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I don't think so and would go so far as to say it's a publicity stuntI am sure many families would want justice brought to these people however and I don't think I can blame them.
Hello!I am new member but neither American citizen nor resident.In my view the U.S would never exist as we know it today with all his grandeur and exuberance.Till the end of American civil war, Britain inconsolable mind over the lost of America has made all maneuvers to try to dislocate, the then emerging ambitious world power.The main cause of the 1812-1814 war ,was the Britain attempt to prevent the westward expansion of the hungry lands Americans .And during civil war Britain was eager to see the Union split apart by secretly financing the CSA and declaring its neutrality in the war.We would have probably four or more blocks of independents states all members Commonwealth had the Revolutionary?s war failed.
Welcome to the forums! I have been doing lots of reading on what you mention in your 2nd paragraph and I think that the financial repercussions of the Civil War were hugely important. I plan to do some reading tonight on the 'Greenback' currency as a matter of fact. To answer the topic I find it hard to imagine what would happen. If I had to guess I would say that Britain would stamp out the rebels as best they could and most likely (not sure if they were spreading too thin around the world or if they could pull this off, somebody please let me know as I'm interested) deploy a lot more troops to the Colonies which would undoubtedly be very unpopular with many colonialists and I honestly think that they would try for revolution once again. The ideas that went behind drafting the constitution as well as what I imagine the frame of mind the founding fathers would have had would have been ideas that no amount of military occupation or 100 stamp taxes could erase and these would only add more fuel to the fire.In a broader sense look at what the US has brought the world in the past two centuries. They have produced great scientists, literature, works of art, architecture, innovation, household appliances, automobiles, ... in a relatively short span of time. If the colonies still belonged to Britain I would go on a limb and propose that many of these would not exist or alternatively they may have been invented at a later date.
That is a very difficult question. I admire many of them for many reasons but if I had to choose it would certainly be Franklin.
One quote I thought would be very fitting:"?When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes? Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.?? Napoleon Bonaparte, 1815The part played during the Napoleonic wars by the economy and the already super rich banking elite is not to be underestimated just like the revolution that preceded it, and the revolution in the US that preceded France's. The practice of banks' money lending to one side or even both sides engaged in conflict is something that has repeated itself through history for better or for worse and I am convinced that Napoleon was fully aware of this.Second thing I wanted to mention I don't think I can I tried typing it out but I am terrible at this (I need practice!!) so I found an article that expressed exactly what was running around in my head. I'd recommend reading the whole thing as it's very interesting but I think the most important part that I could find regarding banking disputes, colonial scrip, fractional reserve banking, etc. is as follows:In 1764 Franklin returns to London and, from 1764 to 1775, serves as an agent for Pennsylvania (and later for several other colonies as well). He is now a renowned scientist and writer. The debates over colonial paper money, however, continue to engage him. In 1765, in response to Lord Grenville?s challenge to come up with some palatable way for the British to increase taxes on the colonists to help pay for the Seven Years War, Franklin writes up a proposal for a North-America-wide universal paper currency modeled on Pennsylvania?s land bank system. The British would run the colonial land bank and collect the interest on the paper money loaned out to colonists in place of any new direct taxes placed on the colonists. The colonies would get a universal paper currency to support internal trade throughout colonial America. Franklin?s proposal appears to be the first ever made for a universal or ?national? American paper currency. The colonists? unexpectedly violent response to the Stamp Act and the Pennsylvania Assembly?s instructions to Franklin to not let the British infringe on their money-issuing privileges led Franklin to abandon his proposal and obscure his authorship. The Pennsylvania Assembly also instructed Franklin to lobby for repeal of the new British restriction on colonial paper money enacted in 1764. In making his case Franklin adds an important new argument to his arsenal. He points out that while a bank-based paper money system with the paper money payable on demand in gold and silver may be preferable, such a bank-based system is ?impracticable? in the colonies as long as the colonies are held as a dependent country and not allowed to implement their own foreign trade and capital controls. Britain and other European countries can use gold and silver as their money for internal trade and so can develop a bank-based paper money system because they can execute laws that guard against the foreign trade that would cause an untimely export of their gold and silver. Franklin writes that gold and silver have a ?universal estimation? but ?that very universal estimation is an inconvenience which paper money is free from, since it [gold and silver money] tends to deprive a country of even the quantity of currency that should be retain?d as a necessary instrument of its internal commerce; and obliges it to be continually on its guard in making and executing?the laws that are to prevent the trade which exports it.? Britain does not allow the colonies to exercise such legal powers, and so the colonies cannot rely on retaining