Understanding the United States of America (USA) - III

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 04 Sep 2016 23:49

The previous thread must have been lost in the corruption (BRexit).

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 04 Sep 2016 23:51

Viv S wrote:ONE:

A stunningly powerful video. I don't know who made it but the editing is superb.

An absolute must watch for anybody who's wondering how high the stakes really are. Not just for a US citizen but any citizen of the world.

(Also I never realized what a good public speaker Ronald Reagan was.)

Made by the DNC.

Hillary planned on using as many Trumpisms in her ads.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 05 Sep 2016 00:30

Nrao-ji,

This thread is about understanding the USA. Many of us of Indian origin who live in the USA will have differing views, but the view point of the Indian person in understanding the USA must be taken in to consideration. I asked my youngest child who was born in the USA - What is the difference between an Indian in India and an Indian in the USA regardless of where they were born and where they spent their time growing up? He put it very succinctly - the difference is the person who wipes their arse versus the person who washes their arse. Keeping this in mind we should see different points of view.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 04:31

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Era

Reconstruction Era
The term Reconstruction Era, in the context of the history of the United States, has two senses: the first covers the complete history of the entire country from 1865 to 1877 following the Civil War; the second sense focuses on the transformation of the Southern United States from 1863 to 1877, as directed by Congress, with the reconstruction of state and society.
From 1863 to 1865, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson both took moderate positions designed to bring the South back to normal as quickly as possible, while the Radical Republicans used Congress to block any moderate approaches, impose harsh terms, and upgrade the rights of the freedmen. Johnson followed a lenient policy toward ex-Confederates much like Lincoln's. Lincoln's last speeches show that he was leaning toward supporting the enfranchisement of all freedmen, whereas Johnson was opposed to this.[2]

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 04:49

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws
Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued in force until 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in states of the former Confederate States of America, starting in 1890 with a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. Facilities for African Americans were consistently inferior and underfunded compared to those available to European Americans; sometimes they did not exist at all. This body of law institutionalized a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages. De jure segregation mainly applied to the Southern states, while Northern segregation was generally de facto—patterns of housing segregation enforced by private covenants, bank lending practices, and job discrimination, including discriminatory labor union practices.
Jim Crow laws—sometimes, as in Florida, part of state constitutions—mandated the segregation of public schools, public places, and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated, as were federal workplaces, initiated in 1913 under President Woodrow Wilson. By requiring candidates to submit photos, his administration practiced racial discrimination in hiring.
These Jim Crow laws followed the 1800–1866 Black Codes, which had previously restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans. Segregation of public (state-sponsored) schools was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, although in some cases it took years for this decision to be acted on. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but years of action and court challenges were needed to unravel numerous means of institutional discrimination.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 05:12

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redeemers
Redeemers

In United States history, the Redeemers were a white political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War. Redeemers were the southern wing of the Bourbon Democrats, the ultra-conservative, far right, pro-business faction in the Democratic Party, who pursued a policy of Redemption, seeking to oust the Radical Republican, far left coalition of freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags". They generally were led by the rich landowners, businessmen and professionals, and dominated Southern politics in most areas from the 1870s to 1910.
During Reconstruction, the South was under occupation by federal forces and Southern state governments were dominated by Republicans. Republicans nationally pressed for the granting of political rights to the newly freed slaves as the key to their becoming full citizens. The Thirteenth Amendment (banning slavery), Fourteenth Amendment (guaranteeing the civil rights of former slaves and ensuring equal protection of the laws), and Fifteenth Amendment (prohibiting the denial of the right to vote on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude) enshrined such political rights in the Constitution.
Numerous educated blacks moved to the South to work for Reconstruction, and some blacks attained positions of political power under these conditions. However, the Reconstruction governments were unpopular with many white Southerners, who were not willing to accept defeat and continued to try to prevent black political activity by any means. While the elite planter class often supported insurgencies, violence against freedmen and other Republicans was often carried out by other whites; insurgency took the form of the secret Ku Klux Klan in the first years after the war.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 05:16

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877

Compromise of 1877

The Compromise of 1877 was a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the intensely disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election. It resulted in the national government pulling the last federal troops out of the South, and formally ended the Reconstruction Era. Through the Compromise, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden on the understanding that Hayes would remove the federal troops whose support was essential for the survival of Republican state governments in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. The compromise involved Democrats who controlled the House of Representatives allowing the decision of the Electoral Commission to take effect. The outgoing president, Republican Ulysses S. Grant, removed the soldiers from Florida. As president, Hayes removed the remaining troops from South Carolina and Louisiana. As soon as the troops left, many white Republicans also left, and the "Redeemer" Democrats took control. They already dominated most other state governments in the South. What exactly happened is somewhat contested as the documentation is scanty.[1]
Black Republicans felt betrayed as they lost power and were subject to discrimination and harassment to suppress their voting. At the turn of the 20th century, most Blacks were effectively disenfranchised by state legislatures in every southern state.[2]

Terms of compromise[edit]

The compromise essentially stated that Southern Democrats would acknowledge Hayes as president, but only on the understanding that Republicans would meet certain demands. The following elements are generally said to be the points of the compromise:[3]
The removal of all U.S. military forces from the former Confederate states. At the time, U.S. troops remained in only Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida, but the Compromise completed their withdrawal from the region.
The appointment of at least one Southern Democrat to Hayes' cabinet. (David M. Key of Tennessee was appointed as Postmaster General.)
The construction of another transcontinental railroad using the Texas and Pacific in the South (this had been part of the "Scott Plan," proposed by Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad; he had initiated negotiations resulting in the final compromise).
Legislation to help industrialize the South and restore its economy following Reconstruction and the Civil War.

In exchange, Democrats would accept the Republican Hayes as president by not employing the filibuster during the joint session of Congress needed to confirm the election.[4][5]

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 05:20

This compromise between the president from the Republican party in agreement by the democratic party is practiced in US

The election in 2016 is also going through the same bargaining and democrats may concede the president to the republicans maybe after sept or oct

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 05:26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-A ... 2%80%9395)

African-American Civil Rights Movement (1865–95)

The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1865–1895) refers to the post-Civil War reform movements in the United States aimed at eliminating racial discrimination against African Americans, improving educational and employment opportunities, and establishing electoral power. This period between 1865 and 1895 saw tremendous change in the fortunes of the black community following the elimination of slavery in the South.
The year 1865 held two important events in the history of African Americans: the Thirteenth Amendment, which eliminated slavery, was ratified; and Union troops arrived in June in Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, giving birth to the modern Juneteenth celebrations. Freedmen looked to start new lives as the country recovered from the devastation of the Civil War.
Immediately following the Civil War, the federal government began a program known as Reconstruction aimed at rebuilding the states of the former Confederacy. The federal programs also provided aid to the former slaves and attempted to integrate them as citizens into society. During and after this period, blacks made substantial gains in their political power and many were able to move from abject poverty to land ownership.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 05:40

