Jack Balkin of Yale, pictured, and Eric Posner of the University of Chicago on whether members of the Bush White House should face trial.
Traducing Solzhenitsyn
by Daniel J. Mahoney
Copyright (c) 2004 First Things (August/September 2004).
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is one of the great souls of the age. He is also among its most maligned and misunderstood figures. It is hard to think of another prominent writer whose thought and character have been subjected to as many willful distortions and vilifications over the past thirty years.
Things were not always so. Until the early 1970s Solzhenitsyn was widely admired in the West as a dissident and as a critic of Communist totalitarianism. On the left he was appreciated as a defender of human rights against an undeniably illiberal and autocratic regime. But with the publication of works such as August1914 (1972), the Letter to the Soviet Leaders, and the cultural-spiritual anthology From Under the Rubble (both published in the West in 1974), it became impossible to claim Solzhenitsyn as a champion of left-liberal secularism. He continued to be, of course, a ferocious critic of the ideological “lie” and a tenacious defender of fundamental human liberties. But this antitotalitarian writer clearly did not believe that a free Russia should become a slavish imitator of the secular, postmodern West. It became increasingly clear that he was both an old-fashioned patriot and a committed Christian—but here also he was perplexing to some, because he adamantly rejected “blood and soil” nationalism, expressed no desire to return to the Tsarist past, and asked for no special privileges for Christianity in a post-totalitarian Russia.
Some of his critics soon reasoned that if Solzhenitsyn was not a conventional liberal, then he must be an enemy of liberty. The legend grew that he was, at best, a “Slavophile” and a romantic critic of decadent Western political institutions, and that he was, at worst, an authoritarian and even, perhaps, an anti-Semite and a theocrat. Even those Western critics who admired Solzhenitsyn’s courage in confronting the Communist behemoth and who drew upon his dissections of ideological tyranny tended to slight his contribution to the renewal of the spiritual foundations of human liberty in a post-totalitarian world. In a memorable article published in Commentary in 1985 (“The Terrible Question of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn”), Norman Podhoretz praised Solzhenitsyn as an anti-Communist and as the author of The Gulag Archipelago, while largely taking for granted the accuracy of the caricature about him that had taken shape over the previous decade and a half. Podhoretz simply assumed that Solzhenitsyn was an authoritarian or anti-democratic thinker, though he did acquit Solzhenitsyn, a strong supporter of the state of Israel, of the charge of anti-Semitism. He also cavalierly dismissed as a literary failure The Red Wheel, Solzhenitsyn’s magnum opus that explores the events leading up to the Bolshevik revolution. (Podhoretz was in no position to do so at the time since he did not have access to any of the finished volumes of that great work.) The anti-Communist Podhoretz, however, never denied Solzhenitsyn’s greatness or his enduring commitment to human dignity.
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Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler
Banking With Hitler Part 1 of 5
Banking With Hitler Part 2 of 5
Banking With Hitler Part 3 of 5
Banking With Hitler Part4 of 5
Banking With Hitler Part 5 of 5
Sutton makes that case that several Wall Street firms were deeply involved in financing the rise to power of the National Socialist German Workers Party (i.e., the Nazis) in pre-World War II Germany. Sutton shows that first, Wall Street financed the German cartels in the 1920's, second, that Wall Street indirectly financed Hitler and the Nazi Party, prior to their rise in power in Germany, third, that Wall Street firms profited from the build-up to war and the war itself, even after the U.S. got involved, and finally, that U.S. firms worked to cover up their complicity after the war.
This book is the third in a trilogy. The two other books chronicle Wall Street's involvement in the rise of FDR and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. The anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies of businessmen like Henry Ford is no secret, so it's surprising that this subject gets so little play. Given modern leftist thought on big business, one would think that they would leap at the chance to link Wall Street to the Nazis. The reason they don't is no doubt due to Sutton's larger effort at showing that Wall Street supported "corporate socialism" not only in Germany, but in Russia and the U.S. as well. Since leftists still idealize FDR and the brutal regime that arose to become the U.S.S.R., they probably prefer to forget about the businessmen who connect them all. Sutton himself is no anti-business left-winger, instead he is a conservative concerned with the actions of an "unelected power elite", controlling events/governments/societies behind the scenes, to the detriment of freedom everywhere.
It makes for rather dry reading, but Sutton goes into extensive details about the persons, funds and timelines that show the deep connection between certain American Big Businesses and the Nazis. Why would Big Business embrace such a horrid political movement? Although Sutton does not go into details about motivation, there is a good case to be made that many businesses were not fond of the untrammeled free market and instead yearned for the security of government guaranteed profits, regardless of the expense to others in terms of loss of freedom. These businesses saw themselves as the contractors running the government machinery of what was thought to be the inevitable march to socialism. Sutton doesn't mention it, but many in the early twentieth century thought that some form of socialism was unavoidable, and that it was a choice between that and corporate domination through monopoly. Thus these businesses saw themselves as merely working towards what was almost pre-destined to happen, and ensuring that they would be the ones running the show and reaping the benefit.
The book turns a bit conspiratorial in the end. Sutton invokes the Kennedy Assassination, the Korean War and Vietnam War and the Council on Foreign Relations all in an attempt to suggest that we are being ruled by an unelected power elite, bent on societal domination at all costs, in the name of profit. There's no need to invoke conspiracy, though. The selfish acts of business men, tempted by access to the levers of power, is as good an explanation as any.
The case that Sutton makes is compelling. If his evidence is able to withstand scrutiny, it's hard to come to any other conclusion than that Big Business was willing to deal with the worst of the worst in order to profit via the coercive powers of government.
Chase Bank collaboration with the Nazis Part One
Chase Bank collaboration with the Nazis Part Two
Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, who began investigating this collaboration, He found the Chase were not alone. His archives reveal that both British and American bankers continued to do business with Hitler, even as Germany was invading Europe and bombing London. Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars' worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan?
Gold that had been looted from the national banks of Austria, Holland, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia, or melted down from the Reichsbank holdings of the teeth fillings, spectacle frames, cigarette cases and lighters, and wedding rings of the murdered Jews.
Banking With Hitler Part 2 of 5
Banking With Hitler Part 3 of 5
Banking With Hitler Part4 of 5
Banking With Hitler Part 5 of 5
Sutton makes that case that several Wall Street firms were deeply involved in financing the rise to power of the National Socialist German Workers Party (i.e., the Nazis) in pre-World War II Germany. Sutton shows that first, Wall Street financed the German cartels in the 1920's, second, that Wall Street indirectly financed Hitler and the Nazi Party, prior to their rise in power in Germany, third, that Wall Street firms profited from the build-up to war and the war itself, even after the U.S. got involved, and finally, that U.S. firms worked to cover up their complicity after the war.This book is the third in a trilogy. The two other books chronicle Wall Street's involvement in the rise of FDR and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. The anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies of businessmen like Henry Ford is no secret, so it's surprising that this subject gets so little play. Given modern leftist thought on big business, one would think that they would leap at the chance to link Wall Street to the Nazis. The reason they don't is no doubt due to Sutton's larger effort at showing that Wall Street supported "corporate socialism" not only in Germany, but in Russia and the U.S. as well. Since leftists still idealize FDR and the brutal regime that arose to become the U.S.S.R., they probably prefer to forget about the businessmen who connect them all. Sutton himself is no anti-business left-winger, instead he is a conservative concerned with the actions of an "unelected power elite", controlling events/governments/societies behind the scenes, to the detriment of freedom everywhere.
It makes for rather dry reading, but Sutton goes into extensive details about the persons, funds and timelines that show the deep connection between certain American Big Businesses and the Nazis. Why would Big Business embrace such a horrid political movement? Although Sutton does not go into details about motivation, there is a good case to be made that many businesses were not fond of the untrammeled free market and instead yearned for the security of government guaranteed profits, regardless of the expense to others in terms of loss of freedom. These businesses saw themselves as the contractors running the government machinery of what was thought to be the inevitable march to socialism. Sutton doesn't mention it, but many in the early twentieth century thought that some form of socialism was unavoidable, and that it was a choice between that and corporate domination through monopoly. Thus these businesses saw themselves as merely working towards what was almost pre-destined to happen, and ensuring that they would be the ones running the show and reaping the benefit.
The book turns a bit conspiratorial in the end. Sutton invokes the Kennedy Assassination, the Korean War and Vietnam War and the Council on Foreign Relations all in an attempt to suggest that we are being ruled by an unelected power elite, bent on societal domination at all costs, in the name of profit. There's no need to invoke conspiracy, though. The selfish acts of business men, tempted by access to the levers of power, is as good an explanation as any.
