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The attack was a direct response to suppression aid by the people of Kansas to the Missouri raiders, which were led by Quantrill, a member of the pro-slavery Confederate forces. Lawrence is also where Union and Jayhawker forces get a headstart when they enter into Missouri.

Before the Raid

The raid was partly caused by the issuance of General Thomas Ewing Jr.’s General Order No. 10. The order commanded authorities to arrest anyone who is found sympathetic to Quantrill’s cause. Anyone who is caught is then detained automatically in Kansas City.

Unfortunately, the makeshift prison collapsed on August 13, 1863, which caused the deaths of five women who were detained in the prison. There were rumors that the building was intentionally sabotaged to collapse, as one of the inmates there were the 14-year old sister of Bloody Bill Anderson.

The Quantrill raid is also thought to be a response to the Union Jayhawker sacking of the Osceola, Missouri. The sacking was carried out by James H. Lane’s forces, who were originally organized to resist an invasion by Sterling Price into Kansas in September 1861. The town of Osceola was pillaged, looted and burned by the Kansans who carried off spoils of the attack.

The Attack

Quantrill had given much thought about the conduct of the attack in order to ensure its success. He enlisted the help of many Bushwhackers, eventually coming up with a large force of over 300 men. Quantrill also carefully selected and set up every detail of the attack, from the day and the time of the day itself.

The groups came east individually for a rendezvous a few miles from Lawrence, which was intended to be in the pre-dawn hours to catch everyone by surprise. The guerilla force converged on Mount Oread. Their objective: to loot and pillage Lawrence like what happened to Osceola, and to kill the now-senator James H. Lane. It is said that the men rode hard to make the rendezvous that they even secured themselves to the saddles so they could sleep while riding.

When all of his forces were assembled, Quantrill gave the order to ride into Lawrence. In the early hours of day, Lawrence’s townsfolk were caught in surprise as hundreds of Quantrill’s guerilla forces thundered into the town and massacred the town’s males. Echoing what happened to Osceola, Quantrilll’s men pillaged the town for four hours.

Aftermath

The guerillas concentrated their killing on the town’s male population. When the raiders left, over 180 males had been killed. Quantrill was indiscriminate between boys and men, killing both the former and the latter without mercy. They also killed 17 out 23 Army recruits that were living in Lawrence.

Quantrill’s men also burned all the business buildings in Lawrence, leaving only two standing. The stores and banks were also rid of their money before the raiders rode out of town.

Successful as they were in their objectives, Quantrill failed to kill Senator Lane. The jayhawker was said to have escaped by running through a cornfield still wearing his nightclothes.

The response was quick and brutal. Barely a day after the raid, a member of Quantrill’s Raiders wandered and was caught in Lawrence by the surviving citizens. This raider was then killed through a lynch mob in angry retaliation to the raid.

Following General Order No. 10, General Ewing issued General Order No. 11 which resulted in the eviction of thousands of Missourians who were living by the border of the state of Kansas. Ewing also sent incursions led by Charles “Doc” Jennison into the four countries inhabited by the Missourian evictees, and burned them to the ground.

Quantrill and his men headed south after the raid into Texas. The Quantrill’s Raiders eventually disbanded barely one year following the raid. There were no other successful raids for William Clark Quantrill after Lawrence, as he was left with only few supporters. Frank James and Jesse James were said to be part of this. Two years later, Quantrill died in Kentucky.

Senator Lane survived the raid, but in 1866, he shot himself because of depression. He had been accused of discrepancies in his financial statements, and was also said to be deranged. He survived for 10 more days before dying near Leavenworth, Kansas.

Attila Z Jancsina is a freelance copy writer. He occasionally writes for Kansas Real Estate FSBO. Website offers Free FSBO advertisement.

John McCain is out of touch with the American public.

At a time when nearly 60% of Americans use text messaging, how does the McCain campaign not have a text message element? His competitors, Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton sure seem to be more in touch with the American public, especially younger adults who must find the McCain campaign to be so yesterday.

Text messaging today is as important to the American public as the fireside chats of the FDR era that targeted radio listeners. In fact, statistically, text messaging is more important than radio was in the 1930’s. So why has McCain refused to add a text message mobile marketing element to his campaign?

