Dissident Veteran For Peace

Roughly translated the text on the image above says: "100 Years" and "Fight with the Comintern for the rebuilding of the Bavarian Soviet! Long live the 100th anniversary of the Bavarian Soviet Republic April 13, 1919 - April 13, 2019". The sign identifies the marchers as members of the Neuhausen—a borough of Munich—section of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

One of the best books on the American labor movement I've ever read is the late Robert Fitch's 2006 Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America's Promise. Following Fitch's lead, a reviewer for The Nation aptly compared the book to Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses.

Unfortunately, Fitch's constructive criticism of American unions was not generally well-received. It was mostly ignored.

However, the impetus for this post was not Solidarity for Sale but, rather, a bit in a fascinating 2006 book review by Fitch of separate works by Michael Lerner and Jim Wallis. I won't comment on those books or Fitch's review except to say I am on the same side of the fence as Fitch (but for somewhat different reasons) and he was out of his hermeneutical depth.

What I want to focus on here is his striking reference to the 1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic. In "Vetting God's Politics" Fitch writes:

Lerner's account of the Nazi rise to power leaves out some critical material and political factors — like the Great Depression and the suicidal division of the Left between Social Democrats and Communists. But even more significantly, Lerner blots out the not inconsiderable role of the communitarian Jewish Left in producing the convulsive reaction that Hitler exploited.

At a certain point in the upheaval that followed the German defeat by the Allies, members of [Martin] Buber's Neue Gemeinschaft group — like Gustav Landauer and Erich Mühsam — were high-level participants in the regime which seized power in Bavaria.  To understand the terrible repercussion of the 1919 anarchist coup, imagine if Vietnam not only won the war but invaded the U.S. in the 60s and, in the chaos that followed, a handful of long-bearded Jewish radicals from Berkeley seized power in California and declared the state a Republic.  Then, although a tiny anarchist minority of a left revolutionary minority, the government proceeded to decree a new social order; handing out a worthless currency as free money; establishing agrarian communes; and declaring war on Mexico.  (Bavaria declared war on Switzerland after its refusal to lend the new government 60 locomotives.)  It's likely that California would have experienced a reaction far worse than the election of Ronald Reagan.

In speaking this not-so-speakable (see note below) history Fitch exhibits the kind of intellectual integrity that helped unfairly doom him to a relative obscurity in academic and activist circles. There's a reason why Lerner's account left this information out and it is directly related to why Lerner's star rose much higher than Fitch's in elite circles.

That said, Fitch's characterization of the Bavarian Soviet Republic (BSR) as an "anarchist coup" is a bit puzzling. Apparently, some of the leading figures in the BSR, such as Landauer and Mühsam were self-described anarchists. However, the seizure of state power in a coup is inimical to anarchism as I understand it.

Moreover, in The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (UChicago Pr., 1993) Benjamin Ginsberg more aptly writes:

Jews were also among the leaders of the Communist government that the KPD briefly established in Bavaria after the murder of Kurt Eisner. Eugene Levine was head of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, Gustav Landauer was its commissar for propaganda and cultural affairs, and Ernst Toller commanded its "red army."

Kurt Eisner and Ernst Toller were members of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). Founded in 1917, the USPD joined the Communist International in 1920, leading to a split with the majority of party members going into the KPD. (The USPD is not to be confused with the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany (MSPD) but often referred to simply as the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The USPD was the result of a split within the SPD/MSPD, a self-proclaimed Marxist party. Many founders of the Spartacist League-KPD, such as the Jewish revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, also started out in the SPD.)

This is a complicated period in Bavarian history. As best I can tell, the sequence of events is as follows:

November 8, 1918: Eisner (a USPD communist) proclaims the People's State of Bavaria (Volksstaat Bayern; VSB) in Munich. Johannes Hoffmann, a Social Democrat (MSPD) and not a Jew, becomes the VSB's minister of education or culture (sources vary). Some sources say Landauer and Mühsam had formal positions in Eisner's government, most say their positions were supportive but informal.

November 21: 29-year-old Adolph Hitler arrives at an army garrison in Munich after being discharged from the hospital where he was recovering from war injuries. The following month he is transferred to Traunstein (about 100 km/62 mi from Munich) only to return to Munich in January or February (In Mein Kampf Hitler says it was March).

January 5, 1919: A general strike, led by the Spartacist League (renamed as/absorbed into the KPD in the preceding month) and the Independent Socialists, begins in Berlin. It will last about one week and in the ensuing violence 150 - 200 people will die before it is violently suppressed by Freikorps.

January 12: In parliamentary elections Eisner's party, the USPD, gets only 2.5% of the vote, entitling them to 3 seats. By contrast, the MSPD wins 31 seats.

February 21: Eisner is assassinated by a 22-year-old army officer, Count Arco-Valley (described as "a young Jew" by British historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke in his book, The Occult Roots of Nazism). Some sources claim Hitler is photographed in uniform at Eisner's funeral five days later. The VSB falls into disarray and Toller soon takes over Eisner's position as leader of the Bavarian branch of the USPD.

March 17:  Hoffmann is elected by the VSB's parliament as the VSB's new minister-president.

