Woman of the Year, Carole Ghosn

We don't know if Lebanese-Brazilian serial super auto executive Carlos Ghosn is any kind of a criminal or not. The Japanese could easily have an iron-clad case against the plutocrat. Nevertheless, his wife Carole is a modern-day heroine. According to various sources, including the man himself, his lovely wife engineered his escape from his house arrest that began in April after he had spent 120 days in detention. Ghosn had been released on bond of 1.5 billion yen or about $13.5 million, which will be confiscated.

His wife, from her home in the US, had hired a group of mercenaries who posed as a Gregorian band and smuggled Ghosn out of his Tokyo home in a musical instrument case and flew him to Istanbul and thence to Lebanon. It's refreshing to know that there are some women who are willing to assume risks themselves for their husbands, a practice that seems to have disappeared in the civilized world. 

Modern Technology

Isn't it interesting that the same society that can send objects far into space, communicate with and guide them and even return them to earth, uses 14th century technology that involves employing a rapid chemical reaction to drive a metal pellet through the body of someone who fails to obey the orders of a public employee?

The 1619 Project

The 1619 Project is an effort by the New York Times and associated historians to emphasize in education the role of slavery in the social, cultural and economic development of the United States. This has proven to be somewhat controversial, as this article in The Atlantic points out.

The long American intellectual hangover brought about by the peculiar institution, its ultimate rejection and its continuing societal influence is a daily feature of life across the fruited plain. One can't page through a newspaper or spend more than a few moments in other media without being reminded in no uncertain terms of white guilt in the commodification of blacks and their plight after their supposed attainment of liberty. 

No one, at least for public consumption, defends slavery today. Nonetheless, its residue, since the practice involved generally easily identifiable black Africans, seems to have persisted today in a negative regard for the descendants of slaves that is evident most of all in their economic status. The majority of blacks don't seem to have realized the American dream of financial success.

The ideas behind the 1619 Project, that date being selected because that's when the first slaves arrived on the continent, include their contribution to the nascent American economy as being crucial to the success of the country and that servitude was the impetus for the War Between the States.

It's accepted as a given that a shortage of labor existed in the colonies prior to the American Revolution and that compensation for this labor made slavery an attractive choice for southern agricultural pursuits. During their formative years, the colonies, which included the Dutch in the mid-Atlantic area, were a part of a nearly global explosion of ocean transportation driven by improvements in ship design and construction, new navigation techniques, exploration that included detailed maps, and demand for products found at other ends of the earth. The crews that manned these ships were exposed to dangers and living conditions unimaginable today. Square-rigger sailors reefed sails at night in torrential storms, walking out on pitching spars over seas where losing one's grip meant death by drowning in minutes with no hope of rescue. This was for low pay and terrible food. Press gangs circulated in European seaports to gather in drunken sailors to man both navy and merchant ships. Herman Melville accurately described life on the ocean in his books, one of which, White Jacket, led to congressional action on discipline in the US Navy. In other words, working the land was an attractive alternative to sailing the seven seas.

Yet, even so, southern planters bought expensive African slaves to work their tobacco and cotton farms. The reality is that these slaves were looked at in the same light as horses and oxen. They were valuable assets, property, that could be bought and sold, as were farm animals. Their breeding and use added to the profitability of an agricultural enterprise. This was a feature of agriculture for millennia and remains so today in some places. It was hardly unique to southern North America.

The 1619 Project stipulates that opposition to slavery was the primary impetus to the War Between the States. This is by no means universally accepted as fact. The 17th century was an era of exceptional turmoil in Europe and beyond. The Reformation, beginning with Luther's posting of his 95 theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenburg, Saxony, on October 31, 1517, upset the religious and cultural order of Europe, and the rest of the world, in ways that are still being felt today. 

English Tudor King Henry VIII took advantage of the Reformation to establish the Church of England, his method to secure an heir to the throne when Pope Clement VII refused to go along with his proposed annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Later, beginning in the early 17th century, Puritanism became a major force in anti-Catholic activity in England. Much of the immigration from the UK to North America was made up of Puritans disgusted with what they felt was the licentious behavior of Stuart England. They established their capital in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and were willing participants in the War of the Three Kingdoms, Oliver Cromwell's subjugation of the Stuarts and their Cavalier allies. The reality is that the American Revolution was another, later episode in that war. New England, and particularly Puritan Boston, was the center of revolutionary thought and activity, although some southern colonialists could see the advantages of breaking with the UK and were willing to take the risk of opposing the British crown across the Atlantic, especially with the assistance of French and Polish adventurers.

During the pre-revolutionary era the New England Puritans were pretty much left to their own devices by the UK crown. They were less occupied in defying the British, embroiled in their own problems on the continent, particularly with the Dutch, than they were with the native Americans that surrounded them. Already decimated by European diseases for which they had no immunity, the remaining fragment of the native population was still a problem for the Puritans. Despite some efforts at education and religious indoctrination, the Puritans carried on Cromwell's policy of death and destruction in their relations with the original inhabitants. KIng Phillip's War from 1675 to 1678 was an especially gruesome episode. This became the standard operating procedure for the expansion of the new republic to the Pacific Coast and beyond. "Manifest Destiny", became the rationale for the technologically superior post-Puritan march across the continent, just as it had for Cromwell's conquest of the Irish.

