History is written by those cowards who Hang Heroes!

There was no greater mind in the 19th century than the British philosopher and historian, John Acton. Lord Acton, famous for the quote, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” was not only a great mind, but a great spirit. 

He rejected tyranny however “patriotic” and refused the spoils of war however enticing. Acton watched closely as the crisis built up between the old Union and the states of the South in America. He was aware of the various economic, political and moral issues—including slavery—but nonetheless, cast his lot with the South. After the war, he wrote the following to General Robert E. Lee:

“I saw in States’ rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy…Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization, and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.”

Acton saw in the South’s struggle for independence, not an attempt to save slavery or even an effort to throw off the economic yoke of the North with its American System of crony capitalism which has become so familiar to us today. Rather, he saw an effort to hold fast to the Founding Principles upon which the original Union was established and which had long since been abandoned by the ever increasing statism and centralization embraced by the North.

Acton saw States’ rights as “the only availing check” on that statism and centralization. Today see the ultimate victory of the Union in the overwhelming power of Washington, D. C. Acton believed that the Confederacy was fighting for more than its own liberty, progress and civilization; it was fighting for all mankind. 

Indeed, in another place, he states that had the Confederacy been victorious, it would have “blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom…” 

As Lord Acton was contemporary to the struggle, it would be ludicrous to suggest the he had been duped, elevating the cause of the South into something greater than it was.

Yet, today no such vision of that struggle or definition of that cause is even permitted to be entertained. We are told that the South fought for slavery and tyranny and that her heroes were wicked or corrupt or lacking in sufficient wit to understand the nature of the cause for which they fought. 

The Grand Bargain— which for so many years allowed Americans on both sides to embrace the heroes in Blue and Gray—has been repudiated and now, all things Confederate are held in contempt. Southern heritage and history including her symbols, monuments and heroes are pronounced as unfit for anything but the ash heap of history. Yet, one of the greatest minds of the time, Lord Acton, clearly thought otherwise.

Furthermore, most of what people are told about the South and its cause are myths, mistakes, half-truths and outright lies. Efforts to disseminate the truth and well documented facts are shouted down by the politically correct revisionists of academia, government and the media. No attempt is made to disprove the facts. Rather the truth is simply kept from the people.

Confederate-American History:

Dear Brethren (hundreds bcc herein)

'History is written by those who Hang Heroes' or, to the Victor goes the Spoils!

COMMENTARY PREFACE:

There is probably no other Confederate figure who has been as maligned and falsely portrayed than General Nathan Bedford Forrest. And just like our Confederacy, his true person, ideals and beliefs have been deliberately mis- characterized for fear by those that if the TRUTH of each were to be made known, this country would be an altogether different place and their standard of dependency & control, would be threatened as never before.

I have always admired & respected him and he is in fact, my personal hero. Anyone who knows me will attest to this. I not only admire him but the respect I have for him is immeasurable.

I have MUCH in common with the General and I share his principles, standards, beliefs and his commitment to a Cause that has never died! The enemies of America would have you believe he was an out and out racist. NOTHING could be further from the Truth. He was a man of directness, never mixed words and told you exactly how he felt. 

On the Battlefield.....well let me say I would NOT have been one who desired to oppose him. He was the consummate warrior and is constantly studied by today's military tacticians.

In my office I have a Sharps 56-50 rifle and beneath it is this inscription: “Never stand and Take a charge..... Charge them Too! "- General Nathan Bedford Forrest

Therein lays the persona of the man!

How sad that today we don't have many like him anymore but rather, the sorry likes of black radicals like Sharpton, Jackson & yes Obama, who assail my General & who will only portray him as the first leader of the Klu Klux Klan to a black populace who, like white America, has been denied the Truth because of their designed diatribe. 

It's always easy to do that to anyone who no longer can defend themselves or their persons & beliefs when they're not around....especially when they're in control.

If he were alive today, I wonder if they would have the courage to meet with him much less speak ill of him knowing the nature of his standards and character!

History is written by those cowards who Hang Heroes!

If President Davis ever made a mistake, it was NOT giving him the Corps Command of our Trans-Mississippi Army. Had he done so, I believe things would have been entirely different. 

In fact, I would go so far as to say that the Confederacy would have prevailed or certainly, in the least, would have been in a position to seek the Treaty General Robert E. Lee desired had he been successful at Gettysburg....and thus, TWO Countries (a Constitutional Republic or a Federal Democracy would have resulted as it should have been) in which the People could choose the one whose design they felt represented their wishes the Best....and the one they would decide they wanted to live in!

IF General Forrest were given the Corps Command he should have had, Ft. Donnellson would have NEVER been surrendered and if it had to go down, it would have gone down fighting. 