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-A ... 80%931954)

African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a long, primarily nonviolent series of events to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. The movement has had a lasting impact on United States society, in its tactics, the increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights, and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of racism.
The American Civil Rights Movement has been made up of many movements. The term usually refers to the political struggles and reform movements between 1954 and 1968 to end discrimination against African Americans and other disadvantaged groups and to end legal racial segregation, especially in the US South.
This article focuses on an earlier phase of the movement. Two United States Supreme Court decisions—Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), which upheld "separate but equal" racial segregation as constitutional doctrine, and Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) which overturned Plessy—serve as milestones. This was an era of stops and starts, in which some movements, such as Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, were very successful but left little lasting legacy, while others, such as the NAACP's painstaking legal assault on state-sponsored segregation, achieved modest results in its early years but made steady progress on voter rights and gradually built to a key victory in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

After the Civil War, the US expanded the legal rights of African Americans. Congress passed, and enough states ratified, an amendment ending slavery in 1865—the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution. This amendment only outlawed slavery; it provided neither citizenship nor equal rights. In 1868, the 14th Amendment was ratified by the states, granting African Americans citizenship. All persons born in the US were extended equal protection under the laws of the Constitution. The 15th Amendment (ratified in 1870) stated that race could not be used as a condition to deprive men of the ability to vote. During Reconstruction (1865–1877), Northern troops occupied the South. Together with the Freedmen's Bureau, they tried to administer and enforce the new constitutional amendments. Many black leaders were elected to local and state offices, and many others organized community groups, especially to support education.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 05:42

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Manifesto

Southern Manifesto

The Declaration of Constitutional Principles (known informally as the Southern Manifesto) was a document written in February and March 1956, in the United States Congress, in opposition to racial integration of public places.[1] The manifesto was signed by 101 politicians (99 Southern Democrats and two Republicans) from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.[1] The Congressmen drafted the document to counter the landmark Supreme Court 1954 ruling Brown v. Board of Education, which determined that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. School segregation laws were some of the most enduring and best-known of the Jim Crow laws that characterized the American South and several northern states at the time.
Senators led the opposition, with Strom Thurmond writing the initial draft and Richard Russell the final version.[2] The manifesto was signed by 19 Senators and 82 Representatives, including the entire congressional delegations of the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia. All of the signatories were Southern Democrats except two Republicans, Joel Broyhill and Richard Poff of Virginia. However, four Southern Senate Democrats refused to sign: Albert Gore, Sr.; Estes Kefauver; Ralph Yarborough and Lyndon B. Johnson. Their opposition earned them the enmity of their colleagues for a time.
The Southern Manifesto accused the Supreme Court of "clear abuse of judicial power." It promised to use "all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision which is contrary to the Constitution and to prevent the use of force in its implementation." [3] The Manifesto suggested that the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution should limit the reach of the Supreme Court on such issues.[4]

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 05:50

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-A ... 2%80%9368)

African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68)

The Civil Rights Movement or 1960s Civil Rights Movement (sometimes referred to as the "African-American Civil Rights Movement" although the term "African American" was not widely used in the 1950s and '60s) encompasses social movements in the United States whose goals were to end racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans and to secure legal recognition and federal protection of the citizenship rights enumerated in the Constitution and federal law. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1954 and 1968, particularly in the South. The leadership was African-American, and much of the political and financial support came from labor unions (led by Walter Reuther), major religious denominations, and prominent white Democratic Party politicians such as Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon B. Johnson and white Republican Party politicians such as Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Senator Everett Dirksen.

The movement was characterized by major campaigns of civil resistance. Between 1955 and 1968, acts of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience produced crisis situations and productive dialogues between activists and government authorities. Federal, state, and local governments, businesses, and communities often had to respond immediately to these situations, which highlighted the inequities faced by African Americans. Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included boycotts such as the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–56) in Alabama; "sit-ins" such as the influential Greensboro sit-ins (1960) in North Carolina; marches, such as the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama; and a wide range of other nonviolent activities.

During this period, the white-dominated Democratic Party maintained political control of the South. With whites controlling all the seats representing the total population of the South, they had a powerful voting block in Congress. The Republican Party—the "party of Lincoln"—which had been the party that most blacks belonged to, shrank to insignificance as black voter registration was suppressed. Until 1965, the "solid South" was a one-party system under the Democrats. Outside a few areas (usually in remote Appalachia), the Democratic Party nomination was tantamount to election for state and local office.[9] In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House, making him the first African American to attend an official dinner there. "The invitation was roundly criticized by southern politicians and newspapers." Washington persuaded the president to appoint more blacks to federal posts in the South and to try to boost African-American leadership in state Republican organizations. However, this was resisted by both white Democrats and white Republicans as an unwanted federal intrusion into state politics.[10]

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 06:06

Richard Russell was a key figure and was a mentor of Lyndon Johnson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Russell_Jr.
Richard Russell Jr.

Richard Brevard Russell Jr. (November 2, 1897 – January 21, 1971) was an American politician from Georgia. A member of the Democratic Party, he briefly served as speaker of the Georgia house, and as Governor of Georgia (1931–33) before serving in the United States Senate for almost 40 years, from 1933 until his death from emphysema in Washington, D.C. in 1971. As a Senator, he was a candidate for President of the United States in the 1948 Democratic National Convention, and the 1952 Democratic National Convention.
Russell was a founder and leader of the conservative coalition that dominated Congress from 1937 to 1963, and at his death was the most senior member of the Senate. He was for decades a leader of Southern opposition to the civil rights movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_coalition
Conservative coalition

The conservative coalition was an unofficial Congressional coalition bringing together a conservative majority of the Republican Party and the conservative, mostly Southern, wing of the Democratic Party. According to James T. Patterson:
By and large the congressional conservatives by 1939 agreed in opposing the spread of federal power and bureaucracy, in denouncing deficit spending, in criticizing industrial labor unions, and in excoriating most welfare programs. They sought to "conserve" an America which they believed to have existed before 1933.[1]
The coalition was dominant in Congress from 1937 to 1963 and remained a political force until the mid-1980s, eventually dying out in the 1990s when few conservative Democrats remained in Congress.[2] In terms of Congressional roll call votes, it primarily appeared on votes affecting labor unions. The conservative coalition did not operate on civil rights bills, for the two wings had opposing viewpoints.[3] However, the coalition did have the power to prevent unwanted bills from even coming to a vote. The coalition included many committee chairmen from the South who blocked bills by not reporting them from their committees. Furthermore, Howard W. Smith, chairman of the House Rules Committee, often could kill a bill simply by not reporting it out with a favorable rule; he lost some of that power in 1961.[4] The conservative coalition was not concerned with foreign policy, as most of the southern Democrats were internationalists, a position opposed by most Republicans.

