Sunday, July 31, 2016

Hillary Rodham Clinton's 1960's Work For GOP Politicians Revisited

During the late 1960's most Democratic Party voters who are now over 60 years-of-age did not work for Republican Party politicians like the then-Republican Minority Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives (and later Republican Vice-President and Republican President) Gerald Ford or the then-Republican Congressional Representative (and later Republican President Nixon's Secretary of Defense) Melvin Laird.

Nor did most Democratic Party voters who are now over 60 years-of-age support the unsuccessful campaign in 1968 by the pro-Vietnam War, billionaire plutocrat and then-Republican New York Governor (and later Republican Vice-President) Nelson Rockefeller to get nominated as the Republican Party's presidential nominee at the 1968 Miami Republican National Convention.

Yet in her 2003 book Living History (for which she was paid more than $10 million in book advance and book royalties by the Viacom-CBS media conglomerate's Simon & Schuster book publishing subsidiary), former President Bill Clinton's wife--2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton--wrote the following:

"By the mid-1960s...I had been elected President of our college's Young Republicans during my freshman year...My Vice-President and friend, Betsy Griffith...stayed in the Republican Party, along with her husband, the political consultant John Deardourff...

"I had applied for the Wellesley Internship Program in Washington, D.C....Professor Alan Schechter, the program's Director...assigned me to intern at the House Republicans Conference. He knew I had come to college as a Republican...I...ended up reporting for duty to a group headed by the Minority leader Gerald Ford and including Melvin Laird of Wisconsin and Charles Goodell of New York, who befriended and advised me...

"...Goodell was later appointed to the Senate by Governor Nelson Rockefeller to replace Robert Kennedy...Toward the end of my internship, Goodell asked me...to go with him to the Republican Convention in Miami to work on behalf of Governor Rockefeller's...effort to wrest his party's nomination...I jumped at the chance and headed for Florida...We staffed the Rockefeller for President suites, taking phone calls and delivering messages to and from Rockefeller's political emissaries and delegates...I...didn't leave the Republican Party as much as it left me..."


Saturday, July 30, 2016

Did Hillary Rodham Clinton Campaign For GOP Opponent of 1964 Civil Rights Act in 1964 U.S. Presidential Campaign?

Most Democratic Party voters who are now over 60 years-of-age were glad to see the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed by the U.S. Congress. And most Democratic Party voters who are now over 60 years-of-age were glad to see that the 1964 Republican Party presidential nominee who voted in the U.S. Senate against passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Barry Goldwater, was not elected in November 1964 to be the U.S. President.

Yet in her 2003 book Living History (for which she was paid more than $10 million in book advance and book royalties by the Viacom-CBS media conglomerate's Simon & Schuster book publishing subsidiary), former President Bill Clinton's wife--2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton--wrote the following:

"...My father, Hugh F. Rodham, owned a small business...He started his own print plant in a building on the North Side [of Chicago]. He employed day laborers...

"...My dad was a rock-ribbed...conservative Republican and proud of it...By the Fall of 1960, my world was expanding and so were my political sensibilities. John F. Kennedy won the presidential election, to my father's consternation. He supported...Richard M. Nixon...Betsy Johnston and I...heard about a group of Republicans asking for volunteers to...uncover vote fraud...Betsy and I decided to participate...Betsy and I separated and went off with total strangers. I ended up with a couple who drove me to the South Side [of Chicago]...and told me to knock on doors and ask people their names so I could...find evidence to overturn the election...When I finished, I stood on the corner waiting to be picked up, happy that I'd ferreted out proof of my father's contention that `Daley stole the election for Kennedy.'...

"I was interested in politics from an early age...I...ran for student council and junior class Vice President. I was also an active Young Republican and, later, a Goldwater girl, right down to my cowgirl outfit and straw cowboy hat...Paul Carlson...a very conservative Republican...encouraged me to read Senator Barry Goldwater's...book, The Conscience of a Conservative. That inspired me to write my...paper on the American conservative movement...I liked Senator Goldwater...Years later, I admired his outspoken support of individual rights...When Goldwater learned I had supported him in 1964, he...invited me to come see him. I went to his home in Phoenix in 1996 and spent a wonderful hour talking to him and his dynamic wife, Susan..."






