Category Archives: Propaganda

The Truth About Dragan Mihailovich and Serbia’s Chetniks

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Statement by Richard L. Felman, USAF, in front of the Serb National Federation, on July 7, 1987 and entered into the Congressional Record on Draga Mihailovic and the Serb Chetniks on November 19, 1987

President Stone, Reverend Clergy, Distinguished quests, members of the SNF, and fellow Chetniks:

Moja braco i sestre, (“my brothers and sisters” in Serbian language)

May I first express my deep appreciation to President Stone and all members of the Serb National Federation for inviting me to your 3 Day Serbian Day Weekend. I know it is a most important event and I am delighted you have asked me to share it with you.

Chetnik leader
General Draža Mihajlovi?

Before getting into my speech I would like to acknowledge how appreciated it is that today (July 17th) is the very day in 1946 that General Mihailovich lost his life to a Communist Firing Squad. I say it is appropriate because were it not for Draza Mihailovich and the Grace of God, I would not be shading here before you today. I have said it before and will say it again: I owe my very life to General Mihailovich, the Chetniks and the Serbian people and because of this whenever I get together with the Serbian people it is like a family reunion and fill me with much emotion. If I may state it as simply as possible: “OO MOM SERTZU YA SAM SERBEEN.” (This is the pronunciation script of “U mom srcu ja sam Srbin” – in Serbian or “In my heart I am a Serb” – in English.)

My feelings, however, go far deeper then just gratitude for saving my life. I say that because when I was shot down in Yugoslavia, I had the opportunity to know first hand what truly remarkable people the Serbians are … and the bond of brotherhood that we formed during the war continues to this day. In every Serb I met I always found a sense of honor and sense of freedom that is second to none … and in this day and age I feel privileged to know people who still maintain these values and have such a strong commitment to their God, their family and their heritage.

I was in England a while ago to celebrate the European Chetnik Congress and Karageorgevich Day. Needless to say the Serbian Hospitality and food were out of this world. But the outstanding part of my visit was meeting with the Serbian Youth and seeing how intense they were about carrying on their priceless heritage… Their parents told them about the American Airmen that Mihailovich had rescued but I was the first one they met and their questions were endless. I spent a great deal of time with them and came away inspired by their enthusiasm.

I am reminded of them as I see the young people in the audience today. If I may I would like to say to them: “Thank God you were blessed with such a proud heritage. I saw with my own eyes the blood shed by your parents and grandparents just so it could be passed on to you .. Be proud of this priceless treasure you have and preserve it the rest of your days… So many of today’s youth are troubled and searching for answers in many strange ways. You have all the answers you need right here in your own church and your own heritage.”

So much for the Sunday Sermon, and now I would like to tell you of my first introduction to the Serbian people an how I won my Ravna Gora Badge as an honorary Chetnik. The one good thing the Germans did during WWII was shoot me down, giving me a chance to meet the Serbian people. During World War II, I was returning from an air raid on the Ploesti oil fields in Roumania when my B-24 Bomber was attacked by German ME-109s over Yugoslavia. We managed to shoot down two of them before my pane caught fire and we were forced to bail out from 20,000 feet.

As soon as I landed I was immediately surrounded by about 20 Chetniks all shouting “Amerikanski”… Before I knew it they each took turns hugging and kissing me (only the men mind you, not the women). As my leg was bleeding, they carried me to a nearby kucha (house in Serbian) for treatment. They had no medical supplies, but they did have a bottle of slivovitza [Serbian plum brandy] and used it to clean my wound… Once that was done, we all sat around and drank what was left in the bottle.

Shortly after that, an elderly man about ninety motioned for me to follow him. I had no idea what he wanted but limped after him until we came to a small wooden chapel. He then got down on his knees, clasped his hand in prayer and motioned for me to kneel down beside him. It was a most unforgettable sight! Here we were: strangers from 2 different countries, we spoke two different languages and practiced two different religions. But in those few moments we were united as brothers kneeling to give thanks for my rescue to the one God we all worship: It was one of the most moving experiences of my life.

It would be impossible for me to relate all the many wonderful things the Chetniks and the Serbian people did for me and my fellow American fliers. As our numbers increased, each man would tell of his own personal experiences. They told how the people went hungry in order to give them what little food they had. How many of them slept on the floor so that the Airmen could have the comfort of their beds. How they risked their lives to protect us from the German patrols. Not once did I hear anything but the highest praise from the 500 Americans rescued by General Mihailovich………

….Before getting into the concluding part of my speech, I would like to make brief mention of a matter of a personal nature which is added reason for my admiration of the Serbian people.

Besides being one of the American Airmen rescued, by the Serbian people, I am also a Jew! It is a matter of historical fact that Serbia was one of the very few countries where anti-Semitism was not permitted.

In the old kingdom of Serbia, and later in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Jews were, by law, equal members of the community and enjoyed all the rights and privileges of other citizens. This is so very remarkable when you consider the persecution of the Jewish people throughout history.

The historical goodwill between the Serbs and the Jews does not seem strange when you consider the many parallels in our history. We both suffered cruel persecution, both have been driven from our homeland and today we are both dispersed throughout the world.

One other amazing similarity is that both our peoples fought battles to the death for their belief in the freedom and dignity of man. The Jews at Masada and the Serbs in Kosovo.

In keeping with this same love of freedom, many Serbs risked their lives during World War II to save countless Jews from Nazi death camps. This is something we can never forget and for which I and The Jewish People will always be grateful……

Permit me to read what President Truman had to say in awarding him the highest combat award our nation can bestow on a foreign national:

“LEGION OF MERIT – CHIEF COMMANDER: General Dragoljub Mihailovich distinguished himself in an outstanding manner as Commander-in-Chief of the Yugoslavian Army Forces and later as Minister of War by Organizing and leading important resistance forces against the enemy which occupied Yugoslavia, from December 1941 to December 1944. Through the undaunted efforts of his troops, many United States airmen were rescued and returned safely to friendly control. General Mihailovich and his forces, although lacking adequate supplies, and fighting under extreme hardships, contributed materially to the Allied cause, and were instrumental in obtaining a final Allied victory. March 29, 1948. Harry S. Truman.”

We now know that from this day forward there is a symbol on American soil that established a permanent bond between Gen. Mihailovich, President Truman and 500 grateful Americans… and it is here for all the world to see!

Since the end of WWII we have made great strides in trying to repay our debt of honor to the man who saved our lives. Permit me to read just a partial list of those who have joined us in support of General Mihailovic:
Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan;
The United States Senate;
hundreds of United States Congressmen;
the Secretary of the Air Force, Thomas Reed;
The Department of Interior;
The National Capital Memorial Advisory Committee;
the United States Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Laurence Silberman;
the Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Clement Zablocki;
a United States Commission of Inquiry;
the Arizona State Senate;
the governors of Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Texas;
the mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley;
Bishops Firmilian, Iriney and Manning;
John Wayne;
The American Legion;
Polish War Veterans;
George Meany and the AFL-CIO;
the Teamsters Union;
The Heritage Foundations;
The Coalition for America;
The New Your Times;
Washington Post and Washington Times,
Toronto Sun, Christian Science Monitor, etc., etc…

And this is only a partial list. Incredible as it may sound, the only ones in the entire world who have not supported and continue to oppose us are the Communist Government of Yugoslavia and our own State Department….