enough imported gold and silver to support their internal trade. The colonies, therefore, need a fiat paper money that is not linked to gold and silver money.Franklin knew very well the implications of opposing the British on these matters and went on to say:"The refusal of King George to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from clutches of the money manipulators was probably the prime cause of the revolution."Furthermore, he goes on to say:"The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament, which has caused in the Colonies hatred of England and the Revolutionary War."This is an important detail because I was always under the impression from books and television that the notorious Stamp Tax was the prime cause, and it may well have been, but it doesn't give me the full picture as much as that quote does.Actually on the very last page of the document it describes how in his last days Franklin was enthusiastic about the Bank of North America (precursor to 1st BUS):Although he had been an ardent supporter of colonial government paper money, Franklin was not opposed to a private bank-based system of paper money backed by reserves of gold and silver coins as long as the nation had sovereign power to control trade and capital flows to protect its gold and silver money supply from the trade disruptions that might cause it to be precipitously exported. With the sovereign power to regulate money and trade flows that came with independence, Franklin may have been willing to abandon the old system of legislatures? issuing paper money backed by land mortgages and future taxes for a new system of governments? chartering and regulating privately run banks that issued paper money backed by reserves of gold and silver. Certainly Franklin?s enthusiasm for the Bank of North America points in that direction.Sources: http://21stcenturycicero.wordpress.com/fraud/how-benjamin-franklin-made-new-england-prosperous/http://www.philadelphiafed.org/publications/economic-education/ben-franklin-and-paper-money-economy.pdf
That is true. There was a first BUS (Bank of the United States) which Hamilton backed. Their charter in the 1790's was not renewed, so they bided their time until coming up with a 2nd BUS which got I believe a 20 year charter. Jefferson was opposed to the 1st BUS but that did not stop them from coming back. It was the 2nd BUS that Jackson pledged to end and when he did it brought the nation into a position where state-controlled banks could and did open up but backed on fractional reserve based on gold & silver. There were many attempts to do this in US history most notably the Federal Reserve in 1913. All of these central banks try to give the impression through their name that they are a government entity when they are really a privately owned corporation that creates money on the basis of debt. I believe that is why many of the founding fathers dreaded the central bank because they realised this from seeing how the Bank of England operated and knew the dangers of debt to the colonies and it also explains why it's taken them [the banks] so long to get a permanent foothold in the US via the Federal Reserve.
This book as been very good. It is an economic history of the early republic and little later. Not only does it explain the differences in the British and American systems, also discussed are the urban and rural differences, regional differences, and various political groups and how their policies affected all of these.I find economic history (of any era) interesting.
I have to agree. I have become fascinated with economics lately and it's amazing how important of a role it played in peace and war in the US. I think it was Benjamin Franklin when he was working in England mentioned that the colonies were doing well because of the Colonial Scrips that were issued which flew right in the face of how England had been running things for the past century (at least) with central, privately owned banks (Bank of England) because the colonies produced the Scrips based on supply/demand as opposed to creating money out of thin air which leads to debt (case of the central banks).In fact if I am not mistaken the entire platform of Andrew Jackson's campaign was "end the bank" and he was staunchly opposed to the Bank of the United States a very early forerunner to the Federal Reserve and it's alleged that the man hired to assassinate him (whereby both pistols miraculously misfired) later stated that the international bankers set him up.
Well I was recommended by a good friend of mine to check out ratemyprofessor website and I used this when there were multiple classes offered by different professors to decide which would suit me best. Of course a lot of the bad ratings may come from those students that are e-raging but I found that some profs had hundreds of ratings so the average when compared with the 'measuring stick' school professor average was somewhat helpful. May be too late for that now for you but something to consider for the future.
Even then ... back in the mid 1960s, my wife worked at Lockheed Air International in L.A. because she was gifted in 5 languages. As a result, she was requested to entertain important Italian visitors. I also had studied italian at Cal and was still reasonably fluent. We showed them the city and had them over for dinner. One was the son of Mussolini's military governor of Abyssinia aka Ethoipia.During the course of conversation, he said Italy could be as powerful economically as Germany and Japan (circa 1960s) if only they could rid themselves of everything south of Naples.And Spain -- the Catalans have never felt 100% Spanish nor have the Basques with their unique language. Valencian is a separate language as well closer to Catalan.I have come to believe that tribalism trumps all other -isms.
On the subject of Spain one can go even further and look at the southern regions where the descendants of the Moors still make a living. They have their own culture which is very unique and their african-inspired music, which I find very beautiful, inspired the Flamenco style from what I learned.