Certainly the results at Shiloh would have been altogether different as he would have NOT 'rested' that night as Braxton Bragg had ordered and he would have DESTROYED the Federal Invader as they came across the river at Pittsburg Landing as he wanted to..... 

And thus, Vicksburg would have NEVER been put under siege and the Mississippi would have remained in Confederate hands.

Oh the what if!!!!

Now here is more of that History that has been denied, withheld, hidden or 'altered' & 'revised' in order to COMPLY with today's Political Correctness thanks to the Federal Invader & their Special Interest lackey's who over-ran our Country more than 145 years ago-

The Following article appeared in the April, 2010 edition of The Nationalist Times and was written by Michael X. Collins entitled: "Suppression of Ft. Pillow". 

2010 marks the 146th anniversary of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest's stunning suppression of Union- occupied Ft. Pillow in Tennessee on April 12, 1864. It is the event that Cultural-Marxists in government schools & the media have hysterically tagged as the "Ft. Pillow Massacre."

I was indoctrinated as early as the 6th grade that the evil Confederate General Forrest, during the battle, sought to slaughter every blessed soul in Ft. Pillow, especially the blacks.

Not only have we learned that was a LIE on several levels, it wasn't even a clever lie. But the anti-white character assassins point to the putative Union 'investigation' & U.S. Grant's memoirs as 'authority' for the charge. Again, all of which merely showed that not only was Grant a drunk, and ABSENT from that battle, but a drunk in a failing struggle with the truth as well.

That there were so many Union survivors to "testilie" about what occurred DISPROVES, res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself) the bogus charge that Forrest sought to slaughter all of the fort's occupants, particularly the drunken Negroes who were gotten into that condition by their new Republican plantation Mastas. 

As History has demonstrated, had Forrest wished for such a result it would certainly have occurred. No doubt about it! Nor would he have blanched from taking a hand in the work himself. He was Celtic warrior in the tradition of Vercingetorix: totally fearless & absolutely ferocious in battle. 

He was a nightmare for his escort & bodyguard. It had been reported that by the War's conclusion Forrest had killed 30 men in individual hand to hand combat, had 29 horses shot out from under him &, in the process, suffered 5 severe wounds. 

In the course of my inquiries, I have been unable to identify even 10 Union Generals, combined, who had anything approaching that remarkable record. I'm guessing that all Union Generals, combined, couldn't match his record.

This absolutely remarkable & authentic genius for war, has been vilified for a number of reasons, i.e., he was a White, monogamous heterosexual, Southern male, Christian, tee-totaled, semi-literate, slave owner with no formal schooling & without ANY military training & champion of State's Rights....blah, blah, yada, yada, etc. so sayeth the gospel of the Left! But one of the real reasons Forrest is pillowried with the Ft. Pillow MYTH is simply to hide a greater Lincoln crime, more obscene than any of his (Lincoln's) other crimes.

Ft. Pillow was the ideal vehicle of misdirection. 

(NOTE what we Confederates have been saying all along- Lincoln & Reconstruction were simply the 'parents' for today's Federal Leviathan culminating with the Marxist Obama & his Transformation 'policy'. Y'all have been led down a false path and, as y'all have paid the price, literally, through the theft of your money for their Transgressions and Treasonous actions, you have been sheared like sheeple taking their last breath just before their 'executions'.)

It was used by LINCOLN----the greatest coffin filler in American History until FDR---to cover up his own atrocities against Southern women & children by his proxies, Grant, Sherman & Sheridan.

Eisenhower 1st Black-Jew President (Link).

But Forrest's most unforgivable sin was proving, once again, that blacks did not possess the martial attributes necessary for modern warfare, liberal fantasies notwithstanding. 

But the enormity of the Ft. Pillow LIE wasn't enough for the party of Lincoln. Incidentally, Lincoln the pillager in whom Reinhard Heydrich must surely have found an authentic soul mate. 

Just as the same LEFTIST forces would totally destroy another Celtic warrior, Senator Joseph McCarthy, 90 years later. 

The Northern royalty & their subversive allies were determined to thoroughly obliterate the character if not the very name & substance of Nathan Bedford Forrest. 

As the most brilliant cavalry tactician in American History, and possibly the greatest since Genghis Khan, demonizing him would be a daunting task.

So, after 'formal' hostilities ceased, Forrest was tossed under the manure cart once again. 

This time his 'crime' was having the temerity to defend his kinsmen against the depredations of the rapacious Northern white carpetbaggers, Southern Scalawags and black terrorists.

Know Your Enemy!(Link)

He did so by assuming leadership of the newly formed White self-defense organization, the Klu Klux Klan. Never mind that during the totally mis-named period called 'Reconstruction', Southern Whites were NOT legally permitted to defend themselves against even the most barbaric crimes perpetrated by the newly freed blacks. 

