Category Archives: Military

Were 1200 black soldiers massacred by white soldiers in Mississippi?

Camp Van Dorn was a U.S. Army Post located in Centreville, Mississippi and served as a training camp from 1942-1945. The 364th was an all-Black regiment of soldiers that had been stationed at Camp Van Dorn in Jim Crow-era Mississippi. According to the book, "The Slaughter: An American Atrocity," black soldiers were massacred in fall of 1943.

At that time, the Army had begun intensifying its efforts to recruit Blacks, as evidenced by the WWII propaganda film "The Negro Soldier" created in 1943 by the United States Army and released in 1944, but the Army was still racially segregated.  

The 364th arrived at Camp Van Dorn in two groups on May 26, and May 28, 1943, some of whom had already survived three previous race riots, came to Centreville announcing they were going to "clean up" the base and surrounding towns and challenged Jim Crow laws at every turn. On May 29, 1943, a Black soldier, Pvt. William Walker from the regiment was detained by a white military policeman and questioned, resulting in a fight. The county sheriff arrived, the private was shot and killed by the sheriff.

Shortly after, black soldiers stormed a supply room and took a number of rifles and planned to march on the town. A crowd gathered near the regimental exchange and a riot squad made up of Black military policemen fired into the crowd. Allegedly, only one soldier was wounded by this exchange and the soldiers returned to their barracks.

According to newspaper accounts, Centreville's mayor telegrammed the governor asking that the 364th be related to the North to avoid a serious race riot. Camp Van Dorn Commander R.E. Guthrie assured the local civilians that the disturbances had been controlled by military authorities. Another near-riot broke out in July 1943 at a service club dance on the base and the 99th was called to disperse a crowd of about 2,000. 

The Army high command in Washington, D.C., warned base and regimental commanders that they were to end racial violence or lose their jobs. The 364th's Morning Reports, a kind of company-by-company daily attendance sheet, note dozens of soldiers as AWOL following the Private Walker killing and its aftermath.

Killer's Confession

Carroll Case, a white Mississippi banker, artist, and writer born in 1939, heard "hushed rumors" of a mass killing of black troops during his childhood. In 1985, William Martzell, a maintenance man at the bank where Case was president confessed to Case about his participation in a massacre at Van Dorn. 

Martzell described a night in the fall of 1943 when he and other white troops and military police armed with machine guns surrounded the 364th's barracks. As quoted by Case, Martzell said, "We had the whole area sealed off–it was like shooting fish in a barrel. We opened fire on everything that moved, shot into the barracks, shot them out of trees, where some of them were climbing, trying to hide. . . ." 

Martzell explained the black soldiers were easily killed because the firing pins had been removed from all the black soldier's rifles. In 2001 the History Channel aired a documentary about the massacre titled, "Mystery of the 364th" shown below.

Case alleged the Army planned and executed the massacre of troops from the 364th and covered it up by informing next of kin the soldiers were killed in the line of duty and the bodies were not recoverable.

The book, pressure from a Mississippi congressman, Bennie Thompson, and the NAACP caused the Army to investigate the massacre allegations.

The Army spent more than 16 months trying to disprove allegations that 1,200 black soldiers were massacred during a racial disturbance at an Army camp in Mississippi during World War II. A final report was issued by the Army on Dec. 23, 1999, stating, "There is no documentary evidence whatsoever that any unusual or inexplicable loss of personnel occurred".

The Army based some of the conclusions in its 1999 report on records it kept classified. But the Army's report is riddled with dozens of factual errors, marred by gaps, and suffers from internal contradictions and conflicts with other Army records that diminish its credibility.

Army Clerk Claims of Forged and Changed Records

Malcolm LaPlace, a former 364th soldier, who told the makers of a documentary that his signature was forged on a key document, accused the Army of covering up the deaths of fellow soldiers by listing them as AWOL in regimental journals. LaPlace, who served as the regiment's clerk, said he is the one who made the changes at the request of the regiment commander, Col. John F. Goodman, who has since died.