I watched the documentary of Ben Stein on evolution (sorry can't remember the name of it) and I have to say that approaching it with an open mind I can see where he is coming from. I don't want to justify whether he's right or wrong nor do I think he intends for the viewer to do so but inevitably folks will do just that and either discredit him or praise him for it, in my opinion.Please bear (bare?) with me a moment. I once heard the anecdote of what Newton was to Einstein, in the sense that Newton forever changed physics and from that point on the general concensus was that classical newtonian physics was the explanation for everything, the mechanical universe as you will, and that was that, no question about it. When Einstein came out at the turn of the century with general relativity I would say that it didn't necessarily disprove Newton, rather it revised it or refined it to what physics would later become. So in a sense Newton was not 'wrong' but his idea was a step up in knowledge and Einstein took another step up from there. The way I see evolution is it being like Newton's theories, a first major step for biology but by no means did we go from A-Z in biology just from evolution (in my opinion again).The danger I see with evolution is that it's a very hot topic and if folks were to come out and say something like this, and they have, then right away people would classify them as being pro-creationism or anti-evolution which I don't think is very fair. Ben Stein interviews many people in his documentary that have taken a great fall in their professional lives because they chose to question. I think we have to be skeptical about it but I think we should also give it credit. I personally believe in evolution but at the same time I also feel we should have open minds and be able to revise or refine it if we learn that it may not explain absolutely everything we know about organisms. However, and this is the main point I would like to make, is that evolution and politics makes for a very volatile combination and people have done horrible things unto others because of such beliefs (racial discrimination for starters).
Sorry, I thought the movie was set in the forties and about reactions to the flood of Irish Immigrants fleeing the Potato Famines. I admit I have not seen the movie and probably won't just because it has Leonardo DiCaprio in it.As to the Draft Riots, they should probably be covered better but will not be because any talk that slavery was not the central issue for the North is contrary to the current narrative taught in schools. Many people do not want to admit that for most Northerners the war was much more about preserving the Union than it was baout freeing the slaves. For just about everybody except for rabid abolitionists at least.Lincoln once said that if he could preserve the Union without freeing a single slave he would do so. Slavery was a wedge issue that Lincoln used to gain the moral high ground with the rest of the world. Most northerners certainly were not willing to die to free the slaves. For proof of how the northerners felt just look at the way ex-slaves were treated during and after the war. The south did not have a monopoly on Jim Crow laws.
It starts in the 40's when Amsterdam Vallon (DiCaprio) is just a young boy but the majority of the movie takes place in the 60's. After reading this thread I went to go watch the movie again hehe.In the movie some of the issues they tie in with the riots looks to be like the rich in uptown manhattan not having to send their kids to war (they can pay the $300 outright) while those getting off the boats from Ireland or wherever else are immediately bombarded with offers to join, pelted with thrown objects by the 'natives', and are asked to vote for people they have probably never heard of and probably just want a bowl of hot soup more than anything else at that moment in time.What I am curious about and I am very interested in Civil War but admittedly don't know much about it other than the bare bones is when the boats start bombarding lower manhattan with cannonballs to break up/disperse rioters... did this really take place? What about the massacres on the streets as shown in the movie?
Terry Jones did a TV series called medieval lives and in one episode 'The Peasant' he mentions something along the lines of many peasants in those days living relatively good if not better than many of us today.
you may want to listen to the podcast 'Stuff You Missed in History Class', particularly March 9, 2009 they did one entitled: Was There Really a Pied Piper of Hamelin? I copy/pasted the description here for you:"Everyone knows the story of the Pied Piper -- but how much of this legend is factual? Learn more about the fact and fiction behind the story of the Pied Piper in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com."
update:I am registered for fall term major in history degree minor in greek & roman studies so far I am taking:-History of the US-Colonial Experience in Latin America to 1808-History of Canada from 1867-present-Latin 101-Introduction to 20th century world historytheir greek/roman history 101 was filled up like 2 days after I registered :'( but I can always take it next yearReason I'm telling you this is be prepared for me to ask a lot more questions!! Also I checked out the writers of history webpage thanks for the helpful posts there I will definitely use that as an asset
has the U.N. also lost reputation points over the past five decades? I think it has...
I strongly believe so as well but most of my opinions on this topic have to do with new world order and what many consider to be conspiracy theories so I will refrain from opening a potential can of worms.Furthermore you should also look at some of the headlines when the Queen & monarchy visit Canada. Many people forget/don't know that she is still our head of state (just go into any police department and you'll see her portrait there) and many folks either don't care, don't accept their authority, or welcome them openly depending where they go. Where I live I have a strong impression that most citizens are 'pro-monarchy' but where I grew up on the east coast I would hesitate to say it's probably tilted more on to the other end of the spectrum. For example, I remember meeting Prince Charles when he came to visit about 15 years ago and many of my classmates, myself included, had no idea who he was nor did we have much education on the monarchy so embarrassingly we had to have a primer before meeting him.
