Californië, een apocalyps van vuur, plus een boodschap voor dwaze nucleaire energie lobbyisten

In het volgende artikel vertelt Harvey Wasserman over de enorme branden in Californië een goed geschreven verhaal over een vreselijke gebeurtenis, waar intussen volgens de laatste berichten al meer dan 50 mensen het slachtoffer van zijn geworden........ Bosbranden die één op één te maken hebben met de door de mens veroorzaakte snelle opwarming van de aarde. Met deze enorme bosbranden komen er duizenden tonnen CO2 vrij en ook dat doet het klimaat verder opwarmen..... (om maar te zwijgen over de gifstoffen die ook bij bosbranden vrijkomen en de luchtvervuiling verder vergroten >> ook daar spreekt Wasserman over...)

Opperschoft Trump had het gore lef om de bosbouw in Californië de schuld te geven, terwijl de klimaatverandering ervoor heeft gezorgd dat de bossen kurkdroog zijn* en dus bij het minste geringste in brand 'vliegen....' Trump heeft een aantal natuurparken opengesteld voor commerciële activiteiten, waardoor de kans op bosbranden in de toekomst nog verder worden vergroot..... 

Dit alles terwijl Trump de door de mens veroorzaakte klimaatverandering een leugen durft te noemen, zelfs nadat al lang bekend is dat Exxon en Shell uit eigen onderzoek respectievelijk in de 70er en 80er jaren van de vorige eeuw wisten dat de verbranding van fossiele brandstoffen zorgt voor een relatief snelle klimaatverandering....... Deze georganiseerde misdadigers van de oliemaffia stopten deze rapporten diep weg in een kluis, waarna ze 'klimaatsceptische' wetenschappers inhuurden, die e.e.a. ontkenden...... (de top van die bedrijven zou moeten worden vervolgd door het Internationaal Strafhof [ICC] in Den Haag!!)

Wasserman spreekt ook over de ramp met de kerncentrales in het Japanse Fukushima, waar men voor de kust van Californië een paar jaar geleden al tonijn ving die fiks was besmet met radioactiviteit (en niet geschikt was voor consumptie), radioactiviteit die te herleiden was naar de Fukushima rampencentrales...... Terecht stelt Wasserman nog eens dat de ramp in Fuskushima in feite voortduurt, dagelijks nog stromen daar grote hoeveelheden zwaar radioactief besmet water in de oceaan....... 

Californië zelf heeft overigens nog 2 stokoude centrales in Diablo Canyon (toepasselijke naam), centrales die een enorme ramp kunnen veroorzaken bij een zware aardbeving en dat bijna op de San Andreasbreuk (-lijn)....... Eén van de vele feiten die pleiten tegen kernenergie is het feit dat er geen verzekeringsmaatschappij is die een (nieuwe) kerncentrale wil verzekeren, me dunkt een teken aan de wand......

Voorts haalt Wasserman ook de laatste schietpartijen in de VS aan (dagelijks worden er in de VS meerdere mensen vermoord met vuurwapens, echter alleen de meest 'sensationele schietpartijen' komen in het nieuws). Kortom Wasserman wijst op alle gevaren waaraan VS burgers dagelijks bloot staan.

California Apocalypse: Fire and Fury

In today’s America, random mass murder has merged with ecological devastation.

by Harvey Wasserman

November 12, 2018

Fifty years ago, in my twenties, I often hitchhiked the Pacific Coast Highway through Southern California. I slept on pristine beaches, swam in the ocean, and spent endless hours watching seals and dolphins ride the waves just a few yards offshore.

A favorite spot was in Santa Monica, where Sunset Boulevard meets the sea at Will Rogers State Park. This gorgeous stretch of white sand, framed by the Santa Monica pier to the south and the Malibu Hills to the north, seemed like paradise.

Today, fulfilling a lifelong dream, I live in the San Fernando Valley, a forty-minute drive from the Pacific, half of which is through beautiful Topanga Canyon.