Roaming black mobs were armed by the UNION, plied with Massachusetts whiskey, egged on by the Northern Church's perfumed princes, praised in Lincoln's newspapers & PROTECTED by Federal Bayonets. (Sound familiar to 'any' current events folks?) 

Self-help was the Southern citizen's ONLY defense and the KKK was the instrument. (Did y'all ever learn about this in the Federal classroom?)

But it became clear as the wart on Lincoln's mendacious face that Southern Whites were marked for a program of perpetual revenge & outright EXTERMINATION (today it’s called genocide) by the John Brown's & Thaddeus Stevens 'Republican's'. Perhaps the maltreatment of Germans after WW II by the FDR- HST Morgenthau liberals will give doubters a more RECENT reality reference.

As to the charge that Nathan Bedford Forrest singled out blacks to kill rather than whites, I suggest you consider his remarks at the Democratic Convention in Brownsville, Tennessee in 1868. 

I think these couple of sentences capture the essence of Nathan Bedford Forrest as warrior & politician & might be instructive for us as well:

"I can assure you, fellow citizens that I for one do NOT want any more war...nor do I want to see Negroes armed to shoot down White men. If they (meaning Washington, DC- and again, look & sound familiar with respect to today's events? 

How does the Washington elitists describe us- Nazi's, right-winger's and oh yes, let us NOT forget that Historic Card they hold over y'all's head- RACIST) bring this war upon us, there is one thing I will tell you: I shall NOT shoot ANY NEGROES so long as I can see a White Radical to shoot, for it is the Radicals who will be to blame for bringing on this War."

All Roads lead to 1865- the beginning of the end!

When the South Lost, so too did this Entire Country...But Only We Confederates Knew it at the Time!

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Secession is not an Anti-American Objective

In closing out my interview with my friend Judge Andrew Napolitano last week, I told him that I believe we are now in a virtual civil war in this country between those who believe in the sanctity of private property and those who believe it is the government’s duty to provide for us. I then asked him, “Where do you, as an individual, see all this eventually leading?” The Judge’s full response to my question is worth repeating and will certainly give you a lot to think about:

“Well, there’s a couple ways it could go. The country could break apart into different countries. There are serious movements on the part of some [states] to secede. 

The notion that secession is un- American is absurd. The whole country was founded when it seceded from Great Britain, and the act of joining the Union is merely a legislative act, and any legislative act can be undone by a legislature.

“The states formed the federal government, not the other way around, and the powers they gave to the federal government they can take back. So I could see liberty-loving people flocking to different parts of the country. New Hampshire, Texas come to mind. Things go on in those states and in the government that I don’t always agree with, but they’re not as heavily regulated as, say, the People’s Republic of California or Massachusetts or New Jersey.

“We could also devolve into a revolution, where blood is actually shed over the rights of human beings. Now, it’s difficult to talk about that, but if you look at the very first act of Congress, it was the Declaration of Independence. It’s still the law of the land, and it basically says when the government takes away your rights, it is your duty to abolish the government.

“And if you can’t abolish the government by elections — because no matter who gets elected, they just keep stealing our property and our freedom — then you have to abolish the government by some other means. It’s lawful to discuss this at this time in our history. It is certainly not lawful to fire guns. But when you strike at the king, you must kill him. If you don’t, you get executed.”

Statistics on both the right and the left would like us to forget about a little inconvenient document like the Declaration of Independence, but the fact is that it laid the foundation for our Constitution, which did not become the law of the land until 1789.

Does this mean that Abraham Lincoln was wrong to force the Southern states to stay in the Union? Yes, absolutely. No one has the legal authority to force a group of people whose ancestors helped form an organization to remain in that organization. Forced membership is not freedom; it’s slavery.

Speaking of slavery, we all agree that American slavery was morally wrong in every respect, but slavery was not the issue with Abraham Lincoln. He repeatedly made it clear that he would be willing to continue to allow slavery if that’s what it took to keep the Union together. 

The Civil War was not about slavery; it was about revenues that would be lost to the federal government if the Southern states were allowed to secede.

High-profile libertarians like Judge Napolitano and John Stossel are true American heroes for defending both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in this day and age of a Beckless Fox News. And if they’re willing to take the arrows by speaking out on an international stage, they deserve our full support. That said, if you believe in human freedom, make it a point to watch them as often as possible.

FAIR USE DISCLAIMER

Throughout this website, and without receiving financial gain from it; there are documents, pictures and literature that have been sometimes edited, and reprinted to be used as educational material under the Fair Use Doctrine of International Copywriter Law.

 Do you know who Lord Acton was?

