Monday, April 11, 2016

Historical Lessons in April 2016

African Americans have a huge role to play in the Revolutionary War (among both sides). Back during that war, black people in North America were heavily enslaved and some were free. African Americans participated in both sides during the war for diverse reasons. The British recruited slaves from the Patriot side and promise freedom to them. One promise was made by Dunmore’s Proclamation. Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation had the following words: “…And I hereby further declare all indented servants, Negroes, or others (appertaining to Rebels) free, that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining His Majesty's Troops, as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing the Colony to a proper sense of their duty, to this Majesty's crown and dignity…” Lord Dunmore was the title of the Governor of Virginia. Dunmore officially issued his proclamation in November, 1775, and within a month 300 black men had joined his Ethiopian regiment. Probably no more than 800 eventually succeeded in joining Dunmore's regiment, but his proclamation inspired thousands of runaways to follow behind the British throughout the war. There were manpower shortages on the American side, so George Washington (who owned slaves) lifted the ban on black enlistment in the Continental Army in January of 1776. There were small all-black units were formed in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Many slaves were promised freedom for serving. When the war was over, some slaves were brought back to slavery and some were freed. Another all-black unit came from Saint-Domingue with French colonial forces. At least 5,000 black soldiers fought for the Revolutionary cause. Thousands of slaves escaped during the war and joined British lines. Other moved into the areas of America. One example is in South Carolina; nearly 25,000 slaves (30% of the enslaved population) fled, migrated or died during the disruption of the war.  This greatly disrupted plantation production during and after the war. When they withdrew their forces from Savannah and Charleston, the British also evacuated 10,000 slaves belonging to Loyalists. Altogether, the British evacuated nearly 20,000 blacks at the end of the war. More than 3,000 of them were freedmen and most of these were resettled in Nova Scotia; other blacks were sold in the West Indies. There was a 1780 drawing of American soldiers from the Yorktown campaign which showed a black infantryman from the 1st Rhodes Island Regiment. For black people, we wanted freedom back then. Back then, the majority of Americans were either neutral or Loyalist. African Americans like Agrippa Hull and Prince Hall sided with the Patriot cause. James Lafayette, an enslaved African American from Virginia, served in the Continental Army and successfully requested his freedom after the war.

5,000 black men served in the Continental Army and hundreds more served on the sea. Black people fought side by side with their white counterparts in the battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. Colonel Tye was perhaps the best-known of the Loyalist black soldiers. An escaped bondman born in Monmouth County, New Jersey, he fought the American colonists with his guerrilla Black Brigade in New York and New Jersey. At one time he commanded 800 men. For most of 1779 and 1780, Tye and his men fought by getting cattle, freeing slaves, and capturing Patriots at will. On September 1, 1780, during the capture of a Patriot captain, Tye was shot through the wrist, and he later died from a fatal infection. Boston King was a black escaped slave and he joined the Loyalists. He was kidnapped by Southern Loyalists who tried to sell him back into slavery. He escaped and again rejoined the army. Many thousands of African Americans who fought for the British lost their freedom. Some were placed into slavery in the Caribbean. According to Margaret Washington (historian on the evacuation of Charleston): “…Many of them ended up in slavery in the Caribbean. Others, when they attempted to leave with the British, in places like Charleston and Savannah, were prevented. And there are incredible letters written by southerners of Africans after the siege of Charleston, swimming out to boats, and the British hacking away at their arms with cutlasses to keep them from following them. So it was a very tragic situation. And of the many thousands of Africans who left the plantations, not many of them actually got their freedom.” Sir Guy Carleton (or the acting commander of the British forces) refused to abandon black Loyalists. So, Brigadier General Samuel Birch, British commandant of the city of New York, created a list of claimants known as The Book of Negroes. Boston King and his wife, Violet, were among 3,000 to 4,000 African Americans Loyalists who boarded ships in New York bound for Nova Scotia, Jamaica, and Britain. Yes, the miniseries “Book of Negroes,” which is an excellent movie is based on these events. I saw the Book of Negroes movie before and I do recommend it for any person. They or those Brothers and Sisters were not slaves anymore. In 1780, Massachusetts approved a new constitution, which borrowed from the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Bill of Rights, stating that "all men are born free and equal." Relying upon this language, Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker (both African Americans) successfully sued for emancipation. Phillis Wheatley was a black woman who was an amazing poet and wrote literature in favor of liberty. The Revolutionary War (filled with controversies, hypocrisies, and contradictions) included history where many black people fought courageously for freedom and justice. We do honor that black people back then who fought against slavery and desired justice for all.