This past Friday, I set off for my weekly bike ride along the beach. As usual, I parked at Will Rogers and rode my bike south down the concrete path about six miles to the Venice Pier. The final stretch, through Venice Beach, featured a constant cloud of the cannabis smoke that now flows free and easy in the land of legal pot.

At the end of a peaceful afternoon, I rode north back up to Will Rogers (always into the wind) to watch the sunset and take a dip in the ocean, which was, as expected this time of year, warmer than the air.

But this evening there was something else—an unwelcome terror. Over the ridge, in Malibu and Calabasas, fires were raging, engulfing the entire range of hills and valleys to the north in smoke. The flames were clearly visible as I rode along, all too aware that at that moment, fellow humans were dying, homes and livelihoods were being consumed, and for many people not much different from me, the world was ending.

Earlier in the week, in nearby Thousand Oaks, yet another crazed gunman shot up yet another bar, killing eleven people. Some of the victims were survivors of the Las Vegas shooting a year ago, where more than fifty people died. Now they died here.

I thought about the ocean waves, once so pure, now laced with unseen traces of Fukushima. The March 11, 2011, earthquake there caused three meltdowns and four hydrogen explosions that blew radiation into the air and water far in excess of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The three melted cores still seeth underground. A constant flow of liquid carries untold isotopes into the Pacific as Tokyo Electric has failed for nearly a decade to permanently cool them.

That witches brew of some of the world’s most lethal substances has long since arrived here. Years ago tuna caught off the coast of California were found to be carrying significant doses of identifiable Fukushima contaminants.

I swim anyway. I don’t know how much radiation is in those waves. But it’s there, as are the twin nuclear reactors just four hours drive north at Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo. Thousands of us have been arrested protesting those reactors, capable of making this entire region a dead zone, especially once hit by the “Big One” earthquake we all know will eventually come.

The awful glow of the deadly fires shine through massive clouds of soot and smoke. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen, a hellish reality in a paradise I once took for granted.

The following afternoon, I find solace in a few blessed hours with my darling grandchildren, playing in an idyllic suburban backyard under pristine blue skies.

And then it arrives. The soot and smoke of the Woolsey fire smacks us in the face. The flames have already torn through Santa Susana, a toxic wasteland whose lethal pollutants—including radioactive isotopes from ten small reactors—may be pouring over Los Angeles. At least twenty-five people have already died in the inferno, several of them roasted to death in their cars, caught by the rapidly moving flames. Many more are still missing.

Fallout from the fires cover us with a filthy, acrid fallout.

Only fate has thus far protected me and my family from the poisonous contamination and the killings—the sudden death that seems poised to strike at random anywhere we live, work, and play. In today’s America, random mass murder has merged with ecological devastation.

There is much we can do about both of these sources of terror. Meaningful gun control. Limiting fossil fuel and nuclear emissions. Finally switching totally to renewable energy.

But the path to security is narrowing. Breathe the air, look at your kids, think about being in a crowded public room, and know that the need for meaningful, powerful, and effective citizen action is more immediate than ever.

Tags: GUN CONTROL DISASTERS ENVIRONMENT DISPATCHES

Harvey Wasserman

Harvey “Sluggo” Wasserman’s prn.fm podcast is Green Power & Wellness.  His show, California Solartopia broadcasts at KFPK-Pacifica 90.7FM Los Angeles. His books include the forthcoming The Life & Death Spiral of US History.

Read more by Harvey Wasserman

==================================
* Afgelopen zomer waren er zelfs grote bosbranden in Canada en Siberië........

VS martelt gevluchte kinderen......

Het scheiden van kinderen en hun ouders is al een vorm van marteling, waar opsluiting van die kinderen op volgde, ook al een marteling....... Martelingen die deze kinderen hebben getraumatiseerd en die hen hun leven lang zal achtervolgen......

Beste bezoeker dat was het bepaald niet, nee deze kinderen worden zelfs letterlijk fysiek gemarteld en mishandelt, zo bleek uit aanklachten tegen een 'kinderopvangcentrum' (lees: gevangenis) in Virginia...

