Is that your final A.N.S.W.E.R.?
And he just walked along, alone, with his guilt so well concealed.
And muttered underneath his breath, "Nothing is revealed." - Bob Dylan
Another march on Washington, and more grumbling about A.N.S.W.E.R.'s performance.
Much of the noise comes from embarrassed moderates, who are new to the demonstration game and are simply not that demonstrative. Others suggest A.N.S.W.E.R. engages in bait and switch: draw mass numbers with the cause of Iraq and then use the platform to catapult the propaganda, including wedge issues bound to alienate sizeable contingents of the crowd, and serves to categorize a generalized anti-war movement in the terms of Stalinist caricature.
Now I don't have a problem with radical politics. Those are my politics. And I do believe that mass events are good occasions to wisely shed light upon the interconnections of injustice. What I have a problem with is Ramsey Clark. I don't trust him. And so, I must have a problem with A.N.S.W.E.R. I don't trust it, either.
A.N.S.W.E.R., established by Clark's International Action Center, shows a national, organizational savvy in securing police permits and outclasses and outspends all popular opposition groups in America. (Though there's no transparency regarding the source of its funds.) While the Iraq War is its rallying cause, A.N.S.W.E.R. was founded, presciently, on September 14, 2001, even before the "War on Terror" was officially launched, even rhetorically.
Why don't I trust Clark? If LBJ's former Attorney General was ever going to win my trust, he would have repudiated his handpicked Clark Panel, its medical professionals linked to the intelligence community, and its findings a whitewash of John F Kennedy's incomplete and adulterated autopsy records. He would have apologized to history and America's thwarted justice for stating just days after the murder of Dr King, and even before a suspect was in custody, that "all of our evidence at this time indicates that it was a single person who committed this criminal act." Years later in The Nation, after his radical makeover, Clark said James Earl Ray should not be given a new trial, but rather his case ought to be studied by a government panel. As Lisa Pease asks in The Assassinations, "Did Clark really think the government, which produced the Warren Commission and the HSCA and failed to reveal the truth about either the Martin Luther King case or the Kennedy assassination, should have been given a chance to bamboozle us yet again?"
The American Left of Chomsky and Cockburn and The Nation will never touch these matters of conspiracy. So Clark is largely untouched by his legacy of abetting three of the most egregious miscarriages of modern justice - John, Martin and Bobby - which, uncorrected, have brought America to this point of low comedy and great horror.
If your intent is generational warfare, you had better give some forethought to the stage management of your opposition. As you turn up the pressure, you need to ensure people can vent some steam. It makes them feel better. Like they've done something.
posted by Jeff Wells at 4:24 a.m.
83 Comments:
Right on, Jeff! Cursed as we are to live in such times, the most bitter taste comes from the False Opposition set above us.
Chomsky's great mission is to be emphatically silent, or sweepingly scathing, about the truth of the two most important events in recent history: Kennedy's execution and the WTC bombings. He's a real designer leftist - with the added bonus of anti-Marxism as an "anarchist". Such types as these, or Galloway in Britain, preside over a Pretend-to Stop-the-War movement. The function of everyone who blathers on about "blowback" is to affirm the official Conspiracy Theory of 9/11, no matter how fiercely they may criticise over Iraq. Their charade gets the credence of the left-minded sheeple, while the celebrity lefts serve their real masters by certifying the biggest lies in modern history.
It is far better to be right and even completely alone than to be in with a crowd who are being led up a blind alley by the secret servants of the suits. Even if mountebanks like those already named are too scared to speak out it's almost as deplorable as being agents; all that phony dissident courage is utterly shameful and disgusting.
Keep up this good work on these exposures. We need to split from these mountebanks. All this broad coalition crap ends up in the harmless swamp of the existing two party system. Remember these jokers urging "anybody but Bush" and "vote for Kerry"? There's plenty more where that came from.
Your post reminds me of when I was a student, back in the 80s, we organized a large demonstration in a Canadian city to protest Ray-Gun's bombing of Libya. The bombing was a violation of international law, murdered civilians, and was totally unjustified.
I was impressed and delighted by the number and variety of people who participated in the demonstration: university students and some professors, other professionals, labour union leaders, people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds.
I didn't really notice the tiny group of "Albanians" as we called them, a bunch of true nuts who ranted and raved about Albania being the perfect Marxist utopia --they were dishevelled, incoherent and wild-eyed, but they somehow had the funds to produce a number of glossy publications, which they carefully laid out as we gathered for the demonstration.
Imagine my shock, watching the local news coverage that evening, when the news camera panned almost exclusively over the "Albanians" and their cukoo publications, while the real demonstration barely got any air-time! They were interviewed about the demonstration that they had neither participated in organizing, nor been invited to join!
I think that was my first exposure to psy-ops. It wasn't to be my last.
Dear Jeff Wells,
Goody-two-shoes historian activists like me have little use for conspiracy theories, but you always raise such *clever* points.
Anyway, I was thinking about the nineteenth-century equivalent of crowd/power issues last night, and this morning I've amended my blog to link to your excellent post.
If I may add a caution, the same British historians who have done such good work on how crowds are received follow on the heels of a band of radical/Marxist historians of the 1950s/60s who, looking at the eighteenth-century mob, assumed that failed political crowds were inevitably planted by spies.
It turns out that the fons et origo for the spy-plant story was itself contemporary documents were suspicious authors (usually arch-conservatives out of power) accused the popular mob of being planted by foreign or radical spies from the aristocracy, spinning French revolution through the unthinking populace.
Essentially, in my world, the spy-in-crowd story comes from journalists and historians who don't give enough credit to popular organization from the ground up. We don't believe that any more, because we've had access to more sources since that original historical work was done.
The more we know about the organizations of boot-blacks and handloom-weavers, the more we realize that their networks were tightly guarded, local, face-to-face organizations, which failed often enough for lack of considering the complications of politics.
Which leaves room for a great, grand conspiracy of education, access, and messaging, if control over public opinion and blockage of grassroots organization from public opinion may be called conspiracy. But it leaves little need for explanation by spy organizers amongst the crowd.
Of course that was then, and this is now; but let us make room for an argument that says that government might be stupid as well as evil, and that the failures of radical politics could come as much from our ignorance about how to fight better, as from those admittedly powerful and often unethical creatures on the other side of the line.
Although this point can be used for redbaiting, Clark's association with the Worker's World Party is problematic. WWP split off from Socialist Workers Party waaay back in the 50's. Interestingly, so did Larouche. And make no mistake, ANSWER is the WWP.
Normally, I wouldn't get close to territory that would just give the right more ammo...but why is Ramsey, a former attorney general who commands mainstream legitimacy due to his mainstream prominence in the past, hanging out with these folks?
Meanwhile, another person who split off from the SWP and formed his own organization was Lyndon Larouche, who I'm getting all bent out of shape about in our forums. Larouche, of course, in the early 70's, decided his contribution to history would be better served by attacking other leftists with baseball bats, and in operation mop-up, that's just what he ordered his followers to do. A general rule of thumb is that when a "left" organization spends much of its time attacking leftists, they are probably not what they seem.
When Larouche gets sent to jail for fraud...who is is lawyer? Ramsey Clark, of course.
Here's a link on Ramsey. More later.
http://shadow.autono.net/sin001/clark.htm
I'm not happy with the post today. I was at the demonstration in Washington yesterday and it was truly inspiring and I'm a veteran of the big 60's demos and this was better in every way -- not because of the organizers but because of the people who attended. It was "our" demonstration not ANSWER's.
Ramsey Clark is not politically pure but who is? He's worked tirelessly to aid the poor and represent the unpopular and unfortunate--I've not agreed with him on some issues but the man deserves a lot more respect than you gave him in your post. Few people have the courage to look at the assassinations and other black-ops--it is like looking at Hell, very frightening.
The demonstration was useful because it was inspiring and joyful giving heart and hope to many who were there. I sensed a much more "conscious" attitude in the crowd, more mindful and more politically sophisticated than I expected.
We need to organize our communities so that we can begin to assert collective power, in short, to form unions. Boycotts and general strikes would ultimately be the goal. Talking and demonstrations are first steps at best. I was impressed that the marchers came from far away and were patient and calm in their determination. My guess is that many of them would be willing to make sacrifices for a larger cause; thus, we need to seize this opportunity and opening presented, largely, by Cindy and Katrina who were very much on everyone's mind.
Thanks Jeff
Jeff, I think it's important to discuss these issues; such as leaders like Ramsey Clark who are possible agents provocatuers or disinformationists, almost no one else is doing it, so for that I applaud you.
But there was much more to yesterday's trully mega demonstration than leaders or A.N.S.W.E.R. I was there and I'm glad I went.
The left leaders may have some kind of troubling problem - witness Amy Goodmans, Liberation's (France) and Manifesto's (Italy), etc, participation in the cover up of the salient details of the Basra British commando incident last week - but the majority of the readers and listeners are sincere and if we can talk to the ones we know and go over these issues many will see the light and will push the leaders to shape up or ship out. It's already happening as I have noticed the left discourse including more and more of our points.
It's time we got off our arses and did our own form of political activism, if we can educate grassroots activists, opinion shapers and others this will have a big impact. So many of these people are passionate and willing to make big sacrifices of time and energy to turn things around. They are not married to the ideology of these leaders, the ones I've spoken with biggest concern is trully making a difference.
And once enough people know about the false flag type stategy - the game is over.
Bobby Kennedy was killed because in 1968 he was more Zionist than even LBJ, and Golda Meir. He wanted to sell weapons to Israel and honor agreements set up by LBJ, one year after the Six Day War, June 6, 1968.
Truly, some folks are ignorant of America's involvement in that region, including a bunch of Canadians.
BTW, your nation is not pure in that region by any stretch, being a huge player in Anglo-Saxon global politics.
And why the Hell is your nation in Afghanistan?
Surely not because you love democracy. Give me a freaking break.
Anglo-Saxon racists purely and simply beating up Muslims.
I'm no more an apologist for my government than I'm sure you are for yours. And you need to add Haiti to your list of blood on Canadian hands.
What an odd stream of reactions! You all act like you are unfamiliar with the work of CIA Off Campus, with Operation CHAOS and the COINTELPROs and the whole sweep of what the IC was doing back in the 60s and 70s. The Left, in the US, has always been supported, so as to be closely monitored,and steered if necessary, by the big financial interests; the New Republic was one of JP Morgan's pet projects (so was Allen Dulles, hence the CIA...), for example.
The CIA's biggest "coups" in Latin America (and worldwide), but least understood, were its progressive, day-by-day infiltration and co-optation of any and all radical movements. This is excruciatingly detailed in Philip Agee. Now, of course, we have the Ukraine, Georgia, and other democracy project. Look up "swarming" and so forth.
The oligarchy, at least those of it who believe that capitalism needs a metastable environment in order to flourish (probably excluding energy interests--ExxonMobil, for example), have realized since at least the times of the robber barons that it was important to let off steam, help maintain balance, etc.
A truly radical movement would, of course, stop marching in the way it is marching now--recreationally, on weekends, holding up signs. It would recreate a Gandhian "salt march," breaking all the rules in a strictly non-violent fashion, but this would of course involve a type of "group-think" and suffering of extreme violence probably intolerable to pampered and essentially individualistic Westerners.