Barrack Obama is using a cutting edge text message campaign to sway voters. Last summer, the Illinois senator launched a text message initiative to organize volunteers and encourage supports to text GO to 62262 (OBAMA).

The Obama campaign’s site offers free ringtones from Obama’s speeches, Obama wallpapers, and voters can send questions to get policy statements. The text campaign also includes information on how to donate or volunteer for the campaign. Now, that’s change.

Obama’s text campaign is also the only one to regionalize its database. This has been valuable in getting the public out to see the senator during his local political speeches. Prior to one of his regional visits, the Obama text message campaign sends thousands of text messages to his supporters and encourages them to show their support by showing up at his rallys.

While Obama’s text message campaign may be the most active, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards actually had their text message campaigns going before Obama did. Clinton and Edwards are certainly not the only politicians using text message campaigns.

President Bill Clinton recently stated that he’s no longer a text message virgin and he demonstrated such during a speech on his wife’s campaign.

Hillary Clinton’s efforts were admirable, but not nearly to the same effectiveness of Obama’s. The Clinton campaign failed to use a vanity short code and never got the recognition that Obama’s has today. Maybe text messaging is one reason why Obama is the clear favorite of younger voters over both candidates.

Text message campaigns on the political front are clearly here to stay. A University of Michigan and Princeton University study found that using text messages to remind voters to get out and vote increases voter participation by 4% among young voters. Given young adults propensity for using cell phone text messaging, you can bet Obama will be sending reminders on election day.

The efforts of Obama and Clinton contrast starkly to the John McCain campaign that has yet to add any element of mobile marketing. “It’s not surprising given his age,” said Bob Bentz, director of marketing at Advanced Telecom Services that supplies text message solutions to businesses. “Only 11% of those over 65 use text messages and Mr. McCain is a bit older than 65. You would think that somebody on his campaign would have advised Senator McCain that text messaging is an important way to communicate with young, politically-active adults.”

Maybe that’s one reason why Barrack Obama has a huge advantage among younger voters.

When it comes to text messaging, John McCain just doesn’t get it.

http://www.textmessageblog.mobi
Anthony Wayne is a writer for the Text Message Blog and works in the marketing department at Advanced Telecom Services.

Women have been making headlines in politics across the globe.

There was once a time when having a woman in a powerful political position was unheard of. Those days are gone, for the most part. There always will be people who oppose the idea, but they are becoming the minority.

Margaret Thatcher paved the way for the future of women in politics. She held the position of British prime minister from 1979-1990, the longest tenure in that office since 1827.

She led the Conservative Party from 1975-1990 and was the first and only female (to date) to hold either position. Nicknamed ‘The Iron Lady’ she was a close ally of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Margaret Thatcher once said, ‘The woman’s mission is not to enhance the masculine spirit, but to express the feminine. Hers is not to preserve a man-made world, but to create a human world by the infusion of the feminine elements into all of its activities.’

Women Now the Majority in the Spanish Cabinet

Thatcher isn’t the only woman to hold an important political position. Spain’s newly elected Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has a strong platform for gender equality. Until recently, his cabinet was equally split between male and female members. He changed that balance when he named a woman, Carme Chacon, as the new defense minister.

This created a shift that made a majority of the cabinet female for the first time in history. Nine of Spain’s 17 cabinet members are now women. Zapatero also is planning to raise the number of women in the Spanish armed forces.

Zapatero’s choice for defense minister has been met with some skepticism because Chacon lacks a military background.

She earned her law degree from Barcelona University. In 1989, she joined the Cataluna Young Socialists. Later, she joined the PSC Catalan Socialist Party. Her first formal experience in politics came in 1999 when she was elected first deputy. The following year, she was elected as a Socialist MP for Barcelona. Chacon was later given the title of first vice president of Congress.

Hillary Clinton Runs for President

Another prime example of women in politics is Hillary Clinton. In 1992, she became the U.S. first lady when her husband, Bill Clinton, was elected president.

She proved herself a headstrong woman during their eight years in the White House. She ran for and won a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2000. She was re-elected in 2006. Her formidable 2008 presidential campaign has helped to break through even more barriers for women in politics.