Deze zaken naast andere berichten uit dergelijke gevangenissen die spreken over het onder dwang innemen van psychofarmaca en zelfs het injecteren van kinderen met dergelijke stoffen, alles om deze kinderen rustig te houden......... Ook hier is sprake van ernstige mishandeling ofwel marteling.......

Als je dacht dat dit het wel was, heb je het helaas mis, immers er zijn rapporten verschenen over deze 'jeugddetentiecentra' waar kinderen seksueel worden misbruikt door de leiding.....

Deze kinderen hebben niets anders gedaan dan gevlucht (met of zonder ouders) voor terreur in eigen land, terreur die voor het grootste deel het gevolg is van ingrijpen door de VS dan wel door VS bedrijven in een één tweetje met corrupte landelijke dan wel lokale overheden, neem bedrijven als plantages voor fruit en mijnen (in Zuid- en Midden-Amerika).........

Trump zou het scheiden van ouders en kinderen hebben teruggedraaid, echter twee derde van de kinderen die de VS 'illegaal' binnenkomen zijn alleen en zij zullen het slachtoffer blijven van zaken zoals hierboven beschreven..... Daarnaast zullen voortaan hele gezinnen gevangen worden gezet, alleen omdat ze veelal door de VS veroorzaakte ellende proberen te ontvluchten......

De VS het land van de ongekende mogelijkheden...... (voor de welgestelden, misdadige psychopaten, die je in overvloed aantreft in overheidsfuncties, politiek, financiële maffia en grote bedrijven.....)

‘Abu Ghraib for 8th Graders’: Allegations of Children Being Tortured at Virginia Facility

June 21, 2018 at 4:42 pm

Written by Jake Johnson

(CD) — “Beaten while handcuffed.”

“Locked up for long periods in solitary confinement.”

“Strapped…to chairs with bags placed over their heads.”

These are among the many shocking allegations leveled against a Virginia detention facility by immigrant children as young as 14-years-old, the Associated Press reported on Thursday, citing the first-hand accounts and sworn statements of abuse victims detailed in federal court filings.

“Whenever they used to restrain me and put me in the chair, they would handcuff me,” recounted one Honduran immigrant who was sent to the facility when he was 15-years-old. “Strapped me down all the way, from your feet all the way to your chest, you couldn’t really move… They have total control over you. They also put a bag over your head. It has little holes; you can see through it. But you feel suffocated with the bag on.”

A child-development specialist who worked inside the facility told the AP that she saw children with broken bones and bruises that they said were caused by abuse from guards. It is unclear whether any of the children alleging rampant abuse at the facility were detained as a result of the Trump administration’s so-called “zero tolerance” policy.

Responding to the AP‘s reporting in a tweet on Thursday, Freedom of the Press Foundation executive director Trevor Timm wrote simply, “This is outright torture.”

Kelly Weill, a reporter for The Daily Beast, described the Virginia facility as “Abu Ghraib for eighth-graders.”

Kelly Weill

✔@KELLYWEILL

Abu Ghraib for eighth-graders: https://apnews.com/afc80e51b562462c89907b49ae624e79 …

1:31 PM - Jun 21, 2018

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• 2,424 people are talking about this

According to the AP, many of the immigrant children detained at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center—which is located in Staunton, Virginia—were arrested after federal immigration officials accused them of being gang members.

“But a top manager at the Shenandoah center said during a recent congressional hearing that the children did not appear to be gang members and were suffering from mental health issues resulting from trauma that happened in their home countries—problems the detention facility is ill-equipped to treat,” AP reported.

The appalling allegations against the Virginia detention facility come as President Donald Trump continues to use dehumanizing language to describe immigrants fleeing violence in their home nations and conflate undocumented immigrants and those seeking asylum with violent gang members.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Trump accused Democrats of wanting undocumented immigrants to “infest” the U.S.

Chris Hayes

✔@chrislhayes

I’m still hung up on the sheer vileness of using the verb “infest” to refer to human beings.

It’s not overstating things to say that it springs from the darkest, most evil corners of human history.