Thus the safety of letting folks blow off steam, particularly when ANY type of violence, even against (sacred) property, on the part of the protesters, gets one labeled instantly as an instigator and an infiltrator. What was it that the Mayor of London said recently? How else but through terrorism itself could the brutal regime in Uzbekistan be removed? It is logical to use non-violence, but tactical non-violence such as was used in the Civil Rights Movement here in the US, or in India.
But I don't see the possibility today, at least until the credit dries up, and that may never happen. I never would have thought that graphic TV footage of thousands left, purposely, to die and rot in an American city, would not have led to massive riots and protests across American cities. I heard a rumor of a "Camp Katrina" in DC, but don't know if it's happened. If someone had told me such an event were to happen to a major city, and be televised, I would have imagined an outpouring of wrath from the people.
The People! WHAT people? The soul has apparently gone cold. I CANNOT imagine this happening elsewhere, including in several countries of my intimate acquaintance, and NOT sparking something close to a popular uprising.
Geographer1 said:
The People! WHAT people? The soul has apparently gone cold. I CANNOT imagine this happening elsewhere, including in several countries of my intimate acquaintance, and NOT sparking something close to a popular uprising.
Indeed, the riddle, and an uncrackable one at that, is how do you awaken the comatose patient?
I would argue that to shake the aforementioned patient vigorously would only serve to further incapacitate, and the reaction of the patient to Katrina has proven the validity of this assertion.
Maybe the answer is as simple as "you don't." The comoatose patient is as much a law of the universe as the law of gravity.
I'm to the point where I'm content with telling the comatose patient to go fuck themself because I'm tired of trying. It's futility.
Those of us who are not comatose need to form a more effective union. Perhaps what has drawn many of us here is an early attempt to do just that, but it's imperative that we take it to the next level, sooner, rather than later.
What exactly the "next level" is, I'm not certain, but we must begin an earnest dialogue that facilitates its manifestation.
to Geo1
I was at the march yesterday. The Salt March is exactly what people were talking about there. People know that more has to happen. People went to the march to meet with others interested in having this discussion. The tabling was perfect for establishing lines of communication among people with various interests. There is no one center. Empire is crumbling because so many different kinds of people are doing so many different kinds of actions. More of this is better!
What everybody must realize is that, in order to achieve something, popular uprisings must be steered by a small group of determined and, yes, relatively powerful people. That is one of the most important aspects of 1984 : the thought police is not interested in suppressing popular discontent. It seeks only to destroy the few who are intelligent and strong enough to mount a really effective opposition.
In a sense, there may be no need to infiltrate, or steer, the American Left (even if I am deeply convinced it is already the case). Just removing those who get too close to the truth is enough. What is left (no pun intended) is a bunch of inoffensive marxists, stuck in the Vietnam era and in love with their pompous, outdated rantings.
A stylishly expressed post, Geographer 1, like Jeff letting off steam under a pseudonym.
Try not to despair and keep a cool head. The only way to stop the war is if people strike. In Vietnam the army went on strike. If there are calls for a strike against the war in the US, there might be one. People might at least think and see what is going on. Voting and marching don't work. Why persist? Whose idea is that - someone who wants you to carry on with ineffective actions? You are far better employed online, in cold truth.
In the fall of 1995, France was SHUT DOWN for a full month by a general strike. All the unions jointly organized a month-long strike against the disastrous austerity policies imposed by the EU's Maastricht Treaty and the German Bundesbank on all prospective members of the Economic and Monetery Union (the euro).
The moral of the story? They didn't accomplish anything, at the time. But at least they tried. At least people woke up (the French are generally more awake than most people though). And ten years later, 55% voted NON to the EU constitution in yet another French revolution, in defiance of a united political, economic and media elite. The constitution is now dead and the EU is paralysed as a result.
The moral is that the referendum was held only because the elite feared the consequences of not holding one.
I noticed that most of the people doing the most bitching and griping about Answer over at DU have an agenda too.
Most of them seem to be the DLC whores and the (Gen) Clarkie swarm.
Just sayin'.
My comment about getting off our arses and doing something was not aimed at Jeff who is already doing so much. Writing and publishing this website must be a mammoth time commitment.
Watching the atrocities of our times and not taking any action to help change things is bad for one's mental and physical health and that of the planet.
If protests and the left aren't your thing, talk to people on the right or apoliticals. We're all in this together.
The "powers that be" love it when people feel hopeless, powerless and paralysed. Smug and paralysed is a varition on the same theme.
I'm an academic, I write about this stuff and lecture about it, my students get to read texts like Killing Hope, and it's very empowering. There's still a lot of freedom of speech in academia. I'm glad to hear the Salt March is being discussed, and I'm also hoping that these anti-war protests will begin to look a bit like Seattle and particularly Cancun in what is achieved--or even, dare I say, Bolivia (so far).
The comment on Chomsky was interesting--he's a faux anarchist, actually, and academically not really qualified (as a structural linguist) to write about political science in the first place. I wish Jeff would do one of his biography columns (or did I miss it?) on this guy, as he strikes me as a glorified Gloria Steinem who has never blown his cover. He appears to fit the mold of the types of folks Quigley wrote about who helped the Left blow off steam in the 1940s and 1950s, and were mistaken by McCarthy and the radical Right as part of a vast Communist Conspiracy, along with their Foundation supporters!
Why do post at DU? It's a hateful website that doesn't allow fee speech. Only sheep can post there. Why donate money to a site that hates the 1st amendment?
to Qutb
You got a point. In the short term, a majority can actually have an impact. The referendum was particularly spectacular, because basically the non vote was considered vastly improbable six months before. I guess it's a matter of Chirac botching it up (he decided to hold the referendum two years before, at a time where it seemed a strong majority would vote yes).
The problem is, people in general do not move until they're directly affected by what's going on. In the case of the referendum or the 1995 strikes, it was basically about jobs and fears of outsourcing, in a liberal UE. They're not interested in politics per se, and they don't have the time, or the money, to inform themselves.
Now, I don't want to sound gloomy, I admire those who demonstrate, but I'm not convinced it can lead to a real change. The american empire will collapse eventually, but due to its own (financial) weaknesses. Like all empires...
Who says that I donate? It doesn't cost anything to read or post over there.
Besides, the LBN forum is a pretty good source of info. GD is usually a cesspool, but sometimes you can find a pearl of info amongst the swine.
And I like to laugh at some of the sheeple/freeple over there.
So sue me.
Speaking of General Strikes, The World Can't Wait is calling for Nov. 2nd to be a day of no work, no school - everyone in the street. There seemed to be a lot of interest and enthusiam for their call in Washington yesterday. Nov. 2 was the day Bush took office so it's only fitting that it will be the day he is repudiated annd driven out.
Each city has local Nov. 2 gathering places. For NYC it's Union Square for other places check the website. They have a big student following, I hope more older and working people will get involved. Read their call to action on the website. I'm not a member of this group but I'm into to supporting ideas that make sense and have potential.
Read the call at www.worldcantwait.org
Jeff, I might agree with A.N.S.W.E.R. on many positions pertaining to the mideast, although their position on Serbia is rather difficult to deal with. But I bet you'd be more in line with their attitude towards Katrina and Rita, which in my mind defy partisan politics in terms of the reality of natural catastrophes.
I think that's part of the reason why coalitions are difficult to maintain:
Folks may have agreements on some issues, and then part ways on others. Still, we put up with the smell of Stalin in order to defeat Hitler. That's the price one pays in terms of political action:
One must make deals with the devil.
I'm also voting 'Not Happy With Today's Jeff Comment.'
This is a case of too clever for our own good and wallowing in the past to the point of being disabled.
The slaughter of the innocents is relentless AND so is the ignorance.
This statement by a JFK researcher named Gaeton Fonzi puts a point on it:
>>>The cover story was transparent and designed not to hold, to fall apart at the slightest scrutiny. The forces that killed Kennedy wanted the message clear: 'We are in control and no one - not the President, nor Congress, nor any elected official - no one can do anything about it.' It was a message to the people that their Government was powerless. And the people eventually got the message. Consider what has happened since the Kennedy assassination. People see government today as unresponsive to their needs, yet the budget and power of the military and intelligence establishment have increased tremendously.
The tyranny of power is here. Current events tell us that those who killed Kennedy can only perpetuate their power by promoting social upheaval both at home and abroad. And that will lead not to revolution but to repression. I suggest to you, my friend, that the interests of those who killed Kennedy now transcend national boundaries and national priorities. No doubt we are dealing now with an international conspiracy. We must face that fact - and not waste any more time microanalyzing the evidence. That's exactly what they want us to do. They have kept us busy for so long. And I will bet, buddy, that is what will happen to you. They'll keep you very, very busy and, eventually, they'll wear you down."<<<
"International conspiracy."
Isn't that exactly what Ramsey Clark and ANSWER address? Isn't that exactly what the PNAC espouses?
Jeff, the value of having ANYONE speak out against the American cryptocracy, whether Ramsey Clark or Lyndon Larouche or Bob Denver, no matter their past, FAR OUTWEIGHS any other consideration. ANSWER addresses US imperialism and fascism in other countries, too, just like Ramsey Clark.
This is how we should 'globalize' the resistance to the War on the Peaceful Poor, by uniting our struggle and showing that it IS THE SAME CABAL of murderers, not giving in to the COINTELPRO divide-and-conquer relentlessly-distrustful fear of association Jeff is espousing by raising eyebrows over Ramsey and ANSWER
'lest it be a discrediting trick.' This is disabling suspicion, just what the alphabet agencies desire.
So you've got to do a cost-benefit analysis instead of just playing "mirror-mirror -who's-a-spook."
You think most Americans know the history of Ramsey in the 1960s? NO. They know the august title of 'Former Attorney General.' And that credibility receptivity HELPS the peace movement more than it hurts.
Are Americans brain-washed against Palestinians and socialists? Yes, of course. Many will ignore George Galloway because of these associations. Doesn't mean we should reject him, though.
-He called out Congress for its crimes to its face.
-ANSWER is getting hundreds of thousand of 'NORMAL' looking people to visibly and simultaneously REJECT Bushism even though TV won't show it. IT STILL HAPPENED.
Can't deny it. This bucks up a demoralized and complacent peace movement.
Every gain is a gain, whether for the wrong motives or not.
Look at former KKK Senator Robert Byrd. His mistake was many decades ago and now he's one of our strongest defenders of the Constitution. He changed.
Re: Ramsey and JFK, RFK, MLK murders-
Don't forget that both the CIA and FBI were KILLING their opponents while the country was going up in flames and the nuclear threat of the Missiles of October was fresh in everyone's adrenalin glands.
Awareness of the CIA's willingness to murder many many people bloomed when Ramsey was in DC.
AND CIA was telling people that Castro killed JFK and Americans might want revenge which would lead to 40 million US dead in a nuclear war with the USSR. So, "shh" and "move on."
That was THEN. This is NOW.
Looks to me like Clark played to survive and then went whistle-blower in the 70s in disillusionment just like former CIA Angola station chief John Stockwell who became a staunch opponent of the system he'd been part of.
