Politics 101

"an honest true-bred, freeborn Englishman that never in his life loved a tyrant nor feared an oppressor."-John Lilburne

"Freeborn John"
John Lilburne was arrested upon information by an informer acting for The Stationers' Company and brought before the Court of Star Chamber. Instead of being charged with an offense he was asked how he pleaded. John Lilburne demanded to be presented in English with the charges brought against him (much of the written legal work of the time was in Latin). The Court refused Lilburne's request. The court then threw him in prison and again brought him back to court and demanded a plea. Again John Lilburne demanded to know the charges brought against him.

The authorities then resorted to flogging him with a three-thonged whip on his bare back, as he was dragged by his hands tied to the rear of an ox cart from Fleet Prison to the pillory at Westminster. He was then forced to stoop in the pillory where he still managed to campaign against his censors, while distributing more unlicensed literature to the crowds. He was then gagged. Finally he was thrown in prison. He was taken back to the court and again imprisoned.

This began the first in a long series of trials that lasted throughout his life for what John Lilburne called his "freeborn rights". As a result of these trials a growing number of supporters began to call him "Freeborn John" and they even struck a medal in his honor to that effect. It is this trial that has been cited by constitutional jurists and scholars in the United States of America as being one of the historical foundations of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is also cited within the 1966 majority opinion of Miranda v. Arizona by the U.S. Supreme Court.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lilburne

FIFTH AMENDMENT [U.S. Constitution] - 'No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb, nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.'
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"While others supported civil liberties to gain their own freedom and denied it to their enemies, Lilburne grew more and more consistent in his devotion to the fundamentals of liberty, and he was an incandescent advocate. Standing trial for his life four times, he spent most of his adult years in prison and died in banishment. Yet he could easily have had positions of high preferment if he had thrown in his lot with Parliament or Cromwell. Instead, he sacrificed everything in order to be free to attack injustice from any source. He once accurately described himself as "an honest true-bred, freeborn Englishman that never in his life loved a tyrant nor feared an oppressor." In his own day he was known as Freeborn John because of his insistent references to the rights of every freeborn Englishman."

http://www.hiscovenantministries.org/scripture/silence.htm

i thought this was a politics page not american history!? can we get back to the politics at hand???

The US government tries to codify the laws of our country, print money, collect taxes, and try to provide for the common welfare of its citizens.

History is essential to understanding politics because history is politics. it's the same thing happening over and over again. Anything that has ever happened can happen again anywhere at any time.

In fact it has to happen because we our the same people we were then as we our now.

The only new thing is globalisation and even that translates into class war only world wide. One group of people trying to enslave people and take over their resources. There religion, political ideology, nationality or whatever is incidental. Theres good people and bad people.

Creator of inalienable rights
The 'Creator of inalienable rights' was put there to counter claims of monarchs' Divine Right to Rule.

Re: Creator of inalienable rights
Thanks talk72000. I'm going to check that out right now.

Devine right
n.
The doctrine that monarchs derive their right to rule directly from God and are accountable only to God.

Holly crap BUSH

The people Vs. The king

inalienable rights Vs. Divine Right.

Cambodia

In 1982, trying to remove the smell from the Khmer Rouge, the United States put together a coalition composed of the Khmer Rouge and two "non-communist" groups also opposed to the Cambodian government, one headed by former Cambodian ruler, Prince Sihanouk.
The coalition became the recipient of much aid from the US and China, mainly funneled through Thailand. The American aid, by the late 1980s, reached $5 million officially, with the CIA providing between $20 and $24 million behind Congress's back. The aid was usually referred to as "non-lethal" or "humanitarian", but any aid freed up other money to purchase military equipment in the world's arms markets. Officially, Washington was not providing any of this aid to the Khmer Rouge, but it knew full well that Pol Pot's forces were likely to be the ultimate beneficiaries. As one US official put it: "Of course, if the coalition wins, the Khmer Rouge will eat the others alive". In any event, the CIA and the Chinese were supplying arms directly as well to the Khmer Rouge.

Pol Pot's regime killed between 1.5 to 2.3 million people between 1975-1979, out of a population of approximately 8 million. The regime targeted Buddhist monks, Western educated intellectuals, people who appeared to be intelligent (for example, individuals with glasses), the crippled and lame, and ethnic minorities like ethnic Laotians and Vietnamese.

Yep, Pol Pot was another guy that tried to right all the wrongs and injustices in the world, so that some kind of utopia on earth could be created, and in order to try to do it, he killed anyone and everything standing in his way, thus accomplishing the exact opposite of what he supposedly envisioned. Can't be done. So it scares me to hear politicians begin talking about all the injustices and inequities they perceive to be everywhere. Especially when I hear it out of politicians in this country (mostly Democrats I hear in this regard), this being a country that millions are trying to come to because it offers the most opportunity for freedom and prosperity of almost any country on earth. My thought is, quit whinin and complainin and be happy for once.