It’s the way genocidaires talk about the people they are murdering.

3:39 PM - Jun 21, 2018

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• 24K people are talking about this

By Jake Johnson / Creative Commons / Common Dreams / Report a typo

Hier de tekst van het Care2 Team bij een petitie tegen de beslissing van psychopaat Sessions vluchtelingen van (drugs-) bende geweld en huiselijk geweld, waar de regering van hun thuisland niets onderneemt tegen dit geweld of geweld bagatelliseert dan wel zelfs dader is van geweld tegen burgers (zoals bij het landjepik van arme boeren t.b.v. grote buitenlandse, veelal VS bedrijven, waar men niet zelden bloedbaden aanricht onder onwilligen, die NB volkomen in hun recht staan.....)......

It's no secret that the Trump administration is staunchly against immigrants entering the United States without permission, but Attorney General Jeff Sessions just shut down a way for especially vulnerable people to come to this country legally for their own protection. 


Thousands, particularly from Central America, come to the U.S. each year looking for protection from an abusive spouse or a dangerous gang that's issued threats. Though recently the U.S. has granted asylum to many of these people to guarantee their safety, Sessions has declared that fleeing gang violence or domestic abuse will no longer qualify people for asylum.

Helaas kunnen wij deze petitie niet tekenen.

Zie ook:
'13.000 kinderen van vluchtelingen zitten gevangen in VS 'detentiekampen''

'Immigrants& Muslims Are Trump's Jews ... Until He Comes for theActual Jews' (van Harvey Wasserman)

'VS sluit zelfs kinderen van 10 jaar op..... Met dat land onderhoudt Nederland hechte banden, een rechteloos land waaraan 'we' zelfs mensen uitleveren.....'

'A Grandmother Seeking Asylum Separated From Disabled Grandson at the Border. It’s Been 10 Months'

'Met nieuw VS 'vluchtelingenbeleid' zullen nog meer kinderen seksueel misbruikt worden.....

'Jeff Sessions: 'asielzoekers zijn alleen welkom in de VS als ze kunnen bewijzen dat ze overleden zijn t.g.v. geweld..........'' (en het liefst in poedervorm verkeren....)

'Concentratiekampen in VS voor migranten.......'

'Peuter vluchtelingen moeten eigen zaak bepleiten in VS rechtszalen, de VS: het land van de 'ongekende mogelijkheden....''

'VS wil van 3.000 migrantenkinderen DNA afnemen om zo de ouders op te sporen.....'

'De VS heeft een lange geschiedenis in het ontvoeren van kinderen uit niet witte families.......'

'Nikki Haley (VS ambassadeur bij de VN) UNHRC heeft commentaar op een land met een goede mensenrechten reputatie, t.w. Israël.... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

en de volgende artikelen op dan wel via Anti-Media: 

Children Drugged, Given Forced Injections at Texas Detention Facility: Lawsuit

Pentagon Accepts Trump’s Call to House 20,000 Children on US Military Bases

PS: 'onnodig' nogmaals op te merken dat het vluchtelingenbeleid van de VS recht tegen het VN Vluchtelingenverdrag ingaat (zoals ook de EU-Turkije-deal daar tegen ingaat....).....

Puerto Rico, na de orkanen Irma en Maria in de steek gelaten door de VS, gaat energievoorziening verduurzamen

Puerto Rico werd vorig jaar door 2 orkanen getroffen, Irma en Maria, deze hebben het eiland in diepe ellende gestort. Niet alleen gigantische materiële schade, maar ook zaken als de elektriciteitsvoorziening werden vernield...... De Trump administratie heeft de situatie op Puerto Rico keer op keer gebagatelliseerd en Trump gaf een hem bevriend bedrijf de opdracht om de energievoorziening op het eiland weer op gang te brengen, echter dit bedrijf had daar bij lange na de capaciteit niet voor.....