People really can change. LET THEM instead of dismissing them as formerly flawed. We need all the help we can get.
Re: Larouche-
Case in point. As bizarre as his past is(I don't know if he personally sent people off to attack with baseball bats but Dreams End is convinced), now his organization is focused on the neocons, Cheney, Bush Crime Family, and the cryptocracy.
And the information coming out of EIR looks solid to me.
Yesterday I joined thousands of anti-war protesters in SF. In the debris on the ground was a current Larouche pamphlet which I picked up since Dream's End just went off like a bomb on me when I posted an internet article on 9/11 of Larouche's and now I REALLY want to see what Dream's End is so volatile about!
(No, I'm not a Larouchie. Too many anti-Jew flavored comments.)
Well, here's what 's in it.
This Larouche pamphlet reads exactly like the Rigorous Intuition website with psy-ops warfare articles about:
1) Aquino+Vallely's 'MindWar' essay for the Pentagon.
2) Generals Stubblebine, Schoomaker, Downing, and Boykin.
3) Lt. Cl. Channon's 'First Earth Battalion' essay.
4) Wolfowitz and non-lethal warfare
5) Gitmo and Abu-Ghraib and SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) military training and research.
6) Pentagon training of 9/11 suspects.
7) EIR interview with Genl. (retired) Paul Vallely about Iran.
8) Satanic Subversion of the US military-Aquino, Franklin cover-ip/Bonacci, Gosch, Presidio day-care scandal etc.
9) Operation Northwoods false -flag terror plot to invade Cuba in 1962
10) A Larouche-written essay and a Larouche interview.
Reads almost EXACTLY like Rigorous Intuition, doesn't it?
So you can focus on forty year-old failures or you can focus on who the mass-murderers are today.
Ramsey Clark and Lyndon Larouche, for all we can fault them with, are fighting fascism.
Do you really want to impede that effort by focusing on personal gotcha flaws that 'might be COINTELPRO' but is an indictment of mass murder? I say think Bigger Picture. Lives are at stake.
Watchful Citizen is right.
[quote]If protests and the left aren't your thing, talk to people on the right or apoliticals. We're all in this together.[/quote]
Indeed, we might have a better chance reaching middle class conservatives who tend to view the Constitution with sanctity, and where there is a tradition of paranoia that a power elite (the communists) are trying to subvert and overthrow the country. In a very imprtant way, the RI crowd are patriots. We should try to move beyond our "humanist" stance and tap into a more narrow patriotism, even though it's not conspiracy-correct.
I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE an RI de-panting of Chomsky. If it's thorough enough, it could something to spread all over the radical establishment's turf. Chomsky is friendly with an Army relative of mine who is as scorched-earth right-wing hawk as you can get and probably works for the DIA.
Re: Correcting my take on Larouche.
After seeing more stuff Dreams End found, yes, Larouche PERSONALLY is way too flawed to quote directly without discrediting the historical analysis he offers.
(Thanks, Dreams End, for the info.)
He has said some truly horrific things about Jews and gays.
However, his organization is much better and I have no problem with EIR. The contents of that pamphlet I found reveals this paradox.
It read exactly like Rigorous Intuition. Amazingly exact. I mean, it could've been written by Jeff to promote this website exact!
Consider this situation to be like hating Miles Davis for beating up women but digging his band's music. Just get back-up on any info from EIR but leave him out of the discussion. Larouche is an asshole and I don't in any way apologize for him or condone his 'moral' views on religion and sexuality.
J said
Which leaves room for a great, grand conspiracy of education, access, and messaging
Read this
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm
Few people have the courage to look at the assassinations and other black-ops--it is like looking at Hell, very frightening.
That pretty much sums up how we got here.
1999, the WTO protests, Seattle... a young hispanic man approached my partner and me. He asked "Who is paying you, who is paying you to be here?" I was dumbfounded, for a moment.
To me, the whole Bobby Kennedy as savior angle is misguided. Or, let's put it this way, he may have been pro-Black, pro-Gay, pro-Hispanic, anti-Vietnam in 1968. But he was extremely anti-Palestinian, as well. That was the culture of that time, and very little has changed in Washington D.C. on the elite level, except words are little nicer.
But do as you wish.
Truly, Americans have no political alternatives in either party.
The Democrats are up to their NECKS in mideast violence, and yes, Blowback slapped them upside the head on June 6, 1968. That day was the dark beginning of America's deciding to become the new UK in the ME.
One must make deals with the devil.
Not if you want to own your own soul.
Just sayin'. Some things aren't worth the going price.
I suspect the good historians of the future will find that the various infiltrations and agents provacateurs currently attributed to cointelpro, the cia, and so on will be found to have simply been scapegoats for the left's failure to organize itself properly, etc., etc., as, of course, no surviving documentation will indicate that any such governmental activities existed, and, in the absence of such documentation, the squabbling and infighting on record in the groups' surviving minutes will be proof enough of their inability to properly organize.
Just as those who fail to study history often fail to repeat it, so do those who fail to understand the present -- when real history is most exposed to observation -- fail to understand history, no matter how much study they put into it.
Nice work, J.
Well said, Kelley b.
Who in their right mind would contemplate doing a deal with a liar?
If you deal with crooks, you will get burnt every time. That's the nature of the beast, as it were. It can't be otherwise. There will always be "blowback" to use the current vernacular.
I don't know anything about Ramsay Clarke but if he was a bad guy who's now unequivocally doin' good, has he done the big Mea Culpa, the Big Expose? The answer to that question should answer the other questions raised here by Jeff and others.
Actually, in many ways I agree with Kelly B.
In my nation of the USA, the Dems are the alternative to the Repubs and vice versa. Both sides have enough blood on their hands to fill several oceans.
Still, they are the main players at this stage, having eliminated so many in their path through the old knife in, knife out techniques.
From my vantage, the one thing that is the glue to the opposition is a disgust with the neo-cons. But is that enough to gain power and then keep it?
That, in my mind, is the question.
I see little center to the opposition whatsoever.
Interesting board. Thanks for letting me vent.
The comment on Chomsky was interesting--he's a faux anarchist, actually, and academically not really qualified (as a structural linguist) to write about political science in the first place.
What up with the academic snobbery? Yeah, he's a linguist. So what? How does that have anything to do with what he says about politics?
counter-productive, halting a confrontation with confrontational style speech??
::::::::::::::::::::::::
a few effective speeches but the ANSWER strident, screaming, fist-wavers, depress, turn-off rather than uplift,... confrontation solidifies resolve of 'apparent' OTHERS.
war-like speech to stop a war?
sure anger and outrage is felt by us awake and aware
but art is the synthesis of opposites
healing of semmingly intractable dichotomies is is so easy and basic considering the transparency and manifestation of injustice, illegality and inhumanity in this latest slide to lower the bar of reasonable mass-behavior and what is acceptable civilized conduct.
watchful citizen brought up good points.
but here are my recommendations
-these speakers are not effective to listen to them is psychic torture
-more heart than head needs to be encouraged
-folk singers, poets
-spiritual activists
-congress not in session, president evacuated
-rally takes place same time as Granite shadow exercise to practice fed. control
-widespread, local, regional rallies everywhere to reach more people and those on the fence & offering more diversity of real people speakers, artists to get out the message, plus generate coverage by local and little america media.
"If we solidify Bush as being evil and react with righteous indignation, we are guilty of the very same thing we're accusing Bush of (i.e., projecting the shadow). We then become a conduit for the very evil we're reacting to. Who among us has not been guilty of being a channel for ME disease at one time or another? If, when we see this virulent pathogen, we contract against it and react in any way, be it in judgment, hatred, anger or revulsion, we're helping to perpetuate the diabolical polarization that is the signature of the disease. Our reacting in this way, which is typical of many political activists, is itself an expression that we ourselves have the disease, or to say it more clearly, the disease has us."
by Paul Levy @ http://www.serendipity.li/bush/madness.htm
Dennis Kucinich on the knowing that Words create Worlds;
We have reached a moment in our country's history where it is urgent that people everywhere speak out as president of his or her own life, to protect the peace of the nation and world within and without. We should speak out and caution leaders who generate fear through talk of the endless war or the final conflict. We should appeal to our leaders to consider that their own bellicose thoughts, words and deeds are reshaping consciousness and can have an adverse effect on our nation. Because when one person thinks: fight! he or she finds a fight. One faction thinks: war! and starts a war. One nation thinks: nuclear! and approaches the abyss. And what of one nation which thinks peace, and seeks peace?
Neither individuals nor nations exist in a vacuum, which is why we have a serious responsibility for each other in this world. It is also urgent that we find those places of war in our own lives, and begin healing the world through healing ourselves. Each of us is a citizen of a common planet, bound to a common destiny. So connected are we, that each of us has the power to be the eyes of the world, the voice of the world, the conscience of the world, or the end of the world. And as each one of us chooses, so becomes the world.
Each of us is architect of this world. Our thoughts, the concepts. Our words, the designs. Our deeds, the bricks and mortar of our daily lives. Which is why we should always take care to regard the power of our thoughts and words, and the commands they send into action through time and space.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/22/161735/424
of course it was historic, and energizing to be with kindred spirits and creative modes of protest, I am a sign-maker, but the speakers assigned were holding back the progress, as i heard on background at c-span, people shouting let us march and the stage replying we only have a few more speakers to sap your energy with.
with the extremism and lawlessness operating in full view, and the need for a complete new outlook, overhaul, repudiation and Turn About so imperative, even 'apparent' progressives WillPitt, M.Moore are unwittingly or not Cointelpro or obstacles in the way.
we cannot work magic when we fall into dichotomous traps
we need holistic speakers try neale donald walsche, marianne williamson, dennis kucinich, jesse jackson, paul coelho, john hagelin, GrannyD, Helen Caldicott, Bill Moyer, Arundhati Roy the philosopher-teachers from the underground movie What The #Bleep! do We Know? and any number of unknown anonymous Love Sting Operators.
look the other (apparent) side in the eye, if there not genuine they will look away, share a smile with and give directions to a boo!ssh supporter on the street in everyday life
kill dishonesty with kindness, your, Our time will come History, Decency, The Future and Nature are in Charge
But at these huge gatherings we need speakers who are at peace with themselves, and I bet there are some children, teenagers and 20somethings who would do a wonderful job! too!
heaven peace already exist if we just let go and open to the wonder, awesomeness
the courageous New World Starts Inside of YOU !
Impress upON EveryOne you meet the Potency of their Existence
"A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries"- Thomas Mann
blogger aggregator= www.katrinafeeds.org
Why is everyone always talking about conspiracy "theorie's"? There's no theory to it, we're currently embroiled in a conspiracy, the likes of which this nation has never seen.
Is it just me or who have you noticed the same two screamers for ANSWER have been on C-Span for a solid 3 years. The husky black guy and the dark skinned girl both look to be in their mid to late 20's.
Jeff, hundreds of thousands turn out to oppose torture and murder and your response is to sow suspicion of the organizers? Seems to me that's very COINTELPRO of YOU, not Ramsey or a.n.s.w.e.r.
Not saying your hypothesis is true or false, but just look at the present. People rejected WAR and cared not who organized or got permits.
I saw the many responses to your article posted at democraticunderground.com.
Red-baiting works, doesn't it?