Article posted by Bobby Jo Coffey on our Facebook group
General Nathan Bedford Forrest
By Craig Maus
Send him email
(Part A of Lesson # 4)
Craig Maus,
President, The Confederate Society of America and Proud Member of The Confederate Alliance of Independent Organizations.
Staunch Supporters for the RESTORATION of the LEGAL Government of the South - The Confederate States of America.
PS - Will YOU join us Now? www.deovindice.org

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http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
By Robert Ringer
Monday, August 1, 2011

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http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html

(End of Part A.....This one's for you General. God Bless YOU and Thank You!!! I would have been PROUD to have ridden with y'all!)

The True Judahite (not yehudim jews or israelis) Germans Need a Jubilee.

Why is everyone silent in view of ALL (and the emphasis is on ALL) Germans having lost it ALL by the end of WWII. Everything that every German owned and paid for, including insurance policies, saving accounts and investments were lost. Tens of thousands of valuable art treasures, of both, medium and high art, were turned into ashes by allied-fire-storms. What was not destroyed, was immediately confiscated by the victors and removed from Germany.

More than 50.000 patents were also "kindly" removed by the victors, giving them a 50-year technical and economical advantage over an exhausted Germany. After the war, every German had to start anew with only 40 Deutsch Marks as start-up money. 40 Deutsch Marks – not 40 million! They had to rebuilt their homes from the rubble and take on the burden of mortgages, when most of them had already paid for their original homes.

They had to take and pay for new insurance policies. During the Bolshevik expulsion of Germans from their home-lands in the East and in the death-camps of the Allies, 10 million innocent men, women and children were massacred. After the war, literally, millions of women and girls were gang-raped and many died in these mass-orgies and depravities.

The following allied premeditated food-shortages annihilated another 5 million civilians and soldiers in tattered uniforms in "liberated" Germany. Hundreds of thousands of German civilians, including thousands of mothers who were torn away from their children, were deported to the Soviet Union after 1945 and ended-up as slave-labour, together with German prisoners of war. However, many ended-up as slave-labour in the Western "democracies" as well. Those, who survived the tortures of the Soviet death-camps, came back as broken human beings to a homeland that was 80 percent in ruins and rubble.

No politician ever demanded restitution for these victims of "crimes against humanity" and their descendants. In the East the Red Hordes had driven 16 million Germans from their homesteads and murdered 3 million of them on their way out. Their possessions were confiscated by Poles, Czechs and Russians. Even the silverware in the kitchen-drawers were stolen – no restitution for those crimes either.

It was in 1933 when, for the first time, Jewry declared war on Germany and called on the world to kill Adolf Hitler: "Judea declares War on Germany"  (Daily Express, London, March 24, 1933, front page). The Jewish declaration of war on Germany was pronounced 19 days after Adolf Hitler won absolutely democratically the general election and only one day after he was even more democratically empowered by the "Reichstag" (parliament) to resolve the dire straits and poverty in Germany. Of course, no concentration camps were built and no restrictive Laws regarding the Jews had yet been passed at that time.

Later the World Jewish Congress and the Zionist leaders succeeded, according to the Torah True Jews, to initiate World War II: "The worldwide boycott against Germany in 1933 and the later all-out declaration of war against Germany, initiated by the Zionist leaders and the World Jewish Congress ..." (Rabbi Schwartz of the American Neturei Karta Movement, Friends of Jerusalem, stated in the New York Times, Sep. 30, 1997)

On September 3, 1939, Great Britain and France declared officially war on Hitler-Germany, not the other way around. Thus, World War II was instigated by the so-called Western democracies.

The result of WWII, initiated by the World Jewish Congress, was not only the suffering in Auschwitz but the genocide of 15 million Germans. The destruction of Germany and its cities was the aim of Jewish criminals like Ehrenburg, Morgenthau, Kaufman, Lindemann, Eisenhower and many like them. Did Israel, did the Jewish World Congress ever pay a penny to those unfortunate victims of Jewish hate? The answer is emphatically NO. Not one penny. On the contrary, these genocidal murderers have forced their victims to pay for their own suffering and to enrich Jewish Organisations with their labour and ingenuity.

These Jewish institutions continue to demand money, money, money and more money. Money for Jewish insurance-policy-holders, which had already been paid-out in 1939. The same with Jewish bank accounts. Jewish real estates and firms were paid-off under Hitler in hard foreign currency for their possessions. After the war the Germans had to rebuilt Jewish homes and factories, destroyed by Lindemann's bombing-raids. After the new German currency was established, in 1947, Israel has since been paid billions of Marks to the Jewish World Congress and other Jewish representatives around the world. The money-flow continues uninterrupted, despite the agreements already fulfilled decades ago.