Er zijn veel vergelijkingen met Sint Maarten, onderdeel van 'ons koninkrijk', ook daar hield orkaan Irma stevig huis en 90% van de huizen werd vernield*. Nederland misbruikte de enorme ellende voor de bewoners om het bestuur van dit eiland te chanteren (hoofdverantwoordelijke PvdA ploert Plasterk): het democratisch gekozen bestuur moest opstappen en het kleine eiland met amper middelen werd verplicht meer te doen aan grensbewaking, dit terwijl er al jaren een peperdure marine missie gaande is rond de Antillen waar de Nederlandse marine de VS marine assisteert in de zinloze jacht van de VS op drugs uit Zuid-Amerika.......

Terug naar Puerto Rico, waar men nu de blik heeft gevestigd op duurzame energie, waarbij de firma van Elon Musk, Tesla de eilandbewoners helpt met batterijen voor de opslag van zonne- en windenergie. Voor korte duur was Puerto Rico zelfs de VS staat, waarbij het grootste gebied werd voorzien van duurzame energie. 

Uiteraard is de Trump administratie niet blij met het besluit van Puerto Rico om duurzaam te gaan, immers deze administratie zet in op zoveel mogelijk fossiel brandstofverbruik....... Toch leuk dat deze administratie dit zelf in de hand heeft gewerkt, al blijft het een godvergeten schandaal dat men deze elandbewoners zo lang heeft laten zitten, zoals het voor ons een schande is, dat Nederland na 8 maanden eindelijk wat geld heeft overgemaakt voor de wederopbouw van Sint Maarten, al wordt dit geld dan wel beheert door de neokoloniale Wereldbank....... (het bestuur moest weg van Plasterk, daar het niet vertrouwd was geld aan dit bestuur over te maken, blijkbaar vertrouwt men nu ook het nieuwe bestuur niet......)

Lees het volgende artikel van Harvey Wasserman over de gevolgen van 2 vernietigende orkanen op- en de verduurzaming van Puerto Rico:

Puerto Rico Gets to Solartopia

Puerto Rico Goes Back Door to Solartopia and the Corporate Media Blacks It Out

By Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News

Puerto Rico has made history by becoming — briefly — the largest US territory or state to be powered almost entirely by renewable energy.

The corporate media has done all it can to black the story out.

The rising grassroots movement to totally rebuild Puerto Rico’s electric supply system with renewable energy and locally owned micro-grids poses a serious threat to the centralized, fossil-based corporate elite.

But two hurricanes and two human-error blackouts have opened the door to systemic change.
Here’s how:

Last September, Hurricane Irma blew through the Caribbean, passing over enough of Puerto Rico to plunge tens of thousands of people into darkness. Many of them are still without power.

Then Hurricane Maria shredded the island’s electric grid and blacked out its 3.4 million residents virtually in toto.

The island had two large wind farms, one of which was severely damaged. The other survived, but had no grid through which to distribute its electricity.

Some solar arrays on the island were also severely damaged.

But at a farm in Barranquitas owned by Hector Santiago, 244 solar panels kept some 2,500 light bulbs alight to maximize greenhouse plant growth. Much to the derision of his neighbors, Santiago had invested some $300,000 in the solar array. Small gas and kerosene-fired generators kicked back up around the island. But Santiago’s solar array may well have been its biggest operating power station. 

Over the following months, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) tried to restore its rickety poles and wires, plus its network of obsolete gas and oil plants … and the ancient coal plant that burns ore from Colombia.

Along the way, PREPA’s director was fired, and Governor Ricardo Antonio “Ricky” Rosselló Nevares has campaigned to privatize the utility, a move strongly opposed by democracy activists.

On April 8, as PREPA was bringing the island back up to near-total power, restoration workers felled a tree onto live transmission wires, knocking out power to some 850,000 customers.

Ten days later, PREPA proudly announced that it had restored power to 95.8 percent of the island’s population. Some 62,000 customers were still in the dark. But PREPA was proud that each the territory’s 78 municipalities had at least some power.

Literally within hours, Puerto Rico was again plunged into darkness. The same contractor that on April 8 had dropped a tree into the grid now ran an excavator that shorted out the entire system. Once again, 
Puerto Rico was without central-generated electric power.

