21st Century American Civil War has already started

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Caption reads: -- Southern Boys in Iraq, 2007. Wherever you find brave men, you'll find the Battle Flag. Happy Veterans Day to all....

 

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Confederates: If we go down, we will go down fighting

Confederate Will

Today, many scholars insist that the Confederacy could have won if the Southern people had possessed the will to make the necessary sacrifices. There is a tendency to believe that once Southerners got past the heady summer of 1861, with victory at Manassas fading and the prospect of significant sacrifice looming, morale plummeted. As desertion and disaffection increased, Confederate resistance collapsed from internal stresses that rendered further struggle impossible. Historian Merton Coulter declared that the Confederacy lost because its ‘people did not will hard enough and long enough to win’. Arguably, the Confederacy failed to generate a strong sense of nationalism. Accordingly, when the going got tough, Southerners found it tough to keep going.

In reality, however, Southerners had a strong sense of distinctiveness – a belief that they shared cultural values at odds with those of the rest of the nation. What particularly set them apart was slavery – the ‘cornerstone’ of the Confederacy. The strength of patriotic feeling in 1861 produced 500,000 volunteers for military service. Southern politicians, clergymen and newspaper editors, invoking memories of 1776, did their utmost to secure support for the Confederacy. The war, which gave Southerners a new set of heroes and which also created a unifying hatred of the enemy, strengthened feelings of national identity. So did military service. Historian James McPherson found evidence of very strong patriotism in the letters of Southern soldiers. Most believed they were fighting for freedom and liberty. Even during the awful winter of 1864-5 most soldiers faithfully discharged their duty. Thousands of courageous Confederate troops, for example, mounted impressive – but hopeless – assaults against well-positioned Federals in the battle of Franklin in November 1864. Historian Gary Gallagher suggests that the most nationalistic Southerners were young officers. Reared among the sectional controversies of the 1850s, they had few, if any, doubts about slavery, attributed base motives to Northerners in general and Republicans in particular, and supported secession. Once fighting began, their personal example in combat inspired their men and their achievements nourished patriotism and resolve among civilians. Devoted to the Confederacy, they remained outspoken advocates of continued sacrifice until the last days of the war.

Far from being a reason for defeat, the strength of Confederate nationalism explains why most Southerners fought as long and hard as they did. In the summer of 1864 Northerners almost threw in the towel when they suffered casualty rates that Southerners had endured for more than two years. 260,000 Confederate troops died in the war – a quarter of the white male population of military age. A further 200,000 were seriously wounded. The Confederacy’s death toll was far greater than France’s in the Franco-Prussian War. Nobody suggests that Frenchmen in 1870 did not have a strong sense of national identity. Yet France lost. Nationalism does not ensure invulnerability to those who possess it.

Given so much death and destruction, some scholars believe that Southerners came to doubt whether God was really on their side and that this helped corrode morale. This view is hard to substantiate. Southern Church leaders supported the Confederate cause until the bitter end. Most Southerners believed that God would ensure their success. Religious revivals swept through Confederate armies, especially in 1863-4. Many Southern soldiers equated duty to God with duty to the Confederacy. Rather than explaining Confederate defeat, religion played a vital role in sustaining Southern will. The notion that many Southern whites felt moral qualms about slavery, which undermined their will to fight a war to preserve it, is even less convincing. All the evidence suggests that most Southerners went to war to preserve their peculiar institution and remained committed to it to the end.

Recent scholarship has stressed that many groups within the South became disenchanted as the war progressed. Two-thirds of the Confederacy’s white population were non-slaveholders who may have come to resent risking their lives and property simply to defend slavery for slaveholders. However, McPherson found little if any evidence of class division in the letters of Confederate soldiers. Large numbers of non-slaveholders were ready to fight and die for the Confederacy from start to finish.

‘Historians have wondered in recent years why the Confederacy did not endure longer’, wrote historian Drew Gilpin Faust; ‘In considerable measure … it was because so many women did not want it to. It may well have been because of its women that the South lost the Civil War’. Severe hardship on the home front, Faust claims, led to a growth of defeatism which was conveyed by uncensored letters to Southern soldiers. Women told their men folk to put family before national loyalty. In reality, however, many Southern women remained loyal to the end, exhorting their men to stay at the front and fight. Increased privation, the experience of living under Federal occupation, and the loss of loved ones often reinforced rather than eroded loyalty to the Confederacy.