April 3: Hitler is elected liaison of his demobilization battalion to the Hoffmann government.

April 6-7: A coup is undertaken following which the establishment of the Bavarian Soviet Republic (Räterepublik Baiern; RRB) is proclaimed under the leadership of Toller, along with Landauer and Mühsam as cabinet ministers. Hoffmann and others flee Munich to Bamberg. It was during this period that the RRB, under Toller, declared war on Switzerland. Hitler stays put.

April 13: Hoffmann's forces attempt to forcibly re-establish control in Munich but fail. That same day a Jewish KPD member, Eugen Leviné stages a coup against Toller and seizes power. According to Richard J. Evans in The Coming of the Third Reich, the Russian-born Leviné is acting on his own, not the KPD's, initiative. He takes directions from V. I. Lenin (also of Jewish ancestry) to, among other things, arrest large numbers of so-called class enemies, seize privately owned weapons under penalty of death, and organize a 20,000 strong "Red Army" to "spearhead the Bolshevization of Europe". The ousted Toller, an avowed pacifist, takes a position in the new regime as commander of the Red Army. Landauer is also prepared to stay in the new regime but when his cultural program is rejected he quits.

April 15: Hitler is elected liaison of his demobilization battalion to the Leviné government. Leviné's repressive policies and inept leadership along with outside pressure quickly bring about chaos in Munich.

May 1: The siege of Munich is broken by an alliance between Hoffmann's forces and Freikorps under Lt. General Burghard von Oven. Shortly afterwards, Hitler comes out in open opposition to the recently deposed revolutionary government(s) and in what he will describe in Mein Kampf as his "first more or less purely political activity" Hitler joins a commission "investigating the behaviour of his regiment's soldiers during the two soviet republics."

Note
As another example of the not-so-speakable consider that on the popular, if generally unreliable, web site Wikipedia there is a category of articles on "Christian communists" (not to mention "Christian communism") and a category of "African-American communists‎". There are also 151 categories of "Communists by nationality". There's a category of "Jewish socialists" but you will not find a category of articles on Jewish communists. That category was repeatedly created and deleted in the span of about two weeks in 2007.

Thus, for instance, Karl Marx is not categorized in Wikipedia as a "Jewish communist". Bear in mind that the Communist Manifesto's primary author had maternal and paternal grandfathers who were rabbis and his mother converted from Judaism to Christianity years after Karl's birth. FWIW, Marx is also not categorized with "Christian communists", "German Christians", or "German Lutherans" (although his father is). 

To the extent that Jews constitute an ethnicity or nationality, Karl Marx was Jewish. Although he was baptized as a child (so was the execrable Abe Foxman), Marx was nevertheless Jewish under Judaic religious law, i.e. halakha. As one Orthodox rabbi notes: "... in Jewish law there is no true notion of converting out of the faith. Once a person is born Jewish, that is his lifelong status, whether he is observant or not ... past baptism and conversion never [change] that."

There is also no apparent evidence that Marx ever participated in the Lutheran rite of confirmation or that he ever professed faith in Christ as a child or an adult. Marx did profess atheism but that is not necessarily a halakhic disqualifier.

Now consider the case of Benedict Spinoza. Amsterdam's rabbis formally branded Spinoza a heretic and expelled him from the community in 1656. In 2012, the chief rabbi of Amsterdam's Sephardic Jews was asked to rescind the writ of cherem; he refused. Yet, Spinoza's biographical article is included in the following Wikipedia categories: 17th-century Jewish theologians, 17th-century Sephardi Jews, Dutch Jews, Jewish biblical scholars, Jewish philosophers, Jewish skeptics, Jewish translators of the Bible, and 17th-century Jewish biblical scholars.

The single, Wikipedia categorical reference to Marx's Jewishness is "German people of Dutch-Jewish descent". The point is not that Karl Marx was an observant, professing adherent of Judaism; he, apparently, was not. The point is that, unlike virtually every other group of communists, Jewish communists such as Eisner, Toller, Luxemburg, and Leviné are not allowed to be seen and considered in their collective in Wikipedia. Why is that?

Labels: Abraham Foxman, anarchism, communism, history, Jews, labor, Lenin, Lerner, Ronald Reagan, Wikipedia

I can't help but believe that in the future we will see in the United States and throughout the western world an increasing trend toward the next logical step, employee ownership. It is a path that benefits a free people.

Source: Ronald W. Reagan. "Project Economic Justice" (a speech presented at the White House). August 3, 1987.

Labels: economics, government, politics, quotations, Ronald Reagan, video

Below are some excerpts from Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America by Adam Winkler (Norton, 2011).