So...does helping to promote division validate your essay or is it self-justification? I know what it means to get the first dose of suspicion when alerting people to COINTELPRO tactics so don't think I'm not aware people need to know them.
But ask yourself, did your article help or hurt the cause of peace? Is that your goal or is it something else?
Is ONLY understanding tactics the goal of your website or is it helping people survive mass murder today?
You can groom your audience to the point of killing them.
Lives are at stake.
I have had some doubts about the honesty of Ramsey Clark before, and your post today renews some of those doubts. However, I would still tentatively give Clark the benefit of the doubt until I hear or read more of his current activities which really contradict his stated MO -- using his lawyer skills to defend anyone who is down and out. Everyone deserves good legal defense according to Clark, even people he does not personally like.
I have read interviews with Clark where the interviewer has questioned his Establishment background (e.g., his father Tom, a Texan like LBJ, was a Supreme Court justice), and Ramsey was just another talented attorney in the Justice Dept. when LBJ appointed him as AG. He seems to have some "remorse" you might say for his previous position in the Johnson administration and its demands on his integrity, being a "team player". Since then, he genuinely seems (to me) to have taken a more difficult but honest path. If you recall, he was denounced by Pres. Jimmy Carter when he made some high profile trips to the Middle East and extolled the brilliance and accomplishments of Islamic culture in the late 1970's and early 1980's when the Iranian students' taking of American hostages got a lot of Americans angry with anything Islamic or Iranian. He has taken some unpopular public positions such as this when it appears to have served no one's particluar interest but Clark's genuine human concern for other people's problems.
I'd like an "a.n.s.w.e.r" myself to whether Ramsey Clark has apologized for and acknowledged his cointelpro devil's work. If not, then why on earth would anyone even begin to trust him?
Saboteur-led or not, the current state of protesting is wholly ineffective, if not counterproductive.
A whole day of protests without screaming would be nice. Thousands of people listening to a calm recitation of the facts and focused contemplation of the solutions. Huge fact lists and maps and cause-and-effect flow charts. Singing and poetry is wonderful, just not always shrill or desperate. And if the chanting could be freed from its stultifying brevity and bumber-stickerness, that would be great also. And I think every protest, before it introduces its speakers, should be preceded by a disclaimer of sorts cataloguing the history of CHAOS and COINTELPRO. A quick check of ourselves in the mirror.
I love the Paul Levy and Kucinich quotes. However...
"we need holistic speakers try neale donald walsche, marianne williamson, dennis kucinich, jesse jackson, paul coelho, john hagelin, GrannyD, Helen Caldicott, Bill Moyer..."
Jackson and Moyer are establishment toadies, right?
That all said, Watchful Citizen again brings up urgent points. Lives are at stake. Maybe the puppets-in-charge on the radical left deserve to have the rug pulled out from under them, but if soon there'd be no heavyweights left standing, and we'd have a leadership vacuum. Which would be good and necessary, so long as it is filled by the righteous, brave, and intelligent. And rigorous?
Do demonstrations need to have 200,000+ attendees to gather that all important "attention", which theoretically leads to "awareness", which is ultimately the only viable achievement of these impotent, hysterical protests? No, with about 20 or 30 people, you could stage a protest and with a little strategy and luck garner as much attention as 200,000 people being led by 20 or 30. And your message would be undiluted.
Is a Rigorous Intuition march feasible?
If not a march, then how about a saunter?
"March" is war-centric, anyway.
Do we have any urban clusters of dedicated readers?
- FourthBase
I went to the LA protest. It reminded of the Two-Minute Hate from 1984. There were communists there telling me how great comrade Stalin was. I was almost ashamed to be with anti-torture, human-rights demonstrators who think that Stalin was a good guy.
I had a good time at the march -- took a bus up from North Carolina. We had twice as many buses going as we did for the women's march last spring; I have heard number from tens of thousands to 600,000 plus, and I would guess that it was more towards the high end, as we barely moved a block in the first two hours. ANSWER seemed like a minor presence, and who goes to a march in DC to listen to speeches -- besides the media? I heard several people mention that ANSWER could be provocateurs.
A.N.S.W.E.R. is fucked--that doesn't mean Jesse Jackson or Ramsey Clark are though.
"A whole day of protests without screaming would be nice. Thousands of people listening to a calm recitation of the facts and focused contemplation of the solutions. Huge fact lists and maps and cause-and-effect flow charts. Singing and poetry is wonderful, just not always shrill or desperate. And if the chanting could be freed from its stultifying brevity and bumber-stickerness, that would be great also. And I think every protest, before it introduces its speakers, should be preceded by a disclaimer of sorts cataloguing the history of CHAOS and COINTELPRO. A quick check of ourselves in the mirror."
Hear! Hear!
The Bush Cabal are essentially demagogues. Blind, flag-waving xenophobia and rapturous religious hysteria are their instruments. Their aim is an ignorant, sentimental, passive, fearful population.
Cold, hard facts and logic and thoughtful questions demanding answers are their enemy.
You could have a million-man-and-woman march and it would be futile, as was proved by the millions who marched before the invasion of Iraq.
I think small groups, armed with THE FACTS (the basic, incontrovertible facts ONLY), would be more effective if they organized presentations by talented, intelligent and informed speakers, at the meetings of various civil groups.
These would include university student organizations, labour unions, church groups, grassroots political organizations, and even support groups for military families, etc.
Just an idea.
Dear Jeff,
I really know nothing about ANSWER or Ramsey Clark but I am very interested in you explaining to me the meaning of the lyrics to the ballad of Jimmy Lee and Judas Priest because I have never, ever been able to figure it out.
Also, I think Chomsky just does not care who assassinated Kennedy because Kennedy was not such a knight in shining armor anyhow. I know I am not that interested in the issue for the same reason.
Doesn't it all come down to what "we, the people" can do about it? ("It", for the sake of argument, being Dubya).
We can write and talk about it, share information.
We can (and oh God, the irony here is choking me) vote the SOB out, because, hey! it's a democracy.
We can hope he gets impeached, or drinks himself to death.
We can take to the streets, in whatever numbers available, and shout about it, because we're fucking furious.
What we can't do, apparently, is produce a figurehead leader that can open people's eyes and minds. Someone necessarily charismatic, driven, smart, honest, good, and courageous. That we can't do. And all the rest is so much thumb-sitting, isn't it? Unless someone gets up there on the same podium, and destroys the little freak head-to-head (and how hard could that be?), he has no worries he can't blank out with pills and booze and sheer callousness.
So what is the problem with Chomsky folks?
Yes after reading a couple of his books I did notice that he studiously avoids digging deeper on certain topics.
For example who are these elites who are running the show?
But it was my impression that he did so in order to maintain his mainstream credibility and therefore reach as wide an audience as possible.
I always got the impression that he has his own (dark) opinions but that he keeps them firmly under wraps because he knows it could be used against him to scare off middle America.
Anonymous One,who would have thought,that back in Nov 23 1963,the blood ritual of JFK would start the big ball rolling? This wasn't the only death that day of any importance,there happened to be the death of another great mind,Huxley.I belive the PYS OP was set into motion that day and has never stop.
From the desk of Shamus:
Ah, here we go again…
It is often easier to question the soldier in the fight when on the sidelines regardless of political affiliation because we all know it’s wrong. If you care so much about what people are doing when you aren’t looking join them. If you are a good person and your head is in the right place you can sometimes change your environment for the positive. If you are where you need to be (i.e., not an asshole or psychotic) you will eventually create a positive environment even after you get shown the door.
You are feeding the folks out in TV land entertainment every time you march without purpose or a clear voice on what the solution may be. We all know the world is fucked. If you can’t find an honest politician go into politics. If you want to sit with your big brain on a Saturday night debating the legal system become a civil rights lawyer or a police officer. These jobs are filled everyday by someone else.
I think it’s hilarious that we have come to the point in history when an organization holds itself out as the Answer-give me a break, when have we ever had “the answer”?
Jeff, you are now personally responsible for moving a debate in a certain direction for a lot of folks who don’t have the time or the brain power to read the “tea leaves” for themselves.
Jeff, I could care less what you are really up to as-your self styled graphics aside-you generally let everyone know in the most obvious matter where you are coming from first. RI is a great place to get info but let’s stop debating what happened yesterday or who has “cleaner hands” then the next guy.
RI is a good medium to see where the big brain folks are on most topics while they are happening. But, give me a break.
Most RI’s readers-I assume-are now the adults that we used to run into every time we went into a room of adults that suddenly became silent on the adult topics under discussion.
If conflict or domination is your goal (not you Jeff I hope) learn the game of chess as a hobby or better yet move to Montana and learn how to herd fish on a fish farm as they will forgive you that.
As to the folks that speak of “patriotism” I say to you beware of that line of thinking. That’s what has brought most of the folks we have seen in history into positions of power and control. A patriot is a person that has arrived at the conclusion that he can now shoot you for what you are thinking in what he now calls his base camp. Most men that have ever experienced walking the line will tell you to fuck off with your “knowledge” of the way the world really works. The man behind the mask has always been replaced throughout history. Even Jesus Christ was replaced at some point.
I could care less what monkey business any of you people are into as long as you play your games in private without affecting anyone in a harmful way. Everything is done for power, money or stupidity or some self serving agenda.
I believe that change can only be done in a forward manner because human nature will always pull us back into the shit. What we have now is a society that is either seeking the status quo or talking about how fucked everything is.
Where is the change our fathers spoke of in the history of the past? Where is that fabled neutral place where all men can be into his own affairs without others trying to find new ways to harm his head with their own agenda?
I say who cares about the men in the red-lit rooms. The day we see those nefarious individuals and groups of all camps as irrelevant is the day we have cut the ties of our past.
We are repeating the mistakes of past generations.
I think if all the big brains put their heads together we can reach a neutral place for now with a focus on couching all principles that need an ongoing debate until such time.
I hate to be too preachy as I really do have other things to focus on today but I would hope that if you have an IQ over 70 that you would start working on a list of answers to the questions that have always plagued us since the beginning of time.
Who knows, you may be smarter then you think. I would hope you are at least smarter then I.
Who cares about the secrets of the world governments? You noticed how many people actually do these days. If you talk of secrets no one will listen to you. If you speak of problems you will join the rank and file of all peoples. If you present answers to problems most people will probably listen to you. Just like any artist you have the potential to eventually shit out a promising idea every now and then.
I believe we are at a point in history when we are accountable for our fellow man. Until we stop the point-counter-point of the patient on the table he will continue to atrophy.
What’s my point here? I know that we have to take care of ourselves on all issues including the time and place of our own death if we can help it. When we have reached the point of bargaining the value of our rights is the day we are unable to do so. We have talked ourselves into a catch-22. We are looking for the man with the cleanest hands via some culpa of honesty that fits what we are looking for until our minds change. We will never have a truly honest man walk the earth as we all see the same things differently some days. The man you call a fag could be my boyfriend or the head of some powerful organization. The woman who takes your job could possibly be a better fit. The men in the dark suits on some days do the right thing.
Let’s stop sitting in the movie theatre that is our life and start working on solutions to how we want all this to end in our children’s favour. Instead of spending three days in an environment that is filled with your fellow travelers and protestors I would say sit at home and think about what you are trying to accomplish first as an individual. Even the Light House for the Blind has one employee that can see well enough to find the emergency exit if need be.