Amigo, I'm not talkin to you, I'm just talking about society in general. Your point of inalienable rights is a favorite of mine too.

Who gave Pol Pot $24 million in American money? Utopian Democrats?


"What Kissinger and Nixon began, Pol Pot completed. Had the United States and China allowed it, Cambodia's suffering could have stopped when the Vietnamese finally responded to years of Khmer Rouge attacks across their border and liberated the country in January 1979. But almost immediately the United States began secretly backing Pol Pot in exile. Direct contact was made between the Reagan White House and the Khmer Rouge when Dr. Ray Cline, a former deputy director of the C.I.A., made a clandestine visit to Pol Pot's operational base inside Cambodia in November 1980. Cline was then a foreign policy adviser to President-elect Reagan. Within a year some fifty C.l.A. and other intelligence agents were running Washington's secret war against Cambodia from the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok and along the Thai-Cambodian border."


"Two U.S. relief aid workers, Linda Mason and Roger Brown, later wrote, "The U.S. government insisted that the Khmer Rouge be fed.. .the U.S. preferred that the Khmer Rouge operation benefit from the credibility of an internationally known relief operation." In 1980, under U.S. pressure, the World Food Program handed over food worth $12 million to pass on to the Khmer Rouge."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Global_Secrets_Lies/Friends_PolPot.html

I don't wish to debate the details of who supported Pol Pot. I would need to brush up on the history in terms of what was done, why, and when, not based on 20/20 hindsight. I do vaguely recall however that Jimmy Carter also had some hand in facilitating the Kmer Rouge?

We make all kinds of mistakes in who we support, and we often have a choice between bad and worse. I am sure both Republican and Democratic administrations have supported bad apples from time to time, based on the current thinking at the time.

Amigo, where do you get all the copy and paste propaganda anyway? Who is Steve Kangas and what qualifies him as expert on what happened?

okie, Haven't you learned anything? You're supposed to attack the content of the message, not the messanger. Comprende?

In other words, show that what is listed by Steve Kangas are untrue.

Attacking the messenger will get you nowhere.

I didn't attack him. I simply asked who he was and what his qualifications or expertise on the subject came from.

Perhaps you could attempt to use this newfangled thing called 'google' and find out for yourself. It took me three seconds to do so.

Cycloptichorn

If anything I have posted is bad information to your knowledge please help me correct it as I am only interested in the truth as I have been give the faculties of reason, logic and observation to know it.

The truth has no opinion or ideology. The truth is not anti-American. If you are resisting it you should ask yourself WHY?

Cyclops, I already did, but I wanted to find out from the person that is posting the long winded dissertation about all the sins of the CIA, as to why he thought the person was credible and why?

Perhaps the truth has no idealogy, so why would you think that people that might have an idealogical axe to grind is going to give you the truth? Before I would believe Mr. Kangas, I am curious about his qualifications to know the truth or even desire to tell the truth. I don't know if he had an idealogical axe to grind or not, that is why I asked if you had the inside track on the credibility of the person and why. I don't have time to spend the next year studying the history of the CIA, to determine how much of his dissertation on the CIA is correct. I suspect it is a bunch of facts mixed with an absence of other facts that if analyzed by someone else, the analysis pobably would be somewhat different, perhaps very different for some of the events. I am not naive enough to think the CIA has not made plenty of mistakes, but I do not subscribe to the conclusion that it has been as totally bad as portrayed, which I think would be just as naive. In other words, I would not think we should throw the baby out with the bath water. If the CIA can be improved, lets clean it up.

okie, You're looking at terrorist activities from a one-way mirror.

We rely on investigative reporting to tell us what our government does in our name. Our CIA is responsible for atrocities around the world, and people like you continue to look at tyrants like Saddam as if he's the only terrorist around.

Before we start wars against tyrants like Saddam, we need to look at ourselves concerning humanity and ethics. We're supposed to be the country of fair play and equality.

Your one-sided criticisms of foreign leaders leave much to be desired.

Not perhaps. The truth has no ideology. I do not believe people with an ideological axe to grind will give me the truth. You are creating a scenario that does not exist.

The faculties of reason, logic and observation (and the will to know it) are my only ways of knowing the truth.

The American foreign policies executed behind the backs of the American people by the CIA are no secret nor are they exclusive to America. They are the history of civilization. The first step to solving a problem is to aknowledge the truth of the problem.

Throw the baby out with the bath water? No, we are all in the same tub.