Press Action ::: PA Feedback: Gitlin, Shannon and Freemasons

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

PA Feedback: Gitlin, Shannon and Freemasons

Today is free-for-all Wednesday. Send Press Action your comments about what you’ve read here and we’ll publish them on Wednesdays. Use our feedback form or send an email to . Please let us know if you want your full name, location or email address published. Otherwise, we’ll just use your first name and first letter of last name.

Re: Not Another Leftist Ideology Czar!

I read your article about the four former leftists criticizing the antiwar movement.

Of the four named, the most disappointing is Gitlin, who did a fairly adequate job of writing about the Sixties. Todd has from the git-go (no pun intended) been telling the antiwar movement to go slow, and not to offend anyone ever since 9/11. I remember seeing him on TV within a week of 9/11, admonishing people not to proclaim a connection between US foreign policy in the Mideast fomenting the attack on the WTC and Pentagon. He didn’t disavow the connection, but like a nervous Nell, wringing his hands, he told us to be cautious and not offend the “natural” jingoistic response.

I admired Gitlin at one point, and must say he has disappointed me (and others) with his reactionary stands during the past two years.

Enjoyed your website.

Signed, Marc C.

Re: Press Action Hero of the Week: MARY KELLY

The “Shannon Peace Camp” is a bunch of misguided souls whose hearts are in the right place but just don’t get it!! This whole thing is really simple. We have irrefutable evidence linking Hussein, Al Queda and other terrorist groups together. Iraq may not act directly in the attacks, but they harbor, fund and assist them in every other way. These people must go! Americas’ beef is not with nor has ever been with the innocent civilians of Afghanistan and Iraq. However, we will not let anything stop us from protecting ourselves even if that means taking the fight to their backyard. If they don’t want bad things to happen to them, they are free to oust the remnants of the Taliban and Al Queda, as well as Saddam and his cronies, so as to prevent themselves from being used as human shields. If they cannot, then what makes you think that those same lovely gents won’t continue to murder and maim their own people, not to mention starve them to death in droves, just as they have always done?? That said, the lesser of the evils is to go in, clean out the hornet’s nest and help those folks start fresh, with a government in power that will take care of its people rather than use them as human shields. It is ugly, profoundly disturbing, and sad, yet it is the horrible simple truth of the matter. Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden are about as trustworthy and open to diplomatic solutions as Ireland is open to a renewed occupation by the English. So, let’s get this horrible thing done before you and yours all get killed in a terrorist attack on your next visit to Disney World. If you just don’t believe it can or will happen to you, just ask the families of the 9/11 victims whether or not they thought it could happen to their loved ones, as they all left for work that fateful morning.

Signed, An American

Re: Not Another Leftist Ideology Czar!

Thanks for your piece in CounterPunch. I looked up the Dominick piece and found the following bit, which sounds more than a little like the positions of anti-left ex-leftists he is attacking:

“They are right that Clark is not a sound leader, and that the Workers World Party front group poses a serious, long-term threat to the Left if it continues to grow and garner support from diverse groups. Numerous concerns about Workers World front groups and their ploys and tactics have been exposed of late. But each of these four writers has also managed to lump most of the present day Left in with Clark and his miniscule minions. The truth is, most American leftists are anything but pro-Saddam/pro-Stalinism types like Clark’s WWP. And there is plenty of middle ground between the genocide apologetics of Ramsey Clark’s ilk and the venomous pro-Establishment viewpoints of wankers like Cooper, Gitlin, Corn and Hitchens.”

It’s true that WWP engages in some antidemocratic shenanigans that piss off members of the left, including other communists. But for the life of me, I can’t find any evidence that they are pro-Saddam or pro-Stalinist (indeed, I believe they are a Trotskyite group).

Signed, Jim H.

Re: Not Another Leftist Ideology Czar!

Thanks for highlighting the self-serving twaddle which is too-often being propagated by would-be “Elite Leftists”.

One point I would make is that people like Kazin seem to have been utterly propagandised by the Bush administration’s foam-specked rantings.

Kazin’s stated requirement that the anti-war movement “clarify how they would achieve security, for individuals and the nation”, implicitly accepts Bush’s kindergarten-philosophy that “they hate us because we’re free”. Kazin seeems to ignore 150 years of malformed and biased foreign policy - the root cause of the hatreds which express themselves in violence towards the US (and in particular icons of its government and icons of corporate interests which control the government). {It is my belief that whoever did the WTC has no “beef” with the US citizenry-at-large, but rather with the financial-military-industrial complex and its corrupt nexus with the White House}.

One last point - please let’s GET RID OF the stupid “Left-Right” false dichotomy in the anti-war movement. I realise that Americans almost NEED for everything to be a choice between two alternatives, but it is an insult to thinking people. (Financial markets are dominated with the same false dichotomy - US stocks or US bonds… a two-asset world… it is for the feeble minded).