Jeff, for now you are a designated driver for most of us trying to find the next step.
Jeff, if you can present us with some solutions to what ails us when you get a chance you will have moved from the theatre attendant with the flashlight to a knowledgable fire marshal which is what I think we all need these days or least looking for-because unless the men who wish us harm have invented a time machine there is no fixed commodity on the future.
My personal opinion on the state of the world now is generally this: if you can still breathe without too much pain then odds are you are going to be ok. Fuck that.
We should move this dropped ball forward in a positive fashion and let the goofs of history do their thing because that’s what they do.
This whole thing on Chomsky is disheartening in the same way that Freud gets lambasted by the big brain folks that think they know better then him. If you get a better idea write it out as I’m sure we would like to get another opinion on something a man says.
Even Einstein was proved eventually wrong on some big things but he at least put his neck out there for review. Restated, challenge a man’s ideas so he can learn from your experience-don’t go along for the ride because you think he’s headed in your direction.
Most people don’t know about your great ideas until you tell us. Who knows? You may be more right then wrong. The debate about yesterday is now over-lets start working on the solutions we have before us.
If you disagree with me that's fine as I will hopefully learn something from your thoughts on the matter.
Just a thought I had today as my mind is not yet made up on most things that change.
Jeff, on a side note I still get the best sleep ever when I visit Canada.
I realize you don't like this word, but Bobby Kennedy was the original Blowback Kid. LBJ never understood how some in his administration were so gung-ho for Israel being number one and yet so critical of Vietnam, but those were the times. Those were the realities, and Bobby fit right in. The sad fact is that the Dems aren't an anti-war party at all. They are an anti-not that war party, since that ain't my war party. Notice how gung how they are for Afghanistan, as if Afghanistan is Disneyland or Haight-Ashbury?
No Gandhis in that party. Just war-hawks with different agendas.
And Canada was never hit by Osama bin Laden, and, yet, you guys bought the same line the Dems have on that thing.
Still, this board raises very interesting questions, some I've dealt with myself several times. That is always healthy.
Just HAD to weigh in here on this most interesting blog debate.
I thank Jeff for popinting out the obvious.
We should no more trust ANSWER and Ramsey Clark unconditionally than we should trust Jesse Jackson (a man I believe was the COINTELPRO replacement for MLK according to their own documents saying they HAD a replacement once they had terminated MLK) or Chomsky (or Clintons or Kerry for that matter).
Anyone with a good political science background KNOWS that the Coomunist left and socialist parties in the US were essentially set up covertly and funded by the Rockefellers, Morgans etc and have been tools of the right since they began.
The RCP, mentioned on some threads, is a total COINTELPRO provocateur set up.
And even though there may be well meaning people in the leadership of answer, it is just too simple to insert a disruptive agenda into the movment when the leadership has covert network ties to people like the Larouches and the extreme intelligence "right" .
I have never really trusted Clark and Chomsky just never struck the right notes for me.
BUT the thing is SOMEBODY has to look at the Machiavellian technique of infiltration and coopting of the left: i.e. that the fascist intel ops are DEEPLY ingrained and ploanted throughout the sytem and throughout the organizations.
I don't know whether Clark can be trusted or is for real.
But the agent-provocateurs ALWAYS say and do the politically correct thing while they are running your train off the track and into the swamp of ineffectiveness or even death.
So to RAISE the questions and investigate them thoroughly. To debate and discuss these issues - especially Clark and Chomsky and ANSWER etc., these are all incredibly important.
Thanks Jeff for raising a point I would probably have been afraid to.
Finally, there was also a mention of Carroll Quigley. His treatise "Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time" is the classic analysis of how the wealthy wasp elites have manipulated and infiltrated the left as well as communist countries (our deals with Stalin and Mao and now the Chinesse Communists all make sense in this context of the wealthy elites making capitalist deals with slave states and giant concentration camps like the Soviets and Chinese "governments" (all wall street dictatorships in my view).
I always say for those who wish to understan there are two books: Konrad Heiden's "Der Fuehrer" and "A History of National Socialism". I would add John Loftus's "Secret War Against the Jews" and Quigleys book. (not to mention Webster Tarpley's Bush bio at www.tarpley.net)
ALL these books have some elements of suspicious agendas (except Heiden, who is a pure antiNazi with no goal except to expose the truth as he sees it) and so must be read in CONTEXT of the belief system of the authors. And Tarpley's conclusions can be IMO, all wrong where his facts are impeccable.
But if we assume that we can trust ANYONE who has baggage like Clark or Jackson or who works for an organization which may be a total set up, then we are foolish.
We ALWAYS need to question authority, even if it is the authorities on the left.
That does NOT mean that we do not stand united on the key issues and put our fears and suspicions aside when the moments to stand up come. But that also does not mean every person singing "we shall overcome" really means it except those who only mean it in a purely selfish sense.
I do not trust ANSWER, Clark or ANY of these types. That does not mean I won't listen and learn and join them in protest. It just means I will not follow them over the lemming drop with many people who are simply sheeple for the stylish left who follow blindly, sometimes led by the blind or the dissemblers of truth.
I made it to Saturday's march and was impressed as always with the huge crowds who made their way in from afar to join in a few hours of protest. These are beautiful people gathering to share the energy of humanity.
Whatever its faults, Answer is a broad coalition that knows how to put on a gathering of this kind; that is their main objective, not radical preaching. Sure we had screamers on stage but most of us could barely hear them and had no interest in listening. Mingling is the thing and it works.
I attended two of the earlier antiwar gatherings in DC; first in October 2003 when MSM studiously ignored 100K people, lovely nonviolent people calling for an end to reptile rule. Answer has been the nugget that draws us together and it should be recognised for that.
In case you folks didn't notice, the 250,000 people who marched in anti-war demonstrations were soundly ignored by the statist mainstream media. If you haven't figured out that unarmed crowds of clowns and sloganeers are not considered a threat to the establishment, you never will.
If all those people who marched did something constructive like withheld their taxes in protest of the the war, THAT would have registered someone's attention. Or if half of that number marched down Pennsylvania Avenue with shotguns demanding a redress fo grievances, THAT would have gotten their attention. As things are currently structured, marches are a 'steam valve' that allow the system to proceed unimpeded.
As far as those operating under the delusion that the Democrats and the Republicans are opposed to each other, consider that a Google search of Kerry's top 10 campaign donors also features 4 names from Bush's top 10. And that's just what has been openly declared. Both parties promote a big government agenda that diminishes the power and responsibilities of individuals in favor of the nanny-state collective.
Someone just said,
"If all those people who marched did something constructive like withheld their taxes in protest of the war, THAT would have registered someone's attention."
The British government just jailed a 73 year old lady pensioner for 7 days because she refused to pay the above inflation portion of her council tax bill (equivalent of state taxes) – the unpaid part of her bill came to well under a hundred dollars – 53 GB pounds I think.
This extraordinary action is in the face of well documented rises in council tax, year after year, well in excess of inflation and with no comparable rises in the state pension. The pensioner, along with many other thousands like her, have quite rightly claimed they are being impoverished by Phoney Bliar.
Personally I think the time for nicey, nicey protests has come to an end. I for one would be very happy to see a far more physical approach taken. Fuck these people.
Details are just that. What needs to chainge are the basic concepts on which society operates. These are some thoughts that I have been working on.
The economy is a convective cycle, with energy in the form of labor, materials and ideas rising up, while wealth, civil order and social security precipitate down. Supply side theory has created a situation where more has been rising then is effectively used or precipitating down and the results are large storm clouds of surplus curency boiling over a parched economy. For reference, consider where the money the government borrows would go, if it were not being recycled through the public sector. We already have a situation of serious asset inflation and this money would just increase the effect. Government borrowing is effectively a nationalization of surplus wealth, but rather than actually taking it, the revenue stream of the government is being transferred to those with surplus wealth in the first place, which only adds to the problem.
In 1996, Bob Dole had a campaign slogan, "We want you to keep more of your money in your pocket." My first thought was, Well thank God it isn't my money, or it would be worthless." The logic behind this idea is that as a medium of exchange, money is actually a form of public commons, much like the highway system. Under our current ideology of individualism, we assume it is private property. To use the roads as an analogy, it would be as if every time a new road was built, everyone tried to claim as much as possible. The eventual result would be that everything would be paved over and no one would be able to get anywhere. We are close to reaching that situation with our monetary system, as every aspect of life is judged according to the bottom line and the economy is still about to seize up.
I first started questioning economic pronouncements when trying to figure out how Paul Volcker cured inflation by raising interest rates. Yes, it is started by loose money, but reverse engineering in not always so simple. By raising interest rates, his solution for the oversupply of money was to raise the cost of using it! Government borrowing is a more likely explanation for what brought inflation under control After supply side economics squeezed it out of the general economy, the government skimmed it off the top and then spent it. As public spending supports private investment, rather then competing with it, the effect was compounded. Frankly, the boom of the 80's and 90's had more to do with the baby boom going through its most productive years, than anything else.
The fact that Social Security is a direct transfer is one of the primary reasons it is so efficient. Only as much money can be saved as can be invested and there is a dearth of investment vehicles, relative to the amount of surplus currency in circulation. It is a situation similar to the electric industry. As it would be prohibitively expensive to build the battery storage for the amounts in question, it has to be used as it is generated. Creating the investment vehicles necessary to store private accounts would be like storage batteries for the electric industry.
The problem with the line item veto is that it would place most of the power of the purse in the hands of the president, but a way around this would be to break the bills into their constituent items and have each legislator assign a percentage value to each one. Then re-assemble them in order of preference and have the president draw the line at what is to be funded. Not only would this break up the budgetary log jams which make over spending irresistible, but it would take away some of the power this process gives to the legislative leadership and parties and returns it to the level of the individual legislators. While the buck really would stop with the president. Democracy is a bottom up process and the republic is a top down entity. This would clarify that relationship.
Money and government are two sides of the same coin. One is rights, the other is responsibilities. Money is like processed sugar, so if we were to learn to maintain a more organic, wholistic society and maintain wealth and value within every aspect of our lives and not continually drain reductionistic units out to put in some bank, then government would be forced to organize itself along similar lines.
Communism spent seventy years finding that a better society isn't built at the expense of the individual and we are in the process of finding that a better individual doesn't come at the expense of society. The coin always has two sides, even though we can only see one at a time.
regards,
brodix
I think Jeff serves us very well by merely being that theater attendant. We can all come up with solutions ourselves, and we should consider this site and its board as the suggestion box. Spreading real awareness, i.e. facts, is a crucial step in the process of healing and winning. I would love to see Rigorous Intuition eventually put its name behind a fact-spreading campaign. Not spreading conclusions, just facts. Gather the best facts, and they will evoke the truth in people's intuitions, and hopefully lead to rigor.
PS this has been a great comment thread.
Ramsey Clark called Fallujah "the Guernica of our time. If Ramsey Clark is a COINTELPRO agent, then I'm not as averse to those agents as I used to be. (figure of speech, obviously, ok?)
