Blair speech signals beginning of World War IV

[Pincher]

....The Germans, at Versailles, realised that the bankers had brought America into the war on the promise that Palestine would be given to Jews as a homeland.....

Enlighten me, O wise one.

Some straight forward substitutions reveal the poverty of your reasoning..

It's rather like you ('the banker') paying me ('America') my bus fare ('the cost of the war') to beat up one of our mates ('Germany') on condition that I supply you with free Big Mac's for life ('Palestine').

So what's the point of me ('America') getting bruised and battered so that you ('the banker') can get millions of free burgers at my expense?

What's in it for me ('America')?

[kbo234]

...Some straight forward substitutions reveal the poverty of your reasoning..

It's rather like you ('the banker') paying me ('America') my bus fare ('the cost of the war') to beat up one of our mates ('Germany') on condition that I supply you with free Big Mac's for life ('Palestine')........

Actually it is nothing LIKE that at all. That simile is hopelessly muddled and inappropriate.

You seem to be assuming that there would have had to be 'something in it' for America. Well there wasn't. Just like there is nothing in the current US government's actions that are 'good for America'. The US government's actions are serving the purposes of another group entirely.....the financial oligarchs and criminals who control America but care nothing for the American people....nor the Jewish people for that matter.

Your little bit of schoolmasterly criticism left me concerned about your exposition of the 'fault' in my post.....but what you have presented is floppy, featherbrained and, um......not even intelligent.

[Pincher]

...Some straight forward substitutions reveal the poverty of your reasoning..

It's rather like you ('the banker') paying me ('America') my bus fare ('the cost of the war') to beat up one of our mates ('Germany') on condition that I supply you with free Big Mac's for life ('Palestine')........

Actually it is nothing LIKE that at all. That simile is hopelessly muddled and inappropriate.

You seem to be assuming that there would have had to be 'something in it' for America. Well there wasn't. Just like there is nothing in the current US government's actions that are 'good for America'. The US government's actions are serving the purposes of another group entirely.....the financial oligarchs and criminals who control America but care nothing for the American people....nor the Jewish people for that matter.

Your little bit of schoolmasterly criticism left me concerned about your exposition of the 'fault' in my post.....but what you have presented is floppy, featherbrained and, um......not even intelligent.

kbo234,

I would recommend you beg, steal or borrow a logic primer at the earliest opportunity.

The analogy I drew inferred that the US had no interest in WW1. By admitting that there wasn't anything in the war for America you are supporting my deduction and therefore the analogy itself (NB interesting you don't say precisely where it is 'floppy, featherbrained and, um...not even intelligent').

The analogy would fall if you could demonstrate (without any amenedments) that the deduction was incorrect (that America had an interest in going to war).

Ergo, my deduction is not a philosophical abusrdity (the same conclusion from two opposite lines of reasoning). Politically speaking though, the deduction IS wholly irrational (which is a completely separate matter) and I drew the analogy to make this very point. So let's talk politics.

The US did not enter WWI because it was forced into it by faceless bankers. The US joined the war because of massive concessions made to it by Britain and France (which weakened significantly both empires).

If, as you stubbornly and stupidly contend, the US was effectively forced into the war against its own perceived interests by an international financial elite that begs a lot of questions. Why so late? Why not on the side of Germany (whom you maintain were winning the war right up to Versailles)? Why not on the side of those expat German Jews with banks on Wall Street?

And if indeed the US was forced into the war, what about the other protagonists (Germany, Austria, France, Russia, Britain Japan etc): why were these lesser lights allowed to go to war independently or were they too under the spell of invisible, sinister, Zionist forces as they knocked seven bells out of one another?

And if it was the US (with no sway in the Middle East at that time) who was forced to deliver Palestine (at their own expense) how comes the 'Zionists' quite logically went to Britain (who had taken most of the Middle East away from the Ottoman Empire) to get what they wanted (at least in words if not deeds) under the Balfour Declaration?

If the international bankers were so powerful that they could force the world's richest nation into a war against its own interests ...

...they could have carved out 8,000 square miles of desert ALL BY THEMSELVES while Victoria was still on the throne.

[Pincher]

Dear All,

I have been posting on this site for a few weeks now and have been struck by a number of things:

1) The extent to which a number of posters here sign up to the 'International Banking Conspiracy' and the view that The Federal Reserve is both owned, controlled and manipulated for profit (to the detriment of the US) by a foreign, financial elite.

2) The general ignorance amongst posters of the provenance of the above conspiracy, who the real objects of this black propaganda are and what the true motives are of those who are behind it.

3) The general unwillingness of many posters to read any authoritative critiques of this conspiracy - dismissing any such criticism as 'establishment disinformation.'

4) The great reluctance by the majority here to accept that the originators of most international financial conspiracy theories, both historically and contemporaneously have been/are far right organisations and that the remainder are sensationalist authors in the Da Vinci Code genre.

5) The general political naivete about the backgrounds of the individuals who propagate such ideas and how and why the conspiracists are often tolerated and used by the 'para political' establishment.

6) The abject lack of intellectual curiosity on the part of many posters (principally manifested as a lack of desire to explore alternative world views) who instead prefer to escape into a political fantasy world.

7) The lack of concern here at the wholehearted support for the financial conspiracy by the lunatic fringe (Icke & co) and the general indifference of posters to the total absence of suport for it from senior economists, financial professionals and political commentators.

8 ) The failure to perceive that the financial conspiracy movement is intrinsically a cult styled partly on the fringe religious movements of the '70's & 80's (eg Moonies) and partly on the Hitler Youth and that its principal purpose is the enrichment and empowerment (at the expense of democratic institutions) of its leadership.

9) The dullness of perception of some posters who fail to realise that the financial conspiracy is just a cynical ploy and that most of its senior public advocates do not believe it (in private they disavow it).

10) The rejection of the notion by most here that the 9/11 plot fits neatly into a more familiar geo political context - one that closely resembles the 'Great Game' of the British Empire in the Victorian era.

Second thoughts anyone?

[Leiff]

If all of the above is true would you care to comment on the Wanta Plan?

You say that this story is only reported on 'conspiracy' sites (The Arctic Beacon), but it is really being reported by Christopher Story of International Currency Review (which is a subscription service). However this article from The Arctic Beacon quotes large sections directly from an International Currency Review article.

http://www.arcticbeacon.com/18-Aug-2006.html

Do you consider International Currency Review to be a 'conspiracy' site?

[ian neal]

There are many non-conspiracy, non-neo-nazi writers that challenge the global banking system

Here is another example
http://www.chelseagreen.com/2003/items/609

[Dr Doom]

Pincher,

Do a search for freedomtofascism, a new film coming out which started out being about whether there is actually a law that says you have to pay tax, and turned into an expose of the global central banking system, and why people are really struggling to get by in America.

More anti-semitic propaganda you say, the director Aaron Russo (another 9/11 truther) is Jewish. On a related note, he says he used to know one of the Rockfellers, they even invited him to join the Council on Foreign Relations.

They also told him that it was they who funded the women's movement, and also told him there was going to be "an event" to be followed by the invasion of Iraq, about 9 months before 9/11.

1) The extent to which a number of posters here sign up to the 'International Banking Conspiracy' and the view that The Federal Reserve is both owned, controlled and manipulated for profit (to the detriment of the US) by a foreign, financial elite.

The supreme court has ruled many times that the Federal Reserve is a private bank.

The general unwillingness of many posters to read any authoritative critiques of this conspiracy - dismissing any such criticism as 'establishment disinformation.'

I'm prepared to read any alternative information which explains the core inner working of the financial system. You have not presented any.