‘The devils seem to have a determination that cannot but be admired’, wrote General Sherman to his wife in March 1864. ‘No amount of poverty or adversity seems to shake their faith – niggers gone – wealth and luxury gone, money worthless, starvation in view within a period of two or three years, are causes enough to make the bravest tremble, yet I see no sign of let up – some few deserters – plenty tired of war, but the masses determined to fight it out’. Sherman’s subsequent actions underscored his belief that severe measures were necessary to break the dogged Confederate resistance.

There was some states rights obstructionism in the Confederacy: that was only to be – and was far less than might have been – expected. There were class tensions: there are in any state. There was war weariness: there always is. But even in 1864-5, letters, diaries and newspapers reveal a tenacious popular will rooted in a sense of national community.

As the war progressed, Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia embodied the Confederacy in the minds of most white Southerners. Lee’s military success sustained Southern hopes. Contemporaries understood the centrality of military events to national morale and, by extension, to the outcome of the war. In his second inaugural address Lincoln spoke of the ‘progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends’. But for victories at Atlanta and in the Shenandoah Valley, Lincoln might well have lost the 1864 election. Lee won many, but in the end not enough, victories. The prestige and symbolic importance of the Army of Northern Virginia were such that few Southerners contemplated serious resistance after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, despite the fact that he surrendered only a fraction of Southerners under arms in April 1865. Appomattox was the end of the Confederacy.

When asked some years afterwards why the Confederates lost at Gettysburg, General Pickett replied, ‘I think the Yankees had something to do with it’. The Yankees also explain why the Confederacy lost the war. The Union defeated the Confederacy: the Confederacy did not defeat itself.

Given the Union’s strength, the Confederacy was always likely to be beaten. To win, the Confederacy had to wear down Northern will. A long bloody war was the best way to do this. The war was long and bloody but Northern will endured. The morale of Union soldiers was crucial. McPherson’s study of soldiers’ letters suggests that Northern soldiers were aware of the issues at stake and passionately concerned about them. In 1864 some 80 per cent of Union soldiers voted for Lincoln, proof that soldier morale still held strong. Federal victories from mid-1863 onwards helped sustain that morale. The Confederacy surrendered in 1865 because Union armies had demonstrated their ability to crush Southern military resistance. Defeat caused defeatism, not vice versa. A people whose armies are beaten, railways wrecked, cities burned, countryside occupied and crops laid waste, lose their will – and ability – to continue fighting. In war ‘heavy battalions’ do normally triumph. The Civil War was to be no exception. Unable to fight a perfect war, the stubborn Confederacy finally fell before the enemy’s superior resources. The final epitaph of the Confederacy should be ‘Expired after a brave fight’.

Why was the Confederacy Defeated? | History Today

 

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Caption reads: -- Southern Boys in Iraq, 2007. Wherever you find brave men, you'll find the Battle Flag. Happy Veterans Day to all....

They look Yankee to me.

 

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Unionists invoke Alfred Hitchcock

A proper whodunit

SATISH K SHARMA, Jun 11, 2013, 12.00AM IST

Hitchcock didn't depend on the cheap surprise, nor should cricket.

Talking of movies, what can be more thrilling than to watch an Alfred Hitchcock classic? But the master of suspense never sets much store by whodunit. On the contrary, he puts all the facts before the audience, including who is the murderer, and then goes on to build suspense. As the master himself conceded in an interview, the idea is not to shock the audience through a dramatic outcome but to entertain them through what can be called the battle of wits.

Returning to human affairs, they are interesting study material not because of any uncertainty about the events but the way things work out towards an inevitable destiny. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold exemplifies this beautifully. What makes the book unputdownable is not anxiety about the story's denouement, which readers know from the beginning, but how it is brought about by the tragic interplay of circumstances.