For Jews in Germany, restitution is being paid for things they never possessed or owned. Israel receives billion-dollar credits from Germany that are never repaid. Products and military weapons of mass-destruction, submarines, nuclear-rockets etc. are manufactured in Germany for Israel. Not forgetting the complete infra-structure of that desert-nation. Since 1945 the "Central Council of Jews in Germany" has an unwritten right of veto-interference in German foreign politics.

Paul Spiegel, leader of the Jews in Germany,  reiterates relentlessly that he and his fellow Jews are real Germans, "only of the Jewish faith". Why then, are they treated so vastly different in the compensation payouts than the Germans of the Christian faith? Why is Mr. Spiegel so quiet about the underprivileged Christian Germans on this question? It appears that it is so much better to be a German of the Jewish faith, than to be a German of the Christian faith, as many observers clearly point out. If the Jews in Germany were Germans, logically, restitution money would remain in Germany, instead of going to Israel.

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Wave 3 The Right To Farm

Right To Farm (Nice Sounding Names with Mischievous Results)

When Monsanto’s home state of Missouri passed the “Right to Farm” on August 5, 2014 the third noose of corporate control tightened around the neck of the US.  Unlike the first two steps of corporate domination of public life, this was a constitutional amendment that would block the state legislature or voters from passing future laws for environmental protection, animal welfare or labeling of contaminated food.  This third wave corporatocracy could well spread across US and globally as it becomes a new form of mass disenfranchisement.

First wave: Corporate “personhood”

State constitutional amendments are the most recent phase in a long march of corporations to extend their direct control of government.  Efforts of corporations to grab the legal rights of persons date to the post-Civil War ear.  In the late 1880s the US Supreme Court first applied the rights of the 14th Amendment to corporations. That amendment had been ratified in 1868 in order to grant former slaves “equal protection under the law.”  As Jane Anne Morris documents in Gaveling Down the Rabble (2008), the court became far more interested in applying it to “corporate persons,” granting them the right to “privileges and immunities, equal protection, and due process.”

This flew in the face of the fact that corporations are created by legislative bodies and must incorporate in order to receive their powers and privileges.  After the initial rulings, legislative and judicial bodies in the US expanded laws and rulings that enhanced corporate power.  In 1938, Justice Hugo Black wrote of court decisions that “Less than 1/2 of 1% invoked it in protection of the Negro race, and more than 50% asked that its benefits be extended to corporations.”

Second wave: Free trade

During the decades following World War II, corporations sought to expand their powers internationally via trade agreements.  By the end of the 1980s, they conceptualized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a prototype for granting panels of corporate bureaucrats the power to trump national laws.  Designed as an agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico, it would basically tell a poor country, “If you want to increase trade, you must give corporations from rich countries the right to sue you for failing to change your laws to benefit them.”  But Americans balked at the idea that other countries might do the same to them and George Bush could not get NAFTA through Congress.

Bill Clinton persuaded financial backers that a liberal could accomplish what a right winger could not and their money put him in the White House.  “Slick Willy” Clinton had a couple of tricks to get NAFTA approved.  One was authorization of “Fast Track,” whereby Congress agreed not to amend the trade deal, but only vote it up or down.  The other tool was Speaker of the House Dick Gephardt from St. Louis, who pretended to be a “friend of labor,” opposing NAFTA in the US at the same time that he made trips to Mexico promising he would get it passed.

Sharp differences emerged between environmental organizations.  Virtually all small local groups and most big ones (notably Greenpeace and the Sierra Club) opposed NAFTA.  But some organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council backed NAFTA to strengthen their ties to corporate funders.

With the help of Democrats in the White House and Congress, NAFTA became a model for a series of international trade deals lasting through today.  Divisions between environmental organizations also remain.  The deals reflect the modern reality that very little trade has to do with “comparative advantage” — the idea that different countries are better suited to producing different products because of their climate, geography and natural resources.  Nowadays, the “advantages” that countries offer include cheaper labor, greater tolerance of wildlife destruction and more acceptance agricultural chemicals.

Riding the third wave

The first wave of Corporatocracy looked inward: It focused on US businesses power that no author of the Constitution would recognize.  The second wave looked outward: It asked how corporations in overdeveloped countries could use international poverty to their advantage.

The third wave is so new that not even the first chapter of its book has been written.  Its origins are rooted in corporate anger at state and local laws, especially those sparked by citizen initiative and passed by grassroots organizing.  Throughout the US, concerns with confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), soaking crops with pesticide poisons, and genetically contaminated food has led to a groundswell of efforts for laws to protect health and the environment.  The essence of third wave corporatocracy is to alter state constitutions so that they prohibit laws which limit corporate profits by environmental and health restrictions.  This is what characterized the “Right to Farm” amendments passed by North Dakota in 2013 and Indiana in 2014.  The proposed “Right to Farm” Amendment 1 to the Missouri constitution reads:

That agriculture which provides food, energy, health benefits, and security is the foundation and stabilizing force of Missouri’s economy. To protect this vital sector of Missouri’s economy, the right of farmers and ranchers to engage in farming and ranching practices shall be forever guaranteed in this state, subject to duly authorized powers, if any, conferred by Article VI of the Missouri Constitution.