..  What is even more bizarre is that our own State Department chose to take sides against us (its own combat veterans) and side with a Communist government that openly supports and justifies international terrorism.[LR: Tito’s government]

Bob Stone was there in the hearing room and I’m sure he can tell you more about the most incredible alliance of opponents American ever had to face in their own country. Had this been a court of law, the opposition would have been thrown out as completely irrelevant – but this was the political arena where truth takes a back seat to what is politically expedient.

If even the slightest semblance of doubt existed as to what the truth was, it was exploded beyond all recognition when the Encyclopedia Britannica published its revised account of Gen. Mihailovich and the CIA released (under the Freedom of Information Act) the previously unpublished top secret intelligence file on the activities of all parties in Yugoslavia during WWII. Here was the on-the-scene American intelligence reports to the President of the United States exposing all the propaganda lies that have stood in our way since 1944. If ever there was a smoking gun, this was it. And those who still insist on the propaganda fairy tale about Mihailovich’s collaboration, I suggest they join hands with those who believe in the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and the flat earth theory.

Now that we have the top secret CIA Intelligence File an the same opposition continues to stand in our way, the American Airmen are publicly offering to pay the sum of $100,000 to the United States Government if the State Department or any of Mihailovich’s political opponents can prove in an American court of law the treacherous lies they continue to make against him in opposing our petition before Congress.

What’s more, if they have any respect for the service to the United States of America, the American Veteran represents, I suggests they should speak up now or forever hold their peace. We do not have another 40 years. You can bet your life we are justifiably outraged and fighting mad. Quite frankly, even if our offer were for ten times that amount, we have no fear it will ever be accepted. Under the close scrutiny of an American Court, the facts contained in the CIA file would prove to be an embarrassment and even humiliation to all those parties who continue to oppose us…..”

Richard L. Felman is president of the National Committee of American Airmen Rescued by General Mihailovich).

Reagan Revisionism From The Left

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The Daily Bell has a good piece by Paul Craig Roberts about the continual historical revisionism that blames everything on Reagan.

Salient points excerpted:

1. Reagan most certainly is not to blame for the financial crisis or for the neoconservative wars for American hegemony.

The Reagan administration’s interventions in Grenada and Nicaragua were not, as is sometimes claimed, precursors to Clinton’s war on Serbia and the Bush and Obama wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, with more waiting in the wings. Reagan saw his interventions in the context of the Monroe Doctrine, not as an opening bid for world hegemony.

The purpose of Reagan’s interventions was to convince the Soviets that there would be no more territorial gains for communism. The interventions were part of Reagan’s strategy of bringing the Soviets to the table to negotiate the end of the cold war.

2. When Reagan understood what the Israelis had lured him into in Lebanon, he pulled out. Reagan opposed war as an instrument of American hegemony. It is the neoconservatives who use war to achieve hegemony. Reagan was not a neoconservative.

3. The first business of the new Reagan administration was to complete the Carter administration’s plan to save autoworker jobs by imposing quotas on imports of Japanese cars. Reagan did this even though it demoralized his conservative free trade supporters. Reagan got no thanks from the left who denounced him instead for bailing out his Republican buddies in the auto business.

4. I still hear from readers hostile to Reagan that Reagan’s firing of the illegally striking air traffic controllers is proof that he was a “union buster.” One sometimes feels sorry for people who have so little grasp of politics. For a new president to let himself be rolled up by a poorly-advised, illegally-striking public sector union would have rendered Reagan impotent and without the power to achieve his ambitious agenda of changing the economic and foreign policies of the US. Even Reagan’s court historians do not realize Reagan’s extraordinary achievements in economic and foreign policy.

5. It wasn’t Reagan’s agenda that was anti-left; it was the rhetoric Reagan used in order to keep the conservative base in line. Conservatives did not understand supply-side economics any better than did the economics profession and Wall Street. Conservatives wanted a balanced budget, which is their solution to every economic problem. Reagan was talking about a 30% reduction in marginal tax rates (the rate of tax applied to increases in income) and about faster depreciation schedules for capital investments.

What this meant to conservatives was more budget deficits. Wall Street never lobbied me to repeal Glass-Steagall, but Wall Street did lobby me to water down the Reagan tax rate reductions.

[LR: exactly. The financial world is left-oriented because they benefit most from finagling money/banking and not from tax reductions aimed at the manufacturing and non-financial business sector]

5. On the cold war front, conservatives were very suspicious of negotiating with the Soviets. Some conservatives put out the story that Gorbachev was the anti-christ, that he would take Reagan to the cleaners and we would all end up living under the red flag of communism.

[LR: Well, they got that half right]

6. Reagan did not cut back government or abolish the welfare state.

7.  If all the uninformed people who ranted about “Reagan deficits” and “tax cuts for the rich” had bothered to educate themselves about the policy that they so desperately wanted to demonize, a wider understanding of the Reagan era might have created an audience among Washington policymakers for writings by myself and others who stressed, to no effect, the adverse impact of jobs offshoring on the economy. Instead, this cancer, masquerading as the benefits of free trade, has gone untreated for 20 years.

8. The Presidents Working Group on Financial Markets, created in the last year of the Reagan administration, was labeled the “plunge protection team” by the Washington Post. The Working Group consists of the Treasury Secretary, Federal Reserve Chairman, and the financial regulators….. If speculators were indeed gaming the market at the expense of pension funds, IRAs, and long term investors, the government might have felt obliged to come up with new regulations or to use moral suasion or even direct intervention in order to protect legitimate investors from the greed of speculators. If speculators short the market and the Federal Reserve buys long, the shorts don’t pan out for the speculators.

How the Working Group has evolved since 1988 I do not know.

However, it is absurd to blame Reagan for the Federal Reserve’s different use or misuse of the Working Group twenty-four years later, if that is indeed what is occurring.

Elite Mouthpiece Taunts Ron Paul On Failure Of Fed Campaign

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Added July 21, 2012:

How did I see the confrontation? I thought Paul did as well as anyone could in the time given. Except for a few word slips, he was pretty cogent and effective. Bernanke looked discomfited in the middle, when he was questioned about the transfer of authority from Congress to the Fed and when the issue of secrecy was brought up. Other than that, he was impassive and spoke little.  Paul wasn’t “subdued” at all. I don’t watch all his videos, but I’ve seen him a number of times in debate, and that was fairly straightforward Paul. If there was a white flag, I didn’t see it.

If he wasn’t as combative as some seem to think, it’s most likely because it’s his last such confrontation. He’s retiring, I’m told. Too bad.

I thought it was a fairly effective performance and a good wrap up of his major arguments. I think if you’d known nothing about the Fed until then, you would have got the salient points of the anti-Fed argument: he described Bretton Woods,  exchange-rate and interest-rate manipulation; big government financing through debt; transfer of wealth from the poor and middle-class to the wealthy; malinvestment; money supply expansion versus CPI inflation; the housing bubble; and the need for Congressional oversight.

I wouldn’t call it a knock-out, simply because Bernanke was so impassive through out.

That of course helps the media to reframe the confrontation anyway it suits them. Which is what Dana Milbank promptly did.

Paul Vs. Bernanke video

“Ron Paul Vs. Bernanke: final battle ends on surprising note,” David Grant, Christian Science Monitor, July 18, 2012

“Ron Paul Has The Final Say,” Bob Adelman, New American, July 19, 2012

ORIGINAL POST

“Skull & Bones affiliated establishment journalist Dana Milbank taunts Ron Paul about the end of the “End the Fed” campaign in a piece entitled, “Ron Paul Fed Up With Trying To End The Fed” (Washington Post, July 18, 2012)

Well, I have plenty of problems with the whole Ron Paul movement these days (for a view from a Paul supporter see  this:), but the piece does more than criticize Paul.

