Gibson Factory Raided at Gun point

[NickC]

............ the other portions of the quote can't be found anywhere in anything wilson ever wrote. this is just nonsense nick and sloppy nonsense at that. this sloppiness on your part is consistent w/ you whole argument--wildly inaccurate and in many places just made up.

The New Freedom - Woodrow Wilson link provided above, where you can find the passages cited. The context presented in my posts was concise, intact, and substantive.

You are mistaken.

here's what you first quoted:

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

the first two sentence are NOWHERE in ANYTHING wilson EVER wrote. the third and fourth sentences of what you quote are inaccurate, but a version of them does appear the 8th and 9th chapters of the new freedom by wilson. what wilson actually said is below. first is where that modified third sentence comes from and after that i quote where the modified fourth sentence comes from.


from chapter 8:

"A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom."

from chapter 9:

"We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world--no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men."


i'm not trying to be insulting, but everything that binds your views together is based on inaccuracies, oversimplifications and falsifications. you say i'm mistaken, but you did in fact misquote wilson and you misquoted him in such a way that made it sound like he was saying something he wasn't. you misqoute or mischaracterized everything you quote and i've shown that in re: to several of your posts by posting more context or giving the actual quotes or simply giving a factual correction. none of that, however, gives you pause. you just press on preaching that you're right even though i've shown you that you're in fact wrong in what you're saying by showing that you're wrong about material you're using to make your point. you may think you're ultimately right, but the substance of your arguments are just wrong, man.

this is an incredibly vague criticism:

"What [Wilson] perhaps did not realize is that government merely replaced the abuse-of-power from Big Business with its' own abuse of power. "

no doubt power can be abused, but i think it's pretty silly to claim that the gov is somehow abusing big business. big business has an enormous influence on politics in america. sure gov has flaws, but utopias by definition don't exist. no gov. would be a disaster. but you talk about small or smaller gov as if it's some kind of magic bullet and the talk about the current gov. in mischaracterized or simply false terms. take for example your first wilson quote from your most recent post. the very next paragraph, which you don't quote, is wilson giving an example of what he means by the previous paragraph. he actually writes, "let me illustrate what i mean," man. here that paragraph:

"Let me illustrate what I mean: It used to be true in our cities that every family occupied a separate house of its own, that every family had its own little premises, that every family was separated in its life from every other family. That is no longer the case in our great cities. Families live in tenements, they live in flats, they live on floors; they are piled layer upon layer in the great tenement houses of our crowded districts, and not only are they piled layer upon layer, but they are associated room by room, so that there is in every room, sometimes, in our congested districts, a separate family. In some foreign countries they have made much more progress than we in handling these things. In the city of Glasgow, for example (Glasgow is one of the model cities of the world), they have made up their minds that the entries and the hallways of great tenements are public streets. Therefore, the policeman goes up the stairway, and patrols the corridors; the lighting department of the city sees to it that the halls are abundantly lighted. The city does not deceive itself into supposing that great building is a unit from which the police are to keep out and the civic authority to be excluded, but it says: "These are public highways, and light is needed in them, and control by the authority of the city.""

I will point you towards what may have been your source of information about the controversy of whether the first two sentences are attributable to Wilson, or not:

References at Google Book

Woodrow Wilson: "I am a most unhappy man; unwittingly I have ruined my country..."

The American Mercury by George Jean Nathan, Henry Louis Mencken, 1924, p. 56 [2]

"President Woodrow Wilson-( After breaking with the engineers of the Fed Act, and near his death), "I am a most unhappy man; unwittingly I have ruined my ..."

The Federal Reserve Hoax By Wickliffe B. Vennard, 1959, p. 27, full quote [3]

Richard Cotten's Conservative Viewpoint by Richard B. Cotten [4]

"PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON - (After breaking with Colonel House) who with Warburg engineered the Fed. act: "I am a most unhappy man; unwittingly I have ruined ..."