Despite the utopian dreams of some gun control advocates, guns in America aren't going anywhere ... Nevertheless, disarmament was the motive behind the D.C. laws challenged in the Heller case. The D.C. city council hoped that its ban on handguns would trigger a nationwide movement to eliminate civilian ownership of guns. The folly of its idealism was highlighted when, a decade or so after enactment of its strict gun laws, the District came to be known as the "murder capital of America." ... In the absence of any short-term hope of disarmament, gun control extremists throw their support behind poorly designed and predictably ineffective reforms. The statistics that clearly suggest bans on handguns and assault weapons don't reduce crime—or even the number of handguns and assault weapons in circulation—don't seem to matter. [p. 10]

Few people realize it, but the Ku Klux Klan began as a gun control organizations; after the Civil War, the Klan and other violent racist groups sought to reaffirm white supremacy, which required confiscating the guns blacks had obtained for the first time during the conflict. To prevent blacks from fighting back, the night riders set out to achieve complete black disarmament. In the 1960s, race was also central to a new wave of gun control laws, which were backed by liberals and even some conservatives, like Ronald Reagan. Enacted to disarm politically radical urban blacks, like the Black Panthers, these laws sparked a backlash that became the modern gun rights movement—a movement that ironically, is largely white, rural, and politically conservative. [pp.13-14]

Nelson "Pete" Shields III, one of the founders of Handgun Control Inc.—later renamed the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence—argued for eliminating all handguns. "We're going to have to take this one step at a time ... Our ultimate goal—total control of all guns—is going to take time." The "final problem," he insisted, "is to make possession of all handguns, and all handgun ammunition" for ordinary civilians "totally illegal." Sarah Brady, who serves as chair of the Brady Center, argues that "the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes," not self-defense, and supports the creation of a national gun licensing system in which only people with government approval can have a gun. Self-defense, the core reason why many people in America own guns, would not be a proper basis for government approval to be gra.[p. 35]

Used to losing battles over gun control, gun controllers latch onto any proposal popular enough to make it through the legislature—usually right after some school shooting or other tragedy. Whether or not a proposed law will actually curb gun deaths is irrelevant; gun control extremists will stand behind it. ... Consider the federal gun ban on so-called assault weapons, adopted in 1994 during the Clinton Administration. The controversy flared up a few years earlier, when Josh Sugarmann, founder of the pro-gun control Violence Policy Center, published a study entitled "Assault Weapons and Accessories in America." Sugarmann called for a ban on guns he termed assault weapons—a name derived from a German World War II-era battle rifle called the Sturmgewehr, or storm rifle. ... Machine guns have been heavily regulated in the United States since the 1930s [civilian ownership of new machine guns has been illegal since the 1986 passage of the Firearm Owners' Protection Act - VFPD], Sugarmann was referring to semiautomatic rifles that just looked like machine guns. A semiautomatic rifle can't spray fire like a machine gun. Instead, when you pull the trigger on a semiautomatic rifle, it fires only one bullet. ... Sugarmann was unusually frank about how public misperception of assault weapons would make banning them the sale of them easier. "The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semiautomatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons." [pp. 35-36]

... in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, law enforcement began confiscating guns from law-abiding people even though police protection was nowhere to be found amid the looting and theft. Often, if there's a crisis, the easy solution is to do away with the guns. [p. 40]

Not only did killing [in Washington, DC] become more common after the [1976 Washington, DC] gun ban, but guns also became a more common way to kill. [p. 42]

Concerning the legislative debate over the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, Winkler writes: Gun rights advocates managed to defeat registration and licensing by arguing that such measures would lead eventually to confiscation of all civilian guns. In the House of Representatives, The Michigan Democrat and NRA board member John Dingell warned his colleagues that the Nazis adopted mandatory registration and used the records to disarm the Jews and political dissidents. This law, too, could be the first step toward a holocaust. While others dismissed the analogy to the Nazis, it didn't help that [US Senator from Connecticut] Thomas Dodd had in fact asked the Library of Congress to provide him with a translation of the German laws of the 1930s when he was drafting his bills ... [p. 252]

Labels: civil liberties, Clintons, guns, politics, quotations, Ronald Reagan

The image at right is from 1994; it is still apt today.

Last Friday, Warren Olney spoke with guests about Haiti on his show, To the Point. If you listen to the program you can hear David Rothkopf essentially erasing the effects of foreign exploitation from Haiti's history and, typically, you can hear Robert Perito and Amy Wilentz bashing former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. If US leaders and the "experts-in-legitimation" such as Rothkopf, Perito, and Wilentz had supported Aristide instead of undermining him at virtually every step then it is quite conceivable that Haiti would have been in a much better position to deal with the recent earthquake.

Below are some excerpts from Paul Farmer's informative albeit compromised, partisan article in the April 15, 2004 edition of the London Review of Books, "Who removed Aristide?" Farmer was appointed as the United Nations Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti last fall by Bill Clinton.

In 1825, under threat of another French invasion and the restoration of slavery, Haitian officials signed the document which was to prove the beginning of the end for any hope of autonomy. The French king agreed to recognise Haiti’s independence only if the new republic paid France an indemnity of 150 million francs and reduced its import and export taxes by half. The ‘debt’ that Haiti recognised was incurred by the slaves when they deprived the French owners not only of land and equipment but of their human ‘property’.

... ‘Imposing an indemnity on the victorious slaves was equivalent to making them pay with money that which they had already paid with their blood,’ the abolitionist Victor Schoelcher argued.