The case that Sutton makes is compelling. If his evidence is able to withstand scrutiny, it's hard to come to any other conclusion than that Big Business was willing to deal with the worst of the worst in order to profit via the coercive powers of government.
Chase Bank collaboration with the Nazis Part One
Chase Bank collaboration with the Nazis Part Two
Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, who began investigating this collaboration, He found the Chase were not alone. His archives reveal that both British and American bankers continued to do business with Hitler, even as Germany was invading Europe and bombing London. Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars' worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan?
Gold that had been looted from the national banks of Austria, Holland, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia, or melted down from the Reichsbank holdings of the teeth fillings, spectacle frames, cigarette cases and lighters, and wedding rings of the murdered Jews.
John Adams (HBO Miniseries) (2008)
Based on David McCullough's bestselling biography, the HBO miniseries John Adams is the furthest thing from a starry-eyed look at America's founding fathers and the brutal path to independence. Adams (Paul Giamatti), second president of the United States, is portrayed as a skilled orator and principled attorney whose preference for justice over anti-English passions earns enemies. But he also gains the esteem of the first national government of the United States, i.e., the Continental Congress, which seeks non-firebrands capable of making a reasoned if powerful case for America's break from England's monarchy. The first thing one notices about John Adams' dramatizations of congress' proceedings, and the fervent pro-independence violence in the streets of Boston and elsewhere, is that America's roots don't look pretty or idealized here. Some horrendous things happen in the name of protest, driving Adams to push the cause of independence in a legitimate effort to get on with a revolutionary war under the command of George Washington. But the process isn't easy: not every one of the 13 colonies-turned-states is ready to incur the wrath of England, and behind-the-scenes negotiations prove as much a part of 18th century congressional sessions as they do today.
Besides this peek into a less-romanticized version of the past, John Adams is also a story of the man himself. Adams' frustration at being forgotten or overlooked at critical junctures of America's early development--sent abroad for years instead of helping to draft the U.S. constitution--is detailed. So is his dismay that the truth of what actually transpired leading to the signing of the Declaration of Independence has been slowly forgotten and replaced by a rosier myth. But above all, John Adams is the story of two key ties: Adams' 54-year marriage to Abigail Adams (Laura Linney), every bit her husband's intellectual equal and anchor, and his difficult, almost symbiotic relationship with Thomas Jefferson (Stephen Dillane) over decades. Giamatti, of course, has to carry much of the drama, and if he doesn't always seem quite believable in the series' first half, he becomes increasingly excellent at the point where an aging Adams becomes bitter over his place in history. Linney is marvelous, as is Dillane, Sarah Polley as daughter Nabby, Danny Huston as cousin Samuel Adams, and above all Tom Wilkinson as a complex but indispensable Ben Franklin. --Tom Keogh
Product Description
John Adams is a sprawling HBO miniseries event that depicts the extraordinary life and times of one of Americas least understood and most underestimated founding fathers: the second President of the United States John Adams. Starring Paul Giamatti (Sideways Cinderella Man HBOs American Spendor) in the title role and Laura Linney (You Can Count on Me Kinsey) as Adams devoted wife Abigail John Adams chronicles the extraordinary life journey of one of the primary shapers of our independence and government whose legacy has often been eclipsed by more flamboyant contemporaries like George Washington Thomas Jefferson Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin. Set against the backdrop of a nations stormy birth this sweeping miniseries is a moving love story a gripping narrative and a fascinating study of human nature. Above all at a time when the nation is increasingly polarized politically this story celebrates the shared values of liberty and freedom upon which this country was built.Running Time: 501 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/SERIES & SEQUELS UPC: 883929020065 Manufacturer No: 1000038820
Churchill and His Myths
Geoffrey Wheatcroft | New York Review of Books | May 29, 2008
Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Dire Warning
by John Lukacs
Basic Books, 147 pp., $24.00
Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England
by Lynne Olson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 436 pp., $27.50; $15.00 (paper)
Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization
by Nicholson Baker
Simon and Schuster, 566 pp., $30.00
Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost the Empire and the West Lost the World
by Patrick J. Buchanan.
Crown, 544 pp., $29.95
1.
At the end of 1936, Winston Churchill's fortunes had sunk as low as he would ever know. His career had long resembled Snakes and Ladders, the nursery board game where a shake of the dice leads to either a brisk ascent or a downward slither. Already famous in 1900 when he entered Parliament at the age of twenty-five, he was home secretary at thirty-four (having nimbly deserted the Conservatives before the Liberals won their landslide in 1906), and went on climbing the ladder until the outbreak of the Great War. Then in 1915 he stepped on a nasty snake. He was saddled with the blame for the Dardanelles debacle and left government to command an infantry battalion on the Western Front. After easing his way back into office, he stealthily returned to the Conservative fold, but in 1931, while the Tories were in opposition, he resigned from the party leadership because of his bitter opposition to Gandhi's release from prison, and to any measure of Indian self-government.
A heroic account of his "wilderness years" in the 1930s, which Churchill promoted and which is current today among his huge American claque, has him as the noble lone voice crying out while his countrymen willfully ignored his warnings about the need to rearm against a resurgent Germany. It's true that most British people understandably had little enthusiasm for another war only twenty years after one in which they had lost three quarters of a million dead (equivalent to nearly six million Americans today). But Churchill's woes were largely self-inflicted, from India to what John Lukacs calls "his impetuous (and, in retrospect, unnecessary) championing of Edward VIII" in December 1936. In the most disastrous parliamentary performance of his life, incoherent and seemingly the worse for drink, Churchill pleaded on behalf of the King until he was shouted down. London bookmakers take bets on anything from sport to the weather to politics; what odds would they have given that December that, within less than four years, he would be prime minister, at the supreme crisis in his country's history?
Read more...
The Book They’re All Talking About!
Even before it was published (May 27, 2008), Pat Buchanan’s book, Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, set the cat amongst the pigeons, not least because of John Lukacs review, “Necessary Evil”, which appeared, somewhat incongruously, in the June 2, 2008 [sic] issue (presumably online), sometime late last May, of The American Conservative. As an anti-anti-communist, who considers Nationalism to have been the supreme evil of the 20th century, Lukacs, whom Geoffrey Wheatcroft, a more considered judge of Churchill’s achievements, describes as “preeminent among intellectually respectable Churchillians”, has always idolized Churchill, who fought against that most extreme form of 20th-century Nationalism, Nazism, and made common cause with Uncle Joe Stalin.
On May 25, Buchanan posted an excerpt from his book, titled, “Man of the Century”, on Taki’s Magazine. He begins:
As the twentieth century ended, a debate ensued over who had been its greatest man. The Weekly Standard nominee was Churchill. Not only was he Man of the Century, said scholar Harry Jaffa, he was the Man of Many Centuries. To Kissinger he was “the quintessential hero.” A BBC poll of a million people in 2002 found that Britons considered Churchill the “greatest Briton of all time.”
As a Briton, I well remember the poll, tho’ I didn’t take part in it.
Buchanan goes on to examine whether Churchill really deserves that accolade and concludes that “Churchill succeeded magnificently as a war leader”, but “failed as a statesman”: “He had been a great man—at the cost of his country’s greatness.”
He also says of his own country, which has ceased to be a republic and has become a fast-declining empire: “There is hardly a blunder of the British Empire we have not replicated.”
Two days later, Buchanan posted a second article, “How the West Lost the World”, on Takimag, in which he outlines the series of British “blunders” which led to the Second World War.
Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, is one of a number of books on the subject reviewed by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in his review, “Churchill and His Myths” (a possible allusion to Churchill’s phrase, “Hitler and all his works”), which appeared on the same day in The New York review of Books, the others being John Lukacs’ own Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Dire Warning, Lynne Olson’s Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England, about the Tory rebels who voted against Chamberlain in 1940, and Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, which Lukacs has denounced, unsurprisingly, as “a bad book”.
Wheatcroft writes:
In the best sentence in her book, about the Suez adventure of 1956, [Olson] writes, "Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, the lessons of Munich and appeasement were wrongly applied to a later international crisis." Likewise, having rightly observed that "there has arisen among America's elite a Churchill cult," Patrick Buchanan devotes a chapter, "Man of the Century," to denouncing the cult, and the man. He not only looks askance at Churchill's saying in September 1943 that "to achieve the extirpation of Nazi tyranny there are no lengths of violence to which we will not go"; he chastises the administration of George Bush the Younger—who installed a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office—for having emulated "every folly of imperial Britain in her plunge from power," and having drawn every wrong lesson from Churchill's career. There is by now an entire book to be written about the way that "Munich," "appeasement," and "Churchill" have been ritually invoked, from Suez to Vietnam to Iraq, so often in false analogy, and so often with calamitous results.