R. Clark got to the podium in DC and praised Aristide as being more democratically elected in Haiti than Bush will ever be in America, said Fallujah was today's Guernica, condemned Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and a few other White House crimes.
With 'enemies' like Ramsey Clark, who needs friends?
It does not make sense to consider the last twenty years of Clark's pointing vigorously at White House crimes as a trick to get us to....what? See White House crimes? I think he really turned against the killer cryptocracy and dedicated himself to opposing its actions but doesn't go directly up against the CIA.
Why don't some of you consider the CIA dangerous and accept that some don't want to be targets for 'neutralizing?'
I heard Jane Fonda interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air program when she was pushing her biography. When Fonda talked about the COINTELPRO focus on her, the fear in her voice was obvious. Really obvious. Terry could hardly get her to say who was breaking into her apartment and searching it. Fonda's voice cracked.
The Mockingbird media still works for the War machine and ignores Ramsey Clark and anyone else who says "j'accuse."
No, the real Clark to worry about is Wesley Clark.
General Wesley Clark.
Because he is being manuevered into the Democratic Party as the next figure head for US Military Virtue as the Reagan Revolution against the peaceful poor continues to erase the Woodstock Era and totally remilitarize American culture.
And Jesse Jackson now recruits for the Pentagon as a jobs program for African Americans in return for large donations to the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition from weapons merchants like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
I know. I saw the corporate donor signs at a conference in Chicago. I met Jesse at one of his functions and gave him hell for doing this last year right after Abu Ghraib broke. He was friends of a friend and he said nothing to me in response and walked away with his security people looking back at me meaningfully. Now THAT is something to be wary of, not what Ramsey Clark does.
Anonymous said... 7:20 AM From the desk of Shamus....
"As to the folks that speak of “patriotism” I say to you beware of that line of thinking. That’s what has brought most of the folks we have seen in history into positions of power and control."
" I could care less what monkey business any of you people are into as long as you play your games in private without affecting anyone in a harmful way. Everything is done for power, money or stupidity or some self serving agenda.
I believe that change can only be done in a forward manner because human nature will always pull us back into the shit.
Where is the change our fathers spoke of in the history of the past? Where is that fabled neutral place where all men can be into his own affairs without others trying to find new ways to harm his head with their own agenda?
I say who cares about the men in the red-lit rooms. The day we see those nefarious individuals and groups of all camps as irrelevant is the day we have cut the ties of our past. "
Ahhhh, that's why i truly similary love my Bukowski....btw any dirt on Bukowski? other than the usual "oh he was just a drunken crazed author"?
Good stuff Seamus, good stuff.
LL Bukowski (Long Live)
Anonymous 12:01 AM said...
but art is the synthesis of opposites
-these speakers are not effective to listen to them is psychic torture
-folk singers, poets -spiritual activists
Anon 12:01AM, what do you think of this... ( i had mentioned site previously )
www.lipstickmystic.com/articles/articles033005.html
or this one titled "Chaos Elementals and End of the World Consciousness"
www.lipstickmystic.com/articles/articles112804.html
Hope everyone's watching the Dylan special on PBS tonight and tomorrow.
Watching/listening to the Dylan special in the background while i read, seems about on the 55th minute; in Dylan speaking of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, good quotes pertaining to having a positive mind frame.
So you've got to do a cost-benefit analysis instead of just playing "mirror-mirror -who's-a-spook."
Thank you for your superb post, Watchful Citizen. This is the Now. We cannot afford to vet everyone out there who the same goal of ousting the Bush Regime. As in most wars, I'm not real concerned right now about the backgrounds of the fighters. I just want to win; it will take everything and everyone to do it. This is the most formidable opponent our side has ever fought.
That does not mean being suspicious of people like Clark is unwarranted. Vigilance is always necessary. You don't have to make a deal with the devil to see that we all have a mutually beneficial goal here.
Further, instead of being cynical about the protest as a valueless display, why not look at the positive social benefits? I'm speaking in the Durkheimian sense, being social science trained. People on the left need these rallies. They need to gather, as tribes, to display their totems, to share survival strategies, and to reaffirm their right to live and their intention to fight for that right. The visibile affirmation of so many coming together gives hope to those who think they are powerless, friendless, and alone as fascism's jackboot continues to stomp on their heads.
If this post comes across as facile, so be it. I'm no genius, and don't have the knowledge base to debate much of the deep politics posted here. That said, I very much appreciate the chance to learn from others who do know. However, according to my nature, I see things through a different lens. In this case, my lens is focused on a growing social movement that can positively benefit from the commingling of disparate elements, all working toward the same end.
BTW: I saw the Dylan special on PBS. When Lawrence Ferlinghetti described how he wept when he first heard Dylan sing "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall", I wept.
Cheers,
Morgan
There is an added ingredient this time, one that was missing in the '60's, that I believe will almost insure our success. That is - women as full participants and leaders.
Unfortunately our opponents are already scheming to co opt this unstoppable force and are launching it into the unconscious minds of TV viewers tonight- (Hillary for President.)
Morgan Wolf:
Re: No Direction Home.
Actually watching the Dylan special again it was Allen Ginsburg who wept/was weeping.
The wonders of having a DVD-Recorder to catch these things.
Ginsburg had just come back from India when...."I..got to the west coast; there's a poet, charlie parnell, at a party in bolinas, played me a record of this new young folk singer, and i heard a part of "hard rain"....and i wept. (long pause as he almost starts to weep again)
..i wept cause it seemed that the torch had been passed to another generation from earlier bohemian or beat illumination and self-empowerment."
I also caught Dylan saying of Liam Clancy, that he had these incredible sayings, especially after about thirty pints of Guinness, (this one for instance)
"Remember Bob..No Fear, No Envy, No Meaness"
And of the Clancy Bro. and Tommy Makem, Dylan says...
"What i heard of the Clancy Bros. were rousing rebel songs, Napoleonic in scope, and they were just these musketeer type characters; yet on another level you have these romantic ballads that would just slay you right in your tracks....the sweetness of Tommy Makem and Liam."
Cheers back.
Intriguing thread. My Chomsky slam ruffled some feathers. I do need to back it up, I admit, and will do so as soon as I can. But I will say that Chomskyian linguistic structuralism, like many structuralist schools in US academia, made a concerted attempt to belittle and destroy alternate currents of tought; Chomskyians were well known for shouting down the "opposition" (anyone who didn't believe in deep structure etc.) in conferences; they harassed and pushed people out of fine departments like Cornell; they were right and everyone else was wrong. Structuralists in academia are like positivists--they are completely right, and everyone else is a moron. Freud came to dominate psychoanalysis, so everything was about Mommy and Daddy. Complete Bull! See Guattari, for example (Anti-Oedipus, with Deleuze). Piaget, child development, education. Levi-Strauss, antrhpology.
And who do they always go after? The anarchists--those of us who do not feel we need a structure to solve our problems, that we can function perfectly well at the community scale. Read Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, and anything by Elisee Reclus.
sorry if that sounded stuffy.
Connection between Noam's two worlds of thought? a heck of a lot, I think. The structuralist view of the world brings us a bigger and better State, which few of the readers here I suspect really desire. In any case, noam chalked up evidence of 9-11 complicity as "anomalies" that didn't mean anything--because in his version of modeling reality, results that falsify the hypothesis don't matter. (Ball lightning was once an anomaly--it didn't exist). This is bad science, constraining reality to a rigid model that forces you to banish evidence that might force you to alter your model. Noam said 9-11 complicity isn't real, so thousands of otherwise brilliant followers go along with him. Noam also says that he can't find a generator for deep structure--that it implies a Deity.
Google the controversy over whether the Ivory-billed Woodpecker has really been rediscovered. Fricking ornithologists and birdwatchers are more rigid in their conditions of accepting reality than almost anyone. If the standards applied to the IBWO evidence were rigorously applied to events like 9-11, it would be wonderful.
I just got back and have not had time to look a the comments but want to drop this in before it gets to far down the page.
Folks couldn't care less who organized it, it matters, but doing the right thing matters more. Ramsey Clark, whom I have not studied did give a excellent speech btw. McKinney did too and did not dodge the typical Leftgatekeeper barricades, forcefully mentioning voter fraud, 9-11, and Palestine.
This was a full spectrum demo and finally it was nice to note a large turn out of young people. The Katrina atrocities and the were nicely woven in as was the Palestine issue which was not shoved aside. I saw no one bullhorning the crowds, no Tom Haydens or Jerry Rubins. Well there was a bullhorning session, a chant.. "George Bush is a liar we're gonna set his ass on fire" HA! Whoever organized it, the fact remains that this was a mainstream outpouring in the hundreds of thousands of ... dare I say, the "Radical Middle". I know that there were provocateurs there, in fact I confornoted one of them but never saw them gain any traction.
Also not to be forgotten is that there were other actions, a Mock Trial held at the Holiday Inn, Two lobby actions, the one I participated in had first hand witnesses of American torture. This took place in the Dirksen Senate building after members of this group went and visited every senators office and made a presentation. Activists of this action included Jennifer Harbury, Col. Anne Wright,(later arrested) Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire and many others.
http://www.uusc.org/programs/STOP/cast.html
Watch the trial
http://www.uusc.org/blog/hotwire.html
He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years
He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an athiest, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you
And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way
And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls
But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on
He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.
Buffie Saint Marie as recorded by Donovan.
And Dylan's duet with Johnny Cash doing "I'm so Lonesome I could Cry" was priceless last night.
Anonymous @ 6:03 PM: Blush. I have no idea, honest to God, why I typed Ferlinghetti. Thank you so much for including Ginsberg's quote, especially this part: ...i wept cause it seemed that the torch had been passed to another generation from earlier bohemian or beat illumination and self-empowerment.
Has the torch gone out? I don't know who has it now. Is it lost, forever? I wept because I was lost in an 'if only' moment. If only ... (fill in the blanks.)
I watched part 2 of NDH last night. It was like gazing through a window to the past - a dizzying experience. Of course, it's unhealthy to become too enamored of the past, except for what it can teach us. Dylan himself never looked back, of course. Rightly, he refuses to waste time pitying those who could not or would not keep up with the relentless, restless, forward rush that was his life.
I was struck by something he said about language: (I'm paraphrasing) 'Words don't mean what they used to - something you said 20 years ago doesn't mean the same thing now.' Obvious, yet profound. Quintessential Bobby D.
To Anon 7:35 am, who called the duet with Johnny Cash on "So Lonesome I Could Cry" priceless. I agree. It was a wonderful moment in a film that became a visual ethnography of 1960s protest music culture.
(Nod to director Scorcese, who once said he viewed himself as a kind of anthropologist because his films work so hard to reconstruct culture through its artifacts.)
Gawd. No Direction Home is on my Christmas Wish List.
Cheers,
Morgan
The last two Anons have hit the nail pretty squarely, in my opinion. I'm so tired of watching self-congratulatory marches and demonstrations -- and that's after a long history of passionately attending them myself.
The elites don't care. Again: They don't care a whit. Withholding taxes or some other such action just might make a ripple; and if 250,000 people did it, they might be a bit more successful than one poor pensioner.
Not that the rest of the world will be held completely blameless, but I'm beginning to feel that the people of the United States will soon be judged the same way the German people were when the horrors of Nazi Germany became evident. Now is the time to rise up. Protests are NOT the answer. Revolution is. Anything short is complicity.