By the late 19th century, the United States had eclipsed France as a force in Haitian affairs. A US military occupation (1915-34) brought back corvée labour and introduced bombing from the air, while officials in Washington created the institutions that Haitians would have to live with: the army, above all, which now claims to have the country ‘in its hands’, was created by an act of the US Congress. Demobilised by Aristide in 1995, it never knew a non-Haitian enemy. It had plenty of internal enemies, however. Military-backed governments, dictatorships, chronic instability, repression, the heavy hand of Washington over all: this state of affairs continued throughout the 20th century.

I learned about Haiti’s history while working on medical projects on the country’s central plateau. When I first travelled there in 1983, the Duvalier family dictatorship had been in place for a quarter of a century. There was no dissent. The Duvaliers and their military dealt ruthlessly with any opposition, while the judiciary and the rest of the world looked the other way. Haiti was already known as the poorest country in the Western world, and those who ran it argued that force was required to police deep poverty.

By the mid-1980s, the hunger, despair and disease were beyond management. Baby Doc Duvalier, named ‘president for life’ at 19, fled in 1986. A first attempt at democratic elections, in 1987, led to massacres at polling stations. An army general declared himself in charge. In September 1988, the mayor of Port-au-Prince – a former military officer – paid a gang to set fire to a Catholic church as mass was being said. It was packed with people, 12 of whom died. At the altar was Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the nemesis of the dictatorship and the army. Aristide was a proponent of liberation theology, with its injunction that the Church proclaim ‘a preferential option for the poor’, but liberation theology had its adversaries: members of Reagan’s brains trust, meeting in 1980, declared it less Christian than Communist. ‘US policy,’ they said, ‘must begin to counter (not react against) . . . the "liberation theology” clergy.’

Aristide’s elevation from slum priest to presidential candidate took place against a background of right-wing death squads and threatened military coups. He rose quickly in the eyes of Haitians, but his stock plummeted in the United States. The New York Times, which relies heavily on informants who can speak English or French, had few kind words for him. ‘He’s a cross between the Ayatollah and Fidel,’ one Haitian businessman was quoted as saying. ‘If it comes to a choice between the ultra-left and the ultra-right, I’m ready to form an alliance with the ultra-right.’ Haitians knew, however, that Aristide would win any democratic election, and on 16 December 1990, he got 67 per cent of the vote in a field of 12 candidates. No run-off was required.

The United States might not have been able to prevent Aristide’s landslide victory, but there was plenty they could do to undermine him. The most effective method, adopted by the first Bush administration, was to fund both the opposition – their poor showing at the polls was no reason, it appears, to cut off aid to them – and the military. Declassified records now make it clear that the CIA and other US groups helped to create and fund a paramilitary group called FRAPH, which rose to prominence after a military coup that ousted Aristide in September 1991. Thousands of civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands fled overseas or across the border into the Dominican Republic. For the next three years Haiti was run by military-civilian juntas as ruthless as the Duvaliers.

In October 1994, under Clinton, the US military intervened and restored Aristide to power, with a little over a year of his term left to run. Although authorised by the UN, the restoration was basically a US operation. Then, seven weeks after Aristide’s return, Republicans took control of the Congress, and influential Republicans have worked ever since to block aid to Haiti or burden it with preconditions.

The aid coming through official channels was never very substantial: the US gave Haiti, per capita, one tenth of what it distributed in Kosovo. It is true that, as former US ambassadors and the Bush administration have recently claimed, hundreds of millions of dollars flowed into Haiti – but not to the elected government. A great deal of it went to the anti-Aristide opposition. A lot also went to pay for the UN occupation, and Halliburton support services. There was little effort to rebuild schools, the healthcare infrastructure, roads, ports, telecommunications or airports ...

That the US and France undermined Aristide is not a fringe opinion. The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the African Union have called for a formal investigation into his removal. ‘Most people around the world believe that Aristide’s departure was at best facilitated, at worst coerced by the US and France,’ Gayle Smith, a member of the National Security Council staff under Clinton, recently said.

Why such animus towards Haiti’s leader? Taking up the question of the historic French debt, Aristide declared that France ‘extorted this money from Haiti by force and . . . should give it back to us so that we can build primary schools, primary healthcare, water systems and roads.’ He did the maths, adding in interest and adjusting for inflation, to calculate that France owes Haiti $21,685,135,571.48 and counting. This figure was scoffed at by some of the French, who saw the whole affair as a farce mounted by their disgruntled former subjects; others, it’s increasingly clear, were insulted or angered when the point was pressed in diplomatic and legal circles.

Still, Aristide kept up the pressure. The figure of $21 billion was repeated again and again. The number 21 appeared all over the place in Haiti, along with the word ‘restitution’. On 1 January this year, during the bicentennial celebrations, Aristide announced he would replace a 21-gun salute with a list of the 21 things that had been done in spite of the embargo and that would be done when restitution was made. The crowd went wild. The French press by and large dismissed his comments as silly, despite the legal merits of his case. Many Haitians saw Aristide as a modern Toussaint l’Ouverture, a comparison that Aristide did not discourage. ‘Toussaint was undone by foreign powers,’ Madison Smartt Bell wrote in Harper’s in January, ‘and Aristide also had suffered plenty of vexation from outside interference.’

