Letter Never Sent

This song was so popular in 1915 that it topped the charts as the #2 best selling piece of sheet music.

Ten million soldiers to the war have gone
Who may never return again;
Ten million mothers’ hearts must break
For the ones who died in vain.
Head bowed down in sorrow,
In her lonely years,
I heard a mother murmur through her tears:

Chorus
“I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier
I brought him up to be my pride and joy;
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder
To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It’s time to lay the sword and gun away;
There’d be no war today,
If mothers all would say,
‘I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.’ ”

2nd verse
What victory can cheer a mother’s heart
When she looks at her blighted home?
What victory can bring her back
All she cared to call her own?
Let each mother answer
In the years to be,
“Remember that my boy belongs to me!”

Today is Juneteenth here in Texas.

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the ending of slavery.

From its Galveston, Texas origin in 1865, the observance of June 19th as the African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond.

Today Juneteenth commemorates
African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. It is a day, a week, and in some areas a month marked with celebrations, guest speakers, picnics and family gatherings. It is a time for reflection and rejoicing. It is a time for assessment, self-improvement and for planning the future. Its growing popularity signifies a level of maturity and dignity in America long over due. In cities across the country, people of all races, nationalities and religions are joining hands to truthfully acknowledge a period in our history that shaped and continues to influence our society today. Sensitized to the conditions and experiences of others, only then can we make significant and lasting improvements in our society.

Good article from USA Today showing how the FBI lies, lies, lies and then when they get caught in a lie with hard evidence they finally tell the truth. What makes anyone think things are different today? I’m sure most ground level FBI agents have noble intentions, but unfortunately the FBI and the CIA are tools of murderers and thieves. In recent weeks, we have seen stories of FBI complicity with the mafia, CIA buffoonery, and now this story finally coming out despite the best attempts at killing the story.

This article also shows what an evil, contemptible piece of crap Ronald Reagan was. I would say IS but the man’s brain has long been swiss cheese. He probably can’t even wipe his own once evil ass:

The documents obtained by the Chronicle show just how extensive these activities were in California, how Kerr and others were targeted, and how eagerly Reagan worked to quash protests.

Gov. Reagan intended to mount a “psychological warfare campaign” against subversives, file tax evasion and other charges against them, and do anything else it could to restore moral order, Herbert Ellingwood, Reagan’s legal affairs secretary, told the FBI in a request for confidential information about people on campus.

The records show FBI director J. Edgar Hoover agreed to provide such information from the agency’s files.

“This has been done in the past,” the director said, “and has worked quite successfully.”

The Office of Ronald Reagan referred the Chronicle’s questions to Edwin Meese III, Reagan’s chief of staff as governor. Meese said the FBI, as far as he knew, gave Reagan no special political help, and that he did not remember planning any activities against “subversives.”

“There was never any concentrated strategy to do these things,” he said.

The documents also show that the FBI tried to protect Reagan from being implicated for lying about his own past as a member of several groups officially deemed subversive by altering his security clearance.

Reports that Reagan informed on his fellow actors at a time when the FBI was trying to root out suspected subversives have surfaced before, but were downplayed. In 1985, when the FBI released some documents about Reagan, a Reagan spokesman said he had only a “very minor” involvement with the bureau at a time when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild.

The records obtained by the Chronicle reveal who it was that Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman, named during a 1947 meeting with FBI agents: Larry Parks (The Jolson Story), Howard Da Silva (The Lost Weekend) and Alexander Knox (Wilson). Each was later called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and blacklisted in Hollywood.

The new documents also show Reagan’s contacts with the bureau were more extensive than he acknowledged or has been reported: Files show he repeatedly gave the FBI names of people he suspected of being communist over the years.

My favorite part is the justification for trying to destroy the lives of young americans:

In its unsuccessful battle to keep them secret, the agency had said its actions had been proper � that it had merely tried to protect civil order and national security during a time when the nation feared Communism and waged war in Vietnam.

What hubris.

I know people think the word ‘fascist’ gets tossed around frequently by people of the libertarian/anarchist persuasion, and I am especially guilty of this. However, in this case it is appropriate. What else would you call a group who rule in the name of the people but who hatch plans to murder Americans in order to further a political, nationalist agenda?

According to the book in this article, beginning in 1959 the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Military drew up plans which “included the possible assassination of Cuban �migr�s, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.” The goal, of course, was to overthrow the dangerous communist leader, Fidel Castro.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba’s then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America’s top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” and, “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

Code named Operation Northwoods, these plans also involved blaming any potential disasters occurring during the launch of the first American manned space flight on Castro.

These signed plans were presented to President Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara, by Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer in March 1962. Apparently they were rejected by the civilian leadership. However, the military continued to mastermind ‘pretext’ plans to lead a US overthrow of Cuba through 1963.

One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base � an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.

The thing that really gets me is that Americans today are naive or stupid enough to believe anything the government, especially the military tells them. The military and intelligence bureaucracies in general are pyramid organizations controlled by corrupt Machiavellian-types. They operate in secret without public accountability. We know that they consume trillions of dollars in public funds, but we never know what they do. Now we know a little more of what they’re up to. A little more that can be added to the long litany of criminality that we do already know about: assassinations, lies, deception, inhumanity, injustice, and corruption. Who knows what will come out in another 40 years? Is there any reason to believe anything has changed? Given the recent history of crimes suggested in the Enron scandal, the Florida election fraud, and the botched coup in Venezuela, I don’t think so.