What it does is gloat.

Here are some lines from it, with my parsing.:

“He didn’t even make a dent in it.”

[LR: The Fed is unassailable]

“…Paul raised the white flag.”

[LR: The Fed has won…]

“For the fiery Paul, it was a subdued surrender.”

[LR: So now you know how powerful we really are, old man.]

“….treating him with the cautious affection one might use to address a crazy uncle.”

[LR: You didn’t reach the point where we’d have to assassinate you, so we’ll just let people know that you and your supporters can’t be taken seriously.]

“But Paul faded away with surprising deference.”

[LR: Yes. He’s under our thumb. We call the shots. He knows what’s good for him, so he’s fading away.]

“The one substantial challenge to Bernanke — Paul’s “audit the Fed” bill, which the House is expected to approve next week before it dies in the Senate — was easily dispatched by the Fed chairman,”

[LR: Audit the Fed is croaking.]

“The Paul to Bernanke word ratio this time was 12 to 1.”

[LR: He’s just a rambling  old man. Real men don’t talk, they print.]

“There’s no constitutional reason why Congress couldn’t just take over monetary policy,” he said. “But I’m advising you that it wouldn’t be very good from an economic policy point of view.”

[LR: We’re the constitutionalists, not you. Audit the Fed is only about Congress taking over monetary policy, folks. Imagine! They can’t run a post office. How do you think they’re going to do with deep stuff like economics?]

“”At this point, the committee chairman cut him off. Paul’s time had expired.”

[LR: We’ve put up with you long enough, grandpa. Your time’s up. The game is over.]

The framing of the whole piece is quite masterful. There is not one substantial piece of analysis about the actual policies in question. We are not told what is involved in either “End the Fed” or “Audit the Fed.”

We are instead given information about procedure….rules regarding how bills go through the house, and how speakers get to speak. A contrast is set up between the grave, measured proceedings of the state and the law (the constitution) and the self-indulgent rambling of an aging politician.

The roles are reversed.

Paul becomes the political class. Bernanke becomes the embodiment of the constitution and of law.

From beginning to end we’re told how to think about what’s going on.

This is what we’re supposed to think:

Bernanke is sage, powerful and indulgent.

Paul is a crazy old man, who doesn’t know the elements of civility….or the constitution.

He’s an anti-government politician, but he’s for the government control of the money supply.

He cuts into other people’s time. He rambles on. He talks too much.

Paul is just a “supplicant” before the great Fed chairman. The final word is with the Fed.

So, even though he gets his fifteen minutes, it’s clear Paul doesn’t really understand the constitution or money.

And he’s for the government!

Notice how the piece distorts Paul’s position to make it look as if “Audit the Fed” (Paul’s fall-back position from “End the Fed”) is about putting arcane and complex professional matters into the hands of politicians.

Milbank turns Bernanke into the “private” expert and Paul into the bumbling government man.

That is sure to appeal to Americans of every political stripe. The average reader would immediately distrust anyone who intends to subject policies about the country’s money-supply to ignorant legislators driven by partisan bias.

What that does is clear.

It turns the  whole anti-government argument against anti-government activists.

It also turns  the pro-constitution argument against constitutionalists.

This is propaganda of the highest order.

Thousands Attend Cremation Of Bollywood Legend, Rajesh Khanna

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Rajesh Khanna, who died yesterday, was the biggest Bollywood star ever until Amitabh Bhachchan.

Khanna was cremated in Vila Parle in Mumbai, as thousands of people followed the cavalcade in the monsoon rains. Present at the cremation was Bachchan, a big fan himself, who complained that the huge crowd had come out to see the dozens of film stars at the funeral and not Khanna.

Khanna made some 120 films and had millions of fans who mobbed him each time he set foot outside his house. Known as India’s leading heart throb, Khanna had female fans who were known to marry pictures of him and write his name in blood.

Thus has India been ruled since independence.  Escapist film spectaculars and star-gazing for the impoverished millions, a form of narcotics.  For the intellectual and bureaucratic ruling-class, there is a different kind of escape, the coconut political/literary circles funded by the West and dominated by its ideologies, all shot-through with the malevolent intent of western state-craft, ceaseless in its goal of total dominion.

The masses of middle-class people who actually create value in society, remain invisible to a Western world fed a diet of media hype alternating between jet-setting  maharajas, models, and tycoons on one hand, and slums, sex-gurus, and call-centers on the other.

War On India: RAW Fighting Back Against Mossad In India

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This is from a Wayne Madsen report from February 2012 this year

“An Israeli Chabad sect couple, Rabbi Sheneor Zalman and his wife Yaffa Shenoi, have been told by Kerala police to leave India in fifteen days. The two are suspected by the Indian intelligence, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of being involved in a covert operation in India linked to the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack in which six Chabad members were killed in a shootout between Dawood Ibrahim’s Pakistan-based gangsters and the residents of Mumbai’s Chabad House. The incident was reported as a major act of terrorism when, in fact, it was score settling between Ibrahim’s drug syndicate and Chabadniks who were seen as moving in on Ibrahim’s control over the Mumbai drug trade.

WMR has previously reported that Chabad houses around the world are believed by multiple intelligence agencies to be centers for Mossad activity operating under religious “cover.”

RAW agents apparently staked out the couple’s pricey residence in Kochi as late night meetings were conducted with suspect individuals under Indian intelligence surveillance. The Israeli couple had lived in Kochi for almost two years. After being presented with evidence of espionage by the intelligence and police services, the Ernakulum District in Kochi decided to order the Israeli couple deported.

Chabad Jews and Mossad were forced to leave their former base in Goa as a result of increased RAW and federal police surveillance of their activities, believed to include the shipment of heroin from Afghanistan to Southeast Asia in the east and the United Arab Emirates to the west. The Israeli Mossad and Chabad re-located their operations to Kochi, which had replaced Goa as a major drug trans-shipment point.

In addition, Mumbai bombing suspect David Headley is believed to have maintained contact with the Mossad station in Goa prior to the Mumbai terrorist attacks. Headley is believed to have also maintained links with Ibrahim’s crime syndicate in Pakistan and the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group in planning false flag terrorist attacks in India. Then the green light for the Mumbai attacks was given, Ibrahim’s men decided to use the occasion to also attack their drug smuggling competitors at the Mumbai Chabad House.

Kochi had, according to WMR’s Indian intelligence sources, also served as a clandestine communications support facility for Israeli Dolphin-class submarines and their contingent of naval divers operating in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea. The submarines are believed to be targeting Iran in the event of an outbreak of hostilities between Israel and Iran.

Indian intelligence also believes the Israelis in Kochi were targeting the classified communications of the Indian naval base in Kochi, the headquarters for the Indian Navy’s Southern Command. By targeting the Kochi naval base and the anti-submarine warfare intelligence elements there and at the Indian naval air station on Willingdon Island, the Israelis were capable of providing warning to Israeli forces of Indian, Chinese, American, British, and French warships transiting past the tip of southern India to the Arabian and Red Seas.

Rabbi Zalman and his wife denied all charges against them and insisted they were meeting people day and night as a service to the local Jewish community.

Our sources say that after years of being played by Mossad, RAW has finally taken action against a major Mossad operating cell in the country.“

Comment:

Earlier this year, India, like China, had skirted the sanctions imposed on Iran by the US, through barter and rupee accounts, bypassing the dollar altogether.