The linchpin in this masterpiece of vagueness is that “farmers and ranchers” refers not only to the 40 acres that grandpa and grandma had, but also to CAFOs cramming thousands of hogs or chickens together, puppy mills cranking out pure-bred animals in deplorable conditions and megafarms of tens of thousands of acres growing genetically contaminated crops.  Please scrutinize the amendment’s wording and notice that it never says that the “farmers and ranchers” have to actually live in Missouri.

Third wave corporatocracy transcends (includes and goes beyond) the first and second waves.  The constitutional amendment assumes the corporate personhood of “farmers and ranchers.”  It also assumes that such corporate persons can be based anywhere in the world.

Swimming against the wave

Groups which quickly picked up on eco-devastation hidden between the lines included Missouri’s Food for America, Humane Society of the United States, Gateway Green Alliance, Missouri Green Party, GMO-Free Midwest, St. Louis Animal Rights Team, Missouri Rural Crisis Center, Universal African Peoples Organization, Earth Dance, Missouri Coalition for the Environment, Progressive Party of Missouri, and, most interestingly, the Sierra Club.  By April and May 2014 the network expanded and contacted the press and their informal networks.  The message was that everyone had to act quickly to warn as many people as possible by the November, 2014 general election, when it was expected to be on the ballot.

Wes Shoemeyer appeared on Green Time TV, which is broadcast to four areas of Missouri.  Former Lt. Gov. Joe Maxwell (Dem) stumped with the Humane Society of the United States across the state.

The votenoon1.com website explained: “Amendment 1 will guarantee foreign corporations the right to own Missouri farm land and do as they see fit without any check and balance from the people or the legislature.”

The Sullivan Journal wrote:

…if Amendment 1 passes, corporate farms may actually escape regulations concerned with chemical use, animal treatment, and waste disposal… The amendment may also limit municipalities from keeping noxious corporate livestock farms away from citizens. This amendment is not for the little family farmer – it’s for the corporate farms…

The Joplin Globe asked: “…who qualifies as a farmer in Missouri?  Smithfield Foods, for example, owner of Premium Standard Farms? How about Tyson Foods? Both of those are Fortune 500 companies that count their revenue in the billions.”

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted that supporters of “Right to Farm” amendments “…hope to pre-empt any proposals to ban genetically modified crops similar to ones recently passed in Oregon.”  The article documented that Missouri’s Amendment 1 was bankrolled by “five-figure checks from the state corn and pork associations, the Farm Bureau and businesses with strong financial stakes in rural America…”

John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics University of Missouri Columbia, warned on his website that:

Foreign corporations—including the largest pork, beef, and poultry processors in the U.S.—would be given special constitutional rights; including special exemptions from Clean Water and Clean Air Acts, Occupational Health and Safety Administration, and legitimate nuisance lawsuits—rights that ordinary American citizens do not have.

Betrayal 1: Democratic Party governor

As Vote-No-on-One forces began to pull together and plan how, within a few short months, they could explain the dangers lurking within the jolly sounding amendment, the first bombshell fell.  Missouri’s Democratic Governor Jay Nixon announced that the vote would be moved forward from the November general election to the August primary.

The Democratic Party governor had given a huge advantage to Yes-on-One forces. For the big ag side, most of their campaign work was buying expensive series of ads to come out 2 to 3 weeks before the election.  Shortening the campaign by three months meant nothing to them.  But for grassroots organizing based on word-of-mouth communication, three months is everything.

As if a super-short campaign was not enough of a gift to big ag, the State of Missouri used ballot descriptive language that was so misleading as to constitute intentional falsification.  Ballots don’t have the actual wording of proposed laws or amendments (which can be quite lengthy) and instead use an abbreviated description.  For Missouri’s Amendment 1 the ballot description read: “Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to ensure that the right of Missouri citizens to engage in agricultural production and ranching practices shall not be infringed?”

This directly contradicts the wording of the amendment itself (above):

1. The ballot description uses the word “citizen,” which means (according to Webster), individuals “born or naturalized” in a state.  Amendment 1 itself never uses the word “citizen,” instead referring to “farmers and ranchers,” which, of course includes “corporate persons.”