Friday, July 29, 2016

Would Hillary Clinton's Election As U.S. President Violate 22nd Amendment To U.S. Constitution?

According to the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, "No person shall be elected to the office of the President MORE THAN TWICE, and no person who has held the office of President, OR ACTED AS PRESIDENT, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President MORE THAN ONCE..."

Yet in her 2003 book Living History (for which she was paid more than $10 million in a book advance and book royalties by the Viacom-CBS media conglomerate's Simon & Schuster book publishing subsidiary), former President Bill Clinton's wife--2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton--wrote the following:

"About...8 years I spent in the White House...with Bill Clinton...I walked into the White House on January 20, 1993...

"By the time I crossed the threshold of the White House, I had been shaped by my family upbringing...as the daughter of a staunch conservative father and...Bill's wife...

"Since leaving the White House I...embarked on a phase of my life as a U.S. Senator from New York...This memoir illustrates how my success as a candidate for the Senate arose out of...White House...

"My husband assumed the Presidency...I supported his agenda...He left office in January 2001...

"My 8 years in the White House tested...our nation's Constitution...This book is the story of how I experienced those 8 years.." 

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Australian Anti-War Activist Joan Coxsedge's July 24, 2016 Letter




The following letter from Australian anti-war and Latin American solidarity activist Joan Coxsedge--who is also a former member of the Victoria state parliament--originally appeared in an Australian-Cuban solidarity group's newsletter.

“July 24, 2016

“Dear Comrades,

“Sad, sad times for mother earth with its wars and environmental and economic devastation. No wonder so many are unhinged. Evil begetting evil in spades. Some a direct consequence of the Iraq inferno. Six years in the writing, Chilcot’s damning 6000-page report on Iraq (so far we’ve only had a prĂ©cis), spelled out some of the catastrophic consequences, but only told part of the story.

“A Nuremburg trial would have been a better option for the Bush/Blair/Howard war criminals. Blalr snivelled about his dishonourable role and then had the gall to say the world is ‘better and safer’ as a result, with the other two amigos from the Coalition of the Willing agreeing. If they were helicoptered into Iraq, into Libya, into Syria, into Afghanistan, into the Gaza Strip, and left for an indefinite period, they might think again.

“But why is Gulf War One (1990-91) never mentioned? George Bush Snr's ‘Operation Desert Storm’ (launched to catch New York’s evening news) left Iraq on its knees. US men in their killing machines unleashed 90,000 around-the-clock bombing runs, the equivalent of seven Hiroshimas, precipitating one of the great civilian slaughters of the late 20th century.

“The cluster bombs, the fuel air bombs, the napalm, the phosphorous and fearful anti-personnel weaponry with names like Adam, Beehive and Bouncing Betty, went hand-in-hand with a decade of savage sanctions that destroyed Iraq’s entire infrastructure, its electricity, clean water, sewerage, communications, hospitals, schools and agriculture. Spare parts, embargoed like hospital equipment, drugs and pain-killers. Iraq was finished, but apparently not enough for George Bush Jnr and his clique of neo-cons who used 9/11 to unleash ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’ and full-on invasion and occupation, trumpeting it was ‘the greatest moral crusade since the Second World War’, a ‘moral crusade’ Australia rushed to join.

“But this wasn’t a war against generals or presidents. This was a war against ordinary people, people like us walking along roads, travelling in buses, in hospitals, in coffee shops, going to school, going to work, going to the market.