Foreign policy goals also presented a contrast. Prior to World War II most, though not all, conservative Republicans were non-interventionists who wanted to stay out of the war at all costs, while most, though not all, Southern conservatives were interventionists who favored helping the British defeat Nazi Germany.[10] After the war a minority of conservative Republicans (led by Taft) opposed military alliances with other nations, especially NATO, while most Southern Democrats favored such alliances.
During the post-war period, Republican presidents often owed their legislative victories to ad hoc coalitions between conservative Republicans and conservative southern Democrats. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party (elected mainly from Northern cities), on the other hand, tended to combine with Republicans from the west and the north to put their own legislation through.[11]

NOTE:
All the southern Democrats are still internationalists
From President Carter to President Clinton and President Obama are internationalists

The current policy of the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is to favor Muslim Americans and intervention in Middle East.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 06:19

Under President Lyndon Johnson, who had an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of Congress, liberal Democrats, together with Conservative and Liberal Republicans led by Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, who convinced all but six Republicans to vote for cloture on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This vote broke a Southern filibuster led by Senators Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Strom Thurmond (D-SC). Though a greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats (about 80% versus 60% respectively) voted for cloture and for the bill, the 1964 GOP Presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), voted against cloture; before his presidential campaign Goldwater had supported civil rights legislation but opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on constitutional grounds. The GOP was massively defeated in 1964, but recovered its strength in the congressional elections of 1966, and elected Richard Nixon president in 1968. Throughout the 1954-1980 era the Republicans were a minority in both the House and Senate.

In 1968, Nixon and native Southerner and American Independent candidate George Wallace carried the same number of states in the South. With Nixon's reelection and sweep of the South—as well as nearly every state in the country—in 1972, the Democratic stronghold of the Solid South had fallen to the GOP at the presidential level, save for 1976, 1992, and 1996. However state and local elections were still dominated by Democrats until the 1990s.

With the "Southern Strategy" of the 1970s and the "Republican Revolution" in 1994, Republicans took control of most conservative Southern districts, replacing many conservative Democratic congressmen with Republicans. A few Congressmen switched parties. Thus the Southern Democratic element of the conservative coalition gradually faded.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 06:45

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Southern strategy

In American politics, the Southern strategy is the plan in which the Republican Party gained political support in the Southern United States by using a strategy appealing to racism against African Americans.[1][2][3]
During the 1950s and 1960s, the African-American Civil Rights Movement achieved significant progress in its push for desegregation in the Southern United States. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, in particular, largely dismantled the system of Jim Crow laws that had enforced legal (or de jure) segregation in the South since the end of the Reconstruction Era. During this period, Republican politicians such as Presidential candidate Richard Nixon worked to attract southern white conservative voters, most of whom had traditionally supported the Democratic Party, to the Republican Party,[4] and Senator Barry Goldwater won the five formerly Confederate states of the Deep South (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina) in the 1964 presidential election. In the 1968 presidential campaign, Nixon won Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee, all former Confederate states, contributing to the electoral realignment that saw many white, southern voters shift allegiance from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party during this period.

In addition to presidential campaigns, subsequent Republican campaigns for the House of Representatives and Senate in the South employed the Southern strategy. During his 1990 re-election campaign, Jesse Helms attacked his opponent's alleged support of "racial quotas," most notably through an ad in which a white person's hands are seen crumpling a letter indicating that he was denied a job because of the color of his skin.[71][72]
New York Times opinion columnist Bob Herbert wrote in 2005 that "The truth is that there was very little that was subconscious about the G.O.P.'s relentless appeal to racist whites. Tired of losing elections, it saw an opportunity to renew itself by opening its arms wide to white voters who could never forgive the Democratic Party for its support of civil rights and voting rights for blacks."[73] Aistrup described the transition of the Southern strategy saying that it has "evolved from a states’ rights, racially conservative message to one promoting in the Nixon years, vis-à-vis the courts, a racially conservative interpretation of civil rights laws—including opposition to busing. With the ascendancy of Reagan, the Southern Strategy became a national strategy that melded race, taxes, anticommunism, and religion."[74]
Some analysts viewed the 1990s as the apogee of Southernization or the Southern strategy, given that the Democratic president Bill Clinton and vice-president Al Gore were from the South, as were Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle.[[75] During the end of Nixon's presidency, the Senators representing the former Confederate states in the 93rd Congress were primarily Democrats. During the beginning of Bill Clinton's, 20 years later in the 103rd Congress, this was still the case.[76]

Scholars generally emphasize the role of racial backlash in the realignment of southern voters. The viewpoint that the electoral realignment of the Republican party due to a race-driven Southern Strategy is also known as the "top-down" viewpoint.[5][7] Most scholarship and analysts support this top-down viewpoint and claim that the political shift was due primarily to racial issues.[7][82][83] The Southern Strategy is generally believed to be the primary force that transformed the "Democratic South into a reliable GOP stronghold in presidential elections."[6] Some historians believe that racial issues took a back seat to a grassroots narrative known as the "suburban strategy". Matthew Lassiter, who along with Shafer and Johnston is a leading proponent of the "suburban strategy" viewpoint, recognizes "This analysis runs contrary to both the conventional wisdom and a popular strain in the scholarly literature...."[84] Glen Feldman, when speaking of the "suburban strategy", states it is "the dissenting – yet rapidly growing – narrative on the topic of southern partisan realignment..."[10]

In interviews with historians years later, Nixon denied that he ever practiced a Southern strategy. Harry Dent, one of Nixon's senior advisers on Southern politics, told Nixon privately in 1969 that the administration "has no Southern strategy, but rather a national strategy which, for the first time in modern times, includes the South."[100]

Other observers have suggested that the election of President Obama in the 2008 presidential election and subsequent re-election in 2012 signaled the growing irrelevance of the southern strategy-style tactics. Louisiana State University political scientists Wayne Parent, for example, suggested that Obama's ability to get elected without the support of southern states demonstrate that the regions was moving from "the center of the political universe to being an outside player in presidential politics,"[75] while University of Maryland, Baltimore County political scientist Thomas Schaller argued that the Republican party had "marginalized" itself, becoming a "mostly regional party" through a process of Southernization.[75]

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 07:33

Civil Rights passed in US

Civil Rights Act of 1866
Civil Rights Act of 1871
Civil Rights Act of 1875
Civil Rights Act of 1957
Civil Rights Act of 1960
Civil Rights Act of 1968
Civil Rights Act of 1991
Voting Rights Act of 1965