It’s usually easy to tell, in even the briefest conversation about Aristide, how your interlocutor feels about him. Opinion in Haiti is almost always referred to as ‘polarised’ in the US press, but this isn’t true in every sense. Elections and polls, even recent ones, show that the poor majority still support Aristide. It’s the middle classes and the traditional political elites who disagree about him, as well as people like me: non-Haitians who, for whatever reasons, concern themselves with that country’s affairs ...

It would be convenient for the traditional Haitian elites and their allies abroad if Aristide, who has been forced to preside over unimaginable penury, had been abandoned by his own people. But Gallup polls in 2002, the results of which were never disseminated, showed that, despite his faults, he is far and away Haiti’s most popular and trusted politician. ...

See also:

• "Clinton and the taming of Haiti" by José Antonio Gutiérrez D. on Anarkismo.net, November 12, 2009.
• "Securing disaster: The US repeats past mistakes in Haiti" by Peter Hallward in the The National, January 21, 2010.
• "Haiti: The Israeli Connection" on the Middle East Reality Check blog, January 16, 2010.

Labels: Clintons, Empire, Haiti, Ronald Reagan

Bear in mind that the "weapons embargo" described below is much like the "embargo" during the Spanish Civil War--one that the forces of injustice and repression deftly violated. Thus, the criminal Winters--with the help of Jimmy Hoffa, Sr.--did get the bombers to the Jewish invaders. Needless to say, there's no record of anyone receiving a presidential pardon for the 'crime' of helping Palestinians--just ask Sami al-Arian.

Here's a few excerpts from "Bush pardons man who helped Israel during wartime" by Deb Reichmann:

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a gesture of forgiveness for a decades-old offense, President George W. Bush on Tuesday granted a pardon posthumously to a man who broke the law to supply aircraft to Jews fighting in Israel's 1948 war of independence.

Charles Winters, a Miami businessman considered a hero in Israel, was listed in a batch of 19 pardons and one commutation that Bush issued before leaving for Camp David to spend the holidays. No high-profile lawbreakers were on the list. ...

Members of the Jewish community, who adorned his father's funeral with blue and white flowers symbolic of the Israeli flag, filled in details about his father's past. His obituary in The Miami Herald read, "Charles Winters, 71, aided birth of Israel."

In the summer of 1948, Winters, a Protestant from Boston who exported produce, worked with others to transfer two converted B-17 "Flying Fortresses" to Israel's defense forces. He personally flew one of the aircraft from Miami to Czechoslovakia, where that plane and a third B-17 were retrofitted for use as bombers.

"He and other volunteers from around the world defied weapons embargoes to supply the newly established Israel with critical supplies to defend itself against mounting attacks from all sides," New York Reps. Carolyn Maloney, Gary Ackerman, Jose Serrano and Brian Higgins said in a Dec. 15 letter urging Bush to pardon Charlie Winters. "Without the actions of individuals like Mr. Winters, this fledgling democracy in the Middle East almost certainly would not have survived as the surrounding nations closed in on Israel's borders."

The three B-17s were the only heavy bombers in the Israeli Air Force. It is reported that counterattacks with the bombers helped turned the war in Israel's favor. In March 1961, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir issued a letter of commendation to Winters to recognize his contributions to Israel's survival as an independent state.

Winters, a Protestant from Boston, was convicted in 1949 for violating the Neutrality Act for conspiring to export aircraft to a foreign country. He was fined $5,000 and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Two others, Herman Greenspun and Al Schwimmer, also were convicted of violating the act, but they did not serve time. President Kennedy pardoned Greenspun in 1961. President Clinton pardoned Schwimmer in 2000.

"Rules are rules, but it's interesting that my dad was the low man on the totem pole in the operation, but he's the only one who had to serve time," said Jim Winters, 44.

Reginald Brown, an attorney who worked on the Winters pardon, said Bush's action "rights a historical wrong and honors Charlie's belief that the creation of the Jewish state was a moral imperative of his time. ... Charlie Winters helped shape human history for the better."

Film director Steven Spielberg wrote a letter to Bush appealing for a pardon for Winters.

"There are probably many unsung heroes of America and of Israel, but Charlie Winters is surely one of them," wrote the director of "Schindler's List," his Oscar-winning movie about the Holocaust. "While a pardon cannot make Charlie Winters whole, and regrettably he did not live to see it, it would be a fitting tribute to his memory and a great blessing to his family if this pardon is granted." ...

Here's a report of Clinton's remarks on Greenspun:

As an adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in the mid-1980s, Al Schwimmer traveled to the United States often and met with former Presidents Reagan and Bush.

He served as an intermediary between the United States and Iran in the arms-for-hostages scandal.

It never seemed to matter that he was a U.S. felon, convicted for his role in smuggling airplanes from the United States to Israel as it fought its War of Independence in 1948.

Now, a half-century after his conviction, Schwimmer has been exonerated, one of the many pardons granted by President Clinton on his last days in office.

It was a pardon he never asked for and is less than enthusiastic about.

