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I Told You They Love Snitches

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From this morning’s Orlando Sentinel::

The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday afternoon appealed to civil rights groups and community leaders, nationally and in Sanford, for help investigating whether a federal criminal case might be brought against George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, one advocate said.

The DOJ has also set up a public email address to take in tips on its civil rights investigation.
Barbara Arnwine, president and executive director the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law who earlier in the day joined calls for federal civil rights charges against Zimmerman, said that later in the afternoon, she joined a U.S. Department of Justice conference call to discuss the prospects.
“They were calling on us to actively refer anyone who had any information,” that might build a case against Zimmerman for either a civil rights violation or a hate crime, Arnwine said. “They said they would very aggressively investigate this case.”
Arnwine said the call was convened at about 3:30 p.m. by Tom Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, and included representatives from the FBI, and several federal prosecutors, she said. DOJ officials also said they would open a public email address so people could send in tips on the case.
That email address, which is now in operation, is Sanford.florida@usdoj.gov.

Considerations on the N-Word

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The injudicious use of which has led to Paula Deen being booted from the Food Network, never mind that she was speaking under oath, and is a lady of a certain age and of a background where the n-word was … well, I honestly can’t say how current was the use of that word back in Paula Deen’s early days. It’s certainly scattered generously all over 19th century literary works like Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn like chocolate sprinkles on a frosted Krispy Kreme donut, and piled on by the handful in the 20th century oeuvre of rap artists and edgy comedians of color…

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History Friday: MacArthur’s Sioux Code Talkers

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I have mentioned in a previous column (https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/36669.html) that researching and understanding MacArthur’s WW2 fighting style was an exercise in frustration due to existing institutional historic narratives plus the patchwork and mayfly-like lives of some of the institutions MacArthur created and used to fight in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA). Organizations that were discarded by the US Army after WW2 and then hidden behind bureaucratic walls of classification for decades. One of my internet searches stumbled across another example of these many, small, ‘here today and gone tomorrow’, narrative busting organizations in MacArthur’s South West Pacific Theater, his Sioux Indian Code Talkers.

Unlike the much more publicized US Marine Corps Navajo Code Talker program, this smaller “Code Talker” program used Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Sioux Native American soldiers in MacArthur’s South West Pacific Theater and in Europe. The program was not declassified until the mid-1970’s and the US Army has never seen fit to publicly recognize their Sioux code talkers to the extent that the USMC has with its Navajos. It does not fit the narrative on MacArthur.

MacArthur’s Code Talker program was smaller than both the USMC program and the European Theater Comanche code talker program with the 4th Infantry Division (whose cover was blown to the Axis by the NY Times in 1940!) and was centered around the US Army’s 302nd Reconnaissance Squadron of the 1st Cavalry Division, a battalion sized horse cavalry Reconnaissance unit, that was reorganized into two company sized units, the 302nd Reconnaissance Troop (Mechanized) and the 603rd Independent Tank Company. Some of the 302nd code talkers graduated from the same course that the 6th Army Alamo Scout infiltration teams were selected from.

See this 1st Cavalry Division Association link (http://www.first-team.us/tableaux/chapt_02/) on the 1st Cav’s “Sioux Code Talkers” —

“During the fall of 1943, more changes came to the Division. On 11 October, the firepower of the Division was improved by the activation of the 271st Field Artillery. In the reorganization of 04 December, weapons troops “D” and “H” were added to each of the regiments. The 7th Reconnaissance Squadron was reorganized into the 603rd Light Tank Company and the 302nd Reconnaissance Troop (Mech). The 302nd had a specific Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E) which incorporated a unique radio unit with troops of Lakota and Dakota Indian Tribes who used their ancient tribal Sioux language to communicate with other divisional headquarters troops. This secret organization, formed in the foothills of Australia and later to be known as “The Code Talkers” was recruited at the direction of General MacArthur. The close-knit group of individuals, Phillip Stoney LeBlanc, Edmund St. John, Baptiste Pumkinseed, Eddie Eagle Boy, Guy Rondell, and John Bear King took their task seriously. They saved many American lives using their language as an unbreakable code to fool the Japanese throughout the subsequent Island Campaigns.”

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History Friday: MacArthur’s “Red Bull Dust Express”

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One of the maddening things about researching General Douglas MacArthur’s fighting style in WW2 was the way he created, used and discarded military institutions, both logistical and intelligence, in the course of his South West Pacific Area (SWPA) operations. Institutions that had little wartime publicity and have no direct organizational descendent to tell their stories in the modern American military. This is a huge problem for readers/researchers interested in World War 2 Southwest Pacific history because most modern historians have become like modern journalists. They both have lost the have lost ablity to do systematic record searches “outside the accepted narrative.” And as my previous post “MacArthur — A General Made for Convenient Lies” made clear, MacArthur’s historical narrative was written by his enemies.

A case in point of a ‘here today and gone tomorrow’ logistic institution was MacArthur’s “Red Bull Dust Express“, or more properly, “Motor Transport Command No. 1.” Unlike the fabled “Red Ball Express” that trucked supplies to Patton’s 3rd Army in it’s dash across France. The efforts of the 3,500 African-American truckers in the racially segregated 29th and 48th Quartermaster Truck Regiment’s to convoy supplies across the Australian Outback to a besieged Darwin, in the dark days of 1942, have been largely forgotten. Their story was hidden behind veils of wartime censorship, Mid-World War 2 American Army organizational restructuring and the post war demobilization.

29th Quartermaster Truck Regiment at Mt Isa, Australia

The African-American drivers of the 29th Quartermaster Truck Regiment taking a water break at Mt Isa, Australia

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America 3.0: Audio of Mike Lotus on the Radio with Dan Proft and Bruce Wolf

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A great big thank you to Dan and Bruce for having me on their radio show on WLS in Chicago today, to talk about America 3.0, the totally awesome new book from me and Jim Bennett.

The audio of the interview is here.