Pat Buchanan himself appeared on CNN’s Situation Room to discuss his book with Wolf Blitzer, an appearance which was written up in an article, “Pat Buchanan Blames Britain for Holocaust”, by Jason Linkins on the Huffington Post, and which he peppered with ad hominem attacks:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Srwk5WwroXY]
He also appeared with Lester Holt on the Today Show:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChP4-FF4A3E]
Man of the Century
How the West Lost the World
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Buchanan, Kennan, and the “Good War”
Paul Gottfried | Taki's Magazine | June 01, 2008
The following is the first installment in a three-part critical symposium on Patrick Buchanan’s Churchill, Hitler, and the “Unnecessary War.”
It is not surprising that Pat Buchanan’s new book, exploring the collapse of the British Empire and the connection of that disaster to England’s involvement in two world wars, should have received a strong endorsement from George F. Kennan, written (it might be surmised) shortly before this luminary’s death at the age of a hundred and one. Although Kennan praises Pat specifically for taking over and developing his argument that “the British guaranty to Poland [in 1939] was neither necessary nor wise,” there is little in Pat’s work that is not traceable to this once celebrated American exponent of political realism. There are other historians whom Pat cites, such as Giles MacDonogh, Thomas Fleming, John Charmley and my close friend Ralph Raico, all of whom have written critically about Churchill. But his main guide to enlightenment is Kennan. Moreover, the work by this author and onetime American ambassador to Russia that fuels Pat’s “revisionist” arguments, concerning the misuse of British power, the overly close connection between the U.S. and Britain, and the overextension of English participation in continental European conflicts, is Kennan’s American Diplomacy 1900-1950, a work that was first published in 1951.
It is not surprising that Pat Buchanan’s new book, exploring the collapse of the British Empire and the connection of that disaster to England’s involvement in two world wars, should have received a strong endorsement from George F. Kennan, written (it might be surmised) shortly before this luminary’s death at the age of a hundred and one. Although Kennan praises Pat specifically for taking over and developing his argument that “the British guaranty to Poland [in 1939] was neither necessary nor wise,” there is little in Pat’s work that is not traceable to this once celebrated American exponent of political realism. There are other historians whom Pat cites, such as Giles MacDonogh, Thomas Fleming, John Charmley and my close friend Ralph Raico, all of whom have written critically about Churchill. But his main guide to enlightenment is Kennan. Moreover, the work by this author and onetime American ambassador to Russia that fuels Pat’s “revisionist” arguments, concerning the misuse of British power, the overly close connection between the U.S. and Britain, and the overextension of English participation in continental European conflicts, is Kennan’s American Diplomacy 1900-1950, a work that was first published in 1951.
When I was in college and later graduate school in the 1960s, this book was regularly assigned to undergraduates as an authoritative introduction to America’s role in international affairs in the 20th century. As Lee Congdon will surely explain in his forthcoming monograph, Kennan then enjoyed a certain cachet on the academic left as a critic of Cold War hawks, and he was even allowed to publish in the “anti-anti-Communist” New York Review of Books a tribute to the Prussian aristocracy that had tried to overthrow Hitler in 1944. By the 1980s Kennan had predictably come to rattle the neocons as someone who had never been particularly favorable to Israel and who had even shown the effrontery to warn against weakening the white minority government in South Africa. Despite Kennan’s mostly accidental association with the Left, the neocons, led by the sociologist Paul Hollander, correctly reminded us that Kennan was a reactionary—and certainly no friend of progressive democracy.
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Review: When Robert Kennedy gave his all
By Todd Leopold | CNN
A few days before the 1968 California Democratic primary, Washington Post reporter Richard Harwood told his editor he wanted to stop covering Robert F. Kennedy's campaign for president.
Robert Kennedy's campaign for president lasted 82 days before he died on June 6, 1968.
It was easy to see why. During his ill-fated run for the presidency, Kennedy appeared to be that rarest of candidates, the truth teller. By many accounts, he meant every word he said, particularly those about fighting prejudice and poverty. He refused to kowtow to his audiences, and he wore his emotions on his sleeves (adoring crowds sometimes shredded his cuffs). And he pondered questions before offering thoughtful, sometimes stammering, answers.
Indeed, if Clarke's careful and moving book has a problem, it's that the author also seems to have fallen a little in love with his subject. The hard-nosed -- the preferred adjective was "ruthless" -- RFK who shrewdly managed his brother's presidential campaign gets short shrift. The book sometimes seems to exist in its own bubble, lacking the uncertainty that afflicted Kennedy in fighting his uphill nomination battle.
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The Jewish key to Henry Kissinger
Is the ferocity of criticism for Kissinger related to the fact that he is Jewish?, asks Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson | The Times Literary Supplement | May 28, 2008
To say that Henry Kissinger is the most controversial of twentieth-century American Secretaries of State would be an understatement. No other holder of that office has inspired opprobrium of the sort heaped on Kissinger by journalists such as Seymour Hersh and Christopher Hitchens. The latter’s polemic, The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2002), for example, accuses Kissinger of having “ordered and sanctioned the destruction of civilian populations, the assassination of inconvenient politicians, the kidnapping and disappearance of soldiers and journalists and clerics who got in his way”. Hitchens offers no explanation of his subject’s alleged record of “promiscuous violence abroad and flagrant illegality at home”. The reader is merely left to infer that Kissinger must be a terribly wicked man.
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Angry Man
Nixon's America was a land of rebellion and reaction.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Drew | WaPo | Sunday, June 1, 2008; BW05
NIXONLAND
The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
By Rick Perlstein
Scribner. 881 pp. $37.50
There is so much literature about various aspects of Richard Nixon -- his foreign policy, his domestic policy, his rise to power, his time in power, his fall from power, his comeback, his relationship with Vice President Spiro Agnew, his trip to China -- that it would seem difficult to find an original approach to the man. But, in Nixonland, Rick Perlstein has come up with the novel and important idea of exploring the relationship between Nixon and the 1960s counterculture, a rebellion of mostly young people against society's conventions and authority in general. Perlstein is quite right in identifying this rebellion -- and the reaction against it -- as critical to Nixon's rise and his strange hold on the American people. One might even consider Perlstein's book to be primarily about the counterculture and only secondarily about Nixon, since he devotes nearly half of it to a brilliant evocation of the '60s.The decade had begun quiescently, with a general acceptance of the conventional mores of the '50s and the Cold War. But midway through came upheaval: hippies, yippies, be-ins, the drug culture, the Weather Underground, the "summer of love." Then the traumas of 1968: the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, campus unrest, urban riots. And, of course, Vietnam. A nation unhinged.
Perlstein astutely follows the reaction against all of this by a large part of the American people, whose deep resentments and fear Nixon shrewdly observed and exploited. In the 1968 election campaign, he offered America peace and quiet, law and order. But once in office, he delivered mass arrests of peaceful protesters against the war; his allies in the construction unions beat up demonstrators on Wall Street. Perlstein's Nixonland is a land of rebellion and reaction, each faction stirring up the other.
McClellan’s Biggest Revelation? Bush Personally Authorized Leak Of CIA Agent’s Identity
By: emptywheel Thursday May 29, 2008 7:08 am
Scottie McC doesn't know it yet. But that's basically what he revealed this morning on the Today Show (h/t Rayne).
During the interview, Scottie revealed the two things that really pissed him off with the Bush Administration. First, being set up to lie by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. And second, learning that Bush had--himself--authorized the selective leaking of the NIE.
Now, for the most part, this is not new. We have known (since I first reported it here) that Scooter Libby testified that, after Libby told Dick Cheney he couldn't leak the information Cheney had ordered him to leak to Judy Miller because it was classified, Cheney told Libby he had gotten the President to authorize the declassification of that information.
Thus far, though, we only had Dick Cheney's word that he had actually asked Bush to declassify this information. We didn't have Bush's confirmation that he had actually declassified the information. In fact, we've had Dick Cheney's claims that he--Dick--had insta-declassified via his super secret pixie dust declassification powers.
But now we've got George Bush, confirming that he, the President of the United States, authorized the leaks of "this information."