The Treaty of Paris was signed in September 3, 1783. It was signed by the representatives of King George III of Great Britain and the representatives of the United States of America. It was signed at Hotel d’York (called now 56 Rue Jacob) in Paris, France. 1783. It marked the end of the Revolutionary War. After the battle of Yorktown, political support for the war in London decreased rapidly. British Prime Minister Lord North resigned in March of 1782. In April 1782, the Commons voted to end the war in America. There were preliminary peace articles signed in Paris at the end of November 1782. The formal end of the war didn’t happen until the Treaty of Paris (or the Treaties of Versailles for other Allies) was signed on September 3, 1783. The last British troops left New York City on November 25, 1783. The United States Congress of the Confederation ratified the Paris treaty on January 14, 1784. Britain negotiated the Paris peace treaty without consulting her Native American allies. They ceded all Native American territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River to the United Nations.  Native Americans reluctantly confirmed these land cessions with the United States in a series of treaties, but the fighting would be renewed in conflicts along the frontier in the coming years, the largest being the Northwest Indian War.  The British sought to establish a buffer Native American state in the American Midwest, and continued to pursue that goal as late as 1814 in the War of 1812. The United States gained a lot of lands in the western territory. The other Allies had mixed to poor results. France had some gains over its nemesis, Great Britain. Yet, France’ material gains were minimal and France experienced huge financial loses as a product of the Revolutionary War. France was already in financial trouble and it was borrowing money to pay for the war. It used up all of its credit and created the financial disasters that marked the 1780’s which led into the French Revolution. The Dutch clearly lost on all points. The Spanish had a mixed result; they did not achieve their primary war goal (recovery of Gibraltar), but they did gain territory. However, in the long run, as the case of Florida shows, the new territory that Spain acquired was temporary.

The Pentagon is located in Arlington County, Virginia. It is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. As a symbol of the military, it is related to many policies related to foreign policy. The American architect George Bergstrom designed the Pentagon. It was built by general contractor John McShain of Philadelphia. Ground was broken for construction on September 11, 1941 and the building was dedicated on January 15, 1943.  General Brehon Somervell provided the major motive power behind the project; Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the U.S. Army. The Pentagon is one of the world's largest office buildings, with about 6,500,000 sq. ft. (600,000 m2), of which 3,700,000 sq. ft. (340,000 m2) are used as offices. Approximately 23,000military and civilian employees and about 3,000 non-defense support personnel work in the Pentagon. It has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 mi (28.2 km) of corridors. The Pentagon includes a five-acre (20,000 m2) central plaza, which is shaped like a pentagon and informally known as "ground zero", a nickname originating during the Cold War on the presumption that it would be targeted by the Soviet Union at the outbreak of nuclear war. The western side of the building was damaged by the 9/11 attacks done by the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77. The attack killed 189 people total (or 59 victims in the plane, 5 hijackers, and the 125 victims in the building). It was the first significant foreign attack in Washington, D.C.’s government facilities during the 21st century, which was similar to the burning of Washington D.C. during the War of 1812. The Pentagon is about 28.7 acres.  We know about how the Pentagon was involved in nefarious actions and how the CIA has been involved in evil, clandestine activities since its inception from 1947. One myth is that view that no plane hit the Pentagon. This myth is common among many people who are sincere and others who are outright disinformationists. One such person is Steve Pieczenik. He was an assistant and chief anti-terrorist hostage negotiator at the State Department to Rockefeller allied members Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Shultz, and James Baker. He listed himself as member of the AFIO and the National Military Intelligence Association. He was a member of the CFR too, which is an establishment organization. He was an ally of the Reagan administration and is a reactionary person. Joel Skousen promotes the no-757 hit the Pentagon myth too. Joel is the nephew of the Mormon Cleon Skousen (he wrote the 970 conspiracy best-seller 'The Naked Capitalist' (largely a review of Carroll Quigley's book 'Tragedy and Hope'). The Skousens have ties to the Council for National Policy. The CNP are a far right organization with establishment ties. Oliver North and the Blackwater founder Erik Prince are members of the CNP. Many witnesses have said that they saw an airplane crash into the Pentagon. Images show debris of an airplane surrounding the Pentagon area. Quotes from the aftermath of the crash site offer no proof that something else than a 757 hit the building.

As for 9/11, we know the truth. Osama bin Laden back during the 1970’s had ties to the CIA and the intelligence community of the West. He founded Al-Qaeda and many terrorist groups have ties to Western agencies for a long time. Bin Mahfouz was an important former BCCI director and he was in business with the CIA’s Frank Carlucci and George H. W. Bush. The CIA Counterterrorist Center (CTC), under later War on Terror fundamentalist Cofer Black, was aware from March 2000 and on that Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar had entered the United States via Los Angeles, immediately after attending an Al Qaeda conference in Kuala Lumpur, which the CTC was also aware of. The CTC didn't put this pair on watch lists. Neither did it inform the FBI about them. On its own the FBI figured out that these men were financed and supported by a Saudi intelligence asset with covert financial ties to the wife of Bandar Bush, a close friend of the Bush family. Joseph Kasputys, tenant of the South Tower's impact and collapse floors, had various direct and indirect ties to the Carlyle Group, both pre and post 9/11. Carlucci and former president George H. W. Bush, both with a CIA background, were key individuals of this company. Carlucci knew Kasputys for years before 9/11 through the Committee for Economic Development and Bush almost certainly through the Council for Excellence in Government. In addition, Kasputys' associate Patrick Gross ran a company owned by the Carlyle Group. Carlucci, Bush and James Baker met Shafig bin Laden, an older half-brother of Osama bin Laden, on the morning of 9/11 at a Carlyle meeting. Senators Bob Graham and Jon Kyl also served on the board of the NED in 2001. Both were in contact with Pakistani backers of Al Qaeda, along with CIA covert operations veteran and AFIO member Porter Goss. On the morning of 9/11 these three men were having lunch with an ISI general who was accused of wiring $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers. So, the attacks on 9/11 were bigger than people using planes to crash into various buildings. Innocent human beings were murdered by evil people. Certain intelligence members and the political establishment exploited the evil September 11 attacks as an excuse for them to promote the murderous, nefarious war on terror (which is filled with torture, illegal wars, other war crimes, etc.).

By Timothy

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