“I appreciate it,” said the 83-year-old Schwimmer, who lives in Israel and holds dual American and Israeli citizenships. ...

Schwimmer, the founder and former CEO of Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd., was convicted in 1950 of violating the United States Neutrality Act for his role in aiding Israel. ...

A veteran of World War II originally from Connecticut, Schwimmer – known then as Adolph – joined TWA after the war as a flight engineer and was recruited through friends to help bring airplanes to the Middle East to aid the Jews in their war for independence.

He set up dummy airline companies that were supposed to be flying charter flights, and purchased airplanes from the United States, which was selling surplus planes no longer needed after the war.

In all, Schwimmer and his crew brought 30 planes to Israel, flying them through either Italy or South America and to Czechoslovakia, from where the planes were sent to the Middle East.

They also recruited men, mostly World War II veterans, to go to the Middle East and fight. ...

After the War of Independence had been won, Schwimmer came back to the United States to face the music.

“I decided I didn’t want to be a fugitive the rest of my life,” Schwimmer said.

He pleaded not guilty but was convicted in 1950 – along with his colleagues – and received a $10,000 fine.

The fine, and his court costs, were paid for by the Jewish Agency for Israel, he said.

Schwimmer returned to Israel and founded Bedek, the precursor to Israel Aircraft. After nearly 25 years at the helm of the military and commercial airplane manufacturer, Schwimmer retired.

But that did not end his life in the spotlight.

For one shekel a year, Schwimmer joined Peres’ government in the mid-1980s as a special adviser to the prime minister for technology and industry.

He would once again find himself in the midst of controversy.

On his role in the Iran/Contra affair, Schwimmer would not reminisce. He would say very little about the role he played.

“We used the connections we had, which were perhaps better than the United States had, to try to get the hostages out,” he said, but would not elaborate.

According to the 1993 Independent Counsel report on the Iran/Contra Affair, Schwimmer played a key role as an Israeli intermediary between the United States and Iran in the weapons-for-hostages plan.

The Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran, using Israel as an intermediary, in an effort to secure the release of American hostages being held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.

Some of the proceeds from the sale of weapons to Iran was diverted to the contras, who were waging war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

According to the report, Schwimmer introduced Robert McFarlane, Reagan’s national security adviser, to Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian businessman who would lay the Iranian’s demands on the table.

He also helped secure El Al planes to transport the weapons from Israel to a mediating country. ...

Labels: Bush, Clintons, crime, Israel, Palestine, Ronald Reagan, United States, Zionism

Historian Kathryn S. Olmsted's Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Pr., 1996) is a retrospective look at the 1975-76 work of the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the "Church Committee") and the House Select Intelligence Committee (the "Pike Committee"). Olmsted argues that the outcome of these "inquiries show that American political culture of the 1970s was characterized more by continuity than by change." More specifically, she highlights the "resistance to change in three important areas:"

1. Congress "hesitated" to take responsibility to oversee the operations of US intelligence agencies.
2. "The media proved reluctant ... to confront the national security state."
3. The American people "were reluctant to acknowledge unpleasant truths about their secret agencies."

Each of the points above is drawn from Olmsted's "Introduction" and is an example of scholarly understatement, as the body of the book makes clear. For example, as Olmsted, quoting I.F. Stone, notes: "at the end of the investigations, their net effect 'has been to accustom the public mind to the evils exposed and to institutionalize and legalize them by systems of congressional "oversight." ' " Olmsted quotes former CIA head William Colby drawing a similar conclusion.

In the chapter, "Sensational Scoops and Self-Censorship" the case of Mr. Colby shows how the press generally performed a lapdog rather than a watchdog role. Concerning Project Jennifer—the CIA's secret operation with Howard Hughes to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine—Colby is shown to have contacted the editors of major US news organizations and they all "agreed to suppress the story." As Olmsted continues:

For his part, Colby was "totally surprised and pleased" by the media's self-censorship. ... Indeed, "responsibility," not aggressivesness, was the watchword for the post-Watergate press in the case of Project Jennifer. Far from playing the mythic role popularly assigned to them after Nixon's fall, the nation's editors seemed terrified of the potential risks of defying the government.

An earlier chapter, "Trusting the 'Honorable Men' " explores how the media suppressed information about the CIA's involvement in domestic spying and in Watergate affair.

There are mostly villains and anti-heroes—including the American public—in Olmsted's book but a few heroes emerge, too: Otis Pike, Seymour Hersh, Daniel Schorr, Jack Anderson. General Lyman Lemnitzer makes a cameo appearance in the book. In 1962, Lemnitzer, "infuriated [then-Representative Gerald] Ford by deleting some of his questions on the U-2 spy plane program from the transcript of a defense appropriations hearing" and Ford complained, at the time, of a " 'totalitarian' attempt to suppress information." In the wake of Seymour Hersh's expose on CIA involvement in the Chilean coup of Augusto Pinochet, however, Ford appointed Lemnitzer to his Commission on CIA Activities in the United States, along with Lane Kirkland and Ronald Reagan, because Ford knew that Lemnitzer could be trusted to guard the CIA's secrets and power.

