posted on June 8, 2002 02:15:40 AM new
In 70 BC, an ambitious minor politician and extremely wealthy man, Marcus Licineus Crassus, wanted to rule Rome. Just to give you an idea of what sort of man Crassus really was, he is credited with invention of the fire brigade. But in Crassus' version, his fire-fighting slaves would race to the scene of a burning building whereupon Crassus would offer to buy it on the spot for a tiny fraction of it's worth. If the owner sold, Crassus' slaves would put out the fire. If the owner refused to sell, Crassus allowed the building to burn to the ground. By means of this device, Crassus eventually came to be the largest single private land holder in Rome, and used some of his wealth to help back Julius Caesar against Cicero.
In 70 BC Rome was still a Republic, which placed very strict limits on what Rulers could do, and more importantly NOT do. But Crassus had no intentions of enduring such limits to his personal power, and contrived a plan.
Crassus seized upon the slave revolt led by Spartacus in order to strike terror into the hearts of Rome, whose garrison Spartacus had already defeated in battle. But Spartacus had no intention of marching on Rome itself, a move he knew to be suicidal. Spartacus and his band wanted nothing to do with the Roman empire and had planned from the start merely to loot enough money from their former owners in the Italian countryside to hire a mercenary fleet in which to sail to freedom.
Sailing away was the last thing Crassus wanted Spartacus to do. He needed a convenient enemy with which to terrorize Rome itself for his personal political gain. So Crassus bribed the mercenary fleet to sail without Spartacus, then positioned two Roman legions in such a way that Spartacus had no choice but to march on Rome.
Terrified of the impending arrival of the much-feared army of gladiators, Rome declared Crassus Praetor. Crassus then crushed Spartacus' army and even though Pompeii took the credit, Crassus was elected Consul of Rome the following year.
With this maneuver, the Romans surrendered their Republican form of government. Soon would follow the first Triumvirate,consisting of Crassus, Pompeii, and Julius Caesar, followed by the reign of the god-like Emperors of Rome.
The Romans were hoaxed into surrendering their Republic, and accepting the rule of Emperors.
posted on June 8, 2002 02:47:30 AM new
Well, the Republic was an oligarchy, and aren't you forgetting Gaius Marius and Sulla? You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on June 8, 2002 06:35:10 AM new
I will bet even money if you have a sample of 1000 people on the street read this piece they will have 50% or more clueless who it is aimed at.
posted on June 8, 2002 07:01:03 AM new
OK, well how about one more recent?
What Cicero only dreamed of, Adolph Hitler succeeded in doing. Elected Chancellor of Germany, Hitler, like Crassus, had no intention of living with the strict limits to his power imposed by German law. Unlike Cicero, Hitler's thugs were easy to recognize; they all wore the same brown shirts. But their actions were no different than those of their Roman predecessors. They staged beatings, set fires, caused as much trouble as they could, while Hitler made speeches promising that he could end the crime wave of subversives and terrorism if he was granted extraordinary powers.
Then the Reichstagg burned down; a staged terrorist attack.
The Germans were hoaxed into surrendering their Republic, and accepting the total rule of Der Fuhrer.
posted on June 8, 2002 07:30:59 AM new
Like Germany, we may soon be left with a version of Der Fuhrer.
Bush wants a war in Iraq and like Crassus, money is the motivating factor...not terrorism. The crazy bastard wants oil.
But he NEEDS terrorists to justify the war. I believe that the threat is deliberately exaggered. Americans need to be convinced that Bush's war agenda is really necessary.
By the time his war is over, we may never regain our country.
posted on June 8, 2002 09:17:16 AM new
Thank you Helen for making it clear. Really, all the Republicans did was to drag out the corpse of Ivan the Communist and inflate it back into Abdul, the Terrorist. A recycled Boogieman.
posted on June 8, 2002 01:19:16 PM new
They can be even more versatile!
Remember...before the terrorists hit, we were planning an ESSENTIAL war in space? We couldn't POSSIBLY get along without a war in space. And the American people were not asking any questions about that preposterous idea either. Everybody, including congress was ready to play star wars.