To All My Children As the World Turns By Gyeorgos C. Hatonn, 1993, p. 152 [5]

"Even Woodrow Wilson would regret his actions and before his death, stated: "I am a most unhappy man--unwittingly I have ruined my country."

After Fascism By Abid Ullah Jan, p. 31, full quote [6]

Web of Debt By Ellen Hodgson Brown. p. 127, partial quote [7]

"The bill passed on December 22, 1913, and President Wilson signed it into law the next day. Later he regretted what he had done. He is reported to have said before he died, "I have unwittingly ruined my country."

Outsourcing Culture By Robert E. Greenwood Jr. Phd, p. 118, partial quote [8]

--98.202.49.82 22:09, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Woodrow_Wilson

Are you familiar with the Wiki article?

Even if I have unknowingly quoted unsubstantiated information with regard to the contested quote "I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country" (maybe true, maybe not ... original source is unclear), that doesn't alter Wilson's criticism of the Federal Reverse System which is the central thrust of the matter. He eventually recognized the concentration of power in the Fed was bad. That much is clear.

In the meantime, I will concede the quote in question ("I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country.") does not appear to have any ready source of authentication. Though a source has been cited, it is apparently a rare book and no one has yet produced verification. The references in the Wiki article may also rely on that tome. Until a copy surfaces, we'll never know.

[fritferret]

nope, i'm not familiar w/ that article at all. i know what wikipeadia is, but i didn't even now wikitalk existed.

i must say this is getting tiring. you just jump from point to point w/ out really correcting your views. so now you want to talk about wilson on the federal reserve. i don't know what you mean when you say wilson thought the concentration of power in the fed was bad. the meaning of a statement like that is pretty vague. i will say that everthing you've quote from wilson has NOTHING to do w/ the fed. why? they were ALL written before the fed existed. now keep in mind that the new freedom was drawn from wilson's campaign speeches from 1911. the fed reserve act passed in 1913.

you are either of victim of misinformation (as in someone has mislead you and you've bought the narrative hooks, line and sinker) or your research is just bad. again, not tryingto be insulting but so far EVERYTHING you've posted is misinformation or has been very poorly researched.

to be clear re: wilson on the fed: wilson did not regret creating the fed, never regretted creating it and in fact took its creation as a great accomplishment.

[NickC]

....... to be clear re: wilson on the fed: wilson did not regret creating the fed, never regretted creating it and in fact took its creation as a great accomplishment.

I've already conceded that the quote in question lacks authentication. I did not know that previously, and thank you for bringing it to my attention. Until it has been completely (if ever) verified, I will spread the word that those lines lack veracity.

If I understand you correctly, you say Wilson created the Federal Reserve System and never lamented doing so?

[CHIP]

yeah screw em they got the cash.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.


I don't care if they have the cash or not. That's not the important issue here; whether or not they can afford to prove themselves innocent or not. The issue here is Holden going way too far. Soros, who had a lot to do with Obama getting elected, has been lobbying to raid Gibson for a long time now...Soros, a flaming, rich liberal, seems not to like Gibson for some reason...perhaps because they donate to the GOP rather than the Dems (unlike most other guitar manufacturers, who use the same wood and sources Gibson does, BTW). Whatever the reason, this whole thing stinks to high heaven from the top on down. It has greater ramifications than it seems some folks are willing to come to terms with.

Finally after 9 pages of postings, we're getting to the heart of this uncalled for action by the Feds.

[fritferret]

....... to be clear re: wilson on the fed: wilson did not regret creating the fed, never regretted creating it and in fact took its creation as a great accomplishment.

I've already conceded that the quote in question lacks authentication. I did not know that previously, and thank you for bringing it to my attention. Until it has been completely (if ever) verified, I will spread the word that those lines lack veracity.