"I worked with Col. Goodman for day after day, month after month. I sat at a desk right outside his office door," LaPlace stated. " I recall on four different occasions he had me revise journal entries. On one occasion he provided me with information for an entry that read 20 black soldiers had been found murdered. I typed it up and gave it to him. About an hour later he came back to me and he said, 'Sergeant, I have given you the wrong information.' What he gave me now read that 20 black soldiers were AWOL. Now how in hell do you go from murdered to absent without leave? That happened on three other occasions, when it was 10 [black soldiers murdered], and then about three, then one, all the same thing."

However, LaPlace says he never saw or heard about any mass shootings at Camp Van Dorn. 

In December 1943, the remaining men of the 364th were relocated to a camp in the Aleutian Islands, off the coast of Alaska. It was then that their personnel roster began to show signs of loss. Nearly 1,000 enlisted men — a third of the regiment — disappeared from the Aleutians with no explanation. 

Analysis

Just ten years before the Camp Dorn Massacre, Gen. Smedley Butler called war a racket. U.S. officials would not have wanted anything to hamper support for the war.

More than 60 million people were killed during World War II, including 419,400 U.S. Military deaths. Generals were sending tens of thousands of men to their deaths during single battles. The government certainly would not have jeopardized an entire war effort during WWII, to tell the truth about a massacre of rebellious black soldiers, that some white officials may have considered unpatriotic.

President Nixon's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger said, “Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” Kissinger certainly wasn't the first U.S. official to believe that soldiers are pawns. When men at the highest levels of government feel this way, it's easy to understand how racist officers would have felt black soldiers were expendable. 

During World War II, when a family received word that their loved one was killed in the line of duty, missing in action or taken prisoner, they would have taken the information at face value and not questioned the truthfulness.

Unfortunately, the truth may never be known about what actually happened at Camp Dorn, but even rumors are often based on facts. I can't imagine a person near the end of his life lying about participating in a mass murder. What would he have to gain? 

The Army, on the other hand, has its reputation on the line and may be worried about the potential liability to the soldiers' families.


Part of the Court.rchp.com 2017 Black History Month Series

Billionaire President Equals Massive Military Industrial Complex Profits

In less than three weeks, President-Elect Trump will be sworn into office, on January 20, 2017. Billionaires used to be content by controlling power from behind the scenes, but not anymore. Billionaires have effectively overthrown the U.S. Government

According to Title 3 of the US Code, the US President "shall earn" a salary of  $400,000, along with a $50,000 annual expense account, a $100,000 nontaxable travel account, and $19,000 for entertainment. In a tweet, Trump stated, "I won't take even one dollar. I'm totally giving up my salary if I become president," but later stated on "60 Minutes" that he would take a $1 salary because the law required him to.

Billionaires earn a tremendous amount money, some as much as $37 million dollars per day. So why does a billionaire who has a history and reputation for looking out for only himself suddenly decide to spend $66 million of his own money and give up his huge earning potential to become president? 

Trump hasn't even donated to his own foundation since 2008, which is currently under multiple investigations.

Common sense requires you to consider a profit motive especially considering the President-Elect is also the author of "The Art of the Deal". As President, Trump gains incredible bargaining power with bankers, governments, and others. Trump has an estimated billion dollar debt including $300 million with Deutsche Bank which he recently renegotiated. Deutsche is currently under investigation by the U.S. Attorney General’s Office over stock trades for Russian customers. As President, Trump will choose the next Attorney General, Trump would then be the the Attorney General's boss, a significant bargaining chip.

Defense Contractors – The Military Industrial Complex

In 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower tried to warn the American public during his farewell speech to beware of the military-industrial complex. The "War Dogs" clip on our "War is a Racket" page mentions, "war is an economy; anybody who tells you otherwise is either in on or stupid". If profits are your motivation, there is not a greater engine for profits than war.

War disproportionate affects poor and minority populations. People with limited opportunities are drawn to the military more than any other segment of society. Martin Luther King Jr. expressed a chilling sentiment about war that could just as easy be expressed today; see the clip below from the documentary, "War Made Easy".