I first learned of Lemnitzer while reading a book about the National Security Agency by James Bamford. During the Kennedy administration, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lemnitzer was one of the proponents of Operation Northwoods—a secret plan that included killing American civilians in false-flag operations to be blamed on Cuba. According to a March 13, 1962 memorandum, the point was to create "pretexts which would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba." The Northwoods memo was supported by the other Joint Chiefs and sent to the Secretary of Defense for his approval. In 1963, Lemnitzer left the JCS to become Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and Operation Northwoods remained secret for 25 years.

Labels: civil liberties, history, media, politics, repression, Ronald Reagan, surveillance, United States

Concerning "Bayard Rustin--Giant with Feet of Clay," a reader asks, "It seems to me, pretty obvious in fact, that the likelihood exists that Rustin worked with the support of the US government. Have you come across any documents that highlighted or suggested this?"

The short answer is no. The long answer is there seems little room for doubt that, in his later life, through his direct and indirect connections with Freedom House, the AFL-CIO, A. Philip Randolph Institute, Committee on the Present Danger, League for Industrial Democracy, Coalition for a Democratic Majority, etc. that Rustin was definitely a beneficiary of CIA and other gov't. support and funding. I haven't come across any particularly relevant documents on this topic but then again I haven't really looked for any. In any case, have a look at rightweb.irc-online.org. Rustin's name pops up there a lot of times in association with prominent neocons and known CIA front groups. The statement below makes a lot of sense when considered in this light.

Ronald Reagan's Statement on the Death of Bayard Rustin

August 25, 1987

We mourn the loss of Bayard Rustin, a great leader in the struggle for civil rights in the United States and for human rights throughout the world. He will be sorely missed by all those who shared his commitment to the twin causes of peace and freedom.

As few men have, Mr. Rustin understood that the struggle for the two is inseparable; either we achieve them both or neither. Mr. Rustin held to this belief all his adult life. This took great physical, intellectual, and, most of all, moral courage. He was denounced by former friends, because he never gave up his conviction that minorities in America could and would succeed based on their individual merit. But Mr. Rustin never gave an inch. Though a pacifist, he was a fighter to the finish. That is why over the course of his life he won the undying love of all who cherish freedom.

Labels: Bayard Rustin, Neoconservatives, repression, Ronald Reagan, United States

The editorial board of the Free Arab Voice web site recently issued a "Declaration in support of the Arab Resistance in Lebanon" (excerpts below). Thinking about and researching the declaration and Hizbullah, I ended up on a Hizbullah web site where I was a bit surprised to find the text of a May 19, 2006, Daily Star (Lebanon) article on Noam Chomsky's remarks to the press in Beirut. The article is by Jim Quilty and entitled "Hizbullah is a Lebanese phenomenon & the resistance should keep their weapons." I wasn't able to verify the article on the Daily Star web site but the information in the article was corroborated here, here, and here.

Below are some excerpts from the article that mention Hizbullah; I have mostly deleted Chomsky's remarks on Iran, opportunism, tactical questions, etc. I could not resist leaving in his biting comment on "the nature of the political class." I have not edited the non-standard usage of quotation marks around Israel, Israeli, etc. and don't know if they appeared in the original Daily Star article or were added later.

...

After interviewing Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, Chomsky's told the press the resistance should keep their weapons.

"In an ideal situation all militias should be disarmed," he told The Daily Star. "Unfortunately Lebanon isn't Luxembourg. Since 1978 there have been four invasions from "Israel" - meaning a U.S.-"Israeli" invasion since "Israel" can't invade with out U.S. permission - and plenty of bombings and other terrorism. That happens to be where Lebanon is.

"There's only one deterrent to another U.S.-"Israeli" attack and that's the threat of guerrilla warfare. If anybody can think of a better alternative I'd be happy to hear it. It'd be nice if the Lebanese Army offered a deterrent but it doesn't.

"There is an alternative, namely a credible international agreement to prevent aggression. But who would guarantee it? The EU cannot and will not.

...

"If the U.S. and "Israel" decide ... there's a group here that supports Hamas, say. In that reality Lebanon has two choices: either eliminate any deterrent to another "Israeli"-U.S. invasion or else have the credible threat of guerrilla warfare which is what drove "Israel" out in the first place."

Chomsky characterizes his critique of U.S. policy as straightforward institutional analysis. States act on interests, not friendship. "People in Lebanon who think that John Bolton wanted Syria out of Lebanon because he likes the Lebanese are dreaming," he says, a view contrary to local narratives of last spring's "Cedar Revolution".

...

"When it came to ["Israel's" 1982 Lebanon invasion] the U.S. had a policy: they supported it. When that became an embarrassment on the international scene, they changed policy and called it off and tried to settle it their own way. As long as Lebanon remains more or less orderly and it's not harming any major U.S. interests there probably is no policy, at least none that I can think of."

Given Hizbullah's rhetoric against "Israel" - and the fact that the disarming of all militias (aka Hizbullah's military wing) was appended to UN Security Council Resolution 1559 - one would think the Party of God is the exception to the rule of U.S. indifference.