But now there was much more solar. In the wake of Irma and Maria, Solartopian activists have poured thousands of photovoltaic panels into the island. Strongly advocating that they become the centerpiece of a rebuilt energy supply system, many collectors now power locally owned micro-grids.

According to Elon Musk, Tesla has helped make 662 locations energy self-sufficient. Key has been San Juan’s Hospital del Nino, which in just two weeks was made energy self-sufficient with panels and batteries.

Nearly all the island’s hospitals were knocked out by Maria. Dialysis machines, operating rooms, air 
conditioning and other key services went dead. Many still are.

Ironically, according to activist Joel Segal, much of the nation’s supply of pain-killing morphine and Dilaudid also went away, as they are mostly (for tax purposes) manufactured in Puerto Rico.

While referring uniformly to this latest centrally-generated fiasco as a “total” blackout, the corporate media have almost totally ignored this steady, fast-growing stream of power being generated on Puerto Rico, virtually all of it solar.

CNN did cover a local named “Frank,” who after Maria took his home solar with $7500 in system components. Wired has reported on a Brooklyn architect, Andrew Marvel (a grand-nephew of the famed futurist Buckminster Fuller), who plans to use grants of $625,000 for his Resilient Power Puerto Rico to build 25 small arrays with Tesla battery backups. Another 75 or more may follow.

During my California Solartopia show on KPFK-Pacifica in Los Angeles, a listener pledged $20,000 for a 
neighborhood micro-grid linked with solar panels and batteries.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Rep. Stacey Plackett (D-Virgin Islands) have asked FEMA to take the island solar. So has San Juan’s progressive mayor, Carmen Yulin Cruz.

But it’s all too hot for the corporate media.

In December PREPA and the New York governor’s office estimated that $17.6 billion was needed to revamp Puerto Rico’s old grid, funds that could instead help take the island totally solar.

To put that in perspective: Governor Andrew Cuomo wants New York ratepayers to fork over $8 billion to keep four decrepit upstate reactors on line, despite their owners’ attempts to close them. Ohio’s 
FirstEnergy just asked Trump to force ratepayers to fork over $8 billion PER YEAR in “emergency funding” to prop up four more dying nukes and scores of obsolete coal burners.

Ironically, the blacked-out story of Puerto Rico having already inadvertently gone almost entirely solar has opened the brightest window onto a sustainable future.

A Solartopian Puerto Rico would enjoy permanent, reliable service, free of fuel costs and protected from the ravages of the inevitable next storm while avoiding the emissions that would help cause and intensify it.

But a Solartopian Puerto Rico would threaten the Trumpian corporatists who want to “restore” the island’s central, fossil-fired, utterly corrupted grid, which is sure to go down in the next global-warmed hurricane. Or by the next felled tree and errant excavator.

Puerto Rico’s Solartopian moments are big news. So are the solar panels and micro-grids that could help the island survive the next hurricanes (season starts June 1) and corporate wrecking crews.

Let’s keep those panels coming!

To learn more contact me at solartopia.org.

Hear this at prn.fm with Joel Segal & David Braun:  http://prn.fm/solartopia-green-power-wellness-hour-04-19-18/

===============================

* Zie o.a.: 'Sint Maarten bukt nog steeds onder de gevolgen van orkaan Irma, pas na bijna 8 maanden maakt Nederland wat geld over........' Voor meer berichten over het schandalige gedrag van Nederland i.z. Sint Maarten, klik op het label met die naam, of op 'orkaan Irma', direct onder dit bericht.

Zie ook: 
'Puerto Rico ('VS') wordt nog steeds slecht of niet geholpen voor gevolgen orkaan Maria >> Trump: 'eiland krijgt teveel hulp'' (zie ook de links in dat bericht)

'Trump: VS heeft een geweldige prestatie geleverd met de hulp aan Puerto Rico na orkaan Maria.......... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'6.000 doden i.p.v. 60 op Puerto Rico na Orkaan Maria, zo gaat de VS met haar burgers om.........'