I was glad to see a war protest, but irritated to hear a gaggle of shrilly shrieking college girls and see the entire gang of Central Casting hippie types. The very best you could say about these people, I thought, is that they are complete idiots when it comes to public relations.
Interesting, Alice! I don't know which ethnic group he purports to be, but someone resembling your Albanians used to show up at all our local educational events on controversial political issues and disrupt them. He would shout down the speaker with demands that we all go charging out to march in the street forthwith, without wasting any time on public education. He was very off-putting, so no marching would happen, but often no education would happen, either. If he could have turned our peaceful rally into a riot, he would have been in his glory.
I heard that Jello Biafra would be speaking at the rally. Did he? And What is the opinion on this would-be Abbie Hoffman of Gen-x crowd?
How Ramsey Clark Championed Baltic Nazi War Criminals...and He's Still Doing It
There is a tendency in the United States to treat the past like a design detail to be adjusted when it suits current requirements. But one cannot erase facts. As documented below, starting in the mid-1980s former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark was politically allied with the Baltic Nazi war criminals who entered the US under the Nazi-friendly immigration policies of the late 1940s...
Clark is generally described as a Left wing attorney. He has helped redefine this concept to include taking up the cause of people once considered enemies of the Left: violent antisemites of various varieties.
In this article, we examine the specific case of former Nazi concentration camp boss Karl Linnas. We will show that in 1986 Ramsey Clark chose to make a cause celebre of Linnas, taking his case to the supreme court. When he lost and Linnas was deported to the Soviet Union, Clark flew to his deathbed in Leningrad. Four years later, Clark used the Linnas case to make a public appeal for "reconciliation" with Nazi war criminals. In making this appeal, Clark outdid perhaps even Reagan administration official Pat Buchanan who was also a big defender of Baltic Nazis.
Clark joined Pat Buchanan and Baltic-American groups in trying to abolish the Office of Special Investigations, or O.S.I. This was the US agency which deported Nazi to their home countries in Eastern Europe, especially the Baltic states. These Nazis had gotten into the US by lying on their immigration papers. The O.S.I. was created for the express purpose of finding such falsifications and deporting the Nazis, thus reversing the previous US policy of giving them safe haven. [1]
What especially infuriated the ultra-right winger Pat Buchanan, and the ultra-right wing Baltic-American groups, was that the O.S.I. cooperated with authorities in the Soviet Union who were trying to bring these Nazis to justice.
Matters came to a head when the O.S.I. tried to deport Karl Linnas, wanted by the Soviets for mass murder in Estonia during World War II.
Ramsey Clark argued against the O.S.I. because, he claimed, hunting Nazi war criminals was *wrong on principle*:
"'I oppose the idea of regenerating hatreds and pursuits 40 years after the fact,' Clark said." [2]
"Regenerating hatreds"? Is that what a progressive lawyer calls it when racist murderers are brought to justice? The O.S.I. took the opposite position:
'''The passage of time does not mitigate what they have done, and it doesn't excuse it,' said Neal M. Sher, 39, the director of Office of Special Investigations. ''We're dealing with people who would do it all over again.''' [2]
In 1991, even as Clark was in the process of setting up the supposedly Leftist International Action Center (IAC) he gave an interview to the NY Times in which he again called for "reconciliation" with aging Nazis. As late as 2002 Clark defended another Nazi being deported for having lied on his immigration papers about his past.
Ramsey Clark defines his "calling" by his practice
========================================================
We of course agree that every person accused of a crime has the right to legal counsel. However, it does not follow that every lawyer is obliged to accept every case. This is especially true of 'political' lawyers. Indeed, if one is a political lawyer, and if one publicly declares that representing the vulnerable is one's calling, then the cases which one chooses define one's political intent.
In his self-descriptions, Ramsey Clark tries to obscure this point. Explaining why he has represented certain "bad people," Clark says:
"Are they human beings? Do they need help? Is that your calling? You can't do it all, but you do what you can." [3]
This is very dramatic-sounding, but in asking, "Are they human beings," Clark begs the question: how does he choose *which* human beings to help? There are thousands of defendants worldwide who could use the assistance of a world famous attorney. How does Clark pick the people for whom he will "do what he can"?
It is precisely because, as Clark says, "you can't do it all," that a political attorney defines "his calling" by deciding whom he will represent.
Clark has mixed some cases which, in our view, have real merit (such as the Nicaraguan government's case against the US in the 1980s) with a snake pit of violent antisemites. By doing so, Clark has communicated his world outlook: that these antisemites are part of the oppressed.
* 1984 *
Clark champions the mass murderer, Karl Linnas, a World War II death camp boss who emigrated from Estonia to escape Soviet justice. Clark's arguments inside and outside of court parallel those of the pro-Nazi Right. Clark emotionally attacks the legitimacy of the O.S.I., the Justice Department group trying to deport Nazis to the Soviet Union to face charges of mass murder;
* 1989 *
Clark defends Mahmoud El-Abed Ahmad against extradition to Israel, where he is wanted for allegedly murdering passengers in a bus;
* 1989 *
Clark defends Lyndon LaRouche, the ultra Right wing, anti-Semitic cult leader;
* 1990s *
Clark defends Sheikh Rahman, head of Gama'a al-Islamyya. These are the terrorists who sliced noses and ears off some of the 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptian workers whom they slaughtered at Luxor in Egypt in 1997. They fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. They fought the Serbs in Bosnia. Both times, they were under covert US direction; [4]
* 1980s-1990s *
Clark defends the PLO against the lawsuit by the family of Leon Klinghoffer, the wheelchair-bound, disabled American Jew whom PLO terrorists murdered and then tossed, wheelchair and all, into the sea.
* 2002 *
Clark represents Jack Riemer, former Nazi SS guard, accused of playing "a supporting role" during "the liquidation of the Warsaw and Czestochowa ghettoes" in World War II Poland. [5]
========================================================
The road not taken...
========================================================
How different Clark's public persona would be if, like Leftist attorneys of times past, he had concentrated his efforts on championing the poor, or workers injured because of unsafe conditions on the job, or Mexican immigrant farm workers, or big city workers fired for organizing on the job, or tenants mistreated by landlords, or Black victims of racism, or elderly victims of the Managed Care medical system.
Instead of encouraging people to view Nazi concentration camp personnel and the religious gurus of Islamist terrorist groups as the oppressed, he would have engendered concern and respect for the genuine heroes of our social system - working people. Remember them? And in favor of social change. Do you remember social change? At one time the Left talked about social change.
However, it is not just Clark's choice of cases which communicates a message. Time and again, Clark has made public pronouncements which were unnecessary from the standpoint of legally defending his chosen monsters, statements which parroted the views of said monsters and of their fascist supporters as well. Let us consider one example: Clark's championing of Karl Linnas in the 1980s and Clark's use of the Linnas case in an attempt to discredit the O.S.I.
========================================================
Linnas vs. the O.S.I. - A landmark case, a political battlefield
========================================================
The Karl Linnas case was important because Linnas was one of the first Nazis whom the Office of Special Investigations, O.S.I., attempted to deport. And he was the first who was wanted for war crimes in the Soviet Union.
Created by Congress in 1979 despite powerful resistance, the O.S.I. had a most important mission: to deport *thousands* of Nazi war criminals who had been welcomed into the US after World War II:
[Excerpt from Newsday starts here]
These war criminals were beneficiaries of the Displaced Persons Act, a 1948 law that virtually excluded Jews and gave preference to their wartime oppressors, especially those from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine, sites of some of the most notorious Nazi atrocities. Death-camp guards and collaborators from these areas were welcome - invited, even - to become new Americans as long as they denied being old Nazis. So they did.
Many ended up living in well-established Baltic and Ukrainian communities in and around Chicago and Cleveland. Others settled right here in the New York metropolitan area. Those who lied about their Nazi pasts have, since 1979, been subject to denaturalization and deportation proceedings initiated by the Office of Special Investigations, a branch of the Justice Department created specifically to prosecute Nazis and their collaborators for immigration fraud. [6]
[Excerpt from Newsday ends here]
The O.S.I. pulled no punches in discussing the U.S. policy it was created to reverse. Here is Neal M. Sher, then the director of O.S.I., interviewed by the New York Times in 1987:
'"I think the number of Nazi criminals who came here after the war is at least 10,000. I would assume they are all still here except for those who have died and those who have been deported. The United States was a haven for Nazi war criminals.'" [7]
These words, honest and blunt, are to us especially surprising to read because we know something about the role which World War II Nazi émigrés played in creating the US Central Intelligence Agency. And yet here was a US agency actually saying these Nazi émigrés should be deported! [8]
Moreover, the O.S.I. did something previously taboo: it cooperated with Soviet authorities to hunt down Nazi murderers. This was fiercely attacked by a coalition of forces which not surprisingly included pro-Nazi East European émigré groups and Pat Buchanan, a high official in the Reagan administration. As we shall see, Ramsey Clark also attacked the O.S.I.
The Linnas deportation case became a battleground. It lasted for years, with some "13 or 14 appeals". [7]
It was a continual focus of attacks from Buchanan and the Baltic-American Right. It was in this context that Clark chose to represent Linnas, convicted of mass murder in the Soviet Union, in his Supreme Court appeal against deportation.
[The excerpt from Newsday starts here]
...after a denaturalization proceeding was brought against him in 1979, Linnas was supported by some of O.S.I.'s most vociferous critics. Heading the list was Pat Buchanan who, while serving in the Reagan Administration, repeatedly urged then-Attorney General Ed Meese to quash the O.S.I. action against Linnas.
That denaturalization order was granted in 1981 and upheld by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1986....
After finding that Linnas was chief guard at the Tartu concentration camp, a job in which he committed numerous acts of murder, the appeals court showed unmistakable contempt for Linnas' request that he not be deported back to the USSR for the sake of decency and compassion.
"Noble words such as 'decency' and 'compassion' ring hollow," wrote the judge, "when spoken by a man who ordered the extermination of innocent men, women and children kneeling at the edge of a mass grave. Karl Linnas' appeal to humanity, a humanity which he has grossly, callously and monstrously offended, truly offends this court's sense of decency." [6]
[The excerpt from Newsday ends here]
Buchanan and the East European émigré groups went all out in the Linnas case:
"In a syndicated column published this past February, Buchanan called the O.S.I. the 'dim-witted instrument' of the Soviet K.G.B. and stated that 'in its zealotry to punish naturalized Americans who collaborated in the Holocaust, forty years ago,' the office 'is relying upon 'evidence' produced by the secret police of a neo-Stalinist state.'" [9]
But the O.S.I. refused to back down on the use of Soviet evidence. Here is Eli Rosenbaum, then on leave from the O.S.I., commenting on the Soviet track record regarding Nazi war criminals:
"'Not once in 40 years has anyone proved a case of Soviet forgery or perjury by a Soviet-supplied witness,' says former OSI Prosecutor Eli Rosenbaum...'" [10]
And here is then-director of the O.S.I., Neil Sher:
"OSI Director Neil M. Sher has said that in West German war crimes trials, 'not once to my knowledge' has a court 'found that the Soviets supplied forged documents or suborned perjury.'" [11]
U.S. Atty. Rudolph W. Giuliani, who helped prosecute Linnas, said the Soviet evidence was air tight. Giuliani, whom *nobody* would suggest was pro-Soviet, was interviewed by the LA Times after Linnas died in a Soviet hospital following his deportation:
"In New York, U.S. Atty. Rudolph W. Giuliani, who argued twice before the federal appeals court in Manhattan to have Linnas deported, had no comment on his death. But he said the record against Linnas contained 'proof to a certainty that he was a mass murderer and a butcher.'" [12]
Ramsey Clark did *not* agree about Soviet evidence. Clark's court arguments eerily echoed Pat Buchanan's claims that Soviet evidence was intrinsically unreliable: [12]
[Excerpt from LA Times starts here]
In his appeal on behalf of Mr. Linnas, Ramsey Clark, who was Attorney General of the United States from 1967 to 1969, stressed the Government's collaboration with the Soviet Union in the case and reliance on evidence obtained through Soviet authorities.