[Pincher]

If all of the above is true would you care to comment on the Wanta Plan?

You say that this story is only reported on 'conspiracy' sites (The Arctic Beacon), but it is really being reported by Christopher Story of International Currency Review (which is a subscription service). However this article from The Arctic Beacon quotes large sections directly from an International Currency Review article.

http://www.arcticbeacon.com/18-Aug-2006.html

Do you consider International Currency Review to be a 'conspiracy' site?

I didn't actually say that in my last post - I stated that I wanted to do some formal reading first. As yet though I haven't come across any mainstream or reputable para-political sites with any info on Wanta.

For someone described as a well known British journalist who lists advising Margaret Thatcher on his CV, Christopher Story only merits a single link on Google and even then that's to his own web site. I must say I found occasional references on his site to 'World Revolution' just a little incongrous next to descriptions of (supposedly) professional finance titles.

I'd advice you to hang fire on Wanta's trillions if I were you. There could be an element of truth in all of this but at the moment it has all the ingredients of a first class hoax.

Believe me, I've seen a lot more convincing cases go this way...

[Pincher]

There are many non-conspiracy, non-neo-nazi writers that challenge the global banking system

Here is another example
http://www.chelseagreen.com/2003/items/609

You're right! I forgot to mention crackpots! Icke's as sane as a shrink compared to Gaians!

Aargh! Let me out!!!

[Pincher]

Pincher,

Do a search for freedomtofascism, a new film coming out which started out being about whether there is actually a law that says you have to pay tax, and turned into an expose of the global central banking system, and why people are really struggling to get by in America.

More anti-semitic propaganda you say, the director Aaron Russo (another 9/11 truther) is Jewish. On a related note, he says he used to know one of the Rockfellers, they even invited him to join the Council on Foreign Relations.

They also told him that it was they who funded the women's movement, and also told him there was going to be "an event" to be followed by the invasion of Iraq, about 9 months before 9/11.

1) The extent to which a number of posters here sign up to the 'International Banking Conspiracy' and the view that The Federal Reserve is both owned, controlled and manipulated for profit (to the detriment of the US) by a foreign, financial elite.

The supreme court has ruled many times that the Federal Reserve is a private bank.

The general unwillingness of many posters to read any authoritative critiques of this conspiracy - dismissing any such criticism as 'establishment disinformation.'

I'm prepared to read any alternative information which explains the core inner working of the financial system. You have not presented any.

1)If people are struggling to get by in the US what words would you use to describe the lot of people in Darfur, Congo, Zimbabwe? Ever heard the expression 'deserving and undeserving poor?'

2) Which non religious foundation hasn't funded the women's movement?

3) I do not dispute that The Fed is made up of twelve domestically owned banks. I do dispute that The Fed is owned, controlled and manipulated by foreign (ie Jewish) bankers.

4) I posted this link before I recommend that you read it:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Se ... Facts.html

and this too:

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

[Dr Doom]

1)If people are struggling to get by in the US what words would you use to describe the lot of people in Darfur, Congo, Zimbabwe? Ever heard the expression 'deserving and undeserving poor?'

That is another can of worms altogether. But this is the bottom line, wars are usually too expensive to finance using tax revenues alone. Therefore the debt money creation machine usually needs to be put into action for this purpose, which is inflationary (an invisible tax).

I'm not advocating communism here, I'm advocating an honest non debt-based money system, ideally backed by something tangible (like gold).

3) I do not dispute that The Fed is made up of twelve domestically owned banks. I do dispute that The Fed is owned, controlled and manipulated by foreign (ie Jewish) bankers.

At the end of the day whether whoever owns / controls this system is Jewish, black, 16 foot tall lizard is besides the point. The important point is it is privately owned, and run for private profit.

It is a fraud because great lengths are made to make the Fed, BOE etc, look as if they are part of the government.

4) I posted this link before I recommend that you read it:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Se ... Facts.html

This agrees with most of what I say.

All the Fed profits are returned to the treasury, so there's no conspiracy. Explain to me why it needs to be done this way, why can't congress print the money.

If money can be created to finance wars, why can't it also be created to finance hospitals, schools, etc. Taxation shouldn't be necessary with the system we have, they continue to enforce it because if they didn't people would start asking difficult questions.

[insidejob]

Don’t be taken in by Pincher’s arguments (or is rants a more accurate description?). He is clearly paranoid about LaRouche and his defence (or Prof. Flaherty's) of the Federal Reserve is absurd. Are we really meant to believe that the politically-appointed Board makes the decisions and the big banks happily carry them out? That the banks somehow give up opportunities for profits for a politically-appointed Board? When is the last time you heard any complaints, rows, civil war, splits between the Board and the big banks? That’s right. Never. Why do you think that is?

In fact, 'neo-fascist, left-wing, Jew-hating conspiraloons' like MoneyWeek, The Daily Reckoning (investement advisers) and Gold-Eagle (gold investment advisers) will tell you what a conspiratorial con 'fiat money' and the Federal Reserve is.

Pincher's silly defence may go down well at primary schools but I expect a bit more from adults.

It’s likely that Pincher is on the left and may be Jewish. Many Left Jews are, perhaps, happy to criticise members of the ruling elite so long as they are not Jewish. But why the Left are hostile to conspiracy theories needs investigation. I feel that competition is an issue. That is, LaRoche’s organisation is unwelcome competition with the Left among people disillusioned with the system. Thus, the baloney about him being neo-Fascist. If anything, Chip Berlet has got into bed with US intelligence to do down LaRouche. I will continue to use LaRouche’s analysis and information and use my own judgment about it.


I identify s good deal with the article (I’m sorry, it’s a bit long) from Lobster, December 1992

An Incorrect Political Memoir
Daniel Brandt

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This piece by Daniel Brandt began as a short letter commenting on my review of Right Woos Left by Chip Berlet (Lobster 23 p. 34). I wrote back and asked if he would like to expand it. And so he did, writing almost the whole thing at one long sitting.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyone who joined the U.S. New Left in 1967 and continued to define this event as a point of departure over the next 25 years is going to have some stories to tell. But only in the last couple of years has it become necessary to tell them. Something strange had happened to 'progressive' politics, and what's left bears little resemblance to the issues that consumed us then. I'm doing pretty much the same thing with the same convictions, but someone seems to have moved the goalpost on me.

The Big One for me was 1967. In 1964 I licked stamps for Goldwater, but in 1967 I joined the tiny chapter of Students for a Democratic Society on campus. I walked in cold to one of their meetings after reading a book on U.S. involvement in Vietnam and walking out of my fraternity. They must have thought I was a spy, with my short hair and button-down clothes, but it didn't matter because at the time SDS accepted everyone and I was wearing a strong suit of moral indignation over U.S. foreign policy. And I was eager to learn and ready to turn on. A year later we uncovered a spy, and were too naive and democratic to ask him to leave. We hated the war-monger, yet everyone was redeemable if presented with a little common sense. That was the New Left I remember; the positive energy and confidence were absolutely compelling. The grass and acid were just frosting on the cake.

Much has changed, but not everything. After driving up to San Francisco for the 1967 Stop the Draft week, my friends invited me along as they met with a JFK assassination researcher. Garrison's investigation was big news, and I recall the hushed, paranoid atmosphere in a crowded restaurant. Today we know much more about the assassination than we did in 1967, and much more about CIA covert operations. The lowered voices still seem reasonable to me, and the questions they raised seem as vital now as they did then.