'Puerto Rico het Sint Maarten van de VS: dodental orkaan Maria bijgesteld naar 2.975 en bijna een jaar later zit een groot deel van het eiland zonder stroom'

Trumps grote held: Andrew Jackson, een genocidale voorstander van slavernij.........

Afgelopen zaterdag ontving ik een artikel van Harvey Wasserman. Hierin vertelt hij over het beest Trump en zijn uitlating dat zijn held, Andrew 'Andy' Jackson, de burgeroorlog in de VS had kunnen voorkomen...... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Jackson was een genocidale voorstander van slavernij, dezelfde slavernij die ten grondslag lag aan die burgeroorlog......... Jackson was democraat en onder zijn presidentschap is een enorm aantal oorspronkelijke bewoners van de VS vermoord, de zogenaamde indianen.......

Eerst als militair en later als president, heeft deze schoft een fikse steen bijgedragen aan de vreselijke en enorme genocide die de leiders van het gestolen land hebben uitgevoerd op de oorspronkelijke bewoners van dat 'land'. Het gestolen 'land' dat wordt aangeduid als de Verenigde Staten van Amerika.........

Het gaat hier overigens over een genocide, die een enorm aantal slachtoffers meer heeft gemaakt, dan de genocide van Hitler en zijn psychopathisch tuig op de joden.........

Het maakt alweer het e.e.a. duidelijk over Trumps zieke geest....

Hier het artikel van Harvey Wasserman:

How Trump's Genocidal Hero Andrew Jackson Might Have "Avoided the Civil War"

A portrait of former president Andrew Jackson hangs on the wall behind President Donald Trump, accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, in the Oval Office at the White House in late March. (photo: Andrew Harnik/AP)

By Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News

05 May 17

onald Trump’s latest insane excursion into US history has been to claim that his great hero, Andrew Jackson, might have prevented the Civil War.

Given his racist, genocidal nature, our seventh president could only have done that by giving up slavery in the South, spreading it into the North or giving the Southwest back to Mexico.

Jackson, of course, would never have given up slavery, which was the cause of the war and the core of his fortune.

As a young man, like a cowboy driving cattle, Jackson personally drove slaves to market. He eventually owned more than a hundred of them, and defended America’s “peculiar institution” at every opportunity.

In addition to their authoritarian temperaments, Jackson and Trump share “accomplishments” such as trashing the Constitution, personally profiting from the presidency, and inciting imperial conquest. Jackson did stand for the Union against South Carolina’s threatened secession, but that was about tariffs, not slavery.

Trump rightly says Jackson was “tough.” In 1806, in one of his fourteen duels, Jackson took a bullet an inch from his heart. He then killed his opponent in a manner considered most unchivalrous, and became a social outcast for many years. The bullet stayed in his chest until his own death four decades later.

Jackson was also a pioneer homophobe. As Sen. James Buchanan of Pennsylvania openly lived with his likely lover, Sen. Rufus King of South Carolina, Jackson loudly referred to him as “Aunt Nancy.” (After King died, Buchanan became our only “bachelor president.”)

But mainstream historians have made a hero of “Old Hickory.” Born to dirt poor Irish immigrants who died early, Jackson’s hardscrabble upbringing was the opposite of Trump’s.

Trump inherited millions from his father, who was a Klan (Kukluksklan, of KKK, AP) sympathizer (or member), a landlord so cruel that the legendary leftie folksinger Woody Guthrie wrote a song denouncing him.

Andrew Jackson pre-dated the Klan, but would’ve killed for an estate like the one Trump inherited. And he did.

As an orphan, Jackson began his military career at age 13. Rising through the ranks as an Indian killer, he conquered the Chickasaw by recruiting their ancient rivals, the Cherokee. Jackson then turned on the Cherokee as if they had been the enemy. His racism was open, lethal, and proud.

With Trump-style “Common Man” rhetoric, Jackson promised to destroy the National Bank. He then made insider deals with the smaller banks that replaced it, enriching his backers and himself. These and other scams helped buy him his 1000-acre slave plantation in Tennessee.