Now, though Scottie refers, obliquely, to "this information," he explicitly refers only to the NIE. But as I've described over and over again, it's not just the NIE Bush authorized Dick to order Libby to leak.
At this point, Scottie McC is still accepting Scooter Libby's lies, though I suspect he sees the dangerous frailty of them. With Bush's clear admission to Scottie that he was in the loop, and the evidence that, subsequent to receiving an order from Cheney (authorized by Bush) to leak classified information to Judy Miller, Libby leaked Valerie Wilson's identity, the circumstantial evidence shows the President was directly involved in the deliberate outing of a CIA spy. The only question now is whether Bush realized he authorized the leak of Valerie's identity, in addition to a bunch of other classified documents.
Think of how much sense this makes. We have evidence that George Bush ordered Libby to respond to Joe Wilson on June 9, 2003. We now have Bush's own confirmation that he authorized the leak Libby made to Judy Miller on July 8, 2003--which included the leak of Valerie Wilson's identity. We know on July 10, Condi told Stephen Hadley that Bush "was comfortable" with the response the White House was making towards Wilson. And we know that--when Cheney forced Scottie McC to exonerate Libby publicly that fall, he did so by reminding people that "The Pres[ident] [asked Libby] to stick his head in the meat-grinder." We know that Libby's lawyers tried desperately to prevent a full discussion of the NIE lies to be presented at trial. And we know that--after those NIE lies did not come out, for the most part (though one juror told me that NIE story was obviously false, even with the limited information they received)--the President commuted Libby's sentence on July 2, 2007.
Scottie McC doesn't know it yet. But that's basically what he revealed this morning on the Today Show (h/t Rayne).
During the interview, Scottie revealed the two things that really pissed him off with the Bush Administration. First, being set up to lie by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. And second, learning that Bush had--himself--authorized the selective leaking of the NIE.
Scottie McC: But the other defining moment was in early April 2006, when I learned that the President had secretly declassified the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq for the Vice President and Scooter Libby to anonymously disclose to reporters. And we had been out there talking about how seriously the President took the selective leaking of classified information. And here we were, learning that the President had authorized the very same thing we had criticized.
Viera: Did you talk to the President and say why are you doing this?
Scottie McC: Actually, I did. I talked about the conversation we had. I walked onto Air Force One, it was right after an event we had, it was down in the south, I believe it was North Carolina. And I walk onto Air Force One and a reporter had yelled a question to the President trying to ask him a question about this revelation that had come out during the legal proceedings. The revelation was that it was the President who had authorized, or, enable Scooter Libby to go out there and talk about this information. And I told the President that that's what the reporter was asking. He was saying that you, yourself, was the one that authorized the leaking of this information. And he said "yeah, I did." And I was kinda taken aback.
Now, for the most part, this is not new. We have known (since I first reported it here) that Scooter Libby testified that, after Libby told Dick Cheney he couldn't leak the information Cheney had ordered him to leak to Judy Miller because it was classified, Cheney told Libby he had gotten the President to authorize the declassification of that information.
Thus far, though, we only had Dick Cheney's word that he had actually asked Bush to declassify this information. We didn't have Bush's confirmation that he had actually declassified the information. In fact, we've had Dick Cheney's claims that he--Dick--had insta-declassified via his super secret pixie dust declassification powers.
But now we've got George Bush, confirming that he, the President of the United States, authorized the leaks of "this information."
Now, though Scottie refers, obliquely, to "this information," he explicitly refers only to the NIE. But as I've described over and over again, it's not just the NIE Bush authorized Dick to order Libby to leak.
As a review, here's what Libby's NIE lies are all about. This is all documented in this post, and here is the court transcript in which most of this is revealed.
- Scooter Libby has instructions in his notes to leak something to Judy Miller on July 8, 2003
- When questioned about the notation, Libby claimed the instructions related to the NIE
- Libby went further to make certain claims about the NIE leak--that the leak was authorized by Dick Cheney and George Bush, that such an authorization was totally unique in his career, and that Libby was so worried about leaking the NIE to Judy that he double checked to make sure he was authorized to do so
- Libby later made claims that directly contradicted these assertions--most importantly, even though Libby claims the Judy leak was totally unique in his career, he also leaked the NIE to three other people: Bob Woodward, a journalist [David Sanger] on July 2, and the WSJ
- Also, in spite of the fact that Libby says he was really worried about getting authorization to leak the NIE to Judy, he's not really sure whether he was authorized to leak the NIE to Woodward; his concern about the leak to Judy only extended to whatever he leaked to Judy
In short, Libby is almost certainly lying about what he was authorized to leak to Judy on July 8, 2003, in a meeting where Judy Miller admits he talked about Valerie Plame, and where Libby tried to get her to falsely attribute the story.
At this point, Scottie McC is still accepting Scooter Libby's lies, though I suspect he sees the dangerous frailty of them. With Bush's clear admission to Scottie that he was in the loop, and the evidence that, subsequent to receiving an order from Cheney (authorized by Bush) to leak classified information to Judy Miller, Libby leaked Valerie Wilson's identity, the circumstantial evidence shows the President was directly involved in the deliberate outing of a CIA spy. The only question now is whether Bush realized he authorized the leak of Valerie's identity, in addition to a bunch of other classified documents.
Think of how much sense this makes. We have evidence that George Bush ordered Libby to respond to Joe Wilson on June 9, 2003. We now have Bush's own confirmation that he authorized the leak Libby made to Judy Miller on July 8, 2003--which included the leak of Valerie Wilson's identity. We know on July 10, Condi told Stephen Hadley that Bush "was comfortable" with the response the White House was making towards Wilson. And we know that--when Cheney forced Scottie McC to exonerate Libby publicly that fall, he did so by reminding people that "The Pres[ident] [asked Libby] to stick his head in the meat-grinder." We know that Libby's lawyers tried desperately to prevent a full discussion of the NIE lies to be presented at trial. And we know that--after those NIE lies did not come out, for the most part (though one juror told me that NIE story was obviously false, even with the limited information they received)--the President commuted Libby's sentence on July 2, 2007.
The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America
In the course of his forty-year-career as one of America's most admired journalists, Robert Scheer's work has been praised by Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, and Joan Didion, who deems him "one of the best reporters of our time." Now, Scheer brings a lifetime of wisdom and experience to one of the most overlooked and dangerous issues of our time - the destructive influence of America's military-industrial complex.Scheer examines the expansion of our military presence throughout the world, our insane nuclear strategy, the immorality of corporations profiting in Iraq, and the arrogance of our foreign policy. Although Scheer is a liberal, his view echoes that of former Republican president General Dwight Eisenhower, who, in his farewell speech to the American people, spoke prophetically about need to guard against the growing influence of the military-industrial complex. In George W. Bush's America, politicians like Ike and Richard Nixon seem like prudent centrists.
The views of libertarians, liberals, and pacifists are often overlooked or ignored by America's mainstream media. The Pornography of Power is the culmination of a respected journalist's efforts to change the terms of debate. At a time when many are exploiting fears of terrorist attacks and only a few national leaders are willing to advocate cuts in defense spending, nuclear disarmament, and restrained use of American force, Robert Scheer has written a manifesto for enlightened reform.
About the Author
Robert Scheer is currently Editor-in-Chief of Truthdig.com, 2007 Webby Award winner for best political blog.
Between 1964 and 1969 he was Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. From 1976 to 1993 he served as a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, writing on diverse topics such as the Soviet Union, arms control, national politics and the military. In 1993 he launched a nationally syndicated column based at the Los Angeles Times, where he was named a contributing editor. That column ran weekly for the next 12 years and is now based at the San Francisco Chronicle.
Scheer can be heard on the political radio program "Left, Right and Center" on KCRW, the National Public Radio affiliate in Santa Monica, Calif. He has written seven books, including "With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War."
He is a contributing editor for The Nation as well as a Nation Fellow. He has also been a Poynter fellow at Yale, and was a fellow in arms control at Stanford.
Daily Show: Moving Private Ryan
President Bush announces the troops will finally be coming home, but not the troops you're thinking of and not for another ten years.
“I’m sorry, did you say plural? Was that ‘wars’? How many more of these do you have in mind?” Jon Stewart
David Iglesias Vows: "It's Not Over!"
...so if you hear anybody says it's yesterday's news (Oh, that' so 2007!), please straighten them out, 'cos it's not.
