Posted on 01/18/2003 1:34:19 PM PST by MattAMiller
On September 29th, 2001, just a few weeks following the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a large peace rally was held in Washington, D.C., to oppose an American military response to the attack. The main organizer of the D.C. rally, ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism), was officially established shortly after the 9/11 attack. The leading force behind ANSWER's creation is the International Action Center (IAC), which represents itself as a progressive organization devoted to peace, justice, and human rights issues. The IAC's organizational clout is considerable: for the past decade it has played a leading role in organizing protest demonstrations against U.S. military actions against both Iraq and Serbia. After the September 11th attack, the IAC decided to turn its long-organized planned protest against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank gathering, scheduled for the 29th, into an action opposing any use of U.S. military power in response to terrorism.
The IAC owes its current success to Ramsey Clark, a former Attorney General during the Johnson Administration, who is listed on the IAC's website as its founder. Clark's establishment credentials have caused many in the mass media to accept the IAC's self-portrayal as a group of disinterested humanitarians appalled by war and poverty who are working to turn American foreign policy towards a more humane course. On its website the IAC says it was "Founded by Ramsey Clark" and then describes its purpose: "Information, Activism, and Resistance to U.S. Militarism, War, and Corporate Greed, Linking with Struggles Against Racism and Oppression within the United States."
(Excerpt) Read more at slash.autonomedia.org ...
"Every once in a while a man comes along who not only asks to be pounded into the ground, down right begs for it. It is every mans duty to accommodate him for one day it may be him that is in desperate need."
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"After a failed bid for the Senate in 1976, Clark abandoned government service and set out to provide legal defense to victims of oppression. As an attorney in private practice, he has represented many controversial clients over the years, among them antiwar activist
* Father Philip Berrigan;
* Native American political prisoner Leonard Peltier;
* the Branch Davidians,[!?] whose compound in Waco, Texas, was destroyed by government agents;
* Sheik Omar Abd El-Rahman, who was accused of masterminding the World Trade Center bombing; and
* Lori Berenson, an American held in a Peruvian prison for allegedly supporting the revolutionary Tupac Amaru movement there. Clark's dedication to defending unpopular, and even hated, figures has also led him to represent such clients as
* Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and
* far-right extremist Lyndon LaRouche."
[Ramsey Clark Interview -- RaceMatters.org]
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That's some resume!
Is this guy some psycho nut,
or is he a spy?
Didn't you love Patti Smith and her "People have the power" tune? I was so LOL I was cryin'!
It has to be orchestrated... nobody wants to see a 50 yr old female's sagging breasts. In the sixties, all one needed was a guitar, some weed, and a naked female covered in mud or bodypaint.
Conservatives by nature don't demonstrate and protest.
I think this difference in "temperament" of these opposing groups is important. I have always found my friends on the Left to be insecure and emotionally immature. Psychology certainly plays a large part in the determination of a Lefty or a Conservative.
Ramsey Clarke was Lyndon Johnson's Attorney General. When you think about it, it amounts to just about the same thing.
So maybe, as we are going after the bank accounts of foreign terrorists.., we should look hard at what funds we are giving those who seem to have so much free time and influence..
Most Freepers do have a working life and can't always counter-protest.. Something there.. doesn't seem quite.. well.. Fair?
All in favor signify by saying aye.
The ayes have it.
From these peace protests some radicals will emerge and they will not be content with peaceful demonstration. They will be reporting information to the enemy and giving the enemy the perception that if they fight long enough U.S. public opinion will turn in their favor. It will prolong the war to a degree and cost more U.S. servicemen their lives. It will also cost the enemy more lives.
Expect the democrap party leftists to join in on the anti-Americanism to get votes. This will further embolden the peacenik radicals to attack U.S. government interests.
The shoe is on the other foot and the next terrorism threat is no longer from a Timothy McVeigh. The new terrorist profile is a radical leftist professor or peace activist.
More from the same article:
Conclusion
Given the WWP’s worldview, the notion that a group as closely linked to the WWP as the International Action Center could ever be taken seriously, either as a “human rights” or “peace” organization, seems comical as well as grotesque. The all too “resistible rise” of the IAC/ WWP, however, only makes sense when it is viewed in the context of the broader collapse of Soviet-style Marxism and all of its ideological variants. Left to its own devices, the WWP would have remained on the political margin as a quirky Left sect whose weirdly messianic ideology combined the worst aspects of Trotskyism, Maoism, and Stalinism into a unique and utterly foul brew. That a bizarre outfit like the WWP could become a serious player in American left-wing radicalism in the year 2001 is above all a testament to the existing ideological, intellectual, and moral bankruptcy of the broader Left, which still insists on living in a decrepit fantasy world where criminals are good, the police are evil, blacks are noble, whites are all racist, heterosexual men are sexist, all women are victims, Israel is always 100% wrong, the Palestinians are always 100% right, America is ”objectively” reactionary, and America’s enemies are “objectively” progressive and therefore worth defending. If this were not the case, the IAC never could or would have emerged as a serious force.
There is no reason, at least in theory, why a new movement from the Left could not both support a U.S.-led war against Islamist fanatics and fight to preserve civil liberties and social justice, both at home and abroad. The entrenched knee-jerk anti-American mindset of so many on the Left, however, makes such a development highly unlikely. At the very least, however, the rational elements within the Left should be willing to critically examine the propagandistic claims emanating from a variety of self-styled “human rights” and “anti-war” groups that are as politically compromised and morally dubious as the IAC, ANSWER, and the WWP. While the future role of the Left after 9/11 may not be clear, surely that much ought to be obvious.
When originally published the following article was accompanied by three sidebars focussing on specific aspects of the WWP:
Appendix 1: The IAC and the Campaign Against Sanctions: Helping the Iraqi People or Saddam Husayn? Appendix 2: "ANSWER" and "The Pod People" Appendix 3: The WWP: From Kim Il Sung's Birthday Party to the Russian "Red-Brown Alliance"..
Kevin Coogan is the author of a crucially important study on the postwar right, Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International (New York: Autonomedia, 1999), as well as a regular contributor to Hit List. Among other things, he wrote “How ‘Black’ is Black Metal: Michael Moynihan, Lords of Chaos, and the ‘Countercultural Fascist’ Underground,” an article which appeared in Hit List 1:1 (February-March 1999), pp. 32-49.
Some of them are not "usefull idiots", but died in the wool, red wool of course, communists themselves, and have been since the 50s in some cases. No reasonable person should put any weight behind a group organized to protect those who helped perpetrated of the 9-11 murders.
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