Other scenes have changed dramatically. David Horowitz was an editor of Ramparts in 1966, the only magazine that dared give issues like the CIA and the JFK assassination the coverage they deserved. In 1974 he persuaded the Ramparts book-keeper to help the Black Panther Party get its books in order. Apparently she stumbled onto evidence that the Panthers were involved in drugs and protection rackets in Oakland, and was soon found murdered, floating in the San Francisco Bay. Today Horowitz has defected to the hard Right, along with his long-time colleague Peter Collier; and if you want to keep up with anti-CIA conspiracy journalism these days, it is helpful to have a subscription to The Spotlight, published by the right-wing Liberty Lobby. But you had better be prepared to defend your choice of reading material to politically-correct leftists who are checking on your associates.

What's going on here? In the first place, Horowitz isn't completely mad. Yes, the Panthers were riddled with FBI agents and other dirty tricksters, but Huey Newton was living in a luxury Oakland penthouse in 1971, overlooking Lake Merritt, and I doubt that 'security' was the only reason. By 1978 I was living on the other side of the lake, and Newton was still considered politically correct as he returned from Cuba to stand trial for the shooting death of a prostitute and something about pistol-whipping his tailor. 'Wait a minute', I hesitated from my one-room dump, 'I've never even met any tailors. Are we in the same movement?' I can trace my confusion back to 1969, when women on campus began to feel that they were more oppressed than men. I could see their point, but at the time I was in the middle of a two-year federal prosecution for declining the all-male privilege of lying face-down in a Vietnam rice paddy, so some of their arguments were lost on me.

By 1971 it looked like I had escaped from my prison sentence when a higher court reversed my conviction for refusing induction. The Ninth Circuit ruled that my draft board's punitive actions were illegal, and said that the district court also screwed up. My file, quite thick by then, was sent back to the draft board. They lost no time in ordering me to report for a pre-induction physical -- the first step on the way to Vietnam. For some reason I was getting cynical, and was quite fed up with legal probems. So I stopped eating for ten days and showed up a pound underweight. The doctor could see from my records that when I refused induction more than two years earlier I had been fifteen pounds heavier, but he knew there was nothing he could do. Meanwhile I was almost hallucinating from hunger. 'Would you like to drink a glass of water?', he asked. 'I'm not thirsty', I replied. This saved American taxpayers many thousands of dollars in new prosecution costs.

My draft board left me alone after that because by mid-1971 the Selective Service System was collapsing due to massive resistance. The fact that the anti-draft forces won is the best-kept secret of the sixties. Journalists don't get paid to write about it; you had to be in the middle of it to know what happened. Many hundreds of amateur draft counsellors like myself knew more about the law than any of the 4,000 draft boards, and many thousands of draft-age men practiced non-cooperation on one level or another. We simply overloaded the system, from local boards to the federal courts.

The next year I enrolled in grad school to study something the pipe-smoking professors called 'Social Ethics'. One day Jesse Jackson came to speak to a small group of us in the department. I was interested in the issue of affirmative action, and wanted to determine if he thought the concept of 'merit' might play a role in a normative social ethic. I posited a hypothetical situation of a super-qualified white surgeon and black doctor just out of med school. 'Which one should perform the critical brain surgery?', I asked. But Jackson's interest was political, not intellectual, and he wasn't going to play: 'There are lots of qualified black surgeons', he replied. 'Next question, please.' That was my first clue that I was already out of the loop.

In 1975 I transferred to a Ph.D. program in Berkeley and took a part-time handyman job to support myself. I found myself carrying heavy boxes of copying paper up the stairs to the Women's Affairs Office, and being told to change their light bulbs. These feminists were all cruising comfortably on a huge Ford Foundation grant, spinning out analyses based on sex divisions while playing their neo-Marxist cards whenever it was in their interests. I was a theoretical Marxist by then (in the sixties I never needed it), and felt I knew a thing or two. I pointed out the obvious, namely that sex divisions cut the class divisions in half again. This branded me as a troublemaker, which is terminal in graduate school. The smart ones see their mistake immediately, while the dumb ones spend ten years writing a dissertation and end up driving a cab. I dropped out of academia and several years later got into electronics. Jimmy Carter's CETA job training program paid me minimum wage to attend tech school; these days it costs too much and wouldn't be possible. Social and political theory was getting difficult to understand, while those little electrons were very reasonable.

A technically advanced leftist
By the time the microcomputer revolution came along I was technically ahead of every other leftist in the country. That isn't saying much; 'technically advanced leftist' is a lot like 'military intelligence.' But I could design and build circuits and write software. With the microcomputer, something I had been trying to do the hard way was suddenly within reach the easy way. High-tech has been good to me. Over the ten years I've pursued my obsession, microcomputers have become more powerful and less expensive at the same rate that my project expanded.

To explain this obsession -- there's no other word for it -- I have to return to 1967 again, the year I woke up. One day I noticed from a puff paragraph in our campus yearbook that University of Southern California trustee John McCone was a former CIA director. By 1969 I had done some research on him, which was published in a campus alternative paper I edited. Here was a multi-millionaire entrepreneur who was well-connected with corporate elites, and very conservative, with a CIA-on-campus issue thrown in for good measure. My story came and went, seniors graduated, and McCone stayed. By 1973 the CIA had overthrown Allende in Chile. McCone, as a director of ITT and friend of Richard Helms, was involved. He remained at USC. All the correct American Civil Liberties Union liberals on the Social Ethics faculty had nothing to say when I pressed them on the issue. This was before I moved to Berkeley -- certainly this couldn't happen there.

Now I was fundamentally upset, and started collecting investigative books and building a clipping file. Watergate was also in the news, and several of those players were former USC fraternity rats like me, only a few years older. I was beginning to develop an appreciation of the power structure. In fact, it was beginning to look like not only had my political instincts been accurate all along, but I was quite probably in the belly of the beast.

Over the next few years there were plenty of amazing CIA revelations on record, confirming that our most paranoid fantasies in the 1960s were underestimates. I began compiling a name index of Counterspy and Covert Action Information Bulletin using little pieces of paper. Someone had to track the beast. When I saw my first microcomputer in action in 1980 I knew instantly that I was doing it all wrong. Those clanking floppy disks were like lightning compared to my fingers sorting little pieces of paper. By 1982 I had moved to the Washington DC area, bought my own computer, written the software, and begun inputting my library. I was a refugee from California correctness, and I migrated to the information capital of the world. Fortunately it is also a high-tech area, which makes it easier to keep up with electronics and find technical work when I have to.

We eventually incorporated as Public Information Research (PIR). Ten years of inputting and five computers later, my database, NameBase has 130,000 citations and 62,000 names. Although we received our first grants recently (from the Funding Exchange and the C.S. Fund), we basically meet our expenses with income from sales -- not to mention the nine technical jobs I've had since I came to the DC area. In other words, we are self-sufficient and answer to no one. NameBase exists from the purest of populist, anti-establishment impulses, and it is used by hundreds of journalists and reseachers all over the world.

David Wise, the dean of all CIA-tracking journalists, had written about McCone in The Invisible Government in 1964. Almost all of my research on McCone in 1969 had to be lifted from this book because there was nothing else to be found. I've finally come full circle. Wise is still churning out important books and says for the record that NameBase is 'absolutely indispensable'. It's too easy to forget that very little information about the secret state was available in the 1960s -- we had to get by pretty much on instinct. But ironically, NameBase isn't used that much on the U.S. Left. Even worse, I've spent far too much energy over the past few months defending PIR against charges of political incorrectness.


PC Does Not Mean Personal Computer
I'm not bitter yet but I'm getting touchy. Already I do things like cancel complimentary subscriptions because I get angry with the same Politically Correct line when it has nothing to do with investigating or challenging the establishment. Recently I sent a letter to an editor to correct the record about NameBase and express my opinions on his PC cover story. At the last minute I marked it 'not for publication', because I was worried that it would come back and bite me. Now it's a month later and I'd rather get bitten than keep it bottled up. Editors don't know what to do with people like me, and he wrote back to complain that mine was one of the strangest letters he had seen in some time. Like I said, I'm getting touchy.