The Bush administration's drive to politicize the Justice Department reached a new low with the wrongful firing of seven U.S. Attorneys in late 2006. Their action has ignited public outrage on a scale that far surpassed the reaction to any of the Bush administration's other political debacles. David Iglesias was one of those federal prosecutors, and now he tells his story.
The first chapter, titled, "For Such a Time as This" (a quotation from the Book of Esther), describes how, shortly before he departed Baltimore-Washington International Airport to spend the Christmas of 2006 with his family in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Iglesias received a message on his BlackBerry from his assistant telling him to phone director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA), Mike Battle, which he did and his reactions on being told to resign, "effective the end of January".
Iglesias writes:
"It's ironic to think," Iglesias now reflects, "that I had once been offered the position of director of EOUSA. If I'd taken it, I'd have been the one who would have had to make that fateful phone call."
The penultimate chapter is titled, "All Roads Lead to Rove", the final one, "Fredo", a reference to the little man who occupied the office of Attorney General when Iglesias was fired (alas, he is no longer with us), and whose famous powers of recollection have so often formed the subject of posts on this blog.
Chapter 1 can be read online (click here) and is well worth reading, as no doubt, is the rest of the book.
In Justice: Inside the Scandal That Rocked the Bush Administration
From the Inside Flap:
Wiley publishers substitute the last two paragraphs above with the following paragraph:
Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias has some harsh words for fellow Republicans during a visit to an Albuquerque, N.M. bookstore on May 19, 2008.
The Bush administration's drive to politicize the Justice Department reached a new low with the wrongful firing of seven U.S. Attorneys in late 2006. Their action has ignited public outrage on a scale that far surpassed the reaction to any of the Bush administration's other political debacles. David Iglesias was one of those federal prosecutors, and now he tells his story.The first chapter, titled, "For Such a Time as This" (a quotation from the Book of Esther), describes how, shortly before he departed Baltimore-Washington International Airport to spend the Christmas of 2006 with his family in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Iglesias received a message on his BlackBerry from his assistant telling him to phone director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA), Mike Battle, which he did and his reactions on being told to resign, "effective the end of January".
Iglesias writes:
I consider it one of the ironies of history that my personal "day that will live in infamy" occurred on December 7, 2006, exactly sixty-five years after the Japanese launched the sneak attack that took us into World War II. Of course, I'm not comparing what happened to me that afternoon to any such epic date with destiny. At the same time, however, I realize that my personal Pearl Harbor Day is not without its own historical resonance. From that moment on, things were not the same, for me or for the country I'd so proudly served. I'd arrived at a point when my history intersected with America's history in a way that would change—and is still changing—both America's justice system and me.
"It's ironic to think," Iglesias now reflects, "that I had once been offered the position of director of EOUSA. If I'd taken it, I'd have been the one who would have had to make that fateful phone call."
The penultimate chapter is titled, "All Roads Lead to Rove", the final one, "Fredo", a reference to the little man who occupied the office of Attorney General when Iglesias was fired (alas, he is no longer with us), and whose famous powers of recollection have so often formed the subject of posts on this blog.
Chapter 1 can be read online (click here) and is well worth reading, as no doubt, is the rest of the book.
In Justice: Inside the Scandal That Rocked the Bush Administration
From the Inside Flap:
David Iglesias's first encounter with Alberto Gonzales was when he was White House counsel in 2001. Something Gonzales said really stuck in his mind. "This is a tough town," Gonzales told him. "They are out to destroy the president, and it is my job to protect him." Who knew he would even break the law to do it?
The Bush administration's drive to politicize the Justice Department reached a new low with the wrongful firing of seven U.S. Attorneys in late 2006. Their action has ignited public outrage on a scale that far surpassed the reaction to any of the Bush administration's other political debacles. David Iglesias was one of those federal prosecutors, and now he tells his story.
Iglesias has long served in the navy as part of the JAG Corps. One of his earliest cases, concerning an assaulted marine in Guantanamo Bay, became the basis for the movie A Few Good Men. When Bush chose Iglesias to become the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, it was a dream come true. He was a core member of Karl Rove's idealized Republican Party of the future—handsome, Hispanic, evangelical, and a military veteran. The dream came to an abrupt end when Senator Pete Domenici improperly called Iglesias, asking him to indict high-level Democrats before the 2006 elections. When Iglesias refused, the line went dead. Iglesias was fired just weeks later. First he was devastated. Then he was angry. Now he is speaking out.
Packed with previously unrevealed facts, In Justice follows Iglesias and his colleagues, who would soon be known as the Justice League, as they pieced together the sources and purpose of the conspiracy against them. In fascinating detail, it reveals how various members of the group viewed their own dismissals, reacted to threats from Justice Department officials designed to ensure their silence, and struggled to find a way to respond to the growing furor over the case.
Complete with insights into the power and responsibilities of U.S. Attorneys and an impassioned plea for their historic independence, the rule of law, and insulation from politics, In Justice is a compelling, real-life political thriller that takes you deep inside the Bush administration's darkest moment.
Wiley publishers substitute the last two paragraphs above with the following paragraph:
Iglesias recounts his interactions with Bush, Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and other key players as he takes readers into his time at the Justice Department to reveal what top Republican officials said and did, and how they subverted justice.
The Last Good Campaign
Increasingly opposed to the Vietnam War, Robert F. Kennedy struggled over whether he should challenge his party’s incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, in 1968. His younger brother, Teddy, was against it. His wife, Ethel, urged him on. Many feared he would be assassinated, like the older brother he mourned.
by Thurston Clarke | Vanity Fair | June 2008
Bobby Kennedy campaigns in Indianapolis during May of 1968, with various aides and friends, including (behind and left of Kennedy) former prizefighter Tony Zale and (right of Kennedy) N.F.L. stars Lamar Lundy, Rosey Grier, and Deacon Jones. Photographs by Bill Eppridge.
Text excerpted from The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America by Thurston Clarke, to be published this month by Henry Holt and Company, L.L.C.; © 2008 by the author.
Photographs excerpted from A Time It Was: Bobby Kennedy in the Sixties; photographs and text by Bill Eppridge; introduction by Pete Hamill; to be published this month by Abrams; © 2008 by Bill Eppridge.
Two months after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Robert Kennedy traveled to Asia on an itinerary that had originally been planned for J.F.K. During the trip, he visited a girls’ school in the Philippines where the students sang a song they had composed to honor his brother. As he drove away with CBS cameraman Walter Dombrow, he clenched his hands so tightly that they turned white, and tears rolled down his cheeks. He shook his head, signaling that Dombrow should remain silent. Finally he said in a choked voice, “They would have loved my brother.” Dombrow put his arm around him and said, “Bob, you’re going to have to carry on for him.” Kennedy stared straight ahead for half a minute before turning to Dombrow and nodding. It was then, Dombrow said, that he knew Bobby would run for president and realized how much he loved him.
A deep, black grief gripped Robert Kennedy in the months following his brother’s assassination. He lost weight, fell into melancholy silences, wore his brother’s clothes, smoked the cigars his brother had liked, and imitated his mannerisms. Eventually his grief went underground, but it sometimes erupted in geysers of tears, as had happened in the Philippines. He wept after seeing a photograph of his late brother in the office of a former aide, wept when asked to comment on the Warren Commission Report, and wept after eulogizing J.F.K. at the 1964 Democratic convention with a quotation from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.”
Kennedy was still mourning his brother and endeavoring to live for him when he ran for the U.S. Senate from New York in the autumn of 1964, telling a friend that he wanted to ensure that the hopes J.F.K. had kindled around the world would not die, and saying in his victory statement that he had won “an overwhelming mandate to continue the policies” of President Kennedy. And at first it appeared that his 1968 presidential campaign—challenging his brother’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, for the Democratic Party’s nomination—would be another homage to J.F.K. Bobby announced his candidacy on March 16 in the caucus room of the Old Senate Office Building, the room that his brother had used for the same purpose. He stood in the same spot and began with the same sentence: “I am announcing today my candidacy for the presidency of the United States.” After saying that he was running to “close the gaps that now exist between black and white, between rich and poor, between young and old,” he concluded with a passage that made him sound like his brother, perhaps because it had been contributed in part by Ted Sorensen, who had been his brother’s speechwriter: “I do not lightly dismiss the dangers and the difficulties of challenging an incumbent President. But these are not ordinary times and this is not an ordinary election. At stake is not simply the leadership of our party and even our country. It is our right to the moral leadership of this planet.”
Read more...