If I understand you correctly, you say Wilson created the Federal Reserve System and never lamented doing so?

hmmm....i thought i was pretty clear. not sure how to be any clearer so i'll try saying the same thing is a slightly different way: wilson created the fed. reserve and never regretted creating the fed. reserve.

[NickC]

....... to be clear re: wilson on the fed: wilson did not regret creating the fed, never regretted creating it and in fact took its creation as a great accomplishment.

I've already conceded that the quote in question lacks authentication. I did not know that previously, and thank you for bringing it to my attention. Until it has been completely (if ever) verified, I will spread the word that those lines lack veracity.

If I understand you correctly, you say Wilson created the Federal Reserve System and never lamented doing so?

hmmm....i thought i was pretty clear. not sure how to be any clearer so i'll try saying the same thing is a slightly different way: wilson created the fed. reserve and never regretted creating the fed. reserve.

What I don't understand is how he could embrace "progressive" politics that purport to protect the little guy, while creating a monolithic quasi-federal agency that was largely responsible for the Great Depression. It doesn't make sense. The Federal Reserve was ineffectual in preventing, and mitigating, the Great Depression. Indeed, it has been blamed for creating that economic condition deliberately.

[fritferret]

I've already conceded that the quote in question lacks authentication. I did not know that previously, and thank you for bringing it to my attention. Until it has been completely (if ever) verified, I will spread the word that those lines lack veracity.

If I understand you correctly, you say Wilson created the Federal Reserve System and never lamented doing so?

hmmm....i thought i was pretty clear. not sure how to be any clearer so i'll try saying the same thing is a slightly different way: wilson created the fed. reserve and never regretted creating the fed. reserve.

What I don't understand is how he could embrace "progressive" politics that purport to protect the little guy, while creating a monolithic quasi-federal agency that was largely responsible for the Great Depression. It doesn't make sense. The Federal Reserve was ineffectual in preventing, and mitigating, the Great Depression. Indeed, it has been blamed for creating that economic condition deliberately.

i don't know what you're talking about, where you're getting this s tuff, nor why you find it at all convincing.

wilson didn't have an opinion about the depression or the feds relation to it. wilson died in 1924, the beginning of the great depression was around 1929.

i can only imagine that a qoute is coming that will have been taken out of context.

[Structo]

Come on guys, lets keep this pertinent to the Gibson raid and the consequences of it.

[NickC]

Come on guys, lets keep this pertinent to the Gibson raid and the consequences of it.

Okay

[talbany]

O.K., here's a brief summary of the Gibson situation.AFAIK India has for many years officially ruled that fingerboards (in their blank form) are legal to export, and that official Clarification is something that can't be argued by the U.S. government or anyone else..This ruling is nothing new, since India has allowed many millions of fingerboards to be exported for decades with no problem. There are also other factors involved:


1) The U.S. has absolutely no laws prohibiting the use of Indian (or Madagascar!) rosewood and ebony as such, only general laws that require no tribal, state, national or international laws have been violated.

2) None of this has anything at all to do with overharvesting, illegal logging, or any other environmental issues. Veneers, guitars or anything else made of these same Indian woods would have been completely legal.

3) The supposed violations named in Special Agent Rayfield's warrant affidavit concern his private interpretation of Indian law about semi-finished raw materials or component parts. Lacey doesn't allow the U.S. to disagree or argue about another country's regulations, only to enforce their compliance (which in the matter of India were being complied with according to their own written document).

4) Lacey is what's called a "fact-based" as opposed to a "document-based" statute. In other words, simply possessing legitimate-looking paperwork won't protect anyone from confiscation, fines or imprisonment if indeed laws really were broken. It's the same legal principle that has always applied in U.S. mining law, that it's not how technically accurate the filed paperwork description of a claim's boundaries are but how it's actually marked out and posted on the ground.
Several complicating and confusing glitches were made on the paperwork from LMII's Indian ebony shipment, but what counts is whether or not any actual regulations were violated. They certainly don't seem to have been (in the case of India, at least), but it's up to the courts and not us to decide guilt or innocence. Hopefully, they'll toss this one out no matter how foolish it makes Special Agent Rayfield and the USFWS appear.