Coming back to cricket, it's high time we stopped being concerned with who is going to win or lose but rather focus on how that is done in a plausible manner. Imagine the thrill of watching a match between Bangladesh and Australia, which is already fixed in the former`s favour. Similarly, it is shocking to see a top batsman getting out in the 90s but it would be so exciting to watch him contrive towards that end in everyone`s knowledge. In fact, the tag line of ads promoting a match could go like, "Watch so and so getting out at 99."

A proper whodunit - Times Of India

 

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Unionists invoke Alfred Hitchcock

Convoluted Yankee strategy. Inherently ineffective. They have tried that before. Do they even have such strategy this time? Doesn’t seem so. Looks like a bluff. Why don’t they simply nuke the target?

 

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Unionists invoke Alfred Hitchcock

Convoluted Yankee strategy. Inherently ineffective. They have tried that before. Do they even have such strategy this time? Doesn’t seem so. Looks like a bluff. Why don’t they simply nuke the target?

Copperhead speaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Edward Snowden has links with Chinese intelligence: Congressman Peter King

PTI : Washington, Sat Jun 15 2013, 15:23 hrs

Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who disclosed America's secret surveillance programme, may have been working with the Chinese government to reveal intelligence secrets, a US lawmaker has alleged.

"There's a lot of reason for suspicion," Republican Congressman Peter King told MSNBC.

Snowden, an American citizen, is currently hiding in Hong Kong. The US has launched a criminal investigation against him for allegedly leaking the secretive American programme.

"First of all, the fact that he transferred money to China; the fact that that he had studied Chinese; the fact that his girlfriend had some connections to China; the fact

that, of all countries in the world, he went to China and he arranged to have the papers or his documents released on the same weekend that President Obama was meeting with the president of China and why he's still in China. What is Chinese intelligence doing with all of this?" King said.

"There's no definitive proof yet. But it's something that has to be investigated fully. My belief is that it is being fully investigated," the New York Congressman said.

"To me, people who glorify him and make him out to be a hero are just doing damage to the country, just like Snowden did. This person is not a hero," he said.

"He is a person who has betrayed this country, violated his oath and caused incalculable damage to our national security," King said.

Snowden, an ex-CIA technical assistant, exposed the National Security Agency's vast electronic surveillance operation last week.

Edward Snowden has links with Chinese intelligence: Congressman Peter King - Indian Express

 

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Shooting in Lincoln City: 1 dead, 1 injured, suspect in custody

June 16, 2013 10:30 am • By EMILY NITCHER / Lincoln Journal Star

One man died and another was injured after a shooting at a house in northwest Lincoln early Saturday, said police, who have taken a man into custody in connection with the incident.

The shooting was reported at about 1:30 a.m. at a house at 316 W. Saunders Ave.

Rescue workers took Shane Christopher Newman, 38, to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Lincoln Police Capt. Joseph Wright said. Another man from the house, age 22, arrived at the hospital shortly before 2 a.m. with non-life-threatening gunshot injuries, according to a police news release. Police would not provide the man's name.

Officers arrested 21-year-old Michael Arellano Jr. in connection with the shooting, but they did not indicate whether they suspected he is the shooter, saying charges against him would be decided by the Lancaster County attorney's office.

A Lancaster County jail official said Arellano was being held as a suspect in aiding and abetting a Class I felony. He remained in jail Saturday evening.

Lincoln police said they still were investigating.

“I think that they plan on having a few arrests when they’re done,” Chief Jim Peschong said.

"Detectives are still speaking with people of interest at this time. Anyone with information about this incident should call LPD at 402-441-6000 or Crime Stoppers at 402-475-3600," the media release said.

Investigators remained at the scene late Saturday, looking inside a parked car with in-transit stickers.

Earlier in the day, investigators wearing blue gloves and booties combed through the house's front yard using a metal detector and their hands and pulling up large chunks of grass. Yellow crime scene numbers were placed throughout the yard leading up to the front door.

The house is along a residential street and faces a line of trees separating the block from a tavern to the south.

Sharon Whisenhunt, who has lived next door to 316 W. Saunders for seven years, said she heard a loud noise outside at about the time of the shooting. It didn’t sound like a gunshot, she said.

Neighbors surveying the crime scene later discovered the source of the noise.

“This is terrible,” one said.