The still-vital Vidal
Friend of the Kennedys, enemy of Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal is an extraordinary compendium of American politics and literature
Playing to the gallery ... Self-confessed 'American patriot' Gore Vidal. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe
Ben Marshall |guardian.co.uk | May 23, 2008 3:45 PM
It was a strange sensation to see Gore Vidal wheeled on stage in Brighton last night. As his recent appearance on the South Bank Show revealed, Vidal is, for the first time ever, looking, if not sounding, his age. He was born in 1925, the year F Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby, but he still has something of the enfant terrible about him, even sitting trembling and shrunken in a wheelchair. Furthermore he seems, in his archness and studied pomposity, to belong to a time I fancifully imagine, and he credibly claims, to have been altogether more thoughtful and civilised than our own.
Vidal has written more than 25 novels, another 20 or so works of non-fiction, more than a half dozen plays and, I think, eight screenplays. And of course he has met pretty everyone who matters from the worlds of politics and the arts. Amongst his friends he could count Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, John Kennedy, the Clintons and pornographer Bob Guccione. And his enemies make for an equally exalted list - Truman Capote, Bobby Kennedy, Norman Mailer, the Reagans and of course the Bush family (and I do mean the entire family, he hates the whole dynasty, probably because they are almost as ancient and American-aristo as his own).
It was politics that Vidal stuck to in Brighton, despite interviewer Andrew Marr's valiant efforts to talk about his novels, plays and poetry. Vidal's long-practised technique is to mix extraordinary anecdotes with mostly incisive, occasionally glib observations about the parlous state of the United States. Thus an early question about literature evoked a story about JFK, which in turn evolved into a critique of Republican Presidential candidate John McCain and, swiftly but inevitably turned into a vitriolic attack on George W Bush.
And this was a problem for me. Gore, despite his impeccable credentials as a snob, cannot help but play to the gallery. So the second he detected that Brighton loathed the present American administration (and perhaps America and Americans too) he wasted no time in attacking it, them and everything it and they stand for. Often in the crudest terms. For instance calling Bush a "cretin" seems to me to be both inaccurate and lazy, but it elicited huge laughs. So Gore persisted. Bush began as a "cretin", was soon a "real cretin", occasionally an "imbecile", and ultimately a "congenital cretin". The audience just lapped this stuff up.
His best moments, as ever, came when he defended the American constitution, something, he stressed, he and his family have always done. He made one marvellous point - alluding to the Virginia Statute and the First Amendment - concerning the US in particular and the world in general. Gore, rightly in my view, thinks that anyone who believes in an afterlife should never be afforded any power whatsoever over the lives of others.
Once again the crowd, audibly prepared to storm Grosvenor Square, appeared to assume he was simply talking about Dubya and his God-fearing, tub-thumping, Bible-bashing mates. It was left to a member of the audience to ask the question that elicited the simplest, most unequivocal reply. Given his remorseless defence of the constitution, would Gore Vidal consider himself an American patriot? "Yes!" he shouted, from his wheelchair. There was only the faintest ripple of polite applause. No surprise, given the ghastly nature of the Brighton crowd.
Me? With patriots like Gore Vidal around, I walked home whistling The Star Spangled Banner.
Gore Vidal: ready to kill
Jon Snow interviews the writer Gore Vidal on the American presidential campaign - he dismisses John McCain as Mr Magoo and says he should have been court-martialled.
His career has spanned more than six decades, and he has written more than 20 novels and five plays. Gore Vidal is one of Americas most respected writers and thinkers, and is considered a patriarch of American letters and Democratic politics.
He is highly critical of George W Bush's administration. But what does he have to say about the bitter contest for the Democratic nomination?
This afternoon Jon Snow spoke to Gore Vidal here in London. They discussed the race to lead America and the candidates presenting themselves for president, starting with John McCain.
To watch Jon Snow's complete interview with Gore Vidal, click here.
His career has spanned more than six decades, and he has written more than 20 novels and five plays. Gore Vidal is one of Americas most respected writers and thinkers, and is considered a patriarch of American letters and Democratic politics.
He is highly critical of George W Bush's administration. But what does he have to say about the bitter contest for the Democratic nomination?
This afternoon Jon Snow spoke to Gore Vidal here in London. They discussed the race to lead America and the candidates presenting themselves for president, starting with John McCain.
To watch Jon Snow's complete interview with Gore Vidal, click here.
Is the U.S. the World’s Largest State Sponsor of Terrorism?
George Washington's Blog | Friday, May 16, 2008
Preface: As someone who was born in America and has lived here my whole life, and who loves the ideals and Constitution our country was founded on, it has been a rude and painful awakening to learn about my government's terrorist acts.
I believe that, if the American public knew what crimes the government was carrying out, they would not stand for it.
Four headlines this week make it clear that America may be the world's largest sponsor of terrorism:
This is on top of previous stories showing that Cheney is directly funding terrorist groups out of his office, and that the U.S. is funding terrorists all over the world to promote its agenda. See also this, this and this.
And Americans dressed as Arabs have apparently been setting off car bombs in Iraq (when it was discovered that some of the cars used in Iraqi bombings recently came from the U.S., the cover story seemed to become that American cars were involved in car bombings only because they had recently been stolen from the U.S. and then shipped to Iraq -- but does it make sense that Iraqi insurgents would steal cars in the U.S. and ship them all the way to Iraq?)
Unfortunately, this involvement in terrorism is not unique to the Bush administration:
No wonder the former director of the National Security Agency said "By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism - in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation"(the audio is here).
So next time the warmongers accuse a foreign country of sponsoring terrorism, remind them that - even if that is true - the U.S. is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism.
In addition to being the leading sponsor of terrorism, the U.S. is also the largest purveyor of disinformation and propaganda in the world. Gangsters like Al Capone would be astonished at how successfully the American public has been fooled as to the nature of their government's actions.
As one of the leading American media critics says:
Preface: As someone who was born in America and has lived here my whole life, and who loves the ideals and Constitution our country was founded on, it has been a rude and painful awakening to learn about my government's terrorist acts. I believe that, if the American public knew what crimes the government was carrying out, they would not stand for it.
Four headlines this week make it clear that America may be the world's largest sponsor of terrorism:
This is on top of previous stories showing that Cheney is directly funding terrorist groups out of his office, and that the U.S. is funding terrorists all over the world to promote its agenda. See also this, this and this.
And Americans dressed as Arabs have apparently been setting off car bombs in Iraq (when it was discovered that some of the cars used in Iraqi bombings recently came from the U.S., the cover story seemed to become that American cars were involved in car bombings only because they had recently been stolen from the U.S. and then shipped to Iraq -- but does it make sense that Iraqi insurgents would steal cars in the U.S. and ship them all the way to Iraq?)
Unfortunately, this involvement in terrorism is not unique to the Bush administration:
- As documented by the New York Times, Iranians working for the C.I.A. in the 1950's posed as Communists and staged bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected president (see also this essay)
- As confirmed by a former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence, NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: "You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security."
No wonder the former director of the National Security Agency said "By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism - in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation"(the audio is here).
So next time the warmongers accuse a foreign country of sponsoring terrorism, remind them that - even if that is true - the U.S. is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism.
In addition to being the leading sponsor of terrorism, the U.S. is also the largest purveyor of disinformation and propaganda in the world. Gangsters like Al Capone would be astonished at how successfully the American public has been fooled as to the nature of their government's actions.
As one of the leading American media critics says:
"Little has been done to address the astonishing ignorance of Americans regarding the US role in the world, [including] the extensive use of terrorism by the United States . . . ."
I Agree with Bush . . . Stop Appeasing the Terrorists!
George Washington's Blog | Thursday, May 15, 2008
A lot of people, including Senator Biden, are criticizing Bush's statement to the Israeli parliament that Democrats are like those who tried to appease the Nazis. Bush - apparently incensed that people are trying to frustrate the Neocon plan to bomb Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Lebanon in order to "protect" Israel and seize a little oil in the process - accused the Democrats of trying to negotiate with terrorists.
But who is really appeasing who?
It is Congress that is trying to appease the terrorists in the White House. After the 9/11 false flag attack, and the attack on Congress with U.S. military anthrax, and the attack on liberty and privacy, and the attack on the U.S. economy, Congress has done nothing but role over and play dead.
Instead of doing something to stop the terrorists in the White House, to stop their terrorist plans, to de-fund terrorist operations, to impeach the terrorists and try them for war crimes, Congress members and senators just make long speeches, hold endless "investigations", and write letters begging for the terrorists to consider talking to them.