The Madagascar wood raid of 09 remains problematic since it does involve endangered trees, logging in a national forest, and a questionable state of political unrest in the country at the time the wood was exported with questions about the government's validity as a legitimately recognized power.

See The Difference!!

that stuff is in there, but what most struck me were the paragraphs about gibson allegedly intentionally tried to fool custom by mislabeling shipments and coding them to match the false label. i think that's the heart of the issues. it's also much harder to make fun of that allegation. it's much easier to say "this is stupid, are we really talking about a few tenths of an inch?!" that's part of the case, but it seems to be that the real matter is criminal and serious because gibson appears to have intentionally mislabeled shipments and then coded them to match the false labels in order to fools customs. how is that not serious? again, if this was an honest mistake, i think it would be playing out differently, but it looks like gibson intentionally engaged in criminal behavior.

Here are some problems as I see it with Rayfields report he misquotes the Indian regs by inserting a critical word "finished" that's not found in them; the wood was correctly exported as being HS 9209.92.00 according to Indian law as millions of boards have been for decades with no objections from either Indian or U.S. authorities; but due to a paperwork mistake by a neophyte broker, Rayfield (understandably) was led to equate the shipment as HS 4407 in response to the erroneous HS 4408.. Once again Here's a statement from Natalie Swango at LMII (the importer and correct consignee):

“The exporter entered the correct code for his country's export according to Indian customs. I incorrectly listed Gibson as the consignee on the Lacey paperwork...the material was destined for them, but at this time LMI owns and is (was, ?) warehousing it. The broker made a mistake and listed the material as veneers, although all other paperwork correctly listed it as fingerboards (they have remedied this with an oops letter). The warehouse employee incorrectly informed the feds as to the ownership (although they bill me for the storage fees). The officers incorrectly came to the conclusion that we are smuggling wood.”

“The broker for LMI listed the "entry" as veneers <6mm despite all other paperwork listing it as sawn wood and fingerboards in excess of 6mm. The broker sent a letter explaining the error and attempted to contact FWS to correct the entry, but they refused to speak to him. A copy of the letter was sent to LMI as well as FWS.”

He also in several places injects interpretations of Indian law, when all that Lacey insists on is conformance to another country's regulations. He's trying to redefine Indian regs in a way that the Indian government doesn't agree with and didn't intend...This whole thing could have been cleared up by a phone call..

Tony

[fritferret]

Come on guys, lets keep this pertinent to the Gibson raid and the consequences of it.

gladly!

[10thTx]

Talbany,

Thanks for your perspective and the information.

With respect, 10thtx

[talbany]

So how does all this impact us!!

The November, 2009, Gibson raid was the very first enforcement action on plant materials under the Lacey regs as revised in 2008. Of course this now placed Gibson in the enforcement spotlight, so it appears the feds have been monitoring Gibson's subsequent activities hoping to catch them doing something else wrong. This makes it a major "test case", the outcome of which will establish important "court precedents" that will be used from then on. Because the last phase of Lacey regarding pianos and guitars was implemented only on April 1, 2010, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) is probably holding back on confronting other big dogs such as Martin, Taylor, Fender, and PRS until their case against Gibson is resolved.

It may well be that USFWS also has hopes that Gibson’s iconic stature and high visibility will work in their favor to publicly demonstrate the U.S. is aggressively enforcing environmental violations. This could, and already may be, backfiring on them especially if Gibson winds up being vindicated in court. My guess is that they’ll be convicted on the 2009 Madagascar citations and walk free on the completely separate Indian charges.