2. The ballot description put the word “Missouri” immediately prior to “citizen,” stating unambiguously that those who would benefit from the law would be those residing in the state.  The Amendment itself says no such thing, as it refers to protecting the “Missouri economy” and never suggests that the “farmers and ranchers” who receive protection must reside in the state.

As the propaganda blizt began, Yes-on-One TV ads tunnel-visioned on the wording that voters would see on the ballot description, claiming that Amendment 1 would protect local farmers.  TV reporters and commentators repeatedly predicted a victory for “Right to Farm” because Missouri liked farmers.  They parroted big ag messages as if their advertising revenue depended on it.

Betrayal 2: Democratic Party mayor

On August 4, the day before the primary election, No-on-One organizers in the City of St. Louis were stunned to receive a robo call from Francis Slay, Democratic Party Mayor of the largest city in the state.  Throughout the campaign, his silence on the issue led St. Louisans to believe that he had no bone to pick.  But less than 24 hours before voting began tens of thousands of City residents received an automated call urging them to vote “yes” on Amendment 1.  For the large number of people who were undecided on ballot issues, a last minute call from the mayor could have been the deciding factor.

A couple of days after the election count, I answered my phone to hear, “This is Mayor Slay’s office calling for Barbara Chicherio.”  I was hardly surprised since my wife Barbara was a No-on-One organizer for the St. Louis area and she had planned to call the Mayor.

“She’s not available now.  Could you give me your name and number so she can call you back in an hour?”

“No.  I’ll call her back,” answered the mayoral assistant who refused to identify himself.

He also refused to tell Barbara who he was when he called back.  “I have two questions,” she told him.  “One, when did Mayor Slay decide that he would support Amendment 1?  Two, what went into his thinking that made him wait until the last minute, and, without participating in any public discussion on the issue, make robo-calls the night before the vote?”

His refusal to answer either question was as adamant as his refusal to identify himself.  “It sounds like you are accusing the Mayor of making a deal,” he retorted.

The defensive denial let the cat out of the bag.  Despite abundant speculation, we may never know what deal the Mayor made with whom for what reason or when it was made.

Sierra Club: The unexpected

A funny thing happened on the road to the primary election.  The Sierra Club forgot how to identify the most important issue for mobilizing campaign workers.

Sierra has a history of organizing its active members for election work and was one of the first groups to put information about Amendment 1 on its web site.  So it seemed a no-brainer that Sierra would join the growing coalition to recruit organizers to turn out poll workers on election day.  But everyone’s jaws dropped when Sierra organizers responded that they were going to put all of their efforts into opposing Amendment 7 and not confuse voters by talking about Amendment 1.

Amendment 7 was very deserving of opposition.  It would have imposed a ¾ cent sales tax to pay for road improvements.  The tax would have let trucking companies, the chief culprits in tearing up roads, pay nothing while people too poor to own a car would foot the bill when they bought food and clothing.  But Amendment 7 defined a temporary tax that would end after a given period of time.  That’s why the Missouri Green Party and other groups distributed literature recommending a “No-on-One” first and “No-on-Seven” on the bottom of the page.

As voting day approached, the importance of person-to-person contact became increasingly evident.  Virtually every day we talked with people, we found some who were ignoring TV ads and eager to hear what we had to say about the dangers of the amendment.

Then came the vote count nightmare: 498, 451 YES and 496,223 NO.  The vote was so close that the Channel 2 website summarized the count as 50% YES and 50% NO.  The constitutional amendment enshrining corporate control of Missouri’s environment passed by one of the narrowest margins in the state’s history: 2825 votes, barely ¼ of 1% of those cast.

The two Democratic Party betrayals plus Sierra Club standoffishness snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.  It is possible that any one of them by itself could have changed the outcome.  And how sweet it would have been to have rebuffed the grab for megafarm supremacy in Monsanto’s home state.

Though there was no shortage of anger at Democratic Party bigwhigs during the days following the election, it is important to remember that sleazy maneuvers is what it takes to rise in the world of professional politicians.  Should you be any more surprised that a Democrat politico backstabs than a rattlesnake bites or a scorpion stings?  That’s what they do.  Stepping on the faces of little people is how they climb their political ladder.

What was truly disturbing was Sierra.  As a group that was central to opposing NAFTA, has protected wilderness areas across the country, and has mobilized for countless political campaigns, its aloofness toward No-on-One in Missouri was egregious.  One apology is that Sierra could not have garnered 2600 additional votes.  This is wrong on multiple counts.

First, people were not only making up their minds two weeks before the election — they were making up their minds when they were at the polls.  Handing out literature urging people to vote for a President, Governor or Senator rarely accomplishes anything since people know who they are going to vote for.  Not so with ballot initiatives.  Many people go to the polls knowing only the candidates while paying little or no attention to amendments.  Those who worked the polls reported multiple interactions with voters who changed their mind.  Many more than 1% of voters would have changed their vote on Amendment 1 if someone had spoken to them.

