The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions brought about by Britain's ongoing war with France, the impressment of American merchant sailors into the Royal Navy, British support of American Indian tribes against American expansion, outrage over insults to national honour after humiliations on the high seas and possible American desire to annex Canada [3]. Tied down in Europe until 1814, the British at first used defensive strategy, repelling multiple American invasions of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. However, the Americans gained control over Lake Erie in 1813, seized parts of western Ontario, and ended the prospect of an Indian confederacy and an independent Indian state in the Midwest under British sponsorship. In the Southwest, General Andrew Jackson destroyed the military strength of the Creek nation at theBattle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. With the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, the British adopted a more aggressive strategy, sending in three large invasion armies. The British victory at the Battle of Bladensburg in August 1814 allowed them to capture and burn Washington, D.C. American victories in September 1814 and January 1815 repulsed all three British invasions in New York, Baltimore and New Orleans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812

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The Mexican–American War, also known as the First American Intervention, the Mexican War, or the U.S.–Mexican War,[4][5] was an armed conflict between the United States of America and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered part of its territory despite the 1836 Texas Revolution.

Update January 12, 2011: First WikiLeaks’ Cable Mentioning UFOs Released

A new report circulating in the Kremlin today prepared for President Medvedev by Russian Space Forces (VKS) 45th Division of Space Control says that an upcoming WikiLeaks release of secret US cables details that the Americans have been “engaged” since 2004 in a “war” against UFO’s based on or near the Continent of Antarctica, particularly the Southern Ocean.

According to this report, the United States went to its highest alert level on June 10, 2004 after a massive fleet of UFO’s “suddenly emerged” from the Southern Ocean and approached Guadalajara, Mexico barely 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) from the American border. Prior to reaching the US border, however, this massive UFO fleet is said in this report to have “dimensionally returned” to their Southern Ocean “home base”.

The fears of the Americans regarding these Southern Ocean UFO’s began, this report says, during the unprecedented events of July 11, 1991 (referred to as 7/11) when during the Solar Eclipse these mysterious aircraft appeared by the hundreds over nearly all of Mexico, even their Capital city. Most notable about the events of 7/11 were that as millions of Mexicans were watching on their televisions the National broadcasts of these UFO’s over Mexico City, the American media refused to allow their people to view it.

http://www.eutimes.net/2010/12/wikileaks-set-to-reveal-us-ufo-war-in-southern-ocean/

The Australian-American Alliance is a constant feature of national politics since at least the Pacific War and certainly since the formalisation of the ANZUS Treaty in 1951. Even so, it remains central to the contemporary political debate.

On the ABC TV Four Corners program last night, Major-General John Cantwell reflected on the challenges he faced when commanding forces in Afghanistan. The retired general wondered how he could tell individual soldiers and their families that serving alongside NATO forces in Afghanistan was worth it in view of the potential sacrifice involved. However, he acknowledged that "at the highest level of strategy" the Australian-American alliance, and the mutual obligations that go with it, are of importance to Australia.

In yesterday's Australian, Sydney University historian James Curran described the tension that developed between the then-new Whitlam Labor government and the Nixon administration in 1973 and early 1974. This led the Americans to query the value of the alliance and to consider the re-location of US intelligence-gathering installations located in Australia.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/leftwing-critique-of-us-alliance-is-a-little-hit-and-myth-20120416-1x3p8.html#ixzz1sHTkHjqk

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Once again, Geerard Henderson gives us his fanciful version of stuff... But the truth is that since becoming a "country" on its own on 1 January 1901, Australia has participated in all the major conflicts in which Yamerika has been involved in... The mention of Whitlam is topical — as when Whitlam decided to remove Aussie troops from the war in Vietnam, the US administration cut the Aussie beef quota to the US forthwith. This led to price of beef and sheep plummet in this country... The US had decided to harm the Aussie economy for what they considered desertion before the Aussie were asked to retreat, which the Yanks eventually did. 

As Tom Brokaw noted the next day on “Meet the Press,” it’s time to rethink the “glittering” annual dinner. The event, he said, “separates the press from the people they’re supposed to serve, symbolically.”

The decline of power has been happening for a while. In 1987, I wrote a piece for this magazine called “The Party’s Over.” In it, I chronicled the demise of the Washington hostess. That was 25 years ago, and people were complaining even then that Washington would never be the same.

But power still trumped money in those days. Today, money trumps power. If Katharine Graham, the late publisher of The Washington Post, were having a party today, and politicians or statesmen received a conflicting invitation to a party put together by Sheldon Adelson (Gingrich’s super PAC guy), where do you think people would go? Adelson. No question. Now, at a party, if you find people staring over your shoulder to see who’s more important in the room, they’re usually looking at someone rich, rather than someone powerful. (Or perhaps they’re staring at themselves in a mirror, as I once observed.)

