Who's Pulling Protesters Strings?

boblonsberry.com ^ | 2/20/03 | Bob Lonsberry

[shortstop]

I have a question about these massive anti-war protests they’re having around the world.

Who’s pulling the strings?

Who’s behind it and what’s their agenda? And why do they operate in secrecy and anonymity?

Not to sound like some crazy conspiratorialist – like Hillary Clinton or Timothy McVeigh – but the level of orchestration and coordination in these protests and mass demonstrations is so great and so widespread as to require extensive and central command and control.

Translation: Somebody’s in charge.

The question is: Who?

For example, last Saturday as many as three million people in at least a dozen countries met in simultaneous demonstrations in hundreds of cities. All across America, in Asia, in Baghdad, in Paris, in London. Everywhere. Amazingly, many of them carried the same signs. They chanted the same chants.

How did that happen?

How was the decision made that it would be that Saturday, and not the one before or the one after? And how was it decided it would be a Saturday, instead of a Sunday or a Monday?

How is it that the people in Baghdad happened to be on the same sheet of music as the people in Salt Lake City or Rochester? Ditto for Paris and Bogota and Moscow? How exactly did that happen?

Why is it the sound bites are all the same?

Even at the local level, what kind of extensive coordination is required to get the various gay, environmental, union, women’s and civil rights groups together for the march on city hall? What is that structure and why haven’t we learned more about it?

And why has the news media completely ignored it?

What’s passed for journalism in this matter has been nothing more than public relations for the protesters.

And inasmuch as the actual number of people who have seen the protests is relatively miniscule, media coverage of them is where the rubber really meets the road. Media coverage is the purpose and point, and reporters become the most important participants.

Which makes their failure all the more troubling.

Instead of looking into the protest organizations and rooting out their bosses, money sources and agendas, reporters have given themselves over to being press agents for anarchists.

If nothing else, the power behind these protests is a massive, multi-national organization with tremendous resources and abilities to command millions of people.

That’s not insignificant.

And it can’t be refuted.

Some say that this is a grassroots movement, that it arises organically from the will of the people.

That’s a bunch of crap. And anybody who’s ever organized anything knows that. You can’t put a family reunion or a PTA bake sale together without all kinds of hassle and work. And there’s no way a worldwide movement like this just happens.

It happens because somebody made it happen.

And in the interest of disclosure and honesty we have a right and duty to know who that is.

Some say it’s the fruit of the Internet, that people can communicate more freely and like-minded people are merely joining together. But that misses the point. Thought the Internet is widely used to transmit information, it is a means of communication, a tool of command and control.

Internet sites, like the one linked below, are full of Madison Avenue polish and glitz. They are a big-money tool. And they solicit big money, typically asking donors for $100 a pop.

Where does that money go and what does it do?

And how is society affected by these activities? When does protest stop being free speech and start being insurrection?

The answers are not in the public domain.

And they should be.

It’s possible these are just activists, but it is also possible these are enemies. The problem is we can’t know which they are because we don’t know who they are.

The shouting protesters and the TV-camera activists are just pawns.

We’ve got to find out who’s pulling the strings.

It could be a matter of national and world security.

Related Links:

1. http://www.pax.protest.net Anti-war and anti-racism events

[dirtboy]

I don't think it takes any particular string-pulling. I would venture that 90 percent of the folks showing up were also at one time or another involved in the anti-capitalism protests prior to 9/11. So in the end, these causes attrack lib wingnuts like fresh manure attracts flies, and for the exact same spontaneous reasons.

[Lexington Green]

Commies

[aristeides]

We’ve got to find out who’s pulling the strings.

I imagine the NSA knows. And that means Bush does.

[aristeides]

Communism used to be an international conspiracy headquartered in Moscow. Who runs it now?

[stuartcr]

It's probably just a big conspiracy organization company on the web. You write in, tell them what you want to protest, where, how many people, etc. Give them your credit card #, and it happens. Same people that organise freeps.

[AdA$tra]

You can’t put a family reunion or a PTA bake sale together without all kinds of hassle and work.

It probably IS just a big family reumion. The only place where that many people are related is Arkansas. See where I am going with this?

[dark_lord]

Go to the World Workers Party website link http://www.workers.org/ww/2001/call1004.php and you will see they founded International A.N.S.W.E.R.(Act Now to Stop War & End Racism). Phone number of that group is 212 633 6646. Do a "google" search on that phone number and a plethora of radical groups pop out. International Action Center is funded by Peoples Rights Fund, Inc. as well as other front groups.