Things seem strange from my perspective also. As soon as PIR got its tax-exempt status I filled out our first grant application. We have three other directors besides myself. Steve Baldrich, my best east coast friend, is a white male like me. (I don't blame him, he was born that way.) He has a Ph.D. in English and is an excellent teacher, but the department needed a woman so he was laid off. Now he's unemployed and probably wishes he had gotten into electronics when Jimmy Carter was paying for it. Martha Moran is an artist from a working-class background; she and Steve recently got married. Then there's Dennis Brutus, a black professor and poet who is exiled from South Africa, where he broke stone with Nelson Mandela and was shot while trying to escape. Dennis likes what we're doing and has an internationalist perspective on black struggle that makes the U.S. PC Left seem petty by comparison. Essentially the other three directors let me do my thing and I keep them informed, which works fine for all of us. I appreciate their support. We also have a Board of Advisors, people who let us use their name on our letter head. Legally we don't need them and they have no formal say, but their support means a lot to us.

My first grant application was to a group called 'Resist', which was a name I recognized from the old days. I was an active member of 'The Resistance', a loose nation-wide collection of draft resisters who practiced conspicuous non-cooperation and were expecting to serve prison time for eventual felony convictions. 'Resist' was their adult support group. They didn't face the same risks that draft-age men faced, but they stood with us in spirit. The new 'Resist' will remember their roots, I thought, and here's an easy $600 for us. But by 1990 everything was strange, and I received a PC application form in the mail.

The tough question was this one: 'Please be specific on the programs, coalition work and position of your group in relationship to the rights and concerns of each of the following: a) people of color, b) working class and poor people, c) women, including your position on reproductive rights and abortion rights, d) gay and lesbian rights/liberation, (e) disabled people, (f) older people.' The next question was easier, because our Board of Directors looked okay: 'What is the make-up/diversity of your group in terms of age, race, sexual preference, class, gender? Have you taken steps to increase the diversity?'

I went for honesty: 'The Board of Directors has not taken any positions of this nature. Our work is technically specialized, and we would tend to defer to technical ability over considerations of class, race, and gender when considering a particular technical project. It seems apparent to us, however, that any effort to curtail U.S. covert activities in the Third World would be appreciated by more people of color and poor people around the world than existed in the entire U.S. population.'

After all, we boasted the largest collection of CIA names that was publically available anywhere in the world. Didn't this count for something? Two weeks earlier we had helped provide the Washington Post with obscure information about the CIA's involvement in the arrest of Nelson Mandela. Another point, perhaps?

No way. Not only did we not we end up with the $600, Resist apparently couldn't believe what they were reading. Staff member Nancy Moniz wrote back to say that the page with these questions was missing, and would I please supply it? In other words, we aren't unreasonable, we're going to give you another chance to get your act together! At this point I wasn't even touchy. I sent a copy of my copy of the supposedly missing page with a polite apology, and waited for the inevitable polite refusal of our application. If the same thing happened today, they'd get quite a long letter from me.

It wasn't called PC in 1990, but by 1991 'Politically Correct' had become a buzzword to describe a phenomenon that was happening on U.S. campuses. Critics like Dinesh D'Souza, funded by conservative foundations and think tanks, helped popularize the concept. Although I rarely agree with anything they write, I'll give credit where it's due. Because of them it now takes just two letters of the alphabet to describe something that's real; and everyone I've talked to knows exactly what I mean, even if they see me as part of the problem. Anything that facilitates communication as thoroughly as this is a step forward.

The first hint of a PC crack within Public Information Research came in October 1990, when Chip Berlet resigned from our Board of Directors because he objected to the fact that Fletcher Prouty was also on the Board. We did not discuss the issue because I was putting in overtime on my technician job and wasn't in the mood to call him back. I whipped out the white-out and removed Chip's name from the letterhead and thanked him for his past support.

In July 1991, Martha Wenger resigned from our Board after reading something about Prouty in a leftist publication. Her final advice to me was to 'think long and hard about working together with others who may be opposed to CIA covert operations, but whose political commitments are diametrically opposed to those of the progressive movement.' (I first met Wenger and her husband Konrad Ege when our paths crossed while working on CounterSpy magazine, and think very highly of them. Wenger is an assistant to Joe Stork at the Middle East Research and Information Project, which does excellent work.)

Meanwhile Chip Berlet was starting to release early drafts of Right Woos Left, which received wide coverage in the left press beginning in early 1992. I still wasn't into writing long letters, so Martha Wenger got the same polite white-out that Chip received the previous year. Then in January 1992, Holly Sklar resigned from our Board, stating that 'I find Chip Berlet's objection to sharing a board with Fletcher Prouty compelling, even more so at a time of increasing right wing efforts to build insidious alliances with often unwitting leftists.' (In the same letter she enclosed a check for an update of NameBase, so it was clear that our work was not the issue. In fact, our work has never been the issue; everyone who uses NameBase swears by it, right or left. It's just that we're not PC.)

Sklar is best known for editing Trilateralism (South End Press, Boston, 1980) a fat volume on the Trilateral Commission. This book began as a classic of left power-structure research, and is now a staple on the populist, anti-elitist Right. In fact, the only inquiries we get at PIR these days on Trilateralism or Bilderberg are from right-wing researchers who are concerned about corruption and conspiracies from high places. Sklar is aware of this, but for her that means that the insidious Right is trying to sneak up on the Left, and we should exercise extreme caution. To me it means that the Right includes reasonable people with reasonable concerns. There doesn't seem to be a middle way, but at least I wrote Sklar a letter defending my position.

Let's Go Get Stone
It all pretty much hit the fan when Oliver Stone's JFK was released in December 1991. Z Magazine had just run a Chip Berlet interview in which he bashed Prouty, the Christic Institute and dozens of others. Stone's sin was to portray a 'Mr X' that was based on Prouty's experiences in the Pentagon shortly before the JFK assassination. Stone had first approached Prouty for script assistance in July 1990.
Although Right Woos Left in its earlier drafts, as well as the Z Magazine interview, were in type before anyone saw the movie, Berlet was in position. He had the goods on Prouty, and Prouty's prominence in the wake of JFK made the issue that much more topical. Everyone knew about Prouty and 'Mr X' by then, because one-time assassination author Robert Sam Anson had bashed Stone and Prouty in Esquire two months earlier. What you have to realize about assassination researchers is that they barely tolerate each other: it's just one of those things. And what you have to realize about the Stone movie is that the long knives were out at least six months before it hit the screen. It's enough to make you paranoid.

Berlet hand-delivered a letter to Stone dated January 16 1992, in which he called on him to 'distance yourself publicly from attempts by racist, anti-Jewish and pro-fascist groups to use your film JFK as a vehicle to promote bigoted theories claiming Jewish control of U.S. foreign policy and the CIA.... You appear to have been mislead by JFK film advisor Fletcher Prouty regarding the extent of his cooperation with the Liberty Lobby and other neo-fascist operations created by Willis Carto. Willis Carto is infamous around the world as a leading Nazi-apologist. Fletcher Prouty and two other critics of the CIA, Mark Lane and Victor Marchetti, have forged deep and longstanding ties to the Liberty Lobby and other Carto groups.'

And so it goes. I've read Liberty Lobby's Spotlight every week for six months now, and I find only infrequent hints of what Berlet is talking about. Of course this must mean that they're only being sneakier than usual. (I signed up for another two years. Some of it is good NameBase material that the Left ignores. Spotlight is consistently anti-elitist and anti-CIA, they hate George Bush, and they staunchly opposed U.S. intervention in the Gulf.)