Recall that January-February (early in the year)  is also when the government began stalling about turning over its evidence to the Rajat Gupta defense, despite repeated requests, following Gupta’s arraignment in October 2011 on federal criminal charges.

It is also the same time that Goldman Sachs stated publicly that it no longer expected criminal charges (paraphrase), even though in August 2011, Blankfein had feared that eventuality enough to go out and hire a criminal defense attorney.

Sometime then, it seems, a deal got struck, involving letting Corzine and Blankfein out of the sights of the prosecution and instead throwing Gupta to the wolves. Hence the bizarre rulings of Judge Rakoff, a friend of the defense attorney and also apparently on good terms with Bharara, who prevented the defense from showing crucial evidence while allowing damaging hearsay from the prosecution.

Do all of these seemingly unrelated events have a common source – increasing tension between the NWO elites and India?
One faction of RAW (Research and Analysis Wing, the Indian intelligence service) reportedly wants to play along with the CIA and Mossad. Another faction wants to show third-world solidarity with Iran and Pakistan.

The RAW crack-down could explain why there was a noticeable intensification of negative media reports on India and pressure on the PM through the derogatory Time cover I blogged about previously.

In response, the Indian government has told Mr. Mittal to stop bashing it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/transatlantic-alliance-between-rothschilds-and-rockefellers-for-wealth-management-7805035.html

Mittal is connected to the Rothschilds through his investments in RIT Capital,through his ownership with Evelyn and Lynn Rothschild of “FirstMark Communications International LLC” and “FieldFresh Foods”.

Evelyn is head of N. M. Rothschild, which has links to the Agora Inc. publishing network, which encompasses the hard money/patriot/libertarian crowd.

[LR: I learned about this connection only after leaving and have blogged about it since then, as much as possible, given my one-time connection to them. In my previous blog posts about them, I noted various associations, but also noted that Agora’s flag-ship publications didn’t seem to promote views similar to what George Soros might be expected to promote. Soros is a Rothschild agent, according to some observers.  However, quite recently,  researching Lakshmi Mittal’s connection with Rothschild, I came across some more evidence of ties between the Agora network and the Rothschilds. If this new evidence pans out, then the Rees-Mogg link  – noted by Bill Engdahl a while back –  is likely also a Rothschild connection.

Agora then would be related to both Rothschild and Rockefeller interests.]

[Note: Recently, another Rothschild, Jacob, bought a 37% stake in David Rockefeller’s business, so both families are consolidating investments.]

Kochi, the focus of Chabad and the drug-trade, is also the site of the killing of two unarmed Indian fishermen by an Italian vessel in February, following which murder charges have been brought against the culprits.

Obama Birth Certificate A Forgery, Says Sheriff Arpaio

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Update (July 20): The Daily Bell has an interesting theory that this whole controversy might be engineered to rescue Obama in public perception. Their reasoning is that Sheriff Arpaio is himself a polarising figure guilty of many controversial practices and making him the center piece of the storm over the certificate (which broke in 2008) might be an clever way to diffuse the scandal. Additional proof for this theory is that the forgery itself is so clumsy that people have been speculating it was intended as a trap.

Well, well, well. Lookee here (chuckle, and h/t EPJ)…

Turns out Barack Obama’s birth certificate is definitely forged.

“I have to respect the science of document examination and the evidence there points to the forgery pictured above.  There are also serious signs that the forger of the Obama birth certificate released by the White House did not understand codes and numbers associated with the document.  Analysis of the numbers and code revealed that the document is not genuine.  The evidence is more than compelling.

The biggest error came as a result of the age of the document forger.  He or she was obviously too young to be aware of correct terms used to classify what we today call African-Americans. The creator of the phony document listed Obama’s race as African.  That is a huge red flag because that term was not applied as a race title until well into the 1980’s.  That term and the moniker, Black would have been considered politically incorrect and racist back when Obama was born.  The proper term throughout history until the late 1970’s was Negro. The government did not change this until well into the 1980s.

“Additionally the United States government standardized the acceptable terms for all identification documents.  Eventually Negro became an apparent derogatory term that sensitive politically correct Americans abandoned in the 1980’s.

This so-called birth certificate document was the product of a criminal conspiracy.  It needs to be investigated by Congress and the State of Hawaii.   The problem here is politics prevents the orderly administration of justice.  Democratic politicians have total control and are breaking the law by obstructing justice. “

Comment:

President Obama’s release of a long form birth certificate in April 2011 didn’t assuage his critics. They insisted it was forged.

The persistence of such doubts, die-hard Obama defenders in the media replied, was yet another yahoo conspiracy by bitter clingers.

Here are some reminders of what the mainstream said (courtesy of wikipedia):

Michael Tomasky called it racial paranoia “Birthers and the persistence of racial paranoia” The Guardian (London) April 27, 2011

[A guy called Tomasky would never express racial paranoia, I suppose]

Dan Vergano said it was racial prejudice, “Study: racial prejudice plays role in Obama citizenship views”. USA Today, May 1, 2011

[USA Today would never, never cater to racial prejudice.}

The New York Times said it was an embarrassment, “A Certificate of Embarrassment”. The New York Times. April 27, 2011.

[The NY Times is never embarrassed by the baldfaced banditry in its own backyard]

Fareed Zakaria said it was coded racism, “Fareed Zakaria on Donald Trump and coded racism”. Global Public Square (CNN), April 22, 2011.

[Zakaria apparently doesn’t mind racism when it involves dropping bombs on strangers in the Middle East]

Real estate mogul Donald Trump’s taste in wives  is much better than his taste in wedding-cake mansions…..or in bankster bail-outs, but he scored a bulls-eye on this one.

The fudge with “African” instead of “Negro” was discussed a long while back.

So what’s the news in the recent claim?

Apparently, a 95 year old retired state worker was able to point out numerical codes that hadn’t been filled in, while the boxes for race and employment had.

I’m not sure what to make of it yet, but I already know what to make of how it’s being spun.

I googled Obama birth certificate, and right after a couple of sites with the hot news at the top, where you’d expect it to be,  were sites that dismissed the birth certificate controversy as “birther” conspiracy.

They were in  third or fourth place when I saw them, which would seem to be pretty high when the news that’s breaking is that big.

Usually new stuff buries the old stuff and sends it way back past the fourth or fifth page in an Internet search…at least for the first day after a big story.

But not here.

Then I hunted for images to put up on my blog so people could see what the Sheriff’s team means about the fudge about “African.”

Well, when I searched google and then looked on the left-hand side of the search results for what comes up under IMAGES, the very first image on the left was the certificate.  But instead of getting a bunch of different sites where the image was posted, google kept redirecting me instantly to Snopes.  The redirection was blatant.

So why would google heart snopes?

Snopes, according to its ABOUT page, was founded in 1995 by Barbara and David Mikkelson of Los Angeles, to explore urban legends and such. Naturally, it just became the web’s leading “touchstone” for rumor research. Naturally, they got a couple of “Webbies” and “Best of the Web” awards and have been invited onto all the major networks.

So naturally, no one in their right mind would take them at face value.

And so it is.

Read anti-Zionist activist Maidh O’Cathail’s piece at Dissident Voice, exposing its pro-Israeli bias in covering 9-11 research.

See also the conservative blog called Huffington Riposte which considers Snopes a left-liberal propaganda outlet.

On the other hand, here are some Kossacks (from Daily Kos) claiming it pushes right-wing views.

My diagnosis of something that sounds left to the right and right to the left and reeks of big bucks?

You guessed it. George Soros.