Power in Washington used to be centered on the White House, the Congress, the Cabinet, the diplomatic corps and the journalists. Today, all of those groups depend on money for their very existence. The real power lies with the lobbyists, the money-raisers, the super PACs, the bundlers, the corporations and rich people. The hottest ticket on the planet is not an invitation to the White House but an invitation to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/sally-quinn-announces-the-end-of-power-in-washington/2012/06/07/gJQA6iTcMV_story.html?hpid=z5

Members of Congress trade in companies while making laws that affect those same firms

One-hundred-thirty members of Congress or their families have traded stocks collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars in companies lobbying on bills that came before their committees, a practice that is permitted under current ethics rules, a Washington Post analysis has found.

The lawmakers bought and sold a total of between $85 million and $218 million in 323 companies registered to lobby on legislation that appeared before them, according to an examination of all 45,000 individual congressional stock transactions contained in computerized financial disclosure data from 2007 to 2010.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/members-of-congress-trade-in-companies-while-making-laws-that-affect-those-same-firms/2012/06/23/gJQAlXwVyV_print.html

This week, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. On its own, such a vote would be unremarkable. Republicans control the House, they oppose President Obama’s health reform law, and so they voted to get rid of it.

But here’s the punchline: This was the 33rd time they voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Holding that vote once makes sense. Republicans had promised that much during the 2010 campaign. But 33 times? If doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result makes you insane, what does doing the same thing 33 times and expecting a different result make you?

Well, it makes you the 112th Congress.

Hating on Congress is a beloved American tradition. Hence Mark Twain’s old joke, “Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” But the 112th Congress is no ordinary congress. It’s a very bad, no good, terrible Congress. It is, in fact, one of the very worst congresses we have ever had. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/07/13/13-reasons-why-this-is-the-worst-congress-ever/?hpid=z7

Here, in Australian, the opposition (akin to the GOP in the US), the Liberal (conservatives plods) have tried to enforce a standing order motion at least SIXTY SIX TIMES to stop the proper government from operating...

In politics, seemingly small events can have a disproportionately large effect. Remember the repercussions of ‘that handshake’ – the one Mark Latham gave John Howard at a TV studio door during the 2004 election campaign, a handshake that journalists deemed to be overly aggressive, too confronting, the tall man hovering threateningly over the shorter. While media reaction was over-the-top, that event signaled the weakening of Latham’s campaign, which steadily declined to end in defeat. Remember Kim Beasley’s confusing the name of Karl Rove, George Bush’s adviser and deputy chief of staff, with that of Rove McManus, our own TV entertainer. An innocent slip, but magnified by the media as a sign of Beasley’s incapacity to become PM, his unsuitability for this high office. Beasley never recovered from this seemingly small memory lapse. 

In the same way, we have to ask whether Abbott’s “Gillard won’t lie down and die” was a momentous admission of concern that events are not unfolding as he predicted, or had hoped they would; an expression of anxiety, even fear that the certainty of winning the next election was receding. Anxiety and fear engender uncertainty and doubt, which in turn fosters more anxiety, more fear, which is so corrosive of confidence. 

What precipitated Abbott’s admission? 

Let’s go back to the beginning. Read again The pugilistic politician written on 10 December 2009, ten days after Abbott’s ascension to leadership. Here are some excerpts. After recalling his boxing exploits at Oxford where flattening his opponents to the canvass in the first round was his aim, I wrote this: ”… suddenly, and for most unexpectedly, he became Leader of the Opposition last week, and found himself thrown into the spotlight, with nothing much in the ledger but opposition to almost everything the Government was trying to do, trenchant opposition to the Government’s ETS leading to its defeat, a heap of political baggage, a mediocre team, a disgruntled ex-leader, and very poor popularity ratings in the opinion polls.”Later in that piece there was this: ”Abbott intends to criticise everything the Government does, to fight everything it attempts to do, to refuse to collaborate on anything, and to decline to reveal any policies until the last moment…”

http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/2012/05/default.aspx

Tony Abbott is a dangerous idiot...

The iconic red sandstone used to build the Smithsonian Castle, one of Washington’s most recognizable buildings, was quarried by slaves, including some who were once most likely owned by Martha Washington, according to new historical research to be published Thursday.

The discovery by anthropology professor Mark Auslander adds to what has been a years-long reckoning with slavery’s role in Washington landmarks, including the Capitol and the White House, and adds nuance to the historical portrait of the Smithsonian Castle, which was built between 1847 and 1855.

Auslander, a native Washingtonian, said in an interview that the Smithsonian has been reluctant over the years to address whether slave labor might have played a part in the history of the Castle. “It’s just an area of total silence,” said Auslander, whose findings are to be unveiled in Southern Spaces, an online, peer-reviewed journal published in cooperation with Emory University’s Robert W. Woodruff Library. “The Smithsonian hasn’t gone through the truth-and-reconciliation process that a lot of institutions have gone through. But I think there’s a willingness to do so.”