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 05 Sep 2016 07:36

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson

Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon Baines Johnson (/ˈlɪndən ˈbeɪnz ˈdʒɒnsən/; August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, assuming the office after serving as the 37th Vice President of the United States under President John F. Kennedy, from 1961 to 1963. Johnson was a Democrat from Texas, who served as a United States Representative from 1937 to 1949 and as a United States Senator from 1949 to 1961. He spent six years as Senate Majority Leader, two as Senate Minority Leader, and two as Senate Majority Whip.
Johnson ran for the Democratic nomination in the 1960 presidential election. Although unsuccessful, he was chosen by Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts to be his running mate. They went on to win a close election over Richard Nixon and Johnson was sworn in as Vice President on January 20, 1961. Two years and ten months later, on November 22, 1963, Johnson succeeded Kennedy as President following the latter's assassination. He ran for a full term in the 1964 election, winning by a landslide over Republican opponent Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. He is one of four people[a] who have served as President and Vice President, as well as in both houses of Congress.[1] Johnson was renowned for his domineering, sometimes abrasive, personality and the "Johnson treatment"—his aggressive coercion of powerful politicians to advance legislation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Way_(film)

All the Way is a 2016 American HBO biographical drama film based on events of the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, directed by Jay Roach and adapted by Robert Schenkkan from his play with the same title. The film stars Bryan Cranston, who reprises his role as Johnson from the play's 2014 Broadway production, opposite Melissa Leo as First Lady Lady Bird Johnson; Anthony Mackie as Civil Rights Movement leader Martin Luther King, Jr.; and Frank Langella as Georgia Senator Richard Russell.

panduranghari · Post by **panduranghari** » 05 Sep 2016 18:27

“The astonishing fact about America is that the state would be designed to protect the individual’s “metaphysical” rights of life, freedom, and property.

Locke’s political philosophy provides a basis for American exceptionalism and a theme that will reappear across American diplomacy from colonial times to the present: that America at once is, and is not, a part of the international state system. Private property is at the heart of Locke’s theory, as indispensable for freedom as it is for material accumulation. In America (Locke always italicizes the name), property is not finite but infinitely available. This breaks the Old World link between property and the bounded territory of a state. “America,” Locke wrote, “is made both continuous and discontinuous with already extant nation-states by relegating the business of making new landed property, and the state-making associated with that possession, to a place outside the system of nations.” This will make the United States’ recognition of, and relationship to, “the international” an ambiguous matter.”

Excerpt From: Hill, Charles. “Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order.” Yale University Press.

The Doric Columns(masculine) of Sparta and thus Greece lost to the Trojans and their Ionian(Feminine) columns. Troy imbibed the Masculine characteristics for Sparta and it lead to the birth of Rome. The collapse of Rome lead to the movement of the power centre westwards. In the interim it allowed the gradual separation of Church and State. It lead to the birth of England which took over the mantle from Rome. Oliver Cromwells rebellion was a transition away from monarchy. It however was refined by the establishment of America which represents everything wonderful about Europe but only better. Or so they believe.

g.sarkar · Post by **g.sarkar** » 06 Sep 2016 04:36

I do not know where to put this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... -son-whore'
Barack Obama cancels meeting after Philippines president calls him 'son of a whore'
Rodrigo Duterte further strains diplomatic ties with Washington as he warns US leader not to question him on extrajudicial killings
Barack Obama has cancelled a meeting with the president of the Philippines after Rodrigo Duterte appeared to call him a “son of a whore”.
The move followed a warning from Duterte to the US president to keep off the subject of extrajudicial killings in his country’s brutal drug war when they were due to meet on Tuesday at a regional summit in Laos. Duterte told a press conference that Obama “must be respectful”.
The firebrand president was answering a reporter’s question about how he intended to explain the extrajudicial killings to Obama, before boarding a plane to Laos for the Association of South-east Asian Nations summit.
“You must be respectful. Do not just throw away questions and statements. Son of a whore, I will curse you in that forum,” Duterte was quoted by as saying by Agence-France Presse. “We will be wallowing in the mud like pigs if you do that to me.”
When his comments reached the Obama camp, the US president initially said he was asking his staff to find out whether holding the meeting as scheduled would be useful.
“What I’ve instructed my team to do is to talk to their Philippine counterparts to find out, is if this in fact a time where we can have some constructive, productive conversations,” Obama said at a news conference at the end of a G20 summit in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou.
“Obviously the Filipino people are some of our closest friends and allies and the Philippines is a treaty ally of ours. But I always want to make sure that if I’m having a meeting that it’s actually productive and we’re getting something done.”
But hours later the decision was made to cancel, a White House spokesman said. Instead, Obama will meet with South Korean president Park Geun-hye.
Duterte has faced condemnation from human rights campaigners, diplomats and the UN for inciting a war on drugs that, according to official figures published on Sunday, has led to 2,400 deaths in just two months......
Gautam

Manish_Sharma · Post by **Manish_Sharma** » 06 Sep 2016 05:21

Thanks Lilo ji, for posting this news:

Lilo wrote:
No ‘compassion’ for NGO in India leaves Kerry worried
SUHASINI HAIDAR VIJAITA SINGH

MHA says it will relook at FCRA ban case on Compassion International

Raising the pressure on the government on the issue of NGOs, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry voiced concerns over the treatment of American NGO Compassion International at the strategic and commercial dialogue held here this week, Indian and American officials present at the meeting confirmed to The Hindu.

Mr. Kerry’s request is the highest level at which the NGO issue has ever been taken up bilaterally, though the government’s action against Christian and climate change NGOs has been a thorn in India-U.S. relations for over six years. Officials say they may reconsider their action after the request.

According to very senior officials of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Ms. Swaraj told Mr. Kerry at the meeting: “India expects all NGOs operating here to adhere to our rules and regulations.”

However, the government also directed the MHA to look at the case again.

Kerry raised NGO issue with Sushma

According to the officials, Mr. Kerry spoke to Ms. Swaraj directly, asking that India reconsider its move to put Compassion International on its ‘prior permission’ list on March 28, cancelling its ability to transfer funds directly to NGOs in the country.

Asked whether Compassion International could now be removed from the ‘prior permission’ list, a senior North Block official told The Hindu: “We have received the request. We may consider it.”

Mr. Kerry’s request was unusual not just because it was taken up at the highest level, but because he singled out the Colorado-based Christian advocacy group for consideration, out of several U.S. NGOs currently under extra scrutiny by the MHA’s Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) division. The other NGOs are Mercy Corps, the National Endowment for Democracy and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

Compassion International had been under scrutiny for transferring funds to a Chennai-based NGO and other non-FCRA- registered NGOs, including one allegedly involved in religious conversions, an MHA official told The Hindu. “We put them on the watch list after monitoring them for many months.”