Hillary Clinton has held strong to her beliefs in health care, women’s rights, child advocacy and a fair voting process. She also has taken the stance that the fight at home over the U.S. economic crisis is just as important as the fighting going on overseas.

Women in Politics

More and more qualified women around the world are entering the political ring and they are paving a path for the future of women in politics. A growing need for equality has made it possible for more women to run for office.

We may one day see a time when having females in top leadership positions, or in the majority of a nation’s leadership, is no longer viewed as a unique occurrence, and Spain is leading the way at the moment.

Tribune Properties produce a series of European travel guides including for the Spanish island of Tenerife at http://www.yourtenerife.net

The guide includes a Tenerife map

Oscar Arias is the current president of the country of Costa Rica. He first assumed office on May 8, 2006 and is currently serving his second term. He had first been elected president on May 8, 1986 and served until May 8, 1990. For more information on Costa Rica, check out ToucanEstate.

President Arias is best known as one of the driving figures behind the end of the Central American civil wars during the 1980s. For his efforts, Oscar Arias Sanchez received the Nobel Peace Price in 1987.

Aside from that, President Arias was also awarded the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism. The Economists for Peace and Security also accepted him as a trustee. President Arias is a member of the Board of Directors of International Criminal Court’s Trust Fund for Victims.

Personal History

President Arias was born on September 13, 1940 in Heredia, Costa Rica. He was born to an upper class family, a status which made it possible for him to undergo secondary schooling at the Colegio Saint Francis in San Jose, Costa Rica.

After finishing his secondary schooling, Oscar Arias Sanchez flew to the United States in order to study medicine in Boston University. However, he changed his mind after a while and returned to Costa Rica. He finished law and economics instead at the University of Costa Rica. To continue educating himself, Arias flew to the United Kingdom in 1967, where he went to school in the London School of Economics. Eight years later in 1974, he received a political science doctorate degree from the University of Essex.

The Costa Rican president is also the holder of over 50 honorary degrees from different universities.

The National Liberation Party and his First Presidency

Arias joined the Partido Liberacion Nacional and ran under its banner for president in 1986. The PLN is known for being the party under which several popular Costa Rican presidents belong to, like its founder Jose Figueres. Under the same banner, Arias achieved victory.

He then went on to shift Costa Rican economy to focus on non-traditional agriculture and tourism, which some of his own party mates critized as shifting to a neoliberal economic model. The PLN, after all, focuses on social democrat teachings, which they claimed Arias abandoned during his administration.

President Arias also reinstated the standard academic tests that students have to take upon finishing primary and secondary schooling. He also pushed for the creation of the Central American Parliament, although currently he announced Costa Rica’s non-participation in the Parliament.

Esquipulas Accord

By the time Arias became the president of Costa Rica, the Central American countries were engaged in violent and long-running civil wars. In May 1986, President Arias was one of the five Central American presidents that attended the first Esquipulas Summit in Esquipulas, Guatemala.

The summit resulted into a Peace Plan which was submitted on February 15, 1987. From this peace plan, the Esquipulas Peace Process was drafted. The Process was a framework for resolving conflict and for economic cooperation between the beleaguered Central American states.

Another summit was then held by the five Central American presidents including Arias, which resulted to the “Esquipulas II” accord that was signed on August 7, 1987 in Guatemala City.

Despite rejection by the United States due to its recognition of the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime, the accoes was successful as it paved the way for the 1990 reconciliation and ending of the 30-year Guatemalan Civil War, and the peace agreement in El Salvador.

Arias’ efforts led to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, although there are criticisms that he has plagiarized propositions made by Vinicio Cerezo of Guatemala as his own.

Second Presidency

The Costa Rican judiciary formerly forbade former presidents from running for a second term. However, in 2004, the Constitutional Court made a very controversial decision removing that restriction. Following that, Arias announced his intention to run for a second presidency opposite Otton Solis, Otto Guevara, Ricardo Toledo and Antonio Alvarez.

Solis and Arias were the foremost among the five presidential candidates. Competition was stiff, with only a 0.4% or 3,200-vote difference after the first count. Voters who abstained from voting for the other candidates even voted for Solis at the last minute, resulting in the thin margin of votes. It was seen as an effort to prevent Arias from winning.