The real terrorists are the anti-Americans who pulled a Reichstag-fire on 9/11 and the anthrax attacks soon after, who lied us into Iraq and are trying to lie us into Iran, who instituted torture policies which fly in the face of human rights and the safety of our military personnel, who authorized spying on all Americans and have stomped on our freedoms and privacies, and who have used the old trick of whipping the populace into a state of fear by exaggerating the danger from our supposed enemies (isn't that the very definition of terrorism?)
Indeed, the "appeasing Hitler" image is not just an analogy with the Bush family. His grandfather literally helped Hitler rise to power (he also plotted a coup against the sitting American president, FDR). And Cheney and the boys are now directly funding terrorist groups (see confirming articles here, here and here).
I agree with Bush . . . stop appeasing the terrorists!
A lot of people, including Senator Biden, are criticizing Bush's statement to the Israeli parliament that Democrats are like those who tried to appease the Nazis. Bush - apparently incensed that people are trying to frustrate the Neocon plan to bomb Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Lebanon in order to "protect" Israel and seize a little oil in the process - accused the Democrats of trying to negotiate with terrorists.
But who is really appeasing who?
It is Congress that is trying to appease the terrorists in the White House. After the 9/11 false flag attack, and the attack on Congress with U.S. military anthrax, and the attack on liberty and privacy, and the attack on the U.S. economy, Congress has done nothing but role over and play dead.
Instead of doing something to stop the terrorists in the White House, to stop their terrorist plans, to de-fund terrorist operations, to impeach the terrorists and try them for war crimes, Congress members and senators just make long speeches, hold endless "investigations", and write letters begging for the terrorists to consider talking to them.
The real terrorists are the anti-Americans who pulled a Reichstag-fire on 9/11 and the anthrax attacks soon after, who lied us into Iraq and are trying to lie us into Iran, who instituted torture policies which fly in the face of human rights and the safety of our military personnel, who authorized spying on all Americans and have stomped on our freedoms and privacies, and who have used the old trick of whipping the populace into a state of fear by exaggerating the danger from our supposed enemies (isn't that the very definition of terrorism?)
Indeed, the "appeasing Hitler" image is not just an analogy with the Bush family. His grandfather literally helped Hitler rise to power (he also plotted a coup against the sitting American president, FDR). And Cheney and the boys are now directly funding terrorist groups (see confirming articles here, here and here).
I agree with Bush . . . stop appeasing the terrorists!
Gladio: Nato-sponsored State Terrorism in Europe
On August 4, 1974, while I was travelling around Italy on an Interrail ticket, a bomb exploded in car 5 of the Italicus Express running from Rome to Brennero on the Florence-Bologna line as it left the tunnel of San Benedetto Val di Sambro. Twelve passengers were killed and 44 were wounded. Mario Tuti, Pietro Malentacchi, and Luciano Franci of the Revolutionary National Front were accused of the attack, though when they came to trial years later they were aquitted for lack of evidence.
Days earlier I had travelled through the same tunnel on my way by train from Venice to Naples. A few days later, I would travel through the same tunnel on my way to Florence. Had my schedule been different, I may well have found myself a victim of the attack.
I became aware of the event through the lurid artist's reconstructions on the covers of Italian news magazines outside newsagents on Rome's Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
I was seventeen at the time.
On August 2, 1980, a bomb was planted in the waiting room of the Bologna railway station: 84 died and some 200 were injured. The act was ascribed to neo-Fascists.
A few weeks later, while travelling with a friend around Italy by train we passed through Bologna and noted the gap where the waiting room had been.
In March, 1982, I began to live and work in Italy. In the June of that year, the body of Italian banker, Roberto Calviwas found hanging from a noose under Blackfriars Bridge, London. In the next few years, the name of Banco Ambrosiano, the Propaganda Due (P2) Masonic Lodge, and Licio Gelli would become familiar.
In the winter of 1984/85, I was working in Pistoia, Tuscany, and I lived in a mansard directly under the rafters on the top floor of the medieval Casa del Capitano del Popolo (House of the Captain of the People). (See picture below.)
Shortly before Christmas, 1984, I travelled through the San Benedetto Val di Sambro tunnel where, ten years earlier, there had been a bomb explosion, on my way from Florence to Bologna and from Bologna to Padua to stay with the family of an Italian friend who lived in a house in the Veneto countryside, before flying from Treviso airport to London's Gatwick airport.
In the January 7, 1985, edition of Time Magazine, the article, "Italy Tunnel of Death", appeared. It began:
I had travelled through this very tunnel only days before this second bomb attack.
After flying back to Italy, I returned by the same route to my mansard in Pistoia's Casa del Capitano del Popolo.
As the couple above whose flat I lived were out and I couldn't get in, a doctor who lived in a flat below theirs invited me in for a drink and a chat. Naturally, the conversation revolved around the recent bombing, and my own lucky escapes, both in 1974 and a few weeks earlier.
It was then that I became aware of the view, quite commonly held by all classes of people in Italy, including respectable middle class doctors, that the Italian government were somehow behind these attacks.
Over the next few years, the words Operazione Gladio (Operation Gladio), and strategia di tensione (strategy of tension), became increasingly familiar as these were increasingly talked about in the Italian press. These topics are too complicated to deal with in one article. But I leave the reader with a few links and the first of a three-part BBC programme on Operation Gladio.
And with one final thought. When, in 1990, Italian Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, revealed the existence of Gladio (though he denied that it had anything to do with the bombings described above), then president of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, who had been involved in setting Gladio up, felt honor-bound to resign.
More recently, Senator Cossiga, who clearly has a deep roots in his country's intelligence service, has stated, in an interview with leading Italian newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera: "It is common knowledge amongst global intelligence agencies that 9/11 was an inside job."
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part 12
part 13
part 14
part 15
Days earlier I had travelled through the same tunnel on my way by train from Venice to Naples. A few days later, I would travel through the same tunnel on my way to Florence. Had my schedule been different, I may well have found myself a victim of the attack.
I became aware of the event through the lurid artist's reconstructions on the covers of Italian news magazines outside newsagents on Rome's Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
I was seventeen at the time.
On August 2, 1980, a bomb was planted in the waiting room of the Bologna railway station: 84 died and some 200 were injured. The act was ascribed to neo-Fascists.
A few weeks later, while travelling with a friend around Italy by train we passed through Bologna and noted the gap where the waiting room had been.
In March, 1982, I began to live and work in Italy. In the June of that year, the body of Italian banker, Roberto Calviwas found hanging from a noose under Blackfriars Bridge, London. In the next few years, the name of Banco Ambrosiano, the Propaganda Due (P2) Masonic Lodge, and Licio Gelli would become familiar.
In the winter of 1984/85, I was working in Pistoia, Tuscany, and I lived in a mansard directly under the rafters on the top floor of the medieval Casa del Capitano del Popolo (House of the Captain of the People). (See picture below.)
Shortly before Christmas, 1984, I travelled through the San Benedetto Val di Sambro tunnel where, ten years earlier, there had been a bomb explosion, on my way from Florence to Bologna and from Bologna to Padua to stay with the family of an Italian friend who lived in a house in the Veneto countryside, before flying from Treviso airport to London's Gatwick airport.
In the January 7, 1985, edition of Time Magazine, the article, "Italy Tunnel of Death", appeared. It began:
Stretching for 11 1/2 miles beneath central Italy's rugged Apennine mountains, it is one of Europe's longest railway tunnels and carries the nickname La Direttissima because it provides the most direct route between Florence and Bologna. Last week the Italian press renamed it the "Tunnel of Death."
Two days before Christmas, Train 904, an express bound from Naples to Milan with 700 holiday passengers aboard, was roaring through La Direttissima at 90 m.p.h. when a time bomb exploded in a second-class carriage. The force of the blast blew in the double-paned windows in most of the train's 14 cars. Antonio Algieri, 33, one of those wounded by the flying glass, described the scene as "a hurricane of slivers--and then so much terrible screaming in the dark." The train came to a stop, and thick smoke billowed through the tunnel, initially frustrating rescue attempts as dazed passengers stumbled around in the blackness.
When rescue teams eventually reached the wreckage, they found that the ninth car of the train had been demolished by the blast; at least 15 people were found dead and 80 were seriously injured. It was Italy's bloodiest terrorist act since the authorities began to gain the upper hand in the fight against political extremists two years ago.