According to the data with the MHA, Compassion International was the top foreign donor during 2012-13 when it donated Rs. 183.83 crore to NGOs in India, and had been transferring approximately Rs. 150 crores every year since then until it was put on the ‘prior permission’ list.
Sikularism as practiced by "liberal" Democrats of Massa.
Atleast with Republicans these things will be overt and in your face - hence a Hindu response can be mobilized.
I must say the Indian origin Hindu americans who sanctimoniously support Hillary may as well have empty sockets for their eyes .

In understanding the US this is the most important think, that democrats are as much of crusaders-cum-cultural-genociders as republicans but in stealth mode.

See how snake kerry manages to have the ban removed from colorado's christian crusader ngo?

With trump these sorts of things will show our people and the world real ugly face of amrika, while slimey clintons, obamas and kerrys keep it stealthy.

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 06 Sep 2016 06:39

I think we need to replace BOTH Hillary Clinton AND Trump with someone else.

These two, along with their spouses and children, are setting up to be a story line for a cartoon stripe.

NRao · Post by **NRao** » 06 Sep 2016 07:02

Who is Hillary Clinton

You may need to click on the vid

Manish_Sharma · Post by **Manish_Sharma** » 06 Sep 2016 17:07

NRao wrote:I think we need to replace BOTH Hillary Clinton AND Trump with someone else.

These two, along with their spouses and children, are setting up to be a story line for a cartoon stripe.

This is the strategy VivS types have been using for long, '71 movement of 7th fleet wasn't amrika's doing... Oh it was that nickson guy , '98 pokharan sanctions weren't amrika's doing ... oh it was that clinton guy.

Now VivS is evangelising madly on behalf of clinton.

Viv S · Post by **Viv S** » 06 Sep 2016 20:10

Manish_Sharma wrote:This is the strategy VivS types have been using for long, '71 movement of 7th fleet wasn't amrika's doing... Oh it was that nickson guy , '98 pokharan sanctions weren't amrika's doing ... oh it was that clinton guy.

Cute.

Now VivS is evangelising madly on behalf of clinton.

So sorry for being concerned about a thin-skinned buffoon with impulse control issues being given 3,000 nukes with zero oversight.

Kashi · Post by **Kashi** » 07 Sep 2016 05:56

Viv S wrote:So sorry for being concerned about a thin-skinned buffoon with impulse control issues being given 3,000 nukes with zero oversight.

Are you saying that there are no checks and balances in the US system when it comes to the use of nukes..that the POTUS has unbridled authority when it comes to ordering a nuke launch?

Now that's a scary thought.

Manish_Sharma · Post by **Manish_Sharma** » 07 Sep 2016 16:32

^ Its true hence Soviets even french were worried during ronald reagan's times, on one hand this guy used to talk about how sure he is that mars has little green men who'll attack earth one day to his circle. Nuke control was in such hands for 8 years.

On the other hand Soviets had one with General Secretary and other with Defence secretary and they had to join to give the order. But it was only after Reagen that they decided to go for "Dead hand" option.

As they say about cowboy definition "if he can't screw it or ride it, then he shoots it...." thats american way.

Viv S · Post by **Viv S** » 07 Sep 2016 17:19

Kashi wrote:Are you saying that there are no checks and balances in the US system when it comes to the use of nukes..that the POTUS has unbridled authority when it comes to ordering a nuke launch?

There are no checks and balances in any country. One person alone, the head of govt, makes that call.. whether it be in the US, UK, France, Russia, China or Israel.

The idea is if the political leadership of the country (Parliament, Congress, Cabinet, Duma whatever) is struck by a first strike it shouldn't neuter the country's nuclear retaliatory capability.

In India while officially there are committees to advise the PM on the decision, there will probably be protocols allowing him absolute discretion in command authority.

Now that's a scary thought.

No its not. Well.. not until now anyway.

Whatever one may think about the the character, values, ethics of the leaders of nuclear states (whether it be Xi, Putin, Modi or Obama) they are all 'normal' people as have their predecessors been. Including Pakistan BTW (for all their sabre-rattling their leaders aren't stupid enough to use them).

Trump, in contrast, is about as abnormal as they come.

This article is worth a read for anyone interesting in the nuclear command issue:

If President Trump decided to use nukes, he could do it easily

Wednesday morning, NBC’s Joe Scarborough said something profoundly frightening about Donald Trump. In a private conversation with a foreign policy expert, Scarborough reported, Trump asked — repeatedly — why we have nuclear weapons if we don’t use them.

"Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point if we had them why can't we use them," Scarborough said.

Obviously, this isn’t gospel; it’s a thirdhand report of a conversation that may or may not have happened. But it tracks with what Trump has said publicly. When MSNBC’s Chris Matthews told Trump in March that presidents shouldn’t suggest they might use nukes, as Trump has done repeatedly, the candidate responded with a question: "Then why do we make them?"

This raises some very, very scary questions about Trump’s judgment. It suggests that he doesn’t know the basic way nuclear weapons are supposed to work — deterring attacks on the United States — and that he might be the first president since Harry Truman to order the use of nuclear weapons.

The natural question to ask, then, is whether he could actually do that. The answer is deceptively simple: Yes, he can. No matter what.

The president has basically unconstrained authority to use nuclear weapons, a seemingly insane system that flows pretty logically from America’s strategic doctrine on nuclear weapons. The US needs a system to launch weapons fast for deterrence to work properly, which means one person needs to be able to order the use of nukes basically unencumbered. The president is the only possible choice.

This entire system, however, is built around a basic faith in democracy: that the American people will elect a sober, stable leader who understands the seriousness of nuclear weapons. Someone not named Donald Trump.

In 2008, then–Vice President Dick Cheney said something pretty chilling about nuclear weapons during a Fox News appearance. According to Cheney, the president is always accompanied by a military aide carrying a briefcase, called the "nuclear football," which allows the president to launch nuclear weapons. The president can launch at whomever, whenever:
_____________________________________________

He could launch a kind of devastating attack the world's never seen. He doesn't have to check with anybody. He doesn't have to call the Congress. He doesn't have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in.
_____________________________________________

This may sound like Cheneyian hyperbole. But Ron Rosenbaum, a journalist who wrote a book about America’s nuclear weapons, looked into Cheney’s claims as part of a 2011 Slate piece. He concluded that they were basically accurate.

"No one could come up with a definitive constitutional refutation of this," Rosenbaum writes. "Any president could, on his own, leave a room, and in 25 minutes, 70 million (or more than that) would be dead."