Another Berlet target is the Christic Institute, and anyone else who has ever been guilty of sharing information with the Lyndon LaRouche organization. I've been privately critical of Christic's conspiracy theories myself. I won't rehash this now, because the federal government is going after Christic with a vengeance and is turning it into a dead issue (and a dead organization). Christic eventually did some homework and had pretty much cleaned up their act by 1988, but by then their earlier legal offensive was already set in judicial concrete. Now it has collapsed on top of them. Berlet objects to any association with LaRouche on any level whatsoever; for him it's a moral issue. He has spent much of his career tracking Main Enemy Lyndon LaRouche. In the late 1970s some LaRouchies were locked out of their office for non-payment of rent, and Berlet purchased several boxes of financial records from a janitor by posing as a paper recycler. He wrote it up and the Illinois State Attorney General launched an investigation of LaRouchian financial activities.

I don't object to associations with LaRouche people, but I do feel that all associations should be open and acknowledged, because in some cases it has a bearing on our judgement of certain information offered by certain sources. In other words, Berlet's concern is PC purity, while my concern is the quality and reliability of a particular piece of information. Often I'm unable to make this judgement, in which case the fact of the association itself is filed away for future reference and judgement is suspended. Berlet, on the other hand, makes an immediate judgement on the basis of the association itself, whether the information is useful or not. So if the LaRouche people were into Iran-contra before the mainstream press discovered it, and if they are uncannily well informed on certain other specific issues as well, this is irrelevant.

For Berlet, Fletcher Prouty's main sin is that Liberty Lobby's Noontide Press reprinted Prouty's The Secret Team, first published by Prentice-Hall in 1973. The content of the book has never been an issue; everyone agrees that it is valuable. It makes no difference to Berlet whether the book is important or useful, or that Prouty's latest book JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1992), offers unique perspectives based on his own experiences in the Pentagon. And never mind that no one else offered to reprint Prouty's book. Berlet's point is that Prouty should not have given his good name to Liberty Lobby. And once he gave his name, everyone should avoid Prouty. If Public Information Research fails to avoid Prouty, then you should avoid PIR -- and so on down the line. But this quickly becomes absurd, and while Berlet probably realises this he doesn't have time to explain himself.

At least Holly Sklar tried to define where she would exit this reductio ad absurdum. She stated in her resignation letter that 'I have no problem with NameBase being a research tool used across the political spectrum; I know Trilateralism, for example, is widely used on the right. But I think there's a big difference between sometimes overlapping resources and overlapping boards.' I don't find this very convincing, particularly when dealing with informal advisory boards that have no legal power. If political identity is important to someone personally, then I can see Sklar's point. But if the quality of the resources is as important as it ought to be, then Sklar has it backwards.

The debate became more pitched during the first half of 1992. First Joel Bleifuss of In These Times quoted an anonymous source who called Prouty a 'Nazi crackpot'. Then Bleifuss bashed Stone for over-reaching with the JFK conspiracy. As this is the same Joel Bleifuss who has been plugging away at an elusive October Surprise story for five years now, he of course ended the same column by implying that it would be more reasonable for Stone to reach even further, by also incorporating more recent conspiracies! Then Berlet recruited the chief pundit from The Nation, Alexander Cockburn, who started sniping at Stone and Prouty and then proceeded to destroy his credibility by blithely defending the Magic Bullet theory. (Here's someone who should stop writing long enough to read a few books now and then.)

Bill Schaap and Ellen Ray of Covert Action Information Bulletin and Lies Of Our Times, who played a role in getting Stone interested in the assassination in the first place, have endured some of Cockburn's snipes in The Nation. They seem to be staying out of the fray, probably because some years ago Cockburn was on their advisory board. We've fallen out of touch in recent years (the war between CounterSpy and CAIB is another sad story), so I can only guess what they're thinking lately.

I did try to interest Schaap in a response to Berlet from me and Carl Oglesby, but he never returned my call. That left me all bottled up until Lobster expressed an interest. It's worth noting that this piece you're reading could not get published in the U.S unless I defect to the Right, or I'm lucky enough to stumble across some mainstream editor who happens to think it's cute, harmless, and topical.

Jeff Cohen and Marty Lee of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), who in the 1970s researched the JFK assassination and ought to know better, both support Berlet. When I spoke with Lee, it was clear that he bought the Berlet line completely, but I have only second-hand information about Cohen's current position. (Cohen and I belonged to the same group in Los Angeles in 1977 and 1981, working on the issue of police repression.) I've heard that In These Times staffers generally feel Berlet has gone too far, and Bleifuss is more or less holding his own out there in Chicago. In These Times even runs intelligent discussions of the PC issue on occasion. But judging from FAIR's monthly publication Extra!, FAIR is increasingly in the PC camp. They devote more and more space to soft issues, while carefully paying ritual homage to the god of cultural diversity. As for Erwin Knoll, longtime editor of The Progressive, he is downright proud of his anti-conspiracism and recently ran Belet's Right Woos Left as a cover story titled 'Friendly Fascism.' Knoll is the one who got my strange letter.

Maybe it will all go away soon; I hope so. Even Sara Diamond, a member of Berlet's fan club, recognizes that the U.S. Left is talking to itself on this issue. 'In part, its's desperation,' Berlet quotes her in The Progressive by way of explaining why leftists are easy prey for rightists. 'We have, in fact, lost influence and become marginal.' This is easily the most lucid observation that has yet emerged from the Berlet camp. However, the reason that they are increasingly marginal has somehow escaped them. It's simply because the PC Left is becoming a privileged segment of society and frequently acts only to preserve their privileges.

That's what I believe is really happening, but if the split deepens it will certainly be disguised with more elevated terminology. Already it seems that a distinction is evolving between the conspiracists and the structuralists. The former see specific historical events (e.g. the assassination of JFK) as probable determinants of other events (the war in Vietnam), while the latter view this as a naive challenge to the conventional left wisdom about infrastructure and economics as major determinants. The structuralists feel that it's inconceivable that John Kennedy, who was initially a product of the System, changed his mind about the System once in office. And more amazingly, that the System would deal with it the way they did -- real people with real names (if only we knew who they were!) deciding he was a threat to their private interests and successfully engineering a coup.

Besides Fletcher Prouty, who has long maintained this view, another Stone advisor was Major John M. Newman, a professor and former military intelligence officer, whose competence was demonstrated in JFK and Vietnam. As soon as it was published this year, structuralists like Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn went scurrying back to the documents to try and refute him. But as Newman pointed out in a folksy talk on June 17, 1992, it's finally unimportant whether you are 'left wing, right wing, or from the middle of the bird.' There are a number of ex-Cold Warrior analyst-academic types in the military who are taking a fresh look at recent history, he assured us, and that has to be healthy. If he's telling the truth -- and I have no reason to doubt him -- then I have to agree.

Back to the real world of people behind the events. Personally, I don't think the PC Left has any legitimate use for theory at all. I haven't seen any for over ten years, and that makes me reasonably sceptical. When I requested the names of the Board of Directors from Political Research Associates, the group that sponsors Berlet, it looked like theory had nothing to do with anything. I discovered that their Board is less diverse than one might expect. For me this makes the situation transparent -- these are people who have something to lose if populist conspiracism replaces political correctness. They are the System. They don't need theory, they need protection. If theory provides protection, that's when we'll get theory.