"America and Jordan talk about 'the Shiite Crescent' but Hizbullah is irrelevant to that," Chomsky says. "Hizbullah doesn't have any oil. It's a Lebanese phenomenon. It won its position primarily by driving the "Israelis" out. It has its own interests and its own concerns - which it's up to Lebanon to figure out.

"If Hizbullah were to accept U.S. policies, they could run Lebanon as far as the U.S. cares. Is Hizbullah a more extreme fundamentalist organization than the people who run Saudi Arabia?

"In fact, the U.S. has always strongly supported Islamic fundamentalism. It created the jihadis after all, in the 1980s. It supported Zia al-Huq when he was turning Pakistan into an Islamic fundamentalist state. The Reagan administration pretended that Pakistan wasn't developing nuclear weapons.

"It's just not an issue. The U.S. is ecumenical."

Chomsky followed last Spring's "Independence Uprising" and is aware many activists felt betrayed by their political leadership, but he resists dispensing advice.

"People shouldn't be surprised to be betrayed by the political class," he says. "It's in the nature of the political class, any power grouping for that matter."

...

Excerpts from the "Declaration in support of the Arab Resistance in Lebanon:"

To every Arab Nationalist, to every Muslim, to every supporter of the Resistance against imperialist and/or Zionist aggression, to every supporter of justice and freedom:

The enemy's aim to divide and conquer will succeed if we do not unite behind the legitimate Resistance of groups like Hizb'ullah in Lebanon. We cannot afford to think in terms of 'regions' or of sectarian interests. We must unite to support EVERY strike against foreign occupation and foreign aggression against the Arab Nation.

Any one who attempts to argue that Hizb'ullah is nothing more than a Lebanese Shi'a organisation might as well give active support to the Zionists. Any one who attempts to argue that Hizb'ullah is the instigator of unprovoked aggression here has his/her head in the sand and is in danger of finding a new world map when he/she finally takes a look at the world.

...

A fact that evidently has escaped notice in the West is that the earliest Zionists in the 19th century had a plan to invade Lebanon and incorporate the entire South of Lebanon in what they purported to define as 'Greater Israel'. This early ambition was reiterated in the 1950s, long before the 'Grapes of Wrath' invasion by the Zionist entity. People have the unqualified right to resist against a foreign invasion and no amount of strictly 'humanitarian relief' will protect the Lebanese people from Zionist ambitions.

...

The history of this region is steeped in acts of Zionist aggression and Hizb'ullah's actions are no more than legitimate acts of self-defence against a foreign militarised imperialist entity that never has abandoned its plans for total domination of the region.

Under the spurious guise of 'eternal victim', the Zionists once again are attempting to distort the facts.

...

This is a situation in which every Arab should be involved. In that sense, it does concern Syria but no more than it concerns any one in any part of or with any ties to the Arab Nation in general. It would be a grave error for any one to pretend otherwise.

This is not a conflict only for the Shi'a, although every Shi'a should support Hizb'ullah's actions. This is not a conflict only for Muslims, although every Muslim should support this Resistance. This is a conflict in which every Muslim, every Christian, every secularist, every Arab and every individual anywhere who believes in justice must support Hizb'ullah's Resistance.

The people of Iraq are struggling under the yoke of foreign Occupation and oppression and a puppet government that only concerns itself with its own selfish and sectarian interests. The people of Palestine are struggling under the burden of foreign Occupation and a continuing programme of dispossession and genocide. The people of the Arab Nation from sea to sea are struggling under the corrupt rule of leaders who bow to U.S./Zionist propaganda and foreign interests daily. The aim of the U.S. alliance ultimately is the destruction of every vestige of strength and independence in the Arab Nation. The Zionist entity was the foreign seed of destruction that was allowed by the West to take root in the heart of the Arab Nation for the sole purpose of weakening it. Will the Arab Nation continue to ignore the parasite that devours it from within?

'Democracy' in the U.S./Zionist lexicon signifies any group that works together to facilitate U.S./Zionist economic and political goals. If any organisation or leader anywhere in the world, however democratic in fact, opposes U.S./Zionist economic and political goals it conveniently will be labelled a 'terrorist' leader or group, making it obvious that 'democracy' is a meaningless term in this context.

...

The Arab Nation needed a boost of morale and Hizb'ullah has provided it. Every true Arab Nationalist must be heartened by the thought of any Arab Resistance group with the courage and steadfastness to oppose the Zionists in this fashion. When the majority of Arab leaders either have been bribed or intimidated not into mere silence but into actual betrayal of the cause of the Arab Nation, it becomes vital for every Arab voice to be raised in support of the Resistance.

In Gaza, Shaima al-Quqa, daughter of martyr Al-Abd Al-Quqa, announced the formation of special armed brigades of female human bombs and declared that the women of Palestine 'take upon ourselves before Allah to do what the sleeping leaders and armies of the Arab Nations have failed to do. We are carrying arms alongside the fighters and embarking on the path of the Resistance and the Jihad.'

May the entire Arab Nation take note of their courage and may it inspire an awakening to Resistance among other women and men alike!

Labels: Israel, Lebanon, resistance, Ronald Reagan, United States