Now, there’s a slight wrinkle: The secretary of defense is required to verify the president’s order to launch. But he or she doesn’t have veto power. If the president orders a nuclear launch, the secretary is legally obligated to do it. He or she could theoretically choose to resign rather than carry out the order, but then it would fall to the secretary’s second-in-command to order the strike.

"It's up to the president," Kingston Reif, the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, tells me. "The advisers that make up the national command authority are obliged to obey and execute the order."

This may sound insane. But to understand why it works this way, you need to understand a little about how the US government thinks about nuclear weapons.

America’s nuclear system has been designed with an eye toward MAD — mutually assured destruction. That’s the idea that no country would nuke the United States first if it knew America would be able to launch a devastating response. Every US nuclear system is thus designed around establishing deterrence: making sure other countries can be certain that the US will be able to nuke them back no matter what.

The US being able to launch fast is a key part of this system. It takes roughly 30 minutes for a nuclear missile to travel between Russia and the United States; Moscow needs to know that the US can respond before then. Otherwise, it might be tempted to nuke Washington in an attempt to destroy the US government before anyone could order retaliation.

Hence why the system has no formal checks on the president’s authority to order nukes. Serious constraints would, according to standard nuclear deterrence theory, make a nuclear attack more likely.

At the same time, you also don’t want a rogue military officer going off and launching nukes on his own. You need a system that allows the president to launch nuclear weapons quickly, but also one that ensures the launcher has proper identification and that it is nuking the right countries (you don’t want to hit China if Russia is the actual one launching nukes).

The nuclear football system, developed as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis, is a way to accomplish both goals. The football is designed to verify the president’s identity — using a code card, called "the Biscuit," that the president carries at all times — while also allowing for near-immediate nuclear launch potential. Scientific American’s Michael Dobbs explains how:
____________________________________________

Contrary to popular belief, the Football does not actually contain a big red button for launching a nuclear war. Its primary purpose is to confirm the president’s identity, and it allows him to communicate with the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon, which monitors worldwide nuclear threats and can order an instant response. The Football also provides the commander in chief with a simplified menu of nuclear strike options — allowing him to decide, for example, whether to destroy all of America’s enemies in one fell swoop or to limit himself to obliterating only Moscow or Pyongyang or Beijing.
_____________________________________________

Dobbs, a former military aide to President Clinton, described the targeting options as a "Denny’s breakfast menu," allowing presidents to pick "one [target] out of Column A and two out of Column B."

A few ISIS-held cities here, a few Chinese nuclear silos there: President Donald Trump could order a nuclear strike about as easily as you or I could order a Grand Slam breakfast.

You might think this system would be incredibly destabilizing — that leaders of other countries might have been terrified about a US president deciding that nukes are a simple way to solve a hard policy problem.

But it hasn’t been. There’s a reason for that, going back to World War II — one that Trump might not fully appreciate.

After Harry Truman used the bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the horrific consequences of nuclear use became abundantly clear. Truman himself came to believe that the US should never use nuclear weapons as ordinary weapons of war. He refused to use them in the Korean War, even when China’s entry turned the tide against America, for this reason.

"You have got to understand that this isn’t a military weapon," Truman said in April 1948. "It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses. So we have got to treat this differently from rifles and cannon and ordinary things like that."

Truman’s apprehension became widely shared, helping create something scholars now call the "nuclear taboo."

The US and other world powers don’t see nuclear weapons simply as bigger bombs. They see them as qualitatively different from conventional weapons: something that cannot be used in the ordinary course of war. No one talked about America using nukes during the Iraq War or Russia using nukes against Chechen rebels, because the very idea of using such a destructive weapon under such mundane circumstances is unthinkable.

"A powerful taboo against the use of nuclear weapons has developed in the global system, which, although not (yet) a fully robust prohibition, has stigmatized nuclear weapons as unacceptable weapons," Nina Tannenwald, a professor of international relations at Brown University, writes in her groundbreaking book on the taboo. "The effect of this taboo has been to delegitimize nuclear weapons as weapons of war."

Presidents since Truman have, to varying degrees, accepted this norm. While US nuclear doctrine doesn’t formally rule out the offensive use of nuclear weapons, it’s basically understood that a president wouldn’t consider using nukes unless America had somehow gotten involved in a shooting war with a nuclear power, like Russia or China, and that things would have to have gone very wrong.

This is because past US presidents have appreciated the seriousness of nuclear weapons. Say what you will about either George W. Bush or Barack Obama, but their foreign policy ideas and advisers all came from basically mainstream traditions that understood the reasons the US doesn’t use nukes as a matter of course. Ditto Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and on down the line.

Trump, by contrast, has basically no understanding of foreign policy. His ideas are a wacko, instinctive melange, ranging from breaking up American alliances to colonizing Iraq for its oil. There’s no guarantee he understands why the United States has traditionally seen nuclear weapons as deterrents, to be used only under the rarest of circumstances.

His comments on nuclear weapons, specifically, give little reason for us to trust him. At a December Republican debate, radio host Hugh Hewitt asked him about the "nuclear triad" — the three different ways the US can deliver nuclear weapons (bomber aircraft, submarines, and land-based missiles). Here’s what Trump said:
_____________________________________________

Well, first of all, I think we need somebody absolutely that we can trust, who is totally responsible, who really knows what he or she is doing. That is so powerful and so important. And one of the things that I'm frankly most proud of is that in 2003, 2004, I was totally against going into Iraq because you're going to destabilize the Middle East. I called it. I called it very strongly. And it was very important.

But we have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ball game. Frankly, I would have said get out of Syria; get out—if we didn't have the power of weaponry today. The power is so massive that we can't just leave areas that 50 years ago or 75 years ago we wouldn't care. It was hand-to-hand combat.

The biggest problem this world has today is not President Obama with global warming, which is inconceivable, this is what he's saying. The biggest problem we have is nuclear—nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That's in my opinion, that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.
_____________________________________________

It’s not clear, in this mostly incoherent answer, that Trump actually knows what the triad is. When Hewitt pressed him, Trump answered with a single line: "I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me."

Clearly, Trump doesn’t know the most basic thing about nuclear weapons — how the United States can launch them. This level of ignorance about the literal facts of nuclear weapons, together with his generally uneducated approach to policy, means it’s very likely he also doesn’t understand the strategic role of nuclear weapons.

Trump might order the use of nuclear weapons against ISIS — indeed, he has refused to rule it out in interviews — just because he has promised to wipe out the terrorist threat. We cannot know that he takes nuclear weapons as seriously he should.

The other reason for concern is his character.

After the Watergate scandal broke, and President Nixon became increasingly embattled politically, he turned to drink as a source of comfort. This freaked out Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, who worried that an erratic, drunk Nixon might order a nuclear launch out of pique. Schlesinger told aides in the Pentagon war room to check with him if Nixon started talking to them about launching nukes.