Political Research Associates doesn't list their Board on their letterhead because, as director Jean Hardisty explained to me, they've been sued by two of the groups they've attacked and their liability insurance is becoming problematic. Fair enough, I suppose, because its part of the public record and there are other ways to get it. But Spotlight has a large staff box on every issue, and Berlet seems to be calling up the people on my letterhead, so I'm going to quote from Hardisty's letter.
'Because I'm not comfortable putting people in a position of risk equivalent to the risk I am willing to assume, we have a small board. It is made up of me, Lucy Williams, Esq., Rev. Sally A. Dries, Prof. Robin Gillies, and Prof. Deborah Bright. They are, respectively, a law professor at Northeastern Law Scool in Boston, a United Church of Christ minister in Shamokin, PA, a political science professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Il., and an art professor at Rhodes Island School of Design. I do not list their names on the letterhead and do not advertise their membership on the board in order to protect them from harassment.'

By contrast, the readers of the hated Spotlight, Liberty Lobby's weekly with a circulation of over 100,000, are far down the elitist ladder. They are concerned about the very issues that injected Ross Perot into presidential politics. As I write the jury is still out on Perot as a potential leader, but something is stirring out there in the heartland, and Perot is a convenient symbol. He might well be the first presidential candidate willing to say that conspiracies and corruption exist in high places. To my knowledge he hasn't made any statements about the JFK assassination, but how much money would you put on his ability to serve out his term if he got elected and reopened the JFK, MLK and RFK investigations?

The PC Left, meanwhile, not only sees this as irrelevant, but is even inclined to call it neo-fascism. There is, of course, facist potential in any populist movement, just as there is also democratic potential. And it appears to me that there's no potential at all in business as usual on the PC Left. Everyone knows it except them. The 75% of the population that feels JFK was the victim of a high-level conspiracy involving the CIA or mafia know it. The more than 50% of the population who don't vote (this year I'm voting for the first time since 1972) know it. The conspiracy 'buffs', 'nuts', and 'crackpots' -- against whom Berlet crusades and Alexander Cockburn pontificates -- know it. But it is still news to a small group that control the diminishing 'progressive' press in America.

Clinton, another Trilateralist?
This 'progressive' press has been blindsided by a special-interest multiculturalism that has the ruling class laughing all the way to their banks. Unlike in 1976 and 1977, when progressives were interested in Jimmy Carter's Trilateralist connections, these days you have to consult Spotlight to discover that Bill Clinton attended a Bilderberg Group meeting in 1991 (before anyone outside Arkansas had heard of him), and that currently he is a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. So it came as no surprise to Spotlight readers when David Rockefeller Jnr. wrote a strong endorsement of Clinton for the New York Times (October 16 1992).

The populist Right consider Clinton a set-up, in the sense that the rich will continue to get richer. The ruling class knows that more subtle techniques are needed than those used by Bush, and will offer some health insurance and job training to deflect discontent. But ultimately free trade will prevail in the New World Order, and the U.S. middle class will be picked clean. I'm 'incorrect' if I try and explain this to the U.S. Left, and treasonous if I enclose a clipping from Spotlight.

Meanwhile, I'm going to try and ignore the handful of vocal PC leftists. We still have one woman on our Board of Advisors, and a woman and a 'person of color' on our Board of Directors. We will survive without grants if we must. Some may continue to call Prouty a 'Nazi crackpot' without any justification whatsoever, but we have former Nazi-hunter John Loftus on our Advisory Board also. If that helps confuse the issue, so much the better. We also have other investigative writers such as Peter Dale Scott and Jim Hougan, who do excellent work and have no need of PC distinctions.

The late Bernard (Bud) Fensterwald of the Assassination Archives and Research Center helped us a bit with our tax-exemption, and I helped him with their computers. Bud was incorrect enough to let his law firm represent Lyndon LaRouche, but so what? Anyone can walk in off the street and go through AARC's impressive collection of material. Is this worth anything to the Left these days? Probably not, and it's their loss.

Prouty can stay on our Board of Advisors as long as he likes; we're proud to have him. I submit that left-right distinctions have outlived their usefulness in America, and particularly in the Washington information milieu. They should be replaced with other distinctions -- perhaps between those who believe in more information for more people and those who don't. Or as Dan Moldea suggested to me, maybe a distinction between 'players' and 'non-players'. In either case, Prouty continues to make an important contribution, and so does Victor Marchetti, Mark Lane, and, yes, Spotlight and Liberty Lobby.

So forget it, Chip. I'll turn in my SDS membership card if you promise to go away, but the only one qualified to accept it these days is former national SDS president Carl Oglesby. Carl is too busy writing JFK assassination books to bother with your concerns, and feels fine on our Board sitting next to Prouty. And if you ask him, he'll probably tell you that at some point between the late sixties and now, you are the one who changed, not us.

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Public Information Research
PO Box 5199, Arlington VA 22205. USA
Tel: +1 703 241 5437.

[Rory Winter]

Re your smear-campaign against LaRouche: Pincher, you make a personal allegation which you will not and cannot prove. This well illustrates the pompous, egotistic bullshitting troll you are

[Pincher]

Don’t be taken in by Pincher’s arguments (or is rants

a more accurate description?). He is clearly paranoid about LaRouche and his defence (or Prof. Flaherty's) of the Federal Reserve is absurd. Are we really meant to believe that the politically-appointed Board makes the decisions and the big banks happily carry them out? That the banks somehow give up opportunities for profits for a politically-appointed Board? When is the last time you heard any complaints, rows, civil war, splits between the Board and the big banks? That’s right. Never. Why do you think that is?

In fact, 'neo-fascist, left-wing, Jew-hating conspiraloons' like MoneyWeek, The Daily Reckoning (investement advisers) and Gold-Eagle (gold investment advisers) will tell you what a conspiratorial con 'fiat money' and the Federal Reserve is.

Pincher's silly defence may go down well at primary schools but I expect a bit more from adults.

It’s likely that Pincher is on the left and may be Jewish. Many Left Jews are, perhaps, happy to criticise members of the ruling elite so long as they are not Jewish. But why the Left are hostile to conspiracy theories needs investigation. I feel that competition is an issue. That is, LaRoche’s organisation is unwelcome competition with the Left among people disillusioned with the system. Thus, the baloney about him being neo-Fascist.anything, Chip Berlet has got into bed with US intelligence to do down LaRou If che. I will continue to use LaRouche’s analysis and information and use my own judgment about it.

1) Another twerp with profound reasoning difficulties: 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.' In other words my hypocritical, egocentric chum because YOU don't hear about disagreements within the Fed doesn't mean they don't happen and it certainly doesn't mean that hook nosed Shylocks of Threadneedle Street and Frankfurt own and control it.

In fact, it is considerably easier to find out about the Fed's monetary policy than it is to find out just about anything from the CIA or Pentagon. Try the American Banking Association and enquire about their list of specialist periodicals. That is not to say that the Fed is transparent in its deliberations. But there again no arm of any government ever is.

2) It's funny that it's always the (seemingly) innocuous errors that people make that give them away. 'Neo nazi left wing'...eh? Only a complete political illiterate could coin a couplet like that. Do you understand the theoretical differences between left and right, between the 'race struggle' and the 'class struggle?'

You're a great ego boost insidejob. With political pygmies like you running around I feel like an intellectual giant.

3) Money Week will tell me what a con 'fiat money' is will it? You mean that grateful reproducer of six month old personal finance advertorial cobbled together by first rung financial PR's and subbed by semi literate Business Studies graduates from Middlesex Univeristy who'd think that 'fiat money' was a deposit on a Punto, you mean THAT pulp will give me chapter and high minded verse on the finer points of Fed conspiracies?

Go and wipe your hairless arse sonny!