US Navy Kills Indian Fisherman Near Dubai

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Update:

To make my original post a bit clearer, you’d have to understand what is called “convergence” by some people. I call it the “commie-capitalist” kiss up.

What this amounts to is this. The elites try to subvert a country by soft and by hard power. The soft power angle is worked by human rights groups intentionally misrepresenting or exaggerating valid social concerns in a way that provokes rioting, secession, terrorism or civil war.

This then gives an excuse for intervention by the hard power arm of the empire (NATO police action, arms sales, legal actions, war financing).

In the case of India, you have a concerted ideological war on Hinduism played out in the looting of temples through communist-dominated/Christian friendly state governments.

Then you have the human rights focus on the plight of Dalits (socially the lowest caste). Their legitimate grievances are amplified and manipulated by Western interests to fracture the social fabric and enable legal action against state and federal governments which ultimately accrue to the benefit of Church-sponsored  NGOs and the Western powers themselves. Thus, in increasingly globalized Tamil Nadu,  Tamil secessionism is encouraged. Rumors of CIA/ Mossad involvement in the area should also not be discounted.

Then you have the communists in the West making common cause in the media with the communists in China (on the one hand)… and on the other, conflating the just demands of the Palestinians in the Middle East with revanchist Caliphate claims in India. This also incites secession among Muslim dominant states.

As someone who believes Asia has always been the main focus of the global elites since the end of WWII, the convenient Muslim terrorism narrative provides cover for both the expansion of Western hard and soft power in Asia, as well as a feint behind which covert operations against alleged allied of the US, like India, are conducted. In that sense, India is less an ally as it is a host incubating a parasite  that will eventually kill it.

Simultaneously, the globalist elites pressure the government through psychological war and cyber-war.  This explains the increase in negative portraits of India, the recurrent attacks on the political leadership for not giving into the demands of multinationals. For example, Arcelor-Mittal CEO  Lakshmi Mittal has  demanded that the Indian economy grow at the rate of 10 percent. The expulsion of Rajat Gupta (connected to Manmohan’s opening of the economy) displays the fist behind Mittal’s request.

Mittal has recently joined the board of Goldman Sachs (2011), and like the bank,  works with Rothschild interests, which were behind the opening of the Indian economy in the 1990s.

ORIGINAL POST

The Statesman reports on American naval fire on an Indian boat off the coast of Dubai.

Although so far it seems to be only an accident,it wouldn’t be far-fetched to wonder if it wasn’t a shot  in the low-grade psy war on India, about which I blogged here (Chinese cybera attacks on Indian naval HQ in Vizag) and here (Time’s derogatory cover of Manmohan Singh) and here (the criminal prosecution of Rajat Gupta, the man who opened up the Indian economy, most likely  by connivance between the government and the banking elites)  and  here (Rajiv Malhotra’s thesis of a US strategy of “breaking India” via  postmodern transnationalism, US intelligence and human rights activism all converging in NGO’s like Wikileaks that act as the soft power arm of  empire).

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An Indian fisherman aboard a boat shot at by the U.S. Navy off Dubai’s coast has told officials the crew received no warning before being fired upon, India’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates said Tuesday. The account differs from that provided by the Navy, which said it resorted to lethal force Monday only after issuing a series of warnings. One Indian was killed in the incident, and three of his countrymen were seriously wounded. The shooting underscored how quickly naval encounters can escalate in the increasingly tense waters of the Gulf.”

Note that this isn’t the first naval accident recently. In February 2012  an Italian cargo ship fired on an Indian trawler off the coast of Kochi in South India, killing two Indians. The equivalent of this would be Barack Obama’s face appearing in The Indian Express with the word ‘loser’ under it; Carly Fiorina arrested and convicted on weak evidence in India, while Indian CEOs guilty of multicrore fraud played witness for the prosecution; Indian and Iranian war ships shooting and killing American fishermen and officers off the coast of Florida and Scotland; and a pallid Indian hacktivist with an arrest record haranguing America on its internal affairs from the pages of a Chinese paper.

Rothbard’s Leninist Attack On Gandhi And Voluntaryists

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George H. Smith in the June 1983 volume of The Voluntaryist gives one more example of  Rothbard’s penchant for manipulating (in this case, manufacturing) evidence whenever he needed it. It is an article deriding the menace of Gandhism.

Smith correctly calls it “Leninist.” ((This, by the way, is Rothbard’s own term.  By it he meant not the substance of what he wrote but the strategy and tactics he used which he admitted he borrowed from Lenin.

Ah. I knew I wasn’t mistaken.  I know the smell of sulphur as well as anyone. …

Anyway, since I’ve read quite a bit on Gandhi (including the multi-volume biography by Pyarelal, Koestler, Chaudhuri, and dozens of others, as well as Gandhi’s own writing), I feel I am on very strong grounds when I say that Rothbard could not have known much about Gandhi at all, if he thought that Gandhi’s habit  of sleeping with some young women of his circle was unknown.  It was not. It was widely known.

To be clear, there was never any sex in these arrangements and the whole thing was highly public and visible to everyone. The young women were around the ages of 18 or 19 (maybe one was 17? I’ll check)   and vied for the honor of sleeping next to him.

This happened when Gandhi was in his eighties, and it happened after the death of his wife of nearly seventy years (he’d had a child marriage, a common practice in those days).

The young women helped him walk (he called them his crutches), bathed him, and often administered the enemas that were routine in his nature cures. Gandhi wrote about all of this at length, because he saw it as part of a spiritual practice testing his celibacy. He derived this apparently from Tantra and berated himself endlessly when he felt he had been aroused subconsciously or in his dreams (!), instead of just feeling like a “mother” to the women.

I’ve written about this at Counterpunch and Dissident Voice and I believe I was among the first to describe Gandhi’s practices as both arising from repressed psychological needs as a widower and from bona-fide Tantric techniques.

I even corresponded for a while with an academic who had written a dissertation to that effect.  Gandhi was a strongly sexed man, who married in childhood (13), fathered several children, and took a vow of celibacy in his forties. There is no evidence that he ever broke his vow, although he enjoyed warm and slightly very flirtatious relationships with several female admirers.

[Correction n July 18: Sorry, I overlooked more recent research since my 2005 piece that shows Gandhi had “spiritual marriages” with a couple of his close women friends and a very close emotional relationship with a male friend.  These were very close but not physical, so far as I know.  His own words certainly show him to be a highly sexed man and reveal what many will insist is a homoerotic tendency. My own conclusions are different, but I can see some one else thinking he was “creepy” or “freaky”.]

Where Rothbard misrepresents is in claiming that this is unknown. Gandhi himself talked incessantly about his sexual feelings in his letters and even in his startlingly honest autobiography, “My Experiments With Truth,” probably the most revelatory autobiography ever written by a man in his position. Also, there is very little traditionally Hindu about Gandhi in any way. He was a Westernized eclectic, most influenced by Jesus, Thoreau, Tolstoi, and Ruskin]

He was strict (even authoritarian) but affectionate with his own wife, and most of what took place after her death was a kind of acting out of  subconscious drama that he never confronted consciously.

What he did was certainly not harmless to the young women, who must have suffered a good deal of psychological damage.

But it was not intentional, and he was no charlatan.

Even Koestler never thought so.

Anyway, whatever you think about Gandhi or mysticism or Tantra, those who met the man were largely captivated.

Except for a few like Churchill who famously dismissed him as a “seditious Middle Temple lawyer,” most people were impressed by Gandhi’s patent sincerity, demanding personal discipline, and complete unwordliness with regard to money or power.