Thankfully, Nixon didn’t do it. But the worry with Trump is similar: His character is so erratic that he might order a nuclear launch just because he’s mad at someone.

Think of all the bizarre feuds Trump has gotten himself into: Ghazala Khan, random fire marshals, a woman with a baby at his rally, the "short-fingered vulgarian" incident. In all of them, he has displayed a similar pattern: irrational overreaction to perceived insults and slights.

Now imagine that same tendency to overreact to insults, only with Trump’s finger on the nuclear button. Would he order a nuclear strike on a country merely because he felt its leader had disrespected him?

I hope not. But the truth is that we don’t know — which makes every stray Trump comment about nukes, even thinly sourced speculation like Scarborough’s, deeply terrifying.

Manish_Sharma · Post by **Manish_Sharma** » 07 Sep 2016 17:28

^ All fallacy that truman himself believed nuclear bomb should never be used as normal bomb. Genocidal US used orange x on ordinary citizens of vietnam.

And same US deployed Nasr type subkilotan battlefield warheads against Soviet 15000 tank army in europe.

I tell you these johnsons, carters, clintons they all seem human but actually they are as mad as ronald reagen and trump types, just a little scratch they reveal themselves as genocidal churchill who obliterated big part of bengali population saying "....Indians breed like rabbits anyway..."

Soviets were always scared of mentally sick ronald reagen launching nukes.

VivS is lying again by saying that Soviets had nukes in single hand. They didn't They had to launch laptops one with Defence Secretary and other with General Secretary. Merkalya the deadhand was commission in reaction to madman reagen.

Viv S · Post by **Viv S** » 07 Sep 2016 17:58

Apparently nobody told Sharmaji that the USSR and Russia are not the same country. Not that he got the Soviet system right either. There's no such thing as a 'launch laptop'.

Primarily nuclear launch authority in Russia meanwhile lies in hands of the Russian President and his decision is not vetoable.

The Russian Nuclear Button

In the event of a nuclear missile attack on Russia, three hard-shell briefcases filled with electronics are set to alert their holders simultaneously. Inside each is a portable terminal, linked to the command and control network for Russia’s strategic nuclear forces. One of them accompanies the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, wherever he goes. It is known as the Cheget, and allows the president to monitor a missile crisis, make decisions, and transmit those decisions to the military. It’s similar to the nuclear "football" that accompanies the American president.

But a new book by a leading Russian security analyst points to a surprising disconnect in the system, a potential flaw that has not been widely understood. Under Russia’s 1993 Constitution, the president is the commander in chief, and if incapacitated in any way, all of his duties fall to the prime minister. Yet the prime minister does not have a nuclear briefcase at his disposal. The other two Cheget briefcases are actually held by the defense minister and the chief of the general staff, as was the case in Soviet times. The resulting ambiguity, warns Alexei Arbatov, could be dangerous in the event of a nuclear crisis. In today’s Russia, neither of the military men has the constitutional or legal responsibility to make a decision about how or whether to launch a nuclear attack. Certainly, they would be among the top advisors to the president at a time of crisis, but they are not decision-makers.

The Soviet Union created the current command and control system at the peak of the Cold War in the early 1980s. The three nuclear briefcases were put on duty just as Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader in 1985. They are linked to a redundant network, called Kavkaz, made of cables, radio transmissions, and satellites. The three briefcases are essentially communications terminals to give those using them information about a possible attack, and allowing them to consult with each other. Initially, they were given to the Soviet general secretary, defense minister, and chief of the general staff because, in the Soviet system, the military has historically played a larger role in decisions about nuclear war. If a nuclear launch were ordered, it would go from the Cheget to a receiving terminal called Baksan, located at the command posts of the General Staff, rocket forces, navy, and air force. The overall communications network is called Kazbek.

The Cheget does not by itself contain a nuclear button. Rather, it is a transmission system for permission to launch. The launch permission would be received by the military, and distributed by them to the proper branch of service and the weapons crews.

Adventures of the "Nuclear Briefcase": A Russian Document Analysis - by Mikhail Tsypkin

The attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev on August 18-21, 1991, provides an intriguing case study of interaction between politics, government communications, and command and control of nuclear weapons. During these days, the legitimate leader of the Soviet superpower, President Mikhail Gorbachev, was held incommunicado under house arrest; he was replaced by his most unprepossessing and visibly shaky Vice-president Gennady Yanaev, who was only a figurehead for a junta named the Emergency Committee; and the military custodians of the Soviet nuclear might seemed to be split between those supporting the coup and those trying to sit it out on a fence. Who was in charge of the Soviet strategic nuclear weapons? Have the Russian leaders learned any lessons for the future from this episode?

At the pinnacle of the command and control of the Soviet (and today's Russian) Strategic Nuclear Forces (SNF) is the "nuclear briefcase" code-named Cheget: It is portable equipment, installed in a briefcase, that can be used by the civilian commander in chief "to prepare and issue authorization for the use of nuclear weapons." Wherever the civilian commander in chief is, the Cheget follows him. It is connected to the special communications system of the national leadership code-named Kavkaz, which "supports communication between senior government officials while they are making the decision whether to use nuclear weapons, and in its own turn is plugged into the special communication system Kazbek, which embraces all the individuals and agencies involved in command and control of the SNF." It is usually assumed that the nuclear briefcases are also issued to the Minister of Defense and Chief of General Staff.

Well-informed sources suggest that this trio agreed to prevent the conspirators from issuing commands to the strategic nuclear forces, and switching the strategic C3 system to a manual mode.[10] Moreover, once Gorbachev's "nuclear briefcase" vanished, operators in Moscow deactivated the two remaining Chegets, issued to the Minister of Defense Yazov and Chief of General Staff Moiseev. Yanaev was denied access to the aforementioned special communication system Kazbek, which excluded him from any involvement in decision-making on nuclear weapons use. The Soviet nuclear arsenal was not disabled: according to no lesser authority than Yuri Maslyukov, the head of the Soviet Military-Industrial Commission (the body which supervised the Soviet defense industry), the General Staff could launch a retaliatory nuclear strike without a presidential authorization.

The technical barriers made it practically impossible for one faction in the political-military leadership to seize command and control of the superpower's strategic nuclear weapons. The weakness, however, was political, not technical. The KGB easily cut President Gorbachev's communications (which they controlled), while the keepers of the "nuclear briefcase" and their supervisors in the General Staff accepted the secret police's arrogant violation of the chain of command with habitual humility born out of the decades of nearly superstitious fear of the KGB and its even more sinister predecessors.