4) As it happens I'm neither. See you've been rummaging in the neo cons bag of dirty tricks: 'he who is not with me is against me.'

And I'd like to know which left wing Jews only target the 'gentile elite.'

5) I'm glad you made that accusation against Berlet and gladder still that you dug up Brandt's 1992 piece (he's a bit more reflective about LaRouche these days) from Lobster (if this intelligent but partial journal bothered to consider the motives, schemes and deceptions of ALL the players at the RISK board instead of just focusing on the West's plotting, its global analysis would be more credible). It'll form the basis of a future post.

Business before pleasure as they say...




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1 703 241 5437.

[Pincher]

Re your smear-campaign against LaRouche: Pincher, you make a personal allegation which you will not and cannot prove. This well illustrates the pompous, egotistic bullshitting troll you are

You sound just like your avatar, venceremos, and you make even less sense. That's because you're angry. You're annoyed with me because I turned the tables on you by dredging up the Stephen Lawrence case to show up your selective morality.

As for 'smear campaigns:' do you think Doreen Lawrence is guilty of smearing the Acourt brothers? Tell me 'yes' or 'no.'

And as far as personal allegations are concerned: the Justice for Jermiah campaign hold LaRouche personally responsible for the actions of Schiller cadres as they were acting directly under his instructions on the day he died. Indeed, it was Jeremiah's response to LaRouche's anti semitic diatribe which triggered off the chain of events (ie his 'deprogramming') that led to his death.

Remember in the Lawrence case the fatal wound was inflicted by only one of the five gang members present. In law, the others are accessories to murder and just as culpable. And LaRouche is almost certainly more than a mere accessory in the Duggan case.

And finally the 'proof.' There is a substantial body of evidence available just on the web linking LaRouche and Schiller cadres to Duggan's death (just as much evidence as that which links Acourt & Co to Lawrence). You clearly haven't read it. More accurately, you don't want to read it because, more accurately still, you don't want to believe it - you are too far gone.

Venceremos, you are a bitter rebel in search of a twisted cause.

[Pincher]

I identify s good deal with the article (I’m sorry, it’s a bit long) from Lobster, December 1992

Don't apologise insidejob - I'm glad you reproduced it in full. And I'm so pleased that you identify with the author (and I mean that most sincerely folks!). Oh yes, if ever there was a writer whose political career and ideological journey so closely mirrors my own it is Dan Brandt's.

This classic product of the counter culture was indefatiguable in his quest for emprical (as opposed to ideological) truth. No obscurantist he, Dan would entertain and evaluate evidence no matter what the source. Which is why he fell out with old left wing chums like Chip Berlet and Dennis King.

A piece on Bill Clinton by Brandt written shortly after the 'Lobster' memoir is an excellent example of his willingness to consider 'right wing' conspiracy theories. Here's the link:

http://www.namebase.org/news01.html

and here's a quote that no doubt will have you jumping up and down on the terraces.

For anyone who wants to figure out what LaRouche is talking about, it is necessary to be conversant with esoterica concerning Freemasonry, the Knights of Malta, and British imperialism.The alternative is to see all of the above as code words for Jews, and LaRouche's enemies -- namely Chip Berlet, Dennis King, and the Anti-Defamation League -- tend to take this easy way out.

'Aha!' I hear you crow in true Alan Partridge style, 'he doesn't think either that global conspiracies are anti semitic so it's 1-0 to me!' But Brandt continues:

I don't believe that right-wing globalist conspiracy theories in general, or LaRouche's theories in particular, can be dismissed by claiming that they are disguised anti-Semitism -- that is to say, code-word versions of the old international Jewish banking conspiracies. While there is some anti-Semitism on the right, it is no longer the driving force it might have once been. Most right-wing theories are more sophisticated than Berlet, King, or the ADL are ready to believe.

Sorry, insidejob, but your effort has been flagged offside. Just in case you are a little slow off the mark, Brandt said 13 years ago he would consider a sophisticated global conspiracy theory only because he didn't consider it 'code' for old international Jewish banking conspiracies

If the evidence of this site is anything to go by the international banking conspiracy IS now the global conspiracy - the international banking chickens that Brandt both denied and feared have finally come home to roost.

In mitigation he could plead he was writing before Money Masters and before LaRouche's youth movement and the Schiller Institute really took off (but Berlet, King et al were alive to the danger in the 1970's).

I need hardly remind you insidejob that Brandt (with whom you so closely identified) has dissed all your nonsense about banking conspiracies (by referring to them in the manner that he did) and has thus lent his muscular support to my argument. And it gets worse for you:

The Big One for me was 1967. In 1964 I licked stamps for Goldwater, but in 1967 I joined the tiny chapter of Students for a Democratic Society on campus. I walked in cold to one of their meetings after reading a book on U.S. involvement in Vietnam and walking out of my fraternity. They must have thought I was a spy, with my short hair and button-down clothes, but it didn't matter because at the time SDS accepted everyone and I was wearing a strong suit of moral indignation over U.S. foreign policy.

Intriguingly, Brandt doesn't reveal here the identity of his friend and mentor, whose 'Labour Committee' faction would take over the SDS the following year and spectacularly run the entire organisation into the ground because it was 'too obsessed with the counter culture' and 'with being the revolutionary vanguard'. I'll unmask this Svengali later but Brandt continues:

Today we know much more about the assassination than we did in 1967, and much more about CIA covert operations.

And in 2006 we know even more about CIA covert activities than Brandt did here in 1992. In particular we know a great deal more about penetration of national liberation movements ( the best example of this is Sinn Fein - a claim made earlier this year that its effective joint leader, Martin McGuinness, was an MI5 mole has rocked the organisation to its foundations) and revolutionary parties of the left and right.

In the case of the US this went a lot further than any conspiracy commentator might care to admit (because they all served their political apprenticeships in far left organisations). This includes commentators like Berlet, King and Brandt himself. And it wasn't just because they were spied on. It was because they were duped.

Many far left (and later far right) organisations were effectively inventions of the CIA and Trotskyism was their crowning glory.

To be continued...

[brian]

Pincher, you have the flair required for penning a Mills and Boon novelette but lack the skills required for critical analysis it seems.

From YOUR quotes you draw some strange conclusions.

First off you quote a passage then say "Brandt continues" but then quote from THE SAME passage.

You then waffle away with no regard to what is actualy said in the quote (singular) leading to this nonsense -

"I need hardly remind you insidejob that Brandt (with whom you so closely identified) has dissed all your nonsense about banking conspiracies (by referring to them in the manner that he did) "

From the quote -

"I don't believe that right-wing globalist conspiracy theories in general, or LaRouche's theories in particular, can be dismissed by claiming ..."

Did you read only as far as "in general"- missing "that"??

Still, with your flair you no doubt convince yourself you are actually saying something. We are still waiting.

[Pincher]

Pincher, you have the flair required for penning a Mills and Boon novelette but lack the skills required for critical analysis it seems.

From YOUR quotes you draw some strange conclusions.

First off you quote a passage then say "Brandt continues" but then quote from THE SAME passage.

You then waffle away with no regard to what is actualy said in the quote (singular) leading to this nonsense -

"I need hardly remind you insidejob that Brandt (with whom you so closely identified) has dissed all your nonsense about banking conspiracies (by referring to them in the manner that he did) "

From the quote -

"I don't believe that right-wing globalist conspiracy theories in general, or LaRouche's theories in particular, can be dismissed by claiming ..."Did you read only as far as "in general"- missing "that"??

Still, with your flair you no doubt convince yourself you are actually saying something. We are still waiting.