Also, from "Marching With Stalinists" by Michael Kelly on Wednesday, January 22, 2003; Page A15:

...Last weekend, the left held large antiwar marches in Washington, San Francisco and elsewhere. Major media coverage of these marches was highly respectful. This was "A Stirring in the Nation," in the words of an approving New York Times editorial, "impressive for the obvious mainstream roots of the marchers."

There is, increasingly, much that happens in the world that the Times feels its readers should be sheltered from knowing. The marches in Washington and San Francisco were chiefly sponsored, as was last October's antiwar march in Washington, by a group the Times chose to call in its only passing reference "the activist group International Answer."

International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is a front group for the communist Workers World Party. The Workers World Party is, literally, a Stalinist organization. It rose out of a split within the old Socialist Workers Party over the Soviet Union's 1956 invasion of Hungary -- the breakaway Workers World Party was all for the invasion. International ANSWER today unquestioningly supports any despotic regime that lays any claim to socialism, or simply to anti-Americanism. It supported the butchers of Beijing after the slaughter of Tiananmen Square. It supports Saddam Hussein and his Baathist torture-state. It supports the last official Stalinist state, North Korea, in the mass tarvation of its citizens. It supported Slobodan Milosevic after the massacre at Srebrenica. It supports the mullahs of Iran, and the narco-gangsters of Colombia and the bus-bombers of Hamas.

This is whom the left now marches with. The left marches with the Stalinists. The left marches with those who would maintain in power the leading oppressors of humanity in the world. It marches with, stands with and cheers on people like the speaker at the Washington rally who declared that "the real terrorists have always been the United Snakes of America."

There is your answer.

[AdA$tra]

There is your answer.

Now, that is what I call connecting the dots!

[geedee]

Followers of . . .

[Uncle Miltie]

I have read that Brian Becker of the Workers World Party (also International ANSWER) is lavishly hosted in Baghdad and Pyongyang each time he visits.

[Uncle Miltie]

WPK secretary meets U.S. party delegation

Pyongyang, February 24 (KCNA) -- Kim Jung Rin, secretary of the Central Committee of the Worker's Party of Korea, today met and conversed with the delegation of the Worker's World Party of the United States headed by Brian Becker, member of its secretariat.

At the meeting the head of the delegation said that the Korean people are firmly defending socialism despite the continued isolation and suffocation moves of the imperialists, adding this is attributable to the tested leadership of the WPK led by General Secretary Kim Jong Il.

He noted that his party would continue to wage a vigorous struggle for the pullback of the U.S. forces from South Korea and intensify the movement for solidarity with the WPK.

http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2000/200002/news02/24.htm

[aristeides]

Interesting. I wonder if kristinn knows that.

[Uncle Miltie]

MEDIA ADVISORY

January 23, 2002
Contacts: Brian Becker, Larry Holmes -- 212-633-6646

Feb 2 Protesters Against World Economic Forum Say: "WE WILL DEFEND OUR RIGHT TO PROTEST"

Announcing First Anti-Globalization Protests Since Sept. 11

PRESS CONFERENCE

Who:

Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General and one of the attorneys who have filed a lawsuit in federal court demanding that Guantanamo POWs be accorded the legal protections of the Geneva Conventions
James Creedon, NYC Paramedic who worked at Ground Zero
Larry Holmes, International Action Center
Ismael Guadalupe, Committee for the Rescue & Development of Vieques
Macrina Cardenas, Mexico Solidarity Network
Brian Becker, Co-Director, International Action Center
Nadia Ahmed, Students for International Peace & Justice
Sarah Sloan, Student Organizer for A.N.S.W.E.R.
Debbie Daniels, M.D., Doctors for Global Health
Ray LaForest, DC 1707, New York Labor Against the War
Elijah Crane, Student Organizer for International Action Center
Gail Walker, IFCO/Pastors for Peace
Facilitator: Teresa Gutierrez, International A.N.S.W.E.R.

[pfflier]

As looney as it sounds it is a vast left wing conspiracy. All the unemployed communists of the world, since 1989 have been looking for a cause. The environmentalists gave them the cause, the Greens gave them the medium internationally and the Demoncrats nationally.

In short, we are in a cold war again with the same opponents, just a different face.

We fell asleep for a decade while they were building this infrastructure. Our culture and our country are at serious risk.

[MJemison]

You mean they're in bed with Clinton/McAuliffe and their lefty ilk? My grandma always said there's no accounting for taste.

[Uncle Miltie]

REPORT FROM IRAQ: U.S. DROPS BOMBS EVERY DAY

By Brian Becker
Mosul, Iraq

06/09/2002
URL : http://www.lai-aib.org/lai/article_lai.phtml?section=A3ABBD&object_id=15163

Irak

---

REPORT FROM IRAQ: U.S. DROPS BOMBS EVERY DAY
A trip through Iraq in blistering late-August heat makes it crystal clear that the Bush administration is already waging a "pre-war" war that includes bombings almost on a daily basis.