Second, the reason for soliciting Sierra’s active involvement was to build a movement that would build enthusiasm as it got larger.  This happened; but, without the Sierra Club (which touts itself as being the largest and most effective grassroots organization in the US) this movement did not grow nearly as large as it might have.  The point was not just to get more Sierra members to work the polls but to get them to do organizing work prior to voting day so that many, many more people would work the polls.

The third illustration of how Sierra involvement might have tipped the scales is that an early poll showed 80% of Missourians favoring Amendment 1 and only 20% opposing it.  If a coalition boycotted by the largest environmental group in the state could increase public opposition from 20% to 50% in 2–3 months, there can be no doubt, that if that organization had actively participated, the “No” vote would have won.

Next round

The skirmish is not over in Missouri as voting irregularities could lead to a recount.  The closer an election is, the more easily computer software can introduce random changes to fix the outcome.  Be as confident that the “Right to Farm” gang honestly won the vote as you are certain that George W. Bush was fairly elected President twice in a row.

“Right to Farm” barely scratches surface of the potential of third wave corporatocracy.  Changing state constitutions to destroy environmental rights can be extended to undoing all gains made during the last century regarding labor, civil rights and human welfare as well as prohibiting future progressive legislation.  In Missouri, right wingers had barely wolfed down the destruction of environmental legislation when they began drooling at the vision of a constitutional amendment to require that teacher pay be based on supervisor evaluations.

Waves of corporatocracy have not been distinct in the sense that one wave stops when the next one starts.  Rather, each wave has developed within the context of the previous wave while seeking to resolve its contradictions.  The first wave for “corporate personhood” focused inward on US law, which left unresolved US domination of the globe.  It was not until after World War II, when the US established its economic supremacy that it could focus outward on trade deals.  Yet, this left open the possibility of citizens of rich countries insisting on their ability to protect themselves and the survival of their offspring.  Rather than merely overturning such laws, third wave corporatocracy seeks to prevent such laws from ever being written.

Of course, rulers of every society seek to gain more and more control over those they subjugate; and, in this sense corporatocracy is not unique.  But corporatocracy, especially its second and third waves, is different in that it goes against the general grain of capitalism, revealing a phase of decay.  Most typically, capitalism rules best when it rules indirectly via a stratum of professional politicians whose life work is to wheel and deal while convincing those them swindle that they are their friend.  But in crisis periods of declining profits and declining investment opportunities, the 1% become nervous about the “normal” political process and seek to rule directly, along with their allies in the top 2–3%.  The early 21st century is characterized by increasing economic instability and an energy exhaustion that allows expanded investment if and only if corporations are willing to yank fossil fuels from the bowels of the Earth in ways that threaten the existence of humanity.

Corporations are unraveling the biology of Life by slaughtering millions for the crime of living atop fossil fuels that they crave, subjecting unknown numbers of species to extinction or lives of torture, and producing chemicals and food that poison their own children.  It is in this context of the most extreme moral depravity that the world has ever seen that corporations are demanding to rule directly, to increase their “rights” as persons, to expand the power of rich countries to overturn laws of poor countries, and, now, to seek constitutional amendments which disallow citizens from protecting their rights and health.

Just as each wave has developed its own contradictions for those who control, each has opened new opportunities of struggle for corporate victims.  The first wave hammered home the way that corporations self-serve by purchasing politicians and judges.  The second wave expanded the link between labor, environmental, and human rights groups in a way that had never happened before.

The third wave occurs in the midst of declining US economic power.  As laws such as “Right to Farm” invite non-US corporations to dominate the well-being of those in Missouri and other states, it dramatizes the way US business practices have decimated the status of US workers.  It emphasizes that the fight against capital is international and that struggles here must join hands with those across the globe if they are to succeed.  It is time to ask why we must work overtime so that our neighbors loose their jobs while we produce goods that fall apart sooner and are manufactured through industrial processes that poison our communities.

Forging a coalition that is strong enough to win will likely require struggling within many labor, human rights, and environmental organizations to change their orientation from choosing the least bad politico to one of actually confronting economic and political powers.  It may even mean Sierra Club members’ dragging their local leaders kicking and screaming into meaningful battles.  If we can build the sort of coalition we need to stop the right wing onslaught, we will be setting the stage for that coalition to ask what sort of new society it needs to midwife.

Don Fitz is a member of the Missouri Green Party and Sierra Club, Eastern Missouri Group.  He can be reached at fitzdon@aol.com

Original Article (That Inspired This One)

 Third Wave Corporatocracy

The Right-to-Farm Scam

by DON FITZ