Though Whisenhunt said she'd never had a problem with her neighbors, with whom she'd never spoken, others said they weren't surprised by Saturday's events.

One neighbor, who wouldn't give his name, said he had lived in the neighborhood since 1984. From his home down the block, he often could hear people yelling and screaming late into the night, he said, and has called police there multiple times.

Officers drive by the house very slowly, the neighbor said.

Saturday's incident was the first fatal shooting in the Lincoln area since December, when a newspaper carrier found the body of 25-year-old Tyler Schoenrock along a gravel road north of the city. Two men -- Adrian Casares and Miguel Castillo -- have been charged in that case.

Journal Star reporter Jourdyn Kaarre contributed to this story. Reach the Journal Star newsroom at 402-473-7306 or citydesk@journalstar.com.

1 dead, 1 injured in shooting; suspect in custody : The Lincoln Journal Star Online

 

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Don’t get me wrong. I want Yankees to win. But UNFORTUNATELY, what Ahmadinejad said about them is true, “They are like dogs. If you retreat, they attack. If you attack, they retreat.” What Wikipedia said about Copperheads may be actually true about Yankees. Yankee resolve and strength increase when it wins great victories and decrease when it does poorly. Like Copperhead snake, a Yankee’s bite is rarely fatal and it’s venom is weak. What a terrible damp squib!

And most crucially, they have no answer to many weapons nor do they look capable of finding ways around them. Yankees are unlikely to have the last laugh. I think I committed a blunder by placing heavy bets on a loser community.

 

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And most crucially, they have no answer to many weapons nor do they look capable of finding ways around them. Yankees are unlikely to have the last laugh. I think I committed a blunder by placing heavy bets on a loser community.

BRMS: It’s all over for Abraham Lincoln.

 

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We are back in the 90's

Is this conclusion also wrong? We seem to have returned to 50’s not 90’s!

 

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Tennessee girl suspended from school 24 times for ‘foul odor’

Published April 03, 2013
FoxNews.com

An eight-year-old Tennessee girl has been sent home from school 24 times this school year because of what her mother describes as her foul odor.

The second-grader's mother, Krystal Hensley, told WJHL.com that officials at the unidentified Washington County school continue to send her daughter home despite attempts to correct the problem.

"She's been to the doctor and it's not a medical problem. They send her home at least once a month. You go to school to learn, not to be sent home," Hensley told the station.

Other students and teachers at the school have complained of the smell, saying they are unable to focus on school activities, according to a suspension notice Hensley provided to WJHL.com.

The school has warned that the suspensions will continue if "corrective measures" are not taken, according to the report.

Ron Dykes, director of schools at Washington County School District, told WJHL.com that a child is only sent home when a family refuses to use proper hygiene or the child is not required to use proper hygiene.

"In those cases, they are very extreme and to be quite frank the odor is so overpowering and extremely offensive to other children and adults so some sort of home bound program is used or the child will be removed temporarily from the school until the family complies," Dykes told the station.

Dykes declined to comment directly on Hensley's daughter's case, the station reported.

Read more: Tennessee girl suspended from school 24 times for

 

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After April story about girl sent home from school for bad smell, child able to get education

Posted: Apr 02, 2013 3:04 AM IST Updated: Jun 07, 2013 8:58 PM IST
By Nate Morabito, Investigative Reporter - email

WASHINGTON COUNTY, TN (WJHL) -

UPDATE: May 31, 2013

The second-grader, previously suspended 24 days after teachers and students complained her bad smell was distracting and disruptive, had a surprisingly normal end to her school year, according to her mother.

After we first reported the little girl's situation, her mom tells us the school system never sent her home again for the remainder of the school year.

"The rest of the school year has just been fine," she said. "We are still awaiting the doctors to get together and conclude findings. She has not been sent home anymore...She is all in all a great child that has (had) just a rough year."

We're not sure what, if anything changed between April and now, whether it was something at home, school or both.

Regardless, according to her mother, the girl has since been able to get the education she was previously missing out on.

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The chairman of the Washington County Board of Education plans to speak up on behalf of the eight year-old girl suspended multiple times for smelling bad.

Board Chairman Clarence Mabe says he learned of the issue from our story.