By Brian Becker Mosul, Iraq
06-09-2002

Designed to degrade Iraq's potential for air defense and to monitor its military response to air assaults, these bombings are taking a toll. People are getting killed and wounded regularly, but you would never know it if your source of information is the Western mass media.


This writer went to Iraq on Aug. 25 as part of a fact- finding anti-war delegation led by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. The delegation flew into Iraq's "no- fly zones" in the north and south of the country for five days. In those five days, the U.S. bombed Iraq on five separate occasions.


True to form, the U.S. media said almost nothing about these daily bombings. Each day after we returned from the site of the latest bombing we would check the web sites of the Western media. Nary a peep about the lawless aggression waged from the skies by U.S. warplanes. Instead, the U.S. media focused its coverage on "why Saddam Hussein is such a great threat to world peace."


BOMBS DROP EVERY DAY


On Aug. 25, U.S. planes bombed Basra, the second-largest city in Iraq. Eight people died on the spot and 10 more were wounded. When we arrived in Basra on Aug. 27, we learned that one of the seriously injured had also died from his wounds.

http://www.lai-aib.org/lai/article_lai.phtml?section=A3ABBD&object_id=15163

[Uncle Miltie]

U.S. War Mongering, Its Legacy of Deceit
The U.S. Conspiracy to Initiate the War Against Iraq

By Brian Becker
Presented in May 1991
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/conspiracytowarwithiraq31jan02.shtml
Jan. 31, 2002

Even before the first day of the Persian Gulf crisis George Bush and the Pentagon wanted to wage war against
Iraq.

What was the character of this war? Iraq neither attacked nor threatened the United States. We believe that this
was a war to redivide and redistribute the fabulous markets and resources of the Middle East, in other words this
was an imperialist war. The Bush administration, on behalf of the giant oil corporations and banks, sought to
strengthen its domination of this strategic region. It did this in league with the former colonial powers of the region,
namely Britain and France, and in opposition to the Iraqi people's claim on their own land and especially their
natural resources.

http://educate-yourself.org/cn/conspiracytowarwithiraq31jan02.shtml

[Uncle Miltie]

Why U.S. wants Milosevic ousted

By Brian Becker

Demonstrations demanding the ouster of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic were organized in several cities inside Yugoslavia in the second week of July by opposition parties.

Some of these demonstrations received wide coverage in the U.S. media. In the city of Prokuplje, for instance, 3,000 people answered the call of the opposition. The July 9 New York Times carried a large photo of the demonstration. A picture of an even smaller demonstration from the city of Valjevo filled up a half page of the July 12 New York Times.

When 10,000 demonstrators marched on the Pentagon on June 5 to condemn the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia the New York Times didn't carry a large picture of the activity. They didn't write a big article about it either. In fact, they didn't write one word of the demonstration. It was totally ignored.

What accounts for the difference in the coverage between the anti-war demonstrations at home and the anti-Milosevic demonstrations in Yugoslavia? Both demonstrations were opposing their respective governments.

"People always were and always will be foolish victims of deceit and self-deceit in politics until they learn to discover the interests of some class or other behind the moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises," wrote V.I. Lenin, the leader of the Russian revolution.

Lenin was succinctly presenting the Marxist starting point for an analysis of all social phenomenon. Whether it's an assessment of a tenant-landlord dispute, a strike of auto workers, a war in a far-off land, or the complexity of international diplomacy, Marxists seek to unearth the class interests that are being served by the contending forces.

What are the class interests being served by the U.S./NATO war against Yugoslavia, by the NATO occupation of Kosovo, and now by the concerted efforts of the CIA, the IMF and the major U.S. mass media to support the overthrow of the Milosevic government?

All the information about the recent war from the U.S. media directs the public to think that in the Balkans different nationalities, for a variety of reasons, have entered into a period of prolonged, agonizing conflict with each other. The propaganda from the Western media focuses its attack on the Serbian leadership and on "Serb nationalism."

But Yugoslavia and the Balkans today is not simply a collection of nationalities. Classes have not been abolished in Yugoslavia and in the region of the Balkans. Nor have they been abolished in the United States, Britain, Germany and the other NATO countries.

The Marxist criteria of putting "class interests" at the center of an analysis immediately brings clarity about the war and the current U.S. efforts to promote the counter-revolution against the Milosevic government.

President Bill Clinton said that the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was in response to the refusal of Yugoslavia to sign the Rambouillet "peace agreement." That agreement stipulated that "The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free-market principles [and] ... there shall be no impediments to the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital to and from Kosovo."