“The bombs weren’t unleashed to protect human rights. Gulf Wars One and Two were wars for oil, for US strategic interests and a reminder to the rest of the world that the global cop was back on the beat. To con us, PR hacks and spin doctors went to work with their phoney slogans and monstrous lies like Hill and Knowlton and the powerful Rendon Group. As Robert Fisk commented: ‘Don’t tell me that America would have invaded Iraq if its chief export was beetroot’.

“This week we heard ad nauseum the rather clumsy plagiarism by Trump’s missus in her keynote address to the Republican faithful. There were precedents. Tony Blair’s propaganda dossier on Iraq was a cut-and-paste job pinched from a student’s website, large slabs of which were then pinched by George W for his own inept presentation.

“But Washington believes it has a god-given right to do what it likes against anyone not sufficiently up its backside, but not Australia. Heavens no, we’ll give you what you want even before you ask!  We were there during Indonesia’s brutal 1965 anti-communist purge after the US gave its nod of approval, during the Vietnam War and had ASIS agents working with the CIA in the destruction of Allende’s Chile. We supply bases for their war games and assassinations and manipulation of trade unions and ignore their biological attacks against countries like Cuba.

“Currently, Washington has blockades against dozens of countries. Makes me wonder about the recent visit of Vice Pres. Joe Biden. You can bet London to a brick he didn’t come here to open Melbourne’s new cancer centre or chat with a few political nonentities. Apart from demanding more support for a buggeredup Iraq, what else?

“And here we are post-election, or what passed for one, with important policies on by-pass. Greed is Good Malcolm is back licking his chops getting ready to further stuff up our stuffed-up economy along with a new round of dire warnings and threats, with Governor-General Cosgrove on hand if needed.

“Some may recall that a few years ago, the then Major General Cosgrove, spoke at the Australian Army’s annual Land Warfare conference in Sydney which was reported in the Financial Review. Cosgrove recommended that the Australian Army should be prepared to to take part in operations against civilian dissidents or militant trade unionists in an industrial situation. The general warned that the attacks against the US had ‘blurred the hitherto quite distinct boundaries of the functions and responsibilities of the security, law and order and administrative arms of government…’ Thank you but no thank you, Mr Cosgrove. One former jumped-up CIA-run Governor-General by the name of Kerr is more than enough.

“In the UK Jeremy Corbyn has his back to the wall facing a virulent campaign from the Tories and the Blairites. He supports trade unions, the re-nationalisation of Britain’s  railway system and ignores public opinion polls, threatening the status quo.

“Union boss Len McClusky has accused Britain’s secret agencies of using agents provocateurs to undermine Corbyn. ‘We found out a couple of years ago that the chair of my union, the Transport and General Workers, was an MI5 informant when a strike was taking place that I was involved in (1972)’, said McClusky. ‘Anyone who thinks that isn’t happening doesn’t live in the same world that I live in…that there’s not all kinds of right-wingers able to disguise themselves and stir up trouble?’

“On the other side of Europe, Turkey’s hard man President Erdogan is having a field day purging large swathes of the army, the judiciary, municipalities, journalists, universities, anyone who might oppose him after the aborted coup d’etat, lists prepared in advance by an ASIO-type outfit who probably let the ‘coup’ roll on to justify his ‘cleansing’.

“So any chance you get, talk to people about a different society, one that puts people before profits… Viva!


“Joan Coxsedge”

Sunday, July 24, 2016

`Orlando Massacre' folk song lyrics





An anti-war topical folk song about mass shootings in USA and endless U.S. drone wars abroad that was written after the 2016 massacre in Orlando, Florida.

(lyrics)
(chorus)
On Virginia Tech's campus
In a Sandy Hook school
And in California and Colorado
And a Black church massacre
In South Carolina
And then 49 killed in Orlando.