When he conquered native land for the US, Jackson and his cronies somehow wound up with the best parcels. His 1830 Indian Removal Act ordered all eastern tribes to move west of the Mississippi.

The Appalachian Cherokee had an advanced tribal government, an elected leader (John Ross), a capitol, a written constitution, and much more. Most lived in private homes and ran successful farms. Some (like Ross) owned plantations and slaves. There were seven Cherokee lumber mills.

The Cherokee petitioned for statehood. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Constitution allowed no new state to be created from existing ones (Abraham Lincoln dodged that technicality in 1863 to form West Virginia).

But Marshall also ruled that the Cherokee had sovereignty (a clause later used to site casinos) and a Constitutional right to stay on their ancestral lands.

Jackson replied, Trump-style, that he would ignore the Court. Under Jackson’s successor, Martin Van Buren, federal troops forced some 14,000 Cherokee out of their homes at gunpoint. Through the summer of 1838 they were held in a concentration camp. Then, along the infamous “Trail of Tears,” they were marched hundreds of miles to Oklahoma. About 3,000 died along the way.

Jackson promised the Cherokee and other tribes the right to live in that Oklahoma territory “as long as the grass grows and the rivers flow.” Fifty years later their “excess land” was given to white “Sooners” who raced in on horseback and covered wagons to claim homesteads.

As for the Civil War, its root cause was conflict over Mexican land. Mexico abolished slavery in its 1821 revolution against Spain. But American settlers (many from Tennessee) re-established it in 1836, when (after the Alamo) they made Texas an independent republic.

Jackson died in 1845. The next year his protégé, James K. Polk, provoked a war and took from Mexico what became New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada and more. US troops marched all the way into Mexico City, where young soldiers like Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant fought side-by-side. Americans like Abraham Lincoln and Henry Thoreau denounced the conquest as a “poison pill.”

The Civil War broke out when slave owners demanded the right to spread slavery into the West. California’s 1850 statehood gave free states a majority in Congress. War erupted in Kansas, where John Brown and other abolitionists battled slave owners for control.

The only way Jackson’s “art of the deal” might have avoided the Civil War was by persuading northerners to embrace slavery, or southerners to give it up. But both regions were committed to expansion, and neither wanted the other’s economic system. When Lincoln said the nation could not exist “half slave and half free,” he was tragically correct.

Of course, war might have been avoided if Jackson’s progeny had given that land back to Mexico, or restored the Carolinas to the Cherokee, or persuaded the southerners that slavery was never going to work in the West anyway. Cotton does not grow in Kansas or the Southwest, and slavery made no economic sense in the desert, corn or wheat fields.

Without the Jacksonian conquest of Mexico, the “immigrants” Trump now attacks would merely be living on their own land. The wall Trump wants to build tracks a border that did not exist before Polk overran what was once both our southern and our western neighbor.

Sorting through his often insane pronouncements about US history, Trump has seemed surprised to discover that Abraham Lincoln was actually his fellow Republican, while Jackson was a Democrat. Each was the first president from his respective party. Both were “men of the people.” But their views on slavery were, literally, at war with each other.

Trump might also note that when he retired from the presidency in 1837, Jackson found a trusted relative had squandered his wealth. Much of what he’d gouged out of slaughtering Indians and whipping slaves was gone.

Since Trump has joined Jackson in using the presidency to enrich himself, he might want to oversee his sons more carefully.

He might also try doing a better job with the economy. As Trump’s hero left office in 1837, his immediate “legacy” featured a major stock market panic followed by four years of depression.

No doubt the Great Historian would loudly blame that on the Democrats … until he realized his hero actually was one.

Harvey Wasserman’s History of the US is at www.solartopia.org, along with Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth.

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Klik voor meer berichten n.a.v. het bovenstaande, op één van de labels, die u hieronder terug kan vinden, dit geldt niet voor de labels: John Brown, Chickasaw, A. Jackson en Lincoln.