He loved India and he loved her villages and he wanted to free the masses of people from the most grinding poverty and oppression. No one can doubt that.

What is even more remarkable he never expressed hatred for the British and showed sincere affection and respect even for the officers who arrested and beat him.

When he was shot, his last words were “He Ram” (a salutation to God).

Gandhi’s  stature as a political figure and as a man  is probably a bit higher, I’d guess, than Rothbard’s, which makes R’s shoddy scholarship even stranger.

In sum,  Rothbard has no qualms about

1. Attacking major figures (Gandhi, Ayn Rand, Adam Smith, Milton Friedman and others) in vicious and often personal terms.

2. Misrepresenting both what his targets said and what others have said about them.

3. Refitting the facts/history to suit his own ideological goals and individual temperament.

Why am I spending times analyzing Rothbard’s missteps?

Because for some time I have felt something terribly amiss with the Ron Paul movement.

There is more going on there than meets the eye and it is not just picking the right strategy or Rand’s tactics or alleged opportunism (or not).  My misgivings are not confined to Paul. They extend to the people who promote him, many of whom are anarcho-capitalists (if there is such a thing).

Rothbard is the central figure of this group.

That seems to be not just because of his scholarship (there are many Mises scholars) but because of his relative political success and the success of his acolyte Ron Paul.

Paul, Rothbard and Co. have become the mouthpiece of antiwar, antistate libertarianism.  What they say needs to be examined carefully.  It would be smart to give them more than uncritical support.

With all the establishment propaganda and co-optation out there, one can’t be too suspicious. And Rothbard and Paul have given any thoughtful observer plenty to worry over.

Here are some excerpts from the Smith piece.

“THE ROTHBARDIAN FLIP-FLOP

One of the first times I talked to Murray Rothbard was at the 1975 California Libertarian Party Convention. Looking for a conversational topic, and having just read Arthur Koestler’s anthology The Heel of Achilles, I mentioned to Murray one of  the essays, “Mahatma Gandhi: A Re-valuation.” Calling it “Gandhi revisionism,” I related some of Koestler’s debunking, such as Gandhi’s practice of sleeping with young girls to
test his vow of celibacy.

I vividly recall Murray’s reaction. Stating that Gandhi was a “good guy” who was “sound” on British imperialism, Murray emphasized that one’s personal life is irrelevant to one’s political beliefs and accomplishments. A simple point perhaps, but it sunk in.

Considering this background, it is surprising to see the Koestler piece re-emerge. This time, however, the article (reprinted in a recent Koestler anthology) is used by Rothbard to attack Gandhi with surprising vindict¡veness. Calling Koestler’s piece “a superb revisionist article,” Rothbard employs a Classic Comics version to argue that Gandhi was a “little Hindu charlatan.”

Something changed Rothbard’s view of Gandhi. Was it a scholarly assessment of Gandhi’s ideas and influence? The facts suggest otherwise. Rothbard displays little familiarity with Gandhian literature, primary or secondary. He seems to  think that Koestler uncovered obscure information about Gandhi, but Koestler relied on standard biographies and anthologies (as his footnotes reveal). “The time has come,” Rothbard announces, “to rip the veil of sanctity that has been  carefully wrapped around Gandhi by his numerous disciples, that has been stirred anew by the hagiographical movie, and that greatly inspired the new Voluntaryist movement.”
What “veil of sanctity”? Gandhi’s sexual theories and practices,  his dietary habits, his treatment of his children — these and other “revisionist” aspects of Gandhi’s life were extensively discussed by Gandhi himself, and they appear in many  Gandhi biographies. This may be scintillating revisionist fare for Murray Rothbard, but not for people who have read more than a solitary article. (Rothbard apparently hasn’t even seen the movie.)

Has voluntaryism been fueled by a trumped-up, sanctified Gandhi? Not one iota of evidence is given to support this claim. Not one word of voluntaryist writing is quoted to support Rothbard’s contention that we are, in effect, Gandhi disciples…”

And this:

Nonviolent resistance is not just a fallacy or mistake. True, it is “Hindu baloney,” nonsense,” and a “fad,” but it “cuts deeper than that.” It is a “menace,” “a spectre haunting the libertarian movement” which “has been picking off some of the best and most radical Libertarian Party activists [i.e., RC members], ones
which the Libertarian Party can ill afford to lose if it is to retain its thrust and its principles.” (How such a ridiculous fad appeals to the Party’s best and brightest is not explained.)

Here lies the solution to our puzzle. Here lies the difference between the 1975 Gandhi and the 1983 Gandhi: the latter is a threat to the Party, whereas the former was not. The good of the Party required some quick, if inaccurate, revisionism, so Gandhi got the axe. Rothbard assassinated a dead man for “reasons of Party.” (My own keen analyst informs me that Rothbard searched for someone else to do the dirty work; but apparently unable to locate a good hit man, he did the job himself.”

Rothbard – Fudged Money Supply Figures?

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I came across this on the Mises forum, in my search for any other examples of Rothbard’s tendency (noted by several people) to manipulate facts to support his objectives.

I’ve noted some of them before. His treatment of Ayn Rand seems to be the strongest example and the best documented. The others I can’t judge yet, but they include

misrepresentation of Adam Smith (which provoked a rebuttal by David Gordon, which was then answered by David Friedman)

misrepresentation of Milton Friedman’s work (addressed by David Friedman)

and a couple of examples from banking history I’ve noted elsewhere.

Here is another example from Civil War history. Again, there could be other explanations for it (oversight, confusing data etc.), but it’s one more question mark. I have no wish to exaggerate his failings (as he did others), but it’s at the least very curious and troubling.

Here’s the comment as it appears on the forum (I’ll add links later):

I’m starting to research into the Panic of 1873 for a college project I have. Among other economic literature, I reviewed Rothbard’s “A History of Money and Banking in the United States”. Upon scrutinizing his money supply statistics, I’ve noticed either a vague (i.e, not explicitly distinguished) or downright false money aggregate of his.

At the beginning of his talk about the Civil War, Rothbard mentions that “over the entire war, the money supply rose from $745.4 [sic] million to$1.773 billion, an increase of 137.9 percent, or 27.9 percent per annum.” (p.130).

However, on page 153, Rothbard writes that “Total state and national bank notes and deposits rose from $835 million in 1865 to $1.964 billion in 1873, an increase of 135.2 percent or an increase of 16.9 percent per year.” (p.153)

So what happened here? At first I suspected that Rothbard was being ambiguous by referring to the later statistic as “bank money”, but later Rothbard seems to use it as his total statistic of “money supply”. Even if this wasn’t the true money supply, then that means Rothbard was lobbing off roughly $1billion (and more as currency increased) in all of his subsequent monetary calculations.

Did the total money supply drop by a “cataclysmic” 50% from 1865 to 1867, was Rothbard wrong on his money supply statistic for the Civil war or his later money supply statistic, or am I missing something here?

Note that if we treat $1.964 as the money supply as he seems to do, then using his earlier estimate (1.773) the expansion over nearly ten (8) years increased by a paltry10.77%, or 1.34% per year. In a similar statistic (though with different money aggregates), Friedman states that the money stock from 1867 to 1873 increased by 1.3% per year. Although this is inflationary, one wonders how such a small increase in the money supply could have caused a very serious banking panic/business cycle in 1873 (say what you will about the subsequent recession, the actual panic was very supposedly severe).