One of the first decisions he made on his second Presidency was to end Costa Rica’s recognition of Taiwan as the Republic of China, and instead recognized the mainland People’s Republic of China.

Tendinitis

Just recently, on May 20, 2008, President Arias was diagnosed as having a nonmalignant cyst on his vocal cords by the Philadelphia Ears, Nose and Throat Associates. Doctors then advised him not to talk for a month, after which surgery may be performed if his condition did not improve.

Attila Z Jancsina is a freelance copy writer. He occasionally writes for Costa Rica Real Estate. Website offers Free FSBO advertisement.

Everyone knows about the Panama Canal, and how it connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, not everyone knows that the United States originally wanted to build this canal through Nicaragua, information on which can be found in NicaFSBO. It was only through the efforts of a few lobbyists and the French intention to sell their interests on the Panama Canal that this plan was diverted.

Early Proposals

Like the Panama Canal, ideas for the construction of trans-oceanic canal through Nicaragua had been proposed by Spanish colonial administrations. As for Nicaragua, the Federal Republic of Central America — composed of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica — made the proposal in 1825 to the United States.

In line with its proposal, the Republic made surveys, which showed that the canal would be 278 kilometers long. The canal’s route would be parallel the San Juan River and enter Lake Nicaragua, after which locks and tunnels would be built in order to link the lake to the Pacific Ocean.

Washington, D.C. was impressed with the proposed canal, which prompted a presentation to the U.S. Congress by Secretary of State Henry Clay. However, the Congress rejected it because of the poverty and political instability of the Nicaragua area. The British’s presence in British Honduras and the Mosquito Coast also played a part in the rejection of the proposed canal.

The Nicaraguan government turned to other means, by entering into a contract with Cornelius Vanderbilt which enabled his company the exclusive right to build a canal for 12 years. Vanderbilt’s company, the Accessory Transit Co., would also solely administrate the temporary overland trade route through the Rivas isthmus. However, the canal was not completed because of the Nicaraguan Civil War and William Walker’s invasion of the region.

The Panama Canal is Built

Two more proposals were pitched forward for the construction of the Nicaragua Canal. The first was in 1897 by the U.S. Nicaraguan Canal Commission, and another one in 1899 by the Isthmian Canal Commission. It should also be noted that the second commission gave the U.S. the second option of continuing the French construction of the Panama Canal, which was failing due to inhospitable conditions and high mortality rate among the workers.

The Nicaragua canal faced yet again several oppositions, although several key figures supported the idea like the Nicaraguan minister in Washington Luis Felipe Corea. The U.S. government even entered into talks with Nicaraguan president Jose Santos Zelaya for a lease in preparation for the construction of this canal.

The Nicaragua Canal proposals ultimately lost to the Panama Canal proponents when a Nicaraguan stamp depicting the Momotombo volcano was printed. Lobbyists led by William Nelson Cromwell made use of the stamp to argue that the Nicaragua canal was exposed to the threat of volcanic activity, although such claims were unfounded as Momotombo was significantly distant from the proposed Nicaragua canal.

However, the die was cast. Panama Canal was chosen over the Nicaragua canal and the efforts of Cromwell — who was under the employ of the French Canal Syndicate — paid off. In 1902, majority of the U.S. senators voted for Panama, driven by the stamps and a volcanic eruption in Saint-Pierre, Martinique.

After failing in getting the United States to build the canal, President Santos Zelaya turned to Germany and Japan for financial support. However, the United States opposed the construction, because it would pose competition for the high successful Panama canal.

Present Proposals

The idea of building a Nicaragua canal has once again been revived in 2004. The Nicaraguan government made pitches to build a canal which could be large enough to accommodate modern ships whose capacities made them unable to traverse the Panama Canal.

The proposals met again fierce opposition. This time the opposition came from the environmental sector, who argued that the canal would most likely damage Nicaragua’s rivers and jungles.

Despite oppositions, Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos announced intentions to push through with the Nicaragua Canal plans. According to the official, the Nicaragua canal would work well with the Panama Canal — an expansion of which is also being proposed to answer the new ship capacities — because there is demand to have two trans-oceanic canals to exist in the Central American isthmus.

