Margarita Simonyan is a personal friend of Putin, and worked in one of his presidential campaigns before being chosen to head RT. She took Putin's seat next to Flynn when Putin went to the stage to speak. RT
After Putin got up to make his speech, his place at Flynn's side was taken by Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief. She is also editor-in-chief of Rossiya Segodnya, a state-owned and operated Russian news agency created by Putin. A personal friend of Putin, she worked in one of his presidential campaigns before being chosen by Gromov to head RT. The U.S. intelligence assessment of RT paints Simonyan as the lead person, along with Gromov, engaging in "information warfare" against U.S. policies. She is described as "closely tied to, controlled by the Kremlin."
In his dinner speech, Putin praised RT for its objectivity, disclaiming any influence on its coverage.
Next to Simonyan was the night's biggest global cultural celebrity, acclaimed director Emir Kusturica, who has twice won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Born a Muslim in Bosnia, he converted to Orthodox Christianity and is a Putin booster. Putin awarded him the Russian Order of Friendship in 2016. Of Putin, Kusturica once said, "If I was English, I would be very much against him. I was an American, I would even fight with him. But if I was Russian, I would vote for him."
Kusturica's wife, seated next to him, was the only spouse at the head table.
Also at the head table were three western politicians. Willy Wimmer, a former member of the German Bundestag who is often critical of U.S. foreign policy; Cyril Svoboda, former deputy prime minister, minister of foreign affairs, and interior minister of the Czech Republic, and two-time U.S. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, the only American besides Flynn at the head table.
Willy Wimmer, left, is a former member of the German Bundestag who is often critical of U.S. foreign policy. Two-time U.S. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was the only American besides Flynn at the head table. RT
Stein's 2016 campaign was heavily promoted by RT. She hasn't spoken much about the RT dinner, but in an interview with NBC News last fall, she deflected questions about her appearance, instead chastising the U.S. media for not paying attention to her campaign while RT gave it a lot more attention.
"And my own connection to RT, you know ironically, it takes a Russian television station to actually be open to independent candidates in this country and that is a shame. A shameful commentary on our own media," she told NBC's Alex Seitz-Wald.
(Stein did well enough to help Russia achieve its aims. Her vote totals in the crucial states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan were all greater than Clinton's margin of defeat, and arguably denied Clinton an Electoral College victory.)
Beyond the head table, Russia's oligarchs filled many of the seats.
Seated at a corner table was Mikhail Prokhorov, the owner of the Brooklyn Nets who ran against Putin as the designated liberal candidate in 2012 (and whose offices were raided by Russian security last April). Prokhorov is now on the outs with Putin. Next to him was Viktor Vekselberg, whose billions are in oil and aluminum and who is a business partner of Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the owner of the world's largest collection of Faberge eggs.
Mikhail Prokhorov, owner of the Brooklyn Nets, ran against against Vladimir Putin as the designated liberal candidate in 2012. To the right of Prokhorov is fellow billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, an oil and aluminum magnate who is a business partner of Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. RT
At the table behind Putin's was Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Communist Party ruler of the Soviet Union, along with Artur Chilingarov, polar explorer and federal senator. Nearby, there was Arkady Mamontov, a famous TV host who said that a massive meteor strike that injured nearly 1,500 people in 2013 was God's vengeance on Russia's gay rights movement.
There was Tina Kandelaki, a socialite and award-winning TV host who's appeared on the covers of the Russian versions of Playboy, InStyle, and Maxim — and ran an international marketing operation for the AK-47, calling it an instrument of peace.
Unable to attend in person was WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who formerly hosted his own show on RT. Instead, he appeared via satellite as host of one of the 10th anniversary event's seminars, where he lamented the end of privacy.
Tina Kandelaki has appeared on the covers of the Russian versions of Playboy, InStyle, and Maxim and ran an international marketing operation for the AK-47, calling the gun an instrument of peace. RT
'A Great Learning Opportunity'
Flynn had already been a frequent guest on RT in the months prior to the dinner.
In an interview with Dana Priest of the Washington Post in August 2016, Flynn talked about why he accepted such a starring role. He said he didn't ask for it, that the Russians sat him next to Putin.
"I was one of the guests there. ... Some interesting characters. I found it a great learning opportunity. One of the things I learned was that Putin has no respect for the United States leadership. Not for the United States, but the leadership."
When Putin finished his speech that night, Flynn was among the first to leap to his feet and offer a standing ovation.
In the year following the dinner, RT was part of the Putin government's overt attempt to influence the U.S. election, according to the U.S. Intelligence Community. In the January 2017 report on Russian interference, the IC discussed the network's role at length.
Mikhail Gorbachev sat a table behind Putin's. RT
"RT's criticism of the U.S. election," said the report, "was the latest facet of its broader and longer-standing anti-U.S. messaging likely aimed at undermining viewers' trust in U.S. democratic procedures and undercutting U.S. criticism of Russia's political system. RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan recently declared that the United States itself lacks democracy and that it has 'no moral right to teach the rest of the world.'"
Jill Stein declined an NBC News request for comment.
In August, 1914, Europe erupted in warfare For nearly three years, President Woodrow Wilson kept the United States out of the war, even in the face of actions that could have justified US entry.
American lives were lost on the high seas when German submarines sank the British civilian passenger ship Lusitania without warning and without stopping the ship and boarding it to determine if the cargo included contraband or offering passengers the opportunity to escape in life boats. These were well understood measures in maritime law intended to protect civilian life. To sink the ship without warning violated international law and custom.
Germany justified its actions because, since the last maritime war in the early 19th century, Marconi's invention of the radio made the traditional procedures too hazardous for warships to follow. The United States protested and Germany relented to a certain extent.
But Germany was becoming desperate. Enough so that they sent a telegram to Mexico offering to return territory taken by the US in 1846 to Mexico if they would join the war if the United States entered on the British side. That Zimmerman telegram alone could have been enough to justify US entry. But Wilson held off.
Then, in January 1917 a desperate Germany renewed unrestricted submarine warfare, sinking merchant ships on the high seas without warning no matter what flag they were flying. The goal was to starve England and France to the negotiating table. They expected this would cause the United States to enter the war, but expected they could defeat the allies before the US could recruit, train, equip and transfer to Europe a force sufficient to tip the balance against them.
It was a bad bet.
Last week PBS broadcast a three episode series showing the US entry into World War I: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/great-war/
If you missed the series, I recommend you seek it out and watch it.
Consequences of that decision produced powerful effects whose ripples are with us to the present time.
To my old readers - I have been silent for awhile. Blogger changed some things and I lost ability to post new entries. I finally figured it out and am back on line.
I expect to start posting my thoughts about the new regime and associated issues.
If any of you missed the American Experience broadcast on PBS of a three episode series on US entry into World War I (The Great War), make sure you see it.
Mile 181 on the Atlantic Section of the Intra Coastal Waterway brings you to Oriental, NC.
I expect to focus on issues and interests important to the Town of Oriental, to Pamlico County, Pamlico Sound and Eastern North Carolina. Like the body of water at our doorstep, though, these concerns can lead offshore and to other exotic ports of call.
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