H/T ‘On This Date’ by Cat @EuroTrib
In the ongoing discussion on the NYT letters page on what else sauerkraut might be called, one Matthew Craig of Brooklyn suggests sour slaw, to complement cold/cole slaw. He rejects the suggestion kapovsta, because what if we find ourselves at war with Russia some day?
So much more interesting the feeble minds historically of Americans at time of war …. includes this very day!
The Bolsheviki and the Deplorables of Hillary today
One hundred years later this sort of people would be classified as “deplorables” by Hillary Clinton in her failed bid to beat Donald Trump, the Apprentice, to the presidency in 2016. Her 19 point lead in the polls evaporated in a matter of weeks between mid-August and the election on November 8. In was all due to the foreign influence of $3 million worth of ads on social media on a group of 100 Russian bots spreading fake news. Putin’s “Bolsheviki.”
○ How the Rustbelt Paved Trump’s Road to Victory | The Atlantic |
○ Scranton Rally: The Queen of the Deplorables and the guy with the trucks
Continued below he fold …
How many of the Clintonites have chosen to stay on the affluent side of the railroad tracks running through Main Street USA? A road to irrelevance in politics and classified as DINO. How can one serve two masters?
Many Members of This Notorious
Organization Found to be SubnormalTo the Editor of The New York Times:
I have just read with great interest your editorial article in today’s issue on “Our Bolsheviki,” by which name you designate the members of the I.W.W.
I believe there is one characteristic of these people which is not generally known to the public and which should be considered in dealing with them and in making legislation to curb their vicious activities. In conversation with an eminent sociologist of this State, I was told that recently a study of these people was made by a social worker well suited to the task. This man lived with the I.W.W. members as much as possible, visited their meetings, and made a careful study of them, coming to the conclusion that most of them belonged to the class of mental defectives. Most of them show a mentality but little in advance of that higher types of feeble-minded housed in our various institutions.[photo rally for Trump]
They are the men that drifted from job to job, [today’s flex workers with zero hours contracts – Oui] have never been able to keep at work in one place long because of their roving disposition or their inefficiency. Many of them confirmed alcoholics,
[photo race track]
their desire to drink being the result rather than the cause of their mental condition. Many of them have become discouraged in the struggle for existence in competition with laboring men of normal minds and have become easy victims of long-haired fanatica,
[photo Karl Marx]
each with their own crack-brained scheme for the reformation of society.
I believe that society should frankly recognize the limitations of these men and treat them as we would any other feeble-minded who constitute a menace to the social order if left at liberty. The imbecile and the moron we do not hesitate to shut up, and we should consider the statement of such principles as form the basis of the I.W.W. organization as sufficient reason for depriving a man of his liberty and putting him at work under careful and stern supervision so that he might be of some use to society as well to himself. As in the institutions for the feeble-minded much good work is done bij de inmates on farms and in other forms of productive labor, many of these I.W.W. members can be made useful, but they cannot be left free to promulgate their crazy doctrines.
[Neuegamme labor camp]
Let us consider them as sick people, have them examined by psychologists to determine their degree of mentality, and if they are found to be subnormal shut them up in farm colonies of industrial plants under guard and see what we can do with them.
We in America are too prone to lock the doors after our horses are stolen. Would it not be possible to deal with this I.W.W. menace in a sane and scientific manner and break it up before to much damage has been done?
New York, May 3, 1918 R. B. S.[Superbly written in the style of Us vs. Them as in the clash of civilization and by demonizing a large group of people, described as a lower class. This was just 15 years before the Rise of Hitler’s Nazi regime of terror and the Final Solution of concentration and death camps across Europe.]
In 1917, during an incident known as the Tulsa Outrage, a group of black-robed Knights of Liberty, a short-lived faction of the Ku Klux Klan, tarred and feathered seventeen members of the IWW in Oklahoma. The IWW members had been turned over to the Knights of Liberty by local authorities after they were convicted of the crime of not owning war bonds.
…
The situation grew so intense that even acts of murder were merely winked at, such as in the case of miner Robert Prager, above, who was hanged by an angry mob in Collinsville, Illinois because they “suspected” he might be a German spy. The perpetrators of this heinous act received no punishment.