One of the advantages being cited by Bolanos is that the canal, which is estimated to cost around US$18 billion, can shorten sea travel to and from California and New York by a day. Compared to the Panama Canal’s capacity to accommodate ships having a displacement of only 65,000 tons, the proposed Nicaragua canal can accommodate up to 250,000 tons.

Aside from the Nicaragua canal, there were also proposals to build an overland link made by two companies: the Intermodal System for Global Transport and the Inter-Ocean Canal of Nicaragua. SIT Global’s proposals also call for a combination of oil pipeline and fibre optic cable in addition in addition to a railway.

Attila Z Jancsina is a freelance copy writer. He occasionally writes for Buy Land in Nicaragua. Website offers Free FSBO advertisement.

Hamas is waiting, and hoping, for an Obama victory in November. During the Doha Debates (BBC, May 27, 2008), leading Hamas spokesman Mahmoud Al Zahar categorically implied that the only way out of the current impasse in the Gaza strip would be a neutral and balanced administration in Washington.

Senator Obama can claim that he rejects any endorsement by Hamas; that, however, is not the point. The first relevant question Americans have to ask themselves is this: why are the worst religious extremists in the Middle East waiting for President Obama?

Hamas waiting is not alone in waiting for John McCain to decisively falter. Hezbollah controlled television and radio outlets in Lebanon have been making very sympathetic reference to anti-war speeches made by Senator Obama for many months now. The Ayatollahs in Teheran have not made any serious comment on the Obama agenda for Iraq, but nobody can doubt that any withdrawal of US-led troops at this juncture would only serve as a major longer-term strategic boost for Iran. On that note, it should not be forgotten that Iran has had close historical ties with the leadership of the mainstream Kurdish parties, currently allied with the United States.

The second question Americans must ask themselves relates to the serious security consequences for the West in the event that Islamic fascists begin exercising unrestricted power throughout the Middle East. The related consequences for the oil producing Gulf nations and for Saudi Arabia will be even more immediate, and certainly more dramatic.

Senator Obama rests his thesis of troop withdrawals on the assumption that the fact upon which the Iraq war was predicated have proven to be dubious, at best. That may well be so. That discussion should be left to historians and political analysts who want to write history, or re-write history as the case might be. The point is that more that nearly 200,000-plus foreign troops and military contractors are currently present in Iraq, and that their removal, albeit over 18 months, would be tantamount to an unequivocal victory, politically and militarily, for religious extremists.

Senator Obama wants to direct his focus to the high mountains of the Hindu Kush, to hunt down Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda cohorts. That position is fundamentally flawed on two counts. Firstly, Senator Obama has no idea where exactly Bin Laden is today, and if he is alive at all. Secondly, as American troops are now finding out, many or most of the so-called militants in the Afghanistan theatre are part of robust opium producing and drug smuggling syndicates. Of course, there is no reason for the perpetrators of 9/11 to stay hiding in the mountains if the geographical area stretching from Iran to Lebanon qualifies as an infinitely better safe-haven.

Iraq represents a dual reality: the military reality on one hand and the economic (reconstruction) reality on the other. Both aspects of Iraq deserve high priority. Rather than engaging in discussions on the qualitative nature of the pre-war intelligence, a Washington administration needs to address both challenges.

Given the military situation on the ground, there will be no reconstruction without the presence of 120,000-plus American troops Iraq, at least for the foreseeable future. And, if there is no reconstruction, the dismal state of the Iraqi economy will provide extremely fertile terrorist recruitment windows; the average Iraqi living in the villages and the shanty towns is struggling to maintain a minimum level of human dignity.

An unusually large section of the American media is doing the American voter a major disservice. Rather than repeatedly alluding the wisdom of the pre-war stance adopted by Barack Obama, journalists and anchors must demand specifics which are verifiable in the context of today. Most importantly, what are the facts upon which Senator Obama has concluded that a withdrawal from Iraq will not lead to the absolute domination of Iran for many decades into the future? Nobody should endorse the Democratic ticket without getting an acceptable and verifiable answer.

Rakesh Saxena is a pricing and risk analysis specialist in insurance and derivative products and has extensive deal making in the emerging economies. He can be reached at derivatives@shaw.ca. Home URL: http://www.quoteplatform.com