Smithsonian officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Auslander, who teaches at Central Washington University, does not contend that slaves participated directly in the building of the Castle, beyond the hard, perilous work of quarrying the stone. In this way, the Smithsonian appears to differ from the White House and the Capitol, which were partially built by slaves.

He says that references to unnamed “colored men” on a Smithsonian landscaping work order suggest that slaves could have labored at the construction site. If they had been free African American men, their names probably would have been listed, said Auslander, the author of the book “The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of the American South.”

Auslander plumbed old Smithsonian ledger books, with the permission of Smithsonian officials, while he was a senior fellow at the National Museum of African Art last year. The sandstone, he learned, was bought from a quarry in the community of Seneca in Montgomery County. That quarry was owned by John Parke Custis Peter, a great-grandson of Martha Washington’s who had inherited slaves she once owned. (George Washington had famously freed his slaves in his will, but his wife retained slaves she had owned during a previous marriage.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/researcher-finds-slaves-quarried-sandstone-used-to-build-smithsonian-castle/2012/12/12/381c1762-44a5-11e2-9648-a2c323a991d6_print.html

see also story at top...

House Ignores Storm Relief, to Fury of Local Republicans
By MARC SANTORA

Elected officials from the New York area erupted with outrage on Wednesday after the House refused to take up a federal aid package for states that suffered damages from Hurricane Sandy, and even local Republicans blasted their Congressional leaders for their inaction.

“I’m saying right now, anyone from New York or New Jersey who contributes one penny to Congressional Republicans is out of their minds,” Representative Peter T. King, a Long Island Republican, said during an interview on CNN on Wednesday morning. “Because what they did last night was put a knife in the back of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans. It was an absolute disgrace.”

Gov. Chris Christie, a New Jersey Republican, furiously accused the Congressional leadership of his own party of duplicity and selfishness, and called the decision not to hold a vote on the storm-relief measure irresponsible. He said the legislation had fallen victim to “palace intrigue,” and “it’s why the American people hate Congress.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/nyregion/congressional-       

Carlos Lozada is Outlook editor of The Washington Post. Follow him on Twitter: @carloslozadaWP

Mark Leibovich toyed with several titles for his new book on self-interest, self-importance and self-perpetuation in the nation’s capital. “Suck-Up City” was one. “The Club” was another. Finally, he settled on “This Town,” a nod, he explains, to the “faux disgust” with which people here refer to their natural habitat.

It’s not bad, but the longer I roamed around “This Town,” the more I thought Leibovich should have borrowed Newsweek’s memorable post-Sept. 11, 2001, cover line: “Why They Hate Us.” His tour through Washington only feeds the worst suspicions anyone can have about the place — a land driven by insecurity, hypocrisy and cable hits, where friendships are transactional, blind-copying is rampant and acts of public service appear largely accidental.

Only two things keep you turning pages between gulps of Pepto: First, in Leibovich’s hands, this state of affairs is not just depressing, it’s also kind of funny. Second, you want to know whether the author thinks anyone in Washington — anyone at all? — is worthy of redemption.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/review-of-mark-leibovichs-this-town/2013/07/03/5d882b8c-de9f-11e2-b94a-452948b95ca8_print.html

see picture at top...

The day began like so many days in Washington, with a painfully long meeting marked by confusion, misinformation and indecision.

The British were coming. They were on the march in the general direction of Washington. The precise target of the invaders remained unclear, but their intentions were surely malign.

James Madison, the fourth president of these young United States, had raced to a private home near the Navy Yard for an emergency war council with top generals and members of his Cabinet. The secretary of war, John Armstrong — conspicuously late for the meeting — had argued in recent days that the British would not possibly attack Washington, because it was too unimportant, with just 8,000 inhabitants and a few grandiose government buildings scattered at a great distance from one another.

“They certainly will not come here. What the devil will they do here? No! No! Baltimore is the place, sir. That is of so much more consequence,” Armstrong had declared.

The British had landed five days earlier near the head of navigable waters on the Patuxent River, southeast of Washington. There were about 4,500 of them — hardened fighters fresh from the Napoleonic wars.

Read more:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/2014/08/23/abf407ae-24bd-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html?hpid=z4

See story at top...

The British embassy in Washington has apologised after tweeting a picture of a White House cake surrounded by sparklers, "commemorating" the burning of the building 200 years ago.

The US presidential residence was set on fire by British forces in 1814 during the "War of 1812" with the United States.

A number of Twitter users said the embassy's tweet was "in poor taste".

The embassy later said: "Apologies for earlier Tweet."

It added: "We meant to mark an event in history & celebrate our strong friendship today."

'Only sparklers!'

British troops led by Maj Gen Robert Ross, from Northern Ireland, attacked and burned public buildings including the Capitol, Washington Navy Yard and the president's mansion during the conflict.

It was the only time since the American War of Independence that a foreign power has captured and occupied Washington.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28929626

See article at top...