Manish_Sharma · Post by **Manish_Sharma** » 07 Sep 2016 18:42

^Thank you for proving my point, I nettled you enough to provide by yourself the SUCCESSFUL SOVIET CHECKS AND BALANCES DURING GORBACHEV - GENNADY YAYANEV ; The Chess playing Soviets not only disabled the highjacking rebels control on nuke-laptops, but still retained the capability to strike back at enemies. If this isn't checks and balance than what is?

Oh how many of these laptos/suitcases/briefcases do american defence secretary etc. carry? None no checks and balances it is only in one single thumb, it could be christian crusader maniac sick minded ronald reagen for all one knows.

I remember george bush senior had said at the end of Gennady saga on cnn that "...we were tracking both the briefcases during crises through satellites..."

Viv S · Post by **Viv S** » 07 Sep 2016 20:09

FYI the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. My statement which you apparently had trouble comprehending referred to Russia i.e the Russian Federation.

Also for record, the fact that the General Staff could launch a nuclear attack WITHOUT authorization from the Soviet Premier or Minister of Defence is not an example of 'checks-and-balances'. It is the exact opposite of that.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 07 Sep 2016 20:14

Hannity interview with Julian Assange : Clinton's email scandals

Manish_Sharma · Post by **Manish_Sharma** » 07 Sep 2016 21:13

Viv S wrote:FYI the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. My statement which you apparently had trouble comprehending referred to Russia i.e the Russian Federation.

Also for record, the fact that the General Staff could launch a nuclear attack WITHOUT authorization from the Soviet Premier or Minister of Defence is not an example of 'checks-and-balances'. It is the exact opposite of that.

I never said Soviet Union exist after 1991. I specially used words Soviets and Russia to differentiate the time. That psycho president ronald reagen and no checks balances US policy forced Soviets who had the nuclear control launch to be only launched together by General Secretary and Defence Secretary to Merkalaya dead hand.

That they didn't launch but could have in US-NATO attacked shows the successful checks and balances which US doesn't have. Hence you fear trump it shows the failure of your US system. While those Soviet leaders who were portrayed as warmongers by ian fleming, western media, forsyth and your types showed far more depth and maturity.

Why bush senior said on cnn then at the time of gennady saga that they kept track of both the briefcases/laptops/suitcases? Why both? Why not all 3.

It proves that without both it couldn't be launched.

Viv S · Post by **Viv S** » 07 Sep 2016 22:24

Manish_Sharma wrote:I never said Soviet Union exist after 1991. I specially used words Soviets and Russia to differentiate the time.

This is what I said -

There are no checks and balances in any country. One person alone, the head of govt, makes that call.. whether it be in the US, UK, France, Russia, China or Israel.

This is what you responded with -

VivS is lying again by saying that Soviets had nukes in single hand. They didn't

Its quite clear who's lying.

That psycho president ronald reagen and no checks balances US policy forced Soviets who had the nuclear control launch to be only launched together by General Secretary and Defence Secretary to Merkalaya dead hand.

The General Staff could launch a nuclear attack WITHOUT authorization from the President or Defence Minister, let alone both of them.

Manish_Sharma · Post by **Manish_Sharma** » 07 Sep 2016 23:13

Read it slowly and try to understand your own mistake.

Obama goes to russia, russians kill him sneakily and his entire entourage, take hold of 'nuke laptop' and launch nuke strike on usa, then who will retaliate? Would usa not be able to launch 'cause obama was the only one who could launch? If still USA launches would it be a failure of one man president could launch system?

Soviet nuke launch system went through the ringer and yet came out shining. But you americans are trouser-shivering at the thought of trump holding the futball, though a much worse man reagan held it.

Viv S · Post by **Viv S** » 07 Sep 2016 23:39

Manish_Sharma wrote:Read it slowly and try to understand your own mistake.

Right... perhaps you should first stop trying to use USSR and Russia interchangeably.

Obama goes to russia, russians kill him sneakily and his entire entourage, take hold of 'nuke laptop' and launch nuke strike on usa, then who will retaliate? Would usa not be able to launch 'cause obama was the only one who could launch? If still USA launches would it be a failure of one man president could launch system?

There's no such thing as a 'nuke laptop'. Command authority passes down presidential line of succession (in the event of death or resignation or incapacity). The Joint Chiefs of Staff get absolutely no vote in the matter let alone authority over launch control (unlike the Soviet General Staff).

And please save the 'sneakily kill POTUS' B-movie plot for your screenplay.

Soviet nuke launch system went through the ringer and yet came out shining. But you americans are trouser-shivering at the thought of trump holding the futball, though a much worse man reagan held it.

Typical Trumpet defence - ignore our lunatic because because that guy (who never launched any nukes) was so much worse.

Manish_Sharma · Post by **Manish_Sharma** » 08 Sep 2016 00:10

There is no trumpet defence, good thing about trump types is that they are actually trumpets of american christian crusade, trump types expose the hidden stealthy imperialism of US, which bans democratically elected Chief Minister Modi but welcomes army dictator-cum-genocider musharraf.

Even now snake kerry has pressurised Mrs. Sushma Swaraj Minister of External affairs to lift ban of colorado's christian ngo 'compassion' so they can do cultural genocide of hindu way of life. That's what disturbs americans. When silent soul harvestation is happening, why have this buffoon trumpeting all about it to the world.

Rajiv Malhotra has mentioned that in the beginning one point in Human Rights was also kept about genocide of cultures, but at US and vatican insistence it was removed.

Hope trumpet wins aur amrikan krusade ki duggi peet dey !!!

panduranghari · Post by **panduranghari** » 10 Sep 2016 13:38

I would recommend reading George Washington's farewell speech on 1796. Apparently it was ghostwritten by James Madison (father of modern day republicans) and Alexander Hamilton (father of modern day Democrats). Both were intellectually opposed to each other but agreed.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

Many a things Americans are not doing today that Washington wanted them to do. He must be spinning in his grave.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 13 Sep 2016 05:01

svinayak wrote:This compromise between the president from the Republican party in agreement by the democratic party is practiced in US

The election in 2016 is also going through the same bargaining and democrats may concede the president to the republicans maybe after sept or oct

Might already be happening with the Hillary's 9/11 overheating episode.

Kannan · Post by **Kannan** » 13 Sep 2016 12:12

Manish_Sharma wrote:Read it slowly and try to understand your own mistake.

Obama goes to russia, russians kill him sneakily and his entire entourage, take hold of 'nuke laptop' and launch nuke strike on usa, then who will retaliate? Would usa not be able to launch 'cause obama was the only one who could launch? If still USA launches would it be a failure of one man president could launch system?

Soviet nuke launch system went through the ringer and yet came out shining. But you americans are trouser-shivering at the thought of trump holding the futball, though a much worse man reagan held it.

Are you actually serious? You think this is the way the world actually works?