Hell forbid, but it's probably still under consideration.
posted on June 8, 2002 03:28:42 PM new
Oh that is a given. No need to talk it up 'cause it is a done deal. The first space war will be with China actually.
posted on June 8, 2002 06:09:41 PM new
Bush will avoid war by going to China like Nixon did, and then asking then if they have any Black People. (what an idiot)
posted on June 10, 2002 01:39:46 PM new
So the Romans accepted the Emperors and the Germans accepted Hitler not because they wanted to, but because the carefully crafted illusions of threat appeared to leave no other choice.
In 1898, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal were arguing for American intervention in Cuba. Hearst is reported to have dispatched a photographer to Cuba to photograph the coming war with Spain. When the photographer asked just what war that might be, Hearst is reported to have replied, "You take the photographs, and I will provide the war". Hearst was true to his word, as his newspaper published stories of great atrocities being committed against the Cuban people, most of which turned out to be complete fabrications.
On the night of February 15, 1898, the USS Maine, lying in Havana harbor in a show of US resolve to protect her interests, exploded violently. Captain Sigsbee, the commander of the Maine, urged that no assumptions of enemy attack be made until there was a full investigation of the cause of the explosion. For this, Captain Sigsbee was excoriated in the press for "refusing to see the obvious". The Atlantic Monthly declared flat out that to suppose the explosion to be anything other than a deliberate act by Spain was "completely at defiance of the laws of probability".
Under the slogan "Remember the Maine", Americans went to war with Spain, eventually winning the Phillipines (and annexing Hawaii along the way).
In 1975, an investigation led by Admiral Hyman Rickover examined the data recovered from a 1911 examination of the wreck and concluded that there had been no evidence of an external explosion. The most likely cause of the sinking was a coal dust explosion in a coal bunker imprudently located next to the ship's magazines. Captain Sigsbee's caution had been well founded.
posted on June 10, 2002 04:22:00 PM new
Hanging out the Scarecrow to get people to become mindlessly patriotic works for a while. That's because Fear doesn't last forever and Fear wears off and peole begin to start thinking for themselves again. For longest lasting mindless patriotic effects, change the Scarecrow Fear to Scarecrow Hate.
posted on June 10, 2002 07:50:41 PM new
Auroranorth recommended a good book about American Wars by Edwin P. Hoyt that has a very interesting description of the use of the media in manipulating the American people to support this war. Some of the following information is based on that book.
Captain Sigsbee of the Maine and Secretary of the navy Long both believed that the explosion was internal. but the administration and the business world saw their chance to inflame America and that was accomplished by the media. At the time, Hearst of the New York American was engaged in a circulation battle with Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World.
In the first week after the explosion, Hearst devoted eight pages per day to the Maine explosion. Circulation jumped from 400,000 copies a day to more than a million. Pulitzer did the same and papers all across America profited. This is an excellent lesson in the short term manipulation of public opinion.
So, the nation believed!
Remember the Maine
To Hell with Spain
That was the slogan of 1898.
The State Department was assured that the explosion was caused by a torpedo or a bomb used by the Spanish authorities. The American Consul recommended immediate occupation of Cuba by the United States, and then anexation. "American capital and enterprising spirit would soon Americanize the island."
posted on June 16, 2002 01:16:19 PM new
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt needed a war. He needed the fever of a major war to mask the symptoms of a still deathly ill economy struggling back from the Great Depression (and mutating towards Socialism at the same time). Roosevelt wanted a war with Germany to stop Hitler, but despite several provocations in the Atlantic, the American people, still struggling with that troublesome economy, were opposed to any wars. Roosevelt violated neutrality with lend lease, and even ordered the sinking of several German ships in the Atlantic, but Hitler refused to be provoked.
Roosevelt needed an enemy, and if America would not willingly attack that enemy, then one would have to be maneuvered into attacking America, much as Marcus Licinius Crassus has maneuvered Spartacus into attacking Rome.
The way open to war was created when Japan signed the tripartite agreement with Italy and Germany, with all parties pledging mutual defense to each other. Whereas Hitler would never declare war on the United States no matter the provocation, the means to force Japan to do so were readily at hand.