1) Apologies for reproducing the latter part of the Brandt quote. I intended to cut the first paragraph in two - my error in the editing suite. (I will re edit) Good to see that some one is paying attention!

2) If you read only the first part of the first sentence of para two you will naturally draw the inference that Brandt considers that LaRouche's global conspiracy is not simply disguised anti semitism (remember that this was written in 1992).

Then read the first sentence in its entirety in the light of 2006. I think I can safely say that:

i) Brandt is suggesting that the international Jewish banking conspiracy is codswallop.

ii) Brandt did not think that LaRouche at that time was secretly advancing the banking conspiracy under the guise of an alternative global conspiracy.

iii) Brandt is inferring he buys the global conspiracy because it is NOT a rehash of the banking conspiracy. He leaves the reader with the distinct impression that if the global conspiracy was simply a reworking of the banking conspiracy he would reject it.

In 2006 there can be no doubt that LaRouche is one of the main forces behind the promotion of the international Jewish banking conspiracy. Money Masters is unquestionably his work. Eyewitness accounts of lectures given to inductees at The Schiller Institute confirm his adherence to this theory

I rest my case...

[brian]

Only in a Mills and Boon novelette could this sentence -

"I don't believe that right-wing globalist conspiracy theories in general, or LaRouche's theories in particular, can be dismissed by claiming that they are disguised anti-Semitism -- that is to say, code-word versions of the old international Jewish banking conspiracies."

- be construed as saying the theories can be dismissed as codswallop.

The only inference that can be taken is that those that dismiss these theories are the ones employing codswallop.

Of course there is always the mysterious "light of 2006" eh?

Even at a Pinch - er.., you never had a case.

[Pincher]

The CIA and its penetration of far left and right organisations (Part II)

Literal minded/pedantic/quibbling historians will point out that the Troskyist inspired Fourth International was founded in Paris in 1938 and was attended by delegates from all over the world and could hardly be described as a creation of the CIA (which was founded during the war by the British in Canada) or even its forerunner the OSS.

It should be remembered though that the FI relocated to New York in the following year. Barely had this been accomplished than the movement began to split. The hallmark of Trotskyist organisations are factionalism and fragmentation. And in the early days it was usually over attitudes towards the Soviet Union.

Should the Soviet Union, imperfect though it was, be defended against the capitalist west in wartime (as Trotsky himself thought) or should it be regarded as a degenerated workers state in need of another socialist revolution? Eventually it was the latter view which prevailed and then mutated into other hostile critiques (eg state capitalism) of the USSR.

The US, the global bastion of capitalism, considered it an imperative to cultivate anti sovietism at every level - even within the Marxist left. The (relative) advantage to the US of having a multitude of small, subversive, faction riven organisations with no significant foreign backer rather than a single cohesive party supported by a militarised super power was obvious.

And it was from one of these splinter groups, the SWP (a Troskyist brand successfully exported to the UK) , that our middle aged Svengali emerged in the mid 60's into the maelstrom of the largely student counter culture. In less than two years this wealthy management consultant succeeded in either being expelled from, or splitting with and then joining anew, no less than five different organisations (three of them Troskyist - SWP, RT & Sparticist) - all for politically obscure reasons.

Invariably, whenever he left an organisation it was weaker than when he had first joined and, whenever he joined an organisation, in no time at all a separate faction which railed against the dominant tendency would spring up and destablise the entire party. This was in stark contrast to the relative stability of his earlier political existence (all seventeen years of which had been spent in the SWP).

By 1970 he was on his sixth party (National Caucus for Labor Committees -NCLC). Rumours began to spead that its largely student menbership was being regimented and brainwashed and being sent out to beat up Communists and Troskyists and break up their meetings. Svengali countered that the CIA was kidnapping and brainwashing HIS members.

Despite all this and his relative political obscurity Svengali entered the world of high diplomacy and made US government approved visits to various Middle Eastern countries, discussing prestige infrastructure projects with their leaderships.

At home things were changing in the NCLC. Disillusioned members stated that Marx and socialism were off the agenda. Rumours spread that the NCLC leadership had studied Hitler's methods of organising and controlling political parties. Svengali began to revise his past involvement with the SWP in the 1950's (falsely claiming he allowed his membership to lapse) and that he had abandoned Marxism as early as 1966 (even though he was lecturing in it and was a member of The New Left).

And everywhere there was violence. The Communist Party of America was even forced to complain to the FBI about NCLC activity! The FBI responded by launching an enquiry. The Washington Post eventually denounced the NCLC and Svengali as fascist. If the following testimony of a former comrade is anything to go by the newspaper had a case:

"The parallel between his thinking and that of the classical fascist model is striking. He, like Mussolini and Hitler before him, borrowed from Marx yet changed his theories fundamentally. Most important, Marx's internationalist outlook was abandoned in favor of a narrow nation-state perspective. Marx's goal of abolishing capitalism was replaced by the model of a totalitarian state that directs an economy where ownership of the means of production is still largely in public [should this say "private"?] hands. The corporations and their owners remain in place but have to take their orders from him. Hitler called the schema "national socialism". LaRouche hopes the term "the American System" will be more acceptable."

Another observation commonly made by his associates at this time were his numerous contacts within the intellignce community and his profound understanding of the way in which the CIA operated. After his involvement in the John Demaniuk case (in which he failed to prevent the extradition of a retired Ukranian-American auto worker to Israel on war crimes' charges) many suspected he was co-operating with the CIA and that the service was assisting him in his political career. In particular they noted:

1) His atypical background (Quaker, upper middle class) for revolutionary politics.
2) The considerable personal wealth he accumulated whilst being a political activist.
3) His disruptive activities within Trotskyist organisations.
4) His role in leading away students from the counter culture into non Marxist politics.
5) His regimentation and control of members of his organisations.
6) The continual violence against far left groups.
7) The fact that he could publish, virtually unhindered, on intelligence matters.

It is only recently though that some commentators have picked up on Svengali's espousal of global conspiracy theories and how these could be of benefit to hard pressed US administrations:

'When our government is under pressure both domestically and internationally it might draw some comfort from the fact that an increasing proportion of its own citizens and those of possible hostile nations are effectively letting the US administration off the hook either by placing the blame for policy failure elsewhere or by signing up to a view that all the world's ills are due to the nefarious activities of a wealthy, secretive, non-American elite.

As no former US intelligence operative has ever leaked details of Svengali's involvement with any US intelligence agency we can only speculate as to its degree.

What we can do though is examine the personality traits and life experience of another demogogue who certainly owed his rise to 'dark forces:' the largely unhappy childhhod, failure to fit in at school, emergence of a colossal (narcissistic) ego, schematic yet superficial intelligence, incomplete formal education, suspect involvement with the far left and subsequent move to the far right. One could be forgiven for thinking that there is more than a little of Adolf Hitler in our Svengali.

Deep in the vaults of every intelligence agency throughout the world there must by a standard text entitled: 'How to spot your Fuhrer'

http://www.schillerinstitute.org/graphi ... fbidoc.jpg

[Pincher]

Only in a Mills and Boon novelette could this sentence -

"I don't believe that right-wing globalist conspiracy theories in general, or LaRouche's theories in particular, can be dismissed by claiming that they are disguised anti-Semitism -- that is to say, code-word versions of the old international Jewish banking conspiracies."

- be construed as saying the theories can be dismissed as codswallop.

The only inference that can be taken is that those that dismiss these theories are the ones employing codswallop.

Of course there is always the mysterious "light of 2006" eh?

Even at a Pinch - er.., you never had a case.

...and only in a Money Masters DVD could any idea, theory or observation preceded by the adjective 'old' (as in 'old wives' tale' 'old hat' & 'same old') be construed as anything but codswallop.