(verses)
They claim drone wars in foreign lands
"Protect our security"
Yet the more they make war to change regimes
The less secure people seem to be. (chorus)

They cut programs that treat the mentally ill
To pay billions for "homeland security"
Yet they don't stop weapons being sold to the insane
Before they go on a shooting spree. (chorus)

He worked for G4S
That gets contracts to provide "security"
Yet before licensing him to shoot his gun
They failed to do enough screening. (chorus)

In the LGBT Pulse club
The homophobic guard staged his massacre
To kill civilians was his goal
In his lonely, mixed-up, suicidal war. (chorus)

The leaders still don't know that drone attacks
Create hate and not world peace
And negotiations, not more endless war,
Is the way to get homeland security. (chorus)

Thursday, July 7, 2016

`In Hibbing and Minneapolis" historical folk song lyrics




Put together a few months ago a public domain historical folk song (which I still haven't yet memorized, however) about Hibbing and Minneapolis's pre-1961 hidden history, that contains the following lyrics:

(verses 1 and 2)
In Hibbing, Minnesota
Guess who owned a furniture store?
And guess whose grandfather
Owned the town theaters?
Rich whites owned its iron mine
And Greyhound's Jim Crow bus lines
In Hibbing and Minneapolis
The racist bells did chime.

In Minneapolis, Minnesota
Pillsbury owned the City
And owned with Lumber and Milling Trusts
The University.
Rich whites controlled its politics
Its banks, mills and factories
In Hibbing and Minneapolis
Guess who lived in poverty? 

(refrain)
Some people create myths
Or sell us fantasies
Others still fight for Freedom
And protest against Society.

(verses 3 and 4)
In Minneapolis, Minnesota
A Citizens Alliance tried
To bust the Teamsters Union
And break the drivers' strike.
To keep an "open shop"
While keeping closed social clubs
In Hibbing and Minneapolis
That's how things were done.

In Minneapolis, Minnesota
Some could not rent or own
A home in any neighborhood
Except in its Northern zone.
And the jobless in Gateway District
Were bulldozed from Downtown
In Hibbing and Minneapolis
They didn't want the poor around. 

(refrain)
Some people create myths
Or sell us fantasies
Others still fight for Freedom
And protest against Society.

(verses 5 and 6)
In Minneapolis, Minnesota
No firm did hire you
If you grew up on the North Side
Or lived on Snelling Avenue.
And professors Weinberg and Wiggins
Got fired for their politics
In Hibbing and Minneapolis
You couldn't be too leftist. 

In Hibbing and Minneapolis
Most whites just sang of love
And musicians showed off their skills
And competed for jobs in clubs.
And those who were ambitious
Got big wealth in New York
Yet in Hibbing and Minneapolis
People still are out of work.

(refrain)
Some people create myths
Or sell us fantasies
Others still fight for Freedom
And protest against Society. 

Sunday, July 3, 2016

Australian Anti-War Activist Joan Coxsedge's June 26, 2016 Letter

The following letter from Australian anti-war and Latin American solidarity activist Joan Coxsedge—who is also a former member of the Victoria state parliament--originally appeared in an Australian-Cuban solidarity group’s newsletter)

“June 26, 2016

“Dear Comrades,

“Elections are all around us, engulfing us in trivia, with the important bits pushed to the sidelines. Trump versus Clinton, Brexit versus Stayit and Shorten versus Turnbull.

“Brexit won and has caused apoplexy in Brussels and financial circles. Jeremy Corbyn hit the nail on the head with his comment that many communities are fed up with cuts, fed up with economic dislocation and feel very angry at the way they’ve been betrayed and marginalized. From Tariq Ali: It was a revolt against the political establishment’. From Pilger: An act of raw democracy…millions refused to be bullied, intimidated and dismissed with open contempt. But they’re still stuck with capitalism and all its inequalities.

“It’s anyone’s guess what the Yankees will do faced with a Wall Street/Military Industrial Complex former Goldwater Girl versus a racist buffoon. Fifty-one Clintonites in the US State Department recently bunged off a petition - leaked to the press - urging for yet another illegal, murderous regime change war, this time against Syria. Preparing for a showdown with Russia? And Iran? An equal opportunity triumph for Hillary. Both boys and girls will die in World War 3.