Although still optimistic there’s a way to make sense of this, I’m a little disgruntled by this mistake/ambiguity made by Rothbard. Either he just wanted to calculate a “total money supply only for the Civil War” and then proceeded to concentrate solely on bank deposits, or there is a large error in his statistics. I know he gets his money sources from the historical statistics, which I plan on consulting, but that doesn’t seem to answer his ambiguity/incorrectness.

Any thoughts on these money supply statistics? Any help is appreciated.

Well I got the book, 1957 and all. I felt an air of history as I pulled it off the shelf and sifted through its yellow and fading pages.

From what I can tell, there is good news and bad news.

The good news is that Rothbard’s money supply statistics add up, at least according to this book. All of his Civil War totals are obtained by adding total bank deposits, state bank notes, gold coins, silver  subsidiaries, fractional currencies, other U.S currency, greenbacks,  and national bank notes.

The bank news is that judging by this book, some of the statistics are questionable, and Rothbard should be severely criticized for his misleading interpretations. The most obvious is his 1865-1873, state and bank deposits and notes increased about 16.9% per annum. From the book, this is correct, but using highly suspect statistics. It is true that state and national bank notes and deposits increased from 1865 (roughly $869) to $1.964 in 1873, an increase of 16.9% per annum. However careful inspection reveals that according to the statistics, the number of deposits did not increase really increase 16.9% per annum, but rather 50% between last two reported years (1872-1332 and 1873-1964)! My guess is that the bank money (and to a greater extent total money supply) did not explode in one year, but rather the amount of banks voluntarily reported their deposits to the state banking authority. It even says in the forward to the particular section Rothbard used that “Prior to 1896, figures shown here include all national banks and all State banks that voluntarily reported to State banking departments in the United States..”. My guess is that with the Panic in 1873 and more banks under distress, they contacted the state authorities more so than before.

Taking out 1873, and just taking the totals from 1865 to 1872 (for whatever they are worth, considering that they are probably low due to faulty reports), the annual percentage increase was much lower, roughly 4% per year! For Rothbard to report these statistics that bank money increased 17% per annum when it reality it seems to have come only from 1)the last year 2)more likely bad statistics is downright sloppy and poor research.

Regardless of the factual accuracy of the Historical Statistics (I’m extremely hesitant to see bank totals increasing by 50% in one year), even with the statistics he is using they clearly did not increase 17% per year, as Rothbard is claiming.

The problem is he isn’t really stating that the annual expansion in bank deposits wasn’t 16.9%. It’d be one thing if the yearly averages were 10, 20, 12, 15, etc etc, which averaged out to 16.9%. But in the last year when you have a 50% increase lifting an otherwise 7-8 year statistical average of 4%, and then claiming that there was an average of 17% bank credit expansion,it  is very misleading and  resembles an outlier. In addition, it seems likely that the overall expansion wasn’t that great and there were less banks reporting in the late 1860s/early 1870s their financial conditions, which means the bank deposit figures for that time period (1860s) was abnormally low, giving the illusion of great bank credit growth than what actually occurred. Either the statistics are 1) Entirely truthful,which would give great doubt as to why no one has written about one of the U.S’ greatest yearly MS expansions 2)Not accurate, and Rothbard was misleading to use these aggregates and conducted poor research. Even if he wanted to use these numbers, he should have at least written in a footnote that the totals weren’t accurate, especially the 16.9% figure he was using.

EDIT: “The problem is he isn’t really stating that the annual expansion in bank deposits wasn’t 16.9%. It’d be one thing if the yearly averages were 10, 20, 12, 15, etc etc, which averaged out to 16.9%. But in the last year when you have a 50% increase lifting an otherwise 7-8 year statistical average of 4%, and then claiming that there was an average of 17% bank credit expansion,it  is very misleading and  resembles an outlier. In addition, it seems likely that the overall expansion wasn’t that great and there were less banks reporting in the late 1860s/early 1870s their financial conditions, which means the bank deposit figures for that time period (1860s) was abnormally low, giving the illusion of great bank credit growth than what actually occurred. Either the statistics are 1) Entirely truthful,which would give great doubt as to why no one has written about one of the U.S’ greatest yearly MS expansions 2)Not accurate, and Rothbard was misleading to use these aggregates and conducted poor research. Even if he wanted to use these numbers, he should have at least written in a footnote that the totals weren’t accurate, especially the 16.9% figure he was using.”

Beneath this comment is a response from someone who lays out various possible explanations and seems to think Rothbard wouldn’t have manipulated the data intentionally.

There could be many reasons for this error.  I don’t think he was lying.

He states clearly that this is the result of pyramiding of state bank deposits on top of national bank deposits and it doesn’t explicitly say that this happened in one year.  It says “…after 1870…” not in 1872.  Also, he says, “From then on [May 1871] paper money would be held consonant with the U.S. Constitution.” (p. 153)  Although, his stating it as ‘percent per year’ could be considered dubious and was very generous to his argument.

If we are to assume that the statistics prior to May 1871 (the under-reporting) would not have counted all of the paper money as some states had made it illegal. (p. 152).  And my guess is that the unreported money that was being counted after 1871 was so because the state banks had a new Federal law forcing them to redeem all of the paper they had and were using. (Kind of an argument that if the Federal government would have stayed out of it there would never have been the statistical explosion that Rothbard is exploiting, which ironically Rothbard would have wanted.)  To me this could be an explanation as to the dramatic rise that Rothbard was seeing in total money supply.  Again, he could also have been following, or interpreting, again in a possibly conspicuous manner, along with the Federal law.  But lying, I don’t think.

PsyWar: COINTELPRO Infiltration Of Dissidents

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From the War at Home Archive:

“False Media Stories: COINTELPRO documents expose frequent collusion between news media personnel and the FBI to publish false and distorted material at the Bureau’s behest. The FBI routinely leaked derogatory information to its collaborators in the news media. It also created newspaper and magazine articles and television “documentaries” which the media knowingly or unknowingly carried as their own. Copies were sent anonymously or under bogus letterhead to activists’ financial backers, employers, business associates, families, neighbors, church officials, school administrators, landlords, and whomever else might cause them trouble.

One FBI media fabrication claimed that Jean Seberg, a white film star active in anti-racist causes, was pregnant by a prominent Black leader. The Bureau leaked the story anonymously to columnist Joyce Haber and also had it passed to her by a “friendly” source in the Los Angeles Times editorial staff. The item appeared without attribution in Haber’s nationally syndicated column of May 19, 1970. Seberg’s husband has sued the FBI as responsible for her resulting stillbirth, nervous breakdown, and suicide.

Bogus Leaflets, Pamphlets, and Other Publications: COINTELPRO documents show that the FBI routinely put out phony leaflets, posters, pamphlets, newspapers, and other publications in the name of movement groups. The purpose was to discredit the groups and turn them against one another.

FBI cartoon leaflets were used to divide and disrupt the main national anti-war coalition of the late 1960s. Similar fliers were circulated in 1968 and 1969 in the name of the Black Panthers and the United Slaves (US), a rival Black nationalist group based in Southern California. The phony Panther/US leaflets, together with other covert operations, were credited with subverting a fragile truce between the two groups and igniting an explosion of internecine violence that left four Panthers dead, many more wounded, and a once-flourishing regional Black movement decimated.

Another major COINTELPRO operation involved a children’s coloring book which the Black Panther Party had rejected as anti-white and gratuitously violent. The FBI revised the coloring book to make it even more offensive. Its field offices then distributed thousands of copies anonymously or under phony organizational letterheads. Many backers of the Party’s program of free breakfasts for children withdrew their support after the FBI conned them into believing that the bogus coloring book was being used in the program.