If the Indian woods are somehow, incredibly, found to be illegal, then the entire guitar industry goes down since for almost 20 years virtually 100% of the industry has been bringing in and using materials that are over 6mm thick with the blessings (and paperwork) of the Indian government and the Forest Stewardship Council’s certification! It would also make criminals out of everyone who owns a guitar with Indian wood in it, regardless of whether it was made in the U.S. or China…This is of coarse sending shock waves through the guitar manufacturing community..
By the way, it’s not just the guitar industry impacted by this, but also the custom and production knife, antiques, furniture, hobby and craft, arts, bead supply, woodturning, writing pen, second hand store, yard sale, and many other industries and activities. The laws as written allow government agents to enforce at the tiniest levels for the smallest unintentional violations – just because they may (at least temporarily) choose not to doesn’t mean they won’t at a later time, as long as the regulations aren’t rewritten. Unrestrained laws such as these leave the door wide open for rule by force any time the authorities want to cause trouble for almost anybody…Let's all hope Gibson didn't do anything stupid by having something turn up in the seized files that would award the Indian wood ruling in favor of the DOJ..My friends on the other side are quite concerned that this is a real possibility..I have several lawyer friends and they all say the same thing.. Some of the best laywers out there work for the DOJ..
These are of coarse my views and info I have received by my sources.

Tony.

[Structo]

Yes the ripple effects of this case could be devastating including custom firearm manufacturing now and existing firearms.

It would seem that an Gibson employee is feeding the DOJ information.
I sure hope it was honest paper work errors rather than Gibson trying to get away with something.
That would be bad for the entire industry as well as other manufacturers that use exotic woods.

I for one think it ridiculous that people transporting their personal instruments would be subject to seizure and fines.

Take Brazilian rosewood for example.
How can the Gov't tell when the rosewood on a guitar or other instrument was harvested or imported?
Because the way I understand it, some manufacturers have stock piles of these woods in warehouses for their higher end instruments.

Say you have a 1925 Martin acoustic with rosewood back and sides.
What would you have to have to prove it was legal?
That would be a very valuable guitar and to have it seized would be unimaginable.

And speaking of seizures, what in the world happens to the instruments that are seized?

Why in the world should a private citizen have to prove that the wood on his guitar or other instrument is not in violation of the many laws pertaining to endangered species?

What a cocked up mess.

[NEjoe]

I've got to say that this whole thread is depressing on multiple levels.

There seems to be two options, Gibson is innocent or guilty. If Gibson really is innocent then the government is overstepping; If guilty then they're lawbreakers and I don't like patronizing companies that feel they are above the law.

The "news" coverage is pathetically incomplete at best and slanted, sensationalist political dogma in anything owned by the right of center crowd. Used to be the WSJ opinion page was off in right field but the news was fairly straight on, now since Rupert owns it, well, I wouldn't trust it as far as I could throw a rosewood tree.....with the roots still in the ground. Depressing that so few reporters can make a half readable report anymore, BTW I didn't see any of the SWAT guys with machine guns and body armor in the picture that the WSJ had.

But really what disturbs me more than anything is use of this event to springboard into all sorts of unconnected political dogma and police state nightmare predictions of doom; the downright paranoid responses by some of the people on this very board. The "oh wait, it's coming", the police state where you're not allowed to play your 100W amp or do any of your (fill in your favorite hobby here). Let's take up arms and have a shootout with the feds......even though we don't know if Gibson is guilty or not.

It's a free country and you can be as paranoid as you want, but this type of fear is just stupid, and I'm really pissed that this was the main factor in the price of ammo staying sky high way longer than it should have.

It's just sad that when the RW blows their dog whistle (through Rupert's Megaphone), how easy so many fall in line before they know the whole story.

Then I read Structo's sig line of "The best defense is common sense and knowledge. "
Ironic and sad that common sense isn't very common anymore and knowledge is in such short supply. For some misplaced reason I thought amp builders were better than this.

But since this is at its core a thread about fretboards, anyone else have grain like this?

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