''It is unthinkable that a United States court would allow deportation to be used to send a man to his decreed death in a foreign country without due process,'' Mr. Clark said in his brief.
[Excerpt from LA Times ends here]
Note the use of the phrases, "without due process" and "decreed death," mimicking the words of Pat Buchanan. One could defend Clark's statement, quoted above, on the grounds that this was a legal brief and therefore what Clark wrote did not necessarily reflect his true feelings. We would challenge that. By using this language, Clark was lending his credibility and his media presence to the campaign by Buchanan and the ultra-right Baltic groups to discredit the O.S.I. as the "'dim-witted instrument' of the Soviet K.G.B." Clark is a political lawyer; the Linnas affair was a highly visible political case; and he was using the Supreme Court appeal, which nobody expected him to win, as a bully pulpit to express views strikingly like those of Pat Buchanan.
Clark spoke to the New York Times, again sounding much like Buchanan:
'''I find it remarkable that the Department of Justice, which is part of an Administration that consistently criticizes Soviet justice, would accept evidence that it's unable to independently examine in a real sense,' said Mr. Clark." [2]
And Clark continued to speak out publicly, opposing the O.S.I. long after the Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal, indeed, several years after Linnas died.
Since both Pat Buchanan and Ramsey Clark argued *in favor* of abolishing the O.S.I., it is informative to compare what they said. As we shall see, Buchanan attacked the O.S.I. straightforwardly and politically, with no tricky sub-text. Clark usually made sneak attacks, relying on emotional manipulation.
First, Buchanan:
"In 1982, appearing on the Washington television talk show After Hours, Buchanan called for the O.S.I.'s abolition and asked what the purpose was of 'going after people who are about 70 years old now' and whose crimes were committed 'thirty-five, forty-five years ago.' [9]
Now here's Clark.
========================================================
Ramsey calls for "reconciliation"
========================================================
On June 14th, 1991, the New York Times published a sympathetic article about Clark called, "The Long and Lonely Journey of Ramsey Clark". In it, they quoted him as follows concerning the O.S.I.'s campaign against Nazi illegal immigrants:
"'There comes a time after the most horrible acts when the possibility of reconciliation outweighs any possible need for retribution or to maintain the integrity of the law,' he said. 'If you take a man who's senile, who's on his deathbed, and you can hear the rattle, and you have to rush to strangle him before he dies, then there's no hope for reconciliation.'" [13]
Let us note, for the record, that in 1987, as the "senile" Mr. Linnas was taken to the airport for deportation, this Nazi managed to shout quite coherently: [14]
[Associated Press quote starts here]
Linnas accused the United States of murder as he was put aboard the Czechoslovak Airlines flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
"What they are doing right now is murder and kidnapping," the retired surveyor shouted as he was led into a police office at the New York airport.
[Associated Press quote ends here]
Note that in contrast to Mr. Buchanan, who at least has the virtue of being straightforward, Mr. Clark never speaks to the point but relies on emotional manipulation. He calls for an end to retribution against Nazi war criminals in the interest of some "possibility of reconciliation." But what does he mean? With whom are we to reconcile? Or are we to encourage reconciliation between some groups? What groups? Does he mean that the survivors of Nazi butchery should be reconciled with Nazi butchers? Let bygones be bygones? Forgive and forget?
Apparently that is exactly what Ramsey Clark means. In plain English, he is an apologist for Nazi war criminals. Frankly Clark's attempt to seduce us by appealing to our sense of compassion makes him all the worse.
Former Attorney General Clark goes so far as to proclaim that the need for reconciliation "outweighs any possible need...to maintain the integrity of the law"!
For whom should we override the "integrity of the law"? For the Nazi butchers. But why should we override the law even though, by Clark's own admission, these people have committed "the most horrible acts"? Because they have been punished? But they have *not* been punished. Because they are truly sorry? But Clark does not claim they are sorry. Then why? Because, Clark explains, they have...grown old.
They have grown old.
Our government welcomed these monsters during the 1940s and 1950s. They were allowed to escape justice in the U.S., to live, to prosper, and so now they have grown old and we should let them live in peace. After all, monsters are human too; they have needs; and so, as Mr. Clark says, "you do what you can."
People claim that Clark was a progressive U.S. Attorney General and that he became more progressive after leaving office. It is noteworthy that while Clark, the false progressive, did everything he could to protect Karl Linnas, the true Nazi butcher, it was Reagan's Attorney General, Ed Meese, the notorious Ed Meese of Iran-Contra fame, who deported Karl Linnas to the Soviet Union.
We do not raise this point because of what it says about Attorney General Ed Meese, who was under great pressure to deport Linnas. Rather, we raise this point because of what it says about Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
And remember, Clark gave this interview, calling for reconciliation with Nazi war criminals, in June of 1991. At that time he was already in the process of forming the International Action Center.
========================================================
A touching farewell
========================================================
After Karl Linnas was deported to the Soviet Union, he got sick. The Soviets gave him the best medical treatment available because, of course, the last thing they wanted was for him to die in a Leningrad hospital. Nevertheless he died in a Leningrad hospital.
The last two visitors whom Linnas saw before he died were his daughter and Ramsey Clark; the two of them flew to the monster's bedside. Clark's presence served the political purpose of calling attention to Linnas' death, thereby lending seeming credence to Clark's argument that the O.S.I. was heartlessly persecuting poor, old, decrepit mass murderers.
Just before he died, we are told, Karl Linnas gave his daughter and Ramsey Clark the thumbs-up sign. Which means: keep up the good work. [15]
Jared Israel and Nico Varkevisser
* Footnotes and Further Reading *
========================================================
Other articles on Ramsey Clark are listed at
http://emperors-clothes.com/clarklist.htm
[1] Simpson, C. 1988. Blowback: America's recruitment of Nazis and its effects on the Cold War. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
[2] The New York Times; March 3, 1987, Tuesday, Late City Final Edition; Section: Section A; Page 20, Column 3; National Desk; Length: 1142 Words; Headline: Washington Talk: Justice Department; Lobbying The Office That Hunts Nazi Suspects; Byline: By Kenneth B. Noble, Special To The New York Times
Dateline: Washington, March 2
[3]From transcript of Clark's appearance before National Press Club. Quoted in, " Ramsey Clark Poses as Milosevic's Lawyer...and then smears the "client" on nationwide U.S. television!" at
http://emperors-clothes.com/milo/ramsey1.htm
[4] On Gama'a al-Islamyya. In the meantime, for articles dealing with US-backed Islamist terrorism in Afghanistan, please see:
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/911page.htm#4
For Bosnia, see "U.S. & Iran: Enemies in Public, but Secret Allies in Terror," at http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/deja.htm
[5] Los Angeles Times; September 6, 2002 Friday Home Edition; Section: Main News Main News; Part 1; Page 22; National Desk; Headline: The Nation
and
Ethnic NewsWatch; The Jewish Week; September 13, 2002
Section: Vol. 215; No. 16; Pg. 5; SLI-ACC-NO: 1002W2DR 061 000048; Headline: Followup: SS Guard Must Leave U.S.;
By: Lipman, Steve
[6] Newsday (New York) February 23, 1995, Thursday, All Editions Section: Part Ii; The Nazis Among Us; Pg. B04 Length: 1759 Words Headline: Nowhere To Run; For some of the more notorious war criminals living there, post-war life had been sweet and secure - until a recently discovered 'treasure trove of evidentiary riches' ripped away their cover. Series: The Nazis Among Us Byline: David Friedman. Staff Writer
[7] The New York Times April 26, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition Section: Section 4; Page 2, Column 1; Week In Review Desk Length: 1114 Words Headline: The World: Q. & A.;
[8] See, "US Intelligence was Formed from Nazi War Criminals
Part 1: Primed not to hear," at
http://emperors-clothes.com/coverup/summary.htm
and
"Part 2: In 1983 U.S. Intelligence Took Charge of Investigating the Recruitment of Nazis by...U.S. Intelligence," at
http://emperors-clothes.com/coverup/1983.htm
[9] The Nation May 4, 1985 Section: Vol. 240 ; Pg. 525; Issn: 0027-8378 Length: 983 Words Headline: Pat Buchanan And The Emigre Nazis Byline: Lagnado, Lucette
[10] Time Magazine April 20, 1987, U.S. Edition Section: Ethics; Pg. 60 Length: 978 Words Headline: Problems Of Crime And Punishment; Should The U.S. Use Soviet Evidence Against Accused War Criminals? Byline: By Richard Lacayo. Reported By Anne Constable/Washington And Jeanne Mcdowell/New York
[11] The Washington Post; July 13, 1986, Sunday, Final Edition
Section: First Section; A5; Length: 1017 Words; Headline: U.S. Nazi Hunters Brace For Criticism; Doubts About Soviet Evidence Surround Move To Deport Linnas; Byline: By Jay Mathews, Washington Post Staff Writer
[12] Los Angeles Times; July 3, 1987, Friday, Home Edition; Section: Part 1; Page 5; Column 1; Foreign Desk; Length: 772 Words; Headline: Deported War Criminal Dies In Soviet Hospital; Byline: By William J. Eaton, Times Staff Writer; Dateline: Moscow
[13] The New York Times; June 14, 1991, Friday, Late Edition - Final; Name: Tom C. Clark; Section: Section B; Page 9; Column 1; National Desk; Law Page; Length: 1635 Words; Headline: The Long And Lonely Journey Of Ramsey Clark
[14] The Associated Press; April 21, 1987, Tuesday, PM cycle; Section: International News; Length: 729 Words; Headline: Karl Linnas Headed To Soviet Estonia; Dateline: Moscow
[15] The New York Times; July 5, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition; Section: Section 1; Part 1, Page 18, Column 5; Foreign Desk; Length: 264 Words
tenc.net
mondo said...
Why is everyone always talking about conspiracy "theorie's"? There's no theory to it, we're currently embroiled in a conspiracy, the likes of which this nation has never seen.
--------
yes, MONDO, we know. But the question is "what is the effective action that intelligent humans can NOW take to expose and disempower this conspiring cabal?" and are we willing to make the necessary effort?
Also, concerning internationalization, watchful citizen, will you be at the US Social Forum this summer in Atlanta?
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