Within hours, a number of outlawed groups of both the left and the right claimed responsibility for the blast. Official suspicion centered on neo- Fascist terrorists, since the Christmas attack took place in the same tunnel in which right-wing extremists bombed a train in 1974, killing twelve and wounding 48. In 1980 neo-Fascists planted a bomb in the waiting room of the Bologna railway station: 84 died and some 200 were injured.
I had travelled through this very tunnel only days before this second bomb attack.
After flying back to Italy, I returned by the same route to my mansard in Pistoia's Casa del Capitano del Popolo.
As the couple above whose flat I lived were out and I couldn't get in, a doctor who lived in a flat below theirs invited me in for a drink and a chat. Naturally, the conversation revolved around the recent bombing, and my own lucky escapes, both in 1974 and a few weeks earlier.
It was then that I became aware of the view, quite commonly held by all classes of people in Italy, including respectable middle class doctors, that the Italian government were somehow behind these attacks.
Over the next few years, the words Operazione Gladio (Operation Gladio), and strategia di tensione (strategy of tension), became increasingly familiar as these were increasingly talked about in the Italian press. These topics are too complicated to deal with in one article. But I leave the reader with a few links and the first of a three-part BBC programme on Operation Gladio.
And with one final thought. When, in 1990, Italian Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, revealed the existence of Gladio (though he denied that it had anything to do with the bombings described above), then president of Italy, Francesco Cossiga, who had been involved in setting Gladio up, felt honor-bound to resign.
More recently, Senator Cossiga, who clearly has a deep roots in his country's intelligence service, has stated, in an interview with leading Italian newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera: "It is common knowledge amongst global intelligence agencies that 9/11 was an inside job."
Operation Gladio: NATO Terrorists pt 1 of 15
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6
part 7
part 8
part 9
part 10
part 11
part 12
part 13
part 14
part 15
The $3-Trillion War
By James Harris | truthdig, posted on Apr 16, 2008
Listen to this interview.
Transcript:
James Harris: This is Truthdig. James Harris here with Linda Bilmes. She is the co-author of the new book, “The Three Trillion Dollar War.” She’s also a Harvard economist, and she did serve in the Department of Commerce during the Clinton administration. As we watch the sensational news coverage of the governor of New York’s resignation, “The Three Trillion Dollar War” reminds us that nearly 4,000 American soldiers and more than half a million Iraqis have been killed in this war. And that spending will total more than $3 trillion. Linda, why is it important that we take this war, and our spending, more seriously?Read more...
Alfred Kazin: A Biography
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by Michael Dirda
For more than 50 years Alfred Kazin (1915-1998) was one of the best known critics in America. In 1934, at the age of 19, he started reviewing for the New Republic (under the literary editorship of Malcolm Cowley). In 1942, at only 27, Kazin published a masterly study of American literature, On Native Grounds. During the 1940s and '50s he contributed to Partisan Review, Commentary and the Reporter, as well as a host of other magazines. Just as important, throughout these years he steadily debated politics and literature with Philip Rahv, Irving Howe, Sidney Hook, Lionel Abel, Newton Arvin, Cleanth Brooks, R.P. Blackmur, Leslie Fiedler, Mark Van Doren, Harold Rosenberg, Allen Tate, Dwight Macdonald and Lionel Trilling. By the early 1960s he was, arguably, after Edmund Wilson, the country's leading man of letters.
And yet. Look at the names in that paragraph. How many do you recognize? If you are under 50, perhaps a couple. How many have you actually read? Probably just one: Edmund Wilson. It is a sad truth that almost any poet or novelist has a shot at immortality, but a critic lives only as long as he keeps writing, keeps in the thick of the action. A decade after his (or her) death, a loyal publisher may bring out a "selected essays" that will prompt a few reminiscences and reconsiderations. After another decade, nothing.
Kazin, however, is luckier than most. While he scratched out a living by writing book reviews, teaching at various colleges and universities, and snagging grants (four Guggenheims, numerous other fellowships and regular visits to the artist's retreat Yaddo), he also produced three wonderful works of autobiography, classics of the modern American experience:
A Walker in the City (1951) describes his childhood and education in New York's impoverished Brownsville neighborhood; it remains one of the great documents of Jewish-American immigrant life.
Starting Out in the Thirties (1965) recalls the ideological and literary battles of a decade racked by the Depression, the Spanish Civil War, the rise of Hitler and the darkening shadow of Stalinism. Yet grim as they were, the 1930s were also as exhilarating as the 1960s, full of intellectual intensity and passion: Socialism would surely change the world.
New York Jew (1978) strikes a more elegiac tone, as Kazin offers pen portraits of many of the leading figures of the postwar cultural scene. But now the young rebels and hotshots have grown old, become the mainstays of the establishment, even turned to the right.
Read more...
Reviewed by Michael Dirda
For more than 50 years Alfred Kazin (1915-1998) was one of the best known critics in America. In 1934, at the age of 19, he started reviewing for the New Republic (under the literary editorship of Malcolm Cowley). In 1942, at only 27, Kazin published a masterly study of American literature, On Native Grounds. During the 1940s and '50s he contributed to Partisan Review, Commentary and the Reporter, as well as a host of other magazines. Just as important, throughout these years he steadily debated politics and literature with Philip Rahv, Irving Howe, Sidney Hook, Lionel Abel, Newton Arvin, Cleanth Brooks, R.P. Blackmur, Leslie Fiedler, Mark Van Doren, Harold Rosenberg, Allen Tate, Dwight Macdonald and Lionel Trilling. By the early 1960s he was, arguably, after Edmund Wilson, the country's leading man of letters.
And yet. Look at the names in that paragraph. How many do you recognize? If you are under 50, perhaps a couple. How many have you actually read? Probably just one: Edmund Wilson. It is a sad truth that almost any poet or novelist has a shot at immortality, but a critic lives only as long as he keeps writing, keeps in the thick of the action. A decade after his (or her) death, a loyal publisher may bring out a "selected essays" that will prompt a few reminiscences and reconsiderations. After another decade, nothing.
Kazin, however, is luckier than most. While he scratched out a living by writing book reviews, teaching at various colleges and universities, and snagging grants (four Guggenheims, numerous other fellowships and regular visits to the artist's retreat Yaddo), he also produced three wonderful works of autobiography, classics of the modern American experience:
A Walker in the City (1951) describes his childhood and education in New York's impoverished Brownsville neighborhood; it remains one of the great documents of Jewish-American immigrant life.
Starting Out in the Thirties (1965) recalls the ideological and literary battles of a decade racked by the Depression, the Spanish Civil War, the rise of Hitler and the darkening shadow of Stalinism. Yet grim as they were, the 1930s were also as exhilarating as the 1960s, full of intellectual intensity and passion: Socialism would surely change the world.
New York Jew (1978) strikes a more elegiac tone, as Kazin offers pen portraits of many of the leading figures of the postwar cultural scene. But now the young rebels and hotshots have grown old, become the mainstays of the establishment, even turned to the right.
Read more...
Soros Says the Pain Has only just Begun
Louise Story | International Herald Tribune | Friday, April 11, 2008
George Soros will not go quietly.
At the age of 77, Soros, one the world's most successful investors and richest men, leapt out of retirement last summer to safeguard his fortune and legacy. Alarmed by the unfolding crisis in the financial markets, he once again began trading for his giant hedge fund and won big while so many others lost.
Soros has always been a controversial figure. But he is becoming more so with a new, dire forecast for the world economy. Last week he rushed out a book, his 10th, warning that the financial pain has only just begun.
"I consider this the biggest financial crisis of my lifetime," Soros said during an interview Monday in his office overlooking Central Park. A "superbubble" that has been swelling for a quarter of a century is finally bursting, he said.
Soros, whose daring, controversial trades came to symbolize global capitalism in the 1990s, is now busy promoting his book, "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets," which goes on sale next month.
Read more...
George Soros will not go quietly.At the age of 77, Soros, one the world's most successful investors and richest men, leapt out of retirement last summer to safeguard his fortune and legacy. Alarmed by the unfolding crisis in the financial markets, he once again began trading for his giant hedge fund and won big while so many others lost.
Soros has always been a controversial figure. But he is becoming more so with a new, dire forecast for the world economy. Last week he rushed out a book, his 10th, warning that the financial pain has only just begun.
"I consider this the biggest financial crisis of my lifetime," Soros said during an interview Monday in his office overlooking Central Park. A "superbubble" that has been swelling for a quarter of a century is finally bursting, he said.
Soros, whose daring, controversial trades came to symbolize global capitalism in the 1990s, is now busy promoting his book, "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets," which goes on sale next month.
Read more...
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