I have two draft-age sons. When Trump makes incendiary statements toward other nations, I am naturally concerned about future ramifications for my sons. Trump had a stellar education which included: The Kew-Forest School, New York Military Academy, Fordham University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, so I have no reason to believe he doesn't understand that his statements have consequences. If he understands, those consequences are part of his stategy or end game.

Trump may be the sort of billionaire mentioned in chapter 2 of "None Dare Call it Conspiracy". Trump may even have a king complex, any chess player knows that all the other pieces on the board ultimate sacrifice themselves in defense of the king. I am not interested in my son's or the sons and daughters of others, being used as pawns to increase someone else's profits.

Nuclear Buildup

Trump has mentioned expanding the United States nuclear capacity. From a profit standpoint, nothing comes close to nuclear armaments.

 One-third of the Energy Department’s budget is allocated to nuclear weapons. The United States spends an average of $20 billion per year on its nuclear arsenal. The U.S. hasn't built a new warhead since 1990, however, many of the existing warheads are being refurbished at a cost of $2 – $20 million each depending on the type. Recently, the Pentagon said it needs $200 billion dollars to modernize it's U.S. nuclear weapons.

Imagine a scenario where the United States spends hundreds of billions, maybe even trillions to build up our nuclear capacity then later sign another non-proliferation agreement where we spend billions more decommissioning many of those weapons. Can you imagine a more profitable situation? There is no profit if nukes are used, but building and then destroying nukes – very profitable.

Trump once made the following statement about Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi: "I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for two years, and then I didn't let him use the land," Trump boasted. "That's what we should be doing. I don't want to use the word 'screwed', but I screwed him." 

Now imagine a defense contractor that made hundreds of billions in profits during Trump's tenure paying billions of dollars for real estate owned by Trump years from now. See the Huffington's Post "10 Well-Kept Secrets That All Billionaires Know".

Fake News

Independent journalist using cell phones equipped with a camera and video capability have transformed how people get information. Social media brought attention to incidents that major media probably may not have even noticed on its own. The killings of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in New York, and others may have gone unnoticed if not but for cell phones and social media. 

Major media is controlled by members of the billionaire's boys club and those billionaires have lost some media influence and they want it back. Calling into question the reporting of independent journalists by labeling their product as "fake news" is an attempt to regain total control of the narrative.

Denzel Washington recently responded to a question concerning "fake news" by quoting Mark Twain, “If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”

As we mentioned in our recent corporation post, there are five corporations that control most major media outlets. Major media originally questioned whether President Elect Trump and Russian President Putin were friends.  Then the narrative changed and suddenly there is talk of sanctions and retaliation against Russia

There is a long tradition of "fake news" from the mainstream media. Since the revolutionary war, the government has used propaganda, censored information and news under the guise of national security. The Declaration of Independence contained a compelling piece of propaganda, “All men are created equal,” which conveniently ignored slaves.

The Committee on Public Information was established during the first World War. During World War II there was an official office of censorship that the CIA reports even reprimanded the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.

After Pearl Harbor, Americans had a strong sense of why the U.S. had entered the war, but by 1942, a poll showed 30% of the population had doubts. The Office of War Information began a propaganda campaign of "presenting the war in simple terms of good versus evil".

The top 50 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas contain more than a million people each, the next 50 largest contain at least half a million each and there are an additional 250 areas with at least 100,000 people. However, turn on the evening news and the same few stories are being reported by all the major networks. You would think that a country with 50 states and a population of more than 345 million people would have a number of diverse and interesting stories every day.

The real fake news story is major networks ignoring major stories that independent journalist seem to have no problem finding and reporting to same news as all the other networks. There are fake news stories in both mainstream and independent media. Use common sense and critical thinking to determine for yourself what is relevant and what is true.

Nothing would make me happier than for Trump to end up becoming a great president and for some of my assumptions and opinions to be wrong. I won't, however, hold my breath while we wait to find out. 


War Made Easy – How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death

The full 2007 documentary that attempted to show the parallels between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq and expose how the American government used the media as a propaganda tool.