Abolitionist sentiment in the ante-bellum years also radiated from New England, with  reinforcement from British figures like William Wilberforce. Although slavery was a contentious issue at that time there were many other factors involved as well. The principle issue was not existing slavery but its extension to new states, states that were being carved out of territory that once belonged to the native Americans, now considered as vermin. The War Between the States could be called the last engagement of the War of the Three Kingdoms. It could also be said that a major impetus to the War Between the States was Preston Brooks' caning of neo-Puritan Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner on the senate floor in 1856, as recounted here. The North's victory, ultimately resulting in the death of over 600,000 men and destruction of millions of dollars in property, led to freedom and citizenship for blacks who had been slaves. Some of these newly-freed slaves, the Buffalo Soldiers, were organized into military units set up to wage war against the natives. In the end the natives, once owner-occupants of a continent, were shuffled off to the most remote, inhospitable parts of that continent, the areas least desired by the European invaders, to make their way as best they could. They did not become legal US citizens until the 1920's. Even today the US government reserves the right to determine if a group of native Americans can refer to itself as a tribe and be treated as one. The Pamunkey tribe, that once signed a treaty with the British crown in 1646 and one of whose members was the famous Pocahontas, wasn't accepted as a tribe by the federal government until 2015. 

If there is any new focus needed on American history it should primarily be on that of the native Americans. African-Americans today include elected officials like the president of the country, successful businessmen, influential and popular entertainers and respected sports heroes. Native Americans occupy none of those niches.   

 

  

Changing What?

 Absolutely the lamest form of political campaign verbiage. Everyone wants something or other to change. Mealy-mouthed politicians like the above attempt to appeal to this universal without going into specifics that would alienate at least some of the intended audience. Good to see that this dope has failed in whatever mysterious change he had in mind.

Money Guru James Rickards Says:

Financial avalanches are goaded by greed, but greed is not a complete explanation. Bankers' parasitic behavior, the result of a cultural phase transition, is entirely characteristic of a society nearing collapse. Wealth is no longer created, it is taken from others. Parasitic behavior is not confined to bankers; it also infects high government officials, corporate executives, and the elite social stratum.

James Rickards, The Death of Money, Portfolio/Penguin, 2014, pg. 267.

  

A Presidential Opinion

The Kaplan Collection

If the savage resists, civilization, with the ten commandments in one hand and the sword in the other, demands his immediate extermination.

President Andrew Johnson in a message to the U.S. Congress in 1867. 

Another Asset Forfeiture Crime By The Government

This article is part of a series in the Greenville News, Greenville SC, that delves into the techniques and consequences of asset forfeiture in that area.

Asset forfeiture is what occurs when law enforcement ostensibly confiscates assets, cash, automobiles, real estate, etc. that are the fruits of crime. However, no crime needs to be charged and it's very unlikely that the individual that forfeits the asset will ever see it returned. The funds realized by the agency that confiscates the asset become part of its budget. A police department that grabs that cash can use it to purchase whatever it wishes.

German Brandenburger Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist wrote a historical novella, Michael Kohlhaas, in 1810 that describes a famous incident in 15th century Germany where a powerful baron confiscates two of a passing trader's horses and the trader's reaction to this crime results in extensive rebellion. 

In the Twin City metropolitan area, a co-operative effort between various police departments called the Metro Gang Strike Force was found to have grabbed cash and property for their own personal use. While the investigation resulted in the disbanding of the agency and cash awards to the victims, no law enforcement officers involved were fired, censured or charged.

Of course, all Americans are familiar with some of the reasons for the American Revolution, much of which involved disgust with the United Kingdom's financial depradations. The fact that the established government is the predator doesn't necessarily remove it from the consequences of its behavior. In fact, in a country that is supposedly the land of the free and the home of the brave, the citizens are duty-bound to oppose such policies.  It might be time for all presidential candidates to express their opinion on asset forfeiture.

Dog Is Hero In Raid On ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

US President Donald Trump has identified "Conan", a Belgian Malinois Military Working Dog as a key member of the team that caused the death of the wanted terrorist leader. The dog is said to have been injured in raid, apparently by an  electrical shock.

The dog is being returned to the US where it will visit the White House and receive honors from the POTUS.

Maybe it's time to step back for a moment and take stock of this event. Wonderful as dogs might be, man's best friend and all, they don't have the power of abstract thought that humans do. They're not capable of actually volunteering for military service. 

Furthermore, since they're trained for military and law enforcement work, they really don't have the option of refusing to enter a cave or dark building in search of an armed suspect. They are given such tasks because of their natural sensory gifts and powerful bite and, more importantly, because the humans involved don't wish to be injured or killed. A dog doesn't search for bad guys or contraband because it's concerned. It does so because it knows that it will receive a food treat. That isn't an act of heroism.

If people had a genuine love and respect for canines they wouldn't expose them to dangers that they can't understand.