Forged Correspondence: Former employees have confirmed that the FBI has the capacity to produce state-of-the-art forgery. This capacity was used under COINTELPRO to create snitch jackets and bogus communications that exacerbated differences among activists and disrupted their work.

One such forgery intimidated civil rights worker Muhammed Kenyatta (Donald Jackson), causing him to abandon promising projects in Jackson, Mississippi. Kenyatta had foundation grants to form Black economic cooperatives and open a “Black and Proud School” for dropouts. He was also a student organizer at nearby Tougaloo College. In the winter of 1969, after an extended campaign of FBI and police harassment, Kenyatta received a letter, purportedly from the Tougaloo College Defense Committee, which “directed” that he cease his political activities immediately. If he did not “heed our diplomatic and well-thought-out warning,” the committee would consider taking measures “which would have a more direct effect and which would not be as cordial as this note.” Kenyatta and his wife left. Only years later did they learn it was not Tougaloo students, but FBI covert operators who had driven them out.

Later in 1969, FBI agents fabricated a letter to the mainly white organizers of a proposed Washington, D.C. anti-war rally demanding that they pay the local Black community a $20,000 “security bond.” This attempted extortion was composed in the name of the local Black United Front (BUF) and signed with the forged signature of its leader. FBI informers inside the BUF then tried to get the group to back such a demand, and Bureau contacts in the media made sure the story received wide publicity.

The Senate Intelligence Committee uncovered a series of FBI letters sent to top Panther leaders throughout 1970 in the name of Connie Mathews, an intermediary between the Black Panther Party’s national office and Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, in exile in Algeria. These exquisite forgeries were prepared on pilfered stationery in Panther vernacular expertly simulated by the FBI’s Washington, D.C. laboratory. Each was forwarded to an FBI Legal Attache at a U.S. Embassy in a foreign country that Mathews was due to travel through and then posted at just the right time “in such a manner that it cannot be traced to the Bureau.” The FBI enhanced the eerie authenticity of these fabrications by lacing them with esoteric personal tidbits culled from electronic surveillance of Panther homes and offices. Combined with other forgeries, anonymous letters and phone calls, and the covert intervention of FBI and police infiltrators, the Mathews correspondence succeeded in inflaming intra-party mistrust and rivalry until it erupted into the bitter public split that shattered the organization in the winter of 1971.

Anonymous Letters and Telephone Calls: During the 1960s, activists received a steady flow of anonymous letters and phone calls which turn out to have been from the FBI. Some were unsigned, while others bore bogus names or purported to come from unidentified activists in phony or actual organizations.

Many of these bogus communications promoted racial divisions and fears, often by exploiting and exacerbating tensions between Jewish and Black activists. One such FBI-concocted letter went to SDS members who had joined Black students protesting New York University’s discharge of a Black teacher in 1969. The supposed author, an unnamed “SDS member,” urged whites to break ranks and abandon the Black students because of alleged anti-Semitic slurs by the fired teacher and his supporters.

Other anonymous letters and phone calls falsely accused movement leaders of collaboration with the authorities, corruption, or sexual affairs with other activists’ mates. The letter on the next page was used to provoke “a lasting distrust” between a Black civil rights leader and his wife. Its FBI authors hoped that his “concern over what to do about it” would “detract from his time spent in the plots and plans of his organization.” As in the Seberg incident, inter-racial sex was a persistent theme. The husband of one white woman active in civil rights and anti-war work filed for divorce soon after receiving the FBI-authored letter reproduced on page 50.

Still other anonymous FBI communications were designed to intimidate dissidents, disrupt coalitions, and provoke violence. Calls to Stokely Carmichael’s mother warning of a fictitious Black Panther murder plot drove him to leave the country in September 1968. Similar anonymous FBI telephone threats to SNCC leader James Forman were instrumental in thwarting efforts to bring the two groups together.

The Chicago FBI made effective use of anonymous letters to sabotage the Panthers efforts to build alliances with previously apolitical Black street gangs. The most extensive of these operations involved the Black P. Stone Nation, or “Blackstone Rangers,” a powerful confederation of several thousand local Black youth. Early in 1969, as FBI and police infiltrators in the Rangers spread rumors of an impending Panther attack, the Bureau sent Ranger chief Jeff Fort an incendiary note signed “a black brother you don’t know.” Fort’s supposed friend warned that “The brothers that run the Panthers blame you for blocking their thing and there’s supposed to be a hit out for you.” Another FBI-concocted anonymous “black man” then informed Chicago Panther leader Fred Hampton of a Ranger plot “to get you out of the way.” These fabrications squelched promising talks between the two groups and enabled Chicago Panther security chief William O’Neal, an FBI-paid provocateur, to instigate a series of armed confrontations from which the Panthers barely managed to escape without serious casualties.

Pressure Through Employers, Landlords, and Others: FBI records reveal repeated maneuvers to generate pressure on dissidents from their parents, children, spouses, landlords, employers, college administrators, church superiors, welfare agencies, credit bureaus, and the like. Anonymous letters and telephone calls were often used to this end. Confidential official communications were effective in bringing to bear the Bureau’s immense power and authority.

Agents’ reports indicate that such FBI intervention denied Martin Luther King, Jr., and other 1960s activists any number of foundation grants and public speaking engagements. It also deprived alternative newspapers of their printers, suppliers, and distributors and cost them crucial advertising revenues when major record companies were persuaded to take their business elsewhere. Similar government manipulation may underlie steps recently taken by some insurance companies to cancel policies held by churches giving sanctuary to refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala.

Tampering With Mail and Telephone Service: The FBI and CIA routinely used mail covers (the recording of names and addresses) and electronic surveillance in order to spy on 1960s movements. The CIA alone admitted to photographing the outside of 2.7 million pieces of first-class mail during the 1960s and to opening almost 215,000. Government agencies also tampered with mail, altering, delaying, or “disappearing” it. Activists were quick to blame one another, and infiltrators easily exploited the situation to exacerbate their tensions.

Dissidents’ telephone communications often were similarly obstructed. The SDS Regional Office in Washington, D.C., for instance, mysteriously lost its phone service the week preceding virtually every national anti-war demonstration in the late 1960s.

Disinformation to Prevent or Disrupt Movement Meetings and Activities: A favorite COINTELPRO tactic uncovered by Senate investigators was to advertise a non-existent political event, or to misinform people of the time and place of an actual one. They reported a variety of disruptive FBI “dirty tricks” designed to cast blame on the organizers of movement events.”

Comment

Some of my experiences of internet harassment over the past five years sound a lot like this stuff. But in my case, I’m pretty sure that the people involved were private individuals, who maybe used some of their government connections or authority. At some point, one ex-CIA official [ a guy who had a history of out-of-control behavior and had had run-ins with the law] was actually writing nasty stuff on this blog, and may have been behind a few other things.

But the rest was private. Which suggests that between corporations (correction: criminal corporations) and  government (correction: unconstitutional governments), there’s not much to choose.

Anyway, this kind of history of government infiltration of activist groups  should make people very wary about their communications. The email in your inbox can be forged and your own name could be tacked onto things you never wrote.  With all the powers at their disposal, if the government decided to frame someone, they would be able to get or create all kinds of incriminating stuff.

That’s why I don’t buy the Gupta verdict at all. With five years of investigation by two different outfits, with thousands of wire-taps, they only got him talking to Raj once? And even then, there was nothing illegal in that conversation….