 

 

Black Concentration Camps?

Food for thought

In anticipation of the Darren Wilson grand jury decision, the governor has declared a state of emergency, photos of hidden federal police vehicles parked at a hotel garage were posted on social media resulting in the firing of the hotel employee who posted the pictures, the national guard has been activated and a general sense of apprehension has gripped the area.

The video below which discusses the controversial "King Alfred Plan" a plan to control and or eliminate black and other people during civil unrest is offered as food for thought especially concerning the recent militarized police response to a mostly peaceful protest.

I am not certain when this lecture was given, but the reference to Colin Powell being the current Secretary of State, suggest during the Bush administration. Bush accepted Powell's resignation in November 2004, so this video is most likely more than a decade old. Compare the predictions with what is happening in response to the Ferguson Protest.

Rex84

Rex 84, short for Readiness Exercise 1984, was a classified scenario and drill developed by the United States federal government to detain large numbers of American citizens deemed to be "national security threats", in the event that the President declared a "State of National Emergency". The plan was first revealed in detail in a major daily newspaper by reporter Alfonso Chardy in the July 5, 1987, edition of the Miami Herald.

The existence of a master military contingency plans (of which REX-84 was a part), "Garden Plot" and a similar earlier exercise, "Lantern Spike", were originally revealed by journalist Ron Ridenhour, who summarized his findings in an article in CounterSpy. Rex 84 was similar to a plan in a 1970 report written by FEMA chief Louis Giuffrida, while at the Army War College, which proposed the detention of up to 21 million "American Negroes" if there were a black militant uprising in the United States.

Transcripts from the Iran-Contra Hearings in 1987 record the following dialogue between Congressman Jack Brooks, Oliver North's attorney Brendan Sullivan and Senator Daniel Inouye, the Democratic Chair of the joint Senate-House Committee: 

[Congressman Jack] Brooks: Colonel North, in your work at the N.S.C. were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?
Brendan Sullivan [North’s counsel, agitatedly]: Mr. Chairman?
[Senator Daniel] Inouye: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch upon that?
Brooks: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed, by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was an area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.
Inouye: May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.

Contingency plans by the US Government for rounding up people perceived by the government to be subversive or a threat to civil order have existed for many decades.[8] For example, from 1967 to 1971, the FBI kept a list of over 100,000 people to be rounded up as subversive, dubbed the "ADEX" list.

Public Policy Memorandum 23 (PP23)

Memo by George Kennan, Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff. Written February 28, 1948, Declassified June 17, 1974. George Kennan

National Security Study Memorandum 200

National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM200) was completed on December 10, 1974, by the United States National Security Council under the direction of Henry Kissinger. It was adopted as official U.S. policy by President Gerald Ford in November 1975. It was originally classified but was later declassified and obtained by researchers in the early 1990s.

The basic thesis of the memorandum was that population growth in the least developed countries (LDCs) is a concern to U.S. national security because it would tend to risk civil unrest and political instability in countries that had a high potential for economic development. The policy gives "paramount importance" to population control measures and the promotion of contraception among 13 populous countries. This is to control rapid population growth which the US deems inimical to the socio-political and economic growth of these countries and to the national interests of the United States, since the "U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad", and these countries can produce destabilizing opposition forces against the United States.

It recommends that U.S. leadership "influence national leaders" and that "improved world-wide support for population-related efforts should be sought through increased emphasis on mass media and other population education and motivation programs by the UN, USIA, and USAID."

Named countries

Thirteen countries are named in the report as particularly problematic with respect to U.S. security interests: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil. These countries are projected to create 47 percent of all world population growth.
The report advocates the promotion of education and contraception and other population control measures, stating for instance that "No country has reduced its population growth without resorting to abortion". It also raises the question of whether the U.S. should consider the preferential allocation of surplus food supplies to states that are deemed constructive in the use of population control measures.

Presidential Review Memorandum 46 

The document on the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library website is purported to be a forged document, titled Presidential Review Memorandum 46.