For example, I am a classically trained economist who worked for almost a decade at one of Australia’s (allegedly) “right wing” think tanks - and from there worked in the financial markets for a few years before retiring at age 35.

My economics is “markets where markets work” - i.e., any market where there are not non-internalisable spillover benefits or costs. But the market must be GENUINE (i.e., not corrupt) and sound regulation is therefore a must, since “markets plus democracy” tend to foster corruption when the pot of money gets large enough (witness the Bush Junta and the Oil and Arms industries).

My politics is anti-democracy - in line with the Founders of the United States - with isolationist, non-interventionist foreign policy (with unfettered free trade).

My social view is pro-drugs, pro-abortion, anti-special-interest/affirmative action, anti-religion.

And I am a Freemason, to top it off!

So am I “Right” or “Left”? No.

One thing is CERTAIN: I am anti-WAR - and that should be all that matters when the world’s most militarised nation is being run headlong into war by a cabal of corrupt religious nutballs and Zionists ("Israel and Oil, in that order").

Signed, Geoffrey T.

Re: Not Another Leftist Ideology Czar!

FYI ... I’m in the peace movement. I’m not a patriot. The idea that America is a better nation than most other nations is ludicrous given our history and current level of exploitation, inequality and violence. I’ve lived in Europe, btw. Much nicer than here. Canada too.

Besides, I value people over nations. You should too. American lives are not worth more than, say, Indonesian or Iraqi or Mexican or French lives. Therefore, I cannot be a patriot because American Patriotism, in anyone’s definition, promotes American and American lives above all others.

#### patriotism in all its forms. I’m an American by birth, not by choice. I’m an Internationalist by choice and proud of it. Until you can say you are an internationalist too, you are not for peace. Too bad you don’t have the guts that Robert Fisk does and challenge the notion of patriotism itself.

If this be treason, let us make the most of it.

Signed, Jeff B.

Re: Not Another Leftist Ideology Czar!

I like your reply. I am planning on writing a “LTTE” tonight, and sending it to the Post. Who knows if they’ll print it.

My problem with Kazin is an inference that what he labels as “anti-american” dissent is not acceptable or successful. I would argue that all dissent is american. After all, some of us have been dissenting since 1787.

It was quite lame of him to target Chomsky, Hoffman, and Malcom X as “anti-american” dissenters and it was insulting to denigrate Thomas Paine. Paine’s anti-Washington and Adams letters written in the late 1790s and early 1800s are quite powerful. I am sure Kazin would find them anti-american, as he would Langston Hughes and quite a few others.

Signed, Jim Downey, New Jersey,

Re: Press Action Hero of the Week: MARY KELLY

How can you label such an anarchist a “hero”? Ireland has such a spotty record when it comes to “innocent civilians.” It should be ashamed to endorse this garbage.

The United States takes a significant role in world leadership. Mostly because Europeans are too timid. Need you have another holocaust before you take action on a world threat? How many Adolph’s and Stalins do you require before Europe gets off its backside and demonstrates leadership against totalitarian regimes?

Condemn US action through your press and demonstrations. Destroying American property is neither heroic nor fruitful. Ask Osama Bin Laden.

Signed, Keith Helmke, Nashville

Re: Press Action Hero of the Week: MARY KELLY

The criminal act performed by Mary Kelly in alleged response to “criminal acts” by the United States and its military forces should be an embarrassment for the Irish people. Political views aside, the actions by the United States against the Taliban regime were in full compliance with the International Law of Armed Conflict. In response to harboring and aiding the organization responsible for the murder of 3,000 innocent civilians, International Law stipulates that the United States acted in accordance with all pertinent directives. While Ms. Kelly and her friends may not agree with International Law, their criminal act of vandalism is far from heroic and will do nothing to further their cause. She and her friends should concentrate on the politics of their own country and find a cause to help the Irish people, although I am sure it would be as flashy.

Signed, Robert B.

Re: Occupied Territories to Occupier’s Territories?

Some readers, claiming political neutrality, would have us overlook the political realities facing the people of Palestine in order to enjoy the alleged “beauty” of a story which furthers the dispossession of Palestinians. Far from reducing to the question of Palestine to political semantics, Mr. Akram rightly points out that the Zionist takeover of Palestine in order to solve Europe’s “Jewish problem” has had human consequences that Herzl and other European colonialists either could not or would not consider. The West Bank is Palestine, not Israel. This is not semantics, but reality. To refer to “Israel’s West Bank” is but one more attempt to deny the existence of Palestinians and their legitimate claim to lands stolen from them which are now currently under ILLEGAL military occupation. A review of over 60 UN resolutions condemning Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories might benefit those who dismiss Mr. Akram’s hard-hitting and factual analysis.

Signed, Daniel Jacob, Washington, D.C.

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