The first step was to place oil and steel embargoes on Japan, using Japan's wars on the Asian mainland as a reason. This forced Japan to consider seizing the oil and mineral rich regions in Indonesia. With the European powers militarily exhausted by the war in Europe, the United States was the only power in the Pacific able to stop Japan from invading the Dutch East Indies, and by moving the Pacific fleet from San Diego to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Roosevelt made a pre-emptive strike on that fleet the mandatory first step in any Japanese plan to extend it's empire into the "southern resource area".
Roosevelt boxed in Japan just as completely as Crassus had boxed in Spartacus. Japan needed oil. They had to invade Indonesia to get it, and to do that they first had to remove the threat of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. There never really was any other course open to them.
To enrage the American people as much as possible, Roosevelt needed the first overt attack by Japan to be as bloody as possible, appearing as a sneak attack much as the Japanese had done to the Russians. From that moment up until the attack on Pearl Harbor itself, Roosevelt and his associates made sure that the commanders in Hawaii, General Short and Admiral Kimmel, were kept in the dark as much as possible about the location of the Japanese fleet and it's intentions, then later scapegoated for the attack. (Congress recently exonerated both Short and Kimmel, posthumously restoring them to their
former ranks).
But as the Army board had concluded at the time, and subsequent de-classified documents confirmed, Washington DC knew the attack was coming, knew exactly where the Japanese fleet was, and knew where it was headed.
On November 29th, Secretary of State Hull showed United Press reporter Joe Leib a message with the time and place of the attack, and the New York Times in it's special 12/8/41 Pearl Harbor edition, on
page 13, reported that the time and place of the attack had been known in advance!
The much repeated claim that the Japanese fleet maintained radio silence on it's way to Hawaii was a lie. Among other intercepts still held in the Archives of the NSA is the UNCODED message sent by the Japanese tanker Shirya stating, "proceeding to a position 30.00 N, 154.20 E. Expect to arrive at that point on 3 December." (near HI)
posted on June 23, 2002 09:17:33 PM new
President Lyndon Johnson wanted a war in Vietnam. He wanted it to help his friends who owned defense companies to do a little business. He needed it to get the Pentagon and CIA to quit trying to invade Cuba.
And most of all, he needed a provocation to convince the American people that there was really "no other choice".
On August 5, 1964, newspapers across America reported "renewed attacks" against American destroyers operating in Vietnamese waters, specifically the Gulf of Tonkin. The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an "unprovoked attack" on the USS Maddox while it was on "routine patrol".
The truth is that USS Maddox was involved in aggressive intelligence gathering in coordination with actual attacks by South Vietnam and the Laotian Air Force against targets in North Vietnam. The truth is also
that there was no attack by torpedo boats against the USS Maddox. Captain John J. Herrick, the task force commander in the Gulf, cabled Washington DC that the report was the result of an "over-eager" sonarman who had picked up the sounds of his own ship's screws and panicked. But even with this knowledge that the report was false, Lyndon Johnson went on national TV that night to announce the commencement of air strikes against North Vietnam, "retaliation" for an attack that had never occurred.
posted on June 23, 2002 10:43:14 PM new
In other words, President can and have lied and manipulated Americans into wars, knowing that lives were at stake and simply written off. Anyone who has read some history understands just how often this tactic has been used in every country of the world. The Founders of our Constitution were wary of one man getting an entire nation into a war and removed the authority to commit America into a course of war from the hands of the President and put it into the hands of the people who fought those war via their elected representatives in Congress. American history is replete with obscene incursions upon the Constitution by Presidents and Congress in order to personally profit from acts of war or genocide against natives. That the current President may have known ahead of time what was about to take place on 9-11 grows clearer each day that passes and those brave should who risk their very lives to tell us what they find are letting us know that some people are still willing to pay the price of Freedom and Democracy. That recent incursions against the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights shows only how short a memory that the public has and just how gullible so many of them are in their blind faith in elected officials ~ a faith NEVER held by our Founding Fathers, by the way. Some day soon, hopefully sooner than Bush hopes, he will be revealed for what he is and his handlers will show themselves and their horns and cloven, hoofed feet.