That's technical treaty language. But Bill Clinton put it into popular terms when he explained the U.S. aims with the war: "If we are going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got to be the key; that's what this Kosovo thing is all about ... its globalism versus tribalism."

Milosevic and the Yugoslav government had put definite impediments on the free movement of capital in Kosovo and in all the other parts of Yugoslavia as well. It is the unfettered flow of capital and investment that Clinton refers to when he talks about "globalism." Although the socialist publicly-owned sector of the economy has been damaged over time from decentralization and economic sanctions, public ownership still exists in thousands of factories and enterprises in Yugoslavia.

While Clinton has to put Corporate America's agenda in the Balkans in popular terms, New York Times writer Thomas Friedman is able to put Wall Street's brutal class interests in the war in blunter language.

"For globalization to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is ... The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist--McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps," Freidman wrote in the March 28 New York Times.

While the Milosevic government is not pursuing a revolutionary communist policy, it drew the anger of the United States and other imperialist governments when it acted to slow down and resist the wholesale privatization of industry, banking, and trade as demanded by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

This trend was widely noted in Western media accounts in 1996.

"Milosevic is harking back to the political control promised by that old Communist star on his presidency building ...[he] is revoking some privatization and free-market measures," stated an article in the June 6, 1996, Christian Science Monitor. A month later, the July 18, 1996, New York Times complained about Milosevic's determination to "keep state controls and his refusal to allow privatization."

The Aug. 4, 1996, Washington Post carried a piece against Milosevic that was even more explicit. "Milosevic failed to understand the political message of the fall of the Berlin Wall," the Post quotes Konstantin Obradovic, deputy director of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights. He is one of the "democratic opposition" seeking to oust the Yugoslav government.

"While other Communist politicians accepted the Western model, and moved in the direction of the rest of Europe, Milosevic went the other way. That is why we are where we are today."

After the collapse of the USSR and the socialist bloc governments in Eastern Europe, the United States has aggressively moved into the region to create a patchwork of new military and economic arrangements, organizations and treaties to insure U.S. domination over the entire area of southern and eastern Europe.

The expansion of NATO to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic puts these countries under a Pentagon-dominated military chain of command. Tens of thousands of U.S. and other NATO troops now occupy the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia and Macedonia, as well as Kosovo and Albania.

The U.S. also dominates the Southeastern Europe Cooperative Initiative (SECI) which is planning for the reorganization of the newly-privatized sectors in energy, oil and petroleum, telecommunications, scientific research and banking.

The SECI is planning for the integration of the region's economic infrastructure into the arteries of U.S.-dominated finance and banking. Nine of the eleven member states of the SECI were formerly part of the socialist bloc countries. Greece and Turkey are the exceptions.

Yugoslavia, under Milosevic, is the only country in the region that has refused to participate in the SECI and its program for the outright imperialist takeover of the region.

This is why the U.S. calls Milosevic "intransigent." This is why the opposition "economists" in Belgrade known as Group 17 have denounced the Milosevic government as "illegitimate."

These darlings of Western bankers have proposed an alternative to the IMF to Yugoslavia's public ownership sector once Milosevic could be removed. Who are they?

"The Group 17 gathers 20 most-distinguished Yugoslav economists employed at the universities, banks, consulting agencies and international financial instutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund," reads the mission statement of the group.

Why are they opposed to Milosevic? Because he has acted as a brake to the full-scale capitalist restoration in Yugoslavia.

One of the latest statements of the Group 17 says it all: "A new phase in the process of transition to a market economy throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is beginning." However, "it is extremely well known that this transition in Yugoslavia is practically stopped," the statement complains.

http://www.geocities.com/cpa_blacktown_02/19990718ww.htm

[aristeides]

U.S. party delegation sojourns in Pyongyang

Pyongyang, February 24 (KCNA) -- A delegation of the Worker's World Party of the United States headed by Brian Becker, member of its secretariat, yesterday visited the Pyongyang mission of the National Democratic Front of South Korea (NDFSK).

Pak Kwang Gi, chief of the mission, at the meeting, expressed thanks to the Worker's World Party of the United States for having extended support and solidarity to the NDFSK in its struggle for independence, democracy and reunification and informed the delegation of the South Korean people's struggle against the U.S. and fascism and for democracy and national reunification.

The head of the delegation recalled that the party has struggled against the military dictatorship in South Korea and the U.S. forces' occupation of South Korea and evinced its determination to further strengthen support and solidarity to the Korean people's struggle for national reunification.

That day the delegation visited the family of Jong Song Ok, world "queen of marathon."

http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2000/200002/news02/24.htm.