"It's not a good situation," Mabe said. "Let me sit down with the superintendent and try to come up with a plan. I'll definitely talk to him tomorrow and see, because every kid's important. I don't know the answer, but we can ask the question and hopefully, somebody can help us."

Since our report aired Monday, several of you have contacted us and reached out offering to help. We have put the family in touch with all of those people. In fact, the mother says she plans on taking her daughter to a pediatrician tomorrow who has offered to help.

We continue to be an advocate for this child who is missing out on a normal education, seemingly at no fault of her own.

The Washington County 2nd grade student has missed at least 24 days of school this school year, all because of what is described as her foul odor.

The school system has suspended the eight year-old multiple times since October because of that bad smell.

"They just say it's a foul odor," her mother Krystal Hensley said. "She takes a bath every day, but they ask her when the last time she took a bath was and she don't remember. She's been to the doctor and it's not a medical problem. They send her home at least once a month. You go to school to learn, not to be sent home."

The issue has become a major problem, not only for Hensley and her daughter, but for the girl's teachers and fellow students.

"We have made repeated attempts to address a foul odor that (name) has been {emitting}," the first suspension notice provided to us by Hensley said. "This is not being resolved. Other students and teachers are complaining, saying that they can not focus on school activities. We are taking this action because this is disruptive to the school program. If corrective measures are not taken then suspensions will continue."

Those suspensions did continue. The student was suspended two more times in October, twice in December, once in February and then again last week. The school system listed a variety of reasons why: "Did not bathe yesterday or today, Could not remember the last time she took a bath, and sleeps in clothes."

Her mother disputes all of that. Regardless, the girl is missing out on school due to something that is apparently beyond her control. It appears she may very well be falling through the cracks.

Washington County Director of Schools Ron Dykes would not talk about a specific child or case, but he did explain how these kinds of situations are generally handled by the district.

"Sometimes children are raised in environments that are very close to being classified as neglect and sometimes are actually placed in that category," Dykes said. "When children appear to be dirty or have excessive body odor generally the teacher will have a conference with the child or ask the nurse or guidance counselor to discuss the issue with the parent to determine the possible cause. There are rare instances when a medical problem is involved, but more often than not it is simply poor hygiene and the child is living in troubling conditions. Perhaps the electricity or water service has been terminated for non payment of bills. There are times when we involve DCS, but generally the conversations with the parents will discover there is a need to assist with finding a funding source or agency that can help the family thorough social services."

According to Dykes, a child is only sent home in "rare" situations when a family refuses to use proper hygiene or refuses to require the child to use proper hygiene.

"In those cases, they are very extreme and to be quite frank the odor is so overpowering and extremely offensive to other children and adults so some sort of home bound program is used or the child will be removed temporarily from the school until the family complies," Dykes said.

Hensley says the Department of Children Services did investigate at one point.

"We do not currently have an open case," DCS Communications Director Molly Sudderth said. "We have not opened a new investigation."

That said, DCS can close a case with or without recommending services. Those services could include everything from medical to psychological services and even financial assistance.

Little girl suspended 24 days from school for smelling bad - WJHL-TV: News: Weather, and Sports for Johnson City, TN

 

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American civil war has now become worldwide white community civil war

As the heading says, foreign whites are joining the war in individual capacity. All over the world, whites are taking sides in this conflict. From South Africa to New Zealand, from Canada to Australia, from Bolivia to Serbia, from Cuba to Germany, from Argentina to Ukraine, from Mexico to Denmark, from Falklands to Russia – all are taking active interest. Hence western societies have become divided along ACW lines. Because the choice varies from person to person. Not a single white person is remaining neutral once he has been told of the matter. Same was the case in earlier edition of ACW. Other countries were not really disinterested. By claiming to be neutral, Britain had actually supported the Union in 19th century. Reminds me of a line from the movie No Man’s Land, “Neutrality does not exist in the face of murder. Doing nothing to stop it is, in fact, choosing. It is not being neutral.” Whites from as diverse walk of life as politics and cricket are getting involved. Whatever decision governments take, an opposing cabal is emerging in those states to unofficially help the ‘team’ of their personal preference

Missiles and bombs will rain on Denmark and NorthEast region of US before the end of Dec 2014.