Searching archives @EuroTrib …
Veblen–a political economist for today
The postoffice was forbidding the mails to Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (1915) while propaganda agencies were sending it out to make people hate the Huns. Educators were denouncing The Nature of Peace (1917) while Washington experts were clipping phrases out of it to add to the Wilsonian smokescreen.)
For the Food Administration Thorstein Veblen wrote two reports; in one he advocated granting the demands of the I.W.W. as a wartime measure and conciliating the workingclass instead of beating up and jailing all the honest leaders; in the other he pointed out that the Food Administration was a businessman’s racket and was not aiming for the most efficient organisation of the country as a producing machine. He suggested that, in the interests of the efficient prosecution of the war, the government step into the place of the middleman and furnish necessities to the farmers direct in return for raw materials; but cutting out business was not at all the Administration’s idea of making the world safe for democracy; so Veblen had to resign from the Food Administration.
He signed the protests against the trial of the hundred and one wobblies in Chicago.
○ Thorstein Veblen, Darwinism, and Gene-Culture Coevolution Theory
○ IWW and wobblies: The Tulsa Outrage in 1917
I recently wrote up a piece how the American State reacted to U.M.W. coal miners in West-Virginia after the end of World War I – with deathly gas bombs from those new flying machines in the air.
The history of the term redneck is long and complex. One of the earliest recorded uses of the term comes from the 1890’s, and refers to rednecks as “poorer inhabitants of the rural districts…men who work in the field.
In 1921, the term became synonymous with armed insurrection against the state, as members of the United Mine Workers of America tied red bandanas around their necks during the Battle of Blair Mountain, a two week long armed multi-racial labor uprising in the coalfields of West Virginia.
To us, redneck is a term that signifies a pride in our class as well as a pride in resistance to bosses, politicians, and all those that protect domination and tyranny.
The battle ended after approximately one million rounds were fired, and the United States Army intervened by presidential order.
By the President of the United States of America
A PROCLAMATION
Whereas, the governor of the State of West Virginia has represented that domestic violence exists in said State, which the authorities of said State are unable to suppress; andWhereas, it is provided in the Constitution of the United States that the United States shall protect each state in this Union on application of the legislature or the executive when the legislature cannot be convened, against domestic violence; and
Whereas, by the law of the United States, in pursuance of the above, it is provided that in all cases of insurrection in any state or of obstruction to the laws thereof it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, on application of the legislature of such state or the executive when the legislature cannot be convened, to call forth the militia of any other state or states or to employ such part of the land and naval forces of the United States as shall be judged necessary for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection and causing the laws to be duly executed; and
Whereas, the legislature of the State of West Virginia is not now in session and cannot be convened in time to meet the present emergency …
Was signed:Warren G. Harding
On August 30, 1921, President Warren G. Harding declared martial law for the entire state of West Virginia, and 2,500 federal troops arrived on September 2, bringing with them machine guns and military aircraft armed with surplus explosive and gas bombs from the recently concluded World War I. Facing a large and well equipped fighting force, the miners were forced to stand down.
o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o
Just to summarize, war propaganda is of all times. One has to demonize an enemy image to stir-up discontent whether during a political campaign or leading up to a new military campaign. The UK and US are well underway for over a decade now.
Kerry Preaching Policy Contra Russia @Atlantic Council (March 2014)
Kerry should experience a warm bath here as I have referred to the right-wing Atlantic Council and its harsh statements of containment for Putin’s Russia in a New Cold War. The US wants to reduce its military presence in Europe and has set policy for NATO members to increase investments in its military: Navy, Air Force and Army. The Ukraine is an ideal nation to illustrate the “Imperial Danger” of the Russian Bear. A dangerous path to create division between new and old Europe, when did we take this path before? Rumsfeld in the lead-up to the Iraq War …
○ Churchill Gassed the Kurds in Mesopotamia
Also interesting this new article from US and German “non-compliance” to possess CWB products …
○ Germany’s Cold War chemical weapons: Military planned to stockpile arsenal in 1960s
○ Middle East: CWB weapons a poor man’s option to Israel’s nuclear arsenal