“As for our home-grown affair, it limps along boring us silly, reminding us of Sondheim’s hit song, ’Send in the Clowns’. Turnbull's a creep I have always disliked, but I reckon he’s turned into an even more opportunistic creep run by the hard right, sickening in the way he’s used the CFA debacle, a state matter, to get a few anti-union brownie points and the way he runs around the marginals indiscriminately chucking our money around to get a lift in the polls. And you can bet London to a brick he’ll weigh in about ‘today’s uncertainties’ blah, blah. Trust him and his right-wing mates? On anything? You’d need fur for brains. And then there’s Shorten…

“An era of commercialized sloganeering, with everything up for sale. A two-party duopoly, a tyranny where the issues we should be talking about are off-limits, not debated or discussed.

“Some of us, not nearly enough, fume and rage and get out on the streets to protest against the greedy and corrupt, for safer food, cleaner air, better pensions, a freer media, more open government, waging peace instead of war, for indigenous rights, for public everything instead of privatized rorts ripping the heart out of our education and health care systems, along with science and the arts. But the powers-that-be have congealed wax in their ears.

“As I’ve said many, many times, elections are only about the sauce with which we’ll be eaten. Everywhere, we see the damage wreaked by transnational corporations, financially, economically, ecologically in a creeping colonization of our daily lives, where just 147 organizations now control 40 percent of global trade. It feels as if we’re taking part in a slow motion coup d’etat swamped by a rising corporatocracy that should have been brought to heel by governments decades ago.

“A study in 2000 by Corporate Watch and the Global Policy Forum highlighted that of the 100 largest economies, 51 were Transnational Corporations (TNCs) and only 49 were countries. America’s WalMart, for instance, is bigger than 161 countries; Mitsubishi is bigger than Indonesia, the fourth most-populated nation on earth; General Motors is bigger than Denmark and Ford is bigger than South Africa. These same corporations - bigger than the combined economies of 182 countries and with twice the economic clout - employ less than one-third of one percent of the world’s people - just 18.8 million.

“A decade later, the TNC’s share of the global market has increased dramatically. And yet, armed with such damning evidence, politicians abandon any smidgin of morality in favor of lucrative revolving door careers leaving once-thriving nations as hollowed out corpses.

“In her ‘State of Corporations’ Susan George observed that: from the mid-1990s, the largest American banking, securities, insurance and accounting transnational corporations joined forces and employed 3000 people and spent $US5 billion to get rid of all New Deal laws passed under the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s - the very laws that had protected the American economy for over sixty years.

“Through this collective lobbying, they won total freedom to remove any money-losing assets from their balance sheets into ‘shadow’ banks that appeared nowhere on their balance sheets, leaving them free to create and trade hundreds of billions worth of toxic derivative products, such as unregulated sub-prime mortgages’.“ In the US alone, more than ten million families had their homes repossessed. In our era of ‘too big to fail and gaol’ virtually no-one has been brought to heel or sent to prison.

“Today, corporate lobbyists called ‘expert committees’ meet daily with officialdom to hammer out trade deals with no representation from consumer or environmental organizations or civil society. Anarchy by the rich and powerful. Epic financial crimes, monumental tax evasion, ecological mayhem on an industrial scale and non-stop illegal wars. A roll-call of shame.

“Pinch a loaf of bread and it’s prison for the likes of you and me, loot an entire country and you’ll get a knighthood.

“Only a few weeks ago, the European Parliament voted in favor of the ‘Trade Secrets Protection Directive’, a law that gives corporations huge new powers to prosecute and criminalize whistleblowers, journalists, and news organizations that publish leaked internal documents. Anything to keep us in the dark.

“Not in Cuba. During the long ‘special period’ after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world’s media, almost without exception, predicted Cuba’s demise. And yet underneath was an undeniable energy, human energy. Everywhere, problems were discussed in depth at meeting after meeting. I left Cuba inspired… Viva!

“Joan Coxsedge”